New NASA Web Page discards Light on Science of Warming World

PASADENA, Calif. -- Will 2010 be the warmest year on testimony? How do the latest U.S. "Snowmageddon" winter storms and record low temperatures in Europe fit into the bigger picture of long-term global warming? NASA has launched a new Web page to assist people better understand the causes and effects of Earth's changing climate.

The new "A Warming World" page hosts a series of new articles, videos, data visualizations, space-based imagery and interactive visuals that presents unique NASA perspectives on this topic of global importance.

The page includes aspect articles that explore the recent Arctic winter weather that has gripped the United States, Europe and Asia, and how El Nino and other longer-term ocean-atmosphere phenomena may influence global temperatures this year and in the future. A new video, piecing mutually the Temperature Puzzle, illustrates how NASA satellites monitor climate change and help scientists better appreciate how our complex planet works.

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For NASA no easy reply for next space destination

For the record in decades, NASA has no particular space destination for its next stop, although it has lots of places it wants to go. Future space flight, NASA officials say, now depends on new rocket science and where it can acquire us.

That ambiguity may not sit well with Congress, which will be grilling NASA chief Charles Bolden on Wednesday and Thursday in the first hearings since the George W. Bush moon mission was shelved.

There are only little places in space where humans can go in the next couple of decades. NASA desires to go to all of them, with the ultimate destination, as always, being Mars.

The suite of destinations has not altered over time, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver said in an interview. The moon, asteroids, Mars - if you're going to go anyplace - is where we are going.

But with any route there is a first stop, so what is that?

Check back in a pair of years. That's when new technology should be developed sufficient to answer that question, Garver said. President Barack Obama plans to divert billions of dollars from the Bush moon plan to developing better rocketry.

The best mode to get anywhere ... is in fact invest in technologies that will reduce the cost, reduce the time, reduce the risk and so forth, Garver said.

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NASA astronomers loosen secret of the supernova

Supernovas have long been used as “cosmic mile markers” to measure the growth of the universe, but NASA scientists now claim that they have finally exposed what actually sparks the massive stellar explosions.

A team of astronomers led by Marat Gilfanov used NASA’s Chandra X-Ray laboratory to study supernovas in five near elliptical galaxies and the central region of the Andromeda galaxy — a spiral galaxy nearby to our own, the Milky Way.

They found that most Type 1a supernovas are sparked by the merging of two white dwarf stars, or the collapsed remains of old stars. The stars become uneven when they exceed their weight limit which causes a stellar explosion, the Telegraph reported.

It was a major discomfiture that we did not know how they (supernovas) worked. Now we are beginning to appreciate what lights the fuse of these explosions, said Gilfanov, an astronomer from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany.

Previously it was consideration that Type 1a supernovas were also caused by accretion — when the gravity of a star draws in enough material from a sun-like companion and becomes unstable.
Though, Akos Bogdan of the Max Planck Institute said: If the supernovas were formed by accretion, the galaxies would be roughly 50 times brighter in x-rays than actually observed.

It is not clear whether merging is also the primary source of supernovas in spiral galaxies, and further study is required, he said. Pairs of white dwarfs are tremendously difficult to find. Once the white dwarfs spiral into expanses when they are about to merge, it takes just a few tenths of a second for them to explode.

The study is available in the latest edition of the journal Nature.

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NASA Invites Reporters to Tranquility Node Ceremony at Kennedy

The European Space Agency, or ESA, will transfer ownership of the Tranquility node to NASA on Thursday, Nov. 19. NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida will host a commemorative ceremony at 3 p.m. EST.

Tranquility is a pressurized module that will provide room for many of the station's life support systems. Attached to the node is a cupola, a unique work station with windows on its six sides and top. The module will be delivered to the station during space shuttle Endeavour's STS-130 mission, targeted for launch Feb. 4, 2010.

Tranquility is the last element of a barter agreement for station hardware. ESA contributed the node in exchange for NASA's delivery of ESA's Columbus laboratory to the station. Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, built the module.

