TWIN SPACECRAFT ON FINAL APPROACH TO NEW YEARS DAY LUNAR RENDEZVOUS

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

“PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's twin spacecraft to study the moon from
crust to core are nearing their New Year's Eve and New Year's Day
main-engine burns to place the duo in lunar orbit.

Named Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), the spacecraft
are scheduled to be placed in orbit beginning at 1:21 p.m. PST (4:21
p.m. EST) for GRAIL-A on Dec. 31, and 2:05 p.m. PST (5:05 p.m. EST)
on Jan. 1 for GRAIL-B.

"Our team may not get to partake in a traditional New Year's
celebration, but I expect seeing our two spacecraft safely in lunar
orbit should give us all the excitement and feeling of euphoria
anyone in this line of work would ever need," said David Lehman,
project manager for GRAIL at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
in Pasadena, Calif.

The distance from Earth to the moon is approximately 250,000 miles
(402,336 kilometers). NASA's Apollo crews took about three days to
travel to the moon. Launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station
Sept. 10, 2011, the GRAIL spacecraft are taking about 30 times that
long and covering more than 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers)
to get there.

This low-energy, long-duration trajectory has given mission planners
and controllers more time to assess the spacecraft's health. The path
also allowed a vital component of the spacecraft's single science
instrument, the Ultra Stable Oscillator, to be continuously powered
for several months. This will allow it to reach a stable operating
temperature long before it begins making science measurements in
lunar orbit.

"This mission will rewrite the textbooks on the evolution of the
moon," said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. "Our two
spacecraft are operating so well during their journey that we have
performed a full test of our science instrument and confirmed the
performance required to meet our science objectives."

As of Dec. 28, GRAIL-A is 65,860 miles (106,000 kilometers) from the
moon and closing at a speed of 745 mph (1,200 kph). GRAIL-B is 79,540
miles (128,000 kilometers) from the moon and closing at a speed of
763 mph (1,228 kph).

During their final approaches to the moon, both orbiters move toward
it from the south, flying nearly over the lunar south pole. The lunar
orbit insertion burn for GRAIL-A will take approximately 40 minutes
and change the spacecraft's velocity by about 427 mph (688 kph).
GRAIL-B's insertion burn 25 hours later will last about 39 minutes
and is expected to change the probe's velocity by 430 mph (691 kph).

The insertion maneuvers will place each orbiter into a near-polar,
elliptical orbit with a period of 11.5 hours. Over the following
weeks, the GRAIL team will execute a series of burns with each
spacecraft to reduce their orbital period from 11.5 hours down to
just under two hours. At the start of the science phase in March
2012, the two GRAILs will be in a near-polar, near-circular orbit
with an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers).

When science collection begins, the spacecraft will transmit radio
signals precisely defining the distance between them as they orbit
the moon. As they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity,
caused both by visible features such as mountains and craters and by
masses hidden beneath the lunar surface. they will move slightly
toward and away from each other. An instrument aboard each spacecraft
will measure the changes in their relative velocity very precisely,
and scientists will translate this information into a high-resolution
map of the Moon's gravitational field. The data will allow mission
scientists to understand what goes on below the surface. This
information will increase our knowledge of how Earth and its rocky
neighbors in the inner solar system developed into the diverse worlds
we see today.

JPL manages the GRAIL mission. MIT is home to the mission's principal
investigator, Maria Zuber. The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery
Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft.”

EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY TO LAUNCH NEW SPACESHIP MODEL

The following excerpt is from the European Space Agency Website:

"Europe's ambition for a spacecraft to return autonomously from low orbit is a cornerstone for a wide range of space applications, including space transportation, exploration and robotic servicing of space infrastructure.

Part of this goal will be achieved with IXV Intermediate Experimental Vehicle planned for launch in 2014.  Launced into a suborbital trajectory on ESA's Vega rocket from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana, IXV will return to Earth as if from a low-orbit mission, to test and qualify new European critical reentry technologies such as advanced ceramic and ablative thermal protection."

CRYOGENIC TESTING COMPLETE ON MIRRORS FOR HUBBLE TELESCOPE REPLACEMENT

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

Dec. 21, 2011
GREENBELT, Md. -- Cryogenic testing is complete for the final six
primary mirror segments and a secondary mirror that will fly on
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The milestone represents the
successful culmination of a process that took years and broke new
ground in manufacturing and testing large mirrors.

"The mirror completion means we can build a large, deployable
telescope for space," said Scott Willoughby, vice president and Webb
program manager at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. "We have
proven real hardware will perform to the requirements of the
mission."

