NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, spacecraft was loaded on a truck Wednesday to begin its two-day journey to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launch is targeted for April 24.

The spacecraft was built by engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where it recently completed two months of tests in a thermal vacuum chamber. During its time in the chamber, the spacecraft was subjected to hot and cold temperatures it will experience as it orbits the moon.

The satellite's mission is one of the first steps in NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon. LRO will spend at least one year in a low polar orbit on its primary exploration mission, with the possibility of three more years to collect additional detailed scientific information about the moon and its environment.

The orbiter will carry seven instruments to provide scientists with detailed maps of the lunar surface and enhance our understanding of the moon's topography, lighting conditions, mineralogical composition and natural resources. Information gleaned from LRO will be used to select safe landing sites, determine locations for future lunar outposts and help mitigate radiation dangers to astronauts. The polar regions of the moon are the main focus of the mission because continuous access to sunlight may be possible and water ice may exist in permanently shadowed areas of the poles.

"This is the culmination of four years of hard work by everyone on the LRO Project," said Cathy Peddie, LRO deputy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "LRO now begins its launch site processing, where it will be prepped for integration with our sister mission LCROSS, and eventually encapsulated in the Atlas V for its journey to the moon."

LRO's instruments have considerable heritage from previous planetary science missions, enabling the spacecraft to transition to a research phase under the direction of NASA's Science Mission Directorate one year after launch.

Accompanying LRO on its journey to the moon will be the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, a mission that will impact the lunar surface in its search for water ice. The LCROSS mission is managed by NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

Goddard manages the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington.

NASA's activities in social networking media will be recognized Wednesday in New York, when the agency receives an award for its presence on the popular Web site Twitter.

Known as the Shorty Award, it was created to honor the best producers of short content on Twitter during 2008. Updates on NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander mission received the most votes in the science category from users of the site.

The Mars Phoenix Twitter delivered more than 600 updates during the 152 days the lander was operating in the north polar region of Mars. By the end of the lander's mission in early November, more than 38,000 people were following its reports, called "tweets." The account is still used to provide updates on the mission's science results and has more than 41,000 followers.

"We created the account, known as Mars Phoenix, last May with the goal of providing the public with near real-time updates on the mission," said Veronica McGregor, manager of the news office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and originator of the updates. "The response was incredible. Very quickly it became a way not only to deliver news of the mission, but to interact with the public and respond to their questions about space exploration."

Twitter allows people to follow accounts of their choosing through the Web, or by having updates sent to their mobile phones. Users post short updates that are limited to 140 characters or less. The Shorty Awards were created by Sawhorse Media in New York and are supported by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Miami.

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander ceased communications Nov. 2 after successfully returning unprecedented science data to Earth. Launched Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix safely touched down on Mars on May 25, 2008, at a site farther north than where any previous spacecraft had landed. Phoenix's soft landing on Mars was the first in 32 years. Phoenix sent more than 25,000 images back to Earth. Science instruments returned a treasure trove of data that continue to be analyzed.

NASA's Mars Phoenix Twitter site is at: http://twitter.com/marsphoenix .

In addition to the Mars Phoenix site, NASA maintains another Twitter feed that includes updates on other agency programs at: http://twitter.com/nasa .

For a list of NASA missions providing updates on Twitter, visit http://www.nasa.gov/collaborate .

For more information on the Phoenix mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix .

For more information about the Shorty Awards, and a complete listing of award winners, visit: http://shortyawards.com .

Astronomers using NASA's Swift satellite and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope are seeing frequent blasts from a stellar remnant 30,000 light-years away. The high-energy fireworks arise from a rare type of neutron star known as a soft-gamma-ray repeater. Such objects unpredictably send out a series of X-ray and gamma-ray flares.

"At times, this remarkable object has erupted with more than a hundred flares in as little as 20 minutes," said Loredana Vetere, who is coordinating the Swift observations at Pennsylvania State University. "The most intense flares emitted more total energy than the sun does in 20 years."

The object, which has long been known as an X-ray source, lies in the southern constellation Norma. During the past two years, astronomers have identified pulsing radio and X-ray signals from it. The object began a series of modest eruptions on Oct. 3, 2008, then settled down. It roared back to life Jan. 22 with an intense episode.

Because of the recent outbursts, astronomers will classify the object as a soft-gamma-ray repeater -- only the sixth known. In 2004, a giant flare from another soft-gamma-ray repeater was so intense it measurably affected Earth's upper atmosphere from 50,000 light-years away.

