Preparing Discovery For Flight

A specialized transporter brought the payload canister to Launch Pad 39A in preparation for the STS-131 mission. The canister, which is the same dimensions as the shuttle's cargo bay, held the Leonardo supply module during the move from processing to the shuttle. Leonardo will be packed inside space shuttle Discovery for launch. In this image, the payload canister holding the Leonardo supply module is hoisted to the clean room at Launch pad 39A.Image Credit: NASA/Amanda Diller

NASA Study Finds Atlantic 'Conveyor Belt' Not Slowing

New NASA measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years. › Learn More

Discovery Fit to Fly on April 5

The STS-131 crew will deliver a multi-purpose logistics module filled with science racks and perform three spacewalks at the orbital outpost, during its April mission. › Shuttle Section

Trip To Pulau Aman, Pulau Pinang 27-28/03/2010

Image Of The Day

A Burst of Spring

Spring has sprung on Mars, bringing with it the disappearance of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) that covers the north polar sand dunes. In spring, the sublimation of the ice (going directly from ice to gas) causes a host of uniquely Martian phenomena. In this image streaks of dark basaltic sand have been carried from below the ice layer to form fan-shaped deposits on top of the seasonal ice. The similarity in the directions of the fans suggests that they formed at the same time, when the wind direction and speed was the same. They often form along the boundary between the dune and the surface below.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

NASA Mars Rover Getting Smarter as it Gets Older

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, now in its seventh year on Mars, has a new capability to make its own choices about whether to make additional observations of rocks that it spots on arrival at a new location. › Read More

Shuttle Detector at Heart of Volcano Alert System

As a team was working on better ways to detect hazardous gases on the shuttle launch pad, they found out they also could build something to find hazardous gases venting from a volcano.

Tim Griffin, foreground, and designer Richard Arkin miniaturized the leak detector system used by the space shuttle and then found out it could be used for volcano studies. Working with Costa Rican officials, the mobile detector has been used to find out what gases volcanoes give off and how much. With enough information, the detectors are expected to be able to predict a volcanic eruption in time to allow safe evacuations of nearby areas. Photo credit: NASA/Amanda Diller› View Hi-Res Image

The mobile leak detector was placed inside a small aircraft and flown over the Turrialba volcano to gauge the air around the volcano. In this photo, the sampling device is attached to the wing strut and positioned so it doesn't pick up exhaust gases. Photo courtesy of Tim Griffin› View Hi-Res Image

Tim Griffin and his team of researchers carried the leak detector by hand into the cone of the Turrialba volcano in Costa Rica in 2005. Photo courtesy of Tim Griffin› View Hi-Res Image

Tim Griffin works with the mobile leak detector in the back seat of a Costa Rican airplane before a sampling fllight. The shuttle leak detection system used at the launch pads is the size of three refrigerators, but Griffin's team reduced it in size and added automation so it could be mobile.Photo courtesy of Tim Griffin. › View Hi-Res Image

NASA IceBridge Mission Prepares for Study of Arctic Glaciers

NASA's Operation IceBridge mission, the largest airborne survey ever flown of Earth's polar ice, kicks off its second year of study when NASA aircraft arrive in Greenland March 22.

NASA's Operation IceBridge mission will make science flights from Kangerlussuaq and Thule, Greenland, in spring 2010 to survey the area's ice sheet, outlet glaciers and sea ice. Credit: NASA

Related Links:

