Space and Space Travel News

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Comspacewatch

The Space Report 2009 Reveals Industry Growth to $257 Billion
Wednesday, April 1, 2009, Space Foundation


http://history.nasa.gov - Orbireport.com


According to The Space Report 2009: The Authoritative Guide to Global Space Activity, which was released March 30 by the Space Foundation at the 25th National Space Symposium, overall worldwide space revenues grew nearly 2.5 percent in 2008, rising to $257 billion.

This is one of many fascinating facts revealed in the publication -- the definitive overview of the global space industry and a valuable resource for government and business leaders, educators, financial analysts, students, and space-related businesses. Copies may be purchased at http://www.TheSpaceReport.org.

The largest segments of the space economy are commercial infrastructure and commercial satellite services, which together total 67 percent, compared to about 32 percent for government space spending. The largest growth sectors were space products and services, which grew 10.4 percent to $91 billion, mainly due to direct-to-home television services, which generated $69.8 billion in 2008. Fixed satellite services showed the strongest growth rate, with revenue up 31 percent to $16.8 billion.

Space industry stocks suffered along with the world economy in 2008, declining 45 percent in 2008, erasing the gains from three consecutive years of growth. Still, space investment and output remain strong and the long-term outlook for the global space industry is encouraging.

The Space Report 2009 has 20 additional pages and new features:

* Two new financial indexes to help guage financial performance
* A section examining trends in education and their impact on the space industry
* Greatly expanded data on international (non-U.S.) space activities
* A special report on astronomy and space science
* New information on spaceports and spaceport authorities/coalitions

The Space Report 2009 is the result of extensive research by the Space Foundation and its team of independent research organizations, thoroughly examining the state of the space industry. The methodology, which is refined every year, involves identifying, gathering, analyzing, and synthesizing data from publicly available sources, as well as industry publications and reports.


www.govtech.com

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Web Links: Microsoft's Telescope on the Web - News.cnet: Microsoft, NASA put universe back on the Web

- "Want to see the same images that scientists at NASA use for their research or perform your own research with those images? Or do you
want to see the Earth from the same perspective that astronauts see as they descend to Earth? How about taking a 5 minute break and
viewing a panorama of a different city? Install WWT and start your explorations. The WorldWide Telescope is a browser-based version of
WorldWide Telescope that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground- and space-based telescopes
to enable seamless, guided explorations of the universe from within a web browser for Windows PC and Intel Mac OS X user."

What is WWT?

"The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a Web 2.0 visualization software environment that enables your computer to function as a virtual tele-
scope—bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world for a seamless exploration of the universe.

Choose from a growing number of guided tours of the sky by astronomers and educators from some of the most famous observatories and
planetariums in the country. Feel free at any time to pause the tour, explore on your own (with multiple information sources for objects at
your fingertips), and rejoin the tour where you left off. Join Harvard Astronomer Alyssa Goodman on a journey showing how dust in the
Milky Way Galaxy condenses into stars and planets. Take a tour with University of Chicago Cosmologist Mike Gladders two billion years into
the past to see a gravitational lens bending the light from galaxies allowing you to see billions more years into the past.

WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft® high performance Visual Experience Engine™ and allows seamless panning and
zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelengths: See the x-ray view of the sky and
zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then crossfade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion
from a thousand years ago. Switch to the Hydrogen Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud
structures lit up by the high energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way. These are just two of many different ways to
reveal the hidden structures in the universe with the WorldWide Telescope. Seamlessly pan and zoom from aerial views of the Moon and
selected planets, as well as see their precise positions in the sky from any location on Earth and any time in the past or future with the
Microsoft Visual Experience Engine.

WWT is a single rich application portal that blends terabytes of images, information, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into
a seamless, immersive, rich media experience. Kids of all ages will feel empowered to explore and understand the universe with its simple and
powerful user interface. Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WWT as a free
resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand
the universe like never before. How do you start exploring? Click the top of the Guided Tours tab and then click the Welcome thumbnail to
watch a guided tour showing you how to navigate in WWT. Or click a link to read more: WWT in Depth"


The mission of the WWT is twofold:




• "To aggregate scientific data from major telescopes, observatories and institutions and make temporal and multi-spectral studies
available through a single cohesive Internet–based portal.
• To re-awaken the interest for science in the younger generations through astronomy and new technologies through the virtual
observatory of the WWT. This also provides a wonderful base for teaching astronomy, scientific discovery, and computational science."
(more)
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On the Net:
Website: www.worldwidetelescope.org
Install WWT Programme: Worldwide Telescope

