Feb 3 2010

From The Space Library

RELEASE: 10-062

NASA LAUNCHES INTERACTIVE SIMULATION OF SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA today unveiled an interactive computer simulation that allows virtual explorers of all ages to dock the space shuttle at the International Space Station, experience a virtual trip to Mars or a lunar impact, and explore images of star formations taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. In an effort to excite young people about space and NASA's missions, the agency has launched the online Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) simulation, designed to entertain and educate. The interactive simulation offers a virtual 3-D experience to visualize how data travels along various space communications paths. "The elaborate space communications networks that connect scientists and engineers with NASA's spacecraft is essential to all of NASA's missions and can be a challenging concept to comprehend, said Barbara Adde, a policy and strategic communications manager for the Office of Space Communications and Navigation at NASA Headquarters in Washington. This simulation helps explain this complex infrastructure in an engaging way by using an interactive 3-D game. The interactive Space Communication and Navigation simulation allows visitors to select spacecraft and experience a flythrough, or a tutorial with images and descriptions of NASA's three space communication networks. For example, the Near Earth Network flythrough shows how data originates at an antenna at McMurdo Station, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. The data is then sent to NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, as it passes overhead. The Space Network flythrough also shows how data is relayed from NASA's White Sands Test Facility, N.M., to the space station via the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, a network of communication satellites and ground stations NASA uses for space communications. Finally, in the Deep Space Network demonstration, visitors learn how NASA communicates with the Mars Exploration Rovers, Sprit and Opportunity, by using the Madrid Deep Space Network antenna to send data to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which then relays the data to the rover. "Making this interactive simulation available to young people is important and may lead them to consider a career in engineering, science or information technology as it relates to space, said Chris C. Kemp, chief information officer at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. NASA is embracing the fact that programs like this help convey NASA's message to people who respond well to virtual and online learning environments. The space communication network simulation features nine spacecraft to choose from, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the space station, the space shuttle orbiter, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, Cassini, the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), ICESat and Aura. Once a spacecraft is contacted, visitors can request actions such as choose an imaging target and take pictures of the Crab Nebula as seen from Hubble, or view videos of the space shuttle docking at the station. In addition to the Space Communication and Navigation simulation, NASA provides interactive applications and other online educational tools on its Web site. To explore the Space Communication and Navigation network simulation, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/3d_resources/spacecomm.html

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MEDIA ADVISORY: M10-007

NASA OFFERS TRANQUILITY NODE SATELLITE INTERVIEWS FROM LAUNCH PAD

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Bill Dowdell, NASA Kennedy Space Center's deputy director for International Space Station and spacecraft processing, is available for satellite interviews from 6 to 9 a.m. EST on Friday, Jan. 22. Dowdell will conduct the interviews from Launch Pad 39A, just outside space shuttle Endeavour's payload bay. Tranquility, the next pressurized element bound for the station, will be placed inside Endeavour on 39A for its targeted launch on Sunday, Feb. 7. Dowdell has worked for NASA since 1989, beginning his career in the Space Shuttle Program as an agency and orbiter test director. He is NASA's manager responsible for giving the go to launch the station payload and the readiness of the orbiting laboratory to receive and carry out its installation. Dowdell holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Fairmont State College in Fairmont, W.Va., and a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from West Virginia University in Morgantown. To schedule interviews, reporters should contact Tracy Young at 321-867-9284 or by e-mail to tracy.g.young@nasa.gov by noon Thursday, Jan. 21. The NASA Live Interview Media Outlet channel will be used for the interviews. The channel is a digital satellite C-band downlink by uplink provider Americom. It is on satellite AMC 3, Transponder 9C, orbital position 87 Degrees West, transmission format is DVB-S, 4:2:0, downlink frequency 3865.5 Mhz, downlink polarity is horizontal, FEC is 3/4, data rate is 6.0 Mbps, symbol rate is 4.3404 Msps. For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

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RELEASE: 10-003

NATURE'S MOST PRECISE CLOCKS MAY MAKE GALACTIC GPS POSSIBLE; PULSING PULSARS HELP IN SEARCH FOR GRAVITATIONAL WAVES

WASHINGTON -- Radio astronomers have uncovered 17 millisecond pulsars in our galaxy by studying unknown high-energy sources detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The astronomers made the discovery in less than three months. Such a jump in the pace of locating these hard-to-find objects holds the promise of using them as a kind of galactic GPS to detect gravitational waves passing near Earth. A pulsar is the rapidly spinning and highly magnetized core left behind when a massive star explodes. Because only rotation powers their intense gamma-ray, radio and particle emissions, pulsars gradually slow as they age. But the oldest pulsars spin hundreds of times per second -- faster than a kitchen blender. These millisecond pulsars have been spun up and rejuvenated by accreting matter from a companion star. "Radio astronomers discovered the first millisecond pulsar 28 years ago, said Paul Ray at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. "Locating them with all-sky radio surveys requires immense time and effort, and we've only found a total of about 60 in the disk of our galaxy since then. Fermi points us to specific targets. It's like having a treasure map. Millisecond pulsars are nature's most precise clocks, with long-term, sub-microsecond stability that rivals human-made atomic clocks. Precise monitoring of timing changes in an all-sky array of millisecond pulsars may allow the first direct detection of gravitational waves -- a long-sought consequence of Einstein's relativity theory. "The Global Positioning System uses time-delay measurements among satellite clocks to determine where you are on Earth, explained Scott Ransom of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va. Similarly, by monitoring timing changes in a constellation of suitable millisecond pulsars spread all over the sky, we may be able to detect the cumulative background of passing gravitational waves. The sources Fermi detected are not associated with any known gamma-ray emitting objects and did not show evidence of pulsing behavior. However, scientists considered it likely that many of the unidentified sources would turn out to be pulsars. For a more detailed look at radio wavelengths, Ray organized the Fermi Pulsar Search Consortium and recruited a handful of radio astronomers with expertise in using five of the world's largest radio telescopes -- the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in W.Va., the Parkes Observatory in Australia, the Nancay Radio Telescope in France, the Effelsberg Radio Telescope in Germany and the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico. After studying approximately 100 targets, and with a computationally intensive data analysis still under way, the discoveries have started to pour in. "Other surveys took a decade to find as many of these pulsars as we have, said Ransom, who led one of the discovery groups. Having Fermi tell us where to look is a huge advantage. Four of the new objects are black widow pulsars, so called because radiation from the recycled pulsar is destroying the companion star that helped spin it up. "Some of these stars are whittled down to masses equivalent to tens of Jupiters, said Ray. We've doubled the known number of these systems in the galaxy's disk, and that will help us better understand how they evolve. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. For images and animations related to this release, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/fermi

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RELEASE: 10-122

NASA SPACECRAFT PENETRATES MYSTERIES OF MARTIAN ICE CAP

PASADENA, Calif. -- Data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have helped scientists solve a pair of mysteries dating back four decades and provided new information about climate change on the Red Planet. The Shallow Radar, or SHARAD, instrument aboard MRO revealed subsurface geology allowing scientists to reconstruct the formation of a large chasm and a series of spiral troughs on the northern ice cap of Mars. The findings appear in two papers in the May 27 issue of the journal Nature. "SHARAD is giving us a beautifully detailed view of ice deposits, whether at the poles or buried in mid-latitudes, as they changed on Mars over the last few million years, said Rich Zurek, MRO project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. On Earth, large ice sheets are shaped mainly by ice flow. According to this latest research, other forces have shaped, and continue to shape, polar ice caps on Mars. The northern ice cap is a stack of ice and dust layers up to two miles deep, covering an area slightly larger than Texas. Analyzing radar data on a computer, scientists can peel back the layers like an onion to reveal how the ice cap evolved over time. One of the most distinctive features of the northern ice cap is Chasma Boreale, a canyon about as long as Earth's Grand Canyon but deeper and wider. Some scientists believe Chasma Boreale was created when volcanic heat melted the bottom of the ice sheet and triggered a catastrophic flood. Others suggest strong polar winds carved the canyon out of a dome of ice. Other enigmatic features of the ice cap are troughs that spiral outward from the center like a gigantic pinwheel. Since the troughs were discovered in 1972, scientists have proposed several hypotheses about how they formed. Perhaps as Mars spins, ice closer to the poles moves slower than ice farther away, causing the semi-fluid ice to crack. Perhaps, as one mathematical model suggests, increased solar heating in certain areas and lateral heat conduction could cause the troughs to assemble. Data from Mars now points to both the canyon and spiral troughs being created and shaped primarily by wind. Rather than being cut into existing ice very recently, the features formed over millions of years as the ice sheet grew. By influencing wind patterns, the shape of underlying, older ice controlled where and how the features grew. "Nobody realized that there would be such complex structures in the layers, said Jack Holt, of the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics. Holt is the lead author of the paper focusing on Chasma Boreale. The layers record a history of ice accumulation, erosion and wind transport. From that, we can recover a history of climate that's much more detailed than anybody expected. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was launched on Aug. 12, 2005. SHARAD and the spacecraft's five other instruments began science operations in November 2006. "These anomalous features have gone unexplained for 40 years because we have not been able to see what lies beneath the surface, said Roberto Seu, SHARAD team leader at the University of Rome. It is gratifying to me that with this new instrument we can finally explain them. The MRO mission is managed by JPL for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Headquarters in Washington. SHARAD was provided by the Italian Space Agency, and its operations are led by the InfoCom Department, University of Rome. To view images and learn more about MRO, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro

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RELEASE: 10-075

NASA INVITES EDUCATORS TO WEBCASTS SUPPORTING NATIONAL LAB DAY

HAMPTON, Va. ? In preparation for National Lab Day on May 12, NASA will host a series of weekly live webcasts during the month of April through the agency's Digital Learning Network. The series is aimed at equipping teachers to promote hands-on science education in their classrooms. "The professional development of educators in the area of science, technology, engineering and math is a critical component in getting students interested in these fields early in their schooling, said Caryn Long, manager of the Digital Learning Network at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Although many activities are focused on May 12, National Lab Day is more than just one day. It is a nationwide initiative that gets volunteers, university students, scientists and engineers to work together with educators to bring discovery-based science experiments to students in kindergarten through 12th grades. NASA's National Lab Day webcasts are (all times EDT): What Does it Matter? April 8, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Join Rudo Kashiri, coordinator of NASA's Langley Explorer Schools, as she answers: What does it matter? Kashiri will share fun, hands-on activities to help educators teach students about matter, density and weight. Teachers will learn how to get their students to love discovering mind over matter. This webcast targets teachers of grades 5-8. Electricity and Magnetism, April 15, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Join Langley engineer William Young as he shares activities that will engage and teach students about electricity and magnetism. Young offers an array of activities that will electrify students' scientific knowledge. This webcast targets teachers of grades 4-8. Global Warming, April 22, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Thomas Charlock, a scientist at Langley, will give classroom demonstrations about global warming and atmospheric science. Learn how scientists measure the temperature of Earth and explain the effects of global warming. This webcast targets teachers of grades 3-12. The Moon, April 29, 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Aerospace Education Specialist Brandon Hargis from Langley will demonstrate how to teach students to become moon engineers. Students will design and build a solar hot water heater. This lesson will require student to feel the heat of science. This webcast targets teachers of grades 6-12. NASA's Digital Learning Network allows the next generation of explorers to connect with scientists, engineers and researchers without leaving the classroom. Through interactive videoconferencing available across the agency at all 10 NASA field centers, the network provides distance-learning events designed to educate through demonstrations and real time interactions with NASA experts.

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