Ice currently covers more than 10 percent of our watery planet, yet its volume is continuing to decline at a staggering pace in response to our warming world. A new NASA interactive tool lets you take a close-up tour of some of the places around our planet where climate change is taking a toll on Earth’s ice cover, including:

* Greenland, where the massive Ilulissat Glacier is depositing 35 to 50 cubic kilometers of icebergs into the ocean each year, raising sea level (a cubic kilometer is about 264.2 billion gallons, enough to fill 400,000 Olympic-size pools)
* The Arctic, where sea ice continues to decline in both area and volume
* Antarctica, where massive ice shelves the size of some small U.S. states have collapsed in recent years

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Combining instruction in science and math with lessons in Spanish, students from a rural Kentucky middle school participated Thursday in a bilingual online chat with Herman Posada, a NASA research pilot who flies unmanned aerial vehicles.

“A chat like this provides our students with a real and meaningful second language, math and science experience,” said Zenaida Smith, the Spanish teacher at Raceland Worthington High School in Raceland, KY.

More than 50 of her students stayed after school to participate in the online discussion.

“It was really fun. They loved it. It was a real learning experience for all of us,” Smith said.

Questions were submitted to Posada in either English or Spanish, and then answered with the help of NASA chat moderators in both languages. Chat guests from around the world submitted more than 200 questions during the 90-minute online event.

“This was a great opportunity for our kids to see there is a great big world out there and how, if the students can work hard, they can be a part of it,” Smith said.

During the chat Posada described his role in remotely flying NASA’s Ikhana, an unmanned Predator B aircraft modified for non-military missions, and the Global Hawk, which is used mostly for gathering Earth-sciences related data.

“We can fly anywhere in the world; I can be in California and the plane can be thousands of miles away,” Posada said in response to a question. “We are doing Earth science missions such as studying hurricanes and wildfires. An unmanned aircraft can often go to dangerous places where manned aircraft can’t. We’ve also used the Ikhana to test out new flight technologies that could be used on future aircraft.”

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A full-scale mock-up of the Orion launch abort system (LAS) is heading back across the country. The nearly 45-foot-long mock-up, known as the LAS pathfinder, is hitting the road on a large flatbed trailer to travel from the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

At White Sands, the LAS pathfinder was used to help prepare for the successful Pad Abort 1 (PA-1) flight test, which occurred May 6, 2010.

Ground crews used the pathfinder to practice lifting and stacking the launch abort system on the launch pad, to help ready the crew in handling the actual flight test hardware that launched. It will be used similarly at Kennedy to prepare for other Orion spacecraft operations.

On its journey to Florida, the spacecraft hardware will make stops at various museums and science centers so the public can learn more about Orion and the launch abort system.

The planned stops included:
Sept. 28-29: Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Denver
Oct. 4-7: Adler Planetarium, Chicago
Oct. 9-14: Great Lakes Science Center, Cleveland
Oct. 16-17: The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia

Engineers and technicians at NASA’s Langley Research Center designed and fabricated the hardware, which represents the size, outer shape and specific mass characteristics of the Orion crew exploration vehicle’s abort system.

The Orion LAS is an innovative design that will significantly improve astronaut safety for future human space exploration. It is designed to immediately pull the Orion crew module away from the launch vehicle during an emergency on the pad or during the climb to orbit.

The Orion Project Office, located at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, is leading development of the Orion spacecraft. Development of the LAS is being led by Langley in Hampton, Va. in partnership with the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin leads a nationwide industry team as the prime contractor to NASA for the Orion spacecraft.

The LAS pathfinder toured several other states during its cross-country trek from Langley to White Sands last year.

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Expedition 24 Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko landed their Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft in Kazakhstan on Saturday, Sept. 25, wrapping up a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station.

Skvortsov was at the controls of the spacecraft as it undocked at 10:02 p.m. EDT Friday from the Poisk docking port on the station’s Zvezda module, a day later than planned because of a Poisk-side hatch sensor problem Thursday night. That problem prevented hooks on the Poisk side of the docking interface from opening, resulting in a one-day landing delay.

Following undocking and a normal descent, the crew landed at 1:23 a.m. near Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, as the station orbited 220 miles above over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan.

Russian recovery teams were on hand to help the crew exit the Soyuz vehicle and adjust to gravity after 176 days in space. Skvortsov and Kornienko will return to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, outside of Moscow. Caldwell Dyson will return to Houston aboard a NASA plane.

The trio launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in April. As members of the Expedition 23 and 24 crews, they spent 174 days on the station. Caldwell Dyson and Expedition 25 Commander Doug Wheelock conducted three spacewalks to replace a faulty cooling pump module on the station’s truss structure. Kornienko conducted one spacewalk to perform assembly work on the Russian segment of the complex.

The station is now occupied by Wheelock, who assumed command of the station Wednesday, NASA Flight Engineer Shannon Walker and Russian Flight Engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin, who arrived in mid-June.

A new trio of Expedition 25 crew members, NASA’s Scott Kelly, Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka, will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Oct. 7, U.S. time and will arrive on the station about 48 hours later.

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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will swing high over Saturn’s moon Titan on Friday, Sept. 24, taking a long, sustained look at the hazy moon. At closest approach, Cassini will fly within 8,175 kilometers (5,080 miles) above the hazy moon’s surface. This flyby is the first in a series of high-altitude Titan flybys for Cassini over the next year and a half.

Cassini’s composite infrared spectrometer instrument will be probing Titan’s stratosphere to learn more about its vertical structure as the seasons change. Equinox, when the sun shone directly over the equator, occurred in August 2009, and the northern hemisphere is now in spring.

Another instrument, the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, will be mapping an equatorial region known as Belet at a resolution of 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel. This mosaic will complement the mosaics that were obtained in earlier Titan flybys in January and April. This spectrometer will also look for clouds at northern mid-latitudes and near the poles.

Cassin’s visible-light imaging cameras will also be taking images of Titan’s trailing hemisphere, or the side that faces backward as Titan orbits around Saturn. If Titan cooperates and has a cloudy day, scientists plan to analyze the images for cloud patterns.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.

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After undergoing a major overhaul and upgrades, the Boeing / NASA X-48B Blended Wing Body research aircraft resumed flight tests with a checkout flight Sept. 21 from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The subscale, manta ray-shaped, remotely piloted airplane, also called a hybrid wing body, is a tool of NASA’s new Environmentally Responsible Aviation, or ERA, project. ERA aims to develop the technology needed to create quieter, cleaner, and more fuel-efficient airplanes for the future.

After completion of its first phase of flight testing, the airplane was disassembled for a complete inspection and refurbishment. This new series of flight tests will focus on additional parameter identification investigations following installation and checkout of a new flight computer. The parameter identification work will evaluate the new computer’s control of the aircraft’s flight control surfaces and the airplane’s performance.

In addition to NASA and Boeing, the X-48B team includes Cranfield Aerospace Ltd. in the United Kingdom, and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

The team completed the 80th and last flight of the project’s first phase on March 19, 2010, almost three years after the X-48B’s first flight on July 20, 2007.

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NASA has awarded grants to nine academic institutions and their partners that serve large numbers of minority and underrepresented students to strengthen offerings in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM. The grants total approximately $1.15 million through the agency’s Curriculum Improvement Partnership Award for the Integration of Research (CIPAIR) project.

Seven institutions and their partners will receive one-year funding ranging from approximately $145,000 to $150,000 per year for up to three years, based on performance and availability of funds. Two organizations will receive planning grants. The grants must be used to increase the quantity and quality of STEM curricula. The institutions and partners selected are:

- Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, and Southeastern Community College in Whiteville, N.C. (Planning Grant)
- LaGuardia Community College in Long Island, N.Y., and Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Planning Grant)
- Atlanta Metropolitan College
- New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Hostos Community College in the Bronx, N.Y.
- San Mateo/Canada Community College in San Francisco and San Francisco State University
- Santa Monica Community College in California and the University of California, Los Angeles
- Spelman College in Atlanta and Gadsen Community College in Gadsen, Ala.
- United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck, N.D.
- Virginia State University in Petersburg, Va., and Louisburg Community College in Louisburg, N.C.

Selections were based on proposal reviews by scientists and educators from private industry, academia, the National Science Foundation and NASA. The formal award, financial arrangements and grant administration will be made through the NASA Shared Services Center. CIPAIR is managed for NASA by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

These awards provide funding that continues NASA’s commitment to achieving a broad-based, competitive aerospace research and technology development capability among the nation’s minority serving institutions. NASA continues to invest in projects that will build, sustain and provide a skilled, knowledgeable and diverse workforce to meet the emerging needs of the agency and the nation.

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Been outside at midnight lately? There’s something you really need to see. Jupiter is approaching Earth for the closest encounter between the two planets in more than a decade–and it is dazzling.

The night of closest approach is Sept. 20-21st. This is also called “the night of opposition” because Jupiter will be opposite the sun, rising at sunset and soaring overhead at midnight. Among all denizens of the midnight sky, only the moon itself will be brighter.

Earth-Jupiter encounters happen every 13 months when the Earth laps Jupiter in their race around the sun. But because Earth and Jupiter do not orbit the sun in perfect circles, they are not always the same distance apart when Earth passes by. On Sept. 20th, Jupiter will be as much as 75 million km closer than previous encounters and will not be this close again until 2022.

The view through a telescope is excellent. Because Jupiter is so close, the planet’s disk can be seen in rare detail–and there is a lot to see. For instance, the Great Red Spot, a cyclone twice as wide as Earth, is bumping up against another storm called “Red Spot Jr.” The apparition of two planet-sized tempests grinding against one another must be seen to be believed.

Also, Jupiter’s trademark South Equatorial Belt (SEB) recently vanished, possibly submerging itself beneath high clouds. Researchers say it could reappear at any moment. The dramatic resurgence would be accompanied by a globe-straddling profusion of spots and cloudy swirls, clearly visible in backyard telescopes.

And what was that flash? Amateur astronomers have recently reported a surprising number of fireballs in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Apparently, many small asteroids or comet fragments are hitting the giant planet and exploding among the clouds. Researchers who have studied these events say visible flashes could be occurring as often as a few times a month.

Finally, we mustn’t forget the moons of Jupiter because they are also having a close encounter with Earth. These are planet-sized worlds with active volcanoes (Io), possible underground oceans (Europa), vast fields of craters (Callisto), and mysterious global grooves (Ganymede). When Galileo discovered the moons 400 years ago, they were no more than pinpricks of light in his primitive spy glass. Big, modern amateur telescopes reveal actual planetary disks with colorful markings.

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NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, will complete the exploration phase of its mission on Sept. 16, after a number of successes that transformed our understanding of Earth’s nearest neighbor.

LRO completed a one-year exploration mission in a polar orbit approximately 31 miles above the moon’s surface. It produced a comprehensive map of the lunar surface in unprecedented detail; searched for resources and safe landing sites for potential future missions to the moon; and measured lunar temperatures and radiation levels.

The mission is turning its attention from exploration objectives to scientific research, as program management moves from NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate to the Science Mission Directorate at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington.

“LRO has been an outstanding success. The spacecraft has performed brilliantly,” said Doug Cooke, associate administrator of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. “LRO’s science and engineering teams achieved all of the mission’s objectives, and the incredible data LRO gathered will provide discoveries about the moon for years to come.”

The LRO team will continue to send data gathered during the last year to the Planetary Data System, which archives and distributes scientific information from NASA planetary missions, astronomical observations and laboratory measurements.

By the time LRO achieves full mission success in March, and its data is processed and released to the scientific community, it will have sent more information to the Planetary Data System than all other previous planetary missions combined. During its new phase of discovery, LRO will continue to map the moon for two to four more years.

“The official start of LRO’s science phase should write a new and intriguing chapter in lunar research,” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. “This mission is one more asset added to NASA’s vast science portfolio.”

The spacecraft launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying a suite of seven instruments on June 18, 2009. LRO formally began its detailed survey of the moon in September 2009.

Results from the mission include: new observations of the Apollo landing sites; indications that permanently shadowed and nearby regions may harbor water and hydrogen; observations that large areas in the permanently shadowed regions are colder than Pluto; detailed information about lunar terrain; and the first evidence of a globally distributed population of thrust faults that indicates the moon has recently contracted and may still be shrinking.

LRO also took high resolution pictures of the Lunokhod 1 rover that had been lost for almost 40 years. The rover, which carries a retroreflector, was located to within approximately 150 feet. The accurate position data enabled researchers on Earth to bounce laser signals off the retroreflector for the first time ever. The retroreflector is providing important new information about the position and motion of the moon.

LRO also supported the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite impact, a companion mission sent to determine if the moon’s poles harbor water ice, by helping to select a promising impact site. LRO observed both the expanding plume that arose after the impact and the evolving temperature at the site.

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NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter put itself into a precautionary standby mode after experiencing a spontaneous computer reboot on Sept. 15. The mission’s ground team has begun restoring the spacecraft to full operations.

Initial analysis of telemetry from the orbiter indicates the “safe mode” status was triggered by a reboot similar to one experienced Aug. 26, 2009. That was the most recent time that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter put itself into safe mode. For 10 months prior to this latest reboot, the spacecraft operated normally, making science observations and returning data. During 2009, unplanned reboots put the spacecraft into safe mode four times.

The orbiter has normal power, fully charged batteries and safe temperatures. The team has increased the data-rate of communications and is taking additional steps to resume science observations soon.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at Mars since 2006, has met the mission’s science goals and returned more data than all other Mars missions combined. It completed its primary science phase of operations in November 2008, but continues to observe Mars both for science and for support of future landed missions.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

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