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Just looking forward to the future
focusing on Space Station and visiting vehicles and we still have a lot of work to do.
It's very enjoyable, challenging, and very rewarding.
I work with a very good of people.
I guess about two or three years ago when it was announced that this was going to be the last shuttle.
No one really believed it. They figured that something would come up and we're going to have another shuttle and another shuttle.
But I guess all good things have to end at one point.
And lift-off of the Delta II with the NPP satellite.
Blazing the way at new technology for climate research and weather forcasting.
If you were to go looking for water on the moon, how would you find a good place to start digging?
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has a pretty unique answer.
Count the neutrons coming from the moon.
LRO's LEN instrument or Lunar Explorer Neutron Detector
is specifically designed to do just this.
But how does counting neutrons help you find water?
The answer lies in hydrogen, the smallest atom, and how those neutrons interact with it.
So where do those neutrons come from and what do they do?
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Two weeks ago we had another mission over Pine Island glacier.
When looking out of the window of the aircraft we noticed a farly large crack in the ice shelf.
And I talked back to colleagues in the US that downloaded satellite images
and they reported that this crack has formed sometime between end of September or early October.
At the moment the crack is about 80 meters wide. If the crack continues to propagate
It's about an iceberg that has area of about 800 square kilometer that will eventually break
from the Pine Island glacier.
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So this has implications for the origin of life on Earth.
We know that meteorites contain amino acids which are the building blocks of proteins
and now from our research nucleobases which are the building blocks of genetic material,
like DNA and RNA, are also found in meteorites.
So these things together could have seeded an early Earth with these really important
molecules that could have built up to the larger molecules that you see today
that are essential for biology.
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When we started working on the part there was a lot that was aready in place before we begain actually conceptualizing
what it would look like. We really had take a created approach to come up with the geometer that we needed.
And try to meet all of our requirements for interfaces and scientific requirements.
When they start working on it they machine it out of a solid block of titanium.
And what they do is they use a milling machine and actually mill away
slight layers until they get the basic shape.
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OSIRIS REx is the acronym for Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer
Scheduled for launch in 2016 the mission will collect the first sample from this special type of asteroid
that holds clues to the origin of the solar system.
And just possibly the kinds of organic molecules that may have planted the seeds of life on Earth.
In 2023 the OSIRIS REx mission will return a sample to Earth where it will be studied by scientist for generations to come.
MAVEN is the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN mission.
We're trying to understand basically why the climate changed on Mars,
why Mars appears to have gone from an environment that was habitalble, to microorganisms
at least, to the one that is the cold, dry, unihabitable environment we see today.
By looking at the nature of the upper atmosphere today
and how gases can be lost out of the atmosphere to space today.
We learn about the processes that control the atmosphere and we are going to have a good understand of
what the history of the atmosphere has been.
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A next generation space telescope
designed to cause yet another giant leap forward in our
understanding of the cosmos.
It will carry some of the most advanced technologies ever placed on an orbiting observatory.
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18 articulating mirror segments
2.75 times the diameter of Hubble's primary mirror.
Microshuttles. Wave front sensing and control sub system
12 x 18 meter. 5 layer Kaption based sunshield.
The Webb Telescope
a revolutionary tool, able to study every phase in the history of our universe.
The Webb Telescope
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