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Sezione dedicata alle notizie provenienti dalla National Aereonautics and Space Administration
Edited by Tursiops - 1/11/2006, 19:36. -
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Discovery Rolls Toward Launch
11.01.06
In darkness, Discovery rolls out of its processing facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center for the short trip to the Vehicle Assembly Building. Once there, the orbiter will be joined to its large external tank and twin solid rocket boosters, which are already stacked on the mobile launch platform.
Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to roll out to Launch Pad 39B no earlier than Nov. 7 in preparation for launch on mission STS-116 to the International Space Station. The mission's payload includes the next space station component -- the P5 integrated truss segment -- as well as the SPACEHAB module and other key components. During the mission, the crew will not only install the truss segment, but also rewire the station to use the new solar arrays deployed by the crew of STS-115 in September. The launch window for mission STS-116 opens Dec. 7.
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Per gli appassionati come me delle missioni spaziali, ecco a voi il lancio dello Shuttle Discovery del 4 luglio 2006:
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Uragano su Saturno:
NASA Sees into the Eye of a Monster Storm on Saturn
11.09.06 -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has seen something never before seen on another planet -- a hurricane-like storm at Saturn's south pole with a well-developed eye, ringed by towering clouds.
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lo space shuttle Discovery - STS116 è pronto per raggiungere la ISS tra 6 ore e 40 minuti. Attached Image
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NASA Images Suggest Water Still Flows in Brief Spurts on Mars
NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.
"These observations give the strongest evidence to date that water still flows occasionally on the surface of Mars," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Washington.
Liquid water, as opposed to the water ice and water vapor known to exist at Mars, is considered necessary for life. The new findings heighten intrigue about the potential for microbial life on Mars. The Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA's Mars Global Surveyor provided the new evidence of the deposits in images taken in 2004 and 2005.
"The shapes of these deposits are what you would expect to see if the material were carried by flowing water," said Michael Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. "They have finger-like branches at the downhill end and easily diverted around small obstacles." Malin is principal investigator for the camera and lead author of a report about the findings published in the journal Science.
The atmosphere of Mars is so thin and the temperature so cold that liquid water cannot persist at the surface. It would rapidly evaporate or freeze. Researchers propose that water could remain liquid long enough, after breaking out from an underground source, to carry debris downslope before totally freezing. The two fresh deposits are each several hundred meters or yards long.
The light tone of the deposits could be from surface frost continuously replenished by ice within the body of the deposit. Another possibility is a salty crust, which would be a sign of water's effects in concentrating the salts. If the deposits had resulted from dry dust slipping down the slope, they would likely be dark, based on the dark tones of dust freshly disturbed by rover tracks, dust devils and fresh craters on Mars.
Mars Global Surveyor has discovered tens of thousands of gullies on slopes inside craters and other depressions on Mars. Most gullies are at latitudes of 30 degrees or higher. Malin and his team first reported the discovery of the gullies in 2000. To look for changes that might indicate present-day flow of water, his camera team repeatedly imaged hundreds of the sites. One pair of images showed a gully that appeared after mid-2002. That site was on a sand dune, and the gully-cutting process was interpreted as a dry flow of sand.
Today's announcement is the first to reveal newly deposited material apparently carried by fluids after earlier imaging of the same gullies. The two sites are inside craters in the Terra Sirenum and the Centauri Montes regions of southern Mars.
"These fresh deposits suggest that at some places and times on present-day Mars, liquid water is emerging from beneath the ground and briefly flowing down the slopes. This possibility raises questions about how the water would stay melted below ground, how widespread it might be, and whether there's a below-ground wet habitat conducive to life. Future missions may provide the answers," said Malin.
Besides looking for changes in gullies, the orbiter's camera team assessed the rate at which new impact craters appear. The camera photographed approximately 98 percent of Mars in 1999 and approximately 30 percent of the planet was photographed again in 2006. The newer images show 20 fresh impact craters, ranging in diameter from 7 feet (2 meters) to 486 feet (148 meters) that were not present approximately seven years earlier. These results have important implications for determining the ages of features on the surface of Mars. These results also approximately match predictions and imply that Martian terrain with few craters is truly young.
Mars Global Surveyor began orbiting Mars in 1997. The spacecraft is responsible for many important discoveries. NASA has not heard from the spacecraft since early November. Attempts to contact it continue. Its unprecedented longevity has allowed monitoring Mars for over several years past its projected lifetime.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, manages the Mars Global Surveyor mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
(fonte: http://www.nasa.gov )
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Il lancio del Discovery - STS116 è stato posticipato al giorno 9 dicembre 2006 alle ore 20.47 USA. Attached Image
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Updated: 11:30 a.m. EST
Under a partly cloudy sky, Space Shuttle Discovery is ready for launch of mission STS-116 from Launch Pad 39B. The rotating service structure rolled back at approximately 9:30 a.m. this morning to enable launch.
