This Week at NASA…
“Splash down, splash down.”
The SpaceX Dragon capsule that splashed down Sunday in the Pacific off Mexico’s Baja
California coast is back on dry land.
Its recovery ship returned the spacecraft to San Pedro, California, laden with more
than 3-quarters of a ton of cargo from the International Space Station.
Much of what Dragon brought back was from science experiments conducted on the station
that’ll benefit us here on Earth, as well as provide critical data about how long-duration
spaceflight affects the human body.
Not since the space shuttle have NASA and its international partners been able to return
considerable amounts of research and samples to Earth for analyses.
“Suni you’re going to remove the cover carefully and restrain it on the Nadir side.”
Back on, or, outside the ISS, Expedition 33 Commander Suni Williams of NASA and Flight
Engineer Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency “went EVA.”
The pair bypassed an ammonia leak in one of the station’s coolant lines.
The leak, which began slowly in 2007, had grown recently.
The spacewalk was the 166th on the station, and the third since August by Williams and
Hoshide.
Space Shuttle Endeavour debuted at its temporary display pavilion in a grand opening ceremony
hosted by the California Science Center in Los Angeles.
Endeavour will make its permanent home at the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center now
under construction at the CSC.
Among those attending the ceremony were astronauts, public officials and local school children,
many of whom it’s hoped will be inspired by Endeavour to join our next generation of
explorers and scientists.
Meanwhile, Atlantis, the last NASA space shuttle to fly in space, also became the last to be
officially retired.
Beginning at the Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building, Atlantis rolled
the ten miles to the KSC Visitor Complex where it will go on permanent public display.
The orbiter stopped along the route for its retirement ceremony.
“America still leads the world in exploration and we’re building on the many fine accomplishments
of the space shuttle program to take us where we have not gone before, to places where our
imagination and our aspiration tells us we can go if we channel the passions that built
and launched Atlantis and create a new day.”
“It is my sincere hope that one day some young boy or girl is going to look at Atlantis
and it’s going spark that dream of exploration in space.”
NASA retains Atlantis’s title.
The public can see it at the visitor complex, where a grand opening for Atlantis’s new
“space” is planned for next July.
Meanwhile, the Kennedy Space Center continues its modernization and refurbishment as the
spaceport of the future.
The large space shuttle-era work platforms have been removed from high bay 3 of Kennedy’s
Vehicle Assembly Building.
That’s part of the center-wide effort to accommodate NASA’s Space Launch System and
a variety of other spacecraft.
When updating is complete, KSC will safely process, assemble, transport and launch NASA’s
next generation of rockets and spacecraft.
NASA researchers, project managers and program leads gathered in Huntsville for the first
annual review of the Technology Demonstration Missions.
TDMs bridge the gap between laboratory development of revolutionary, cross-cutting technologies
and their practical demonstration in the space environment.
“These accomplishments included the MEDLI experiment that flew in on the Mars Science
Laboratory, the Human Exploration Robotic Technology experiment on space station that
was the Robonaut and the Spheres demonstration and several other accomplishments that we
had.”
Hi, I'm David Bish, co-investigator on the CheMin instrument on the Mars Science Laboratory
and this is your Curiosity rover update.
We have been spending some time in an area called Rocknest, and this week we delivered
a scoop of a dune to Curiosity.
CheMin performs X-ray diffraction measurements on powdered rocks and soil samples.
An X-ray diffraction is the best method for telling us what minerals are present in a
rock or a soil because it is sensitive to the arrangements of atoms in minerals.
As the X-rays strike the soil sample, CheMin shows us how mineral crystals distinctively
interact with X-rays, and this image shows us our first X-ray diffraction results.
The diffraction signals appear on the detector as rings that represent the fingerprint of
the minerals.
The rings tell us not only what minerals are present in the soil and but also how abundant
they are.
The CheMin data provide us distinctive signatures of the minerals plagioclase feldspar, pyroxenes,
and olivine.
Peridot is a variety of olivine.
Just keep in mind that the olivine in the soil sample is much smaller than these crystals.
Roughly half of the soil consists of poorly crystalline material, such as volcanic glass.
Thus, this Martian soil appears very similar to some weathered basaltic soils that we see
on Earth, in places like the flanks of Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
You can appreciate how revolutionary CheMin is when you consider that instruments of this
type on Earth are typically about the size of a double-wide refrigerator and the CheMin
instrument on the Mars Science Laboratory is about the size of a shoebox.
CheMin has been modified for use on Earth in places such as Antarctica and the Arctic.
It’s also been applied for detection of counterfeit pharmaceuticals around the world
and a modification of the instrument has been used in archeological studies to help us understand
the nature of surfaces and how might we protect them.
In the coming weeks and months, we’re excited to measure more X-ray diffraction data on
soils and rocks to tell us more about the geology of Gale Crater.
This has been your Curiosity rover report.
Stay tuned for futher updates.
Marshall Space Flight Center astrophysicist Dr. Chryssa Kouveliotou has been selected
by Time Magazine as one of the twenty-five most influential people in space.
A NASA astrophysicist since 2004, Kouveliotou is an associated scientist of NASA’s Swift
mission; a member of the NuSTAR Science Team; and, co-investigator on the Gamma-ray Burst
Monitor, an instrument flying aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope.
As for Fermi, astronomers using data from the Gamma-ray Space Telescope have made the
most accurate measurement of starlight in the universe and used it to establish the
total amount of light from all the stars that have ever shone.
Light from stars that have stopped shining still travels throughout the universe, creating
a sort of cosmic fog.
By measuring average amounts of gamma radiation generated by black-hole-fueled galaxies traveling
through this fog over the past 9-point-six billion years, astronomers can estimate the
fog’s thickness, or density.
That comes to 1-point-4 stars per 100 billion cubic light years.
Or, in other words, the average distance between each star is 4,150 light years.
The Visitor Center at Goddard Space Flight Center is celebrating its newest exhibit --- a
replica of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that is circling the moon.
The LRO team at Goddard spent more than a year refurbishing this mechanical prototype
to make it look exactly like the spacecraft in orbit – right down to the thermal blankets.
“This is a wonderfully exciting day.
It’s an exhibit that tells the LRO story and NASA’s story very well and we expect
that this will be a real attraction for visitors to Goddard.”
The interactive exhibit allows visitors to browse the images LRO has captured, learn
about the mission and meet the team.
Launched in 2009, LRO has captured some of the most detailed images ever taken of the
lunar landscape providing scientists with critical data about Earth’s closest neighbor.
“It’s not a place that, you know, we’ve been there and that’s it.
It’s a place that we need to continue to explore and learn about because it can tell
us so much about our entire solar system.”
The information LRO is returning will help scientists identify resources for future exploration
and scientific research of the moon.
Thirty-nine years ago, on November 3, 1973, Mariner 10, the seventh successful launch
in the Mariner series of spacecraft, was sent into space at the Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station in Florida.
Mariner 10 became the first spacecraft to visit Mercury, the first to use the gravitational
pull of one planet to reach another and the first to visit two planets, Mercury and Venus.
Mariner 10 measured each planet’s environment, atmosphere, surface, and body characteristics.
Data from Mariner 10 was used to help plan NASA’s current MESSENGER mission.
And that’s This Week @NASA.
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