Lunar Magma Has Much More Water Than We Thought

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Lunar Magma Has 800 Times More Water Than Previously Suggested

"A team of NASA-funded researchers has measured for the first time water from the moon in the form of tiny globules of molten rock, which have turned to glass-like material trapped within crystals. Data from these newly-discovered lunar melt inclusions indicate the water content of lunar magma is 100 times higher than previous studies suggested."

Lunar Water Brings Portions of Moon's Origin Story Into Question, Carnegie Institution

"Compared with meteorites, Earth and the other inner planets of our solar system contain relatively low amounts of water and volatile elements, which were not abundant in the inner solar system during planet formation. The even lower quantities of these volatile elements found on the Moon has long been claimed as evidence that it must have formed following a high-temperature, catastrophic giant impact. But this new research shows that aspects of this theory must be reevaluated."

Apollo Vets Are Not Happy Today (White House Responds)

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Roundup: Obama's policy aims to revitalize space program John Holdren and Charlie Bolden

"Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan are genuine American heroes who brought immense courage and competence to the historic manned moon missions they led. Obviously, they are more than entitled to their opinions about the best way forward for America's space program today. But their opinions would be more worthy of attention if they were based on a more accurate understanding of where we are, how we got here, and how President Obama's space policy, far from "grounding" JFK's space legacy, is positioning us to revitalize it with new technology, new capabilities and new destinations ("Is Obama grounding JFK's space legacy?", The Forum, Wednesday)."

Column: Is Obama grounding JFK's space legacy?, By Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell and Gene Cernan, USA Today

"President Obama's proposed 2011 budget did not include funds for Constellation, therefore essentially canceling the program. It sent shock waves throughout NASA, the Congress and the American people. Nearly $10 billion had been invested in design and development of the program. Many respected experts and members of Congress voiced concern about the president's proposal. Some supported the president's plan,but most were critical. The supporters' biases were often evident, particularly when there was a vested or economic interest in the outcome. Obama's advisers, in searching for a new and different NASA strategy with which the president could be favorably identified, ignored NASA's operational mandate and strayed widely from President Kennedy's vision and the will of the American people."

So … Where Are those Cool Soyuz Fly Around Pix?

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Keith's note: NASA sources report that Paolo left the memory card in the Soyuz when he climbed out. The Soyuz is being shipped now, so it will be next week before the images can be retrieved. Its quite understandable that you can forget to do some things when you arrive on a planet from outer space.

One Hearing – Two Different Takes

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Subcommittee Democrats Seek Assurance of Reliable and Timely Commercial Cargo Capability for the International Space Station, House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Democrats

"In 2006, NASA laid out a two-phase plan to ensure that vital equipment and supplies could be delivered to the ISS after the retirement of the space shuttle. In phase one, companies would be required to develop and demonstrate the capability to safely deliver cargo to the ISS. In phase two, when confident that commercial cargo sources were available, NASA would sign long-term CRS contracts with commercial cargo providers. However, NASA signed long-term resupply contracts with SpaceX and Orbital before either company had successfully demonstrated a commercial cargo flight. Furthermore, in 2010, NASA canceled the Constellation Program, which would have served as a contingency backup in case commercial cargo services were delayed or failed. Commercial providers are now fully responsible for the critical task of resupplying the ISS when the Space Shuttle retires in July."

Critical Questions Remain on the Viability of Commercial Cargo Efforts to Support the Space Station, House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

"In his opening remarks, Subcommittee Chairman Steven Palazzo (R-MS) noted that Congress has generally been supportive of NASA's commercial cargo efforts. However, he said that "Too often, requests for information have been met with a veil of secrecy and claims of company proprietary information." Subsequently, Palazzo said, "I want to remind NASA and the commercial partners that you are spending taxpayer money, and lots of it. So you will not be exempt from oversight and financial scrutiny."

