Space station shipment launched from Virginia

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. –  A commercial cargo ship rocketed toward the International Space Station on Sunday, carrying food, science samples and new odor-resistant gym clothes for the resident crew.

Orbital Sciences Corp. launched its Cygnus capsule from the Virginia coast, its third space station delivery for NASA.

Daylight and clouds limited visibility, but observers from North Carolina to New Jersey still had a shot at seeing the rising Antares rocket. It resembled a bright light in the early afternoon sky.

Its destination, the space station, was soaring 260 miles above Australia when the Cygnus took flight. The unmanned capsule should arrive there Wednesday.

This newest Cygnus contains more than 3,000 pounds of supplies, much of it food. Also on board: mini-satellites, science samples, equipment and experimental exercise clothes. NASA said the new type of clothing is resistant to bacteria and odor buildup. So the astronauts won't smell as much during their two hours of daily workout in orbit and they'll require fewer clothing changes.

NASA is paying for the delivery service. The space agency hired two companies -- the Virginia-based Orbital Sciences and California's SpaceX -- to keep the space station well stocked once the shuttle program ended. The international partners also make shipments; the European Space Agency, for example, will launch its supply ship in 1 1/2 weeks from French Guiana.

This particular Cygnus delivery was delayed a few months by various problems, including additional engine inspections and, most recently, bad weather at the Wallops Island launch site.

The Cygnus will remain at the space station for about a month. It will be filled with trash and cut loose for a fiery re-entry. Unlike the SpaceX Dragon capsule, the Cygnus is not built to return safely to Earth.

Saturday, meanwhile, marked the 5,000th day of continuous human habitation at the 260-mile-high outpost. Six men currently are on board, representing the United States, Russia and Germany.

"Humans are explorers!" German astronaut Alexander Gerst said via Twitter.

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NASA rover launched to seek out life clues on Mars

An artist's concept of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover.

Credit: Reuters/NASA/JPL-Caltech

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Tue Nov 29, 2011 3:51pm EST

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Florida on Saturday, launching a $2.5 billion nuclear-powered NASA rover toward Mars to look for clues on what could sustain life on the Red Planet.

The 20-story-tall booster built by United Launch Alliance lifted off from its seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 10:02 a.m. EST (3:02 p.m. GMT).

It soared through partly cloudy skies into space, carrying NASA's Mars Science Laboratory on a 354-million mile (556 million km), nearly nine-month journey to the planet.

"I think this mission is an important next step in NASA's overall goal to address the issue of life in the universe," lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology, told reporters shortly after the launch.

The car-sized rover, nicknamed Curiosity, is expected to touch down on August 6, 2012, to begin two years of detailed analysis of a 96-mile (154-km) wide impact basin near the Martian equator called Gale Crater.

The goal is to determine if Mars has or ever had environments to support life. It is the first astrobiology mission to Mars since the 1970s-era Viking probes.

Scientists chose the landing site because it has a three-mile-high (4.8-km high) mountain of what appears from orbital imagery and mineral analysis to be layers of rock piled up like the Grand Canyon, each layer testifying to a different period in Mars' history.

The rover has 17 cameras and 10 science instruments, including chemistry labs, to identify elements in soil and rock samples to be dug up by the probe's drill-tipped robotic arm.

'LONG SHOT'

The base of the crater's mountain has clays, evidence of a prolonged wet environment, and what appears to be minerals such as sulfates that likely were deposited as water evaporated.

Water is considered to be a key element for life, but not the only one.

Previous Mars probes, including the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, searched for signs of past surface water.

"We are not a life-detection mission," Grotzinger said. "We have no ability to detect life present on the surface of Mars. It's an intermediate mission between the search for water and future missions, which may undertake life detection."

With Curiosity, which is twice as long and three times heavier than its predecessors, NASA shifts its focus to look for other ingredients for life, including possibly organic carbon, the building block for life on Earth.

"It's a long shot, but we're going to try," Grotzinger said.

Launch is generally considered the riskiest part of a mission, but Curiosity's landing on Mars will not be without drama.

The 1,980-pound (898 kg) rover is too big for the airbag or thruster-rocket landings used on previous Mars probes, so engineers designed a rocket-powered "sky-crane" to gently lower Curiosity to the crater floor via a 43-foot (13-meter) cable.

"We call it the 'six-minutes of terror,'" said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, referring to the landing. "It is pretty scary, but my confidence level is really high."

Curiosity is powered by heat from the radioactive decay of plutonium. It is designed to last one Martian year, or 687 Earth days.

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Twin NASA craft launched to study insides of moon (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A pair of spacecraft rocketed toward the moon Saturday on the first mission dedicated to measuring lunar gravity and determining what's inside Earth's orbiting companion — all the way down to the core.

"I could hardly be happier," said the lead scientist, Maria Zuber. After two days of delays and almost another, "I was trying to be as calm as I could be."

NASA launched the near identical probes — named Grail-A and Grail-B — aboard a relatively small Delta II rocket to save money. It will take close to four months for the spacecraft to reach the moon, a long, roundabout journey compared with the zippy three-day trip of the Apollo astronauts four decades ago.

Grail-A popped off the upper stage of the rocket exactly as planned 1 1/2 hours after liftoff, followed eight minutes later by Grail-B. Both releases were seen live on NASA TV thanks to an on-board rocket camera, and generated loud applause in Launch Control.

The spacecraft are traveling independently to the moon, with A arriving on New Year's Eve and B on New Year's Day.

Once they were safely on their way, Zuber announced a contest for schoolchildren to replace the "working-class names" of Grail-A and Grail-B.

"Grail, simply put, is a journey to the center of the moon," said Ed Weiler, head of NASA's science mission directorate, borrowing from the title of the Jules Verne science fiction classic, "Journey to the Center of the Earth."

The world has launched more than 100 missions to the moon since the Soviet Union's Luna probes in 1959. That includes NASA's six Apollo moon landings that put 12 men on the lunar surface.

NASA's Grail twins — each the size of a washing machine — won't land on the moon but will conduct their science survey from a polar lunar orbit.

Beginning in March, once the spacecraft are orbiting just 34 miles above the moon's surface, scientists will monitor the slight variations in distance between the two to map the moon's entire gravitational field. The measurements will continue through May.

"It will probe the interior of the moon and map its gravity field 100 to 1,000 times better than ever before. We will learn more about the interior of the moon with Grail than all previous lunar missions combined," Weiler said.

At the same time, four cameras on each spacecraft will offer schoolchildren the opportunity to order up whatever pictures of the moon they want. The educational effort, called MoonKAM, is spearheaded by Sally Ride, America's first spacewoman. As of Saturday, more than 1,100 schools had signed up.

The entire Grail mission costs $496 million.

Zuber, the mission's principal investigator and a planetary scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the precise lunar gravity measurements will help her and other planetary scientists better understand how the moon evolved over the past 4 billion years. The findings also should help identify the composition of the moon's core: whether it's made of solid iron or possibly titanium oxide.

Another puzzle that Grail may help solve, Zuber said, is whether Earth indeed had a smaller second moon. Last month, astronomers suggested the two moons collided and the little one glommed onto the big one, a possible explanation for how the lunar highlands came to be.

Knowing where the moon's gravity is stronger will enable the United States and other countries to better pinpoint landing locations for future explorers, whether robot or human. The gravity on the moon is uneven and about one-sixth Earth's pull.

"If you want to land right next to a particular outcrop (of rock), you're going to be able to do it," Zuber said. "There will be no reason to do another gravity experiment of the moon in any of our lifetimes."

Zuber said the Grail findings should eliminate cliffhangers like the Apollo 11 landing in 1969 by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. They overshot their touchdown site in part because of the subtle gravity changes in the moon's surface below; they almost ran out of fuel before safely touching down on the Sea of Tranquility.

"It will be easier next time," Zuber promised.

For now, NASA has no plans to return astronauts to the moon, Earth's closest neighbor at approximately 240,000 miles away. That program, called Constellation, was canceled last year by President Barack Obama, who favors asteroids and Mars as potential destinations in America's future without the shuttle.

This is the second planetary mission for NASA since the space shuttle program ended in July, and attracted a large crowd to Cape Canaveral. NASA counted nearly 1,000 guests at Kennedy Space Center on Saturday, nowhere near the 12,000 on hand for the Juno launch to Jupiter at the beginning of August.

Grail was supposed to soar Thursday, but high wind interfered. Then NASA needed an extra day to check the rocket after engine heaters stayed on too long. High wind almost stopped NASA again Saturday; the launch team had to skip the morning's first opportunity, but the wind dissipated just in time for the second.

The year's grand finale will be the launch of the biggest Mars rover ever the day after Thanksgiving.

"NASA is still doing business even though the shuttles stopped flying," Weiler told reporters earlier in the week.

Grail is the 110th mission to target the moon, according to NASA records. Missions have been launched by the United States, Soviet Union, Japan, China and India.

The previous moonshot was two years ago: NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Just last month, the moon-circling probe beamed back the sharpest pictures yet of some of the Apollo artifacts left on the moon from 1969 through 1972 — and even moonwalkers' tracks. NASA released the photos earlier in the week.

Ride and Zuber will help pick the winning names for the Grail twins later this year, well before the spacecraft reach the moon.

Zuber said she has her own pet names, "but I think I'll keep those to myself because I don't want to influence the contestants." Some of the names used by members of her team over the four-year life of the project: Fred and Ginger, Castor and Pollux, and Tom and Jerry.

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/grail/main/index.html

Sally Ride Science: http://moonkam.ucsd.edu/

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