Expedition 42 Crew Prepares for Return to Earth

ISS - Expedition 42 Mission patch.

March 10, 2015

Expedition 42 crew members Barry Wilmore, Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova are two days away from ending their stay aboard the International Space Station. The trio is packing gear and cleaning crew quarters as they prepare to undock in their Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft Wednesday at 6:44 p.m. EDT and land in Kazakhstan at 10:07 p.m.

Image above: U.S. astronaut Terry Virts observed this scene from the International Space Station on Mar. 1, 2015. He sent this image via Twitter with the remark, “The camera doesn’t do it justice – floating in space, looking down on creation, seeing new color shades”.

Wilmore, the commander of Expedition 42, will handover control of the orbital laboratory Tuesday to NASA astronaut Terry Virts who will command Expedition 43. The Change of Command Ceremony will take place live on NASA TV (video bellow).

Change of Command on the ISS

Video above: On March 10, Expedition 42 Commander Barry Wilmore of NASA handed over command of the International Space Station to NASA astronaut Terry Virts – marking the start of Expedition 43. Wilmore will return to Earth March 11 EDT in the Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft with Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova to wrap up almost six months in orbit.

Read more about the Body Measures experiment: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1070.html

Read more about the Airway Monitoring study: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1172.html

Meanwhile, advanced microgravity science and laboratory maintenance is ongoing aboard the space station. Among the experiments, the crew studied body size and shape in space for suit sizing and looked at airway inflammation in astronauts. Ethernet cables were also installed in the Harmony module that will enable future commercial crew vehicles to communicate with a pair of upcoming International Docking Adapters.

For more information about the International Space Station (ISS), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Image, Video, Text, Credits: NASA/NASA TV.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

CERN - Injection tests make a splash

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

March 10, 2015

On Saturday 7 March, two of the LHC experiments saw proton beams for the first time after a two-year stop. Beam 2 (anticlockwise) made it through LHCb at 10.30 and Beam 1 (clockwise) passed through ALICE at 17.00. The two experiments were switched on to record so-called splash events, particles emerging from the collision between the proton beam and a block positioned to stop the beam. The proton beams passed through three of the eight sectors of the LHC machine – slightly more than 10 km of the 27 km ring.

The splash events recorded by the LHCb (left) and ALICE experiments(right)

“The tests were a big a success – on the one hand because we made it successfully to Point 3 with Beam 1 and onto the beam-dump block in Point 6 with Beam 2, and on the other hand because we discovered many issues, which we can still fix before we start commissioning with beam”, said Verena Kain, one of the two engineers in charge of LHC operations at the weekend.

An essential first step before a full restart, these injection tests are now being followed by the final stages of the hardware commissioning of the machine at the CERN Control Centre. Commissioning with beam is scheduled to start in the week beginning 23 March.

CERN - The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 27 km ring annotated

Note:

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature.

The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions.

Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 22 Member States.

Related links:

CERN - LHC injector tests to begin: http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2015/03/cern-lhc-injector-tests-to-begin.html

Timelapse: LHC experiments prepare for restart: http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2015/02/timelapse-lhc-experiments-prepare-for.html

CERN's two-year shutdown drawing to a close: http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2015/02/cerns-two-year-shutdown-drawing-to-close.html

Large Hadron Collider (LHC): http://home.web.cern.ch/topics/large-hadron-collider

ALICE: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/experiments/alice

ATLAS: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/experiments/atlas

CMS: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/experiments/cms

LHCb: http://home.web.cern.ch/about/experiments/lhcb

Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS): http://home.web.cern.ch/about/accelerators/super-proton-synchrotron

For more information about the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), visit: http://home.web.cern.ch/

Images, Text, Credits: CERN/Paola Catapano.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

Solar Impulse 2 has completed its second step

SolarImpulse Around the World patch.

March 10, 2015

Solar Impulse 2 landed safely in Ahmadabad, India, the second step.

 Solar Impulse takes off from Oman on second-leg of record breaking trip

The airplane Solar Impulse 2 (SI2) landed Tuesday, March 10 in India, the second stage of his tour of the historical world without fuel, to promote clean energy.

Party of Muscat Airport, the capital of Oman, at 6:35 local time, the revolutionary device only solar traveled 1465 km in just under 16 hours to Ahmedabad, the main city of the State of Gujarat in western India.

Image Above: Solar Impulse will travel 1465 km in sixteen hours to Ahmedabad in western India. Image Credits: Jean Revillard, Solar Impulse.

The aircraft landed on the airport Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel at 11:25 p.m. (5:55 p.m. in Switzerland). Images, broadcast live on the website, show white and blue lights of the aircraft in the night with the approach of Ahmedabad, where he must stay four days.

