Astronauts Wrap Up Preps for Friday Spacewalk

ISS - Expedition 50 Mission patch.

January 5, 2017

ISS - Flying over night Earth (EarthCam) from International Space Station. Animation Credit: NASA

Two Expedition 50 astronauts are in final preparations for the first of two power maintenance spacewalks that starts Friday at 7 a.m. EST. Astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson will stow and replace power gear during the first 6.5 hour spacewalk. The duo will work near the solar arrays on the starboard truss segment.

The two spacewalkers will be assisted by ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet and cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy from inside the International Space Station. Pesquet will conduct the second spacewalk Jan. 13 with Kimbrough to wrap up the battery installation work. The majority of the complex power upgrade work was done by controllers on the ground remotely using the Canadarm2 robotic arm and hand.

Image above: Astronaut Peggy Whitson works on a U.S. spacesuit inside the Quest airlock. Image Credit: NASA.

The three cosmonauts worked on an array of station maintenance tasks and advanced space experiments. Cosmonauts Andrey Borisenko and Sergey Ryzhikov researched how blood flow and respiration is affected by living in space. Novitskiy explored the station’s magnetic field and how it affects navigation.

Related article:

NASA Preps for Space Station Power Upgrade Spacewalks; Live NASA TV Coverage
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2016/12/nasa-preps-for-space-station-power.html

Related links:

Blood flow and respiration: http://www.energia.ru/en/iss/researches/human/19.html

Station’s magnetic field: http://www.energia.ru/en/iss/researches/develop/11.html

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

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

Image (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

How Far Away is That Galaxy? Vast Catalog Has Answers

NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database logo.


Jan. 5, 2017

A team of researchers has compiled a special catalog to help astronomers figure out the true distances to tens of thousands of galaxies beyond our own Milky Way.

The catalog, called NED-D, is a critical resource, not only for studying these galaxies, but also for determining the distances to billions of other galaxies strewn throughout the universe. As the catalog continues to grow, astronomers can increasingly rely on it for ever-greater precision in calculating both how big the universe is and how fast it is expanding. NED-D is part of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), an online repository containing information on more than 100 million galaxies.

Image above: This graphic shows all the cosmic light sources in the sky that are included in the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), an online repository containing information on over 100 million galaxies. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

"We're thrilled to present this catalog of distances to galaxies as a valuable resource to the astronomical community," said Ian Steer, NED team member, curator of NED-D, and lead author of a new report about the database appearing in The Astronomical Journal. "Learning a cosmic object's distance is key to understanding its properties."

Steer and colleagues presented the paper this week at the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas.

Since other galaxies are extremely far away, there's no tape measure long enough to measure their distances from us. Instead, astronomers rely on extremely bright objects, such as Type La supernovae and pulsating stars called Cepheids variables, as indicators of distance. To calculate how far away a distant galaxy is, scientists use known mathematical relationships between distance and other properties of objects, such as their total emitted energy. More objects useful for these calculations have emerged in recent years. NED-D has revealed that there are now more than six dozen different indicators used to estimate such distances.

NED-D began as a small database pulled together in 2005 by Steer. He began serving at NED the following year to build out the database, poring over the scores of astronomical studies posted online daily, identifying newly calculated distance estimates as well as fresh analyses of older data.

From its humble origins a little over a decade ago, NED-D now hosts upwards of 166,000 distance estimates for more than 77,000 galaxies, along with estimates for some ultra-distant supernovae and energetic gamma ray bursts. To date, NED-D has been cited by researchers in hundreds of studies.

Besides providing a one-stop tabulation of the ever-increasing distance estimates published in the astronomical literature, NED-D -- as well as the broader NED -- can serve as "discovery engines." By pooling tremendous amounts of searchable data, the information repositories can allow scientists to identify novel, exotic phenomena that otherwise would get lost in a deluge of observations. An example is the discovery of "super luminous" spiral galaxies by NED team members, reported last year, which were identified among nearly a million individual galaxies in the NED database.

"NED and its associated databases, including NED-D, are in the process of transforming from data look-up services to legitimate discovery engines for science," said Steer. "Using NED today, astronomers can sift through mountains of 'big data' and discover additional new and amazing perspectives on our universe."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Astrophysics Division, Washington. NED operations are conducted at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at Caltech in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

The NED archive is at: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu

The NED-D archive is found at: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/Library/Distances/

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Martin Perez/JPL/Elizabeth Landau, written by Adam Hadhazy.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Scientists Receive Preliminary Data from GOES-16's Magnetometer

NASA / NOAA - GOES-R patch.

Jan. 5, 2017

On Dec. 22, scientists received preliminary data from the outboard magnetometer (MAG) instrument aboard NOAA's GOES-16 satellite! GOES-16 was formerly known as GOES-R.

Graphic above: Credits: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

MAG observations of Earth's geomagnetic field strength are an important part of NOAA’s space weather mission, with the data used in space weather forecasting, model validation and for developing new space weather models. The GOES-16 MAG samples five times faster than previous GOES magnetometers, which increases the range of space weather phenomena that can be measured. (You can learn more about the GOES-16's magnetometer at http://www.goes-r.gov/products/baseline-geomagnetic-field.html.)

Earth’s geomagnetic field acts as a shield, protecting us from hazardous incoming solar radiation. Geomagnetic storms, caused by eruptions on the surface of the sun, can interfere with communications and navigation systems, cause damage to satellites, cause health risks to astronauts and threaten power utilities. When a solar flare occurs, GOES-16 will tell space weather forecasters where it happened on the sun and how strong it was. Using that information, forecasters can determine if the explosion of energy is coming toward Earth or not.

Image above: Artist's concept of GOES-16. Image Credits: NASA.

GOES-R, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration mission, is the first spacecraft in a new series of NASA-built advanced geostationary weather satellites. NASA successfully launched GOES-R at 6:42 p.m. EST on Nov. 19, 2016, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NOAA manages the GOES-R Series Program through an integrated NOAA-NASA office. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, oversees the acquisition of the GOES-R series spacecraft and instruments.

Learn more about space weather and our infrastructure at http://go.usa.gov/x8y34.

GOES (Geostationary Environmental Operational Satellites): http://www.nasa.gov/goes/

GOES-R: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goes-r/

Science Instruments: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/science-instruments/index.html

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Rob Gutro/Jennifer Hottle/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), By Lauren Gaches.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA Flying Observatory Makes Observations of Jupiter Previously Only Possible from Space

NASA & DLR - SOFIA patch.

Jan. 5, 2017

NASA & DLR Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP jetliner modified to carry a 100-inch diameter telescope. Image Credit: NASA.

For the first time since the twin Voyager spacecraft missions in 1979, scientists have produced far-infrared maps of Jupiter using NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA. These maps were created from the researchers’ studies of the circulation of gases within the gas giant planet’s atmosphere.

Infrared observations provide details not possible at other wavelengths. When gas planets like Jupiter are studied with visible light, they can only see the light reflecting from the top of the gas clouds that make up the atmosphere. Using infrared light allows scientists to see past the clouds and into the deep layers of the atmosphere, providing a three-dimensional view of the planet and the ability to study how gasses circulate within the atmosphere.

Leigh N. Fletcher from the University of Leicester, England, led a team of researchers that used the SOFIA telescope and data from the Faint Object infraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope, known as FORCAST, to make these observations. Fletcher’s team was looking for the two types of molecular hydrogen, called “para” and “ortho” – differentiated by whether their protons have aligned or opposite spins. The fraction of hydrogen in the “para” flavor is a good indicator for gasses upwelling from deep within the planet’s atmosphere. This interaction of gas molecules was observed at infrared wavelengths between 17 and 37 microns, a spectrum range that is largely inaccessible to ground-based telescopes.

Much of the current understanding of Jupiter’s circulation patterns are based on results from space-based missions of the past, including the Voyager mission, Galileo mission (1989–2003), and the Cassini spacecraft, which flew past Jupiter in 2000. SOFIA’s airborne location, above more than 99 percent of Earth’s infrared-blocking water vapor, combined with the powerful FORCAST instrument, provides one of the only current facilities capable of studying Jupiter’s overall atmospheric circulation. These new SOFIA observations allow comparisons of how Jupiter’s atmospheric circulation has changed over time.

