NASA'S Wise Mission Discovers Coolest Class of Stars

Scientists using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered the coldest class of star-like bodies, with temperatures as cool as the human body.

Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success. When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see. WISE's infrared vision allowed the telescope to finally spot the faint glow of six Y dwarfs relatively close to our sun, within a distance of about 40 light-years.

"WISE scanned the entire sky for these and other objects, and was able to spot their feeble light with its highly sensitive infrared vision," said Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "They are 5,000 times brighter at the longer infrared wavelengths WISE observed from space than those observable from the ground."

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NASA Moon Mission in Final Preparations for September Launch

NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission to study the moon is in final launch preparations for a scheduled Sept. 8 launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

GRAIL's twin spacecraft are tasked for a nine-month mission to explore Earth's nearest neighbor in unprecedented detail. They will determine the structure of the lunar interior from crust to core and advance our understanding of the thermal evolution of the moon.

"Yesterday's final encapsulation of the spacecraft is an important mission milestone," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Our two spacecraft are now sitting comfortably inside the payload fairing which will protect them during ascent. Next time the GRAIL twins will see the light of day, they will be about 95 miles up and accelerating."

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Cassini Closes in on Saturn's Tumbling Moon Hyperion

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured new views of Saturn's oddly shaped moon Hyperion during its encounter with this cratered body on Thursday, Aug. 25. Raw images were acquired as the spacecraft flew past the moon at a distance of about 15,500 miles (25,000 kilometers), making this the second closest encounter.

Hyperion is a small moon -- just 168 miles (270 kilometers) across. It has an irregular shape and surface appearance, and it rotates chaotically as it tumbles along in orbit. This odd rotation prevented scientists from predicting exactly what terrain the spacecraft's cameras would image during this flyby.

However, this flyby's closeness has likely allowed Cassini's cameras to map new territory. At the very least, it will help scientists improve color measurements of the moon. It will also help them determine how the moon's brightness changes as lighting and viewing conditions change, which can provide insight into the texture of the surface. The color measurements provide additional information about different materials on the moon's deeply pitted surface.

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Researchers Detail How A Distant Black Hole Devoured A Star

Two studies appearing in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal Nature provide new insights into a cosmic accident that has been streaming X-rays toward Earth since late March. NASA's Swift satellite first alerted astronomers to intense and unusual high-energy flares from the new source in the constellation Draco.

"Incredibly, this source is still producing X-rays and may remain bright enough for Swift to observe into next year," said David Burrows, professor of astronomy at Penn State University and lead scientist for the mission's X-Ray Telescope instrument. "It behaves unlike anything we've seen before."

Astronomers soon realized the source, known as Swift J1644+57, was the result of a truly extraordinary event -- the awakening of a distant galaxy's dormant black hole as it shredded and consumed a star. The galaxy is so far away, it took the light from the event approximately 3.9 billion years to reach Earth.

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Robonaut Wakes Up In Space

After months of patiently snoring away in its storage bag, Robonaut 2 – the first dexterous humanoid robot in space – finally got its wakeup call on Monday.

R2, as the robot is called, was delivered to the International Space Station on STS-133 – the last flight of space shuttle Discovery – in February, but due to the astronaut’s busy schedule of shuttle missions and science experiments, the station crew hadn’t been able to do more than unpack it. Until now.

On Monday, Mission Specialists Mike Fossum and Satoshi Furukawa hooked R2 up inside the Destiny laboratory, and teams on the ground sent power to the robot for the first time in space.

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Hurricane Season 2011: NASA Sees Heavy Rain in Hurricane Irene

Before Irene even reached hurricane status, a NASA satellite saw heavy rainfall and hot towering thunderstorm clouds around the storm's center this weekend. That heavy rainfall is expected as Irene continues to track through the Caribbean today. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed over Irene when it was a tropical storm on August 21, 2011 at 0024 UTC (8:24 p.m. EDT August 20). Data collected with this orbit showed that Irene contained numerous powerful thunderstorms with TRMM's Precipitation Radar revealing that some thunderstorm towers near the center of the storm were reaching to heights above 15 km (~9.3 miles).

