It will be Earth vs. space in a unique chess match, and you can help Earth win. NASA and the U.S. Chess Federation (USCF) are teaming up to host the first public chess match between International Space Station astronaut Greg Chamitoff and the inhabitants of the Earth, beginning Monday, Sept. 29.Key players in the game will be the kindergarten through third grade U.S. Chess Championship Team and its chess club teammates from Stevenson Elementary School in Bellevue, Wash. The K-3 champions will select...

NASA's Ames Research Center Friday awarded a contract with a maximum value of $300 million to Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies Inc. (SGT Inc.), of Greenbelt, Md., for intelligent systems research and development support.Under the terms of the contract, SGT Inc. will provide support to the Intelligent Systems Division at Ames. The division conducts scientific research, develops technologies, builds applications and deploys advanced information systems technology into NASA missions and other federal government projects. Project areas include autonomous...

NASA managers briefed industry representatives, members of academia and reporters Thursday about the agency's initial plans for the Ares V heavy-lift rocket and Altair lunar lander. The Ares V and Altair are part of a fleet of vehicles NASA is developing for a new space transportation system designed to travel beyond low Earth orbit and return humans to the moon by 2020.Interested participants from throughout the aerospace community attended the forum to discuss the outcomes of a nine-month lunar...

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed hundreds of small fractures exposed on the Martian surface that billions of years ago directed flows of water through underground Martian sandstone.Researchers used images from the spacecraft's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera. Images of layered rock deposits at equatorial Martian sites show the clusters of fractures to be a type called deformation bands, caused by stresses below the surface in granular or porous bedrock."Groundwater...

Conversations between astronauts aboard the International Space Station and flight controllers on the ground now are available for the public to hear live, 24 hours a day, seven days a week on NASA's Web site, www.nasa.gov .The streaming audio of space-to-ground communications includes NASA commentary during specific station mission events and regularly scheduled space station commentary on NASA Television Monday through Friday at 10 a.m. Central time. NASA already provides this space-to-ground communication with commentary during space shuttle...

Members of the public can send their names around Earth on NASA's Glory satellite, the first mission dedicated to understanding the effects of particles in the atmosphere and the sun's variability on our climate.The "Send Your Name Around the Earth" Web site enables everyone to take part in the science mission and place their names in orbit for years to come. The Web site, where participants can submit their information, is located at:http://polls.nasa.gov/utilities/sendtospace/jsp/sendName.jspParticipants will receive a printable certificate from...

NASA will hold a media briefing Monday, Sept. 29, at 2 p.m. EDT, to discuss the latest developments, findings and upcoming science opportunities of the Phoenix Mars Lander. The briefing will take place in the NASA Headquarters' James E. Webb Auditorium, 300 E St., S.W., Washington. It will be carried live on NASA Television and on the Web.Phoenix landed on Mars May 25, and officially ended its prime mission Aug. 26. Now in extended operations, the lander is continuing to study a northern arctic...

The target launch date for space shuttle Atlantis' STS-125 mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope has been reset to Oct. 14 at 10:19 p.m. EDT. A news conference is scheduled for Friday, Oct. 3, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to announce an official launch date.With the delay of Atlantis' launch from Oct. 10 to Oct. 14, shuttle Endeavour's STS-126 supply mission to the International Space Station, also will move from Nov. 12 to Nov. 16 at 7:07 p.m. EST. The target launch date adjustments...

NASA and the Levine School of Music in Washington will host astronaut Leland Melvin, legendary music producer Quincy Jones and musician-producer Pharrell Williams on Thursday, Sept. 25, at 10 a.m. EDT. The school's address is 1901 Mississippi Ave. SE.More than 300 students from area schools will hear a presentation from Melvin as he discusses being an astronaut and the importance of education. Melvin is a former pro football star who was injured early in his career, but refocused his life as a scientist and became a NASA astronaut.During Melvin's...

The work of the next International Space Station residents will be previewed in a briefing broadcast on NASA Television at 1 p.m. CDT Thursday, Sept. 25, from NASA's Johnson Space Center. Reporters at participating NASA centers may ask questions.Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke, Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Yuri Lonchakov and U.S. spaceflight participant Richard Garriott are scheduled to launch in a Soyuz spacecraft Oct. 12 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They will arrive at...

Data from the Ulysses spacecraft, a joint NASA-European Space Agency mission, show the sun has reduced its output of solar wind to the lowest levels since accurate readings became available. The sun's current state could reduce the natural shielding that envelops our solar system."The sun's million mile-per-hour solar wind inflates a protective bubble, or heliosphere, around the solar system. It influences how things work here on Earth and even out at the boundary of our solar system where it meets...

NASA Television and www.nasa.gov will broadcast a gala event commemorating the agency's Golden Anniversary on Wednesday, Sept. 24, at 8 p.m. EDT.The invitation-only celebration, organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), is being held at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va.The program honors NASA's 50th Anniversary and celebrates the power of innovation and discovery, and recognizes the agency's challenges and achievements over the past five decades. Award-winning...

If the robotic arm on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander can nudge a rock aside today, scientists on the Phoenix team would like to see what's underneath.Engineers who develop commands for the robotic arm have prepared a plan to try displacing a rock on the north side of the lander. This rock, roughly the size and shape of a VHS videotape, is informally named "Headless.""We don't know whether we can do this until we try," said Ashitey Trebi Ollennu, a robotics engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,...