Images above: Jupiter was observed with SOFIA by stepping the FORCAST spectroscopic slit across the planet. The left-hand panel shows a visible-light image of Jupiter with blue rectangles illustrating the orientation and size of the FORCAST slit. For each pointing of the telescope, the spectrum was made at every position along the slit. The two right-hand panels show SOFIA images of Jupiter made from combining the wavelengths in two of the slits. Jupiter's Great Red Spot is evident and has rotated between the different observations. The total information content is full images of Jupiter at all wavelengths between 17.9 and 32.9 microns, or equivalently, spectra at each position.
Images Credits: Visible light image: Anthony Wesley. FORCAST slitscan: NASA/SOFIA/Fletcher et al.

Images from SOFIA reveal several interesting features. The cold, red spot in the southern hemisphere indicates an upwelling of gas that is cooling the atmosphere. The belt zone structure near the equator shows that the equator is cold and surrounded by warm belts of sinking gas. The atmospheric heating from Jovian aurora in the northern reaches of the planet indicates the presence of methane and ethane in the stratosphere. SOFIA’s unique observations of the comparison between ortho and para hydrogen reveal a gradual trend from the equatorial to polar regions.

Based upon earlier observations, Fletcher’s research team assumed that Jupiter should have equilibrium everywhere in its atmosphere, but they found that at low latitudes in the tropics there is significant mixing. Aureoles may be affecting this mixing, but further observations are necessary to better understand the processes over time. The results from the Fletcher team’s observations were recently published in the journal Icarus.

“These results demonstrate that from Earth we can now capture a similar quality of spatially resolved observations as we can obtain from space missions like Voyager,” said Fletcher. “These SOFIA observations will fill the gap in the wavelength coverage of current and future space-based observatories and provide spatial and temporal context for them.”

SOFIA is a Boeing 747SP jetliner modified to carry a 100-inch diameter telescope. It is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center, DLR. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley manages the SOFIA program along with science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, and the German SOFIA Institute (DSI) at the University of Stuttgart. The aircraft is based at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center's Hangar 703, in Palmdale, California.

For More Information about SOFIA, at:

http://www.nasa.gov/sofia • http://www.dlr.de/en/sofia

Study SOFIA's science mission and scientific instruments at:

http://www.sofia.usra.edu • http://www.dsi.uni-stuttgart.de/index.en.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA Ames Research Center/Kassandra Bell/SOFIA Science Center/Nicholas A. Veronico.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Chandra finds Galactic Particle Accelerator, Black Hole Bonanza

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

Jan. 5, 2017

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Image Credits: NASA/CXC

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory are uncovering secrets of some of the most mysterious and exciting X-ray spewing objects in the universe. Here are two latest findings presented at the 229th American Astronomical Society meeting in Grapevine, Texas this week.

Astronomers Discover Powerful Cosmic Double Whammy

Image above: Abell 3411 and Abell 3412: A pair of colliding galaxies about 2 billion light years away. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/R. van Weeren et al; Optical: NAOJ/Subaru; Radio: NCRA/TIFR/GMRT.

Astronomers have discovered a cosmic one-two punch unlike any ever seen before. Two of the most powerful phenomena in the Universe, a supermassive black hole, and the collision of giant galaxy clusters, have combined to create a stupendous cosmic particle accelerator.

By combining data from Chandra, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India, the NSF's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, and other telescopes, researchers have found out what happens when matter ejected by a giant black hole is swept up in the merger of two enormous galaxy clusters.

Read more from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/17_releases/press_010517.html

Deepest X-ray Image Ever Reveals Black Hole Treasure Trove

 
Image above: Chandra Deep Field-South: The deepest X-ray image, containing objects at a distance of nearly 13 billion light years. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/B.Luo et al.

