NASA set to fund space taxi systems

CAPE CANAVERAL — NASA next year will fund the development of at least two space taxi systems that could return astronauts to orbit aboard U.S. vehicles by late 2016.

The agency this week released draft terms of a contract that aims to complete designs of those systems by 2014, after which one or more would be chosen for a follow-up phase that builds and tests vehicles.

The draft request for proposals proves the agency's commitment "to outsource our space station transportation so NASA can focus its energy and resources on deep space exploration," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

Potential providers of the outsourced crew flights, which would launch from the Space Coast, have a month to review and comment on the draft before a final version is released late this year.

A SpaceX spokesman said the company was still reviewing the draft language.

SpaceX is one of the four companies that shared nearly $270 million in NASA funding this year to advance designs of spacecraft able to fly people to and from the International Space Station.

Blue Origin, The Boeing Co. and Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems were the others.

The next contract phase intends to develop integrated transportation
systems, combining spacecraft with launch vehicles, escape systems and all the ground systems necessary to launch at least four astronauts to the station.

Expected to be awarded next summer, the next contract phase could be worth $1.6 billion between 2012 and 2014, NASA says.

But actual funding could be significantly lower than the total proposed in the Obama administration's 2012 budget.

Some companies and commercial space advocates fear limited funding and NASA's new contracting strategy could slow or derail the development program.

"From a technical standpoint (the companies) are proceeding well, but there's a concern about both the future funding and how the contracting is going to be structured in this next phase," said Jeff Foust, an industry analyst with Futron Corp.

NASA last week announced it would abandon the use of more simple Space Act Agreements in favor of federal contracts that some companies consider more costly and bureaucratic.

Cassini Sees Saturn on a Cosmic Dimmer Switch

Like a cosmic lightbulb on a dimmer switch, Saturn emitted gradually less energy each year from 2005 to 2009, according to observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. But unlike an ordinary bulb, Saturn's southern hemisphere consistently emitted more energy than its northern one. On top of that, energy levels changed with the seasons and differed from the last time a spacecraft visited Saturn in the early 1980s. These never-before-seen trends came from a detailed analysis of long-term data from the composite infrared spectrometer (CIRS), an instrument built by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., as well as a comparison with earlier data from NASA's Voyager spacecraft. When combined with information about the energy coming to Saturn from the sun, the results could help scientists understand the nature of Saturn's internal heat source.

"The fact that Saturn actually emits more than twice the energy it absorbs from the sun has been a puzzle for many decades now," said Kevin Baines, a Cassini team scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and a co-author on a new paper about Saturn's energy output. "What generates that extra energy? This paper represents the first step in that analysis."

The research, reported this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets, was led by Liming Li of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. (now at the University of Houston).

"The Cassini CIRS data are very valuable because they give us a nearly complete picture of Saturn," Li said. "This is the only single data set that provides so much information about this planet, and it's the first time that anybody has been able to study the power emitted by one of the giant planets in such detail."

The planets in our solar system lose energy in the form of heat radiation in wavelengths that are invisible to the human eye. The CIRS instrument picks up wavelengths in the thermal infrared region, far enough beyond red light where the wavelengths correspond to heat emission.

"In planetary science, we tend to think of planets as losing power evenly in all directions and at a steady rate," Li said. "Now we know Saturn is not doing that." (Power is the amount of energy emitted per unit of time.)

Instead, Saturn's flow of outgoing energy was lopsided, with its southern hemisphere giving off about one-sixth more energy than the northern one, Li explains. This effect matched Saturn's seasons: during those five Earth-years, it was summer in the southern hemisphere and winter in the northern one. (A season on Saturn lasts about seven Earth-years.) Like Earth, Saturn has these seasons because the planet is tilted on its axis, so one hemisphere receives more energy from the sun and experiences summer, while the other receives less energy and is shrouded in winter. Saturn's equinox, when the sun was directly over the equator, occurred in August 2009.

In the study, Saturn's seasons looked Earth-like in another way: in each hemisphere, its effective temperature, which characterizes its thermal emission to space, started to warm up or cool down as a change of season approached. The effective temperature provides a simple way to track the response of Saturn's atmosphere to the seasonal changes, which is complicated because Saturn's weather is variable and the atmosphere tends to retain heat. Cassini's observations revealed that the effective temperature in the northern hemisphere gradually dropped from 2005 to 2008 and started to warm up again by 2009. In the southern hemisphere, the effective temperature cooled from 2005 to 2009.

The emitted energy for each hemisphere rose and fell along with the effective temperature. Even so, during this five-year period, the planet as a whole seemed to be slowly cooling down and emitting less energy.