NASA OIG Semiannual Report Online

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NASA OIG Semiannual Report October 1, 2010 - March 31, 2011

"In January 2011, the NASA Office of Inspector General (OIG) took the unusual step of sending a letter to the Chairs and Ranking Members of NASA's congressional oversight and appropriations committees highlighting a situation created by "holdover" language in NASA's fiscal year (FY) 2010 appropriation. The language prohibited NASA from terminating contracts related to the Agency's canceled Constellation Program or starting programs to implement the follow-on human space exploration program called for in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. The OIG urged Congress to take immediate action to enable NASA to more efficiently redirect its funds to the priorities outlined in the Authorization Act. While not a traditional audit or investigative report, the letter seeks to fulfill the Inspector General Act's directive that OIGs should make recommendations to Congress concerning the impact of legislation on the "economy and efficiency" of their agencies."

Congress Is Using Bad Numbers To Trash a Business Case

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Keith's note: When a witness testifies before this committee they are required to sign a "Truth in Testimony" from which the committee now posts on its hearing website (just look uner each witness' name for links). Yet the hearing charter that the committee posts on its site does not seem to be held to the same high standards. One glaring example:

"The terms of the contracts awarded to SpaceX and Orbital call for delivery of at least 40 metric tons (approximately 88,160 pounds) of cargo to the space station between 2010 and 2015 for $3.5 billion. SpaceX was awarded $1.6 billion to deliver 20 metric tons on 12 cargo resupply missions. Orbital was awarded $1.9 billion to deliver 20 metric tons on 8 cargo resupply missions. The following chart lists approximate costs to deliver one pound of cargo to the ISS under various programs. Development costs are not included in these calculations, and are considered proprietary information by the COTS partners.

Approximate cost per pound to ISS

Space Shuttle* - $21,268
Russian Progress - $18,149
Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) - $26,770

*Calculated assuming four missions per year with a capability to deliver 16 metric tons (35,264 pounds) to the space station at a total annual program cost of $3.0 Billion. $3,000,000,000 ÷ (4 flights × 35,264 pounds/flight) = $21,268 per pound. Assumes no additional cost to transport 28 astronauts to the space station and return.

Costs for the Russian Progress and the Commercial Resupply program are NASA estimates. The CRS estimate would be higher, at around $39,700 per pound, if derived using a method similar to that used for the Space Shuttle; i.e. Dividing the CRS program cost ($3.5 billion) by the mass delivered to the space station (40 metric tons, i.e. 88,160 pounds)."

Keith's note: Are full shuttle development costs, sustaining engineering, post-Challenger and post-Columbia fixes etc. included in what it cost to develop and maintain the current shuttle capability - including costs picked up by the ISS program? Is any honest attempt whatsoever made to figure out what the development costs (mostly by the communist command economy Soviet Union) were for Soyuz/Progress system? Everyone knows that the Russians pick the highest cost they can get away with (they learned capitalism from us all too well). Yet this committee's staff (i.e. Ken Monroe) provides these misleading numbers to the members of the committee to cite as facts.

If witnesses (invited to voluntarily testify) are put through this scrutiny to calibrate their truthfulness/conflicts of interest, then shouldn't staff (and members who get political contributions) be asked to sign a similar form stating that their "facts" are as free from bias as they can possibly make them? And since some of these numbers come from NASA, shouldn't they also be called upon to at least provide caveats (in the case of Progress numbers)?

How can you possibly have a calm, reasoned discussion about the cost of things - and the relative merits of government vs private sector operations - when the numbers are either flawed, cooked, or skewed like this? Curiously, it was Shotwell and Culbertson who knew all of their numbers - and the numbers rolled off their tongues easily when asked - and often, when they were not asked.

Arctic Nations Debate Their Industrial Future

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World leaders of arctic nations are gathering in Greenland to discuss global warming, but also the future of industrial opportunities such as oil and mineral exploration, fishing, and transportation. Can these governments strike the right balance between economic and environmental concerns? And, can

Car Review: 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo 4×4

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Even the cushiest Jeep products have always traded on at least the perception that they would make capable off-road vehicles. So when we got ahold of a 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo 4x4, loaded up with all the "Trail Rated" bells and whistles, we decided we'd be remiss if we didn't at least ge

Is Google the Most Reputable Company in the U.S.?

