Nasa Technology News

The next spacewalk to complete the removal of a failed ammonia pump module and installation and activation of a new pump module on the International Space Station’s S1 Truss will take place no earlier than Wednesday.

Expedition 24 Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson completed the first spacewalk to remove and replace the pump module at 3:22 p.m. EDT Saturday. As the result of an ammonia leak in the final line that needed to be disconnected from the failed pump module, the day’s tasks were only partially completed. The decision was made to reconnect the line on the pump module and install a spool positioning device to maintain proper pressure internal to the ammonia line.

Teams on the ground are evaluating the impact of the leak on plans to replace the failed pump, as well as possible fixes for the leak. The completion of the process will most likely require at least two additional spacewalks.

Saturday’s excursion lasted 8 hours, 3 minutes, making it the longest expedition crew spacewalk in history and the sixth longest in human spaceflight history.

Wheelock conducted the fourth spacewalk of his career. Caldwell Dyson made her first spacewalk. Flight Engineer Shannon Walker operated Canadarm2, the station’s robotic arm, and assisted the spacewalkers from inside the station.

After the loss of one of two cooling loops July 31, ground controllers powered down and readjusted numerous systems to provide maximum redundancy aboard the orbiting laboratory. The International Space Station is in a stable configuration, the crew is safe and engineers continue reviewing data from the failed pump.

› View Aug. 2 spacewalk briefing graphics
› Read more about the cooling loop loss
› View the ISS Active Thermal Control System Overview (1.2 Mb PDF)

In less than two weeks, NASA scientists will begin their quest for the holy grail of hurricane research.

The exact conditions required to kickstart a tropical depression into a hurricane largely remain a mystery. Though scientists know many of the ingredients needed, it is unclear what processes ultimately drive depressions to form into the intense, spinning storms that lash the U.S. coasts each summer.

"Hurricane formation and intensification is really the ‘holy grail' of this field," said Ed Zipser, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah and one of three program scientists helping to lead the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment this summer.

With GRIP, NASA's first domestic hurricane project since 2001, the agency has assembled the largest-ever hurricane research experiment to investigate these questions. Three NASA planes, multiple NASA satellites and four planes from research partners NOAA and NSF will combine to make unprecedented measurements of tropical storms as they are forming (or dying out) and intensifying (or weakening). The intense scientific focus on these meteorological processes could provide new insight into the fundamental physics of hurricanes and ultimately improve our ability to forecast the strength of a storm at landfall. Predictions of hurricane strength continue to lag behind the accuracy of storm track predictions, but accurate predictions of both are needed for the best possible preparation before landfall.

With each aircraft outfitted with multiple instruments, scientists will be taking a closer look at hurricanes with hopes of gaining insight into which physical processes or large-scale environmental factors are the key triggers in hurricane formation and intensification.

The GRIP fleet includes NASA's Global Hawk, the unmanned drone built by Northrop Grumman and also used by the U.S. Air Force, WB-57 and DC-8. The NASA aircraft will be deployed from Florida (DC-8), Texas (WB-57) and California (Global Hawk) and will fly at varying altitudes over tropical storms in an attempt to capture them at different stages of development.

"One of the potential data-gathering breakthroughs of GRIP could be to continuously observe a tropical storm or hurricane for 24 hours straight, by including aircraft from all three agencies," said GRIP Project Manager Marilyn Vasques. The Global Hawk alone could fly continuously over a storm system for up to 16 hours.

While geostationary satellites used for forecasting can observe the basic movement of a storm across the Atlantic, these aircraft instruments will be able to "see" below the cloud-tops and uncover what is happening in the internal structure of the storm.

"That's what makes this really unique, the ability to observe one of these storms up close as it changes over its life-cycle. Before we've only been able to get a few hours of data at a time," Vasques said. "We want to see storms that become hurricanes, and we want to see some that don't become hurricanes, so we can compare the data. The same is true for hurricane intensification."

"When you think of analyzing it later, we want to break down what the temperatures were, what the winds were doing, what the aerosol concentration was, to see if we can start detecting a pattern," Vasques said.

