WASHINGTON -- In 2012, NASA continued to implement America's ambitious
space exploration program, landing the most sophisticated rover on the
surface of Mars, carrying out the first-ever commercial mission to the
International Space Station and advancing the systems needed to send
humans deeper into space.
"NASA achieved historic milestones
this year landing the most sophisticated rover on the surface of Mars,
carrying out the first ever commercial mission to the space station and
continuing to advance the systems needed to send humans deeper into
space -- beyond the moon, to an asteroid and on to Mars," NASA
Administrator Charles Bolden said. "We are able to keep the United
States the world leader in space exploration -- and continue to
implement America's bipartisan space plan -- because of our talented and
dedicated work force."
The following are some of NASA's top stories this year:
NASA LANDS CAR-SIZE ROVER BESIDE MARTIAN MOUNTAIN
Undertaking the most complex landing ever attempted in planetary
exploration, NASA successfully placed the most advanced robotic rover on
Mars. The Mars Science Laboratory mission carrying the one-ton rover
named Curiosity, touched down in August. Almost immediately, Curiosity
sent back pictures of its landing site at Gale Crater with the eventual
destination of Mount Sharp in the background. Since then, Curiosity has
checked out its 10 science instruments, sent back detailed photos and
weather observations and "tasted" Martian soil.
Key mission
findings during the first three months after the landing include
conglomerate rocks bearing rounded pebbles as evidence of vigorous
ancient stream flow right in the area where Curiosity landed; mineral
composition of Martian soil similar to soils in Hawaii that contain
volcanic glass; and the first assessment of the natural radiation
environment that future astronauts will encounter on the surface of
Mars.
Curiosity's planned two-year prime mission will be to
explore and assess a local region on the surface of Mars as a potential
habitat for life, past or present. In addition, the landing technology
for putting such a large payload safely on the Martian surface could
help with plans for future human Mars missions.
On Dec. 4,
NASA announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars program, including a
new robotic science rover based on the Curiosity design set to launch in
2020. The planned portfolio includes the Curiosity and Opportunity
rovers; two NASA spacecraft and contributions to one European spacecraft
currently orbiting Mars; the 2013 launch of the Mars Atmosphere and
Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) orbiter to study the Martian upper
atmosphere; the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations,
Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission, which will take the first
look into the deep interior of Mars; and participation in ESA's 2016 and
2018 ExoMars missions, including providing "Electra" telecommunication
radios to ESA's 2016 mission and a critical element of the premier
astrobiology instrument on the 2018 ExoMars rover. With InSight, there
will be a total of seven NASA missions operating or being planned to
study and explore our Earth-like neighbor.
The 2020 mission
will constitute another step toward being responsive to high-priority
science goals and the president's challenge of sending humans to Mars
orbit in the 2030s.
NASA ADVANCES COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT, HELPS MAKE HISTORY
A Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) Dragon spacecraft
successfully resupplied the International Space Station and returned
cargo back to Earth in October, completing NASA's first contracted cargo
delivery flight.
Under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services
contract, SpaceX will fly at least 12 cargo missions to the space
station through 2016. The Dragon launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
carrying 882 pounds of cargo, including crew supplies, scientific
research and hardware. Dragon returned almost twice that amount of
cargo, including a freezer packed with research samples collected in the
orbiting laboratory's unique microgravity environment. These samples
will help advance multiple scientific disciplines on Earth and provide
critical data on the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human
body. The ability to return frozen samples is a first for this flight
and will be tremendously beneficial to the station's research community.
Not since the space shuttle have NASA and its international partners
been able to return considerable amounts of research and samples for
analysis.
SpaceX is one of two companies that built and
tested new cargo spacecraft under NASA's Commercial Orbital
Transportation Services (COTS) program. SpaceX completed its final
demonstration test flight in May, becoming the first commercial company
ever to launch, rendezvous and be docked to the International Space
Station. Orbital Sciences is the other company participating in COTS.
Orbital's Antares launch vehicle is on the launch pad at Wallops Flight
Facility in Virginia in advance of a hot fire test of the Antares
first-stage engines. A flight test of the Antares with a simulated
Cygnus spacecraft and a demonstration flight of Cygnus to the space
station are planned for 2013.
With commercial cargo flights
to the space station under way in 2012, NASA took the next steps in the
effort to launch Americans from U.S. soil again. The agency announced in
August new agreements with three American commercial companies to
design and develop the next generation of U.S. human spaceflight
capabilities, enabling a launch of astronauts from the United States in
the next five years.
Advances made by these companies under
Space Act Agreements through the agency's Commercial Crew Integrated
Capability (CCiCap) initiative are intended to ultimately lead to the
availability of commercial human spaceflight services for government and
commercial customers. The CCiCap partners are the Sierra Nevada
Corporation, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), and The Boeing
Company.
CCiCap is an initiative of NASA's Commercial Crew
Program (CCP) and an administration priority. The objective of the CCP
is to facilitate the development of a U.S. commercial crew space
transportation capability with the goal of achieving safe, reliable and
cost-effective access to and from the International Space Station and
low-Earth orbit. Between now and May 31, 2014, NASA's partners will
perform tests and mature integrated designs. This would then set the
stage for a future activity that will launch crewed orbital
demonstration missions to low-Earth orbit by the middle of the decade.
SPACE STATION FULLY OPERATIONAL WITH NEW RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY TESTING
NASA and its international partners celebrated 12 years of permanent
human habitation on the International Space Station on Nov. 2. More than
1,500 research and technology development experiments have been
conducted aboard the orbiting lab -- more than 200 of them this year
alone -- many of which are producing advances in medicine, environmental
systems and our understanding of the universe.
Human
research studies, including new research announced in August, have shown
that using the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device for high-intensity
workouts aboard the orbiting laboratory, in combination with proper
diets, helps astronauts lose less bone density during their stay. This
could have profound effects on future space exploration, as well as the
aging population on Earth. Plant-growth studies are often on the menu,
as the ability to grow plants in microgravity would allow for fresh
food, oxygen generation and carbon dioxide removal. This research also
could help improve crop production on the ground.
Several new
facilities delivered to the space station this year allow for an array
of new research projects. The Japanese Experiment Module Small Satellite
Orbital Deployer changes the way mini satellites now can be deployed to
their optimal orbit, allowing for greater flexibility, operational
control and significant monetary savings. The Aquatic Habitat received
its first inhabitants, translucent Medaka fish, allowing for easy
observation of their skeletal systems, which gives more insight into
bone and muscle atrophy, which are medical issues for astronauts and the
aging population, and radiation effects. A Gravitational Biology Lab
also was delivered to station. The centrifuge allows for biological
experimentation in artificial gravity -- from zero gravity to twice
Earth's normal gravity -- for prolonged periods of time. This facility
provides environmental control, lighting, data transfer, commanding and
observation of experiments in Mars and moon gravity conditions, as well
as mimicking Earth's gravity. The centrifuge is useful for biological
organism research and could lead to advances in medications and
vaccines, agricultural controls and discoveries in genetics -- all
beneficial to people on Earth.
WORK UNDER WAY FOR FIRST LAUNCHES OF NASA'S NEW SPACECRAFT AND ROCKET
In July, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida welcomed the arrival of
the agency's first space-bound Orion capsule, marking a major milestone
in the construction of the spacecraft that will carry astronauts
farther into space than ever before. Orion will be the most advanced
spacecraft ever designed, sustaining astronauts during space travel,
providing safe re-entry from deep space and emergency abort capability.
The Orion at Kennedy will launch on Exploration Flight Test-1, an
uncrewed mission planned for 2014. The spacecraft will travel 3,600
miles above the Earth's surface, 15 times farther than the International
Space Station's orbital position. The primary flight objective is to
understand Orion's heat shield performance at speeds generated during a
return from deep space.
NASA and its industry partners around
the country also made swift progress on the Space Launch System (SLS)
this year, testing and developing new components and improving on
existing hardware. New construction on the largest rocket ever built is
enabled by existing, proven technology, like the space shuttle main
engines that will power the first stage of the rocket. The new J-2X
engine, which is targeted to power the upper stage of the rocket,
underwent a battery of tests that broke duration records and pushed the
engine design to its limits.
The Orion, SLS, and Ground
Systems Development and Operations programs also reached their critical
milestones this year each with an approved system requirement review and
system definition review. Those pivotal steps allowed these programs to
move from concept into its preliminary design phase and all remain on
target for its first flight test in 2017.
NASA'S HUBBLE PROVIDES FIRST CENSUS OF GALAXIES NEAR COSMIC DAWN
Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers announced Dec. 12 they
have seen further back in time than ever before and have uncovered a
previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies that formed
more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 3
percent of its present age. The deepest images to date from Hubble yield
the first statistically robust sample of galaxies that tells how
abundant they were close to the era when galaxies first formed.
The greater depth of the new Hubble images, together with a carefully
designed survey strategy, allows this work to go further than previous
studies, thereby providing what researchers say is the first reliable
galaxy census of this epoch. Notably, one of the galaxies may be a
distance record breaker, observed 380 million years after the birth of
our universe in the theorized big bang.
Looking deeper into
the universe also means peering further back in time. The universe is
estimated to be 13.7 billion years old. The newly discovered galaxies
are seen as they looked 350 to 600 million years after the big bang.
Their light is just arriving at Earth now.
ICE SHEET LOSS AT BOTH POLES INCREASING
An international team of experts supported by NASA and the European
Space Agency combined data from multiple satellites and aircraft to
produce the most comprehensive and accurate assessment to date of ice
sheet losses in Greenland and Antarctica and their contributions to sea
level rise.
The combined rate of melting for the ice sheets
covering Greenland and Antarctica increased during the last 20 years.
Together, these ice sheets are losing more than three times as much ice
each year as they were in the 1990s. About two-thirds of the loss is
coming from Greenland, with the rest from Antarctica.
The
study announced in November was produced by an international
collaboration -- the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise --
that combined observations from 10 satellite missions to develop the
first consistent measurement of polar ice sheet changes. Satellite data
from NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) and the
NASA/German Aerospace Center's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment
(GRACE) missions were included in the study.
This activity
was a major challenge involving cutting-edge, difficult research to
produce the most rigorous and detailed estimates of ice loss from
Greenland and Antarctica to date.
NASA'S AERONAUTICS RESEARCH WORKS TO MAKE A SILENT SONIC BOOM
NASA is continuing to learn more about how sound waves created by
supersonic aircraft move through the atmosphere, all with an eye towards
designing aircraft that generate sonic booms you can barely hear -- or
can't hear at all -- on the ground below. This work could open a whole
new segment of the economy for commercial aviation by making supersonic
flight over land acceptable.
Following a series of research
flights last year, NASA engineers in 2012 poured over information they
gathered from residents near Edwards Air Force Base in California to see
how well they did in generating sonic booms with NASA's F/A-18 jet that
could barely be heard on the ground. The Waveforms and Sonic boom
Perception and Response, or WSPR, project gathered data from a select
group of more than 100 volunteers. A final report on the study is due
soon.
Another phase of this research began in 2012 with the
Farfield Investigation of No Boom Threshold, or FaINT. Using NASA's
F/A-18 supersonic jet, project researchers will try to better understand
what's happening at the very edge of the sonic boom, or just beyond.
and
SPACE TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM SHARPENS CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGIES
With a new set of Space Technology Roadmaps as a guide, NASA's Office
of the Chief Technologist and the Space Technology Program continued to
make great strides in creating the new knowledge and capabilities needed
for NASA's current and future missions in 2012. NASA's Space Technology
Program is innovating, developing, testing, and flying technology for
use in NASA's future missions and by the greater aerospace community.
With more than 800 projects under way, many of which are partnering with
universities and industry, the program continues to meet milestones and
advance NASA's technology capabilities.
This year, NASA's
Space Technology Program launched and successfully demonstrated a
hypersonic inflatable reentry vehicle, proving that inflatable heat
shields are viable for safely slowing large-mass payloads during their
fiery entry through planetary atmospheres, like those of Earth or Mars.
NASA continues to invest in and create new enabling robotic
technologies that aid in future exploration while also having
applications here one Earth, potentially helping paraplegics walk and
aiding in other medical rehabilitation efforts. Investments in improved
woven thermal protection systems also made strides this year using
commercially available 3-D weaving techniques, reducing life cycle costs
and allowing for sustainable and scalable space missions.
Rebuilding the bridge to new ideas and the nation's top talent, Space
Technology is engaging in more than 350 activities with approximately
100 universities and academic institutions through fellowships, direct
competitive awards and partnerships with NASA centers, and commercial
contractors for its technology developments and demonstrations.
In addition, NASA technologies continue to create thousands of jobs and
revenue while significantly improving the quality of life for millions
of people here on Earth.
NASA EDUCATION PROVIDES HANDS-ON LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
NASA's 2012 Summer of Innovation program continued to offer a variety
of programs to provide summer learning opportunities to students and
teachers. The program reached approximately 42,000 students in grades
4-9 across the country, many of whom fell within the agency's target
audience of underrepresented and underserved students. The program also
provided professional development for more than 3,200 middle school
teachers nationwide to help them improve their ability to teach STEM
content in the classroom.
SPACECRAFT FINDS NEW EVIDENCE FOR ICE ON MERCURY
NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging
(MESSENGER) spacecraft provided compelling support for the long-held
hypothesis the planet harbors abundant water ice and other frozen
volatile materials within its permanently shadowed polar craters.
The spacecraft's onboard instruments have been studying Mercury in
unprecedented detail since its historic arrival there in March 2011.
Scientists are seeing clearly for the first time a chapter in the story
of how the inner planets, including Earth, acquired their water and some
of the chemical building blocks for life.
The new data
announced in December indicated the water ice in Mercury's polar
regions, if spread over an area the size of Washington, D.C., would be
more than 2 miles thick. Given its proximity to the sun, Mercury would
seem to be an unlikely place to find ice, however, there are pockets at
the planet's poles that never see sunlight.
IBEX SPACECRAFT REVEALS NEW OBSERVATIONS OF INTERSTELLAR MATTER
NASA announced in January its Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX)
spacecraft captured the best and most complete glimpse yet of what lies
beyond the solar system -- observations that show our solar system is
different than the space right outside it. The new measurements give
clues about how and where our solar system formed, the forces that
physically shape our solar system, and the history of other stars in the
Milky Way.
The spacecraft observed four separate types of
atoms, including hydrogen, oxygen, neon and helium. These interstellar
atoms are the byproducts of older stars, which spread across the galaxy
and fill the vast space between stars. IBEX determined the distribution
of these elements outside the solar system that are flowing charged and
neutral particles, which blow through the galaxy.
IBEX also
measured the interstellar wind traveling at a slower speed than
previously measured by the Ulysses spacecraft, and from a different
direction. The improved measurements from IBEX show a 20 percent
difference in how much pressure the interstellar wind exerts on our
heliosphere. Measuring the pressure on our heliosphere from the material
in the galaxy and from the magnetic fields out there will help
determine the size and shape of our solar system as it travels through
the galaxy.
WISE MISSION SEES SKIES ABLAZE WITH BLAZARS
Astronomers announced in April they were actively hunting a class of
supermassive black holes throughout the universe called blazars thanks
to data collected by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The
mission revealed more than 200 blazars to date with the potential for
finding thousands more.
Blazars are among the most energetic
objects in the universe. They consist of supermassive black holes
actively "feeding," or pulling matter onto them, at the cores of giant
galaxies. As the matter is dragged toward the supermassive hole, some of
the energy is released in the form of jets traveling at nearly the
speed of light. The findings ultimately will help researchers understand
the extreme physics behind super-fast jets and the evolution of
supermassive black holes in the early universe.
SPACE SHUTTLES ARRIVE AT NEW HOMES
With the final flight of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011, the
shuttles themselves were delivered in 2012 to their new homes, where
they will begin a new chapter in their careers: inspiring museum-goers
of all ages to reach for the stars.
Discovery arrived at the
Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Dulles,
Virginia, in April; Enterprise was unveiled at the Intrepid Sea, Air and
Space Museum in New York in July; Endeavour was moved to the California
Science Center in Los Angeles in October; and Atlantis was relocated to
the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida in November.
NASA'S SOCIAL MEDIA AND INTERNET TEAMS CONNECT WITH THE PUBLIC
NASA's social media activities continued to evolve in 2012. With more
than 3.2 million Twitter followers on the agency's flagship account
@NASA, more than a million on Facebook, and a growing audience of
hundreds of thousands on Google+, NASA is connecting directly with more
people to share the agency's activities, people and mission.
NASA's online media teams provided live coverage of several major agency
events and milestones, including this year's historic SpaceX launches
to the International Space Station, the Transit of Venus and the landing
of the Curiosity rover on Mars. In each event, the agency shattered
records for new levels of online engagement with live updates of each
event that reached millions, and in the case of Curiosity -- billions,
of people.
During the August Mars Curiosity rover landing,
NASA's website received 15 million visits and sent out 36 million
webcast streams of NASA TV, breaking records that had just been set
during the Venus Transit (4.2 million website visits, 7.7 million
webcast streams). In October, Curiosity checked-in on Foursquare from
Gale Crater, making it the first time a check-in has happened on another
planet. The two events contributed to record traffic to the site, 185
million visits through Nov. 30, up from 151 million for 2011.
For the first time, visits to NASA.gov from mobile devices contributed a
significant amount of traffic, totaling more than 10 percent of all
visits. The site was honored with its fifth People's Voice Webby for
best government site, and for the first time received the judges' Webby
award as well. NASA.gov also was chosen by Time magazine as one of the
50 Best Websites of 2012.
NASA transitioned our in-person
social media events from NASA Tweetups to NASA Socials, included more
social media platforms and held the agency's first multi-NASA center
social for Curiosity's landing. NASA's social media teams held 16
events, bringing more than 1,000 people into NASA and other facilities.
The agency also worked to integrated social media into more daily news
processes than ever before. From inviting social media followers to
participate in NASA news briefings and events to being able to virtually
attend events held for news media, such as the Orion capsule arrival at
Kennedy Space Center in July. NASA also offered more than a dozen
opportunities to ask questions of agency officials using #askNASA,
including in several Google+ Hangouts, providing additional direct
interaction points between the public and NASA.
and
A little more than a year after the final shuttle mission, NASA helped
return cargo flights to the International Space Station from U.S. soil,
furthered the development of U.S. commercial spaceflight systems to
transport astronauts to the space station and made progress toward the
first launches of NASA's new deep-space spacecraft and heavy-lift
rocket. Complemented by key research and technology products to enable
long journeys into space, NASA continued making the investments in 2012
required to undertake this new era of deep space exploration.
NASA Television's Video File newsfeed will include items featuring
these top stories beginning at noon EST, Dec. 17. For NASA TV streaming
video, schedules and downlink information, visit:
NASA's website will highlight these stories and more also starting at noon on Dec. 17. Visit:
Curiosity Traverse Map, Sol 123
This
map traces where NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drove between landing at a
site subsequently named "Bradbury Landing," and the position reached
during the mission's 123rd Martian day, or sol, (Dec. 10, 2012). The
inset shows the most recent legs of the traverse in greater detail.
With the Sol 123 drive of 63 feet (19 meters), the rover approached a
step down into an area called "Yellowknife Bay," which is a potential
location for selecting the first target rock for Curiosity's hammering
drill. The drive brought the mission's total driving odometry to 0.37
mile (598 meters). Three sols earlier, Curiosity stopped near a layered
outcrop informally named "Shaler," and acquired the image seen at
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16550 .
The mapped area is within Gale Crater and north of the mountain called
Mount Sharp in the middle of the crater. After the first use of the
drill, the rover's main science destination will be on the lower reaches
of Mount Sharp. For broader-context images of the area, see
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16064 and
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16058.
The base image from the map is from the High Resolution Imaging Science
Experiment Camera (HiRISE) in NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Mars Science
Laboratory/Curiosity for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington. The mission's Curiosity rover was designed, developed and
assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
Layered Martian Outcrop 'Shaler' in 'Glenelg' Area
The
NASA Mars rover Curiosity used its Mast Camera (Mastcam) during the
mission's 120th Martian day, or sol (Dec. 7, 2012), to record this view
of a rock outcrop informally named "Shaler."
The outcrop's
striking layers, some at angles to each other in a pattern called
crossbedding, made it a target of interest for the mission's science
team. The site is near where three types of terrain meet at a place
called "Glenelg," inside Gale Crater.
The area covered by the image spans about 3 feet (90 centimeters) in the foreground.
Figure 1 includes a 10-centimeter (4-inch) scale bar.
The image has been white-balanced to show what the rock would look like if it were on Earth.
Figure 2 is a raw-color version, showing what the rock looks like on Mars to the camera.
Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, developed, built and operates
Mastcam. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's
Curiosity rover.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
PASADENA, Calif. -- The NASA Mars rover Curiosity drove 63 feet (19
meters) northeastward early Monday, Dec. 10, approaching a step down
into a slightly lower area called "Yellowknife Bay," where researchers
intend to choose a rock to drill.
The drive was Curiosity's fourth consecutive driving day since leaving a
site near an outcrop called "Point Lake," where it arrived last month.
These drives totaled 260 feet (79 meters) and brought the mission's
total odometry to 0.37 mile (598 meters).
The route took the rover close to an outcrop called "Shaler," where
scientists used Curiosity's Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument
and Mast Camera (Mastcam) to assess the rock's composition and observe
its layering. Before departure from Point Lake, a fourth sample of
dusty sand that the rover had been carrying from the "Rocknest" drift
was ingested and analyzed by Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM)
instrument.
Curiosity ended Monday's drive about 30 percent shorter than planned for
the day when it detected a slight difference between two calculations
of its tilt, not an immediate risk, but a trigger for software to halt
the drive as a precaution. "The rover is traversing across terrain
different from where it has driven earlier, and responding differently,"
said Rick Welch, mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif. "We're making progress, though we're still in the
learning phase with this rover, going a little slower on this terrain
than we might wish we could."
Curiosity is approaching a lip where it will descend about 20 inches
(half a meter) to Yellowknife Bay. The rover team is checking carefully
for a safe way down. Yellowknife Bay is the temporary destination for
first use of Curiosity's rock-powdering drill, before the mission turns
southwestward for driving to its main destination on the slope of Mount
Sharp.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena,
manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project and the mission's Curiosity
rover for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed
and built the rover.
More information about Curiosity is online
You can follow the mission on Facebook
Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achuteguui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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