NASA's New High-Performance Engine for Ares Rocket Passes Review

NASA's newest high-performance rocket engine, the J-2X, successfully completed its critical design review Thursday at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The J-2X engine, developed for NASA by Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif., is the first element of NASA's Constellation Program to pass this design milestone. The engine will power the upper stage of NASA's next-generation Ares I rocket and the Earth departure stage of the Ares V heavy cargo launch vehicle. The Constellation Program is responsible for developing this new fleet of rockets, as well as the Orion crew capsule and the Altair lunar lander that will send explorers to the International Space Station, the moon and beyond.

"The approval today by the upper stage engine critical design review board signals the beginning of manufacturing and full-scale testing of this high-performance engine," said Steve Cook, manager for the Ares Projects at Marshall. "This is a testament to the team's hard work during the past three years and validates our continued development of this important element of Ares I and V rockets."

The board is comprised of engineers and project managers, including representatives from the Safety and Mission Assurance organization, who reviewed the detailed designs of the new engine. The critical design review demonstrated the maturity of the engine's design and concluded that the planned technical approach meets NASA's requirements for propulsion of the Ares I upper stage. Full-scale testing will begin in the fall of 2010.

"The design of this propulsion system confirms that Ares I is proceeding on a solid foundation -- built on years of experience by an eager team of engineers," said Teresa Vanhooser, chairperson for the J-2X Critical Design Review Board. "Our goal is to build the safest and most reliable system possible to carry our future explorers on missions of exploration."

The J-2X engine is expected to be the most efficient engine of its type ever built. The high efficiency is achieved by using advanced design turbopumps, fuel injectors and a large extension added to the nozzle -- the large, bell-shaped structure through which exhaust gases are expelled with great force as they are burned by the engine. These enhancements deliver greater thrust, or liftoff power, while burning fuel more efficiently.

The J-2X development follows the Constellation Program's goals to seek commonality between the Ares I and Ares V systems, and use proven hardware and knowledge from 50 years of American spaceflight experience to streamline development and reduce program, technical and budget risks.

"We now are ready for the challenges ahead as we move to build and test this new engine," said Mike Kynard, manager of the Upper Stage Engine Element for the Ares Projects at Marshall. "The J-2X engine design process has been a rewarding endeavor, offering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to develop this high-performance rocket engine that will play a vital role in America's future in space."

Marshall manages the Ares projects and is responsible for design and development of the Ares I and Ares V vehicles. NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston manages the Constellation Program, which includes the Ares I, the Ares V, the Orion and the Altair. NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for program ground and launch operations. The program also includes multiple project-element teams at NASA centers and contract organizations around the United States.

For more information about the Ares rockets, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ares

For more information about NASA's Constellation Program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/constellation

Hubble Directly Observes a Planet Orbiting Another Star

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star.

Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter's mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the "Southern Fish."

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by NASA's Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS.

In 2004, the coronagraph in the High Resolution Camera on Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys produced the first-ever resolved visible-light image of the region around Fomalhaut. It clearly showed a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 21.5 billion miles across and having a sharp inner edge.

This large debris disk is similar to the Kuiper Belt, which encircles the solar system and contains a range of icy bodies from dust grains to objects the size of dwarf planets, such as Pluto.

Hubble astronomer Paul Kalas, of the University of California at Berkeley, and team members proposed in 2005 that the ring was being gravitationally modified by a planet lying between the star and the ring's inner edge.

Circumstantial evidence came from Hubble's confirmation that the ring is offset from the center of the star. The sharp inner edge of the ring is also consistent with the presence of a planet that gravitationally "shepherds" ring particles. Independent researchers have subsequently reached similar conclusions.

Now, Hubble has actually photographed a point source of light lying 1.8 billion miles inside the ring's inner edge. The results are being reported in the November 14 issue of Science magazine.

"Our Hubble observations were incredibly demanding. Fomalhaut b is 1 billion times fainter than the star. We began this program in 2001, and our persistence finally paid off," Kalas says.

"Fomalhaut is the gift that keeps on giving. Following the unexpected discovery of its dust ring, we have now found an exoplanet at a location suggested by analysis of the dust ring's shape. The lesson for exoplanet hunters is 'follow the dust,'" said team member Mark Clampin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Observations taken 21 months apart by Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys' coronagraph show that the object is moving along a path around the star, and is therefore gravitationally bound to it. The planet is 10.7 billion miles from the star, or about 10 times the distance of the planet Saturn from our sun.

