GOES-O Satellite Successfully Launched

The latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-O, soared into space yesterday after a successful launch from Space Launch Complex 37 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The GOES-O spacecraft lifted off at 6:51 p.m. EDT on a Delta IV rocket. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's GOES-O satellite will improve weather forecasting and monitor environmental events around the world. The satellite is the second to be launched in the GOES N series of geostationary environmental weather satellites.

"All indications are that GOES-O is in a normal orbit, with all spacecraft systems functioning properly," says Andre Dress, GOES deputy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We are proud of our support teams and pleased with the performance of the Delta IV launch vehicle."

Approximately 4 hours and 21 minutes after launch, the spacecraft separated from the launch vehicle. The Universal Space Network Western Australia tracking site in Dongara monitored the spacecraft separation.

On July 7, GOES-O will be placed in its final orbit and renamed GOES-14. Approximately 24 days after launch, Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems will turn engineering control over to NASA. About five months later, NASA will transfer operational control of GOES-14 to NOAA. The satellite will be checked out, stored in orbit and available for activation should one of the operational GOES satellites degrade or exhaust its fuel.

NASA contracted with Boeing to build and launch the GOES-O spacecraft. NASA's Launch Services Program at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida supported the launch in an advisory role. NOAA manages the GOES program, establishes requirements, provides all funding and distributes environmental satellite data for the United States.

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Satellites Show Arctic Literally on Thin Ice

The latest Arctic sea ice data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center show that the decade-long trend of shrinking sea ice cover is continuing. New evidence from satellite observations also shows that the ice cap is thinning as well.

Arctic sea ice works like an air conditioner for the global climate system. Ice naturally cools air and water masses, plays a key role in ocean circulation, and reflects solar radiation back into space. In recent years, Arctic sea ice has been declining at a surprising rate.

Scientists who track Arctic sea ice cover from space announced today that this winter had the fifth lowest maximum ice extent on record. The six lowest maximum events since satellite monitoring began in 1979 have all occurred in the past six years (2004-2009).

Until recently, the majority of Arctic sea ice survived at least one summer and often several. But things have changed dramatically, according to a team of University of Colorado, Boulder, scientists led by Charles Fowler. Thin seasonal ice -- ice that melts and re-freezes every year -- makes up about 70 percent of the Arctic sea ice in wintertime, up from 40 to 50 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. Thicker ice, which survives two or more years, now comprises just 10 percent of wintertime ice cover, down from 30 to 40 percent.

According to researchers from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., the maximum sea ice extent for 2008-09, reached on Feb. 28, was 5.85 million square miles. That is 278,000 square miles less than the average extent for 1979 to 2000.

"Ice extent is an important measure of the health of the Arctic, but it only gives us a two-dimensional view of the ice cover," says Walter Meier, research scientist at the center and the University of Colorado, Boulder. "Thickness is important, especially in the winter, because it is the best overall indicator of the health of the ice cover. As the ice cover in the Arctic grows thinner, it grows more vulnerable to melting in the summer."

The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several months and intense cold sets in. Some of that ice is naturally pushed out of the Arctic by winds, while much of it melts in place during summer. The thicker, older ice that survives one or more summers is more likely to persist through the next summer.

Sea ice thickness has been hard to measure directly, so scientists have typically used estimates of ice age to approximate its thickness. But last year a team of researchers led by Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., produced the first map of sea ice thickness over the entire Arctic basin.

Using two years of data from NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), Kwok's team estimated thickness and volume of the Arctic Ocean ice cover for 2005 and 2006. They found that the average winter volume of Arctic sea ice contained enough water to fill Lake Michigan and Lake Superior combined.

The older, thicker sea ice is declining and is being replaced with newer, thinner ice that is more vulnerable to summer melt, according to Kwok. His team found that seasonal sea ice averages about 6 feet in thickness, while ice that had lasted through more than one summer averages about 9 feet, though it can grow much thicker in some locations near the coast.

Kwok is currently working to extend the ICESat estimate further, from 2003 to 2008, to see how the recent decline in the area covered by sea ice is mirrored in changes in its volume.

"With these new data on both the area and thickness of Arctic sea ice, we will be able to better understand the sensitivity and vulnerability of the ice cover to changes in climate," Kwok says.

