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Mars Base

2013 in science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...2013_in_science

scibyte114 2013YearInReview

shared by Mars Base on 23 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Morocco in 2011, and report that it is a new type of Mars rock with an unusually high water content.[8][9][10] American researchers state that a gene associated with active personality traits is also linked to
  • Astronomers affiliated with the Kepler space observatory announce the discovery of KOI-172.02, an Earth-like exoplanet candidate which orbits a star similar to the Sun in the habitable zone
  • 13 January – Massachusetts doctors invent a pill-sized medical scanner that can be safely swallowed by patients, allowing the esophagus to be more easily scanned for disease
  • ...101 more annotations...
  • 17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue
  • 2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta
  • 3 January
  • 8 January
  • 20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells
  • 25 January
  • An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology
  • 30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch
  • 6 February
  • Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets
  • Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans
  • American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice
  • 10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane
  • 15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people
  • 28 February
  • Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta
  • A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart
  • 1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot
  • 3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year
  • researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants
  • 7 March
  • A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies
  • 11 March
  • 12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals
  • 14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson
  • 18 March
  • NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm
  • 27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.
  • NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station
  • 3 April
  • 15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital
  • 18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft
  • 21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight
  • After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh
  • 29 April
  • 1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope
  • A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life
  • NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like
  • 15 May
  • 16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine
  • 27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory
  • 29 May
  • Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia
  • A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent
  • 4 June
  • During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory
  • 20 June
  • China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date
  • 26 June
  • 20 June
  • 20 June
  • 6 July
  • Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms
  • 15 July
  • ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector
  • 19 July
  • NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover
  • Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn
  • 29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth
  • exoplanet
  • 7 January
  • Astronomers
  • report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy
  • 20 February
  • NASA reports the discovery of Kepler-37b, the smallest exoplanet yet known, around the size of Earth's Moon
  • 10 June
  • Scientists report that the earlier claims of an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a star close to our Solar System, may not be supported by astronomical evidence
  • 25 June – In an unprecedented discovery, astronomers detect three potentially Earthlike exoplanets orbiting a single star in the Gliese 667
  • 11 July For the first time, astronomers determine the true colour of a distant exoplanet. HD 189733 b, a searing-hot gas giant, is said to be a vivid blue colour, most likely due to clouds of silica in its atmosphere
  • NASA announces that the failing Kepler space observatory may never fully recover. New missions are being considered
  • 15 August
  • Phase I clinical trials of SAV001 – the first and only preventative HIV vaccine – have been successfully completed with no adverse effects in all patients. Antibody production was greatly boosted after vaccination
  • 3 September
  • 12 September NASA announces that Voyager I has officially left the Solar System, having travelled since 1977
  • NASA scientists report the Mars Curiosity rover detected "abundant, easily accessible" water (1.5 to 3 weight percent) in soil samples
  • 26 September
  • In addition, the rover found two principal soil types: a fine-grained mafic type and a locally derived, coarse-grained felsic type
  • mafic
  • as associated with hydration of the amorphous phases of the soi
  • perchlorates, the presence of which may make detection of life-related organic molecules difficult, were found at the Curiosity rover landing site
  • earlier at the more polar site of the Phoenix lander) suggesting a "global distribution of these salts
  • Astronomers have created the first cloud map of an exoplanet, Kepler-7b
  • 30 September
  • 8 October The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"
  • 16 October Russian authorities raise a large fragment, 654 kg (1,440 lb) total weight, of the Chelyabinsk meteor, a Near-Earth asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere over Russia on 15 February 2013, from the bottom of Chebarkul lake.
  • Researchers have shown that a fundamental reason for sleep is to clean the brain of toxins. This is achieved by brain cells shrinking to create gaps between neurons, allowing fluid to wash through
  • 17 October
  • 22 October – Astronomers have discovered the 1,000th known exoplanet
  • 4 November - Astronomers report, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy
  • 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars
  • 5 November – India launches its first Mars probe, Mangalyaan
  • The IceCube Neutrino Observatory has made the first discovery of very high energy neutrinos on Earth which had originated from beyond our Solar System
  • 21 November
  • 1 December – China launches the Chang'e 3 lunar rover mission, with a planned landing on December 16
  • 3 December – The Hubble Space Telescope has found evidence of water in the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets: HD 209458b, XO-1b, WASP-12b, WASP-17b and WASP-19b
  • 9 December NASA scientists report that the planet Mars had a large freshwater lake (which could have been a hospitable environment for microbial life) based on evidence from the Curiosity rover studying Aeolis Palus near Mount Sharp in Gale Crater
  • 12 December NASA announces, based on studies with the Hubble Space Telescope, that water vapor plumes were detected on Europa, moon of Jupiter
  • 14 December – The unmanned Chinese lunar rover Chang'e 3 lands on the Moon, making China the third country to achieve a soft landing there
  • 18 December
  • nomers have spotted what appears to be the first known "exomoon", located 1,800 light years away
  • 20 December – NASA reports that the Curiosity rover has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a need to drive more carefully, over the rough terrain the rover is currently traveling on its way to Mount Sharp, was also reported
Mars Base

