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''RELEASE: 12-338 NASA ROVER FINDS OLD STREAMBED ON MARTIAN SURFACE''

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Curiosity rover mission has found evidence a stream once ran vigorously across the area on Mars where the rover is driving. There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars, but this evidence - images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels - is the first of its kind.  Scientists are studying the images of stones cemented into a layer of conglomerate rock. The sizes and shapes of stones offer clues to the speed and distance of a long-ago stream's flow.  "From the size of gravels it carried, we can interpret the water was moving about 3 feet per second, with a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep," said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley. "Plenty of papers have been written about channels on Mars with many different hypotheses about the flows in them. This is the first time we're actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of it."  The finding site lies between the north rim of Gale Crater and the base of Mount Sharp, a mountain inside the crater. Earlier imaging of the region from Mars orbit allows for additional interpretation of the gravel-bearing conglomerate. The imagery shows an alluvial fan of material washed down from the rim, streaked by many apparent channels, sitting uphill of the new finds.  The rounded shape of some stones in the conglomerate indicates long-distance transport from above the rim, where a channel named Peace Vallis feeds into the alluvial fan. The abundance of channels in the fan between the rim and conglomerate suggests flows continued or repeated over a long time, not just once or for a few years.  The discovery comes from examining two outcrops, called "Hottah" and "Link" with the telephoto capability of Curiosity's mast camera during the first 40 days after landing. Those observations followed up on earlier hints from another outcrop, which was exposed by thruster exhaust as Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory Project's rover, touched down.  "Hottah looks like someone jack-hammered up a slab of city sidewalk, but it's really a tilted block of an ancient streambed," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.  The gravels in conglomerates at both outcrops range in size from a grain of sand to a golf ball. Some are angular, but many are rounded.  "The shapes tell you they were transported and the sizes tell you they couldn't be transported by wind. They were transported by water flow," said Curiosity science co-investigator Rebecca Williams of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz.  The science team may use Curiosity to learn the elemental composition of the material, which holds the conglomerate together, revealing more characteristics of the wet environment that formed these deposits. The stones in the conglomerate provide a sampling from above the crater rim, so the team may also examine several of them to learn about broader regional geology.  The slope of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater remains the rover's main destination. Clay and sulfate minerals detected there from orbit can be good preservers of carbon-based organic chemicals that are potential ingredients for life.  "A long-flowing stream can be a habitable environment," said Grotzinger. "It is not our top choice as an environment for preservation of organics, though. We're still going to Mount Sharp, but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment."  During the two-year prime mission of the Mars Science Laboratory, researchers will use Curiosity's 10 instruments to investigate whether areas in Gale Crater have ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

''RELEASE: 12-340 NASA ORION SPLASHDOWN TESTS ENSURE SAFE LANDINGS FOR ASTRONAUTS''

HAMPTON, Va. -- The 18,000-pound test article that mimics the size and weight of NASA's Orion spacecraft crew module recently completed a final series of water impact tests in the Hydro Impact Basin at the agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.  The campaign of swing and vertical drops simulated various water landing scenarios to account for different velocities, parachute deployments, entry angles, wave heights and wind conditions the spacecraft may encounter when landing in the Pacific Ocean. The next round of water impact testing is scheduled to begin in late 2013 using a full-sized model that was built to validate the flight vehicle's production processes and tools.  Orion will carry astronauts farther into space than ever before and be the most advanced spacecraft ever designed. It will fly its first flight test, designated Exploration Flight Test 1, in 2014. The spacecraft will travel more than 3,600 miles into space -- 15 times farther from Earth than the International Space Station -- and reach speeds of more than 20,000 mph before returning to Earth. This unmanned flight test will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Several Orion systems, including the heat shield and parachutes at speeds generated during a return from deep space, will be tested.  In 2017, Orion will be launched by NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), a heavy-lift rocket that will provide an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS will enable new missions of exploration and expand human presence in the solar system.  Langley's Hydro Impact Basin is 115 feet long, 90 feet wide and 20 feet deep, and is located at the historic Landing and Impact Research Facility where Apollo astronauts trained for moonwalks.

