NASA is aboard first private moon landing attempt

by Lonnie Shekhtman for GSFC News
Greenbelt MD (SPX)
Feb 21, 2019

The last screw is tightened and a private Moon lander is packed in the fairing atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It took eight years to get there, plus significant dedication by a small group of scientists and engineers building Israel's first machine to leave Earth's orbit. Now, the highly anticipated moment is here: a shot at the first private Moon landing, and NASA is contributing to the experiment.

An Israeli spacecraft from SpaceIL is scheduled to launch Thursday, Feb. 21 and is aiming to touch down on Mare Serenitatis two months later. NASA installed a small laser retroreflector aboard the lander to test its potential as a navigation tool. The agency also provided images of the Moon's surface to help the engineers identify a landing site for the mission. NASA will also use its deep space telecommunications network to transmit images and science data home to SpaceIL and its partners.

Administrator Bridenstine signed an agreement with the Israel Space Agency (ISA) in July 2018 in order to collaborate with SpaceIL on the mission. SpaceIL will provide NASA scientific data from the spacecraft's magnetometer as part of the collaboration.

"This is the type of collaboration that will become more frequent as NASA looks to expand opportunities with a greater variety of partners to continue the exploration of the Moon and Mars," said Steve Clarke, NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration. "NASA is proud to work with the Israel Space Agency (ISA) and SpaceIL and we look forward to the landing and the science data that will be gained from this important mission."

It takes a village

SpaceIL was established in 2010 to tackle the Lunar X Prize, a competition sponsored by Google that challenged private companies to land a spacecraft on the Moon. Though no company was able to meet the competition deadline, prompting Google to end it with no winner in March 2018, the Israeli team pressed on.

But no company can make it in space alone. SpaceIL will rely on the Swedish Space Corporation's network of antennas to communicate navigation commands to the spacecraft and to track its trajectory. Once the spacecraft lands, NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) will ferry data between it and Earth. DSN is a system of global antennas managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, that scientists use to communicate with spacecraft in deep space.

The SpaceIL mission advances a partnership between NASA and ISA as both agencies will share the resulting discoveries with the global scientific community.

"The team's tension level is high, but we're also very, very excited" said Eran Shmidt, deputy manager and head of the ground control team at SpaceIL, the Israeli nonprofit that built the Moon lander, called Beresheet, or "genesis" in Hebrew, in partnership with Israeli-government-owned defense contractor Israel Aerospace Industries.

Beresheet - about 5 feet (1 meter) tall by 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) wide with its landing gear and legs deployed - is one of two payloads that will hitch a ride aboard the Falcon 9 today. The other payload is an Earth telecommunications satellite. The lander will separate first from the rocket, taking the long route to the Moon to save fuel by employing gravitational forces to propel itself.

Thus, Beresheet will stay in Earth's orbit for about a month, slowly widening its ellipse until it reaches apogee, or its farthest point from here, at nearly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away. The SpaceIL team will need to time Beresheet's apogee precisely to meet up with the Moon in its orbit about Earth. At this point, the navigators can slow the spacecraft to allow it to be captured by the Moon's gravity and thereby pulled into its orbit.

"Once we are captured by the Moon," said Shmidt, "we will orbit around it, perform a few maneuvers for about a week, and then start a 20- to 30-minute autonomous descent."

A few moments of precious science

Beresheet is due to touch down between April 11 and 12 in a dark patch of an ancient volcanic field visible from Earth, known as the Sea of Serenity (Mare Serenitatis in Latin). NASA's Apollo 17 astronauts landed near this region on Dec. 11, 1972.

Now, Beresheet will have an opportunity to mark a new first in space exploration with its landing. Though the primary goal of its mission is to land safely, the spacecraft will attempt to do science in orbit, during landing, and on the ground. The window of opportunity for research is small, though: just three Earth days maximum after landing that the spacecraft can withstand the crushing heat - 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius) at local noon - of the lunar day (14 Earth days). But every second counts to scientists back on Earth.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), one of the agency's three spacecraft circling and studying the Moon, will analyze the gases released by Beresheet's decent engine as the lander approaches the surface.

"What we're trying to learn is how volatile compounds, such as water or other gases, are transported around the Moon," said John W. Keller, an LRO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "If we can predict where these compounds will go and where they'll settle, we'll know in what regions of the Moon to look for water and other valuable resources."

Meanwhile, scientists from the University of California in Los Angeles, Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, and from other global organizations will rely on data from Beresheet's magnetometer to study whether Moon rocks contain a history of the magnetic field there.

An old, new instrument

Another experiment on Beresheet will involve a tiny but robust instrument called a Laser Retroreflector Array. Smaller than a computer mouse, this device features eight mirrors made of quartz cube corners that are set into a dome-shaped aluminum frame. This configuration allows the device to reflect light coming in from any direction back to its source.

LRO's laser altimeter, an instrument that measures altitude, will try to shoot laser pulses at Beresheet's retroreflector and then measure how long it takes the light to bounce back. By using this technique, engineers expect to be able to pinpoint Beresheet's location within 4 inches (10 centimeters).

One day, this simple technology, requiring neither power nor maintenance, may make it easier to navigate to locations on the Moon, asteroids, and other bodies. It could also be dropped from a spacecraft onto the surface of a celestial body where the reflector could help scientists track the object's spin rate or position in space.

"It's a fixed marker you may return to it any time," said David E. Smith, principal investigator of the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, or LOLA, on the LRO.

Laser retroreflectors have already been instrumental to space exploration. Apollo- astronauts left three large reflector panels at various Moon locations 50 years ago. They're still reflecting light today, with their 100 mirrors each, though they're reflecting light all the way back to Earth instead of a close-by orbiter. Using these mirrors, scientists have learned many things about the Moon, particularly that it is moving away from Earth at a rate of 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) per year.

These days, smaller laser reflectors are commonly used to track Earth-orbiting satellites from the ground and have been included on several recent space missions. NASA installed an Italian Space Agency-provided retroreflector on the deck of the InSight lander, which arrived on Mars in November 2018. Though there's no orbiter with a laser instrument at Mars today to shoot light to InSight's reflector, scientists expect that there will be one in the future.

In Beresheet's case, too, the reflector will live on forever, even though Beresheet is expected to stop working within a few days of landing. It may be a simple dome of mirrors, yet Beresheet's reflector may be one of the first flickers of light future explorers undertaking NASA's Moon to Mars exploration will see as they descend to the Moon in the coming decade.

Source: Moon Daily.
Link: http://www.moondaily.com/reports/NASA_is_aboard_first_private_moon_landing_attempt_999.html.

NASA Selects New Mission to Explore Origins of Universe

Washington DC (SPX)
Feb 14, 2019

NASA has selected a new space mission that will help astronomers understand both how our universe evolved and how common are the ingredients for life in our galaxy's planetary systems.

The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission is a planned two-year mission funded at $242 million (not including launch costs) and targeted to launch in 2023.

"I'm really excited about this new mission," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "Not only does it expand the United States' powerful fleet of space-based missions dedicated to uncovering the mysteries of the universe, it is a critical part of a balanced science program that includes missions of various sizes."

SPHEREx will survey the sky in optical as well as near-infrared light which, though not visible to the human eye, serves as a powerful tool for answering cosmic questions. Astronomers will use the mission to gather data on more than 300 million galaxies, as well as more than 100 million stars in our own Milky Way.

"This amazing mission will be a treasure trove of unique data for astronomers," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "It will deliver an unprecedented galactic map containing 'fingerprints' from the first moments in the universe's history. And we'll have new clues to one of the greatest mysteries in science: What made the universe expand so quickly less than a nanosecond after the big bang?"

