Category Archives: Space Station

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CAPE CANAVERAL (CBSMiami/AP) The 1-million-mile destination for a space weather satellite isnt what has the space community excited. Its the rockets ocean landing that everyone will be monitoring after Sundays launch.

The SpaceX company will take a second stab at landing a booster on a platform floating off the Florida coast; last months experiment ended in a fireball.

The close, but no cigar attempt on Jan. 10 was caused by an insufficient amount of hydraulic fluid. SpaceX added extra fluid for Sundays sunset landing attempt. But the booster will fly back faster this time given its particular course, and company officials are less certain of success in this attempt to demonstrate rocket reusability.

So on one side we fixed the problem, on the other side this trajectory is a lot more aggressive and a lot more difficult, SpaceX vice president Hans Koenigsmann said Saturday. He stressed that the test is secondary and entirely separate from the primary mission of launching the Deep Space Climate Observatory for NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

Excellent weather is forecast for the 6:10 p.m. launch.

The Deep Space Climate Observatory is the revitalized version of the Earth-observing spacecraft conceived in the late 1990s by then Vice President Al Gore. It was called Triana back then, after the sailor who first spotted land on Christopher Columbus famed voyage.

The Triana program was suspended, however, and the spacecraft put in storage in 2001. The spacecraft was tested seven years later and refurbished for this new $340 million mission known as DSCOVR, pronounced discover, a joint effort by NASA, NOAA and the Air Force.

DSCOVR will travel to the so-called Lagrange point, or L1, a spot 1 million miles from Earth and 92 million miles from the sun, where the gravity fields are neutralized.

The spacecraft will observe Earth from this ideal vantage point scientists expect wow pictures of the home planet but its primary objective will be to monitor outbursts from the sun that could disrupt communications and power back on Earth.

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Rocket Booster Aiming For Ocean Barge In Redo Of SpaceX Test

Projet M 2014
Watch your Full Movies Click Link Play Here http://tinyurl.com/ooru4mj Create your account and you will be re-directed to your movie!! Projet-M (2014) Four astronauts have to stay 1000 days...

By: Sherni Cing

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Projet M 2014 - Video

February is National African American History Month (HL02)
All Hands Update February 2, 2015 #1 February is National African American History Month; NASA Sailor Calls USS Theodore Roosevelt from International Space Station.

By: U.S. Navy

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February is National African American History Month (HL02) - Video

Synopsis | The Ranchers Take A Wife [The Men Of Space Station One #1] (Siren Publishing Men
THE SYNOPSIS OF YOUR FAVORITE BOOK =--- Where to buy this book? ISBN: 9781619268067 Book Synopsis of The Ranchers Take a Wife [The Men of Space Station One #1] (Siren Publishing...

By: Heavy truck

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Synopsis | The Ranchers Take A Wife [The Men Of Space Station One #1] (Siren Publishing Men - Video

Stunning Flyover of US Eastern Seaboard with Aurora Borealis Meeting Sunrise
http://www.undergroundworldnews.com This is a Vine clip from the Space Station. It catches an Amazing event as the Aurora Borealis Meets the Sunrise On the US Eastern Seaboard! More at Link:...

By: Dahboo777

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Stunning Flyover of US Eastern Seaboard with Aurora Borealis Meeting Sunrise - Video

ATV-1 reentry
Europe #39;s space freighter ATV Jules Verne burning up over an uninhabited area of the Pacific Ocean at the end of its mission. ATV Jules Verne was the first of ESA #39;s Automated Transfer...

By: European Space Agency, ESA

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ATV-1 reentry - Video

Space Station Live: Still to Come in 2015
NASA Commentator Amiko Kauderer talks with Kenny Todd, the International Space Station Mission Operations Integration Manager, about some of the highlights of station activities in the coming...

By: ReelNASA

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Space Station Live: Still to Come in 2015 - Video

Drastic reductions in Arctic sea ice in the last decade may be intensifying the chemical release of bromine into the atmosphere, resulting in ground-level ozone depletion and the deposit of toxic mercury in the Arctic, according to a new NASA-led study.

The connection between changes in the Arctic Ocean's ice cover and bromine chemical processes is determined by the interaction between the salt in sea ice, frigid temperatures and sunlight. When these mix, the salty ice releases bromine into the air and starts a cascade of chemical reactions called a "bromine explosion." These reactions rapidly create more molecules of bromine monoxide in the atmosphere. Bromine then reacts with a gaseous form of mercury, turning it into a pollutant that falls to Earth's surface.

Bromine also can remove ozone from the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere. Despite ozone's beneficial role blocking harmful radiation in the stratosphere, ozone is a pollutant in the ground-level troposphere.

A team from the United States, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom, led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., produced the study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research- Atmospheres. The team combined data from six NASA, European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency satellites; field observations and a model of how air moves in the atmosphere to link Arctic sea ice changes to bromine explosions over the Beaufort Sea, extending to the Amundsen Gulf in the Canadian Arctic.

"Shrinking summer sea ice has drawn much attention to exploiting Arctic resources and improving maritime trading routes," Nghiem said. "But the change in sea ice composition also has impacts on the environment. Changing conditions in the Arctic might increase bromine explosions in the future."

The study was undertaken to better understand the fundamental nature of bromine explosions, which first were observed in the Canadian Arctic more than two decades ago. The team of scientists wanted to find if the explosions occur in the troposphere or higher in the stratosphere.

Nghiem's team used the topography of mountain ranges in Alaska and Canada as a "ruler" to measure the altitude at which the explosions took place. In the spring of 2008, satellites detected increased concentrations of bromine, which were associated with a decrease of gaseous mercury and ozone. After the researchers verified the satellite observations with field measurements, they used an atmospheric model to study how the wind transported the bromine plumes across the Arctic.

The model, together with satellite observations, showed the Alaskan Brooks Range and the Canadian Richardson and Mackenzie mountains stopped bromine from moving into Alaska's interior. Since most of these mountains are lower than 6,560 feet (2,000 meters), the researchers determined the bromine explosion was confined to the lower troposphere.

"If the bromine explosion had been in the stratosphere, 5 miles [8 kilometers] or higher above the ground, the mountains would not have been able to stop it and the bromine would have been transported inland," Nghiem said.

After the researchers found that bromine explosions occur in the lowest level of the atmosphere, they could relate their origin to sources on the surface. Their model, tracing air rising from the salty ice, tied the bromine releases to recent changes in Arctic sea ice that have led to a much saltier sea ice surface.

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The Heat discusses growth in space exploration
Space exploration has seen a resurgence of sorts with more countries and more planned missions to Pluto, Mars, Jupiter and beyond. In 1961, then U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced an...

By: CCTV America

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The Heat discusses growth in space exploration - Video

One may think that participation with the International Space Station would be restricted to an exclusive club of high ranking officials and agencies. In actuality, students, teachers and commercial companies have also been taking advantage of the station's unique environment for years. One of those commercial companies, Houston-based Odyssey Space Research, plans to bring the experience to the rest of us via our mobile devices!

International Space Station National Laboratory partner NanoRacks LLC has a collaboration with Odyssey and Apple. This relationship enabled Odyssey to send two iPhone 4's to the space station as part of the STS-135 mission on July 8, 2011. These phones are just like the ones you can find at the store, but with certain alterations to meet NASA flight certification standards. It took less than a year to make the necessary changes and launch the devices to the station.

The iPhone 4 was selected for its mix of features, according to Odyssey CEO Brian Rishikof. "It had a three-axis gyro, and accelerometer, a high resolution camera and screen, and the means to manipulate the image. We had done some projects in the past that used all those features, but of course it was big, dedicated equipment and suddenly here it is in this small little package," said Rishikof.

The smartphones use the same software as their Earth counterparts and Odyssey used standard tools to develop a new app called SpaceLab for iOS, which will enable the planned research aboard the station. The app is also available for people to download to their own devices.

These devices are part of an investigation called NanoRacks Smartphone, which looks at how the phones will operate in space. The hope is to use the compact hardware in future research studies and to augment crew performance and productivity in operational activities. Currently there are four separate experiments that will run on the smartphones via SpaceLab for iOS.

The first study is Limb Tracker, a navigation experiment using photos of the Earth and image overlay manipulation to match the horizon to an arc to give an estimate of altitude and off-axis angles. Next is the Sensor Calibration or Sensor Cal experiment, which uses reference photos and the three-axis gyro and accelerometer for calibration to improve measurement accuracy. The State Acquisition or State Acq experiment also uses photos, but this time to estimate spacecraft orbital parameters. After the first three investigations are complete, the Lifecycle Flight Instrumentation or LFI experiment will operate to track the impact of radiation on the phones. To do this, the devices will monitor radiation-induced single bit upsets, which are unintended changes in memory location values.

One of the other goals in sending the phones to the space station is to engage the public. The SpaceLab for iOS app for users on the ground is identical to the software that was downloaded onto the space devices prior to launch.

According to Rishikof, there is a setting in the application that indicates if the equipment is in microgravity or not. The software operates differently to accommodate the presence of gravity. "There are 200 million devices that run the operating system and could potentially run the application," said Rishikof. "Which means there are 200 million users out there that could get a sense of what it does; a sense of what an experiment in space might look like; a sense of participation."

The investigation is planned to run on the space station in the fall of 2011. The phones are not intended to have the same leisure appeal as they do on Earth, however, given the lack of iTunes, games and Internet or roaming connectivity. "People have asked me if we were loading games on the phones for the crew. No, we did not want them to be distracted, though certainly it would have been fun!" said Rishikof.

Once the investigation completes, the smartphones will return to Earth at the next opportunity. Scientists will then analyze the stored data to better understand how the devices can be used for future research on the space station and how the phones react to the space environment.

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