The Daily Blog

Jul 20

Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch: LIVE VIDEO Of Final NASA Flight.

Jun 14

NASA Voyager Craft Discover Magnetic ‘Bubbles’ At Solar System’s Edge.

NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft have made a baffling discovery along their journey to the outer limits of the solar system.

Scientists studying the Voyager data noticed what may be giant magnetic bubbles located in the heliosphere, the region of our solar system that separates us from the violent solar winds of interstellar space.

The bubbles, scientists believe, form when the sun’s magnetic field becomes warped at the edge of our solar system.

“The sun’s magnetic field extends all the way to the edge of the solar system,” astronomer Merav Opher of Boston University said in a statement released Thursday. “Because the sun spins, its magnetic field becomes twisted and wrinkled, a bit like a ballerina’s skirt. Far, far away from the sun, where the Voyagers are, the folds of the skirt bunch up.”

What will these bubbles tell us about the way our sun’s magnetic field interacts with interstellar rays entering our solar system? According to CNET, Voyager project scientist Ed Stone told CBS News that this layer of bubbles “might affect how cosmic rays from outside can actually get inside the heliosphere. They have to sort of manage to get across all these bubbles.”

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory launched the Voyager craft 33 years ago on a mission bound for interstellar space.

Jun 4

Space Shuttle Endeavour Makes Historic Final Return to Earth.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space shuttle Endeavour and its six astronauts returned to Earth on Wednesday, closing out the next-to-last mission in NASA’s 30-year program with a safe middle-of-the-night landing.

Endeavour touched down on the runway a final time under the cover of darkness, just as Atlantis, the last shuttle bound for space, arrived at the launch pad for the grand finale in five weeks.

Commander Mark Kelly – whose wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, remained behind at her rehab center in Houston – brought Endeavour to a stop before hundreds of onlookers that included the four Atlantis astronauts who will take flight in July.

The museum-bound Endeavour, the youngest of the shuttles, logged nearly 123 million miles over 25 spaceflights.

“Your landing ends a vibrant legacy for this amazing vehicle that will long be remembered. Welcome home, Endeavour,” Mission Control told Kelly and his crewmates, who wrapped up U.S. construction at the International Space Station.

“It’s sad to see her land for the last time,” Kelly replied, “but she really has a great legacy.”

A considerably larger crowd gathered a few hours earlier to see Atlantis make its way to the launch pad, the last such trek ever by a shuttle. Thousands of Kennedy Space Center workers and their families lined the route Tuesday night as Atlantis crept out of the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building a little after sunset, bathed in xenon lights.

“The show pretty much tells itself,” Atlantis’ commander, Christopher Ferguson, said as he waved toward his ship. “We’re going to look upon this final mission as a celebration of all that the space shuttle has accomplished over its 30-year life span.”

Bright lights also illuminated the landing strip for Kelly, who made the 25th night landing out of a total of 134 shuttle flights.

The Endeavour astronauts – all experienced spacemen – departed the 220-mile-high outpost over the weekend. They installed a $2 billion cosmic ray detector, an extension beam and a platform full of spare parts, enough to keep the station operating in the shuttle-less decade ahead.

Their flight lasted 16 days and completed NASA’s role in the space station construction effort that began 12 years ago.

The official tally for Endeavour was 170 crew members, 299 days in space, 4,671 orbits of Earth and 122,883,151 miles.

Kelly was the last astronaut to exit Endeavour. He and his crew posed for pictures and signed autographs on the runway. Astronaut Gregory Chamitoff was so wobbly from weightlessness that he had to be supported by two colleagues.

“It’s great to bring Endeavour back in great shape. It looks like it’s ready to go do another mission,” Kelly said.

As Kelly thanked his crewmates for their flawless performance, co-pilot Gregory Johnson leaned over to shout into the mike, “And our commander, we want to thank him, too.” Johnson and the rest of the crew were openly supportive, over the months, about Kelly’s decision to stick with the flight, despite his wife’s serious injury.

Giffords was shot in the head during a mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., in January, but made a remarkable recovery and was able to attend the May 16 launch. The congresswoman did not travel to Florida for the landing because of the inconvenient hour, but Kelly’s two teenage daughters were on hand, along with his twin brother, Scott, who is also an astronaut.

Giffords and Kelly will reunite in Houston on Thursday.

Their flight lasted 16 days and, with a series of four spacewalks, completed NASA’s role in the space station construction effort that began more than 12 years ago. They were the last spacewalks to be conducted by a shuttle crew. One of the spacewalking astronauts, Mike Fincke, set a U.S. career record of 382 days in space.

Endeavour is the second shuttle to be retired. It ultimately will be put at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Built to replace the destroyed Challenger, Endeavour first soared in 1992 on a satellite-rescue mission that saw a record-setting three spacewalkers grab the wayward craft. Other highlights for the baby of the fleet: the first repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, to fix its blurred vision, and NASA’s first flight to assemble the space station in 1998.

Atlantis will remain at Kennedy Space Center as a tourist stop, following one last supply run to the space station. Liftoff is set for July 8.

Discovery, the fleet leader, returned from its final voyage in March. Its next stop is a Smithsonian Institution hangar outside Washington.

NASA is leaving the Earth-to-orbit business behind to focus on expeditions to asteroids and Mars. Private companies hope to pick up the slack for cargo and crew hauls to the space station. But it will be a while following Atlantis’ upcoming flight – at least three years, by one business’ estimate – before astronauts ride on American rockets again.

Until then, Americans will continue hitching rides aboard Russian Soyuz capsules at the cost of tens of millions of dollars a seat.

“We’re in the process of transition now, and it’s going to be awkward,” said Atlantis astronaut Rex Walheim. “But we’ll get to the other side and we’ll have new vehicles.

“I really do have to say, though, it’s going to be really hard to beat a vehicle that is so beautiful and majestic as that one is,” he said as Atlantis rolled to the pad behind him. “I mean, how can you beat that? An airplane sitting on the side of a rocket. It’s absolutely stunning.”

Mar 17

NASA Finds Cocaine At Space Center—AGAIN

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA is investigating after cocaine was found in a facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA spokesman Allard Beutel said Tuesday that 4.2 grams of a white powdery substance was found last week at the NASA facility, though he would not say where.

It tested positive for cocaine.

It’s not the first time cocaine has been found at the space center.

A small amount was discovered in January 2010 in a secure part of a hangar that housed space shuttle Discovery. A spokeswoman from NASA’s Inspector General Office in Washington declined to comment on how that case was resolved.

Mar 15

Shuttle Worker Dies in Fall at Kennedy Space Center.

A contract worker for NASA fell to his death today from a launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he was working to prepare space shuttle Endeavour for its final flight next month, NASA said.

The man, identified by NASA this afternoon as James D. Hanover, fell at around 7:40 a.m., NASA said. He worked for United Space Alliance, the primary contractor for the space agency’s shuttle program.

“Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to the family of Mr. Vanover,” United Space Alliance Chief Executive Officer Virginia Barnes said in a statement, according to the Sun-Sentinel. “Our focus right now is on providing support for the family, and for his coworkers. We are also providing our full support to investigating officials in order to determine the cause of the incident as quickly as possible.”

It was not clear how high up on the approximately 255-foot-high pad he was, or what task he was performing. “It’s all under investigation,” Kennedy spokeswoman Candrea Thomas said.

NASA emergency medical officials were unable to revive the man, NASA said. All work on the pad was canceled for the day while the fall was being investigated. An e-mail sent to United Space Alliance was not immediately returned.

Endeavour is slated to leave on its final mission April 19.

Mar 3

Kepler Spacecraft Finds 2 Planets Sharing Same Orbit.

To date, the telescope on the Kepler spacecraft has detected 1,235 planet candidates, and while Earth-bound telescopes are trying to determine if 54 of those planets may have conditions that could harbor life, one unique planetary system may have been uncovered.

Unique because it’s the first time scientists have discovered what may be two planets sharing the same orbit of their home sun, New Scientist reports.Since planets are so far away and smaller than their host stars, Kepler is only able to “see” the potential planets by measuring any decreases in the brightness of stars, which would be caused by planets passing in front of them.

If this dual-orbiting planet hypothesis gets confirmed, researchers suggest it would lend credence to a theory that our moon was created when a planet-sized object, sharing a similar orbit to Earth’s eons ago, possibly crashed into our home world.”Systems like this are not common, as this is the only one we have seen,” said Jack Lissauer, a space scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

The double-planetary system, dubbed KOI-730, is described in greater detail by Lissauer and his colleagues in the Astrophysical Journal.”About one-third of the 1,200 transiting planet candidates detected in the first four months of Kepler data are members of multiple candidate systems,” the scientists wrote.

“Several considerations strongly suggest that the vast majority of these multi-candidate systems are true planetary systems.”

A big question scientists now wonder about the KOI-730 planets is whether they’re headed for a runaway collision that could result in the formation of a moon.

But, in the galactic scheme of things, these two potential planets will most likely continue their cosmic close dance with each other for at least another 2 million years.

Oct 14

(Oct. 9) — Clinton Cragg is a NASA engineer on a troubleshooting safety team set up in the wake of the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. He had spent much of his professional life in the Navy, where he served as a submarine captain, accustomed to living in confined space.

So when the Chilean rescue authorities settled on a plan for reaching the 33 miners trapped 2,400 feet below a desolate desert, but needed a contraption to bring them to the surface, Cragg would become the perfect man to pitch in.
It had to be the smallest possible vehicle for the job, a capsule that would fit into a hole the size of a bicycle tire, with no wasted space for luxury, no elbow room for comfort.When Cragg turned over the design elements to the Chilean navy, which refined them and built the capsule, the rescue craft that emerged looked as if it belonged on a science fiction movie’s drawing board. Shaped like a cigar canister, with a drop-through escape hatch at the bottom, the capsule is designed to bring all 33 men up, one at a time, on a 20-minute ride from the hellhole where they have been trapped since Aug. 5. It is 13 feet long and weighs 926 pounds.”NASA is in the business of building unique, one-of-a-kind vehicles,” Cragg told AOL News. “I thought we could help.”