SPHEREx will survey hundreds of millions of galaxies near and far, some so distant their light has taken 10 billion years to reach Earth. In the Milky Way, the mission will search for water and organic molecules - essentials for life, as we know it - in stellar nurseries, regions where stars are born from gas and dust, as well as disks around stars where new planets could be forming.

Every six months, SPHEREx will survey the entire sky using technologies adapted from Earth satellites and Mars spacecraft. The mission will create a map of the entire sky in 96 different color bands, far exceeding the color resolution of previous all-sky maps. It also will identify targets for more detailed study by future missions, such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope.

NASA's Astrophysics Explorers Program requested proposals for new missions in September 2016. Nine proposals were submitted, and two mission concepts were selected for further study in August 2017. After a detailed review by a panel of NASA and external scientists and engineers, NASA determined that the SPHEREx concept study offered the best science potential and most feasible development plan.

The mission's principal investigator is James Bock of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. Caltech will work with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to develop the mission payload. JPL will also manage the mission.

Ball Aerospace in Broomfield, Colorado, will provide the SPHEREx spacecraft and mission integration. The Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute in Daejeon, Republic of Korea, will contribute test equipment and science analysis.

NASA's Explorer program, managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the agency's oldest continuous program, designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space using principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the Astrophysics and Heliophysics programs in NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

The program has launched more than 90 missions, beginning in 1958 with Explorer 1, which discovered the Earth's radiation belts. Another Explorer mission, the Cosmic Background Explorer, which launched in 1989, led to a Nobel Prize.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Selects_New_Mission_to_Explore_Origins_of_Universe_999.html.

NASA announces demise of Opportunity rover

By Ivan Couronne
Washington (AFP)
Feb 14, 2019

During 14 years of intrepid exploration across Mars, it advanced human knowledge by confirming that water once flowed on the red planet -- but NASA's Opportunity rover has analyzed its last soil sample.

The robot has been missing since the US space agency lost contact during a dust storm in June last year and was declared officially dead Wednesday, ending one of the most fruitful missions in the history of space exploration.

Unable to recharge its batteries, Opportunity left hundreds of messages from Earth unanswered over the months, and NASA said it made its last attempt at contact Tuesday evening.

"I declare the Opportunity mission as complete," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate told a news conference at mission headquarters in Pasadena, California.

The community of researchers and engineers involved in the program were in mourning over the passing of the rover, known affectionately as Oppy.

"It is a hard day," said John Callas, manager of the Mars Exploration Rover project.

"Even though it is a machine and we're saying goodbye, it's very hard and it's very poignant."

"Don't be sad it's over, be proud it taught us so much," former president Barack Obama tweeted later on Thursday.

"Congrats to all the men and women of @NASA on a @MarsRovers mission that beat all expectations, inspired a new generation of Americans, and demands we keep investing in science that pushes the boundaries of human knowledge."

The nostalgia extended across the generations of scientists who have handled the plucky little adventurer.

"Godspeed, Opportunity," tweeted Keri Bean, who had the "privilege" of sending the final message to the robot.

"Hail to the Queen of Mars," added Mike Seibert, Opportunity's former flight director and rover driver in another tweet, while Frank Hartman, who piloted Oppy, told AFP he felt "greatly honored to have been a small part of it."

"Engulfed by a giant planet-encircling dust storm: Is there a more fitting end for a mission as perfect and courageous from start to finish as Opportunity?" he said.

The program has had an extraordinary record of success: 28.1 miles (45.2 kilometers) traversed, more than the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 moon rover during the 1970s and more than the rover that US astronauts took to the moon on the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

"It is because of trailblazing missions such as Opportunity that there will come a day when our brave astronauts walk on the surface of Mars," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement.

Opportunity sent back 217,594 images from Mars, all of which were made available on the internet.

- Human-like perspective -

"For the public, the big change was that Mars became a dynamic place, and it was a place that you could explore every day," Emily Lakdawalla, an expert on space exploration and senior editor at The Planetary Society.

"The fact that this rover was so mobile, it seemed like an animate creature," she said. "Plus it has this perspective on the Martian surface that's very human-like."

"It really felt like an avatar for humanity traveling across the surface," she added.

Opportunity landed on an immense plain and spent half its life there, traversing flat expanses and once getting stuck in a sand dune for several weeks. It was there, using geological instruments, that it confirmed that liquid water was once present on Mars.

During the second part of its life on Mars, Opportunity climbed to the edge of the crater Endeavor, taking spectacular panoramic images -- and discovering veins of gypsum, additional proof that water once flowed among the Martian rocks.

Opportunity's twin, Spirit, landed three weeks ahead of it, and was active until it expired in 2010. The two far exceeded the goals of their creators: In theory, their missions were supposed to last 90 days.

Today, only a single rover is still active on Mars, Curiosity, which arrived in 2012. It is powered not by the sun, but by a small nuclear reactor.

In 2021, the recently named Rosalind Franklin robot, part of the European-Russian ExoMars mission, is slated to land on a different part of the planet, raising the population of active rovers to two.

Source: Mars Daily.
Link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Mission_complete_NASA_announces_demise_of_Opportunity_rover_999.html.

NASA Announces Design for New Deep Space Exploration System

Washington DC (SPX)
Sep 15, 2011

NASA is ready to move forward with the development of the Space Launch System - an advanced heavy-lift launch vehicle that will provide an entirely new national capability for human exploration beyond Earth's orbit. The Space Launch System will give the nation a safe, affordable and sustainable means of reaching beyond our current limits and opening up new discoveries from the unique vantage point of space.

The Space Launch System, or SLS, will be designed to carry the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, as well as important cargo, equipment and science experiments to Earth's orbit and destinations beyond. Additionally, the SLS will serve as a back up for commercial and international partner transportation services to the International Space Station.

"This launch system will create good-paying American jobs, ensure continued U.S. leadership in space, and inspire millions around the world," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that's exactly what we are doing at NASA. While I was proud to fly on the space shuttle, tomorrow's explorers will now dream of one day walking on Mars."

The SLS rocket will incorporate technological investments from the Space Shuttle Program and the Constellation Program in order to take advantage of proven hardware and cutting-edge tooling and manufacturing technology that will significantly reduce development and operations costs.

It will use a liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propulsion system, which will include the RS-25D/E from the Space Shuttle Program for the core stage and the J-2X engine for the upper stage.

SLS will also use solid rocket boosters for the initial development flights, while follow-on boosters will be competed based on performance requirements and affordability considerations. The SLS will have an initial lift capacity of 70 metric tons.

That's more than 154,000 pounds, or 77 tons, roughly the weight of 40 sport utility vehicles. The lift capacity will be evolvable to 130 metric tons - more than 286,000 pounds, or 143 tons - enough to lift 75 SUVs. The first developmental flight, or mission, is targeted for the end of 2017.

This specific architecture was selected, largely because it utilizes an evolvable development approach, which allows NASA to address high-cost development activities early on in the program and take advantage of higher buying power before inflation erodes the available funding of a fixed budget.

This architecture also enables NASA to leverage existing capabilities and lower development costs by using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for both the core and upper stages. Additionally, this architecture provides a modular launch vehicle that can be configured for specific mission needs using a variation of common elements.

NASA may not need to lift 130 metric tons for each mission and the flexibility of this modular architecture allows the agency to use different core stage, upper stage, and first-stage booster combinations to achieve the most efficient launch vehicle for the desired mission.

"NASA has been making steady progress toward realizing the president's goal of deep space exploration, while doing so in a more affordable way," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said. "We have been driving down the costs on the Space Launch System and Orion contracts by adopting new ways of doing business and project hundreds of millions of dollars of savings each year."

The Space Launch System will be NASA's first exploration-class vehicle since the Saturn V took American astronauts to the moon over 40 years ago. With its superior lift capability, the SLS will expand our reach in the solar system and allow us to explore cis-lunar space, near-Earth asteroids, Mars and its moons and beyond.

