Pieces Coming Together for First Test Launch of NASA's New Spacecraft

NASA is using powerful computers and software programs to design the rocket that will carry crew and cargo to space after the space shuttle retires. But those computers will have their work checked the old-fashioned way with the first of several uncrewed demonstration launches beginning in 2009.

Ares I-X, the first Ares I test rocket, will lift off from Kennedy Space Center, Fla. in the summer of 2009. It will climb about 25 miles (40.2 km) in a two-minute powered test of Ares I first stage performance and its first stage separation and parachute recovery system.

A less obvious -- but no less critical -- test will be of overall vehicle aerodynamics. Is the design safe and stable in flight? This is a question that must be answered before astronauts begin traveling into orbit and beyond.

With that question answered, the flight of Ares I-X will be an important step toward verifying analysis tools and techniques needed to further develop Ares I, NASA's next launch vehicle.

In order to ensure that the rocket's flight characteristics are fully understood, extreme care is being taken to precisely fabricate the rocket's simulated upper stage and the simulated Orion crew module and associated launch abort tower. These full-scale hardware components must accurately reflect the shape and physical properties of the models used in computer analyses and wind tunnel tests in order to confidently compare flight results with preflight predictions.

At NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., where the Orion crew module and tower-like launch abort system simulators are taking shape, researchers and managers are working to overcome multiple challenges.

"We are a highly matrixed team -- a lot of people from various organizations -- that must work together successfully on a tight schedule," explained Kevin Brown, project manager for the Ares I-X Crew Module/Launch Abort System (CM/LAS) project.

"We have a team doing fabrication and assembly work in conjunction with an off-site contractor, and we have another team readying to install about 150 sensors once the crew module and launch abort tower are completed," he added.

The simulated crew module, faithful to the vehicle that will ferry astronauts to the International Space Station by 2015, to the moon in the 2020 timeframe and ultimately to points beyond, will measure approximately five meters (16.4 ft) in diameter. While the conical module will have the same basic shape as the Apollo Command Module, it will be significantly larger. The simulated launch abort system, positioned above the crew module at launch, will add another 46 feet (14 m) in length to the combined simulator.

The sensors will measure aerodynamic pressure and temperature at the nose of the rocket, and contribute to measurements of vehicle acceleration and angle of attack. How the tip of the rocket slices through the atmosphere is important because that determines the flow of air over the entire vehicle.

"This launch will tell us what we got right and what we got wrong in the design and analysis phase," said Jonathan Cruz, deputy project manager for Ares I-X CM/LAS. "We have a lot of confidence, but we need those two minutes of flight data before NASA can continue to the next phase of rocket development," he said.

The completed two-part flight test article is to be delivered to Kennedy in early 2009. Before launch, the combined crew module and launch abort system tower will be used to help demonstrate lifting, handling and stacking of Ares I-X flight test vehicle elements.

Ares I-X will provide important data for developing Ares I in time to support the vehicle's critical design review in 2010.

Deadline Nears for Student Contest to Name NASA's Next Mars Rover

NASA is issuing a last call to the nation's youth for entries in a contest to name the agency's next Mars rover.

The naming contest, in partnership with Disney-Pixar's WALL-E, invites ideas from students 5 to 18 years old and enrolled in a U.S. school. The contest began two months ago. Entries will be accepted until midnight Jan. 25 (Eastern Time).

Entrants should submit essays explaining why their suggested name for the rover is the right fit. In March, the public will have an opportunity to rank nine finalist names via the Internet as additional input for judges to consider. In April, NASA will announce the winning name.

The Mars Science Laboratory rover will be larger and more capable than any craft previously sent to land on the Red Planet. The rover will check to see whether the environment in a selected landing region ever has been favorable for supporting microbial life and preserving evidence of life. The rover also will search for minerals that formed in the presence of water and look for several chemical building blocks of life. NASA is currently building and testing the rover, which will launch in 2011.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Science Laboratory for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For contest information and rules visit: http://marsrovername.jpl.nasa.gov .

Missions NOAA-N Prime Update

In the early morning hours on Jan. 15, the NOAA-N Prime spacecraft was transported from the Building 1610 payload processing facility to Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It was hoisted from the pad surface and mated to the Delta II rocket. Spacecraft 'state of health' checks are under way.

The liquid oxygen tanking test and countdown demonstration and simulated flight test have been successfully completed. The Flight Program Verification, an integrated test of the Delta II and NOAA-N Prime, is scheduled for Jan. 22. This is the last major test before launch. The fairing is scheduled to be installed around the spacecraft on Jan. 27. Liftoff is set for Feb. 4 during a window that extends from 5:22 to 5:32 a.m. EST.

NOAA-N Prime is the latest satellite in the Advanced Television Infrared Observational Satellites (ATN) –N series built by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. NOAA-N Prime will provide a polar-orbiting platform to support environmental monitoring instruments for imaging and measuring the Earth’s atmosphere, its surface and cloud cover, including Earth radiation, atmospheric ozone, aerosol distribution, sea surface temperature, and vertical temperature and water profiles in the troposphere and stratosphere. The satellite will assist in measuring proton and electron fluxes at orbit altitude, collecting data from remote platforms and will assist the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking system.

