NASA Wants Energy to Bloom Throughout the World

K.R. Sridhar used to spend his time as a researcher at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., looking at the sky and dreaming of ways to sustain life on Mars. Now, CEO of Bloom Energy, Sridhar heads a company that just unveiled new technology that could make energy cleaner, cheaper, more reliable and accessible to everyone in the world.

The journey from NASA to Bloom Energy started with Sridhar and a small team of university researchers working to build a fuel cell powered module to go to Mars. When their NASA project ended, the team left academic life, opened a research and development office in NASA Research Park, and began working to commercialize the fuel cell technology with a new company, ION America, which became Bloom Energy.

"NASA is a tremendous environment for encouraging innovation - it's all about solving problems that are seemingly unsolvable. After realizing that we could make oxygen on Mars, making electrons on Earth seemed far less daunting. We're grateful to NASA for giving us a challenge with serendipitous impact for mankind," said Sridhar.

Invented over a century ago, fuel cells have been used in practically every NASA mission since the 1960s. However, they have not gained widespread acceptance because of their inherently high cost. Traditional fuel cell technology used precious metals but this technology uses sand. Sand is inexpensive, which Sridhar asserts makes the Bloom Energy technology affordable and easy to mass produce.

As more people consume more energy, Sridhar became aware that the world was heading in the wrong direction. “We would be handing our children and their children a broken planet," ventured Sridhar. “I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines and do nothing." Sridhar believed that conservation alone was not enough and that there was a “calling to our generation to find a different way to create energy."

"To make clean reliable energy affordable for everyone in the world," is the mission of Bloom Energy. "One in three humans lives without power," Sridhar asserted. "Energy demand exceeds supply. Global population is growing quickly." Keeping these three facts in mind, Sridhar is working to bring energy to parts of the world that don’t have power.

On Feb. 24, 2010, Bloom Energy held a press conference at the eBay town hall in San Jose, Calif. “This is a day that I have been looking forward to for a long time,” Sridhar commented. Representatives from companies that were early adapters attended, including Larry Page from Google, Inc., Bill Simon from Walmart, Brian Kelly from The Coca-Cola Company, and John Donahoe of eBay, Inc.

Former secretary of state, Colin Powell, and Arnold Schwarzeneggar, California governor, also attended the event. “This technology is an excellent example of the wave of green innovation washing over the state of California,” said Schwarzeneggar. "He [Sridhar] is someone shaping the future of energy not just for California but for the world."


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Temperature Trackers Watch Our Watery World

Climatologists have long known that human-produced greenhouse gases have been the dominant drivers of Earth's observed warming since the start of the Industrial Revolution. But other factors also affect our planet's temperature. Of these, the ocean plays a dominant role. Its effects helped nudge global temperatures slightly higher in 2009, and, according to NASA scientists, could well contribute to making 2010 the warmest year on record.

Covering 71 percent of our planet's surface, the ocean acts as a global thermostat, storing energy from the sun, keeping Earth's temperature changes moderate and keeping climate change gradual. In fact, the ocean can store as much heat in its top three meters (10 feet) as the entire atmosphere does.

"The vast amount of heat stored in the ocean regulates Earth's temperature, much as a flywheel regulates the speed of an engine," said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The ocean has a long history of capturing and giving up heat generated by both human activities and natural cycles; it is the thermal memory of the climate system."

Heat and moisture from the ocean are constantly exchanged with Earth's atmosphere in a process that drives our weather and climate. Scientists at NASA and elsewhere use a variety of direct and satellite-based measurements to study the interactions between the ocean and atmosphere.

"These interactions result in large-scale global climate effects, the largest of which is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation," explained Josh Willis, a JPL oceanographer and climate scientist. This climate pattern appears in the tropical Pacific Ocean roughly every four to 12 years and has a powerful impact on the ocean and the atmosphere. It can disrupt global weather and influence hurricanes, droughts and floods. It can also raise or lower global temperatures by up to 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

The oscillation pattern is made up of linked atmospheric and oceanic components. The atmospheric component is called the Southern Oscillation, a pattern of reversing surface air pressure that see-saws between the eastern and western tropical Pacific. The ocean's response to this atmospheric shift is known as either "El Niño" or "La Niña" (Spanish for "the little boy" and "the little girl," respectively).

Where the wind blows

During El Niño, the normally strong easterly trade winds in the tropical eastern Pacific weaken, allowing warm water to shift toward the Americas and occupy the entire tropical Pacific. Heavy rains tied to this warm water move into the central and eastern Pacific. El Niño can cause drought in Indonesia and Australia and disrupt the path of the atmospheric jet streams over North and South America, changing winter climate.

Large El Niños, such as the most powerful El Niño of the past century in 1997 to 1998, tend to force Earth's average temperatures temporarily higher for up to a year or more. Large areas of the Pacific can be one to two degrees Celsius (around two to four degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, and the average temperature of the ocean surface tends to increase. The current El Niño began last October and is expected to continue into mid-2010. Scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York estimate that if this pattern persists, 2010 may well go down as the warmest year on record.

El Niño's cold counterpart is La Niña. During La Niña, trade winds are stronger than normal, and cold water that usually sits along the coast of South America gets pushed to the mid-equatorial region of the Pacific. La Niñas are typically associated with less moisture in the air and less rain along the coasts of the Americas, and they tend to cause average global surface temperatures to drop. The last La Niña from 2007 to 2009 helped make 2008 the coolest year of the last decade. The end of that La Niña last year and subsequent transition into an El Niño helped contribute to last year's return to near-record global temperatures.

