NASA Installs Giant Composite Material Research Robot

The ISAAC robotic system, which recently arrived at NASA Langley, will manufacture composite structures and parts.

Image Credit: 

NASA/Gary Banziger

It looks like something out of a "Transformers" movie – a huge robotic arm that moves and spins to pick up massive heads filled with spools of carbon fibers, then moves in preprogrammed patterns to deposit those fibers onto a 40-foot long bed. But instead of transforming from machine to Autobot, it can transform epoxy and fibers into aerospace structures and parts.

Two trucks carried the multi-million dollar robot system across country from Washington state to Hampton, Virginia.

Image Credit: 

NASA/David C. Bowman

NASA's Langley Research Center is in the process of setting up this advanced composite research capability that engineers are calling ISAAC for Integrated Structural Assembly of Advanced Composites. Just to get ISAAC to the Hampton, Virginia facility was a challenge financially and physically.

"We have worked for two years to obtain this precise robotic technology. But we proposed the idea more than six years ago," said structural mechanics engineer Chauncey Wu. "It will really make a difference in our ability to understand composite materials and processes for use in aviation and space vehicles."

A huge crane from a local company barely had clearance to lift the ISAAC robot arm and set it down on the ground until technicians could install it on its track 40-foot long track.

Image Credit: 

NASA/Kathy Barnstorff

Funding was one stumbling block. But Wu and his ISAAC project teammates Brian Stewart and Robert Martin were able to convince NASA Langley to provide about $1.4 million, the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate to kick in $1.1 million, and the Space Technology Mission Directorate and NASA Langley's Space Technology and Exploration Directorate contribute a combined $200,000 to the multi-million dollar system cost.

The other challenge was the actual physical move of the ISAAC system. The system is only one of three in the world manufactured by Electroimpact, Inc., headquartered in Mukilteo, Washington. The other two are used for bulk manufacturing of composites, not for research as NASA intends.

The crane returned two weeks later so the 21-foot tall robot arm could be placed on the track. The robot head will make large composite pieces by sliding up and down the track laying down epoxy and carbon fibers in precise patterns.

Image Credit: 

NASA/David C. Bowman

Two 53-foot long covered flatbed trucks made the trek all the way across country to bring the robot to NASA Langley in Hampton, Virginia. The trucks arrived at the crack of dawn, before most employees, because they were so large.  Waiting for them was ISAAC's new home – a big empty space in NASA Langley's Advanced Manufacturing and Flight Test Articles Development Laboratory.

The robot is known for its precision work, but the choreography to place it inside the building had to be just as exact.

"We had to bring in a massive crane from a local company to lift ISAAC," said Stewart. "There were only inches of clearance between the crane and the ceiling as they moved the robot arm and set it on the floor."

A few weeks later the same crane returned to set the arm onto the track that it will use to lay down composite fibers. Technicians from Electroimpact still have a number of weeks to make sure all the electronics and pieces work so that ISAAC can begin doing the research that Langley engineers have been waiting to do.

Researchers plan to have ISAAC up and running by early 2015 with the first research customer the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Advanced Composites Project (ACP).

The project is a public-private partnership that is geared toward reducing the amount of time and money it takes to bring new, advanced composites from test tube to vehicles.

The goal of the ACP is to reduce the time for development, verification, and regulatory acceptance of new composite materials and design methods. NASA will meet this objective through the development and use of high fidelity and rigorous computational methods, new test protocols, and new inspection techniques.

NASA's space projects also plan to use the ISAAC system in their research. The second project planned for the robot is ­­­­­­­­the Composites for Exploration Upper Stage (C-EUS) Project, a partnership between the Space Technology Mission Directorate and Human Exploration Mission Directorate that is led by the Marshall Space Flight Center. 

The C-EUS Project is a 3-year effort to design, build, test and address flight certification of a large composite shell suitable for the second stage of the Space Launch System.

Langley’s role in the C-EUS Project will be to lead the design, manufacture and testing of the shell’s structural joints, as well as leading the overall structural and thermal analyses.

Kathy Barnstorff
NASA Langley Research Center

( http://www.nasa.gov/larc/nasa-installs-giant-composite-material-research-robot/index.html#.VFxuWWjZFJ8 )

NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover Finds Mineral Match

This image shows the first holes drilled by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity at Mount Sharp. The loose material near the drill holes is drill tailings and an accumulation of dust that slid down the rock during drilling.