April 9 - Today in Science History - Scientists born on April 9th, died, and events - 0 views

todayinsci.com/4_09.htm

scibyte125 LookingBackApr

shared by Mars Base on 08 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • First astronauts selected
  • In 1959, NASA announced the selection of America's first seven astronauts for project Mercury. Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton were chosen from 110 applicants. Their training program at Langley, which ranged from a graduate-level course in introductory space science to simulator training and scuba-diving. Project Mercury, NASA's first high profile program, was an effort to learn if humans could survive in space. NASA required astronaut candidates to be male, not over 40 years old, not more than 5' 11" height and in excellent physical condition. On 5 May 1961, Shepard became the first American in space
Mars Base

International Cometary Explorer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...nternational_Cometary_Explorer

scibyte132 ISEE-3

shared by Mars Base on 25 May 14 - No Cached
  • Original mission: International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3)
  • to investigate solar-terrestrial relationships at the outermost boundaries of the Earth's magnetosphere
  • to examine in detail the structure of the solar wind near the Earth and the shock wave that forms the interface between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere
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  • investigate motions of and mechanisms operating in the plasma sheets
  • continue the investigation of cosmic rays and solar flare emissions in the interplanetary region near 1 AU
  • Second mission: International Cometary Explorer
  • On June 10, 1982, after completing its original mission, ISEE-3 was repurposed. It was renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE)
  • The primary scientific objective of ICE was to study the interaction between the solar wind and a cometary atmosphere
  • a series of lunar orbits over the next 15 months. Its last and closest pass over the Moon, on December 22, 1983, was a mere 119.4 km above the Moon's surface. By the beginning of 1984, ICE was in heliocentric orbit
  • Giacobini-Zinner encounter
  • on a trajectory intercepting that of Comet Giacobini-Zinner.
  • On 11 September 1985, the craft passed through the plasma tail of Comet Giacobini-Zinner
  • ICE carried no cameras. It instead carried instruments for measurements of energetic particles, waves, plasmas, and fields
  • Halley encounter
  • transited between the Sun and Comet Halley in late March 1986, when other spacecraft
  • were in the vicinity of Comet Halley
  • ICE flew through the tail
  • Heliospheric mission
  • mission was approved by NASA in 1991
  • consisting of investigations of coronal mass ejections in coordination with ground-based observations
  • End of mission
  • On May 5, 1997, NASA ended the ICE mission, and ordered the probe shut down, with only a carrier signal left operating
  • Further contact
  • In 1999, NASA made brief contact with ICE to verify its carrier signal. On September 18, 2008
  • NASA, with the help of KinetX, located ICE using the Deep Space Network after discovering that it had not been powered off after the 1999 contact
  • status check revealed that all but one of its 13 experiments were still functioning, and it still has enough propellant
  • Reboot effort
  • A team webpage said, "We intend to contact the ISEE-3 (International Sun-Earth Explorer) spacecraft, command it to fire its engine and enter an orbit near Earth, and then resume its original mission...If we are successful we intend to facilitate the sharing and interpretation of all of the new data ISEE-3 sends back via crowd sourcing."
  • Sometime after NASA's interest in the ICE waned
  • A team of engineers, programmers, and scientists
  • realized that the spacecraft might be steered to pass close to another comet
  • began to study the feasibility and challenges involved
  • On May 15, 2014, the project reached its crowdfunding goal
  • which will cover the costs of writing the software to communicate with the probe, searching through the NASA archives for the information needed to control the spacecraft, and buying time on the dish antennas
  • The project then set a 'stretch' goal of $150,000
  • The project members are working on deadline: if they get the spacecraft to change its orbit by late May or early June 2014, it can use the Moon's gravity to get back into a useful halo orbit.
  • Earlier in 2014, officials with the Goddard Space Flight Center had said that the Deep Space Network equipment necessary to transmit signals to the spacecraft had been decommissioned in 1999, and that replacing it was not economically feasible
  • oject members obtained the needed hardware (power amplifier, modulator/demodulator[12]), and installed it on the 305-meter Arecibo dish antenna on May 19, 2014
  • Although NASA is not funding the project, it made advisors available and gave approval to try to establish contact
  • On May 21, 2014, NASA announced that it had signed a Non-Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with the ISEE-3 Reboot Project
  • "This is the first time NASA has worked such an agreement for use of a spacecraft the agency is no longer using or ever planned to use again," officials said
Mars Base

