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Space News Update — August 12, 2013 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1:

NASA's next Mars mission inside 100 days from launch

Story 2:

Following Higgs Discovery, Physicists Offer Vision to Unravel Mysteries of

Universe

Story 3:

NASA Maps Out Goals for Potential Landing On Jupiter's Moon Europa

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

Space Calendar

NASA-TV Highlights

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. NASA's next Mars mission inside 100 days from launch

The team in charge of NASA's $671 million Mars orbiter due

for liftoff in November says the project is on schedule and on

budget for launch during an immovable 20-day interplanetary

window this fall.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN,

mission is being sent to the red planet to answer a fundamental

question: Why did Mars dry up and cool off?

The MAVEN spacecraft arrived at the Kennedy Space Center

on Aug. 2 on a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane. MAVEN

was built by Lockheed Martin in Denver, then moved to Florida

for final launch preparations.

"We're in good shape," said David Mitchell, MAVEN project

manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

"I don't want to claim success until we're actually there, [but] I'll

say right now we're on the plan and on the budget. It's a

tremendous thing the team has accomplished."

Its launch is scheduled aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5

rocket from Cape Canaveral on Nov. 18. The mission has 20

days to depart Earth, or else stay grounded for 26 months to wait

for the planets to properly align again to make the journey

possible.

"When you have a planetary launch period of 20 days, and then you have to stand down for 26 months, there's a

real sense of urgency in decision-making and trades to keep moving forward," Mitchell said.

MAVEN is NASA's 10th Mars mission to launch since 1996. Eight of those reached their destinations, either

Mars orbit or the red planet's surface.

The armada of probes dispatched to Mars in the last 15 years have answered key questions about Mars, its

evolution, habitability and geology. But while scientists know more about the Martian environment of today

and yesteryear, Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN's principal investigator, said little is known about how Mars

transitioned from a warmer, wetter world into the barren planet of today.

"We're trying to understand why the climate changed on Mars - why Mars appears to have gone from an

environment that was habitable, to microorganisms at least, to one that is the cold, dry, uninhabitable

environment we see today," said Jakosky, a scientist from the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory

for Atmospheric and Space Physics. "By looking at the nature of the upper atmosphere today, we learn about

the processes that control the atmopshere, and we're going to have a good understanding of what the history of

the atmosphere has been."

Mitchell and Jakosky said teams are focused on keeping MAVEN on track for its Nov. 18 launch date.

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"To see it safely here in Florida, the last destination before it heads to Mars, is incredible," Mitchell said. "It's

been a lot of years working together, and it's been a great team effort. They've landed it right on schedule, and

we're still tracking to the original launch date we had planned when our proposal was selected five years ago."

MAVEN was selected by NASA in 2008 after a competition, beating out another orbiter that would have

measured biogenic constituents such as methane in the atmosphere.

Officials say MAVEN's total cost is $671 million. That figure includes the costs of constructing the spacecraft,

the Atlas 5 launcher, and a year of operations at the red planet.

Lockheed Martin, which has a history of building interplanetary probes for NASA, used work on previous

missions to MAVEN's benefit, said Guy Beutelschies, the company's MAVEN program manager.

Beutelschies said designers based MAVEN's spacecraft bus, propulsion module and communications systems

on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched to the red planet in 2005. And engineers recycled much of

the software and avionics used on NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno mission for MAVEN.

"The structure of MAVEN is almost identical to MRO," Beutelschies said, adding MAVEN is a bit smaller but

has a larger fuel tank.

Lockheed Martin also altered MAVEN's solar panels, which extend 37.5 tip-to-tip feet when unfurled, to be

canted at an angle on each end. Beutelschies said the design makes the spacecraft more stable when it dips into

the Martian atmosphere, which MAVEN will do at least five times to get a taste of what is going on at lower

altitudes.

