Nasa Nasa | SilverScorpio.Com

NASA to rely on Russia for only ride into space

November 22, 2008 By Rajesh Leave a Comment

Star City, Russia – Astronaut Garrett Reisman uttered a first word in heavily-accented Russian and his homegrown audience exploded into applause, giving a taste of how space can clear national differences.

The welcome back for the crew 17th International Space Station (ISS) mission at Star City, a formerly secret military base outside Moscow, is a familiar affair with the Soviet-tinged feel of war heroes coming home to children holding balloons as they line the walkway.

Two teenage girls cooed over how cute first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was in a huge black-and-white shot above the stage where NASA officials sat with translator ear pieces one row back behind the cosmonauts and officials from the Russian space agency, Roscosmos.

They took turns congratulating “our boys” between bursts of fanfare that NASA staff on the base where astronauts train to fly aboard the Soyuz can all by now hum by heart.

A speech hailing the mission as a step to “putting a man on Mars” by NASA’s Chicago-born director of the human space flight program, Joel Montalbano, was at odds in the stilted atmosphere.

“We’ll have to go through this four times a year now,” John McBrine, the veteran director of US operations at Star City, said, sharing a sigh, a grin and a drink with colleagues afterwards.

McBrine’s was not an idle complaint, he has raised the issue with Houston afraid of time constraints as Star City increases to four launches a year.

That’s because Star City will soon hold the only ticket to the space station. From 2010, NASA will be buying seats for its astronauts on the Soyuz much like space tourists.

Simultaneously, crews will swell from three to six as the expansion of the 100-billion-dollar ISS nears completion on its 10th anniversary Thursday.

NASA’s planned dependence on Russia is controversial as animosity between the Cold War foes mounts over the conflict in Georgia and a host of other security differences.

US president-elect Barack Obama has vowed to speed the development of a successor shuttle.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin has reportedly ordered the agency to look into ways to extend its shuttle flights, but NASA staff say the suspension of flights is already a practical reality.

But Star City veterans believe in the hard-won partnership with Russia which in many ways they pioneered and which, they say, has resulted in a strong relationship stretching into its 15th year.

“While some people may question the International Space Station, the fact remains its an engineering, scientific and foreign management marvel that is pulling humankind into the cosmos,” said. Montalbano.

“No one country has the money to do it all.”

Reisman, still and perhaps forever on a high from his recent space mission, was an example of that cooperation.

He said he now faces a career choice of whether to sign up for one of the last US shuttles for a two-week stint in space or invest in another three-year bout of training for one of the longer Soyuz missions.

There is an inkling of the space race in NASA’s smart-budget re-diversion of funds to new and improved space shuttles. For Russia the station is the only space game in town, Montalbano said.

From “low-earth orbit” it is a three-hour emergency landing back to earth, he said: “We aren’t going to have that luxury on the moon and Mars.”

It is not clear whether there was political will to maintain the ISS beyond its planned 2015 expiration date exists, he said. But until that time, NASA staff say, they have and will work with Russia.

While politics may be professionally avoided, as NASA staff insist, a cultural gap persists in the US, Russia space partnership – at least to the delight of the cosmonauts and astronauts thrown together.

Cosmonaut Sergei Volkov toasted Reisman “as his first American friend” at a small gathering before Jersey-native Reisman prepared to fly home.

There was a crescendo of laughter as they traded memories: Volkov was made to watch the US college cult film Animal House in space while Reisman was taught to take a “snow bath” in sub-zero temperatures during survival training.

“The cosmonauts are often our greatest allies here,” McBrine says. “They spend time in Houston and when they come back here its not about Russians and Americans anymore – it’s one team.” (dpa)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: agency, NASA, NASA american, nasa astronauts, NASA base, NASA city, NASA cosmonauts, NASA flights, NASA fly, NASA houston, NASA international, NASA iss, nasa mars, NASA mcbrine, NASA mission, NASA montalbano, nasa nasa, NASA planned, NASA reisman, NASA russia, NASA russian, NASA shuttle, NASA soyuz, nasa space, NASA staff, NASA star, NASA station, NASA veteran, NASA volkov, NASA ways, NASA year

NASA spacecraft detects buried glaciers on Mars

November 21, 2008 By Rajiv Gupta Leave a Comment

Washington, Nov 21: NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has detected vast Martian glaciers of water ice buried under protective blankets of rocky debris at much lower latitudes than any ice previously identified on the Red Planet.

Scientists analyzed data from the spacecraft’s ground-penetrating radar and suggested that buried glaciers extend for dozens of miles from the edges of mountains or cliffs.

A layer of rocky debris blanketing the ice may have preserved the underground glaciers as remnants from an ice sheet that covered middle latitudes during a past ice age.

This discovery is similar to massive ice glaciers that have been detected under rocky coverings in Antarctica.

“Altogether, these glaciers almost certainly represent the largest reservoir of water ice on Mars that is not in the polar caps,” said John W. Holt of the University of Texas at Austin, who is lead author of the report.

“Just one of the features we examined is three times larger than the city of Los Angeles and up to half a mile thick. And there are many more. In addition to their scientific value, they could be a source of water to support future exploration of Mars,” he added.

The detection of these glaciers may also provide an answer to a Martian puzzle.

Scientists have been puzzled by what are known as aprons, which are gently sloping areas containing rocky deposits at the bases of taller geographical features, since NASA’s Viking orbiters first observed them on the Martian surface in the1970s.

One theory has been that the aprons are flows of rocky debris lubricated by a small amount ice.

Now, the shallow radar instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has provided scientists an answer to this Martian puzzle.

“These results are the smoking gun pointing to the presence of large amounts of water ice at these latitudes,” said Ali Safaeinili, a shallow radar instruments team member with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Radar echoes received by the spacecraft indicated radio waves pass through the aprons and reflect off a deeper surface below without significant loss in strength.

That is expected if the apron areas are composed of thick ice under a relatively thin covering.

The apparent velocity of radio waves passing through the apron is consistent with a composition of water ice.

According to Roberto Seu, leader of the instrument science team at the University of Rome La Sapienza in Italy, “It is now a priority to observe other examples of these aprons to determine whether they are also ice.” (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: NASA, nasa answer, nasa aprons, nasa areas, nasa blankets, nasa buried, nasa covered, nasa debris, nasa detected, nasa features, nasa glaciers, nasa ice, nasa instrument, nasa latitudes, nasa mars, nasa martian, nasa mile, nasa nasa, nasa orbiter, nasa pass, nasa provide, nasa puzzle, nasa radar, nasa radio, nasa reconnaissance, nasa rocky, nasa scientists, NASA spacecraft, nasa thick, nasa water, nasa waves

NASA chief says US must stick to road map to the Moon

November 17, 2008 By Rajesh Leave a Comment

Washington : The present chief of NASA has stressed on the importance for the US to stick to the agency’s road map to the Moon, even after the change of leadership in January 2009, when Barack Obama takes over the presidency of the country.

According to NASA administrator Mike Griffin, the new government should follow the space policy laid out by President George W Bush and endorsed by the Congress.

The policy includes building the International Space Station, retire the space shuttles, return to the Moon, establish a base and continue the exploration to near-Earth asteroids and Mars.

“Two successive Congresses – one Republican and one Democrat – have strongly endorsed the path NASA is on. I think it’s the right path,” Griffin said.

“For 35 years since the Nixon administration, we’ve been on the wrong path. It took the loss of (space shuttle) Columbia and the (accident investigation) report to highlight the strategic issues to get us on the right path,” he explained.

“We’re there. I personally will not be party to taking us off that path. Someone else may wish to, but I do not,” he added.

Griffin’s comments come a day after a space advocacy group proposed that the next administration and Congress head to nearby asteroids and Mars instead of focusing on the Moon.

Under the exploration initiative, NASA plans to land a crew on the Moon by 2020, develop a base and continue on to Mars. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: accident, NASA, NASA administration, NASA asteroids, NASA base, NASA change, NASA congress, NASA continue, NASA endorsed, NASA exploration, NASA focusing, NASA griffin, NASA importance, NASA leadership, NASA loss, NASA map, nasa mars, NASA moon, nasa nasa, NASA near-earth, NASA obama, NASA path, NASA policy, NASA president, NASA shuttle, nasa space, NASA stick, NASA strategic, NASA takes, NASA took, NASA years

Missing NASA tapes may provide clues for unlocking Moon’s mysteries

November 14, 2008 By Rajesh Leave a Comment

Canberra: Missing NASA tapes from the 1960s, which could be the key to unlocking valuable information from the space agency’s Apollo missions to the moon, have been retrieved by scientists.

According to a report by ABC News, an archiving error by NASA in the 1960s resulted in 173 data tapes being misplaced, which hold information about lunar dust that could be vital in expanding science’s understanding of the moon.

The Apollo 11, 12 and 14 missions of the late 1960s carried “dust detectors” that were invented by Perth physicist Dr Brian O’Brien. This information was beamed back to earth and recorded onto tapes.

O’Brien had access to the tapes at University of Sydney, but the scientific papers on moon dust he published with the preliminary findings failed to spark as much interest from the scientific community as he was hoping for.

“These were the only active measurements of moon dust made during the Apollo missions, and no-one thought it was important,” he said.

“But, it’s now realised that dust, to quote Harrison Schmitt, who was the last astronaut to leave the moon, is the number one environmental problem on the moon,” he explained.

O’Brien’s work on lunar dust took a back seat when he started working for Western Australia’s Environmental Protection Authority, and when NASA lost their copies of the tapes it meant the information was basically laying fallow.

“NASA, in the words of their website, misplaced the tapes before they were archived,” said O’Brien.

The revelation of the loss only came two years ago. According to O’Brien, there is no indication as to when exactly the tapes were lost, but he guesses that it was “way, way back”.

When Dr O’Brien learnt of the tape loss, he was contacted by Guy Holmes from data recovery company SpectrumData, who offered to try and get hold of the information.

Holmes has kept the tapes in a climate-controlled room since then, and it was only when he stumbled upon a 1960s IBM729 Mark 5 tape drive at the Australian Computer Museum Society that his company had the ability to unlock the information.

According to Holmes, “The drives are extremely rare, we don’t know of any others that are still operating.”

“It’s going to have to be a custom job to get it working again. It’s certainly not simple, there’s a lot of circuitry in there, it’s old, it’s not as clean as it should be and there’s a lot of work to do,” he added.

Holmes is hopeful of getting the tape recorder working again in January, and then it should only take a week to extract information that has been locked away. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: 1960s, NASA, NASA according, NASA apollo, NASA archived, NASA brien, NASA data, NASA dust, NASA hold, NASA holmes, NASA information, NASA lost, NASA lot, NASA lunar, NASA missions, NASA moon, nasa nasa, NASA recorded, NASA scientific, NASA tapes, NASA working

Distance doesn’t matter – NASA astronauts vote from space

November 6, 2008 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington – Two NASA astronauts didn’t let their distance from Earth deter them from voting in the US presidential election Tuesday.

Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineer Greg Chamitoff voted from their current home in the International Space Station – 322 kilometres above Earth and orbiting at
28,200 kilometres per hour – and beamed back a message urging others to exercise their franchise.

Voting from space was made possible through a 1997 bill passed by Texas legislators, as nearly all the astronauts live in Houston, a statement from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.

NASA’s Johnson Space Centre uplinked a secure electronic ballot – an email with the crew member’s credentials sent from the county clerk. The astronauts then cast their votes and the completed ballot was downlinked and sent back to the county clerk’s office via email.

“Although we’re a long way from home as we orbit 200 miles (322 kilometres) above our beautiful planet, we’re exercising our constitutional right and privilege,” Fincke said in a video message.

“Voting is the most important statement Americans can make in fulfilling a cherished right to select its leaders. If we can vote, so can you.” (dpa)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: although, NASA, nasa americans, nasa astronauts, nasa ballot, nasa clerk, nasa commander, nasa county, nasa credentials, nasa distance, nasa dpa, nasa earth, nasa email, nasa exercise, nasa fincke, nasa home, nasa hour, nasa johnson, nasa kilometres, nasa legislators, nasa member, nasa message, nasa nasa, nasa orbit, nasa others, nasa secure, nasa sent, nasa space, nasa statement, nasa video, nasa voting

NASA to rely on Russia for only ride into space

NASA spacecraft detects buried glaciers on Mars

NASA chief says US must stick to road map to the Moon

Missing NASA tapes may provide clues for unlocking Moon’s mysteries

Distance doesn’t matter – NASA astronauts vote from space

Search More News

Technology News

Ads