NASA Sensor Completes Initial Gulf Oil Spill Flights

NASA's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer instrument collected an image over the site of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil rig disaster on May 17, 2010. Crude oil on the surface appears orange to brown. Scientists are using spectroscopic methods to analyze measurements for each point in images like this one to detail the characteristics of the oil on the surface.

AVIRIS extensively mapped the region affected by the spill during 11 flights conducted between May 6 and May 25, 2010, at the request of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In total, AVIRIS measured more than 100,000 square kilometers of the national oil spill response. The instrument flew at altitudes of up to 19,800 meters aboard a NASA ER-2 aircraft from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif.

Figure 1 depicts AVIRIS imaging spectrometer measurements along the Gulf coast to measure the characteristics and condition of the ecosystem and habitat prior to possible oil contamination and impact. The location is near Johnson's Bayou and along the Gulf Beach Highway, between Port Arthur, La., to the west and Cameron, La., to the east. The west corner of the image includes part of the Texas Point National Wildlife Refuge.

AVIRIS data provide scientists with many different types of information about the spill. Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey's Spectroscopy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., are working to determine the characteristics of the oil based upon the AVIRIS measured spectral signature.

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.

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit

Rocks examined by NASA's Spirit Mars Rover hold evidence of a wet, non-acidic ancient environment that may have been favorable for life. Confirming this mineral clue took four years of analysis by several scientists.

An outcrop that Spirit examined in late 2005 revealed high concentrations of carbonate, which originates in wet, near-neutral conditions, but dissolves in acid. The ancient water indicated by this find was not acidic.

NASA's rovers have found other evidence of formerly wet Martian environments. However the data for those environments indicate conditions that may have been acidic. In other cases, the conditions were definitely acidic, and therefore less favorable as habitats for life.

Laboratory tests helped confirm the carbonate identification. The findings were published online Thursday, June 3 by the journal Science.

"This is one of the most significant findings by the rovers," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Squyres is principal investigator for the Mars twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, and a co-author of the new report. "A substantial carbonate deposit in a Mars outcrop tells us that conditions that could have been quite favorable for life were present at one time in that place. "

Swift Survey Finds 'Smoking Gun' Of Black Hole Activation

The optical counterparts of many active galactic nuclei (circled) detected by the Swift BAT Hard X-ray Survey clearly show galaxies in the process of merging. These images, taken with the 2.1-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, show galaxy shapes that are either physically intertwined or distorted by the gravity of nearby neighbors. These AGN were known prior to the Swift survey, but Swift has found dozens of new ones in more distant galaxies.

Data from an ongoing survey by NASA's Swift satellite have helped astronomers solve a decades-long mystery about why a small percentage of black holes emit vast amounts of energy.

Only about one percent of supermassive black holes exhibit this behavior. The new findings confirm that black holes "light up" when galaxies collide, and the data may offer insight into the future behavior of the black hole in our own Milky Way galaxy. The study will appear in the June 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The intense emission from galaxy centers, or nuclei, arises near a supermassive black hole containing between a million and a billion times the sun's mass. Giving off as much as 10 billion times the sun's energy, some of these active galactic nuclei (AGN) are the most luminous objects in the universe. They include quasars and blazars.

"Theorists have shown that the violence in galaxy mergers can feed a galaxy's central black hole," said Michael Koss, the study's lead author and a graduate student at the University of Maryland in College Park. "The study elegantly explains how the black holes switched on."

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.

Astronauts Test Glenn Exercise Harnesses

Imagine that you want to exercise on a treadmill. You step onto the machine and select your desired speed. As the belt starts moving, you start walking and eventually running. Your feet rhythmically hit the belt, and you get a nice workout.

In space, it isn't that simple.

For astronauts living in space, like those who reside on the International Space Station, getting a good workout is equally -- and in some ways even more important -- than for earthbound people.

"Crew members exercise for a host of important reasons. There's a psychological benefit to exercise, and crew members work out to combat spaceflight deconditioning -- to help fend off the bone loss that they experience in microgravity and to help maintain muscle strength and cardiovascular endurance. All of these things are adversely affected by long-duration space flight," says Gail Perusek, Manager for Exercise Physiology and Countermeasures Project at NASA's Glenn Research Center.

Like your local gym, the space station has a variety of exercise equipment. The exercise complement includes a resistance device, a cycle ergometer and two treadmills.

The two different types of treadmills on the space station are the Treadmill with Vibration Isolation System (TVIS) and the newly-installed Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT), named after comedian Stephen Colbert. They're different in many ways, but both treadmills share the need for an exercise harness. Astronauts must use a harness to attach themselves to the treadmill while running in space due to the lack of gravity. The harness prevents them from floating off the machine, provides friction against the treadmill belt as they run and exerts an external load, or force, on their body to simulate the resistance of gravity that a terrestrial workout would naturally provide.

The current harness, which has been in use for several years, has some drawbacks. It isn't comfortable and has limited adjustability. Some crew members have reported chafing, as well as pain in their hips and shoulders from using the harness. As a result, the astronauts are not loading their bodies to the optimal amount needed to maintain muscle and bone health. The thinking is, the more load applied to an astronaut while running (ideally the equivalent of their full body weight on Earth) the better the workout; it increases the health benefits and decreases health risks.

"Bone loss occurs at a more rapid rate in space than it does on Earth," Perusek says. "In space, astronauts don't get nearly the same amount or quality of repetitive loading as we do here on earth, and bone mineral density loss occurs when the skeleton is unloaded."

The need for a new treadmill harness that is more comfortable and effective inspired the development of a new harness by NASA's Glenn Research Center. This effort, undertaken in collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic and funded by the Human Research Program at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, resulted in the creation of a new harness design called the Glenn Harness. The team also developed custom instrumentation to measure the loads on the harness during exercise. Two Glenn Harnesses are currently being tested by space station crew members on orbit, in a study called the Harness Station Development Test Objective, or Harness SDTO. Additional harnesses will soon be tested on the station by different crewmembers.

Four years ago, the team from the NASA Glenn, ZIN Technologies of Middleburg Heights, Ohio and the Cleveland Clinic began work on their re-imagined harness. They realized that the treadmill harness operates much like a backpack, with shoulder straps and a hip belt distributing load. The team travelled to Colorado to consult with backpack companies, such as Osprey and Kelty. Upon their return, the team designed and created prototypes of the new harnesses (initial prototypes were actually crafted from disassembled backpack components) and began testing.

"At Glenn, we have an Enhanced Zero-gravity Locomotion Simulator (eZLS) where we can simulate zero-g treadmill exercise with human subjects," Perusek says. "We tested the prototypes with our treadmill and determined that indeed the harness was more comfortable than the current harness in a side-by-side comparison on the eZLS, and was able to distribute loads more evenly."

The team also sought extensive input from former space station crew members regarding the new harness. The idea to use antimicrobial fabric (containing silver ions) for the harness, for example, came from an astronaut who commented on the amount of sweat the harness must endure without a lot of washing.

After all of the research, designing and testing, the team worked with Terrazign, Inc. of Portland Oregon, to create the finished flight harnesses. The flight harnesses were shipped to Johnson Space Center in the spring of 2009, and packaged with additional equipment from Johnson to capture the load data. The first harnesses were blasted into space in September 2009.

The crew members participating in the study will use and evaluate the new and existing harnesses, and will complete questionnaires after each session to provide qualitative comfort data. The team also designed special sensors, called buckle transducers, which will measure the amount of tension in the harness straps and external loading each astronaut uses during their workout.

Once the crewmembers have returned to earth, they will share their experiences with Perusek and her team during the crew debriefing process. If the feedback proves favorable, the hope is to incorporate the new harness as part of the standard crew exercise equipment.

The in-flight study is expected to continue through November 2010 on Expedition 24, and encompass the results from up to seven participating crewmembers.

"Working on a project that has the potential to positively affect crew members so directly is very rewarding. A lot of great effort has gone into this, and we're very hopeful that it will be of benefit for the crew," Perusek says. "As long as we have a manned presence in space, humans will be exercising in zero gravity or even partial gravity, like on the moon, and we'll need comfortable harnessing systems."