ISS Photography: 100 Million Words

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the Expedition 22 crew aboard the International Space Station is about to complete the generation of 100 million words worth of information.

That’s because Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineers Max Suraev, Oleg Kotov, T.J. Creamer, and Soichi Noguchi are expected to snap a total of 100,000 images by the end of their mission in Earth orbit.

Williams is setting a record that surpasses his own previous record of 83,856 images taken during Expedition 13 in 2006.

“This week we broke my old Exp. 13 record for number of Earth photos,” Williams “tweeted” from the station. “Later, after landing and recovery, I will post some of best.”

Among those digital still images is this spectacular nighttime image taken of Houston, Texas, the home of Mission Control and astronaut training, and the hub of the International Space Station Program that unites five space agencies and 15 countries in peaceful exploration and scientific research.

Williams and Suraev will end their five-and-a-half-month stay on the station Thursday, when they undock their Soyuz spacecraft and head for a landing in Kazakhstan. They were part of both the Expedition 21 and 22 crews. Kotov, Creamer and Noguchi will stay on orbit, snapping more photos, for two more months before returning home after being part of both the Expedition 22 and 23 crews.

All told, space station crews so far have amassed a total of almost 639,000 images. Those images include photos that document life and work aboard the space station, and photos that document the condition of the home planet from its unique perspective 220 miles above Earth. Their efforts are part of a larger collection that began with Earth observations photos during the Gemini Program of the 1960s. Many of the images are used in scientific research about the Earth, its climate, its resources and the effects humans are having on both.

The recent STS-130 space shuttle mission delivered a new observation deck known as the cupola that offers the largest window ever flown on a spacecraft, and the upcoming STS-131 shuttle mission to the station will deliver the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF), which will provide a new facility dedicated to multi- and hyper-spectral remote sensing and high resolution Earth observation photography to enhance the use of the best optical-quality window ever flown in space, in the U.S. Destiny Laboratory.

For more information about Earth observations photography, visit the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of the Earth at:

http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov

For more information about WORF, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/WORF.html

For more information about the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

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Planck Mission Images Galactic Web of Cold Dust

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Tendrils of cold dust
Planck images a galactic web of cold dust. Image credit: ESA and the HFI Consortium, IRAS
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Tendrils of the coldest stuff in our galaxy can be seen in a new, large image from Planck, a mission surveying the whole sky to learn more about the birth of our universe.

Planck, a European Space Agency-led mission with important participation from NASA, launched into space in May 2009 from Kourou, French Guiana. The space telescope has almost finished its first of at least four separate scans of the entire sky, a voluminous task that will be completed in early 2012.

The new image available online at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12964, highlights a swath of our Milky Way galaxy occupying about one-thirteenth of the entire sky. It shows the bright band of our galaxy's spiral disk amidst swirling clouds where gas and dust mix together and, sometimes, ignite to form new stars. The data were taken in the so-called far-infrared portion of the light spectrum, using two of nine different frequencies available on Planck.

"We've got huge amounts of data streaming down from space," said Ulf Israelsson, the NASA project manager for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The intricate process of sorting through all of it has begun."

The mission's primary objective is to map the cosmic microwave background -- relic radiation left over from the Big Bang that created our universe about 13.7 billion years ago. Planck's state-of-the-art technology will provide the most detailed information yet about the size, mass, age, geometry, composition and fate of the universe.

In addition to cosmological questions like these, the mission will address such astronomy topics as star formation and galactic structure. Its observations will be used in synergy with data from other missions, such as the Herschel Space Observatory, another ESA mission with important NASA participation, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

"Planck is the first big cosmology mission that will also have a large impact on our understanding of our galaxy, the Milky Way," said Charles Lawrence, the mission's NASA project scientist at JPL. "We can see the cold dust and gas that permeate our galaxy on very large scales, while other missions like Herschel can zoom in to see the detail."

Planck is scheduled to release a first batch of astronomy data, called the Early Release Compact Source Catalog, in Jan. 2011. Cosmology results on the first two years' worth of data are expected to be released in Dec. 2012.

Planck is a European Space Agency mission, with significant participation from NASA. NASA's Planck Project Office is based at JPL. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for both of Planck's science instruments. European, Canadian, U.S. and NASA Planck scientists will work together to analyze the Planck data. More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/planckhttp://www.esa.int/planck. and

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Mars moon Phobos

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This image of Mars' moon Phobos was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on Mars Express. The HRSC camera is operated by the German Aerospace Center and the Mars Express mission is operated by the European Space Agency. The HRSC took this image using the nadir channel on March 7, 2010, on HRSC Orbit 7915. The image has been enhanced to bring out the features in the less illuminated areas.

Visit the German Aerospace Center page for 3-D and other imagery of Phobos.

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Little Shrimp Makes Big Splash Beneath Antarctica

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A JPL-designed camera submerged 600 feet beneath the Antarctic ice sheet to image its underbelly has yielded an unexpected find -- a shrimp.
A JPL-designed camera submerged 600 feet beneath the Antarctic ice sheet to image its underbelly has yielded an unexpected find -- a shrimp.
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JPL researcher Alberto Behar got more than he bargained for when he and fellow researchers from NASA and the National Science Foundation submerged a small camera he designed 183 meters (600 feet) beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet in November 2010 to image its underbelly. The video captured an unexpected visitor -- a pinkish-orange shrimp creature, known as a Lyssianasid amphipod, swimming beneath the ice.

Behar designed the original NASA borehole camera apparatus in 1999. It has now seen six deployments with British, Australian and American science teams in Antarctica, Greenland and Alaska. He plans to take this new camera rig to Antarctica's Pine Island glacier, and hopes to eventually probe into Antarctica's mysterious sub-glacial lakes. There he'll attach a fiber-optically tethered micro-submarine with high-resolution camera, "so we can swim within the lake."

Behar, also known for his work on robotic exploration of Mars, remarked, "The real benefit of these exploration programs is that you go in not knowing what you're going to find and you get surprised. It makes it worth all the trouble putting everything together when you find something new that you didn't expect."

Read more at: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/antarctic-shrimp.html
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Google-Viacom court papers leave a lot to the imagination – FierceOnlineVideo

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Auto problem

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I have a 97 Ford Explorer, 120000 miles, running good except...When it is cold the wipers, power doors and power seats don't work. After the engine runs for about 5-10 minutes everything works. Any clues? I give up on trying to find out.

X-15 Pilot Robert White Dies

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X-15 Pilot Robert White DiesOn July 17, 1962, Major Robert White flew the X-15 to an altitude of 314,750 feet, or 59 miles, becoming the first "winged astronaut." He was the first to fly at Mach 4, Mach 5 and Mach 6; he was the first to fly a winged vehicle into space. After a career of 'firsts' White died on March 17, 2010.

White was one of the initial pilots selected for the X-15 program, representing the Air Force in the joint program with NASA, the Navy, and North American Aviation. Between April 13, 1960, and Dec. 14, 1962, he made 16 flights in the rocket-powered aircraft.

His July 17, 1962, flight to an altitude of 314,750 feet set a world record. This was 59.6 miles, significantly higher than the 50 miles the Air Force accepted as the beginning of space, qualifying White for astronaut wings. The X-15 rocket-powered aircraft were built by North American Aviation and developed to provide in-flight information and data on aerodynamics, structures, flight controls and the physiological aspects of high-speed, high-altitude flight.

A follow-on program used the aircraft as testbeds to carry various scientific experiments beyond the Earth's atmosphere on a repeated basis. Information gained from the highly successful X-15 program contributed to the development of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo manned spaceflight programs, and also the space shuttle program. The X-15s made a total of 199 flights and the first aircraft X-15-1, serial number 56-6670, is now located at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

According to an article by Al Hallonquist, White's achievements as an X-15 pilot "allowed him to become the fifth American to attain astronaut wings and only the second Air Force pilot to do this."

