The TDRS Project is building three space communications satellites that are part of a follow-on spacecraft fleet that will replenish NASA's Space Network. The TDRS Project Office at Goddard Space Flight Center manages the TDRS development effort. TDRS is the responsibility of the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) office within the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C. Operations of the network are the responsibility of the Space Network Project at Goddard.

In December 2007, NASA signed a contract for Boeing Space Systems to build two third generation TDRS spacecraft for launch in 2013 and 2014. An option for a third TDRS spacecraft was executed in 2011. Within the contract there were required modifications that would enable the White Sands Complex ground system to support the new spacecraft.

The January 2013 launch of TDRS-K will begin the replenishment of the fleet through the development and deployment of the next generation spacecraft. These satellites will ensure the Space Network's continuation of around-the-clock, high throughput communications services to NASA's missions; serving the scientific community and human spaceflight program for years to come.The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite constellation is a space-based communication system used to provide Tracking, Telemetry, Command, and high bandwidth data return services to its many customers. A major component of the system is the spacecraft itself, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS). Aboard each spacecraft are multiple antennae that simultaneously relay signals between the ground and multiple satellites. As a result, TDRS provides a wide variety of services to meet customers' needs and demands.

The primary payload of each TDRS is the microwave communications equipment, two gimbaled antennae and a phased array antenna. The gimbaled antennae provide forward (to the customer satellite), return (from the customer satellite), and tracking services to one customer at a time.  Each TDRS communicates with customers at S-band and Ku-band microwave frequencies at various data rates.   Through Ka-Band, the 2nd and 3rd generation satellites are able to provide improved overall service potental with substantially higher bandwidth communications services.  The phased array antenna provides low-rate S-band forward, return, and tracking services to multiple customers simultaneously.  The TDRS Payload is designed to communicate through both gimbaled antennae and the phased array antenna simultaneously to customer electronic communication hardware operating at different carrier frequencies and various data-rates. 

Clever use of a microscopic resonator can quickly measure the masses of proteins and gold nano particles.

Physicist Michael Roukes and his colleagues at Caltech have developed a microscopic device that can measure the mass of a single molecule in real time. Chemists use such sensitive weighings to help determine the chemical identities of unknown substances. The Caltech team says that its system could eventually allow scientists to analyze thousands of different proteins in a matter of milliseconds using much smaller samples than before.

The device, a microscopic resonator measuring 2 micrometers long by 120 nano meters wide, consists of a metallic layer 1 on top of a silicon carbide layer 2, attached to a silicon substrate 3 by minuscule supports 4. To “weigh” a molecule, a solution containing the molecule is sprayed onto the resonator. When a single molecule lands on it, it causes a change in the way the resonator vibrates. The resonator is connected to an electric circuit that registers the vibration change and transmits it to computers that then calculate the molecule’s mass. Each time a molecule lands on the resonator, it produces a mass measurement; eventually, hundreds of molecules can pile up on the resonator, allowing the scientists to obtain additional data for increased accuracy.

So far, Roukes has used this system to measure the masses of gold nano particles and three proteins found in the blood serum of cows. He is now working on a resonator that can vibrate in more complex ways, yielding even more precise readings.

The outflows were detected by astronomers from 
Australia, the USA, Italy and The Netherlands. They report their finding Nature."These outflows contain an extraordinary amount of energy — about a million times the energy of an exploding star," said the research team's leader, CSIRO's Dr Ettore Carretti. But the outflows pose no danger to the Earth or Solar System.The speed of the outflow is supersonic, about 1000 kilometres a second. "That's fast, even for astronomers," Dr Carretti said."They are not coming in our direction, but go up and down from the Galactic Plane. We are 30,000 light-years away from the Galactic Centre, in the Plane. They are no danger to us."From top to bottom the outflows extend 50,000 light-years [five hundred thousand million million kilometres] out of the Galactic Plane.That's equal to half the diameter of our Galaxy (which is 100,000 light-years—a million million million kilometres—across).Seen from the Earth, the outflows stretch about two-thirds across the sky from horizon to horizon.The outflows correspond to a "haze" of microwave emission previously spotted by the WMAP and Planck space telescopes and regions of gamma-ray emission detected with NASA's Fermi space telescope in 2010, which were dubbed the "Fermi Bubbles".The WMAP, Planck and Fermi observations did not provide enough evidence to indicate definitively the source of the radiation they detected, but the new Parkes observations do."The options were a quasar-like outburst from the black hole at the Galactic Centre, or star-power—the hot winds from young stars, and exploding stars," said team member Dr Gianni Bernardi of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Massachusetts."Our observations tell us it's star-power.In fact, the outflows appear to have been driven by many generations of stars forming and exploding in the Galactic Centre over the last hundred million years.The key to determining this was to measure the outflows' magnetic fields."We did this by measuring a key property of the radio waves from the outflows—their polarisation," said team member Dr Roland Crocker of the Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kernphysik in Heidelberg, Germany, and the Australian National University.The new observations also help answer one of astronomers' big questions about our Galaxy: how it generates and maintains its magnetic field."The outflow from the Galactic Centre is carrying off not just gas and high-energy electrons, but also strong magnetic fields," said team member Dr Marijke Haverkorn of Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands.

"We suspect this must play a big part in generating the Galaxy's overall magnetic field."

Here are some interesting, but true facts, that you may or may not have known.

1. The Statue of Liberty's index finger is eight feet long.

2. Rain has never been recorded in some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile.

3. A 75 year old person will have slept about 23 years.

4. Boeing 747's wing span is longer than the Wright brother's first flight. 

5. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans. 

6. One type of hummingbird weighs less than a penny.

7. The word "set" has the most number of definitions in the English language; 192 Slugs have four noses.

8. Sharks can live up to 100 years.

9. Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.

10. Kangaroos can't walk backwards                                                   .

11. About 75 acres of pizza are eaten in in the U.S. everyday.

12. The largest recorded snowflake was 15 Inch wide and 8 Inch      thick. It fell in Montana in 1887.

13. The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that the sound it makes is actually a tiny sonic boom.

14. Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency.

15. Koalas and humans are the only animals that have finger prints.

16. There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human.

17. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery had in it to begin with.

18. The world's largest Montessori school is in India, with 26,312 students in 2002.

19. Octopus have three hearts.

20. If you ate too many carrots, you would turn orange.

21. The average person spends two weeks waiting for a traffic light to change.

22. 1 in 2,000,000,000 people will live to be 116 or old.

23. The body has 2-3 million sweat glands.

24. Sperm whales have the biggest brains; 20 lbs.

25. Tiger shark embroyos fight each other in their mother's womb. The survivor is born.

26. Most cats are left pawed.

27. 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

28. A Blue whale's tongue weighs more than an elephant.

29. You use 14 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. Keep Smiling! 

30. Bamboo can grow up to 3 ft in 24 hours

1. India never invaded any country in her last 100000 years of history.

2. Chess was invented in India.

3. Algebra, Trigonometry and Calculus are studies, which originated in India.

4. India has the largest number of Post Offices in the world.

5. The largest employer in India is the Indian Railways, employing over a million people.

6. The world's first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

7. Until 1896, India was the only source of diamonds in the world 

8. India was one of the richest countries till the time of British rule in the early 17thCentury. Christopher Columbus, attracted by India's wealth, had come looking for a sea route to India when he discovered America by mistake.

9. The Art of Navigation & Navigating was born in the river Sindh over 6000 years ago. The very word Navigation is derived from the Sanskrit word 'NAVGATIH'. The word navy is also derived from the Sanskrit word 'Nou'.

10. Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to mankind. The Father of Medicine, Charaka, consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago.

THEY ARE........ 

Adam.....

Newton....

Steve Jobs.......

LET'S CELEBRATE...

WISHING ALL THE BLOGIES......

This afternoon I had a nap. During that nap I had a lucid dream (most of which I no longer remember). As I was waking up, I was thinking about my dream and thought that it would be a great idea to write a list about dreams for the site. So, here are the top 10 amazing facts about dreams.

10. Blind People Dream

People who become blind after birth can see images in their dreams. People who are born blind do not see any images, but have dreams equally vivid involving their other senses of sound, smell, touch and emotion. It is hard for a seeing person to imagine, but the body’s need for sleep is so strong that it is able to handle virtually all physical situations to make it happen.

9. You Forget 90% of your Dreams

Within 5 minutes of waking, half of your dream if forgotten. Within 10, 90% is gone. The famous poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, woke one morning having had a fantastic dream (likely opium induced) – he put pen to paper and began to describe his “vision in a dream” in what has become one of English’s most famous poems: Kubla Khan. Part way through (54 lines in fact) he was interrupted by a “Person from Porlock“. Coleridge returned to his poem but could not remember the rest of his dream. The poem was never completed.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
[...]
Curiously, Robert Louis Stevenson came up with the story of Doctor Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde whilst he was dreaming. Wikipedia has more on that here. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was also the brainchild of a dream.

8. Everybody Dreams

Every human being dreams (except in cases of extreme psychological disorder) but men and women have different dreams and different physical reactions. Men tend to dream more about other men, while women tend to dream equally about men and women. In addition, both men and women experience sexually related physical reactions to their dreams regardless of whether the dream is sexual in nature; males experience erections and females experience increased vaginal blood flow.

7. Dreams Prevent Psychosis

In a recent sleep study, students who were awakened at the beginning of each dream, but still allowed their 8 hours of sleep, all experienced difficulty in concentration, irritability, hallucinations, and signs of psychosis after only 3 days. When finally allowed their REM sleep the student’s brains made up for lost time by greatly increasing the percentage of sleep spent in the REM stage.

6. We Only Dream of What We Know

Our dreams are frequently full of strangers who play out certain parts – did you know that your mind is not inventing those faces – they are real faces of real people that you have seen during your life but may not know or remember? The evil killer in your latest dream may be the guy who pumped petrol in to your Dad’s car when you were just a little kid. We have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces through our lives, so we have an endless supply of characters for our brain to utilize during our dreams.

5. Not Everyone Dreams in Colour

A full 12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The remaining number dream in full colour  People also tend to have common themes in dreams, which are situations relating to school, being chased, running slowly/in place, sexual experiences, falling, arriving too late, a person now alive being dead, teeth falling out, flying, failing an examination, or a car accident. It is unknown whether the impact of a dream relating to violence or death is more emotionally charged for a person who dreams in colour than one who dreams in black and white. 

4. Dreams are not about what they are about

If you dream about some particular subject it is not often that the dream is about that. Dreams speak in a deeply symbolic language. The unconscious mind tries to compare your dream to something else, which is similar. Its like writing a poem and saying that a group of ants were like machines that never stop. But you would never compare something to itself, for example: “That beautiful sunset was like a beautiful sunset”. So whatever symbol your dream picks on it is most unlikely to be a symbol for itself.

3. Quitters have more vivid dreams

People who have smoked cigarettes for a long time who stop, have reported much more vivid dreams than they would normally experience. Additionally, according to the Journal of Abnormal Psychology: “Among 293 smokers abstinent for between 1 and 4 weeks, 33% reported having at least 1 dream about smoking. In most dreams, subjects caught themselves smoking and felt strong negative emotions, such as panic and guilt. Dreams about smoking were the result of tobacco withdrawal, as 97% of subjects did not have them while smoking, and their occurrence was significantly related to the duration of abstinence. They were rated as more vivid than the usual dreams and were as common as most major tobacco withdrawal symptoms.” 

2. External Stimuli Invade our Dreams

This is called Dream Incorporation and it is the experience that most of us have had where a sound from reality is heard in our dream and incorporated in some way. A similar (though less external) example would be when you are physically thirsty and your mind incorporates that feeling in to your dream. My own experience of this includes repeatedly drinking a large glass of water in the dream which satisfies me, only to find the thirst returning shortly after – this thirst… drink… thirst… loop often recurs until I wake up and have a real drink. The famous painting above (Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening) by Salvador Dali, depicts this concept.

1. You are paralysed while you sleep

Believe it or not, your body is virtually paralysed during your sleep – most likely to prevent your body from acting out aspects of your dreams. According to the Wikipedia article on dreaming, “Glands begin to secrete a hormone that helps induce sleep and neurons send signals to the spinal cord which cause the body to relax and later become essentially paralysed.”

This post is another gem added to the crown of the great mathematician

SRINIVASA RAMANUJAN. Mathematicians from a US university have solved a cryptic puzzle that renowned Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan claimed came to him in his dreams on his deathbed.While on his death-bed in 1920, Ramanujan wrote a letter to his mentor, G H Hardy, outlining several new mathematical functions never before heard of, along with a hunch about how they worked, the Daily Mail said.Now, researchers say they have proved Ramanujan was right, and that the formula could explain the behaviour of black holes. "We've solved the problems from his last mysterious letters," Ken Ono, a mathematician from Emory University in Georgia, US, said.Ono said Ramanujan spent so much time thinking about maths that he flunked out of college in India twice. A devout Hindu, he thought these patterns were revealed to him by the goddess Namagiri