On February 13, 2014, Air Strato, electrical powered unmanned aerial vehicle performed the first take-off from rough, frozen ground.
The aircraft performed a short flight at 25 m altitude and then landed.
Air Strato was powered by four electrical engines. Two supplementary electric motors (engines) were added to boost power and shorten the take-off distance.
Additional suspension strengthening was installed on the wings and forward landing gear.
Despite this addition, the right landing gear suspension sustained some damage at touch down.
"The aircraft had only 10 percent of the batteries intended for the commercial version so we had to add ballast to simulate take-off weight."
"We also added two more electrical motors to increase thrust, needed on the rough ground to decrease take-off distance that, combined with the landing gear suspension, provided for a smooth taxi and take-off on rough terrain."
"It took less than 30 m to lift into the air at maximum thrust. Also we were impressed by the aircraft's rate of climb." - Teodor Diaconu, ARCA flight dynamics engineer.
Air Strato is a high altitude electrical powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It can reach altitudes of above 18 km and has an autonomy of 7 hours on internal batteries and 3 days using solar panels.
It can carry a variable payload up to 30 kg consisting of surveillance equipment or other scientific instruments.
NASA's unmanned Global Hawk is pushed out of a hangar on Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, in preparation for an ATTREX science flight over the Western Pacific. Credit: NASA
The NASA Global Hawk research aircraft is in the Western Pacific region on the ATTREX mission to track changes in the upper atmosphere and help researchers understand how these changes affect Earth's climate.
Much like the inside of an operating room, in the clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, engineers worked meticulously to implant part of the eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope. They scrubbed up and suited up to perform one of the most delicate performances of their lives. That part of the eyes, the MIRI, or Mid-Infrared Instrument, will glimpse the formation of galaxies and see deeper into the universe than ever before. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
They scrubbed up and suited up to perform one of the most delicate performances of their lives. That part of the eyes, the MIRI, or Mid-Infrared Instrument, will glimpse the formation of galaxies and see deeper into the universe than ever before.
It's high-stakes surgery that has taken years of preparation. This science instrument must fit precisely into the ISIM, or Integrated Science Instrument Module (the black frame on the right to which they install the MIRI), so that it is installed exactly where it needs to be within the width of a thin human hair.
This intricate process involves a tremendous amount of work from the engineering team to make sure the instrument is settled and installed just right.
The MIRI itself weighs 181 pounds (82 kg) and is being held by a crane (on the left of the photo), which is being maneuvered by the engineer at the base of the ladder.
Each engineer has a role in the process that must be done as delicately as possible so as not to disturb anything, said Jason Hylan, the engineer responsible for the operation from start to finish.
Disturbing MIRI would cost the mission the critical science that will help shape our knowledge of the universe, and push the boundaries of scientific discoveries.
For that reason, precise engineering is key and that can put some of the engineers in awkward positions, literally.
"Because we are trying to put so much stuff into such a small space, we always run into problems related to access," Hylan said. "This is somewhat akin to working on a car under the hood – some things are easy to get to because they are on the outside of where you are working."
"Other parts are buried and are very difficult to get to. Much of what we have to integrate is on the 'inside' and so access is very difficult. "
"During the operation, we need to access multiple things at the same time and one person may only be able to access one area, so we need multiple people all around doing the same thing at the same time. It is a very coordinated operation."
Hylan said that, like watching the new World Trade Center being built in New York right now, the process is tedious, but the end result is something significant that will leave its mark on a generation.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built and observe the most distant objects in the universe, provide images of the first galaxies formed and see unexplored planets around distant stars.
NASA's remotely piloted X-48C hybrid-wing-body subscale aircraft, which demonstrates technology concepts for cleaner and quieter commercial air travel, completed an eight-month flight research campaign on April 9, 2013. In this image, the aircraft flies over the intersection of several runways adjacent to the compass rose on Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base during one of the sub-scale aircraft's final test flights on Feb. 28, 2013. The scale-model aircraft, shaped like a manta ray, was designed by The Boeing Co., built by Cranfield Aerospace Limited of the United Kingdom, and flown in partnership with NASA. The X-48C is a version of NASA's X-48B blended wing body aircraft modified to evaluate the low-speed stability and control of a low-noise version of a notional hybrid-wing-body design. This design features a flattened fuselage with no tail, and engines mounted on top of the fuselage at the rear of the plane. The design stems from concept studies for commercial aircraft that could be flying within 20 years. The studies are under way in NASA's Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project. Image Credit: NASA / Carla Thomas
Scientists use images from NASA's Messenger spacecraft to create these global views of Mercury, the most complete maps ever. The images were released on Feb. 22, 2013. CREDIT: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
The surface of the planet Mercury has been completely mapped for the first time in history, scientists say.
The closest planet to the sun hasn't received as much scientific attention as some of its more flashy solar system neighbours, such as Mars, but NASA's Messenger spacecraft is helping to close the gap.
Papers published in Science Express provide support for the long-held hypothesis that Mercury's permanently shadowed polar craters contain water ice.
The probe has been in orbit around Mercury since March 2011, and its team announced Feb. 28 that the spacecraft had finished mapping the planet's surface.
"We can now say we have imaged every square meter of Mercury's surface from orbit," said Messenger principal investigator Sean Solomon of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "Admittedly, some regions are in permanent shadow, but we're actually peering into those shadows with our imaging systems."
Before Messenger, less than half the surface had been imaged by NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft, which made several flybys of Mercury in 1974 and 1975.
Messenger is the first probe to orbit the planet. In addition to photographing the unseen parts of Mercury, the spacecraft substantially improved on the resolution of existing maps.
"When we set out with the Messenger mission we didn't know if the planet would look like the other half that was seen in the '70s," Solomon reported.
"There was a great debate over how important volcanism was in the history of Mercury."
Messenger quickly showed that not only did volcanism occur during Mercury's past, but it might have been widespread.
The spacecraft also revealed never-before-seen types of terrain on the planet, such as surface pockmarks called hollows that scientists suspect are created when volatile materials sublimate off the surface.
"Unstable material is exposed to the temperatures and space environment, and slowly over thousands, maybe millions, of years, it's lost to Mercury's atmosphere and to space, to create a depression or hollow in an area where there are often many such hollows that etch the terrain," Solomon said.
This image shows a map of the Galactic Bulge region, reconstructed from data collected over seven years, from 2003 to 2010, with IBIS/ISGRI on board INTEGRAL, and covering the 17-60 keV energy band. The overlaid green contours are isophotes of the 4.9 micron surface brightness of the Galaxy as seen by COBE/DIRBE, revealing the bulge/disc structure of the inner galaxy.
The near-infrared brightness of the Galaxy traces also the hard X-ray Galactic Ridge emission.
The German-American Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, completed an important milestone by achieving 'first light' when it performed its first observations during the night between 25 and 26 May 2010.
SOFIA is the only airborne observatory in the world, operated jointly by NASA and the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR). The observatory carried out observations of astronomical objects at infrared wavelengths in flight.
First Light The modified Boeing 747SP houses a 2.7-metre reflecting telescope built in Germany under DLR management. The aircraft took off at 21:45 local time from its home base, the NASA Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, California.
During a eight-hour flight that reached 11,000 metres in altitude, the 18-person crew of scientists, engineers and technicians tested the telescope's performance to its limits and took the first infrared images of test objects in the night sky.
The crowning achievement of the night: scientists recorded images of the Messier 82 (M82) galaxy and of Jupiter, at wavelengths unobservable by ground- or space-based telescopes.
The composite image of Jupiter shows heat pouring out of the planet's interior through holes in its clouds. In the infrared image of M82, it is possible to look through the galaxy's interstellar dust clouds to show several 'starburst' knots in which stars are forming by the tens of thousands.
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