''CONTRACT RELEASE: C12-053 NASA SELECTS OCEAN COLOR SERVICES CONTRACTOR''

WASHINGTON -- NASA selects Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) of McLean, Va., for ocean color services at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.  This is a five-year cost-plus-fixed fee, indefinite-delivery-indefinite-quantity contract with a maximum ordering value of $43 million. Performance period for the contract is Oct. 24 - Oct. 23, 2017.  Under this contract, SAIC will provide support services focused on global ocean remote sensing, satellite data processing and distribution, ocean color sensor calibration and product validation. In addition, SAIC will support processing algorithm and software development, ocean bio-optical and bio-geochemical field data collection and laboratory analysis, research in marine bio-geochemistry and ocean dynamics. These services will support flight projects such as Aquarius, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, and Visible and Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite.

''MEDIA ADVISORY: M12-193 NASA ASTRONAUT KEVIN FORD INTERVIEW AVAILABILITY BEFORE SPACE STATION MISSION''

HOUSTON -- NASA astronaut Kevin Ford of Indiana, making final preparations for an October launch to the International Space Station at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Star City, Russia, will be available for live satellite interviews from 5 to 6 a.m. CDT Friday, Oct. 5.  The interviews will originate from Star City, and will be preceded at 4:30 a.m. by a video b-roll feed of Ford's mission training and previous spaceflight.  Ford, who previously served as pilot aboard space shuttle Discovery on its STS-128 mission to the station in September 2009, will first serve as an Expedition 33 flight engineer through mid-November, and will then transition to commander of Expedition 34 through March, 2013. Ford is scheduled to launch with Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin of the Russian Federal Space Agency at 5:51 a.m. CDT Oct. 23 (4:51 p.m. Baikonur time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad 31 in Kazakhstan.  A retired U.S. Air Force colonel, Ford is a native of Montpelier, Ind. He holds a bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame, a master's in international relations from Troy State University, a master's in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida, and a doctorate in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology. He was selected as an astronaut in 2000.  Ford and his colleagues will be aboard the station during an exceptionally busy time that includes cargo operations of two SpaceX Dragon commercial vehicles; four Russian Progress resupply vehicles, and the arrival of "Cygnus," the first commercial cargo spacecraft from the Orbital Sciences Corp., scheduled for December 2012. November will bring the departure of station crew members Sunita Williams, Yuri Malenchenko and Aki Hoshide, while mid-December will bring Ford and his crewmates three new crew members - NASA's Tom Marshburn, Canada's Chris Hadfield and Russia's Roman Romanenko - rounding out the six-person Expedition 34 crew.  Ford previously spent 14 days in space as pilot aboard the space shuttle Discovery's STS-128 mission in 2009, which delivered the multi-purpose logistics module "Leonardo" to the station with more than 15,000 pounds of science and storage racks to the orbiting outpost. On that mission, Ford used Discovery's robotic arm to help conduct a survey of the shuttle's heat shield; installed and unberthed "Leonardo," operated the station's robotic arm in support of two of the mission's three spacewalks and helped unload critical supplies from Leonardo.  NASA TV's Media Channel 103 will carry the b-roll and will be used to conduct the interviews. It is an MPEG-4 digital C-band signal, carried by QPSK/DVB-S modulation on satellite AMC-18C, transponder 3C, at 105 degrees west longitude, with a downlink frequency of 3760 MHz, vertical polarization, data rate of 38.80 MHz, symbol rate of 28.0681 Mbps, and 3/4 FEC. A Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) compliant Integrated Receiver Decoder (IRD) is needed for reception. The Compression Format is MPEG-4, Video PID = 0x1031 hex / 4145 decimal, AC-3 Audio PID = 0x1035 hex /4149 decimal, MPEG I Layer II Audio PID = 0x1034 hex /4148 decimal.