By MattPublished: 02 July 2009 10:05 PM UTC PASADENA, Calif. — Favorable chemistry and episodes with thin films of liquid water during ongoing, long-term climate cycles may sometimes make the area where NASA’s Phoenix Mars mission landed last year a favorable environment for microbes.
Interpretations of data that Phoenix returned during its five months of operation on a Martian arctic plain fill four papers in this week’s edition of the journal Science, the first major peer-reviewed reports on the mission’s findings. Phoenix ended communications in November 2008 as the approach of Martian winter depleted energy from the lander’s solar panels.
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By Rob GoldsmithPublished: 02 July 2009 9:24 PM UTC With NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, astronomers now are getting their best look at those whirling stellar cinders known as pulsars. In two studies published in the July 2 edition of Science Express, international teams have analyzed gamma-rays from two dozen pulsars, including 16 discovered by Fermi. Fermi is the first spacecraft able to identify pulsars by their gamma-ray emission alone.
A pulsar is the rapidly spinning and highly magnetized core left behind when a massive star explodes. Most of the 1,800 cataloged pulsars were found through their periodic radio emissions. Astronomers believe these pulses are caused by narrow, lighthouse-like radio beams emanating from the pulsar’s magnetic poles.
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By MattPublished: 02 July 2009 6:14 PM UTC ESA engineers plan to apply the same wireless systems that keep our mobile phones, laptops and devices connected on the move to a new generation of networked space hardware.
Microsensors
Wireless technologies are shaping up to be important enablers of future space exploration. Wireless sensor nodes placed throughout a spacecraft might function as a networked nervous system, yielding a wealth of currently inaccessible structural or environmental data to mission controllers. Similar nodes scattered across a planetary surface would generate a much higher scientific return than a single lander could, configuring a network to combine their findings for relaying to Earth.
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By Rob GoldsmithPublished: 02 July 2009 6:11 PM UTC This week Airborne Engineering Limited blazed a new trail in British rocketry by moving to facilities at the former Rocket Propulsion Establishment at Westcott – the site where the rocket engines of the British Blue Streak rocket were tested in the 1960s.
The move includes the refurbishing of two large static test stands, which are designed to accommodate rocket engines of several tonnes thrust. These test stands are being fully instrumented with state of the art test equipment used at Airborne Engineering’s former test facility, and will help establish a new rocket manufacturing and test facility based in the UK.
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By MattPublished: 02 July 2009 5:54 PM UTC NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has transmitted its first images since reaching the moon on June 23. The spacecraft’s two cameras, collectively known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, were activated June 30. The cameras are working well and have returned images of a region in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds).
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By MattPublished: 02 July 2009 4:08 PM UTC Dubbed a Lyman-alpha blob, an enormous cloud of hydrogen gas spans several hundred thousand light-years in this remarkable image (left), a composite of x-ray, optical, and infrared data from space and ground based observatories. The gigantic, amoeba-like structure is seen as it was when the universe was a mere 2 billion years old (about 12 billion years ago).
Lyman-alpha blobs are so called because they strongly emit radiation due to the Lyman-alpha emission line of hydrogen gas. Normally, Lyman-alpha emission is in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, but Lyman-apha blobs are so distant, their light is redshifted to (longer) optical wavelengths. X-ray data (blue) indicates the presence of a supermassive black hole feeding at the center of an active galaxy embedded in the blob.
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By Klaus SchmidtPublished: 02 July 2009 3:55 PM UTC (NASA) – A test fueling of space shuttle Endeavour’s external tank revealed no gaseous hydrogen leaks, verifying recent repairs were successful, NASA managers confirmed during a Wednesday afternoon news conference at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Space Shuttle Endeavour
The tanking test began at 6:52 a.m. EDT Wednesday. During the next three hours, teams in the Launch Control Center watched closely for signs of a leak as liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen poured into the massive orange tank. Previous attempts to launch Endeavour on the STS-127 mission were scrubbed by a leak in the area of the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate, which attaches a gaseous hydrogen vent line to the external tank. Crews worked tirelessly to investigate and repair the problem.
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By MattPublished: 02 July 2009 3:52 PM UTC Final preparations for Thursday’s move of the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft were performed Wednesday by the Expedition 20 crew aboard the International Space Station.
Commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineers Mike Barratt and Koichi Wakata reviewed the Soyuz relocation procedures with specialists at the Russian Mission Control Center in Korolev, outside Moscow.
