Ames Research Center Bolden Visit on This Week @NASA – February 19, 2016

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• published: 20 Feb 2016
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more at: http://scitech.quickfound.net/astro/nasa_news.html 'Published on Feb 19, 2016 - NASA Administrator Charles Bolden visited Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California to thank employees for the work they do on behalf of the agency to improve aviation. President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2017 budget proposal for NASA calls for a multi-year investment in aeronautics research that will enable the agency to test, demonstrate and validate cutting-edge technologies designed to make aviation cleaner, greener, safer, and quieter. Also, Cygnus leaves the space station, New astrophysics mission, X-ray astronomy mission launches, and NEAR Shoemaker anniversary!' Public domain film from NASA. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Research_Center Ames Research Center (ARC), commonly known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. Originally founded as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics laboratory (NACA), that agency was dissolved and its assets and personnel transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October 1, 1958. NASA Ames is named in honor of Joseph Sweetman Ames, a physicist and one of the founding members of NACA. At last estimate NASA Ames has over US$3.0 billion in capital equipment, 2,300 research personnel and a US$860 million annual budget. Ames was originally founded to conduct wind-tunnel research on the aerodynamics of propeller-driven aircraft; however, its role has expanded to encompass spaceflight and information technology. Ames plays a role in many NASA missions. It provides leadership in astrobiology; small satellites; robotic lunar exploration; the search for habitable planets; supercomputing; intelligent/adaptive systems; advanced thermal protection; and airborne astronomy. Ames also develops tools for a safer, more efficient national airspace. The center's current director is Eugene Tu. The site is mission center for several key current missions (Kepler, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission, Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) and a major contributor to the "new exploration focus" as a participant in the Orion crew exploration vehicle... Missions Although Ames is a NASA Research Center, and not a flight center, it has nevertheless been closely involved in a number of astronomy and space missions. The Pioneer program's eight successful space missions from 1965 to 1978 were managed by Charles Hall at Ames, initially aimed at the inner solar system. By 1972, it supported the bold flyby missions to Jupiter and Saturn with Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11. Those two missions were trail blazers (radiation environment, new moons, gravity-assist flybys) for the planners of the more complex Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions, launched five years later. In 1978, the end of the program saw a return to the inner solar system, with the Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Multiprobe, this time using orbital insertion rather than flyby missions. Lunar Prospector was the third mission selected by NASA for full development and construction as part of the Discovery Program. At a cost of $62.8 million, the 19-month mission was put into a low polar orbit of the Moon, accomplishing mapping of surface composition and possible polar ice deposits, measurements of magnetic and gravity fields, and study of lunar outgassing events. Based on Lunar Prospector Neutron Spectrometer (NS) data, mission scientists have determined that there is indeed water ice in the polar craters of the Moon. The mission ended July 31, 1999 when the orbiter was guided to an impact into a crater near the lunar south pole in an (unsuccessful) attempt to analyze lunar polar water by vaporizing it to allow spectroscopic characterization from Earth telescopes...