[Spacetalk] https://www.nasa.gov/index.html

Fri Apr 15 10:37:53 CDT 2016

Good morning all,
 I hope your week has been great and I know you are looking forward to the weekend :-) :-) The visit to Fort Benning was awesome...visiting kids of military personnel is so very special, although it also seems with so many restrictions and security requirements, it increases the technology challenges too. The kids were great…On Monday morning I was at Wilson speaking with 5th graders from 5 schools as a group, then at a station where the kids from each school stopped by with questions…in the afternoon I visited White and Dexter speaking with 3rd & 4th graders; Tuesday I visited 4 schools: McBride, Loyd, Wilson, and Stowers speaking with grades K-3, including 2 kindergarten classes…no matter what else happens being with the kids is always so much fun…I can’t really explain it, I only know it feels magical when they are excited, laughing, and have fun learning. I would like to thank GeLonda for everything she did to set up the schedule and help me both days. Tomorrow I am doing something different which I am sure will also be way fun... I will be presenting at a Planetarium/star party celebrating Yuri's night, the first person in space...Yuri Gagarin...The Spring Star Party is a large scale astronomy event with a mission to enrich the community in the wonders of the cosmos in addition to providing a launching platform for students to choose careers in Science and Engineering. This event will also be in tandem with Yuri Space Night and the focus is on space exploration. Interesting news this weekend is the first human-rated expandable structure that may help inform the design of deep space habitats is set to be installed to the International Space Station on Saturday….hopefully you can let the kids know or maybe spend a few minute son Monday watching a replay….  For coverage times and to watch the BEAM installation live, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv <http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv>. For more information about BEAM, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/beam <http://www.nasa.gov/beam> ...we must always remember to do our best, enjoy everything we do, live in the present, make each day special, let those we care about most know, be thankful for the good in our lives, smile and have fun....gabe 

April 14, 1981, Landing of First Space Shuttle Mission
 <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/s81-30746.jpg>
On April 14, 1981, the rear wheels of the space shuttle orbiter Columbia touched down on Rogers dry lake at Edwards Air Force Base, NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center (then Dryden Flight Research Center), in southern California, to successfully complete a stay in space of more than two days. Astronauts John W. Young, STS-1 commander, and Robert L. Crippen, pilot, were aboard the vehicle. The mission marked the first NASA flight to end with a wheeled landing and represented the beginning of a new age of spaceflight that would employ the same hardware repeatedly. An area of the air base was set aside for public viewing of the landing, and crowds numbered well over 200,000 people <http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/sts1/first_landing.html>, with some estimates as high as 300,000 visitors who flocked to the site. Media from around the world added to the throng, as radio and TV trucks of all shapes and sizes rolled in from everywhere. James Young, Chief Historian of the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, remembered the landing well. "You just had to be there to hear, even feel, the double crack of the sonic boom," Young said. "It was such a tremendous sense of excitement to see something never seen before, to witness such a historic event."

