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New Horizons spots its next flyby target …

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Administrator Bridenstine visits our west
coast facilities …

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and using data from space to fight a life-threatening
disease … a few of the stories to tell you

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about – This Week at NASA!

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Our New Horizons spacecraft has made its first
detection of the Kuiper Belt object it is

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scheduled to flyby on New Year’s Day, 2019.

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The small, dim object – nicknamed Ultima
Thule – was detected by the spacecraft’s

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telescopic Long Range Reconnaissance Imager
from a distance of more than 100 million miles.

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The flyby will be the first-ever close-up
exploration of a small Kuiper Belt object

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and the farthest exploration of any planetary
body in history, shattering the record New

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Horizons itself set at Pluto in July 2015
– by about 1 billion miles.

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The Kuiper Belt is a ring of icy objects around
the Sun – that extends just beyond the orbit

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of Neptune and includes Pluto.

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On Aug. 27, our administrator, Jim Bridenstine
kicked off a series of visits to our west

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coast centers and facilities with a stop at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,

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California.

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While there, he visited labs and test beds
related to the InSight Mars lander, the Mars

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2020 rover, and the Mars Helicopter.

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The next day, at our Armstrong Flight Research
Center in Edwards, California, Bridenstine

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heard about a number of aeronautical research
projects and visited Mojave Air and Space

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Port.

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The administrator’s final stop was Ames
Research Center, in northern California.

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While there, he talked to the Ames workforce
and saw innovative thermal protection materials

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being develop to support the agency’s space
exploration missions.

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He also spoke to the NASA Advisory Council
about our plans to return humans to the lunar

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surface.

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"This time when we go to the moon, we're going
sustainably.

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In other words, we're not going to do flags
and footprints again.

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This time when we go, we're going to go to
stay."

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For the first time ever, measurements from
our Earth-observing research satellites are

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being used to help combat a potential outbreak
of the life-threatening disease, cholera.

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A humanitarian effort in Yemen is targeting
areas identified by a NASA-supported project

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that precisely forecasts high-risk regions
for the disease, based on environmental conditions

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observed from space.

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The forecasts are made using data from our
Global Precipitation Measurement mission,

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and our Terra and Aqua satellites, as well
as measurements of phytoplankton concentrations

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in nearby coastal ocean areas.

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Our ICESat-2 mission will use the most advanced
laser instrument of its kind to measure – in

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unprecedented detail – changes in the heights
of Earth’s polar ice.

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The mission’s Advanced Topographic Laser
Altimeter System, or ATLAS will fire 10,000

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times each second – sending hundreds of
trillions of photons to the ground in six

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beams of green light.

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ATLAS measures the height of objects by timing
how long it takes individual light photons

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to travel from the spacecraft to Earth and
back.

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ICESat-2 is scheduled to launch Sept. 15 from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

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That’s what’s up this week @NASA …