SOFIA Confirms Nearby Planetary System is Similar to Our Own

NASA & DLR - SOFIA patch / NASA - Spitzer Space Telescope patch.

May 2, 2017

NASA’s flying observatory, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA, recently completed a detailed study of a nearby planetary system. The investigations confirmed that this nearby planetary system has an architecture remarkably similar to that of our solar system.

Image above: NASA & DLR flying observatory, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, SOFIA. Image Credit: NASA.

Located 10.5 light-years away in the southern hemisphere of the constellation Eridanus, the star Epsilon Eridani, eps Eri for short, is the closest planetary system around a star similar to the early sun. It is a prime location to research how planets form around stars like our sun, and is also the storied location of the Babylon 5 space station in the science fictional television series of the same name.

Previous studies indicate that eps Eri has a debris disk, which is the name astronomers give to leftover material still orbiting a star after planetary construction has completed. The debris can take the form of gas and dust, as well as small rocky and icy bodies. Debris disks can be broad, continuous disks or concentrated into belts of debris, similar to our solar system’s asteroid belt and the Kuiper Belt – the region beyond Neptune where hundreds of thousands of icy-rocky objects reside. Furthermore, careful measurements of the motion of eps Eri indicates that a planet with nearly the same mass as Jupiter circles the star at a distance comparable to Jupiter’s distance from the Sun.

Image above: Artist's illustration of the Epsilon Eridani system showing Epsilon Eridani b. In the right foreground, a Jupiter-mass planet is shown orbiting its parent star at the outside edge of an asteroid belt. In the background can be seen another narrow asteroid or comet belt plus an outermost belt similar in size to our solar system's Kuiper Belt. The similarity of the structure of the Epsilon Eridani system to our solar system is remarkable, although Epsilon Eridani is much younger than our sun. SOFIA observations confirmed the existence of the asteroid belt adjacent to the orbit of the Jovian planet. Image Credits: NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook.

With the new SOFIA images, Kate Su of the University of Arizona and her research team were able to distinguish between two theoretical models of the location of warm debris, such as dust and gas, in the eps Eri system. These models were based on prior data obtained with NASA’s Spitzer space telescope.

One model indicates that warm material is in two narrow rings of debris, which would correspond respectively to the positions of the asteroid belt and the orbit of Uranus in our solar system. Using this model, theorists indicate that the largest planet in a planetary system might normally be associated with an adjacent debris belt.

Spitzer Space Telescope. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The other model attributes the warm material to dust originating in the outer Kuiper-Belt-like zone and filling in a disk of debris toward the central star. In this model, the warm material is in a broad disk, and is not concentrated into asteroid belt-like rings nor is it associated with any planets in the inner region.

Using SOFIA, Su and her team ascertained that the warm material around eps Eri is in fact arranged like the first model suggests; it is in at least one narrow belt rather than in a broad continuous disk.

These observations were possible because SOFIA has a larger telescope diameter than Spitzer, 100 inches (2.5 meters) in diameter compared to Spitzer’s 33.5 inches (0.85 meters), which allowed the team onboard SOFIA to discern details that are three times smaller than what could be seen with Spitzer. Additionally, SOFIA’s powerful mid-infrared camera called FORCAST, the Faint Object infraRed CAmera for the SOFIA Telescope, allowed the team to study the strongest infrared emission from the warm material around eps Eri, at wavelengths between 25-40 microns, which are undetectable by ground-based observatories.

Image above: Illustration based on Spitzer observations of the inner and outer parts of the Epsilon Eridani system compared with the corresponding components of our solar system. Image Credits: NASA/JPL/Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC).

“The high spatial resolution of SOFIA combined with the unique wavelength coverage and impressive dynamic range of the FORCAST camera allowed us to resolve the warm emission around eps Eri, confirming the model that located the warm material near the Jovian planet’s orbit,” said Su. “Furthermore, a planetary mass object is needed to stop the sheet of dust from the outer zone, similar to Neptune’s role in our solar system. It really is impressive how eps Eri, a much younger version of our solar system, is put together like ours.”

This study was published in the Astronomical Journal on April 25, 2017.

