Looks like we are in for more rain today in the Houston metro area. Watch out for streets with standing water….
| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- War of the Cakes
- New ISS Mailbag Episode - Organizations/Social
- Today - Find Your Social Media Zen w/ Shama Kabani
- The GOOOOOAAAAL? Lunch and the World Cup
- JSC Summer Interns and Co-ops Meet and Greet
- Trauma Awareness and Coping
- Starport Youth Karate Classes - Free Class July 12
- Starport Summer Camp: Week 4 Open Spots |  |
| Headlines - War of the Cakes
Do you watch "Cake Boss" or "Cupcake Wars?" Is baking one of your hobbies? Well, here is your chance to compete in the Orion Cake-Decorating Contest! You will be judged on creativity, taste, presentation and your team's best depiction of Orion or the Exploration Flight Test-1 flight. The contest will be held on July 15. - New ISS Mailbag Episode
Hi all, Be sure to check out the latest installment of the International Space Station (ISS) Mailbag series on the InsideISS YouTube Channel! The new episode features astronauts Nicole Stott and Don Pettit answering questions from the public via Twitter … Brought to you by Team Cueva ... Organizations/Social - Today - Find Your Social Media Zen w/ Shama Kabani
Are you ready to join Shama Kabani, CEO of the Marketing Zen Group, as she guides JSC through finding our own social media Zen? The JSC External Relations Office and SAIC/Safety and Mission Assurance invite you to hear from this social media expert on the do's and don'ts of social media and harnessing digital trends for the benefit of your organization. Topic: The Seven Digital Trends Every Leader Must Know to Grow Your Organization Date/Time: TODAY, June 26, from 11 a.m. to noon Where: Teague Auditorium Expand your knowledge during lunch as Kabani discusses the importance of social media and how it's changing the way we communicate and strengthening our brand. - The GOOOOOAAAAL? Lunch and the World Cup
Get competitive today at lunch as you make one monumental decision of many—will you have brats or hot dogs? What about American potato salad versus German potato salad? Then, support your homeland while the USA takes on Germany during the 2014 FIFA World Cup match. The game will be broadcast in the cafés for you lunchtime enjoyment beginning at 11 a.m. in Buildings 3 and 11. Get a free U.S. flag while you're there (one per employee while supplies last). Employees wearing the colors of the good ol' USA will receive 10 percent off store merchandise in the Starport Gift Shops. (And, to be fair to our international friends, the discount is also applicable to employees wearing red, black and gold in support of Germany.) Standard exclusions apply. Is your GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAL to be entertained at lunch? Don't miss out on the fun today. Event Date: Thursday, June 26, 2014 Event Start Time:11:00 AM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Bldgs 3 & 11 Cafes
Add to Calendar
Cyndi Kibby x47467
[top] - JSC Summer Interns and Co-ops Meet and Greet
The JSC Employee Resource Groups are hosting a "Meet and Greet" social for the summer interns and co-ops today, June 26, from 4 to 6 p.m. in Building 35, Room 107 (1958 Collaboration Center). We are providing food, soft drinks and music, and a friendly competition is planned. This is a great opportunity to network with other employees, learn about JSC and have a good time. This event is open to the entire JSC community, so please join us. Senior staff and first-line supervisors have also been invited. Event Date: Thursday, June 26, 2014 Event Start Time:4:00 PM Event End Time:6:00 PM
Event Location: Building 35, Room 107
Add to Calendar
Libby Moreno x38608
[top] - Trauma Awareness and Coping
If you've gone through a traumatic experience, you may be struggling with upsetting emotions, frightening memories or a sense of constant danger. Any situation that leaves you feeling overwhelmed and alone can be traumatic. When bad things happen, it can take a while to get over the pain and feel safe again. Be a part of the conversation about treatment, self-help strategies and support to aid in recovery of yourself or a loved one. In recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Awareness Month, please join Anika Isaac, MS, LPC, LMFT, LCDC, CEAP, NCC, as she presents "Trauma Awareness and Coping." - Starport Youth Karate Classes - Free Class July 12
Let Starport introduce your child to the exciting art of Youth Karate. Youth Karate will teach your child the skills of self-defense, self-discipline and self-confidence. The class will also focus on leadership, healthy competition and sportsmanship. TRY A FREE CLASS ON JULY 12! Please call the Gilruth Center front desk to sign your child up for the free class (only 25 available spots). Five-week session: July 19 to Aug. 16 Saturdays: 10:15 to 11 a.m. Ages: 6 to 12 Cost: $75 | $20 drop-in rate Register online or at the Gilruth Center. - Starport Summer Camp: Week 4 Open Spots
Starport is offering summer camp for youth at the Gilruth Center all summer long. We have tons of fun planned, and we expect each session to fill up, so get your registrations in early! Weekly themes are listed on our website, as well as information regarding registration. Ages: 6 to 12 Times: 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Dates: June 9 to Aug. 22 in one-week sessions Fee per session: $140 per child | $125 per sibling Register online or at the Gilruth Center information desk. | |
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| JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters. |
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Thursday – June 26, 2014
HEADLINES AND LEADS
U.S. And German Astronauts Play Soccer In Space
Alex Knapp – Forbes
Like the gravitational pull of a black hole, the World Cup is so powerful that you can't escape it even if you're in orbit. When the astronauts haven't been busy, they've been watching snippets of games being streamed to them via the station's Internet.
Weightless World Cup: US, German Astronauts Play Soccer in Space
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have staged a zero-gravity preview of Thursday's (June 26) big World Cup match between the United States and Germany.
Talking to the International Space Station this Saturday
The local American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Field Day will be staged at the Sam's Club on Sherwood Way
Ken Grimm- The San Angelo (TX) Standard-Times
ATV Shielding Takes a Bullet To Show Space Station's Stopping Power
Peter B. de Selding – Space News
The European Space Agency fired a 7.5-millimeter-diameter aluminum bullet traveling at 7 kilometers per second into a bulletproof-vest-type fabric resembling the outer skin of Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to check for space-debris resistance.
NASA's Next Manned Spaceship Passes 'Most Complex' Parachute Test
NASA successfully completed its "most complex" test of the Orion spacecraft's parachute system today (June 25), space agency officials said.
Latest SpaceX Delay Costing Orbcomm Money
Peter B. de Selding – Space News
The latest delay in the launch schedule of SpaceX's Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket to early July will deprive customer Orbcomm of at least some of the revenue it had told investors would arrive soon after the six Falcon-launched satellites entered service.
The Man Who Hated Gravity, Part 2
George Johnson – New York Times
In my recent column about Roger Babson, the eccentric tycoon who tried to save humanity from the deadly force of gravity, I noted that for all its perils — death by avalanche, drowning and so forth — gravity is far from a complete villain. It sustains life on earth by holding in the atmosphere. But as you get higher above the planet, the air becomes steadily thinner until, in space, a person without a protective suit would die as surely as a swimmer pulled to the bottom of a lake. Danger lurks above and below. NASA says mysterious X-ray signal may be coming from dark matter
Lee Roop – Huntsville (AL) Times
NASA says an X-ray signal from distant galaxies may be coming from dark matter, the mysterious form of matter thought to make up 85 percent of all matter in the Universe, but unobservable directly because it neither absorbs nor emits light.
Found! Trio of Huge Black Holes in Distant Galaxy's Core
Scientists have just discovered a distant galaxy with not one but three supermassive black holes at its core.
Q&A: The 5 Ingredients Needed for Life Beyond Earth
A NASA scientist lists the essentials that extraterrestrial life must have to exist.
Mike Lemonick - National Geographic
Back when astrogeophysicist Christopher McKay got his doctorate in 1982, the hunt for extraterrestrial life was confined to the solar system. The obvious places to look were the planets and moons that seemed most likely to be habitable: Mars, two moons of Saturn (Enceladus and Titan), and a moon of Jupiter called Europa.
NASA's New Mars-Landing Tech Gets 1st Test Flight Saturday
Mike Wall –Space.com
NASA will try again this weekend to launch the first test flight of new technology designed to help land heavy payloads on Mars.
NRC co-chairs reiterate call for national commitment and sustained funding for human space exploration
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
Tuesday's 90-minute hearing by the House Science Committee on the final report National Research Council's Committee on Human Spaceflight broke little new ground about the report or its conclusions about where, why, and how humans should explore space beyond Earth orbit. The committee's two co-chairs, Mitch Daniels and Jonathan Lunine, discussed the report's conclusions as some members used the report to back up their own—and often negative—opinions of NASA's current space exploration plans.
China plans to land rover on Mars by 2020
RT (RUS)
China is planning to land a rover on Mars by 2020 and bring back samples from the Red Planet a decade later, according to a top scientist with the country's Lunar Exploration Program.
COMPLETE STORIES
U.S. And German Astronauts Play Soccer In Space
Alex Knapp – Forbes
Like the gravitational pull of a black hole, the World Cup is so powerful that you can't escape it even if you're in orbit. When the astronauts haven't been busy, they've been watching snippets of games being streamed to them via the station's Internet.
Thursday's match between U.S. and Germany, which will help determine who advances from Group G, has struck a particular chord with the astronauts. That's because of the astronauts currently on board, two of them, Reid Wiseman and Steve Swanson, are from the United States, and one of them, Alexander Gerst, is from Germany.
To help celebrate the upcoming match, NASA released a video of the three astronauts showing off their soccer skills in zero gravity. The video features some upside down kicks, a header, and some sideline cheering action from the station's robot astronaut, Robonaut 2.
In addition to their own game, the astronauts have their own personal stakes on Thursday's match.
"If the U.S. wins, these guys are going to draw a little U.S. flag on my head, but I think if Germany wins these guys should have to shave their heads. Either way I'm looking forward to the game. It's going to be fun," Gerst said in a press release.
As it does with many pop culture events, NASA is using this opportunity to show off what's happening with its programs and in particular on board the International Space Station. You can see all of its tie-in stories here.
Weightless World Cup: US, German Astronauts Play Soccer in Space
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have staged a zero-gravity preview of Thursday's (June 26) big World Cup match between the United States and Germany.
NASA's Steve Swanson and Reid Wiseman and European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, who hails from Germany, showed off their moves in a soccer exhibition aboard the orbiting lab recently. A NASA video released today (June 25) shows the trio performing acrobatic bicycle kicks, headers and — as players tend to do here on terra firma — celebrating riotously after scoring goals. NASA's humanoid robot Robonaut 2, which is designed to help astronauts perform chores aboard the space station, even gets into the spirit, waving its arms this way and that. The weightless action presages a pivotal World Cup game on Thursday in Brazil featuring the two teams currently atop the tournament's so-called "Group of Death."
