Tackling Tumors With Space Station Research

In space, things don’t always behave the way we expect them to. In the case of cancer, researchers have found that this is a good thing: some tumors seem to be much less aggressive in the microgravity environment of space compared to their behavior on Earth. This observation, reported in research published in February by the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal, could help scientists understand the mechanism involved and develop drugs targeting tumors that don’t respond to current treatments. This work is the latest in a large body of evidence on how space exploration benefits those of us on Earth.
Research in the weightlessness of space offers unique insight into genetic and cellular processes that simply can’t be duplicated on Earth, even in simulated microgravity. “Microgravity can be approximated on Earth, but we know from the literature that simulated microgravity isn’t the same as the real thing,” says Daniela Gabriele Grimm, M.D., a researcher with the Department of Biomedicine, Pharmacology at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark, and an author of the FASEB paper.
True weightlessness affects human cells in a number of ways. For one thing, cells grown in space arrange themselves into three-dimensional groupings, or aggregates, that more closely resemble what happens in the body. “Without gravitational pull, cells form three-dimensional aggregates, or spheroids,” Grimm explains. “Spheroids from cancer cells share many similarities with metastases, the cancer cells which spread throughout the body.” Determining the molecular mechanisms behind spheroid formation might therefore improve our understanding of how cancer spreads.
The FASEB paper resulted from an investigation in the Science in Microgravity Box (SIMBOX) facility aboard Shenzhou-8, launched in 2011. Cells grown in space and in simulated microgravity on the ground were analyzed for changes in gene expression and secretion profiles, with the results suggesting decreased expression of genes that indicate high malignancy in cancer cells.
The work was funded by a grant from the German Space Life Sciences program, managed by the German space agency, DLR, in collaboration with Chinese partners.
Grimm and her colleagues are following up with additional research, a Nanoracks Cellbox investigation called “Effect of microgravity on human thyroid carcinoma cells,” scheduled to launch in March on SpaceX's third commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station. Another follow-up investigation, “Spheroids,” is planned in 2015. The overall goal is to find as many genes and proteins as possible that are affected by microgravity and to identify the cellular activities they influence. Researchers can then use this information to develop new strategies for cancer research.
In a recent paper published in Nature Reviews Cancer, Jeanne Becker, Ph.D., a cell biologist at Nano3D Biosciences in Houston and principal investigator for the Cellular Biotechnology Operations Support System (CBOSS) 1-Ovarian study, examined nearly 200 papers on cell biology research in microgravity during four decades. This body of work shows that not only does the architecture of cells change in microgravity, but the immune system also is suppressed. Other studies in addition to Grimm’s have shown microgravity-induced changes in gene expression. The key variable, Becker concluded, is gravity. And the only way to really mitigate gravity is to go into space.
To maximize use of the space station’s unique microgravity platform, in 2011 NASA named the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) as manager of the station’s U.S. National Laboratory. By selecting research and funding projects, connecting investors and scientists and improving access to the station, CASIS accelerates new technologies and products with the potential to benefit all humanity.
CASIS recently requested proposals for research on the effects of microgravity on fundamental stem cell properties. That request, says Patrick O’Neill, communications manager, generated a terrific response from the research community – larger than any other CASIS proposal to date. That, he says, is because CASIS has become more known within the scientific and research community as a viable option for sending research to the space station. It is also because, now that the station is complete, crew members can increase their focus on research. All in all, this is an ideal time to send research to the station.
Grimm agrees. “The station is an invaluable tool for long-term studies of cells in microgravity. Exposure to real microgravity in space will always be the gold standard for all microgravity research and will therefore always be an important cornerstone of our work.”
Thanks to that research in space, scientists continue to learn more about diseases and their possible treatment here on Earth. With this new knowledge, we can turn that unexpected behavior in microgravity to our own advantage.

NASA and JAXA Launch New Satellite to Measure Global Rain and Snow

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint Earth-observing mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), thundered into space at 1:37 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 27 (3:37 a.m. JST Friday, Feb. 28) from Japan.
The four-ton spacecraft launched aboard a Japanese H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island in southern Japan. The GPM spacecraft separated from the rocket 16 minutes after launch, at an altitude of 247 miles (398 kilometers). The solar arrays deployed 10 minutes after spacecraft separation, to power the spacecraft.
"With this launch, we have taken another giant leap in providing the world with an unprecedented picture of our planet's rain and snow," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "GPM will help us better understand our ever-changing climate, improve forecasts of extreme weather events like floods, and assist decision makers around the world to better manage water resources."

 

The GPM Core Observatory will take a major step in improving upon the capabilities of the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM), a joint NASA-JAXA mission launched in 1997 and still in operation. While TRMM measured precipitation in the tropics, the GPM Core Observatory expands the coverage area from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle. GPM will also be able to detect light rain and snowfall, a major source of available fresh water in some regions.

To better understand Earth's weather and climate cycles, the GPM Core Observatory will collect information that unifies and improves data from an international constellation of existing and future satellites by mapping global precipitation every three hours.
"It is incredibly exciting to see this spacecraft launch," said GPM Project Manager Art Azarbarzin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This is the moment that the GPM Team has been working toward since 2006. The GPM Core Observatory is the product of a dedicated team at Goddard, JAXA and others worldwide. Soon, as GPM begins to collect precipitation observations, we'll see these instruments at work providing real-time information for the scientists about the intensification of storms, rainfall in remote areas and so much more."
The GPM Core Observatory was assembled at Goddard and is the largest spacecraft ever built at the center. It carries two instruments to measure rain and snowfall. The GPM Microwave Imager, provided by NASA, will estimate precipitation intensities from heavy to light rain, and snowfall by carefully measuring the minute amounts of energy naturally emitted by precipitation. The Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR), developed by JAXA with the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Tokyo, will use emitted radar pulses to make detailed measurements of three-dimensional rainfall structure and intensity, allowing scientists to improve estimates of how much water the precipitation holds. Mission operations and data processing will be managed from Goddard.
"We still have a lot to learn about how rain and snow systems behave in the bigger Earth system," said GPM Project Scientist Gail Skofronick-Jackson of Goddard. "With the advanced instruments on the GPM Core Observatory, we will have for the first time frequent unified global observations of all types of precipitation, everything from the rain in your backyard to storms forming over the oceans to the falling snow contributing to water resources."
"We have spent more than a decade developing DPR using Japanese technology, the first radar of its kind in space," said Masahiro Kojima, JAXA GPM/DPR project manager. "I expect GPM to produce important new results for our society by improving weather forecasts and prediction of extreme events such as typhoons and flooding."
The GPM Core Observatory is the first of NASA's five Earth science missions launching this year. With a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns, NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space. NASA also develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.

