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The shuttle made its final flight on the back of a modified 747 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to Virginia’s Dulles International Airport today. At 9:48 a.m. EDT it flew over the airport at about 300 feet and then went around Washington, D.C., for about an hour and 15 minutes.

Discovery landed at 11:05 a.m. April 17, on runway 1R. The plane then taxied to a stop in an area called Apron W, which has been set up as a construction site to work on the 83-ton shuttle and de-mate it from the 747. The pilot, Jeff Moultrie, and co-pilot, Bill Rieke, will be greeted by officials from NASA and the Smithsonian and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. The shuttle will remain at the airport to be prepared for its final journey Thursday morning when it is towed to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center.

The official transfer of the shuttle from NASA to the Smithsonian will take place at the Udvar-Hazy Center at 11 a.m. Thursday with 15 of Discovery’s 32 commanders on the stage. The keynote address will be given by former Senator and astronaut John Glenn, who, at age 77, was the oldest member of a Discovery crew. The ceremony is free and open to the public.

Discovery will be the backdrop of the ceremony, and it will remain outdoors until 5:30 p.m. when it is scheduled to be towed into its new permanent home, the James S. McDonnell Space Hanger of the Udvar-Hazy Center.

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A team of researchers analyzing high-resolution images obtained by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) show small, narrow trenches typically much longer than they are wide. This indicates the lunar crust is being pulled apart at these locations. These linear valleys, known as graben, form when the moon’s crust stretches, breaks and drops down along two bounding faults. A handful of these graben systems have been found across the lunar surface.

Thomas Watters of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum discusses the lunar graben and what they reveal about how the moon evolved. (Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Dan Gallagher)

“We think the moon is in a general state of global contraction because of cooling of a still hot interior,” said Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and lead author of a paper on this research appearing in the March issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. “The graben tell us forces acting to shrink the moon were overcome in places by forces acting to pull it apart. This means the contractional forces shrinking the moon cannot be large, or the small graben might never form.”

The weak contraction suggests that the moon, unlike the terrestrial planets, did not completely melt in the very early stages of its evolution. Rather, observations support an alternative view that only the moon’s exterior initially melted forming an ocean of molten rock.

Right: This image shows the largest of the newly detected graben found in highlands of the lunar farside. The broadest graben is about 1,640 feet wide and topography derived from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) stereo images indicates they are almost 20 meters (almost 66 feet) deep. (Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution)

In August 2010, the team used LROC images to identify physical signs of contraction on the lunar surface, in the form of lobe-shaped cliffs known as lobate scarps. The scarps are evidence the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today. The team saw these scarps widely distributed across the moon and concluded it was shrinking as the interior slowly cooled.

Based on the size of the scarps, it is estimated that the distance between the moon’s center and its surface shank by approximately 300 feet. The graben were an unexpected discovery and the images provide contradictory evidence that the regions of the lunar crust are also being pulled apart.

“This pulling apart tells us the moon is still active,” said Richard Vondrak, LRO Project Scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “LRO gives us a detailed look at that process.”

Left: This image shows the largest of the newly detected graben found in highlands of the lunar farside. The broadest graben is about 500 meters (1,640 feet) wide and topography derived from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) stereo images indicates they are almost 20 meters (almost 66 feet) deep. (Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University/Smithsonian Institution)

As the LRO mission progresses and coverage increases, scientists will have a better picture of how common these young graben are and what other types of tectonic features are nearby. The graben systems the team finds may help scientists refine the state of stress in the lunar crust.

“It was a big surprise when I spotted graben in the far side highlands,” said co-author Mark Robinson of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, principal investigator of LROC. “I immediately targeted the area for high-resolution stereo images so we could create a three-dimensional view of the graben. It’s exciting when you discover something totally unexpected and only about half the lunar surface has been imaged in high resolution. There is much more of the moon to be explored.”

The research was funded by the LRO mission, currently under NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. LRO is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. –Source: NASA

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Nine months after his return from the moon, Worden received a phone call telling him he was fired and ordering him out of his office by the end of the week. He refused to leave.