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By Klaus SchmidtPublished: 02 July 2009 3:48 PM UTC (Space Systems/Loral) – World’s Largest Commercial Satellite Deploys Solar Arrays On Schedule
PALO ALTO, Calif. — Space Systems/Loral (SS/L), a subsidiary of Loral Space & Communications (Nasdaq:LORL), and the world’s leading provider of high-power commercial satellites, today announced that the satellite it built for TerreStar Networks is successfully performing post-launch maneuvers. The world’s largest commercial satellite deployed its solar arrays Wednesday evening, following its launch aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The satellite’s first thruster firing will begin later today, to propel it toward its final geosynchronous orbit.
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By MattPublished: 02 July 2009 3:48 PM UTC (NASA) – Engineers placed a rock underneath the test rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., on July 1, 2009, to more closely simulate Spirit’s predicament on Mars. After becoming embedded in soft soil, Spirit used the microscopic imager at the end of its arm last month to look under its own belly for the first time.
The resulting view (at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20090603a.html) confirmed a rock beneath the rover touching its underbelly. With a rock now placed similarly in the test sandbox, testing in the next few weeks will evaluate possible extraction moves for Spirit.
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By MattPublished: 02 July 2009 3:43 PM UTC The Ariane 5’s 31st consecutive mission success was another record-setting flight for this workhorse Arianespace launcher – lofting the world’s largest commercial satellite, TerreStar-1, from the Spaceport in French Guiana today.
Lifting off from the ELA-3 launch zone on a rare afternoon departure, the Ariane 5 deployed TerreStar-1 into geostationary transfer orbit 26 minutes later. With a launch mass of nearly 6,910 kg., TerreStar-1 was carried as a solo payload on the heavy-lift Ariane 5 ECA mission, which followed Arianespace’s most recent flight by less than two months.
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By MattPublished: 01 July 2009 8:48 PM UTC Planetary scientists have monitored some Martian sand dunes for more than 30 years, and the dunes have not moved during that time, leading scientists to question whether snow and ice trapped inside the dunes might be preventing movement.
However a recent study published in “Geomorphology” shows that snow and ice are not enough in themselves to stop dune movement. While trapped ice and snow impedes movement of sand dunes in polar climates, compared to their counterparts in warmer areas, this does not entirely stop dune movement, the study shows.
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By MattPublished: 01 July 2009 6:17 PM UTC Astronomers have unveiled an unprecedented new atlas of the inner regions of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, peppered with thousands of previously undiscovered dense knots of cold cosmic dust — the potential birthplaces of new stars. Made using observations from the APEX telescope in Chile, this survey is the largest map of cold dust so far, and will prove an invaluable map for observations made with the forthcoming ALMA telescope, as well as the recently launched ESA Herschel space telescope.
This new guide for astronomers, known as the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL) shows the Milky Way in submillimetre-wavelength light (between infrared light and radio waves. Images of the cosmos at these wavelengths are vital for studying the birthplaces of new stars and the structure of the crowded galactic core.
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By Rob GoldsmithPublished: 01 July 2009 6:17 PM UTC Astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory have discovered a black hole weighing more than 500 solar masses, a missing link between lighter stellar-mass and heavier supermassive black holes, in a distant galaxy. This discovery is the best detection to date of a new class that has long been searched for: intermediate mass black holes.
Due to appear tomorrow in the journal Nature, the discovery has been made by an international team of researchers working with XMM-Newton data, led by Sean Farrell from the Centre d’Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements, now based at the University of Leicester.
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By Rob GoldsmithPublished: 01 July 2009 6:03 PM UTC Robert C. Reedy, a senior scientist at the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute, is mapping the moon’s surface elements using data gathered by an advanced gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) that rode aboard the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft.
The data promise to show chemical elements on the moon that have never been identified before, and Reedy and the Kaguya GRS team already have found uranium signatures in the data, an element not seen in previous moon-mapping efforts.
The uranium results were recently announced in papers presented at the 40th Lunar and Planetary Conference and at the Proceedings of the International Workshop Advances in Cosmic Ray Science. The lead authors on those papers are Prof. Naoyuki Yamashita and Prof. Nobuyuki Hasebe respectively. Both are from Japan’s Waseda University.
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By MattPublished: 01 July 2009 6:01 PM UTC HUNTSVILLE, Ala., July 1 – Alliant Techsystems (NYSE: ATK) was selected by The Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) to manufacture the upper stage ullage motors for the new Ares I launch vehicle. The Ares I is NASA’s two-stage rocket that will launch astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft on missions to the International Space Station, the moon, Mars and out into the solar system.
The ullage motor, almost four feet in length, is similar to the Space Shuttle booster separation motor which ATK also manufacturers. Eight ullage motors will be arranged in four pairs on the Ares I upper stage, which also houses the reaction control system.
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By Rob GoldsmithPublished: 01 July 2009 5:58 PM UTC Warm weather near the Martian equator may have melted the ice in ice-rich soils as recently as 2 million years ago, according to a paper published yesterday in “Earth and Planetary Science Letters.” This indicates that the Red Planet was warmer and more life-friendly much later in its history than previous studies show.
Matthew Balme, a research scientist with the Tucson-based Planetary Science Institute and a research fellow at the United Kingdom’s Open University, discovered signs of melting permafrost in images from NASA’s HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera, which is flying aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
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By Rob GoldsmithPublished: 01 July 2009 5:39 PM UTC CLEVELAND — Software developed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center received special recognition at the Northeast Ohio Software Association’s annual Best of Tech Awards in the category of Best Software Product.
The software – Optimal Trajectories by Implicit Simulation version 4
(OTIS4) – is a general-purpose program used to perform trajectory performance studies. Its principal application includes the preliminary design of aerospace vehicles. It can also predict how a vehicle will perform or determine how best to fly it.
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By Rob GoldsmithPublished: 01 July 2009 5:02 PM UTC HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif., July 1, 2009 — An industry team led by The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] has received a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for work on Phase 2 of the Fast Access Spacecraft Testbed (FAST) program. The $15.5 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract is currently funded to $13.8 million.
DARPA’s FAST program aims to develop a new, ultra-lightweight High Power Generation System (HPGS) that can generate up to 175 kilowatts — more power than is currently available to the International Space Station. When combined with electric propulsion, FAST will form the foundation for future self-deployed, high-mobility spacecraft to perform ultra-high-power communications, space radar, satellite transfer and servicing missions.
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By Rob GoldsmithPublished: 01 July 2009 4:50 PM UTC This image, created from data obtained from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, shows a part of the roughly circular supernova remnant known as RCW 86. This remnant of an exploded star may be the one observed in 185 AD by Chinese astronomers. By studying it, astronomers gained a better understanding of new details about the role of supernova remnants as the Milky Way’s super-efficient particle accelerators.
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By Klaus SchmidtPublished: 01 July 2009 9:21 AM UTC HOUSTON, (NASA) — Three members of the International Space Station crew will board a Soyuz spacecraft attached to the station and move it to a different docking port on Thursday, July 2. The journey will be broadcast live on NASA Television.
Expedition 20 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineers Mike Barratt of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will undock the Soyuz TMA-14 return spacecraft, from the Zvezda service module and fly a short distance to the Pirs docking compartment. The flight is expected to take about 30 minutes.
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By Klaus SchmidtPublished: 01 July 2009 8:36 AM UTC (NASA) – The Expedition 20 crew aboard the orbiting International Space Station bid farewell, for now, to an unpiloted Progress cargo craft Tuesday.
The ISS Progress 33 undocked from the Pirs docking compartment at 2:30 p.m. EDT. Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Roman Romanenko monitored the undocking and photographed the departing cargo craft to assess the condition of its docking assembly.
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By Klaus SchmidtPublished: 01 July 2009 8:31 AM UTC (NASA) – NASA’s Cassini mission has been orbiting Saturn for five Earth years as of June 30, 2009. That’s about one sixth of a Saturnian year, enough time for the spacecraft to have observed seasonal changes in the planet, its moons and sunlight’s angle on the dramatic rings.
Cassini passed through a gap in the rings as it entered orbit on June 30, 2004. It finished its prime mission in 2008 and continues to use its 12 instruments in an extended mission that includes extensive further studies of the moons Titan and Enceladus.
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By Klaus SchmidtPublished: 01 July 2009 8:25 AM UTC (NASA) – After several days of preparing a sloped area of soft, fine soil to simulate Spirit’s current sandtrap on Mars, the rover team drove a test rover into the material on June 30, 2009. The test rover became embedded in the soil, as planned. The rover team will use this setup at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., during the next few weeks to test possible extraction moves Spirit might use on Mars.
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