Monthly Archives: May 2010

OSTP’s New STEM Guy Is Out Of Synch With Upper Management

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Science Education May Not Be Rocket Science, Wieman Tells Senate, Science

"Appearing today before the Senate commerce committee as the nominee for associate director for science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Wieman was asked if NASA should play a bigger role in the federal effort to raise student achievement and produce a better-trained workforce. He politely but firmly suggested that NASA stick to what it does best--sending astronauts and scientific instruments into the heavens. "I think the answer to that is unclear," Wieman told Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR), who was filling in for the panel's chairman, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). "NASA has a unique role in inspiring people. I wanted to be an astronaut as a child. And there's something really dramatic about rockets blasting into outer space. But at the same time NASA does not bring much expertise to exactly what's critical to achieving learning in science and engineering."

Keith's note: Gee, this guy seems to be a bit at odds with his boss - and his boss's boss. I wonder if Wieman knows about this whole "Summer of Innovation" thing?

Remarks by the President on Space Exploration in the 21st Century

"In the years that have followed, the space race inspired a generation of scientists and innovators, including, I'm sure, many of you. It's contributed to immeasurable technological advances that have improved our health and well-being, from satellite navigation to water purification, from aerospace manufacturing to medical imaging. Although, I have to say, during a meeting right before I came out on stage somebody said, you know, it's more than just Tang -- and I had to point out I actually really like Tang. (Laughter.) I thought that was very cool."

Launching a New Era in Space Exploration, OSTP

"Last, and in many ways most importantly, President Obama wants NASA to inspire more young people to engage in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. NASA's Summer of Innovation, for example, will work with thousands of middle school teachers and students to engage students in stimulating, evidence-based math and science-based education programs."

Holdren Makes Impact (Craters) on National Lab Day, OSTP

"Following the Q&A, Dr. Holdren joined the students in literally getting their hands dirty in an educational activity set up by NASA. Students created a simulated asteroid surface using a mixture of soil, flour, and other ingredients. Then, using golf balls and a protractor, they observed how changes in the angle of a projectile's impact affected the area and volume of the resulting craters."

Cool Time-Lapse Video Of Shuttle Processing

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Go For Launch!, Air and Space

"In this unique time-lapse video created from thousands of individual frames, photographers Scott Andrews, Stan Jirman and Philip Scott Andrews condense six weeks of painstaking work into three minutes, 52 seconds. The action starts in the hangar-like Orbiter Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, where Discovery has been outfitted for its STS-131 mission."

Challenger Center Expands Board

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Challenger Center Welcomes Communication Professional Gwen Griffin to Its Board of Directors

"William Readdy, chairman of the board for the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, today announced aerospace communications professional Gwen Griffin has been elected to the board of directors. Griffin is the founder, president and chief executive officer of Griffin Communications Group, a full-service communications firm established in 1997 with offices in Houston and Central Florida. The firm is a nationally recognized for its work in branding, advocacy and outreach programs for corporate, academic and not-for-profit clients."

The entire Challenger Center board is listed here.

Cooperative Biomonitoring

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From Chemical & Engineering News: Latest News:

In an unusual cooperative effort between industry and government, the German Chemical Industry Association, known as VCI, has undertaken a 10-year program to develop analytical methods to detect up to 50 industrial chemicals in people.

Kitchen Renovations, Part 4

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Cabinet Installation

Putting in cabinets can be rewarding, but it is one thing that you should measure twice before securing everything in place. I started with wall cabinets since it's easier to get to without the base cabinets in the way. I set them at the standard height using a simple brack

EPA Orders BP to Use Less Toxic Oil Dispersant

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From Wired Top Stories:

The Environmental Protection Agency ordered British Petroleum to change the type of dispersant the company is using to keep oil from reaching American shores. The EPA gave the company 72 hours to switch to a less toxic chemical for use in breaking up oil

NASAs MISR Provides Unique Views of Gulf Oil Slick

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False-color image of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill
Top: False-color image of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, created by combining data from different color bands on two of MISR's nine cameras. Bottom: Two MISR camera views of a smoke plume believed to be from a controlled burn of oil on the ocean surface.

These unique images of the Deepwater Horizon oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico were obtained by the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA's Terra spacecraft on May 17, 2010, at around 16:40 UTC (11:40 a.m. CDT). The top panel is a false-color image created by combining data from the red band of the 26-degree forward-viewing camera (where the oil appears dark) with the blue and green bands of the nadir (vertical-viewing) camera (where the oil appears bright).

The result causes the oil spill to stand out dramatically in shades of cyan, while other features like clouds and land appear close to their natural color. The Mississippi River Delta is visible in the upper left portion of the image. The red symbol represents the former location of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. The image dimensions are 346 by 258 kilometers (215 by 160 miles), and north is toward the top of the image.

The white arrow in the right-center of the image points to a plume of smoke, most likely from a controlled burn of oil collected on the surface. Controlled burns of oil began in early May to attempt to remove oil from the open water. The plume appears as a dark streak against the brighter reflection of sunlight off the ocean surface. The lower two panels are enlarged images of the area around the smoke plume acquired by MISR's 46-degree forward-viewing and 46-degree backward-viewing cameras. At these viewing angles and under the viewing conditions on this date, the smoke particles appear bright and sunglint from the ocean surface is much weaker.

The views at the two different angles cover the same physical area of 42 by 30 kilometers (26 by 19 miles). The clouds in the lower right quadrant of these panels appear to shift in position, due to the different camera view angles. However, a bright point to the south of the plume does not show such a shift, and is likely a boat observing the controlled burn. The apparent shift in position of the smoke plume itself places its altitude at about 560 meters (1,840 feet) above the surface.

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Two Peas in an Irregular Pod

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A surprisingly large collection of galaxies (red dots in center) stands out at a remarkably large distance in this composite image combining infrared and visible-light observations.
New evidence from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is showing that tight-knit twin stars might be triggered to form by asymmetrical envelopes like the ones shown in this image.
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How Binary Stars May Form

Our sun may be an only child, but most of the stars in the galaxy are actually twins. The sibling stars circle around each other at varying distances, bound by the hands of gravity.

How twin stars form is an ongoing question in astronomy. Do they start out like fraternal twins developing from two separate clouds, or "eggs”? Or do they begin life in one cloud that splits into two, like identical twins born from one egg? Astronomers generally believe that widely spaced twin, or binary, stars grow from two separate clouds, while the closer-knit binary stars start out from one cloud. But how this latter process works has not been clear.

New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope are acting like sonograms to reveal the early birth process of snug twin stars. The infrared telescope can see the structure of the dense, dusty envelopes surrounding newborn stars in remarkable detail. These envelopes are like wombs feeding stars growing inside -- the material falls onto disks spinning around the stars, and then is pulled farther inward by the fattening stars.

The Spitzer pictures reveal blob-like, asymmetrical envelopes for nearly all of 20 objects studied. According to astronomers, such irregularities might trigger binary stars to form.

"We see asymmetries in the dense material around these proto-stars on scales only a few times larger than the size of the solar system. This means that the disks around them will be fed unevenly, possibly enhancing fragmentation of the disk and triggering binary star formation," said John Tobin of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, lead author of a recent paper in the Astrophysical Journal.

All stars, whether they are twins or not, form from collapsing envelopes, or clumps, of gas and dust. The clumps continue to shrink under the force of gravity, until enough pressure is exerted to fuse atoms together and create an explosion of energy.

Theorists have run computer simulations in the past to show that irregular-shaped envelopes may cause the closer twin stars to form. Material falling inward would be concentrated in clumps, not evenly spread out, seeding the formation of two stars instead of one. But, until now, observational evidence for this scenario was inconclusive.

Tobin and his team initially did not set out to test this theory. They were studying the effects of jets and outflows on envelopes around young stars when they happened to notice that almost all the envelopes were asymmetrical. This led them to investigate further -- 17 of 20 envelopes examined were shaped like blobs instead of spheres. The remaining three envelopes were not as irregular as the others, but not perfectly round either. Many of the envelopes were already known to contain embryonic twin stars – possibly caused by the irregular envelopes.

"We were really surprised by the prevalence of asymmetrical envelope structures," said Tobin. "And because we know that most stars are binary, these asymmetries could be indicative of how they form."

Spitzer was able to catch such detailed views of these stellar eggs because it has highly sensitive infrared vision, which can detect the faint infrared glow from our Milky Way galaxy itself. The dusty envelopes around the young stars block background light from the Milky Way, creating the appearance of a shadow in images from Spitzer.