NASA Radar Provides First Look Inside Moon’s Shadowed Craters

Using a NASA radar flying aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists are getting their first look inside the moon's coldest, darkest craters.

The Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, has passed its initial in-flight tests and sent back its first data. The images show the floors of permanently-shadowed polar craters on the moon that aren't visible from Earth. Scientists are using the instrument to map and search the insides of the craters for water ice.

"The only way to explore such areas is to use an orbital imaging radar such as Mini-SAR," said Benjamin Bussey, deputy principal investigator for Mini-SAR, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "This is an exciting first step for the team which has worked diligently for more than three years to get to this point."

The images, taken on Nov. 17, 2008, cover part of the Haworth crater at the moon's south pole and the western rim of Seares crater, an impact feature near the north pole. Bright areas in each image represent either surface roughness or slopes pointing toward the spacecraft. Further data collection by Mini-SAR and analysis will help scientists to determine if buried ice deposits exist in the permanently shadowed craters near the moon's poles.

"During the next few months we expect to have a fully calibrated and operational instrument collecting valuable science data at the moon," said Jason Crusan, program executive for the Mini-RF Program for NASA's Space Operations Mission Directorate in Washington.

Mini-SAR is one of 11 instruments on the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 and one of two NASA-sponsored contributions to its international payload. The other is the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a state-of-the-art imaging spectrometer that will provide the first map of the entire lunar surface at high spatial and spectral resolution. Data from the two NASA instruments will contribute to the agency's increased understanding of the lunar environment as it implements America's space exploration plan, which calls for robotic and human missions to the moon.

Chandrayaan-1 launched from India's Satish Dhawan Space Center on Oct. 21 and began orbiting the moon Nov. 8. The Applied Physics Laboratory performed the final integration and testing on Mini-SAR. It was developed and built by the Naval Air Warfare Center and several other commercial and government contributors. The Applied Physics Laboratory's Satellite Communications Facility is Chandrayaan-1's primary ground station in the Western Hemisphere.

For more information about the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, visit:

http://m3.jpl.nasa.gov

For more information about Chandrayaan-1, visit:

http://www.isro.org/Chandrayaan

Socializing on Mars

After five groundbreaking years exploring the Red Planet, the communications engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory pretty much know what they are getting when another downlink from Spirit or Opportunity arrives. They know that with a typical transmission comes about 10 megabits of engineering data, another 4 megabits of science data, and around 26 megabits of images. They also realize that after the information is amassed and analyzed by the rovers' science teams that the most unique, scientifically exciting of that compiled data will be released via peer-reviewed papers, articles, science briefings and press releases.

To date, literally thousands of rover images have been analyzed and discussed in detail. But the rovers have sent back about a quarter-million images. NASA decided this incongruity could be best addressed by making every single Mars rover image available to all who were interested -- and had Internet access.

Access to all that imagery brought the thrill of exploration to people around the world in a way never envisioned before the rovers began to roam the Red Planet. Now, the Mars Exploration Rovers have new life on the likes of "Second Life," "YouTube," online forums like "Unmannedspaceflight.com," and the social networking site "Facebook."

Like the majority of college students today, Keri Bean knows the ins and outs of Facebook. But the Texas A&M student did her Earth-based socializing peers one planet better when she opened a page for the Mars Rovers. "If I had to chose, I would say I like Spirit better," said the 20 year-old meteorology major from College Station, Texas. "She's had to work for everything. Opportunity gets a major discovery handed to her by landing nearly on top of it, but Spirit's had to work hard for everything she gets."

Bean started her Mars Rovers Facebook page to keep a few of her friends in the loop on what's happening up there on the Red Planet. She populated it with rover information and updates when she could find time. To her surprise, the rovers' friends list began to grow well beyond her goal of "a few friends." Then one day, she got a new friend that changed everything.

"Steve Squyres, the scientist in charge of both of the rovers, messaged me and said he liked my site," said Bean. "I knew then I had to get serious."

Bean and the Mars Rovers now have almost 1,700 online friends from as far away as Norway and New Zealand. Her (or their, depending how you look at it), page includes links to interesting articles about the rovers, images, sometimes a heads-up about upcoming documentaries and even some first-person dialogue between Mars' roving twosome.

"I do not have a lot of time this semester, but I try to check it once a day," said Bean. "It is all about reaching out to people who would normally not pay attention."

If Bean's Facebook page is for those with short Martian attention spans, Doug Ellison of the United Kingdom has put together a Web site for those with an insatiable appetite. Ellison has been interested in the Red Planet ever since NASA/JPL's first scrappy Mars rover, Pathfinder, roved the Martian surface back in 1997.

"Mars grabbed me in an unhealthy way," quipped Ellison, the United Kingdom-based Web czar of unmannedspaceflight.com. "Just on the fringe of acceptable."

