Results tagged “NASA”

MacGregor Campbell, contributor

In a unanimous decision, the US Supreme court ruled on Wednesday that scientists and engineers working on government space programmes must submit to extensive background checks as a condition of their employment.

New Scientist reported on this case back in October, when oral arguments were heard. At issue was a 2005 lawsuit filed by 28 employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The suit sought to bar the institution from requiring background checks that the plaintiffs claimed violated their privacy.

Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent

(Image: NASA)

Because it mainly talks about outer space, you could be forgiven for not knowing that the first 'A' in NASA actually stands for aeronautics - giving the National Aeronautics and Space Administration a role in shaping the future of American aviation. And in future, as we all know, aircraft are going to have to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, burn less fuel and lessen the noise nuisance to people who live near airports. So since October 2008, engineers at NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program in Langley, Virginia, have been considering ideas from industry and academia on how aircraft might offer these capabilities.

The NASA team has now given three firms the go-ahead to develop their ideas further. Stealth fighter maker Lockheed Martin's idea - above - is easily the most radical. It proposes a jetliner with two engines slung beneath a horizontal stabiliser formed from hyper-extended "winglets" that extend over the top of the plane. Winglets prevent eddy current drag at the wing tips wasting fuel - and this design seems to take that concept to the max. 

(Note: my earlier assumption that there was just one engine visible in the Lockheed Martin design stands corrected - thanks to all who pointed it out.)  

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

Now that's one heck of a piggyback.

NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA), a modified Boeing 747, carries the Phantom Ray unmanned combat air vehicle on a test flight in the skies above St Louis, Missouri, on December 13.

The 50-minute flight marked the first time in the SCA's 33-year history that it had carried anything other than a space shuttle orbiter on its back. Its systems were monitored from an observation plane and the following day, the SCA and Phantom Ray completed the 2897-kilometre journey to Edwards Air Force Base in California, where the jet will make a series of test flights under its own power.

The unloaded Phantom Ray, together with the specially-engineered cradle attaching it to the SCA, weigh 13,608 kilograms - considerably less than the porky shuttle orbiter, which weighs 99,790 kilograms.

The stealth jet has a cruise speed of 988 km/h, with an operating altitude of 12,192 metres. Its F404-GE-102 engine can deliver 78.7 kilonewtons of thrust at sea level. The air force will use it to try out new technologies over 10 test flights over the next 6 months.

The plane will support missions that "may include intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; suppression of enemy air defenses; electronic attack; hunter/killer; and autonomous aerial refuelling" according to Boeing Defense, Space & Security.

The UK unveiled a similar unmanned air vehicle called Taranis earlier this year.

by Helen Knight, technology reporter

The world's largest airship will take to the skies early next year, powered by biofuel produced by algae.

The Bullet 580 airship, which is 72 metres long and 20 metres wide, will take off from its future home at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, carrying remote monitoring equipment designed to help forecast tropical storms and hurricanes.

(Image: E Green Technologies)

Developed by E Green Technologies, based in Kellyton, Alabama, and 21st Century Airships, in Newmarket, Canada, the airship is designed to transport heavy equipment to remote locations, carry remote monitoring equipment to high altitudes, or act as a communications hub or surveillance platform.

The Bullet 580 is capable of flying at speeds of up to 120 kilometres per hour, and reaching altitudes of 20,000 feet. Initially flown by pilot, the airship will ultimately be used as an unmanned vehicle.

Helium held within a system of bags is used to give the airship its lighter-than-air lift, while the inner hull is filled with ambient air. The blimp's outer shell is made from Kevlar.

On its first flight from its new base, planned for the first few months of next year, the blimp will carry the Radar Oxygen Barometric Sensor, an instrument developed by researchers at NASA Langley Research Centre in Hampton, Virginia and Old Dominion University in Norfolk, which will measure barometric pressure at sea level.

