Crew unpacked the fresh fruit, opens Cygnus hatch

On Thursday morning 5:02 a.m, Commander Steve Swanson opened the hatch to Orbital Sciences Cygnus cargo vehicle, to begin unloading a half of science experiments, crew supplies, station hardware and even a bit of fresh food. Swanson joined Gerst to equalize the cabin pressure and the vestibule leading to Cygnus between the station and the cargo craft. NanoRacks module was the first item unloaded from Cygnus, it provides microgravity research with a low-cost and use of standardized "plug and play" modules.

“Just stunk my thumb into the skin of a fresh orange and the smell completely overwhelmed my senses. Didn’t know how much I missed real fruit.” shared these by Wiseman on twitter, when their unpacked a special treat aboard Cygnus-fresh fruit.

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Lifetime achievement award to JPL director, Ed Stone


From 1972, Ed Stone is a project scientist of NASA's Voyager mission, and former director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California. On Wednesday, American Astronautical Society honored with a lifetime achievement award to ED Stone. Stone received with honor, "for sustained and extraordinary contributions to America's space programs, including innovative planetary missions in support of unnamed exploration of the solar system" said society. "This award is an extraordinary honor", said Stone.

This award was given for every 10 years on the occasion of the society’s anniversary; Stone received this award in Washington. Previously this award was taken by William H. Pickering (another former director of JPL) and Wernher von Braun (a pioneer in rocket development).

Between 1991 and 2001, Stone served as JPL director, during this period of time a number of missions were launched, all while Voyager 1 and 2 soared beyond planets and headed toward the boundary of the solar system.

Cygnus and Robonaut in the Space


On Wednesday at 6:36 a.m. EDT Cygnus was grappled in the space, as it flew within about 32 feet of the complex by the Steve Swanson. 57-foot Canadarm2 is controlled by Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst from robotics workstation inside the station's cupola. Wiseman helps his crewmates to capture and coordinate activities, orbital flying nearly 260 miles over northern Libya, at the time of capture. Canadarm 2 robotic arm helps to hold the Cygnus securely, the robotics officer at Mission Control in Houston remotely operated the arm to guide the cargo craft.

Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman monitored the Common Berthing Mechanism operations for first and second stage capture of the cargo ship, when the Cygnus in position, second stage captured at 8:36 a.m. EDT. After completing the captures, Wiseman removed the Center line Berthing Camera System. At afternoon Swanson spent his time on work, the installation of some upgrades for Robonaut 2 (the humanoid robot).
More information about Robonaut

Robonaut delivered to the station in May 2011 through STS-134 shuttle mission, including legs delivered to the station through SpaceX-3 cargo mission in April. He started his work on Wednesday to install new helmet pieces and replace Robonuat's shoulder and elbow covers, installing legs (It may take 2 additional days).

Two giant radiation belts – NASA’s Van Allen Probes orbit


Van Allen radiation belt contains inner is fairly stable and outer changes shape, size and composition. It suggests two-fold process; one is called mechanism which gives the particles an initial boost and other one is called electromagnetic wave known as Whistlers. Numerous theories tell where these energetic particles come from and have been developed. The first theory is that the Particles move slowly from one place to another, 4,00,000 miles or more, gathering energy along the way. While in second theory, increasing the particles speed through some mechanism, which already inhabiting that area of space.

In past Van Allen Probes known as the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP). It designed for understanding the sun's influence on Earth and also helps for studying the Earth's radiation belts on various scales of space and time. The instrument Van Allen Probes are the part of the broader LWS (Living With Star) program and also helps for measuring the charged particles that comprise the Earth's radiation belts.


For more information, visit
Van Allen Probes

Keep Aircraft on Schedule - TSS

TSS means Terminal Sequencing and Spacing, developed by NASA to help NextGen a reality, and it delivered to the FAA on July 14 during public occasion in nation's capital. It is designed to help controllers who work as a part of TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control), which is doughnut shaped volume of sky that extends outward about 35 miles and begins 5 miles from the airport.




