From Space to Sea to Scientists: SpaceX Return of Samples Marks Next Step in One-Year Mission Science

ISS - International Space Station patch / SpaceX - CRS-8 Dragon Mission patch.

May 23, 2016

International Space Station (ISS). Image Credits: NASA/STS-132

More than one thousand tubes of blood, urine, and saliva made their way back to Earth from the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX-8 Dragon capsule, signaling an exciting next step for the scientists leading research for the recently completed One Year Mission. NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko returned to Earth from their yearlong mission aboard the orbiting laboratory more than two months ago, but many of the samples critical to the continuation of research have only just made their way back to labs this week.

“[It’s] like Christmas in May, with frost to boot,” said Scott M. Smith, who holds a doctorate in nutrition and is a principal investigator of the Biochemical Profile investigation.

Smith was referring to the specialized cold stowage needed to safely transport temperature-sensitive samples. After being collected in space, crew members store the samples in the Minus Eighty-Degree Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI). The tubes are transferred to either powered freezers or insulated coolers with special ice packs which are then packed inside the SpaceX Dragon capsule to be returned to Earth.

Image above: Members of the Cold Stowage Lab unpack samples of blood, urine and saliva that returned aboard SpaceX-8. Samples are kept on dry ice as they are delivered to science team members. Image Credit: NASA.

“SpaceX provides our primary capability for sample return, allowing us to bring home freezer bags and powered freezers containing samples,” said chief scientist for the space station, Julie Robinson, who holds a doctorate in Biology.

After splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, the Dragon capsule was loaded onto a ship and taken to shore in Long Beach, California. Members of NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) Cold Stowage team transferred the samples to a charter aircraft, where portable, powered freezers awaited. While some investigators were on hand in California to retrieve their samples directly from the Cold Stowage team aboard the aircraft, most of the precious cargo was flown back to Houston for distribution at JSC.

“Samples coming home on Space-X include samples from a variety of human experiments,” said Robinson. “Most notably blood, urine and saliva collected from the crew for the One-Year Mission and Twins Study.”

Studies supported by the samples coming back in this batch include Biochemical Profile, Cardio Ox, Fluid Shifts, Microbiome, Salivary Markers and the Twins Study. A point of contact for each study was on hand to receive the samples from JSC’s Cold Stowage team.

“The inventory process is actually pretty intense,” said Smith.

Members of the Cold Stowage team hand samples off to researchers, who are assigned time slots for retrieving their precious cargo.

“We inventory and check every tube serial number against what we expected,” said Smith. “Once we have all of [our samples], and are sure we don’t have anything we’re not supposed to, official documents are signed, and we bag them up to carry back to the lab.”

Once back in their lab, also onsite at JSC, Smith’s team will unpack and re-inventory everything once again, to ensure nothing was lost in the dry ice or during the return to the Nutritional Biochemistry Lab. From there, the samples will be packed in laboratory minus eighty-degree freezers until further preparation for analysis.

Image above: Scott M. Smith and members of the Nutritional Biochemistry Laboratory inventory samples returned on SpaceX-8. Image Credit: NASA.

Stuart Lee, who holds a doctorate in Kinesiology, and is the principal investigator for the Cardio Ox and Cardio Ox Twins investigations, said many of the samples will be shared between his and Smith’s biochemical profiles investigation. Lee said that seven subjects have completed their mission for cardio ox, but samples for only three of those have been previously returned to Earth.

“Given that, we will more than double the amount of data that we have for Cardio Ox with this sample return,” said Lee. “Of course, we also get the excitement of starting to receive the data from the One-Year Mission.”

Lee said that up until now, scientists’ data have described the effects of spaceflight from the typical six-month missions to the space station, but data from the One-Year Mission samples will change that.

“This will be NASA’s first glimpse at the effects of space travel which start to approach that which we might expect from a Mars mission,” said Lee. “These data may provide clues as to whether we can expect more, or more extreme, changes as mission duration increases.”

Samples for the Twins Study, in which Kelly and his identical twin brother, retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, participated, also returned on SpaceX-8. The blood and urine components of those studies offer new molecular analyses for investigators.