Those "hot towers" are called "hot" because they rise to such altitude due to the large amount of latent heat. Water vapor releases this latent heat as it condenses into liquid. Back in 2004, researchers Owen Kelley and John Stout of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., found that a tropical cyclone with a hot tower in its eyewall was twice as likely to intensify within the next six hours than a cyclone that lacked a tower. Irene had those hot towers and did intensify into a hurricane.

The National Hurricane Center noted on August 22 that Irene is expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of 5 to 10 inches across Puerto Rico, The Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the Southeastern Bahamas and The Turks and Caicos Islands. Isolated maximum amounts of rainfall may reach up to 20 inches.

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New Rover Snapshots Capture Endeavour Crater Vistas

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has captured new images of intriguing Martian terrain from a small crater near the rim of the large Endeavour crater the rover arrived at the 13-mile-diameter (21-kilometer-diameter) Endeavour on Aug. 9, after a journey of almost three years.

Opportunity is now examining the ejected material from the small crater, named "Odyssey", The rover is approaching a large block of ejecta for investigation with tools on the rover's robotic arm.

Opportunity and Spirit completed their three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004 both rovers continued for years of bonus, extended missions both have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life spirit ended communications in March 2010.

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NASA Research Leads to First Complete Map of Antarctic Ice Flow

NASA-funded researchers have created the first complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica. The map, which shows glaciers flowing thousands of miles from the continent's deep interior to its coast, will be critical for tracking future sea-level increases from climate change. The team created the map using integrated radar observations from a consortium of international satellites.

"This is like seeing a map of all the oceans' currents for the first time. It's a game changer for glaciology," said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California (UC), Irvine. Rignot is lead author of a paper about the ice flow published online Thursday in Science Express. "We are seeing amazing flows from the heart of the continent that had never been described before."

Rignot and UC Irvine scientists Jeremie Mouginot and Bernd Scheuchl used billions of data points captured by European, Japanese and Canadian satellites to weed out cloud cover, solar glare and land features masking the glaciers. With the aid of NASA technology, the team painstakingly pieced together the shape and velocity of glacial formations, including the previously uncharted East Antarctica, which comprises 77 percent of the continent.

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NASA's GRAIL Moon Twins are Joined to Their Booster

NASA's lunar-bound GRAIL twins were mated to their Delta II launch vehicle at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 17 at 8:45 a.m. EDT (5:45 a.m. PDT) today. The 15-mile (25-kilometer) trip from Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Fla., is the last move for GRAIL before it begins its journey to the moon. NASA's dynamic duo will orbit the moon to determine the structure of the lunar interior from crust to core and to advance understanding of the thermal evolution of the moon.

"We are about to finish one chapter in the GRAIL story and open another," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL's principal investigator, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "Let me assure you this one is a real page-turner. GRAIL will rewrite the book on the formation of the moon and the beginning of us."

Now that the GRAIL spacecraft are atop their rocket, a final flurry of checks and tests can begin to confirm that all is go for launch. The final series of checks begins tomorrow, Aug. 19, with an on-pad functional test. The test is designed to confirm that the spacecraft is healthy after the fueling and transport operations. Next week, among all the upcoming final tests, reviews and closeout operations leading up to liftoff, the GRAIL team will install the launch vehicle fairing around the spacecraft.

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Airplane Plus Heat Plus Ice Equals Mystery

It's difficult to believe that an airplane flying in the tropics in the summer could have an engine fill up with ice, freeze, and shut down. But the phenomenon, known as engine core ice accretion, has happened more than 150 times since 1988 — frequently enough to attract the attention of NASA aviation safety experts, who are preparing a flight campaign in northern Australia to learn more about this occasional hazard and what can be done to prevent it.

"It's not happening in one particular type of engine and it's not happening on one particular type of airframe," said Tom Ratvasky, an icing flight research engineer at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. "The problem can be found on aircraft as big as large commercial airliners, all the way down to business-sized jet aircraft." And it has happened at altitudes up to 41,000 feet.

