A Boeing 747-400 can hold 524 people, not counting the crew. However, the new AirBus A380, which is currently underdevelopment, might be able to accomodate 840 passengers.

At 12:30 a.m. this morning, the Sun reaches its farthest point south of the celestial equator. This marks the Winter Solstice, and the shortest day of the year for the Northern Hemisphere.

Civilian passenger jets cruise at between 30,000 and 39,000 feet. Military aircraft can attain greater altitudes. Prop planes are limited to about 20,000 feet. A small plane can legally fly 2000 feet.

Birds were the fastest creatures on Earth until 1919. At that time, pilots first reached speeds of 190 mph (306 km/hr). Thus, the record for fastest speeds among birds was broken. The champion bird had been the peregrine falcon, clocked at speeds nearing 185mph(298km/hr) while diving. Since then, even cars and trains have beaten that record.

The outer skin of an aeroplane is only 5 mm thick. Only 7.5 in (19 cm) separate the passengers from the outside.

Seventy-five thousand engineering drawings were used to produce the first 747.

A 747-400 has six million parts (half of which are fasteners) made in 33 different countries.

An airplane’s “blackbox”‘ is a device which records conditions and events on an air vessel. A “blackbox” is actually orange in color to make it more visible in the wreckage. The term black box might come from its charred appearance after an air crash.

When airplanes were still a novel invention, seat belts for pilots were installed only after the consequence of their absence was observed to be fatal – several pilots fell to their deaths while flying upside down.

The first United States coast to coast airplane flight occurred in 1911 and took 49 days.

As of 2010, aeronautical engineering annual salaries range from $57,356 to $87,050.

According to U.S. News & World Report, the top aeronautical engineering schools in the U.S. are Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the U.S. Air Force Academy, the U.S. Naval Academy and California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo.

Technological instruments utilized by aeronautical engineers include robotics, computer-aided drafting (CAD) software and electronic and laser optics.

Technology-based areas that aeronautical engineers work in include aircraft guidance, navigation and control systems.

Aeronautical engineering is heavily involved in developing military aircraft including fighter planes, helicopters, rockets and missiles.

Aeronautical engineering tasks encompass a variety of careers including wind tunnel testing, engine design, aircraft design, spacecraft design and airliner comfort systems design.

Aeronautical engineers are employed by national companies including Boeing, General Electric, Lockheed Martin and Cessna, and government agencies including NASA.

Aeronautical engineering is an engineering branch that involves designing, producing and maintaining aircraft.

Communication to the ISS is via Ku-band, S-band and UHF frequencies.

The International Space Station is scheduled to operate until 2020.

On Thursday, Space Station residents enjoyed a dinner of turkey, cranberry dressing, stuffing, all of the standard traditional fare for a Thanksgiving meal.

Brazil provided an outside movable experiment pallet.

As well as its contribution in the European Space Agency, Italy is also contributing three logistics modules to move equipment racks and 1 living quarters module.

Canada has supplied robotics, such as the 55-foot 'Canadarm'1 and 2, as well as a mobile cart that moves along tracks on the ISS backbone.

Japan, renowned for it's efficiency in the hi-tech world, is also helping out in making modules, a robotic arm and an external platform.

With 11 space agencies working together as a whole, the European Space Agency has committed itself to the ISS and is spending money and manpower in making many modules as well as other additions, such as a robotic arm, connecting nodes etc.

As well as making quite a few modules, the Russian space agency is contributing its great experience in running space stations.

America is the main country behind the ISS, pumping the most money into it and keeping everything running smoothly.

Since the launch of Expedition 1 on Oct. 31, 2000, humans have had a continuous presence in space.

The solar array wingspan (240 ft) is longer than that of a Boeing 777 200/300 model, which is 212 ft.

ISS has an internal pressurized volume of 33,023 cubic feet, or equal that of a Boeing 747.

More than 115 space flights will have been conducted on five different types of launch vehicles over the course of the station’s construction.

More than 100 telephone-booth sized rack facilities can be in the ISS for operating the spacecraft systems and research experiments.

On this day in 1955, Dr. Emmett Brown discovered the Flux Capacitor after slipping in his bathroom.

Fifty-two computers control the systems on the ISS.  Two iPads were just launched to the ISS via Soyuz, but they will just be used for email and entertainment.

