Transcript: This Week at NASA, February 11 - 17
02.17.06
BUDGET HEARING – HQ
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin and Deputy Administrator Shana Dale testified before the U.S. House Science Committee on the President's Fiscal Year 07 budget for the agency. Griffin and Dale addressed how NASA plans to maximize what monies the agency is appropriated.
SOT Griffin “…We are now poised to carry out a balanced portfolio of space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research. We must balance these competing interests of time, resources and energy within the budget provided so setting priorities is vitally important.”
REMOTE SENSING - MSFC
Remains of the ancient Maya culture, hidden in the rainforests of Central America for more than 1,000 years, are now being located with the help of NASA aircraft-based technology called "remote-sensing" and commercial satellites. In the jungle, tall and dense vegetation can obscure objects as close as ten feet away. But NASA archaeologist Tom Sever and scientist Dan Irwin, both from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, along with University of New Hampshire archaeologist, William Saturno, have used "remote sensing" images to uncover hidden Maya ruins by identifying the chemical signature of the civilization's ancient building materials.
SOT Tom Sever "The Maya built their cities out of limestone and lime plaster. Through the centuries, this material has decomposed and it had affected the vegetation and the moisture in the forest canopy on top of the sites. So, this is how we're able to find the sites."
The team has surveyed an uncharted region around San Bartolo, Guatemala, and ground-tested its data with 100-per cent accuracy. Scientists believe the Maya's densely-populated cities fell prey to cataclysmic drought and deforestation in the ninth century.
NEW EXPLORERS – JSC
After 18 months of intense training, NASA's latest astronaut candidates are now officially astronauts. The class of 11 includes three educator astronauts selected from teachers across the nation. This is the first astronaut class that focused, from the beginning, on realizing the Vision for Space Exploration. Three Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronauts trained alongside the NASA candidates.
LESSONS FROM SPACE - JSC
Expedition 12 Commander Bill McArthur and Flight Engineer Valery Tokarev fielded questions about their mission from students at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, N.C.
Student SOT:”…My name is Nora and my question is for Bill.
How is maintaining a journal help you tract any psychological or behavioral changes during your stay on board the ISS?”
McArthur SOT: “…The journal experiment is helping me to do, to be quite frank, honest with myself. It provides a vehicle in which, if its been a particularly frustrating day, I can elaborate what I found frustrating about that day. Similarly, if its been a good day it allows me to organize in my mind what I enjoyed about that day. And so, what I found is it’s very good vehicle for me to do an assessment, not only on how the mission is going, but how I’m responding to the mission.”
The ISS crew is in the homestretch of a six-month mission on the complex, with their return to Earth scheduled in early April.
INVASIVE SPECIES - MSFC
NASA and the US Geological Survey are working together to develop a National Invasive Species Forecasting System, or ISFS. The system, based on NASA satellite observations and USGS field data, provides land managers quick and inexpensive data on the location and spread of plants over regional areas. An "invasive species" is a non-native plant, animal or other organism that can negatively impact human health, or harm the economy or environment where it's found.
NASA SCIENTIST JEFF MORISETTE SOT: “…The invasive species monitoring that we’re doing at NASA is really just one part of the puzzle of monitoring our global vegetation and NASA’s using its satellites to really take the pulse of the planet to understand and to quantify the dynamics that we observe.”
The ISFS was used recently to make the first predictive map of the tamarisk habitat. Tamarisk is a prolific, small, shrubby tree introduced to the Southwest around the turn of the century and experts estimate that it has infested more than 3.3 million acres in the western United States.
SPECIAL DELIVERY - MSFC
A special 29-foot-long, 16-foot diameter module was delivered by NASA's Super Guppy from Kennedy Space Center to the Marshall Space Flight Center. The unit, originally developed as a habitation module for the International Space Station, will be used to test an advanced life support system for future NASA exploration missions. With a cargo compartment that's 25 feet tall and wide, and 111 feet long, the Super Guppy was the only NASA aircraft large enough to transport the habitation module.
HALF PIPE ON A FULL MOON? - JSC
With the help of several Olympic athletes, students can get a physics lesson from NASA about the potential of future winter sports on the most extreme venue around -- the moon! A series of 30-to-60-second NASA television clips feature U.S. Olympic Team members, skier Eric Bergoust, women’s half-pipe snowboard gold medalist, Hannah Teter, and bobsledder Todd Hays. They're joined by U.S. Snowboard team member Kier Dillon in exploring the scientific concepts of their winning flips and rips.
Teter SOT: “…When you go to the moon it’s going to take some sweet skills to make sure the feet on the lunar lander line up with the surface of the moon the right way when you touch down; at least somebody who can rotate and flip the spacecraft to compensate for the trajectory during your descent. And I figure if you can bust a ‘Cab 9’ or a ‘Front Side 5’ on a snowboard, you can probably stop a pretty sick lunar landing.
The educational segments are available for anyone to use.
AND THAT’S THIS WEEK AT NASA
+ Listen Now (mp3)