No accident has been attributed to the phenomenon in the 23 years since it was identified, but there have been some harrowing moments in the air. In most of the known cases, pilots have managed to restore engine power and reach their destinations without further problems. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, there have been two forced landings. For example, in 2005, both engines of a Beechcraft business jet failed at 38,000 feet above Jacksonville, Fla. The pilot glided the aircraft to an airport, dodging thunderstorms and ominous clouds on the way down. Engine core ice accretion was to blame.

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Robotic Refueling Module, Soon To Be Relocated to Permanent Space Station Position

NASA’s groundbreaking Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) will reach a key milestone in September when the International Space Station (ISS) robots transfer the module to its permanent home on space station’s ExPRESS Logistics Carrier-4. Robotic operations for the technology demonstration are currently slated to begin soon afterwards.

A joint effort between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, RRM is designed to demonstrate the technologies, tools, and techniques needed to robotically service satellites, especially those not built with servicing in mind.The results of this two-year technology test bed are expected to the reduce risks associated with satellite servicing as well as lay the foundation and encourage future robotic servicing missions. Such future missions could include the repair and repositioning of orbiting satellites.

President Obama called the RRM demonstration “innovative” during a July 15 phone call to STS-135 astronauts onboard the ISS noting its potential future benefits to the commercial satellite industry. “It’s a good reminder of how NASA technology and research often times has huge spillover effects into the commercial sector, and makes it all that much more important in terms of peoples’ day to day lives.”Launched to the ISS in July onboard the last shuttle mission, RRM marks the first use of the space station’s Dextre robot beyond robotic station maintenance for technology research and development. It is also the first on-orbit demonstration to test, prove and advance the technology needed to perform robotic servicing on spacecraft not designed for refueling and repair.

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Calling the Caribbean from the International Space Station

Close to 300 students in the Caribbean got a very long distance call from the International Space Station on Monday, Aug. 8, 2011. Crew members aboard the station used the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, or ARISS, to make contact with their eager audience on the ground. The goal was to inspire students and educators via an interactive space experience. This was the first ARISS communication for the Caribbean region.

The ARISS conversations usually last about 10 minutes. During that time, chosen students on the ground ask questions, which the crew answers from the space station. Questions during the Caribbean contact ranged from how space travel affects human health and how the space station was powered and maneuvered to concerns about space debris. Students also wanted to know what it was like to be an astronaut, asking about the most difficult aspects of the job.

Students prepared by learning about the space station, radio waves and how amateur radio works, as well as proposing questions to ask the crew. Ken Ransom, project coordinator with the International Space Station Ham Radio Program, points out the educational benefits of the approximately 50 conversations that take place every year. "The ARISS program is all about inspiring and encouraging by reaching the community and providing a chance for schools to interact with local technical experts. It also brings the space program to their front door."

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Honeycomb Carbon Crystals Possibly Detected in Space

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted the signature of flat carbon flakes, called graphene, in space if confirmed, this would be the first-ever cosmic detection of the material -- which is arranged like chicken wire in flat sheets that are one atom thick. Graphene was first synthesized in a lab in 2004, and subsequent research on its unique properties garnered the Nobel Prize in 2010, It's as strong as it is thin, and conducts electricity as well as copper, Some think it's the "material of the future," with applications in computers, screens on electrical devices, solar panels and more.

Graphene in space isn't going to result in any super-fast computers, but researchers are interested in learning more about how it is created. Understanding chemical reactions involving carbon in space may hold clues to how our own carbon-based selves and other life on Earth developed.

Spitzer identified signs of the graphene in two small galaxies outside of our own, called the Magellanic Clouds, specifically in the material shed by dying stars, called planetary nebulae, the infrared-sensing telescope also spotted a related molecule, called C70, in the same region – marking the first detection of this chemical outside our galaxy.

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NASA’s DC-8 Flying Lab Validates Laser Instruments

Twenty scientists went aloft aboard NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory in late July to conduct an airborne test of four very different laser techniques for remotely measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide and two laser instruments that remotely measured oxygen. The DC-8 also carried two “truth” instruments – devices that are known to produce accurate data – that took air samples to be compared with the laser measurements.

