Endeavour to Move to VAB

Technicians at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida successfully completed all pressure and leak tests on space shuttle Endeavour this past weekend.

Endeavour's side hatch will be closed for Saturday's move from its hangar in Orbiter Processing Facility-2 to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Also, the shuttle's final tire pressurization for flight is set for today.

Meanwhile, the STS-130 astronauts will practice techniques for the mission's first spacewalk in the neutral buoyancy lab near NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Proctor Crater, Mars

This view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is of the Proctor Crater. The relatively bright, small ridges are ripples. From their study on Earth, and close-up examination by the MER rovers (roving elsewhere on Mars), scientists surmise that the ripples are composed of fine sand (less than 200 microns in diameter) or fine sand coated with coarser sand and granules.

The larger, darker bedforms are dunes composed of sand, most likely of fine size. Ripples tend to move slower than dunes. Because of this, over time, ripples get covered with dust, possibly explaining the bright tone visible here. The dunes are dark probably because they are composed of basaltic sand (derived from dark, volcanic rock) that is blown by the wind enough that dust does not sufficiently accumulate to change their color.

This area in Proctor Crater is being monitored by HiRISE to document any changes over time.

Version 1.1 of the NASA App Is Now Available!

The first official NASA App invites you discover a wealth of NASA information right on your iPhone or iPod Touch. The NASA App collects, customizes and delivers an extensive selection of dynamically updated information, images and videos from various online NASA sources in a convenient mobile package. Come explore with us.

Features:

• NASA Mission Information
• Launch Information & Countdown clocks
• Sighting Opportunities (Visible Passes for ISS, Shuttle and more)
• Mission Orbit Trackers
• NASA Image of the Day
• Astronomy Picture of the Day
• NASA Videos
• NASA Twitter Feeds/Mission Updates

What's New In This Version:

• Visible sighting opportunities listed for near-earth orbiters (shuttle, ISS, etc), by home location and through search for location
• Richer Mission details and more content
• Enhancements to Videos and Updates panels
• High-resolution image option (configured in device settings)
• Status updates on upcoming launches
• Prevent sleep mode setting for tracking launches (configured in device settings)

Space Station 2010 Calendar Celebrates a Decade of Research

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of people continuously living aboard the International Space Station, NASA is providing a special 2010 calendar to teachers and the public.

The calendar contains unique images and highlights historic space exploration milestones and educational facts about the international laboratory. Each month has its own theme and offers a glimpse into topics such as a typical day in the life of a crew member, the staff that supports the station, and the massive dimensions of the orbiting research facility.

The calendar is available for free download at:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

"As we enter into our 10th year of human presence on the space station, we celebrate that fact and acknowledge the success of the station as one of the greatest technological, political and engineering accomplishments in human history," said Space Station Program Manager Mike Suffredini. "I hope people enjoy the calendar and are inspired to learn something new and exciting about NASA and the station throughout the year."

Nearly 100,000 copies of the calendar are being delivered to classrooms in all 50 states through NASA education programs and affiliated education networks.

Suzaku Spies Treasure Trove of Intergalactic Metal

Every cook knows the ingredients for making bread: flour, water, yeast, and time. But what chemical elements are in the recipe of our universe?

Most of the ingredients are hydrogen and helium. These cosmic lightweights fill the first two spots on the famous periodic table of the elements.

Less abundant but more familiar to us are the heavier elements, meaning everything listed on the periodic table after hydrogen and helium. These building blocks, such as iron and other metals, can be found in many of the objects in our daily lives, from teddy bears to teapots.

Recently astronomers used the Suzaku orbiting X-ray observatory, operated jointly by NASA and the Japanese space agency, to discover the largest known reservoir of rare metals in the universe.

Suzaku detected the elements chromium and manganese while observing the central region of the Perseus galaxy cluster. The metallic atoms are part of the hot gas, or "intergalactic medium," that lies between galaxies.

"This is the first detection of chromium and manganese from a cluster," says Takayuki Tamura, an astrophysicist at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency who led the Perseus study. "Previously, these metals were detected only from stars in the Milky Way or from other galaxies. This is the first detection in intergalactic space."

The cluster gas is extremely hot, so it emits X-ray energy. Suzaku's instruments split the X-ray energy into its component wavelengths, or spectrum. The spectrum is a chemical fingerprint of the types and amounts of different elements in the gas.

The portion of the cluster within Suzaku's field of view is some 1.4 million light-years across, or roughly one-fifth of the cluster's total width. It contains a staggering amount of metal atoms. The chromium is 30 million times the sun's mass, or 10 trillion times Earth's mass. The manganese reservoir weighs in at about 8 million solar masses.

Exploding stars, or supernovas, forge the heavy elements. The supernovas also create vast outflows, called superwinds. These galactic gusts transport heavy elements into the intergalactic void.

Harvesting the riches of the Perseus Cluster is not possible. But researchers will mine the Suzaku X-ray data for scientific insights.

"By measuring metal abundances, we can understand the chemical history of stars in galaxies, such as the numbers and types of stars that formed and exploded in the past," Tamura says.

The Suzaku study data show it took some 3 billion supernovas to produce the measured amounts of chromium and manganese. And over periods up to billions of years, superwinds carried the metals out of the cluster galaxies and deposited them in intergalactic space.

A complete history of the universe should include an understanding of how, when, and where the heavy elements formed -- the chemical elements essential to life itself. The Suzaku study contributes to a larger ongoing effort to take a chemical census of the cosmos. "It's a part of learning the entire history of chemical element formation in the universe," notes Koji Mukai, who heads the Suzaku Guest Observer program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

With more than 10,000 galaxy clusters known, astronomers have just barely begun their work. "The current Suzaku result cannot answer these big questions immediately," Tamura says, "but it is one of the first steps to understand the chemical history of the universe."

The study appeared in the November 1 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

NASA Uses Twin Processes to Develop New Tank Dome Technology

NASA has partnered with Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, Colo., and MT Aerospace in Augsburg, Germany, to successfully manufacture the first full-scale friction stir welded and spun formed tank dome designed for use in large liquid propellant tanks.

The NASA and Lockheed Martin team traveled to Germany to witness the first successful aerospace application of two separate manufacturing processes: friction stir welding, a solid-state joining process, and spin forming, a metal working process used to form symmetric parts.

The twin processes were used by MT Aerospace to produce an 18-foot-diameter tank dome using high-strength 2195 aluminum-lithium. The diameter of this development dome matches the tank dimensions of the upper stage of the ARES I launch vehicle under development by NASA, as well as the central stage of the European Ariane V launcher.

"This new manufacturing technology allows us to use a thinner, high-strength alloy that will reduce the weight of future liquid propellant tanks by 25 percent, compared to current tank designs that use a lower-strength aluminum alloy that weighs more," said Louis Lollar, project lead for the Friction Stir Weld Spun Form Dome Project at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The concave net shape spin forming process, patented by MT Aerospace, drastically simplifies the manufacturing of large tank domes and reduces cost by eliminating manufacturing steps, such as machining and assembly welding, that are required when manufacturing traditional gore panel - a pie-shaped section of the tank dome --construction domes.

"The success of this project is proof positive that when innovation, partnership and expertise are brought together, we can deliver new capabilities at lower cost with greater reliability for NASA and the nation's space program," said Jeb Brewster, project manager of the Friction Stir Welded Spun Formed Dome project at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. "This team has pushed the envelope by using existing commercial materials combined with cutting edge technology. The results provide the potential for a significant improvement over the current processes and materials being used today."

The spherical tank dome was manufactured from a flat plate "blank" made of the 2195 alloy. The blank was constructed by friction stir welding together two commercial off-the-shelf plates in order to produce a large starting blank, reducing the cost of raw materials. The welded plate blank was then spun formed to create the single-piece tank dome.

This is the first time this combination of twin manufacturing processes has been successfully applied to produce a full-scale 2195 aluminum-lithium dome.

"This achievement also demonstrates that international cooperation between the United States and Europe can achieve very promising and concrete results with mutual benefits for future space programs," said Judith Watson, program manager at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. "Lockheed Martin and MT Aerospace have set up a very efficient and effective development team."

Two additional, full-scale development tank domes are scheduled for manufacture and testing in coming months as part of the joint, two-year technology demonstration program.

NASA has invested in the Friction Stir Weld Spun Form Dome Project since 2006, which is managed by the Exploration Technology Development Program for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington.

Honoring Apollo 13's Fred Haise

At a 1 p.m. ceremony on Dec 2, 2009, Administrator Charles Bolden presented NASA's Ambassador of Exploration Award to Apollo 13 astronaut Fred Haise, a Biloxi, Miss., native. The ceremony took place at Biloxi's Gorenflo Elementary School. Pictured from left to right are school principal Tina Thompson, Administrator Bolden, Fred Haise, Biloxi Public School District Superintendent Paul Tisdale and Stennis Space Center Director Gene Goldman.

Endeavour, Crew Prep for STS-130 On-going

Technicians in Orbiter Processing Facility-2 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida are preparing space shuttle Endeavour for its move to the Vehicle Assembly Building on Dec. 12.

Throughout the next three days, they'll leak test Endeavour's environmental control and life support system. Techs also are testing the space shuttle main engine and aerosurface hydraulics, as well as testing and calibrating the Inertial Measurement Units, or IMUs, which provide navigational information for the shuttle while it's in orbit.

Meanwhile, Endeavour's STS-130 astronauts ‪are practicing an integrated launch simulation today at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

STS-129 Astronauts Install SpaceCube on ISS

The Goddard SpaceCube team members include (left to right): Manuel Buenfil, Mike Lin, Tom Flatley, Ed Hicks (kneeling), Danny Espinosa, Robin Ripley (seated), Gary Crum, Alessandro Geist, Karin Blank (seated), and Jeff Hosler. Not pictured: Dave Petrick.

SpaceCube is a next-generation computer system developed at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The potentially revolutionary computer system, which provides up to 25 times the processing power of a typical flight processor, will be testing special software techniques that would make the computer more immune to upsets that happen when radioactive particles affect the computer. The SpaceCube was demonstrated during the Hubble Servicing Mission earlier this year.

70th Anniversary Exhibits

In celebration of NASA Ames' 70th anniversary, 12 businesses in downtown Mountain View are showcasing exhibits of the center's past. Shown here is a spacesuit replica at Red Rock Cafe.

Twin Brown Dwarfs Wrapped in a Blanket

This image shows two young brown dwarfs, objects that fall somewhere between planets and stars in terms of their temperature and mass. Brown dwarfs are cooler and less massive than stars, never igniting the nuclear fires that power their larger cousins, yet they are more massive (and normally warmer) than planets. When brown dwarfs are born, they heat the nearby gas and dust, which enables powerful infrared telescopes like NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to detect their presence.

Here we see a long sought-after view of these very young objects, labeled as A and B, which appear as closely-spaced purple-blue and orange-white dots at the very center of this image. The surrounding envelope of cool dust surrounding this nursery can be seen in purple. These "twins," which were found in the region of the Taurus-Auriga star-formation complex, are the youngest of their kind ever detected. They are also helping astronomers solve a long-standing riddle about how brown dwarfs are formed - more like stars or more like planets? Based on these findings, the researchers think they have found the answer: Brown dwarfs form like stars.

This image combined data from three different telescopes on the ground and in space. Near-infrared observations collected at the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain cover wavelengths of 1.3 and 2.2 microns (rendered as blue). Spitzer's infrared array camera contributed the 4.5-micron (green) and 8.0-micron (yellow) observations, and its multiband imaging photometer added the 24-micron (red) component. The Caltech Submillimeter Observatory in Hawaii made the far-infrared observations at 350 microns (purple).

These observations were made before Spitzer ran out its coolant in May of 2009, officially beginning its "warm" mission.

NASA TV to Broadcast Space Station Crew Soyuz Landing Events

NASA Television will air the events surrounding the landing of three International Space Station crew members who will return to Earth Dec. 1. The space travelers have lived and worked aboard the space station for the past six months. NASA TV coverage will include the broadcast of farewells aboard the orbiting laboratory, hatch closure and undocking on Nov. 30, and the deorbit burn and landing on Dec. 1.

Frank De Winne of the European Space Agency, Russian cosmonaut and Soyuz Commander Roman Romanenko and Flight Engineer Bob Thirsk of the Canadian Space Agency will undock their Soyuz spacecraft from the station at 9:53 p.m. CST Nov. 30. They will land in Kazakhstan at about 1:16 a.m. (1:16 p.m. Kazakhstan time) on Dec. 1. The three men spent 188 days in space, including 186 days aboard the station, following their Soyuz launch on May 27 from Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

NASA's Jeff Williams took over command of the station on Nov. 24 from De Winne, who served as the first European Space Agency commander of the complex. Williams also will lead the new Expedition 22 crew along with Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev. Expedition 22 begins with the undocking of the Soyuz Monday evening. It will be the first time the station has been tended by only two crew members since July 2006. Oleg Kotov of the Russian Federal Space Agency, NASA's Timothy J. Creamer and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Space Agency, are set to launch in another Soyuz vehicle from Kazakhstan on Dec. 21 and join Expedition 22 on the station on Dec. 23.

Upcoming NASA TV Soyuz landing programming events (all times CST):

Monday, Nov. 30:
-- 6:30 p.m. Farewells and Hatch Closure (hatch closure scheduled at 6:53 p.m.)
-- 9:30 p.m. Undocking (undocking scheduled at 9:53 p.m.)

Tuesday, Dec. 1:
-- 12 a.m. Deorbit burn and landing (deorbit burn scheduled at 12:25 a.m.; landing scheduled at 1:16 a.m.)
For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and schedule information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

NASA Assessing New Roles for Ailing QuikScat Satellite

NASA mission managers are assessing options for future operations of the venerable QuikScat satellite following the age-related failure of a mechanism that spins the scatterometer antenna. This spinning antenna had been providing near-real-time ocean- surface wind speed and direction data over 90 percent of the global ocean every day.

In recent months, the QuikScat project team has been monitoring a pattern of increasing friction in the bearings that allow the antenna to spin, leading to increased resistance and strain on the motor that turns QuikScat's rotating antenna. This degradation was fully expected, as the spin mechanism was designed to last about 5 years.

After experiencing further difficulties over the weekend, the antenna stopped spinning early today, Nov. 23. The QuikScat spacecraft and scatterometer instrument themselves remain in otherwise good health. Should engineers be unable to restart the antenna, QuikScat will be unable to continue its primary science mission, as the antenna spin is necessary to estimate wind speed and direction and form the wide data swath necessary to obtain nearly global sampling.

Over the coming days, NASA managers will review contingency plans for restarting the antenna and assess options for using the mission in its present degraded state to advance Earth system science in the event the antenna cannot be restarted. For example, degraded scatterometer measurements from QuikScat can still be useful for cross-calibrating the mission's climate data record with measurements from other scatterometers, including the operational EUMETSAT ASCAT instrument, India's recently launched Oceansat-2 and a planned Chinese scatterometer. Specific operational forecasting applications such as polar ice measurements and limited hurricane observations may also be supportable.

By any measure of success, the 10-year-old QuikScat mission is a unique national resource that has achieved and far surpassed its science objectives. Designed for a two-year lifetime, QuikScat has been used around the globe by the world's operational meteorological agencies to improve weather forecasts and identify the location, size and strength of hurricanes and other storms in the open ocean. The mission has also provided critical information for monitoring, modeling, forecasting and researching our atmosphere, ocean and climate.

Inventors Answer Call for New Glove Designs

Two independent inventors answered NASA's call for innovative new designs for the next generation of astronaut gloves. Today's spacewalkers have to contend with bulky gloves that stiffen when pressurized, making it tough to grip and flex while completing tasks in the vacuum of space.

Peter Homer and Ted Southern put their prototypes to the test during NASA's 2009 Astronaut Glove Challenge, held Nov. 19 at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville, Fla., near NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

Homer, an engineer from Southwest Harbor, Maine, was awarded $250,000 after placing first. Southern, a sculpture major at New York's Pratt Institute, earned second place and $100,000.

The ultimate goal of the Astronaut Glove Challenge is to improve the current design, resulting in a stronger and more flexible glove that will reduce the hand fatigue experienced by astronauts working in space.

For the first Astronaut Glove Challenge held in 2007, competitors supplied only the inner pressure-restraining layer. The outer layer, which provides protection against extreme temperatures and micrometeoroids, was an added requirement this year. Representatives from NASA and the agency's spacesuit contractor, ILC Dover, observed and noted the gloves' performances in a series of three tests.

The competitor inserted his gloved arm and hand into a depressurized glove box for the dexterity and flexibility test, completing cycles of movements and tasks, such as gripping a handle, using tools, flexing the hand and wrist, and touching the tip of the thumb to the tip of each finger.

In the joint force test, test operators from ILC Dover sealed and pressurized each glove to 4.3 pounds per square inch (psi) of internal pressure, then tugged it through its full range of motion while measuring the amount of force each movement required.

Finally, the gloves' strength capabilities were measured in the burst test. The room quieted as test operators sealed the glove and filled it with water, slowly increasing the pressure. Competitors, judges and other spectators leaned forward, watching the glove for signs of weakness or rupture.

The event was sponsored by Secor Strategies LLC of Titusville, Fla., and non-profit Volanz Aerospace of Owings, Md., managed the event for NASA.

"Both of you did better than the (current) Phase VI glove, and you both get a round of applause for that," said Alan Hayes, Volanz Aerospace chairman. "The test results were incredibly close."

Both Homer and Southern began working on the project in spring 2006 and competed in the first Astronaut Glove Challenge. Homer took home $200,000 after winning that event. After the 2007 challenge, Southern teamed up with former competitor Nikolay Moiseev.

Prior to the challenge, competitors were in the dark about who else would participate or what their designs might be.

"You're sort of developing in the vacuum of your own little world," Homer said. "You're hoping that you're going far enough with your design. And then there's the aspect of, 'Who am I going to be going up against?' I didn't know Ted was competing until we walked in and saw each other."

The Astronaut Glove Challenge is one of six Centennial Challenges prize competitions managed by NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program.

Supersonic Testing

Supersonic aircraft create a substantial sonic boom, meaning that they can't fly over populated areas without creating an intense noise disruption. NASA has been investigating ways to decrease this noise, which could revolutionize the way we fly.

Ray Castner, an aerospace engineer in the Inlet and Nozzle Branch at NASA's Glenn Research Center, has been testing nozzle concepts with the goal of dramatically reducing noise produced by supersonic aircraft. Castner and his team tested a small scale exhaust nozzle in the 1-by 1-Foot Supersonic Wind Tunnel at Glenn. Pressurized air was supplied to the nozzle, which was tested at simulated flight conditions of Mach 2. Early results are promising, and suggest that changes in pressure in the nozzle affect the sonic boom signature.

Cabeus Crater

Most mountains on the Earth are formed as plates collide and the crust buckles. Not so for the Moon, where mountains are formed as a result of impacts. Images taken looking across the landscape rather than straight down really bring out topography and help us visualize the lunar landscape. However such images can only be taken as the spacecraft rolls to the side, in this case about 70°, so the opportunities are limited. Foreground is about 15 km wide, view is northeast across the north rim of Cabeus crater. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.

Cabeus crater is relatively old, 100-km in diameter, and contains significant areas of permanent shadow. Such regions are of great interest because they may harbor significant deposits of ices (water, methane, etc). Cabeus crater is most famous as the site of the LCROSS Centaur impact (9 October 2009) that was intended to excavate and eject any volatiles that may be in the regolith (what we call the lunar soil). Though analyses of data collected during the impact are still ongoing, preliminary results suggest that yes, significant amounts of water ice may be trapped in these shadowed regions (at least at this one spot).

Two and a half days after the LCROSS impact the LRO spacecraft slewed 70° back towards Cabeus crater to allow LROC to acquire an overview image of a portion of the northern rim. The large mountain (or massif) in the right background (full panorama below) is a portion of the ancient rim of the South Pole Aitken basin, it rises some 6000 meters (19,685 feet) above the surrounding plains, and more than 9200 meters (30,184 feet) above the floor of Cabeus crater -- taller than any mountain on the Earth. On the Moon mountains are formed in only minutes as huge amounts of energy are released when asteroids and comets slam into the surface at velocities greater than 16-km per second (more than ten times faster than a speeding bullet). In contrast, mountains on the Earth typically form over millions of years during slow motion collisions of tectonic plates.

Panoramic view looking across the North rim of Cabeus crater from the SW. The distance from left to right is about 75-km and from foreground to background in the center is about 50-km. The LCROSS impact was just off the bottom center of the panorama Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University.

Future astronauts will see the same view as they descend to the surface for a polar landing. Explore the rim of Cabeus on your own as you plan your landing spot!

New Moon Sets Stage for Brilliant Leonids Meteor Shower

This year's Leonids meteor shower peaks on Tuesday, Nov. 17. If forecasters are correct, the shower should produce a mild but pretty sprinkling of meteors over North America followed by a more intense outburst over Asia. The phase of the moon will be new -- setting the stage for what could be one of the best Leonid showers in years.

"We're predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas, and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia," says Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "Our forecast is in good accord with independent theoretical work by other astronomers."

Leonids are bits of debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Every 33 years the comet visits the inner solar system and leaves a stream of dusty debris in its wake. Many of these streams have drifted across the November portion of Earth's orbit. Whenever our planet hits one, meteors appear to be flying out of the constellation Leo.

"We can predict when Earth will cross a debris stream with pretty good accuracy," says Cooke. "The intensity of the display is less certain, though, because we don't know how much debris is in each stream." Caveat observer!

Join the live chat with Bill Cooke on Monday, Nov. 16 from 3:00 p.m. until 4:00 p.m, CST (4:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. EST). Bill will be online to take your questions about the Leonids meteor shower. To join the live chat, return to this page and log in by 3:00 p.m. CST (4:00 p.m. EST) on Monday, Nov. 16. The chat module will open below, embedded in this page. See you in chat!

Students Send Microbe Experiment on Space Shuttle Atlantis

An experiment by college students that will study how microbes grow in microgravity is heading to orbit aboard space shuttle Atlantis.

Undergraduate and graduate students at Texas Southern University in Houston developed the experiment that will fly as part of the STS-129 mission. The mission is scheduled to launch at 2:28 p.m. EST on Nov. 16 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"I'm thrilled that giving students the chance to design and research an experiment to fly in space is one of the tools we have at NASA to engage them in science, technology, engineering and mathematics," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori B. Garver said." These young people are our future, and providing an opportunity to inspire them is a major part of our mission at NASA."

NASA's Office of Education selected Texas Southern University as a 2008 University Research Center. Texas Southern established a Center for Bio-nanotechnology and Environmental Research. Students at the center developed the Microbial-1 experiment to evaluate the morphological and molecular changes in E. coli and B. subtilis bacteria.

"The University Research Center Project is designed to enhance the research infrastructure and capacity at minority institutions," said Katrina Emery, NASA's University Research Center project manager at the agency's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif. "By engaging in participatory learning opportunities like this experiment, students can see themselves as researchers, now and in the future."

This space shuttle flight experiment is a proof-of-concept model for the URC project to give students hands-on experience. The experiment provides the university students the opportunity to design, monitor and execute the study in laboratories, as well as near real-time on the space shuttle. Each component of the experiment is designed for easy reproduction in the classroom, providing a valuable experience to students.

"This is an amazing opportunity for our students, and it reflects the growing quality of our research programs at Texas Southern," said John M. Rudley, president of Texas Southern University. "We are excited our students have the opportunity to participate in such relevant research. We are also pleased that with our partnerships with area school districts, we are able to take these projects beyond the university to the school classrooms to encourage more students to study science, math, and technology."

The unique experimental data will be used to develop grade-appropriate microbiology modules for students in kindergarten through twelfth grade. Data downloaded from NASA's Payload Operations and Control Center will be available on the research center's Web site. In addition, educators will receive a teacher's guidebook featuring background information, lesson plans and student activities for conducting this project in their classrooms. BioServe Space Technologies at the University of Colorado is providing management support and hardware for the experiment.

Texas Southern University is one of 13 universities to receive grant funding from NASA's University Research Center project. The project is designed to enhance the research capabilities of minority-serving institutions and increase the production of underrepresented and underserved students majoring in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines.

Test Stand A-2 Peering Out from the Fog

At Stennis Space Center, three large engine test stands were built the early 1960s to test the first and second stages of the Apollo Saturn V rocket that carried Americans to the moon. Since 1975, the test stands have supported testing of the Space Shuttle main engines. The last planned test was conducted in July of 2009.

In this photo, the A-2 Test Stand peered out from a thick blanket of fog during the early morning hours of Oct. 28, 2009. This photo was taken from the top of the B Test Stand.

The A-1 and A-2 test stands are transitioning to support J-2X engine testing for the Constellation Program, while the B-1/B-2 test stand will support stage testing. For the first time since the 1960s, a new test stand, called A-3, is under construction with a scheduled completion date of 2011. The A-3 test stand will be 300 feet tall and will enable engineers to conduct simulated high-altitude testing up to 100,000 feet.

A Picture of Unsettled Planetary Youth

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope captured this infrared image of a giant halo of very fine dust around the young star HR 8799, located 129 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. The brightest parts of this dust cloud (yellow-white) likely come from the outer cold disk similar to our own Kuiper belt (beyond Neptune's orbit). The huge extended dust halo is seen as orange-red.

Astronomers think that the three large planets known to orbit the star are disturbing small comet-like bodies, causing them to collide and kick up dust. The extended dust halo has a diameter of about 2,000 astronomical units, or 2,000 times the distance between Earth and the sun. For reference, the size of Pluto's orbit is tiny by comparison, with a diameter of about 80 astronomical units.

This image was captured by Spitzer's multiband imaging photometer at an infrared wavelength of 70 microns in Jan. 2009.