All the ocean's a stage

Both El Niño and La Niña play out on a larger stage that operates on decade-long timescales. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO for short, describes a long-term pattern of change in the Pacific Ocean that alternates between cool and warm periods about every five to 20 years. The PDO can intensify the impacts of La Niña or diminish the impacts of El Niño. In its "cool, negative phase," warm water, which causes higher-than-normal sea-surface heights (because warmer water expands and takes up more space), forms a horseshoe pattern that connects the north, west and south Pacific with cool water in the middle. In its "warm, positive phase," these warm and cool regions are reversed, and warm water forms in the middle of the horseshoe.

Such phase shifts of the PDO result in widespread changes in Pacific Ocean temperatures and have significant global climate implications. During the 1950s and 1960s, the PDO was strongly negative, or cool, and global temperatures seemed to level off. During most of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, the Pacific was locked in a strong positive, or warm, PDO phase and there were many El Niños. We are currently in the early stages of a cool PDO phase that began around 2006. Cool, negative phases tend to dampen the effects of El Niños.

Willis said the PDO, El Niño and La Niña can strongly affect global warming due to increased greenhouse gases. "These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities, or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it," he explained.

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NASA, NOAA Ready GOES-P Satellite For Launch

NOAA

The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-P represents a continuation of the newest generation of environmental satellites built by Boeing for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the technical guidance and project management of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

GOES satellites provide the familiar weather pictures seen on United States television newscasts every day. The GOES imaging and sounding instruments (built by ITT) feature flexible scans for small-scale area viewing in regions of the visible and infrared spectrum allowing meteorologists to improve short-term forecasts. GOES provides nearly continuous imaging and sounding, which allow forecasters to better measure changes in atmospheric temperature and moisture distributions and hence increase the accuracy of their forecasts.

GOES environmental information is used for a host of applications, including weather monitoring and prediction models, ocean temperatures and moisture locations, climate studies, cryosphere (ice, snow, glaciers) detection and extent, land temperatures and crop conditions, and hazards detection.

The GOES-O & P Imagers have improved resolution. The finer spatial resolution allows an improved cloud-top product, better information on atmospheric motion and volcanic ash detection. GOES-P continues the improved image navigation and registration, additional power and fuel lifetime capability, space weather, solar x-ray imaging, search and rescue, and communication services as provided on GOES-13 and GOES-14.

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Endeavour Safely Lands in Florida

Endeavour Safely Lands in Florida
Endeavour Completes Mission, Lands at KSC
Space shuttle Endeavour is home after two weeks in space, having delivered the final U.S. module and a "room with a view" to the International Space Station. STS-130 Commander George Zamka guided Endeavour to a landing at the Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility at 10:20 p.m. EST, to wrap up a 5.7 million mile mission.

Zamka, pilot Terry Virts and Mission Specialists Kathryn Hire, Stephen Robinson, Nicholas Patrick and Robert Behnken left behind more than 36,000 pounds of hardware that included the Tranquility Node 3 and the unique cupola providing a 360-degree view through seven windows.

Behnken and Patrick conducted three spacewalks during the mission totaling 18 hours, 14 minutes. That brings the totals for station assembly to 140 spacewalks and more than 873 hours.

Mission Managers Praise Flawless Mission

Shuttle Launch Integration Manager Mike Moses said that space shuttle Endeavour's landing capped off a flawless mission. "The crew did an outstanding job," Moses said, referring to the complex task of installing Tranquility and its seven-windowed cupola to the International Space Station. "The landing today went as smooth as you can hope for -- by the numbers."

Moses wrapped up his remarks about the STS-130 mission by saying, "It was an outstanding mission -- I can't be happier with the success we had and look forward to repeating that on our next mission."

Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach was extremely pleased with Endeavour's condition."One of the most magical things we get to do here at Kennedy Space Center is walk around the orbiter after a mission from space. She looks really, really good," Leinbach said.

Leinbach also congratulated Norm Knight and his team in the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for a job well done.

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NASA's Stardust Burns for Comet

NASA's Stardust Burns for Comet

Just three days shy of one year before its planned flyby of comet Tempel 1, NASA's Stardust spacecraft has successfully performed a maneuver to adjust the time of its encounter by eight hours and 20 minutes. The delay maximizes the probability of the spacecraft capturing high-resolution images of the desired surface features of the 2.99-kilometer-wide (1.86 mile) potato-shaped mass of ice and dust.

With the spacecraft on the opposite side of the solar system and beyond the orbit of Mars, the trajectory correction maneuver began at 5:21 p.m. EST (2:21 p.m. PST) on Feb. 17. Stardust's rockets fired for 22 minutes and 53 seconds, changing the spacecraft's speed by 24 meters per second (54 miles per hour).

Stardust's maneuver placed the spacecraft on a course to fly by the comet just before 8:42 p.m. PST (11:42 p.m. EST) on Feb. 14, 2011 – Valentine's Day. Time of closest approach to Tempel 1 is important because the comet rotates, allowing different regions of the comet to be illuminated by the sun's rays at different times. Mission scientists want to maximize the probability that areas of interest previously imaged by NASA's Deep Impact mission in 2005 will also be bathed in the sun's rays and visible to Stardust's camera when it passes by.

"We could not have asked for a better result from a burn with even a brand-new spacecraft," said Tim Larson, project manager for the Stardust-NExT at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "This bird has already logged one comet flyby, one Earth return of the first samples ever collected from deep space, over 4,000 days of flight and approximately 5.4 billion kilometers (3.4 billion miles) since launch."

Launched on Feb. 7, 1999, Stardust became the first spacecraft in history to collect samples from a comet and return them to Earth for study. While its sample return capsule parachuted to Earth in January 2006, mission controllers were placing the still viable spacecraft on a trajectory that would allow NASA the opportunity to re-use the already-proven flight system if a target of opportunity presented itself. In January 2007, NASA re-christened the mission "Stardust-NExT" (New Exploration of Tempel), and the Stardust team began a four-and-a-half year journey to comet Tempel 1. This will be humanity's second exploration of the comet – and the first time a comet has been "re-visited."

