NASA launches next-generation scientific balloon

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COSI collaboration/NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility

The blackness of space was visible above Mount Erebus, on Antarctica's Ross Island, as the COSI mission climbed attached to a helium balloon.

NASA has launched its most ambitious scientific balloon ever. On 28 December at 21:16 London time, technicians inflated and released a 532,000-cubic-metre aerostatic balloon from near McMurdo Station in Antarctica. It is the biggest test yet of a 'super-pressure' design that enables a balloon to stay aloft much longer than a conventional scientific balloon.

If all continues smoothly, experts expect the flight to last for 100 days or longer. The current record for the longest NASA scientific ballooning flight is 55 days, using a traditional balloon. The record for a super-pressure balloon is just a day shorter, at 54 days.

More time aloft equals more science. The new super-pressure balloon is carrying a -ray telescope to hunt for high-energy photons streaming from the cosmos. Known as the Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI), it can detect where in the sky these rays are coming from, and thus begin to unravel various astronomical mysteries.

COSI is the first science payload designed from scratch to take advantage of NASAs super-pressure technology, says team leader Steven Boggs, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley. Its predecessors used liquid nitrogen to cool themselves, meaning that the nitrogen ran out in less than 10 days. COSI carries a mechanical cooler that contains nothing to run out of.

COSI collaboration/NASA Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility

The balloon, flanked by a rainbow, as it ascended the Antarctic sky.

The imager stares upward and gathers data through the body of the balloon above it, which is transparent at the -ray energies it studies. It can scan about 50% of the sky overhead during the course of a day.

One of its main goals is to measure polarization in rays streaming from -ray bursts, black holes, pulsars and other cosmic phenomena. The longer it flies, the more data it will be able to gather. The long flight time is key for this study, says Boggs.

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NASA launches next-generation scientific balloon

NASA designs robot for disasters

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By Heather Kelly, CNN

The RoboSimian disaster-response robot has four limbs, seven cameras and a LiDAR system.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- When we imagine the robots of the future, they often look and move like humans, standing up on two legs and using a pair of arms to grab and move objects. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is working on a different kind of robot for disaster response that's designed to move like an ape.

Headless but covered with seven cameras that act as "eyes," the RobotSimian has four identical limbs that do double duty as arms and legs. Together, they ably move the robot across rough terrain and rubble but can also pick up and manipulate objects. It has wheels it can coast on if the surface is smooth enough.

The RoboSimian is JPL's final entry into the DARPA Robotics Challenge, a 27-month-long competition among some of the world's top robotic talent to create an emergency response robot. In situations such as a nuclear disaster, one of these robots could go into environments too dangerous for human rescue workers and execute simple tasks such as lifting debris off survivors or turning off a valve.

In June, RoboSimian and up to 18 other finalists will have to make their way through an obstacle course that simulates eight common scenarios. Each robot will attempt to drive a car, move across rubble, use a tool and climb stairs, all without a human controlling it. DARPA says the final competitors should be as competent as a 2-year-old child. The winning team will receive a $2 million prize.

JPL used leftover parts from RoboSimian to create another robot called Surrogate. The more traditional upright robot has a flexible spine, head and two arms. While better at manipulating objects, Surrogate ran on tracks and wasn't as adept at traversing the complicated terrain that is common in a disaster. After considering both candidates, the team decided to take RoboSimian to the finals.

One trade-off is that RoboSiman is slower than many other competitors. JPL's team is working with the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Caltech to increase the robot's walking speed.

"It is intentionally the tortoise relative to the other hares in the competition.We feel that a very stable and deliberate approach suites our technical strengths and provides a model for one vital element of the 'ecosystem' of robots that we expect to be deployed to disaster scenarios in the future," said JPL's Brett Kennedy, who is supervisor of the Robotic Vehicles and Manipulators Group.

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NASA designs robot for disasters

NASA Updates Pre-Launch Briefings for Upcoming Resupply Mission to Space Station

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The fifth SpaceX cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract now is scheduled to launch about 6:18 a.m. EST Tuesday, Jan. 6, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA Television coverage of the launch begins at 5 a.m.

