NASA Chooses Small Business High Tech Projects for Development

NASA has selected for development 368 small business innovation projects that include research to minimize aging of aircraft, new techniques for suppressing fires on spacecraft and advanced transmitters for deep space communications.

Chosen from more than 1,600 proposals, the competitively selected awards will address agency research and technology needs. The awards are part of NASA's Small Business Innovation Research, or SBIR, and Small Business Technology Transfer, or STTR, programs.

The SBIR program selected 335 proposals for negotiation of Phase 1 contracts, and the STTR program chose 33 proposals for negotiation of Phase 1 contract awards. The selected SBIR projects have a combined value of approximately $33.5 million. The selected STTR projects have a combined value of approximately $3.3 million.

The SBIR contracts will be awarded to 245 small, high technology firms in 36 states. The STTR contracts will be awarded to 31 small high technology firms in 19 states. As part of the STTR program, selected firms will partner with 26 universities and research institutions in 20 states.

Past innovations from the program have benefited a number of NASA efforts, including air traffic control systems, Earth observing spacecraft, the International Space Station and the development of spacecraft for exploring the solar system.

A few of the research areas among this group of selected proposals include:

- Advanced aerospace adhesives to minimize aging and increase durability of aircraft
- Novel computational tools to better design future hypersonic spacecraft
- New approaches to fire suppression in spacecraft environments
- Technologies to monitor crew health and well being using very small scale testing devices
- New instruments for small lunar rovers or landers to enable critical mineralogical analysis for studying regolith, rock, ice, and dust samples
- Advanced transmitters for deep space communications

The SBIR program is a highly competitive, three-phase award system. It provides qualified small businesses -- including women-owned and disadvantaged firms -- with opportunities to propose unique ideas that meet specific research and development needs of the federal government.

The criteria used to choose these winning proposals included technical merit and feasibility, experience, qualifications and facilities, effectiveness of the work plan and commercial potential and feasibility.

The SBIR and STTR programs are part of NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA works with U.S. industry to infuse pioneering technologies into agency missions and transition them into commercially available products and services.

NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., manages the SBIR and STTR programs for the Innovative Partnerships Program. Each of NASA's 10 field centers manages individual projects.

For a list of selected companies and more information about the program, visit:

http://www.ipp.nasa.gov/ti_sbir.htm

NASA Updates Time of Tuesday News Conference with Space Station

The 12 crew members aboard space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station will hold a news conference Tuesday at 7 a.m. CST, 13 minutes earlier than previously announced.

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the 40-minute news conference. For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Atlantis' STS-129 mission includes three spacewalks and the installation of two platforms to the station's truss, or backbone. The platforms will store the spare parts needed to sustain station operations after the shuttle fleet is retired. Atlantis will return with station resident Nicole Stott, marking the final time the shuttle will be used to rotate station crew members.

For more information about STS-129 and its crew, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

Spitzer Telescope Observes Baby Brown Dwarf

This image shows two young brown dwarfs, objects that fall somewhere between planets and stars in terms of their temperature and mass.
› Full image and caption

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has contributed to the discovery of the youngest brown dwarf ever observed -- a finding that, if confirmed, may solve an astronomical mystery about how these cosmic misfits are formed.

Brown dwarfs are misfits because they fall somewhere between planets and stars in terms of their temperature and mass. They are cooler and more lightweight than stars and more massive (and normally warmer) than planets. This has generated a debate among astronomers: Do brown dwarfs form like planets or like stars?

Brown dwarfs are born of the same dense, dusty clouds that spawn stars and planets. But while they may share the same galactic nursery, brown dwarfs are often called "failed" stars because they lack the mass of their hotter, brighter stellar siblings. Without that mass, the gas at their core does not get hot enough to trigger the nuclear fusion that burns hydrogen -- the main component of these molecular clouds -- into helium. Unable to ignite as stars, brown dwarfs end up as cooler, less luminous objects that are more difficult to detect -- a challenge that was overcome in this case by Spitzer's heat-sensitive infrared vision.

To complicate matters, young brown dwarfs evolve rapidly, making it difficult to catch them when they are first born. The first brown dwarf was discovered in 1995 and, while hundreds have been found since, astronomers had not been able to unambiguously find them in their earliest stages of formation until now. In this study, an international team of astronomers found a so-called "proto brown dwarf" while it was still hidden in its natal star-forming region. Guided by Spitzer data collected in 2005, they focused their search in the dark cloud Barnard 213, a region of the Taurus-Auriga complex well known to astronomers as a hunting ground for young objects.

"We decided to go several steps back in the process when (brown dwarfs) are really hidden," said David Barrado of the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid, Spain, lead author of the paper on the discovery in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal. "During this step they would have an (opaque) envelope, a cocoon, and they would be easier to identify due to their strong infrared excesses. We have used this property to identify them. This is where Spitzer plays an important role because Spitzer can have a look inside these clouds. Without it this wouldn't have been possible."

Spitzer's longer-wavelength infrared camera penetrated the dusty natal cloud to observe a baby brown dwarf named SSTB213 J041757. The data, confirmed with near-infrared imaging from Calar Alto Observatory in Spain, revealed not one but two of what would potentially prove to be the faintest and coolest brown dwarfs ever observed.

Barrado and his team embarked on an international quest for more information about the two objects. Their overarching scientific objective was to observe and characterize the presence of this dusty envelope -- proof of the celestial womb of sorts that would indicate that these brown dwarfs were, in fact, in their earliest evolutionary stages.

The twins were observed from around the globe, and their properties were measured and analyzed using a host of powerful astronomical tools. One of the astronomers' stops was the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory in Hawaii, which captured the presence of the envelope around the young objects. That information, coupled with what they had from Spitzer, enabled the astronomers to build a spectral energy distribution -- a diagram that shows the amount of energy that is emitted by the objects in each wavelength.

From Hawaii, the astronomers made additional stops at observatories in Spain (Calar Alto Observatory), Chile (Very Large Telescopes) and New Mexico (Very Large Array). They also pulled decade-old data from the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre archives that allowed them to comparatively measure how the two objects were moving in the sky. After more than a year of observations, they drew their conclusions.

"We were able to estimate that these two objects are the faintest and coolest discovered so far," Barrado said. Barrado said the findings potentially solve the mystery about whether brown dwarfs form more like stars or planets. The answer? They form like low-mass stars. This theory is bolstered because the change in brightness of the objects at various wavelengths matches that of other very young, low-mass stars.

While further study will confirm whether these two celestial objects are in fact proto brown dwarfs, they are the best candidates so far, Barrado said. He said the journey to their discovery, while difficult, was fun. "It is a story that has been unfolding piece by piece. Sometimes nature takes its time to give up its secrets."

These observations were made before Spitzer ran out of its liquid coolant in May 2009, beginning its "warm" mission.

The paper's other authors are M. Morales-Calderon, Centro de Astrobiología and Spitzer Science Center; A. Palau and A. Bayo, Centro de Astrobiología; I. de Gregorio-Monsalvo, European Southern Observatory; C. Eiroa, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; N. Huelamo, Centro de Astrobiología; H. Bouy, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and European Space Agency; O. Morata, Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics and National Taiwan Normal University; and L. Schmidtobreick, European Southern Observatory.

More information on the Spitzer Space Telescope is online at http://spitzer.caltech.edu and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

Wise a Bit Closer to the Sky

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or Wise, is now perched atop its rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base, north of Santa Barbara, Calif. The mission, which will scan the whole sky in infrared light, is scheduled to blast off on Dec. 9. It was hoisted to the top of its United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket on Friday, Nov. 20.

JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The mission's principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu

Inventors Answer Call for New Glove Designs

Two independent inventors answered NASA's call for innovative new designs for the next generation of astronaut gloves. Today's spacewalkers have to contend with bulky gloves that stiffen when pressurized, making it tough to grip and flex while completing tasks in the vacuum of space.

Peter Homer and Ted Southern put their prototypes to the test during NASA's 2009 Astronaut Glove Challenge, held Nov. 19 at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville, Fla., near NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

Homer, an engineer from Southwest Harbor, Maine, was awarded $250,000 after placing first. Southern, a sculpture major at New York's Pratt Institute, earned second place and $100,000.

The ultimate goal of the Astronaut Glove Challenge is to improve the current design, resulting in a stronger and more flexible glove that will reduce the hand fatigue experienced by astronauts working in space.

For the first Astronaut Glove Challenge held in 2007, competitors supplied only the inner pressure-restraining layer. The outer layer, which provides protection against extreme temperatures and micrometeoroids, was an added requirement this year. Representatives from NASA and the agency's spacesuit contractor, ILC Dover, observed and noted the gloves' performances in a series of three tests.

The competitor inserted his gloved arm and hand into a depressurized glove box for the dexterity and flexibility test, completing cycles of movements and tasks, such as gripping a handle, using tools, flexing the hand and wrist, and touching the tip of the thumb to the tip of each finger.

In the joint force test, test operators from ILC Dover sealed and pressurized each glove to 4.3 pounds per square inch (psi) of internal pressure, then tugged it through its full range of motion while measuring the amount of force each movement required.

Finally, the gloves' strength capabilities were measured in the burst test. The room quieted as test operators sealed the glove and filled it with water, slowly increasing the pressure. Competitors, judges and other spectators leaned forward, watching the glove for signs of weakness or rupture.

The event was sponsored by Secor Strategies LLC of Titusville, Fla., and non-profit Volanz Aerospace of Owings, Md., managed the event for NASA.

"Both of you did better than the (current) Phase VI glove, and you both get a round of applause for that," said Alan Hayes, Volanz Aerospace chairman. "The test results were incredibly close."

Both Homer and Southern began working on the project in spring 2006 and competed in the first Astronaut Glove Challenge. Homer took home $200,000 after winning that event. After the 2007 challenge, Southern teamed up with former competitor Nikolay Moiseev.

Prior to the challenge, competitors were in the dark about who else would participate or what their designs might be.

"You're sort of developing in the vacuum of your own little world," Homer said. "You're hoping that you're going far enough with your design. And then there's the aspect of, 'Who am I going to be going up against?' I didn't know Ted was competing until we walked in and saw each other."

The Astronaut Glove Challenge is one of six Centennial Challenges prize competitions managed by NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program.

For more information about NASA's Centennial Challenges, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/innovation_incubator/centennial_challenges/index.html

NASA Assessing New Roles for Ailing QuikScat Satellite

NASA mission managers are assessing options for future operations of the venerable QuikScat satellite following the age-related failure of a mechanism that spins the scatterometer antenna. This spinning antenna had been providing near-real-time ocean- surface wind speed and direction data over 90 percent of the global ocean every day.

In recent months, the QuikScat project team has been monitoring a pattern of increasing friction in the bearings that allow the antenna to spin, leading to increased resistance and strain on the motor that turns QuikScat's rotating antenna. This degradation was fully expected, as the spin mechanism was designed to last about 5 years.

After experiencing further difficulties over the weekend, the antenna stopped spinning early today, Nov. 23. The QuikScat spacecraft and scatterometer instrument themselves remain in otherwise good health. Should engineers be unable to restart the antenna, QuikScat will be unable to continue its primary science mission, as the antenna spin is necessary to estimate wind speed and direction and form the wide data swath necessary to obtain nearly global sampling.

Over the coming days, NASA managers will review contingency plans for restarting the antenna and assess options for using the mission in its present degraded state to advance Earth system science in the event the antenna cannot be restarted. For example, degraded scatterometer measurements from QuikScat can still be useful for cross-calibrating the mission's climate data record with measurements from other scatterometers, including the operational EUMETSAT ASCAT instrument, India's recently launched Oceansat-2 and a planned Chinese scatterometer. Specific operational forecasting applications such as polar ice measurements and limited hurricane observations may also be supportable.

By any measure of success, the 10-year-old QuikScat mission is a unique national resource that has achieved and far surpassed its science objectives. Designed for a two-year lifetime, QuikScat has been used around the globe by the world's operational meteorological agencies to improve weather forecasts and identify the location, size and strength of hurricanes and other storms in the open ocean. The mission has also provided critical information for monitoring, modeling, forecasting and researching our atmosphere, ocean and climate. More information on QuikScat is online at: http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/quikscat/index.cfm.

