NASA Stardust Spacecraft Officially Ends Operations

NASA's Stardust spacecraft sent its last transmission to Earth at 4:33 p.m. PDT (7:33 p.m. EDT) Thursday, March 24, shortly after depleting fuel and ceasing operations. During a 12-year period, the venerable spacecraft collected and returned comet material to Earth and was reused after the end of its prime mission in 2006 to observe and study another comet during February 2011.The Stardust team performed the burn to depletion because the comet hunter was literally running on fumes. The depletion...

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Work Stopped on Alternative Cameras for Mars Rover

The NASA rover to be launched to Mars this year will carry the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument already on the vehicle, providing the capability to meet the mission's science goals.Work has stopped on an alternative version of the instrument, with a pair of zoom-lens cameras, which would have provided additional capabilities for improved three-dimensional video. The installed Mastcam on the Mars Science Laboratory mission's Curiosity rover uses two fixed-focal-length cameras: a telephoto for one...

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Payload Installation Set to Wrap Up Saturday Morning

Launch Pad 39A crews at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida briefly delayed installing space shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 payload into its cargo bay today to evaluate the alignment of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer's remotely operated electrical umbilical, which provides heating and avionics power to the experiment. Installation now is expected to be completed Saturday morning.During the 14-day mission to the International Space Station, Endeavour's six astronauts will deliver the Alpha Magnetic...

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NASA's Successful 'Can Crush' Will Aid Heavy-Lift Rocket Design

On March 23, NASA put the squeeze on a large rocket test section. Results from this structural strength test at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will help future heavy-lift launch vehicles weigh less and reduce development costs.This trailblazing project is examining the safety margins needed in the design of future, large launch vehicle structures. Test results will be used to develop and validate structural analysis models and generate new "shell-buckling knockdown factors"...

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NASA Dryden Flies New Supersonic Shockwave Probes

NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center is flight testing two new supersonic shockwave probes to determine their viability as research tools.The probes were designed by Eagle Aeronautics of Hampton, Va., under a NASA Research Announcement, and manufactured by Triumph Aerospace Systems of Newport News, Va. The probes were first tested in a wind tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center, also in Hampton.The new probes are being flown on NASA Dryden's F-15B research test bed aircraft.Supersonic flight...

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Juno Marches On

NASA's Juno spacecraft has completed its thermal vacuum chamber testing. The two-week-long test, which concluded on March 13, 2011, is the longest the spacecraft will undergo prior to launch.In the image, a technician is attaching the lifting equipment in preparation for hoisting the 1,588-kilogram (3,500-pound) spacecraft out of the chamber. Prominent in the photo is one of three large, black, square solar array simulators, which reproduced the thermal properties of Juno's large solar arrays.The...

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Observing Clouds for NASA Becomes a Class Tradition

Attending homecoming games, purchasing class rings, and wearing school colors are a few common traditions students pass down. A not-so-common class tradition? Validating NASA satellites.For over 10 years, Gary Popiolkowski's seventh grade students at Chartiers-Houston Jr./Sr. High School in Houston, Pa. have carried on the tradition of sending cloud observations to NASA to help scientists make sure satellites are identifying clouds correctlyPopiolkowski's seventh graders are participants in Students'...

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NASA Makes Use of Historic Test Site for New Robotic Lander Prototype Tests

Today, engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., began the first phase of integrated system tests on a new robotic lander prototype at Redstone Test Center’s propulsion test facility on the U.S. Army Redstone Arsenal, also in Huntsville. These tests will aid in the design and development of a new generation of small, smart, versatile robotic landers capable of performing science and exploration research on the surface of the moon or other airless bodies, including near-Earth...

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Japan Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days, Moved Axis

The March 11, magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Japan may have shortened the length of each Earth day and shifted its axis. But don't worry—you won't notice the difference.Using a United States Geological Survey estimate for how the fault responsible for the earthquake slipped, research scientist Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., applied a complex model to perform a preliminary theoretical calculation of how the Japan earthquake—the fifth largest since 1900—affected...

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NASA Satellite Sees Area Affected by Japan Tsunami

A new before-and-after image pair from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft shows a region of Japan's northeastern coast, northeast of the city of Sendai, which was affected by the March 11, 2011 tsunami.The images show the coastal cities of Ofunato and Kesennuma, located about 90 kilometers (55 miles) northeast of Sendai. Ofunato has a population of about 42,000, while the population of Kesennuma is about 73,000. Areas...

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Speed Demon Creates a Shock

Just as some drivers obey the speed limit while others treat every road as if it were the Autobahn, some stars move through space faster than others. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, captured this image of the star Alpha Camelopardalis, or Alpha Cam, in astronomer-speak, speeding through the sky like a motorcyclist zipping through rush-hour traffic. The supergiant star Alpha Cam is the bright star in the middle of this image, surrounded on one side by an arc-shaped cloud of dust...

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NASA Finds Polar Ice Adding More To Rising Seas

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating pace, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study. The findings of the study -- the longest to date of changes in polar ice sheet mass -- suggest these ice sheets are overtaking ice loss from Earth's mountain glaciers and ice caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted.The nearly 20-year study reveals that in 2006, a year in which comparable results for...

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NASA Creates Glory Satellite Mishap Investigation Board

NASA's Glory mission ended Friday after the spacecraft failed to reach orbit following its launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.NASA has begun the process of creating a Mishap Investigation Board to evaluate the cause of the failure. Telemetry indicated the fairing, a protective shell atop the satellite's Taurus XL rocket, did not separate as expected.The launch proceeded as planned from its liftoff at 5:09 a.m. EST through the ignition of the Taurus XL's second stage. However, the...

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NASA Dryden Flies New Supersonic Shockwave Probes

NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center is flight testing two new supersonic shockwave probes to determine their viability as research tools.The probes were designed by Eagle Aeronautics of Hampton, Va., under a NASA Research Announcement, and manufactured by Triumph Aerospace Systems of Newport News, Va. The probes were first tested in a wind tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center, also in Hampton.The new probes are being flown on NASA Dryden's F-15B research test bed aircraft.Supersonic flight...

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NASA Nanosatellite Celebrates 100 Days In Space Studying Life

More than one hundred days ago, on Nov. 19, 2010, NASA sent a small satellite about the size of a loaf of bread on an important mission to answer astrobiology’s fundamental questions about the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the universe.Since then, the nanosatellite, known as Organism/Organic Exposure to Orbital Stresses (O/OREOS) continues on its quest, which has taken it just about everywhere between the Arctic and Antarctic Circles more than 400 miles above Earth's surface.O/OREOS...

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NASA Dryden Flies New Supersonic Shockwave Probes

NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center is flight testing two new supersonic shockwave probes to determine their viability as research tools.The probes were designed by Eagle Aeronautics of Hampton, Va., under a NASA Research Announcement, and manufactured by Triumph Aerospace Systems of Newport News, Va. The probes were first tested in a wind tunnel at NASA's Langley Research Center, also in Hampton.The new probes are being flown on NASA Dryden's F-15B research test bed aircraft.Supersonic flight...

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Launching Balloons in Antarctica

They nicknamed it the "Little Balloon That Could." Launched in December of 2010 from McMurdo Station in Antarctica, the research balloon was a test run and it bobbed lower every day like it had some kind of leak. But every day for five days it rose back up in the sky to some 112,000 feet in the air.Down on Earth, physicist Robyn Millan was cheering it on, hoping the test launch would bode well for the success of her grand idea: launches in 2013 and 2014 of 20 such balloons to float in the circular...

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