Applauded Piccard

In the control room, applause rang out to greet the pilot, Bertrand Piccard, who was at the controls for this trip over the Arabian Sea.

Image above: Bertrand Piccard pilot of the SI2 during the second step. Image Credits: Jean Revillard, Solar Impulse.

Eight hours after takeoff, the aircraft entered Pakistani airspace at an altitude of 8,230 meters, according to the Twitter account of the Swiss driver. Earlier, Bertrand Piccard had tweeted: "When I relax, I breathe so slowly that it triggers the alarm in the cockpit."

Bertrand Piccard, 57, noted in the cockpit of his compatriot André Borschberg, 63, who had successfully secured the first step Monday by connecting in 13 hours and two minutes Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates in Muscat.

35,000 kilometers in total

This flight was "moving", said André Borschberg, smiling, on his arrival in Oman. He explained that the trip was taken at 6000 meters above sea level, as it was a short trip.

Solar Impulse 2 landing. Image Credits: Jean Revillard, Solar Impulse

After India, SI2 will travel to Burma before the longest leg of the journey: Five consecutive days of flight to a single driver loaded rally Nanjing, China, the US islands of Hawaii, the Pacific .

In total, the unit will travel 35,000 kilometers at a modest speed (between 50 and 100 km / h), flying over two oceans. This convolution, at 8500 meters at maximum altitude, take five months, including 25 days of actual flight before returning to Abu Dhabi late July / early August.

Round-The-World Solar Flight - Follow it live: http://www.solarimpulse.com/leg-2-from-Muscat-to-Ahmedabad

For more information about Solar Impulse 2, visit: http://www.solarimpulse.com/

Images (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: SolarImpulse / Euronews / Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA's Soil Moisture Mapper Takes First 'SMAPshots'

NASA - SMAP Mission patch.

March 10, 2015

Fresh off the recent successful deployment of its 20-foot (6-meter) reflector antenna and associated boom arm, NASA's new Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) observatory has successfully completed a two-day test of its science instruments.

The observatory's radar and radiometer instruments were successfully operated for the first time with SMAP's antenna in a non-spinning mode on Feb. 27 and 28. The test was a key step in preparation for the planned spin-up of SMAP's antenna to approximately 15 revolutions per minute in late March. The spin-up will be performed in a two-step process after additional tests and maneuvers adjust the observatory to its final science orbit over the next couple of weeks.

Based on the data received, mission controllers concluded the radar and radiometer performed as expected. The controllers are based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

Images above: First image from NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite from a test of its science instruments Feb. 27-28, 2015, with SMAP's antenna in a non-spinning mode, which limits measurement swath widths to 25 miles (40 kilometers). Radar data are in the upper panel; radiometer data in the lower. Images Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

SMAP launched Jan. 31 on a minimum three-year mission to map global soil moisture and detect whether soils are frozen or thawed. The mission will help scientists understand the links in Earth's water, energy and carbon cycles; help reduce uncertainties in predicting weather and climate; and enhance our ability to monitor and predict natural hazards such as floods and droughts

The first test image illustrates the significance of SMAP's spinning instrument design in producing more comprehensive maps. For this initial test with SMAP's antenna not yet spinning, the observatory's measurement swath width -- the strips observed on Earth in the image -- was limited to 25 miles (40 kilometers). When fully spun up and operating, SMAP's antenna will measure a 620-mile-wide (1,000-kilometer) swath of the ground as it flies above Earth at an altitude of 426 miles (685 kilometers). This will allow SMAP to map the entire globe with high-resolution radar data every two to three days, filling in all of the land surface detail that is not available in this first image.

The radar data illustrated in the upper panel of the image show a clear contrast between land and ocean surfaces. The Amazon and Congo forests in South America and Africa, respectively, produced strong radar echoes due to their large biomass and water content. Areas with no vegetation and low soil moisture, such as the Sahara Desert, yielded weaker radar echoes. As expected, the dry snow zone in central Greenland, the largest zone of the Greenland ice sheet where snow does not melt year-round, produced weaker radar echoes. Surrounding areas in Greenland's percolation zone, where some meltwater penetrates down into glaciers and refreezes, had strong radar echoes due to ice lenses and glands within the ice sheet. Ice lenses form when moisture that is diffused within soil or rock accumulates in a localized zone. Ice glands are columns of ice in the granular snow at the top of glaciers.

