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Article source: http://www.examiner.com/article/mars-hoax-day-warning-don-t-look-out-the-window
Tags: local city <BR/>The voice of NASA’s chief has boldly gone where no voice has gone before — to another planet and back.
Words uttered by Charles Bolden, the administrator of NASA, were radioed to the Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars, which in turn sent them back to NASA’s Deep Space Network on Earth, NASA said in a statement Monday.
The successful transmission means Bolden’s space-faring comments are the first instance of a recorded human voice traveling from Earth to another planet and back again, according to NASA.
In the recording, Bolden congratulated NASA employees and other agencies involved in the Curiosity mission, noting that “landing a rover on Mars is not easy.”
“Others have tried,” he said. “Only America has succeeded.”
The announcement by NASA of the voice transmission, the latest in a series of advances by Curiosity since it landed on Mars earlier this month, comes just days after the death of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
“We hope these words will be an inspiration to someone alive today who will become the first to stand upon the surface of Mars,” Dave Lavery, NASA Curiosity program executive, said in the agency’s statement. “And like the great Neil Armstrong, they will speak aloud of that next giant leap in human exploration.”
As well as the voice recording, NASA on Monday released new photos of the Martian landscape taken by Curiosity. The images show the knobbly terrain on the side of Mount Sharp, an area that Curiosity is eventually intended to explore.
Mount Sharp was formed from hundreds of rock layers that built up over time. The mountain is about 3 miles high, but the rover will trek up a small portion of it, testing different layers for signs that life could have once existed on Mars. It may take about a year for the rover to reach this target.
Curiosity already is sending back more data from the surface of Mars than the combined results of all of NASA’s previous rovers, the space agency said Monday.
Last week, it completed its first drive on Mars, setting the stage for it to venture farther afield.
Despite the complexity of landing a 2,000-pound vehicle on another planet, Curiosity had a perfect landing on August 6, and most of the instruments scientists have tested appear to function.
There’s only been one glitch so far: a wind sensor on the rover’s weather station was damaged and the reason might always remain mysterious, scientists say.
CNN’s Elizabeth Landau contributed to this report.
Article source: http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/world/mars-rover-landing-curiosity-photos-video-nasa-human-voice-makes-giant-leap-in-space
Tags: charles bolden, neil armstrong, NASA Curiosity, mars rover <BR/> 
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The Mars rover Curiosity has sent some spectacular new images to Earth, giving a detailed view of the landing site in Mars Gale Crater and the surface of the red planet. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, mission control for the project, put them together in a giant mosaic.
“The mosaic, which stretches about 29,000 pixels across by 7,000 pixels high, includes 130 images taken on Aug. 8 and an additional 10 images taken on Aug. 19,” said JPL.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
The images have been combined to provide a 360 degree panoramic view of the landing site, including the 3.4 mile high Mount Sharp. Exploring Mount Sharp is one of Curiosity’s primary objectives, largely because previous spacecraft in orbit spotted evidence of possible past exposure to liquid water at the mountain’s base.
The Rover also made history by sending the first audio recording of a human voice from Mars to Earth. The voice was that of NASA administrator Charles Bolden, who congratulated the mission team on its success in getting the rover to Mars. In the recording, Bolden said, “Curiosity will bring benefits to Earth and inspire a new generation of scientists and explorers, as it prepares the way for a human mission in the not too distant future.”
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/AP Photo
Curiosity landed Gale Crater on Mars on Aug. 5. It is set to explore the crater over the next two years, looking, among other things, for evidence to determine whether the planet could have ever supported life. The rover, with a $2.5 billion budget, is equipped with an array of instruments to aid in its quest, including a rock-cutting laser and an onboard chemistry lab.
For more images from the Mars Rover Curiosity check out our slideshow.
Article source: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/08/mars-rover-sends-stunning-new-shots/
Tags: image credit, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Mars Gale Crater, Gale Crater on Mars <BR/>
Addressing the insatiable curiosity of its builders, NASA’s roving Mars Science Laboratory has taken its first small “roll for mankind” in search of unraveling the clues to the habitability of Mars, past and present.
However, there is a small chance that Martian evolutionary history may be confused by the presence of hitchhiking microbes from Earth.
