WASHINGTON — Astronomers declared NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope a fully rejuvenated observatory with the release Wednesday of observations from four of its six operating science instruments. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., unveiled the images at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Topping the list of new views are colorful, multi-wavelength pictures of far-flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie “pillar of creation,” and a “butterfly” nebula. Hubble’s suite of new instruments allows it to study the universe across a wide swath of the light spectrum, from ultraviolet all the way to near-infrared. In addition, scientists released spectroscopic observations that slice across billions of light-years to probe the cosmic-web structure of the universe and map the distribution of elements that are fundamental to life as we know it.

“This marks a new beginning for Hubble,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The telescope was given an extreme makeover and now is significantly more powerful than ever, well-equipped to last into the next decade.”

“I fought for the Hubble repair mission because Hubble is the people’s telescope,” said Mikulski, chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA. “I also fought for Hubble because it constantly rewrites the science textbooks. It has more discoveries than any other science mission. Hubble is our greatest example of our astronauts working together with scientists to show American leadership and ingenuity. I want to salute Team Hubble — everyone who worked on Hubble from the Goddard Space Flight Center and Space Telescope Science Institute scientists in Maryland, to the ground crew at the Kennedy Space Center, to the Johnson Space Center where the astronauts train, and to the astronauts who were heroes in space.”

The new instruments are more sensitive to light and, therefore, will improve Hubble’s observing efficiency significantly. It is able to complete observations in a fraction of the time that was needed with prior generations of Hubble instruments. The space observatory today is significantly more powerful than it ever has been.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled with the quality of the images from the new Wide Field Camera 3 and repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys, and the spectra from the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph,” said Keith Noll, leader of a team at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which planned the early release observations. “The targets we’ve selected to showcase the telescope reveal the great range of capabilities in our newly upgraded Hubble.”

These results are compelling evidence of the success of the STS-125 servicing mission in May, which has brought the space observatory to the apex of its scientific performance. Two new instruments, the Wide Field Camera 3 and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, were installed, and two others, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, were repaired at the circuit board level. Mission scientists also announced Wednesday that the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer was brought back into operation during the three months of calibration and testing.

“On this mission we wanted to replenish the ‘tool kit’ of Hubble instruments on which scientists around the world rely to carry out their cutting-edge research,” said David Leckrone, senior project scientist for Hubble at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “Prior to this servicing mission, we had only three unique instrument channels still working, and today we have 13. I’m very proud to be able to say, ‘mission accomplished.’ ”

For the past three months, scientists and engineers at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Goddard have been focusing, testing, and calibrating the instruments. Hubble is one of the most complex space telescopes ever launched, and the Hubble servicing mission astronauts performed major surgery on the 19-year-old observatory’s multiple systems. This orbital verification phase was interrupted briefly July 19 to observe Jupiter in the aftermath of a collision with a suspected comet.

Hubble now enters a phase of full science observations. The demand for observing time will be intense. Observations will range from studying the population of Kuiper Belt objects at the fringe of our solar system to surveying the birth of planets around other stars and probing the composition and structure of extrasolar planet atmospheres. There are ambitious plans to take the deepest-ever near-infrared portrait of the universe to reveal never-before-seen infant galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 500 million years old. Other planned observations will attempt to shed light on the behavior of dark energy, a repulsive force that is pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. Goddard manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute conducts Hubble science operations. The institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. in Washington, and is an International Year of Astronomy 2009 program partner.

For images and more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble.

NASA will unveil the first images from the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope at 11 a.m. EDT today. NASA Television and the agency’s Web site will provide live coverage from NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-125 mission upgraded the telescope in May with state-of-the-art science instruments, leaving it more powerful than ever and extending its life into the next decade.

Charlie Bolden, NASA administrator and pilot of space shuttle Discovery on the STS-31 mission that launched Hubble in 1990, will join U.S. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., in the unveiling of the Hubble images during the 11 a.m. briefing. A panel of scientists then will discuss Hubble’s new and refurbished instruments and the images they produced.

A second briefing — in which the STS-125 astronauts will discuss how they enabled Hubble’s new capabilities during their historic servicing mission — immediately follows at noon.

Scott Altman commanded Atlantis’ crew, which included Pilot Gregory C. Johnson and Mission Specialists Andrew Feustel, Michael Good, John Grunsfeld, Megan McArthur and Mike Massimino.

NASA’S KEPLER MISSION SPIES CHANGING PHASES IN A DISTANT WORLD

WASHINGTON — NASA’s new exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope has detected the atmosphere of a known giant gas planet, demonstrating the telescope’s extraordinary scientific capabilities. The discovery was published Friday in the journal Science.

The find is based on a relatively short 10 days of test data collected before the official start of science operations. Kepler was launched March 6, 2009, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The observation demonstrates the extremely high precision of the measurements made by the telescope, even before its calibration and data analysis software were finished.

“As NASA’s first exoplanets mission, Kepler has made a dramatic entrance on the planet-hunting scene,” said Jon Morse, director of the Science Mission Directorate’s Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Detecting this planet’s atmosphere in just the first 10 days of data is only a taste of things to come. The planet hunt is on!”

Kepler team members say these new data indicate the mission is indeed capable of finding Earth-like planets, if they exist. Kepler will spend the next three-and-a-half years searching for planets as small as Earth, including those that orbit stars in a warm zone where there could be water. It will do this by looking for periodic dips in the brightness of stars, which occur when orbiting planets transit, or cross in front of, the stars.

“When the light curves from tens of thousands of stars were shown to the Kepler science team, everyone was awed; no one had ever seen such exquisitely detailed measurements of the light variations of so many different types of stars,” said William Borucki, the principal science investigator and lead author of the paper.

The observations were collected from a planet called HAT-P-7, known to transit a star located about 1,000 light years from Earth. The planet orbits the star in just 2.2 days and is 26 times closer than Earth is to the sun. Its orbit, combined with a mass somewhat larger than the planet Jupiter, classifies this planet as a “hot Jupiter.” It is so close to its star, the planet is as hot as the glowing red heating element on a stove.

The Kepler measurements show the transit from the previously detected HAT-P-7. However, these new measurements are so precise, they also show a smooth rise and fall of the light between transits caused by the changing phases of the planet, similar to those of our moon. This is a combination of both the light emitted from the planet and the light reflected off the planet. The smooth rise and fall of light is also punctuated by a small drop in light, called an occultation, exactly halfway between each transit. An occultation happens when a planet passes behind a star.

The new Kepler data can be used to study this hot Jupiter in unprecedented detail. The depth of the occultation and the shape and amplitude of the light curve show the planet has an atmosphere with a day-side temperature of about 4,310 degrees Fahrenheit. Little of this heat is carried to the cool night side. The occultation time compared to the main transit time shows the planet has a circular orbit. The discovery of light from this planet confirms the predictions by researchers and theoretical models that the emission would be detectable by Kepler.

This new discovery also demonstrates Kepler has the precision to find Earth-size planets. The observed brightness variation is just one and a half times what is expected for a transit caused by an Earth-sized planet. Although this is already the highest precision ever obtained for an observation of this star, Kepler will be even more precise after analysis software being developed for the mission is completed.

“This early result shows the Kepler detection system is performing right on the mark,” said David Koch, deputy principal investigator of NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. “It bodes well for Kepler’s prospects to be able to detect Earth-size planets.”

Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission. Ames is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., is responsible for developing the Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations.

For images, animations and more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler.

By Marc S. Posner
SOAR Magazine

Space shuttle Atlantis is safely in orbit after blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center on Monday afternoon to undertake the program’s final mission to a destination other than the International Space Station.

While in orbit, the seven-member Atlantis crew will make repairs and provide an upgrade to the venerable Hubble Space Telescope. One of the most-successful missions in NASA history, Hubble began its life as a much-maligned observatory because it was launched with faulty optics.

The unique capabilities of the space shuttle fleet combined with human occupants have produced renovations which have turned Hubble into a crown jewel of human kind’s exploration of the cosmos.

Atlantis is scheduled to rendezvous with Hubble on Wednesday for a final visit before the shuttle fleet is retired.

Liftoff of Atlantis came right on time at 2:01 p.m., EDT from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, with Endeavour on standby on Pad 39B for a potential rescue mission - in the event that Atlantis was damaged in a Columbia-like scenario.

Atlantis is scheduled to return to the Kennedy Space Center on May 22, with landing at 11:42 a.m.

TUCSON, Ariz. — Laboratory tests aboard NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander’s robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples.

“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.”

With enticing results so far and the spacecraft in good shape, NASA also announced operational funding for the mission will extend through Sept. 30. The original prime mission of three months ends in late August. The mission extension adds five weeks to the 90 days of the prime mission.

“Phoenix is healthy and the projections for solar power look good, so we want to take full advantage of having this resource in one of the most interesting locations on Mars,” said Michael Meyer, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The soil sample came from a trench approximately 2 inches deep. When the robotic arm first reached that depth, it hit a hard layer of frozen soil. Two attempts to deliver samples of icy soil on days when fresh material was exposed were foiled when the samples became stuck inside the scoop. Most of the material in Wednesday’s sample had been exposed to the air for two days, letting some of the water in the sample vaporize away and making the soil easier to handle.

“Mars is giving us some surprises,” said Phoenix principal investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona. “We’re excited because surprises are where discoveries come from. One surprise is how the soil is behaving. The ice-rich layers stick to the scoop when poised in the sun above the deck, different from what we expected from all the Mars simulation testing we’ve done. That has presented challenges for delivering samples, but we’re finding ways to work with it and we’re gathering lots of information to help us understand this soil.”

Since landing on May 25, Phoenix has been studying soil with a chemistry lab, TEGA, a microscope, a conductivity probe and cameras. Besides confirming the 2002 finding from orbit of water ice near the surface and deciphering the newly observed stickiness, the science team is trying to determine whether the water ice ever thaws enough to be available for biology and if carbon-containing chemicals and other raw materials for life are present.

The mission is examining the sky as well as the ground. A Canadian instrument is using a laser beam to study dust and clouds overhead.

“It’s a 30-watt light bulb giving us a laser show on Mars,” said Victoria Hipkin of the Canadian Space Agency.

A full-circle, color panorama of Phoenix’s surroundings also has been completed by the spacecraft.

“The details and patterns we see in the ground show an ice-dominated terrain as far as the eye can see,” said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, lead scientist for Phoenix’s Surface Stereo Imager camera. “They help us plan measurements we’re making within reach of the robotic arm and interpret those measurements on a wider scale.”

The Phoenix mission is led by Smith at the University of Arizona with project management at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and development partnership at Lockheed Martin in Denver. International contributions come from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA scientists have concluded that at least one of the large lakes observed on Saturn’s moon Titan contains liquid hydrocarbons, and have positively identified the presence of ethane. This makes Titan the only body in our solar system beyond Earth known to have liquid on its surface.

Scientists made the discovery using data from an instrument aboard the Cassini spacecraft. The instrument identified chemically different materials based on the way they absorb and reflect infrared light. Before Cassini, scientists thought Titan would have global oceans of methane, ethane and other light hydrocarbons. More than 40 close flybys of Titan by Cassini show no such global oceans exist, but hundreds of dark lake-like features are present. Until now, it was not known whether these features were liquid or simply dark, solid material.

“This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid,” said Bob Brown of the University of Arizona, Tucson. Brown is the team leader of Cassini’s visual and mapping instrument. The results will be published in the July 31 issue of the journal Nature.

Ethane and several other simple hydrocarbons have been identified in Titan’s atmosphere, which consists of 95 percent nitrogen, with methane making up the other 5 percent. Ethane and other hydrocarbons are products from atmospheric chemistry caused by the breakdown of methane by sunlight.

Some of the hydrocarbons react further and form fine aerosol particles. All of these things in Titan’s atmosphere make detecting and identifying materials on the surface difficult, because these particles form a ubiquitous hydrocarbon haze that hinders the view. Liquid ethane was identified using a technique that removed the interference from the atmospheric hydrocarbons.

The visual and mapping instrument observed a lake, Ontario Lacus, in Titan’s south polar region during a close Cassini flyby in December 2007. The lake is roughly 7,800 square miles in area, slightly larger than North America’s Lake Ontario.

“Detection of liquid ethane confirms a long-held idea that lakes and seas filled with methane and ethane exist on Titan,” said Larry Soderblom, a Cassini interdisciplinary scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Ariz. “The fact we could detect the ethane spectral signatures of the lake even when it was so dimly illuminated, and at a slanted viewing path through Titan’s atmosphere, raises expectations for exciting future lake discoveries by our instrument.”

The ethane is in a liquid solution with methane, other hydrocarbons and nitrogen. At Titan’s surface temperatures, approximately 300 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, these substances can exist as both liquid and gas. Titan shows overwhelming evidence of evaporation, rain, and fluid-carved channels draining into what, in this case, is a liquid hydrocarbon lake.

Earth has a hydrological cycle based on water and Titan has a cycle based on methane. Scientists ruled out the presence of water ice, ammonia, ammonia hydrate and carbon dioxide in Ontario Lacus. The observations also suggest the lake is evaporating. It is ringed by a dark beach, where the black lake merges with the bright shoreline. Cassini also observed a shelf and beach being exposed as the lake evaporates.

“During the next few years, the vast array of lakes and seas on Titan’s north pole mapped with Cassini’s radar instrument will emerge from polar darkness into sunlight, giving the infrared instrument rich opportunities to watch for seasonal changes of Titan’s lakes,” Soderblom said.

Launched in Oct. 1997, Cassini’s 12 instruments have returned a daily stream of data from Saturn’s system. The mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, Fla. — NASA’s Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, successfully launched aboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 12:05 p.m. EDT today.

The GLAST observatory separated from the second stage of the Delta II at 1:20 p.m. and the flight computer immediately began powering up the components necessary to control the satellite. Twelve minutes after separating from the launch vehicle, both GLAST solar arrays were deployed. The arrays immediately began producing the power necessary to maintain the satellite and instruments. The operations team continues to check out the spacecraft subsystems.

“The entire GLAST Team is elated the observatory is now on-orbit and all systems continue to operate as planned,” said GLAST program manager Kevin Grady of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

After a 75-minute flight, the GLAST spacecraft was deployed into low Earth orbit. It will begin to transmit initial instrument data after about three weeks. The telescope will explore the most extreme environments in the universe, searching for signs of new laws of physics and investigating what composes mysterious dark matter. It will seek explanations for how black holes accelerate immense jets of material to nearly light speed, and look for clues to crack the mysteries behind powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts.

“After a 60-day checkout and initial calibration period, we’ll begin science operations,” said Steve Ritz, GLAST project scientist at Goddard. “GLAST soon will be telling scientists about many new objects to study, and this information will be available on the internet for the world to see.”

NASA’s GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the U.S.

For more information about the GLAST mission, please visit: http://www.nasa.gov/glast.

The upcoming launch of two upcoming missions have been pushed back, NASA announced this week.

The Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope is now targeted for no earlier than June 11 aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. The launch window for GLAST extends from 11:45 a.m. to 1:40 p.m. EDT and remains unchanged through Aug. 7.

The additional time is necessary to allow for replacement of the rocket’s Flight Termination System battery which displayed indications of a problem Wednesday.

Loading of the hypergolic propellants into the Delta II second stage is planned for this weekend. On launch day, June 11, the mobile service tower will be retracted from around the rocket at 2 a.m. The terminal countdown sequence will begin at 9:15 a.m. by loading the first stage with RP-1 fuel, a highly refined kerosene. This will be followed at 10:15 a.m. by cryogenic fueling, loading the first stage with liquid oxygen. This will lead to a liftoff targeted for 11:45 a.m. EDT.

Meanwhile, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 has also been delayed.

At the Astrotech payload processing facility on north Vandenberg, the OSTM/Jason 2 spacecraft is ready for transportation to Space Launch Complex 2 for mating with the Delta II rocket. An initial attempt was planned for Monday, June 2, but was postponed due to high wind. These windy conditions have continued throughout the week and have precluded shipping of the encapsulated spacecraft to the launch pad and hoisting of the spacecraft into the mobile service tower.

Technicians hope the wind will begin to diminish sometime over the weekend. Launch has been retargeted for no earlier than June 19.

OSTM/Jason 2 is a satellite that will help scientists better monitor and understand rises in global sea level, study the world’s ocean circulation and its links to Earth’s climate.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft performed a daring flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus on Wed., March 12, flying about 32,000 miles per hour (15 kilometers per second) through icy water geyser-like jets. The spacecraft snatched up precious samples that might point to a water ocean or organics inside the little moon.

Scientists believe the geysers could provide evidence that liquid water is trapped under the icy crust of Enceladus. The geysers emanate from fractures running along the moon’s south pole, spewing out water vapor at approximately 800 mph (400 meters per second).

The new data provide a much more detailed look at the fractures that modify the surface and will give a significantly improved comparison between the geologic history of the moon’s north pole and south pole.

New images show that compared to much of the southern hemisphere on Enceladus–the south polar region in particular–the north polar region is much older and pitted with craters of various sizes. These craters are captured at different stages of disruption and alteration by tectonic activity, and probably from past heating from below. Many of the craters seem sliced by small parallel cracks that appear to be ubiquitous throughout the old cratered terrains on Enceladus.

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WASHINGTON - The recent flyby of Mercury by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft has given scientists an entirely new look at a planet once thought to have characteristics similar to those of Earth’s moon. Researchers are amazed by the wealth of images and data that show a unique world with a diversity of geological processes and a very different magnetosphere from the one discovered and sampled more than 30 years ago.

After a journey of more than 2 billion miles and three and a half years, NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging spacecraft made its first flyby on Jan. 14. The mission is the first sent to orbit the planet closest to our sun. The spacecraft’s cameras and other sophisticated, high-technology instruments collected more than 1,200 images and made other science observations. Data included the first up-close measurements of Mercury since the Mariner 10 spacecraft’s third and final flyby on March 16, 1975.

“This flyby allowed us to see a part of the planet never before viewed by spacecraft, and our little craft has returned a gold mine of exciting data,” said Sean Solomon, MESSENGER’s principal investigator, Carnegie Institution of Washington. “From the perspectives of spacecraft performance and maneuver accuracy, this encounter was near-perfect, and we are delighted that all of the science data are now on the ground.”

Unlike the moon, the spacecraft showed that Mercury has huge cliffs with structures snaking up hundreds of miles across the planet’s face. These cliffs preserve a record of patterns of fault activity from early in the planet’s history. The spacecraft also revealed impact craters that appear very different from lunar craters.
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