• Sympathy for Boston from space

    Chris Hadfield / CSA via Twitter

    Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield passed along this picture of Boston at night, as seen from the International Space Station, in recognition of the city's tragedy.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    Monday's Boston Marathon bombing prompted expressions of sympathy from humanity's farthest-flung outpost: the International Space Station.

    "Our crew just heard about the horrible events at the Boston Marathon," the space station's commander, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, wrote in a Twitter update. "We all pass along our condolences and thoughts to everyone affected."

    Later, Hadfield tweeted a picture of the city at night in recognition of "a somber spring night in Boston."

    Even though the space station wheels around our planet at a height of 230 miles (370 kilometers) or so, the crew stays in touch with earthly news through official NASA communications as well as Internet links that make use of the space agency's TDRS satellite network. For example, the space station has been receiving a digital version of NBC Nightly News for years.

    All that altitude gives the station's crew a unique perspective on Earth's tragedies. On Sept. 11, 2001, NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson looked down on the smoke streaming from the wreckage of New York's World Trade Center. "It was like seeing a wound in the side of your country, of your family, your friends," he said years later. Last October, astronauts watched as Superstorm Sandy blasted its way toward the East Coast.

    The horrible events in Boston may not have been visible from space — but Hadfield's tweets demonstrate how we connect during times of tragedy, even when we're off the planet.

    More perspectives from space:

    Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other science and space news coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered via email. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about dwarf planets and the search for new worlds.

  • NASA to get $100 million for asteroid mission, senator says

    Rick Sternbach / Keck Institute for Space Studies

    An artist's illustration of an asteroid retrieval spacecraft capturing a 500-ton asteroid that's 7 meters wide.

    By Mike Wall
    Space.com

    NASA will likely get $100 million next year to jump-start an audacious program to drag an asteroid into orbit around the moon for research and exploration purposes, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., says.

    The $100 million will probably be part of President Barack Obama's federal budget request for 2014, which is expected to be released next week, Nelson said. The money is intended to get the ball rolling on the asteroid-retrieval project, which also aims to send astronauts out to the captured space rock in 2021.

    "This is part of what will be a much broader program," Nelson said Friday during a visit to Orlando. "The plan combines the science of mining an asteroid along with developing ways to deflect one, along with providing a place to develop ways we can go to Mars."

    NASA's plan involves catching a near-Earth asteroid (NEA) with a robotic spacecraft, then towing the space rock to a stable lunar orbit, Nelson said. Astronauts would then be sent to the asteroid in 2021 using NASA's Orion capsule and Space Launch System rocket, both of which are in development.

    The idea is similar to one proposed last year by researchers based at Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies in Pasadena.

    "Experience gained via human expeditions to the small returned NEA would transfer directly to follow-on international expeditions beyond the Earth-moon system: to other near-Earth asteroids, (the Mars moons) Phobos and Deimos, Mars and potentially someday to the main asteroid belt," the Keck team wrote in a feasibility study of their plan.

    Cosmic Log: Asteroid miners get a boost from NASA

    NASA will need much more than this initial $100 million to make the asteroid-retrieval mission happen. The Keck study estimated that it would cost about $2.6 billion to drag a 500-ton, 23-foot-wide (7-meter-wide) space rock back near the moon. (Experts say such an asteroid is too small to threaten Earth. In comparison, the asteroid that blew apart over Russia in February, creating a meteoric blast, was thought to be 55 feet or 17 meters wide.)

    Nelson said he thinks the Obama administration is in favor of the asteroid-retrieval plan. In 2010, the president directed NASA to work to get astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025, then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.

    News of the potential $100 million allocation is not a complete surprise, as Aviation Week reported late last month that NASA was seeking that amount in 2014 for an asteroid-retrieval program.

    Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

    Copyright 2013 Space.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

  • San Quentin inmates building satellite hardware for NASA

    View more videos at: http://nbcbayarea.com.

    By Suzanne Shaw, NBCBayArea.com

    CALIFORNIA -- Tucked deep back in the tightly guarded machine shop of California's oldest prison, well away from the muscle flexing inmates in "the yard," a select group of convicted felons has their eyes on space. They fabricate metal housing for miniature satellites designed to explore the heavens. That's right. San Quentin inmates serving time for horrible crimes are given easy access to some of the sharpest metal humans can make.

    They are, most likely, the only prisoners on Earth helping to develop products for space exploration.

    Ariel Wainzinger, a man with ten months left on his sentence, said: "You come to prison and you think it's gonna be all gloom and doom and you find yourself with a lot of different opportunities and you take advantage of it."

