Messenger to Mercury

The Messenger probe has arrived in proximity of Mercury. And it's churning out plenty of new data about our small and distant neighbor. The false color image above is colored to discriminate among common minerals. The left most image is closer to what the human eye would see. So far there's not enough data to fully distinguish the color regions down to specific minerals. And Messenger is still far enough away that its instruments aren't able to build up enough exposure time. But not to worry. Once in orbit about Mercury, the full suite of instruments and imaging will be put to full use to further mine (no pun intended) the new wealth of information about Mercury.

Messenger has three years yet to enter Mercurian orbit. It is using gravity-assist from the sun to complete its trip...one of those sneaky secrets of rocket scientists to make the sun work for them instead of against them. That is why it flew close by Mercury but still has three years to catch orbit. And yet those flybys have revealed a great deal about Mercury. Such as, the planet's magnetic moment is very nearly centered and it is strongly aligned with Mercury's rotation axis; just two degrees of tilt. What? Bingo...the model's of Mercury's mag field generated by science are in close agreement with reality.

What does this mean to you and why should you care? It's like looking in on the elderly neighbor down the street. A neighborhood has a life made up of the combination of each person on the street. You can stay in the house and ignore everyone, but what do you miss by that? How much richer is your life by the interactions with people? What do you learn from them and how does it affect you afterwards? Or for me, I like to think of all the stories my grandmother used to tell me. She was an excellent story teller and every story was entertaining and, as I later realized, educational. Even the ones not told for that primary reason still had lessons of life, and lessons of my grandmother, who she was and how she affected the family.

Mercury is our neighbor. We can become enriched and wiser by watching and listening and checking in on it now and then. If you think that's silly or if you pass off the chance to learn, your life will be poorer. How can anyone not be interested?

NASA at Work in Inner Space

PRP: The Proven Solution for Cleaning Up Oil Spills

(Reproduced from the NASA Spinoff Magazine, 2006)

The Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker exporting millions of gallons of oil, ran aground just after midnight on March 24, 1989 in Alaska, creating what is, to this day, the worst environmental disaster in American history. The affected area of coastal Alaska continues to feel the toxic results of that disaster that killed more than 250,000 seabirds, thousands of marine mammals, and countless numbers of other coastal marine organisms in just its first months. Oil is notoriously difficult to clean from water, and it is still emerging from subsurface reservoirs. Salmon caught in that region are, even now, 16 years later, showing signs of long-term contamination from the devastating oil spill.

While disasters of this magnitude happen rarely, with large spills making up less than 5 percent of the oil spilled into water each year, tens of thousands of smaller oil spills are occurring all around the world. Oil enters the water supply from road runoff; refuse from routine engine maintenance; emptying of boat wastewater and other ship operations; air pollution that settles into bodies of water after rains; and through offshore oil production, which can cause ocean oil pollution from spills, leaks, and routine, operational discharges.

Water can, thankfully, be cleaned or remediated and made safe again for drinking, swimming, fishing, and boating, a task made significantly easier if the oil is caught before it has the chance to settle into the depths. A product using NASA technology is available to consumers and industry that enables them to safely and permanently clean petroleum-based pollutants from the water. It is almost alchemical in its perfection, as it is comprised of beeswax microcapsules that act as a food source that stimulates the indigenous microbes to consume the oil.

The product makes use of NASA microencapsulation technology. Work was done at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to demonstrate the feasibility of encapsulating live cells, while technology developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center for experiments in orbital production of microspheres provides the basic design of the delivery system.

Industry scientists worked with researchers at JPL and Marshall in the early 1990s to develop the microencapsulated wonder, PRP, or Petroleum Remediation Product, for the company Petrol Rem, Inc. In 2004, Universal Remediation, Inc. (UniRemInc), of Pittsburgh, purchased the assets of Petrol Rem, Inc., and has rapidly expanded the uses of the original microencapsulating technology. UniRemInc has broadened production and availability of PRP, making it accessible to more clients and in a variety of different forms.

The basic technology behind PRP is thousands of microcapsules—tiny balls of beeswax with hollow centers. Water cannot penetrate the microcapsule’s cell, but oil is absorbed right into the beeswax spheres as they float on the water’s surface. This way, the contaminants—chemical compounds that originally come from crude oil such as fuels, motor oils, or petroleum hydrocarbons—are caught before they settle.

PRP works well as a loose powder for cleaning up contaminants in lakes and other ecologically fragile areas. The powder can be spread over a contaminated body of water or soil, and it will absorb contaminants, contain them in isolation, and dispose of them safely. In water, it is important that PRP floats and keeps the oil on the surface, because, even if oil exposure is not immediately lethal, it can cause long-term harm if allowed to settle. Bottomdwelling fish exposed to compounds released after oil spills may develop liver disease, in addition to reproductive and growth problems. This use of PRP is especially effective for environmental cleanup in sensitive areas like coral reefs and mangroves.

This ecological wonder has also been packaged for specific uses by UniRemInc to create a variety of different commercial products, including the BioSok Bilge Maintenance System, the BioBoom, the WellBoom, and OilBuster.

One of the most popular uses for PRP is the BioSok Bilge Maintenance System. It allows boaters to clean up small spills. Boats take on water, either from rain, washing, or waves splashing over the sides. This water often mixes with cleaning fluids, and oil and gas from a boat’s motor. The water collects in a bilge, the area inside a boat’s bottom designed to collect and hold the errant water. A bilge needs to be pumped overboard regularly to prevent the boat from taking on too much water. This bilge water, though, is often contaminated.

The BioSok is a small, 3- by 10-inch “sock” with PRP encased in polypropylene that floats in the bilge, absorbing and bioremediating any hydrocarbons, thus, decontaminating the water. Each BioSok can immediately absorb twice its weight and can degrade more than 20 times its weight in oil over time. One BioSok will generally last for an entire boating season. It requires no maintenance or monitoring, and it safely eliminates the pollutants and fumes associated with spilled oil and gasoline.

The U.S. Coast Guard is always on the prowl for any boaters who expel oil-contaminated water from their bilges. Fines are often thousands of dollars, which makes sense, knowing that every year bilge cleaning and other ship operations release millions of gallons of oil into navigable waters from thousands of discharges of just a few gallons each. The BioSok is such an effective antidote to polluted bilge water, that even the Coast Guard has used it on its boats.

UniRemInc also manufactures the BioBoom, essentially a longer BioSok that can be used to enclose larger oil spills. It is especially effective for emergency containment of spilled oil in large areas, like in marinas, ponds, lakes, or open waters; but can also be effective in tanks, storm runoff systems, electrical utility vaults, and anywhere that requires the containment, absorption, and biodegredation of leaking petroleum hydrocarbons. The BioBoom acts as a perimeter around spills and prevents them from spreading. The snake-like tube is 3 inches in diameter and can be produced at any length up to 10 feet.

The WellBoom facilitates groundwater monitoring by absorbing floating petroleum more effectively and less expensively than traditional bailing methods. UniRemInc makes the standard WellBoom by filling a weighted polypropylene sock, 36 inches long and up to 3 inches in diameter, with PRP. The product is then lowered into the groundwater monitoring wells where it absorbs and accelerates the biodegradation of any floating petroleum hydrocarbon contaminants. WellBoom is typically used at petroleum storage facilities, gasoline stations, and other locations where there is a potential for groundwater contamination.

OilBuster is yet another product using PRP that UniRemInc has developed. It is the beeswax PRP mixed with several grades of ground corncob and is for use on land or hard surfaces where no natural microbial population is present. It is ideal for cleaning oil spills that have not yet reached the water and that hopefully never will.

PRP has proven effective in facilities conducting railroad repair, where ballasts, ties, and the ground can be saturated with diesel fuel and oil. It is a safe, costeffective way for these types of contaminated facilities to get quick results that restore the environment and help them avoid the steep U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fines. UniRemInc is continuing to find uses for this amazing bioremediation technology and to supply consumers and industry with safe, natural, and effective ways to keep oil out of our water.

BioSok Bilge Maintenance System™, BioBoom™, WellBoom™, and OilBuster™ are trademarks of Universal Remediation, Inc.

Ballet of Rocketry

Heavy Lifting

Most crane operators don’t use words like “ballet” and “pirouette” when describing their work. But, most crane operators don’t perform the delicate task of maneuvering a space shuttle several hundred feet in the air, sometimes with only inches to spare.

Before each mission, the space shuttle designated for that flight is rolled from its processing hangar to the center transfer aisle of the massive Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once there, the process begins to first raise the shuttle to a vertical position, take it up and over a 170-foot high transom, and then carefully lower it into one of two high bays where the external fuel tank and twin solid rocket booster are waiting on one of the mobile launcher platforms.

“It’s a ballet, it really is,” says Del Dewees, a lead mechanical technician and veteran crane operator or ground controller for more than 95 shuttle lifts, “but it’s fun once you’ve done it a couple dozen times.”

The process, which calls for a team of about 16 technicians and normally takes between 20 and 24 hours, requires skill and precision. At the center of the operation are two pairs of crane operators and a ground controller. Once the shuttle is maneuvered into the vertical position using a 175-ton crane, it's disconnected and attached to a 325-ton crane. The operator, located in a tiny cab 467 feet above the floor, begins the lift as the ground controller guides him from below.

While all the focus would seem to be on the crane operators, Dewees says the harder and equally important job is that of the ground controller, who acts as the eyes of the operators.

“Ground control is a lot harder than operating the crane. That’s the hard part, but the fun part too. You’re their eyes.” he says. “Crane operating is one thing, but they’re doing what they’re told to do. But ground control, that’s the guy who really has to coordinate both cranes and they have to do exactly what he tells them, and then he has to fine tune it. You have to pick it up horizontally and you have to rotate it with both cranes. When it comes out great, it looks like there’s nothing to it.”

Dewees assists in certifying the roughly 40 operators trained in the serious work of maneuvering the space hardware high overhead. In addition to the crane operations, the team is responsible for the maintenance and operation of more than 800 pieces of equipment in the cavernous building, including the giant doors, which they must ride to the top for service. Given the scale of the building and the jobs involved, it’s obviously not a place for the faint-hearted.

Certainly a calm and steady hand is required as the crane operator guides the dangling shuttle toward the high bay.

“We take it out in the middle of the bay so we can pirouette it, then bring it back on the mark," says Dewees. “We have to get it perfectly lined up before we lower it down.”

Once inside the high bay, there is little margin for error. “Between the platforms, which are retracted, and the tank, you have interference from the wings, and you have just inches of clearance,” he explains.

With a description like that, many people might think his job sounds stressful, but not Dewees. He grew up near the space center and remembers driving in the truck with his father as they heard the sound of pilings being driven during construction of the Vehicle Assembly Building. He watched as the Mercury astronauts lifted off from Cape Canaveral to pioneer American spaceflight. Even after working around space hardware for almost 30 years, he says simply, “it’s one of those jobs that never gets old.”

Cheryl L. Mansfield
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center

Exquisite

The image was taken by the Cassini (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Domenico_Cassini) probe (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/). The satellite is on the side of Saturn opposite the sun. This eclipse back lights the limb and rings of Saturn such that the particulars of the rings is apparent in ethereal detail. The faint outermost ring is hauntingly frail and most visible in such a line up of elements. Needless to say, such images help NASA scientists learn more about the rings, exciting on display to Cassini's close-up inspection.

This image is of a vortex at Saturn's south pole. Shadows reveal the topography of the south polar vortex. At high resolution, a new, inner ring of isolated, bright clouds is seen. These clouds are localized regions of convective upwelling, an important clue to understanding how heat energy is transported in Saturn's atmosphere.

The news from Saturn is exciting and fascinating, igniting much new understanding of the planet and of certain of its moons. For more news, great photos and videos visit the Cassini mission page at nasa.gov. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/

What has NASA done for you lately?

How about this?

NDAnalyzer -- Cancer Detection Device

A medical-related spinoff, the DNAnalyzer, resulted from a NASA/American Cancer Society partnership, the Space Station In-Flight Cytometry Project. To help decipher the medical mystery of why and how microgravity affects the immune system, NASA sought development of a machine that could separate and examine cells rapidly.

The existing device was too large -- the size of a pool table -- to place in an orbiting space station, so the partnership was formed to develop a far more compact flow cytometer. The resulting hardware could support biomedical experiments aboard the space station while advancing medical knowledge in cancer detection and treatment on Earth.

A Miami, Fla., business, RATCOM, Inc., pioneered the new triangular flow cell technology that improves resolution in flow cytometer technology. The cancer-fighting benefits of flow cytometry include the ability to evaluate cancer cells very early and to determine several important features, such as the sensitivity of the cancer cells to different chemotherapy drugs, the ability of the cells to grow, and their capacity for spreading.

The DNAnalyzer allows better understanding of the nature of a patient's tumor, thereby enabling better treatment. Dr. Awtar Krishan at the University of Miami, who was instrumental in defining requirements for the instrument, is carrying out studies on the application of the technology in cancer diagnosis and therapy.

Other potential uses of the new technology involve early detection of leukemia, chemo-sensitivity studies prior to chemotherapy, antibody analysis, and detection of pathogenic organisms.

That's only one benefit that your tax dollars have paid for through research that NASA has conducted...better, faster detection and understanding of potential cancer, leading to faster treatment, which can make all the difference sometimes in survivability.

NASA's budget is 0.6% of the entire national budget. Not even 1%. That's about 15 cents per day per taxpayer. Think of your favorite vice...coffee, chocolate, cigarettes. You spend more on that every day than you spend on NASA. NASA does a great deal more than most people realize. That's one of the purposes of this blog. I will continue to bring updates on such technology spinoffs from NASA research and technology.

Or if you don't want to wait and want to learn more, visit NASA's Spinoff magazine site and peruse the myriad technological products and benefits which NASA brings to our daily life.

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/Spinoff2008/toc_2008.html

Hello Earth

Hello Earth, I bid you good day.
You’re looking lovely this morn.
As I see you from my ship far away,
My mind, heart and soul are reborn.
Though physically I have forsaken you,
My heart is always at thy command.
For one day soon I shall bid fair moon adieu
And return once more to your protective hand.

Wow...

Just wow. Speechless. I received my copy yesterday of "NASA/Art: 50 Years of Exploration". An amazing book overflowing with enough creative energy to propel us back to the moon. I don't have the words to fully describe the book or all that it represents. I've already run out of adjectives from studying the unbelievable art between those covers. One must experience it for oneself to find the full appreciation of the talent, both artistic and scientific represented, which the NASA art program has dared to try to contain. The only thing more I can say is to buy it for yourself and take a slow and relaxed trip through the pages, being certain to note the media and size of these gems. I'm astounded thinking of the hours that must have gone into covering a 120" x 50" canvas, with great detail mind you, and the minutiae and depth of feeling which could be captured by sometimes gross media. These masters make this very rank amateur feel quite meek...

Stunning

What an image. As one of my good friends says, it doesn't look real. It seems as if from a movie, or an artist's conception. The mind, unfamiliar with the outer reaches of the solar system, retreats to what it is more familiar with...invented images. Saturn and its lovely rings seen from above, image taken by the Cassini satellite. Oh, Cassini? Well, he was a mathematician and astronomer born in the 17th century. You can read about him at Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Domenico_Cassini

And you can read so much more about the Cassini satellite and its mission of exploration of Saturn, and you can enjoy a ton of other amazing photos.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/index.html

ISS sighting

Last night my dearest friend, better half and I were found in the street before our house, standing and staring into the sky. The advantage of living on a quite unbusy street is the ability to do this without disrupting the flow of traffic. Then there was the cry, "There it is!"

"It" is the International Space Station. That technical wonder that circles above us, occupied for nearly upon ten years now, built by tedious labor of astronauts in hundreds of hours of EVAs made more difficult by the lack of gravity and air. That only makes it more amazing in what they have accomplished.

The ISS has grown more than most people imagine. So many have seen photos of it, but don't truly have the idea of just how big it truly is, particularly inside. At any rate, it is now big enough that it rivals the planet Venus in size and visible magnitude. I'm sure it likely has been ID'ed as a UFO as well.

Though I well understand the orbital mechanics at work, it still amazes me to look up and see the ISS appear just at the time predicted, to watch it gracefully sail over head and disappear rather suddenly as it passes the terminator into, what is for the ISS, night time. And the think that there are three space travelers--scientists--on this light racing across the sky, nearing the end of their six month stay. Have they really been up there so long, and I have seldom noted their passage? I see it on NASA TV and still am rather astounded to see ISS hurry away from my wondering eyes.

NASA maintains a web site listing ISS sitings for locations in the US.
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/cities/skywatch.cgi?country=United+States
I recommend experiencing this at least one time. It never ceases to put my mind into consideration of place in universe and life, something that is more needed among all peoples at such a time as this.

The Davidson Center for Space Exploration

It's an amazing place to visit...one of the few places where one can see actual flight hardware of the Apollo era. The last three flights of the Apollo program were cancelled due to funding cuts. One of the Saturn V launch vehicles from this tragic move on the part of Congress has rested in Huntsville, AL for very many years. Alas, it was left out in the weather to corrode and erode. Until last year that is. That is when the Davidson Center was completed and the Saturn V moved inside in the Rocket Roll. This tribute to our history and technology is now on display in wonderfully restored condition for all to enjoy. It would have been beyond words to allow it to continue to disintegrate.

Standing underneath this behemoth is humbling and awe inspiring. Lifting this baby off the pad was like launching a building. Recall how slowly the thing crawls away from the pad on launch. But it had to generate the power to go a quarter million miles to the moon.

Don't miss the equally incredible mural in the lobby of the Davidson Center. A close up and intimate encounter with the business end of Saturn V at launch, crafted masterfully by Paul Calle.

I would like to add the dimensions of the masterpiece, as reproduced, but honestly, I can't recall it, so taken was I by the effect and the excellent quality of the artwork. But it's probably a good 20-25 feet wide. A Saturn V of the art world.

There's so very much more to see at the space museum, and don't forget Space Camp. But as the newest addition, and the most amazing one, the Davidson Center owned my interest (for days after) and is well worth the visit.

Musing

The shuttle is a marvel, a technological wonder that has given the US great service. No, it's a flying deathtrap and we're lucky it's lasted this long and hasn't failed more.

I hear both sides of this, at work and away from work, from friends and from people I don't know.

Well, the shuttle is a compromise, and perhaps that's at the heart of the discontent. The shuttle should have been a vehicle built in one design cycle with appropriate test and safety parameters, built to explore low-earth orbit environs from a science and engineering point of view. What the shuttle turned out to be is a vehicle which went through many design iterations, not because the initial design was flawed, but because too many cooks forced a say in the issue. It's very difficult for NASA to pursue any program when it must go through the same budget battle each year and justify its existence and every thing it does. Of course the government has a right to know what NASA does and how it spends its money, but the people of government are not generally engineers. Yet they feel free to tell NASA how to run its programs and set the budget for how they think it should be done. Accordingly, NASA must do what it can with what it is given. Budget overruns? Well, yes, but see it from the inside. If one must redesign a vehicle at a lower performance level than the original design, then the money give to build the vehicle now must be spent to alter the design.

And let us not forget the military fingers that got in the pie. Mostly the Air Force since they view themselves as the rightful owners of the "air" space over this planet, but they were not the only ones who saw use of the shuttle for their own purposes, and compelled NASA into other design changes such that it would launch payloads suitable to military purposes, not scientific ones. And how fast did the military flee the program after the Challenger incident? No, they do not bear all the fault, but they do bear a cut of it for their input to an imperfect design, and when it gave way under the opposing pressures, the military bailed and never looked back.

Also there was the intelligence interests of the US. Spy satellites, another good use of the shuttle. No, this is not strictly the military again. Don't forget the civilian side to that...and their pressure for a vehicle size and payload capacity to serve them.

Where were all these other agencies and organizations when Challenger exploded, when Columbia broke up on re-entry? Most people forgot all these other pressures and demands and cuts and exigencies. NASA stood alone to answer for an imperfect design. Yes, and imperfect people making imperfect decisions, acknowledged. But how different would all that have been if NASA had not been forced into a corner of using solid rockets on a manned vehicle, something that had been anathema to NASA before.

And so, now that we have a flawed vehicle, consider what it has accomplished. Twenty-seven years of service. Satellites launched into earth orbit. Satellites picked up, repaired and released. Hubble launched, and re-gained to be repaired and put back into service. I haven't counted up the hours of EVA activity that has not only repaired satellites, looked closer at the shuttle, done experiments in zero g, built a space station. And what about that...built a space station. The shuttle has ferried up all those parts and brought astronauts to assemble them. The space station has been in service ten years now; something that would not exist, at least in this form, without the shuttle. How many hours of experiments? How many feet of photography of the earth , to better understand it? How many contingency situations which were solved in orbit and tasks complete, proving man's ability to work in space and to problem solve, making use of limited available materials to come up with a fix when unable to run down to Home Depot?

And I could go on and on, but I think the point is made. Whatever you want to say about the shuttle, it is what it is and it is what we have. It's too late to change it now; no amount of complaining or criticizing is going to make it better or different. So let's use it as we can, in its limitations, and celebrate what it is able to do...which is a great deal!

http://www.nasaimages.org/

This web site is a new addition to the internet. To quote the "about" page...
NASA Images is a service of Internet Archive ( www.archive.org ), a non-profit library, to offer public access to NASA's images, videos and audio collections. NASA Images is constantly growing with the addition of current media from NASA as well as newly digitized media from the archives of the NASA Centers.

This is a great service. NASA has produced miles of film and video footage, photos galore and enough audio to fill many, many iPods. The biggest problem in making it available to the public is manpower. If you think it's hard for NASA to get money to keep the shuttle flying, just consider how they might be able to fund all those unnecessary things, such as staff to establish a web accessible archive. However, now with Internet Archive on the job, this rich melange of NASA history and universal beauty is very accessible. It's easily searched and simple to navigate. You can create a workspace to play in before you make decisions on downloading. For the professional and the amateur, it's a delight and something past due.

So...go, play, enjoy. After all, you helped pay for it. It belongs to you too.

Bravo

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081002/OPINION02/810020316

The Toledo Blade

Article published October 2, 2008

NASA at 50


America has no choice but to find the will and the money to design and build the next generation of spaceships

THE National Aeronautics and Space Administration turned 50 this week, its five decades marked by both notable achievements and sometimes spectacular failures. As America's space agency enters its sixth decade, it finds itself at a crossroads of sorts: What will the future of American space exploration look like?

NASA was a child of the Cold War, born in October, 1958, in response to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik a year earlier. For its first 14 years it had, essentially, just two missions: close the space gap with the Soviets and be the first to put a man on the moon. NASA scientists met those goals and in doing so put a U.S. stamp on at least our small corner of the universe. And Americans loved it, sitting glued to their TV sets as a procession of heroes from John Glenn to Neil Armstrong went, in the words of a popular television show of the time, "where no man has gone before."

After the last moon landing in 1972, however, NASA's mission changed. "One great leap for mankind" was replaced by the more workmanlike space shuttle and construction of an international space station. It was a worthy goal but lacked the glitz and glitter of the race for the moon.

Predictably, public interest waned and the space program attracted attention only when something went wrong, as it did with the Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003.

Despite contributions made not only to our knowledge of the universe but to the development of GPS navigation systems, cell phones, computers, and a host of other consumer products, not even Mars rovers Opportunity and Spirit - still collecting data four years after scientists thought they'd only be collecting Martian dust - have been able to hold the attention of a public distracted by joblessness, high fuel prices, and record mortgage foreclosures. As a result, even though NASA is again preparing for manned moon missions with an eye toward a permanent lunar station and future manned missions to Mars, Congress wastes almost as much each year on earmarks ($16 billion) as it allocates the space agency ($17 billion), and there is no public outcry to do more.

And yet we must. America has no choice but to find the will - and the money - to design and build the next generation of spaceships, and it must do so even as it solves the current financial mess, reinvigorates the economy, and defends against terrorism.

Otherwise, space will become the province of nations that have the will, nations - like China - whose self interest may not coincide with ours. And if that happens we will not only lose the lead in space exploration but also the technological advantage that has buttressed our standing as the pre-eminent world power.

NASA either turned 50 years old this week or 50 years young. It's up to us to decide.

Confusional

What a wonderful photograph. The other photos I'd seen were great, historical and exciting in a geeky sort of way. Two shuttles on the launch pad simultaneously. That had only happened once before in 1990 with STS-35 and STS-41 poised on pads A and B at the same time. There had been a lot of build up with in NASA for the Saturday morning arrival of Endeavour at pad B, joining Atlantis in launch position. Pictures have made the rounds and the nerdy rocket scientists all have them as wall paper, in sig files, printed out and pinned to the wall...etc. And then I saw this one on someone's lap top in a meeting. Oh...even more sublime than the full day light photos. Wonderfully beautiful. I can't read the name on the copy of the file that I have, else I'd be most happy to credit the photog and sing praises. Whoever you are, excellent job, and you brought even more joy to geek hearts throughout NASA.

However, the joy faded a little too quickly for us with the news that Hubble is in further trouble. It stopped transmitting data. Long story short...processor problem...which isn't necessarily fatal. There is side B for redundancy. However, this has major effect on NASA's launch schedule, and beyond. After this potential dual launch, pad B was going to be shut down so that modification could begin for the Ares I-X test flight, which was to launch in April, 2009. Since the Hubble repair mission is now an unknown, at least for launch date, that puts all the plans for pad work and test flight launch into a quandary. We mushrooms haven't heard anything yet on what's to happen. Of course that's probably just as much about decision making as not passing information around. But it is having an effect on morale, which is a bit fragile these days what with all the NASA bashing and uncertainty over what will become of NASA after the election. The mushroom employees, in the midst of all this, are in an imbroglio. Perhaps that's the reason for the elation over the 50th anniversary a couple of days ago.

In the meantime, until decisions are made and passed on, enjoy the wonderful photo.

Not your typical rocket scientist

As I'd said before, I'd like to explore some of my co-workers. They are interesting and entertaining, wise and wise-cracking, fun and annoying. But I have endured worse! Today I present for your consideration a person that everyone likes, bar none. Not only an intelligent person and hard worker but simply a nice fellow as well.

Jonathan W. is a new safety engineer with NASA. He was working with the vehicle integration team as a contractor for Hernandez (now Bastion) Engineering, but a NASA safety position opened and he applied for it. The result is that he is doing nearly the same work with exactly the same people.

Jon seems quiet and unassuming on first glance. He is a tall and thin fellow whose bald pate gleams in fluorescent light, additionally set off by the close-cropped hair around the sides of his head. A quick smile flashes across his face, igniting impish eyes which only show wrinkles when he does smile. Always dressed in perfectly pressed and matched clothing, Jon's appearance belies the fact that he plays in a rock band on the side. That is a fact that only came out over a year after I met him, by carefully prospecting the rich lode of personality that lies just beneath Jon's calm and polished exterior.

This calm facade hides a myriad of complexities and contradictions that one would never guess by a quick observation. Sitting in a meeting, Jon proclaims deep and enduring love for his laptop computer because it frees him to go to any available corner to work. However, when the same (or any other computer or machine proximate to his hearing range) fails to respond properly, Jon mutters with cool malevolence, "I hate computers."

Watching him in a meeting can be entertaining if the meeting runs long or flirts with boredom. Jon can hide everything behind a sphinx mask if he so chooses. Or he can allow his thoughts and feelings to play the stage of his face like character actors emoting at their highest state of motility. Jon's frustration, amusement, anger, even disinterest can clearly be noted in the movement of eyebrows, turn of mouth, glimmer of eye, or blank expression. His calm still in place, he begins to speak what was recently carved in his countenance. His point made, Jon will retreat back to his computer, thoughts or hiding in plain sight. However, a point missed only ignites his passion to share what he knows further. Crossing swords with Jon is taking risk if one hasn't proper knowledge of the subject. Interestingly, once a meeting has adjourned and all issues solved or tabled, Jon can be quite friendly with the people he just hammered for lack of insight or thought.

A fascinating dichotomy.

Happy Birthday NASA

What an occasion...to celebrate a milestone anniversary of an agency that has done great and amazing things. What is the right thing to say to recognize NASA and the fruits of its labor? Many words have already been spoken by those wiser than I. So I won't try to be clever or profound. I'll just think over my memories of NASA, which date from very early in my life and are responsible for the fact that I now work for this great organization. How far NASA has led us, from a simple sub-orbital flight to the surface of the moon and beyond. Even where people can't currently travel, NASA still sends robots, and peers into the depths of the universe. And it's not only the places they've gone and the things they've seen, though those are unspeakable achievements on their own, it's also what NASA has accomplished on this planet, for let us not disremember the many technologies that pervade our lives which NASA helped distribute from their halls to ours.

But, to take the view of NASA's current administrator, Michael Griffin, there are many ways to justify NASA's existence and programs. However, at the heart of it all is the basic human desire to explore and to know. This NASA has accomplished as the acme. And so, to be succinct and, above all, not to become maudlin, I end this post with an enormous salute to all the men and women who led the way, and now keep that path open, to the stars.