Image above: The SpaceX Dragon splashed down at 11:51 a.m. PT in the Pacific Ocean on May 11, returning 1,300 pounds of science. Image Credit: SpaceX.

“With these samples,” said Lee. “we will have pilot data to understand spaceflight effects on and linkages between genetic expression, protein expression, and physiology, improving our understanding of the cardiovascular system in space as well as astronauts’ ophthalmologic issues.”

This batch of samples includes the final collection returning from space for the One-Year Mission investigations. While some of the investigations include several data collections in the year – or longer – beyond the crew’s return to Earth, analysis of the returning samples can begin, in most cases, when they reach the scientists’ laboratories. The Twins Study investigators have agreed to wait until after the return plus six-month data collection completes in September 2016, Smith said.

Smith said organization, tracking and careful planning is critical to successful analysis. Thought has to be given to samples that can only be thawed one time, and samples that need to be run at the same time as those collected before and after flight, to reduce variability.

“We analyze over 100 chemicals in each blood sample, and over 30 in each urine sample,” said Smith. “We try to have samples available for the folks analyzing them as quickly as possible. Nonetheless, depending on the type of test, and number of samples – it can take quite a bit of time.”

With samples being delivered to investigators across the country, Smith remains optimistic that the bulk of testing on these samples will be completed by the end of the year.

“[The research is] very carefully plotted out and planned, reviewed, documented and then executed,” said Smith. “We only get one shot at this.”

Related links:

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/overview.html

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

One-Year Crew: https://www.nasa.gov/content/one-year-crew/index.html

Minus Eighty-Degree Laboratory Freezer for ISS (MELFI): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/58.html

Biochemical Profile: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1008.html

Cardio Ox: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/heart_health_cardio_ox

Fluid Shifts: http://www.nasa.gov/content/fluid-shifts-study-advances-journey-to-mars

Microbiome: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1010.html

Salivary Markers: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1009.html

Twins Study: https://www.nasa.gov/twins-study

Commercial Resupply: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/index.html

One-Year Crew: https://www.nasa.gov/content/one-year-crew/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA’s Johnson Space Center/Kristine Rainey/International Space Station Program Science Office/Rachel Hobson.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA: Solar Storms May Have Been Key to Life on Earth

NASA - Kepler Space Telescope logo.

May 23, 2016

Our sun's adolescence was stormy—and new evidence shows that these tempests may have been just the key to seeding life as we know it.

Some 4 billion years ago, the sun shone with only about three-quarters the brightness we see today, but its surface roiled with giant eruptions spewing enormous amounts of solar material and radiation out into space. These powerful solar explosions may have provided the crucial energy needed to warm Earth, despite the sun's faintness. The eruptions also may have furnished the energy needed to turn simple molecules into the complex molecules such as RNA and DNA that were necessary for life. The research was published in Nature Geoscience on May 23, 2016, by a team of scientists from NASA.

The Faint Young Star Paradox: Solar Storms May Have Been Key to Life on Earth

Video above: Watch this movie to see how energy from our young sun – 4 billion years ago -- aided in creating molecules in Earth's atmosphere that allowed it to warm up enough to incubate life. Video Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Genna Duberstein.

Understanding what conditions were necessary for life on our planet helps us both trace the origins of life on Earth and guide the search for life on other planets. Until now, however, fully mapping Earth's evolution has been hindered by the simple fact that the young sun wasn't luminous enough to warm Earth.

"Back then, Earth received only about 70 percent of the energy from the sun than it does today," said Vladimir Airapetian, lead author of the paper and a solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "That means Earth should have been an icy ball. Instead, geological evidence says it was a warm globe with liquid water. We call this the Faint Young Sun Paradox. Our new research shows that solar storms could have been central to warming Earth."

Scientists are able to piece together the history of the sun by searching for similar stars in our galaxy. By placing these sun-like stars in order according to their age, the stars appear as a functional timeline of how our own sun evolved. It is from this kind of data that scientists know the sun was fainter 4 billion years ago. Such studies also show that young stars frequently produce powerful flares – giant bursts of light and radiation -- similar to the flares we see on our own sun today. Such flares are often accompanied by huge clouds of solar material, called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, which erupt out into space.

NASA's Kepler mission found stars that resemble our sun about a few million years after its birth. The Kepler data showed many examples of what are called "superflares" – enormous explosions so rare today that we only experience them once every 100 years or so. Yet the Kepler data also show these youngsters producing as many as ten superflares a day.

Solar superflares

While our sun still produces flares and CMEs, they are not so frequent or intense. What's more, Earth today has a strong magnetic field that helps keep the bulk of the energy from such space weather from reaching Earth. Space weather can, however, significantly disturb a magnetic bubble around our planet, the magnetosphere, a phenomenon referred to as geomagnetic storms that can affect radio communications and our satellites in space. It also creates auroras – most often in a narrow region near the poles where Earth's magnetic fields bow down to touch the planet.

Our young Earth, however, had a weaker magnetic field, with a much wider footprint near the poles.

"Our calculations show that you would have regularly seen auroras all the way down in South Carolina," says Airapetian. "And as the particles from the space weather traveled down the magnetic field lines, they would have slammed into abundant nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere. Changing the atmosphere's chemistry turns out to have made all the difference for life on Earth."

The atmosphere of early Earth was also different than it is now: Molecular nitrogen – that is, two nitrogen atoms bound together into a molecule – made up 90 percent of the atmosphere, compared to only 78 percent today. As energetic particles slammed into these nitrogen molecules, the impact broke them up into individual nitrogen atoms. They, in turn, collided with carbon dioxide, separating those molecules into carbon monoxide and oxygen.

The free-floating nitrogen and oxygen combined into nitrous oxide, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. When it comes to warming the atmosphere, nitrous oxide is some 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. The teams’ calculations show that if the early atmosphere housed less than one percent as much nitrous oxide as it did carbon dioxide, it would warm the planet enough for liquid water to exist.

This newly discovered constant influx of solar particles to early Earth may have done more than just warm the atmosphere, it may also have provided the energy needed to make complex chemicals. In a planet scattered evenly with simple molecules, it takes a huge amount of incoming energy to create the complex molecules such as RNA and DNA that eventually seeded life.

Kepler Space Telescope

While enough energy appears to be hugely important for a growing planet, too much would also be an issue -- a constant chain of solar eruptions producing showers of particle radiation can be quite detrimental. Such an onslaught of magnetic clouds can rip off a planet's atmosphere if the magnetosphere is too weak. Understanding these kinds of balances help scientists determine what kinds of stars and what kinds of planets could be hospitable for life.

"We want to gather all this information together, how close a planet is to the star, how energetic the star is, how strong the planet's magnetosphere is in order to help search for habitable planets around stars near our own and throughout the galaxy," said William Danchi, principal investigator of the project at Goddard and a co-author on the paper. "This work includes scientists from many fields -- those who study the sun, the stars, the planets, chemistry and biology. Working together we can create a robust description of what the early days of our home planet looked like – and where life might exist elsewhere."

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Images, Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Karen C. Fox/Rob Garner.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Saturn - Up and Over

NASA - Cassini International logo.

May 23, 2016

Cassini orbited in Saturn's ring plane -- around the planet's equator -- for most of 2015. This enabled a season of flybys of the planet's icy moons, but did not allow for angled views of the rings and the planet's poles, like this one. But in early 2016, the spacecraft began to increase its orbital inclination, climbing higher over the poles in preparation for the mission's final spectacular orbits in 2017.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 16 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 26 2016 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.7 million miles (2.8 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 103 miles (165 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org and ESA's website: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens

Image, Text, Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Tony Greicius.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

SolarImpulse - Bertrand Piccard will takeoff to Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania on May 24th at 10:00 AM UTC

SolarImpulse - Around The World patch.

May 23, 2016

Si2 will takeoff for the fifth leg of the crossing of the United States with Si2 from Dayton International Airport to Lehigh Valley International Airport on May 24th at 10:00AM UTC, 12:00PM CET, 6:00AM EDT.

