Jan 5 2010

From The Space Library

RELEASE: 10-314

NASA-GERMAN SOFIA OBSERVATORY COMPLETES FIRST SCIENCE FLIGHT

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA, completed the first of three science flights on Wednesday morning to demonstrate the aircraft's potential to make discoveries about the infrared universe. The airborne observatory is an international collaboration between NASA and the German Aerospace Center, Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft und Raumfahrt (DLR). SOFIA is a heavily modified Boeing 747SP that cruises at altitudes between 39,000 and 45,000 feet. It will allow researchers to better understand a wide range of astronomical phenomena including how stars and planets are born, how organic substances form in interstellar space, and how supermassive black holes feed and grow. This premiere science flight took off from an Air Force runway in Palmdale, Calif., on Nov. 30, flying for approximately 10 hours. "These initial science flights mark a significant milestone in SOFIA's development and ability to conduct peer-reviewed science observations, said NASA Astrophysics Division Director Jon Morse. "We anticipate a number of important discoveries from this unique observatory, as well as extended investigations of discoveries by other space telescopes. SOFIA is fitted with a 100-inch diameter airborne infrared telescope. It is based and managed at NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale. The aircraft's instruments can analyze light from a wide range of celestial objects, including warm interstellar gas and dust of bright star forming regions, by observing wavelengths between 0.3 and 1,600 microns. A micron equals one millionth of a meter. For comparison, the human eye sees light with wavelengths between 0.4 and 0.7 microns. The first three science flights, phase one of SOFIA's early science program, will employ the Faint Object InfraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope (FORCAST) instrument developed by Cornell University and led by principal investigator Terry Herter. FORCAST observes the mid-infrared spectrum from five to 40 microns. Researchers used the FORCAST camera on SOFIA during a test flight two weeks ago to produce infrared images of areas within the Orion star-formation complex, a region of the sky for which more extensive data were collected during the Nov. 30 flight. A gallery of those images is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/SOFIA/multimedia/imagegallery/index.html Upcoming SOFIA images, including images from the Nov. 30 flight, will be added to this gallery. "The early science flight program serves to validate SOFIA's capabilities and demonstrate the observatory's ability to make observations not possible from Earth-based telescopes, said Bob Meyer, NASA's SOFIA program manager. It also marks SOFIA's transition from flying testbed to flying observatory, and it gives the international astronomical research community a new, highly versatile platform for studying the universe. In February 2011, the German Receiver for Astronomy at Terahertz Frequencies (GREAT), developed under the lead of the Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany, will be installed in the observatory for three flights during the second phase of the program. "The first science flight showed that the SOFIA observatory works very well, said Alois Himmes, SOFIA project manager at DLR. It also demonstrated the excellent collaboration between the U.S. and German partners and the intense work of the teams during the past weeks. NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages the SOFIA science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association in Columbia, Md., and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut at the University of Stuttgart, Germany.

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CONTRACT RELEASE: C10-040

NASA AWARDS RAPID RESPONSE SPACE WORKS CONTRACT

This is an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity, cost-plus fixed-fee single award contract that begins Wednesday. The contract consists of a five-year period of performance. Under the terms of the contract, the company will provide support for the ORS Office within the Department of Defense. In partnership with the DOD, NASA will play a role in planning, acquisition and operations of ORS efforts. Specifically, the company will design, develop, build, operate and sustain the RRSW to enable rapid access to space for DOD. The RRSW activities include mission coordination, design, development, procurement, assembly, integration, test, on-orbit support, launch support and ground system support. NASA released a Request for Proposals to industry on Feb. 1, 2010, to solicit two individual requirements, including this RRSW contract and a Modular Space Vehicles (MSV) contract, which will be awarded at a later date. The RRSW and MSV contracts share a maximum value of $500 million. The work will be performed at Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, N.M. The contract with Millennium Engineering and Integration Co. includes a subcontract with Raytheon Co. of Tucson, Ariz.

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RELEASE: 10-329

NASA SCIENTISTS THEORIZE FINAL GROWTH SPURT FOR PLANETS

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif -- A team of NASA-funded researchers has unveiled a new theory that contends planets gained the final portions of their mass from a limited number of large comet or asteroid impacts more than 4.5 billion years ago. These impacts added less than one percent of the planets' mass. Scientists hope the research not only will provide a better historical picture of the birth and evolution of Earth, the moon and Mars, but also allow researchers to better explore what happened in our solar system's beginning and middle stages of planet formation. No one has a model of precisely what happened at the end of planet formation?we've had a broad idea?but variables such as impactor size, the approximate timing of the impacts, and how they affect the evolution of the planets are unknown,? said William Bottke, principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in Boulder, Colo. ?This research hopefully provides better insights into the early stages of planet formation.? The team used numerical models, lunar samples returned by Apollo astronauts and meteorites believed to be from Mars to develop its findings. The scientists examined the abundances of elements such as gold and platinum in the mantles, or layers beneath the crust, of Earth, the moon and Mars. Consistent with previous studies, they concluded the elements were added by a process called late accretion during a planet's final growth spurt. "These impactors probably represent the largest objects to hit Earth since the giant impact that formed our moon, Bottke said. ?They also may be responsible for the accessible abundance of gold, platinum, palladium, and other important metals used by our society today in items ranging from jewelry to our cars' catalytic convertors.? The results indicate the largest Earth impactor was between 1,500 - 2,000 miles in diameter, roughly the size of Pluto. Because it is smaller than Earth, the moon avoided such enormous projectiles and was only hit by impactors 150 - 200 miles wide. These impacts may have played important roles in the evolution of both worlds. For example, the projectiles that struck Earth may have modified the orientation of its spin axis by 10 degrees, while those that hit the moon may have delivered water to its mantle. "Keep in mind that while the idea the Earth-moon system owes its existence to a single, random event was initially viewed as radical, it is now believed that large impacts were commonplace during the final stages of planet formation,' Bottke said. ?Our new results provide additional evidence that the effects of large impacts did not end with the moon-forming event. The paper, Stochastic Late Accretion to the Earth, Moon, and Mars, was published in the Dec. 9 issue of Science. It was written by Bottke and David Nesvorny of SWRI; Richard J. Walker of the University of Maryland; James Day of the University of Maryland and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego; and Linda Elkins-Tanton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The research is funded by the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) at the agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. The NLSI is a virtual organization that enables collaborative, interdisciplinary research in support of NASA lunar science programs. The institute uses technology to bring scientists together around the world and comprises competitively selected U.S. teams and several international partners. NASA's Science Mission Directorate and the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington, funds the institute, which is managed by a central office at Ames.

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