Jan 12 2011
From The Space Library
Oregon Students To Talk With Orbiting Space Station Astronauts
WASHINGTON -- International Space Station residents Scott Kelly, Cady Coleman and Paolo Nespoli will speak to approximately 250 school students in McMinnville, Ore., about what it is like to live and work in space.
The astronauts will make the long-distance connection to students gathered at the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum on Wednesday, Jan. 19, from 12:15-12:35 p.m. EST. The event airs live on NASA Television and on the agency's website.
Media representatives interested in attending this event should contact Kasey Richter at 503-434-4185 x4790 by 5 p.m. Monday, Jan. 17.
The museum is located at 500 NE Capt. Michael King Smith Way in McMinnville.
The live downlink will include students in grades 8 to 12 attending the McMinnville School District's Engineering Pathway – Engineering, Aerospace and Sciences Academy, which meets daily at the museum. Other local students in kindergarten through eighth grades also will participate in the event.
NASA astronauts Kelly and Coleman and Nespoli of the European Space Agency are conducting science experiments aboard the space station. Kelly serves as the Expedition 26 commander until March when he returns home. Coleman and Nespoli will complete their station mission in May.
The downlink is part of a series with educational organizations in the U.S. and abroad to improve teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It is an integral component of NASA's Teaching From Space education program.
The program promotes learning opportunities and builds partnerships with the education community using the unique environment of space and NASA's human spaceflight program.
NASA Names Deputy Chief Technologist
WASHINGTON -- NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun has announced the appointment of Michael J. Gazarik as the agency's deputy chief technologist.
Gazarik will be a key member of the office responsible for coordination, integration and tracking of all technology investments across the agency, as well as management of NASA's Space Technology programs.
"I'm delighted Mike has agreed to come to Washington to help manage the technology portfolio that will enable NASA's future missions in aeronautics, science and exploration," Braun said. "Mike has more than 20 years experience in the design, development and operation of spaceflight systems, spanning both science and exploration missions. His technical leadership skills will be a great asset to our team as we implement the agency's Space Technology Program."
Prior to this appointment, Gazarik was the deputy director for programs in the Engineering Directorate at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. In this role, he balanced the directorate's engineering and fabrication capabilities across projects that ranged from conceptual design to spaceflight operations, focused the directorate's resources to deliver flight hardware for numerous flight programs, and led the formulation of a variety of programs in science and exploration.
In previous roles, Gazarik was the chief engineer of NASA's Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Earth science mission, and served as the project manager for the Mars Science Laboratory entry, descent and landing instrumentation project during the formulation and design phases. Gazarik also was principal investigator for the Shuttle Program's Extravehicular Infrared Camera Project, leading the development of this handheld infrared camera system in 2006.
Prior to joining NASA, Gazarik served as project manager for the Geosynchronous Imaging Fourier Transform Spectrometer (GIFTS) project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory.
He also led the development of the Airborne Sounder Testbed-Interferometer, an instrument that helps scientists understand temperature and water vapor profiles of the Earth's atmosphere. Gazarik also worked in the private sector on software and firmware development for commercial and government applications.
Gazarik earned his B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 1987. He earned an M.S. in 1989 and Ph.D. in 1997, both in electrical engineering, from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Gazarik has received numerous awards, including NASA's Outstanding Leadership Medal in 2007 and the Silver Snoopy Award, one of the agency's highest honors, in 2006. He has authored or co-authored more than 20 peer-reviewed publications.
NASA Telescopes Help Identify Most Distant Galaxy Cluster
WASHINGTON -- Astronomers 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.
The astronomers also found that this cluster is buzzing with extreme bursts of star formation and one enormous feeding black hole.
"We think the starbursts and black holes are the seeds of the cluster," said Peter Capak of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "These seeds will eventually grow into a giant, central galaxy that will dominate the cluster -- a trait found in modern-day galaxy clusters." Capak is first author of a paper appearing in the Jan. 13 issue of the journal Nature.
Most galaxies in our universe are bound together into clusters that dot the cosmic landscape like urban sprawls, usually centered around one old, monstrous galaxy containing a massive black hole. Astronomers thought that primitive versions of these clusters, still forming and clumping together, should exist in the early universe. But locating one proved difficult -- until now.
Capak and his colleagues first used the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the United Kingdom's James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to search for the black holes and bursts of star formation needed to form the massive galaxies at the centers of modern galaxy cities. The astronomers then used Hubble and the Subaru telescopes to estimate the distances to these objects, and look for higher densities of galaxies around them. Finally, the Keck telescope was used to confirm that these galaxies were at the same distance and part of the same galactic sprawl.
Once the scientists found this lumping of galaxies, they measured the combined mass with the help of Spitzer. At this distance the optical light from stars is shifted, or stretched, to infrared wavelengths that can only be observed in outer space by Spitzer. The lump sum of the mass turned out to be a minimum of 400 billion suns -- enough to indicate that the astronomers had indeed uncovered a massive proto-cluster.
The Spitzer observations also helped confirm a massive galaxy at the center of the cluster was forming stars at an impressive rate. Chandra X-ray observations were used to find and characterize the whopping black hole with a mass of more than 30 million suns. Massive black holes are common in present-day galaxy clusters, but this is the first time a feeding black hole of this heft has been linked to a cluster that is so young.
Finally, the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique's interferometer telescope in France and 30-meter telescope in Spain, along with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico, measured the amount of gas, or fuel for future star formation, in the cluster. The results indicate the cluster will keep growing into a modern city of galaxies.
"It really did take a village of telescopes to nail this cluster," said Capak. "Observations across the electromagnetic spectrum, from X-ray to millimeter wavelengths, were all critical in providing a comprehensive view of the cluster's many facets."
COSMOS-AzTEC3, located in the constellation Sextans, is named after the region where it was found, called COSMOS after the Cosmic Evolution Survey. AzTEC is the name of the camera used on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope.
NASA Research Finds 2010 Tied For Warmest Year On Record
WASHINGTON -- Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
The two years differed by less than 0.018 degrees Fahrenheit. The difference is smaller than the uncertainty in comparing the temperatures of recent years, putting them into a statistical tie. In the new analysis, the next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2009, which are statistically tied for third warmest year. The GISS records begin in 1880.
The analysis found 2010 approximately 1.34 F warmer than the average global surface temperature from 1951 to 1980. To measure climate change, scientists look at long-term trends. The temperature trend, including data from 2010, shows the climate has warmed by approximately 0.36 F per decade since the late 1970s.
"If the warming trend continues, as is expected, if greenhouse gases continue to increase, the 2010 record will not stand for long," said James Hansen, the director of GISS.
The analysis produced at GISS is compiled from weather data from more than 1000 meteorological stations around the world, satellite observations of sea surface temperature and Antarctic research station measurements. A computer program uses the data to calculate temperature anomalies -- the difference between surface temperature in a given month and the average temperature for the same period during 1951 to 1980. This three-decade period acts as a baseline for the analysis.
The resulting temperature record closely matches others independently produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center.
The record temperature in 2010 is particularly noteworthy, because the last half of the year was marked by a transition to strong La Nina conditions, which bring cool sea surface temperatures to the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean.
"Global temperature is rising as fast in the past decade as in the prior two decades, despite year-to-year fluctuations associated with the El Nino-La Nina cycle of tropical ocean temperature," Hansen and colleagues reported in the Dec. 14, 2010, issue of Reviews of Geophysics.
A chilly spell also struck this winter across northern Europe. The event may have been influenced by the decline of Arctic sea ice and could be linked to warming temperatures at more northern latitudes.
Arctic sea ice acts like a blanket, insulating the atmosphere from the ocean's heat. Take away that blanket, and the heat can escape into the atmosphere, increasing local surface temperatures. Regions in northeast Canada were more than 18 degrees warmer than normal in December.
The loss of sea ice may also be driving Arctic air into the middle latitudes. Winter weather patterns are notoriously chaotic, and the GISS analysis finds seven of the last 10 European winters warmer than the average from 1951 to 1980. The unusual cold in the past two winters has caused scientists to begin to speculate about a potential connection to sea ice changes.
"One possibility is that the heat source due to open water in Hudson Bay affected Arctic wind patterns, with a seesaw pattern that has Arctic air downstream pouring into Europe," Hansen said.