"Traditionally, these envelopes have been observed by looking at longer infrared wavelengths where the cold dust is glowing. However, those observations generally have much lower resolution than the Spitzer images," said Tobin.

Further study of these envelopes, examining the velocity of the material falling onto the forming stars using radio-wavelength telescopes, is already in progress. While the researchers may not yet be able to look at a picture of a stellar envelope and declare "It's twins," their work is offering important clues to help solve the mystery of how twin stars are born.

Other authors of this study include Lee Hartmann of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and Hsin-Fang Chiang and Leslie Looney of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The observations were made before Spitzer ran out its liquid coolant in May 2009, beginning its "warm" mission.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about Spitzer, visit http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/spitzer and http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

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Geometry Drives Selection Date for 2011 Mars Launch

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Artist's concept of Curiosity
This artist's concept from an animation depicts Curiosity, the rover to be launched in 2011 by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, as it is being lowered by the mission's rocket-powered descent stage during a critical moment of the "sky crane" landing in 2012.
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Planners of NASA's next Mars mission have selected a flight schedule that will use favorable positions for two currently orbiting NASA Mars orbiters to obtain maximum information during descent and landing.

Continuing analysis of the geometry and communications options for the arrival at Mars have led planners for the Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, to choose an Earth-to-Mars trajectory that schedules launch between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, 2011. Landing will take place between Aug. 6 and Aug. 20, 2012. Due to an Earth-Mars planetary alignment, this launch period actually allows for a Mars arrival in the earlier portion of the landing dates under consideration.

"The key factor was a choice between different strategies for sending communications during the critical moments before and during touchdown," said Michael Watkins, mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The shorter trajectory is optimal for keeping both orbiters in view of Curiosity all the way to touchdown on the surface of Mars. The longer trajectory allows direct communication to Earth all the way to touchdown."

The simplicity of direct-to-Earth communication from Curiosity during landing has appeal to mission planners, in comparison to relying on communications relayed via NASA's Mars Odyssey, which has been orbiting Mars since 2001, and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, in operation since 2006. However, the direct-to-Earth option allows a communication rate equivalent to only about 1 bit per second, while the relay option allows about 8,000 bits or more per second.

Landing on Mars is always difficult, with success uncertain. After an unsuccessful attempted Mars landing in 1999 without definitive information on the cause of the mishap, NASA put a high priority on communication during subsequent Mars landings.

"It is important to capture high-quality telemetry to allow us to learn what happens during the entry, descent and landing, which is arguably the most challenging part of the mission," said Fuk Li, manager of NASA's Mars Exploration Program at JPL. "The trajectory we have selected maximizes the amount of information we will learn to mitigate any problems."

Curiosity will use several innovations during entry into the Martian atmosphere, descent and landing in order to hit a relatively small target area on the surface and set down a rover too heavy for the cushioning air bags used in earlier Mars rover landings. In a "sky-crane" maneuver during the final minute of arrival, a rocket-powered descent stage will lower Curiosity on a tether for a wheels-down landing directly onto the surface.

Even though Curiosity won't be communicating directly with Earth at touchdown, data about the landing will reach Earth promptly. Odyssey will be in view of both Earth and Curiosity, in position to immediately forward to Earth the data stream it is receiving during the touchdown. Odyssey performed this type of "bent-pipe" relay during the May 25, 2008, arrival of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander.

Curiosity will rove extensively on Mars, carrying an analytical laboratory and other instruments to examine a carefully selected landing area. It will investigate whether conditions there have favored development of microbial life and its preservation in the rock record. Plans call for the mission to operate on Mars for a full Martian year, which is equivalent to two Earth years.

Consideration of landing sites for the mission narrowed to four finalist candidates in November 2008. The candidate sites are still being analyzed for safety and science attributes.

Curiosity is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL also manages the Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter missions, in partnership with Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.

More information about NASA's Mars Science Laboratory is at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl.

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Hubble Finds a Star Eating a Planet

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Artist's concept of the exoplanet WASP-12b.

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Artist's concept of the exoplanet WASP-12b.

The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.

The planet, called WASP-12b, is so close to its sunlike star that it is superheated to nearly 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit and stretched into a football shape by enormous tidal forces. The atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times Jupiter's radius and is spilling material onto the star. The planet is 40 percent more massive than Jupiter.

This effect of matter exchange between two stellar objects is commonly seen in close binary star systems, but this is the first time it has been seen so clearly for a planet.

"We see a huge cloud of material around the planet, which is escaping and will be captured by the star. We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own solar system," says team leader Carole Haswell of The Open University in Great Britain.

Haswell and her science team's results were published in the May 10, 2010 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A theoretical paper published in the science journal Nature last February by Shu-lin Li of the Department of Astronomy at the Peking University, Beijing, first predicted that the planet's surface would be distorted by the star's gravity, and that gravitational tidal forces make the interior so hot that it greatly expands the planet's outer atmosphere. Now Hubble has confirmed this prediction.

WASP-12 is a yellow dwarf star located approximately 600 light-years away in the winter constellation Auriga. The exoplanet was discovered by the United Kingdom's Wide Area Search for Planets (WASP) in 2008. The automated survey looks for the periodic dimming of stars from planets passing in front of them, an effect called transiting. The hot planet is so close to the star it completes an orbit in 1.1 days.

The unprecedented ultraviolet (UV) sensitivity of COS enabled measurements of the dimming of the parent star's light as the planet passed in front of the star. These UV spectral observations showed that absorption lines from aluminum, tin, manganese, among other elements, became more pronounced as the planet transited the star, meaning that these elements exist in the planet's atmosphere as well as the star's. The fact the COS could detect these features on a planet offers strong evidence that the planet's atmosphere is greatly extended because it is so hot.

The UV spectroscopy was also used to calculate a light curve to precisely show just how much of the star's light is blocked out during transit. The depth of the light curve allowed the COS team to accurately calculate the planet's radius. They found that the UV-absorbing exosphere is much more extended than that of a normal planet that is 1.4 times Jupiter's mass. It is so extended that the planet's radius exceeds its Roche lobe, the gravitational boundary beyond which material would be lost forever from the planet's atmosphere.

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BP is Ordered to Use a Less Toxic Dispersant

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PHOTO BY TED JACKSON / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE An oily mess inundates the Roseau Grasses that mark the coastline of Southeast Louisiana at Pass a Loutre at the mouth of the Mississippi River. . . . . especially on the western side of South Pass, Wednesday, May 19, 2010.

The EPA is running out of patience with BP.  On Thursday they told the EPA to stop using the dispersant its using, to use one less toxic and that is on a list of approved chemicals.  In another letter they told BP that they don’t feel BP is telling us everything. They were told to divulge everything about everything having to do with this leak . . . far too late to be telling BP this, but better late than never.  It’s been about a month since this disaster, and about 70,000 gallons of dirty oil is pouring out of one of two leaks.  Talk radio can frame this hwever they want, but anyone who has seen the videos of the oil leak and the oil washing up in the marshes right now, not at some imagined point in the future, knows this is an epic disaster.

May 20 — WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a directive requiring BP to identify and use a less toxic and more effective dispersant from the list of EPA authorized dispersants. Dispersants are a chemical used to break up oil into small droplets so that they are more easily degraded.

The directive requires BP to identify a less toxic alternative – to be used both on the surface and under the water at the source of the oil leak – within 24 hours and to begin using the less toxic dispersant within 72 hours of submitting the alternative.  

If BP is unable to identify available alternative dispersant products, BP must provide the Coast Guard and EPA with a detailed description of the alternative dispersants investigated, and the reason they believe those products did not meet the required standards.  

EPA’s directive to BP can be found here.

While the dispersant BP has been using is on the agency’s approved list, BP is using this dispersant in unprecedented volumes and, last week, began using it underwater at the source of the leak – a procedure that has never been tried before. Because of its use in unprecedented volumes and because much is unknown about the underwater use of dispersants, EPA wants to ensure BP is using the least toxic product authorized for use. We reserve the right to discontinue the use of this dispersant method if any negative impacts on the environment outweigh the benefits.

On May 15, EPA and the U.S. Coast Guard authorized BP to use dispersants underwater at the source of the Deepwater Horizon leak. As the dispersant is used underwater, BP is required to do constant, scientifically rigorous monitoring so EPA scientists may determine the dispersant’s effectiveness and impact on the [...]