NASA to Attach, Test First Expandable Habitat on International Space Station
 <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/beam_berthed_to_iss_aft_port_node_3_concept_art_b_003.jpg>
This artist’s concept depicts the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module attached to the International Space Station’s Tranquility module.
Credits: Bigelow Aerospace
The first human-rated expandable structure that may help inform the design of deep space habitats is set to be installed to the International Space Station Saturday, April 16. NASA Television coverage of the installation will begin at 5:30 a.m. EDT. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) will be attached to the station’s Tranquility module over a period of about four hours. Controllers in mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will remove BEAM from the unpressurized trunk of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, using the robotic Canadarm2, and move it into position next to Tranquility’s aft assembly port. NASA astronauts aboard the station will secure BEAM using common berthing mechanism controls. Robotic operations begin at 2:15 a.m. and are expected to be complete by 6:15 a.m. BEAM launched aboard Dragon on April 8 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. At the end of May, the module will be expanded to nearly five times its compressed size of 7 feet in diameter by 8 feet in length to roughly 10 feet in diameter and 13 feet in length. Astronauts will first enter the habitat about a week after expansion and, during a two-year test mission, will return to the module for a few hours several times a year to retrieve sensor data and assess conditions. Expandable habitats are designed to take up less room on a rocket, but provide greater volume for living and working in space once expanded. This first test of an expandable module will allow investigators to gauge how well the habitat performs overall and, specifically, how well it protects against solar radiation, space debris and the temperature extremes of space. Once the test period is over, BEAM will be released from the space station, and will burn up during its descent through Earth’s atmosphere. BEAM is an example of NASA’s increased commitment to partnering with industry to enable the growth of the commercial use of space. The BEAM project is co-sponsored by NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Division and Bigelow Aerospace. The International Space Station serves as the world's leading laboratory for conducting cutting-edge microgravity research and is the primary platform for technology development and testing in space to enable human and robotic exploration of destinations beyond low-Earth orbit, including asteroids and Mars. For coverage times and to watch the BEAM installation live, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv <http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv>. For more information about BEAM, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/beam <http://www.nasa.gov/beam>  For more information about the International Space Station, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station <http://www.nasa.gov/station>

 <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/keplerbeautyshot.jpg>
April 11, 2016
 <http://www.nasa.gov/feature/mission-manager-update-kepler-recovered-from-emergency-and-stable/#> <http://www.nasa.gov/feature/mission-manager-update-kepler-recovered-from-emergency-and-stable/#> <http://www.nasa.gov/feature/mission-manager-update-kepler-recovered-from-emergency-and-stable/#> <http://www.nasa.gov/feature/mission-manager-update-kepler-recovered-from-emergency-and-stable/#> <http://www.nasa.gov/feature/mission-manager-update-kepler-recovered-from-emergency-and-stable/#>
Mission Manager Update: Kepler Recovered from Emergency and Stable
Mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM). On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode. The mission has cancelled the spacecraft emergency, returning the Deep Space Network <http://http//deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/> ground communications to normal scheduling. Once data is on the ground, the team will thoroughly assess all on board systems to ensure the spacecraft is healthy enough to return to science mode and begin the K2 mission's microlensing observing campaign <http://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/kepler/searching-for-far-out-and-wandering-worlds>, called Campaign 9. This checkout is anticipated to continue through the week. Earth-based observatories participating in Campaign 9 will continue to make observations as Kepler's health check continues. The K2 observing opportunity for Campaign 9 will end on July 1, when the galactic center is no longer in view from the vantage point of the spacecraft. K2's previous science campaign concluded on March 23. After data was downlinked to the ground, the spacecraft was placed in what is termed Point Rest State (PRS). While in PRS, the spacecraft antenna is pointed toward Earth and it operates in a fuel-efficient mode, with the reaction wheels at rest. The Emergency Mode began approximately 14 hours before the planned maneuver to orient the spacecraft toward the center of the Milky Way for Campaign 9. The team has therefore ruled out the maneuver and the reaction wheels as possible causes of the EM event. An investigation into what caused the event will be pursued in parallel, with a priority on returning the spacecraft to science operations. The anomalous EM event is the first that the Kepler spacecraft has encountered during its seven years in space. Mission operations at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, Ball Aerospace and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder remain vigilant. It was the quick response and determination of the engineers throughout the weekend that led to the recovery. We are deeply appreciative of their efforts, and for the outpouring of support from the mission's fans and followers from around the world.  We also recognize the tremendous support from NASA’s Deep Space Network, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and to NASA’s other missions that surrendered their scheduled telemetry links in order to provide us with the resources needed to protect the Kepler spacecraft.

The Great Divide
 <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/pia18365_1041.jpg>
It's difficult to get a sense of scale when viewing Saturn's rings, but the Cassini Division (seen here between the bright B ring and dimmer A ring) is almost as wide as the planet Mercury. (See PIA11142 <http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11142> for a labeled panorama of features in the rings.) The 2,980-mile-wide (4,800-kilometer-wide) division in Saturn's rings is thought to be caused by the moon Mimas. Particles within the division orbit Saturn almost exactly twice for every time that Mimas orbits, leading to a build-up of gravitational nudges from the moon. These repeated gravitational interactions sculpt the outer edge of the B ring and keep its particles from drifting into the Cassini Division.This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 4 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 28, 2016. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 740,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 76 degrees. Image scale is 4 miles (7 kilometers) per pixel. The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov <http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/> and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini <http://www.nasa.gov/cassini>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org <http://ciclops.org/>.

Space to Ground: Six Pack of Spaceships: 04/15/2016
Watch Now <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/video/space-to-ground_121_160415_fb.mp4>
TWO US COMMERCIAL VEHICLES ARE AT THE STATION TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER. WELCOME TO SPACE TO GROUND, I’M DAN HUOT.  SPACEX’S DRAGON RESUPPLY CRAFT ARRIVED THIS WEEK, WITH ABOUT 7000 POUNDS OF CARGO AND PAYLOADS ONBOARD. THE SPACECRAFT WAS GRAPPLED BY BRITISH ASTRONAUT TIM PEAKE USING THE STATION’S ROBOTIC ARM AND THEN ATTACHED TO THE EARTH FACING PORT OF THE HARMONY MODULE. THIS WAS AN EXCITING MILESTONE AS IT MARKS THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY THAT BOTH U.S. COMMERCIAL CARGO VEHICLES, DRAGON AND CYGNUS, ARE AT THE STATION TOGETHER. THIS IS ALSO ONLY THE SECOND TIME THAT SIX VEHICLES HAVE BEEN DOCKED AT THE SAME TIME, TYING THE RECORD SET BACK IN 2011. THERE’S A LOT OF SCIENCE ONBOARD DRAGON, AND ONE OF THE FIRST EXPERIMENTS TO BE CARRIED OFF IS FOCUSED ON HELPING PEOPLE HERE ON EARTH.    PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY ELI LILLY PARTNERED WITH CASIS TO LAUNCH A NEW STUDY TO THE STATION’S U.S. NATIONAL LAB SECTION. IT’S INVESTIGATING MUSCLE ATROPHY AND WEAKNESS IN MICE WHILE IN MICROGRAVITY. CHANGES THAT OCCUR DURING SPACEFLIGHT ARE SIMILAR TO THOSE EXPERIENCED BY PEOPLE WITH MUSCLE WASTING ILLNESSES HERE ON EARTH, SO RESULTS FROM THIS STUDY COULD LEAD TO NEW TREATMENTS FOR BONE AND MUSCLE WASTING DISEASES ON THE GROUND.   THIS WEEK, RAYCO WANTS TO KNOW HOW LONG THE BEAM DEPLOYMENT PROCEDURE WILL TAKE. WELL IT’S A TWO-STEP PROCESS THAT KICKS OFF THIS WEEKEND WITH GETTING BEAM OUT OF DRAGON’S TRUNK. FIRST, GROUND CONTROLLERS WILL USE THE STATION’S ROBOTIC ARM TO EXTRACT BEAM FROM DRAGON AND INSTALL IT TO THE TRANQUILITY MODULE. THIS WILL TAKE ABOUT FOUR HOURS FROM START TO FINISH. THE CREW WILL THEN HAVE SEVERAL WEEKS TO DO LEAK CHECKS AND GET THE MODULE READY FOR DEPLOYMENT. THE EXPANSION TAKES ABOUT 45 MINUTES AND REQUIRES DAYLIGHT AND SOLID COMMUNICATION FOR GROUND CONTROLLERS. BE SURE TO TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE FIRST LOOK AT BEAM AND KEEP SENDING US YOUR QUESTIONS USING THE HASHTAG SPACE-TO-GROUND. WE’LL SEE YOU NEXT WEEK.

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