Posts tagged shuttle

The cross-country ferry flight to Los Angeles International Airport is the shuttle program’s last. It’s expected to end Sept. 20, including a stops at Ellington Field in Houston and the Dryden Flight Research Center in California.

In mid-October, Endeavour will roll from LAX to the California Science Center to take up residence in a new display hangar slated to open Oct. 30.

(Source: futurenow321)

New analysis of 36-year-old data, resuscitated from printouts, shows NASA found life on Mars, an international team of mathematicians and scientists conclude in a paper published this week.

Further, NASA doesn’t need a human expedition to Mars to nail down the claim, neuropharmacologist and biologist Joseph Miller, with the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, told Discovery News.

“The ultimate proof is to take a video of a Martian bacteria. They should send a microscope — watch the bacteria move,” Miller said.

“On the basis of what we’ve done so far, I’d say I’m 99 percent sure there’s life there,” he added.

(Source: futurenow321)

The US space agency said Friday it is seeking fresh ideas for robotic missions to explore Mars, after budget cuts nixed a planned partnership with the European space agency. “NASA is reformulating the Mars Exploration Program to be responsive to high-priority science goals and the president’s challenge of sending humans to Mars in the 2030s,” the agency said. A Mars Program Planning Group has started to sift through potential options for future missions, which could involve sending an orbiter around the red planet or a robotic rover to land by 2018, two years later than planned as part of a now defunct European partnership.NASA issued an open appeal to scientists worldwide to “submit ideas and abstracts online as part of NASA’s effort to seek out the best and the brightest ideas from researchers and engineers in planetary science.”

(Source: futurenow321)

Simply put,the PowerPottransforms the heat from cooking into electricity with no moving parts.  This is done using a technology called thermoelectric power generation. Thermoelectric technology was discovered in the early 1800’s, but found no consumer application in power generation due to the relatively high power needs of the devices in use at the time. However, times have changed. Today, nearly everyone uses microelectronics-based devices (smart phones, mp3 players, GPS units, etc.) which consume less than 5 watts of power.

(Source: futurenow321)

Weather permitting, the craft will fly at about 1,500 feet and the local flight is scheduled to occur between 10 and 11 a.m. that day, according to nasa.The aircraft is expected to fly near a variety of landmarks, including the National Mall, Reagan National Airport, National Harbor and the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center. According to NASA, Discovery completed 39 missions, spent 365 days in space, orbited the Earth 5,830 times, and traveled 148,221,675 miles. In 2005, the shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center and was the first since the shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry in February 2003.

(Source: futurenow321)

A $10 million project aims to grow algae for biofuels inside plastic bags. Next week, NASA will show off some of its latest technology, a system for growing algae in floating plastic bags. The system is the result of a $10 million, two-year project that investigated whether the algae could be used to make biofuels, including jet fuel. The system is designed to reduce the cost of making fuel from algae by making it possible to put algae farms near wastewater facilities, which offer a large source of nutrients.

(Source: futurenow321)

Nine NASA-funded astrophysics missions, including the planet-hunting Kepler space telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, will continue scanning the heavens for at least another two to four years, the U.S. space agency announced last week.

NASA’s decision to extend the science operations for nine of its 14 in-orbit missions largely follows the recommendations of an outside panel of senior scientists that convened in late February to weigh the scientific merits of keeping these missions in service.

(Source: futurenow321)

Hawthorne-based rocket venture Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is looking into launching its rockets from a small Texas town on the Gulf of Mexico.

The company, better known as SpaceX, filed a document with the Federal Aviation Administration saying it was taking its first steps toward establishing a launch pad in Cameron County, Texas.

Company spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham said SpaceX is considering multiple potential locations around the country for a new commercial launch pad. The area near Brownsville, Texas, along the coast, is a possibility, she said.

(Source: futurenow321)