Wakeup Music of the Space Shuttle’s Final Mission

Use of music to awaken astronauts on space missions dates back at least to the Apollo Program, when astronauts returning from the moon were serenaded by their colleagues in mission control with lyrics from popular songs that seemed appropriate for the occasion.

Usually picked by flight controllers or by crew members’ friends and family members, most wakeup calls are musical, but sometimes include dialog from movies or TV shows. The playlist is eclectic, ranging from rock, country, classical, bluegrass and jazz, to children’s choruses and songs from the countries of international crewmembers. The recording is usually followed by a call from the CAPCOM in Mission Control, wishing the crew a good morning.

The common element of all these selections is that they promote a sense of camaraderie and esprit de corps among the astronauts and ground support personnel.

NASA Receives European Commitment To Continue Space Station

The Multilateral Coordination Board (MCB) for the International Space Station partner agencies met Wednesday, April 27, to discuss increased efforts to use the station as a test-bed for exploration. The MCB also congratulated the European Space Agency (ESA) on its recent decision to continue station operations to at least 2020. The MCB is working diligently to extend the benefits to future exploration beyond low-Earth orbit through enhanced station research, technology development and other opportunities. Other topics on the agenda included a report on efforts to create international standards for docking and berthing; rendezvous and proximity operations; interfaces for replaceable items and payloads; and standardization of command protocols for spacecraft.

Station research with potential societal impact includes:

-- The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2, which will fly aboard STS-134, scheduled to launch on April 29. The experiment is a cosmic ray detector that will search for dark matter and antimatter, components critical to understanding the origin and structure of our universe.

-- The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) continues its life science research program on mitigating health risks associated with spaceflight. These health experiments and activities will monitor crew health and deliver health care on space missions.

-- ESA began the GeoFlow experiment in the Fluid Science Laboratory payload. This experiment will take advantage of the microgravity environment on the station in combination with electrical fields, thermal gradients and rotation to simulate many parameters of geo-physical flows under the Earth's crust. Results will help scientists understand thermal convection in planets and the outer shells of celestial bodies. It also will verify numerical simulations of fluid dynamics of liquid core planets with real experimental data.

-- Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, continues experimental programs aimed at human adaptation to future long- term expeditions. Dedicated medical experiments study the effects of flight conditions on the cardiovascular system, respiratory system and bones. Other research includes planting wheat and vegetables them performing genetic, microbiological and biochemical tests on the plants.

NASA And German Aerospace Center Sign Civil Space Agreements

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Chairman of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Executive Board Johann-Dietrich Worner signed a framework agreement for cooperative activities in aeronautics, exploration and the peaceful use of space Wednesday at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The agreement is intended to enhance cooperation between the two agencies during the next decade. "NASA has a long history of successful cooperation with the government of Germany and an outstanding relationship with DLR," Bolden said. "Today's signing will further enhance our ability to work closely together in a variety of mutually beneficial activities in virtually every NASA mission area."

The agreement sets forth the general terms and conditions for cooperation on a range of activities related to human spaceflight, exploration, aeronautics, global climate change and Earth and space science. "Many space missions and projects can only be carried out through international cooperation, for example, with NASA, because of their great complexity and the associated costs," Worner said. "This is why DLR, as Germany's national space agency and research center, is endeavoring to set up bilateral collaborations such as this." Bolden and Worner also signed an agreement making DLR a NASA Lunar Science Institute associate partner. The institute brings together scientists from around the world to conduct collaborative research in lunar science. 

So you Think you can Solve a Cosmology Puzzle?

Cosmologists have come up with a new way to solve their problems. They are inviting scientists, including those from totally unrelated fields, to participate in a grand competition. The idea is to spur outside interest in one of cosmology's trickiest problems measuring the invisible dark matter and dark energy that permeate our universe. The results will help in the development of new space missions, designed to answer fundamental questions about the history and fate of our universe. "We're hoping to get more computer scientists interested in our work," said cosmologist Jason Rhodes of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who is helping to organize the challenge, which begins on Dec. 3, 2010.

"Some of the mathematical problems in our field are the same as those in machine-learning applications for example facial recognition software." JPL and several European Universities, including The University of Edinburgh and University College London in the United Kingdom, are helping to support the event, which is funded by a European Union group called Pattern Analysis, Statistical Modelling and Computation Learning. The principal investigator is Thomas Kitching of the University of Edinburgh. This year, the competition, which has operated since 2008, is called GREAT 2010, after GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing. The challenge is to solve a series of puzzles involving distorted images of galaxies. Occasionally in nature, a galaxy is situated behind a clump of matter that is causing the light from the galaxy to bend.

The result is a magnified and skewed image of the galaxy. In the most extreme cases, the warping results in multiple images and even a perfect ring, called an Einstein Ring after Albert Einstein, who predicted the effect. But most of the time, the results are more subtle and a galaxy image is distorted just a tiny bit not even enough to be perceived by eye. This is called weak gravitational lensing, or just weak lensing for short. Weak lensing is a powerful tool for unlocking the fabric of our universe. Only four percent of our universe consists of the stuff that makes up people, stars and anything with atoms. Twenty-four percent is dark matter a mysterious substance that we can't see but which tugs on the regular matter we can see. Most of our universe, 72 percent, consists of dark energy, which is even more baffling than dark matter.

Space Station Partners Release International Docking Standard

The International Space Station Multilateral Coordination Board (MCB) has approved a docking system standard. The international standard will provide guidelines for a common interface to link future spacecraft ranging from crewed to autonomous vehicles and from low-Earth orbit to deep-space exploration missions. The MCB consists of senior representatives from NASA, the Russian Federal Space Agency; the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology assisted by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency; the European Space Agency; and the Canadian Space Agency.

The MCB is the space station's senior level management board. It coordinates the orbiting laboratory's operations and activities among the partners. "The goal was to identify the requirements to create a standard interface to enable two different spacecraft to dock in space during future missions and operations," said Bill Gerstenmaier, MCB chair and associate administrator for the Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This standard will ease the development process for emerging international cooperative space missions and enable the possibility of international crew rescue missions."

This standardization effort will ensure interface commonality without dictating any particular design behind the standard interface. The document contains the information necessary to describe physical features and design loads of a standard docking interface. The technical teams from the five space station partner agencies will continue to work on additional refinements and revisions to the initial standard. The Multilateral Coordination Board released the document to allow non-partner agencies and commercial developers to review the new standard and provide feedback.

NASA Sponsors Reduced Gravity Technology Test Flights

NASA recently sponsored a series of flights from Ellington Field in Houston to test technologies in reduced gravity conditions. The flights marked the third year of operations for NASA's Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology program, called FAST. The 16 research teams that participated were comprised of small businesses, university groups and NASA researchers from Massachusetts, New York, Maryland, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Texas and California. The teams were selected competitively based on the value of their technology to NASA and the potential to improve the technology through testing in the unique, reduced-gravity environment.

"University students from Florida to California, private companies and NASA centers all participated in this latest round of technology test flights," said NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This commercially-provided test platform allows small technology innovators a unique way to test systems before they reach the harsh and unforgiving environment of space, providing a proving ground at the high frontier." The FAST program is designed to help reduce the risk of using new technologies during space missions. The flights also provide insight into why some technologies may fail before deploying them on a costly ride into the unforgiving environment of space.

The flights were on a Boeing 727 airplane operated under contract to NASA by the Zero Gravity Corporation in Vienna, Va. They simulated the weightless environment of space and the reduced-gravity conditions of the moon. The FAST program paid for the flight time and operations while each research team secured separate funding for their technology development. The aircraft provides a series of short periods of reduced gravity lasting about 25 seconds. By repeating the maneuver, researchers obtain approximately 15 minutes of cumulative test time during each flight. Two flights with lunar gravity conditions and two flights with zero gravity conditions were conducted with approximately 10 projects and 25 to 30 researchers on each flight.

NASA Helps in Upcoming Asteroid Mission Homecoming

The space and astronomy worlds have June 13 circled on the calendar. 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 since its launch in May 2003.

With the return of the Hayabusa capsule, targeted for June 13 at Australia's remote Woomera Test Range in South Australia, JAXA will have concluded a remarkable mission of exploration -- one in which NASA scientists and engineers are playing a contributing role.

"Hayabusa will be the first space mission to have made physical contact with an asteroid and returned to Earth," said Tommy Thompson, NASA's Hayabusa project manager from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The mission and its team have faced and overcome several challenges over the past seven years. This round-trip journey is a significant space achievement and one which NASA is proud to be part of."