"Stardust-NExT will provide scientists the first opportunity to see the surface changes on a comet between successive visits into the inner solar system," said Joe Veverka, principal investigator of Stardust-NExT from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "We have theories galore on how each close pass to the sun causes changes to a comet. Stardust-NExT should give some teeth to some of these theories, and take a bite out of others."

Along with the high-resolution images of the comet's surface, Stardust-NExT will also measure the composition, size distribution, and flux of dust emitted into the coma, and provide important new information on how Jupiter family comets evolve and how they formed 4.6 billion years ago.

Stardust-NExT is a low-cost mission that will expand the investigation of comet Tempel 1 initiated by NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Stardust-NExT for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. Joe Veverka of Cornell University is the mission's principal investigator. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver Colo., built the spacecraft and manages day-to-day mission operations.

For more information about Stardust-NExT, please visit:

http://stardustnext.jpl.nasa.gov

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WISE Mission Releases Medley of First Images

WISE Mission Releases Medley of First Images

A diverse cast of cosmic characters is showcased in the first survey images NASA released Wednesday from its Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

Since WISE began its scan of the entire sky in infrared light on Jan. 14, the space telescope has beamed back more than a quarter of a million raw, infrared images. Four new, processed pictures illustrate a sampling of the mission's targets -- a wispy comet, a bursting star-forming cloud, the grand Andromeda galaxy and a faraway cluster of hundreds of galaxies. The images are online at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/images20100216.html .

"WISE has worked superbly," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These first images are proving the spacecraft's secondary mission of helping to track asteroids, comets and other stellar objects will be just as critically important as its primary mission of surveying the entire sky in infrared."

One image shows the beauty of a comet called Siding Spring. As the comet parades toward the sun, it sheds dust that glows in infrared light visible to WISE. The comet's tail, which stretches about 10 million miles, looks like a streak of red paint. A bright star appears below it in blue.

"We've got a candy store of images coming down from space," said Edward (Ned) Wright of UCLA, the principal investigator for WISE. "Everyone has their favorite flavors, and we've got them all."

During its survey, the mission is expected to find perhaps dozens of comets, including some that ride along in orbits that take them somewhat close to Earth's path around the sun. WISE will help unravel clues locked inside comets about how our solar system came to be.

Another image shows a bright and choppy star-forming region called NGC 3603, lying 20,000 light-years away in the Carina spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. This star-forming factory is churning out batches of new stars, some of which are monstrously massive and hotter than the sun. The hot stars warm the surrounding dust clouds, causing them to glow at infrared wavelengths.

WISE will see hundreds of similar star-making regions in our galaxy, helping astronomers piece together a picture of how stars are born. The observations also provide an important link to understanding violent episodes of star formation in distant galaxies. Because NGC 3603 is much closer, astronomers use it as a lab to probe the same type of action that is taking place billions of light-years away.

Traveling farther out from our Milky Way, the third new image shows our nearest large neighbor, the Andromeda spiral galaxy. Andromeda is a bit bigger than our Milky Way and about 2.5 million light-years away. The new picture highlights WISE's wide field of view -- it covers an area larger than 100 full moons and even shows other smaller galaxies near Andromeda, all belonging to our "local group" of more than about 50 galaxies. WISE will capture the entire local group.

The fourth WISE picture is even farther out, in a region of hundreds of galaxies all bound together into one family. Called the Fornax cluster, these galaxies are 60 million light-years from Earth. The mission's infrared views reveal both stagnant and active galaxies, providing a census of data on an entire galactic community.

"All these pictures tell a story about our dusty origins and destiny," said Peter Eisenhardt, the WISE project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "WISE sees dusty comets and rocky asteroids tracing the formation and evolution of our solar system. We can map thousands of forming and dying solar systems across our entire galaxy. We can see patterns of star formation across other galaxies, and waves of star-bursting galaxies in clusters millions of light years away."

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NASA Finds Warmer Ocean Speeding Greenland Glacier Melt

Glaciers in west Greenland are melting 100 times faster at their end points beneath the ocean than they are at their surfaces, according to a new NASA/university study published online Feb. 14 in Nature Geoscience. The results suggest this undersea melting caused by warmer ocean waters is playing an important, if not dominant, role in the current evolution of Greenland's glaciers, a factor that had previously been overlooked.

Researchers Eric Rignot and Isabella Velicogna, both of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine; along with colleague Michele Koppes of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, measured the undersea melting rates of four glaciers in central west Greenland in the summer of 2008. They deployed oceanographic equipment in the glacier fjords, sampling the water at various depths to measure ocean currents, temperature and salinity, along with the depth of the fjords. The researchers found the melt rates of the glaciers studied was 100 times larger under the ocean at their terminus points than that observed at the glacial surfaces.

Rignot said the new study complements other recent research on the effects of ocean conditions in Greenland fjords. A study in the same online issue of Nature Geoscience by researcher Fiammetta Straneo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Mass., and colleagues looked at changes in oceanographic conditions in fjords that may be conducive to changes in undersea melting. Another 2008 Nature Geoscience study by researcher David Holland of New York University, New York, found that Greenland glaciers sped up as warm waters intruded into their fjords.

"Our study fills the gap by actually looking at these submarine melt rates, something that had never been done before in Greenland," Rignot said. "The results indicate rather large values that have vast implications for the evolution of the glaciers if ocean waters within these fjords continue to warm."

In recent years, scientists have observed a widespread acceleration of Greenland's glaciers, associated with thinning of their lower reaches as they reach the sea. In the past decade, surface melting of glaciers around Greenland due to warm air temperatures has increased in both magnitude and area, while snowfall has increased just slightly. The result is a tripling in the amount of ice mass lost in Greenland between 1996 and 2007. Of this loss, between 50 and 60 percent is attributable to a speedup in the flow of outlet glaciers, with the remainder due to increased surface melting.

But the glaciers also melt along their submerged faces, where they come into contact with warm ocean waters. A warmer ocean erodes a glacier's submerged, grounded ice and causes its grounding line -- the point at which a tidewater glacier floats free of its bed -- to retreat. Little is known about these rates of undersea melting and how they may influence the glaciers. The only previous measurements of undersea glacier melting were in Alaska.

The melting of glaciers beneath the ocean surface causes deep, warm, salty water to be drawn up toward the glacier's face, where it mixes turbulently with the glacier's cold, fresh water. The water then rises along the glacier face, melting its ice along the way, then reaches the ocean surface and flows away from the glacier in a plume. An ocean temperature of 3 degrees Celsius (37.4 degrees Fahrenheit) can melt glacial ice at a rate of several meters per day, or hundreds of meters over the course of a summer.

Rignot said the study points to the need to include the ocean factor if scientists are to increase the reliability of models used to predict how Greenland will be affected by climate change.

"All major Greenland glaciers end up in the ocean, and tidewater glaciers control 90 percent of the ice discharged by Greenland into the sea," Rignot said. "Submarine melting may therefore have a large indirect impact on the ice mass budget of the entire Greenland Ice Sheet. If we are to determine the future of the Greenland Ice Sheet more reliably in a changing climate, more complete and detailed studies of the interactions between ice and ocean at the ice sheet's margins are essential."

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Solar Dynamics Observatory Begins Mission to Study Our Sun

Solar Dynamics Observatory

The Atlas V roared to life Thursday morning to send the Solar Dynamics Observatory into space on its mission to evaluate the complex mechanisms of the sun. Liftoff came on-time at 10:23 a.m. EST from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Florida's Atlantic Coast.

The SDO spacecraft is in good shape midway through the launch phase that will eventually place it in an elongated orbit reaching more than 21,000 miles high. Eventually, SDO's orbit will be circularized and will reach about 22,300 miles in what is called geosynchronous orbit. From that altitude, the spacecraft will point its instruments at the sun and relay the readings instantly to a ground station in New Mexico.

The research is expected to reveal the sun's inner workings by constantly taking high resolution images of the sun, collecting readings from inside the sun and measuring its magnetic field activity. This data is expected to give researchers the insight they need to eventually predict solar storms and other activity on the sun that can affect spacecraft in orbit, astronauts on the International Space Station and electronic and other systems on Earth.Patio misting systems | Misting cooling system | Mist cooling | Outdoor cooling systems | Patio cooling systems | Misting fan

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Tranquility Node Up and Running on Station

Tranquility Node Up and Running on Station

Computers and other systems have been activated on the space station's new Tranquility node. Mission managers have extended Endeavour's stay by a day.

The crew relocated the cupola at 1:25 a.m. EST from the Tranquility node’s forward side to Tranquility’s nadir (Earth-facing) port. The second stage capture of the cupola was at 1:31 a.m. EST, signifying the completion of the module’s relocation. It is securely latched and all Common Berthing Mechanism bolts have been driven in.

Astronauts Move Cupola, Activate Tranquility

Astronauts on space shuttle Endeavour relocated one of the new modules they just delivered to the International Space Station, and pressed ahead with activation and checkout of the new Tranquility node.

Mission Specialists Nicholas Patrick and Robert Behnken spent the first three hours of their day working on tools and preparations of the station’s airlock for the last planned spacewalk on Tuesday.

Pilot Terry Virts and Mission Specialist Kathryn Hire kicked off the day monitoring the depressurization of the cupola module. While they operated Canadarm2, station Commander Jeff Williams operated the common berthing mechanisms for the relocation of cupola from Tranquility’s outboard hatch to the Earth-facing side of the module.

Cupola will then be repressurized and monitored for an airtight seal by flight controllers in Houston. At the same time shuttle Commander George Zamka, Mission Specialist Stephen Robinson, and station Flight Engineers Max Suraev and T.J. Creamer will resume outfitting and activation of Tranquility.

At 10:24 p.m. EST, Virts and Hire took time to answer questions about their mission prepared by students at NASA Explorer Schools. At 6:04 a.m. Monday Virts and Behnken will talk about the flight in interviews with WOR Radio New York’s John Gambling and television stations KTVI-TV in St. Louis and WREG-TV in Memphis.Patio misting systems | Misting cooling system | Mist cooling | Outdoor cooling systems | Patio cooling systems | Misting fan

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Layers Piled in a Mars Crater Record a History of Changes

Near the center of a Martian crater about the size of Connecticut, hundreds of exposed rock layers form a mound as tall as the Rockies and reveal a record of major environmental changes on Mars billions of years ago.

The history told by this tall parfait of layers inside Gale Crater matches what has been proposed in recent years as the dominant planet-wide pattern for early Mars, according to a new report by geologists using instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

"Looking at the layers from the bottom to the top, from the oldest to the youngest, you see a sequence of changing rocks that resulted from changes in environmental conditions through time," said Ralph Milliken of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "This thick sequence of rocks appears to be showing different steps in the drying-out of Mars."

Using geological layers to understand stages in the evolution of a planet's climate has a precedent on Earth. A change about 1.8 billion years ago in the types of rock layers formed on Earth became a key to understanding a dramatic change in Earth's ancient atmosphere.

Milliken and two co-authors report in Geophysical Research Letters that clay minerals, which form under very wet conditions, are concentrated in layers near the bottom of the Gale stack.

Above that, sulfate minerals are intermixed with the clays. Sulfates form in wet conditions and can be deposited when the water in which they are dissolved evaporates. Higher still are sulfate-containing layers without detectable clays. And at the top is a thick formation of regularly spaced layers bearing no detectable water-related minerals.

Rock exposures with compositions like various layers of the Gale stack have been mapped elsewhere on Mars, and researchers, including Jean-Pierre Bibring of the University of Paris, have proposed a Martian planetary chronology of clay-producing conditions followed by sulfate-producing conditions followed by dry conditions. However, Gale is the first location where a single series of layers has been found to contain these clues in a clearly defined sequence from older rocks to younger rocks.

"If you could stand there, you would see this beautiful formation of Martian sediments laid down in the past, a stratigraphic section that's more than twice the height of the Grand Canyon, though not as steep," said Bradley Thomson of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. He and John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena are Milliken's co-authors.

NASA selected Gale Crater in 2008 as one of four finalist sites for the Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, which has a planned launch in 2011. The finalist sites all have exposures of water-related minerals, and each has attributes that distinguish it from the others. This new report is an example of how observations made for evaluating the landing-site candidates are providing valuable science results even before the rover mission launches.

Three instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have provided key data about the layered mound in Gale Crater. Images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera reveal details used to map hundreds of layers. Using stereo pairs of the images, the U.S.

Geological Survey has generated three-dimensional models used to discern elevation differences as small as a meter (about a yard). Observations by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars yielded information about minerals on the surface. The Context Camera provided broader-scale images showing how the layers fit geologically into their surroundings.

Thomson said, "This work demonstrates the synergy of the instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. We wouldn't have as complete a picture if we were missing any of the components." Patio misting systems | Misting cooling system | Mist cooling | Outdoor cooling systems | Patio cooling systems | Misting fan

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Astronauts Enter Tranquility Node, Cupola on Space Station

Astronauts

Endeavour and space station astronauts entered the outpost's new "room with a view" for the first time late Friday.

ISS Commander Jeff Williams opened the hatch into Tranquility at 9:17 p.m. EST on Friday entering it for the first time with STS-130 Commander George Zamka and Mission Specialist Stephen Robinson. The hatch into the cupola was opened afterwards at 11:32 p.m.

Opening Night for Tranquility

The doors leading to the final U.S. components of the International Space Station were opened at 9:17 p.m. EST. The crews of space shuttle Endeavour and the station entered Tranquility and began internal outfitting of the module and the cupola.

While Pilot Terry Virts and Mission Specialist Kathryn Hire took the controls of the space station’s robotic arm for a walkoff from its base on the Harmony module to the Destiny laboratory, Mission Specialist Stephen Robinson and station Commander Jeff Williams began outfitting the vestibule between Tranquility and the Unity node.

While internal outfitting proceeds Virts and Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi will move components of the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device and the Air Revitalization System rack into the new node.

Spacewalkers Robert Behnken and Nicholas Patrick are preparing a new spacesuit for Patrick to use during the second spacewalk scheduled to begin Saturday at 9:09 p.m. It was discovered that his original suit had a temporary slight decrease in the speed in its cooling fan during the first spacewalk.

Behnken and Patrick took a break at 2:29 a.m. Saturday to answer questions about the mission that have been gathered by astronaut and spacecraft communicator Mike Massimino on his Twitter account.Patio misting systems | Misting cooling system | Mist cooling | Outdoor cooling systems | Patio cooling systems | Misting fan

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Solar Dynamics Observatory Launches!

Solar Dynamics

The Atlas V roared to life Thursday morning to send the Solar Dynamics Observatory into space on its mission to evaluate the complex mechanisms of the sun. Liftoff came on-time at 10:23 a.m. EST from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Florida's Atlantic Coast.

The SDO spacecraft is in good shape midway through the launch phase that will eventually place it in an elongated orbit reaching more than 21,000 miles high. Eventually, SDO's orbit will be circularized and will reach about 22,300 miles in what is called geosynchronous orbit.

From that altitude, the spacecraft will point its instruments at the sun and relay the readings instantly to a ground station in New Mexico. The research is expected to reveal the sun's inner workings by constantly taking high resolution images of the sun, collecting readings from inside the sun and measuring its magnetic field activity.

This data is expected to give researchers the insight they need to eventually predict solar storms and other activity on the sun that can affect spacecraft in orbit, astronauts on the International Space Station and electronic and other systems on Earth.Patio misting systems | Misting cooling system | Mist cooling | Outdoor cooling systems | Patio cooling systems | Misting fan

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Endeavour Arrives at International Space Station

EndeavourSpacewalk preparations and water recovery system maintenance highlight the work schedule for the first full day of joint docked operations by the astronauts on space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station.


First up for Mission Specialists Nicholas Patrick and Bob Behnken will be time to configure tools they’ll take outside on the first spacewalk of the mission Thursday evening. Shuttle Commander George Zamka and station Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi will resize a spare spacesuit for Behnken after a power harness on his original suit failed.

Station Commander Jeff Williams began his day by beginning the installation of a new Distillation Assembly and Flow Control Pump Assembly in the station’s Water Recovery System as part of the plan to reactivate the equipment that processes urine into drinking water for station crews.

Flight Engineers Max Suraev and Oleg Kotov will continue to pack items in a Progress supply ship and T.J. Creamer is scheduled to be monitoring several scientific payloads. Shuttle Pilot Terry Virts and Mission Specialists Kay Hire and Steve Robinson will continue moving new equipment and supplies from Endeavour onto the station.

All 11 crew members are scheduled for some off duty time in the latter portion of their day before a spacewalk procedures review at 4:09 a.m. EST Thursday.

The International Space Station has been moving steadily closer to completion for the past several years. But what house is complete without a utility room, a gym and a picture window?

During the STS-130 mission, space shuttle Endeavour will deliver the Tranquility node and its cupola, a dome-shaped extension from Tranquility made up of seven windows. They will be the last major U.S. modules to be added to the space station, and together they’ll help clear out premium workspace in other areas of the station – as well as offer a window on the world.

At 15 feet wide and 23 feet long, the Tranquility node will provide a centralized home for the station’s environmental control equipment – one of the systems that remove carbon dioxide from the station’s air, one of the station’s bathrooms and the equipment that converts urine into drinkable water, all of which is currently taking up space in the Destiny laboratory.

And there’s enough room left over to house the station’s new treadmill and its microgravity equivalent of a weight machine, moving it out of the Unity node where it’s in the way whenever spacewalk preparations are going on inside the adjacent Quest airlock.

“It gives us a much needed addition to the house, so to speak,” said Bob Dempsey, lead space station flight director for the mission. “We’re getting to the point where we’re really cramped for space. You might be surprised at that, considering we’re essentially the volume of a 747 and we’ve been adding modules for the last couple of years.

You might think we’d be sitting around in a big empty house. But no – every inch is really getting packed up there. Patio misting systems | Misting cooling system | Mist cooling | Outdoor cooling systems | Patio cooling systems | Misting fan

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Solar Dynamics Observatory Set to Launch Today

Solar Dynamics

The Solar Dynamics Observatory is set for an unprecedented mission to study the sun and its dynamic behavior.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory and its Atlas V rocket rolled out to the launch pad at Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Tuesday morning move sets the stage for a liftoff Wednesday at 10:26 a.m. EST.

Weather for launch day stands at 40 percent "go" at liftoff time due to wind, cloud thickness and a slight chance of showers. The temperature at launch time is expected to be a chilly 51 degrees.

Live coverage of the launch will begin at 7:15 a.m. Wednesday on NASA TV and NASA's Launch Blog.

SDO's unprecedented mission will study the sun and its dynamic behavior. Onboard telescopes will scrutinize sunspots and solar flares using more pixels and colors than any other observatory in the history of solar physics. And SDO will reveal the sun’s hidden secrets in a prodigious rush of pictures.
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Dark-Orange And Charcoal-Black Terrain

Dark-Orange And Charcoal-Black Terrain

NASA today released the most detailed set of images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show an icy and dark molasses-colored, mottled world that is undergoing seasonal changes in its surface color and brightness. Pluto has become significantly redder, while its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter.

These changes are most likely consequences of surface ices sublimating on the sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole as the dwarf planet heads into the next phase of its 248-year-long seasonal cycle. The dramatic change in color apparently took place in a two-year period, from 2000 to 2002.

The Hubble images will remain our sharpest view of Pluto until NASA's New Horizons probe is within six months of its Pluto flyby. The Hubble pictures are proving invaluable for picking out the planet's most interesting-looking hemisphere for the New Horizons spacecraft to swoop over when it flies by Pluto in 2015.

Though Pluto is arguably one of the public's favorite planetary objects, it is also the hardest of which to get a detailed portrait because the world is small and very far away. Hubble resolves surface variations a few hundred miles across, which are too coarse for understanding surface geology.

But in terms of surface color and brightness Hubble reveals a complex-looking and variegated world with white, dark-orange and charcoal-black terrain. The overall color is believed to be a result of ultraviolet radiation from the distant sun breaking up methane that is present on Pluto's surface, leaving behind a dark and red carbon-rich residue.

When Hubble pictures taken in 1994 are compared with a new set of images taken in 2002 to 2003, astronomers see evidence that the northern polar region has gotten brighter, while the southern hemisphere has gotten darker. These changes hint at very complex processes affecting the visible surface, and the new data will be used in continued research.
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Solar Dynamics Observatory Set to Launch on Feb. 10

Solar Dynamics ObservatoryThe Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is set to launch on Feb. 10 at 10:26 a.m. EST from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Weather for launch day stands at a 60 percent chance of "go" for liftoff.

A prelaunch news conference will be held at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, followed by the mission science briefing. Both will be carried live on NASA TV. Live coverage of the launch will begin at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday on NASA TV and the launch blog.

SDO's unprecedented mission will study the sun and its dynamic behavior. Onboard telescopes will scrutinize sunspots and solar flares using more pixels and colors than any other observatory in the history of solar physics. And SDO will reveal the sun’s hidden secrets in a prodigious rush of pictures.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) will be taking a closer look at the Sun, the source of all Space Weather. Space Weather affects not only our lives here on Earth, but the Earth itself, and everything outside its atmosphere (astronauts and satellites out in space and even the other planets).

The Sun, our closest star, is still a great mystery to scientists. SDO will help us understand where the Sun's energy comes from, how the inside of the Sun works, and how energy is stored and released in the Sun's atmosphere... yes, the Sun has an atmosphere! By better understanding the Sun and how it works, we will be able to better predict and better forecast the "weather out in space" providing earlier warnings to protect our astronauts and satellites floating around out there.

SDO is the first satellite under the Living with a Star (LWS) program at NASA. The spacecraft is being designed to fly for five years. However, since satellites go through a lot of testing and retesting, they often keep working long past their initial mission life. SOHO for example, which was built to fly for five years, in 2005 celebrated its 10 year anniversary in 2005!

SDO is unlike any other satellite. It will be collecting huge amounts of data everyday. In fact SDO will produce enough data to fill a single CD every 36 seconds.Patio misting systems | Misting cooling system | Mist cooling | Outdoor cooling systems | Patio cooling systems | Misting fan

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Endeavour Launch Rescheduled for Monday, Feb. 8

Endeavour Launch

Commander George Zamka is first to board and be seating inside Endeavour. First-time flyer, Pilot Terry Virts, Mission Specialists Kathryn Hire, Stephen Robinson, Nicholas Patrick and Robert Behnken are next to be strapped securely in their seats.