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, 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’s Armstrong Flight Research Center's Hangar 703, in Palmdale, California.

Related links:

Astronomical Journal: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/aa696b/meta

NASA’s Spitzer space telescope: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/main/index.html

For more information about SOFIA, visit:

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/Nick Veronico/Kassandra Bell.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Scientists Find Giant Wave Rolling Through the Perseus Galaxy Cluster

NASA - Chandra X-ray Observatory patch.

May 2, 2017

Combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with radio observations and computer simulations, an international team of scientists has discovered a vast wave of hot gas in the nearby Perseus galaxy cluster. Spanning some 200,000 light-years, the wave is about twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.

The researchers say the wave formed billions of years ago, after a small galaxy cluster grazed Perseus and caused its vast supply of gas to slosh around an enormous volume of space.

"Perseus is one of the most massive nearby clusters and the brightest one in X-rays, so Chandra data provide us with unparalleled detail," said lead scientist Stephen Walker at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The wave we've identified is associated with the flyby of a smaller cluster, which shows that the merger activity that produced these giant structures is still ongoing."

X-ray 'Tsunami' Found in Perseus Galaxy Cluster

Video above: A wave spanning 200,000 light-years is rolling through the Perseus galaxy cluster, according to observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory coupled with a computer simulation. The simulation shows the gravitational disturbance resulting from the distant flyby of a galaxy cluster about a tenth the mass of the Perseus cluster. The event causes cooler gas at the heart of the Perseus cluster to form a vast expanding spiral, which ultimately forms giant waves lasting hundreds of millions of years at its periphery. Merger events like this are thought to occur as often as every three to four billion years in clusters like Perseus. Video Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

A paper describing the findings appears in the June 2017 issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is available online:
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/468/2/2506/3072192/Is-there-a-giant-Kelvin-Helmholtz-instability-in

Galaxy clusters are the largest structures bound by gravity in the universe today. Some 11 million light-years across and located about 240 million light-years away, the Perseus galaxy cluster is named for its host constellation. Like all galaxy clusters, most of its observable matter takes the form of a pervasive gas averaging tens of millions of degrees, so hot it only glows in X-rays.

Chandra observations have revealed a variety of structures in this gas, from vast bubbles blown by the supermassive black hole in the cluster's central galaxy, NGC 1275, to an enigmatic concave feature known as the "bay."

Image above: This X-ray image of the hot gas in the Perseus galaxy cluster was made from 16 days of Chandra observations. Researchers then filtered the data in a way that brightened the contrast of edges in order to make subtle details more obvious. An oval highlights the location of an enormous wave found to be rolling through the gas. Image Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Stephen Walker et al.

The bay's concave shape couldn't have formed through bubbles launched by the black hole. Radio observations using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in central New Mexico show that the bay structure produces no emission, the opposite of what scientists would expect for features associated with black hole activity. In addition, standard models of sloshing gas typically produced structures that arc in the wrong direction.

Walker and his colleagues turned to existing Chandra observations of the Perseus cluster to further investigate the bay. They combined a total of 10.4 days of high-resolution data with 5.8 days of wide-field observations at energies between 700 and 7,000 electron volts. For comparison, visible light has energies between about two and three electron volts. The scientists then filtered the Chandra data to highlight the edges of structures and reveal subtle details.

Next, they compared the edge-enhanced Perseus image to computer simulations of merging galaxy clusters developed by John ZuHone, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The simulations were run on the Pleiades supercomputer operated by the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division at Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. Although he was not involved in this study, ZuHone collected his simulations into an online catalog to aid astronomers studying galaxy clusters.

"Galaxy cluster mergers represent the latest stage of structure formation in the cosmos," ZuHone said. "Hydrodynamic simulations of merging clusters allow us to produce features in the hot gas and tune physical parameters, such as the magnetic field. Then we can attempt to match the detailed characteristics of the structures we observe in X-rays."

