"Launch day approaches for NASA's next Mars
mission ..."
"A show of power from our Sun ..."
"And activity picks up on The International
Space Station ...Those are some of the stories
trending, This Week at NASA!"
During a news briefing at NASA headquarters
officials and scientists discussed MAVEN,
the agency's next mission to Mars.
"When we send human missions we want to understand
what the structure, the composition is at
all parts of the atmosphere, including the
upper atmosphere."
Scheduled to launch November 18 from Cape
Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, MAVEN
will study the history and change of Mars'
atmosphere, climate, and planetary habitability.
NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden visited
Langley Research Center to thank employees
for the great work they're doing and for their
patience during the recent government shutdown.
Langley's history of aviation research goes
back almost a hundred years - to nineteen
seventeen.
The Orion spacecraft came to life at Kennedy
Space Center as engineers powered up the spacecraft
to check out avionics and flight hardware
for the very first time. The power-up is a
major milestone in Orion's preparation for
a September 2014 flight test.
A power up of another kind from the middle
of our solar system. Lots of "X" and "M" class
solar flare activity from the Sun recently.
We're protected by our atmosphere from the
powerful bursts of radiation, but they can
disrupt GPS and other satellite communication
signals.
A busy time at the International Space Station
-- after delivering over seven tons of cargo,
the "Albert Einstein" Automated Transfer Vehicle
4 left on Oct. 28 ... not long after, the
crew hopped into a Soyuz spacecraft and changed
parking spots -- from the Rassvet module to
the Zvezda Service module to make room for
the arrival of Expedition 38 and the Olympic
Torch. Rick Masstracchio of NASA, Russian
Mikhail Tyurin and Koichi Wakata of JAXA -- arrive
with the torch on November 7 -- it returns
to Earth with Expedition 36 November 10 and
will be used in the Winter Games in Sochi
, Russia in February 2014.
Although the first approach-and-landing free-flight
test of Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream
Chaser spacecraft experienced an anomaly with
the left landing gear deployment, the high-quality
flight and telemetry data through the critical
phases of the test will help refine Dream
Chaser's design. SNC is one of three companies
working with NASA to develop spaceflight systems
that could eventually launch astronauts to the International Space Station from U.S. soil.
Data on seasonal land and sea ice melt in Greenland collected by a NASA C-130 research
plane from Wallops Flight Facility may give
researchers better context and a more comprehensive
view of seasonal changes in the region, when
compared with measurements of future satellite
missions, such as ICESat-2. The C-130 uses
laser sensing technology called LVIS, or Land,
Vegetation and Ice Sensor, to map terrain.
And that's what's up ... This Week at NASA.
For more on these and other stories follow
us on social media and visit www.nasa.gov/twan.