Scientists think the source is a spinning neutron star, which is the superdense, city-sized remains of an exploded star. Although only about 12 miles across, a neutron star contains more mass than the sun. The object has been cataloged as SGR J1550-5418.

While neutron stars typically possess intense magnetic fields, a subgroup displays fields 1,000 times stronger. These so-called magnetars have the strongest magnetic fields of any known object in the universe. SGR J1550-5418, which rotates once every 2.07 seconds, holds the record for the fastest-spinning magnetar. Astronomers think magnetars power their flares by tapping into the tremendous energy of their magnetic fields.

"The ability of Fermi's gamma-ray burst monitor to resolve the fine structure within these events will help us better understand how magnetars unleash their energy," said Chryssa Kouveliotou, an astrophysicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The object has triggered the instrument more than 95 times since Jan. 22.

Using data from Swift's X-ray telescope, Jules Halpern at Columbia University captured the first "light echoes" ever seen from a soft-gamma-ray repeater. Images acquired when the latest flaring episode began show what appear to be expanding halos around the source. Multiple rings form as X-rays interact with dust clouds at different distances, with closer clouds producing larger rings. Both the rings and their apparent expansion are an illusion caused by the finite speed of light and the longer path the scattered light must travel.

"X-rays from the brightest bursts scatter off of dust clouds between us and the star," Halpern said. "As a result, we don't really know the distance to this object as well as we would like. These images will help us make a more precise measurement and also determine the distance to the dust clouds."

NASA's Wind satellite, the joint NASA-Japan Suzaku mission, and the European Space Agency's INTEGRAL satellite also have detected flares from SGR J1550-5418.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the Swift satellite. It is being operated in collaboration with partners in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany and Japan. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics observatory developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy and with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S.

To see the related images, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/gammaray_fireworks.html

Galileo first turned his telescope to the heavens in 1609, marking the dawn of modern astronomy. To commemorate 400 years of exploring the universe, 2009 has been designated the International Year of Astronomy.

In conjunction with Galileo's birthday on Feb. 15, NASA is releasing images from its Great Observatories -- the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory -- to more than 100 planetariums, museums, nature centers and schools across the country.

The selected sites will unveil a large 9-square-foot print of the spiral galaxy Messier 101 that combines the optical view of Hubble, the infrared view of Spitzer, and the X-ray view of Chandra into one multi-wavelength picture. "It's like using your eyes, night vision goggles and X-ray vision all at the same time," said Dr. Hashima Hasan, lead scientist for the International Year of Astronomy at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Participating institutions also will display a matched trio of Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra images of Messier 101. Each image shows a different wavelength view of the galaxy that illustrates not only the different science each observatory conducts but also how far astronomy has come since Galileo.

Messier 101 is a spiral galaxy about 22 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It is larger than our own Milky Way galaxy but similar in many ways. Hubble's visible light view shows off the swirls of bright stars and glowing gas that give Messier 101 its nickname "the Pinwheel Galaxy." In contrast, Spitzer's infrared-light image sees into the spiral arms and reveals the glow of dust lanes where dense clouds can collapse to form new stars. Chandra's X-ray uncovers the high-energy features in the galaxy, such as remnants of exploded stars or matter zooming around black holes. The juxtaposition of observations from these three telescopes provides an in-depth view of the galaxy for both astronomers and the public.

"The amazing scientific discoveries Galileo made four centuries ago are continued today by scientists using NASA's space observatories," said Denise Smith, the unveiling's project manager at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. "NASA's Great Observatories are distributing huge prints of spectacular images so the public can share in the exploration and wonder of the universe."

The unveilings will take place Feb. 14-28 at 76 museums and 40 schools and universities nationwide, reaching both big cities and small towns. Sites are planning celebrations involving the public, schools and local media.

The Astrophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate supports the International Year of Astronomy Great Observatories image unveiling. The project is a collaboration among the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Spitzer Science Center in Pasadena, Calif., and the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Mass.

A list of places exhibiting these images can be found at http://hubblesource.stsci.edu/events/iya/participants.php.

In an annual "battle of the brains," Santa Monica High School placed first in the regional Science Bowl held on Saturday, Feb. 7, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. The event is an astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth science, mathematics and physics competition for Southern California high school students.

In a close final round, Santa Monica High School ultimately pulled ahead of challenger Arcadia High School with a score of 124-92. University High School in Los Angeles placed third. About 100 math- and science-savvy students from 24 high schools in Los Angeles and Orange counties competed in the Science Bowl.