The Webb telescope has 21 mirrors, with 18 mirror segments working
together as a large 21.3-foot (6.5-meter) primary mirror. Each
individual mirror segment now has been successfully tested to operate
at 40 Kelvin (-387 Fahrenheit or -233 Celsius).

"Mirrors need to be cold so their own heat does not drown out the very
faint infrared images," said Lee Feinberg, NASA Optical Telescope
Element manager for the Webb telescope at the agency's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "With the completion of all mirror
cryogenic testing, the toughest challenge since the beginning of the
program is now completely behind us."

Completed at the X-ray and Cryogenic Facility (XRCF) at NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., a ten-week test
series chilled the primary mirror segments to -379 degrees
Fahrenheit. During two test cycles, telescope engineers took
extremely detailed measurements of how each individual mirror's shape
changed as it cooled. Testing verified each mirror changed shape with
temperature as expected and each one will be the correct shape upon
reaching the extremely cold operating temperature after reaching deep
space.

"Achieving the best performance requires conditioning and testing the
mirrors in the XRCF at temperatures just as cold as will be
encountered in space," said Helen Cole, project manager for Webb
Telescope mirror activities at the XRCF. "This testing ensures the
mirrors will focus crisply in space, which will allow us to see new
wonders in our universe."

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. successfully
completed comparable testing on the secondary mirror. However,
because the secondary mirror is convex (i.e., it has a domed surface
that bulges outward instead of a concave one that dishes inward like
a bowl), it does not converge light to a focus. Testing the mirror
presented a unique challenge involving a special process and more
complex optical measurements.

The Webb telescope is the world's next-generation space observatory
and successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. It will be most powerful
space telescope ever built, provide images of the first galaxies ever
formed, and explore planets around distant stars. It is a joint
project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space
Agency.”

NEW MAGNETIC BACTERIA COULD LEAD TO BIOTECH AND NANOTECH APPLICATIONS

The following excerpt is from the National Science Foundation website:

“Nevada, the "Silver State," is well-known for mining precious metals.
But scientists Dennis Bazylinski and colleagues at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) do a different type of mining.
They sluice through every water body they can find, looking for new forms of microbial magnetism.
In a basin named Badwater on the edge of Death Valley National Park, Bazylinski and researcher Christopher Lefèvre hit pay dirt.

Lefèvre is with the French National Center of Scientific Research and University of Aix-Marseille II.
In this week's issue of the journal Science, Bazylinski, Lefèvre and others report that they identified, isolated and grew a new type of magnetic bacteria that could lead to novel biotech and nanotech uses.
Magnetotactic bacteria are simple, single-celled organisms that are found in almost all bodies of water.
As their name suggests, they orient and navigate along magnetic fields like miniature swimming compass needles.

This is due to the nano-sized crystals of the minerals magnetite or greigite they produce.
The presence of these magnetic crystals makes the bacteria and their internal crystals--called magnetosomes--useful in drug delivery and medical imaging.

The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy and the French Foundation for Medical Research.

"The finding is significant in showing that this bacterium has specific genes to synthesize magnetite and greigite, and that the proportion of these magnetosomes varies with the chemistry of the environment," said Enriqueta Barrera, program director in NSF's Division of Earth Sciences.

While many magnetite-producing bacteria can be grown and easily studied, Bazylinski and his team were the first to cultivate a greigite-producing species. Greigite is an iron sulfide mineral, the equivalent of the iron oxide magnetite.
"Because greigite-producing bacteria have never been isolated, the crystals haven't been tested for the types of biomedical and other applications that currently use magnetite," said Bazylinski.
"Greigite is an iron sulfide that may be superior to magnetite in some applications due to its slightly different physical and magnetic properties. Now we have the opportunity to find out."
Researchers found the greigite-producing bacterium, called BW-1, in water samples collected more than 280 feet below sea level in Badwater Basin. Lefèvre and Bazylinski later isolated and grew it leading to the discovery that  BW-1 produces both greigite and magnetite
.
A detailed look at its DNA revealed that BW-1 has two sets of magnetosome genes, unlike other such bacteria, which produce only one mineral and have only one set of magnetosome genes.
This suggests that the production of magnetite and greigite in BW-1 is likely controlled by separate sets of genes. That could be important in the mass production of either mineral for specific applications.
According to Bazylinski, the greigite-producing bacteria represent a new, previously unrecognized group of sulfate-reducing bacteria that "breathe" the compound sulfate rather than oxygen as most living organisms do.
"With how much is known about sulfate-reducing bacteria, it's surprising that no one has described this group," he said.

Working with Bazylinski and Lefèvre on the project are David Pignol of the French National Center of Scientific Research and University of Aix-Marseille II; Nicolas Menguy of Pierre and Marie Curie University, France; Fernanda Abreu and Ulysses Lins of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Mihaly Pósfai of the University of Pannonia, Hungary; Tanya Prozorov of Ames Laboratory, Iowa; and Richard Frankel of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.”

PULSAR FOUND IN REMAINS OF A SUPERNOVA

The following is an excerpt from the NASA website:

“With the holiday season in full swing, a new image from an assembly of telescopes has revealed an unusual cosmic ornament. Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton have been combined to discover a young pulsar in the remains of a supernova located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, or SMC. This would be the first definite time a pulsar, a spinning, ultra-dense star, has been found in a supernova remnant in the SMC, a small satellite galaxy to the Milky Way.

In this composite image, X-rays from Chandra and XMM-Newton have been colored blue and optical data from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile are colored red and green. The pulsar, known as SXP 1062, is the bright white source located on the right-hand side of the image in the middle of the diffuse blue emission inside a red shell. The diffuse X-rays and optical shell are both evidence for a supernova remnant surrounding the pulsar. The optical data also displays spectacular formations of gas and dust in a star-forming region on the left side of the image. A comparison of the Chandra image with optical images shows that the pulsar has a hot, massive companion.

Astronomers are interested in SXP 1062 because the Chandra and XMM-Newton data show that it is rotating unusually slowly -- about once every 18 minutes. (In contrast, some pulsars are found to revolve multiple times per second, including most newly born pulsars.) This relatively leisurely pace of SXP 1062 makes it one of the slowest rotating X-ray pulsars in the SMC.

Two different teams of scientists have estimated that the supernova remnant around SXP 1062 is between 10,000 and 40,000 years old, as it appears in the image. This means that the pulsar is very young, from an astronomical perspective, since it was presumably formed in the same explosion that produced the supernova remnant. Therefore, assuming that it was born with rapid spin, it is a mystery why SXP 1062 has been able to slow down by so much, so quickly. Work has already begun on theoretical models to understand the evolution of this unusual object.”

24 STUDENTS SELECTED TO TEST EXPERIMENTS IN MICROGRAVITY CONDITIONS

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

Dec. 21, 2011
“WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected 24 undergraduate student teams to test
science experiments under microgravity conditions. The teams will fly
during 2012 as part of the agency's Reduced Gravity Education Flight
Program (RGEFP).

The teams will design and build their experiments at NASA's Johnson
Space Center in Houston and conduct tests aboard an aircraft modified
to mimic a reduced-gravity environment. The aircraft will fly
approximately 30 parabolas with roller-coaster-like climbs and dips
to produce periods of weightlessness and hyper-gravity ranging from 0
to 2g's.

"The program provides unique opportunities for students all over the
country to experience life as a scientist or engineer in the working
world," said Douglas Goforth, RGEFP manager at Johnson. "We hope the
experience of performing experiments in microgravity will help
inspire students to pursue careers in technical fields."

Ten of the teams will participate through the Systems Engineering
Education Discovery (SEED) flight week April 20-28. They will work
with NASA scientists and engineers as part of ongoing systems
engineering projects pertinent to future agency research and
missions.

The 2012 SEED teams are from Carthage College, Georgia Institute of
Technology, Northwest Nazarene University, Oklahoma State University,
University of Houston-Clear Lake, San Jacinto College, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Washington University in St. Louis
and Yale University.

The other teams were selected through the Microgravity University
program and will conduct their research June 8-16. Those teams are
from Arizona State University, University of Southern California,
Yale University, University of Florida, Boise State University,
Purdue University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Missouri
University of Science and Technology, Santa Ana Community College,
Lamar University, University of Texas-El Paso, Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University, University of Washington and West
Virginia University.

The RGEFP experience includes scientific research, experimental
design, test operations and outreach activities. The program supports
NASA's goal of strengthening the nation's future workforce.”

2011 DEVELOPMENTS IN FUTURE SPACE

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:


NASA Announces Plans for Human Exploration of Deep Space, Fosters Commercial Spaceflight and Makes Major Discoveries in 2011


WASHINGTON -- In 2011, NASA began developing a heavy-lift rocket for the human exploration of deep space, helped foster a new era of commercial spaceflight and technology breakthroughs, fully utilized a newly complete space station, and made major discoveries about the universe we live in, many of which will benefit life on Earth. 


"The year truly marks the beginning of a new era in the human exploration of our solar system," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "Just as important are the ground-breaking discoveries about Earth and the universe, as well as our work to inspire a
nd educate a new generation of scientists and engineers, and our efforts to keep the agency on a firm financial footing with its first clean audit in nine years. It's been a landmark year for the entire NASA team.”


The following are some of NASA's top stories for the past calendar year:


NASA DECIDES ARCHITECTURE FOR FUTURE HUMAN DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION


NASA reached several milestones in developing a new U.S. space transportation system that will serve as the cornerstone for America's future human space exploration efforts. The first decision came in late May, when NASA Administrator Bolden selected the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle as the spacecraft that would take astronauts beyond low Earth orbit. In addition to exceeding the requirements necessary for deep space travel, it was consistent with the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 to retain as much of the current workforce and its critical skills as possible. In September, Bolden announced the design of a new Space Launch System -- a heavy-lift rocket that will take our astronauts farther into space than ever before, create high-quality jobs here at home, and provide the cornerstone for America's future human space exploration efforts. 


In November, NASA announced it planned to add an unpiloted flight test of the Orion spacecraft in early 2014 to its contract with Lockheed Martin Space Systems. The Exploration Flight Test, or EFT-1, will fly two orbits to a high-apogee and make a high-energy re-entry through Earth's atmosphere. Orion will land off the California coast and be recovered using operations planned for future human exploration missions. Throughout the year, engineers conducted multiple test firings of the agency's J-2X engines at NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and performed several Orion water drop tests at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. In September, NASA and ATK Space Systems successfully completed a two-minute, full-scale test of Development Motor-3, the agency's largest and most powerful solid rocket motor ever designed for flight. 

NASA DESCRIBES HOW TO MAKE A CELESTIAL SNOW ANGEL

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. The outstretched "wings" of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates the "wings" of our angel. A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an "hourglass" shape."

NASA ANNOUNCES PROCUREMENT STRATEGY TO GET U.S. BACK INTO SPACE

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

November 15, 2011
“WASHINGTON -- NASA announced today a modified competitive procurement strategy to keep on track the agency’s plan to have U.S. companies transport American astronauts into space instead of outsourcing this work to foreign governments.

Instead of awarding contracts for the next phase of the Commercial Crew Program, the agency plans to use multiple, competitively awarded Space Act Agreements. Using competitive Space Act Agreements instead of contracts will allow NASA to maintain a larger number of partners during this phase of the program, with the flexibility to adjust technical direction, milestones and funding.

This flexibility is important during a period of high budget uncertainty when NASA is receiving less funding than President Obama requested for the agency’s commercial space program.

"NASA is committed to ensuring that U.S. companies are sending American astronauts into space," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "This new acquisition strategy will allow us to preserve competition as we maintain our momentum to provide a U.S.-based commercial crew launch capability at the earliest possible time."

This competitive Space Act solicitation is separate from the work being carried out under existing Space Act Agreements. The new competition will focus on an overall system design rather than single technology activities. Details on the new competition will be available in January.

The announcement for proposals is expected in the first quarter of 2012. These competitively awarded Space Acts will be followed by a competitively awarded contract for the certification phase. The certification phase will ensure that the designs fully meet the safety and performance requirements for NASA utilization.”

A FIRST IN SUPERNOVA OBSERVATIONS

The following is an excerpt from the NASA website:

"First Supernova Companion Star Found
In 2004, an international team of astronomers had, for the first time, observed a stellar "survivor" emerge from a double star system involving an exploded supernova.

Supernovae are some of the most significant sources of chemical elements in the universe, and they are at the heart of our understanding of the evolution of galaxies. In this artist's view, the red super-giant supernova progenitor star (left) is exploding after having transferred about 10 solar masses of hydrogen gas to the blue companion star (right).

Image Credit: NASA

NASA SAYS MINERAL VEIN FOUND ON MARS WAS DEPOSITED BY WATER

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"WASHINGTON -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found bright veins of a mineral, apparently gypsum, deposited by water. Analysis of the vein will help improve understanding of the history of wet environments on Mars.

"This tells a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for Opportunity. "This stuff is a fairly pure chemical deposit that formed in place right where we see it. That can't be said for other gypsum seen on Mars or for other water-related minerals Opportunity has found. It's not uncommon on Earth, but on Mars, it's the kind of thing that makes geologists jump out of their chairs."

The latest findings by Opportunity were presented Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union's conference in San Francisco.

The vein examined most closely by Opportunity is about the width of a human thumb (0.4 to 0.8 inch), 16 to 20 inches long, and protrudes slightly higher than the bedrock on either side of it. Observations by the durable rover reveal this vein and others like it within an apron surrounding a segment of the rim of Endeavour Crater. None like it were seen in the 20 miles (33 kilometers) of crater-pocked plains that Opportunity explored for 90 months before it reached Endeavour, nor in the higher ground of the rim.

Last month, researchers used the Microscopic Imager and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer on the rover's arm and multiple filters of the Panoramic Camera on the rover's mast to examine the vein, which is informally named "Homestake." The spectrometer identified plentiful calcium and sulfur, in a ratio pointing to relatively pure calcium sulfate.

Calcium sulfate can exist in many forms, varying by how much water is bound into the minerals' crystalline structure. The multi-filter data from the camera suggest gypsum, a hydrated calcium sulfate. On Earth, gypsum is used for making drywall and plaster of Paris.

Observations from orbit have detected gypsum on Mars previously. A dune field of windblown gypsum on far northern Mars resembles the glistening gypsum dunes in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.

"It is a mystery where the gypsum sand on northern Mars comes from," said Opportunity science-team member Benton Clark of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "At Homestake, we see the mineral right where it formed. It will be important to see if there are deposits like this in other areas of Mars."

The Homestake deposit, whether gypsum or another form of calcium sulfate, likely formed from water dissolving calcium out of volcanic rocks. The minerals combined with sulfur either leached from the rocks or introduced as volcanic gas, and was deposited as calcium sulfate into an underground fracture that later became exposed at the surface.

Throughout Opportunity's long traverse across Mars' Meridiani plain, the rover has driven over bedrock composed of magnesium, iron and calcium sulfate minerals that also indicate a wet environment billions of years ago. The highly concentrated calcium sulfate at Homestake could have been produced in conditions more neutral than the harshly acidic conditions indicated by the other sulfate deposits observed by Opportunity.

"It could have formed in a different type of water environment, one more hospitable for a larger variety of living organisms," Clark said.

Homestake and similar-looking veins appear in a zone where the sulfate-rich sedimentary bedrock of the plains meets older, volcanic bedrock exposed at the rim of Endeavour. That location may offer a clue about their origin.

"We want to understand why these veins are in the apron but not out on the plains," said the mission's deputy principal investigator, Ray Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis. "The answer may be that rising groundwater coming from the ancient crust moved through material adjacent to Cape York and deposited gypsum, because this material would be relatively insoluble compared with either magnesium or iron sulfates."

Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, completed their three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004. Both rovers continued for years of extended missions and made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Spirit stopped communicating in 2010. Opportunity continues exploring, currently heading to a sun-facing slope on the northern end of the Endeavour rim fragment called "Cape York" to keep its solar panels at a favorable angle during the mission's fifth Martian winter.

NASA launched the next-generation Mars rover, the car-sized Curiosity, on Nov. 26. It is slated for arrival at the planet's Gale Crater in August 2012.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington."

VOYAGER(V-GER IN STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE) IS NOW ON THE EDGE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"NASA's Voyager Hits New Region at Solar System Edge WASHINGTON -- NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space. Data obtained from Voyager over the last year reveal this new region to be a kind of cosmic purgatory. In it, the wind of charged particles streaming out from our sun has calmed, our solar system's magnetic field piles up and higher energy particles from inside our solar system appear to be leaking out into interstellar space.

"Voyager tells us now that we're in a stagnation region in the outermost layer of the bubble around our solar system," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Voyager is showing that what is outside is pushing back. We shouldn't have long to wait to find out what the space between stars is really like."

Although Voyager 1 is about 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from the sun, it is not yet in interstellar space. In the latest data, the direction of the magnetic field lines has not changed, indicating Voyager is still within the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. The data do not reveal exactly when Voyager 1 will make it past the edge of the solar atmosphere into interstellar space, but suggest it will be in a few months to a few years.

The latest findings, described today at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco, come from Voyager's Low Energy Charged Particle instrument, Cosmic Ray Subsystem and Magnetometer.

Scientists previously reported the outward speed of the solar wind had diminished to zero in April 2010, marking the start of the new region. Mission managers rolled the spacecraft several times this spring and summer to help scientists discern whether the solar wind was blowing strongly in another direction. It was not. Voyager 1 is plying the celestial seas in a region similar to Earth's doldrums, where there is very little wind.

During this past year, Voyager's magnetometer also detected a doubling in the intensity of the magnetic field in the stagnation region. Like cars piling up at a clogged freeway off-ramp, the increased intensity of the magnetic field shows that inward pressure from interstellar space is compacting it.

Voyager has been measuring energetic particles that originate from inside and outside our solar system. Until mid-2010, the intensity of particles originating from inside our solar system had been holding steady. But during the past year, the intensity of these energetic particles has been declining, as though they are leaking out into interstellar space. The particles are now half as abundant as they were during the previous five years.

At the same time, Voyager has detected a 100-fold increase in the intensity of high-energy electrons from elsewhere in the galaxy diffusing into our solar system from outside, which is another indication of the approaching boundary.

"We've been using the flow of energetic charged particles at Voyager 1 as a kind of wind sock to estimate the solar wind velocity," said Rob Decker, a Voyager Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument co-investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "We've found that the wind speeds are low in this region and gust erratically. For the first time, the wind even blows back at us. We are evidently traveling in completely new territory. Scientists had suggested previously that there might be a stagnation layer, but we weren't sure it existed until now."

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 are in good health. Voyager 2 is 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from the sun.

The Voyager spacecraft were built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which continues to operate both. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology."

SPACE FIRM TO TEST ENGINE AT NASA SITE

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"NASA Deputy Administrator Garver Tours Blue Origin; Announces Commercial Space Firm's April Engine Testing At NASA Stennis

WASHINGTON -- NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver is visiting Blue Origin in Kent, Wash., today. The company is one of NASA's commercial partners opening a new chapter in human exploration by developing innovative systems to reach low Earth orbit as part of the Commercial Crew Development Program.

"Blue Origin is creating cutting edge technologies to take us to low Earth orbit," Garver said. "Like all of our commercial partners, they're making real progress and opening up a new job-creating segment of the economy that will allow NASA to focus on our next big challenges -- missions to asteroids and Mars."

Garver also announced Blue Origin has delivered its BE-3 engine thrust chamber assembly -- the engine's combustion chamber and nozzle -- to NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where testing will begin in April 2012. The company is developing a reusable launch vehicle, designed to take off and land vertically, and an escape system for its crewed spacecraft. Testing will take place on the center's E-1 Test Stand.

"We're delighted Blue Origin is taking advantage of Stennis, a center with a long record of propulsion testing from the dawn of the Space Age, to test the rocket engines of the future," Garver said.

"We appreciate the opportunity to work with the depth of expertise and utilize the facilities at Stennis for our engine testing, and are glad to have the test hardware onsite and ready to go," said Rob Meyerson, president and program manager at Blue Origin.

WANT TO BE AN ASTRONAUT? NASA IS NOW HIRING

The following is an excerpt from the NASA website:

“NASA Accepting Applications For Future Astronauts
HOUSTON -- Do you dream of flying in space? Now is your chance. NASA is accepting applications for the agency's next class for the Astronaut Candidate Program.

Starting today, qualified individuals can submit their applications through the federal government's USAJobs.gov website. Those selected will be among the first to pioneer a new generation of commercial launch vehicles and travel aboard a new heavy-lift rocket to distant destinations in deep space.

"For 50 years, American astronauts have led the exploration of our solar system," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "Today we are getting a glimpse of why that will remain true for the next half-century. Make no mistake about it, human space flight is alive and well at NASA."

Qualifications include a bachelor's degree in engineering, science or math and three years of relevant professional experience. Successful applicants frequently have significant qualifications in engineering or science; or extensive experience flying high-performance jet aircraft. Educators teaching kindergarten through 12th grade with these minimimum degree requirements also are encouraged to apply.

NASA will accept applications through January 27, 2012. After applicant interviews and evaluations, the agency expects to announce the final selections in 2013. Training will begin that summer. “

THE NEW MOON MAP FROM NASA

The following excerpt is from the NASA website:

"NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter science team released the highest resolution near-global topographic map of the moon ever created. This new topographic map shows the surface shape and features over nearly the entire moon with a pixel scale close to 328 feet.

Although the moon is Earth's closest neighbor, knowledge of its morphology is still limited. Due to the limitations of previous missions, a global map of the moon’s topography at high resolution has not existed until now. With LRO's Wide Angle Camera and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter instrument, scientists can now accurately portray the shape of the entire moon at high resolution."