8/10/12 news

 
 
Happy Friday everyone.    Have a safe and great weekend.
 
 
 
Friday, August 10, 2012
 
JSC TODAY HEADLINES
1.            Smokey Bear Goes Where No Bear Has Gone Before -- Watch it Here
2.            Just in Time for Back to School -- A PSA From Astronaut Suni Williams
3.            Starport's The Inner Space Mind/Body Studio -- Free Demo Classes
4.            Upcoming Inclusion and Innovation Classes
5.            Building 1 Café Catering
6.            Mission To Mars Family Showcase -- Aug. 16
7.            Don't Wait! Request JSC Library Training for Your Organization
8.            EVA Development and Verification Testing at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab
9.            Beginners Ballroom Dance -- Last Chance for Summer Classes
10.          Breaking Free of Self-Limiting Male Roles
11.          Did You Get Passed Over Because of Your Communication Skills?
12.          Space Available -- Cryogenic Engineering
________________________________________     QUOTE OF THE DAY
“ It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”
 
-- Winston Churchill
________________________________________
1.            Smokey Bear Goes Where No Bear Has Gone Before -- Watch it Here
Yesterday, Smokey Bear celebrated his 68th birthday with a special visit to the International Space Station Flight Control Room. Watch yesterday's unprecedented festivities at: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=150135131
 
On May 14, Smokey went where no bear had gone before when Flight Engineer Joe Acaba and the Expedition 31 crew chose a plush Smokey doll to be the team's launch mascot. As part of the birthday celebration, Acaba beamed down special birthday wishes for Smokey Bear from the space station. For 68 years, Smokey Bear has been promoting fire safety and prevention through the message, "Only You Can Prevent Wildfires." Watch Acaba's message here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=14555&me...
 
And while we're all things "Smokey," ISS Update featured Jeffrey Miller from the U.S. Forest Service inside Mission Control Center speaking on the topic of the famous bear. See that interview here:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=14555&me...
 
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111
 
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2.            Just in Time for Back to School -- A PSA From Astronaut Suni Williams
In this Public Service Announcement (PSA), NASA astronaut Suni Williams stresses the importance of studying science, technology, engineering and math. What you learn in school today will help you reach for the stars tomorrow!
 
Share this video with students you know or others that could use a little inspiration to reach their education goals:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=150127121
 
JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111
 
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3.            Starport's The Inner Space Mind/Body Studio -- Free Demo Classes
Introducing "The Inner Space" - the newest addition to Starport's fitness offerings. We recently held a ribbon cutting for our new yoga and pilates studio, where we will create an entire mind/body experience with an exciting new program. Membership packages can be purchased for half price through the month of August for the mind/body program set to launch in early September.
 
During the week from Aug. 13 to 19, we will hold free demo classes for anyone who would like to experience what we will soon be offering. Space is limited, so please sign up at the Gilruth front desk to participate in the demo classes. Visit http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/MindBody/ for more information.
 
Shelly Haralson x39168 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/
 
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4.            Upcoming Inclusion and Innovation Classes
The courses listed below expand on Steve Robbins' principles by focusing on unconscious bias and its impact on employee engagement and productivity.
 
Increasing Inclusion and Engagement:
Employees and supervisors are moving so fast to meet deadlines that we are unaware of how our behavior impacts others. Participants will:
- Increase team cohesiveness
- Understand the bottom-line impact of employee engagement
- Learn to connect individual work-life passions with the mission of the department and agency
 
Sept. 26 -- Half-day sessions for employees
- AM session https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
- PM session https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
 
Sept. 27 -- 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. supervisor session https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
 
Making Purposeful Connections:
At the heart of diversity and inclusion is the connection employees feel to their colleagues and overall organization. Supervisors/leads will learn about "The Connection Culture" that every organization needs to make everyone feel connected so they thrive in their work environment.
 
Sept. 18 -- 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHEDULED_...
 
Cheryl Vaught x34961
 
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5.            Building 1 Café Catering
The Building 1 café now offers catering for offices located within the building. Please call Janet at x36175 for more details and pricing. Food can be prepared and delivered to any room within Building 1. Also check out the daily lunch specials on the white board just outside the café. We also have fresh popcorn, sodas, coffee and other refreshments daily.
 
Janet x36175
 
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6.            Mission To Mars Family Showcase -- Aug. 16
The JSC Education Office invites you to share your mission designs and creations from the "Summer of Curiosity" Mission to Mars Challenge at the Voyage Back to School event on Aug. 16 at Space Center Houston!
 
Not only are all JSC families invited to this free celebration, but any family who participated in the "Summer of Curiosity" activities may submit pictures of the process and bring completed projects for display. If your friends or family outside of JSC took part, please let them know that they too can join in the fun!
 
If you would like to bring items for display or submit photos, please contact Patricia Moore at x36686 or: patricia.l.moore@nasa.gov
 
Please visit http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/johnson/student-activities/summ... for more information.
 
Patricia Moore x36686
 
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7.            Don't Wait! Request JSC Library Training for Your Organization
JSC organizations can request training sessions for their groups. A librarian can customize the session depending upon your organization's needs -- whether it's a general overview of resources (databases, e-books, JSC documents, imagery and video repositories) or a tailored session focusing on a specific area. This can include aerospace medicine, engineering, historical resources and more. Librarians can train employees via WebEx or in person.
 
Schedule a session today by emailing the Scientific and Technical Information Center at:
jsc-sticnter@mail.nasa.gov
 
Or call 281-483-4245.
 
The JSC Library is a service of JSC's Information Resources Directorate: http://ird.jsc.nasa.gov
 
Ebony Fondren x32490 http://library.jsc.nasa.gov
 
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8.            EVA Development and Verification Testing at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab
Join us as Juniper Jairala, Crew and Thermal Systems Division project and test engineer on the ExtraVehicular Activity (EVA) Development and Verification Test Team, describes the requirements and process for performing a neutral buoyancy test, including: typical hardware and support equipment requirements; personnel and administrative resource requirements; examples of International Space Station systems and operations that are evaluated; and typical operational objectives that NASA evaluates. She will also discuss the new and potential types of uses for the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, including those by non-NASA customers.
 
Date: Tuesday, Aug. 14
Time: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Location: Building 5 South, Room 3102 (corner of Gamma Link/5th Street/third floor).
 
For additional information, contact any spacesuit knowledge capture point of contact: Cinda
Chullen (x38384); J. Jairala (281-461-5794); Vladenka Oliva (281) 461-5681; or Rose Bitterly.
 
Rose Bitterly 281-461-5795
 
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9.            Beginners Ballroom Dance -- Last Chance for Summer Classes
Do you feel like you have two left feet? Well, Starport has the perfect summer program for you: Beginners Ballroom Dance!
 
This eight-week class introduces you to the various types of ballroom dance. Students will learn the secrets of a good lead and following, as well as the ability to identify the beat of the music. This class is easy, and participants have fun as they learn. JSC friends and family are welcome.
 
