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NASA Awards Safety and Mission Support Services Contract

Mon, 25 May 2009 13:53:54 GMT

NASA has selected Safety and Quality Assurance Alliance of Cleveland to provide safety and mission assurance services at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

The contract, to be administered through NASA's Office of Safety and MissionAssurance at NASA Headquarters in Washington, is valued at approximately $33 million. Safety and Quality Assurance Alliance is a joint venture with N&R Engineering and Mainthia Technologies Inc., both of Cleveland.

The cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price contract will take effect June 25. The base contract lasts 23 months and has three one-year options.

The contractor will support all of the programs and activities necessary to provide a safe environment for Langley's workforce. Safety and mission assurance support services will cover aeronautical and spaceflight projects, as well as quality assurance activities associated with the design, fabrication, assembly, test, delivery of spaceflight-quality hardware, and material testing functions within the Materials and Quality Assurance Laboratory.

Additionally, support services will provide inspection and quality assurance elements administered through the Center Operations Directorate. These include a variety of quality assurance support services to ensure research facilities and institutional infrastructure are maintained in accordance with standards of quality as specified by its contracts and facility management programs.

The inspection and quality assurance elements support the monitoring of numerous government construction, maintenance and operation contracts, including all activities of the Research Operations, Maintenance, Engineering contract and all facility or research-related construction projects.

For more about NASA's Langley Research Center, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/langley

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

NASA Announces Briefing about Satellite Missions to the Moon

Mon, 25 May 2009 13:52:15 GMT

NASA will hold a briefing about two upcoming lunar missions scheduled to launch in June that will begin a journey to better understand the moon. A briefing with members of the mission and science teams will be held Thursday, May 21, at 4 p.m. EDT, in the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street, SW, in Washington. The briefing will air live on NASA Television and the agency's Web site.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, focuses on the selection of safe landing sites, identification of lunar resources and the study of how lunar radiation will affect humans. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, will impact the moon twice in its search for water ice.

The briefing participants are:

- Doug Cooke, associate administrator, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
- Mike Wargo, chief lunar scientist, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate
- Craig Tooley, project manager, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
- Rich Vondrak, project scientist, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Goddard
- Dan Andrews, project manager, Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
- Tony Colaprete, project scientist, Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, Ames

Reporters may ask questions from participating NASA centers. For information about phone access, contact Ashley Edwards at 202-358-1756 by noon on Thursday, May 21.

LRO and LCROSS are scheduled to launch together aboard an Atlas V rocket no earlier than June 17 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the LRO and LCROSS missions, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/lro

and

http://www.nasa.gov/lcross

Hubble Photographs a Planetary Nebula to Commemorate Decommissioning of Super Camera

Tue, 19 May 2009 10:28:34 GMT

The Hubble community bids farewell to the soon-to-be decommissioned Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 onboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In tribute to Hubble's longest-running optical camera, which was developed and built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a planetary nebula has been imaged as the camera's final "pretty picture."

This planetary nebula is known as Kohoutek 4-55 (or K 4-55). It is one of a series of planetary nebulae that were named after their discoverer, Czech astronomer Lubos Kohoutek. A planetary nebula contains the outer layers of a red giant star that were expelled into interstellar space when the star was in the late stages of its life. Ultraviolet radiation emitted from the remaining hot core of the star ionizes the ejected gas shells, causing them to glow.

In the specific case of K 4-55, a bright inner ring is surrounded by a bipolar structure. The entire system is then surrounded by a faint red halo, seen in the emission by nitrogen gas. This multi-shell structure is fairly uncommon in planetary nebulae.

This Hubble image was taken by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on May 4, 2009. The colors represent the makeup of the various emission clouds in the nebula: red represents nitrogen, green represents hydrogen, and blue represents oxygen. K 4-55 is nearly 4,600 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus.

The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 instrument, which was installed in 1993 to replace the original Wide Field/Planetary Camera, will be removed to make room for Wide Field Camera 3 during the upcoming Hubble Servicing Mission.

During the camera's amazing, nearly 16-year run, the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 provided outstanding science and spectacular images of the cosmos. Some of its best-remembered images are of the Eagle Nebula pillars, Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9's impacts on Jupiter's atmosphere, and the 1995 Hubble Deep Field � the longest and deepest Hubble optical image of its time.

The scientific and inspirational legacy of the camera will be felt by astronomers and the public alike, for as long as the story of the Hubble Space Telescope is told.

For images and more information about planetary nebula K 4-55, visit: http://hubblesite.org/news/2009/21 . For more information about the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wfpc2/

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency and is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The Space Telescope Science Institute conducts Hubble science operations. The institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., Washington, D.C.

The Space Telescope Science Institute is an International Year of Astronomy 2009 program partner. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Mike Massimino Becomes the First to 'Tweet' From Space

Mon, 18 May 2009 13:06:44 GMT

As astronaut Mike Massimino zoomed to rendezvous with the Hubble Space Telescope Tuesday, he managed to reach out to thousands of people who are following his Twitter feed. He sent an email to Johnson Space Center, which then posted this message to his Twitter:

"From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!"

Massimino began 'tweeting' in early April about his training for the STS-125 shuttle mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. By Wednesday morning, more than 247,000 people were following his Twitter feed.

Massimino and his six crew mates launched Monday on an 11-day mission that includes five spacewalks. Massimino has said he will do his best to post updates to Twitter, if at all possible, during the challenging mission.

Aboard the shuttle, astronauts have one or two opportunities each day to send an email, but do not have access to the Internet.

Another astronaut, Mark Polansky, commander for the next shuttle flight, also is 'tweeting.' He's posting updates as he and his crew finish preparing for their STS-127 mission to the International Space Station in June.

NASA also provides updates on the shuttle missions and its other endeavors.
Check out NASA's Twitter feed.