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