One simulation seemed to explain the formation of the bay. In it, gas in a large cluster similar to Perseus has settled into two components, a "cold" central region with temperatures around 54 million degrees Fahrenheit (30 million Celsius) and a surrounding zone where the gas is three times hotter. Then a small galaxy cluster containing about a thousand times the mass of the Milky Way skirts the larger cluster, missing its center by around 650,000 light-years.

Animation above: This animation dissolves between two different views of hot gas in the Perseus galaxy cluster. The first is Chandra's best view of hot gas in the central region of the Perseus cluster, where red, green and blue indicate lower-energy to higher-energy X-rays, respectively. The larger image incorporates additional data over a wider field of view. It has been specially processed to enhance the contrast of edges, revealing subtle structures in the gas. The wave is marked by the upward-arcing curve near the bottom, centered at about 7 o'clock. Animation Credits: NASA/CXC/SAO/E.Bulbul, et al. and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Stephen Walker et al.

The flyby creates a gravitational disturbance that churns up the gas like cream stirred into coffee, creating an expanding spiral of cold gas. After about 2.5 billion years, when the gas has risen nearly 500,000 light-years from the center, vast waves form and roll at its periphery for hundreds of millions of years before dissipating.

These waves are giant versions of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves, which show up wherever there's a velocity difference across the interface of two fluids, such as wind blowing over water. They can be found in the ocean, in cloud formations on Earth and other planets, in plasma near Earth, and even on the sun.

"We think the bay feature we see in Perseus is part of a Kelvin-Helmholtz wave, perhaps the largest one yet identified, that formed in much the same way as the simulation shows," Walker said. "We have also identified similar features in two other galaxy clusters, Centaurus and Abell 1795."

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

The researchers also found that the size of the waves corresponds to the strength of the cluster's magnetic field. If it's too weak, the waves reach much larger sizes than those observed. If too strong, they don't form at all. This study allowed astronomers to probe the average magnetic field throughout the entire volume of these clusters, a measurement that is impossible to make by any other means. 

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.

Related links:

ZuHone Catalog: http://gcmc.hub.yt./

Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array: http://www.vla.nrao.edu/

Pleiades supercomputer: https://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/resources/pleiades.html

NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division: https://www.nas.nasa.gov/index.html

For more information about Chandra, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/chandra

Images (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, by Francis Reddy/Rob Garner.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Satellites track Antarctic ice loss over decades

ESA - Sentinel-1 Mission logo / ESA - ENVISAT Mission logo.

2 May 2017

Over two decades of observations by five radar satellites show the acceleration of ice loss of 30 glaciers in Western Palmer Land in the southwest Antarctic Peninsula.

The study in Geophysical Research Letters combines over 24 years of radar data from satellites including ESA’s Envisat and ERS missions, as well as from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission.

Western Palmer Land ice loss

Radar is particularly suited for monitoring polar regions that are prone to bad weather and long periods of darkness because it can collect information regardless of cloud cover, day or night.

Mapping 30 glaciers in the region, the research team found that between 1992 and 2016, most of the glaciers sped up by 20 and 30 cm per day. This is equivalent to an average 13% increase in flow speed across the area as a whole.

The team also combined their satellite observations with an ice-flow model to fill in gaps where no satellite data were available. This allowed the scientists to estimate that the glaciers’ speed increase has led to the discharge of 15 cubic km of ice per year into the surrounding ocean.

The findings differ from an earlier study that estimated the region was losing three times this amount of ice than the findings published today.

Ice speed

“This new research – which is the first to map the actual change in ice speed – deviates from the previous interpretation, because the glacier speedup is in fact far too small,” said Anna Hogg, lead author and researcher at the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling.

The greatest acceleration in flow was observed at glaciers that were grounded at depths more than 300 m below the ocean surface.

“We looked at water temperatures in front of the glaciers which have sped up the most, and we found that they flow through deep bedrock channels into the warmest layer of the ocean,” explained Dr Hogg.

Flying over ice

“This circumpolar deep water, which is relatively warm and salty compared to other parts of the Southern Ocean, has warmed and shoaled in recent decades, and can melt ice at the base of glaciers which reduces friction and allows them to flow more freely.”