This is the sixth consecutive year that Santa Monica has captured first place. By doing so, the team will receive an all-expense-paid trip to the National Science Bowl in Washington, D.C., on April 30 through May 5. Santa Monica High will go head to head with dozens of other regional winners. Last year, the team won the National Science Bowl, and Santa Monica High coach Ingo Gaida said he hopes to reprise the win this year.

JPL has hosted the regional Science Bowl for 17 years. The U.S. Department of Energy created the event in 1991 to encourage students to study and pursue careers in science and math. The competition attracts about 17,000 middle and high school students nationwide.

Bushfires in southeastern Australia turned deadly over the first weekend of February 2009. Out-of-control fires raced into small communities and towns in Victoria, and more than 100 people had died as of February 9, according to news reports. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC News) reported that many of those who died had remained to protect their homes. Among the most devastated communities were those in the Kinglake area and Marysville. As of February 9, firefighters were expressing concern about the increased activity of the fire around the town of Dederang, southwest of Lake Hume.

This image shows the Barry Mountains of central Victoria on February 9, 2009. The image, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite,is shown in false color, using visible, near-infrared and shortwave infrared light. Places where the sensor detected active fire are outlined in red. Burned areas are brick red, and places of intense heat -- often a sign of open flame in this kind of image -- are glowing pink. Smoke turns a transparent blue, which makes it easier to see the ground.

Fire is a regular occurrence in the forests and grasslands of southeastern Australia, even in the absence of people. In the hot, dry summer months, vegetation dries out; lightning triggers many natural wildfires. However, in the past decade, the area has experienced several severe droughts, and in late January and early February, parts of South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales were also paralyzed by an exceptional heatwave. Conditions were primed for devastating fires, some of which appear to have been started by lighting and others, according to news reports, by arson. The event was the worst fire disaster in Australia’s history.

A new Progress cargo carrier launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday at 12:49 a.m. EST. Less than 9 minutes later, the ISS Progress 32 reached its preliminary orbit and deployed its solar arrays and navigational antennas.

It replaces the trash-filled Progress 31 which was undocked from the Pirs Docking Compartment on Feb. 5 and destroyed on re-entry.

The spacecraft is set to dock to Pirs at 2:19 a.m. Friday with more than 2.4 tons of oxygen, air, propellant and other supplies and equipment aboard.

The station's 32nd Progress unpiloted spacecraft brings to the orbiting laboratory more than 1,910 pounds of propellant, more than 100 pounds of oxygen and air, and more than 2,860 pounds of dry cargo. Total cargo weight is 4,894 pounds.

Once Expedition 18 crew members have unloaded the cargo, Progress 32 will be filled with trash and station discards. It will be undocked from the station and like its predecessors deorbited to burn in the Earth's atmosphere.

The Progress is similar in appearance and some design elements to the Soyuz spacecraft, which brings crew members to the station, serves as a lifeboat while they are there and returns them to Earth. The aft module, the instrumentation and propulsion module, is nearly identical.

But the second of the three Progress sections is a refueling module, and the third, uppermost as the Progress sits on the launch pad, is a cargo module. On the Soyuz, the descent module, where the crew is seated on launch and which returns them to Earth, is the middle module and the third is called the orbital module.

› Read more about Expedition 18
› View crew timelines

2009 International Space Station Calendar

As part of NASA's celebration of the 10th anniversary of the International Space Station, the agency is offering a special 2009 calendar to teachers, as well as the general public.

The calendar contains photographs taken from the space station and highlights historic NASA milestones and fun facts about the international construction project of unprecedented complexity that began in 1998.

› Download calendar (5.3 Mb PDF)

Recent years have seen an increase in record-setting events related to climate change. For example, 2005 was the warmest year globally in more than a century, and in 2007, Arctic sea ice retreated more than in any other time in recorded history. A new NASA mission set to launch later this month will help scientists better understand the most important human-produced greenhouse gas contributing to climate change: carbon dioxide. Called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, the satellite may help us better predict how our climate may change in the future.

Scientists rely on models to forecast future impacts of carbon dioxide on Earth's climate. When the carbon dioxide concentrations used in, or predicted by, these models are not accurate, the resulting climate projections can have a large degree of uncertainty. To accurately predict atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in the future, we need to understand natural and human sources of carbon dioxide, as well as the natural "sinks" that remove this gas from our atmosphere.

The rapid buildup of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels is a relatively well understood and predictable source. Other impacts, however, such as forestry and agricultural practices, which can act as either sources or sinks, are far harder to predict with confidence. More importantly, measurements from a global network of greenhouse gas monitoring stations indicate that more than half of the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities is currently being absorbed by the ocean and by plants on land. But the current ground-based carbon dioxide monitoring network does not have the coverage or resolution needed to identify sufficiently the natural sinks responsible for absorbing this carbon dioxide. In addition, the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by natural sinks varies dramatically from year to year, for reasons that are largely unknown. Because the nature, location and processes controlling these natural sinks are not well understood, it is impossible to accurately predict how much carbon dioxide they might absorb in the future as the climate changes. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory aims to help resolve these and other open carbon-cycle questions.

"The Orbiting Carbon Observatory will provide the initial steps in the journey of measuring carbon dioxide from space, and the discoveries will be profound?we'll gather basic information about the distribution of carbon that we wouldn't have been able to do any other way," says Graeme Stephens of Colorado State University, Fort Collins, a co-investigator on the Orbiting Carbon Observatory science team.

Researchers have shown that warming, particularly from greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, is driving Earth's climate toward "tipping points." Those are the points at which temperatures could set in motion processes that are very difficult to reverse. One potential example is the runaway disintegration of Arctic sea ice and of the West Antarctic ice sheet. In this scenario, warmer temperatures melt more ice and create more open water, which absorbs more heat. This, in turn, melts more ice, in a process that feeds upon itself.

Research by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and colleagues suggests that to avoid dangerous tipping points, Earth's atmosphere should be limited to a carbon dioxide concentration of 450 parts per million at the most, and potentially much lower. Today, the level of carbon dioxide is about 385 parts per million, and over the last few decades that number has been rising by about two parts per million per year. But arriving at models that accurately predict how carbon dioxide levels will change in the future depends, in part, on whether researchers can collect enough data to untangle the mysteries of the carbon cycle.

"As human-caused emissions change, what will happen to the carbon budget [the contribution of carbon dioxide's various sources]?" Stephens asked. "There's a gross lack of understanding as to where the re-absorbed carbon is going because it's currently impossible to make global observations to see how carbon dioxide varies on both global and regional scales."

Currently, a sparse network of stations across the globe collects precise measurements of carbon dioxide near Earth's surface, but the number of stations is limited and most are located far away from power plants, automobiles and other sources of carbon dioxide. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory will complement the ground-based network by collecting thousands of times as many measurements over the sunlit side of Earth. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite now routinely provides global maps of carbon dioxide at altitudes between 5 and 13 kilometers (3 and 8 miles) high, where it is most efficient as a greenhouse gas. Orbiting Carbon Observatory measurements will complement those from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder because they are much more sensitive to the concentration of carbon dioxide near Earth's surface, where most of it is emitted by sources or absorbed by sinks.

Measurements from ground stations and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder have already shown that the level of carbon dioxide is more varied throughout the atmosphere than was previously believed. The levels fluctuate with weather and temperature and are influenced by land plants and the ocean. It's the goal of carbon cycle models to explain and ultimately predict the response of this complex system.

"It's like a domino effect," Stephens said. "The climate system is so interconnected, and the carbon dioxide system is an integral part of that system."

A new generation of climate modelers already considers the interactions of carbon between land, ocean and atmosphere. These models predict that the growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide and of global warming will accelerate as Earth's land and ocean show a decreased capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. But with the current scant observations of the carbon system, the magnitude and timing of such model predictions are highly uncertain. The next generation of carbon-climate models will better represent these systems, thanks to more abundant global carbon dioxide data from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory and other future satellite missions. And while the data from these new satellites may not be as precise as data from ground stations, the models will nonetheless improve due to the tremendous volume of data from across the globe and throughout the atmosphere.

Researchers expect the volume of carbon dioxide data to increase dramatically. "This is tremendous," says Inez Fung of the University of California, Berkeley, a co-investigator on the Orbiting Carbon Observatory science team. "There is much horizontal and vertical variation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to sources and sinks and turbulent mixing processes that vary between day and night, from place to place, and from season to season. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory will give scientists a much more complete global picture of how the carbon cycle works."

