During its examination of Mars, the Viking 1 spacecraft returned images of Valles Marineris, a huge canyon system 5,000 km, or about 3,106 miles, long, whose connected chasma or valleys may have formed from a combination of erosional collapse and structural activity. This synthetic oblique view shows Ophir Chasma, the northern most one of the connected valleys of Valles Marineris. For scale, the large impact crater in lower right corner is about 18.5 miles, or 30 km, wide.

Ophir Chasma is a large west-northwest-trending trough about 62 miles, or 100 km, wide. The Chasma is bordered by high-walled cliffs, most likely faults, that show spur-and-gully morphology and smooth sections. The walls have been dissected by landslides forming reentrants. The volume of the landslide debris is more than 1,000 times greater than that from the May 18, 1980, debris avalanche from Mount St. Helens. The longitudinal grooves seen in the foreground are thought to be due to differential shear and lateral spreading at high velocities.

Cady Coleman and Ron Garan measure the orbiting radius of a water droplet as it circles a piece of statically charged rubber tubing on the International Space Station. (NASA)

An example of water 'bending' towards a static charge created by a balloon.
(Image credit: ©Faith Fashion & Photos LLC)

Even simple scientific experiments can yield amazing results and add to the collective knowledge of the research community. Take the winning proposal for the most recent round of the Kids in Micro-g competition, for example, which was designed by two 5th grade girls from Chabad Hebrew Academy in San Diego. Conducted in April 2011 on the International Space Station, this study, called "Attracting Water Drops," looked at static attraction in microgravity to reveal an exciting new understanding of physics in space.

Kids in Micro-g was a hands-on design challenge and part of NASA's Teaching from Space education program. Six finalists were selected in the 2011 Kids in Micro-g competition, earning the chance to have their proposed studies performed on the space station. The Attracting Water Drops experiment involved rubbing a piece of rubber tubing with a pair of nylon shorts to create a static charge. Then astronauts released a droplet of water close by and watched to see what happened.

Marilyn Sniffen, advanced placement science coordinator with Chabad Hebrew Academy, found out about the Kids in Micro-g competition while researching new challenges for her students online. Having previously participated with her classes in other NASA education challenges, she was aware of NASA as a resource to help foster a love of science in students. "I asked my current students if they would like to participate," said Sniffen. "There was no hesitation, as they immediately wanted to check out the list of supplies available for the physics tests that could be done aboard the space station."

Students did their own companion study in the classroom to gain results for the investigation under the force of gravity here on Earth. They observed that a piece of charged rubber tubing held near a stream of running water caused the flow of water to bend toward the tubing. Students learned that the action of rubbing the tubing with nylon transferred negatively charged electrons to the tubing, creating a negative static charge. Since opposite charges attract to each other, and water molecules have a polarity with a positive end, the negatively charged tubing held near the water caused the positive end of the water to draw towards the tubing.

Astronauts Cady Coleman and Ron Garan performed the Attracting Water Droplets experiment aboard the station on April 23, 2011. You can view a video of the investigation being performed here . Their objective was to study the electrostatic interaction of the charged rubber tubing and water drops in microgravity. Students anticipated a greater attraction of the water droplet to the electrostatic charge than found on Earth. "Their hypothesis was that the results in space would be dramatically different than on Earth," commented Sniffen. "This is because the force of gravity on the water was greater than the force attraction to the static charge on the tube."

In addition to successfully proving the hypothesis, however, students and crew members were astonished to see the water droplet actually orbit the charged piece of tubing. "Look at that!" exclaimed Cady Coleman during the experiment on the space station. "It is going around our tubing. You would think it would keep sailing; in microgravity it would keep sailing, but it is coming back to our tubing and around."

Sniffen echoed Coleman's surprise, as she detailed the student's expectations for the water droplets in space. "The students predicted that in micro-g, the drop would be free floating and that it could be 'pulled' around by the charged rubber tube without it falling to the ground. The actual experiment on the station showed they were able to pull the drop around in the air, but it also revealed a surprise we didn't predict. The droplet of water actually orbited the tube at about 6 cm! So our hypothesis was supported, but we learned something entirely new in the process. The kids were amazed, as were we!" said Sniffen.

The school plans to repeat the Earth-bound portion of the experiment while showing the video of the study done on the space station to allow more students to share in the science next school year. "This kind of collaboration is really important for our students as they so often feel that what they are learning in school has no real connection to everyday life," comments Sniffen. "This program has allowed our students to make connections with real science and scientists, real discovery, and other students. It has inspired analytical thinking, creativity and communication for all our students."

A satellite with amateur radio capabilities and a student-designed experiment was released into orbit around Earth on Aug. 3, 2011, during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station. The satellite is transmitting signals containing information that students around the world can access.

The Amateur Radio on the International Space Station Satellite-1, or ARISSat-1, is a follow-on project to the unique SuitSat-1. SuitSat-1 was an amateur radio transmitter fitted into a surplus Russian Orlan spacesuit that was released from the station into space in 2006. SuitSat-1 transmitted for about two weeks and orbited Earth for seven months before burning up in Earth’s atmosphere.

The rectangular ARISSat-1 is covered by six solar panels that will charge the batteries in the satellite for about six months as it orbits Earth. Credit: AMSAT]

Formerly known as SuitSat-2 and also called Radioskaf-V and Kedr by the project’s Russian partners, ARISSat-1 contains a student-designed experiment and other equipment that students can use to learn more about space and space exploration. ("Kedr," which is Russian for "Cedar" in English, was the call sign of Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut and the first human in space.)

ARISSat-1 is a project by the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation, or AMSAT, and affiliated with the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station. ARISS is an education activity where space station astronauts and cosmonauts use amateur radio equipment aboard the space station to talk with students around the world.

The development, launch and deployment of ARISSat-1 are being conducted as an educational mission with the support of the NASA Office of Education’s ISS National Lab Education Project and RSC-Energia. It is the first of a series of educational satellites planned for deployment from the space station. Future satellites will carry additional student-built experiments, which will have data sent to the ground via amateur radio signals.

AMSAT ARISSat-1 project manager Gould Smith said the educational mission of the project is to use the unique aspects of satellites and amateur radio transmissions to generate student interest in space, science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

ARISSat-1 traveled to the space station in late January aboard a Russian Progress cargo vehicle and was released into space during a spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Alexander Samokutyaev.

For ARISSat-1, the onboard experiment is from Kursk State Technical University in Kursk, Russia. The experiment is going to measure the vacuum in space at different altitudes as the satellite’s orbit decays, gathering 90 minutes of data each day and transmitting that data continuously back to Earth. By analyzing these data, student scientists can derive atmospheric density from in situ measurements. These data in turn can be used to better predict the orbital lifetime of ARISSat-1.

Aboard ARISSat-1 is an experiment that will measure the vacuum in space at different altitudes as the spacecraft de-orbits. Credit: AMSAT

Originally designed -- like its predecessor -- to fit inside an Orlan spacesuit, ARISSat-1 was redesigned when the expired spacesuit allocated for the project was disposed of sooner than AMSAT could use it. The redesign actually turned out to be a good move for the project, project managers said, because it allowed capabilities to be expanded.

The rectangular spacecraft is covered by six solar panels that will charge the batteries in the satellite for about six months as it orbits Earth. Spoken telemetry values, with data such as temperature and battery life, are intended to promote science and mathematics education by encouraging schoolchildren to listen to the satellite, track its progress and plot the changes. AMSAT president Barry Baines said it’s a great opportunity for students to do actual science, by taking real-time, practical readings on a daily basis and plotting the changes. The telemetry data will be available live and over the Internet for schools and radio amateurs to study the operation and changes that the satellite experiences during its orbits around Earth.

The project website provides free downloadable software that can be used to decode the data. "They can look at all the values, but you can also get the Russian experiment data at the same time and actually look at that every day," Baines said. "Plus, that data will be stored online, and they will be able to access it via the Internet to be able to go back and look at historical data or just use it in a lesson to actually take the real data and analyze it."

"The most useful, exciting and effective element of learning in regards to this project is actually doing something hands-on and practical, rather than just sitting and listening to a lecture. If you can actually go out and collect the data and then do something with it, that’s a lesson that’s learned and understood at higher cognitive levels."

In addition to data, the satellite will transmit 24 pre-recorded greetings in 15 different languages -- French, Spanish, German, English and Chinese, to name a few. More than half of the messages were recorded by schoolchildren, Smith said. "Most of them are really creative and interesting to listen to, especially male and female voices, and even kind of a little rap by the Dutch group. Also, most of them have a secret word at the end, and there’s a contest: If you can identify the secret word and send an e-mail, we’ll return an e-mail back to you with a little certificate."

Attached to the inside of the satellite is a memory card containing images and documents from children around the world. A website has been set up to view the files on the card. There is also a contest to see who correctly copies the most Morse Code signals sent by ARISSat-1. The signals will consist of the call signs of all amateur radio operators who worked on the project. Additionally, still images of Earth will be transmitted from four cameras aboard the satellite. ARISSat-1 also will serve as an orbital communications relay station for use by amateur radio operators around the world. The ARISSat-1 website lists all of the ARISSat-1 contests and challenges.

Helping with the project is NASA retiree Lou McFadin. McFadin has been closely involved with amateur radio and human spaceflight through the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment, or SAREX, project, beginning with astronaut Owen Garriott’s first amateur radio communications on the STS-9 shuttle mission in 1983. McFadin is the ARISS hardware manager and has worked with the development of the ARISSat-1 hardware since the start of the project.

"I think if they (students) do the telemetry decode," McFadin said, "there’s a lot of opportunity for learning there. It has solar panel temperatures; it has solar panel data; it has battery voltage and all kinds of information there about what’s going on in the satellite. That kind of learning really connects to our goal of getting children and all Americans interested in space. That’s a big part of what we wanted to do."

SuitSat-1 in orbit after its release from the International Space Station during Expedition 12. Credit: NASA
ARISSat-1 also will serve as a technology demonstration. "For AMSAT, it certainly was a way to try out some new ideas -- how to build the structure for the dynamics of the satellite itself, it’s a new power system, it’s a new transponder system we’ve not tried before, it’s the first time we’ve flown a software-defined transponder, and it’s paving the path for the future for us," Smith said.

McFadin said the software-defined transponder was the key to how they were able to design a satellite to do so many things at once. "It’s an FM transmitter, it’s a transponder, it’s a telemetry transmitter, and Morse code transmitter, all done with one system, all simultaneously," McFadin said. "We’ve never been able to do that before."

This was AMSAT’s second opportunity to release a satellite from the International Space Station, and Smith said they hope to continue the project with future spacecraft and more student-designed experiments. "It’s not any harder to build four of something than it is to build one, hardly. So we built four space frames, five actually, one for the prototype, and we built four flight versions," Smith said. "So it’ll be easy to do this again."

Mark Severance, manager for the ISS National Laboratory Education Project, sees ARISSat-1 as an important flight test for future educational satellites. "Future ARISSats will carry at least four student-designed and -built experiments," Severance noted. "This will give students the opportunity to go hands-on and build actual spaceflight experiment hardware. Furthermore, they can track the satellite using off-the-shelf amateur radio hardware and obtain the data from their experiment directly from their own ground station. In this manner, ARISSat can provide an 'end-to-end' space mission experience for participating students."

NASA's Office of Education's ISS National Laboratory Project will sponsor future ARISSats. The project provides hands-on opportunities for elementary, secondary and university students, as well as lifelong learners, to participate in the space station mission. The ARISS school contact activity is supported by the ISS National Laboratory Project as well as the Teaching From Space Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Teaching From Space facilitates education opportunities like ARISS that use the unique environment of space to increase student interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Check out the ARISSat-1 website at http://arissat1.org/  → for information on data transmissions, contests and student activities.

Caterpillar promotes education and technology at international collegiate event

Showcasing its world-class technology leadership, Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT) is supporting the NASA Lunabotics Mining Competition at the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida. The event, May 26-28, is designed to engage and retain college students in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). For complete coverage, follow the competition on Twitter @CaterpillarInc. or #lmc2011.

Tana Utley, Caterpillar Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, will be a keynote speaker during the opening ceremonies of the three-day event. "Educational outreach has been an important part of our collaboration with NASA, and we look forward to continuing this focus during the Lunabotics Mining Competition," said Utley. "The technologies produced at the competition could one day be used in mine and work sites. What better way to enhance jobsite safety and efficiency than to design autonomous solutions."