Technicians began assembling MAVEN in Denver last summer, then Lockheed Martin put the spacecraft

through a series of extensive of tests to ensure the probe will survive the vibrations and acoustic noise of launch

and the extreme temperatures and vacuum of space.

MAVEN came through the tests unscathed, and engineers put the spacecraft inside an 18-foot-tall canister for

shipment to Cape Canaveral. Workers opened up the box inside a clean room at KSC's Payload Hazardous

Servicing Facility on Aug. 3, beginning a three-month campaign to prepare the one-of-a-kind spacecraft for its

trip to Mars. Technicians bolted on MAVEN's high-gain communications antenna Friday.

They planned to install three of the craft's five attitude-controlling reaction wheels, which needed to be

recalibrated, according to Jakosky, who said the wheels used by MAVEN are different than the wheels used by

NASA's Kepler telescope, which has suspended science operations due to reaction wheel failures.

Plans called for workers inside the clean room to plug in several of MAVEN's suite of scientific instruments

undergoing last-minute touch-ups at Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley.

The first power-up of the MAVEN spacecraft since its arrival in Florida is scheduled for next week.

"Then we'll start checking all the systems out to make sure the flight, and the transportation, there was no

issue," Mitchell said. "I'm sure there won't be an issue, but we have to check it. Then we'll go into some

deployment testing of some of the appendages, do a dry spin balance of the spacecraft to get the mass properties

with everything on-board, fuel the spacecraft with hydrazine, and then pretty soon we'll be getting into

integrated operations with the launch vehicle."

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With its propellant tank empty, MAVEN weighs less than a ton. With a tank full of hydrazine, MAVEN will tip

the scales at more than 5,400 pounds at the time of launch. Most of the propellant will be consumed during a

lengthy rocket firing to brake MAVEN into orbit around Mars in September 2014.

MAVEN will be encapsulated inside the two halves of the Atlas 5's four-meter diameter payload fairing around

the end of October, then the spacecraft will be trucked to the seaside launch pad in early November, Mitchell

said.

With MAVEN perched atop it, the Atlas 5 will roll to the launch pad Nov. 17, ahead of its planned liftoff one

day later to begin a 10-month journey to Mars.

If MAVEN blasts off Nov. 18, its arrival is appointed for Sept. 22, 2014, Mitchell said. MAVEN will enter an

elongated, oval-shaped orbit and then spiral down to a science orbit with a high point of more than 3,700 miles

and a low point 90 miles above the Martian surface.

Controllers will deploy instrument booms and a sensor platform soon after MAVEN's arrival at Mars. The

payloads will monitor the solar wind's impact on Mars and scoop up and study gases in the outermost layers of

the Martian atmosphere.

"After we get to Mars, there's about a five-week commissioning phase, then we go into one year of operations,"

Mitchell said.

NASA could extend MAVEN's mission beyond late 2015 if the spacecraft remains healthy and producing good

science results. The probe carries enough propellant to stay operational for nearly a decade, according to fuel

projections by Lockheed Martin.

"What we're really getting at is understanding the history of the climate, the history of the volatile inventory,

and I think the understanding of the history of the habitability of Mars by microbes," Jakosky said. "I see it as a

geology mission, or an astrobiology mission, because that's what we're getting at by studying the top of the

atmosphere and its interactions with the sun."

Source: Spaceflight Now Return to Contents

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2. Following Higgs Discovery, Physicists Offer Vision to Unravel Mysteries of Universe

After nine days of intensive discussions, nearly 700 particle physicists from about 100 universities and

laboratories concluded nine months of work with a unified framework for unmasking the hidden secrets of

matter, energy, space and time during the next two decades.

Physicists have made remarkable advances in understanding the fundamental laws of the universe during the

last two years. On July 4, 2012, the world celebrated the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron

Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. The discovery, made possible by more than 1,500 U.S. scientists providing

talent, technology and leadership, ended a decades-long search for the elusive particle. Physicists working in

other facilities made progress in unmasking some of the bizarre behavior of particles called neutrinos.

But despite these successes, puzzling questions about the nature of the universe remain unanswered. For

example, the essential properties of neutrinos are still a mystery. And dark matter and dark energy, which

together constitute 95 percent of the universe, are today still astonishing enigmas.

Scientists debated those and other questions July 28-Aug. 6 at the University of Minnesota during the 2013

Snowmass Community Summer Study, the capstone in a series of meetings held last year. They wrapped up

their work by identifying the most exciting and vital questions facing particle physics and by providing a 20-

year outlook for the investigative work needed to address them. The final report of the Summer Study, to be

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published this fall, will detail the scientific importance of each question and the scientific instruments required

to probe them.

The following provides a flavor of the questions:

- The Higgs particle is unlike any other particle we have ever encountered. Why is it different? Are there more?

- Neutrinos are very light, elusive particles that change their identity as they travel. How do they fit into our

understanding of nature?

- Known particles constitute 1/6 of all the matter in the universe. The rest we call dark matter. But what is it?

Can we detect these particles in our labs? Are there other undiscovered particles in nature?

- There are four known forces in nature. Are these manifestations of a single unified force? Are there

unexpected new forces?

- Are there new hidden dimensions of space and time?

- Both matter and anti-matter were produced in the Big Bang, but today our world is composed only of matter.

Why?

- Why is the expansion of the universe accelerating?

"There's a great deal of energy and a host of ideas in the field of particle physics," said Jonathan Rosner, chair

of the American Physical Society's Division of Particles and Fields. "In the last 12 months, we've discovered the

Higgs boson and made important discoveries about the behavior of neutrinos. It's clear that there is much more

to discover. We understand less than 5 percent of the matter and energy in our universe. What experiments can

help expand our knowledge in the next 20 years?"

Significantly, the final report of the Summer Study will reflect the ideas of the next generation of scientists who

will become the stewards of particle physics. It will include the results of a survey of graduate students,

postdoctoral researchers and young staff scientists in the field.

"The Snowmass process is about planning the next generation of experiments, many of which have decade-long

lead times," said Jonathan Asaadi, a researcher at Syracuse University. "Decisions made today will shape the

careers of the young scientists who will run these experiments many years from now. Our survey of nearly

1,000 young scientists has provided a valuable perspective."

Source: SpaceRef Return to Contents

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3. NASA Maps Out Goals for Potential Landing On Jupiter's Moon Europa

The top priority of a robotic lander mission to Jupiter's

potentially life-supporting moon Europa should be

investigating the composition and chemistry of its

subsurface ocean, scientists say.

Such a mission should also aim to determine the

thickness and dynamics of the moon's ice shell and

characterize the surface geology of Europa in detail, a

NASA-appointed "science definition team" reports in a

new study in the journal Astrobiology.

"If one day humans send a robotic lander to the surface of Europa, we need to know what to look for and what

tools it should carry," study lead author Robert Pappalardo, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,

Calif., said in a statement.

"There is still a lot of preparation that is needed before we could land on Europa, but studies like these will help

us focus on the technologies required to get us there, and on the data needed to help us scout out possible

landing locations," Pappalardo added.

Pappalardo and his colleagues further recommend that any Europa lander be capable of drilling up to 4 inches

(10 centimeters) into the moon's surface ice. Collecting underground samples from different depths would help

scientists figure out the ocean's composition and determine how it is affected by the high levels of radiation that

bombard the icy moon, they write.

The team also suggests a model payload for a potential Europa lander consisting of seven scientific instruments:

a mass spectrometer, Raman spectrometer, magnetometer, multiband seismometer package, site imaging

system, microscopic imager and reconnaissance imager.

"This model payload is meant as a proof of concept representing the range of possible instruments that could be

used to investigate Europa in situ," the scientists write in the study, stressing that thorough reconnaissance of

the moon would be required to pick out a safe and suitable landing site.

Astrobiologists would love to drop a lander onto Europa, a 1,900-mile-wide (3,100 kilometers) moon that is

regarded as perhaps the most likely candidate in our solar system to host life beyond Earth. But no such mission

is yet on the books at NASA, or anywhere else.

The European Space Agency is leading a mission called JUICE (short for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer), which

aims to launch a probe toward the solar system's largest planet in 2022.

The JUICE spacecraft would reach the Jovian system in 2030 and spend at least three years studying Jupiter,

Europa and its fellow satellites Callisto and Ganymede. But the probe would not land on any of these worlds.

Source: Space.com Return to Contents

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The Night Sky

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

Monday, August 12

During and after dusk, spot Saturn above the

waxing crescent Moon in the southwest. Look

lower right of the Moon for Spica. Much higher to

their upper right shines Arcturus.

Tuesday, August 13

The first-quarter Moon shines in the southwest

at nightfall, with Saturn to its right and Antares

farther to its left. Quite close to the Moon is Alpha

Librae, a wide double star for binoculars. The

Moon occults (covers) Alpha Librae for much of

South America.

Wednesday, August 14

Look for orange Antares lower left of the Moon

after dusk, with the other stars of upper Scorpius

around it. Near the zenith shines the Summer Star,

Vega.

Thursday, August 15

Antares is lower right of the Moon this evening.

Friday, August 16

By about 10 p.m. (depending on where you

live), W-shaped Cassiopeia is now as high in the

northeast as the Big Dipper is in the northwest.

Cassiopeia will grow more ascendant over the

Dipper in the evening for the next several months

as the seasons turn.

Look below the Moon tonight and tomorrow

night for the Sagittarius Teapot, as shown below.

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ISS Sighting Opportunities For Denver:

Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Mon Aug 12, 8:36 PM 2 min 15° 15 above NNW 10 above NNE

Mon Aug 12, 10:13 PM 2 min 11° 10 above N 10 above NNE

Tue Aug 13, 9:24 PM 2 min 10° 10 above NNW 10 above NNE

Tue Aug 13, 11:01 PM < 1 min 14° 12 above NNW 14 above N

Wed Aug 14, 8:35 PM 2 min 11° 11 above NNW 10 above NNE

Wed Aug 14, 10:12 PM 2 min 13° 11 above NNW 13 above NNE

Thu Aug 15, 9:23 PM 2 min 11° 10 above NNW 10 above NNE

Thu Aug 15, 11:00 PM < 1 min 16° 16 above NNW 16 above NNW

Fri Aug 16, 8:35 PM 2 min 11° 10 above NNW 10 above NNE

Fri Aug 16, 10:12 PM 1 min 20° 14 above NNW 20 above NNE

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights

(all times Eastern Daylight Time)

August 14, Wednesday

6 a.m. - ISS Expedition 36 In-Flight Interview with the NBC “Today” Show - JSC (All Channels)

August 15, Thursday

1:40 p.m. - ISS Expedition 36 In-Flight Educational Event with the Riverside Preparatory High School in Oro

Grande, CA - JSC (All Channels)

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August 16, Friday

10 a.m. - ISS Expedition 36 Russian Spacewalk Coverage (Spacewalk begins at 10:40 a.m. ET) - JSC (All

Channels)

Watch NASA TV online by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar

Aug 12 - Comet 152P/Helin-Lawrence Closest Approach To Earth (2.735 AU)

Aug 12 - Perseids Meteor Shower Peak

Aug 12 - Asteroid 17681 Tweedledum Closest Approach To Earth (0.998 AU)

Aug 12 - Asteroid 69263 Big Ben Closest Approach To Earth (1.599 AU)

Aug 12 - 35th Anniversary (1978), ISEE-3 (ICE) Launch

Aug 13 - Asteroid 54509 YORP Closest Approach To Earth (0.437 AU)

Aug 13 - Asteroid 1241 Dysona Closest Approach To Earth (1.906 AU)

Aug 13 - NASA Small Business Conference, Greenbelt, Maryland

Aug 14 - Comet P/2013 J2 (McNaught) At Opposition (1.159 AU)

Aug 14 - Asteroid 3581 Alvarez Closest Approach To Earth (0.914 AU)

Aug 14 - Asteroid 5805 Glasgow Closest Approach To Earth (1.878 AU)

Aug 14 - Asteroid 4341 Poseidon Closest Approach To Earth (1.942 AU)

Aug 15 - Comet P/2013 J2 (McNaught) Closest Approach To Earth (1.159 AU)

Aug 15 - Comet 132P/Helin-Roman-Alu Closest Approach To Earth (2.030 AU)

Aug 15 - Asteroid 5816 Potsdam Closest Approach To Earth (2.024 AU)

Aug 15 - Asteroid 83360 Catalina Closest Approach To Earth (2.111 AU)

Aug 15 - Lecture: Curiosity's First Year on Mars, Pasadena, California

Aug 15 - Teleconference: Human Spaceflight: Technical Panel

Aug 15-18 - 16th Annual International Mars Society Convention, Boulder, Colorado

Aug 16 - Comet C/2012 V2 (LINEAR) Perihelion (1.455 AU)

Aug 16 - [Aug 06] Comet P/2013 P1 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (2.564 AU)

Aug 16 - Asteroid 7 Iris At Opposition (7.6 Magnitude Star)

Aug 16 - Asteroid 2008 ON10 Near-Earth Flyby (0.047 AU)

Aug 16 - Asteroid 3989 Odin Closest Approach To Earth (0.992 AU)

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

Hyperloop: Billionaire Elon Musk Unveiling Mysterious Travel Technology

Today

Elon Musk stands next to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket

There is now a schedule for the big reveal. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who runs the electric-car firm

Tesla and the private spaceflight company SpaceX, will unveil the design of his proposed "Hyperloop" travel

system today (Aug. 12) at 4:30 p.m. EDT (1:30 p.m. PDT; 2030 GMT).

"Pulled all nighter working on Hyperloop (as did others). Hopefully not too many mistakes. Will publish link at

1:30 PDT," Elon Musk (@elonmusk) tweeted today.

Musk first mentioned the Hyperloop publicly in July 2012 but has disclosed few details about it since then,

leading to intense speculation around the Internet about just what this potentially revolutionary travel concept

might be.

Musk has said that the Hyperloop could get passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than 30

minutes, meaning it could travel faster than 600 mph (966 km/h); that it would be solar-powered; and that

tickets to ride a Hyperloop vehicle would cost much less than seats aboard a plane or train.

Further, in May, Musk described the Hyperloop as a "cross between a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey

table," leading many amateur techsleuths to imagine a system that pneumatically blasts passenger-packed pods

through long tubes.

We'll see what all the fuss was about in just a few hours.

Source: Space.com Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Orbits of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech

Explanation: Are asteroids dangerous? Some are, but the likelihood of a dangerous asteroid striking the Earth

during any given year is low. Because some past mass extinction events have been linked to asteroid impacts,

however, humanity has made it a priority to find and catalog those asteroids that may one day affect life on

Earth. Pictured above are the orbits of the over 1,000 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). These

documented tumbling boulders of rock and ice are over 140 meters across and will pass within 7.5 million

kilometers of Earth -- about 20 times the distance to the Moon. Although none of them will strike the Earth in

the next 100 years -- not all PHAs have been discovered, and past 100 years, many orbits become hard to

predict. Were an asteroid of this size to impact the Earth, it could raise dangerous tsunamis, for example. Of

course rocks and ice bits of much smaller size strike the Earth every day, usually pose no danger, and

sometimes creating memorable fireball and meteor displays.

Source: APOD Return to Contents