Endeavour

 

 

 

NASA Managers have given a "go" for the 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, carrying space shuttle Endeavour, to depart Edwards Air Force Base and begin a four-and-a-half hour flyover of northern California and the Los Angeles basin.

Weather is forecast to be clear for the entire flight.

NASA Television will air live coverage of the departure at 8 a.m. PDT. Takeoff is planned for 8:15 a.m.

The SCA and Endeavour will salute NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center and the Edwards Air Force Base area after takeoff with a low flyby northbound to Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. Any time after 9:30 a.m. PDT, watch for Endeavour from viewing locations that include the Bay Area Discovery Museum, Chabot Space and Science Center, the California State Capitol, Exploratorium, Lawrence Hall of Science and Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Next the aircraft will travel south, making a pass over NASA's Ames Research Center and Vandenberg Air Force Base before heading into the Los Angeles area. Any time after 11:30 a.m., watch for flyovers of Endeavour passing regional landmarks such as its future home at the California Science Center, Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey, Disneyland, The Getty Center, Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles City Hall, the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific, Malibu Beach, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the Queen Mary, Universal Studios and Venice Beach, among others.

Finally, the SCA and Endeavour will land about 12:45 p.m., at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for an arrival ceremony before Endeavour is taken off the 747. The orbiter will be transported to the California Science Center next month.

The exact timing and path of the ferry flight will depend on weather conditions and operational constraints. Some planned flyovers or stopovers could be delayed or canceled.

Angel Falls(എയ്ഞ്ചൽ വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടം)

Venezuela

It is the world's highest uninterrupted waterfall, with a height of 979 m (3,212 ft) and a plunge of 807 m (2,648 ft). The waterfall drops over the edge of the Auyantepui mountain in the Canaima National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Canaima), a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Gran Sabana region of Bolívar State. The height figure 979 m (3,212 ft) mostly consists of the main plunge but also includes about 400 m (0.25 mi) of sloped cascades and rapids below the drop and a 30-metre (98 ft) high plunge downstream of the talus rapids.

ലോകത്തിലെ ഏറ്റവും ഉയരം കൂടിയ വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടമാണ്. ഇതിന്റെ ഉയരം 979 (3,212 അടി) മീറ്ററാണ്. വെനിസ്വേലയിലെ കനൈമ നാഷണൽ പാർക്കിലാണ് യുനെസ്കോ പൈതൃകകേന്ര പട്ടികയിലുള്ള ഈ വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടം സ്ഥിതി ചെയ്യുന്നത്. ഈ വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടത്തിന്റെ മുകളിൽ നിന്നും വീഴുന്ന വെള്ളം താഴെയെത്തുന്നതിനു മുന്നേ ശക്തമായ കാറ്റിൽ മൂടൽമഞ്ഞാ(mist)യിത്തീരുന്നു. എയ്ഞ്ചൽ വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടം കെറെപ് നദിയിലാണ് പതിക്കുന്നത്. സർ വാൾട്ടർ റാലേഗ്, ഏറ്ണസ്റ്റോ സാഞ്ചസ് ലാക്രൂസ് എന്നിവരാണ് ഈ വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടം കണ്ടെത്തിയതെന്ന് പറയപ്പെടുന്നു.എന്നാൽ 1933-ൽ അമേരിക്കൻ വൈമാനികൻ ജിമ്മി എയ്ഞ്ചൽ ഈ വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടത്തിനു മുകളിലൂടെ വിമാനം പറത്തിയതോടെയാണ് ഈ വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടം ലോക ശ്രദ്ധയിലേക്ക് വരുന്നത്. അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്റെ സ്മരണാർഥമാണ് ഈ വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടത്തിന് എയ്ഞ്ചൽ വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടം എന്ന നാമം നൽകപ്പെട്ടത്. വെൻസ്വേലയിലെ ഏറ്റവും വലിയ വിനോദസഞ്ചാര കേന്ദ്രങ്ങളിലൊന്നായ എയ്ഞ്ചൽ വെള്ളച്ചാട്ടം ബൊളിവർ സംസ്ഥാനത്തിലെ ഗ്രാൻസബാനാ പ്രദേശത്താണ് സ്ഥിതി ചെയ്യുന്നത്.