The observatory will measure the percentage of carbon dioxide present within columns of the atmosphere that span less than 4.1 square kilometers (1.6 square miles) on the surface and extend all the way up to the satellite 705 kilometers (438 miles) above. "This is a major advance over the traditional surface observations, which are sparse and which sample only at fixed heights and mostly near the ground," Fung said.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory information will allow researchers to "see" for the first time carbon dioxide sources and sinks. The information will allow researchers to assess, or "rank," the performance of carbon-climate models and will help to flag areas that need additional study. Researchers also expect the observatory to turn up surprises where little or no carbon dioxide data have been taken, such as over Africa, Eurasia and the open ocean.

"I am extremely excited - I have been working on the carbon cycle for over 25 years and have been hampered by the data scarcity," Fung said. "Christmas is coming."

For more information on the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, see: http://www.nasa.gov/oco .

Because of an ongoing review of the space shuttle's flow control valves, NASA managers are rescheduling meetings next week to assess the launch readiness of shuttle Discovery's STS-119 mission to the International Space Station.

The Space Shuttle Program will hold a meeting Feb. 13 to review data and determine whether to move forward with a flight readiness review on Feb. 18. The official launch date will be set at the readiness review, but for planning purposes launch now is no earlier than Feb. 22.

There are three valves that channel gaseous hydrogen from the shuttle's main engines to the external fuel tank. One of these valves in shuttle Endeavour was found to be damaged after its mission in November. As a precaution, Discovery's three gaseous hydrogen valves were removed, inspected and reinstalled.

For information on the STS-119 mission, visit:

It’s not an accident that Greta Crawford gives a great first impression.

Her friendly smile and gentle nature welcome employees to the NASA Langley clinic in the morning. In the afternoon, she welcomes the newest members of the center’s family, the babies at the Langley Child Development Center (LCDC).

In the “panda room” of the LCDC, Crawford watched over the babies and said, “I love this room because we see them when they first start to notice things.”

Crawford has two sons, who attend Tabb High School in Yorktown. “It seems like just last week when I was taking them to preschool,” she said.

But she has come a long way from her boys' preschool days – literally.

They have lived in Japan, Germany, Georgia, Alabama, Alaska, Korea and Italy. Crawford’s husband, James, was stationed at Langley Air Force Base, which brought them here. He is retired.

The military life was nothing new to Crawford. Her father was in the Army. Her younger sister and oldest son were born in Japan.

Crawford misses living in Anchorage, Alaska, and she hopes to move back there. “I cried when we had to leave,” she said. “We had to leave wide open spaces and mountains and hiking for hours. We used to have one child in the stroller and one in a baby back pack, and we would hit the trail.”

Both of her sons enjoy music and the arts. As a family, they are involved in the “drama guild” at church. They participate in a play every four months.

Her youngest son, Joshua, wrote the next play in which her family will perform. “It’s about accepting people for who they really are,” Crawford said.

This is a lesson she and husband have emphasized to Joshua and their oldest son, Jordan.

Sons only 19 months apart are often mistaken for twins. And while they did have things in common -- similar looks, a creative side -- they were very much their own persons.

“Jordan and I love to try new foods together,” she said. Joshua and husband James leave the taste tasting to them. “But we all love the cold,” Crawford said.

That doesn’t stop them from visiting Florida and Texas, Crawford’s birthplace, for Christmas and holidays. “Everything really is bigger in Texas,” she said. Her parents still reside in San Antonio.

“I look forward to seeing my sons graduate from college and becoming productive citizens,” she said. “I want them to be free, to enjoy life and, above all, live by the Golden Rule.”

She believes their faith can help lead them to success and security. Crawford cites Romans 12:18, which has utmost importance in her own life: " In as much as possible, live peaceably with all men."

Crawford describes her workdays as “long, pleasant, and at times, challenging.” She really enjoys both of her jobs and the people she interacts with on a daily basis, but her favorite and most rewarding job starts when she arrives home.

A NASA satellite sleuth set to launch this month will soon be hot on the trail of the elusive greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced cause of global warming. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory's mission is to find the vast warehouses of carbon dioxide that are "missing" - hidden in "sinks" around the globe. Finding them will help scientists better predict how our climate will change in the future.

Chip Miller, deputy principal investigator for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, will explain the mission and answer your questions live on Ustream TV on Feb. 9 at 5 p.m. Pacific: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasajpl . If you are unable to take part in the live chat, you can submit questions in advance to carolina.martinez@jpl.nasa.gov and watch the archived video at a later time.

