Quadrantids Will Create Brief, Beautiful Show on Jan. 4

The 2012 Quadrantids, a little-known meteor shower named after an extinct constellation, will present an excellent chance for hardy souls to start the year off with some late-night meteor watching. Peaking in the wee morning hours of Jan. 4, the Quadrantids have a maximum rate of about 100 per hour, varying between 60-200. The waxing gibbous moon will set around 3 a.m. local time, leaving about two hours of excellent meteor observing before dawn. It's a good thing, too, because unlike the more famous Perseid and Geminid meteor showers, the Quadrantids only last a few hours -- it's the morning of Jan. 4, or nothing.

Like the Geminids, the Quadrantids originate from an asteroid, called 2003 EH1. Dynamical studies suggest that this body could very well be a piece of a comet which broke apart several centuries ago, and that the meteors you will see before dawn on Jan. 4 are the small debris from this fragmentation. After hundreds of years orbiting the sun, they will enter our atmosphere at 90,000 mph, burning up 50 miles above Earth's surface -- a fiery end to a long journey!

The Quadrantids derive their name from the constellation of Quadrans Muralis (mural quadrant), which was created by the French astronomer Jerome Lalande in 1795. Located between the constellations of Bootes and Draco, Quadrans represents an early astronomical instrument used to observe and plot stars. Even though the constellation is no longer recognized by astronomers, it was around long enough to give the meteor shower -- first seen in 1825 -- its name.

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Powerful Pixels: Mapping the "Apollo Zone"

At NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., computer scientists have made a giant leap forward to pull as much information from imperfect static images as possible. With their advancement in image processing algorithms, the legacy data from the Apollo Metric Camera onboard Apollo 15, 16 and 17 can be transformed into an informative and immersive 3D mosaic map of a large and scientifically interesting part of the moon.

The "Apollo Zone" Digital Image Mosaic (DIM) and Digital Terrain Model (DTM) maps cover about 18 percent of the lunar surface at a resolution of 98 feet (30 meters) per pixel. The maps are the result of three years of work by the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at NASA Ames, and are available to view through the NASA Lunar Mapping and Modeling Portal (LMMP) and Google Moon feature in Google Earth.

"The main challenge of the Apollo Zone project was that we had very old data – scans, not captured in digital format," said Ara Nefian, a senior scientist with the IRG and Carnegie Mellon University-Silicon Valley. "They were taken with the technology we had over 40 years ago with imprecise camera positions, orientations and exposure time by today’s standards."

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NASA's Cassini Delivers Holiday Treats From Saturn

No team of reindeer, but radio signals flying clear across the solar system from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have delivered a holiday package of glorious images. The pictures, from Cassini's imaging team, show Saturn's largest, most colorful ornament, Titan, and other icy baubles in orbit around this splendid planet. The release includes images of satellite conjunctions in which one moon passes in front of or behind another.

Cassini scientists regularly make these observations to study the ever-changing orbits of the planet's moons. But even in these routine images, the Saturnian system shines. A few of Saturn's stark, airless, icy moons appear to dangle next to the orange orb of Titan, the only moon in the solar system with a substantial atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere is of great interest because of its similarities to the atmosphere believed to exist long ago on the early Earth.

While it may be wintry in Earth's northern hemisphere, it is currently northern spring in the Saturnian system and it will remain so for several Earth years. Current plans to extend the Cassini mission through 2017 will supply a continued bounty of scientifically rewarding and majestic views of Saturn and its moons and rings, as spectators are treated to the passage of northern spring and the arrival of summer in May 2017.

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NASA Telescopes Help Find Rare Galaxy at Dawn of Time

Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have discovered that one of the most distant galaxies known is churning out stars at a shockingly high rate. The blob-shaped galaxy, called GN-108036, is the brightest galaxy found to date at such great distances.

The galaxy, which was discovered and confirmed, using ground-based telescopes, is 12.9 billion light-years away. Data from Spitzer and Hubble were used to measure the galaxy's high star production rate, equivalent to about 100 suns per year. For reference, our Milky Way galaxy is about five times larger and 100 times more massive than GN-108036, but makes roughly 30 times fewer stars per year.

"The discovery is surprising because previous surveys had not found galaxies this bright so early in the history of the universe," said Mark Dickinson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. "Perhaps those surveys were just too small to find galaxies like GN-108036. It may be a special, rare object that we just happened to catch during an extreme burst of star formation."

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Dawn Obtains First Low Altitude Images of Vesta

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has sent back the first images of the giant asteroid Vesta from its low-altitude mapping orbit. The images, obtained by the framing camera, show the stippled and lumpy surface in detail never seen before, piquing the curiosity of scientists who are studying Vesta for clues about the solar system's early history.

At this detailed resolution, the surface shows abundant small craters, and textures such as small grooves and lineaments that are reminiscent of the structures seen in low-resolution data from the higher-altitude orbits. Also, this fine scale highlights small outcrops of bright and dark material.

The Dawn mission to the asteroids Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. The Dawn Framing Cameras have been developed and built under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, with significant contributions by DLR German Aerospace Center, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, and in coordination with the Institute of Computer and Communication Network Engineering, Braunschweig. The framing camera project is funded by the Max Planck Society, DLR, and NASA/JPL.

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NASA Conducts Orion Parachute Testing for Orbital Test Flight

NASA successfully conducted a drop test of the Orion crew vehicle's parachutes high above the Arizona desert Tuesday, Dec. 20, in preparation for its orbital flight test in 2014. Orion will carry astronauts deeper into space than ever before, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel and ensure a safe re-entry and landing.

A C-130 plane dropped the Orion test article from an altitude of 25,000 feet above the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Grounds. Orion's drogue chutes were deployed between 15,000 and 20,000 feet, followed by the pilot parachutes, which then deployed two main landing parachutes. This particular drop test examined how Orion would land under two possible failure scenarios.

Orion's parachutes are designed to open in stages which are called reefing, to manage the stresses on the parachutes after they are deployed. The reefing stages allow the parachutes to sequentially open, first at 54 percent of the parachutes' full diameter, and then at 73 percent. This test examined how the parachutes would perform if the second part of the sequence was skipped.

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NASA Discovers First Earth-size Planets beyond Our Solar System

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun.

The discovery marks the next important milestone in the ultimate search for planets like Earth. The new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth. Kepler-20f is a bit larger than Earth, measuring 1.03 times its radius. Both planets reside in a five-planet system called Kepler-20, approximately 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.

Kepler-20e orbits its parent star every 6.1 days and Kepler-20f every 19.6 days. These short orbital periods mean very hot, inhospitable worlds. Kepler-20f, at 800 degrees Fahrenheit, is similar to an average day on the planet Mercury. The surface temperature of Kepler-20e, at more than 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, would melt glass.

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NASA, Industry Leaders Discuss New Booster Development for Space Launch System

On Dec. 15, more than 120 aerospace industry leaders from more than 70 companies attended the Space Launch System's Advanced Booster Industry Day held at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The event focused on a NASA Research Announcement for the Space Launch System's (SLS) advanced booster.

Marshall is leading the design and development of the SLS on behalf of the agency. The new heavy-lift launch vehicle will expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration across the solar system. For explorations beyond the first two test flights, the SLS vehicle will require an advanced booster with a significant increase in thrust over existing U.S. liquid or solid boosters.

"As we are forging ahead with Space Launch System development, we are pleased to have such a strong response from industry and look forward to their ideas and hardware demonstrations for advance boosters concepts," said Todd May, SLS program manager. "Together, our expertise will enable an entirely new U.S. booster capability -- the largest and highest performing booster system ever produced -- to begin the journey to deep space safely and affordably."

