Seeyle Martin, chief scientist of NASA’s Operation Ice Bridge in Antarctica, explains that the more than month-long excursion will be useful in comparing Antarctica’s ice mass loss with Greenland’s. (0:28)
By Julianne LaJeunesse – University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News Service
NASA will fly its 157 foot DC-8 laboratory aircraft south for some of the winter, where officials hope to use radar and airborne and imaging lasers to collect and record changes to sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers. NASA says that all of these are experiencing the effects of warming in some areas, and snow and ice accumulation in others.
“Our motivation in these aircraft observations, is based on our concern about the contributions of the ice sheets to sea level rise,” said Seeyle Martin, the chief scientist of Operation Ice Bridge, which is a six-year effort by NASA to fly to each of the earth’s polar regions each year.
Martin added that NASA surveyed Greenland in the 1990’s and found that ice mass loss is increasing by 7 percent each year. However, said Martin, “we do not have a comparable number for Antarctica.”
The Operation Ice Bridge team will be based in Punta Arenas, Chile through mid-November, where they will make up to 17 flights, passing in and out of West Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, and the Southern Ocean.
Tom Wagner, a cryosphere program scientist at NASA’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, said in a NASA press release that the team will use equipment which he called “the only way to find out where change is occurring in remote continent-sized ice sheets like Antarctica.”
That equipment includes NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation satellite laser, which will be used before using the Airborne Topographic Mapper. When the equipment is used collaboratively, scientists will be able to calibrate the data that satellite alone cannot map. The NASA team will also use radar depth sounding to measure ice sheet thickness, a laser vegetation imaging sensor, a snow radar, and a gravimeter, which will measure the changes in gravity the team expects to encounter at the edges of the Pines Island Bay.
Robin Bell, a geophysicist at Columbia University, said that the Ice Bridge endeavor is unique and will answer many questions about why ice sheets are changing.
“Ice Bridge is going to allow us to look at the base of the ice sheets, where the warm ocean water is reaching the bottom of the ice sheet, and where those… glaciers may actually be lubricated by water,” she said.
During a ceremony held Tuesday by the U.S. House of Representatives to celebrate the recent 40th anniversary of the lunar landing, famous astronaut Neil Armstrong joked that NASA considered sending photographers into space.
“No one knew what kind of person could be persuaded to take the trip. Prisoners were suggested. Soldiers could be ordered. Photographers could take pictures and they’re expendable,” Armstrong teased, referencing the crowd of eager photographers in attendance. (0:56)
By Courtney Ann Jackson – Talk Radio News Service
A group of Apollo mission astronauts said that America should work towards landing on Mars at a news conference Monday to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing.
“The door opened when we touched down on the moon because that is what enabled humans to put many many more footprints on the surface of the moon. Landing on another object is what will enable us to put many other things, determine many other things with humans being there-inspiring many other people,” said Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11. “America to Mars is what ought to be, not America back to the moon.”
Seven astronauts from the Apollo program participated in the news conference: Walter Cunningham of Apollo 7, James Lovell of Apollo 8 and 13, Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11, David Scott of Apollo 15, Charles Duke of Apollo 16, Thomas Stafford of Apollo 10, and Eugene Cernan of Apollo 10 and 17.
Neil Armstrong of Apollo 11 was not present at the news conference, but those present mentioned Armstrong and his notoriety as the “first man on the moon.”
Lovell said that June 20 is a national celebration, not only because of the Apollo 11 moon landing, but also because of the advances in the space program that made those steps possible.
“We just happen to be the luckiest group of people in the entire history of the modern world to have done something, to live our dreams, to go somewhere where no man has ever gone before and the responsibility is to give that back in some way or another or provide…the opportunities for those that follow in our footsteps to once again see what has never been seen before,” said Cernan.
Cernan added that less than one penny out of every tax dollar goes to support space exploration. “You decide if that’s worth it,” he asked rhetorically.
The astronauts said that people were excited about space exploration during the “space race” age, and that the U.S. needs to find ways to inspire its youth to get excited about it once again.
On March 30, 2009, NASA unveiled the new Orion Spacecraft in front of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The module is still undergoing tests, but is planned to make its first journey to the International Space Station in 2015.
The new Orion Exploration Vehicle was unveiled today at the National Mall; plans are underway for missions “to Mars and beyond,” said Alan Rhodes of NASA. Water safety testing on the vehicle will commence next week, and when ready, its first mission will be a 2015 journey to the International Space Station.
The vehicle bears resemblance to the Apollo spacecraft from the 1960s on the outside, but on the inside, it is almost double in size. The crew on Orion will be six people, whereas Apollo could hold three. Much of the design preparation for Orion was based off of designs from the 1960s in order to reduce cost. An engineer from Lockheed Martin explained, “The physics never changed,” so they were able to make use of the original research.
NASA plans to use Orion for many different missions in the future. The vehicle has potential to go to the space station, the Moon, and Mars. The trip to Mars, however, is very daunting: a six-month journey, two-year stay, and six-month return. As of now, science is not advanced enough to handle the duration of this trip. The plan for Orion is to have a man on the Moon for six months in 2020 to test the feasibility of the Mars journey.
“This is your vehicle,” Alan Rhodes explained to a group of students, noting that NASA encourages input for improvements to the system and to the next generation of space travel.
NASA released information about ‘solar sailing’ as a new technology in their advancement of broad planetary exploration. NASA plans to send the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft on its second mission October 6th to orbit the planet closest to the sun, Mercury. During the encounter, the probe will swing just 125 miles (200 kilometers) above the cratered surface of Mercury, snapping 1,278 pictures and collecting a variety of other data from the planet as it gains a critical gravity assist that keeps the probe on track to become the first spacecraft ever to orbit the innermost planet beginning in March 2011.
Daniel J. O’Shaughnessy, Lead for MESSENGER’s Guidance and Control subsystem, explained the technology behind solar sailing. O’Shaughnessy said, “sunlight exerts a small but perceptible force on MESSENGER at all times. Rather than let the MESSENGER trajectory be pushed around by the force due to sunlight, operators planned an intricate sequence of solar, ray, and body attitude changes, helping to deflect the light in a way that allows the push from the sun to drive the MESSENGER closer to the flyby target.”
The only previous probe to visit Mercury was the Mariner 10, which completed its mission in March 1975. The Mariner 10 mapped only about 45% of the planet’s surface from 1974 to 1975. The MESSENGER mapped approximately 30% of the planet on its first mission. As Marilyn Lindstrom from NASA’s Washington headquarters said, “it’s not very easy getting into Mercury’s orbit. We need to have six planetary flybys to provide gravity assist to slow us down and ease us into orbit in 2011.” NASA proposes ‘solar sailing’ as a differentiator between this upcoming mission and past missions, which will bring great advancements in broad planetary exploration.
When asked what the biggest surprise was that occurred during the STS-124 mission to the International Space Station (ISS), mission specialist Karen L. Nyberg says that it was the fact that everything went according to plan. On the other hand, Commander Mark Kelly continues and talks about an incident involving the flight control system. Kelly says that a clip from off the rudder speed brake came flying off but according to the experts on the ground, it was of no consequence for re-entry. (1:10)
Christopher Shank, head of strategic communications at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), says that the International Space Station (ISS) is ‘the greatest engineering project in the history of mankind.’ Shank says the ISS is larger in wingspan than a football field and that its development is the largest task ever to have been performed by civilian agencies. (0:33)
Astronauts of the STS-124 Space Shuttle crew were present at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) headquarters to discuss their mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The STS-124 shuttle mission delivered the Pressurized Module and robotic arm of the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) to the ISS. Chris Shank, head of strategic communications at NASA, referred to the mission as the ‘greatest engineering project in the history of mankind.’ (more…)
