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NASA working on Venus rover that can can stand planet's extreme heat, acid rain - Digital Trends
Category Archives: NASA
Nasa security agents detain then release ‘police officers’ – Daily Nation
Friday August 11 2017 In Summary
Two individuals believed to be police officers who had been arrested and detained by Nasa security agents at their tallying centre in Runda were released in unclear circumstances after almost 45 minutes in custody.
Joseph Shimekha, who chairs the Nasa board responsible for coordination of agents, said that the two men infiltrated journalists who had come to cover a press conference and pretended to be media people.
"We noticed that amongst the journalists, there were two suspicious characters who had gained access. I confronted them but realised they were not journalists because they were armed.
An argument ensued but we managed to hand them over to our security officers manning the gate and alerted our legal team. They managed to produce their identification document showing they are indeed police officers from the DCI Gigiri," Mr Shimekha said at the tallying centre.
Earlier on Mr David Ndii had confirmed the incident during his address to journalists but did not provide more details.
"Sneaking into private property with intention of patrolling and snooping around is illegal. They claimed they were not armed but this shows their intentions are bad. This is supposed to be a political competition not a security issue because what we are doing is not illegal," he said.
But the officers were let go in unclear circumstances.
They were driven away from a neighbouring compound, where they had been taken to, in two Subaru Forester cars.
However, Mr Shimekha said that Nasa will take extra measures to ensure their work is not frustrated by government agents including the police.
Just moments after this assurance, the tallying staff at the facility were whisked from the building in different cars together with their materials to an unknown destination.
Mr Dida said the commission must address the hacking claims advanced by Nasa.
Dr Kuti vied for governor as an independent candidate.
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Nasa security agents detain then release 'police officers' - Daily Nation
How NASA’s Shared Services Center is using process robotics – FedScoop
Somewhere in the NASA Shared Services Center at theStennis Space Center in Mississippi, George Washington is hard at work.
George Washington is precisely the type of team-player employee youd want on your HR or finance staff adept at doing rote, repetitive work quickly and consistently and never complains. George Washington is a bot.
NASA first started looking into bots about two years ago, according toJim Walker, head of robotic process automation at the NASA Shared Services Center. The centerisnt exactly the sexiest part of the space agency, and while the work done in Building 1111 may be characterized by lots of bookkeeping and organizational tasks, it is nonetheless important.
This, in Walkers estimation, made NSSC the perfect place to test process robotics.
We realized it was going to be extremely valuable, Walker told FedScoop. Robotics will do that mundane task that no one wants to do. Which leads us to the George Washington namingstory our first [bot] was named George Washington because we think it was the first bot in the federal government, Walker said, adding that this was just for fun.
NSSC contracted with Deloitte Process Robotics one of five agencies to do so, according to Deloitte to develop an early proof of concept. Deloitte acts as a consultant in this equation helpingclients like NSSC build the bots for specific processes using the software Automation Anywhere. Walker was sure to keep the project small-scale, he said. He wanted to test whether these bots would give a good return on investment and assure that they wouldnt add too much to the IT backlog.
Walker said the choice to go with Deloitte as an integrator was primarily practical the agency already had a contract with Deloitte for other things. Later this year, he said, NSSC plans to put out a request for quotes from other integrators, after which the agency will pick whichever best suits itsneeds moving forward.
But NSSC does plan to move forward with these process automation bots because so far, Walker said, everything hes seen has been positive.We see a lot of value in taking these routine tasks and automating them, he said.
For example, NSSC gets job suitability emails that contain a report on a given NASA job applicants suitability for government work. Once received, the body of the email needs to be copied and pasted into a separate ticket for further review. This used to be done by hand by a human employee now George Washington can take care of it.
Its not just about taking a tedious process off a humans to-do list. In an era of shrinking budgets, process automation allows agencies to do more with less. Automation could also reducethe size of government over time, astated goal of the political right.
Is Walker concerned about job loss? Not at the moment, he said. For now, process automation simply frees up human employee time to focus on higher-level tasks. At some point in automation, Walker says, it seems likely that bots will displace some workers. But hes a pragmatist about the march of tech innovation automation is on its way, whether we like it or not.Bots will be a big workforce enabler in the near future, he said.
At the end of the day, Walker is proud that NSSC is leading the way in developing process automation bots in the federal government.Its nice for a shared service center to be able to bring innovation toNASA, hesaid. Weve highlighted a tool to other agencies that they might not have looked at.
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How NASA's Shared Services Center is using process robotics - FedScoop
NASA short-lists six candidates for future missions – The Register
NASA has published a shortlist of six missions its considering for launch from the year 2022.
All are part of the space agency's Explorers Program, which aims to do heliophysics and astrophysics on modest budgets. The program runs Medium-Class missions with a budget cap of US$250m and Missions of Opportunity that get just $70m to play with. Over 90 Explorer missions have run since the first in 1958.
The Medium-Class missions NASA's decided to fling some exploratory cash at are:
The Missions of Opportunity bidding for a green light are:
NASA's already conditionally-selected a mission called CASE, or Contribution to ARIEL Spectroscopy of Exoplanets. CASE would provide packaged detectors to the ESA's planned Atmospheric Remote-sensing Exoplanet Large-survey (ARIEL). Doing so would help that effort's attempts to understand the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation during the nebular phase and the following few millions of years.
Making this shortlist means the projects mentioned above have scored funding for a nine-month implementation concept study. More reviews await each project after that document is completed and assessed, but NASA is hopeful it will launch one of the missions above by the year 2022.
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NASA short-lists six candidates for future missions - The Register
NASA’s plasma rocket making progress toward a 100-hour firing – Ars Technica
Enlarge / With 200 kW of solar power, the VASIMR engine could be used as a lunar tug.
Ad Astra Rocket Company
Almost everyone recognizes that if humans are truly to go deeper into the Solar System, we need faster and more efficient propulsion systems than conventional chemical rockets. Rocket engines powered by chemical propellants are great for breaking the chains of Earth's gravity, but they consume way too much fuel when used in space and don't offer optimal control of a spacecraft's thrust.
NASA recognizes this, too. So in 2015, the space agency awarded three different contracts for development of advanced propulsion systems. Of these, perhaps the most intriguing is a plasma-based rocketwhich runs on Argon fuel, generates a plasma, excites it, and then pushes it out a nozzle at high speed. This solution has the potential to shorten the travel time between Earth and Mars to weeks, rather than months.
But to realize that potential, Houston-based Ad Astra Rocket Company must first demonstrate that its plasma rocket, VASIMR, can fire continuously for a long period of time. The three year, $9 million contract from NASA required the company to fire its plasma rocket for 100 hours, at a power level of 100 kilowatts, by 2018.
This week, Ad Astra reported that it remains on target toward that goal. The company completed a successful performance review with NASA after its second year of the contract, and it has now fired the engine for a total of 10 hours while making significant modifications to its large vacuum chamber to handle the thermal load produced by the rocket engine.
When Ars visited the company early in 2017, the company was pulsing its rocket for about 30 seconds at a time. Now, the company is firing VASIMR for about five minutes at a time, founder Franklin Chang-Diaz told Ars. "The limitation right now is moisture outgassing from all the new hardware in both the rocket and the vacuum chamber," he said. "This overwhelms the pumps, so there is a lot of conditioning that has to be done little by little."
A view of the plasma plume during a test firing.
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Loading the VASIMR engine into the vacuum chamber.
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Where the plasma comes out of the rocket engine.
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The VASIMR engine and the exterior of the vacuum chamber.
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Exterior view of the vacuum chamber.
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Installing cryopumps inside the vacuum chamber.
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Franklin Chang-Daz peers into the vacuum chamber during a test firing.
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Franklin Chang-Daz.
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Setup of the VASIMR engine (VX 200SS) inside the vacuum chamber during tests. The rocket is at left, and the area of the plume is shown by the purple outline.
Ad Astra Rocket Company
As the company continues to test the new hardware, it is gradually building up to longer and longer pulses with inspections in between. As Astra remains on target to perform the 100-hour test in late summer or early fall of 2018, Chang-Diaz said.
Initially, the company foresees the plasma rocket as a means for pushing cargo between Earth and the Moon, or on to Mars. With solar powered panels, the rocket would have a relatively low thrust and therefore would move loads slowly but efficiently. But with more power, such as from a space-based nuclear reactor, it could one day reach much higher velocities that would allow humans to travel rapidly through the Solar System.
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NASA's plasma rocket making progress toward a 100-hour firing - Ars Technica
Watch martian clouds scoot, thanks to NASA’s Curiosity – Phys.Org
August 10, 2017 by Guy Webster Clouds drift across the sky above a Martian horizon in this accelerated sequence of enhanced images taken on July 17, 2017, by the Navcam on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/York University
Wispy, early-season clouds resembling Earth's ice-crystal cirrus clouds move across the Martian sky in some new image sequences from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover.
These clouds are the most clearly visible so far from Curiosity, which landed five years ago this month about five degrees south of Mars' equator. Clouds moving in the Martian sky have been observed previously by Curiosity and other missions on the surface of Mars, including NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in the Martian arctic nine years ago.
Researchers used Curiosity's Navigation Camera (Navcam) to take two sets of eight images of the sky on an early Martian morning last month. For one set, the camera pointed nearly straight up. For the other, it pointed just above the southern horizon. Cloud movement was recorded in both and was made easier to see by image enhancement. A midday look at the sky with the same camera the same day showed no clouds.
Mars' elliptical orbit makes that planet's distance from the Sun vary more than Earth's does. In previous Martian years, a belt of clouds has appeared near the equator around the time Mars was at its farthest from the Sun. The new images of clouds were taken about two months before that farthest point in the orbit, relatively early in the season for the appearance of this cloud belt.
"It is likely that the clouds are composed of crystals of water ice that condense out onto dust grains where it is cold in the atmosphere," said Curiosity science-team member John Moores of York University, Toronto, Canada. "The wisps are created as those crystals fall and evaporate in patterns known as 'fall streaks' or 'mare's tails.' While the rover does not have a way to ascertain the altitude of these clouds, on Earth such clouds form at high altitude."
York's Charissa Campbell produced the enhanced-image sequences by generating an "average" of all the frames in each sequence, then subtracting that average from each frame, emphasizing any frame-to-frame changes. The moving clouds are also visible, though fainter, in a sequence of raw images.
Explore further: Curiosity captures gravity wave shaped clouds on Mars
More information: For more about Curiosity, visit mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl
This week, from March 20th to 24th, the 48th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference will be taking place in The Woodlands, Texas. Every year, this conference brings together international specialists in the fields of geology, ...
Using the most powerful telescope ever sent to Mars, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught a view of the Curiosity rover this month amid rocky mountainside terrain.
Many features on the surface of Mars hint at the presence of liquid water in the past. These range from the Valles Marineris, a 4,000 km long and 7 km deep system of canyons, to the tiny hematite spherules called "blueberries". ...
The left side of this 360-degree panorama from NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the long rows of ripples on a linear shaped dune in the Bagnold Dune Field on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp.
NASA's Curiosity Mars rover began close-up investigation of a target called "Marimba," on lower Mount Sharp, during the week preceding the fourth anniversary of the mission's dramatic sky-crane landing.
Curiosity celebrated two years on Mars on August 5, 2014, and is continuing its progress across the surface of the planet. The rover has already fulfilled one of its primary mission goals by confirming that environments theoretically ...
An asteroid the size of a house will shave past Earth at a distance of some 44,000 kilometres (27,300 miles) in October, inside the Moon's orbit, astronomers said Thursday.
(Phys.org)An international team of astronomers has discovered a Jupiter-mass alien world circling a giant star known as HD 208897. The newly detected exoplanet was found as a result of high-precision radial velocity measurements. ...
NASA's Cassini spacecraft will enter new territory in its final mission phase, the Grand Finale, as it prepares to embark on a set of ultra-close passes through Saturn's upper atmosphere with its final five orbits around ...
A bright Moon will outshine the annual Perseids meteor shower, which will peak Saturday with only a fifth the usual number of shooting stars visible to Earthlings, astronomers say.
Scientists have discovered why heavyweight galaxies living in a dense crowd of galaxies tend to spin more slowly than their lighter neighbours.
New evidence from ancient lunar rocks suggests that an active dynamo once churned within the molten metallic core of the moon, generating a magnetic field that lasted at least 1 billion years longer than previously thought. ...
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Watch martian clouds scoot, thanks to NASA's Curiosity - Phys.Org
7 of The Wackiest Questions NASA Has Been Asked About The Total Solar Eclipse – ScienceAlert
By now, you've probably - hopefully - heard that there's a total solar eclipse to watch out for on 21 August this year. Dubbed the 'Great American Eclipse', it's the first such event travelling coast to coast across the United States since 1918 and everyone is super excited.
Naturally, NASA has been using this excitement to do some quality public engagement, and last night they even hosted a science Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit, featuring six actual NASA scientists. There were a lot of valuable scientific queries, but plenty of stuff on the lighter side, too. Below are some of our favourite tidbits.
1. Will I really go blind? Really?
You certainly don't want to be looking directly at the sun, ever - but some people still have their doubts.
One user asked if they would actually go blind if they looked directly at it, only to be assured by atmospheric scientist Jay Herman that yes, yes they would:
Contact me in braille after you are done with the experiment. Seriously, do not attempt this experiment. You can look at it during the 1.5 minutes of totality, but be careful to look away the moment the light gets brighter. Not kidding. Look away instantly.
To a similar query, astronomer Bill Cooke told the cautionary tale of his own unfortunate eye damage:
You can damage your eyes without feeling pain. I know because I have a scar on my retina from not getting my eye protection back on at the end of totality during the 1979 eclipse. Please don't follow my example!
So yes, dowear proper eye protection.
2. Are my animals going to go blind? Or freak out?
One person was really worried about their horses, hoping that they wouldn't look directly at the sky:
Dumb question....do animals suffer eye damage during a total eclipse? Do they even care to look into the sky? The reason I ask is because I have a couple horses that live outside 24/7 and I don't want to be slapped with a major vet bill on the 22nd.
As it turns out, NASA's Bill Cooke has actually experienced a solar eclipse together with a pasture full of horses, and they did not go blind - just ran around a bit, in confusion. Phew.
Several people mentioned animals, and it's actually a really interesting topic - researchers encourage people to take note on how animals are behaving during the eclipse, because it's one of those subjects that's tricky to study due to its rarity.
3. WHAT IF THERE ARE CLOUDS?
As with any phenomenon that involves staring a clear sky, the worst thing that can happen is cloud cover. Having direct access to scientists from NASA, some Reddit users were keen to just get the weather report from them. Okay then.
But we did learn from Bill Cooke that if you're in the path of totality and there are clouds, you'll still get something.
"It will get dark if you're in the path of totality! But it is a weird dark," he wrote.
4. How much fun will I miss out on if I don't watch it?
One person really didn't want to go on their family trip to Oregon to experience the eclipse, so NASA's geologist Noah Petro tried talking them into it:
You'd be missing out on a really awesome experience! Solar eclipses are rare enough that you really shouldn't pass up the chance to see it, if you can! The next total eclipse in the US will be 2024, but it won't be in Oregon.
5. Does NASA have advice for my eclipse wedding?
Some couples have come up with the fun idea that the spectacle of an eclipse would make a great backdrop for a wedding. So naturally, one of these 'eclipse brides' sought input on her big day from NASA scientists.
"Don't lock your knees, drink lots of water, make sure you get some appetizers, have fun, and congratulations! Make sure you and your guests have eclipse glasses," replied Noah Petro.
Solid advice for any event, really.
6. How long before we don't have any more eclipses?
For as long as humans have occupied our planet we've had the spectacle of eclipses (with the earliest eclipse confirmed in 3340BC), but this celestial arrangement is not always going to stick around - some Reddit users aware of this wanted to know how long we have until the Moon recedes too far.
Turns out we have plenty of time to still experience some more totalities - about 600 million years to be precise, according to solar scientist Mitzi Adams.
7. Can I use this to convince my flat earther friend?
Reddit user mistaotoo wanted to know if there would be "any physical proof during the eclipse" that could change the mind of their friend who is into flat Earth theories.
And we just love this answer by NASA's Jay Herman:
Of course the earth is flat. Otherwise you would fall off. We are working on the problem of where the sun goes every day when it sets over a flat earth. So far, we have not seen clouds of steam when it hits the ocean.