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Video of the Day: NASA Weather Satellite Blasts Off

NASA successfully launched a rocket carrying a new weather satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, after two scrubbed launches earlier this week.

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GLAST Satellite Arrives At Naval Research Lab for Testing

NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) has arrived at the Naval Research
Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, for its final round of testing.

The GLAST spacecraft has successfully completed two of its three environmental tests at the prime contractor, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems in Gilbert, Ariz. These tests included exposure to extreme vibrations and electromagnetic fields. "We've completed two of the big three tests, and now we're going to the NRL to perform the third," says GLAST project manager Kevin Grady of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

On Nov. 26, the spacecraft began its drive across the country in a specially modified truck. GLAST arrived at NRL on November 28. At NRL, the spacecraft will undergo thermal and vacuum testing to ensure that it can survive the 90-degree F (50-degree C) temperature swings it will experience in Earth orbit.

"Although gamma rays can travel billions of light-years across the universe, they can't penetrate Earth's atmosphere, so we must launch our instruments into space. We need to ensure the observatory can function in the space environment, and that is the main goal of the testing about to take place," says GLAST project scientist Steve Ritz of NASA Goddard.

After GLAST finishes the thermal-vac testing, it will be trucked or flown to Cape Canaveral, Fla. There, the solar arrays and flight battery will be added to the spacecraft, and it will be fueled with propellant. The launch, aboard a Delta II Heavy rocket, is scheduled for no earlier than May 29, 2008.

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New NASA Satellite Images Show Vast Size of California Wildfires

NASA satellites have obtained new images of the California wildfires, illustrating the scale of the blazes. The National Interagency Fire Center reports that 12 large, uncontained fires have burned more than 335,000 acres in Southern California.

The latest images are accessible on NASA's Web site and new images will be posted as they become available. A video file will air on NASA TV at 2 p.m. EDT, during mission coverage of STS-120.

These new NASA satellite images of the wildfires show the area between Los Angeles and San Diego. Fire activity is indicated by red pixels. Vast plumes of thick smoke can be seen blowing out over the Pacific Ocean.

The first image was captured by NASA's Terra satellite at 2:25 p.m. EDT on October 23. The second image was acquired by NASA's Aqua satellite at 5:40 p.m. EDT, just over three hours later.

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NASA Satellite Sees Solar Hurricane Detach Comet Tail

A NASA satellite has captured the first images of a collision between a comet and a solar
hurricane. It is the first time scientists have witnessed such an event on another cosmic body. One of NASA's pair of Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory satellites, known as STEREO, recorded the event April 20.

The phenomenon was caused by a coronal mass ejection, a large cloud of magnetized gas cast into space by the sun. The collision resulted in the complete detachment of the plasma tail of Encke's comet. Observations of the comet reveal the brightening of its tail as the coronal mass ejection swept by and the tail's subsequent separation as it was carried away by the front of the ejection. The researchers combined the images into a movie.

"We were awestruck when we saw these images," says Angelos Vourlidas, lead author and researcher at the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington. "This is the first time we've witnessed a collision between a coronal mass ejection and a comet and the surprise of seeing the disconnection of the tail was the icing on the cake."

Encke's comet was traveling within the orbit of Mercury when a coronal mass ejection first crunched the tail then ripped it completely away. The comet is only the second repeating, or periodic, comet ever identified. Halley's comet was the first.

Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory made the observations using the Heliospheric Imager in its Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation telescope suite aboard the STEREO-A spacecraft. The results will be published in the Oct. 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Coronal mass ejections are violent eruptions with masses greater than a few billion tons. They travel from 60 to more than 2,000 miles per second. They have been compared to hurricanes because of the widespread disruption they can cause when directed at Earth. These solar hurricanes cause geomagnetic storms that can present hazards for satellites, radio communications and power systems. However, coronal mass ejections are spread over a large volume of space, mitigating their mass and power to create an impact softer than a baby's breath.

Scientists have been aware of the disconnection of the entire plasma tail of a comet for some time, but the conditions that lead to these events remained a mystery. It was suspected that coronal mass ejections could be responsible for some of the disconnected events, but the interaction between a coronal mass ejection and a comet never had been observed.