David Shiga, reporter

"Has NASA discovered extraterrestrial life?" asked blogger Jason Kottke on Tuesday, in a post that spread like wildfire around the web.

The speculation was prompted by a cryptic notice on NASA's website about "an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life".

Physicist Michio Kaku mused about several possibilities, including that "NASA might announce they found some form of evidence of microbial life in the universe".

Washington Post bloggers had more fun with it:

Have we made contact with little green martians? E.T.? Tribbles? Body snatchers? Or, is this just NASA's splashy way of announcing the discovery of microscopic bacteria -- interstellar snot, if you will?

The truth, while intriguing, is less Earth-shattering. A paper in Science, discussed in a press conference today, announced the discovery of terrestrial microbes that can incorporate normally toxic arsenic into their DNA.

A similar series of events transpired a couple of years ago, when speculation abounded - including on NewScientist.com - about something that NASA's Phoenix Mars lander had found. The truth turned out to be a little deflating in that case too. Phoenix had not found signs of life, but did detect chemicals called perchlorates in the soil that could serve as food for potential microbes.

If nothing else, these episodes show how big the public appetite is for news about the search for alien life. If we do discover ET someday, maybe it won't be as shocking to society as movies like Contact would suggest. We seem quite ready to believe it.

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter
(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD)

This is the first ever close-up picture of comet Hartley 2. It was taken by the Medium-Resolution Instrument onboard NASA's Deep Impact space probe as it flew past the comet's icy nucleus at 7am Pacific Daylight Time today.

The probe transmitted several pictures, which were taken at a distance of 700 kilometres from the comet, back 37 million kilometres to NASA's Deep Space Network antennas in Goldstone, California.

Hartley 2 was discovered in 1986 at the Schmidt Telescope Unit in Siding Spring, Australia, and can be seen from Earth every six years. This young dwarf comet has a nucleus only 1.5 kilometres across.

Deep Impact photographed Comet Tempel 1 in 2005, and its orbit was adjusted for today's Hartley 2 flyby as part of the EPOXI dual mission to investigate extrasolar stars and comets.

It is the fifth time in history a spacecraft has visited a comet nucleus. 

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter
Double click any part of this Gigapan image to zoom in and click and drag to explore  (Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Space shuttle Discovery sits on launch pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida awaiting its final flight, scheduled for tomorrow. 
 
Discovery's 12-day mission is to deliver spare parts and a storage module to the International Space Station as well as Robonaut 2 - the first humanoid robot in space.  
 
With 38 missions under its belt, 5600 orbits around Earth and 352 days in space - more than any other spacecraft - Discovery has more than earned its retirement. It was responsible for  carrying the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990.
 
Discovery's sister shuttle Endeavour has one more flight scheduled, which is due to be the final launch of the shuttle programme.
 

Cian O'Luanaigh, reporter

A toxic ammonia leak and a jammed fitting have foiled plans to fix a cooling pump on the International Space Station, forcing astronauts to delay the repairs until Wednesday at the earliest, reports NASA.

On Saturday, Expedition 24 Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson suffered setbacks that stretched their space walk to 8 hours 3 minutes - the longest in space station history and the sixth longest ever undertaken, according to NASA.

The astronauts began their excursion outside the International Space Station at 0719 EDT (1119 GMT) as the outpost flew 220 miles (354 km) above Earth.

They planned to remove a broken ammonia coolant pump and install a replacement, which involved disconnecting four ammonia hoses and five electrical cables from the pump on the station's truss.

Maggie McKee, physical sciences news editor

Chalk one up for the graybeards. The oldest spacecraft now operating around Mars has produced the best ever map of the Red Planet (if the map does not load, heavy traffic may have temporarily crashed the site).

NASA's Mars Odyssey reached the planet in 2001 and researchers have now stitched together 21,000 of its images into a global map. When seen as a whole, the gray-scale map isn't much to look at, but its power snaps into focus when viewers zoom in on particular features, whose details can be seen at scales as small as 100 metres across - see a 140-km-wide image of Mars's "Grand Canyon" below. (Cameras such as HiRISE on the newer Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter can spot things about 1 metre wide, but have covered only small portions of the planet.)

"The map lays the framework for global studies of properties such as the mineral composition and physical nature of the surface materials," says Odyssey scientist Jeffrey Plaut of JPL in a statement.

The new map was released just days after NASA announced that Odyssey had gone into 'standby' mode on 14 July after an electronic component responsible for moving its solar array suffered a glitch. The probe switched to a backup component and returned to work on Friday, but it was not the first sign of trouble for the ageing spacecraft, which was temporarily sidelined due to memory problems in late 2009. If the craft can hang on for another five months or so, it will smash the longevity record for a Martian spacecraft, set by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor. That probe orbited the Red Planet for a little over nine years, from September 1997 until November 2006.

(Valles Marineris canyon system image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University)

David Shiga, reporter

How soon should the US send astronauts to the moon, asteroids and Mars?

The White House wants to delay work on missions to beyond low Earth orbit - which are pricy - until after 2015, but needs congressional approval to do this. Now a senator who oversees NASA policy says that work on a powerful new rocket that would enable such missions should begin next year.

Under former president George W. Bush, NASA focused on building the Ares I rocket to send astronauts to the International Space Station after the space shuttle fleet retires. There were also plans to build a more powerful Ares V rocket to fly astronauts to the moon and beyond.

Barack Obama's White House wants to cancel both Ares rockets. Under its new plan, commercial space taxis would be used to ferry astronauts to the space station. A so-called heavy-lift rocket with similar capabilities to the Ares V would be developed to fly astronauts to asteroids and ultimately to Mars, but that costly effort would not begin until 2015.

Kate McAlpine, reporter

Want to feel a part of the last space shuttle missions? NASA will give you an honorary presence on one of the final two flights to the International Space Station. Upload a head shot to their website, choose your mission, and they'll put your face in space.

The method of transport for the images isn't clear, but judging from previous efforts, odds are they'll be digital. The Stardust mission carried a million names written to a microchip to comet Wild 2 and the Cassini orbiter took 616,400 signatures recorded on a DVD to Saturn.

Richard Fisher, deputy news editor

Phoenix's wings have been catastrophically clipped.

The Mars lander has lost its protruding solar panels, leading NASA to declare it officially dead.

In recent weeks, NASA has been trying to revive the lander after losing contact in November 2008 as the Martian winter approached. The likelihood of success was slim.

Now images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show it is casting a shadow with a different shape to when it was last active. Accumulated dust can explain this in part, but mission scientists say the main reason is that the solar arrays that powered the lander have been broken off or bent, rendering Phoenix useless.
















Like wings, the panels extended out from either side of the lander. Large amounts of carbon dioxide ice probably built up on them during the winter, causing the damage.

Despite 61 fly-bys last week, the orbiter failed to hear a radio transmission from Phoenix.

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

Rachel Courtland, space reporter

At last, a rough time line has emerged in the White House's new vision for space exploration: new spacecraft ready for deep space by 2025 and forays to Mars by the mid-2030s.

It has been more than two months since the White House unveiled a new plan for NASA.

The proposal, which must still be approved by Congress, calls for scrapping NASA's Constellation programme, which aims take astronauts back to the moon using a pair of new rockets. NASA administrator Charles Bolden has said the new plan maintains the ultimate goal of Constellation, to take humans to Mars. But some critics have said that the lack of a defined time line for exploration will hobble the agency.

Now Obama has revealed more about the new vision in his first speech on the plan, delivered yesterday in Florida. By 2025, the US will have readied the first spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts beyond the moon and into deep space, Associated Press reports. Trips to Mars, beginning with forays to Martian orbit and back, would begin in the mid-2030s. "I expect to be around to see it," Obama said.

Richard Fisher, deputy news editor

Moon visits are off the table, but NASA's Orion capsule may soon fly after all.

The crew capsule, which had been shelved earlier this year along with the rest of the agency's moon plans, will be used to return astronauts from the International Space Station in an emergency, NASA officials told Associated Press.

NASA's Constellation programme, which included the development of Orion and the Ares I rocket, was cancelled earlier this year. Orion would have carried astronauts to the moon.

Richard Fisher, deputy news editor

Shuttle-watchers, hold fire on booking that plane ticket to Florida. The final flight of NASA's space shuttle, likely to bring on nostalgia and disappointment in equal share, is unlikely to happen this year after all.

So says a report (PDF) by NASA's office of the inspector general (OIG), the agency's independent watchdog.

"Based on calculations by the office of inspector general, historical flight rates, and internal NASA evaluations, NASA is not likely to meet its September 2010 timetable," states the report. "Our analysis now predicts that the last of the four remaining shuttle flights will launch in January 2011."

Still, NASA officials told space.com that they are confident they can complete the final four remaining flights before December at the latest.

The OIG points out that NASA should at least seek assurance that funding will be available should the flights slip into early 2011. It will cost an estimated $200 million a month if the programme does carry over into next year.

Rachel Courtland, reporter

It has been called "radical", "dangerous", "a brave reboot", and "a giant step from greatness to mediocrity". Everyone seems to have an opinion on the White House's new plan for NASA. But one key figure has yet to weigh in on NASA's future – the president himself. That could change next month, when Barack Obama will travel to Florida for a conference on the future of the agency.

David Shiga, reporter

A former space shuttle engineer was sentenced to 15 years in prison for espionage on Monday.

The sentencing follows a July 2009 conviction by a California judge, who found Dongfan Chung guilty of "economic espionage to benefit a foreign country" and acting as an agent of the People's Republic of China.

Chung, now 74, worked on the space shuttle program as an engineer for Rockwell International and later for Boeing, which acquired Rockwell in 1996.

He was accused of stealing documents on the space shuttle and the Delta IV rocket with the intent of passing them to Chinese government agents. Evidence presented in Chung's trial included letters between him and individuals in the Chinese aviation industry dating from as early as 1979. Some of the letters directed him to collect technical information about the space shuttle and military aircraft.

Chung is not the only space worker to be charged with spying recently. In October, a planetary scientist who worked on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was charged with selling defence secrets to a US agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer.

David Shiga, reporter

The Obama administration is axing plans to return astronauts to the moon, according to an Orlando Sentinel article, which cites unnamed officials.

"There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation programme at all," the article says. (Constellation is the umbrella term for NASA's efforts to develop new hardware for human space exploration.)

It has been clear for months that the NASA plan was on shaky ground.

Justin Mullins, consultant editor

Space shuttle for sale, fully loaded, air conditioning, one careful owner. It's the ultimate bargain. NASA has cut the price of a space shuttle to $28.8 million. The vehicles will go on sale after they finish constructing the International Space Station, scheduled to be later this year. The New York Times reports that NASA had hoped to get $42 million for each vehicle but lowered the cost in the hope of sealing a deal. It has three to sell, although one of these, Discovery, is already promised to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

If an entire shuttle is beyond your budget, consider a main engine instead. NASA had hoped to charge up to $800,000 for these but lack of interest has forced it to slash the price. They are now available for free: a bargain in anybody's language. Just bear in mind that the buyer must pay for postage and packaging.

David Shiga, reporter

NASA officials were ecstatic at the (mostly) successful Ares I-X rocket test flight on 28 October.

It was a major step along the path to developing the Ares I crew launch vehicle, NASA's chosen successor to the space shuttle.

Following the test, Time magazine hailed the Ares line of rockets as the best invention of 2009. Fair enough, right?

Not according to vocal critics like Keith Cowing, who runs the NASA Watch website. Cowing complains that so far the Ares I rocket "only exists on paper". "I guess Time magazine got carried away with all the noise and hype," he says in a recent post.