Oct 1 2015

From The Space Library

Release M15-146 NASA Sets Coverage Schedule for CubeSat Launch Events

Thirteen NASA and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)-sponsored CubeSats are scheduled to launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket Thursday, Oct. 8, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Prelaunch media briefings and launch commentary coverage will be carried live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

Four of the CubeSats are NASA-sponsored and nine are NRO-sponsored, one of which was developed with NASA funding. All will be flown on the NRO's Government Rideshare Advanced Concepts Experiment (GRACE), which is an auxiliary payload aboard the NROL-55 mission.

The CubeSat developed with NASA funding will evaluate the ability to point a small satellite accurately as it demonstrates data transfer by laser at rates of up to 200 Mb/s -- a factor of 100 increase over current high-end CubeSat communications systems. The NASA-sponsored CubeSats will test new small satellite control and communications systems, Earth observations, amateur radio communications and an X-Band radio science transponder.

These CubeSats also include the first to be designed, built and operated by students in Alaska and the first from Native American tribal college students.

Small satellites, including CubeSats, are playing an increasingly larger role in exploration, technology demonstration, scientific research and educational investigations at NASA. These miniature satellites provide a low-cost platform for NASA missions, including planetary space exploration; Earth observations; fundamental Earth and space science; and developing precursor science instruments like cutting-edge laser communications, satellite-to-satellite communications and autonomous movement capabilities. They also allow an inexpensive means to engage students in all phases of satellite development, operation and exploitation through real-world, hands-on research and development experience on NASA-funded rideshare launch opportunities.

NASA will host two prelaunch briefings at Vandenberg on Wednesday, Oct. 7. The first briefing will highlight the growing importance of CubeSats in exploration and technology development and will begin at 1 p.m. EDT (10 a.m. PDT). The participants will be:

• Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator for Space Technology at NASA Headquarters
• Meagan Hubbell, deputy chief, CubeSat Program Office, National Reconnaissance Office
• Sherrie Zacharius, vice president, Technology and Laboratory Operations at The Aerospace Corporation
• John Serafini, vice president, Allied Minds and CEO, BridgeSat and HawkEye 360
• Andrew Petro, Small Spacecraft Technology Program executive at NASA Headquarters
• Scott Higginbotham, Launch Services Program ELaNa-12 Mission manager at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida

The second briefing will discuss the five NASA-sponsored CubeSats. This briefing will begin at 2 p.m. EDT (11 a.m. PDT). The participants will be:

• Richard Welle, director, Microsatellite Systems department at The Aerospace Corporation
• Tim Olson, principal investigator for BisonSat, Salish Kootenai College, Pablo, Montana
• Morgan Johnson, team lead for the ARC CubeSat, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
• Jerry Buxton, vice president, Engineering, for AMSAT Fox-1
• Courtney Duncan, principal investigator for LMRST-Sat, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

Release M15-147 Virginia Students to Speak Live with Space Station Crew

A group of students from Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Virginia, will get the chance to speak with an astronaut who once studied in their classrooms and now is working and living on the International Space Station.

The 20-minute, Earth-to-space call is scheduled for 10:20 a.m. EDT on Monday, Oct. 5, and will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, a 1991 graduate of Robinson, will be answering questions from 8th and 11th grade students at the school while orbiting 260 miles above Earth on the space station. Lindgren will be joined for the event by fellow Expedition 45 crew members NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Kimiya Yui.

Media interested in covering the event at the school must contact John Torre at 571-423-1200. Robinson Secondary School is located at 5035 Sideburn Road in Fairfax. The time of the call is subject to change depending on real-time station operations and weather conditions in the Fairfax area. Media should confirm the event with the school before arrival.

Lindgren and Yui arrived at the space station on July 23 for a five-month mission. Kelly is halfway through a year-long mission on the station. During Expedition 45, the station crew will conduct more than 250 science investigations in fields such as biology, Earth science, human research, physical sciences and technology development.

This in-flight education downlink is an integral component of the NASA Education Office effort to improve science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) teaching and learning in the United States. Linking students directly to astronauts aboard the space station provides them with an authentic, live experience of space exploration, space study and the scientific components of space travel, while introducing them to the possibilities of life in space.

Pluto’s Big Moon Charon Reveals a Colorful and Violent History

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has returned the best color and the highest resolution images yet of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon – and these pictures show a surprisingly complex and violent history.

At half the diameter of Pluto, Charon is the largest satellite relative to its planet in the solar system. Many New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they’re finding a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more.

“We thought the probability of seeing such interesting features on this satellite of a world at the far edge of our solar system was low,” said Ross Beyer, an affiliate of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging (GGI) team from the SETI Institute and NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, “but I couldn't be more delighted with what we see."

High-resolution images of the Pluto-facing hemisphere of Charon, taken by New Horizons as the spacecraft sped through the Pluto system on July 14 and transmitted to Earth on Sept. 21, reveal details of a belt of fractures and canyons just north of the moon’s equator. This great canyon system stretches more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across the entire face of Charon and likely around onto Charon’s far side. Four times as long as the Grand Canyon, and twice as deep in places, these faults and canyons indicate a titanic geological upheaval in Charon’s past.

“It looks like the entire crust of Charon has been split open,” said John Spencer, deputy lead for GGI at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “With respect to its size relative to Charon, this feature is much like the vast Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars.”

The team has also discovered that the plains south of the Charon’s canyon -- informally referred to as Vulcan Planum -- have fewer large craters than the regions to the north, indicating that they are noticeably younger. The smoothness of the plains, as well as their grooves and faint ridges, are clear signs of wide-scale resurfacing.

One possibility for the smooth surface is a kind of cold volcanic activity, called cryovolcanism. “The team is discussing the possibility that an internal water ocean could have frozen long ago, and the resulting volume change could have led to Charon cracking open, allowing water-based lavas to reach the surface at that time,” said Paul Schenk, a New Horizons team member from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

Even higher-resolution Charon images and composition data are still to come as New Horizons transmits data, stored on its digital recorders, over the next year – and as that happens, “I predict Charon’s story will become even more amazing!” said mission Project Scientist Hal Weaver, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

The New Horizons spacecraft is currently 3.1 billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from Earth, with all systems healthy and operating normally.

New Horizons is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. APL designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. SwRI leads the science mission, payload operations, and encounter science planning.