WATCH VIDEO: Will the real ET be little green men or little green bacteria?
ANALYSIS: Could New Rover’s Wheels Deliver Germs to Mars?
To date, a total of a dozen U.S., Soviet, and European spacecraft have landed or crashed on Mars. They were all sterilized before leaving Earth, but were the procedures good enough to wipe out every last stowaway Earth bug?
If we were to determine Mars has been biocontaminated by microscopic colonists from Earth, it would open a Pandora’s box of astrobiological issues. Did we “play God” by inadvertently seeding another world with life that mutated into a new type of organism that adapted to alien conditions?
There is reason to worry about biocontamation. In 2006 it was reported that a common soil bacterium, called Bacillus, remained healthy and viable on a spacecraft that had been sterilized with ultraviolet light.
Perversely, sending microbes to Mars could become one of the greatest accidental science experiments of all time: the introduction of an organism on another planet that tests the power of Darwinian evolution, and offers a window into Earth’s early history.
ANALYSIS: Homemade ‘Mars in a Bottle’ Tortures Bacteria
“We have known from the rock record that complex life is amazingly resilient. Despite repeated near annihilation, complex life has never failed to adapt to new environments. We believe that once life got started on this planet, it survived one way or another,” writes Janet Siefert of Rice University in Astrobiology.
The author argues that based on the fossil record it seems inevitable that microbes will eke out a living by beating all odds to accumulate the right genetic material to adapt quickly. But can they pull it off on a dry, irradiated, and hostile place like Mars?
A lab experiment in 2012 subjected microorganisms to Mars-like conditions. The bugs had a rough time coping with a daily thawing and freezing cycle, lack of oxygen, and sparse water. It slowed down their growth and the microbes ultimately perished.
On the other hand say the researchers, even if a small fraction of the stowaways survive on Mars, it’s possible that they could rapidly “play the numbers,” perhaps like their early Earth ancestors. Relying on quickly trying out a plethora of genetic mutations the bugs might come up with a new survival strategy in short order.
ANALYSIS: Are We Infecting Mars With Our Germs?
The makeover could be so extreme that it would really be a Genesis II, the origin of a new form of life on another world, say the researchers.
Ironically, I’d say that this line of reasoning leads inevitably to the conclusion that Mars must already be inhabited with native organisms that arose at the same time life appeared on Earth, and were genetically agile at adapting to a dying Red Planet.
Therefore, stranded Earth microbes might compete with Mars microbes for resources. We’d introduce a shadow biosphere on the Red Planet; where completely different form of life co-exists.
Contaminating Mars with Earth organisms, “might not be an experiment we ethically want to conduct, but it would be an unparalleled experimental result,” the authors conclude.
Images: Top: E. coli, a hardy bacteria. But is it a potential Mars colonist? Middle: The British Beagle 2 lander that was built to specifically hunt down Mars life. Sadly, it failed. Credit: NASA, ESA
Article source: http://news.discovery.com/space/we-may-have-already-colonized-mars-120831.html
Tags: european spacecraft, earth microbes, Mars Science Laboratory <BR/>advertisement
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Researchers have discovered multiple planets in a solar system with two suns something previously thought impossible.
SDSU Associate Professor of Astronomy Jerome Orosz Ph.D. is the lead author of the study which was published this week in the journal Science.
“This is the first case where we see two planets around a single binary star,” Orosz told NBC 7 as he recalled what he described as a “wild weekend.”
In Kepler-47, two stars whirl around each other, orbiting each other in every seven and a half days some 5000 light-years away from our solar system.
The planet closest to the suns is about three times larger than Earth.
The outer planet is even larger, slightly bigger than Uranus in our solar system. It is most likely a gas giant and likely uninhabitable Orosz said.
Even so, just the discovery of a second planet with data that can’t be refuted is a milestone for astronomers.
“It was thrilling to find a second planet,” Orosz said.
The discovery shows us that binary stars can host planetary systems as much as single stars he said.
So researchers can now look for planets that could hold life, in systems with two stars.
“There could be liquid water on that planet. That region where you’re not too close or you’re not too far is called the habitable zone so you could have liquid water on an earthlike planet,” Orosz said.
This discovery was only possible because of the Kepler Telescope which orbits the sun giving it an uninterrupted look at the universe.
