The i-series Of U.S. Space Spacecraft Missions

The Project Mercury was the primary crewed i-series of U.S. space missions. Taking position between 1961 and 1963, the 6 missions aimed to orbit humans approximately Earth, explore a human's aptitude to survive in space, and successfully return both the spacecraft and its occupants to Earth. Alan Shepherd's Mercury Freedom 7 mission frightened President Kennedy to such a level that he straight away pronounced his goal of landing an American on the Moon previous to the end of the 1960s.

Project Gemini consisted of 10 crewed spaceflights between 1962 and 1966. This second series of missions set out to test the period of humans and gear in space, to dock with other spacecraft at present in orbit, to further our knowledge of incoming and leaving Earth's atmosphere, and to effort controlled landings on Earth's surface. Gemini spacecraft superior upon the Mercury designs, and the intended docking allowed for testing and consideration of how a Moon land might work.

Lyrids 'Balloon-Cam' Update

During the peak of the 2012 Lyrid meteor on the night of April 21-22, Dr. Tony Phillips with Science@NASA and a group of students in Bishop, Calif., launched a balloon and an attached camera into the atmosphere. Their hope was to capture footage of Lyrid meteors from above Earth's atmosphere. Here's an update on the balloon and its journey.

The balloon had a hard landing due to unusual way it popped; suffice it to say the parachute was not fully functional because it had a pound of rubber sitting on top of it! The last data file the DVR was writing to was corrupted because of the impact. However, the balloon captured lots of video, and the camera appears to be intact despite the rough descent. Fortunately, a 12,000-foot mountain caught the payload before it could plummet any further.

Earth's Energy Budget Remained Out of Balance despite Unusually Low Solar Activity

A new NASA study underscores the fact that greenhouse gases generated by human activity -- not changes in solar activity are the primary force driving global warming. The study offers an updated calculation of the Earth's energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy absorbed by Earth's surface and the amount returned to space as heat. The researchers' calculations show that, despite unusually low solar activity between 2005 and 2010, the planet continued to absorb more energy than it returned to space.

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, led the research. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics published the study last December. Total solar irradiance, the amount of energy produced by the sun that reaches the top of each square meter of the Earth's atmosphere, typically declines by about a tenth of a percent during cyclical lulls in solar activity caused by shifts in the sun's magnetic field. Usually solar minimums occur about every eleven years and last a year or so, but the most recent minimum persisted more than two years longer than normal, making it the longest minimum recorded during the satellite era.

Pinpointing the magnitude of Earth's energy imbalance is fundamental to climate science because it offers a direct measure of the state of the climate. Energy imbalance calculations also serve as the foundation for projections of future climate change. If the imbalance is positive and more energy enters the system than exits, Earth grows warmer. If the imbalance is negative, the planet grows cooler.

Something New On the Sun: SDO Spots a Late Phase in Solar Flares

The sun's surface dances. Giant loops of magnetized solar material burst up, twist, and fall back down. Some erupt, shooting radiation flares and particles out into space. Forced to observe this dance from afar, scientists use all the tools at their disposal to look for patterns and connections to discover what causes these great explosions. Mapping these patterns could help scientists predict the onset of space weather that bursts toward Earth from the sun, interfering with communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) signals.

Analysis of 191 solar flares since May 2010 by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has recently shown a new piece in the pattern: some 15 percent of the flares have a distinct "late phase flare" some minutes to hours later that has never before been fully observed. This late phase of the flare pumps much more energy out into space than previously realized.

"We're starting to see all sorts of new things," says Phil Chamberlin, deputy project scientist for SDO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We see a large increase in emissions a half-hour to several hours later, that is sometimes even larger than the original, traditional phases of the flare. In one case on November 3, 2010, measuring only the effects of the main flare would mean underestimating the amount of energy shooting into Earth's atmosphere by 70 percent."

Hayabusa Asteroid Mission Comes Home

The Hayabusa capsule and bus entered the Earth's atmosphere over Woomera, Australia, on June 13 at 11:21 p.m. local time. From the perspective of NASA's DC-8 airborne observation team, the capsule moved below and slightly ahead of the bus and stayed clear of the spectacular breakup of the bus.

After the bus had disintegrated, the capsule continued to create a wake, before reaching peak heating and then fading gradually. That's when the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) expects the sample return capsule of the agency's technology demonstrator spacecraft, Hayabusa, to boomerang back to Earth.

The capsule, along with its mother ship, visited a near-Earth asteroid, Itokawa, five years ago and has logged about 2 billion kilometers (1.25 billion miles) since its launch in May 2003. With the return of the Hayabusa capsule, JAXA concluded a remarkable mission of exploration -- one in which NASA scientists and engineers played a contributing role.