STS-125/SM4 (Hubble Servicing Mission)

Atlantis is scheduled to arrive at Hubble at 7:41 AM this morning (EDT I presume). Looking forward to great video from NASA!

ARCTAS

Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites.
NASA Current Missions Site
NASA-ESPO, ARCTAS
Discovery Earth Live: Arctas

This mission seems to be primarily an aerospace based one with data collection from aircraft flying through the polar region and satellites orbiting above during the International Polar Year. I still need to read up more on it. Discover Live blog has some interesting entries and pictures from those involved.

from the Earth Science Project Office:

The Arctic is a beacon of global change. It is where warming has been strongest over the past century, accelerating over the past decades. It is an atmospheric receptor of pollution from the northern mid-latitudes continents, as manifested in particular by thick aerosol layers ("arctic haze") and by accumulation of persistent pollutants such as mercury.

It is increasingly beset by emissions from massive forest fires in boreal Eurasia and North America. Perturbations to the arctic environment trigger unique regional responses including melting of ice sheets and permafrost, decrease in snow albedo due to deposition of black carbon,and halogen radical chemistry from sea salt aerosols deposited to the ice.

These responses make the Arctic a particularly vulnerable place, subject to dramatic amplification of environmental change with possibly global consequences. The urgent need for research to better understand changes in arctic atmospheric composition and climate is discussed by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (http://amap.no/acia/) and the U. S. Global Change Research Program (http://www.usgcrp.gov). Major research activities to address this need will take place in 2007 - 2008 under the auspices of the Third International Polar Year (IPY; http://www.ipy.org/ ).

ARCTAS is part of a larger interagency and international IPY effort collectively identified as POLARCAT.

ARCTAS includes studies for the California Air Resources Board, (CARB) as part of a scientific collaborative effort. Particulars about this study are located here.

AQUA

Aqua carries six state-of-the-art instruments in a near-polar low-Earth orbit. The six instruments are the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A), the Humidity Sounder for Brazil (HSB), the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E), the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES). Each has unique characteristics and capabilities, and all six serve together to form a powerful package for Earth observations.

Orbit Characteristics

Sun synchronous, near-polar orbit
Equatorial Crossing 1:30 p.m., acsending node
Inclination 98°
Altitude 705 km
Period 99 minutes
Semi-major axis 7085 km
Eccentricity 0.0015

Launch Statistics

Vehicle Two-stage Delta II 7920-10L with 9 strap-on solid rocket motors and 10 foot, bisector, composite fairing
Site SLC-2W, Western Range, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California
Launch Date May 4, 2002 @ 2:55 a.m. PDT
Window 1335 LMST to 1345 LMST (any day of the year)

Vital Statistics

Weight (at launch) 2,934 kg (6,468 pounds)
Power 4,860 watts end of life
Size (stowed) 2.7 m (8.8 ft) x 2.5 m (8.2 ft) x 6.5 m (21.3 ft)
Size (deployed) 4.8 m (15.8 ft) x 16.7 m (54.8 ft) x 8 m (26.4 ft)
Mission Life 6 years

Aqua, Latin for water, is a NASA Earth Science satellite mission named for the large amount of information that the mission will be collecting about the Earth's water cycle, including evaporation from the oceans, water vapor in the atmosphere, clouds, precipitation, soil moisture, sea ice, land ice, and snow cover on the land and ice. Additional variables also being measured by Aqua include radiative energy fluxes, aerosols, vegetation cover on the land, phytoplankton and dissolved organic matter in the oceans, and air, land, and water temperatures.

AIM

Launch Date: 25 April 2007
Location: Vandenberg AFB, California, USA
Launch Vehicle: Pegasus
Orbit: Sun-synchronus
Inclination: 97.8 degrees
Period: 96 min, 32 sec

Exploring clouds at the edge of space - AIM website

That pretty much says it all. AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) was launched to study the noctilucent (also called polar mesospheric) clouds at the highest levels of our atmosphere (the first to do so). Extending from 50 km up to 80-90 km up, the mesosphere is between the maximum altitude for aircraft and the minimum for spacecraft. Lack of study of this region and the lower thermosphere above it has led to it sometimes being referred to as the ignorosphere.

The AIM mission has been extended until September of 2012.

Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE)

There are a ton of missions to cover, so I'm going to just start going through the index of current missions alphabetically. There are eighty-five current missions listed!

First up is the Advanced Composition Explorer or ACE.



Launched: August 25th, 1997

ACE is orbiting the L1 libration point at 1.5 million miles from the earth and it's mission is to study accelerated particles from the Sun, interstellar and galactic sources:

Study of these energetic particles contributes to our understanding of the formation and evolution of the solar system as well as the astrophysical processes involved. The Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft carrying six high-resolution sensors and three monitoring instruments samples low-energy particles of solar origin and high-energy galactic particles with a collecting power 10 to 1000 times greater than past experiments.

Mission Status: Last update April, 2008

ACE has been at the L1 point for over 10 years, and the spacecraft and instruments are still working very well, with the exception of the SEPICA instrument. Due to failure of the valves that control gas flow through the instrument, active control of the SEPICA proportional counter is no longer possible. At this time, we do not expect to deliver any SEPICA data beyond Feb 4 2005, unless one of the valves opens by itself, as has happened a few times in the past.

Realtime data from ACE is used to help with the forecasting and prediction of solar storms.

By conserving fuel, it is believed ACE can continue operations through 2024.

As of October 2006, 438 peer reviewed papers have been published by ACE science team members. See the ACE Publications List for more information.

Over 100 Science News items have been released by the ACE Science Center. You can check http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/ACENews_curr.html
for the latest science news from ACE.

For complete mission information, including history and characteristics, visit the ACE website here. The wiki site here also has some basic info.

Introduction

This blog is going to be all about Identifying flying objects (anti-ufo). No, I'm not looking for secret aliens, but looking for much more plausible explanations.

There are no solid documented cases of a flying objects of extraterrestrial origin (other than perhaps it actually turning out to be an astronomical object). There have only been personal anecdotes and blurry photos.

I will also be identifying flying objects by going through current NASA missions.

Edit: I don't know anything more than anyone else with an internet connection and a life-long fascination with space and nature. Honestly, my primary interest here is the incredible instruments we are involved with and the science we are doing with them.