SpaceX launches historic Trip to space station

The US Company SpaceX on Tuesday became the first marketable outfit to send its own spacecraft toward the International Station with the launch of the cargo-bearing Dragon capsule.

Three, two, one and launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, as NASA turns to the confidential sector to resupply the International Space Station," said NASA commentator George Diller, as the spaceship blasted off at 3.44 am .

The trial flight -- which should include a fly by and berthing with the station in the coming days -- aims to show that industry can reinstate US access to the ISS after NASA retired its space transport fleet last year.

The task was delayed on Saturday due to a defective engine valve in the rocket's main engine, but was repaired the same day.

California-based SpaceX, owned by billionaire Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk, is the primary of several US competitors to attempt sending spacecraft to the ISS with the aim of restoring US access to space for human travelers by 2015.

The company effectively test-launched its Falcon 9 rocket in June 2010, then made history with its Dragon launch in December of that year, becoming the first marketable outfit to send a spaceship into orbit and back.

Until now, only the space agency’s of Russia, Japan and Europe have been able to send deliver ships to the ISS.

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NASA is Training up an Astronaut for asteroid mission

NASA is presently teaching astronauts to land on asteroids and hopes to send humans to one of the distant space rocks in about a decade, The Telegraph reported over the weekend. As in the picture Armageddon, one inspiration for the attempt is to figure out a way to obliterate or deflect a huge asteroid that could be on a collision course with Earth.

In June, a group of astronauts will start learning how to activate vehicles and move about on asteroids.

Major Tim Peake, an astronaut with the European Space Agency, told The Telegraph that a manned mission to intercept a received asteroid would be a last option but could prove necessary because even huge space objects can be hard to notice.

Peake, before a test helicopter pilot, told the newspaper that "an asteroid mission of up to a year is absolutely achievable" with technology that's now available or being developed.

Asteroids are primarily placed in a belt beyond the orbit of Mars, but some "near-Earth" substance swing closer to our planet—sometimes even within 100,000 miles or nearer, clearly, when they strike us.

 Still, The Telegraph renowned that a mission to call an asteroid would probably takes space explorers further from Earth than the 239,000 miles traversed by NASA's Apollo astronauts when they visited the Moon.

Aside from receiving about securely on the near-zero gravity conditions on an asteroid, landing on such little, fast-moving substance could show thorny.

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NASA Telescope Sees the Light from an Alien Super- Earth’ 55 Cancri e

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a "super-Earth" past our solar system for the first time. While the planet is not habitable, the recognition is a notable step toward the greatest search for signs of life on other planets.

"Spitzer has astonished us yet again," said Bill Danchi, Spitzer program scientist at NASA head office in Washington. The planet, called 55 Cancri e, falls into a group of planets termed wonderful Earths, which are more enormous than our residence world but lighter than massive planets like Neptune.

The planet is about twice as large and eight times as huge as Earth. It orbits an intense star, called 55 Cancri, in a mere 18 hours.

Previously, Spitzer and other telescopes were able to learn the planet by analyzing how the glow from 55 Cancri distorted as the planet accepted in front of the star.

In the new study, Spitzer calculated how much infrared light comes from the planet itself. The 55 Cancri systems are comparatively close to Earth, at 41 light-years away. It has five planets, with 55 Cancri e the closest to the star and tidally protected, so one surface always faces the star.

Spitzer exposed the sun-facing surface is tremendously hot, indicating the planet probably does not have an extensive atmosphere to take the sun's warmth to the unlit side.

The telescope might be able to use a similar infrared technique to Spitzer to search extra potentially habitable planets for signs of molecules perhaps associated to life.

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Private Company reschedules 1st Launch to Space Station to May 19

The private spaceflight corporation SpaceX has once again delayed the launch of its first commercial Dragon space capsule bound for the global Space Station, this time to May 19, to permit more time to complete final checks on the spacecraft's rocket.

The new launch date, announced now (May 4), and is the newest delay for SpaceX, which originally hoped to loft the Dragon capsule on its debut journey to the space station on April 30.

 Last week, the Hawthorne, Calif.-based Corporation postponed the launch to May 7 to permit more time for flight software checks. Yesterday, SpaceX officials said the May 7 date was improbable, but kept open a choice for a May 10 takeoff.