Space Station Live: Measuring Body Changes During Spaceflight

NASA Public Affairs Officer Brandi Dean talks with Dr. Rajulu, principal investigator for the Body Measures experiment taking place aboard the International Space Station. This study collects anthropometric data to help researchers understand the magnitude and variability of the changes to body measurements during spaceflight. Predicting these changes will maximize crew performance, prevent injury and reduce time spent altering or adjusting spacesuits and workstations. The investigation also could help scientists understand the effects of prolonged bed rest, which produces physiological changes similar to those experienced in microgravity.

Space Station Live: Environmental Control and Life Support System

Robyn Carrasquillo, the Space Station Technology Demonstrations manager from NASA Headquarters, discusses the Environment Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) aboard the International Space Station. The station's regenerative life support hardware provides the crew with a comfortable environment and minimizes the resupply burden.

NASA's Kepler Mission Announces a Planet Bonanza, 715 New Worlds

NASA's Kepler mission announced Wednesday the discovery of 715 new planets. These newly-verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system.
Nearly 95 percent of these planets are smaller than Neptune, which is almost four times the size of Earth. This discovery marks a significant increase in the number of known small-sized planets more akin to Earth than previously identified exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.
"The Kepler team continues to amaze and excite us with their planet hunting results," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "That these new planets and solar systems look somewhat like our own, portends a great future when we have the James Webb Space Telescope in space to characterize the new worlds.”
Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system roughly two decades ago, verification has been a laborious planet-by-planet process. Now, scientists have a statistical technique that can be applied to many planets at once when they are found in systems that harbor more than one planet around the same star.
To verify this bounty of planets, a research team co-led by Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., analyzed stars with more than one potential planet, all of which were detected in the first two years of Kepler's observations -- May 2009 to March 2011.
The research team used a technique called verification by multiplicity, which relies in part on the logic of probability. Kepler observes 150,000 stars, and has found a few thousand of those to have planet candidates. If the candidates were randomly distributed among Kepler's stars, only a handful would have more than one planet candidate. However, Kepler observed hundreds of stars that have multiple planet candidates. Through a careful study of this sample, these 715 new planets were verified.
This method can be likened to the behavior we know of lions and lionesses. In our imaginary savannah, the lions are the Kepler stars and the lionesses are the planet candidates. The lionesses would sometimes be observed grouped together whereas lions tend to roam on their own. If you see two lions it could be a lion and a lioness or it could be two lions. But if more than two large felines are gathered, then it is very likely to be a lion and his pride. Thus, through multiplicity the lioness can be reliably identified in much the same way multiple planet candidates can be found around the same star.
"Four years ago, Kepler began a string of announcements of first hundreds, then thousands, of planet candidates --but they were only candidate worlds," said Lissauer. "We've now developed a process to verify multiple planet candidates in bulk to deliver planets wholesale, and have used it to unveil a veritable bonanza of new worlds."
These multiple-planet systems are fertile grounds for studying individual planets and the configuration of planetary neighborhoods. This provides clues to planet formation.
Four of these new planets are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's habitable zone, defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for life-giving liquid water.
One of these new habitable zone planets, called Kepler-296f, orbits a star half the size and 5 percent as bright as our sun. Kepler-296f is twice the size of Earth, but scientists do not know whether the planet is a gaseous world, with a thick hydrogen-helium envelope, or it is a water world surrounded by a deep ocean.
"From this study we learn planets in these multi-systems are small and their orbits are flat and circular -- resembling pancakes -- not your classical view of an atom," said Jason Rowe, research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and co-leader of the research. "The more we explore the more we find familiar traces of ourselves amongst the stars that remind us of home."
This latest discovery brings the confirmed count of planets outside our solar system to nearly 1,700. As we continue to reach toward the stars, each discovery brings us one step closer to a more accurate understanding of our place in the galaxy.
Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets. Discoveries include more than 3,600 planet candidates, of which 961 have been verified as bona-fide worlds.

Benefits for Humanity: Farming from Space

In this chapter of Benefits for Humanity: In Their Own Words, learn how farmers across the country are using cameras aboard the International Space Station to come up with new and more efficient ways of maintaining their crops.

This version, with a narrated introduction, replaces the video previously released in Nov. 2013.

Space Station Live: Student Science Reaches Higher Orbits

NASA Public Affairs Officer Brandi Dean speaks with Michelle Ham, U.S director of ISSET and president and founder of Higher Orbits, about opportunities for students to get involved with science aboard the International Space Station. Mission Discovery, sponsored by ISSET and Higher Orbits, is a five-day program for high school and university students that uses space to get students interested in STEM fields -- science, technology, engineering and math. Students work in teams to design an experiment, and the winning team's experiment flies to the space station. The first set of winning experiments recently flew to the station aboard Orbital Sciences' Cygnus cargo ship during its first operational resupply flight.

NASA's IRIS Spots Its Largest Solar Flare

On Jan. 28, 2014, NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, witnessed its strongest solar flare since it launched in the summer of 2013. Solar flares are bursts of x-rays and light that stream out into space, but scientists don't yet know the fine details of what sets them off.

IRIS peers into a layer of the sun's lower atmosphere just above the surface, called the chromosphere, with unprecedented resolution. However, IRIS can't look at the entire sun at the same time, so the team must always make decisions about what region might provide useful observations. On Jan. 28, scientists spotted a magnetically active region on the sun and focused IRIS on it to see how the solar material behaved under intense magnetic forces. At 2:40 p.m. EST, a moderate flare, labeled an M-class flare -- which is the second strongest class flare after X-class – erupted from the area, sending light and x-rays into space.
IRIS studies the layer of the sun’s atmosphere called the chromosphere that is key to regulating the flow of energy and material as they travel from the sun's surface out into space. Along the way, the energy heats up the upper atmosphere, the corona, and sometimes powers solar events such as this flare.
IRIS is equipped with an instrument called a spectrograph that can separate out the light it sees into its individual wavelengths, which in turn correlates to material at different temperatures, velocities and densities. The spectrograph on IRIS was pointed right into the heart of this flare when it reached its peak, and so the data obtained can help determine how different temperatures of material flow, giving scientists more insight into how flares work.
The IRIS mission is managed by the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory of the ATC in Palo Alto, Calif. NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., is responsible for mission operations and the ground data system. The Ames Pleiades supercomputer is used to carry out many of the numerical simulations that are led by the University of Oslo. The IRIS telescope was designed and built by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory while Montana State University faculty and students assisted in the design of the spectrograph. A large volume of science data is downlinked via Kongsberg Satellite Services, (KSAT) facilities through a cooperative agreement between NASA and the Norwegian Space Centre.  NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., oversees the Explorers Program from which IRIS evolved.
 

NASA Seeks U.S. Industry Feedback on Options for Future Space Station Cargo Services

Over the past two years, NASA and its American industry partners have returned International Space Station resupply launches to U.S. soil, established new national space transportation capabilities and helped create jobs right here on Earth. More than 250 miles overhead, hundreds of science experiments not possible on Earth are being conducted by an international team of astronauts, enabled by these new cargo delivery and return services.
In January, the Obama Administration announced plans to extend the life of the space station through at least 2024 – marking another decade of discoveries to come that will benefit Earth while increasing the knowledge NASA needs to send astronauts to an asteroid and Mars.
NASA has issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking industry feedback on options to meet the future needs of the International Space Station for cargo delivery of a variety of new science experiments, space station hardware and crew supplies.

The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station has had crew members continuous on board since November 2000. In that time, it has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to NASA's next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.

Space Station Live: Orion Recovery Testing

NASA Public Affairs Officer Dan Huot talks with Mike Sarafin, lead flight director for Orion Exploration Flight Test-1, about the Orion EFT-1 mission's recovery testing this week in southern California.

Orion Testing Provides Lessons And Data For Splashdown Recovery Operations

The first full joint testing between NASA and the U.S. Navy of Orion recovery procedures off the coast of California was suspended after the team experienced issues with handling lines securing a test version of Orion inside the well deck of the USS San Diego.
NASA and the Navy were conducting tests to prepare for recovery of Orion after it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of its first space flight, Exploration Flight Test-1, in September. The testing was planned to allow teams to demonstrate and evaluate the processes, procedures, hardware and personnel that will be needed for recovery operations.
The lines were unable to support the tension caused by crew module motion that was driven by wave turbulence in the well deck of the ship. The team called off the week's remaining testing to allow engineers to evaluate next steps.
The challenges that arose demonstrate why it is important to subject Orion to tests in the actual environments that the spacecraft will encounter.
"Even though the testing didn't go as we had planned, we're learning lessons that will help us be better prepared to retrieve Orion after it travels more than 3,600 miles into space and comes home," said Bill Hill, assistant deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The Orion testing work we do is helping us work toward sending humans to deep space."
The testing has provided important data that is being used to improve recovery procedures and hardware ahead of Orion’s first flight test this fall. Several of the test objectives were accomplished before the remaining tests were called off, including successful recoveries of the forward bay cover, parachute and demonstrations of the coordination required between the team onboard the ship and mission control in Houston.
Orion is America's new spacecraft that will take astronauts to destinations not yet explored by humans, including an asteroid and Mars. It will have an emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space. During Exploration Flight Test-1, an uncrewed spacecraft will travel 15 times farther than the International Space Station before returning to Earth at speeds as fast as 20,000 mph and temperatures above 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit to evaluate the spacecraft’s heat shield and other systems.

NASA's NuSTAR Untangles Mystery of How Stars Explode

One of the biggest mysteries in astronomy, how stars blow up in supernova explosions, finally is being unraveled with the help of NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR).
The high-energy X-ray observatory has created the first map of radioactive material in a supernova remnant. The results, from a remnant named Cassiopeia A (Cas A), reveal how shock waves likely rip apart massive dying stars.
"Stars are spherical balls of gas, and so you might think that when they end their lives and explode, that explosion would look like a uniform ball expanding out with great power," said Fiona Harrison, the principal investigator of NuSTAR at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. "Our new results show how the explosion's heart, or engine, is distorted, possibly because the inner regions literally slosh around before detonating."
Harrison is a co-author of a paper about the results appearing in the Feb. 20 issue of Nature.
Cas A was created when a massive star blew up as a supernova, leaving a dense stellar corpse and its ejected remains. The light from the explosion reached Earth a few hundred years ago, so we are seeing the stellar remnant when it was fresh and young.
Supernovas seed the universe with many elements, including the gold in jewelry, the calcium in bones and the iron in blood. While small stars like our sun die less violent deaths, stars at least eight times as massive as our sun blow up in supernova explosions. The high temperatures and particles created in the blast fuse light elements together to create heavier elements.
NuSTAR is the first telescope capable of producing maps of radioactive elements in supernova remnants. In this case, the element is titanium-44, which has an unstable nucleus produced at the heart of the exploding star.
The NuSTAR map of Cas A shows the titanium concentrated in clumps at the remnant's center and points to a possible solution to the mystery of how the star met its demise. When researchers simulate supernova blasts with computers, as a massive star dies and collapses, the main shock wave often stalls out and the star fails to shatter.
The latest findings strongly suggest the exploding star literally sloshed around, re-energizing the stalled shock wave and allowing the star to finally blast off its outer layers.
"With NuSTAR we have a new forensic tool to investigate the explosion," said the paper's lead author, Brian Grefenstette of Caltech. "Previously, it was hard to interpret what was going on in Cas A because the material that we could see only glows in X-rays when it's heated up. Now that we can see the radioactive material, which glows in X-rays no matter what, we are getting a more complete picture of what was going on at the core of the explosion."
The NuSTAR map also casts doubt on other models of supernova explosions, in which the star is rapidly rotating just before it dies and launches narrow streams of gas that drive the stellar blast. Though imprints of jets have been seen before around Cas A, it was not known if they were triggering the explosion. NuSTAR did not see the titanium, essentially the radioactive ash from the explosion, in narrow regions matching the jets, so the jets were not the explosive trigger.
"This is why we built NuSTAR," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division in Washington. "To discover things we never knew – and did not expect – about the high-energy universe."
The researchers will continue to investigate the case of Cas A's dramatic explosion. Centuries after its death marked our skies, this supernova remnant continues to perplex.