Preliminary analysis suggests the disconnection likely is triggered by what is known as magnetic reconnection, in which the oppositely directed magnetic fields around the comet are crunched together by the magnetic fields in the coronal mass ejection. The comet fields suddenly link
together, reconnecting, to release a burst of energy that detaches the comet's tail. A similar process takes place in Earth's magnetosphere during geomagnetic storms, powering the aurora borealis and other phenomena.

Comets are icy leftovers from the solar system's formation billions of years ago. They usually reside in the cold, distant regions of the solar system. Occasionally, the gravitational tug from a planet, another comet or a nearby star sends a comet into the inner solar system, where the sun's heat and radiation vaporizes gas and dust from the comet to form its tail. Comets typically have two tails: one of dust and a fainter one of electrically conducting gas called plasma.

"Even though STEREO is primarily designed to study coronal mass ejections, particularly their impact on Earth, we hope this impact will provide many insights to scientists studying comets," says Michael Kaiser, STEREO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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Engineers Rescue Aging Satellites, Saving Millions

Researchers have used a new technique to save $60 million for broadcasters by extending the service life of two communications satellites.

The technique works by applying an advanced simulation and a method that equalizes the amount of propellant in a series of fuel tanks so that the satellite consumes all of the fuel before being retired from service.

The two satellites would have been shut down prematurely and wasted remaining fuel if not for the new technique developed by researchers from Purdue University and Lockheed Martin Corp., says Steven Collicott, a Purdue professor of aeronautics and astronautics.

Communications satellites, which are maintained in proper orbit about 22,500 miles above Earth by firing small rocket thrusters, must be replaced shortly before they run out of fuel. Enough fuel must remain to get the satellites out of orbit to make room for their replacements.
Some aging communications satellites are each equipped with four fuel tanks. If one of the tanks empties before the others, the satellite loses control and should be decommissioned, wasting the remaining fuel in the other tanks, says Boris Yendler, senior thermal system analyst at Lockheed Martin Mission Services in Sunnyvale, Calif.

The Purdue and Lockheed Martin engineers not only determined precisely how much fuel remained in each tank, but they also used a technique to "rebalance," or equalize, propellant levels in all of the tanks. The engineers kept the twin satellites operating an additional six months, which translates into about $60 million in revenue for the broadcast companies that owned the satellites, Collicott said.

This work, led by Yendler, represents the first time such a fuel gauging and rebalancing has been carried out in commercial communications satellites," Collicott says.

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Satellite Tracking Will Help Answer Questions About Penguin Travels

You could understand if a half-dozen Magellanic penguins developed a "big bird is watching" phobia before this month is over, but the surveillance really will be for their own good.

University of Washington scientists will attach satellite tracking devices to the backs of six penguins that have been treated at two centers in northern Argentina after their feathers were fouled with oil. The birds will be released into the Atlantic Ocean and their movements traced using satellites and the Internet.

The idea is to plug a critical gap in the knowledge of the Magellanics' annual life cycle, their movements on the journey from their winter feeding grounds back to their breeding colonies along the southern Argentina coast and the Islas Malvinas, or Falkland Islands.

"We're missing that information. We know what happens when they leave the breeding grounds but we don't know what happens on the return trip," says Elizabeth Skewgar, a University of Washington doctoral student in biology.

"We want to model the energy requirements for these birds so that we understand what it takes to return to the breeding grounds and still have enough energy to reproduce. Human fisheries competing for the same food could make migration even more difficult for them."

The project is led by Dee Boersma, a UW biology professor who for 25 years has headed the Magellanic Penguin Project at Punta Tombo, Argentina, the birds' largest breeding colony in South America.

"We need to know how penguins use the ocean so we can make their migration route safe through a combination of national marine parks, marine protected areas and ocean zoning," Boersma says.

During the week of Aug. 20, the scientists will select six adult male penguins from rehabilitation centers at San Clemente del Tuyu and Mar del Plata, coastal towns more than 500 miles north of Punta Tombo. Epoxy and special tape will be used to attach a transmitter to each bird before it is released into the Atlantic. The tags are about the size of many common cellular telephones and weigh less than 3.5 ounces.