As part of a research campaign dubbed Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Night, Days and Seasons II, or ASCENDS II, the aircraft flew over central California July 28. The focus of this mission, which is funded by the Earth Science division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, is the further development of laser-based Earth-observing satellite instruments designed to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide.

"Satellite instruments start in a laboratory and mature to a point where they need to be used in the atmosphere," said DC-8 project manager Frank Cutler at NASA’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif. "The cheapest way to test is first on the ground and then to get the instruments into the air for in-flight analysis."The DC-8 flying laboratory is often used to facilitate these assessments," Cutler added. "It is interesting to observe what an instrument that will fly on a satellite goes through to be certified for operational use."

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NASA Chat: Stay 'Up All Night' to Watch the Perseids!

Looking for a good reason to enjoy an August evening? This year's Perseid meteor shower peaks on the night of Friday, Aug. 12 and into the early morning of Saturday, Aug 13, The Perseids are considered the best meteor shower of the year by many, but with the full moon washing out all but the brightest meteors, rates will probably only be 20-30 per hour at most -- weather permitting.

The Perseids rate in the southern hemisphere is quite a bit lower, since the Perseid radiant doesn't climb above the horizon, The Perseids have been observed for at least 2,000 years and are associated with the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years.

Each year in August, the Earth passes through a cloud of the comet's debris these bits of ice and dust -- most over 1,000 years old -- burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, The Perseids can be seen all over the sky, but the best viewing opportunities will be across the northern hemisphere those with sharp eyes will see that the meteors appear to radiate from the direction of the constellation Perseus.

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NASA Mars Rover Approaches Long-Term Goal

The NASA Mars rover Opportunity has gained a view of Endeavour crater from barely more than a football-field's distance away from the rim the rim of Endeavour has been the mission's long-term goal since mid-2008.

Endeavour offers the setting for plenty of productive work by Opportunity the crater is 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter -- more than 25 times wider than Victoria crater, an earlier stop that Opportunity examined for two years, Observations by orbiting spacecraft indicate that the ridges along Endeavour's western rim expose rock outcrops older than any Opportunity has seen so far the selected location for arrival at the rim, "Spirit Point," is at the southern tip of one of those ridges, "Cape York," on the western side of Endeavour.

Opportunity and Spirit completed their three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004 both rovers continued for years of bonus, extended missions both have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life The mission of the Spirit rover, for which Spirit Point was named, was concluded in May, 2011, after the rover did not re-establish communications following the Martian winter.

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NASA's Juno Spacecraft Launches to Jupiter

NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:25 a.m. PDT (12:25 p.m. EDT) Friday to begin a five-year journey to Jupiter. Juno's detailed study of the largest planet in our solar system will help reveal Jupiter's origin and evolution. As the archetype of giant gas planets, Jupiter can help scientists understand the origin of our solar system and learn more about planetary systems around other stars.

"Today, with the launch of the Juno spacecraft, NASA began a journey to yet another new frontier," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "The future of exploration includes cutting-edge science like this to help us better understand our solar system and an ever-increasing array of challenging destinations." After Juno's launch aboard an Atlas V rocket, mission controllers now await telemetry from the spacecraft indicating it has achieved its proper orientation, and that its massive solar arrays, the biggest on any NASA deep-space probe, have deployed and are generating power.

"We are on our way, and early indications show we are on our planned trajectory," said Jan Chodas, Juno project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We will know more about Juno's status in a couple hours after its radios are energized and the signal is acquired by the Deep Space Network antennas at Canberra."

NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing on Mars

"NASA's Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, “and it reaffirms Mars as an important future destination for human exploration."

Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring. Repeated observations have tracked the seasonal changes in these recurring features on several steep slopes in the middle latitudes of Mars' southern hemisphere.

"The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water," said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson. McEwen is the principal investigator for the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and lead author of a report about the recurring flows published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.

Juno Ready to Launch to Jupiter

The Juno spacecraft will soon be on its way to Jupiter on a mission to look deep beneath the planet's swirling curtain of clouds to find out what lies beneath. The answer might confirm theories about how the solar system formed, or it may change everything we thought we knew.