Orion Underway Recovery Testing Begins off the Coast of California

About a hundred miles off the coast of San Diego, in the Pacific Ocean, a U.S. Navy ship’s well deck filled with water as underway recovery operations began Feb. 18 on a test version of NASA's Orion crew module to prepare for its first mission, Exploration Flight Test-1, in September. Orion was undocked from its cradle and allowed to float out to sea.
Building on the knowledge gained from previous Orion recovery tests performed in calm waters near NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, the agency's Ground Systems Development and Operations (GSDO) Program began the next phase, seeking turbulent water off the west coast in which to practice recovering the Orion crew module, one parachute and a forward bay cover, which keeps Orion's parachutes safe until being jettisoned, just before the parachutes are needed.
“This is an end-to-end test that takes us to the edge of our safe zone,” said Mike Generale, the Orion recovery operations manager and test director at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “It will help us see how successful our processes and hardware are to recover Orion in higher sea swells.” 
During the recovery test, controllers at Johnson Space Center in Houston simulated the launch and splash down of the Orion capsule. An F-18 jet flew from 13,000 feet into a dive to simulate Orion’s descent through the atmosphere and splashdown, as Johnson confirmed tracking and cleared the air space. Helicopters were stationed in the air to observe the “Orion capsule” during descent, as they would be during an actual retrieval mission.
The ship circled around to the floating test vehicle, and an integrated team of U.S. Navy amphibious specialists, engineers and technicians from Kennedy, Johnson and Lockheed Martin Space Operations practiced retrieving Orion, the forward bay cover and parachute.
A sea anchor and recovery winch was attached to Orion. The recovery winch attachments were secured between Orion’s two main windows, near the heat shield.
For the underway recovery test, even though there are no propellants or coolant on the capsule, the small boat teams examined Orion for leaks, just as they will following Exploration Flight Test-1. Then, two rigid-hull inflatable boats and two smaller Zodiac boats were used to help guide Orion into the Navy ship’s flooded well deck and secure it in a specially designed cradle. Water was drained from the well deck, leaving Orion secure and dry.
Two more rigid-hull inflatable boats were used to secure and reposition the recovered forward bay cover and parachute to the port side of the Navy ship where a crane lifted them on the ship’s main deck.
Generale said the underway recovery test allows GSDO to verify recovery operations and procedures, demonstrates capabilities and incorporates partnership efforts with the U.S. Navy and Lockheed Martin.
“The next steps will be to incorporate lessons learned and, if needed, modify Orion recovery hardware,” Generale said.
The underway recovery test will continue through Feb. 21.

NASA's Chandra Sees Runaway Pulsar Firing an Extraordinary Jet

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has seen a fast-moving pulsar escaping from a supernova remnant while spewing out a record-breaking jet – the longest of any object in the Milky Way galaxy -- of high-energy particles.
The pulsar, a type of neutron star, is known as IGR J11014-6103. IGR J11014-6103's peculiar behavior can likely be traced back to its birth in the collapse and subsequent explosion of a massive star.
Originally discovered with the European Space Agency satellite INTEGRAL, the pulsar is located about 60 light-years away from the center of the supernova remnant SNR MSH 11-61A in the constellation of Carina. Its implied speed is between 2.5 million and 5 million mph, making it one of the fastest pulsars ever observed.
"We've never seen an object that moves this fast and also produces a jet," said Lucia Pavan of the University of Geneva in Switzerland and lead author of a paper published Tuesday,in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. "By comparison, this jet is almost 10 times longer than the distance between the sun and our nearest star."
The X-ray jet in IGR J11014-6103 is the longest known in the Milky Way galaxy. In addition to its impressive span, it has a distinct corkscrew pattern that suggests the pulsar is wobbling like a spinning top.
IGR J11014-6103 also is producing a cocoon of high-energy particles that enshrouds and trails behind it in a comet-like tail. This structure, called a pulsar wind nebula, has been observed before, but the Chandra data show the long jet and the pulsar wind nebula are almost perpendicular to one another.
"We can see  this pulsar is moving directly away from the center of the supernova remnant based on the shape and direction of the pulsar wind nebula," said co-author Pol Bordas, from the University of Tuebingen in Germany. "The question is, why is the jet pointing off in this other direction?"
Usually, the spin axis and jets of a pulsar point in the same direction as they are moving, but IGR J11014-6103's spin axis and direction of motion are almost at right angles.
"With the pulsar moving one way and the jet going another, this gives us clues that exotic physics can occur when some stars collapse," said co-author Gerd Puehlhofer also of the University of Tuebingen..
One possibility requires an extremely fast rotation speed for the iron core of the star that exploded. A problem with this scenario is that such fast speeds are not commonly expected to be achievable.
The supernova remnant that gave birth to IGR J11014-6013 is elongated from top-right to bottom-left in the image roughly in line with the jet's direction. These features and the high speed of the pulsar are hints that jets could have been an important feature of the supernova explosion that formed it.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., controls Chandra's science and flight operations.

Space Station Live: Astronauts Test Spacesuits for Orion

NASA Public Affairs Officer Dan Huot talks with NASA astronaut Rex Walheim about the development and testing of spacesuits for Orion. Based on the familiar orange Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES) worn by space shuttle crews during launch and entry, MACES (Modified ACES) can add the capability to perform a spacewalk with the same suit without the need to fly a second, dedicated spacesuit for that purpose.

U.S. Cargo Spacecraft Wraps Up Its First Station Resupply Mission

Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Cygnus spacecraft, which delivered  nearly one-and-a-half tons of supplies and scientific equipment to the International Space Station in January, completed its first commercial cargo mission to the orbiting laboratory Tuesday.
NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, with assistance from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata, used the station’s 57-foot Canadarm2 robotic arm to detach Cygnus from the Earth-facing port of the Harmony node at 5:15 a.m. EST.  While Wakata monitored data and kept in contact with the team at Houston’s Mission Control Center, Hopkins released Cygnus from the robotic arm at 6:41 a.m.
At the time of release, the station was orbiting about 260 miles over the southern Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Argentina and Uruguay.
From their vantage point inside the station’s cupola observation deck, the two flight engineers monitored telemetry from Cygnus as the unpiloted resupply ship -- now loaded with trash -- conducted a 1-minute, 30-second departure burn to move a safe distance away from the station.
The U.S. commercial cargo craft will begin its deorbit sequence shortly after 8 a.m. Wednesday to enable it to slip out of orbit for a destructive entry into Earth's atmosphere. Cygnus will burn up over the Pacific Ocean later that afternoon.
During its first official commercial resupply mission, designated Orbital-1, Cygnus delivered 2,780 pounds of supplies to the space station, including vital science experiments for the Expedition 38 crew. Cygnus launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Jan. 9 aboard an Orbital Sciences Antares rocket and arrived at the complex Jan. 12.
 The departure of Cygnus clears the way for the arrival of Space Exploration Technologies’ Dragon cargo ship on its third commercial resupply mission, SpaceX-3.  Dragon is set to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on March 16.

In addition to Cygnus departure activities, the six-person Expedition 38 crew tackled a variety of scientific experiments and routine maintenance tasks Tuesday.
Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio, who began the day performing a leak check at the vestibule where the soon-to-depart Cygnus was berthed, spent most of the morning collecting air samples in the U.S. segment of the station. These air samples will be incubated for five days and tested for signs of microbial contamination.
Later, Mastracchio cleaned soot from the hardware for an experiment known as the Burning and Suppression of Solids, or BASS, located in the Microgravity Science Glovebox. Afterward he fired up the experiment for a pair of flame tests and calibrated the hardware. Results from BASS, which takes a look at how a variety of materials burn and extinguish in microgravity, may lead to lead to improvements in spacecraft materials selection and strategies for putting out accidental fires aboard spacecraft. The research also provides scientists with improved computational models that will aid in the design of fire detection and suppression systems here on Earth.
 Hopkins spent some time swapping out a fiber optic cable for the Light Microscopy Module inside the Fluids Integrated Rack. Hopkins also collected surface samples throughout the station to check for bacterial and fungal contamination.
On the Russian side of the orbiting complex, Commander Oleg Kotov performed the Albedo experiment, which takes a look at using the solar radiation reflected from the Earth to provide power for the station. The commander also used the treadmill in the Zvezda service module as he participated in the Motocard study, which examines how long-duration spaceflight affects a cosmonaut’s gait and ability to walk or run.
Flight Engineers Sergey Ryazanskiy and Mikhail Tyurin performed the Bar experiment, studying methods and instruments for detecting the location of an air leak from one of the station’s modules.
Ryazanskiy also studied chemical luminescent reactions in the Earth’s atmosphere for the Relaxation experiment. Tyurin meanwhile conducted the Uragan Earth-observation experiment, which seeks to document and predict the development of natural and man-made disasters on Earth.

Space Station Live: Destination Station: Los Angeles

NASA Public Affairs Officer Josh Byerly talks to Tammie Letroise-Brown, Campaign Strategist for Destination Station, to discuss the events taking place in Los Angeles, Calif. from Feb. 15-22.

Astronauts Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Mark Vande Hei and Peggy Whitson will interact with the public throughout the Los Angeles area. NASA International Space Station scientists will also talk about the research taking place on the orbital laboratory.

Space to Ground - 02/14/14

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station. Got a question or comment? Use #spacetoground to talk to us.

Flight Director Talks to Texas Students

From NASA's International Space Station Mission Control Center, NASA Flight Director Ginger Kerrick participates in a Digital Learning Network (DLN) event with students from El Paso High School in El Paso, Texas.

The DLN connects students and teachers with NASA experts and education specialists using online communication technologies like video/web conferencing and webcasting. Register for free, interactive events listed in the catalog or watch the webcasts.

Space Station Live: Starting Fire in Water

Space Station Live commentator Josh Byerly talks to Michael Hicks of the NASA Glenn Research Center, the principal investigator of the Supercritical Water Mixture experiment on the International Space Station. Hicks discusses his research on orbit into how to control the precipitation of salt from supercritical water—water at extreme pressure and high temperature—in order to prevent corrosion of metallic components of vessels used when supercritical water is mixed with oxygen to eliminate organic wastes. Using supercritical water to start the process of oxidation is a way to purify waste streams on ships and on land, and could be useful in future space vehicles.

Satellite Video Shows Movement of Major U.S. Winter Storm

A new NASA video of NOAA's GOES satellite imagery shows three days of movement of the massive winter storm that stretches from the southern U.S. to the northeast.
Visible and infrared imagery from NOAA's GOES-East or GOES-13 satellite from Feb. 10 at 1815 UTC/1:15 p.m. EST to Feb. 12 to 1845 UTC/1:45 p.m. EST were compiled into a video made by NASA/NOAA's GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
In the video, viewers can see the development and movement of the clouds associated with the progression of the frontal system and related low pressure areas that make up the massive storm. The video also shows the snow covered ground over the Great Lakes region and Ohio Valley that stretches to northern New England. The clouds and fallen snow data from NOAA's GOES-East satellite were overlaid on a true-color image of land and ocean created by data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites.
On February 12 at 10 a.m. EST, NOAA's National Weather Service or NWS continued to issue watches and warnings from Texas to New England. Specifically, NWS cited Winter Storm Warnings and Winter Weather Advisories were in effect from eastern Texas eastward across the interior section of southeastern U.S. states and across much of the eastern seaboard including the Appalachians. Winter storm watches are in effect for portions of northern New England as well as along the western slopes of northern and central Appalachians. For updates on local forecasts, watches and warnings, visit NOAA's  www.weather.gov webpage.
NOAA's Weather Prediction Center or WPC noted the storm is expected to bring "freezing rain spreading into the Carolinas, significant snow accumulations are expected in the interior Mid-Atlantic states tonight into Thursday and ice storm warnings and freezing rain advisories are in effect across much of central Georgia.
GOES satellites provide the kind of continuous monitoring necessary for intensive data analysis. Geostationary describes an orbit in which a satellite is always in the same position with respect to the rotating Earth. This allows GOES to hover continuously over one position on Earth's surface, appearing stationary. As a result, GOES provide a constant vigil for the atmospheric "triggers" for severe weather conditions such as tornadoes, flash floods, hail storms and hurricanes.

Space Station Live: Investigating "Genius Materials" On the Space Station

Space Station Live commentator Pat Ryan talks to Dr. Eric Furst, Principal Investigator for the InSPACE experiment, from the University of Delaware. InSpace, or Investigating the Structure of Paramagnetic Aggregates from Colloidal Emulsions, studies the fundamental behavior of magnetic colloidal fluids under the influence of various magnetic fields.

These fluids are classified as smart materials which transition to a solid-like state by the formation and cross-linking of microstructures in the presence of a magnetic field. This technology has promise to improve the ability to design structures, such as bridges and buildings, and to better withstand earthquake damage.

Furst describes colloids as "really interesting building blocks of matter to assemble other structures from or other useful, functional types of materials - 'genius materials' as some people have called them."

NASA Mars Orbiters See Clues to Possible Water Flows

NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars have returned clues for understanding seasonal features that are the strongest indication of possible liquid water that may exist today on the Red Planet.
The features are dark, finger-like markings that advance down some Martian slopes when temperatures rise. The new clues include corresponding seasonal changes in iron minerals on the same slopes and a survey of ground temperatures and other traits at active sites. These support a suggestion that brines with an iron-mineral antifreeze, such as ferric sulfate, may flow seasonally, though there are still other possible explanations.
Researchers call these dark flows "recurring slope lineae." As a result, RSL has become one of the hottest acronyms at meetings of Mars scientists.
"We still don't have a smoking gun for existence of water in RSL, although we're not sure how this process would take place without water," said Lujendra Ojha, a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, and lead author of two new reports about these flows. He originally discovered them while an undergraduate at the University of Arizona, Tucson, three years ago, in images from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Ojha and Georgia Tech assistant professor James Wray more recently looked at 13 confirmed RSL sites using images from the same orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument. They searched for minerals that RSL might leave in their wake as a way of understanding the nature of these features: water-related or not?
They didn't find any spectral signature tied to water or salts. But they did find distinct and consistent spectral signatures of ferric and ferrous minerals at most of the sites. These iron-bearing minerals were more abundant or featured distinct grain sizes in RSL-related materials as compared to non-RSL slopes. These results are in a paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Ojha said, "Just like the RSL themselves, the strength of the spectral signatures varies according to the seasons. They're stronger when it's warmer and less significant when it's colder."
One possible explanation for these changes is a sorting of grain sizes, such as removal of fine dust from the surface, which could result from either a wet process or dry one. Two other possible explanations are an increase in the more-oxidized (ferric) component of the minerals, or an overall darkening due to moisture. Either of these would point to water, even though no water was directly detected. The spectral observations might miss the presence of water, because the dark flows are much narrower than the area of ground sampled with each CRISM reading. Also, the orbital observations have been made only in afternoons and could miss morning moisture.
The leading hypothesis for these features is the flow of near-surface water, kept liquid by salts depressing the freezing point of pure water. "The flow of water, even briny water, anywhere on Mars today would be a major discovery, impacting our understanding of present climate change on Mars and possibly indicating potential habitats for life near the surface on modern Mars," said Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project Scientist Richard Zurek, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
In related research, reported in a paper to be published by the journal Icarus next month, the Georgia Tech scientists and colleagues at the University of Arizona; U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Ariz.; and Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, used the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter to look for patterns in where and when the dark seasonal flows exist on Mars. Their results indicate that many sites with slopes, latitudes and temperatures matching known RSL sites do not have any evident RSL.
They hunted for areas that were ideal locations for RSL formation: areas near the southern mid-latitudes on rocky cliffs. They found 200, but barely any of them had RSL. "Only 13 of the 200 locations had confirmed RSL," said Ojha. "The fact that RSL occur in a few sites and not others indicates additional unknown factors such as availability of water or salts may play a crucial role in RSL formation."
They compared new observations with images from previous years, revealing that RSL are much more abundant some years than others.
"NASA likes to 'follow the water' in exploring the Red Planet, so we'd like to know in advance when and where it will appear," Wray said. "RSL have rekindled our hope of accessing modern water, but forecasting wet conditions remains a challenge."
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey projects for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built both orbiters. The University of Arizona operates the HiRISE camera, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo.  The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md., provided and operates CRISM.

Space Station Live: Investigating "Genius Materials" On the Space Station

Space Station Live commentator Pat Ryan talks to Dr. Eric Furst, Principal Investigator for the InSPACE experiment, from the University of Delaware. InSpace, or Investigating the Structure of Paramagnetic Aggregates from Colloidal Emulsions, studies the fundamental behavior of magnetic colloidal fluids under the influence of various magnetic fields.

These fluids are classified as smart materials which transition to a solid-like state by the formation and cross-linking of microstructures in the presence of a magnetic field. This technology has promise to improve the ability to design structures, such as bridges and buildings, and to better withstand earthquake damage.

Furst describes colloids as "really interesting building blocks of matter to assemble other structures from or other useful, functional types of materials - 'genius materials' as some people have called them."

Orion Stage Adapter Aces Structural Loads Testing

A test article of the stage adapter that will connect the Orion spacecraft to a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta IV rocket for its first mission, Exploration Flight Test-1, aced structural loads testing Jan. 30. Now, the stage adapter that will fly on the Delta IV is officially ready for the journey to its final exam -- a flight more than 15 times farther into deep space than the International Space Station.
For the structural loads test, the hardware was attached with lines running in different directions on the hardware. Hydraulic pressure was added to those lines in increments, which pushed on the adapter to evaluate its integrity. The test was similar to the recent "can-crush" tests on a rocket fuel tank, but the adapter wasn't purposefully buckled for the structural test as it was on the fuel tank. Twenty-five test cases were completed on the adapter.
"The loads put on the adapter are similar to the conditions it will experience in flight," said Brent Gaddes, Spacecraft & Payload Integration Adapter Subsystem manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where the test was conducted. "This test showed us the adapter can handle loads even higher than it will see in flight, without any compromise to the hardware -- like bending or cracking."
"It takes a lot of hard work from many different teams to pull a large-scale test like this together," said Dee VanCleave, lead test engineer for the structural loads test at Marshall. "We were able to compare the test data with the stress-analysis predictions in real-time for immediate results."
The flight adapter will be shipped in mid-March to ULA's facility in Decatur, Ala., where the Delta IV is being constructed. From there, it will travel by ship to Cape Canaveral, Fla., ahead of Orion's inaugural flight in September.
During the mission, Orion will travel approximately 3,600 miles above Earth’s surface before re-entering the atmosphere at almost 20,000 mph, generating temperatures near 4,000 degree Fahrenheit. The uncrewed flight will provide engineers with important data about Orion's heat shield and other elements, including the adapter’s performance, before it is flown in 2017 as part of the first mission to include the Space Launch System, or SLS.
SLS will be capable of powering humans and potential science payloads to deep space. It has the greatest capacity of any launch system ever built, minimizing the cost and risk of deep space journeys.
"It will be so gratifying to see the adapter fly on Orion's flight test this fall and know that I helped in a small way," VanCleave said.
Marshall manages the SLS Program for the agency.

NASA Study Points to Infrared-Herring in Apparent Amazon Green-Up

For the past eight years, scientists have been working to make sense of why some satellite data seemed to show the Amazon rain forest "greening-up" during the region's dry season each year from June to October. The green-up indicated productive, thriving vegetation in spite of limited rainfall.
Now, a new NASA study published today in the journal Nature shows that the appearance of canopy greening is not caused by a biophysical change in Amazon forests, but instead by a combination of shadowing within the canopy and the way that satellite sensors observe the Amazon during the dry season.
Correcting for this artifact in the data, Doug Morton, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues show that Amazon forests, at least on the large scale, maintain a fairly constant greenness and canopy structure throughout the dry season. The findings have implications for how scientists seek to understand seasonal and interannual changes in Amazon forests and other ecosystems.
"Scientists who use satellite observations to study changes in Earth's vegetation need to account for seasonal differences in the angles of solar illumination and satellite observation," Morton said.
Isolating the apparent green-up mechanism
The MODIS, or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, sensors that fly aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites make daily observations over the huge expanse of Amazon forests. An area is likely covered in green vegetation if sensors detect a relatively small amount of red light – absorbed in abundance by plants for photosynthesis – but see a large amount of near-infrared light, which plants primarily reflect. Scientists use the ratio of red and near-infrared light as a measure of vegetation "greenness."
Numerous hypotheses have been put forward to explain why Amazon forests appear greener in MODIS data as the dry season progresses. Perhaps young leaves, known to reflect more near-infrared light, replace old leaves? Or, possibly trees add more leaves to capture sunlight in the dry season when the skies are less cloudy.
Unsettled by the lack of definitive evidence explaining the magnitude of the green-up, Morton and colleagues set out to better characterize the phenomenon. They culled satellite observations from MODIS and NASA's Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) Geosciences Laser Altimeter System (GLAS), which can provide an independent check on the seasonal differences in Amazon forest structure.
The team next used a theoretical model to demonstrate how changes in forest structure or reflectance properties have distinct fingerprints in MODIS and GLAS data. Only one of the hypothesized mechanisms for the green-up, changes in sun-sensor geometry, was consistent with the satellite observations.
"We think we have uncovered the mechanism for the appearance of seasonal greening of Amazon forests – shadowing within the canopy that changes the amount of near-infrared light observed by MODIS," Morton said.
Seeing the Amazon in a new light
In June, when the sun is as low and far north as it will get, shadows are abundant. By September, around the time of the equinox, Amazon forests at the equator are illuminated from directly overhead. At this point the forest canopy is shadow-free, highly reflective in the infrared, and therefore very green according to some satellite vegetation indices.
 Around the equinox, the MODIS sensor takes the 'perfect picture' with no shadows," Morton said. "The change in shadows is amplified in MODIS data because the sun is directly behind the sensor at the equinox. This seasonal change in MODIS greenness has nothing to do with how forests are changing."
In fact, accounting for the changing geometry between the sun and satellite sensor paints a picture of the Amazon that, as a whole, doesn't change much through the dry season.
"Additional work is needed to verify these results with field measurements, and to explore the influence of drought on corrected vegetation indices," said Scott Goetz, an ecologist at Woods Hole Research Center in Woods Hole, Mass., who was not involved with the Nature study. "But past interpretations of productivity changes need to be reconsidered in light of these new results."
Looking forward, Morton sees the results as a reminder and opportunity for remote sensing scientists to work more closely with ground-based ecosystem scientists.
"Scaling our knowledge of forest canopies from measurements of individual leaves to satellite observations of the entire Amazon basin requires a deep understanding of both forest ecology and remote sensing science," Morton said. "This interdisciplinary collaboration is critical to improve our understanding of the patterns and processes driving changes in vegetation productivity."

Space Station Live: Studying the Immune System In Space

An experiment on the International Space Station explores why astronauts' immune systems become suppressed in microgravity. NASA Public Affairs Officer Lori Meggs talks about the experiment, T-Cell Activation in Aging, with Principal Investigator and former shuttle astronaut Millie Hughes Fulford.

Station Crew Conducts Science While Awaiting Next Cargo Launch

While awaiting the launch of the next shipment of supplies to the International Space Station, the six-person Expedition 38 crew participated in a wide range of experiments studying the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body Tuesday.
Flight Engineer Mike Hopkins spent much of his morning participating in the Body Measures experiment, which collects anthropometric data to help researchers understand the magnitude and variability of the changes to body measurements during spaceflight. Predicting these changes will maximize crew performance, prevent injury and reduce time spent altering or adjusting spacesuits and workstations. The investigation also could help scientists understand the effects of prolonged bed rest, which produces physiological changes similar to those experienced in microgravity. Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata assisted Hopkins throughout the experiment session, setting up the calibration tape, collecting data and taking photographs.
Wakata also conducted an ultrasound scan on Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio for the ongoing Spinal Ultrasound investigation. Medical researchers have observed that astronauts grow up to three percent taller during their long duration missions aboard the station and return to their normal height when back on Earth. The Spinal Ultrasound investigation seeks to understand the mechanism and impact of this change while advancing medical imaging technology by testing a smaller and more portable ultrasound device aboard the station.
 Wakata took a break from his work to talk with students from Fukuoka Prefecture and Kyushu University in his home country of Japan.
Hopkins and Wakata spent the afternoon loading the Orbital Sciences’ Cygnus cargo craft with trash for disposal when that vehicle departs the station on Feb. 18 for a destructive re-entry over the Pacific Ocean. Cygnus delivered over 2,700 pounds of cargo including crew provisions and scientific gear when it arrived at the station Jan. 13.
Hopkins also read up on procedures and gathered hardware for his upcoming session with the BP Reg experiment. This is a Canadian medical study that seeks to understand the causes of fainting and dizziness seen in some astronauts when they return to Earth following a long-duration mission. Results from this experiment will not only help researchers understand dizziness in astronauts, but it also will have direct benefits for people on Earth – particularly those predisposed to falls and resulting injuries, as seen in the elderly.

Mastracchio meanwhile changed out a recycle tank in the station’s Water Recovery System, which recycles condensation and urine into drinkable water, thereby reducing the amount of fresh water that must be sent to the crew aboard resupply ships.
On the Russian side of the complex, Commander Oleg Kotov conducted a biochemical analysis of his blood for the Splanh experiment, which is taking a look at the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the digestive system. The commander also performed the Seiner ocean-observation study, documenting color bloom patterns in the oceans’ waters for the fishing industry.
Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy downloaded data from an earthquake-monitoring experiment known as Seismoprognoz. He and Kotov installed the hardware for Seismoprognoz on the exterior of the station during a spacewalk on Dec. 27.
 The third Russian cosmonaut aboard the station, Mikhail Tyurin, set up a camera to record the operation of the Kaplya-2 experiment, which is studying the fluid motion and heat transfer of monodisperse drop flows in space. Tyurin also collected dosimeter readings for the Matryoshka experiment. Named after the traditional Russian nesting dolls, Matryoshka analyzes the radiation environment onboard the station.
Meanwhile at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, preparations continue for the launch of the ISS Progress 54 cargo craft Wednesday at 11:23 a.m. EST (10:23 p.m. Baikonur time) for an accelerated 6-hour, 4-orbit journey to the station.  When the new Progress docks with the station’s Pirs docking compartment at 5:25 p.m., it will deliver 1,764 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 926 pounds of water and 2,897 pounds of spare parts, experiment hardware and other supplies to the orbiting complex.

Space Station Live: Space Diet to Prevent Bone Mineral Loss

Space Station Live commentator Pat Ryan conducts an interview with Dr. Scott M. Smith, the principal investigator of the Pro K experiment. The experiment is NASA's first evaluation of a dietary countermeasure to lessen bone loss of astronauts. Pro K proposes that a flight diet with a decreased ratio of animal protein to potassium will lead to decreased loss of bone mineral. Read more...

Kepler Finds a Very Wobbly Planet

Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat. That is the situation on a weird, wobbly world found by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.
The planet, designated Kepler-413b, precesses, or wobbles, wildly on its spin axis, much like a child's top. The tilt of the planet's spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years, leading to rapid and erratic changes in seasons. In contrast, Earth's rotational precession is 23.5 degrees over 26,000 years. Researchers are amazed that this far-off planet is precessing on a human timescale.
Kepler 413-b is located 2,300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It circles a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars every 66 days. The planet's orbit around the binary stars appears to wobble, too, because the plane of its orbit is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the star pair's orbit. As seen from Earth, the wobbling orbit moves up and down continuously.
Kepler finds planets by noticing the dimming of a star or stars when a planet transits, or travels in front of them. Normally, planets transit like clockwork. Astronomers using Kepler discovered the wobbling when they found an unusual pattern of transiting for Kepler-413b.
"Looking at the Kepler data over the course of 1,500 days, we saw three transits in the first 180 days -- one transit every 66 days -- then we had 800 days with no transits at all. After that, we saw five more transits in a row," said Veselin Kostov, the principal investigator on the observation. Kostov is affiliated with the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. The next transit visible from Earth's point of view is not predicted to occur until 2020. This is because the orbit moves up and down, a result of the wobbling, in such a great degree that it sometimes does not transit the stars as viewed from Earth.
Astronomers are still trying to explain why this planet is out of alignment with its stars. There could be other planetary bodies in the system that tilted the orbit. Or, it could be that a third star nearby that is a visual companion may actually be gravitationally bound to the system and exerting an influence.
"Presumably there are planets out there like this one that we're not seeing because we're in the unfavorable period," said Peter McCullough, a team member with the Space Telescope Science Institute and Johns Hopkins University. "And that's one of the things that Veselin is researching: Is there a silent majority of things that we're not seeing?"
Even with its changing seasons, Kepler-413b is too warm for life as we know it. Because it orbits so close to the stars, its temperatures are too high for liquid water to exist, making it inhabitable. It also is a super Neptune -- a giant gas planet with a mass about 65 times that of Earth -- so there is no surface on which to stand.
NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., is responsible for the Kepler mission concept, ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

Sun Emits Mid-Level Solar Flare

The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, beginning at 11:57 p.m. EST on Feb. 3, 2014, and peaking at midnight EST. NASA released images of the flare as captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

 Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

Russian Cargo Craft Departure Clears Way for Next Delivery

The Expedition 38 crew said farewell to an unpiloted Russian cargo craft Monday morning while making preparations for the arrival of the next space freighter, which is set to make an expedited 6-hour journey to the International Space Station Wednesday.
The ISS Progress 52 cargo ship undocked from the Pirs docking compartment 11:21 a.m. EST, and backed away to a safe distance from the orbital complex to begin several days of tests to study thermal effects of space on its attitude control system.
Progress 52 delivered nearly three tons of supplies when it arrived at the station on July 27. Now filled with trash and other unneeded items, the Russian resupply ship will be commanded to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere Feb. 11 and disintegrate harmlessly over the Pacific Ocean.
The departure of Progress 52 clears Pirs for the arrival of the next Russian cargo ship, ISS Progress 54, which rolled out to its launch pad early Monday morning at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as temperatures hovered around 17 below zero F.  The vehicle is scheduled to launch on Wednesday at 11:23 a.m. (10:23 p.m. Baikonur time) on an accelerated 4-orbit journey to dock to Pirs at 5:25 p.m.  The new Progress is loaded with 1,764 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 926 pounds of water and 2,897 pounds of spare parts, experiment hardware and other supplies  for the Expedition 38 crew.
Station Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Mikhail Tyurin spent Monday morning conducting a training session with the Telerobotically Operated Rendezvous Unit, or TORU, which could be used to remotely guide Progress 54 to its docking port in the event that its Kurs automated rendezvous system experiences a problem.
Along with Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy, Kotov also participated in the Splanh experiment, a Russian study of the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the digestive system.
Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio, who began his day with a vision test, spent much of his morning installing and activating a NanoRacks platform and multi-gas monitor. NanoRacks provides lower-cost microgravity research facilities for small payloads utilizing a standardized “plug-and-play” interface. Mastracchio also connected a keyboard and video monitor for NanoRacks.
Meanwhile, Flight Engineer Koichi Wakata conducted an ultrasound scan of the calf and thigh of his right leg for the Sprint study.  This experiment is evaluating effectiveness of high-intensity, low-volume exercise training in minimizing the loss of muscle mass and bone density that occurs during long-term exposure to weightlessness. Flight Engineer Mike Hopkins assisted Wakata with the experiment session.
Wakata also participated in a vision check-up, as medical teams on the ground keep a watchful eye on the crew’s health.
Hopkins focused most of his attention on preparing the Multi-user Droplet Combustion Apparatus within the Combustion Integrated Rack for more experiments studying how different materials burn in microgravity. Hopkins replaced the fuel reservoirs, igniter tips and fiber arm inside the chamber insert assembly of the apparatus.