Showing posts with label NASA's SDO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NASA's SDO. Show all posts

NASA Sets Endeavour's Last Launch for April 29

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Launch sign at Kennedy Space Center counts down the days to the STS-134 launch of shuttle Endeavour

The space shuttle Endeavour is set to blast off on its final mission at the end of this month.  The U.S. space agency made the official announcement Tuesday afternoon after a thorough review of the shuttle's readiness.

NASA says space shuttle Commander Mark Kelly and his five crewmates will blast off on Endeavour's last mission on April 29.

Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations, told reporters Tuesday that NASA officials gave the shuttle a clean bill of health.

"We reviewed everything," said Gerstenmaier. "We spent quite a bit of time talking about all the things, and I think the team was unanimous and we're ready to go fly."

NASA managers ran extensive tests on an external tank that was damaged during Hurricane Katrina, which struck the U.S. Gulf coast in 2005.  NASA determined the tank is ready for launch, without the same metal support beams that were on the shuttle Discovery's tank.  Those supports, or stringers, cracked while Discovery was on the launch pad, delaying its lift-off by several months.

Gerstenmaier also said engineers added more, tougher tiles to the underside of Endeavour's wings and fuselage for enhanced protection from launch-related debris.

NASA concluded that the shuttle and space station's equipment, as well as support systems and personnel, are ready for the mission.

The primary objective of Endeavour's 14-day journey in Earth orbit is to deliver the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer  to the International Space Station.  The spectrometer, or AMS, is a sophisticated detector that will help researchers study the formation of the universe.

"It will allow us to just learn more about dark matter, which makes up a large portion of the universe, which we really don't understand why it's there, or matter that we can't see with classical instruments.  So it was very interesting hearing about AMS," said Gerstenmaier.

The spectrometer will look for elusive evidence of anti-matter by searching for anti-carbon and anti-helium molecules among all discernible particles.

This will be the last mission for Endeavour, and the second-to-last mission for the U.S. shuttle fleet.  NASA is retiring the shuttles in order to focus on developing the next generation of spacecraft that could go beyond low-Earth-orbit.

at 12:03 AM
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When the sun and the Earth line up on the galactic plane at the same time with the black whole being in the center couldn’t that cause something to happen, due to the fact that the black hole has such a strong gravitational pull.

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There is a giant black hole in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, and like any concentration of mass it exerts gravitational force on the rest of the Galaxy. However, the galactic center is very far away, approximately 30,000 light years, 

so it has negligible effects on the solar system or the Earth. There are no special forces from the galactic plane or the galactic center. The only important force that acts on the Earth is the gravitation of the Sun and Moon. 

As far as the influence of the galactic plane, there is nothing special about this location. The last time the Earth was in the galactic plane was several million years ago. Claims that we are about to cross the galactic plane are untrue.

at 11:20 PM
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If the government knew about Nibiru, wouldn’t they keep it a secret to avoid panic? Isn’t it the government’s job to keep the population at ease?

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There are many objectives of government, but they do not include keeping the population at ease. My experience is that sometimes parts of the government do just the opposite, as in the frequent references to various terrorist threats or warnings about driving accidents on long holiday weekends, which are no more dangerous than any other time. 

There is a long history of associating bad things with political opponents (older readers will remember the “missile gap” in the 1960 election, younger ones will note the many current references to who is or is not keeping the U.S. safe from terrorists). 

Further, social scientists have pointed out that many of our concepts of public panic are the product of Hollywood, while in the real world people have a good record of helping each other in a time of danger. I think everyone also recognizes that keeping bad news secret usually backfires, making the issue even worse when the facts finally come out. And in the case of Nibiru, these facts would come out very soon indeed. 

Even if they wanted to, the government could not keep Nibiru a secret. If it were real, it would be tracked by thousands of astronomers, amateurs as well a professional. These astronomers are spread all over the world. I know the astronomy community, and these scientists would not keep a secret even if ordered to. You just can’t hide a planet on its way to the inner solar system!

at 11:05 PM
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How can you deny the existence of Nibiru when NASA discovered it in 1983 and the story appeared in leading newspapers? At that time you called it Planet X, and later it was named Xena or Eris.

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IRAS (the NASA Infrared Astronomy Satellite, which carried out a sky survey for 10 months in 1983) discovered many infrared sources, but none of them was Nibiru or Planet X or any other objects in the outer solar system. There is a good discussion from Caltech to be found at (spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/tchester/iras/no_tenth_planet_yet.html). 

Briefly, IRAS cataloged 350,000 infrared sources, and initially many of these sources were unidentified (which was the point, of course, of making such a survey). All of these observations have been followed up by subsequent studies with more powerful instruments both on the ground and in space. The rumor about a “tenth planet” erupted in 1984 after a scientific paper was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters titled “Unidentified point sources in the IRAS minisurvey”, 

which discussed several infrared sources with “no counterparts”. But these “mystery objects” were subsequently found to be distant galaxies (except one, which was a wisp of “infrared cirrus”), as published in 1987. No IRAS source has ever turned out to be a planet. A good discussion of this whole issue is to be found on Phil Plait’s website (www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/planetx/science.html#iras). The bottom line is that Nibiru is a myth, with no basis in fact. To an astronomer, persistent claims about a planet that is “nearby” but “invisible” are just plain silly.

at 10:53 PM
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The Great 2012 Doomsday Scare

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Scenes from the motion picture  


The year 2012 is acting like a badly behaved celebrity. Frightful rumors and gossip are spreading. Already more than a half dozen books are marketing, to eager fans, astronomical fears about 2012 End Times. Opening in theaters on Friday, Nov. 13, will be 2012, a $200-million disaster movie that seems designed to break all records for disaster spectacles -- with cracking continents, plunging asteroids, burning cities, and a tsunami throwing an aircraft carrier through the White House. The movie's ominous slogan: "Find out the truth." Two other major movies about the 2012 doomsday are also reported to be in the works.

Anyone who cruises the internet or all-night talk radio knows why. The ancient Mayan of Mexico and Guatemala kept a calendar that is about to roll up the red carpet of time, swing the solar system into transcendental alignment with the heart of the Milky Way, and turn Earth into a bowling pin for a rogue planet heading down our alley for a strike.

None of it is true. People you know, however, are likely becoming a bit afraid that modern astronomy and Maya secrets are indeed conspiring to bring our doom. If people know you’re an astronomer, they will soon be asking you all about it.

Here is what you need to know.

Birth of a Notion
We"ve had similar scares in the recent past, but none quite like this. The last time the world got all worked up over the mystical turning of a calendar was the false Millennium of Jan. 1, 2000. Never mind the actual Y2K computer-date bug. True-believer authors (and their imitators) published scary and/or hopeful books about the moment's prophetic potential to catch an immense cosmic wave and change everything for either good or ill. Borrowing a forecast from Nostradamus, the 16th-century French riddler, author Charles Berlitz predicted catastrophe in his 1981 book Doomsday 1999. Berlitz (fresh off books on Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle), warned that 1999 could inflict flood, famine, pollution and a shift of Earth's magnetic poles. He also spotlighted the planetary alignment of May 5, 2000, and warned that it could bring solar flares, severe earthquakes, "land changes" and "seismic explosions."

In the 1990s an entire "Earth Changes" movement swelled into being as the end of the century neared, with all sorts of Millennial expectations -- earthquakes, plagues, polar axis shifts, continents sliding into the sea, Atlantis rising and more. In England, the Sun tabloid predicted a "marvelous millennium of joy, peace, prosperity."

When Jan. 1, 2000, came and went with nothing worse than ski-lift passes printing the date as 1900, the focus shifted to "5/5/2000" several months later. Most believers in the power of planetary alignments forgot the failure of earlier lineups to induce disaster. The "Jupiter Effect" cataclysm predicted for March 10, 1982 (named for the 1974 book about it by John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann) commanded headlines but never materialized.

Throughout history, end-of-the-world movements missing their mark number in the "hundreds of thousands at the very least, says Richard Landes, historian at Boston University and director of its Center for Millennial Studies. But people eager for the world to end are not to be denied, and this time, of course, all will be different.

The Rollover
What exactly is the Maya calendar about to do? On Dec. 21, 2012, it will display the equivalent of a string of zeros, like the odometer turning over on your car, with the close of something like a millennium. In Maya calendrics, however, it's not the end of a thousand years. It's the end of Baktun 13. The Maya calendar was based on multiple cycles of time, and the baktun was one of them. A baktun is 144,000 days: a little more than 394 years.

Scholars have deciphered how the Mayan calendar worked from historical texts and ancient inscriptions, and they have accurately correlated so-called Maya Long Count dates with the equivalent dates in our calendar. Just as we number our years counting from a historically and culturally significant event (the presumed birth year of Christ), Maya times were numbered from a date endowed with religious and cosmic significance: the creation date of the present world order. A Long Count date is the tally of days from that mythic startup. Most experts think the start point corresponds to Aug. 11, 3114 B.C.

Most of the Maya calendar intervals accumulate as multiples of 20. An interval of 7,200 days (360 × 20) was known as a katun. It takes 20 katuns to complete a baktun (20 × 7,200 = 144,000 days). Although some ancient inscriptions turn 13 baktuns into an important reset milestone, others imply that the calendar simply keeps running. For instance, it takes 20 baktuns to make a pictun.

No one paid much attention to the end of Baktun 13 until fairly recently. In 1975 Frank Waters, a romantic and speculative author, devoted a brief section to the subject in his book Mexico Mystique. He identified the 13-baktun interval as a "Mayan Great Cycle," overestimated its duration as 5,200 years, and equated five such cycles with five legendary eras, each of which ends in the world’s destruction and rebirth. There is no genuine Maya tradition behind any of this.

Waters also miscalculated the date when the calendar would supposedly pull down the shades. "The end of the Great Cycle . . . will occur Dec. 24, 2011 A.D.," he announced, when the world "will be destroyed by catastrophic earthquakes." Exact date aside, the doomsday ball was now rolling.

Another book in 1975 also spotlighted the Maya calendric roundup. Dennis and Terence McKenna discussed it in The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching. That book at least got the Baktun-13 end date right: Dec. 21, 2012. It also noted that the date is the winter solstice, when the Sun will be "in the constellation Sagittarius, only about 3 degrees from the Galactic Center, which, also coincidentally, is within 2 degrees of the ecliptic." The McKennas continued, "Because the winter solstice node is precessing, it is moving closer and closer to the point on the ecliptic where it will eclipse the galactic center." In reality this event will never happen, but it hardly matters. The McKennas linked the whole arrangement with the concept of renewal and called 2012 a moment of "potential transformative opportunity."

Broader interest in 2012 caught on beginning in 1987. In The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology, José Argüelles (an "artist, poet, and visionary historian" according to the dust jacket) linked the 13-baktun period with an impalpable "beam" from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. According to Argüelles, the Maya knew when we entered this beam and when we would leave it, and set their 13-baktun cycle to mark our passage through it accordingly. The beam, he asserted, operates as "invisible galactic life threads" that link people, the planet, the Sun, and the center of the Galaxy. Neither Maya tradition nor modern astronomy supports a belief in any such beam. It stemmed instead from Argüelles’s personal philosophy, which emphasizes "the principle of harmonic resonance." Argüelles also concluded that the planets are "orbiting harmonic gyroscopes" that “play a role in the coordination of the beam," which advances the development of anything with DNA. The year 2012, therefore, will bring a rosy version of the apocalypse.

If this sounds a bit familiar, you're right. In 1987 Argüelles and his followers predicted, with worldwide fanfare, that Aug. 16–17 of that year would bring a Maya-Galactic "Harmonic Convergence." That event turned into a global phenomenon, with thousands gathering at Earth’s “acupuncture points” to create a "synchronized and unified bio-electromagnetic collective battery." Unfortunately, the date passed with nothing more than colorful newspaper stories and a Doonesbury satire. (A character explains earnestly that that the alignment could bring either "mass unification of divine and earth-plane selves," or perhaps nuclear annihilation. "Either way there will probably be a crafts fair.")

Galactic Guessing Games
Fast-forward to 1995. That year John Major Jenkins packaged several of these themes into Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. According to Jenkins, the winter-solstice point and the centerline of the Galaxy will line up exactly on Dec. 21. Arguing that this motivated the Maya to contrive the calendar to end on that date, Jenkins concludes that it will be "a tremendous transformation and opportunity for spiritual growth, a transition from one world age to another."

In fact, astronomy cannot pinpoint such a "galactic alignment" to within a year, much less a day. The alignment depends on the rather arbitrary modern definition of the galactic equator, and/or the visual appearance of the Milky Way. There is no precise definition of the Milky Way's edges -- they are very vague and depend on the clarity of your view. (Jenkins says that he personally established the Milky Way’s edges by viewing it from 11,000 feet, far above anywhere the Maya lived.) So to give a precise visual position for its centerline is not meaningful.

Jenkins did acknowledge that the winter-solstice Sun actually crosses the center of the Milky Way anytime between 1980 and 2016. Elsewhere he expands this approach zone to a 900-year period, and settles for an imprecise alignment to which Dec. 21, 2012, is arbitrarily and circularly assigned. Real astronomy does not support any match between the Baktun-13 end date and a galactic alignment. The advocates both admit and ignore this discrepancy.