The winner will win the group and move on to the single-elimination "knockout stage" of the World Cup, while the loser may go home, depending on what happens in Thursday's game between Ghana and Portugal, the other two teams in the group. (Two teams from the group will advance. If the U.S. and Germany tie, they both will move on to the next stage.)
Swanson, Wiseman and Gerst are apparently pretty into the World Cup. The three spaceflyers also played microgravity soccer in another video that NASA posted on June 11, the day before the tournament — which is held once every four years — kicked off. "We want to wish all the teams and fans on the ground and in Brazil a great World Cup," Gerst said in that video. "Have fun and have peaceful games. May the best win."
The three astronauts make up half of the space station's current Expedition 40. The other three crewmembers are Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Artemyev and Maxim Suraev.
The $100 billion International Space Station is a collaboration involving five different space agencies and 15 countries. Construction on the immense structure began in 1998, and it has been continuously occupied by rotating crews since November 2000.
Talking to the International Space Station this Saturday
The local American Radio Relay League (ARRL) Field Day will be staged at the Sam's Club on Sherwood Way
Ken Grimm- The San Angelo (TX) Standard-Times
This Saturday attempts will be made to talk to the International Space Station as it orbits overhead using an amateur radio station from San Angelo. From a story posted on the Amateur Radio ISS web site, Kenneth Ransom, the ISS Ham Radio payload developer, stated "I have received a response from astronaut (Reid) Wiseman that he is willing to try and work some stations on Saturday. Pass times begin very soon after the start of Field day."
Glenn Miller (AA5PK) will be leading the space communications attempts from a lot adjacent to the Sam's Club gas station on Sherwood Way. In addition to talking with astronaut Wiseman, Miller will be attempting multiple communications with other operators using satellites orbiting the earth in low earth orbit (LEO). A LEO satellite races around the earth at approximately 17,000 miles per hour. Miller has identified at least five LEOs that will be in range of the Sam's Club location during the field day activities.
"The best chance of working the ISS will be during the 19:47 pass when the maximum elevation will be 72 degrees," said Miller. "Saturday there are three satellite targets that provide the best possibilities for multiple contacts with other operators."
What is the ARRL Field Day?
ARRL Field Day is the single most popular on-the-air event held annually in the US and Canada. This Saturday the local amateur radio club will be set up near the Sam's Club gas station on Sherwood Way joining more than 35,000 other radio amateurs gathering with their clubs, groups or simply with friends to operate from remote locations.
The Amateur Radio Field Day is a picnic, a campout, practice for emergencies, an informal contest and, most of all, FUN!
Gary Chaffin (W5ETJ), activities director of the local amateur club, said "The club will begin operating at 1 p.m. on Saturday the 28th and finish around noon Sunday the 29th. This is when the public is invited to come out and see what it is all about and even get a chance to try their hand at talking on a radio."
"Everyone is welcome to the event," said Chaffin. "There will be many stations set up and running and it's a great time to see the many varieties of different ways to communicate and meet the people from the Concho Valley that love to play with and invent communications technologies."
It is a time where many aspects of Amateur Radio come together to highlight its many roles. While some will treat it as a contest, other groups use the opportunity to practice their emergency response capabilities. It is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate Amateur Radio to the organizations that Amateur Radio might serve in an emergency, as well as the general public. For many clubs, ARRL Field Day is one of the highlights of their annual calendar.
The contest part is simply to contact as many other stations as possible and to learn to operate our radio gear in abnormal situations and less than optimal conditions. These same skills are used to help with events such as marathons and bike-a-thons; fund-raisers such as walk-a- thons; celebrations such as parades; and exhibits at fairs, malls and museums — these are all large, preplanned, non-emergency activities.
But despite the development of very complex, modern communications systems — or maybe because they ARE so complex — ham radio has been called into action again and again to provide communications in crises when it really matters. Amateur Radio people (also called "hams") are well known for our communications support in real disaster and post-disaster situations.
What is the ARRL?
The American Radio Relay League is the 150,000+ member national association for Amateur Radio in the USA. ARRL is the primary source of information about what is going on in ham radio. It provides books, news, support and information for individuals and clubs, special events, continuing education classes and other benefits for its members.
What is Amateur Radio
Often called "ham radio," the Amateur Radio Service has been around for a century. In that time, it's grown into a worldwide community of licensed operators using the airwaves with every conceivable means of communications technology. Its people range in age from youngsters to grandparents. Even rocket scientists and a rock star or two are in the ham ranks. Most, however, are just normal folks who enjoy learning and being able to transmit voice, data and pictures through the air to unusual places, both near and far, without depending on commercial systems.
The Amateur Radio frequencies are the last remaining place in the usable radio spectrum where you as an individual can develop and experiment with wireless communications. Hams not only can make and modify their equipment, but can create whole new ways to do things.
The San Angelo Amateur Radio Club holds regular monthly meetings on the second Thursday of each month beginning at 7:30 p.m. at the clubhouse located at 5513 Stewart Lane, Mathis Field. All amateurs and persons interested in amateur radio are invited to attend the club meetings.
ATV Shielding Takes a Bullet To Show Space Station's Stopping Power
Peter B. de Selding – Space News
The European Space Agency fired a 7.5-millimeter-diameter aluminum bullet traveling at 7 kilometers per second into a bulletproof-vest-type fabric resembling the outer skin of Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to check for space-debris resistance.
The resulting damage, shown in a photo of the bullet's exit hole ESA published June 24, illustrates the expected resistance of the ATV and other international space station modules. It also shows the power of a small piece of debris colliding with the space station at orbital velocity.
The 20-nation ESA is scheduled to launch the fifth and last of its ATV freighters to the space station in late July aboard a heavy-lift Ariane 5 rocket. ATV carries water, fuel and other supplies to the station, and also is used as a tug to reboost the station's orbit, which degrades over time under the effects of atmospheric drag.
While designed to deliver cargo, then to be filled with garbage and subsequently destroyed on re-entry into the atmosphere after several months at the station, the ATV is occasionally used by station astronauts as a sleeping quarters. That, plus the fact that astronauts clamber in and out of the canister to retrieve supplies and store garbage, means ATV must meet the same debris-proof standards as the station's habitable modules.
The bullet test was performed for ESA's Space Environment and Effects section by the Fraunhofer Ernst Mach Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, located in Bruehl, Germany, using a high-performance light-gas gun.
The target was the same multilayer Kevlar-Nextel fabric that protects the other station modules. ESA said that at 7.5 millimeters in diameter, the aluminum bullet would represent "the upper end of the size of debris the shield is designed to cope with. ... Testing confirms the spacecraft's pressure shell would survive such a collision intact."
The bullet first penetrated the multilayered insulation blanket before going through a 1-millimeter-thick aluminum bumper shield before breaking apart and becoming easier for the deeper layers to handle.
The photo shows the penetration of the deeper layer, a weave of Kevlar and Nextel fabric, which was shredded on impact but afforded enough final protection so that the bullet's effect on the ATV's 3-millimeter-thick aluminum wall was no more than a harmless scorching. The shield's total thickness in orbit is 128 millimeters.
The shielding's strength is one reason why ATVs do not fully disintegrate when re-entering the atmosphere, but break up into pieces that fall into the South Pacific along a corridor that has been cleared of traffic.
NASA's Next Manned Spaceship Passes 'Most Complex' Parachute Test
NASA successfully completed its "most complex" test of the Orion spacecraft's parachute system today (June 25), space agency officials said.
The Orion capsule — designed to take astronauts deeper into space than ever before, to destinations like Mars and an asteroid dragged into orbit near the moon — will depend on parachutes to slow its descent when it re-enters the atmosphere after spaceflight. Parachutes will be used to slow Orion down when it comes back from its first spaceflight, which is currently scheduled for December. In order to test the effectiveness of the parachutes, engineers working on Orion are launching a series of parachute tests in Arizona. Today's test was the 14th and the most difficult test for the system, officials said. In total, there will be 17 tests of the parachute system before the December spaceflight. [See a video of the successful drop test] "We've put the parachutes through their paces in ground and airdrop testing in just about every conceivable way before we begin sending them into space on Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1 before the year's done," Orion program manager Mark Geyer said in a NASA statement. "The series of tests has proven the system and will help ensure crew and mission safety for our astronauts in the future." During today's test, Orion was dropped from a C-17 aircraft 35,000 feet (10,668 meters) above the Arizona desert, marking the first time the parachutes were tested from such heights, NASA officials said. After the capsule was released, Orion fell for 10 seconds, increasing speed and adding stress to the parachutes once they were released, space agency officials said.
The first set of chutes — called the forward bay cover parachutes — deployed as planned, and pulled the forward bay cover away from Orion during the test. This step is important because if the forward bay cover remained attached, it would prevent the second set of parachutes, used to slow Orion down to a safe speed, from deploying correctly, according to NASA officials.
"Engineers also rigged one of the main parachutes to skip the second phase of a three-phase process of unfurling each parachute, called reefing," NASA officials said in the statement. "This tested whether one of the main parachutes could go directly from opening a little to being fully open without an intermediary step, proving the system can tolerate potential failures."
For EFT-1, Orion will launch atop a Delta 4 Heavy rocket to an altitude of 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometers). As it comes back to Earth, Orion will be traveling at about 20,000 mph (32,200 km/h) and be forced to withstand temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees Celsius). Ultimately, the parachutes will need to slow Orion down to about 20 mph (32 km/h) to splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean, NASA officials said. NASA will perform another parachute test in August, dropping Orion with the planned failure of one main parachute and one drogue chute, which is used for stability.
Latest SpaceX Delay Costing Orbcomm Money
Peter B. de Selding – Space News
The latest delay in the launch schedule of SpaceX's Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket to early July will deprive customer Orbcomm of at least some of the revenue it had told investors would arrive soon after the six Falcon-launched satellites entered service.
Rochelle Park, New Jersey-based Orbcomm, which sells satellite- and terrestrial-wireless-based machine-to-machine messaging services, has seen its planned launch schedule buffeted by a series of apparently unrelated launch cancellations as Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corp. deals with various rocket issues.
The latest issue, which canceled the planned June 23 launch, is related to a suspected anomaly on the rocket's thrust-vector control system, which orients the first-stage engine nozzles to keep the rocket on trajectory as it traverses the atmosphere.
SpaceX spokesman John Taylor declined to comment on the issue, but said the vehicle has been removed from the launch pad and returned to its integration building to permit SpaceX personnel to resolve the issue.
SpaceX's June 23 statement about the delay, which followed earlier issues including a helium leak and Orbcomm's need to verify the health of one of its six satellite passengers, reads:
"SpaceX is taking a closer look at a potential issue identified while conducting pre-flight checkouts during yesterday's countdown. SpaceX will stand down Tuesday while our engineering teams evaluate further, which will also allow the range to move forward with previously scheduled maintenance. We are currently targeting the first week of July and will work with the range to confirm the next available launch opportunities."
SpaceX has conducted two launches so far this year. As of mid-June, when it was still counting on a June 20 Orbcomm flight, the company said it was confident of being able to launch seven more times by the end of the year, including the Orbcomm flight. SpaceX's 2014 manifest includes three NASA missions to supply cargo to the international space station, which NASA has scheduled for August, September and December.
Get in Line
SpaceX's low prices have lured multiple commercial customers, including operators of midsize telecommunications satellites that operate from geostationary orbit 36,000 kilometers over the equator and are launched one at a time on Falcon 9.
Whether SpaceX can maintain its plans for nine total launches this year is unclear and will depend on how quickly the latest issue is resolved. One of its customers, AsiaSat of Hong Kong, has already shipped its satellite, called AsiaSat 8, to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, in anticipation of a mid-June Orbcomm launch.
AsiaSat is next on the SpaceX manifest, with AsiaSat 8 to be followed by AsiaSat 6. Both satellites were to have been launched between March and May of this year under contracts signed in mid-2012. AsiaSat had booked a launch reservation with SpaceX competitor International Launch Services of Reston, Virginia, for one of the satellites as a hedge against possible SpaceX Falcon 9 delays. But ILS, which markets Russia's Proton heavy-lift rocket, has been grounded since a May Proton failure that destroyed a Russian satellite.
It is unclear when ILS launches will resume.
As an example of the kind of launch prices SpaceX is offering compared to its competition, AsiaSat said it paid $52.2 million each for its Falcon 9 launches of AsiaSat 8 and AsiaSat 6. AsiaSat's ILS reservation for one of these satellites included a launch price of $107 million.
Commercial satellite fleet operators have said that with a price differential so large — more than 50 percent in this case — they can absorb the cost of even lengthy SpaceX delays without much trouble.
In Orbcomm's case, the launch of 17 second-generation Orbcomm satellites, each weighing about 170 kilograms, was negotiated at a time when SpaceX was operating its smaller Falcon 1e rocket. The launches were then transferred to Falcon 9, and ultimately the decision was made to launch six on one Falcon 9, and the remaining 11 satellites on a second rocket scheduled for launch this year.
Orbcomm satellites are designed to operate from a 750-kilometer orbit. Orbcomm is paying about $43 million in total for the two launches of 17 satellites — a price industry officials have said would be impossible to replicate with any other commercially available rocket.
Orbcomm Chief Executive Marc Eisenberg said he remains hopeful that SpaceX will have the latest issues resolved in time for a launch in the first week of July. In a June 23 email, he said the two-month delay will not have a serious effect on the company's revenue, and that most Orbcomm investors view Orbcomm as a growth stock over the longer term and are not concerned with quarterly ups and downs.
The Man Who Hated Gravity, Part 2
George Johnson – New York Times
In my recent column about Roger Babson, the eccentric tycoon who tried to save humanity from the deadly force of gravity, I noted that for all its perils — death by avalanche, drowning and so forth — gravity is far from a complete villain. It sustains life on earth by holding in the atmosphere. But as you get higher above the planet, the air becomes steadily thinner until, in space, a person without a protective suit would die as surely as a swimmer pulled to the bottom of a lake. Danger lurks above and below. I used as my coda the movie "Gravity," in which two astronauts, played by George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, are stranded outside their spacecraft with a limited supply of air. They face suffocation, though in a very different way from Babson's kin.
But I was wrong to write that it is "a lack of gravity" that endangers them. They, too, in a backhanded way, are gravity's victims. It is the pull of the earth on the atmosphere that deprives them of air.
As several readers pointed out, there is still plenty of gravity at orbital altitudes. The farther you go above the surface of the earth, the weaker gravity becomes — a phenomenon described by the inverse square law. But even at the International Space Station, the strength of gravity is only about 13 percent less than it is on terra firma. In the movie, the astronauts' seeming weightlessness is caused by their being in continuous free fall as they orbit the earth.
Robin T. Stebbins, chief of NASA's Gravitational Astrophysics Laboratory, put it this way: "George and Sandra are bit players in the drama of gravity writ large."
"If we had a giant switch that allowed us to shut off the earth's gravity," he wrote in an email, "we could release Sandra and George from the embrace, and they would exit stage right at 17,100 m.p.h., their tangential velocity. That would make for a short and thrilling drama, with severely Doppler-shifted dialogue. Fortunately, gravity never sleeps."
For all his wrongheadedness, Babson seems to be undergoing a revival. In addition to the book I mentioned in my column ("The Perfect Theory" by Pedro G. Ferreira), Babson appears in "The Newton Papers: The Strange and True Odyssey of Isaac Newton's Manuscripts," by Sarah Dry. She describes how Babson, the founder of Babson College, and particularly his wife, Grace Knight Babson, were avid collectors of Newtoniana — including editions of Newton's books and papers, a plaster death mask (once owned by Thomas Jefferson) and a fourth-generation descendant of Newton's apple tree.
