NASA News: NASA Signs Commercial Space Agreement With Sierra Nevada

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is
entering into an agreement with Sierra Nevada Space Systems (SNSS) of
Sparks, Nev., to offer technical capabilities from the center's
uniquely skilled work force.

The umbrella space act agreement is Kennedy's latest step in its
transition from a historically government-only launch complex to a
multi-user spaceport. Sierra Nevada also has space act agreements
with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston; NASA's Langley Research
Center in Hampton, Va.; NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at
Edwards, Calif.; and NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

"We're pleased that our partner Sierra Nevada is going to make use of
the deep resources existing at the Kennedy Space Center to enhance
its ongoing work," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Sierra
Nevada's agreements with Kennedy and other NASA centers demonstrate
its commitment to using the full resources of NASA as the agency
facilitates commercial cargo and crew capabilities to the
International Space Station."

Kennedy will help Sierra Nevada with the ground operations support of
its lifting body reusable spacecraft called "Dream Chaser," which
resembles a smaller version of the space shuttle orbiter. The
spacecraft would carry as many as seven astronauts to the space station.

Through the new agreement, Kennedy's work force will use its
experience of processing the shuttle fleet for 30 years to help
Sierra Nevada define and execute Dream Chaser's launch preparations
and post-landing activities.

"The partnership is an effort to bring new commercial space activities
to the center and help transition Kennedy from a government,
program-focused, single user launch complex to a diverse, multi-use
spaceport, enabling both government and commercial space providers,"
said Kennedy Center Director Bob Cabana.

In 2010 and 2011, Sierra Nevada was awarded grants as part of the
initiative to stimulate the private sector in developing and
demonstrating human spaceflight capabilities for NASA's Commercial
Crew Program. The goal of the program, which is based at Kennedy, is
to facilitate the development of a U.S. commercial crew space
transportation capability by achieving safe, reliable and
cost-effective access to and from the space station and future low
Earth orbit destinations.

"Our Dream Chaser vehicle was born at NASA, and NASA has continued to
be an important partner in the vehicle's development," said Mark
Sirangelo, head of SNSS. "By adding the Kennedy Space Center, with
its highly experienced technical staff and world-class facilities, to
the Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser Program we blend the best of both the
NASA shuttle heritage alongside the best of industry practices."

NASA also has space act agreements with other commercial partners
under the agency's Commercial Crew Program. Pratt & Whitney
Rocketdyne has agreements with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in
Huntsville, Ala., for development of the J-2X upper-stage engine;
NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for hardware assurance
testing; and NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, for
propulsion related technology development. Space Exploration
Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) in Hawthorne, Calif., has agreements with
Marshall for engineering development work, and Orbital Sciences Corp.
in Dulles, Va., has agreements with Marshall and Stennis for AJ-26
engine engineering support.

For more information about Kennedy, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kennedy

For information about NASA's commercial transportation programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/index.html

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Cassini Spacecraft Captures Images And Sounds Of Big Saturn Storm

WASHINGTON -- Scientists analyzing data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft
now have the first-ever, up-close details of a Saturn storm that is
eight times the surface area of Earth.

On Dec. 5, 2010, Cassini first detected the storm that has been raging
ever since. It appears at approximately 35 degrees north latitude on
Saturn. Pictures from Cassini's imaging cameras show the storm
wrapping around the entire planet covering approximately 1.5 billion
square miles (4 billion square kilometers).

The storm is about 500 times larger than the biggest storm previously
seen by Cassini during several months from 2009 to 2010. Scientists
studied the sounds of the new storm's lightning strikes and analyzed
images taken between December 2010 and February 2011. Data from
Cassini's radio and plasma wave science instrument showed the
lightning flash rate as much as 10 times more frequent than during
other storms monitored since Cassini's arrival to Saturn in 2004. The
data appear in a paper published this week in the journal Nature.

"Cassini shows us that Saturn is bipolar," said Andrew Ingersoll, an
author of the study and a Cassini imaging team member at the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "Saturn is not
like Earth and Jupiter, where storms are fairly frequent. Weather on
Saturn appears to hum along placidly for years and then erupt
violently. I'm excited we saw weather so spectacular on our watch."

At its most intense, the storm generated more than 10 lightning
flashes per second. Even with millisecond resolution, the
spacecraft's radio and plasma wave instrument had difficulty
separating individual signals during the most intense period.
Scientists created a sound file from data obtained on March 15 at a
slightly lower intensity period.

Cassini has detected 10 lightning storms on Saturn since the
spacecraft entered the planet's orbit and its southern hemisphere was
experiencing summer, with full solar illumination not shadowed by the
rings. Those storms rolled through an area in the southern hemisphere
dubbed "Storm Alley." But the sun's illumination on the hemispheres
flipped around August 2009, when the northern hemisphere began
experiencing spring.

"This storm is thrilling because it shows how shifting seasons and
solar illumination can dramatically stir up the weather on Saturn,"
said Georg Fischer, the paper's lead author and a radio and plasma
wave science team member at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Graz.
"We have been observing storms on Saturn for almost seven years, so
tracking a storm so different from the others has put us at the edge
of our seats."

The storm's results are the first activities of a new "Saturn Storm
Watch" campaign. During this effort, Cassini looks at likely storm
locations on Saturn in between its scheduled observations. On the
same day that the radio and plasma wave instrument detected the first
lightning, Cassini's cameras happened to be pointed at the right
location as part of the campaign and captured an image of a small
bright cloud.

Because analysis on that image was not completed immediately, Fischer
sent out a notice to the worldwide amateur astronomy community to
collect more images. A flood of amateur images helped scientists
track the storm as it grew rapidly, wrapping around the planet by
late January 2011.

The new details about this storm complement atmospheric disturbances
described recently by scientists using Cassini's composite infrared
spectrometer and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large
Telescope. The storm is the biggest observed by spacecraft orbiting
or flying by Saturn. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured images in
1990 of an equally large storm.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the mission for the
agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The radio and
plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa
City, where the instrument was built. The imaging team is based at
the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For images and an audio file of the storm, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

Source:

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