• 2010 nasa special
    a total eclipse of the Sun is visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses Earth's southern Hemisphere. The path of the Moon's umbral shadow crosses the South Pacific Ocean where it makes no landfall except for Mangaia (Cook Islands) and Easter Island (Isla de Pascua).
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NASA startling discovery: 54 planets found that could harbor life Continue reading on Examiner.com: NASA startling discovery: 54 planets found that could harbor life - Miami Technology | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/technology-in-miami/nasa-startling-discovery-54-planets-found-that-could-harbor-life#ixzz1DRBHXa6C

9:43 PM Nasa Information , Posted in , , , , , , 0 Comments

The South Florida spaceplanetary community got news for cheering about: The Kepler mission is making science fiction a reality. In a single year, they spotted 235 thousand candidates for confirmation as planets. Of these, sixty-eight measure the same as Earth, fifty-four could harbor life and five are the Earth size. Add a new Solar system-like discovery with six planets orbiting a star.

Barriers are Breaking down: The results reported at a NASA press conference on Wednesday were based on observations by probing made from  May through September 2009, in which 150,000 stars were observed, the equivalent to one fourth the sky. William Borucki, at Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said, "That we found so many candidates for planets in so little of the sky, suggests that there are countless planets orbiting Sun-like stars in our galaxy.” He added, “We went from zero to sixty-eight planet candidate Earth size and from zero to fifty-four candidates in the habitable zone; they could have moons with liquid water.”

The fifty-four are in the "habitable zone," where liquid water could exist on the planetary surface, thereby increasing the life possibilities in all its forms.  Furthermore, theirs compositions are so varied that some have a density as light as Styrofoam and others are similar to iron. The Earth density is between these ranges. Of The 235 thousand potential candidates, sixty-eight could measure the same as our planet; 288 would be super-Earth; 662 would measure the same as Neptune; 165 same as Jupiter, and 19 would exceed the jovial planet size. All the data has to be reanalyzed and verified by scientists at NASA.

Charles Bolden from NASA said, “These conclusions underscore the importance of Space Agency's science missions, which systematically increase our understanding of our place in the cosmos." Before the Keplers announcement on Wednesday, the number of planets outside the solar system, known as exoplanets, was 519. That means that Kepler could triple the known planets number. Launched in 2009, the telescope has been orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars; it has conducted a global survey, looking for planets similar to Earth all year. It has discovered many planets much smaller than Jupiter, the largest of our solar system, and giant planets, totaling 15 new mega planets.

Kepler is providing one-hundred times more information than before. It is discovering a variability of stars that had never been analyzed, like planets as small as they had never been imagined,” said Mr. Borucki, the principal investigator for the Kepler mission. More than two-hundred celestial bodies have not yet been confirmed as planets, but Borucki estimated that most of them will qualify. He went on, “In one generation we went from the idea of alien planets as a pillar of science fiction to present, when Kepler has helped make science fiction a reality.

Step by step.  Debra Fischer, expert on exoplanets at Yale University, not a Kepler team member, but an external consultant for NASA, said the new information “gives us a much firmer basis, hoping to discover life in other worlds.”  “I feel better now knowing these new Kepler results than a week ago,” she said. All Kepler research stars are in our galaxy, but are so far that traveling to them is not realistic. It would take us a million years to reach them with our current technology. What excites astronomers is that the more planets there are, with the right conditions, the greater the chances of life existing in other worlds.

Continue reading on Examiner.com: NASA startling discovery: 54 planets found that could harbor life - Miami Technology

NASA Plans for Nonprofit To Manage Station Research

6:54 AM Nasa Information , Posted in , , , , , , , 0 Comments

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — NASA is making plans to competitively select a domestic nonprofit organization to manage experiments aboard the international space station (ISS), according to agency officials, and is expected to set aside at least 50 percent of U.S. research capacity aboard the orbiting outpost for non-NASA use.

“It’s time to start making a NASA investment in the buyers, the nongovernment end-users, so that we stimulate a future nongovernmental market,” NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said in remarks at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight here Oct. 21. “That’s our objective in establishing a nonprofit organization to stimulate, develop and manage use of ISS by entities other than the government.”

Given President Barack Obama’s pledge to extend space station operations through at least 2020 and foster development of commercial space transportation systems for ferrying people and cargo there, Garver said the agency sees an opportunity to expand use of the station to non-NASA users, including federal and state government agencies and private companies.

“We don’t talk enough about why NASA requires this transportation system and how this policy is part of a broader commercial picture for low Earth orbit research and commerce with the international space station as a flagship program,” Garver said, adding that NASA expects to enter into a competitive acquisition to establish the nonprofit “very soon.”

NASA spokesman Michael Curie said NASA is in the process of drafting a solicitation for the competition, though no target release date is set. In an Oct. 22 e-mail he said the so-called Cooperative Agreement Notice would be open only to U.S. organizations.

“This will be an open and competitive acquisition of a cooperative agreement,” Curie said, adding that the initiative is directed by congressional legislation Obama signed into law Oct. 11. “Further information on the release of draft and final versions will be announced in the future.”

According to the newly enacted law, the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, NASA must enter into a cooperative agreement with a nonprofit entity dedicated to managing U.S. research activities aboard station and guarantee that national laboratory experiments have access to “not less than 50 percent of the United States research capacity allocation.” The law gives NASA until next October to make that happen.

The 2005 NASA Authorization Act designated the U.S. segment of the space station for use as a national laboratory with the goal of increasing non-NASA and private sector use of the orbiting outpost for basic and applied research. NASA projects that it will utilize approximately 50 percent of the U.S. space station research facilities for its own use, including human research programs, leaving the remaining facilities open to non-NASA research, according to a November 2009 report by the Government Accountability Office titled “International Space Station: Significant Challenges May Limit Onboard Research.”

According to the newly enacted law, NASA is to provide initial funding assistance to the nonprofit group, though the law does not specify a timeline or authorize a specific funding level for the effort.

The law states that the nonprofit entity must be engaged exclusively in activities related to the management of the space station’s national lab “without any other organizational objectives or responsibilities on behalf of the organization or any parent organization or other entity.”

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