"The special thing about Juno is we're really looking at one of the first steps, the earliest time in our solar system's history," said Scott Bolton, the principal investigator for the Juno mission. "Right after the sun formed, what happened that allowed the planets to form and why are the planets a slightly different composition than the sun?"

Starting the 4-ton spacecraft on its five-year journey to the largest planet in the solar system is the job of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V equipped with five solid-fueled boosters. Even with that much power, Juno will still require a flyby of Earth to get up enough energy to swing out to Jupiter. With three 34-foot-long solar arrays and a high-gain antenna in the middle, the spacecraft is reminiscent of a windmill. It even spins slowly as it goes through its mission. Those arrays will be the sole power source for Juno as it conducts its mission, a first for a spacecraft headed beyond the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Juno to Show Jupiter's Magnetic Field in High-Def

When it comes to magnetic fields, Jupiter is the ultimate muscle car. It's endowed with the biggest, brawniest field of any planet in the solar system, powered by a monster engine under the hood.Figuring out how this mighty engine, or dynamo, works is one goal of NASA's Juno mission, which is scheduled to begin its five-year, 400-million-mile voyage to Jupiter in August 2011. Juno will orbit the planet for about a year, investigating its origin and evolution with eight instruments to probe its internal structure and gravity field, measure water and ammonia in its atmosphere, map its powerful magnetic field and observe its intense auroras.

The magnetic field studies will be the job of Juno's twin magnetometers, designed and built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. They will measure the field's magnitude and direction with greater accuracy than any previous instrument, revealing it for the first time in high-def.

"Valuable information about Jupiter’s magnetic field was gathered by the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions in the early 1970s and Voyagers 1 and 2 in the late '70s," says NASA Goddard's Jack Connerney, Juno's deputy principal investigator and head of the magnetometer team. Connerney is collaborating with the mission's principal investigator, Scott Bolton, at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "But previous spacecraft orbited among Jupiter's moons; Juno, a polar orbiter, will be the first magnetic mapping mission to Jupiter."

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Russian Spacewalkers to Move Cargo Boom, Deploy Ham Radio Satellite

Two Russian cosmonauts will leave the confines of the International Space Station on Aug.3 to move a cargo boom from one airlock to another, install a prototype laser communications system and deploy an amateur radio micro-satellite.

Expedition 28 Flight Engineers Sergei Volkov and Alexander Samokutyaev are scheduled to venture outside the Pirs airlock at 10:30 a.m. EDT Wednesday to begin the six-hour excursion. Both spacewalkers will wear Russian Orlan-MK spacesuits. Coverage of the spacewalk will be broadcast live on NASA Television beginning at 10 a.m. EDT. Volkov, making his third spacewalk, and Samokutyaev, making his first, will both wear spacesuits marked with blue stripes. Volkov’s previous two spacewalks occurred while he was Expedition 17 commander in 2008.

During the spacewalk, Commander Andrey Borisenko and NASA Flight Engineer Ron Garan will close the hatches on the Poisk docking module, which is opposite the Pirs airlock, and seal the hatches between Zvezda and Poisk. This gives them access to their Soyuz 26 spacecraft, protects against the unlikely possibility of a sudden station depressurization and allows the forward transfer compartment of Zvezda to be used as a backup airlock. Flight Engineers Mike Fossum of NASA, and Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will be in the U.S. segment and will have access to their Soyuz 27 spacecraft, which is docked to the Rassvet module.

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NASA's Dawn's Spacecraft Views Dark Side of Vesta

Dawn took this image over Vesta's northern hemisphere after the spacecraft completed its first passage over the dark side of the giant asteroid. It is northern hemisphere winter on Vesta now, so its north pole is in deep shadow.

The Dawn science team is working to determine the significance of the distinct features in this image, which include large grooves or ridges extending for great distances around Vesta.This image was taken by Dawn's framing camera on July 23, from a distance of 3,200 miles (5,200 kilometers).

The Dawn mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, for NASA. The University of California, Los Angeles, 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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