NASA'S WISE Spacecraft Ready for Launch Dec. 9 from California

The launch of NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, aboard a Delta II rocket is scheduled to occur between 9:09 a.m. and 9:23 a.m. EST on Wednesday, Dec. 9, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. NASA will provide television and Internet coverage of prelaunch activities and launch.

After launch, WISE will scan the entire sky in infrared light with a sensitivity hundreds of times greater than ever before, picking up the glow of hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of images. The mission will uncover objects never seen before, including the coolest stars, the universe's most luminous galaxies and some of the darkest near-Earth asteroids and comets.

A prelaunch news conference on NASA Television will be held on Dec. 7 at 4 p.m. at the NASA Vandenberg Resident Office. Reporters can ask from participating NASA centers. A WISE mission science briefing will immediately follow the prelaunch news conference. The briefings will be webcast at:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

On Dec. 9, NASA TV coverage of the countdown and launch will begin at 7 a.m. A WISE webcast with launch and mission principals is scheduled for noon on Dec. 8. To access WISE features, visit NASA's WISE Web site at:

http://www.nasa.gov/wise

Audio of the prelaunch news conference and the launch coverage will be available by dialing 321-867-1220/1240/1260. This is a listen-only audio system. Mission audio of countdown activities without NASA launch commentary will be carried on 321-867-7135 beginning at 6 a.m.

Launch coverage of WISE/Delta II countdown activities also will be available on the NASA Web site at:

http://www.nasa.gov

Live countdown coverage on NASA's launch blog begins at 7 a.m. Coverage features real-time updates of countdown milestones, as well as streaming video clips highlighting launch preparations and liftoff.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/home/ksc_blogs.html

Beginning Dec. 3, a WISE mission news center will be operational at the NASA Vandenberg Resident Office. Reporters should call 805-605-3051 for launch information. Recorded status reports also will be available at that time by dialing 805-734-2693.

Media Invited to International Earth Observation Briefing, Exhibit

The United States is hosting the sixth plenary meeting of the Group on Earth Observations, or GEO, this week at the Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, in Washington. Reporters are invited to a Nov. 17 press opportunity and a public exhibition highlighting recent GEO projects, including several involving NASA.

The press event will be held at 12:45 p.m. EST in the Reagan Building's Hemisphere A area. Photo identification is required. Sherburne B. Abbott, associate director for environment in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and other speakers will present details of GEO programs around the world.

Through GEO, 80 national governments, the European Commission and almost 60 global organizations coordinate Earth observation assets and strategies to track global trends in carbon levels, biodiversity loss, deforestation, water resources, ocean temperatures and other critical indicators of Earth's health and human well-being. The U.S. is a founding member of GEO through the U.S. Group on Earth Observations.

The exhibition in the Reagan Building's Atrium Hall will be open to the public on Nov. 17 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Nov. 18 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Highlighted projects featuring NASA contributions include near real-time fire detection, global agricultural monitoring, natural disaster monitoring and forecasting, and a famine early warning system.

For more information on the GEO plenary meeting, visit:

http://usgeo.gov

NASA Hosts Native Peoples Workshop to Study Climate Change

NASA will hold a second national strategies workshop to examine the impacts of climate change and extreme weather variability on native peoples and their homelands. The workshop, which will study the impacts from an indigenous cultural, spiritual and scientific perspective, will take place Nov. 18 - 21 at the Mystic Lake Casino Hotel in Prior Lake, Minn.

"This workshop will bring native indigenous knowledge together with science, education, and technologies to address the challenges of climate and environmental change," said Nancy Maynard of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The workshop will help ensure participation by tribal colleges and universities in the development of response and adaptation policies and recommendations regarding climate change. The goal is to ensure the survival of indigenous communities. The workshop is being held in collaboration with the nation's 36 tribally-controlled colleges and universities, the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, and other partners.

"Tribal college students represent many of the future tribal leaders who will inherit the consequences of climate change and be responsible for implementing the adaptation strategies," said Dan Wildcat of Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan. "It is critical that they have these kinds of opportunities to participate in key climate change discussions and build their science, technology, engineering and math skills."

For more information about the workshop, including registration information, visit:

http://www.nativepeoplesnativehomelands.org

Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End - 2012?

Remember the Y2K scare? It came and went without much of a whimper because of adequate planning and analysis of the situation. Impressive movie special effects aside, Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know. It will, however, be another winter solstice.

Much like Y2K, 2012 has been analyzed and the science of the end of the Earth thoroughly studied. Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, the science behind the end of the world quickly unravels when pinned down to the 2012 timeline. Below, NASA Scientists answer several questions that we're frequently asked regarding 2012.

Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
Answer (A): Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.

Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.

Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?
A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.

Q: Could a phenomena occur where planets align in a way that impacts Earth?
A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.

Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?
A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.

Q: What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the earth’s crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours?
A: A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-shift to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway.

Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?
A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA NEO Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of pending doomsday?
A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.

Addition information concerning 2012 is available on the Web, at:

• NASA Astrobiology Institute: "Nibiru and Doomsday 2012"
• Bad Astronomy: "The Planet X Saga: The Scientific Arguments in a Nutshell"
• Sky and Telescope Magazine: "2012: The Great Scare"

NASA Seeks Student Payloads for High-Flying Research Balloon

NASA is accepting applications from students at U.S. colleges and universities who want to send their experiments to the edge of space on a high-flying scientific balloon.

The annual NASA project provides near space access for 12 undergraduate and graduate student experiments to be carried by a NASA high-altitude research balloon. The flights typically last 15 to 20 hours and reach an altitude of 23 miles. Experiments may include compact satellites or prototypes.

The experiments are flown aboard the High Altitude Student Platform, or HASP, a balloon-born instrument stack launched from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility's remote site in Fort Sumner, N.M. The goals of the project are to provide a space test platform to encourage student research and stimulate the development of student satellite payloads and other space-engineering products.

HASP seeks to enhance the technical skills and research abilities of students in critical science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. The project is a joint effort between NASA and the Louisiana Space Grant Consortium.

NASA's HASP houses and provides power, mechanical support and communications for test articles and instruments. It can support approximately 200 pounds of student payloads. Since 2006, the HASP program has selected 44 payloads for flight, the work of more than 200 students from across the United States.

A question-and-answer teleconference for interested parties will be held Nov. 13 at 11 a.m. EST. The deadline for applications is Dec. 18. NASA is targeting fall 2010 for the next flight opportunity. NASA expects to make selections in January 2010. Teleconference dial in information, application materials and technical details are available in the Call for Proposals document at:

http://laspace.lsu.edu/hasp

Information about NASA's scientific balloon program is available at:

http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/code820

More information about NASA's education programs is available at:

http://www.nasa.gov/education