SPACE: WHERE ARE WE GOING? : NASA TO DELIVER CENTRIFUGE TO INVESTIGATE PLANT AND ANIMAL CELLS

Thursday, February 16, 2012

NASA TO DELIVER CENTRIFUGE TO INVESTIGATE PLANT AND ANIMAL CELLS

The following excerpt is from the NASA website: 

"HOUSTON -- NASA, Astrium Space Transportation and NanoRacks LLC are 
teaming up to expand the research capability of the International 
Space Station through delivery of a small commercial centrifuge 
facility that will conduct molecular and cellular investigations on 
plant and animal tissue. 

The centrifuge enhances NanoRacks' existing suite of lab equipment 
aboard the space station, which includes microscopes and a plate 
reader used to detect biological, chemical or physical activity in 
samples. 

Astrium Space Transportation handed over the research centrifuge to 
NanoRacks LL, during a ceremony Tuesday, Feb. 14 in Houston. Astrium 
North America adapted the centrifuge -- originally built by Kayser 
Italia for use on space shuttle missions -- for use in the station's 
NanoRacks Platform-3. The commercial research team funded the 
centrifuge. 

NASA will deliver the centrifuge as part of its responsibility to 
provide transportation for U.S. National Laboratory research and 
facilities to the space station. 

Under its partnership with Astrium, NanoRacks will add the centrifuge 
to the two racks of laboratory support equipment already on the 
station. The centrifuge is sized to fit the standard NanoRacks 
architecture, which can fly on any launch vehicle. 

"This is an important step in the expansion of National Lab facilities 
aboard the space station," said Marybeth Edeen, U.S. National 
Laboratory manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center. "Having companies 
develop research and facilities for the National Lab with their own 
funding demonstrates the beginnings of the commercial space 
marketplace that the National Lab was created to serve." 

The platform and centrifuge were produced in a short time at low cost. 
Both NanoRacks and Astrium expect announcements in the near future 
about more joint projects. 

NASA has manifested the NanoRacks-3 platform and the Astrium 
centrifuge on a Russian Progress cargo ship scheduled for launch in 
summer 2012 under its cargo agreements with the Russian Federal Space 
Agency."

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STAR FLASH

What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this had never been seen before -- supernovas and novas expel matter out into space. Although the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the complex array of ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros), while the light echo above spans about six light years in diameter. Image Credit: NASA, ESA

THE SPIDERWEB GALAXY

Looking like a spider's web swirled into a spiral, Galaxy IC 342 presents its delicate pattern of dust in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Seen in infrared light, faint starlight gives way to the glowing bright patterns of dust found throughout the galaxy's disk. At a distance of about 10 million light-years, IC 342 is relatively close by galactic standards, however our vantage point places it directly behind the disk of our own Milky Way. The intervening dust makes it difficult to see in visible light, but infrared light penetrates this veil easily. IC 342 belongs to the same group as its even more obscured galactic neighbor, Maffei 2. IC 342 is nearly face-on to our view, giving a clear, top-down view of the structure of its disk. It has a low surface brightness compared to other spirals, indicating a lower density of stars (seen here as a blue haze). Its dust structures show up much more vividly (red). Blue dots are stars closer to us, in our own Milky Way. New stars are forming in the disk at a healthy rate. The very center glows especially brightly in the infrared, highlighting an enormous burst of star formation occurring in this tiny region. To either side of the center, a small bar of dust and gas is helping to fuel this central star formation. Data from Spitzer's infrared array camera are shown in blue (3.6 microns), green (4.5 microns) and red (5.8 and 8.0 microns). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

JUMPING TO WARP SPEED

This cockpit view of a hypothetical spacecraft traveling at eight-tenths the speed of light shows the visual distortions that would be experienced at such high speeds. The star field is actually being wrapped toward the front of the craft in addition to being significantly blue-shifted. NASA Glenn leads the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, NASA's primary effort to produce near-term, credible, and measurable progress toward the technology breakthroughs needed to revolutionize space travel and enable interstellar voyages. NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio.

OBSERVATION FROM THE SPACE STATION