  We report observations of 240 Cepheid variables obtained with the Near
Infrared Camera (NICMOS) through the F160W filter on the Hubble Space Telescope
(HST). The Cepheids are distributed across six recent hosts of Type Ia
supernovae (SNe Ia) and the "maser galaxy" NGC 4258, allowing us to directly
calibrate the peak luminosities of the SNe Ia from the precise, geometric
distance measurements provided by the masers. New features of our measurement
include the use of the same instrument for all Cepheid measurements across the
distance ladder and homogeneity of the Cepheid periods and metallicities thus
necessitating only a differential measurement of Cepheid fluxes and reducing
the largest systematic uncertainties in the determination of the fiducial SN Ia
luminosity. The NICMOS measurements reduce differential extinction in the host
galaxies by a factor of 5 over past optical data. Combined with an expanded of
240 SNe Ia at z<0.1 which define their magnitude-redshift relation, we find
H_0=74.2 +/-3.6, a 4.8% uncertainty including both statistical and systematic
errors. We show that the factor of 2.2 improvement in the precision of H_0 is a
significant aid to the determination of the equation-of-state of dark energy, w
= P/(rho c^2). Combined with the WMAP 5-year measurement of Omega_M h^2, we
find w= -1.12 +/- 0.12 independent of high-redshift SNe Ia or baryon acoustic
oscillations (BAO). This result is also consistent with analyses based on the
combination of high-z SNe Ia and BAO. The constraints on w(z) now with high-z
SNe Ia and BAO are consistent with a cosmological constant and improved by a
factor of 3 from the refinement in H_0 alone. We show future improvements in
H_0 are likely and will further contribute to multi-technique studies of dark
energy.
