Aviation News, Headlines & Alerts
 
Category: <span>NASA</span>

NASA Flies Large Unmanned Aircraft in Public Airspace Without Chase Plane


Credits: NASA Photo / Carla Thomas
NASA’s remotely-piloted Ikhana aircraft, based at the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, successfully flew its first mission in the National Airspace System without a safety chase aircraft on Tuesday. This historic flight moves the United States one step closer to normalizing unmanned aircraft operations in the airspace used by commercial and private pilots.

Flying these large remotely-piloted aircraft over the United States opens the doors to all types of services, from monitoring and fighting forest fires, to providing new emergency search and rescue operations. The technology in this aircraft could, at some point, be scaled down for use in other general aviation aircraft.

“This is a huge milestone for our Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the National Airspace System project team,” said Ed Waggoner, NASA’s Integrated Aviation Systems Program director. “We worked closely with our Federal Aviation Administration colleagues for several months to ensure we met all their requirements to make this initial flight happen.”

Flights of large craft like Ikhana, have traditionally required a safety chase aircraft to follow the unmanned aircraft as it travels through the same airspace used by commercial aircraft. The Ikhana flew in accordance with the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Technical Standard Order 211 — Detect and Avoid Systems — and Technical Standard Order 212 — Air-to-Air Radar for Traffic Surveillance.

The FAA granted NASA special permission to conduct this flight under the authority of a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization on March 30. The certificate permitted Ikhana’s pilot to rely on the latest Detect and Avoid technology, enabling the remote pilot on the ground to see and avoid other aircraft during the flight.

NASA successfully worked with its industry partners to develop a standard for Detect and Avoid technologies, complied with the requirements of the FAA Technical Standard Orders, and garnered flight approval from the FAA.

The Ikhana aircraft was equipped with detect and avoid technologies, including an airborne radar developed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., a Honeywell Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System, a Detect and Avoid Fusion Tracker, and an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast capability – a surveillance technology where the aircraft determines its position via satellite navigation and periodically broadcasts this information so other aircraft can track it.

The flight took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California and entered controlled air space almost immediately. Ikhana flew into the Class-A airspace, where commercial airliners fly, just west of Edwards at an altitude of about 20,000 feet. The aircraft then turned north toward Fresno, requiring air traffic control to be transferred from the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center to the Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center. On the return trip, the pilot headed south toward Victorville, California, requiring communication control to be transferred back to Los Angles.

During the return flight, the pilot began a gentle decent over the city of Tehachapi, California, into Class E airspace — about 10,000 feet — where general aviation pilots fly. The pilot initiated an approach into Victorville airport at 6,000 feet, coordinating in real time with air traffic controllers at the airport. After successfully executing all of these milestones, the aircraft exited the public airspace and returned to its base at Armstrong.

“We are flying with a suite of sophisticated technology that greatly enhances the safety capabilities of pilots flying large unmanned aircraft in the National Airspace System,” said Scott Howe, Armstrong test pilot. “We took the time to mitigate the risks and to ensure that we, as a program, were prepared for this flight.”

Tuesday’s flight was the first remotely-piloted aircraft to use airborne detect and avoid technology to meet the intent of the FAA’s “see and avoid” rules, with all test objectives successfully accomplished.


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NASA to Host National Space Council Meeting at Kennedy Space Center


NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida will host a meeting of the National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday, Feb. 21.

NASA Television and the agency’s website will provide live coverage of the meeting beginning at 10 a.m. EST.

Media are invited to cover the vice president’s arrival on Tuesday, Feb. 20, at Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility and the council meeting on Wednesday.

After his arrival on Tuesday, Vice President Pence will tour Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch facilities and participate in a commercial spaceflight federal reception. On Wednesday, Vice President Pence will lead the National Space Council meeting inside Kennedy’s Space Station Processing Facility. “Moon, Mars, and Worlds Beyond: Winning the Next Frontier” will include testimonials from leaders in the civil, commercial, and national security sectors about the importance of the United States’ space enterprise. The Vice President will conclude his visit with a tour of Kennedy Space Center.

New Mexico Students to Speak with NASA Astronaut on Space Station

Expedition 54-55 prime Scott Tingle of NASA.

Students from six schools in Alamogordo, New Mexico, will speak with a NASA astronaut living, working and doing research aboard the International Space Station at 11 a.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 21. The 20-minute, Earth-to-space call will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

Middle and high school students will travel to Alamogordo High School for the call to Expedition 54 astronaut Scott Tingle aboard the space station, posing questions about life aboard the orbital outpost, NASA’s deep space exploration plans, and doing science in space.

Tingle arrived Dec.19 and is scheduled to return to Earth in June.

The New Mexico Museum of Space History (NMMSH) has collaborated with the Alamogordo Public School and the New Mexico School for the Blind and Visually Impaired for this event. NMMSH is a state museum chartered to educate the people of New Mexico and visitors in the history, science and technology of space.

Students have been preparing for the event by forming teams to design and build simple apparatuses or experiments involving fluid management, combustion, or crystal growth to compare performance in a 1g vs simulated microgravity environment. Some 1,500 students and teachers are expected to be on-site at Alamogordo High School during the downlink with 4,000 more watching virtually in school auditoriums throughout Alamogordo Public Schools.

NASA TV to Air Return of 3 International Space Station Crew

Expedition 52 Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson of NASA, Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Jack Fischer of NASA float through the Harmony module of the International Space Station. Credits: NASA
Expedition 52 Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson of NASA, Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Jack Fischer of NASA float through the Harmony module of the International Space Station.
Credits: NASA

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and her Expedition 52 crew are scheduled to return to Earth Saturday, Sept. 2. NASA TV and website will provide complete coverage.

The complete schedule of return (all times EDT):

2:15 p.m. – farewell and hatch closure (hatch closure at 2:40 p.m.)
5:30 p.m. – undocking (undocking at 5:58 p.m.)
8 p.m. – deorbit burn and landing (deorbit burn at 8:29 p.m. and landing at 9:22 p.m.)
11 p.m. – replay of hatch closure, undocking and landing activities

Nasa Begins the ACT-America campaign

Nasaphoto

WASHINGTON, July 6, 2016— NASA’s airborne experiment to improve scientists’ understanding of the sources of two powerful greenhouse gases and how they cycle into and out of the atmosphere begins now.The Atmospheric Carbon and Transport–America, or ACT-America campaign will measure concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane in relation to weather systems. The study will gather real-time measurements from research aircraft and ground stations.

“Carbon dioxide and methane are the two most important long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” said Ken Davis, ACT-America principal investigator from Pennsylvania State University, University Park. “We have a very difficult time inferring important sources and sinks of these gases, including uptake of carbon dioxide by the biosphere, and emission of methane from a variety of human and biological sources. We hope to improve our ability to measure those sources and sinks today, which should enable improvements in the management and simulation of future climate.””

ACT-America employs new gen data analysis systems to convert regional observations of greenhouse gas concentrations and the meteorological conditions. The information will help scientists interpret long-term greenhouse gas observations.

The ACT-America campaign will bridge the gap between satellite and ground observations, look how weather patterns contribute the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases. The campaign team includes researchers and flight crews collecting data in the air, and scientists on the ground synthesizing that information into computer models. The first flights will be based out of NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, and Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia. Subsequent flights this summer will be based in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Shreveport, Louisiana.

ACT-America team members and the two NASA research aircraft will be available to the media at an event at Langley on Friday, July 15, from 9 to 11 a.m. EDT. This summer’s flights are the first of five field campaigns planned during the study. NASA collects data from space, air, land and sea to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future.
For more information about ACT-America, go to: http://act-america.larc.nasa.gov


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Helicopter News

Just crossing the transom now, there were alerts today of a number of helicopter events:

  • The fleet of North Sea Super Pumas were reinstated after the Sumburgh crash that killed 4 oil workers:
    but the L2 version of the helicopter – the Super Puma model involved in Friday’s crash – will only be allowed to fly on the what has been described as “non passenger revenue operations”

  • 1 hurt in helicopter crash in Tonto National Forest when a helicopter leased by APS made a hard landing with six people aboard

See Video below

  • Helicopter crashes for science at NASA Langley

See Video below

  • The Canadian NTSB indicated that the Robinson Helicopter R44 II in July 2012 in Carcross, Yukon occurred because of the pilot’s failure to check winds affecting the landing area. On July 10, 2012, an R44 II operated by Horizon Helicopters Ltd. transported 2 Yukon Government surveyors to bear-bait sites in the Carcross area. The helicopter departed Carcross at 3 p.m. followed the north shore of Tagish Lake and approached the wildlife survey site from the west. At approximately 3:13 p.m., the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre received an emergency locator transmitter signal from the aircraft. The wreckage was found approximately 5 nautical miles east of Carcross on Nares Mountain. The pilot was fatally injured, one passenger was seriously injured, and another received minor injuries.
  • On Oahu, a civilian pilot and a passenger crashed in a pineapple field a mile south of Wheeler Army Airfield. Both were hospitalized. The privately owned AC 8KCAB Decathlon experienced a loss of power. The accident was originally listed as occurring in a helicopter, but it is a single engine fixed wing plane registered to J3 ENGINEERING.

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    JAN. 10 NASA MEDIA BRIEFING ON NEXT LANDSAT MISSION


    WASHINGTON — NASA will hold a news briefing at 1 p.m. EST on Thursday, Jan. 10, about the upcoming launch of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM). The briefing will be held in the James E. Webb Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E St. SW, Washington. The news conference will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

    LDCM is a collaboration between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey that will continue the Landsat Program’s 40-year data record of monitoring Earth’s landscapes from space. LDCM will expand and improve on that record with observations that advance a wide range of Earth sciences and contribute to the management of agriculture, water and forest resources. The spacecraft is scheduled to launch Feb. 11.

    The panelists for the briefing are:

    • David Jarrett, LDCM program executive, NASA Headquarters, Washington
    • Jim Irons, LDCM project scientist, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
    • Ken Schwer, LDCM project manager, Goddard Space Flight Center
    • Matthew Larsen, associate director for climate and land use change, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Va.

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    NASA Kicks Off 2013 First Robotics Season with Live Broadcast Jan. 5


    WASHINGTON — NASA Television will broadcast the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Kickoff event on Saturday, Jan. 5, starting at 10:30 a.m. EST from Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester. The event also will be streamed live on NASA’s website.

    As in past years, NASA plays a significant role by providing public access to robotics programs to encourage young people to investigate careers in the sciences and engineering. Through the NASA Robotics Alliance Project, the agency provides grants for almost 250 teams and sponsors four regional student competitions, including a FIRST regional competition in Washington that will be held March 28-30.

    Each year, FIRST presents a new robotics competition scenario where each team receives an identical kit of parts and has six weeks to design and build a robot based on the team’s interpretation of the game scenario. Other than dimension and weight restrictions, the look and function of the robots is up to each individual team. This year more than 2,500 teams from 49 states, and 12 countries will participate.

    Engineer Dean Kamen founded FIRST in 1989 to help convince American youth that engineering and technology are exciting and ‘cool’ fields. NASA participation in the FIRST program is provided through the NASA Headquarters Science Mission Directorate in Washington.


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    NASA TO HOLD COMMERCIAL CREW PROGRAM STATUS UPDATE JAN. 9


    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA will hold a status update news conference to discuss the progress of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) at 2 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Jan. 9. The briefing from Kennedy Space Center in Florida will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency’s website.

    Through CCP, NASA is facilitating the development of U.S. commercial crew space transportation capabilities to achieve safe, reliable and cost-effective access to and from low-Earth orbit for potential future government and commercial customers.

    Briefing participants are:

    • Phil McAlister, NASA Commercial Spaceflight Development director
    • Ed Mango, NASA Commercial Crew Program manager
    • Rob Meyerson, Blue Origin president and program manager
    • John Mulholland, The Boeing Co. Commercial Programs Space
      Exploration vice president and program manager

    • Mark Sirangelo, Sierra Nevada Corp vice president and SNC Space
      Systems chairman

    • Garrett Reisman, Space Exploration Technologies Commercial Crew
      project manager

    To participate by phone, media representatives must call the newsroom at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston at 281-483-5111, 15 minutes before the briefing begins. Priority will be given to journalists participating in person. Questions by phone will be taken as time permits. To participate via Twitter, journalists should use the hashtag #askNASA.


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    NASA EVENTS SET FOR AMERICAN ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY MEETING


    WASHINGTON — NASA scientists will present new findings on a wide range of astrophysics topics next week at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). The meeting takes place Jan. 6-10 at the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd, in Long Beach, Calif. Media registration for the event is open.

    None of the briefings will be carried on NASATelevision, but all will be web-streamed on AAS’s website for registered journalists.

    NASA’s media briefings during the meeting will feature topics such as new video of a rapidly rotating neutron star, the latest images of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, and the most detailed “weather map” of a brown dwarf star. In addition, NASA scientists and their colleagues who use NASA research capabilities will present noteworthy findings during several scientific sessions throughout the week.


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    NASA RELEASE: FERMI IMPROVES ITS VISION FOR THUNDERSTORM GAMMA-RAY FLASHES


    WASHINGTON — Thanks to improved data analysis techniques and a new operating mode, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is now 10 times better at catching the brief outbursts of high-energy light mysteriously produced above thunderstorms.

    The outbursts, known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), last only a few thousandths of a second, but their gamma rays rank among the highest-energy light that naturally occurs on Earth. The enhanced GBM discovery rate helped scientists show most TGFs also generate a strong burst of radio waves, a finding that will change how
    scientists study this poorly understood phenomenon.

    Before being upgraded, the GBM could capture only TGFs that were bright enough to trigger the instrument’s on-board system, which meant many weaker events were missed.

    “In mid-2010, we began testing a mode where the GBM directly downloads full-resolution gamma-ray data even when there is no on-board trigger, and this allowed us to locate many faint TGFs we had been missing,” said lead researcher Valerie Connaughton, a member of the GBM team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). She presented the findings Wednesday in an invited talk at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. A paper detailing the results is accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics.

    The results were so spectacular that on Nov. 26 the team uploaded new flight software to operate the GBM in this mode continuously, rather than in selected parts of Fermi’s orbit.

    Connaughton’s team gathered GBM data for 601 TGFs from August 2008 to August 2011, with most of the events, 409 in all, discovered through the new techniques. The scientists then compared the gamma-ray data to radio emissions over the same period.

    Lightning emits a broad range of very low frequency (VLF) radio waves, often heard as pop-and-crackle static when listening to AM radio. The World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN), a research collaboration operated by the University of Washington in Seattle, routinely detects these radio signals and uses them to pinpoint the
    location of lightning discharges anywhere on the globe to within about 12 miles (20 km).

    Scientists have known for a long time TGFs were linked to strong VLF bursts, but they interpreted these signals as originating from lightning strokes somehow associated with the gamma-ray emission.

    “Instead, we’ve found when a strong radio burst occurs almost simultaneously with a TGF, the radio emission is coming from the TGF itself,” said co-author Michael Briggs, a member of the GBM team.

    The researchers identified much weaker radio bursts that occur up to several thousandths of a second before or after a TGF. They interpret these signals as intracloud lightning strokes related to, but not created by, the gamma-ray flash.

    Scientists suspect TGFs arise from the strong electric fields near the tops of thunderstorms. Under certain conditions, the field becomes strong enough that it drives a high-speed upward avalanche of electrons, which give off gamma rays when they are deflected by air molecules.

    “What’s new here is that the same electron avalanche likely responsible for the gamma-ray emission also produces the VLF radio bursts, and this gives us a new window into understanding this phenomenon,” said Joseph Dwyer, a physics professor at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla., and a member of the study team.

    Because the WWLLN radio positions are far more precise than those based on Fermi’s orbit, scientists will develop a much clearer picture of where TGFs occur and perhaps which types of thunderstorms tend to produce them.

    The GBM scientists predict the new operating mode and analysis techniques will allow them to catch about 850 TGFs each year. While this is a great improvement, it remains a small fraction of the roughly 1,100 TGFs that fire up each day somewhere on Earth, according to the team’s latest estimates.

    Likewise, TGFs detectable by the GBM represent just a small fraction of intracloud lightning, with about 2,000 cloud-to-cloud lightning strokes for every TGF.

    The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership and is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Fermi was developed in collaboration with
    the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States.

    The GBM Instrument Operations Center is located at the National Space Science Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala. The GBM team includes a collaboration of scientists from UAH, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and other institutions.


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    NASA AND PARTNERS TEST UNMANNED AIRCRAFT TECHNOLOGY IN N.D.

    NASA AND PARTNERS TEST UNMANNED AIRCRAFT TECHNOLOGY IN N.D.

    GRAND FORKS, N.D. – A joint team of government, a not-for-profit research and development organization and academia has completed two weeks of flight testing “sense and avoid” technology that could some day help unmanned aircraft better integrate into the national air transportation system.

    The MITRE Corporation and the University of North Dakota (UND) developed automatic sense and avoid computer software algorithms that were uploaded onto a NASA Langley Research Center general aviation aircraft. The NASA Langley Cirrus SR-22 flew 147 maneuvers during 39 hours of flight tests in airspace near the Grand Forks International Airport. A supporting UND aircraft flew more than 40 hours during the tests.

    During the Limited Deployment – Cooperative Airspace Project (LD-CAP) flights the NASA aircraft demonstrated how technology onboard allowed it to sense and avoid the UND Cessna 172 “intruder” plane, flown by a university instructor pilot. The Cirrus, which has been developed as a testbed to assess and mimic unmanned aircraft systems, had a safety pilot in the cockpit, but researchers say computer programs developed by MITRE and UND automatically maneuvered the aircraft to avoid conflicts.

    “This partnership has allowed us to address challenges from a national perspective,” said Frank Jones, NASA Langley LD-CAP deployment lead. “The strengths that NASA Langley, MITRE and UND brought here have enabled us to accomplish a lot in terms of how much data we have been able to collect.”

    The data from this flight test will validate work done in simulation and help engineers determine howthey can design systems so that unmanned aircraft can be safely incorporated into the skies. “One of the toughest obstacles to safe integration of unmanned aircraft into civilian airspace is the availability of technology to mitigate the lack of an on board pilot who can see and avoid,” said Andy Lacher, MITRE’s UAS Integration Lead. “This is a complex operational and technical challenge that requires significant research in the community to address. What we are doing here will help inform and future development of performance standards for sense and avoid.”

    More than 100 leaders from academia, industry, government, the military and the general aviation community came to the Grand Forks Airport to observe the LD-CAP flight demonstration. Live, on a large screen, they saw how a remotely piloted aircraft, equipped with technology, such as satellite-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast ADS-B data-link tracking, could detect a plane in its vicinity then automatically be safely maneuvered away from any possible conflict.

    Unmanned aircraft systems are growing in popularity and have many possible uses, including remote firefighting, search and rescue and surveillance. But their routine use in civil airspace creates technical, operational and policy challenges.

    Organizers say sense and avoid technology is just one piece of the puzzle and that these initial flight tests further illustrate the complexity of incorporating remotely piloted aircraft into the national airspace. “We are dealing with a very complex problem that no one organization can solve on its own,” said Jones. “The door is open and now it is time to gather data and explore the potential solutions.”

    Follow-on testing is expected to feature additional advanced software by MITRE and UND as well as sense and avoid software managed by a task automation framework developed by Draper Laboratory.


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    NASA, PARTNERS LAUNCH: BEYOND WASTE INNOVATORS

    PASADENA, Calif. — NASA and partners from the LAUNCH: Beyond Waste forum will discuss innovative ideas for waste management during a 3-day forum July 20-22. Waste management is important for planning long-duration human spaceflight missions to an asteroid, Mars or beyond.

    Reporters are invited to attend the forum at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Reporters must register in advance by contacting Joshua Buck at jbuck@nasa.gov by 2 p.m. PDT (5 p.m. EDT) July 19.

    LAUNCH: Beyond Waste is part of an initiative to identify, showcase and support innovative approaches to sustainability challenges through a series of forums. It is the fourth forum in the series.

    LAUNCH allows NASA to propel innovative solutions that help those outside the agency make the connection between our lives on Earth and how we live and work in space. Through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s involvement, LAUNCH places a special emphasis on accelerating innovations poised for large-scale impact in improving the lives of people in the developing world.

    During the forum, nine international participants will showcase new innovations that could address waste management problems on Earth and may be used to solve problems for long-duration spaceflight.

    NASA, USAID, Nike Inc. and the U.S. State Department are LAUNCH founding partners. The Office of Naval Research; Vestergaard Frandsen; IDEO, a design and innovation consulting firm; and Architecture for Humanity are partners for LAUNCH: Beyond Waste.

    The partners all contributed to planning the forum, selecting innovators and recruiting other event participants. A list of the innovators and innovations will be available online before the forum at:

    http://www.launch.org

    The public may access and engage in the Launch: Beyond Waste conversation online through MindMapr at:

    http://mindmapr.nasa.gov

    A link to live video of the conference will be on UStream at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) July 20 at:

    http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-educational

    Nasa Admin tours Lockheed Martin

    WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will tour Lockheed Martin’s facilities near Denver on Tuesday, Jan. 10.

    Bolden and Lockheed Martin’s Vice President and General Manager for Human Spaceflight John Karas will hold a brief press availability after Bolden’s tour on Tuesday, Jan. 10, at 1:30 p.m.

    Media who wish to attend should contact Joan Underwood at joan.b.underwood@lmco.com no later than 10 a.m. MST on Tuesday, Jan. 10.

    For directions to the Lockheed Martin Waterton Facility, visit:

    http://bit.ly/ypOM49

    Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor to NASA for Orion, a multipurpose exploration spacecraft designed to explore destinations throughout our solar system. The Orion spacecraft can be used for both crew and cargo transportation and is comprised of a crew module, service module and launch abort system.

    CELEBRATE NASA MARS LAUNCH, Public Invited

    Who: Open to the public
    What: Mars Family Day – celebrating the launch of Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and its Curiosity rover.
    When: Saturday, November 26, 2011– 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
    Where: Virginia Air & Space Center, 600 Settlers Landing Road, downtown Hampton
    How: Launch viewing and Mars Family Day activities are included in regular exhibit admission. Members always receive free admission.

    More than 100 researchers and technicians at NASA Langley have worked on the MSL mission. Mars Family Day participants will be able to: learn more about MSL and Langley’s role in it; create an “egg” Mars lander; go on a MarsQuest scavenger hunt to win the chance for a free VASC Summer Science Camp; test their Martian skills with rover races; become an engineer for the day to help work on the challenges of landing on the Red Planet; see how much they weigh on Mars and other planets; and see a Mars meteorite and Viking lander, Viking orbiter and Mars rover models.

    During the day, Air & Space Center visitors will also be able to participate in a free live, interactive video broadcast about the MSL launch from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. NASA is partnering with the National Institute of Aerospace, also in Hampton; the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS); and VASC to host livestream web coverage.

    NASA Data and New Techniques Yield Detailed Views of Solar Storms

    WASHINGTON — NASA spacecraft observations and new data processing techniques are giving scientists better insight into the evolution and development of solar storms that can damage satellites, disrupt communications and cause power grid failures on Earth.

    The solar storms, called Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), are being observed from NASA’s twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, spacecraft launched in 2006. The duo represents a key component within a fleet of NASA spacecraft that enhance the capability to predict solar storms.

    Previous spacecraft imagery did not clearly show the structure of a solar disturbance as it traveled toward Earth. As a result, forecasters had to estimate when storms would arrive without knowing the details of how they evolve and grow. New processing techniques used on STEREO data allow scientists to see how solar eruptions develop into space storms at the Earth.

    “The clarity these new images provide will improve the observational inputs into space weather models for better forecasting,” said Lika Guhathakurta, STEREO program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

    CMEs are billion-ton clouds of solar plasma launched by the same sun explosions that spark solar flares. When they sweep past Earth, they can cause auroras, radiation storms that can disrupt sensitive electronics on satellites, and in extreme cases, power outages. Better tracking of these clouds and the ability to predict their arrival is an important part of space weather forecasting.

    Newly released images from cameras on the STEREO-A spacecraft reveal detailed features in a large Earth-directed CME in late 2008, connecting the original magnetized structure in the sun’s corona to the intricate anatomy of the interplanetary storm as it hit the planet three days later. When the data were collected, the spacecraft was more than 65 million miles away from Earth.

    The spacecraft’s wide-angle cameras captured the images. They detect ordinary sunlight scattered by free-floating electrons in plasma clouds. When these clouds in CMEs leave the sun, they are bright and easy to see. However, visibility is quickly reduced, as the clouds expand into the void. The clouds are about one thousand times fainter than the Milky Way, which makes direct imaging of them difficult. That also has limited our understanding of the connection between solar storms and the coronal structures that cause them.

    “Separating these faint signals from the star field behind them proved especially challenging, but it paid off,” said Craig DeForest, scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. and lead author of an Astrophysical Journal article released online yesterday. “We have been drawing pictures of structures like these for several decades. Now that we can see them so far from the sun, we find there is still a lot to learn.”

    These observations can pinpoint not only the arrival time of the CME, but also its mass. The brightness of the cloud enabled researchers to calculate the cloud’s gas density throughout the structure, and compare it to direct measurements by other NASA spacecraft. When this technique is applied to future storms, forecasters will be able to say with confidence whether Earth is about to be hit by a small or large cloud, and where on the sun the material originated.

    STEREO’s two observatories orbit the sun, one ahead of Earth and one behind. They will continue to move apart over time. STEREO is the third mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes program. The program seeks to understand the fundamental physical processes of the space environment from the sun to Earth and other planets.

    The STEREO spacecraft were built and are operated for NASA by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the mission, instruments and science center. The STEREO instruments were designed and built by scientific institutions in the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, and Switzerland.


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    $400 Million Solicitation

    NASA has selected five firms for awards under a $400 million solicitation to perform large general construction projects.

    The work will be performed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Ellington Field, the Sonny Carter Training Facility, all in Houston, and the White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico.

    The five selected firms are Swinerton Builders of Arvada, Colo.; J.T. Vaughn Construction, LLC of Houston; Kiewit Building Group of Arlington, Va.; Skanska USA Building of Houston; and Hensel Phelps Construction Co. of Austin, Texas.

    Awardees will provide general construction services, including limited design-build capability, modification, repair and demolition for multiple unrelated large projects. The guaranteed minimum amount of work for each firm under the contracts is $5,000. The maximum total amount of all task orders under all contracts awarded under this
    solicitation shall not exceed $400 million for the five-year period of performance. There are no options included.

    Nasa Holds Open Source Conference in California


    Open Source is the practice and philosophy of promoting access to a technology’s source content, a pragmatic methodology that brings peer collaboration, peer production, diversity and community innovation.

    From March 29-30 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PDT on both days. the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California will be hosting a Nasa Open Source Summit.

    Attending will be open source engineers, policy makers and other open sourcers.

    Tsengdar Lee, Nicholas Skytland and others will be available for interview from noon to 1pm.

    Tsengdar Lee is Nasa’s acting chief technology officer for information technology.Nicholas Skytland, director of NASA’s Open Government Initiative.

    Reporters may register with Cristina LeClerc cristina.k.leclerc@nasa.gov by 4 p.m. on Monday, March 28. Non reporters may contact Jessica Culler jessica.culler@nasa.gov.



    Nasa Open Source Summit


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    LUNAR AND PLANETARY CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS SOLAR SYSTEM EVOLUTION

    HOUSTON — NASA researchers and other scientists will present findings that provide new insights into the evolution of the solar system during the 42nd annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

    The conference will run March 7-11 at the Woodlands Waterway Marriott Hotel and Convention Center, 1601 Lake Robbins Drive, The Woodlands, Texas.

    Key events include the unveiling of future planetary science strategy; early science results from a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency mission, called Hayabusa, that returned the first particle samples from an asteroid; presentations about the recent comet Hartley 2 flyby; and the upcoming MESSENGER mission, the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.

    The conference also will include a briefing about the Planetary Decadal Survey at 5:30 p.m. CST on March 7. The survey is a strategy released by the National Research Council in Washington to prioritize missions, research areas and observations ten or more years into the future. The briefing’s featured speaker will be Steve Squyres of Cornell University. He is the survey’s chair and principal investigator for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers.

    News media representatives interested in registering or obtaining more information should visit:

    http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/

    The conference is hosted by the Lunar and Planetary Institute in . The institute is managed by the Universities Space Research Association, a national, nonprofit consortium of universities chartered in 1969 by the National Academy of Sciences at NASA’s request.


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    NASA RESCHEDULES NEWS CONFERENCE ON STARDUST-NEXT COMET FLYBY

    PASADENA, Calif. — NASA has rescheduled the news conference about the Stardust-NExT comet flyby for 12:30 p.m. PST (3:30 p.m. EST) today.

    The briefing will release images and early data from the comet encounter and will be carried live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

    The participants are:

    -Ed Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, Washington
    -Joe Veverka, Stardust-NExT principal investigator, Cornell University

    -Tim Larson, Stardust-NExT project manager, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
    -Don Brownlee, Stardust-NExT co-investigator, University of Washington, Seattle
    -Pete Schultz, Stardust-NExT co-investigator, Brown University

    The news conference was originally scheduled for 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST). The additional time will allow scientists to process and analyze data and images gathered when the spacecraft flew past comet Tempel 1, with closest approach at a distance of 112 miles. The mission team had expected the closest-approach images to be sent first. Instead, the images were downlinked in chronological order, starting with the most distant approach views.


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    NASA’s Hubble Finds Most Distant Galaxy Candidate Ever Seen in Universe

    Astronomers have pushed NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to its limits by finding what they believe is the most distant object ever seen in the universe. Its light traveled 13.2 billion years to reach Hubble, roughly 150 million years longer than the previous record holder. The age of the universe is 13.7 billion years.

    The dim object, called UDFj-39546284, is a compact galaxy of blue stars that existed 480 million years after the Big Bang, only four percent of the universe’s current age. It is tiny. Over one hundred such mini-galaxies would be needed to make up our Milky Way.

    Astronomers were surprised to find evidence that the rate at which the universe was forming stars grew precipitously in about a 200-million-year time span.

    “We’re seeing huge changes in the rate of star birth that tell us that if we go a little further back in time we’re going to see even more dramatic changes,” says Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz. The rate of star birth increased by about a factor of ten going from 480 million years to 650 million years after the Big Bang.

    “These observations provide us with our best insights yet into the earlier primeval objects that have yet to be found,” adds Rychard Bouwens of the Leiden University in the Netherlands.

    Astronomers don’t know exactly when the first stars appeared in the universe, but every step farther from Earth takes them deeper into the early universe’s “formative years” when stars and galaxies were just beginning to emerge in the aftermath of the Big Bang. “We’re moving into a regime where there are big changes afoot. Another couple of hundred million years toward the Big Bang, that will be the time where the first galaxies really are starting to get built up,” says Illingworth.

    Bouwens and Illingworth are reporting the discovery in the January 27 issue of the British science journal Nature.

    The even more distant proto-galaxies that Illingworth expects are out there will require the infrared vision of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which is the successor to Hubble. Planned for launch later this decade, Webb will provide confirming spectroscopic measurements of the object’s tremendous distance being reported today.

    After over a year of detailed analysis, the object was positively identified in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field – Infrared (HUDF-IR) data taken in the late summer of both 2009 and 2010. This observation was made with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) starting just a few months after it was installed into the Hubble Space Telescope in May of 2009, during the last NASA space shuttle servicing mission to Hubble.

    The object appears as a faint dot of starlight in the Hubble exposures. It is too young and too small to have the familiar spiral shape that is characteristic of galaxies in the local universe. Though its individual stars can’t be resolved by Hubble, the evidence suggests that this is a compact galaxy of hot stars that first started to form over 100-200 million years earlier, from gas trapped in a pocket of dark matter.

    The proto-galaxy is only visible at the farthest infrared wavelengths observable by Hubble. This means that the expansion of the universe has stretched and thereby reddened its light more than that of any other galaxy previously identified in the HUDF-IR, to the very limit of what Hubble can detect. Webb will go deeper into infrared wavelengths and will be at least an order of magnitude more sensitive than Hubble, allowing it to more efficiently hunt for primeval galaxies at even greater distances, at earlier times, closer to the Big Bang.

    Astronomers plumb the depths of the universe, and probe its history, by measuring how much the light from an object has been stretched by the expansion of space. This is called the redshift value or “z.” In general, the greater the observed “z” value for a galaxy, the more distant it is in time and space as observed from our own Milky Way. Before Hubble was launched, astronomers could only see galaxies out to a z of approximately 1, corresponding to halfway across the universe.

    The original Hubble Deep Field taken in 1995 leapfrogged to z=4, or roughly 90 percent of the way back to the beginning of time. The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) produced the Hubble Ultra Deep Field of 2004, pushing back the limit to z~6. ACS was installed on Hubble during Servicing Mission 3B in 2002. Hubble’s first infrared camera, the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, reached out to z=7. The WFC3 first took us back to z~8, and has now plausibly penetrated for the first time to z=10. The Webb Space Telescope is expected to leapfrog to z of approximately 15, 275 million years after the Big Bang, and possibly beyond. The very first stars may have formed between z of 30 and 15.

    The hypothesized hierarchical growth of galaxies — from stellar clumps to majestic spirals and ellipticals — didn’t become evident until the Hubble Space Telescope deep-field exposures. The first 500 million years of the universe’s existence, from z of 1000 to 10, is now the missing chapter in the hierarchical growth of galaxies. It’s not clear how the universe assembled structure out of a darkening, cooling fireball of the Big Bang. As with a developing embryo, astronomers know there must have been an early period of rapid changes that would set the initial conditions to make the universe of galaxies what it is today.


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    NASA MEDIA ACCREDITATION FOR NEXT SPACE SHUTTLE FLIGHT ENDS FEB. 11

    WASHINGTON — The deadline for media accreditation for the February space shuttle launch to the International Space station ends on Feb. 11. Shuttle Discovery and six astronauts are targeted to launch on the STS-133 mission on Feb. 24 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

    Reporters must apply for credentials to attend the launch or cover the mission from other NASA centers. To be accredited, reporters must work for verifiable newsgathering organizations. No substitutions of credentials are allowed at any NASA facility.

    The 11-day mission will be the 35th flight to the station and the 39th and final scheduled flight for Discovery. The mission will deliver and install the Permanent Multipurpose Module; the Express Logistics Carrier 4, an external platform that holds large equipment; and critical spare components for the station. Discovery also will deliver Robonaut 2, or R2, to become a permanent resident of the station as the first human-like robot in space.

    NASA’s Office of Protective Services has changed its policy for processing foreign nationals. All journalists who are lawful permanent U.S. residents, have dual U.S. citizenship or are U.S. citizens representing international media outlets will have their credential applications processed in the same way as U.S. citizens who represent domestic media.

    Additional time may be required to process accreditation requests by journalists from certain designated countries. Designated countries include those with which the U.S. has no diplomatic relations, countries on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, those under U.S. sanction or embargo and countries associated with proliferation concerns.

    Contact the accrediting NASA center for details. Journalists should confirm accreditation before traveling.

    KENNEDY SPACE CENTER

    Accreditation for the STS-133 mission badges remains open. Mission badges previously issued for Discovery’s first launch attempt in November 2010 are valid.

    Reporters applying for credentials at Kennedy should submit requests via the Web at:

    https://media.ksc.nasa.gov

    Reporters must use work e-mail addresses, not personal accounts, when applying. Applicants will receive confirmation via e-mail when accreditation approved.

    Accredited media representatives with mission badges will have access to Kennedy from launch through the end of the mission. The application deadline for mission badges is Feb. 11 for all reporters requesting credentials. Reporters with special logistic requests for Kennedy, such as space for satellite trucks, trailers, electrical connections or workspace, must contact Laurel Lichtenberger by Feb. 11 at:

    laurel.a.lichtenberger@nasa.gov.

    Wireless Internet access is available at Kennedy’s news center. Workspace in the news center and the news center annex is provided on a first-come basis, limited to one space per organization. To set up temporary telephone, fax, ISDN or network lines, media representatives must arrange with BellSouth at 800-213-4988. Reporters must have an assigned seat in the Kennedy newsroom prior to setting up lines.

    To obtain an assigned seat, contact Patricia Christian at: patricia.christian-1@nasa.gov.

    Journalists must have a public affairs escort to all other areas of Kennedy except the Launch Complex 39 cafeteria.

    JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

    Reporters may obtain credentials for NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston by calling the center’s newsroom at 281-483-5111 or by presenting STS-133 mission credentials from Kennedy.

    Media representatives planning to cover the mission only from Johnson need to apply for credentials only at the center. The application deadline for mission badges is Feb. 11 for all reporters requesting credentials.

    Journalists covering the mission from Johnson using Kennedy credentials must contact the center’s newsroom by Feb. 11 to arrange workspace, phone lines and other logistics.

    Johnson is responsible for credentialing media if the shuttle lands at NASA’s White Sands Space Harbor, N.M. If a landing is imminent at White Sands, Johnson will arrange credentials.

    DRYDEN FLIGHT RESEARCH CENTER

    Notice for a shuttle landing at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards Air Force Base in California could be short. Domestic media outlets should consider accrediting Los Angeles-based personnel who could travel quickly to Dryden.

    Deadlines for submitting Dryden accreditation requests are Jan. 28 for non-U.S. media, regardless of citizenship, and March 1 for U.S. media who are U.S. citizens or who have permanent residency status.

    For Dryden media credentials, U.S. citizens representing domestic media outlets must provide their full name, date of birth, place of birth, media organization, driver’s license number with the name of the issuing state, and the last six digits of their social security number.

    In addition to the above requirements, foreign media representatives, regardless of citizenship, must provide data including their citizenship, visa or passport number and its expiration date. Foreign nationals representing either domestic or foreign media who have permanent residency status must provide their alien registration number and expiration date.


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    NEXT INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION CREW HOLDS NEWS CONFERENCE

    HOUSTON — The next three crew members to live and work aboard the International Space Station will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. CST on Wednesday, Jan. 26 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The news conference will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency’s website. Questions will be taken from participating NASA centers.

    NASA astronaut Ron Garan and crewmates, Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Andrey Borisenko, will participate in individual round-robin interviews, in person or by phone, following the news conference. The crew also will participate in a photo opportunity for reporters at Johnson.

    U.S. and foreign media representatives planning to attend the briefing or participate in the round-robin interviews must contact the Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 by 4 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 24.

    Garan, Samokutyaev and Borisenko are three of the six crew members for Expedition 27 and 28. The trio is scheduled to launch to the station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on March 29 (March 30 Kazakhstan time). They will join Expedition 27 NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, European Space Agency astronaut Paolo Nespoli and Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev who will stay aboard the station until mid-May.

    On June 1, NASA’s Mike Fossum, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Sergei Volkov will join Garan, Samokutyaev and Borisenko to complete the Expedition 28 crew.


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    NASA UPDATES BROADCAST PLANS FOR JAPANESE CARGO FLIGHT TO STATION

    Jan. 20, 2011
    MEDIA ADVISORY

    HOUSTON — The launch of the H-II Transfer Vehicle “Kounotori2” (HTV2)
    planned for Thursday, Jan. 20, was rescheduled due to a forecast for
    weather conditions that would exceed launch restrictions. The Japan
    Aerospace Exploration Agency reset the launch for 11:37 p.m. CST on
    Friday, Jan. 21.

    NASA still plans live television coverage of the launch from
    Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. With an adjusted
    rendezvous plan, the grapple and attachment of the cargo ship to the
    International Space Station remain planned for Thursday, Jan. 27, and
    also will be covered live on NASA Television.

    NASA TV’s updated programming schedule for HTV2 events includes (all
    times CST):

    Friday, Jan. 21:
    11 p.m. — Launch coverage, anchored from NASA’s Johnson Space Center
    in Houston, begins. Launch is scheduled at 11:37 p.m.

    Thursday, Jan. 27:
    5 a.m. — Grapple coverage, anchored from Johnson, begins. The grapple
    of HTV2 is scheduled at 5:44 a.m.
    8 a.m. — Berthing coverage, anchored from Johnson, begins. The
    attachment should be complete at approximately 10 a.m.


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    NASA TV TO BROADCAST JAPANESE CARGO CRAFT FLIGHT TO SPACE STATION

    HOUSTON — NASA plans live television coverage of the launch, grapple and berthing of the second unpiloted Japanese cargo ship that will deliver more than four tons of food and supplies to the International Space Station.

    The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is scheduled to launch an H-IIB rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan at 12:29 a.m. CST (3:29 p.m. Japan time) on Thursday, Jan. 20. The launch vehicle will send the Kounotori2 H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV2) orbit on a week-long rendezvous with the station. “Kounotori” is the Japanese word for white stork, emblematic of delivering happiness and joy.

    On Jan. 27, Expedition 26 Flight Engineers Cady Coleman and Paolo Nespoli will command the station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, to reach out, grapple Kounotori2, and attach it to the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module.

    In the following days, a pallet loaded with spare station parts will be extracted from a slot in the cargo ship and attached to an experiment platform outside the Japanese Kibo module. Other cargo will be transferred internally to the station.

    The cargo vehicle will be filled with trash, detached from the station and sent to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere at the end of March.

    NASA Television’s programming schedule for HTV2 events includes (all times CST):

    Thursday, Jan. 20:

    12 a.m. — Launch coverage, anchored from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, begins. Launch is scheduled at 12:29 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 27:

    5 a.m. — Grapple coverage, anchored from Johnson, begins. The grapple of HTV2 is scheduled at 5:44 a.m.

    8 a.m. — Berthing coverage, anchored from Johnson, begins. The attachment should be complete at approximately 10 a.m.

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