NASA's Successful Ice Cloud and Land Elevation Mission Comes to an End

UPDATE: NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office at Johnson Space Center, Houston, has reported that debris from the ICESat spacecraft fell to Earth in the Barents Sea on Monday, Aug. 30, at approximately 5 a.m. EDT.

One of NASA's orbiting sentinels is expected to return to Earth in a few days. The agency's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation (ICESat) satellite completed a very productive scientific mission earlier this year. NASA lowered the satellite's orbit last month and then decommissioned the spacecraft in preparation for re-entry. It is estimated that the satellite will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and largely burn up on or about August 29.

ICESat was launched in January 2003, as a three-year mission with a goal of returning science data for five years. It was the first mission of its kind –specifically designed to study Earth's polar regions with a space-based laser altimeter called the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System, or GLAS.

ICESat's lasting legacy will be its impact on the understanding of ice sheet and sea ice dynamics. The mission has led to scientific advances in measuring changes in the mass of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, polar sea ice thickness, vegetation-canopy heights, and the heights of clouds and aerosols. Using ICESat data, scientists identified a network of lakes beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. ICESat introduced new capabilities, technology and methods such as the measurement of sea ice freeboard – or the amount of ice and snow that protrudes above the ocean surface - for estimating sea ice thickness.

"ICESat has been a tremendous scientific success," said Jay Zwally, ICESat's project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It has provided detailed information on how the Earth's polar ice masses are changing with climate warming, as needed for government policy decisions. In particular, ICESat data showed that the Arctic sea ice has been rapidly thinning, which is critical information for revising predictions of how soon the Arctic Ocean might be mostly ice free in summer. It has also shown how much ice is being lost from Greenland and contributing to sea level rise. Thanks to ICESat we now also know that the Antarctic ice sheet is not losing as much ice as some other studies have shown."

The End of an Era

After seven years in orbit and 15 laser-operations campaigns, ICESat's science mission ended in February 2010 with the failure of its primary instrument. Because the spacecraft remained in operating condition, NASA's Science Mission Directorate accepted proposals for engineering tests to be performed using ICESat. These tests were completed on June 20. NASA's Earth Science Division then authorized the decommissioning of ICESat. After completing a review of decommissioning activities, the agency directed that ICESat be decommissioned by this August.

Mission flight controllers began firing ICESat's propulsion system thrusters on June 23 to lower its orbit. Thruster firings ended on July 14, safely reducing the lowest point of the spacecraft's orbit to 125 miles (200 km) above Earth's surface. The orbit has since naturally decayed. ICESat was successfully decommissioned from operations on Aug. 14. All remaining fuel on the spacecraft is now depleted, and atmospheric drag is slowly lowering ICESat's orbit until the spacecraft re-enters the Earth's atmosphere.

A statement from the Earth Science Mission Operations office summarized the achievement:

"The ICESat mission operations team is commended for its exceptional performance, working tirelessly for the past eleven years (four years of preparation and seven years of operations), overcoming several obstacles in the early years of the mission, and closing out the mission with a flawless series of orbital maneuvers before final decommissioning. The positive control maintained over the mission right to the end shows the quality and effort that went into designing, building, qualifying, launching, and operating a tremendously successful mission such as ICESat."

The Return to Planet Earth

The vast majority of ICESat will burn up in the atmosphere during re-entry. Of the spacecraft's total mass (about 2000 lbs.), only a small percent will reach the surface of Earth. Some pieces of the spacecraft, weighing collectively about 200 pounds, are expected to survive re-entry. The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth from this debris is estimated to be very low.

ICESat was not designed to perform a controlled re-entry and is unable to provide targeting to a particular location on Earth. ICESat circles the Earth from pole to pole, so surviving debris could land almost anywhere on the planet. Due to natural variability in the near-Earth environment, a precise location of where spacecraft debris will re-enter cannot be forecast. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network is closely monitoring the orbit of ICESat during its final days and will continue to issue periodic predictions of re-entry time and location. The NASA Orbital Debris Program Office will issue re-entry information based on these predictions.

NASA and international standards for space objects re-entering Earth's atmosphere do not require controlled re-entry but do have requirements and guidelines for the maximum risk posed by debris surviving re-entry.

"The ICESat team has done a marvelous job to ensure that the spacecraft is removed as a hazard to other spacecraft and as a potential source of future orbital debris," said Nicholas L. Johnson, NASA Chief Scientist for Orbital Debris at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The Future Looks Bright

Despite the end of ICESat's mission, NASA's observations of Earth's polar regions continue. In anticipation of the ICESat mission coming to an end, and in accordance with the National Research Council's Decadal Survey of future NASA Earth science missions, NASA has begun development of ICESat-2, planned for launch in 2015. ICESat-2 will continue the science legacy of its predecessor, and improve our understanding of Earth's dynamic polar regions with new and advanced technology.

The Operation Ice Bridge airborne mission, started in 2009, is the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown. The mission is designed to partially fill the data gap between the ICESat and ICESat-2 satellite missions. For the next five years, instruments on NASA aircraft will target areas of rapid change to yield an unprecedented 3-D view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves, and sea ice. Targeted information from aircraft combined with the broad and consistent coverage from satellites contribute to a more complete understanding of Earth's response to climate change, helping scientists make better predictions of what the future might hold.

Source NASA

Communicating in Space

When astronauts venture outside of a spaceship or the International Space Station, they must wear protective space suits to keep them safe from the harsh environment of space. While inside these pressurized suits, it's essential that they remain in constant communication with the rest of the crew in space as well as Mission Control Center on Earth.

While wearing the current space suits, astronauts wear a Communications Carrier Assembly (CCA), or "Snoopy Cap" — a fabric hat fitted with microphones in the ear area for listening and boom microphones in front of the mouth for speaking. These caps are worn under the helmet and visor that surround an astronaut's head.
 
NASA is in the process of completely redesigning their space suits, with the goal of creating a brand new space suit to be used starting in 2020. Redesigned and reinvented communications equipment will be an important facet of the new suit. 

Integrated Audio

NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland is working on different parts of the new space suit, including communications equipment. The Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP) is involved with testing various proposed solutions to the communications requirements within the suit.

The Communications Carrier Assembly (CCA), while effective, has some logistical drawbacks. Multiple cap sizes must be available due to the difference in astronauts' head sizes. The caps cannot be adjusted once the visor of the helmet is in place and the astronaut is in space, which means that if the microphones shift, communication quality can decrease. The boom microphones can also interfere with feeding and drinking mechanisms during long-duration spacewalks. An additional problem is that astronaut sweat can negatively interfere with the performance of the electrical and mechanical parts in the CCA.

For several years, Glenn has performed research and development on a variety of communications technologies. About six years ago, teams at Glenn began working on integrated audio solutions to support extravehicular activities, like space walks. In 2008, Glenn signed a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) agreement with WeVoice Inc. of Bridgewater, N.J. Together, they began developing and testing an integrated audio system that is built directly into a space helmet.

"The integrated audio system is where the microphones and earphones are removed from the Communications Carrier Assembly and integrated into the structure of the space suit itself," says Obed "Scott" Sands, an electronics engineer at Glenn, lead for Configuration II Audio under Constellation and lead for integrated audio development for the Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP).

The new integrated audio system solves many of the issues the CCA presents. As the integrated audio system is part of the actual space suit, there are no additional parts to worry about maintaining. The microphones and earphones are built into the suit, which means there are no moving parts to disrupt an astronaut's movements or become dislodged during activity. And the integrated audio system is a universal size — no separate caps are needed for individual crew members.

Rather than one boom microphone, the new integrated audio system uses an array of microphones — currently four, but the number could increase — that are located in front of where an astronaut's mouth is while inside the helmet. The integrated audio system features cutting-edge digital signal processing which helps the microphones overcome loss of fidelity on the outbound (speaking) part of the system.

The microphone array and associated signal processing are needed in the integrated audio system to overcome decreased sound quality. Sound quality can be negatively impacted because the microphones of the integrated audio system are positioned on the inside of the helmet — farther from an astronaut's mouth. This makes the microphones more susceptible to interference from noise created inside of the suit as well as noise from vibrations of the spacesuit structure.

The current technology development approach to solving these problems involves processing signals from each element in the array, known as Multi-Channel Noise Reduction. This new filtering approach features technology adapted from video teleconferencing systems. Advanced filters are used for each of the array's channels, and additional noise reduction is used to isolate the sound of speech.

Several speakers are installed in the helmet, which are designed to focus the sound towards the astronaut's ears. These speakers also isolate other sounds so that crew members can effectively hear. This solves the issue of occasional unclear inbound communications (listening).

"This new system will provide the crew member with more freedom and increased reliability," says Terry O'Malley, an aerospace engineer and the EVA lead at Glenn. "It also provides the system designers with increased flexibility in designing the system."

Testing with a Torso

In order to assess the effectiveness of the new system, the conditions inside a space suit must be replicated. Then the integrated audio is tested by using a specialized piece of equipment that creates human speech. This equipment, shaped like a human torso, is called HATSMAN — Head and Torso Simulator. It is manufactured by Brüel & Kjær, a company based in Denmark.

"It listens like a person and talks like a person," Sands says. "It's got microphones in its ears and a speaker in its mouth, and the radiation patterns conform to international standards for mannequins that emulate human speech and hearing."

The testing involves taking advanced measurements of the noise produced by HATMSAN and received by the integrated audio system and vice versa. This anthropometric measuring helps Glenn researchers refine their design, using data created by machines that accurately represent the needs of the humans who will eventually use the completed system.

The HATMSAN at Glenn is installed in a testing tank that is carefully designed to mimic the environment inside a space suit. It is lined with acoustic absorbing foam that isolates extra noise that the tank itself might create. Then a noise source simulates the sound created by space suits, which is generated from a recording taken inside an actual space suit. Special microphones that do not create their own static pressure are installed, which take measurements without affecting the readings.

"The biggest reason we're in the tank is that we can create a static pressure environment that simulates the inside of the actual suit," says Dave Pleva (DB Consulting Group, Inc.), an IT Project Analyst at Glenn who supports audio development work for ETDP.


The tank recreates the pressure inside of the suit, not the pressure of the entirety of space — because the integrated audio system is made for use inside a helmet. The positive pressure inside a space suit is about 4.3 PSI (equivalent to about 35,000 feet altitude) so the team tests with this as its base. They also explore other variations in barometric pressure. The test rig also includes an acrylic dome to simulate the helmet. The team explores how speech and sound bounce off of the surface of the helmet.

A specialized device, called Digital Speech Level Analyzer (DSLA), provides vocal tracks for use in testing. Various utterances comprise the test speech to make it phonetically balanced — including all of the patterns and pairs that, statistically speaking, would show up in the English language. Both male and female voices are used.

"We generate a signal, it goes through an amplifier that powers the speaker in the HATSMAN, and then the array picks up the speech. The array then processes the speech and sends out the process signal to the DSLA. The DSLA then does a comparison of what it sent and what it receives," Pleva says.

The primary performance concern is speech intelligibility. Although quality of sound is also important, the main interest is that as many words as possible be successfully transmitted both ways. This can be effectively measured using the equipment in place.

"The next step would be to build an even higher fidelity version of this integrated audio system. Then we'll do another round of these tests. Eventually, we'll have a human being tested inside a pressure chamber," says Dave Irimies, a computer engineer and ETDP lead at Glenn.

Advancing Technology

The ongoing research, development and testing of this integrated audio system is part of the Space Audio Development and Evaluation Laboratory at Glenn.

"Our direction is replacing the current suit on the space station and shuttle. The current certification runs out in ten years, in 2020, so… this is an opportunity to use even more advanced technology," Irimies says. "This work is pressing forward."

The team hopes that the integrated audio system can commence testing on the space station in 2016. The technology may also be useful for communicating inside the station as well as during space walks. There may also be the potential that the technology can help on Earth. WeVoice Inc. is currently working with the University of Pittsburg on one potential spin-off: developing a teleconferencing system using microphone arrays for operating rooms in hospitals.

The team looks forward to working together to continue testing and evolving their integrated audio system, with the goal of significantly influencing how the next generation space suit will work.

"We all challenge each other in different ways, all the time," Sands says. "It's a lot of fun, getting new concepts infused into space systems. That's what NASA is all about."

Tori Woods, SGT Inc.
NASA’s Glenn Research Center

Source NASA 

Module to Get a Home in Space

The Italian-built multi-purpose logistics module (MPLM) called Leonardo was built to serve the same purpose as its two brothers, Rafaello and Donatello: to ferry supplies, equipment, experiments and other cargo to and from the International Space Station via the space shuttle's payload bay. Now the module formerly known as Leonardo is on its way to a permanent assignment in space.

 

 An MPLM is designed to be carried to the space station by a shuttle, be temporarily attached to the station to allow astronauts to float inside and remove cargo and fill it back up with items, and then be detached and returned to Earth by the shuttle.



"For many years, NASA and the Italian Space Agency have been looking at the potential of turning one of the multi-purpose logistics modules into a permanent module to fly and attach to the station and leave behind," says Scott Higginbotham, the payload mission manager for space shuttle Discovery’s STS-133 flight. "Efforts to actually conduct the conversion got serious in the summer of 2009 when we started studies to understand specifically what modifications would be necessary to make the conversion from a temporary visiting vehicle to a permanent vehicle."

Once the conversion plan was approved, the Italian Space Agency contracted with Thales Alenia Space, the European company that originally built the module, to perform the majority of the modifications.

"There are three basic types of modifications that were performed to make the conversion from the MPLM to the PMM (Permanent Multipurpose Module)," explains Higginbotham. "The first has to do with weight. We tried to reduce the weight of the module as much as possible by eliminating hardware that we didn't need for the long-duration stay on orbit to allow us to carry more useful cargo up to space on STS-133."

The second set of modifications was aimed at making the module's interior more user-friendly to the station crew members. "For example, we have modified some of the panels inside the vehicle so that they are much easier for the astronauts to open and close during a flight," says Higginbotham.

But by far the biggest change was preparing the PMM to spend 10 years exposed to the rigors of space instead of the 10 days it might previously have been outside the protection of the shuttle during a mission.

"Probably most significantly we had to armor the exterior of the module so that it can withstand the micrometeoroid and hypervelocity debris impacts over the 10 years that it'll be on the station," says Higginbotham, "Rather than modify the external shields, which are made of metal, which was going to be heavy and expensive, the clever idea that both we and the Italians came up with was to install a micrometeoroid mattress, which is basically a bullet-proof vest for the station that lies underneath the metallic shield and on top of the pressure vessel."

When the modifications are completed, the module will be loaded with the STS-133 payload and fly aboard Discovery, remaining at the station at the end of the mission. The extra space it provides will give the station's resident crew what amounts to a giant new float-in closet to help store supplies, equipment and potentially experiments aboard the orbiting laboratory, helping the station continue its mission through the decade.

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NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Two Planets Transiting the Same Star

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star

The transit signatures of two distinct planets were seen in the data for the sun-like star designated Kepler-9. The planets were named Kepler-9b and 9c. The discovery incorporates seven months of observations of more than 156,000 stars as part of an ongoing search for Earth-sized planets outside our solar system. The findings will be published in Thursday's issue of the journal Science.

Kepler's ultra-precise camera measures tiny decreases in the stars' brightness that occur when a planet transits them. The size of the planet can be derived from these temporary dips.

The distance of the planet from the star can be calculated by measuring the time between successive dips as the planet orbits the star. Small variations in the regularity of these dips can be used to determine the masses of planets and detect other non-transiting planets in the system.

In June, mission scientists submitted findings for peer review that identified more than 700 planet candidates in the first 43 days of Kepler data. The data included five additional candidate systems that appear to exhibit more than one transiting planet. The Kepler team recently identified a sixth target exhibiting multiple transits and accumulated enough follow-up data to confirm this multi-planet system.

"Kepler's high quality data and round-the-clock coverage of transiting objects enable a whole host of unique measurements to be made of the parent stars and their planetary systems," said Doug Hudgins, the Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Scientists refined the estimates of the masses of the planets using observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The observations show Kepler-9b is the larger of the two planets, and both have masses similar to but less than Saturn. Kepler-9b lies closest to the star with an orbit of about 19 days, while Kepler-9c has an orbit of about 38 days. By observing several transits by each planet over the seven months of data, the time between successive transits could be analyzed.

"This discovery is the first clear detection of significant changes in the intervals from one planetary transit to the next, what we call transit timing variations," said Matthew Holman, a Kepler mission scientist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "This is evidence of the gravitational interaction between the two planets as seen by the Kepler spacecraft."

In addition to the two confirmed giant planets, Kepler scientists also have identified what appears to be a third, much smaller transit signature in the observations of Kepler-9. That signature is consistent with the transits of a super-Earth-sized planet about 1.5 times the radius of Earth in a scorching, near-sun 1.6 day-orbit. Additional observations are required to determine whether this signal is indeed a planet or an astronomical phenomenon that mimics the appearance of a transit.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/kepler


Source NASA
 

 

"Avatar" Director And NASA Focus On Earth Science Exploration In Psa Campaign

 

 

 

WASHINGTON -- James Cameron, director of "Avatar," the most successful film ever released, is featured in a series of new NASA public service announcements that describe the many contributions of the agency's Earth science program to environmental awareness and exploration of our home planet.

"When NASA ventures into space, it remembers to keep a steady eye on home," Cameron said. "Its fleet of Earth-orbiting satellites constantly reveals our whole planet: its remotest places, its mysteries and the powerful influence of humans."

Cameron's 3-D epic, based on the fictional planet of Pandora and is coming back to theaters this week. The story centers on a beautiful planet threatened by forces that want to exploit its natural resources.

The public service announcements feature "Avatar" film imagery and include computer animations and data from NASA's fleet of Earth-observing satellites. NASA has 14 science satellites in orbit making cutting-edge global observations of the entire global system including the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, snow and ice.

NASA Television will broadcast the announcements beginning Tuesday and they are available to television and radio stations, and other interested media outlets.

To download or view the PSAs online, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/avatar.html

http://www.youtube.com/nasatelevision

For information about NASA's Earth science missions, visit:

http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/missions  

 

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NASA's ATHLETE Warms Up for High Desert Run

Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are currently putting their All-Terrain, Hex-Limbed, Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE) through a series of long-drive tests on the long, dirt roads found adjacent to JPL. The JPL grounds do not include an unpaved area of sufficient size for testing such a large robot over a long distance. Some of the dirt roads in the Arroyo Seco (a wash located next to JPL) are wide enough for ATHLETE, and its close proximity to JPL allows the robot to be secured in its hangar between test runs.

The engineers want to test the moon rover's ability to meet a NASA milestone of traveling at least 40 kilometers (25 miles) over 14 days under its own power. The official demonstration is slated to begin in the Arizona high desert next month.
ATHLETE is a 1/2-scale working prototype of a robot under development to transport habitats and other cargo on the surface of the Moon or Mars. The ATHLETE concept is a level cargo deck carried by six wheels, each on the end of a configurable leg. The prototype stands approximately 4.5 meters (15 feet) tall and 4.5 meters (15 ft) wide and weighs about (about 2,300 kilograms (2.5 tons). The robot moves relatively slowly, with a top speed during traverse of approximately 2 kilometers per hour (1.25 mph).

For more information about ATHLETE, including photos and video clips, visit: http://athlete.jpl.nasa.gov/.

It takes a lot of hard work, ingenuity and creativity to build a rover like ATHLETE. And it takes a lot of creativity of a different sort to make ATHLETE "dance." See the results of that effort in a fast-action video of ATHLETE bustin' a move.

Source NASA

Pulverized Planet Dust May Lie Around Double Stars

PASADENA, Calif. -- Tight double-star systems might not be the best places for life to spring up, according to a new study using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The infrared observatory spotted a surprisingly large amount of dust around three mature, close-orbiting star pairs. Where did the dust come from? Astronomers say it might be the aftermath of tremendous planetary collisions.

"This is real-life science fiction," said Jeremy Drake of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. "Our data tell us that planets in these systems might not be so lucky -- collisions could be common. It's theoretically possible that habitable planets could exist around these types of stars, so if there happened to be any life there, it could be doomed."

Drake is the principal investigator of the research, published in the Aug.19 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The particular class of binary, or double, stars in the study are about as snug as stars get. Named RS Canum Venaticorums, or RS CVns for short, they are separated by only about two million miles (3.2 million kilometers), or two percent of the distance between Earth and our sun. The stellar pairs orbit around each other every few days, with one face on each star perpetually locked and pointed toward the other.

The close-knit stars are similar to the sun in size and are probably about a billion to a few billion years old -- roughly the age of our sun when life first evolved on Earth. But these stars spin much faster, and, as a result, have powerful magnetic fields, and giant, dark spots. The magnetic activity drives strong stellar winds -- gale-force versions of the solar wind -- that slow the stars down, pulling the twirling duos closer over time. And this is where the planetary chaos may begin.

As the stars cozy up to each other, their gravitational influences change, and this could cause disturbances to planetary bodies orbiting around both stars. Comets and any planets that may exist in the systems would start jostling about and banging into each other, sometimes in powerful collisions. This includes planets that could theoretically be circling in the double stars' habitable zone, a region where temperatures would allow liquid water to exist. Though no habitable planets have been discovered around any stars beyond our sun at this point in time, tight double-star systems are known to host planets; for example, one system not in the study, called HW Vir, has two gas-giant planets.

"These kinds of systems paint a picture of the late stages in the lives of planetary systems," said Marc Kuchner, a co-author from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "And it's a future that's messy and violent."

Spitzer spotted the infrared glow of hot dusty disks, about the temperature of molten lava, around three such tight binary systems. One of the systems was originally flagged as having a suspicious excess of infrared light in 1983 by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite. In addition, researchers using Spitzer recently found a warm disk of debris around another star that turned out to be a tight binary system.

The astronomy team says that dust normally would have dissipated and blown away from the stars by this mature stage in their lives. They conclude that something -- most likely planetary collisions -- must therefore be kicking up the fresh dust. In addition, because dusty disks have now been found around four, older binary systems, the scientists know that the observations are not a fluke. Something chaotic is very likely going on.

If any life forms did exist in these star systems, and they could look up at the sky, they would have quite a view. Marco Matranga, first author of the paper, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and now a visiting astronomer at the Palermo Astronomical Observatory in Sicily, said, "The skies there would have two huge suns, like the ones above the planet Tatooine in 'Star Wars.'"

Other authors include V.L. Kashyap of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; and Massimo Marengo of Iowa State University, Ames.

The Spitzer observations were made before it ran out of its liquid coolant in May 2009, officially beginning its warm mission.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit http://spitzer.caltech.edu/ and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer .

The Infrared Astronomical Satellite, known commonly by its acronym, IRAS, was a joint project between NASA, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Source NASA

IBEX Spacecraft Finds Discoveries Close to Home

Imagine floating 35,000 miles above the sunny side of Earth. Our home planet gleams below, a majestic whorl of color and texture. All seems calm around you. With no satellites or space debris to dodge, you can just relax and enjoy the black emptiness of space.

 
But looks can be deceiving.

In reality, you've unknowingly jumped into an invisible mosh pit of electromagnetic mayhem — the place in space where a supersonic "wind" of charged particles from the Sun crashes head-on into the protective magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet. Traveling at a million miles per hour, the solar wind's protons and electrons sense Earth's magnetosphere too late to flow smoothly around it. Instead, they're shocked, heated, and slowed almost to a stop as they pile up along its outer boundary, the magnetopause, before getting diverted sideways.

Space physicists have had a general sense of these dynamic goings-on for decades. But it wasn't until the advent of the Interstellar Boundary Explorer or IBEX, a NASA spacecraft launched in October 2008, that they've been able to see what the human eye cannot: the first-ever images of this electromagnetic crash scene. They can now witness how some of the solar wind's charged particles are being neutralized by gas escaping from Earth's atmosphere.

A New Way to See Atoms

IBEX wasn't designed to keep tabs on Earth's magnetosphere. Instead, its job is to map interactions occurring far beyond the planets, 8 to 10 billion miles away, where the Sun's own magnetic bubble, the heliosphere, meets interstellar space.

Only two spacecraft, Voyagers 1 and 2, have ventured far enough to probe this region directly. IBEX, which travels in a looping, 8-day-long orbit around Earth, stays much closer to home, but it carries a pair of detectors that can observe the interaction region from afar.

Here's how: When fast-moving protons in the solar wind reach the edge of the heliosphere, they sometimes grab electrons from the slower-moving interstellar atoms around them, like batons getting passed between relay runners. This charge exchange creates electrically neutral hydrogen atoms that are no longer controlled by magnetic fields. Suddenly, they're free to go wherever they want — and because they're still moving fast, they quickly zip away from the interstellar boundary in all directions.



This animation shows a neutral solar particle's path leaving the Sun, following the magnetic field lines out to the Heliosheath. The solar particle hits a hydrogen atom, stealing it's electron and we follow it until we see it hit one of IBEXs detectors. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Some of these "energetic neutral atoms," or ENAs, zip past Earth, where they're recorded by IBEX. Its two detectors don't take pictures with conventional optics. Instead, they record the number and energy of atoms arriving from small spots of sky about 7 degrees across (the apparent size of a tennis ball held at arm's length). Because its spin axis always points at the Sun, the spacecraft slowly turns throughout Earth's orbit and its detectors scan overlapping strips that create a complete 360 degrees map every six months.

A Collision Zone Near Earth

Because IBEX is orbiting Earth, it also has a front-row seat for observing the chaotic pileup of solar-wind particles occurring along the "nose" of Earth's magnetopause, about 35,000 miles out. ENAs are created there too, as solar-wind protons wrest electrons from hydrogen atoms in the outermost vestiges of our atmosphere, the exosphere.

Other spacecraft have attempted to measure the density of the dayside exosphere, without much success. NASA's Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) spacecraft probably detected ENAs from this region a decade ago, but its detectors didn't have the sensitivity to pinpoint or measure the source.

Now, thanks to IBEX, we know just how tenuous the outer exosphere really is. "Where the interaction is strongest, there are only about eight hydrogen atoms per cubic centimeter," explains Stephen A. Fuselier, the Lockheed Martin Space Systems researcher who led the mapping effort. His team's results appear in the July 8 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

The key observations were made in March and April 2009, when IBEX was located far from Earth — about halfway to the Moon's orbit — and its detectors could scan the region directly in front of the magnetopause. During some of the March observations, the European Space Agency's Cluster 3 spacecraft was positioned just in front of the magnetopause, where it measured the number of deflected solar-wind protons directly. "Cluster played a very important role in this study," Fuselier explains. "It was in the right place at the right time."

The new IBEX maps show that the ENAs thin out at locations away from the point of peak intensity. This falloff makes sense, Fuselier says, because Earth's magnetopause isn't spherical. Instead, it has a teardrop shape that's closest to Earth at its nose but farther away everywhere else. So at locations well away from the magnetopause's centerline, even fewer of the exosphere's hydrogen atoms are hanging around to interact with the solar wind. "No exosphere, no ENAs," he explains.

A Versatile Spacecraft

Since its launch, IBEX has also scanned another nearby world, with surprising results. The moon has no atmosphere or magnetosphere, so the solar wind slams unimpeded into its desolate surface. Most of those particles get absorbed by lunar dust. In fact, space visionaries wonder if the moon's rubbly surface has captured enough helium-3, an isotope present in tiny amounts in the Sun's outflow, to serve as a fuel for future explorers.

Yet cosmic chemists have long thought that some solar-wind protons must be bouncing off the lunar surface, becoming ENAs through charge exchange as they do. So does the moon glow in IBEX's scans? Indeed it does, says David J. McComas of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, who serves as the mission's Principal Investigator.

In a report published last year in Geophysical Research Letters, McComas and other researchers conclude that about 10 percent of the solar-wind particles striking the Moon escape to space as ENAs detectable by IBEX. That amounts to roughly 150 tons of recycled hydrogen atoms per year.

Meanwhile, the squat, eight-sided spacecraft continues its primary task of mapping the interactions between the outermost heliosphere and the interstellar medium that lies beyond. McComas and his team are especially eager to learn more about the mysterious and unexpected "ribbon" of ENAs that turned up in the spacecraft's initial all-sky map.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., IBEX Mission Scientist Robert MacDowall says the spacecraft should be able to continue its observations through at least 2012. "We weren't sure those heliospheric interactions would vary with time, but they do," he explains, "and it's great that IBEX will be able to record them for years to come."