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Space.gs

Expedition 18 and Charles Simonyi land safely in Kazakhstan.
From Space News, April 8th, 2009




- Expedition 18 Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov (left), Charles Simonyi (left, back) and Commander Mike Fincke relax outside the Soyuz TMA-13 capsule after landing in Kazakhstan. Credit: NASA TV


Two members of the 18th crew to live and work aboard the International Space Station and a spaceflight participant returned to Earth at 2:16 a.m. CDT Wednesday. NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov and spaceflight participant Charles Simonyi safely landed their Soyuz spacecraft in the steppes of southern Kazakhstan. The Expedition 18 crew members undocked their Soyuz from the station at 10:55 p.m. April 7. The deorbit burn to slow the Soyuz and begin its descent toward Earth began at 1:24 a.m. April 8.

The landing was moved to a more southerly landing site because of poor landing conditions at the original site. Fincke commanded the Expedition 18 mission, which saw the station go to full power and begin water supply recycling. He spent 178 days in orbit on this flight and has accumulated a full year in space during his career. Launching to the station on Oct. 12, 2008, he also became the first American to fly to and from the space station twice aboard a Russian Soyuz. Fincke served almost 188 days as a flight engineer on the Expedition 9 crew, which launched April 18, 2004, and returned to Earth on Oct. 23, 2004. Lonchakov completed his first long-duration spaceflight. He spent nearly 12 days aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in 2001. He spent nearly 11 days in space in 2002, launching aboard one Soyuz craft and landing in another while carrying different crews to the space station and back. With this mission, he has accumulated a total of more than 200 days in space.

Simonyi, an American, spent 11 days on the station under a commercial agreement with the Russian Federal Space Agency. He is the only spaceflight participant to visit the station twice. The Expedition 18 crew worked with a variety of experiments, including human life sciences, physical sciences and Earth observation. Many of the experiments are designed to gather information about the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body, which will help with planning future missions to the moon and beyond. Other experiments involved practical solutions to extended mission challenges such as repairing electrical components and fighting fire in microgravity.

Before undocking, Fincke and Lonchakov bid farewell to the new station crew, Expedition 19 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Mike Barratt, who launched to the station on a Soyuz March 26. Remaining on the station with Padalka and Barratt as an Expedition 19 crew member is Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata. Wakata launched to the orbiting laboratory on space shuttle Discovery’s STS-119 mission on March 15. The Expedition 19 crew will be joined in orbit by Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk in May, inaugurating the station’s first six-person crew. It also will be the first time that crew members from all five International Space Station partners will be living aboard at the same time.

- courtesy of NASA Headquarters and Johnson Space Center

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Space.gs

Constellation: NASA selects material for Orion’s heat shield.
April 7th, 2009


NASA has chosen the material for a heat shield that will protect a new generation of space explorers when they return from the moon. After extensive study, NASA has selected the Avcoat ablator system for the Orion crew module. Orion is part of the Constellation Program that is developing the country’s next-generation spacecraft system for human exploration of the Moon, the Mars and further destinations in the solar system. The Orion crew module, which will launch atop an Ares I rocket, is targeted to begin carrying astronauts to the International Space Station in 2015 and to the moon in 2020.

Orion will face extreme conditions during its voyage to the moon and on the journey home. On the blistering return through Earth’s atmosphere, the module will encounter temperatures as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Heating rates may be up to five times more extreme than rates for missions returning from the International Space Station. Orion’s heat shield, the dish-shaped thermal protection system at the base of the spacecraft, will endure the most heat and will erode, or “ablate,” in a controlled fashion, transporting heat away from the crew module during its descent through the atmosphere.




- Orion (right) flies in space while docked with a lunar lander in this NASA artist’s rendering. Please note that this artwork is not precise. Image credit: NASA


To protect the spacecraft and its crew from such severe conditions, the Orion Project Office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston identified a team to develop the thermal protection system, or TPS, heat shield. For more than three years, NASA’s Orion Thermal Protection System Advanced Development Project considered eight different candidate materials, including the two final candidates, Avcoat and Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator, or PICA, both of which have proven successful in previous space missions.

