Monthly Archives: February 2021

China's Tianwen-1 probe has sent back its first image of Mars, the national space agency said, as the mission prepares to touch down on the Red Planet later this year.

The spacecraft, launched in July around the same time as a rival US mission, is expected to enter Mars orbit around February 10.

The black-and-white photo released late Friday by the China National Space Administration showed geological features including the Schiaparelli crater and the Valles Marineris, a vast stretch of canyons on the Martian surface.

The photo was taken about 2.2 million kilometres (1.4 million miles) from Mars, according to CNSA, which said the spacecraft was now 1.1 million kilometres from the planet.

Graphic on China's first independent probe to Mars that was launched in July. (Photo: AFP)

The robotic craft ignited one of its engines to "make an orbital correction" Friday and was expected to slow down before being "captured by Martian gravity" around February 10, the agency said.The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, a lander and a rover that will study the planet's soil.

China hopes to ultimately land the rover in May in Utopia, a massive impact basin on Mars.

After watching the United States and the Soviet Union lead the way during the Cold War, China has poured billions of dollars into its military-led space programme.

It has made huge strides in the past decade, sending a human into space in 2003.The Asian powerhouse has laid the groundwork to assemble a space station by 2022 and gain a permanent foothold in Earth orbit.

But Mars has proved a challenging target so far, with most missions sent by the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and India to the planet since 1960 ending in failure. Tianwen-1 is not China's first attempt to reach Mars.

A previous mission with Russia in 2011 ended prematurely as the launch failed.

China has already sent two rovers to the Moon. With the second, China became the first country to make a successful soft landing on the far side.

All systems on the Tianwen-1 probe are in "good condition," CNSA said Friday.

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China's space probe sends back its first image of Mars - India Today

(Space Cargo Unlimited via Courthouse News)

BORDEAUX, France (AFP) Twelve bottles of Bordeaux wine and dozens of vine shoots are back at home in southwest France after spending months on the International Space Station (ISS) for an unusual astrochemistry experiment.

The red wine and 320 mature shoots known as canes arrived Monday after their return to Earth via a Dragon capsule operated by SpaceX, the private launching company created by Elon Musk.

They will be analyzed at the Institute of Vine and Wine Science in Bordeaux to see how the stresses produced by zero gravity affect both grape growth and the finished product, which could spur new agricultural research.

The WISE Mission is the first private applied research program aimed at using spatial conditions to tackle agricultural challenges of tomorrow, on a warmer planet and with less water, said Nicolas Gaume.

Gaume and his partner Emmanuel Etcheparre founded their Space Cargo Unlimited group for carrying out a range of research projects in zero gravity.

The bottles were on the station for 438 days and will be compared with 12 similar Bordeaux bottles stored in similar conditions on Earth, while the vine plants half Cabernet Sauvignon and half Merlot were stored 312 days.

A private expert tasting of the wine is planned for later this month.

The only thing that changes compared with Earth is the near-total absence of gravity, which produces immense stress for life on the ISS, Gaume told AFP.

Plants that can be made resilient to such stress might also be able to better cope with environmental changes produced by climate change.

The things we learn about wine we also plan to develop for other agricultural uses, he said.

The cost of the project, carried out with the University of Erlangen in Germany and Frances CNES space agency, was not disclosed.

It was not the first time wine has been sent into orbit: In 1985, Jean-Michel Caze, owner of the storied Chateau Lynch-Bages, gave French astronaut Patrick Baudry a small bottle of its 1975 vintage for a Space Shuttle launch in Houston.

But no one got to sample the wine in weightlessness it stills sits unopened on a dining-room shelf in Cazes home.

Agence France-Presse

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Out-of-This-World Wine Back in Bordeaux After Space Station Trip - Courthouse News Service

OTTAWA -- It was an out of this world experience for a group of Ottawa students.

As students become used to learning and connecting virtually through technology, on Friday, seventeen students with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board used radio waves to connect live with the International Space Station.

They had an opportunity to ask questions to Mike S. Hopkins, as he was high above the earth.

Connecting through amateur radio, students asked a variety of questions during an approximately 10-minute window. NASA says that as the space station travels at approximately eight kilometres per second, communication is only possible as the station is above our horizon.

"How does it feel to see the sun, earth, moon and stars from space?" asked Sham.

"It doesnt seem real. I have to pinch myself every morning, because its amazing to me that Im actually up in space orbiting the earth 250 miles up or 400 kilometres over," replied Hopkins.

"This is Alex, do you think extraterrestrial beings exist? asked another student.

"Its hard to believe that there are not extraterrestrial beings out there, with the billions and billions of stars that are there; so, I think theres a likelihood, over," replied Hopkins.

NASA selected Michael S. Hopkins as an astronaut in 2009. The Missouri native is currently serving as Commander on the Crew-1 SpaceX Crew Dragon, named Resilience, which launched Nov. 15, 2020, according to the NASA website.

The event took place for online learning students, and during COVID-19, its a topic that was asked by one student..

"Hello, this is Rowan. Is COVID-19 a concern for astronauts?

Hopkins replied, COVID-19 is absolutely a concern for astronauts; fortunately, all of us up here, though, we know that we dont have COVID-19, so were pretty safe up here - but, when we return to earth, we have to be very careful - and, before we launch we have to protect ourselves by going into what we call quarantine."

Six-year-old Samantha told CTV News Ottawa the question and answer session with the astronaut, "was just awesome."

Ottawa Carleton Virtual School and NASA teacher co-ordinator Lori McFarlane says the 10-minute session was a success.

"Ive had so many emailing saying that this was the highlight of the kids week, they just found it so interesting to be able to listen to an astronaut and hear what he has to say about the space station," said McFarlane. "For some of them, it will ignite their interest in science and technology, and perhaps even space exploration or becoming an astronaut."

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'Is COVID-19 a concern for astronauts?': Ottawa students chat with astronaut on space station - CTV News Ottawa

Chances are, you've seen, heard, or felt a lightning bolt erupt in the sky somewhere near you. After all, there are well over a billion lightning flashes on Earth per year. That's about four dozen per second, somewhere over our planet (sometimes in one spot, where an astronomer with a phonecam can get video).

Thunderstorms are a common feature of our planet, and the electrical fields therein are the root source of the power of lightning. But they also generate other phenomena, too, ones that we're just starting to learn about.

One of the most mysterious of these is a blue flash. As the name says, these are intense, short blasts of blue light that occur near the tops of storm clouds, and last for only ten microseconds (one one-hundred-thousandth of a second). They sometimes trigger blue jets: upward-reaching tendrils that last for perhaps a few tenths of a second. These pulsate with energy as they go from being narrow channels to fanning out into wide cones as they propagate into the stratosphere, 1020 kilometers above the ground. But we don't know a huge amount about them.

Because they happen above the clouds, it's hard to see them from the Earth's surface. That's why scientists built a device called the AtmosphereSpace Interactions Monitor (or ASIM), which is mounted on the outside of one of the modules on the International Space Station (ISS). It looks to the Earth below, and can take data at 10 microsecond intervals, allowing these weird phenomena to be studied.

On February 26, 2019, a thunderstorm brewed in the South Pacific Ocean near the equator. The ISS passed almost directly over it, giving ASIM an incomparable view. Happily, the storm didn't disappoint: Five blue flashes were seen, including one that generated a blue jet.

The flashes occurred 16 kilometers above the ocean, near the center of the storm where deep convection was seen this is the rising and falling of air inside the cloud, which is how the strong electric fields inside are generated. These flashes may be from electrons accelerated to high speed inside the cloud slamming into nitrogen molecules in the air, which respond by emitting ultraviolet and blue light.

When this happens, the air becomes ionized electrons are stripped from the molecules creating a channel in the air that can conduct electricity. There's a huge charge difference between the top of a cloud and the air above it, and if conditions are just right, that blue flash can create a blue jet, a tremendous but narrow discharge of electricity upwards into the sky (similar to a lightning leader). The one seen by ASIM stretched about 50 kilometers up.

There was also a very faint red pulse at the start of the flash, which may have been the start of the leader, the first ionized channel carved upward, probably a few hundred meters long. This is also due to electrically excited nitrogen gas emitting light as well (the same reason some aurorae are red).

The blue flashes did more than make a blue jet, too: They made ELVES, which stands for get this Emission of Light and Very low frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic pulse Sources. A blue flash strongly accelerates electrons, which in turn generate powerful pulses of radio waves. These pulses move upwards into the ionosphere (80 kilometers or more above Earth's surface) which themselves accelerate electrons there. This creates rapidly expanding rings of blue and ultraviolet light as the pulse propagates horizontally at the bottom of the ionosphere, like a ripple moving away from a rock dropped into a pond.

I know, this is all quite complicated, but that's part of the point. The theory is partly there, but scientists have lacked observations to back them up. These ASIM observations really help.

Mind you, there are lots of other bizarre phenomena generated in clouds you may not have heard of. Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, for example, are blasts of extremely high-energy photons out of the tops of thunderstorms, generated when electrons in the cloud are accelerated to nearly the speed of light and then interact with molecules of air. Maybe; the details of these flashes also aren't well understood even though they've been studied for decades.

There are also red sprites, which are tendril-like features that flash upwards from the tops of clouds. Pilots had reported seeing them for years but they were never caught in photos, so scientists were perhaps overly skeptical. In the 1990s these faint flashes started turning up in digital images, and now they're understood more or less in general. They're on my bucket list of Things I Want To See For Myself, but it's hard; since they appear over storms you have to be far enough away to see above the storm, and they're faint. We do see enormous storms to our east in the summer, and at some point I'll see about trying for them.

I know I usually write about mysterious objects and phenomena quadrillions of kilometers away, but there's a lot of very cool stuff going on much closer to us. It's not technically astronomy, but hey, it's still over our heads. Unless you're ASIM, looking down on Earth. But that's just a matter of perspective.

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A blue bolt out of the blue: On the edge of space, lightning leaps *upward* - SYFY WIRE

A LOCAL photographer has spoken of the amazement of capturing the moment the International Space Station (ISS) flew over the Dumbarton night sky.

Gerry Doherty took to his back garden in Dumbarton to capture the magnificent sight of the ISS - the largest single structure humans have ever put into space, manned year-round by citizens of different countries -as it barrelled past the area through the stars on the night of Saturday, January 30.

Gerry told the Reporter: I have an app that gives you the time that its flying over, and I used a DLSR camera on a triped with a twenty second exposure with a remote release to capture the photo.

It just amazes me everytime I see it flying overhead at 17,000 miles per hour that there are astronauts and cosmonauts working aboard it.

Even in lockdown you dont have to travel to get interesting shots of the night sky, just look up from your garden.

The giant collaborative project was launched in 1998 and intended as a laboratory, an observatory and factory for space transportation.

Occupying astronauts are given a run at the station for six months at a time as the station orbits the earth 16 times per day.

READ MORE:Click here for all the latest news headlines from around Dumbarton and the Vale of Leven

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ISS Dumbarton: Space station caught on camera over West Dunbartonshire - The Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter

A private expert tasting of the wine is planned for later this month. (AFP pic)

BORDEAUX: Twelve bottles of Bordeaux wine and dozens of vine shoots are back at home in southwest France after spending months on the International Space Station (ISS) for an unusual astrochemistry experiment.

The red wine and 320 mature shoots known as canes arrived Monday after their return to Earth via a Dragon capsule operated by SpaceX, the private launching company created by Elon Musk.

They will be analysed at the Institute of Vine and Wine Science in Bordeaux to see how the stresses produced by zero gravity affect both grape growth and the finished product, which could spur new agricultural research.

The WISE Mission is the first private applied research programme aimed at using spatial conditions to tackle agricultural challenges of tomorrow, on a warmer planet and with less water, said Nicolas Gaume.

Gaume and his partner Emmanuel Etcheparre founded their Space Cargo Unlimited group for carrying out a range of research projects in zero gravity.

The bottles were on the station for 438 days, and will be compared with 12 similar Bordeaux bottles stored in similar conditions on Earth, while the vine plants half Cabernet Sauvignon and half Merlot were stored 312 days.

A private expert tasting of the wine is planned for later this month.

The only thing that changes compared with Earth is the near-total absence of gravity, which produces immense stress for life on the ISS, Gaume told AFP.