New Deep Space Capsule Passes NASA Chief's Inspection NASA & Orion Multipurpose Crew Ve... - 0 views

www.space.com/cv-spacecraft-exploration.html

scibyte29 NASA Orion capsule multimedia

shared by Mars Base on 13 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • engineers have completed a suite of structural, acoustic and vibration tests on key components of the spaceship
  • Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle
  • stacked hardware stretching 53 feet (16 meters)
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • unmanned 2014 EFT-1 mission will blast Orion into space aboard a Delta 4-Heavy rocket. The capsule will orbit Earth twice while climbing to an altitude of several thousand miles, then rocket back in a high-speed plunge to validate its heat shield and other systems.
  • Artist's rendering of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle on a deep space mission.CREDIT: NASA
  • Acoustic testing
  • recent acoustic testing of the Orion crew module/launch abort system structure involved hundreds of sensors planted throughout the hardware.
  • subjected it to the flight environment
  • chamber gets up to 150 decibels…like a rifle shot right next to your ear. It's pretty loud. All that sound…it's like a really loud rock concert
  • Huge heat shield
  • underside of Orion's crew module is the heat shield
  • measuring 16.5 feet (5 m) in diameter
  • Thermal Protection System advances heritage materials from the NASA's space shuttle and Apollo programs to create a next-generation system that can withstand the extreme environments of piloted deep space missions.
Mars Base

Commercial Spaceship Builders Ponder Future Without NASA Funding | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-space-taxis-nasa-funding.html

scibyte47 SpaceX iss PrivateSpaceTravel

shared by Mars Base on 16 May 12 - No Cached
  • SpaceX is one of several aerospace firms who are competing for NASA funding under the third and final phase of NASA's commercial crew development program
  • Proposals for this stage of the competition, called Commercial Crew integrated Capability(CCiCap), require companies to present a complete launch system — rocket and vehicle — for consideration
  • company is facing some stiff competition from other aerospace firms, including Boeing and Sierra Nevada Corp
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  • NASA is expected to announce at least two recipients for CCiCap funding awards in August.
  • even if SpaceX is not selected for the final round of NASA funding, a crewed version of the Dragoncapsule will not be mothballed
  • Boeing
  • willing to continue that at that level? I doubt it — maybe at some lower level, but I really don't know."
  • Alliant Techsystems (ATK)
  • the company will not stop developing the launch system if they are not selected by NASA.
Mars Base

