How Does The Whole Sleeping Situation Work With 0 Gravity, Or Do Sleep Mid Air?

Hitchhiking a Ride to Space

Have you ever packed for a long trip with a friend and ran out of space in your suitcase? Maybe your friend was nice and let your spare items hitchhike a ride in their bag?  The following science experiments are doing something similar on our Space Launch System rocket.

Our Space Launch System (SLS) will be the most powerful rocket we’ve ever built and will enable astronauts in the Orion spacecraft to travel deeper into the solar system. This advanced launch vehicle will launch astronauts to an asteroid and eventually to Mars, while opening new possibilities for other payloads including robotic scientific missions to places like Mars, Saturn and Jupiter.

The primary goal of SLS and the Orion spacecraft is to launch future crewed, deep space missions. That said, an added bonus of this powerful rocket is the extra science it can carry. On it’s first mission (known as Exploration Mission-1, EM-1) SLS will carry 13 CubeSats (small satellites, each the size of a large shoebox) on its first flight as secondary payloads. These small satellites will perform various in-space experiments. In a way, these 13 CubeSats are ‘space hitchhikers’, catching a ride to deep space where they can gather data valuable to future exploration missions.

How were these 13 experiments selected? Great question. They were selected through a series of announcements of flight opportunities, a public contest and negations with our international partners.

These secondary payloads have a vast array of functions, from taking pictures of asteroids, to using yeast to detect impacts of deep-space radiation. Each month we will highlight one of these experiments on Tumblr and talk about all the exciting science they will do. Just to give you an idea of what these shoebox-sized satellites will do, we’ll give you a preview:

1. NEA Scout

NEA Scout, stands for: Near-Earth Asteroid Scout. This CubeSat will investigate an asteroid, taking pictures and observe its position in space.

2. BioSentinel

BioSentinel will be the first time living organisms have traveled to deep space in more than 40 years. It will use yeast to detect, measure and compare the impact of deep-space radiation on living organisms over long durations in deep space.

3. Lunar Flashlight

This experiment will look for ice deposits and identify locations where resources may be extracted from the lunar surface. It will demonstrate the capability to scout for useful materials and resources from lunar orbit.

4. Skyfire

Lockheed Martin’s Skyfire will perform a lunar flyby, collecting data to address both Moon and Mars Strategic Knowledge Gaps, or gaps in information required to reduce risk, increase effectiveness and improve the design of robotic and human space exploration missions, for surface characterization, remote sensing and site selection.

5. Lunar IceCube

Morehead State University’s Lunar IceCube will look for water in ice, liquid and vapor forms from a very low orbit of only 62 miles above the surface of the moon. The ability to search for useful resources can potentially help astronauts manufacture fuel and necessities to sustain a crew.

6. CuSP

The CubeSat mission to study Solar Particles, or CuSP, will be the first protype of an interplanetary CubeSat space weather station. It will observe space weather events hours before they reach Earth.

7. Luna-H-Map

Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH) will enter a polar orbit around the moon with a low altitude. From there, it will produce maps of near-surface hydrogen.

8, 9, 10. Three Tournament Payloads

Three of the payloads riding along on this journey will be the winners of the Ground Tournaments portion of our CubeQuest Challenge. This challenge is designed to foster innovation in small spacecraft propulsion and communications techniques. Learn more about this challenge HERE.

11, 12, 13. International Partners

The remaining three payloads are reserved for international partners, and will be announced at a later time.

To stay updated on these experiments, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/launching-science-and-technology.html

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Would you smooch an alien?

Depends what he looks like!

Sea Level Rise

For thousands of years, sea level has remained relatively stable. But now, Earth’s seas are rising. Since the beginning of the 20th century, they have risen about eight inches, and more than two inches in the last 20 years alone!

As water warms, it expands and takes up more space. That means that when oceans warm, the sea level rises. This summer, we’ve been researching exactly how global warming has impacted Greenland’s ice sheet. Our ICESat-2 mission will use a laser to measure the height of the planet’s surface. Over time, we will be able to provide a record of elevation change, and estimate how much water has melted into the ocean from land ice change.

So how much ice are we actually losing? Great question, but the answer might shock you. In Greenland alone, 303 gigatons of ice was lost in 2014!

Since we know that ice is melting, we’re working to gain a better understanding of how much and how fast. We’re using everything from planes, probes and boats, to satellites and lasers to determine the impact of global warming on the Earth’s ice.

Follow along for updates and information: http://climate.nasa.gov/

Let's Explore a Metal-Rich Asteroid 🤘

Between Mars and Jupiter, there lies a unique, metal-rich asteroid named Psyche. Psyche’s special because it looks like it is part or all of the metallic interior of a planetesimal—an early planetary building block of our solar system. For the first time, we have the chance to visit a planetary core and possibly learn more about the turbulent history that created terrestrial planets.

Here are six things to know about the mission that’s a journey into the past: Psyche.

1. Psyche could help us learn more about the origins of our solar system.

After studying data from Earth-based radar and optical telescopes, scientists believe that Psyche collided with other large bodies in space and lost its outer rocky shell. This leads scientists to think that Psyche could have a metal-rich interior, which is a building block of a rocky planet. Since we can’t pierce the core of rocky planets like Mercury, Venus, Mars, and our home planet, Earth, Psyche offers us a window into how other planets are formed.

2. Psyche might be different than other objects in the solar system.

Rocks on Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Earth contain iron oxides. From afar, Psyche doesn’t seem to feature these chemical compounds, so it might have a different history of formation than other planets.

If the Psyche asteroid is leftover material from a planetary formation, scientists are excited to learn about the similarities and differences from other rocky planets. The asteroid might instead prove to be a never-before-seen solar system object. Either way, we’re prepared for the possibility of the unexpected!

3. Three science instruments and a gravity science investigation will be aboard the spacecraft.

The three instruments aboard will be a magnetometer, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, and a multispectral imager. Here’s what each of them will do:

Magnetometer: Detect evidence of a magnetic field, which will tell us whether the asteroid formed from a planetary body

Gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer: Help us figure out what chemical elements Psyche is made of, and how it was formed

Multispectral imager: Gather and share information about the topography and mineral composition of Psyche

The gravity science investigation will allow scientists to determine the asteroid’s rotation, mass, and gravity field and to gain insight into the interior by analyzing the radio waves it communicates with. Then, scientists can measure how Psyche affects the spacecraft’s orbit.

4. The Psyche spacecraft will use a super-efficient propulsion system.

Psyche’s solar electric propulsion system harnesses energy from large solar arrays that convert sunlight into electricity, creating thrust. For the first time ever, we will be using Hall-effect thrusters in deep space.

5. This mission runs on collaboration.

To make this mission happen, we work together with universities, and industry and NASA to draw in resources and expertise.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the mission and is responsible for system engineering, integration, and mission operations, while NASA’s Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Services Program manages launch operations and procured the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Working with Arizona State University (ASU) offers opportunities for students to train as future instrument or mission leads. Mission leader and Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton is also based at ASU.

Finally, Maxar Technologies is a key commercial participant and delivered the main body of the spacecraft, as well as most of its engineering hardware systems.

6. You can be a part of the journey.

Everyone can find activities to get involved on the mission’s webpage. There's an annual internship to interpret the mission, capstone courses for undergraduate projects, and age-appropriate lessons, craft projects, and videos.

You can join us for a virtual launch experience, and, of course, you can watch the launch with us on Oct. 12, 2023, at 10:16 a.m. EDT!

For official news on the mission, follow us on social media and check out NASA’s and ASU’s Psyche websites.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

Pi Guides the Way

It may be irrational but pi plays an important role in the everyday work of scientists at NASA. 

What Is Pi ?

Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It is also an irrational number, meaning its decimal representation never ends and it never repeats. Pi has been calculated to more than one trillion digits, 

Why March 14?

March 14 marks the yearly celebration of the mathematical constant pi. More than just a number for mathematicians, pi has all sorts of applications in the real world, including on our missions. And as a holiday that encourages more than a little creativity – whether it’s making pi-themed pies or reciting from memory as many of the never-ending decimals of pi as possible (the record is 70,030 digits).