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NASA Mars-Bound Rover Begins Research in Space

NASA's car-sized Curiosity rover has begun monitoring space radiation during its 8-month trip from Earth to Mars. The research will aid in planning for future human missions to the Red Planet. Curiosity launched on Nov. 26 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard the Mars Science Laboratory. The rover carries an instrument called the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) that monitors high-energy atomic and subatomic particles from the sun, distant supernovas and other sources.

These particles constitute radiation that could be harmful to any microbes or astronauts in space or on Mars. The rover also will monitor radiation on the surface of Mars after its August 2012 landing. "RAD is serving as a proxy for an astronaut inside a spacecraft on the way to Mars," said Don Hassler, RAD's principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "The instrument is deep inside the spacecraft, the way an astronaut would be. Understanding the effects of the spacecraft on the radiation field will be valuable in designing craft for astronauts to travel to Mars."

Previous monitoring of energetic-particle radiation in space has used instruments at or near the surface of various spacecraft. The RAD instrument is on the rover inside the spacecraft and shielded by other components of Mars Science Laboratory, including the aeroshell that will protect the rover during descent through the upper atmosphere of Mars. Spacecraft structures, while providing shielding, also can contribute to secondary particles generated when high-energy particles strike the spacecraft. In some circumstances, secondary particles could be more hazardous than primary ones

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NASA Concludes 2011 Testing of J-2X Engine -- Prepares for Another Active Year of Testing in 2012

NASA conducted its final J-2X rocket engine test of the year Dec. 14, the 10th firing in a series of tests on the new upper-stage engine that will carry humans farther into space than ever before. The J-2X engine was test fired on the A-2 Test Stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center, in south Mississippi. The test was performed at the 100 percent power level.

The main focus of this test was to characterize engine performance calibration and the effects of fuel inlet pressure variations. The results of this test are being analyzed. The engine -- No. 10001 -- now will be removed from the test stand to allow for addition of a nozzle extension and associated test facility modifications needed for additional engine tests in 2012.

The engine will be returned to the stand early in 2012 to resume the test series. These tests will characterize the J-2X engine with nozzle extension as needed for the Space Launch System. In addition, J-2X Powerpack testing in 2012 at the Stennis A-1 test facility will characterize the required range of fuel and oxidizer turbopump operating conditions. Meanwhile, three other J-2X engines, 10002 through 10004, are being manufactured for hot fire testing at Stennis planned through 2014.

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NASA Tests New Smart Card Access to Google Apps

NASA recently began a pilot using Google Apps, a suite of applications that brings services such as Gmail, Google Docs and other products together to help workers in today's business environment. NASA IT Labs, a part of the Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO), sponsored the pilot to meet the growing demand from workers to access resources on any device.

About 600 IT staff from 11 NASA centers and facilities are participating in the pilot, which offers cost savings by managing user's identities, credentials and access via cloud computing using on-demand software. Cloud computing refers to resources and applications that are available on the Internet from nearly any Internet-connected device. No sensitive NASA data is being placed in the cloud.

Under the pilot, NASA users can connect to Google Apps for Government using an existing NASA work ID, which also functions as a smart card in the card reader of compatible computers. The card was created as a common identification standard for federal employees and contractors to increase security and reduce opportunities for identify fraud.

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NASA's Kepler Mission Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.

The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.

Previous research hinted at the existence of near-Earth-size planets in habitable zones, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our sun recently were confirmed on the very edges of the habitable zone, with orbits more closely resembling those of Venus and Mars.

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Landsat satellites Track Yellowstone's Underground Heat

Yellowstone National Park sits on peak of a vast, ancient, and still active volcano heat pours off its underground magma chamber, and is the fuel for Yellowstone’s famous features additional than 10,000 hot springs, mud pots, terraces and geysers, as well as Old Faithful.

But expected development by energy companies right outside Yellowstone’s borders have a few fearing that Old Faithful could be cheated out of its energy."If that geothermal development exterior of the park begins, we need to recognize whether that's going to cause Old Faithful to suddenly stop spewing," says Rick Lawrence of Montana State University.

Geothermal energy development is here to stay, says Yellowstone Park geologist Cheryl Jaworowski, but it has also raised a few big questions for the National Park Service, which is tasked by Congress to monitor and skeep Yellowstone's unique landscape.

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Satellite Data Shows that Kirtland’s Warblers Prefer Forests After Fire

Kirtland’s warblers are an endangered species of lightweight little birds with bright yellow-bellies that summer in North America and winter in the Bahamas. But be it their winter or their summer home, a new study using data from NASA-built Landsat satellites shows that these warblers like to live in young forests and often forests that have been on fire.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed Kirtland’s warblers as endangered in 1967 after a startling decline of over 50 percent in less than ten years. The little birds prefer to nest on the ground amidst large areas of relatively young jack pine trees, and these trees need fire to reproduce. When fires were dramatically suppressed in the 1960s across northern Michigan, Wisconsin and southern Ontario, the warbler’s habitat became scarce.

After an intensive recovery program that focused both on combating invasive cowbirds and managing controlled forest burns, and thus creating warbler-friendly jack pine habitat, the Kirtland’s warbler made an impressive comeback. By 1995 their numbers had tripled.

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Solar Storms Could 'Sandblast' the Moon

Solar storms and associated Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) can significantly erode the lunar surface according to a new set of computer simulations by NASA scientists. In addition to removing a surprisingly large amount of material from the lunar surface, this could be a major method of atmospheric loss for planets like Mars that are unprotected by a global magnetic field.

The research is being led by Rosemary Killen at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., as part of the Dynamic Response of the Environment At the Moon (DREAM) team within the NASA Lunar Science Institute.

CMEs are basically an intense gust of the normal solar wind, a diffuse stream of electrically conductive gas called plasma that's blown outward from the surface of the Sun into space. A strong CME may contain around a billion tons of plasma moving at up to a million miles per hour in a cloud many times the size of Earth.

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NASA's Voyager Hits New Region at Solar System Edge

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space. Data obtained from Voyager over the last year reveal this new region to be a kind of cosmic purgatory. In it, the wind of charged particles streaming out from our sun has calmed, our solar system's magnetic field has piled up, and higher-energy particles from inside our solar system appear to be leaking out into interstellar space.

"Voyager tells us now that we're in a stagnation region in the outermost layer of the bubble around our solar system," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Voyager is showing that what is outside is pushing back. We shouldn't have long to wait to find out what the space between stars is really like."

Although Voyager 1 is about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun, it is not yet in interstellar space. In the latest data, the direction of the magnetic field lines has not changed, indicating Voyager is still within the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. The data do not reveal exactly when Voyager 1 will make it past the edge of the solar atmosphere into interstellar space, but suggest it will be in a few months to a few years.

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What's That Sparkle in Cassini's Eye?

The moon Enceladus, one of the jewels of the Saturn system, sparkles peculiarly bright in new images obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The images of the moon, the first ever taken of Enceladus with Cassini's synthetic aperture radar, reveal new details of some of the grooves in the moon's south polar region and unexpected textures in the ice. These images, obtained on Nov. 6, 2011, are the highest-resolution images of this region obtained so far.

The area on Enceladus observed by Cassini's radar instrument does not include the famous "tiger stripes," fissures that eject great plumes of ice particles and water vapor, but covers regions just a few hundred miles away from the stripes. Scientists are scrutinizing an area around 63 degrees south latitude and 51 degrees west longitude that appears to be very rough, a texture that shows up as very bright in the radar images.

"It's puzzling why this is some of the brightest stuff Cassini has seen," said Steve Wall, deputy team lead of Cassini's radar team, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "One possibility is that the area is studded with rounded ice rocks. But we can't yet explain how that would happen."

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Trio of NASA Missions Named 'Best of What's New'

NASA's Dawn, Mars Science Laboratory and MESSENGER missions have earned recognition from Popular Science magazine as innovations worthy of the publication's "Best of What's New" Award in the aviation and space category.

Dawn and Mars Science Laboratory are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Dawn is currently orbiting and exploring the massive main-belt asteroid Vesta. The Mars Science Laboratory and its Curiosity rover launched on Nov. 26 on a journey to the Red Planet, where the rover will look for signs of past or present habitability.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Dawn and Mars Science Laboratory for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.

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FLEX-ible Insight Into Flame Behavior

Whether free-burning or smoldering, uncontrolled fire can threaten life and destroy property. On Earth, a little water, maybe some chemicals, and the fire is smothered. In space, where there is no up or down, flames behave in unconventional ways. And when your entire world is the size of a five-bedroom home like the International Space Station, putting out even a small fire quickly is a life-and-death matter.

Since March 2009, NASA's Flame Extinguishment Experiment, or FLEX, has conducted more than 200 tests to better understand the fundamentals of flames and how best to suppress fire in space. The investigation is currently ongoing aboard the space station.

"We hope to gain a better knowledge of droplet burning, improved spacecraft fire safety and ideas for more efficient utilization of liquid fuels on earth," Principal Investigator Forman Williams, University of California, San Diego, said. "The experiments will be used to verify numerical models that calculate droplet burning under different conditions."

NASA Goddard Employee Wins 2011 Presidential SAVE Award

Matthew Ritsko, a financial manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., won the 2011 Presidential Securing Americans' Value and Efficiency (SAVE) award.The SAVE program began in 2009 and allows front-line federal workers to submit their ideas on how their agency can save money and work more efficiently. Ritsko's proposal calls for the space agency to create a "lending library" where specialized space tools and hardware purchased by one NASA organization will be made available to other NASA programs and projects.

"I was part of a team here at NASA Goddard within the Flight Projects Directorate that was exploring ways for continuous improvements," said Ritsko. "We discussed efficiencies from part purchases on a recent Goddard mission. NASA could create a high tech 'tool shed' where both reusable tools and additional parts could be shared."

Ritsko's proposal was one of four finalists that the Office of Management and Budget put online. More than 48,000 Americans across the country cast votes for the idea they liked best, and the "lending library" idea won with just over 19,000 votes.

Smithsonian Channel to Air Special 'Arthur Christmas' Segment Featuring NASA Spinoff Technology

Have you ever been curious about where all the technology in your school, home, car, computer, or office comes from? You might be surprised that a great percentage of the technology we rely on each day was developed or enhanced by NASA. We all know about NASA's outstanding accomplishments in space, but few of us know just how much the space agency has accomplished right here at home. Except for Arthur. Arthur Christmas, that is.

This year in the holiday release of Arthur Christmas, Santa's North Pole has turned to high technology to run a precise operation in getting billions of gifts delivered around the world. Run by thousands of computer-savvy elves, the North Pole uses NASA-style technology to track the delivery of gifts around the Earth as they are being delivered by Santa's high speed S-1. The S-1 is a giant spacecraft in the shape of a sleigh.

"This was an exciting opportunity for us to have real examples of space technology being used right here on Earth featured in a family holiday film," said Daniel Lockney, NASA's technology transfer program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "NASA is constantly creating innovative technologies to enable our current and future missions. Many of these technologies get further developed and turned into consumer products by American industries, creating jobs, fueling the economy, and saving and improving lives around the planet."

"Coming Back Down to our Fragile Oasis," featuring Peter Gabriel's "Down to Earth"

A time-lapse video is about as close as we can come to show what astronauts see in space. This time-lapse video is a collaboration between images taken by Ron Garan and Mike Fossum from the International Space Station and music from Peter Gabriel. The music featured in the video is Peter Gabriel's "Down to Earth".

All of the sequences for this video were shot by either Mike Fossum or Ron Garan. Although the International Space Station travels at 17,500 mph, orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes, time-lapse photography speeds up the apparent motion considerably.

The flashes of lightning throughout the video are captured by the individual frames of the photography. Yet, only a small percentage of the actual lightning is captured in the imagery. While the video is sped up, it still accurately captures the paparazzi-look of lightening storms as we see them from space. While still onboard the ISS, Peter Gabriel and Ron Garan brainstormed some ideas for using this type of imagery to help tell the Fragile Oasis story. The hope with this video and others like it is to help people follow the missions not as spectators, but as crewmembers, inspired to help improve life on our planet.

Cassini Chronicles the Life and Times of Saturn's Giant Storm

New images and animated movies from NASA's Cassini spacecraft chronicle the birth and evolution of the colossal storm that ravaged the northern face of Saturn for nearly a year.These new full-color mosaics and animations show the storm from its emergence as a tiny spot in a single image almost one year ago, on Dec. 5, 2010, through its subsequent growth into a storm so large it completely encircled the planet by late January 2011.

The monster tempest, which extended north-south approximately 9,000 miles (15,000 kilometers), is the largest seen on Saturn in the past two decades and is the largest by far ever observed on the planet from an interplanetary spacecraft. On the same day that Cassini's high-resolution cameras captured the first images of the storm, Cassini's radio and plasma wave instrument detected the storm's electrical activity, revealing it to be a convective thunderstorm. The storm's active convecting phase ended in late June, but the turbulent clouds it created linger in the atmosphere today.

The storm's 200-day active period also makes it the longest-lasting planet-encircling storm ever seen on Saturn. The previous record holder was an outburst sighted in 1903, which lingered for 150 days. The large disturbance imaged 21 years ago by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and comparable in size to the current storm lasted for only 55 days.

NASA Probe Data Show Evidence of Liquid Water on Icy Europa

Data from a NASA planetary mission have provided scientists evidence of what appears to be a body of liquid water, equal in volume to the North American Great Lakes, beneath the icy surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa.

The data suggest there is significant exchange between Europa's icy shell and the ocean beneath. This information could bolster arguments that Europa's global subsurface ocean represents a potential habitat for life elsewhere in our solar system. The findings are published in the scientific journal Nature.

"The data opens up some compelling possibilities," said Mary Voytek, director of NASA's Astrobiology Program at agency headquarters in Washington. "However, scientists worldwide will want to take a close look at this analysis and review the data before we can fully appreciate the implication of these results."

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MSL "Go" for Nov. 25 Launch

NASA and contractor managers for the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) launch held their Flight Readiness Review meeting at NASA's Kennedy Space Center this morning. After an evaluation of the MSL spacecraft and United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, managers gave a "go" to continue proceeding toward a liftoff at 10:25 a.m. EST next Friday, Nov. 25. Managers will meet again Nov. 22 for the Launch Readiness Review.

The spacecraft -- with its rover, Curiosity -- is sealed inside the protective payload fairing atop the Atlas V rocket, which stands inside the Vertical Integration Facility at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 41. Closeouts of the spacecraft and the Atlas V fairing are planned for Saturday, with a countdown dress rehearsal on Sunday's schedule.

Curiosity has 10 science instruments to search for evidence about whether Mars has had environments favorable for microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life. The unique rover will use a laser to look inside rocks and release the gasses so that its spectrometer can analyze and send the data back to Earth.

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NASA Legends Awarded Congressional Gold Medal

Leaders of Congress honored astronauts John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins with congressional gold medals in a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda on Nov. 16, 2011. The Gold Medal, Congress' highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions, was first given to George Washington in 1776.

Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth, achieving the feat aboard Friendship 7 on Feb. 20, 1962. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the Moon, while Collins piloted Apollo 11's command module."We stand on the shoulders of the extraordinary men we recognize today," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden at the ceremony. "Those of us who have had the privilege to fly in space followed the trail they forged."

"When, 50 years ago this year, President Kennedy challenged the nation to reach the moon, to "take longer strides" toward a "great new American enterprise," these men were the human face of those words," said Bolden. "From Mercury and Gemini, on through our landings on the Moon in the Apollo Program, their actions unfolded the will of a nation for the greater achievement of humankind."

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Mobile Launcher Moves to Launch Pad

The mobile launcher is making the longest trip of its young life today to begin a two-week series of structural tests at Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In anticipation of launching the Space Launch System later this decade, engineers wanted to check the mobile launcher, or ML, in a number of categories ranging from how it would behave moving atop a crawler-transporter to how well its systems mesh with the infrastructure at Pad B, which has undergone extensive renovations during the past year.

"We have the time and will be able to gain significant knowledge that will assist in the development of the ML," said Larry Schultz, ML project manager. The ML began its 14-hour move at 9:15 a.m. on Nov. 16. The trip will cover about 4.2 miles from a work site beside the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad. Schultz said the team will get its first look at the information after the move is complete.

Rising 400 feet above the rocky crawlerway, the mobile launcher is substantially different than the mobile launcher platforms that carried space shuttles to the launch pads for 30 years. The dominant feature is the ML's tower, a 355-foot-high gray, steel tower reminiscent of the ones that serviced the Saturn V rockets headed to the moon in the 1960s and 70s. In fact, not since 1975 has a launch structure as tall as the ML stood at either of Kennedy's launch pads.

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NASA Extends MESSENGER Mission

NASA has announced that it will extend the MESSENGER mission for an additional year of orbital operations at Mercury beyond the planned end of the primary mission on March 17, 2012. The MESSENGER probe became the first spacecraft to orbit the innermost planet on March 18, 2011.

"We are still ironing out the funding details, but we are pleased to be able to support the continued exploration of Mercury," said NASA MESSENGER Program Scientist Ed Grayzeck, who made the announcement on November 9 at the 24th meeting of the MESSENGER Science Team in Annapolis, Md.

The spacecraft's unprecedented orbital science campaign is providing the first global close-up of Mercury and has revolutionized scientific perceptions of that planet. The extended mission will allow scientists to learn even more about the planet closest to the Sun, says MESSENGER Principal investigator Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

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New Crew Launches to Join Expedition 29

Expedition 29 crew members Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoly Ivanishin and Dan Burbank are on their way to the International Space Station. The Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft carrying the new trio launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, at 11:14 p.m. EST Sunday (10:14 a.m. Baikonur time Monday).

The Soyuz TMA-22 will dock to the Poisk mini-research module at 12:33 a.m. Wednesday. Expedition 29 Commander Mike Fossum and Flight Engineers Satoshi Furukawa and Sergei Volkov will welcome their new crewmates a little while later when they open the hatches about 2:55 a.m. Shkaplerov, Ivanishin and Burbank are scheduled to live and work aboard the orbiting laboratory until March.

NASA astronaut and Flight Engineer Dan Burbank is making his third visit to the International Space Station. His previous two visits were both aboard space shuttle Atlantis. He helped prepare the station for its first crew during STS-106 and helped install the P3/P4 truss during STS-115.

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NASA Releases Updated Radar Movie of Asteroid 2005 YU55

NASA Scientists working with the 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., have released a second, longer, and more refined, movie clip of asteroid 2005 YU55. The images were generated from data collected at Goldstone on Nov. 7, 2011, between 11:24 a.m. and 1:35 p.m. PST (2:24 p.m. and 4:35 p.m. EST).

Each of the 28 frames required 20 minutes of data collection by the Goldstone radar. At the time of the observations, 2005 YU55 was approximately 860,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) from Earth. The resolution is about 13 feet (4 meters) per pixel. 2005 YU55 takes approximately 18 hours to complete one rotation, so the rotation in the movie appears much more rapid than the actual asteroid rotation speed.The Goldstone observations utilized a new system to obtain images with a resolution of 4 meters, which is five times finer than the highest resolution previously possible at Goldstone.

"The encounter with 2005 YU55 has produced an enormous amount of data that is still being processed." said radar astronomer Lance Benner, the principal investigator for the 2005 YU55 Goldstone observations, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The sequence of images we obtained shows unprecedented fine-scale detail on this asteroid, which is comparable in size to the Empire State Building. The Goldstone images show evidence for concavities, a ridge near the asteroid's equator, and numerous features that may be large boulders."

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International Team to Drill Beneath Massive Antarctic Ice Shelf

An international team of researchers funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will travel next month to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea.

The science expedition will be the most extensive ever deployed to Pine Island Glacier. It is the area of the ice-covered continent that concerns scientists most because of its potential to cause a rapid rise in sea level. Satellite measurements have shown this area is losing ice and surrounding glaciers are thinning, raising the possibility the ice could flow rapidly out to sea.

The multidisciplinary group of 13 scientists, led by Robert Bindschadler, emeritus glaciologist of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will depart from the McMurdo Station in Antarctica in mid-December and spend six weeks on the ice shelf. During their stay, they will use a combination of traditional tools and sophisticated new oceanographic instruments to measure the shape of the cavity underneath the ice shelf and determine how streams of warm ocean water enter it, move toward the very bottom of the glacier and melt its underbelly.

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NASA's New Upper Stage Engine Passes Major Test

NASA conducted a successful 500-second test firing of the J-2X rocket engine on Wednesday, Nov. 9, marking another important step in development of an upper stage for the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS).

SLS will carry the Orion spacecraft, its crew, cargo, equipment and science experiments to destinations in deep space. SLS will be safe, affordable and sustainable to continue America's journey of discovery from the unique vantage point of space.

"The J-2X engine is critical to the development of the Space Launch System," Dan Dumbacher, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, said after the test at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. "Today's test means NASA is moving closer to developing the rocket it needs if humans are to explore beyond low-Earth orbit."

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NASA Develops Super-Black Material That Absorbs Light Across Multiple Wavelength Bands

NASA engineers have produced a material that absorbs on average more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that hits it a development that promises to open new frontiers in space technology.The team of engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., reported their findings recently at the SPIE Optics and Photonics conference, the largest interdisciplinary technical meeting in this discipline. The team has since reconfirmed the material's absorption capabilities in additional testing, said John Hagopian, who is leading the effort involving 10 Goddard technologists.

"The reflectance tests showed that our team had extended by 50 times the range of the material’s absorption capabilities. Though other researchers are reporting near-perfect absorption levels mainly in the ultraviolet and visible, our material is darn near perfect across multiple wavelength bands, from the ultraviolet to the far infrared," Hagopian said. "No one else has achieved this milestone yet."

The nanotech-based coating is a thin layer of multi-walled carbon nanotubes, tiny hollow tubes made of pure carbon about 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. They are positioned vertically on various substrate materials much like a shag rug. The team has grown the nanotubes on silicon, silicon nitride, titanium, and stainless steel, materials commonly used in space-based scientific instruments.

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NASA's Fermi Finds Youngest Millisecond Pulsar, 100 Pulsars To-Date

An international team of scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a surprisingly powerful millisecond pulsar that challenges existing theories about how these objects form.At the same time, another team has located nine new gamma-ray pulsars in Fermi data, using improved analytical techniques.

A pulsar is a type of neutron star that emits electromagnetic energy at periodic intervals. A neutron star is the closest thing to a black hole that astronomers can observe directly, crushing half a million times more mass than Earth into a sphere no larger than a city. This matter is so compressed that even a teaspoonful weighs as much as Mount Everest.

"With this new batch of pulsars, Fermi now has detected more than 100, which is an exciting milestone when you consider that, before Fermi's launch in 2008, only seven of them were known to emit gamma rays," said Pablo Saz Parkinson, an astrophysicist at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics at the University of California Santa Cruz, and a co-author on two papers detailing the findings.

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