Imagine you’re an astronaut exploring the surface of Mars, when suddenly you fall ill or injure yourself. As your team struggles to get you safely back to base, you become seriously dehydrated. With their trusty — and ingenious — kit, the medical officer hooks into the drinking water supply, using it to create a saline solution that they can inject directly into your blood stream for quick and safe rehydration.

That’s the idea behind the Intravenous Fluid Generation for Exploration Missions, or IVGEN, investigation that was conducted on the space station over five days in the spring of 2010. Since standard IV fluid bags used in hospitals would be too costly to send and hard to keep from spoiling on long-duration space missions, the ability to make fresh saline right from the drinking water supply could save the day in emergency scenarios.

Using the station’s current recycled drinking water, the IVGEN investigation demonstrated that it is possible to produce medical-grade saline in space. Now, the focus has turned to the longevity of the IVGEN hardware and the shelf life of the solution produced.

“Basically IVGEN was a project to verify that, somehow, we could take potable or drinking water, purify it, and mix it to make a normal, medical-grade saline solution that could be injected into astronauts if the need arose,” said John McQuillen, IVGEN principal investigator at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

The IVGEN experiment relied on U.S. Pharmacopeia, or USP, guidelines for producing purified water and medical-grade saline. USP is the authoritative source for medicine and healthcare product standards.

Water from the station’s Water Processor Assembly was fed through IVGEN hardware, where a series of filters removed air, bacterial contaminates, particulates, and heavy metals upstream of the heart of the system. The water then continued on through an internal deionizing resin, similar to that used in home water purifiers, removing the bulk of the minerals and organics. The experiment produced six 1.5 liter bags, or about 2.5 gallons, of purified water.

Two of the six bags were used to produce medical-grade saline. To do that, the purified water was added to a bag containing a premeasured amount of salt and a magnetic stir bar for mixing. The resulting solution then was transferred to the final collection bag through a sterilizing filter, which removed any additional remaining air and bacteria.

Once back on Earth, the two bags of saline were shipped to a Food and Drug Administration-certified lab to test whether the contents complied with USP standards. In the meantime, the hardware was placed on the shelf to undergo lifetime testing and ground studies until needed for a future mission.

“We are now wrapping up testing of the post-flight hardware. This testing was performed to see what we can learn from the current state hardware, as opposed to when it was initially launched,” said Terri McKay, IVGEN project scientist at Glenn. “We are also testing the filters to make sure they can satisfy missions of multiple year durations. The pharmaceutical product shelf life needs to be documented, as well.”

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Humanity is on the constant search for improvements in cancer treatments, and the International Space Station has provided a microgravity platform that has enabled advancements in the cancer treatment process.

The oncology community has a recent history of using different microencapsulation techniques as an approach to cancer treatment. Microencapsulation is a single step process that forms tiny liquid-filled, biodegradable micro-balloons containing various drug solutions that can provide better drug delivery and new medical treatments for solid tumors and resistant infections. In other words, by using microcapsules containing antitumor treatments and visualization markers, the treatment can be directed right to the tumor, which has several benefits over systemic treatment such as chemotherapy. Testing in mouse models has shown that these unique microcapsules can be injected into human prostate tumors to actually inhibit tumor growth or can be injected following cryo-surgery (freezing) to improve the destruction of the tumors much better than freezing or local chemotherapy alone. The microcapsules also contain a contrast agent that enables C-T, X-ray or ultrasound imaging to monitor the distribution within the tissues to ensure that the entire tumor is treated when the microcapsules release their drug contents.

Morrison, Ph.D. (retired), at NASA Johnson Space Center, was performed on the station in 2002 and included innovative encapsulation of several different anti-cancer drugs, magnetic triggering particles, and encapsulation of genetically engineered DNA. The experiment system improved on existing microencapsulation technology by using microgravity to modify the fluid mechanics, interfacial behavior, and biological processing methods as compared to the way the microcapsules would be formed in gravity.

In effect, the MEPS-II system on the station combined two immiscible liquids in such a way that surface tension forces (rather than fluid shear) dominated at the interface of the fluids. The significant performance of the space-produced microcapsules as a cancer treatment delivery system motivated the development of the Pulse Flow Microencapsulation System, or PFMS, which is an Earth-based system that can replicate the quality of the microcapsules created in space.

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Imagine this: you are a young and inquisitive middle-school student, investigating and examining the vastness of Earth’s majestic mountain ranges, coastlines, oceans and other geographic imprints. Now, envision the thrill of doing so from the vantage point of an astronaut! Earth Knowledge Acquired by Middle School Students, or EarthKAM, allows students to do just that — view and capture images of their world from an astronaut’s perspective!

EarthKAM is a NASA-funded educational outreach program run in collaboration with the University of California at San Diego. The goal is to provide an enriched and enhanced educational experience to motivate students toward math and science studies. The camera allows students worldwide to examine and photograph Earth from the unique vantage point of the International Space Station.

EarthKAM uses a Nikon D2Xs digital camera mounted in the Window Observational Research Facility, or WORF, which uses the science window located in the U.S. Destiny Laboratory. This window’s high quality optics capabilities allow the camera to take high-resolution photographs of the Earth using commands sent from the students via the online program. Students and educators then use the photos as supplements to standard course materials, offering them an opportunity to participate in space missions and various investigative projects. Creators of EarthKAM hope that combining the excitement of this space station experience with middle-school education will inspire a new set of explorers, scientists and engineers.

Students use EarthKAM to learn about spacecraft orbits and Earth photography through the active use of Web-based tools and resources. With the help of their teachers, they identify a target location and then must track the orbit of the station, reference maps and atlases and check the weather prior to making their image request. These requests funnel to another set of students, this time at the University of California at San Diego. These college students run the EarthKAM Mission Operations Center, or MOC, for the project. Here they compile the requests into a camera control file and, with the help of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, then uplink the requests to a computer aboard the space station.

Requests ultimately transmit to the digital camera, which then takes the desired images and transfers them back to the station computer for downlink to EarthKAM computers on the ground. This entire relay process usually completes within a few hours, and the photos are available online for both the participating schools and the public to enjoy.

As an added bonus, EarthKAM does not require much attention aboard the space station, which allows the astronauts to pay more attention to the other more involved payloads. According to Annie Powers, a NASA flight controller in the Cargo Integration and Operations Branch at the Johnson Space Center, “The crew’s main role is the set up: they position the camera on a bracket over the window, adjust the camera settings, connect the USB cable to the laptop and start the EarthKAM software. But, after set-up, all the crew has to do is periodically change the camera battery, and we usually have them swap to a different lens mid-week. It’s a very autonomous system; it pretty much just snaps away!”

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Plants are critical in supporting life on Earth, and with help from an experiment that flew onboard space shuttle Discovery’s STS-131 mission, they also could transform living in space.

NASA’s Kennedy Space Center partnered with the University of Florida, Miami University in Ohio and Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation to perform three different experiments in microgravity.

The studies concentrated on the effects microgravity has on plant cell walls, root growth patterns and gene regulation within the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Each of the studies has future applications on Earth and in space exploration.

“Any research in plant biology helps NASA for future long-range space travel in that plants will be part of bioregenerative life support systems,” said John Kiss, one of the researchers who participated in the BRIC-16 experiment onboard Discovery’s STS-131 flight in April 2010 and a distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Botany at Miami University in Ohio.

The use of plants to provide a reliable oxygen, food and water source could save the time and money it takes to resupply the International Space Station (ISS), and provide sustainable sources necessary to make long-duration missions a reality. However, before plants can be effectively utilized for space exploration missions, a better understanding of their biology under microgravity is essential.

Kennedy partnered with the three groups for four months to provide a rapid turnaround experiment opportunity using the BRIC-16 in Discovery’s middeck on STS-131. And while research takes time, the process was accelerated as the end of the Space Shuttle Program neared.

Howard Levine, a program scientist for the ISS Ground Processing and Research Project Office and the science lead for BRIC-16, said he sees it as a new paradigm in how NASA works spaceflight experiments. The rapid turnaround is quite beneficial to both NASA and the researchers, saving time and money.

Each of the three groups was quite impressed with the payload processing personnel at Kennedy.

Kiss said the staff at the Space Life Sciences Lab at Kennedy did an outstanding job and that the experienced biologists and engineers were extremely helpful with such a quick turnaround. Kiss and his group published a paper on their initial findings of plant growth in microgravity in the October 2011 issue of the journal Astrobiology.

They found that roots of space-grown seedlings exhibited a significant difference compared to the ground controls in overall growth patterns in that they skewed in one direction. Their hypothesis is that an endogenous response in plants causes the roots to skew and that this default growth response is largely masked by the normal gravity experienced on the Earth’s surface.

“The rapid turnaround was quite challenging, but it was a lot of fun,” said Anna-Lisa Paul, research associate professor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at the University of Florida. “The ability to conduct robust, replicated science in a time frame is comparable to the way we conduct research in our own laboratories, which is fundamentally a very powerful system.”

Paul’s research and that of her colleague Robert Ferl, professor at the University of Florida and co-principal investigator on the BRIC-16 experiment, focused on comparing patterns of gene expression between Arabidopsis seedlings and undifferentiated Arabidopsis cells, which lack the normal organs that plants use to sense their environment – like roots and leaves. Paul and Ferl found that even undifferentiated cells “know” they are in a microgravity environment, and further, that they respond in a way that is unique compared to plant seedlings.

Elison Blancaflor, associate professor at the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, discovered that plant genes encoding cell-wall structural proteins were significantly affected by microgravity.

“This is exciting because this research has given us the tools to begin working on designing plants that perform better on Earth and in space,” Blancaflor said.

Blancaflor has now extended his findings from BRIC-16 to generate new hypotheses to explain basic plant-cell function. For example, the BRIC-16 results led the Noble Foundation team to identify novel components of the molecular machinery that allow plant cells to grow normally.

According to Levine, plants could contribute to bioregenerative life support systems on long-duration space missions by automatically scrubbing carbon dioxide, creating oxygen, purifying water and producing food.

“There is also a huge psychological benefit of growing plants in space,” said Levine. “When you have a crew floating around in a tin can, a plant is a little piece of home they can bring with them.”

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Part of human fascination with space is the chance to look back at our own planet from afar. The unique vantage from the International Space Station affords a vista both breathtaking and scientifically illuminating.

Here on Earth, both scientists and spectators rely on the station’s crew to record and transmit images and videos of what they see to share in their experience. Until recently, reduced lighting conditions at night, combined with insufficiently perceptive equipment, made some of the most beautiful views difficult to capture.

This changed with the arrival of the Super Sensitive High Definition TV, or SS-HDTV, camera on the space station. With the SS-HDTV, the crew can document new and more detailed footage of the dynamic interactions that take place in the area between the Earths’ atmosphere and the vacuum of space, known as the cosmic shore.

According to Keiji Murakami, a senior engineer with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, this camera’s superior recording capability opens up a significant window of observation. Some may not realize that the station orbits the Earth 16 times a day, experiencing multiple sunrises and sunsets during those 24 hours. The crew actually has a 50/50 chance of a night view. “Half of the Earth view from [station] is a night view. And the day view and night view are very different,” said Murakami.

By October, JAXA astronaut Satoshi Furukawa had logged more than 30 hours of video using the camera. While the Earth observations are an amazing sight, they are also an important part of the research goals for the space station. From images taken by crew members aboard station, scientists can research natural phenomena and man-made changes to the planet.

Japan Broadcasting Corp., or NHK, which is similar to the U.S.’s Public Broadcasting System, or PBS, aired the first public videos showing the SS-HDTV camera’s capabilities Sept. 18, 2011. The resulting show was appropriately titled “The Cosmic Shore,” and it thrilled audiences with a spectacular view of natural phenomena, such as aurora and lightning. Furukawa filmed and narrated the video footage, which also shared man-made wonders, like the lights of Japan at night, in greater detail than previously possible.

Murakami comments on the merit of the SS-HDTV camera system’s ability to capture momentary phenomena, like meteors and sprites — a form of upper atmospheric lightning. “Using this super sensitive camera, we have observed the lightning, sprite, aurora, meteor, noctilucent cloud and airglow,” said Murakami. “The phenomena of the sprite has not yet been studied in high definition until now. The color video of the sprite was taken for the first time from space using this camera.”

This advanced equipment belongs to JAXA, in cooperation with NHK, and enables recording of the elusive phenomena that occurs within low-light conditions using an Electron Multiplying Charged Coupled Device, or EM-CCD, sensor. After filming, the crew downlinks the videos to the ground using data-relay satellites.

The SS-HDTV also can advance astronomical observations, according to Murakami. This equipment will continue to operate on orbit indefinitely. Even if a failure should occur, there is a backup camera and Panasonic SD card recorder already aboard the station as a precaution. As with many facilities and technology on the space station, this camera provides another asset available to future researchers as they continue to explore the space environment using the orbiting laboratory.

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Backpack technology gains traction with astronauts:

After years of chaffing, bruising, and discomfort in some astronauts, running in space just got easier. Whether it’s a two-mile jog or a half-marathon, many astronauts on the International Space Station find their stride and enjoy a relatively pain-free run thanks to the custom-fit, backpack-inspired Glenn Harness.

Because their bones are not under stress or heavy loads in space, astronauts on orbit can suffer a rapid loss of bone mineral density. Without exercise the average monthly loss in astronauts during a six-month stay on the space station is approximately equivalent to the average annual loss that is suffered by post-menopausal women on Earth.

In response, astronauts follow a bone-strengthening routine that includes treadmill running. While the space station has two treadmills, just having the machines available isn’t enough. The microgravity environment of space means astronauts cannot simply step onto a treadmill and jog through a twenty-minute run.

“The only way you can run on a treadmill in space is to have a harness that pulls you back toward the treadmill surface,” said Peter Cavanagh, University of Washington professor and former Director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Space Medicine that developed the new harness design. “What you want ideally is a harness that will apply a force exactly equal to your body weight.”

To provide the mechanical stimulus for healthy bones, the runner needs an impact that represents their full body weight as it is on Earth. Depending on the astronaut, that could be 220 pounds, up to 110 pounds provided by the harness on each side of the body. Compared to the 80- to 90-pound backpack that is considered a heavy load on earth, full body loading is an “extraordinarily difficult loading situation,” according to Gail Perusek, NASA’s Glenn Research Center, Principal Investigator and Project Manager for the Glenn Harness flight studies.

“The torso is basically a cylinder. To get traction you need to apply a downward force. All you have to work with are the shoulders and the hips,” said Perusek. “The original treadmill harness was mostly just Nomex fabric and webbing with minimal padding (Aramid felt). The harness was one-size-fits-all and cumbersome to adjust. It was also inadequate to transfer loads to the hips, where 70-80% of the load should be going.”

Not only did the original harness not transfer loads well, some astronauts found it uncomfortable. One astronaut said the old harness gave him “hot spots.” So he tried using duct tape to protect his skin, leaving him with a few scars. Other astronauts shared his frustration. Crew members complained at times about rubbing, chaffing, and bruising at the shoulders and hips.

Because of the discomfort, astronauts reduced the loads and, as a result, the thinking goes, failed to provide enough stimulus for bone maintenance. Investigating a new design became an obvious direction for the research team.

“Conceptually, the treadmill harness is like a backpack harness. You’re bearing a downward load with the backpack and you’re bearing it on your shoulders and hips. This was a key insight for the research team,” said Sara Novotny, who was a Research Engineer on Cavanagh’s team at the Cleveland Clinic.

The research team went to backpack manufacturers Kelty and Osprey Packs to learn what those companies had done to improve the comfort of carrying heavy loads. The team then selected a mixture of off-the-shelf components from the backpack manufacturers and added some parts of its own to produce a composite harness.

Novotny, a Colorado native who describes the harness as similar to a “backpack without the pack,” assembled the new harnesses that were then used in a number of research studies, including those conducted in NASA Glenn’s Enhanced Zero-gravity Locomotion Simulator, which replicates running on a treadmill in zero gravity.

Ultimately the new experimental Glenn Harnesses were tested aboard the space station in a side-by-side comparison with the operational harnesses. Harnesses equipped with innovative, non-invasive instrumentation provided first-ever insight into how crew members were loading the harnesses in-flight. Crew feedback regarding comfort provided qualitative data, and enthusiasm for the new design.

The collaboration between NASA Glenn and the Cleveland Clinic resulted in the much more comfortable and practical Glenn Harness.

The Glenn Harness has a softer, more malleable interior with a harder exterior, to better distribute loads and avoid hot spots. The hip belt is molded to hug the pelvis, and has a “split feature” to minimize pressure at the hip bones. The shoulder straps are designed in an “S” shape that lets them cut across the chest so they don’t impede the ability to breathe while running under a heavy load.

The Glenn Harness can be easily adjusted while running and is designed for a custom fit with a range of sizes from small to extra large in both female and male versions. The harness sizes can be blended as necessary. For example, a large shoulder strap can be combined with a medium waist strap for a perfect fit. A more recent development is a newer shoulder-strap design specifically for women.

With the new harness it is possible to adjust how the load is distributed between the shoulders and the hips. The molded waist belt allows for more comfortable distribution of a large load to encourage astronauts to run under a heavier load, a condition believed to be necessary for bone health.

Along with the custom fitting, another reason for providing each astronaut with their own harness has to do with the basic feature of a good workout.

“It’s athletic equipment. They sweat in it. The harness never gets washed. They wear these things for the entire six-month increment,” said Perusek.

At the suggestion of one astronaut, the Glenn Harness now employs a biocidal fabric on surfaces where there is contact with the body. This antimicrobial material kills the bacteria that causes odor and causes things to grow. Pre – and post-microbial tests confirm “the stuff works great,” said Perusek.

The new harnesses are endorsed as a crew preference item and are provided by request to the U.S. on orbit segment. They can take up to six months prior to launch to schedule the pre-fit session with the crew member and conduct a crew familiarity briefing. The new harnesses take about eight weeks to assemble and certify before they are ready for use in space. The future plan is to have an inventory of harnesses in stock, and certify them for operational use as the primary treadmill harness for the space station.

The next step is to evaluate whether use of the new harness influences bone health in long duration crew members.

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As the school year kicks off, teachers commonly ask students to share their summer experiences with the class. One might have vacationed with their family, another may have gone camping, but this year there will be a select few who can say that they programmed code that controlled satellites on the International Space Station!

The second annual Zero Robotics Summer SPHERES Program ran for five weeks this past summer. The Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites, or SPHERES, mentioned in the program name are used aboard the station to test guidance, navigation and control in microgravity — when not in use for space competitions.

Astronaut Ron Garan refereed the on-orbit tournament on Aug. 16, 2011. Students watched via live video downlink as the team from Winthrop 21st Century Community Learning Center in Winthrop, Mass. took home first place honors. Other participating Massachusetts schools included Salem CyberSpace in Salem, Robert L. Ford School in Lynn, the East End House in Cambridge and James P. Timilty Middle School in Roxbury.

Zero Robotics Lead 2011 Sreeja Nag explained the appeal for participating students. “It’s like playing video games with real satellites on the space station, except that instead of an X-box or a game controller, students are using computer code for autonomous control,” said Nag.

The goal of this partnership between NASA, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, and the Massachusetts Afterschool Partnership, or MAP, is to ramp up middle school student interest in math, science, technology and engineering. More than 75 students participated this summer, learning problem-solving and design skills. Under the guidance of an MIT undergraduate coach, students worked through a preset curriculum. After covering basic math, science and space concepts, students studied the game and then divided into groups to plan strategies and learn to write code.

MAP Executive Director Kathleen Magrane commented on the success of the collaborative effort. “We want to provide students with complimentary, experiential learning opportunities that connect youth with prominent scientists and encourage them to pursue careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and/or mathematics,” said Magrane. “Strategic partnerships like these allow us to generate curiosity, build confidence and strengthen the capacity of our young people to achieve greatness, now and in the future.”

This year the competition had half the participants as last year, due to reduced funding. The students learned C Programming, an advanced computer language with specific rules on how the code must be written. Each team paid great attention to their code, as a misplaced colon or parenthesis could mean the difference between a win or loss.

Once uploaded, the code that student teams wrote controlled and directed the SPHERES to achieve the game objectives aboard the station. This summer’s specific challenge was to provide a lasting energy source by mining asteroids. In addition, mentors organized fun science activities, like liquid nitrogen making and shooting bottle rockets, to give students a break from coding. “Students enjoyed it and said that they learned a lot,” said Nag. “This year’s Zero Robotics game was very challenging, however, they picked up very well and the station finals had pretty awesome formation flights in microgravity!”

Since many of the students had no previous coding experience, the success of their efforts was proof of their new capabilities. Even if their SPHERE did not triumph, each student in the competition came away a winner, having learned a new skill in the area of computer programming. More importantly, as their classmates may learn this fall, they likely have a new found passion for space that could put them on the path to higher education and careers in engineering, math, science or technology.

NASA has many opportunities for teachers and students to participate in space station science and education. Zero Robotics organizes yearly robotics programming tournaments for students, including the upcoming SPHERES Zero Robotics high school competition, which kicks off nationwide this month. The final event for the high school challenge will take place in December 2011.

Although a Zero Robotics Summer SPHERES Program 2012 challenge has yet to be planned, there are hopes for growth in the program. “Zero Robotics’ high school program operates nationwide and is looking to go international,” said Nag. “Given the positive feedback from students in the summer programs, we are also very keen on expanding the middle school program nationwide, given funding and support.”

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As NASA commemorates the 10th anniversary of September 11, the anniversary is both a milestone for the country and a moment to reflect on the last ten years. Throughout the agency, we were deeply touched by the tragedy. This page chronicles some of NASA’s remembrances of the September 11 attacks and the Americans who died that day.

Astronaut Frank Culbertson — The Only American Off the Planet

Expedition 3 Commander Frank Culbertson was aboard the International Space Station at the time of the attacks, and the only American on the crew. As soon as he learned of the attacks, he began documenting the event in photographs because the station was flying over the New York City area. He captured incredible images in the minutes and hours following the event. From his unique vantage point in space, he recorded his thoughts of the world changing beneath him.

The following day, he posted a public letter that captured his initial thoughts of the events as they unfolded. “The world changed today. What I say or do is very minor compared to the significance of what happened to our country today when it was attacked.”

Upon further reflection, Culbertson said, “It’s horrible to see smoke pouring from wounds in your own country from such a fantastic vantage point. The dichotomy of being on a spacecraft dedicated to improving life on the earth and watching life being destroyed by such willful, terrible acts is jolting to the psyche, no matter who you are.”

NASA Science Programs Monitor the Air

NASA science programs were called into action after Sept. 11, 2001, as the agency worked with FEMA to fly sensors over the affected areas on aircraft looking for aerial contaminants and used satellite resources to monitor from above.

Flags for Heroes and Families

NASA flew nearly 6,000 4 by 6 inch flags on Endeavour’s flight during STS-108 to honor the victims of the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. Students working at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas assembled the commemorative packages, including the U.S. flags flown in space, to be presented to relatives of the victims. Distribution began on June 14, 2002, National Flag Day, at a ceremony held at the American Museum of Natural History’s Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York.

“The ‘Flags for Heroes and Families’ campaign is a way for us to honor and show our support for the thousands of brave men and women who have selflessly contributed to the relief and recovery efforts,” said then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin. “The American flags are a patriotic symbol of our strength and solidarity, and our Nation’s resolve to prevail.”

“NASA wanted to come up with an appropriate tribute to the people who lost their lives in the tragic events of September 11,” added Goldin. “America’s space program has a long history of carrying items into space to commemorate historic events, acts of courage and dramatic achievements. ‘Flags for Heroes and Families’ is a natural extension of this ongoing outreach project.”

Commemoration Goes to Mars

Honeybee Robotics, one of the companies involved in building the Mars Exploration Rovers, is located just outside of New York City. As a tribute to the fallen, Honeybee created a dust cover for each rover’s rock abrasion tools of aluminum, about the size of a credit card and adorned with the American flag that was cut out of debris from the World Trade Center. The rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are currently on the surface of Mars.

NASA Kennedy Adds Florida Touch to Sept. 11 Flag

The contributions of NASA and Kennedy Space Center were stitched into the fabric of one of the nation’s most recognizable symbols, when flags from Florida’s Spaceport were sewn into an American Flag recovered near ground zero following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“A few days after the collapse of the World Trade Center this flag was hanging on a scaffolding at 90 West Street, which was a building directly south of the World Trade Center that was heavily damaged when the south tower collapsed,” said Jeff Parness, director, founder and chairman of the “New York Says Thank You Foundation.”

The flag went on to become one of the most enduring symbols of the recovery from the attack. Once complete, “The National 9/11 Flag” will become a permanent collection of the National September 11 Memorial Museum being built at the World Trade Center site. There, America’s flag can evoke a sense of pride, unity and hunger to keep achieving greatness, just as the nation’s space program has for more than half a decade.

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NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured the sharpest images ever taken from space of the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 landing sites. Images show the twists and turns of the paths made when the astronauts explored the lunar surface.

At the Apollo 17 site, the tracks laid down by the lunar rover are clearly visible, along with the last foot trails left on the moon. The images also show where the astronauts placed some of the scientific instruments that provided the first insight into the moon’s environment and interior.

“We can retrace the astronauts’ steps with greater clarity to see where they took lunar samples,” said Noah Petro, a lunar geologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is a member of the LRO project science team.

All three images show distinct trails left in the moon’s thin soil when the astronauts exited the lunar modules and explored on foot. In the Apollo 17 image, the foot trails, including the last path made on the moon by humans, are easily distinguished from the dual tracks left by the lunar rover, which remains parked east of the lander.

“The new low-altitude Narrow Angle Camera images sharpen our view of the moon’s surface,” said Arizona State University researcher Mark Robinson, principal investigator for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). “A great example is the sharpness of the rover tracks at the Apollo 17 site. In previous images the rover tracks were visible, but now they are sharp parallel lines on the surface.”

At each site, trails also run to the west of the landers, where the astronauts placed the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) to monitor the moon’s environment and interior.

This equipment was a key part of every Apollo mission. It provided the first insights into the moon’s internal structure, measurements of the lunar surface pressure and the composition of its atmosphere. Apollo 11 carried a simpler version of the science package.

One of the details that shows up is a bright L-shape in the Apollo 12 image. It marks the locations of cables running from ALSEP’s central station to two of its instruments. Although the cables are much too small for direct viewing, they show up because they reflect light very well.

The higher resolution of these images is possible because of adjustments made to LRO’s orbit, which is slightly oval-shaped or elliptical. “Without changing the average altitude, we made the orbit more elliptical, so the lowest part of the orbit is on the sunlit side of the moon,” said Goddard’s John Keller, deputy LRO project scientist. “This put LRO in a perfect position to take these new pictures of the surface.”

The maneuver lowered LRO from its usual altitude of approximately 31 miles (50 kilometers) to an altitude that dipped as low as nearly 13 miles (21 kilometers) as it passed over the moon’s surface. The spacecraft has remained in this orbit for 28 days, long enough for the moon to completely rotate. This allows full coverage of the surface by LROC’s Wide Angle Camera. The cycle ends today when the spacecraft will be returned to its 31-mile orbit.

“These images remind us of our fantastic Apollo history and beckon us to continue to move forward in exploration of our solar system,” said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

LRO was built and managed by Goddard. Initial research was funded by the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. In September 2010, after a one-year successful exploration mission, the mission turned its attention from exploration objectives to scientific research in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

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Half a century after humankind entered outer space, an European Space Agency-developed camera produced live-streaming 3D images for the first time in the history of space travel — showing the International Space Station like never before.

On 6 August, NASA astronaut Ron Garan operated the Erasmus Recording Binocular (ERB-2) camera to open a new window on the International Space Station through stereoscopic eyes, in high-definition quality. As flight engineer for Expedition 28 and a video blogger himself, Garan set up the futuristic-looking camera in Europe’s Columbus laboratory. While talking about the work on board the space station, he enhanced the sense of depth and presence by playing with an inflatable Earth globe.

Not much bigger than a shoebox, with high-definition optics and advanced electronics, the ERB-2 is the second generation of ESA’s stereoscopic camera family developed by Cosine BV (Leiden, the Netherlands) and Techno System (Naples, Italy).

On the ground at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands, viewers wore polarized glasses similar to those used in cinemas and were amazed by the quality of the images. These near-real 3D images not only change the whole viewing experience, but can also be used in supporting science operations on the Station.

This premiere was a long-awaited commissioning test of the live mode transmission, proving that all systems and procedures are ready to be used for future ERB-2 live-streaming events.

Apart from broadcasting stereo images in real-time for live programs, ESA’s ERB-2 coordinator Massimo Sabbatini dreams about filming extravehicular activities. “The camera could also be used in the future outside the ISS to support the astronauts’ spacewalks or other critical robotic operations. This really felt like being in space with an astronaut by your side,” he said.

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You

Get your 3D glasses ready. The first ERB-2 images will be soon posted on the new ESA YouTube 3D channel. “If you already have a new generation 3D-enabled plasma TV at home, you’ll be able to immerse yourself in the world of the Space Station without leaving your sofa. These videos will turn more people into real space fans,” said Sabbatini.

ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli already recorded his life on board the station during his MagISStra mission. His colleague André Kuipers will also contribute to the 3D immersion: he is being trained to use the ERB-2 camera during his upcoming mission to the station..

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