Image above: Artist’s rendering of NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft in orbit. Image Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

The test shows that SMAP's radiometer is performing well. The radiometer's brightness temperature data are illustrated in the lower panel. Brightness temperature is a measurement of how much natural microwave radiant energy is traveling up from Earth's surface to the satellite. The contrast between land and ocean surface is clear, as it is in the radar image. The Sahara Desert has high brightness temperatures because it is so hot and has low soil moisture content. The India subcontinent is currently in its dry season and therefore also has high brightness temperatures. Some regions, such as the northeast corner of Australia, show low brightness temperatures, likely due to the high moisture content of the soil after heavy rainfall from Cyclone Marcia in late February.

For more information on SMAP, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/smap

For more information about NASA's Earth science programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/JPL/Alan Buis.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Testing astronauts’ lungs in Space Station airlock

ESA - Futura Mission patch.

9 March 2015

The International Space Station’s air lock was pumped free of air for the first time in the name of science last week. Inside the cylindrical Quest airlock, ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and NASA’s Terry Virts monitored their breathing for researchers back on Earth.

With each lungful of air, our bodies absorb oxygen and exhale waste-product molecules such as carbon dioxide and the important ‘signalling’ molecule nitric oxide. The Airway Monitoring experiment looks at the amount of nitric oxide the astronauts expelled by the astronauts in the airlock.

Samantha working on Airway Monitoring

Nitric oxide is a gas found in cigarette smoke and car exhaust, for example, and it is produced in our bodies to regulate blood vessels and act as an antibacterial agent.

Doctors measure the amount of nitric oxide exhaled by patients to help diagnose inflamed lungs and asthma.

Airway monitoring for space and Earth

On Earth, dust drifts to the floor where vacuum cleaners or a damp cloth remove it easily. In weightlessness, dust circulates freely and often irritates and inflames eyes and lungs.

In addition, dust on the Moon and probably Mars sticks to astronauts through static electricity and has sharp edges – all making it more likely that dust will enter astronauts’ lungs and do harm.

Moon dust on astronaut after moonwalk

The Airway Monitoring experiment will test the use of nitric oxide as a tool to monitor lung inflammation as well as charting lung health in astronauts.

Four sessions will see the pair exhale into the equipment. Samantha and Terry made their first contributions before flight at NASA and ran their first space session in space in January.

On Friday, they entered the Station’s Quest airlock for their last run and reduced the pressure by 30% – equivalent to being on a mountain at 3000 m altitude.

They are the first of eight astronauts to collect data on their lungs for this experiment. It is also the first time that Quest is used for scientific purposes – the module was installed to allow astronauts to venture outside on spacewalks.

Quest airlock

A complete view of lung health

Testing the nitric oxide diagnostic technique in space adds to the data for use on Earth. More than 300 million people suffer from asthma, so a quick and simple lung test would be of great benefit.

Lars Karlsson, lead investigator for this experiment from the Karolinska Institutet of Sweden, is hopeful that the experiment in the airlock will open up new fields of research in reduced pressure in space: “In the future, it is quite likely that drugs could be designed based on exhaled nitric oxide measurements, to find the most effective molecules to treat inflamed airways and lungs. This type of research is a first step down this road.”

Related links:

Futura mission: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Futura

Connect with Samantha Cristoforetti: http://samanthacristoforetti.esa.int/

Avamposto42: http://avamposto42.esa.int/

Where is the International Space Station?: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/International_Space_Station/Where_is_the_International_Space_Station

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/NASA.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Solar Impulse 2 has completed its first step of the Round-The-World Solar Flight

SolarImpulse Around the World patch.

March 9, 2015

Image Above: Solar plane take off Monday in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates for travel in 12 steps expected to last five months, to promote clean energy.

Solar plane landed without incident Monday night in Oman. This is the first step in a series of 12 in his round the world expected to last five months.

The only solar unit took 13 hours and two minutes to connect Abu Dhabi, capital of UAE, Muscat, capital of Oman.

Solar Impulse 2 First Landing in Muscat

André Borschberg was in control of the aircraft for the first twelve steps in the world tour that will last five months. When the cockpit door opened, the pilot was welcomed by Bertrand Piccard, wearing a traditional turban from Oman.

Bertrand Piccard must relay it to the next step, between Muscat and Ahmedabad, India, scheduled for Tuesday. After India comes Burma, before the longest leg of the journey: Five consecutive days of flight to a single driver loaded rally Nanjing, China, the US islands of Hawaii and the Pacific.

Ignition delay

The revolutionary aircraft take off at 7:12 (4:12 in Switzerland) in the capital of the UAE shortly after sunrise. A light breeze swept the tarmac while the small airport Al Bateen.