"SpaceX is requesting a May 19th launch goal with a endorsement on May 22 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station," SpaceX officials announced in a Twitter update today.

The newest setback pushes the Dragon launch well into May, meaning it will launch on the heels of a Russian Soyuz spaceship transport three new crewmembers to the International Space Station.

That Soyuz spacecraft will discharge off from Kazakhstan on May 14 and arrive at the space station on May 17.

 NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin travel the Soyuz to the station to connect three other crewmates already aboard.

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Hubble to Use Moon as Mirror to See Venus Transit

This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our moon. Astronomers didn't aim NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study Tycho, however. The image was taken in preparation to observe the transit of Venus across the sun's face on June 5-6.

Hubble cannot look at the sun directly, so astronomers are planning to point the telescope at the Earth's moon, using it as a mirror to capture reflected sunlight and isolate the small fraction of the light that passes through Venus's atmosphere. Imprinted on that small amount of light are the fingerprints of the planet’s atmospheric makeup.

These observations will mimic a technique that is already being used to sample the atmospheres of giant planets outside our solar system passing in front of their stars. In the case of the Venus transit observations, astronomers already know the chemical makeup of Venus's atmosphere, and that it does not show signs of life on the planet. But the Venus transit will be used to test whether this technique will have a chance of detecting the very faint fingerprints of an Earth-like planet, even one that might be habitable for life, outside our solar system that similarly transits its own star. , Venus is an excellent proxy because it is similar in size and mass to our planet.

The astronomers will use an arsenal of Hubble instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, Wide Field Camera 3, and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, to view the transit in a range of wavelengths, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. During the transit, Hubble will snap images and perform spectroscopy, dividing the sunlight into its constituent colors, which could yield information about the makeup of Venus's atmosphere.

Hubble will observe the moon for seven hours, before, during, and after the transit so the astronomers can compare the data. Astronomers need the long observation because they are looking for extremely faint spectral signatures. Only 1/100,000th of the sunlight will filter through Venus's atmosphere and be reflected off the moon.

This image, taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, reveals lunar features as small as roughly 560 feet (170 meters) across. The large "bulls-eye" near the top of the picture is the impact crater, caused by an asteroid strike about 100 million years ago. The bright trails radiating from the crater were formed by material ejected from the impact area during the asteroid collision. Tycho is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide and is circled by a rim of material rising almost 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the crater floor. The image measures 430 miles (700 kilometers) across, which is slightly larger than New Mexico.

Because the astronomers only have one shot at observing the transit, they had to carefully plan how the study would be carried out. Part of their planning included the test observations of the moon, made on Jan. 11, 2012, as shown in the release image.

Hubble will need to be locked onto the same location on the moon for more than seven hours, the transit's duration. For roughly 40 minutes of each 96-minute orbit of Hubble around the Earth, the Earth occults Hubble's view of the moon. So, during the test observations, the astronomers wanted to make sure they could point Hubble to precisely the same target area.

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Public Invited to Two Free Earth Day 2012 Events at NASA Goddard

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. is hosting two free events on April 18 in celebration of Earth Day's forty-second anniversary. Both events will take place at the NASA Goddard Visitor's Center on IceSat Road, Greenbelt, Md.

Often cited as the most-viewed photograph of all time, the view of Earth's disk from Apollo 17 is emblematic of our home planet as an isolated blue marble. Despite the ubiquity of the Blue Marble, few people realize NASA has viewed the Earth since the agency's creation. In this talk Rob Simmon of NASA's Earth Observatory will discuss the history of NASA's evolving views of Earth, from the first weather satellites to the latest climate missions, from the orbit of Mercury to the edge of the Solar System. He will also describe the techniques used to build images that simulate the view from space, including cloud-free global composites and a picture of the Eastern Hemisphere from NASA and NOAA's newest Earth-observing mission, Suomi NPP. Speaker: Robert Simmon, NASA's Earth Observatory
Length: 20 minutes

1 - 2 p.m. EDT -- See the broadcast presentation titled: "Beautiful Earth Multimedia Performance and Science Dialogue," on a big screen at the NASA Goddard Visitor Center Auditorium.

