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Latest Posts by astrosciencechick - Page 3
Hubble in Safe Mode as Gyro Issues are Diagnosed
NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch. Oct. 8, 2018 NASA is working to resume science operations of the Hubble Space Telescope after the spacecraft entered safe mode on Friday, October 5, shortly after 6:00 p.m. EDT. Hubble’s instruments still are fully operational and are expected to produce excellent science for years to come. Hubble entered safe mode after one of the three gyroscopes (gyros) actively being used to point and steady the telescope failed. Safe mode puts the telescope into a stable configuration until ground control can correct the issue and return the mission to normal operation. Built with multiple redundancies, Hubble had six new gyros installed during Servicing Mission-4 in 2009. Hubble usually uses three gyros at a time for maximum efficiency, but can continue to make scientific observations with just one. The gyro that failed had been exhibiting end-of-life behavior for approximately a year, and its failure was not unexpected; two other gyros of the same type had already failed. The remaining three gyros available for use are technically enhanced and therefore expected to have significantly longer operational lives.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA
Two of those enhanced gyros are currently running. Upon powering on the third enhanced gyro that had been held in reserve, analysis of spacecraft telemetry indicated that it was not performing at the level required for operations. As a result, Hubble remains in safe mode. Staff at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute are currently performing analyses and tests to determine what options are available to recover the gyro to operational performance. Science operations with Hubble have been suspended while NASA investigates the anomaly. An Anomaly Review Board, including experts from the Hubble team and industry familiar with the design and performance of this type of gyro, is being formed to investigate this issue and develop the recovery plan. If the outcome of this investigation results in recovery of the malfunctioning gyro, Hubble will resume science operations in its standard three-gyro configuration. If the outcome indicates that the gyro is not usable, Hubble will resume science operations in an already defined “reduced-gyro” mode that uses only one gyro. While reduced-gyro mode offers less sky coverage at any particular time, there is relatively limited impact on the overall scientific capabilities. For more information about Hubble, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/hubble Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Sarah Loff/Felicia Chou. Greetings, Orbiter.ch Full article
This mosaic image from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is centered at 9 degrees north latitude, 254 degrees west longitude. The image was acquired at a distance of about 57,800 km from Rhea.
Image credit: NASA/JPL
Solar flares produce gamma rays by several processes, one of which is illustrated here. The energy released in a solar flare rapidly accelerates charged particles. When a high-energy proton strikes matter in the sun’s atmosphere and visible surface, the result may be a short-lived particle – a pion – that emits gamma rays when it decays.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
I won’t be able to do a full write-up of this, as I’ll be out most of this evening, but this article does a great job at answering a lot of questions about today’s launch failure.
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals a spiral galaxy named Messier 95 (also known as M95 or NGC 3351). Located about 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion), this swirling spiral was discovered by astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1781, and catalogued by French astronomer Charles Messier just four days later. Messier was primarily a comet hunter, and was often left frustrated by objects in the sky that resembled comets but turned out not to be. To help other astronomers avoid confusing these objects in the future, he created his famous catalogue of Messier objects.
Most definitely not a comet, Messier 95 is actually a barred spiral galaxy. The galaxy has a bar cutting through its centre, surrounded by an inner ring currently forming new stars. Also our own Milky Way is a barred spiral.
As well as hosting this stellar nursery, Messier 95 is a known host of the dramatic and explosive final stages in the lives of massive stars: supernovae. In March 2016 a spectacular supernova named SN 2012aw was observed in the outer regions of one of Messier 95’s spiral arms. Once the light from the supernova had faded, astronomers were able to compare observations of the region before and after the explosion to find out which star had “disappeared” — the progenitor star. In this case, the star was an especially huge red supergiant up to 26 times more massive than the Sun.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1841a/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SocialSignIn
This is the moment of today’s Soyuz rocket failure. It happened as the 4 side boosters were being jettisoned. Very glad the crew is safely back on the ground. (at Baikonur Cosmodrome) https://www.instagram.com/p/BozMRz0Hm2Y/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=168pfhpjc77cm
Crew Safe After Soyuz Launch Abort
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin are in good condition following an aborted launch of their Soyuz spacecraft.
The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station at 4:40 a.m. EDT Thursday, October 11 (2:40 p.m. in Baikonur) carrying American astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. Shortly after launch, there was an anomaly with the booster and the launch ascent was aborted, resulting in a ballistic landing of the spacecraft. Search and rescue teams were deployed to the landing site. Hague and Ovchinin are out of the capsule and are reported to be in good condition.
Note: This video is edited for length, but includes the launch, the initial report of the issue, and the confirmation that the crew landed safely.
The little moon Janus and Rhea transiting Saturn. Images from the Cassini mission to Saturn, captured between Aug. 27 and Nov. 8, 2009. Credit: NASA, JPL, California Institute of Technology
The Space Station Transits Our Sun via NASA https://ift.tt/2RFTo9W
Cherenkov Radiation: When Electrons go Faster than the Speed of Light!
Well faster than light is an overstatement in the sense that it only happens in water. Basically the speed of light in water is 0.75c and although matter can be accelerated faster than that it is still below the speed of light in a vacuum. And that’s what basically causes the blue light or Chernenkov radiation, particles in a medium moving faster than the speed of light in that medium.
How does that happen though? Well that is due to very excited neutrinos produced by the nuclear reactor colliding with the nuclei of the water that is surrounding it. The collision produces muons and electrons which have the resulting momentum faster than the speed that light can travel in water. Which in turn brings the electrons in the surrounding water atoms/molecules to a higher state, and when they return back to the ground state they emit light in the wavelength of the resulting momentum transfer from those excited particles.
A common analogy is the sonic boom of a supersonic aircraft or bullet. The sound waves generated by the supersonic body propagate at the speed of sound itself; as such, the waves travel slower than the speeding object and cannot propagate forward from the body, instead forming a shock front. In a similar way, a charged particle can generate a light shock wave as it travels through an insulator.
More science and gifs on my blog: rudescience Gif made from: This video References: (x), (x). You can donate to support more science content on tumblr: here
I love this! Our SPS club is building a memorial to Cassini, and it should be finished and installed by March!
Ultra-Close Orbits of Saturn = Ultra-Cool Science
On Sept. 15, 2017, our Cassini spacecraft ended its epic exploration of Saturn with a planned dive into the planet’s atmosphere–sending back new science to the very last second. The spacecraft is gone, but the science continues!
New research emerging from the final orbits represents a huge leap forward in our understanding of the Saturn system – especially the mysterious, never-before-explored region between the planet and its rings. Some preconceived ideas are turning out to be wrong while new questions are being raised. How did they form? What holds them in place? What are they made of?
Six teams of researchers are publishing their work Oct. 5 in the journal Science, based on findings from Cassini’s Grand Finale. That’s when, as the spacecraft was running out of fuel, the mission team steered Cassini spectacularly close to Saturn in 22 orbits before deliberately vaporizing it in a final plunge into the atmosphere in September 2017.
Knowing Cassini’s days were numbered, its mission team went for gold. The spacecraft flew where it was never designed to fly. For the first time, it probed Saturn’s magnetized environment, flew through icy, rocky ring particles and sniffed the atmosphere in the 1,200-mile-wide (2,000-kilometer-wide) gap between the rings and the cloud tops. Not only did the engineering push the spacecraft to its limits, the new findings illustrate how powerful and agile the instruments were.
Many more Grand Finale science results are to come, but today’s highlights include:
Complex organic compounds embedded in water nanograins rain down from Saturn’s rings into its upper atmosphere. Scientists saw water and silicates, but they were surprised to see also methane, ammonia, carbon monoxide, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The composition of organics is different from that found on moon Enceladus – and also different from those on moon Titan, meaning there are at least three distinct reservoirs of organic molecules in the Saturn system.
For the first time, Cassini saw up close how rings interact with the planet and observed inner-ring particles and gases falling directly into the atmosphere. Some particles take on electric charges and spiral along magnetic-field lines, falling into Saturn at higher latitudes – a phenomenon known as “ring rain.” But scientists were surprised to see that others are dragged quickly into Saturn at the equator. And it’s all falling out of the rings faster than scientists thought – as much as 10,000 kg of material per second.
