NASA Satellites Detect Extensive Drought Impact on Amazon Forests

A new NASA-funded study has revealed widespread reductions in the greenness of the forests in the vast Amazon basin in South America caused by the record-breaking drought of 2010."The greenness levels of Amazonian vegetation - a measure of its health - decreased dramatically over an area more than three and one-half times the size of Texas and did not recover to normal levels, even after the drought ended in late October 2010," said Liang Xu, the study's lead author from Boston University.

The drought sensitivity of Amazon rainforests is a subject of intense study. Scientists are concerned because computer models predict that in a changing climate with warmer temperatures and altered rainfall patterns the ensuing moisture stress could cause some of the rainforests to be replaced by grasslands or woody savannas. This would cause the carbon stored in the rotting wood to be released into the atmosphere, which could accelerate global warming. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned that similar droughts could be more frequent in the Amazon region in the future.The comprehensive study was prepared by an international team of scientists using more than a decade's worth of satellite data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM).

NASA's Successful 'Can Crush' Will Aid Heavy-Lift Rocket Design

In this week, NASA put the squeeze on a large rocket test section. Results from this structural strength test at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will help future heavy-lift launch vehicles weigh less and reduce development costs.This trailblazing project is examining the safety margins needed in the design of future, large launch vehicle structures. Test results will be used to develop and validate structural analysis models and generate new "shell-buckling knockdown factors" -- complex engineering design standards essential to launch vehicle design.

"This type of research is critical to NASA developing a new heavy-lift vehicle," said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. "The Authorization Act of 2010 gave us direction to take the nation beyond low-Earth orbit, but it is the work of our dedicated team of engineers and researchers that will make future NASA exploration missions a reality."

The aerospace industry's shell buckling knockdown factors date back to Apollo-era studies when current materials, manufacturing processes and high-fidelity computer modeling did not exist. These new analyses will update essential design factors and calculations that are a significant performance and safety driver in designing large structures like the main fuel tank of a future heavy-lift launch vehicle.During the test, a massive 27.5-foot-diameter and 20-foot-tall aluminum-lithium test cylinder received almost one million pounds of force until it failed. More than 800 sensors measured strain and local deformations. In addition, advanced optical measurement techniques were used to monitor tiny deformations over the entire outer surface of the test article.

NASA wishes Shatner happy 80th

NASA joined the throngs of fans wishing "Star Trek" actor William Shatner a happy 80th birthday Tuesday in the form of an online note to TV's original Capt. James T. Kirk.

"We want to wish happy birthday to @WilliamShatner — someone who continues to boldly go!" NASA told Shatner via Twitter, where the space agency posts updates as @NASA.

Shatner starred as the iconic captain of the starship Enterprise in the original "Star Trek" science fiction series that ran from 1966 to 1969. He reprised the role in seven of the franchise's 11 feature films.

To mark Shatner's birthday, the actor's website teamed up with TrekMovie.com and ThinkGeek for an online video contest for "International Talk Like William Shatner Day." The winner for best video will receive a gold command-color Star Trek robe.

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NASA unpacks humanoid robot in space

The first humanoid robot ever launched into space is finally free. Astronauts at the International Space Station unpacked Robonaut on Tuesday, about two weeks after its arrival via shuttle Discovery. NASA broadcast the light-hearted unveiling ceremony yesterday.

American Catherine Coleman and Italian Paolo Nespoli pried off the lid of the robot’s packing box, as though they were opening a coffin. TV cameras showed lots of foam inside, but no robot.

“It’s like unearthing a mummy,’’ radioed a payload controller at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

“Well, at least the mummy would be here,’’ Coleman replied. “We just have an empty box where Robonaut is supposed to be.’’

Robonaut — also known as R2 — was spotted a minute later.

Also yesterday, astronaut Scott Kelly and two Russian cosmonauts landed safely in the snowy expanses of central Kazakhstan after spending five months on the station. Kelly returns as his twin brother, Mark, husband of wounded congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, prepares to be the commander of space shuttle Endeavour’s final mission in April. Scott Kelly was shown in a NASA photo wearing a blue wristband with a peace sign, a heart and the name “Gabby.’’