We will learn more about how the solar system formed, where Earth's water and organics originated and how life might be sustained in places far from our Earth's atmosphere and expand the boundaries of human exploration. These discoveries will change the way we understand ourselves, our planet, and its place in the universe.

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_Announces_Design_for_New_Deep_Space_Exploration_System_999.html.

NASA unveils new launcher design for Mars missions

Washington (AFP)
Sept 14, 2011

NASA unveiled its plans Wednesday for a massive new launcher capable of powering manned space flights well beyond low-Earth orbit and ultimately to Mars.

NASA chief Charles Bolden made the announcement of the design for the new Space Launch System, which the space agency touted as the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V rocket put US astronauts on the moon.

"The next chapter of America's space exploration story is being written today," said Bolden.

"President Obama challenged us to be bold and dream big, and that's exactly what we are doing at NASA."

The launcher, which will take until 2017 to build and cost an estimated $35 billion, will fill a gap in US manned flight program created by the retirement of the last US space shuttle in July after 30 years of service.

But NASA said it will be far more powerful, capable of carrying much larger payloads beyond low-Earth orbit deep into space, and eventually to Mars.

Still, the so-called "Space Launch System" borrows heavily from the space shuttle, said John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

For instance, the first stage of the new launcher will use the shuttle's cryogenic engine fueled with a mix of hydrogen and oxygen kept at very low temperatures, he told AFP.

The system will be topped with a capsule initially capable of carrying into space payloads of 70 to 100 metric tonnes, and expanded over time to carry up to 130 metric tonnes.

"The booster will be America's most powerful since the Saturn V rocket that carried Apollo astronauts to the moon and will launch humans to places no one has gone before," NASA said in a statement.

"The SLS will carry human crews beyond low-Earth orbit in a capsule named the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle," NASA said.

The first test launch is scheduled for 2017 followed by manned flights in 2021.

NASA could use it for a mission to an asteroid in 2025. NASA has indicated that it expects to send astronauts around Mars before eventually landing on the red planet, but not before 2030.

NASA's decision on the SLS design follows many months of deliberations while the space agency weighed different approaches that would ensure it could be adapted to changing missions and take advantage of new technologies that emerge in the future.

The project comes at a time when the United States is facing deep budget cuts that is likely to impinge on the costly space program, which is vital to the economies of a number of US states.

Bolden said the program will "create good-paying American jobs, ensure continued US leadership in space, and inspire millions around the world."

Champions of the space program in the US Congress welcomed the decision, noting that NASA has been losing jobs and had appeared to directionless after the end of the space shuttle program.

"This is perhaps the biggest thing for space exploration in decades," said Senator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut who represents Florida, a big beneficiary of NASA dollars.

Logsdon said however the vision for deep space exploration remains murky.

"Mars is a long way," he said, adding that getting there will take NASA "beyond the 2030s."

"The international community would prefer going back to the moon," he said. "This is possible if we have an integrated international plan with enough money to pay for this rocket and this spacecraft and pay for a landing vehicle."

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_unveils_new_launcher_design_for_Mars_missions_999.html.

NASA launches twin spacecraft to study Moon's core

Washington DC (AFP)
Sep 10, 2011

NASA on Saturday launched a $500 million pair of washing-machine-sized satellites on a mission to map the Moon's inner core for the first time.

The twin spacecraft took off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 9:08 am (1308 GMT) aboard a Delta II rocket on a three-month journey to the Moon.

"We are on our way, and early indications show everything is looking good," said David Lehman, NASA project manager for GRAIL, which stands for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory.

High upper level winds delayed the first attempt on Thursday, and also briefly set back Saturday's launch.

But once the rocket blasted off, the journey went smoothly and the twins separated as planned just under an hour and half into the flight.

The duo will travel on a three-month route to the Moon, arriving into a polar lunar orbit around New Year's Day.

With one spacecraft trailing the other, the plan is for the two to use gravity tools to map the terrain beneath, revealing the contents of the inner core of the Moon, about which little is known.

The mission should also shed light on the unexplored far side of the Moon, and perhaps tell scientists whether there was once a second Moon that fused with ours.

"GRAIL will be the first mission to determine the internal structure of the Moon," program scientist Bobby Fogel told reporters this week.

"We have used gravity science before to try to gain some insight as to what is going on inside the Moon, however these have been very primitive attempts.

"If those previous attempts could be likened to a magnifying glass, GRAIL by contrast would be a high-powered microscope."

Scientists believe that the Moon was formed when a planet-sized object crashed into the Earth, throwing off a load of material that eventually became what we now recognize as our planet's airless, desolate satellite.

How it heated up over time, creating a magma ocean that later crystallized, remains a mystery, despite 109 past missions to study the Moon since 1959 and the fact that 12 humans have walked on its surface.

A recent hypothesis that there may have been two Moons that slowly merged into one can also be tested with this mission, said principal investigator Maria Zuber.

"If we want to reconstruct the evolution of the Moon over time, we certainly need to reconstruct the temperature structure of the Moon right now," she said.

Little is known for certain about what lies inside the lunar body. The widely held belief that there is a small solid iron core surrounded by a liquid iron core is unproven, said Zuber.

"It is actually quite possible that deep inside the Moon the core could be titanium oxide, which is a material that would have fallen out or would have crystallized out of the magma ocean and sunk to the deep interior of the Moon," she said.

Once the GRAIL twins enter the orbit of the Moon, they will line up with each other and "essentially chase each other around in a polar orbit as the Moon rotates slowly underneath them," said Zuber.

They will hover about 34 miles (55 kilometers) above the lunar surface, with the distance between them ranging from 37 to 140 miles, collecting measurements of the terrain beneath.

The duo will accomplish the mission's primary aim of understanding the Moon's inner character by performing a series of low-altitude gravity field measurements using what is known as a Ka-band ranging instrument.

The mission itself is relatively short in duration, just 90 days once the two spacecraft reach orbit.

About 40 days after their work is done, the pair will plunge into the lunar surface, NASA said. Scientific analysis of their data is expected to continue for a year.

The project is part of NASA's Discovery program, which has launched 10 spacecraft since 1992 to study the solar system.

Last month, NASA launched its billion-dollar solar-powered spacecraft Juno on a five-year journey to Jupiter aiming to discover what makes up the solar system's biggest planet.

After GRAIL, the US space agency plans to launch its Mars Science Laboratory in November on a nearly two-year journey to the red planet.

Source: Moon Daily.
Link: http://www.moondaily.com/reports/NASA_launches_twin_spacecraft_to_study_Moons_core_999.html.

NASA postpones launch of Moon-bound spacecraft

Washington (AFP)
Sept 8, 2011

NASA will try again Friday to launch a $500 million pair of unmanned spacecraft that will use gravity tools to map the Moon's inner core for the first time, after high winds delayed a first attempt.

The GRAIL (Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory) mission, aims to launch on a single Delta II rocket as early as 8:33 am (1237 GMT). A second launch window opens at 9:12 am (1316 GMT).

Weather conditions for Friday are the same as Thursday -- 40 percent favorable -- though upper level winds were deemed too strong to try it on the first day of the launch window.

If Friday's bid is also pushed back, plenty more opportunities will arise over the next 41 days.

Scientists hope the satellites will shed light on how the Moon formed and whether there was once another Moon that melded with it, forming lunar mountains.

Despite 109 past missions to study the Moon since 1959, and the fact that 12 humans have walked on its surface, GRAIL program scientist Bobby Fogel said there has never been a serious attempt to peer inside.

"GRAIL will be the first mission to determine the internal structure of the Moon," he told reporters this week.

"We have used gravity science before to try to gain some insight as to what is going on inside the Moon, however these have been very primitive attempts.

"If those previous attempts could be likened to a magnifying glass, GRAIL by contrast would be a high-powered microscope."

Scientists believe that the Moon was formed when a planet-sized object crashed into the Earth, throwing off a load of material that eventually became what we now recognize as our planet's airless, desolate satellite.

How it heated up over time, creating a magma ocean that later crystallized, remains a mystery.

A recent hypothesis that there may have been two Moons that slowly merged into each other can also be tested with this mission, said principal investigator Maria Zuber.

"If we want to reconstruct the evolution of the Moon over time, we certainly need to reconstruct the temperature structure of the Moon right now," she said.

Little is known for certain about what lies inside the Moon. The widely held belief that there is a small solid iron core surrounded by a liquid iron core is unproven, said Zuber.

"It is actually quite possible that deep inside the Moon the core could be titanium oxide which is a material that would have fallen out or would have crystallized out of the magma ocean and sunk to the deep interior of the Moon," she said.

The GRAIL twins will journey for more than three months, both entering orbit around New Year's Day.

Once there, they will line up with each other and "essentially chase each other around in a polar orbit as the Moon rotates slowly underneath them," said Zuber.

They will hover about 34 miles (55 kilometers) above the lunar surface, with the distance between them ranging from 37 to 140 miles (60 to 225 kilometers), collecting measurements of the terrain beneath.

The duo will accomplish the mission's primary aim of understanding the Moon's inner character by performing a series of low-altitude gravity field measurements using what is known as a Ka-band ranging instrument.

The mission itself is relatively short in duration, just 90 days once the two spacecraft reach orbit.

About 40 days after their work is done, the pair will plunge into the lunar surface, NASA said. Scientific analysis of their data is expected to continue for a year.

Source: Moon Daily.
Link: http://www.moondaily.com/reports/NASA_postpones_launch_of_Moon-bound_spacecraft_999.html.

NASA Spacecraft Reveals Recent Geological Activity on the Moon

by Nancy Neal-Jones for Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD (SPX)
Feb 21, 2012

New images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft show the moon's crust is being stretched, forming minute valleys in a few small areas on the lunar surface. Scientists propose this geologic activity occurred less than 50 million years ago, which is considered recent compared to the moon's age of more than 4.5 billion years.

A team of researchers analyzing high-resolution images obtained by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) show small, narrow trenches typically much longer than they are wide. This indicates the lunar crust is being pulled apart at these locations.

These linear valleys, known as graben, form when the moon's crust stretches, breaks and drops down along two bounding faults. A handful of these graben systems have been found across the lunar surface.

"We think the moon is in a general state of global contraction because of cooling of a still hot interior," said Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and lead author of a paper on this research appearing in the March issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.

"The graben tell us forces acting to shrink the moon were overcome in places by forces acting to pull it apart. This means the contractional forces shrinking the moon cannot be large, or the small graben might never form."

The weak contraction suggests that the moon, unlike the terrestrial planets, did not completely melt in the very early stages of its evolution. Rather, observations support an alternative view that only the moon's exterior initially melted forming an ocean of molten rock.

In August 2010, the team used LROC images to identify physical signs of contraction on the lunar surface, in the form of lobe-shaped cliffs known as lobate scarps.

The scarps are evidence the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today. The team saw these scarps widely distributed across the moon and concluded it was shrinking as the interior slowly cooled.

Based on the size of the scarps, it is estimated that the distance between the moon's center and its surface shank by approximately 300 feet. The graben were an unexpected discovery and the images provide contradictory evidence that the regions of the lunar crust are also being pulled apart.

"This pulling apart tells us the moon is still active," said Richard Vondrak, LRO Project Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "LRO gives us a detailed look at that process."

As the LRO mission progresses and coverage increases, scientists will have a better picture of how common these young graben are and what other types of tectonic features are nearby. The graben systems the team finds may help scientists refine the state of stress in the lunar crust.

"It was a big surprise when I spotted graben in the far side highlands," said co-author Mark Robinson of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, principal investigator of LROC.

"I immediately targeted the area for high-resolution stereo images so we could create a three-dimensional view of the graben. It's exciting when you discover something totally unexpected and only about half the lunar surface has been imaged in high resolution. There is much more of the moon to be explored."

Source: Moon Daily.
Link: http://www.moondaily.com/reports/NASA_Spacecraft_Reveals_Recent_Geological_Activity_on_the_Moon_999.html.

NASA Plans to Visit a Near-Earth Asteroid

by Dauna Coulter for NASA Science News
Huntsville AL (SPX)
Aug 17, 2011

In a few years a NASA spacecraft will seek the building blocks of life in a shovelful of asteroid dirt. The OSIRIS-REx1 spacecraft, targeted for launch in September 2016, will intercept asteroid 1999 RQ36, orbit it for a year, and then reach out a robotic arm to touch its surface.

"We call it 'touch and go,'" explains principal investigator Michael Drake of the University of Arizona. "OSIRIS-REx will approach the surface at 0.1 m/sec (only 0.2 mph, less than a tenth of walking pace) and, without landing, stretch out its arm equipped with a sample collector. We'll simply agitate the asteroid's surface with ultra-pure nitrogen to stir up material for capture."

Asteroids appear to be as lifeless as Yorick's skull, yet material captured from 1999 RQ36 could hold clues to life's origin on Earth.

Some scientists believe Earth's surface was sterilized2 soon after the planet was formed some 4.5 billion years ago. Planetoids and other debris left over from the genesis of planets pummeled Earth, turning it into a cratered wasteland. The tremendous kinetic energy from the collisions heated Earth to the boiling point.

"Earth at 'time zero' had a steam atmosphere that was wrung out to make a boiling hot ocean," says Drake. "Imagine standing on a lava lake in Hawaii, but it's a planet-wide, 600 mile deep lake. You and everything else, including any organics and any one-celled organisms, would be converted to carbon dioxide and water. Gone."

In this scenario, an infusion of organics from elsewhere might be required to ignite life here. The building blocks for life on our planet may have come, at least in part, from asteroids.

"Observations by ground-based telescopes suggest that asteroid 1999 RQ36 has a wealth of carbon-based compounds, but we don't know exactly what is there. Are there amino acids? To find out, we need to bring a sample home where we have sophisticated, exquisitely precise instruments, plus the ability to react to new discoveries."

Obtaining that sample is a key part of OSIRIS-REx's mission.

Upon reaching 1999 RQ36 in 2019, the spacecraft's suite of cameras and instruments will spend a year photographing the asteroid and measuring its surface topography, composition, and thermal emissions while its radio provides mass and gravity field maps. This information will increase our understanding of asteroids as well as help the mission team select the most promising sample site.

Like the ancient Egyptian god Osiris, the OSIRIS-REx mission is associated with death as well as life, with both our destiny and our origin. That's because 1999 RQ36 is the Near Earth Object "Most Likely to Succeed" - in affecting our destiny, that is. It has a 1/1800 chance of hitting Earth by the 22nd century.

Evidence suggests that a 6-mile wide asteroid smashed into Earth about 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and altering the history of life. Instead of dinosaurs prevailing, mammals flourished, evolving into humans.

"We're the first species that can mitigate asteroid extinction," notes Drake. "With enough information, we can project the orbit of a threatening asteroid."

If researchers can track an NEO's precise path, they can devise a way to nudge the object out of a collision course with Earth. OSIRIS-REx wil help NASA learn to navigate near an asteroid, laying the groundwork for landing on one. That could be pretty tricky, considering asteroids like 1999 RQ36 have so little gravity.

"If you simply pushed your finger into the surface, you'd fly off into space, disappear, and never come back!"

OSIRIS-REx, however, will hang close, and its cameras will give us window seats to watch its delicate sampling maneuvers. The mission team plans near-live coverage of the operations. But the real action starts, says Drake, when the sample is returned to Earth in 2023...

