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In 2010, I told you how Pat Fant, the man who signed on Rock 101 KLOL and 94.5 The Buzz KTBZ among others, was moving into the world of Internet streaming radio. That year he signed on HISD’s K12 Radio.

Now Fant is back with an online radio station that reaches for the stars. Yeah, that was a cliche for saying he is working with NASA.

NASA has always stood for exploring the new and undiscovered. That now applies to music too.

The NASA mission of discovery and exploration is about to be showcased in a custom produced music radio station that is crafted specifically to speak the language of tech-savvy young adults. Third Rock: America’s Space Station, is set to lift off with a New Rock/Indi/Alternative format on Monday, December 12 from the home page of nasa.gov, while also streaming live over NASA iPhone and Droid applications.

Discovery powers the work of NASA. It’s also what drives music lovers to the Internet in search of works by new recording artists not generally represented on terrestrial radio. Music is a powerful lure. So, to connect and build a bridge with the hard-to-reach generation, NASA is taking its blend of art and science to where the largest audience can be found.

NASA has selected Houston-based RFC Media to launch Third Rock. Programming is designed to showcase the continuing work of NASA in a fresh new context that is tuned to connect with the marketing-resistant crowd. Pat Fant, RFC Media Co-Founder and COO said, “Today’s 4G audience craves new music and enjoys finding it. We’ve done the digging and pulled out the best songs and the deepest tracks from a full spectrum of rock artists across many styles and decades. NASA features and news items are embedded throughout the programming alongside greetings by celebrity artists. This is the full body of work, unpredictable and full of surprise, without the customary mind-numbing repetition. And, computers don’t pick the music. People do.”

Cruze, RFC Media Co-Founder and President added, “No one knows more about discovering new rock than NASA! If you were a cool new song, where would you want to live? The explosion in talented new writers and musicians is more than traditional radio can digest. The exciting new music is being discovered online through specialty sites like Third Rock, where listeners will hear about great new artists way before their friends hear of them.”

And while discovery is great, opportunity is everything. NASA places a high value on education, and since “you can’t rock if you don’t work,” Third Rock will also help partner companies fill high-tech job openings in engineering, science, IT, etc. The Third Rock job connection feature will link the brightest and best to the marketplace of high-paying job opportunities.

It’s music discovery at the speed of light. Look for Third Rock in on-line radio listings such as the Radio tab of Apple’s iTunes. NASA will utilize a wide array of social media resources to help spread the word about Third Rock. Third Rock is another leap forward in NASA’s use of award winning digital outreach and social media.
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NASA is the world’s leading authority in GO FAST!

Houston-based RFC Media, LLC, designs, produces and executes private label radio stations for business, streaming custom content live online and across the mobile broadband networks. Our firm brings a rich history of broadcast management, programming and media marketing to private enterprise in the development of on-demand media.

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The future home of a retired space shuttle is causing a war and now it’s a battle between two of the nation’s proudest states - Texas vs New York.

It’s a war we must win, but we’ve already lost a big battle when NASA snubbed Space City and set aside a shuttle for New York. The prototype orbiter Enterprise has been slated for the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York. New York City?

I don’t even have to go into any great detail how Houston has the Johnson Space Center, Mission Control, “Houston, we have a problem,”…etc. and New York has Broadway.

Now lawmakers are laying down claim to the aging spacecrafts. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee others introduced legislation that would temporarily loan the Space Shuttle Discovery to the Space Center Houston for 15 years.

“This legislation would temporarily set aside the decision to dispose of the Discovery shuttle and instruct Gen. Bolden and NASA to temporarily ‘loan’ the Discovery shuttle to the appropriate location in Houston, Texas for a period of 15 years,” Congresswoman Lee said in a statement.

And it’s become a war of words between Houston Congressman Ted Poe and New York Senator Chuck Schumer.

Poe says NASA made a big mistake and did this for political reasons. Then Schumer fired back.

“And I say to the people in Houston, when people all around the world in London and Tokyo and Paris and Buenos Aires say, ‘Gee, I can’t wait for my trip to Houston,’ then you can have a shuttle,” Schumer told a group of reporters. “Until then it’s staying in New York.”

We have to be careful with Sen. Schumer as an opponent. Even though he was not elected in Texas, he’ll somehow figure out how to tax and regulate us until we don’t want the shuttle. Then lots of citizens will flee to Connecticut…I mean Louisiana for relief.

Then there is the bigger picture. Clearly NASA is looking to scale down its presence at the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake. JSC was Mission Control for the shuttle fleet and obviously those missions are going away very soon. The current administration has also pretty much killed the back to the moon Constellation mission too. So what is the future of space locally for us?

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The Houston mayor and Harris County Judge are putting out an SOS concerning getting out area a space shuttle:

Mayor Annise Parker, Judge Ed Emmett and surviving Columbia and Challenger family members invite you to help Houston Bring Home the Shuttle

Wednesday, April 6, 2011
12:30 p.m.
in front of City Hall
901 Bagby
Houston 77002

On April 12, 2011, NASA will announce the future homes for the retiring space shuttle orbiters. Houston is the home of the Johnson Space Center and mission control. The shuttles were designed here and astronauts live and train in Houston. Much of NASA’s work today is still based from Houston. One of the shuttles belongs in Houston.
Please bring your family and friends and forward this email to others.

See http://www.houstontx.gov/citizensnet/shuttlehome.pdf for additional ways to support Houston in Bringing the Shuttle Home to Houston where it belongs.

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Break out the freeze dried champagne and astronaut ice cream for NASA’s Mars mission. Launched in 2001, NASA’s Mars Odyssey broke the record for longest serving spacecraft on the Red Planet. The probe began its 3,340th day in Martian orbit at 8:55 p.m. EST on Wednesday to break the record set by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor, which orbited Mars from 1997 to 2006:

Odyssey’s longevity enables continued science, including the monitoring of seasonal changes on Mars from year to year and the most detailed maps ever made of most of the planet. In 2002, the spacecraft detected hydrogen just below the surface throughout Mars’ high-latitude regions. The deduction that the hydrogen is in frozen water prompted NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which confirmed the theory in 2008. Odyssey also carried the first experiment sent to Mars specifically to prepare for human missions, and found radiation levels around the planet from solar flares and cosmic rays are two to three times higher than around Earth.

Odyssey also has served as a communication relay, handling most of the data sent home by Phoenix and NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Odyssey became the middle link for continuous observation of Martian weather by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Odyssey will support the 2012 landing of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and surface operations of that mission. MSL will assess whether its landing area has had environmental conditions favorable for microbial life and preserving evidence about whether life has existed there. The rover will carry the largest, most advanced set of instruments for scientific studies ever sent to the Martian surface.

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Just when you thought you couldn’t find a place that hadn’t been checked into on Foursquare - NASA had to pull some rocket science on your social media mobile GPS self.

NASA astronaut and International Space Station Commander Doug Wheelock became the first person to “check in” from space Friday using the mobile social networking application:

When Wheelock checked in to the space station venue using Foursquare’s mobile site, he received a message that revealed a new Foursquare badge:

“You are now 220 miles above Earth traveling at 17,500 mph and unlocked the NASA Explorer Badge! Show this badge and get a free scoop of astronaut ice cream.”

When Wheelock completes his mission and returns to Earth at the end of November, the NASA Explorer badge will be available for Foursquare users to earn.

“Check-ins from around the world have been cool, but this blew my mind!” said Dennis Crowley, CEO and co-founder of Foursquare. “We’re psyched to partner with NASA to help users explore the space program and the universe.”

Foursquare users check in to venues wherever they go using the service to find nearby friends; get helpful tips about the places they’re visiting; and be challenged and rewarded for experiencing new things.

As result of the partnership, Foursquare users who check in to a NASA-related venue will find information from NASA about the location. For example, someone checking in at the agency’s headquarters in Washington will discover that a replica of NASA astrophysicist John Mather’s Nobel Prize is on display in the lobby.

I can boast that I just became the mayor of KIAH TV Channel 39 on Foursquare. My thing doesn’t quite match up to Wheelock’s though.

http://www.foursquare.com/NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/connect/foursquare.html

By the way, space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to begin an 11-day mission to the International Space Station with a launch at 3:40pm Monday, Nov. 1, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The STS-133 mission is Discovery’s final scheduled flight.

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Take a second to stop watching Houston’s new KUBE 57 channel and take a look at NASA engineers building the next Mars rover. A webcam is broadcasting NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory staff build the new Curiosity rover in a clean room at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. A clean room means no pretzels or cigars.

Curiosity should be able to drive longer distances over rougher terrain than previous rovers with a science payload 10 times the mass of instruments on NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity. No word if it can go ‘mudding’ though.

So what’s this very expensive device going to do? NASA says it will investigate whether the landing region has had environments favorable for supporting microbial life and for preserving evidence about whether life existed on the Red Planet. That is no small job either.

WATCH THE LIVE CAM HERE | More on the rover

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If you want to look at NASA photos from more than half a century, then head over to Flickr. The space agency and picture site just teamed up.

“NASA’s long-standing partnership with Internet Archive and this new one with Yahoo!’s Flickr provides an opportunity for the public to participate in the process of discovery,” said Debbie Rivera, lead for the NASA Images project at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “In addition, the public can help the agency capture historical knowledge about missions and programs through this new resource and make it available for future generations.”

That’s right, the public can add tags or keywords to the images to identify objects and people. The hope is the public’s assistance will make the images easier to find online and add insight about NASA’s history.

The sets of photos are broken down into themes:
- The “Launch and Takeoff” set captures iconic spacecraft and aircraft taking flight.
- “Building NASA” spotlights ground-breaking events and the construction of some of NASA’s one-of-a-kind facilities.
- The “Center Namesakes” set features photos of the founders and figureheads of NASA’s 10 field centers.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasacommons

While the NASA and Flickr partnership is new, the space agency already has a site called NASAimages.org which provides hundreds of thousands of images and thousands of hours of video, HD video and audio content available free to the public for download.

http://www.nasaimages.org/

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You know how NASA wakes up the astronauts on shuttle missions with a special song? Now you get the chance to choose those songs for the last two scheduled space shuttle missions.

Normally those songs are selected by friends and family of the crews.

For the last two scheduled missions, NASA is inviting the public to visit the “Wakeup Song Contest” website to select songs from a list of the top 40 previous wakeup calls or to submit original tunes for consideration.

To vote or submit a song go to:
https://songcontest.nasa.gov/

The two songs that get the most votes will be jump start the crews on the final scheduled flight of space shuttle Discovery. Discovery’s STS-133 mission is targeted to launch on Nov. 1.

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NASA just put out a bunch of super detailed maps of the Mars planetary surface. It’s all thanks to a camera on  the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. This is the most accurate global Martian map ever.

Users can pan around images and zoom into them. At full zoom, the smallest surface details are 330 feet wide. While portions of Mars have been mapped at higher resolution, this map provides the most accurate view so far of the entire planet.

GO SEE THE MAPS

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NASA fans rejoice. Coming Monday, NASA Television will launch a full-time High Def channel for news and coverage of agency missions.

NASA says this channel will have exclusive HD content only the space agency can provide. This includes:

- Live launch coverage of space shuttles and other spacecraft.
- The “ISS Update,” a daily program covering the activities of the on-orbit International Space Station crews, will air on the new HD channel.
- Video of the Earth shot by crews on the station and from NASA satellites also will be available.

Also look out for news feed, media conferences, lectures, satellite interviews and special events.

I guess this is up to your TV provider if they allot bandwidth to this new NASA HD channel however.

Remember in MTV’s early days when you were supposed to call the cable operator doing your best Sting and say, “I want my MTV in stereo?”

Now you can call them up and say, “I want my NTV in HD!” OK that was weak, I know. It’s almost the weekend, what do you care?

For complete NASA TV information: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

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