But, as Bill Cooke pointed out, there's not much you can do if a flat earther already doesn't accept all those views of Earth we have from space. Sigh.
Bonus: Just sometimes, the best questions are actually comments, like this one:
I just want to thank you and all your coworkers for ensuring the human race never stops learning and exploring, you scientists should be the real super stars.
We totally agree. Thank you very much, NASA!
You can check out the rest of the AMA and some of the more serious scientific answers here.
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7 of The Wackiest Questions NASA Has Been Asked About The Total Solar Eclipse - ScienceAlert
9-year-old NASA applicant gets planetarium job offer – CNET
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
As the job offers begin to flow, where on Earth will our young Mr. Davis land?
When one spaceship door closes, another opens wide.
Many were moved when 9-year-old Jack Davis wrote to NASA to explain that, as a Guardian of the Galaxy, he was the perfect candidate to be the space agency's new planetary protection officer.
This is a job that involves protecting our Earth against alien microbes and protecting aliens from, well, our general incompetence.
NASA decided Jack wasn't (yet) the perfect candidate as, well, he's 9, you know.
However, in has stepped the (PR department of the) Liberty Science Center near Manhattan. In a YouTube message to the little guardian, Paul Hoffman, CEO of the nonprofit, told Jack he could work at the center's planetarium right now.
Well, when he says right now, he means when it opens sometime later this year. It will be the largest planetarium in the western hemisphere, says the LSC, and Hoffman wants Jack to be its official kid science advisor.
"Give me a call and we can work this out," Hoffman says in the video.
The science center has also sent Jack a letter and is waiting for his response.
My attempts to reach Jack were unsuccessful. As a Guardian of the Galaxy, he's likely quite busy. Moreover, he's already admitted that his sister thinks he's an alien, so he could be anywhere.
Still, Jack lives in New Jersey and the Science Center is in Jersey City, so he'd have a short commute.
My one concern, if I were his agent, would be whether the science center would match the six figure salary offered by NASA for the planetary protection officer job. So I asked.
"We are not offering a salary," a science center spokeswoman told me, adding that the LSC "would love to have him as a kid advisor, until he heads off to NASA in many years!" The canny spokeswoman said the center hasn't yet heard from Jack.
Drive a hard bargain, Jack. You don't want to let those earthlings take advantage of you.
Crowd Control: A crowdsourced science fiction novel written by CNET readers.
Tech Culture: From film and television to social media and games, here's your place for the lighter side of tech.
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NASA Debunks Perseid Meteor Shower Rumor – Space.com
There is a striking misconception going around that the 2017 Perseid meteor shower will be the "brightest shower in recorded human history" and even visible during the day.
This rumor is not true, according to NASA.
Long-awaited celestial events, such as the annual Perseid meteor shower on Aug. 12 or the total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, create a lot of excitement. However, many rumors about these events get blown out of proportion, as is the case with this year's Perseids, NASA said. [Top 10 Perseid Meteor Shower Facts]
"For one thing, the Perseids never reach storm levels (thousands of meteors per hour). At best, they outburst from a normal rate [of] between 80-100 meteors per hour to a few hundred per hour," Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center,said in a statement. "The best Perseid performance of which we are aware occurred back in 1993, when the peak Perseid rate topped 300 meteors per hour.Last year also saw an outburstof just over 200 meteors per hour."
The Perseid meteor shower happens every August, as the Earth passes through debrisleft behind from Comet Swift-Tuttle. This year's Perseids will peak on Aug. 12, when Earth encounters the densest area of the comet's dusty trail. Astronomers expect rates of about 150 meteors an hour, according to the statement.
A meteor streaks across the sky in this 30-second exposure from the Perseid meteor shower on Aug. 13, 2015, in Spruce Knob, West Virginia.
However, it will be a little harder to see the Perseids this year, Cooke said. Shortly before the shower peaks overnight, the full moon will be three-quarters full, meaning its bright light will wash out many of the fainter meteors.
"A meteor every couple of minutes is good and certainly [makes it] worth going outside to look, but it is hardly the 'brightest shower in human history,'" Cooke said. "The Leonid meteor storms of the late 1990s and early 2000s were much more spectacular and had rates 10 times greater than the best Perseid display."
The Perseid meteor shower is one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year, occurring in early August. How much do you know about the celestial light show?
0 of 10 questions complete
Perseid Meteor Shower Quiz: Test Your Cosmic Fireworks Smarts
The Perseid meteor shower is one of the most spectacular meteor showers of the year, occurring in early August. How much do you know about the celestial light show?
The Leonid meteor shower on Nov. 12, 1833, had tens of thousands possibly even 100,000 meteors per hour (or 20 to 30 meteors per second). For comparison, a Perseid meteor shower has about one meteor per minute under ideal conditions, according to the statement.
"The 1833 storm had a profound effect on those that witnessed it; it also gave birth to modern meteor science. Those of us who study meteors dream of such a display happening sometime within our lifetimes," Cooke said. "But it won't be caused by this year's Perseids."
Follow Samantha Mathewson @Sam_Ashley13. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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NASA airborne mission returns to Africa to study smoke, clouds – Phys.Org
August 10, 2017 by Ellen Gray NASA's P-3 aircraft is prepared for departure from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia early in the morning Aug. 1 to support the agency's Observations of Aerosols above Clouds and their interactions or ORACLES mission. A five-year investigation, ORACLES is examining the impact aerosols from biomass burning in southern Africa has on climate as it mixes with clouds over the southeast Atlantic Ocean. The 2017 flight campaign, which runs through August, will base from So Tom, Africa. Credit: NASA/Patrick Black
NASA's P-3 research plane begins flights this month through both clouds and smoke over the South Atlantic Ocean to understand how tiny airborne particles called aerosols change the properties of clouds and how they influence the amount of incoming sunlight the clouds reflect or absorb.
The Observations of Aerosols above Clouds and their Interactions, or ORACLES, field mission is carrying out the month-long field campaign from So Tom and Princip, an island nation off the west coast of Africa. From there researchers will investigate an area off the coast of Angola, where two phenomena meet. One is natural: a low-lying cloud bank that naturally forms over the ocean. The other is at least partly human-made: a plume of smoke from seasonal fires set on agricultural fields across central Africa.
The short lifetime of aerosols in the atmosphere make them among the most variable components of Earth's climate system. An umbrella term for any small particle suspended in the atmosphere, aerosols can be either light or dark, reflective or absorbent of sunlight, and can enhance or suppress the formation of cloud droplets. They can be natural, like desert dust, sea salt or pollen. They can also result from human activities, such as sulfate particles which form from the oxidation of sulfur dioxide emitted from power plants, or, as is the case in Central Africa, soot and ash from human-made fires.
"Imagine a plume of smoke," said ORACLES Principal Investigator Jens Redemann of NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "If you see it over the contrast of a dark ocean, it looks lighter, which means the aerosols making up the smoke would have a cooling effect at the top of the atmospherethey reflect more radiation."
In contrast, "if you look at those aerosol particles over a cloud deck, they make the clouds appear darker sometimes, and that would have a warming effect at the top of the atmosphere," he said.
The sheer variety of aerosol particle types and the fact that they stay in the atmosphere for just days to weeks, compared to years spent by greenhouse gases, means they are among the most challenging to understand and incorporate into climate models, said Redemann, which is why the data collected from the P-3 aircraft measurements of aerosols and clouds are so important.
"Ideally, we're going to create a data set climate modelers can use to test their parameterization of these cloud-aerosol interactions," said Redemann. "So ten years from now, someone can go back and say, 'OK, I wonder if these guys collected data on mechanisms A, B, C and I can use that to get the mechanisms correct in my model.'"
One of those climate modelers is Susanne Bauer at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, who is also a member of the ORACLES science team.
"In order to develop climate models, we have to consider microphysical processes, such as how a cloud droplet gets formed and how such droplets and physical conditions inside and outside of a cloud are changed by the presence of aerosols," she said. "These can only be measured in the field."
Those microscopic interactions between particles and droplets have multiple effects. In addition to direct effects like absorbing or reflecting sunlight, Bauer said, "they can change how much sunlight a cloud reflects back to space and the lifetime of a cloud. Possibly they can influence if it's raining or if a cloud will start to drizzle." Understanding these small-scale processes is crucial to gaining knowledge about how human-made pollution is changing the climate globally via cloud effects.
