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This Week at NASA…
The Curiosity rover continues to make its way to Mars
and its scheduled landing in Gale Crater on Monday, Aug. 6,
at around 1:30 in the morning, Eastern.
Once delivered to the Red Planet’s surface, Curiosity will
begin a two-year prime mission to investigate one of
the most intriguing places on Mars.
Join NASA TV coverage of Curiosity’s landing on Sunday, Aug. 5,
at 11:30 p.m. Eastern. We’ll have it on all three NTV channels,
on nasa.gov, AND, on Xbox 360, as well!!
While the real Curiosity rover makes its way to the Red Planet,
reporters on Earth met the rover’s “stunt doubles” in the JPL Mars Yard.
“We had a rare moment. We’re between testing where we can invite
people over and actually watch us do some testing.”
“The Vehicle System Test Vehicle rover is essentially Curiosity’s
twin sister where it’s almost the same rover that’s about to touch
down on Mars. And we’re testing autonomous navigation software today.
So what we’re doing is setting a pile of rocks and the rover is
imaging the world around it and it’s determining where
is it safe to drive and where is it not to.”
Media visitors saw the rovers in action and talked to scientists,
rover drivers, and engineers. Landing day is on
everyone’s mind, after all, it’s coming up fast.
“You have to be nervous. It’s a very difficult thing to get right,
but the thing is we have done all the testing we can think of,
but we did it and we put the effort in and I’m very proud of the team.”
The rocket that will launch humans farther into space than
ever before has passed a major milestone. The Space Launch
System Program completed a combined System Requirements and
System Definition review, which set technical, performance,
cost and schedule requirements to provide on-time development
of the overall launch vehicle system. SLS now moves ahead to the
preliminary design phase of the heavy-lift rocket that will carry
NASA's Orion spacecraft and other payloads, and provide an
entirely new capability for human exploration beyond low Earth
orbit. The first test flight, which will feature a configuration
for a 70-metric-ton (77-ton) lift capacity, is scheduled for 2017.
A large inflatable heat shield developed by NASA's Space
Technology Program at Langley Research Center has successfully
survived a trip through Earth's atmosphere while travelling
at hypersonic speeds up to 76-hundred miles per hour.
IRVE-3, The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment, was
launched by sounding rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight
Facility, inflated as expected to a mushroom shape almost
10 feet in diameter, returned safely through Earth's
atmosphere at hypersonic speeds and fell into the Atlantic
Ocean off the coast of North Carolina. The test
demonstrated that a space capsule can use an inflatable
outer shell to slow and protect itself during planetary entry
and descent.The program is managed by the Langley Research Center.
NASA engineers surpassed the previously set J-2X powerpack
record during the latest test at Stennis Space Center. The
13-hundred-50-second test on the A-1 Test Stand broke the
previous record of 11-hundred-50 seconds – set earlier this
summer on June 8. The July 24 test gathered data on performance
of the liquid oxygen and fuel pumps during extreme conditions
critical information for continued development of the turbopump
for use on the J-2X engine. The J-2X is the first human-rated
liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket engine to be developed
in four decades and is being built for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
The successful, July 20th launch of "Kounotori 3," the
H-II Transfer Vehicle, from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern
Japan was followed seven days later by the arrival of the unpiloted
cargo ship at the International Space Station. HTV-3 was captured by
the ISS crew using the station’s robotic Canadarm-2, then berthed
to a docking port on the Earth-facing side of the Harmony node.
Glenn Research Center employees watched the launch of the HTV-3
with heightened interest. Among the almost 4 tons of supplies,
experiments and hardware HTV-3 is delivering to station is the
Space Communications and Navigation, or SCaN, testbed. Designed
and built at Glenn, the device will allow researchers to conduct
experiments which could lead to a new generation of space communications.
Also onboard -- a remote-controlled Earth-observing camera system
named ISERV Pathfinder. The new imaging instrument, designed and
built at the Marshall Space Flight Center, will acquire imagery
of specific areas of the globe for disaster analysis and
environmental studies. The program is operated as a partnership
between NASA and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“I can’t tell you how privileged we feel to be part of the crew
going to the space station and how thrilled
we are to be at this point in our training.”
NASA astronaut Kevin Ford, and crewmates Evgeny Tarelkin and
Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency were at the
Johnson Space Center to preview for media their upcoming
Expedition 33 and 34 missions to the International Space Station.
“We really appreciate the magnitude of the effort to get us
into space and what the space station represents. So few people
get to fly up there compared to the number
of people who invest their lives in it.”
A prior briefing outlined mission priorities and objectives,
including hundreds of research experiments, a Russian spacewalk,
international and commercial cargo deliveries to the complex
and a commercial cargo demonstration flight.
“During the six month period for Expedition 33 and 34, we’ll see
over 198 experiments active on the space station with hundreds
of participating scientists across the entire
partnership and around the world.”
The trio is scheduled to launch to the station aboard a Soyuz
spacecraft on October 15. Once there, they’ll join NASA
astronaut Suni Williams, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
astronaut Aki Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko
to round out the Expedition 33 crew.
The Newseum in Washington, DC served as the site of a joint
news conference by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey to
highlight 40 years worth of accomplishments by Landsat, the
world's longest-running, Earth-observing satellite program.
“No other satellite program in our country or in any other
nation in the world comes close to having the historical length
and breadth and the continuity in the coverage of the Landsat archive.”
NASA launched the first Landsat satellite on July 23, 1972.
The resulting four decades of imagery from the fleet of Landsat
satellites forms an impartial, comprehensive, and easily-accessed
register of human and natural changes on the land. This
information supports the improvement of human and environmental
health, biodiversity, energy and water management, urban
planning, disaster recovery and crop monitoring.
“It’s really by stepping back and looking at the Earth,
observing these changes in that context from space can
we really understand what’s happening.”
“Hopefully you will enjoy the opportunity to present to your peers.”
Administrator Charlie Bolden helped welcome to Headquarters
members of the next generation of idea makers The Ideas in
Flight program provided a forum for summer interns in NASA’s
Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate to give “What I Did
This Summer” -type presentations. Topics ranged from intelligent
aircraft engines to technologies for reducing harmful emissions.
"Ideas in Flight" was designed to provide unique hands-on
experiences in careers related to science,
technology, engineering and mathematics.
Also at NASA headquarters, the Science Mission Directorate
sponsored the DEVELOP Program’s Annual Summer Highlight
Presentation. Presentations were given by young professionals
and students who worked on Earth Observation research
projects this summer focused on
environmental issues around the globe.
“The students really benefit because they get the
exposure and they’ve got a nice thing at the end of
the summer that they can go back and tell their family
and their friends and other students that
they’ve made a difference for the summer.”
Mentored by NASA and partner agency scientists, DEVELOP
interns extend NASA Earth Science data and
technology to policy and decision makers.
"Kevin Ford in control of the stick at this moment…
(double sonic boom)…Discovery now going sub-sonic,
the fleet-leading shuttle announcing its arrival
at the landing site with a pair of sonic booms…"
When Space Shuttle Discovery touched down at Edwards
Air Force Base in Southern California on September 11th, 2009
to conclude mission STS-128, no one could have foreseen
that it would be the last of 54 such landings
at the famed desert air base.
NASA astronaut Rick "C.J." Sturckow, who commanded the
mission, returned to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center
at Edwards recently to recap the mission for Dryden employees.
In his video-illustrated presentation, Sturckow recalled
highlights of the 13-day supply mission to the International
Space Station, noting that the station is contributing to
both scientific understanding and future solar system exploration:
"I think one of the biggest benefits of the space station
will be …we'll look back and go, wow, if we hadn’t flown
ISS we could have never accomplished whatever it is we do
next. I think that'll be one of the biggest contributions,
in addition to all the great science, other
science that's going on up there."
Fifteen of Discovery's 39 missions landed at Edwards, the
remainder at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The
retired space shuttle is now enshrined at the Smithsonian
National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington, D.C.
Twenty years ago on July 31, 1992, Space Shuttle Atlantis
launched from the Kennedy Space Center on STS-46. Atlantis’
crew consisted of Commander Loren Shriver, Pilot Andrew Allen,
Mission Specialists Jeff Hoffman, Franklin Chang-Diaz, Marsha
Ivins and Claude Nicollier and Payload Specialist Franco
Malerba. One of the mission’s primary objectives was called
off. The joint NASA/Italian Space Agency Tethered Satellite
System or TSS was restowed and returned to Earth after a jammed
tether line prevented deployment. Meanwhile, The European
Space Agency's European Retrievable Carrier (EURECA) was
deployed successfully. Atlantis and crew returned nearly
eight days later to conclude the mission.
“It meant a lot to me to have the opportunity to go
into space and it meant a lot to
me to be the first woman that was chosen.”
When Sally Ride passed away recently at age 61,
she left a legacy of accomplishment and inspiration.
As the first American woman in space, Ride proved there
was nothing to which a young girl could not aspire.
And, as a former astronaut, she continued to reassure
young women – and young men, too, that careers in
science and exploration can be exciting, fun, and rewarding.
Sally Ride will be missed not only by the NASA Family,
but also countless millions of Americans and citizens of the world.
And that’s This Week @NASA.
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