New Celestial Map Gives Directions for GPS

Many of us have been rescued from unfamiliar territory by directions from a Global Positioning System (GPS) navigator. GPS satellites send signals to a receiver in your GPS navigator, which calculates your position based on the location of the satellites and your distance from them. The distance is determined by how long it took the signals from various satellites to reach your receiver.

The system works well, and millions rely on it every day, but what tells the GPS satellites where they are in the first place?

"For GPS to work, the orbital position, or ephemeris, of the satellites has to be known very precisely," said Dr. Chopo Ma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "In order to know where the satellites are, you have to know the orientation of the Earth very precisely."

This is not as obvious as simply looking at the Earth – space is not conveniently marked with lines to determine our planet's position. Even worse, "everything is always moving," says Ma. Earth wobbles as it rotates due to the gravitational pull (tides) from the moon and the sun. Even apparently minor things like shifts in air and ocean currents and motions in Earth's molten core all influence our planet's orientation.

Just as you can use landmarks to find your place in a strange city, astronomers use landmarks in space to position the Earth. Stars seem the obvious candidate, and they were used throughout history to navigate on Earth. "However, for the extremely precise measurements needed for things like GPS, stars won't work, because they are moving too," says Ma.

What is needed are objects so remote that their motion is not detectable. Only a couple classes of objects fit the bill, because they also need to be bright enough to be seen over incredible distances. Things like quasars, which are typically brighter than a billion suns, can be used. Many scientists believe these objects are powered by giant black holes feeding on nearby gas. Gas trapped in the black hole's powerful gravity is compressed and heated to millions of degrees, giving off intense light and/or radio energy.

Most quasars lurk in the outer reaches of the cosmos, over a billion light years away, and are therefore distant enough to appear stationary to us. For comparison, a light year, the distance light travels in a year, is almost six trillion miles. Our entire galaxy, consisting of hundreds of billions of stars, is about 100,000 light years across.

Fermi Telescope Caps First Year With Glimpse of Space-Time

During its first year of operations, NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope mapped the extreme sky with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity.

It captured more than 1,000 discrete sources of gamma rays -- the highest-energy form of light. Capping these achievements was a measurement that provided rare experimental evidence about the very structure of space and time, unified as space-time in Einstein's theories.

"Physicists would like to replace Einstein's vision of gravity -- as expressed in his relativity theories -- with something that handles all fundamental forces," said Peter Michelson, principal investigator of Fermi's Large Area Telescope, or LAT, at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "There are many ideas, but few ways to test them."

Many approaches to new theories of gravity picture space-time as having a shifting, frothy structure at physical scales trillions of times smaller than an electron. Some models predict that the foamy aspect of space-time will cause higher-energy gamma rays to move slightly more slowly than photons at lower energy.

Such a model would violate Einstein's edict that all electromagnetic radiation -- radio waves, infrared, visible light, X-rays and gamma rays -- travels through a vacuum at the same speed.

On May 10, 2009, Fermi and other satellites detected a so-called short gamma ray burst, designated GRB 090510. Astronomers think this type of explosion happens when neutron stars collide. Ground-based studies show the event took place in a galaxy 7.3 billion light-years away. Of the many gamma ray photons Fermi's LAT detected from the 2.1-second burst, two possessed energies differing by a million times. Yet after traveling some seven billion years, the pair arrived just nine-tenths of a second apart.

"This measurement eliminates any approach to a new theory of gravity that predicts a strong energy dependent change in the speed of light," Michelson said. "To one part in 100 million billion, these two photons traveled at the same speed. Einstein still rules."

Fermi's secondary instrument, the Gamma ray Burst Monitor, has observed low-energy gamma rays from more than 250 bursts. The LAT observed 12 of these bursts at higher energy, revealing three record setting blasts.

GRB 090510 displayed the fastest observed motions, with ejected matter moving at 99.99995 percent of light speed. The highest energy gamma ray yet seen from a burst -- 33.4 billion electron volts or about 13 billion times the energy of visible light -- came from September's GRB 090902B. Last year's GRB 080916C produced the greatest total energy, equivalent to 9,000 typical supernovae.

Scanning the entire sky every three hours, the LAT is giving Fermi scientists an increasingly detailed look at the extreme universe. "We've discovered more than a thousand persistent gamma ray sources -- five times the number previously known," said project scientist Julie McEnery at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "And we've associated nearly half of them with objects known at other wavelengths."

Blazars -- distant galaxies whose massive black holes emit fast-moving jets of matter toward us -- are by far the most prevalent source, now numbering more than 500. In our own galaxy, gamma ray sources include 46 pulsars and two binary systems where a neutron star rapidly orbits a hot, young star.

"The Fermi team did a great job commissioning the spacecraft and starting its science observations," said Jon Morse, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "And now Fermi is more than fulfilling its unique scientific promise for making novel, high-impact discoveries about the extreme universe and the fabric of space-time."‪

NASA Ice Campaign Takes Flight in Antarctica

Early in the 20th century, a succession of adventurers and scientists pioneered the exploration of Antarctica. A century later, they're still at it, albeit with a different set of tools. This fall, a team of modern explorers will fly over Earth's southern ice-covered regions to study changes to its sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers as part of NASA's Operation Ice Bridge.

Starting next month, NASA will fly its DC-8, a 157-foot-long airborne laboratory that can accommodate many instruments. The fall 2009 campaign is one of few excursions to the remote continent made by the DC-8, the largest aircraft in NASA's airborne science fleet.

The plane is scheduled to leave NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., on October 12 and fly to Punta Arenas, Chile, where the plane, crew and researchers will be based for through mid-November. For six weeks, the Ice Bridge team will traverse the Southern Ocean for up to 17 flights over West Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, and coastal areas where sea ice is prevalent. Each round-trip flight lasts about 11 hours, two-thirds of that time devoted to getting to and from Antarctica.

Operation Ice Bridge is a six-year campaign of annual flights to each of Earth's polar regions. The first flights in March and April carried researchers over Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. This fall's Antarctic campaign, led by principal investigator Seelye Martin of the University of Washington, will begin the first sustained airborne research effort of its kind over the continent. Data collected by researchers will help scientists bridge the gap between NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) -- which is operating the last of its three lasers -- and ICESat-II, scheduled to launch in 2014.

The Ice Bridge flights will help scientists maintain the record of changes to sea ice and ice sheets that have been collected since 2003 by ICESat. The flights will lack the continent-wide coverage that can be achieved by satellite, so researchers carefully select key target locations. But the flights will also turn up new information not possible from orbit, such as the shape of the terrain below the ice.

"Space-based instruments like the ICESat lasers are the only way to find out where change is occurring in remote, continent-sized ice sheets like Antarctica," said Tom Wagner, cryosphere program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "But aircraft missions like Ice Bridge allow us to follow up with more detailed studies and make other measurements critical to modeling sea level rise."

STS-128 Outfits Station for New Science

Space shuttle Discovery launched atop brilliant pillars of fire into a midnight sky over NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Aug. 28, 2009, to begin a textbook outfitting and supply mission to the International Space Station.

With the Leonardo cargo module bolted tight into the payload bay and astronaut Rick “C.J.” Sturckow in the commander’s seat, Discovery pursued the space station for two days before linking up with the orbiting laboratory.

Pilot Kevin Ford and Mission Specialists Jose Hernandez and Nicole Stott marked their first days in space during STS-128. Along with veteran commander Sturckow, Mission Specialists Patrick Forrester, Danny Olivas and Christer Fuglesang brought a wealth of spaceflight experience to the flight.

The first task of STS-128’s extensive mission manifest wrapped up soon after docking as Stott joined the station’s Expedition 20 crew and station resident Tim Kopra took Stott’s slot on the shuttle.

Crews on the shuttle and station numbered 13 in all and included astronauts from the U.S., Canada, Sweden, and Belgium and cosmonauts from Russia.

Leonardo, one of the multi-purpose logistics modules NASA uses to carry large racks to and from the station, was the star of Discovery’s fourth day in orbit. Ford and Michael Barratt used the robotic arm from the space station to lift the 21-foot-long Leonardo from its cradle inside Discovery and connect it directly to the station, clearing the way for about a week of moving work for the crew members.

Spacewalker Olivas stepped outside the station along with Stott for the first of three spacewalks slated for STS-128. With crew members outfitting the inside of the station, the two spacewalkers set out for some upkeep tasks on the outside. Assisted by the station’s robotic arm, known as Canadarm 2, Olivas and Stott removed an empty ammonia tank from the truss. The station uses ammonia to cool its sophisticated system of equipment. The astronauts also took two experiments off the outside of the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory module.

Inside the station, the Colbert treadmill was moved into its new home in space. The treadmill is a new exercise machine that station residents will use to stay fit while in the weightlessness of space. It gained notoriety when NASA named it after Comedy Central comedian and faux newscaster Stephen Colbert following an online NASA poll to name a new station module. The exercise equipment is more advanced than the treadmill already on the station. For example, it allows astronauts to run as fast as an Olympic sprinter. The treadmill is mounted on a system to prevent the vibrations from shaking the station as it floats through space.

The treadmill was far from the only thing moved into the station. Leonardo was loaded with nine racks and eight platforms. The racks are the basic structure for holding space station systems inside the laboratory. Each one is a shell about the size of a refrigerator and is outfitted with connectors that attach to the station on the back and the specialized equipment inside. The hatches from Leonardo to the station are large enough to allow the racks to pass through easily, and even though a full rack can only be moved with a forklift on Earth, a single astronaut can push them around in the microgravity of the station.

The racks are big enough to house a crew quarters or bedroom for a station astronaut, and one of the racks Leonardo carried up became a private room right away for Canadian station resident Robert Thirsk.

Two of the racks were set up for research in space: the Fluids Integrated Rack to study liquid in weightlessness, and the Materials Science Research Rack, which is to conduct experiments on different materials to find new ways to use them. A second freezer for completed experiments also was carried into orbit inside Discovery, along with an air filtration system destined for the Tranquility node, which will be added to the station in 2010.