The Crab Nebula: A Cosmic Icon

A star's spectacular death in the constellation Taurus was observed on Earth as the supernova of 1054 A.D. Now, almost a thousand years later, a super dense object -- called a neutron star -- left behind by the explosion is seen spewing out a blizzard of high-energy particles into the expanding debris field known as the Crab Nebula. X-ray data from Chandra provide significant clues to the workings of this mighty cosmic "generator," which is producing energy at the rate of 100,000 suns.

This composite image uses data from three of NASA's Great Observatories. The Chandra X-ray image is shown in blue, the Hubble Space Telescope optical images are in yellow and red, and the Spitzer Space Telescope's infrared image is in purple. The X-ray image is smaller than the others because extremely energetic electrons emitting X-rays radiate away their energy more quickly than the lower-energy electrons emitting optical and infrared light. Along with many other telescopes, Chandra has repeatedly observed the Crab Nebula over the course of the mission’s lifetime. The Crab Nebula is one of the most studied objects in the sky, truly making it a cosmic icon.

> View larger images

NASA Awards $350,000 to Winning Astronaut Glove Designers

NASA's Centennial Challenges program awarded $350,000 this week to a pair of designers who developed concepts for more flexible space gloves that could make it easier for astronauts to perform tasks.

The 2009 Astronaut Glove Challenge awarded a first place prize of $250,000 to Peter Homer of Southwest Harbor, Maine, and a second place prize of $100,000 to Ted Southern of Brooklyn, N.Y. The competition seeks innovative spacesuit glove design concepts to reduce the effort needed to do work during spacewalks. In this challenge, competitors demonstrated their glove design by performing a range of tasks with the glove in a pressurized chamber.

"It is remarkable that two designers working on their own could create gloves that meet the requirements for spaceflight -- a task that normally requires a large team of experts," said Kate Mitchell, an engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The competition was held at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville, Fla., on Nov. 19. It was managed for NASA by Volanz Aerospace, a non-profit space education organization based in Owings, Md. Secor Strategies LLC of Titusville was a commercial sponsor of the event.

In order to qualify for a prize, the gloves had to meet all of the basic requirements of NASA's current spacesuit gloves and exceed their flexibility. The gloves also were tested to ensure they would not leak.

For the 2009 challenge, teams had to develop a complete glove, including the outer, thermal-micrometeoroid-protection layer and the inner, pressure-restraining layer. In a previous 2007 competition, only the pressure-restraining layer was required.

The two competitors were tied in several categories, but Peter Homer, who won $200,000 in the first Astronaut Glove Challenge in 2007, claimed first prize again this time by outscoring his rival in the joint-flexibility and pressure tests. Ted Southern, who captured second place, also competed in 2007. The designs presented in the competition were measured and evaluated by engineers from Johnson, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and NASA's spacesuit manufacturer, ILC Dover of Dover, Del.

The Astronaut Glove Challenge is one of six Centennial Challenges prize competitions managed by NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program, which provides the prize funds. This was the fourth consecutive Centennial Challenge event with prize winners. The program has awarded $3.65 million in 2009.

"Our challenges have been difficult, multi-year efforts and in many cases it has taken several years for competitors to perfect their designs," said Andrew Petro, the Centennial Challenges Program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We are now seeing the results of their perseverance."

For more information on Centennial Challenges, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/innovation_incubator/cc_home.html

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

NASA Pushes Social Media Experience to New Heights

NASA launched a social media experience at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that quickly turned into an unprecedented world-wide event as more than 100 Twitter users got a unique look inside America's space program and front row seats to the Nov. 16 liftoff of the space shuttle Atlantis.

People from as far away as New Zealand participated in Kennedy's first Tweetup, an event where bloggers meet face-to-face and share their experiences in 140 character online bursts. During the two-day event Twitter users, or Tweeps, took behind-the-scenes tours of Kennedy, spoke at length with NASA astronauts, technicians, engineers and managers, and saw a launch from the vantage point usually reserved for more traditional media.

"We were very excited by the extraordinary number of people from all over the world who participated," said Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator. "NASA will continue to evolve with the social media environment and look for new ways to engage the public and spread the word about the tremendous things we do."

The Tweetup, identified by the search term #nasatweetup, was the third highest trending topic Nov. 15 on the social networking service. The micro-blogs, or tweets, are text-based Internet posts that are delivered to the author's subscribers. The more than 100 people in attendance had over 150,000 followers. As people share and forward the information, the potential online reach could be in the millions.

People from 21 states and the District of Columbia attended, as did guests who flew from Canada, England, Morocco and New Zealand. Participants ranged in age from 18 to more than 60, with most being under age 40. NASA Television also streamed video of Tweetup events online where more than 7,500 viewers watched the events prior to launch.

"The way people are communicating and receiving information is undergoing a global revolution," said Morrie Goodman, NASA's assistant administrator for Public Affairs. "NASA is a recognized leader in adopting social media and this is another exciting 'first' for the agency."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory held the first NASA Tweetup on Jan. 21. NASA Headquarters held its first Tweetup on July 21, followed by another from Headquarters Sept. 24 that featured the STS-127 space shuttle crew. On Oct. 21, NASA held a smaller Tweetup, allowing 35 Tweeps to talk with Nicole Stott and Jeff Williams aboard the International Space Station via a live downlink.

In April, Mike Massimino (@Astro_Mike) became NASA's first astronaut to tweet. Astro_Mike reached 1 million Twitter followers on Sept. 23. He sent his first tweet from space while flying on the STS-125 Hubble servicing mission in May. Since then, 12 other NASA astronauts have set up Twitter accounts. You can follow them individually or through the NASA Astronauts Twitter account at:

http://twitter.com/NASA_Astronauts

To view the Nov. 15 portion of the Tweetup on YouTube, visit:

http://www.youtube.com/user/NASAtelevision#p/u/3/wl9zBgpmdjQ

To view photos from the STS-129 launch Tweetup, visit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/sets/72157622806978124

For more information about NASA's Tweetup events, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup

To view all NASA's Twitter and other social media accounts at:

http://www.nasa.gov/connect

For more information about space shuttle Atlantis' STS-129 mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

Science Magazines Honor Cutting-Edge NASA Programs

NASA's revolutionary planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has been honored with the 2009 Best of What's New Grand Award from Popular Science Magazine and a 2009 Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics Magazine.

"The Kepler Space Telescope is a stunning new tool that has a very targeted mission: studying planetary systems," the Popular Mechanics magazine editors wrote in recognizing Kepler. "It is the first instrument able to detect Earth-like planets, potentially capable of hosting life, as they circle distant suns. About 100,000 stars in our region of the Milky Way will be observed."

Popular Science also honored NASA's new moon mapping mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Orion Launch Abort System with Best of What's New awards in the aviation and space category. Popular Science announced the award winners in its December issue. Popular Mechanics made the announcement in its November issue.

"The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in June, will use seven instruments to deliver the most detailed picture of the moon yet," Popular Science magazine editors wrote. "In addition to photographing the lunar surface in high resolution and creating a 3-D topographical map, it will beam back reams of information on surface radiation, surface temperature, soil composition, the presence of water ice and more."

Popular Science editors reviewed thousands of products before selecting 100 new products and technologies in 11 categories to receive Best of What's New awards. Award categories include automotive, aviation and space, computing, engineering, gadgets, green technology, home entertainment, security, home technology, personal health and recreation.

"For 22 years, Popular Science has honored the innovations that surprise and amaze us - those that make a positive impact on our world today and challenge our views of what's possible in the future." said Mark Jannot, editor-in-chief of Popular Science. "The Best of What's New Award is the magazine's top honor, and the 100 winners - chosen from among thousands of entrants - represent the highest level of achievement in their fields."

The Kepler Space Telescope is managed by NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. NASA's Orion Launch Abort System is managed by NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

For information about the Popular Science awards, visit:

http://www.popsci.com

For information about the Popular Mechanics awards, visit:

http://popularmechanics.com/breakthrough09

For more information about NASA and its programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

Cassini Sends Back Images of Enceladus as Winter Nears

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has sailed seamlessly through the Nov. 21 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus and started transmitting uncalibrated temperature data and images of the rippling terrain. These data and images will be processed and analyzed in the coming weeks. They will help scientists create the most-detailed-yet mosaic image of the southern part of the moon's Saturn-facing hemisphere and a contiguous thermal map of one of the intriguing "tiger stripe" features, with the highest resolution to date.

"These first raw images are spectacular, and paint an even more fascinating picture of Enceladus," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The Cassini teams will be delving into the data to better understand the workings of this bizarre, active moon."

Scientists are particularly interested in the tiger stripes, which are fissures in the south polar region, because they spew jets of water vapor and other particles hundreds of kilometers, or miles, from the surface. This flyby was scientists' last peek at the tiger stripes before the south pole fades into the darkness of winter for several years. The thermal imaging work focused on the tiger stripe known as Baghdad Sulcus.

The Nov. 21 encounter, which is sometimes called "E8" because it is the eighth targeted flyby of Enceladus, brought Cassini to within about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) of the moon's surface, at around 82 degrees south latitude. Cassini is now cruising toward Rhea, another one of Saturn's moons, for more imaging and mapping work.

KSC Powers on Solar Energy Future

NASA's Kennedy Space Center turned a shade greener Nov. 19 with the addition of five acres of electricity-producing solar panels to the spaceport's power grid.

The Kennedy Solar Energy Center is the first of two new power facilities being built at Kennedy that use solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity. The process creates no carbon emissions and requires no fuel, such as oil or natural gas, to generate power.

It is the first large-scale power plant of its kind at a NASA center, and part of a small but growing solar infrastructure under development in Florida.

"We are taking a leadership role in supporting an important national goal and that's to increase America's energy independence while protecting the climate," said Bob Cabana, director of Kennedy.

A ceremony commissioning the first of two power plants also offered a glimpse at future projects that could include permanent renewable energy research and development center proposed for Kennedy. A plan to build solar panels on up to 500 acres of fallow agricultural land also is under consideration depending on the environmental and economic feasibility.

For now, the solar farms under construction help show the way for electricity generation.

Built in the center's Industrial Area south of the Vertical Integration Facility, the solar farm is large enough to create one megawatt of electricity, or enough to power 110 homes. For Kennedy, the power output equates to about 1 percent of the center's electricity uses.

A second, much larger, solar energy complex is under construction in a former citrus grove at the south end of the center. That location will produce 10 megawatts of electricity and is scheduled to be finished in April 2010. It will be plugged into FPL's network and distributed to the utility's other customers.

"The fuel for this is always free," said Eric Silagy, FPL vice president and chief development officer. "Solar power is ready to take center stage here in the sunshine state."

SunPower Corp. designed and built the facility by mounting 3,344 panels atop 1,183 piers. The structures are designed to withstand 130 mph winds.

Compared with a conventionally fueled power plant, the solar energy center is relatively simple. All the panels have to do is let the sun hit them to produce current. It can be monitored remotely and its maintenance needs are expected to be quite small, said Roderick Roche, senior manager in SunPower's program office.

The panels are tilted 20 degrees facing south. Their greatest energy producing time will be in April, from 11 a.m. to noon. Predictably, January conditions are the least favorable for power generation, but that won't stop the panels from working even in the winter.

Jim Ball, program manager for Center Development at Kennedy, said it would take a tremendous amount of new solar facilities to fulfill all of the center's electricity requirements, but that may become possible as the technology improves and new efficiencies develop.

"We're in the right place at the right time," Ball said.

Planet 51 Star Brings NASA's Message of Exploration Down to Earth

Actor Dwayne Johnson, usually known for his action and comedic film roles, takes to the stars as an astronaut in a new animated feature that brings important messages about the importance of space exploration and education to those of us here on Earth.

Johnson provides the voice of space explorer Chuck Baker in the new Sony family film "Planet 51" and is featured in a series of new public service announcements dealing with education, diversity and NASA "spinoff" technologies.

In a public service announcement about diversity, Johnson underscores the importance of a global work force: "On this planet promoting diversity is very important. At NASA, astronauts from all nationalities and backgrounds work together aboard the International Space Station to help improve our lives here on Earth. I'm here to tell you that every barrier is meant to be broken, whether it's the sound barrier, the furthest layer of the Earth's atmosphere, the outer limits of our solar system, or the challenges we face here at home."

"Films are such a powerful way to reach out to new audiences and excite them about space exploration," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said. "Dwayne will enlighten families about the importance of learning science and math and celebrating others' differences. He also informs the public about some NASA technologies which are used right here on Earth."

NASA Television also will air the public service announcements during its programming starting Friday and will make the PSAs available to local television and radio stations. The date coincides with the theatrical release of "Planet 51."

"Planet 51" is an animated adventure-comedy revolving around American astronaut who lands on Planet 51 thinking he's the first person to explore this new world. To his surprise, Baker finds little green people inhabiting the planet who are happily living in a white picket fence-world reminiscent of a cheerfully innocent 1950s America.

The agency permitted the use of the NASA Insignia on Chuck's space suit in the family feature. Aside from Johnson, the film also stars Jessica Biel, Justin Long, Gary Oldman, Seann William Scott, and John Cleese. The film is directed by Jorge Blanco, co-directed by Javier Abad and Marcos Martínez, written by Joe Stillman, and produced by Ignacio Pérez Dolset and Guy Collins.

› Watch, Listen, and Download the Public Service Announcements (including HD videos)

International Space Station, International Space Shuttle Joint Crew News Conference Tuesday

The 12 crew members aboard space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station will hold a news conference at 7:13 a.m. CST on Tuesday, Nov. 24.

Reporters can ask questions from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Kennedy Space Center in Florida and headquarters in Washington. Journalists from Canada, Europe and Russia also will participate in the news conference. U.S. journalists must RSVP by calling the public affairs office at a participating NASA location by noon Nov. 23.

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the 40-minute news conference. For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Atlantis' STS-129 mission includes three spacewalks and the installation of two platforms to the station's truss, or backbone. The platforms will store spare parts needed to sustain station operations after the shuttle fleet is retired. Atlantis will return with station resident Nicole Stott, marking the final time the shuttle is expected to rotate station crew members.

For more information about STS-129 and its crew, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

Space Shuttle Pilot Set to Talk With Tennessee Students from Orbit

Congressman Bart Gordon and Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville will host a live conversation between more than 120 students and NASA astronaut Barry E. Wilmore on Sunday, Nov. 22. Wilmore is the pilot of space shuttle Atlantis, which launched Nov. 16 on an 11-day mission to the International Space Station. Members of Wilmore's family also will attend the event.

The live call from orbit will take place between 11:08 a.m. and 11:28 a.m. CST. Twenty students, ranging from kindergarten to college age, will ask questions of Wilmore and fellow astronauts Nicole Stott and Leland Melvin. Stott has served as a flight engineer and member of the Expedition 21 crew living aboard the International Space Station for more than two months. She will return to Earth aboard Atlantis. Melvin is a mission specialist and crewmate of Wilmore's aboard Atlantis.

Reporters interested in attending the event should contact Monica Greppin at 931-372-3214.

Gordon is the chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee. Wilmore was born and raised in Gordon's district in Tennessee and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Tennessee Technological University.

The downlink is one in a series with educational organizations in the U.S. and abroad to improve teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It is an integral component of NASAs Teaching From Space office. The office promotes learning opportunities and builds partnerships with the education community using the unique environment of human spaceflight.

Tennessee Tech University and WCTE, the local PBS affiliate, will carry a live feed of the event at:

http://www.tntech.edu

and

http://www.wcte.org

For more information about Wilmore, visit:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/wilmore-be.html

For information about NASAs education programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/education

For information about the sts-129 space shuttle mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

Cassini's Big Sky: The View from the Center of Our Solar System

In this illustration, the multicolored (blue and green) bubble represents the new measurements of the emission of particles known as energetic neutral atoms.
› Full image and caption

* NASA's Cassini spacecraft is helping to rewrite our understanding of the shape of our solar system as it moves through the local Milky Way galaxy.
* Previous models pictured our solar system as having a comet-like appearance. The new results suggest a picture more like a bubble.
* Cassini scientists created an image from this exotic region of space by detecting particles known as energetic neutral atoms.
* It complements data collected by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer.

When NASA's Cassini spacecraft began orbiting Saturn five years ago, a dozen highly-tuned science instruments set to work surveying, sniffing, analyzing and scrutinizing the Saturnian system.

But Cassini recently revealed new data that appeared to overturn the decades-old belief that our solar system resembled a comet in shape as it moves through the interstellar medium (the matter between stars in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy).

Instead, the new results suggest our heliosphere more closely resembles a bubble - or a rat - being eaten by a boa constrictor: as the solar system passes through the "belly" of the snake, the ribs, which mimic the local interstellar magnetic field, expand and contract as the rat passes. An animation is available here.

"At first I was incredulous," said Tom Krimigis, principal investigator of the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "The first thing I thought was, 'What's wrong with our data?'"

Krimigis and his colleagues on the instrument team published the Cassini findings in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Science, which featured complementary results from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX). Together, the results create the first map of the heliosphere and its thick outer layer known as the heliosheath, where solar wind streaming out from the sun gets heated and slowed as it interacts with the interstellar medium.

The Cassini data also provide a much more direct indication of the thickness of the heliosheath, whereas scientists previously had to rely on calculations from models. The new results from Cassini show that the heliosheath is about 40 to 50 astronomical units (3.7 billion to 4.7 billion miles) thick and that NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft, which are traveling through the heliosheath now, will cross into true interstellar space well before the year 2020. Estimates as far out as 2030 had been suggested.

"These new data from Cassini really redefine our sense of our home in the galaxy, and we can now do better studies of whether our solar system resembles those elsewhere," Krimigis said.

The Voyagers have sent back rich data on the heliosphere and heliosheath, but just at two locations. Scientists want more context. One way to learn about the region is to track energetic neutral atoms streaming back toward the sun from the heliosheath.

Energetic neutral atoms form when cold, neutral gas collides with electrically-charged particles in a cloud of plasma, which is a gas-like state of matter so hot that the atoms split into an ion and an electron. The positively-charged ions in plasma can't reclaim their own electrons, which are moving too fast, but they can steal an electron from the cold gas atoms. Since the resulting particles are neutrally charged, they are able to escape magnetic fields and zoom off into space. The emission of these particles often occurs in the magnetic fields surrounding planets, but also happens when the solar wind mingles with the interstellar medium.

How did Cassini, with 22,000 wire connections and 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) of cabling specifically tweaked to get the most out of its investigation of the solar system's second largest gas bag, recently end up helping to redefine how we look at our entire solar system?

Krimigis and his Cassini colleagues working with MIMI weren't sure their instrument could pick up emissions from far-out, exotic locations, such as from the boundary of our heliosphere, the region of our sun's influence.

Last year, after spending four years focused on the energetic electrons and ions trapped in the magnetic field that surrounds Saturn, as well as the offspring of these particles known as energetic neutral atoms, the team started combing through the data from the instrument's Ion and Neutral Camera, looking for particles arriving from far beyond Saturn.

"We thought we could get some hits from energetic neutral atoms from the heliosheath because Cassini has really been in an excellent position to detect these particles," said Don Mitchell, MIMI instrument scientist and a researcher at the Applied Physics Laboratory.

Cassini was farther away from the sun than previous spacecraft trying to image the heliosphere and even swung very far away from Saturn on some of its orbits, Mitchell said. The data would likely be free of much of the interference that hampered other efforts.

Mitchell, Krimigis and their team were able to stitch together data from late 2003 to the summer of 2009. They created a color-coded map of the intensity of the energetic neutral atoms and discovered a belt of hot, high-pressure particles where the interstellar wind flowed by our heliosheath bubble.

The data matched up nicely with the IBEX images of lower-energy particles and connected that data set to the Voyager data on higher-energy particles.

"I was initially skeptical because the instrument was designed for Saturn's magnetosphere," Mitchell said, "But our camera had long exposures of months to years, so we could accumulate and map each particle that streamed through the tiny aperture from the far reaches of the heliosphere. It was luck, but also a lot of hard work."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini.

Before Darkness Falls: Cassini to Scan Enceladus on Winter's Cusp

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will fly by Saturn's moon Enceladus this weekend for a last peek at the intriguing "tiger stripes" before winter darkness blankets the area for several years.

Scientists are particularly interested in the tiger stripes, which are fissures in the south polar region, because they spew jets of water vapor and other particles hundreds of kilometers, or miles, from the surface.

The flyby, which is sometimes called "E8" because it is the eighth targeted flyby of Enceladus, is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 21 UTC, which is the evening of Friday, Nov. 20 in U.S. time zones. Cassini team members expect to fly the spacecraft to within about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) of the moon's surface, at around 82 degrees south latitude. This will be a more distant flyby than the one on Nov. 2, when Cassini flew about 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the surface.

During this flyby, scientists will focus on a tiger stripe called Baghdad Sulcus and create a contiguous thermal map of the feature. The spacecraft will also be snapping high-resolution images of the southern part of the Saturn-facing hemisphere.

For more information on the flyby, click here.

NASA Provides Venerable Hubble Hardware to Smithsonian

NASA's Wide Field and Planetary 2 camera on display in the National Air and Space Museum's Space Hall.

Two key instruments from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have a new home in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington after being returned to Earth aboard space shuttle Atlantis last May.

Astronauts brought back the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, or WFPC-2, and the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement, or COSTAR, after more than 15 years in space. The camera returned the iconic images that now adorn posters, album covers, the Internet, classrooms and science text books worldwide.

"This was the camera that saved Hubble," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "I have looked forward for a long time to stand in front of this very instrument while on display to the public."

After Hubble's launch and deployment aboard the shuttle in 1990, scientists realized the telescope's primary mirror had a flaw, known as a spherical aberration. The outer edge of the mirror was ground too flat by a depth of 2.2 microns, roughly equal to one-fiftieth the thickness of a human hair. This tiny flaw resulted in fuzzy images because some of the light from the objects being studied was scattered.

Hubble's first servicing mission provided the telescope with hardware that basically acted as eye glasses. Launched in December 1993 aboard space shuttle Endeavour, the mission added the WFPC-2, about the size of a baby grand piano, and COSTAR, about the size of a telephone booth. The WFPC-2 had the optical fix built in, while the COSTAR provided the optical correction for other Hubble instruments.

The WFPC-2 made more than 135,000 observations of celestial objects from 1993 to 2009. The camera was the longest serving and most prolific instrument aboard Hubble.

"For years the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 has been taking pictures of the universe," said John Trauger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Today, we are taking pictures of the WFPC-2 and I guess if there was ever a camera that deserves to have its picture taken, this is it."

The Hubble instruments will be on display in the National Air and Space Museum's Space Hall through mid-December. They then will travel to Southern California to go on temporary display at several venues. In March 2010, the instruments will return to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, where they will take up permanent residency.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed and built the WFPC-2. The COSTAR instrument was built by Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colo. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. The project is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. The institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc., in Washington.

For more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Radar Strip Showing Crater Bessel

Click to view the original image (4.1MB file)

Mini-RF S-band zoom synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image strip through central Mare Serenitatis on the near side of the Moon (approximate longitude of strip ~ 18° E; center latitude ~ 20° N). The radar strip runs through the crater Bessel (inset; 15 km (9 mile) diameter; center at 21.8° N, 17.9° E) and covers the highlands of the Haemus Mts. (rim of Serenitatis basin) in its southern (bottom) third. The full-resolution SAR data are 30 m (90 feet). The streaks of bright and dark material in the walls of Bessel probably reflect the blockiness of landslides within the crater, brighter streaks having more blocks of the 10-cm (4-inch) scale. The radar strip covers a major geological boundary in Mare Serenitatis; the darker, lower maria has higher titanium content than central Serenitatis. We see this geological boundary in the Mini-RF radar image, caused by higher absorption of RF energy by the high content of the iron-titanium oxide mineral ilmenite. Thus, Mini-RF SAR images can be used to map the titanium content of the lunar maria. The background image is part of the Clementine global mosaic.

NASA's Hurricane Page is All "a-Twitter"

NASA is all "a-Twitter" about its tropical cyclone research. In 2005, NASA created the NASA Hurricane and Tropical Cyclone Web page that covers NASA research on tropical cyclones around the world every day. That includes all ocean basins in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Now, NASA's Hurricane page has a companion "Twitter" page.

NASAHurricane on Twitter.com is updated daily and provides updates on the tropical cyclone happenings in various ocean basins. The primary source for "Tweets" is the daily storm updates from the NASA Hurricane page (www.nasa.gov/hurricane). The storm updates always include a NASA satellite image of a tropical cyclone, its most recent strength and location, and what the NASA satellite image reveals. If there are watches and warnings, the updates usually include them from the forecast source.

