On May 20, 2009, during his second attempt to reach the highest point on Earth’s continental crust, former NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski successfully carried the moon rocks with him to the summit of Mt. Everest. Part of the Himalaya range in Asia, Mt. Everest is located on the border between Sagarmatha Zone, Nepal and Tibet, China - a perilous journey for Parazynski and his team.

Parazynski collected a rock from the summit of Mt. Everest to accompany the lunar samples on their journey back to space.

On Jan. 6, at Space Center Houston, Parazynski presented the rocks to NASA astronaut and STS-130 Commander George Zamka during a special ceremony. Zamka will deliver the rocks to the space station during Space Shuttle Endeavour's mission where they will reside in the Tranquility module, also being delivered to the station by the crew.

Fittingly, the moon rocks were originally collected by former NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong from the Sea of Tranquility on the lunar surface more than four decades ago.

After being presented with the moon and Earth rocks, Zamka expressed the significance of the event.

“These rocks have already done more than a human being can do in a lifetime,” Zamka said. “For 4 million years they were on the moon undisturbed. They got on a spaceship, traveled to Earth, went up to Mt. Everest. So in a way they have tremendous history, and now they’re going to travel 17,500 mph back to space, where they will reside in the cupola of the Tranquility node.”

Zamka said the rocks will be a reminder to the astronauts on the space station about “what human beings can do and what our challenges are. So this is a tremendous opportunity.”

During the presentation, Parazynski gave a narration of his journey to the top of Mt. Everest. He explained that a part of his motivation to carry along the lunar samples was pride to have been “born in this great country of ours and growing up in the shadows of many heroes, such as John Glenn, Jacques Cousteau, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin,” among others.

“These are the folks who I really looked up to as a kid,” Parazynski said. “It’s great to grow up in a country where you can walk in the paths of these types of people. One of the things I like to do is to honor them and pay tribute to them, and that is why I took a sample of the moon with me to Mt. Everest.”

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Cosmic rays consist mainly of protons that move through space at nearly the speed of light. In their journey across the galaxy, the particles are deflected by magnetic fields. This scrambles their paths and masks their origins.

"Understanding the sources of cosmic rays is one of Fermi's key goals," said Stefan Funk, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), jointly located at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University, Calif.

When cosmic rays collide with interstellar gas, they produce gamma rays.

"Fermi now allows us to compare emission from remnants of different ages and in different environments," Funk added. He presented the findings Monday at the American Physical Society meeting in Washington, D.C.

Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) mapped billion-electron-volt (GeV) gamma-rays from three middle-aged supernova remnants -- known as W51C, W44 and IC 443 -- that were never before resolved at these energies. (The energy of visible light is between 2 and 3 electron volts.) Each remnant is the expanding debris of a massive star that blew up between 4,000 and 30,000 years ago.

In addition, Fermi's LAT also spied GeV gamma rays from Cassiopeia A (Cas A), a supernova remnant only 330 years old. Ground-based observatories, which detect gamma rays thousands of times more energetic than the LAT was designed to see, have previously detected Cas A.

"Older remnants are extremely bright in GeV gamma rays, but relatively faint at higher energies. Younger remnants show a different behavior," explained Yasunobu Uchiyama, a Panofsky Fellow at SLAC. "Perhaps the highest-energy cosmic rays have left older remnants, and Fermi sees emission from trapped particles at lower energies."

In 1949, the Fermi telescope's namesake, physicist Enrico Fermi, suggested that the highest-energy cosmic rays were accelerated in the magnetic fields of gas clouds. In the decades that followed, astronomers showed that supernova remnants are the galaxy's best candidate sites for this process.

Young supernova remnants seem to possess both stronger magnetic fields and the highest-energy cosmic rays. Stronger fields can keep the highest-energy particles in the remnant's shock wave long enough to speed them to the energies observed.

The Fermi observations show GeV gamma rays coming from places where the remnants are known to be interacting with cold, dense gas clouds.

"We think that protons accelerated in the remnant are colliding with gas atoms, causing the gamma-ray emission," Funk said. An alternative explanation is that fast-moving electrons emit gamma rays as they fly past the nuclei of gas atoms. "For now, we can't distinguish between these possibilities, but we expect that further observations with Fermi will help us to do so," he added.

Either way, these observations validate the notion that supernova remnants act as enormous accelerators for cosmic particles.

"How fitting it is that Fermi seems to be confirming the bold idea advanced over 60 years ago by the scientist after whom it was named," noted Roger Blandford, director of KIPAC.

Related Links:

› Additional information and resolutions of supernova remnant media
› Additional information and resolutions of pion creation media

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View my blog's last three great articles....

U.S. reporters may ask questions in person from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and NASA Headquarters in Washington. A portion of the news conference will be set aside for Japanese reporters.

To participate in the news conference, U.S. journalists must call the public affairs office at their preferred NASA center by 5 p.m. Wednesday. Media must be in place at participating locations at least 20 minutes prior to the start of the news conference.

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the 40-minute news conference. For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:

For more information about the STS-130 mission and its crew, visit: