|
|
|
|
|
NASA picks teams for space weather mission and studies NASA NEWS RELEASE Posted: August 1, 2006 Four university teams will share $100 million to provide experiments and supporting hardware for a future NASA mission to study near-Earth space radiation. This type of radiation is hazardous to astronauts, orbiting satellites and aircraft flying high altitude polar routes. The teams will initially use $4.2 million to perform a one-year cost, management and technical study prior to assembling and testing their scientific payload for the mission. The anticipated lifetime cost of payload development is $96 million. Called the Radiation Belt Storm Probes, the two-spacecraft mission is scheduled for launch in 2012. The mission will study how accumulations of space radiation form and change during space storms. Space weather storms involve constantly changing magnetic and electric fields and gusts of radiation particles that produce intense energy. This energy can black out long-distance communications over entire continents and disrupt the global navigational system. "This research will provide information to aid those working in this environment to respond proactively to space radiation events, rather than reactively," said NASA's Heliophysics Division director Dick Fisher. NASA also has selected three teams to share approximately $2.3 million to conduct studies for small missions that will augment the 2012 mission. NASA will review the studies and select one investigation for continued development. Proposals for the 2012 mission and studies were submitted to NASA in response to an Announcement of Opportunity released in August 2005. Selected teams and experiments for the 2012 mission:
Selected teams for studies and areas of research to augment the 2012 mission:
The National Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, Va., plans to enhance the mission's scientific goals by contributing an experiment to gather additional data that will better characterize the radiation environment in space. The experiment will extend the measurement capabilities to a range beyond what was originally planned for the mission. These investigations and the Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission are part of NASA's Living with a Star Program. The program is designed to understand how and why the sun varies, how planetary systems respond and the effect on human space and Earth activities. The program is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., for the agency's Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate. |
|
|
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
Astronauts Jeff Williams and Thomas Reiter will conduct a U.S.-based spacewalk outside the International Space Station on August 3. To preview the EVA and the tasks to be accomplished during the excursion, station managers held this press conference from Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Space shuttle Atlantis is transported to the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building where the ship will be mated to the external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters for a late-August liftoff.
A camera was mounted in the front of space shuttle Discovery's flight deck looking back at the astronauts during launch. This video shows the final minutes of the countdown and the ride to space with the live launch audio included. The movie shows what it would be like to launch on the shuttle with the STS-121 crew.
A high-altitude WB-57 aircraft flying north of Discovery's launch trajectory captures this incredible aerial footage of the space shuttle's ascent from liftoff through solid rocket booster separation.
This is the full launch experience! The movie begins with the final readiness polls of the launch team. Countdown clocks then resume ticking from the T-minus 9 minute mark, smoothly proceeding to ignition at 2:38 p.m. Discovery rockets into orbit, as seen by ground tracker and a video camera mounted on the external tank. About 9 minutes after liftoff, the engines shut down and the tank is jettisoned as the shuttle arrives in space.
MiTEx -- an experimental U.S. military project to test whether the advanced technologies embedded in two miniature satellites and a new upper stage kick motor can operate through the rigors of spaceflight -- is launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Boeing Delta 2 rocket.