Aug 6 2012
From The Space Library
CONTRACT RELEASE: C12-033 NASA SELECTS STRATEGIC ANALYSIS AND COMMUNICATIONS SUPPORT SERVICES CONTRACT
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- NASA has selected Analytical Services Inc. (ASI) of Huntsville, Ala., to provide strategic research and analysis and communications support services at the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. The firm-fixed-price contract begins Oct. 1, 2012 with a one-year base period, followed by four, one-year options and one, six-month option that may be exercised at NASA's discretion. The performance period, including all options, has a maximum contract value of $51.6 million, which includes a maximum potential indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity value of $19.25 million. Under the contract, ASI will be responsible for providing strategic research and analysis, communication planning, and communications services and product development and delivery.
RELEASE: 12-266 SMOKEY BEAR TO CELEBRATE 68TH BIRTHDAY AT MISSION CONTROL
HOUSTON -- NASA, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), the Texas Forest Service and Smokey Bear are teaming up to celebrate Smokey's 68th birthday Aug. 9 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The popular mascot will tour the center and record a promotional announcement for NASA Television that will air later this month. Smokey Bear is the USFS symbol for wildland fire prevention and represents the Advertising Council Inc.'s longest-running public service announcement campaign. On May 14, Smokey went where no bear had gone before. NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and the Expedition 31 crew chose a plush Smokey doll to be the team's launch mascot, celebrating their trip to the International Space Station. During his tour about 250 miles above Earth, Smokey will turn 68 years old, sparking the celebrations back on the ground Thursday. NASA's collaboration with the USFS began in 1971 when Stuart Roosa, an Apollo 14 astronaut and former Forest Service smokejumper, orbited the moon with a pack of seeds as part of a joint NASA/USFS project. Those "moon trees" were planted around the country (many for the nation's bicentennial in 1976) and around the world. Today, the trees stand as a tribute to Roosa and the Apollo program. This year, NASA and the USFS signed a Space Act Agreement that unites the two agencies in raising awareness about the importance of fire prevention and fire safety
RELEASE: 12-269 NASA'S CURIOSITY ROVER CAUGHT IN THE ACT OF LANDING
PASADENA, Calif. -- An image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured the Curiosity rover still connected to its 51-foot (almost 16 meter)-wide parachute as it descended toward its landing site at Gale Crater Sunday. "If HiRISE took the image one second before or one second after, we probably would be looking at an empty Martian landscape," said Sarah Milkovich, HiRISE investigation scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "When you consider that we have been working on this sequence since March and had to upload commands to the spacecraft about 72 hours prior to the image being taken, you begin to realize how challenging this picture was to obtain." The image was taken while MRO was 211 miles (340 kilometers) away from the parachuting rover. Curiosity and its rocket-propelled backpack, contained within the conical-shaped back shell, had not deployed yet. At the time, Curiosity was about two miles (three kilometers) above the Martian surface. "Guess you could consider us the closest thing to paparazzi on Mars," said Milkovich. "We definitely caught NASA's newest celebrity in the act." Curiosity, NASA's latest contribution to the Martian landscape, landed at 10:32 p.m. PDT Aug. 5 (1:32 a.m. EDT Aug. 6) near the foot of a three-mile tall mountain inside Gale Crater, which is 96 miles in diameter. In other Curiosity news, one part of the rover team at JPL continues to review the data from Sunday night's landing while another continues to prepare the 1-ton mobile laboratory for its future explorations of Gale Crater. One key assignment given to Curiosity for its first full day on Mars is to raise its high-gain antenna. Using this antenna will increase the data rate the rover can communicate directly with Earth. The mission will use relays to orbiters as the primary method for sending data home because that method is much more energy efficient for the rover. Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking rocks' elemental composition from a distance, are the first of their kind on Mars. Curiosity will use a drill and scoop which is located at the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into the rover's analytical laboratory instruments. To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater's interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history. The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona in Tucson. The instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Exploration Rover projects are managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, built the orbiter.