By using TSS, Controllers gives the appropriate direction to the aircraft like- to speed up, slow down, or maintain current speed. The goal for TSS is to control the speed of the continuously descending aircraft to safely merge together at a point in the sky where they can be handed off  to an airport for their final clearance and approach to land.

 
John Robinson is a chief engineer for the TSS development at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, given a statement about TSS "TSS gives controllers the strategic information they need so that downstream merge works out easier". With the help of TSS, works in aircraft is easier to the controllers.

Astronaut has started work

German Flight engineer Alexander Gerst and Commander Steve Swanson, they ready to hold the grapple Cygnus on Wednesday at 6:39 a.m.EDT. On Monday morning Swanson started to do work on Advanced Colloids Experiment, for that he opened the Fluids Integrated Rack. Fluids Integrated Rack (FIR) is designed to host investigations in areas such as wetting, gels, colloids and capillary action, including cooling and boiling. For study the behavior of microscopic particles in creams and gels, there is a experiment called Advanced Colloids Experiment-Microscopy-1 (ACE-M-1).

With the help of Reid Wiseman (NASA astronaut), Gerst work in the Kibo laboratory module because of set up sensors to measure airflow in the Japanese lab. Wiseman removed all the samples and swapped desiccant packs in a science freezer. In the Destiny laboratory’s Microgravity Science Glovebox, Reid Wiseman set up the Burning and Suppression of Solids experiment called combustion experiment.

Read more about Combustion experiment.

ANTARES rocket launch successful

Antares rocket successfully launched on Sunday (13-07-2014) at 12:52 pm, from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, U.S.A. This mission is the second cargo delivery flight to the station. Total amount spent for this mission is $1.9 million. This mission carries overall 3,300 pounds of supplies to the station, including crew food and supplies, hardware and scientific equipment and experiments. For research investigations Planet Labs of San Francisco developed, a flock of nanosatellites designed to make images of Earth. NASA’s Ames Research Center (Moffett Field, California) built a new experiment called TechEdSat-4; it’s used for satellite-based investigation. Another experiment called SPHERES by Ames, it contains some features like sensor, multiple cameras to enable 3d-mapping and finally a robotic navigation inside the space station.

Expedition 40 Commander Steve Swanson of NASA with the help of his partner Alexander Gerst (European Space Agency) is a flight engineer, will use the station’s robotic arm to take hold of Cygnus at 6:39 am on Wednesday. It will take one month to be filled with trash and burn up during reentry in Earth’s atmosphere.

For more information about Orbital-2 mission, visit
Orbital-2

To fly an airborne test bed instrument (MABEL) and ICESat-2


 Comparing in summer and winter, sea ice looks dramatically different. In these weekends, NASA ready to investigate the features of ice in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the help of Flying Laser Altimeter. NASA going to launches the ICESat-2; it will measure the elevation of Earth through the out pluses of green laser light and timing how long it takes individual photons to bounce off Earth’s surface and return. MABEL (Multiple Altimeter Beam Experiment) collects data with lasers and photon-detectors.

Thorsten Markus given a statement, "We need to give scientists data to enable them to develop algorithms that work during summer." He is a project scientist in ICESat-2 at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. With the help of ICESat-2 like data, we can study about the features like areas where snow has melted, pooling up in low spots of the sea ice or glaciers and also bare ice with no snow coverage.

For more information about ICESat-2, visit
http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/icesat2/

Degradation Free Spectrometers

A new sounding rocket is ready to launch on 14 July, 2014 from White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. This mission is used to measure the irradiance (total energy output). Leonid Didkovsky given a statement about the mission “Data observations from previous missions have provided significantly improved measurements of irradiance easily”. He is the principal investigator for the mission in University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Degradation Free Spectrometers experiment helps to find the total energy of the extreme ultraviolet light coming from sun. This experiment was developed by Didkovasky and his team. two new instruments, one is called Optics-Free Spectrometer is used to detect the sun’s photons another one Dual Grating Spectrometer is used to separate the visible light from the extreme ultraviolet light with two stable.

NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft and STEREO



"The particles coming from the sun such as photons, electrons, protons, neutrons, gamma rays are to gather different kinds of information" said by David Lawrence. Charge particles from the sun (closer to Earth), we can observe easily, but it’s difficult to analyze their journey affected by magnetic fields. MESSENGER spacecraft is close as 28 million miles from the sun and 93 million miles from the earth, to detect the solar neutrons (Created in solar flares) near to the sun.

STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) provided useful observation of the burn with a sudden intensity. This mission is mostly helpful in solar observation. It consists of two space-based observations, one is a head o earth in the orbit and the other one is trailing behind. With this mission scientists will able to see the evolution and structure of solar storms.

Exo-brake (Smartphone and a small satellite with a de-orbiting device)


NASA's Ames Research Center located in Moffett Field, California. They’re going to launch new experiments into space aboard NASA's second Orbital Sciences Corporation Cygnus spacecraft. The agency's for second of eight planned cargo mission is $1.9 billion Commercial cargo resupply flight of the Orbital Science. Launching date is July 11, 2014 (Friday) at 10.40 am, launch coverage on NASA TV will begin at 10 am, it will arrive at the space station on Tuesday (July 15, 2014).

Smart SPHERES (Prototype):

SPHERES means Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites; it is one of the flying space robots. There using Google's "Project Tango" Smart SPHERES, because of 3-D sensor with multiple cameras. Smart SPHERES helps for 3-D mapping and navigation inside the space station. Smart SPHERES are developed and tested by Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Head quarters in Washington.

TechEdSat-4 (Autonomous):

Type of mission is technology. TechEdSat means "Technical Education Satellite". This mission built by San Jose State University students in partnership with Ames Research Center and AAC Microtec. The goal of this mission is to, develop the requisite technologies for on-demand sample return capability from the ISS, and perform re-entry test flights and hard ware’s validation.


PMBSS moving the telescope


PMBSS is used to holds the telescope's science instruments and also the 18 beryllium mirror-segments. Largest mirror in the telescope called primary mirror (the one starlight will hit first). It is designed to reduce the changes in the shape of the telescope, because when one side is hotter than the other side. The telescope is operated in the cold temperature with a range between -406 and -343 degrees Fahrenheit, the black plane must move less than 98 nanometers, i.e., approximately 1/1,000 the diameter of a human hair.

Even though its size is despite and complex, it is one of the most lightweight precision-alignment and the structure is ever designed and built. It measures roughly 24 ft tall by 19.5 ft wide by more than 11.5 ft deep and weighs only 190kgs (2,180 pounds). It supports a mission payload and instruments that weigh more than 3,150kgs (7,300 pounds).


Finally OCO-2 successfully launched


At 2.56 am .PDT (5.56 a.m. EDT) Wednesday, the spacecraft were successfully launched, to study about atmospheric carbon dioxide. The orbit launched in Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The second stage of rocket is 429-mile (690-kilometer) orbit. OCO-2 is mainly used to locate the Earth's sources of and storage places for atmosphere carbon dioxide. Charles Bolden (NASA Administrator) given a quotation "Climate change is the challenge of our generation."

Why scientist used OCO-2?, this mission tells how long carbon dioxide level change in future and also change in concentration that effect earth's climate. After 45 days the operation will begin.


Titan's ice shell


By the use of Cassini mission, scientist found some data (Analyzed data). Inside the Titan, might (Are the Saturn's largest moon) be as salty as the Earth's Dead Sea. With the help of Cassini project, researchers presented a new structure for Titan. "We're finding the new mysterious to solve old ones." the quotes word are spoken by Linda Spillker.

The ocean in the Titan is extremely salty brine of water mixed with dissolved salts likely composed of chemicals like sulfur, sodium and potassium. The data of Cassini's indicates the thickness of Titan's ice crust it varies slightly from place to place.

A new binary or twin stars


The distance between two binary or twin stars is same at which Earth orbits the sun. While comparing with sun and planet host star, sun is not much dimmer. Earth (little colder) is not much colder than planet. Four international research team, Andrew Gould (Professor in the Ohio State University in Columbus), on July 4 their published the issue of the journal science.

