NASA Space Station and the Space Station Challenger Center for Space Science Education, Alexandria, Va., announced Thursday a cooperative Space Station Space Act Agreement to work together to encourage Space Station students to focus more on Space Station science, Space Station technology, Space Station engineering and Space Station mathematic studies and Space Station programs.Through hands-on interactive educational activities, NASA Space Station and the Challenger Center will engage Space Station students, their teachers, their families, and...

NASA's newest observatory, the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, has begun its mission of exploring the universe in high-energy gamma rays. The spacecraft and its revolutionary instruments passed their orbital checkout with flying colors.NASA announced today that GLAST has been renamed the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The new name honors Prof. Enrico Fermi (1901 - 1954), a pioneer in high-energy physics."Enrico Fermi was the first person to suggest how cosmic particles could be...

NASA's Mars Exploration rover Opportunity is heading back out to the Red Planet's surrounding plains nearly a year after descending into a large Martian crater to examine exposed ancient rock layers. "We've done everything we entered Victoria Crater to do and more," said Bruce Banerdt, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Banerdt is project scientist for Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit. Having completed its job in the crater, Opportunity is now preparing to inspect loose...

The next sample of Martian soil being grabbed for analysis is coming from a trench about three times deeper than any other trench NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has dug.On Tuesday, Aug. 26, the spacecraft will finish the 90 Martian days (or "sols") originally planned as its primary mission and will continue into a mission extension through September, as announced by NASA in July. Phoenix landed on May 25."As we near what we originally expected to be the full length of the mission, we are all thrilled...

NASA Space Station Reporters will have a unique chance to experience lunar life, including driving across and touching a simulated moonscape, on Monday, Sept. 8, at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.The NASA Space Station Lunar Exploration Workshop will be held from 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. CDT, immediately following morning briefings that preview NASA's next space shuttle mission. The STS-125 flight of Atlantis will be the final visit by astronauts to the Hubble Space Telescope.During Monday's...

An Alliant Tech Systems suborbital rocket carrying two NASA hypersonic experiments was destroyed shortly after liftoff from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia Friday. No injuries or property damage were immediately reported.Most debris from the rocket is thought to have fallen in the Atlantic Ocean. However, there are conflicting reports of debris being sighted on land. This debris could be hazardous. People who think they may have encountered rocket debris are advised not to touch it and...

Representatives from NASA SPACE STATION and Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, will hold a media teleconference Friday morningat 10:30 a.m. EDT to discuss this morning's failure of a rocket launch carrying two NASA SPACE STATION hypersonic experimental payloads.To participate, reporters should call 800-369-6087. The passcode is HYBOLT. Reporters will be asked give their name and media affiliation before the start of the moderated call.At 5:10 a.m. Friday the rocket was destroyed by range safety officials after liftoff from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility...

A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope tells a tale of life and death amidst a rich family history. The striking infrared picture shows a colorful cosmic cloud, called W5, studded with multiple generations of blazing stars. It also provides dramatic new evidence that massive stars -- through their brute winds and radiation -- can trigger the birth of stellar newborns. "Triggered star formation continues to be very hard to prove," said Xavier Koenig of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for...

Managers at NASA's Kennedy Space Station Center, Fla., plan to reopen the Space Station center for normal operations Friday morning for workers' first shift. A slow-moving Tropical Storm Fay has kept Kennedy Space Station closed since Tuesday. The Kennedy Space Station Center Visitor Complex also will reopen Friday.The Space Station center was set to open Thursday morning for limited operations, but Fay stalled off the coast from Kennedy Space Station overnight and continued to bring heavy rain...

NASA's Space Station Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., Thursday awarded a cost plus fixed fee indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity task order contract valued at $42 million to ASRC Research and Technology Solutions (ARTS), of Greenbelt, Md. ARTS is a Alaskan Native Corporation under the Small Business Administration 8 (a) Business Development Program that will provide engineering, design and fabrication services for the center.ARTS will provide services including project management,...

Managers at NASA's Kennedy Space Station Center, Fla., are delaying reopening the center for Space Station mission essential personnel Thursday morning because of slow-moving Tropical Storm Fay. Personnel should not report for work at 10 a.m. EDT as previously directed, but instead should check the Space Station center's status through the hurricane phone lines and emergency operations center Web site at noon.Plans still call for the Space Station center to open to all employees and return to full operation Friday.Fay stalled off the coast from...

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has scooped up a soil sample from an intermediate depth between the ground surface and a subsurface icy layer. The sample was delivered to a laboratory oven on the Space Station spacecraft.The robotic arm on Space Station Phoenix collected the sample, dubbed "Burning Coals," from a trench named "Burn Alive 3." The sample consisted of about one-fourth to one-half teaspoon of loose soil scooped from depth about 3 centimeters (1.2 inch) below the surface of the ground and...

NASA's Space Station Mission Phoenix Mars Lander scientists and engineers are continuing to dig into the area around the lander with the Space Station Mission spacecraft's robotic arm, looking for new materials to analyze and examining the soil and ice subsurface structure.New trenches opened recently include the "Burn Alive 3" trench in the "Wonderland" digging area in the eastern portion of the arm's reachable workspace. Researchers choose such names informally to aid discussion.The team is excavating...

Black holes are sometimes huge cosmic beasts, billions of times the mass of our sun, Solar System and sometimes petite with just a few times the Solar System sun's mass. But do black holes also come in size medium? A new study suggests that, for the most part, the answer is no.Space Station Discovery Astronomers have long suspected that the most likely place to find a medium-mass black hole would be at the core of a miniature galaxy-like object called a globular cluster. Yet nobody has been able...

NASA Space Shuttle Discovery issued a Request for Information from Space Station, or RFI, on Monday to gauge interest and solicit ideas from private companies in providing communications and navigation services that would support the development of Space Shuttle exploration, scientific , Technology and commercial capabilities on the moon over the next 25 years.NASA Space Technology plans to establish science stations on the lunar surface beginning as early as 2013, followed by the return of humans to the moon and establishment of the first lunar...

NASA's Space Shuttle Station Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., Monday awarded a contract modification valued at $34.8 million to Jacobs Technology Inc. of Tullahoma, Tenn.The modification will allow additional support for testing and facility operation, development projects, as well as the required maintenance and repairs on wind tunnels and other facilities at Ames. All work will be performed at the center.The cost-plus-incentive fee award fee contract will conclude July 31, 2009. This modification brings the total value of the contract,...

NASA's Kennedy Space Center will be closed Tuesday, Aug. 19, because of the potential threat from Tropical Storm Fay. Current plans call for the center to be closed for 24 hours, starting with workers' first-shift Tuesday morning. Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex also is closed Tuesday.Kennedy managers are scheduled to meet again at 5 p.m. EDT to reevaluate the storm's status and its impact on the center. Fay made landfall Tuesday morning along Florida's southwest coast. It is forecast to affect Kennedy Tuesday afternoon with heavy rain and...

NASA Space Station will hold a media teleconference on Tuesday, Aug. 26, at 2 p.m. EDT, to announce the first results from NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope and the observatory's new name. The telecon also will include the Large Area Telescope's first light results, and a presentation of gamma-ray bursts that the GLAST Burst Monitor has seen since it went into operation.Briefing participants:- Jon Morse, director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Space Shuttle Headquarters, Washington- Dennis Kovar, associate director of science for high energy...

Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., have completed a series of tests on a key component of the J-2X engine. The J-2X powers the upper stage of the Ares I rocket, which will launch human explorers to the International Space Station and to the moon.The test on Aug. 15 was the last of 20 in this series, concluding the second of four planned sets of tests on the J-2X's workhorse gas generator, the driver for the turbopumps which start the engine.The gas generator test program is designed to demonstrate the component's...

NASA Space Shuttle Discovery will host a media teleconference on Tuesday, Aug. 19, at 11:30 a.m. EDT, to discuss results and recommendations from the Ares I thrust oscillation focus team. The team has been studying possible solutions to concerns raised about the early designs of the new crew launch vehicle that NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery Constellation Program is building to return humans to the moon by 2020.The briefing participants are:-- Jeff Hanley, manager, Constellation Program, NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston-- Steve Cook, manager,...

