NASA’s Hubble: Amazing Stellar Dance

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers this wonderful view of the crowded astral encampment called Messier 68, a spherical, star-filled region of space known as a circular cluster. Mutual gravitational attraction amongst a cluster’s hundreds of thousands or even millions of stars keeps stellar members in check, allowing globular clusters to hang together for many billions of years. More than 150 of these objects surround our Milky Way galaxy.

On a galactic scale, globular clusters are indeed not all that big. In Messier 68's case, its constituent stars span a volume of space with a diameter of little more than a hundred light-years. The disc of the Milky Way, on the other hand, extends over some 100,000 light-years or more. Astronomers can measure the ages of globular clusters by looking at the light of their constituent stars.

Hubble added Messier 68 to its own impressive list of cosmic targets in this image using the Wide Field Camera of Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The image, which combines visible and infrared light, has a field of view of approximately 3.4 by 3.4 arc minutes

Nasa is in High Term to Develope Atlantic Row

After a Tropical low pressure, NASA's Aqua satellite spotted some very cold, high, thunderstorms around the center of a tropical low pressure area in the Atlantic Ocean today, indicating that the system is getting stronger,organized and developed.

In that low pressure area, designated as system 99L was located about 850 miles east of the southern Windward Islands  near 10.7 north latitude and 46.9 west longitude then it was moving west between 15 and 20 mph.

The Aqua Satellite's  Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured an infrared image of the storm. It showed that there was a small area of strong, high, cold cloud tops of thunderstorms around the center of circulation, indicating some strength in the low pressure area. Infrared imagery shows temperature and the higher the cloud tops, the colder they are as they reach higher in the troposphere (lowest atmospheric layer). When cloud top temperatures are very cold, it's an indication of strong uplift in the atmosphere. The cloud top temperatures around the center of this low were near -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius), and indicated powerful uplift and high cloud tops.

The New vehicle "LauncherOne" to transform small satellite for tourism is in final leg of test flights

The Great Farnborough "International Air Show 2012", Virgin Galactic, the world's first commercial spaceline, Today they announced "LauncherOne", a new air-launched rocket specifically designed to deliver small satellites into orbit. With substantial funding already raised from Virgin Galactic's partner aabar Investments PJS, and with commercial flights of this new orbital launch vehicle expected to begin by 2016, Virgin Galactic aims to offer frequent and dedicated launches at the world's lowest prices. Virgin Galactic also announced that four private companies have already put down deposits as future LauncherOne customers, expressing their intent to purchase a total of several dozen launches, which would exceed the level of early commitment of any previous new launch vehicle. 

The New LauncherOne will be a two-stage vehicle capable of carrying up to 500 pounds that is 225 kilograms to orbit for prices below $10 million. And,the rocket will be launched from Virgin Galactic's proven WhiteKnightTwo,it is uniquely capable aircraft also designed to carry along SpaceShipTwo aloft to begin her suborbital missions.Very thanks to the extreme flexibility of air launch, Virgin Galactic's customers will enjoy reduced infrastructure costs in addition to the wide range of possible launch locations tailored to individual mission requirements and weather conditions in this mission.

NASA’s SUMI: to Observe Magnetic Fields on the Sun

On July 5, NASA will launch a mission called the Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph Investigation or SUMI, to study the intricate, constantly changing attractive fields on the sun in a hard-to-observe region of the sun's low atmosphere called the chromospheres. SUMI will launch from White Sands Missile series in New Mexico on a Black Brant rocket. The flight will last about eight minutes total.

Magnetic fields, and the intense magnetic energy they help marshal, lie at the heart of how the sun can create huge explosions of light such as solar flares and eruptions of particles such as coronal mass ejections. While there are already instruments both on the ground and flying in space – that can measure these fields, each is constrained to observe the fields on a particular layer of the sun's surface or atmosphere. 

This higher layer of the chromospheres is known as the transition region because the chromospheres transitions here into the part of the sun's atmosphere called the corona -- and it is a region that is dominated by the magnetic fields and in which solar material heats up dramatically forming the corona and the base of the solar wind.

Model Return Robot Return Challenge at WPI

Self-directed robots roamed across the grassy terrain at Worcester Polytechnic Institute searching for samples to gather at the 2012 Sample Return Robot Challenge in Worcester, Mass, June 14-17. The challenge: plan, build up and show the next generation of robots capable of exploring the landscapes of other worlds.

Eleven teams initially registered for the challenge. Six teams complete it to WPI for the start of the challenge. After weigh-in and inspections, one team effectively met all necessities and competed in the challenge but did not win a cash prize.

WPI was the first university to offer a bachelor's degree program in robotics engineering. In 2009, a WPI robotics group took home $500,000 in NASA prize money after captivating the Regolith Excavation Challenge. The competition has demonstrated the difficulty in developing truly autonomous robotic systems for future space exploration. Prizes are merely awarded once all specifications are met. No prizes were awarded during this contest; NASA's $1.5 million prize purse will remain accessible for future Centennial Challenges

ORBITAL SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES NuSTAR SATELLITE ABOARD PEGASUS ROCKET FOR NASA

Orbital Sciences Corporation announced that its Pegasus^R rocket earlier today effectively launched the Nuclear Spectroscopic Array Telescope satellite for the NASA into its intended range.  Early on results indicate that the NuSTAR satellite is operating as anticipated at this period of its mission.

Orbital planned, manufactured and tested the NuSTAR satellite at its Dulles, VA satellite manufacturing capability. According Mr. Ron Grabe, Orbital's Executive Vice President and General Manager of its Launch Systems Group, We are very pleased to support NASA and JPL on this important scientific project. 

Throughout its mission, NuSTAR will use high-energy x-rays to detect black holes and other lively phenomenon in the cosmos with the reason of mounting our understanding of the origins and destinies of stars and galaxies.  NuSTAR will have more than one hundred times the sensitivity of previous instruments to notice black holes and will be the first focusing hard x-ray telescope in space. Pegasus is the world's leading launch system for the deployment of small satellites into low-Earth orbit.

 It remains the world's only small space launch vehicle that is certified with NASA's consignment Risk Category 3, which the space agency reserves for its highest value space missions.

NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO)

 A global crew of aquanauts is settling into its home on the ocean floor, where the team will spend 12 days testing concepts for a potential asteroid assignment. The journey is the 16th excursion of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO). The crew of four began its mission in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Aquarius Reef Base undersea research habitat off the coast of Key Largo, Fla., at 11:04 a.m. EDT Monday.

NEEMO sends groups of astronauts, engineers and scientists to live in the Aquarius lab, 63 feet below the outside of the Atlantic sea. The laboratory is placed in the Florida Keys National Marine safe haven. For NASA, Aquarius provides a persuasive simulation to space exploration, and NEEMO crew members experience some of the same tasks and challenges under water that they would in space.The NEEMO 16 mission will focus on three areas related to asteroid missions. The crew of aquanauts will investigate communiqué delays, restraint and conversion techniques, and optimum crew size.

The separation and microgravity situation of the ocean floor allows the NEEMO 16 crew to study and test concepts for how future exploration of asteroids might be conducted. NASA's Orion spaceship and the Space Launch System rocket, which currently are in development, will allow people to begin exploring beyond the boundaries of Earth's orbit. The first human mission to an asteroid is planned for 2025. NEEMO 16 Commander Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger of NASA will be joined by European Space Agency astronaut Timothy Peake; Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Kimiya Yui; and Steven W. Squyres, Goldwin Smith professor of astronomy at Cornell University and chairman of the NASA Advisory Council. Squyres also was a member of NEEMO 15.

The NEEMO crew members will be chronicling their mission using several social media outlets, blogs and live video streams from the crews' helmets, the air lock and outside the habitat. For additional information on the mission and links to the various ways to connect with NEEMO

Instrument Integration Begins at Goddard on MMS Spacecraft

The decks have arrived. Engineers working on NASA’S Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission have started integrating instruments on the first of four instrument decks in a newly fabricated cleanroom at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The MMS mission consists of four identical spacecraft, and each instrument deck will have 25 sensors per spacecraft.

"This is the first time NASA has ever built four satellites near simultaneously like this," says Craig Tooley, project manager for MMS at Goddard. "It feels like we're planning a giant game of musical chairs to produce multiple copies of a spacecraft. One instrument deck might be 2/3 finished, while another one is 1/3 finished, and the same people will have to test a nearly complete deck one day, and install large components on another one another day."

MMS will fly the four spacecraft in formation to investigate how the sun's and Earth's magnetic fields connect and disconnect, explosively transferring energy from one to the other -- a process that occurs throughout the universe, known as magnetic reconnection.

By going into space to observe magnetic reconnection where it is happening, MMS will both study a fundamental physical process that occurs throughout the universe as well as observe one of the ultimate drivers of our space weather, which affects modern technological systems such as communications networks, GPS navigation, and electrical power grids.

NASA’s tornado Webpage: Source for universal Tropical Cyclones

NASA’s Hurricane Web page is a source for meteorologists or weather fanatics, with updates on humid cyclones incident anywhere around the world, satellite descriptions, the latest study, animations, educational tools, scientist profiles, satellite information and historic storm information, on all storms going away to 2005.

NASA’s Hurricane Page also has companion Face book and Twitter pages. At any time there are no tropical cyclones, the Face book and Twitter pages give information on tropical lows that may or may not have the possible to extend.

The latest in NASA’s hurricane research is featured in the bottom midpoint of the webpage. That area includes a variety of NASA in-situ tempest missions, such as the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) mission that NASA flew in the summer of 2010. There’s also a wide-ranging instruction section including session plans. Users can also meet the group of scientists after NASA’s hurricane research from oceanographers to atmospheric scientists.

NASA infrared satellite: Tropical snowstorm Mawar intensification

ASA's Aqua satellite passed over tropical storm Mawar on May 31 at 1705 UTC. The reflection showed enhanced deep convection packaging into its low-level circulation center. Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen. When NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead, facts from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) gathered infrared data.

The infrared tool on NASA's Aqua satellite captured temperature data on Tropical Storm Mawar in the western North Pacific Sea and showed that the cloud top temperatures were growing colder. The AIRS descriptions demonstrate the heat of the cloud tops or the surface of the Earth in cloud-free regions. By June 4, Mawar is predicting to reach storm power with maximum sustained winds near 85 knots (98 mph/157.4 kph) before deteriorating