The variety and number of instruments will allow scientists to investigate multiple science questions at once: What role does dust from the Sahara play in hurricane formation? Can lightning be used as a predictor of a storm's change in intensity? Do widespread environmental conditions such as humidity, temperature, precipitation and clouds lead to cyclone formation, or are smaller-scale interactions between some of these same elements the cause?

Scientists at NASA and the many academic and government research partners in GRIP are excited to put several new state-of-the-art hurricane observing instruments in the field. A powerful microwave radiometer and a radar will provide insight into the massive "hot towers" of convection found in cyclones, and a NASA-designed and –built lidar (laser radar) will provide the first-ever measurements of wind speed in three dimensions – not just east, west, north and south, but also vertically.

These instrument advancements, in addition to the deployment of the Global Hawk in a major Earth science campaign for the first time, have NASA scientists anxious to take to the field.

On August 1st, the sun emitted a C-class solar flare that spawned what scientists call a coronal mass ejection, or CME, headed toward Earth. The CME impacted Earth's magnetic field August 3rd. CMEs occasionally hit Earth. This CME will have few noticeable consequences beyond producing an aurorae.

The CME hit Earth's magnetic field on August 3rd at 1740 UT. The impact sparked a G2-class geomagnetic storm that lasted nearly 12 hours--time enough for auroras to spread all the way from Europe to North America. The possible arrival of a second CME on August 4th might provide even better spectacular auroral displays.

CMEs are large clouds of charged particles that are ejected from the sun over the course of several hours and can carry up to ten billion tons of plasma. They expand away from the sun at speeds as high as a million miles an hour. A CME can make the 93-million-mile journey to Earth in just two to four days. Stronger solar storms could cause adverse impacts to space-based assets and technological infrastructure on Earth.

The sun goes through a regular activity cycle about 11 years long. The last solar maximum occurred in 2001 and its recent extreme solar minimum was particularly weak and long lasting. These kinds of eruptions are one of the first signs that the sun is waking up and heading toward another solar maximum expected in the 2013 time frame.

Lightning's connection to hurricane intensification has eluded researchers for decades, and for a riveting 40 days this summer, NASA lightning researchers will peer inside storms in a way they never have before.

Earth scientists and engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will soon fly the Lightning Instrument Package, or LIP, a flight instrument designed to track and document lightning as hurricanes develop and intensify. In August and September, LIP will fly on a remotely piloted Global Hawk airplane over the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of 60,000 feet. LIP will be part of a NASA hurricane study called Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes, or GRIP for short. The study involves three storm chaser planes mounted with 15 instruments. LIP and the other instruments will work together to create the most complete view of hurricanes to date.

"We're now putting LIP on an aircraft that can stay in the air for 30 hours," said Richard Blakeslee LIP principal investigator and Earth scientist at the the Marshall Center. "That’s unprecedented. We typically fly on airplanes that fly over a storm for a period of 10-15 minutes. But this plane can stay with a storm for hours."

"We'll be able to see a storm in a way we’ve never seen it before," he added. "We'll see how the storm develops over the long term, and how lightning varies with all the other things going on inside a hurricane. It's the difference between a single photograph and a full-length movie. That’s quite a paradigm shift."

While scientists know an increase in lightning means the storm is changing, it remains a mystery as to whether that increase signifies strengthening or weakening. Though scientists have quite a few ideas, they lack the data to firmly establish a concrete relationship. Researchers hope LIP's upcoming flights will change that. If scientists can figure out the ties between lightning and hurricane severity, meteorologists may be able to greatly improve their short-term forecasts. Researchers have connected lightning to everything from strong winds to flooding to tornadoes, and a few extra minutes of warning time can save lives each year.

"We can use lightning as a natural sensing tool to see into the heart of a storm," said Blakeslee. "Lightning allows us to get at rain and other processes going on within a storm."

For Blakeslee and the rest of the LIP team, the hurricane study this fall presents a tremendous opportunity. In its nearly 15-year lifespan, LIP has flown nearly 100 missions in 10 major field campaigns, soaring over more than 800 storms. That's unparalleled for a lightning instrument, according to Blakeslee, and LIP researchers hope it will continue its long tradition of successful research.