    Working under the strict guidance of NASA, Ariel and a handful of other skilled inmate machinists are making something most people have never heard of: P-PODs, Poly Picosatellite Orbital Deployers, essentially, aluminum boxes designed to hold tiny satellites known as CubeSats, which ride "piggyback" into space as secondary payloads. The devices are part of a new generation of low-cost, miniature launch vehicles developed for research used by more than 150 universities worldwide.

    Read more from NBCBayArea.com

    The inmates involved in this unique NASA-San Quentin partnership seem to break most of the stereotypes society has about men behind bars. Not only do they study chemistry, calculus, and trigonometry, they look forward to their work every day. Never mind that their wages are limited to between 35 and 85 cents an hour. There's a waiting list for this prison job.

    Out of a general population of more than 3,800 prisoners, machine shop instructor Richard Saenz has accepted just 27 men in his vocational education program; only five on the highly technical NASA project. A veteran government contractor on such aerospace projects as the space shuttle and the ICBM missile, Saenz is a stickler for precision. And he calls this job, training inmates to become skilled machinists, the best he has ever had.


    "They have to be better than the average guy," Saenz said in describing the felons under his watch. "It's all about education, making them job worthy."

    Inmates punch a time clock and learn work ethics. No attitude, no discrimination allowed. Saenz knows how hard it is to convince employers to hire an ex-felon. He's been at it for 12 years and when not working one-on-one with students in the prison shop, he's on the phone recruiting companies to sponsor the program, donate machines, and hire the men who are eventually released.

    When challenged by critics who complain inmates don't deserve this kind of privilege, one felon, asking to remain anonymous, replied, "I understand where they're coming from but… I'm a human too and I think I have a second chance of deserving to go get a job as well… I've made lots of mistakes in my life. Everybody makes mistakes but I think the difference is I've been able to learn from my mistakes, realize where I went wrong in the first place and change myself in a way through positive acts… to become marketable as a citizen in society."

    Except for one "lifer," all of the inmates working in the NASA directed P-POD production unit will eventually be released. Supporters of the partnership, including NASA Ames Research Center Director Pete Worden, share the perspective that inmates have a much better chance of succeeding in the outside world if, while incarcerated, they learn skills that will help them transition to an honest living upon their release.

    Wainzinger has earned two NIMS (National Institute for Metalworking Skills) certificates during his time at San Quentin, which he proudly describes as the gold standard for the industry.

    He argues that inmates "must be given a chance to reintegrate themselves into society" and for that, they need to develop skill sets. "It's places like this that keep the recidivism rate down", he says, "and without them, I don't know how much worse off we'd be."

  • Space shuttle Endeavour takes to the sky for start of last cross-country trip

    Gerald Herbert / AP

    Space shuttle Endeavour flies over the skyline of New Orleans, on Sept. 19.

    Michael Brown / Reuters

    The space shuttle Endeavour leaves Kennedy Space Center for the last time in Florida, on the morning of Sept. 19. Endeavour, attached to a NASA modified 747 aircraft, is on the first leg of its trip to the California Science Center museum where it will be put on display. Endeavour was to leave the space center on Sept. 17 but was delayed because of bad weather between Florida and Texas, where it will make its first stop before heading to California.

    David J. Phillip / AP

    Scott Rush, left, photographs space shuttle Endeavour atop the shuttle aircraft carrier after it landed on Sept. 19 at Ellington Field in Houston.

    Space.com reports-- Houston, we have a space shuttle. The space shuttle Endeavour landed in Houston on Wednesday for a one-day stopover while en route to its new museum home in California. Endeavour landed at Ellington Field while riding piggyback atop a modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet to end the first leg of its three-day journey to Los Angeles, where the retired space shuttle will ultimately be transformed into a museum exhibit at the California Science Center.

    The shuttle is expected to arrive in California on Friday, but only after a cross-country farewell tour of sorts. Since NASA's 30-year space shuttle program retired last year, this is NASA's final space shuttle ferry flight across the United States. Continue reading the full story.

    View more photos of the space shuttle on PhotoBlog.
    Follow @NBCNewsPictures

    John Raoux / AP

    Space shuttle Endeavour atop a modified jumbo jet makes its departure from the Kennedy Space Center, on Sept. 19, in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

    Nasa via Reuters

    Jorgen and Ruth Sabinsky watch the fly-over of the space shuttle Endeavour atop NASA's Shuttle Carrier Aircraft on Sept. 19 in Cocoa Beach, Fla. This is the final ferry flight scheduled in the Space Shuttle Program era.

