NASA

SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) announced that the inaugural flight of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle successfully launched and achieved Earth orbit right on target, marking a key milestone for SpaceX and the commercial space flight industry.

 Preliminary data indicates that Falcon 9 achieved all of its primary mission objectives, culminating in a nearly perfect insertion of the second stage and Dragon spacecraft qualification unit into the targeted 250 km (155 mi) circular orbit. SpaceX also gathered important aerodynamic data during ascent and vehicle performance, which will be used in final preparations for the upcoming NASA demonstration and missions to the International Space Station (ISS).

"This is a major milestone not only for SpaceX, but the increasingly bright future of space flight," said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO, SpaceX. "It was an incredible day for the employees of SpaceX, but it is important to note that we did not do this alone. I,d like to thank from the bottom of my heart all of our supporters in NASA-particularly the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) office-the US Air Force, the FAA and our customers. Their support has been critical to this success."

Air force NASA Satellite

Boeing [NYSE: BA] has acquired the first on-orbit signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS) IIF-1 satellite, the inaugural spacecraft in a 12-satellite constellation that the company is building for the U.S. Air Force. The signals indicate that the spacecraft bus is functioning normally and ready to begin orbital maneuvers and operational testing.

A United Launch Alliance Delta IV rocket launched the GPS IIF-1 satellite at 11 p.m. Eastern time on May 27 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. At 2:33 a.m., the satellite separated from the rocket's upper stage, and a ground station on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean received the first signals from the newest member of the Air Force's GPS satellite constellation. The Air Force 19th Space Operations Squadron and Boeing's Mission Operations Support Center in El Segundo, Calif., confirmed that the satellite is healthy. GPS signals from the spacecraft payload will be turned on for test purposes in the coming weeks.

GPS is the U.S. Department of Defense's largest satellite constellation, with 30 spacecraft on orbit. The GPS IIF satellites will provide more precise and powerful signals, a longer design life, and many other benefits to nearly 1 billion civilian and military users worldwide.

"The inaugural launch of the GPS IIF-1 is a milestone in Boeing's 30 years of support to the Air Force that goes back to the first days of this program," said Craig Cooning, vice president and general manager, Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems. "The new GPS IIF satellites bring key improvements, including a more jam-resistant military signal, a new civil signal to enhance commercial aviation and search-and-rescue operations, and significantly improved signal accuracy as more of these new satellites go into operation."

The GPS IIF-1 satellite will undergo months of on-orbit tests, including functional testing of its payloads and end-to-end system testing to verify operability with older GPS satellites, ground receivers, and the ground control system.

Boeing has production of the next 11 GPS IIF satellites well under way as it implements an innovative pulse-line manufacturing approach that will help deliver the satellite fleet on schedule. Adapted from Boeing aircraft and helicopter assembly lines, the Boeing GPS IIF pulse line efficiently moves satellites under development from one work area to the next in a steady, pulse-like rhythm. The second GPS IIF satellite is scheduled for launch later this year.

Boeing's legacy with GPS includes development of the current GPS ground control infrastructure, the Operational Control Segment (OCS), which has supported an expanding set of GPS services and capabilities since 2007. Boeing also is a member of the Raytheon team that recently won a contract to build the next version of the ground segment, which will support current and future GPS satellites.

NASA

(May 26, 2010) -- Astronomers studying the Milky Way have discovered a large number of previously unknown regions where massive stars are being formed. Their discovery, made with the help of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, provides important new information about the structure of our home galaxy and promises to yield new clues about its composition.

The star-forming regions the astronomers sought, called H II regions, are sites where hydrogen atoms are stripped of their electrons by intense radiation from massive, young stars. To find these regions, hidden from visible-light detection by the Milky Way's gas and dust, the researchers used infrared and radio telescopes.

"We found our targets by using the results of infrared surveys done with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and of surveys done with the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array radio telescope," said astronomer Loren Anderson of the Astrophysical Laboratory of Marseille in France, who worked on the project. "Objects that appear bright in both the Spitzer and Very Large Array images we studied are good candidates for H II regions."

Further analysis allowed the astronomers to determine the locations of the H II regions. They found concentrations of the regions at the end of the galaxy's central bar and in its spiral arms. Their analysis also showed that 25 of the regions are farther from the galaxy's center than the sun.


Source :NASA/ASD News

NASA

E- Green Technologies has successfully inflated airship ‘Bullet 580’, 235-foot long (as long as a 23-floor skyscraper), 65-foot diameter.  It promises an aerial experience for science experiment and will serve as a sky based platform to relay communications and to keep watch on oil spills, forest fires and even pirates at sea. It can be compared to a huge truck which travels in sky instead of roads. The airship could possibly be used to transport heavy equipment to remote locations. It looks very promising and is likely to change the future of air transport.

Bullet-580 was tested this week inside the Garrett Coliseum in Montgomery, Alabama and sits inflated there. The whole operation to inflate the airship took six hours. Initially it looked like a white skimpy thing that gradually transformed into a spaceship. Kind of like inflating a humongous balloon.


Its first mission would be to carry a NASA soil moisture sensor, which is expected to fly from Kennedy Space Center. It includes a system of bags that hold helium gas for lighter-than-air lift and an inner hull that is filled with ambient air. The bags expand as the altitude increases. The material used to build these airships is Kevlar which is ten times stronger than steel according to designers. It is estimated to haul payloads as heavy as 15,000 pounds up to 2,500 feet. In the years to come you might see more of airships than you would trucks. The top speed of these airships would be 80mph (129 km/hr) and is retailed at $8 million a piece. Bullet 580 is the first in a wave of airships in production for commercial use. Fair enough, airships are going to be yet another leaping step for mankind!

Giant Bullet 580 Airship

NASA

The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.

The planet, called WASP-12b, is so close to its sunlike star that it is superheated to nearly 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit and stretched into a football shape by enormous tidal forces. The atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times Jupiter's radius and is spilling material onto the star. The planet is 40 percent more massive than Jupiter.

This effect of matter exchange between two stellar objects is commonly seen in close binary star systems, but this is the first time it has been seen so clearly for a planet.

"We see a huge cloud of material around the planet, which is escaping and will be captured by the star. We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own solar system," says team leader Carole Haswell of The Open University in Great Britain.

Haswell and her science team's results were published in the May 10, 2010 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A theoretical paper published in the science journal Nature last February by Shu-lin Li of the Department of Astronomy at the Peking University, Beijing, first predicted that the planet's surface would be distorted by the star's gravity, and that gravitational tidal forces make the interior so hot that it greatly expands the planet's outer atmosphere. Now Hubble has confirmed this prediction.

WASP-12 is a yellow dwarf star located approximately 600 light-years away in the winter constellation Auriga. The exoplanet was discovered by the United Kingdom's Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) in 2008. The automated survey looks for the periodic dimming of stars from planets passing in front of them, an effect called transiting. The hot planet is so close to the star it completes an orbit in 1.1 days.

The unprecedented ultraviolet (UV) sensitivity of COS enabled measurements of the dimming of the parent star's light as the planet passed in front of the star. These UV spectral observations showed that absorption lines from aluminum, tin, manganese, among other elements, became more pronounced as the planet transited the star, meaning that these elements exist in the planet's atmosphere as well as the star's. The fact the COS could detect these features on a planet offers strong evidence that the planet's atmosphere is greatly extended because it is so hot.

The UV spectroscopy was also used to calculate a light curve to precisely show just how much of the star's light is blocked out during transit. The depth of the light curve allowed the COS team to accurately calculate the planet's radius. They found that the UV-absorbing exosphere is much more extended than that of a normal planet that is 1.4 times Jupiter's mass. It is so extended that the planet's radius exceeds its Roche lobe, the gravitational boundary beyond which material would be lost forever from the planet's atmosphere.

NASA

One of the final space shuttle visits to the International Space Station began at 2:20 p.m. Friday with the launch of Atlantis and six astronauts from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission will deliver cargo, critical spare parts and a Russian laboratory to the station.

The third of five shuttle missions planned for 2010, this was the last planned launch for Atlantis. The Russian-built Mini Research Module-1 is inside the shuttle's cargo bay. Also known as Rassvet (dawn in Russian), it will provide additional storage space and a new docking port for Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft. The laboratory will be attached to the bottom port of the station's Zarya module.

Commander Ken Ham is joined on the STS-132 mission by Pilot Tony Antonelli and Mission Specialists Garrett Reisman, Michael Good, Steve Bowen, and Piers Sellers, all veteran space fliers. Good and Sellers rode Atlantis into orbit on their first space missions in 2009 and 2002, respectively.

The shuttle crew is scheduled to dock to the station at 10:27 a.m. EDT on Sunday, May 16. The mission's three spacewalks will focus on storing spare components outside the station, including six batteries, a communications antenna and parts for the Canadian Dextre robotic arm.

After completing the 12-day STS-132 mission, the shuttle's first landing opportunity at Kennedy is scheduled for 8:44 a.m. on Wednesday, May 26. STS-132 is the 132nd shuttle flight, the 32nd flight for Atlantis and the 34th shuttle mission dedicated to station assembly and maintenance.