Registration cost:
- $110 per couple (ends Aug. 13)
 
Two class sessions available:
- Tuesdays, 7:30 to 8:30 p.m., starting Aug. 14
- Thursdays, 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., starting Aug. 16
 
All classes are taught in the Gilruth Center's dance studio.
 
To register or for additional information, please contact the Gilruth Center's information desk at: 281-483-0304
 
Steve Schade x30304 http://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/Fitness/RecreationClasses/RecreationProgram...
 
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10.          Breaking Free of Self-Limiting Male Roles
This is a meeting for the male population at JSC to discuss ideas and suggestions on issues related to male stereotypes. Takis Bogdanos, LPC-S of the JSC Employee Assistance Program, will facilitate the discussion and offer tools. Through conversation and feedback, we can expand our view of the male role on how to manage life more resourcefully. Some of the "men's issues" we discuss include work and responsibility, relationships and parenting.
 
Date: Thursday, Aug. 16
Time: 12 noon to 1 p.m.
Location: Building 32, Room 132
 
Lorrie Bennett x36130
 
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11.          Did You Get Passed Over Because of Your Communication Skills?
Toastmasters can help! We have a program that will help you develop both your leadership and communication skills. Come join us -- visitors are always welcome. The Space Explorers Toastmasters Club meets every Friday from 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. in Building 30A, Conference Room 1010.
 
Carolyn Jarrett x37594
 
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12.          Space Available -- Cryogenic Engineering
Learning basic engineering and science skills, Cryogenic Engineering supplies a brief history of cryogenic engineering, which includes useful design guidelines for selecting the right system, either for procurement or in-house construction. Explains general rules concerning the properties and behaviors of cryogenic fluids and materials used in any cryogenic system. Discusses the thermal properties of materials at low temperatures. Elucidates the principles and techniques of high-quality insulation.
 
Examines both proven and new techniques in the field of cryogenic instrumentation and provides examples and sample data calculations. Considers the processing and liquefaction of natural gas and more.
 
This course is open for self-registration in SATERN and is available to civil servants and contractors.
 
Dates: Monday through Friday, Aug. 27 to 31
Location: Building 20, Room 205
 
Zeeaa Quadri x39723 https://satern.nasa.gov/learning/user/deeplink_redirect.jsp?linkId=SCHED...
 
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________________________________________
JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. To see an archive of previous JSC Today announcements, go to http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/pao/news/jsctoday/archives.
 
 
 
 
NASA TV: Noon Central (1 EDT) – MSL/”Curiosity” post-landing briefing  - Sol 5 Update
 
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT…
 
The view from ISS
Here’s a great time-lapse video of views of cities, aurora, lightning and other sights.
 
Happy 68th Birthday Smokey Bear
Smokey Bear visited JSC Thursday in celebration of his 68th birthday. One stop included Mission Control and the US Forest Services' Jeffrey Miller was there to talk about it.
 
Astronaut Suni Williams Talks Education
In this public service announcement, Suni stresses the importance of studying science, technology, engineering and math.
 
Human Spaceflight News
Friday – August 10, 2012
 

The first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by Curiosity made from thumbnail versions of images taken by the Mast Camera. www.nasa.gov/mars
 
HEADLINES AND LEADS
 
Commercial crew safety certification to run in parallel with spacecraft development
 
Dan Leone - Space News
 
With an eye toward buying its first astronaut taxi services by 2017, NASA on Aug. 8 unveiled details about a safety certification process that will be conducted in parallel with the industry-led development of new crewed space transportation systems. Under more than $1 billion Space Act Agreements awarded Aug. 3, Boeing Space Exploration, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) and Sierra Nevada Space Systems are developing crew transportation systems designed to carry astronauts to the international space station. These development efforts will be almost entirely guided by industry, with input from NASA. In parallel with the design phase, however, NASA plans to conduct a government-run safety certification process under separate agreements it calls Certification Products Contracts, or CPCs.
 
Blue Origin didn't apply for NASA human-launch contracts, so what's next?
 
Steve Wilhelm - Puget Sound Business Journal
 
People from Blue Origin, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ enigmatic space launch company, aren’t sharing their plans for the company, now that three of its competitors are finalists for a contract to restore human space launch capability to NASA. It’s no secret, and has been confirmed by NASA, that Blue Origin didn’t apply to win the agency’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability initiative, CCiCap, which on Aug. 3 was won by The Boeing Co., Space X, and Sierra Nevada Corp. The contracts are worth about $1.1 billion.
 
Blast off, once again, for one Honolulu biotech company
 
Teri Okita - Hawaii News Now
 
As the Mars Rover Curiosity continues to astound with pictures of the Red Planet, a Honolulu-based biotech company is taking on its own mission to the Final Frontier. NASA awarded Tissue Genesis a two-million dollar contract for further study on how human stem cells react in space. Tissue Genesis team members thought they hit pay gold last summer - as part of the payload aboard the final, U.S. space shuttle flight, but they may be one-upping themselves now. NASA scientists from California's Ames Research Center came to Hawaii recently to award the company that contract for its BIOS project. "What the BIOS project is, with the International Space Station being a lab, you have the capability to do longer term experiments in space," says Tissue Genesis CEO, Anton Krucky.
 
NASA astronaut Don Pettit demonstrates what yo-yos look like in space
 
William Goodman - CBS News
 
I'm sure like myself, most of you probably have some pretty random and bizarre questions hit you from time to time. Luckily we live an era where a quick Google search will often answer most of these queries. However, if you've ever happened to wonder what yo-yos might look like in space, you've been out of luck... until now.  Can you guess where this post is going? That's right - to space!  NASA astronaut Don Pettit recently decided to take a little of his off-duty time to demonstrate his "microgravity yo-yo skills" and post it on YouTube for all of us to see. And it turns out that when you drop gravity from the equation, you end up with a whole new array of fun tricks to show off (and "around the world" takes on a whole new meaning). A big triple-rainbow salute goes out to Don Pettit from all of us here at The Feed for this fun and fascinating demonstration with a little physics education thrown in for good measure! (NO FURTHER TEXT)
 
New Space Station Video Of Earth Shows Storms, City Light
 
Carl Franzen - Talking Points Memo
 
While the world gawks and gushes over new images of Mars taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover, NASA is not neglecting our own planet. Far from it: The agency on Wednesday released a new video composed of time-lapse photography of the Earth as seen by the International Space Station from its vantage point over 200 miles above the surface.
 
Small test rocket veers out of control, crashes
 
William Harwood – CBS News
 
A small vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket being used to test advanced technologies veered off course an instant after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center Thursday, crashed and exploded in a spectacular burst of fire and smoke. There were no injuries or other property damage, officials said. The Morpheus rocket was designed and built by engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to test advanced technologies and approaches to integrated propulsion and guidance, navigation and control that could be used in the future for cargo missions to the moon.
 
Prototype lander Morpheus crashes, explodes at KSC
NASA's craft malfunctions a second into test flight
 
James Dean - Florida Today
 
An apparent hardware malfunction caused a prototype NASA lander to crash and explode seconds into a test flight Thursday at Kennedy Space Center, destroying the vehicle. Around 12:40 p.m., the lander called Morpheus rose 10 feet from its pad near the center of the shuttle runway before it turned over, fell to the ground and burst into flames. A dramatic, larger explosion followed about 12 seconds later, according to video of the event streamed live online and broadcast later in the afternoon on NASA TV.
 
NASA's Morpheus lander in fiery crash at Cape Canaveral
 
Tom Brown - Reuters
 
NASA'S Project Morpheus lander, an experimental vehicle designed with a view toward future U.S. space missions beyond Earth's orbit, crashed and burst into flames at the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida on Thursday. During a so-called autonomous free-flight test, NASA said the vehicle lifted off the ground successfully but "then experienced a hardware component failure, which prevented it from maintaining stable flight."
 
NASA lander blows up during test
 
Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log
 
A prototype lander for future moon missions went awry and blew up today during its first free-flight test at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the space agency reported. The $7 million Morpheus lander project is an experiment aimed at testing autonomous navigation systems and other spaceflight technologies. Morpheus has undergone a series of less ambitious tests, including its first tethered flight at Kennedy Space Center last Friday. During that test, the craft was suspended from a crane on a safety tether. Today's test was aimed at pushing the envelope further by letting the methane-powered craft off its leash. Video of the test shows the craft rising off its pad, then turning to the side and plunging back down to the ground in flames. Moments later, the entire vehicle explodes.
 
NASA Moon Lander Prototype Explodes in Test Flight
 
Mike Wall - Space.com
 
An experimental, "green" NASA lander crashed during its first free-flight test Thursday, erupting in a ball of flame when it hit the ground. The unmanned Morpheus lander, which could one day deliver payloads to the moon or other solar system bodies, barely got off the pad around 12:40 p.m. EDT (1640 GMT) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida before toppling over and exploding.
 
Los Angeles Warned About Endeavour's Trip Through The Streets
 
Brian Williams - NBC News
 
"One of the old shuttles, the Endeavour, is headed to Southern California. Traffic there being what it is, they're warning people that on October 12th it's going make a 12-mile two-day journey at two miles an hour, so average LA speeds over surface streets from LAX to the California Science Center. Los Angeles, you've been warned." (NO FURTHER TEXT)
 
NASA’s experimental Morpheus lander explodes during test flight
 
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy
 
Project Morpheus is a new, test spacecraft being developed at Johnson Space Center. In July a prototype of Morpheus was moved from Houston to Kennedy Space Center for additional field testing. After a tether test flight on August 3, and subsequent testing, the Morpheus lander exploded during an experimental flight today. Morpheus features a lot of experiment technology, including new green propellant propulsion systems and autonomous landing and hazard detection technology. With a budget of less than $7 million over 2.5 years (pretty sure this does not include most labor), the Morpheus project is considered lean and low-cost by NASA. Today’s crash is a reminder that spaceflight remains a real challenge.
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MEANWHILE, ON MARS…
 
Rover prepped for software upgrade; snaps color panorama
 
William Harwood - CBS News
 
Engineers are gearing up to flush entry, descent and landing software from the Curiosity rover's central computer and replace it with programming optimized for surface operations, a complex bit of electronic brain surgery that will take several days to complete, mission managers said Thursday. In the meantime, the rover has snapped its first 360-degree color panorama of its surroundings in Gale Crater and beamed down an initial set of low-resolution thumbnail frames that provide a hint of things to come. The full-resolution frames will be eight times sharper than the thumbnails, but they must be moved from the camera's memory to the main computer for later relay to Earth.
 
Mars rover sends back 1st 360-degree color view
 
Alicia Chang - Associated Press
 
The photo-snapping rover Curiosity returned another postcard from Mars on Thursday — the first 360-degree color panorama of Gale Crater. Scientists admired the sweeping vista. In the distance was the base of Mount Sharp, a three-mile-high mountain rising from the crater floor, where the six-wheel rover planned to go. "It's very exciting to think about getting there, but it is quite a ways away," said mission scientist Dawn Sumner of the University of California, Davis.
 
Mars Curiosity rover snaps self-portrait and color panorama image
 
Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times
 
Just as teens hold up their cell phones to snap a Myspace-worthy photo, the Mars Science Laboratory rover has taken its own self-portrait: a mosaic of images taken as the rover looks down from its navigation cameras, located high up in the robot’s mast. The rover, nicknamed Curiosity, has also used its Mast Camera to send back a lower-resolution 360-degree color panorama of its surroundings in the landing site in Gale Crater.
 
Mars rover Curiosity sends back more postcards from Red Planet
 
Steve Gorman - Reuters
 
The science rover Curiosity took a break from instrument checks on its third full day on Mars to beam back more pictures from the Red Planet, including its first self-portrait and a 360-degree color view of its home in Gale Crater, NASA said on Thursday. The panoramic mosaic, comprising 130 separate images that Curiosity captured with its newly activated navigation cameras, shows a rust-colored, pebble-strewn expanse stretching to a wall of the crater's rim in one direction and a tall mound of layered rock in another.
 
Mars team dubs rover's new home 'Yellowknife'
Earthbound name refers to history of geology discovery
 
Todd Halvorson - Florida Today
 
The conspiracy theorists are going to go nuts when they discover NASA’s Curiosity rover landed in Area 51 inside Gale Crater. But NASA officially is naming the landing site “Yellowknife” after the capital of the Northwest Territories in Canada, a place where geologists discovered the oldest rocks on Earth. The “rocks underneath the ones named Yellowknife are the oldest rocks we’ve found on Earth. They are almost 4 billion years old,” said Dawn Sumner, a Curiosity project scientist.
 
Mars Rover Curiosity Beams Home 1st Color Panorama of Red Planet
 
Denise Chow - Space.com
 
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has captured a magnificent postcard from the Red Planet — a 360-degree color view that offers a glimpse of the rover's colorful and apparently diverse surroundings. Curiosity, which is also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, successfully touched down on Mars on Sunday, and has already snapped a flurry of photos, including sweeping black-and-white and color images of the Martian landscape and a self-portrait. In a news briefing Thursday, NASA released images and video of Curiosity's first color panorama view, a mosaic taken on the rover's third full day on Mars, which mission managers refer to as Sol 3.
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COMPLETE STORIES
 
Commercial crew safety certification to run in parallel with spacecraft development
 
Dan Leone - Space News
 
With an eye toward buying its first astronaut taxi services by 2017, NASA on Aug. 8 unveiled details about a safety certification process that will be conducted in parallel with the industry-led development of new crewed space transportation systems.
 
Under more than $1 billion Space Act Agreements awarded Aug. 3, Boeing Space Exploration, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) and Sierra Nevada Space Systems are developing crew transportation systems designed to carry astronauts to the international space station. These development efforts will be almost entirely guided by industry, with input from NASA. In parallel with the design phase, however, NASA plans to conduct a government-run safety certification process under separate agreements it calls Certification Products Contracts, or CPCs.
 
“There are two reasons why we wanted to start now,” Ed Mango, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program said in a meeting with press and industry at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “We believe that industry is at a point where they are going to need to make some decisions on their design if they would like to try to go after an [international space station] design reference mission. The timing for those decisions is now. It isn’t a couple of years from now, it’s now.”
 
No spacecraft can visit the international space station unless NASA certifies that it is safe.
 
A synopsis of the CPC solicitation is due out this month, with a formal request for proposals to follow in September, Mango said at the Aug. 8 forum at Kennedy. Five days after it releases the formal request, NASA will hold another industry day for companies interested in proposing. Awards for these contracts, which will not exceed $10 million, are expected in February, Mango said. NASA expects to make two to four awards under the first phase of CPC. The three companies that just won commercial crew Space Act Agreements do not automatically qualify for a CPC award, Mango said.
 
The chief deliverable for the CPC contracts will be data, Brent Jett, Mango’s deputy, said. These will include items familiar to aerospace contractors such as verification records and hazard analysis reports, Jett said.
 
“Hazard reports form the basis of getting through the NASA safety review process, and so those hazard reports are very important,” Jett said. “We want to engage early so that you can use those hazard reports and identification and analysis to influence your design to eliminate those hazards to the maximum extent possible.”
 
Unlike the Space Act Agreements that govern design and development of the industry-operated crew taxis, CPC work will be performed under traditional contracts administered under the Federal Acquisitions Regulation, or FAR. Using FAR contracts means that NASA is free to dictate design requirements.
 
Boeing’s 21-month Commercial Crew Integrated Capability Space Act Agreement is worth $460 million. SpaceX’s is worth $440 million. Sierra Nevada’s award is valued at $212.5 million. Boeing and SpaceX are developing wingless capsules while Sierra Nevada is working on a lifting body design called Dream Chaser. Boeing and Sierra Nevada plan to launch on United Launch Alliance’s proven Atlas 5. SpaceX will use an upgraded version of its Falcon 9 rocket, which has flown in space three times, including on one cargo delivery run to the international space station.
 
Blue Origin didn't apply for NASA human-launch contracts, so what's next?
 
Steve Wilhelm - Puget Sound Business Journal
 
People from Blue Origin, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ enigmatic space launch company, aren’t sharing their plans for the company, now that three of its competitors are finalists for a contract to restore human space launch capability to NASA.
 
It’s no secret, and has been confirmed by NASA, that Blue Origin didn’t apply to win the agency’s Commercial Crew Integrated Capability initiative, CCiCap, which on Aug. 3 was won by The Boeing Co., Space X, and Sierra Nevada Corp. The contracts are worth about $1.1 billion.
 
Earlier, Kent-based Blue Origin had won a NASA contract for about $25 million for the Commercial Crew Development program, known as CCDev, a predecessor to the CCiCap program.
 
"They’re not discussing anything,” said Brooke Crawford, senior editor for Griffin Communications Group, the closest thing Blue Origin has to a spokesman or spokeswoman. “They’re not talking about anything to do with CCDev contracts.”
 
CCiCap required companies to submit plans for complete systems, including a launch vehicle and crew compartment.
 
Blue Origin has been developing what it calls an “innovative space vehicle.” The company in a May 31 release said the vehicle has a "bionic" design, referring to its shape.
 
The Blue Origin space vehicle “will carry astronauts to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station,” the press release said.
 
It isn't clear if Blue Origin can go it alone, and develop a viable business model for human space flight, without further NASA support.
 
While there are constant satellite launches, and strong competition for cheaper ways to lift those satellites into orbit, there’s only one International Space Station, and possibly two in a few years if China succeeds with its space station plans. Those are essentially the only destinations for manned space flights at this time.
 
So there's little need for manned space flights other than tourist flights. It remains to be seen how many people will be willing to spend big bucks for a short flight consisting of little more than a few minutes of weightlessness in a very confined space.
 
Blast off, once again, for one Honolulu biotech company
 
Teri Okita - Hawaii News Now
 
As the Mars Rover Curiosity continues to astound with pictures of the Red Planet, a Honolulu-based biotech company is taking on its own mission to the Final Frontier. NASA awarded Tissue Genesis a two-million dollar contract for further study on how human stem cells react in space.
 
Tissue Genesis team members thought they hit pay gold last summer - as part of the payload aboard the final, U.S. space shuttle flight, but they may be one-upping themselves now. NASA scientists from California's Ames Research Center came to Hawaii recently to award the company that contract for its BIOS project.
 
"What the BIOS project is, with the International Space Station being a lab, you have the capability to do longer term experiments in space," says Tissue Genesis CEO, Anton Krucky.
 
The team invented a bio-reactor that contains one hot and one cold chamber. Both are needed to grow and regenerate human stem cells. Elite scientists from around the world can then use this technology to send their experiments to outer space.
 
Bio-engineer Nora Robertson shows us the prototype and explains, "This is the incubated side. It's where the cells are grown, the bio-reactor. This is where we supply them with oxygen and nutrients - and this side is the refrigerated side."
 
The Tissue Genesis technology allows for more experiments to go into space at a time, they can stay there for months, instead of days, and can even be controlled from earth via handheld devices.
 
Krucky continues, "The huge advance is the capability, if needed, to have astronauts interject themselves from the experiment, open the unit up, make adjustments, feed the cells, close it back up in the right environment, and put it back."
 
And what they discover up there will potentially help with data down here - for everything from the body's vascular and muscular conditions to orthopedic and functioning issues.
 
The spacecraft, SpaceX Dragon, is slated to deliver the Tissue Genesis project to the International Space Station in early 2014.
 
Perhaps another giant leap for mankind.
 
New Space Station Video Of Earth Shows Storms, City Light
 
Carl Franzen - Talking Points Memo
 
While the world gawks and gushes over new images of Mars taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover, NASA is not neglecting our own planet. Far from it: The agency on Wednesday released a new video composed of time-lapse photography of the Earth as seen by the International Space Station from its vantage point over 200 miles above the surface.
 
The video footage, comprised of hundreds of images taken by cameras outside and aboard the International Space Station, show numerous awe-inspiring views of the globe and natural and man-made phenomena: Aside from the glowing city lights seen at the 18-second-mark and at various points throughout, the video also shows spectacular shots of the aurora borealis (at 1:09) and lightning storms (at 1:25).
 
Although many of the shots used to create the video were taken by external cameras, some were also taken by the crew inside, using the relatively new SSHD-TV camera brought up by Japanese astronauts in March 2011.
 
Other shots through a seven-paned window come from inside the Cupola, the largest window ever launched into space, which can be shuttered with shields to protect the window panes from damage by micrometeorites.
 
It is through the Cupola that astronauts aboard the International Space Station position themselves in order to control the station’s robotic arm, Canadarm, in order to make repairs and to grapple and attach incoming spacecraft, such as the Russian Soyuz and Progress vessels (shown attached to the Space Station in the video at 1:58), or, more recently, the SpaceX Dragon, the first commercial spacecraft ever to complete an attachment to the space station in May.
 
The video isn’t the first such time lapse that NASA has released, but it may be the best yet. NASA’s Johnson Space Center is also inviting viewers to visit its Crew Observations Videos website and download their own time-lapse imagery to create their own works of art.
 
Small test rocket veers out of control, crashes
 
William Harwood – CBS News
 
A small vertical-takeoff-and-landing rocket being used to test advanced technologies veered off course an instant after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center Thursday, crashed and exploded in a spectacular burst of fire and smoke. There were no injuries or other property damage, officials said.
 
The Morpheus rocket was designed and built by engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to test advanced technologies and approaches to integrated propulsion and guidance, navigation and control that could be used in the future for cargo missions to the moon.
 
The rocket's engine burns liquid oxygen and methane, a propellant that can be easily stored in space. The Morpheus rocket has been test fired while attached to a crane, but engineers were staging its first untethered free flight Thursday near the Kennedy Space Center's shuttle runway.
 
The rocket's engine appeared to ignite normally and the vehicle climbed vertically for just an instant before tipping over and crashing on its side. A few moments later, as the wreckage burned, a secondary explosion erupted, presumably the result of a ruptured tank.
 
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZPnTK3Bhgw
 
"During today's free-flight test at Kennedy Space Center, the Project Morpheus vehicle lifted off the ground and then experienced a hardware component failure, which prevented it from maintaining stable flight," NASA said in a brief statement. "No one was injured and the resulting fire was extinguished by Kennedy fire personnel.
 
"Engineers are looking into the test data and the agency will release information as it comes available. Failures such as these were anticipated prior to the test, and are part of the development process for any complex spaceflight hardware. What we learn from these tests will help us build the best possible system in the future."
 
On its web page, Morpheus engineers described the rocket as a demonstration test bed for "green propellant propulsion systems and autonomous landing and hazard detection technology.
 
"It was manufactured and assembled at JSC and Armadillo Aerospace," the project said on its web page. "Morpheus is large enough to carry 1,100 pounds of cargo to the moon -- for example, a humanoid robot, a small rover, or a small laboratory to convert moon dust into oxygen -- performing all propellant burns after the trans-lunar injection.
 
"The primary focus of the test bed is to demonstrate an integrated propulsion and guidance, navigation and control system that can fly a lunar descent profile to exercise the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology safe landing sensors and closed-loop flight control. Additional objectives include technology demonstrations -- for instance, tank material and manufacture, reaction control thrusters, main engine performance improvements, helium pressurization systems, ground operations, flight operations, range safety, software and avionics architecture."
 
The Morpheus rocket engine burns liquid oxygen and methane, which offers several advantages over more traditional propellants. Methane can be stored longer in space, it's relatively inexpensive and safe to operate, engineers said. It also could be eventually manufactured on the moon or Mars.
 
Prototype lander Morpheus crashes, explodes at KSC
NASA's craft malfunctions a second into test flight
 
James Dean - Florida Today
 
An apparent hardware malfunction caused a prototype NASA lander to crash and explode seconds into a test flight Thursday at Kennedy Space Center, destroying the vehicle.
 
Around 12:40 p.m., the lander called Morpheus rose 10 feet from its pad near the center of the shuttle runway before it turned over, fell to the ground and burst into flames.
 
A dramatic, larger explosion followed about 12 seconds later, according to video of the event streamed live online and broadcast later in the afternoon on NASA TV.
 
KSC firefighters controlled the blaze. No one was injured.
 
NASA officials called the failure a disappointment but said the Morpheus program could continue testing with a new lander in a matter of months.
 
“We anticipated the potential for this type of scenario, and so we had a second vehicle in work,” said Jon Olansen, the project manager from Johnson Space Center. “We look forward to learning from what happened today and preparing ourselves for future testing.”
 
Project Morpheus, named for the Greek god of dreams, was testing an engine that burned liquid oxygen and liquid methane, a technology NASA believed could benefit future landing or in-space propulsion systems.
 
The program also planned to test a suite of landing sensors that could autonomously detect and avoid hazards, but those were not on board the vehicle that crashed.
 
As a precaution against the type of mishap that occurred Thursday, they were to be added only after Morpheus had demonstrated a series of successful free flights.
 
Measuring 10 feet in diameter and weighing 2,300 pounds without fuel, Morpheus arrived at KSC from Houston two weeks ago to begin what was expected to be more than a dozen flights over several months.
 
They were to culminate in a half-mile hop to a landing in a field resembling a lunar landscape that was built recently at the northwest end of the shuttle runway.
 
All systems worked properly during a successful test last week with the vehicle tethered to a crane.
 
The Morpheus team attempted its first free flight Tuesday. The vehicle had barely lifted off when a sensor failure unrelated to Thursday’s problem caused an engine cutoff and a safe abort of the flight.
 
On Thursday, engineers stationed in a mobile command center noticed a failure less than a second into the flight that lasted about four seconds, Olansen said.
 
He said data was still being pulled from memory devices recovered from the wreckage, but early indications pointed to a hardware failure in the lander’s guidance, navigation and control system.
 
“At this point we’re still looking into the data,” he said. “We will provide more information as we learn more through our investigation.”
 
NASA has invested about $7 million in the relatively low-budget Morpheus project over the past two-and-a-half years. The vehicle itself was worth about $500,000.
 
Olansen said testing could possibly resume within two to three months with the replacement lander that is already being built, pending the outcome of the failure investigation.
 
“We want to make sure that what we learn from today gets applied to that next vehicle,” he said.
 
NASA's Morpheus lander in fiery crash at Cape Canaveral
 
Tom Brown - Reuters
 
NASA'S Project Morpheus lander, an experimental vehicle designed with a view toward future U.S. space missions beyond Earth's orbit, crashed and burst into flames at the Kennedy Space Center in central Florida on Thursday.
 
During a so-called autonomous free-flight test, NASA said the vehicle lifted off the ground successfully but "then experienced a hardware component failure, which prevented it from maintaining stable flight."
 
No one was injured in the accident, which followed nearly a year of testing on Morpheus at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. But NASA TV footage showed the space capsule engulfed almost totally in flames after the crash, with little left to salvage.
 
The U.S. space agency said engineers were looking into test data to determine the exact cause of Thursday's accident, but further details were not immediately available.
 
"Failures such as these were anticipated prior to the test, and are part of the development process for any complex spaceflight hardware," NASA said.,
 
The hazard field where Morpheus had been scheduled to undergo about three months of increasingly rigorous tests was located at the north end of Kennedy's former space shuttle landing facility.
 
It was designed to mimic the surface of the moon, with an array of boulders, rocks, slopes and craters.
 
The accident came as NASA scientists were still hailing the Mars rover Curiosity's decent and landing on the "Red Planet" earlier this week as a "miracle of engineering."
 
NASA lander blows up during test
 
Alan Boyle - NBCNews.com's Cosmic Log
 
A prototype lander for future moon missions went awry and blew up today during its first free-flight test at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the space agency reported. The $7 million Morpheus lander project is an experiment aimed at testing autonomous navigation systems and other spaceflight technologies.
 
Morpheus has undergone a series of less ambitious tests, including its first tethered flight at Kennedy Space Center last Friday. During that test, the craft was suspended from a crane on a safety tether. Today's test was aimed at pushing the envelope further by letting the methane-powered craft off its leash.
 
Video of the test shows the craft rising off its pad, then turning to the side and plunging back down to the ground in flames. Moments later, the entire vehicle explodes.
 
In a statement, NASA said no one was injured in the blast.
 
"During today’s free-flight test of the Project Morpheus vehicle lifted off the ground and then experienced a hardware component failure, which prevented it from maintaining stable flight," the space agency said. "No one was injured, and the resulting fire was extinguished by KSC fire personnel. Engineers are looking into the test data, and the agency will release information as it comes available. Failures such as these were anticipated prior to the test and are part of the development process for any complex spaceflight hardware. What we learn from these tests will help us build the best possible system in the future."
 
Morpheus is one of several comparatively low-cost projects aimed at developing technologies for future spaceflight in the post-shuttle era. The prototype craft was built at Johnson Space Center and at Armadillo Aerospace in Texas. Armadillo is one of the prize winners in the NASA-backed Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, which concluded in 2009.
 
Just last month the Morpheus prototype was shipped from Texas to Florida for the next phase of development.
 
NASA says Morpheus is designed to deliver up to 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of cargo to the moon from lunar orbit. Such payloads could include a small rover, a robotic laboratory to convert moon dust into oxygen and other materials, or even a humanoid robot. The Morpheus project evolved from a preliminary mission concept known as "Project M," which involved sending a two-legged robot to the moon for remote-controlled exploration.
 
The prototype that exploded today served as a test bed for concepts that could be incorporated into the next-generation lunar lander.
 
"The primary focus of the test bed is to demonstrate an integrated propulsion and guidance, navigation and control system that can fly a lunar descent profile to exercise the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) safe landing sensors and closed-loop flight control," NASA said in today's statement. "Additional objectives include technology demonstrations — for instance, tank material and manufacture, reaction control thrusters, main engine performance improvements, helium pressurization systems, ground operations, flight operations, range safety, software and avionics architecture."
 
The prototype also serves as an experiment in using methane for space propulsion. Systems that use methane and liquid oxygen are considered more environmentally benign than the hydrazine-based thruster systems that are traditionally used on space probes, including the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft that deposited the Curiosity rover on the Red Planet this week.
 
Update for 8 p.m. ET: Armadillo Aerospace's founder, video-game millionaire John Carmack, said in a series of Twitter updates that it was "sad" to see Morpheus crash, "but getting comfortable with failure allows you to progress faster. If allowed to."
 
"Whenever I see bright and confident rocket people (including NASA!), I warn them about the upcoming inevitable Tragic Loss of Vehicle," Carmack wrote.
 
NASA Moon Lander Prototype Explodes in Test Flight
 
Mike Wall - Space.com
 
An experimental, "green" NASA lander crashed during its first free-flight test Thursday, erupting in a ball of flame when it hit the ground.
 
The unmanned Morpheus lander, which could one day deliver payloads to the moon or other solar system bodies, barely got off the pad around 12:40 p.m. EDT (1640 GMT) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida before toppling over and exploding.
 
"During today's free-flight test of the Project Morpheus vehicle, it lifted off the ground and then experienced a hardware component failure, which prevented it from maintaining stable flight," NASA officials said in a statement. "No one was injured, and the resulting fire was extinguished by KSC fire personnel."
 
"Engineers are looking into the incident, and the agency will release information as it becomes available," the statement added.
 
The Morpheus lander is powered by liquid oxygen and methane propellants, which are safer and cheaper to operate than traditional fuels and can be stored for longer periods in space, NASA officials say. Morpheus is also testing out automated landing-hazard avoidance technology, which would use lasers to spot dangerous boulders or craters on the surface of another world.
 
Prior to today's free-flight test, the experimental lander was tested in a series of tethered flights at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, as well as one at KSC last Friday (Aug. 3). The Johnson center oversees the project, which has reportedly cost about $7 million over the last 2 1/2 years.
 
The robotic Morpheus lander, which is about the size of an SUV, was built and assembled at JSC and the facilities of private spaceflight firm Armadillo Aerospace.
 
The vehicle could deliver about 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of cargo to the moon, NASA officials say. With some modifications, its precision landing system could also be used to help a probe rendezvous with an asteroid in deep space. 
 
Morpheus set off a grass fire at JSC during a tethered test flight in June 2011. Nobody was hurt in that incident, either.
 
NASA’s experimental Morpheus lander explodes during test flight
 
Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle's SciGuy
 
Project Morpheus is a new, test spacecraft being developed at Johnson Space Center.
 
In July a prototype of Morpheus was moved from Houston to Kennedy Space Center for additional field testing. After a tether test flight on August 3, and subsequent testing, the Morpheus lander exploded during an experimental flight today.
 
Morpheus features a lot of experiment technology, including new green propellant propulsion systems and autonomous landing and hazard detection technology. With a budget of less than $7 million over 2.5 years (pretty sure this does not include most labor), the Morpheus project is considered lean and low-cost by NASA.
 
Today’s crash is a reminder that spaceflight remains a real challenge.
 
Morpheus’ propellant combination – liquid oxygen and methane – is of particular interest because it can be stored for longer times in space, compared to other common propellants such as liquid hydrogen. It is also much cheaper to test and use than other space fuels.
 
Project Morpheus is one of 20 small projects that are part of NASA Advanced Exploration Systems program. Best of luck to the engineers as they figure out what went wrong and correct the problem.
_____
 
MEANWHILE, ON MARS…
 
Rover prepped for software upgrade; snaps color panorama
 
William Harwood - CBS News
 
Engineers are gearing up to flush entry, descent and landing software from the Curiosity rover's central computer and replace it with programming optimized for surface operations, a complex bit of electronic brain surgery that will take several days to complete, mission managers said Thursday.
 
In the meantime, the rover has snapped its first 360-degree color panorama of its surroundings in Gale Crater and beamed down an initial set of low-resolution thumbnail frames that provide a hint of things to come. The full-resolution frames will be eight times sharper than the thumbnails, but they must be moved from the camera's memory to the main computer for later relay to Earth.
 
Frames from a black-and-white survey showed what appeared to be small dirt clods littering Curiosity's upper deck, apparently blasted up and onto the spacecraft by the descent engines that lowered the rover to the surface. Areas where the rocket plumes blasted away topsoil are clearly visible in the color panorama,
 
"We don't see any operational constraint by this stuff being there," said mission manager Mike Watkins. "But it's a little unexpected. The EDL (entry, descent and landing) team ... didn't think they would kick up stuff this large. They're off looking at that.
 
"The EDL guys, they have nothing to do now," he joked. "They need a problem to go start working on, right? So this is something for them to do. But as I mentioned, we don't see any impact to this."
 
The panorama was shot amid preparations for the computer software transition, a move requiring engineers to uplink hundreds of files and thousands of commands.
 
"Just like you upgrade the operating system on your home computer or your laptop or something, we're going to do the same thing," Watkins said. "We need a new flight software load that is optimized for surface (operations). ... We're going to do that starting day after tomorrow."
 
In the meantime, scientists are carefully evaluating one-mile by one-mile quadrangle maps of Gale Crater to find the best route from Curiosity's landing site to the base of Mount Sharp, a three-mile-high mound of layered terrain that represents one of the major scientific objectives of the two-year mission.
 
Photographs taken from orbit indicate a possible route through dune fields near the base of the mound that may provide a route upward. But Dawn Sumner, a geobiologist at the University of California-Davis, said scientists will make a thorough assessment before picking any course of action.
 
"It's very exciting to think about getting there," she told reporters Thursday. "But it is quite a ways away. We also want to be able to take the science we can do where we landed and integrate that into the mission as well.
 
By chance, Curiosity landed in quadrangle No. 51, which was mapped by Sumner. She jokingly called it "area 51" in a post-landing tweet.
 
"What the science team is now doing, we have these individual maps and we started integrating them to get the broader picture and also investigating the rocks and craters and patterns around where Curiosity is now," she said. "We'll use this map to find a path from where we landed to the main target at the base of Mount Sharp, which is south of where we landed.
 
"So we'll drive on the northwest side of the dunes and go through a break in the dune field. But on the way, we're going to have a lot of interesting geology to look at. And so the team will be balancing observations and scientific investigations on our drive but also still get to the base of Mount Sharp."
 
Mars rover sends back 1st 360-degree color view
 
Alicia Chang - Associated Press
 
The photo-snapping rover Curiosity returned another postcard from Mars on Thursday — the first 360-degree color panorama of Gale Crater.
 
Scientists admired the sweeping vista. In the distance was the base of Mount Sharp, a three-mile-high mountain rising from the crater floor, where the six-wheel rover planned to go.
 
"It's very exciting to think about getting there, but it is quite a ways away," said mission scientist Dawn Sumner of the University of California, Davis.
 
Though it's the sharpest view yet of the landing site, the panorama was stitched together from thumbnails while scientists waited for better quality pictures to be downloaded.
 
Since safely landing Sunday night, Curiosity has dazzled scientists with peeks of its new home that at first glance seems similar to California's Mojave Desert. The initial pictures were fuzzy and black-and-white.
 
Earlier this week, the rover raised its mast containing high-definition and navigation cameras that have provided better views.
 
The car-size rover remained healthy and busy testing its various instruments. Several pebbles landed on the rover's deck next to its radiation sensor during the final seconds of landing as it was lowered to the ground, but project managers said the stones posed no risk.
 
Curiosity "continues to behave basically flawlessly," said mission manager Mike Watkins of the NASA Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5 billion mission.
 
Over the weekend, the rover will take a break so its computers can get a software upgrade in a process similar to a laptop having periodic updates to its operating systems. The upgrade will take several days. Data download will continue during that time, but the rover won't be doing anything new.
 
During its two-year mission, the roaming laboratory will analyze rocks and soil in search of the chemical building blocks of life, and determine whether there were habitable conditions where microbes could thrive. As high-tech as Curiosity is, it can't directly look for past or present life; future missions would be needed to answer that question.
 
Curiosity arrived on Mars Sunday night after traveling more than eight months and 352 million miles. Because of its heft, it couldn't land using air bags like its predecessors. Curiosity made a precision landing, relying on a heat shield, supersonic parachute, retrorockets and cables that lowered it inside Gale Crater.
 
Since the thrilling landing, the pace on the surface has been deliberately slower.
 
Curiosity is the most complex interplanetary rover ever designed, and engineers are taking their time performing health checkups. The rover will not make its first drive or move its robotic arm for weeks.
 
Mars Curiosity rover snaps self-portrait and color panorama image
 
Amina Khan - Los Angeles Times
 
Just as teens hold up their cell phones to snap a Myspace-worthy photo, the Mars Science Laboratory rover has taken its own self-portrait: a mosaic of images taken as the rover looks down from its navigation cameras, located high up in the robot’s mast.
 
The rover, nicknamed Curiosity, has also used its Mast Camera to send back a lower-resolution 360-degree color panorama of its surroundings in the landing site in Gale Crater.
 
“We built the thing and we touched it with our hands here, and now it’s on Mars,” said mission manager Michael Watkins. “So it’s fascinating to look back and see our rover again.”
 
The images, each stitched together from multiple photos, serve as proof that the rover’s cameras are alive and working.
 
The self-portrait also shows almost marble-sized pebbles scattered over the body of the rover – detritus probably kicked up as Curiosity landed, which wasn’t expected but should pose no risk to the instruments on board, scientists said.
 
Curiosity’s ultimate destination is Mt. Sharp, a mound in the middle of Gale Crater – it will study the three-mile-high mountain’s exposed sedimentary layers in search of the ingredients for life.
 
The full-resolution images weren't yet available for download at the time of Thursday's news conference, and Friday will be the last day the NASA scientists and engineers can grab a few more images before Curiosity's scheduled software update Saturday.
 
This "brain transplant," which will ready the rover for surface operations, will last over the weekend and into early next week.
 
Mars rover Curiosity sends back more postcards from Red Planet
 
Steve Gorman - Reuters
 
The science rover Curiosity took a break from instrument checks on its third full day on Mars to beam back more pictures from the Red Planet, including its first self-portrait and a 360-degree color view of its home in Gale Crater, NASA said on Thursday.
 
The panoramic mosaic, comprising 130 separate images that Curiosity captured with its newly activated navigation cameras, shows a rust-colored, pebble-strewn expanse stretching to a wall of the crater's rim in one direction and a tall mound of layered rock in another.
 
That formation, named Mount Sharp, stands at the center of the vast, ancient impact crater and several miles from where Curiosity touched down at the end of an eight-month voyage across 352 million mile (566 million km) of space.
 
The layers of exposed rock are thought to hold a wealth of Mars' geologic history, making it the main target of exploration for scientists who will use the rover to seek evidence of whether the planet most similar to Earth might now harbor or once have hosted key ingredients for microbial life.
 
But mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles are exercising caution immediately following Curiosity's jarring, death-defying descent to the surface on Sunday night.
 
They plan to spend weeks putting the nuclear-powered, six-wheeled rover and its sophisticated array of instruments through a painstaking series of "health" checks before embarking on the thrust of their science mission in earnest.
 
The $2.5 billion Curiosity project, formally named the Mars Science Laboratory, is NASA's first astrobiology mission since the Viking probes of the 1970s and is touted as the first fully equipped mobile geochemistry lab ever sent to a distant world.
 
Equipment checkups
 
After three full days on the Red Planet, "Curiosity continues to behave flawlessly" and has "executed all planned activities" without a hitch, mission manager Michael Watkins said at a JPL news briefing.
 
The latest round of equipment checks included an instrument designed to determine mineral composition of powdered rock and soil samples; one to analyze soil and atmospheric samples for organic compounds; one to detect traces of water locked in shallow mineral deposits; and another that uses particle X-rays to identify chemical elements in rocks and soils.
 
The very delivery of Curiosity to the surface of Mars already has been hailed by NASA as the greatest feat of robotic spaceflight.
 
The car-sized rover, which flew from Earth encased in a protective capsule, blasted into the Martian sky at hypersonic speed and landed safely seven minutes later after an elaborate, daredevil descent combining a giant parachute with a rocket-pack that lowered the rover to the Martian surface on a tether.
 
Since then, the rover has been sending a string of early images back to Earth, relayed by two NASA satellites orbiting Mars, providing glimpses of a terrain that scientists say appear reminiscent of the Mojave Desert in Southern California.
 
One shot beamed back late Wednesday night, the first taken by Curiosity of itself, shows the rover's top deck strewn with dark pebbles apparently kicked up from the ground when the craft landed. NASA scientists said the gravel does not appear to pose any risk to instruments on the vehicle.
 
Two separate high-resolution "Navcam" images taken of the surface show that thrust from the sky-crane rockets during descent carved out a 1.5-foot (0.5-meter) trench in the surface, exposing what appears to be Martian bedrock underneath.
 
When Curiosity wakes up for its fourth day on Mars, early Friday California time, mission controllers plan to conduct additional instrument checks and prepare the craft for an upgrade of its main computer software for surface operations. All other activities will be suspended during that upgrade, which will begin on day 5 of the mission and last four days.
 
Mars team dubs rover's new home 'Yellowknife'
Earthbound name refers to history of geology discovery
 
Todd Halvorson - Florida Today
 
The conspiracy theorists are going to go nuts when they discover NASA’s Curiosity rover landed in Area 51 inside Gale Crater.
 
But NASA officially is naming the landing site “Yellowknife” after the capital of the Northwest Territories in Canada, a place where geologists discovered the oldest rocks on Earth.
 
The “rocks underneath the ones named Yellowknife are the oldest rocks we’ve found on Earth. They are almost 4 billion years old,” said Dawn Sumner, a Curiosity project scientist.
 
“The rocks we’re looking at on Mars are also billions of years (old), and so there is a nice relationship that way.”
 
Sumner is one of a group of scientists mapping the Gale Crater region where Curiosity touched down on its six wheels.
 
“We’ve divided the area up into about one-mile by one-mile quads, or squares. And we had volunteers from the science team map each quad,” she said. “Curiosity happened to land in Quad 51, which is one of the ones I mapped.”
 
Sumner said no one on the science team made the connection with mysterious Area 51, a nickname for the secret military base in southern Nevada where the Air Force develops experimental aircraft and weapons systems. The base also is the subject of UFO and conspiracy theories, where the U.S. government supposedly hosts extraterrestrials and reverse engineers alien spacecraft.
 
Curiosity’s landing in Quad 51 is nothing more than happenstance.
 
“That was completely by accident,” Curiosity science chief John Grotzinger said with a laugh.
 
Yellowknife has its own interesting history. Located 250 miles south of the Arctic Circle, Yellowknife was named for a local tribe of Indians who made yellow knives out of copper.
 
The boomtown was settled in the mid-1930s — the result of a gold rush. People also mined uranium in the region, and in the 1990s, a there was a diamond rush.
 
For geologists and arctic explorers, the mining town always has been a jumping off point for mapping and excavation missions.
 
“So Yellowknife has always been a place where geological and exploration missions have taken place – maybe the best example in North America,” Grotzinger said.
 
“The whole area has a really strong connection to geology. It’s also very key for all of the geologists and explorers who are interested in the Arctic,” Sumner said.
 
“It’s the largest town in the Northwest Territories, but it only has a little less than 20,000 people. And for all of the geologists and explorers going up there, it’s a very convenient place to pass through — more convenient than anything else up in that area.”
 
Project scientists decided Yellowknife is a wholly appropriate name for Quad 51.
 
“The quad that Curiosity landed in has this rich geologic history. In terms of a name, we will be looking at that geologic history on Mars, and it is a very exciting place to be.”
 
NASA officials released a low-resolution color panorama of Yellowknife on Thursday.
 
A full-resolution, full-color panorama will be beamed back to Earth after a four-day pause in science instrument checkouts that begins Saturday. Engineers during that time will load Curiosity’s computers with software made for surface operations.
 
Mars Rover Curiosity Beams Home 1st Color Panorama of Red Planet
 
Denise Chow - Space.com
 
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has captured a magnificent postcard from the Red Planet — a 360-degree color view that offers a glimpse of the rover's colorful and apparently diverse surroundings.
 
Curiosity, which is also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, successfully touched down on Mars on Sunday, and has already snapped a flurry of photos, including sweeping black-and-white and color images of the Martian landscape and a self-portrait. In a news briefing Thursday, NASA released images and video of Curiosity's first color panorama view, a mosaic taken on the rover's third full day on Mars, which mission managers refer to as Sol 3.
 
The panoramic view shows Curiosity's own shadow reflected onto the Martian surface, with a dark band of dunes in the distance, and the rim of Gale Crater beyond that. Nearby on the left and right, gray patches where the spacecraft's rocket-powered sky crane blasted the ground can be clearly seen. The sky crane helped slow Curiosity's speed as it flew through the Martian atmosphere to the planet's surface.
 
The impact of the rocket plumes kicked up material from the surface, leaving these gaping scars that scientists are now eager to investigate.
 
"There's been a lot of discussion and an awful lot of eagerness to know what the composition of the rocks are, and to use our laser," said Dawn Sumner, a Mars Science Laboratory scientist and a geology professor at the University of California, Davis.
 
The color panorama was stitched together using 130 images that are 144 by 144 pixels each. A selected number of full frame versions from the panorama are expected to be relayed back to Earth at a later date, said Michael Malin, of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego and principal investigator of Curiosity's imaging system, called Mastcam.
 
The panoramic view also showcases Mars' true colors, albeit slightly brighter.
 
"They're what the camera sent back, I just brightened them up," Malin said. "That's what the bare filter gets you when you look at Mars."
 
Mission controllers are now preparing for a roughly 4-day procedure to update Curiosity with new software from the ground. This transition is expected to begin on Saturday (Aug. 11), and will switch the rover's focus from landing to its new life of operating on the Martian surface, NASA officials said.
 
During the software transition, however, science operations will temporarily take a back seat. After the software upgrade is complete, researchers are keen to study the colorful features highlighted in Curiosity's color panorama.
 
"We're very excited that there are a lot of things to look at," Sumner said.
 
As for the different colors in the photo — the dark, almost bluish appearance of the dune field, the dark dust, the reddish Martian dust, and the lighter-toned pebbles — scientists are hoping Curiosity will be able to answer whether these indicate differences in composition as well.
 
"We don't know whether they're the same or different compositions, but they certainly have different textures. We're hoping the colors can guide us to some variations as well."
 
END