A drill finally broke through to the miners’ underground chamber on Saturday, and rescuers began bringing the men up to the surface late Tuesday.Cragg, 55, is part of a four-man team NASA dispatched to Chile in late August after the Chilean government asked the space agency for assistance. Its other members included two doctors, Michael Duncan and James Polk, and a psychologist, Al Holland. His colleagues were in demand from the moment they got on-site, but at first Cragg wasn’t sure how he could help.

The team arrived at the mine, 500 miles north of Santiago, on Aug. 30, about a week after the miners were discovered alive. The encampment where rescue drilling crews and the miners’ relatives had set up a small tent city dubbed Camp Hope was still in a state of euphoria.”The whole atmosphere at the mine was that they were going to get these guys at some point,” Cragg said. “Everybody was pulling the oars to the same beat.”While the NASA team was there, drillers had opened holes, called palomas — the Spanish word for dove — through which rescue workers topside sent fresh water and supplies down to the men.

“They had two holes in operation while I was there,” Cragg said. “In a 24-hour period, they sent down 76 different loads. They wanted to stock them up with food in case something else happened. They sent cots down, medical supplies, vaccinations. All sorts of stuff. They were constantly in motion.”

Andres Sougarret, the engineer in charge of the operation, was also working to relocate the miners’ sleeping area to a more secure location deeper in the mine.

But the Chileans had not yet figured out how to actually bring the men back up to the surface. Cragg met Chilean Navy Cmdr. Renato Navarro — also a submarine captain — who was directing the team of Chilean naval engineers charged with creating the rescue vehicle. Though they had surveyed the site, they had not gotten far on the actual design. Cragg offered to pitch in.”They knew what the diameter was going to be and the maximum height for the thing,” he said. “But not much else. It was a pretty fluid situation.”

Cragg returned to his office at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia and assembled about 20 NASA engineers to come up with a design. Using the same practices used in designing spacecraft, the group took three days to compile a list of 75 elements.

“The first thing you do is figure out what you want the capsule to do,” he said. “For example, it has to be operated by a single person, because at the end of the day, there is going to be only one guy left to himself inside and secured.”

The capsule also has to be able to withstand the friction of traveling up and down the rock walls of the mine shaft multiple times, so the NASA team gave it wheels. (And suggested an alternative: Teflon-coated sliding blocks attached to the outside of the capsule.)

“Metal scraping on rock would not last,” Cragg said.

It had to have an escape hatch, in case it got stuck in the shaft. It also got a safety harness, a clock and a way to communicate with the miner inside.

NASA’s medical experts weighed in, and other design elements were added: an oxygen tank, a light and a flat space in the bottom of the capsule for miners to stretch their legs.”A parade soldier who stands at attention with his legs locked often will pass out, cutting off blood supply to the legs,” Cragg explained. “As they pass out and lay on the ground in a crumpled position, blood starts flowing again, and they regain consciousness. The medical team was worried that the miners might pass out in a similar fashion, but wouldn’t have the ability to fall to the ground. The thing is so tiny, it could kill a guy.”

Cragg sent the list of design elements down to Chile and heard back that most of them were incorporated into the final design. Except for one: NASA gave the capsule a typical NASA-like name: the Escape Vehicle. The Chilean navy engineers, not improving on matters, christened it the Rescue Capsule.

But the name that appears to have stuck — and Cragg isn’t sure of its source — seems much more appropriate. At Camp Hope, where eager relatives wait for the rescues to begin, the capsule is known simply as the Phoenix.

Oct 10

(Oct. 10) — Like something out of a sci-fi movie, did alien particles find their way inside a space probe that landed on an asteroid and returned to Earth?

That question was raised last week by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, according to Japanese news agencies. Scientists reportedly found small, odd particles inside Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft, which returned to Earth in June after a seven-year, 3-billion-mile journey that took it to an asteroid and back.

Hayabusa left Earth in 2003, destined to become the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid, one of the many small, rocky objects found in space generally between the planets Mars and Jupiter.After a more than two-year voyage, Hayabusa spent 30 minutes on the surface of an asteroid — dubbed Itokawa — and collected small samples of asteroid dust.Hayabusa’s mission was to get enough asteroid samples to help scientists learn more about the origins of our solar system. NASA researchers are helping JAXA in the examination of the spacecraft’s powder payload.

Whether the asteroid dust contains an unknown extraterrestrial life form may not be known for some time, as the analysis of the material will continue for several months.

“Although we have not yet analyzed the makeup of the particles, I personally think the particles include sand removed from the Itokawa asteroid,” said JAXA scientist Toshifumi Mukai

Recent electron microscope analysis detected some particles that display different characteristics from the dust already picked up by the spacecraft.