NASA Awards Space Station Support Contract to ARES Corp

WASHINGTON -- NASA has signed a $144 million follow-on contract with ARES Corp. of Burlingame, Calif., for International Space Station Program integration and control services. 

ARES will provide support for configuration management, data management, information technology, safety and mission assurance, vehicle integrated performance, resource and budget analysis, program schedule development, engineering and technical services, spacecraft integration, international partner integration and strategic analysis planning. 

The three-year contract is effective Oct. 1, 2009 through Sept. 30, 2012, and includes two one-year options that could extend the contract through Sept. 30, 2014. If both options are exercised, the total value of the indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract would be $180 million. 

ARES will perform the work on-site at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, or at nearby offices. Significant subcontractors include Barrios Technology and Booz-Allen Hamilton, both of Houston. 

The previous contract was awarded in November 2003, and had a total value of $154 million, including all of the options that were exercised, through Sept. 30, 2009.

NASA Awards Contract for Constellation Spacesuit for the Moon

WASHINGTON -- NASA has awarded a contract to Oceaneering International Inc. of Houston, for the design, development and production of a new spacesuit system. The spacesuit will protect astronauts during Constellation Program voyages to the International Space Station and, by 2020, the surface of the moon. The subcontractors to Oceaneering are Air-Lock Inc. of Milford, Conn., David Clark Co. of Worcester, Mass., Cimarron Software Services Inc. of Houston, Harris Corporation of Palm Bay, Fla., Honeywell International Inc. of Glendale, Ariz., Paragon Space Development Corp. of Tucson, Ariz., and United Space Alliance of Houston. "The award of the spacesuit contract completes the spaceflight hardware requirements for the Constellation Program's first human flight in 2015," said Jeff Hanley, Constellation program manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Contracts for the Orion crew capsule and the Ares I rocket were awarded during the past two years. The cost-plus-award-fee spacesuit contract includes a basic performance period from June 2008 to September 2014 that has a value of $183.8 million. During the performance period, Oceaneering and its subcontractors will conduct design, development, test, and evaluation work culminating in the manufacture, assembly, and first flight of the suit components needed for astronauts aboard the Orion crew exploration vehicle. The basic contract also includes initial work on the suit design needed for the lunar surface. "I am excited about the new partnership between NASA and Oceaneering," said Glenn Lutz, project manager for the spacesuit system at Johnson. "Now it is time for our spacesuit team to begin the journey together that ultimately will put new sets of boot prints on the moon." Suits and support systems will be needed for as many as four astronauts on moon voyages and as many as six space station travelers. For short trips to the moon, the suit design will support a week's worth of moon walks. The system also must be designed to support a significant number of moon walks during potential six-month lunar outpost expeditions. In addition, the spacesuit and support systems will provide contingency spacewalk capability and protection against the launch and landing environment, such as spacecraft cabin leaks. Two contract options may be awarded in the future as part of this contract. Option 1 covers completion of design, development, test and evaluation for the moon surface suit components. Option 1 would begin in October 2010 and run through September 2018, under a cost-plus-award fee structure with a total value of $302.1 million. Option 2 provides for the Orion suit production, processing and sustaining engineering under a cost-plus-award fee or a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract structure with a maximum value of $260 million depending on hardware requirements. Option 2 would begin at the end of the basic performance period in October 2014, and would continue through September 2018.

Mars Phoenix Media Teleconference Scheduled for Today

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA and the University of Arizona, Tucson, will hold a media teleconference at 10 a.m. PDT, to report on the latest developments concerning the bright material discovered in the Martian soil by the Phoenix Mars Lander. Briefing participants: - Peter Smith, principal investigator, University of Arizona, Tuscon - Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. To participate in the teleconference, reporters should contact the JPL Media Relations Office at 818-354-5011 by 9:30 a.m. for the call-in number and passcode.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Puts Soil in Chemistry Lab, Team Discusses Next Steps

TUCSON, Ariz. -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander placed a sample of Martian soil in the spacecraft's wet chemistry laboratory today for the first time. Results from that instrument, part of Phoenix's Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, are expected to provide the first measurement of the acidity or alkalinity of the planet's soil. The analysis of this and other soil samples will help researchers determine whether ice beneath the soil ever has melted, and whether the soil has other qualities favorable for life. The Phoenix team is discussing what sample to deliver next to the lander's other analytical instrument, which bakes and sniffs soil to identify volatile ingredients. Engineers have identified possible problems in the mechanical and electrical operation of that instrument, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. Scientists are studying information provided by TEGA's analysis of the first Martian soil sample put in that instrument. The instrument has eight single-use oven cells; each cell can analyze one sample. When doors for a second TEGA oven were commanded open last week, the doors opened only partway. Later, the team determined that mechanical interference may prevent doors on that oven and three others from opening fully. The remaining three ovens are expected to have one door that opens fully and one that opens partially, as was the case with the first oven used. "The tests we have done in our test facility during the past few days show the robotic arm can deliver the simulated Martian soil through the opening with the doors in this configuration," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, lead scientist for TEGA. "We plan to save the cells where doors can open wider for accepting ice samples." Scientists believe the first soil sample delivered to TEGA was so clumpy that soil particles clogged a screen over the opening. Four days of vibration eventually succeeded at getting the soil through the screen. However, engineers believe the use of a motor to create the vibration may also have caused a short circuit in wiring near that oven. Concern about triggering other short circuits has prompted the Phoenix team to be cautious about the use of other TEGA cells. Subsequent soil samples for TEGA will be delivered with a different method than the first. The newer method will sprinkle soil into the instrument to make it easier for particles to get through the screens. The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the development partnership at Lockheed Martin in Denver. International contributions are from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus, Denmark; Max Planck Institute, Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute. EDITOR’S NOTE: NASA and the University of Arizona, Tucson, will hold a news media teleconference at 10:30 a.m. PDT, Thursday, June 26, to discuss science results and provide an update on future science gathering plans. To participate in the teleconference, news media should phone the JPL Media Relations Office at 818-354-5011 by 10 a.m. PDT, June 26, to obtain the dial-in number and passcode.

NASA Spacecraft Reveal Largest Crater in Solar System

PASADENA, Calif. -- New analysis of Mars' terrain using NASA spacecraft observations reveals what appears to be by far the largest impact crater ever found in the solar system. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Global Surveyor have provided detailed information about the elevations and gravity of the Red Planet's northern and southern hemispheres. A new study using this information may solve one of the biggest remaining mysteries in the solar system: why does Mars have two strikingly different kinds of terrain in its northern and southern hemispheres? The huge crater is creating intense scientific interest. The mystery of the two-faced nature of Mars has perplexed scientists since the first comprehensive images of the surface were beamed home by NASA spacecraft in the 1970s. The main hypotheses have been an ancient impact or some internal process related to the planet's molten subsurface layers. The impact idea, proposed in 1984, fell into disfavor because the basin's shape didn't seem to fit the expected round shape for a crater. The newer data is convincing some experts who doubted the impact scenario. "We haven't proved the giant-impact hypothesis, but I think we've shifted the tide," said Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Andrews-Hanna and co-authors Maria Zuber of MIT and Bruce Banerdt of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., report the new findings in the journal Nature this week. A giant northern basin that covers about 40 percent of Mars' surface, sometimes called the Borealis basin, is the remains of a colossal impact early in the solar system's formation, the new analysis suggests. At 5,300 miles across, it is about four times wider than the next-biggest impact basin known, the Hellas basin on southern Mars. An accompanying report calculates that the impacting object that produced the Borealis basin must have been about 1,200 miles across. That's larger than Pluto. "This is an impressive result that has implications not only for the evolution of early Mars, but also for early Earth's formation," said Michael Meyer, the Mars chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. This northern-hemisphere basin on Mars is one of the smoothest surfaces found in the solar system. The southern hemisphere is high, rough, heavily cratered terrain, which ranges from 2.5 to 5 miles higher in elevation than the basin floor. Other giant impact basins have been discovered that are elliptical rather than circular. But it took a complex analysis of the Martian surface from NASA's two Mars orbiters to reveal the clear elliptical shape of Borealis basin, which is consistent with being an impact crater. One complicating factor in revealing the elliptical shape of the basin was that after the time of the impact, which must have been at least 3.9 billion years ago, giant volcanoes formed along one part of the basin rim and created a huge region of high, rough terrain that obscures the basin's outlines. It took a combination of gravity data, which tend to reveal underlying structure, with data on current surface elevations to reconstruct a map of Mars elevations as they existed before the volcanoes erupted. "In addition to the elliptical boundary of the basin, there are signs of a possible second, outer ring - a typical characteristic of large impact basins," Banerdt said.

NASA to Reveal New Discoveries from Mercury

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a media teleconference Thursday, July 3, at 2 p.m. EDT, to discuss analysis of data from the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft's flyby of Mercury earlier this year. The spacecraft is the first designed to orbit the planet closest to the sun. It flew past Mercury on Jan. 14, 2008, and made the first up-close measurements since Mariner 10's final flyby in 1975. Analyses of the data show volcanoes were involved in the formation of plains. The data also suggest the planet's magnetic field is actively produced in its core. In addition, the mission has provided the first look at the chemical composition of Mercury's surface. The results will be reported in a series of 11 papers published July 4 in a special section of Science magazine. The teleconference participants are: - Marilyn Lindstrom, program scientist, NASA Headquarters - Sean Solomon, principal investigator, Carnegie Institution of Washington - James W. Head III, professor of geological sciences, Brown University, Providence, R.I. - William McClintock, senior research associate, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder - Thomas H. Zurbuchen, associate professor, Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

STEREO Creates First Images of the Solar System's Invisible Frontier

GREENBELT, Md. -- NASA's sun-focused Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, twin spacecraft unexpectedly detected particles from the edge of the solar system last year. This helped scientists map the energized particles where the hot solar wind slams into the cold interstellar medium. The two STEREO spacecraft were launched in 2006 into Earth's orbit around the sun to obtain stereo pictures of the sun's surface and measure magnetic fields and ion fluxes associated with solar explosions. From June to October 2007, sensors aboard both STEREO spacecraft detected energetic neutral atoms originating from the same spot in the sky, where the sun plunges through the interstellar medium. Mapping the region by means of neutral, or uncharged, atoms instead of light "heralds a new kind of astronomy using neutral atoms," said Dr. Robert Lin, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley and lead for the suprathermal electron sensor aboard the STEREO spacecraft. "You can't get a global picture of this region, one of the last unexplored regions of the heliosphere, through normal telescopes," Lin said. The heliosphere is a bubble in space produced by the solar wind. It stretches from the sun to beyond the orbit of Pluto. The solar wind streams off the Sun in all directions at great speeds. Once beyond the orbit of Pluto, this supersonic wind must slow down to meet the gases in the interstellar medium. As the solar wind slows, it changes direction to form a comet-like tail behind the sun. This subsonic flow region is called the heliosheath. The results, reported in the July 3 issue of the journal Nature, clear up a discrepancy in the amount of energy dumped into space by the decelerating solar wind. The solar wind was detected when Voyager 2 entered the heliosheath. Researchers determined that the newly discovered population of ions in the heliosheath contains about 70 percent of the dissipated energy from the solar wind, exactly the amount unaccounted for by Voyager 2's instruments. The Voyager 2 results also are reported in the July 3 issue of Nature. The Berkeley team concluded that these energetic neutral atoms were originally ions heated up in the termination shock area that lost their charge to cold atoms in the interstellar medium and, no longer hindered by magnetic fields, flowed back toward the sun and into the sensors aboard STEREO. "This is the first mapping of energetic neutral particles from the edge of the heliosphere," Lin said. According to Lin, the neutral atoms are probably hydrogen, which comprise most of the particles in the local interstellar medium. The charge exchange between hot ions and neutral atoms to generate energetic neutral atoms is well known around the sun and planets, including Earth and Jupiter. Spacecraft have used this as a means of remotely measuring the energy in ion plasmas since neutral atoms travel much farther than ions. NASA plans to launch the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, later this year to more thoroughly map the boundary of the solar system.

NASA Reveals New Discoveries From Mercury

GREENBELT, Md. -- Scientists have argued about the origins of Mercury's smooth plains and the source of its magnetic field for more than 30 years. Now, analyses of data from the January 2008 flyby of the planet by the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft have shown that volcanoes were involved in plains formation and suggest that its magnetic field is actively produced in the planet's core. Scientists additionally took their first look at the chemical composition of the planet's surface. The tiny craft probed the composition of Mercury's thin atmosphere, sampled charged particles (ions) near the planet, and demonstrated new links between both sets of observations and materials on Mercury's surface. The results are reported in a series of 11 papers published in a special section of Science magazine July 4. The controversy over the origin of Mercury's smooth plains began with the 1972 Apollo 16 moon mission, which suggested that some lunar plains came from material that was ejected by large impacts and then formed smooth "ponds." When Mariner 10 imaged similar formations on Mercury in 1975, some scientists believed that the same processes were at work. Others thought Mercury's plains material came from erupted lavas, but the absence of volcanic vents or other volcanic features in images from that mission prevented a consensus. Six of the papers in Science report on analyses of the planet's surface through its reflectance and color variation, surface chemistry, high-resolution imaging at different wavelengths, and altitude measurements. The researchers found evidence of volcanic vents along the margins of the Caloris basin, one of the solar system's youngest impact basins. They also found that Caloris has a much more complicated geologic history than previously believed. The first altitude measurements from any spacecraft at Mercury also found that craters on the planet are about a factor of two shallower than those on Earth's moon. The measurements also show a complex geologic history for Mercury. Mercury's core makes up at least 60 percent of its mass, a figure twice as large as any other known terrestrial planet. The flyby revealed that the magnetic field, originating in the outer core and powered by core cooling, drives very dynamic and complex interactions among the planet's interior, surface, exosphere and magnetosphere. Remarking on the importance of the core to surface geological structures, Principal Investigator Sean Solomon at the Carnegie Institution of Washington said, "The dominant tectonic landforms on Mercury, including areas imaged for the first time by MESSENGER, are features called lobate scarps, huge cliffs that mark the tops of crustal faults that formed during the contraction of the surrounding area. They tell us how important the cooling core has been to the evolution of the surface. After the end of the period of heavy bombardment, cooling of the planet's core not only fueled the magnetic dynamo, it also led to contraction of the entire planet. And the data from the flyby indicate that the total contraction is a least one-third greater than we previously thought." The flyby also made the first-ever observations of the ionized particles in Mercury's unique exosphere. The exosphere is an ultrathin atmosphere in which the molecules are so far apart they are more likely to collide with the surface than with each other. The planet's highly elliptical orbit, its slow rotation and particle interactions with the magnetosphere, interplanetary medium and solar wind result in strong seasonal and day-night differences in the way particles behave.

Space Agencies Continue Talks on Global Exploration Strategy

WASHINGTON -- Representatives of 11 space agencies from around the world gathered in Montreal July 10 - 12 to continue the coordination of programs to extend human and robotic presence throughout the solar system. In May 2007, multilateral space agency discussions resulted in the release of "The Global Exploration Strategy - The Framework for Coordination." The document is a product of a shared vision of space exploration focused on solar system destinations where humans may someday live and work. It represents an important first step in coordinating space exploration efforts toward common goals. The framework envisions a coordination mechanism to facilitate international planning, leading to the establishment of the International Space Exploration Coordination Group, or ISECG. During last week's ISECG meeting in Montreal, hosted by the Canadian Space Agency, the participants made significant progress on a number of areas that will facilitate cooperation. Among the accomplishments were establishing an ISECG secretariat to be initially hosted by the European Space Agency; plans for conducting effective public engagement; and development of tools for sharing information on exploration capabilities and mission plans across agencies. The participants also took initial steps toward identifying critical space infrastructure interfaces, such as between spacecraft, lunar rovers and lunar habitats, which if standardized would increase opportunities for international cooperation. The agencies reaffirmed the importance of the steps taken in Montreal toward ensuring a comprehensive global approach to space exploration and maintaining an open dialogue as the space exploration architecture planning of individual space agencies moves forward. Attending the meeting were representatives of Australia, Canada, the European Space Agency, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Ukraine and the United States.

Dark Energy Found Stifling Growth in the Universe

WASHINGTON -- For the first time, astronomers have clearly seen the effects of "dark energy" on the most massive collapsed objects in the universe using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. By tracking how dark energy has stifled the growth of galaxy clusters and combining this with previous studies, scientists have obtained the best clues yet about what dark energy is and what the destiny of the universe could be. This work, which took years to complete, is separate from other methods of dark energy research such as supernovas. These new X-ray results provide a crucial independent test of dark energy, long sought by scientists, which depends on how gravity competes with accelerated expansion in the growth of cosmic structures. Techniques based on distance measurements, such as supernova work, do not have this special sensitivity. Scientists think dark energy is a form of repulsive gravity that now dominates the universe, although they have no clear picture of what it actually is. Understanding the nature of dark energy is one of the biggest problems in science. Possibilities include the cosmological constant, which is equivalent to the energy of empty space. Other possibilities include a modification in general relativity on the largest scales, or a more general physical field. To help decide between these options, a new way of looking at dark energy is required. It is accomplished by observing how cosmic acceleration affects the growth of galaxy clusters over time. "This result could be described as 'arrested development of the universe'," said Alexey Vikhlinin of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., who led the research. "Whatever is forcing the expansion of the universe to speed up is also forcing its development to slow down." Vikhlinin and his colleagues used Chandra to observe the hot gas in dozens of galaxy clusters, which are the largest collapsed objects in the universe. Some of these clusters are relatively close and others are more than halfway across the universe. The results show the increase in mass of the galaxy clusters over time aligns with a universe dominated by dark energy. It is more difficult for objects like galaxy clusters to grow when space is stretched, as caused by dark energy. Vikhlinin and his team see this effect clearly in their data. The results are remarkably consistent with those from the distance measurements, revealing general relativity applies, as expected, on large scales. "For years, scientists have wanted to start testing how gravity works on large scales and now, we finally have," said William Forman, a co-author of the study from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. "This is a test that general relativity could have failed." When combined with other clues -- supernovas, the study of the cosmic microwave background, and the distribution of galaxies -- this new X-ray result gives scientists the best insight to date on the properties of dark energy. The study strengthens the evidence that dark energy is the cosmological constant. Although it is the leading candidate to explain dark energy, theoretical work suggests it should be about 10 raised to the power of 120 times larger than observed. Therefore, alternatives to general relativity, such as theories involving hidden dimensions, are being explored. "Putting all of this data together gives us the strongest evidence yet that dark energy is the cosmological constant, or in other words, that 'nothing weighs something'," said Vikhlinin. "A lot more testing is needed, but so far Einstein's theory is looking as good as ever." These results have consequences for predicting the ultimate fate of the universe. If dark energy is explained by the cosmological constant, the expansion of the universe will continue to accelerate, and the Milky Way and its neighbor galaxy, Andromeda, never will merge with the Virgo cluster. In that case, about a hundred billion years from now, all other galaxies ultimately would disappear from the Milky Way's view and, eventually, the local superclusters of galaxies also would disintegrate. The work by Vikhlinin and his colleagues will be published in two separate papers in the Feb. 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

Curiosity,' Meet Clara

Twelve-year-old Clara Ma flew from Kansas to JPL to meet and sign the next rover that will zoom millions of miles to Mars. The trip is Clara's prize for winning an essay contest in which she named the rover "Curiosity." Clara, a sixth-grader from Sunflower Elementary school in Lenexa, Kan., got a VIP tour of JPL, along with her parents and sister. Inside the building where Curiosity is being assembled, Clara donned a "bunny suit" to step into the clean room and sign her name on the rover. The trip to JPL was provided by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Clara and her family also visited the Mars Yard, where future generations of rovers are tested

Dawn Re-Lights the Ionic Fire

Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have received a transmission from the Dawn spacecraft confirming it has re-ignited its ion propulsion system. For those of you scoring at home, Thruster # 1 received the honors. Over the course of its eight-year mission, first to asteroid Vesta and then off to dwarf planet Ceres, Dawn's three ion engines will accumulate 2,000 days of operation. The mission of the 1138 kilograms (2,508 pound) spacecraft is to reconnoiter Vesta and Ceres, the asteroid belt's two biggest residents. Dawn is currently 299 million kilometers (185.6 million miles) from Earth. At that distance, it takes almost 17 minutes for a transmission from the spacecraft to arrive on Earth.

The Mars Hoax Goes Viral

Only in Photoshop does Mars appear as large as a full Moon Mars in August 2003 during a 60,000-year record close approach. Even then, the planet resembled a bright star, not a full Moon. Photo credit: John Nemy & Carol Legate of Whistler, B.C. For the sixth year in a row, a message about the Red Planet is infecting worldwide email boxes. It instructs readers to go outside after dark on August 27th and behold the sky. "Mars will look as large as the full moon," it says. "No one alive today will ever see this again." Don't believe it. Here's what will really happen if you go outside after dark on August 27th. Nothing. Mars won't be there. On that date, the red planet will be nearly 250 million km away from Earth and completely absent from the evening sky. The Mars Hoax got its start in 2003 when Earth and Mars really did have a close encounter. On Aug. 27th of that year, Mars was only 56 million km away, a 60,000-year record for martian close approaches to Earth. Someone sent an email alerting friends to the event. The message contained some misunderstandings and omissions—but what email doesn't? A piece of advanced technology called the "forward button" did the rest. Tolerant readers may say that the Mars Hoax is not really a hoax, because it is not an intentional trick. The composer probably believed everything he or she wrote in the message. If that's true, a better name might be the "Mars Misunderstanding" or maybe the "Confusing-Email-About-Mars-You-Should-Delete-and-Not-Forward-to-Anyone-Except-Your-In-Laws." Another aspect of the Mars Hoax: It says "Mars will look as large as the full Moon if you magnify it 75x using a backyard telescope." The italicized text is usually omitted from verbal and written summaries of the Hoax. (For example, see the beginning of this story.) Does this fine print make the Mars Hoax true? After all, if you magnify the tiny disk of Mars 75x, it does subtend an angle about the same as the Moon. No. Even with magnification, Mars does not look the same as a full Moon. This has more to do with the mysterious inner workings of the human brain than cold, hard physics. Looking at Mars magnified 75x through a slender black tube (the eyepiece of a telescope) and looking at the full Moon shining unfettered in the open sky are two very different experiences. A good reference is the Moon Illusion. Moons on the horizon look huge; Moons directly overhead look smaller. In both cases, it is the same Moon, but the human mind perceives the size of the Moon differently depending on its surroundings. Likewise, your perception of Mars is affected by the planet's surroundings. Locate the planet at the end of a little dark tunnel, and it is going to look tiny regardless of magnification.

Mars Orbiter Resumes Science Observations

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is examining Mars again with its scientific instruments after successfully transitioning out of a precautionary standby mode triggered by an unexpected June 3 rebooting of its computer. Engineers brought the spacecraft out of the standby mode on June 6. Cameras and other scientific instruments resumed operation June 9. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reached Mars in 2006 and has returned more data about the planet than all other Mars missions combined. The June 3 rebooting resembled a Feb. 23 event on the spacecraft. Engineers are re-investigating possible root causes for both events. The new investigation includes reconsidering the likelihood of erroneous voltage readings resulting from cosmic rays or solar particles hitting an electronic component.

