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Cape Canaveral, Florida — Mar 07, `08 — Preparations are on track for Tuesday’s 25th flight to the International Space Station, said NASA test director Steve Payne during today’s STS-123 Countdown Status Briefing, the first for the mission.

The launch remains on schedule for 2:28 a.m. EDT on March 11.

The orbiter’s aft compartment was closed Wednesday night and the payload bay doors were closed for flight early Thursday morning.

NASA managers decided to fly using the secondary backup system in low-power mode after a problem surfaced with a high-power amplifier on one Ultra High Frequency (UHF) radio. The backup system meets all of the flight safety rules required for flight.

Some pre-launch activities this weekend will include loading supercold propellants after the pad is cleared at about 11 p.m. Saturday night. After the pad opens again on Sunday morning, the shuttle will get an engine check, the external tank will be inspected and the crew’s gear will be stowed inside the orbiter.

The Rotating Service Structure surrounding and protecting the shuttle will be retracted at 6 a.m. EDT Monday for Tuesday’s launch.

“We have no other issues to report,” Payne said. “The systems are clean, it appears it’s going to be a good day for us and Endeavour and her crew are ready to launch.”

The weather outlook, according to Todd McNamara, shuttle weather officer, is looking very good for Tuesday. There will be a high-pressure system over Central Florida and there’s only a 10 percent chance that weather will prohibit launch. More at NASA.

Cape Canaveral, Florida — Feb 01, `08 — Space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-122 mission remains on schedule for launch Feb 07, `08 at 2:45 pm EST from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida now that a plan to fix a bent cooling system hose has been determined.

During launch preparations at Kennedy, technicians noticed a small section of a braided metal hose that was bent in a shape similar to the Greek letter Omega. The radiator retract hose, part of the shuttle’s cooling system that carries Freon, is designed to flex. However, engineers wanted to make sure they were not overlooking potential problems and designed a tool to guide the hose back into the storage box. Testing in Huntington Beach, Calif., has proven successful and program managers gave the go ahead to close payload bay doors using the tool on Sunday evening.

The NASA teams of controllers at Kennedy, Johnson Space Center in Houston and Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will be joined by European teams based in Germany for the mission. The German-based controllers will oversee the operation of the new Columbus laboratory which is tucked inside Atlantis’ payload bay.

The lab, built in Italy and outfitted in Germany, will be the second dedicated research facility taken to the International Space Station. It can hold 10 racks dedicated for experiments covering a wide range of space science.

Atlantis’ seven astronauts will arrive at Kennedy Monday at 10:30 am, and the countdown clock will begin ticking down Monday at 5 pm. More at NASA.

Cape Canaveral, Florida — The Space Shuttle Program met Thursday, Dec 27, to assess the progress made to troubleshoot an issue with the engine cutoff sensor circuit that occurred during the recent launch attempts and tanking test. Instrumentation installed for the tanking test indicate that there are one or more intermittent open circuits in the area of the feed through connector on the external tank’s liquid hydrogen tank.

The external parts of the connector will be removed and replaced with others that have been strategically soldered to ensure pin-to-socket connectivity and allow continuous electrical flow from sensors inside the external tank to the shuttle’s computers.

This work will take some time to properly accomplish and to certify the redesigned configuration before flight. While a launch on Jan 10 is no longer achievable, no launch date has been discussed. The program will take time to assess progress of the work before setting a target launch date. More at NASA.

Expedition 16 astronauts Dan Tani and Peggy Whitson wrapped up 100th spacewalk in support of station assembly and maintenance on Tuesday, Dec 18. The 6-hour, 56-minute spacewalk focused on International Space Station solar array issues.

The spacewalkers looked for the cause of partial loss of electrical power to one of the station’s two Beta Gimbal Assemblies (BGAs) for starboard solar wings. They also examined damage to the starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joint (SARJ).

The SARJ enables the arrays to rotate in a paddlewheel-like fashion to follow the sun as the station orbits the Earth. The BGA lets the solar wings tilt along their long axis to point more directly to the sun.

After leaving the US airlock Quest and setting up equipment, Tani, EV1 or lead spacewalker, and Whitson moved to the station’s main truss and then out to near the end of its starboard side. There they inspected BGA 1A without seeing apparent damage. They disconnected two cables to facilitate ground tests.

On Dec. 8 the BGA’s primary power was lost after three circuit breakers tripped. A backup power source still functions, but because of the loss of redundancy, the device was latched with the wing in a position suitable for docking of the shuttle Atlantis on STS-122.

With the cables disconnected the circuits remained closed, apparently clearing the cables as suspects. Whitson reconnected them late in the spacewalk.

For the BGA inspection, the spacewalkers entered the truss from opposite sides, but remained together to be able to warn one another of obstructions in that confined area. That inspection took about 45 minutes.

Next the spacewalkers moved to the SARJ. Working together, they removed two large drive lock assembly covers and inspected the race rings and bearings beneath them. Then they removed and inspected beneath most of the 22 covers.

That SARJ was locked after vibrations were noted and increased power consumption was seen. Inspection findings Tuesday showed various degrees of contamination under the individual covers. Generally it was similar to what had been seen previously.

Tani and Whitson described what they saw, took photos and used tape and a scraper to collect samples of debris in the SARJ. That debris included metal shavings and “dusting” in the SARJ race ring

Finally, they removed trundle bearing assembly No. 5, one of the 12 trundle bearing assemblies that move along the race ring, and returned it to the station’s interior.

After cleanup they entered the Quest airlock and closed its hatch. The beginning of repressurization marked the official end of the spacewalk.

The starboard array continues to produce some power, and no station operations have been affected. But managers want to resolve the SARJ and BGA problems before launch of the Japanese Kibo laboratory next year.

The spacewalk was the 100th for the construction and maintenance of the station. During the spacewalk, Whitson set a new record for cumulative spacewalk time by a woman.

About halfway through today’s spacewalk she surpassed the mark set by Sunita Williams, a station crew member during Expeditions 14 and 15, who had a total of 29 hours and 17 minutes during four spacewalks. Whitson’s new mark is 32 hours, 36 minutes in five spacewalks.

More at NASA.

WASHINGTON — Dec 17, `07 — A powerful jet from a super massive black hole is blasting a nearby galaxy, according to new findings from NASA observatories. This never-before witnessed galactic violence may have a profound effect on planets in the jet’s path and trigger a burst of star formation in its destructive wake.

Known as 3C321, the system contains two galaxies in orbit around each other. Data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory show both galaxies contain super massive black holes at their centers, but the larger galaxy has a jet emanating from the vicinity of its black hole. The smaller galaxy apparently has swung into the path of this jet.

This “death star” galaxy was discovered through the combined efforts of both space and ground-based telescopes. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer Space Telescope were part of the effort. The Very Large Array telescope, Socorro, N.M., and the Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) telescopes in the United Kingdom also were needed for the finding.

“We’ve seen many jets produced by black holes, but this is the first time we’ve seen one punch into another galaxy like we’re seeing here,” said Dan Evans, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and leader of the study. “This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling.”

Jets from super massive black holes produce high amounts of radiation, especially high-energy X-rays and gamma-rays, which can be lethal in large quantities. The combined effects of this radiation and particles traveling at almost the speed of light could severely damage the atmospheres of planets lying in the path of the jet. For example, protective layers of ozone in the upper atmosphere of planets could be destroyed.

Jets produced by super massive black holes transport enormous amounts of energy far from black holes and enable them to affect matter on scales vastly larger than the size of the black hole. Learning more about jets is a key goal for astrophysical research.

The effect of the jet on the companion galaxy is likely to be substantial, because the galaxies in 3C321 are extremely close at a distance of only about 20,000 light years apart. They lie approximately the same distance as Earth is from the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

A bright spot in the Very Large Array and MERLIN images shows where the jet has struck the side of the galaxy, dissipating some of the jet’s energy. The collision disrupted and deflected the jet.

Another unique aspect of the discovery in 3C321 is how relatively short-lived this event is on a cosmic time scale. Features seen in the Very Large Array and Chandra images indicate that the jet began impacting the galaxy about one million years ago, a small fraction of the system’s lifetime. This means such an alignment is quite rare in the nearby universe, making 3C321 an important opportunity to study such a phenomenon.

It is possible the event is not all bad news for the galaxy being struck by the jet. The massive influx of energy and radiation from the jet could induce the formation of large numbers of stars and planets after its initial wake of destruction is complete. More at NASA.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala — Dec 17, `07 — In December, NASA will begin testing core components of a rocket engine from the Apollo era. Data from the tests will help NASA build the next generation engine that will power the nation’s new Ares launch vehicles on voyages that will send humans to the moon.

NASA will test the engine’s powerpack, a gas generator and turbopumps that perform the rocket engine’s major pumping and combustion work. These components originally delivered propellants to the Apollo-era J-2 engine that fueled the second stage of the Saturn V rockets.

NASA is using these heritage parts to develop a new engine, known as the J2-X, to power the upper stages of both the Ares I crew launch vehicle and the Ares V cargo launch vehicle. Results from the tests will help engineers modify the machinery to meet the higher performance requirements of these two next-generation rockets.

The powerpack tests will be conducted at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss., where the components were installed in late September 2007.

The Ares rockets support NASA’s goal of providing safe, reliable, affordable transportation to support sustainable, long-term exploration. The Ares I is an in-line, two-stage rocket that will transport the Orion crew vehicle to low Earth orbit.

Orion will accommodate as many as six astronauts on missions to the International Space Station or as many as four crew members on lunar missions. The Ares V, a heavy-lift launch vehicle, will enable NASA to launch a variety of science and exploration payloads and key components needed to go to the moon. More at NASA.

Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle; Ares V Cargo Launch Vehicle

Cape Canaveral, Florida — Dec 17, `07 — The fifth in a series of eight modernized Global Positioning System Block IIR (GPS IIR-M) satellites built by Lockheed Martin for the US Air Force is ready for launch aboard a Delta II rocket on Dec 20, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

The spacecraft, designated GPS IIR-18M, is a modernized version of the Block IIR series designed to enhance the GPS constellation for military and civilian GPS users around the globe. The modernized series delivers increased signal power to receivers on the ground, two new military signals for improved accuracy, enhanced encryption and anti-jamming capabilities for the military, and a second civil signal to provide users with an open access signal on a different frequency.

The GPS constellation provides critical situational awareness and precision weapon guidance for the military and supports a wide range of civil, scientific and commercial functions – from air traffic control to the Internet – with precision location and timing information.

The Global Positioning System enables properly equipped users to determine precise time and velocity and worldwide latitude, longitude and altitude to within a few meters. Air Force Space Command’s 2nd Space Operations Squadron (2SOPS), based at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., manages and operates the GPS constellation for both civil and military users. More at Lockheed Martin.

With the little help from NASA, now you can send your personalized Holiday Greetings 220 miles above the planet Earth.

Select a postcard and send your own personalized message to Expedition 16 crew members, Station Commander Peggy Whitson, and Flight Engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Daniel Tani the International Space Station.

Go ahead, make their day. Send your Greetings NOW.

Cape Canaveral, Florida — Dec 09, ‘07 — Space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-122 mission to the International Space Station is targeted to launch no earlier than Jan 02, ‘08 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The liftoff date depends on the resolution of a problem in a fuel sensor system.

Early Sunday, one of the four engine cutoff, or ECO, sensors inside the liquid hydrogen section of Atlantis’ external fuel tank gave a false reading while the tank was being filled. NASA’s current Launch Commit Criteria require that all four sensors function properly.

The sensor system is one of several that protect the shuttle’s main engines by triggering their shut down if fuel runs unexpectedly low. Atlantis’ scheduled launch on Thursday, Dec 06, was delayed after two liquid hydrogen ECO sensors gave false readings.

The crew of STS-122 will be heading back to Houston on Sunday evening but before leaving they expressed their gratitude for the effort to launch.

The main objective of Atlantis’ 11-day mission is to install and activate the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory, which will provide scientists around the world the ability to conduct a variety of life, physical and materials science experiments. More at NASA.

Cape Canaveral, Florida — Dec 08, ‘07 — Space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch Sunday, Dec 9, at 3:21 pm EST, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Shuttle program managers made the liftoff decision after three days of reviewing data on a problem with fuel sensors.

Atlantis’ scheduled launch on Thursday was delayed after two of the four engine cutoff, or ECO, sensors in the shuttle’s external fuel tank gave false readings. A third sensor failed after the tank was drained of fuel. The sensor system is one of several that protect the shuttle’s three main engines by triggering their shut down if fuel runs unexpectedly low.

During a Mission Management Team meeting Saturday, NASA leaders decided to fuel the tank Sunday and monitor the status of the sensor system. If all four ECO sensors inside the liquid hydrogen section of the tank perform as expected, the countdown will proceed toward the planned liftoff. NASA Television coverage of the tank loading will start Sunday at 6 a.m., with launch coverage beginning at 10 a.m.

During Atlantis’ 11-day mission to the International Space Station, the astronauts will install and activate the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory, which will expand the station’s scientific research capabilities. Crew members for the STS-122 mission are Commander Steve Frick, Pilot Alan Poindexter, mission specialists Leland Melvin, Rex Walheim, Stanley Love and European Space Agency astronauts Hans Schlegel from Germany and Leopold Eyharts from France. More at NASA.

Cape Canaveral, Florida — Dec 07, ‘07 — NASA is targeting the launch of space shuttle Atlantis no earlier than Sunday, Dec 9, at 3:21 p.m. EST from the Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Shuttle program managers made the decision after a meeting Friday to review data on a problem with a fuel cutoff sensor system inside the shuttle and its external fuel tank.

Because of the length of the meeting, the managers agreed that targeting Sunday would allow the launch and management teams appropriate time to rest and prepare. The Mission Management Team will meet Saturday at 1 p.m. to decide whether to make a Sunday attempt. A news conference will be held after the meeting’s conclusion.

Atlantis’ scheduled launch Thursday was delayed after two ECO sensors gave false readings. A third sensor failed after the tank was drained of fuel. The fuel cutoff sensor system is one of several that protects the shuttle’s main engines by triggering their shut down if fuel runs unexpectedly low

During Atlantis’ 11-day mission to the International Space Station, the shuttle and station crews will work with ground teams to install and activate the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory. The new lab will expand the station’s scientific research capabilities. More at NASA.

Cape Canaveral, Florida  — Dec 07, ‘07 — The launch of NASA’s space shuttle Atlantis will take place no earlier than Saturday, Dec 8, at 3:43 p.m. EST. Thursday’s scheduled liftoff from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla., was postponed because of a problem with a fuel cutoff sensor system inside the shuttle’s external fuel tank.

The fuel cutoff sensor system is one of several that protect the shuttle’s main engines by triggering their shut down if fuel runs unexpectedly low. Launch Commit Criteria require that three of the four sensor systems function properly before liftoff.

Space Shuttle Program managers will hold a Mission Management Team meeting Friday at 3 p.m. to discuss the issue and determine the steps necessary to start a new launch countdown. A news conference will be held at about 6 p.m. after the meeting’s conclusion.

On Thursday morning, two of the four engine cutoff, or ECO, sensors inside the liquid hydrogen section of the tank failed a routine prelaunch check. Following the launch postponement, the tank’s liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen were drained. While the tank was being emptied, engineers monitored and collected data on the liquid hydrogen sensors that failed. During that process, another sensor gave a false reading, indicating that the tank was “wet,” when it was dry. All ECO sensors are now indicating dry as they should be.

During Atlantis’ 11-day mission to the International Space Station, the shuttle and station crews will work with ground teams to install and activate the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory. The new lab will expand the station’s scientific research capabilities.

More at NASA.

PASADENA, Calif — Dec 06, ‘07 –  The California Institute of Technology and the University of California have received a $200 million commitment over nine years from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation toward the further development and construction of the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT). Funding under this commitment will be shared equally between the two universities, with matching gifts from the two institutions expected to bring the total to $300 million. When built, TMT will be the largest telescope in the world.

The telescope design is being developed by a U.S.-Canadian team that includes the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA), with completion of the design development expected by March 2009.

With the TMT, astronomers will be able to locate and analyze the light from the first stellar systems born soon after the Big Bang, determine the physical processes governing the formation and evolution of galaxies like our own Milky Way, study planet formation around nearby stars, and make observations that test the fundamental laws of physics. However, it is the unexpected discoveries that TMT will make that will likely be the most exciting.

TMT will consist of a primary mirror with 492 individual 1.45-meter segments that together measure 30 meters in diameter, providing more than eight times the collecting area of the current largest telescope. All segments will be under precision computer control so that they will work together as a single mirror. This revolutionary technology was developed for the 10-meter mirrors in the two Keck telescopes in Hawaii.

The TMT will not only be the largest optical-infrared telescope in the world, but it will also be at the forefront of technology in virtually every aspect of its design. Adaptive optics (AO) will allow the TMT to achieve a resolution superior to that of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The TMT AO system will use six laser beams to create six luminous spots in a layer of sodium atoms high in Earth’s upper atmosphere. These bright artificial stars serve as references for measuring the turbulence in the atmosphere, allowing the AO system to compensate for blurring of starlight by Earth’s fluctuating atmosphere. This technology was pioneered at the Lick Observatory 3-meter telescope and has been developed further at the Palomar 5-meter and Keck 10-meter telescopes. More at Caltech.

Cape Canaveral, Florida — Dec 06, 07 — During tanking, two of four LH2 Engine Cutoff (ECO) sensors failed to respond appropriately, which is a Launch Commit Violation. The requirement to proceed calls for 3 of 4. The launch was scrubbed at 9:56 a.m. EST on the recommendation of Launch Director Doug Lyons.

Mission Management Team Chairman LeRoy Cain concurred following a short briefing on the issue. The ice inspection team will proceed with an abbreviated vehicle inspection prior to offloading the LO2 and LH2 and recycle for a launch attempt tomorrow, at 4:09 p.m.

A press briefing is tentatively scheduled for 4 p.m. EST.

The sensors are part of a safety system that ensures the shuttle’s main engine does not switch off too early or too late. At least three must be working perfectly before the shuttle can be cleared for launch. In flight, an onboard computer shuts the engines down when a majority of the sensors declare the main fuel tank to be empty.

Engineers are not only checking the sensors, but also surrounding circuitry for faults. Earlier this morning, engineers discovered a minor leak in equipment used to fill smaller liquid hydrogen tanks aboard the shuttle. The gas is used to power fuel cells that provide electricity during the voyage. More at NASA.

Cape Canaveral, Florida — Dec 05, ‘07 — The launch team at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is continuing its steady march toward a lift off Thursday afternoon for space shuttle Atlantis. The countdown is proceeding smoothly, NASA Test Director Jeff Spaulding said Wednesday.

Technicians and engineers at the launch pad have several steps ahead of them Wednesday. The most visible milestone will come in the evening when the Rotating Service Structure is moved to its launch position where it will be out of the way of Atlantis. The gantry encloses much of the shuttle while it is on the launch pad and gives workers access to critical areas of the shuttle and its payload.

The weather forecast calls for a 90 percent chance of acceptable conditions at launch time.

“The vehicle’s looking good and the weather’s looking good, too,” Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters said. More at NASA.

Houston — Dec 05, ‘07 — On August 07, 2008, after 20 years of hype, disappointment, blunders, triumphs and peerless glittering vistas of space and time, and four years after NASA decided to leave the Hubble Space Telescope to die in orbit, setting off public and Congressional outrage, a group of astronauts will ride to the telescope aboard the space shuttle Atlantis with wrenches in hand. Says NYTimes.

That, at least, is the plan.

Servicing Mission 4
NASA managers officially are targeting August 7, 2008, for the launch of the fifth and final space shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. During the 11-day flight, Atlantis’ seven astronauts will repair and improve the observatory’s capabilities through 2013.

Mission planners have been working since last fall, when the flight was announced, to determine the best time in the shuttle manifest to support the needs of Hubble while minimizing the impact to International Space Station assembly. NASA also will support a “launch on need” flight during the Hubble mission. In the unlikely event a rescue flight becomes necessary, shuttle Endeavour currently is planned to lift off from Launch Pad 39-B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. However, managers constantly are evaluating the manifest to determine the best mission options.

Shuttle missions beyond the Hubble flight, designated STS-125, still are being assessed. Shuttle and station program officials will continue to consider options for the remainder of the shuttle flights to complete construction of the space station by 2010, when the fleet will be retired. Those target launch dates are subject to change.

More at NASA, NYTimes.

Cape Canaveral, Florida — Dec 03, ‘07 — Five NASA astronauts and two European Space Agency astronauts arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday, for the start of countdown to Thursday’s space shuttle launch as NASA wrapped up repairs on Atlantis’ fuel tank.

Damage was discovered Friday to the insulating foam on the shuttle’s 15-story external tank. NASA doesn’t know how or when the gouges to the foam occurred, but the damage is considered minor.

New patches of foam have been applied. It will take 16 hours for the foam to harden properly, in plenty of time for liftoff late Thursday afternoon, said NASA test director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson.

Now that it’s repaired, the foam should pose no threat to Atlantis during launch, said Blackwell-Thompson. Falling foam was disastrous in the case of Columbia in 2003, and has been a recurring problem.

Space shuttle Atlantis is set to begin its launch countdown for the STS-122 mission with a flurry of activities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Atlantis is scheduled to launch at 4:31 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec 06. Packed safely aboard Atlantis was the European Space Agency’s Columbus Laboratory headed for delivery to the international space station.

NASA astronaut Steve Frick will command the seven-man crew during an 11-day mission to attach the European-built Columbus laboratory to the International Space Station. Frick, Alan Poindexter, Rex Walheim, Leland Melvin, Hans Schlegel and Leopold Eyharts will fly aboard Atlantis during mission STS-122.

“It’s been a long time building to this moment, so we’re just absolutely ready to go,” Frick said. “We flew by shuttle Atlantis on the launch pad and it’s a beautiful sight,” Poindexter said.

ESA’s Columbus laboratory is the most important European mission to the ISS to date and the cornerstone of Europe’s contribution to this international endeavour. Once Columbus is launched, assembled to the Space Station and verified, ESA will become an active partner in the operations and utilization of mankind’s only permanent outpost in space.

As the first European laboratory devoted to long-term research in space, Columbus will further expand the science capabilities of the ISS. In its interior, the Columbus laboratory will provide accommodation for experiments in the field of multidisciplinary research into biology, physiology, material science, fluid physics, technology, life science and education. In addition, its external payload facility hosts experiments and applications in the field of space science, Earth observation and technology.

More at NASA, ESA.

WASHINGTON — Dec 03, ‘07 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — As the agency commemorates its 50th anniversary, NASA has launched “NASA.gov 5.0,” the first major redesign of its primary Web site in more than four years.

The new design goes beyond a cosmetic facelift. It features a new level of interactivity and customization, and provides the opportunity to comment on selected NASA stories, create personal playlists of favorite NASA videosand share agency content with social bookmarking sites on the Internet.

While adding new features, the site’s overall focus remains on providing the latest news, which is prominently displayed at the top of the page. Also, NASA imagery and videos have been given more prominence.

Visitors will notice a new navigation interface, with 10 topic areas covering the depth and breadth of NASA programs replacing three outdated
and overly broad categories. Web editors from around the agency will be able to contribute content.

Web managers have improved the new site’s search capability using Google’s Customer Search Engine to provide visitors with the same search
results they would get from Google’s public site. NASA has tools to apply “crowd wisdom” to search results by weighting findings according to how many previous searchers clicked on a particular link.

NASA revamped the customized “myNASA” feature to allow users to collect their favorite NASA Web content, including videos and news feeds, all in one location. NASA.

Nov 29, ‘07 — A developing star wrapped in a black cocoon of dust is seen sprouting giant jets in a new image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

The stellar portrait, seen in infrared light, offers the first glimpse at a very early stage in the life of an embryonic sun-like star — a time when the star’s natal envelope is beginning to flatten and collapse, and streams of gas are escaping. The observations will ultimately help astronomers better understand how stars and their planets form.

“This is the first time we’ve clearly seen a flattened envelope around a forming star,” said Leslie Looney of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, lead author of a study about the star, called L1157, appearing Dec. 1 in Astrophysical Journal Letters. “Some theories had predicted that envelopes flatten as they collapse onto their stars and surrounding planet-forming disks, but we hadn’t seen any strong evidence of this until now.”

Stars are born out of thick clouds, or envelopes, of gas and dust that condense and collapse inward. As a star grows and feeds off the envelope, it spins faster and faster like a twirling ice skater. A disk of planet-forming material begins to take shape in orbit around the star, and jets of gas shoot up from above and below the disk to relieve the star’s accumulating pressure. Eventually, the original envelope falls onto the spinning disk, and the jets slow to a stop.

The regions where all the action takes place are dark and dusty, letting little visible light escape. For example, the embryonic star L1157 appears black in visible-light views. Spitzer’s infrared view of the star, on the other hand, penetrates the dusty haze, giving us a rare look at what our own solar system might have looked like when it was very young.

The bipolar jets shooting away from L1157 are enormous; light itself would take about nine months to travel the length of one jet. The color white shows the hottest parts of the jets, with temperatures around 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit). Most of the material in the jets, seen in orange, is roughly zero degrees on the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales.

The flattened envelope around the fledgling star is perpendicular to the jets and appears deep black. This is because it is so thick with dust that even infrared light cannot escape. The envelope is big enough to engulf the equivalent of tens of thousands of mature solar systems similar to our own, while the planet-forming disk tucked inside cannot be seen in this photo – it is smaller than a pixel.

L1157 is located about 800 light-years away in the constellation Cepheus. It is roughly 10,000 years old, and, according to astronomers’ estimates, will ignite to become a full-fledged star about the mass of our sun in a million years or so.

“Taking baby pictures of stars is not easy to do,” said Looney. “Now that we have a good picture, we can begin to ask questions about whether this star system and its potential planets will grow up to become like ours.”

Other authors of this study include John J. Tobin of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Woojin Kwan of the University of Illinois.

More at NASA.

Nov 29, ‘07 — Scientists analyzing data gathered by Cassini have confirmed the presence of heavy negative ions in the upper regions of Titan’s atmosphere. These particles may act as building blocks for more complicated organic molecules.

The discovery was completely unexpected because of the chemical composition of the atmosphere (which lacks oxygen - responsible for forming negative ions in the lower ionosphere of the Earth - and mainly consists of nitrogen and methane). The observation has now been verified on 16 different encounters.

Prof Andrew Coates, researcher at University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory and lead author of the paper, says: “Cassini’s electron spectrometer has enabled us to detect negative ions which have 10 000 times the mass of hydrogen. Additional rings of carbon can build up on these ions, forming molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which may act as a basis for the earliest forms of life.

Coates added, “Their existence poses questions about the processes involved in atmospheric chemistry and aerosol formation and we now think it most likely that these negative ions form in the upper atmosphere before moving closer to the surface, where they probably form the mist which shrouds the planet and which has hidden its secrets from us in the past. It was this mist which stopped the Voyager mission from examining Titan more closely in 1980 and was one of the reasons that Cassini was launched.”

The new paper builds on work published in Science on 11 May where the team found smaller tholins, up to 8000 times the mass of hydrogen, forming away from the surface of Titan.

Dr Hunter Waite of the South West Research Institute in Texas and author of the earlier study, said: “Tholins are very large, complex, organic molecules thought to include chemical precursors to life. Understanding how they form could provide valuable insight into the origin of life in the solar system.”

The findings, authored by A. Coates, F. Crary, G. Lewis, D. Young, J. Waite Jr. and E. Sittler Jr., published yesterday, 28 November, in the Geophysical Research Letters appear in ‘Discovery of heavy negative ions in Titan’s ionosphere’. More at ESA.

Nov 29, ‘07 — NASA has released details of its strategy for sending a human crew to Mars within the next few decades, reports BBC News.

“The space agency envisages despatching a “minimal” crew on a 30-month round trip to the Red Planet in a 400,000kg (880,000lb) spacecraft.Details of the concept were outlined at a meeting in Houston, Texas.

In January 2004, President George W Bush launched a program for returning humans to the Moon by 2020 and - at an undetermined date - to Mars. The “Mars ship” would be assembled in low-Earth orbit using three to four Ares V rockets - the new heavy-lift launch vehicle that Nasa has been developing.

Notionally despatched in February 2031, the mission’s journey from Earth to Mars would take six to seven months in a spacecraft powered by an advanced cryogenic fuel propulsion system. The details are highly subject to change, and may not represent the way NASA eventually chooses to go to the Red Planet.

However, the document says this is the agency’s current “best strategy” for landing humans on the Martian surface.

Grow your own

The cargo lander and surface habitat would be sent to Mars separately, launched before the crew in December 2028 and January 2029. According to the Nasa presentation seen by BBC News, astronauts could grow their own fruit and vegetables on the way.

Recycled water

The spacecraft itself would be equipped with so-called “closed-loop” life support systems, in which air and water would be recycled. Plants would be grown onboard to feed the crew and contribute to the “psychological health” of the astronauts.

They will also need medical equipment for the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses or injuries. NASA proposes using the Moon as a testing ground for many of these new systems.Details of the plan, which comes under Nasa’s new Constellation program, were presented at a meeting of NASA’s Lunar Exploration and Analysis Group.” More at BBCNews, NASA.

On Saturday, Nov 24, Astronauts spent seven hours in space to finish preparing the International Space Station for its next addition — Europe’s first permanent space laboratory, the Columbus laboratory — which is sitting in the cargo bay of space shuttle Atlantis at Cape Canaveral, Florida launch pad — set to lift off on December 6.

International Space Station Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Daniel Tani completed a 7-hour, 4 minute spacewalk at 11:54 a.m. EST Saturday, continuing the external outfitting of the Harmony node in its new position in front of the US laboratory Destiny.

The spacewalkers completed all scheduled tasks, including another look at the starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joint, and did some get-ahead work as well. The spacewalk otherwise was similar to the one on Nov. 20.

Tethered to the station, Whitson and Tani spent much of their time passing the second of two 300-pound (136-kg), 18.5-foot (5.6-metre) pallets “like a high-tech baton in a relay race” to its new position, a spokesman for the NASA said.

The pallet routes coolant lines to the station’s Harmony module to which the Columbus lab will be connected in December. Japan’s Kibo Experiments Module is set to be attached to Harmony in February.

Tani moved to the right side of the main truss and removed one of the 22 covers of the starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joint (SARJ) and did an inspection similar to the one he did during his spacewalk during the STS-120 mission. He took digital pictures, samples of metallic shavings he found there. He described some surfaces as being abraded.

Tani did an inspection of a Solar Alpha Rotary Joint that had previously shown increased power consumption and vibration while rotating as it followed the Sun. Whitson deployed and mated cables to be used as part of the Station to Shuttle Power Transfer System, or SSPTS. A portable foot restraint was also installed on Node 2 for upcoming spacewalks when the European Columbus laboratory is installed on the STS-122 mission.

Saturday’s excursion 215 miles above Earth was the second spacewalk this week to connect Harmony to electrical, cooling and data systems aboard the station. Whitson and Tani relayed the first pallet into position on Tuesday.

Ground controllers told Whitson and Tani coolant was flowing into Harmony about an hour after they completed the connections.

“We couldn’t be more pleased to have a good install(ation) of Harmony,” Tani said. More at NASA.

During a new inspection Saturday, Tani and Whitson described what they said was clearly “metal on metal” grinding and took pictures to be sent back to NASA engineers on the ground for further study. They also left the joint uncovered to make it easy to look inside again. The joint must be fixed before a Japanese lab can be added to the station later next year.

NASA must now determine the cause of the damage and decide whether Atlantis’ lead spacewalker, Rex Walheim, will embark on another joint inspection spacewalk or attempt a repair next month. The fix could be a simple swap-out of a bearing mechanism or a major gear-replacement operation.

That decision to even attempt a fix will be largely dependent on how much power Atlantis uses on the flight to the station. Unlike the other two shuttles — Discovery and Endeavour — Atlantis cannot plug into the space station’s power system and must rely only on the power stored in its fuel cells, limiting its time in space. What to do about the joint is expected to be a matter of hot debate in the run-up to launch.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee are leading a new study involving 500 scientists worldwide to find, analyze, and prove the existence of gravitational waves in order to learn even more about our universe.

Gravitational waves were predicted by Albert Einstein, but so far, it has not been proven that they exist.

A new window on the universe

“Galileo was the first person to use the telescope to view the cosmos,” says Brady, a UWM professor of physics. “His observations with the new technology led to the discovery of moons orbiting Jupiter and lent support to the heliocentric model of the solar system.”

Just such an opportunity exists today with a unique observatory that is scanning the skies, searching for one of Einstein’s greatest predictions – gravitational waves.

Gravitational waves are produced when massive objects in space move violently. The waves carry the imprint of the events that cause them. Scientists already have indirect evidence that gravitational waves exist, but have not directly detected them.

UWM researchers, backed by considerable funding from the National Science Foundation, are taking a leadership role in the quest.

It is an epic undertaking involving about 500 scientists worldwide, including Brady and other members of UWM’s Center for Cosmology and Gravitation: associate professors Alan Wiseman and Jolien Creighton, and assistant professor Xavier Siemens.

Two UWM adjunct physicists, who work at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, also are involved – former UWM professor Bruce Allen and scientist Maria Alessandra Papa.

“It’s an unimaginable opportunity to be on the forefront of scientific discovery,” says Creighton.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, consists of detectors at two U.S. sites managed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

UWM’s physicists are analyzing the data generated by the LIGO facilities.

The project is supported with a sizable investment of grant money from both federal and UWM sources.

Last year, UWM’s LIGO group brought in $3 million in grant funding. Since 1999, UWM has received more than $9 million for the project, with much of it going toward a supercomputer called Nemo that operates unobtrusively on the second floor of the Physics Building.

Stretching and squeezing

The LIGO observatories use lasers to accurately monitor the distance between a central station and mirrors suspended three miles away along perpendicular arms. When a gravitational wave, a traveling ripple in space-time, passes by, the mirror in one arm will move closer to the central station, while the other mirror will move away.

