Messenger Sends Back First Image of Mercury

NASA scientists have received their first images of the planet Mercury captured from the orbiting Messenger probe. Messenger is equipped with two cameras and other sensing equipment which is hoped to shed light on the planets make up and history. The first photo, number 1 of 7500 expected to be sent back to Earth over the coming year, makes Mercury appear as though it is our own moon; baron and pocked by many collisions.

The mission website provides a great deal of information regarding the mission, the scientific portion of which will begin on April 4th.

NASA iPad App = Geek Eye Candy

It's no secret, I'm a huge fan of NASA and all of the technology they develop and use. When I heard that NASA had developed a free HD app I quickly fired up the iPad and made my way to the app store to download NASA App HD a fist full of interactive hi-definition goodness. Next to Flipboard this might be my new favorite app. I love the shots of and from space, and who isn't impressed by big toys these folks get to play with? Pictures from todays full-scale test firing of the DM-2, the largest and most powerful solid rocket motor designed for flight, are awesome. Incredible photos of hurricane action down here on earth from the ISS crew and tons of info about many NASA projects past and president. Very pretty!

Second Spacewalk Aborted - Third Being Considered For ISS Crew

The second of two space walks planned to replace a faulty cooling pump had to be called after astronauts Douglas Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson could not get one of the four pressurized ammonia hoses to come off the disabled pump. The crew struggled to get the forth hose loose but had to reconnect it as "A fair amount of ammonia leaked out, forcing them to set aside time to get any traces of the toxic substance off their spacesuits."

Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson where forced to go back to the air lock, to inspect their suits and equipment for ammonia crystals. While none was found, the precautions where necessary, extending the spacewalk to eight hours and three minutes which NASA confirmed was the sixth-longest spacewalk ever.

A third spacewalk is being considered.

Source: CBC

NASA Weighing Options Regarding Space Station Equipment Failure

According to the NASA website Teams in Mission Control in Houston are weighing the options with regards to a cooling loop that has had a mechanical failure and space walks are being considered. The loop that was shut down, and since been unable to restart, is one of two cooling loops and the problem seems to be associated with a pump that circulates ammonia. The failed loop is said not to have placed the crew in danger "The space station crew is in no danger and all systems are stable, though operating in a "single string" mode without redundancy. " 

Thankfully there are two spare pump modules aboard but they are located on the outside of the IIS and thus the potential for a spacewalk to retrieve the parts. 

NASA says "Two of the four main buss switching units are cooled by the failed loop. The units switch and route power to various station systems. Mission Control is evaluating whether the heat generation may be low enough to not require powering off these switching units. With the loss of the cooling loop, several systems have been shut down, including one of two S-band communication circuits, one Global Positioning System circuit, several DC to DC current converters in Tranquility and a set of components that route commands to station equipment. Though two of the four station Control Moment Gyroscopes initially were turned off, the crew installed a jumper cable to regain a third gyro. The gyroscopes maintain the station's attitude in space."

As someone who works in the IT field, I feel much safer when the redundant systems are in place. This is however precisely why you build redundancy into systems and I'm sure NASA is considering all of the potential dangers and making their decision accordingly.

Video Of Apollo 11's Saturn Rocket Ignition With Narration

Here is awesome footage of the Apollo 11 Saturn V rocket, ignition of the first manned flight to the moon... incredible video! From Gizmodo via Geek's Are Sexy.

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

Mars Rover Likely Stuck For Good NASA Concedes

"[Spirit's] driving days are likely over," according to Doug McCuistion, NASA's director of the Mars exploration program, but "science will continue." Spirit has been stuck in loose sand since April of '09 and despite all attempts the space agency has been unable to free it. Efforts will now focus on trying "to jostle the rover in place and angle its solar panels to increase its chance of surviving the Martian winter." according to this CBC News story. 

Spirit and it's sister rover Opportunity landed 21 days apart in January of 2004 on missions with expected lives of 90 days. Spirit, the first to land on January 4, 2004, has encountered some mechanical difficulties limiting it's movement but Opportunity soldiers on continuing to explore the surface of the planet with over 19 total kilometers on the odometer.

"Spirit is not dead," said McCuistion "It has just entered another phase of its long life."

Long live Spirit!

NASA Fans Plan Shuttle Launch Tweetup

About 100 NASA fans have converged on Cape Canaveral for today's launch of the shuttle Atlantis, with plans to tweet the event providing a virtual play by play. "I'll be uploading stuff as it happens," promised Steve Wake, 38, a computer programmer who flew in from Denver. "On launch day, who knows? I may be too excited about everything else to even think about doing that stuff. When it's over with, I'm sure I will."