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Discovery counts down toward launch

NASA is counting down to the planned launch Thursday of shuttle Discovery and six astronauts on the orbiter's final flight into space.
Grounded for four months by dangerous external tank defects, Discovery and its crew are slated to blast off from Kennedy Space Center at 4:50 p.m. Thursday.
The orbiter's 39th flight will cap a career that has included missions to the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope, Russia's space station Mir and the first flights after the 1986 Challenger disaster and the 2003 Columbia accident.
John Glenn flew aboard Discovery on his 1998 return to space at age 77.
"She's taken us on many amazing journeys throughout the years, and we don't expect this flight to be any different than those," NASA Test Director Jeff Spaulding said Monday.
"She still has a few more miles to go before she
sleeps, though," Spaulding said.
A three-day launch countdown picked up Monday as NASA geared up for one of only three shuttle missions remaining before fleet retirement.
Mission commander Steve Lindsey and his crew aim to deliver a modified Italian cargo carrier to the International Space Station, where it will serve as a badly needed permanent storage unit.
The crew arrived at KSC Sunday and includes pilot Eric Boe and four mission specialists: Michael Barratt, Stephen Bowen, Al Drew and Nicole Stott.
Now poised for launch at pad 39A, Discovery has been upright on its mobile launcher platform a near-record 168 days. Only Columbia's 183-day stand on its platform before a 1990 astronomy mission was longer.

Alien life boost after Nasa finds one in two Suns has Earth like planets

The chances of finding alien life have been given a boost after it was revealed that one in two stars in the universe have Earth like planets orbiting around them.

The news came from NASA scientists studying the results from the Kepler telescope which in its first two years in space has found evidence of more than 1,200 planets in orbit around far distant stars.

The early findings suggests that there are triple the number of known planets outside our own solar system - 54 of them are Earth size and in the habitable zones from their suns.

Only two potentially habitable planets have previously been found outside earth's solar system, so Kepler scientists are very excited at finding so many possible candidate planets.

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Kepler chief scientist William Borucki said: "I am really delighted that we are seeing so many candidate planets and that means there is a rich ocean of planets out there to explore.

"For every two stars we are seeing a candidate planet."

The next step is to send out new telescopes to see if the atmospheres of the planets, that are between 30 and 100 light years away, have friendly atmospheres on which life could survive.

It is another big step to prove that a confirmed planet has some of the basic conditions needed to support life, such as the proper size, composition, temperature and distance from its star.

More advanced aspects of habitability such as specific atmospheric conditions and the presence of water and carbon require telescopes that are not built yet.

NASA facing new budget cuts?

The House Appropriations Committee wants to cut NASA's budget by hundreds of millions dollars for the rest of the year.
A new list outlines the proposed cuts, including NASA.
A $379 million budget cut was proposed for the space agency for the last half of the current fiscal year.

The first thing to remember is that Congress never passed a budget for the current fiscal year. All federal agencies are working on last year's funding levels, including NASA.
But the House Appropriations Committee is developing the official budget to take them through October, and on Wednesday, the chairman released what he called "a partial list" of 70 spending cuts that will be included in the upcoming bill that has to be passed before early March.
The cuts total $74 billion.
NASA's cuts are not from current funding levels. It is a cut from the Obama administration's proposed budget for this year. But it still will be a cut.
News 13 has talked to Congressman Bill Posey's office, but they really haven't had a chance to figure out what it means yet. The news is just out and Posey is involved in meeting after meeting Wednesday.
We got a similar response from Congresswoman Sandy Adams' office. They are waiting to see the actual language in the budget resolution, and can't really comment yet.

NASA Finds Earth-Size Planet Candidates in Habitable Zone, Six Planet System

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun.

Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.

"In one generation we have gone from extraterrestrial planets being a mainstay of science fiction, to the present, where Kepler has helped turn science fiction into today's reality," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "These discoveries underscore the importance of NASA's science missions, which consistently increase understanding of our place in the cosmos."

The discoveries are part of several hundred new planet candidates identified in new Kepler mission science data, released on Tuesday, Feb. 1. The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter.

Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter.

The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009, of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky.

"The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission's science principal investigator. "We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of which could have moons with liquid water."

Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of multiple planetary candidates. Kepler-11, located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth, is the most tightly packed planetary system yet discovered. All six of its confirmed planets have orbits smaller than Venus, and five of the six have orbits smaller than Mercury's. The only other star with more than one confirmed transiting planet is Kepler-9, which has three. The Kepler-11 findings will be published in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Nature.

NASA To Announce New Planetary Discoveries

NASA will host a news briefing at 1 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Feb. 2, to announce the Kepler mission’s latest findings about planets outside our solar system. The briefing will be held in the NASA Headquarters auditorium at 300 E St S.W. in Washington and carried live on NASA Television and the agency’s website at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.
Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the “habitable zone,” the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the surface of the orbiting planet. Although additional observations will be needed over time to achieve that milestone, Kepler is detecting planets and planet candidates with a wide range of sizes and orbital distances to help us better understand our place in the galaxy.
The news conference will follow the scheduled release of Kepler mission science data on Feb. 1. The data release will update the number of planet candidates and is based on observations conducted between May 2 and Sept. 17, 2009.
Participants are:
– Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington
– William Borucki, Kepler Science principal investigator, NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
– Jack Lissauer, Kepler co-investigator and planetary scientist, Ames
– Debra Fischer, professor of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
Reporters also may ask questions from participating NASA field centers or by phone. To obtain dial-in information, journalists must send their name, affiliation and telephone number to Steve Cole by e-mail at stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov by noon EST on Feb. 1.

U.S. human spaceflight and the road ahead

The USA first lofted a human into space in 1961. Within only a dozen years of that ride around the Earth by astronaut Alan Shepard, NASA landed 12 men on the moon and launched the Skylab space station.
The space shuttle era began in 1981, when shuttle Columbia launched from Cape Canaveral. Since then, the shuttle has lifted off 132 times, returning safely to Earth on all but two missions: Challenger's launch on Jan. 28, 1986, and Columbia's return flight on Feb. 1, 2003.
Three more shuttle missions are planned, one each for the remaining shuttles.
Discovery is due to launch Feb. 24 and go to the space station with a load of supplies and a storage cubicle. Endeavour is to launch April 19 and also go to the space station. It will carry more supplies and a multimillion-dollar physics experiment, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.
NASA has a final flight set for June 28. Shuttle Atlantis will take supplies to the space station and return a faulty pump. But NASA does not have funding yet for the few hundred million dollars to pay for the mission.
The mission scheduled for April was to be commanded by astronaut Mark Kelly. But Kelly's wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was critically wounded in a shooting this month, and it's not clear whether Kelly will fly his mission with her in rehabilitation.

NASA looking for business at KSC

NASA is spreading the word that the Kennedy Space Center is open for business even after the space shuttles stop flying later this year.
The space agency put out a formal notice Monday that the facilities at the space center are available to commercial space businesses.
Among the facilities available are the space center's two launch pads; the Vehicle Assembly Building, where the orbiter is mated with the rockets and fuel tank; the hangars where the shuttles are parked when they're not flying; and the landing strip where the shuttles touch down after completing a mission.
NASA has three more space shuttle flights planned before the program ends, most likely at the end of June.
The Center Planning and Development Office is the business development arm of the center. Responsible for all non-procurement partnerships and development, this office serves as Kennedy Space Center’s “front door” for potential new internal and external partners seeking to do business with Kennedy Space Center. Area development managers are listed on the contact page and are eager to work with prospective clients.

Kennedy Space Center also has many technology partnership opportunities for prospective customers, which include technical and lifecycle simulation laboratories. In addition, the Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP) focuses on small business and technological transfer opportunities. The IPP Partnership Seed Fund improves NASA's ability to meet mission technology goals by providing seed funding, as well as bridge funding to enable larger partnerships and development efforts. The IPP is instrumental in providing for an increased range of technology solutions, broadened technology portfolios, and larger pool of qualified commercial providers.