Olivas led the second spacewalk on the seventh day of the STS-128 mission. He was joined by Sweden’s Fuglesang, another veteran spacewalker. Their work centered on the ammonia tanks. They fastened the old tank inside Discovery so it could be returned to Earth, refilled and launched again on a future mission. The new tank went into place easily for the astronauts.

After getting most of the equipment out of Leonardo, the astronauts on Discovery and the station changed focus a bit to move items into the cargo module. Completed experiments and expired equipment were some of the items to be taken back to Earth.

The mission’s third spacewalk began Sept. 6, again performed by Olivas and Fuglesang. It set up the station for future missions and the Tranquility module. When it finished, Discovery’s spacewalkers had added more than 20 hours to the spacewalk log for space station assembly. Astronauts have completed more than 830 hours of spacewalks to build the space station to this point.

The transfers between the station and Leonardo also wrapped up Sept. 6. Leonardo was repositioned inside Discovery the next day and the crews split up into their shuttle and station contingents before the hatches between the two craft were closed.

Sept. 8 saw Discovery back away from the station, pushed along by springs so the shuttle wouldn’t have to fire its steering jets close to the orbital complex. Minutes later, Ford took the controls to maneuver the shuttle in a circle around the station from about 650 feet away. He then steered the spacecraft away from the station, putting it on a path to move further away as the crew looked ahead to going back to Earth.

That return was delayed by a day, however, after poor weather conditions materialized over the primary landing site at Kennedy. The bad weather stayed over Florida the following day and mission controllers opted to send Sturckow and his team of astronauts to Edwards Air Force Base in California instead.

Sturckow and Ford guided Discovery through Earth’s atmosphere Sept. 11. The spacecraft glided over the Pacific Ocean and soared over Greater Los Angeles on its way to Edwards and its home in the high desert. Discovery’s wheels touched down at 8:53 p.m. EDT and the shuttle rolled to a stop about a minute later to end the flight.

While the astronauts returned to their training base at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, the mission was just beginning for the team of technicians and specialists who spent the next week getting Discovery set up and mounted on a modified 747 for the ride back to Kennedy. Discovery faced more weather concerns during that flight, too, but a break in the storms allowed the 747 and Discovery to land at Kennedy on Sept. 21.

Climate Simulation Computer Becomes More Powerful

Remember the day you got a brand-new computer? Applications snapped open, processes that once took minutes finished in seconds, and graphics and animation flowed as smoothly as TV video. But several months and many new applications later, the bloom fell off the rose.

Your lightning-fast computer no longer was fast. You needed more memory and faster processors to handle the gigabytes of new files now embedded in your machine.

Climate scientists can relate.

They, too, need more powerful computers to process the sophisticated computer models used in climate forecasts. Such an expanded capability is now being developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

High-End Computing System Installed

In August, Goddard added 4,128 new-generation Intel "Nehalem" processors to its Discover high-end computing system. The upgraded Discover will serve as the centerpiece of a new climate simulation capability at Goddard. Discover will host NASA’s modeling contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading scientific organization for assessing climate change, and other national and international climate initiatives.

To further enhance Discover’s capabilities, Goddard will install another 4,128 Nehalem processors in the fall, bringing Discover to 15,160 processors.

"We are the first high-end computing site in the United States to install Nehalem processors dedicated to climate research," said Phil Webster, chief of Goddard’s Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office (CISTO). "This new computing system represents a dramatic step forward in performance for climate simulations."

Well-Suited for Climate Studies

According to CISTO lead architect Dan Duffy, the Nehalem architecture is especially well-suited to climate studies. "Speed is an inherent advantage for solving complex problems, but climate models also require large memory and fast access to memory," he said. Each processor has 3 gigabytes of memory, among the highest available today. In addition, memory access is three to four times faster than Discover’s previous-generation processors.

In preliminary testing of Discover’s Nehalem processors, NASA climate simulations performed up to twice as fast per processor compared with other nationally recognized high-end computing systems. The new computational capabilities also allowed NASA climate scientists to run high-resolution simulations that reproduced atmospheric features not previously seen in their models.

For instance, "features such as well-defined hurricane eyewalls and convective cloud clusters appeared for the first time," said William Putman, acting lead of the Advanced Software Technology Group in Goddard’s Software Integration and Visualization Office. "At these cloud-permitting resolutions, the differences are stunning."

IPCC Simulations

For the IPCC studies, scientists will run both longer-term and shorter-term climate projections using different computer models. A climate model from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies will perform simulations going back a full millennium and forward to 2100. Goddard’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office will use a climate model for projections of the next 30 years and an atmospheric chemistry-climate model for short-term simulations of chemistry-climate feedbacks. The IPCC will use information from climate simulations such as these in its Fifth Assessment Report, which IPCC expects to publish in 2014.

NASA climate simulation efforts also contribute to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the U.S. Integrated Earth Observation System, and the U.S. Weather Research Program. Supported international programs include UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Climate Research Programme, the World Meteorological Organization, and the World Weather Research Programme.

