This Week at NASA
NASA's Landsat Data Continuity Mission satellite
was successfully launched from California's
Vandenberg Air Force Base on Monday. LDCM, a joint
NASA and U.S. Geological Survey mission, is the
eighth satellite in the Landsat series, which began
in 1972. The mission extends the longest continuous
data record of Earth's surface as viewed from space
data critical in areas such as energy and water
management, forest monitoring, environmental health,
urban planning, disaster recovery and agriculture.
Also at Vandenberg Air Force Base for Landsat launch
activities NASA followers on Twitter and other
social media. The group heard details about the
mission from the Landsat science and engineering teams
and received behind-the-scenes tours of Vandenberg
Air Force Base facilities. A NASA Social is an informal
meeting of people who use social networking sites such
as Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Participants at these
events are provided a unique in-person experience
by NASA, which they are encouraged to share with
others through their favorite social network
An unpiloted Russian resupply ship launched
to the International Space Station from the
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 9:41 a.m. EST
on February 11. The Progress cargo craft was loaded
with almost three tons of food, fuel, supplies and
experiment hardware for the six crew members on the
orbiting complex. The new Progress vehicle launched
on an accelerated rendezvous to the station, becoming
the third consecutive Progress craft to test this
fast-track approach of making a trip to the ISS.
It won't be long before an asteroid named 2012 DA-14
makes its extreme flyby of our planet. About half
the size of a football field, DA14 should come within
17, 200 miles of Earth on February 15. Although the
space rock will pass within the orbit of many of our
geosynchronous satellites, scientists in NASA's
Near-Earth Object Program Office say there's no
danger of a collision. Still, theyr are keeping a close eye on DA14.
Even though it's getting very close it won't
reach naked eye visibility, but if you have a
pair of binoculars and you know where to look
you happen to be located in eastern Europe, Asia
or Australia you can observe it going from the
South to the North passing closest approach over Indonesia.
Closest approach is estimated for 2:24 p.m. EST
Friday. NASA TV's live coverage from the Jet Propulsion Lab
in Pasadena begins at 2 p.m. EST. Later that afternoon,
NASA TV will carry live views of the asteroid that
may be available from observatories around the world
as DA14 makes its exit from our galactic neighborhood.
NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has acquired its
first images of a comet believed to have quite the
bright future. The images of C/2012 S1, better known
as comet ISON, were taken over 36 hours in mid-January
by Deep Impact's Medium-Resolution Imager from a distance
of 493 million miles. Many scientists anticipate
that comet ISON will put on a brilliant show this
fall when the space-borne conglomeration of
dust and ice passes through the inner solar system.
The core satellite of the Global Precipitation
Measurement mission, GPM, has successfully completed
rigorous testing at the Goddard Space Flight Center.
The satellite spent more than two months in a
thermal vacuum chamber exposed to extreme heat
and cold to simulate the harsh conditions of space.
GPM is an international network of satellites that
will provide global data about rain and snowfall
every 3 hours. Information collected by GPM, the
first satellite designed to measure snowfall from space,
will expand our understanding of Earth's water
and energy cycles and improve the ability of weather
forecasting models to predict extreme storms.
The GPM Core satellite is scheduled for launch in early 2014.
More than 50 journalists and social media followers
visiting the Dryden Flight Research Center and
its Palmdale operations facility learned how a
small fleet of highly-specialized aircraft supports
NASA's Earth science and environmental mission.
The Airborne Science Showcase highlighted the
specially-modified aircrafts' cutting-edge
instrumentation used by numerous NASA missions
to monitor and collect crucial data about our home planet.
With what we do in the Airborne Science Program
really is enmeshed and critical with what we do
with our space missions as well. We're NASA, we
launch rockets. But primarily from the Science
Directorate at NASA and Earth Science in particular,
our main goal is to try to advance our understanding of the science itself.
Among the NASA missions highlighted were DISCOVER-AQ
currently measuring air quality over California's
San Joaquin Valley; the PODEX mission evaluating
instrumentation for a future satellite; and the
Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment, a multi-year
investigation of how the chemistry of the upper
regions of Earth's atmosphere is contributing to climate change.
Dryden's facilities are joined by the Johnson Space
Center, the Wallops Flight Facility, and the Langley
Research Center in serving as home to these unique and valuable craft.
This suborbital rocket successfully launched from
the Wallops Flight Facility is helping scientists
determine how best to create lithium vapor trails
for studying phenomena in the ionosphere.
The two red-colored lithium vapor trails produced by
the flight posed no threat to the public and were
reportedly seen from as far away as the Outer Banks,
North Carolina, eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Lithium trails will be used in two missions this year.
The first is scheduled for April from Kwajalein
Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean; the second is set for June at Wallops.
NASA astronaut Ron Garan was a keynote speaker at
the Susan G. Komen Global Women's Cancer Summit in
Washington. A veteran of two spaceflights, most
recently on Expedition 27/28 aboard the International
Space Station, Garan now works on NASA's Open Government
Initiative to develop innovative collaborations
between government, industry and citizens around
the world to benefit all humankind.
If we can land on the moon and return to Earth safely,
if nations can join together and build an enormous,
incredibly capable research facility in orbit,
we can by working together solve the problems that
we all face, including the elimination of cancer.
My name is Clayton Turner. I'm Chief Engineer at
NASA Langley Research Center.
I am responsible for the engineering excellence
of all of our projects and activities here at the
center and also for promoting the disciplines across
the engineering directorate. So diversity for me is
bringing in fresh thought and ideas. The more fresh
thought from different perspectives you can bring to
a problem, the more solutions you can have to that problem.
We have many challenges across the Nation and those are
best solved with a diverse set of thought. If we get
stuck in one mind set or one set of backgrounds to solve
a problem, we may try to do the same solutions over and
over, and a new set of ideas may come in for something
we've never thought of before. Here at NASA we see that
a lot because we do some of the really challenging things;
we take on some of the most challenging problems, and the
solutions aren't going to be something you can find in a book;
they aren't going to be something you can find with two or
three really smart people getting together and working through it.
You need a diverse team that are bringing in ideas from
engineering, business development, education, science,
from across a background. In my current job as Chief Engineer,
I'm not a supervisor for anyone. All of my work and everything
I get done is through influence, and part of that influence is
understanding what the various parties want to do and trying
to find a consensus or trying to find a technical agreement
that still may have a dissent, but something that we can
agree - this is the right technical way to go.
NASA's Associate Administrator for Science,
John Grunsfeld, donned his astronaut flight jacket
for a luncheon in his honor at the National Geographic
Society in Washington. The five-time shuttle astronaut
returned a National Geographic Society flag he'd brought
with him on STS-125, NASA's final mission to
service the Hubble Space Telescope.
As I would go on my expeditions around the world to
climb high mountains I would take a flag with me I thought,
wouldn' it be appropriate this the last
Hubble Servicing Mission going to the world's
greatest telescope, to bring a flag of National
Geographic's that inspired me.
Grunsfeld, who earned the nickname, 'Hubble Repairman
for flying three Hubble servicing missions, is the
last human to touch the telescope. National Geographic,
one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational
institutions in the world, presented Grunsfeld with an
engraved copy of Hubble: Imaging Space and Time,
a Society-published book for which he'd written the forward.
3-2-1 ignition and liftoff Discovery now on
its way to service NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
On February 11, 1997, Space Shuttle Discovery lit
up the pre-dawn sky at the Kennedy Space Center to
begin STS-82, the second planned servicing mission to
the Hubble Space Telescope. During the almost 10-day mission,
Discovery's crew upgraded Hubble with new imaging
devices including the Space Telescope Imaging
Spectrograph, or STIS an instrument designed to
seek out super-massive black holes, and NICMOS and
The Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer,
which astronomers would use to capture
near-infrared views of the universe.
Additional Day of Remembrance tributes to those
members of the NASA family who've given their lives
for exploration and discovery.
Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa,
astronauts and other NASA employees joined the
Sabine County Columbia Memorial Committee and the
Patricia Huffman Smith NASA Museum in Hemphill, Texas,
on February first for a tribute to STS-107.
Ten years ago to the day, the mission's seven astronauts
died when space shuttle Columbia broke apart over
East Texas 16 minutes before its scheduled landing
at the Kennedy Space Center. Local citizens and
personnel from more than 120 federal, state and
regional agencies and organizations worked together
under challenging conditions for three months to
recover Columbia debris and evidence
that led to the cause of the accident.
And, following a public ceremony at the Ames
Research Center in honor of the Apollo 1, Challenger
and Columbia crews, an exhibit was unveiled in
tribute to STS-107 Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla.
Chawla worked at Ames for six years before joining
NASA's astronaut corps. Donated to NASA by her family,
the exhibit contains personal belongings, awards and
other items from her time in Mountain View.
We have items that she used and she wore, including
her Congressional Medal of Honor that was given to her.
And now we have to remind us, and the future generations,
the sacrifice that she made. This is really a
true treasure for us to have here at Ames Research Center.
And that's This Week @NASA.
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