While 3.14 is often a precise enough approximation, hence the celebration occurring on March 14, or 3/14 (when written in standard U.S.  month/day format), the first known celebration occurred in 1988, and in 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution designating March 14 as Pi Day and encouraging teachers and students to celebrate the day with activities that teach students about pi.

5 Ways We Use Pi at NASA

Below are some ways scientists and engineers used pi.

Keeping Spacecraft Chugging Along

Propulsion engineers use pi to determine the volume and surface area of propellant tanks. It’s how they size tanks and determine liquid propellant volume to keep spacecraft going and making new discoveries. 

Getting New Perspectives on Saturn

A technique called pi transfer uses the gravity of Titan’s moon, Titan, to alter the orbit of the Cassini spacecraft so it can obtain different perspectives of the ringed planet.

Learning the Composition of Asteroids

Using pi and the asteroid’s mass, scientists can calculate the density of an asteroid and learn what it’s made of--ice, iron, rock, etc.

Measuring Craters

knowing the circumference, diameter and surface area of a crater can tell scientists a lot about the asteroid or meteor that may have carved it out.

Determining the Size of Exoplanets

Exoplanets are planets that orbit suns other than our own and scientists use pi to search for them. The first step is determining how much the light curve of a planet’s sun dims when a suspected planets passes in front of it.

Want to learn more about Pi? Visit us on Pinterest at: https://www.pinterest.com/nasa/pi-day/

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Tracking a Warming Arctic – From Underground to High in the Sky

The Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of Earth. This warming is creating big and small changes, some of which could ripple beyond the planet’s frozen regions and affect us world-wide – possibly raising sea levels, increasing greenhouse warming and affecting wildlife.

Our Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment, known as ABoVE, just began a 10-year mission in Alaska and western Canada, studying these changes.

Underground: Permafrost is the layer of frozen soil beneath some Arctic forests and tundra. 

Like the name suggests, this icy layer stays solid year-round, so when it does melt, it can create big problems. The soil above the thawing permafrost can collapse, creating this wobbly, unstable surface.

7 feet above sea level: As the permafrost thaws, the soil above it can fall away. 

Along the banks of the Itkillik River in Alaska, thawing permafrost has dripped into the water, eroding the cliff side. Known as the “Stinky Bluffs,” this permafrost contains lots of frozen organic matter from dead plants and animals. As the permafrost thaws, this organic matter doesn’t just smell, it also releases carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, adding to the warming effect.

446 feet above sea level: Wildfires aren’t unusual in the forests and shrub lands of Alaska, but as the climate continues to warm, they burn longer and do more damage. 

People who live off the land in the region help researchers understand where plant life isn’t growing back after fires.

100-1000 feet above sea level: Researchers set up 100-foot tall towers at strategic locations throughout Alaska to measure carbon dioxide and methane emissions from right above the forest canopy. 

This provides an up-close look at what gases are released or absorbed from the trees, or swirl in from neighboring regions. These data are combined with measurements taken from airplanes and satellites to create a clearer picture of how much carbon is entering the atmosphere.

3,369 feet above sea level: Dall sheep live in several Alaskan mountain ranges, where they’re critical to both the tourism and sports hunting economies. 

Credit: National Park Service

Changes in temperature and vegetation can profoundly affect their behavior, like grazing habits, and so researchers study how changing plant life and snow cover affect the sheep.

100-30,000 feet above sea level: Carbon emissions in the air come from thawing permafrost, fossil fuel burning, decaying vegetation and wildfires burning across the Arctic-boreal regions. 

One experiment in the ABoVE campaign measures these emissions with instruments on a DC-8 plane.

About 30,000 feet about sea level: When wildfires burn through vegetation, the effects extend far beyond what we see on the ground. 

Fires release carbon stored in the plants into the atmosphere, where it affects air quality and contributes to the greenhouse effect.

438 miles: Our ABoVE campaign combines research on the ground and from planes with data collected by a fleet of Earth-observing satellites, orbiting Earth hundreds of miles above the surface. 