Babson's autobiography, "Actions and Reactions," was named after Newton's third law of motion ("for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction") and was the basis for the Babson Chart, a stock market system that he credited with making his fortune and predicting the 1929 financial crash. What goes up, after all, must come down.
NASA says mysterious X-ray signal may be coming from dark matter
Lee Roop – Huntsville (AL) Times
NASA says an X-ray signal from distant galaxies may be coming from dark matter, the mysterious form of matter thought to make up 85 percent of all matter in the Universe, but unobservable directly because it neither absorbs nor emits light.
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory have both found an unidentified X-ray emission line, or "spike of intensity at a very specific wavelength of X-ray light," NASA says. The spike has been found in the Perseus Cluster and 73 other galaxy clusters, and scientists think it may be produced by decaying sterile neutrinos. Up to now, "sterile neutrinos" have been hypothetical forms of the electrically neutral subatomic particles called neutrinos. NASA says scientists think sterile neutrinos "may at least partially explain dark matter," and this data could be evidence of them.
NASA says the results must be confirmed with other data, and other explanations must be ruled out, but the findings hold "exciting potential."
"We know that the dark matter explanation is a long shot, but the pay-off would be huge if we're right," said study leader Esra Bulbul of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass. "So we're going to keep testing this interpretation and see where it takes us."
The paper describing the new observations is published in the June 20, 2014 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville manages the Chandra program for the space agency. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass., controls the telescope.
Found! Trio of Huge Black Holes in Distant Galaxy's Core
Scientists have just discovered a distant galaxy with not one but three supermassive black holes at its core.
The new finding suggests that tight-knit groups of these giant black holes are far more common than previously thought, and it potentially reveals a new way to easily detect them, researchers say. Supermassive black holes millions to billions of times the mass of the sun are thought to lurk at the hearts of virtually every large galaxy in the universe.
Most galaxies have just one supermassive black hole at their center. However, galaxies evolve through merging, and merged galaxies can sometimes possess multiple supermassive black holes.
Astronomers observed a galaxy with the alphabet soup name of SDSS J150243.09+111557.3, which they suspected might have a pair of supermassive black holes. It lies about 4.2 billion light-years away from Earth, about "one-third of the way across the universe," said lead study author Roger Deane, a radio astronomer at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.
To investigate this galaxy, the scientists combined the signals from large radio antennas separated by up to 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers), a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). Using the European VLBI Network, the researchers could see details 50 times finer than is possible with the Hubble Space Telescope. The astronomers unexpectedly discovered that the galaxy was actually not home to two supermassive black holes, but three. Two of the black holes in this trio are very close together, which previously made them look like one black hole.
"All three of the black holes have masses around 100 million times that of the sun," Deane told Space.com. Scientists had previously known of four triple black-hole systems. However, the closest pairs of black holes in those triplets are about 7,825 light-years apart. In this newfound trio of supermassive black holes, the closest pair of black holes is only about 455 light-years apart, "a very close pair of black holes," Deane said — the second-closest pair of supermassive black holes known.
The researchers found this "tight pair" of black holes after searching only six candidate galaxies. This suggests that tight pairs of supermassive black holes "are far more common than previous observations have found," Deane said.
Knowing how often supermassive black holes merge is key to discovering how they might influence their galaxies, the researchers noted. Supermassive black holes can shape the evolution of their galaxies with blasts of energy given off by turbulent matter, which gets sucked toward the black holes.
Although tight pairs of supermassive black holes might previously have been difficult to tell apart, the researchers discovered that the pair they saw left a helical or corkscrew-like pattern in the large jets of radio waves they emitted. This suggests that twisted jets may serve as easy-to-find signals of tight pairs without the need for extremely high-resolution telescopic observations, such as those from the European VLBI Network.
"The twisted radio jets associated with close pairs may be a very efficient way to find more of these systems that are even closer together," Deane said.
Closely orbiting black holes are expected to generate ripples in the fabric of space and time known as gravitational waves, which are theoretically detectable even from across the universe. By finding more tight pairs of black holes, scientists can better estimate how much gravitational radiation these pairs generate, Deane said.
"The end goal is a self-consistent understanding of how two separate black holes that start out in two interacting galaxies slowly get drawn closer to one other, impact their host galaxies, emit gravitational waves and eventually merge to become one, in what is predicted to be a violent event," Deane said.
The scientists detailed their findings in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
Q&A: The 5 Ingredients Needed for Life Beyond Earth
A NASA scientist lists the essentials that extraterrestrial life must have to exist.
Mike Lemonick - National Geographic
Back when astrogeophysicist Christopher McKay got his doctorate in 1982, the hunt for extraterrestrial life was confined to the solar system. The obvious places to look were the planets and moons that seemed most likely to be habitable: Mars, two moons of Saturn (Enceladus and Titan), and a moon of Jupiter called Europa.
That started to change in 1995, says McKay, a senior scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, when astronomers began finding planets orbiting distant stars. These so-called exoplanets now number nearly 1,800, with one of the most Earth-like, the planet Kepler 186-f that orbits a red dwarf star known as Kepler 186, announced just this past April.
In a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, McKay summarizes how the search for habitable planets needs to go beyond simply looking in the "Goldilocks zone"—the orbital distance where it's not too hot, not too cold, but just right for biology.