Join us on a musical and visual tour of Earth from space with interactive discussions through the Beautiful Earth program. Director and Musician Kenji Williams performs the BELLA GAIA (www.bellagaia.com) multimedia show along with interactive discussions by NASA Earth Scientist Thorsten Markus and Native American Science Educator Jim Rock. The Beautiful Earth program highlights Earth's water in all of its forms: liquid, solid, and vapor, from the western scientific, indigenous, artistic, and multi-cultural points of view. The program simulates spaceflight for the public and reminds us of the beauty and inter-connectedness of Earth’s life systems. Students and teachers from across the country will interact live with the program.

Three days of NASA activities will also be held on the National Mall in Washington from April 20 through April 22. The agency's involvement includes free activities and exhibits open to the public.

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Giant Prominence Erupts

A beautiful prominence eruption producing a coronal mass ejection (CME) shot off the east limb (left side) of the sun on April 16, 2012. Such eruptions are often associated with solar flares, and in this case an M1 class (medium-sized) flare occurred at the same time, peaking at 1:45 PM EDT. The CME was not aimed toward Earth.

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12-Mile-High Martian Dust Devil Caught in Act

A Martian dust devil roughly 12 miles high (20 kilometers) was captured whirling its way along the Amazonis Planitia region of Northern Mars on March 14. It was imaged by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Despite its height, the plume is little more than three-quarters of a football field wide (70 yards, or 70 meters).

Dust devils occur on Earth as well as on Mars. They are spinning columns of air, made visible by the dust they pull off the ground. Unlike a tornado, a dust devil typically forms on a clear day when the ground is heated by the sun, warming the air just above the ground. As heated air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler air above it, the air may begin to rotate, if conditions are just right.

The image was taken during late northern spring, two weeks short of the northern summer solstice, a time when the ground in the northern mid-latitudes is being heated most strongly by the sun.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been examining the Red Planet with six science instruments since 2006. Now in an extended mission, the orbiter continues to provide insights into the planet's ancient environments and how processes such as wind, meteorite impacts and seasonal frosts continue to affect the Martian surface today. This mission has returned more data about Mars than all other orbital and surface missions combined.

More than 21,700 images taken by HiRISE are available for viewing on the instrument team's website: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu . Each observation by this telescopic camera covers several square miles, or square kilometers, and can reveal features as small as a desk.

HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson. The instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project and the Mars Exploration Rover Project are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter.

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Hurricane Season 2012: Typhoon Pakhar (Western North Pacific Ocean)

Typhoon Pakhar made landfall on April 1 at 1200 UTC (8 a.m. EDT) in southeastern Vietnam and NASA satellites tracked its progress across Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and into the Gulf of Thailand.

A NASA satellite captured two infrared images of the clouds and thunderstorms that Pakhar brought when it made landfall. The two images were captured from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite on April 1 and April 2, after Typhoon Pakhar made landfall in southeastern Vietnam. The coldest cloud top temperatures were as cold as -63F (~-52C) and indicated the strongest thunderstorms with the heaviest rainfall. The images were from April 1 at 1823 UTC (2:23 p.m. EDT) when Pakhar had moved into Cambodia and April 2 at 0647 UTC (2:47 a.m. EDT) when the remnants moved into the Gulf of Thailand.

According to Vietnam News.com, as Pakhar made landfall it affected seven provinces including Ho Chi Minh City, with heavy rains and gusty winds. Two deaths and 10 injuries were reported. The province of Dong Nai, Bien Hoa City reported more than 700 damaged homes. Flooded streets, damaged structures and downed trees were reported throughout.

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NASA GRAIL Returns First Student-Selected Moon Images

One of two NASA spacecraft orbiting the moon has beamed back the first student-requested pictures of the lunar surface from its onboard camera. Fourth grade students from the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont., received the honor of making the first image selections by winning a nationwide competition to rename the two spacecraft.

The image was taken by the MoonKam, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students. Previously named Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) A and B, the twin spacecraft are now called Ebb and Flow. Both washing-machine-sized orbiters carry a small MoonKAM camera. Over 60 student–requested images were taken by the Ebb spacecraft from March 15-17 and downlinked to Earth March 20.

"MoonKAM is based on the premise that if your average picture is worth a thousand words, then a picture from lunar orbit may be worth a classroom full of engineering and science degrees," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL mission principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. "Through MoonKAM, we have an opportunity to reach out to the next generation of scientists and engineers. It is great to see things off to such a positive start."

GRAIL is NASA's first planetary mission to carry instruments fully dedicated to education and public outreach. Students will select target areas on the lunar surface and request images to study from the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego.

The MoonKAM program is led by Sally Ride, America's first woman in space, and her team at Sally Ride Science in collaboration with undergraduate students at the University of California in San Diego. More than 2,700 schools spanning 52 countries are using the MoonKAM cameras.

"What might seem like just a cool activity for these kids may very well have a profound impact on their futures," Ride said. "The students really are excited about MoonKAM, and that translates into an excitement about science and engineering."

Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow will answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, is home to the mission's principal investigator, Maria Zuber. GRAIL is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

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NASA spacecraft puts moon in new focus

After buzzing around the moon for two years, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has beamed more than 192 terabytes of data back to its home planet — more than all the printed information contained in the U.S. Library of Congress, says project scientist Richard Vondrak of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Among those data are 4 billion measurements made by the orbiter’s laser altimeter, which allowed scientists to construct a detailed elevation map of the moon’s pockmarked surface. An animation of the moon’s rotation shows the orbiter’s data compared with maps made in 2005 by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Unified Lunar Control Network. Scientists presented the animation during a conference held on June 21. “We go from a relatively fuzzy moon that kind of looks out of focus, to one that’s sharp and very well-defined,” says NASA’s Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist for exploration.

Flying approximately 50 kilometers above the cratered world, the 1,900-kilogram spacecraft has helped illuminate Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor by studying its features, temperature, composition and elusive dark side. Using the data sent back home, scientists have identified locations likely to hold frozen water ice — shaded regions that never see sunlight and which are among the coldest places in the solar system — as well as sunnier spots that could one day host a solar-powered moon base.

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NASA’s Astrobiology Research Sparks 'GreenTech' Revolution

NASA’s astrobiologists study microbial life to understand how it transformed a rocky Earth into the thriving, diverse, life-sustaining planet we inhabit today. These studies of photosynthetic ‘green’ algae are creating sparks for new ‘green technologies’ on Earth and future human space exploration missions.

“Once we understand these microbial recycling pathways, we can apply these processes in imaginative and innovative ways to solve problems on Earth, and in various space microgravity environments,” said Leslie Bebout, a research scientist in the Exobiology Branch at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

Exobiology scientists at NASA Ames are conducting astrobiology research into the origin and early evolution of life, the potential of life to adapt to different environments, and the implications for life elsewhere. Goals of this research are to determine the nature of the most primitive organisms and the environments in which they evolved, and how those microbes and environments have changed over time to produce the world we have today.

These findings are helping scientists understand the transformations of Earth and its atmosphere throughout time. This requires an investigation of the evolution of genes, metabolic pathways, and microbial species, subject to long-term environmental change. Such an investigation will show the co-evolution of, and interactions within, microbial communities that drive the major recycling processes on Earth. These constantly flowing cycles of energy and elements are what make Earth unique, and are critical to the development of new technologies for sustainable energy, food and water processing.

“It may surprise people to learn that NASA’s space science research has so many direct applications to the development of ‘greentech.’ Many of the organisms we study are important producers of hydrogen, methane and lipids that can be used as carbon neutral fuels, and other products,” said Orlando Santos, chief of the Exobiology Branch at Ames.

Microbial ecology links this research together. By studying microbes in a given environment, scientists can observe how they thrive and interact with each other. It is important to note that microbial communities are profoundly influenced by their environment. By looking at geographic location, or a shift to short- or long-term environmental perturbations, scientists can determine how microbial populations and processes differ in response to different environments.

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NASA Seeking University Participants for Summer Rocket Workshop

University faculty and students are invited to join a weeklong workshop June 16-21 to learn how to build and launch a scientific experiment to space. Registration is open through May 1.

RockOn! 2012 will be held at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The annual workshop is held in partnership with the Colorado and Virginia Space Grant Consortia.

"This workshop provides an opportunity for participants to learn how to build an experiment for space flight," said Phil Eberspeaker, chief of the sounding rocket program office at Wallops. "The hope is this experience will encourage them to participate in more ambitious payload programs, including someday building instruments for orbital spacecraft and beyond."

During the program, participants will work together to build experiment payloads for a NASA Terrier-Orion sounding rocket predicted to fly to an altitude of 73 miles. The flight will take place June 21, the last day of the workshop, weather permitting.

"During the week, the participants will gain an understanding of what it takes to build a basic scientific payload," said Chris Koehler, director of the Colorado Space Grant Consortium. "Through hands-on learning, they will learn how to develop circuit boards, program flight code and work together as a cohesive team."

Since the annual workshop began in 2008, 150 students and instructors have participated. It has been a successful program, with all experiments completed on time, launched and recovered. In addition, 48 of the 50 payloads have worked as intended.

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NASA Satellite Finds Earth's Clouds are Getting Lower

Earth's clouds got a little lower -- about one percent on average -- during the first decade of this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate.

Scientists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand analyzed the first 10 years of global cloud-top height measurements (from March 2000 to February 2010) from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft. The study, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, revealed an overall trend of decreasing cloud height. Global average cloud height declined by around one percent over the decade, or by around 100 to 130 feet (30 to 40 meters). Most of the reduction was due to fewer clouds occurring at very high altitudes.

Lead researcher Roger Davies said that while the record is too short to be definitive, it provides a hint that something quite important might be going on. Longer-term monitoring will be required to determine the significance of the observation for global temperatures.

A consistent reduction in cloud height would allow Earth to cool to space more efficiently, reducing the surface temperature of the planet and potentially slowing the effects of global warming. This may represent a "negative feedback" mechanism – a change caused by global warming that works to counteract it. "We don't know exactly what causes the cloud heights to lower," says Davies. "But it must be due to a change in the circulation patterns that give rise to cloud formation at high altitude."

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The Sun As Art

A new interactive NASA art exhibit opens February 9 at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore that will showcase stunning images of the sun.

Called "Sun As Art," the collection consists of 20 full-color, high-resolution images of the star with which we live. Some of the pieces stand alone, beautiful images that hold true to the original picture. Others have been modified: one looks like an Andy Warhol painting; another like an orange. Several pieces in the collection have an interactive component where visitors using smart phones can scan a QR code and watch the particular solar event that inspired the finished image.

The exhibit is the brainchild of Dr. Steele Hill, a media specialist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Hill selected images from some of the agency's solar missions to showcase incredible details of the sun in a unique way.

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NASA Mission Returns First Video From Moon's Far Side

A camera aboard one of NASA's twin Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar spacecraft has returned its first unique view of the far side of the moon. MoonKAM, or Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students, will be used by students nationwide to select lunar images for study.

GRAIL consists of two identical spacecraft, recently named Ebb and Flow, each of which is equipped with a MoonKAM. The images were taken as part of a test of Ebb's MoonKAM on Jan. 19. The GRAIL project plans to test the MoonKAM aboard Flow at a later date.

In the video, the north pole of the moon is visible at the top of the screen as the spacecraft flies toward the lunar south pole. One of the first prominent geological features seen on the lower third of the moon is the Mare Orientale, a 560-mile-wide (900 kilometer) impact basin that straddles both the moon's near and far side.

The clip ends with rugged terrain just short of the lunar south pole. To the left of center, near the bottom of the screen, is the 93-mile-wide (149 kilometer) Drygalski crater with a distinctive star-shaped formation in the middle. The formation is a central peak, created many billions of years ago by a comet or asteroid impact.

"The quality of the video is excellent and should energize our MoonKAM students as they prepare to explore the moon," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

The twin spacecraft successfully achieved lunar orbit this past New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Previously named GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B, the washing machine-sized spacecraft received their new names from fourth graders at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont., following a nationwide student naming contest.

Thousands of fourth- to eighth-grade students will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego. Photos of the target areas will be sent back by the satellites for students to study. The MoonKAM program is led by Sally Ride, America's first woman in space. Her team at Sally Ride Science and undergraduate students at the University of California in San Diego will engage middle schools across the country in the GRAIL mission and lunar exploration. GRAIL is NASA's first planetary mission carrying instruments fully dedicated to education and public outreach.

"We have had great response from schools around the country; more than 2,500 signed up to participate so far," Ride said. "In mid-March, the first pictures of the moon will be taken by students using MoonKAM. I expect this will excite many students about possible careers in science and engineering."

Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow periodically perform trajectory correction maneuvers that, over time, will lower their orbits to near-circular ones with an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers). During their science mission, the duo will answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft.

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NASA Mission Takes Stock of Earth's Melting Land Ice

In the first comprehensive satellite study of its kind, a University of Colorado at Boulder-led team used NASA data to calculate how much Earth's melting land ice is adding to global sea level rise.

Using satellite measurements from the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), the researchers measured ice loss in all of Earth's land ice between 2003 and 2010, with particular emphasis on glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica.

The total global ice mass lost from Greenland, Antarctica and Earth's glaciers and ice caps during the study period was about 4.3 trillion tons (1,000 cubic miles), adding about 0.5 inches (12 millimeters) to global sea level. That's enough ice to cover the United States 1.5 feet (0.5 meters) deep.

"Earth is losing a huge amount of ice to the ocean annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet's cold regions are responding to global change," said University of Colorado Boulder physics professor John Wahr, who helped lead the study. "The strength of GRACE is it sees all the mass in the system, even though its resolution is not high enough to allow us to determine separate contributions from each individual glacier."

About a quarter of the average annual ice loss came from glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica (roughly 148 billion tons, or 39 cubic miles). Ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica and their peripheral ice caps and glaciers averaged 385 billion tons (100 cubic miles) a year. Results of the study will be published online Feb. 8 in the journal Nature.

Traditional estimates of Earth's ice caps and glaciers have been made using ground measurements from relatively few glaciers to infer what all the world's unmonitored glaciers were doing. Only a few hundred of the roughly 200,000 glaciers worldwide have been monitored for longer than a decade.

One unexpected study result from GRACE was the estimated ice loss from high Asian mountain ranges like the Himalaya, the Pamir and the Tien Shan was only about 4 billion tons of ice annually. Some previous ground-based estimates of ice loss in these high Asian mountains have ranged up to 50 billion tons annually.

"The GRACE results in this region really were a surprise," said Wahr, who also is a fellow at the University of Colorado-headquartered Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. "One possible explanation is that previous estimates were based on measurements taken primarily from some of the lower, more accessible glaciers in Asia and extrapolated to infer the behavior of higher glaciers. But unlike the lower glaciers, most of the high glaciers are located in very cold environments and require greater amounts of atmospheric warming before local temperatures rise enough to cause significant melting. This makes it difficult to use low-elevation, ground-based measurements to estimate results from the entire system."

"This study finds that the world's small glaciers and ice caps in places like Alaska, South America and the Himalayas contribute about .02 inches per year to sea level rise," said Tom Wagner, cryosphere program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "While this is lower than previous estimates, it confirms that ice is being lost from around the globe, with just a few areas in precarious balance. The results sharpen our view of land ice melting, which poses the biggest, most threatening factor in future sea level rise."

The twin GRACE satellites track changes in Earth's gravity field by noting minute changes in gravitational pull caused by regional variations in Earth's mass, which for periods of months to years is typically because of movements of water on Earth's surface. It does this by measuring changes in the distance between its two identical spacecraft to one-hundredth the width of a human hair.

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Astronomy team discovers nearby dwarf galaxy

NGC 4449 has a nucleus that may someday host a black hole and an irregular structure, lacking the spiral arms characteristic of many galaxies, he said. It is surrounded by a huge complex of hydrogen gas that spans approximately 300,000 light years, which may be fueling its burst of star formation.

Rich collaborated with Francis Longstaff, a professor of finance at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and an amateur astronomer, in acquiring and using a specialized telescope designed to take images of wide fields of the sky. Known as the Centurion 28 (the diameter of the mirror is 28 inches), the telescope, and the observatory the astronomers used, are located at the Polaris Observatory Association near Frazier Park, in Kern County, Calif.

With the C28 telescope, the astronomers discovered the companion dwarf galaxy, which has "evidently experienced a close encounter with the nucleus of NGC 4449," Rich said. Dubbed NGC 4449B, the dwarf galaxy has been stretched into a comet-like shape by this gravitational encounter.