NASA's P-3 research aircraft, managed at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, is outfitted with a suite of instruments to directly measure these and other properties from air drawn into the plane through inlets on the sides and wings. Each instrument is operated by small groups of scientists who make up the ORACLES research team.
"The work we do can only be done by a large, dedicated team," said Bernadette Squire Luna, ORACLES project manager at Ames, who manages the logistics for the nearly one hundred scientists who will be rotating through So Tom in August. "We have scientists from five NASA centers, ten universities and two national labs, as well as new international partnerships."
The August 2017 deployment is the second of three annual deployments designed to capture different parts of the agricultural fire season each year.
Explore further: NASA flies to Africa to study climate effects of smoke on clouds
NASA scientists and two research aircraft are on their way to a unique natural laboratory off the Atlantic coast of southwest Africa to study a major unknown in future climate prediction.
How the properties of clouds change in response to local pollution - mainly from coal burning and ship engines - has been more accurately determined.
A spectacular six-month Icelandic lava field eruption could provide the crucial key for scientists to unlock the role aerosols play in climate change, through their interactions with clouds.
A scientist at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science is leading an upcoming international research campaign to study a significant contributor to regional climate warming - smoke. ...
Clouds can be observed from the International Space Station moving across Earth's surface, as in this image of New Zealand taken by Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti. Other tiny solid and liquid particles ...
(Phys.org) Aerosols, tiny particles in the atmosphere, play a significant role in Earth's climate, scattering and absorbing incoming sunlight and affecting the formation and properties of clouds. Currently, the effect ...
It is "extremely unlikely" 2014, 2015 and 2016 would have been the warmest consecutive years on record without the influence of human-caused climate change, according to the authors of a new study.
Efforts by farmers to reduce the amount of fertilizer that reaches drinking water sources can take years to have a positive impact, according to a new study from the University of Waterloo.
Despite repeated promises over the past 18 years, the US Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) is unlikely to deliver on its mission to develop and demonstrate an advanced nuclear reactor by the mid-21st century.
A loss of oxygen in global ocean seawater 94 million years ago led to a mass extinction of marine life that lasted for roughly half a million years.
Drought-stricken areas anxiously await the arrival of rain. Full recovery of the ecosystem, however, can extend long past the first rain drops on thirsty ground.
The disposal of wastewater from oil and gas production by injecting it deep into the ground has been linked to a dramatic increase in earthquake activity in Oklahoma since 2009. Injection rates have declined recently because ...
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NASA airborne mission returns to Africa to study smoke, clouds - Phys.Org
It’s No Joke. NASA Needs Someone to Stop Us Polluting Outer Space – Newsweek
Last week it was reported that on August 14 NASA will begin accepting applications to become its new Planetary Protection Officer.
The job post, which notes a cushy six-figure salary, immediately kicked off a spate of sensational headlines, though the positions actual responsibilities mostly consist of preventing the transfer of microorganisms from Earth to other planets and vice versa to prevent biological contamination during space missions.
For some, the discovery that, rather than activating cosmic shields to defend against alien invasions, the Planetary Protection Officer will more likely be focusing on keeping spacecrafts spotlessly clean, might seem disappointing. Its actually refreshing.
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In an article in New York magazine, The Uninhabitable Earth, journalist David Wallace-Wells prophesizes a litany of potential global warming disasters, including lethal heat waves, global drought, and perpetual war.
Other oft-predicted doomsday scenarios have involved nuclear holocausts, genetically-engineered diseases and, in a particularly sci-fi-oriented example, machine uprisings.
What all of the above scenarios have in common is their roots in human innovation and adventurism.
American astronaut Joseph Tanner during a space walk as part of the STS-115 mission to the International Space Station, September 2006. NASA
Indeed, while our species may not actually bring about the Apocalypse, its hard to claim humanitys ambition has ever been tempered by an abundance of caution.
From land explorations to military conflicts to science and technology, our history has generally been long on hubris and short on humility. In some cases, the dangers were not even foreseeable.
Could the pioneering inventors and engineers of the Industrial Revolution, for instance, ever have imagined the potentially catastrophic effects that oil, coal and gasoline would have on the environment?
Today, as we continue to make ever greater strides in technological innovation, even some prominent tech leaders have expressed reservations. Teslas Elon Musk, for example, has repeatedly warned of the existential threat posed by artificial intelligence, likening A.I. to a demon being summoned by a guy with a pentagram who inevitably wont be able to control it.
In Silicon Valley, his concerns have mostly fallen on deaf ears, though the notion that our technology is outpacing our abilities to contend with it is hardly new. Biologist E.O. Wilson perhaps put it best when he described the essential human problem as follows: W e have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.
Meanwhile, Musks anxieties have fueled his mission to colonize Mars via his aerospace corporation, SpaceX, in the hopes that humanity may eventually become, in his words, a multi-planetary species.
Stephen Hawking, fearful Earth is on its way to becoming uninhabitable, also urges space colonization as a means for long-term survival. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, on the other hand, is confident this planet will always remain our home, but is convinced that colonizing space (including the moon) will enable our continued existence here. He aims for his own spaceflight company, Blue Origin, to be part of that process.
If a new Space Age is indeed upon us, it is essential that this new frontier be one area in which human beings know our proverbial place.
In this context, NASAs Planetary Protection Officer emerges as an unlikely hero and an important example for private spaceflight companies like Musks and Bezoss to follow.
In contrast to the fifteenth century European colonialists who visited disease and destruction upon the Americas, NASAs Planetary Protection Officer represents a careful and considerate explorer, intrepid in all the right ways, for all the right reasons.
Of course it can be argued that protecting planets from microscopic organisms is trivial stuff in comparison to close encounters with intelligent extraterrestrial beings. That is correct, and precisely what makes the task so important. It is undoubtedly in the care and concern over the minutia of interplanetary exploration that we set the tone for the entire enterprise.
Our relationship to space is unpredictable and still in its infancy, and an emphasis on responsibility, especially at this stage, is paramount. In that light, the Planetary Protection Officer is no less important than the title implies.
This summer saw the fourth hottest June in record-keeping history. In mid-July, an iceberg the size of Delaware broke off from Antarctica.
If, as many people fear, weve already damaged this world irrecoverably, its not too late to be more responsible with others.
Joseph Helmreich is the author of The Return (St. Martins Press, 2017), a science fiction novel about interplanetary conflict.
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It's No Joke. NASA Needs Someone to Stop Us Polluting Outer Space - Newsweek
NASA Explores potential of altered realities for space engineering and science – Phys.Org
August 10, 2017 by Lori Keesey Using headgear and handsets, users can assemble a spacecraft in a new virtual-reality application now being developed with NASA R&D funding. Credit: NASA
Virtual and augmented reality are transforming the multi-billion-dollar gaming industry. A team of NASA technologists now is investigating how this immersive technology could profit agency engineers and scientists, particularly in the design and construction of spacecraft and the interpretation of scientific data.
Thomas Grubb, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is leading a team of center technical experts and university students to develop six multidisciplinary pilot projects highlighting the potential of virtual and augmented reality, also known as VR and AR. These pilots showcase current capabilities in engineering operations and science, but also provide a glimpse into how technologists could use the technology in the future.
"Anyone who followed the popularity of Pokmon Go has seen how the public has embraced this technology," said Grubb, referring to the augmented-reality game that quickly became a global sensation in 2016. "Just as it's changing the gaming industry, it will change the way we do our jobs," Grubb added. "Five years from now, it's going to be amazing."
To understand the potential, Grubb, whose project is funded by NASA's Center Innovation Fund, said people need to understand the technology's differences and how it has evolved.
Virtual reality typically involves wearing a headset that allows the user to experience and interact with an artificial, computer-generated reality. By combining computer-generated 3-D graphics and coded behaviorsthat is, how the app will respond when the user chooses an actionthese simulations can be used for design and analysis, entertainment, and training. They allow the user to feel like he or she is experiencing the situation firsthand.
Augmented reality, on the other hand, doesn't move the user to a different place, but adds something to it. As with Pokmon Go, augmented reality is made possible through low-end devices like smartphones and high-end AR headsets that blend digital components into the real world. In other words, with virtual reality, the user swims with the sharks; with augmented reality, the shark pops out of the user's cellphone.