Communication checks are being conducted between the astronauts, Mission Control in Houston and the Launch Control Center at Kennedy, as each takes their seat.

When all the crew members are seated, the Closeout Crew will close the hatch, pressurize the crew cabin and check for leaks, then finish remaining work inside the pad's White Room before departing.

Astronaut Chris Ferguson is flying weather reconnaissance in the Shuttle Training Aircraft keeping Mission Control informed of current conditions at Kennedy Space Center.

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A Little Telescope Goes a Long Way

Telescope
NASA astronomers have successfully demonstrated that a David of a telescope can tackle Goliath-size questions in the quest to study Earth-like planets around other stars. Their work, reported today in the journal Nature, provides a new tool for ground-based observatories, promising to accelerate by years the search for prebiotic, or life-related, molecules on planets orbiting stars beyond our solar system.

The scientists reported on a new technique used with a relatively small Earth-based telescope to identify an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-size planet nearly 63 light-years away. The measurement revealed details of the exoplanet's atmospheric composition and conditions, an unprecedented achievement from an Earth-based observatory.

The surprising new finding comes from a venerable 30-year-old, 3-meter-diameter (10-foot) telescope that ranks 40th among ground-based telescopes - NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

The new technique promises to further speed the work of studying planet atmospheres by enabling studies from the ground that were previously possible only through a few very high-performance space telescopes. "Given favorable observing conditions, this work suggests we may be able to detect organic molecules in the atmospheres of terrestrial planets with existing instruments," said lead author Mark Swain, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. This can allow fast and economical advances in focused studies of exoplanet atmospheres, accelerating our understanding of the growing stable of exoplanets.

"The fact that we have used a relatively small, ground-based telescope is exciting because it implies that the largest telescopes on the ground, using this technique, may be able to characterize terrestrial exoplanet targets," Swain said.

Currently, more than 400 exoplanets are known. Most are gaseous like Jupiter, but some "super-Earths" are thought to be large terrestrial, or rocky, worlds. A true Earth-like planet, with the same size as our planet and distance from its star, has yet to be discovered. NASA's Kepler mission is searching from space now, and is expected to find several of these earthly worlds by the end of its three-and-a-half-year prime mission.


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NASA's Aquarius Gets a Presidential Visit

NASA's Aquarius
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (center in blue) was briefed Jan. 20 during a tour of the facility where the JPL-built Aquarius instrument is being integrated with the Argentinian satellite, called the Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas (SAC-D).

The visit took place during the kickoff of the satellite's system contractor new satellite integration facility in Bariloche, Argentina. The president met with Aquarius/SAC-D team members from NASA, Argentina's space agency, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, and the contractor.

The primary instrument on the mission, Aquarius is designed to provide monthly global maps of how salt concentration varies on the ocean surface -- a key indicator of ocean circulation and its role in climate change. Seven Argentine space agency-sponsored instruments will provide environmental data for a wide range of applications, including natural hazards, land processes, epidemiological studies and air quality issues.

The minimum three-year mission is scheduled to launch this year from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.


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NASA Extends Cassini's Tour of Saturn

Tour of Saturn
NASA will extend the international Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its moons to 2017. The agency's fiscal year 2011 budget provides a $60 million per year extension for continued study of the ringed planet.

"This is a mission that never stops providing us surprising scientific results and showing us eye popping new vistas," said Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary science division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The historic traveler's stunning discoveries and images have revolutionized our knowledge of Saturn and its moons."

Cassini launched in October 1997 with the European Space Agency's Huygens probe. The spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004. The probe was equipped with six instruments to study Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Cassini's 12 instruments have returned a daily stream of data from Saturn's system for nearly six years. The project was scheduled to end in 2008, but the mission received a 27-month extension to Sept. 2010.

"The extension presents a unique opportunity to follow seasonal changes of an outer planet system all the way from its winter to its summer," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Some of Cassini's most exciting discoveries still lie ahead."

This second extension, called the Cassini Solstice Mission, enables scientists to study seasonal and other long-term weather changes on the planet and its moons. Cassini arrived just after Saturn's northern winter solstice, and this extension continues until a few months past northern summer solstice in May 2017. The northern summer solstice marks the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere.

A complete seasonal period on Saturn has never been studied at this level of detail. The Solstice mission schedule calls for an additional 155 orbits around the planet, 54 flybys of Titan and 11 flybys of the icy moon Enceladus.

The mission extension also will allow scientists to continue observations of Saturn's rings and the magnetic bubble around the planet known as the magnetosphere. The spacecraft will make repeated dives between Saturn and its rings to obtain in depth knowledge of the gas giant. During these dives, the spacecraft will study the internal structure of Saturn, its magnetic fluctuations and ring mass.



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Payload and Weather "Go" for Launch

At today's prelaunch briefing held at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, managers reported space shuttle Endeavour, its payload and crew are ready for launch at 4:39 a.m. EST on Sunday for the 13-day STS-130 mission.

NASA Test Director Jeremy Graeber reported everything is progressing on schedule for Endeavour's flight to deliver the Italian-built Tranquility node and cupola to the International Space Station. "There are no issues and preps are going well," said Graeber.

According to Graeber the water leak that occurred in the Launch Control Center last week was confined to a south stairwell and cleanup was successfully accomplished.

"To summarize, Endeavour and the launch team are all ready to proceed and we're all very excited to pick up with the countdown leading up to Sunday's early morning launch," said Graeber.

Joe Delai, the STS-130 payload manager who leads the team of engineers and technicians assembling and testing the payloads, said, "This is one of the most complex modules I've seen in awhile. (But) we're ready for flight."