"We want to put the transmitters on healthy, robust birds that we think are likely to get back and start breeding," Boersma says. "The point is to follow them back to their colony and see where they might be running into petroleum."

Through late October the birds' movements will be tracked by the Argos satellite system, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the French space agency. A satellite will pass overhead every two hours and chart the penguins' positions, then transmit the information back to the researchers, who will use it to update a public tracking map on the Internet.

The transmitters will be active for 36 hours at a time and then will be off for 36 hours, a means of preserving the two double-A batteries in each transmitter for the life of the project. The researchers have no way of knowing whether the birds will go to southern Argentina or the Malvinas, or whether they will follow a straight course to the breeding grounds or take a circuitous route.

"After we release them, they could just hang out at Mar del Plata for a month. It's all up to them," Boersma said. "We're hoping the males we tag will be in a hurry to get to their colony and start breeding."

The satellite tracking also will be instrumental in pinpointing the birds after they arrive at the breeding grounds. Punta Tombo alone is home to some 400,000 penguins during breeding season.

"Tracking the locations by satellite is only accurate to within five kilometers, so it really is like trying to find a needle in a haystack," Boersma says.

Locating the penguins once they reach the breeding ground is important so the researchers can assess the birds' physical condition after the long journey.

"We'll know how much weight they gained or lost on their journey," Boersma says.


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Faster, Better Emergency Response Through Satellite

When emergency teams are well informed and governments can coordinate their efforts, lives and property can be saved. The Health Early Warning System, a project supported by the European Space Agency (ESA), is intended to bring this benefit to Europe. Extreme natural phenomena like tsunamis, earthquakes and hurricanes have featured prominently in the news. So, too, has the rapid spread of new diseases such as SARS and avian flu. By identifying and mapping occurrences of these problems sooner, agencies can relieve suffering more quickly and contain a situation more efficiently. That is why ESA is supporting the Health Early Warning System (HEWS), which will improve the performance of emergency service end-users.

HEWS offers these users a wider, real-time perspective of events and how to manage them. It integrates knowledge of a particular threat or disease and brings it to remote areas, even if they are in an extreme state of disorder. It helps with logistical support and reduces the need to carry large amounts of heavy equipment to trouble spots.

A pan-European solution HEWS works by setting up a communication network via satellite to survey and monitor risk indicators. It allows communication between teams in the field and with command centres. Data from many locations can be collected, stored and processed. It can then be quickly analysed and distributed to the users who need it the most. HEWS is an open platform, built using a modular approach, so the widest variety of users can implement it. What will make HEWS critical to disaster relief agencies is that it is satellite based. Disasters may disrupt or even destroy local infrastructure – but satellites are immune to their effects.

Two scenarios

The system will be tested in two different exercise scenarios, one African and one European. In the first, a suspected case of an infectious disease is reported. Field teams will be deployed by the local Ministry of Health, international organisations and NGOs. The scenario will require them to assess the current situation and deploy a mobile laboratory. Based on field reports, a practice emergency will be declared. HEWS will provide real-time reporting from the various locations and provide insight into how the epidemic is developing. A response will then be organised and feedback provided to mobile teams on road access, water, food, drugs, and medical disposables.

The second scenario simulates a terrorist attack in the center of a European capital. The resulting confusion leads to traffic jams and saturation of the mobile telephone network. The work of the many civil protection and health operators, who are all entering the scene at the same time, is hindered by a lack of coordination and field information, particularly on decontamination measures and treatment protocols. HEWS will give civil protection authorities the ability to supply this information and coordinate the field teams correctly.

HEWS is the work of a consortium of three companies, Instituto Nacional de Saúde and Tekever S.A., both from Portugal, and Ridgeback s.a.s. from Italy. The project is co-financed by ESA as part of the Health and Telemedicine via Satellite Program.

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Safer Air Traffic With EGNOS

Vertical guidance by means of signals from the sky: this is what EGNOS, the first European satellite navigation service, will offer pilots during approach and landing. Flight trials are regularly conducted to demonstrate the new possibilities offered by the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), which has been launched by ESA, the European Commission and Eurocontrol.

A few weeks ago, the Direction Générale de l'Aviation Civile (DGAC – French Civil Aviation Authority) test plane was specially equipped to make tests using EGNOS. At Limoges airport the ATR42 made a number of approaches and landings using the new procedures, in each case aligning itself with the runway's axis and then following a descent path to touchdown.

Inside the plane, normally used for calibration of airport systems in France, the method of analysing the quality of the EGNOS signals was by comparing the landing phases guided by satellite with landings using traditional means such as the Instrument Landing System (ILS).

The results of Limoges trials show again that EGNOS signals allow approaches and landings that meet the safety standards that govern international air traffic. One of the main advantages of EGNOS in this application is that it is available everywhere without the need for ground infrastructure and it provides vertical guidance procedures for every runway.

Furthermore, the cockpit data display is the same as for ILS, so there are no familiarization problems for the pilots and no additional training costs. Currently in pre-operational service, EGNOS will be certified in 2008 for safety-of-life applications such as air traffic control.

Systems that are equivalent to EGNOS have been set up in the United States, Japan and India, and these systems are compatible and interoperable.

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Intelsat to Test Internet Routing in Space for the U.S. Military

Intelsat General Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intelsat Ltd, today announced that it has been selected for an industry-government collaboration to demonstrate the viability of conducting military communications through an Internet router in space.

The Department of Defense project to test Internet routing in space (IRIS) will be managed by Intelsat General, and the payload will convert to commercial use once testing has been completed. The IRIS project is one of seven projects -- out of hundreds of applicants -- funded and announced infiscal 2007 as a Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) by the US Department of Defense, the contractor says.

Intelsat says it is the first commercial satellite company to be awarded a JCTD program. The IRIS JCTD is a three-year program that allows the DOD to collaborate with Intelsat General and its industry team to demonstrate and assess the utility of the IRIS capability.

Cisco Systems will provide commercial networking software for the on-board router. In addition, SEAKR Engineering Inc. of Denver, Colo., will manufacture the space-hardened router and integrate it into the IRIS payload.

Concerto Advisors, a financial advisory firm based in Iowa City, Iowa, is organizing equity financing for a new company to provide the funds to design, build and operate the equipment used for the demonstration. Following the JCTD testing period, Concerto's affiliate will own the equipment, and Intelsat will operate the equipment on Concerto's behalf to provide services for government and commercial users.

"IRIS extends the Internet into space, integrating satellite systems and the ground infrastructure for warfighters, first responders and others who need seamless and instant communications," says Bill Shernit, president and CEO of Intelsat General. "IRIS will enable U.S. and allied military forces with diverse satellite equipment to seamlessly communicate over the Internet from the most remote regions of the world."

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NASA Mission Launches to Study Geomagnetic Substorms

NASA says its THEMIS mission successfully launched Saturday, Feb. 17, at 6:01 p.m. EST from Pad 17-B at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

THEMIS stands for the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms. It is NASA's first five-satellite mission launched aboard a single rocket. The spacecraft separated from the launch vehicle approximately 73 minutes after liftoff. By 8:07 p.m. EST, mission operators at the University of California, Berkeley, commanded and received signals from all five spacecraft, confirming nominal separation status, NASA says.

The mission will help resolve the mystery of what triggers geomagnetic substorms. Substorms are atmospheric events visible in the Northern Hemisphere as a sudden brightening of the Northern Lights, or aurora borealis. The findings from the mission may help protect commercial satellites and humans in space from the adverse effects of particle radiation, the space agency says.

THEMIS' satellite constellation will line up along the sun-Earth line, collect coordinated measurements, and observe substorms during the two-year mission. Data collected from the five identical probes will help pinpoint where and when substorms begin, a feat impossible with any previous single-satellite mission, NASA says.

"The THEMIS mission will make a breakthrough in our understanding of how Earth's magnetosphere stores and releases energy from the sun and also will demonstrate the tremendous potential that constellation missions have for space exploration," says Vassilis Angelopoulos, THEMIS principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley. "THEMIS' unique alignments also will answer how the sun-Earth interaction is affected by Earth's bow shock, and how 'killer electrons' at Earth's radiation belts are accelerated."

The Mission Operations Center at the University of California, Berkeley, will monitor the health and status of the five satellites. Instrument scientists will turn on and characterize the instruments over the next 30 days. The center will then assign each spacecraft a target orbit within the THEMIS constellation based on its performance. Mission operators will direct the spacecraft to their final orbits in mid-September, NASA says.

During the mission the five THEMIS satellites will observe an estimated 30 substorms in process. At the same time, 20 ground observatories in Alaska and Canada will time the aurora and space currents. The relative timing between the five spacecraft and ground observations underneath them will help scientists determine the elusive substorm trigger mechanism, NASA says.

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Exploiting Space With Low-Cost Satellites

At a time when European science budgets are increasingly under pressure UK academia and industry representatives met in London on January 24 to look at opportunities for exploiting space using low cost satellites.

UK industry and academia has developed a unique partnership in designing and building compact and extremely cost effective satellites packed with innovative technology including miniaturised instrumentation, robotics, software and autonomous systems. Such small spacecraft can make a real contribution to scientific research, environmental monitoring, navigation and communications, alongside more traditional larger missions, representatives say.

Through the European Space Agency's (ESA) Cosmic Vision program, which looks at an exploration program for the time period of 2015-2025, there will inevitably be great opportunities for UK industry and academia to provide lead roles in medium and large missions.

Ahead of this it is anticipated that there will be several precursor technology demonstrator missions within ESA's Aurora program which will need lower cost technologies developed over a shorter timescale, and this is where the UK could exploit its expertise in small satellites.

Keith Mason, chief executive of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) said, "Whilst it is recognized that some space missions can only be achieved using larger platforms frontier science can be obtained by smaller, more defined satellites. Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better."

The advantages of producing small satellites are multiple. Not only can they be produced over a shorter time scale but they cost significantly less – allowing more regular opportunities for the launch of missions. It can also be argued that small satellites allow for more optimised missions by carrying a single primary instrument. This means that there are no compromise issues which often occur on larger missions carrying a diverse payload, researchers say.


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NASA GeneSat Shows Small Satellites Can Deliver Big Science

A very small NASA satellite has proven that scientists can quickly design and launch a new class of inexpensive spacecraft -- and conduct significant science. The 11-pound GeneSat-1, carrying bacteria inside a miniature laboratory, was launched on Dec. 16, 2006. It was a secondary payload on an Air Force four-stage Minotaur 1 rocket that delivered the Air Force TacSat 2 satellite to orbit.

GeneSat-1 began to transmit data on its first pass over the mission's California ground station. Scientists still receive data from the satellite regularly.

"GeneSat proves that big science can be done using small satellites," says GeneSat project manager John Hines, an engineer and scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "GeneSat's success points out how NASA can spend less money and time to learn new things in space."

According to Hines, GeneSat-1 is NASA's first fully automated, self-contained biological spaceflight experiment on a satellite of its size. "Based on this success, we expect that in the near future, this class of small satellite will see increasing acceptance and usage by the science community," Hines notes.

These small satellites will help scientists understand the hazards and risks associated with human space travel, Hines believes.

The cost to develop the GeneSat satellite class, launch the first spacecraft and operate it was a fraction of what it normally costs to conduct a mission in space, according to scientists.

Subsequent GeneSat-class missions will cost much less, Hines predicts. Researchers say that knowledge gained from GeneSat-1 will help scientists understand how spaceflight affects the human body. GeneSat-1's onboard micro-laboratory includes sensors and optical systems that can detect proteins that are the products of specific genetic activity.

Biological data returned so far have exceeded the project’s pre-launch success criteria, according to GeneSat-1 lead biologist Macarena Parra. "Throughout the experiment, the temperature remained constant and all systems functioned properly to record our required data," Parra says.
Researchers will further analyze GeneSat-1's on-board systems during the remaining life of the satellite, according to Bruce Yost, the GeneSat-1 mission manager.“We plan to conduct a number of engineering tests and evaluations to increase our confidence in the GeneSat platform," Yost says. "In the next few weeks, we will hand over the GeneSat-1 spacecraft to Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, Calif., for use as a training tool for future aerospace engineers.”

GeneSat-1 will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up before the end of the year. "Our partnership with the Santa Clara University mission operations team has surpassed all of our expectations with their level of performance and professionalism," Hines says. "This is the first NASA mission to be operated by a student-based team; they worked around the clock and over a holiday break to complete our primary mission. It was a remarkable success," Hines adds.


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