Avcoat was used for the Apollo capsule heat shield and on select regions of the space shuttle orbiter in its earliest flights. It was put back into production for the study. It is made of silica fibers with an epoxy-novalic resin filled in a fiberglass-phenolic honeycomb and is manufactured directly onto the heat shield substructure and attached as a unit to the crew module during spacecraft assembly. PICA, which is manufactured in blocks and attached to the vehicle after fabrication, was used on Stardust, NASA’s first robotic space mission dedicated solely to exploring a comet, and the first sample return mission since Apollo.

“NASA made a significant technology development effort, conducted thousands of tests, and tapped into the facilities, talents and resources across the agency to understand how these materials would perform on Orion’s five-meter wide heat shield,” said James Reuther, the project manager of the study at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. “We manufactured full-scale demonstrations to prove they could be efficiently and reliably produced for Orion.”




- A concept image shows the Ares I crew launch vehicle during launch and the Ares V cargo launch vehicle on the launch pad. Ares I will carry the Orion crew exploration vehicle with an astronaut crew to Earth orbit. Ares V will deliver large-scale hardware to space. This includes the lunar lander, materials for establishing an outpost on the Moon, and the vehicles and hardware needed to extend a human presence beyond Earth orbit. Image credit: NASA/MSFC


Ames led the study in cooperation with experts from across the agency. Engineers performed rigorous thermal, structural and environmental testing on both candidate materials. The team then compared the materials based on mass, thermal and structural performance, life cycle costs, manufacturability, reliability and certification challenges. NASA, working with Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin, recommended Avcoat as the more robust, reliable and mature system.

“The biggest challenge with Avcoat has been reviving the technology to manufacture the material such that its performance is similar to what was demonstrated during the Apollo missions,” said John Kowal, Orion’s thermal protection system manager at Johnson. “Once that had been accomplished, the system evaluations clearly indicated that Avcoat was the preferred system.” In partnership with the material subcontractor, Textron Defense Systems of Wilmington, Mass., Lockheed Martin will continue development of the material for Orion. While Avcoat was selected as the better of the two candidates, more research is needed to integrate it completely into Orion’s design.

- courtesy of NASA Headquarters and Johnson Space Center

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Space.gs

NASA hunts for remains of an ancient planet near Earth to find the origin of the Moon
From Space News, April 9th, 2009


STEREO launch to carry solar experiments into orbit (2006)


NASA’s twin STEREO probes are entering a mysterious region of space to look for remains of an ancient planet which once orbited the Sun not far from Earth. If they find anything, it could solve a major puzzle - the origin of the Moon. “The name of the planet is Theia,” says Mike Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center. “It’s a hypothetical world. We’ve never actually seen it, but some researchers believe it existed 4.5 billion years ago - and that it collided with Earth to form the Moon.”

The “Theia hypothesis” is a brainchild of Princeton theorists Edward Belbruno and Richard Gott. It starts with the popular Great Impact theory of the Moon’s origin. Many astronomers hold that in the formative years of the Solar System, a Mars-sized protoplanet crashed into Earth. Debris from the collision, a mixture of material from both bodies, spun out into Earth orbit and coalesced into the Moon. This scenario explains many aspects of lunar geology including the size of the Moon’s core and the density and isotopic composition of moon rocks.

It’s a good theory, but it leaves one awkward question unanswered: Where did the enormous protoplanet come from? Belbruno and Gott believe it came from a Sun-Earth Lagrange point. Sun-Earth Lagrange points are regions of space where the pull of the Sun and Earth combine to form a “gravitational well.” The flotsam of space tends to gather there much as water gathers at the bottom of a well on Earth. 18th-century mathematician Josef Lagrange proved that there are five such wells in the Sun-Earth system: L1, L2, L3, L4 and L5 located as shown in the diagram below.




- Sun-Earth Lagrange points. The STEREO probes are about to pass through L4 and L5. Solar observatories often park themselves at L1 while deep space observatories prefer L2. Credit: NASA


When the Solar System was young, Lagrange points were populated mainly by planetesimals, the asteroid-sized building blocks of planets. Belbruno and Gott suggest that in one of the Lagrange points, L4 or L5, the planetesimals assembled themselves into Theia, nicknamed after the mythological Greek Titan who gave birth to the Moon goddess Selene. “Their computer models show that Theia could have grown large enough to produce the Moon if it formed in the L4 or L5 regions, where the balance of forces allowed enough material to accumulate,” says Kaiser. “Later, Theia would have been nudged out of L4 or L5 by the increasing gravity of other developing planets like Venus and sent on a collision course with Earth.”