Solar Impulse 2 (Si2)

We are ready to continue the adventure after our two-day stay in Dayton, Ohio, the home of the famous Wright Brothers. The flight is expected to last 17 hours in order to reach Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. The next step will be to reach New York City!

For more information about SolarImpulse Around The World, visit: http://blog.solarimpulse.com/

Image, Text, Credit: SolarImpulse.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Are mystery Mars plumes caused by space weather?

ESA - Mars Express Mission patch.

23 May 2016

Mysterious high-rise clouds seen appearing suddenly in the martian atmosphere on a handful of occasions may be linked to space weather, say Mars Express scientists.

Amateur astronomers using telescopes on Earth were the first to report an unusual cloud-like plume in 2012 that topped-out high above the surface of Mars at an altitude around 250 km. The feature developed in less than 10 hours, covered an area of up to 1000 x 500 km, and remained visible for around 10 days.

The extreme altitude poses something of a problem in explaining the features: it is far higher than where typical clouds of frozen carbon dioxide and water are thought to be able to form in the atmosphere.

Mars mystery plume

Indeed, the high altitude corresponds to the ionosphere, where the atmosphere directly interacts with the incoming solar wind of electrically charged atomic particles.

Speculation as to their cause has included exceptional atmospheric circumstances, auroral emissions, associations with local crustal anomalies, or a meteor impact, but so far it has not been possible to identify the root cause.

Unfortunately, the spacecraft orbiting Mars were not in the right position to see the 2012 plume visually, but scientists have now looked into plasma and solar wind measurements collected by Mars Express at the time.

They have found evidence for a large ‘coronal mass ejection’, or CME, from the Sun striking the martian atmosphere in the right place and at around the right time.

“Our plasma observations tell us that there was a space weather event large enough to impact Mars and increase the escape of plasma from the planet’s atmosphere,” says David Andrews of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, and lead author of the paper reporting the Mars Express results.

“But we were not able to see any signatures in the ionosphere that we can categorically say were due to the presence of this plume.

Mystery plume on Mars

“One problem is that the plume was seen at the day–night boundary, over a region of known strong crustal magnetic fields where we know the ionosphere is generally very disturbed, so searching for ‘extra’ signatures is rather challenging.”

To go further, the scientists have looked at the chances of these two relatively rare events – a large and fast CME colliding with Mars, and the mysterious plume – occurring at the same time.

They have been searching back through the archives for similar events, but they are rare.

For example, the Hubble Space Telescope observed a similar high plume in May 1997, and a CME was registered hitting Earth at the same time.

Although that CME was widely studied, there is no information from Mars orbiters to judge the scale of its impact at the Red Planet.

Similarly, CMEs have been detected at Mars without any associated plume being reported, although changes in distance and visibility of Mars from Earth makes it difficult to acquire good ground-based images at all times.

“The jury is still out as to what physics is at play here, but given the altitude of the plume, we think that plasma interactions must be important,” says David.

“One idea is that a fast-travelling CME causes a significant perturbation in the ionosphere resulting in dust and ice grains residing at high altitudes in the upper atmosphere being pushed around by the ionospheric plasma and magnetic fields, and then lofted to even higher altitudes by electrical charging.

“This could lead to a plume effect that is significant enough to be detected from Earth by astronomers.”

“A number of processes could be responsible, but if these plumes are indeed driven by space-weather disturbances, this adds an important angle to our understanding of how Mars may have lost much of its atmosphere in the past, changing from a warm, wet world and becoming the cold, dry, dusty place it is today,” says Dmitri Titov, Mars Express project scientist.

Mars Express

“The plume also emphasises the scientific potential for continuous monitoring of Mars by both orbiters and ground-based observatories. In particular, we are now going to use the webcam on Mars Express for more frequent coverage of the planet.”

Notes for Editors:

“Plasma observations during the Mars atmospheric “plume” event of March–April 2012”, by D. Andrews et al has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research: http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.05906

The measurements were conducted by the Mars Express Analyzer for 
Space Plasmas and Energetic Atoms (ASPERA-3) plasma instrument suite and the Mars Advanced Radar for Sub-Surface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS).