Scott Gaudi (Professor of astronomy at Ohio State) said "This greatly expands the potential locations to discover habitable planets in future". OGLE-2013-BLG-0341LBb is a planet named by astronomers; it is called gravitational microlensing, by using this method "A planet is also present around the foreground star". With the help of telescope, it can easily study about OZLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment), MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics).

Cygnus cargo spacecraft (Orbital-2 mission)


Spacecraft is scheduled to launch on July 11, 2014 at 1.40 p.m. E.D.T, in Mid-Atlantic Regional Spacecraft's Launch Pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It is filled with more than 3,000 pounds of supplies, science experiments to expand the research capability of 40 crew members from aboard, spare parts, and hardware.

TechEdSat-4 is a satellite-related investigation (flock of nano satellite). It’s used for taking images of earth. The main region for building cargo is to conduct new science investigations to the only laboratory in microgravity.

Cygnus spacecraft will arrive at the space station on July 15, 2014, when the launch scheduled on July 11, 2014. The capture and installing stars on July 15, 2014 at 6.15 a.m.

Information about Eruptions by IRIS (Solar Observatory)


IRIS means Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph. A new solar observatory was launched into orbit around earth on June 27, 2013. IRIS observes the sun's atmosphere in low level, Interface region means moving constantly. IRIS helps for understanding the detailed images on particular area, even more turbulence and complexity than expected. By using this, we can easily understand how the solar material reaches million of degrees.

On all observation IRIS captures two kinds of data, it collects images and also data called spectra. Spectra are an important tool in IRIS arsenal to understand the interface region. Scientists easily measure the velocity, temperature and density of the solar material, it provides causes of eruptions.

50th Anniversary (The Civil Rights Act of 1964) for NASA

Lyndon Johnson (American President 1963-1969) signed into the law, most of the effect in civil rights legislation. Due to the outlawed discrimination in such areas like restaurants, employment, voting, public and education on the basis of some characteristics like race, color, religion, national origin.... etc.

Before the law was enacted, there is a change happen in workspace in the forefront. In 1964 January, their create a contractors group in Alabama to make sure African-American got space jobs. The first negro recruiter was "Charlie Smoot" hired by NASA.

Knowing about globe and they change over time by OCO-2 mission


OCO-2(Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2) is scheduled for Wednesday, July 2 at 5.56 am from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The launch team operated properly during tests before the launch countdown, but it failed at final minutes. Their decided to replace the failed value with a spare and the system is being tested in preparation for Wednesday's launch attempt.

OCO-2 will produced the detailed picture of natural sources of carbon dioxide, and also their “sinks” places on Earth surface where carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. By OCO-2 mission we know around the globe and how they change over time.

For more information about OCO-2, visit http://www.nasa.gov/oco2

The high-altitude balloon carrying the LDSD project



High-altitude balloon(Helium Balloon) launch occurred in Hawaiian island facility at 8.45 a.m.Their tested balloon and vehicle were about 1,20,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean at the time of the drop and it splashed down in the ocean at 11.35 a.m.

Mark alder is a project manager for LDSD at NASA's jet Propulsion Laboratory located in Pasadena, California. “The test vehicle worked good. After the result we met all of our flight objectives, have recovered all the the vehicles hardware and data recorders for future flights”.

He said "Our vehicle flew so well, by adding some extra credit points with the Supersonic inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator[SIAD]". SIAD is a large, first deceleration technology is deployed during the flight and second one is an enormous parachute, and the tam analyzing data on the parachute due to the test vehicle did not deploy as expected.

Dorothy Rasco given some text about NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate is " This entire effort was just fantastic work by the whole team and is a proud."

For more information about LDSD mission. 
 http://go.usa.gov/kzZQ
For More information Space Technology Mission Directorate.
http://www.nasa.gov/spacetech

Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 by NASA on July 1

NASA prepares to launch the first spacecraft to analyze the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere on July 1 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 is the second earth science mission launched by NASA

Carbon dioxide being the vital part of our carbon cycle has major impact on the climatic changes. Scientists have warned that carbon dioxide released by human activity like burning of fossil fuel and deforestation has disturbed the balance of natural carbon cycles.  A portion of Carbon dioxide emitted stays in the earth atmosphere and the remaining portion is observed by the ocean, but the location and identity of the natural land sinks believed to be absorbing the rest is not clearly understood.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) will clearly portrait the sources of carbon dioxide, the process that pulls out carbon dioxide from earth atmosphere. 

 Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division in Washington SAYS, “With the OCO-2 mission, NASA will be contributing an important new source of global observations to the scientific challenge of better understanding our Earth and its future."

3 Powerful X-class Solar Flares in 2 days

Solar flare actually refers to the eruption of energy in the sun’s surface. In simple terms, it is the sudden flash of brightness in the sun layer. The radiations from flare are actually harmful to humans. The safest part is that these radiations cannot pass through the earth surface. But still if the radiations are more intense then it may disturb the atmospheric layer where communication signals travel. 

Recently on June 10, 2014 three X-class solar flares has erupted in 2 days and the images were clearly captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. All the three flares have been emitted from the active region of the sun. 


The solar flares are represented as X1, X2. . X-class solar flare, X denotes the most intense flame and number denotes the strength of the flare. Higher number means more intense.
Forecasters are keeping a close eye on the Sun for more updates. 

Nasa seeks coders to follow asteroids

US space agency Nasa is seeking coders who could help thwart a global catastrophe by identify asteroids that may collapse into Earth. Its Asteroid Data Hunter contest will suggest $35,000 (£21,000) to programmers who can recognize asteroids capture by ground-based telescopes.The charming elucidation must increase the revealing rate and minimize the number of false positives.Scientists are progressively more work for be of assistance to make good judgment of measureless statistics sets.

The new enhanced asteroid hunt code must also be able to ignore imperfection in the figures and run on all computer systems."Protecting the planet from the intimidation of asteroid impact means first eloquent where they are," said Jenn Gustetic, decision-making of the programme.


"By opening up the search for asteroids, we are harnessing the potential of innovators and makers and citizen scientists everywhere to solve this global challenge."

Current asteroid detection is only tracking one percent of the estimated objects that orbit the sun, according to asteroid mining firm Planetary Resources, which is partnering with Nasa in the contest.Human curiosity Zooniverse is one of the leading online platforms for citizen scientists, working on a range of projects including classifying galaxies. In February it racked up one million volunteers.

"Nasa takes these detailed pictures but there is a lot of noise out there from stars and other things and we need to write code that can find patterns in the data," said Zooniverse team member Robert Simpson. "This is not necessarily Nasa's area of expertise. It is a technology problem rather than a space problem."He thinks that increasingly citizen scientists can contribute to important scientific discoveries and breakthroughs.

Keeping foods fresher for a long duration in space with misting systems

Even though there are many advancement in technology, keeping foods fresher in space for a long period has been impossible. Research has been going on to keep fresh fruits and vegetables for long-term in space. It has been found that spraying waters over fruits and vegetables keep them fresher for a long period. It’s a fact that if a plant or a food has more solute than the environment surrounding it then to achieve equilibrium state water diffuses into the cell.


Thus by routinely spraying the vegetables with water it keeps up their turgor pressure and keeps them nice and crisp for us to eat.


And this can be achieved by creating a food locker installed with misting systems. A misting system can be used a water sprayer and can help to keep food fresher for a long period.


Based on the above considerations, our research and development team at mistingsystems.net designed an extraordinary misting product that can be used in the food lockers used in space to keep foods fresher for a longer period. This misting product creates a tiny mist at regular intervals that work as a water sprayer to keep foods and vegetables fresh over a long term.


Infact the mist generated by this specially designed misting product preserves the foods from being getting spoiled.


This may sound ridiculous but in a recent test conducted it has been proved that the foods kept under this product remained fresh for more than three months. Now with this product our astronauts can have fresh and tastier food in space as we have at earth.


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