Nasa adds new shuttle flight – the final one for the fleet

Nasa does not yet know where it will get the money, but the space agency has added another shuttle launch to its schedule – the final one for the fleet.
The agency set a target launch date of June 28 for shuttle Atlantis and started preparations for the 135th and last shuttle flight.
The four-member crew will take up supplies to the International Space Station, make one spacewalk, and return a faulty pump that has bedevilled engineers.
Now three missions remain before Nasa retires its shuttle fleet this year. Shuttle Discovery’s last mission is planned for February 24, Endeavour’s in April.
The decision allows different parts of the shuttle programme to start work on Atlantis’ 12-day flight, including astronaut training and mission planning, Nasa spokesman Michael Curie said.
Originally Atlantis was planned as an emergency-only rescue mission if needed for the Endeavour crew.
Last year, the Obama administration and the US Congress clashed over the future of the human space programme and came up with a compromise that authorised one extra shuttle flight – the Atlantis mission. But congress never gave Nasa the few hundred million dollars needed for the extra flight, leaving the agency in a quandary about whether the flight was real or not.

NASA prepares climate science launch

NASA says it's nearly ready to launch a new Earth-observing research satellite, scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California next month.
The Glory mission, scheduled for Feb. 23, will improve understanding of how the sun and tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols affect Earth's climate, and will continue a legacy of long-term solar measurements intended to address key uncertainties about climate change, a NASA release said Thursday.
Once in orbit Glory will join a fleet called the Afternoon Constellation or "A-train" satellites, a group of Earth-observing satellites, including NASA's Aqua and Aura spacecraft, that flies in tight formation.
Glory will fly in a low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 438 miles and is intended to collect data for at least three years.
"Glory is going to help scientists tackle one of the major uncertainties in climate change predictions identified by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: the influence of aerosols on the energy balance of our planet," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division in Washington. "This mission also marks the first satellite launch under President Obama's climate initiative that will advance the United States' contribution to cutting-edge and policy-relevant climate change science."

NASA updates space shuttle target launch dates for two flights

NASA is targeting 4:50 p.m. EST on Thursday, Feb. 24, for the launch of space shuttle Discovery's STS-133 mission to the International Space Station. The liftoff of shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 flight is planned for 7:48 p.m. EDT on April 19, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The target dates were selected Thursday during the Space Shuttle Program's weekly Program Requirements Control Board meeting.
NASA sets official launch dates for each shuttle mission following agency Flight Readiness Reviews, which typically occur about two weeks prior to launches. All target launch dates are subject to change.

Launch Target	Assembly Flight	Launch Vehicle	Element(s)
Jan. 20, 2011	H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV)	HTV2	Logistics and resupply
Jan. 28, 2011	41P	ISS Progress 41	Logistics and resupply
Feb. 24, 2011	ULF5	Discovery STS-133	EXPRESS Logistics Carrier 4 (ELC4) Permanent Multi-Purpose Module (PMM)
Feb. 15, 2011	ATV-2	Ariane 5	Logistics and resupply
March 29, 2011	26S	Soyuz TMA-21 Expedition 27	Crew transport
April 19, 2011	ULF6	Endeavour STS-134	EXPRESS Logistics Carrier 3 (ELC3)Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS)
December 2011	3R	Russian Proton	Multipurpose Laboratory Module with European Robotic Arm (ERA)

NASA telescopes help identify most distant galaxy cluster

A team of astronomers has uncovered a burgeoning galactic metropolis, the most distant known in the early universe. This ancient collection of galaxies presumably grew into a modern galaxy cluster similar to the massive ones seen today.

The developing cluster, named COSMOS-AzTEC3, was discovered and characterized by multiwavelength telescopes, including NASA’s Spitzer, Chandra and Hubble space telescopes, and the ground-based W.M. Keck Observatory and Japan’s Subaru Telescope.

Johannes Staguhn, an associate research scientist at Johns Hopkins’ Center for Astrophysical Sciences in the Krieger School’s Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, contributed data to uncover the nature of a main cluster member.

“This exciting discovery showcases the exceptional science made possible through collaboration among NASA projects and our international partners,” said Jon Morse, NASA’s Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Scientists refer to this growing lump of galaxies as a proto-cluster. COSMOS-AzTEC3 is the most distant massive proto-cluster known and also one of the youngest, because it is being seen when the universe itself was young. The cluster is roughly 12.6 billion light-years away from Earth. Our universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old. Previously, more mature versions of these clusters had been spotted at 10 billion light-years away.

NASA Telescopes Help Find Most Distant Galaxy Cluster

Astronomers have uncovered a burgeoning galactic metropolis, the most distant known in the early universe. This ancient collection of galaxies presumably grew into a modern galaxy cluster similar to the massive ones seen today.

The developing cluster, named COSMOS-AzTEC3, was discovered and characterized by multi-wavelength telescopes, including NASA's Spitzer, Chandra and Hubble space telescopes, and the ground-based W.M. Keck Observatory and Japan's Subaru Telescope.

"This exciting discovery showcases the exceptional science made possible through collaboration among NASA projects and our international partners," said Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Scientists refer to this growing lump of galaxies as a proto-cluster. COSMOS-AzTEC3 is the most distant massive proto-cluster known, and also one of the youngest, because it is being seen when the universe itself was young. The cluster is roughly 12.6 billion light-years away from Earth. Our universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old. Previously, more mature versions of these clusters had been spotted at 10 billion light-years away.

Planck Mission Peels Back Layers of the Universe

The Planck mission released a new data catalogue Tuesday from initial maps of the entire sky. The catalogue includes thousands of never-before-seen dusty cocoons where stars are forming, and some of the most massive clusters of galaxies ever observed. Planck is a European Space Agency mission with significant contributions from NASA.

"NASA is pleased to support this important mission, and we have eagerly awaited Planck's first discoveries," said Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "We look forward to continued collaboration with ESA and more outstanding science to come."

Planck launched in May 2009 on a mission to detect light from just a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, an explosive event at the dawn of the universe approximately 13.7 billion years ago. The spacecraft's state-of-the-art detectors ultimately will survey the whole sky at least four times, measuring the cosmic microwave background, or radiation left over from the Big Bang. The data will help scientists decipher clues about the evolution, fate and fabric of our universe. While these cosmology results won't be ready for another two years or so, early observations of specific objects in our Milky Way galaxy, as well as more distant galaxies, are being released.

NASA'S Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet

NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.

The discovery of this so-called exoplanet is based on more than eight months of data collected by the spacecraft from May 2009 to early January 2010.

"All of Kepler's best capabilities have converged to yield the first solid evidence of a rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler's deputy science team lead at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and primary author of a paper on the discovery accepted by the Astrophysical Journal. "The Kepler team made a commitment in 2010 about finding the telltale signatures of small planets in the data, and it's beginning to pay off."

Kepler's ultra-precise photometer measures the tiny decrease in a star's brightness that occurs when a planet crosses in front of it. The size of the planet can be derived from these periodic dips in brightness. The distance between the planet and the star is calculated by measuring the time between successive dips as the planet orbits the star.

Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone, the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the planet's surface. However, since it orbits once every 0.84 days, Kepler-10b is more than 20 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun and not in the habitable zone.

Extreme Planet Makeover

The "Extreme Planet Makeover" on the NASA/JPL PlanetQuest site lets you roll up your sleeves and create your very own planet.

Balance five factors to create an Earth-like habitable world, or get wild and make your own extreme exoplanet. Use the Image Gallery feature to compare your creation with those of other Earthlings. Once you've finished creating the exoplanet of your dreams, download a picture of your custom world for posterity.

NASA Chat: The Quest for Planets

A new planet discovery will be announced Monday Jan. 10 during the 'Exoplanets & Their Host Stars' presentation at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference in Seattle, Washington.

Kepler is NASA's first mission to look specifically for Earth-size planets in the habitable zones (areas where liquid water could exist) around stars like our sun. Kepler will spend 3-1/2 years surveying more than 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy. More than 300 exoplanets have been discovered previously, most of which are low-density gas giants such as Jupiter or Saturn in our own solar system.

Natalie Batalha of the NASA Kepler Mission Team will be online answering your questions about this new planet finding on Monday, Jan. 10 from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. EST / 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. PST. Natalie will be chatting with you live from the conference in Seattle.

Joining the chat is easy. Simply visit this page on Monday from 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. EST / 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. PST. The chat window will open at the bottom of this page starting 15 minutes before the chat. You can log in and be ready to ask questions at 3:30 p.m.