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http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/21mar_nakedeye.htm

Naked-eye Gamma Ray Burst
03.21.2008

http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/images/nakedeye/piinthesky_strip.gif

A powerful gamma ray burst detected March 19th by NASA's Swift satellite has shattered the record for the most distant object that could be seen with the naked eye.

"It was a whopper," says Swift principal investigator Neil Gehrels of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "This blows away every gamma ray burst we've seen so far."

Swift's Burst Alert Telescope picked up the burst at 2:12 a.m. EDT on March 19, 2008, and pinpointed the coordinates in the constellation Bootes. Telescopes in space and on the ground quickly moved to observe the afterglow. The burst was named GRB 080319B and registered between 5 and 6 on the visual magnitude scale used by astronomers. (A magnitude 6 star is the dimmest visible to the human eye; magnitude 5 is almost three times brighter.)

Later that evening, the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas measured the burst's redshift at 0.94. A redshift is a measure of the distance to an object. A redshift of 0.94 translates into a distance of 7.5 billion light years, meaning the explosion took place 7.5 billion years ago, a time when the universe was less than half its current age and Earth had yet to form. This is more than halfway across the visible universe.

"No other known object or type of explosion could be seen by the naked eye at such an immense distance," says Swift science team member Stephen Holland of Goddard. "If someone just happened to be looking at the right place at the right time, they saw the most distant object ever seen by human eyes without optical aid."

Most gamma ray bursts occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. Their cores collapse to form black holes or neutron stars, releasing an intense burst of high-energy gamma rays and ejecting particle jets that rip through space at nearly the speed of light. When the jets plow into surrounding interstellar clouds, they heat the gas to incandescent visibility. It is this gaseous "afterglow" which was visible to the human eye on March 19th.

GRB 080319B's afterglow was 2.5 million times more luminous than the most luminous supernova ever recorded, making it the most intrinsically bright object ever observed by humans in the universe. The most distant previous object that could have been seen by the naked eye is the nearby galaxy M33, a relatively short 2.9 million light-years from Earth.

Analysis of GRB 080319B is just getting underway, so astronomers don't know why this burst and its afterglow were so bright. One possibility is the burst was more energetic than others, perhaps because of the mass, spin, or magnetic field of the progenitor star or its jet. Or perhaps it concentrated its energy in a narrow jet that was aimed directly at Earth.

GRB 080319B was one of four bursts that Swift detected on March 19th, a Swift record for one day. Swift science team member Judith Racusin of Penn State University comments, "coincidentally, the passing of Arthur C. Clarke seems to have set the universe ablaze with gamma ray bursts." A fitting farewell, indeed.
 
src

Moondust in the Wind

Moondust is dry, desiccated stuff, and may seem like a dull topic to write about. Indeed, you could search a ton of moondust without finding a single molecule of water, so it could make for a pretty "dry" story. But like the dust in your mother's attic, moondust covers something interesting – the moon – and even the dust itself has curious tales to tell.

A group of NASA and University of Alabama researchers are what you might call "active listeners": Mian Abbas, James Spann, Richard Hoover and Dragana Tankosic have been shooting moondust with electrons, levitating moondust using electric fields, and scrutinizing moondust under an electron microscope. All this is happening at the National Space Science and Technology Center's "Dusty Plasma Lab" in Huntsville, Alabama.

Why such attention? Spann explains: "Humans will return to the moon in a few years and have to know what to expect. How do you live and work in a place filled with moondust? We're trying to find out."

"Moondust was a real nuisance for Apollo astronauts," adds Abbas. "It stuck to everything – spacesuits, equipment, instruments." The sharp-edged grains scratched faceplates, clogged joints, blackened surfaces and made dials all but unreadable. "The troublesome clinginess had a lot to do with moondust's electrostatic charge."

Dust on the moon is electrified, at least in part, by exposure to the solar wind. Earth is protected from the solar wind by our planet's magnetic field, but the moon has no global magnetic field to ward off charged particles from the sun. Free electrons in the solar wind interact with grains of moondust and, in effect, "charge them up."

http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/images/moondustinthewind/chargedmoon_strip.jpg

At the Dusty Plasma Lab, the scientists simulate solar wind-like conditions to study the moon's dust in a realistic environment. In previous studies, Abbas and colleagues examined the effects of ultraviolet sunlight on grains of moondust to help construct theories about how moondust will behave during daylight hours on the moon. (UV photons can also charge up moondust.) Now they are investigating how the grains behave in the dark of night, when the swirling solar wind dominates "lunar weather."

"Fortunately, we know what the solar wind is like, so we can simulate it," says Spann.

In a typical experiment, Abbas peppers the dust grains with a beam of electrons from an electron gun. He suspends a single grain of moondust inside the vacuum test chamber and bombards the grain with different numbers of electrons.

"We've had some surprising results," says Abbas "We're finding that individual dust grains do not act the same as larger amounts of moon dust put together. Existing theories based on calculations of the charge of a large amount of moondust don't apply to the moondust at the single particle level."

When it comes to electrostatic charging, grains of moondust are individualists capable of eccentric and surprising behavior. For instance, in one experiment conducted by Abbas, pelting a positively charged grain of moondust with electrons (which carry a negative charge) caused the grain to exhibit a more positive charge. Consider that grain a contrarian! Abbas thinks that each electron hitting the grain dislodged two or more electrons already there, resulting in a net increase of positive charge.

Not all moondust behaves this way. How each grain reacts depends on a variety of factors including the grain's size, the charge it already carries, and the number of free electrons incoming.

Spann adds, "We believe the single grains will behave differently on the moon, too – not just in our lab. Our results are closer to what's really happening on the moon. We're saying, 'Hey wait a second guys. We're finding something odd. When you go to the moon, it's going to be a little different than you thought.'"

You can bet mission planners will be listening as the moondust tells its tale.
 
Earth Rise from Japan's Kaguya satellite.

"Long" commercial followed by short clip of the Earthrise.
 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24442143/
http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photo_StoryLevel/080503/080503-shuttle-hmed-10a.h2.jpg

Space shuttle takes its place on the pad
Discovery rolls out for May 31 launch to space station with Japanese lab
May. 3, 2008

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - After an hours-long crawl, the space shuttle Discovery reached its launch pad on Saturday, in preparation for a May 31 liftoff to add the main piece of a huge Japanese research complex to the international space station.

With the shuttle in position, NASA will conduct a practice launch countdown with the seven-member crew next week. The mission is the third of five planned for this year.

Discovery's crew, led by Mark Kelly, includes five first-time fliers and two veterans. Kelly has made two previous spaceflights, and lead spacewalker Michael Fossum has flown once.

The crew includes Japan's Akihiko Hoshide, who will oversee the setup of Kibo, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's primary contribution to the space station. Also aboard will be pilot Ken Ham, spacewalker Ron Garan, mission specialist Karen Nyberg and space station flight engineer Greg Chamitoff.

Chamitoff will remain behind on the station, replacing astronaut Garrett Reisman, who began his stint as a member of the station's live-aboard crew during the last shuttle mission in March. Reisman will be returning to Earth in Chamitoff's place.

NASA delivered the storage compartment for Kibo during the March flight, setting the stage for this month's mission. Discovery is bringing up the lab's workspace module, along with its robotic-arm system. Kibo's experiments will focus on space medicine, biology, Earth observations, material production, biotechnology and communications research.

A final segment of the elaborate lab, an exposed back porch for microgravity research experiments, is due to arrive next year.

Ten shuttle flights to go
NASA is planning 10 more shuttle flights to the multibillion-dollar space station before it retires the fleet in 2010. The space agency also plans a final servicing call to the Hubble Space Telescope this fall.

The shuttles, which began flying to space in 1981, are being retired due to safety issues raised by 2003's Columbia tragedy. NASA is funding the development of a new spaceship, called Orion, which will be capable of traveling to the moon as well as low Earth orbit. However, there will be a gap between the shuttle fleet's retirement and Orion's debut.


NASA estimates the country will need to depend on other space transports to ferry station crew members to and from the station for about five years while the new ships are under construction. For now, the Russian Soyuz craft is the only alternative, but NASA is also supporting private-sector spaceship development projects that may become available.

NASA's post-shuttle options have become a subject of renewed debate in the wake of last month's bone-jarring landing of a Soyuz crew returning from the space station. NASA managers have acknowledged that the Soyuz capsule's separation system apparently malfunctioned during the descent. An investigation into the hard landing is continuing.
 
Okay, I should know the answer to this......but I don't.......so I'm just going to ask you experts.

I know HOW the shuttle gets to the pad via the crawler, but once there, how is it transferred to the launch pad? Or does it launch directly from the crawler? Nawwww. That would melt the seat cushions in the driver compartment.

Help me out here, guys.
 
Colonel Hogan said:
Okay, I should know the answer to this......but I don't.......so I'm just going to ask you experts.

I know HOW the shuttle gets to the pad via the crawler, but once there, how is it transferred to the launch pad? Or does it launch directly from the crawler? Nawwww. That would melt the seat cushions in the driver compartment.

Help me out here, guys.
Click to expand...


http://www.cdli.ca/CITE/sts_rollout.htm

Site has pictures of the crawler without the launch pad & shuttle on top of it.
 
Thanks. I figured it was something like that. I still don't have a great mental picture of how the "poles" support or engage the mobile launch pad, but I at least have the general idea.
 
NASA Successfully Completes First Series of Ares Engine Tests

NASA engineers have successfully completed the first series of tests in the early development of the J-2X engine that will power the upper stages of the Ares I and Ares V rockets, key components of NASA's Constellation Program. Ares I will launch the Orion spacecraft that will take astronauts to the International Space Station and then to the moon by 2020. The Ares V will carry cargo and components into orbit for trips to the moon and later to Mars


really big picture
 
Take me out of orbit, Mr. Sulu...

WASHINGTON -- NASA invites people of all ages to join the lunar exploration journey with an opportunity to send their names to the moon aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, spacecraft.

The Send Your Name to the Moon Web site enables everyone to participate in the lunar adventure and place their names in orbit around the moon for years to come. Participants can submit their information at http://lro.jhuapl.edu/NameToMoon/, print a certificate and have their name entered into a database. The database will be placed on a microchip that will be integrated onto the spacecraft. The deadline for submitting names is June 27, 2008.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/nametomoon.html

It'd be fun for the kiddos too...:nana:

http://ipy.nasa.gov/multimedia/m000000/m000000/m000023/163815main_LRO_Rendering_web.jpg
 
wow, where has this thread been all my life?
Click to expand...
It has a long history of educating the masses of the General Board- :nana:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

WASHINGTON — With just 12 days to go until its Mars arrival, NASA's Phoenix lander is functioning well and on course to be the first mission to land in the frigid, arctic regions of the red planet, NASA officials said today.

A planned maneuver to adjust Phoenix's course was canceled last Saturday because the spacecraft is on track for its May 25 landing, said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Another maneuver is set for this coming Saturday.

NASA also released enhanced images of Phoenix's landing site, located at 68 degrees north latitude, 233 degrees east longitude in Vastitas Borealis, the northern arctic planes of Mars. This latitude corresponds to northern Canada, just below the Arctic sea, said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Below the surface layer of dust in these plains lies a layer of water ice mixed with sand and dust. During its three-month mission, Phoenix will use its 7.7-foot (2.3-meter) robotic arm to dig up samples of this dirty ice and analyze it with onboard science instruments to shed light on the history of water in the Martian arctic and see if the icy soil could support life.

http://www******.com/missionlaunches/080513-phoenix-landing-overview.html

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/070802_phoenix_lab_02.jpg
 
NASA Orion Spacecraft

Man’s Mission to… 2000 SG344?
By Joshua Hill Monday, May 12, 2008

Those who keep track of such things will know that there is a lot of discussion as to where man will head next, in mankind’s continuing journey into space. George W. Bush wants us to head back to the Moon in 2020, and set up a lunar outpost. Experts want us to forget the Moon and head straight to Mars.

But a new report out of NASA is looking at sending a two-man crew to rendezvous with 2000 SG344, an asteroid discovered in 1999 and with a diameter of 40 meters.

The asteroid, which was in 2000 given a high chance of striking Earth (but has since been relegated to unlikely, along with so many others), has been identified as a potential landing site for astronauts. However, more than just the next step in our outward journey, this mission would also provide experts with invaluable data about long term journeys.

<snip>

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3023
 
I'm a huge fan of manned space flight, but when I saw this headline, my first question was, "why?" Robots can do it more safely and more cheaply. The article explained it.

I think it would be way cool. Hell, lasso it and bring it home!

And ain't it sooo cool that Phoenix didn't need a course correction after traveling a bajillion miles? Math is cool!
 
Last edited:
Wow! What a month!

The NASA Phoenix Mars Lander is just about ready to make its landing on the red planet, Mars. The touch-down is set for May 25th.

In just over a week, the NASA Phoenix Mars Lander will make its touch-down on Mars in its Arctic region.

The Phoenix is already on its final approach to the red planet, with NASA saying it will land in the red planet’s Arctic zone.

Phoenix will be going along at 13,000 mph once it crosses into the Mars atmosphere.

From there, it will have to slow down to 5 mph in a matter of under 8 minutes in order to land on three legs and go along safely.

http://www.dbtechno.com/space/2008/05/14/nasas-phoenix-makes-final-approach-for-mars-landing/

http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/mars_seattlehumor.jpg
 
Lost Cause said:
The NASA Phoenix Mars Lander is just about ready to make its landing on the red planet, Mars. The touch-down is set for May 25th.

In just over a week, the NASA Phoenix Mars Lander will make its touch-down on Mars in its Arctic region.

The Phoenix is already on its final approach to the red planet, with NASA saying it will land in the red planet’s Arctic zone.

Phoenix will be going along at 13,000 mph once it crosses into the Mars atmosphere.

From there, it will have to slow down to 5 mph in a matter of under 8 minutes in order to land on three legs and go along safely.

http://www.dbtechno.com/space/2008/05/14/nasas-phoenix-makes-final-approach-for-mars-landing/

http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/mars_seattlehumor.jpg
Click to expand...

Pheonix Lander video courtesy of Space.com
 
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