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Narrator: 2013 was a big year for Ames Research
Center's space exploration programs, including
several new launches, and continuing a long
history of cutting-edge innovations.
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Designed and built at Ames, the Lunar Atmosphere
and Dust Environment Explorer or LADEE Mission was
successfully launched and sent to orbit the Moon
to conduct science operations.
The spacecraft is studying the extremely thin
atmosphere or exosphere of the Moon and measuring
the amount of dust found in this region of space.
Ames is managing the science operations for the
LADEE Mission, as well as commanding and
controlling the spacecraft using the
Multi-Mission Operations Center.
This facility is also being used by controllers
for the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph
or IRIS Mission.
The IRIS spacecraft successfully launched this
year on its mission to study the region of space
around the surface of the sun.
Using state of the art imaging technologies, IRIS
is gathering extremely high-resolution data about
the energy release from the sun that creates what
is commonly referred to as space weather.
The Kepler Mission continues to make
groundbreaking discoveries and redefine our
understanding of planetary systems and stars in
the galaxy.
The team has found hundreds of new planet
candidates this year and continues to discover
smaller, Earth-sized planets orbiting in the
habitable zone of their sun-like stars.
For Ames researchers, 2013 could be called the
"Year of the Nanosatellite!"
Several of these tiny satellites were built and
sent into space, including the innovative
PhoneSat cubesat.
PhoneSat was created as a technology demonstration
mission to prove that a satellite based on a
smartphone could function in space.
This year, the team successfully flew 4 of the
tiny satellites in space and future versions are
already in development.
The TechEdSat cubesat was also built at Ames as a
technology demonstration.
It tested a new "exo-braking" parachute system
that could allow satellite payloads to safely
re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.
In collaboration with the Air Force,
a team at Ames built the first
Nanosatellite Launch Adapter System.
NLAS is designed to launch multiple cubesats from
rockets that could previously only carry
two or three at a time.
The Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames is
working to improve the capability, functionality
and reliability of robotic systems that are key to
the future of space exploration.
On three different occasions this year, astronauts
on the International Space Station remotely
operated the Ames-developed K10 planetary rover
located at the Center's Marscape.
These tests were the first time an astronaut in
space controlled a rover on a planetary surface.
2013 was also a year that Ames researchers
conducted experiments on the
International Space Station to better
understand the effects of microgravity.
Seedling Growth-1 was designed to study
how plants respond and adapt to a range
of low gravity environments.
The results of these studies could be key to
supporting astronauts for
long-duration space missions.
Ames also developed the Cell Biology
Technology Demonstration.
The system is a simple, yet highly effective
method, for conducting cell biology tests
while in space.
A team at Ames tested an innovative and compact
heat shield that could expand like an umbrella to
enable much larger payloads for planetary entry
than are currently possible.
Wind tunnel tests on models of the NASA Space
Launch System were conducted at Ames to help
improve the design and stability of NASA's next
heavy-launch vehicle.
This summer NASA launched Spaceloft-7 and
Spaceloft-8, two sub-orbital rockets, from
Spaceport America near Las Cruces, New Mexico.
They achieved a record altitude of 73.9 miles,
while carrying a variety of experiments
in microgravity.
Ames manages the selection and development of
payloads for the suborbital flights program.
The Curiosity rover continues to explore the
surface of Mars and a team from Ames is using
their X-ray diffraction instrument called CheMin
to analyze the soil and find out exactly what
minerals it contains.
Ames researcher David Blake developed the CheMin
instrument that is one of the key tools being used
to identify whether the conditions for life could
have existed at one time on the surface of Mars.
Using instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter, researchers from Ames and JPL are working
to see if a form of salty water is responsible for
the seasonal slopes that appear on the sides of
Martian hills and mountains, an area where
scientists generally believe conditions to be dry.
Researchers at Ames worked in partnership with the
Russian Space Agency on a life science experiment
called Bion-1.
The mission was to study how life adapts to
microgravity in space and then re-adapts to
gravity on Earth.
The Ames-developed Pioneer 11 spacecraft reached
its 40th anniversary in space.
Launched in April of 1973, Pioneer 11 flew past
Jupiter and Saturn and collected tremendous
amounts of data about both before communication
with the spacecraft ended in 1995.
As they did in 2013, scientists, researchers and
staff are hard at work to continue their mission
to make new discoveries in 2014 and beyond!
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