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When space makes you dizzy:
Landing a spaceship is not a good time for a pilot to feel
dizzy.
It's easy to tell which way is up and which way is down...or
is it? In the freefall of space travel, there's no pull of gravity to tell your body which way is which. Most astronauts and cosmonauts experience some motion sickness when they first arrive in orbit. NASA is studying why.
Download sound files of the sun from Stanford's Solar Center: The Singing Sun.
Go to theBBC SPACE Science Homepage & Weather Page for space events and forecasts.
View NASA Kids Toon for animations on NASA, space missions and science.
Space Science Institute Curriculum Materials.Has Saturn Educators Guide and Kinesthetic Astronomy lessons.
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STENNIS SPACE CENTER'S NAUTILUS PROGRAM
HELPS CITIES PLAN FOR THE FUTURE
by John C. Stennis Space Center
HANCOCK COUNTY, Miss. — While space technology was undergoing a spectacular birth during
the 1950s and '60s, and visionaries were predicting the spread of human colonies into space, another
kind of human colony was spreading rapidly — right here on Earth.
It was the dawn of the modern suburb, a time of post-war prosperity when housing
developments popped up across the landscape like mushrooms after a rain.
A half-century later, scientists understand that many environmental problems go with this
outward spread of communities, including polluted runoff water into streams and lakes and the
destruction of wildlife habitats.
Space technology of the 1950s has grown along with our cities. Today, dozens of high-tech
satellites are circling the Earth, gathering scientific data about the environment every day. This
satellite data provides a unique "big picture" view of the effects of urban sprawl.
But most city planners still don't use it.
Enter NASA's Earth Science Enterprise, or ESE. Why NASA? ESE is responsible for many
of those satellites circling the earth, and they are used to fulfill NASA's mission to understand and
protect our home planet. The information collected from satellites such as Landsat 7, Terra, Aqua
and Jason-1 enable NASA scientists to make more accurate predictions of weather, climate, and
natural hazards. Local resource managers and policy makers can use that information to make
decisions about the futures of their communities.
NASA earth scientists at Stennis Space Center are managing a project, the Northeast
Application of Useable Technology in Land Planning for Urban Sprawl, or NAUTILUS, with the
Center for Land-use Education and Research at the University of Connecticut. The project is one of
several Regional Earth Science Applications Centers (RESACs) managed by Stennis to optimize
benefits from NASA's Earth Science investments.
"Land-use decisions are made locally, while satellite data has, until very recently, looked at
the regional or global picture," said Chet Arnold, associate director of the Center for Land-use
Education and Research. "Currently there's no good end-to-end system for getting useful satellite
data on the impacts of urban sprawl into the hands of local decision makers."
The NAUTILUS team is working in test regions in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and
New Jersey to understand the information needs of public officials there and to summarize the
satellite data in ways that meet those needs: color-coded maps, for example, or time-lapse
animations. Sensors aboard satellites such as Landsat 7, the most recent of NASA's long-lived
Landsat series, provide unique broad-area coverage that allows seasonal and long-term monitoring of
important small-scale processes on a global scale.
The satellite record gives a compelling view of the past, but what about the future? After all,
it's the future consequences of land use that planners must address.
One tool NAUTILUS researchers have created is like a computerized "crystal ball" — a
decision-support software package that lets city planners see an imaginary future of their city,
assuming that it grew according to current zoning patterns. They can view simple maps, color-coded
for environmental impacts, or a 3-D map for a physical sense of their future city. More importantly,
the tool lets planners make changes and view the likely outcome of different growth scenarios.
But satellite images are more than just pretty pictures. Satellite data can convey information
about water-quality damage due to development, for example, or the decrease in animal habitat
caused by the development of forested land. Information like this is crucial for making the tough
decisions public officials face.
"The NAUTILUS Project is an excellent example of non-science users applying NASA
science and technology to aid in important everyday decision-making," said NASA's Rodney
McKellip, manager of the RESAC program at Stennis.
If the NAUTILUS RESAC project is successful, other cities will soon join those in the test
regions using the "big picture" perspective of satellites to better understand the environmental impact
of humanity's expanding colonies here on Earth.
For more information about the NAUTILUS program, visit http://resac.uconn.edu. To learn
more about the project's management at Stennis Space Center's Earth Science Applications
Directorate, visit http://www.esad.ssc.nasa.gov.
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