In Brief:

• Chandra snaps 10 million-degree star corona
• Cargo airship among new NASA start-ups
• Environmental Impact Report plans prepared for X-34

August 31, 1999
Web posted at: 4:55 p.m. EDT (2055 GMT)

(CNN) -- The new Chandra X-ray Observatory continues to return impressive data, making the most precise measurements ever recorded of the energy output from the corona of a star.

A spectrometer on the Earth-orbiting telescope measured X-rays from the star Capella, which is 40 light years away in the constellation Auriga, and put its coronal, or outer, temperature at 10 million degrees.

Capella actually is two stars orbiting one another and possibly interacting in ways that pump extra heat into its highly active corona.

Chandra's spectrometer allows for a 1,000-fold improvement in the capability to measure X-ray spectra from space.

The new measurements follow photos released last week of a supernova remnant and quasar trailing an X-ray jet.

The spectrometer spreads X-rays Chandra collects at its concentric, barrel-shaped mirrors. The X-rays are split up like light in a prism into its components to indicate the chemical composition and temperature of the corona.

"Within the first hour we had obtained the best X-ray spectrum ever recorded for a celestial source," said Claude Canizares of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, principal investigator for the spectrometer.

"We can already see unexpected features that will teach us new things about stars and about matter at high temperatures."

Star coronas, regions of hot gas and magnetism that extend for thousands of miles above a star's visible surface, are best studied in the X-ray range of light.

But astronomers are puzzled about how stars manage to heat up their coronas to temperatures 1,000 times higher than their surface. The Chandra data could help solve that problem.

In the coming months, Chandra will study other high-energy targets in the universe, including black holes, quasars and more stellar explosions.

The spectrometer is made up of hundreds of gold gratings, each about the size of a postage stamp. The surface of each grating resembles a precise picket fence, with microscopic gold pickets 500 times thinner than a human hair. These are spaced every 2000 angstroms, or less than half the wavelength of visible light.

(CNN) -- NASA selected proposals for a piloted, cargo airship and a remotely piloted flying wing as part of a project that encourages the development of ideas that could lead to revolutionary experimental planes.

The selected concepts for the REVCON, or Revolutionary Concepts project, are: AeroCraft, a piloted, partially buoyant airship; the Blended Wing Body, a powered, remotely piloted, flying wing configuration; and the Pulse Detonation Engine, a design geared toward lower maintenance and operations costs.

AeroCraft could dramatically improve cargo transportation and is designed to move goods faster than ocean freighters and more cheaply than aircraft.

The project partners for AeroCraft include NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center and Ames Research Center, both in California, as well as MicroCraft, a company based in Tennessee; Lockheed Martin Skunkworks in California; and American Blimp Company, of Oregon.

A scale model of AeroCraft, a $10 million project, is slated for test flights at Dryden in 2001.

The Blended Wing Body research aircraft may improve fuel efficiency, maximum takeoff weight and direct operating costs for commercial carriers.

The project is a partnership between NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, as well as Dryden, Ames and Boeing Phantom Works in California. Test flights in the $1.5 million program are scheduled at Dryden for 2002.

The Pulse Detonation Engine, a $9.6 million project, is a new approach to high-speed jet propulsion, with a design aimed at higher efficiency propulsion using fewer parts.

(CNN) -- NASA is working on plans for an environmental impact report for test flights of its X-34 rocket plane next year starting in California, New Mexico and Florida and passing over Nevada and Utah.

The plan includes studying whether it makes sense to conduct test flights of other NASA experimental vehicles in the future at and over those sites.

North and South Carolina are being evaluated for contingency landings for Florida-based flights. The final test plan will be approved after the final environmental impact report is completed.

Marshall manages the X-34 project for NASA. The unpiloted, reusable X-34 is designed to demonstrate technologies that could cut the cost of putting payloads into orbit from $10,000 per pound to $1,000 per pound.

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