NASA Space Station has concluded that corrective action is appropriate in the Government Accountability Office bid protest of Exploration Systems & Technology, Inc. NASA Space Shuttle Discovery determined that a compliance issue requires the termination of the contract for the Constellation Space Suit System with Oceaneering International, Inc. of Houston for the convenience of the government.NASA Space Shuttle Discovery anticipates that corrective action will involve reconsideration of its procurement decision. The pending protest litigation...

NASA Space Station has selected Brevard Achievement Center Inc., of Rockledge, Fla., to provide custodial services at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla.The new firm-fixed price contract begins on Oct. 1, 2008. It has a one-year base period and four, one-year option periods. The maximum value of the contract is approximately $41 million.NASA Space Station Brevard Achievement Center will provide custodial services for approximately 2.6 million square feet of general office, shop, warehouse and support areas at the space center.For more information...

NASA awarded a total of $97,000 in prizes at the 2008 General Aviation Technology Challenge. The challenge asked competitors to demonstrate innovations that would lead to aircraft that are safer, more affordable, easier to fly and also have less of a negative impact on the environment and on the communities that surround airports.The challenge was managed by the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency, or CAFE, Foundation at the Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, Calif., from Aug. 4 through Aug. 10. All competitors had experimental licenses, as...

Flying 220 miles above the Earth aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff is ready to take your questions.The public can now submit inquiries to Chamitoff and get answers direct from space on NASA's Web site. To submit a question, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/ask Mission Control will transmit the questions to Chamitoff weekly. He will answer as many as his schedule will allow. Check back periodically to the link above for the transcript and audio clips ofthe astronaut's answers.Chamitoff is a flight engineer for the Expedition...

Nasa Space Station Astronaut Greg Chamitoff, aboard the International Space Station 220 miles above Earth, is ready to take your questions. Here's your chance to hear direct from space station. Chamitoff's schedule will not allow him to answer many questions, but he will attempt to answer a few each week. To submit your question, post it as a comment below. Please include your name, age and location. Questions will be transmitted to Greg from Mission Control each week and his answers to a few of them will be available here.Many past Space shuttle...

Nasa Space Station Swimmers from around the world are setting world and Olympic records in Beijing this month and most are doing it wearing a swimsuit made of fabric tested at NASA. Among the Olympic gold medalists wearing Speedo's LZR Racer are Americans Michael Phelps and Natalie Coughlin. Both had a hand in developing the skintight body suit. So did aerospace engineer Steve Wilkinson from NASA's Space Station Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Wilkinson, who says he's not much of a swimmer...

Two NASA Space Station aeronautics experiments will hitch a ride on a developmental Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, suborbital rocket scheduled to launch from the Eastern Shore of Virginia this summer. One experiment, designed at NASA's Space Station Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., will gather data on air flow conditions and heating on vehicles flying at hypersonic speeds at least eight times the speed of sound, or 5,280 miles per hour. The other experiment will evaluate a possible shape...

The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, or ASAP, has released its 2007 Annual Report. The report examines NASA's Space Shuttle safety performance and advises the agency on ways to better that performance."While there are still opportunities for improvement, the panel's finding concluded that NASA Space Station is making significant progress in improving safety issues during the past year," said ASAP Chairman Joseph W. Dyer. "The ASAP commends the Constellation Program for endorsing the recommendation of the ASAP and continuing to employ early hazard...

In the coming weeks, high school and college students across the country will soon be heading back to school. A fortunate few will share some unique experiences. They will tell how they were at NASA Space Station for two months conducting cutting-edge research and working to send span style="font-weight: bold;">American astronauts to the moon and beyond.This summer, more than 150 students from 23 states and Puerto Rico took part in a new NASA education project called "INSPIRE" -- the Interdisciplinary National Science Technology Project Incorporating...

In a news conference Monday, NASA Space Station Shuttle managers discussed how the agency will be adjusting the budget, schedule and technical performance milestones for its Constellation Program to ensure the first crewed flight of the Ares I rocket and Orion crew capsule in March 2015.The Space Shuttle Constellation Program is developing the Station spacecraft and systems, including the Ares I and Ares V rockets, the Orion crew exploration vehicle, and the Altair lunar lander, that will take astronauts to the span style="font-weight: bold;">International...