If this idea is correct, Theia itself is long gone, but some of the ancient planetesimals that failed to join Theia may still be lingering at L4 or L5. “The STEREO probes are entering these regions of space now,” says Kaiser. “This puts us in a good position to search for Theia’s asteroid-sized leftovers.” Just call them “Theiasteroids.” Astronomers have looked for Theiasteroids before using telescopes on Earth, and found nothing, but their results only rule out kilometer-sized objects. By actually entering L4 and L5, STEREO will be able to hunt for much smaller bodies at relatively close range.


http://stargazer.gsfc.nasa.gov

BBC News: Get ready to see the Sun in 3D, (October 26, 2006)

- The spacecraft launched on a route that goes past the Moon
- When they move past the moon the spacecraft will move apart
- One will lead the Earth in its orbit, the other will travel a little way behind
- Over the course of their mission, the satellites will continue to move apart
- Their different views will be combined to make 3D movies of the sun


“The search actually began last month when both spacecraft rolled 180 degrees so that they could take a series of 2-hour exposures of the general L4/L5 areas. In the first sets of images, amateur astronomers found some known asteroids and new comet Itagaki was imaged just a couple of days after the announcement of its discovery. No Theiasteroids however.”

Hunting for Theiasteroids is not STEREO’s primary mission, he points out. “STEREO is a solar observatory. The two probes are flanking the sun on opposite sides to gain a 3D view of solar activity. We just happen to be passing through the L4 and L5 Lagrange points en route. This is purely bonus science.” “We might not see anything,” he continues, “but if we discover lots of asteroids around L4 or L5, it could lead to a mission to analyze the composition of these asteroids in detail. If that mission discovers the asteroids have the same composition as the Earth and Moon, it will support Belbruno and Gott’s version of the giant impact theory.”

The search will continue for many months to come. Lagrange points are not infinitesimal points in space; they are broad regions 50 million kilometers wide. The STEREO probes are only in the outskirts now. Closest approach to the bottoms of the gravitational wells comes in Sept-Oct. 2009. “We have a lot of observing ahead of us,” notes Kaiser. You may be able to help. The STEREO team is inviting the public to participate in the search by scrutinizing photos as they come in from the spacecraft. If you see a dot of light moving with respect to the stars, you may have found a Theiasteroid. Links to the data and further instructions may be found at http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/index.php ... e_campaign

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- An engineer looks on as the stacked STEREO spacecraft undergo a spin balance test.
Image credit: NASA www.nasa.gov/mission/stereo

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NASA APOD: Comet SOHO and Nebulae in Orion discovered by STEREO
News and Information: April 9, 2009 -- Coming soon to a night sky near you

STEREO's 20th comet has been discovered... and it's a pretty exciting one! Comet C/2009 G1 (STEREO), also known as STEREO-20, was announced earlier today on MPEC 2009-G30. Discovered yesterday by Chinese amateur astronomer Jiangao Ruan, it is a small but relatively bright comet that, unlike most of SOHO and STEREO's comet discoveries, does not belong to any known population or group of objects. This in itself makes it an interesting target, but the most exciting part of this discovery is that it is very likely to be visible from Earth to observers with relatively small telescopes! This may not seem like a particularly big deal, but of the more than 1,600 comets discovered by SOHO, only a very small number have ever been seen from the ground (perhaps most notably C/1998 J1 (SOHO), and none of STEREO's other nineteen discoveries have been ground-observable at all.

Jiangao first reported C/2009 G1 as a possible moving object in SECCHI HI1-B images from April 5th. It was quickly established that this was indeed a real object, but nobody was sure if it was already "known". Fortunately, its brightness narrowed down the list of possible known objects to just a few, and it took little time after that to establish that this was indeed a brand new discovery. At the time of writing, the orbit of the comet is based entirely on SECCHI HI1-B measurements, so has a degree of uncertainty to it. However, the comet is currently placed some 40-degrees from the pre-dawn Sun for observers in the Southern Hemisphere. Hopefully they will be able to find comet STEREO in their early-morning skies and allow the determination of a more certain orbit. Comet C/2009 G1 is not predicted to get much brighter than it is now, as it is predicted to reach perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on April 12, 2009. But maybe we will be lucky and it will put on an unexpected show for us... I will continue to update this article as and when ground observations/images are announced. More: http://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil/latest_news


* A QuickTime movie here

The image opposite shows C/2009 G1 (STEREO) in SECCHI HI1-B on April 6th, 2009 at ~23UT. The image has been processed in such a way as to enhance moving features (such as comets and solar outflow), and minimize the effect of stars. It has also been cropped and then enlarged. Click for a larger version.