Shuttle Weather Officer Kathy Winters reported the forecast is looking good for launch day and for the loading of propellants into Endeavour's external fuel tank. Winds may be a little breezy but at this time there is only a 30 percent chance of weather hindering a successful launch on Sunday.

At 2 a.m. Thursday, NASA's official launch countdown clock begins counting backward toward Sunday's liftoff.

Tune in to the STS-130 mission's prelaunch news conference that will be aired tomorrow at 10 a.m. on NASA TV at www.nasa.gov/ntv.



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Measuring the Sun's Hidden Variability

Sun's Hidden Variability

Every 11 years, the sun undergoes a furious upheaval. Dark sunspots burst forth from beneath the sun's surface. Explosions as powerful as a billion atomic bombs spark intense flares of high-energy radiation. Clouds of gas big enough to swallow planets break away and billow into space. It's a flamboyant display of stellar power.

So why can't we see any of it?

Almost none of the drama of Solar Maximum is visible to the human eye. Look at the sun in the noontime sky and—ho-hum—it's the same old bland ball of light.

"The problem is, human eyes are tuned to the wrong wavelength," explains Tom Woods, a solar physicist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. "If you want to get a good look at solar activity, you need to look in the EUV."

EUV is short for "extreme ultraviolet," a high-energy form of ultraviolet radiation with wavelengths between 1 and 120 nanometers. EUV photons are much more energetic and dangerous than the ordinary UV rays that cause sunburns. Fortunately for humans, Earth's atmosphere blocks solar EUV; otherwise a day at the beach could be fatal.

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Solar Dynamics Observatory Set to Launch Feb. 9

Solar Dynamics
Solar Dynamics Observatory Set For Launch

The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is set to launch from Florida no earlier than 10:30 a.m. EST on Feb. 9, on an unprecedented mission to study the sun and its dynamic behavior.

Onboard telescopes will scrutinize sunspots and solar flares using more pixels and colors than any other observatory in the history of solar physics. And SDO will reveal the sun’s hidden secrets in a prodigious rush of pictures.



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NASA FY 2011 Budget

NASA FY 2011 Budget

FY 2011 Budget

› FY 2011 Budget Overview (387 Kb PDF)
› Administrator Bolden's Statement (68 Kb)
› Deputy Administrator's Remarks at the OSTP Budget Announcement (68 Kb)
› Office of Management and Budget: FY 2011 NASA Fact Sheet→
› NASA Budget Details From OMB→
› Joint Statement From NASA Administrator Bolden and John P. Holdren, Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy (112 Kb PDF)
› Joint NASA-OSTP Factsheet (70 Kb PDF)
› Statement from Buzz Aldrin: A New Direction in Space (13 Kb PDF)
› Statement From Norman R. Augustine (11 Kb PDF)

Feb. 1, 2010 FY 2011 NASA Budget Teleconference

› Listen Now (14 MB)

Previous Years' Budgets

› FY 2010 | › FY 2009 | › FY 2008 | › FY 2007
› FY 2006 | › FY 2005 | › FY 2004 | › FY 2003 and Earlier



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Cassini's Next Look at Titan

Cassini

Sixteen days after last visiting Saturn's largest moon, NASA's Cassini spacecraft returns for another look-see of the cloud-shrouded moon - this time from on high. The flyby on Thursday, Jan. 28, referred to as "T-66" in the hollowed halls of Cassini operations, will place the spacecraft within 7,490 kilometers (4,654 miles) above the surface during time of closest approach.

While this latest close approach places Cassini more than 6,400 kilometers (3,970 miles) higher above Titan's surface than the Jan. 12 flyby, it should not considered of lesser scientific value. Instead, this high-altitude encounter will provide an opportunity for some of the spacecraft's instruments to gain another unique perspective on this crepuscular world.

During T-66, the Imaging Science Subsystem is set to acquire high-resolution observations during and after closest-approach, covering territory from the trailing hemisphere at high southern latitudes northeast to near-equatorial Adiri. On the inbound leg, the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer will have the opportunity to do one stellar occultation. (A stellar occultation occurs when an intervening body -- in this case Titan -- blocks the light from a star). Thursday's stellar occultation should allow the Cassini science team to further constrain the composition and the spectral properties of Titan's atmosphere.

Although this latest flyby is dubbed "T66," planning changes early in the orbital tour made this the 67th targeted flyby of Titan. T66 is the 22nd Titan encounter in Cassini's Solstice Mission.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. The Huygens probe, built and managed by the European Space Agency, was bolted to Cassini and rode along during its nearly seven-year journey to Saturn, before being released for its descent through Titan's atmosphere.

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Obama may scrap NASA moon mission

NASA's plan to send another mission to the moon by 2020 may take a U-turn as US President Barack Obama is expected to propose the closure of the space agency's programme in his new budget to be presented before the Congress on Monday.

With the release of President Obama's budget request, NASA will finally get the new marching orders, and there won't be anything in there about flying to the moon, The Washington Post reported.

The US administration has planed to kill the Constellation programme of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that called for the re-launch of a space shuttle to the moon by 2020. The budget is a death knell for the Ares 1 rocket, NASA's planned successor to the space shuttle.

According to an official, Obama's budget will call for spending $6 billion over five years to develop a commercial spacecraft that could ferry astronauts to low earth orbit.

"The President is committed to a robust 21st century space program, and his budget will reflect that dedication to NASA. NASA is vital not only to spaceflight, but also for critical scientific and technological advancements," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said on Sunday.

"The expertise at NASA is essential to developing innovative new opportunities, industries, and jobs. The President's budget will take steps in that direction," he was quoted as saying.

The Obama administration believes that new funding for the commercial programme would create up to 1,700 jobs, which could help offset the expected loss of 7,000 jobs in Florida when the space shuttle is retired next year.


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