The change in distance caused by stretching and squeezing is what LIGO is designed to measure, says Wiseman.

Those changes will be inconceivably tiny. LIGO can record distortions at a scale so small, it is comparable in distance to a thousandth of the size of an atomic nucleus.

LIGO records a series of numbers – lots of them – and feeds them to several supercomputer clusters around the country, including UWM’s Nemo cluster.

Think of a modern hard disk on a desktop computer, which stores about 100 gigabytes. LIGO fills up about 10 of those at Nemo in a single day, says Brady.

The computer’s job is to sort out the numerical patterns representing gravitational waves buried in ambient noise produced by lots of other vibrations – from internal vibrations of the equipment itself, to magnetic fluctuations from lightning storms, to seismic vibrations from trains rolling along the tracks a few miles from the observatory, or from earthquakes on the other side of the world.

“There are thousands or even millions of different signals that could be emitted from space,” says Wiseman. “So you have to take each segment of data individually. That turns out to be a formidable computational problem.”

Nemo performs many billions of calculations per second in its search for these signals.

Space sounds

The strings of numbers from LIGO are like tracks on a compact disk, says Brady. That means, once detected, gravitational-wave signals can be converted into sound.

In fact, scientists have already simulated, based on mathematical predictions, what certain events in space will sound like.

When two black holes are merging, for example, you might expect to hear a “chirp” that represents the spiraling together of the black holes just before they collide. “The spiral can go on for tens of thousands of years,” says Brady. “The sound is the identifying signal of the last few seconds of the process!”

Those analyzing the data from space could actually listen to the data. Instead, scientists look for the signals using computers like Nemo.

To augment the computing capacity, UWM is hosting a way for anyone with a computer and a high-speed Internet connection to join the astrophysical treasure hunt. Called “Einstein@Home, the program borrows computer power available when participants are not using it, and pool those resources to aid in filtering the massive amounts of data from LIGO.

Possible secrets

Scientists concede that the current LIGO facilities will need to be improved to increase the chances of detecting gravitational waves. More NSF funding to do that is requested in the 2009 U.S. budget currently winding its way through the approval process.

For now, the best hope is to detect events relatively close to Earth.

So what is the likelihood of success”

“The events we are looking for may only happen once every million years in our galaxy,” says Wiseman, “but if your instrument is sensitive enough to see such events in, say, one million galaxies, then the probability of detecting something is much larger.”

Gravitational waves may hold secrets to the nature of black holes, the unknown properties of nuclear material, and maybe even how the universe began.

“We’ve only been able to find out about the universe since it became cool,” says Siemens. “But with gravitational waves, we’ll see the universe when it was much younger – and hotter.”

But then again, scientists don’t really know.

“I think we’re in for a surprise,” says Siemens. “We have all these ideas about what we think we will find, but it could be something completely different.” UWM.

On Friday, Nov 23, ESA and London based Inmarsat Global Ltd announced  in Paris the formal signature of the contract for Alphasat satellite, one of the world’s largest telecommunications satellites.

The six-tonne satellite will deliver high-bandwidth services, such as mobile internet, to Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.It will have five times the capacity of current space platforms.

Inmarsat will use Alphasat I-XL to support its huge I-4 satellites, which deliver the company’s global broadband network, BGan.

The spacecraft allow people to set up virtual offices anywhere around the world - on land or at sea. Users get half-a-megabit connections through small, laptop-sized terminals. Customers include business travellers, disaster relief workers, journalists, and people in the petrochemical and maritime industries.

The Alphabus Alphasat programme represents an expenditure of $649 million (€ 440 mln) by 16 ESA Member States. Under the development schedule, Alphasat will be available for launch in 2012.

Positioned at 25 degrees East, providing extended coverage to Africa, Europe, the Middle-East and parts of Asia , Alphasat will supplement the existing Inmarsat satellite constellation and offer the opportunity for new and advanced services.

Alphasat I-XL features a 12m aperture antenna reflector. It will have an electrical power of 12kW and a design lifetime of 15 years. The Alphabus model, though, allows for even bigger spacecraft to be made in the future, supporting missions that have a launch mass of more than eight tonnes and 18kW payload power.

One of the world’s most powerful rockets will be needed to launch a satellite of I-XL’s size - something comparable to a bus or small truck. As a flagship European mission, the task of lofting Alphasat I-XL may well fall to the European bloc’s premier launch vehicle, the Ariane 5 ECA. More at ESA.

MOSCOW — On November 21 Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree authorizing construction of a new launch facility on Russian  territory to reduce the nation’s dependency on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, First Deputy Premier Sergei Ivanov told reporters,  Space.com reports.

The site further writes, “The cosmodrome will be built in the Amur region in Russia’s Far East and will serve the nation’s human and robotic space exploration programs, according to Ivanov.

Ivanov said the cosmodrome will be named Vostochny, or Eastern, and that a feasibility study will be completed by 2010 to pinpoint the exact location. The cosmodrome will be built from 2010 to 2018 with the first launch scheduled to take place in 2018.” More at Space.com