The telescope’s mission is to find other planets like our own. Findings like this most recent one mean chances of success may be greater Orosz said.
The work was presented at the International Astronomical Union meeting by Dr. William Welsh, Professor of Astronomy at San Diego State University, on behalf of the Kepler Science Team.
“The thing I find most exciting,” Welsh said in an SDSU news release, “is the potential for habitability in a circumbinary system. Kepler-47c is not likely to harbor life, but if it had large moons, those would be very interesting worlds.”
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Article source: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/tech/Two-Planets-Discovered-Binary-Solar-System-Kepler-Jerome-Orosz-SDSU-167832735.html
NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has led to a bonanza of newfound supermassive black holes and extreme galaxies called dust-obscured galaxies (hot DOGS).
Images from the telescope have revealed millions of dusty black hole candidates across the universe and about 1,000 even dustier objects thought to be among the brightest galaxies ever found. These powerful galaxies that burn brightly with infrared light are nicknamed hot DOGs.
“WISE has exposed a menagerie of hidden objects,” said Hashima Hasan from NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “We’ve found an asteroid dancing ahead of Earth in its orbit, the coldest star-like orbs known, and now supermassive black holes and galaxies hiding behind cloaks of dust.”
WISE scanned the whole sky twice in infrared light, completing its survey in early 2011. Like night-vision goggles probing the dark, the telescope captured millions of images of the sky. All the data from the mission have been released publicly, allowing astronomers to dig in and make new discoveries.
The latest findings are helping astronomers better understand how galaxies and the behemoth black holes at their centers grow and evolve together. For example, the giant black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, has 4 million times the mass of our Sun and has gone through periodic feeding frenzies where material falls toward the black hole, heats up, and irradiates its surroundings. Bigger central black holes, up to a billion times the mass of our Sun, even may shut down star formation in galaxies.
In one study, astronomers used WISE to identify about 2.5 million actively feeding supermassive black holes across the full sky, stretching back to distances more than 10 billion light-years away. About two-thirds of these black holes never had been detected before because dust blocks their visible light. WISE easily sees these monsters because their powerful, accreting black holes warm the dust, causing it to glow in infrared light.
In two other WISE papers, researchers report finding what are among the brightest galaxies known, one of the main goals of the mission. So far, they have identified about 1,000 candidates.
These extreme objects can pour out more than 100 trillion times as much light as our Sun. They are so dusty, however, that they appear only in the longest wavelengths of infrared light captured by WISE. NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope followed up on the discoveries in more detail and helped show that, in addition to hosting supermassive black holes feverishly snacking on gas and dust, these DOGs are busy churning out new stars.
“These dusty, cataclysmically forming galaxies are so rare WISE had to scan the entire sky to find them,” said Peter Eisenhardt, lead author of the paper on the first of these bright, dusty galaxies, and project scientist for WISE at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California (JPL). “We are also seeing evidence that these record-setters may have formed their black holes before the bulk of their stars. The ‘eggs’ may have come before the ‘chickens.’”
More than 100 of these objects, located about 10 billion light-years away, have been confirmed using the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, as well as the Gemini Observatory in Chile, Palomar’s 200-inch Hale Telescope near San Diego, and the Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.
The WISE observations combined with data at even longer infrared wavelengths from Caltech’s Submillimeter Observatory atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii, revealed that these extreme galaxies are more than twice as hot as other infrared-bright galaxies. One theory is their dust is being heated by an extremely powerful burst of activity from the supermassive black hole.
“We may be seeing a new, rare phase in the evolution of galaxies,” said Jingwen Wu of JPL.
Article source: http://www.astronomy.com/~/link.aspx?_id=f005fa5a-52ea-42cf-b32b-4c2d194949af
Tags: infrared light, dusty galaxies, black holes, black hole, supermassive black holes <BR/>There are two parts to every storm. On the ground it can be devastation as seen with the landfall of Hurricane Isaac. It nearly stalled over southern Louisiana for three days hammering the coastal regions storm surge, high winds, a few tornadoes, and between 10-20 inches of rainfall. Levees have been toppled and even Thursday afternoon’ evacuation along Louisiana/Mississippi border. Tangipahoa Parish ordered an immediate evacuation as McComb mayor mentioned the dam at Lake Tangipahoa at Percy Quin State Park had a 50% chance of failing.
The other part of the storm is seen from above. NASA satellites have helped to provide important forecast information as well as research for future events. See the incredible views in the attached video clip and images in the slide show. Special thanks for some of the information provided to meteorologists Joe Witte and Rob Gutro located at NASA Goddard.
NASA’s TRMM Satellite Sees Hurricane Isaac Drench Louisiana [annimation]
The TRMM satellite twice flew directly above hurricane Isaac as it was starting to pound Louisiana with strong winds and heavy rainfall. The first orbit shown here was on August 28, 2012 at 2212 UTC ( 5:12 PM EDT) and the second time was on August 29, 2012 at 0307 UTC (August 28, 2012 at 10:07 PM CDT). These TRMM passes were combined in an animation to show that Isaac had only moved a short distance in the 5 hours between the two orbits. An analysis of rainfall from TRMM’s Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments shows that intense bands of rain around Isaac were dropping rain at a rate of over 70 mm/hr (~2.75 inches). TRMM’s Precipitation Radar (PR) data were used to show a 3-D view of rainfall within Isaac. A few very powerful thunderstorms near Isaac’s eye were reaching heights of almost 17km (~10.6 miles).
Night View of Isaac from Suomi-NPP
Early on August 29, 2012, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi-NPP satellite captured this nighttime view of Hurricane Isaac and the cities near the Gulf Coast of the United States. The image was acquired at 1:57 a.m. local time (6:57 Universal Time) by the VIIRS “day-night band,” which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses light intensification to enable the detection of dim signals. In this case, the clouds of Isaac were lit by moonlight.
Isaac in 3-D Shows Powerful, Towering Thunderstorms
A three-dimensional view of rainfall within then Hurricane Isaac was made at NASA Goddard using TRMM’s Precipitation Radar (PR) data. The 3-D image showed a few very powerful thunderstorms near Isaac’s eye were reaching heights of almost 17km (~10.6 miles). Those tall thunderstorms near a hurricane’s center release heat and can help a hurricane become more powerful. NHC reported at 10 p.m. CDT (close to the time of the first TRMM image) that Isaac’s central pressure had fallen to its lowest value of 968 millibars (~28.58 inches of mercury).
NASA’s MISR Instrument Shows Isaac’s Inflow and Outflow
NASA’s Terra spacecraft and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)-built Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument flew over then Tropical Storm Isaac at 11:30 a.m. CDT on Aug. 28, 2012, a few hours before Isaac was upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. At the time of the overpass, MISR recorded low-level wind speeds of up to 75 miles per hour (65 knots) from cloud motion observed outside Isaac’s eye. The National Hurricane Center in Miami similarly reports maximum sustained winds of 69 miles per hour (60 knots) with gusts to 86 miles per hour (75 knots) soon after. Isaac made initial landfall in southeastern Louisiana in Plaquemines Parish about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of New Orleans around 6:45 p.m. CDT with maximum sustained winds of 80 miles per hour (70 knots).
Isaac Coverage:
Isaac forced federal emergency declarations in Louisiana and Mississippi
Isaac breaks Katrina’s rainfall record in New Orleans
Hurricane Isaac radar shows crawling by southern LA, half million powerless
Hurricane Isaac crawling along the Louisiana coastline this morning
Hurricane Isaac radar loop at landfall near Venice as it gets stronger
Hurricane Isaac upgraded and slowly moving for landfall on Katrina anniversary
Article source: http://www.examiner.com/article/isaac-seen-from-nasa-satellites-3d-and-hi-def
Tags: TRMM Satellite Sees Hurricane Isaac Drench, southern louisiana, nasa goddard, Tropical Storm Isaac, precipitation radar, Hurricane Isaac, trmm satellite <BR/>NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is on track to become the first probe to orbit and study two distant solar system destinations, to help scientists answer questions about the formation of our solar system. The spacecraft is scheduled to leave the giant asteroid Vesta on Sept. 4 PDT (Sept. 5 EDT) to start its two-and-a-half-year journey to the dwarf planet Ceres.
Dawn began its 3-billion-mile (5-billion kilometer) odyssey to explore the two most massive objects in the main asteroid belt in 2007. Dawn arrived at Vesta in July 2011 and will reach Ceres in early 2015. Dawn’s targets represent two icons of the asteroid belt that have been witness to much of our solar system’s history.
To make its escape from Vesta, the spacecraft will spiral away as gently as it arrived, using a special, hyper-efficient system called ion propulsion. Dawn’s ion propulsion system uses electricity to ionize xenon to generate thrust. The 12-inch-wide ion thrusters provide less power than conventional engines, but can maintain thrust for months at a time.
“Thrust is engaged, and we are now climbing away from Vesta atop a blue-green pillar of xenon ions,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn’s chief engineer and mission director, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “We are feeling somewhat wistful about concluding a fantastically productive and exciting exploration of Vesta, but now have our sights set on dwarf planet Ceres.
Dawn’s orbit provided close-up views of Vesta, revealing unprecedented detail about the giant asteroid. The mission revealed that Vesta completely melted in the past, forming a layered body with an iron core. The spacecraft also revealed the scarring from titanic collisions Vesta suffered in its southern hemisphere, surviving not one but two colossal impacts in the last two billion years. Without Dawn, scientists would not have known about the dramatic troughs sculpted around Vesta, which are ripples from the two south polar impacts.
“We went to Vesta to fill in the blanks of our knowledge about the early history of our solar system,” said Christopher Russell, Dawn’s principal investigator, based at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). “Dawn has filled in those pages, and more, revealing to us how special Vesta is as a survivor from the earliest days of the solar system. We can now say with certainty that Vesta resembles a small planet more closely than a typical asteroid.”
The mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
UCLA is responsible for the overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are part of the mission’s team. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.
Article source: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASAs_Dawn_Prepares_for_Trek_Toward_Dwarf_Planet_999.html
Tags: ion propulsion, solar system, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dawn mission, asteroid vesta, asteroid belt <BR/>
Artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Juno spacecraft during a burn of its main engine. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Eyes
› Full image and caption
PASADENA, Calif. – Earlier today, navigators and mission controllers for NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter watched their computer screens as their spacecraft successfully performed its first deep-space maneuver. This first firing of Juno’s main engine is one of two planned to refine the spacecraft’s trajectory, setting the stage for a gravity assist from a flyby of Earth on Oct 9, 2013. Juno will arrive at Jupiter on July 4, 2016.
The deep-space maneuver began at 6:57 p.m. EDT (3:57 p.m. PDT) today, when the Leros-1b main engine was fired for 29 minutes 39 seconds. Based on telemetry, the Juno project team believes the burn was accurate, changing the spacecraft’s velocity by about 770 mph (344 meters a second) while consuming about 829 pounds (376 kilograms) of fuel.
“This first and successful main engine burn is the payoff for a lot of hard work and planning by the operations team,” said Juno Project Manager Rick Nybakken of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “We started detailed preparations for this maneuver earlier this year, and over the last five months we’ve been characterizing and configuring the spacecraft, primarily in the propulsion and thermal systems. Over the last two weeks, we have carried out planned events almost every day, including heating tanks, configuring subsystems, uplinking new sequences, turning off the instruments and increasing the spacecraft’s spin rate. There is a lot that goes into a main engine burn.”
The burn occurred when Juno was more than 300 million miles (483 million kilometers) away from Earth.
A second deep space maneuver, of comparable duration and velocity change, is planned for Sept. 4. Together, they will place Juno on course for its Earth flyby, which will occur as the spacecraft is completing one elliptical orbit around the sun. The Earth flyby will boost Juno’s velocity by 16,330 mph (about 7.3 kilometers per second), placing the spacecraft on its final flight path for Jupiter. The closest approach to Earth, on Oct. 9, 2013, will occur when Juno is at an altitude of about 310 miles (500 kilometers).
“We still have the Earth flyby and another 1.4 billion miles and four years to go to get to Jupiter,” said Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The team will be busy during that whole time, collecting science on the way out to Jupiter and getting ready for our prime mission at Jupiter, which is focused on learning the history of how our solar system was formed. We need to go to Jupiter to learn our history because Jupiter is the largest of the planets, and it formed by grabbing most of the material left over from the sun’s formation. Earth and the other planets are really made from the leftovers of the leftovers, so if we want to learn about the history of the elements that made Earth and life, we need to first understand what happened when Jupiter formed.”
Juno was launched on Aug. 5, 2011. Once in orbit, the spacecraft will circle Jupiter 33 times, from pole-to-pole, and use its collection of eight science instruments to probe beneath the gas giant’s obscuring cloud cover. Juno’s science team will learn about Jupiter’s origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere, and look for a potential solid planetary core.
Juno’s name comes from Greek and Roman mythology. The god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, and his wife, the goddess Juno, was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter’s true nature.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
More information about Juno is online at http://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu
DC Agle 818-393-9011 Maria Martinez 210-522-3305 2012-272
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
maria.martinez@swri.org
Article source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/news/juno20120830.html
Tags: Scott Bolton, Earth flyby, southwest research institute, juno mission, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory <BR/>
Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, foreground, greets Sunita Williams, right, and Akihiko Hoshide in the U.S. airlock after a frustrating spacewalk. Photo Credit/NASA TV NASA’s lengthy spacewalk drought may come to an end with an encore of Thursday’s hard luck outing for NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshihiko, who were unable to accomplish their primary task – the installation of a new Main Bus Switching Unit — during an excursion outside the International Space Station that stretched to an unexpected eight hours. Several stubbon bolts that prevented them from quickly removing an aging MBSU and replacing it with a spare were to blame. Williams and Hoshiko could make an unscheduled walk early next week — if NASA’s station program managers, flight control team and resident engineers can pinpoint a cause for the difficulties and devise a plan to overcome them. In the meantime, the six person space station crew will have to make due with 75 percent of the electricity normally available. That means some science experiments will likely have to be re-scheduled to adjust the power draw. Heaters that warm the station’s outer walls will likely be adjusted manually rather than by thermostats. “From a systems perspective we are stable and in good shape,” Mike Suffredini, NASA’s ISS program manager, assured a news briefing called to address the implications of the difficult spacewalk. “I would tell you this is not a configuration we want to stay in for a long period of time, even if this configuration is robust to many failures,” Suffredini added. “We will try to get out the door early next week if we can come up with a plan. The biggest driver is knowing what we can do.” Thurday’s spacewalk, which was scheduled for 6 1/2 hours, marked the first NASA organized excursion outside the orbiting science lab since July 2011. The previous walk was incorporated into the final shuttle mission, which marked the end of NASA’s long running assembly of the station’s U. S. segment. At that point, NASA turned its focus to science experiments and engineering demonstrations rather than construction. Repair tasks outside the station are allowed to accumulate until a spacewalk is warranted. Williams, a veteran of previous spacewalks, and Hoshide, a rookie, departed the airlock early Thursday with an ambitious agenda, replace the faulty MBSU, one of four power distribution boxes fastened to the station’s solar power truss to route power to electrical components inside and outside the lab; string two power cables for a future Russian science module; replace a failed video camera on the Canadian robot arm; and perhaps fasten a protective shield on the docking port once used by visiting shuttles. The spacewalkers ran into difficulties, though, when they tried to remove two bolts securing MBSU-1. The switching unit arrived at the station in 2002 as part of the central solar power truss segment and stopped responding to remote commands in October 2011. Though Williams and Hoshide finally succeeded in freeing the old switching unit, they encountered similar problems when they attempted to secure a replacement MBSU with new bolts. Further inspection revealed some galling in the bolt receptacle, which Williams attempted to remove with pliers and puffs of nitrogen gas. That helped but didn’t solve the issue. The spacewalkers attempted to drive, then remove one of the new bolts with a power ratchet and a torque multiplier. Their efforts left the new MBSU partially secured by a single bolt and strapped down to an external hand rail with a strap. They didn’t attempt to temporarily connect the circuit box to the power grid. In the coming days, NASA’s experts will look to lubricants as a possible solution, inspect MBSU production records for clues of a hidden assembly issue and sort through the station’s big tool inventory in search of a solution.
Williams managed to fully string one of the cables along the station’s U. S. segment and partially string the second.
NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Drills into Red Planet in Hunt for Life by alkaon
Camborne astronaut wannabe Josh Harvey wants to emigrate to planet Mars by alkaon