Scientists were surprised to see what the material looks like in the gap between the rings and Saturn’s atmosphere. They knew that the particles throughout the rings ranged from large to small. They thought material in the gap would look the same. But the sampling showed mostly tiny, nanograin- and micron-sized particles, like smoke, telling us that some yet-unknown process is grinding up particles. What could it be? Future research into the final bits of data sent by Cassini may hold the answer.
Saturn and its rings are even more interconnected than scientists thought. Cassini revealed a previously unknown electric current system that connects the rings to the top of Saturn’s atmosphere.
Scientists discovered a new radiation belt around Saturn, close to the planet and composed of energetic particles. They found that while the belt actually intersects with the innermost ring, the ring is so tenuous that it doesn’t block the belt from forming.
Unlike every other planet with a magnetic field in our Solar System, Saturn’s magnetic field is almost completely aligned with its spin axis. Think of the planet and the magnetic field as completely separate things that are both spinning. Both have the same center point, but they each have their own axis about which they spin. But for Saturn the two axes are essentially the same – no other planet does that, and we did not think it was even possible for this to happen. This new data shows a magnetic-field tilt of less than 0.0095 degrees. (Earth’s magnetic field is tilted 11 degrees from its spin axis.) According to everything scientists know about how planetary magnetic fields are generated, Saturn should not have one. It’s a mystery physicists will be working to solve.
Cassini flew above Saturn’s magnetic poles, directly sampling regions where radio emissions are generated. The findings more than doubled the number of reported crossings of radio sources from the planet, one of the few non-terrestrial locations where scientists have been able to study a mechanism believed to operate throughout the universe. How are these signals generated? That’s still a mystery researchers are looking to uncover.
For the Cassini mission, the science rolling out from Grand Finale orbits confirms that the calculated risk of diving into the gap – skimming the upper atmosphere and skirting the edge of the inner rings – was worthwhile.
Almost everything going on in that region turned out to be a surprise, which was the importance of going there, to explore a place we’d never been before. And the expedition really paid off!
Analysis of Cassini data from the spacecraft’s instruments will be ongoing for years to come, helping to paint a clearer picture of Saturn.
To read the papers published in Science, visit: URL to papers
To learn more about the ground-breaking Cassini mission and its 13 years at Saturn, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
Enceladus and Saturn
Image credit: Gordan Ugarkovic
The Lonely Neutron Star in Supernova E0102 72.3 via NASA https://ift.tt/2DDSt7b
This image is beautiful, and closer to my heart because I have done a field study at NRAO. Such an incredible experience!
The W50 supernova remnant in radio (green) against the infrared background of stars and dust (red).
Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF, K. Golap, M. Goss; NASA’s Wide Field Survey Explorer (WISE).
Sharpless 249 and the Jellyfish Nebula : Normally faint and elusive, the Jellyfish Nebula is caught in this alluring telescopic image. Centered in the scene it’s anchored right and left by two bright stars, Mu and Eta Geminorum, at the foot of the celestial twin. The Jellyfish Nebula is the brighter arcing ridge of emission with dangling tentacles. In fact, the cosmic jellyfish is part of bubble-shaped supernova remnant IC 443, the expanding debris cloud from a massive star that exploded. Light from the explosion first reached planet Earth over 30,000 years ago. Like its cousin in astrophysical waters the Crab Nebula supernova remnant, the Jellyfish Nebula is known to harbor a neutron star, the remnant of the collapsed stellar core. An emission nebula cataloged as Sharpless 249 fills the field at the upper left. The Jellyfish Nebula is about 5,000 light-years away. At that distance, this image would be about 300 light-years across. via NASA
55 Nights with Saturn
This is the 4th week of Deep, Dark, Space month!
This week’s entry is a not so “chilling” tale known as:
“The Big Crunch”
http://www.universetoday.com/37018/big-crunch/
http://www.iflscience.com/physics/big-crunch-back-possible-end-universe
Starry Greetings!
