Sep 14 2012
From The Space Library
RELEASE: 12-311 BOEING COMPLETES FIRST MILESTONE FOR NASA'S COMMERCIAL CREW INITIATIVE
HOUSTON -- The Boeing Company completed its first performance milestone Aug. 23 for NASA's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative, which is intended to lead to the availability of human spaceflight transportation services for government and commercial customers. In its Integrated Systems Review (ISR), Boeing presented the latest designs of its CST-100 spacecraft, United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket launch system, and ground and mission operations. These designs will serve as the baseline for further development work to be accomplished during CCiCap. The company also discussed its plans for safety and mission assurance, which ultimately will contribute to achieving certification of the system for human spaceflight. "The ISR established a firm baseline configuration that will allow our team to push forward with the final vehicle design", said John Mulholland, Boeing vice president and program manager for Commercial Programs. "We hope the rigor of our design and development process, and our outstanding team of suppliers will help position the CST-100 as one of the next crew transportation vehicles to the space station and other low Earth orbit destinations." Technical experts from NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) participated in the review in Houston. They are in the process of providing comments and advice based on more than 50 years of human spaceflight experience. "All of our industry partners are gearing up to push their human spaceflight technologies further than ever before so America can have its own crew transportation system around the middle of the decade," said Ed Mango, CCP's program manager. "This review was just the first of many exciting and valuable milestones Boeing is expected to complete during its funded partnership with NASA." At the review, Boeing also presented results from numerous tests that were conducted as part of its earlier Commercial Crew Development Round Two Space Act Agreement with NASA. These tests included parachute and air bag drops, abort engine firings and wind tunnel tests. NASA's new CCiCap agreements follow two previous commercial endeavors by the agency to spur the development of crew transportation systems and subsystems. Work by NASA's industry partners during CCiCap will set the stage for a crewed orbital demonstration mission around the middle of the decade. Future development and certification initiatives eventually will lead to the availability of human spaceflight services for NASA to send its astronauts to the International Space Station, where critical research is taking place daily to benefit all of humanity. The overall goal of NASA's commercial space efforts is to make low Earth orbit more accessible and open for business for other government and commercial customers.
RELEASE: 12-322 FIRST PLANETS FOUND AROUND SUN-LIKE STARS IN A CLUSTER
WASHINGTON -- NASA-funded astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. The findings offer the best evidence yet planets can sprout up in dense stellar environments. Although the newfound planets are not habitable, their skies would be starrier than what we see from Earth. The starry-skied planets are two so-called hot Jupiters, which are massive, gaseous orbs that are boiling hot because they orbit tightly around their parent stars. Each hot Jupiter circles a different sun-like star in the Beehive Cluster, also called the Praesepe, a collection of roughly 1,000 stars that appear to be swarming around a common center. The Beehive is an open cluster, or a grouping of stars born at about the same time and out of the same giant cloud of material. As such, the stars share a similar chemical composition. Unlike the majority of stars, which spread out shortly after birth, these young stars remain loosely bound together by mutual gravitational attraction. "We are detecting more and more planets that can thrive in diverse and extreme environments like these nearby clusters," said Mario R. Perez, the NASA astrophysics program scientist in the Origins of Solar Systems Program. "Our galaxy contains more than 1,000 of these open clusters, which potentially can present the physical conditions for harboring many more of these giant planets." The two new Beehive planets are called Pr0201b and Pr0211b. The star's name followed by a "b" is the standard naming convention for planets. "These are the first 'b's' in the Beehive," said Sam Quinn, a graduate student in astronomy at Georgia State University in Atlanta and the lead author of the paper describing the results, which was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Quinn and his team, in collaboration with David Latham at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, discovered the planets by using the 1.5-meter Tillinghast telescope at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona to measure the slight gravitational wobble the orbiting planets induce upon their host stars. Previous searches of clusters had turned up two planets around massive stars but none had been found around stars like our sun until now. "This has been a big puzzle for planet hunters," Quinn said. "We know that most stars form in clustered environments like the Orion nebula, so unless this dense environment inhibits planet formation, at least some sun-like stars in open clusters should have planets. Now, we finally know they are indeed there." The results also are of interest to theorists who are trying to understand how hot Jupiters wind up so close to their stars. Most theories contend these blistering worlds start out much cooler and farther from their stars before migrating inward. "The relatively young age of the Beehive cluster makes these planets among the youngest known," said Russel White, the principal investigator on the NASA Origins of Solar Systems grant that funded this study. "And that's important because it sets a constraint on how quickly giant planets migrate inward. And knowing how quickly they migrate is the first step to figuring out how they migrate." The research team suspects planets were turned up in the Beehive cluster because it is rich in metals. Stars in the Beehive have more heavy elements such as iron than the sun has. According to White, "Searches for planets around nearby stars suggest that these metals act like a 'planet fertilizer,' leading to an abundant crop of gas-giant planets. Our results suggest this may be true in clusters as well." NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program office.
RELEASE: 12-323 NASA SELECTS ADVANCED ROBOTICS PROJECTS FOR DEVELOPMENT
WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected eight advanced robotics projects that will enable the agency's future missions while supporting the Obama administration's National Robotics Initiative. The projects, ranging from technologies for improving robotic planetary rovers to humanoid robotic systems, will support the development and use of robots for space exploration, as well as by manufacturers and businesses in the United States. Robots can work beside, or cooperatively, with people to enhance individual human capabilities, performance and safety in space as well as here on Earth. Co-robotics, where robots work cooperatively with people to enhance their individual human capabilities, performance and safety, is a valuable tool for maintaining American leadership in aerospace technology and advanced manufacturing. "Robonaut, NASA's robotic crewmember aboard the International Space Station, is being tested to perform tasks to assist our astronauts and free them up to do the important scientific research and complex engineering taking place each day on our orbiting national lab," said NASA Chief Technologist Mason Peck at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Selected through our participation in the National Robotics Initiative, these new projects will support NASA as we plan for our asteroid mission in 2025 and the human exploration of Mars around 2035." The proposals NASA has selected for development are: -- "Toward Human Avatar Robots for Co-Exploration of Hazardous Environments," J. Pratt, principal investigator, Florida Institute of Human Machine Cognition, Pensacola -- "A Novel Powered Leg Prosthesis Simulator for Sensing and Control Development," H. Herr, principal investigator, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge -- "Long-range Prediction of Non-Geometric Terrain Hazards for Reliable Planetary Rover Traverse," R. Whittaker, principal investigator, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh -- "Active Skins for Simplified Tactile Feedback in Robotics," S. Bergbreiter, principal investigator, University of Maryland, College Park -- "Actuators for Safe, Strong and Efficient Humanoid Robots," S. Pekarek, principal investigator, Purdue University -- "Whole-body Telemanipulation of the Dreamer Humanoid Robot on Rough Terrains Using Hand Exoskeleton (EXODREAM)," L. Sentis, principal investigator, University of Texas at Austin -- "Long, Thin Continuum Robots for Space Applications," I. Walker, principal investigator, Clemson University, Clemson, S.C. -- "Manipulating Flexible Materials Using Sparse Coding," R. Platt, principal investigator, State University of New York, Buffalo The National Science Foundation (NSF) managed the solicitation and peer review selection process for these NASA awards. Awards range from $150,000 to $1 million, with a total NASA investment of $2.7 million. NASA has a long history of developing cutting-edge robotic systems for use in space exploration. NASA also partners with American businesses, universities and other federal agencies to transfer those technologies back into the nation's industrial base, improving manufacturing capabilities and economic competitiveness. Recently, tremendous advances in robotics technology have enabled a new generation of assistive systems and devices in industries as diverse as manufacturing, logistics, medicine, health care, military, agriculture, and consumer products. As part of the National Robotics Initiative, NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have managed a joint solicitation, seeking to engage our next generation of roboticists for the new global technology economy. All participating federal agencies are working with partners to foster the exchange of ideas and technologies that will directly benefit American today and well into the future. The purpose of the initiative is to encourage innovative collaborative research that combines computer and systems science with mechanical, electrical and materials engineering and social, behavioral and economic sciences. The resulting research will tackle the most important and challenging problems in producing this class of human-assisting co-robotics. NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist and the Space Technology Program lead the agency's participation in the National Robotics Initiative. NASA's Space Technology Program is dedicated to innovating, developing, testing, and flying hardware for use in NASA's future science and exploration missions. NASA's technology investments provide cutting-edge solutions for our nation's future.
RELEASE: 12-324 NASA MARS ROVER OPPORTUNITY REVEALS GEOLOGICAL MYSTERY
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's long-lived rover Opportunity has returned an image of the Martian surface that is puzzling researchers. Spherical objects concentrated at an outcrop Opportunity reached last week differ in several ways from iron-rich spherules nicknamed "blueberries" the rover found at its landing site in early 2004 and at many other locations to date. Opportunity is investigating an outcrop called Kirkwood in the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The spheres measure as much as one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter. The analysis is still preliminary, but it indicates that these spheres do not have the high iron content of Martian blueberries. "This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission," said Opportunity's principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different. We never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars." The Martian blueberries found elsewhere by Opportunity are concretions formed by action of mineral-laden water inside rocks, evidence of a wet environment on early Mars. Concretions result when minerals precipitate out of water to become hard masses inside sedimentary rocks. Many of the Kirkwood spheres are broken and eroded by the wind. Where wind has partially etched them away, a concentric structure is evident. Opportunity used the microscopic imager on its arm to look closely at Kirkwood. Researchers checked the spheres' composition by using an instrument called the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer on Opportunity's arm. "They seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle," Squyres said. "They are different in concentration. They are different in structure. They are different in composition. They are different in distribution. So, we have a wonderful geological puzzle in front of us. We have multiple working hypotheses, and we have no favorite hypothesis at this time. It's going to take a while to work this out, so the thing to do now is keep an open mind and let the rocks do the talking." Just past Kirkwood lies another science target area for Opportunity. The location is an extensive pale-toned outcrop in an area of Cape York where observations from orbit have detected signs of clay minerals. That may be the rover's next study site after Kirkwood. Four years ago, Opportunity departed Victoria Crater, which it had investigated for two years, to reach different types of geological evidence at the rim of the much larger Endeavour Crater. The rover's energy levels are favorable for the investigations. Spring equinox comes this month to Mars' southern hemisphere, so the amount of sunshine for solar power will continue increasing for months. "The rover is in very good health considering its 8-1/2 years of hard work on the surface of Mars," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Energy production levels are comparable to what they were a full Martian year ago, and we are looking forward to productive spring and summer seasons of exploration." NASA launched the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity in the summer of 2003, and both completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004. They continued bonus, extended missions for years. Spirit finished communicating with Earth in March 2010. The rovers have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. JPL manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