NASA officials have set the next launch attempt for tonight at 8:47 p.m. EST. Shuttle weather forecasters anticipate that a cold front will linger in the area this evening, limiting chances for liftoff to 30 percent.
The launch team is still working its way through a series of tasks that must be completed before Discovery's orange external tank can be loaded with 500,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and hydrogen. If tanking has not started by 12:30 p.m. today, the Mission Management Team will meet and decide whether to make another attempt on Sunday or delay launch further.
The STS-116 mission is the 33rd for Discovery and the 117th space shuttle flight. During the 12-day mission, the crew will continue construction on the International Space Station, rewiring the orbiting laboratory and adding a segment to its integrated truss structure.Attached Image
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Lo Space Shuttle Discovery è partito alle 2.47 (ora italiana) ed è arrivato in orbita. Tutto si è svolto nel migliore dei modi.
STS116Attached Image
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CLAP, CLAP (Battimani)
All right, boys!
Come mi piacerebbe essere sulla navetta!
Saluti orbitanti
Triturus. -
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io trovo sempre emozionante il lancio dello Shuttle.
Per chi fosse interessato è possibile guardare in tempo reale la missione spaziale sintanizzandosi su NASA TV (tramite Real o Windows Media Player) dal sito ufficiale della NASA http://www.nasa.gov. -
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Ecco qui il filmato del lancio dello Space Shuttle Discovery per la STS-116
Edited by Tursiops - 10/12/2006, 15:26. -
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NASA
Spacecraft's Pinch of Comet Dust Reveals 'Cosmic Zoo'
12.14.06
Materials formed in different times and places in space mixed "a whole lot" during the solar system's formation, according to an international team of scientists who studied comet particles captured by NASA's Stardust spacecraft in January 2004.
About 170 scientists studied bits of material caught by the Stardust spacecraft during its encounter with comet Wild 2. The scientists' findings appear in seven reports about the mission in the Dec. 15, 2006, issue of the journal Science. Stardust delivered the first pristine, solid samples from outside the Earth-moon system when a capsule containing the comet materials parachuted into Utah in January 2006.
Image Left: Artist's concept of Stardust studying a comet's environment, made of dust and ice.
"Comet dust seems to be a real zoo of things; we see all kinds of particles that are clearly formed at different places, possibly at different times and certainly under different conditions," said Scott Sandford, lead author of the 'organics' paper and a scientist from NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. His paper also revealed that scientists found a new class of organics in the comet dust.
A panel of three Stardust scientists will present additional findings during a news conference Thursday, Dec. 14, at 5 p.m. EST (2 p.m. PST) at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in San Francisco in the Moscone Center South, Room 232 (747 Howard Street, between 3rd and 4th Streets). The panelists include Stardust principal investigator Donald Brownlee, a professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and lead author of an overview technical paper; Sandford; and Mike Zolensky of NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, who is lead author of a study about the mineralogy of the captured comet particles.
"All seven papers, to some degree, indicate that when the solar system was forming, there was a whole lot of mixing going on," Sandford said.
Brownlee estimates that as much as 10 percent of the material in comets came from the inner solar system. "That's a real surprise because the common expectation was that comets would be made of interstellar dust and ice," Brownlee observed.
The Stardust spacecraft was launched on Feb. 7, 1999, from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., aboard a Delta II rocket. The NASA probe flew through comet dust and captured specks of it in a very light, low-density substance called aerogel. The capsule – small enough to hug – landed in the Utah Test and Training Range, southwest of Salt Lake City, on Jan. 15, 2006. During the capsule's high-speed reentry into Earth's atmosphere, NASA studied the capsule's heat shield material, which yielded information that could be useful for heat shield development for future missions to the moon and beyond.
After the preliminary examinations were complete, all the samples were transferred to NASA's curatorial office at NASA Johnson, where they will be made available to the general scientific community for more detailed study.
"I anticipate that people will be asking for and working on these samples for decades to come," Sandford said.
For more information about Stardust studies and other mission information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/...st_feature.html
John Bluck
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
(fonte: http://www.nasa.gov ). -
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Il fatto che le sostanze si siano formate in differenti posti dell'Universo (di cui solo il 10 % nel Sistema solare) ed in differenti tempi non semplifica certo l'indagine...non credete?
Aspettiamo ulteriori studi
Saluti cosmici
Triturus. -
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lo penso anche io. Non ci sono dubbi che sia un risultato molto emozionante il fatto di avere trovato materiale organico sulle comete (come alcune ipotesi sospettavano) però non si sa ancora quel materiale da dove è arrivato..cioè sappiamo che quelle molecoe sono sulla cometa ma non come ci siano arrivate. .
NASA |