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Plans_to_Visit_a_Near_Earth_Asteroid_999.html.

NASA selects Virgin Galactic for Suborbital Flights

Los Angeles CA (SPX)
Aug 11, 2011

Virgin Galactic has been selected by NASA to provide flight opportunities for engineers, technologists and scientific researchers to fly technology payloads into space.

This arrangement marks the first time that NASA has contracted with a commercial partner to provide flights into space on a suborbital spacecraft, and represents another important endorsement of the value of regular commercial space access for a wide range of science and educational applications.

The announcement came from NASA's Flight Opportunities Program, funded by NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist and managed out of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, CA.

Through this program, NASA has already arranged the flight of several innovative scientific payloads on low-altitude rockets. With selection of Virgin Galactic as a flight provider, NASA will soon be able to offer the research community access to space itself.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo is the only crewed suborbital vehicle in flight testing, and the only such vehicle based on a spacecraft that has already sent humans into space, the X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne.

Virgin Galactic offers a significantly larger cabin than any other company taking deposits today, allowing for unique technology demonstrations and research.

"The Flight Opportunities program is an efficient research program that leverages investment in private vehicles to drive new discoveries for researchers and real benefits for taxpayers," said George Whitesides, President and CEO of Virgin Galactic.

"NASA leadership, the Office of the Chief Technologist and Congress deserve credit for supporting this worthy program. We look forward to providing a high-quality, cost-effective research platform for researchers and scientists over the coming years."

With several flight providers selected, NASA will now be able to begin the process of offering these flight opportunities to the research community, which has already expressed very strong interest in such a novel environment.

Proposals are being invited from the research community by NASA and are expected to span a wide variety of disciplines. NASA's Flight Opportunities Program will be responsible for selecting those which go forward for flight.

These research flights mark an important milestone for Virgin Galactic. Although generally referred to as a space tourism company-Virgin Galactic has already collected more than $55 million in deposits from 445 future tourist astronauts-providing access to space to researchers and their experiments is viewed by Virgin Galactic as both a future mission segment and a significant business opportunity.

To best serve NASA and the research community, Virgin Galactic assembled an expert team of partners to provide payload integration and flight services. This team includes: Southwest Research Institute of Texas; NanoRacks, LLC of Texas; SatWest, LLC of New Mexico and Spaceflight Services of Washington.

These partner organizations bring extensive experience flying scientific experiments on high performance jet aircraft, suborbital and orbital rockets, and the International Space Station. Researchers flying experiments onboard SpaceShipTwo will be able to work with these companies directly when desired to allow for the quickest paths to flight.

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_selects_Virgin_Galactic_for_Suborbital_Flights_999.html.

NASA's Mars rover reaches new grounds

WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) — NASA on Wednesday announced that its Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached the planet’s Endeavor crater to study rocks never seen before.

On Monday, the golf cart-sized rover relayed its arrival at a location named Spirit Point on the crater’s rim, after a journey of almost three years. Opportunity was able to drive approximately 13 miles (21 kilometers) after climbing out of the Victoria crater, NASA said.

Endeavor crater is more than 25 times wider than Victoria crater, being 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. At Endeavor, scientists expect to see much older rocks and terrains than those examined by Opportunity during its first seven years on Mars.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter first detected clay minerals that may have formed in an early warmer and wetter period, making Endeavor an intriguing destination.

“NASA is continuing to write remarkable chapters in our nation’s story of exploration with discoveries on Mars and trips to an array of challenging new destinations,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. “Opportunity’s findings and data from the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory will play a key role in making possible future human missions to Mars and other places where humans have not yet been,” he added.

Matthew Golombek, Mars Exploration Rover science team member at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said the exploration will allow sampling of a rock type the rovers had not seen before. “Clay minerals form in wet conditions so we may learn about a potentially habitable environment that appears to have been very different from those responsible for the rocks comprising the plains.”

NASA launched the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity in the summer of 2003. Both completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004 and continued years of extended operations. They made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. 


In search for evidence that water persisted on the Martian surface for a long period of time, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched on August 12, 2005. Other Mars missions have shown water flowed across the surface in the planet’s history, but scientists have not determined if water remained long enough to provide a habitat for life.

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

Source: WireUpdate.
Link: http://wireupdate.com/wires/19375/nasas-mars-rover-reaches-new-grounds/.

NASA Discovers First Earth-size Planets Beyond Our Solar System

by Michele Johnson for NASA Ames Research Center
Moffet Field CA (SPX)
Dec 21, 2011

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun.

The discovery marks the next important milestone in the ultimate search for planets like Earth. The new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth. Kepler-20f is a bit larger than Earth, measuring 1.03 times its radius.

Both planets reside in a five-planet system called Kepler-20, approximately 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.

Kepler-20e orbits its parent star every 6.1 days and Kepler-20f every 19.6 days. These short orbital periods mean very hot, inhospitable worlds. Kepler-20f, at 800 degrees Fahrenheit, is similar to an average day on the planet Mercury. The surface temperature of Kepler-20e, at more than 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, would melt glass.

"The primary goal of the Kepler mission is to find Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone," said Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., lead author of a new study published in the journal Nature.

"This discovery demonstrates for the first time that Earth-size planets exist around other stars, and that we are able to detect them."

The Kepler-20 system includes three other planets that are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. Kepler-20b, the closest planet, Kepler-20c, the third planet, and Kepler-20d, the fifth planet, orbit their star every 3.7, 10.9 and 77.6 days.

All five planets have orbits lying roughly within Mercury's orbit in our solar system. The host star belongs to the same G-type class as our sun, although it is slightly smaller and cooler.

The system has an unexpected arrangement. In our solar system, small, rocky worlds orbit close to the sun and large, gaseous worlds orbit farther out. In comparison, the planets of Kepler-20 are organized in alternating size: large, small, large, small and large.

"The Kepler data are showing us some planetary systems have arrangements of planets very different from that seen in our solar system," said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist and Kepler science team member at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

"The analysis of Kepler data continue to reveal new insights about the diversity of planets and planetary systems within our galaxy."

Scientists are not certain how the system evolved but they do not think the planets formed in their existing locations. They theorize the planets formed farther from their star and then migrated inward, likely through interactions with the disk of material from which they originated. This allowed the worlds to maintain their regular spacing despite alternating sizes.

The Kepler space telescope detects planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars to search for planets crossing in front, or transiting, their stars. The Kepler science team requires at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet.

The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations on planet candidates the spacecraft finds.

The star field Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can be seen only from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations help determine which candidates can be validated as planets.

To validate Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, astronomers used a computer program called Blender, which runs simulations to help rule out other astrophysical phenomena masquerading as a planet.

On Dec. 5 the team announced the discovery of Kepler-22b in the habitable zone of its parent star. It is likely to be too large to have a rocky surface. While Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f are Earth-size, they are too close to their parent star to have liquid water on the surface.

"In the cosmic game of hide and seek, finding planets with just the right size and just the right temperature seems only a matter of time," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead and professor of astronomy and physics at San Jose State University.

"We are on the edge of our seats knowing that Kepler's most anticipated discoveries are still to come."

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Discovers_First_Earth_size_Planets_Beyond_Our_Solar_System_999.html.

NASA to hold alien planet briefing

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Earth-like planets outside the solar system will help humanity know its place in the galaxy, the U.S. space agency said ahead of an alien-planet news briefing.

NASA's alien, or extrasolar, planet announcement, set for 1 p.m. EST Tuesday, was expected to be based on findings made by the space agency's Kepler planet-hunting observatory, orbiting Earth since March 2009.

The Kepler mission is designed to discover Earth-like planets in or near the "habitable zone," where liquid water can exist on the surface of an orbiting planet, and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets, NASA said.

