For NASA, 2010 was another year of new exploration,
exciting discoveries, and important milestones.
From spaceflight, to science and technology; from
understanding life here on Earth, to where we might
find it elsewhere. From protecting our home planet,
to inspiring the next generation of explorers.
This was “This Year at NASA.”
The December 15th launch of the Soyuz spacecraft carrying
Expedition 26 crew members Cady Coleman, Paolo Nespoli
and Dimitry Kondratyev to the International Space Station
capped another year of important milestones for the orbiting
complex – and NASA’s space shuttle program, as its fleet
of orbiters approaches its retirement.
Astronaut: "All right give me a smile."
Expedition 22 Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer
Max Suraev made a safe return to Earth in a Soyuz spacecraft
landing on the remote steppes of Kazakhstan.
Russian recovery teams worked in frigid temperatures to help
the crew exit the spacecraft and begin their
readjustment to Earth’s gravity.
Launch Announcer: "Liftoff of Alexander Skvortsov,
Tracy Caldwell Dyson, and Mikhail Kornienko beginning their
journey to the International Space Station."
The new members of the Expedition 23 crew began their journey
to the International Space Station with a successful launch
from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Soyuz Commander Alexander Skvortsov, Flight Engineers
Mikhail Kornienko and Tracy Caldwell Dyson will spend
the next six months aboard the orbiting complex.
The crew of STS-131 returned home to Houston following their
fifteen days in space aboard shuttle Discovery.
Mike Coates: "Nice landing. Well done."
A crowd of several hundred well-wishers greeted the seven
astronauts at Ellington Field after their flight from
the Kennedy Space Center one day after their safe landing.
Launch Announcer: "4-3-2-1, launch, launch, launch."
The first test of the fully integrated Launch Abort System
for the Orion crew vehicle was successfully completed
at the White Sands Missile Range on May 6.
The Pad Abort 1 test is part of an ongoing mission to
develop safer vehicles for human spaceflight applications.
Carrying a six-astronaut crew – STS-132 Commander Ken Ham,
Pilot Tony Antonelli and Mission Specialists Garrett Reisman,
Steve Bowen, Mike Good and Piers Sellers, space shuttle
Atlantis concluded its final flight, a 12-day trip to the
International Space Station with a smooth landing
at the Kennedy Space Center.
"And Houston/Atlantis we have wheel stop.
Copy wheel stop Atlantis. That landing was something that
your air force crewmates should of really been proud of;
that was pretty sweet."
Bill Hardwood: "I think what a lot of us are wondering
about is making sure that everything is up and running again."
Tracy Caldwell: "Shannon and Doug removed the last jumpers
today and put the racks back and so it’s all spic
and span and it’s back to business as usual it seems."
The International Space Station’s cooling system was
reactivated and finally back in normal operation.
Mission Control: "The pump is looking good."
Doug Wheelock: "Oh, Sweet! We got our station back!"
Three spacewalks by Expedition 24 Flight Engineers
Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson were needed to
remove and replace a failed ammonia pump that had disabled
one of the station’s two cooling loops on July 31.
Tracy Caldwell: "I’ll pull it."
Doug Wheelock: "There you can see it."
Mission Control: "Yep I see."
Launch Announcer: "3-2-1 fueling tower separates,
booster ignition, and liftoff of the Soyuz Rocket
as Alexander Kaleri, Scott Kelly and Oleg Skripochka
begin their journey to the International Space Station."
Following several days of traditional pre-launch activities
and preparations, the Expedition 25 crew successfully
launched aboard a Soyuz rocket
to begin its two-day journey to the International Space Station.
Soyuz Commander Alexander Kaleri, NASA Flight Engineer
Scott Kelly and Russian Flight Engineer Oleg Skripochka
are joining Commander Doug Wheelock and Flight Engineers
Fyodor Yurchikhin and Shannon Walker,
all of whom have been in orbit aboard the complex since June.
The first SpaceX Falcon 9 demonstration launch for NASA's
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program lifted
off on Wednesday, Dec. 8 from Launch Complex 40
at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Launch Announcer: "We have liftoff of Falcon 9 stage one."
Known as COTS 1, the launch is the first flight of the Dragon
spacecraft and the first commercial attempt to re-enter
a spacecraft from orbit. The demonstration mission proved key
capabilities such as launch, structural integrity of the Dragon
spacecraft, on-orbit operation, re-entry, descent
and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
As he did in 2009, President Obama made several calls
from the White House to astronauts in space…
But 2010 also saw the president visit the Kennedy Space Center
in Florida to present his plans for NASA and reaffirm
his support for space exploration.
President Obama: "Hey guys!"