Plants that can be made resilient to such stress might also be able to better cope with environmental changes produced by climate change.

The things we learn about wine we also plan to develop for other agricultural uses, he said.

The cost of the project, carried out with the University of Erlangen in Germany and Frances CNES space agency, was not disclosed.

It was not the first time wine has been sent into orbit: In 1985, Jean-Michel Caze, owner of the storied Chateau Lynch-Bages, gave French astronaut Patrick Baudry a small bottle of its 1975 vintage for a Space Shuttle launch in Houston.

But no one got to sample the wine in weightlessness it stills sits unopened on a dining-room shelf in Cazes home.

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Out-of-this-world wine back in France after space station trip - Free Malaysia Today

In June 2019, the volcano on Raikoke, part of the uninhabited Kuril Islands between Russia and Japan, erupted without warning spewing dust and ash into the sky. Luckily, the International Space Station was passing over the region, and was able to capture the drama before the ash cloud settled in a few minutes.(Photo courtesy NASA/ ISS; CEO)

This image of Thors Helmet, the cloud of gas and dust named for its bulging shape and wings was shot aboard the European Space Agencys XMM-Newton satellite observatory, with optical observations from Cerro Tololo in Chile.(Photo courtesy [JA Toala & M.A. Guerrero (IAA-CSIC), Y-H. Chu (UIUC/ASIAA), RA Gruendl (UIUC), S Mazlin, J Harvey, D Verschatse & R Gilbert (SSRO-South) and ESA])

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous Pillars of Creation, revealing a sharper and wider view of the structures in this visible-light image. The towering pillars are about 5 light-years tall.(Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

A close-up from afar, the International Space Station captured this shot of Irans arid Kavir region in 2014. The marbled region is some 65-km across, featuring rock formations and erosion. The dark path in the centre is a lake, the odd lighter patch next to it is a sand sheet.(Photo courtesy NASA/ ISS; CEO)

Another Hubble gem, this show of the Bubble nebula, 7,100 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia, features a star that is 45 times larger than our sun.(Photo courtesy NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

A special satellite was sent out in 1989 to take better measurements of the radiation field, with respect to what we know as Cosmic Background Radiation. This picture of its findings confirmed that the waves were indeed uniform, with only minor wrinkles.(Photo by DMR/NASA)

See that white dot? Thats us, Earth, shown from the Cassini spacecraft that flew past Saturns icy rings in 2017. Cassini was 870 million miles (1.4 billion kilometers) away from Earth when the image was taken.(Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

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Photos: How telescopes, space stations & voyaging crafts photographed Earth - Hindustan Times

SAN FRANCISCO The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded a $43.8 million space weather contract to L3 Harris Technologies.

Under the five-year, cost-plus contract, Melbourne, Florida-based L3Harris will develop, deploy and operate a command and control system for NOAAs Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 observatory, scheduled to launch in 2025 on NASAs Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe. L3Harris also will provide operations support for the space weather observatory for up to two years.

The new command and control system will be an extension of the existing Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) R Series Core Ground System, according to a Feb. 5 NOAA news release. L3Harris is the prime contractor for the GOES-R Series ground segment.

The new contract will be managed by the NOAA Satellite and Information Services Office of Projects, Planning and Analysis. L3Harris plans to perform work at its Melbourne, Florida, headquarters and to install equipment at NOAAs Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Maryland; NOAAs Wallops Command and Data Acquisition Station in Wallops, Virginia; and at NOAAs Consolidated Backup Facility (CBU) in Fairmont, West Virginia.

The Space Weather Follow On-L1 mission is designed to provide imagery of solar wind and coronal mass ejection to NOAAs National Weather Service Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

These data are critical to support monitoring and timely forecasts of space weather events that have the potential to adversely impact elements vital to national security and economic prosperity, including telecommunication and navigation, satellite systems and the power grid, according to the NOAA news release.

Space Weather Follow On-L1 is a joint NOAA-NASA program. NASA is acquiring the satellite and launch services. NOAA, meanwhile, is responsible for the ground segment including the acquisition, development, testing and integration of the command and control system.

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NOAA taps L3Harris for space weather command and control - SpaceNews