The Guts of the Lightning Instrument Package

LIP's instruments may look simple, but they're surprisingly complex. To measure the electric field in a storm, the instrument relies on electric field mills, devices that allow scientists to measure the amount of lightning a storm produces. Originally developed at NASA, the mills look like big cans -- each about a foot long and approximately 8 inches across. As the instrument flies through the air, a plate covering each can rotates, covering and uncovering four metal disks housed inside. Uncover a disk and electricity from the storm rushes in. Cover the disk and it rushes back out. The whole process converts the electrical current from DC to AC and back to DC, allowing scientists to measure how strong a storm's electric field is, and how prone to lightning it might be. A sudden shift in the strength of the electrical field allows scientists to determine that a lightning strike has occurred.

In addition, a conductivity probe reveals how easily electrical current can flow through the storm to the upper part of the atmosphere. The probe is a small nose-cone shaped device with two sensor tubes attached to each side. As the plane flies near a hurricane, small electrical particles called ions rush through the tube, allowing the team to count them.

The LIP team uses all that data to determine how much lightning a hurricane produces and where it originates within the storm. By combining that data with wind speed, rainfall rate and other information, researchers can connect how lightning relates to hurricane intensification. And because Blakeslee and his team get their data real time, they can redirect the plane as needed to improve the likelihood of quality results.

After the summer hurricane study ends in September, the team will analyze, evaluate, and eventually release the data, a process which should take several months. Following that, the Lightning Instrument Package will continue to fly in hurricane and storm studies in hopes of collecting more data. The more data, the better the forecasts, Blakeslee said -- and the nearer scientists move to understanding these powerful storms.

On that day 25 years ago the public affairs specialist was a young U.S. Air Force airman heading home on leave to North Carolina, flying out of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

"I was looking out my window, sitting at the end of the runway aboard the second airplane lined up to take off," said Creech. "I had a window seat and was looking out the window when I noticed some really, really black thunder clouds at our end of the runway. Then I saw orange, extremely bright orange, light. My brain didn't register what I was seeing."

What Creech saw was Delta Flight 191 as it crashed on landing.

"It was like a slow motion thing. There was the initial fireball, but then as the airplane rolled over, breaking apart and slowing down, the fire caught up with it and enveloped it," added Creech. "It all came to a halt directly even with my window, across the other side of the runway in the grass. As soon as the movement stopped, the rain hit. It was like a wall of rain and the fire quickly became a smoke ball, black and white smoke mixed."

"I remember our pilot coming over the intercom and saying something to the effect -- ladies and gentlemen, there has been a tragedy and I'm sorry, but we can't return to the terminal and let anyone deplane," said Creech. "Of course that was the last thing any of us wanted to hear, because anybody who saw that wasn't wanting to stay on their plane and go flying. I know I didn't."

One hundred and thirty four people of the 163 on board the Delta Lockheed L-1011 and one person on the ground died that day, in part because of a powerful thunderstorm microburst-induced wind shear, a rare but potentially deadly downdraft.

Dave Hinton, now the deputy director of the Aeronautics Research Directorate at NASA's Langley Research Center, also remembers that accident vividly. He and a team of researchers studied it for years as part of their efforts to help develop predictive wind shear radar, a technology that is now standard on all airliners.

"That [Dallas] microburst has been modeled extensively," said Hinton. "It was very strong as microbursts go -- at the top of the range and a mile and a half to two miles in diameter. That would be easily detectable with the technologies that are out there today."

The Dallas accident, one of three fatal wind shear events in the 70s and 80s, was the catalyst for the invention of those technologies. Within months a government/industry/academia partnership started attacking the problem of wind shear from all sides.

"It was a tremendously productive cooperation between multiple agencies and companies," said Hinton. "We advanced the state of the art from basic knowledge of a meteorological phenomena to developing well-defined system requirements for on-board sensors and crew procedures."

Hinton was part of the NASA team that took to the skies in search of some of those answers. The team flew on a Langley-based Boeing 737 aircraft, equipped with airborne Doppler radar and forward-looking infrared sensors, and went looking for storms near Denver, Colo., and Orlando, Fla. Crews on the ground, from MIT Lincoln Labs and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), staffed ground-based radars to help them find events quickly.

"We flew over a two-year period and penetrated on the order of some 70 microbursts, starting with very weak ones and working up to stronger ones," added Hinton. "We validated the models for the sensors, proving that they do in fact work as we intended."

