Daily Archives: April 21, 2020

April 16, 2020

Posted: April 16, 2020

Updated: 11:36 PM

KUSI Newsroom

SAN DIEGO (KUSI) NASA astronaut and UC San Diego graduate Jessica Meir is scheduled to return to Earth Thursday evening after 205 days in space.

Meir, along with fellow NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, with whom she servedaboard the International Space Station, will depart the station at 6:53 p.m. Pacific time with a parachute-assisted landing slated for 10:17 p.m. Pacific time in Kazakhstan, according to a NASA statement.

Meirs spaceflight included her participation in the first three all- woman spacewalks along with fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch.

NASA says Meir has made 3,280 orbits of Earth and traveled nearly 87 million miles.

Meir tweeted a few photos Wednesday of various locations across Earth, including a view from space of San Diego, focused on UCSD.

She wrote Yesterday, @Space_Station flew over almost every place Ive ever lived, ranging from Canada to France all within 8 hours. Mother Earths way of calling me home?

Full coverage of the station departure will begin at 3 p.m. Pacific time at https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive, which will feature coverage of the landing beginning at 9 p.m.

Continue reading here:
NASA astronaut, UCSD grad to return to earth from space station - - KUSI

THE coronavirus lockdown has provided the perfect opportunity for stargazers to catch a glimpse of the International Space Station.

The fast-moving ISS orbits the planet 16 times a day at 17,500mph. Plummeting air pollution levels and a lack of planes in the sky have made it easier to spot on a clear night.

Gareth Breen, a map-maker from Covingham, has always had an interest in photography but it took the government restrictions for him to put some effort into his newfound hobby.

He told the Adver: It was basically to stave off boredom a little bit, but Ive always been interested in space observation, the night sky and photography in general.

Ive had a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex camera) for about 10 years and never known how to use it.

With all this extra time weve had its just the perfect opportunity to try something new.

Gareth used information from YouTube and Google to get himself set up and shared some tips with the Adver for those looking to match his amazing results.

He said: I used an app on my phone thats a star chart which you can point at the sky and itll tell you whats there. One app called Heavens Above will show you a live feed of all the satellites and the space station and when itll be overhead and how long for.

So youve then got time to set up your camera.

With the photos themselves, dependent on the light or how dark the sky is, you can set the exposures and the ISO and aperture to allow as much light into the camera as possible so it captures the station going across the sky.

How long you leave the shutter open and how big the aperture is will affect what you see. Its about the amount of time the shutter is open.

Its a lot of trial and error, my wife was quite happy because I was out in the back garden for an hour or two just testing things out.

To find out when the space station will next be over Swindon you visit spotthestation.nasa.gov/home.cfm

View original post here:
Amazing shots of International Space Station over Swindon (and here's when you can see it next) - Swindon Advertiser

Looks like weve got another NASA live stream from the International Space Station (ISS) on our hands possibly revealing yet more clues about UFOs and extraterrestrial life than the government would like us to know.

It happened back in November in what one expert called 100 percent proof that NASA and Russia know aliens visits the International Space Station.

And it occurred again in February with the person in the video sounding dismayed and unprepared for its sudden appearance.

Now, in April, we have yet another NASA video from the ISS in which UFO and alien expert Scott Waring says on his web site while discussing the footage, This UFO looks like a classic disk design. The metallic glint is unmistakable.

It looks to be in lower orbit as the space station passes it in upper orbit. Awesome catch, very rare, but absolutely real.

This is what NASA does not want the public to see, but this UFO was so faint and so small that Im sure they missed it, especially since most NASA is at home on lock down, probably fooling around instead of doing real work.

He is speaking about the second sighting documented on the video below which begins at around the 4:20 mark. He believes the first sighting in the video was not aliens

Two months ago, Waring was watching the NASA live space station cam and captured a 22-minute long video of a UFO sighting near the ISS. In that video, he points out, They [NASA] are as baffled by it as I am. They dont know what it is or why it is there.

He goes on to speculate that with the pandemic spreading like a wildfire out of control, its possible that aliens know what going to happen and they decided abandon the Earth. The virus may be very dangerous to aliens too. If this is true, expect to see a big rise in UFO sightings as they appear from underground bases and leave Earths atmosphere.

We have most certainly seen a big rise in UFO sightings over the past couple of months. No doubt about that. The question is, are the aliens leaving, as he suggests, or are they monitoring their handiwork and reporting back?

