NASA Chat: Green Flight Challenge!

The "wild blue yonder" is about to get a color change. From Sept. 25 to Oct. 3, 2011, innovative companies will come together in Santa Rosa, Calif., to compete in the third Green Flight Challenge, part of NASA's year-long Centennial Challenge Series.

The excitement goes beyond the $1.65 million of NASA-funded prize money at stake -- the ultimate goal is for energy-efficient, quiet, green-friendly flight solutions for the future.Energy-efficient, quiet, green-friendly flight solutions. That may sound simple until you read the stringent rules and specifications for the 2011 Green Flight Challenge.

Aircraft in the competition are required to fly 200 miles in less than two hours; reach an average speed of at least 100 mph; take off at a distance of less than 2,000 feet to clear a 50-foot obstacle; deliver a decibel rating of less than 78 dBA at full-power takeoff -- all while using less than one gallon of gasoline per occupant!

Paving the Way for Space-Based Air Pollution Sensors

Although the nation’s air has grown significantly cleaner in recent decades, about 40 percent of Americans – 127 million people – live in counties where pollution levels still regularly exceed national air quality standards established by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Most of the areas with the heaviest pollution are in California, but other parts of the country are anything but immune. On the drive down I-95 between Baltimore and Washington D.C., for example, sweltering summer heat and relentless traffic often leave plumes of polluted air stewing over the highway making the area one of the top 20 smoggiest metro areas in the country.

Come July, all that health-sapping pollution will have company: a 117-foot P-3B NASA research aircraft flying spirals over six ground stations in Maryland. The aircraft is part of a month-long field campaign designed to improve satellite measurements of air pollution.

NASA Tops Off Earl Research with Historic Global Hawk Flight

NASA completed a historic day for its hurricane research on Thursday as it put the Global Hawk over Earl, marking the first time the unmanned drone flew over a fully formed hurricane. The Global Hawk also flew in concert with NASA’s DC-8 during the DC-8’s fourth and final research flight to Earl. Both planes are outfitted with a suite of highly advanced instruments that scientists hope will bring new insight into how hurricanes form and intensify. Thursday marked the first day of the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment when two NASA aircraft involved were flying and studying a storm at the same time. The experiment was designed to take advantage of having multiple aircraft above a storm at once, in order to observe hurricanes and tropical storms in as many facets as possible.

As Earl changed over the course of the week, the hurricane turned into an almost ideal test bed for GRIP. The DC-8 flew to Earl four times, including twice from St. Croix in order to reach it when it was farther east. GRIP scientists designed the mission in order to capture a hurricane either as it was forming or as it was strengthening or fizzling. And the Earl flights delivered, allowing scientists to observe the storm rapidly intensifying earlier in the week and then collapsing to a degree later in the week. A Sunday flight from St. Croix put the DC-8 over Earl as it intensified from a Category 1 to a Category 2. And Monday’s flight from Ft. Lauderdale allowed the DC-8’s instruments to observe what was happening as Earl went from a Category 3 to a Category 4.

One of GRIP’s key goals is to help scientists understand why and how some hurricanes rapidly intensify. These flights collected important data toward that end, scientists said. “That series of flights alone really helped us achieve a great goal, which is to observe rapid intensification,” said GRIP mission scientist Scott Braun from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Earl had surprised scientists earlier in the week when they saw that it was surrounded by dry air. Hurricanes often derive strength from moist air and weaken when dry air infiltrates the cyclone. “What happened?” said GRIP mission scientist Ed Zipser of the University of Utah. “The storm continued to intensify in spite of that. And we need to know why.”

NASA, Internet Archive And Flickr Launch Historic Image Collection

Three compilations of images from more than half a century of NASA history are available for comment on a section of the photo-sharing site Flickr known as The Commons. Visitors to NASA on The Commons can help tell the photos' story by adding tags, or keywords, to the images to identify objects and people. In addition, viewers can communicate with other visitors by sharing comments. These contributions will help make the images easier to find online and add insight about NASA's history. The capability to interact with these already-public photos is the result of a partnership between NASA, Flickr from Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, Calif., and Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library based in San Francisco.

Three sets of photos share a common theme of NASA beginnings. The "Launch and Takeoff" set captures iconic spacecraft and aircraft taking flight. "Building NASA" spotlights ground-breaking events and the construction of some of NASA's one-of-a-kind facilities. The "Center Namesakes" set features photos of the founders and figureheads of NASA's 10 field centers. "NASA's long-standing partnership with Internet Archive and this new one with Yahoo!'s Flickr provides an opportunity for the public to participate in the process of discovery," said Debbie Rivera, lead for the NASA Images project at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "In addition, the public can help the agency capture historical knowledge about missions and programs through this new resource and make it available for future generations."

The Commons was launched with the Library of Congress to increase access to publicly-held photography collections and provide a way for the public to contribute information and knowledge. "NASA on The Commons is bringing literally out-of-these-world images to Flickr," said Douglas Alexander, general manager of Flickr. "We are thrilled to be working with NASA to offer such a rich archive and provide amazing insight into this country's space program and its early beginnings." As the project leader, the New Media Innovation Team at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., enlisted the help of NASA photography and history experts to compile the three image sets for The Commons. The group will continue to create and release new photo sets that highlight different elements, themes or achievements.

GRIP 'Shakedown' Flight Planned over Gulf Coast

The first flight of NASA's hurricane airborne research mission is scheduled to take off from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on Tuesday, Aug. 17. NASA's DC-8 research aircraft will be making a planned five-hour flight along the Gulf Coast from western Florida to Louisiana primarily as a practice run for the many scientific instruments aboard. Mission scientists, instrument teams, flight crew and support personnel gathered in Fort Lauderdale this weekend to begin planning the six-week Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes mission, or GRIP. NASA's DC-8, the largest of NASA's three aircraft taking part in the mission, is based at the Fort Lauderdale airport.

The two other aircraft the WB-57 based in Houston and the autonomous Global Hawk flying out of southern California will join the campaign in about a week. The target for Tuesday's "shakedown" flight is the remnants of Tropical Depression 5, a poorly organized storm system whose center is currently hugging the coasts of Mississippi and Louisiana and moving westward. While forecasters do not expect this storm system to strengthen significantly before it reaches landfall in Louisiana, the system offers the DC-8's seven instrument teams an opportunity to try out their equipment on possible convective storms. Rainfall rates, wind speed and direction below the airplane to the surface, cloud droplet sizes, and aerosol particle sizes are just some of the information that these instruments will collect.

GRIP science team members and project managers are now meeting daily at the airport to review weather forecasts and plan upcoming flights with their counterparts in two other airborne hurricane research missions sponsored by the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation. Instrument teams are also working on their equipment onboard the DC-8 in preparation for the flight. On Sunday, Aug. 15, NASA's Global Hawk completed a successful test flight over NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., that took the remotely piloted plane to an altitude of 60,000 feet. The last of three instruments being mounted on the Global Hawk for GRIP is being installed this week. 

Tropically Speaking, NASA Investigates Precipitation Shapes, Sizes for Severity

Rain drops are fat and snowflakes are fluffy, but why does it matter in terms of predicting severe storms? We've all seen fat rain drops, skinny rain drops, round hailstones, fluffy snowflakes and even ice needles. This summer, NASA researchers are going to get a look at just how much these shapes influence severe storm weather. To do it, they'll have to look inside the guts of some of the world's fiercest storms. NASA recently assembled a team of hurricane scientists from across the country to carry out high-altitude-aircraft surveillance to explore in detail how storms form, intensify and dissipate.

Earth scientists and engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., have redesigned one of their instruments, the Advanced Microwave Precipitation Radiometer, or AMPR, to better observe the different shapes of precipitation. In August and September, AMPR will fly at an altitude of 60,000 feet over the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. It will sit in the bomb bay of a WB-57 airplane, which is based at the NASA Johnson Space Center's Ellington Field in Houston. During these flights, AMPR researchers will test a new build the instrument is an upgraded version of the original AMPR built at NASA Marshall in the early 1990s and use it to participate in NASA's upcoming hurricane study, the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes field campaign, better known as GRIP.

The campaign involves three planes mounted with 14 different instruments, including AMPR. The instruments will all work together to create the most complete view of a hurricane to date. Researchers hope the hurricane campaign will help them answer some of nature's most perplexing questions. As tropical storms grow, they produce massive amounts of rain a key element in the development of full-scale hurricanes. Scientists will use AMPR along with the other instruments, such as data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite, to figure out just how hard it's raining inside these ferocious storms, and how much of that rain is associated with the production of ice during intensification.

NASA Announces Media Day For Hurricane Research Flights

NASA will host media in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Houston on Tuesday, Aug. 31, for a behind-the-scenes look at the agency's major airborne campaign studying Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico hurricanes. The campaign, called the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes mission, or GRIP, starts next week. Scientists will spend six weeks flying NASA research aircraft in and around storms and the areas where they may be forming. Instruments onboard NASA's aircraft will collect data to help enhance understanding of how tropical storms form and become hurricanes. NASA's DC-8 aircraft, which will carry seven science instruments, is based in Fort Lauderdale. NASA's WB-57 aircraft, which will carry two instruments, is based in Houston.

