NASA's new moon probe settles into lunar orbit

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft is pictured orbiting near the surface of the moon, in this artist's illustration released by NASA on August 15, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Dana Berry/NASA Ames/Handout via Reuters

By Irene Klotz

Mon Oct 7, 2013 7:39pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Politics may be keeping most of NASA's workers home, but that didn't stop the U.S. space agency's new moon probe from achieving lunar orbit, officials said on Monday.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, blasted off on September 6 aboard a small rocket that placed the spacecraft into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth.

After three trips around the planet, LADEE on Sunday was in precise position to fire its braking rocket, let itself be captured by the moon's gravity and then settle into lunar orbit.

The timing was not ideal. The ongoing partial shutdown of the U.S. government has sidelined about 97 percent of the NASA's 18,000 employees.

But among those still on the job were LADEE's flight controllers, who managed the difficult maneuver, said deputy project scientist Greg Delory, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Over the next two weeks, LADEE will tweak its orbit so that it ends up about 155 miles above the lunar surface, an ideal vantage point for studying the gases surrounding the moon and search for electrically charged dust rising from the ground.

The government furlough also was not expected to impact a LADEE laser communications demonstration slated for later this month, Delory said.

Last week, NASA brought back workers preparing a new Mars orbiter for launch on November 18. Skeleton crews, meanwhile, are overseeing NASA's communications satellites and science probes.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Philip Barbara)

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NASA's new moon probe settles into lunar orbit

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft is pictured orbiting near the surface of the moon, in this artist's illustration released by NASA on August 15, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Dana Berry/NASA Ames/Handout via Reuters

By Irene Klotz

Mon Oct 7, 2013 7:39pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Politics may be keeping most of NASA's workers home, but that didn't stop the U.S. space agency's new moon probe from achieving lunar orbit, officials said on Monday.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, blasted off on September 6 aboard a small rocket that placed the spacecraft into a highly elliptical orbit around Earth.

After three trips around the planet, LADEE on Sunday was in precise position to fire its braking rocket, let itself be captured by the moon's gravity and then settle into lunar orbit.

The timing was not ideal. The ongoing partial shutdown of the U.S. government has sidelined about 97 percent of the NASA's 18,000 employees.

But among those still on the job were LADEE's flight controllers, who managed the difficult maneuver, said deputy project scientist Greg Delory, with NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Over the next two weeks, LADEE will tweak its orbit so that it ends up about 155 miles above the lunar surface, an ideal vantage point for studying the gases surrounding the moon and search for electrically charged dust rising from the ground.

The government furlough also was not expected to impact a LADEE laser communications demonstration slated for later this month, Delory said.

Last week, NASA brought back workers preparing a new Mars orbiter for launch on November 18. Skeleton crews, meanwhile, are overseeing NASA's communications satellites and science probes.

(Editing by Tom Brown and Philip Barbara)

View the original article here

NASA's Mars rover spies solar eclipse

Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons, is pictured in the midst of an annular eclipse of the sun on August 17, 2013 in this combination of three handout photographs taken three seconds apart by NASA's Curiosity rover from the surface of Mars.

Credit: Reuters/NASA/Handout via Reuters

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Thu Aug 29, 2013 12:49pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity turned its cameras skyward to snap pictures of the planet's moon, Phobos, passing in front of the sun, images released on Thursday show.

Curiosity landed on Mars in August 2012 for a two-year mission to determine if the planet most like Earth in the solar system has, or ever had, the chemical ingredients for life. It struck pay dirt in its first analysis of powder drilled out from inside a once water-soaked piece of bedrock.

The rover is now enroute to its primary hunting ground, a three-mile (5-km) high mountain of layered sediment called Mount Sharp. It paused on August 17 to snap pictures of Mars' larger moon, Phobos, making a dash in front of the sun. NASA released three pictures, taken three seconds apart, of the eclipse, taken with the rover's telephoto lens.

"This one is by far the most detailed image of any Martian lunar transit ever taken. It was even closer to the sun's center than predicted, so we learned something," Curiosity scientist Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University said in a statement.

Curiosity is scheduled to moonlight as an astronomer again in September and October when it tries to catch a glimpse of the approaching Comet ISON.

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NASA's JPL, Ames Win 2007 NASA Software of Year Award

This before/after image shows how the JPL software allows control of distortions to correct aberrations in light. Image credit: NASA/JPL July 22, 2008

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has selected the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., as one of two winners of the agency's 2007 Software of the Year Award for software to help detect planets outside our solar system.

JPL's software, called Adaptive Modified Gerchberg-Saxton Phase Retrieval, characterizes the optical errors in a telescope system using innovative and robust algorithms. The software may be integrated into a telescope's calibration control loops to correct those errors and markedly improve optical resolution. JPL's software can be applied to other sciences and systems that use light, such as laser communications and extrasolar planet detection.

The other award went to software engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., who developed the Data-Parallel Line Relaxation, or DPLR, which is used to analyze and predict the extreme environments human and robotic spacecraft experience during super high-speed entries into planetary atmospheres.

JPL's software is already used at the California Institute of Technology's Palomar Observatory, in northern San Diego County. The software played a significant role in designing next-generation telescopes such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2013.

A eight-person team from JPL is responsible for the Adaptive Modified Gerchberg-Saxton Phase Retrieval Software: Scott Basinger, Siddarayappa Bikkannavar, David Cohen, Joseph Green, John Lou, Catherine Ohara, David Redding and Fang Shi.

Early work for the software was based on efforts to correct the vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. After initial images came back blurry, engineers worked for months to determine the problem. Eventually, astronauts traveled to the telescope to install a corrective lens based on telescope-imaging errors.

"Several years ago, it took teams of experts months to agree on a correct prescription for a telescope lens," said team member Siddarayappa Bikkannavar. "Our software can do all of that in just a few minutes."

David Redding said he and his team have worked since the mid-1990s to develop the innovative software, and they are gratified to receive recognition for it.

Ames Research Center's DPLR software simulates the intense heating, shear stresses and pressures a spacecraft endures as it travels through atmospheres to land on Earth or other planets. It is capable of creating a highly accurate, simulated entry environment that exceeds the capability of any test facility on Earth, allowing engineers to design and apply thermal protection materials suited to withstand such intense heating environments.

The DPLR team members include Michael J. Wright, James Brown, David Hash, Matt MacLean, Ryan McDaniel, David Saunders, Chun Tang and Kerry Trumble.

The NASA Software of the Year Award was initiated in 1994. Since then, both JPL and Ames have won or have been co-winner of the award seven times, including three out of the past four years.

A NASA Software Advisory Panel reviews entries and recommends winners to NASA's Inventions and Contributions Board for confirmation. Entries are nominated for developing innovative technologies that significantly improve the agency's exploration of space and maximize scientific discovery.

More information about NASA's Inventions and Contributions Board is at: http://icb.nasa.gov .

More information about JPL is at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov. More information about NASA is at: http://www.nasa.gov .

Media contacts: Rhea Borja 818-354-0850
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
rhea.r.borja@jpl.nasa.gov

Rachel Prucey 650-604-0643
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
rachel.l.prucey@nasa.gov

Sonja Alexander 202-358-1761
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Sonja.r.alexander@nasa.gov

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