NASA-International Space Station

"For a long time the thinking was that you couldn't find a cup's worth of water in the entire asteroid belt," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Today we know you not only could quench your thirst, but you just might be able to fill up every pool on Earth – and then some."

The discovery is a result of six years of observing asteroid 24 Themis by astronomer Andrew Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. Rivkin, along with Joshua Emery, of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, employed the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility to take measurements of the asteroid on seven separate occasions beginning in 2002. Buried in their compiled data was the consistent infrared signature of water ice and carbon-based organic materials.

The study's findings are particularly surprising because it was believed that Themis, orbiting the sun at "only" 479 million kilometers (297 million miles), was too close to the solar system's fiery heat source to carry water ice left over from the solar system's origin 4.6 billion years ago.

Now, the astronomical community knows better. The research could help re-write the book on the solar system's formation and the nature of asteroids.

"This is exciting because it provides us a better understanding about our past – and our possible future," said Yeomans. "This research indicates that not only could asteroids be possible sources of raw materials, but they could be the fueling stations and watering holes for future interplanetary exploration."

Rivkin and Emory's findings were independently confirmed by a team led by Humberto Campins at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

JPL manages the Near-Earth Object Program Office for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

As the Hubble Space Telescope achieves the major milestone of two decades on orbit, NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute, or STScI, in Baltimore are celebrating Hubble’s journey of examination with a stunning new picture and several online educational activities. There are also opportunities for people to discover galaxies as armchair scientists and send personal greetings to Hubble for posterity.



NASA is releasing a new Hubble photo of a small segment of one of the largest known star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula. Three light-year-tall towers of cool hydrogen laced with soil rise from the wall of the nebula. The scene is reminiscent of Hubble’s classic “Pillars of Creation” photo from 1995, but even more striking.

NASA’s best-recognized, longest-lived and most prolific space observatory was launched April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery during the STS-31 mission. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology.

Over the years, Hubble has suffered broken equipment, a bleary-eyed primary mirror, and the cancellation of a planned shuttle servicing mission. But the ingenuity and dedication of Hubble scientists, engineers and NASA astronauts allowed the observatory to rebound and thrive. The telescope's crisp vision continues to challenge scientists and the public with new discoveries and evocative images.

"Hubble is undoubtedly one of the most recognized and successful scientific projects in history," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Last year's space shuttle servicing mission left the observatory operating at peak capacity, giving it a new beginning for scientific achievements that impact our society."

Hubble fans worldwide are being invited to take an interactive journey with Hubble. They can also visit Hubble Site to share the ways the telescope has affected them. Follow the “Messages to Hubble” link to send an e-mail, post a Facebook message, or send a cell phone text message. Fan messages will be stored in the Hubble data archive along with the telescope’s science data. For those who use Twitter, you can follow @HubbleTelescope or post tweets using the Twitter hashtag #hst20.

NASA is taking part in the celebration of Earth Day's fortieth anniversary on the National Mall in Washington beginning Saturday, April 17. The agency's involvement is much expanded over previous years and includes 9 consecutive days of activities and exhibits open to the public.

The 'NASA Village,' which contains three domed tents, will highlight the use of NASA science and technology to advance knowledge and awareness about our home planet and sustain our environment. The area is located on the Mall one block west of 12th Street and the Smithsonian Metro station entrance. On the weekend of April 17-18, a performance stage at 12th Street will also feature NASA presentations along with a wide variety of entertainment organized by the Earth Day Network.

The Science Tent which will host exhibits and hands-on demonstrations. The Cinema Tent will feature multimedia presentations by NASA scientists and others. The Technology Tent will present exhibits and demonstrations on a wide range of NASA environmental technologies.

NASA will hold a conference following President Obama's remarks about the bold new way the administration is charting for NASA and the future of U.S. leadership in human spaceflight on Thursday, April 15, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A diverse set of senior officials, space leaders, academic experts, industry leaders and others who have specific expertise or interests related to the topics of discussion will attend the conference and take part in four concurrent sessions on different aspects of the President's new direction for NASA.