With much of Western Palmer Land’s ice mass lying well below sea level it is important to monitor how remote areas such as this are responding to further warming in the region due to climate change.

The two-satellite Sentinel-1 mission for Europe’s Copernicus programme routinely monitors polar areas at a high resolution, continuing the long-term data record from European satellites.

Related links:

The study in Geophysical Research Letters: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016GL072110

Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling: http://www.cpom.org/index.html

Support to Science Element: http://due.esrin.esa.int/stse/

ESA's Climate Change Initiative (CCI): http://cci.esa.int/

Related missions:

Sentinel-1: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1

Envisat: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Envisat

ERS: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/ERS_overview

Images, Video, Text, Credits: ESA/Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2014-16), processed by J. Wuite, ENVEO/A. Hogg/CPOM/S. Cornford, CPOM/Univ. Swansea.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Cassini Finds 'The Big Empty' Close to Saturn

NASA - Cassini Mission to Saturn patch.

May 2, 2017

As Cassini spacecraft prepares to shoot the narrow gap between Saturn and its rings for the second time in its Grand Finale, Cassini engineers are delighted, while ring scientists are puzzled, that the region appears to be relatively dust-free. This assessment is based on data Cassini collected during its first dive through the region on April 26.

Animation above: NASA's Cassini spacecraft is shown diving through the gap between Saturn and its rings in this artist's depiction. Animation Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

With this information in hand, the Cassini team will now move forward with its preferred plan of science observations.

"The region between the rings and Saturn is 'the big empty,' apparently," said Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "Cassini will stay the course, while the scientists work on the mystery of why the dust level is much lower than expected."

A dustier environment in the gap might have meant the spacecraft's saucer-shaped main antenna would be needed as a shield during most future dives through the ring plane. This would have forced changes to how and when Cassini's instruments would be able to make observations. Fortunately, it appears that the "plan B" option is no longer needed. (There are 21 dives remaining. Four of them pass through the innermost fringes of Saturn's rings, necessitating that the antenna be used as a shield on those orbits.)

Image above: The sounds and spectrograms in these two videos represent data collected by the Radio and Plasma Wave Science, or RPWS, instrument on NASA's Cassini spacecraft, as it crossed the plane of Saturn's rings on two separate orbits. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Iowa.

Based on images from Cassini, models of the ring particle environment in the approximately 1,200-mile-wide (2,000-kilometer-wide) region between Saturn and its rings suggested the area would not have large particles that would pose a danger to the spacecraft.

But because no spacecraft had ever passed through the region before, Cassini engineers oriented the spacecraft so that its 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide) antenna pointed in the direction of oncoming ring particles, shielding its delicate instruments as a protective measure during its April 26 dive.

Image above: Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize waits for Cassini's signal with the spacecraft's operations team in mission control at JPL on April 26, 2017. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument was one of two science instruments with sensors that poke out from the protective shield of the antenna (the other being Cassini's magnetometer). RPWS detected the hits of hundreds of ring particles per second when it crossed the ring plane just outside of Saturn's main rings, but only detected a few pings on April 26.

When RPWS data are converted to an audio format, dust particles hitting the instrument's antennas sound like pops and cracks, covering up the usual whistles and squeaks of waves in the charged particle environment that the instrument is designed to detect. The RPWS team expected to hear a lot of pops and cracks on crossing the ring plane inside the gap, but instead, the whistles and squeaks came through surprisingly clearly on April 26.

Cassini Crossing Saturn's Planet-Ring Gap (April 26, 2017)

"It was a bit disorienting -- we weren't hearing what we expected to hear," said William Kurth, RPWS team lead at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. "I've listened to our data from the first dive several times and I can probably count on my hands the number of dust particle impacts I hear."

Cassini Crossing a Faint Saturn Ring (Dec. 18, 2016)

The team's analysis suggests Cassini only encountered a few particles as it crossed the gap -- none larger than those in smoke (about 1 micron across).