Participants in the competition will design and build autonomous systems that could be used for future lunar exploration. Teams will test their designs in a head-to-head challenge to see which machine can excavate the most simulated lunar "dirt" over a specific timeframe. "Caterpillar has a long history of supporting educational opportunities that promote the STEM areas," said Eric Reiners, Caterpillar Automation Manager, who is lending his expertise as a judge at the event. "We need to encourage technology, innovation and ingenuity to students of all ages. The development of autonomous systems will ultimately help our global customers boost safety, efficiency and increase profitability."

Currently, there are 45 graduate and undergraduate student teams enrolled in the competition from various parts of the world. That number has more than doubled from last year's event. Caterpillar will have a 287C semi-autonomous Multi Terrain Loader (MTL) on display to showcase the technologies Caterpillar and NASA are developing.

For updates during the competition, find us on Twitter @CaterpillarInc. or #lmc2011 and www.caterpillar.com. To learn more about the Lunabotics Mining Competition, please go to

About Caterpillar:

For more than 85 years, Caterpillar Inc. has been making sustainable progress possible and driving positive change on every continent. With 2010 sales and revenues of $42.588 billion, Caterpillar is the world's leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. 

The company also is a leading services provider through Caterpillar Financial Services, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services, Caterpillar Logistics Services and Progress Rail Services. More information is available at: http://www.caterpillar.com.

The images from the Hubble space telescope provide breathtaking visual information. And multispectral imaging methods used to see the Martian surface have been applied to, as the Chicago Tribune reported, "badly charred Roman manuscripts that were buried during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Examining those carbonized manuscripts under different wavelengths of light suddenly revealed writing that had been invisible to scholars for two centuries," because of manuscript degradation.

The initial wake up call to the crew of space shuttle Endeavour was at 10:56 p.m. EDT, and the day's wake up song was uplinked about 30 minutes later because of a communications drop out. The song “Luna” by Jose Serrano was played for Mission Specialist Greg Chamitoff. The artist is a friend of his and wrote the song especially for this mission.

The fourth day of the mission will focus on the installation of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS), a particle physics detector. The AMS is a 2-ton ring of powerful magnets and ultrasensitive detectors built to track, but not capture, cosmic rays in a search for various types of unusual matter. The 15,251-pound instrument will be connected to the outside of the International Space Station, tilted a bit so it will not interfere with any of the station's mechanisms and storage platforms. It will be operated remotely from Earth and should not require any attention from astronauts in orbit.

The mobile transporter is in position. The crew will extract AMS using the space shuttle robotic arm at 1:56 a.m. Shortly thereafter, the station crew will wake, and at 3:01 a.m., the shuttle robotic arm will transfer AMS to the station's robotic arm. At 3:41 a.m., the crew will manipulate the station arm to install AMS onto the starboard side of the station's truss structure on the zenith side.

Later this morning, the crew will participate in interviews.

Toward the end of the flight day, the crew will review procedures for the mission's first spacewalk, and spacewalkers Drew Feustel and Greg Chamitoff will begin their camp out at a reduced air pressure, a procedure that helps purge nitrogen from their bloodstreams and prevents the “bends” when they exit the airlock.

Discovery and its crew delivered to the International Space Station the Permanent Multipurpose Module, or PMM, which was converted from the multipurpose logistics module Leonardo. The PMM can host experiments in fluid physics, materials science, biology, biotechnology and other areas.

STS-133 also brought critical spare components and the Express Logistics Carrier 4 to the International Space Station. Robonaut 2, or R2, became the first human-like robot in space and a permanent resident of the station. The mission's two spacewalks assisted in outfitting the station and completed a variety of other tasks designed to upgrade station systems.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts133/main

WASHINGTON - NASA officials on Friday again postponed the final flight of the shuttle Endeavour, until May 16 at the earliest. 

The reason: a nagging electrical problem that engineers worry could lead to a major malfunction when the orbiter tries to land after its last trip to the International Space Station. 

Technicians discovered the glitch last week just hours before Endeavour's scheduled April 29 takeoff. President Obama and his family had flown to Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch, along with wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D., Ariz.), whose husband, Mark Kelly, is Endeavour's commander. Giffords' staff said she would return for the rescheduled launch.

Since the original launch was scrubbed, NASA has repeatedly postponed setting a new date as engineers work to fix the problem, which they suspect lies with an electrical switch box that connects several systems. 

Among those systems: heaters that prevent fuel lines from freezing while the orbiter is in space. These lines help power the hydraulics system that runs essential functions, such as the landing gear. A failure in the heater circuit initially tipped NASA to the problem. 

Space center workers have installed a new electrical switch box, which is working fine, but the engineers are still trying to understand what caused the failure. 

NASA on Friday also extended Endeavour's planned mission to 16 days, from 14.

 

Airlines can not afford to fly with empty seats very often – and Space Shuttle orbiters can’t leave valuable payload capacity “on the ground.” Costing hundreds of millions of dollars per flight, NASA filled extra space in the shuttle’s cargo bay using the Shuttle Small Payloads Project (SSPP).

Hooks and power buses built into the shuttle bays allowed hundreds of small, modular experiments and technology test units to make the best use of missions that didn’t need all 50,000 pounds of payload capacity. Between 1982 and 2003, more than 200 of these projects, including Get-Away Special (GAS) Cannisters, Hitchhikers and Spartans, flew in 108 missions.

The program offered an invaluable proving ground for science and technology as well as for a large contingent of young scientists and engineers who came to Goddard in the early 1980s and grew up here working with small payloads. The Shuttle Small Payloads Project became one of NASA’s most fertile nurturing grounds as well as one of NASA’s most economically and technically successful programs. Many of these investigators rose to positions of authority, shaping the course of NASA science and exploration.

“In terms of ride-share opportunities, we know what the formula for success is and we’re currently working with Marshall space flight center to ensure some funding for small mission capability on NASA’s heavy-lift vehicle.”

– Mike Weiss, Project Manager for the Exporations Systems Projects “Back then the SSPP, and the other projects in the Special Payloads Division (SPD), operated in a skunk-works type of atmosphere,” said Gerry Daelemans, now Project Formulations Manager for the Earth Science Program Office and Landsat 9. “Young people gravitated to it. There were a lot of different projects in the SPD – we had the original Small Explorers (SMEX) Project, the Shuttle based Spartan Project, the PegSat Project. A lot of people got a lot of really good engineering and management experience in a short period of time. There was a lot of cross-fertilization of training on a lot of different small and quick missions, all of which flew in less than three years. Today nobody would dream of that.”

Many missions could be approved to fly in two years from conception – mere months for a second flight if the experimenter was ready, Daelemans said. “You could risk failing, because if you did, we could just re-fly you.”

To Earth Orbit – and Beyond

In the mid 1980s, Dr. James Garvin, a fresh-faced geoscientist from Brown University, flew laser ranging Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) equipment aboard aircraft out of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. Systems he helped design graphed the meter-scal topography of Mars, the moon and Mercury.

However, to get the more detailed data needed to learn how to assess landing sites and surfaces of other planets, he needed to experiment with LIDAR in Earth orbit.

“Mapping Mars allowed us to have confidence to fly these kind of missions,” Garvin said of the Shuttle Laser Altimeter missions (SLA I and SLA II: Jan. 1996 and Aug. 1997)). “What it did for us was show what we could actually do for Earth science.”

Using leftover equipment from the Mars Orbiting Laser Altimeter project, the SLA team integrated a wave-form analyzer – allowing scientists to glean significant new data from individual backscattered photons, rather than from the bulk of the returned light.

He got his chance in 1996 aboard STS 72 on Endeavour. Their first topographic profiles showed the peak of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, one of the largest volcanoes on earth.

Later, Garvin and the SLA team noticed peculiar surface height distributions in the data. “We started getting these booming echoes that turned out to be the tops of trees, and smaller returns from the ground underneath,” he said. “We realized we could use this method to measure the biomass of the planet.” Individual signals teased out of the apparent noise also allowed them to measure the difference between glacier top surfaces and the ground beneath – technology and methods adapted for the IceSat-1 and Operation Ice Bridge missions.

“The legacy of those experiments was the proving ground for what we have since accomplished in developing these LIDAR instruments for other planets,” Garvin said. “Everyone who worked on this project went on to really make a contribution to science.”

Beyond Technology – Growing Up at Goddard

Small payloads work exposed many Goddard engineers and managers to the larger agency, said Joann Baker. She started in 1983 working with Get Away Special (GAS) cannisters.

“It was exciting because I got to go integrate payloads in the actual Shuttle bay. I learned a lot about safety. I presented safety information to the broader agency. We got a lot of inter-center interaction that way,” she said.

These opportunities and responsibilities boosted the career trajectories of many Goddard leaders.

“That was a powerful experience. It gave me a lot of confidence and experience that in other larger, more structured organizations would have taken many more years to garner that level of experience,” said Craig Tooley. He calls his start as a mechanical engineer in the Special Payloads Division at Goddard in 1983 the “luckiest thing” that ever happened to him. “We were kind of thrust into it.”

He went on to manage the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission and is now the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission Flight Project Manager.

The program was also open to students and institutions outside NASA, and many of those investigators drew big achievements from their small payloads, said Dr. Ruthan Lewis, who helped manage multiple SSPP missions.

“Engaging and inspiring students was very exciting,” she said. “To watch these students start from near zero experience, and just see their wonderment, their sense of, ‘Wow, I flew my experiment in space, and I learned so much from it.’ That was just incredible.”

Goddard engineers and managers are working to ensure low-cost access to space for science and technology payloads remains an agency priority.

“Once a program matures and requirements get established, it’s difficult to introduce new ideas,” Lewis said.

NASA managers have retargeted space shuttle Endeavour's launch to no earlier than Monday, May 16. After a meeting on Friday, they also extended the length of Endeavour's STS-134 mission to the International Space Station from 14 to 16 days. If Endeavour launches on May 16, liftoff would be at 8:56 a.m. EDT.

At 3 p.m. on Monday, May 9, NASA Space Shuttle Program Launch Integration Manager Mike Moses and Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach will hold a news conference at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to discuss the progress of repairs since Endeavour's launch postponement on April 29. The news conference will air live on NASA Television and online at www.nasa.gov/ntv.

Kennedy technicians are continuing work to resolve an issue in a heater circuit associated with Endeavour's hydraulic system that resulted in the launch postponement. Technicians determined the failure was inside an aft load control assembly, which is a switchbox in the shuttle's aft compartment, and possibly its associated electrical wiring.

Although the root cause of the failure in the switchbox has not been found, technicians are replacing hardware that could have caused the problem. The faulty box was changed Wednesday, and a test of nine shuttle systems powered by the new box is under way.

This weekend, technicians will install and check out new wiring that bypasses the suspect electrical wiring connecting the switchbox to the heaters. They also will run the heaters for up to 30 minutes to verify they are working properly and complete retesting of the other systems powered by the switchbox.

The shuttle has three Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) that provide hydraulic power to steer the vehicle during ascent and entry. The hydrazine fuel lines on each APU have two heater circuits that prevent the fuel from freezing while the shuttle is in space. NASA launch commit criteria and flight rules require all APUs and heater circuits to be operational for launch. On Endeavour's first launch attempt, one of two heaters for APU-1's fuel line did not work. Engineers confirmed the circuit in the original switchbox that directed power to the heaters was shorted out.

Launch attempts are available through May 26. May 21 is the only day a launch is not an option because it would lead to a May 23 docking with the space station. May 23 is when three of the space station's Expedition 27 crew members undock and return home in their Soyuz spacecraft. Managers reviewed the STS-134 mission timeline and determined the Endeavour crew can accomplish all objectives even with the departure of the three station crew members.

NASA says no new launch attempt before next Sunday (AP)

 

 

NASA on Sunday delayed the launch of space shuttle Endeavour to no earlier than May 8 as work continues to resolve an electronics problem that scuttled Friday's launch attempt, officials said.

NASA tried to launch Endeavour on Friday on its 25th and final flight to deliver the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector to the International Space Station. A problem with a heating system on one of the ship's hydraulic power generators prompted managers to halt the countdown. The heaters keep fuel from freezing in the line, preventing it from rupturing in the cold vacuum of space.

NASA was hopeful that the problem would have an easy solution and had re-targeted Endeavour's launch for today, but further troubleshooting indicated the glitch was more complicated than officials hoped initially.

Workers will replace a microwave-sized electronics box, in the shuttle's rear engine compartment, which routes power to the heaters, as well as 70 to 80 other shuttle systems. Installing a new switch and retesting all the systems that draw power through the circuit will take several days.

CAPE CANAVERAL — NASA managers have determined space shuttle Endeavour will not launch before Sunday, May 8, but will not officially set a new launch date until early this week. 

After Friday’s launch scrub, Kennedy Space Center technicians searched for the cause of a failure in a heater circuit associated with Endeavour’s hydraulic power system. The failure was found to be in a power circuit in a switchbox in the shuttle’s aft compartment.

Managers and engineers are developing a schedule to remove and replace the switchbox and retest the new unit. That work will delay Endeavour’s launch until at least May 8.

The shuttle has three Auxiliary Power Units (APUs) that provide hydraulic power to steer the vehicle during ascent and entry. The hydrazine fuel lines on each APU have two heater circuits that prevent the fuel from freezing while the shuttle is in space.

NASA launch commit criteria and flight rules require all three APUs and heater circuits to be operational for liftoff.
Endeavour’s six astronauts have returned to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for several days of additional training.

 

Deadly tornadoes raked across Alabama on April 27, 2011, killing as many as 210 people as of April 29. The hardest-hit community was Tuscaloosa. In an image acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on April 28, three tornado tracks are visible through and around the city.

The tracks are pale brown trails where green trees and plants have been uprooted, leaving disturbed ground. Though faint, the center track runs from southwest of Tuscaloosa, through the gray city, and extends northeast towards Birmingham. Two other tracks run parallel to the center track. The northernmost track is in an area where the National Weather Service reported a tornado, but no tornado was reported in the vicinity of the more visible southern track. In the southern region, strong winds were reported.

The tornadoes were part of a larger weather pattern that produced more than 150 tornadoes across six states, said the National Weather Service. The death toll had nearly reached 300 on April 29, making the outbreak the deadliest in the United States since 1974.

Late last year, astronomers noticed an asteroid named Scheila had unexpectedly brightened, and it was sporting short-lived plumes. Data from NASA's Swift satellite and Hubble Space Telescope showed these changes likely occurred after Scheila was struck by a much smaller asteroid.

Collisions between asteroids create rock fragments, from fine dust to huge boulders, that impact planets and their moons," said Dennis Bodewits, an astronomer at the University of Maryland in College Park and lead author of the Swift study. "Yet this is the first time we've been able to catch one just weeks after the smash-up, long before the evidence fades away."

Asteroids are rocky fragments thought to be debris from the formation and evolution of the solar system approximately 4.6 billion years ago. Millions of them orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt. Scheila is approximately 70 miles across and orbits the sun every five years.

"The Hubble data are most simply explained by the impact, at 11,000 mph, of a previously unknown asteroid about 100 feet in diameter," said Hubble team leader David Jewitt at the University of California in Los Angeles. Hubble did not see any discrete collision fragments, unlike its 2009 observations of P/2010 A2, the first identified asteroid collision.

The studies will appear in the May 20 edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters and are available online.

Astronomers have known for decades that comets contain icy material that erupts when warmed by the sun. They regarded asteroids as inactive rocks whose destinies, surfaces, shapes and sizes were determined by mutual impacts. However, this simple picture has grown more complex over the past few years.

During certain parts of their orbits, some objects, once categorized as asteroids, clearly develop comet-like features that can last for many months. Others display much shorter outbursts. Icy materials may be occasionally exposed, either by internal geological processes or by an external one, such as an impact.

On Dec. 11, 2010, images from the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey, a project of NASA's Near Earth Object Observations Program, revealed Scheila to be twice as bright as expected and immersed in a faint comet-like glow. Looking through the survey's archived images, astronomers inferred the outburst began between Nov. 11 and Dec. 3.

Three days after the outburst was announced, Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) captured multiple images and a spectrum of the asteroid. Ultraviolet sunlight breaks up the gas molecules surrounding comets; water, for example, is transformed into hydroxyl and hydrogen. But none of the emissions most commonly identified in comets, such as hydroxyl or cyanogen, show up in the UVOT spectrum. The absence of gas around Scheila led the Swift team to reject scenarios where exposed ice accounted for the activity.

Images show the asteroid was flanked in the north by a bright dust plume and in the south by a fainter one. The dual plumes formed as small dust particles excavated by the impact were pushed away from the asteroid by sunlight. Hubble observed the asteroid's fading dust cloud on Dec. 27, 2010, and Jan. 4, 2011.`

The two teams found the observations were best explained by a collision with a small asteroid impacting Scheila's surface at an angle of less than 30 degrees, leaving a crater 1,000 feet across. Laboratory experiments show a more direct strike probably wouldn't have produced two distinct dust plumes. The researchers estimated the crash ejected more than 660,000 tons of dust -- equivalent to nearly twice the mass of the Empire State Building.

"The dust cloud around Scheila could be 10,000 times as massive as the one ejected from comet 9P/Tempel 1 during NASA's UMD-led Deep Impact mission," said co-author Michael Kelley, also at the University of Maryland. "Collisions allow us to peek inside comets and asteroids. Ejecta kicked up by Deep Impact contained lots of ice, and the absence of ice in Scheila's interior shows that it's entirely unlike comets."

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages Hubble and Swift. Hubble was built and is operated in partnership with the European Space Agency. Science operations for both missions include contributions from many national and international partners.

For more information, video and images associated with this release, visit:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?10747

 

The F-16D test aircraft takes off from Edwards Air Force Base during the Automatic Collision Avoidance Technology flight test project in June 2009. (NASA photo/Tom Tschida) The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Automatic Collision Avoidance Technology Fighter Risk Reduction Program (ACAT/FRRP) team, which includes NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, has won an Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine Laureate Award for its successful development and flight test of an Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System.

The award was announced March 8 during the magazine's 54th Annual Laureate Awards ceremony in Washington, DC.

NASA Dryden led the project's integrated test team, which was responsible for the technical content of the project's test and evaluation, maintenance of the Air Force's F-16D test aircraft, project management and engineering services, and provision of the project's chief pilot.

"It is a tremendous honor to be recognized by Aviation Week this way," said Dryden's Mark Skoog, the team's project manager. "Speaking for the NASA and Air Force Flight Test Center team, we were proud to contribute to this team effort by ironing out the system requirements with Air Combat Command, bringing improved digital data to the system, acquiring and preparing the test jet, as well as conducting and evaluating the thrilling flight test effort," Skoog said.

The Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System, or Auto GCAS, is a lifesaving aircraft technology that incorporates onboard digital terrain mapping data, a robust terrain scan pattern, and "time to avoid impact" algorithms to predict impending ground collisions and, at the last moment, execute avoidance maneuvers. The result is a system that automatically prevents controlled flight into terrain, the leading cause of all fighter aircraft mishaps.

The U.S. Air Force's F-16D Automatic Collision Avoidance Technology (ACAT) aircraft banks over NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center during a flight in March 2009. (NASA Photo / Jim Ross) By flight-testing the Auto GCAS system across the entire F-16 flight envelope and in all terrain conditions, including such extremes as flying only 100 feet above ground level in canyons and over mountainous terrain, the ACAT/FRRP team successfully proved the maturity of this technology, its ability to be nuisance-free and ready for transition to operational fighter aircraft.

As a direct result of the ACAT/FRRP team efforts and success, Auto GCAS is now transitioning to operational use in the Air Force's F-16 and F-22 aircraft, as well as in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Auto GCAS offers unprecedented payoffs in terms of operator safety and aircraft retention, according to Air Force Research Laboratory officials. They believe the 20-year projected payoff from implementation of Auto GCAS will result in savings of tens of billions of dollars and hundreds of lives and fighter aircraft.

The ACAT/FRRP team is composed of AFRL, Lockheed Martin, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, the Air Force Flight Test Center, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense Personnel and Readiness.

› ACAT Video The annual Aviation Week Laureate Awards recognize extraordinary individuals and teams for their exploration, innovation and vision in the aerospace and defense industry.