[Spacetalk] http://www.nasa.gov/

Mon Nov 10 09:02:34 CST 2014

Good morning all,
 I hope you had a wonderful weekend and will enjoy the week ahead, of course, one day at a time...It seems some schools have off tomorrow and some don't...have no idea how this works...Since it is a Federal Holiday all gov't workers are off but we will be here because we work certain holidays through the year in order to have the time off between Christmas and New Year's...which is great...a successful return of the crew from the ISS over the weekend, be sure to go to NASATV to watch  a replay of the undocking, return, and landing....also NASA Television and the agency's website will provide live coverage from 9-11:30 a.m. EST (6-8:30 a.m. PST) of the European Space Agency (ESA) Rosetta mission's scheduled landing of a probe on a comet on Wednesday, Nov. 12. I know your schedules are so busy but if you can find a few minutes to share this with the kids, I'm sure they will enjoy it...wishing everyone a wonderful day...we have to remember tomorrow to say a special thanks for our veterans as we celebrate their day and thank them for their sacrifices in keeping our country free....we have to remember to always do our best, enjoy everything we do, make each day special, let the people we care about most know, live in the present, smile & have fun! gabe

November 9, 2014
Space Station Crew Returns to Earth, Lands Safely in Kazakhstan

        [http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/673xvariable_height/public/14-309a.jpg] <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/14-309a.jpg>
European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst (left), Russian cosmonaut Maxim Suraev (center) and NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman pose for a portrait in the Harmony node of the International Space Station. The three crew members of Expedition 41 returned to Earth at 10:58 p.m. EDT Sunday, Nov. 9.
Image Credit: NASA
Three International Space Station (ISS) crew members returned to Earth Sunday after a 165-day mission that included hundreds of scientific experiments and several spacewalks.
Expedition 41 Commander Max Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Flight Engineers Reid Wiseman of NASA and Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency touched down northeast of the remote town of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan at 10:58 p.m. EST (9:58 a.m., Nov. 10, Kazakh time). While in space, they traveled more than 70 million miles.
During their time aboard the station, the crew participated in research focusing on Earth remote sensing, advanced manufacturing, and studies of bone and muscle physiology. They set a milestone for station science by completing a record 82 hours of research in a single week in July.
A key research focus during Expedition 41 was human health management for long duration space travel, as NASA and Roscosmos prepare for two crew members to spend one year aboard the space station beginning in 2015.
The crew welcomed five cargo spacecraft during its time aboard the orbiting laboratory. Two Russian ISS Progress cargo vehicles docked to the station, bringing tons of supplies in July and October. The fifth and final European Automated Transfer Vehicle, dubbed the Georges Lemaitre after the Belgian physicist who is considered the father of the big-bang theory, launched to the station in July.
In July, Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft completed its second resupply mission under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract. SpaceX launched its Dragon spacecraft to the station in September, the company's fourth commercial resupply mission.
Wiseman and Gerst ventured outside the confines of the space station for a planned spacewalk to relocate a failed pump module and configure the station for upcoming additions. Wiseman completed a second spacewalk with fellow NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore. Suraev also conducted one spacewalk during Expedition 41.
In addition to being a scientific research platform, the space station also serves as a test bed to demonstrate new technology. The first 3-D printer to be tested in space arrived at the station during Expedition 41. It will be the first step toward establishing an on-demand machine shop in space, which is a critical enabling component for deep space crewed missions and in-space manufacturing.
A new Earth monitoring instrument called RapidScat also was installed and activated on the station during the crew's time in orbit. RapidScat will measure Earth's ocean surface wind speed and direction, essential measurements used in weather prediction.
Having completed his second space station mission, Suraev now has spent 334 days in space. Wiseman and Gerst have spent 165 days in space with the end of their first flights.
Expedition 42 now is operating aboard the station with Barry Wilmore of NASA in command. Wilmore and his crewmates, Flight Engineers Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova of Roscosmos, will tend to the station as a three-person crew until the arrival in two weeks of three new crew members: Terry Virts of NASA, Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos and Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency. Virts, Shkaplerov and Cristoforetti are scheduled to launch from Kazakhstan on Nov. 23 (U.S. time).
For more information on the International Space Station and its crews, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/station

November 7, 2014
NASA Television to Provide Coverage of European Mission Comet Landing

[http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/673xvariable_height/public/rosetta20141107-16_0.jpg]<http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/rosetta20141107-16_0.jpg>
This artist's concept of the Rosetta mission's Philae lander on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, is from an animation showing the upcoming deployment of Philae and its subsequent science operations on the surface of the comet.
Image Credit: ESA

NASA Television and the agency's website will provide live coverage from 9-11:30 a.m. EST (6-8:30 a.m. PST) of the European Space Agency (ESA) Rosetta mission's scheduled landing of a probe on a comet on Wednesday, Nov. 12.
NASA's live commentary will include excerpts of the ESA coverage and air from 9-10 a.m. NASA will continue carrying ESA's commentary from 10-11:30 a.m. ESA's Philae (fee-LAY) lander is scheduled to touch down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 10:35 a.m.  A signal confirming landing is expected at approximately 11:02 a.m.
After landing, Philae will obtain the first images ever taken from a comet's surface. It also will drill into the surface to study the composition and witness close up how a comet changes as its exposure to the sun varies. Philae can remain active on the surface for approximately two-and-a-half days. Its "mothership" is the Rosetta spacecraft that will remain in orbit around the comet through 2015. The orbiter will continue detailed studies of the comet as it approaches the sun and then moves away. NASA has three of the 16 instruments aboard the orbiter.
Comets are considered primitive building blocks of the solar system that are literally frozen in time. They may have played a part in "seeding" Earth with water and, possibly, the basic ingredients for life.
NASA TV streaming video, downlink and updated scheduling information is at:
http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv
For more information on the U.S. instruments aboard Rosetta, visit:
http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov<http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/>
ESA's live coverage of landing events will be streamed at:
http://www.esa.int/rosetta
More information about Rosetta is available at:
http://www.esa.int/rosetta

Fifteen Years of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
<http://www.nasa.gov/content/fifteen-years-of-nasas-chandra-x-ray-observatory>

This Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the Hydra A galaxy cluster was taken on Oct. 30, 1999<http://chandra.si.edu/photo/1999/0087/>, with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) in an observation that lasted about six hours. Hydra A is a galaxy cluster that is 840 million light years from Earth. The cluster gets its name from the strong radio source, Hydra A, that originates in a galaxy near the center of the cluster. Optical observations show a few hundred galaxies in the cluster. Chandra X-ray observations reveal a large cloud of hot gas that extends throughout the cluster. The gas cloud is several million light years across and has a temperature of about 40 million degrees in the outer parts decreasing to about 35 million degrees in the inner region.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched into space fifteen years ago<http://www.nasa.gov/chandra/news/chandra-15th-anniversary.html> aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. Since its deployment on July 23, 1999, Chandra has helped revolutionize our understanding of the universe through its unrivaled X-ray vision. Chandra, one of NASA's current "Great Observatories," along with the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, is specially designed to detect X-ray emission from hot and energetic regions of the universe.
Image Credit: NASA

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