May 18 2016
From The Space Library
MEDIA ADVISORY M16-055 NASA Invites Media, Social Media to June Deep Space Rocket Booster Test
Media and social media followers are invited to watch as NASA tests the largest, most powerful booster in the world for the agency's new deep space rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), on June 28 at Orbital ATK Aerospace System's test facility in Promontory, Utah. SLS and NASA’s Orion spacecraft will launch astronauts on missions to explore multiple destinations on the journey to Mars.
A test version of the booster for NASA's new rocket, the Space Launch System, will fire up for the second of two qualification ground tests June 28 at prime contractor Orbital ATK's test facility in Promontory, Utah. The test will provide NASA with critical data to support booster qualification for flight. When completed, two five-segment boosters and four RS-25 main engines will power the world's most powerful rocket, with the Orion spacecraft atop, to achieve human exploration to deep-space destinations, including our journey to Mars.
NASA social media followers can apply for credentials to attend the booster test firing as part of a NASA Social event. A maximum of 45 participants will be selected to attend events on June 27, which include tours of the Orbital ATK facilities and opportunities for interviews with NASA and Orbital ATK officials. Participants also will have the opportunity to view, and feel, the powerful test firing on June 28.
Social media followers can apply to attend the event at: [[1]]
Registration is for U.S. citizens only and closes Monday, May 23. All social media accreditation applications will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Details and rules for social media accreditation also are listed on the website.
Members of the U.S. media interested in covering the June 27 events and June 28 test can request credentials by contacting Orbital ATK's Kay Anderson at 435-230-2787 or kay.anderson@orbitalatk.com.
This is the second two-minute, full-duration qualification test for the booster, and will provide NASA with critical data to support booster qualification for flight. It also will be the last time the booster is fired in a test environment before the first flight of SLS and Orion in 2018.
During the test, 82 qualification test objectives will be measured through more than 530 instrumentation channels on the booster at a target initial temperature of 40 degrees Fahrenheit – the colder end of its accepted propellant temperature range.
The first, full-scale booster qualification test was successfully completed in March 2015 and demonstrated acceptable performance of the booster design at 90 degrees Fahrenheit -- the highest end of the booster’s accepted propellant temperature range. Testing at the thermal extremes experienced by the booster on the launch pad is important to understanding the effects of temperature on the performance of the propellant.
Two five-segment solid rocket boosters and four RS-25 main engines will power the SLS. Solid rocket boosters operate in parallel with the main engines for the first two minutes of flight, providing more than 75 percent of the thrust needed for the rocket to overcome Earth’s gravitational pull.
The SLS Block I configuration will have a minimum 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capability and be powered by twin boosters and four RS-25 engines. The next planned upgrade of SLS, Block 1B, would use a more powerful exploration upper stage for more ambitious missions with a 105-metric-ton (115-ton) lift capacity. Block 2 will add a pair of more powerful boosters to provide a 130-metric-ton (143-ton) lift capacity. In each configuration, SLS will continue to use the same core stage and four RS-25 engines.
Goddard Visitor Center, Celebrating its Big 4-0, Is Ready for Its Close-Up with Google
Practically everyone on the planet has accessed Google Maps at one time or another. OK, maybe not EVERYONE, but quite a few people, you know who you are! What is so amazing about Google Maps is its ability to help the user find his or her way from HERE to THERE, but for its ability to take the user directly THERE from their computer screen. Google Street View collection has made it possible for users to virtually visit hundreds of thousands of streets, museums, cultural centers, landmarks, hidden gems and roadside attractions. You can virtually visit the Taj Mahal, the canals of Venice, even underwater at the Great Barrier Reef and get up close and personal.
The Goddard Space Flight Center’s Visitor Center located in Greenbelt, Maryland, was treated to a visit from a Google Street View Collection team on Aug. 4, 2014. Goddard was eager to share its own amazing collection of space memorabilia, life-sized satellite models of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, scale models of the Hubble, even our very own moon rock, as well as interactive exhibits and awe-inspiring images of space. And today, coincidentally, the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Goddard Visitor Center on May 18, 1976, the Google Street View team released to the public its street view of the Visitor Center!
Back in August 2014, the Google Street View Collection Team of Janson Lo and Alan Chau brought both the Street View Trolley, which is a camera mounted on a sophisticated dolly to capture the interior of the Visitor Center, as well as the Google Trekker to capture the Rocket Garden located in back of the Visitor Center. The Rocket Garden has such highlights as a Delta Rocket, an Apollo space capsule and sounding rockets in all shapes and sizes. The Google Trekker is a backpack camera that films a 360 degree view as the camera operator moves through the landscape capturing images. At 50 pounds of hardware, it is not exactly something you’d want to take on a hike! The Google camera dolly, used mainly for indoor shooting, is pushed through the exhibit area by an operator and images are collected at zero, 90, 180 and 270 degrees as the camera swings around to each location for a shot. These images are then sent back to Google, and engineers there are able to stitch together the images for a full 360 degree view.
They were also able to capture the Science on a Sphere exhibit at Goddard, which is a mesmerizing visualization system developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that uses computers and video projectors to display animated data on the outside of a suspended, six-foot diameter, white sphere. Four strategically placed projectors work in unison to coat the sphere with data such as "3-D surface of the Earth and Nighttime Lights," "Moon and Mars" and "X-ray Sun."
Now that the street view has been released please feel free to visit it at: Goddard Visitor Center Google Street View
Or if you’re in the neighborhood, by all means, come on by and see it in person. We love visitors! Admission to the Visitor Center and parking is free.
IRIS Releases New Imagery of Mercury Transit
On May 9, 2016, a NASA solar telescope called the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, observed Mercury crossing in front of the sun — an astronomical phenomenon known as a Mercury transit. During the transit, IRIS focused on Mercury in order to help calibrate its telescope. By observing the planet — a region that ideally should appear completely dark — the team could determine just how the optics focus incoming light. IRIS can then be recalibrated to accommodate any changes that may have happened during launch into space.
IRIS tracks a small portion of the sun — in incredibly high resolution — at any given time, so IRIS was able to track Mercury for 50-minute chunks of time after which the telescope was repointed. Repointing takes about 10 minutes during which time no data can be gathered, so IRIS was not able to see Mercury during its whole transit. The inset shows a blend of IRIS observations with SDO filling in the gaps while IRIS was repointing.
The thin, dark line that appears in the IRIS imagery is a slit that helps focus incoming light for an instrument called a spectrograph. The spectrograph analyzes the wavelengths present in one thin slice of the telescope's view at a time. Information about the wavelengths helps IRIS determine the temperature and movement of the material hovering in the lower solar atmosphere, the chromosphere — a dynamic region of the sun that is is mysteriously hotter than the surface of the sun itself. Understanding why the atmosphere gets hotter the farther away it gets from the original source of heat is a key area of study for IRIS.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Explorer Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin designed the IRIS observatory and manages the mission for NASA.
Sounding Rocket EVE Supporting Tune-up of SDO EVE Instrument
EVE Launch Postponed
The Black Brant IX sounding rocket carrying the EVE scientific payload schedule for launch May 25 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico has been postponed because of inclement weather. The launch is now scheduled for 3 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, June 1.
Satellites provide data daily on our own planet, our sun and the universe around us. The instruments on these spacecraft are constantly bombarded with solar particles and intense light, not to mention the normal wear and tear from operating in space.
If it were a car that’s a few years old, you would take it to the mechanic for a tune-up to make sure it continues running smoothly. However, with a spacecraft it’s not that easy. Thus, scientists may turn to calibration flights to make sure the instruments are kept up to snuff and providing validated data.
One such flight will be the Extreme UltraViolet (EUV) Variability Experiment, or EVE, from the University of Colorado, Boulder, to observe the sun from a NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket at 3:02 p.m. EDT May 25 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
"The experiment's primary goal is to provide the under-flight calibration for the SDO EVE spectrometers and the solar EUV imager aboard SDO," said Tom Woods, the principal investigator for this mission as well as the EVE instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO. "The calibration rocket measurements also support the calibration and validation for several other solar soft X-ray and extreme ultraviolet spectrometers and imagers on NASA solar observatories."
The sounding rocket flight will be the eighth calibration flight of the EVE rocket instrument. After suffering a launch vehicle failure on a flight in May 2015, the instruments were recovered, refurbished and are ready for this mission, according to Woods.
The flights of the sounding rocket EVE instrument have been conducted since 2006 with the first launches to calibrate the solar EUV instrument aboard NASA’s TIMED satellite. With the launch of SDO in February 2010, unprecedented information has been received on our closest star that includes over 10 million EUV spectra and over 100 million solar images.
Woods said, “There is a lot of science and many exciting -- some unexpected -- results from the SDO satellite measurements. For example, while most EUV emissions increase during a solar flare, some emissions decrease, or dim, during a flare, and this dimming is providing new information about the mass loss during eruptive flare events. This calibration rocket flight contributes to those satellite measurements by providing the most accurate and updated calibration for the satellite instruments. It is invaluable for helping to understand how the satellite instruments are degrading.”
He continued, “One of the unexpected results in analysis of the instrument degradation trends, especially the spectral signature of the degradation trend for SDO EVE, is that most of the degradation in some of the EUV instruments is from oxidation of the metal foil filters and not from hydrocarbon contamination as has been the case for past satellite missions. In other words, despite the fact that SDO is a very clean spacecraft (with no significant hydrocarbon contamination), the satellite instruments still are degrading in space.”
The EVE on the 56.5-foot Black Brant IX sounding rocket is expected to fly to approximately 180 miles altitude during a 16-minute flight and provide about five minutes of solar viewing time. For Woods and his team this is all the time needed to gather data for a tune-up of the various satellite instruments.
The calibration rocket measurements also support the calibration and validation for several other solar soft X-ray and extreme ultraviolet spectrometers and imagers on NASA's Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics, Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, ESA/NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/NASA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite Program, and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency/NASA's Hinode.
The EVE calibration mission is supported through NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program at the Goddard Space Flight Center’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. NASA’s Heliophysics Division manages the sounding rocket program.
Keith Koehler NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia
Historic Tank in California, Part of Facility’s Legacy of Work on Journey to Mars
NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) in New Orleans has been building spacecraft components for decades, helping lay the foundation for the Journey to Mars. Today, this advanced manufacturing facility is where engineers are building the massive core stage of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which will store cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to feed the vehicle’s four RS-25 engines. Previously, the space shuttle external tanks were manufactured at MAF. The last tank, ET-94, recently embarked on its final mission to commemorate past achievements in space, to educate, and inspire future generations of explorers as part of a permanent shuttle exhibit at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. ET-94 has traveled more than 5,000 miles from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility Traveling by barge, ET-94 has traveled more than 5,000 miles from NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Shannon Dann and Gulfmaster I, carrying ET-94, departed the Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal in San Diego on May 17, 2016. ET-94 arrived this morning to Marina Del Ray, Calif. Credits: Dennis Jenkins
The tank left MAF on a barge Tuesday, April 12, and will arrive at the California Science Center Wednesday, May 19. With the addition of ET-94, the California Science Center's Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will be the only place in the world to view a complete shuttle stack in launch configuration.
“We are elated to have ET-94 at the California Science Center to inspire future generations of explorers with a means of reaching beyond our current limits and opening new doors of discovery from the unique vantage point of space,” said John Honeycutt, former external tank manager and current program manager for NASA’s Space Launch System. “NASA is embarking on its next step in space exploration with the Space Launch System, the new launch vehicle that will enable journeys to deep space destinations, including Mars. The external tank provided a great foundation for building the SLS core stage.”
ET-94 was designated a test article for the Space Shuttle Program in order to validate processes and procedures prior to performing the work on the next flight tank. ET-94 was a vital part of NASA’s ability to return to flight and is a testament to the ingenuity and can-do spirit of the external tank team. The external tank was managed by Lockheed Martin Space Systems of Denver, Colorado, for NASA and built at MAF.
ET-94, is a lightweight version of the external tank, measures approximately 154 feet long and 27.5 feet in diameter and weighs about 69,000 pounds. The external tank served as the structural backbone of the space shuttle and was designed to absorb and distribute over 7 million pounds of thrust generated at launch. It also fed liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen to the three space shuttle main engines mounted on the shuttle’s orbiter.
“This exhibit of ET-94 is about inspiration and motivation, and encouraging people of all ages to dream about the possibilities, to understand that when we set our minds to it and use our knowledge of science and engineering, we can do amazing things,” said Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center.
During the Space Shuttle Program, 135 external tanks were flown. NASA retired the space shuttles in 2011 in order to devote its resources to sending astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit. The Space Launch System, the launch vehicle which NASA is currently building, will be the world’s most powerful rocket and designed to enable astronauts to travel deeper into the solar system, ushering in the next extraordinary moments in our nation’s story of exploration.