Astronomers Find Organic Molecules Around Gas

Peering far beyond our solar system, NASA researchers have detected the basic chemistry for life in a second hot gas planet, advancing astronomers toward the goal of being able to characterize planets where life could exist. The planet is not habitable but it has the same chemistry that, if found around a rocky planet in the future, could indicate the presence of life.

"It's the second planet outside our solar system in which water, methane and carbon dioxide have been found, which are potentially important for biological processes in habitable planets," said researcher Mark Swain of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Detecting organic compounds in two exoplanets now raises the possibility that it will become commonplace to find planets with molecules that may be tied to life."

Swain and his co-investigators used data from two of NASA's orbiting Great Observatories, the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, to study HD 209458b, a hot, gaseous giant planet bigger than Jupiter that orbits a sun-like star about 150 light years away in the constellation Pegasus. The new finding follows their breakthrough discovery in December 2008 of carbon dioxide around another hot, Jupiter-size planet, HD 189733b. Earlier Hubble and Spitzer observations of that planet had also revealed water vapor and methane.

The detections were made through spectroscopy, which splits light into its components to reveal the distinctive spectral signatures of different chemicals. Data from Hubble's near-infrared camera and multi-object spectrometer revealed the presence of the molecules, and data from Spitzer's photometer and infrared spectrometer measured their amounts.

"This demonstrates that we can detect the molecules that matter for life processes," said Swain. Astronomers can now begin comparing the two planetary atmospheres for differences and similarities. For example, the relative amounts of water and carbon dioxide in the two planets is similar, but HD 209458b shows a greater abundance of methane than HD 189733b. "The high methane abundance is telling us something," said Swain. "It could mean there was something special about the formation of this planet."

Other large, hot Jupiter-type planets can be characterized and compared using existing instruments, Swain said. This work will lay the groundwork for the type of analysis astronomers eventually will need to perform in shortlisting any promising rocky Earth-like planets where the signatures of organic chemicals might indicate the presence of life.

Rocky worlds are expected to be found by NASA's Kepler mission, which launched earlier this year, but astronomers believe we are a decade or so away from being able to detect any chemical signs of life on such a body.

If and when such Earth-like planets are found in the future, "the detection of organic compounds will not necessarily mean there's life on a planet, because there are other ways to generate such molecules," Swain said. "If we detect organic chemicals on a rocky, Earth-like planet, we will want to understand enough about the planet to rule out non-life processes that could have led to those chemicals being there."

"These objects are too far away to send probes to, so the only way we're ever going to learn anything about them is to point telescopes at them. Spectroscopy provides a powerful tool to determine their chemistry and dynamics."

JPL Develops High-Speed Test to Improve Pathogen Decontamination

PASADENA, Calif. - A chemist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., has developed a technology intended to rapidly assess any presence of microbial life on spacecraft. This new method may also help the military test for disease-causing bacteria, such as a causative agent for anthrax, and may also be useful in the medical, pharmaceutical and other fields.

Adrian Ponce, the deputy manager for JPL's planetary science section, devised the new microscope-based method, which has the potential to quickly validate -- from days to minutes -- a spacecraft's cleanliness.

NASA adheres to international protocols by striving to ensure that spacecraft don't harbor life from Earth that could contaminate other planets or moons and skew science research. Microbes known as bacterial endospores can withstand extreme temperatures, ultraviolet rays and chemical treatments, and have been known to survive in space for six years. This resilience makes them important indicators for cleanliness and biodefense, Ponce said.

"Bacterial endospores are the toughest form of life on Earth," Ponce explained. "Therefore, if one can show that all spores are killed, then less-resistant, disease-causing organisms will also be dead."

The new technology works by looking for dipicolinic acid -- a major component of endospores and evidence of endospore growth -- by first applying terbium to a dime-sized area. Terbium is a chemical element used to generate the color green on television screens. That area is then illuminated under an ultraviolet lamp. Within minutes, one can see through a microscope aided by a digital camera whether live endospores are present. That's because they will literally glow: The terbium will show the endospores as bright green spots.

Ponce co-authored a paper on the new technology, called Germinable Endospore Biodosimetry, along with Pun To Young, a post-doctoral student at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The research was also highlighted in Microbe, a magazine of the American Society for Microbiology.

The technology has piqued the interest of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The federal agency is funding development of a portable instrument based on Ponce's research that could quickly check for decontamination of pathogens after a biological attack. Ponce is working with the Department of Homeland Security and Advance Space Monitor, a company based in Falls River, Mass., to develop the instrument, which they plan to have ready for use by 2011. JPL and Caltech licensed the technology to Advance Space Monitor.

"As part of the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate's near-term bioassays effort, the technology could enable the rapid assessment of facility sterilization. This could significantly reduce the time and cost of building restoration following a bio-contamination event," said James Anthony, chemical and biological research and development program manager at the Dept. of Homeland Security. A bioassay is an assessment of whether certain biological material is present on a surface being tested.

Anthony added that the technology could also be used in bio-containment facilities that have regularly scheduled decontamination requirements and rapidly reactivate important bio-defense research facilities.

Besides outer space and defense purposes, this new technology might also be applied in hospitals, child-care centers, dentists' offices and nursing homes.

"Given all the problems with hospital-acquired infections, assessing the sterility and hygiene of medical equipment and surfaces is becoming increasingly important," said Ponce.

Electronic Nose to Return from Space Station

Sniffing out any potential contaminants on the International Space Station where it was stationed for the last six months, the JPL-built electronic nose, or ENose, is homeward bound.

While on the space station, the ENose sampled the air with 32 sensors that can detect various odors and pinpoint which ones are dangerous to humans. The sleek, shoebox-sized ENose, the third generation of its kind, monitored the air for 10 contaminants continuously.

"Our six-month test went very well. The ENose identified formaldehyde, Freon 218, methanol and ethanol, but all of them were at harmless levels," said Amy Ryan, principal investigator of the ENose at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Ryan built the ENose at JPL and has managed the project from its early beginnings in 1996. "An instrument like this could one day remain on the Space Station and monitor air quality in real-time."

In the future, the ENose could be used in monitoring crew cabins for vehicles to the moon and other destinations or be stationed on a moon base. Other potential applications include detecting a smoldering fire before it erupts, sniffing for unexploded land mines and monitoring for chemical spills in a work area. There are also possible applications in medical diagnosis.

"A human nose is not always as sensitive to chemicals as the ENose and our noses cannot even detect some hazardous chemicals," said Ryan. "The ENose can smell trouble and give people advance warning before contamination levels cause harm."

Aviation Pioneer Richard T. Whitcomb

Aviation pioneer Richard Whitcomb has died in Newport News at the age of 89. The NASA Langley Research Center engineer has been called the most significant aerodynamic contributor of the second half of the 20th century.

If you look at almost any large airplane today -- especially those that fly at supersonic speeds -- you can see the genius of Dick Whitcomb.

"Dick Whitcomb's intellectual fingerprints are on virtually every commercial aircraft flying today," said Tom Crouch, noted aviation historian at the Smithsonian Institution. "It's fair to say he was the most important aerodynamic contributor in the second half of the century of flight."

Born in Illinois in 1921, Richard Travis Whitcomb was the son and grandson of engineers. He grew up in Worcester, Mass., building model airplanes, in an era when aviation pioneers such as Charles Lindbergh were household names.

His interest in aeronautics continued into college at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he joined the aeronautics club and spent a lot of time in the school's wind tunnel.

Whitcomb came to what is now NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., in 1943, during World War II, right after graduating with a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and highest honors.

It was a busy time for aeronautical engineers working to improve America's military air superiority and Whitcomb dived right in. In less than a decade he tackled and solved one of the biggest challenges of the day -- how to achieve practical, efficient transonic and supersonic flight.

In interviews over the years Whitcomb told how he was sitting one day with his feet up on his desk when he had a "Eureka!" moment and came up with what is known as the Whitcomb area rule. He theorized the shape of the fuselage could be changed to reduce the aircraft shock wave drag that occurs near the speed of sound. The basic idea was to ensure a smooth cross sectional area distribution between the front and back of the plane. "We built airplane models with Coke bottle-shaped fuselages and lo and behold the drag of the wing just disappeared," said Whitcomb. "The wind tunnel showed it worked perfectly."

For that innovation the Langley engineer won the 1954 Collier Trophy for the year's greatest achievement in aviation in the U.S.

Whitcomb came up with three important aeronautical innovations while working at NASA Langley, one in each decade of his career. If the area rule was Whitcomb's major accomplishment of the 1950s, his supercritical wing revolutionized the design of jet liners after the 1960s. The key was the development of an airfoil that was flatter on the top and rounder on the bottom with a downward curve on the trailing edge. That shape delayed the onset of drag, increasing the fuel efficiency of aircraft flying close to the speed of sound.

In the 1970s it was an article on birds that led Whitcomb to develop his third significant innovation -- winglets -- refining an idea that had been around for decades. Other engineers had suspected that end plates added to the wing tips could reduce drag. But the Langley engineer proved a simple vertical plate wasn't enough. "It is a little wing. That's why I called them winglets," said Whitcomb. "It's designed with all the care that a wing was designed." Winglets reduce yet another type of drag and further improve aerodynamic efficiency. Many airliners and private jets sport wingtips that are angled up for better fuel performance.

Those who worked with Whitcomb remember him as brilliant, driven and single-minded with aerodynamics dominating his thoughts at work and at home. "I was extremely fortunate to work with Dick Whitcomb from 1974 to 1980, when I was an engineer fresh out of college," said Pete Jacobs, chief engineer for the Ground Facilities and Testing Directorate at NASA Langley. "It was truly an amazing experience to learn from the man who had been referenced in my textbooks. He had an uncanny sense of aerodynamics, unbelievable concentration, and the most phenomenal memory of anyone I've ever met."

The famed aerodynamicist retired from NASA Langley in 1980, but his contributions remain some of the research center's greatest accomplishments. "Dick Whitcomb's three biggest innovations have been judged to be some 30 percent of the most significant innovations produced by NASA Langley through its entire history," said Langley chief scientist Dennis Bushnell, who worked with Whitcomb. "That's from its founding in 1917 to the present. He is without the doubt the most distinguished alumnus of the Langley Research Center."

Whitcomb earned many honors in his life. Besides the Collier Trophy, he received the National Medal of Science (personally conferred by President Richard Nixon) in 1973, the U.S. Air Force Exceptional Service medal in 1955, the first NACA Distinguished Service Medal in 1956, the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1959 and the National Aeronautics Association's Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy in 1974. The engineer was also was inducted into the National Inventors' Hall of Fame in 2003, the National Academy of Engineering in 1976 for his pioneering research in the aerodynamic design of high performance aircraft and the Paul E. Garber First Flight Shrine at the Wright Brothers National Memorial. Whitcomb's alma mater, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, also awarded him an honorary doctorate and its presidential medal.

Whitcomb requested there be no funeral. Instead his ashes will be spread by plane over the Chesapeake Bay.

NASA Spacecraft Impacts Lunar Crater in Search for Water Ice

NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, created twin impacts on the moon's surface early Friday in a search for water ice. Scientists will analyze data from the spacecraft's instruments to assess whether water ice is present.

The satellite traveled 5.6 million miles during an historic 113-day mission that ended in the Cabeus crater, a permanently shadowed region near the moon's south pole. The spacecraft was launched June 18 as a companion mission to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"The LCROSS science instruments worked exceedingly well and returned a wealth of data that will greatly improve our understanding of our closest celestial neighbor," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS principal investigator and project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "The team is excited to dive into data."

In preparation for impact, LCROSS and its spent Centaur upper stage rocket separated about 54,000 miles above the surface of the moon on Thursday at approximately 6:50 p.m. PDT.

Moving at a speed of more than 1.5 miles per second, the Centaur hit the lunar surface shortly after 4:31 a.m. Oct. 9, creating an impact that instruments aboard LCROSS observed for approximately four minutes. LCROSS then impacted the surface at approximately 4:36 a.m.

"This is a great day for science and exploration," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The LCROSS data should prove to be an impressive addition to the tremendous leaps in knowledge about the moon that have been achieved in recent weeks. I want to congratulate the LCROSS team for their tremendous achievement in development of this low cost spacecraft and for their perseverance through a number of difficult technical and operational challenges."‪

Other observatories reported capturing both impacts. The data will be shared with the LCROSS science team for analysis. The LCROSS team expects it to take several weeks of analysis before it can make a definitive assessment of the presence or absence of water ice.

"I am very proud of the success of this LCROSS mission team," said Daniel Andrews, LCROSS project manager at Ames. "Whenever this team would hit a roadblock, it conceived a clever work-around allowing us to push forward with a successful mission."

The images and video collected by the amateur astronomer community and the public also will be used to enhance our knowledge about the moon.

"One of the early goals of the mission was to get as many people to look at the LCROSS impacts in as many ways possible, and we succeeded," said Jennifer Heldmann, Ames' coordinator of the LCROSS observation campaign. "The amount of corroborated information that can be pulled out of this one event is fascinating."

"It has been an incredible journey since LCROSS was selected in April 2006," said Andrews. "The LCROSS Project faced a very ambitious schedule and an uncommonly small budget for a mission of this size. LCROSS could be a model for how small robotic missions are executed. This is truly big science on a small budget."

Rice University Accepts Exploration Award

During the half-time ceremonies of the Rice vs. Navy football game Oct. 10, 2009, Johnson Space Center Director Mike Coats presented Rice University President David Leebron with the Ambassador of Exploration Award that was presented posthumously to President John F. Kennedy. From left to right are Rep. Pete Olsen (R-TX), Rice University President David Leebron and JSC Director Michael Coats holding the award.

On July 20, the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, NASA honored President Kennedy with the award for his vision and leadership in landing a man on the moon. The Kennedy family has selected Rice University to house and publicly display the award at Fondren Library. President Kennedy called for a national initiative to go to the moon during a speech given at Rice University on Sept. 12, 1962.

Blowing in the Wind – Tunnel, That is, at Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

Aeronautics can seem like such heady stuff, but NASA staff members at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta used a tool to bring some sky-high concepts down to Earth for Fiesta visitors.

One such tool was the flow-visualization wind tunnel that brings the wind tunnel aeronautical engineering technology down to a more manageable, desktop size.

“Before we fly anything it’s tested in a wind tunnel, regardless of whether it is researched at NASA or with our partners in other government agencies, industry or academia,” said Tony Springer, NASA lead for communication and education.

Visitors at the Balloon Fiesta had an opportunity to experience for themselves the value of wind tunnels and how they work, regardless of how they’re used to test components, concept models or full-size aircraft or automobiles.

In the case of the miniature flow-visualization wind tunnel, a smoke-like vapor is used to demonstrate the airflow around an object placed in the wind tunnel. Wind-tunnel components take incoming air through a honeycomb material that increases the air to provide what researchers call laminar flow, or smooth air.

The model wind tunnel permits people to observe airflow patterns over scale-model aircraft and cars to better visualize what researchers are looking for in their designs. It also shows how the wind tunnel can help those researchers see on the ground a representation of how a concept, shape or component will perform in flight.

“We can show people how air moves over or around an aircraft and explain to them how similar methods are used in launch vehicles and even tall buildings to see how the air is going to flow, or what the aerodynamic characteristics are of the object,” Springer said.

NASA uses wind tunnels at its centers, other government agencies or at industry-partner facilities. The tunnels range in size from a few inches to full-scale tunnels of 80 by 120 feet that can test a full-sized aircraft, he explained.

“Wind tunnels allow you to determine what the aerodynamics of a vehicle are before you actually expend money on a full-scale aircraft. They’re also used to reduce the unknowns, because you don’t want to put a person or some hardware at risk,” Springer said.

The concepts usually start small and get larger as the test article solidifies from data acquired through a number of increasingly complex tests in incrementally larger wind tunnels with bigger and bigger models, Springer said. Researchers essentially start off with a toy, where they can take the wings and flight control surfaces off and they can change out components to determine the optimum aerodynamic range through wind-tunnel tests.

“Every U.S. commercial and military aircraft or launch vehicle has been tested in NASA wind tunnels or uses NASA-developed technology. NASA has gone beyond the fundamental research that defines the concepts to actual application of them in the wind tunnel and following on with flight test,” Springer said.

A number of key modern aircraft technologies were first proven in wind tunnels before undergoing the crucible of flight research.

A team led by Dr. Richard Whitcomb of Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., originated a number of those technologies, including area rule, the supercritical wing and winglets.

Area rule is the concept that a narrowing of the fuselage over the wing reduces aerodynamic drag at transonic speeds.

The supercritical wing, an airfoil shape that reduces drag at speeds just below Mach 1, enables an aircraft to go slightly faster or see an increase in performance as a result of drag reduction. Research flights made at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., with a modified F-8 validated wind-tunnel predictions that aircraft using the supercritical wing experienced increased cruising speed, saw improved fuel efficiency of about 15 percent, and saw better flight range than those featuring conventional wings. As a result, supercritical wings are now common on most modern subsonic military and commercial transports.

Winglets, which were tested on a KC-135 at Dryden, are end plates on the wing that “fool” the wing into behaving as though it had a longer span. In other words, with winglets, the wing is more efficient without the performance penalties of actually having a larger wing. The economic advantages of winglet use eventually led to their adoption on light aircraft, business jets, airliners and heavy military transports.

Another area of wind-tunnel use is icing research, which has made flight safer through use of NASA’s world-class facilities, Springer said.

Aerodynamic drag reduction also is valuable to the design of semi trucks and racecars.

In fact, a research effort led by Ed Saltzman at Dryden on aerodynamic drag on semi trucks revolutionized the trucking industry in the 1970s. That research lead to major design changes resulting in an increase in efficiency and a 20 to 25 percent increase in fuel economy over vehicles that did not feature the aerodynamic improvements.

A professional racing association used the NASA Langley Full Scale Wind Tunnel for a detailed look at aerodynamics on racecar drag reduction. Another area of interest was the impacts of aerodynamics with multiple racecars, Springer said.

New Antenna May expose More Clues About Lightning

Launch scrubs are nothing new at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. In fact, there have been 116 space shuttle scrubs; 72 for technical reasons and 45 for inclement weather.

During the summer, bad weather, particularly lightning, seems to strike as the countdown clock nears zero. Maybe it's because Kennedy and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station are well within what meteorologists call, "Lightning Alley."

Of course, NASA already can locate lightning strikes when they hit the ground with the Cloud to Ground Lightning Surveillance System, or CGLSS, and the National Lightning Detection Network. The agency also can locate lightning channels in a cloud with the Lightning Detection and Ranging Network, or LDAR II.

But according to Professor Tom Marshall of the University of Mississippi, humans have yet to truly figure out lightning.

So, Marshall and one of his senior students, Lauren Vickers, visited Kennedy to test a new antenna that might someday measure the level of individual lightning flashes and their return strokes. A measurement that could give launch managers information to make their "go-no go" decisions easier... decisions that might save money.

"We're trying to extend some measurement of cloud-to-ground lightning here at Kennedy," Marshall said. "We may find a return stroke is larger, and therefore, one for us to target."

The strength of these strokes might someday determine if future launch vehicles, such as Ares I, must undergo testing if lightning strikes nearby.

"What Professor Marshall's work is going to enable us to do is determine more precisely than we can now exactly where charges are located in clouds and how big those charges are when lightning strikes," said Dr. Frank Merceret, director of research for the Kennedy Weather Office. "The problem lies in the fact that NASA does not know where the charge center is located in the clouds.

"The Lightning Advisory Panel (LAP), which develops and recommends our lightning launch commit criteria (LLCC), has been wrestling with that issue for quite some time and his project may give the panel information that will help provide more accurate lightning readings before a launch."

A launch vehicle traveling through an anvil cloud, a cloud mostly made of ice that forms on top of thunderstorms, can trigger lightning at much lower electric field levels than natural lightning requires. This triggered lightning can damage vehicles or its cargo. In 1987, an Atlas-Centaur rocket was destroyed when its launch triggered such lightning. To prevent such accidents, the LLCC -- a strict set of lightning avoidance rules -- was modified by the LAP.

The LAP, which is made up of top lightning experts from various government agencies and academia, continues to review and modify those criteria for both the Eastern and Western ranges.

Although some launch weather guidelines involving shuttles and expendable rockets may differ because a distinction is made for the individual characteristics of each, the LLCC are identical for all vehicles.

"If the shuttle is on the launch pad and a lightning strike occurs nearby, we need to know the distance from the shuttle and the intensity of the lightning to determine if there are any possible effects on the vehicle. If the lightning was close enough and intense enough, operations, including a launch, will be delayed so the team can ensure the shuttle was not damaged," said Kathy Winters, shuttle launch weather officer.

During shuttle launch countdowns, weather forecasts are provided by the U. S. Air Force Range Weather Operations Facility at Cape Canaveral beginning at launch minus three days in coordination with the NOAA National Weather Service Space Flight Meteorology Group, or SMG, at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. These include weather trends and possible effects on launch day.

A formal prelaunch weather briefing is held on launch minus one day to discuss specific weather conditions for all areas of shuttle operations.

Launch weather forecasts, ground operations forecasts and launch weather briefings for the mission management team and the shuttle launch director are prepared by the shuttle launch weather officer.

Forecasts that apply after launch are prepared by SMG. These include all emergency landing forecasts and end-of-mission forecasts presented to the flight director and mission management team.

Herschel's Multicolored View of the Sky

A new image from the Herschel Observatory shows off the observatory's talents for seeing multiple wavelengths of light. The infrared observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important participation from NASA, can use two science instruments simultaneously to see five different "colors" of infrared, which is light that we can't see with our eyes.

The new composite picture features a dark and cool region of our Milky Way galaxy, where material is just beginning to be stirred together into new batches of stars. Much of this region would appear dark in visible-light views, but Herschel can see the very dim infrared glow of cold dust that is only slightly warmer than the coldest temperature theoretically attainable. Herschel's view reveals that this star-forming region is even richer in cold and turbulent material than previously believed.

"Herschel's infrared vision lets us sense the feeble heat from some of the coldest objects in the cosmos," said Paul Goldsmith, the NASA project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Herschel is still in what is called the performance verification phase, in which its instruments are being fine-tuned and checked out. Some routine science observations have begun.

The new image is a combination of data taken with Herschel's photodetector array camera and spectrometer, and its spectral and photometric imaging receiver. By using these two instruments at the same time, Herschel won't need to use as much of its stored liquid coolant, a limited resource expected to last about three-and-a-half years.

In the color-coded image, blue shows warmer dust and red, the coolest, with green representing temperatures in between. The coldest dust can be seen as thin filaments. It is here that stars are in the very earliest stages of their infancy, and can be seen lined up together like glittering beads of water on a blade of grass.

More images like this are expected in the future and will ultimately help astronomers map the "terra incognita," or unknown land, of our Milky Way, as well as other galaxies that are farther away.

Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Nasa Technology : Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

Engineers for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project have stepped up the communication rate being received from the orbiter as an early step in the process of determining why the spacecraft spontaneously rebooted its computer on Aug. 26. The latest reboot occurred at 5:42 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time ( 12:42 Universal Time) on Wednesday, Aug. 26. Data received from the orbiter indicate that this reboot had a different signature from reboots in February and June of this year.

Three new pieces of information are available to guide the investigation. This latest reboot affected some memory locations that had not been affected by the earlier ones. Also, unlike those earlier reboots, this event occurred while the spacecraft was using its backup, "B Side," main computer. In early August, the orbiter unexpectedly switched itself from the "A Side" main computer to the "B Side" computer. And finally, the decreasing intervals between the four safe-mode events this year are also providing clues to the problem.

To help in identifying a root cause in case of a recurrence, engineers had programmed the spacecraft this month to frequently record engineering data onto non-volatile memory. That large amount of data now being received could give an improved record of spacecraft events leading up to the latest reboot.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently has normal power, temperatures and battery charge. It remains in proper sun-pointed attitude and in high-rate communication with Earth. Safe mode is a precautionary status that spacecraft are programmed to enter when they sense conditions for which they do not know a more specific response. While in this mode, a spacecraft suspends non-essential activities pending further instructions from ground controllers.

"The spacecraft is stable and our priority now is to carefully work our way to understanding this anomaly, with the intent of preventing recurrences," Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Manager Jim Erickson, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena , Calif. , said Friday.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been investigating Mars with six science instruments since it reached that planet in 2006. It has returned more data than all other current and past Mars missions combined.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena , managed the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission for NASA.