An unparalleled image from Chandra gives astronomers the best look yet at the growth of black holes over billions of years beginning soon after the Big Bang. This is the deepest X-ray image ever obtained, collected with about 7 million seconds, or eleven and a half weeks, of Chandra observing time.

The image comes from what is known as the Chandra Deep Field-South. The central region of the image contains the highest concentration of supermassive black holes ever seen, equivalent to about 5,000 objects that would fit into the area of the full Moon and about a billion over the entire sky.

Read more from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: http://chandra.si.edu/press/17_releases/press_010517cdfs.html

Read More from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory: http://chandra.harvard.edu/

For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Lee Mohon/Marshall Space Flight Center/Molly Porter/Chandra X-ray Center/Megan Watzke.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA Selects Two Missions to Explore the Early Solar System

NASA logo.

Jan. 4, 2017

NASA has selected two missions that have the potential to open new windows on one of the earliest eras in the history of our solar system – a time less than 10 million years after the birth of our sun. The missions, known as Lucy and Psyche, were chosen from five finalists and will proceed to mission formulation, with the goal of launching in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

“Lucy will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids, while Psyche will study a unique metal asteroid that’s never been visited before,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This is what Discovery Program missions are all about – boldly going to places we’ve never been to enable groundbreaking science.”

Image above: (Left) An artist’s conception of the Lucy spacecraft flying by the Trojan Eurybates – one of the six diverse and scientifically important Trojans to be studied. Trojans are fossils of planet formation and so will supply important clues to the earliest history of the solar system. (Right) Psyche, the first mission to the metal world 16 Psyche will map features, structure, composition, and magnetic field, and examine a landscape unlike anything explored before. Psyche will teach us about the hidden cores of the Earth, Mars, Mercury and Venus. Image Credits: SwRI and SSL/Peter Rubin.

Lucy, a robotic spacecraft, is scheduled to launch in October 2021. It’s slated to arrive at its first destination, a main belt asteroid, in 2025. From 2027 to 2033, Lucy will explore six Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These asteroids are trapped by Jupiter’s gravity in two swarms that share the planet’s orbit, one leading and one trailing Jupiter in its 12-year circuit around the sun. The Trojans are thought to be relics of a much earlier era in the history of the solar system, and may have formed far beyond Jupiter’s current orbit.

“This is a unique opportunity,” said Harold F. Levison, principal investigator of the Lucy mission from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “Because the Trojans are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets, they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. Lucy, like the human fossil for which it is named, will revolutionize the understanding of our origins.”

Lucy will build on the success of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, using newer versions of the RALPH and LORRI science instruments that helped enable the mission’s achievements. Several members of the Lucy mission team also are veterans of the New Horizons mission. Lucy also will build on the success of the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu, with the OTES instrument and several members of the OSIRIS-REx team.

NASA's New Discovery Missions

The Psyche mission will explore one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt – a giant metal asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, about three times farther away from the sun than is the Earth. This asteroid measures about 130 miles (210 kilometers) in diameter and, unlike most other asteroids that are rocky or icy bodies, is thought to be comprised mostly of metallic iron and nickel, similar to Earth’s core. Scientists wonder whether Psyche could be an exposed core of an early planet that could have been as large as Mars, but which lost its rocky outer layers due to a number of violent collisions billions of years ago.

The mission will help scientists understand how planets and other bodies separated into their layers – including cores, mantles and crusts – early in their histories.

“This is an opportunity to explore a new type of world – not one of rock or ice, but of metal,” said Psyche Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe. “16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the solar system, and this is the only way humans will ever visit a core. We learn about inner space by visiting outer space.”

Psyche, also a robotic mission, is targeted to launch in October of 2023, arriving at the asteroid in 2030, following an Earth gravity assist spacecraft maneuver in 2024 and a Mars flyby in 2025.

In addition to selecting the Lucy and Psyche missions for formulation, the agency will extend funding for the Near Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) project for an additional year. The NEOCam space telescope is designed to survey regions of space closest to Earth’s orbit, where potentially hazardous asteroids may be found.

“These are true missions of discovery that integrate into NASA’s larger strategy of investigating how the solar system formed and evolved,” said NASA’s Planetary Science Director Jim Green. “We’ve explored terrestrial planets, gas giants, and a range of other bodies orbiting the sun. Lucy will observe primitive remnants from farther out in the solar system, while Psyche will directly observe the interior of a planetary body. These additional pieces of the puzzle will help us understand how the sun and its family of planets formed, changed over time, and became places where life could develop and be sustained – and what the future may hold.”

Discovery Program class missions like these are relatively low-cost, their development capped at about $450 million. They are managed for NASA’s Planetary Science Division by the Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The missions are designed and led by a principal investigator, who assembles a team of scientists and engineers, to address key science questions about the solar system.

The Discovery Program portfolio includes 12 prior selections such as the MESSENGER mission to study Mercury, the Dawn mission to explore asteroids Vesta and Ceres, and the InSight Mars lander, scheduled to launch in May 2018.

NASA’s other missions to asteroids began with the NEAR orbiter of asteroid Eros, which arrived in 2000, and continues with Dawn, which orbited Vesta and now is in an extended mission phase at Ceres. The OSIRIS-REx mission, which launched on Sept. 8, 2016, is speeding toward a 2018 rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu, and will deliver a sample back to Earth in 2023. Each mission focuses on a different aspect of asteroid science to give scientists the broader picture of solar system formation and evolution.

Read more about NASA’s Discovery Program and missions at: https://discovery.nasa.gov/missions.cfml

Near Earth Object Camera (NEOCam): http://neocam.ipac.caltech.edu/

Image (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/Dwayne Brown/Laurie Cantillo/Karen Northon.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Scientists Offer Sharper Insight into Pluto’s Bladed Terrain

NASA - New Horizons Mission logo.

Jan. 4, 2017

Using a model similar to what meteorologists use to forecast weather and a computer simulation of the physics of evaporating ices, scientists have found evidence of snow and ice features on Pluto that, until now, had only been seen on Earth.

Image above: The bladed terrain of Pluto’s informally named Tartarus Dorsa region, imaged by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015. Image Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

Formed by erosion, the features, known as “penitentes,” are bowl-shaped depressions with blade-like spires around the edge that rise several hundreds of feet.

The research, led by John Moores of York University, Toronto, and done in collaboration with scientists at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, indicates that these icy features may also exist on other planets where environmental conditions are similar.

The identification of these ridges in Pluto’s informally named Tartarus Dorsa area suggests that the presence of an atmosphere is necessary for the formation of penitentes – which Moores says would explain why they have not previously been seen on other airless icy satellites or dwarf planets. “But exotic differences in the environment give rise to features with very different scales,” he adds. “This test of our terrestrial models for penitentes suggests that we may find these features elsewhere in the solar system, and in other solar systems, where the conditions are right."

The research team, which also includes York’s Christina Smith, Anthony Toigo of APL and Scott Guzewich of Goddard Space Flight Center, compared its model to ridges on Pluto imaged by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. Pluto’s ridges are much larger – more than 1,600 feet (about 500 meters) tall and separated by two to three miles (about three to five kilometers) – than their Earthly counterparts.

“This gargantuan size is predicted by the same theory that explains the formation of these features on Earth,” says Moores. “In fact, we were able to match the size and separation, the direction of the ridges, as well as their age: three pieces of evidence that support our identification of these ridges as penitentes.”

Image above: Artist's conception of the New Horizons spacecraft at Pluto. Image Credits: NASA/JHUAPL.

Moores says though Pluto's environment is very different from Earth’s -- it is much colder, the air much thinner, the sun much dimmer and the snow and ice on the surface are made from methane and nitrogen instead of water -- the same laws of nature apply.  He adds that both NASA and APL were instrumental in the collaboration that led to this new finding; both provided background information on Pluto's atmosphere using a model similar to what meteorologists use to forecast weather on Earth. This was one of the key ingredients in Moores’ own models of the penitentes, without which this discovery would not have been made.   

The findings appear this week in the journal Nature.

New Horizons: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tricia Talbert.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch