NASA Discovers Unprecedented Blooms of Ocean Plant

Scientists have made a biological discovery in Arctic Ocean waters as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert. A NASA-sponsored expedition punched through three-foot thick sea ice to find waters richer in microscopic marine plants, essential to all sea life, than any other ocean region on Earth.

The finding reveals a new consequence of the Arctic's warming climate and provides an important clue to understanding the impacts of a changing climate and environment on the Arctic Ocean and its ecology. The discovery was made during a NASA oceanographic expedition in the summers of 2010 and 2011.

The expedition called ICESCAPE, or Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment, explored Arctic waters in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas along Alaska's western and northern coasts onboard a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker. Using optical technologies, scientists looked at the impacts of environmental variability and change in the Arctic on the ocean biology, ecology and biogeochemistry.

"Part of NASA's mission is pioneering scientific discovery, and this is like finding the Amazon rainforest in the middle of the Mojave Desert," said Paula Bontempi, NASA's ocean biology and biogeochemistry program manager in Washington. "We embarked on ICESCAPE to validate our satellite ocean-observing data in an area of the Earth that is very difficult to get to," Bontempi said. "We wound up making a discovery that hopefully will help researchers and resource managers better understand the Arctic."

The microscopic plants, called phytoplankton, are the base of the marine food chain. Phytoplanktons were thought to grow in the Arctic Ocean only after sea ice had retreated for the summer. Scientists now think that the thinning Arctic ice is allowing sunlight to reach the waters under the sea ice, catalyzing the plant blooms where they had never been observed. 

Previously, researchers thought the Arctic Ocean sea ice blocked most sunlight needed for phytoplankton growth. But in recent decades younger and thinner ice has replaced much of the Arctic's older and thicker ice. This young ice is almost flat and the ponds that form when snow cover melts in the summer spread much wider than those on rugged older ice.

This extensive but shallow melt ponds act as windows to the ocean, letting large amounts of sunlight pass through the ice to reach the water below, said Donald Perovich, a geophysicist with the U.S. Army Cold Regions and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, N.H., who studied the optical properties of the ice during the ICESCAPE expedition.

"When we looked under the ice, it was like a photographic negative. Beneath the bare-ice areas that reflect a lot of sunlight, it was dark. Under the melt ponds, it was very bright," Perovich said. He is currently visiting professor at Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering.

Keywords:- NASA, ICESCAPE Expedition, Arctic Ocean Sea, Phytoplankton, Biological Discovery.

NASA chief to see history making SpaceX Capsule

Marred by just a few scorch marks from its re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere, the world's first commercial supply spacecraft to visit the International Space Station weathered its maiden voyage well, NASA and SpaceX officials said Wednesday.

"It's almost untouched," SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said as he looked at the Dragon capsule, which was on display at the company's rocket factory in McGregor. The large, bell-shaped craft is more than 14 feet high and 12 feet in diameter.

Last month, the unmanned SpaceX Dragon delivered 1,000 pounds of provisions - mostly food - to the space station and returned with nearly 1,400 pounds of old equipment and a handful of experiments. Because it was a nine-day test flight, NASA did not load it with anything valuable.

The California-based SpaceX - formally named Space Exploration Technologies Corp. - is the first private business to send a cargo ship to the space station. The company hopes to launch another capsule in September.

Musk said that a site near Brownsville in South Texas is the leading candidate for SpaceX's latest spaceport. He and Texas Gov. Rick Perry met later Wednesday to discuss incentives and other issues.

Musk said other launch sites under consideration - in Florida and Puerto Rico - had made stronger cases than Texas, "but that may be changing."

Perry spokeswoman Lucy Nashed said the meeting went well. Perry and Musk discussed Texas interest in the project and commitment to working with SpaceX to find a good location for the spaceport in the state, Nashed said.

"Locating this new facility in Texas would be a natural fit," Nashed said in a statement.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden praised SpaceX and the Dragon, saying last month's flight was a success that had taken much time and hard work. Bolden said the capsule was "beaten up" during re-entry but is robust.

"Sometimes, something bad is going to happen, but when it does ... they will bounce back," Bolden said, referring to SpaceX. "NASA is with you."

President Barack Obama is leading the move to commercial spaceflight. He wants routine orbital flights turned over to private businesses so the federal space agency can work on sending astronauts to Mars and asteroids.

NASA has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in seed money to vying companies, including SpaceX. It received nearly $400 million as part of its contract with NASA to develop the capability to carry cargo to the space station and back, including the recently completed Dragon flight, said company spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham.

Keywords:- NASA, Space X Capsule, Dragon, Charles Bolden, Elon Musk, asteroids, Obama.

NASA’s NuSTAR Mission Lifts Off The

NASA Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array has been launched into the morning skies over the Pacific Ocean at 9 am on Wednesday. Paul Hertz” We have been eagerly awaiting the launch of this novel X ray observations”. NASA is not ready to use a set of eyes to see the highest energy X ray light from the cosmos. The observatory can thus have the gas and dust to reavel black holes lurking in the entire Milky Way galaxy as that where hidden in the hearts of the faraway galaxies. 

Fiona Harrison is the principal of the investigator at the California Institute of technology in Pasadena said that”NuSTAR will help us find the most elusive and most energetic black holes to help us understand the structure of the universe”Yunjin Kim said that” NuSTAR spread its solar panels to charge the space craft battery and then reported back to Earth of its good health”. 

Yunjin kim is the project manager of the NASA jet population Laboratory in Pasadena Calif.This mission has the unique telescope design that will be included with33 foot in which it can be folded with a small canister during the best launch.

Keywords: Project Manager, NASA, Telescope, Best Launch, Black Holes.

NASA Was Poised to Launch Black Hole Hunter

NASA is poised to launch on Wednesday after that sophisticated orbiting telescope that will be used with high energy on the X ray vision to hunt the black holes in the universe. NuSTAR will be carried in the sky by a jet that will be deploying a rocket that will be send in the satellite with the space said by NASA. 

This project has been aimed with the energetic phenomena such as Black holes and also the explosions of the massive stars. Harrison said that “It used to be thought that Black Holes were rare and exotic that will be just 20 years ago”. Paul Hertz said that “a small space telescope that will be provided with world class science in an important but relatively unexplored band of the electromagnetic spectrum”.

Keywords: NASA, Sophisticated, telescope, Satellite, black holes.

NASA Shoots For Riskier Mars Rover Landing

NASA Scientists are taking a risk aiming to land its super Martian rover closer to its ultimate destination but near a hazardous mountain slope. “We’re trimming the distance we’ll have to drive after landing by almost half” said Pete Theisinger Mars Science Laboratory project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  

NASA reported that they will send more software upgrades to the Mars rover about a week after it lands. 

NASA launched the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory last November. Super rover has nearly completed an eight month journey so it can soon begin its mission to help scientists learn whether life can exist or has ever existed on the Red Planet.

In a teleconference on Monday, NASA officials said that the agency’s scientists have gained enough confidence in the precision of the landing technology aboard the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft to change its landing plans. The rover is now slated to touch down close to Mount Sharp Which is the center of Gale Crater.

Scientists are eager to analyze the rock layers in the mountain to find out if the area has or ever had environmental conditions favorable to microbial life. 

“We have been preparing for years for a successful landing by Curiosity, and all signs are good” said Dave Lavery Mars Science Laboratory program executive at NASA.

“However, landing on Mars always carries risks, so success is not guaranteed. Once on the ground we’ll proceed carefully.” Said Dave Lavery.

Lavery explained that unlike the Mars rovers Odyssey and Spirit, which had a life expectancy of three months, the Curiosity has an expected mission length of a year.

Keywords -  Mars rover, NASA, Gale Crater, Curiosity, Red Planet, Mars Science Laboratory.

NASA Launches $2.5 Billion Mars Rover

In a bid of best to investigate the Red planet could be hosted by the microbial life. The world’s biggest extraterrestrial explorer has been launched I the next mars rover in NASA. The best car size curiosity will be rover blasted at the top of the Atlas rocket5 at 10.02 a.m. on Saturday in the cloudy sky above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here. 

This process will take eight and a half months for curiosity to make the best 345 million-mile journey to mars and it can be arrived at the Red Planet on 6 August 2012. NASA will begin at the Curiosity mission at Mars science Laboratory in 2003. Peter Theisinger said that” Our spacecraft is in excellent health and it’s on its way to health.

This rover will be 10 feet long and 9 feet wide and should work further for hard previous mars explorer. This comes up in senior space agency called as Mars the “Death Planet” because it may have many missions have been failed to get in a piece. 

Keywords: NASA, Death Planet, Red Planet, Spacecraft.

NASA Scuttles Black hole Seeking Space Telescope

NASA is cancelling a project to build an X-ray telescope designed to look for black holes and neutron stars due to cost overruns.  The GEMS telescope, short for Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer, had a budget of $105 million plus additional costs for launching it into space. The telescope was in the design state and no hardware had been built when the space agency pulled the plug on the GEMS mission. It cost $13 million only to cancel the mission. 

NASA made the very difficult decision not to confirm GEMS into the implementation phase. An independent review of the GEMS budget commissioned by NASA projected that if completed, the mission would run 20 to 30 percent over budget. 

“The instrument technology was more difficult and took longer than they had originally estimated” said Hertz. 

Hertz said NASA had no immediate plans to launch a similar project. GEMS was said to be a two year mission that would have launched in 2014.

“Although there aren’t any other projects in the queue right now to measure polarized X-ray sources, there are a number of observatories which can address the science questions from different areas” said Hertz.

Keywords – NASA, GEMS,  GEMS budget, GEMS telescope, X-ray telescope.

NASA Kills X ray Telescope, Blames Project Cost

The NASA killed a new X ray telescope mission on Thursday before it has two years launched.  The gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer mission will be supposed to blast on 2014 to study the best black holes and neutron stars. But the external projects will considerably appear over the budget. Paul Hertz said that “That cost cap is very important aspect of the development of the project. He is the director of NASA’s astrophysics division.

Webb is the largest science project in NASA and considered the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope. Goddard Space Flight center in Maryland managed both Webb and GEMS. Gems will be supposed to hold the US$119 million and also not counting to the rocket.

But this independent review estimated the final cost at 20 percent to 30 percent said by Hertz. Hertz in a new conference said that technology is needed for the instruments that took longer to develop than expected and that drove up the price.

 NASA will cost and estimation of $13million to close out the project. After adding the money already spent on GEMS the final tab for the space will be$50 million. Now no rockets have been purchased for this mission. And even the telescopes have not yet been built.

Keywords:- NASA, X- ray, Telescope, GEMS.

NASA Space Shuttle Enterprise floated up Hudson River to New York Museum

The space shuttle Enterprise named after the spaceship in Star Trek was hoisted by a crane onto a floating museum in New York’s Hudson River. Cheers erupted from the crowd of New Yorkers and tourists who turned out to see the retired spacecraft moved to its new home. 

“Beam me up, Scotty!” a man in the crowd shouted as the crane lifted the shuttle off a barge onto the museum. 

“It’s a part of our history” said the New Yorker Cameron Fisher.  The crowd grew quiet and the air was filled with the creaking of the crane and the beating of a helicopter circling overhead as the shuttle rose 230 feet into the air.

The shuttle strapped to a barge made its way up the Hudson River and past the Statue of Liberty.

Enterprise drew more crowds on Wednesday on the banks of the Hudson to watch the NASA spacecraft make its final approach to its new floating home on Manhattan’s west side.

Experts say Enterprise captured the hearts and minds of many by embodying the best of American ingenuity. In April last year NASA announced it would retire its space shuttle to locations in New York, Virginia, California and Florida.  

Since its joy ride over the city in April, Enterprise has been kept in a protective tent at JFK International Airport.

It is expected that the space shuttle will be the major attraction for years to come.

Keywords – Star Trek, crane, floating museum, Hudson River, retired spacecraft, NASA, space shuttle. 

NASA starts the software development for deep space Rocket

The Nasa Marshall Space centers have received three computers from the place Boeing that will be effectively used to develop the flight software for space agency’s Space Launch system and also heavy lift rocket that can be intended to carry humans to deep space destinations such as mars. This Boeing provides the computer hardware and also low level software like the operating system whiel in the same way the NASA develops the software to fly the vehicle. The NASA describes the new systems as the real time embedded computers in which it is capable of computing and executing the programs on the fixed schedule in which it can be measured in milliseconds. 

Dane Richardson said that “These are the most capable flight computers ever developed for human spaceflight”. Dane Richardson is the manager of Boeings SLS avionics and software team. These three redundant processors interrupt the data separately and vote for sure and they will response to be sent. Richardson says” The triple redundant processor makes each computer reliable in the harsh radiation environment. In the same he also said that” the three computers working in the concert make the vehicle reliable”. The NASA has the legacy flight software’s, modeling and stimulation software from other programs that cane be recently concluded in the space shuttle programs that can be widely used for developing the SLS software’s. The main arrival of the test bed signals starts the development of the application modeling and stimulation of space flight conditions. This SLS is targeted for 2017 and eventually payload of 130 metric tons needed that will be enabled to manned to the missions beyond the earth orbit. 

keywords: computers, nasa, software, modelling, dane richardson.

Free Spy telescope come to NASA with a Cost

The astronomers have been licking their lips ever since it was revealed that a US spy agency would be bequeathing NASA with two telescopes as good as the Hubble space telescope.  The mission “WFIRST” that would seek a better handle on dark energy which is speeding up the expansion of the Universe got a chance to resurrect. The 2.4 metre-wide telescopes have a field of view much wider than Hubble’s and would be better suited to the survey approach called for in WFIRST. “It is a tremendous opportunity”, says David Spergel an astronomer at Princeton University in New Jersey.

The telescopes each valued by NASA at around $250 million might actually make a WFIRST mission more expensive. As it stands right now, NASA would not be able to launch WFIRST until 2024. Moore the deputy director for astrophysics says that, with an infusion of money to re-purpose one of the spy telescopes, WFIRST launch could happen as early as 2020.

WFIRST was designed around 2.4 metre mirror and the mission can peer deeper into the Universe. It can survey the sky much more quickly. It can capture the attention of exoplanet hunters. Some are already calling for a star blocker to be added to the guts of the telescope so that the faint light of planets might be seen.

WFIRST was estimated to cost $1.6 billion. Reconfiguring the mission for a larger 2.4 metre telescope will come with added expenses. The spy telescope contains only the mirrors, optics and other structural supports. They lack solar panels, instruments and electronics. A heavier telescope would also require more expensive rocket to lift it into orbit. “I think we need a serious evaluation of the cost” says Spergel

Keywords – WFIRST, spy telescope, NASA, mission, expensive rocket.