Separate Web features that highlight NASA hurricane research are also posted on the NASAHurricane Twitter site. The site also includes research features on topics such as the status of El Niňos and La Niňas, flood maps of areas inundated by tropical cyclones, hurricane videos, and more.

"The Twitter site is also used to provide up-to-the-minute updates, including watches and warnings, and background information," said Rob Gutro, manager of the NASA Hurricane Page at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Even though there may not be tropical activity in an ocean basin, people still want to know why and Twitter provides the vehicle to do that in an easy way on a daily basis." The Twitter NASAHurricane uses information from numerous forecast centers, including the National Hurricane Center, the Central Pacific Hurricane Center, and the U.S. Navy's Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

If there's a tropical wave that is has any potential for development, and it's cited by one of the forecast centers, NASAHurricane's Twitter will explain what it is, and where it is. For example, if there's a tropical wave in the Atlantic Ocean, Twitter provides the opportunity to highlight it and give a status on it.

NASA uses several satellites in hurricane research including Aqua, CloudSat, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, Jason-1, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, Landsat, QuikScat, and Terra. NASA also creates images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites. NASA researches hurricanes and supplies some of the data from these satellites to NOAA, who forecast the storms. Each storm update on the NASA Hurricane page, and subsequently posted on Twitter, will reference what at least one of these satellites is seeing in a current tropical cyclone.

Using all of these satellites and their instruments and computer modeling, NASA scientists gather data on many factors that determine if a tropical cyclone may strengthen or weaken. Data include: storm and surface winds; sea surface heights and temperatures; rainfall intensity and area; lightning; cloud water; water vapor; cloud heights, extent of cloud cover and cloud temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure; cloud development; and size of the storm.

All of this research is housed on NASA's Hurricane/Tropical Cyclone Web page, which explains the research NASA does on tropical cyclones. It contains daily storm updates from storms around the world, videos, educator lesson plans, a storm archive since 2005, videos and animations, International Space Station cyclone videos, a live alerts feed on the Atlantic Basin from the National Hurricane Center, NASA hurricane missions, "About Hurricanes: background information," fact sheet, "Hurricanes in History," and education links.

"NASAHurricane Twitter is excited about communicating 'in-real-time' to hurricane enthusiasts worldwide," said climatologist Bill Patzert at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif. "'Tweeting' the latest in NASA research and technology, developing hurricane events and impacts cranks up NASA's commitment to rapidly providing the most up-to-date and useful hurricane information to every level of society."

AIRS Image Shows Global Carbon Dioxide Transport

This image was created with data acquired by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument (AIRS) on NASA's Aqua satellite during July 2009. The image shows large-scale patterns of carbon dioxide concentrations that are transported around Earth by the general circulation of the atmosphere. Dark blue corresponds to a concentration of 382 parts per million and dark red corresponds to a concentration of almost 390 parts per million.

The northern hemisphere mid-latitude jet stream effectively sets the northern limit of enhanced carbon dioxide. A belt of enhanced carbon dioxide girdles the globe in the southern hemisphere, following the zonal flow of the southern hemisphere mid-latitude jet stream. This belt of carbon dioxide is fed by biogenesis activity in South America (carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere through the respiration and decomposition of vegetation), forest fires in both South America and Central Africa, and clusters of gasification plants in South Africa and power generation plants in south eastern Australia.

The AIRS instrument flies on NASA's Aqua satellite and is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, under contract to NASA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

COBE Satellite Marks 20th Anniversary

NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite rocketed into Earth orbit on Nov. 18, 1989, and quickly revolutionized our understanding of the early cosmos. Developed and built at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., COBE precisely measured and mapped the oldest light in the universe -- the cosmic microwave background.

COBE showed that the radiation's spectrum agrees exactly with predictions based on the Big Bang theory. And COBE's map of slight hot and cold spots within this background let scientists glimpse the roots of cosmic structure we see around us today. In essence, COBE produced the first "baby picture" of the universe.

For these results, COBE scientists John Mather, at Goddard, and George Smoot, at the University of California, Berkeley, shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics. The mission ushered cosmologists into a new era of precision measurements, paving the way for deeper exploration of the microwave background by NASA's ongoing WMAP mission and the European Space Agency's new Planck satellite.

› Larger image

The cosmic microwave background radiation is a remnant of the Big Bang. These minute temperature variations (depicted here as varying shades of blue and purple) are linked to slight density variations in the early universe. These variations are believed to have given rise to the structures that populate the universe today: clusters of galaxies, as well as vast, empty regions. This image, representing data collected between 1990 and 1992, received much publicity at the time. It was later superseded by a more accurate four-year COBE map.

Related Links:

› View COBE sky map images
› Read about WMAP, successor mission to COBE
› View interactive presentation from Dr. Mather
› NASA Scientist Shares Nobel Prize for Physics -- 2006

NASA's Wise Gets Ready to Survey the Whole Sky

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or Wise, is chilled out, sporting a sunshade and getting ready to roll. NASA's newest spacecraft is scheduled to roll to the pad on Friday, Nov. 20, its last stop before launching into space to survey the entire sky in infrared light.

Wise is scheduled to launch no earlier than 6:09 a.m. PST (9:09 a.m. EST) on Dec. 9 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It will circle Earth over the poles, scanning the entire sky one-and-a-half times in nine months. The mission will uncover hidden cosmic objects, including the coolest stars, dark asteroids and the most luminous galaxies.

"The eyes of Wise are a vast improvement over those of past infrared surveys," said Edward "Ned" Wright, the principal investigator for the mission at UCLA. "We will find millions of objects that have never been seen before."

The mission will map the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with sensitivity hundreds to hundreds of thousands of times greater than its predecessors, cataloging hundreds of millions of objects. The data will serve as navigation charts for other missions, pointing them to the most interesting targets. NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, and NASA's upcoming Sofia and James Webb Space Telescope will follow up on Wise finds.

"This is an exciting time for space telescopes," said Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Many of the telescopes will work together, each contributing different pieces to some of the most intriguing puzzles in our universe."

Visible light is just one slice of the universe's electromagnetic rainbow. Infrared light, which humans can't see, has longer wavelengths and is good for seeing objects that are cold, dusty or far away. In our solar system, Wise is expected to find hundreds of thousands of cool asteroids, including hundreds that pass relatively close to Earth's path. Wise's infrared measurements will provide better estimates of asteroid sizes and compositions -- important information for understanding more about potentially hazardous impacts on Earth.

