#SpotOrion As NASA Spacecraft Travels Cross Country

A test version of NASA’s Orion spacecraft has taken to the road for the next several weeks, as it makes its way across country for recovery tests off the coast of California. The mockup rolled away from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., on Dec. 11, and will arrive at Naval Base San Diego in California in early January. There, the Orion stand in will be used in February to support tests simulating the recovery of Orion following its return from space.

The Orion mockup will travel through Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona before crossing the California border. For updates on where the capsule is or is headed, follow @NASA_Orion on Twitter. If spotted, individuals are encouraged to share their photos of the mockup via social media using the hashtag #SpotOrion. The mockup, called a boilerplate test article, has already been used in a number of tests to ensure that Orion will be ready for its first mission, Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), scheduled for September 2014. That mission will take Orion to 3,600 miles above the Earth’s surface before returning it at speeds of up to 20,000 miles per hour for a splash landing in the Pacific Ocean.

During the underway recovery tests in San Diego, the mockup will be set adrift in open and unstable waters, providing NASA and the Navy the opportunity to recover the capsule and bring it into the well deck of the USS San Diego. While deployed, the team will seek out various sea states in which to practice the capsule recovery procedures. This will help build a knowledge base of how the capsule recovery differs in calm and rough seas and what the true physical limits are.

The 18,000-pound mockup is a full-size replica of the Orion spacecraft currently being built at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. NASA and the Navy previously used this mockup to practice recovery in calm seas during a stationary recovery test in August where the spacecraft was set adrift in the waters of Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia and recovered into the docked well deck of the USS Arlington. The mockup was also dropped from 25 feet above the water of Langley’s Hydro Impact Basin to simulate different splashdown scenarios.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov

NASA Sees 'Watershed' Cosmic Blast in Unique Detail

On April 27, a blast of light from a dying star in a distant galaxy became the focus of astronomers around the world. The explosion, known as a gamma-ray burst and designated GRB 130427A, tops the charts as one of the brightest ever seen.

A trio of NASA satellites, working in concert with ground-based robotic telescopes, captured never-before-seen details that challenge current theoretical understandings of how gamma-ray bursts work.

"We expect to see an event like this only once or twice a century, so we're fortunate it happened when we had the appropriate collection of sensitive space telescopes with complementary capabilities available to see it," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division in Washington.

Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the cosmos, thought to be triggered when the core of a massive star runs out of nuclear fuel, collapses under its own weight, and forms a black hole. The black hole then drives jets of particles that drill all the way through the collapsing star and erupt into space at nearly the speed of light.

Gamma-rays are the most energetic form of light. Hot matter surrounding a new black hole and internal shock waves produced by collisions within the jet are thought to emit gamma-rays with energies in the million-electron-volt (MeV) range, or roughly 500,000 times the energy of visible light. The most energetic emission, with billion-electron-volt (GeV) gamma rays, is thought to arise when the jet slams into its surroundings, forming an external shock wave.

The Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope captured the initial wave of gamma rays from GRB 130427A shortly after 3:47 a.m. EDT April 27. In its first three seconds alone, the "monster burst" proved brighter than almost any burst previously observed.

Source: www.nasa.gov

MAVEN Prelaunch Updates

MAVEN Launch Preps on Schedule

Fri, 18 Nov 2013 10:40 AM EDT

MAVEN launch preparations remain on schedule and have continued to go well since spacecraft processing resumed earlier this month. On Tuesday, Oct. 22, MAVEN is slated for a spin test without propellant aboard. Once complete, the spacecraft will be prepared for fueling. The Atlas V rocket payload fairing will be moved into the clean room on Oct. 21 in preparation for MAVEN's encapsulation beginning in early November.

The Atlas booster was hoisted into the vertical integration facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41 on Oct. 11, and the Centaur upper stage was hoisted atop the Atlas the following Monday. United Launch Alliance has completed powering of the stacked vehicle for checkout. The Combined Systems Test, an electrical test of the rocket, is scheduled for Oct. 22.

The launch of MAVEN is scheduled for Nov. 18 at 1:28 p.m. EST.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/