Previous news and evidence Mysterious UFO sighting during the day in northern Siberia leaves top Russian scientists baffled Expert claims triangle UFO spotted on an Antarctic Island is 100% proof of ancient aliens Mass UFO sighting in the skies above Detroit and Cleveland on consecutive nights has people shook UFO expert Tom DeLonge shares strange video of a huge fiery orange orb dancing about the sky over California Flurry of UFO sightings, including a Tic Tac spotted by a pilot over Mexico, sparks more speculation Top quantum physicist believes USS Nimitz UFO used metamaterial and time-traveled to reach 19,000 mph Time-lapse video showing mysterious red trails reignites debate about UFOs over North Carolina Former UK Ministry Of Defence UFO investigator says we are completely unprepared for an alien invasion Black Triangle UFO spotted orbiting the sun on NASA video: This is an alien space station UFO sighting is absolute proof a Mexican volcano is being used as a secret alien base of operations Satellite photos spot mysterious objects emerging from top secret Area 51 experimental air base Secret Area 51 tunnel openings discovered on Google Earth, are they UFO hangar entrances? Google Earth shows an example of an alien abduction taking place near Fiji, says UFO expert NASA live cam catches UFO flying near International Space Station on video USS Nimitz technician technician allegedly forced to sign NDA after witnessing Tic-Tac UFO from Navy spy plane Fleet of UFOs hovering over Arizona captured on video Darting UFO recorded on NASA live stream shows proof the International Space Station is being watched Mind-blowing new book puts forth theory that UFOs may actually be crafts piloted by time-traveling humans UFO hunters claim they are behind the unexplained group of Colorado drones, mystery remains unsolved Ominous black ring cloud hovers in the sky above Pakistan Glowing UFO spotted on NASA live stream of the Space Station sparks more claims aliens are real Newly declassified CIA intelligence report reveals new info about 1973 UFO sighting at Site 7 in Russia Navy admits it has additional top secret footage of USS Nimitz UFO encounter but wont release it UFO sighting? Mysterious object leaving a fiery trail in the sky spotted by multiple people in Florida Navy pilot who filmed USS Nimitz UFO encounter breaks his silence after 15 years Tic Tac craft broke laws of physics UFO that nearly hits a SpaceX satellite during live stream is 100% proof aliens are watching, says expert Top researchers claim U.S. military is covering up their own super advanced aircraft by making people believe it is a UFO Mysterious hovering orbs over Mesa have many believing they spotted a glowing UFO UFO seen by 100+ people hovering in the California sky for five minutes sparks alien concerns A stationary UFO recorded in the South Carolina sky sparks secret government surveillance theory Former head of MI6, whos allegedly part of a secret global conspiracy on UFOs, says he believes aliens do exist UFO expert claims ISS video is 100% proof NASA, Russia know aliens visit the space station Bug expert declares there are insects on Mars and then suddenly deletes research after backlash UFO expert claims to have video proof of a fleet of alien spaceships passing by our moon 5 Navy veterans and new anonymous source who witnessed the USS Nimitz UFO incident come forward to reveal what they saw Retired Air Force Major says a space alien was shot and killed at a base in 1978, government covered it up US Navy pilot David Fravor who claims to have witnessed a UFO says the tapes of the encounter have disappeared Eyewitnesses spot identical fleet of UFOs in the sky over Utah and North Carolina in the same day UFO expert says he has 100% proof that aliens currently live in a city on our moon Red triangular craft recorded hovering in the Texas sky is perhaps the clearest UFO footage ever Top Gun Navy pilot describes his incredible UFO encounter on The Joe Rogan Experience A strange fleet of 14 glowing UFOs was spotted and caught on camera off the coast of North Carolina

Read the original:
UFO Spotted On NASA Live Stream Video Outside The International Space Station Is Absolutely Real - BroBible

The International Space Station (ISS) crew members Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir of NASA and Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos are seen inside the Soyuz MS-15 space capsule shortly after the landing in a remote area outside Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan April 17, 2020. three-member crew left the confines of the International Space Station to return to Earth where their home countries grapple with the outbreak of COVID-19. Andrey Shelepin/GCTC/Russian space agency Roscosmos/Handout via REUTERS

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir reacts after landing of the Soyuz MS-15 space capsule in a remote area outside Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan April 17, 2020. They will then head to the recovery staging city in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Andrey Shelepin/GCTC/Russian space agency Roscosmos/Handout via REUTERS

International Space Station (ISS) crew member Oleg Skripochka of Roscosmos gets medical treatment shortly after the landing of the Soyuz MS-15 space capsule in a remote area outside Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan April 17, 2020. Andrey Shelepin/GCTC/Russian space agency Roscosmos/Handout via REUTERS

NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan reacts after landing of the Soyuz MS-15 space capsule in a remote area outside Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan April 17, 2020. Andrey Shelepin/GCTC/Russian space agency Roscosmos/Handout via REUTERS

The Soyuz MS-15 space capsule carrying International Space Station (ISS) crew members NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka descends beneath a parachute before landing in a remote area outside Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan April 17, 2020. Andrey Shelepin/GCTC/Russian space agency Roscosmos/Handout via REUTERS

A search and rescue team works on the site of landing of the Soyuz MS-15 space capsule carrying International Space Station (ISS) crew members NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan and Jessica Meir and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Skripochka, in a remote area outside Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan April 17, 2020. Andrey Shelepin/GCTC/Russian space agency Roscosmos/Handout via REUTERS

Read the original:
Three amember Space Station Crew Return to Earth - En Tempo.co

Last Tuesday, a team of engineers sat huddled around their computer screens, monitoring a spacecraft as it maneuvered around a rocky asteroid more than 140 million miles from Earth. They were conducting an important interplanetary dress rehearsal, running the spacecraft through many of the operations it will do in August when it attempts to snag a tiny sample of rocks from the asteroids surface. This dress rehearsal has been in the works for years, and the team had expected to be gathered together for it in a mission center in Colorado.

Instead, most of them kept tabs on the event from home. It was a skeleton crew that was supporting the event in person, compared to what was originally planned, Mike Moreau, deputy project manager for the mission at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center, tells The Verge. More than three-quarters of the team was doing it from home and monitoring remotely.

Moreau is part of NASAs OSIRIS-REx mission, tasked with grabbing a sample of the asteroid Bennu and bringing it back to Earth for study. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft launched in 2016, and the team had planned for this particular dress rehearsal for more than a decade. They hadnt counted on a pandemic occurring during one of the most highly anticipated checkpoints of their mission but the show had to go on.

We were all going to be there together in the mission operations area, and we actually had rehearsed that even before this checkpoint rehearsal; we had done a simulation, Dante Lauretta, the principal investigator on NASAs OSIRIS-REx mission at the University of Arizona, tells The Verge. None of that happened. We were all in remote work conditions.

Just like millions of workers all over the world, the engineers who operate spacecraft are grappling with how to do their jobs while working from home. All of NASAs centers have instituted mandatory telework policies, with some exceptions for essential personnel. That includes many people who are tasked with calculating commands for interplanetary space probes and navigating rovers through harsh terrains on other worlds.

For some, the transition was awkward at first since operating a spacecraft often relies on ample amounts of in-person communication. Thats been the case for Carrie Bridge, who works as a liaison between scientists and the engineers who operate NASAs Curiosity rover on Mars. Every day, she talks with scientists all over the country about the kind of science theyd like the rover to accomplish, and then she relays those desires to the engineers who actually navigate the robot. Normally, she just walks over to the engineering team at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to coordinate the rovers movements for the day.

My morning consisted of being on the phone with the scientists and then going in and sitting beside the rover planners at the computer, Bridge tells The Verge. And we look at the terrain and look at the targets. I then go and report back to the scientists and say, Okay I think we can drive over here.

Now, that entire routine has been moved online. She says she has about 15 to 20 chat rooms open for all of the engineers and rover planners not to mention telecons with scientists across the country. The level of intensity has gone up because youre kind of always watching things, Bridge says. Im also not exercising anymore, she jokes. I used to walk around, and now Im staring at a computer station for hours on end without moving.

One of the lead rover planners that Bridge communicates with is Matt Gildner, who is also coordinating all the commands for Curiosity from his one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. He and his team started testing how to work remotely back in mid-March when the writing was on the wall about the COVID-19 pandemic, he says. He started coordinating everything theyd need to have at home, including audio headsets, monitors, cables, and even 3D glasses. Curiosity sends back 3D images of the Martian terrain, which the rover planners and engineers observe as 3D meshes, allowing them to simulate how the rover will interact with the environment when it moves.