A total of 161 spacewalks have been conducted in support of space station assembly totaling more than 1,015 hours.

The space station, including its large solar arrays, spans the area of a U.S. football field, including the end zones, and weighs 861,804 pounds, not including visiting vehicles. The complex now has more livable room than a conventional five-bedroom house, and has two bathrooms, a gymnasium and a 360-degree bay window.

The NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) program aimed to bridge the gap between old and new systems by flying new instruments on a satellite originally to be launched in 2005.

Interest in climate research through the use of satellites began in the 1960s and early 1970s through space probes studying other planets.

GOES is a constellation of satellites that monitors and forecasts weather for NOAA.

TRIMM, launched in 1997, carries five instruments which uses radar and sensors of visible infrared light to closely monitor precipitation.

Terra, launched in 1990, carries five instruments to observe the state of the atmosphere, land, and oceans, as well as their interactions with solar radiation and with one another.

SORCE, launched in 2003, monitors total output from the sun for understanding of earth's absorption of radiation energy.

Jason-2, launched in 2008, a Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM), is used to monitor the height of water of earth's ocean, which help understand weather patterns such as El Nino and formations of hurricanes.

Landsat-7, launched in 1999, takes digital images of earth's coastal areas with global coverage on a seasonal basis.

LAGEOS 1 launched in 1976, LAGEOS 2, launched in 1992 used for orbiting benchmark for geodynamical studies.

Jason-1, launched in 2001, uses microwaves to monitor the height of water of earth's oceans.

ICESat, launched in 2003, keeps track of size and thickness of earth's ice sheetes.

GRACE, launched in 2002, observes and measures earth's gravitational field, which may help determining the shape and composition of the planet's distribution of water and ice.

CloudSat, launched in 2006, monitors the state of earth's atmosphere and weather through radar, which can be used to predict which clouds produce rain, observe snowfall, and monitor the moisture content of clouds.

CALIPSO, launched in 2006, studies thickness of clouds and aerosols for understanding of how much air pollution is present and changes in compositions in the atmophere.

AURA, launched in 2004, studies earth's ozone, air quality, and climate though observation of composition, chemistry, and dynamics of the atmosphere.

AQUARIUS, launched in 2011, measures salt concentrations in ocean surface needed to understand heat transport and storage in the ocean.

Aqua, launched in 2002, carries six instruments to observe interactions among the four sphere's for earth's systems: oceans, land, atmosphere, and biosphere.

Terra is a multi-national, multi-disciplinary mission involving partnerships with the aerospace agencies of Canada and Japan.

Although Key West, Fl is the hottest city in the United States with an average temperature of 77.8, it has never had a day over 100˚.  It has also never experienced a recorded frost, sleet, or snow.

Of the top ten cities where thunderstorms occur, eight are located in Florida.

The Cassini probe passed by Venus twice, then Earth, and finally Jupiter on the way to Saturn. The 6.7-year transit was slightly longer than the six years needed for a Hohmann transfer, but cut the total amount of delta V needed to about 2 km/s, so that the large and heavy Cassini probe was able to reach Saturn even with the small boosters available.

In 1990, NASA launched the ESA spacecraft Ulysses to study the polar regions of the Sun. Ulysses was first sent towards Jupiter, aimed to arrive at a point in space just "in front of" and "below" the planet. As it passed Jupiter, the probe 'fell' through the planet's gravity field, exchanging momentum with the planet; this gravity assist maneuver bent the probe's trajectory up out of the planetary plane into an orbit that passed over the poles of the Sun. By using this maneuver, Ulysses needed only enough propellant to send it to a point near Jupiter, which is well within current capability.

The Galileo spacecraft was launched by NASA in 1989 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis. Its original mission was designed to use a direct Hohmann transfer. However, Galileo's intended booster, the cryogenically fueled (Hydrogen/Oxygen) Centaur booster rocket was prohibited as a Shuttle "cargo" for safety considerations following the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Forced to substitute a lower delta V capable solid rocket upperstage, the IUS, instead of ascending directly to Jupiter, Galileo flew by Venus once and Earth twice in order to reach Jupiter in December, 1995.

The gravity assist maneuver was first used in 1959 when the Soviet probe Luna 3 photographed the far side of Earth's Moon. The maneuver relied on research performed at the Department of Applied Mathematics of Steklov Institute.

As of January 21, 2010, Voyager 1 is over 16.81 terameters (1.681×1013 meters, or 1.681×1010 km, 112.4 AU, or 10.4 billion miles) from the Sun, and is in the boundary zone between the Solar System and interstellar space. It gained the energy to escape the Sun's gravity completely by performing slingshot maneuvers around Jupiter and Saturn.

The Mariner 10 probe was the first spacecraft to use the gravitational slingshot effect to reach another planet, passing by Venus on February 5, 1974, on its way to becoming the first spacecraft to explore Mercury.

The Administrator of NASA is appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the US Senate. Major General Charles Bolden, USMC (ret.) is the current and 12th NASA Administrator; he serves as the senior space science adviser to the President.

JPL teamed up with Wernher von Braun’s rocketeers at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency’s Redstone Arsenal to launch America’s first satellite, Explorer 1, on February 1, 1958.

NASA TV is available everyday. Find the schedule here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/schedule.html

"The rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air" tell about an attack of 32-pound English Congreve rockets on our Fort McHenry in 1814. They were a new weapon of war, with a range of about three miles.

NASA named the world's first space-based optical telescope after American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble (1889—1953). Dr. Hubble confirmed an "expanding" universe, which provided the foundation for the Big Bang theory.

Grumman Aerospace Corporation, the builder of the Lunar Module, issued an invoice for $312,421.24 to North American Rockwell, the builder of the Command Module (CM), for "towing" the crippled ship most of the way to the moon and back. This was never paid.

The V-2 rocket, first used in World War II by the Germans and later used by the United States in its early rocketry work, was the first manufactured object to achieve hypersonic flight in February 1949.

The acceleration of an object toward the ground caused by gravity alone, near the surface of Earth, is called "normal gravity," or 1g. This acceleration is equal to 32.2 ft/sec2 (9.8 m/sec2).

NASA stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; there are ten NASA centers nationwide, not including NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

INSPIRE stands for Interdisciplinary National Science Project Incorporating Research and Education Experience and is a national program for students in 9th through 12th grade, but that’s nothing new. The INSPIRE program is. In its second year of the Online Community, the INSPIRE OLC currently has over 1300 students.

INSPIRE also includes the Summer STEM Experience, a program designed for students entering the 9th through 12th grades. Last year 356 students were accepted for the Summer Experience. Be sure to apply early if you want to be a part of this exciting program.

The X-48B is an unmanned research the uses a blended wing/fuselage to reduce both exhaust and noise pollution.

Astronaut Ed White became the first American to walk in space on June 3, 1965. Since White’s historic EVA (Extravehicular Activity), astronauts have used spacewalks to retrieve satellites, repair the Hubble space telescope, and assemble portions of the International Space Station.

Portable, self-contained power tools were originally developed to help Apollo astronauts drill for moon samples. This technology has lead to development of such tools as the cordless vacuum cleaner, power drill, shrub trimmers, and grass shears.

The official designation for space shuttle orbiter Atlantis is OV-104.

The V-2 rocket, first used in World War II by the Germans and later used by the United States in its early rocketry work, was the first manufactured object to achieve hypersonic flight in February 1949.

NASA stands for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; there are ten NASA centers nationwide, not including NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

INSPIRE stands for Interdisciplinary National Science Project Incorporating Research and Education Experience and is a national program for students in 9th through 12th grade, but that’s nothing new. The INSPIRE program is. In its second year of the Online Community, the INSPIRE OLC currently has over 1800 students.

Atlantis, OV-104, was named after the primary research vessel for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts from 1930 to 1966.

By STS-134 mission designation, Mike Finke was the final first-time flier on the shuttle. The entire STS-135 crew has flown on shuttles before.

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space when she flew aboard Challenger on STS-7, in 1983.

The youngest person to travel in space was Tammy Jernigan, 32, who flew on shuttle Columbia in 1991.

The oldest person to travel in space is John Glenn, 77, who flew on shuttle Discovery’s STS-95 mission in 1998.

Story Musgrave is the only astronaut to have flown on all five shuttles.

Astronauts Jerry Ross and Franklin Chang-Diaz have flown the most shuttle missions with seven each.

355 individual fliers have flown on NASA’s space shuttles.

NASA’s space shuttles have traveled 537,114,016, making 20,952 orbits around the Earth.

For Fiscal Year 2010, the average cost to prepare and launch a shuttle mission was approximately $775 million.

The Johnson Space Center was established in 1963 as the Manned Spacecraft Center.

The Johnson Space Center is located on property donated by Rice University. Rice is where President Kennedy said, "We go to the moon ... not because it is easy, but because it is hard!"

The Johnson Space Center is the home of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where samples collected during the Apollo mission are stored.

Aquarius will collect more data about Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) in two months than had been amassed by ships and in-water sensors during the 100 years before launch.

As computer models evolve, Aquarius will provide the essential Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) data needed to link the two major components of the climate system: the water cycle and ocean circulation.

Aquarius is an instrument developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that will be launched on the SAC-D satellite.

The Aquarius / SAC-D mission being developed by NASA and the Space Agency of Argentina (Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, CONAE).

Aquarius is a mission of original exploration: Sea Surface Salinity (SSS) has never been observed from space.

Aquarius will be launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, in a polar orbit that covers the entire planet every seven days.

The cupola, launched to the ISS on STS-130, is 4.9 feet in length, 9.7 feet in diameter and weighs about 4,145 pounds.

The Goddard Space Flight Center has developed more planetary instruments than any other institution on Earth.

Painted on the dry lake beds near Dryden is the world's largest compass rose, which measures approximately 0.75 miles (1.21 km) in diameter.

There is a tradition at JPL to eat "good luck peanuts" before critical mission events, such as orbital insertions or landings.

The V-2 rocket, first used in World War II by the Germans and later used by the United States in its early rocketry work, was the first manufactured object to achieve hypersonic flight in February 1949.

Guinness World Records recognized NASA's X-43A scramjet with a new world speed record for a jet-powered aircraft - Mach 9.6, or nearly 7,000 mph. The X-43A set the new mark and broke its own world record on its third and final flight on Nov. 16, 2004.

Ames houses one of the world’s greatest collections of wind tunnels, including one of the only supersonic wind tunnels in the world.

The Zero Gravity Research Facility at GRC is a vertical vacuum chamber used for microgravity experiments. The facility consists of a concrete-lined shaft, 28 feet in diameter, that extends 510 feet below ground level. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985.

On March 1, 1999, the Lewis Research Center was officially renamed the NASA John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field after John Glenn (American fighter pilot, astronaut and politician) and George W. Lewis (head of NACA from 1919 to 1947). Within NASA, Glenn is often referred to by the acronym GRC.

NASA originally planned to retire Atlantis in 2008, but a restructuring of the maintenance schedule allowed Atlantis to remain in service with Endeavour and Discovery until the retirement of the shuttle fleet in 2011.

Many astronauts have appeared in film and television, most notably Mae Jemison on "Star Trek: The Next Generation"

The first appearance on film of NASA's Space Shuttle was in the 1979 James Bond film "Moonraker".

A supposed list of 'NASA's Worst Sci-Fi Movies' released early in 2011 was not created by NASA. It was a case of spectacularly bad reporting.

The earliest NASA film credit was for the 1961 film "X-15".

According to the Internet Movie Database, NASA is credited on 271 motion pictures and television programs.

Ames Research Center was the first to develop the swept wing concept that is used in all high-speed aircraft in the world today

Ames Research Center is leading the way in the development of very small satellites called nanosatellites that can be launched quickly and cheaply. Find out more about nanosatellites at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/smallsats/index.html

The old Navy Airship hangers are still at Ames and have been featured on the Discovery Channel program Mythbusters.

Ames Research Center is located in Sunnyvale, California and is adjacent to Moffett Field. Moffett Fields was originally a Naval Air Station equipped to house the airship USS Macon. When the military base closed in 1994, it’s runways and hangars were given to NASA and folded into Ames.

NASA Ames Research Center was established in 1939 as the second laboratory for NACA and was named for the chairman of NACA, Joseph S. Ames.