To find out if similar changes were happening one Saturn-year ago, the researchers looked at data collected by the Voyager spacecraft in 1980 and 1981 and did not see the imbalance between the southern and northern hemispheres. Instead, the two regions were much more consistent with each other.

Why wouldn't Voyager have seen the same summer-versus-winter difference between the two hemispheres? One explanation is that cloud patterns at depth could have fluctuated, blocking and scattering infrared light differently.

"It's reasonable to think that the changes in Saturn's emitted power are related to cloud cover," says Amy Simon-Miller, who heads the Planetary Systems Laboratory at Goddard and is a co-author on the paper. "As the amount of cloud cover changes, the amount of radiation escaping into space also changes. This might vary during a single season and from one Saturn-year to another. But to fully understand what is happening on Saturn, we will need the other half of the picture: the amount of power being absorbed by the planet."

Scientists will be doing that as a next step by comparing the instrument's findings to data obtained by Cassini's imaging cameras and infrared mapping spectrometer instrument. The spectrometer, in particular, measures the amount of sunlight reflected by Saturn. Because scientists know the total amount of solar energy delivered to Saturn, they can derive the amount of sunlight absorbed by the planet and discern how much heat the planet itself is emitting. These calculations help scientists tackle what the actual source of that warming might be and whether it changes.

Better understanding Saturn's internal heat flow "will significantly deepen our understanding of the weather, internal structure and evolution of Saturn and the other giant planets," Li said.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The composite infrared spectrometer team is based at NASA Goddard, where the instrument was built.

More Cassini information is available at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Taking On Water Resource Issues

Worldwide today, it is estimated that nearly 1.1 billion people live without access to adequate water supplies and about 2.6 billion people lack adequate water sanitation. Improved understanding of water processes at global and regional scales is essential for sustainability.

Researchers at JPL recently launched the Western Water Resource Solutions website to highlight activities that apply NASA expertise and data to water resource issues in the western United States.

One focus area for this new site is the hydrologic cycle and using global satellite observations of the Earth to improve our understanding of water processes on a regional and local level. The western United States is expected to bear the brunt of impacts to water resource availability because of changing precipitation patterns, increasing temperatures, and a growing population. California is already starting to feel the impacts and is taking action to develop new adaptive management practices to ensure a safe and reliable water supply, while maintaining healthy ecosystems throughout the state.

NASA researchers at Ames Research Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Marshall Space Flight Center are currently working with water managers to apply NASA expertise and data to water resource issues in California. The project partners with universities, agencies and other stakeholders, to utilize information from a number of sources, including existing ground observations and models.

This project is only one of several NASA initiatives aimed at providing actionable scientific information on water quality and the water balance worldwide. These other projects include development of better estimates of snow pack, groundwater monitoring, soil moisture and evapotranspiration, water quality, and monitoring fragile levee systems.

In addition to raising awareness about current water resource challenges, the new website highlights NASA’s capability to use satellite and airborne data to help solve some of these challenges.

Learn more about the Western Water Resource Solution Group at: http://water.jpl.nasa.gov/

Observe the Moon

This photograph shows the Laser Ranging Facility at the Geophysical and Astronomical Observatory at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The observatory helps NASA keep track of orbiting satellites. In this image, the lower of the two green beams is from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's dedicated tracker. The other laser originates from another ground system at the facility. Both beams are pointed at the moon -- specifically at LRO in orbit around the moon.

Fermi Detects 'Shocking' Surprise from Supernova's Little Cousin

Astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected gamma-rays from a nova for the first time, a finding that stunned observers and theorists alike. The discovery overturns the notion that novae explosions lack the power to emit such high-energy radiation.

A nova is a sudden, short-lived brightening of an otherwise inconspicuous star. The outburst occurs when a white dwarf in a binary system erupts in an enormous thermonuclear explosion.

"In human terms, this was an immensely powerful eruption, equivalent to about 1,000 times the energy emitted by the sun every year," said Elizabeth Hays, a Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "But compared to other cosmic events Fermi sees, it was quite modest. We're amazed that Fermi detected it so strongly."

Gamma rays are the most energetic form of light, and Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) detected the nova for 15 days. Scientists believe the emission arose as a million-mile-per-hour shock wave raced from the site of the explosion.

Crew Sets Up Hardware, Prepares for Soyuz Move

With Expedition 24 recently expanded to its full crew complement of six, the International Space Station’s residents tackled a variety of science and maintenance tasks Tuesday.

Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock, Shannon Walker and Fyodor Yurchikhin, who arrived at the station on the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft Thursday, participated in familiarization briefings with the crew members who welcomed them aboard -- Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Mikhail Kornienko and Tracy Caldwell Dyson. The three new flight engineers also had an hour of free time set aside to study the layout of their orbital home for the next five-and-a-half months and learn to move about in its large habitable space.

Working in the Destiny laboratory, Wheelock and Walker began installing and outfitting the Window Observation Research Facility, a rack surrounding the lab’s 20-inch window. This rack will serve as an attachment point for cameras and scanners to be mounted in the window and provides power and data transfer capabilities for those instruments.

Caldwell Dyson performed her third session with an experiment that studies changes in the astronauts’ aerobic capacity during long-duration spaceflight. NASA is interested in tracking these changes because a reduction in maximum oxygen uptake directly impacts a crew member’s ability to perform strenuous activities such as spacewalks or emergency operations.

Our Powerful Sun

Eight planets and their moons, tens of thousands of asteroids, and trillions of comets revolve around the sun. One of these is our Earth, orbiting the sun at an average distance of about 92,960,000 miles (149,600,000 kilometers). The sun is a huge, glowing ball that provides light, heat, and other energy to our Earth. But our beneficial space neighbor is also capable of some stellar "temper tantrums."

On Thursday, June 17, Dr. David Hathaway, a solar scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, will answer your questions about how our sun works and produces phenomena such as sunspots, solar flares, and solar storms -- "hot' topics that have communication and health implications for everyone on Earth.

Joining the chat is easy. Simply visit this page on Thursday, June 17 from 3-4 p.m. EDT. The chat window will open at the bottom of this page starting at 2:30 p.m. EDT. You can log in and be ready to ask questions at 3:00. See you in chat!

Heart and Soul

The Heart and Soul nebulae are seen in this infrared mosaic from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The image covers an area of the sky over ten times as wide as the full moon and eight times as high (5.5 x 3.9 degrees) in the constellation Cassiopeia.

Located about 6,000 light-years from Earth, the Heart and Soul nebulae form a vast star-forming complex that makes up part of the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. The nebula to the left is the Heart, designated IC 1805 and named after its resemblance to a human heart. To the right is the Soul nebula, also known as the Embryo nebula, IC 1848 or W5. The Perseus arm lies further from the center of the Milky Way than the arm that contains our sun. The Heart and Soul nebulae stretch out nearly 580 light-years across, covering a small portion of the diameter of the Milky Way, which is roughly 100,000 light-years across.

The two nebulae are both massive star-making factories, marked by giant bubbles that were blown into surrounding dust by radiation and winds from the stars. WISE's infrared vision allows it to see into the cooler and dustier crevices of clouds like these, where gas and dust are just beginning to collect into new stars. These stars are less than a few million of years old -- youngsters in comparison to stars like the sun, which is nearly 5 billion years old.

Also visible near the bottom of this image are two galaxies, Maffei 1 and Maffei 2. Both galaxies contain billions of stars and, at about 10 million light-years away, are well outside our Milky Way yet relatively close compared to most galaxies. Maffei 1 is the bluish elliptical object and Maffei 2 is the spiral galaxy.

Reisman, Bowen Complete First STS-132 Spacewalk

Astronauts Garrett Reisman and Steve Bowen completed a seven hour, 25 minute spacewalk at 3:19 p.m. EDT.

The new space-to-ground antenna they installed will increase the space station's ability to conduct two-way data, voice, and video communications. They put into place a new tool platform for the Dextre robot, and Bowen prepared six batteries that will be installed during the second and third spacewalks by loosening the bolts that hold the batteries in place. The batteries weigh approximately 2,200 pounds.

Meanwhile, the space shuttle's robotic arm has successfully grappled the Mini Research Module-1 for relocation to the space station on flight day 5. It will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian spacecraft.

This was the first of three STS-132 spacewalks, 237th conducted by U.S. astronauts, the second for Reisman and the fourth for Bowen. It was the 144th in support of International Space Station assembly and maintenance, totaling 900 hours, 58 minutes.

Atlantis Lifts Off

Space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the STS-132 mission to the International Space Station at 2:20 p.m. EDT on May 14. The third of five shuttle missions planned for 2010, this was the last planned launch for Atlantis. The Russian-built Mini Research Module-1, also known as Rassvet, or "dawn," will be delivered and it will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft. The laboratory will be attached to the bottom port of the station's Zarya module. The mission's three spacewalks will focus on storing spare components outside the station, including six batteries, a communications antenna and parts for the Canadian Dextre robotic arm.