In those days, Ellison was reading everything he could on the journey of Pathfinder. Then, in February 2004, while Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity were still under factory warranty, and after his day job, Ellison used imaging software to "stitch" his first Mars panorama from a collection of raw images from the JPL Web site: (http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/).

Like Bean, Ellison had "no ambition or expectation" other than impressing himself and a few friends. But then a few more friends took an interest in his nascent Web site, and then a few more. Ellison's site – unmannedspaceflight.com -- was slowly being colonized with people with a serious jonesing for all things deep in deep space exploration.

"Our membership includes a care worker for the elderly here in the U.K. to a teacher in North Wales to a government employee in California," said Ellison. "In London, I recently met for the first time someone I had known through the Web site for four years. There were no "getting to know you" pleasantries. Straight off the bat it was right into a detailed, in-depth, insightful discussion about something ridiculously space-geeky."

Online discussions of spacecraft and mission science are only a small part of unmannedspaceflight.com's allure to the truly space geeky. The majority of the site, and its appeal, is dedicated to those stark and beautiful and sometimes puzzling images coming down from Spirit and Opportunity each and every day.

"Our members share results from stitching together rover images and working with those images," said Ellison. "Say Opportunity does a long drive. We download those pictures from the rover Web site. Somebody will make a mosaic from the imagery taken at the end of the drive. Somebody else will keep the route map up to date to show where Opportunity has been. Somebody else will then stitch together the next mosaic and have the full mosaic all together and then keep track of what the following day's activities are going to be."

All this pro-bono, unofficial fine-tuning of rover imagery by the members of the unmannedspaceflight.com forum has been recognized by some very official members of the aerospace and science media. Their work has made the cover of Aviation Week and Space Technology and Spaceflight and even been featured in NASA's own "Astronomy Picture of the Day" Web site: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ .

As proud as Ellison is of his site's contributions to promoting the rovers and their stories, he is just as proud about how they can band together to police some of the more inimitable Mars storylines. With over 1,700 forum contributors surfing the internet, Mars stories that seem a little -- or a lot -- out of whack, are quickly identified. Like the one where numerous major media outlets began discussing the possibility of a Martian Sasquatch making an unscheduled appearance in a Spirit image.

"We took the story and quickly ripped it apart just by using the facts," said Ellison. "Some members worked out how far the "Sasquatch" was from the rover when the image was taken and calculated it was about the size of a packet of cigarettes. One of our posters did a brilliant job of taking the mosaic that the image came from and demonstrating how so many of the rocks in it could appear to look like something else."

Of course, not all Mars rover imagery that makes its way into the public consciousness is meant to be taken seriously (we think). Like Madison Avenue's pitch for an adult beverage that puts a new angle on the search for life in our solar system - available for viewing on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_iPvUWyzhE. Or a brace of commercials where both Mars rovers and their mission controllers meet their intellectual superiors on the Martian surface, also available for viewing on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvY9vMAMxc4 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYzM1M1X790&feature=PlayList&p=74F444229EB256C3&playnext=1&index=98 . Or the hilarious "Mars: 2020: Springtime" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjiGH9QNiU0 ) where multiple aspiring Mars landers meet an ignominious fate, much to the chagrin of local residents.

"Like any travel adventure, a big part of the fun is sharing the experience with family and friends back home," said John Callas, Mars Exploration Rover project manager at JPL. "For five years now, it has been very rewarding to see the fascination -- and the love -- for the rovers that runs deep and knows no international boundaries. And as many ways as we can find to share the experience of exploring Mars, we now know that many out in the general public will find even more ways to enrich the whole experience for everyone."

The story could end here, but this is about how those outside of NASA have managed to place Mars within their own sphere of influence. So in conclusion, the words of someone who took Mars and ran with it.

"People like me get to see a little bit of Mars that no one has ever seen before," said Ellison. "The downlink of the imagery from the rovers is an entirely automated process. So, it might be 2 a.m. in Pasadena (home of JPL) when images come down but it is lunchtime here. I can see the images before the scientists do. To be able to ride along every single day on that adventure, sometimes you have to kind of shake your head in disbelief that you are seeing something that nobody has ever seen before."

For more information about NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, visit us on the web at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/index.html and http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/ .

NASA and the Inaugural Parade

The crew of STS-126 join representatives from across the country and the nation's armed forces in the 56th Inaugural Parade. The NASA contingent will include a next-generation lunar rover that astronauts could use for future exploration of the moon.

Astronaut Mike Gernhardt will drive the rover; while Astronaut Rex Walheim, wearing a spacesuit, will ride with him. The Lunar Electric Rover is a concept vehicle about the size of a pickup truck that NASA is evaluating for use when humans return to the moon and has the ability to house two astronauts for as long as 14 days. NASA will record video during the parade from a camera mounted on the lunar rover. A member of the lunar rover team will provide live updates to the NASA News Twitter feed throughout the event.

NASA photographers and videographers will document the agency's participation in the inaugural activities. Images will be posted online at the agency's Web site when they become available.

NASA Television will air a video file of the parade footage and the video recorded on the rover as soon as possible following the parade's conclusion. For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

To access the NASA News Twitter feed and other agency Twitter feeds, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/collaborate.

For more information about NASA's Lunar Electric Rover, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/LER.html

For information about STS-126 and the next space shuttle mission in February, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle.

The Human Factor: Understanding the Sources of Rising Carbon Dioxide

Every time we get into our car, turn the key and drive somewhere, we burn gasoline, a fossil fuel derived from crude oil. The burning of the organic materials in fossil fuels produces energy and releases carbon dioxide and other compounds into Earth's atmosphere. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap heat in our atmosphere, warming it and disturbing Earth's climate.

Space Station Scientists agree that human activities have been the primary source for the observed rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the beginning of the fossil fuel era in the 1860s. Eighty-five percent of all human-produced carbon dioxide emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil, including gasoline. The remainder results from the clearing of forests and other land use, as well as some industrial processes such as cement manufacturing. The use of fossil fuels has grown rapidly, especially since the end of World War II and continues to increase exponentially. In fact, more than half of all fossil fuels ever used by humans have been consumed in just the last 20 years.

Human activities add a worldwide average of almost 1.4 metric tons of carbon per person per year to the atmosphere. Before industrialization, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 280 parts per million. By 1958, the concentration of carbon dioxide had increased to around 315 parts per million, and by 2007, it had risen to about 383 parts per million. These increases were due almost entirely to human activity.

While we are able to accurately measure the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, much about the processes that govern its atmospheric concentration remains a mystery. Scientists still do not know precisely where all the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere comes from and where it goes. They want to learn more about the magnitudes and distributions of carbon dioxide's sources and the places it is absorbed (sinks). This knowledge will help improve critical forecasts of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases as fossil fuel use and other human activities continue. Such information is crucial to understanding the impact of human activities on climate and for evaluating options for mitigating or adapting to climate change.

Scientists soon expect to get some answers to these and other compelling carbon questions, thanks to the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, a new Earth-orbiting NASA satellite set to launch in early 2009. The new mission will allow scientists to record, for the first time, detailed daily measurements of carbon dioxide, making more than 100,000 measurements around the world each day. The new data will provide valuable new insights into where this important greenhouse gas is coming from and where it is being stored.

Before humans began emitting significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the atmospheric uptake and loss of carbon dioxide was approximately in balance. "Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere remained pretty stable during the pre-industrial period," said Gregg Marland of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. "Carbon dioxide generated by human activity amounts to only about four percent of yearly atmospheric uptake or loss of carbon dioxide, but the result is that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been growing, on average, by four-tenths of one percent each year for the last 40 years. Though this may not seem like much of an influence, humans have essentially tipped the balance of the global cycling of carbon. Our emissions add significant weight to one side of the balance between carbon being added to the atmosphere and carbon being removed from the atmosphere.

"Plant life and geochemical processes on land and in the ocean 'inhale' large amounts of carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and then 'exhale' most of it back into the atmosphere," Marland continued. "Humans, however, have altered the carbon cycle over the last couple of centuries, through the burning of fossil fuels that enable us to live more productively. Now that humans are acknowledging the environmental effects of our dependence on fossil fuels and other carbon dioxide-emitting activities, our goal is to analyze the sources and sinks of this carbon dioxide and to find better ways to manage it."

Current estimates of human-produced carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere are based on inventories and estimates of where fossil fuels are burned and where other carbon dioxide-producing human activities are occurring. However, the availability and precision of this information is not uniform around the world, not even from within developed countries like the United States.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory's highly sensitive instrument will measure the distribution of carbon dioxide, sampling information around the globe from its space-based orbit. Though the instrument will not directly measure the carbon dioxide emissions from every individual smokestack, tailpipe or forest fire, scientists will incorporate the observatory's global measurements of varying carbon dioxide concentrations into computer-based models. The models will infer where and when the sources are emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

"The Orbiting Carbon Observatory data differ from that of other missions like the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite by having a relatively small measurement 'footprint,'" said Kevin Gurney, associate director of the Climate Change Research Center at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. "Rather than getting an average amount of carbon dioxide over a large physical area like a state or country, the mission will capture measurements over scales as small as a medium-sized city. This allows it to more accurately distinguish movements of carbon dioxide from natural sources versus from fossil fuel-based activities."

"Essentially, if you visualize a column of air that stretches from Earth's surface to the top of the atmosphere, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory will identify how much of that vertical column is carbon dioxide, with an understanding that most is emitted at the surface," said Marland. "Simply, it will act like a plane observing the smoke from forest fires down below, with the task of assessing where the fires are and how big they are. Compare that aerial capability with sending a lot of people into the forest looking for fires. In this vein, the observatory will use its vantage point from space to peer down and capture a picture of where the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide are, rather than our cobbling data together from multiple sources with less frequency, reliability and detail."

Gurney believes the Orbiting Carbon Observatory will also complement a NASA/U.S. Department of Energy jointly-funded project he is currently leading called Vulcan.

"Vulcan estimates the movement of carbon dioxide through the combustion of fossil fuels at very small scales. Vulcan and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory together will act like partners in closing the carbon budget, with Vulcan estimating movements in the atmosphere from the bottom-up and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory estimating sources from the top-down," he said. "By tackling the problem from both perspectives, we'll stand to achieve an independent, mutually-compatible view of the carbon cycle. And the insight gained by combining these top-down and bottom-up approaches might take on special significance in the near future as our policymakers consider options for regulating carbon dioxide across the entire globe."

For more information on this topic, see: http://www.nasa.gov/oco and http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov .

Discovery At the Launch Pad - Space Shuttle Mission: STS-119

Space shuttle Discovery now sits on Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida -- a major milestone met for the STS-119 mission. The approximate six-hour trip was complete at 12:16 p.m. EST Jan. 14.

The rotating service structure was moved into place around the shuttle to protect it from inclement weather and provide protected access to the orbiter for installation and servicing of payloads at the pad.

At NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the STS-119 crew members are rehearsing spacewalking techniques in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. Later today Commander Lee Archambault and Pilot Tony Antonelli will fly to Edwards Air Force Base in California for landing practice in NASA's Shuttle Training Aircraft.

The Space Shuttle Program's two-day Flight Readiness Review is scheduled for Jan. 12-22. On Feb. 3 NASA senior managers will hold an Executive Review to set the official launch date for STS-119's 14-day mission to the International Space Station.

Commander Lee Archambault will lead a crew of seven, along with Pilot Tony Antonelli, and Mission Specialists Joseph Acaba, John Phillips, Steve Swanson, Richard Arnold and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata.

The astronauts will fly to Kennedy for a full-dress rehearsal called the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, or TCDT, scheduled for Jan. 19-21. They will have the opportunity to check out the spacecraft and payload, try on their custom-made flight suits and review safety procedures.

Discovery's STS-119 mission to the International Space Station is targeted to lift off at 7:32 a.m. EST, Feb. 12.

Martian Methane Reveals the Red Planet is not a Dead Planet

Mars today is a world of cold and lonely deserts, apparently without life of any kind, at least on the surface. Worse still, it looks like Mars has been cold and dry for billions of years, with an atmosphere so thin, any liquid water on the surface quickly boils away while the sun's ultraviolet radiation scorches the ground.

But there is evidence of a warmer and wetter past -- features resembling dry riverbeds and minerals that form in the presence of water indicate water once flowed through Martian sands. Since liquid water is required for all known forms of life, scientists wonder if life could have risen on Mars, and if it did, what became of it as the Martian climate changed.

New research reveals there is hope for Mars yet. The first definitive detection of methane in the atmosphere of Mars indicates the planet is still alive, in either a biologic or geologic sense, according to a team of NASA and university scientists.

"Methane is quickly destroyed in the Martian atmosphere in a variety of ways, so our discovery of substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars in 2003 indicates some ongoing process is releasing the gas," said Dr. Michael Mumma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "At northern mid-summer, methane is released at a rate comparable to that of the massive hydrocarbon seep at Coal Oil Point in Santa Barbara, Calif."

Methane -- four atoms of hydrogen bound to a carbon atom -- is the main component of natural gas on Earth. It's of interest to astrobiologists because organisms release much of Earth's methane as they digest nutrients. However, other purely geological processes, like oxidation of iron, also release methane. "Right now, we don’t have enough information to tell if biology or geology -- or both -- is producing the methane on Mars," said Mumma. "But it does tell us that the planet is still alive, at least in a geologic sense. It's as if Mars is challenging us, saying, hey, find out what this means." Mumma is lead author of a paper on this research appearing in Science Express Jan. 15.

If microscopic Martian life is producing the methane, it likely resides far below the surface, where it's still warm enough for liquid water to exist. Liquid water, as well as energy sources and a supply of carbon, are necessary for all known forms of life.

"On Earth, microorganisms thrive 2 to 3 kilometers (about 1.2 to 1.9 miles) beneath the Witwatersrand basin of South Africa, where natural radioactivity splits water molecules into molecular hydrogen (H2) and oxygen. The organisms use the hydrogen for energy. It might be possible for similar organisms to survive for billions of years below the permafrost layer on Mars, where water is liquid, radiation supplies energy, and carbon dioxide provides carbon," said Mumma.

"Gases, like methane, accumulated in such underground zones might be released into the atmosphere if pores or fissures open during the warm seasons, connecting the deep zones to the atmosphere at crater walls or canyons," said Mumma.

"Microbes that produced methane from hydrogen and carbon dioxide were one of the earliest forms of life on Earth," noted Dr. Carl Pilcher, Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute which partially supported the research. "If life ever existed on Mars, it's reasonable to think that its metabolism might have involved making methane from Martian atmospheric carbon dioxide."

However, it is possible a geologic process produced the Martian methane, either now or eons ago. On Earth, the conversion of iron oxide (rust) into the serpentine group of minerals creates methane, and on Mars this process could proceed using water, carbon dioxide, and the planet's internal heat. Although we don’t have evidence on Mars of active volcanoes today, ancient methane trapped in ice "cages" called clathrates might now be released.

The team found methane in the atmosphere of Mars by carefully observing the planet over several Mars years (and all Martian seasons) with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility, run by the University of Hawaii, and the W. M. Keck telescope, both at Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

The team used spectrometer instruments attached to the telescopes to make the detection. Spectrometers spread light into its component colors, like a prism separates white light into a rainbow. The team looked for dark areas in specific places along the rainbow (light spectrum) where methane was absorbing sunlight reflected from the Martian surface. They found three such areas, called absorption lines, which together are a definitive signature of methane, according to the team. They were able to distinguish lines from Martian methane from the methane in Earth's atmosphere because the motion of the Red Planet shifted the position of the Martian lines, much as a speeding ambulance causes its siren to change pitch as it passes by.

"We observed and mapped multiple plumes of methane on Mars, one of which released about 19,000 metric tons of methane," said Dr. Geronimo Villanueva of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. Villanueva is stationed at NASA Goddard and is co-author of the paper. "The plumes were emitted during the warmer seasons -- spring and summer -- perhaps because the permafrost blocking cracks and fissures vaporized, allowing methane to seep into the Martian air. Curiously, some plumes had water vapor while others did not," said Villanueva.

According to the team, the plumes were seen over areas that show evidence of ancient ground ice or flowing water. For example, plumes appeared over northern hemisphere regions such as east of Arabia Terra, the Nili Fossae region, and the south-east quadrant of Syrtis Major, an ancient volcano 1,200 kilometers (about 745 miles) across.

It will take future missions, like NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, to discover the origin of the Martian methane. One way to tell if life is the source of the gas is by measuring isotope ratios. Isotopes are heavier versions of an element; for example, deuterium is a heavier version of hydrogen. In molecules that contain hydrogen, like water and methane, the rare deuterium occasionally replaces a hydrogen atom. Since life prefers to use the lighter isotopes, if the methane has less deuterium than the water released with it on Mars, it's a sign that life is producing the methane. The research was funded by NASA's Planetary Astronomy Program and the NASA Astrobiology Institute.

NASA Selects Hampton Firms For Engineering Support

NASA has selected Analytical Services & Materials Inc., and Analytical Mechanics Associates Inc., both of Hampton, Va., to provide analysis, systems engineering and research support for NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton.

The fixed price, multiple award blanket purchase agreements have an aggregate maximum value of $100 million during a period of five years.

The Hampton firms will provide scientific, engineering, and design and development activities in aerodynamics, mechanical, structural, thermal, propulsion, fluid systems, electrical and electronics, avionics and controls, instrumentation and advanced sensor, and manufacturing technology.

The work will be performed at Langley and at contractor locations.

For information about the Langley Research Center, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/langley

Next Mission Milestone Met STS-119

In the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the joining of space shuttle Discovery, its external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters continues over the weekend.

Discovery's 3.4-mile journey to Kennedy's Launch Pad 39A is scheduled to begin 4 a.m. EST Jan. 14. The trip will take approximately six hours.

STS-119's mission payload, which includes the S6 truss segment and U.S. solar arrays, has been packed into a transport canister and is set for delivery to the pad Jan. 11.

At NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston the STS-119 crew continues training for the additional powering up of the International Space Station.

Commander Lee Archambault will lead a crew of seven, along with Pilot Tony Antonelli, and Mission Specialists Joseph Acaba, John Phillips, Steve Swanson, and Richard ArnoldJapan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata.

The astronauts are expected to be at Kennedy for a full-dress rehearsal called the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, or TCDT, Jan. 19-21. They will have the opportunity to check out the spacecraft and payload, try on their custom-made flight suits and review safety procedures.

Discovery's STS-119 mission to the International Space Station is targeted to lift off at 7:32 a.m. EST, Feb. 12.

Dead Stars Tell Story of Planet Birth

Astronomers have turned to an unexpected place to study the evolution of planets -- dead stars.

Observations made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal six dead "white dwarf" stars littered with the remains of shredded asteroids. This might sound pretty bleak, but it turns out the chewed-up asteroids are teaching astronomers about the building materials of planets around other stars.

So far, the results suggest that the same materials that make up Earth and our solar system's other rocky bodies could be common in the universe. If the materials are common, then rocky planets could be, too.

"If you ground up our asteroids and rocky planets, you would get the same type of dust we are seeing in these star systems," said Michael Jura of the University of California, Los Angeles, who presented the results today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif. "This tells us that the stars have asteroids like ours -- and therefore could also have rocky planets." Jura is the lead author of a paper on the findings accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.

Asteroids and planets form out of dusty material that swirls around young stars. The dust sticks together, forming clumps and eventually full-grown planets. Asteroids are the leftover debris. When a star like our sun nears the end of its life, it puffs up into a red giant that consumes its innermost planets, while jostling the orbits of remaining asteroids and outer planets. As the star continues to die, it blows off its outer layers and shrinks down into a skeleton of its former self -- a white dwarf.