Im at home now, and I have all my headsets on as I talk to multiple audio channels, put on my red-blue glasses and evaluate parts of a drive that were planning for a few minutes as part of our planning day, Gildner tells The Verge. I have a nice desk set up and Ive got all my houseplants around me, dual monitors, and a good keyboard and mouse headset stand. And this is working out just fine.

Someone does need to physically be at mission control at JPL in order to send Curiosity the commands that Gildner and his team develop. That person sends commands out to the Deep Space Network, an array of large radio antennas here on Earth, which then beam commands to interplanetary space probes like the rover.

Other spacecraft operators have figured out a way to send commands to their spacecraft without actually having anyone in a mission control center. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Utah is responsible for operating two small NASA satellites HARP and CIRiS which are both observing Earth. The team there typically goes into a mission control center to send commands to the spacecraft via a ground station in Virginia. But in a weird twist of fate, operators at the lab came up with a way to actually send the commands from their laptops at home just before everyone went into lockdown.

We were preparing and testing out our working from home techniques right before the pandemic hit, Ryan Martineau, an SDL engineer and spacecraft operator, tells The Verge. We frequently have to operate our spacecraft in the middle of the night, and so we didnt have to have the same two people driving into work every day, we were getting ready to test a secure solution.

Martineau and his colleagues essentially took the software they use at their mission control centers that allows them to connect with the Virginia ground station, and they put it in their local computers. We run a [virtual] Linux machine inside of our Windows laptop that has all the software we need to run the spacecraft, he says. Thanks to this arrangement, Martineau can control the spacecraft around Earth from his home for the foreseeable future. And that means juggling other responsibilities while maintaining the satellites.

I have a three year old and a three month old, Martineau says. There have been a couple of cases where I had to hurry up with a diaper change real quick before I needed to send some commands to the spacecraft.

The presence of children and pets has been a mainstay for many at NASAs workforce at home. One of our dogs [a Great Dane] has this habit of squeaking his toys when he wants attention, Amber Straughn, the associate director for the astrophysics science division at Goddard, writes in an email to The Verge. Hes definitely done that a couple times when Ive been in telecons.

New work companions have also been present for the OSIRIS-REx team as they prepared for their big dress rehearsal last week. Many of the team managers have had to juggle family responsibilities, such as remote learning, as they prepared for the event. For some of the managers it has been really stressful because we obviously wanted to see this go forward, Moreau says. But we were also very concerned about how our people were holding up.

Ultimately, everyone made it to the day of the rehearsal. But with most of the team away from Lockheed Martins mission control center in Colorado, some adjustments needed to be made. Theres no substitute for being in the same building; being on the same floor; being able to walk over to somebodys office and say, Hey, now I was just thinking about this. How does it look on your side? Lauretta says. We couldnt really do any of that.

Lauretta says the team made do with calls, which mostly worked, though there were a few technical difficulties. For some reason my phone kept going on mute, he says. Id be dialed in, and I would be talking and nobody would be hearing me. While that was frustrating, he said everyone was in good spirits. Actually everybody was just happy to be talking to each other on the group chat.

Despite the added challenges, the rehearsal went off without a hitch. During the practice session, OSIRIS-REx got closer to Bennu than its ever been before. It was a key maneuver that paves the way for OSIRIS-REx to get right next to Bennus surface in August and scoop up 60 grams of rocks from a crater called Nightingale. The engineers are thrilled with the result, though there was definitely some sadness over the unexpected circumstances.

I would say it was bittersweet in the sense that it was a great day; everything went according to plan. But we didnt get to celebrate it as a team, says Lauretta, who notes that theyve been waiting for this big test for over a decade. Were hopeful that by August, well all be able to gather together and actually celebrate the actual sample collection event.

For now, its unclear exactly when extreme social distancing will be over, allowing everyone not just spacecraft operators to return to their normal daily routines. But until that time arrives, the people in charge of operating spacecraft are making the most of their new mission control centers at home. For Gildner, its even been a nice distraction from the daily cycle of news surrounding the virus.

Work is a nice escape from everything thats going on, especially when youre working on a spaceflight project, Gildner says You feel like youre doing something that is very worthwhile that humanity appreciates, and right now thats important more than ever, I think.

Continued here:
How engineers are operating space missions from their homes - The Verge