Herschel Gets Sneak Peak at Star Birth

The first scientific results from the Herschel infrared space observatory are revealing previously hidden details of star formation. New images show thousands of distant galaxies furiously building stars and beautiful star-forming clouds draped across our Milky Way galaxy. One picture even catches an "impossible" star in the act of formation.

Presented today during a major scientific symposium held at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands, the results challenge old ideas of star birth, and open new roads for future research. The mission is led by the European Space Agency with important participation from NASA.

"Herschel is a new eye on a part of the cosmos that has been dark and buried for a long time," said the mission's NASA project scientist, Paul Goldsmith, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Herschel's observation of the star-forming cloud RCW 120 has revealed an embryonic star, which appears ready to turn into one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galaxy within the next few hundred thousand years. It already contains eight to 10 times the mass of the sun and is still surrounded by an additional 2,000 solar masses of gas and dust from which it can feed further.

"This star can only grow bigger," says Annie Zavagno, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille in France. Massive stars are rare and short-lived. To catch one during formation presents a golden opportunity to solve a long-standing paradox in astronomy. "According to our current understanding, you should not be able to form stars larger than eight solar masses," says Zavagno.

Cassini Returning Enceladus Gravity Data

NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its 26-hour gravity observation at Saturn's moon Enceladus this week, sending back data scientists will use to understand the moon's interior composition and structure.

The flyby took Cassini through the water-rich plume flaring out from Enceladus' south polar region, with a closest approach of about 100 kilometers (60 miles) occurring in the late afternoon of April 27, 2010, Pacific Time, or just after midnight April 28 UTC.

A steady radio link to NASA's Deep Space Network on Earth enabled Cassini's scientists to use the radio science instrument to measure the variations in the gravitational pull of Enceladus. Analyzing the wiggles will help scientists understand whether an ocean, pond or great lake lies under the famous "tiger stripe" fractures that spew water vapor and organic particles from the south polar region.

Results from the experiment will also tell scientists if bubbles of warmer ice in the interior rise toward that region's surface like an underground lava lamp.

Radio science was prime during the flyby and controlled spacecraft pointing. The optical instruments were not pointed at Enceladus during most of the flyby, so the imaging camera obtained some more distant pictures.

Robotics Work Station Relocation and Station Reboost for Crew

Expedition 23 Commander and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov downlinked live video and audio of the treadmill while it was operating inside the Zvezda service module. Kotov identified unusual sounds and motion coming from the treadmill and was working with ground controllers to see if there was a problem. Ground controllers determined everything was nominal but continued to analyze the issue.

With American and Russian spacecraft coming and going to the station over the next two months, the docked ISS Progress 36 supply craft fired its engines on Friday afternoon to raise the orbiting laboratory to the proper altitude.

The ISS Progress 35 undocked from the Pirs Docking Compartment on Thursday after being loaded with trash and other unneeded gear and equipment. The Progress will be used for scientific experiments until it is deorbited and burned up in the Earth's atmosphere next week.

Pirs will host the new ISS Progress 37 when it docks on Saturday, May 1. ISS Progress 37 will bring to the station 1,918 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen and air, 220 pounds of water and 3,031 pounds of spare parts and experiment hardware.

Space shuttle Atlantis will arrive at the International Space Station in May for the 12-day STS-132 mission. On June 2, Expedition 23 crew members Kotov, T.J. Creamer and Noguchi will return home in the Soyuz TMA-17. Expedition 24 crew members Fyodor Yurchikhin, Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker will arrive in the Soyuz TMA-19 to begin their stay on June 18.

Crew Prepares for ISS Progress 35 Undocking

The Expedition 23 crew members aboard the International Space Station were busy Wednesday preparing for the undocking of the ISS Progress 35 supply ship. They also performed routine station maintenance and worked with science experiments.

The unmanned Progress cargo resupply vehicle is scheduled to undock at 12:32 p.m. EDT Thursday from the Pirs docking compartment. Filled with trash and station discarded items, the cargo craft will deorbit and burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.

ISS Progress 35 arrived at the station Oct. 17 after launching Oct. 14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineers Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko tested the Russian telerobotically operated rendezvous system, TORU, which they can use to monitor the Progress undocking or take control of the process in the unlikely event that difficulties arise with the automated Kurs system.

The Russians also performed maintenance on the Treadmill Vibration Isolation System (TVIS). The TVIS is an important part of the exercise regimen aboard the station. Each crew member exercises for 2.5 hours daily to stave off the effects of long-term exposure to weightlessness.

Flight Engineers T.J. Creamer and Tracy Caldwell Dyson worked on a variety of research, including the Evaluation of Maximal Oxygen Uptake and Submaximal Estimates of VO2max Before, During, and After Long Duration International Space Station Missions (VO2max) experiment, which looks at the working capacity of humans in microgravity, and the Transgenic Arabidopsis Gene Expression System (TAGES) experiment, which uses plants specially fitted with genes that make them glow so that scientists can monitor how they grow in the space environment.

Meanwhile, Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi inspected hatch seals around the station. He also worked with the Reaction Self Test experiment that helps monitor the daily effects of living in space.

Space shuttle Discovery descended to a smooth landing Tuesday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to conclude the STS-131 mission that brought 7.6 tons of supplies and equipment to the station, including a new crew sleeping quarters, a new ammonia tank, a new gyroscope and four experiment racks.

Space Shuttle Discovery Undocks from Station

The Expedition 23 crew and the STS-131 crew of space shuttle Discovery parted company Saturday at 8:52 a.m., wrapping up a mission that brought 7.6 tons of supplies and equipment to the International Space Station, including a new crew sleeping quarters, a new ammonia tank, a new gyroscope and four experiment racks.

Discovery arrived at the station on April 7.

The mission was the final roundtrip to the station for the 21-foot-long, 15-foot-diameter Multi-Purpose Logistics Module Leonardo. It will return to Earth in Discovery’s cargo bay with about 2.5 tons from the station. Once back on Earth, the module will be reconfigured with increased shielding on the outside for the STS-133 mission in September when it will be left on the station as a permanent module.

Buzz, Astronauts Shine as Stars of Disney Parade

Buzz Lightyear didn't quite make it to infinity, but he went well beyond the realm of other action figures.

The icon of Disney's "Toy Story" films spent 15 months on the International Space Station and got a ticker-tape parade alongside real-life moonwalker Buzz Aldrin and Expedition 18 Commander and NASA astronaut Mike Finke to welcome him home to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., on Oct. 2.

"Buzz was the perfect crewmate," Finke said. "He lifted our spirits, he didn't talk much and he didn't eat much, so he left us his extra portions."

While Buzz Lightyear is a space ranger, Finke said the character's best work has been in serving as a bridge between the fun, fanciful side of spaceflight and the technical and scientific skills NASA uses to make spaceflight happen in real life.

"Buzz is internationally known, and Buzz is a space ranger, so by sharing some of Buzz's adventures with what we do at NASA, it really highlights a lot of good things for NASA and shows what we really do, what astronauts do," Finke said.

The toy’s popularity gives NASA a head start in getting children's attention in a world in which focus is short-lived, said Joyce Winterton, NASA's associate administrator for Education.

"It's something that students and children can relate to," Winterton said. "So when they see him going up in space on the shuttle or the station it becomes a touch point for them. Sometimes I think they see an astronaut as something they can achieve, but when they see a toy, they somehow think, 'Hey, I can do that, too.'"

The parade coincided with a NASA education initiative that includes an opportunity for students to propose an experiment which will be flown on the International Space Station. There also is a contest to design a mission patch that will go into orbit on the station.

"We've got the attention of thousands of students because of Buzz Lightyear," Winterton said. "And hopefully we'll have a large number of students say let's plan an experiment. And of those we'll pick 12 that will fly on the International Space Station, and that's pretty great."

Disney also developed and posted several Web-based educational games for Buzz's launch and landing based on NASA's missions and goals.

Finke also shared a stage with Buzz at Disney's Magic Kingdom to talk to school children about space travel, science and technology.

Veronica Franco, an education specialist at NASA's Kennedy Space Center near Orlando, led a number of space-related demonstrations, including freezing and crumbling plants using liquid nitrogen. With help from "Spaceman" from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, she showed how astronauts get dressed for a spacewalk.

Then it was Finke's turn to wow the students with firsthand accounts from his two, six-month stays in the weightlessness of space. He looked at stars, conducted research on changes to the body and basically adjusted his body to cope with the unpredictable nature of things in zero gravity.

So what did students want to hear about first? The technologically advanced toilet.

Buzz didn't have to learn that lesson during his time in orbit.

Disney was aware of the somewhat mixed goals for NASA and the entertainment company, and backed down its normal commercial considerations for the chance to send Buzz into space.

"You've got to strike a balance," said Disney's Duncan Wardle, the company's global vice president for Public Relations Integration. "And it's a hard role for a government organization sponsored by the taxpayer, but you've got to excite the next generation of space travelers."

Buzz has proven an attraction in ways Wardle said he didn’t expect. For instance, a U.S. Air Force officer at Edwards Air Force Base in California asked for a photo with Buzz after the shuttle touched down there in September after space shuttle Discovery’s STS-128 mission.

But the idea was hardly a certainty when Wardle pitched it to a roomful of NASA officials.

"My sense was 50 percent loved the idea but probably didn't want to say it, and 50 percent of the room wanted to pick me up and throw me out the window," Wardle recalled.

Once the plan was approved, there was still a significant hurdle for the project: 12-inch Buzz Lightyear action figures had gone out of production months before and Wardle's team of employees could not find them in any store, warehouse or anywhere else.

"I was driving back to the office, and I got a call and all I heard was a voice, 'To Infinity and Beyond,'" Wardle said. "Then my wife said, 'Found it, it's been underneath (my son's) bed. It's been there six months collecting dust. And I was like, 'Right, that's it then, that's the Buzz Lightyear that's going into space. Wasn't quite in the plan, but . . . "

That Buzz went from bedroom floor to Houston in days, and into orbit a couple months later. At that point, there was not any talk of bringing the action figure back. Instead, he would stay on the station as a permanent resident, including during the station's fiery entry when it is de-orbited.

Wardle provided the winning argument for bringing Buzz back on the shuttle: "I said, guys, if you incinerate Buzz Lightyear, I'll have to tell the world's children."

So with his flight home approved, Buzz moved into Discovery during the STS-128 and returned to Earth. His education mission is not over though. Plans call for him to be displayed in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, Wardle said.

"This one is going to be hard to top," Finke said.

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."

Lasers and Radars

ICESat launched in January 2003 and since then, its sole instrument -- a precise laser altimeter -- has helped scientists map ice sheet elevation, calculate sea ice thickness, and monitor how both have changed.

"With ICESat, we have seen significant changes, things we wouldn't otherwise know were taking place," said Jay Zwally of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and ICESat investigator on the mission. For example, shifts in surface elevation have previously revealed the draining and filling of lakes below Antarctica's ice.

After ICESat, scientists will rely on an airborne laser called the Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM), developed at NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va. ATM pulses laser light in circular scans on the ground, and those pulses reflect back to the aircraft and are converted into elevation maps of the ice surface. By flying ATM over the same swath of ground covered by ICESat, researchers can compare the two data sets and calibrate them so that aircraft can continue the record keeping after the satellite data ends. They can also make more detailed elevation studies over dynamic areas, such as the Crane glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula, which sped up following the collapse of the Larsen Ice Shelf in 2002.

In addition, University of Kansas scientists will fly the Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder, which measures ice sheet thickness. It can also map the varied terrain below the ice, which is important for computer modeling of the future behavior of the ice.

The Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor, developed at Goddard, will map large areas of sea ice and glacier zones. And a gravimeter, managed by Columbia University, will measure the shape of seawater-filled cavities at the edge of some major fast-moving major glaciers. Finally, a snow radar from University of Kansas will measure the thickness of snow on top of sea ice and glaciers, allowing researchers to differentiate between snow and ice and make more accurate thickness measurements.

Targets

The Antarctic continent may be remote, but it plays a significant role in Earth's climate system. The expanse is home to glaciers and ice sheets that hold frozen about 90 percent of Earth's freshwater -- a large potential contribution to sea level rise should all the ice melt.

How and where are Antarctica's ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice changing? Compared to the Arctic, where sea ice has long been on the decline, sea ice in Antarctica is growing in some coastal areas. Snow and ice have been accumulating in some land regions in the east. West Antarctica and the Peninsula, however, have seen more dramatic warming and rapid ice loss.

"We don't see the same sea ice changes in Antarctica that we see in the Arctic, and the reason is that the system is more complex," said Thorsten Markus of NASA Goddard, the principal sea ice investigator for the mission. "But the fact that we don't see the same changes in Antarctica that we see in the Arctic doesn’t make it less important to study those changes. It's really important for us to understand the global climate system."

With the DC-8 limited to just a few hours over Antarctica on each flight, mission planners have carefully selected targets of current and potential rapid change.

One such target is West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier. "That glacier is one of the great unknowns because its bed -- where the glacier contacts rock -- is below sea level," Martin said. "So if there's a surge or dramatic change, seawater could get under the glacier and we could be looking at very rapid change."

Other proposed targets along the Amundsen coast include the Thwaites, Smith, and Kohler glaciers and the Getz Ice Shelf. Researchers also intend to study the myriad glaciers and ice shelves on the Peninsula, which has been undergoing dramatic changes.

NASA's Spitzer Spots Clump of Swirling Planetary Material

PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers have witnessed odd behavior around a young star. Something, perhaps another star or a planet, appears to be pushing a clump of planet-forming material around. The observations, made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, offer a rare look into the early stages of planet formation.

Planets form out of swirling disks of gas and dust. Spitzer observed infrared light coming from one such disk around a young star, called LRLL 31, over a period of five months. To the astronomers' surprise, the light varied in unexpected ways, and in as little time as one week. Planets take millions of years to form, so it's rare to see anything change on time scales we humans can perceive.

One possible explanation is that a close companion to the star -- either a star or a developing planet -- could be shoving planet-forming material together, causing its thickness to vary as it spins around the star.

"We don't know if planets have formed, or will form, but we are gaining a better understanding of the properties and dynamics of the fine dust that could either become, or indirectly shape, a planet," said James Muzerolle of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. Muzerolle is first author of a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "This is a unique, real-time glimpse into the lengthy process of building planets."

One theory of planet formation suggests that planets start out as dusty grains swirling around a star in a disk. They slowly bulk up in size, collecting more and more mass like sticky snow. As the planets get bigger and bigger, they carve out gaps in the dust, until a so-called transitional disk takes shape with a large doughnut-like hole at its center. Over time, this disk fades and a new type of disk emerges, made up of debris from collisions between planets, asteroids and comets. Ultimately, a more settled, mature solar system like our own forms.

Before Spitzer was launched in 2003, only a few transitional disks with gaps or holes were known. With Spitzer's improved infrared vision, dozens have now been found. The space telescope sensed the warm glow of the disks and indirectly mapped out their structures.

Muzerolle and his team set out to study a family of young stars, many with known transitional disks. The stars are about two to three million years old and about 1,000 light-years away, in the IC 348 star-forming region of the constellation Perseus. A few of the stars showed surprising hints of variations. The astronomers followed up on one, LRLL 31, studying the star over five months with all three of Spitzer's instruments.

The observations showed that light from the inner region of the star's disk changes every few weeks, and, in one instance, in only one week. "Transition disks are rare enough, so to see one with this type of variability is really exciting," said co-author Kevin Flaherty of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Both the intensity and the wavelength of infrared light varied over time. For instance, when the amount of light seen at shorter wavelengths went up, the brightness at longer wavelengths went down, and vice versa.

Muzerolle and his team say that a companion to the star, circling in a gap in the system's disk, could explain the data. "A companion in the gap of an almost edge-on disk would periodically change the height of the inner disk rim as it circles around the star: a higher rim would emit more light at shorter wavelengths because it is larger and hot, but at the same time, the high rim would shadow the cool material of the outer disk, causing a decrease in the longer-wavelength light. A low rim would do the opposite. This is exactly what we observe in our data," said Elise Furlan, a co-author from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The companion would have to be close in order to move the material around so fast -- about one-tenth the distance between Earth and the sun.

The astronomers plan to follow up with ground-based telescopes to see if a companion is tugging on the star hard enough to be perceived. Spitzer will also observe the system again in its "warm" mission to see if the changes are periodic, as would be expected with an orbiting companion. Spitzer ran out of coolant in May of this year, and is now operating at a slightly warmer temperature with two infrared channels still functioning.

"For astronomers, watching anything in real-time is exciting," said Muzerolle. "It's like we're biologists getting to watch cells grow in a petri dish, only our specimen is light-years away."

Other authors are Zoltan Balog, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Germany; Paul S. Smith and George Rieke, University of Arizona; Lori Allen, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, Tucson; Nuria Calvet, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Paola D'Alessio, National Autonomous University of Mexico; S. Thomas Megeath, University of Toledo, Ohio; August Muench, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge; William H. Sherry, National Solar Observatory, Tucson.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

NASA's LCROSS Reveals Target Crater For Lunar South Pole Impacts

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – NASA has selected a final destination for its Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, after a journey of nearly 5.6 million miles that included several orbits around Earth and the moon. The mission team announced Wednesday that Cabeus A will be the target crater for the LCROSS dual impacts scheduled for 7:30 a.m. EDT on Oct. 9, 2009. The crater was selected after an extensive review as the optimal location for LCROSS' evaluation of whether water ice exists at the lunar south pole.

LCROSS will search for water ice by sending its spent upper-stage Centaur rocket to impact the permanently shadowed polar crater. The satellite will fly into the plume of dust left by the impact and measure the properties before also colliding with the lunar surface. The LCROSS team selected Cabeus A based on a set of conditions that include proper debris plume illumination for visibility from Earth, a high concentration of hydrogen, and mature crater features such as a flat floor, gentle slopes and the absence of large boulders.

"The selection of Cabeus A was a result of a vigorous debate within the lunar science community that included review of the latest data from Earth-based observatories and our fellow lunar missions Kaguya, Chandrayaan-1, and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principle investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "The team is looking forward to the impacts and the wealth of information this unique mission will produce."

A cadre of professional astronomers using many of the Earth's most capable observatories is helping maximize the scientific return from the LCROSS impacts. These observatories include the Infrared Telescope Facility and Keck telescope in Hawaii; the Magdalena Ridge and Apache Ridge Observatories in New Mexico and the MMT Observatory in Arizona; the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope; and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, among others.

"These and several other telescopes participating in the LCROSS Observation Campaign will provide observations from different vantage points using different types of measurement techniques," said Jennifer Heldmann, lead for the LCROSS Observation Campaign at Ames. "These multiple observations will complement the LCROSS spacecraft data to help determine whether or not water ice exists in Cabeus A."

During a media briefing Sept. 11, Daniel Andrews, LCROSS project manager at Ames, provided a mission status update indicating the spacecraft is healthy and has enough fuel to successfully accomplish all mission objectives. Andrews also announced the dedication of the LCROSS mission to the memory of legendary news anchor, Walter Cronkite, who provided coverage of NASA's missions from the beginning of America's manned space program to the age of the space shuttle.

"Dad would sure be proud to be part, if just in name, of getting humans back up to the moon and beyond," said Chip Cronkite, son of the famed news anchor.

The LCROSS mission was selected in April 2006 as a mission manifested with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Both missions launched on June 18, 2009 on an Atlas V from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The LCROSS mission and science operations are managed at Ames.

"The LCROSS team has long been preparing for its final destination on the moon, and we're looking forward to October 9," Andrews said. "The next 28 days will undoubtedly be very exciting."

For more information about the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite Mission and images of Cabeus A, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/lcross

Report about International Space Station Science

HOUSTON -- Advances in the fight against food poisoning, new methods for delivering medicine to cancer cells, and better materials for future spacecraft are among the results published in a NASA report detailing scientific research accomplishments made aboard the International Space Station during its first eight years.

The report includes more than 100 science experiments ranging from bone studies to materials research.

"This report represents a record of science accomplishments during assembly and summarizes peer-reviewed publications to date," said Julie Robinson, program scientist for the station at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "As we enter the final year of station assembly, this report highlights the capabilities and opportunities for space station research after assembly is complete."

One of the most compelling results reported is the confirmation that the ability of common germs to cause disease increases during spaceflight, but that changing the growth environment of the bacteria can control this virulence. The Effect of Spaceflight on Microbial Gene Expression and Virulence experiment identified increased virulence of space-flown Salmonella typhimurium, a leading cause of food poisoning. New research on subsequent station missions will target development of a vaccine for this widespread malady.

Another experiment produced a potential medical advance, demonstrating a new and powerful method for delivering drugs to targets in the human body. Microgravity research on the station was vital to development of miniature, liquid-filled balloons the size of blood cells that can deliver medicine directly to cancer cells. The research was conducted for the Microencapsulation Electrostatic Processing System experiment.

One of the most prolific series of investigations aboard the station tests how spacecraft materials withstand the harsh space environment. The results of the Materials International Space Station Experiment already have been used to develop solar cells for future commercial station cargo ships. This experiment has significantly reduced the time needed to develop new satellite systems, such as solar cells and insulation materials, and paved the way for materials to be used in new NASA spacecraft such as the Orion crew capsule.

The report compiles experiment results collected from the first 15 station missions, or expeditions, from 2000 to 2008. Results of some of the summarized investigations are complete. Preliminary results are available from other continuing investigations.

NASA's research activities on the station span several scientific areas, including exploration technology development; microgravity research in the physical and biological sciences; human physiology research; Earth science and education.

The report details 22 different technology demonstrations; 33 physical science experiments; 27 biological experiments; 32 experiments focused on the human body; Earth observations and educational activities. In addition to science important to long-duration human spaceflights, most findings also offer new understanding of methods or applications relevant to life on Earth.

In 2008, station laboratory space and research facilities tripled with the addition of the European Space Agency's Columbus Laboratory and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's three Kibo scientific modules, adding to the capabilities already provided in NASA's Destiny Laboratory. In 2009, the number of crew members increased from three to six, greatly increasing crew time available for research.

The stage is set for increased station scientific return when assembly and outfitting of the research facility is completed in 2010 and its full potential as a national and international laboratory is realized. Engineers and scientists from around the world are working together to refine operational relationships and build on experiences to ensure maximum use of the expanded capabilities.

The International Space Station Program Scientist Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center published the report. A link to the full NASA Technical Publication, which provides an archival record of U.S.-sponsored research through Expedition 15, is available at: