Well-known rabbi to speak on mystic spirituality in Ashland

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Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi was in the Jewish Renewal movement

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi is a founder of the Jewish Renewal movement and is leading a series of teachings this weekend at the Havurah in Ashland.

By John Darling

Posted:2:00 AMApril 12, 2013

A prime mover in the founding of the liberal Jewish Renewal movement in the early 1970s, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, 88, will host prayers and teachings today through Sunday at the Havurah Shir Hadash, focusing on a mystic spirituality that is founded in peace, environmentalism and the divine feminine.

The famed author and spiritual leader is now 88 and living in Boulder, Colo., so his trips are few these days, said Havurah Rabbi David Zaslow.

"Reb Zalman blends mystic, Hasidic thought with a modern progressive vision that includes the divine feminine, the living planet and a faith that can touch all religions," Zaslow said.

Schachter-Shalomi has ordained eight rabbis in Oregon, including Zaslow and three others in the Rogue Valley, and has had a big impact on Judaism in the state, Zaslow said.

"Oregon is a place that honors the sea and earth and rivers," Schachter-Shalomi said in a phone interview. "I have a feel for it and they have a feeling for Jewish Renewal. What is it with Oregon and me that so many have felt they should study with me?"

Ashland Rabbi Jacqueline Brodsky, who was ordained by Schachter-Shalomi, said the synergy dates back to the 1960s, when many of young Jews migrated to Ashland and other parts of Oregon.

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Well-known rabbi to speak on mystic spirituality in Ashland

The Earth From Orbit – Satellite and Space Station Views Our Planet | Science Video – Video

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The Earth From Orbit - Satellite and Space Station Views Our Planet | Science Video
Visit my website at http://www.junglejoel.com - some nice views of Earth from space. Please rate and comment, thanks! Credit: NASA.

By: CoconutScienceLab

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The Earth From Orbit - Satellite and Space Station Views Our Planet | Science Video - Video

Russian cargo craft departs International Space Station

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An unpiloted Russian Progress cargo ship departed the International Space Station (ISS) early Monday, clearing the way for Moscow's next space freighter.

The ISS Progress 49 resupply ship undocked from the rear port of the stations Zvezda service module at 8:02 a.m. EDT after more than five months at the orbiting complex.

From a window in the Russian segment of the station, Russian crew members photographed the automated departure as the cargo craft fired its thrusters to move a safe distance away from the complex.

After several days of thruster firings to help calibrate Russian radar systems on the ground, Progress 49 will re-enter Earth's atmosphere on Sunday, April 21 and will burn up over the Pacific Ocean. Progress resupply ships are not designed to be recovered, so, like its predecessors, Progress 49 was filled with trash and station discards after its cargo was unloaded.

Progress 49 delivered nearly three tons of supplies for the station crew when it docked to the station a little less than six hours after launch on Oct. 31. It should be noted that this was the second of three Progress launches in a row that used an abbreviated launch-to-rendezvous schedule instead of following the typical two-day flight profile to reach the station.

Progress 49's departure clears the way for the arrival of the ISS Progress 51 cargo craft. Loaded with more than 3 tons of food, fuel, supplies and experiment hardware for the six crew members aboard the orbital laboratory, Progress 51 is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:12 a.m. (4:12 p.m. Kazakh time) Wednesday, April 24, and dock to the station two days later.

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Russian cargo craft departs International Space Station

Mayor Vincent Gray plans space station simulator for D.C. students

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NASA has stopped sending shuttles into space, but D.C. students soon may get their chance to experience life among the stars.

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray plans to open a space education center, featuring a space station simulator, in the DC Public Schools system, he revealed in his fiscal 2014 budget. Though the so-called Challenger Center for Space Education does not have a designated location, it is expected to include "a two-room simulator that consists of a space station, complete with communications, medical, life and computer science equipment, and a mission control room patterned after NASA's Johnson Space Center and a space lab ready for exploration," according to the budget proposal.

It is expected to cost $1.5 million to design, $1 million of which has already been approved in a previous year's budget. Gray's fiscal 2014 budget proposal includes the remaining $500,000.

The facility would be part of the national Challenger Center for Space Science Education, which oversees a network of centers offering programs in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM. There are 41 centers across the United States, as well as one each in Canada, South Korea and Britain.

Prince George's County Public Schools has operated one of the centers since 1989. The simulator, located at the Howard B. Owens Science Center in Lanham, caters largely to sixth-grade students.