Where and When to Watch:

• Live Streaming High Definition Video of President Barack Obama's visit to NASA's Kennedy Space Center will be available on this page, beginning at approximately 1:30 p.m. EDT. The President is scheduled to speak at 2:40 p.m. EDT. It will also be available in standard definition on the regular NASA TV page.

• The opening session of the NASA Space Conference, starting at approximately 3:45 p.m. EDT, will be streamed in standard definition on this page and on the regular NASA TV page.

• Four concurrent breakout sessions, beginning at approximately 4:25 p.m. EDT, will be streamed in standard definition on this page.

• The closing session of the NASA Space Conference, starting at approximately 5:40 p.m. EDT, will be streamed in standard definition on this page and on the regular NASA TV page.

Image above: NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, STS-131 mission specialist, participates in the mission's second spacewalk as construction and maintenance continue on the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA


Astronauts on space shuttle Discovery will enjoy some well-deserved off-duty time in the morning, then continue to transfer substance from the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module and prepare for the final spacewalk of the mission in the afternoon.

Mission Specialists Clayton Anderson and Rick Mastracchio will end their day reviewing the new timeline for Tuesday’s finishing spacewalk and then spend the night in the Quest airlock, sealed off from the rest of the station, at a reduced atmospheric pressure.

With the NASA space shuttle Discovery docking at the International Space Station, it’s the first occasion in history four women have been in the same space craft at once.



The crew, which also includes men, is attaching the Leonardo Multi Purpose Logistics Module, or MPLM, to the station’s Harmony module so its 17,000 pounds of science resources and experiments can be transferred to the International Space Station, NASA says.

The work to shift the racks and supplies will occupy much of the combined shuttle and station crews’ time while the two spacecraft are docked.

Commander Alan Poindexter and the crew of space shuttle Discovery performed the Terminal Initiation burn at 1:06 a.m. EDT, firing the left Orbital Maneuvering System engine for 10 seconds to steer the shuttle onto the final trail toward the International Space Station.



At 2:42 a.m., Discovery will arrive at a point 600 feet directly below the station. Poindexter will gradually rotate the shuttle through a back flip maneuver to expose the base to Expedition 23 Commander Oleg Kotov and Flight Engineer Soichi Noguchi, who will use digital cameras equipped with 800 millimeter and 400 millimeter lenses to photograph the heat shield.

The images will be sent to Mission Control for evaluation by descriptions experts and mission managers to determine whether Discovery incurred any damage during Monday’s launch. Docking is expected to occur at 3:44 a.m.

Orbiter will take note for signs that Phoenix has revived after arctic winter



NASA is giving its long-frozen Phoenix Mars Lander one last opportunity to send a signal, beep or any sign that it has survived the harsh Martian winter with enough of its systems intact to phone home.

From Monday to Friday, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter rotating the red planet will listen for the third time in four months to see if the Phoenix Mars Lander has come back to life after experiencing a Martian arctic winter it was not designed to survive.

The first two listening campaigns by the orbiter, conducted in January and February, didn't listen to any signs of life from the lander, which studied the surface of the Martian arctic and confirmed the presence of water ice just below the top surface layer.

Images taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in February show the gradual disappearance of surface ice with the inception of Martian spring.

Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25, 2008, and operated successfully in the Martian arctic for about two months longer than its designed three-month mission. But once the sun and temperatures dropped and winter set in, the spacecraft didn't have enough power to remain going. The lander went quiet in November 2008.

Phoenix was not designed to withstand the very low temperatures and the ice load of the Martian arctic winter. But in the unlikely event that the lander's components survived and the spacecraft conventional energy from the rising spring sun, mission managers planned on listening for any signals that Phoenix was waking itself up.
While Odyssey listens for Phoenix throughout 60 overflights next week, the Phoenix site will be in around-the-clock sunshine, maximizing the quantity of sunlight available to the spacecraft's solar panels, should they have survived the winter.

Technicians at a space centre in Kazakhstan have hoisted a rocket on to its initiate pad ahead of Friday's blast-off.



A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts will be within and will travel to the International Space Station.

NASA's Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko are to flash off at 10.04am (0404 GMT) Friday for their six-month mission in the orbiting science lab.

Workers at the craft's storage shelter slid open the gate just before daybreak on Wednesday and mounted the Soyuz rocket on a flatbed train for slow transportation to the launch site.

Armed police with sniffer dogs walked ahead of the train and a helicopter circled overhead amid heightened defense following the Moscow subway bombings, which killed dozens of people.

Image above: On Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, space shuttle Discovery stands poised for liftoff

-> Meet the STS-131 Crew

Commander Alan Poindexter will lead the STS-131 mission to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Discovery. Jim Dutton will serve as the pilot. Mission Specialists are Rick Mastracchio, Clay Anderson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson and Naoko Yamazaki of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Discovery will deliver a multi-purpose logistics module filled with science racks to be transferred to laboratories on the International Space Station. The mission will feature three spacewalks.

Mastracchio and Anderson will conduct three six-and-a-half-hour-long spacewalks on flight days 5, 7 and 9 to replace an ammonia tank assembly, retrieve a Japanese experiment from the station’s exterior and switch out a rate gyro assembly on the S0 element of the station’s truss.

STS-131 is the 33rd shuttle mission to the station.

During the first two weeks of February 2010, the GOES-12 weather satellite practical a record-setting series of "Nor'easter" snow storms which blanketed the mid-Atlantic coast in two blizzards.



Washington, D.C. normally averages only 16 inches of snow per year, but this year the majority of the season's snowfall arrived over numerous days and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite called GOES-12 captured the storms.

NASA's GOES Project produced a movie of GOES satellite data from February 1-16, 2010 when two blizzards hit the Baltimore, Md. and Washington areas. The GOES-12 operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) captures images of U.S. East Coast weather endlessly. Those imagery were compiled into a movie by the NASA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

"It is a enjoyment to see the fruits of the hard work and commitment from the NASA and NOAA team," said Andre Dress, GOES N-P NASA Deputy Project Manager, at NASA Goddard. "These imagery are very impressive and I am excited to think that these were taken with the older satellites. NOAA plans to put into examination the newer GOES N-P design, this April. I know we will be seeing superior and more exhilarating images this year," Dress said.


For the duration of the first two weeks of February, heavy, wet snows semi-paralyzed Washington. Five inches fell on February 3, 24 inches fell on February 6, and 12 inches on February 10. A second storm followed on February 16 that dumped 10 inches on Philadelphia and New York, but secure Washington and Baltimore.

These storms are called "Nor'easters" because the counter-clockwise circulation around a low strain system on the Atlantic coast pushes moist sea air from the north-east into arctic air over the land. This windy mixture creates a very capable snow-making machine from Boston to Washington. "The GOES movie illustrates how succeeding storms form along the Gulf coast, travel up the Atlantic coast, break over the mid-Atlantic states, and finally slide out to sea," said Dennis Chesters of the NASA GOES Project.

This movie was shaped by overlaying the clouds observed several times per hour by NOAA's GOES Imager onto a true-color map previously derived from NASA's MODIS land-mapping instrument. The infrared channels on GOES detect vapors day and night, which are portrayed as grey for low clouds and white for high clouds. During the day, the visible channel on GOES adds shadow-texture to the exhaust and illuminates the snow on the ground.

The movie compresses 16 days into 2 minutes. It illustrates how continental-scale land/sea/air phenomena come together to make big winter storms. NOAA's ground/space-based observing system and statistical weather models did an excellent job of accurately forecasting the location and depth of each East Coast blizzard in this series.