NASA – Page 12 – Take off with Natarajan

Joke of the Day…” Message to Moon…” !!!

March 14, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

I used to be a taxi driver but I had to quit…

I couldn’t stand people talking behind my back.

…………………..

When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training. One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew, who were walking among the rocks.

The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people:

“What are these guys in the big suits doing?”

One of the astronauts said they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment, the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon.

Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, “Why certainly!” and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder’s comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate.

So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder’s message to the moon.

Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After he finally stopped laughing, the translator relayed the message:

“Watch out for these guys! They’ve come to steal your land.”….

SOURCE:::::: http://www.joke a day.com

Natarajan

Image of the Day… ” Return of Expedition 42 to Earth ” …

March 14, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

The Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft is seen as it lands with International Space Station Expedition 42 commander Barry Wilmore of NASA, Alexander Samokutyaev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Elena Serova of Roscosmos near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. The landing took place on the evening of Wednesday, March 11 in the U.S, and early in the morning on Thursday, March 12, in Kazakhstan.

The three crew members returned to Earth after a 167-day mission on the orbital outpost that included hundreds of scientific experiments and several spacewalks to prepare the orbiting laboratory for future arrivals by U.S. commercial crew spacecraft.

SOURCE:::: http://www.nasa.gov

Natarajan

Image For The Day…. Dwarf Planet Ceres as Seen From Dawn Spacecraft Of NASA…

March 7, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has become the first mission to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet. The spacecraft was approximately 38,000 miles (61,000) kilometers from Ceres when it was captured by the dwarf planet’s gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST (7:39 a.m. EST) Friday, March 6.

This image of Ceres was taken by the Dawn spacecraft on March 1, just a few days before the mission achieved orbit around the previously unexplored world. The image shows Ceres as a crescent, mostly in shadow because the spacecraft’s trajectory put it on a side of Ceres that faces away from the sun until mid-April. When Dawn emerges from Ceres’ dark side, it will deliver ever-sharper images as it spirals to lower orbits around the planet.

The image was obtained at a distance of about 30,000 miles (about 48,000 kilometers) at a sun-Ceres-spacecraft angle, or phase angle, of 123 degrees. Image scale on Ceres is 1.9 miles (2.9 kilometers) per pixel. Ceres has an average diameter of about 590 miles (950 kilometers).

Dawn’s mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The University of California, Los Angeles, is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of acknowledgments, http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

SOURCE:::: http://www.nasa.gov

Natarajan

” MARS once had More Water Than Earth”s Arctic Ocean….”

March 6, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

NASA Research Suggests Mars Once Had More Water than Earth’s Arctic Ocean

Mars once held more water than Earth's Arctic Ocean

NASA scientists have determined that a primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth’s Arctic Ocean and that the Red Planet has lost 87 percent of that water to space.

Image Credit:

NASA/GSFC

A primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth’s Arctic Ocean, according to NASA scientists who, using ground-based observatories, measured water signatures in the Red Planet’s atmosphere.

Scientists have been searching for answers to why this vast water supply left the surface. Details of the observations and computations appear in Thursday’s edition of Science magazine.

“Our study provides a solid estimate of how much water Mars once had, by determining how much water was lost to space,” said Geronimo Villanueva, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the new paper. “With this work, we can better understand the history of water on Mars.”

Perhaps about 4.3 billion years ago, Mars would have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 450 feet (137 meters) deep. More likely, the water would have formed an ocean occupying almost half of Mars’ northern hemisphere, in some regions reaching depths greater than a mile (1.6 kilometers).

The new estimate is based on detailed observations made at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, and the W.M. Keck Observatory and NASA Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii. With these powerful instruments, the researchers distinguished the chemical signatures of two slightly different forms of water in Mars’ atmosphere. One is the familiar H₂O. The other is HDO, a naturally occurring variation in which one hydrogen is replaced by a heavier form, called deuterium.

By comparing the ratio of HDO to H₂O in water on Mars today and comparing it with the ratio in water trapped in a Mars meteorite dating from about 4.5 billion years ago, scientists can measure the subsequent atmospheric changes and determine how much water has escaped into space.

The team mapped H₂O and HDO levels several times over nearly six years, which is equal to approximately three Martian years. The resulting data produced global snapshots of each compound, as well as their ratio. These first-of-their-kind maps reveal regional variations called microclimates and seasonal changes, even though modern Mars is essentially a desert.

The research team was especially interested in regions near Mars’ north and south poles, because the polar ice caps hold the planet’s largest known water reservoir. The water stored there is thought to capture the evolution of Mars’ water during the wet Noachian period, which ended about 3.7 billion years ago, to the present.

From the measurements of atmospheric water in the near-polar region, the researchers determined the enrichment, or relative amounts of the two types of water, in the planet’s permanent ice caps. The enrichment of the ice caps told them how much water Mars must have lost – a volume 6.5 times larger than the volume in the polar caps now. That means the volume of Mars’ early ocean must have been at least 20 million cubic kilometers (5 million cubic miles).

Based on the surface of Mars today, a likely location for this water would be in the Northern Plains, considered a good candidate because of the low-lying ground. An ancient ocean there would have covered 19 percent of the planet’s surface. By comparison, the Atlantic Ocean occupies 17 percent of Earth’s surface.

“With Mars losing that much water, the planet was very likely wet for a longer period of time than was previously thought, suggesting it might have been habitable for longer,” said Michael Mumma, a senior scientist at Goddard and the second author on the paper.

NASA is studying Mars with a host of spacecraft and rovers under the agency’s Mars Exploration Program, including the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, and the MAVEN orbiter, which arrived at the Red Planet in September 2014 to study the planet’s upper atmosphere.

In 2016, a Mars lander mission called InSight will launch to take a first look into the deep interior of Mars. The agency also is participating in ESA’s (European Space Agency) 2016 and 2018 ExoMars missions, including providing telecommunication radios to ESA’s 2016 orbiter and a critical element of the astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars rover. NASA’s next rover, heading to Mars in 2020, will carry instruments to conduct unprecedented science and exploration technology investigations on the Red Planet.

NASA’s Mars Exploration Program seeks to characterize and understand Mars as a dynamic system, including its present and past environment, climate cycles, geology and biological potential. In parallel, NASA is developing the human spaceflight capabilities needed for future round-trip missions to Mars in the 2030s.

To view a video of this finding, visit:

http://youtu.be/WH8kHncLZwM

SOURCE:::::;www.nasa.gov

Natarajan

Image of the Day…. Smallest Full Moon On March 5 2015…

March 6, 2015March 6, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

EarthSky Facebook friend Curtis Beaird in south Georgia captured the shot above.

Tonight’s full moon is the smallest full moon of the year. We’ve heard it called the micro-moon or mini-moon. This March 5, 2015 full moon lies about 50,000 kilometers (30,000 miles) farther away from Earth than will the year’s closest full moon – the full supermoon and Northern Hemisphere’s Harvest Moon – on September 28. The March 5 moon is the year’s farthest full moon because full moon and lunar apogee – the moon’s farthest point in its monthly orbit – both fall on the same date.

Every year has a closest full moon, of course. The mini-moon returns about one month and 18 days later with each passing year, meaning that, in 2016, the year’s smallest full moon will come on April 22. In 2017, it’ll come June 9. In 2018, the year’s smallest full moon will come on July 27. And so on, no doubt until our earthly calendars are long forgotten.

By the way, as an aside, mark your calendar for that September 28, 2015 full moon – the Harvest moon – and closest full moon of this year. It’ll also stage a total eclipse of the moon, which some will call a Blood Moon eclipse. It concludes a series of four straight total lunar eclipses that started on April 15, 2014.

The crest of the moon’s full phase comes on March 5, 2015 at precisely 18:05 Universal Time.

Although the full moon occurs at the same instant all around the world, our clocks read differently in different time zones. In the United States, the moon turns exactly full onThursday, March 5, at 1:05 p.m. EST, 12:05 p.m. CST, 11:05 a.m. MST or 10:05 a.m. PST. So the Americas won’t see the moon at the instant it turns full because it happens during the daytime hours, when the moon is below the horizon and under our feet.

The moon looks full for several days around full moon. William Vann submitted this shot. It’s the rising almost-full moon on March 4, 2015.

No matter where you live worldwide, look for the full moon tonight, lighting up the nighttime from Thursday nightfall until dawn Friday. As with any moon at the vicinity of full moon, tonight’s moon rises in the east at early evening, climbs highest in the sky around midnight and sets in the west in the vicinity of sunrise.

In North America, we often call the March full moon by the names of Sap Moon, Crow Moon, Worm Moon or Lenten Moon. But in recent years, we’ve also heard the term mini-moon to describe the year’s smallest full moon. It’s not a name (like Sap Moon). It’s not bound to a particular month or season. It’s just a term to describe the year’s smallest moon.

What is a mini-moon or micro-moon? Like most astronomers, we at EarthSky have always referred to the year’s smallest full moon as an apogee full moon. The terms mini-moon andmicro-moon stem from popular culture. They roll off the tongue more easily than apogee full moon. As some indication of the appellation’s growing popularity, we’ve found that theNASA Astronomy Photo of the Day and timeanddate.org sites both like to call the smallest full moon a micro-moon.

Billie C. Barb submitted this photo of the rising moon on March 4, 2015 from the state of Washington, saying it was “. . . a love affair between the moon and the evergreens.”

Bottom line: The micro-moon or mini-moon – smallest full moon of 2015 – comes on March 5, 2015 It lies about 50,000 kilometers (30,000 miles) farther away from Earth than will the full moon supermoon of September 28, 2015.

SOURCE:::: http://www.earhskynews.org

Natarajan

Image of the Day…. ” Astronaut Salutes Leonard Nimoy From Orbit…”

March 2, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

International Space Station astronaut Terry Virts (@AstroTerry) tweeted this image of a Vulcan hand salute from orbit as a tribute to actor Leonard Nimoy, who died on Friday, Feb. 27, 2015. Nimoy played science officer Mr. Spock in the Star Trek series that served as an inspiration to generations of scientists, engineers and sci-fi fans around the world.

Cape Cod and Boston, Massachusetts, Nimoy’s home town, are visible through the station window.

SOURCE:::::: http://www.nasa.gov

Natarajan

Watch Sunday Spacewalk on March 1…

February 28, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

NASA astronaut Terry, Virts Flight Engineer of Expedition 42 is seen working to complete a cable routing task while near the forward facing port of the Harmony module on the International Space Station. February 21, 2015. Image credit: NASA

On Sunday (March 1, 2015) two NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will perform the last of Expedition 42’s scheduled spacewalks. The spacewalk will begin around 6:10 a.m. Central Time and is expected to last about 6 hours, 45 minutes. NASA Television coverage on Sunday will begin at 5 a.m. Central time. Watch here

NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts completed the first spacewalk on February 21 and the second on Wednesday (February 25.)

The spacewalks are designed to prepare the orbiting laboratory for future arrivals by U.S. commercial crew spacecraft. The astronauts are laying cables along the forward end of the U.S. segment to bring power and communication to two International Docking Adapters slated to arrive later this year. The new docking ports will welcome U.S. commercial spacecraft launching from Florida beginning in 2017, permitting the standard station crew size to grow from six to seven and potentially double the amount of crew time devoted to research.

When astronaut Terry Virts returned the airlock after Wednesday’s spacewalk, he reported a minor seepage of water in his helmet. The Mission Management Team reviewed the status of spacewalk preparations as well as an analysis of the minor seepage of water and on Friday morning, the team expressed a high degree of confidence was that the suit’s systems are all in good shape and gave approval to proceed with Sunday’s spacewalk as planned.

Spacewalk specialists reported that Virts’ suit — serial number 3005 — has a history of what is called “sublimator water carryover”, a small amount of residual water in the sublimator cooling component that can condense once the environment around the suit is re-pressurized following its exposure to vacuum during a spacewalk, resulting in a tiny amount of water pushing into the helmet.

Spacewalkers Terry Virts and Barry Wilmore work outside Pressurized Mating Adapter-2. Image credit: NASA TV

$NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore works outside the International Space Station on the first of three spacewalks preparing the station for future arrivals by U.S. commercial crew spacecraft, Saturday, February 21, 2015. Fellow spacewalker Terry Virts, seen reflected in the visor, shared this photograph on social media. View larger. \ Image credit; NASA$

NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore works outside the International Space Station on the first of three spacewalks preparing the station for future arrivals by U.S. commercial crew spacecraft, Saturday, February 21, 2015. Fellow spacewalker Terry Virts, seen reflected in the visor, shared this photograph on social media.
View larger. | Image credit: NASA

During Sunday’s spacewalk, Virts and Expedition 42 Commander Barry Wilmore will deploy 400 feet of cable along the truss of the station and install antennas as part of the new Common Communications for Visiting Vehicles (C2V2) system that will provide rendezvous and navigational data to visiting vehicles approaching the station, including the new U.S. commercial crew vehicles

NASA astronaut Terry Virts Flight Engineer of Expedition 42 on the International Space Station is seen working to complete a cable routing task while the sun begins to peak over the Earth’s horizon on February 21 2015. Image credit: NASA

All three spacewalks are in support of the long-planned ISS reconfiguration from its current configuration, which was designed to support visiting Space Shuttles, to its new configuration optimived for future visiting commercial crew and cargo vehicles.

While cargo vehicles attach to the ISS using the process of berthing, whereby they are captured with the station’s robotic arm and positioned below a berthing port prior to being bolted into place, commercial crew vehicles will not use this method.

This is because the process of un-berthing takes a long time to complete, since cables and ducting between the visiting spacecraft and the ISS must first be manually disconnected, control boxes installed, hatches closed, and then the visiting spacecraft must be maneuvered away from the station with the robotic arm.

This means that berthing ports cannot support a rapid evacuation of crew from the ISS should it ever be necessary, which will be one of the primary roles of the commercial crew vehicles as they serve as “lifeboats” during their crew’s stay at the ISS.

Instead, crewed vehicles will attach to the ISS via a process of docking, whereby the visiting spacecraft flies itself all the way into its docking port and attaches via a capture ring striking a corresponding attachment mechanism..

The leading end effector of the Canadarm2 (bottom foreground) will be lubricated Wednesday when astronauts Barry Wilmore conduct their second spacewalk. Image credit: NASA TV

Bottom line: NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) completed the first of three spacewalk on February 21, 2105 and the second on February. On Sunday (March 1, 2015) they will perform the last of Expedition 42’s scheduled spacewalks. The astronauts are securing cables to prepare the orbiting laboratory for future arrivals by U.S. commercial crew.

SOURCE::::www.earthsky.org

Natarajan

Selfie of Curiosity ‘Mojovae’ Site on Mount Sharp of MARS !!!!

February 26, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

This self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the “Mojave” site, where its drill collected the mission’s second taste of Mount Sharp.

The scene combines dozens of images taken during January 2015 by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the rover’s robotic arm. The pale “Pahrump Hills” outcrop surrounds the rover, and the upper portion of Mount Sharp is visible on the horizon. Darker ground at upper right and lower left holds ripples of wind-blown sand and dust.

An annotated version, Fig. A, labels several of the sites Curiosity has investigated during three passes up the Pahrump Hills outcrop examining the outcrop at increasing levels of detail. The rover used its sample-collecting drill at “Confidence Hills” as well as at Mojave, and in late February was assessing “Telegraph Peak” as a third drilling site.

The view does not include the rover’s robotic arm. Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic’s component images. The arm was positioned out of the shot in the images, or portions of images, that were used in this mosaic. This process was used previously in acquiring and assembling Curiosity self-portraits taken at sample-collection sites “Rocknest” (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16468), “John Klein” (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16937) and “Windjana” (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA18390).

Curiosity used its drill to collect a sample of rock powder from target “Mojave 2” at this site on Jan. 31, 2015. The full-depth, sample-collection hole and the shallower preparation test hole beside it are visible in front of the rover in this self-portrait, and in more detail at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19115 . The Mojave site is in the “Pink Cliffs” portion of the Pahrump Hills outcrop. The outcrop is an exposure of the Murray formation, which forms the basal geological layer of Mount Sharp. Views of Pahrump Hills from other angles are at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19039 and the inset at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=6968 .

The frames showing the rover in this mosaic were taken during the 868th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity’s work on Mars (Jan. 14, 2015). Additional frames around the edges to extend the amount of terrain included in the scene were taken on Sol 882 (Jan. 29, 2015). The frames showing the drill holes were taken on Sol 884 (Jan. 31, 2015).

For scale, the rover’s wheels are 20 inches (50 centimeters) in diameter and about 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide. The drilled holes in the rock are 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter.

MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project’s Curiosity rover.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

SOURCE:::::: http://www.nasa.gov

Natarajan

Image of the Day…. ISS astronauts’ Space Walk Today… Feb 25…

February 25, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Today’s spacewalk – the 2nd of 3 planned – began at 7:10 a.m. EST (1210 UTC) and will last 6.5 hours. This post has links to today’s live coverage, plus spectacular images from Saturday’s spacewalk.

Today – February 25, 2015 – beginning at 7:10 a.m. EST (1210 UTC), International Space Station (ISS) astronauts are performing the second of three spacewalks to prepare the orbiting laboratory for future arrivals by U.S. commercial crew spacecraft. NASA TV coverage has begun and will go until 2 p.m. EST (1900 UTC) Wednesday. Watch here

NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts completed the first spacewalk on February 21 and the third is scheduled for Sunday, March 1.

The spacewalks are designed to lay cables along the forward end of the U.S. segment to bring power and communication to two International Docking Adapters slated to arrive later this year. The new docking ports will welcome U.S. commercial spacecraft launching from Florida beginning in 2017, permitting the standard station crew size to grow from six to seven and potentially double the amount of crew time devoted to research.

Ground controllers have maneuvered the space station’s large robotic arm Canadarm2 in place for work planned for Wednesday’s spacewalk. Spacewalkers Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts will start their spacewalk at 7:10 a.m. EST to lay more cables and lubricate one of Canadarm2’s two latching end effectors, which serve as tip or base for the robotic arm. They will also prepare the Tranquility module for the relocation of the Permanent Multipurpose Module and the new Bigelow Expanded Activity Module later this year.

Bottom line: NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts aboard the International Space Station completed the first of three spacewalk on February 21, 2105. The second is scheduled for Wednesday, February 25 and the third for Sunday, March 1. The astronauts are securing cables to prepare the orbiting laboratory for future arrivals by U.S. commercial crew.

SOURCE::::: http://www.earthskynews.org

Natarajan