NASA Awards Microwave Sounder Contract For JPSS Spacecraft

The Indian Ocean at Sunset aboard the ISS. (Photo by NASA)

WASHINGTON -- NASA, on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has awarded a sole source letter contract to Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Azusa, Calif., for the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) instrument planned for flight on the first Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS-1).

The estimated value of this letter contract is $30 million with a period of performance from 2011 through 2017. Northrop Grumman will manufacture, test and deliver ATMS, support instrument integration on JPSS-1, and provide launch and post-launch support.

Major Progress Made on Nation's New Space Exploration Plan

First Space Bound Orion Comes Alive:  Construction on the first space-bound Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Module
began with the first weld at the Michoud Assembly Facility on Sept. 9, 2011.  This capsule will be used during Orion's
first test flight in space.   -    After welding is completed at Michoud, the Orion spacecraft orbital test article will be
shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, where the heat shield will be installed. At Kennedy, it will undergo final
assembly and checkout operations for eventual flight.

NEW ORLEANS -- Construction began this week on the first new NASA spacecraft built to take humans to orbit since space shuttle Endeavour left the factory in 1991, and marked a significant milestone in carrying out the ambitious exploration vision President Obama and Congress have laid out for the nation.

Engineers at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans started welding together the first space-bound Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. "The Orion team has maintained a steady focus on progress, and we now are beginning to build hardware for spaceflight," said Orion Program Manager Mark Geyer, NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston.

NASA Gives Public New Internet Tool To Explore The Solar System

NASA now gives anyone with a computer the chance to
explore space in 3D. (Photo by NASA)

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA is giving the public the power to journey through the solar system using a new interactive Web-based tool.

The "Eyes on the Solar System" interface combines video game technology and NASA data to create an environment for users to ride along with agency spacecraft and explore the cosmos. Screen graphics and information such as planet locations and spacecraft maneuvers use actual space mission data.

"This is the first time the public has been able to see the entire solar system and our missions moving together in real-time," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "It demonstrates NASA's continued commitment to share our science with everyone."

The virtual environment uses the Unity game engine to display models of planets, moons, asteroids, comets and spacecraft as they move through our solar system. With keyboard and mouse controls, users cruise through space to explore anything that catches their interest. A free browser plug-in, available at the site, is required to run the Web application.

Watch Exploration Take Place LIVE 24/7 on FOSSILHD.COM!!!!!

You can now watch NASA HDTV LIVE on Fossil HD.
(Photo by NASA)

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Nasa HDTV is a 24/7 broadcast station that presents live coverage from NASA headquarters in Houston and onboard spacecraft.  They also show viewers exclusive NASA interviews with astronauts and much more.

Times have changed.  No one in Europe had any idea what was happening the exact moment Columbus set foot in the New World, but today, viewers can watch exploration take place live.

Therefore NASA HDTV is now available on fossilhd.com 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year at absolutely no cost.  All you have to do to access the live NASA HDTV channel on Fossil HD is click the tab that says "NASA HDTV" at the top of any page.

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Epic search for evidence of life on Mars heats up with focus on high-tech instruments

Sensitive instuments onboard the Mars rover Curiosity and other future space missions will be key to detecting
signs of life on the planet.  (Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech)

DENVER, Aug. 30, 2011 — Scientists are expressing confidence that questions about life on Mars, which have captured human imagination for centuries, finally may be answered, thanks in part to new life-detection tools up to 1,000 times more sensitive than previous instruments.

“The bottom line is that if life is out there, the high-tech tools of chemistry will find it sooner or later,” said Jeffrey Bada, Ph.D., co-organizer of a special two-day symposium on the Red Planet, which began here today during the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). “It certainly is starting to look like there may be something alive out there somewhere, with Mars being the most accessible place to search,” Bada added.

The symposium included more than two dozen presentations by experts concerned with whether life exists, or existed, on Mars. Abstracts of the presentations appear below.

Strongest evidence yet indicates icy Saturn moon hiding saltwater ocean

Water vapor jets spewing from Saturn's icy moon,
Enceladus.  (Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL/Space
Science Institute)

Samples of icy spray shooting from Saturn's moon Enceladus collected during Cassini spacecraft flybys show the strongest evidence yet for the existence of a large-scale, subterranean saltwater ocean, says a new international study led by the University of Heidelberg and involving the University of Colorado Boulder.

The new discovery was made during the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, a collaboration of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Launched in 1997, the mission spacecraft arrived at the Saturn system in 2004 and has been touring the giant ringed planet and its vast moon system ever since.

The plumes shooting water vapor and tiny grains of ice into space were originally discovered emanating from Enceladus -- one of 19 known moons of Saturn -- by the Cassini spacecraft in 2005. The plumes were originating from the so-called "tiger stripe" surface fractures at the moon's south pole and apparently have created the material for the faint E Ring that traces the orbit of Enceladus around Saturn.

During three of Cassini's passes through the plume in 2008 and 2009, the Cosmic Dust Analyser, or CDA, on board measured the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. The icy particles hit the detector's target at speeds of up to 11 miles per second, instantly vaporizing them. The CDA separated the constituents of the resulting vapor clouds, allowing scientists to analyze them.

A Planet Made of Diamond

Artist's Conception(Photo by the Swinburne University
of Technology)

A once-massive star that’s been transformed into a small planet made of diamond: that’s what astronomers think they’ve found in our Milky Way.

The discovery, reported today in Science, was made by an international research team led by Professor Matthew Bailes, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne and the ‘Dynamic Universe’ theme leader in a new wide-field astronomy initiative, the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO).

The researchers, from Australia, Germany, Italy, the UK and the USA, first detected an unusual star called a pulsar using the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope and followed up their discovery with the Lovell radio telescope in the UK and one of the Keck telescopes in Hawaii.

Pulsars are small spinning stars about 20 km in diameter—the size of a small city—that emit a beam of radio waves. As the star spins and the radio beam sweeps repeatedly over Earth, radio telescopes detect a regular pattern of radio pulses.

For the newly discovered pulsar, known as PSR J1719-1438, the astronomers noticed that the arrival times of the pulses were systematically modulated. They concluded that this was due to the gravitational pull of a small companion planet, orbiting the pulsar in a binary system.