National Geographic spoke with McKay about how scientists can tell if an exoplanet is likely to be habitable, based on what is known about the range of environments that can support life on Earth.
In your PNAS paper, you talk about a "checklist for speculating on the possibilities of life on these distant worlds." What's on the list?
The first thing is temperature [i.e., temperature allowing for water in liquid form]. The astronomers know this—it's what defines the "habitable zone." But the next question you need to ask is whether water is actually present.
How do you determine whether a planet not only can have water, but does have water?
We need to have some measurement of the atmosphere to confirm that this isn't a planet that's lost all its water. You don't need much: One of the lessons of life on Earth is that a little water goes a long way. It's nice to have a Pacific Ocean, but you don't need it.
Once you know there's still some water on the planet, what do you need to know next?
Energy sources. Life on Earth uses only two types of energy for metabolism: sunlight and redox chemistry ... One or the other has to be present, and if you're in the habitable zone of a star, you at least have enough light to support photosynthesis.
So you have the right temperature, water, and sunlight. What else do you need?
The next criterion is sort of a negative: Make sure there's nothing that will kill you, such as radiation.
That could be a real problem with a planet like Kepler 186-f, right? It orbits a red dwarf star, and those tend to have a lot of solar flares.
It's true that we humans are cream puffs when it comes to radiation. You know, a little excess sunlight and we get sunburns and skin cancer. But microbes, which are likely to be the first life-forms we find, are much, much tougher with respect to both UV and ionizing radiation.
You also list nitrogen as essential for habitability.
Yes, because life is almost certainly going to use amino acids, and it needs nitrogen to build them. So that's a key requirement.
OK, temperature, water, sunlight, nitrogen, and nothing that will kill off life. Anything else?
Yes: oxygen. It's not evidence of life directly—it's not the same as seeing the life-forms themselves. It's like seeing tire tracks when you're lost in the desert. It's not the car. It's not proof you're about to be rescued. But it's certainly damn interesting. And if the oxygen level is high enough, our experience on Earth leads us to suggest that that should enable complex life, plants and animals. And that's very cool.
So can we go out and search today for the things on your list?
Well, not with any [equipment] that's in space right now. None of the telescopes on the ground right now will do it either, I don't think. But there's no reason why everything on this list couldn't be checked off for Kepler 186-f and other Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of their stars within the next decade.
How about Mars? Is it even still worth looking for life there?
I have to admit my hope is dimming with the results that have come back from Curiosity and other missions. But it's not gone yet, partly because Mars is so close by that it [would] take a lot of negativity before I give up. It's like searching for your keys under the lamppost—you look there because that's where the light is good.
Even if we find life on Mars, though, there's another problem: The first assumption I would make is that, yeah, that's life, but it's directly related to us [because Earth and Mars are so close, any life found on Mars might have originated on Earth and been carried over on a meteorite—or vice versa, that life on Earth might have been carried over from Mars]. You'd have to prove that it isn't. If we find it 500 light-years away, on the other hand, we know it's not related.
You're still working on the search for life inside the solar system, though.
Yes, I'm working on a Europa mission concept, I'm working on an Enceladus mission concept, and I'm working on some Titan mission concepts. I'm working on Mars data coming back right now, and I'm working on future Mars missions. And now I've got a student who's going to be looking at Kepler 186-f, too. So I'm involved with all five of those worlds. I'm like a parent with many children. I love them all, and I resist saying that one is better than the other.
NASA's New Mars-Landing Tech Gets 1st Test Flight Saturday
Mike Wall –Space.com
NASA will try again this weekend to launch the first test flight of new technology designed to help land heavy payloads on Mars.
The space agency aims to loft its Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) test vehicle Saturday (June 28) from the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The launch window opens at 2:15 p.m. EDT (1815 GMT; 8:15 a.m. local Hawaiian time); you can watch all the action here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV. Backup launch opportunities are available on June 29, June 30, July 1 and July 3, NASA officials said. And the mission may well need one of those alternate dates; the agency had originally planned to launch the LDSD test flight in early June, but strong winds repeatedly thwarted the attempt.
The LDSD test vehicle is equipped with a 100-foot-wide (30.5 meters) parachute and a saucer-shaped device called a Supersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (SIAD). This gear is being developed to help slow the descent of big, heavy payloads — such as human habitat modules — through the thin Martian atmosphere.
During Saturday's test, a huge balloon will carry the 7,000-lbs (3,175 kilograms) test vehicle up to an altitude of 23 miles (37 kilometers), then drop it. The vehicle's onboard rocket engine will roar to life at this point, blasting the craft up to an altitude of 34 miles (55 km) and a speed of Mach 4 (four times the speed of sound).
The SIAD, which is designed to fit around the rim of an atmospheric entry vehicle, will inflate, slowing the vehicle down to Mach 2.5 by increasing its surface area (and thus its drag). Then the parachute will deploy, slowing the craft enough that it can make a soft splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
That's how the LDSD team drew up the test flight, anyway. But researchers say they'll learn a lot from the demonstration, no matter what happens.
NRC co-chairs reiterate call for national commitment and sustained funding for human space exploration
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
Tuesday's 90-minute hearing by the House Science Committee on the final report National Research Council's Committee on Human Spaceflight broke little new ground about the report or its conclusions about where, why, and how humans should explore space beyond Earth orbit. The committee's two co-chairs, Mitch Daniels and Jonathan Lunine, discussed the report's conclusions as some members used the report to back up their own—and often negative—opinions of NASA's current space exploration plans.
