NASA selects solar mission design teams
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009Gizmorama -
“The Cutting Edge of Science Fact and Science Possibilities”
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Good Morning,
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says
it’s selected three teams to design and build science
instruments for a European-led solar mission. Sounds
interesting…..Have A Good Day!
Until Tomorrow,
Erin
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NASA selects solar mission design teams
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration says
it’s selected three teams to design and build science
instruments for a European-led solar mission. NASA said
the instruments, valued at approximately $81 million
are part of its Living with a Star Program. The total
amount designated for the initial design of the instru-
ments is $1.7 million.
The science teams selected are:
– Russell Howard, principal investigator for the
Heliospheric Imager instrument, valued at $29.7
million. The team will be funded through an inter-
agency agreement with the Naval Research Laboratory
in Washington.
– Donald Hassler, principal investigator for the
Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment instru-
ment, valued at $34 million. The team will be fund-
ed through a cost plus award fee contract with
Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.
– Glenn Mason, co-investigator for the Suprathermal
Ion Spectrograph instrument, valued at $17.3 million.
Mason will be funded through a current NASA contract
with the Applied Physics Laboratory in Columbia, Md.
NASA said its Living with a Star Program is designed
to understand how and why the sun varies, how plane-
tary systems respond and the effect on human space
and Earth activities.
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Earth’s crust melts easier than thought
U.S. geologists say they’ve determined that as rocks
become hotter in the Earth’s crust, they become better
insulators but poorer conductors. The University of
Missouri scientists said their findings from a study
of how well rocks conduct heat at different tempera-
tures provide insights into how magmas are formed and
will possibly lead to better models of continental
collision and the formation of mountain belts. “These
results shed important light on a geologic question:
how large bodies of granite magma can be formed in
Earth’s crust,” said Sonia Esperanca, a program direc-
tor at the National Science Foundation, which funded
the research. University of Missouri geologist Alan
Whittington said that in the presence of external heat
sources, rocks heat up more efficiently than previously
thought. “We applied our findings to computer models
that predict what happens to rocks when they get bur-
ied and heat up in mountain belts, such as the
Himalayas today or the Black Hills in South Dakota
in the geologic past,” he said. “We found that strain
heating, caused by tectonic movements during mountain
belt formation, easily triggers crustal melting.”
The findings were detailed in the journal Nature.
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Computer stimulation may aid the paralyzed
U.S. medical engineers say computerized electrical
stimulation might be used to help people regain more
precise control of paralyzed limbs. Although research
is still in preliminary stages, University of Florida
engineers said computer-adapted electrical stimulation
might one day help people who suffer paralysis from
strokes or spinal cord injuries. “It’s an adaptive
scheme to do electrical stimulation more efficiently,
with less fatigue and more accuracy,” said Associate
Professor Warren Dixon, adding existing techniques do
little more than apply a set current to a designated
muscle. Dixon said stroke sufferers often unconscious-
ly drag their toes, causing them to stumble. He said
his goal is to develop techniques for a wearable,
pacemaker-sized device that would deliver stimulation
to the calf at just the right moment in a person’s
gait, lifting the toe enough to avoid a stumble and
enable a natural walk. The device would adapt to in-
dividuals, adjusting itself to weight, activity and
diet, he said. The research is to appear later this
year in the journal IEEE Transactions on Neural
Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.