NASA, ESA, Thales and Boeing managers involved in building and processing the node for flight will be available for a question-and-answer session after the ceremony. Media representatives planning to attend must arrive at Kennedy's news center by 2 p.m. for transportation to the Space Station Processing Facility. Participants must be dressed in full-length pants, flat shoes that entirely cover the feet, and shirts with sleeves.

Reporters without permanent Kennedy credentials should submit a request online at:

https://media.ksc.nasa.gov

Foreign journalists must apply for credentials by 4:30 p.m., Nov. 4, and U.S. reporters must apply by 4:30 p.m., Nov. 17. For more information on the space station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

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NASA Selects 18 University Proposals for Steckler Space Grants

NASA has chosen 18 proposals from universities around the country to receive up to $70,000 for Phase One of the NASA Ralph Steckler Space Grant Colonization Research and Technology Development Opportunity.

Grant money will support university research and technology development activities that support a sustained human presence in space, increase understanding of the moon's environment and develop basic infrastructure for future space colonies.

"I'm excited that many of the awards will provide a dual benefit to exploration and to Earth conservation by focusing on important issues such as water recycling, food production and power storage," said Frank Prochaska, manager of the Steckler Space Grant Project at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA selected two proposals from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., and the University of Arizona in Tucson and one proposal from each of the following academic institutions:

* Desert Research Institute in Reno
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge
* Montana State University in Bozeman
* New Mexico State University in Las Cruces
* Ohio Aerospace Institute in Cleveland
* Old Dominion University Research Foundation in Norfolk, Va.
* Pennsylvania State University in University Park
* Texas Tech University System in Lubbock
* University of California in San Diego
* University of Central Florida in Orlando
* University of Hartford in West Hartford, Conn.
* University of Idaho in Moscow
* University of North Texas in Denton
* University of Wisconsin in Green Bay

The projects selected to receive Steckler Space Grants will be implemented through three funding and development phases. Phase One will last nine months with a maximum award up to $70,000. The purpose of Phase One is to establish the scientific and technical merit and feasibility of a proposed innovation, research, or technology development effort that could enable space colonization or settlement. Primary exploration elements include habitation, rovers, surface power, communications and extravehicular activity systems.

Phase Two, which lasts two years, will provide a maximum of $250,000 each to four of the most promising Phase One projects through a competitive selection based on scientific and technical merit. The purpose of Phase Two is to begin conducting the research and technology development effort. Two awards of up to $275,000 each will be given for the third phase, also two years, during which time the Phase Two efforts will be integrated with NASA programs or projects.

NASA received 35 proposals. The agency released the cooperative agreement notice inviting lead institutions of the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program to submit proposals for these grants in November 2008. The Space Grant national network includes more than 850 affiliates from universities, colleges, industry, museums, science centers, and state and local agencies supporting and enhancing science and engineering education, research and public outreach efforts for NASA's aeronautics and space projects. These affiliates belong to one of 52 consortia in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Ralph Steckler was an assistant film director and photographer from southern California who had a lifelong interest in space colonization. He left part of his estate to NASA for the colonization of space and the betterment of mankind. Those funds are now providing universities with NASA research opportunities based on his vision.

With this program and NASA's other college and university programs, the agency continues its tradition of investing in the nation's education programs with the goal of developing science, technology, engineering and math skills and capabilities critical to achieving the nations' exploration goals.

For more information about NASA's education programs visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/education

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Progress Launches to Space Station

A new Progress cargo resupply vehicle launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station at 9:14 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 14. Less than nine minutes later, the ISS Progress 35 reached its preliminary orbit and deployed its solar arrays and navigational antennas.

It replaces the trash-filled Progress 34 which undocked on Sept. 21 and was destroyed on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific on Sept. 27.

Progress 35 is set to dock to the station on Saturday, Oct. 17 at 9:41 p.m. with more than two tons of oxygen, air, propellant and other supplies and equipment aboard.

The station's 35th Progress unpiloted spacecraft brings to the orbiting laboratory 1,918 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen and air, 926 pounds of water and 1,750 pounds of spare parts and supplies for the Expedition 21 crew.

Once the Expedition 21 crew members have unloaded the cargo, Progress 35 will be filled with trash and station discards. It will be undocked from the station and like its predecessors deorbited to burn in the Earth's atmosphere.