Planet X is hosting a summer class! (You’ll see more of him in September)
This week’s topic: Pulsars
https://www.space.com/32661-pulsars.html
https://www.universetoday.com/25376/pulsars/
Space is scary wallpaper is now available!
Show your love for the darkness of space by using this wallpaper for your desktop!
You can download it on the main website:
https://www.cosmicfunnies.com/freebies/
Scroll down the wallpaper section and you should be able to see it.
Enjoy!
This year’s winners of Nobel Prize for Physics includes a woman! 🎉🎊
Her name is Donna Strickland. Together with Arthur Ashkin, and Gérard Mourou, they are awarded the Nobel Prize “for their groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics” which help open up doors for potential research in biomedical physics.
[The announcement comes one day after a senior scientist with Cern, the academic home to a number of Nobel prize winners, was suspended for saying that physics was invented and built by men.
“We need to celebrate women physicists because we’re out there. I’m honored to be one of those women,” Strickland said in a news conference following the announcement in Stockholm.
Speaking about being the third woman to ever win the award, she said she thought there might have been more, adding: “Hopefully in time it will start to move forward at a faster rate.”]
Source
“science is cool sometimes” wrong. science is cool all the time.
Good afternoon, the academic culture of “if you’re not overworking, you don’t deserve success” is unhealthy.
#dearMoon is an amazing project that I hope to see come to completion. 🖤
Japanese Billionaire purchases SpaceX colonial ship for circumlunar art project. (September 16, 2018)
Two years after the company announced that a private individual bought a Crew Dragon flight to the moon, SpaceX founder and chief designer Elon Musk revealed their identity Monday night, September 16. In a press conference held at the company’s Hawthorne, California headquarters, surrounded by newly-constructed Falcon 9 rockets, Musk announced that 42-year old Japanese Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa bought an entire BFR spaceship for a circumlunar mission slated to launch no earlier than 2023.
Maezawa - a 42-year old art collector and founder of Japan’s largest online fashion retail site - booked the flight as part of his #dearMoon project, which was also revealed at Monday night’s conference. “Ever since I was a kid, I have loved the moon. Just staring at the moon filled my imagination. It’s always there and has continued to inspire humanity. That is why I could not pass up this opportunity to see the moon up-close.”
#dearMoon
However, Maezawa does not plan on travelling to cislunar space alone - he intends on taking up to eight artists on a trip that aims to “inspire the dreamers in all of us.”
“What if Picasso had gone to the moon, or Andy Warhol, or Michael Jackson, or John Lennon, or Coco Chanel. There are so many artists with us today that I wish would create amazing works of art for humankind, for children of the next generation. And I wish very much that such artists could go to space, and see the moon up close and the Earth in full view and create works that reflect their experience.
#dearMoon aims to send up to eight artists as Maezawa’s guests on a six-day voyage around the moon. “These artists will be asked to create something after their return to Earth and these masterpieces will inspire the dreamer within all of us” Maezawa stated.
The billionaire entrepreneur had not decided on the specific amount of artists or the fields they will represent, but an accompanying promotional video for the project stated that they will “represent Earth” from various fields. These could include “painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians, film directors, fashion designers, architects, etc.”
Maezawa’s inspiration for the project stemmed from imagining his favourite painter - Jean-Michel Basquait, and the works he could have created had he seen the Moon up close. Referencing pop culture and music references ranging from Beethoven to Van Gogh and the Beetles, Maezawa stated that the moon has inspired countless works throughout the ages. “And with utmost love and respect for the moon, our planet’s constant partner, I named this project #dearMoon.” This will not be the first time that prominent Earth artists have come together to create lunar-inspired artwork. Although the artists themselves never left the planet, miniature facsimile copies of works created by Andy Warhol, Forrest Myers, Robert Rauschenberg and others were secretly installed by a Grumman employee on the Apollo 12 lunar module in 1969. The ‘Moon Museum’ - a ceramic wafter less than an inch in size hidden under the gold foil of the Lunar Module’s descent stage - was not disclosed publicly until the mission was already returning to the Earth following their lunar landing.
From the Earth to the Moon.
According to graphics presented at the press conference, Maezawa’s flight would last just under six days from launch to landing. The Big Falcon Spaceship would fly on a “free-return” trajectory around the moon, a flight profile which craft loop around the moon without entering orbit and return to Earth. Lunar gravity would maneuver the spacecraft in such a way that additional course corrections would not be necessary, providing the safest flight profile for a flyby. Apollo 13 flew a modified free-return trajectory following the explosion of an oxygen tank aboard the spacecraft in April, 1970. According to a SpaceX tweet late Monday evening, the company is expecting the BFS to fly as close as 125 miles to the Lunar surface.
During a question and answer session immediately following the announcement, Elon Musk stated that the projected 2023 launch date is not set in stone. “This is a ridiculously big rocket. It’s got so much advanced technology. It’s not 100% certain that we succeed in getting this to flight.” By comparison, the inaugural flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket was slated for late mid-2014 before slipping to the right nearly four years to February 2018.
Monday’s announcement also confirmed that Maezawa initially intended to perform the mission on the company’s Crew Dragon vehicle atop a Falcon Heavy rocket. SpaceX announced in February, 2017 that an unnamed individual paid a deposit for the flight, which was initially scheduled to launch in late 2018.
Immediately following Falcon Heavy’s test flight in February, 2018, SpaceX stated that the rocket was no longer being human-rated, putting the future of the mission in doubt until last week. Musk stated Monday that after modifying the capsule for deep space flight and circumlunar operations, there would only have been enough room for Maezawa and one additional person, not enough to fulfill the host’s desire for a variety of artists.
“If in doubt, go with Tintin.”
Monday’s announcement also presented the third variation of Musk’s Big Falcon Rocket since it was announced at the 2016 IAC in Guadalajara, Mexico.
The recent modifications reflect additional design work by the SpaceX teams to make the spaceship more aerodynamically stable during atmospheric landings and surface operations.
Whereas the previous versions of the Big Falcon Spaceship resembled a cylinder with two small delta wings, the new design features three equally-sized wings equidistant around the vehicles aft section. Two of the wings would be actuated control surfaces that would change orientation during various parts of planetary atmospheric entry. The third, according to Musk “is just a leg…it doesn’t serve any aerodynamic purpose.”
Two smaller fins near the nose of the ship actuate in tandem with the larger fins for further stability.
The design resembles the interplanetary ships of mid 20th-century science fiction, including the rocket from Belgian cartoonist Herge’s famous Tintin series. Musk even stated during the conference that he wanted to bias the BFR design towards the famous cartoon ship: “I love the Tintin rocket design. If in doubt, go with Tintin.”
Although Musk declined to comment on the amount of Maezawa’s deposit for the BFR circumlunar flight, he did state that “it will have a material effect on paying for the development” of the BFR system. Currently, only around 5% of SpaceX resources are spent on BFR, though Musk expects that to “change quite significantly in the years to come.”
He reiterated that the company’s top priorities are still NASA missions to the space station and commercial launches using the smaller Falcon 9 vehicle. The final major version of that rocket, the Block 5, made its first flight earlier in 2018. Once Crew Dragon flights begin on a regular basis - Musk did not state a specific time but likely to be in early 2019 - the company will shift their engineering talent more fully towards BFR. Musk also showed images of the BFR test article, including a cylindrical segment constructed at the company’s recently-purchased facility at the Port of Los Angeles. Watch the introductory video for #dearMoon below. Click here for a replay of SpaceX’s press conference introducing Maezawa and #dearMoon
P/c: SpaceX/#dearMoon
M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy
Remnants from a star that exploded thousands of years ago created a celestial abstract portrait, as captured in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Pencil Nebula.
Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
SH2-155, Cave Nebula
It’s only two things.
Imagine where you could be by this time next year. Now do the work
I’ve been seeing some of the studyblrs that I follow are doing the 100 days of productivity challenge, and I’m considering attempting this. As a non-traditional, upper level university student, I’m trying to keep my life together by finding balance with school and family.
My kids got sick the first week of school, which carried on into the second week and I’ve been trying to catch up on the assignments I’m behind in (which is now down to half of my classes).
Have any of you guys done this challenge? What are the pros and cons from your experience?