Related links:

Looking at Mars: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express

More about...

Mars Express overview: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Mars_Express_overview

Mars Express 10 year brochure: http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/publications/BR-312/

Images, Text, Credits: ESA/visual images: D. Parker (large Mars image and bottom inset) & W. Jaeschke (top inset). All other graphics courtesy D. Andrews/W. Jaeschke.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

India’s Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), Successfully Flight Tested

ISRO - Indian Space Research Organisation logo.


May 23, 2016

RLV-TD lifted off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre

Today, May 23, 2016 ISRO successfully flight tested India’s first winged body aerospace vehicle operating in hypersonic flight regime.  

In this experimental mission, the HS9 solid rocket booster carrying RLV-TD lifted off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota at 07:00hr IST.  After a successful flight of 91.1second, HS9 burn out occurred, following which both HS9 and RLV-TD mounted on its top coasted to a height of about 56 km. At that height, RLV-TD separated from HS9 booster and further ascended to a height of about 65km.

RLV-TD lift off

Video above: India's first-ever indigenous space shuttle RLV-TD launched successfully. Video Credit: NDTV.

From that peak altitude of 65 km, RLV-TD began its descent followed by atmospheric re-entry at around Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound). The vehicle’s Navigation, Guidance and Control system accurately steered the vehicle during this phase for safe descent. After successfully surviving a high temperatures of re-entry with the help of its Thermal Protection System (TPS), RLV-TD successfully glided down to the defined landing spot over Bay of Bengal, at a distance of about 450km from Sriharikota, thereby fulfilling its mission objectives. The vehicle was successfully tracked during its flight from ground stations at Sriharikota and a shipborne terminal. Total flight duration from launch to landing of this mission of the delta winged RLV-TD, lasted for about 770seconds.

RLV-TD ready for launch

In this flight, critical technologies such as autonomous navigation, guidance & control, reusable thermal protection system and re-entry mission management have been successfully validated.

RLV-TD carried to the launch-pad

ISRO acknowledge the support of Indian coast guard and National Institute of Ocean technology (NIOT) for the mid sea wind measurement and shipborne telemetry respectively in this mission.

For more inform<tion about Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), visit: http://www.isro.gov.in/

Images, Video (mentioned), Text, Credit: ISRO.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

SolarImpulse - André Borschberg landed in Dayton, Ohio!

SolarImpulse - Around The World patch.

May 22, 2016

André Borschberg has reached the city where aviation was pushed to its limits

André Borschberg landed in the birthplace of the Wright Brothers, Dayton, Ohio at 1:56 AM UTC, 3:56 AM CET on May 22nd and 9:56 PM EDT on May 21st. After spending a week in Tulsa, Oklahoma, our engineers found a clear path that will lead Si2 to New York, our goal before attempting the Atlantic Crossing.

Dayton, Ohio not only brings us a step closer to attempting the Atlantic Crossing but also marks the birthplace of an aviation revolution: the success of the first flight with a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft.

This flight marks the completion of the fourth Solar Impulse mission flight this year. Despite tricky weather conditions over the United States, our mission engineers at the Mission Control Center in Monaco and the Air Traffic Control in the United States have made it possible for us to push forward in order to attempt the completion of the round-the-world solar flights.

André Borschberg completed this 16 hour and 34 minute flight, arriving with a strong tailwind that brought him to Dayton International Airport a little earlier than expected. He crossed a total distance of 1113 kilometers, flying over Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, until finally arriving in Ohio.

This was definitely a special day to fly. 89 years ago to this date, Charles Lindbergh landed in Le Bourget, Paris after being the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean, pushing the limits of aviation. Our landing in Dayton is symbolic as well since it’s home to the Wright Brothers, the birthplace of their ideas and aircraft development.

While André was flying Si2 to Ohio, Bertrand Piccard boosted ahead to Dayton International Airport with the Solar Impulse team to make sure they were prepared for another historic landing.

For more information about SolarImpulse Around The World, visit: http://blog.solarimpulse.com/

Images, Text, Credit: SolarImpulse.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch