NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Begins Arm-Work Phase

PASADENA, Calif. -- After driving more than a football field's length since landing, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is spending several days preparing for full use of the tools on its arm.

Curiosity extended its robotic arm Wednesday in the first of six to 10 consecutive days of planned activities to test the 7-foot (2.1-meter) arm and the tools it manipulates.

"We will be putting the arm through a range of motions and placing it at important 'teach points' that were established during Earth testing, such as the positions for putting sample material into the inlet ports for analytical instruments," said Daniel Limonadi of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., lead systems engineer for Curiosity's surface sampling and science system. "These activities are important to get a better understanding for how the arm functions after the long cruise to Mars and in the different temperature and gravity of Mars, compared to earlier testing on Earth."

Since the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft placed Curiosity inside Mars' Gale Crater on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT), the rover has driven a total of 358 feet (109 meters). The drives have brought it about one-fourth of the way from the landing site, named Bradbury Landing, to a location selected as the mission's first major science destination, Glenelg.

"We knew at some point we were going to need to stop and take a week or so for these characterization activities," said JPL's Michael Watkins, Curiosity mission manager. "For these checkouts, we need to turn to a particular angle in relation to the sun and on flat ground. We could see before the latest drive that this looked like a perfect spot to start these activities."

The work at the current location will prepare Curiosity and the team for using the arm to place two of the science instruments onto rock and soil targets. In addition, the activities represent the first steps in preparing to scoop soil, drill into rocks, process collected samples and deliver samples into analytical instruments.

Checkouts in the next several days will include using the turret's Mars Hand Lens Imager to observe its calibration target and the Canadian-built Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer to read what chemical elements are present in the instrument's calibration target.

"We're still learning how to use the rover. It's such a complex machine -- the learning curve is steep," said JPL's Joy Crisp, deputy project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory Project, which built and operates Curiosity.

After the arm characterization activities at the current site, Curiosity will proceed for a few weeks eastward toward Glenelg. The science team selected that area as likely to offer a good target for Curiosity's first analysis of powder collected by drilling into a rock.

"We're getting through a big set of characterization activities that will allow us to give more decision-making authority to the science team," said Richard Cook, Mars Science Laboratory project manager at JPL.

Curiosity is one month into a two-year prime mission on Mars. It will use 10 science instruments to assess whether the selected study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Creative success alliance

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NASA Mars rover Curiosity begins trek to new destination

The Mars rover Curiosity is hitting the road. It headed east Tuesday, driving 52 feet toward a spot where it will use its robotic arm for the first time to drill into bedrock. It'll take weeks for the six-wheel NASA rover to reach the site called Glenelg about a quarter mile away.

"It's nice to see some Martian soil on our wheels," mission manager Arthur Amador said in a statement Wednesday.

The drive was the third and longest one yet since the car-size rover touched down in an ancient crater Aug. 5 to study whether the Martian environment could have been favorable for life. The early drives have been deliberately short, allowing Curiosity to identify any hazards on the road and so that engineers can gain practice driving on the Martian terrain.

Scientists have said they eventually expect the rover to travel about the length of a football field a day. Curiosity spent Wednesday at its new locale, snapping pictures of a distant mountain that is its ultimate destination. Intriguing layers of rocks have been spotted at the base and most of its two-year mission will be spent examining the lower slopes.

Since landing, Curiosity has been busy checking out its instruments and it's not done yet. Next week, it will make a longer stop along the way to Glenelg to continue its health checkups.

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Launch Director Hails Curiosity Landing

Omar Baez completed his eighth trip to Mars on Monday when NASA's Curiosity rover touched down perfectly inside the Gale Crater to begin a two-year geologic survey of the mysterious red planet. As with everyone else on Earth, Baez can only go to Mars remotely, but that doesn't diminish his excitement.

Nine months ago, Baez was carefully going over the details of Curiosity ahead of its launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. As launch director for NASA's Launch Services Program, it was up to Baez to confirm that the one-ton robotic rover was ready to make a months-long voyage through space to a planet 14 million miles away.

On Nov. 26, 2011, Baez gave his "go" to start the mission, offering his confidence that everything he had seen showed that the rover was ready. Not to mention the rocket pack that would fly through the Martian atmosphere and lower Curiosity onto the surface in a landing maneuver that had never been tried before.

Although he checked out everything several times in a processing hangar on Earth and worked closely with the rover's builders and operators from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., he still had an anxious night watching the landing on TV.

"I think there's been roughly 7,000 people who have worked on this," Baez said Monday morning. "There's a personal sense of ownership and some skin that went into making this happen. So I am overjoyed. I was so ecstatic to see them succeed and see this thing on the surface."

Before the mission was launched, and knowing how difficult the entry and landing would be, Baez said he would call the flight a success if the rover landed and returned some video and photos of the barren Martian landscape. That goal has been met, but Baez said he is on to the next level of expectations from Curiosity.

"I think I'm still numb, I'm still waiting for more pictures," Baez said. "I want to see the thing roll around and rove. I'm not ready to pop the champagne corks yet." The landing buoyed the whole launch team. "Everyone's walking with a spring in their step, just having a good time," Baez said. "Overall, it's a great feeling."

Even after launching eight spacecraft to Mars, Baez' work with the red planet is not finished. The Launch Services Program is working toward the launch of the MAVEN mission, a spacecraft that will study Mars from orbit. MAVEN, short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatiles EvolutioN, is to look for clues as to why the Martian atmosphere changed and why its surface water was lost to space. It is to launch in late 2013.

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Dust Dominates Foreign Aerosol Imports to North America

NASA and university scientists have made the first measurement-based estimate of the amount and composition of tiny airborne particles that arrive in the air over North America each year. With a 3-D view of the atmosphere now possible from satellites, the scientists calculated that dust, not pollution, is the main ingredient of these imports.

According to a new analysis of NASA satellite data, 64 million tons of dust, pollution and other particles that have potential climate and human health effects survive a trans-ocean journey to arrive over North America each year. This is nearly as much as the estimated 69 million tons of aerosols produced domestically from natural processes, transportation and industrial sources. The results were published Aug. 2 in the journal Science.

"This first-of-a-kind assessment is a crucial step toward better understanding how these tiny but abundant materials move around the planet and impact climate change and air quality," says Hongbin Yu, lead author and an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Observing these microscopic airborne particles and quantifying their global impact on warming or cooling Earth remains one of the most difficult challenges of climate science. Dust and pollution particles rise into the atmosphere and can travel for days across numerous national boundaries before settling to Earth.

Data from several research satellites flying advanced observing technology developed and launched by NASA enabled the scientists to distinguish particle types and determine their heights in the atmosphere. They combined that information with wind speed data to estimate the amount of pollution and dust arriving over North America. The scientists used data from instruments on NASA's Terra satellite and the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) satellite, a joint effort between NASA and the French space agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales.

Yu and colleagues estimated that dust crossing the Pacific Ocean accounts for 88 percent, or 56 milliontons, of the total particle import to North America every year. Dust movement is particularly active in spring, when the rise of cyclones and strong mid-latitude westerlies boost particle transport across the Pacific. Global aerosol transport models revealed Asia was a primary source of the dust reaching North America. About 60 to 70 percent comes from Asia, and the remaining 30 to 40 percent comes from Africa and the Middle East.

Dust particles are fine pieces of minerals that primarily come from dry, desert-like regions. Winds lift these lightweight particles high into the atmosphere where they meet even faster-moving winds capable of transporting them around the planet. Pollution particles, in contrast, come from combustion sources such as wildfires or agricultural fires and fossil fuel burning for power and industry. These particles are emitted close to the ground, making them of prime interest to air quality researchers and managers. High-altitude dust particles are less a concern for human health, but their impact on climate can be significant.

One such impact on climate is a cooling effect, brought about by dust and some pollution particles that reflect sunlight back to space. The team calculated that the imported particles account for one third of the reduction in solar radiation, or solar dimming, over North America. "Globally this can mask some of the warming we expect from greenhouse gases," says Lorraine Remer, an atmospheric scientist at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and co-author on the study.

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NASA launches hypersonic inflatable heat shield prototype

NASA launched a novel new heat shield prototype on a successful test flight Monday (July 23), a mission that sent a high-tech space balloon streaking through Earth's atmosphere at hypersonic speeds of up to Mach 10.

The test flight blasted off atop a suborbital rocket at 7:01 a.m. EDT (1101 GMT) from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. It sent a small capsule, called the Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment 3 (IRVE-3) into suborbital space, which deployed the inflatable heat shield and then plunged back down through Earth's atmosphere to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean.

The mission, according to NASA, was an unqualified success and will help shape new re-entry systems for future spacecraft.

"We had a really great flight today," James Reuther, deputy director of NASA's Space Technology Program, told reporters in a news briefing Monday (July 23). "Initial indications are we got good data. Everything performed as well, or better, than expected."

The IRVE-3 flight was designed to demonstrate how the technology could be used for heat shields during atmospheric entries on future space missions.

The successful test flight is, "a first step for how we explore other worlds," said Steve Jurczyk, deputy director of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

"As far as the applicability of the technology, [we were] originally motivated to do this to allow us to potentially land more masses at Mars," said Neil Cheatwood, IRVE-3 principal investigator at Langley Research Center. "Mars is a very challenging destination. It has a very thin atmosphere — too much of an atmosphere to ignore, but not enough for us to do the things we would at other planets. That was our motivation about nine years ago when we started doing this stuff."

With inflatable heat shields, scientists may be able to land at higher altitudes on Mars, or use the IRVE-3 technology to one day carry larger payloads, including humans, to the surface of the Red Planet, Cheatwood added. 

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NASA builds menu for planned Mars mission in 2030s

HOUSTON (AP) ― Through a labyrinth of hallways deep inside a 1950s-era building that has housed research that dates back to the origins of U.S. space travel, a group of scientists in white coats is stirring, mixing, measuring, brushing and, most important, tasting the end result of their cooking.

Their mission: Build a menu for a planned journey to Mars in the 2030s.

The menu must sustain a group of six to eight astronauts, keep them healthy and happy and offer a broad array of food. That’s no simple feat considering it will likely take six months to get to the Red Planet, astronauts will have to stay there 18 months and then it will take another six months to return to Earth. Imagine having to shop for a family’s three-year supply of groceries all at once and having enough meals planned in advance for that length of time.

“Mars is different just because it’s so far away,” said Maya Cooper, senior research scientist with Lockheed Martin who is leading the efforts to build the menu. “We don’t have the option to send a vehicle every six months and send more food as we do for International Space Station.”

Astronauts who travel to the space station have a wide variety of food available to them, some 100 or so different options, in fact. But it is all pre-prepared and freeze-dried with a shelf life of at least two years. And while astronauts make up a panel that tastes the food and gives it a final OK on Earth before it blasts off, the lack of gravity means smell ― and taste ― is impaired. So the food is bland.

On Mars though, there is a little gravity, allowing NASA to consider significant changes to the current space menu. That’s where Cooper’s team comes in. Travel to Mars opens the possibility that astronauts can do things like chop vegetables and do a little cooking of their own. Even though pressure levels are different than on Earth, scientists think it will be possible to boil water with a pressure cooker too.

One option Cooper and her staff are considering is having the astronauts care for a “Martian greenhouse.” They would have a variety of fruits and vegetables ― from carrots to bell peppers ― in a hydroponic solution, meaning they would be planted in mineral-laced water instead of soil. The astronauts would care for their garden and then use those ingredients, combined with others, such as nuts and spices brought from Earth, to prepare their meals.

“That menu is favorable because it allows the astronauts to actually have live plants that are growing, you have optimum nutrient delivery with fresh fruits and vegetables, and it actually allows them to have freedom of choice when they’re actually cooking the menus because the food isn’t already pre-prepared into a particular recipe,” Cooper said.

The top priority is to ensure that the astronauts get the proper amount of nutrients, calories and minerals to maintain their physical health and performance for the life of the mission, Cooper said.

The menu must also ensure the psychological health of the astronauts, Cooper explained, noting studies have shown that eating certain foods ― such as meatloaf and mashed potatoes or turkey on Thanksgiving ― improve people’s mood and give them satisfaction. That “link to home” will be key to astronauts on the Mars mission, and there are currently two academic studies looking further into the connection between mood and food. Lacking certain vitamins or minerals can also harm the brain, she said.

Jerry Linenger, a retired astronaut who spent 132 days on the Russian space station in 1997, said food is important for morale, and the monotony of eating the same thing day after day is difficult.

“You just wanted something different. I didn’t care if it was something I wouldn’t eat in a million years on Earth. If it was different, I would eat it,” Linenger said, recalling with a laugh how he would even drink up a Russian sour milk-like concoction for breakfast or drink up some borscht because it offered variety.

Already, Cooper’s team of three has come up with about 100 recipes, all vegetarian because the astronauts will not have dairy or meat products available. It isn’t possible to preserve those products long enough to take to Mars ― and bringing a cow on the mission is not an option, Cooper jokes.

To ensure the vegetarian diet packs the right amount of protein, the researchers are designing a variety of dishes that include tofu and nuts, including a Thai pizza that has no cheese but is covered with carrots, red peppers, mushrooms, scallions, peanuts and a homemade sauce that has a spicy kick.

To keep this menu going, and get the most out of any research about food sustainability on Mars, Cooper says it’s possible NASA will choose to have one astronaut solely dedicated to preparing the food ― the Emeril of the Mars mission.

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NASA's Car-Sized Rover Nears Daring Landing on Mars

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's most advanced planetary rover is on a precise course for an early August landing beside a Martian mountain to begin two years of unprecedented scientific detective work. However, getting the Curiosity rover to the surface of Mars will not be easy.

"The Curiosity landing is the hardest NASA mission ever attempted in the history of robotic planetary exploration," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "While the challenge is great, the team's skill and determination give me high confidence in a successful landing."

The Mars Science Laboratory mission is a precursor for future human missions to Mars. President Obama has set a challenge to reach the Red Planet in the 2030s.

To achieve the precision needed for landing safely inside Gale Crater, the spacecraft will fly like a wing in the upper atmosphere instead of dropping like a rock. To land the 1-ton rover, an airbag method used on previous Mars rovers will not work. Mission engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., designed a "sky crane" method for the final several seconds of the flight. A backpack with retro-rockets controlling descent speed will lower the rover on three nylon cords just before touchdown.

During a critical period lasting only about seven minutes, the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft carrying Curiosity must decelerate from about 13,200 mph (about 5,900 meters per second) to allow the rover to land on the surface at about 1.7 mph (three-fourths of a meter per second). Curiosity is scheduled to land at approximately 10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6).

"Those seven minutes are the most challenging part of this entire mission," said Pete Theisinger, the mission's project manager at JPL. "For the landing to succeed, hundreds of events will need to go right, many with split-second timing and all controlled autonomously by the spacecraft. We've done all we can think of to succeed. We expect to get Curiosity safely onto the ground, but there is no guarantee. The risks are real."

During the initial weeks after the actual landing, JPL mission controllers will put the rover through a series of checkouts and activities to characterize its performance on Mars, while gradually ramping up scientific investigations. Curiosity then will begin investigating whether an area with a wet history inside Mars' Gale Crater ever has offered an environment favorable for microbial life.

"Earlier missions have found that ancient Mars had wet environments," said Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars Program at NASA Headquarters. "Curiosity takes us the next logical step in understanding the potential for life on Mars."

Curiosity will use tools on a robotic arm to deliver samples from Martian rocks and soils into laboratory instruments inside the rover that can reveal chemical and mineral composition. A laser instrument will use its beam to induce a spark on a target and read the spark's spectrum of light to identify chemical elements in the target.

Other instruments on the car-sized rover will examine the surrounding environment from a distance or by direct touch with the arm. The rover will check for the basic chemical ingredients for life and for evidence about energy available for life. It also will assess factors that could be hazardous for life, such as the radiation environment.

"For its ambitious goals, this mission needs a great landing site and a big payload," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters. "During the descent through the atmosphere, the mission will rely on bold techniques enabling use of a smaller target area and a heavier robot on the ground than were possible for any previous Mars mission. Those techniques also advance us toward human-crew Mars missions, which will need even more precise targeting and heavier landers."

The chosen landing site is beside a mountain informally called Mount Sharp. The mission's prime destination lies on the slope of the mountain. Driving there from the landing site may take many months.

"Be patient about the drive. It will be well worth the wait and we are apt to find some targets of interest on the way," said John Grotzinger, MSL project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "When we get to the lower layers in Mount Sharp, we'll read them like chapters in a book about changing environmental conditions when Mars was wetter than it is today."

In collaboration with Microsoft Corp., a new outreach game was unveiled Monday to give the public a sense of the challenge and adventure of landing in a precise location on the surface. Called "Mars Rover Landing," the game is an immersive experience for the Xbox 360 home entertainment console that allows users to take control of their own spacecraft and face the extreme challenges of landing a rover on Mars.

"Technology is making it possible for the public to participate in exploration as it never has before," said Michelle Viotti, JPL's Mars public engagement manager. "Because Mars exploration is fundamentally a shared human endeavor, we want everyone around the globe to have the most immersive experience possible." 

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NASA hopes are riding on Mars rover's tricky descent

It is the last 78 miles of a NASA rover's 154 million-mile journey to Mars that concerns Ravi Prakash the most.

That's because this is the first time that NASA - or anyone else - has ever tried to land something nearly so big as the 1-ton Curiosity rover on Mars, and because so much is riding on this particular mission.

"We've got to go from five times as fast as a speeding bullet - 13,000 mph - all the way to a screeching halt in seven minutes," said Prakash, a Texas City native who now works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the rover's lander team.

Five times the size of the Spirit and Opportunity rovers already on Mars, Curiosity is packed with scientific equipment: HD-resolution cameras that can also capture video; a laser than can ignite a spark on rocks 20 feet away to determine what they're made of; and other high-tech tools including an X-ray diffraction setup, a mass spectrometer, and a gas chromatograph.

With these devices the six-wheeled rover will be able to sample hundreds of layers of sedimentary rock, allowing scientists to understand how the surface of Mars changed over time, and providing a detailed history of the Red Planet and clues to whether life could have flourished there.

But it's got to get there safely at first.Adding to the pressure is that NASA is not currently planning or building a next generation rover to go to Mars. More than 200 scientists attended a NASA meeting earlier this year in Houston to discuss plans for follow-up missions, but none has been chosen.

Nail-biting time

So Curiosity, itself a decade in the works, is it for a long time."With no sense of how or when we will follow this up, and without knowing which direction our tools and techniques are evolving - yes, landing successfully is a big deal," said Mark Lemmon, a Texas A&M University planetary scientist who will help operate the rover on Mars.

Launched in November, the $2.5 billion rover will reach the upper limit of the Martian atmosphere at 12:30 a.m. CDT on Aug. 6. Almost out of rocket fuel, it will proceed directly to the planet's surface.

Then the nail-biting will begin. The capsule carrying the rover will slow as it falls through the thin Martian atmosphere, and at seven miles above the Red Planet a parachute will deploy. One mile above the surface, and at a speed of 180 mph, the parachute will separate, and thrusters will further slow the descent.

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NASA Unveils Orion During Ceremony

The Orion capsule that will make the first flight test into space was celebrated Monday morning as the cornerstone of a new era of exploration for America's space program.

The spacecraft's aluminum-alloy crew pressure module arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Friday, June 29, where it will be built up into a fully functioning spacecraft ahead of a test flight slated for 2014.

"This starts a new, exciting chapter in this nation's great space exploration story," said Lori Garver, NASA deputy administrator. "Today we are lifting our spirits to new heights."

Orion will be the most advanced spacecraft ever designed. It will provide emergency abort capability, sustain astronauts during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space.

The 2014 uncrewed flight, called Exploration Flight Test-1 or EFT-1, will be loaded with a wide variety of instruments to evaluate how the spacecraft behaves during launch, in space and the through the searing heat of reentry.

Later Orion spacecraft will take astronauts on missions to destinations far beyond Earth, such as to an asteroid and Mars.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to Mars," proclaimed U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who joined Garver and other officials to welcome the Orion spacecraft. "We know the Orion capsule is a critical part of the system that's going to take us there."

Designed with astronauts in mind, Orion will take crews beyond low-Earth orbit for the first time since 1972, when Apollo 17 completed the last moon landing. The Space Launch System, or SLS -- a gigantic rocket akin to the Saturn V that launched the Apollo spacecraft -- is being developed to launch future Orion missions to deep space. The first launch of the SLS, with Orion atop, is scheduled for 2017.

Astronaut Rex Walheim, who flew on the final space shuttle mission and has had a leading role in the development of Orion, said the capsule can be the principal spacecraft for 30 years of human exploration of the solar system.

"It's the first in a line of vehicles that can take us where we've never gone before," Walheim said. "It'll be a building block approach, we'll have to have a lander and a habitation module, but we can get there."

Although the design is reminiscent of the landmark Apollo capsule that took men to the moon, the interior of the spacecraft if significantly more advanced. Its guidance, navigation and life support equipment have seen significant improvements in size and capabilities.

"The systems on this spacecraft, it's bigger than Apollo and it has to stay in space longer than Apollo, so it has to be better than Apollo," said Bob Cabana, director of Kennedy and a former shuttle commander.

For now, the focus for NASA and Lockheed Martin, the spacecraft's builder, is on preparing this capsule for space in 2014. During the EFT-1 mission, a Delta IV-Heavy rocket from United Launch Alliance will lift the spacecraft into orbit. Its second stage will remain attached to the capsule and will be fired to raise the Orion's orbit to 3,600 miles, about 15 times higher than the International Space Station. The mission will last only a few hours, long enough to make two orbits before being sent plunging back into the atmosphere to test it at deep-space reentry speeds.

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Cassini Finds Likely Subsurface Ocean on Saturn Moon

PASADENA, Calif. -- Data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have revealed Saturn's moon Titan likely harbors a layer of liquid water under its ice shell.

Researchers saw a large amount of squeezing and stretching as the moon orbited Saturn. They deduced that if Titan were composed entirely of stiff rock, the gravitational attraction of Saturn would cause bulges, or solid "tides," on the moon only 3 feet (1 meter) in height. Spacecraft data show Saturn creates solid tides approximately 30 feet (10 meters) in height, which suggests Titan is not made entirely of solid rocky material. The finding appears in today's edition of the journal Science.

"Cassini's detection of large tides on Titan leads to the almost inescapable conclusion that there is a hidden ocean at depth," said Luciano Iess, the paper's lead author and a Cassini team member at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. "The search for water is an important goal in solar system exploration, and now we've spotted another place where it is abundant."

Titan takes only 16 days to orbit Saturn, and scientists were able to study the moon's shape at different parts of its orbit. Because Titan is not spherical, but slightly elongated like a football, its long axis grew when it was closer to Saturn. Eight days later, when Titan was farther from Saturn, it became less elongated and more nearly round. Cassini measured the gravitational effect of that squeeze and pull.

Scientists were not sure Cassini would be able to detect the bulges caused by Saturn's pull on Titan. By studying six close flybys of Titan from Feb. 27, 2006, to Feb. 18, 2011, researchers were able to determine the moon's internal structure by measuring variations in the gravitational pull of Titan using data returned to NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN).

"We were making ultrasensitive measurements, and thankfully Cassini and the DSN were able to maintain a very stable link," said Sami Asmar, a Cassini team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The tides on Titan pulled up by Saturn aren't huge compared to the pull the biggest planet, Jupiter, has on some of its moons. But, short of being able to drill on Titan's surface, the gravity measurements provide the best data we have of Titan's internal structure."

An ocean layer does not have to be huge or deep to create these tides. A liquid layer between the external, deformable shell and a solid mantle would enable Titan to bulge and compress as it orbits Saturn. Because Titan's surface is mostly made of water ice, which is abundant in moons of the outer solar system, scientists infer Titan's ocean is likely mostly liquid water.

On Earth, tides result from the gravitational attraction of the moon and sun pulling on our surface oceans. In the open oceans, those can be as high as two feet (60 centimeters). While water is easier to move, the gravitational pulling by the sun and moon also causes Earth's crust to bulge in solid tides of about 20 inches (50 centimeters).

The presence of a subsurface layer of liquid water at Titan is not itself an indicator for life. Scientists think life is more likely to arise when liquid water is in contact with rock, and these measurements cannot tell whether the ocean bottom is made up of rock or ice. The results have a bigger implication for the mystery of methane replenishment on Titan.

"The presence of a liquid water layer in Titan is important because we want to understand how methane is stored in Titan's interior and how it may outgas to the surface," said Jonathan Lunine, a Cassini team member at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "This is important because everything that is unique about Titan derives from the presence of abundant methane, yet the methane in the atmosphere is unstable and will be destroyed on geologically short timescales."

A liquid water ocean, "salted" with ammonia, could produce buoyant ammonia-water liquids that bubble up through the crust and liberate methane from the ice. Such an ocean could serve also as a deep reservoir for storing methane.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. DSN, also managed by JPL, is an international network of antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions. Cassini's radio science team is based at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. 

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NASA details looming Mars rover landing, '7 Minutes of Terror'

In just 41 days, on August 5, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover will touch down on the Red Planet, and this will be no ordinary landing. In fact, NASA has dubbed the descent "Seven Minutes of Terror."

"When people look at it, it looks crazy," senior EDL engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Adam Steltzner said in a new video by NASA on the rover landing. "It is the result of reasoned engineering thought, but it still looks crazy."

The recently released video (see below) outlines exactly how crazy the feat of landing the rover actually is. Named Curiosity, the rover must tear through Mars' atmosphere, which takes up to seven minutes. However, transmitting a signal to Earth of its progress takes 14 minutes because of the distance between the planets.

"When we first get word that we've touched the top of atmosphere the vehicle has been alive or dead for at least seven minutes," Steltzner said.

In those seven minutes, NASA engineers have set up a complex sequence of procedures that must be followed in order to avoid disaster. First, they will deploy a parachute to slow the more than 1,000 mph descent. Then cutting off the chute, they'll fire up rockets to slow the vertical velocity even more, and lastly they will lower the rover on a tether into a crater to avoid a harmful dust cloud.

"If any one thing doesn't work just right, it's game over," EDL engineer Tom Rivellini said in the video.

The most complex and scientifically powerful robotic spacecraft ever built to explore the surface of another planet, Curiosity cost NASA $2.5 billion to build. It was launched last November, beginning its voyage to Mars and its mission is to look for organic compounds and signs of past or present habitability.

The rover is the size of a small car and weighs 1,982 pounds. It is equipped with 17 cameras, a 7-foot-long robot arm, and a suite of 10 state-of-the-art scientific sensors and experiments weighing 125 pounds. In contrast, NASA's hugely successful Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, each weighed about 385 pounds, including just 20 pounds of miniaturized science hardware.

Curiosity is set to touch down at 10:31 p.m. PDT on August 5.

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Dream Chaser Flight Vehicle Scales Rocky Mountain Summits

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) Space Systems' Dream Chaser design passed one of its most complex tests to date with a successful captive-carry test conducted near the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Jefferson County, Colo., on May 29.

Just like the space shuttle before it, SNC's Dream Chaser will go through extensive testing to prove its wings will work. The company built a full-scale flight vehicle of the Dream Chaser spacecraft to carry out the evaluations.

Backdropped by skyscraping summits, an Erickson Air-Crane helicopter lifted the full-scale orbital crew vehicle to verify proper aerodynamic flight performance. Future plans call for the flight vehicle to be released to evaluate the design's handling during the landing phase of a mission.

The captive-carry test marks the completion of another milestone for the Dream Chaser Space System as part of the Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) agreement with NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP).

"This is a very positive success for the Dream Chaser team and their innovative approach. I applaud and encourage the designers and engineers to continue their efforts in meeting the objectives of the rest of their CCDev2 milestones," said Ed Mango, CCP program manager.

SNC is one of seven companies working to develop commercial crew transportation capabilities to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from low Earth orbit and the International Space Station. The Dream Chaser is designed to carry as many as seven astronauts to space, and is the only spacecraft under CCDev2 that incorporates wings and is designed to land on a conventional runway.

"The successful captive-carry flight test of the Dream Chaser full-scale flight vehicle marks the beginning of SNC's flight test program; a program that could culminate in crewed missions to the International Space Station for NASA," said Steve Lindsey, former NASA astronaut and head of Dream Chaser's flight operations for SNC.

Before the company took to the Rocky Mountain skies, it conducted an interface test to demonstrate the release mechanism between the Dream Chaser prototype and the heavy-lift helicopter. It also conducted a ground-based landing gear drop test and a thorough flight test readiness review with engineers, technical experts and representatives from SNC and NASA.

Another recent milestone included an evaluation of the separation system compatibility of Dream Chaser with its initial launch vehicle, the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, which would be used to release the spacecraft from the rocket’s second stage after it has placed the spacecraft into low Earth orbit.

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Forest Recovering from Mt. St. Helens Explosion

Mt. St. Helens exploded 32 years ago on May 18. It began with a small series of earthquakes and culminated with the volcano erupting, a cataclysmic collapse of the flank of the mountain and the largest landslide in recorded history.

This time series of data shows the explosion and subsequent recovery of life on the volcano. Landsat, a satellite program operated by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey acquired the images between 1979 and 2011. In them, scientists have an unprecedented opportunity to witness how life recovers from devastation.

The animation begins with vegetation as red because early Landsat satellites couldn't 'see' blue light. That changed with launch of Landsat 5 in 1984 and its natural color abilities.

The collapse of the mountain was like uncorking a bottle of champagne. Fifty-seven people died when rocks, hot ash, gas and steam exploded out of the Earth. The blast debris, which is gray in the images, covered over 230 square miles (600 square kilometers) and blew down 4 billion board-feet of timber.

The landslide buried 14 miles (23 kilometers) of the North Fork Toutle River with an average of 150 feet (46 meters) of rocks, dirt and uprooted trees. In some places the debris was as deep as 600 feet (180 meters) high.

The squarish beige patches visible in the upper right and lower left of the animation show logging on the mountain both before and after the eruption.

This image was created using the reflected light from the near infrared, green and red portions of the spectrum from instruments aboard Landsat satellites 2 and 3 and from the blue, green and red portions of the spectrum from instruments aboard Landsat satellites 5 and 7.

Landsat 2 launched in 1975 and provided scientific data for 7 years until 1982. Landsat 3 launched in 1978 and ran for 5 years until1983. NASA launched Landsat 5 in 1984 and it ran for a record-breaking 28 years. Landsat 7 is still up and running; it was launched in 1999. The data from these and other Landsat satellites has been instrumental in our understanding of forest health, storm damage, agricultural trends, urban growth and many other ongoing changes to our land. 

Nasa to put man on asteroid by 2020s

Washington: Nasa is reportedly training a team of astronauts for a mission to land on an asteroid by the end of the next decade.The US space agency is training the astronauts to land on an asteroid to explore its surface, search for minerals and even learn the skills they may need to destroy it should one pose a threat to the Earth, 'The Daily Telegraph' reported.

Nasa plans to send the team to make contact with an asteroid up to three million miles away by the late 2020s; it would take them far beyond the current limit of the Moon, which is 239,000 miles from Earth.Travelling at around 50,000 miles per hour around the Sun with almost non-existent gravity due to their small size, landing safely on these space rocks will present a significant challenge.

But, Major Tim Peake, a British astronaut with the European Space Agency, who is also being trained for the asteroid mission, said: "With the technology we have available and are developing today, an asteroid mission of up to a year is definitely achievable."He added: "Asteroids are interesting on a number of different levels. Nasa is focused on the science you can achieve as asteroids are essentially a historical record of billions of years of universe where we can take samples from.

"These objects are also coming extremely close to Earth all the time, but we rarely hear about it. With enough warning we would probably send a robotic mission to deflect an asteroid, but if something is spotted late... we may have to look at manned missions to deflect it."That is when the skills we are learning about how to work on an asteroid could be useful."

In fact, Nasa hopes to launch an unmanned spacecraft that will use a robotic arm to collect samples from an asteroid by 2016 before sending a manned mission by the late 2020s. A manned mission will aim to rendezvous with an asteroid up to three million miles from the Earth, taking around a year to make the entire round trip.

NASA Spacecraft Detects Changes in Martian Sand Dunes

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth.

This is unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, is only about one percent as dense, and its high-speed winds are less frequent and weaker than Earth's.

For years, researchers debated whether sand dunes observed on Mars were mostly fossil features related to past climate, rather than currently active. In the past two years, researchers using images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera have detected and reported sand movement.

Now, scientists using HiRISE images have determined that entire dunes as thick as 200 feet (61 meters) are moving as coherent units across the Martian landscape. The study was published online today by the journal Nature.

"This exciting discovery will inform scientists trying to better understand the changing surface conditions of Mars on a more global scale," said Doug McCuistion, director, NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Washington. "This improved understanding of surface dynamics will provide vital information in planning future robotic and human Mars exploration missions."

Researchers analyzed before-and-after images using a new software tool developed at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif. The tool measured changes in the position of sand ripples, revealing the ripples move faster the higher up they are on a dune.

The study examined images taken in 2007 and 2010 of the Nili Patera sand dune field located near the Martian equator. By correlating the ripples' movement to their position on the dune, the analysis determined the entire dunes are moving. This allows researchers to estimate the volume, or flux, of moving sand.

"We chose Nili Patera because we knew there was sand motion going on there, and we could quantify it," said Nathan Bridges, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., and lead author of the Nature paper. "The Nili dunes also are similar to dunes in places like Antarctica and to other locations on Mars."

The study adds important information about the pace at which blowing sand could be actively eroding rocks on Mars. Using the new information about the volume of sand that is moving, scientists estimate rocks in Nili Patera would be worn away at about the same pace as rocks near sand dunes in Antarctica, where similar sand fluxes occur.

"Our new data shows wind activity is indeed a major agent of evolution of the landscape on Mars," said Jean-Philippe Avouac, Caltech team leader. "This is important because it tells us something about the current state of Mars and how the planet is working today, geologically." 

Boeing, a NASA commercial crew partner, completes parachute test with United Launch Alliance rocket

The Boeing Company has completed the second parachute drop test for its Crew Space Transportation (CST) spacecraft. This latest parachute test comes as part of the company’s effort to develop commercial crew transportation capabilities to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit (LEO) and the International Space Station (ISS).

During the test, a helicopter lifted the CST-100 crew capsule to roughly 14,000 feet above the Delmar Dry Lake Bed near Alamo, Nev. Staff initiated a drogue parachute deployment sequence, and deployment of the main parachute. The capsule descended to a smooth ground landing that was cushioned by six inflated air bags, demonstrating the performance of the landing system.

"Boeing's parachute demonstrations are a clear sign NASA is moving in the right direction of enabling the American aerospace transportation industry to flourish under this partnership," Ed Mango, NASA's commercial crew program manager, says. "The investments we're making now are enabling this new path forward of getting our crews to LEO and potentially the space station as soon as possible."

Boeing engineers designed the company's CST system to be a reusable, capsule-shaped spacecraft capable of taking up to seven people, or a combination of people and cargo, to and from low-Earth orbit, including the space station. HDT Airborne Systems of Solon, Ohio, designed, fabricated, and integrated the parachute system, including the two drogue parachutes. ILC Dover of Frederica, Del., designed and fabricated the landing air bag system.

The first test, held on 3 April 2012, validated the architecture and deployment of the parachute system, characterized pyrotechnic shock loads, confirmed parachute size and design, and identified potential forward compartment packaging and deployment issues. The company inspected and re-packed the full parachute system for this second test.

"This second parachute drop test validates Boeing's innovative system architecture and deployment plan," says John Mulholland, vice president and program manager of Boeing Commercial Programs. "Boeing's completion of this milestone reaffirms our commitment to provide safe, reliable and affordable crewed access to space."

The company has scheduled additional tests to be performed in 2012 that will provide more data on elements of the spacecraft's design.

Dragon Expected to Set Historic Course

As scheduled, the mission will be the first to see a privately built and funded spacecraft rendezvous with the station. If successful, the mission is expected to pave the way toward regular operational commercial cargo missions.

"It's almost like the lead-up to Apollo, in my mind," said Mike Horkachuck, NASA's project executive for SpaceX. "You had Mercury then you had Gemini and eventually you had Apollo. This would be similar in the sense that, we're not going to the moon or anything as spectacular as that, but we are in the beginnings of commercializing space. This may be the Mercury equivalent to eventually flying crew and then eventually leading to, in the long run, passenger travel in space."

California-based Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, is preparing to launch an ambitious mission to dock its Dragon spacecraft to the space station and return it to Earth. The spacecraft will not have a crew, but will carry about 1,200 pounds of cargo that the astronauts and cosmonauts living on the station will be able to use. The capsule will go into space atop a Falcon 9 rocket also built by SpaceX.

Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX and the company's chief designer, said his team is not taking the mission's objectives for granted, particularly since both the Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket are relatively new to spaceflight.

"We have launched the rocket twice and the spacecraft once so they are pretty new, and the proximity operations will be our first test in space," Musk said following the Flight Readiness Review. "I think it’s important to appreciate that this is fairly tricky and it is important to remember that we are hitting a target within a few inches while it moves over 17,000 mph."

Because the mission is a test flight, the cargo is not material deemed critical to the crew, Horkachuck said. Launch is targeted for May 7 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, within sight of the launch pads the space shuttles used to carry the station's components into orbit. There also are several tests and reviews coming up later this month similar to those performed ahead of space shuttle missions.

If this mission is successful, the Dragon is expected to become operational and launch regular supply runs to the station. Unlike any other cargo carrier, the Dragon can bring things back to Earth, too, a boon for scientists whose research is taking place on the orbiting laboratory.

SpaceX already has two successful Falcon 9 launches to its credit, along with a history making demonstration of the Dragon capsule that in December 2010, became the first privately built and operated spacecraft to be launched to and recovered from Earth orbit.

The mission is expected to last about 21 days, Horkachuck said. 

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NASA's Spitzer Finds Galaxy With Split Personality

While some galaxies are rotund and others are slender disks like our spiral Milky Way, new observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show that the Sombrero galaxy is both.The galaxy, which is a round elliptical galaxy with a thin disk embedded inside, is one of the first known to exhibit characteristics of the two different types. The findings will lead to a better understanding of galaxy evolution, a topic still poorly understood.

"The Sombrero is more complex than previously thought," said Dimitri Gadotti of the European Southern Observatory in Chile and lead author of a new paper on the findings appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society."The only way to understand all we know about this galaxy is to think of it as two galaxies, one inside the other."

The Sombrero galaxy, also known as NGC 4594, is located 28 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo.From our viewpoint on Earth, we can see the thin edge of its flat disk and a central bulge of stars, making it resemble a wide-brimmed hat. Astronomers do not know whether the Sombrero's disk is shaped like a ring or a spiral, but agree it belongs to the disk class.

"Spitzer is helping to unravel secrets behind an object that has been imaged thousands of times," said Sean Carey of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena."It is intriguing Spitzer can read the fossil record of events that occurred billions of years ago within this beautiful and archetypal galaxy."

Spitzer captures a different view of the galaxy than visible-light telescopes. In visible views, the galaxy appears to be immersed in a glowing halo, which scientists had thought was relatively light and small.With Spitzer's infrared vision, a different view emerges. Spitzer sees old stars through the dust and reveals the halo has the right size and mass to be a giant elliptical galaxy.

While it is tempting to think the giant elliptical swallowed a spiral disk, astronomers say this is highly unlikely because that process would have destroyed the disk structure. Instead, one scenario they propose is that a giant elliptical galaxy was inundated with gas more than nine billion years ago.Early in the history of our universe, networks of gas clouds were common, and they sometimes fed growing galaxies, causing them to bulk up.

The gas would have been pulled into the galaxy by gravity, falling into orbit around the center and spinning out into a flat disk. Stars would have formed from the gas in the disk."This poses all sorts of questions," said Ruben Sanchez-Janssen from the European Southern Observatory, co-author of the study. "How did such a large disk take shape and survive inside such a massive elliptical? How unusual is such a formation process?"

Researchers say the answers could help them piece together how other galaxies evolve. Another galaxy, called Centaurus A, appears also to be an elliptical galaxy with a disk inside it. But its disk does not contain many stars.

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Study Finds Surprising Arctic Methane Emission Source

The fragile and rapidly changing Arctic region is home to large reservoirs of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. As Earth’s climate warms, the methane, frozen in reservoirs stored in Arctic tundra soils or marine sediments, is vulnerable to being released into the atmosphere, where it can add to global warming. Now a multi-institutional study by Eric Kort of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has uncovered a surprising and potentially important new source of Arctic methane: the ocean itself.

Kort, a JPL postdoctoral scholar affiliated with the Keck Institute of Space Studies at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, led the analysis while he was a student at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. The study was conducted as part of the HIAPER Pole-to-Pole Observations (HIPPO) airborne campaign, which flew a specially instrumented National Science Foundation (NSF)/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Gulfstream V aircraft over the Pacific Ocean from nearly pole to pole, collecting atmospheric measurements from Earth’s surface to an altitude of 8.7 miles (14 kilometers). The campaign, primarily funded by NSF with additional funding from NCAR, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was designed to improve our understanding of where greenhouse gases are originating and being stored in the Earth system.

During five HIPPO flights over the Arctic from 2009 to 2010, Kort’s team observed increased methane levels while flying at low altitudes over the remote Arctic Ocean, north of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. The methane level was about one-half percent larger than normal background levels.

But where was the methane coming from? The team detected no carbon monoxide in the atmosphere that would point to possible contributions from human combustion activities. In addition, based on the time of year, location and nature of the emissions, it was extremely unlikely the methane was coming from high-latitude wetlands or geologic reservoirs.

By comparing locations of the enhanced methane levels with airborne measurements of carbon monoxide, water vapor and ozone, they pinpointed a source: the ocean surface, through cracks in Arctic sea ice and areas of partial sea ice cover. The cracks expose open Arctic seawater, allowing the ocean to interact with the air, and methane in the surface waters to escape into the atmosphere. The team detected no enhanced methane levels when flying over areas of solid ice.

Kort said previous studies by others had measured high concentrations of methane in Arctic surface waters, but before now no one had predicted that these enhanced levels of ocean methane would find their way to the overlying atmosphere.

So how is the methane being produced? The scientists aren’t yet sure, but Kort hinted biological production from living things in Arctic surface waters may be a likely culprit. “It’s possible that as large areas of sea ice melt and expose more ocean water, methane production may increase, leading to larger methane emissions,” he said. He said future studies will be needed to understand the enhanced methane levels and associated emission processes and to measure their total contribution to overall Arctic methane levels.

“While the methane levels we detected weren’t particularly large, the potential source region, the Arctic Ocean, is vast, so our finding could represent a noticeable new global source of methane,” he added. “As Arctic sea ice cover continues to decline in a warming climate, this source of methane may well increase. It’s important that we recognize the potential contribution from this source of methane to avoid falsely interpreting any changes observed in Arctic methane levels in the future.”

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A farewell to Star Trek's real life Shuttle Enterprise

It was six years after the final airing of the original Star Trek on television and the trekkie movement was alive and well. After a successful run in syndication, Paramount Pictures had announced and began script production on the franchise's first major film titled "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." The victory for show creator Gene Rodenberry and trek fans alike would be one of many in the Star Trek universe.

Fast forward less than a year to Rockwell International's facilities in Palmdale, California. Preparations to unveil to the public the first NASA Space Shuttle were underway. A formal dedication for Shuttle Constitution would be held on September 17th, 1976, on Constitution day.

Designated OV-101 (Orbiter Vehicle 101), Constitution was built to perform test flights within Earth's atmosphere. Designed without physical engines, a heat shield and many systems required for space flight, the space vehicle would never leave Earth, making it the only space shuttle never to fly in space.

While a full campaign of testing was fully underway, another campaign 3000 miles away would define Constitution forever. Momentum was building around a write-in campaign to request a name change of Shuttle Constitution. Without any official mention by The White House or President Ford's staff, over 400,000 Star Trek fans were petitioning the President to reconsider the name Constitution for America's first space shuttle. Their request was simple - call it Enterprise.

President Ford, during World War II, was stationed on the aircraft carrier Monterey, which coincidentally had served with the USS Enterprise. Stating that he was "partial to the name," he overrode the name Constitution and officially dubbed OV-101 Enterprise.

On Constitution Day, 1976, special guests along with NASA officials and President Ford dedicated the first in the fleet. Those special guests were from a not so distant television series. Joining NASA Administrator James Fletcher were Star Trek USS Enterprise crew members DeForest Kelley (Dr. "Bones" McCoy), George Takei (Mr. Sulu), James Doohan (Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott), Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura), Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), Gene Rodenberry (Series Creator), and Walter Koenig (Ensign Pavel Checkov).

Approach & Landing Tests

Less than five months after the formal dedication, Enterprise would take her maiden flight atop a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft for a series of unmanned and unpowered tests to determine structural loads, handling, and monitoring of newly built ground systems. It was also an opportunity to test the ferry flight characteristics of the mated 747 and the shuttle itself. On August 12, 1977 Enterprise flew on its own for the first time with Commander Fred W. Haise, Jr. (former Apollo 13 Lunar Module Pilot) and Pilot C. Gordon Fullerton at the controls. The subsequent test flights would serve as the model for future shuttle landings after orbiting missions.

Retirement & Relocation

When all flight tests were completed, Enterprise was retired from duty. The vehicle had certain components removed which could be reused on on future shuttle missions. Enterprise then was sent on an international tour visiting the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, and within the United States, California, Alabama and Louisiana. Enterprise was sent via barge to Louisiana for display during the 1984 World's Fair. While in California it was used as a fit-check to the never-used shuttle launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

On November 18, 1985 Enterprise was ferried to Washington, D.C., where it became property of the Smithsonian Institution and sat in storage until the opening of the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar at the Smithsonian's National Air & Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center in November of 2004.

On April 12, 2011, NASA officially announced the winning facilities that will permanently display the retired shuttle fleet. Enterprise, which was on display at the Udvar-Hazy center would be replaced by Shuttle Discovery and sent to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City.

Enterprise will depart Dulles International Airport and arrive at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on April 23rd, 2012 marking the first phase of relocation to the shuttle's new home. In June, Enterprise will move by barge to the Intrepid, going past such iconic landmarks including the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center.

"When the Enterprise touches down at JFK [Airport], it will signify the first step of its final journey to educate and inspire millions of people around the world about the groundbreaking work of the NASA space program," said U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D – New York). "The Enterprise will immediately become an iconic and must-see destination in New York that will further contribute to our reputation as the greatest city in the world."

When the barge trip along the Hudson River is completed, Enterprise will be raised by crane to a place near the deck of the USS Intrepid, where it will be on public display in a temporary climate controlled facility until a permanent facility can be constructed.

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