It's almost a sidelight that the winter-solstice sun will never actually "eclipse" the galaxy's true center, the pointlike radio source marking the Milky Way's central black hole. Moreover, the winter-solstice sun won’t even pass closest to it on the sky for another 200 years. What did the Maya themselves think about End Times? There is no evidence that they saw the calendar and a world age ending in either transcendence or catastrophe on December 21, 2012. Some Maya Long Count texts refer to dates many baktuns past 13 and even into the next pictun and beyond. For instance, an inscription commissioned in the 7th century A.D. by King Pacal of Palenque predicts that an anniversary of his accession would be commemorated on Oct. 15, 4772.

In all of the Long Count texts discovered, transcribed, and translated, only one mentions the key date in 2012: Monument 6 at Tortuguero, a Maya site in the Mexican state of Tabasco. The text is damaged, but what remains does not imply the end of time.

The Secret NASA Conspiracy
Some advocates for the 2012 catastrophe say that what will actually cause the devastation is an alignment of planets. There is no planet alignment on the winter solstice in 2012. Nonetheless, advocates of doom connect the fictional alignment to astrological predictions or groundless claims about a reversal of Earth's magnetic field and unprecedented solar storms. Many internet postings and guests on all-night apocalyptic radio have elaborated on these themes.

In particular, several threads of irrational thought have created an internet phantom, the secret planet Nibiru. It's the bowling ball, and Earth is the pin. There is no such planet, though it is often equated with Eris, a plutoid orbiting safely and permanently beyond Pluto. Some insist, however, that a NASA conspiracy is in play and that Nibiru, looming in on the approach, can already be seen in broad daylight from the Southern Hemisphere. It was supposed to become visible from the Northern Hemisphere, too, by last May, but like a fickle blind date, it stood up those awaiting it.

Others on the Web, confused about the supposed alignment of the winter-solstice sun with the Milky Way's center, have declared that the Sun is now plummeting to the Milky Way’s center and dragging Earth with it. The predicted result? Earth’s polar axis will shift. Most of what's claimed for 2012 relies on wishful thinking, wild pseudoscientific folly, ignorance of astronomy, and a level of paranoia worthy of Night of the Living Dead.

So maybe the Maya were on to us after all. The clock is ticking. And it’s the end of the world as we know it.

 
 
E.C. Krupp, a Sky & Telescope contributing editor, is Director of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

at 10:31 PM
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2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End?

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Scenes from the upcoming film 2012. Courtesy Columbia Pictures. 

Scenes from the motion picture "2012." Courtesy Columbia Pictures. Remember the Y2K scare? It came and went without much of a whimper because of adequate planning and analysis of the situation. Impressive movie special effects aside, Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know. It will, however, be another winter solstice.

Much like Y2K, 2012 has been analyzed and the science of the end of the Earth thoroughly studied. Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, the science behind the end of the world quickly unravels when pinned down to the 2012 timeline. Below, NASA Scientists answer several questions that we're frequently asked regarding 2012.

Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
Answer (A): Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.

Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.


Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?
A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.


Q: Could a phenomena occur where planets align in a way that impacts Earth?
A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.

"There apparently is a great deal of interest in celestial bodies, and their locations and trajectories at the end of the calendar year 2012. Now, I for one love a good book or movie as much as the next guy. But the stuff flying around through cyberspace, TV and the movies is not based on science. There is even a fake NASA news release out there..."

- Don Yeomans, NASA senior research scientist 
 
Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?
A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles. 


Q: What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the earth’s crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours?
A: A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-shift to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway.

The Blue Marble: Next Generation 

Earth, as seen in the Blue Marble: Next Generation collection of images, showing the color of the planet's surface in high resolution. This image shows South America from September 2004. Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?
A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of pending doomsday?
A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.

Q: Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012?
A: Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history.

Addition information concerning 2012 is available on the Web, at:

at 10:23 PM
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Ground Facilities

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Ground Facilities

JSC2009-E-156744: International Space Station flight control room

An overall view of the space station flight control room in the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center. Credit: NASA
The International Space Station Program’s greatest accomplishment is as much a human achievement as a technological one. The global partnership of space agencies exemplifies meshing of cultural differences and political intricacies to plan, coordinate, provide, and operate the complex elements of the station. The program also brings together international flight crews and globally distributed launch, operations, training, engineering, communications networks, and scientific research communities.

Maintaining the ISS is an arduous task, requiring an international fleet of vehicles and launch locations to rotate crew members; replenish propellant; provide science experiments, necessary supplies, and maintenance hardware; and remove and dispose of waste. All of these important deliveries sustain a constant supply line crucial to the operation of the station.

United States of America
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

NASA Headquarters (HQ)
NASA headquarters, in Washington, D.C., exercises management over the NASA Field Centers, establishes management policies, and analyzes all phases of the ISS program.

Johnson Space Center (JSC)
Johnson Space Center in Houston, directs the station program. Mission control operates the U.S. on-orbit segment (USOS) and manages activities across the station in close coordination with the international partner control centers. JSC is the primary center for spacecraft design, development, and mission integration. JSC is also the primary location for crew training.

Kennedy Space Center (KSC)
Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Fla., prepares the station modules and space shuttles for each mission, coordinates each countdown, and manages space shuttle launch and post-landing operations.

Marshall Space Flight Center’s Payload Operations and Integration Center (POIC) controls the operation of U.S. experiments and coordinates partner experiments aboard the station. MSFC oversaw development of most U.S. modules and the station’s Environmental Control Life Support System.

Telescience Support Centers (TSCs)
Telescience Support Centers around the country are equipped to conduct science operations on board the station. These TSCs are located at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.; Ames Research Center (ARC) in Moffett Field, Calif.; Glenn Research Center (GRC) in Cleveland; and Johnson Space Center in Houston.


Russia
Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency

Roscosmos oversees all Russian human space flight activities.

Moscow Mission Control Center (TsUP)
Moscow Mission Control Center is the primary Russian facility for the control of Russian human spaceflight activities and operates the station’s Russian segment. It is located in Korolev, outside of Moscow, at the Central Institute of Machine building (TsNIIMASH) of Roscosmos.

Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC)
The Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC), at Zvezdny Gorodok (Star City), near Moscow, provides full-size trainers and simulators of all Russian station modules, a water pool used for spacewalk training, centrifuges to simulate g-forces during liftoff, and a planetarium used for celestial navigation.

Baikonur Cosmodrome
The Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is the chief launch center for both piloted and unpiloted space vehicles. It supports the Soyuz and Proton launch vehicles and plays an essential role in the deployment and operation of the station.


Canada
Canadian Space Agency (CSA)

Mobile Servicing System (MSS ) Operations Complex (MOC)
Located in Saint Hubert, Quebec, the MSS Operations Complex is composed of the following facilities:

* Space Operations Support Center (SOSC)
* MSS Operations and Training System (MOTS)
* Virtual Operations Training Environment (VOTE)
* Canadian MSS Training Facility (CMTF)

These facilities provide the resources, equipment and expertise for the engineering and monitoring of the MSS and provide crew training on Canadian systems.

Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS ) Design and Development
The SSRMS was designed and built for the CSA by MDA of Brampton, Ontario.

Payload Telescience Operations Centre (PTOC)
The PTOC in Saint Hubert supports real time operations for Canadian Payloads onboard the station.


Europe
European Space Agency (ESA)

European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC)
The European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, is the largest ESA establishment, a test center and hub for European space activities. It has responsibility for the technical preparation and management of ESA space projects and provides technical support to ESA’s ongoing satellite, space exploration, and human space activities.

Columbus Control Center (COL-CC) and Automated Transfer Vehicle Control Center (ATV-CC)
Two ground control centers are responsible for controlling and operating the European contribution to the station program. These are the Columbus Control Centre and the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) Control Center. The COl-CC, located at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich, Germany, controls and operate the Columbus laboratory and coordinates the operation of the European experiments. The ATV-CC, located in Toulouse, France, on the premises of the French space agency, Centre national d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), operates the European ATV during the active and docked mission phases of the ATV.

Guiana Space Center (GSC)
Europe’s Spaceport is situated in the northeast of South America in French Guiana. Initially created by CNES, it is jointly funded and used by both the French space agency and ESA as the launch site for the Ariane 5 vehicle.

European Astronaut Center (EAC)
The European Astronaut Centre of the European Space Agency is situated in Cologne, Germany. It was established in 1990 and is the home base of the 13 European astronauts who are members of the European astronaut corps.

User Centers
User Support and Operation Centers (USOCs) are based in national centers distributed throughout Europe. These centers are responsible for the use and implementation of European payloads aboard the ISS.


Japan
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)

In addition to the JAXA headquarters in Tokyo and other field centers throughout the country, Tsukuba Space Center and Tanegashima launch Facility are JAXA’s primary ISS facilities.

Tskuba Space Center (TKSU)
JAXA’s Tsukuba Space Center (TKSU), located in Tsukuba Science City, opened its doors in 1972. The TKSC is a consolidated operations facility with world-class equipment, testing facilities, and crew training capabilities. The Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) or “Kibo,” which translates in English as “Hope,” was developed and tested at TKSC for the station. The Kibo Control Center plays an important role in control and tracking of the Japanese laboratory.

Tanegashima Space Center (TNSC)
The Tanegashima Space Center is the largest rocket launch complex in Japan and is located in the south of Kagoshima Prefecture, along the southeast coast of Tanegashima. The Yoshinobu launch complex is on site for H-IIA and H-IIB launch vehicles. There are also related developmental facilities for test firings of liquid- and solid-fuel rocket engines.

Research and Technology Facilities

Managing the international laboratory’s scientific assets, as well as the time and space required to accommodate experiments and programs from a host of private, commercial, industry and government agencies nationwide, makes the job of coordinating space station research critical.

Teams of controllers and scientists on the ground continuously plan, monitor and remotely operate experiments from control centers around the globe. Controllers staff payload operations centers around the world, effectively providing for researchers and the station crew around the clock, seven days a week.

State-of-the-art computers and communications equipment deliver up-to-the-minute reports about experiment facilities and investigations between science outposts across the United States and around the world. The payload operations team also synchronizes the payload time lines among international partners, ensuring the best use of valuable resources and crew time.

The control centers of NASA and its partners are:

* NASA - Payload Operations and Integration Center (POIC), Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.;
* NASA – Mission Control Center (MCC), Houston;
* Roscosmos – Flight Control Center (TsUP), Korolev, Russia;
* Roscosmos – Transport Vehicle Control Room, Korolev, Russia;
* Japan Experiment Module Mission Control (JEMMC), Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki, Japan;
* ESA - Columbus Control Center (Col-CC), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany (near Munich);
* ESA ATV – Control Center, Toulouse, France;
* ESA – European User Support Operations Centers:
o CADMOS, Toulouse, France
o MARS, Naples, Italy
o MUSC, Cologne, Germany
o B-USOC, Brussels, Belgium
o E-USOC, Trondheim, Norway
o DAMEC, Odense, Denmark
o BIOTESC, Zurich, Switzerland
o ERASMUS, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
* CSA-Payloads Operations Telesciences Center, St. Hubert, Quebec, Canada;
* Canadian Space Agency Mission Control Center (CSA-MCC), Longueuil, Quebec, Canada

NASA’s Payload Operations Center serves as a hub for coordinating much of the work related to delivery of research facilities and experiments to the space station as they are rotated in and out periodically when space shuttles or other vehicles make deliveries and return completed experiments and samples to Earth.

The payload operations director leads the POIC’s main flight control team, known as the "cadre," and approves all science plans in coordination with Mission Control in Houston, the international partner control centers and the station crew.

at 5:29 AM
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This Month in Exploration - September

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From the early days of experimental airplanes to NASA’s soaring space shuttles, the evolution of flight has mirrored the evolution of society. The ongoing scientific discoveries that are part of aeronautics and space flight have improved life on Earth and allowed humans to begin investigating the secrets of the universe. “This Month in Exploration” presents the rich history of human flight, contextualizing where we’ve been and examining the exploration history NASA is making today.

Glenn Curtiss and his biplane.

Glenn Curtiss and his biplane at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. Credit: the Charles E. Frohman Collection at the Rutherford B. Hayes Center 100 Years Ago

September 1, 1910: Glenn H. Curtiss made a return flight from Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio to Euclid Beach in Cleveland in an hour and forty-two minutes. While he did not break his August record for the longest flight over water, he did average around fifty-five miles per hour in his biplane, securing the record for the reverse course. He beat a brace of homing pigeons released just before he left Cedar Point.

85 Years Ago

September 3, 1925: The U.S. Navy dirigible Shenandoah, the United States’ first rigid airship and the first major airship to be filled with helium, crashed near Ava, Ohio, killing 14 of the 43 people aboard. Small pieces of the wrecked airship were salvaged at the Ohio site by curiosity seekers. The Shenandoah took its name from an Indian word meaning “Daughter of the Stars,” and was the first airship to use non-inflammable helium instead of flammable hydrogen.

65 Years Ago

September 20, 1945: The British Gloster Meteor made its historic first flight with Rolls Royce Trent-engines that had five-bladed propellers. The plane was not only the first operational British jet fighter, and the only Allied jet fighter to see combat in World War II, but it also pioneered turboprop power.

The Luna 16 robotic probe.

The Luna 16 robotic probe. Credit: NASA 60 Years Ago

September 22, 1950: Col. David C. Schilling and Lt. Col. William Ritchie flew two Republic F-84E jet fighters across the Atlantic ocean nonstop. Col. Ritchie was forced to bail out over Newfoundland, but Col. Schilling flew from London to New York with three in-flight refuelings, making his journey the first nonstop jet flight across the Atlantic. The flight explored the feasibility of rapidly moving large numbers of jet fighters across the Atlantic.

50 Years Ago

September 8, 1960: The Office of Naval Research announced that radio signals had been received from the planet Saturn and a star 3,000 light-years away by the University of Michigan's 85-foot radio telescope. At the time of its construction in 1958, it was one of the largest radio telescopes in the world. Later advances in radio telescopes and NASA space missions helped to clarify the natural sources of these signals.

September 19, 1960: NASA successfully launched its Nuclear Emulsion Recovery Vehicle (NERV) experiment from Point Arguello, Calif., via an Argo D-8 rocket. The first NASA launch at the Pacific Missile Range, the NERV instrumented capsule reached an altitude of 1,260 miles before landing 1,300 miles downrange where it was picked up by U.S. Navy ships. It was the first manmade object to travel to such an altitude in space and be recovered upon its return to Earth.

35 Years Ago

September 26, 1975: NASA launched the Intelsat 4A F-1 satellite via an Atlas rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. This improved satellite had double the capacity of previous Intelsat satellites.

Russia's Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft.

Review of Russian Soyuz TMA-7 spacecraft as it is rolled out to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Credit: NASA 30 Years Ago

September 9, 1980: NASA launched the GOES-4 weather satellite via a Delta rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. GOES-4 was the first geostationary satellite to provide a continuous look at temperature and moisture conditions in the vertical layers of Earth’s atmosphere.

25 Years Ago

September 11, 1985: NASA’s International Cometary Explorer (ICE), formerly ISEE 3, made its programmed flyby of Comet Giacobini-Zinner. ICE was the first spacecraft to directly investigate a comet, and after an encounter with Halley’s comet, became the first to investigate two comets.

15 Years Ago

September 7, 1995: NASA launched space shuttle Endeavour (STS-69) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Mission highlights include the first deployment and retrieval of two satellites on the same mission, the SPARTAN 201 and Wake Shield Facility (WSF) satellite. The SPARTAN 201 was a free-flying satellite designed to investigate the solar wind that constantly flows past Earth. It was the second flight of the WSF, a commercial satellite designed to manufacture extremely pure materials in low earth orbit.

10 Years Ago

September 8-20, 2000: NASA launched space shuttle Atlantis (STS-106) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The Atlantis astronauts prepared the International Space Station for arrival of the first permanent crew by delivering supplies (more than 6,000 pounds of material) and installing batteries, a toilet, power converters and a treadmill. During a space walk the crew connected power, data and communications cables to the Zvezda Service Module.

5 Years Ago

September 30, 2005: Russia launched the Soyuz-TMA 7 via a Soyuz-FG rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The spacecraft carried a NASA astronaut, a Russian cosmonaut and an American tourist to the International Space Station.

Present Day

September 8, 2010: President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally dedicated NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. on this date 50 years ago. The center was named in honor of Gen. George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army chief of staff during World War II, a U.S. secretary of state and a Nobel Prize winner.

Lee A. Jackson (Analex Corporation)

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NASA's IceBridge Mission Makes First Antarctic Flight

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The first flight of the mission will be flying over a previous path over the Weddell Sea. Credit: Seelye Martin, University of Washington

After five days of weather delays, the NASA's IceBridge mission flew its first flight over the Antarctic polar caps yesterday.

The 12-hour flight was a great success, according to a report from Michael Studinger, one of the scientists on board the plane.

IceBridge is a six-year campaign to survey and monitor areas of Earth's polar ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice and how they are responding to climate change. The goal of this first flight of the winter Antarctic mission was to sample the conditions of sea ice in the Weddell Sea off the Antarctic Peninsula.

IceBridge's DC-8 plane, packed with scientists and equipments, traveled along a pair of lines from last year's mission that extend across the sea ice from the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula to south of Cape Norvegia, and back again. The flight path crossed the tip of the peninsula, proceeded to the eastern Weddell Coast, moved down the coast about 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers), and then transited back, where the sea ice is 1,500 feet (457 meters) thick.

One of the ways in which the plane measures the sea ice below is by Lidar (Light Detection And Ranging), an optical remote-sensing technology that measures properties of scattered light to find range and/or other information of a distant target.

"Lidars were successfully used to record the surface elevation of the sea ice floes, which are largely overlain by snow at this time of year. Wide-band radars were successfully used to estimate the thickness of the snow cover," Kenneth Jezek, the mission's science definition team co-leader from Ohio State University, told OurAmazingPlanet. "Knowledge about the snow thickness and also the surface elevation of the combined sea ice/snow cover column ultimately can be used to estimate the sea ice thickness."

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A window view of Weddell Sea ice. Credit: NASA

Researchers who are part of the project but not on board the flights are also able to watch the progress of the flight in real time. Beyond the reports of the first mission's instruments working, there hasn't been much available to the researchers on the ground, but possibly in future missions sample data can accompany the feed.

"Right now, the flight and instrument crews have their hands full and are doing a great job!" Jezek said.

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Obama’s new mission for NASA: Reach out to Muslim world

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In a far-reaching restatement of goals for the nation’s space agency, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says President Obama has ordered him to pursue three new objectives: to “re-inspire children” to study science and math, to “expand our international relationships,” and to “reach out to the Muslim world.” Of those three goals, Bolden said in a recent interview with al-Jazeera, the mission to reach out to Muslims is “perhaps foremost,” because it will help Islamic nations “feel good” about their scientific accomplishments.

In the same interview, Bolden also said the United States, which first sent men to the moon in 1969, is no longer capable of reaching beyond low earth orbit without help from other nations.

Bolden made the statements during a recent trip to the Middle East. He told al-Jazeera that in the wake of the president’s speech in Cairo last year, the American space agency is now pursuing “a new beginning of the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world.” Then:

When I became the NASA Administrator — before I became the NASA Administrator — [Obama] charged me with three things: One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.

Later in the interview, Bolden discussed NASA’s goal of greater international cooperation in space exploration. He said the United States, more than 40 years after the first moon mission, cannot reach beyond earth’s orbit today without assistance from abroad:

In his message in Cairo, [Obama] talked about expanding our international outreach, expanding our international involvement. We’re not going to go anywhere beyond low earth orbit as a single entity. The United States can’t do it, China can’t do it — no single nation is going to go to a place like Mars alone.

Bolden’s trip included a June 15 speech at the American University in Cairo. In that speech, he said in the past NASA worked mostly with countries that are capable of space exploration. But that, too, has changed in light of Obama’s Cairo initiative. “He asked NASA to change…by reaching out to ‘non-traditional’ partners and strengthening our cooperation in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and in particular in Muslim-majority nations,” Bolden said. “NASA has embraced this charge.”

“NASA is not only a space exploration agency,” Bolden concluded, “but also an earth improvement agency.”

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Incredible moment-Nasa camera as Moon passes in front of the Sun

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It looks a bit like someone has accidentally got their thumb caught in front of lens as they take a picture of the Sun.

But this remarkable image shows the moon as it passes between a spacecraft and the sun - causing a partial eclipse.

In a first for NASA's SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory), the camera was watching the Sun in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light just as the dark Moon began to pass in front.




The moon passing between the SDO and the sun on October 7th, 2010 in an image taken by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory

Tendrils of super-heated plasma - known as solar flares - can be seen reaching far out into space.

Plasma loops like these can heat up to a blistering 20 million degrees Celsius.

The bright plasma loop streaking out on the far left of the image is around 860,000 miles across.
These images are not just nice to look at, however. Scientists who monitor the SDO say the partial eclipse will prove useful to them in improving how the equipment on board works.
The very sharp edge of the lunar limb allows us to measure the in-orbit characteristics of the telescope e.g., light diffraction on optics and filter support grids.

'Once these are characterized , we can use that information to correct our data for instrumental effects and sharpen up the images to even more detail.'

SDO provides better-than-HD quality views of the Sun at a variety of wavelengths and has been responsible for some of the spectacular solar flare images which have emerged in recent months as the Sun begins a period of heightened activity.


The SDO blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida in February 2010 and is on a five year mission which is expected to cost £550million.

The spacecraft, orbiting 22,000 miles above Earth, is 7.2ft by 14.8ft. The solar panels are 21ft across and produce 1450W of power.

Instruments on board have additional shielding because this is in the outer reaches of the Earth's radiation belt where levels can be quite high.
The spacecraft carries three instruments that take ultra-high resolution images of the Sun every minute. It is also able to study solar pressure waves generated on its surface.

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