The spacecraft was named in honor of German astronomer Johannes Kepler, a key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution -- in which new ideas and knowledge in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and chemistry transformed medieval and ancient views of nature and laid the foundations for modern science.

The Kepler mission has already found 2,326 potential Earth-like extrasolar planets in the past 19 months, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said. Twenty-eight of those were confirmed as planets, Space.com reported.

Earth-like planets are rocky planets, as compared with gas giants that might not have solid surfaces. Within the solar system that Earth is part of, the rocky planets are the smaller inner planets closest to the sun.

The Kepler science team announced Dec. 5 it discovered Kepler-22b, the first potentially habitable alien planet. This distant world, located about 600 light-years from Earth, orbits its sun in the habitable zone that could support liquid water and perhaps life, NASA said.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/12/20/NASA-to-hold-alien-planet-briefing/UPI-39751324373400/.

NASA Developing Comet Harpoon for Sample Return

by Bill Steigerwald for Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt MD (SPX)
Dec 14, 2011

The best way to grab a sample of a rotating comet that is racing through the inner solar system at up to 150,000 miles per hour while spewing chunks of ice, rock and dust may be to avoid the risky business of landing on it.

Instead, researchers want to send a spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet, then fire a harpoon to rapidly acquire samples from specific locations with surgical precision while hovering above the target.

Using this "standoff" technique would allow samples to be collected even from areas that are much too rugged or dangerous to permit the landing and safe operation of a spacecraft.

Scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. are in the early stages of working out the best design for a sample-collecting comet harpoon. In a lab the size of a large closet stands a metal ballista (large crossbow) nearly six feet tall, with a bow made from a pair of truck leaf springs and a bow string made of steel cable 1/2 inch thick.

The ballista is positioned to fire vertically downward into a bucket of target material. For safety, it's pointed at the floor, because it could potentially launch test harpoon tips about a mile if it was angled upwards.

An electric winch mechanically pulls the bow string back to generate a precise level of force, up to 1,000 pounds, firing projectiles to velocities upwards of 100 feet per second.

Donald Wegel of NASA Goddard, lead engineer on the project, places a test harpoon in the bolt carrier assembly, steps outside the lab and moves a heavy wooden safety door with a thick plexiglass window over the entrance.

After dialing in the desired level of force, he flips a switch and, after a few-second delay, the crossbow fires, launching the projectile into a 55-gallon drum full of cometary simulant - sand, salt, pebbles or a mixture of each. The ballista produces a uniquely impressive thud upon firing, somewhere between a rifle and a cannon blast.

"We had to bolt it to the floor, because the recoil made the whole testbed jump after every shot," said Wegel.

"We're not sure what we'll encounter on the comet - the surface could be soft and fluffy, mostly made up of dust, or it could be ice mixed with pebbles, or even solid rock. Most likely, there will be areas with different compositions, so we need to design a harpoon that's capable of penetrating a reasonable range of materials.

"The immediate goal though, is to correlate how much energy is required to penetrate different depths in different materials. What harpoon tip geometries penetrate specific materials best? How does the harpoon mass and cross section affect penetration? The ballista allows us to safely collect this data and use it to size the cannon that will be used on the actual mission."

Comets are frozen chunks of ice and dust left over from our solar system's formation. As such, scientists want a closer look at them for clues to the origin of planets and ultimately, ourselves.

"One of the most inspiring reasons to go through the trouble and expense of collecting a comet sample is to get a look at the 'primordial ooze' - biomolecules in comets that may have assisted the origin of life," says Wegel.

Scientists at the Goddard Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory have found amino acids in samples of comet Wild 2 from NASA's Stardust mission, and in various carbon-rich meteorites. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions.

The research gives support to the theory that a "kit" of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts gave a boost to the origin of life.

Although ancient comet impacts could have helped create life, a present-day hit near a populated region would be highly destructive, as a comet's large mass and high velocity would make it explode with many times the force of a typical nuclear bomb. One plan to deal with a comet headed towards Earth is to deflect it with a large - probably nuclear - explosion.

However, that might turn out to be a really bad idea. Depending on the comet's composition, such an explosion might just fragment it into many smaller pieces, with most still headed our way.

It would be like getting hit with a shotgun blast instead of a rifle bullet. So the second major reason to sample comets is to characterize the impact threat, according to Wegel. We need to understand how they're made so we can come up with the best way to deflect them should any have their sights on us.

"Bringing back a comet sample will also let us analyze it with advanced instruments that won't fit on a spacecraft or haven't been invented yet," adds Dr. Joseph Nuth, a comet expert at NASA Goddard and lead scientist on the project.

Of course, there are other ways to gather a sample, like using a drill. However, any mission to a comet has to overcome the challenge of operating in very low gravity. Comets are small compared to planets, typically just a few miles across, so their gravity is correspondingly weak, maybe a millionth that of Earth, according to Nuth.

"A spacecraft wouldn't actually land on a comet; it would have to attach itself somehow, probably with some kind of harpoon. So we figured if you have to use a harpoon anyway, you might as well get it to collect your sample," says Nuth.

Right now, the team is working out the best tip design, cross-section, and explosive powder charge for the harpoon, using the crossbow to fire tips at various speeds into different materials like sand, ice, and rock salt. They are also developing a sample collection chamber to fit inside the hollow tip.

"It has to remain reliably open as the tip penetrates the comet's surface, but then it has to close tightly and detach from the tip so the sample can be pulled back into the spacecraft," says Wegel.

"Finding the best design that will package into a very small cross section and successfully collect a sample from the range of possible materials we may encounter is an enormous challenge."

"You can't do this by crunching numbers in a computer, because nobody has done it before - the data doesn't exist yet," says Nuth.

"We need to get data from experiments like this before we can build a computer model. We're working on answers to the most basic questions, like how much powder charge do you need so your harpoon doesn't bounce off or go all the way through the comet. We want to prove the harpoon can penetrate deep enough, collect a sample, decouple from the tip, and retract the sample collection device."

The spacecraft will probably have multiple sample collection harpoons with a variety of powder charges to handle areas on a comet with different compositions, according to the team. After they have finished their proof-of-concept work, they plan to apply for funding to develop an actual instrument. "Since instrument development is more expensive, we need to show it works first," says Nuth.

Currently, the European Space Agency is sending a mission called Rosetta that will use a harpoon to grapple a probe named Philae to the surface of comet "67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko" in 2014 so that a suite of instruments can analyze the regolith.

"The Rosetta harpoon is an ingenious design, but it does not collect a sample," says Wegel. "We will piggyback on their work and take it a step further to include a sample-collecting cartridge. It's important to understand the complex internal friction encountered by a hollow, core-sampling harpoon."

NASA's recently-funded mission to return a sample from an asteroid, called OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security - Regolith Explorer), will gather surface material using a specialized collector. However, the surface can be altered by the harsh environment of space.

"The next step is to return a sample from the subsurface because it contains the most primitive and pristine material," said Wegel.

Both Rosetta and OSIRIS-REx will significantly increase our ability to navigate to, rendezvous with, and locate specific interesting regions on these foreign bodies.

The fundamental research on harpoon-based sample retrieval by Wegel and his team is necessary so the technology is available in time for a subsurface sample return mission.

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Developing_Comet_Harpoon_for_Sample_Return_999.html.

NASA Takes Next Step In Developing Commercial Crew Program

Washington DC (SPX)
Dec 19, 2011

NASA has announced a modified competitive procurement strategy to keep on track the agency's plan to have U.S. companies transport American astronauts into space instead of outsourcing this work to foreign governments.

Instead of awarding contracts for the next phase of the Commercial Crew Program, the agency plans to use multiple, competitively awarded Space Act Agreements.

Using competitive Space Act Agreements instead of contracts will allow NASA to maintain a larger number of partners during this phase of the program, with the flexibility to adjust technical direction, milestones and funding.

This flexibility is important during a period of high budget uncertainty when NASA is receiving less funding than President Obama requested for the agency's commercial space program.

"NASA is committed to ensuring that U.S. companies are sending American astronauts into space," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said.

"This new acquisition strategy will allow us to preserve competition as we maintain our momentum to provide a U.S.-based commercial crew launch capability at the earliest possible time."

This competitive Space Act solicitation is separate from the work being carried out under existing Space Act Agreements. The new competition will focus on an overall system design rather than single technology activities. Details on the new competition will be available in January.

The announcement for proposals is expected in the first quarter of 2012. These competitively awarded Space Acts will be followed by a competitively awarded contract for the certification phase.

The certification phase will ensure that the designs fully meet the safety and performance requirements for NASA utilization.

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_Takes_Next_Step_In_Developing_Commercial_Crew_Program_999.html.

NASA Announces: Dragon To The Space Station

Hawthorne, CA (SPX)
Dec 16, 2011

December 8 2011, marked the one year anniversary of Dragon's first Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) demonstration flight. The flight made history as SpaceX became the only commercial company to successfully return a spacecraft from orbit. This feat had previously been accomplished only by five nations and the European Space Agency.

We are now preparing the Dragon spacecraft for yet another historic flight - becoming the first commercial vehicle in history to visit the International Space Station (ISS)!

NASA recently announced February 7, 2012, as our new target launch date for the upcoming mission. In addition, NASA officially confirmed that SpaceX will be allowed to complete the objectives of COTS 2 and COTS 3 in a single mission.

This means Dragon will perform all of the COTS 2 mission objectives which include numerous operations in the vicinity of the ISS, and will then perform the COTS 3 objectives.

These include approach, berthing with the ISS, astronauts opening Dragon and unloading cargo, and finally, astronauts closing the spacecraft and sending it back to Earth for recovery from the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

This mission marks a major milestone in American spaceflight. While our first missions to the ISS will be to transport cargo, both Falcon 9 and Dragon were designed to ultimately transport astronauts.

Every trip we make to the ISS from this point forward gets us closer to that goal. SpaceX is incredibly excited for what the future holds and as always, we greatly appreciate NASA's continued support and partnership in this process.

The Cots 2/3 Demonstration Mission
Just as Dragon's first mission to orbit and back involved a level of effort equal to launching the first Falcon 9, preparing Dragon for two weeks of operation in space and for approach and berthing with the ISS poses new challenges. Meeting them requires a large amount of detailed planning and careful execution.

Each launch day will have just one narrow liftoff window-no more than a few minutes-in order to synchronize Dragon's flight with the orbit of the ISS. Catching up to the ISS will take from one to three days. Once there, Dragon will begin the COTS 2 demonstrations to show proper performance and control in the vicinity of the ISS, while remaining outside the Station's safe zone.

During the entire time Dragon is in the vicinity of the ISS, Station astronauts will be in direct communication with Dragon and will be able to monitor the spacecraft as well as issue spacecraft commands.

After successfully completing the COTS 2 requirements, Dragon will receive approval to begin the COTS 3 activities, gradually approaching the ISS from the radial direction (toward the Earth), while under constant observation.

Dragon will approach to within a few meters of the ISS, allowing astronauts to reach out and grapple Dragon with the Station's robotic arm and then maneuver it carefully into place. The entire process will take a few hours.

Once in place, Station astronauts will equalize the pressure between the ISS and Dragon, open the hatches, enter the vehicle and begin unloading Dragon's cargo.

After Dragon spends about a week berthed at the ISS, astronauts will reverse the process, loading Dragon with cargo for return to Earth, sealing the hatches, and un-berthing Dragon using the robotic arm.

Dragon will then depart from the ISS and return to Earth within a day or so, and the SpaceX recovery crew will meet it at splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

Preparing For Launch At The Cape
As previously reported, both the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and the Dragon spacecraft that will fly in the COTS Demo 2/3 mission have been delivered to our launch complex in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Falcon 9's first stage, second stage, and interstage were integrated and rolled out for two separate wet dress rehearsals in which SpaceX engineers performed the entire countdown sequence up until the moment the engines would be fired.

The Dragon COTS Demo 2/3 spacecraft and trunk have also been delivered to our launch pad and are undergoing final processing for flight...

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_Announces_Dragon_To_The_Space_Station_999.html.

NASA Spacecraft Data Suggest Water Flowing on Mars

Pasadena CA (JPL)
Aug 05, 2011

Observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed possible flowing water during the warmest months on Mars. "NASA's Mars Exploration Program keeps bringing us closer to determining whether the Red Planet could harbor life in some form," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, "and it reaffirms Mars as an important future destination for human exploration."

Dark, finger-like features appear and extend down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, fade in winter, and return during the next spring. Repeated observations have tracked the seasonal changes in these recurring features on several steep slopes in the middle latitudes of Mars' southern hemisphere.

"The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water," said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson. McEwen is the principal investigator for the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and lead author of a report about the recurring flows published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.

Some aspects of the observations still puzzle researchers, but flows of liquid brine fit the features' characteristics better than alternate hypotheses. Saltiness lowers the freezing temperature of water. Sites with active flows get warm enough, even in the shallow subsurface, to sustain liquid water that is about as salty as Earth's oceans, while pure water would freeze at the observed temperatures.

"These dark lineations are different from other types of features on Martian slopes," said Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Scientist Richard Zurek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Repeated observations show they extend ever farther downhill with time during the warm season."

The features imaged are only about 0.5 to 5 yards or meters wide, with lengths up to hundreds of yards. The width is much narrower than previously reported gullies on Martian slopes. However, some of those locations display more than 1,000 individual flows. Also, while gullies are abundant on cold, pole-facing slopes, these dark flows are on warmer, equator-facing slopes.

The images show flows lengthen and darken on rocky equator-facing slopes from late spring to early fall. The seasonality, latitude distribution and brightness changes suggest a volatile material is involved, but there is no direct detection of one. The settings are too warm for carbon-dioxide frost and, at some sites, too cold for pure water.

This suggests the action of brines, which have lower freezing points. Salt deposits over much of Mars indicate brines were abundant in Mars' past. These recent observations suggest brines still may form near the surface today in limited times and places.

When researchers checked flow-marked slopes with the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM), no sign of water appeared. The features may quickly dry on the surface or could be shallow subsurface flows.

"The flows are not dark because of being wet," McEwen said. "They are dark for some other reason."

A flow initiated by briny water could rearrange grains or change surface roughness in a way that darkens the appearance. How the features brighten again when temperatures drop is harder to explain.

"It's a mystery now, but I think it's a solvable mystery with further observations and laboratory experiments," McEwen said.

These results are the closest scientists have come to finding evidence of liquid water on the planet's surface today. Frozen water, however has been detected near the surface in many middle to high-latitude regions. Fresh-looking gullies suggest slope movements in geologically recent times, perhaps aided by water.

Purported droplets of brine also appeared on struts of the Phoenix Mars Lander. If further study of the recurring dark flows supports evidence of brines, these could be the first known Martian locations with liquid water.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory operates HiRISE. The camera was built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., provided and operates CRISM. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Source: Mars Daily.
Link: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/NASA_Spacecraft_Data_Suggest_Water_Flowing_on_Mars_999.html.

NASA's Jupiter Probe Ready for Launch

Kennedy Space Center FL (SPX)
Aug 04, 2011

NASA's Juno spacecraft is getting ready to lift off on Friday, Aug. 5, 2011. On Aug. 4, at about 5 a.m. PDT (8 a.m. EDT), the Jupiter explorer will be rolled some 1,800 feet (about 550 meters) from the 286-foot-tall (87-meter) Vertical Integration Facility, where the Atlas V rocket and Juno were mated, to its launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

"Our next move will be much farther - about 1,740 million miles [2,800 million kilometers] to Jupiter," said Jan Chodas, Juno project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The rollout completes Juno's journey on Earth, and now we're excited to be taking our first step into space."

The launch period for Juno opens Aug. 5 and extends through Aug. 26. The spacecraft is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2016. For an Aug. 5 liftoff, the launch window opens at 8:34 a.m. PDT (11:34 a.m. EDT) and remains open through 9:43 a.m. PDT (12:43 p.m. EDT).

At Cape Canaveral, Atlas V rockets are assembled vertically on a mobile launch platform in the Vertical Integration Facility south of the pad. The mobile platform, carrying Juno and its rocket, will be rolled out to the pad using four 250-ton (227,000-kilogram) rail cars.

When launched, Juno will take almost 11 minutes to reach its temporary orbit around Earth. About 30 minutes later, the Atlas rocket's second stage will perform a second, nine-minute burn, after which Juno will be on its five-year journey to the largest planet in the solar system.

Juno Spacecraft to Carry Three Figurines to Jupiter Orbit
NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft will carry the 1.5-inch likeness of Galileo Galilei, the Roman god Jupiter and his wife Juno to Jupiter when the spacecraft launches this Friday, Aug. 5. The inclusion of the three mini-statues, or figurines, is part of a joint outreach and educational program developed as part of the partnership between NASA and the LEGO Group to inspire children to explore science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

In Greek and Roman mythology, Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief. From Mount Olympus, Juno was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature. Juno holds a magnifying glass to signify her search for the truth, while her husband holds a lightning bolt.

The third LEGO crew member is Galileo Galilei, who made several important discoveries about Jupiter, including the four largest satellites of Jupiter (named the Galilean moons in his honor). Of course, the miniature Galileo has his telescope with him on the journey.

Juno Jupiter Mission to Carry Plaque Dedicated to Galileo
A plaque dedicated to the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei will be carried to Jupiter aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft. Among his many achievements, Galileo Galilei discovered that moons orbited Jupiter in 1610. These satellites - Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto - are also known as the Galilean moons.

The plaque, which was provided by the Italian Space Agency, measures 2.8 by 2 inches (71 by 51 millimeters), is made of flight-grade aluminum and weighs six grams (0.2 ounces).

It was bonded to Juno's propulsion bay with a spacecraft-grade epoxy. The graphic on the plaque depicts a self-portrait of Galileo.

It also includes - in Galileo's own hand - a passage he made in 1610 of observations of Jupiter, archived in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence.

Galileo's text included on the plaque reads as follows: "On the 11th it was in this formation - and the star closest to Jupiter was half the size than the other and very close to the other so that during the previous nights all of the three observed stars looked of the same dimension and among them equally afar; so that it is evident that around Jupiter there are three moving stars invisible till this time to everyone."

Source: Space Daily.
Link: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASAs_Jupiter_Probe_Ready_for_Launch_999.html.

NASA, SpaceX agree on space station flight

Washington (UPI)
Jul 26, 2011

NASA and SpaceX, based in California, have agreed on the private spacecraft company's first date with the International Space Station, the space agency says.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule will launch aboard a Falcon 9 rocket Nov. 30 and will rendezvous and dock with the ISS Dec. 7, NewScientist.com reported Tuesday.

The original plan had been for two missions, one for a rendezvous and a second for the actual docking, but after a successful test flight SpaceX requested that NASA combine the two missions.

"We technically have agreed with SpaceX that we want to combine those flights," William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for space operations, said. "We are doing all the planning to go ahead and have those missions combined, but we haven't given them formal approval yet."

The U.S. shuttle program has indeed but the ISS still requires regular resupply, with many seeing commercial, private space flight as the answer.

However, even if the Dragon mission is successful, U.S. astronauts will still depend on launches aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft until the private vehicle is human-rated by NASA.

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_SpaceX_agree_on_space_station_flight_999.html.

NASA fends off tears with shuttle end in sight

Washington (AFP)
July 20, 2011

NASA astronauts and engineers fought off tears Wednesday as Atlantis made its final approach toward Earth, bringing an end to the 30-year shuttle program and closing a chapter in human spaceflight.

The shuttle was set to roll to a stop early Thursday, exactly 42 years after US astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to step foot on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission.

Atlantis's landing will end an era of US dominance in human space exploration, leaving Russia as the sole taxi to the International Space Station until a replacement US capsule can be built by private industry.

But NASA administrator Charles Bolden insisted that once the shuttle eases onto the runway at Kennedy Space Center at 5:56 am (0956 GMT) Thursday, any tears on the faces of NASA employees will reflect both sadness and joy.

"My number one job right now is to ensure that we safely get Atlantis and her crew on the runway tomorrow," Bolden, a former astronaut, said on CNN.

"I will have tears of joy and tears of sadness at that time, but the tears of joy will be because we are already working with commercial companies to put cargo on the International Space Station as early as next year," he said.

"We are working with other commercial companies to put American astronauts and our partner astronauts on the International Space Station in four or five years."

Bolden has repeatedly brushed off critics who say the US space agency is in disarray, facing thousands of layoffs, an astronauts corps half the size it had 10 years ago and no human spaceflight program to replace the shuttle.

"We have just not done a good job of telling our story. NASA is very busy," Bolden said. "The president said to us, 2025 for an asteroid and 2030 to Mars. We have a lot of work to do ahead."

Meanwhile, the crew of four US astronauts aboard Atlantis savored their final day in orbit and NASA TV ran live images of the shuttle's view of Earth after a successful mission to restock the ISS for a year with several tons of supplies and food.

Final inspections of the shuttle's heat shield, which protects the spacecraft during its fiery transition into Earth's atmosphere, were completed and NASA said the spacecraft looked to be in good shape for landing.

"The space shuttle has been with us at the heart and soul of the human spaceflight program for about 30 years, and it's a little sad to see it go away," commander Chris Ferguson said as the crew sat for a series of TV interviews.

"It's going to be an emotional moment for a lot of people that dedicated their lives to the shuttle program for 30 years. But we're going to try to keep it upbeat... We're going to try to make it a celebration of the tremendous crowning achievements that have occurred."

Over the course of the program, five NASA space shuttles -- Atlantis, Challenger, Columbia, Discovery and Endeavor -- have comprised a fleet designed as the world's first reusable space vehicles.

Besides the prototype Enterprise that never flew in space, only three have survived after Columbia and Challenger were destroyed in accidents that killed their crews.

At a time of US budget austerity, President Barack Obama has opted to end the program that has averaged about $450-500 million for each of its 135 missions.

He also canceled Constellation, a project that aimed to put US astronauts back on the Moon by 2020 at a cost of $97 billion.

Mission specialist Rex Walheim said he was optimistic about the future of the US space program, but acknowledged "we're in a kind of a transition period, which is a little bit uncomfortable."

NASA aims to turn over low-orbit space travel and space station servicing to commercial ventures, with a commercial launcher and capsule built by a private corporation in partnership with NASA ready to fly sometime after 2015.

Until the private sector fills the void, the world's astronauts will rely on Russian Soyuz rockets for rides to the ISS.

NASA flight director Tony Ceccacci said his team was trying to stay focused on getting the shuttle home safely.

"Every time you feel something you have to remember that this thing is not over yet," he told reporters.

"We have a motto in the mission control center that flight controllers don't cry, so we are going to make sure that we keep to that."

Source: Space-Travel.
Link: http://www.space-travel.com/reports/NASA_fends_off_tears_with_shuttle_end_in_sight_999.html.