What happened in those nine months, from being honored with parades and meetings with world leaders to being unceremoniously fired, has been a source of much speculation for four decades. In Falling to Earth, Worden tells for the first time the full story around the dramatic events that shook NASA and ended his spaceflight career. Readers will learn them here for the first time, along with the exhilarating account of what it is like to journey to the moon and back. It’s an unprecedentedly candid account of what it was like to be an Apollo astronaut, with all its glory but also its pitfalls.

Falling to Earth is published by Smithsonian Books.

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“Having the right instruments and knowing where to go are equally important,” said John Grant, a Smithsonian geologist and co-chair of the landing site steering committee. “We looked for a site that has water associated with it, materials of interest that are concentrated and preserved and that is accessible so we can get to it. Gale Crater is a good place to explore because there is a mountain of layered materials rising from its floor. Much like chapters in a book, the sediments, minerals and layers in this stack record the story about what Mars was like in the past. The rover will investigate where sediments forming the layers came from and explore how the layers relate to the environments in which they formed.” Grant, who is a researcher in the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, is also a member of the science team for Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

Image right: Gale Crater is 96 miles in diameter and holds a layered mountain rising about 3 miles above the crater floor. The portion of the crater within the planned landing area north of the mountain has an alluvial fan likely formed by water-carried sediments. The lower layers of the nearby mountain–within driving distance for Curiosity–contain minerals indicating a wet history. (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)

The car-sized Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, is scheduled to launch late this year and land in August 2012. The target crater is 96 miles in diameter and holds a mountain rising higher from the crater floor than Mount Rainier rises above Seattle. Gale is about the combined area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Layering in the mound suggests it is the surviving remnant of an extensive sequence of deposits.

Image left: This artist concept shows NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, a mobile robot for investigating Mars’ past or present ability to sustain microbial life. In this picture, the rover examines a rock on Mars with a set of tools at the end of the rover’s arm, which extends about 7 feet. (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

During a prime mission lasting one Martian year—nearly two Earth years—researchers will use the rover’s tools to study whether the landing region had favorable environmental conditions for supporting microbial life and for preserving clues about whether life ever existed.

In 2006, more than 100 scientists began to consider about 30 potential landing sites during worldwide workshops. Four candidates were selected in 2008. An abundance of targeted images enabled thorough analysis of the safety concerns and scientific attractions of each site. A team of senior NASA science officials then conducted a detailed review and unanimously agreed to move forward with the MSL Science Team’s recommendation. The team is comprised of a host of principal and co-investigators on the project.

NASA Video: Animation of the Mars Science Laboratory from entry, descent and landing phase to surface operation.

Curiosity is about twice as long and more than five times as heavy as any previous Mars rover. Its 10 science instruments include two for ingesting and analyzing samples of powdered rock that the rover’s robotic arm collects. A radioisotope power source will provide heat and electric power to the rover. A rocket-powered sky crane suspending Curiosity on tethers will lower the rover directly to the Martian surface.

The rover and other spacecraft components are being assembled and are undergoing final testing. The mission is targeted to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of Caltech.

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In the late 1920s, a very young German airplane enthusiast Reimar Horten started experimenting with flying models equipped with fuselages, stabilizers, rudders, and elevators, but his life’s work involved systematically removing these components from the models to try and achieve flight with only the wing. Not only were the pure wings more difficult to design with the stability and control needed to fly, they were harder to place in practical roles not already filled by conventional aircraft operating for less support and operational costs. Only the Wing is a new book by Russell Lee that recounts Horten’s epic quest to stabalize and control the all-wing aircraft. Lee is curator in the Aeronautics Division at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

Always seeking to increase performance and efficiency, Horten adopted a multi-disciplinary approach after flying his first piloted wing in 1933, eventually breaking new ground in cockpit design and construction materials. His most important innovation was the unique pattern he developed to distribute the lift over his wings, the result of his efforts to refine the aerodynamic control of all-wing aircraft, often while working alone and in difficult circumstances. Two days after he passed away in 1993, the Royal Aeronautical Society awarded Reimar Horten the British Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Aeronautics.

For more information about this book visit the Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press Web site.

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