The new launch date will provide SpaceX engineers time to investigate further issues that arose from a static fire test of the Falcon 9 rocket on Dec. 16, and will ensure proper sun angles for thermal and operational conditions to berth Dragon.

The prelaunch news conferences also have moved to Monday, Jan. 5, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. All briefings, which are subject to a change in time, will air live on NASA TV and the agency's website.

The first briefing of the day will air at noon and cover the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) Earth science instrument headed to the space station. Participants for this briefing will be:

Julie Robinson, ISS Program chief scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston

Colleen Hartman, deputy director for science at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland

Robert J. Swap, program scientist with the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington

Matthew McGill, CATS principal investigator at Goddard

The second briefing will air at 1:30 p.m. and cover some of the numerous science investigations headed to the space station. Participants for the science briefing will be:

Julie Robinson, NASAs ISS Program chief scientist

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NASA Updates Pre-Launch Briefings for Upcoming Resupply Mission to Space Station

NASA Langley aims for younger workforce

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This isn't your grandfather's NASA.

That's the gist of a growing push at the space agency as a whole, and at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton in particular, to get more peach fuzz among the grizzled veterans of its workforce.

In fact, NASA Langley just took a good hard look at its civil service employees and found that more than 85 percent of them are older than 40, with an average age of 50.

The center has about 3,500 employees in all, but just more than half are civil servants directly hired and the rest employed by private companies but contracted to NASA.

As older civil servants retire during the next several years and tight budgets continue to hamper hiring, the center says it wants to use this as an opportunity to transform itself by better defining where it wants to go and what skill sets it needs to get there.

"What the center has done is to develop an emerging skills list that we can use to guide hiring," said John Costulis, head of the center's new Workforce Management and Policy Office. "Since we have limited ability to hire people, new hire requests are reviewed by top management to make sure the employees' skills meet future requirements and Langley priorities."

NASA Langley has a hand in a wide range of research projects, from aeronautics to space exploration to Earth science. It's expanding its work in advanced composite materials for aircraft and spacecraft structures, for instance, and in deep-space exploration technologies.

The center has already begun targeting younger talent, and in the past year increased the number of civil servant employees younger than 40 by 5 percent. The current total stands at 18 percent, but NASA Langley said its goal is to bump that to 30 percent.

It has several avenues to accomplish that, including Pathways programs that offer college students and recent graduates a taste of NASA careers. One current opening on NASA's website, for instance, is for a research engineering intern at NASA Langley with a salary range of $44,615 to $75,376.

Kyle Ellis found a path to NASA while an engineering student at the University of Iowa studying the human factors involved in aviation. Lab work led to a 10-week NASA internship in 2008, he said, then to a graduate student research fellowship under what would become the Pathways program.

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NASA spots Tropical Storm Jangmi moving into Sulu Sea

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IMAGE:NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of Tropical Storm Jangmi over the central and southern Philippines on Dec. 29 at 5:05 UTC. view more

Credit: Image Credit: NASA/NRL

NASA's Aqua satellite saw Tropical Storm Jangmi as it moved through the central and southern Philippines on Dec. 29. Jangmi is known locally in the Philippines as Tropical Storm Seniang.

Many warnings remain in effect as Jangmi continues moving west toward the South China Sea. On Dec. 29, public storm warning signal #1 is in effect in the Visayas provinces of Leyte, Southern Leyte, Camotes Island, rest of Cebu, rest of Negros Occidental, Guimaras, southern part of Iloilo and southern part of Antique. The public storm warning #1 is also in effect in the Mindanao provinces of Bukidnon, Lanao del Norte and Sur, Misamis Occidental Zamboanga del Norte and Sur and Sibugay, Agusan del Sur.

The public storm warning signal #2 is in effect in the Visayas provinces of Bohol, Siquijor, Southern Cebu, Negros Oriental, Southern part of Negros Occidental. It is also in effect in the Mindanao provinces of Surigao del Norte, Siargao Island, Agusan del Norte, Misamis Oriental, Camiguin, and the Dinagat Province.

Tropical Storm Jangmi made landfall in northeastern Mindanao, Philippines on Dec. 28 and has moved across the central part of the country. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Jangmi on Dec. 29 at 05:05 UTC (12:05 a.m. EST) and saw that the storm was over the Visayas (central) and Mindanao (southern) regions of the country. Bands of thunderstorms wrapped into the center from the northeastern and southeastern quadrants stretching back over the Philippine Sea (east of the country).