"The administration's continued focus on costly distractions is harmful to our space program and does not inspire future generations to go into innovative fields in science and math," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the committee, in his opening statement, referring to NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) plans. ARM, he said, "is a mission without a realistic budget, without a destination, and without a certain launch date." That is similar to past criticism he has levied against ARM.
The NRC report did not reflect favorably on an exploration "pathway" that included ARM, indicating that it contained a large number of technological leaps and dead-ends. However, the committee co-chairs were not, despite some questioning along those lines from members, critical of ARM itself, saying they did not closely study it while working on the report. "The task statement that we responded to in our report did not include a detailed assessment of the ARM," Lunine said in response to a question on it from Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL). "We did not conduct a scientific or technical assessment of the ARM, specifically."
While some Science Committee members, like Smith, seemed willing to lay the blame for the current state of NASA human spaceflight efforts at the feet of the Obama Administration, the witnesses stayed above any partisan fray, arguing that any lack of direction in human space exploration has roots that go back far deeper. Language in the report, Daniels said, was "meant to refer not to any one administration, but really to a persistent pattern now, and I think we speak in terms of decades."
Members also pressed Daniels and Lunine on the costs of the proposed pathways that would get humans to Mars. The report was deliberately vague about it, other than stating the need for spending increases above the rate of inflation, as well as a greater use of international partnerships, points the co-chairs emphasized in their testimony. "I think that, quite properly, the committee didn't want to go beyond expressing bands and ranges" for the costs of mission architectures, Daniels said when asked by Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) for a "ballpark" budget estimate. "The ultimate budget would be driven by the pathway chosen" and that the committee "didn't want to commit the sin of false precision."
Edwards sounded a little frustrated by that response. "I don't think we want NASA committing to those sins, either, but we do have to have a budget from the Congress," she responded. As they stated at the rollout of the report earlier in the month, Daniels and Lunine said during the hearing that the total costs of achieving the "horizon goal" of landing humans on Mars would run into the hundreds of billions of dollars over several decades.
One issue the witnesses emphasized throughout the hearing was the importance of a long-term commitment from government and the American public for an exploration pathway, including the budget increases the committee concluded were needed to carry out the missions in that path in a "reasonable" period. (Daniels and Lunine didn't define "reasonable," but the example pathways included in the report have people landing on Mars some time between the late 2030s and mid 2050s.) "If there is not that strong national commitment, then it's going to be difficult to pull off human exploration missions into deep space at all," Lunine said.
The report, though, doesn't discuss how to develop and sustain such a long-term commitment, only that one is necessary. "We recognize that calling for an approach like this flies in the face of everything back to the '70s," Daniels said. "But we also say that if it seems unrealistic to believe that sort unity and that sort of continuity could be brought off in our system, then we might as well face up that Mars itself is unrealistic." He added in what he acknowledged was "wild, wishful thinking" that such sustained support for space exploration could be an area of cooperation for people who "disagree strongly and sincerely" about other issues.
Some members mentioned one of the more controversial aspects of the report that did not deal with exploration destinations and pathways: its finding that greater international cooperation should also include China. Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) expressed concerns about intellectual property theft should China be involved in future space exploration efforts. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) drew an historical analogy. "What if someone said in 1937, 'We really want to develop this rocket to go to the Moon and this guy over there in Germany really has got a good rocket program. Maybe we should cooperate with him.'"
"The committee recognized how difficult and complex this subject is," Daniels responded. "Remember the incredible timeframes over which we're talking. Countries that are friends today with might not be friends in 2040 or 2050, which might be as soon as we can get there in the best of circumstances. And vice versa."
China plans to land rover on Mars by 2020
RT (RUS)
China is planning to land a rover on Mars by 2020 and bring back samples from the Red Planet a decade later, according to a top scientist with the country's Lunar Exploration Program.
The Mars probe will be launching an orbiter and a landing rover, Ouyang Ziyuan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and one of the chief scientists of China's Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP) said on Monday at the 22nd International Planetarium Society Conference in Beijing, with 35 other member countries in attendance.
The central goal of the mission is to explore extraterrestrial activity and research the planet's environment, Ouyang explained. "The mission will also mark the beginning of China's deeper voyages into outer space," the Shanghai Daily quoted him as saying.
Ouyang presented a timetable for the mission – to land the rover by 2020 and collect samples from the Red Planet a decade later.
China is also planning to conduct further space explorations, including looking for signs of life on other planets.
China's Mars program began in 2009 in cooperation with Russia. However, the Chinese probe Yinghuo-1, which was carried by the Russian spacecraft Fobos-Grunt, crashed shortly after lift-off in 2011. Following the accident, China continued with its own Mars probe.
Just last month, a Chinese team emerged from a sealed capsule, in which they subsisted on mealworms and plants for over three months in a study designed to determine if the high-protein diet could be used in lengthy space travel.
In 2013, China landed the unmanned lunar rover Yutu (Jade Rabbit) on the Moon as part of its Chang'e-3 mission. By 2017, the Chinese plan to bring back rock samples from the Moon.
Also, by 2020 – the year the International Space Station is scheduled to be retired – Beijing plans to operate a comparable, full-manned orbital lab of its own.
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