President Obama spoke with the crews of space shuttle Endeavour
and the International Space Station from
the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
President Obama: "I think I speak for the all young people here,
and everybody back home how proud we are of you, how excited
we are about the work that is being done on the Space Station,
and how committed we are to continuing human space
exploration in the future."
President Barack Obama made a trip to the Kennedy Space Center
on Thursday to explain his plan for America’s space program.
Accompanied by Florida Senator and former shuttle astronaut
Bill Nelson, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and NASA Administrator
Charles Bolden, President Obama addressed an audience comprised
of elected officials, leaders from industry,
academia and KSC employees.
President Obama: "I am 100% Committed to the mission of NASA
and its future. Because broadening our capabilities
in space will continue to serve our society in ways we can
scarcely imagine. Because exploration will once more inspire
wonder in a new generation: sparking passions, launching careers.
And because, ultimately, if we fail to press forward in the
pursuit of discovery, we are ceding our future,
ceding that essential element of the American character."
Administrator Charlie Bolden joined President Obama at a special
White House ceremony honoring educators from across the country
for their excellence in mathematics, science teaching and mentoring.
The event was part of the President’s "Educate to Innovate"
campaign to boost student achievement in STEM subjects: science,
technology, engineering and math.
President Obama: "I've challenged the scientific community to think
of new and creative ways to engage young people in their fields.
That's why we launched the "Educate to Innovate" campaign --
a nationwide effort by citizens, non-for-profits, universities,
and companies from across America to help us move to the top
of the pack in math and science education."
Through a combination of hands-on projects, creative partnerships
and public appearances, NASA continued to promote the education
of our youth in science, technology, engineering, and math,
the STEM disciplines so important to our nation’s future.
NASA is teaming with Univision Communications Inc, the Department
of Education and other organizations to support Univision’s
initiative to improve Hispanic students high school graduation
rates, prepare for college and encourage them to pursue careers
in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Charlie Bolden: "It’s a great extension of the efforts that we’ve
been making to foster STEM education to support the President’s
‘Educate to Innovate’ program, the ‘Race to the Top’;
it all fits together for us. This program is designated, primarily,
to reach kids in the high school area, but I think with our
‘Summer of Innovation’ that’s focused on kids in middle schools,
they are kind of a perfect marriage."
Teachers became students while participating in the second annual
NASA Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics -- STEM --
Educators, Workshops held this year in Charlotte, N.C.
The 40-session workshop provided elementary, middle and high
school teachers with creative hands-on ways to
incorporate NASA content into their classrooms.
About 25 seventh-grade girls from area middle schools got up
close and personal with unique aircraft and high technology when
they participated in a "Tech Trek" tour
of the Dryden Flight Research Center.
The Tech Trek, to develop interest and excitement about math
and science and self-confidence among middle-school girls,
included tours of Dryden's main aircraft hangar and several
specialized research and support aircraft.
Dozens of teachers are conducting real science in an extreme
environment. Through Ames Research Center’s Spaceward Bound
project, NASA has sent teachers to California State University’s
Desert Study Center in Zzyzx. (nat) Here, on the edge of the
barren Mojave Desert, they help conduct NASA-related
field science. The data and knowledge they glean at Zzyzx
will be used to develop experiments, demonstrations
and lesson plans for their students.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden joined with other NASA
volunteers in helping these fifth graders
become rocket scientists for day.
The students at the Langdon Elementary School in Washington
built and test flew their own paper rockets
using a high-power paper rocket launcher.
Leland Melvin: "Please give a warm welcome for Charlie Bolden.”
Charles Bolden: “Allright, Allright, Allright. Hi ya doing?”
More than 250 students joined with astronaut Leland Melvin
and Administrator Charles Bolden at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory to help kickoff NASA’s Summer of Innovation.
Bolden: "What we want to do this summer through the Summer
of Innovation is take young men and women like Malik
and we want to help them understand, yeah science and math may be
difficult, but you can learn it."
Also, over the Labor Day weekend, actor/rapper Mos Def and
astronaut Leland Melvin teamed up to share NASA’s Summer of
Innovation program with young people at the Instituting Science
in Schools Science and Cultural Festival at the Chabot
Observatory in Oakland, California, and people attending
the Tom Joyner Morning Show Family Reunion in Orlando, Florida.
Once again, NASA employees proved the importance of community
involvement. Centers threw open their doors to neighbors,
and reached out to make new friends for the agency.
NASA also provided technological assistance to a region of our
country threatened with ecological disaster, and expertise
to another member of the global community
in their time of grave need.
NASA assets continue to help scientists track two events
causing worldwide environmental and economic concern.
NASA’s instrumented research aircraft, the Earth Resources-2,
or ER-2, has been deployed to the Gulf of Mexico to do
flyovers of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill and the
coastline it threatens. The agency is also making extra
satellite observations and conducting additional data
processing to help U.S. disaster response agencies assess
the spread and impact of the slick.
"Okay guys, let’s go!"
The first hatchlings from endangered sea turtle eggs at
possible risk by the BP oil spill were released into the
Atlantic Ocean off the Kennedy Space Center on July 11.
"There they go. Yeah! That’s awesome."
After their collection at a Florida Panhandle beach, the eggs
of twenty-two Kemp’s ridley turtles were brought to a secure,
climate-controlled facility at Kennedy where the nest was
monitored until incubation was complete.
When she was just six years old, Carolina Gallardo fell in
love with the night sky. As a teenager, the young woman
from a poor family near Mexico City watched a television
show about astronomy and the Hubble Space Telescope that
would make the stars her life’s work. Carolina, then thirteen,
was so inspired by Ed Weiler, the NASA scientist featured on
the program that she initiated a correspondence with him
that would encourage her studies for years to come.
Now, at age 30, Carolina Gallardo has finished a summer
internship at the Goddard Space Flight Center to complete
masters’ programs in aeronautics/astronautics
and space technology. A special guest at the Science Mission
Directorate’s monthly meeting at Headquarters, Caroline told
senior managers how Weiler, now the directorate’s Associate
Administrator and others at NASA have impacted her life.
Caroline Gallardo: "Now I graduate with two Masters in
aerospace and I can say that thanks to you, thanks to your
challenge, to your motivation, I can tell everyone that if
it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have gone this far.
Thank you very much."
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and the NASA team that
traveled to Chile to assist the once-trapped miners met with
President Obama on Oct. 28 in the White House Oval Office.
The team advised Chilean rescue officials on how to maintain
the psychological and physiological well-being of the 33
miners trapped a half-mile beneath the Earth’s surface,
as well as the design of the rescue capsule in which each
man would finally ascend after 69 days underground.
For nearly eighty years, the LEGO "brick" has helped enhance
children’s creativity through playing and learning.
Now, NASA is teaming up with LEGO to develop innovative
educational and outreach activities to interest youngsters
in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
The collaboration, called “Build the Future," kicked off
at Kennedy with youngsters building
their vision of the future in space.
The continuing study of ice sheets in the Arctic was just
one way NASA researchers added to the data about changes
in temperatures and sea levels around the globe.
A new NASA Web site can help our future explorers and leaders
better understand the how’s and why’s of climate change –
and what they can do to make our planet more habitable.
Fish: "Kind of far south for a polar bear ain’t you?"
Polar Bear: "You don’t say. Look, my habitat is shrinking
and I obviously fell asleep on the wrong iceberg."
Fish: "What you say?"
Climate Kids can be found at http://climate.nasa.gov/kids
Operation IceBridge has entered the second phase of its spring
2010 campaign. NASA’s DC-8 aircraft has returned from Greenland
to the Dryden Flight Research Center in California, following
a successful survey of the entire Arctic Ocean. The plane flew
from Thule, Greenland to Fairbanks, Alaska providing a detailed
snapshot of sea ice conditions.
As this year’s hurricane season gets underway, the Goddard Space
Flight Center has unveiled, for the media, NASA’s new climate
simulation center. An amalgam of supercomputing, visualization,
and data interaction technologies, the climate simulation center,
supports weather and climate prediction research at one of
the world’s largest contingents of Earth scientists.
A NASA-sponsored mission in Alaska is exploring how changes
in the Arctic’s sea ice cover may be contributing to global warming.
ICESCAPE, for Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the
Arctic Pacific Environment," is working its way through the Bering
Strait headed for the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
From laboratory and wind tunnel research to demonstration tests,
NASA Aeronautics continued its green aviation initiatives.
Their goal: to make air travel quieter, cleaner and more efficient
while increasing the safety and comfort of passengers.
The Ames Research Center was the scene of a gathering of experts
from government, industry and academia meeting to discuss the
agency’s green aviation research efforts
Researcher: "…doing research in alternative bio-fuels."
and showcase groundbreaking solutions NASA and its partners
are developing to reduce the impact
of aviation systems on the environment.
Over a two day period, attendees heard researchers, scientists,
technicians and leading policymakers, present on the latest
emerging environmentally sensitive aviation technologies.
Jaiwon Shin: "Please join us in welcoming
our NASA Administrator, Mr. Bolden."
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden addressed
the group on day one of the event.
Charles Bolden: "We’re so excited at NASA about the
opportunities we’re being given, in the coming years,
to help develop solutions to some of our most pressing aviation
problems, and create the next generation of air transportation
systems that will last generations and make us all safer
and make the planet a better place That’s a huge challenge,
but we at NASA enthusiastically accept it."
Next week, more of This Year @NASA!
For more log on to: www.nasa.gov.