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Wed Mar 2 00:07:24 CST 2016

Good morning all,
 Hope your first day of the new month was great one…kids in Florida took their state reading tests but now have the rest of the testing the end of this month and early April…I think other States and also countries will be doing the same at some time soon….always allot of concern but I know you prepare the kids well, encourage them to relax, to stay focused, and do their best…it will all be fine….this has to be one of the hardest parts of teaching to me….Scott Kelly is on his way home…what an adventure….I hope you can share some of it with the kids…..we have to always do our best, enjoy everything we do, live in the present, make each day special, be thankful for the good in our lives, let those we care about most know, smile , and have fun... Gabe

NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly Returns Safely to Earth after One-Year Mission
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NASA astronaut and Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kornienko enjoy the cold fresh air back on Earth after their historic 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station.
Credits: NASA TV
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NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Mikhail Kornienko of the Russian space agency Roscosmos review procedures aboard the International Space Station in September 2015.
Credits: NASA
NASA astronaut and Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly and his Russian counterpart Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth Tuesday after a historic 340-day mission aboard the International Space Station. They landed in Kazakhstan at 11:26 p.m. EST (10:26 a.m. March 2 Kazakhstan time). Joining their return trip aboard a Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft was Sergey Volkov, also of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, who arrived on the station Sept. 4, 2015. The crew touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan. “Scott Kelly’s one-year mission aboard the International Space Station has helped to advance deep space exploration and America’s Journey to Mars,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “Scott has become the first American astronaut to spend a year in space, and in so doing, helped us take one giant leap toward putting boots on Mars.” During the record-setting One-Year mission <http://www.nasa.gov/1ym/>, the station crew conducted almost 400 investigations to advance NASA’s mission and benefit all of humanity <http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-book-shows-how-space-station-research-offers-benefits-for-humanity-0>. Kelly and Kornienko specifically participated in a number of studies to inform NASA’s Journey to Mars <http://www.nasa.gov/journeytomars/>, including research into how the human body adjusts to weightlessness, isolation, radiation and the stress of long-duration spaceflight. Kelly’s identical twin brother, former NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, participated in parallel twin studies <http://www.nasa.gov/twins-study/> on Earth to help scientists compare the effects of space on the body and mind down to the cellular level. One particular research project examined fluid shifts <http://www.nasa.gov/content/fluid-shifts-study-advances-journey-to-mars> that occur when bodily fluids move into the upper body during weightlessness. These shifts may be associated with visual changes and a possible increase in intracranial pressure <http://www.nasa.gov/content/it-s-all-in-your-head-nasa-investigates-techniques-for-measuring-intracranial-pressure-u>, which are significant challenges that must be understood before humans expand exploration beyond Earth’s orbit. The study uses the Russian Chibis <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/jsc2015e046469_alt.jpg> device to draw fluids back into the legs while the subject’s eyes are measured to track any changes. NASA and Roscosmos already are looking at continuing the Fluid Shifts investigation with future space station crews. The crew took advantage of the unique vantage point of the space station, with an orbital path that covers more than 90 percent of Earth’s population, to monitor and capture images <http://www.nasa.gov/content/one-year-crew-image-gallery> of our planet. They also welcomed the arrival of a new instrument to study the signature of dark matter <http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/calet> and conducted technology demonstrations that continue to drive innovation, including a test of network capabilities for operating swarms of spacecraft <http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-small-satellites-to-demonstrate-swarm-communications-and-autonomy>. Kelly and Kornienko saw the arrival of six resupply spacecraft during their mission. Kelly was involved in the robotic capture of two NASA-contracted cargo flights -- SpaceX’s Dragon during the company’s sixth commercial resupply mission and Orbital ATK’s Cygnus during the company’s fourth commercial resupply mission. A Japanese cargo craft and three Russian resupply ships also delivered several tons of supplies to the station. Kelly ventured outside the confines of the space station for three spacewalks during his mission. The first included a variety of station upgrade and maintenance tasks, including routing cables to prepare for new docking ports for U.S. commercial crew spacecraft <http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew>. On a second spacewalk, he assisted in the successful reconfiguration of an ammonia cooling system and restoration of the station to full solar power-generating capability. The third spacewalk was to restore functionality to the station’s Mobile Transporter system. Including crewmate Gennady Padalka, with whom Kelly and Kornienko launched on March 27, 2015, 10 astronauts and cosmonauts representing six different nations (the United States, Russia, Japan, Denmark, Kazakhstan and England) lived aboard the space station during the yearlong mission. With the end of this mission, Kelly now has spent 520 days in space, the most among U.S. astronauts. Kornienko has accumulated 516 days across two flights, and Volkov has 548 days on three flights. Expedition 47 continues operating the station, with NASA astronaut Tim Kopra in command. Kopra, Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) and Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos will operate the station until the arrival of three new crew members in about two weeks. NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Oleg Skripochka are scheduled to launch from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on March 18. The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that enables us to demonstrate new technologies and make research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. It has been continuously occupied since November 2000 and, since then, has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to NASA's next giant leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars. For more information about the one-year mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/oneyear <http://www.nasa.gov/oneyear> For more information about the International Space Station and its crews, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station <http://www.nasa.gov/station>