NASA: Donated NRO Space Telescopes 'Came Out of the Blue' | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/y-space-telescopes-budget.html

scibyte51 hubble SpaceTelescope

shared by Mars Base on 15 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • A pair of space telescopes that were donated to NASA from the secretive National Reconnaissance Office could be repurposed for a wide variety of science missions
  • it will likely be years before the agency's budget can accommodate them.  
  • two spy satellite telescopes were originally built
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • but they were never used
  • June 4, NASA announced its acquisition of the telescopes, and the agency's intention to use them for future astronomical research
  • The two telescopes have main mirrors that measure nearly 8 feet wide (2.4 meters), making them comparable to the veteran Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched into orbit 22 years ago. Grunsfeld called the donated optical hardware "very high quality."
  • currently being stored in Rochester, N.Y., in facilities belonging to the hardware's manufacturer,
  • cost to keep them in storage is about $70,000 a year
  • not insignificant, but it's not something that's unmanageable
  • One possible application for the telescopes is as a base for NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which is being designed to hunt for dark energy
  • Given budget projections for the next several years
  • in an extremely confined fiscal environment
  • NASA does not anticipate being able to dedicate any funding to the newly acquired telescopes until the James Webb Space Telescope successfully launches
  • In the meantime, NASA is investigating different uses for the telescopes, and hopes to have input from the scientific community to guide the decision-making process
  • Mars Base on 15 Jun 12
     
    Grunsfeld co-hosted a town hall-style gathering Tuesday (June 12) to discuss NASA's budget and plans here at the 220th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
Mars Base

NASA aims to send another rover to Mars in 2020 - 0 views

phys.org/...2-12-nasa-aims-rover-mars.html

scibyte74 mars

shared by Mars Base on 05 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • announced plans to launch another mega-rover to the red planet in 2020 that will be modeled after
  • Curiosity
  • To keep costs down, engineers will borrow Curiosity's blueprints, recycle spare parts where possible and use proven technology including the novel landing gear
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  • comes as NASA reboots its Mars exploration program during tough fiscal times
  • many other details still need to be worked out, including where the rover will land and the types of tools it will carry to the surface
  • the science goals remain fuzzy
  • at the very least should kickstart a campaign to return Martian soil and rocks to Earth
  • a team of experts will debate whether the new rover should have the ability to drill into rocks and store pieces for a future pickup
  • under orders by the White House to send astronauts to circle Mars in the 2030s followed by a landing
  • Curiosity
  • ran over schedule and over budget
  • the engineering hurdles have been fixed and he expected the new rover to cost less than Curiosity
  • One independent estimate put the mission at $1.5 billion, though NASA is working on its own figure
  • Next year, NASA plans to launch an orbiter to study the atmosphere
  • After NASA pulled out of a partnership with the Europeans in 2016 and 2018, it announced plans to fly a relatively low-cost robotic lander in 2016 to probe the interior
  • since said it will contribute to the European missions, but in a minor role
Mars Base

NASA Mulling Missions for Donated Spy Telescopes | National Reconnaissance Office | Spa... - 0 views

www.space.com/llite-telescopes-missions.html

scibyte93

shared by Mars Base on 04 May 13 - No Cached
  • NASA is sorting through a variety of possible uses for a pair of powerful spy satellite telescopes
  • SA asked scientists to suggest missions for the telescopes, which were donated by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and are comparable in size and appearance to the famous Hubble Space Telescope.
  • More than 60 serious proposals came
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  • in, the most promising of which were presented in early February
  • The two scopes were originally built to carry out surveillance missions under a multibillion-dollar NRO program called Future Imagery Architecture
  • cost overruns and delays killed the program in 2005, and NASA announced in June 2012 that the NRO had bequeathed the instruments to the space agency
  • the telescopes' 8-foot-wide (2.4 meters) main mirrors are comparable to that of Hubble, the NRO instruments are designed to have a much wider field of view
  • Seven big ideas
  • Mars-orbiting space telescope
  • Exoplanet observatory
  • General-purpose faint object explorer
  • Advanced, Hubble-like visible light/ultraviolet telescope
  • Optical communications node in space (which would aid transmissions to and from deep-space assets)
  • Geospace dynamic observatory (which would study space weather and the sun-Earth system)
  • Research of Earth's upper atmosphere (from a spot aboard the International Space Station)
  • Whatever missions NASA ultimately assigns to the NRO scopes, the instruments are a long way from launch
  • they're far from being fully outfitted spacecraft.
  • no instruments on these two telescopes — just primary and secondary mirrors and the support structures
  • It's going to take a while to develop the instruments and integrate them into the structure
  • there's no guarantee that it will be
  • the funding to bring the scopes up to speed, launch them into space and maintain their operations has not been granted. And
Mars Base

Radio Glitch Delays 5-Rocket Launch to Edge of Space | Skywatching Tips | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/rocket-launch-atrex-delay.html

scibyte38 launch

shared by Mars Base on 15 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • A radio system glitch on one of five small rockets aimed at the edge of space has forced NASA to cancel a barrage of overnight launches tonight that promised to dazzle East Coast skywatchers with glowing midnight clouds
  • e late-night launch rocket launches, which were scheduled to blast off within about five minutes of one anothe
  • scrubbed for tonight and our next attempt will be no earlier than Friday night, March 16
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  • internal radio frequency interference problem with one of the payloads on the rockets caused the launch delay
  • five rockets form the core of NASA's Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment (ATREX
  • program to study the high-altitude jet stream of wind that blows at speeds of 300 mph (483 kph) at heights of between  60 and 65 miles (97 to 105 kilometers) above Earth.
  • Theories have suggested that these high-altitude winds should only reach speeds of up to 50 mph (80 kph). The edge of space is commonly set at 62 miles (100 km) above Earth.
  • study the jet stream mystery, NASA scientists have loaded each ATREX rocket with a chemical tracer known as trimethyl aluminum. The experiment is designed to spray the material into the jet stream so observers on Earth can map the winds
  • chemical tracer is expected to be seen as glowing, milky white clouds visible to skywatchers along major stretches of the U.S. East Coast, running from southern Vermont and New Hampshire to the border of North and South Carolina.
  • next window to launch the ATREX rockets stretches from March 16 to April 3.
Mars Base

NASA - Space Station Astronaut Will Answer Video Questions From Public - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...HQ_11-406_Ask_the_Crew.html

scibyte29 SpaceStation

shared by Mars Base on 03 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • unique opportunity to ask the commander of the International Space Station a question about his role on the orbiting outpost
  • Commander Dan Burbank will answer videotaped questions from the public during a live event tentatively set for Friday, Jan. 20
  • video questions must be less than 30 seconds
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Submitters should introduce themselves and mention their location
  • Questions must be posted as responses to a video Burbank recorded on YouTube at: http://go.nasa.gov/sDYpzP
  • Burbank launched to the station on Nov. 13
  • conduct a variety of science experiments and perform station maintenance during his nearly six-month stay on the outpost
  • Burbank will answer questions during the time available
  • airing live on NASA TV
  • answers will be posted to YouTube
  • http://twitter.com/AstroCoastie
  • Expedition 30 and the exact time of the event, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station
Mars Base

NASA - NASA's Kepler Mission Finds Three Smallest Exoplanets - 0 views

www.nasa.gov/...smallest-exoplanets.html

scibyte29 Kepler small NASA multimedia

shared by Mars Base on 13 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • 01.11.12 
  • Mini Planetary System: This artist's conception illustrates KOI-961. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
  • Sizing Up Exoplanets: This chart compares artists' concepts of the smallest known exoplanets, or planets orbiting outside the solar system, to our own planets Mars and Earth. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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  • 'Honey I Shrunk the Planetary System': This artist's concept compares the KOI-961 planetary system to Jupiter and the largest four of its many moons. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Chris Fisher

NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...gJQAsT6UDV_print.html

nasa military telescopes

shared by Chris Fisher on 04 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • NASA officials stressed that they do not have a program to launch even one telescope at the moment, and that at the very earliest, under reasonable budgets, it would be 2020 before one of the two gifted telescopes could be in order. Asked whether anyone at NASA was popping champagne, the agency’s head of science, John Grunsfeld, answered, “We never pop champagne here; our budgets are too tight.”
  • The unexpected gift offers NASA an opportunity to resurrect a plan to launch a new telescope to study the mysterious “dark energy” that is causing the universe’s expansion to accelerate.
  • The two new telescopes — which so far don’t even have names, other than Telescope One and Telescope Two — would be ready to go into space but for two hitches
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • First, they don’t have instruments. There are no cameras, spectrographs or other instruments that a space telescope typically needs.
  • Second, they don’t have a program, a mission or a staff behind them. They’re just hardware.
  • “Instead of losing a terrific telescope, you now have two telescopes even better to replace it with,” Spergel said.
Mars Base

Global "Selfie" to Be Beamed to Outer Space - 0 views

news.nationalgeographic.com/...fie-message-new-horizons-space

scibyte131 NewHorizons NewHorizonsMessage

shared by Mars Base on 18 May 14 - No Cached
  • This summer, you will get that chance to send a message to other worlds.
  • leaders of an initiative called New Horizons Message Initiative, announced
  • at the Smithsonian Future Is Here Festival in Washington, D.C., that NASA has agreed to upload a digital crowd-sourced message to the New Horizons spacecraft
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  • The content of the message will be determined by whomever wants to participate in the planet-wide project
  • The message itself will be transmitted sometime after New Horizons does a flyby of Pluto in 2015 and sends back the scientific data that it collects
  • If all goes according to plan, New Horizons will become the fifth man-made object to travel beyond the solar system—after Pioneers 10 and 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2.
  • it's the only one of the five not to launch with a message for any alien travelers it might encounter along the way
  • The Pioneer spacecrafts bore plaques on their sides, and the Voyagers each carried golden records (and the means to play them).
  • When New Horizons' journey was being planned
  • other missions had been scrapped and the budget was extremely tight
  • didn't have the bandwidth for
  • the message
  • . "Now
  • It doesn't cost massive amounts because there's no hardware, just uplinking ones and zeroes
  • Lomberg, who worked closely with Carl Sagan on the Voyager golden record in 1977, had an epiphany last year about sending the message digitally
  • In September 2013, Lomberg launched a website with a petition to NASA. By February 2014, 10,000 people from over 140 countries had signed it.
  • Lomberg approached Stern, who advised him that NASA would need evidence of public support
  • This message will be very different from the one Lomberg designed with Sagan almost 40 years ago
  • The 21st-century version will be a global self-portrait, pieced together by many willing hands
  • Anyone on Earth will be able to upload potential content (images, sounds, software—the formats haven't been finalized)
  • Then everyone will be able to vote on what to include
  • "Our team is going to provide the overall architecture of the message," says Lomberg, "but we'll try to keep ourselves open to what we will send."
  • , a National Geographic emerging explorer
  • will have to figure out how to wrangle a planet's worth of opinions into the roughly 100 MB of memory New Horizons will have available on its computer.
  • the project will officially launch August 25, the final file may not be sent for several years
  • The New Horizons computer won't have any room in its memory until the data from Pluto are transmitted back to Earth, which could take more than a year
  • "The spacecraft is so far away," says Lomberg, "that download times are like dial-up Internet."
  • Pluto may not be the final mission target
  • hopes that the spacecraft will have a shot at a flyby of another object in the Kuiper Belt of the solar system
  • If that happens, the message upload will be delayed
  • As long as the spacecraft is healthy and the radio is working," he says, "there's no particular rush to send it
  • cosmic radiation may eventually corrupt the spacecraft's electronic memory
  • The New Horizons message won't last nearly as long as the metal missives attached to Pioneer and Voyager will
Mars Base

NASA Wants To Send Your Haiku To Mars | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...asa-wants-send-your-haiku-mars

scibyte93 MarsHaiku

shared by Mars Base on 03 May 13 - No Cached
  • Any Earthling can submit a haiku about Mars by July 1—the DVD will include the name of each person who sends a poem, but only the three most popular haikus will eventually orbit the red planet.
  • NASA launches the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft in November, it wants to pack onboard a DVD containing three poetic messages
  • Starting July 15, an online public vote will open to select the three top haikus.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • NASA's MAVEN mission will be the first mission devoted to studying the Martian upper atmosphere
  • gather information that should help scientists figure out what happened to the atmosphere and water that once existed on Mars
Mars Base

NASA to Reveal Vesta Discoveries by Dawn Asteroid Probe | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/discoveries-nasa-thursday.html

scibyte46 Asteroid Vesta dawn

shared by Mars Base on 09 May 12 - No Cached
  • NASA will showcase the latest discoveries from an asteroid probe orbiting the huge space rock Vesta on Thursday (May 10) in a press conference for reporters and the general public.
  • will present a new analysis of Vesta based on the latest observations from NASA's Dawn spacecraft
  • Dawn spacecraft launched in 2007 on a mission to visit two huge space rocks in the asteroid belt that orbits the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
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  • Dawn arrived in orbit around Vesta in July 2011
  • Vesta is the brightest asteroid in the solar system and second most massive object in the asteroid belt
  • Last month, NASA extended Dawn's stay at Vesta by an extra 40 days to give the spacecraft more time to study the asteroid
  • spacecraft has revealed that many new details about Vesta
  • it is rich in iron and magnesium
  • experiences chilly temperatures that range from minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius) in the sunlight, to minus150 degrees F (minus 100 degrees C) in shadowed areas.
  • Scientists think Vesta is a 4.5 billion-year-old relic left over from the formation of the solar system
  • In August the probe will move on to the Texas-size Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt and a space rock so large it is considered a dwarf planet.
  • expected to arrive at Ceres in February 2015
Mars Base

NASA's Robot Glove Lends a Cyborg Hand to Astronauts | NASA Robo-Glove | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/t-glove-astronaut-cyborgs.html

scibyte38 nasa robot cyborg

shared by Mars Base on 15 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • NASA and General Motors have come up with a robotic glove capable of giving today's astronauts and factory workers an extra-strong cyborg grip
  • Robo-Glove" technology emerged when NASA and General Motors (GM) built "Robonaut 2" as a robot assistant for astronauts living aboard the space station
  • glove's mechanical strength allows human wearers to grip tools longer and more comfortably
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • astronaut working in a bulky, pressurized spacesuit might only need to use 10 pounds of force rather than 20 pounds to hold a tool in his or her hand.
  • e robot gloves could also help factory workers on Earth do their job for longer periods with less risk of repetitive stress injury,
  • Such gloves rely upon a robotic sense of touch — pressure sensors in the fingertips — to detect when a human user is grabbing an object
  • wearer grasps a tool, synthetic tendons automatically retract for a firm, mechanical grip until the sensor is released
  • most recent prototypes weigh just two pounds and use an off-the-shelf lithium-ion power tool battery attached to the human user's belt
  • e K-Glove (Robo-Glove) is the first of what we expect to be many spinoffs derived from Robonaut 2
Mars Base

LEGO Figures Flying On NASA Jupiter Probe | NASA Juno Spacecraft & LEGOs In Space | Spa... - 0 views

www.space.com/s-jupiter-juno-spacecraft.html

scibyte38 lego Jupiter

shared by Mars Base on 14 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • three more "very special" LEGO figurines are set to fly to the planet Jupiter with NASA's Juno spacecraft
  • specially-constructed LEGO Minifigures are of the Roman god Jupiter, his wife Juno, and "father of science" Galileo Galilei.
  • part of the Bricks in Space project
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  • joint outreach and educational program developed as part of the collaboration between NASA and the LEGO Group to inspire children to explore science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
  • NASA has a long-standing partnership with the LEGO company
  • Juno and the minifigures are scheduled to arrive in July 2016 and orbit Jupiter for a year (33 revolutions) before intentionally crashing into the giant gas planet
  • 04 August 2011
  • The trio resemble the typical small toys that LEGO sells, but are made out of metal.
  • Jupiter (who was the equivalent of "Zeus" to the Greeks) drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief
  • Juno was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature
  • Juno spacecraft will also look beneath the clouds to help NASA understand the planet's structure and history.
  • Juno holds a magnifying glass "to signify her search for the truth,"
  • husband holds a lightning bolt
  • third LEGO crew member, Galileo Galilei, made several important discoveries about Jupiter
  • first to point a telescope at the sky to make astronomical observations and discovered the four largest satellites of Jupiter — named the Galilean moons in his honor.
  • minifigure Galileo has his telescope with him for the journey to Jupiter.
  • basically the size of the normal LEGO figures
  • made out of aluminum, very special aluminum and they have been prepared in a very special way
  • space-grade aluminum
  • testing to make sure that they fit on our spacecraft in a way that is like our other science instruments."
  • mini-metal statues are joined on the spacecraft by another "special passenger," one
  • 2.8-inch by 2-inch (71 mm by 51 mm) plaque also made of flight-grade aluminum is bonded to Juno's propulsion bay with a spacecraft-grade epoxy. The graphic on the plaque shows a self-portrait of Galileo. The plaque also includes — in Galileo's own hand — a passage he made in 1610 of observations of Jupite
  • Galileo's text included on the plaque reads as follows: "On the 11th it was in this formation -- and the star closest to Jupiter was half the size than the other and very close to the other so that during the previous nights all of the three observed stars looked of the same dimension and among them equally afar; so that it is evident that around Jupiter there are three moving stars invisible till this time to everyone."
Mars Base

Psychedelics in the Sky: NASA Launches 5 Rockets in 5 Minutes - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...aunches-5-rockets-in-5-minutes

nasa rockets ATREX AprMedia

shared by Mars Base on 28 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • After several days of delays due to weather and technical issues, NASA has now successfully launched five suborbital sounding rockets in five minutes from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia as part of a study of the upper level jet stream.
  • first rocket was launched at 4:58 a.m. EDT and each subsequent rocket was launched 80 seconds apart.
  • rockets released a chemical tracer that created psychedelic-looking clouds at the edge of space, which were reported to be seen from as far south as Wilmington, N.C.; west to Charlestown, W. Va.; and north to Buffalo, N.Y.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • The Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment (ATREX) is a Heliophysics sounding rocket mission that gathered information to better understand the process responsible for the high-altitude jet stream located 95-105 km (60 to 65 miles) above the surface of the Earth.
  • map of the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. shows the projected area where the rockets may be visible while the motors are burning through flight
  • high-altitude jet stream is higher than the one commonly reported in weather forecasts
  • winds found in this upper jet stream typically have speeds of 320 to well over 480 km/hr (200 to over 300 mph)
  • two of the rockets had instrumented payloads to measure the pressure and temperature in the atmosphere at the height of the high-speed winds
  • NASA will release more information on the outcome of the experiment after scientists have had time to review the data
  • This jet stream is located in the same region where strong electrical currents occur in the ionosphere.
  • a region with a lot of electrical turbulence, of the type that can adversely affect satellite and radio communications.
  • Not only did the rockets release the chemical tracers to allow scientists and the public to “see” the winds in space
Mars Base

NASA's Nodosaur Track | Dinosaur Tracking - 0 views

blogs.smithsonianmag.com/...nasas-nodosaur-track

scibyte60 dinosaur

shared by Mars Base on 24 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Last fall, fossil tracker Ray Stanford and paleontologists David Weishampel and Valerie Deleon announced something wonderful–a rare impression of a baby ankylosaur
  • the fossil is even more spectacular given the rarity of dinosaur bones found in the area
  • Paleontologists have discovered teeth and bone fragments over the years–including bones from “Capitalsaurus” in Washington, D.C.–but even partially complete skeletons remain elusive
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  • Dinosaur tracks are far more common
  • Stanford may have discovered a footprint of an adult ankylosaur in an unexpected place.
  • the print sits on the property of a NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
  • Stanford stumbled across the lone track earlier this summer and recently led NASA scientists out to the site to show them the fossil depression
  • the track has started to erode, and may have been damaged by a lawnmower, the roughly 112-million-year-old track still shows four toe imprints
  • member of the heavily-armored ankylosaur subgroup that lacked tail clubs but often sported prominent spikes along their sides
  • Officials
  • are already moving to protect the fossil, and they plan to bring in paleontologists to look for other dinosaur tracks
  • it seems that there is more than just a lone track at the spaceflight facility. When Stanford took the NASA scientists out to the site, he and other researchers found several more possible dinosaur tracks. The high-tech NASA facility may have been founded on a Cretaceous dinosaur stomping ground.
Mars Base

New Views Show Old NASA Mars Landers - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - 0 views

www.jpl.nasa.gov/...news.cfm

scibyte33 Archeology

shared by Mars Base on 09 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Mars Base on 09 Feb 12
     
    New Views Show Old NASA Mars Landers
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