Water on Mars: New NASA study suggests Red Planet once had more water than Earths Arctic Ocean – Video

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Water on Mars: New NASA study suggests Red Planet once had more water than Earths Arctic Ocean
New research by NASA indicates a primitive ocean on Mars once held more water than the Earth #39;s Arctic Ocean. Some 4.3 billion years ago, Mars was a far wetter place with five million cubic...

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Water on Mars: New NASA study suggests Red Planet once had more water than Earths Arctic Ocean - Video

NASA launches satellites to probe magnetic mystery

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A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket climbs away from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on March 12, 2015. The rocket carried four NASA science satellites designed to study how the sun's magnetic field interacts with Earth's. NASA TV

Kicking off a $1.1 billion mission, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket streaked into space Thursday, boosting four NASA satellites into orbit to study interactions between Earth's magnetic field and the sun's, which generate the titanic energy discharges that drive auroras and play havoc with satellite navigation, communications and power grids.

The hard-to-study mechanism underlying space weather is known as magnetic reconnection, and it is the focus of NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale -- MMS -- mission, a long-awaited project to reveal the underlying physics powering Earth's space environment.

Carrying the four MMS satellites stacked one atop the other in a protective nose cone fairing, the Atlas 5 roared to life and climbed away from pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 10:44 p.m. EDT (GMT-4). Thirteen minutes later, after the first of two Centaur second stage engine firings, the rocket and its satellite payload were safely in orbit.

The four satellites making up NASA's $1.1 billion Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, or MMS, are stacked for launch Thursday in the nose of an Atlas 5 rocket. The satellites will work in concert to study the underlying physics of explosive interactions between the sun's magnetic field and Earth's.

NASA

After a second Centaur engine firing, the satellites, built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., were released at five-minute intervals starting about one hour and 32 minutes after liftoff.

"The spin rates, the attitude, it was essentially a flawless delivery of our four satellites," said Craig Tooley, NASA MMS project manager at Goddard. "They're all healthy and turned on."

Each 3,000-pound, 12-foot-wide satellite features a suite of sensitive instruments and eight extendable antenna-like booms: four 197-foot-long radial wire booms and two 41-foot axial extensions for electric field sensors and two 16-foot booms carrying magnetometers.

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NASA launches satellites to probe magnetic mystery

NASA Eyes Smart Glasses for Astronauts

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NASA and Osterhout Design Group have partnered to explore using smart glasses on land and in space.

This summer's Space Camp itinerary: flight simulators, zero-gravity machine, and assisted-reality smart glasses?

NASA and Osterhout Design Group (ODG) today announced a partnership that will explore astronauts' use of smart glasses for terrestrial and space-based activities.

After testing virtual and augmented reality in flight, the organizations aim to deploy ODG's technology on NASA space missions.

The most advanced, robust, and mobile AR device available today, ODG's Smart Glasses (R-6 model pictured) project 3G graphics onto a tablet, allowing for a high-tech, hands-free experienceperfect for cosmonauts floating through the solar system.

"As electronic directions and instructions replace paper checklists and longer duration missions are considered, there is a need for tools that can meet evolving demands," NASA engineering director Lauri Hansen said in a statement. "ODG's technology provides an opportunity to increase space mission efficiencies and we are pleased to explore its potential in human spaceflight while also advancing its use here on Earth."

Using position sensors, the glasses gain full awareness of the situation, able to know where the user is location, where they're looking, and how they're moving.

Folks in the medical, energy, and utilities fields already use ODG's software, which NASA will implement to increase astronauts' accuracy and efficiency during in-flight activities.

"ODG's Smart Glasses are revolutionizing the way we explore information and interact with our environments and each other," CEO Ralph Osterhout said. "ODG and NASA share an unwavering commitment to advance technology and today's announcement is a vote of confidence in the power, promise, and possibility of headworn augmented reality technology."

