This Week at NASA
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden delivered
the keynote address for this year's Space
Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration's Auditorium
and Science Center in Silver Spring, Maryland.
The annual forum includes researchers, policymakers
and forecasters discussing space weather and
how to mitigate its effects on communications,
navigation and national security.
Given the growing importance of space to our
nation's economic well being and security,
it's of increasing importance that NASA and
its partner agencies continue to advance our
nation's capability to understand and predict
space weather events.
Space weather involves conditions and events
on the sun and in near-Earth space that can
affect critical systems, such as electric
power grids and communications and navigation
systems.
During a pre-launch news conference at NASA
headquarters investigators and managers briefed
the media on the upcoming Interface Region
Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS mission which
will observe certain characteristics of solar
material as it travels through a little-understood
region in the sun's lower atmosphere.
So it can take images about once a second.
This is critical because the processes that
occur in this part of the atmosphere happen
very, very fast.
The region of the solar atmosphere IRIS will
observe is the origin of most of the ultraviolet
solar emission that impacts Earth.
IRIS will launch June 26 aboard a Pegasus
rocket deployed by an L-1011 aircraft from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Progress continues on the Orion spacecraft.
Technicians at Textron Defense Systems in
Willmington, Massachusetts are using Avcoat
to fill the holes in the honeycomb shaped
structure of Orion's heat shield with Avcoat
is a material able to endure temperatures
up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The heat shield will protect the spacecraft
from the extreme temperatures it will experience
on its return from deep space.
In 2014, Orion will travel 3,600 miles into
space on Exploration Flight Test-1 and return
to Earth at speeds of more than 20,000 miles
per hour.
Engineers at the Stennis Space Center are
fabricating a new 77-hundred-pound thrust
frame adapter to enable testing, in the A-1
Test Stand, of the RS-25 engines, which will
provide core-stage power for NASA's Space
Launch System.
A thrust adapter unique to each rocket engine
type holds an engine in place and absorbs
the thrust produced during a test to allow
accurate measurement of the engine's performance.
The stand component is scheduled to be completed
and installed by November 2013.
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity
is on the move again.
Opportunity, approaching its10th anniversary
of leaving Earth, is trekking to a new study
area still many weeks away called "Solander
Point."
The new destination offers a much taller stack
of geological layering than the "Cape York"
area in which the rover has worked for the
past 20 months.
Since landing in January 2004, Opportunity
and its twin Spirit, which ceased operations
in 2010, have both found evidence of wet environments
on ancient Mars.
News from the American Astronomical Society's
Summer Meeting in Indianapolis included info
about the key role of NASA's Swift satellite
in producing the most detailed ultraviolet
light surveys ever of the Large and Small
Magellanic Clouds, our two closest major galaxies.
Swift's Ultra-Violet/Optical telescope snapped
more than 28-hundred individual shots which
astronomers used to produce the 160-megapixel
mosaic of the LMC and the 57-megapixel mosaic
of the SMC.
The mosaics will enable astronomers to better
study the evolution of stars in each galaxy.
Meanwhile, astronomers say celestial conditions
in October 2014 and February 2016 will present
prime opportunities for NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope to hunt for Earth-sized planets
around the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, the
star nearest to our sun.
When Proxima Centauri passes in front of two
other stars during those two time periods,
astronomers plan to look for any imaging distortion
-- called microlensing.
Microlensing occurs when a foreground star
passes in front of distant star and could
indicate the existence of smaller planets.
Loaded with more than 7 tons of supplies for
the Expedition 36 crew aboard the International
Space Station, Albert Einstein, the European
Space Agency's fourth Automated Transfer Vehicle,
was launched from Kourou, French Guiana on
June 5.
The supply craft, named after the 20th century
icon of science and physics, is scheduled
dock to the station on June 15.
NASA Television coverage of the rendezvous
and docking starts at 8:00 a.m.
NASA and the LEGO Group are collaborating
to inspire the next generation of aerospace
engineers with a new design competition called
"NASA's Missions: Imagine and Build".
The competition offers two categories in which
students of all ages use the toy bricks to
build models of future airplanes and spacecraft.
Deadline for entry is July 31 with winners
selected on September 1.
Prizes include NASA memorabilia and items
from LEGO.
For details visit http://rebrick.lego.com/.
Marshall Space Flight Center astrophysicist,
Dr. Chryssa Kouveliotou, has been selected
for membership to the National Academy of
Sciences.
The honor recognizes her extensive and continuing
achievements in original scientific research
on a host of astronomical phenomena, including
black holes, neutron stars and gamma-ray bursts.
Kouveliotou, currently involved with scientific
investigations conducted by NASA's Fermi,
Swift and NuSTAR programs; is one of 84 new
members of the academy.
On June 11, 2008, NASA launched the space
observatory from Cape Canaveral known then
as the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope
or GLAST.
Renamed the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
two months later after Italian physicist Enrico
Fermi, NASA's largest gamma-ray observatory
has enabled scientists to learn more about
the ever-changing Universe, answer persistent
questions about super-massive black-hole systems,
pulsars and cosmic rays, and search for signals
of new physics in the cosmos.
And that's This Week @NASA.
For more on these and other stories, or to
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media, log on to www.nasa.gov.