Congressman Jake Garn was pretty sick during his shuttle flight in 1985. He made a mark in the Astronaut Corps because he represents the maximum level of space sickness that anyone can ever attain, and so the mark of being totally sick and totally incompetent is one Garn. Most astronauts will get maybe to a tenth Garn, if that high.

The acceleration of an object toward the ground caused by gravity alone, near the surface of Earth, is called "normal gravity," or 1g. This acceleration is equal to 32.2 ft/sec2 (9.8 m/sec2).

Alan Shepard experienced microgravity for about 15 minutes during his suborbital flight 50 years ago today.

Earth's gravitational field at about 250 miles above the surface is 88.8 percent of its strength at the surface.

While most associated with space travel, microgravity is experienced everyday at amusement parks, on aircraft, and at playgrounds.

The Zero Gravity Research Facility at GRC is a vertical vacuum chamber used for microgravity experiments. The facility consists of a concrete-lined shaft, 28 feet in diameter, that extends 510 feet below ground level. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985.

In all, 55 women have made the journey to space, out of a total of 520 people who have reached orbit.

In April 2010, four women — three NASA astronauts and one Japanese astronaut — met on the International Space Station and became the most female space flyers in orbit at the same time.

The first American woman in space, Sally Ride, flew on the space shuttle Challenger in June 1983.

Women began flying in space only two years after the first human spaceflight in history. The first female to fly was cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, who piloted the Soviet Union's Vostok 6 mission in June 1963, becoming the first woman in space.

NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver is the second women to fill that position. The deputy administrator post is the highest rank held by a woman yet.

NASA marked women's history month with a new website (women.nasa.gov) devoted to the contributions of women at the space agency.

The JPL campus is actually located in the city of La Cañada Flintridge, California, but it maintains a Pasadena address.

NASA has sent JPL developed probes to explore every planet in the Solar System, including Earth!

JPL is responsible for operating NASA's Deep Space Network, an international network of large antennas and communication facilities that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions, and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe.

There is a tradition at JPL to eat "good luck peanuts" before critical mission events, such as orbital insertions or landings.

JPL has an open house once a year on a Saturday and Sunday in May, when the public is invited to tour the facilities and see live demonstrations of JPL science and technology.

During missions to the Moon or Mars, the crew will need medical capabilities to diagnose and treat disease as well as for maintaining their health. The Exploration Medical Capability Element develops medical technologies, medical informatics, and clinical capabilities for different levels of care during space missions.

The focus of the Human Health Countermeasures Element is to develop and validate an integrated suite of countermeasures for exploration missions. Countermeasures maintain human health so that crews can perform all required duties during the phases of a mission, including transitions to altered gravitational conditions.

NASA uses the term countermeasures to describe the procedures, strategies, medications, exercise, etc. that help to keep our astronauts healthy and productive while they are traveling in space and after they return to Earth.

The International Space Station Medical Project operates the two International Standard Payload Racks onboard the Station which are collectively called the Human Research Facility. The racks provide a source of utilities, such as electrical power, data handling, cooling air and water, pressurized gases, and a vacuum supply, to support science instruments.

The International Space Station Medical Project provides access to space for Human Research Program activities. They maximize the use of the space station to solve human health and performance problems and the risks of associated with exploration missions.

The James Webb Space Telescope was named after former NASA Administrator James Webb.

Both the mirror and sunshade of the JWST won't fit onto the rocket fully open, so both will fold up and open once Webb is in outer space. Webb will reside in an orbit about 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the Earth.

Webb will have a large mirror, 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) in diameter and a sunshield the size of a tennis court.

Webb will peer through dusty clouds to see stars forming planetary systems, connecting the Milky Way to our own Solar System. Webb's instruments will be designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range.

Webb will find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe, connecting the Big Bang to our own Milky Way Galaxy.

The James Webb Space Telescope (sometimes called JWST) is a large, infrared-optimized space telescope, scheduled for launch in 2014.

Located at Edwards, California, in the western Mojave Desert, Dryden is uniquely situated to take advantage of the excellent year-round flying weather, remote area, and visibility to test some of the nation's most exciting air vehicles.

For 60 years, Projects at Dryden have led to major advancements in the design and capabilities of many state-of-the-art civilian and military aircraft. The newest, the fastest, the highest - all have made their debut in the vast, clear desert skies over Dryden.

Painted on the dry lake beds near Dryden is the world's largest compass rose, which measures approximately 0.75 miles (1.21 km) in diameter.

Dryden is the primary alternate landing site for the Space Shuttle and orbital support for the International Space Station.

In support of aeronautical R&D, Dryden is involved in many aspects of the Fundamental Aeronautics and Aviation Safety programs, including the X-48 Blended Wing body and Ikhana (Predator B) in support of subsonics; the F-15B Quiet Spike in support of supersonics and Adaptive Flight Controls in support of the Aviation Safety Program.

The Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) is NASA's center for aeronautical flight research and atmospheric flight operations. DFRC is chartered to research, develop, verify, and transfer advanced aeronautics, space and related technologies. It also serves as a backup landing site for the Space Shuttle and a facility to test and validate design concepts and systems used in development and operation of the Orbiters.

The Refuse-Fired Steam Generating Facility at Langley Research Center, which is run by the city of Hampton on Langley property, provides about 70 percent of the steam for the center. To do so, it burns garbage from Peninsula cities, NASA Langley, Langley Air Force Base and the Northrop Grumman shipyard.

A 10 megawatt solar facility on Kennedy land will feed energy to all Florida Power & Light customers. For future development, a research facility has been proposed to explore renewable energy options and a larger solar farm on 500 acres. That could boost the energy capacity to 100 megawatts at Kennedy.

Kennedy Space Center hosts a solar farm that covers five acres in the Industrial area and is large enough to convert the sun's energy into one megawatt of electricity. That's enough energy to power about 110 homes. At Kennedy, the electricity will be funneled into the center's power grid.

After completion of the ARC Sustainability Base, the building will be considered as “zero-net energy consuming”. As such it will become eligible for the highest level of LEED certification as well as being ahead of the curve in regards to federal guidelines.

At the ARC Sustainability Base, NASA is making use of technology that is generally found on its long-term space missions in order to bring a reduction in the consumption of potable water by 90 percent by the use of a gray water purification system.

NASA's 50,000 square-foot, two-story Sustainability Base at Ames Research Center, Calif., was declared the winner of the General Services Administration’s Real Property Award for Green Innovation.

The Mars Desert Research Station consists of three buildings: the Habitat, the Greenhab, the Musk Mars Desert Observatory and an remotely located Engineering Support Equipment Area.

From the moment they arrive at MDRS, crews enter a "living on Mars" simulation. Crew members must wear an analogue space suit simulator or a "sim suit" when completing tasks outside the Habitat (HAB) to simulate the protection they would need from the in reality very harsh Martian environment. Complete analogue space suit simulators include a helmet, jumpsuit, boots, gators, gloves, an air supply pack, Platypus water pack, and a radio.

The Refuse-Fired Steam Generating Facility at Langley Research Center, which is run by the city of Hampton on Langley property, provides about 70 percent of the steam for the center. To do so, it burns garbage from Peninsula cities, NASA Langley, Langley Air Force Base and the Northrop Grumman shipyard.

The Mars Society launched the Mars Analog Research Station (MARS) Project in order to develop key knowledge needed to prepare for the human exploration of Mars.

The high failure rate of missions launched from Earth attempting to explore Mars has become informally known as the "Mars Curse". The "Galactic Ghoul" is a fictional space monster that consumes Mars probes, a term coined in 1997 by Time Magazine journalist Donald Neff.

Of 38 launches from Earth in an attempt to reach the planet, only 19 succeeded, a success rate of 50%. Twelve of the missions included attempts to land on the surface, but only seven transmitted data after landing.

Minimum-energy launch windows to Mars occur at intervals of approximately 2.135 years, i.e. 780 days (the planet's synodic period with respect to Earth). This is a consequence of the Hohmann transfer orbit for minimum-energy interplanetary transfer.

The first space flight that utilized the new 'Mission Control Center' was Gemini IV.

"Houston" is the call sign for Mission Control during space missions.

Astronauts train at Johnson Space Center and the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a 6.2 million gallon pool where astronauts can practice extravehicular activities.

The Johnson Space Center is located on property donated by Rice University. Rice is where President Kennedy said, "We go to the moon ... not because it is easy, but because it is hard!"

The Johnson Space Center is the home of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where samples collected during the Apollo mission are stored.

The Johnson Space Center was established in 1963 as the Manned Spacecraft Center.

Two of the five THEMIS satellites have been renamed ARTEMIS (Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun) and are in the process of moving to a new orbit around the moon. They are due to reach their final lunar orbit in July 2011.

Launched in 2007, THEMIS was NASA's first five-satellite mission launched aboard a single rocket.

THEMIS  was specifically designed to study the formation of substorms. It launched with five spacecraft, which can be spread out over some 44,000 miles – a perfect tool for examining different areas of Earth's magnetic environment at the same time.

Substorms originate opposite the sun on Earth's "night side," at a point about a third of the distance to the moon. At this point in space, energy and particles from the solar wind store up over time.

The THEMIS spacecraft, combined with computer models, has helped track the origin of the energetic particles in Earth's magnetic atmosphere that appear during a kind of space weather called a substorm.

THEMIS stands for "Time History of Events and Macroscale Interaction during Substorms".

The Space Shuttle is exclusively launched from NASA Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida.

The Space Shuttle was designed under the direction of Maxime Faget, who also oversaw the development of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft.  It was designed to carry the largest military and commercial satellite to orbit.

In 1995 the space shuttle Atlantis successfully docked at the Russian space station Mir, bringing the two great space programs closer together in an era of cooperation that stood in marked contrast to the early days of the space race.

On April 12, 1981, John Young and Robert Crippen launched the space shuttle program by piloting Columbia to space and returning successfully two days later.

While in orbit, the space shuttle circles the planet at some 17,500 miles (28,000 kilometers) an hour, which means that the crew sees a sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes.

NASA's space shuttle is unlike any other spacecraft ever built. The craft was designed to streak into space as a rocket but return as a glider, utilizing an aerodynamic winged shape to descend through the atmosphere and touch down on a runway much like a commercial airplane.

Before construction of the Stennis Space Center began, five small communities (Gainesville, Logtown, Napoleon, Santa Rosa and Westonia) with 700 families were relocated. Remnants of the communities, including city streets and a one-room school house, still exist within the facility.

Stennis Space Center is also home to Navy Special Boat Team 22 and NAVSCIATTS (Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School).

The Stennis Space Center test area (officially known as the Fee Area) is surrounded by a 125,000 acres (506 km2) acoustical buffer zone.

The visitor center for the Stennis Space Center is known as StenniSphere. Exhibits focus on the the activities of NASA, space, space exploration, science, geography, weather and more. Visitors 18 and over must present a photo ID.

Stennis Space Center has been renamed several times, becoming the Mississippi Test Facility in 1965, the National Space Technology Laboratories in 1974, and taking its present name in 1988 in order to honor the late Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis for his unwavering support of the national space program.

Happy Valentine's Day from NASA INSPIRE!

The Deep Impact mission was finished with the visit to comet Tempel 1. But the spacecraft still had plenty of maneuvering fuel left, so NASA approved a second mission, called Epoxi, that included a visit to a second comet. Three years ago, the mission had to shift course when the comet it was aiming for, Comet Boethin, could not be found. The backup target was Hartley 2.

On its recent trip by comet Hartley 2, the Deep Impact spacecraft took the first pictures of, and flew through, a storm of fluffy particles of water ice being spewed out by carbon dioxide jets coming from the rough ends of the comet.

The flyby of Hartley 2 on Nov. 4, 2010, was only the fifth comet ever to have a spacecraft fly close enough to take images. It is also the first time in history that two comets have been imaged with the same instruments and same spatial resolution.

Cost of EPOXI extended mission: $42 million, for operations from 2007 to end of project at the end of fiscal year 2011.

The name EPOXI is a combination of the names for the two extended mission components: the extrasolar planet observations, called Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization (EPOCh), and the flyby of comet Hartley 2, called the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI).

EPOXI is the name for the supplemental mission of NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft. The mission uses the flyby spacecraft that is part of the Deep Impact flight system.

Cassini-Huygens is a joint NASA/ESA/ASI mission. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft continues to orbit Saturn, making an extensive survey of the ringed planet and its moons.

Gravity-assists from two swing-bys of Venus and one of Earth provide the equivalent of 68 040 kilograms of rocket fuel.

Cassini-Huygens is the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built.

The Cassini/Huygens spacecraft arrived at Saturn in July 2004. Cassini is still in operation, orbiting around Saturn. The Huygens probe landed on Titan on 14 January 2005.

Aeronautical engineers are employed by national companies including Boeing, General Electric, Lockheed Martin and Cessna, and government agencies including NASA.

Cassini/Huygens was launched October 15, 1997, on a Titan-IVB/Centaur from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Aeronautical engineering is an engineering branch that involves designing, producing and maintaining aircraft.

The ESA Huygens probe was the first to land on a world in the outer Solar System - on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Data from Cassini and Huygens may offer clues about how life began on Earth.

Marshall also manages the Michoud Assembly Facility, a state-of-the-art facility in New Orleans, La., where critical hardware components for the space shuttle and exploration vehicles are manufactured for Marshall and other NASA field centers.

U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service has designated five Marshall Center facilities as National Historic Landmarks: the Redstone Test Stand, Propulsion and Structural Test Facility, Saturn V dynamic Test Stand, Neutral Buoyancy Simulator, and the Saturn V on display at the United States Space and Rocket Center.

Marshall’s contribution to the Apollo lunar landing program included development of the Lunar Roving Vehicle for transporting astronauts on the lunar surface.

Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun was the first director of Marshall Space Flight Center.

Marshall Space Flight Center developed the Delta series of rocket boosters.

Marshall Space Flight Center is located on the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville Alabama.

Besides water, the suite of LCROSS and LRO instruments determined as much as 20 percent of the material kicked up by the LCROSS impact was volatiles, including methane, ammonia, hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. The instruments also discovered relatively large amounts of light metals such as sodium, mercury and possibly even silver.

Scientists believe the water and mix of volatiles that LCROSS and LRO detected could be the remnants of a comet impact.

LRO images have been obtained of all six Apollo landing sites.  LRO was also able to image the Russian Lunokhod 1 robotic rover, lost on the Moon for 40 years.

One of LRO''s observations from the past year goes beyond cool to absolutely frigid. Diviner, LRO's temperature instrument, found a place in the floor of the moon's Hermite Crater that was detected to be -415 degrees Fahrenheit (-248 Celsius) making it the coldest temperature measured anywhere in the solar system.

The LRO instruments return global data, such as day-night temperature maps, a global geodetic grid, high resolution color imaging and the moon's UV albedo.

At 5:32 p.m. EDT, June 18, 2009, an United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket roared off the launch pad at Launch Complex 41 to begin the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite missions to the moon.

 In 1976, Congress revised the Space Act to give NASA authority to carry out stratospheric ozone research, formalizing the agency’s movement into the Earth sciences.

When NASA was first created by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, it was given the role of developing technology for “space observations,” but it wasn’t given a role in Earth science.

NASA also sponsors field experiments to provide "ground truth" data to check space instrument performance and to develop new measurement techniques.

Instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites have provided the first global measurements of aerosols in our atmosphere, which come from natural sources such as volcanoes, dust storms and man-made sources such as the burning of fossil fuels.

NASA provides information on solar activity, sea level rise, the temperature of the atmosphere and the oceans, the state of the ozone layer, air pollution, and changes in sea ice and land ice.

In 2004, NASA's spending on climate science exceeded all other Federal agencies, combined. NASA spent $1.3 billion on climate science that year, out of a $1.9 billion total.

Glenn reseacrh Center is distinguished by its unique blend of aeronautics and spaceflight experience.

Almost every space shuttle science mission has had an experiment managed by Glenn, and they have conducted a wide array of experiments on the International Space Station.

Glenn leads NASA's research in the fields of fluids, combustion, and reacting flow systems, including gravity variation.

NASA Glenn is the lead for managing the Orion service module and spacecraft adapter development and integration, providing oversight and independent analysis of the prime contractor's development of these segments.

Plum Brook Station, located 50 miles west of Glenn, offers four large, world-class facilities for space technology and capability development on a 6,400-acre installation.

Glenn Research Center's main campus is situated on 350 acres adjacent to the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. It has more than 140 buildings that include 24 major facilities and over 500 specialized research and test facilities.