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The Harris Interactive poll of more than 30,000 people named Google the most reputable company in the U.S. based on qualities such as leadership and social responsibility. The company operates more than 1 million servers in data centers around the world and processes over 1 billion search requests e

1960s Walking Truck: The First AT-AT?

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From Technabob:

I always wondered how practical a giant manned walking robot like the AT-ATs in The Empire Strikes Back would really be. Well a long, long time ago, at a General Electric factory far, far away, it turns out an actual quadruped manned robot was in development.

Read th

Inner Moon as Wet as Earth

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From Discovery News - Top Stories:

The inside of the moon may have as much water as Earth's mantle, finds an analysis of moon crystals returned by Apollo astronauts.

Read the whole article

Do You Measure Maintenance?

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As our lead story this month details, large companies have the personnel, resources, and smart management to identify, record, and disseminate best practices. At the same time, however, maintenance departments — even in large corporations — are often viewed as cost centers, not revenue g

Spitzer Sees Crystal Rain in Infant Star Outer Clouds

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Tiny crystals of a green mineral called olivine are falling down like rain on a burgeoning star, according to observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

This is the first time such crystals have been observed in the dusty clouds of gas that collapse around forming stars. Astronomers are still debating how the crystals got there, but the most likely culprits are jets of gas blasting away from the embryonic star.

"You need temperatures as hot as lava to make these crystals," said Tom Megeath of the University of Toledo in Ohio. He is the principal investigator of the research and the second author of a new study appearing in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We propose that the crystals were cooked up near the surface of the forming star, then carried up into the surrounding cloud where temperatures are much colder, and ultimately fell down again like glitter."

Spitzer's infrared detectors spotted the crystal rain around a distant, sun-like embryonic star, or protostar, referred to as HOPS-68, in the constellation Orion.

The crystals are in the form of forsterite. They belong to the olivine family of silicate minerals and can be found everywhere from a periodot gemstone to the green sand beaches of Hawaii to remote galaxies. NASA's Stardust and Deep Impact missions both detected the crystals in their close-up studies of comets.

"If you could somehow transport yourself inside this protostar's collapsing gas cloud, it would be very dark," said Charles Poteet, lead author of the new study, also from the University of Toledo. "But the tiny crystals might catch whatever light is present, resulting in a green sparkle against a black, dusty backdrop."

Forsterite crystals were spotted before in the swirling, planet-forming disks that surround young stars. The discovery of the crystals in the outer collapsing cloud of a proto-star is surprising because of the cloud's colder temperatures, about minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 170 degrees Celsius). This led the team of astronomers to speculate the jets may in fact be transporting the cooked-up crystals to the chilly outer cloud.

The findings might also explain why comets, which form in the frigid outskirts of our solar system, contain the same type of crystals. Comets are born in regions where water is frozen, much colder than the searing temperatures needed to form the crystals, approximately 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius). The leading theory on how comets acquired the crystals is that materials in our young solar system mingled together in a planet-forming disk. In this scenario, materials that formed near the sun, such as the crystals, eventually migrated out to the outer, cooler regions of the solar system.

Poteet and his colleagues say this scenario could still be true but speculate that jets might have lifted crystals into the collapsing cloud of gas surrounding our early sun before raining onto the outer regions of our forming solar system. Eventually, the crystals would have been frozen into comets. The Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, also participated in the study by characterizing the forming star.

"Infrared telescopes such as Spitzer and now Herschel are providing an exciting picture of how all the ingredients of the cosmic stew that makes planetary systems are blended together," said Bill Danchi, senior astrophysicist and program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The Spitzer observations were made before it used up its liquid coolant in May 2009 and began its warm mission.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20110526.html

James Webb Space Telescope ISIM on ‘Spin Cycle’

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Prior to taking a new telescope into space, engineers must put the spacecraft and its instruments through a "spin cycle" test for durability to ensure they'll still work after experiencing the forces of a rocket launch. Finding out they don't work once they're in orbit is too late. The structure that houses the science instruments of the James Webb Space Telescope is undergoing that cycle of tests during the weeks of May 23 and 30 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. This structure is called the Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM.