NASA invited it's Twitter followers to make the trek with 100 slots, and 50 backup positions, filling up in less than 20 minutes on Oct. 16th. The tweeps will represent 21 states, the District of Columbia, and five countries, including Morocco and New Zealand. Each of which are traveling at their own expense.

Weather is expected to be excellent for the launch schedules for 2:28 p.m. local time.

Source: USA Today

NASA Running Tests On Spider Monkeys

For the first time in decades NASA is working with primates as part of the preparation for space missions. This time around spider monkeys are being exposed to radiation similar to that which a human might be exposed to when traveling to Mars.

"We realized there was a need for this kind of work," Jack Bergman, a behavioral pharmacologist at Harvard Medical School's McLean Hospital in Boston, told Discovery News.

"There's a long-standing commitment on the part of NASA to deep space travel and with that commitment comes a need for knowing what kinds of adverse effects deep space travel might have, what are the risks to astronauts," Bergman said. "That's not been well assessed."

The animals will not be destroyed after the experiments but will rather be cared for at a veterinary hospital, with no further experiments to be preformed on them.

Chimpanzees were sent into space prior to the first human attempts in order to test the Mercury capsules.

Source: Discovery News.

Moon Strike Not The Big Show Everyone Expected

I was glued to my monitor as the LCROSS mission unfolded and the camera refreshed as the Centaur rocket motor approached the surface of the moon, refreshing ever few seconds to bring an even tighter shot of the surface... and then...meh. I guess I was like many others around the globe who bought into the hype and expected a flare of impact and a huge dust plume! I truly hope that NASA was able to capture something of value, otherwise we're just polluting the moons surface with more space junk.

Discovery Channel:

"It's hard to tell what we saw there," said Michael Bicay, science director at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

Debris from the impact could have flown horizontally, or perhaps didn't clear the crater's rim, lead mission scientist Anthony Colaprete told reporters.

"Some luck has to come to get the ejecta to fly in the direction you want it to fly," he said.

"I'm not convinced we haven't seen the ejecta," Colaprete added. "We just have to go back with a finer tooth comb."

MIT Students Capture Photos From Space - Budget $160.00

Three MIT students, Oliver Yeh, Justin Lee and Eric Newton, used common consumer electronics and a weather balloon to snap pictures from space. Dubbed Project Icarus the three who specialize in taking low-cost aerial photographs that they display and sell through a website called 1337arts, captured the photograph below from 28 kilometres up.

"The camera used in the project was a 7.1-megapixel Canon Powershot the students bought used on Amazon.com. They installed an open-source firmware add-on to the camera that would allow them to program it to take a picture every five seconds.

To track the location of the balloon, they used a $50 pre-paid Motorola cellphone with GPS capabilities and installed a free program that would report the phone's location at regular intervals. A USB phone charger powered by AA lithium batteries kept the phone running during the five-hour voyage. They also installed an external antenna to boost the phone's signal"

Perhaps NASA should hire a few more MIT grads!



Source: CBC

NASA Tracks Bungalow Sized Space Junk Approaching ISS

NASA does not believe that a 19 square metre piece of a European Ariane 5 rocket, debris from a three year old mission, will not cause the International Space Station and space shuttle Discovery to make evasive maneuvers.

The shuttle is docked with the space station and together are currently circling the Earth at a height of 354 kilometres. The debris is easily tracked because of its size and is expected to get within three kilometres from the station, 8 kilometres closer than previously estimated. If a maneuver is required, a decision will be made during the last hour of a space walk planned for today.

Source: CBC

Hubble Testing Halts To Capture New Image Of Jupiter

The Hubble telescope has been in test mode since an upgrade and repair mission in May, however NASA scientists brought the Hubble to life on Thursday so that they could capture a shot of Jupiter's newest scar. "Because we believe this magnitude of impact is rare, we are very fortunate to see it with Hubble," said Amy Simon-Miller of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Details seen in the Hubble view shows a lumpiness to the debris plume caused by turbulence in Jupiter's atmosphere." There has been a great deal of interest in Jupiter since an amateur astronomer in Australia noticed the new mark, which is speculated to have been created by a small comet or asteroid plunging into Jupiter's atmosphere and disintegrating, early Monday.

Source: CNN

Geekdad Debunks Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories

Brian McLaughlin is Wired's Geekdad, and he also works in the space program... cool huh? So it is his duty to point out to us all of the rebuttals regarding the conspiracy theories surrounding the US space program and in particular the moon landings on this the 40th anniversary of the first landing.
Check out his evidence at the Geekdad blog.

Hubble Repairs

NASA is pleased thus far with testing performed on the upgraded Hubble Telescope after 4 days of difficult space walks performed by shuttle astronauts. Check out this video from the Telegraph

Kepler Telescope Launched - In Search Of Earth-like Planets

NASA launched the Kepler telescope aboard a Delta II rocket on Friday night from Cape Canaveral. The telescope, named after 17th-century German astrophysicist Johannes Kepler, is on a mission to seek potentially habitable planets by staring at approximately 100,000 stars some 600 to 3,000 light years away in the so-called habitable zone. "If one of them has a planet like the Earth going around it and if that planet happens to pass in front of that star, the star will get just a little dimmer, then a little brighter for a while as the planet eclipses it," according to CBC's science correspondent Bob McDonald. Over the past 10 years 300 or so planets have been identified to be orbiting stars outside our solar system, but they are largely gaseous planets like Jupiter. Kepler's mission is to look for smaller Earth-like planets.

Mars Spirit Rover Showing It's Age?

Even though it acknowledged receipt of it's commands for the day on Sunday, Mars rover Spirit failed to carry out the commands sent from the command centre at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. The rover also failed to record the days activities to it's memory. "We don't have a good explanation yet for the way Spirit has been acting for the past few days," said JPL's Sharon Laubach, in a statement. "Our next steps will be diagnostic activities."

I think we can forgive the little guy! Sunday marked Spirit's 1,800th Sol (Martian day) on the planet, not bad for a mission that was supposed to last 90 days...

Source: CBC

Mars Landers Celebrate 4 Years On Surface

The Mars Lander "Spirit" celebrated it's 4th anniversary on the surface of the Red Planet yesterday and it's twin "Opportunity" will do the same on January 24th, not bad for missions that were expected to last in the neighborhood of 3 months each! "These rovers are incredibly resilient considering the extreme environment the hardware experiences every day," said John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity at Nasa's Jet Propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"We realise that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead."

The 4 years of service have not been easy on the rovers though, Spirit must drive backwards everywhere it goes because of a jammed wheel; while Opportunity's robotic arm suffers from a glitch in a shoulder joint because of a broken electrical wire.

Source: BBC News

NASA Asjusts Plans After Astronaut Loses Tool Bag

A briefcase-sized tool bag drifted away from astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper on Tuesday during the first of four scheduled space walks to repair a joint used to position a solar panel towards the sun. Stefanyshyn-Piper and Stephen Bowen where about half way through their first day when the bag somehow became untethered and floated away. The bag contained a pair of grease guns, wipes and a putty knife and NASA is now considering having the two astronauts share tools from Bowen's bag in order to complete the repairs. "What it boils down to is all it takes is one small mistake for a tether not to be hooked up quite correctly or to slip off, and that's what happened here,"according to lead spacewalk officer John Ray. At least there's a back up, what a costly mistake it could have been if the repairs could not be completed. Just goes to show that regardless of how much you train and practice we are human afterall and stuff happens. Discovery Channel Story.

Phoenix Lander Goes Silent, Mission Ends

Having not heard a peep out of the Phoenix Lander since November 2nd, NASA has determined that the resilient little rover has finally ceased operating and they are pulling the plug on the mission.

"We are actually ceasing operations, declaring an end to operations at this point," said Barry Goldstein Phoenix mission project manager. "However, since we've been surprised by the robustness of this vehicle, we're going to keep listening. As the orbiters fly overhead every two hours, we'll constantly turn on the radio and try to hail Phoenix to see if it is alive."

"This is an Irish wake rather than a funeral," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars exploration programme.

"We should celebrate what Phoenix and the Phoenix team has done and where it is going to take us in the future. [There were] a lot of lessons learned in this mission for us that will feed forward to future missions. We learned a lot about handling of soils, soil consistency, and how difficult it can be."

It has been fun following the story and receiving the twitter tweets from the Phoenix team! Perhaps we'll see the day when Phoenix rises again to hails from the passing orbiters?

BBC Story here.

Hubble Telescope Stops Sending Data

A mission to repair the Hubble Telescope scheduled for two weeks time has been put on hold by NASA until it understands the problems experienced by the telescope over the weekend. The space shuttle Atlantis had been scheduled to rendevous with Hubble in two weeks, but a new unexpected problem with Hubble appeared on Saturday night and the astronauts would potentially have new repairs to contend with, repairs that haven't trained for. Because it will take time to identify the failed part and train the astronauts to repair or replace it, the mission originally scheduled for October 14th will be postponed until early next year. Discovery Channel.