White retired from the Air Force as a Major General.

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Expedition 22 Crew Lands

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The Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 22 Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Maxim Suraev near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan on Thursday, March 18, 2010. NASA Astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian Cosmonaut Maxim Suraev are returning from six months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 21 and 22 crews.


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El Niño’s Last Hurrah?

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Recent sea-level height data from the NASA/European Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 oceanography satellite shows El Niño 2009-2010 hanging in there
Recent sea-level height data from the NASA/European Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 oceanography satellite shows El Niño 2009-2010 hanging in there. Image credit: Credit: NASA/JPL Ocean Surface Topography Team
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El Niño 2009-2010 just keeps hanging in there. Recent sea-level height data from the NASA/European Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 oceanography satellite show that a large-scale, sustained weakening of trade winds in the western and central equatorial Pacific during late-January through February has triggered yet another strong, eastward-moving wave of warm water, known as a Kelvin wave. Now in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, this warm wave appears as the large area of higher-than-normal sea surface heights (warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures) between 150 degrees west and 100 degrees west longitude. A series of similar, weaker events that began in June 2009 initially triggered and has sustained the present El Niño condition.

JPL oceanographer Bill Patzert says it's too soon to know for sure, but he would not be surprised if this latest and largest Kelvin wave is the "last hurrah" for this long-lasting El Niño.

Patzert explained, "Since June 2009, this El Niño has waxed and waned, impacting many global weather events. I,and many other scientists, expect the current El Niño to leave the stage sometime soon. What comes next is not yet clear, but a return to El Niño's dry sibling, La Niña, is certainly a possibility, though by no means a certainty. We'll be monitoring conditions closely over the coming weeks and months."

An El Niño also causes unusual changes in atmospheric circulation and convection around the globe. JPL's Microwave Limb Sounder instrument on NASA's Aura spacecraft captured a large eastward shift of deep convection from the current El Niño, indicated by large amounts of cloud ice in the upper troposphere. For more information, visit: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/?IDNumber=pia12961

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NASA Celebrates Sun-Earth Day Activities with Live Webcast

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NASA EDGE, an award-winning talk show known for offbeat, funny and informative behind-the-scene stories about the space agency, will celebrate Sun-Earth Day 2010, with a live webcast about our sun and its effects on Earth. The program will air at 1 p.m. EDT, Saturday, March 20, from the exhibit floor of the National Science Teachers Association conference in Philadelphia.


This year's focus is magnetic storms created by the sun. Magnetism, a force that affects our everyday lives, plays a key role in the workings of the sun. Its force also is responsible for coronal mass ejections, the most violent explosions in the solar system.

NASA research about these storms will help scientists increase their understanding of the connections between the sun and its planets. Scientists also will be able to better predict the impact of solar activity on humans and technological systems.

The NASA EDGE program will feature interviews with scientists, educators and students. Viewers will hear discussions and see demonstrations about the power of magnetism and how magnetic storms affect them. Science centers and museums around the world will provide images from NASA satellites studying the sun and other multimedia products for educators, students and the public.


To view the webcast, visit:

http://www.ustream.tv/user/NASA_EDGE

For more information about Sun-Earth Day, visit:

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Cassini Shows Saturnian Roller Derby, Strange Weather

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This natural color view from the Cassini spacecraft highlights the myriad gradations in the transparency of Saturn's inner ringsFrom our vantage point on Earth, Saturn may look like a peaceful orb with rings worthy of a carefully raked Zen garden, but NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been shadowing the gas giant long enough to see that the rings are a rough and tumble roller derby. It has also revealed that the planet itself roils with strange weather and shifting patterns of charged particles. Two review papers to be published in the March 19 issue of the journal Science synthesize Cassini's findings since arriving at Saturn in 2004.

"This rambunctious system gives us a new feel for how an early solar system might have behaved," said Linda Spilker, a planetary scientist and the new Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This kind of deep, rich data can only be collected by an orbiting spacecraft, and we look forward to the next seven years around Saturn bringing even more surprises."

In the paper describing the elegant mess of activity in the rings, lead author Jeff Cuzzi, Cassini's interdisciplinary scientist for rings and dust who is based at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., describes how Cassini has shown us that collisions are routine and chunks of ice leave trails of debris in their wakes. Spacecraft data have also revealed how small moons play tug-of-war with ring material and how bits of rubble that would otherwise join together to become moons are ultimately ripped apart by the gravitational pull that Saturn exerts.

During equinox, the period when sunlight hits the rings exactly edge-on, Cassini witnessed rings that are normally flat - about tens of meters (yards) thick - being flipped up as high as the Rocky Mountains.

The spacecraft has also shown that the rings are composed mostly of water ice, with a mysterious reddish contaminant that could be rust or small organic molecules similar to those found in red vegetables on Earth.

"It has been amazing to see the rings come to life before our very eyes, changing even as we watch, being colorful and taking on a tangible, 3-D nature," Cuzzi said. "The rings were still a nearly unstructured object in even the best telescopes when I was a grad student, but Cassini has brought us an intimate familiarity with them."

Cuzzi said Cassini scientists were surprised to find such fine-scale structure nearly everywhere in the rings, forcing them to be very careful about generalizing their findings across the entire ring disk. The discovery that the rings are clumpy has also called into question some of the previous estimates for the mass of the rings because there might be clusters of material hidden inside of the clumps that have not yet been measured.

In the review paper on Saturn's atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere, lead author Tamas Gombosi, Cassini's interdisciplinary scientist for magnetosphere and plasma science who is based at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, describes how Cassini helped scientists understand a south polar vortex that has a diameter 20 to 40 times that of a terrestrial hurricane, and the bizarrely stable hexagon-shaped jet stream at the planet's north pole. Cassini scientists have also calculated a variation in Saturn's wind speeds at different altitudes and latitudes that is 10 times greater than the wind speed variation on Earth.

According to Gombosi's paper, Cassini has also shown us that the small moon Enceladus, not the sun or Saturn's largest moon Titan, is the biggest contributor of charged particles to Saturn's magnetic environment. The charged particles from Enceladus, a moon that features a plume of water vapor and other gases spraying from its south polar region, also contribute to the auroras around the poles of the planet.

"We learned from Cassini that the Saturnian magnetosphere is swimming in water," Gombosi said. "This is unique in the solar system and makes Saturn's plasma environment particularly fascinating."

Of course, Cassini's intense investigation has opened up a host of new mysteries. For example, Cassini has shown us images of occasional cannon-ball-like objects that rocket across one of the outer rings known as the F ring, without many clues about where they came from or why they quickly disappear.

Learning more about a kind of radio emission known as "kilometric radiation" at Saturn has unsettled debates about the planet's rotation rate rather than settled them. While the regular periods of kilometric radiation have given scientists a sense of the rotation rate at Jupiter, Saturn has clocked different periods for the radiation during NASA's Voyager flybys in 1980 and 1981 and the nearly six years of Cassini's investigations. The modulations vary by about 30 seconds to a minute, but they shouldn't be varying at all. The inconsistency may be related to a source in the magnetic bubble around the planet rather than the core of the gas giant, but scientists are still debating.

"Cassini has answered questions we were not even smart enough to ask when the mission was planned and raised a lot of new ones," Cuzzi said. "We are hot on the trail, though."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

More Cassini information is available at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

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My First Three Point of Inquiry Shows–Requesting Feedback | The Intersection

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I just started a comments thread over at the Point of Inquiry forums to ask what folks think of my first three programs–on vaccine denial with Paul Offit, on climate denial with Michael Mann, and then on science journalism and disaster with Andrew Revkin. We’ve determined that I’ll be taking next week off, and a D.J. Grothe show that was in the can will air instead. So now is a great time to evaluate strengths and weaknesses and plot new directions. This is, after all, a new experiment, and I want to learn from it and progress. So any thoughts are appreciated. Leave them at the forum thread, or leave them here–and thanks!