Memorial Image Taken on Mars on September 11, 2011

PASADENA, Calif. -- A view of a memorial to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center towers was taken on Mars yesterday, on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

The memorial, made from aluminum recovered from the site of the twin towers in weeks following the attacks, serves as a cable guard on a tool on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity and bears an image of the American flag.

The view combining exposures from two cameras on the rover is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/multimedia/pia14750.html .

The memorial is on the rover's rock abrasion tool, which was being made in September 2001 by workers at Honeybee Robotics in lower Manhattan, less than a mile from the World Trade Center.

Opportunity's panoramic camera and navigation camera photographed the tool on Sept. 11, 2011, during the 2,713th Martian day of the rover's work on Mars. Opportunity completed its three-month prime mission on Mars in April 2004 and has worked for more than seven years since then in bonus extended missions.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Additional information about Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, is online at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/rovers

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Shirley Williams plunges NHS reforms into fresh turmoil

The future of the government's health reforms has been plunged into fresh doubt as the Liberal Democrat peer Shirley Williams raises new concerns, and secret emails reveal plans to hand over the running of up to 20 hospitals to overseas companies. The revelations come as MPs prepare to return to Westminster on Tuesday for what promises to be a crucial stage of the flagship health and social care bill.

Baroness Williams, one of the original leaders of a Lib Dem rebellion against health secretary Andrew Lansley's plans – who appeared to have been pacified after changes were made over the summer – said she had new doubts, having re-examined the proposals. "Despite the great efforts made by Nick Clegg and Paul Burstow [the Lib Dem health minister], I still have huge concerns about the bill. The battle is far from over," she said.

Writing in Sunday's Observer, Williams raises a series of issues that she says must be addressed. Chief among them is a legal doubt as to whether the secretary of state will any longer be bound to deliver "a comprehensive health service for the people of England, free at the point of need".

Some critics of Lansley believe the Tories are bent on a mission to privatise the NHS, gradually handing it to the private sector. They fear that moves to end the legal obligation on the secretary of state to deliver comprehensive services may be a deliberate part of the process.

Concerns that ministers want more private involvement will be strengthened by details of email exchanges involving senior health officials about handing the management of 10 to 20 NHS hospitals to international private companies. The emails, which were made public following a freedom of information request and were obtained by non-profit-making investigations company Spinwatch, show that officials have been planning since late last year to bring in international companies. This is despite repeated insistences by both David Cameron and Nick Clegg that there will be no privatisation of the NHS. On 16 May, Cameron said: "Let me make clear: there will be no privatisation." Clegg said: "Yes to reform of the NHS, but no to the privatisation of the NHS."

One of the emails released by the department shows that officials at the private sector firm McKinsey, which advises ministers, were in active discussion about bringing in overseas firms to take over up to 20 hospitals in return for contracts running into hundreds of millions of pounds. An email to Ian Dalton, head of provider development at the Department of Health, who is heavily involved in the reform programme, in November last year talks about "interest in new solution for 10-20 hospitals but starting from a mindset of one at a time with various political constraints".

The emails show that McKinsey is acting as a broker between the department and "international players" that are bidding to run the NHS. The documents even lay out some of the conditions required by "international hospital provider groups" for running NHS hospitals. "International players can do an initiative if 500 million revenue [is] on the table." They also need to have "a free hand on staff management". The NHS would be allowed to "keep real estate and pensions".

The Department of Health attempted to play down the significance of the emails, saying they were referring to what might be done if any one hospital trust asked for the private sector to become involved in running a failing hospital. A spokesman said: "It is not unusual for the Department of Health to hold meetings with external organisations. Any decisions to involve organisations, such as the independent sector or foundation trusts, in running the management of NHS hospitals would be led by the NHS locally and in all cases NHS staff and assets would remain wholly owned by the NHS."

But a spokesman for the public service union Unison said: "Regardless of what Cameron and Clegg say in public, it is clear that behind the scenes the government is planning to privatise the NHS. Private companies will only run hospitals if they see a profit in it. This, together with lifting the cap off the number of private patients NHS hospitals can treat, will completely change the culture of the NHS. It will be profits before patients.

"We demand that the government come clean on their plans. If this is true, patient choice is a complete sham. The move to any qualified provider is clearly about creating a market for private companies. Any MP who votes for the health and social care bill is voting for the end of the NHS."

Williams also raises worries about the extent to which the role of the private sector is being expanded. "I am not against a private element in the NHS, which may bring innovatory ideas and good practice, provided it is within the framework of a public service …" she writes. "But why have they tried to get away from the NHS as a public service, among the most efficient, least expensive and fairest anywhere in the world? Why have they been bewitched by a flawed US system that is unable to provide a universal service and is very expensive indeed?"

She adds: "The remarkable vision of the 1945 Attlee government, of a public service free at the point of need for all the people of England, should not be allowed to die."

John Healey, Labour's shadow health secretary, said: "As David Cameron's government railroads the health bill through parliament, MPs are being denied their constitutional role to properly scrutinise his plans for the NHS. The prime minister has already done a political fix with Nick Clegg on the health bill, and now he's trying to force it through with a procedural fix."

Space Shuttle Era

NASA's space shuttle fleet began setting records with its first launch on April 12, 1981 and continues to set high marks of achievement and endurance. Starting with Columbia and continuing with Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour, the spacecraft has carried people into orbit repeatedly, launched, recovered and repaired satellites, conducted cutting-edge research and built the largest structure in space, the International Space Station.

As humanity's first reusable spacecraft, the space shuttle pushed the bounds of discovery ever farther, requiring not only advanced technologies but the tremendous effort of a vast workforce. Thousands of civil servants and contractors throughout NASA's field centers and across the nation have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to mission success and the greater goal of space exploration.

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Shuttle Atlantis fueled-up in hope of launch

Despite a dismal forecast, NASA managers decided early Friday to load the shuttle Atlantis with rocket fuel and to press ahead for an attempted launch of the orbiter on the program's 135th and final mission.

Liftoff is targeted for 11:26:46 a.m. Eastern, but with a 70 percent chance of stormy weather, mission managers held open the option of standing down later Friday morning, depending on actual conditions.

CBS Space Place: For the latest news on the shuttle mission

"Mike Moses, the mission management team chair, said some people might call it silly to try and play in the rain this morning, but he said we're going to absolutely try for tanking," said countdown commentator Allard Beutel.

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"But throughout the overnight and closer to the dawn early morning hours, between six and seven o'clock, they'll keep their eyes on the forecast, of course, all night long, but around that time, they'll start getting a very focused look on the weather and see whether it's the right thing to proceed towards launch or whether the forecast really is getting worse. We'll look at perhaps standing down at that point."

Hoping for the best, engineers began pumping super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen through transfer lines to pad 39A at 2:01 a.m. Eastern. Routed through Atlantis' main engine plumbing to condition the hardware to cryogenic temperatures, the propellants then flowed into oxygen and hydrogen reservoirs in the shuttle's huge external tank. The fueling procedure was to last about three hours.

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NASA's Hubble Makes One Millionth Science Observation

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope crossed another milestone in its space odyssey of exploration and discovery. On Monday, July 4, the Earth-orbiting observatory logged its one millionth science observation during a search for water in an exoplanet's atmosphere 1,000 light-years away.

"For 21 years Hubble has been the premier space science observatory, astounding us with deeply beautiful imagery and enabling ground-breaking science across a wide spectrum of astronomical disciplines," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. He piloted the space shuttle mission that carried Hubble to orbit. "The fact that Hubble met this milestone while studying a faraway planet is a remarkable reminder of its strength and legacy."

Although Hubble is best known for its stunning imagery of the cosmos, the millionth observation is a spectroscopic measurement, where light is divided into its component colors. These color patterns can reveal the chemical composition of cosmic sources.

Hubble's millionth exposure is of the planet HAT-P-7b, a gas giant planet larger than Jupiter orbiting a star hotter than our sun. HAT-P-7b, also known as Kepler 2b, has been studied by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler observatory after it was discovered by ground-based observations. Hubble now is being used to analyze the chemical composition of the planet’s atmosphere.
"We are looking for the spectral signature of water vapor. This is an extremely precise observation and it will take months of analysis before we have an answer," said Drake Deming of the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Hubble demonstrated it is ideally suited for characterizing the atmospheres of exoplanets, and we are excited to see what this latest targeted world will reveal."

Hubble was launched April 24, 1990, aboard space shuttle's Discovery's STS-31 mission. Its discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology. The observatory has collected more than 50 terabytes of data to-date.

Hubble's odometer reading includes every observation of astronomical targets since its launch and observations used to calibrate its suite of instruments. Hubble made the millionth observation using its Wide Field Camera 3, a visible and infrared light imager with an on-board spectrometer. It was installed by astronauts during the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 in May 2009.

"The Hubble keeps amazing us with groundbreaking science," said Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, the chairwoman of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA. "I championed the mission to repair and renew Hubble not just to get one million science observations, but also to inspire millions of children across the planet to become our next generation of stargazers, scientists, astronauts and engineers."

Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. Goddard manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. in Washington.

Tiny Satellite to be designed by the students of Merritt Island High School

A group of 12 students from Merritt Island High School are participating in Kennedy Space Center's Creating Understanding and Broadening Education through Satellite (CUBES) pilot project. One day soon they may see the tiny satellite they design, called a CubeSat, fly as a secondary payload with a university satellite on one of NASA's expendable launch vehicle missions.


The CUBES project, developed and implemented by Kennedy's Foundations of Leadership Team, is spearheaded by the center's Education Programs Office. The Launch Services Program (LSP) is sponsoring the project and providing the CubeSat kits and additional support material.

Merritt Island is only the second high school in the country, and the first in Florida, to design and build a CubeSat.


Danielle, an incoming senior and CUBES project manager, said she heard about the project through the school's science club and wanted to get involved because it was truly an opportunity of a lifetime.

"I've lived next to the space center my entire life so it is a dream come true to be able to partner with engineers to design, construct and launch a satellite," Danielle said.

Erin, also an incoming senior said she heard about the project through the school's engineering club, as did many of the other students who signed up. Erin readied the preliminary system requirements for review.

"I really wanted to get involved because it seemed like something unique and different than anything else at the school," Erin said. "I knew it would be a great learning experience."

Kennedy mentor Shaun Daly from the Engineering Directorate, is the programmatic manager and liaison to the LSP. He said the mentors are equally excited about the potential to be involved in the development of a CubeSat.

"We hold ourselves to a promise that the students run this project," Daly said. "We will continue to enable learning while giving guidance where needed, but the students make the end decisions."

After completing the first major milestones, which were delivering a mission concept review and preliminary systems requirements review to NASA and industry personnel in late April, the students received approval to continue on to the design phase.

Danielle said the reviews included an overview of the mission and how the team plans to achieve it. She and other students talked about each subsystem, including power, communication, command and data and the requirements needed for each.

"The CubeSat is a tool to educate," said Garrett Skrobot, who is the LSP PPOD/CubeSat mission manager. "It is a way to encourage high school students to get excited about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers."

Grace Johnson, the CUBES education project manager, said that the tiny satellite's primary mission will be to collect vibration data during the launch, which is one of LSP's goals. The data will be transmitted wirelessly to the university satellite also on the mission, and then from there to Earth.

"This is potentially the beginning of a series of missions that could support that effort," Johnson said. "It's also a way to show that high school students can design and build a small satellite."

Danielle said that LSP requirements need to be changed in order to allow the CubeSat to be powered on during launch for data transmission. Normally, secondary payloads must be powered off so they don't interfere with the primary satellite during launch.

According to Alison Fertig, a physics teacher and project advisor, the students will meet during the summer to redefine requirements and work on their trades. She hopes the students will be able to travel to Utah State University at the beginning of August for the Small Satellite Conference and a CubeSat workshop facilitated by California Polytechnic University.

Daly and several other mentors are exceptionally proud of the work the students already accomplished and also are impressed with the innovative solutions they developed to meet tough engineering challenges in the beginning design phase of the project.

"There is much to come," Daly said. "We expect great things from the students and I am sure they will deliver in a big way."

NASA Will Host 150 People for Tweetup at Launch of Jupiter-Bound Mission

NASA will host a two-day launch Tweetup for 150 of its Twitter followers on Aug. 4-5 at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Tweetup is expected to culminate in the launch of the Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft aboard an Atlas V rocket.

The launch window opens at 8:39 a.m. PDT (11:39 a.m. EDT) on Aug. 5. The spacecraft is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2016. The mission will investigate the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere. Juno's color camera will provide close-up images of Jupiter, including the first detailed glimpse of the planet's poles.

The Tweetup will provide @NASA Twitter followers with the opportunity to tour the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex; speak with scientists and engineers from the Juno and other upcoming missions; and, if all goes as scheduled, view the spacecraft launch. The event also will provide participants the opportunity to meet fellow tweeps and members of NASA's social media team.

Juno is the second of four space missions launching this year, making 2011 one of the busiest ever in planetary exploration. Aquarius was launched June 10 to study ocean salinity; Grail will launch Sept. 8 to study the moon's gravity field; and the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity rover will head to the Red Planet no earlier than Nov. 25.

THE NEXT BIG SOLAR SYSTEM

June 21, 2011: In Sept. 1859, on the eve of a below-average solar cycle, the sun unleashed one of the most powerful storms in centuries. The underlying flare was so unusual, researchers still aren't sure how to categorize it. The blast peppered Earth with the most energetic protons in half-a-millennium, induced electrical currents that set telegraph offices on fire, and sparked Northern Lights over Cuba and Hawaii.

This week, officials have gathered at the National Press Club in Washington DC to ask themselves a simple question: What if it happens again?

"A similar storm today might knock us for a loop," says Lika Guhathakurta, a solar physicist at NASA headquarters. "Modern society depends on high-tech systems such as smart power grids, GPS, and satellite communications--all of which are vulnerable to solar storms."

She and more than a hundred others are attending the fifth annual Space Weather Enterprise Forum—"SWEF" for short. The purpose of SWEF is to raise awareness of space weather and its effects on society especially among policy makers and emergency responders. Attendees come from the US Congress, FEMA, power companies, the United Nations, NASA, NOAA and more.

As 2011 unfolds, the sun is once again on the eve of a below-average solar cycle—at least that’s what forecasters are saying. The "Carrington event" of 1859 (named after astronomer Richard Carrington, who witnessed the instigating flare) reminds us that strong storms can occur even when the underlying cycle is nominally weak.

In 1859 the worst-case scenario was a day or two without telegraph messages and a lot of puzzled sky watchers on tropical islands.

In 2011 the situation would be more serious. An avalanche of blackouts carried across continents by long-distance power lines could last for weeks to months as engineers struggle to repair damaged transformers. Planes and ships couldn’t trust GPS units for navigation. Banking and financial networks might go offline, disrupting commerce in a way unique to the Information Age. According to a 2008 report from the National Academy of Sciences, a century-class solar storm could have the economic impact of 20 hurricane Katrinas.

As policy makers meet to learn about this menace, NASA researchers a few miles away are actually doing something about it:

"We can now track the progress of solar storms in 3 dimensions as the storms bear down on Earth," says Michael Hesse, chief of the GSFC Space Weather Lab and a speaker at the forum. "This sets the stage for actionable space weather alerts that could preserve power grids and other high-tech assets during extreme periods of solar activity."

Cassini Sends Back Postcards of Saturn Moons

On Jan. 31, 2011, NASA's Cassini spacecraft passed by several of Saturn's intriguing moons, snapping images along the way. Cassini passed within about 60,000 kilometers (37,282 miles) of Enceladus and 28,000 kilometers (17,398 miles) of Helene. It also caught a glimpse of Mimas in front of Saturn's rings. In one of the images, Cassini is looking at the famous jets erupting from the south polar terrain of Enceladus.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Tracking the Origins of Speedy Space Particles

NASA's Time History of Events and Macroscale Interaction during Substorms (THEMIS) spacecraft combined with computer models have helped track the origin of the energetic particles in Earth's magnetic atmosphere that appear during a kind of space weather called a substorm. Understanding the source of such particles and how they are shuttled through Earth's atmosphere is crucial to better understanding the Sun's complex space weather system and thus protect satellites or even humans in space.

The results show that these speedy electrons gain extra energy from changing magnetic fields far from the origin of the substorm that causes them. THEMIS, which consists of five orbiting satellites, helped provide these insights when three of the spacecraft traveled through a large substorm on February 15, 2008. This allowed scientists to track changes in particle energy over a large distance. The observations were consistent with numerical models showing an increase in energy due to changing magnetic fields, a process known as betatron acceleration.

"The origin of fast electrons in substorms has been a puzzle," says Maha Ashour-Abdalla, the lead author of a Nature Physics paper that appeared online on January 30, 2011 on the subject and a physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "It hasn't been clear until now if they got their burst of speed in the middle of the storm, or from some place further away."