Image Credit: 

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Full image and caption

This image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows a sample of powdered rock extracted by the rover's drill from the "Confidence Hills" target -- the first rock drilled after Curiosity reached the base of Mount Sharp in September 2014.

Image Credit: 

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Full image and caption

This side-by-side comparison shows the X-ray diffraction patterns of two different samples collected from rocks on Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover. The images present data obtained by Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin).

Image Credit: 

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Full image and caption

This view shows the path and some key places in a survey of the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover in autumn of 2014. The outcrop is at the base of Mount Sharp within Gale Crater.

Image Credit: 

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Full image and caption

Reddish rock powder from the first hole drilled into a Martian mountain by NASA's Curiosity rover has yielded the mission's first confirmation of a mineral mapped from orbit.

"This connects us with the mineral identifications from orbit, which can now help guide our investigations as we climb the slope and test hypotheses derived from the orbital mapping," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Curiosity collected the powder by drilling into a rock outcrop at the base of Mount Sharp in late September. The robotic arm delivered a pinch of the sample to the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument inside the rover. This sample, from a target called "Confidence Hills" within the "Pahrump Hills" outcrop, contained much more hematite than any rock or soil sample previously analyzed by CheMin during the two-year-old mission. Hematite is an iron-oxide mineral that gives clues about ancient environmental conditions from when it formed.

In observations reported in 2010, before selection of Curiosity's landing site, a mineral-mapping instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provided evidence of hematite in the geological unit that includes the Pahrump Hills outcrop. The landing site is inside Gale Crater, an impact basin about 96 miles (154 kilometers) in diameter with the layered Mount Sharp rising about three miles (five kilometers) high in the center.

"We've reached the part of the crater where we have the mineralogical information that was important in selection of Gale Crater as the landing site," said Ralph Milliken of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. He is a member of Curiosity's science team and was lead author of that 2010 report in Geophysical Research Letters identifying minerals based on observations of lower Mount Sharp by the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM). "We're now on a path where the orbital data can help us predict what minerals we'll find and make good choices about where to drill. Analyses like these will help us place rover-scale observations into the broader geologic history of Gale that we see from orbital data."

Much of Curiosity's first year on Mars was spent investigating outcrops in a low area of Gale Crater called "Yellowknife Bay," near the spot where the rover landed. The rover found an ancient lakebed. Rocks there held evidence of wet environmental conditions billions of years ago that offered ingredients and an energy source favorable for microbial life, if Mars ever had microbes. Clay minerals of interest in those rocks at Yellowknife Bay had not been detected from orbit, possibly due to dust coatings that interfere with CRISM's view of them.

The rover spent much of the mission's second year driving from Yellowknife Bay to the base of Mount Sharp. The hematite found in the first sample from the mountain tells about environmental conditions different from the conditions recorded in the rocks of Yellowknife Bay. The rock material interacted with water and atmosphere to become more oxidized.

The rocks analyzed earlier also contain iron-oxide minerals, mostly magnetite. One way to form hematite is to put magnetite in oxidizing conditions. The latest sample has about eight percent hematite and four percent magnetite. The drilled rocks at Yellowknife Bay and on the way to Mount Sharp contain at most about one percent hematite and much higher amounts of magnetite.

"There's more oxidation involved in the new sample," said CheMin Deputy Principal Investigator David Vaniman of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.

The sample is only partially oxidized, and preservation of magnetite and olivine indicates a gradient of oxidation levels. That gradient could have provided a chemical energy source for microbes.

The Pahrump HIlls outcrop includes multiple layers uphill from its lowest layer, where the Confidence Hills sample was drilled. The layers vary in texture and may also vary in concentrations of hematite and other minerals. The rover team is now using Curiosity to survey the outcrop and assess possible targets for close inspection and drilling.

The mission may spend weeks to months at Pahrump Hills before proceeding farther up the stack of geological layers forming Mount Sharp. Those higher layers include an erosion-resistant band of rock higher on Mount Sharp with such a strong orbital signature of hematite, it is called "Hematite Ridge." The target drilled at Pahrump Hills is much softer and more deeply eroded than Hematite Ridge.

Another NASA Mars rover, Opportunity, made a key discovery of hematite-rich spherules on a different part of Mars in 2004. That finding was important as evidence of a water-soaked history that produced those mineral concretions. The form of hematite at Pahrump Hills is different and is most important as a clue about oxidation conditions. Plenty of other evidence in Gale Crater has testified to the ancient presence of water.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Science Laboratory projects for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, and built the Curiosity rover. NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, developed CheMin and manages instrument operations. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland, developed and operates CRISM. For more information about Curiosity, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/msl

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/

You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity

http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity

Preston Dyches / Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
818-354-7013 / 818-354-6278
preston.dyches@jpl.nasa.gov / guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

Jessica Culler
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
650-604-4789
jessica.culler@nasa.gov

Kevin Stacey
Brown University
401-863-3766
kevin_stacey@brown.edu

(http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/msl/nasas-curiosity-mars-rover-finds-mineral-match/index.html)

Orion Takes Big Step Before Moving to the Launch Pad

Inside the Launch Abort System Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a crane brings the fourth and final Ogive panel closer for installation on Orion's Launch Abort System. The panels will smooth the airflow over the conical spacecraft to limit sound and vibration.

Image Credit: 

NASA/Kim Shiflett

Kevin Rivers was nothing but giddy as he stood behind the closed door of the Launch Abort System Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, waiting to see the Orion spacecraft that will one day send humans on the journey to Mars. After just a few minutes that seemed like a lifetime, Rivers, the Launch Abort System project manager, walked through the facility door.

There before him stood the 80-foot high Orion spacecraft being readied for its December flight test with the four recently-installed protective panels that make up the Ogive. The Ogive reduces drag and acoustic load on the crew module, making it a smoother ride for the spacecraft.

“What my colleagues and I were able to witness was a significant historical point in our efforts to move beyond low-Earth orbit and explore past the moon,” Rivers said.

On Dec. 4, Orion is scheduled to launch atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 37 in Florida. During the test, Orion will travel 3,600 miles in altitude above Earth. 4 1/2 hours later, the spacecraft will reenter the atmosphere at 20,000 mph and splash down in the Pacific Ocean. Orion’s first flight will verify launch and high-speed reentry systems such as avionics, attitude control, parachutes and the heat shield.

Barry Meredith, who works with Rivers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, expressed a similar awe. “Orion’s flight test is a major step toward exploring beyond low-Earth orbit,” he said. “Though a crew will not occupy the first flight, it’s really critical that we test the spacecraft systems.”

The Ogive installation was one of the last pieces of the puzzle for Orion prior to its move to the launch pad on Nov. 10. There, it will be lifted and attached to the rocket for its December launch.

“There is much effort and preparation for such a momentous occasion,” said Langley engineer Jose Ortiz. “There are many disciplines, geographically dispersed specialties and developments, tests, elaborate analyses, materials characterizations, and other efforts by NASA centers and contractor partners. The nationwide effort is aimed toward one common and challenging goal in mind: human spaceflight.”

Orion is managed out of NASA’s Johnson Space Flight Center in Texas, and the Launch Abort System project is managed out of Langley. NASA centers and industry partners from across the country have also played a critical role in the design, development and testing of Orion.

Sasha Congiu
NASA Langley Research Center

(http://www.nasa.gov/larc/orion-takes-big-step-before-moving-to-the-launch-pad/index.html#.VFnHN2jZFJ8)

NASA's SDO Sees a Mid-Level Solar Flare: Nov. 3

The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 5:40 p.m. EST on Nov. 3, 2014. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

NASA's SDO captured this image of a solar flare on the sun on Nov. 3, 2014. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however, when intense enough, they can disturb the atmosphere where GPS and communications signals travel.

Image Credit: 

NASA/SDO

To see how this event may affect Earth, please visit NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, the U.S. government's official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.

This flare is classified as an M6.5 flare.

M-class flares are a tenth the size of the most intense flares, the X-class flares. The number provides more information about its strength. An M2 is twice as intense as an M1, an M3 is three times as intense, etc. 

Updates will be provided as needed.

What is a solar flare?

For answers to this and other space weather questions, please visit the Spaceweather Frequently Asked Questions page.

Karen C. Fox
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland

( http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasas-sdo-sees-a-mid-level-solar-flare-nov-3/index.html#.VFnGTWjZFJ8 )