Oct 13 2010
From The Space Library
RELEASE: 10-099
NASA'S WEBB TELESCOPE PASSES KEY MISSION DESIGN REVIEW MILESTONE
WASHINGTON -- NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has passed its most significant mission milestone to date, the Mission Critical Design Review, or MCDR. This signifies the integrated observatory will meet all science and engineering requirements for its mission. "I'm delighted by this news and proud of the Webb program's great technical achievements, said Eric Smith, Webb telescope program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The independent team conducting the review confirmed the designs, hardware and test plans for Webb will deliver the fantastic capabilities always envisioned for NASA's next major space observatory. The scientific successor to Hubble is making great progress. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Md., manages the mission. Northrop Grumman, Redondo Beach, Calif., is leading the design and development effort. "This program landmark is the capstone of seven years of intense, focused effort on the part of NASA, Northrop Grumman and our program team members, said David DiCarlo, sector vice president and general manager of Northrop Grumman Space Systems. We have always had high confidence that our observatory design would meet the goals of this pioneering science mission. This achievement testifies to that, as well as to our close working partnership with NASA. The MCDR encompassed all previous design reviews including the Integrated Science Instrument Module review in March 2009; the Optical Telescope Element review completed in October 2009; and the Sunshield review completed in January 2010. The project schedule will undergo a review during the next few months. The spacecraft design, which passed a preliminary review in 2009, will continue toward final approval next year. The review also brought together multiple modeling and analysis tools. Because the observatory is too large for validation by actual testing, complex models of how it will behave during launch and in space environments are being integrated. The models are compared with prior test and review results from the observatory's components. Although the MCDR approved the telescope design and gave the official go-ahead for manufacturing, hardware development on the mirror segments has been in progress for several years. Eighteen primary mirror segments are in the process of being polished and tested by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Manufacturing on the backplane, the structure that supports the mirror segments, is well underway at Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, in Magna, Utah. This month, ITT Corp. in Rochester, N.Y., demonstrated robotic mirror installation equipment designed to position segments on the backplane. The segments' position will be fine-tuned to tolerances of a fraction of the width of a human hair. The telescope's sunshield moved into its fabrication and testing phase earlier this year. The three major elements of Webb - the Integrated Science Instrument Module, Optical Telescope Element and the spacecraft itself - will proceed through hardware production, assembly and testing prior to delivery for observatory integration and testing scheduled to begin in 2012. The Webb is the premier next-generation space observatory for exploring deep space phenomena from distant galaxies to nearby planets and stars. The telescope will provide clues about the formation of the universe and the evolution of our own solar system, from the first light after the Big Bang to the formation of star systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth. The telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
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MEDIA ADVISORY: M10-064
NASA ANNOUNCES WEDNESDAY MEDIA TELECONFERENCE ABOUT SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE
WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news media teleconference at 1:30 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, April 28, to discuss the status of agency-sponsored astrobiology research, including the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life and the study of how life began on Earth. Topics also will include the quest for evidence of life on Mars, the habitability of other celestial bodies, and future technology research. This week, NASA and scientists from around the world are gathering at a biennial meeting near Houston to celebrate 50 years of astrobiology research. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe. Scientists gathered to share new data and insights, initiate and advance collaborations, plan new projects, and educate the next generation of astrobiologists. The teleconference participants are: Mary Voytek, astrobiology senior scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington Steve Squyres, researcher, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Bill Schopf, researcher, University of California, Los Angeles Jack Farmer, researcher, Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz. John Peters, researcher, Montana State University, Bozeman To obtain call-in information, journalists should e-mail their name, media affiliation and telephone number to: dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live on NASA's website at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio
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RELEASE: 10-135
NASA ICEBREAKER VOYAGE TO PROBE CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACT ON ARCTIC
WASHINGTON -- NASA's first dedicated oceanographic field campaign goes to sea June 15 to take an up-close look at how changing conditions in the Arctic are affecting the ocean's chemistry and ecosystems that play a critical role in global climate change. The Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment mission, or ICESCAPE, will investigate the impacts of climate change on the ecology and biogeochemistry of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas. A key focus is how changes in the Arctic may be altering the ocean's ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere. The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is a leading cause of global warming. Predictions of future climate change depend on knowing the details of how this carbon cycle works in different parts of the world. NASA's Earth science program conducts research into the global Earth system using satellite observations. Identifying how Earth's ecology and chemistry are influenced by natural processes and by humans is a key part of this research. The Arctic Ocean, unlike other oceans, is almost completely landlocked, making it an ideal location to study ongoing climate changes in a marine ecosystem already heavily impacted by declining sea ice cover, ocean acidification, and an increase in incoming solar radiation. These changes are likely to modify the physics, biogeochemistry, and ecology of this environment in ways that are not well understood. Satellite remote sensing has provided some insight into these changes which ICESCAPE is designed to advance. "The ocean ecosystem in the Arctic has changed dramatically in recent years, and it's changing much faster and much more than any other ocean in the world, said ICESCAPE chief scientist Kevin Arrigo of Stanford University. Declining sea ice in the Arctic is certainly