Although the computer-generated technology can trace its heritage to the 1980s with the advent electronic-gaming devices, it has advanced rapidly over the past 15 years, largely because of sophisticated computer technologies that render more realistic 3-D experiences and the decline in prices for headsets, handheld devices, and other gear.
"For several years, commercial VR and AR technology has been showing promise, but without real tangible results," said Ted Swanson, senior technologist for strategic integration for Goddard's Office of the Chief Technologist. "However, recently there have been substantial developments in VR/AR hardware and software that may allow us to use this technology for scientific and engineering applications."
The aim isn't to reinvent the hardware and software developed by technology companies, but to be a "consumer of the products and create NASA-oriented applications," he said.
The pilots, which involve students from the University of Maryland, College Park, and Bowie State University, also in Maryland, are as diverse as the specialties in which NASA excels, Swanson said.
Under one, Grubb and his university collaborators are creating a collaborative virtual-reality environment where users don headgear and use hand controls to design, assemble, and interact with spacecraft using pre-defined, off-the-shelf parts and virtual tools, such as wrenches and screwdrivers. "The collaborative capability is a major feature in VR," Grubb said. "Even though they may work at locations hundreds of miles apart, engineers could work together to build and evaluate designs in real-time due to the shared virtual environment. Problems could be found earlier, which would save NASA time and money."
In other engineering-related apps, the team has created a 3-D simulation of Goddard's thermal-vacuum chamber to help engineers determine whether all spacecraft components would fit inside the facility before testing begins. In another involving on-orbit robotic servicing, the augmented app combines camera views and telemetry data in one locationan important capability for technicians who operate robotic arms such as the one on the International Space Station. All information is within the operator's field of view, alerting them to potential problems before they happen.
Just as important is applying the technology to scientific analysis, Grubb said.
The team has applied digital elevation maps and lidar data to create a 3-D simulation of terrestrial lava flows and tubes. The goal is to develop a proof-of-concept app that would allow scientists to compare remotely collected data with what they observe in the field. In another, the team is creating a 3-D visualization of space around the sun for mission planning. This simulation involves a constellation of CubeSats surrounding the sun to investigate the structure of the solar atmosphere, including the formation of coronal mass ejections that, when intense and traveling in the right direction, can affect low-Earth-orbiting spacecraft and power grids.
And last, the team is creating a virtual-reality environment where users can explore and visualize topographical features of Earth's protective magnetosphere. This app allows users to study magnetic reconnection sites, which are difficult to interpret without observations from more than one vantage point, Grubb said.
"I'm a gamer, but I see the potential for engineering and science applications," Grubb said. "We're in the early stages, but I believe this technology will transform how we work here. It will enhance engineering and give scientists a unique perspective of data."
Explore further: Microsoft aims at 'mixed reality' with new devices
Microsoft on Thursday debuted hardware for reaching into virtual worlds powered by its technology as it looked to "mixed reality" as the next big computing platform.
Apple has bought a company that makes augmented-reality software, which adds information or images to real-world scenes when viewed through a special headset or even a smartphone camera.
Augmented reality is seeing strong gains among Americans thanks to social networks like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook, a market research firm said Monday.
Imverse, an EPFL spinoff, has developed a software that lets users convert 360-degree images from 2-D into 3-D and both manipulate and create virtual-reality content in real time with the help of virtual-reality glasses. ...
Facebook on Tuesday launched a mission to make smartphone cameras windows to augmented reality, focusing on what people have in hand instead of waiting for high-tech eyewear.
Apple has a team secretly working on virtual and augmented reality gear in a budding challenge to Facebook-owned Oculus Rift and Microsoft HoloLens, the Financial Times reported on Friday.
An asteroid the size of a house will shave past Earth at a distance of some 44,000 kilometres (27,300 miles) in October, inside the Moon's orbit, astronomers said Thursday.
(Phys.org)An international team of astronomers has discovered a Jupiter-mass alien world circling a giant star known as HD 208897. The newly detected exoplanet was found as a result of high-precision radial velocity measurements. ...
NASA's Cassini spacecraft will enter new territory in its final mission phase, the Grand Finale, as it prepares to embark on a set of ultra-close passes through Saturn's upper atmosphere with its final five orbits around ...
A bright Moon will outshine the annual Perseids meteor shower, which will peak Saturday with only a fifth the usual number of shooting stars visible to Earthlings, astronomers say.
Scientists have discovered why heavyweight galaxies living in a dense crowd of galaxies tend to spin more slowly than their lighter neighbours.
New evidence from ancient lunar rocks suggests that an active dynamo once churned within the molten metallic core of the moon, generating a magnetic field that lasted at least 1 billion years longer than previously thought. ...
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NASA Explores potential of altered realities for space engineering and science - Phys.Org
First Time Seeing a Total Solar Eclipse? Check Out This Video from NASA – Space.com
In preparation for the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse, NASA released a short video providing a few skywatching tips and a packing list for first-time eclipse viewers.
The total solar eclipse will cross the U.S. from Oregon to South Carolina along a stretch of land about 70 miles (113 kilometers) wide. Viewers inside the path of totality will experience up to 2 minutes and 40 seconds of darkness as the moon moves between the Earth and sun. Viewers in the U.S. who are outside of the path of totality will still experience a partial eclipse.
If you're planning to travel to see the total solar eclipse, you likely have your hotel booked and a prime viewing spot staked out. Leading up to the day of the eclipse, you may want to visit your viewing spot to make sure there are no trees or buildings that will obstruct your view of the total or partial solar eclipse. Here are some additional tips from NASA to help you make the most of eclipse day. [Solar Eclipse Glasses: Where to Buy the Best, High-Quality Eyewear]
Make sure you have a pair of safety-rated eclipse glasses. Although it is safe to look up at a total solar eclipse (when the solar disk is completely covered by the moon) with the naked eye, you'll need special solar-viewing glasses before and after totality, when part of the solar disk is visible. [The Best ISO-Certified Gear to See the 2017 Solar Eclipse]
Totality will last less than 3 minutes, so you will also want to "have your safe solar-viewing glasses within immediate reach in your pocket or around your neck, for quick eye protection, before and after totality," Jane Houston Jones, an outreach specialist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California,said in the video.
NASA has some tips for people who plan on observing the total or partial solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017.
"Just before totality if you have a good view of the horizon look west for the approaching shadow," Jones said in the video. "After totality, look east, low on the horizon, for the departing shadow."
If it happens to be overcast on the day of the eclipse, NASA recommends "looking up at the bottoms of the clouds" to see the moon's shadow, according to the video. Before and after totality, you may also see moving waves of light called shadow bands.
During totality, you can also look for stars and planets that are visible in the sky when the moon moves in front of the sun and blots out most of the star's bright light.
If you're interested in doing a little bit of science during the eclipse, the NASA video recommends packing a notebook, a pen or pencil, a clock and stopwatch, the front page of a newspaper, a thermometer, and a stick with a piece of crepe paper attached.
Using the newspaper, skywatchers can test their night vision and try to read the fine print as the moon casts a long, dark shadow on Earth during totality.
In addition to darkening skies, a total solar eclipse also causes temperatures to drop rapidly as daylight turns to twilight. Before totality, record the daytime temperature in your notebook and then use the thermometer you brought along with you to see how low temperatures get during the eclipse. The stick with crepe paper attached will allow you to observe differences in wind patterns before, during and after the eclipse. Also, listen carefully for changes in bird and animal behavior.
Skywatchers are encouraged to download and practice using a citizen science app, such as the NASA-funded Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) app. Using the GLOBE Observer app, skywatchers can record cloud cover and air and surface temperatures during the eclipse.
Lastly, in lieu of solar eclipse glasses, you can make a pinhole projector to view the partial phases of the total solar eclipse safely. You can use your hands or any other item with one or more small holes to see the projected crescent shape of the sun.
Editor's note:Space.com has teamed up with Simulation Curriculum to offerthis awesome Eclipse Safari appto help you enjoy your eclipse experience. The free app isavailable for AppleandAndroid, and you can view iton the web. If you take an amazing photo of the Aug. 21 solar eclipse, let us know! Send photos and comments to:spacephotos@space.com.
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First Time Seeing a Total Solar Eclipse? Check Out This Video from NASA - Space.com
NASA’s scientific balloon program reaches new heights – Phys.Org
August 8, 2017 by Raleigh Mcelvery The Balloon Experimental Twin Telescope for Infrared Interferometer (BETTII) ascending into the upper atmosphere. The experiment was severely damaged on June 9, when the payload detached from its parachute and fell. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab/Michael Lentz
For decades, NASA has released enormous scientific balloons into Earth's atmosphere, miles above the altitude of commercial flights. The Balloon Program is currently preparing new missions bearing sensitive instruments, including one designed to investigate the birth of our universe and another with ballooning origins that will fly on the International Space Station.
NASA's Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER), which will launch a series of test flights over the next few years, could confirm the theory that our nascent universe expanded by a trillion trillion (1024) times immediately following the big bang. This rapid inflation would have shaken the fabric of space-time, generating ripples called gravitational waves. These waves, in turn, should have produced detectable distortions in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the earliest light in the universe lengthened into microwaves today by cosmic expansion. The patterns will appear in measurements of how the CMB light is organized, a property called polarization. Discovering twisting, pinwheel-like polarization patterns in the CMB will prove inflation occurred and take astrophysicists back to the brink of the big bang.
While Albert Einstein's theories accurately describe gravity in today's dilated cosmos, these large-scale physical laws did not apply when our universe was still the size of a hydrogen atom. To reconcile this disparity, PIPER will map the entire sky at four different frequencies, differentiating between twisting patterns in the CMB (indicating primordial gravitational waves) and different polarization signals due to interstellar dust. To maintain sensitivity, the telescope will fly immersed in a bucket of liquid helium the size of a hot tub but much coolernearly 457 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (minus 272 degrees Celsius) and close to absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible.
The PIPER mission was designed, built and tested at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the University of British Columbia, Canada, the National Instituteof Standards and Technology at Boulder, Colorado, and Cardiff University in Wales.
"We're hoping to gain insight into our early universe as it expanded from subatomic size to larger than a planet in less than a second," said Goddard's Al Kogut, PIPER's principal investigator. "Understanding inflation also augments our knowledge of high-energy particle physics, where the forces of nature act indistinguishably from one another."
While PIPER prepares to observe roughly 20 miles above Earth, the latest iteration of the Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass (CREAM) experiment is scheduled to launch to the space station in August. Although CREAM was balloon-borne during its six prior missions, the current payload will take the technology past Earth's atmosphere and into space. CREAM will directly sample fast-moving matter from outside the solar system, called cosmic rays, from its new vantage point on the Japanese Experiment Module - Exposed Facility.
Cosmic rays are high-energy particles traveling at near the speed of light that constantly shower Earth. But precisely how they originate and accelerate through space requires more study, as does their abrupt decline at energies higher than 1,000 trillion electron volts. These particles have been boosted to more than 100 times the energy achievable by the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
CREAMabout the size of a refrigeratorwill carry refurbished versions of the silicon charge detectors and ionization calorimeter from the previous balloon missions over Antarctica. The orbital edition of CREAM will contain two new instruments: the top/bottom counting detectors, contributed by Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea, and a boronated scintillator detector to distinguish electrons from protons, constructed by a team from Goddard, Pennsylvania State University in University Park and Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights.
The international collaboration, led by physicist Eun-Suk Seo at the University of Maryland, College Park, includes teams from numerous institutions in the United States as well as collaborating institutions in the Republic of Korea, Mexico and France. Overall management and integration of the experiment was led by NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore under the direction of Linda Thompson, the CREAM Project Manager.
According to co-investigator Jason Link, a University of Maryland, Baltimore Countyresearch scientist working at Goddard, CREAM's evolution demonstrates the power of NASA's Balloon Program as a developmental test bed for space instrumentation.
"A balloon mission can go from an idea in a scientist's head to a flying payload in about five years," Link said. "In fact, many scientists who design experiments for space missions get their start in ballooning. It's a powerful training ground for researchers and engineers."
As is true with any complex mission, things don't always go as planned. Such was the case for the Balloon Experimental Twin Telescope for Infrared Interferometer (BETTII) experiment, intended to investigate cold objects emitting light in the far-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
BETTII launched on June 8 from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas. Although nearly all the mission components functioned as they should, the payload detached from its parachute and fell 130,000 feet in 12 minutes as the flight ended the following day.
BETTII Principal Investigator Stephen Rinehart at Goddard estimates it will take several years to secure funding and rebuild the mission.
Designed, assembled and tested at Goddard in collaboration with the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, Cardiff University, University College London and the Far-Infrared Interferometric Telescope Experiment team in Japan, BETTII is designed to examine lower infrared frequencies with unprecedented resolution. While optical telescopes like Hubble cannot see stars shrouded by thick dust clouds, far-infrared observations pierce the veil, revealing how these objects form and evolve.
"BETTII is one of the more complex balloon experiments ever flown," Rinehart said. "As a research community, we understand that this risk is necessary for the scientific and technical progress we make with balloons."
After all, just as risk and failure go hand in hand, so do risk and reward.
Explore further: NASA team set to fly balloon mission seeking evidence of cosmological inflation
Now that scientists have confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, a NASA team is set to search for a predicted signature of primordial gravitational waves that would prove the infant universe expanded far faster than ...
If scientists prove or even disprove the theory of cosmological inflation with NASA's Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer, or PIPER, it will be a milestone achievement for three pioneering NASA-developed technologies.
Flying near the edge of space, a NASA scientific balloon broke the flight record for duration and distance. It soared for nearly 42 days, making three orbits around the South Pole. The record-breaking balloon, almost as ...
(PhysOrg.com) -- Sophisticated new technologies created by NASA and university scientists are enabling them to build an instrument designed to probe the first moments of the universe's existence.
NASA on April 24 launched a football-stadium-sized, super-pressure balloon on a mission that aims to set a record for flight duration while carrying a telescope that scientists at the University of Chicago and around the ...
It's springtime and the deployed primary mirror of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope looks like a spring flower in full bloom.
After conducting a cosmic inventory of sorts to calculate and categorize stellar-remnant black holes, astronomers from the University of California, Irvine have concluded that there are probably tens of millions of the enigmatic, ...
Studies of molecular clouds have revealed that star formation usually occurs in a two-step process. First, supersonic flows compress the clouds into dense filaments light-years long, after which gravity collapses the densest ...
A group of astronomers led by Javier Lorenzo of the University of Alicante, Spain, has discovered that the binary star system HD 64315 is more complex than previously thought. The new study reveals that HD 64315 contains ...
The five sunshield layers responsible for protecting the optics and instruments of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope are now fully installed.
In our hunt for Earth-like planets and extraterrestrial life, we've found thousands of exoplanets orbiting stars other than our sun. The caveat is that most of these planets have been detected using indirect methods. Similar ...
A NASA mission designed to explore the stars in search of planets outside of our solar system is a step closer to launch, now that its four cameras have been completed by researchers at MIT.
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NASA's scientific balloon program reaches new heights - Phys.Org
NASA plans to beam a tweet into spaceand it’s taking submissions – The Daily Dot
Do alien races use social media? NASA may answer that question by beaming a social media message into the far reaches of space next month.
In honor of the 40th anniversary of Voyager 1, mankinds farthest-reaching spacecraft,NASA invites citizens of Earth to send via social media a short, uplifting #MessageToVoyager and all that lies beyond it. After a voteand input from the Voyager team of courseone special message will be selected for NASA to beam into interstellar space on the 40th anniversary of Voyagers launch, Sept. 5, 2017.
The few rules that NASA has outlined include a 60-character limit, the inclusion of the #MessageToVoyager tag, and submissions must be in by 11:59pm on Aug. 15, 2017. This allows time for the people at NASA to pick their favorites, which will then be put to a public vote to choose the winner.
The Voyager mission is the longest continually operating space mission, not to mention Voyager 1 is the most distant man-made object that exists. The Voyager vessels were the first space crafts ever to identify their own problems and take corrective action, and the Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to ever fly by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
These incredible accomplishments are deserving of commemoration, and the first social media message to be beamed into space is a very 2017 way to do it. NASA has been working to get the word out via its own social media accounts.
There are already a few submissions in, so dont dally too long if you want to be considered. Some are uplifting and profound, and others are, well less so.
Nothing like the promise ofGame of Thrones to encourage a visit from an alien race.
H/TJezebel
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NASA plans to beam a tweet into spaceand it's taking submissions - The Daily Dot
Montana kids build Mars rovers at Canyon Ferry NASA camp – Helena Independent Record
A dozen NASA-sponsored high school sophomores built functional Mars rovers this week near Canyon Ferry Reservoir at a camp for students interested in science, technology, engineering and math careers.
While the robots built by the high-schoolers were much smaller than the one-ton rovers currently cruising around the red planet, they were programmed to drive around, avoid obstacles and snap photos of rock samples.
The three-day camp is a hands-on culmination of an online course run through the University of Washington. This is the first year the Western Aerospace Scholars program was offered to Montana sophomores, Montana Learning Center director Ryan Hannahoe said. Hannahoe, a Clancy Elementary School teacher, has a background in aerospace and helped host and run the camp.
Jasmine Wilkerson, a sophomore from Helena who hopes for a future in medicine, said she was excited to be learning about how great of an impact NASA research has on every aspect of society. She mentioned the super-strong textiles invented as airbag cushions for rovers dropped on the surface of Mars.
The same fabric, which is woven with steel, is now used as body armor for law enforcement officers, Wilkerson said. The taxes and funding that go towards NASA contribute so much more than just putting people in space.
The mini-rovers are built with Legos robotics-focused products, mounted with a smartphone and controlled by programs written by students on a tablet. Once students sat down with their tools and computers, they had the rovers built and programmed to independently operate within an hour.
The attendants of this years program were mainly chosen by science teachers across Montana. In rural places like Montana, young people who are interested in STEM careers can have limited opportunities for advancement within their own school, said Melissa Edwards, who is leading the program in partnership with UW and The Museum of Flight in Seattle.
This is really just a taste of what is ahead for these gifted students, Edwards said. Sophomore participants are automatically eligible for the junior level program, which is more intensive and earns students five college credits from the University of Washington.
The program is totally free to students, but they must work on the online segment throughout the school year. Three Forks sophomore Cora Taylor, tasked with making sure the rovers stay financially solvent, said it takes a special type of student to put in the extracurricular work to succeed.
Its hard to fit in time to write essays and do the math work in addition to school and homework, Taylor said. But I guess thats why we all get along so well here. Were all pretty nerdy.
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Montana kids build Mars rovers at Canyon Ferry NASA camp - Helena Independent Record
NASA wants to hear from smallsat builders interested in hitching rides on SLS – SpaceNews
NASA artist's concept of SLS.
LOGAN, Utah As NASA prepares to launch cubesats on the first Space Launch System flight, the space agency is asking satellite developers to share information on small spacecraft they would like to fly on subsequent missions.
We are seeking your input, said Kimberly Robinson, NASA Marshall Space Flight Centers SLS secondary payloads manager. We want to make flexible options and accommodate the type of cubesats you want to fly in the future.
NASA plans to fly 13 cubesats to gather data on the sun, moon, asteroids and Earth on the first SLS test flight slated for 2019. For the following SLS mission, a test flight of SLS with the Orion crew capsule known as Exploration Mission-2 scheduled to launch in 2022, NASA is redesigning the second stage to loft 105 metric tons into orbit.
That redesigned SLS, known as Block 1B, will include a secondary payload adapter which could house small satellites, ranging from 6u to 27u cubesats. The 2022 SLS flight also might also be able to accommodate ESPA-class payloads, Robinson said, referring to the EELV secondary payload adapter the Air Force designed to fly on United Launch Alliances Atlas 5 and Delta 4 rockets.
Robinson also asked small satellite developers to describe the type of spacecraft they would like to fly on the SLS Europa Clipper mission so her office can make the case to include secondary payloads on the flight. As we get your input, we can advocate for that mass allocation in the future, Robinson said.
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NASA wants to hear from smallsat builders interested in hitching rides on SLS - SpaceNews
NASA program gives students access to astronauts – Phys.org – Phys.Org
August 8, 2017 by Danny Baird A Girl Scout raises a ham radio antenna to the sky in preparation for the ARISS contact. Credit: Girl Scouts of North East Ohio
On June 23, NASA astronaut Jack Fischer spoke with 22 Girl Scouts of North East Ohio, while he was aboard the International Space Station. More than 400 people attended the event, with many more watching live footage online.
Children all over the world can connect with astronauts aboard the space station via Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS), and with the help of volunteer ham operators. ARISS delegates from the United States, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan help connect the world, from Senegal to Cincinnati, with the station. These contacts endeavor to inspire youth worldwide to pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) interests and careers.
"Ham radio was one of the most rewarding things to do on the International Space Station," said NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, a former Girl Scout and Ohioan. "Having that connection with kids on Earth who have worked hard to understand and build HAM radio was priceless. Their excited voices, echoing through equipment they had a hand in building, brought numerous smiles and often tears to my eyes. Afterward, getting the reports on how the kids enjoyed the event, and how amazed that they were that they were talking directly with a space ship, really made me understand how important and how easily we can get kids interested in STEM. ARISS is a great project and we are so happy to be part of it on the International Space Station."
The Girl Scout mission is to build girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place. Williams embodies this tenet. She's lived more than 322 days in space over the course of four expeditions to the ISS, Expeditions 14, 15, 32 and 33. During her stay, she logged more than 50 hours of space walks, ran the first marathon and triathlon in space, and participated in a number of ARISS contacts. She currently trains to fly America's first commercially built spacecraft, the Boeing CST-100 Starliner and the SpaceX Dragon.
The week prior to the contact, Sydney Walter, an 11-year-old Girl Scout, participated in the Girl Scouts of North East Ohio's Space Cadettes program at Camp Timberlane in Lorain County, Ohio. She met with NASA professionals, learned what it's like to float in zero gravity and explored constellations with a Starlab portable planetarium. The ARISS contact rounded off a week of activities devoted to STEM education.
"I really like that NASA can do this for kids at schools and Girl Scouts at camp," said Sydney. "It was a really fun experience and I will never forget it."
Programs like this instill powerful memories that can spark a lifelong passion for STEM. For 10 minutes, with the space station in range of northern Ohio, a field of girls spoke with humans among the stars. Their vests now bear patches honoring that moment in time. Pink and green encircle a yellow tent with the bold gray shadow of the space station above. The patches honor 10 minutes when they were not Girl Scoutsthey were astronauts.
Volunteers from national amateur radio organizations and AMSAT run ARISS events. For more information and to learn how your community can get involved, visit http://www.ariss.org.
Explore further: Space station astronauts ham it up to inspire student scientists
On Thursday, March 10, 2016 astronauts on the International Space Station logged their 1,000th educational contact with the ground. NASA astronaut Tim Kopra answered questions posed by the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium ...
Replay of the docking of the Soyuz MS-05 spacecraft to the International Space Station with ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli, NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik and Roscosmos commander Sergey Ryazansky. The astronauts were launched ...
A group of pupils at a Zagreb high school on Wednesday marked their country's July 1 entry into the European Union by talking to an astronaut at the International Space Station (ISS).
A Soyuz space capsule blasted off Thursday for the International Space Station, carrying an American astronaut making his first space flight and a veteran Russian cosmonaut.
Two US astronauts aboard the International Space Station successfully completed a spacewalk Thursday to make repairs and install new equipment.
President Donald Trump will speak next week to the commander of the orbiting International Space Station.
After conducting a cosmic inventory of sorts to calculate and categorize stellar-remnant black holes, astronomers from the University of California, Irvine have concluded that there are probably tens of millions of the enigmatic, ...
Studies of molecular clouds have revealed that star formation usually occurs in a two-step process. First, supersonic flows compress the clouds into dense filaments light-years long, after which gravity collapses the densest ...
A group of astronomers led by Javier Lorenzo of the University of Alicante, Spain, has discovered that the binary star system HD 64315 is more complex than previously thought. The new study reveals that HD 64315 contains ...
The five sunshield layers responsible for protecting the optics and instruments of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope are now fully installed.
In our hunt for Earth-like planets and extraterrestrial life, we've found thousands of exoplanets orbiting stars other than our sun. The caveat is that most of these planets have been detected using indirect methods. Similar ...
A NASA mission designed to explore the stars in search of planets outside of our solar system is a step closer to launch, now that its four cameras have been completed by researchers at MIT.
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NASA program gives students access to astronauts - Phys.org - Phys.Org
It Took NASA 1 Day to Brilliantly Respond to a 9-Year-Old’s Job Application – Inc.com
NASA made headlines recently when it posted a very interesting job vacancy:
Planetary Protection Officer (PPO).
It seems like a pretty sweet gig, with the PPO responsible to "[lead] planning and coordination of activities related to NASA mission planetary protection needs." This includes making sure that when we humans explore outer space, we don't contaminate other planets or moons--or bring back anything that could contaminate earth. (Starting salary ranges from $124,406 to $187,000 per year, but preferred applicants should hold an advanced science degree and be recognized as a subject matter expert.)
Of course, this type of job is the thing that a kid's dreams are made of. So it was no surprise that NASA soon received the following application from 9-year-old Jack Davis:
CREDIT: Courtesy NASA
Courtesy, NASA
"Dear NASA,
My name is Jack Davis and I would like to apply for the planetary protection officer job. I may be nine but I think I would be fit for the job. One of the reasons is my sister says I am an alien. Also, I have seen almost all the space movies and alien movies I can see. I have also seen the show Marvel Agents of Shield and hope to see the movie Men in Black. I am great at vidieo [sic] games. I am young, so I can learn to think like an alien.
Sincerely, Jack Davis Guardian of the Galaxy Fourth Grade"
NASA could have easily ignored this letter, or simply filed it away and forgotten about it.
They could have, but they didn't.
Not one to let a great opportunity slip away, the space agency took this chance to encourage the young applicant, by means of an official letter:
CREDIT: Courtesy NASA
"Dear Jack,
I hear you are a 'Guardian of the Galaxy' and that you're interested in being a NASA Planetary Protection Officer. That's great!
Our Planetary Protection Officer position is really cool and is very important work. It's about protecting Earth from tiny microbes when we bring back samples from the Moon, asteroids and Mars. It's also about protecting other planets and moons from our germs as we responsibly explore the Solar System.
We are always looking for bright future scientists and engineers to help us, so I hope you will study hard and do well in school. We hope to see you here at NASA one of these days!
Sincerely, Dr. James L. Green Director, Planetary Science Division"
In addition, a press release from the space administration says the young fourth-grader "also received a phone call from NASA's Planetary Research Director, Jonathan Rall at NASA Headquarters in Washington, to congratulate him on his interest in the position."
"At NASA, we love to teach kids about space and inspire them to be the next generation of explorers," Green said. "Think of it as a gravity assist--a boost that may positively and forever change a person's course in life, and our footprint in the universe."
Before you dismiss this as a simple PR stunt, put yourself in the shoes of that young boy.
How would it affect you to get a response on official NASA letterhead, encouraging you to study hard and do well in school? Imagine then receiving an encouraging phone call from one of the organization's leaders, reinforcing those ideas--along with the hope that you could actually make it to NASA one day.
Scientific research shows that one of the best ways to create positive self-fulfilling prophecies is to identify and nurture potential.
In other words: If you show kids that they're talented, they'll deliver on that promise. If you help them believe they have something to contribute, they will.
Remember: The children are the future. That's not a clich; it's an undeniable truth.
Our job is to inspire the next generation. To care about them, motivate them, and make them believe in themselves.
In order to do that, you have to believe in them, first.
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It Took NASA 1 Day to Brilliantly Respond to a 9-Year-Old's Job Application - Inc.com
NASA Voyager Probes Still Going Strong After 40 Years – Futurism
Milestone Missions
Forty years ago, theVoyager 1and2missions began their journey from Earth to become the farthest-reaching missions in history. In the course of their missions, the two probes spent the next two decades sailing past the gas giants ofJupiterandSaturn. And whileVoyager 1then ventured into the outer Solar System,Voyager 2swung byUranusandNeptune, becoming the first and only probe in history to explore these worlds.
This summer, the probes will be marking thefortieth anniversaryof their launch on September 5th and August 20th, respectively. Despite having traveled for so long and reaching such considerable distances from Earth, the probes are still in contact with NASA and sending back valuable data. So in addition to being the most distant missions from Earth, they are the longest-running mission in history.
In addition to their distance and longevity, theVoyagerspacecraft have also set numerous other records for robotic space missions. For example,in 2012, theVoyager 1probe became the first and only spacecraft to have entered interstellar space.Voyage 2, meanwhile, is the only probe that has explored all four of the Solar Systems gas/ice giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Their discoveries also include the first active volcanoes beyond Earth on Jupiters moonIo the first evidence of a possible subsurface ocean onEuropa, the dense atmosphere aroundTitan(the only body beyond Earth with a dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere), the craggy surface of Uranus Frankenstein Moon Miranda, and the ice plume geysers of Neptunes largest moon,Triton.
These accomplishments have had immeasurable benefits for planetary science, astronomy and space exploration. Theyve also paved the way for future missions, such as theGalileoandJunoprobes, theCassini-Huygensmission, and theNew Horizonsspacecraft. As Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASAs Science Mission Directorate (SMD), said in a recent press statement:
I believe that few missions can ever match the achievements of the Voyager spacecraft during their four decades of exploration. They have educated us to the unknown wonders of the universe and truly inspired humanity to continue to explore our solar system and beyond.
But what is perhaps most memorable about the Voyager missions is the special cargo they carry. Each spacecraft carries what is known as theGolden Record, a collection of sounds, pictures and messages that tell of Earth, human history and culture. These records were intended to serve as a sort of time capsule and/or message to any civilizations that retrieved them, should they ever be recovered.
As noted, both ships are still in contact with NASA and sending back mission data. TheVoyager 1probe, as of the writing of this article, is about 20.9 billion km (13 billion mi; 140 AU) from Earth. As it travels northward out of the plane of the planets and into interstellar space, the probe continues to send back information about cosmic rays which are about four times as abundant in interstellar space than around Earth.
From this, researchers have learned that the heliosphere the region that contains the Solar Systems planets and solar wind acts as a sort of radiation shield. Much in the say that Earths magnetic field protects us from solar wind (which would otherwise strip away our atmosphere), the heliopause protects the Solar planets from atomic nuclei that travel at close to the speed of light.
Voyager 2, meanwhile, is currently about 17.7 billion km (11 billion mi; 114.3 AU) from Earth. It is traveling south out of the plane of the planets, and is expected to enter interstellar space in a few years. And much likeVoyager 1, it is also studying how the heliosphere interacts with the surroundings interstellar medium, using a suite of instruments that measure charged particles, magnetic fields, radio waves and solar wind plasma.
OnceVoyager 2crosses into interstellar space, both probes will be able to sample the medium from two different locations simultaneously. This is expected to tell us much about the magnetic environment that encapsulates our system, and will perhaps teach us more about the history and formation of the Solar System. On top of that, it will let us know what kinds of hazards a possible interstellar mission will have to contend with.
The fact that the two probes are still active after all this time is nothing short of amazing. As Edward Stone the David Morrisroe Professor of Physics at Caltech, the former VP and Director of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Voyager project scientist said:
None of us knew, when we launched 40 years ago, that anything would still be working, and continuing on this pioneering journey. The most exciting thing they find in the next five years is likely to be something that we didnt know was out there to be discovered.
Keeping the probes going has also been a challenge since the amount of power they generate decreases at a rate of about four watts per year. This has required that engineers learn how to operate the twin spacecraft with ever-decreasing amounts of power, which has forced them to consult documents that are decades old in order to understand the probes software and command functions.
Luckily, it has also given former NASA engineers who worked on theVoyagerprobes the opportunity to offer their experience and expertise. At present, the team that is operating the spacecraft estimate that the probes will run out of power by 2030. However, they will continue to drift along their trajectories long after they do so, traveling at a distance of 48,280 km per hour (30,000 mph), covering a single AU every 126 days.
At this rate, they will be within spitting distance of the nearest star in about 40,000 years, and will have completed an orbit of the Milky Way within 225 million years. So its entirely possible that someday, the Golden Records will find their way to a species capable of understanding what they represent. Then again, they might find their way back to Earth someday, informing our distant, distant relatives about life in the 20th century.
And if the craft avoid any catastrophic collisions and can survive in the interstellar medium of space, it is likely that they will continue to be emissaries for humanity long after humanity is dead. Its good to leave something behind!
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NASA Voyager Probes Still Going Strong After 40 Years - Futurism