More about the Orbiting Carbon Observatory is at: http://www.nasa.gov/oco

Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and students at the California Institute of Technology have designed and tested a versatile, low-mass robot that can rappel off cliffs, travel nimbly over steep and rocky terrain, and explore deep craters.

This prototype rover, called Axel, might help future robotic spacecraft better explore and investigate foreign worlds such as Mars. On Earth, Axel might assist in search-and-rescue operations.

Imagine traveling the surface of the Red Planet, observing millennia-old canyons or viewing Martian dust devils first hand. Now, you can with the advent of a new Mars mode in Google Earth that brings to everyone's desktop a high-resolution, three-dimensional view of the Mars.

Besides providing a three-dimensional view of Mars that will aid public understanding of Mars science, the new mode, Google Mars 3D, also gives researchers a platform for sharing data similar to what Google Earth provides for Earth scientists.

The mode enables users to fly virtually through enormous canyons and scale huge mountains on Mars, higher than any found on Earth.

Users also can explore the Red Planet through the eyes of the Mars rovers and other Mars missions, providing a unique perspective of the entire planet.

Users can see some of the latest satellite imagery from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and other probes orbiting the Red Planet, as well as learn about new discoveries and explore indexes of available Mars imagery. The new Mars mode also allows users to add their own 3-D content to the Mars map to share with the world.

"Educators, planetary scientists and citizen scientists alike can use this platform to produce their own maps and tours for the new Google Mars 3D," said Matt Hancher, a research scientist in the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "This really opens up a whole new world of participatory space exploration."

Follow the final hours of the countdown beginning at 3 a.m. EST through the NASA Launch Blog and NASA TV.

Launch is Scrubbed
Today's launch of the NOAA-N Prime spacecraft has been scrubbed for today. Please stand by for details.

The countdown and launch are managed by the NASA Launch Services Program office at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The NOAA-N Prime Mission

The NOAA-N Prime satellite, built for NASA by Lockheed Martin, will improve weather forecasting and monitor environmental events around the world. NOAA-N Prime is the fifth and last in the current series of five polar-orbiting satellites with improved imaging and sounding capabilities.

The satellite will collect meteorological data and transmit the information to NOAA's Satellite and Information Service, which processes the data for input to the National Weather Service for its long-range weather and climate forecasts. Forecasters worldwide also will be able to access the satellite's images and data.

NOAA-N Prime has sensors that will be used in the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System to monitor for distress signals around the world.
> View NOAA N-Prime introduction video

During a review of space shuttle Discovery's readiness for flight, NASA managers decided Tuesday to plan a launch no earlier than Feb. 19. The new planning date is pending additional analysis and particle impact testing associated with a flow control valve in the shuttle's main engines. Discovery's STS-119 mission to the International Space Station originally had been targeted for Feb. 12. The valve is one of three that channels gaseous hydrogen from the engines to the external fuel tank. One of these valves in shuttle Endeavour was found to be damaged after its mission in November.

As a precaution, Discovery's valves were removed, inspected and reinstalled. The Space Shuttle Program will convene a meeting on Feb. 10 to assess the analysis. On Feb. 12, NASA managers and contractors will continue the flight readiness review, which began Tuesday, to address the flow control valve issue and to select an official launch date.

Space shuttle Discovery's STS-119 crew is set to fly the S6 truss segment and install the final set of power-generating solar arrays to the International Space Station.

The S6 truss, with its set of large U.S. solar arrays, will complete the backbone of the station and provide one-fourth of the total power needed to support a crew of six.

The two solar array wings each have 115-foot-long arrays, for a total wing span of 240 feet. They will generate 66 kilowatts of electricity -- enough to provide about 30 2,800-square-foot homes with power.

Commander Lee Archambault will lead Discovery's crew of seven, along with Pilot Tony Antonelli, and Mission Specialists Joseph Acaba, John Phillips, Steve Swanson, Richard Arnold and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata.

What is the Flight Readiness Review?

Approximately two weeks prior to the opening of the launch window for each space shuttle, the Shuttle Mission Management Team meets at Kennedy Space Center for a thorough review of the next mission. Also in attendance are other top-level NASA officials, Space Shuttle Program managers, engineers and contractors. The group conducts a comprehensive evaluation of all activities and elements necessary for the safe and successful performance of shuttle mission operations -- from the prelaunch phase through post-landing. They also examine the readiness of the space shuttle, flight crew and payloads to determine if everything is set to proceed with launch.