The Webb telescope will experience significant shaking and gravitational forces when it is launched on the large Ariane V rocket. The ISIM structure will house the four main scientific instruments of the telescope.

During the testing process, as the ISIM structure is being spun and shaken, engineers take measurements to compare with their computer models. If there are discrepancies, the engineers hunt for the reasons so they can address them. The huge centrifuge will spin at speeds close to 11 rpm, exposing the ISIM structure to about 10 times the force of gravity.

Webb is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and will serve thousands of astronomers worldwide. Webb will study the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of planetary systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System. The Webb telescope is a joint mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/isim-spin-test.html

Carina Nebula

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This Chandra image shows the Carina Nebula, a star-forming region in the Sagittarius-Carina arm of the Milky Way a mere 7,500 light years from Earth. Chandra's sharp X-ray vision has detected over 14,000 stars in this region, revealed a diffuse X-ray glow, and provided strong evidence that massive stars have already self-destructed in this nearby supernova factory.

The lower energy X-rays in this image are red, the medium energy X-rays are green, and the highest energy X-rays are blue. The Chandra survey has a large field of 1.4 square degrees, made of a mosaic of 22 individual Chandra pointings. In total, this image represents 1.2 million seconds -- or nearly two weeks -- of Chandra observing time. A great deal of multi-wavelength data has been used in combination with this new Chandra campaign, including infrared observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Very Large Telescope (VLT).

Several pieces of evidence support the idea that supernova production has already begun in this star-forming region. Firstly, there is an observed deficit of bright X-ray sources in Trumpler 15, suggesting that some of the massive stars in this cluster were already destroyed in supernova explosions. Trumpler 15 is located in the northern part of the image, as shown in a labeled version, and is one of ten star clusters in the Carina complex. Several other well known clusters are shown in the labeled image.

The detection of six possible neutron stars, the dense cores often left behind after stars explode in supernovas, provides additional evidence that supernova activity is ramping up in Carina. Previous observations had only detected one neutron star in Carina. These six neutron star candidates are too faint to be easily picked out in this large-scale image of Carina.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/carina2011.html

NASA’s Hubble Finds Rare ‘Blue Straggler’ Stars in Milky Way’s Hub

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found a rare class of oddball stars called blue stragglers in the hub of our Milky Way, the first detected within our galaxy's bulge.

Blue stragglers are so named because they seemingly lag behind in the aging process, appearing younger than the population from which they formed. While they have been detected in many distant star clusters, and among nearby stars, they never have been seen inside the core of our galaxy.

It is not clear how blue stragglers form. A common theory is that they emerge from binary pairs. As the more massive star evolves and expands, the smaller star gains material from its companion. This stirs up hydrogen fuel and causes the growing star to undergo nuclear fusion at a faster rate. It burns hotter and bluer, like a massive young star.

The findings support the idea that the Milky Way's central bulge stopped making stars billions of years ago. It now is home to aging sun-like stars and cooler red dwarfs. Giant blue stars that once lived there have long since exploded as supernovae.

The results have been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Lead author Will Clarkson of Indiana University in Bloomington, will discuss them today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Boston.

"Although the Milky Way bulge is by far the closest galaxy bulge, several key aspects of its formation and subsequent evolution remain poorly understood," Clarkson said. "Many details of its star-formation history remain controversial. The extent of the blue straggler population detected provides two new constraints for models of the star-formation history of the bulge."

The discovery followed a seven-day survey in 2006 called the Sagittarius Window Eclipsing Extrasolar Planet Search (SWEEPS). Hubble peered at 180,000 stars in the crowded central bulge of our galaxy, 26,000 light-years away. The survey was intended to find hot Jupiter-class planets that orbit very close to their stars. In doing so, the SWEEPS team also uncovered 42 oddball blue stars with brightness and temperatures typical for stars much younger than ordinary bulge stars.

The observations clearly indicate that if there is a young star population in the bulge, it is very small. It was not detected in the SWEEPS program. Blue stragglers long have been suspected to be living in the bulge, but had not been observed because younger stars in the disk of our galaxy lie along the line-of-sight to the core, confusing and contaminating the view.

Astronomers used Hubble to distinguish the motion of the core population from foreground stars in the Milky Way. Bulge stars orbit the galactic center at a different speed than foreground stars. Plotting their motion required returning to the SWEEPS target region with Hubble two years after the first observations were made. The blue stragglers were identified as moving along with the other stars in the bulge.

"The size of the field of view on the sky is roughly that of the thickness of a human fingernail held at arm's length, and within this region, Hubble sees about a quarter million stars toward the bulge," Clarkson said. "Only the superb image quality and stability of Hubble allowed us to make this measurement in such a crowded field."

From the 42 candidate blue stragglers, the investigators estimate 18 to 37 are likely genuine. The remainder could be a mix of foreground objects and, at most, a small population of genuinely young bulge stars.

"The SWEEPS program was designed to detect transiting planets through small light variations" said Kailash Sahu, the principal investigator of the SWEEPS program. "Therefore the program could easily detect the variability of binary pairs, which was crucial in confirming these are indeed blue stragglers."

Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/blue-straggler.html

Radio Telescopes Capture Best-Ever Snapshot of Black Hole Jets

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An international team, including NASA-funded researchers, using radio telescopes located throughout the Southern Hemisphere has produced the most detailed image of particle jets erupting from a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy.

"These jets arise as infalling matter approaches the black hole, but we don't yet know the details of how they form and maintain themselves," said Cornelia Mueller, the study's lead author and a doctoral student at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.

The new image shows a region less than 4.2 light-years across -- less than the distance between our sun and the nearest star. Radio-emitting features as small as 15 light-days can be seen, making this the highest-resolution view of galactic jets ever made. The study will appear in the June issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics and is available online.

Mueller and her team targeted Centaurus A (Cen A), a nearby galaxy with a supermassive black hole weighing 55 million times the sun's mass. Also known as NGC 5128, Cen A is located about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Centaurus and is one of the first celestial radio sources identified with a galaxy.

Seen in radio waves, Cen A is one of the biggest and brightest objects in the sky, nearly 20 times the apparent size of a full moon. This is because the visible galaxy lies nestled between a pair of giant radio-emitting lobes, each nearly a million light-years long.

These lobes are filled with matter streaming from particle jets near the galaxy's central black hole. Astronomers estimate that matter near the base of these jets races outward at about one-third the speed of light.

Using an intercontinental array of nine radio telescopes, researchers for the TANAMI (Tracking Active Galactic Nuclei with Austral Milliarcsecond Interferometry) project were able to effectively zoom into the galaxy's innermost realm.

"Advanced computer techniques allow us to combine data from the individual telescopes to yield images with the sharpness of a single giant telescope, one nearly as large as Earth itself," said Roopesh Ojha at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The enormous energy output of galaxies like Cen A comes from gas falling toward a black hole weighing millions of times the sun's mass. Through processes not fully understood, some of this infalling matter is ejected in opposing jets at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Detailed views of the jet's structure will help astronomers determine how they form.

The jets strongly interact with surrounding gas, at times possibly changing a galaxy's rate of star formation. Jets play an important but poorly understood role in the formation and evolution of galaxies.

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected much higher-energy radiation from Cen A's central region. "This radiation is billions of times more energetic than the radio waves we detect, and exactly where it originates remains a mystery," said Matthias Kadler at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany and a collaborator of Ojha. "With TANAMI, we hope to probe the galaxy's innermost depths to find out."

Ojha is funded through a Fermi investigation on multiwavelength studies of Active Galactic Nuclei.

The astronomers credit continuing improvements in the Australian Long Baseline Array (LBA) with TANAMI's enormously increased image quality and resolution. The project augments the LBA with telescopes in South Africa, Chile and Antarctica to explore the brightest galactic jets in the southern sky.

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the U.S. The Australia Long Baseline Array is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility, which is funded by the Commonwealth of Australia for operation as a National Facility managed by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/radio-particle-jets.html