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This Week at NASA…

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After bidding farewell to the Kennedy Space
Center and Florida’s Space Coast, Space

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Shuttle Endeavour headed west toward its new
home in California.

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Secured to NASA 905, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft,
Endeavour made appearances in the skies over

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several NASA installations – including Stennis
Space Center in Mississippi …

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… the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans
…

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…and Endeavour soared around the Houston
area -- before landing at Ellington Field

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near the Johnson Space Center, for the night.

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The next day Endeavour and the SCA arrived
at the Dryden Flight Research Center – a

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homecoming of sorts for the orbiter which
was built in nearby Palmdale, California,

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in 19-91.

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After leaving Dryden the following day, Endeavour
continued its farewell tour up in Northern

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California – with flyovers of Ames Research
Center …

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… and several iconic locations in that portion
of the Golden State…

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… before heading back downstate for a salute
to The Jet Propulsion Laboratory …

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… and Endeavour provided a series of spectacular
photo ops elsewhere in Southern California

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…

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“It is a great day for NASA – for America
and for the people who live here in Southern

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California.

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The fact that the Space Shuttles were developed
here, built here just down the road and Endeavour’s

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coming back on her last ferry flight on the
747 is a wonderful thing.”

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Next month, Endeavour will be towed through
the streets of Los Angeles to begin its new

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mission of education and inspiration – on
display, at the California Science Center.

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Some forty randomly-selected NASA social media
followers welcomed Endeavour to Dryden with

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a two-day NASA social.

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Those who engage with the agency through Twitter,
Facebook and Google+ watched the landing and

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departure of the orbiter as it piggybacked
on the SCA.

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Participants also spoke with experts, toured
aircraft, and met up with other space enthusiasts

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and members of the NASA social media team.

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Hi, I’m Jessica Samuels, member of the engineering
operations team and this is your Curiosity

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rover update.

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Last week, we completed our second round of
vehicle health checkouts.

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This was primarily targeted on the robotic
arm and the hardware at the end of the robotic

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arm called the turret.

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This included different instruments and the
sample processing hardware and sample acquisitioning

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hardware.

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Our arm checkout activity was in preparation
for our first contact science.

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This is an exciting time for the robotic arm
team and the mission as a whole as we will

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do our first placement of an instrument on
a target called “Jake Matijevic.”

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Our target was named specifically for our
surface operations team chief engineer, who

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unfortunately passed shortly after landing.

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The target Matijevic has been selected to
cross calibrate two of our instruments on

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the rover.

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The alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, which
resides on the end of the robotic arm, and

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the ChemCam instrument, which resides on top
of the remote sensing mast.

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Recently we completed a Mastcam panorama of
a ridge, which will give us a great vantage

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point of the Glenelg target area.

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A few sols ago we completed a interesting
campaign where we actually acquired images

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of the Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, transiting
across the sun.

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So that is your Curiosity rover update.

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Check in for future reports.

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Among those instrumental in Curiosity’s
success are American small businesses.

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One company, ATA Engineering, hosted a Google-Plus
“Hangout” with NASA Administrator Charlie

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Bolden and Small Business Administration Administrator
Karen Mills.

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A Google-Plus "Hangout" is a group video chat.

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The Herndon, Virginia, firm partnered with
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to test and

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analyze Curiosity’s entry, descent and landing.

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“And it deployed its wheels to get ready
for landing and it actually landed on the

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surface of Mars.”

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ATA Engineering also contributed to the rover's
wheels, actuators and thermal control systems.

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The next three residents of the International
Space Station are training for their upcoming

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launch to the orbiting laboratory.

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NASA Flight Engineer Kevin Ford, Soyuz Commander
Oleg Novitskiy and Flight Engineer Evgeny

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Tarelkin of the Russian Federal Space Agency,
together the Expedition 33/34 crew, are at

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the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star
City, Russia, familiarizing themselves with

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the gear they’ll use and procedures they’ll
follow.

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Their Soyuz spacecraft is scheduled to liftoff
from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan

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in mid-October.

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International Space Station Program Scientist
Julie Robinson met with researchers and managers

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at the Glenn Research Center about the experiments
they’re responsible for aboard the station.

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The orbiting lab’s microgravity provides
scientists with unique insight to the physical

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processes presented by problems we encounter
here on Earth.

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Glenn is among several NASA field centers
with key roles in station science.

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“There’s a great capability across the
country for knowing how to do an experiment

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in space and helping a scientist to do that
even if they haven’t done an experiment

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in space before.”

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With assembly of the station complete, Robinson
has overseen the introduction of hundreds

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of new, scientific investigations on the ISS,
the world’s only laboratory in microgravity.

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September is National Preparedness Month,
and the Emergency Management Team at NASA

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Headquarters is sponsoring events and activities
to help employees ready themselves for emergencies

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at work …

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“Don’t panic.”

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“Don’t panic and never try to self-evacuate.”

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… as well as for emergencies at home, and
elsewhere.

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“One of the things we recommend that everyone
have in their home or even in their office

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is the NOAA Weather Radio.”

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For steps you can take to prepare for an emergency,
visit www.ready.gov.

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The first of two Global Hawk unmanned aerial
vehicles expected from NASA's Dryden Flight

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Research Center has arrived at Wallops Flight
Facility and has started its five-year Hurricane

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and Severe Storm Sentinel, or HS3 mission,
to study Atlantic hurricanes closer to the

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source.

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“The HS3 mission in general is a great pathfinder.

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We’re building a Global Hawk Operations
Center East, which will have a permanent ground

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station here.

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So Global Hawks will be a permanent part of
our future here”.

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The aircraft, which can reach altitudes in
excess of 55-thousand feet has already conducted

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a 26-hour flight to study the recent tropical
storm Nadine in the Azores.

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Model makers at the Langley Research Center
have built to-scale three versions of the

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Space Launch System for a series of wind tunnel
tests.

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Officials in the SLS project office at Marshall
will see how these configurations, each complete

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with solid rocket boosters, center body and
crew capsule, behave during ascent.

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Each of the 12-foot long models, built to
three-percent scale, is being instrumented

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with more than 350 active sensors.

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The SLS wind tunnel testing at Langley’s
Transonic Dynamics Tunnel is scheduled to

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last about five weeks.

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NASA’s new Space Launch System will send
astronauts farther into space than ever before.

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At the Wallops Flight Facility, university
students who used their academic skills to

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develop atmospheric and technology experiments
watched those experiments launched on a NASA

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suborbital sounding rocket.

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Four university experiments were flown as
part of an educational project called RockSat-X,

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which is designed to give students hands-on
experience in designing, fabricating, testing

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and conducting experiments for space flight.

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“We have multiple experiments on the Virginia
Tech Baylor collaboration.

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Nitric Oxide censors and IMU censors as well
as trying to detect space particles”.

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The program began with a hands-on workshop
on rocketry called RockOn, followed by RockSat-C,

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during which experiments were developed for
flight inside a special canister.

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The program is supported by NASA, in partnership
with the Colorado and Virginia Space Grant

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Consortia.

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NASA’s “Rockets to Racecars” was at
the Richmond International Raceway to connect

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the science of NASCAR with the Mars Science
Laboratory mission.

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Employees from Langley discussed the physics
of Curiosity’s landing, such as “drag”

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and “G-forces” and how those same processes
are employed in auto racing.

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Kids went “hands on” by landing their
own paper rover and touching an actual rover

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wheel.

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“Rockets to Racecars” shares with NASCAR
fans how NASA has helped improve race car

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safety and performance.

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“This is a rear footprint of a kind of armored
dinosaur, almost certainly a Nodosaur.”

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Paleontologist Robert Weems has confirmed
that the ancient imprint recently found on

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the campus of Goddard Space Flight Center
was, indeed made by a prehistoric creature

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that once roamed here.

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Nodasaur, a large plant-eating dinosaur left
the footprint 110 to 112 million years ago.

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But it turns out it may not have been alone.

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Weems says there’s a much smaller, similar
looking footprint inside the larger one made,

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perhaps by a young nodosaur who was traveling
with an adult.

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“This probably was a breeding area for many
of them based on some of these small ones

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being found.”

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But it’s the adult nodosaur tracks that
are so rare on the East Coast and make this

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such a unique find.

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Dinosaur tracker Ray Stanford, who discovered
the footprint says he’s excited by this

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confirmation.

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“His expert word is as good as you can get.

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I’m thrilled.”

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The next step is to further excavate around
the footprint and see if there are any other

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tracks

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in

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the immediate area.

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Fifteen years ago, on September 25, 1997,
STS-86 got underway at the Kennedy Space Center.

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Commanding Atlantis on its ten-day mission
to the Russian Mir Space Station was Jim Weatherbee.

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Piloting this seventh shuttle docking to Mir
was Michael Bloomfield.

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Rounding out the seven-person crew were NASA
Mission Specialists Scott Parazynski, Wendy

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Lawrence and Dave Wolf, Mission Specialist
and Russian Cosmonaut Vladimar Titov and Mission

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Specialist Jean-Loup Chretien (kray-tee-in)
of France.

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Dave Wolf replaced Mike Foale as a Mir crew
member, making Wolf the sixth U.S. astronaut

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in succession to live on Mir.

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Foale returned to Earth after spending 145
days in space, 134 of them aboard Mir.

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And, five years ago, on September 27, 2007,
the Dawn spacecraft launched atop a Delta

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2 rocket from Cape Canaveral for the asteroid
belt between Mars and Jupiter.

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There, Vesta and Ceres, two of the largest
protoplanets remaining intact since their

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formation billions of years ago, are believed
to hold keys to the origins of our solar system.

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From July 15, 2011 until earlier this month,
Dawn orbited Vesta – mapping its surface

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for clues to its mineralogical composition.

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Dawn is now making its way to Ceres: estimated
arrival is February 2015.

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Hi I’m Omar De Frias, I am the lead for
the Integration Evaluation team for the Science

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Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

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So we basically manage the execution of the
budget for Science.

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Every time I’m asked the question, ‘hey,
where do you work?’

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I say, I work for NASA.

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Obviously, the first response is, ‘wow,
really?

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And they’re fascinated first because of
what we do as an agency.

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I try to tell them, ‘and here’s how I
tie into the big picture.

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Here’s how we do what we do to make, you
know, MSL and Curiosity happen.’

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I basically got recruited as part of the corporate
recruitment effort that NASA did in the University

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of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez and this was back
in 2004.

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I was dealing with a multitude of offers – I
was dealing with IBM as a potential hiring

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possibility and I was dealing with Kimberly-Clark
and I ended up choosing NASA because of the

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path I saw forward.

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I used to be a professional basketball player
in the Dominican Republic, where I had a chance

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to really hone in on the skills of teamwork.

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It’s very important to be able to have a
good diverse team you want people with different

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backgrounds, you want people that have worked
internationally.

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The biggest thing on diversity on my part
is always to put diversity and inclusion in

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the workforce, so it’s not only about, hey
let’s go ahead and hire people from different

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races we’re building them to be the next
leaders of our agency and I think NASA’s

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done a good job on that.

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The family of the late NASA Astronaut Sally
Ride joined with officials at the Johnson

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Space Center to dedicate a tree in memory
of the first American woman in space.

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The live oak was planted in a grove among
62 trees honoring NASA astronauts and space

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pioneers.

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Ride, who made her history-making flight in
1983 aboard shuttle Challenger on STS-7, died

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in July at age 61.

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And that’s This Week @NASA.

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