The Progress is similar in appearance and some design elements to the Soyuz spacecraft, which brings crew members to the station, serves as a lifeboat while they are there and returns them to Earth. The aft module, the instrumentation and propulsion module, is nearly identical.

But the second of the three Progress sections is a refueling module, and the third, uppermost as the Progress sits on the launch pad, is a cargo module. On the Soyuz, the descent module, where the crew is seated on launch and which returns them to Earth, is the middle module and the third is called the orbital module.

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Radar Map of Buried Mars Layers Matches Climate Cycles

New, three-dimensional imaging of Martian north-polar ice layers by a radar instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is consistent with theoretical models of Martian climate swings during the past few million years.

Alignment of the layering patterns with the modeled climate cycles provides insight about how the layers accumulated. These ice-rich, layered deposits cover an area one-third larger than Texas and form a stack up to 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) thick atop a basal deposit with additional ice.

"Contrast in electrical properties between layers is what provides the reflectivity we observe with the radar," said Nathaniel Putzig of Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo., a member of the science team for the Shallow Radar instrument on the orbiter. "The pattern of reflectivity tells us about the pattern of material variations within the layers."

Earlier radar observations indicated that the Martian north-polar layered deposits are mostly ice. Radar contrasts between different layers in the deposits are interpreted as differences in the concentration of rock material, in the form of dust, mixed with the ice. These deposits on Mars hold about one-third as much water as Earth's Greenland ice sheet.

Putzig and nine co-authors report findings from 358 radar observations in a paper accepted for publication by the journal Icarus and currently available online.

Their radar results provide a cross-sectional view of the north-polar layered deposits of Mars, showing that high-reflectivity zones, with multiple contrasting layers, alternate with more-homogeneous zones of lower reflectivity. Patterns of how these two types of zones alternate can be correlated to models of how changes in Mars' tilt on its axis have produced changes in the planet's climate in the past 4 million years or so, but only if some possibilities for how the layers form are ruled out.

"We're not doing the climate modeling here; we are comparing others' modeling results to what we observe with the radar, and using that comparison to constrain the possible explanations for how the layers form," Putzig said.

The most recent 300,000 years of Martian history are a period of less dramatic swings in the planet's tilt than during the preceding 600,000 years. Since the top zone of the north-polar layered deposits -- the most recently deposited portion -- is strongly radar-reflective, the researchers propose that such sections of high-contrast layering correspond to periods of relatively small swings in the planet's tilt.

They also propose a mechanism for how those contrasting layers would form. The observed pattern does not fit well with an earlier interpretation that the dustier layers in those zones are formed during high-tilt periods when sunshine on the polar region sublimates some of the top layer's ice and concentrates the dust left behind. Rather, it fits an alternative interpretation that the dustier layers are simply deposited during periods when the atmosphere is dustier.

The new radar mapping of the extent and depth of five stacked units in the north-polar layered deposits reveals that the geographical center of ice deposition probably shifted by 400 kilometers (250 miles) or more at least once during the past few million years.

"The radar has been giving us spectacular results," said Jeffrey Plaut of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a co-author of the paper. "We have mapped continuous underground layers in three dimensions across a vast area."

The Italian Space Agency operates the Shallow Radar instrument, which it provided for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The orbiter has been studying Mars with six advanced instruments since 2006. It has returned more data from the planet than all other past and current missions to Mars combined. For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro.

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This Week @ NASA 091109

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Nasa Image of the day

Sunset

Layers of Earth's atmosphere, brightly colored as the sun sets, are featured in this image taken by the STS-127 crew on the Earth-orbiting space shuttle...

Endeavour

Endeavour kicked up dust as it touches down on Runway 15 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to complete the 16-day, 6.5-million mile journey on...

Stars at the Galactic Center

The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is hidden from the prying eyes of optical telescopes by clouds of obscuring dust and gas. But, in this stunning vista,...

Rollout of STS-128

Rollout of space shuttle Discovery was slow-going due to the onset of lightning in the area of Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida....,...

Opportunity Eyes Block Island

The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has eyed an oddly shaped, dark rock, which may be a meteorite and is about 2 feet across, on the surface of the...

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