Cassini will next cross through the ring plane Tuesday, May 2, at 12:38 p.m. PDT (3:38 p.m. EDT) in a region very close to where it passed on the previous dive. During this orbit, in advance of the crossing, Cassini's cameras have been looking closely at the rings; in addition, the spacecraft has rotated (or "rolled") faster than engineers have ever allowed it to before, in order to calibrate the magnetometer. As with the first finale dive, Cassini will be out of contact during closest approach to Saturn, and is scheduled to transmit data from this dive on May 3.

More information about Cassini's Grand Finale, including images and video, is available at:
https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/grandfinale

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter.

Related link & article:

Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS): https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/radio-and-plasma-wave-science

Cassini Spacecraft Dives Between Saturn and Its Rings
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2017/04/cassini-spacecraft-dives-between-saturn.html

More information about Cassini:

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens

Images (mentioned), Animation (mentioned), Videos, Text, Credits: NASA/JPL/Written by Jia-Rui Cook and Preston Dyches.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

SpaceX successfully launches NROL-76 US military satellite

SpaceX - Falcon 9 / NROL-76 Mission patch.

May 1, 2017

SpaceX NROL-76: Falcon 9 launch

SpaceX succeeded in its second attempt to launch NROL-76, a classified payload and its first big contract for the U.S. military via the National Reconnaissance Organization (the NRO). While SpaceX couldn’t reveal what the rocket was taking to orbit, it still broadcast the rocket lift off from is LC-39A facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX NROL-76: Falcon 9 launch & landing, 1 May 2017

The rocket lifted off from LC-39A at 7:15 AM EDT as planned, ascending quickly to its target orbit. The first stage separated as planned, and set off to return to Earth via a planned controlled landing at LZ-1, SpaceX’s landing pad at Cape Canaveral.

The first launch attempt on Sunday, April 30 was scrubbed due to a sensor issue with just 52 seconds left to go before liftoff. The launch today was a close call, due to high altitude wind velocity, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk notes that it was actually very, very near to being called off given maximum loads on the Falcon 9 spacecraft.

NROL-76 Satellite / Falcon 9 Mission patch

After the first stage of the rocket separated from the NROL-76 payload and Falcon 9 second stage, it returned to Earth as planned and was recovered by SpaceX via a controlled landing at their LZ-1 landing location at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

For more information about SpaceX, Visit: http://www.spacex.com/

Image, Animation, Video, Text, Credits: SpaceX/SciNews/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Weekly Recap From the Expedition Lead Scientist, week of April 24, 2017

ISS - Expedition 51 Mission patch.

May 1, 2017

(Highlights: Week of April 24, 2017) - A week of science on the International Space Station started with a historic moment as NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson set a new American record for cumulative days in space, passing fellow astronaut Jeff Williams. She then continued work on an investigation into cosmic radiation on the orbiting laboratory.

Image above: NASA astronauts Peggy Wilson, in blue, Jack Fischer move a new payload on to the NanoRacks External Platform to prepare for deployment via an airlock in the Japanese Experiment Module on the International Space Station. Image Credit: NASA.

Whitson recovered radiation detectors from around the interior of the station in support of the Radi-N2 Neutron Field Study (Radi-N2) investigation. The Canadian Space Agency's bubble spectrometers, placed in predetermined locations throughout the station, measure neutron radiation levels while ignoring all other radiation. This investigation characterizes the station neutron environment, defining the risk posed to crew members’ health, and provides the data necessary to develop advanced protective measures for future spaceflight. Because neutrons carry no electrical charge, they have greater potential to penetrate the body and damage tissue. Radi-N2 could help doctors better understand the connections between neutron radiation, DNA damage and mutation rates and can be applied to other radiation health issues on Earth.

Another investigation may help scientists find ways to safeguard crew health by understanding how long-duration spaceflight alters astronaut DNA or weakens the immune system. Studies show that, over time, over time, telomeres -- the protective caps on chromosomes -- shorten as a person ages. This could also be a concern in space as returning astronauts can occasionally exhibit the same symptoms as an elderly person. Genes in Space-2 tests ways to amplify DNA and make it possible to measure and monitor telomere changes in space.

Image above: NASA astronaut Jeff Williams speaks to Peggy Whitson to congratulate her on breaking his previous record for the most cumulative days in space. Image Credit: NASA.