Following the instructions of the teacher -- or "lead flight commander" -- students enter the S.S. Friendship through an airlock door. The students spend two hours performing a variety of experiments -- studying magnetism in rocks, for example, and body weight in zero gravity. While half the class spends an hour in the mock space station, the other half is in mission control, watching the action on Mars via two cameras.

"This is a very good simulation of what it would be like in real life, if they were really in space and really in mission control, which in this case happens to be on Mars," said Russell Waugh, the program's outreach teacher. "This is based on a futuristic style of spacecraft that we're imagining in the year 2076."

Unlike most of the existing centers, the District's "will not only serve D.C. students and teachers, but will also be a national flagship STEM education facility," said Challenger Center spokeswoman Lisa Vernal. "The center will include the next-generation Challenger Learning Center, a model for all of our centers around the globe, and an environment to support workforce development; a state-of-the-art STEM-focused research and development laboratory; and a professional development facility for educators."

Once implemented, DCPS will work to align the program's offerings with science curricula, said DCPS spokeswoman Melissa Salmanowitz, though she said Gray's office is leading the project.

Gray spokesman Pedro Ribeiro said the mayor is excited about the program and directed additional questions to the national program office.

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Mayor Vincent Gray plans space station simulator for D.C. students

Gallery: Behind the scenes at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

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Ars spent the better part of a week at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC)in Huntsville, Alabama, gathering material for our pieces on the Saturn V's F-1 resurrection and testing and the new F-1B rocket engine that's being developed right now. In the process, we got to peek into a number of different areas of MSFC not open to the general public, including manufacturing, training, and operations areas. I took over a thousand photographs over the time I was there, and couldn't resist showing them off. Below are the 40 best images from our tour of Marshall, the birthplace of the Saturn V rocket and the place where NASA's latest launch vehicle is being designed.

A late-afternoon moon peeking over the edge of the engine interface panel on one of Marshall Space Flight Center's outdoor F-1 rockets.

Lee Hutchinson

A late-afternoon moon peeking over the edge of the engine interface panel on one of Marshall Space Flight Center's outdoor F-1 rockets.

Lee Hutchinson

Detail of F-1 engine F-6049. The gas generator from this engine was pulled, reconditioned, and test-fired more than 20 times by the team at MSFC and Dynetics.

Lee Hutchinson

More detail on F-6049. The missing gas generator fits on the upper portion of the rocket. Its cloth-covered attachment points are visible.

Lee Hutchinson

Close detail of the upper nozzle of one of the F-1 engines in storage at MSFC. This portion of the nozzle is constructed of steel tubes brazed together and bound with hoops like a barrel. RP-1 fuel was circulated through the tubes to cool the nozzle.

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Gallery: Behind the scenes at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

NASA provides update on Orion spacecraft

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -

Three years after President Barack Obama directed NASA to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, NASA is making phenomenal progress toward that goal, agency officials said on Monday. Whats more, NASA is thrilled with the prospect of moving up that goal by four years as proposed in the 2014 budget delivered to Congress by the White House last week, officials said.

We have lots of work ahead of us on that challenging and complex mission, said Dan Dumbacher, NASAs deputy associate administrator for exploration system development. But NASA is up to the challenge and the team you see here is ready to take it on.

Local 6 News partner Florida Today reports that Dumbacher and other NASA officials gathered at Kennedy Space Center in the same building where Obama issued the 2025 asteroid challenge three years ago Monday.

KSC Director Robert Cabana, a former astronaut, noted that the building, an empty high bay in April 2010, is now a fully operations production facility for NASAs Orion crew exploration vehicle. Built by Lockheed Martin, the Orion spacecraft will ferry astronauts on missions to asteroids and other destinations beyond Earth orbit.

Obamas 2014 budget includes a proposal to lasso an asteroid with a robotic spacecraft and tow it back to an orbit on the far side of the moon. Astronauts on the first piloted Orion spaceflight in 2021 then would rendezvous with the ancient space rock and return samples to Earth.

The first test flight of an Orion spacecraft is scheduled to launch in September 2014 on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket at Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The spacecraft, which is being assembled in the production facility, will fly loops around Earth at an altitude of 3,600 miles and then reenter the atmosphere at a velocity that will simulate a return from an asteroid, the moon or Mars.

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NASA provides update on Orion spacecraft

NASA's Wallops Island facility in Va. prepares for the spotlight with Antares rocket launch

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WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. - On one of Virginia's small barrier islands, a NASA facility that operates in relative obscurity outside scientific circles is preparing to be thrust into the spotlight.

