Daily Archives: April 6, 2022

The ARISS team, from left: Front Megan Jordan and Rebekah Clark. Back Ocean Bowling, David Tutinzhu, Aiden Price, Joseph Hayes, Tony Lope and Jaiden Stark.

Space Hardware Club

Eight area sixth and eighth graders will be placing a long-distance call to lower Earth orbit when they dial up the International Space Station (ISS) via ham radio on April 7.

The students from New Hope Elementary, Sparkman Middle and Mountain Gap Middle schools will get a rare live interview with the ISS astronauts from the SHC Communications Lab in the UAH Engineering Building, courtesy of a Space Hardware Club (SHC) team at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program.

The SHC team took on the project after a proposal was submitted to ARISS by Amber Porteous, a junior in aerospace engineering at UAH, a part of the University of Alabama System. Advised by Dr. Richard Tantaris, a mechanical and aerospace engineering lecturer, and Dr. Gang Wang, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, SHC has been involved with ARISS before, most recently in 2017.

We luckily got the contact, says Porteous, a Mobile native. In May of 2021, we heard from the ARISS organization that we were one of nine organizations that had been accepted for a contact in the spring of 2022.

ARISS worked to schedule the contact while SHC worked on organizing the ham radio station.

Porteous served as the SHCs outreach manager last year and says she developed a passion for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education.

Rebekah Clark, a junior aerospace engineering major from Tampa, Fla., who is the current SHC outreach manager, says her passion for outreach began when she was a Girl Scout for 13 years in grade school and hosted team and individual service projects to win awards for community service. They often involved educating younger Girl Scouts or students younger than herself.

After finishing my time in Girl Scouts, I came to UAH and began to miss being involved in service projects and I missed the opportunity to be in front of students, she says. Soon I heard of the vacancy for the SHC outreach program manager position, as well as Amber's successful application to the ARISS program, and I immediately wanted to jump in headfirst as this is a major program that Amber and I could not have completed without each other."

ARISS David Jordan is the teams technical advisor.

Hes been able to walk Amber and I through the logistical process and paperwork needed to be approved for ISS contact, Clark says. Kathy Lamont serves as our ARISS educational advisor and has been able to help us organize our educational day presentations for each middle and elementary school.

She says ARISS contact veterans, UAH alumni and former SHC members Beth Dutour and Mark Becnel helped the team, as well.

Through its outreach programs, the ARISS effort has affected many more than the eight students invited to participate in the ISS contact, Clark says.

During our educational visits to the schools, the UAH SHC ARISS team was able to teach approximately 800 students about STEM topics such as rocketry, high altitude ballooning, ham radio and the history of the ISS, she says. In addition to this, the ARISS contact event will be publicly streamed and we hope to reach even more students beyond Huntsville and Madison County.

The students who will speak to the astronauts were selected by the SHC ARISS team after a blind question submission process.

One of the biggest rules we gave the students when submitting questions was, If you can Google it, it's too easy a question, Clark says.

Once the team narrowed the submissions to around six or eight questions, a poll was created for SHC members to vote on which questions they liked the best, she says.

Only after this double vote would we return to find the names of the students and reach out to the school to let them know who was selected.

ARISS SHC members are:

We have had some really great support for our ARISS project, Clark says. We have had a lot of Space Hardware Club members volunteer for our educational days.

Continue reading here:
UAH Space Hardware Club team will connect area students with International Space Station - UAH News

The province of Neuquen welcomed the visit of the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Daniel Filmus, who toured the CLTC-CONAE-NEUQUEN deep space station accompanied by a delegation led by CONAE Executive and Technical Director, Ral Kolichevsky, along with officials of the Argentine Space Agency. The minister toured the interpretation room, where the content of Chinas space activities and missions of CONAEs national space plan, the stations operations room and the antenna, of great sensitivity necessary for interplanetary exploration, were revealed. It should be noted that Argentina provides support for the station, whose facilities provide time for the use of the antenna for the National Astronomical Society for Research in Outer Space.

During his visit to the CLTC-CONAE-NEUQUEN station, Vilmus noted: We are touring the facilities with the idea of deepening cooperation in space and satellite research with both China and the European Union. The deep space radio astronomy research projects obtained through this observatory are shared. With the international scientific community. This is not just a bilateral issue. These are some of the priorities we are highlighting in the 2030 Agenda. In addition to the CLTC-CONAE-NEUQUEN station signed with the Peoples Republic of China, there is an ESA Deep Space 3 (DSA3) in Malarge City, Mendoza Province, signed with the European Space Agency (ESA).

For his part, Kolyshevsky emphasized: We reviewed with the Minister the various research projects implemented by Argentina, taking advantage of the privilege of having two deep space stations in our country, such as ESA and CLTC-CONAE-NEUQUEN. At the same time, we are exploring possibilities to continue encouraging research projects in The astronomical scientific community of our country. Coordination Director Leandro Groetzner; Director of Technology Liaison, Marcelo Collazo and Head of the International Cooperation Area in Outer Space, Stanislav Makarczuk.

The CLTC-CONAE-NEUQUEN Deep Space Station is located near the town of Bajada del Agrio in the province of Neuqun and was created from the signing of inter-institutional agreements between Chinas Satellite Launch and Tracking Control (CLTC) and the National Space Committee. Activities (CONAE), Neuqun Province and the governments of Argentina and the Peoples Republic of China.

The station has a modern antenna with a diameter of 35 meters, intended for missions of deep space exploration, and is located at distances of more than 300,000 km from Earth. Operating since April 2018, it is one of the three antennas that make up Chinas network of deep space stations, along with two others in its territory.

Station useDeep space stations are used to transmit and receive telemetry signals and to receive scientific data obtained by space missions on the Moon and the Solar System. Due to its technical characteristics of large sensitivity and its diameter of 35 meters, the antenna can be used as a radio telescope, as it allows to capture the energy needed to observe objects with weaker signals, which is a prerequisite for exploration beyond our solar system.

CLTC-CONAE-NEUQUEN provided support for the missions of the Chinese lunar exploration program ChangE-3, on the near side of the moon, and ChangE-4, on the far side of the moon, to which the ChangE-5 mission, which brought Samples from the Moon to Earth. Likewise, the station provides support for the Tianwen-1 mission of the Chinese Solar System Exploration Program. This Chinese mission to Mars will also be useful to Argentine researchers specializing in planetary geology, magnetosphere and astrobiology, among other aspects.

Argentina benefitsIn return, the agreement signed with China includes benefits for Argentina, which owns 10% of the antennas operating time to conduct national scientific research and regional and international cooperation activities.

As part of these projects, CONAE, together with researchers from the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy (IAR) of CONICET-CICPBA-UNLP, is carrying out radio astronomical observations and a project to design and build an instrument for astronomical use, which will be installed in astronomical radio stations. Neuqun and DS3 from Malarge in Mendoza.

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Filmus visited the CLTC-CONAE-NEUQUEN deep space station, which is a bridge of cooperation with China and the world - Amico Hoops

NASA has shared a stunning image of Mount Everest. The huge mountain ranges appear like shallow ravines in the image taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Check the amazing picture now.

NASA: On Tuesday, NASA shared a stunning image of Mount Everest on its official Instagram handle. The image was taken by the astronomers in the International Space Station (ISS) and showcases a dream-like view of the gigantic mountain range from space. The aerial image reduces the highest mountain on the planet to mere pebble sized. While we may all have seen Mount Everest as this giant structure which stands taller than any other mountain in the world at the heart of Nepal. But watching the same structure from this perspective is extremely intriguing.

