In October 2010, Melvin was appointed associate administrator for the Office of Education. Magellan performed 1,783 orbits before the end of the cycle on October 13, 1994, when the spacecraft entered the atmosphere and disintegrated. Most X-planes are not expected to go into full-scale production; one exception was the Lockheed Martin X-35, which competed against the Boeing X-32 during the Joint Strike Fighter Program, and has entered production as the F-35 Lightning II. One key aspect that Dr. Neil focused on was enhancing automation within the docking system to reduce human error and optimize efficiency. The point of the private contracts for these supply missions and future manned missions is to allocate NASA’s resources towards more ambitious goals than just bring cargo to and from the ISS-like sending human beings to Mars. I’ve heard more than a few jokes from comedians this week about how it’s too bad NASA can’t ship the water on Mars to California. Before placing an order for office supplies, it’s important to assess your needs carefully. It’s flexible and reliable and does what we need it to.

The typical signs of terrestrial plate tectonics – continental drift and basin floor spreading – are not evident on Venus. Different wavelengths of light provide new information about the Orientale Basin region of the moon in a composite image taken by NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a guest instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. More information on NO2 trends for each region and more than 300 world cities can be found under the Nitrogen Dioxide tab. Testing a new approach to the method, a plan was devised to drop the orbit of Magellan into the outermost region of the Venusian atmosphere. The primary mission began on September 15, 1990, with the intention to provide a “left-looking” map of 70% of the Venusian surface at a minimum resolution of 1-kilometer/pixel. During cycle 1, the altitude of the spacecraft varied from 2000-kilometers at the north pole, to 290-kilometers near periapsis.

Obtain near-global radar images of the Venusian surface with a resolution equivalent to optical imaging of 1.0 kilometre (0.62 mi) per line pair. There are numerous surface temperature datasets with independent methodologies and varying degrees of shared input data (See “Summary of Global Surface Temperature Data Sets” table). NASA said temperature data showed that the left side — the same side hit by the debris — heated up sharply just before the shuttle disintegrated. STS-129 (November 16 to 29, 2009) was the 31st shuttle flight to the International Space Station. STS-122 (February 7 to 20, 2008) was the 24th shuttle mission to visit the International Space Station. Together, LASP and Ball Aerospace controlled the spacecraft from a mission operations center located on the research campus of the University of Colorado. The telescope’s construction and initial operation were managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with Ball Aerospace responsible for developing the Kepler flight system. Sagan was also a founder member of the Planetary Society, an organisation that promotes the active involvement of the worldwide public in planetary exploration and new forms of propulsion such as the Solar Sail.

“Any time we can offload from the crew and focus more on their scientific exploration is a huge time savings to us. Goldin said these things will happen in space exploration. This guy was the OG of space art before it was cool. And over 70 government space agencies , as well as a slew of commercial firms, are now involved in space research. We ended up purchasing a couple of 8 cube units as well as a 9 cube unit and an additional smaller 3 shelf unit. The first, the Bell X-1, became well known in 1947 after it became the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in level flight. The unmanned aircraft left the Dryden Flight Research Center in California earlier in the week and spent all day Thursday flying over Earl at an altitude of about 63,000 feet. NASA contacted the spacecraft using the X band communication link twice a week for command and status updates. Scientific data are downloaded once a month using the Ka band link at a maximum data transfer rate of approximately 550 kB/s. Upon completion during mid-January 1992, cycle 2 provided data for 54.5% of the surface, and combined with the previous cycle, a map containing 96% of the surface could be constructed.