"With infrared, we can find the dark asteroids other surveys have missed and learn about the whole population. Are they mostly big, small, fluffy or hard?" said Peter Eisenhardt, the Wise project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Wise also will find the coolest of the "failed" stars, or brown dwarfs. Scientists speculate it is possible that a cool star lurks right under our noses, closer to us than our nearest known star, Proxima Centauri, which is four light-years away. If so, Wise will easily pick up its glow. The mission also will spot dusty nests of stars and swirling planet-forming disks, and may find the most luminous galaxy in the universe.

To sense the infrared glow of stars and galaxies, the Wise spacecraft cannot give off any detectable infrared light of its own. This is accomplished by chilling the telescope and detectors to ultra-cold temperatures. The coldest of Wise's detectors will operate at below 8 Kelvin, or minus 445 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Wise is chilled out," said William Irace, the project manager at JPL. "We've finished freezing the hydrogen that fills two tanks surrounding the science instrument. We're ready to explore the universe in infrared."

JPL manages Wise for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information about Wise is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu .

NASA and Microsoft Allow Earthlings to Become Martians

A new Web site allows you to participate as citizen scientists to improve Martian maps, take part in research tasks, and assist Mars science teams studying data about the Red Planet. › Explore Now →

NASA and Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., have collaborated to create a Web site where Internet users can have fun while advancing their knowledge of Mars.

Drawing on observations from NASA’s Mars missions, the "Be a Martian" Web site will enable the public to participate as citizen scientists to improve Martian maps, take part in research tasks, and assist Mars science teams studying data about the Red Planet.

"We're at a point in history where everyone can be an explorer," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "With so much data coming back from Mars missions that are accessible by all, exploring Mars has become a shared human endeavor. People worldwide can expand the specialized efforts of a few hundred Mars mission team members and make authentic contributions of their own."

Participants will be able to explore details of the solar system's grandest canyon, which resides on Mars. Users can call up images in the Valles Marineris canyon before moving on to chart the entire Red Planet. The collaboration of thousands of participants could assist scientists in producing far better maps, enabling smoother zoom-in views and easier interpretation of Martian surface changes.

By counting craters, the public also may help scientists determine the relative ages of small regions on Mars. In the past, counting Martian craters has posed a challenge because of the vast numbers involved. By contributing, Web site users will win game points assigned to a robotic animal avatar they select.

With a common goal of inspiring digital-age workforce development and life-long learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, NASA and Microsoft unveiled the Web site at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week. The site also beckons software developers to win prizes for creating tools that provide access to and analysis of hundreds of thousands of Mars images for online, classroom and Mars mission team use.

"Industry leaders like NASA and Microsoft have a social responsibility as well as a vested interest in advancing science and technology education," said Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate vice president of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft. "We are excited to be working with NASA to provide new opportunities to engage with Mars mission data, and to help spark interest and excitement among the next generation of scientists and technologists."

To encourage more public participation, the site also provides a virtual town hall forum where users can expand their knowledge by proposing Mars questions and voting on which are the most interesting to the community. Online talks by Mars experts will address some of the submitted questions. Other features include interactive tools for viewing Martian regions and movies about people who study Mars in diverse ways.

"Mars exploration inspires people of all ages, and we are especially eager to encourage young people to explore Mars for themselves," said Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We are delighted to be involved in providing the creative opportunity for future explorers to contribute to our understanding of Mars."

"The beauty of this type of experience is that it not only teaches people about Mars and the work NASA is doing there, but it also engages large groups of people to help solve real challenges that computers cannot solve by themselves," said Marc Mercuri, director of business innovation in the Developer and Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft.

The Mars Exploration Program is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

To enroll as a virtual Martian citizen and start exploring, visit http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov . For more exploration on NASA's Mars exploration program, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mars .

NASA EDGE Nominated for Best Video Podcast

NASA EDGE Nominated for ‘Best Video Podcast’ in the 5th Annual Podcast Awards! ›› Vote Now for NASA EDGE!

NASA EDGE continues their unprecedented, unscripted journey through the world of video podcasting with their very first award nomination. This is no small accomplishment considering that only two and half years ago, they weren’t sure that they would find an audience.

Well, they have. Almost three years and 3.2 million downloads later, NASA EDGE is now recognized in the company of such internet greats and fellow nominees as “Buzz out Loud,” “Diggnation” and “Filmriot” just to name a few.

In fact, the 5th Annual Podcast Awards, managed by Podcast Connect Inc., mentioned on their Web site that this year’s competition received more than 321,000 nominations for over 3,500 different shows.

Be sure to vote for NASA EDGE

You can vote once a day from November 13 to November 30, 2009 by visiting www.podcastawards.com. NASA EDGE is listed in the “Best Video Podcast” category with nine other video podcasts.

If you’re already a fan of NASA EDGE, please vote for them. If you haven’t seen or heard of NASA EDGE, visit their home page at www.nasa.gov/nasaedge and download any or all of their 46 video podcasts. You will not be disappointed.

What is NASA EDGE?

NASA EDGE is different. Unscripted and unpredictable, NASA EDGE takes a unique look in and around the greatest space program on the planet. They have hosted the Great Moonbuggy Race, examined NASA spinoff technology at the X Games, followed the Desert-RATS with an unconventional set of duct tape boots, coined the term Magnetospherence and even made an appearance on ESPN’s nationally syndicated "Mike & Mike in the Morning" show.

Check out their latest Vodcast, which added a new wrinkle. In October they covered NASA’s historic Ares I-X Flight Demonstration live on the Web. That show featured the entire broadcast team and an attempt at defining and redefining 'triboelectrification.'

Of course, NASA EDGE isn’t just a video podcast. If you have questions, comments or thoughts about NASA or NASA EDGE, you can friend them on facebook and ask questions, chat or check out some exclusive facebook videos.

Or if you just want to keep up with their latest shows or activities you can follow them on twitter (@NASA_EDGE).

If all goes well, you’ll hear from them the second they win their very first award!

› Don't forget to vote at www.podcastawards.com!

› Visit the NASA Edge Home Page