Oct 21 2015

From The Space Library

Release M15-154 Texas Students Talk Space with One-Year Space Station Crew

High school students from Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) Early College High School in Austin, Texas, will find out what it’s like to spend a year in space when they talk to the one-year crew currently living and working on the International Space Station at 10:25 a.m. EDT on Friday, Oct. 23.

The 20-minute, Earth-to-space call will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

Space station Commander Scott Kelly of NASA, who recently broke the U.S. astronaut record for longest time in space, and Flight Engineer Mikhail Kornienko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will answer questions from students at the LBJ Presidential Library, where the students also will hear a presentation on NASA history and take part in a panel discussion with a number of former astronauts.

Media interested in covering the event at the school must contact Anne Wheeler at awheeler@lbjfoundation.org. The LBJ Presidential Library is located at 2313 Red River St. in Austin. The time of the call is subject to change depending on real-time space station operations.

Kelly and Kornienko launched to the station on March 27 for a year of research into how human bodies respond to long periods of time in microgravity. During their mission, Kelly, Kornienko and their crewmates will conduct more than 250 science investigations in fields such as biology, Earth science, human health research, physical sciences and technology development. On Oct. 16, Kelly broke the record for most time spent in space by an American, surpassing the previous record of 382 cumulative days in space.

This in-flight education downlink is an integral component of the NASA Education Office’s efforts 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.

NASA’s K2 Finds Dead Star Vaporizing a Mini “Planet”

Scientists using NASA’s repurposed Kepler space telescope, known as the K2 mission, have uncovered strong evidence of a tiny, rocky object being torn apart as it spirals around a white dwarf star. This discovery validates a long-held theory that white dwarfs are capable of cannibalizing possible remnant planets that have survived within its solar system.

“We are for the first time witnessing a miniature “planet” ripped apart by intense gravity, being vaporized by starlight and raining rocky material onto its star,” said Andrew Vanderburg, graduate student from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and lead author of the paper published in Nature.

As stars like our sun age, they puff up into red giants and then gradually lose about half their mass, shrinking down to 1/100th of their original size to roughly the size of Earth. This dead, dense star remnant is called a white dwarf.

The devastated planetesimal, or cosmic object formed from dust, rock, and other materials, is estimated to be the size of a large asteroid, and is the first planetary object to be confirmed transiting a white dwarf. It orbits its white dwarf, WD 1145+017, once every 4.5 hours. This orbital period places it extremely close to the white dwarf and its searing heat and shearing gravitational force.

During its first observing campaign from May 30, 2014 to Aug. 21, 2014, K2 trained its gaze on a patch of sky in the constellation Virgo, measuring the minuscule change in brightness of the distant white dwarf. When an object transits or passes in front of a star from the vantage point of the space telescope, a dip in starlight is recorded. The periodic dimming of starlight indicates the presence of an object in orbit about the star.

A research team led by Vanderburg found an unusual, but vaguely familiar pattern in the data. While there was a prominent dip in brightness occurring every 4.5 hours, blocking up to 40 percent of the white dwarf's light, the transit signal of the tiny planet did not exhibit the typical symmetric U-shaped pattern. It showed an asymmetric elongated slope pattern that would indicate the presence of a comet-like tail. Together these features indicated a ring of dusty debris circling the white dwarf, and what could be the signature of a small planet being vaporized.

“The eureka moment of discovery came on the last night of observation with a sudden realization of what was going around the white dwarf. The shape and changing depth of the transit were undeniable signatures,” said Vanderburg.

In addition to the strangely shaped transits, Vanderburg and his team found signs of heavier elements polluting the atmosphere of WD 1145+017, as predicted by theory.

Due to intense gravity, white dwarfs are expected to have chemically pure surfaces, covered only with light elements of helium and hydrogen. For years, researchers have found evidence that some white dwarf atmospheres are polluted with traces of heavier elements such as calcium, silicon, magnesium and iron. Scientists have long suspected that the source of this pollution was an asteroid or a small planet being torn apart by the white dwarf's intense gravity.

Analysis of the star's atmospheric composition was conducted using observations made by the University of Arizona's MMT Observatory.

“For the last decade we’ve suspected that white dwarf stars were feeding on the remains of rocky objects, and this result may be the smoking gun we’re looking for,” said Fergal Mullally, staff scientist of K2 at SETI and NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “However, there's still a lot more work to be done figuring out the history of this system.”

“This discovery highlights the power and serendipitous nature of K2. The science community has full access to K2 observations and is using these data to make a wide range of unique discoveries across the full range of astrophysics phenomena,” said Steve Howell, K2 project scientist at Ames.

Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Release 15-29 NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Begins Environmental Testing

NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission is undergoing environmental testing at Lockheed Martin Space Systems facilities, near Denver, Colorado. OSIRIS-REx will be the first U.S. mission to return samples from an asteroid to Earth for further study.

"OSIRIS-REx is entering environmental testing on schedule, on budget and with schedule reserves," said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "This allows us to have flexibility if any concerns arise during final launch preparations."

Over the next five months, the spacecraft will be subjected to a range of rigorous tests that simulate the vacuum, vibration and extreme temperatures it will experience throughout the life of its mission.

“This is an exciting time for the program as we now have a completed spacecraft and the team gets to test drive it, in a sense, before we actually fly it to asteroid Bennu,” said Rich Kuhns, OSIRIS-REx program manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. “The environmental test phase is an important time in the mission as it will reveal any issues with the spacecraft and instruments, while here on Earth, before we send it into deep space.”

Specifically, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will undergo tests to simulate the harsh environment of space, including acoustical, separation and deployment shock, vibration, and electromagnetic interference. The simulation concludes with a test in which the spacecraft and its instruments are placed in a vacuum chamber and cycled through the extreme hot and cold temperatures it will face during its journey to Bennu.

"This milestone marks the end of the design and assembly stage,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “We now move on to test the entire flight system over the range of environmental conditions that will be experienced on the journey to Bennu and back. This phase is critical to mission success, and I am confident that we have built the right system for the job."

OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to ship from Lockheed Martin’s facility to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center next May, where it will undergo final preparations for launch.

After launch in September 2016, the spacecraft will travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and bring at least a 60-gram (2.1-ounce) sample back to Earth for study. OSIRIS-REx will return the largest sample from space since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission returned 170 grams (6 ounces) of lunar soil in 1976.

Scientists expect that the Bennu may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of water and organic molecules that may have made their way to Earth. OSIRIS-REx’s investigation will inform future efforts to develop a mission to mitigate an impact, should one be required.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta is the mission's principal investigator at the University of Arizona. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is building the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Federal Agencies Release Data Showing California Central Valley Idle Farmland Doubling During Drought

NASA, in collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the California Department of Water Resources, released data today showing the effect the current drought has had on agricultural production and the idling of California farmlands.

The datasets map the change in idle, or fallowed, lands -- agricultural acreage typically cultivated but allowed to lie idle during one or more growing seasons -- across the California Central Valley over the past five years. The datasets highlight increases in idle farmland in the Central Valley as the drought has extended into its fourth year.

NASA and USDA estimate that more than 1.03 million acres have been idle all year, which represents approximately 15 percent of the 7 million acres of irrigated farmland in California’s Central Valley. This is more than double the amount of idle agricultural acreage in 2011, which was the last calendar year following a winter with average or above average precipitation across the state.

“As the summer season starts to wind down and the 2015 California water year comes to an end, the data illustrates the toll the drought has taken on California agriculture,” said Forrest Melton, senior research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

The datasets were produced as part of a joint project to use satellite data to continuously track changes in unplanted agricultural acreage during the drought. Results for 2015 indicate that the extent of unplanted agricultural land increased in the Central Valley by more than 500,000 acres in winter and summer months relative to 2011. The project represents the first time state agencies used satellite data to track drought impacts on agricultural lands in California.

Additional analyses conducted by NASA separated estimates of idle acreage for the winter and summer seasons in the Central Valley. This analysis revealed that during the summer season, when many high value crops are produced and harvested, a total of 1.92 million acres of farmland have been left idle since June 1. This represented an increase of 522,000 acres since 2011, when only 1.39 million acres were left unplanted during the entire summer growing season. NASA’s data confirms the model-based estimates included in a report on economic impacts of the drought released by UC Davis in August, which estimated 540,000 acres were fallowed in 2015 due to the drought. In 2015, the largest increases in idle acreage were observed along the west side of the San Joaquin Valley in Fresno, Kings and Kern counties.

The datasets on land fallowing were derived using thousands of observations collected by multiple satellites over California including Landsat, a joint NASA and USGS mission, as well as NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites. The satellite datasets were processed and analyzed by scientists at Ames and the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, who created time series of monthly field conditions for every field in the state. The team used the data to create monthly reports for the California Department of Water Resources.

At Ames, the computing-intensive analysis of these satellite scenes was conducted using the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX), a research platform that allows scientists to perform analyses of Earth observation data using the state-of-the-art computing resources of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility.

"These datasets highlight the continuing impacts of the drought on agricultural communities in California, and identify regions in the state that have been particularly hard hit by water shortages,” said Melton. “At the same time, the data provide insights into regions of the state that have been more resilient to the drought and that have been able to sustain agricultural production despite the reductions in surface water supplies."

The datasets were produced as part of a collaborative effort conducted as a pilot project for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) for California.

California’s 2014 drought emergency proclamation directed the state’s Department of Water Resources to monitor agricultural land fallowing to better quantify drought impacts. “This remote-sensing application gives us a unique opportunity to see impacts in near real-time during the growing season, over a widespread geographic area,” said Jeanine Jones, interstate resources manager for DWR. “Previously, we had to wait until the following year to see the USDA NASS cropping data tabulation.”

NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase understanding of our home planet, improve lives, and safeguard our future. The agency develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records, freely sharing this unique knowledge while working with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.

This project was initiated in response to a request from the California Department of Water Resources for assistance in improving estimates of land fallowing during drought events. With support from the NASA Applied Sciences Program, NOAA/NIDIS, USGS and USDA, the multi-agency team has been working together to advance monitoring and mapping of drought impacts on agricultural lands in near real-time. The project team also included scientists and students from California State University Monterey Bay who collected ground observations in hundreds of agricultural fields across California to verify the accuracy of the satellite maps.

Release C15-044 NASA Awards Contract for Technical, Administrative Services

NASA has contracted with Logical Innovations, Inc. of Houston to provide technical and administrative services in support of the directorates, programs, and offices at the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

The Center Administrative Technical Support Services (CATSS) II contract is an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract with a one-year base period beginning Sunday, Nov. 1, four one-year options and a potential total value of approximately $26.6 million.

Under the CATSS II contract, Logical Innovations will provides services in support of Armstrong’s Resources Management Office, Financial Management Office, Acquisition Management Office, Technical Publications Office Services, Research Library Services, Reproduction Center Services, Office of Strategic Communications, Office of Internal Controls and Management Systems, Administrative Office Support and Business Systems Support.