NGC 4449B had remained undetected because it is more than 10 times fainter than the natural brightness of the night sky and some 1,000 times fainter than our own Milky Way galaxy. The dwarf galaxy is in a "transient stage," Rich said, and will soon — by astronomical standards — be dissolved.

The Milky Way has a similar companion, known as the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy, which has been wrapped around our galaxy as it orbits and which loses its stars to the Milky Way's gravitational tug.

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Powerful Pixels: Mapping the "Apollo Zone"

Grayscale pixels – up close, they look like black, white or grey squares. But when you zoom out to see the bigger picture, they can create a digital photograph, like this one of our moon:

For NASA researchers, pixels are much more – they are precious data that help us understand where we came from, where we've been, and where we're going.

At NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., computer scientists have made a giant leap forward to pull as much information from imperfect static images as possible. With their advancement in image processing algorithms, the legacy data from the Apollo Metric Camera onboard Apollo 15, 16 and 17 can be transformed into an informative and immersive 3D mosaic map of a large and scientifically interesting part of the moon.

The "Apollo Zone" Digital Image Mosaic (DIM) and Digital Terrain Model (DTM) maps cover about 18 percent of the lunar surface at a resolution of 98 feet (30 meters) per pixel. The maps are the result of three years of work by the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at NASA Ames, and are available to view through the NASA Lunar Mapping and Modeling Portal (LMMP) and Google Moon feature in Google Earth.

"The main challenge of the Apollo Zone project was that we had very old data – scans, not captured in digital format," said Ara Nefian, a senior scientist with the IRG and Carnegie Mellon University-Silicon Valley. "They were taken with the technology we had over 40 years ago with imprecise camera positions, orientations and exposure time by today’s standards."

The researchers overcame the challenge by developing new computer vision algorithms to automatically generate the 2D and 3D maps. Algorithms are sets of computer code that create a procedure for how to handle certain set processes. For example, part of the 2D imaging algorithms align many images taken from various positions with various exposure times into one seamless image mosaic. In the mosaic, areas in shadows, which show up as patches of dark or black pixels are automatically replaced by lighter gray pixels. These show more well-lit detail from other images of the same area to create a more detailed map.

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First of NASA's GRAIL spacecraft enters Moon orbit

The first of two NASA spacecraft to study the moon in unprecedented detail has entered lunar orbit.

NASA's Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)-A spacecraft successfully completed its planned main engine burn at 2 p.m. PST (5 p.m. EST) today. As of 3 p.m. PST (6 p.m. EST), GRAIL-A is in an orbit of 56 miles by 5,197 miles (90 kilometers by 8,363 kilometers) around the moon that takes approximately 11.5 hours to complete.

"My resolution for the new year is to unlock lunar mysteries and understand how the moon, Earth and other rocky planets evolved," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "Now, with GRAIL-A successfully placed in orbit around the moon, we are one step closer to achieving that goal."

The next mission milestone occurs tomorrow when GRAIL-A's mirror twin, GRAIL-B, performs its own main engine burn to place it in lunar orbit. At 3 p.m. PST (6 p.m. EST) today, GRAIL-B was 30,018 miles (48,309 kilometers) from the moon and closing at a rate of 896 mph (1,442 kilometers per hour). GRAIL-B's insertion burn is scheduled to begin tomorrow, Jan. 1, at 2:05 p.m. PST (5:05 p.m. EST) and will last about 39 minutes.

"With GRAIL-A in lunar orbit we are halfway home," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Tomorrow may be New Year's everywhere else, but it's another work day around the moon and here at JPL for the GRAIL team."

Once both spacecraft are confirmed in orbit and operating, science work will begin in March. The spacecraft will transmit radio signals precisely defining the distance between them as they orbit the moon in formation. As they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by both visible features, such as mountains and craters, and masses hidden beneath the lunar surface, the distance between the two spacecraft will change slightly.

Scientists will translate this information into a high-resolution map of the moon's gravitational field. The data will allow scientists to understand what goes on below the lunar surface. This information will increase knowledge of how Earth and its rocky neighbors in the inner solar system developed into the diverse worlds we see today.

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