Image Above: The two Swiss pilot in orange uniform, André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, have made the last night inspections and Mr. Borschberg which is installed in the cockpit of the single-seater plane to the applause of all his team.

The takeoff of Abu Dhabi, originally scheduled for Saturday, was delayed due to strong winds that blew through the area during the weekend. On Monday, the unit is left with 42 minutes behind schedule. "An alarm was turned on due to a connector problem," said Bertrand Piccard.

Political Message

Around the World is the culmination of twelve years of research by two Swiss drivers, in addition to scientific achievement, seek to convey a political message.

Shortly after takeoff, Federal Councillor Didier Burkhalter praised the "pioneering adventure" which constitutes the travel Solar Impulse 2. It will "show the younger generation that apparently inaccessible horizons yesterday is already within our reach today," has he added, quoted in a press release of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

"We want to share our vision of a clean future," said his side Bertrand Piccard. "Climate change offers a fantastic opportunity to bring to market new green technologies" that will help "preserve the natural resources of our planet, create jobs and support growth" economy.

Bertrand Piccard will land

The plane, called SI2 (Solar Impulse 2), is powered by over 17,000 solar cells lining the wings of 72 meters, almost as long as those of an Airbus A380. But SI2, designed carbon fiber, weighs only 2.5 tons - as much as a family 4X4, less than 1% of the weight of the A380.

Image Above: The airplane Solar Impulse 2 landed without incident Monday night in Oman. The only solar unit took 13 hours and two minutes to connect Abu Dhabi, capital of UAE, Muscat, capital of Oman.

In total, the unit will travel 35,000 kilometers, at a relatively modest speed (between 50 and 100 km / h), flying over two oceans (Pacific and Atlantic). This convolution, at 8500 meters at maximum altitude, take five months, including 25 days of actual flight before returning to Abu Dhabi late July / early August. Bertrand Piccard will be at the controls of the device if all goes well.

Petition launched

Mr Piccard said the public could "follow live all that we do in the cockpit" and "in the mission control center in Monaco" on the active site "solarimpulse.com". He said a petition was launched to promote clean energy to the general public on the http://futureisclean.org site.

A total of 130 people participated in the adventure 65 will accompany the pilots around the world (as part of the logistical support) and 65 others will be in Monaco at the mission control center (meteorologists, air traffic controllers and engineers) .

Round-The-World Solar Flight - Follow it live: http://www.solarimpulse.com/city-stop-oman

For more information about Solar Impulse 2, visit: http://www.solarimpulse.com/

Images, Video, Text, Credits: SolarImpulse / Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

A vibrant veil

NASA - Hubble Space Telescope patch.

March 9, 2015

The twisted shockwaves of an exploded star

Discovered on 5 September 1784 by astronomer William Herschel, the Veil Nebula was once a star. Now it is a twisted mass of shock waves that appears six times larger than the full Moon in the sky.

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows just a small part of the nebula, a region known as the ‘south-eastern knot’. The entire nebula is about 50 light years in radius, and is located almost 1500 light years away.

Ten thousand years ago, the Veil Nebula did not exist. Back then, it was a star, much brighter and larger than our own Sun, burning furiously thanks to the nuclear furnace in its centre. As those reactions faltered when its fuel was exhausted, the star collapsed and exploded.

This is estimated to have happened some 5000–10 000 years ago. Sky watchers would have seen the star brighten enormously over the course of a day or two. It would have become brighter than a crescent moon.

Such a titanically destructive event is called a supernova. Modern measurements show that a supernova can outshine the combined light of 100 billion normal stars. Over the course of a week or so, our ancestors would have watched the fireball fade back into obscurity, only to be rediscovered millennia later by William Herschel as an expanding ball of gases in space.

During the star’s final detonation, it flung its outer layers into space at more than 600 000 km/h. What we see now is these layers colliding with the surrounding gases of interstellar space.

Hubble and the sunrise over Earth

The energy imparted in the collision heated the gas to millions of degrees, causing it to emit light. The wavelength of this light depends upon the atoms present in the excited gas. In this image, blue shows oxygen, green shows sulphur, and red shows hydrogen.

Supernova explosions are important because they seed the Universe with heavy chemicals, building all the elements heavier than iron. They are rare in our galaxy, with only one or two stars exploding over the course of a century.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA. This image was taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, and was first published in July 2007: http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic0712/

For more information and images from Hubble Space Telescope, visit: http://www.spacetelescope.org and http://hubblesite.org

Image, Video, Text, Credits: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA) - ESA/Hubble Collaboration. Acknowledgment: J. Hester (Arizona State Univ.).

Greetings, Orbiter.ch