Scientists Create Fake Solar Storm to Test on Fake Human

In 1972, Apollo astronauts narrowly escaped a potential catastrophe. On August2 of that year, a large and angry sunspot appeared and began to erupt, over and over again for more than a week, producing a record-setting fusillade of solar proton radiation. Only pure luck saved the day. The eruptions took place during the gap between Apollo 16 and 17 missions, so astronauts missed the storm.

Researchers still wonder, what would have happened if the timing had been just a little different, what if astronauts had been caught unprotected on the surface of the Moon? 

NASA needs to know. The agency is in high gear preparing to send people to the Moon to set up a manned outpost, a step toward eventually sending humans to Mars or elsewhere in the solar system. These missions will take astronauts outside the protection of Earth's magnetic field for months or even years at a time, and NASA must know how to keep its explorers safe from extreme solar storms. 

So scientists are creating an artificial solar radiation storm right here on Earth. And they're testing its effects on an artificial human: Matroshka, the Phantom Torso. 

The European Space Agency's Matroshka and his NASA counterpart Fred have already flown in experiments aboard the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station that have shown how other kinds of space radiation such as cosmic rays penetrate the human body. Now, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, are subjecting an artificial torso to a beam of protons to learn how astronauts would be affected by the 1972 event. 

"We want to know how close it comes to a dangerously acute exposure," says Francis Cucinotta, the Chief Scientist for NASA's Radiation Program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. 

In the parlance of radiation experts, "acute exposure" is brief but intense. Radiation strikes the body over a relatively short period of time ranging from minutes to hours—just like a solar flare. This is different from the "chronic exposure" astronauts normally experience as they travel through space. Cosmic rays hit their bodies in a slow drizzle spread out over weeks or months. With chronic exposure, the body has time to repair or replace damaged cells as it goes along, but an acute exposure gives the body little time to cope with the damage. 

"The biological effects are very sensitive to the dose rate," Cucinotta explains. "A dose of radiation delivered over a short amount of time is two to three times more damaging than the same dose over a few days." 

At first glance, the 1972 event would seem to fall into the acute category—it was after all a solar flare. But there's a problem. It was actually a series of flares producing a radiation storm that was longer and less impulsive than normal. Radiation exposure would have been neither chronic nor clearly acute, but somewhere in between. In this gray area, details about how much of the radiation actually reaches a person’s vital organs — versus how much is blocked by their spacesuit, skin and muscles — can make all the difference. 

Matroshka is helping scientists understand these details. He's a life-size plastic replica of a human torso, sans arms and legs. The plastic closely matches the density of organs and tissues in the human body, and this Phantom Torso is embedded with hundreds of radiation sensors throughout his body. He even has real human blood cells. 

"We put blood cells in small tubes in the stomach and in some places in the bone marrow," some of which are deep within the torso while others are close to the surface where there's less "tissue" to block radiation. "One of the questions we have is whether the less shielded parts of the bone marrow will be [much harder hit]," raising the risks of leukemia and other cancers. 

Using real blood cells lets scientists see how much the radiation damages the cells' DNA. High-speed particles of proton radiation can smash into DNA, breaking the string-like molecules. Cells can usually repair these breaks, but if several breaks occur within a short period of time, the damage can be irreparable. At best, the cell will then self-destruct. At worst, it will go haywire and grow out of control, becoming cancerous. 

To subject Matroshka to a 1972-style radiation storm, scientists have devised a way to simulate that event using a high-energy proton beam at NASA's Space Radiation Lab in Brookhaven. The beam fans out so that, at the point where Matroshka sits, it's 60 cm across — large enough to engulf the entire torso. By stepping the energy of the beam through a series of energy levels, scientists can mimic the unique energy spectrum of the protons in the 1972 event. 

In the upcoming experiment, led by Guenther Reitz of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne, Matroshka's radiation sensors will reveal how much proton radiation reaches various parts of the mannequin's body. "With protons, you might have an order of magnitude (a factor of ten) difference from one part of the body to another," notes Cucinotta. 

The readings will help mission planners figure out how much shielding is necessary to protect real astronauts from a 72-style storm. The results will also point researchers in the right direction for medical treatments that might help mitigate the effects of such an event. 

Unlike a real astronaut, Matroshka can withstand multiple flares with no lasting side effects. A quick transfusion of blood cells and voilà--Matroshka is ready for another blast.

The Last Confessions of a Dying Star

A Hubble Heritage Release

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Probing a glowing bubble of gas and dust encircling a dying Sun-like star, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a wealth of previously unseen structures in planetary nebula NGC 2371. The remnant star visible at the center of NGC 2371 is the super-hot core of the former red giant, now stripped of its outer layers. Its surface temperature is a scorching 240,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Prominent pink clouds of cool, dense gas lie on opposite sides of the central star. Also striking are the numerous, very small pink dots, marking relatively dense and small knots of gas, which also lie on diametrically opposite sides of the star. NGC 2371 lies about 4,300 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. The Hubble Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 images were taken in November 2007.

The Aesthetics of Hubble Images Showcased at Walters Art Museum

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Just as the early explorers ventured ever further into the oceans, recording the wonders they encountered, today's astronomers are probing farther and deeper into space, mapping the distant landscape of the universe. "Mapping the Cosmos: Images from the Hubble Space Telescope," brings together over 20 Hubble images as part of the Walters Art Museum exhibit "Maps: Finding Our Place in the World." The exhibit was created through a unique collaboration between the Walters, scientists and experts at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and Professor Elizabeth Rodini and her students in the "Behind the Scenes at the Walters Art Museum" class at Johns Hopkins University. Seven undergraduate students and Professor Rodini worked with STScI professionals to choose the images and design the two-room exhibit. The students handled the images in the Manuscripts Gallery, while STScI professionals selected images for the museum's Palazzo Courtyard.

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Hubble Finds First Organic Molecule on an Exoplanet

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made the first detection ever of an organic molecule in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting another star. This breakthrough is an important step in eventually identifying signs of life on a planet outside our solar system. The molecule found by Hubble is methane, which under the right circumstances can play a key role in prebiotic chemistry — the chemical reactions considered necessary to form life as we know it. This illustration depicts the extrasolar planet HD 189733b with its parent star peeking above its top edge.

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Astronomers Find Suspected Medium-Size Black Hole in Omega Centauri

A Hubble Heritage Release

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The core of the spectacular globular cluster Omega Centauri glitters with the combined light of 2 million stars. The entire cluster contains 10 million stars, and is among the biggest and most massive of some 200 globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way Galaxy. Omega Centauri lies 17,000 light-years from Earth. Astronomers at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and the University of Texas at Austin have reported on the possible detection of an intermediate-mass black hole in the core of Omega Centauri.

The result is primarily based on spectroscopic measurements obtained with the Gemini South observatory in Chile which suggest the stars are moving around the central core of the cluster at higher than expected velocities. Among the possible explanations for these speedy stars -- and the one favored by their study -- is that an intermediate-mass black hole of approximately 40,000 solar masses resides at the center of Omega Centauri. Its powerful gravitational field speeds up the motions of stars near the core. Hubble images taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys were used in key areas in support of this study: to help pinpoint the center of the cluster, as well as to measure the amount of starlight at the cluster center. Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Paranal, Chile, team members Eva Noyola and Karl Gebhardt are planning to obtain follow-up observations to help confirm the existence of an intermediate-mass black hole. The Hubble images were taken in June 2002.

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Hubble Pinpoints Record-Breaking Explosion

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Peering across 7.5 billion light-years and halfway back to the Big Bang, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the fading optical counterpart of a powerful gamma ray burst that holds the record for being the intrinsically brightest naked-eye object ever seen from Earth. For nearly a minute on March 19, this single "star" was as bright as 10 million galaxies. Hubble Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) images of GRB 080319B, taken on Monday, April 7 show the fading optical counterpart of the titanic blast. Hubble astronomers had hoped to see the host galaxy where the burst presumably originated, but were taken aback that the light from the gamma ray burst is still drowning out the galaxy's light even three weeks after the explosion. Called a long-duration gamma ray burst, such events are theorized to be caused by the death of a very massive star, perhaps weighing as much as 50 times our Sun.

Cosmic Collisions Galore!

A Hubble Heritage Release

 

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Astronomy textbooks typically present galaxies as staid, solitary, and majestic island worlds of glittering stars. But galaxies have a dynamical side. They have close encounters that sometimes end in grand mergers and overflowing sites of new star birth as the colliding galaxies morph into wondrous new shapes. Today, in celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope's 18th launch anniversary, 59 views of colliding galaxies constitute the largest collection of Hubble images ever released to the public. This new Hubble atlas dramatically illustrates how galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures in never-before-seen detail.

STScI and JHU Astronomer Adam Riess Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

A News Nugget Release

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The American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) astronomer and professor at the Johns Hopkins University Adam Riess as an Honorary Member. The Academy honors excellence by electing to membership remarkable men and women who have made preeminent contributions to their fields, and to the world. Riess joins a new class of Academy members drawn from the sciences, the arts and humanities, business, public affairs, and the nonprofit sector. The 212 scholars, scientists, artists, civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders come from 20 states and 15 countries, and range in age from 37 to 86. Represented among this year's newly elected members are more than 50 universities and more than a dozen corporations, as well as museums, national laboratories and private research institutes, media outlets and foundations. Riess is a leader of a team that, in 1998 co-discovered "dark energy", a mysterious repulsive force in the universe. Dark energy is the biggest mystery now confronting astrophysics, and Riess continues doing observations to deduce what dark energy is. The 38-year-old astrophysicist has been at STScI since 1999.

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Compact Galaxies in Early Universe Pack a Big Punch

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Imagine receiving an announcement touting the birth of a baby 20 inches long and weighing 180 pounds. After reading this puzzling message, you would immediately think the baby's weight was a misprint. Astronomers looking at galaxies in the universe's distant past received a similar perplexing announcement when they found nine young, compact galaxies, each weighing in at 200 billion times the mass of the Sun. The galaxies, each only 5,000 light-years across, are a fraction of the size of today's grownup galaxies but contain approximately the same number of stars. Each galaxy could fit inside the central hub of our Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to study the galaxies as they existed 11 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 3 billion years old.

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Riccardo Giacconi to Receive National Inventors Hall of Fame's Lifetime Achievement Award

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Riccardo Giacconi, founding director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., will receive the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Inc. on May 3 at the Hall's headquarters in Akron, Ohio. The annual Lifetime Achievement Award is given to an individual who has fostered innovation throughout his or her lifetime. The Hall honors those who have demonstrated an extended commitment to progress in technical innovation and the protection of that innovation. Each year a new class of inventors is inducted into the Hall of Fame in recognition of their patented inventions that make human, social, and economic progress possible.

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Hubble Survey Finds Missing Matter, Probes Intergalactic Web

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In the May 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal, Charles Danforth and Mike Shull (University of Colorado, Boulder) report on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) observations taken along sight-lines to 28 quasars. Their analysis represents the most detailed observations to date of how the intergalactic medium looks within about four billion light-years of Earth. The astronomers say they have definitively found about half of the missing normal matter, called baryons, in the space between the galaxies.

This illustration shows how the Hubble Space Telescope searches for missing baryons, by looking at the light from quasars several billion light-years away. Imprinted on that light are the spectral fingerprints of the missing ordinary matter that absorbs the light at specific frequencies (shown in the colorful spectra at right). The missing baryonic matter helps trace out the structure of intergalactic space, called the "cosmic web."

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New Red Spot Appears on Jupiter

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In what's beginning to look like a case of planetary measles, a third red spot has appeared alongside its cousins — the Great Red Spot and Red Spot Jr. — in the turbulent Jovian atmosphere. This third red spot, which is a fraction of the size of the two other features, lies to the west of the Great Red Spot in the same latitude band of clouds. The visible-light images were taken on May 9 and 10 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.

White Dwarf Lost in Planetary Nebula

An American Astronomical Society Meeting Release

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Call it the case of the missing dwarf. A team of stellar astronomers is engaged in an interstellar CSI (crime scene investigation). They have two suspects, traces of assault and battery, but no corpse. The southern planetary nebula SuWt 2 is the scene of the crime, some 6,500 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Centaurus. SuWt 2 consists of a bright, nearly edge-on glowing ring of gas. Faint lobes extend perpendicularly to the ring, giving the faintest parts of the nebula an hourglass shape. These glowing ejecta are suspected to have been energized by a star that has now burned out and collapsed to a white dwarf. But the white dwarf is nowhere to be found. This color image was taken on Jan. 31, 1995 at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. These results are being presented today at the 212th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in St. Louis, Mo.

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Hubble's Sweeping View of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies

A Hubble Heritage Release

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures the magnificent starry population of the Coma Cluster of galaxies, one of the densest known galaxy collections in the universe. The Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys viewed a large portion of the cluster, spanning several million light-years across. The entire cluster contains thousands of galaxies in a spherical shape more than 20 million light-years in diameter.

Hubble Sees Stars and a Stripe in Celestial Fireworks

A Hubble Heritage Release

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A delicate ribbon of gas floats eerily in our galaxy. A contrail from an alien spaceship? A jet from a black-hole? Actually this image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago.

This image is a composite of hydrogen-light observations taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys in February 2006 and Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 observations in blue, yellow-green, and near-infrared light taken in April 2008. The supernova remnant, visible only in the hydrogen-light filter was assigned a red hue in the Heritage color image.

Iain Neill Reid Appointed as Head of STScI Science Mission Office

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The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) has appointed Dr. Iain Neill Reid as Head of the STScI's Science Mission Office (SMO).

The SMO is responsible for maintaining the science infrastructure required to support research by STScI staff, for oversight of science policies and for acting as an interface between the Hubble Space Telescope and the broader user community. Among other activities, SMO manages the Hubble telescope time allocation process, the Space Telescope User Committee, and the Hubble Fellowship program. SMO is also responsible for STScI's Giacconi Fellowship Program, the Caroline Herschel Visitor Program and the John Bahcall Lecture Series. Reid joined STScI in 2001. His SMO appointment is effective July 5, 2008.