Aug 20 2012
From The Space Library
MEDIA ADVISORY: M12-153 MEDIA INVITED TO NASA AIRBORNE HURRICANE MISSION MEDIA DAY
WASHINGTON -- NASA is preparing to send unmanned scientific aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean to study tropical cyclones and the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensification. Reporters are invited to view NASA's Global Hawks and tour the mission control center at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va., beginning at 9:30 a.m. EDT, Wednesday, Sept. 19. The Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) is a five-year mission that will use two NASA Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with instruments to survey the overall environment of the storms and peer into the inner core of hurricanes to study their structure and processes. HS3 flights are scheduled to begin in early September and continue into October. Reporters will meet HS3 scientists and pilots and learn about NASA's efforts to better understand these powerful storms. Reporters also will meet with scientists working on another NASA Earth science flight mission using a laser to map forests and see Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Antares rocket under development at Wallops.
MEDIA ADVISORY: M12-154 NASA TO ANNOUNCE NEW PLANETARY SCIENCE MISSION TODAY
WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 5 p.m. EDT today to discuss the selection of a new Discovery-class mission that will further NASA's exploration of the solar system. The selection will be the 12th in NASA's series of Discovery-class missions. The panelists for the briefing are: -- John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator, NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington -- James Green, director, NASA's Planetary Science Division, Washington Created in 1992, the Discovery Program sponsors frequent, cost-capped solar system exploration missions with highly focused scientific goals. In May 2011, NASA selected three mission concepts from 28 proposals for funding to conduct preliminary design studies and analyses. Recent Discovery missions include MESSENGER, Dawn, Stardust, Deep Impact and Genesis. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate.
RELEASE: 12-288 NEW NASA MISSION TO TAKE FIRST LOOK DEEP INSIDE MARS
WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected a new mission, set to launch in 2016, that will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars to see why the Red Planet evolved so differently from Earth as one of our solar system's rocky planets. The new mission, named InSight, will place instruments on the Martian surface to investigate whether the core of Mars is solid or liquid like Earth's and why Mars' crust is not divided into tectonic plates that drift like Earth's. Detailed knowledge of the interior of Mars in comparison to Earth will help scientists understand better how terrestrial planets form and evolve. "The exploration of Mars is a top priority for NASA, and the selection of InSight ensures we will continue to unlock the mysteries of the Red Planet and lay the groundwork for a future human mission there," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "The recent successful landing of the Curiosity rover has galvanized public interest in space exploration and today's announcement makes clear there are more exciting Mars missions to come." InSight will be led by W. Bruce Banerdt at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. InSight's science team includes U.S. and international co-investigators from universities, industry and government agencies. The French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, and the German Aerospace Center, or DLR, are contributing instruments to InSight, which is scheduled to land on Mars in September 2016 to begin its two-year scientific mission. InSight is the 12th selection in NASA's series of Discovery-class missions. Created in 1992, the Discovery Program sponsors frequent, cost-capped solar system exploration missions with highly focused scientific goals. NASA requested Discovery mission proposals in June 2010 and received 28. InSight was one of three proposed missions selected in May 2011 for funding to conduct preliminary design studies and analyses. The other two proposals were for missions to a comet and Saturn's moon Titan. InSight builds on spacecraft technology used in NASA's highly successful Phoenix lander mission, which was launched to the Red Planet in 2007 and determined water existed near the surface in the Martian polar regions. By incorporating proven systems in the mission, the InSight team demonstrated that the mission concept was low-risk and could stay within the cost-constrained budget of Discovery missions. The cost of the mission, excluding the launch vehicle and related services, is capped at $425 million in 2010 dollars. "Our Discovery Program enables scientists to use innovative approaches to answering fundamental questions about our solar system in the lowest cost mission category," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. "InSight will get to the 'core' of the nature of the interior and structure of Mars, well below the observations we've been able to make from orbit or the surface." InSight will carry four instruments. JPL will provide an onboard geodetic instrument to determine the planet's rotation axis and a robotic arm and two cameras used to deploy and monitor instruments on the Martian surface. CNES is leading an international consortium that is building an instrument to measure seismic waves traveling through the planet's interior. The German Aerospace Center is building a subsurface heat probe to measure the flow of heat from the interior. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Discovery Program for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