Carbon-Dioxide Snowfall on Mars

Observations by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have detected carbon-dioxide snow clouds on Mars and evidence of carbon-dioxide snow falling to the surface.
Deposits of small particles of carbon-dioxide

ice are formed by snowfall from carbon-dioxide clouds. This map shows the distribution of small-grain carbon-dioxide ice deposits formed by snowfall over the south polar cap of Mars. It is based on infrared measurements by the Mars Climate Sounder instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

                Jupiter’s latest scar

The biggest planet in the solar system was the site of a bright impact early Monday morning September 10, similar to collisions in the summers of 2010 and 2009. Scientists and observers aren’t sure exactly what hit J

upiter — most likely a stray comet or asteroid — but if the impact leaves behind a break in the planet’s cloud tops, it’ll shed some light on what kind of object created it.
The news apparently broke with a post from Dan Petersen of Racine, Wisconsin. He made the observation through his Meade 12-inch LX 200 GPS scope and a binoviewer with 400x magnification.

Neil Armstrong Buried at Sea

U.S. Navy personnel carry the cremated remains of Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong during a burial-at-sea service aboard the USS Philippine Sea (CG 58), Friday, Sept. 14, 2012, in the Atlantic Ocean. Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, died Aug. 25. He was 82.

Endeavour Flyovers Draw Excited Fans

 

Image above: Jeff Moultrie, chief pilot of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, flew the SCA to Washington, D.C., and New York to deliver Discovery and Enterprise to their new homes.

Image above: Bill Rieke, pilot of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, in the cockpit of the modified 747.

Image above: Astronaut Kay Hire flew on Endeavour during STS-130.


Image above: Endeavour stands atop the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft ahead of its flight to Los Angeles. 
Space shuttle Endeavour and the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft landed at Ellington Field in Houston this morning to complete the first day of its trek from Florida to Los Angeles where the shuttle will be placed on public display.

As the SCA approached Houston, it performed a low-level flyover carrying Endeavour over some of the city's landmarks. The flight made several flyovers during its trip across the American southeast.

The aircraft combination, weighing some 475,000 pounds, took off this morning from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida then flew over the Space Coast in a salute to the region that hosted the shuttles during 30 years of launches and landings. The SCA and Endeavour also soared low over Disney World in Orlando during its trip west.
Later, the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans, Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, were treated to a view of Endeavour atop the modified 747.

People took to Facebook and Twitter to share comments and photos of Endeavour as they saw the shuttle pass overhead.

› Flickr Gallery from Endeavour's Flyout

The flight will be the last ferry flight of the space shuttle era, capping nearly 35 years of shuttles riding atop modified 747s, counting the approach and landing tests conducted by Enterprise in 1977.

The SCA and Endeavour will depart at dawn on Thursday and make a fueling stop at Biggs Army Air Field in El Paso before proceeding to Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, California. On Friday it will depart Dryden for a flyover of northern California and areas of the Los Angeles basin before landing at Los Angeles International Airport between 11 a.m. and noon PDT. In October, Endeavour will move to the California Science Center to begin a new mission inspiring future explorers.The pilots of the aircraft carrying space shuttle Endeavour across the country to California already know what it's like to lead an aerial parade. "The Washington beltway was pretty packed with people," said Jeff Moultrie, chief pilot of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, or SCA, about the crowds the crew witnessed gathered around Washington, D.C., in April as they delivered Discovery to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. "In fact, I think it stopped. We could see people stopped in their cars and up on buildings and such." That ferry flight and a similar one a few days later that flew over New York City with Enterprise were two of a very few times a shuttle has been flown over northeastern cities. Enterprise was flown to the nation's capital in 1985 before going on display at the Smithsonian.
"We weren’t sure what to expect, since we had never done something like this before with the space shuttle on top of the 747, what would be the reaction?" said SCA pilot Bill Rieke. "When that happened and we saw the reaction, that was priceless."

The flight crew for the SCA, a modified 747 airliner, is expecting much the same interest this time.

"We're proud to show off our work that NASA's done," Rieke said.

Moultrie said much more effort goes into setting the courses for the flights delivering the retired space shuttles to their display locations than did the ferry flights that carried the spacecraft back to Florida after a California landing.

Large aerial corridors are assigned for the ferry flight so no other planes can use the airspace while the shuttle and SCA are flying through, for example. Also, the flyovers call for the aircraft to pass into restricted airspace around some notable sites.

"We had a massive coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration," Moultrie said. "The regular ferry flights required none of this. Other than some flyovers on arrival that we did as a bonus, we really didn't do flyovers."

Although they saw the crowds from inside the cockpit of the 747, Moultrie and Rieke said they made sure not to get distracted by them.

"We still have a mission to do and that is, we need to deliver it safely where it belongs and that is the part I'm focused on," Rieke said.

The flight also makes a few special demands of pilots as they line up the best way to approach a landmark so the flyby can be recorded in the best way.

"To do this type of flying, we need to consider the photography aspects, the sun angle, what the geometry with the chase ship needs to be, that type of thing," Moultrie said. "This is obviously the biggest thing I've done in aviation and probably the biggest thing I ever will do."

NASA Mars Rover Targets Unusual Rock on Its Journey

 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Space-Research/481085048569476 The drive by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity during the mission's 43rd Martian day, or sol, (Sept. 19, 2012) ended with this rock about 8 feet (2.5 meters) in front of the rover. 

This mosaic from the Mast Camera on NASA's Curiosity rover shows a close-up view looking toward the "Glenelg" area, where three different terrain types come together.

Mars has two small, asteroid-sized moons named Phobos and Deimos. From the point of view of the rover, located near the equator of Mars, these moons occasionally pass in front of, or "transit," the disk of the sun. PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has driven up to a football-size rock that will be the first for the rover's arm to examine.
Curiosity is about 8 feet (2.5 meters) from the rock. It lies about halfway from the rover's landing site, Bradbury Landing, to a location called Glenelg. In coming days, the team plans to touch the rock with a spectrometer to determine its elemental composition and use an arm-mounted camera to take close-up photographs.
Both the arm-mounted Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer and the mast-mounted, laser-zapping Chemistry and Camera Instrument will be used for identifying elements in the rock. This will allow cross-checking of the two instruments.
The rock has been named "Jake Matijevic." Jacob Matijevic (mah-TEE-uh-vik) was the surface operations systems chief engineer for Mars Science Laboratory and the project's Curiosity rover. He passed away Aug. 20, at age 64. Matijevic also was a leading engineer for all of the previous NASA Mars rovers: Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity.
Curiosity now has driven six days in a row. Daily distances range from 72 feet to 121 feet (22 meters to 37 meters).
"This robot was built to rove, and the team is really getting a good rhythm of driving day after day when that's the priority," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Richard Cook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The team plans to choose a rock in the Glenelg area for the rover's first use of its capability to analyze powder drilled from interiors of rocks. Three types of terrain intersect in the Glenelg area -- one lighter-toned and another more cratered than the terrain Curiosity currently is crossing. The light-toned area is of special interest because it retains daytime heat long into the night, suggesting an unusual composition.
"As we're getting closer to the light-toned area, we see thin, dark bands of unknown origin," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "The smaller-scale diversity is becoming more evident as we get closer, providing more potential targets for investigation."
Researchers are using Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) to find potential targets on the ground. Recent new images from the rover's camera reveal dark streaks on rocks in the Glenelg area that have increased researchers' interest in the area. In addition to taking ground images, the camera also has been busy looking upward.
On two recent days, Curiosity pointed the Mastcam at the sun and recorded images of Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, passing in front of the sun from the rover's point of view. Results of these transit observations are part of a long-term study of changes in the moons' orbits. NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which arrived at Mars in 2004, also have observed solar transits by Mars' moons. Opportunity is doing so again this week.
"Phobos is in an orbit very slowly getting closer to Mars, and Deimos is in an orbit very slowly getting farther from Mars," said Curiosity's science team co-investigator Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station. "These observations help us reduce uncertainty in calculations of the changes."
In Curiosity's observations of Phobos this week, the time when the edge of the moon began overlapping the disc of the sun was predictable to within a few seconds. Uncertainty in timing is because Mars' interior structure isn't fully understood.
Phobos causes small changes to the shape of Mars in the same way Earth's moon raises tides. The changes to Mars' shape depend on the Martian interior which, in turn, cause Phobos' orbit to decay. Timing the orbital change more precisely provides information about Mars' interior structure.
During Curiosity's two-year prime mission, researchers will use the rover's 10 science instruments to assess whether the selected field site inside Gale Crater ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

Wheels and a Destination

This view of the three left wheels of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity combines two images that were taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 34th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (

Sept. 9, 2012). In the distance is the lower slope of Mount Sharp.
The camera is located in the turret of tools at the end of Curiosity's robotic arm. The Sol 34 imaging by MAHLI was part of a week-long set of activities for characterizing the movement of the arm in Mars conditions.
The main purpose of Curiosity's MAHLI camera is to acquire close-up, high-resolution views of rocks and soil at the rover's Gale Crater field site. The camera is capable of focusing on any target at distances of about 0.8 inch (2.1 centimeters) to infinity, providing versatility for other uses, such as views of the rover itself from different angles.

Odd Galaxy Couple on Space Voyage

The galaxy pair Arp 116. The faint bluish spiral galaxy NGC 4647 is much lower in mass and about two thirds the size of Messier 60, which occupies the center of this image. NGC4647 is roughly the size of our galaxy, the Milky Way. 

Two very different galaxies drift through space together in this image taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The peculiar galaxy pair is called Arp 116.

Arp 116 is composed of a giant elliptical galaxy known as Messier 60, and a much smaller spiral galaxy, NGC 4647.

Messier 60 is the third brightest galaxy in the Virgo cluster of galaxies, a collection of more than 1,300 galaxies. Messier 60 has a diameter of 120,000 light-years, and a mass of about one trillion times that of the sun. A huge black hole of 4.5 billion solar masses lies at its center, one of the most massive black holes ever found.

The faint bluish spiral galaxy NGC 4647 is about two thirds of Messier 60 in size and much lower in mass -- roughly the size of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Astronomers have long tried to determine whether these two galaxies are actually interacting. Although looking at them from Earth, they overlap, but there is no evidence of new star formation, which would be one of the clearest signs that the two galaxies are indeed interacting. However, recent studies of very detailed Hubble images suggest the onset of some tidal interaction between the two.

This image combines exposures from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington, D.C.

Williams, Hoshide Complete MBSU Installation

 

Spacewalkers Aki Hoshide and Suni Williams work outside the International Space Station.
MBSU cleaning tools that were used during installation.

Flight Engineers Suni Williams and Aki Hoshide completed their second spacewalk in less than a week at 1:34 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Sept. 5. They completed the installation of a Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) that was hampered last week by a possible misalignment and damaged threads where a bolt must be placed. They also installed a camera on the International Space Station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2.

Flight Engineer Joe Acaba operated the Canadarm2 and monitored the spacewalkers from inside the International Space Station. Hoshide rode the Canadarm2 attached to a portable foot restraint to the MBSU worksite.

Wednesday’s spacewalk lasted 6 hours and 28 minutes.



Williams' and Hoshide's previous spacewalk on Aug. 30 lasted eight hours and 17 minutes making it the third longest in U.S. spaceflight history. It was originally scheduled for 6.5 hours before mission controllers and the astronauts struggled to install the MBSU.



Suni Williams surpassed Peggy Whitson during the Sept. 5 excursion for total cumulative spacewalk time by a female astronaut. Whitson worked outside for 39 hours and 46 minutes over the course of six spacewalks. Williams has conducted six spacewalks for a total of 44 hours and 2 minutes.

NASA Mars Exploration Rover Team to be Honored

 

Rock fins up to about about 1 foot (30 centimeters) tall dominate this scene from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

This 360-degree panorama assembled from images taken by the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exporation Rover Opportunity shows terrain surrounding the position where the rover spent its 3,000th Martian day, or sol, working on Mars (July 2, 2012).
This 360-degree stereo panorama assembled from images taken by the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exporation Rover Opportunity shows terrain surrounding the position where the rover spent its 3,000th Martian day, or sol, working on Mars (July 2, 2012). PASADENA, Calif. -- The mission team for NASA's long-lived Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity will be awarded the Haley Space Flight Award. The team will receive the award Sept. 12 during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space 2012 Conference and Exposition in Pasadena, Calif.
The award is presented for outstanding contributions by an astronaut or flight test personnel to the advancement of the art, science or technology of astronautics. Past recipients include Alan B. Shepard, John Glenn, Thomas Stafford, Robert Crippen, Kathryn Sullivan and the crew of space shuttle mission STS-125, which flew in 2009 on the last shuttle mission to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
The award citation praises the rover project's "new techniques in extraterrestrial robotic system operations to explore another world and extend mission lifetime." Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, will accept the award for the team.
"On behalf of the many hundreds of scientists and engineers who designed, built and operate these rovers, it is a great honor to accept this most prestigious award," Callas said. "It is especially gratifying that this comes right as Opportunity is conducting one of the most significant campaigns in the eight-and-a-half years since landing. We still are going strong, with perhaps the most exciting exploration still ahead."
In its eighth year operating on Mars, Opportunity is surveying a crater-rim outcrop of layered rock in search of clay minerals that could provide new information about a formerly wet environment. Spirit worked for more than six years -- until 2010 -- 24 times longer than its original three-month prime mission. In just the past two months, Opportunity has driven about a third of a mile (more than 525 meters), extending its total overland travel distance to 21.76 miles (35 kilometers). Recent drives along the inner edge of the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater have brought the rover close to a layered outcrop in an area where clay minerals have been detected from orbit. These minerals could offer evidence of ancient, wet conditions with less acidity than the ancient, wet environments recorded at sites Opportunity visited during its first seven years on Mars.
Opportunity's position overlooking 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) Endeavour Crater is about 5,200 miles (8,400 kilometers) from where Curiosity, NASA's next-generation Mars rover, landed inside Gale Crater a month ago.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Colorful Colossi and Changing Hues

A giant of a moon appears before a giant of a planet undergoing seasonal changes in this natural color view of Titan and Saturn from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, measures 3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers, across and is larger than the planet Mercury. Cassini scientists have been watching the moon's south pole since a vortex appeared in its atmosphere in 2012. See PIA14919 and PIA14920 to learn more about this mass of swirling gas around the pole in the atmosphere of the moon.
As the seasons have changed in the Saturnian system, and spring has come to the north and autumn to the south, the azure blue in the northern Saturnian hemisphere that greeted Cassini upon its arrival in 2004 is now fading. The southern hemisphere, in its approach to winter, is taking on a bluish hue. This change is likely due to the reduced intensity of ultraviolet light and the haze it produces in the hemisphere approaching winter, and the increasing intensity of ultraviolet light and haze production in the hemisphere approaching summer. (The presence of the ring shadow in the winter hemisphere enhances this effect.) The reduction of haze and the consequent clearing of the atmosphere makes for a bluish hue: the increased opportunity for direct scattering of sunlight by the molecules in the air makes the sky blue, as on Earth. The presence of methane, which generally absorbs in the red part of the spectrum, in a now clearer atmosphere also enhances the blue.

Astronauts Complete Second Expedition 32 Spacewalk

Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide works outside the station during the second spacewalk of the Expedition 32 mission.
NASA Flight Engineer Sunita Williams and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide completed the second spacewalk of the Expedition 32 mission at 4:33 p.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 30. They began the spacewalk at 8:16 a.m.

During the 8-hour, 17-minute spacewalk, Williams and Hoshide were unable to install a new Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) on the International Space Station’s s-zero truss. After removing and stowing the failed unit, the spacewalkers had difficulties driving the bolts to secure the replacement switching unit in the s-zero truss.

Williams and Hoshide used a long-duration tie-down tether to secure the replacement MBSU to the space station for a future spacewalk.

Prior to this task, Williams was able to successfully connect one of two power cables in preparation for the future arrival of a Russian laboratory module. The third objective, replacing a camera on the Canadarm2 robotic arm, was not completed.

The spacewalk was the fifth for Williams and the first for Hoshide. Hoshide is the third Japanese astronaut in history to conduct a spacewalk. The spacewalk was the 164th in support of station assembly and maintenance and was the first U.S.-based spacewalk since July 2011.

The first Expedition 32 spacewalk was performed by Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko on Aug. 20. The primary task during their 5-hour, 51-minute excursion was the move of the Strela-2 cargo boom from the Pirs docking compartment to the Zarya module. Other tasks included the installation of micrometeoroid debris shields on the exter

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