When not testing next-gen smart glasses, NASA has been busy sending balloons into space and firing up the biggest rocket ever built.

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NASA Eyes Smart Glasses for Astronauts

NASA satellites to study magnetic space explosions

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A cosmic phenomenon in Earth's magnetic field that is both dazzling and potentially dangerous for people on the surface is the focus of a new scientific mission, scheduled to launch into orbit on Thursday (March 12).

The Magnetsopheric Multiscale mission, or MMS, consists of four satellites that will study a process called magnetic reconnection: the explosive phenomenon that can send powerful bursts of particles hurtling toward Earth, potentially damaging satellites. But magnetic reconnection is also responsible for the auroras the northern and southern lights near Earth's poles. Anew NASA video explains the MMS missionin detail.

MMS is the only dedicated instrument studying magnetic reconnection, and scientists say it could finally reveal how this phenomenon occurs. The mission requires an elaborately choreographed arrangement of four separate satellites in an orbit around Earth, placing them in the path of the magnetic reconnection events taking place right on Earth's doorstep. [NASA'S Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission in Pictures]

"[MMS] is going to actually fly in Earth's magnetosphere, this protective magnetic environment around the Earth," Jeff Newmark, interim director of NASA's heliophysics division, said in a Feb. 25 briefing. "We're using this environment around the Earth as a natural laboratory. Rather than building one on Earth, we're going to where magnetic reconnection actually occurs in space so we can understand it."

You canwatch the MMS satellite launch Thursday, with NASA's webcast beginning at 8 p.m. EDT (0000 March 13 GMT). Liftoff is set for 10:44 p.m. EDT (0244 a.m. March 13 GMT) atop an unmanned Atlas V rocket. Today at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT), NASA will hold a science briefing webcast to discuss the mission.

While past space missions have also recorded some data on magnetic reconnection, MMS is the first space mission dedicated solely to studying this phenomenon, according to a statement from NASA. It will collect data 100 times faster than any previous mission that has observed magnetic reconnection in space. The $1.1 billion MMS mission was built and tested at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Magnetic fields can be found all over the universe. Planets, stars, galaxies,black holesand many other bodies create magnetic field lines that can wrap tightly around their parent bodies like vines, or wander loosely into space.

With one end attached to the positive side of a magnet, and the other end attached to the negative side, magnetic field lines are typically looped. Occasionally, a magnetic field line will snap, like a rubber band, before quickly reforming a loop. The snapping and reconnecting of magnetic field lines, also known asmagnetic reconnection, releases great bursts of energy, sometimes accelerating nearby particles close to the speed of light.

"Exactly how magnetic energy is destroyed in a reconnection event is completely unknown," Jim Burch, MMS principle investigator, said in a news briefing on March 10.

When magnetic reconnection occurs in the sun it creates solar flares that explode off the surface. It can also cause coronal mass ejections, in which the solar flare belches up a storm of particles that hurtle outward into space sometimes straight toward Earth. The planet's own magnetic field protects people on the ground from these particle storms, but orbiting satellites areat risk of being damaged.

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NASA satellites to study magnetic space explosions

Power of Nanotechnology The Next Generation Digital World Future Plans Explained – Video

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Power of Nanotechnology The Next Generation Digital World Future Plans Explained
Look around. Technology is all around us. We use it in every aspect of our lives. It enables us to do amazing things. But what if we could go further? What if we could go beyond the screen?...

By: Srinivas Nimmala

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Power of Nanotechnology The Next Generation Digital World Future Plans Explained - Video

UK Space Agency's second CubeSat mission is taking shape

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The UK Space Agency's next CubeSat mission, AlSat Nano, is starting to take shape, following the selection of the mission's payloads. The suite of 3 payloads will be developed by UK academic-industrial partnerships that will use the mission for rapid and cost-effective demonstration of new and innovative space technologies.

AlSat Nano is a joint space mission between the UK Space Agency and Algerian Space Agency (ASAL). In March 2014 the UK Space Agency and ASAL signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) under which the two parties agreed to enhance collaboration in space programmes.

A specific action identified following the MoU was the establishment of a joint educational CubeSat development programme to be delivered by Surrey Space Centre (SSC), utilising its ties and heritage in the field.

The mission's payloads include:

SpaceMag-PV Boom This payload could significantly improve the range of science experiments that a CubeSat could carry by making advances in the field of booms - arms used to hold instrument sensors as far as possible from the spacecraft body to minimise interference.

SpaceMag-PV Boom will flight test the world's longest retractable CubeSat-compatible boom which will be able to deploy up to 2 metres in length from a volume the size of a cigarette packet. This technology could also form the basis of de-orbit systems for future missions.

The payload also carries a magnetometer, one of the most compact of its class, to carry out measurements of the Earth's magnetic field. Also on the payload will be RadFET radiation monitors, and test tokens of a revolutionary flexible solar cell material. The payload is led by Oxford Space Systems Ltd, collaborating with partners including RAL Space and Bartington Instruments Ltd.

C3D2 C3D2 is a highly customisable CubeSat camera offering three fields of view and innovative on-board software processing capabilities. The payload will also be a remote experiment of the Open Science Laboratory - an award-winning suite of remote experiments that supports distance learning students studying science and engineering.

C3D2 will offer these students the chance to operate a real payload on an orbiting spacecraft. The payload development is led by the Open University Centre for Electronic Imaging with sensor hardware provided by e2v Ltd and electronics from XCAM Ltd.

Thin Film Solar Cell Thin Film Solar Cell is a novel and potentially step-changing solar cell structure which is directly deposited on cover glass just 1/10th of a millimeter thick.

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UK Space Agency's second CubeSat mission is taking shape

Internationally Recognized Researcher Ming-Hui Zou Named Director of New Center for Molecular and Translational Medicine

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Newswise ATLANTADr. Ming-Hui Zou, an internationally recognized researcher in molecular and translational medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, has been named the founding director of the new Center for Molecular and Translational Medicine at Georgia State University.

He is also a Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) Eminent Scholar in Molecular Medicine, becoming the seventh eminent scholar at the university.

Zous research focuses on cardiovascular complications related to diabetes, atherosclerosis and hypertension.

Georgia State is excited to welcome Dr. Zou as the founding director of the universitys new Center for Molecular and Translational Medicine, said Dr. James Weyhenmeyer, vice president for research and economic development. This center is designed to meet healthcare needs by converting significant research findings into diagnostic tools and medicines that will help improve the health of individuals. Dr. Zou has made tremendous achievements in cardiovascular research, and he will certainly be an asset as he leads research efforts that could potentially help millions of people suffering from heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses.

At the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center, Zou held two endowed chairs and was chief of the Section of Molecular Medicine, vice chair for research in the Department of Medicine, Warren Chair in diabetes research and professor of medicine, biochemistry and molecular biology. He holds a doctorate and medical degree.

He has received prestigious awards from the American Heart Association, including the Career Development Award, Irvin H. Page Atherosclerosis Research Award and National Established Investigator Award. He has also received the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundations Independent Investigator Award and the Regents Award for Superior Research & Creative Activity from the University of Oklahoma. He was awarded the George Lynn Cross Research Professor position, the highest research honor a faculty member may receive from the University of Oklahoma, in 2013.

In addition, he was elected in 2008 to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the most prestigious society for young physician-scientists in the United States.

Zou studies the role of oxidative stress in vascular biology and disease. He is recognized for making influential discoveries in cardiovascular research, including identifying the role of two key proteins involved in the vessel pathology that leads to vascular disease. He has previously collaborated with the pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly and Merck to develop new drugs and conduct clinical trials, and he plans to develop new therapeutics for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

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Internationally Recognized Researcher Ming-Hui Zou Named Director of New Center for Molecular and Translational Medicine