Sometimes, a jostled asteroid wanders too close to a white dwarf and meets its demise -- the gravity of the white dwarf shreds the asteroid to pieces. A similar thing happened to Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 when Jupiter's gravity tore it up, before the comet ultimately smashed into the planet in 1994.

Spitzer observed shredded asteroid pieces around white dwarfs with its infrared spectrograph, an instrument that breaks light apart into a rainbow of wavelengths, revealing imprints of chemicals. Previously, Spitzer analyzed the asteroid dust around two so-called polluted white dwarfs; the new observations bring the total to eight.

"Now, we've got a bigger sample of these polluted white dwarfs, so we know these types of events are not extremely rare," said Jura.

In all eight systems observed, Spitzer found that the dust contains a glassy silicate mineral similar to olivine and commonly found on Earth. "This is one clue that the rocky material around these stars has evolved very much like our own," said Jura.

The Spitzer data also suggest there is no carbon in the rocky debris -- again like the asteroids and rocky planets in our solar system, which have relatively little carbon.

A single asteroid is thought to have broken apart within the last million years or so in each of the eight white-dwarf systems. The biggest of the bunch was once about 200 kilometers (124 miles) in diameter, a bit larger than Los Angeles County.

Jura says the real power of observing these white dwarf systems is still to come. When an asteroid "bites the dust" around a dead star, it breaks into very tiny pieces. Asteroid dust around living stars, by contrast, is made of larger particles. By continuing to use spectrographs to analyze the visible light from this fine dust, astronomers will be able to see exquisite details -- including information about what elements are present and in what abundance. This will reveal much more about how other star systems sort and process their planetary materials.

"It's as if the white dwarfs separate the dust apart for us," said Jura.

Other authors are Ben Zuckerman at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Jay Farihi at Leicester University, England.

This research was funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., 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. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

New NASA Balloon Successfully Flight-Tested Over Antarctica

NASA and the National Science Foundation have successfully launched and demonstrated a newly designed super pressure balloon prototype that may enable a new era of high-altitude scientific research. The super-pressure balloon ultimately will carry large scientific experiments to the brink of space for 100 days or more.

This seven-million-cubic-foot super-pressure balloon is the largest single-cell, super-pressure, fully-sealed balloon ever flown. When development ends, NASA will have a 22 million-cubic-foot balloon that can carry a one-ton instrument to an altitude of more than 110,000 feet, which is three to four times higher than passenger planes fly.

"This flight test is a very important step forward in building a new capability for scientific ballooning based on sound engineering and operational development," said W. Vernon Jones, senior scientist for suborbital research at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The team has further work to do to enable the super pressure balloon to lift a one-ton instrument to a float altitude of 110,000 feet, but the team has demonstrated they are on the right path."

Ultra-long duration missions using the super pressure balloon cost considerably less than a satellite and the scientific instruments flown can be retrieved and launched again, making them ideal very-high altitude research platforms.

The test flight was launched Dec. 28, 2008, from McMurdo Station, which is the National Science Foundation's logistics hub in Antarctica. The balloon reached a float altitude of more than 111,000 feet and continues to maintain it in its 11th day of flight. The flight tested the durability and functionality of the scientific balloon's unique pumpkin-shaped design and novel material. The material is a special lightweight polyethylene film, about the thickness of ordinary plastic food wrap.

"Our balloon development team is very proud of the tremendous success of the test flight and is focused on continued development of this new capability to fly balloons for months at a time in support of scientific investigations," said David Pierce, chief of the Balloon Program Office at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Va. "The test flight has demonstrated that 100 day flights of large, heavy payloads is a realistic goal."

In addition to the super pressure test flight, two additional long-duration balloons have been launched from McMurdo during the 2008-2009 campaign. The University of Hawaii Manoa's Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna launched Dec. 21, 2008, and is still aloft. Its radio telescope is searching for indirect evidence of extremely high-energy neutrino particles possibly coming from outside our Milky Way galaxy.

The University of Maryland's Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass, or CREAM IV, experiment launched Dec. 19, 2008, and landed Jan. 6, 2009. The CREAM investigation was used to directly measure high energy cosmic-ray particles arriving at Earth after originating from distant supernova explosions elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy.

The super-pressure balloon was highlighted in the National Research Council's decadal survey "Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium," and will play an important role in providing inexpensive access to the near-space environment for science and technology.

NASA and the National Science Foundation conduct an annual scientific balloon campaign during the Antarctic summer. The National Science Foundation manages the U.S. Antarctic Program and provides logistic support for all U.S. scientific operations in Antarctica.

The Wallops Flight Facility is a division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Wallops manages NASA's scientific balloon program for the Science Mission Directorate. Launch operations are conducted by the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility of Palestine, Texas, which is managed for NASA by the Physical Science Laboratory of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

Mars Rovers Near Five Years of Science and Discovery

NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity may still have big achievements ahead as they approach the fifth anniversaries of their memorable landings on Mars.

Of the hundreds of engineers and scientists who cheered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 3, 2004, when Spirit landed safely, and 21 days later when Opportunity followed suit, none predicted the team would still be operating both rovers in 2009.

"The American taxpayer was told three months for each rover was the prime mission plan," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The twins have worked almost 20 times that long. That's an extraordinary return of investment in these challenging budgetary times."

The rovers have made important discoveries about wet and violent environments on ancient Mars. They also have returned a quarter-million images, driven more than 21 kilometers (13 miles), climbed a mountain, descended into craters, struggled with sand traps and aging hardware, survived dust storms, and relayed more than 36 gigabytes of data via NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. To date, the rovers remain operational for new campaigns the team has planned for them.

"These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day," said John Callas, JPL project manager for Spirit and Opportunity. "We realize that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead."

Occasional cleaning of dust from the rovers' solar panels by Martian wind has provided unanticipated aid to the vehicles' longevity. However, it is unreliable aid. Spirit has not had a good cleaning for more than 18 months. Dust-coated solar panels barely provided enough power for Spirit to survive its third southern-hemisphere winter, which ended in December.

"This last winter was a squeaker for Spirit," Callas said. "We just made it through."

With Spirit's energy rising for spring and summer, the team plans to drive the rover to a pair of destinations about 183 meters (200 yards) south of the site where Spirit spent most of 2008. One is a mound that might yield support for an interpretation that a plateau Spirit has studied since 2006, called Home Plate, is a remnant of a once more-extensive sheet of explosive volcanic material. The other destination is a house-size pit called Goddard.

"Goddard doesn't look like an impact crater," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y. Squyres is principal investigator for the rover science instruments. "We suspect it might be a volcanic explosion crater, and that's something we haven't seen before."

A light-toned ring around the inside of the pit might add information about a nearby patch of bright, silica-rich soil that Squyres counts as Spirit's most important discovery so far. Spirit churned up the silica in mid-2007 with an immobile wheel that the rover has dragged like an anchor since it quit working in 2006. The silica was likely produced in an environment of hot springs or steam vents.

For Opportunity, the next major destination is Endeavour Crater. It is approximately 22 kilometers (14 miles) in diameter, more than 20 times larger than another impact crater, Victoria, where Opportunity spent most of the past two years. Although Endeavour is about 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Victoria, it is considerably farther as the rover drives on a route evading major obstacles.

Since climbing out of Victoria four months ago, Opportunity has driven more than a mile of its route toward Endeavour and stopped to inspect the first of several loose rocks the team plans to examine along the way. High-resolution images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached Mars in 2006, are helping the team plot routes around potential sand traps that were not previously discernable from orbit.

"We keep setting the bar higher for what these rovers can do," said Frank Hartman, a JPL rover driver. "Once it seemed like a crazy idea to go to Endeavour, but now we're doing it."

Squyres said, "The journeys have been motivated by science, but have led to something else important. This has turned into humanity's first overland expedition on another planet. When people look back on this period of Mars exploration decades from now, Spirit and Opportunity may be considered most significant not for the science they accomplished, but for the first time we truly went exploring across the surface of Mars."

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rovers for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information about Spirit and Opportunity, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers .

NASA Report Reviews Crew Safety Measures During Columbia Accident, Recommends Improvements

NASA has completed a comprehensive study of crew safety equipment and procedures used during the space shuttle Columbia accident with recommendations for improving the safety of all future human spaceflights.

A media teleconference will be held at 3 p.m. CST Tuesday to discuss the report. To participate, reporters must contact NASA’s Johnson Space Center newsroom at 281-483-5111 no later than 2 p.m. Space may be limited.

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

The teleconference participants are Wayne Hale, deputy associate administrator for strategic partnerships; astronaut Pam Melroy, deputy project manager for the investigation team; Nigel Packham, project manager for the investigation team; and Jeff Hanley, Constellation program manager.

The Spacecraft Crew Survival Integrated Investigation Team report is available at:

http://www.nasa.gov/reports

"The members of this team have done an outstanding job under difficult and personal circumstances," said Johnson Space Station Center Director Michael L. Coats. "Their work will ensure that the legacy of Columbia and her heroic crew continues to be the improved safety of future human spaceflights worldwide."

The team's final report includes 30 recommendations to improve spacecraft design and crew safety. The recommendations cover a broad range of subjects from crew training, procedures, restraints and individual safety equipment to spacecraft design methods and recommendations regarding future accident investigations.

NASA already has implemented some of the report's recommendations and is evaluating others. A fact sheet describing actions that have been taken or are in work by both the Space Shuttle Program and Constellation Program as a result of the investigation is available at the same web link as the report.

This was the first-ever in-depth crew survival study of a spaceflight accident. The investigation was conducted by a multi-disciplinary NASA team based at NASA's Johnson Space Center. The study team also consulted experts outside of NASA for portions of its work.