The planet is brighter than expected for an object of three Jupiter masses. One possibility is that it has a Saturn-like ring of ice and dust reflecting starlight. The ring might eventually coalesce to form moons. The ring's estimated size is comparable to the region around Jupiter and its four largest orbiting satellites.

Kalas and his team first used Hubble to photograph Fomalhaut in 2004, and made the unexpected discovery of its debris disk, which scatters Fomalhaut's starlight. At the time they noted a few bright sources in the image as planet candidates. A follow-up image in 2006 showed that one of the objects is moving through space with Fomalhaut but changed position relative to the ring since the 2004 exposure. The amount of displacement between the two exposures corresponds to an 872-year-long orbit as calculated from Kepler's laws of planetary motion.

Future observations will attempt to see the planet in infrared light and will look for evidence of water vapor clouds in the atmosphere. This would yield clues to the evolution of a comparatively newborn 100-million-year-old planet. Astrometric measurements of the planet's orbit will provide enough precision to yield an accurate mass.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2013 will be able to make coronagraphic observations of Fomalhaut in the near- and mid-infrared. Webb will be able to hunt for other planets in the system and probe the region interior to the dust ring for structures such as an inner asteroid belt.

Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP)

Between 1966 and 1967 NASA sent five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft to the Moon. Images from these spacecraft were used by mission planners to select the Apollo landing sites on the moon. In the late 1960s, after the Apollo era, Lunar Orbiter analog tapes were placed in storage in Maryland. In the mid-1980s, they were transferred to JPL, under the care of Nancy Evans, co-founder of the NASA Planetary Data System (PDS).

In the late 1980's Nancy and Mark Nelson from Caltech began a project to obtain surplus FR-900 tape drives, refurbish them, and digitize the analog data on the tapes. This project was partially successful in that they were able to obtain raw analog data but due to lack of funding they were unable to continue their efforts.

Nancy Evans subsequently retired from JPL and Mark Nelson returned to private industry. They obtained the tape drives as government surplus hardware in an attempt to raise private funds for digitizing the lunar images. They were not able to get the funds and the drives sat in a barn in Sun Valley, CA for the next several decades.

In 2007, Nancy Evans tried to find someone to take the drives. Dennis Wingo heard about this and contacted Keith Cowing. Wingo and Cowng subsequetly obtained the drives and tapes and brought them up to NASA Ames Research Center.

Dusty Shock Waves Generate Planet Ingredients

Shock waves around dusty, young stars might be creating the raw materials for planets, according to new observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The evidence comes in the form of tiny crystals. Spitzer detected crystals similar in make-up to quartz around young stars just beginning to form planets. The crystals, called cristobalite and tridymite, are known to reside in comets, in volcanic lava flows on Earth, and in some meteorites that land on Earth.

Astronomers already knew that crystallized dust grains stick together to form larger particles, which later lump together to form planets. But they were surprised to find cristobalite and tridymite. What's so special about these particular crystals? They require flash heating events, such as shock waves, to form.

The findings suggest that the same kinds of shock waves that cause sonic booms from speeding jets are responsible for creating the stuff of planets throughout the universe.

"By studying these other star systems, we can learn about the very beginnings of our own planets 4.6 billion years ago," said William Forrest of the University of Rochester, N.Y. "Spitzer has given us a better idea of how the raw materials of planets are produced very early on." Forrest and University of Rochester graduate student Ben Sargent led the research, to appear in the Astrophysical Journal.

Planets are born out of swirling pancake-like disks of dust and gas that surround young stars. They start out as mere grains of dust swimming around in a disk of gas and dust, before lumping together to form full-fledged planets. During the early stages of planet development, the dust grains crystallize and adhere together, while the disk itself starts to settle and flatten. This occurs in the first millions of years of a star's life.

When Forrest and his colleagues used Spitzer to examine five young planet-forming disks about 400 light-years away, they detected the signature of silica crystals. Silica is made of only silicon and oxygen and is the main ingredient in glass. When melted and crystallized, it can make the large hexagonal quartz crystals often sold as mystical tokens. When heated to even higher temperatures, it can also form small crystals like those commonly found around volcanoes.

It is this high-temperature form of silica crystals, specifically cristobalite and tridymite, that Forrest's team found in planet-forming disks around other stars for the first time. "Cristobalite and tridymite are essentially high-temperature forms of quartz," said Sargent. "If you heat quartz crystals, you'll get these compounds."

In fact, the crystals require temperatures as high as 1,220 Kelvin (about 1,740 degrees Fahrenheit) to form. But young planet-forming disks are only about 100 to 1,000 Kelvin (about minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit to 1,340 Fahrenheit) -- too cold to make the crystals. Because the crystals require heating followed by rapid cooling to form, astronomers theorized that shock waves could be the cause.

Shock waves, or supersonic waves of pressure, are thought to be created in planet-forming disks when clouds of gas swirling around at high speeds collide. Some theorists think that shock waves might also accompany the formation of giant planets.

The findings are in agreement with local evidence from our own solar system. Spherical pebbles, called chondrules, found in ancient meteorites that fell to Earth are also thought to have been crystallized by shock waves in our solar system's young planet-forming disk. In addition, NASA's Stardust mission found tridymite minerals in comet Wild 2.

Other authors of the paper include C. Tayrien, M.K. McClure, A.R. Basu, P. Mano, Dan Watson, C.J. Bohac, K.H. Kim and J.D. Green of the University of Rochester; A Li of the University of Missouri, Columbia; E. Furlan of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and G.C. Sloan of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Spitzer's infrared spectrograph, which made the observations, was built by Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Its development was led by Jim Houck of Cornell.

More information about Spitzer is at http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer . More information about exoplanets and NASA's planet-finding program is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov .

Cassini Finds Mysterious New Aurora on Saturn

Saturn has its own unique brand of aurora that lights up the polar cap, unlike any other planetary aurora known in our solar system. This odd aurora revealed itself to one of the infrared instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

"We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere," said Tom Stallard, a scientist working with Cassini data at the University of Leicester, England. Stallard is lead author of a paper that appears in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Nature. "It's not just a ring of auroras like those we've seen at Jupiter or Earth. This aurora covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas on what forms Saturn's aurora predict that this region should be empty, so finding such a bright aurora here is a fantastic surprise."

The new views are available online at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Auroras are caused by charged particles streaming along the magnetic field lines of a planet into its atmosphere. Particles from the sun cause Earth's auroras. Many, but not all, of the auroras at Jupiter and Saturn are caused by particles trapped within the magnetic environments of those planets.

Jupiter's main auroral ring, caused by interactions internal to Jupiter's magnetic environment, is constant in size. Saturn's main aurora, which is caused by the solar wind, changes size dramatically as the wind varies. The newly observed aurora at Saturn, however, doesn't fit into either category.

"Saturn's unique auroral features are telling us there is something special and unforeseen about this planet's magnetosphere and the way it interacts with the solar wind and the planet's atmosphere," said Nick Achilleos, scientist at University College London, working with the Cassini magnetometer team at Imperial College. "Trying to explain its origin will no doubt lead us to physics which uniquely operates in the environment of Saturn."

The new infrared aurora appears in a region hidden from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which has provided views of Saturn's ultraviolet aurora. Cassini observed it when the spacecraft flew near Saturn's polar region. In infrared light, the aurora sometimes fills the region from around 82 degrees north all the way over the pole. This new aurora is also constantly changing, even disappearing within a 45 minute-period.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Endeavour Crew Set For Friday Launch

The flight of space shuttle Endeavour includes several significant steps to install new crew equipment inside the International Space Station and service the solar array joints of the laboratory. During STS-126, the crew of space shuttle Endeavour and the space station will:

-- Exchange crew members. Sandra Magnus will swap places with current station resident Greg Chamitoff.

-- Conduct four spacewalks. Working in teams of two, astronauts will emerge from the space station’s Quest airlock and work on the two large joints that turn the station’s massive solar array “wings.” They are to service the starboard side joint and perform preventative maintenance on the port side joint.

-- Install new crew quarters, a galley, waste water recycling system and oxygen generator inside the space station. The equipment has been packed inside refrigerator-sized racks that require forklifts to lift them on Earth. But in space, a single astronaut can move a rack around with little problem.

Endeavour and its crew are to land at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center after 15 days in space.

Additional Resources
› STS-126 Press Kit (4.9 Mb PDF)
› STS-126 Mission Summary (475 kb PDF)
› About the Crew
› Shuttle Launch Manifest

Mars Phoenix Lander Finishes Successful Work on Red Planet

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has ceased communications after operating for more than five months. As anticipated, seasonal decline in sunshine at the robot's arctic landing site is not providing enough sunlight for the solar arrays to collect the power necessary to charge batteries that operate the lander's instruments.

Mission engineers last received a signal from the lander on Nov. 2. Phoenix, in addition to shorter daylight, has encountered a dustier sky, more clouds and colder temperatures as the northern Mars summer approaches autumn. The mission exceeded its planned operational life of three months to conduct and return science data.

The project team will be listening carefully during the next few weeks to hear if Phoenix revives and phones home. However, engineers now believe that is unlikely because of the worsening weather conditions on Mars. While the spacecraft's work has ended, the analysis of data from the instruments is in its earliest stages.

"Phoenix has given us some surprises, and I'm confident we will be pulling more gems from this trove of data for years to come," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Launched Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix landed May 25, 2008, farther north than any previous spacecraft to land on the Martian surface. The lander dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and tasted the Red Planet's soil. Among early results, it verified the presence of water-ice in the Martian subsurface, which NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter first detected remotely in 2002. Phoenix's cameras also returned more than 25,000 pictures from sweeping vistas to near the atomic level using the first atomic force microscope ever used outside Earth.

"Phoenix not only met the tremendous challenge of landing safely, it accomplished scientific investigations on 149 of its 152 Martian days as a result of dedicated work by a talented team," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Phoenix's preliminary science accomplishments advance the goal of studying whether the Martian arctic environment has ever been favorable for microbes. Additional findings include documenting a mildly alkaline soil environment unlike any found by earlier Mars missions; finding small concentrations of salts that could be nutrients for life; discovering perchlorate salt, which has implications for ice and soil properties; and finding calcium carbonate, a marker of effects of liquid water.

Phoenix findings also support the goal of learning the history of water on Mars. These findings include excavating soil above the ice table, revealing at least two distinct types of ice deposits; observing snow descending from clouds; providing a mission-long weather record, with data on temperature, pressure, humidity and wind; observations of haze, clouds, frost and whirlwinds; and coordinating with NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to perform simultaneous ground and orbital observations of Martian weather.

"Phoenix provided an important step to spur the hope that we can show Mars was once habitable and possibly supported life," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Phoenix was supported by orbiting NASA spacecraft providing communications relay while producing their own fascinating science. With the upcoming launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, the Mars Program never sleeps."

The University of Arizona leads the Phoenix mission with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin Corporation in Denver. International contributions came from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; the Finnish Meteorological Institute; and Imperial College of London.

For additional information about Phoenix mission findings, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix

NASA CONTRACT INTEGRATES MISSION OPERATIONS, TRAINING FACILITIES

NASA has awarded a $667.3 million contract to Lockheed Martin Corp. of Gaithersburg, Md., to provide integrated support for the hardware, software, data and displays used to train for and execute human spaceflight missions.

The new Facilities Development and Operations Contract, or FDOC, combines work previously performed under two separate contracts, and the synergy is expected to augment the efficiency and effectiveness of the human spaceflight operations team. The FDOC replaces the Mission Support Operations Contract and incorporates portions of the work performed under the Space Program Operations Contract.

"This award offers the opportunity to effectively transition experienced mission operations capabilities from the Space Shuttle Program to the Constellation Program," said Associate Administrator for Space Operations Bill Gerstenmaier. "Specifically, this contract will make possible the efficient transformation of shuttle operations personnel, knowledge and facilities to enable success in future human spaceflight programs."

The contract provides consolidated systems services development and operations support within NASA's Mission Control Center in Houston and backup control centers for the space shuttle, International Space Station and Constellation programs. The FDOC team will ensure the availability, integrity and reliability of space station avionics software, space shuttle and space station integrated planning systems, shuttle and station simulators for crews and flight controllers, and space shuttle flight software production. In addition, it will support development of a Constellation training facility, simulators and mission control systems. The majority of the work for the contract will take place at or near NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The contract base period begins Jan. 1, 2009, and continues through Sept. 30, 2012. The contract includes two one-year extension options valued at $154.2 million and $155.5 million respectively. Exercising both options would extend the contract through Sept. 30, 2014, and increase the total contract value to $977 million.

For more information about NASA and its programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

This Month in Exploration - November

Visit "This Month in Exploration" every month to find out how aviation and space exploration have changed throughout the years, improving life for humans on Earth and in space. While reflecting on the events that led to NASA's formation and its rich history of accomplishments, "This Month in Exploration" will reveal where the agency is leading us -- to the moon, Mars and beyond.

100 Years Ago

November 5, 1908: The Aéro Club of France awarded Wilbur Wright the Grand Gold Medal for his significant accomplishments in aviation.

75 Years Ago

November 20, 1933: Lieutenant Commander Thomas. G. W. Settle and Major Chester L. Fordney reached the stratosphere at an altitude of 61,237 feet in their hot air balloon over Akron, Ohio.

50 Years Ago

November 8, 1958: NASA launched Pioneer 2, however, the space probe experienced a launch failure and never reached its destination of the moon.

45 Years Ago

November 27, 1963: NASA completed its first successful launch of the Atlas-Centaur rocket (AC-2). This project was managed by Lewis Research Center (now Glenn) and demonstrated the first successful use of liquid hydrogen for propulsion of a space vehicle.

35 Years Ago

November 3, 1973: NASA launched Mariner 10 using an Atlas-Centaur rocket. This spacecraft was the first to explore Mercury and take close-range pictures of the planet. Mariner 10 was also the first spacecraft to use the gravitational pull of one planet (Venus) to reach another (Mercury).

30 Years Ago

November 13, 1978: NASA launched the Einstein Observatory HEAO-2 →, the first fully imaging X-ray telescope put into space.

25 Years Ago

November 28, 1983: NASA launched the space shuttle STS-9 mission to begin the first Spacelab mission and the first mission to carry six people in one spacecraft. NASA and the European Space Agency developed Spacelab-1 to enable advanced research experiments in space.

20 Years Ago

November 15, 1988: The Soviet Union launched the Buran space shuttle using an Energia booster rocket. During the unmanned flight, the shuttle orbited Earth twice before safely returning to the ground. The Buran project was cancelled in 1993.

15 Years Ago

November 1, 1993: Space shuttle ColumbiaSTS-58 successfully landed at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., ending the fourth longest mission in US manned space history. Columbia was named after a small sailing vessel that operated out of Boston in 1792 and explored the mouth of the Columbia River.

10 Years Ago

November 20, 1998: Russia launched the Zarya control module from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the first component for the International Space Station. Zarya, which means "sunrise," weighed 42,600 pounds and functioned as a space tugboat to provide early propulsion, steering, and communications for the space station. It was built by Russia, but was funded and owned by the U.S.

Five Years Ago

November 4, 2003: Scientists observed the largest solar flare → in recorded history. Several months later, scientists discovered the flare was much larger than originally estimated and it was re-classified as an X45. X-class solar flares can cause upper atmospheric storm activity and radio blackouts around the world.

Present Day

November 14, 2008: NASA will launch space shuttle Endeavour which will deliver equipment and supplies to help set the stage for enlarging the crew size aboard the International Space Station.

DIGITAL LEARNING NETWORK HOSTS WORLDWIDE VIRTUAL PARTY FOR NASA

Schools all over the world will wish NASA a happy birthday as part of an all-day virtual birthday party through NASA's Digital Learning Network on Thursday, Nov. 13.

The virtual party begins at 9 a.m. EST with live videoconferences occurring every hour on the hour until 6 p.m. Schools from Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico City, India, Slovenia and New Zealand will participate in the live digital connection.

During each webcast, international schools will connect with a U.S. school and one of NASA's 10 field centers. Each Digital Learning Network site will host a 45-minute videoconference featuring a unique program in NASA's 50 years of discovery and exploration in science, aeronautics and space.

Webcast topics for NASA's 50th birthday party include (all times EST):

- Space shuttle, hosted at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9 a.m.

- Project Mercury, hosted at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., at 10 a.m.

- The Viking Project, hosted at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., at 11 a.m.

- Hubble Space Telescope, hosted at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., at noon.

- Project Gemini, hosted at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston at 1 p.m.

- Stennis Space Center history, hosted at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi at 2 p.m.

- X-43, hosted at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., at 3 p.m.

- Icing Tunnel, hosted at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland at 4 p.m.

- Arc Jet Facility, hosted at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., at 5 p.m.

- Phoenix Mars Lander, hosted at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., at 6 p.m.

The birthday party is being held through a partnership among NASA, Discovery Education of Silver Spring, Md., the U.S. Distance Learning Association of Boston and Polycom of Pleasanton, Calif.

NASA's Digital Learning Network began in the spring of 2004 with three hub sites at Langley, Glenn and Johnson and now extends to all 10 field centers. Through interactive videoconferencing, the network allows the next generation of explorers to connect with scientists, engineers and researchers without leaving the classroom. The distance-learning events are designed to educate through demonstrations and live interactions with NASA experts.

To view the live webcasts on Nov. 13, visit:

http://dln.nasa.gov/dln/content/webcast

For more information about NASA's education programs, visit:

www.nasa.gov/education

NASA Showcases Science at 2008 Supercomputing Conference

NASA will highlight some of its most inspiring science and engineering achievements at the International Conference for High-Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC08), at the Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas, Nov. 15–21, 2008.

At NASA’s SC08 research exhibit, scientists and engineers will be on hand to explain more than 40 projects supporting some of NASA’s most critical mission work — all made possible by the agency’s powerful high-end computing (HEC) resources. Featured are presentations about how NASA is advancing the ability to predict tropical storms to help reduce loss of lives and property, and working to design the thermal protection system for America’s next-generation spacecraft, the Orion crew exploration vehicle (CEV). The exhibit also highlights innovative computational methods to reduce the sound from jet engines — a source of noise pollution for the public and potentially hazardous operating conditions for pilots.

“NASA’s high-performance computers are critical for the accurate simulations needed to support safe engineering designs for the Ares launch vehicles, and the CEV and launch abort system,” said Rupak Biswas, acting chief of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. “With a new generation of supercomputers now in place, NASA is planning even more significant extensions to its high-end computing resources in the coming years to meet the continuing surge in computational requirements,” Biswas said.

The computational infrastructure at Ames was recently expanded to include Pleiades, a 47,104 processor core SGI® Altix® ICE system to augment the Columbia supercomputer in supporting NASA’s four key mission areas. In addition, the NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., has nearly tripled the performance of its Discover cluster to 67 trillion calculations per second (teraflops) with the addition of an IBM® iDataPlex® system containing 4,096 processor cores. The expanded Discover will enable high-resolution modeling of climate, weather, solar activity, and astrophysical phenomena.

“Discover can now provide NASA researchers with even more critical computing power needed for current and future NASA Earth and space science studies,” said Phil Webster, NCCS project manager and chief of the Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Conference participants will also see captivating images and videos generated using NASA computer data models and simulation results, shown on the nine-screen “mini-hyperwall,” a traveling version of the recently installed hyperwall-2 visualization system.

NASA’s exhibit (booth #1343) represents work supporting all four of the agency’s mission directorates — aeronautics, exploration systems, science, and space operations. This work is conducted by researchers at six NASA field centers: Ames Research Center; Goddard Space Flight Center; Glenn Research Center, Cleveland; Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va.; Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.; and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.—in addition to various NASA research partners. The conference is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and by the Association for Computing Machinery.

For more information about the NASA’s SC08 exhibit, please visit:

http://www.nas.nasa.gov/SC08/SC08.html

For more information about the SC08 conference, please visit:

http://sc08.supercomputing.org/

For information about NASA’s High-End Computing Program, please visit:

http://www.hec.nasa.gov/

New NASA Technique Measures Up, When it Comes to Sea Level Changing Glaciers

A NASA-led research team has used satellite data to make the most precise measurements to date of changes in the mass of mountain glaciers in the Gulf of Alaska, a region expected to be a significant contributor to global sea level rise over the next 50-100 years.

Geophysicist Scott Luthcke of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues knew from well-documented research that changes in the cryosphere -- glaciers, ice caps, and other parts of the globe covered year-round by ice -- are a key source of most global sea level rise. Melting ice will also bring changes to freshwater resources and wildlife habitat. Knowing that such ice-covered areas are difficult to observe consistently, the team worked to develop a satellite-based method that could accurately quantify glacial mass changes across seasons and years, and even discern whether individual glacier regions are growing or shrinking.

The study’s authors found that the annual ice mass lost from glaciers in the Gulf of Alaska has been 84 gigatons annually, about five times the average annual flow of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and equal to the entire amount of water in the Chesapeake Bay.

“The Gulf of Alaska region is 20 times smaller than the ice-covered area of Greenland, yet it contributes nearly half as much freshwater melt as Greenland and accounts for about 15 percent of present-day global sea level rise stemming from melting ice,” said Luthcke, lead author of the study which will appear this week in the Journal of Glaciology. “Considering that the Gulf of Alaska makes such a disproportionate contribution, it is vital that we know more about the nature of glacial change there.”

Luthcke and colleagues found a way to remotely measure the “mass balance” of a glacier; that is, the net annual difference between ice accumulation and ice loss. Past measurements of glacial mass balance in remote mountain ranges have been sparse or imprecise. Ground-based sensors can provide long-term data, but such data points are scattered due to the inaccessibility of many remote mountain ranges. Altimeters aboard aircraft can measure changes in the height of glaciers, but the sampling is sporadic because flights are relatively infrequent.

Glaciers in the coastal environments on the edge of the Arctic or Antarctic shed and gain mass rapidly, a high mass turnover that is particularly sensitive to climate change. Warming seas can accelerate the motion of tidewater glaciers, and melt water on glacial surfaces can flow to the floors of glaciers and serve as a lubricant as the ice slides toward the sea. The subsequent addition of freshwater to the ocean contributes to one of two sources of global sea level rise; “eustatic” rise resulting from melted ice in the form of freshwater, with the other source set off by “thermal expansion,” sea level rise that occurs due to warming ocean temperatures.

The Goddard-led research team developed a new data analysis technique for NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission. GRACE is made up of twin satellites that orbit Earth about 137 miles apart and 300 miles above Earth's surface. The positions of the two satellites change in response to variations in Earth's gravity field, which is stronger or weaker depending on the land or ice mass that they are flying over. Microwave ranging systems measure the distance between the two satellites down to the width of a human hair, so by measuring the change in the distance between the satellites over time, researchers can essentially "weigh" the changes in Gulf of Alaska glaciers.

Using data collected by the GRACE satellites from 2003-2007, as well as unique processing and analysis techniques, Luthcke and colleagues were able to measure the mass of the glaciers every 10 days across an area spanning 18,919 square miles, about the equivalent of Vermont and New Hampshire combined.

The team found the largest ice mass losses occurring in the Yakutat, Glacier Bay, and St. Elias regions. Those observations are consistent with recent studies from aircraft-based altimeters and other satellites.

“The consistent and direct measurement of ice-mass change made possible by the GRACE data and the analysis techniques applied in this study provide unprecedented observations that further our knowledge of the region’s complex ice evolution,” said Luthcke.

The most rapid glacial melt, according to Luthcke and colleagues, came in response to the summer heat wave of 2004, when the region's glaciers shed 374 gigatons of ice, or about 98 cubic miles of ice. In comparison, the record for Greenland ice melt was 500 gigatons, or about 131 cubic miles, during the summer of 2007.

"With such rapid change taking place in such a critical area, we need to be able to more reliably observe how these glaciers are responding," said Luthcke. "The direct measurement of ice-mass variation is important for improving our modeling capability and for ultimately predicting future changes."

Related link:

> The Workings of GRACE

NASA Hearing Daily From Weak Phoenix Mars Lander

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has communicated with controllers daily since Oct. 30 through relays to Mars orbiters. Information received over the weekend indicates Phoenix is running out of power each afternoon or evening but reawakening after its solar arrays catch morning sunlight.

The fraction of each day with sun above the horizon is declining at the Martian arctic landing site. Dust raised by a storm last week continues to block some of the sunshine.

"This is exactly the scenario we expected for the mission's final phase, though the dust storm brought it a couple weeks sooner than we had hoped," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We will be trying to gain some additional science during however many days we have left. Any day could be our last."

Mission engineers at JPL and at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, are attempting this week to upload commands to be stored in the lander's flash memory for science activities to be conducted when the lander wakes up each day.

"Weather observations are our top priority now," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith. "If there's enough energy, we will try to get readings from the conductivity probe that has been inserted into the soil, and possibly some images to assess frost buildup."

Phoenix landed on Mars May 25. It accomplished its main science goals during the three months originally planned as its prime mission, then continued operating, now in its sixth month.

The Phoenix mission is led by Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, with project management at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and development partnership at Lockheed Martin, Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; the Finnish Meteorological Institute; and Imperial College, London. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

'Ghost of Mirach' Materializes in Space Telescope Image

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has lifted the veil off a ghost known to haunt the local universe, providing new insight into the formation and evolution of galaxies.

The eerie creature, called NGC 404, is a type of galaxy known as "lenticular." Lenticular galaxies are disk-shaped, with little ongoing star formation and no spiral arms. NGC 404 is the nearest example of a lenticular galaxy, and therefore of great interest. But it lies hidden in the glare from a red giant star called Mirach. For this reason, NGC 404 became known to astronomers as the "Ghost of Mirach."

When the Galaxy Evolution Explorer spied the galaxy in ultraviolet light, a spooky ring materialized.

"We thought this celestial ghost was essentially dead, but we've been able to show that it has an extended ring of new stars. The galaxy has a hybrid character in which the well-known, very old stellar population tells only part of the story," said David Thilker of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "It's like the living dead."

Thilker and members of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer team spotted the Ghost of Mirach in images taken during the space telescope's all-sky survey. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer is a relatively low-cost NASA mission, launched in 2003, with an ambitious charge to survey the entire visible sky in ultraviolet light, a job never before accomplished. Because Earth's atmosphere absorbs ultraviolet photons -- a good thing for us living creatures who are susceptible to the damaging light -- ultraviolet telescopes must operate from space.

The first images of the Ghost of Mirach taken by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer hinted at a surrounding ultraviolet-bright extended structure. Subsequent, longer exposure observations indeed show that the lenticular galaxy is surrounded by a clumpy, never-before-seen ring of stars.

What is this mysterious ultraviolet ring doing around an otherwise nondescript lenticular galaxy? As it turns out, previous imaging with the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico had discovered a gaseous ring of hydrogen that matches the ultraviolet ring observed by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The authors of this Very Large Array study attributed the gas ring to a violent collision between NGC 404 and a small neighboring galaxy 900 million years ago.

The ultraviolet observations demonstrate that, when the hydrogen from the collision settled into the plane of the lenticular galaxy, stars began to form in a ghostly ring. Young, relatively hot stars forming in stellar clusters sprinkled throughout NGC 404's ring give off the ultraviolet light that the Galaxy Evolution Explorer was able to see.

"Before the Galaxy Evolution Explorer image, NGC 404 was thought to contain only very old and evolved red stars distributed in a smooth elliptical shape, suggesting a galaxy well into its old age and no longer evolving significantly," said Mark Seibert of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Pasadena, Calif. "Now we see it has come back to life, to grow once again."

"The Ghost of Mirach has been lucky enough to get a new lease on life through the rejuvenating, chance merger with its dwarf companion," added Thilker.

The findings indicate that the evolution of lenticular galaxies might not yet be complete. They may, in fact, continue to form stars in a slow, piecemeal fashion as they suck the raw, gaseous material for stars from small, neighboring galaxies. It seems the Ghost of Mirach might act more like a vampire than a ghost.

Caltech leads the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission and is responsible for science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Researchers sponsored by Yonsei University in South Korea and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France collaborated on this mission.

Graphics and additional information about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer is online at http://www.nasa.gov/galex/ and http://www.galex.caltech.edu .

First Rocket Parts Of NASA's New Launch System Arrive In Florida

The first major flight hardware of the Ares I-X rocket has arrived in Florida to begin preparation for the inaugural test flight of the agency's next-generation launch system. The test flight is targeted for July 12, 2009.

The Ares I-X upper stage simulator traveled to Port Canaveral aboard the Delta Mariner, a ship that also transports the Delta IV rocket for United Launch Alliance. The journey began Oct. 22 on the Ohio River as the barge traveled toward the Mississippi River for its voyage to Port Canaveral. By Nov. 6, the flight hardware will have been moved off the barge into high bay 4 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

The upper stage simulator consists of 11 individual components that were designed and manufactured during a two-year period at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. The components represent the size, outer shape and weight of the second stage of the Ares I rocket, and will be integrated together in the Vehicle Assembly Building. The upper stage simulator eventually will be stacked atop the solid rocket booster segments of the Ares I-X rocket.

The Ares I-X test flight will provide NASA an early opportunity to test and prove hardware, facilities and ground operations associated with the Ares I crew launch vehicle. It also will allow NASA to gather critical data during ascent of the integrated Orion crew exploration vehicle and the Ares I rocket. The data will ensure the entire vehicle system is safe and fully operational before astronauts begin traveling to orbit.

On Nov. 6, video B-roll of the arrival activities will be available on NASA Television's Video File feed. For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the Ares I-X and NASA's next-generation spacecraft, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ares