Source NASA

NASA opens request line on music for space shuttle

Music picked by family and friends has accompanied astronauts on journeys to space since the Apollo program. For the first time, NASA is asking the public to vote on what songs will serve as wake-up calls for astronauts aboard the final two shuttle missions. People can vote on 40 songs, including “Learn to Fly” by the Foo Fighters, Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” and Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”

Mission Control will broadcast the two most-voted songs to astronauts on Space Shuttle Discovery, which launches Nov. 1. People can submit original songs about human spaceflight for Space Shuttle Endeavour’s final mission in February. “It just became a nice way for family members on the ground to offer something personal to crew members,” Kyle Herring, a Johnson Space Center spokesman, said. “The music became pertinent to what the mission was about.”

Astronauts Steve Robinson and Soichi Noguchi woke up to Mission Control broadcasting Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life” in honor of the duo’s upcoming spacewalk for repair work on the International Space Station in 2005. It was the first shuttle mission after the Columbia disaster.  One of the Golden Oldies for crews on their final day in space is Dean Martin’s “Going Back to Houston.” “Space shuttle crews really enjoy the morning wake-up music,” shuttle Commander Mark Kelly said. “While we don’t have the best-quality speaker in the space shuttle, it will be interesting to hear what the public comes up with.”

More at work but more still looking

Though the unemployment rate rose slightly to 11.6 percent in Brevard County last month, 833 more people were working than in June.Some of the increase in the job total is coming from small high-tech and defense businesses on the Space Coast, a welcome sign for an economy that faces the loss of an estimated 8,000 aerospace jobs when the space shuttle program ends next year.

"We're hiring folks with very high assembly skills on the manufacturing floor," said Matt Smith-Meck, vice president for business development and planning at Symetrics, a Melbourne defense contractor. "We're hiring engineers."Since May, the 182-employee company has added 30 workers and plans to hire another 20 before year's end. Symetrics builds defensive flares and data modems for military aircraft.

"We're not one of the big boys, so we're not having the draconian cuts because of high overhead," Smith-Meck said. He added that the company hasn't struggled to find skilled workers. "We're seeing an uptick in the ability to go out and get good quality, high-caliber workers," Smith-Meck said. Kelly Services, an agency that fills orders for temporary workers, also reported an increase in requests for technicians and skilled assembly workers in Melbourne. Even information giant Harris Corp. in Melbourne is hiring. The company, however, is only hiring to counteract normal attrition and keep its workforce stable at around 6,500, said spokesman Jim Burke.

But despite the job growth, Brevard's unemployment rate rose to 11.6 in July from 11.4 in June, according to figures released by the state Agency for Workforce Innovation. In July, the number of people working in the county grew by 833 to 239,031, while the number of those listed as unemployed grew by 544 to 31,264. That may reflect some unemployed attempting to re-enter the job market.

Across the state, 5,700 more people were working in July than in the previous month, even though the unemployment rate rose .1 percentage point to 11.5 percent. This growth is the first yearly increase in jobs since June 2007, according to state figures. Still, some 1,055,000 remain jobless out of a statewide labor force of 9,214,000. About a quarter of the unemployed have qualified for extended unemployment benefits. 

"Throughout July, we were pleased to see job growth in several industries including government jobs, education and health care," Brevard Workforce President Lisa Rice said. "And while those are positive signs of an improving economy, we still face impending layoffs due to changes in the space program, which will greatly affect us going forward."In October, space industry giant United Space Alliance expects to let go 900 shuttle workers at Kennedy Space Center.

NASA's Ames Research Center turns 30

NASA celebrated 30 years of helping pilots conquer challenges in the cockpit at Ames Research Center in Mountain View.The vertical motion simulator or VMS can adapt to simulate how nearly any aircraft, ranging from small planes to the space shuttle, can be flown in a variety of conditions. 

Pilots also use the VMS to train how to deal with any situation they'll encounter in the cockpit. "They can also handle off-normal scenarios. We'll give them display failure, wind shear, we'll give them bad visibility, no visibility, tire failure, tube failures and they'll have to be able to respond to that as if it were in their motor memory if it happens in real life," NASA contractor Kathleen Starmer said. The VMS also helps develop aircraft in the development stage like the prototype for a helicopter-like craft that can carry hundreds of people like a commercial airliner.

Nye, Bolin draw cash, comments in Brevard County commission race

Next week's Republican primary pits the Brevard County Commission chairwoman against the Space Coast top "tea party" organizer in the race for the District 4 seat.The contest has local talk radio buzzing; both candidates and supporters trading barbs and pointed questions in public; and donors opening their checkbooks to the tune of more than $80,000, with most of the money going to incumbent Commissioner Mary Bolin.

Bolin, 60, is running for a second consecutive term. The Satellite Beach resident served as outreach coordinator for county emergency management services before winning election in 2006. She said she reduced the county budget by $80 million, championed a "buy-local" resolution and supported a moratorium on Transportation impact fees. But some opponents criticize her tie-breaking vote this month to increase the tentative aggregate tax rate.

Matt Nye, 38, works as regional director for Verteks Consulting, a computer technology firm. Since spring 2009, he has organized Tea Party political rallies attended by thousands of people in Melbourne and Viera. Nye pledges to limit taxes and spending, reduce county employee payroll costs, and host town halls with small business owners to remove regulatory red tape. But some opponents criticize his personal fiscal history, which includes bankruptcy, foreclosures and IRS tax liens. 

District 4 encompasses north Melbourne, Rockledge, Viera, Suntree, Palm Shores, Satellite Beach and South Patrick Shores. In sum, 39,865 registered Republican voters live in District 4, supervisor of elections records show. Bolin said her top priority is creating jobs, particularly in light of the pending space shuttle retirement. A major accomplishment: last week's announcement of the potential Sematech solar energy center in Palm Bay. 

"Everything hinges on getting people to work. If people get jobs, their lives get stable again, which makes the entire economic cycle more fluid," she said.Nye said his top priority is "to put an end to the waste and the absolute wasteful spending" in Viera.

First to convent, then to Navy, finally to pulpit

Kim Logar Teehan was 12, lying on her bed in her home in Lorraine, Ohio, when she believes Jesus revealed her future. “It was very strange,” she said. “I was lying in bed at night but I was not asleep. All of a sudden, I had a vision and Jesus appeared ... He wore a white robe and held a staff and looked at me with piercing eyes and said, ‘You’re going to lead my people.’ ” People then and later tried to talk her out of her experience, telling her it was a dream. But Teehan said she was wide awake, and the startling vision changed her life.  That is not to say she immediately launched toward becoming a United Methodist minister, as she is today.

No, Teehan’s journey first took her into a convent and then across oceans in Navy ships. It took her into denial and out, more than once. Teehan said she clung to her faith and calling when her family shipwrecked. The storm came when her 12-year-old brother rode his bicycle into the path of a train and was killed. Then 14, Teehan said her family did not get the pastoral help they needed. “My world as I knew it ended. I lost my family not physically, but emotionally,” she said. Teehan said her family had been faithful Roman Catholics, but they dropped out of church. She said nuns from her school helped her, but her mother went into depression and alcohol abuse. Her mother and father had divorced and her mother was angry with God, she said.

Though pulled from her Catholic school, Teehan said she still followed through on plans to go into a Dominican Sisters convent after graduation. “I was there a little less than a year. It was not a very good fit. Life in the convent was structured, orderly, quiet and a great place for an introvert. I am an extrovert ... I’m the one who stands up in the back of the room to ask, ‘Why?’ ” she said. That quizzical nature, plus some unresolved theological questions, led her to return home. “I wanted to be doing things for God. The convent was not like that then,” she said.

At age 18, she was at a loss for what to do next. All of the young women she knew were getting married and starting families. Then she saw an ad for the military. It was 1974, on the backside of the Vietnam war, and she believed she could do good things serving her country. She ended up in the Navy, and one of her first extra duties was working with a base chaplain, an assignment she felt was wrong. Her venture into religious work had felt like a mistake, she said, and the Navy was putting her into it again. “I tried to get out of working with the chaplain but I could not,” she said.

During those 11 weeks, the chaplain had her teaching Bible studies and even had her preach on Laity Sunday. “I knew and felt in my heart I was where I was supposed to be,” Teehan said. “It was the ‘a-ha’ moment.” The Navy trained her in communications and sent her to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She looked up the chaplain and he soon had her busy. “He was so happy to have help,” she said. At an assignment in Italy, her group was involved in a botched attempt to rescue hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, she said. Teehan said she was happy helping keep her country safe, but she didn’t feel at peace.

“Always in the back of my mind, I felt a nudging,” she said. On a visit to Indiana where her family had moved, Teehan said, she joined a Lutheran church because she liked the minister. In 1982, she married Paul Teehan, whom she met in the Navy. But when the Navy wanted him in Norfolk, Va., and her in Hawaii, he left. He began working in civil service in Hawaii. They were active in a Lutheran church and had a son, Trevor.

Trevor was 15 months old when the Navy wanted to put her on a ship for the third time. Teehan, a chief petty officer, said she decided to leave the Navy rather than go on a nine-month cruise. The family moved to Satellite Beach, Fla., where she did Navy contract work and her husband did administrative construction work for Delta rocket and Space Shuttle facilities. They joined another Lutheran church but it was more strict about women’s roles than Teehan had known in the past. The pastor did not let women teach Sunday school or greet people and he made sure the couple understood.

“My husband looked at me before we made the commitment and asked if I would be OK with it, and I said, ‘It’s what the pastor said so it must be correct.’ ” She said she served in ways she could, happily, but still felt God’s nudge toward more.

When Teehan learned in 1992 her mother had advanced colon cancer, she feared her mother would die without mending her relationship with God. She got nowhere talking to her mother. Teehan went to churches near her mother’s Fort Myers home, asking clergy to visit her mother. 

“They did not know me. I was turned down nine times ... The clergy were nice enough but they did not want to get involved,” she said. After one minister told her it would be a week before he could visit, Teehan left in tears. She feared her mother did not have a week. “I was in the car and started screaming, ‘Why doesn’t anyone care?’ ” She said she was praying and crying and pulled off the road. She did not at first see she was in the parking lot of yet another church.

She went inside that United Methodist church, asked for the pastor and was shocked when a woman came out. Teehan said she told the minister that she was a “last hope.” The pastor cleared her calendar and left immediately with Teehan.“Mom was not happy. She was angry and nasty to the pastor. It was a short visit,” Teehan said. The pastor came back again and again and each time visited longer. Teehan said when her mother died, the pastor reported “Mother had made her peace with God.”

Teehan said after she went back home to the east coast of Florida, the minister kept calling to check on her. “About six months after mother’s death, she said, ‘Have you ever thought about the ordained ministry, because I believe you have the gifts and graces for it.’ ” The minister gave her the book “The Christian as Minister.” “When I read that, it was like a sense of peace came over me, like it was what God had been nudging me toward all along,” she said. Teehan visited Grace United Methodist Church in Merritt Island, Fla., and in her exuberance blurted out to the pastor, “Hi, I’m Kim, and God wants me to be an ordained minister.”

Teehan said that became her family’s church and she eventually taught Disciple Bible Study and started a congregational care program. Already a college graduate by then, she worked toward ordination, becoming licensed and studying at a branch of Asbury Theological Seminary. A district superintendent asked her to serve as pastor of a small church 90 miles away and she agreed. “They were great people and I learned a lot,” she said. When her husband needed to transfer to Huntsville for his NASA job, she was able to join the North Alabama Conference and transfer to Memphis Theological Seminary, where she earned a Master of Divinity degree. 

The bishop appointed her associate minister of Monte Sano United Methodist Church in Huntsville in 2006 and associate at First United Methodist in Decatur in June. She told her story from the pulpit recently at First Methodist. Teehan said many listeners e-mailed or called to say they appreciated her sharing her struggle for faith and ministry. “The faith journey is a difficult one ... Maybe I’m the poster child for that,” she said. Teehan said every church and denomination in her past has made her better and strengthened her faith. Her former pastor in Merritt Island, the Rev. Dave Baldridge, said he saw her strong sense of calling and is proud of her accomplishments.

“She is a dedicated, faithful servant, doing what she feels God wants her to do,” he said. “She is going to be a wonderful asset not only to the church but to the community.” The Rev. Terry Greer, senior pastor of First Methodist, said Teehan is exceptionally qualified and will add an exciting dimension to the church. Teehan said she wants people to know not so much about her but about God who loves and walks with people in good and bad times.

“He is a God who places people in our lives so that we can see a glimpse of his glory. A God who opens doors so that we can feel his presence when life seems to slam other doors in our faces. A God who never gives up on us, even when we give up on ourselves,” she said. Oh, and that vision she had at age 12? Yes, she said, it has come true.

Tech to help lead research center

Florida Tech is a core member of a partnership that the Federal Aviation Administration this week named to lead a new research center focused on commercial spaceflight. The Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation will be based in New Mexico on the campus of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, but Florida space officials say the state appears well positioned to receive a share of its research dollars.

"This center is designed to serve as a research support structure for those commercial space companies, here in Florida as well as other locations around the nation," said Frank Kinney, vice provost for research at Melbourne-based Florida Tech. Local space officials also see the center as part of the long-term effort to help Kennedy Space Center broaden its expertise beyond NASA launches to include a stronger emphasis on research and development.

"It's an opportunity to transform some of work done that's being out there at Kennedy Space Center from simply launch operations to more flight test as well as research," Kinney said. The center's formation comes as NASA is proposing to rely on commercial taxis to fly its astronauts to low Earth orbit, hoping to reduce launch costs and support an emerging private spaceflight market. The FAA, which provides licenses for commercial launches and spaceports, plans to fund the center with $1 million annually over the next five years. Member institutions must match that money. 

Space Florida, the state agency charged with promoting the aerospace industry, in a board meeting this week committed $2 million over three years to provide those matching funds for Florida-based research. "I believe this will provide yet another powerful tool in ensuring Florida remains at the forefront of upcoming global commercial space initiatives," said Space Florida President Frank DiBello. Other state partners along with Florida Tech include the University of Florida and the Florida Center for Advanced Aero-Propulsion, or FCAAP, based at Florida State University.

Ex-NASA chief of staff pleads guilty to conspiracy in steering contract to US university

NASA's former chief of staff pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal conspiracy charge stemming from a $600,000 contract awarded by the space agency to Mississippi State University, a client of his consulting firm. Courtney Stadd, NASA's chief of staff and White House liaison from 2001 to 2003, pleaded guilty to one conspiracy charge in a nine-count indictment in federal court in Gulfport, Mississippi, said Sheila Wilbanks, a U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman. He faces up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 at sentencing, set for Nov. 18, Wilbanks said.

Stadd was indicted in December 2009 on charges that included conspiracy, false statements, false claims, obstructing a grand jury and fraud. He had faced 55 years if convicted of all counts. Stadd's attorneys did not immediately respond to messages left Wednesday. Prosecutors say Stadd conspired with Liam Sarsfield, NASA's former chief deputy engineer in Washington. Sarsfield pleaded guilty in November to one charge against him: acts affecting a personal financial interest. Sarsfield controlled a $1.5 million fund and designed contracts that wouldn't have to be put out for bid. He steered them where he wanted them to go, including to Mississippi State University and a company in Ohio, prosecutors said, netting himself about $270,000 in illegal profits.

Stadd began conspiring with Sarsfield in 2004 to direct the $600,000 contract to MSU, which then subcontracted $450,000 to Stadd's consulting business, Capitol Solutions, prosecutors said. The consulting firm allegedly paid Sarsfield $87,752 on that contract. The contract was for a remote sensing study awarded by NASA's Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, Mississippi. MSU spokeswoman Maridith W. Geuder said no one at the university was implicated in the case.

"MSU has fully co-operated in the investigation since it began, and we were not aware any laws were allegedly broken until the investigation began," Geuder said Wednesday in an email. Stadd had already been convicted of an ethics violation for steering a different contract for almost $10 million to the university. He was sentenced last year to three years' probation in that case. Stadd started his consulting firm after leaving NASA in 2003, but he returned to the agency for a few months in 2005 as the interim No. 3 official during a reorganization after the Columbia space shuttle disaster. During that time, Mississippi State ended up with $9.6 million in agency funds for earth science research, authorities said.

Jurors fault complexity of Blagojevich trial

As jurors in the corruption case against Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor, entered a 25th-floor conference room, one problem was instantly clear: They were overwhelmed. The judge had handed them instructions that ran to more than 100 pages. The verdict sheet was as elaborate as some income tax forms. And many of the 24 counts they were asked to consider came in multiple parts and were highly technical and interconnected. "It was like, 'Here's a manual, go fly the space shuttle,' " Steve Wlodek, one of the jurors, said Wednesday.

Jurors said it took them several days just to figure out how to begin to break down their assignment into manageable tasks — not to mention how to understand the legal terminology (what exactly is conspiracy to commit extortion?) — early hints at the multiple stumbling blocks they would find as they struggled, but failed, over 14 days of deliberations, to reach a verdict on all but one of the counts. It also became clear early on that some jurors believed that much of Blagojevich's crass political talk — captured in hours of secretly recorded phone calls — amounted to dreamy thoughts of what he might gain, not criminal demands.

The jury's conclusion came as a surprise to many because prosecutors had long suggested that their evidence would be overwhelming."A lot of it came down to, "What was his intent?" Wlodek said. "You could infer something if you looked at it one way, or not if you looked another." One juror among the 12 disagreed with the rest over convicting Blagojevich on counts tied to what prosecutors described as attempts to sell the Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama, but the jurors were more evenly split over other counts against the former governor and had, at various times during their private deliberations, cast votes with all sorts of margins.

That, legal experts said, does not bode well for prosecutors, who have vowed to retry their case. In cases involving hung juries, a lone holdout may not be a sign of a significant problem for prosecutors, while a more equally divided jury could be. In the end, the jurors convicted Blagojevich, a Democrat elected to two terms as governor, on one charge of giving a false statement to federal agents but reached a conclusion rare in criminal cases: that they could not agree on the 23 other counts, including the most serious ones. Interviews with a handful of the jurors offered a glimpse inside the conference room and a sense of why James Matsumoto, the foreman and a retired video librarian for public television, had Tuesday morning come to his own certainty that there would be no certainty here.

"It was kind of a bittersweet thing," Matsumoto said, in the living room of his house on this city's Northwest Side, "relief that the trial is over, but frustration that we didn't accomplish what we set out to do." The jury, which had been meeting since the trial's start in June, was a quiet, sober bunch — a math teacher, a former Marine, a college student, a retired mail carrier and a retired naval commander among them. They included three blacks, six whites, a Latino, someone with American Indian roots and Matsumoto, who is Asian-American.After initial frustration and confusion upon arriving in the deliberation room with little sense of what to do next, the jurors laid out a plan.

On large sheets of paper, they wrote down crimes Blagojevich was accused of committing and taped each one on the walls around the room. On the sheets: a claim that he had sought political contributions in exchange for legislation to help a local pediatric hospital; another that he had sought a political fundraising event in exchange for state financing for a school; another that he had sought payments for a law that would benefit the horse racing industry; and so on. From time to time, after talking about each count — and often replaying audiotapes of the former governor's secretly recorded phone calls connected to it — the jurors would take a vote by secret ballot and write the margin on a Post-it note attached to the appropriate sheet. This was repeated over and again, often for the same criminal count.

The margins ranged vastly and changed as the talks went on. Sometimes, he said, the vote was 7 to 5, then 5 to 7, then 9 to 3. Yet the matter of whether Blagojevich had tried to sell his appointment to fill Obama's former Senate seat raised the most attention, and took up, jurors said, at least five days of the deliberations. After initially being more evenly split on that question, 11 jurors repeatedly cast votes in favor of convicting on the charges connected to it — charges that included bribery, conspiracy, extortion conspiracy and racketeering. Many in the group felt this was the pro-secution's strongest case and the set of counts that the jury was most likely to agree on.

But one juror, a woman whom other jurors declined to identify, saying they wanted to respect her privacy, never budged in her opposition to convicting on the counts. She was unmoved by recorded calls in which Blagojevich and his aides spoke of possible jobs, donations, even a White House Cabinet appointment he might get after making his Senate choice. Wlodek described her stance as "very noble," adding: "She did not see it as a violation of any laws. It was politics. It was more of conversations of what-ifs." Matsumoto said he believed that a retrial was "owed to the people," but he and other jurors also seemed to have some advice for prosecutors: Streamline the charges, drop some, pick your shots.

Museums Vie for Space Shuttles

The space shuttle program will come to a close as of 2011, and NASA is preparing to retire the three remaining orbiters and find them new homes. Retiring each orbiter is an involved process that will cost $28.8 million.  Twenty-one institutions across the country are competing for the rare honor of housing an orbiter. Plans are already in the works for Discovery to go to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, where Enterprise (a test shuttle) currently lives. Enterprise will likely be made available to another institution, along with Atlantis and Endeavour.

We talk with Valerie Neal, spaceflight history curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, about the importance of ownership over the soon-to-be-historic artifacts.

Space Shuttle shuffle: America's museums fight for iconic craft as NASA plans its final retirement

It has been one of the most iconic sights in the sky over the last 30 years – a stark image of man’s triumph over gravity even more powerful than Concorde. But within the next 12 months, the Space Shuttle is set to become a museum piece – and America’s museums are currently battling to lay claim to one of the shuttles still in active service. Some 21 institutions across the USA hope to provide a retirement home for one of the three shuttles that will be up for grabs when NASA brings down the curtain on 30 years of escaping the planet's gravitational pull in 2011.

And competition is fierce, pitting state against state. Texas, where spaces shuttle flights are controlled and managed (at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston) believes it should be at the front of the queue – as does Florida, where every shuttle mission has been launched from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. 

But California, where the shuttle has landed at Edwards Air Force Base, near Los Angeles, also wants to take care of a shuttle in its dotage – as do museums in New York, Ohio, Chicago, Seattle, Oklahoma and even Alabama. “Like anything rare, the orbiters will be hugely popular attractions,” Valerie Neal, the space history curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington told the Los Angeles Times, adding that the shuttle ranks as the most significant space-related artefact to become available to museums since hardware pertaining to the Apollo flights was decommissioned in the Seventies.

In all, six space shuttles were built. Enterprise was constructed for test purposes, and never flew in orbit. It is currently on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, an offshoot of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, at Washington’s Dulles Airport. Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour are all still in service - although Atlantis has embarked upon its last mission after flying the most recent shuttle foray into space, in May.

Enterprise was the first shuttle to fly, in 1977 – but Columbia was the first to go into orbit, achieving this feat in April 1981. Challenger infamously disintegrated shortly after launch in 1986. Columbia broke apart while re-entering Earth’s atmosphere in 2003. The final flight will take place in February next year, when Endeavour delivers parts to the International Space Station. 

Discovery has already been promised to the Smithsonian – but its arrival will see the release of Enterprise. Like Atlantis and Endeavour, the original shuttle will be available to buy – assuming any museum can meet the steep price tag. Each shuttle can be purchased for $28.8million (£18.4million) – and that doesn’t include the engine. NASA may replace the shuttle with Orion, a new generation of space craft capable of carrying up to six astronauts. A return of man to the Moon is pencilled in for 2020.

Intrepid's Space Shuttle Bid Will Have to Wait Until End of Year

The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum will have to wait a bit longer to find out if it’s getting one of three soon-to-be decommissioned NASA space shuttles.The space agency originally stated it would announce a decision in early July about who would get the shuttles, but is now saying the winners won’t find out until December at the earliest, according to Queens State Assemblyman Michael DenDekker.

“They extended the decision until the end of the year,” DenDekker said at a press conference aboard the Intrepid Monday.  The Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour are all still in service and most likely will not be decommissioned until early 2011.

The Discovery is reportedly going to The Smithsonian in Washington D.C. leaving 20 institutions fighting for the other two shuttles. DenDekker introduced a resolution calling for the one of the shuttles to land on the Intrepid, which is permanently docked on the west side of Manhattan.

He presented the resolution, which was passed unanimously by the Assembly, to the executive director of the Intrepid, Susan Marenoff, on Monday.  DenDekker said they would next FedEx the resolution to the director of NASA to show the support in the state for getting a shuttle. "If NASA wants people to come and see the space shuttle there is no better place to put it than here on the Intrepid," said State Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, whose district includes the museum.x “If NASA wants the most eyeballs to see it we have over 45 million tourists,” added Marenoff. “This should be the first location that they choose.” Officials in New York, including Gov. David Paterson, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, have all pushed for the city to get a shuttle.

Astronaut Senator Wants Tax Breaks for Space

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., has proposed a set of tax breaks to encourage investment in the commercial space industry as a way to cushion the blow from recent cutbacks in the space program.  Nelson has long had an interest in the space industry, and not only because Cape Canaveral and its Kennedy Space Center happen to be in his home state. Back in 1986 Nelson became only the second sitting member of Congress to orbit in space as a payload specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. (Pioneering astronaut Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, was the oldest lawmaker to orbit in space when at 77 he went for a final spin in the space shuttle in 1998, just a few months before he retired from the Senate.)

No doubt many Americans would like to see their congressional representatives spend more time orbiting outer space. But Nelson has legitimate reasons for trying to encourage investment in the space program. President Obama provoked a fair amount of controversy earlier this year when he suggested that a return trip to the moon was perhaps not the best use of taxpayer dollars in the wake of the economic crisis. 

Instead, Obama suggested that the federal government should encourage development of the commercial space industry as a way to deliver astronauts to the international space station and eventually to Mars, while hitching a ride with the Russians if necessary to make any necessary repairs to the Hubble telescope or the space station. As for the moon, the general attitude seemed to be, “Been there, done that.” The only question seemed to be how to spur investment in the aerospace industry and keep NASA employees from having to finish their careers slinging hamburgers. The Kennedy Space Center is expected to lose 8,000 to 9,000 jobs once the space shuttle is mothballed after another two or three more flights, and jobs in Texas and Alabama will also vanish into thin air.

Nelson’s bill, known as the Commercial Space Jobs and Investment Act of 2010, would amend the Tax Code to encourage investment in commercial space flight facilities and equipment, research and job training, and other purposes. The bill would create up to five regional business enterprise zones around the country as “magnets” for commercial space ventures, which in turn would attract jobs to areas where there are lots of scientists and engineers.  

Specifically, the bill would allow space-related businesses — situated around places like the Kennedy Space Center — to qualify for major tax breaks and other incentives. Investors would be able to write off 20 percent of their investments in commercial space companies that operate in the five regional business enterprise zones.Other provisions include a Commercial Space Research Credit of 30 percent and a special depreciation allowance for commercial space property equal to 50 percent of the adjusted basis of the qualified commercial space property. Now all we need is a special mortgage deduction for property purchased on Jupiter. 

“President Kennedy was right when he predicted that space exploration would create a great number of new companies and strengthen our economy,” Nelson said in a statement. “What we’re doing now is everything we can to ensure KSC’s [not KFC’s] continued importance to our nation’s space exploration effort, while also broadening the economic opportunities along our Space Coast.” 

Earlier this month, the Senate unanimously passed another bill from Nelson that would provide enough money for another space shuttle flight next year, in order to jump-start NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket design, and help develop the commercial rocket industry, aimed at saving the jobs of thousands of displaced shuttle workers. Comparable legislation has been introduced in the House. The new proposal to give tax breaks to commercial space entrepreneurs is already drawing support from the aerospace industry, including Space Florida, a state-backed organization that promotes the development of commercial rocketry and related undertakings. 

(Note to Sir Richard Branson: you may want to apply now for a tax break for your Virgin Galactic spaceship Enterprise.) Keeping the space program going is certainly an important initiative and one of those issues that seem to matter to the country’s sense of national self-esteem. However, the idea of doling out tax breaks as a way to spur investment in space exploration seems a little dubious considering how much money is going to be handed out by NASA to commercial space entrepreneurs. 

On the other hand, if it helps preserve jobs in an important industry like aerospace and helps build a nascent industry like commercial space flight, it’s not really a bad idea. The Obama administration has already pledged $40 million to Florida’s Space Coast to help ease the transition in the space program and has proposed an additional $60 million for other parts of the country that would be affected by the changes in the program, according to the Associated Press. 

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and NASA administrator Charlie Bolden recommended in a report this week that $35 million should be spent on commercial grants in Florida and $5 million on staffing a Commercial Spaceflight Technical Center at the Kennedy Space Center, according to Reuters.With that kind of money in play, in addition to Senator Nelson’s proposed tax breaks, the money saved on NASA’s space program may well be dwarfed by the amount spent on encouraging the commercial space industry to earn its wings and rocket boosters.