The ability to collect this data could lead to better ways to monitor astronaut health and improve the technology for genetic diagnostic tools on deep-space missions. The Genes in Space program invites middle and high school students and teachers to design DNA-related experiments to fly on the space station. This provides students with a direct connection to the space program and hands-on educational experiences, promoting an interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. Results from this investigation could also direct future research into telomere dynamics during spaceflight, which furthers our understanding of fundamental connections between telomere dynamics and disease on Earth.

The ground team for NASA's Space Communications and Navigations (SCaN) Testbed continued another round of tests this week on the space station. SCaN is a flexible radio system -- designed at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland -- that conforms to common, non-proprietary standards so agency flight controllers can change the software and how the equipment is used during flight. It would allow spacecraft crews and ground teams to recover from unpredicted errors or changes in the system.

Image above: NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson – alongside fellow astronaut Jack Fischer -- receives a personal call from President Donald Trump to congratulate her on breaking the American record for cumulative days in space. Image Credit: NASA.

Changing a radio's software after launch would give mission operators on the ground the ability to enhance communication systems for increased data flow and possibly resolve system problems. Using the same hardware platform for various missions and only changing the software to meet specific mission needs would reduce cost and risk. Radio technology designed for use in space could be used on Earth to develop technologically advanced communications products.

Space to Ground: American Recordholder: 04/28/2017

Video above: NASA's Space to Ground is a weekly update on what is happening on the International Space Station. Social media users can post with #spacetoground to ask questions or make a comment. Video Credit: NASA.

Human research investigations conducted this week include MARROW, Fine Motor Skills, Fluid Shifts, Habitability, and Dose Tracker.

Progress was made on other investigations, outreach activities, and facilities this week, including Advanced Colloids Experiment, ISS Ham, NanoRacks External Platform, Zero Boil-Off Tank (ZBOT), Veg-03, Polar, Device for the study of Critical Liquids and Crystallization (DECLIC HTI-R), and METEOR.

Related links:

Radi-N2 Neutron Field Study (Radi-N2): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/898.html

Genes in Space-2: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2437.html

Genes in Space: https://www.genesinspace.org/

Space Communications and Navigations (SCaN): http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/162.html

MARROW: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1931.html

Fine Motor Skills: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1767.html

Fluid Shifts: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1257.html

Habitability: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1772.html

Dose Tracker: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1933.html

ISS Ham: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/346.html

NanoRacks External Platform: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1197.html

Zero Boil-Off Tank (ZBOT): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1270.html

Veg-03: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1294.html

Polar: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1205.html

Device for the study of Critical Liquids and Crystallization (DECLIC HTI-R): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1030.html

METEOR: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1323.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

NASA's Glenn Research Center: http://www.nasa.gov/glenn

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Kristine Rainey/Jorge Sotomayor, Lead Increment Scientist Expeditions 51 & 52.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Station Boosts Orbit, Crew Studies Space Effects on Eyes

ISS - Expedition 51 Mission patch.

April 30, 2017

The International Space Station raised its orbit on April 27, 2017, to get ready for a June crew departure. The first of two orbital reboosts comes just a week after two new crew members arrived to begin their mission with Expedition 51.

Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Thomas Pesquet will return to Earth June 2 ending the Expedition 51 mission. Expedition 52 will begin and veteran cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin will stay behind with NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer waiting for the next crew arrival on July 28.

Image above: Expedition 51 crew members share a meal inside the Unity module. From left are Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy, Fyodor Yurchikhin and Jack Fischer and Commander Peggy Whitson. Image Credit: NASA.

The current orbiting crew of five Expedition 51 crew members continued more biomedical research and eye checks today. The crew underwent a series of ultrasound scans and eye tests to learn how living in space affects vision. The astronauts are subjects of ongoing studies to help NASA plan missions farther out in space for longer periods of time.

One symptom of living in space for long periods is the pressure that builds up behind astronauts’ eyes due to the upward flow of fluids. Doctors are seeking to counteract this flow after some astronauts have reported vision problems during and after their long-term missions.

Related links:

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), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch