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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)

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Bursting at the Seams
Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed 'tiger stripes' near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus....

Chopper Crash Test a Smash Hit

The second crash test of a small lightweight helicopter at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., was a smashing success, literally -- just as engineers had predicted."Three, two, one, release," said the technician on the loudspeaker at the Landing and Impact Research Facility. With that countdown the helicopter smacked hard into the concrete. Its skid gear collapsed, its windscreen cracked open and its occupants lurched forward violently, suffering potentially spine-crushing injuries according to internal data recorders. The crash test was all in the name of research to try to make helicopters safer."The goal of any research program that has an element of impact dynamics is to develop an understanding of the crash response of the vehicle," said Karen Jackson, an aerospace engineer who oversaw the test. "Once we understand that response we can look at ways to improve the crash performance."In December 2009 researchers dropped the same MD-500 at a similar angle from the same height of 35 feet (10.7 m). Inside were the same instruments that collected 160 channels of data and the same four crash test dummies. Three of the dummies were full bodies and one was a special torso model equipped with simulated internal organs. Technicians set up the same cameras to record the impact from inside and outside the helicopter. › Dec. 2009 Test

The test conditions on both days were the same too, simulating what would be a relatively severe but survivable helicopter crash. The flight path angle was about 33 degrees and the combined forward and vertical speeds were about 48 feet per second or 33 miles per hour (53.1 kph).In the first test the MD-500 skidded to a stop, with very little damage to the helicopter or its silent occupants, because its underside was outfitted with an expandable honeycomb cushion called a deployable energy absorber."It's made of Kevlar and has a unique flexible hinge design that allows the honeycomb to be packaged and remain flat until needed," said Sotiris Kellas, the Langley engineer who created the idea as a way to cushion the next generation of astronaut-carrying space capsules, but realized it could be used in other ways.

The MD-500 before and after the drop test. Credit: NASA/Sean Smith

The force of the impact shattered the MD-500's windscreen. Credit: NASA/Sean Smith

The more recent drop on March 10, 2010 involved just the helicopter. No new technology was attached. That was the point. Engineers wanted to determine exactly how efficient the deployable energy absorber had been in the earlier test and how much it might help reduce occupant injuries. So they dropped the same helicopter in the same way and measured and recorded the same conditions with the same instruments."We were fortunate enough that the helicopter survived so well the first time that we could use it again," said engineer Martin Annett.There will be no third crash test for this helicopter. It was too damaged. Researchers say the "g" forces the MD-500 experienced more than tripled those recorded in the previous test. But that doesn't mean the research is over. Engineers have gigabytes of data to analyze to confirm exactly what impact the new honeycomb cushion technology might have for helicopters in the future.The drop tests were conducted by the Subsonic Rotary Wing Project of NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program, and funded by the agency's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate in Washington.

Kathy BarnstorffNASA Langley Research Center

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Snapshot of the International...

On March 13, 2008, the International Space Station passed across the field-of-view of Germany's remote sensing satellite, TerraSAR-X, at a distance of...

Go into a NASA Clean Room Daily with the Webb Telescope via NASA's 'Webb-cam'

How often can you say that you've seen the components of a space telescope being worked on at NASA? Thanks to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., that has now changed. › Learn More

How often can you say that you've seen the components of a space telescope being worked on at NASA? The answer is probably "rarely, if ever." However, thanks to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., that has now changed.Web cameras in Goddard's largest clean room are now providing daily, live coverage of work being done on components of the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. You could say they're "Webb-cams" and they provide one image per minute so people can see what happens behind the scenes. Of course, the work happens during regular working hours, so there may not be action on screen all the time.John Decker, Webb telescope Deputy Project Manager at NASA Goddard was the motivator in getting the "Webb-cam" up and running. "I thought it would be a great way for everyone to see what happens behind the scenes as components of this exciting new space telescope are being tested and coming together here at NASA Goddard," Decker said.The Webb telescope project is managed at Goddard, and several components of this next generation space telescope are already in a clean room here.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the next-generation premier space observatory, exploring deep space phenomena from distant galaxies to nearby planets and stars. The Webb telescope will give scientists clues about the formation of the universe and the evolution of our own solar system, from the first light after the Big Bang to the formation of star systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth. The telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency and is expected to launch in 2014.Clean rooms are like operating rooms in hospitals. They are pristine areas kept as free as possible of contaminants that could interfere with delicate technology. There are several clean rooms at NASA Goddard.Anyone that works in a clean room, such as engineers and scientists, have to wear sterile bodysuits, head covers, gloves, boots, and face masks. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes to get dressed before entering, and it's important because even one speck of dust or a fingerprint could severely damage the sensitive telescope components and instruments. Clean rooms act to filter out these harmful contaminants through a unique ventilation system and an entire wall of air filters. The clean room ventilation system circulates almost one million cubic feet of air every minute through 9,000 square feet of HEPA filters located along one wall. The HEPA filters are specially designed to last several decades. All of these features provide the largest Goddard clean room with a Class-10,000 rating. That means any cubic foot of air in the clean room has no more than 10,000 particles floating around in it larger than 0.5 microns. A micron is one-millionth of a meter, and typical “outside” air has millions of such particles. A human hair is between 20 and 200 microns wide.The advantage to the Webb-cam is that the average person doesn't need to do a micron-type clean up and spend time donning protective gear. Anyone can sit at their computer and see what's going on, no matter what they're wearing.

Related Links

› Watch the Goddard clean room Web cam

› More James Webb Space Telescope images at Goddard's Flickr page

› More about NASA's James Webb Space Telescope› More about Goddard's clean room

› Other Goddard testing chambers

Rob Gutro and Rob GarnerNASA's Goddard Space Flight Center