> Operation IceBridge

> IceBridge Spring 2010 Media Gallery

NASA’s International Space Station Program Wins Aviation Week Laureate Award

The International Space Station Program has received the 2010 Aviation Week Space Laureate Award. This year’s winners were recognized for extraordinary accomplishments in the aerospace and defense industries. In announcing the Space Laureate award, Aviation Week noted that the space station, currently orbiting 220 miles above the Earth with a multicultural crew of three on board, is “essentially complete after 25 years of political upheavals, redesigns, technical problems and the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. “In 2009, the final major pressurized modules were attached to the orbiting laboratory, and its life support and other systems upgraded to support a full-time crew as large as six,” the announcement continued. “The five partner agencies are working to win funding to operate the station until 2020, and engineers already are recertifying its structure until 2028. It has become the model for international cooperation on future human exploration deeper into the Solar System.” Representing the five space agencies in the partnership – and the thousands of men and women who have built the space station – were partner program managers Michael Suffredini, NASA; Pierre Jean, Canadian Space Agency; Bernardo Patti, European Space Agency; Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Alexey Krasnov, Roscosmos. “We are honored to accept this award,” Suffredini said. “The International Space Station is an unbelievable tribute to teamwork and cooperation. We want to thank not only the space station team – including our international partners and contractors -- but also the entire shuttle and mission support teams, which are making assembly and continued operations possible.” The International Space Station is a joint project of five space agencies and 15 countries that is nearing completion and will mark the 10th anniversary of a continuous human presence in orbit later this year. The largest and most complicated spacecraft ever built, the space station is an international, technological and political achievement that represents the latest step in humankind’s quest to explore and live in space.
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov (center), Expedition 22 flight engineer and Expedition 23 commander; NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer (left) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi, both Expedition 22/23 flight engineers, pose for a photo in the International Space Station's Kibo laboratory. Credit: NASAUpon completion of assembly later this year, the station’s crew and its U.S., European, Japanese and Russian laboratory facilities will expand the pace of space-based research to unprecedented levels. Nearly 150 experiments are currently under way on the station, and more than 400 experiments have been conducted since research began nine years ago. These experiments already are leading to advances in the fight against food poisoning, new methods for delivering medicine to cancer cells and the development of more capable engines and materials for use on Earth and in space. The international partner agencies provide crew members, control centers and support teams that train and provide uninterrupted support for systems operations and coordinate the on-orbit research. The station has a mass of almost 800,000 pounds and a habitable volume of more than 12,000 cubic feet – approximately the size of a five-bedroom home, and uses state-of-the-art systems to generate solar electricity, recycle nearly 85 percent of its water and generate much of its own oxygen supply. Nearly 190 humans have visited the space station, which is now supporting its 23rd resident crew. Boeing, prime contractor, responsible for design, development, construction and integration of the ISS, recently handed over the “keys” to the station’s U.S. On-Orbit Segment to NASA at the conclusion of an Acceptance Review Board that verified the delivery, assembly, integration and activation of all hardware and software required by contract.

For more information about the award, visit: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/

Experience Hubble's Universe in 3-D

This image depicts a vast canyon of dust and gas in the Orion Nebula from a 3-D computer model based on observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and created by science visualization specialists at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md. A 3-D visualization of this model takes viewers on an amazing four-minute voyage through the 15-light-year-wide canyon.

Expedition 22 Crew Lands

The Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 22 Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Maxim Suraev near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan on Thursday, March 18, 2010. NASA Astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian Cosmonaut Maxim Suraev are returning from six months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 21 and 22 crews. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

ISS Photography: 100 Million Words

Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineers Max Suraev, Oleg Kotov, T.J. Creamer, and Soichi Noguchi are expected to snap a total of 100,000 images by the end of their mission in Earth orbit.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the Expedition 22 crew aboard the International Space Station is about to complete the generation of 100 million words worth of information. That’s because Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineers Max Suraev, Oleg Kotov, T.J. Creamer, and Soichi Noguchi are expected to snap a total of 100,000 images by the end of their mission in Earth orbit. Williams is setting a record that surpasses his own previous record of 83,856 images taken during Expedition 13 in 2006. “This week we broke my old Exp. 13 record for number of Earth photos,” Williams “tweeted” from the station. “Later, after landing and recovery, I will post some of best.” Among those digital still images is this spectacular nighttime image taken of Houston, Texas, the home of Mission Control and astronaut training, and the hub of the International Space Station Program that unites five space agencies and 15 countries in peaceful exploration and scientific research. Williams and Suraev will end their five-and-a-half-month stay on the station Thursday, when they undock their Soyuz spacecraft and head for a landing in Kazakhstan. They were part of both the Expedition 21 and 22 crews. Kotov, Creamer and Noguchi will stay on orbit, snapping more photos, for two more months before returning home after being part of both the Expedition 22 and 23 crews. All told, space station crews so far have amassed a total of almost 639,000 images. Those images include photos that document life and work aboard the space station, and photos that document the condition of the home planet from its unique perspective 220 miles above Earth. Their efforts are part of a larger collection that began with Earth observations photos during the Gemini Program of the 1960s. Many of the images are used in scientific research about the Earth, its climate, its resources and the effects humans are having on both.

The recent STS-130 space shuttle mission delivered a new observation deck known as the cupola that offers the largest window ever flown on a spacecraft, and the upcoming STS-131 shuttle mission to the station will deliver the Window Observational Research Facility (WORF), which will provide a new facility dedicated to multi- and hyper-spectral remote sensing and high resolution Earth observation photography to enhance the use of the best optical-quality window ever flown in space, in the U.S. Destiny Laboratory. For more information about Earth observations photography, visit the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of the Earth at: http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/

Expedition 22 Commander Jeffrey Williams works with test samples in the Human Research Facility 2 Refrigerated Centrifuge as a part of the Nutritional Status Assessment experiment in the International Space Station's Columbus laboratory. Credit: NASA

Image Of The Day

Phobos

This image of Mars' moon Phobos was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on Mars Express. The HRSC camera is operated by the German Aerospace...

Surprise Shrimp Under Antarctic Ice

At a depth of 600 feet beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet, a small shrimp-like creature managed to brighten up an otherwise gray polar day in late November 2009.

At a depth of 600 feet beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet, a small shrimp-like creature managed to brighten up an otherwise gray polar day in late November 2009. This critter is a three-inch long Lyssianasid amphipod found beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, about 12.5 miles away from open water. NASA scientists were using a borehole camera to look back up towards the ice surface when they spotted this pinkish-orange creature swimming beneath the ice. Credit: NASA

Image Of The Day

The Wizard Nebula

This image of the open star cluster NGC 7380, also known as the Wizard Nebula, is a mosaic of images from the WISE mission spanning an area on the sky...

Image Of The Day

Global Map of Mercury
In December 2009, the first high-resolution global map of Mercury was made publicly available. These images are from MESSENGER, a NASA Discovery mission...

Crew Members Prep for Undocking, Future Arrivals

Expedition 22 Commander Jeff Williams and Soyuz Commander Max Suraev are scheduled to land in the Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft March 18 in Kazakhstan.

Image above: Expedition 22 Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi performs maintenance on the cooling loops in the U.S. spacesuits housed in the International Space Station’s Quest airlock. Credit: NASA TV

Soaring high over the Earth in the International Space Station, the astronauts and cosmonauts of the Expedition 22 crew began a new week Monday, the final week in space for two of their number. Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Maxim Suraev will depart the station Thursday aboard the Soyuz TMA-16 spacecraft. They will undock from the orbiting complex and take a three-and-a-half-hour ride that will culminate in a parachute-assisted landing on the steppe of Kazakhstan early that morning. Williams and Suraev began their final week in orbit by testing the Soyuz spacecraft’s motion control system and recharging the satellite telephone they will carry with them in the unlikely event that they land off course in the barren landing region and need to contact search and recovery forces. They also spent three hours going over procedures for their homeward flight with specialists on the ground. As members of the Expedition 21 and 22 crews, Williams and Suraev will have spent 169 days in space. Including his time on the Expedition 13 and STS-101 crews, this will give Williams a total of 362 days in space, placing him fourth on the all-time U.S. list of space travelers behind Peggy Whitson with 377 days, Mike Foale with 374 and Mike Fincke with 366. Williams will be 26th on the all-time endurance list for all space travelers. Expedition 22 Flight Engineers Soichi Noguchi, T.J. Creamer and Oleg Kotov will continue their stay on the station becoming the new Expedition 23 crew. Kotov will become the new station commander when the departing Williams enters the Soyuz vehicle and closes the hatch. On April 4, Expedition 23 will expand to a six-member crew. Arriving in the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft will be new station crew members Alexander Skvortsov, Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko. On April 7, space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to arrive for a thirteen day mission to supply the station with new science racks and ammonia tanks. STS-131 will feature three spacewalks and the delivery of the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module. In preparation for the joint spacewalks to be performed during STS-131, Creamer and Noguchi packed up equipment for Discovery to return to Earth and Noguchi performed maintenance on the cooling loops in the U.S. spacesuits housed in the station’s Quest airlock. Controllers on the ground operated Canadarm2, the station’s robotic arm, to remove the Special Purpose Dextrous Manipulator, known as Dextre, from the Mobile Base System (MBS) on the complex’s truss structure. Tuesday they will move it to the outside of the Destiny laboratory in order to make the MBS available for use during STS-131.

Amateur Radio Family Day At Teluk Nipah, Pantai Merdeka, Kedah (12-13 Mac 2010)