PALO ALTO, CA (Anna Eshoo PR) — Following a meeting with Congresswoman Anna G. Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), GSA, NASA, and the White House at the Capitol on Tuesday, February 26, the General Services Administration will issue a Notice of Intent regarding Hangar One and Moffett Federal Airfield, which reflects the following:
1. Moffett Federal Airfield will NOT be excessed. It will remain a restricted Federal Airfield and NASA will remain its custodian.
2. The Notice of Intent outlines a competitive bid process and the Request for Proposal (RFP) will be released this spring seeking a qualified lessee to provide for the rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of historic Hangar One. Continue reading ‘New Plan Announced to Save Hangar One at NASA Ames’
The U.S. Air Force’s Office of Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) has teamed up with the University of Hawaii and Aerojet to develop a new small-sat launch vehicle that will make its maiden flight later this year from a missile range on Kauai.
The rail-launched Spaceborne Payload Assist Rocket Kauai (SPARK, a.k.a., Super Strypi) will be capable of launching small satellites and CubeSats into low Earth and sun synchronous orbits at a low cost. The objective is to place 250 kg. (551 lb.) payloads into a 400-km (249 mile) sun-synchronous orbit from Kauai.
Airship Ventures Eureka Zeppelin over NASA Ames in happier times. (Credit: Douglas Messier)
Airship Ventures has flown off into the sunset for the last time. Apparently the company couldn’t make a business out of charging people $500 an hour for riding in a Zeppelin over Silicon Valley. The airship was based out of NASA Ames.
Video Caption: NASA Ames Research Center Director Pete Worden was invited as keynote speaker to the Canadian Space Summit to talk about Small Satellites for Science and Other Uses using Earth Observation as an example.
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. (NASA PR) – NASA has chosen three teams to advance the state of the art for small spacecraft in the areas of communications, formation flying and docking systems. The cutting-edge space technology flights are expected to take place in 2014 and 2015.
All selected missions will employ nanosatellites conforming to the CubeSat standard. CubeSats are composed of four-inch, cube-shaped units with each having a volume of about one quart and a weight of approximately three pounds. CubeSats can be joined to create multiple-unit spacecraft. They readily can be accommodated as secondary payloads or rideshares on a number of space launch vehicles. Continue reading ‘NASA Selects 3 Smallsat Demo Missions’
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (NASA PR) – Decades of rigorous research, testing and development performed in the Entry Systems and Technology Division at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., has garnered Ames’ thermal protection engineers the respect of not just other government agencies, but also commercial entities.
“For four decades, whenever the U.S. government or aerospace industry needed thermal protection capabilities for space flight missions, Ames delivered the technology developments that enabled those missions to go forward,” said Chuck Smith, chief of the Entry Systems and Technology Division at Ames. “Our work plays a key role in both government and industry space flight endeavors.”
X-37B space plane after landing. (Credit: U.S. Air Force)
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. (NASA PR) – NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., has won the 2011 NASA Government Invention of the Year.
Ames received the award for developing Toughened Uni-piece Fibrous Reinforced Oxidation-Resistant Composite (TUFROC), a low-cost, lightweight, two-piece, thermal protection system (TPS) for use on space vehicles during atmospheric re-entry at hypersonic speed. TUFROC, a patented technology invented by David A. Stewart and Daniel B. Leiser of Ames, has been successfully demonstrated on the X-37B Reusable Launch Vehicle.
MOFFET FIELD, Calif. — NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun.
This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. Scientists do not yet know if the planet has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition. It's possible that the world would have clouds in its atmosphere, as depicted here in the artist's interpretation. Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
NASA PR — NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.
The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don’t yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.
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