NASA has completed a comprehensive study of crew safety equipment and procedures used during the space shuttle Columbia accident with recommendations for improving the safety of all future human spaceflights.A media teleconference will be held at 3 p.m. CST Tuesday to discuss the report. To participate, reporters must contact NASA’s Johnson Space Center newsroom at 281-483-5111 no later than 2 p.m. Space may be limited.Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio The teleconference participants are Wayne Hale,...

NASA TV will air a special New Year's message from International Space Station Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineer Sandy Magnus beginning on Monday's noon EST Video File (newsfeed).From their vantage point 220 miles above Earth, the astronauts express their year-end thoughts on the significance of the international outpost and their New Year's wish for the complex in 2009. The crew also shares their wish for peace in the languages of all of the countries represented in the space...

NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity may still have big achievements ahead as they approach the fifth anniversaries of their memorable landings on Mars. Of the hundreds of engineers and scientists who cheered at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on Jan. 3, 2004, when Spirit landed safely, and 21 days later when Opportunity followed suit, none predicted the team would still be operating both rovers in 2009. "The American taxpayer was told three months for each rover was the prime...

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory will launch two years later than previously planned, in the fall of 2011. The mission will send a next-generation rover with unprecedented research tools to study the early environmental history of Mars.A launch date of October 2009 no longer is feasible because of testing and hardware challenges that must be addressed to ensure mission success. The window for a 2009 launch ends in late October. The relative positions of Earth and Mars are favorable for flights to...

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has completed its primary, two-year science phase. The spacecraft has found signs of a complex Martian history of climate change that produced a diversity of past watery environments.The orbiter has returned 73 terabits of science data, more than all earlier Mars missions combined. The spacecraft will build on this record as it continues to examine Mars in unprecedented detail during its next two-year phase of science operations.Among the major findings during...

NASA has invited 14 groups of ambitious young rocketeers from 11 middle schools, high schools and youth organizations around the country to light up the sky over North Alabama during NASA's 2008-2009 Student Launch Initiative rocketry challenge.The rocketeering challenge will be held April 15-20, 2009, when student teams will converge on NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., for a professional review of their rockets by NASA engineers. Day-long launch activities will take place at nearby Bragg Farms in Toney, Ala.The annual event,...

About 10 years ago, scientists reached the astonishing conclusion that our universe is accelerating apart at ever-increasing speeds, stretching space and time itself like melted cheese. The force that's pushing the universe apart is still a mystery, which is precisely why it was dubbed "dark energy."But is dark energy really real? Is our universe really accelerating? These questions hang around in the mind of Ali Vanderveld, a post-doctoral cosmologist at JPL. Vanderveld and her colleagues recently...

Oceanography data that will help scientists around the world better understand climate change are now available. The data come from the Ocean Surface Topography Mission, also known as OSTM/Jason-2, a spacecraft developed jointly by NASA and the French space agency.Launched June 20, 2008, the mission's first validated data products in support of improved weather, climate and ocean forecasts are now being distributed to the public within a few hours of observation. Beginning in 2009, other data products for climate research will be available a few...

For the first time, astronomers have clearly seen the effects of "dark energy" on the most massive collapsed objects in the universe using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. By tracking how dark energy has stifled the growth of galaxy clusters and combining this with previous studies, scientists have obtained the best clues yet about what dark energy is and what the destiny of the universe could be.This work, which took years to complete, is separate from other methods of dark energy research such...

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NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has successfully completed thermal vacuum testing, which simulates the extreme hot, cold and airless conditions of space LRO will experience after launch. This milestone concludes the orbiter's environmental test program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.The orbiter will carry seven instruments to provide scientists with detailed maps of the lunar surface and increase our understanding of the moon's topography, lighting conditions,...

NASA will host a media teleconference with Associate Administrator for Space Operations Bill Gerstenmaier at 4 p.m. EST, Tuesday, Dec. 23, to discuss the contract selection for commercial cargo resupply services for the International Space Station.NASA released a Request for Proposal on April 14 for the cargo needs of the space station beyond those supplied by current international agreements. NASA will depend on commercial resupply for reliable, safe and cost effective cargo delivery services to the station.Reporters who wish to participate must...

NASA recently submitted the following response to Aviation Week:Unfortunately, Aviation Week’s recent article of Dec. 21, 2008, entitled “Bush Administration Nixed NASA's U.S.-China Cooperation Idea," is inaccurate and misleading.As an initial matter, NASA has never asked the White House for a cooperative mission such as the one described in the article. The fact is that the White House has been very supportive of a deliberate and careful establishment of relations between NASA and the China National Space Administration (CNSA) over the past two...

NASA has awarded two contracts -- one to Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., and one to Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif. -- for commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station. At the time of award, NASA has ordered eight flights valued at about $1.9 billion from Orbital and 12 flights valued at about $1.6 billion from SpaceX.These fixed-price indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts will begin Jan. 1, 2009, and are effective through Dec. 31, 2016. The contracts each call for the delivery...

NASA Television will honor the 40th anniversary of the historic Christmas Eve broadcast by the Apollo 8 crew with special programming Dec. 24 and 25 on the NASA TV Public Channel (101).Forty years ago, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders became the first humans to visit another heavenly body as they successfully orbited the moon in their Apollo 8 spacecraft. On Dec. 24, 1968, the three astronauts devoted one of their mission's six live television transmissions to reading from the biblical book of Genesis during what has since come to be known...

Researchers using a powerful instrument aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have found a long sought-after mineral on the Martian surface and, with it, unexpected clues to the Red Planet's watery past.Surveying intact bedrock layers with the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, or CRISM, scientists found carbonate minerals, indicating that Mars had neutral to alkaline water when the minerals formed at these locations more than 3.6 billion years ago. Carbonates, which on Earth...

The 2007 NASA Commercial Invention of the Year is a multi-use foam that insulates for sound, heat and cold with aerospace and down to Earth applications."Polyimide Foam" can be flexible or rigid, structural or non-structural and is highly durable. The foam's density can be varied for a variety of uses including fire protection since it generates no harmful combustion products and has been tested at temperatures above 400 degrees Fahrenheit.For future NASA exploration vehicles, the foam could be used in applications where reduced weight and increased...

The International Space Station crew, paving the way for NASA's return to the moon, will honor the first humans to journey there 40 years ago with a special message.Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineers Sandy Magnus and Yury Lonchakov will pay homage to that bold December 1968 voyage in a message that will air on NASA Television as part of the daily Video File, beginning at 11 a.m. CST, Friday, Dec. 19. The video also will be broadcast in high definition on the NASA TV HD channel at 10 a.m., noon and 3 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 19,...

The Inauguration Committee for President-elect Barack Obama officially extended an invitation Wednesday for NASA to be part of the 56th Inaugural Parade on Jan. 20.The crew of NASA's recent STS-126 space shuttle mission and other agency officials will join representatives from across the country and our armed forces in this historic parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington following swearing-in ceremonies on the steps of the Capitol.Chris Ferguson commanded the STS-126 mission and was joined by Pilot Eric Boe and Mission Specialists Donald...

NASA has issued a Request for Information, or RFI, seeking ideas from educational institutions, science museums and other appropriate organizations about the community's ability to acquire and publicly display the space shuttle orbiters and space shuttle main engines after the conclusion of the Space Shuttle Program.Sponsored by NASA's Office of Infrastructure, the RFI seeks input from appropriate officials and decision-makers from museums, science centers, institutions and other organizations dedicated...

NASA and Ad Astra Rocket Company of Webster, Texas, have signed a Space Act Agreement that could lead to the testing of a new plasma-based space propulsion technology on the International Space Station. The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) engine initially was studied by NASA and is being commercially developed by Ad Astra.This is the first such agreement for a payload on the space station’s exterior and represents an expansion of NASA’s plans to operate the U.S. portion of...

The closer scientists look at Saturn's small moon Enceladus, the more they find evidence of an active world. The most recent flybys of Enceladus made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft have provided new signs of ongoing changes on and around the moon. The latest high-resolution images of Enceladus show signs that the south polar surface changes over time.Close views of the southern polar region, where jets of water vapor and icy particles spew from vents within the moon's distinctive "tiger stripe" fractures,...