Data from these satellites provides information on vegetation, atmospheric particles and gasses, and how humans are impacting our planet. With all these data sets analyzed by computer programs, the result is a comprehensive picture of our warming planet.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

What’s Up for August 2017

The total solar eclipse on August 21 will trace a narrow path across the nation, although most of the U.S. will see a partial eclipse. Here's what to do before, during and after the eclipse, plus how you can become a citizen scientist helping us with eclipse observations.

Not everyone can travel to the path of totality, so here are some things you can do whether you see totality or a partial eclipse. 

Collecting Citizen Science

Want to be a citizen scientist? 

Before the eclipse, make and pack your very own eclipse toolkit, containing a notebook, pen, a clock, a stopwatch, the front page of a newspaper, a thermometer, and a stick with a piece of crepe paper tied to it. Don’t forget your assistant, who will help conduct science observations. 

Practice using a citizen scientist phone app, like our GLOBE app to study clouds, air and surface temperatures and other observations. Go to the location where you plan to observe the eclipse and check for any obstructions. You may want to focus on only one activity as the eclipse will last less than 3 minutes ... or just really experience the eclipse. 

Cell phones don’t take eclipse video! And plan to have your safe eclipse-viewing glasses within reach for before and after totality. Just before totality, if you have a good view of the horizon, look west to see the approaching shadow. After totality, look east low on the horizon for the departing shadow.

During totality, look for stars. You should be able to see the star Regulus in the solar corona or the stars of Orion.

During totality, we may see moving bands of shadows, like on the bottom of a swimming pool.

How dark does it get at totality? Look at the newspaper you brought with you. What is the smallest print you can read?

How much does the temperature drop? Does the wind stop or change direction?

Use your hands, a sheet of paper with a hole in it, a kitchen colander or any other object with one or more holes to use as a pinhole projector. You’ll be able to see the crescent shape of the sun projected through the holes.

Find out more about the eclipse, including eclipse safety, at https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Sea Level Rise is on the Rise

As our planet warms, sea levels are rising around the world – and are doing so at an accelerating rate. Currently, global sea level is rising about an eighth of an inch every year.

That may seem insignificant, but it’s 30% more than when NASA launched its first satellite mission to measure ocean heights in 1992 – less than 30 years ago. And people already feel the impacts, as seemingly small increments of sea level rise become big problems along coastlines worldwide.

Higher global temperatures cause our seas to rise, but how? And why are seas rising at a faster and faster rate? There are two main reasons: melting ice and warming waters.

 The Ice We See Is Getting Pretty Thin

About two-thirds of global sea level rise comes from melting glaciers and ice sheets, the vast expanses of ice that cover Antarctica and Greenland. In Greenland, most of that ice melt is caused by warmer air temperatures that melt the upper surface of ice sheets, and when giant chunks of ice crack off of the ends of glaciers, adding to the ocean.

In Antarctica – where temperatures stay low year-round – most of the ice loss happens at the edges of glaciers. Warmer ocean water and warmer air meet at the glaciers’ edges, eating away at the floating ice sheets there.

NASA can measure these changes from space. With data from the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, scientists can measure the height of ice sheets to within a fraction of an inch. Since 2006, an average of 318 gigatons of ice per year has melted from Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets. To get a sense of how big that is: just one gigaton is enough to cover New York City’s Central Park in ice 1,000 feet deep – almost as tall as the Chrysler Building.

With the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission -- a partnership with the German Research Centre for Geosciences -- scientists can calculate the mass of ice lost from these vast expanses across Greenland and Antarctica.

It’s not just glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland that are melting, though. Nearly all glaciers have been melting in the last decade, including those in Alaska, High Mountain Asia, South America, and the Canadian Arctic. Because these smaller glaciers are melting quickly, they contribute about the same amount to sea level rise as meltwater from massive ice sheets.

The Water’s Getting Warm

As seawater warms, it takes up more space. When water molecules get warmer, the atoms in those molecules vibrate faster, expanding the volume they take up. This phenomenon is called thermal expansion. It’s an incredibly tiny change in the size of a single water molecule, but added across all the water molecules in all of Earth’s oceans – a single drop contains well over a billion billion molecules – it accounts for about a third of global sea level rise.

So Much to See

While sea level is rising globally, it’s not the same across the planet. Sea levels are rising about an eighth of an inch per year on average worldwide. But some areas may see triple that rate, some may not observe any changes, and some may even experience a drop in sea level. These differences are due to ocean currents, mixing, upwelling of cold water from the deep ocean, winds, movements of heat and freshwater, and Earth’s gravitational pull moving water around. When ice melts from Greenland, for example, the drop in mass decreases the gravitational pull from the ice sheet, causing water to slosh to the shores of South America.

That’s where our view from space comes in. We’re launching Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, an international partnership satellite, to continue our decades-long record of global sea level rise.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Black Hole Sculpts an Hourglass Galaxy

When it comes to galaxies, our home, the Milky Way, is rather neat and orderly. Other galaxies can be much more chaotic. For example, the Markarian 573 galaxy has a black hole at its center which is spewing beams of light in opposite directions, giving its inner regions more of an hourglass shape. 

Our scientists have long been fascinated by this unusual structure, seen above in optical light from the Hubble Space Telescope. Now their search has taken them deeper than ever — all the way into the super-sized black hole at the center of one galaxy.

So, what do we think is going on? When the black hole gobbles up matter, it releases a form of high-energy light called radiation (particularly in the form of X-rays), causing abnormal patterns in the flow of gas. 

Let’s take a closer look.

Meet Markarian 573, the galaxy at the center of this image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, located about 240 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cetus. It’s the galaxy’s odd structure and the unusual motions of its components that inspire our scientists to study it.

As is the case with other so-called active galaxies, the ginormous black hole at the center of Markarian 573 likes to eat stuff. A thick ring of dust and gas accumulates around it, forming a doughnut. This ring only permits light to escape the black hole in two cone-shaped regions within the flat plane of the galaxy — and that’s what creates the hourglass, as shown in the illustration above.

Zooming out, we can see the two cones of emission (shown in gold in the animation above) spill into the galaxy's spiral arms (blue). As the galaxy rotates, gas clouds in the arms sweep through this radiation, which makes them light up so our scientists can track their movements from Earth.

What happens next depends on how close the gas is to the black hole. Gas that’s about 2,500 light-years from the black hole picks up speed and streams outward (shown as darker red and blue arrows). Gas that’s farther from the black hole also becomes ionized, but is not driven away and continues its motion around the galaxy as before.

Here is an actual snapshot of the inner region of Markarian 573, combining X-ray data (blue) from our Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio observations (purple) from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico with a visible light image (gold) from our Hubble Space Telescope. Given its strange appearance, we’re left to wonder: what other funky shapes might far-off galaxies take?

For more information about the bizarre structure of Markarian 573, visit http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12657  

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

The total solar eclipse is coming! Here’s your chance to ask an eclipse scientist your questions! Have questions about the upcoming total solar eclipse on August 21? Join our Tumblr Answer Time session on Thursday, August 17 from 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. EDT/12:00 - 1:00 p.m. PDT. here on NASA’s Tumblr, where space physics researcher Alexa Halford will answer them. Make sure to ask your questions now by visiting: https://nasa.tumblr.com/ask!

See all the #AnswerTime questions here: https://nasa.tumblr.com/tagged/answertime

Alexa Halford is a space physics researcher at our Goddard Space Flight Center and Dartmouth College. She started researching waves in Earth's magnetosphere as an undergraduate at Augsburg College with Mark Engebretson using ground based magnetometers in the Arctic and Antarctic. She moved away from waves to focus on geomagnetic storms and substorms during her masters at the University of Colorado Boulder with Dan Baker but returned once more to waves with her PhD at University of Newcastle NSW Australia. Her PhD thesis was on Electromagnetic Ion Cyclotron (EMIC) waves during the CRRES mission and their relationship to the plasmasphere and radiation belts.

She is member of the scientific team for a NASA-funded scientific balloon experiment project called BARREL (Balloon Array for RBSP Relativistic Electron Losses) where she looks at the population of particles lost due to these interactions. She is now currently a contractor at NASA Goddard continuing work the BARREL and NASA Van Allen Probes satellite missions.

To get more information about the eclipse, visit: https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com