On Dec. 29 at 1500 UTC (10 a.m. EST), Jangmi had maximum sustained winds near 40 knots. It was moving to the northwest at 9 knots. Jangmi was centered near 10.0 north latitude and 124.2 east longitude, about 352 nautical miles southeast of Manila.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) looked at animated enhanced infrared satellite imagery and a radar animation from Cebu Station, Philippines that showed Jangmi intensified as it tracked across the Surigao Strait. The low level circulation had become more tightly wrapped and better defined despite a weakening in the bands of thunderstorms as the system made landfall across Bohol Island.

JTWC's forecast on Dec. 29 calls for Jangmi to move in a west-southwesterly direction through the Sulu Sea and over southern Palawan before moving into the South China Sea while maintaining strength as a tropical storm. The current JTWC forecast track takes Jangmi toward the border of southern Thailand and northern Malaysia around January 3, 2015.

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NASA spots Tropical Storm Jangmi moving into Sulu Sea

NASA's Aqua satellite sees Tropical Cyclone Kate in open ocean

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IMAGE:NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of Kate on Dec. 29 at 8:15 UTC and showed bands of thunderstorms were spiraling into the center of the storm, despite having weakened... view more

Credit: Image Credit: NASA/NRL

Tropical Cyclone Kate peaked in strength on Dec. 28, and NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the storm on Dec. 29 as it began weakening over the open waters of the Southern Indian Ocean.

On Dec. 28 at 2100 UTC (4 p.m. EST) Tropical Cyclone Kate had maximum sustained winds near 70 knots (80.5 mph/120.6 kph). It was centered near 14.6 south latitude and 92.1 east longitude, about 265 nautical miles (305 miles/491 km) west-southwest of Cocos Island.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard Aqua captured a visible picture of Kate as it passed overhead on Dec. 29 at 8:15 UTC (3:15 a.m. EST). The MODIS image showed that bands of thunderstorms were spiraling into the center of the storm, despite having weakened slightly from the previous day.

On Dec. 29 at 9:00 UTC (4 a.m. EST) Tropical Cyclone Kate had maximum sustained winds near 65 knots (74.8 mph/120.4 kph) making Kate a minimal Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale. It was centered near 14.9 south latitude and 91.7 east longitude, about 345 nautical miles (397 miles/638 km) west-southwest of Cocos Island. Kate continued moving away from Cocos Island- and in a southwesterly direction at 4 knots (4.6 mph/7.4 kph).

Satellite imagery also showed that the strongest convection (rising air that forms thunderstorms) continued around the storm's center and weak bands of thunderstorms are wrapping into the center. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted on Dec. 29 that it appeared that an eye feature was trying to form.

The JTWC discussion noted that "upper-level analysis indicates a decreasing environment as moderate to strong (20 to 30 knots) easterly vertical wind shear is offset by good outflow that is beginning to decrease. A tropical cyclone needs good outflow (where winds spread out at the top of the hurricane) to maintain strength. Outflow means that air spreads out over the top of the storm assisting in its development. When outflow is weakened, the storm weakens.

Kate is tracking slowly along the western part of a subtropical ridge of high pressure that is centered over Western Australia and will continue steering the storm in a southwestern direction. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center calls for gradual weakening over the next two days as Kate moves into cooler waters which will cause the system's demise in a couple of days.

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NASA's Aqua satellite sees Tropical Cyclone Kate in open ocean

WVU's new engineering research building set to open in 2015

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Dec. 29, 2014 @ 06:47 AM

MORGANTOWN - West Virginia University's new Advanced Engineering Research Building is on track to open in the fall of 2015.

Associate director of design and construction John Thompson said that construction of the main building is completed. Faculty and staff will begin transi tioning to the new building in the spring.

The four-story building will have offices, classrooms, a learning center and graduate student space. It also will have an 8,000-foot clean room for students working on nano-technology.

A clean room is an environment featuring purified air.

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WVU's new engineering research building set to open in 2015

Discover The Power of Black Raspberry Seeds Let Food Be Your Medicine – Video

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