Antares Engines Roar On The Launch Pad For The First Time
NASA commercial partner Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va., successfully conducted an engine test of its Antares rocket Friday at the nation's newest launch pad. The firing was one of the last major tests before the rocket's maiden launch.
HOUSTON, TX – The Boeing Company of Houston, a NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP) partner, recently performed wind tunnel testing of its CST-100 spacecraft and integrated launch vehicle, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. The testing is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative, intended to make commercial human spaceflight services available for government and commercial customers.
Boeing and ULA also worked together to test a newly developed component of the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage. Boeing now has completed two of eight performance milestones under CCiCap and is on track to complete all 19 of its milestones around mid-2014.
WASHINGTON, DC – In preparation for a future where parts and tools can be printed on demand in space, NASA and Made in Space Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., have joined to launch equipment for the the first 3-D microgravity printing experiment to the International Space Station.
If successful, the 3-D Printing in Zero G Experiment (3-D Print) will be the first device to manufacture parts in space. 3-D Print will use extrusion additive manufacturing, which builds objects, layer by layer, out of polymers and other materials. The 3-D Print hardware is scheduled to be certified and ready for launch to the space station next year.
PASADENA, CA – Measurements taken by NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission as it delivered the Curiosity rover to Mars in 2012 are providing NASA the information it needs to design systems to protect human explorers from radiation exposure on deep-space expeditions in the future.
Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) is the first instrument to measure the radiation environment during a Mars cruise mission from inside a spacecraft that is similar to potential human exploration spacecraft. The findings reduce uncertainty about the effectiveness of radiation shielding and provide vital information to space mission designers who will need to build in protection for spacecraft occupants in the future.
PASADENA, CA – NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission has uncovered the origin of massive invisible regions that make the moon’s gravity uneven, a phenomenon that affects the operations of lunar-orbiting spacecraft. Because of GRAIL’s findings, spacecraft on missions to other celestial bodies can navigate with greater precision in the future.
GRAIL’s twin spacecraft studied the internal structure and composition of the moon in unprecedented detail for nine months. They pinpointed the locations of large, dense regions called mass concentrations, or mascons, which are characterized by strong gravitational pull. Mascons lurk beneath the lunar surface and cannot be seen by normal optical cameras.
PASADENA, CA – Detailed analysis and review have borne out researchers’ initial interpretation of pebble-containing slabs that NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity investigated last year: They are part of an ancient streambed.
The rocks are the first ever found on Mars that contain streambed gravels. The sizes and shapes of the gravels embedded in these conglomerate rocks — from the size of sand particles to the size of golf balls — enabled researchers to calculate the depth and speed of the water that once flowed at this location.
PASADENA, CA – A sequence of radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2 was obtained on the evening of May 29, 2013, by NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., when the asteroid was about 3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth, which is 15.6 lunar distances.
The radar imagery revealed that 1998 QE2 is a binary asteroid. In the near-Earth population, about 16 percent of asteroids that are about 655 feet (200 meters) or larger are binary or triple systems. Radar images suggest that the main body, or primary, is approximately 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) in diameter and has a rotation period of less than four hours. Also revealed in the radar imagery of 1998 QE2 are several dark surface features that suggest large concavities. The preliminary estimate for the size of the asteroid’s satellite, or moon, is approximately 2,000 feet (600 meters) wide. The radar collage covers a little bit more than two hours.
PASADENA, CA – From a distance, most of the Saturnian moon Dione resembles a bland cueball. Thanks to close-up images of a 500-mile-long (800-kilometer-long) mountain on the moon from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, scientists have found more evidence for the idea that Dione was likely active in the past. It could still be active now.
“A picture is emerging that suggests Dione could be a fossil of the wondrous activity Cassini discovered spraying from Saturn’s geyser moon Enceladus or perhaps a weaker copycat Enceladus,” said Bonnie Buratti of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who leads the Cassini science team that studies icy satellites. “There may turn out to be many more active worlds with water out there than we previously thought.”
WASHINGTON, DC – Data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to a new and improved family tree for asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Astronomers used millions of infrared snapshots from the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE all-sky survey, called NEOWISE, to identify 28 new asteroid families. The snapshots also helped place thousands of previously hidden and uncategorized asteroids into families for the first time. The findings are a critical step in understanding the origins of asteroid families, and the collisions thought to have created these rocky clans.
WASHINGTON, DC - Eleven teams from across the country and around the globe are preparing to compete for $1.5 million during NASA’s 2013 Sample Return Robot Challenge, June 5-7 at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Mass.
The Soyuz TMA-09M blasts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photo credit: NASA TV
NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin and ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano successfully blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:31 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, May 28, riding the Soyuz TM-09M spacecraft. Just six hours later, they joined their Expedition 36 crewmates when the hatches between their capsule and the International Space Station were opened at 12:14 a.m., bringing the ISS crew up to its full complement of six residents. Today’s docking marks the beginning of a very busy period onboard the International Space Station which will see several spacewalks, the arrival of Japanese and European cargo transfer vehicles and the continuation of NASA’s commercial resupply services cargo deliveries.
Nyberg, Yurchikhin and Parmitano joined NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Pavel Vinogradov, who arrived at the station in March. These six crew members will comprise Expedition 36 for the next several months. All six crew members then participated in a welcome ceremony with family members and mission officials gathered at Baikonur.
June 19, 2013 at 2:04 am ISS Expedition 36 Space Station Live! From Mission Control June 18, 2013: http://t.co/6HFecY3KZ7 via @YouTube
youtu.be
ISS Expedition 36 Space Station Live! From Mission Control June 18, 2013
June 19, 2013 at 1:10 am CubeSat Demo Flight Tests Technologies: http://t.co/hCeRVXtjj6 via @YouTube
I bought and ate a Publix roasted lemon pepper chicken for supper. Yummy.
June 18, 2013 at 10:04 pm Ah yes, and our traipsing tour through the best of FloriDUH! continues....
June 18, 2013 at 10:04 pm Matthew Travis shared a link.
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Sure, the tech sectors in California and New York are bustling. But would you expect Minnesota have the third most Kickstarter-funded tech startups?
June 18, 2013 at 10:03 pm Matthew Travis shared Mandatory's photo.
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