NASA worked very closely with the Federal Aviation Administration and companies interested in building systems during the seven-year wind shear research program.

"They followed the technology development and as a result provided the credibility and basis for certification," said Hinton. "That meant that within two to three years of our wrapping up the project there were certified systems available. " Those airborne systems, better ground-based radar and improved pilot training have now virtually eliminated U.S. airliner wind shear accidents.

There's power in numbers. And with tens of thousands Boy Scouts and leaders celebrating 100 years of 'Scouting in America,' this year's event is a 10-day dream come true.

"'Fun' is the watchword of the jamboree," said Robert J. Mazzuca, the Boy Scout's Chief Scout Executive, of the event that is being held July 26-Aug. 4.

Scouting is endemic to NASA's astronaut corps, with more than 200 astronauts having been Boy or Girl Scouts. While scouting may not always lead to a career as an astronaut, both organizations promote leadership and teamwork.

Held every four years in Virginia, this year's jamboree features NASA traveling exhibits from the Glenn Research Center and Marshall Space Flight Center. There are also interactive displays featuring the history of NASA and aviation with scientists, engineers and other NASA staff are on hand to answer questions. Also at this year's Jamboree are such exhibits as Robots on the Road, Lunar Quest, Stennis Space Center's Astro Camp and a model of the James Webb Telescope.

Scouting and NASA Activities
NASA Space Place: Cub Scouts →
Work on Scout Achievements and Electives at the Space Place!

Recognizing Eagle Scouts
Learn how to receive a congratulatory letter and certificate from NASA’s Administrator upon earning the prestigious Eagle Rank.

Saturn Youth Groups→
Whether it's a Scout troop or 4-H club, local library or astronomy club, a number of activities and opportunities are available for kids of all ages to get involved.

Preflight Interview: Michael Fossum
Mike Fossum, STS-121 mission specialist and former Boy Scout, discusses how he made the decision to become an astronaut.

Space Center Houston – Scout Camp-In →
Campers participate in a structured evening full of hands-on activities and presentations, all designed with the scout badge requirements in mind.

Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Mikhail Kornienko concluded a six-hour, 42-minute spacewalk Tuesday at 6:53 a.m. EDT. The cosmonauts began their spacewalk when they opened the hatches of the Pirs docking compartment at 12:11 a.m. This was the 147th spacewalk overall in support of International Space Station assembly and maintenance.

The cosmonauts wore their Russian Orlan spacesuits to outfit the new Rassvet module for a Kurs automated rendezvous system capability for future dockings of Russian vehicles arriving at the station to link up to Rassvet. They also routed and mated Command and Data Handling cables on the Zvezda and Zarya modules.

A video camera was removed and replaced on the aft end of Zvezda then successfully tested. The old camera was safely jettisoned away from the station. The new camera will be used to provide television views of the final approach and docking of future European Automated Transfer Vehicles carrying cargo to the complex.

During the spacewalk, two objects were detected floating away from the station. One was tentatively identified as a cable clamp, left outside the station from a previous Russian spacewalk. That object and another, not conclusively identified, both departed well below the vicinity of the complex and pose no threat to the orbiting laboratory.

This was Kornienko’s first spacewalk and Yurchikhin’s fourth. Yurchikhin’s first three spacewalks occurred when he was commander of Expedition 15 in 2007.

The second spacewalk of Expedition 24 is planned for August 5 by Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson in U.S. spacesuits out of the Quest airlock. They will install a power cable to the Unity module in preparation for the installation of the Permanent Multipurpose Module during the STS-133 mission in November. A Portable Data Grapple Fixture will be installed on the Zarya module that will extend the reach of Canadarm2, the station’s robotic arm, and increase a spacewalker’s access for assembly or maintenance work. They also will jettison multi-layer insulation removed for the grapple fixture installation and will mate power connectors to Zarya.

Caldwell Dyson will be making the first spacewalk of her career. Wheelock will be conducting his fourth. His first three spacewalks occurred as a mission specialist during STS-120 in late 2007.