    David J. Phillip / AP

    Space shuttle Endeavour flies over Ellington Field atop the shuttle aircraft carrier on Sept. 19, in Houston.

    Slideshow: Endeavour's final trek

    A look back at the space shuttle's farewell tour as it travels from Florida to its new home in California

    Launch slideshow

    Slideshow: Month in Space: Mars and other marvels

    Bill Ingalls / NASA via Reuters

    Relive the Curiosity rover's amazing landing on Mars and other outer-space highlights from August 2012.

    Launch slideshow

    The space shuttle is riding piggyback on a Boeing 747 that left Florida earlier today. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

     

  • NASA's Super Guppy delivers piece of space shuttle history to Seattle

    John Brecher / msnbc.com

    A crowd in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle watches NASA's Super Guppy aircraft approach Boeing Field, carrying a key piece of a space shuttle mockup that will go on display at Seattle's Museum of Flight.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News


    SEATTLE — It may not be a real space shuttle, but it's ours.

    Today NASA delivered a key piece of the mockup that astronauts used for space shuttle practice to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, my hometown. And it arrived aboard one of the most ungainly-looking airplanes ever built. The wingless mockup is known as the Full Fuselage Trainer, or FFT. The plane has a nickname that's more colorful: the Super Guppy.

    The Super Guppy looks more like a Super Whale. The wide-body turboprop airplane has a cargo hold that's been built up into a bulbous shape, specifically to carry big stuff for outer space. Only five of the Guppies were ever produced, and they were used to cart spacecraft components around for the Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and shuttle programs. This Super Guppy is the only one of its kind still flying, and this week's odyssey with the most important piece of the Full Fuselage Trainer is one of the highest-profile flights the plane has ever taken.

    For decades, the plywood-built FFT sat in a building at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The crew compartment — the part of the structure that was flown to Seattle today — was outfitted with all the buttons, switches, cockpit displays and middeck lockers that the real shuttles had. None of those gadgets worked, but they helped the astronauts get familiar with the layout before they started handling the real controls. Astronauts could also practice how they'd get out of the shuttle in the event of a landing-strip emergency.

    With the end of the space shuttle era, NASA's Johnson Space Center no longer needed the FFT, so the space agency decided to donate it for display. The Seattle museum made a play for one of the flown shuttles, and even built a shuttle-sized, 15,500-square-foot Space Gallery to display it in. But Seattle lost out to Florida, California, New York and the "other Washington" in the competition for Atlantis, Endeavour, Enterprise and Discovery. The Full Fuselage Trainer served as the consolation prize.

    Most of the FFT's plywood parts could be shipped up by traditional means for later assembly, but the shuttle crew compartment had to be transported all in one piece. That's why NASA's Super Guppy was called into service.

    The airplane has a 25-foot-high, 25-foot-wide, 111-foot-long cargo compartment — big enough to hold the mockup's most awkward piece, even when it's bound up in shrink wrap and a protective steel frame. Over the past couple of days, the Super Guppy has been making a journey from its home at Ellington Air Force Base in Texas, over to California, and then up to Seattle at a top speed of around 200 knots. It wasn't exactly a record-setting pace — but what the Super Guppy lacks in speed, it more than makes up for in the "What the Heck Is That?" department.

    The Guppy flew over my hometown and its surroundings with a Seattle-born astronaut, Greg Johnson, at the controls. Then it floated down to a landing right in front of the museum, which is adjacent to Boeing Field. One of the commentators at the museum called it a "beautifully ugly airplane."

    Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire pointed to the craft with pride as the sky spit down rain. "When we get together in Washington state, we can land the big whale right behind me," she said.

    Museum of Flight

    NASA's Super Guppy and a chase plane fly above the mostly cloudy skies of Seattle.

    Museum of Flight

    After its touchdown at Seattle's Boeing Field, the turboprop-powered Super Guppy taxis over to the Museum of Flight next door.

    Museum of Flight

    The entire front of the Super Guppy swings open to reveal the cargo inside.

    Museum of Flight

    The 65,000-pound Tunner 60K aircraft cargo loader and transporter rolls toward the Super Guppy.

    Museum of Flight

    The cargo compartment for the Full Fuselage Trainer, wrapped in protective plastic, has been taken out of the Super Guppy for a short ride on the Tunner transporter to its new home in the Museum of Flight's Charles Simonyi Space Gallery.

    Several thousand onlookers watched as the Super Guppy's entire front opened up to the side like a four-story-high door. 

    "It's really cool that it's actually able to fly," Allison Kirkman, a 10-year-old student at Spirit Ridge Elementary School in Bellevue, Wash., told me as she watched from the tarmac. "It's an amazing plane, and how they built it is cool, too."

    The shrink-wrapped shuttle crew compartment was moved out of the wide-yawning Super Guppy onto a 65,000-pound mobile transporter, then rolled over to the museum's Charles Simonyi Space Gallery. Over the next couple of months, the shuttle mockup will be assembled in a place of honor, alongside a Russian Soyuz capsule and a prototype lander that was used in Blue Origin's spacecraft development program. Museumgoers like Kirkman will be able to walk through the shuttle mockup's cargo bay — and they might even be able to crawl through the crew compartment, just like the astronauts did.

    Kids, prepare to be amazed ... again.

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • Earth Day postcards from space

    GeoEye satellite image

    This half-meter resolution image shows icefields near Adelaide Island (on the west), lying at the north side of Marguerite Bay off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. GeoEye tasked its GeoEye-1 satellite to collect this image on April 18.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News




    For commercial imaging satellites, every day is Earth Day: In honor of today's eco-conscious holiday, GeoEye is releasing four recent snapshots of the planet, taken by the company's GeoEye-1 satellite as it orbited 423 miles (681 kilometers) above.

    Earth Day isn't just a day for pretty pictures. It's also an occasion to reflect on the state of the planet. This picture of broken-up icefields near Adelaide Island, off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, is a reminder that our planet's changing climate is a continuing cause of concern. The Antarctic Peninsula is considered one of the world's fastest-warming "hotspots," as documented by imagery from Europe's Envisat satellite.

    "Ice shelves are sensitive to atmospheric warming and to changes in ocean currents and temperatures," Helmut Rott, a professor from the University of Innsbruck in Austria, explained in a statement issued earlier this month. "The northern Antarctic Peninsula has been subject to atmospheric warming of about 2.5 degrees Celsius [4.5 degrees Fahrenheit] over the last 50 years —a much stronger warming trend than on global average, causing retreat and disintegration of ice shelves."

    Antarctica's situation serves as a "canary in the coal mine" for the effects of global climate change and the greenhouse-gas effect, to which industrial activity is an increasing contributor. But this isn't just an issue for penguins around the South Pole, or polar bears around the North Pole. Opinion surveys indicate that the public is increasingly seeing a connection between global changes in climate and the way weather works in their own region.

    For more about the Antarctic Peninsula in particular, check out this report about the effect of climate change on penguin breeding patterns, this one about concerns for seal pups, this one about the encroachment of invasive species, and this video from 2007 about the continent's shrinking "cathedral of ice." Msnbc.com's Environment section has complete coverage of today's Earth Day goings-on.

    Where in the Cosmos
    GeoEye's picture of the Antarctic Peninsula was the subject of our latest "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle, posted to the Cosmic Log Facebook page. Stacy Thompson Layman was the Cosmic Log correspondent who first came up with the location shown in the picture (after a few hints), and to reward her late-night effort, I'm sending her a pair of 3-D glasses and a copy of "The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future," which makes for relevant reading on Earth Day. To get in on future "Where in the Cosmos" puzzle contests, be sure to click the "like" button for Cosmic Log. Here are the three other GeoEye-1 snapshots:

    GeoEye satellite image

    A curl of land at the tip of Australia's Towra Point Nature Reserve, located on the southern shores of Botany Bay, looks a bit like an elephant and its trunk. A boat speeds through the bay at upper left. Situated on an ancient river delta deposit, the Towra Point reserve is designated as a wetland of international importance because it is a breeding ground and home to many vulnerable, protected or endangered species with diverse habitats. There is also a Towra Point Aquatic Nature Reserve in the surrounding waterways. GeoEye tasked its GeoEye-1 satellite to collect this image on Feb. 19.

    GeoEye satellite image

    This GeoEye satellite image shows a portion of the D. Ering Wildlife Sanctuary off the Siang River, directly above the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park, located about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) north of Tinsukia, Assam, India. The sanctuary is named after the late legendary social reformer Daying Ering. The sanctuary consists of a series of islands in the Siang River that are home to endangered animals and many migratory birds. GeoEye tasked its GeoEye-1 satellite to collect this image on March 17.

    GeoEye satellite image

    This half-meter resolution image shows the Okavango Delta (or Okavango Swamp), located in Botswana in central southern Africa. The Okavango is the world's largest inland delta and formed where the Okavango River empties onto a swamp and into a basin in the Kalahari Desert. Most of the water is lost to evaporation and transpiration instead of draining into the sea. Botswana is one of the world's most ecologically sensitive areas. The Moremi Game Reserve spreads across the eastern side of the delta. GeoEye tasked its GeoEye-1 satellite to collect this image on April 12.

    More views of Earth from space:

    Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

     

  • Pearl Harbor from above, 1941-2011

    GeoEye

    A satellite picture of Pearl Harbor, acquired by the GeoEye-1 satellite on Sept. 24, shows the USS Missouri docked at Battleship Row as a museum ship, with its bow pointing toward the USS Arizona memorial at lower right. The wreck of the Arizona can be seen below the white memorial, barely visible beneath the water's surface.

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    Seventy years after a "date which will live in infamy," this satellite image of Pearl Harbor shows the symbols of a war's beginning and end.

    The symbol of the end is more evident: The USS Missouri sits at its dock at Ford Island in the Hawaiian harbor, serving as a museum ship. In 1945, the "Mighty Mo" was the stage for the formal Japanese surrender at the end of World War II. After almost a half-century of service, the battleship was decommissioned for good in 1992 and took its place on Pearl Harbor's Battleship Row in 1998.

    The Missouri wasn't even afloat on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japanese airplanes bombed the harbor and drew the United States into the war. But the battleship Arizona was. In the picture above, snapped by the GeoEye-1 satellite, the outlines of the Arizona are barely visible at upper right, beneath the surface of the water. The USS Arizona Memorial is the white structure sitting above the ship.

    GeoEye-1, a polar-orbiting satellite operated by the GeoEye commercial venture, focused on Pearl Harbor on Sept. 24 from a height of 423 miles as it sped over the scene at 17,000 mph.

    The scene was quite different in 1941, on what President Franklin Roosevelt dubbed a day of infamy. The aerial photograph you see below, taken from U.S. Navy archives, shows the wreckage in the harbor on Dec. 10, 1941, three days after the attack. Dark trails of oil stream from the dead and damaged ships. From this altitude, you get a sense of the attack's toll on the U.S. fleet, but not of the human cost: 2,390 Americans killed, 1,178 wounded.   

    U.S. Navy

    This aerial photograph of Pearl Harbor's Battleship Row was captured on Dec. 10, 1941, after the Japanese attack. The sunken USS California is at upper left. The capsized Oklahoma and the Maryland are at left center, the sunken West Virginia and the lightly damaged Tennessee are at lower center, The sunken Arizona is at lower right, in the same position where it lies today. Dark streaks of oil stream from the damaged vessels.

    Today, veterans, family members and dignitaries are gathering at Pearl Harbor to commemorate the 70th anniversary. Flags are flying at half-staff. And Americans are looking back at the events of 1941 from a remote perspective, as if from a great height.

    These views of Pearl Harbor serve as a somber entry in the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which puts a spotlight on views of Earth from outer space every day from now until Christmas. Click on the links below for more about Pearl Harbor Day, as well as other images from the calendar:

    Pearl Harbor coverage:

    More space views from the calendar:

    Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

  • NASA SVS / GSFC

    These Arctic sea ice images represent real data captured by the AMSR-E instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The top image is from March 7, when sea ice reached its maximum extent this year, near the end of winter. The bottom image is from Sept. 9, around the time sea ice reached its minimum extent this year.

    Holiday calendar: Santa's shrinking domain

    By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

    Few places on Earth have more of a connection to the holiday season than the North Pole: After all, that's where Santa Claus hangs his hat. That's the address most kids write on their Christmas letters. Even NORAD lists that locale as Santa's home base.

    But if I were Santa, I'd start thinking about real estate: Over the years, satellite measurements have pointed to a shrinkage in ice extent and thickness in the Arctic, due to rising temperatures. In September, experts at the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that Arctic sea ice had declined to its second-lowest level in the past 32 years, and researchers at the University of Bremen in Germany said the ice coverage had fallen even below the 2007 minimum. This report from the European Space Agency helps put the issue in perspective.

    With the approach of northern winter, the ice is returning. The picture above, based on data from NASA's Aqua satellite, shows the maximum and minimum extent of Arctic ice this year. ESA has an animation that illustrates the annual fluctuation in a moving way. Santa shouldn't have to worry about shrinking sea ice between now and Christmas. But once the holiday rush is over, he might want to keep an eye on msnbc.com's Environment coverage. There may well be a "new normal" in the Arctic from now on.

    Today's Arctic offering is part of the Cosmic Log Space Advent Calendar, which provides a daily view of Earth from space from now until Christmas. Check out these previous entries on the calendar, as well as other space-themed Advent calendars online. And check in again on Sunday for the next visual treat.

    Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.