NASA and the United States Air Force are looking for university and industry partners as they work to advance hypersonic research.NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate in Washington and the Air Force Research Laboratory's Office of Science Research at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, have released a broad agency announcement describing their intent to establish three national hypersonic science centers. Hypersonic speed is defined as Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, and faster.NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program...

NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is setting its sights on a crater more than 20 times larger than its home for the past two years.To reach the crater the rover team calls Endeavour, Opportunity would need to drive approximately 12 kilometers (7 miles) to the southeast, matching the total distance it has traveled since landing on Mars in early 2004. The rover climbed out of Victoria Crater earlier this month."We may not get there, but it is scientifically the right direction to go anyway," said...

Project scientist Gerry Soffen called Israel Taback the "father of the Mars Viking Lander," parentage that Taback rejected with his usual wry wit."He thought I was because I was responsible for most of the atmosphere surrounding the lander," Taback said. "Remember, there were over 150 Martin (Marietta) people and over 150 Langley people involved -- all talented, outstanding people. It didn't need a father."More of a godfather."That was a role Taback – who passed away on August 30 -- could play naturally...

For the first time since July 2001, two shuttles are on the launch pads at the same time at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Space shuttle Endeavour completed a 4.2-mile journey toLaunch Pad 39B on Friday, Sept. 19, at 6:59 a.m. EDT.Endeavour left Kennedy's Vehicle Assembly Building at 11:15 p.m. Thursday, traveling at less than 1 mph atop a massive crawler-transporter.Endeavour will stand by at pad B in the unlikely event that a rescue mission is necessary during space shuttle Atlantis' upcoming mission...

NASA's Swift satellite has found the most distant gamma-ray burst ever detected. The blast, designated GRB 080913, arose from an exploding star 12.8 billion light-years away."This is the most amazing burst Swift has seen," said the mission's lead scientist Neil Gehrels at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's coming to us from near the edge of the visible universe."Because light moves at finite speed, looking farther into the universe means looking back in time. GRB 080913's...

For the first time since July 2001, two space shuttles are on the launch pads at the same time at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.On Saturday, Sept. 20, media are invited to capture a unique opportunity with both shuttles Atlantis and Endeavour on their respective pads with the rotating service structures rolled back from the vehicles. The structures provide protection from the element and access to the shuttles.A photo opportunity will be available from 8 to 9:30 a.m. EDT, allowing media to take imagery from several locations near Atlantis on Launch...

NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston is scheduled to reopen Monday, Sept. 22, ending its closure related to Hurricane Ike. Johnson shut down Sept. 11 as Ike approached the Texas coast.International Space Station flight control is scheduled to resume from Mission Control in Houston during the morning of Friday, Sept. 19. Station flight control was transferred to a backup facility near Austin, Texas, and later, to another facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.The Mission Control Center and other key Johnson facilities...

NASA will hold a media teleconference Tuesday, Sept. 23, at 12:30 p.m. EDT, to discuss data from the joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission that reveals the sun's solar wind is at a 50-year low. The sun's current state could result in changing conditions in the solar system.Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment above and below the poles of the sun. The reams of data Ulysses returned have changed forever the way scientists view our star and its effects. The venerable spacecraft has lasted more than 17 years...

NASA has extended the Unified NASA Information Technology Services, or UNITeS, contract with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) of San Diego. This extension allows for the completion of an information technology infrastructure realignment and implementation through competition of various NASA agency-wide contracts.The $214,470,324 contract extension provides NASA with agency-wide information services, information technology services to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and support for Marshall's Integrated...

NASA is making available a free Web-based educational product to learners of all ages across the country. NASA eClips consists of more than 55 short, 5-10 minute video segments, which are available on-demand via the Internet for the 2008 -2009 school year.NASA eClips features many of the agency's missions and engages students in the excitement of science and engineering. From the deepest regions of space to hurricanes here on Earth, the goal of NASA eClips is to inspire students to learn more about science and math concepts."This new product was...

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NASA has selected a Mars robotic mission that will provide information about the Red Planet's atmosphere, climate history and potential habitability in greater detail than ever before.Called the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft, the $485 million mission is scheduled for launch in late 2013. The selection was evaluated to have the best science value and lowest implementation risk from 20 mission investigation proposals submitted in response to a NASA Announcement of Opportunity...

NASA for the first time last week used microgravity research flights aboard commercially-owned aircraft to test hardware and technologies. These flights, on an airplane operated by the Zero Gravity Corporation, simulated the weightless conditions of space.In addition to numerous NASA experiments, five companies sponsored by the agency's Innovative Partnerships Program flew experiments aboard the reduced-gravity aircraft flights from Ellington Field in Houston. The flights were the first in NASA's Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for...

Arctic sea ice coverage appears to have reached its lowest extent for the year and the second-lowest amount recorded since the dawn of the satellite era, according to observations from the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.While slightly above the record-low minimum set Sept. 16, 2007, this season further reinforces the strong negative trend in summer sea ice extent observed during the past 30 years. Before last year, the previous record low...