On Wednesday, Orbital Sciences Corp. plans to conduct the first test launch of its Antares rocket under a NASA program in which private companies deliver supplies to the International Space Station. If all goes as planned, the unmanned rocket's practice payload will be vaulted into orbit from Wallops Island before burning up in the atmosphere on its return to Earth several months later.

The goal of the launch isn't to connect with the space station, but to make sure the rocket works and that a simulated version of a cargo ship that will dock with space station on future launches separates into orbit. Orbital officials say that should occur about 10 minutes after liftoff.

In that short period of time, Wallops Island will transition from a little-known launch pad for small research rockets to a major player in the U.S. space program.

The Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's rural Eastern Shore is small in comparison to major NASA centres like those in Florida, California and Texas. The site is near Maryland and just south of Chincoteague Island, which attracts thousands of tourists each summer for an annual wild pony swim made famous by the 1947 novel "Misty of Chincoteague." The Eastern Shore is dominated by forests and farmland, and Wallops Island's isolated nature, with marshland to its west and the Atlantic Ocean to its east, has also made it home to a Navy surface warfare combat centre.

Those who work at Wallops Island joke that even people living on the Eastern Shore are surprised to learn about rocket launches there.

In fact, more than 16,000 rockets have been launched from Wallops Island since 1945, but none has drawn the attention of Antares. Most of the launches are suborbital and focus on educational and research programs.

"The real transformation here at Wallops is we've always been kind of a research facility," said William Wrobel, the facility's director. "So this transition is really kind of into an operational phase, where we're going to be doing kind of regular flights out of here to the space station."

A successful launch would pave the way for Dulles-based Orbital to demonstrate that it can connect its unmanned Cygnus cargo ship with the space station this summer. If that's successful, Orbital would launch the first of eight resupply missions from the island in the fall under a $1.9 billion NASA contract.

Orbital has been in the commercial space business for more than 30 years, producing small satellites and rockets for NASA and the military. Antares marks the company's first venture in medium-size rockets, which can carry twice as much of a payload as other rockets it produces.

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NASA's Wallops Island facility in Va. prepares for the spotlight with Antares rocket launch

NASA hopes to make water on the moon

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NASA

Not so parched? The dry-looking lunar landscape as seen by the Apollo astronauts.

By Irene KlotzDiscovery News

NASA is developing a lunar rover to find and analyze water and other materials trapped in deep freezes at the moons poles and to demonstrate how water can be made on site.

Slated to fly in November 2017, the mission, called Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction (RESOLVE), will have a week to accomplish its goals.

To stay within a tight $250 million budget cap -- including the rocket ride to the moon -- project managers are planning to use solar energy to power the rovers systems and science instruments. However, sunlight on the places where water and other volatiles may be trapped only occurs for a few days at a time.

NEWS: Probe Finds Moon's Shackleton Crater Pretty Dry

To do a mission of any significance (at the lunar poles) it would take nuclear power, but we dont have that kind of money, said William Larson, a recently retired project manager at NASAs Kennedy Space Center.

Solar-powered missions are more affordable and thats the way were going to try to go, Larson said.

That leaves scientists with along to-do list and a very tight timeline.

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NASA hopes to make water on the moon

NASA Marks Third Anniversary of Obama Support of Space at Kennedy

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA marked the third anniversary Monday of President Obama's speech at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he laid out a plan to ensure the United States will remain the world's leader in space exploration.

Obama's plan includes reaching new destinations, such as an asteroid by 2025 and Mars in the 2030s, using NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft. During an anniversary event at Kennedy's Operations and Checkout Building, where Orion spacecraft is being processed for a 2014 flight test, Kennedy Space Center Director Robert Cabana and human spaceflight officials showcased Orion's crew module.

"Three years ago today, the president was here in an empty high bay challenging us to go to an asteroid by 2025, said Cabana. "Today, this is a world-class production facility with a flight article, a flight vehicle, Orion, getting ready to fly next year. We've made tremendous progress in our transition to the future. And now with the announcement from the budget rollout last week about our plans to retrieve an asteroid and send a crew to it, we're moving forward to meet the president's challenge."

Following the president's 2010 visit to Kennedy, Congress passed the bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2010. The agency continues to implement the ambitious national space exploration plan outlined in the act. It will enable scientific discovery and technological developments for years to come and make critical advances in aerospace and aeronautics to benefit the American people.

"I am very proud of the progress the NASA team has made over the past three years to meet the President's challenge, aligning our capabilities in human spaceflight, technology and science to capture an asteroid, relocate it and send astronauts to explore it," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement. "The president's budget for next year advances a strategic plan for the future that builds on U.S. preeminence in science and technology, improves life on Earth and protects our home planet, while creating well-paying jobs and strengthening the American economy."

The 2014 flight test will be the first launch of Orion. NASA also is progressing toward a launch of Orion on top of the SLS rocket during a 2017 flight test.

SLS is essential to America's future in human spaceflight and scientific exploration of deep space. It will take humans beyond Earth orbit to an asteroid and Mars. Ground systems development and operations to support launches of SLS and Orion from Kennedy also are well into development. The SLS Program is on track to complete the rocket's preliminary design review this summer. The tools needed to build SLS's massive structure and fuel tanks are being installed at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. The process will include one of the largest welding tools ever built.

In addition, the agency is working with the private sector to develop a strong commercial capability to deliver cargo and crew to low-Earth orbit. The Boeing Co. of Houston plans to use a former space shuttle hangar at Kennedy to process its CST-100 vehicle, one of several spacecraft in development for commercial providers to take astronauts to low-Earth orbit from American soil in the next four years.

The agency continues to develop technologies for traveling farther into space, such as solar electric propulsion, which will power a mission to capture an asteroid and return it to an orbit nearer to Earth. Then astronauts will launch from Kennedy aboard an SLS rocket and fly to the asteroid to study it in an Orion spacecraft by as early as 2021.

For more information about NASA's ongoing work in human spaceflight, visit:

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NASA Marks Third Anniversary of Obama Support of Space at Kennedy

NASA-funded asteroid tracking sensor passes key test

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Apr. 15, 2013 An infrared sensor that could improve NASA's future detecting and tracking of asteroids and comets has passed a critical design test.

The test assessed performance of the Near Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) in an environment that mimicked the temperatures and pressures of deep space. NEOCam is the cornerstone instrument for a proposed new space-based asteroid-hunting telescope. Details of the sensor's design and capabilities are published in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Optical Engineering.

The sensor could be a vital component to inform plans for the agency's recently announced initiative to develop the first-ever mission to identify, capture and relocate an asteroid closer to Earth for future exploration by astronauts.

"This sensor represents one of many investments made by NASA's Discovery Program and its Astrophysics Research and Analysis Program in innovative technologies to significantly improve future missions designed to protect Earth from potentially hazardous asteroids," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office in Washington.

Near-Earth objects are asteroids and comets with orbits that come within 28 million miles of Earth's path around the sun. Asteroids do not emit visible light; they reflect it. Depending on how reflective an object is, a small, light-colored space rock can look the same as a big, dark one. As a result, data collected with optical telescopes using visible light can be deceiving.

"Infrared sensors are a powerful tool for discovering, cataloging and understanding the asteroid population," said Amy Mainzer, a co-author of the paper and principal investigator for NASA's NEOWISE mission at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. NEOWISE stands for Near-Earth Object Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer. "When you observe a space rock with infrared, you are seeing its thermal emissions, which can better define the asteroid's size, as well as tell you something about composition."

The NEOCam sensor is designed to be more reliable and significantly lighter in weight for launching aboard space-based telescopes. Once launched, the proposed telescope would be located about four times the distance between Earth and the moon, where NEOCam could observe the comings and goings of NEOs every day without the impediments of cloud cover and daylight.

The sensor is the culmination of almost 10 years of scientific collaboration between JPL; the University of Rochester, which facilitated the test; and Teledyne Imaging Sensors of Camarillo, Calif., which developed the sensor.

"We were delighted to see in this generation of detectors a vast improvement in sensitivity compared with previous generations," said the paper's lead author, Craig McMurtry of the University of Rochester.

NASA's NEOWISE is an enhancement of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, mission that launched in December 2009. WISE scanned the entire celestial sky in infrared light twice. It captured more than 2.7 million images of objects in space, ranging from faraway galaxies to asteroids and comets close to Earth.

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NASA-funded asteroid tracking sensor passes key test

Brother – a Medicine Man / Shaman / Spiritual Healer ASMR improv performance / role play – Video

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Brother - a Medicine Man / Shaman / Spiritual Healer ASMR improv performance / role play
You awake to find yourself in the woods only to be approached by a stranger who some have called a shaman that uses various ASMR techniques to help those on ...

By: EphemeralRift

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Brother - a Medicine Man / Shaman / Spiritual Healer ASMR improv performance / role play - Video