At the conclusion of the review, the chairman of the Mission Management Team conducts a poll of the team members. If there are no unresolved issues, the members then sign a "Certification of Flight Readiness" to verify that all flight preparation processes to that date have been successfully completed. The official launch date is then set and announced, and shuttle processing continues toward the projected liftoff date.

Wakata will replace Expedition 18 Flight Engineer Sandra Magnus, who will return to Earth with the STS-119 crew. Wakata will serve as a flight engineer for Expeditions 18 and 19, and return to Earth with the STS-127 crew.

Discovery's STS-119 mission to the International Space Station is targeted to lift off no earlier than Feb. 19.

Additional Resources
› STS-119 Mission Summary (562 Kb PDF)
› STS-119 Press Kit (4.9 Mb PDF)

Put yourself behind the controls of modern astronomy's most famous telescope. Be a part of history and join astronomy fans around the globe in casting a vote for the next object the Hubble Space Telescope will view. Choose from a selection of celestial views never seen before by Hubble, and earn a chance to enter a drawing for 100 copies of the winning picture.

To participate in the contest, go to HubbleSite's You Decide page. Vote by March 1, 2009.

Educators can visit Amazing Space for a classroom collage activity that engages students in the wonders of the universe.

This event is part of the worldwide International Year of Astronomy (IYA), celebrating the 400th anniversary of the astronomer Galileo directing his telescope toward the night sky. The winning image will be released during the IYA's 100 Hours of Astronomy, an event geared toward encouraging as many people as possible to experience the night sky.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit resumed driving Saturday after engineers gained confidence from diagnostic activities earlier in the week evaluating how well the rover senses its orientation.

Spirit drove about 30 centimeters (1 foot) Saturday, during the 1,806th Martian day, or sol, of what was originally planned as a 90-day mission. The rover team had commanded a longer drive, but Spirit stopped short after its right-front wheel, which no longer turns, struck a partially buried rock. The rover drivers prepared commands Monday for the next drive in a slightly different direction to get around that rock.

A diagnostic test on Sol 1805 provided an evaluation of how accurately Spirt's accelerometers sense the rover's orientation or attitude. The testing was a follow-up to Spirit's mistaken calculation of where to expect to see the sun on Sol 1802. The sol 1805 results indicate the accelerometers may have a bias of about 3 degrees. This would explain why Spirit pointed a camera about three degrees away from the sun's actual position on Sol 1802. However, the Sol 1805 test also showed that Spirit's gyroscopes are operating properly, which convinced engineers that the rover could safely resume driving. Only the gyroscopes are used for orientation information during driving.

Diagnostic tests last week also checked possible explanations for behavior for one period of activity on Spirit's Sol 1800, when the rover did not save information into its non-volatile flash memory, so the information was lost when the rover next powered down.

"We may not find any data that will explain what happened on Sol 1800, but there's no evidence that whatever happened then has recurred on subsequent sols," said Jacob Matijevic of the rover engineering team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. One possibility is that a cosmic-ray hit could have temporarily put Spirit temporarily into a mode that disables use of the flash memory. The team intentionally used that mode -- relying only on volatile random-access memory -- during recovery from a memory problem five years ago on Spirit.

Spirit is just north of a low plateau called "Home Plate." It spent 2008 on a north-facing slope on the edge of Home Plate so that its solar panels stayed tilted toward the winter sun for maximum electrical output.

Spirit drove down off Home Plate on Jan. 6, 2009. It subsequently checked whether a patch of nearby soil, called "Stapledon," had a high concentration of silica, like a silica-rich patch of soil Spirit discovered east of Home Plate in 2007. The earlier discovery was interpreted as evidence left by a hot-spring or steam-vent environment. Examination with Spirit's alpha particle X-ray spectrometer confirmed silica at Stapledon. This indicates that the environment that deposited the silica was not limited to the location found earlier.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, landed on Mars in January 2004 and have operated 20 times longer than their original prime missions.

The Cassini spacecraft will swap to a backup set of propulsion thrusters in mid-March due to degradation in the performance of the current set of thrusters.

The thrusters are used for making small corrections to the spacecraft's course, for some attitude control functions, and for making angular momentum adjustments in the reaction wheels, which also are used for attitude control.

The current set of eight thrusters, referred to as branch A, has been in use since Cassini's launch more than 11 years ago. The redundant set, branch B, is an identical set of eight thrusters.

Propulsion engineers began to see a lower performance from one of the thrusters on branch A in October. A second branch A thruster is also now showing some degraded performance.

An extensive review with the propulsion system contractor, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, Colo., the thruster manufacturer, Aerojet, Sacramento, Calif., and propulsion experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., was completed last week. The recommendation was made to swap to side B as soon as is practical.

Mid-March is the earliest practical opportunity to make the swap. This allows time for the team to properly test and prepare the sequence of commands that will be sent to the spacecraft. Science planners have identified a period where no high-priority science will be lost during the switch, which will be done over a seven-day window. It also is a time when no navigation maneuvers are required to maintain the spacecraft's trajectory.

The swap involves commanding a latch valve to open hydrazine flow to the B side, and powering on some thruster control electronics. No pyrotechnic devices are involved in the swap, and the action is fully reversible if necessary.

Almost all Cassini engineering subsystems have redundant backup capability. This is only the second time in Cassini's 11 years of flight that the engineering teams have gone to a backup system. The backup reaction wheel was brought online a few years ago and is currently functioning as one of the three prime wheels.

Cassini successfully completed its four-year planned tour and is now in extended mission operations.

More information on the mission is available at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini . The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

The development of NASA's next-generation crew launch vehicle, the Ares I rocket, took another step forward Thursday as Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, successfully tested a critical piece. ATK conducted a full-scale separation test of the forward skirt extension for the Ares I-X flight test at its facility in Promontory, Utah.

The Ares I-X test launch is scheduled to lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida during 2009. The rocket will climb about 25 miles in altitude during a two-minute powered flight. The launch will culminate with a test of the separation of the first stage from the rocket and deployment of the accompanying parachute system that will return the first stage to Earth for data and hardware recovery.

Yesterday's test simulated the separation event that will take place following the first stage flight of Ares I-X. During the Ares I-X flight, the booster will separate at the frustum, a cone-shaped piece that attaches the first stage to the larger diameter upper stage.

"The Ares I-X team is pleased with the completion of this key test that will provide important data leading up to the launch of the Ares I-X flight," said Steve Davis, deputy mission manager for the Ares I-X test flight at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

At an altitude of about 15,000 feet, the nose cone will be jettisoned, deploying the pilot parachute. The pilot chute will, in turn, deploy the drogue parachute, which will re-orient the booster vertically and slow it to acceptable conditions for main parachute deployment. At about 4,000 feet, the separation at the base of the forward skirt extension occurs, pulling out the three main chutes packed inside.

Test objectives included demonstrating that the linear shaped charge used to separate the forward skirt extension severed cleanly and measuring the shock created by that charge. The data will be used to analyze the system and prepare for the Ares I-X flight test and the development of the Ares I crew launch vehicle.

The forward skirt extension is built to withstand the loads of the first stage and support the weight of the upper stage. The component is built as one solid piece of aluminum forged into a 6-foot-long by 12-foot-diameter cylinder with a unique internal support structure that houses three newly-designed main parachutes. Its state-of-the-art design will withstand the force imparted at main chute deployment.

"This was an important milestone for the program, as it validates key parameters to support the upcoming Ares I-X flight test," said Mike Kahn, executive vice president of ATK Space Systems. "The program is one step closer to the flight test of Ares I-X."

To view pictures of the separation test, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/multimedia/fses_test.html

For more information about NASA's next-generation spacecraft, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ares

The NOAA-N Prime satellite, built for NASA by Lockheed Martin, will improve weather forecasting and monitor environmental events around the world. NOAA-N Prime is the fifth and last in the current series of five polar-orbiting satellites with improved imaging and sounding capabilities.

The satellite will collect meteorological data and transmit the information to NOAA's Satellite and Information Service, which processes the data for input to the National Weather Service for its long-range weather and climate forecasts. Forecasters worldwide also will be able to access the satellite's images and data.

NOAA-N Prime has sensors that will be used in the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System to monitor for distress signals around the world.

> View NOAA N-Prime introduction video

Launch Preparations Update

The Flight Readiness Review for the Delta II and NOAA-N Prime spacecraft was successfully completed Jan. 29, with a countdown dress rehearsal conducted the following day. There are no issues or concerns to prevent final launch preparations.

One final milestone, the Launch Readiness Review, will be conducted today to assure all is ready to start the launch countdown operations tomorrow afternoon. The NOAA-N Prime polar orbiting weather satellite is enclosed in the Delta II payload fairing and is ready for launch.

The preliminary weather outlook for Feb. 4 has conditions forecast to be generally favorable for launch, but becoming less favorable the following day due to an approaching low pressure system.