Mapex

Archive for June, 2010

The surface of Saturn’s moon Dione is rendered in crisp detail against a hazy, ghostly Titan. Visible in this image are hints of atmospheric banding around Titan’s north pole. The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on April 10, 2010. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Dione and 2.7 million kilometers (1.7 million miles) from Titan. Scale in the original image was 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel on Dione and 16 kilometers (10 miles) on Titan. The image has been magnified by a factor of 1.5 and contrast-enhanced to aid visibility. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

NASA has issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) seeking proposals and industry input on heavy-lift system concepts and propulsion technology.

These animations of Antarctica (above) and Greenland, derived from the radar altimeter instrument on ESA’s Envisat satellite, illustrate the variations in the surface height on each ice sheet from 2003 to 2010.

NASA remembers Roy Estess, former Stennis Space Center Director, who passed away on June 25, 2010. Estess had a 37-year career at NASA, which began in 1966 where he was a test engineer at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, known then as the Mississippi Test Facility, and worked on the engines for the Apollo Program. In 1989, he was named center director of Stennis and served in that role until 2002. He also served as acting center director of Johnson Space Center. In this image from 2001, Johnson Space Center Acting Director Roy Estess (right) greets the Expedition 3 and STS-108 crews during return ceremonies. Seated (from left) are Nikolai Zubov, Deputy Director for Logistics and Procurement, Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Star City, Russia; Expedition 3 commander Frank Culbertson; and Expedition 3 flight engineers Mikhail Tyurin and Vladimir N. Dezhurov. Image Credit: NASA

News media and video game reviewers have an opportunity to preview a new NASA video game, Moonbase Alpha, in advance of its worldwide release.

News media and video game reviewers have an opportunity to preview a new NASA video game, Moonbase Alpha, in advance of its worldwide release.

When Mars Express set sail for the crater named after Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, it found a windblown plateau and mysterious rocky mounds nearby.

Yesterday evening, an Ariane 5 launcher lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on its mission to place the Arabsat-5A telecommunications satellite and the multi-mission COMS satellite into their planned transfer orbits.

After a long and successful career providing communications support, NASA’s groundbreaking Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) 1 is retiring.

This future aircraft design concept for supersonic flight over land comes from the team led by the Lockheed Martin Corporation. The team’s simulation shows possibility for achieving overland flight by dramatically lowering the level of sonic booms through the use of an “inverted-V” engine-under wing configuration. Other revolutionary technologies help achieve range, payload and environmental goals. This supersonic cruise concept is among the designs presented in April 2010 to the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate for its NASA Research Announcement-funded studies into advanced aircraft that could enter service in the 2030-2035 timeframe. Image credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin Corporation