Last Sunrise From a Year in Space
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NASA astronaut Scott Kelly shared a series of sunrise photographs with his social media followers on Tuesday, March 1, 2016, as he prepared to depart the International Space Station and return to Earth aboard a Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft. Posting this first image <https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly/status/704680442826350592>, Kelly wrote, "Rise and shine! My last #sunrise from space then I gotta go! 1 of 5. #GoodMorning from @space_station! #YearInSpace” Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov of Roscosmos are scheduled to undock <http://www.nasa.gov/feature/march-1-4-tv-coverage-of-astronaut-scott-kellys-return-after-yearinspace/> their Soyuz from the space station at 8:02 p.m. EST and land in Kazakhstan at 11:25 p.m. Kelly and Kornienko launched to the space station <http://www.nasa.gov/content/year-in-space-begins-with-soyuz-launch> on March 27, 2015, for their one-year mission <http://www.nasa.gov/oneyear/>. Kelly surpassed the previous record for time spent in space <http://www.nasa.gov/feature/scott-kelly-becomes-us-astronaut-to-spend-the-most-time-living-in-space>by a U.S. astronaut on Oct. 16, 2015. After his return, he will have spent a total of 520 days in space across four space missions. During the 340 days of this mission – which spanned four space station expeditions – Kelly has participated in a variety of research that will help scientists better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long-duration spaceflight. That knowledge will play a critical role in future NASA missions deeper into the solar system and on the Journey to Mars <http://www.nasa.gov/journeytomars>, in which a round-trip mission is likely to last 500 days or longer.

Hubble's Blue Bubble
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Sparkling at the center of this beautiful NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is a Wolf–Rayet star known as WR 31a, located about 30,000 light-years away in the constellation of Carina (The Keel). The distinctive blue bubble appearing to encircle WR 31a is a Wolf–Rayet nebula — an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other gases. Created when speedy stellar winds interact with the outer layers of hydrogen ejected by Wolf–Rayet stars, these nebulae are frequently ring-shaped or spherical. The bubble — estimated to have formed around 20,000 years ago — is expanding at a rate of around 220,000 kilometers (136,700 miles) per hour! Unfortunately, the lifecycle of a Wolf–Rayet star is only a few hundred thousand years — the blink of an eye in cosmic terms. Despite beginning life with a mass at least 20 times that of the sun, Wolf–Rayet stars typically lose half their mass in less than 100,000 years. And WR 31a is no exception to this case. It will, therefore, eventually end its life as a spectacular supernova, and the stellar material expelled from its explosion will later nourish a new generation of stars and planets.

What's Up - March 2016
Watch Now <http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/video/jpl-20160301-whatsuf-0001-180.mp4>
Subscribe to this Podcast <http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=252873558>
Jane Houston Jones: What's Up for March. Jupiter, its moons and moon shadows. Hello and welcome. I'm Jane Houston Jones from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Jupiter dominates the evening sky this month, rising at sunset and setting at dawn. On March 8th Jupiter reaches what is called 'opposition.' Imagine that Jupiter and the sun are on opposite ends of a straight line with Earth in between. This brings Jupiter its closest to Earth, so it shines brighter and appears larger in telescopes. On the nights of March 14th and 15th, March 21st and 22nd and March 29th two of Jupiter's moons will cross the planet's disk. When the planet is at opposition and the sun shines on Jupiter's moons, we can see the moons' shadows crossing the planet. There are actually 11 of these double shadow transits in March. The next 6 months will be awesome times for you to image Jupiter when it's highest in the sky-near midnight now and a little earlier each night through the late summer. Even through the smallest telescopes or binoculars you should be able to see the two prominent belts on each side of Jupiter's equator, the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, and with some difficulty Jupiter's Red Spot, when it's facing Earth.

NASA's Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter on July 4th of this year and go into orbit around the giant planet. Right now the Juno mission science team is actively seeking amateur and professional images of the planet. These images are uploaded to a Juno website, and the public is invited to discuss points of interest in Jupiter's atmosphere. Locations will later be voted on. The favorites will be targets for JunoCam, the spacecraft's imaging camera. Once JunoCam has taken the images, they'll be posted online. Imaging participants can then process these raw mission images and re-upload them for others to view. You can find out all about JunoCam at: www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam <http://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam> And you can learn about all of NASA's missions, including Juno, at: www.nasa.gov <http://www.nasa.gov/>. That's all for this month. I'm Jane Houston Jones.

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