QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"We've come full circle since 1961, back to when we had yet to show we
could launch people into space. We will be hitching rides from the
Russians to go to the space station that is mainly ours."
STEVEN J. DICK,
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/science/space/09wilford.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha3>
a retired NASA chief historian, on the last launching in the space
shuttle program.

Playstation(R)Home Users Can Watch Nasa's Shuttle Launch Together

Feb. 23, 2011

Bob Jacobs
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
bob.jacobs@nasa.gov

Linda Rosner
ArtisansPR
310-837-6008
lrosner@artisanspr.com

RELEASE: 11-052

PLAYSTATION(R)HOME USERS CAN WATCH NASA'S SHUTTLE LAUNCH TOGETHER

WASHINGTON -- NASA's final liftoff of space shuttle Discovery will be
available in a unique "social viewing" environment available through
Sony Computer Entertainment America's PlayStation(R)Home for
PlayStation(R)3 computer entertainment system.

Discovery's launch on Thursday, Feb. 24 at 4:50 p.m. EST is the first
live streaming event to be offered by Sunset Yacht, a premium
personal space from LOOT, Sony DADC's interactive entertainment
development team. Users will be able to chat via Bluetooth headsets
with others watching the launch - all from inside the PlayStation
Home social gaming environment.

"We're excited about this new way for people to experience the
exhilaration of human spaceflight as part of a larger community,"
said David Weaver, NASA associate administrator for the Office of
Communications. "In addition to the other two shuttle launches
planned for April and June, NASA looks forward to sharing more of our
endeavors with PlayStation users."

In addition to live streamed events, the Sunset Yacht's NASA TV
channel will offer hundreds of videos offering spectacular views of
the universe from past and current NASA missions. A gallery of
podcasts showcasing several missions including the Mars Science
Laboratory and Voyager spacecraft also will be available from the
agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

"The launch of the space shuttle Discovery provides a wonderful
opportunity to introduce people to the fun of social viewing," said
LOOT Managing Director David Sterling. "Users can share this
experience with their friends, regardless of where those friends
happen to be in the world."

For information about the shuttle Discovery's mission to the
International Space Station and the crew, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

NASA Television also will cover shuttle Discovery's launch For NASA TV
streaming video, scheduling and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about Sunset Yacht, visit:

http://blog.us.playstation.com/

"PlayStation", is a registered trademark of Sony Computer
Entertainment Inc.

NASA'S Neowise Completes Scan For Asteroids And Comets

Feb. 2, 2011

Trent Perrotto/Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-5241/1726
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Whitney Clavin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-4673
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

RELEASE: 11-029

NASA'S NEOWISE COMPLETES SCAN FOR ASTEROIDS AND COMETS

WASHINGTON -- NASA's NEOWISE mission has completed its survey of small
bodies, asteroids and comets, in our solar system. The mission's
discoveries of previously unknown objects include 20 comets, more
than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and
134 near-Earth objects (NEOs). The NEOs are asteroids and comets with
orbits that come within 28 million miles of Earth's path around the
sun.

NEOWISE is an enhancement of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer,
or WISE, mission that launched in December 2009. WISE scanned the
entire celestial sky in infrared light about 1.5 times. It captured
more than 2.7 million images of objects in space, ranging from
faraway galaxies to asteroids and comets close to Earth.

In early October 2010, after completing its prime science mission, the
spacecraft ran out of frozen coolant that keeps its instrumentation
cold. However, two of its four infrared cameras remained operational.
These two channels were still useful for asteroid hunting, so NASA
extended the NEOWISE portion of the WISE mission by four months, with
the primary purpose of hunting for more asteroids and comets, and to
finish one complete scan of the main asteroid belt.

"Even just one year of observations from the NEOWISE project has
significantly increased our catalog of data on NEOs and the other
small bodies of the solar systems," said Lindley Johnson, NASA's
program executive for the NEO Observation Program.
Now that NEOWISE has successfully completed a full sweep of the main
asteroid belt, the WISE spacecraft will go into hibernation mode and
remain in polar orbit around the Earth, where it could be called back
into service in the future.

In addition to discovering new asteroids and comets, NEOWISE also
confirmed the presence of objects in the main belt that already had
been detected. In just one year, it observed about 153,000 rocky
bodies out of approximately 500,000 known objects. Those include the
33,000 that NEOWISE discovered.

NEOWISE also observed known objects closer and farther to us than the
main belt, including roughly 2,000 asteroids that orbit along with
Jupiter, hundreds of NEOs and more than 100 comets.

These observations will be key to determining the objects' sizes and
compositions. Visible-light data alone reveals how much sunlight
reflects off an asteroid, whereas infrared data is much more directly
related to the object's size. By combining visible and infrared
measurements, astronomers also can learn about the compositions of
the rocky bodies -- for example, whether they are solid or crumbly.
The findings will lead to a much-improved picture of the various
asteroid populations.

NEOWISE took longer to survey the whole asteroid belt than WISE took
to scan the entire sky because most of the asteroids are moving in
the same direction around the sun as the spacecraft moves while it
orbits the Earth. The spacecraft field of view had to catch up to,
and lap, the movement of the asteroids in order to see them all.

"You can think of Earth and the asteroids as racehorses moving along
in a track," said Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator of NEOWISE
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We're moving
along together around the sun, but the main belt asteroids are like
horses on the outer part of the track. They take longer to orbit than
us, so we eventually lap them."

NEOWISE data on the asteroid and comet orbits are catalogued at the
NASA-funded International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, a
clearinghouse for information about all solar system bodies at the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. The science
team is analyzing the infrared observations now and will publish new
findings in the coming months.

When combined with WISE observations, NEOWISE data will aid in the
discovery of the closest dim stars, called brown dwarfs. These
observations have the potential to reveal a brown dwarf even closer
to us than our closest known star, Proxima Centauri, if such an
object does exist. Likewise, if there is a hidden gas-giant planet in
the outer reaches of our solar system, data from WISE and NEO-WISE
could detect it.

The first batch of observations from the WISE mission will be
available to the public and astronomical community in April.
"WISE has unearthed a mother lode of amazing sources, and we're having
a great time figuring out their nature," said Edward (Ned) Wright,
the principal investigator of WISE at UCLA.

JPL manages WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the
agency's headquarters in Washington. The mission was competitively
selected under NASA's Explorers Program, which NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages. The Space Dynamics
Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument, and Ball
Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., built the
spacecraft. Science operations and data processing take place at the
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute
of Technology in Pasadena. JPL manages NEOWISE for NASA's Planetary
Sciences Division. The mission's data processing also takes place at
the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center.

For more information about WISE, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/wise

NASA Finds Earth-Size Planet Candidates In Habitable Zone, Six Planet System

Feb. 02, 2011

Trent Perrotto
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0321
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

Michael Mewhinney/Rachel Hoover
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-3937/650-604-0643
michael.s.mewhinney@nasa.gov, rachel.hoover@nasa.gov

RELEASE: 11-030

NASA FINDS EARTH-SIZE PLANET CANDIDATES IN HABITABLE ZONE, SIX PLANET SYSTEM

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first
Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the
habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's
surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit
in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun.

Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual
planets. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like
star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets
orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.

"In one generation we have gone from extraterrestrial planets being a
mainstay of science fiction, to the present, where Kepler has helped
turn science fiction into today's reality," said NASA Administrator
Charles Bolden. "These discoveries underscore the importance of
NASA's science missions, which consistently increase understanding of
our place in the cosmos."

The discoveries are part of several hundred new planet candidates
identified in new Kepler mission science data, released on Tuesday,
Feb. 1. The findings increase the number of planet candidates
identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately
Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are
the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter.

Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are
near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range
from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger
than Jupiter.

The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12
to Sept. 17, 2009, of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of
view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky.

"The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny
fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting
sun-like stars in our galaxy," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames
Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission's science
principal investigator. "We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet
candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of
which could have moons with liquid water."

Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of
multiple planetary candidates. Kepler-11, located approximately 2,000
light years from Earth, is the most tightly packed planetary system
yet discovered. All six of its confirmed planets have orbits smaller
than Venus, and five of the six have orbits smaller than Mercury's.
The only other star with more than one confirmed transiting planet is
Kepler-9, which has three. The Kepler-11 findings will be published
in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Nature.

"Kepler-11 is a remarkable system whose architecture and dynamics
provide clues about its formation," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary
scientist and Kepler science team member at Ames. "These six planets
are mixtures of rock and gases, possibly including water. The rocky
material accounts for most of the planets' mass, while the gas takes
up most of their volume. By measuring the sizes and masses of the
five inner planets, we determined they are among the lowest mass
confirmed planets beyond our solar system."

All of the planets orbiting Kepler-11 are larger than Earth, with the
largest ones being comparable in size to Uranus and Neptune. The
innermost planet, Kepler-11b, is ten times closer to its star than
Earth is to the sun. Moving outward, the other planets are
Kepler-11c, Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e, Kepler-11f, and the outermost
planet, Kepler-11g, which is half as far from its star as Earth is
from the sun.

The planets Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e and Kepler-11f have a significant
amount of light gas, which indicates that they formed within a few
million years of the system's formation.

"The historic milestones Kepler makes with each new discovery will
determine the course of every exoplanet mission to follow," said
Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in
Washington.

Kepler, a space telescope, looks for planet signatures by measuring
tiny decreases in the brightness of stars caused by planets crossing
in front of them. This is known as a transit.

Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars
occur about once a year and require three transits for verification,
it is expected to take three years to locate and verify Earth-size
planets orbiting sun-like stars.

The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer
Space Telescope to review observations on planetary candidates and
other objects of interest the spacecraft finds.

The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and
Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring
through early fall. The data from these other observations help
determine which candidates can be validated as planets.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

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NASA's Hubble Finds Most Distant Galaxy Candidate Ever Seen in Universe]

WASHINGTON -- Astronomers have pushed NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to
its limits by finding what is likely to be the most distant object
ever seen in the universe. The object's light traveled 13.2 billion
years to reach Hubble, roughly 150 million years longer than the
previous record holder. The age of the universe is approximately 13.7
billion years.

The tiny, dim object is a compact galaxy of blue stars that existed
480 million years after the big bang. More than 100 such
mini-galaxies would be needed to make up our Milky Way. The new
research offers surprising evidence that the rate of star birth in
the early universe grew dramatically, increasing by about a factor of
10 from 480 million years to 650 million years after the big bang.

"NASA continues to reach for new heights, and this latest Hubble
discovery will deepen our understanding of the universe and benefit
generations to come," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who was
the pilot of the space shuttle mission that carried Hubble to orbit.
"We could only dream when we launched Hubble more than 20 years ago
that it would have the ability to make these types of groundbreaking
discoveries and rewrite textbooks."

Astronomers don't know exactly when the first stars appeared in the
universe, but every step farther from Earth takes them deeper into
the early formative years when stars and galaxies began to emerge in
the aftermath of the big bang.

"These observations provide us with our best insights yet into the
earlier primeval objects that have yet to be found," said Rychard
Bouwens of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Bouwens and
Illingworth report the discovery in the Jan. 27 issue of the British
science journal Nature.

This observation was made with the Wide Field Camera 3 starting just a
few months after it was installed in the observatory in May 2009,
during the last NASA space shuttle servicing mission to Hubble. After
more than a year of detailed observations and analysis, the object
was positively identified in the camera's Hubble Ultra Deep
Field-Infrared data taken in the late summers of 2009 and 2010.

The object appears as a faint dot of starlight in the Hubble
exposures. It is too young and too small to have the familiar spiral
shape that is characteristic of galaxies in the local universe.
Although its individual stars can't be resolved by Hubble, the
evidence suggests this is a compact galaxy of hot stars formed more
than 100-to-200 million years earlier from gas trapped in a pocket of
dark matter.

"We're peering into an era where big changes are afoot," said Garth
Illingworth of the University of California at Santa Cruz. "The rapid
rate at which the star birth is changing tells us if we go a little
further back in time we're going to see even more dramatic changes,
closer to when the first galaxies were just starting to form."

The proto-galaxy is only visible at the farthest infrared wavelengths
observable by Hubble. Observations of earlier times, when the first
stars and galaxies were forming, will require Hubble's successor, the
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The hypothesized hierarchical growth of galaxies -- from stellar
clumps to majestic spirals and ellipticals -- didn't become evident
until the Hubble deep field exposures. The first 500 million years of
the universe's existence, from a z of 1000 to 10, is the missing
chapter in the hierarchical growth of galaxies. It's not clear how
the universe assembled structure out of a darkening, cooling fireball
of the big bang. As with a developing embryo, astronomers know there
must have been an early period of rapid changes that would set the
initial conditions to make the universe of galaxies what it is today.

"After 20 years of opening our eyes to the universe around us, Hubble
continues to awe and surprise astronomers," said Jon Morse, NASA's
Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in
Washington. "It now offers a tantalizing look at the very edge of the
known universe -- a frontier NASA strives to explore."

Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the
European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md., 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.

For more information about Hubble, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Commemorating Challenger

NASA marks 25th anniversary of Challenger accident

June Scobee Rodgers, left, widow of Dick Scobee, commander of space shuttle Challenger, and William Gerstenmaier, NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations, place a wreath at the Space Mirror Memorial at a remembrance ceremony to mark the 25th Anniversary of space shuttle Challenger at the Kennedy Space Center visitor complex in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday, Jan. 28, 2011. On the memorial, top left, are the names of the astronauts that perished in Challenger. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Hundreds gathered at NASA's launch site Friday to mark the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, receiving words of hope from the widow of the space shuttle's commander.

The chilly outdoor ceremony drew space agency managers, former astronauts, past and present launch directors, family and friends of the fallen crew — and schoolchildren who weren't yet born when the space shuttle carrying a high school teacher from Concord, N.H., erupted in the sky.

The accident on Jan. 28, 1986 — just 73 seconds into flight — killed all seven on board, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. story-->>

NASA Research Team Reveals Moon Has Earth-Like Core]

Jan. 6, 2011

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Janet Anderson
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
janet.l.anderson@nasa.gov
RELEASE: 11-004

NASA RESEARCH TEAM REVEALS MOON HAS EARTH-LIKE CORE

WASHINGTON - State-of-the-art seismological techniques applied to
Apollo-era data suggest our moon has a core similar to Earth's.

Uncovering details about the lunar core is critical for developing
accurate models of the moon's formation. The data sheds light on the
evolution of a lunar dynamo -- a natural process by which our moon
may have generated and maintained its own strong magnetic field.

The team's findings suggest the moon possesses a solid, iron-rich
inner core with a radius of nearly 150 miles and a fluid, primarily
liquid-iron outer core with a radius of roughly 205 miles. Where it
differs from Earth is a partially molten boundary layer around the
core estimated to have a radius of nearly 300 miles. The research
indicates the core contains a small percentage of light elements such
as sulfur, echoing new seismology research on Earth that suggests the
presence of light elements -- such as sulfur and oxygen -- in a layer
around our own core.

The researchers used extensive data gathered during the Apollo-era
moon missions. The Apollo Passive Seismic Experiment consisted of
four seismometers deployed between 1969 and 1972, which recorded
continuous lunar seismic activity until late-1977.

"We applied tried and true methodologies from terrestrial seismology
to this legacy data set to present the first-ever direct detection of
the moon's core," said Renee Weber, lead researcher and space
scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

In addition to Weber, the team consisted of scientists from Marshall;
Arizona State University; the University of California at Santa Cruz;
and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France. Their
findings are published in the online edition of the journal Science.

The team also analyzed Apollo lunar seismograms using array
processing, techniques that identify and distinguish signal sources
of moonquakes and other seismic activity. The researchers identified
how and where seismic waves passed through or were reflected by
elements of the moon's interior, signifying the composition and state
of layer interfaces at varying depths.

Although sophisticated satellite imaging missions to the moon made
significant contributions to the study of its history and topography,
the deep interior of Earth's sole natural satellite remained a
subject of speculation and conjecture since the Apollo era.
Researchers previously had inferred the existence of a core, based on
indirect estimates of the moon's interior properties, but many
disagreed about its radius, state and composition.

A primary limitation to past lunar seismic studies was the wash of
"noise" caused by overlapping signals bouncing repeatedly off
structures in the moon's fractionated crust. To mitigate this
challenge, Weber and the team employed an approach called seismogram
stacking, or the digital partitioning of signals. Stacking improved
the signal-to-noise ratio and enabled the researchers to more clearly
track the path and behavior of each unique signal as it passed
through the lunar interior.

"We hope to continue working with the Apollo seismic data to further
refine our estimates of core properties and characterize lunar
signals as clearly as possible to aid in the interpretation of data
returned from future missions," Weber said.

Future NASA missions will help gather more detailed data. The Gravity
Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, is a NASA Discovery-class
mission set to launch this year. The mission consists of twin
spacecraft that will enter tandem orbits around the moon for several
months to measure the gravity field in unprecedented detail. The
mission also will answer longstanding questions about Earth's moon
and provide scientists a better understanding of the satellite from
crust to core, revealing subsurface structures and, indirectly, its
thermal history.

NASA and other space agencies have been studying concepts to establish
an International Lunar Network -- a robotic set of geophysical
monitoring stations on the moon -- as part of efforts to coordinate
international missions during the coming decade.

For more information about NASA science exploration missions, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars

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