Water sphere "behavior" experiments aboard the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA Watch the video on YouTubeWater, essential to sustaining life on Earth, is that much more highly prized in the unforgiving realm of space travel and habitation. Given a launch cost of $10,000 per pound for space shuttle cargo, however, each gallon of water at 8.33 pounds quickly makes Chanel No. 5 a bargain at $25,000 per gallon. Likewise, ample water reserves for drinking, food preparation, and bathing...

Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high."In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years," says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. "The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions."The cause of the surge is solar minimum,...

NASA's Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging spacecraft known as MESSENGER will fly by Mercury for the third and final time on Sept. 29. The spacecraft will pass less than 142 miles above the planet's rocky surface for a final gravity assist that will enable it to enter Mercury's orbit in 2011.Determining the composition of Mercury's surface is a major goal of the orbital phase of the mission. The spacecraft already has imaged more than 90 percent of the planet's surface....

Jack Fischer flew F-22 Raptors at Langley Air Force Base but didn't have a clue about what was going on the other side of the fence.Reid Wiseman flew F-18 Super Hornets at Oceana and had an idea about some of the things done at NASA's Langley Research Center, but had never been to the facility."My daughter's really interested in NASA," he said. "She loves the Air and Space Center. I'm not sure whether she liked that best or the ride through the (Hampton Roads) tunnel."Wiseman's daughter is three.Fischer,...

Researchers have used NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) to compose the most comprehensive picture of changing glaciers along the coast of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.The new elevation maps show that all latitudes of the Greenland ice sheet are affected by dynamic thinning -- the loss of ice due to accelerated ice flow to the ocean. The maps also show surprising, extensive thinning in Antarctica, affecting the ice sheet far inland. The study, led by Hamish Pritchard...

Since May 2009, the tropical Pacific Ocean has switched from a cool pattern of ocean circulation known as La Niña to her warmer sibling, El Niño. This cyclical warming of the ocean waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific generally occurs every three to seven years, and is linked with changes in the strength of the trade winds. El Niño can affect weather worldwide, including the Atlantic hurricane season, Asian monsoon season and northern hemisphere winter storm season. But while scientists...

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed frozen water hiding just below the surface of mid-latitude Mars. The spacecraft's observations were obtained from orbit after meteorites excavated fresh craters on the Red Planet.Scientists controlling instruments on the orbiter found bright ice exposed at five Martian sites with new craters that range in depth from approximately half a meter to 2.5 meters (1.5 feet to 8 feet). The craters did not exist in earlier images of the same sites. Some of...

NASA scientists have discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the moon. Instruments aboard three separate spacecraft revealed water molecules in amounts that are greater than predicted, but still relatively small. Hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, also was found in the lunar soil. The findings were published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3, instrument reported the observations. M3 was carried into...

Early in the 20th century, a succession of adventurers and scientists pioneered the exploration of Antarctica. A century later, they're still at it, albeit with a different set of tools. This fall, a team of modern explorers will fly over Earth's southern ice-covered regions to study changes to its sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers as part of NASA's Operation Ice Bridge.Starting next month, NASA will fly its DC-8, a 157-foot-long airborne laboratory that can accommodate many instruments. The fall...

Close Marshall Space Flight Center is testing a new robotic lunar lander test bed that will aid in the development of a new generation of multi-use landers for robotic space exploration. The test article is equipped with thrusters that guide the lander, one set of which controls the vehicle's attitude that directs the altitude and landing. On the test lander, an additional thruster offsets the effect of Earth’s gravity so that the other thrusters can operate as they would in a...

Locusts, the grasshopper-like insects of Biblical lore, are normally docile creatures that prefer solitary lives in the desert, away from other members of their species. But sometimes, when the rains come and patches of green begin to dot dry landscapes, their populations skyrocket and something extraordinary can happen. Hormonal changes, triggered by crowding, can cause the insects to change color, become more active and congregate in huge swarms capable of decimating crops.In the 1980s, scientists...

According to the vast majority of climate scientists, the planet is heating up. Scientists have concluded that this appears to be the result of increased human emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, which trap heat near the surface of Earth. However, some information sources -- blogs, websites, media articles and other voices -- highlight that the planet has been cooling since a peak in global temperature in 1998. This cooling is only part of the picture, according to a recent...

After earning his Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, Jonathan Trent spent six years in Europe at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Germany, the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and the University of Paris at Orsay in France. He returned to the United States to work at the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine at Yale Medical School for two years before establishing a biotechnology group at the Department of...

A group of engineers working on a novel manufacturing technique at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., have come up with a new twist on the popular old saying about dreaming and doing: "If you can slice it, we can build it."That's because layers mean everything to the environmentally-friendly construction process called Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication, or EBF3150, and its operation sounds like something straight out of science fiction."You start with a drawing of the part you want...

› Full resolution jpeg (1.05 Mb) This artist's conception shows a lump of material in a swirling, planet-forming disk. Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found evidence that a companion to a star -- either another star or a planet -- could be pushing planetary material together, as illustrated here.Planets are born out of spinning disks of gas and dust. They can carve out lanes or gaps in the disks as they grow bigger and bigger. Scientists used Spitzer's infrared vision to study...

Platforms from the mate-demate device at NASA's Kennedy Space Center surround space shuttle Discovery and its 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. The strucutre is used to lift the shuttle safely on and off the aircraft. There is a similar structure at Dryden Flight Research Center in California adjacent to Edwards Air Force Base. Discovery landed at Edwards Sept. 11 to end the STS-128 mission. › High-Res...

Retired NASA Apollo program astronaut James McDivitt was inducted into the Aerospace Walk of Honor in Lancaster City, Calif. on Sept. 19, 2009. McDivitt, who commanded the Gemini IV mission in 1965 and the Apollo 9 mission in 1969, was one of five former test pilots and astronauts honored at the 20th induction ceremonies.McDivitt was joined at the induction ceremony by retired NASA astronaut Gordon Fullerton, Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, NASA Dryden acting deputy director Gwen Young and Ron...