Adjusting their schedule to support Monday night’s spacewalk, the International Space Station operations team met late yesterday to review results of last week’s dry run for using Canadarm2 and its Dextre robotic helper to replace a failed Remote Power Control Module (RPCM) in the P1 truss. The team elected to defer additional work with Dextre until additional analysis of the forces required to remove the smart circuit breaker from its housing in the truss is completed.

The delay will not affect plans for the upcoming spacewalk by Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson. Power systems on the station are operating well with the failed RPCM in its current installed position.

Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Mikhail Kornienko have exited the Pirs docking compartment, beginning the first Expedition 24 spacewalk at 12:11 a.m. EDT. The cosmonauts are in their Russian Orlan spacesuits to outfit the new Rassvet module for a Kurs automated rendezvous system capability for the automated docking of Russian vehicles arriving at the station to link up to Rassvet in the future.

The six-hour spacewalk will also include routing and mating Command and Data Handling cables on the Zvezda and Zarya modules. A video camera will be removed and replaced from the aft end of Zvezda which will be used to provide television views of the final approach and docking of future European Automated Transfer Vehicles carrying cargo to the complex. This is the 25th Russian spacewalk and the 147th spacewalk overall in support of station assembly and maintenance.

This is Kornienko’s first spacewalk and Yurchikhin’s fourth. Yurchikhin’s first three spacewalks occurred when he was commander of Expedition 15 in 2007.

The second spacewalk of Expedition 24 is planned for August 5 by Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson in U.S. spacesuits out of the Quest airlock. They will install a power cable to the Unity module in preparation for the installation of the Permanent Multipurpose Module during the STS-133 mission in November.

A Portable Data Grapple Fixture will be installed on the Zarya module that will extend the reach of Canadarm2, the station’s robotic arm, and increase a spacewalker’s access for assembly or maintenance work. They also will jettison multi-layer insulation removed for the grapple fixture installation and will mate power connectors to Zarya.

A camera aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has helped develop the most accurate global Martian map ever. Researchers and the public can access the map via several websites and explore and survey the entire surface of the Red Planet.

The map was constructed using nearly 21,000 images from the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, a multi-band infrared camera on Odyssey. Researchers at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility in Tempe, in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have been compiling the map since THEMIS observations began eight years ago.

The pictures have been smoothed, matched, blended and cartographically controlled to make a giant mosaic. Users can pan around images and zoom into them. At full zoom, the smallest surface details are 100 meters (330 feet) wide. While portions of Mars have been mapped at higher resolution, this map provides the most accurate view so far of the entire planet.

The new map is available at: http://www.mars.asu.edu/maps/?layer=thm_dayir_100m_v11 .

Advanced users with large bandwidth, powerful computers and software capable of handling images in the gigabyte range can download the full-resolution map in sections at: http://www.mars.asu.edu/data/thm_dir_100m .

"We've tied the images to the cartographic control grid provided by the U.S. Geological Survey, which also modeled the THEMIS camera's optics," said Philip Christensen, principal investigator for THEMIS and director of the Mars Space Flight Facility. "This approach lets us remove all instrument distortion, so features on the ground are correctly located to within a few pixels and provide the best global map of Mars to date."

Working with THEMIS images from the new map, the public can contribute to Mars exploration by aligning the images to within a pixel's accuracy at NASA's "Be a Martian" website, which was developed in cooperation with Microsoft Corp. Users can visit the site at: http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/maproom#/MapMars .

"The Mars Odyssey THEMIS team has assembled a spectacular product that will be the base map for Mars researchers for many years to come," said Jeffrey Plaut, Odyssey project scientist at JPL. "The map lays the framework for global studies of properties such as the mineral composition and physical nature of the surface materials."

Other sites build upon the base map. At Mars Image Explorer, which includes images from every Mars orbital mission since the mid-1970s, users can search for images using a map of Mars at: http://themis.asu.edu/maps .

"The broad purpose underlying all these sites is to make Mars exploration easy and engaging for everyone," Christensen said. "We are trying to create a user-friendly interface between the public and NASA's Planetary Data System, which does a terrific job of collecting, validating and archiving data."

Mars Odyssey was launched in April 2001 and reached the Red Planet in October 2001. Science operations began in February 2002. The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. NASA's Planetary Data System, sponsored by the Science Mission Directorate, archives and distributes scientific data from the agency's planetary missions, astronomical observations, and laboratory measurements.