Currents

This NASA animation--titled “Perpetual Ocean”, was compiled from data produced by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Earth, Phase II (ECCO2 for short), the animation is a high-res model of global ocean and sea ice movements from June 2005 through December 2007. And it’s strangely therapeutic to watch.

Source

Science Scene - Global Warming?

NASA has created a new animation showing regional temperature changes on a map of the Earth from 1880-2011. On the map, blues represent temperatures lower than baseline averages, while reds indicate temperatures higher than the average. As the 131 years pass, the map turns from bluish-white to increasingly yellow and red. Caused by the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, agricultural practices, and other human impacts, climate change has currently raised temperatures 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.44 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the Industrial Revolution average.

Source

Space X

Dragon Capsule Preparations In a SpaceX clean room in Hawthorne, Calif., technicians prepare the Dragon spacecraft for thermal vacuum chamber testing. The open bays will hold the parachutes. NASA just gave SpaceX a Nov. 30 launch date for Falcon 9 Flight 3, which will send a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program.SpaceX

A little less than six months after the final space shuttle launch, a private space company will launch a rocket carrying a cargo capsule bound for the International Space Station. SpaceX said this week that it plans a Nov. 30 launch date for its first rendezvous with the ISS — an encounter that will mark a major milestone in private space exploration.

Very Cool!

Science Scene - NASA's Orion Makes a Splash

Splashdown Test The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle test undergoes a drop test at the Hydro Impact Basin (HIB) July 21, 2011. NASA

Next-generation spacecraft will not land on runways. Instead they’ll splash down in the ocean a la Apollo, Mercury and Gemini.

NASA just completed building a million-gallon pool to test these splashes, and managers have been dunking a test model of the space agency’s next crew vehicle.

The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle “boilerplate test article,” which weighs 22,700 pounds, is attached to a special gantry — think of a person swinging on a rope out over a lake — and dropped into the Hydro Impact Basin. In the video below, it was going about 24 mph at impact.

The $1.7 million Hydro Impact Basin will help prove that the Orion capsule can withstand a splashdown. Other future space capsules will also be tested in this manner.

NASA is planning additional drop tests at higher speeds throughout the summer.

[NASA Langley Research Center]

Space Shuttle Tribute

Below is a summary of the program, followed by an outstanding 8-minute look at all 135 missions.  It brought tears to my eyes.  Well Done NASA.  (Source)


Now that Atlantis has safely returned to Earth and the 30-year space shuttle program has drawn to a close, it's time to look back at the reign of Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour and the tragically shortened careers of Challenger andColumbia. Since 1981 NASA has launched 135 shuttle missions, reaching destinations such as the Mir space station, the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station.

In those three decades the shuttle has had its triumphs—fixing the initially flawed Hubble, for one—and its tragedies. Below is a video tribute to the space shuttle, prepared by our colleagues at Nature, which touches on all those highs and lows. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) The tribute features footage from every shuttle flight, including the STS 135 mission that concluded this morning, and features a good number of the 355 individuals who flew on the shuttles.

Happy Belated Anniversary ISS :o)

November 2 marked the 10th anniversary of human habitation at the International Space Station, meaning that humans have been living in space for more than two decades. 


The ISS has been continuously lived in since Nov. 2, 2000, when Expedition 1 commander Bill Shepherd and flight engineers Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko became the first residents. Since then, 200 explorers have visited, 15 nations have contributed modules and hardware, and more than 600 experiments have been conducted.


The ISS’ greatest achievements may be yet to come. In February, astronauts will install the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-02, designed to detect dark matter and uncover the secrets of the origins of the universe. The station is built to last through 2020.  Beyond that, its future could be as a base camp for expeditions to the moon, Mars, or an asteroid mission.


It is a bittersweet anniversary as the end of our Shuttle program looms.  I hope that our foray into privatizing of the space program starts to bare fruit soon.

Science Scene - NASA's Future

I know that there has been a lot of coverage the past few days, but just in case you missed it, here is a high level look at the new direction.  I think it makes good sense in the current economic environment, going to the moon [Alice :o)] can be done by private enterprise.  We need to go where no man has gone before [could not resist].

NASA's Orion crew capsule, which was part of the cancelled Constellation program, has been revived as an escape pod for the International Space Station. A smaller version of the capsule could launch on an Atlas or Delta rocket and eliminate the need to buy a multimillion-dollar Russian Soyuz spacecraft for emergency crew escape, Florida Today reports.


President Obama's plan for the U.S. space agency would also make a commitment to a specific heavy-lift launch rocket by 2015. That rocket would have the ability to send missions beyond Earth orbit to destinations that might include Mars.

The president's budget scrapped NASA's original plan to return humans to the moon within the decade, and has refocused the space agency on developing technologies for space exploration beyond Earth orbit. It also supports commercial launches by the private space industry to deliver cargo and crew to the space station.

Obama will also announce plans on Thursday to bring 2,500 more jobs to Florida's Space Coast than the cancelled NASA moon program. That could help soothe the sting of more than 8,000 jobs lost at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida due to the impending shutdown of NASA's shuttle program and the demise of Project Constellation.

Another part of the president's plan puts $2 billion over the next five years toward making Kennedy Space Center a 21st century spaceport with lower launch costs for private companies and the U.S. Department of Defense. Obama added the goal of making Florida's I-4 corridor the "Silicon Valley of Space," Florida Today notes.

Those sound like sweet words to our ears, if the plan can really pull that off. We're not complaining about NASA's future including some robo-astronauts, either.

Source