April 10 UPDATE: STEREO-20 seen from the ground!
Just a couple of hours after the release of the initial orbit of C/2009 G1 (STEREO), it was located from the ground by Japanese astronomers, just a few arc-minutes from its predicted location! (Considering how poor orbit determinations can be from solar instrument data, this is an impressive result!). The orbit was updated to reflect these observations and released on MPEC 2009-G32. C/2009 G1 (STEREO) will reach peak brightness in mid-May at ~mag10.2, and should be a reasonably easy target for Southern Hemisphere observers. Hopefully we'll soon get some ground-based images... (more)

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Sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov

The SOHO spacecraft celebrates 1500th comet discovery


SOHO/LASCO Comets Picture Gallery

- Animation of SOHO's 1500th comet. SOHO-1500 is located between the two white horizontal bars and the insert in the lower left shows a magnification of the area containing the comet. Click on the image for a larger animation.


It's the most successful comet catcher in history. SOHO has just reached a new milestone: It has discovered its 1500th comet, making it more successful than all the other discoverers of comets throughout history put together. Not bad for a spacecraft that was designed as a solar physics mission. SOHO's history-making discovery was made on June 25th 2008 by US-based amateur astronomer Rob Matson. This is Rob's 76th SOHO comet find. When it comes to comet catching, the SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory has one big advantage over everybody else: its location.

Situated between the Sun and the Earth, it has a privileged view of a region of space that can rarely be seen from Earth. From the surface of the planet, the space inside our orbit is largely obscured because of the daytime sky and so we only clearly see close to the Sun during an eclipse. Roughly eighty-five percent of the SOHO discoveries, and also this one, are fragments from a once great comet that split apart in a death plunge around the Sun, probably many centuries ago. The fragments are known as the Kreutz group and now pass within 1.5 million kilometres of the Sun's surface when they return from deep space. At this proximity, which is a near miss in celestial terms, most of the fragments are finally destroyed, evaporated by the Sun's fearsome radiation - all within the sight of SOHO's electronic eyes. One of twelve instruments, the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronograph (LASCO) takes the pertinent images.

Of course, LASCO itself does not make the detections; that task falls to an open group of highly skilled volunteers who scan the data as soon as it is downloaded to Earth. When SOHO is transmitting to Earth, the data can be on the Internet and ready for analysis just 15 minutes after it is taken. Enthusiasts from all over the world look at each individual image for a tiny moving speck that could be a comet. When someone believes they have found one, they submit their results to Karl Battams at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, who checks all of SOHO's findings before submitting them to the Minor Planet Center, where the comet is catalogued and has its orbit calculated.

The wealth of comet information has value beyond mere classification. "This is allowing us to see how comets die," says Battams. When a comet constantly circles the Sun, so it loses a little more ice every time, until it eventually falls to pieces, leaving a long trail of fragments. Thanks to SOHO, astronomers now have a plethora of images showing this process. "It is a unique data set and could not have been achieved in any other way," says Battams. All this on top of the extraordinary revelations that the solar physics mission has provided over the thirteen years it has been in space, observing the Sun and the near-Sun environment. "Catching the enormous total of comets has been an unplanned bonus," says Bernhard Fleck, ESA's SOHO Project Scientist.




- The Kreutz-Group comet SOHO-1500 was spotted on June 25th 2008 in images taken by the LASCO C2 coronagraph.

Related Links

• ESA press release
• Sungrazing comets home page

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The SOHO spacecraft

(high res.)

- SOHO is made up of two modules. The Service Module forms the lower portion of the spacecraft and provides power, thermal control, pointing and telecommunications for the whole spacecraft and support for the solar panels. The Payload Module sits above it and houses all the scientific instruments.


SOHO flying in space

For more photos check-out the spacecraft gallery page. - Web Links

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SOHO image of Sun


http://library01.gsfc.nasa.gov

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• SOHO spacecraft observations: http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/newsroom
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On the Net:
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov

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Stanford University Solar Center


• SOHO's Current Solar Images


• SolarMonitor.org - Includes information on active regions and solar activity from the Global H-alpha Network, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), GONG+, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

• Current solar images (NASA) - Current solar images and links to resources for solar imagery.

• Solar Viewer Widget - NASA's Solar Viewer allows you to see today's images of the Sun on your desktop. These near realtime images come from NASA/ESA's SOHO mission, NASA TRACE mission, and the Big Bear Observatory. Please note: You will need the Yahoo! Widget Engine for Mac or PC.

• Sun-Earth Viewer - This is your best resource if you wish to look at the current Sun. View, zoom on, and pan a collection of near-live solar imagery taken by SOHO, TRACE, POES, and IMAGE spacecrafts and satellites, as well as the Big Bear ground-based solar observatory. The site also includes a collection of illustrations, visualizations, and interviews relating to the Sun and solar science.

• SOHO - The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft is the great solar observatory orbiting the Sun. A joint mission between NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency), SOHO's 12 instruments capture images of the Sun in a variety of "colors", from visible white light to the extreme ultraviolet. On the SOHO homepage you can find breaking news, hot shots of awesome current phenomena, a Weekly Pick image, and special features.

• White Light - A current image of the Sun taken in "white," or visible, light. For reasons unknown, this image has been artificially colored orange even though light from the Sun is actually white, the "color" that results when all other colors are combined.

• Farside - This image shows the current "farside", or backside, of the Sun. Obviously we cannot directly see the back, but scientists who study how sound travels within the Sun can find out where there might be active magnetic regions. Thus they can locate sunspots that may be rotating into view within a few days. For information on how these images are obtained, see Magnetic Maps of the Whole Sun.

• Magnetic Fields - Storms on the Sun are caused by disturbances to its complex magnetic fields. These "magnetograms," taken by the MDI instrument on SOHO, detect the strength and location of the magnetic fields on the Sun. Magnetograms show "line-of-sight" magnetic fields -- that is, those either coming directly towards us or going away from us. The black are regions of "south" magnetic polarity (inward directed, or moving toward the center of the Sun) and the white regions "north" (outward directed, moving toward us) polarity. Grey areas indicate that there is no magnetic field at all. (Any colors could have been chosen; the grey-black-white is just a common convention, or choice.) For more information about magnetograms, see The Sun -- a Magnetic Star".

• H-alpha - If you viewed the Sun through a certain type of red filter, you might be able to see dark sunspots and white "plages" indicating areas of high magnetic activity. Also possibly visible are long, dark filaments -- magnetic arch-like features in the solar atmosphere. If you see a filament on the edge of the solar disk, it will appear as a prominence. Although these "h-alpha" images were taken in light from the red part of the spectrum, they are produced in gray. More...

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Space.gs

Arctic ice is decreasing rapidly and becoming thinner.
By Space News, April 6th, 2009


Web links: Arctic Ice

- The North polar region in Oct. 2007, and the corresponding date in 2008. Note the increased extent of land ice cover. (more)


The latest Arctic sea ice data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that the decade-long trend of shrinking sea ice cover is continuing. New evidence from satellite observations also shows that the ice cap is thinning as well. Arctic sea ice works like an air conditioner for the global climate system. Ice naturally cools air and water masses, plays a key role in ocean circulation, and reflects solar radiation back into space. In recent years, Arctic sea ice has been declining at a surprising rate. Scientists who track Arctic sea ice cover from space announced today that this winter had the fifth lowest maximum ice extent on record. The six lowest maximum events since satellite monitoring began in 1979 have all occurred in the past six years (2004-2009).

Until recently, the majority of Arctic sea ice survived at least one summer and often several. But things have changed dramatically, according to a team of University of Colorado, Boulder, scientists led by Charles Fowler. Thin seasonal ice — ice that melts and re-freezes every year — makes up about 70 percent of the Arctic sea ice in wintertime, up from 40 to 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Thicker ice, which survives two or more years, now comprises just 10 percent of wintertime ice cover, down from 30 to 40 percent.

According to researchers from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., the maximum sea ice extent for 2008-09, reached on Feb. 28, was 15.2 million square kilometers (5.85 million square miles). That is 720,000 square kilometers (278,000 square miles) less than the average extent for 1979 to 2000. “Ice extent is an important measure of the health of the Arctic, but it only gives us a two-dimensional view of the ice cover,” said Walter Meier, research scientist at the center and the University of Colorado, Boulder. “Thickness is important, especially in the winter, because it is the best overall indicator of the health of the ice cover. As the ice cover in the Arctic grows thinner, it grows more vulnerable to melting in the summer.”

The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several months and intense cold sets in. Some of that ice is naturally pushed out of the Arctic by winds, while much of it melts in place during summer. The thicker, older ice that survives one or more summers is more likely to persist through the next summer. Sea ice thickness has been hard to measure directly, so scientists have typically used estimates of ice age to approximate its thickness. But last year a team of researchers led by Ron Kwok of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., produced the first map of sea ice thickness over the entire Arctic basin. Using two years of data from NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), Kwok’s team estimated thickness and volume of the Arctic Ocean ice cover for 2005 and 2006. They found that the average winter volume of Arctic sea ice contained enough water to fill Lake Michigan and Lake Superior combined. The older, thicker sea ice is declining and is being replaced with newer, thinner ice that is more vulnerable to summer melt, according to Kwok.

His team found that seasonal sea ice averages about 1.7 meters (6 feet) in thickness, while ice that had lasted through more than one summer averages about 3 meters (9 feet), though it can grow much thicker in some locations near the coast. Kwok is currently working to extend the ICESat estimate further, from 2003 to 2008, to see how the recent decline in the area covered by sea ice is mirrored in changes in its volume. With these new data on both the area and thickness of Arctic sea ice, we will be able to better understand the sensitivity and vulnerability of the ice cover to changes in climate,” Kwok said.

- courtesy of: NASA Headquarters; Jet Propulsion Laboratory; National Snow and Ice Data Center

Editor: the North Atlantic thermohaline conveyor is a system of deep ocean current circulation. It is responsible for the Gulf Stream which provides North America and Europe with habitable climate conditions. Dense Arctic water from melted ice could sink the conveyor.

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- This data visualization from the AMSR-E instrument on the Aqua satellite show the maximum sea ice extent for 2008-09, which occurred on Feb. 28, 2009. Credit: NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio

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Space.gs

Node 3, International Space Station now named after Apollo 11 landing site.
By Space News, April 15th, 2009


• Images: Tranquility


The International Space Station module formerly known as Node 3 has a new name. After more than a million online responses, the node will be called “Tranquility.” The name Tranquility was chosen from thousands of suggestions submitted by participants on NASA’s Web site. The “Help Name Node 3″ poll asked people to vote for the module’s name either by choosing one of four options listed by NASA or offering their own suggestion. Tranquility was one of the top 10 suggestions submitted by respondents to the poll, which ended March 20.

“The public did a fantastic job and surprised us with the quality and volume of the suggestions,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations. “Apollo 11 landed on the moon at the Sea of Tranquility 40 years ago this July. We selected ‘Tranquility’ because it ties it to exploration and the moon and symbolizes the spirit of international cooperation embodied by the space station.” NASA announced the name Tuesday with the help of Expedition 14 and 15 astronaut Suni Williams on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.” The show’s producers offered to host the name selection announcement after comedian Stephen Colbert took an interest in the poll and urged his viewers to suggest the name “Colbert,” which received the most entries.

“We don’t typically name U.S. space station hardware after living people and this is no exception,” Gerstenmaier joked. “However, NASA is naming its new space station treadmill the ‘Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill,’ or COLBERT. We have invited Stephen to Florida for the launch of COLBERT and to Houston to try out a version of the treadmill that astronauts train on.” The treadmill is targeted to launch to the station in August. It will be installed in Tranquility after the node arrives at the station next year. A newly-created patch will depict the acronym and an illustration of the treadmill. Tranquility is scheduled to arrive at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in May. There, it will be prepared for space shuttle Endeavour’s flight, designated STS-130, which is targeted for launch in February 2010. Tranquility will join four other named U.S. modules on the station: the Destiny laboratory, the Quest airlock, the Unity node and the Harmony node.


• Moon: Sea of Tranquility

- Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chafee before their last Apollo mission (more)


Tranquility is a pressurized module that will provide room for many of the space station’s life support systems. Attached to the node is a cupola, which is a unique work station with six windows on the sides and one on top. Suni Williams made the announcement on “The Colbert Report” two years after running the Boston Marathon in space on a station treadmill similar to COLBERT. Video of Williams’ run and the name announcement on “The Colbert Report” will air on NASA Television’s Video File.