one reason for the change, but that's not the whole story. We need to find out, for example, where the nutrients are coming from that feed this growth if we are going to be able to predict what the future holds for this region. ICESCAPE takes to sea onboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, the United States' newest and most technologically advanced polar icebreaker. The Healy conducts a wide range of research activities, providing more than 4,200 square feet of scientific laboratory space. It is designed to break four-and-a-half feet of ice continuously at three knots and operate in temperatures as low as -50 degrees Fahrenheit. The Healy leaves Dutch Harbor in Alaska's Aleutian Islands on June 15 and heads to the Bering Strait where it begins ocean sampling. The voyage continues across the southern Chukchi Sea and into the Beaufort Sea along northern Alaska's ocean shelf. In early July the Healy will head north into deeper waters to sample thick, multi-year sea ice and take samples within and beneath the ice. More than 40 scientists will spend five weeks at sea sampling the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the ocean and sea ice. A variety of instruments will be used onboard the Healy and deployed into the ocean and on the sea ice. An automated microscope onboard will take continuous digital photographs of phytoplankton cells for near-real time observations of the quantity of different species. Floats with near-real time satellite communication will be placed in the ocean to measure temperature and various biological and optical properties. Scientists also will work on the sea ice several hundred yards from the ship to study the condition of the ice and sample the ocean ecosystem beneath it. Satellite observations are a key part of the ICESCAPE mission. NASA uses its satellite observations to monitor the microscopic plant and animal life in the world's oceans. This ocean color data gives scientists a global view of a critical ecosystem that regulates the flow of carbon into and out of the sea. Similar observations of the Arctic waters collected from the Healy during ICESCAPE will be used to improve the accuracy of the satellite data over the entire region. ICESCAPE science teams are led by researchers from Stanford University, the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, N.H.; Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, Calif.; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Mass.; University of Washington, Seattle; Clark University, Worcester, Mass.; and the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, St. George's. ICESCAPE is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The $10 million program is a joint effort of the Earth Science Division's Cryospheric Sciences and Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry programs.
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RELEASE: 10-119
NASA'S SWIFT SURVEY FINDS 'SMOKING GUN' OF BLACK HOLE ACTIVATION
WASHINGTON -- Data from an ongoing survey by NASA's Swift satellite have helped astronomers solve a decades-long mystery about why a small percentage of black holes emit vast amounts of energy. Only about one percent of supermassive black holes exhibit this behavior. The new findings confirm that black holes light up when galaxies collide, and the data may offer insight into the future behavior of the black hole in our own Milky Way galaxy. The study will appear in the June 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The intense emission from galaxy centers, or nuclei, arises near a supermassive black hole containing between a million and a billion times the sun's mass. Giving off as much as 10 billion times the sun's energy, some of these active galactic nuclei (AGN) are the most luminous objects in the universe. They include quasars and blazars. "Theorists have shown that the violence in galaxy mergers can feed a galaxy's central black hole, said Michael Koss, the study's lead author and a graduate student at the University of Maryland in College Park. The study elegantly explains how the black holes switched on. Until Swift's hard X-ray survey, astronomers never could be sure they had counted the majority of the AGN. Thick clouds of dust and gas surround the black hole in an active galaxy, which can block ultraviolet, optical and low-energy, or soft X-ray, light. Infrared radiation from warm dust near the black hole can pass through the material, but it can be confused with emissions from the galaxy's star-forming regions. Hard X-rays can help scientists directly detect the energetic black hole. Since 2004, the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) aboard Swift has been mapping the sky using hard X-rays. "Building up its exposure year after year, the Swift BAT Hard X-ray Survey is the largest, most sensitive and complete census of the sky at these energies, said Neil Gehrels, Swift's principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The survey, which is sensitive to AGN as far as 650 million light-years away, uncovered dozens of previously unrecognized systems. "The Swift BAT survey is giving us a very different picture of AGN, Koss said. The team finds that about a quarter of the BAT galaxies are in mergers or close pairs. Perhaps 60 percent of these galaxies will completely merge in the next billion years. We think we have the smoking gun' for merger-triggered AGN that theorists have predicted. Swift, launched in November 2004, is managed by Goddard. It was built and is being operated in collaboration with Penn State, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and General Dynamics in Falls Church, Va.; the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory in the United Kingdom; Brera Observatory and the Italian Space Agency in Italy; plus additional partners in Germany and Japan. Other members of the study team include Richard Mushotzky and Sylvain Veilleux at the University of Maryland and Lisa Winter at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
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RELEASE: 10-325
"WINGS IN ORBIT DETAILS SHUTTLE HISTORY BY THOSE WHO MADE IT HAPPEN
HOUSTON -- As NASA's space shuttle fleet nears retirement, the agency is preparing to release a comprehensive account of the program that managed the spacecraft and the dedicated people who made its accomplishments possible. The 500-plus-page book, Wings in Orbit is available for pre-publication sale. The book describes the scientific, engineering and cultural contributions of the space shuttle through text, photographs and graphics, written or selected by those who worked in the shuttle program. "Not only is this book informative and beautifully done, it captures the passion of those who devoted their energies to the more than three decades of the shuttle program, said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for Space Operations. It recognizes and celebrates what NASA has accomplished using the shuttle system. Former shuttle program manager Wayne Hale was the book's executive editor. The book features a wide range of contributors, including the first space shuttle crew and many former flight directors, engineers and program managers. The book is slated for release in March. To order the book during the pre-publication sale through Dec. 31, visit: http://www.shopNASA.com
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