Sharing it on Instagram, NASA said, Mt. Everest like you've never seen it before. The highest mountain on Earth takes on a different perspective from the vantage point of space. An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this near-nadir (almost straight down) photograph of Mount Everest, which towers approximately 29,029 feet (8,848 meters) above sea-level.

Highlighting the gigantic size of the mountain, NASA added in the caption, This world-renowned summit just keeps growing approximately 1 centimetre per year due to the progressive uplift of the crust caused by the convergence of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. At the time of writing this, the post had garnered more than 4.31 Lakh likes and over 1200 comments.

NASA has been using its social media presence to spread more awareness about the universe we live in. Every time NASA posts an image on Instagram, it adds an informative caption along with the image to help the followers learn a little more about not only space but also the world we live in. Taking unique images of the Earth is not something NASA or the ISS is doing for the first time. A few years ago, Thomas Pesquet shared an image of Egyptian Pyramids at Giza from the ISS.

Last week, NASA conducted a joint mission with SpaceX to send four astronauts to the ISS. This was the fourth crewed-rotation mission of NASA done in partnership with private companies to enable cost-effective human transportation to and from the ISS.

Read more from the original source:
Mount Everest from the SPACE! NASA shares Never-Seen-Before picture - HT Tech

NASAs huge new James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful telescope ever launched into space, but the agency is already looking toward the future. It is currently exploring the possibility of creating liquid lenses to make a gigantic telescope perhaps 100 times the size of the Webb.

When it comes to telescopes, bigger is better, the agency writes. Larger telescopes collect more light and allow astronomers to peer farther into space and see distant objects in greater detail.

What if there was a way to make a telescope 10 times or even 100 times bigger than before? What started as a theoretical question is now a series of experiments to see if fluids can be used to create lenses in microgravity.

The experiments are currently being stored on the ISS U.S. National Labin the United States Orbital Segment (USOS) of the International Space Station (ISS) as they await the arrival of the astronauts aboard Axiom Mission 1, a private crew mission that is scheduled to send four people to the ISS for an eight-day stay.

Private Israeli astronaut Eytan Stibbe, Mission Specialist 2 on the crew, will be carrying out the experiments as part of his research portfolio.

While liquids may be less useful as optical lenses in Earths gravity, they are great at focusing light in microgravity.

All liquids have an elastic-like force that holds them together at their surface, NASA says. This force is called surface tension. Its what allows some insects to glide across water without sinking and gives water droplets their shape. On Earth, when droplets of water are small enough (2 mm or smaller), surface tension overcomes gravity and they remain perfectly spherical. If a droplet grows much larger, it gets squished under its own weight.

But in space, blobs of water and other liquids (after wobbling about) eventually assume a perfect spherical shape.

Stibbes experiments will explore whether it will be possible for high-precision lenses and mirrors to be made in space using liquids.

We thought, why not take advantage of the way liquids naturally behave in microgravity and apply it to the construction of large-scale telescopes or space-manufactured optical components that can have all kinds of uses, says Edward Balaban, principal investigator of the Fluidic Telescope Experiment (FLUTE) at NASAs Ames Research Center. In microgravity, liquids take on shapes that are useful for making lenses and mirrors, so if we make them in space, they could be used to build telescopes that are dramatically bigger than was previously thought possible.

Researchers previously tested the idea of liquid lenses on Earth by simulating a weightless environment with water.

By injecting a liquid that can be solidified, into circular frames submerged in water, we were able to create lenses literally in a janitors bucket, Dr. Valeri Frumkin of Technion Israel Institute of Technology tells NASA. Polymers, which are also used in nail salons to make acrylic nails or in adhesives like superglue, are a natural choice for lens material.

The trick is to make sure that the water has the exact same density as the polymer were injecting so that the forces of buoyancy precisely oppose gravitational forces to simulate the conditions of weightlessness.

The solid lenses created with liquid in this way were found to have outstanding surface quality that rivals or even beats what can be created with the best polishing methods that exist in optical lens manufacturing. Whats more, they only required a fraction of the time to create compared to traditional lenses.

This method allows us to completely skip any mechanical processes such as grinding or polishing, says Technion mechanical engineering professor Moran Bercovici. The natural physics of fluids simply does all the work for us.

After successful experiments on the ground, the researchers also tested their experiment in simulated microgravity on ZeroG parabolic airplane flights. They successfully but momentarily created liquid lenses of desired shapes before the airplane stopped diving and gravity ruined the lenses.

When the experiment is done in permanent microgravity aboard the International Space Station, Stibbe will be adding an additional step to cure the fluid into a lens that holds its shape. Once the lenses are created with liquid polymers and hardened with either UV light or temperature, they will be sent back to Earth for analysis by NASA researchers at Ames.

We expect this approach will create perfectly shaped and smooth surfaces: the best surfaces to turn into mirrors, says FLUTE scientist Vivek Dwivedi at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center.

If our station experiment is successful, it will be the first time an optical component is made in space, says Balaban. It feels a bit like making history.

If all goes well, liquid transported on multiple missions to space could be combined to create colossal space telescopes that could otherwise be too large to launch from Earth.

The James Webb Space Telescope is set to capture the highest-quality images of space humans have ever seen, but it may one day be supplanted by liquid lens telescopes 100 times as large that capture space photos we can only dream of today.

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NASA Liquid Lens Space Telescope Could be 100 Times the Size of Webb - PetaPixel

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Gilead's remdesivir fails to show benefit in European trial; no fetus risk seen with first trimester vaccination

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. Two promising drugs for COVID-19 fail to deliver

Gigantic Jupiter-like alien planet observed still 'in the womb'

Scientists have observed an enormous planet about nine times the mass of Jupiter at a remarkably early stage of formation - describing it as still in the womb - in a discovery that challenges the current understanding of planetary formation. The researchers used the Subaru Telescope located near the summit of an inactive Hawaiian volcano and the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope to detect and study the planet, a gas giant orbiting unusually far from its young host star. Gas giants are planets, like our solar system's largest ones Jupiter and Saturn, composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, with swirling gases surrounding a smaller solid core.

First private astronaut mission to space station readies for launch

The International Space Station (ISS) is set to become busier than usual this week when its crew welcomes aboard four new colleagues from Houston-based startup Axiom Space, the first all-private astronaut team ever flown to the orbiting outpost. The launch is being hailed by the company, NASA and other industry players as a turning point in the latest expansion of commercial space ventures collectively referred to by insiders as the low-Earth orbit economy, or "LEO economy" for short.

(With inputs from agencies.)

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Science News Roundup: First private astronaut mission to space station readies for launch; Gigantic Jupiter-like alien planet observed still 'in the...

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Rare vaccine-related blood clots tied to gene; concentrated antibodies may help the immunosuppressed

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that has yet to be certified by peer review. Vaccine-related blood clots tied to gene, antibody variants

Scientists discover ancient cemetery of flying reptiles in Chile's Atacama desert

Scientists in Chile say they have unearthed a rare cemetery with well-preserved bones of ancient flying reptiles that roamed the Andean country's Atacama desert more than 100 million years ago. The remains belong to pterosaurs, scientists determined, flying creatures that lived alongside dinosaurs that had a long wingspan and fed by filtering water through long thin teeth, similar to flamingos.

First private astronaut mission to space station readies for launch

The International Space Station (ISS) is set to become busier than usual this week when its crew welcomes aboard four new colleagues from Houston-based startup Axiom Space, the first all-private astronaut team ever flown to the orbiting outpost. The launch is being hailed by the company, NASA and other industry players as a turning point in the latest expansion of commercial space ventures collectively referred to by insiders as the low-Earth orbit economy, or "LEO economy" for short.

(With inputs from agencies.)

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Science News Roundup: Rare vaccine-related blood clots tied to gene; First private astronaut mission to space station readies for launch and more -...