2015年6月30日 星期二

An Unusual Mountain on Asteroid Ceres


What created this large mountain on asteroid Ceres? No one is yet sure. As if in anticipation of today being Asteroid Day on Earth, the robotic spacecraft Dawn in orbit around Ceres took the best yet image of an unusually tall mountain on the Asteroid Belt's largest asteroid. Visible at the top of the featured image, the exceptional mountain rises about five kilometers up from an area that otherwise appears pretty level. The image was taken about two weeks ago from about 4,400 kilometers away. Although origin hypotheses for the mountain include volcanism, impacts, and plate tectonics, clear evidence backing any of these is currently lacking. Also visible across Ceres' surface are some enigmatic light areas: bright spots whose origin and composition that also remain an active topic of investigation. Even though Dawn is expected to continue to orbit Ceres, officially dubbed a dwarf planet, for millions of years, the hydrazine fuel used to point Dawn's communications antenna toward Earth is expected to run out sometime next year. via NASA http://ift.tt/1U2H5k3

Opinions On Falcon Loss Aftermath Are All Over The Map

Orbital May Benefit From SpaceX's Fiery Rocket Fail, Cowen Says, Bloomberg "SpaceX's explosive mission failure may benefit Orbital ATK Inc. as the two compete for future contracts to supply the International Space Station, according to Cowen & Co." Analyst: Rocket...

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NASA TV Coverage Set for Space Station Cargo Ship Launch and Docking

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the launch and docking of an unpiloted Russian resupply ship to the International Space Station (ISS).

June 30, 2015
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NASA Signs Scientific and Education Agreements with Brazil

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Brazilian Space Agency (AEB) President José Raimundo Braga Coelho have signed agreements to further research into heliophysics and space weather and to enhance global climate study and educational opportunities.

June 30, 2015
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Dawn Journal: Ceres' Intriguing Geology

Dawn is continuing to unveil a Ceres of mysteries at the first dwarf planet discovered. Mission Director Marc Rayman gives us an update.

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NASA Astronaut Preps for First Space Station Mission, Available for Media Interviews

NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren, who is making final preparations for his launch next month on his first mission to the International Space Station, will be available for live satellite interviews from 8 to 9 a.m. EDT Tuesday, July 7.

June 30, 2015
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Pluto Grows Under New Horizons’ Watchful Eye

Right now, Pluto is about 25 pixels across in the New Horizons space probe’s long-range camera. In a week it’ll be 50 pixels across. A few days later it’ll be well to 100 … and then it’ll grow by the hour.

What will we see? I wrote about all this for my twice-monthly column for Sen.com. Go see! It’s subscription only, but c’mon. I’m worth it.



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Eruption of Wolf Volcano, Galapagos Islands


In late May 2015, the highest volcano in the Galapagos Islands, Wolf volcano, erupted for the first time in 33 years. The wide image and closeup of Wolf was acquired on June 11, 2015, by the ASTER instrument on NASA's Terra satellite. The false-color images combine near-infrared, red, and green light (ASTER bands 3-2-1). via NASA http://ift.tt/1LFLHKj

ISS Daily Summary Report – 06/29/15

SpaceX (SpX)-7: Following SpX-7 launch yesterday there was an in-flight anomaly during ascent which resulted in loss of the SpX vehicle.  Teams are assessing immediate impacts from lost cargo and on-board plans for the week. They are also reviewing changes to the near-term flight manifests, including 60P and HTV5, that may be required. Node 1 (N1) Stowage Reconfiguration: Kelly reorganized N1 stowage in preparation for arrival of the Galley Rack on HII Transfer Vehicle (HTV)-5.  Waste & Hygiene Compartment (WHC) Maintenance: Kelly Removed & Replaced (R&R) the WHC pre-treat tank. This is nominal maintenance. On-orbit Sampling: Kelly deployed 2 Formaldehyde Monitoring Kits (FMKs) in designated sample locations for post-flight analysis of on-orbit formaldehyde levels. He also used a Grab Sample Container (GSC) to collect instantaneous air samples for post-flight analysis. Finally, he performed water sample analysis using the Total Organic Carbon Analyzer (TOCA). TOC measured at the potable bus was 2514 parts per billion (ppb). Last week’s TOC at the potable bus was 2371 ppb.  This is not an impact to crew consumption of water since the TOC values are below the flight rule limit of 3000 ppb. Teams are discussing future planning of potable water due to loss of hardware on SpX-7. Fluids and Combustion Facility (FCF) Fluids Integrated Rack (FIR) Translation Interference Removal: On June 19, the crew replaced a burnt out lamp in the FIR.  Upon completion of that task, the crew was unable to translate the FIR back to its nominal position.  Today, Kelly translated and rotated the Optics Bench out into the US Lab, then secured the connector caps and verified that the grounding tabs were correctly oriented, both located in the rear of the facility.  Kelly was then able to successfully rotate the Optics Bench back to the stowed position and translated the FIR to the fully retracted position.  The next planned use for FIR is under review, as the Microchannel Diffusion was lost on the ascent of the SpaceX-7 mission.  Space Aging Closeout: Kelly performed the necessary closeout steps to remove the Space Aging experiment from the Cell Biology Experiment Facility (CBEF) in the Saibo rack.  He accessed and retrieved the samples from the observation experiment units, placed them in moisture bags and within Space Aging Holder for return on a later flight.  Today’s Planned Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. Node 1 stowage reconfig Space Aging closeout EHS TOCA waste water bag changeout EHS TOCA sample WHC pre-treat tank R&R T2 quarterly inspection Cardiovector experiment ops Filling and compression of ЕДВ and БВ2 tank bladder in ТГК 425 Formaldehyde Monitoring Kit deployment Grab Sample Container sampling TOCA sample data record Adjustment and Testing of Russian iPad tablet computers with two access points (on RS and USOS) В3 Fan Screen Cleaning in DC1 Fluids Integrated Rack Rack Doors Open Fluids Integrated Rack Interference Removal Fluids Integrated Rack Rack Doors Close Vacuum Cleaning ПФ1, ПФ2 dust filters and В1, В2 Fan Grilles in DC1 Sleep ISS-12 Actiwatch Spectrum Download and Configuration MPEG-2 video downlink test via KU-band prior to ТКГ 428 docking to the ISS IMS Delta File Prep Cleaning ВД1 and ВД2 Air Ducts in DC1 COSMOCARD. Preparation Ops. Starting 24-hr ECG Recording COTS UHF Communication Unit (CUCU) Deactivation  Completed Task List Items ISS R&D Conference downlink message  Ground Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. FIR ops CUCU deactivation Three-Day Look Ahead: Tuesday, 06/30: EHS Acoustic Dosimeter Setup, Plant Gravity Sensing-2 Experiment Photon Counting Unit Check Out, Binary Colloidal Alloy Test Sample Initialization, CMO CBT Wednesday, 07/01: EHS acoustic dosimeter setup, JEMRMS activation/checkout, N1 stowage reconfig Thursday, 07/02: Multi-user Droplet Combustion Apparatus MWA Prep, CIR Hardware Review/hardware gather, HRF2 Supply Kit Resupply, Reconnection of MagVector Umbilicals to COL1F2 UIP QUICK ISS Status – Environmental Control Group:                               Component Status Elektron On Vozdukh Manual [СКВ] 1 – SM Air Conditioner System (“SKV1”) Off [СКВ] 2 – SM Air Conditioner System (“SKV2”) On Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab Standby Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 Operate Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab Shutdown Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 Operate Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) Standby Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) Standby Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab Off Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 Full Up  

June 30, 2015 at 01:00AM
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A Refreshing Illusion: Flat Glass of Water

I love fun illusions, and I happened upon one that’s pretty interesting to see: An artist draws a glass of water that is startlingly 3D:

Oddly, the illusion is actually more convincing to watch at lower resolution and with a smaller window; that washes out the pencil strokes and actually makes the illusion more realistic. I can’t remember the last time I saw something like that.

This type of art is becoming common in street drawing; a web search will yield a bazillion very cool examples.

This technique is called forced perspective, in that it takes the cues your eyes and brain use to estimate relative distance (like, when one object is closer than another) and plays with them, forcing you to interpret those cues a certain way.

When the artist rotates the drawing so the top of the glass is toward you it looks all weird and distorted because your brain is confused. I love the irony; it shows you this is a drawing and not real, yet your brain may take a moment or two to actually settle with that. Our brains just love to be fooled.

My friend and evil twin Richard Wiseman* is a master at this. Watch this video he created:

Richard is a psychologist who studies things like this. I strongly urge you to watch the videos on his Quirkology YouTube channel and to read his books. It’s really good stuff.

... and please check out what I still consider the single greatest illusion of all time.

Tip o’ the Necker Cube to David Darling.

* He claims I’m the evil one, thus proving he’s the evil one.



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2015年6月29日 星期一

5 Steps to Preventing Asteroid Impact

For Asteroid Day, Bruce Betts reviews 5 steps needed to prevent asteroid impact, as well as how The Planetary Society is involved in those.

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NASA's Boulder Retrieval Mission

Keith's note: NASA quietly admitted today at the Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) Meeting that one of the formally baseline, prime science requirements of the Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM) is to retrive a boulder from the surface of an...

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Quick: Read The Planetary Society Mars Plan While It Is Free

Keith's note: In April 2015 the Planetary Society held an invitation-only "Humans Orbiting Mars" workshop wherein they unveiled their idea for a mission to Mars. At a quick press conference after the event (no media were allowed to attend...

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Falcon Mishap Details Emerge

SpaceX Falcon 9 Mishap: More Details Emerge, SpaceRef "According to SpaceX sources telemetry received from the Dragon spacecraft showed that it too was functioning normally after the mishap occurred and this telemetry continued to be sent back from Dragon for...

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NASA Invites Media to Tour VIPR, Aeronautics Research Project

NASA will host a behind-the-scenes tour of the Vehicle Integrated Propulsion Research (VIPR) project at the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California on Thursday, July 9.

June 29, 2015
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Sen. Nelson Thinks USAF Blew Up Falcon

U.S. Sen. Nelson believes Eastern Range did ultimately send a destruct signal to the Falcon 9.— James Dean (@flatoday_jdean) June 29, 2015 Keith's update: When I asked NASA PAO yesterday for an official response to "Did the Range Safety...

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We're moving!

It's really happening. We're leaving our home of five years on South Grand and heading to our new home just two miles east on South Los Robles.

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Impact of CRS-7 Loss

Another major rocket failure for a space industry out to prove itself, Washington Post "SpaceX and Dulles-based Orbital ATK won contracts to carry cargo to the station. Then last year, NASA awarded contracts to SpaceX and Boeing to develop capsules...

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Spirals in the D Ring


Although the D ring of Saturn is so thin that it's barely noticeable compared to the rest of the ring system, it still displays structures seen in other Saturnian rings. via NASA http://ift.tt/1GVgmio

Weighing A Galactic Monster 

How do you weigh a black hole?

That is, to be more precise (or pedantic), how do you figure out what the mass of a black hole is?

There are actually lots of ways, but they all depend on a very simple law of gravity: If you’re orbiting something (whether it’s a black hole, a star, a planet, or anything else), the closer you are, the faster you’ll go.

If you start there, and make a few assumptions, then all you need to do is observe stuff orbiting the black hole, figure out how quickly it’s moving, and boom. The black hole mass falls out.

Astronomers have been doing this for a long time. Observing stars in motion — literally, watching them physically move over several years — in the center of our own Milky Way galaxy shows that the supermassive black hole residing there has a mass of over four million times that of our Sun.

Another way is to look at the motion of stars and gas in another galaxy. We can’t see their stars moving directly, but as they zip around the central black hole sometimes they move toward us, and sometimes away. That creates a Doppler shift, a shifting of the light emitted toward the blue and red end of the spectrum. The amount of Doppler shift depends on the velocity of the population of stars and/or gas as they orbit, and that means you can get the black hole mass that way. For example, gas in the center of the galaxy M84 was used to find its black hole has a mass of over a billion times that of the Sun!

Now astronomers have used a different way, though based on this same idea. They used ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, to look at light emitted by the molecules HCN (hydrogen cyanide) and HCO (there’s no specific formal name I could find for this, but it’s a carbon atom bonded to an oxygen and hydrogen atom) in the galaxy NGC 1097. ALMA is very precise, and they were able to find both the location of the gas and its velocity.

This gas orbits well outside the black hole, and there are stars there too, millions of them. To account for them (because if they don’t, they’ll get too high a mass for the black hole) they used Hubble observations of NGC 1097. They then fit a series of models, each using different black hole masses, to see which one fit the observed velocity of gas best.

Their result: NGC 1097 has a 140 million solar mass central black hole. That’s way beefier than ours. Also a bit higher than previous estimates of 100 – 120 million.

The reason this is important is that a lot of galaxy characteristics seem to be affiliated with how massive the central black hole is. We can only measure the motion of stars and gas near the center of nearby galaxies, but some of these other characteristics can be seen in galaxies much farther away. If we can get good measurements in different ways for nearby galaxies, we can use that to bootstrap our measurements for the more distant ones.

Also, NGC 1097 is a barred spiral galaxy, and for various reasons these can be very difficult beasts to observe and get the mass of their black holes. These new results should help resolve some of those issues.

So there you go. If you want to take the measure of a black hole, you have to see how things behave nearby it. That’s probably good advice for many things in life, but nothing more so than the heftiest single objects in the Universe.



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2015年6月28日 星期日

CRS-7 Launch Update

Following a nominal liftoff, Falcon 9 experienced a problem shortly before first stage shutdown, resulting in loss of mission. Preliminary analysis suggests the vehicle experienced an overpressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank approximately 139 seconds into flight. Telemetry indicates first stage flight was nominal and that Dragon remained healthy for some period of time following separation.



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All the Colors of the Sun


It is still not known why the Sun's light is missing some colors. Here are all the visible colors of the Sun, produced by passing the Sun's light through a prism-like device. The spectrum was created at the McMath-Pierce Solar Observatory and shows, first off, that although our white-appearing Sun emits light of nearly every color, it does indeed appear brightest in yellow-green light. The dark patches in the above spectrum arise from gas at or above the Sun's surface absorbing sunlight emitted below. Since different types of gas absorb different colors of light, it is possible to determine what gasses compose the Sun. Helium, for example, was first discovered in 1870 on a solar spectrum and only later found here on Earth. Today, the majority of spectral absorption lines have been identified - but not all. via NASA http://ift.tt/1IkZVOI

Was Falcon 9 Destroyed - Yes or No?

? was destruct signal sent? Shotwell - not sure there was one.— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) June 28, 2015 Still waiting for #NASA to say "yes/no range safety officer hit the big red button" & blew up Falcon 9 #CRS7...

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NASA Administrator Statement on the Loss of SpaceX CRS-7

The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on the loss Sunday of the SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services 7 (CRS-7) mission.

June 28, 2015
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Uncrewed SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Explodes After Launch

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station exploded about 2 minutes and 20 seconds after launch this morning. No people were onboard; it was an uncrewed resupply mission. The cause is not yet known.

Here is video of the event (launch is at 51:48, the explosion at 54:05):

SpaceX has not released details yet; a press conference is scheduled for no earlier than 12:30 EDT. I’ll update here when I know more.

Looking at the video, the explosion doesn’t release flames, but instead you see a vaporous white cloud blow away. My guess — and I’m no expert — is that this was a pressurized cryogenic tank failure of some kind. But again, we’ll know more very soon.

Update 1, June 28, 2015 at 16:10 UTC: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk just tweeted that it looks like a tank overpressurization event, as I had guessed:

We should know more soon.

The Dragon capsule on top of the rocket had food and supplies for the astronauts on ISS. The three astronauts on board have enough food to last for many months, so they should be OK for now. Also on board the Dragon was an adapter ring for the ISS that would allow future commercial vehicles easier docking access.

This is the first SpaceX failure since they began resupply missions to ISS, but the third overall failure to ISS, including the loss of a Progress vehicle in April and the Orbital Antares rocket in October of 2014. This comes at a time when the Senate has been trying (wrongly, in my opinion) to cut back on funding for SpaceX and other commercial companies, so I expect we'll see statements from those Senators on this event shortly. Read them with a grain of salt. Again, we'll know more shortly. Stay tuned.



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SpaceX Rocket Breaks Apart En Route to International Space Station

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean during today's flight to the International Space Station.

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SpaceX Launch and Landing Attempts Today

Keith's note: SpaceX is working toward a launch of the CRS-7 ISS Resupply mission aboard a Falcon 9 rocket this morning at 10:21 am EDT this morning. If all goes according to plan they will make another attempt to...

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California May Make It Harder to Opt Out of Getting Vaccinated. I'm OK With That.

California may be about to pass a law that only allows parents to opt their public-school-attending children out of vaccines for medical reasons. Personal or religious objections will no longer be accepted.

This bill, SB-277, has been approved by the state Assembly, and is going to the desk of Governor Jerry Brown to sign or veto. It’s hard to say what he will do, as he can be unpredictable.

I’m writing this to urge him to sign it. I support this bill.

While this issue can be subtle, when all is said and done I support mandatory vaccines for public school children. I’ve been pretty clear about it:

If you want to rely on the public trust then you have an obligation to the public trust as well, and part of that obligation is not sending your child to a place with other children if they aren’t immunized against preventable, communicable diseases.

Some people want to claim religious exemption from getting vaccinations, but I don’t find this argument compelling:

I do understand that people might have a religious belief against vaccinations. However, I think religious exemptions can and should only go so far. Certainly they stop dead when religion impinges on  my rights to have my child attend a school that is safe. 

By the by, there are very few religions that preach against vaccination (one exception: the Dutch Reformed Church, and there was a major measles outbreak in one of their communities in the Netherlands in 2013). The idea of a religious exemption is, to me, something of a non-issue. But, in the end, I don’t think there should be a religious exemption, either.

Certainly there should be some medical exemptions; some children are allergic to some of the ingredients in vaccines, for example. But these too are relatively rare.

When it comes to refusing vaccines, the largest group is obviously composed of people who think vaccines are somehow harmful, or that mandatory vaccination is taking away their rights.

For those opposing it because they think vaccines are unsafe, well, they’re just wrong. There’s no delicate way to put that, no cushioning it. The claims of health concerns from anti-vaxxers are long, but completely unfounded. Vaccines don’t cause autism. Andrew Wakefield, whose research is the very basis of the modern anti-vax movement, has been called a fraud, has been shown to be guilty of scientific misconduct, has been shown to have had a massive conflict of interest in his study, has been shown to have acted unethically, and simply to have been wrong. I mean, sheesh.

Vaccines don’t have toxins in them at anywhere near the levels needed to cause problems (as doctors say, dose makes the toxin). Vaccines are effective, their benefits vastly outweigh any small risk, and are a medical triumph.

For those opposing the bill because they are concerned about parental rights, that’s understandable, but limiting parents’ rights is in some cases justified, especially for the child’s health or for the public welfare. In fact, your rights already are limited. As one obvious example, you can’t drive your child around in a car without them in a safety seat if they’re young, or without wearing a seat belt for older kids. Heck, the state has the right to take your child away from you if you are obviously endangering, neglecting, or abusing them… a sad necessity, but a necessity all the same.

If you don’t vaccinate your child, and there is not a medical reason for it, then you are needlessly endangering your child. It’s really that simple.

And it’s worse even than that. You’re also endangering every child who goes to school with your child.

There are a lot of horrid diseases with devastating health effects that we can stop dead in their tracks with vaccinations. Yet we see outbreaks of them all the time in America, and in many cases it’s because people aren’t vaccinating.

This recent bill in California was spurred by the outbreak of measles that occurred at Disneyland in early 2015. But the need for it is far more broad than that.

Governor Brown: Please sign that bill into law. You could be saving a lot of children's lives.



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2015年6月27日 星期六

Stars of a Summer Triangle


Rising at the start of a northern summer's night, these three bright stars form the familiar asterism known as the Summer Triangle. Altair, Deneb, and Vega are the alpha stars of their respective constellations, Aquila, Cygnus, and Lyra, nestled near the Milky Way. Close in apparent brightness the three do look similar in these telescopic portraits, but all have their own stellar stories. Their similar appearance hides the fact that the Summer Triangle stars actually span a large range in intrinsic luminosity and distance. A main sequence dwarf star, Altair is some 10 times brighter than the Sun and 17 light-years away, while Vega, also a hydrogen-fusing dwarf, is around 30 times brighter than the Sun and lies 25 light-years away. Supergiant Deneb, at about 54,000 times the solar luminosity, lies some 1,400 light-years distant. Of course, with a whitish blue hue, the stars of the Summer Triangle are all hotter than the Sun. via NASA http://ift.tt/1Ij77Lp

The Summer Triangle... Up Close

If you go outside after sunset — and can tear your eyes off of the spectacle of Venus and Jupiter slowly merging in the west — turn around and look to the east. Not long after the sky gets good and dark, you’ll see a trio of bright stars not far above the horizon. Day by day, as summer shambles on*, these stars will be higher in the sky, seemingly strengthening as the season does as well.

This is the iconic Summer Triangle, made up of three of the brightest stars in the sky: Vega, Deneb, and Altair. Straddling the Milky Way, to thousands of amateur astronomer the trio is a sure sign of the season.

I’ve seen countless wide-angle shots of them, placing them in context in the sky, but master astrophotographer Rogelio Bernal Andreo has done something different; taken close-ups of each stars, to show what they look like as individuals:

WOW.

All three are interesting stars. Altair is the brightest star in the constellation Aquila, the eagle. It has a bit less than twice the mass of the Sun, is more than 10 times more luminous, and is located about 17 light years away, making it one of the closest stars you can see with your naked eye. Its brightness is mostly due to its proximity; while it’s physically brighter than the Sun, from a hundred light years away you’d barely notice it.

Vega, in the constellation Lyra, the lyre, is somewhat more massive than Altair, but nearly four times as luminous. Even though it’s 25 light years away, it appears to be a bit brighter than its neighbor. If the name is familiar, try watching the movie (or reading the book!) Contact, by Carl Sagan. In the 1980s, Vega was found to be putting out more infrared light than expected for a star of its kind, and this is due to a vast disk of debris circling the star, possibly due to the collision of comet-like bodies orbiting it. This material is what’s emitting the infrared, and in fact many such disks have been found around other stars.

Deneb, though, is the bruiser of the three. The brightest star in Cygnus, the swan (also called the Northern Cross), it’s a monster. It has 20 times the mass of the Sun, and blasts out light at 200,000 times the rate the Sun does! It’s so massive it will one day become a supernova. At 2,500 light years away, though, there’s not much to worry about. Even if it doesn’t explode in a million years, it’ll still be too far away to hurt us. But it’ll be about as bright as the Moon in the sky!

Incredible, though, that even though it’s 100 times as far as Vega, it’s only a tad dimmer. It really is a brute. In fact, it’s one of the most distant stars you can see with your naked eye, contrasting wonderfully with nearby Altair. If Deneb were as close as Altair, it would shine so brightly you could read by it!

Look at all the stars surrounding the Big Three in Andreo’s photo, though. Each of those is a sun, each with its own particular uniqueness, its own history. The vast majority of them are likely to have planets too… and even then these are just a tiny fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy.

The sky is filled with stars, planets… and stories. Science helps us read them.

* For northern hemisphere observers, that is. The vast majority of people on Earth live near the 40° north latitude line, and for them the stars are highest in August around 10:00 at night local time. For southern observers, they’ll be low to the north in August.



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2015年6月26日 星期五

Planet Aurora


What bizarre alien planet is this ? It's planet Earth of course, seen through the shimmering glow of aurorae from the International Space Station. About 400 kilometers (250 miles) above, the orbiting station is itself within the upper realm of the auroral displays, also watched from the planet's surface on June 23rd. Aurorae have the signature colors of excited molecules and atoms at the low densities found at extreme altitudes. The eerie greenish glow of molecular oxygen dominates this view. But higher, just above the space station's horizon, is a rarer red band of aurora from atomic oxygen. The ongoing geomagnetic storm began after a coronal mass ejection's recent impact on Earth's magnetosphere. via NASA http://ift.tt/1J9Ei2q

Prepared Statements: Hearing on Replacing RD-180 Engines on US Launch Vehicles

Tory Bruno, ULA Rob Meyerson, Blue Origin Julie Van Kleeck, Aerojet Rocketdyne Frank Culbertson, Orbital ATK Katrina McFarland, DoD John Hyten, USAF Space Command Jeffrey Thornburg, SpaceX Samuel Greaves, USAF Space and Missiles Systems Center Michael Griffin, himself...

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Sharing Memories of Columbia and Challenger

A Memorial to Our Fallen Shuttle Family Members "Today, NASA and our nation take a step toward the future by honoring our past. The story of humans in space is more than 50 years old, and a major part of...

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Now Let’s Just Call It Marriage

Good.

Read more of Slate’s coverage of same-sex marriage at the Supreme Court.



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Watching Meteors From the Space Station


Astronaut Ron Garan tweeted this image from the International Space Station in August, 2011, writing, “What a `Shooting Star’ looks like from space, taken yesterday during Perseid Meteor Shower.” A special camera to record meteor showers will launch to the station aboard SpaceX's Dragon cargo craft, currently scheduled to launch on June 28, 2015. via NASA http://ift.tt/1BScbFu

ISS Daily Summary Report – 6/25/15

Ocular Health: Padalka executed his Medical Operations Flight Day 90 (FD90) Ocular Health activities with Kelly’s assistance.  Padalka performed Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and ocular ultrasound and later today will execute fundoscope measurements with Kelly as operator. OCT is used to measure retinal thickness, volume, and retinal nerve fiber layer, and fundoscopy is used to obtain images of the retinal surface. The Ocular Health protocol calls for a systematic gathering of physiological data to characterize the risk of microgravity-induced visual impairment/intracranial pressure in ISS crewmembers. Researchers believe that the measurement of visual, vascular and central nervous system changes over the course of this experiment and during the subsequent post-flight recovery will assist in the development of countermeasures, clinical monitoring strategies, and clinical practice guidelines. Integrated Resistance and Aerobic Training Study (Sprint):  Kelly, with Padalka assisting, configured video, Ultrasound 2 machine, and donned the calf and thigh reference guides for his FD90 Sprint Ultrasound.  Kelly then performed thigh and calf scans with guidance from the Sprint ground team.  Sprint evaluates the use of high intensity, low volume exercise training to minimize loss of muscle, bone, and cardiovascular function in ISS crewmembers during long-duration missions. Ultrasound scans are used to evaluate spaceflight-induced changes in the muscle volume. Fine Motor Skills: Kelly and Kornienko executed their FD90 Fine Motor Skills experiment this morning between one and four hours of wakeup.  In the Fine Motor Skills experiment, crew members perform a series of interactive tasks on a touchscreen tablet. The investigation is the first fine motor skills study to measure long-term microgravity exposure, different phases of microgravity adaptation, and sensorimotor recovery after returning to Earth gravity. The goal of Fine Motor Skills is to answer how fine motor performance in microgravity trend/vary over the duration of a six-month and year-long space mission; how fine motor performance on orbit compare with that of a closely matched participant on Earth; and how performance trend/vary before and after gravitational transitions, including the periods of early flight adaptation, and very early/near immediate post-flight periods. SpaceX (SpX)-7 Preparations: Kelly and Padalka completed another session of On Board Training (OBT) with the robotics trainer to prepare for capture/berthing of the Dragon vehicle. Today they practiced a 30 meter approach and two capture point hold runs. SpX-7 launch is planned for Sunday, June 28 with berthing on Tuesday, June 30. Ground Camera Calibration – Ground controllers performed a calibration of ISS external cameras today, in preparation for SpaceX-7 arrival.  The purpose of the calibration is to make sure that the overlays displayed by the Robotics Workstation line up properly with the video images during SpaceX-7 approach and capture.  Today’s activity gathered data on the camera pan and tilt calibration.  Using this data, ground teams determined that the camera calibrations are within limits and no adjustments are needed. Today’s Planned Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. SLEEP questionnaire SPLANKH. Experiment ops. SLEEP questionnaire ОСТ – hardware prep ОСТ – eye scan ОСТ – hardware stow USND2- activation Fine Motor Skills – experiment FINEMOTR – experiment ops Eye ultrasound – hardware prep Eye ultrasound СОЖ Maintenance Eye ultrasound – data transfer Preparing LAB Camcorder in LAB RWS Mon 1 for Earth observation ОTKLIK. Instrumentation monitoring Eye ultrasound – closeout ops SPRINT- hardware setup SPRINT- experiment ops assist SPLANKH. Repeat bio-chemical blood analysis. SPLANKH. Closeout ops. USND2- deactivation Dragon rendezvous and berthing OBT procedures self-study URAGAN. Observation and photography using [НА ВСС] science instrumentation SPLANKH. Experiment ops PROBOI. [АР] teardown and connecting cables RGN – water transfer to EDV (start) Fundoscopic eye exam – hardware prep IMS update Fundoscopic eye exam – pupil dilation SYN_MUSCL- photo registry RGN – water transfer to EDV (end) Fundoscopic eye exam CONTENT. Experiment ops Crew conference with Astronaut Office Flight Director conference Fundoscopic eye exam – hardware stow Completed Task List Items None  Ground Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. SPRINT Ocular Health Dragon OBT Camera Calibration Three-Day Look Ahead: Friday, 06/26: Crew off duty Saturday, 06/27: Housekeeping, Crew off duty Sunday, 06/28: Crew off duty, SpX-7 launch QUICK ISS Status – Environmental Control Group:                               Component Status Elektron On Vozdukh Manual [СКВ] 1 – SM Air Conditioner System (“SKV1”) Off [СКВ] 2 – SM Air Conditioner System (“SKV2”) On Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab Standby Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 Operate Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab Shutdown Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 Operate Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) Standby Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) Standby Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab Off Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 Full Up  

June 26, 2015 at 01:24AM
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What Lurks in the Outer Solar System?

Where does the solar system end?

You might think of the solar system as being the Sun, a bunch of planets*, and various asteroids and comets.

But it’s more complicated than that. Nothing in the Universe ever really has sharp boundaries when you look at it closely. And just because some stuff is big and bright, and other stuff faint and distant, doesn’t mean you can just pick and choose where the city limits lie.

Neptune may be the outermost big planet, but there’s a whole slew of icy objects out past it. And some are way, way past it. And, not surprisingly, they’re weird.

What may be surprising is how much these tiny, distant chunks of frozen water plying the deep black have affected the history of our solar system, and even our very planet. A large fraction of your body is water, and a large fraction of that may have come from The Space Beyond Neptune.

How? Why, I’m glad you asked. Let this guy and his loud shirt tell you all about it.

* How many? Oh, roughly a dozen. Maybe fewer.



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2015年6月25日 星期四

Star Trails Above Table Mountain


Stars trail above and urban lights sprawl below in this moonlit nightscape from Cape Town, South Africa, planet Earth. The looming form of Table Mountain almost seems to hold terrestrial lights at bay while the stars circle the planet's South Celestial Pole. This modern perspective on the natural night sky was captured in June 2014, the scene composed of over nine hundred, stacked 30 second exposures. The stunning result was chosen as the winner in the Against the Lights category, a selection from over 800 entries in The World at Night's 2015 International Earth and Sky Photo Contest. via NASA http://ift.tt/1e5iHNQ

The why and how of landing rockets

CRS-6 first stage approaching Just Read the Instructions

Some of you may have been following our recent attempts to vertically land the first stage of our Falcon 9 rocket back on Earth.



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JSC's Open Innovation Contract Award Free For All

NASA JSC Solicitation: Open Innovation Challenge "NASA/JSC has a requirement for the use of an established external crowdsourcing support platform with a curated crowd in order to publically post one challenge (external to NASA) to enable interaction with an existing...

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NASA Invites Media, Social Media to a Space Launch System RS-25 Engine Test

Media and social media followers are invited to watch as NASA tests an RS-25 engine like those that will power the rocket that launches astronauts on missions to an asteroid and to Mars. The test will take place Thursday, August 13, at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

June 25, 2015
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What Is Glittering at Pluto’s North Pole?

As the New Horizons spacecraft nears Pluto, more details are coming into view, and we are beginning to see surface features on the tiny world.

And that means we’ll see things that are… odd. Perhaps “as yet unexplained” is a better term, since we’re seeing these markings for the first time in human history. The press releases have been amazing, but the images released have been enlarged and processed in complex ways to bring out details.

But as the probe gets closer, we can see details without such means. The raw data are posted online within hours of them being transmitted back to Earth, and that means they are available for perusal.

I was looking at a pair of fresh ones taken just today, June 25, at 05:37 UTC (just after midnight, more or less, US time), when New Horizons was just 22.9 million kilometers from Pluto. They’re amazing. Both Pluto and its large moon Charon show all kinds of features, as you can see at the top of this article (the only processing I did was a straight enlargement and a brightness/contrast fiddle). Overall, Charon is much darker than Pluto, but even then surface features are clearly visible.

But that bright spot on Pluto surprised me. That’s near its north pole, and it’s been seen before in earlier images, basically as a splotch. In this image it’s quite obvious.

I wondered if perhaps this was an image artifact, like a particle hit on the detector, but in fact it’s the same in the other image taken 30 seconds earlier. Here are the two shots side by side:

The spot is very small, probably on the same scale as a single pixel or two in New Horizon’s long-range camera. That means a slight change in the pointing can make its shape look different. Remember too this image is enlarged by a factor of about 10, which can play with the shape as well. While the shape you see may not be real, the brightness contrast is.

But the important thing to note is that it’s seen in both pictures. I’ll note too that Pluto was in a different spot in the camera’s field of view, too, so this isn’t some bad lone pixel either, messing with the shot. This bright spot is quite real. Measuring the pixel brightnesses, it looks to be about twice as bright as the surface around it.

Right now, Pluto is only a couple of dozen pixels across in the long-range camera’s view. New Horizons is moving so rapidly that in 10 days Pluto will be twice this size, and will double again five days after that. Features that are tantalizingly fuzzy now will continue to sharpen, and then we’ll see Pluto as it truly is.

Is this spot at the north pole a fresh impact? Is it nitrogen in its atmosphere freezing out as Pluto slowly moves away from the Sun on its elliptical orbit? Is it one big spot or a lot of little ones (like the weird ones we see on Ceres)?

Give it a couple of weeks. Because that's how close we are. After more than nine years and 5 billion kilometers of travel, New Horizons is about to give us quite a show.

Tip o' the lens cap to Karl Battams for noting new images had arrived.



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Of Course I Still Love You, Falcon: New SpaceX Ship Ready to Catch Rockets

SpaceX is gearing up for its seventh paid cargo run to the International Space Station, and the third attempt to catch the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a drone ship in the ocean.

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NASA, Microsoft Collaborate to Bring Science Fiction to Science Fact

NASA and Microsoft are teaming up to develop Sidekick, a new project using commercial technology to empower astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

June 25, 2015
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The 2015 Earth and Sky Photography Winners

The good folks at the World at Night—dedicated to preserving the night sky and raising awareness about light pollution—have announced the winners of the sixth annual International Earth and Sky Photo Contest, and as usual they are breathtaking examples of the art of astronomy.

They are all beautiful, and you should see them all, but I particularly liked “The Enchanted Forest” by Lyubov Trifonova (shown at the top of this article). The aurora sweep across the sky, set against snow-covered trees in Russia. The Moon illuminates the scene while the familiar stars of the Pleiades and Taurus hang nearby. This won first place in the “Beauty of the Night Sky” category. You can tell she had to endure some fairly inhospitable circumstances to get that shot.

I was pleased to see frequent BA contributor Brad Goldpaint take second place in this category as well.

All the images have been put into a video for ease of viewing:

The contest is open to people all ages anywhere in the world, a way to show that the sky belongs to all of us. I really do like TWAN and support them; check out their site and see what they do. The photographs they have there are surpassingly lovely and will give you an appreciation of the natural heritage of our night sky.



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Solar Dynamics Observatory Sees M7.9-Class Solar Flare


The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, an M7.9-class, peaking at 4:16 a.m. EDT on June 25, 2015. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured an image of the event. via NASA http://ift.tt/1div2gQ

Inclusive Astronomy Conference

Last week, more than 150 astronomers gathered in Nashville for a conference to examine fundamental questions in our field: Who gets to practice astronomy? How can we make astronomy more inclusive?

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ISS Daily Summary Report – 06/24/15

Microbiome: Kelly collected samples in support of the Microbiome experiment which were then inserted into Minus Eighty Degree Celsius Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI) for later return.  The Microbiome experiment investigates the impact of space travel on both the human immune system and an individual’s microbiome (the collection of microbes that live in and on the human body at any given time). To monitor the status of the crewmembers’ microbiome and immune system and their interaction with the unique environment of the ISS, periodic samples from different parts of the body and the surrounding ISS environment are taken. As part of this study, the likelihood and consequences of alterations in the microbiome due to extreme environments, and the related human health risk, will be assessed. SUPVIS-E Troubleshooting: Kelly conducted a conference with SUPVIS-E specialists, then with the ground assistance, successfully performed troubleshooting on the laptop in an attempt to regain connectivity and allow proper communication between the laptop and ground. ESA ground controllers will continue with commanding and checkout of the laptop.  SUPVIS-E aims at simulating selected future Human exploration scenarios including immersive remote control of a robot by an astronaut in orbit around a target object (such as Mars or the Moon). A crew member will control the ESA test rover located at ESOC (Germany) in near real time. SpaceX (SpX)-7 Preparations: Kelly and Padalka completed another session of On Board Training (OBT) with the robotics trainer to prepare for capture/berthing of the Dragon vehicle. Today they practiced a 30 meter approach and two capture point hold runs. SpX-7 launch is planned for Sunday, June 28 with berthing on Tuesday, June 30.  Today’s Planned Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. SLEEP Questionnaire Self-Reaction Test. Reaction Time Test (morning) BIOME – Survey Completion Biochemical Urine Test URISYS Hardware Stowage HRF. Sample MELFI Insertion Intermodular TORU Test with Docked Progress 425 (AO) PROBOY. RSЕ1 Laptop Ops. PROBOY. Penetration Simulator Ops. HMS Defibrillator Inspection BIOME. Sample collection HRF. Sample MELFI Insertion BIOME – Equipment stowage after sample collection WRM Ops PROBOY. Copy and Downlink Data MOTOCARD. Experiment Ops. MOTOCARD. Assistance with the Experiment WRS – Recycle Tank Fill Vision Test WRS – Recycle Tank Fill Vision Test –  Complete Questionnaire Dragon Approach and Berthing OBT using ROBoT, Session 1 СОЖ Maintenance WRS – Recycle Tank Fill Mating umbilicals to ARIS RGN REC-TNK – Removal of depress hose for nominal operations SPLANH. Preparation for Experiment WRS – Recycle Tank Fill Self-Reaction Test. Reaction Time Test Completed Task List Items None Ground Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. OBT Dragon RoBOT N2 Distribution System Leak Check [In Work] Three-Day Look Ahead: Thursday, 06/25: Ocular Health, Dragon OBT RoBOT, Sprint Friday, 06/26: Crew off duty Saturday, 06/27: Housekeeping, Crew off duty QUICK ISS Status – Environmental Control Group:                               Component Status Elektron On Vozdukh Manual [СКВ] 1 – SM Air Conditioner System (“SKV1”) On [СКВ] 2 – SM Air Conditioner System (“SKV2”) Off Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab Standby Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 Operate Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab Shutdown Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 Operate Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) Standby Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) Process Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab Off Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 Full Up  

June 25, 2015 at 01:02AM
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A Star Boils Away Its Own Planet, Turning It Into a Megacomet

Hey, remember last week when I wrote about a Neptune-sized planet (called GJ 436b) that orbits a nearby star, and how it may have an atmosphere that’s almost entirely helium? That’s really weird, since the bigger planets in our solar system have predominantly hydrogen atmospheres. We’ve got nothing like a helium-rich planet in our solar system.

I wrote that the planet seemed to have no methane in its atmosphere as it should; that could be explained by a lack of hydrogen, needed to make methane. Astronomers were guessing that the planet orbits so closely to its star that the lightweight hydrogen would get blown away by the star, and the planet’s gravity is too weak to hold onto it. Helium is heavier and the planet can hold on to it better.

But hang on. It takes a long, long time to strip a planet of hydrogen. Billions of years! So, if what these astronomers were supposing is true, maybe, just maybe, GJ 436b is still losing hydrogen now.

Yeah, about that.

Astronomers using Hubble have just announced that they’ve detected a huge cloud of hydrogen around the planet, and the long, curving tail-like shape to the cloud indicates it’s being blown away from the planet by the star.

Huh.

When I got the press release for this, I did a double take. You don’t usually get observational proof of an idea so shortly after it’s first announced! But here it is.

The planet GJ 436b is called a warm Neptune because, at 23 times the mass of Earth, it’s closer to Neptune's  mass than it is to Earth or Jupiter, and it orbits the star only a few million kilometers out. From our point of view it passes directly in front of the star, transits it, once per orbit. That’s how it was first discovered; once every 2.6 Earth days the starlight dims a bit as it’s blocked by the planet. The amount of visible light blocked is small, less than 1%, but measurable.

The astronomers observed the star, a red dwarf about 30 light years from Earth, before, during, and after such a transit. They used the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (a camera I helped calibrate!) to observe the star in the ultraviolet, where hydrogen atoms just love to absorb light. What they found is that the amount of UV light they saw from the star dropped precipitously, by over 50%, starting about two hours before the transit, and lasting for three hours after.

Not only that, they could measure the velocity of the hydrogen atoms as they move around the star. Using 3D modeling, the best fit to what they see is a huge cloud of hydrogen around the planet, forming a comet-like tail sweeping out behind it. Here's a the video showing a depiction of the planet and cloud passing in front of the star. The graph below it shows how the UV light gets absorbed by the hydrogen over time.

Most likely what’s happening is that the lightweight hydrogen is very hot due to the planet being so close to the star. The atoms move so rapidly due to heat that they get flung far above the planet, where the light from the star can give them an additional push, freeing them from the planet’s gravity. That push isn’t terribly strong, so they don’t just fly off and away, but instead form a puffy cloud around the planet, and a long tail of material trailing the planet as it orbits. That’s much the same as how comets form long curving tails as they orbit the Sun, too. Anyway, that’s why they see a dip in UV before the planet transits (that’s from the puffy cloud) and for many hours after (that’s the tail blocking the light).

The image at the top of this post gives you an idea of what this looks like. The star is boiling away the planet! Well, part of it, at least. Calculating the amount of hydrogen they see, and how fast it’s leaving GJ 436b, it looks like it would take many billions of years for the planet to lose all its hydrogen (though it’s possible the loss rate was higher in the past). But still, the planet is already billions of years old, so this method has clearly caused a severe depletion of hydrogen, explaining the lack of methane in its atmosphere, too.

I love it when a plan comes together.

All in all, this makes me smile. What’s not to love? A giant planet, skimming the surface of its star, its atmosphere being slowly torn away and trailing behind it, leaving behind mostly helium… which, as I mentioned in the earlier post, will make the planet oddly gray in color.

This is nothing at all like any planet we have hear in our neighborhood. That’s so cool! The goal of science may be to learn as much as we can about the Universe, but the motivation for so many of us is the weird, the spectacular, the alien, the amazing.

This planet is all of those, and more.



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2015年6月24日 星期三

Triple Conjunction Over Galician National Park


What are those bright objects hovering over the horizon? Planets -- and the Moon. First out, the horizon featured is a shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean that occurs at the Galicia National Park in northern Spain. Next furthest out, on the left, is the Moon. Easily the brightest object on the night sky, the Moon here was in only a crescent phase. The next furthest out, on the right, is the planet Venus, while planet Jupiter is seen at the top of the triangle. The long exposure from our rapidly rotating Earth made all of celestial objects -- including the far distant stars -- appear as slight arcs. The featured image was taken last Sunday night. Although the Moon's orbit has now taken it away from this part of the sky, the planets Venus and Jupiter can be seen superposed just after sunset until mid-August. The closest apparent separation of Venus and Jupiter will occur in one week, when the two planets will appear separated by less than the angular diameter of the Moon. via NASA http://ift.tt/1fALvPa

NASA Prepares for Future Space Exploration with International Undersea Crew

NASA will send an international crew to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean this summer to prepare for future deep space missions during the 14-day NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) 20 expedition slated to begin July 20.

June 24, 2015
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Dancing Lights Against the Sky

When you look up in the sky enough, you'll see some really, really weird things. 

YouTube user QuadeM13 was out riding his bike and noticed a strange light beam flashing and twisting around above a cloud. He stopped and took some video of it, and it's, well, really really weird (warning, some NSFW language is muttered therein):

So what is this thing? An alien beacon? Thor going back to Asgard?

Nope. It's... ice crystals.

Seriously. What's happening here is a wispy cirrus cloud, made up of ice crystals, is being impinged upon from below by a rising cumulus cloud. If the ice crystals in the cirrus are long and needle-shaped, they'll align themselves with the electric field of the lower cumulus cloud, which is generated by up- and downdrafts inside the cumulus cloud. When the electric field suddenly changes (due to, say, lightning discharges inside the cloud), the ice crystals can snap into a different orientation, reflecting and refracting sunlight in a different direction (note that the plume in the video is the same color as the Sun). They do this as a group, making it look like huge coherent structures are suddenly changing shape.

In the video the flare is pretty bright, and I imagine it would be easy to be freaked out by it. I watch clouds a lot and I’ve never seen this, so I doubt it’s terribly common; you need the right circumstances of the cumulus cloud rising into an icy cirrus layer as well as the right geometry to get the sunlight flashing of the crystals.

Back in 2011, I wrote this very odd phenomenon. I had to do some sleuthing to find out what was going on, but what I didn't know at the time is that they're called “crown flashes”. That would’ve made it a lot easier to find out more!

I found a letter to Nature magazine from 1971 describing the phenomenon, so people have been seeing this for a while. A web search on “crown flash” turns up lots of interesting pictures and videos, too.

The Internet makes finding weird things like this so much easier. I’ve been able to identify iridescent clouds, pileus clouds, and many other weird atmospheric phenomena with just a few clicks. Like any other tool, the ‘net can be used for ill or for good. I’m glad that it can help us see — and understand — the amazingness all around us all the time.

Tip o’ the Faraday cage to photographer Jerry Lodriguss.



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Lights of An Aurora From the International Space Station


NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photo of an aurora from the International Space Station on June 23, 2015. The dancing lights of the aurora provide spectacular views on the ground, but also capture the imagination of scientists who study incoming energy and particles from the sun. via NASA http://ift.tt/1LuBqke

ISS Daily Summary Report – 06/23/15

Binary Colloidal Alloy Test Low Gravity Phase Kinetics Platform (BCAT-KP):  Kelly changed the camera battery, transferred images to a laptop for downlink, and set the D2Xs intervalometer. The BCAT-KP experiment aims to help materials scientists develop new consumer products with unique properties and longer shelf lives. Colloids are mixtures of small particles distributed throughout a liquid, which include milk, detergents and liquid crystals. Gravity affects how the particles clump together and sink, making the ISS an ideal platform to study their fundamental behaviors. Microbiome Setup: Kelly gathered and reviewed a reminder video prior to beginning his next round of Microbiome collections. The Microbiome experiment investigates the impact of space travel on both the human immune system and an individual’s microbiome (the collection of microbes that live in and on the human body at any given time). To monitor the status of the crewmembers’ microbiome and immune system and their interaction with the unique environment of the ISS, periodic samples from different parts of the body and the surrounding ISS environment are taken. As part of this study, the likelihood and consequences of alterations in the microbiome due to extreme environments, and the related human health risk, will be assessed. Mobile Servicing System (MSS) Operations: Robotics Ground Controllers powered up the MSS in the Hot Backup Configuration in preparation for today’s SpX-7 Offset Grapple practice session. During the MSS power up they also performed the pre-launch checkouts. Kelly and Padalka practiced maneuvering the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) into the grapple envelope of the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (SPDM) Power Data Grapple Fixture (PDGF).  They performed this eight times followed by a final run during which ground controllers safed the SSRMS to simulate a failure. The crew recovered by switching from the Cupola Robotic Workstation (RWS) to the Lab RWS and backed the SSRMS away.  Today’s Planned Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. Micro-purification Unit cartridge F2 regeneration (start) SLEEP questionnaire RSS1,2 reboot [ВКС] laptops antivirus software update WRS – fill for processing from EDV PROBOI. The activity with on-board laptop RSЕ1. PROBOI. Ops with penetration simulator. BIOME questionnaire EHS water purification system sample collection TOCA – PWD water sample analysis PHS hardware setup PROBOI. Data copy and downlink HMS- PHS СОЖ Maintenance PHS data entry hardware stow MOTOKARD payload ops. RWS activation CALCIUM payload session #9. Cable КСПЭ SM-FOTO-D3-03 audit ECLSS vessel transfer and R&R Dragon capture OBT #1 Progress rendezvous monitoring tagup Cleaning panel vent screens of FGB interior panels (pan. 201, 301, 401) OBT – SSRMS OBT debrief TOCA data recording WRS – water sample analysis PAO equipment prep BCAT- Image transfer from video camera Crew prep for PAO PAO Robotics Work Station (RWS) Display and Control Panel (DCP) Checkout URISYS hardware prep IMS update BIOME – prep for sample draw TOCA – data recording Micro-purification Unit cartridge F2 regeneration (end) Completed Task List Items None Ground Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. OBT Dragon offset grapple Three-Day Look Ahead: Wednesday, 06/24: Dragon OBT RoBOT, Biome Thursday, 06/25: Ocular Health, Dragon OBT RoBOT, Sprint Friday, 06/26: Crew off duty for work planned on Saturday QUICK ISS Status – Environmental Control Group:                               Component Status Elektron On Vozdukh Manual [СКВ] 1 – SM Air Conditioner System (“SKV1”) On [СКВ] 2 – SM Air Conditioner System (“SKV2”) Off Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab Standby Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 Operate Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab Shutdown Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 Operate Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) Standby Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) Standby Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab Off Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 Full Up  

June 24, 2015 at 01:03AM
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What to expect when you're expecting a flyby: Planning your July around New Horizons' Pluto Pictures (version 2)

Three months ago, I posted an article explaining what to expect during the flyby. This is a revised version of the same post, with some errors corrected, the expected sizes of Nix and Hydra updated, and times of press briefings added.

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Like a SciFi Sunset: Three Crescent Moons Over Saturn

Every time I think I’ve seen the most amazing picture from the Cassini Saturn probe, it sends back something even more devastatingly spectacular.

Like this shot of three crescent moons huddled in the black sky!

Are you kidding me?

Wow. This image was taken on Mar. 25, 2015. The big one is Titan, the one to the upper left is Rhea, and the little one is Mimas. Titan has a thick atmosphere, thicker than Earth’s, composed mostly of nitrogen (also like Earth’s). Sunlight hitting that air gets bent around, sent around the limb, so the crescent appears to wrap farther around the moon than it would otherwise. Mimas and Rhea are airless, so their crescents look much like the familiar one we see every month from our own Moon.

All of Saturn’s big moons orbit the planet almost exactly above its equator, so when the spacecraft’s orbit crosses that plane, the moons can appear to be close together due to perspective even when they’re hundreds of thousands of kilometers apart. The Sun is just off to the lower right in this shot, setting up the correct angles to get this spectacular and breathtaking scene.

Seriously, this looks like it came right out of a scifi movie. But it’s real. Those are worlds, real actual places, ones we can explore and understand.

And we have: Titan has a methane cycle on it much like Earth’s water cycle; the simple molecule can be found in clouds over the surface which rain it out as a liquid, forming rivers and giant lakes, where it evaporates to form clouds once again.

Mimas has a gigantic single crater named Herschel that makes it look like the Death Star. Though it was almost more like Alderaan: Had the impact that formed Herschel been much larger, it would’ve shattered the moon.

Rhea has deep canyons covering one hemisphere, giving it a wispy fairy-tale look, but they are actually the walls of steep canyons caused by deep fractures in the surface. 

I love science fiction. It’s inspired me over the years, given me a glimpse into places we can only imagine.

But I love science more. It shows us these places as they actually are, and reminds us that clearly, Nature is far, far more imaginative than we are.



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NASA-Developed Air Traffic Management Tool Flies Into Use

A new software tool developed by NASA, and being deployed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is positioned to help air traffic controllers manage the nation’s skies.

June 23, 2015
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2015年6月23日 星期二

Sharpless 308: Star Bubble


Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,200 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance. The massive star that created the bubble, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution. Fast winds from this Wolf-Rayet star create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of evolution. The windblown nebula has an age of about 70,000 years. Relatively faint emission captured in the expansive image is dominated by the glow of ionized oxygen atoms mapped to a blue hue. via NASA http://ift.tt/1NgD9aH

Advising NASA on the Soon-to-be-Redirected Asteroid Redirect Mission

Invitation to Membership on the Formulation Assessment and Support Team for the Asteroid Redirect Mission "The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) intends to release a letter of invitation for membership on the Formulation Assessment and Support Team (FAST) for...

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NASA’s Chandra Captures X-Ray Echoes Pinpointing Distant Neutron Star

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered the largest and brightest set of rings from X-ray light echoes ever observed. These extraordinary rings, produced by an intense flare from a neutron star, provide astronomers a rare chance to determine how far across the Milky Way galaxy the star is from Earth.

June 23, 2015
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Flying Over An Aurora


NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) captured photographs and video of auroras on June 22, 2015. Kelly wrote, "Yesterday's aurora was an impressive show from 250 miles up. Good morning from the International Space Station! ‪#‎YearInSpace‬" via NASA http://ift.tt/1e1NDyw

Pluto Grows in Size While Its Moon Sports a Dark Cap

New Horizons is approaching Pluto and is now just over 20 days from closest approach. Every day the tiny world looks a wee bit bigger to the space probe, which is screaming toward Pluto, getting closer to it by 14 kilometers each and every second.

New images just released are showing more detail, as you can see in the images above. These have been carefully processed to enlarge and enhance those details. Note that Pluto is almost certainly very round, but it looks misshapen due to darker features near the edge blending into the black background.

Pluto is severely tilted with respect to its orbit around the Sun; while the Earth is tilted by about 24°, Pluto is flipped over at about 120°. Because of this and its approach angle, New Horizons doesn’t see the entire surface of Pluto, but it does see more than half as Pluto rotates. Projecting forward, scientists know which part of Pluto will be under the probe’s cameras when it passes, and they can see that part of the surface is richly diverse, sporting lots of different features. This promises some pretty exciting pictures come July …

But we’re learning more all the time. Charon is Pluto’s big moon, more than half the diameter of Pluto itself. Yet it’s very different; as you can see in the video above it’s far darker than Pluto, and therefore likely to have less ice on its surface to reflect sunlight. Also, weirdly, its north pole is darker than the average of the rest of its surface! That’s very interesting. On Earth, water and land are dark, but ice is bright, and the icy poles are brighter than average. Pluto too has a bright north pole (it’s not certain what it is, but it could be frozen nitrogen, not water). Why is Charon’s pole so dark? What different processes are at work there than on its larger partner?

We’ll find out soon enough. Right now, New Horizons is less than 25 million kilometers from Pluto. At closest approach it’ll zoom over the surface at distance of less than 14,000 km! And every day, every hour, between now and then this new world grows under the spacecraft’s eye, getting larger and revealing more detail, more secrets invisible from Earth. 



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New Horizons update: Resolving features on Charon and seeing in color

Only about three weeks remain until the flyby -- it's getting really close! I almost don't want the anticipation to end. New Horizons is now getting color images and is seeing features on Charon. Deep searches have yielded no new moons.

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Yet Another Hearing on Russian Engines

Hearing: Assuring National Security Space: Investing in American industry to end reliance on Russian rocket engines Keith's note: The House Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing Friday with quite a cast of characters - Tory Bruno, Rob Meyerson, Julie...

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More False Memories About the Origin of SLS

Bush's former NASA Administrator Michael Griffin says Obama's Space Launch System 'next essential step': guest opinion, Huntsville Times "The SLS vehicle design materialized from an extensive, unbiased set of NASA technical studies which compared all possible scenarios, with a focus...

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NASA, Partners Test Unmanned Aircraft Systems

NASA, working with government and industry partners, is testing a system that would make it possible for unmanned aircraft to fly routine operations in United States airspace.

June 23, 2015
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ISS Daily Summary Report – 06/22/15

Sleep ISS-12: Kelly and Kornienko are performing a week of sleep logging.  Within fifteen minutes of wakeup, the crew answered questions from the SleepLog application on the Station Support Computer (SSC).  The Sleep ISS-12 experiment monitors ambient light exposure and crew member activity and collects subjective evaluations of sleep and alertness, to examine the effects of space flight and ambient light exposure on sleep during a year-long mission on the ISS.  Habitability:  Kelly resumes the Habitability activity this week after successfully reloading the iShort application to the tablet last week.  He answered a questionnaire that focuses on habitability and his interactions with ISS systems.  Habitability assesses the relationship between crew members and their environment in order to better prepare for future long-duration spaceflights to destinations such as Near Earth Asteroids (NEA) and Mars. The ultimate goal is to understand how much habitable volume is required for vehicle internal design and layout, and if mission duration impacts the volume needed. On Board Training (OBT) 42 Soyuz (42S) Emergency Descent Drill: All 3 crew members participated in this emergency decent drill. The drill is scheduled 12-14 weeks aboard the ISS, then once every 2.5 months.  This training session focused on off-nominal procedures that would be used in the event the crew needed to egress the ISS and perform an emergency descent. SpaceX (SpX)-7 Arrival Preparations: Kelly and Padalka completed another session of robotics training to practice tracking and capture of the Dragon vehicle. They also powered up and checked out the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Ultra High Frequency (UHF) Communication Unit (CUCU) and Dragon Crew Command Panel (CCP). Finally, they placed the Node 2 nadir hatch to the unlatch position. Today’s Planned Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. Regeneration of the Micropurification Unit (БМП) Ф1 cartridge (begin) [ВКС] laptops antivirus software update / r/g 8247 BIOME- Completion of the questionnaire ISS Emergency Soyuz Descent OBT. / r/g 9129 SEISMOPROGNOZ. Data Transfer from Control and Data Acquisition Module (МКСД) hard drive (begin) RSE1 spectrum search (begin). / r/g 9125 CUCU Activation Dragon Robotics Review CUCU and CCP checkout PAO video recording / r/g 9130 Verifying JLP, JEMRMS, ISPR A2, A3, fire indication function. ЕДВ ([КОВ]) No. 1106 (00063570R) filling (separation) for Elektron r/g 8936 Monitoring of ИП-1 air flow sensors installation RR – sample relocation in MELFI IMS Delta File Prep HABIT – Questionnaire completion URAGAN. Observations and Photography / r/g 9131 N2 Nadir Hatch Unlatching Greasing of ARED upper stops cables SEISMOPROGNOZ. Data Transfer from Control and Data Acquisition Module (МКСД) hard drive (end) and beginning of archiving. RSE1 spectrum search (end). / r/g 9125 Regeneration of the Micropurification Unit (БМП) Ф1 cartridge (end) Preparation for the antivirus scanning of [ВКС] laptops / r/g 8247  Completed Task List Items GPS downlink message LAB1OP4 BBA R&R  Ground Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. CUCU checkout Three-Day Look Ahead: Tuesday, 06/23: Dragon Offset Grapple, Biome, BCAT, PWD Sample Collect and TOCA Analysis Wednesday, 06/24: Dragon OBT RoBOT, Biome Thursday, 06/25: Ocular Health, Dragon OBT RoBOT, Sprint QUICK ISS Status – Environmental Control Group:                               Component Status Elektron On Vozdukh Manual [СКВ] 1 – SM Air Conditioner System (“SKV1”) On [СКВ] 2 – SM Air Conditioner System (“SKV2”) Off Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Lab Standby Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) Node 3 Operate Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Lab Shutdown Major Constituent Analyzer (MCA) Node 3 Operate Oxygen Generation Assembly (OGA) Standby Urine Processing Assembly (UPA) Process Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab Off Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 Full Up  

June 23, 2015 at 01:02AM
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What Do We Do About Misogyny Online?

Not surprisingly, the issue of misogyny on the Internet has hit the news again.

The blatant and horrid misogyny women face online has been an issue for as long as there’s been an Internet. Recently, though, with the advent of GamerGate, it’s been amplified to a terrifying degree, with women receiving organized attacks, including death threats.

There’s also the problem of doxxing (publically listing a person’s information like phone number and address), which has also led to SWATting: calling the police with a fake claim of (say) a hostage situation, giving the address of the person you’re targeting. The police raid that person’s house, and this can lead to incredibly dangerous situations, and severe psychological harm.

John Oliver did a typically brilliant report on all this for his show “This Week Tonight” on HBO Sunday. Watch:

I’m very glad he tackled this; it gives this issue a wide audience, and I think it’s very important that people with a soapbox use it to help those who may not have as loud a voice.

There’s a trick in our brains that makes all this hard to fight: We tend to listen to people who are like us, and not listen (or not listen well) to those who aren’t. In this case, that means that some men may not hear this message from women talking about it. But if a man says the same thing, it gets traction. I hate that this is the case, but it means these groups can use vocal advocates, allies, among men.

That’s why I write about this as well. I’m a middle-aged white guy, and pretty much the bulls-eye demographic for a lot of the problems faced by women, minorities, and other marginalized groups. My hope is that if I speak up, others will as well.

As I’ve done before, I’ll make this simple. Men (and anyone, of course): Don’t do this. Don’t threaten, harass, doxx, or SWAT. It’s grossly, morally wrong.

I’ll note it’s also massively ironic, since it so face-palmingly proves the point that we really do need feminism.

If you’re worried about doxxing and SWATting, then I suggest you bookmark the Crash Override Network website — created by harassment survivors — and especially their resources page, which focuses on prevention and supporting victims.

Here are other articles I’ve written on this issue. Some advice: Don’t read the comments, unless you need yet more proof of Lewis’ Law.

Science Advice and Sexual Harassment
#YesAllWomen
The Silencing of Hate
Shirtstorm
Harassment as Art
I Stand with Emma Watson



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2015年6月22日 星期一

It Takes More Than Hype To Get To Mars

Empty Promises On NASA's Road to Mars, SpaceRef "These days you can't seem to go anywhere in the Internet without seeing #JourneyToMars slapped on Tweets about, well, everything that NASA does - regardless of how it is actually related to...

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NASA Signs Agreement with Space Florida to Operate Historic Landing Facility

A new agreement marks another step in the transformation of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to a multi-user spaceport. NASA’s historic Shuttle Landing Facility, the site of one of the longest runways in the world, has a new operator.

June 22, 2015
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A Ceres of Weird Events

Ceres keeps getting weirder.

Those white spots on the surface we’ve been seeing for months are still mystifying, and we can now add another bizarro surface feature to the list: A huge 5 km tall mountain sitting in the middle of an otherwise relatively flat part of the asteroid.

Um. Why is that there?

On Earth, mountains can form for several reasons. Continents crash together, creating wrinkles in the surface. That’s what the Himalayas are. Of course, Ceres doesn’t have plate tectonics! That wouldn’t form a solitary mountain anyway.

Volcanoes? Well, we do see that happening on Earth. But we don't see any other features like this at all nearby, making it unlikely to be from a weak spot in the crust. Devil’s Tower in Wyoming is similar to this feature, though; that tower may have been created by upwelling magma seeping into prehistoric sedimentary layers. But clearly that’s not going to happen on an asteroid! Sedimentary rocks would be, I expect, rather difficult to produce. 

Mountains on airless bodies like asteroids (or our Moon) can be made in several ways as well. Giant impacts have mountain ranges around their rim, created by rock lifted up at the edge of the crater. But this mountain on Ceres is alone.

Smaller craters can get central peaks, where the rock rebounds upward after the initial impact (similar to the drop that splashes up in the center of a glass when you pour milk). But there’s no obvious crater around this mountain. Maybe other forces filled it in, or subsequent impacts eroded it away. There's evidence of landslides on the surface as well, which could eventually erase the features of a crater. This seems most likely to me. We've seen other craters on Ceres with central peaks, but I don't think any yet this size. Given all the evidence, though, this is the way I'd lean.

But I’m simply guessing. We’re just now seeing this strange feature, and it’ll be a while, I suspect, before planetary scientists can get enough data to understand it better. Note that Dawn, the spacecraft now orbiting Ceres that took this picture, is still in a relatively high surveying orbit, 4,400 km above the surface. It’ll be dropping down to get much higher resolution images in the coming months.

Hopefully then we’ll get some definitive answers to these mysteries. Ceres is odd. We know there’s ice under the surface, and there’s evidence it also has geysers, eruptions of water, from its surface. That might explain the white spots, too, but there’s still a long way to go to figure all this out.

Ceres is the largest asteroid in the asteroid belt (some call it a dwarf planet; I find the term not terribly useful). It’s unique in that sense, and big enough to have geological processes on it and in it we haven’t fully grasped yet. It’s not Earth, for sure, but it’s far more than a simple monolithic rock in space.

It’s a world. And with a surface area of nearly 3 million square kilometers, there’s a lot of it to explore.



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Media Invited to Tour Journey to Mars Exhibits with Senior NASA Leaders

Senior NASA officials will help showcase the agency’s work on the Journey to Mars during a Mars Day on the Hill event Thursday, June 25, in the Rayburn House Office Building Foyer in Washington.

June 22, 2015
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NASA Selects Six Wild Ideas in Aviation for Further Study

NASA has selected six proposals to study transformative ideas that might expand what's possible in aviation, shifting the boundary between fantastic and futuristic.

June 22, 2015
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Dawn Survey Orbit Image 11


A cluster of mysterious bright spots on dwarf planet Ceres can be seen in this image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft from an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers). The image, with a resolution of 1,400 feet (410 meters) per pixel, was taken on June 9, 2015. via NASA http://ift.tt/1Iu9xm9

Are Volcanoes Still Erupting on Venus?

There are a handful of known currently tectonically active objects in the solar system: Earth, of course, plus Saturn’s moon Enceladus, Neptune’s moon Triton, Jupiter’s moon Io (the actual most active body known) and (most likely) Jupiter’s moon Europa.

And now we may be able to add Venus to that list. New evidence strongly suggests there are currently active volcanic vents on the surface of Earth’s sister planet.

I’m actually pretty chuffed about this. We’ve had tantalizing evidence for years that something is bubbling and brewing just beneath Venus’s surface. The top of the mountain Idunn Mons is clearly hotter than surrounding terrain, for example. Lava flows have been seen to be warm as well, and they are certainly less than 2.5 million years old, and possibly far less. Sulfur dioxide, a known volcanic gas, has been seen to spike in abundance then fade with time, which looks very much like a volcano outgassing (though it could simply be due to shifting winds).

But new results from an old mission provide what may be the most important evidence yet that Venus is still puffing away: The ESA Venus Express probe, which completed its eight-year mission last year, found several hot spots on the surface of the planet, and they were all located in rift zones; radial cracks around a volcano where, on Earth at least, magma is pushing up on the surface and flowing out.

Better yet, these hot spots flashed into existence and then faded away over the course of a few days. This is exactly the sort of behavior you’d expect from ongoing volcanism.

Observing the surface of Venus is difficult because of its thick, opaque atmosphere (a product of a runaway greenhouse effect). The observations were at the limit of what the camera could do, but Venus was accommodating by providing really big temperature spikes: one may have reach over 800° Celsius, 350° higher than the surface average.

The camera’s field of view is large, so the resolution is low, but it’s possible these hot spots may be as small as a square kilometer. All in all, these really sound like lava eruptions to me. I’m no expert, of course, but then the people who did the research are.

Studying Venus is important. In many ways it’s very much like Earth. It’s roughly the same size and mass, which means the same density, and that implies we have similar compositions. So why is Venus so blisteringly different? Compared to us, we can ask, “What went wrong?” Why is its crust so thick? Why did the greenhouse effect run away there, and not here? Why does Venus appear to have a surface that’s everywhere the same age, as if a globally catastrophic event repaved the entire planet?

Looking to other planets to understand our own is a critical part of planetary science, and given the current state of Earth’s atmosphere, it’s something we must do. Together with studying our own planet (something the current Congressional majority is dead set against, for some odd reason) these are matters that are critical to our own survival.

That’s why these new results of an extant volcanic Venus are so exciting. That, plus the more purely scientific reason that it’s just plain cool. Venus gets closer to Earth than any other planet in the solar system, yet still hides many secrets. What more is there to learn about it?

I’ll leave you with this, my episode of Crash Course Astronomy about Venus. I wonder how many of the questions raised in it will be answered in the coming years?



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Preparing America’s Spaceport for NASA’s New Rocket

At Kennedy Space Center, NASA's ground systems program prepares for the first flight of the Space Launch System in 2018.

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2015年6月21日 星期日

Rings and Seasons of Saturn


On Saturn, the rings tell you the season. On Earth, today marks a solstice, the time when the Earth's spin axis tilts directly toward the Sun. On Earth's northern hemisphere, today is the Summer Solstice, the day of maximum daylight. Since Saturn's grand rings orbit along the planet's equator, these rings appear most prominent -- from the direction of the Sun -- when the Saturn's spin axis points toward the Sun. Conversely, when Saturn's spin axis points to the side, an equinox occurs and the edge-on rings are hard to see. In the featured montage, images of Saturn over the past 11 years have been superposed to show the giant planet passing from southern summer toward northern summer. Although Saturn will only reach its northern summer solstice in 2017 May, the image of Saturn most analogous to today's Earth solstice is the bottommost one. via NASA http://ift.tt/1ezyjdb

Planetary Science Trash Talking

A spacecraft launched in 2006 is about to try for our first good photo of Pluto, Washington Post "NASA's Jim Green is dismissive of the controversy: "That's nomenclature. To me, that's unimportant. What's important is that this is a body...

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To Pluto

Why is it so many of us are excited about the New Horizons mission to Pluto?

This. This is why.

That video was created by Erik Wernquist, the brilliant mind behind Wanderers, what I consider one of the best paeans to exploration ever made.

And like Wanderers, all the places in the New Horizons video are real. We see Venus; Mars (flying over Valles Marineris; a rift valley that dwarfs the Grand Canyon); volcanoes of sulfur erupting over the moon Io as Jupiter and its Red Spot hove into view; the two-faced ice moon Iapetus, stained with organic compounds, revealing the magnificence of Saturn as we slide by; Uranus, its atmosphere a teal green from the presence of methane; Neptune and its moon Triton, with its geyser-like eruptions of nitrogen blasting into its extremely tenuous atmosphere…

… and then Pluto. As I write this, just over three weeks before the New Horizon probe pierces the tiny world’s region of space, we still only have fuzzy pictures of Pluto, a mere dozen or so pixels across. Astronomers have many ideas on what we’ll see when the spacecraft sends back its images over the staggering vastness of five billion kilometers of solar system, but the bottom line is we don’t know exactly what we’ll find.

If we did, it wouldn’t be exploration.

You can follow along with this journey using the Pluto Safari app, and of course by keeping tabs on the New Horizons website.

This is more than just terra incognita. It’s spatium incognita. Whether you think Pluto is a planet or just the biggest of the Kuiper Belt Objects, it’s a marvelous step in our exploration of the solar system.

And we’ll be seeing it for the very first time in the history of all humanity, very, very soon.



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2015年6月20日 星期六

Vulcan Is an Angry God. A Very, Very Angry God.

On April 22, 2015, the Chilean volcano Calbuco erupted, providing the most dramatic and awe-inspiring photographs I’ve ever seen of such an event.

On that day, photographer Martin Heck was right on the scene, by happenstance taking time-lapse footage on the neighboring Osorno volcano. When Calbuco went off, he hurriedly set up and shot video that is, no exaggeration, some of the best I have ever seen of any volcanic eruption ever.

Seriously. Make this full screen and high-definition. It’ll blow your socks off.

Wow. There’s a 4K version of this there, too.

Even better, there were no reported deaths or injuries, despite the huge scale of the eruption. It lasted for well over an hour, and launched a plume 10 kilometers into the sky.

Oh, that plume. The superheated ash and gas are buoyant, so they rise rapidly in a column from the volcano’s vent. The cloud cools as it rises and stops rising when it reaches an altitude where its density equals that of the surrounding air. However, the plume below is still pumping material into that spot, so the cooler material spreads out, forming the mushroom cloud shape. Once the eruption stops, the winds sweep the column to one side.

On top of that, the eruption occurred near sunset, so the low Sun illuminated the cloud from the side, adding more drama. The Sun reddens as it sets, and the ash in the air scatters blue light away, making the cloud appear an unearthly red. At the very end of the video, you can see lightning erupt in the cloud, the result of huge static charges that build up when the sharp, glassy ash particles rub against each other in the turbulent rising column, then suddenly discharge their colossal energy.

This is one of nature’s most impressive terrestrial events, and it unfolds here for you to watch in all its terrifying glory.

You can see more of Heck’s amazing work at his site, Timestorm Films.

Tip o’ the caldera to Joe Hanson at It’s Okay to Be Smart.



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