Media day events will feature a briefing with mission scientists and flight crews, followed by tours of the aircraft and interviews. The Florida event will be at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport from 8 to 10 a.m. EDT. The Texas media day will be at the Johnson Space Center's Ellington Field in Houston from 1 to 3 p.m. CDT. The date of the media day is subject to change depending on the schedule of research flights. Reporters planning to attend must pre-register by Tuesday, Aug. 24. For the Ft. Lauderdale event, contact Rob Gutro at 301-286-4044 or robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov. For the Houston event, contact Nicole Cloutier-Lemasters at 281-483-5111 or nicole.cloutier-1@nasa.gov.

NASA Invites Media to Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Arrival

NASA will host a media event at 10:30 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Aug. 26, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the arrival of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). The state-of-the-art device to further our understanding of the universe will launch to the International Space Station during the last scheduled space shuttle flight next year. The AMS will arrive for processing at Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility at 11 a.m. aboard an Air Force C-5 aircraft. The instrument, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is a particle physics detector constructed, tested and operated by an international team representing 16 countries.

During the media event, reporters will have an opportunity to speak with AMS' principal investigator, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Mark Sistilli, NASA's program manager for AMS. Other members of the international AMS team, flight processing project managers, DOE staff and European Space Agency officials, whose facilities were used in testing the experiment, also will be available for interviews. Media planning to attend must arrive at Kennedy's news center by 9:30 a.m. for transportation to the event. Participants must be dressed in full-length pants, flat shoes that entirely cover the feet and shirts with sleeves. Because times are subject to change, call Kennedy's media information line for updates at 321-867-2525.

The AMS will fly aboard shuttle Endeavour's STS-134 mission, targeted to launch Feb. 26, 2011. The device will be mounted and operated on the space station. It will use the unique environment of space to advance knowledge of the universe, leading to a better understanding of the universe's origin by searching for antimatter, dark matter, strange matter and measuring cosmic rays. AMS will attempt to answer such fundamental questions of the origin and nature of the universe as, is there antimatter in the universe; what is the exact nature of dark matter; and does strange matter exist. The experiment is expected to remain active for the duration of the station's life.

Dashlink is Online Home for Collaborative Research

NASA researchers have created an online resource that dramatically changed how the agency fosters collaborative research. In this new innovative method capitalizing strengths of the Internet, scientists can share information about systems health and data mining while aiming to help improve aviation safety in ways never before possible. The web site is called Dashlink. DASH stands for Discovery in Aeronautics Systems Health. The name hints at the identity of the particular group of scientists who created this online gathering place in 2008. The site has more than 410 registered users.

"The primary goal of Dashlink is to disseminate information on the latest data mining and systems health algorithms, data and research," said Ashok Srivastava, principal investigator for NASA's Integrated Vehicle Health Management Project at the agency's Ames Research Center in California. Integrated vehicle health management, or IVHM, involves technologies designed to monitor all the different systems that enable an aircraft to fly. IVHM technologies are sensors and software applications that work in concert to detect and address potential problems with an aircraft before the problems become serious.

To be effective, IVHM requires new software programs that can record and analyze instantly many variables such as temperature, pressures, stresses, and even cockpit switch positions. Also needed are new computer algorithms, which are sets of mathematical rules used by the computers to make decisions on how to solve a problem given a certain set of data. Dashlink allows researchers, whether inside or outside NASA, who are working on a particular software application to share the applications they have written, test each other's work, and openly discuss the results.

NASA's Hurricane Quest Set To Begin

In less than two weeks, NASA scientists will begin their quest for the holy grail of hurricane research.The exact conditions required to kickstart a tropical depression into a hurricane largely remain a mystery. Though scientists know many of the ingredients needed, it is unclear what processes ultimately drive depressions to form into the intense, spinning storms that lash the U.S. coasts each summer."Hurricane formation and intensification is really the ‘holy grail' of this field," said Ed Zipser, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Utah and one of three program scientists helping to lead the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment this summer.

With GRIP, NASA's first domestic hurricane project since 2001, the agency has assembled the largest-ever hurricane research experiment to investigate these questions. Three NASA planes, multiple NASA satellites and four planes from research partners NOAA and NSF will combine to make unprecedented measurements of tropical storms as they are forming (or dying out) and intensifying (or weakening). The intense scientific focus on these meteorological processes could provide new insight into the fundamental physics of hurricanes and ultimately improve our ability to forecast the strength of a storm at landfall. Predictions of hurricane strength continue to lag behind the accuracy of storm track predictions, but accurate predictions of both are needed for the best possible preparation before landfall.

With each aircraft outfitted with multiple instruments, scientists will be taking a closer look at hurricanes with hopes of gaining insight into which physical processes or large-scale environmental factors are the key triggers in hurricane formation and intensification. The GRIP fleet includes NASA's Global Hawk, the unmanned drone built by Northrop Grumman and also used by the U.S. Air Force, WB-57 and DC-8. The NASA aircraft will be deployed from Florida (DC-8), Texas (WB-57) and California (Global Hawk) and will fly at varying altitudes over tropical storms in an attempt to capture them at different stages of development.