Feb 19 2010

From The Space Library

RELEASE: 10-246

NASA'S WISE MISSION WARMS UP BUT KEEPS CHUGGING ALONG

WASHINGTON -- After completing its primary mission to map the infrared sky, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has reached the expected end of its onboard supply of frozen coolant. Although WISE has 'warmed up,' NASA has decided the mission will still continue. WISE will now focus on our nearest neighbors -- the asteroids and comets traveling together with our solar system's planets around the sun. "Two of our four infrared detectors still work even at warmer temperatures, so we can use those bands to continue our hunt for asteroids and comets, said Amy Mainzer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Mainzer is the principal investigator of the new phase of the mission, now known as the NEOWISE Post-Cryogenic Mission. It takes its name from the acronym for a near-Earth object, NEO, and WISE. A cryogen is a coolant used to make the detectors more sensitive. In WISE's case, the cryogen was frozen hydrogen. WISE launched Dec. 14, 2009, from Vandenberg Air Force Station in California aboard a Delta II launch vehicle. Its 16-inch infrared telescope scans the skies from an Earth-circling orbit crossing the poles. It has already snapped more than 1.8 million pictures at four infrared wavelengths. Currently, the survey has covered the sky about one-and-one-half times, producing a vast catalog containing hundreds of millions of objects from near-Earth asteroids to cool stars called "brown dwarfs to distant, luminous galaxies. To date, WISE has discovered 19 comets and more than 33,500 asteroids, including 120 near-Earth objects, which are those bodies with orbits that pass relatively close to Earth's path around the sun. More discoveries regarding objects outside our solar system, such as the brown dwarfs and luminous galaxies, are expected. "The science data collected by WISE will be used by the scientific community for decades, said Jaya Bajpayee, the WISE program executive in the Astrophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. It will also provide a sky map for future observatories like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The NEOWISE Post-Cryogenic Mission is designed to complete the survey of the solar system and finish the second survey of the rest of the sky at its new warmer temperature of about minus 334 degrees Fahrenheit using its two shortest-wavelength detectors. The survey extension will last one to four months, depending on early results. NEOWISE also will keep on observing other targets, such as the closest brown dwarfs to the sun. In addition, data from the second sky scan will help identify objects that have moved in the sky since they were first detected by WISE. This allows astronomers to pick out the brown dwarfs closest to our sun. The closer the object is, the more it will appear to move from our point of view. The WISE science team now is analyzing millions of objects captured in the images, including many never seen before. A first batch of WISE data, covering more than half the sky, will be released to the astronomical community in spring 2011, with the rest to follow about one year later. "WISE has provided a guidebook to the universe with thousands of targets worth viewing with a large telescope, said Edward (Ned) Wright, WISE principal investigator from University of California, Los Angeles. We're working on figuring out just how far away the brown dwarfs are, and how luminous the galaxies are. A gallery of WISE images is available at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/gallery/gallery-index.html JPL manages the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for the Science Mission Directorate. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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RELEASE: 10-093

NASA, NSBRI SELECT PROPOSALS TO SUPPORT HEALTH ON SPACE MISSIONS

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Human Research Program and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, or NSBRI, of Houston will fund 11 proposals to help investigate questions about astronaut health and performance on future space exploration missions. The selected proposals, representing 10 institutions in eight states, will receive a total of almost $10 million over a three- to four-year period. The Human Research Program provides knowledge and technologies to improve human health and performance during space exploration. The program also develops possible countermeasures for problems experienced during space travel. Goals include the successful completion of exploration missions and preservation of astronauts' health throughout their lives. The program quantifies crew health and performance risks during spaceflight and develops strategies that mission planners can use to monitor and mitigate health and performance risks. The 11 projects were selected from 50 proposals received in response to a research announcement titled Research and Technology Development to Support Crew Health and Performance in Space Exploration Missions. The proposals were reviewed by scientific and technical experts from academia, industry and government. Seven of the projects will be assigned to the Human Research Program's team of principal investigators, while four will join NSBRI's team-based research program. NSBRI is a NASA-funded consortium of institutions studying health risks related to long-duration spaceflight. The institute's science, technology and education projects take place at more than 60 institutions across the United States. A complete list of the selected principal investigators, organizations and proposals is available on the Web at: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/acd/hrp_nsbri_awards_2010.html

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