Showing posts with label NASA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NASA. Show all posts
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Tuesday, 13 December 2011
ISS Flight Control Room 2006
Images above: The above photos show the flight control room known as FCR-1 as it appeared back in 1968, and as it debuts this week as the main center for flight control of the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA
International Space Station flight controllers are now operating from the new mission control room. The new station room was first commissioned as one of two flight control rooms at Johnson Space Center in 1965. It has been updated to increase technical capabilities and available workspace for the station team as they embark on a series of tasks as complex as any in the history of human spaceflight.
Station flight controllers relocated Oct. 7 to the new control room, which has 20 consoles, liquid crystal displays, three giant display screens and more space in general for safety and comfort.
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Images above: The above photos show the flight control room known as FCR-1 as it appeared back in 1968, and as it debuts this week as the main center for flight control of the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA
International Space Station flight controllers are now operating from the new mission control room. The new station room was first commissioned as one of two flight control rooms at Johnson Space Center in 1965. It has been updated to increase technical capabilities and available workspace for the station team as they embark on a series of tasks as complex as any in the history of human spaceflight.
Station flight controllers relocated Oct. 7 to the new control room, which has 20 consoles, liquid crystal displays, three giant display screens and more space in general for safety and comfort.
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In 1958, President Eisenhower signed the Space Act, officially creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. From the beginning, the purpose for the new branch extended beyond space ships and moon boots. The law stipulated that its research and advancements should benefit all people, and in its 50-year history, NASA has certainly fulfilled that role.
Although most people today will never set foot on the moon, everyone likely comes in contact with a NASA by-product every day. Partnering with various research teams and companies, NASA continues to spawn a vast array of new technologies and products that have improved our daily lives. Basic steps in health, safety, communications and even casual entertainment find their roots in the government branch commonly associated with rocket ships and floating people. In fact, NASA has filed more than 6,300 patents with the U.S. government [source: NASA Scientific and Technical Information].
Each year since 1976, NASA has published a list of every commercialized technology and product linked to its research. The NASA journal "Spinoff" highlights these products, which have included things like improved pacemakers, state of the art exercise machines and satellite radio. Each product was made possible thanks to a NASA idea or innovation.
But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to use many of these so-called spinoffs. Read on to learn about ten of these familiar products.
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Gamma-rays are the highest-energy form of light in the universe. Some are generated by transient events, such as solar flares and the huge star explosions known as supernovas. Others are produced by steady sources like the supermassive black holes at the hearts of galaxies.
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has been mapping out the high-energy sky since its June 2008 launch. Earlier this year, the Fermi team released its second catalog of sources detected by the instrument's Large Area Telescope (LAT), producing an inventory of 1,873 objects shining in gamma-ray light.
Fermi scientists recently compiled a "top 10 list" to mark the occasion, and to highlight the diversity of gamma-ray sources. Five of the sources on the list are found within our own Milky Way, while the other five reside in distant galaxies.
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10. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) Satellite
Courtesy of NASA
The Mission: NASA intended the OCO to provide an orbiting platform from which scientists would be able to look at how carbon dioxide moved through the atmosphere. Hyped as a space-down look at global warming, the OCO was supposed to help researchers figure out climate change.
The Problem: Sadly, the OCO never made it into orbit, as the case containing the satellite failed to separate from the rocket during launch, leading the whole assembly to crash into the ocean 17 minutes after lift off.
Courtesy of NASA
The Problem: Sadly, the OCO never made it into orbit, as the case containing the satellite failed to separate from the rocket during launch, leading the whole assembly to crash into the ocean 17 minutes after lift off.
9. Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) Spacecraft
Courtesy of NASA
The Mission: Upset with the expense and risk of launching the shuttle every time a satellite needed maintenance, NASA created the DART to show that a robotic satellite could dock with other satellites. DART was supposed to autonomously navigate towards, and then rendezvous with, an existing communications satellite.
The Problem: And did it ever rendezvous! The computer controlling DART incorrectly estimated the distance between the two satellites, causing DART to bump right into the other satellite! DART then used up all of its fuel, eventually crashing into the ocean.
The Problem: And did it ever rendezvous! The computer controlling DART incorrectly estimated the distance between the two satellites, causing DART to bump right into the other satellite! DART then used up all of its fuel, eventually crashing into the ocean.
8. NASA Helios
Courtesy of NASA
The Mission: Not actually a space probe, Helios was the last in a line of high altitude, solar powered atmospheric research platforms designed to fly in the upper atmosphere.
The Problem: While the previous aircrafts in the series succeeded in breaking a number of flight records, Helios just couldn’t hack it. About 30 minutes after taking off, Helios hit some powerful wind shear and crashed into the Pacific.
The Problem: While the previous aircrafts in the series succeeded in breaking a number of flight records, Helios just couldn’t hack it. About 30 minutes after taking off, Helios hit some powerful wind shear and crashed into the Pacific.
7. The Hubble Space Telescope
Courtesy of NASA
The Mission: The first in a series of space telescopes, the Hubble would allow astronomers to look at the stars without atmospheric interference. This would, and eventually did, provide the most detailed images of the distant universe ever produced.
The Problem: Much like the nerds who designed the telescope, Hubble had a vision problem. When grinding the original camera lens, engineers failed to compensate for the minute shape change the lens would undergo when moved into a zero gravity environment. The solution? Glasses. Once a corrective lens was added, the Hubble was able to look deep into the universe.
The Problem: Much like the nerds who designed the telescope, Hubble had a vision problem. When grinding the original camera lens, engineers failed to compensate for the minute shape change the lens would undergo when moved into a zero gravity environment. The solution? Glasses. Once a corrective lens was added, the Hubble was able to look deep into the universe.
6. Genesis
Courtesy of NASA
The Mission: Designed to catch pieces of the sun itself, Genesis flew into space to collect solar winds in specially designed sheets of gold, diamond and sapphire. By studying actual pieces of the sun, scientists hoped to learn about the original composition of the solar system.
The Problem: It wasn’t the grabbing a piece of the sun that proved to be a problem, but the bringing it back. The satellite was too delicate to simply land, so NASA planned to catch the capsule in mid air by hooking its parachute with a helicopter. Except the parachute never deployed, and the satellite slammed into the Utah desert. Luckily, those wafers were built tough, and scientists managed to recover some of the samples for testing.
The Problem: It wasn’t the grabbing a piece of the sun that proved to be a problem, but the bringing it back. The satellite was too delicate to simply land, so NASA planned to catch the capsule in mid air by hooking its parachute with a helicopter. Except the parachute never deployed, and the satellite slammed into the Utah desert. Luckily, those wafers were built tough, and scientists managed to recover some of the samples for testing.
5. Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS)
Courtesy of NASA
The Mission: A series of classified surveillance satellites, SBIRS was supposed to answer the Air Force’s need for tracking ballistic missile launches. Consisting of high and low orbit satellites, SBIRS is scheduled to go on line next year.
The Problem: Ignoring the $10 billion cost overrun for the project, and the possibility that it won’t work at all, one of the first SBIRS satellites shutdown only seven seconds after reaching Earth Orbit. The satellite’s safety mechanism malfunctioned, putting the satellite into safe mode, and reducing it to what the then Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force called a “useless ice cube.”
The Problem: Ignoring the $10 billion cost overrun for the project, and the possibility that it won’t work at all, one of the first SBIRS satellites shutdown only seven seconds after reaching Earth Orbit. The satellite’s safety mechanism malfunctioned, putting the satellite into safe mode, and reducing it to what the then Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force called a “useless ice cube.”
4. The Mars Polar Lander (MPL)
Courtesy of NASA
The Mission: The Mars Polar Lander was part of an extensive 1998 push to study the red planet. The program consisted of a soil probe, a lander, and a satellite. As the lander, the MPL was supposed to study the climate and surface of Mars.
The Problem: No one really knows what happened to the MPL. The spacecraft successfully reached Mars, but NASA never made contact with the MPL. Anything from a faulty transmitter to a complete crash to interference from Marvin could have caused the failure. NASA still hopes to one day find the MPL and figure out what went wrong.
The Problem: No one really knows what happened to the MPL. The spacecraft successfully reached Mars, but NASA never made contact with the MPL. Anything from a faulty transmitter to a complete crash to interference from Marvin could have caused the failure. NASA still hopes to one day find the MPL and figure out what went wrong.
3. Deep Space 2
The Mission: Sent to Mars on the same spacecraft as the Mars Polar Lander, the Deep Space 2 was a penetrator, designed to burrow into the Martian soil and collect data on water and chemical composition.
The Problem: Much like the MPL, the fate of the Deep Space 2 remains a mystery. Both probes were built under the “faster, better, cheaper” rubric that dominated NASA in the 1990s. Eventually judged as a failure, the ethos tasked NASA with generating a greater number of less expensive projects rather than the small number of large projects that dominated most of the agency’s history. While NASA produced probes that were plenty cheap, many of them weren’t as fast or better as hoped.
The Problem: Much like the MPL, the fate of the Deep Space 2 remains a mystery. Both probes were built under the “faster, better, cheaper” rubric that dominated NASA in the 1990s. Eventually judged as a failure, the ethos tasked NASA with generating a greater number of less expensive projects rather than the small number of large projects that dominated most of the agency’s history. While NASA produced probes that were plenty cheap, many of them weren’t as fast or better as hoped.
2. The Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO)
Courtesy of NASA
The Mission: The brains of the 1998 Mars Missions, NASA intended the MCO to serve the dual function of studying the Martian atmosphere and relaying radio signals from the two surface probes.
The Problem: In one of the all time great engineering gaffs, NASA subcontractor Lockheed Martin created thruster software that used Imperial units, not the metric units used by NASA. NASA did not know this, never converted from pounds to newtons, and the probe eventually hit the atmosphere at the wrong angle and burned up.
The Problem: In one of the all time great engineering gaffs, NASA subcontractor Lockheed Martin created thruster software that used Imperial units, not the metric units used by NASA. NASA did not know this, never converted from pounds to newtons, and the probe eventually hit the atmosphere at the wrong angle and burned up.
1. NOAA-19
Courtesy of NASA
The Mission: NOAA-19 was the last in a series of weather satellites that monitor atmospheric conditions, follow volcanic eruptions and conduct climate research.
The Problem: There have been satellites lost in space, those that have exploded on the runway, and then there’s this. During final servicing at a Lockheed-Martin facility in California, engineers failed to check if the satellite was bolted down before moving it, and accidentally knocked the multi-million dollar piece of equipment onto the ground, breaking a number of components. Whoops!
The Problem: There have been satellites lost in space, those that have exploded on the runway, and then there’s this. During final servicing at a Lockheed-Martin facility in California, engineers failed to check if the satellite was bolted down before moving it, and accidentally knocked the multi-million dollar piece of equipment onto the ground, breaking a number of components. Whoops!
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NASA scientists prepare a rocket for a space launch. The administration began in 1958 and quickly racked up technological achievements. See more rocket pictures.
Robert W. Kelley/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
When the satellite Sputnik orbited Earth in October 1957, Russia pulled ahead in the space race. The Cold War was on, and the United States scrambled to respond in kind. It had already developed a satellite under another national program, but it became clear that a dedicated space agency was in order. President Eisenhower and Senator Lyndon B. Johnson led the drive. It took one year from Sputnik's launch to get the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through Congress and into full operation. Not a second was wasted in eliminating Russia's lead: Even before NASA was fully up and running, the United States sent a satellite into orbit. We were officially in the Space Age.
From the start, NASA's goals were lofty. It planned to expand human knowledge of space; lead the world in space-related technological innovation; develop vehicles that can carry both equipment and living organisms into space; and coordinate with international space agencies to achieve the greatest possible scientific advancements. In the last 50 years, NASA has achieved every one of those goals, and it continues to seek answers to some of the biggest mysteries in science as it evolves with a changing world.
The agency has always reflected the changing values of U.S. society, focusing on technological supremacy from its inception in 1958, and adding goals like Earth observation in 1985, in the wake of climate-change evidence. It amended its goals to include manufacturing preeminence in 1989, reflecting the rise of international players in the industry of space-exploration equipment. But the most sought-after aspiration remains the same: explore every corner of space to expand our knowledge of the universe.
In this article, we'll look at some of NASA's greatest achievements to date. It's hard to choose from among the incredible feats on NASA's résumé, but some of its successes are more monumental than others. This list presents some of those great moments in science, beginning with the launch of the first U.S. spacecraft. Explorer 1 encountered a major discovery before it even reached its orbit.
From the start, NASA's goals were lofty. It planned to expand human knowledge of space; lead the world in space-related technological innovation; develop vehicles that can carry both equipment and living organisms into space; and coordinate with international space agencies to achieve the greatest possible scientific advancements. In the last 50 years, NASA has achieved every one of those goals, and it continues to seek answers to some of the biggest mysteries in science as it evolves with a changing world.
The agency has always reflected the changing values of U.S. society, focusing on technological supremacy from its inception in 1958, and adding goals like Earth observation in 1985, in the wake of climate-change evidence. It amended its goals to include manufacturing preeminence in 1989, reflecting the rise of international players in the industry of space-exploration equipment. But the most sought-after aspiration remains the same: explore every corner of space to expand our knowledge of the universe.
In this article, we'll look at some of NASA's greatest achievements to date. It's hard to choose from among the incredible feats on NASA's résumé, but some of its successes are more monumental than others. This list presents some of those great moments in science, beginning with the launch of the first U.S. spacecraft. Explorer 1 encountered a major discovery before it even reached its orbit.
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Using the perspective of the last few centuries and millennia, speakers in a press conference at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco will discuss the latest research involving climate reconstructions and different climate models.
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| Movie of North America Movie of flat world map |
The press conference features Caspar Ammann of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, Colo.; Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York; and Tom Crowley of Duke University, Durham, N.C. The press conference is at 5 p.m. EST, Thursday, December 11 in the Moscone Convention Center West, Room 2012.
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Changes in the sun's activity have been considered responsible for some part of past climatic variations. Although useful measurements of solar energy are limited to the last 25 years of satellite data, this record is not long enough to confirm potential trends in solar energy changes over time. Tentative connections between the measured solar activity, with sunspots or the production of specific particles in the Earth's atmosphere (such as carbon-14 and beryllium-10), have been used to estimate past solar energy.
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Ammann will discuss how he used a set of irradiance estimates with the NCAR coupled Ocean-Atmosphere General Circulation computer model to show the climate system contains a clearly detectable signal from the sun. Ammann's work with the model also demonstrates that smaller, rather than larger, background trends in the sun's emitted energy are in better agreement with the long-term climate record, as obtained from proxy climate records, such as tree-ring data.
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| Hi res TIF image (11.2 MB) Click here for animation. |
Shindell will discuss how he used a climate model that included solar radiation changes, volcanic eruptions, and natural internal variability to arrive at a more accurate look at Earth's changing climate today. Shindell said that while solar radiation changes and volcanoes exert a similar influence on global or hemispheric average-temperature changes, the solar component has the biggest regional effect over time scales of decades to centuries, while volcanoes cause the largest year-to-year changes.
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| Hi res of sulfur cloud Click here for animation. |
Crowley will discuss one of the goals of climate modeling, to test whether moderately reliable predictions of regional climate change can be made under global warming scenarios. Using paleoclimate data, scientists can in some cases test computer climate-model performance. This testing would occur for a time period in which models accurately predict the larger (hemispheric-scale) response to changes in the Earth's radiation balance.
NASA's Earth Science Enterprise is dedicated to understanding the Earth as an integrated system and applying Earth System Science to improve prediction of climate, weather and natural hazards using the unique vantage point of space.
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NCAR is a research laboratory operated by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a consortium of 67 universities offering doctoral programs in the atmospheric and related sciences. NCAR's primary sponsor is the National Science Foundation.
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While touring the Saturn system in 2008, Cassini enabled great scientific studies and observations. Below is captured the Top 10 Science Highlights of the year as selected by the science teams.
1. Identification of liquid ethane in a lake on Titan
2. Polar storms on Saturn
3. Strong inference of a liquid water layer in Titan's interior
4. The likelihood of dusty rings around Rhea
5. The possibility of plate-tectonic-like spreading in the Enceladus south polar region
6. Water vapor jets inside the plume of gas leaving Enceladus
7. Moonlet population in and around the F ring
8. New insights into Saturn's aurora
9. Three belts of sub-moonlets in the A ring (propellers)
10. Six month-old lightning storm shatters record for longevity
Read More - http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/cassinifeatures/feature20090330/
1. Identification of liquid ethane in a lake on Titan
2. Polar storms on Saturn
3. Strong inference of a liquid water layer in Titan's interior
4. The likelihood of dusty rings around Rhea
5. The possibility of plate-tectonic-like spreading in the Enceladus south polar region
6. Water vapor jets inside the plume of gas leaving Enceladus
7. Moonlet population in and around the F ring
8. New insights into Saturn's aurora
9. Three belts of sub-moonlets in the A ring (propellers)
10. Six month-old lightning storm shatters record for longevity
Read More - http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/cassinifeatures/feature20090330/
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The former NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell has claimed that aliens exist and their visits are being covered up by the United States government. Mitchell is in good company in his beliefs. Here we highlight 12 other public figures who believe that extraterrestrials may have been visiting our planet over the last 100 years.
