Journey of Asteroid Bennu, Target of NASA Mission

NASA - OSIRIS-REx Mission patch.

November 18, 2014

New Animation Follows Long, Strange Trip of Bennu – Target of NASA's Asteroid Sample Return Mission

Born from the rubble of a violent collision, hurled through space for millions of years and dismembered by the gravity of planets, asteroid Bennu had a tough life in a rough neighborhood: the early solar system. "Bennu's Journey," a new animation created at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, shows what's known and what remains mysterious about the life of Bennu and the origin of the solar system.

Asteroid Bennu's Journey

Video above: The animated feature "Bennu's Journey" shows what's known and what remains mysterious about the life of asteroid Bennu and the origin of the solar system. Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab.

"We are going to Bennu because we want to know what it has witnessed over the course of its evolution," said Edward Beshore of the University of Arizona, Deputy Principal Investigator for NASA's asteroid-sample-return mission OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security – Regolith Explorer). The mission will be launched toward Bennu in late 2016, arrive at the asteroid in 2018, and return a sample of Bennu’s surface to Earth in 2023. "Bennu's experiences will tell us more about where our solar system came from and how it evolved. Like the detectives in a crime show episode, we'll examine bits of evidence from Bennu to understand more completely the story of the solar system, which is ultimately the story of our origin."

The video opens with an establishing shot of the galaxy and moves in to a nebula – a vast cloud of gas and dust ejected from the explosions of dying stars. From observations of other star-forming regions in our galaxy, scientists have a good idea of the basic outlines of how our solar system came to be, according to Beshore. As shown in the animation, a nearby exploding star disrupts material in the nebula, causing part of it to collapse under its own gravity and form a disk of material surrounding the infant Sun.

Image above: This is a conceptual image of a nebula. Nebulas are vast clouds of gas and dust ejected from the explosions of dying stars. Scientists think the solar system formed when a nearby exploding star disrupted material in a nebula, causing part of it to collapse under its own gravity. Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab.

Within this disk, bits of dust are flash heated to molten rock and solidify to become chondrules -- some of the building blocks of the solar system. Chondrules are shown in the animation as they clump together via electrostatic and gravitational forces to become asteroids and planets.

Chondrules may make up a large part of the material in Bennu. "On planets like Earth, the original materials have been profoundly altered by geologic activity and chemical reactions with our atmosphere and water. We think Bennu may be relatively unchanged, so this asteroid is like a time capsule for us to examine," said Beshore. By analyzing the sample collected from Bennu, the OSIRIS-REx team will be able to examine some of the most pristine material to be found anywhere in the solar system.

Bennu may also harbor organic material from the young solar system. Organic matter is made of molecules containing primarily carbon and hydrogen atoms and is fundamental to terrestrial life. The analysis of any organic material found on Bennu will give scientists an inventory of the materials present at the beginning of the solar system that may have had a role in the origin of life. "By bringing this material back to Earth, we can do a far more thorough analysis than we can with instruments on a spacecraft, because of practical limits on the size, mass, and energy consumption of what can be flown," said Beshore. "We will also set aside returned materials for future generations to study with instruments and capabilities we can't even imagine now."

Image above: This is an artist's concept of the young Earth being bombarded by asteroids. Scientists think these impacts could have delivered significant amounts of organic matter and water to Earth. Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab.

The mission also will contribute to NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which will identify, capture and redirect a near-Earth asteroid to a stable orbit around the moon, where astronauts will explore it in the 2020s, returning with samples. ARM is part of NASA’s plan to advance new capabilities needed for future human missions to Mars. OSIRIS-REx also will support the agency's efforts to understand the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects and characterize those suitable for future asteroid exploration missions.

The early solar system was quite chaotic. Giant impact craters throughout the inner solar system indicate there may have been a "late heavy bombardment" by asteroids approximately 4.1 billion to 3.8 billion years ago, right around the origin of life on Earth. The video illustrates one theory for this. The massive "gas giant" planet Jupiter began to migrate inward closer to the Sun due to gravitational interactions with the outer gas giant planets. Jupiter's gravity disrupted the asteroid belt, tossing many asteroids closer to the Sun, where some collided with the terrestrial planets, including Earth. This asteroid bombardment may have been a significant source of organic matter and water for the early Earth.

After this bombardment, things calmed down a little, but massive collisions still happened occasionally, like the one the video shows happening between an asteroid and a planetesimal about one billion years ago. Scientists think a collision like this may have resulted in the birth of Bennu, and the video illustrates the asteroid forming as some of the rubble from the collision slowly coalesces under its own weak gravity.

Image above: This is an artist's concept of the impact that created the asteroid Bennu. Scientists think Bennu formed when some of the rubble from a collision like this coalesced under its own gravity. Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab.

Measurements reveal that Bennu's density is less than that of rock, so scientists think the asteroid may have voids in its interior, according to Beshore. An asteroid like this is called a "rubble pile" -- a loosely bound collection of boulders, rock, and dust.

Bennu is also quite dark. Like an asphalt road on a hot day, it absorbs most of the sunlight that hits it and later radiates this energy away as heat. This radiation gives Bennu a tiny push, called the Yarkovsky effect, which gradually changes its orbit over time. The animation shows how the Yarkovsky effect causes Bennu to migrate until it encounters a so-called gravitational resonance with the planet Saturn. Regular tugs by this resonance eventually push Bennu into the inner solar system, where it has repeated close encounters with Venus and Earth. These encounters pull apart the rubble pile that is Bennu, turning it inside out and reshaping the asteroid.

Because Bennu comes close to Earth, there is a tiny chance – about 1 in 2,500 – that it could hit Earth late in the 22nd century, according to Beshore. "We'll get accurate measurements of the Yarkovsky effect on Bennu by precisely tracking OSIRIS-REx as it orbits the asteroid," said Beshore. "In addition, the instrument suite the spacecraft is carrying is perfectly suited to measure all the things that contribute to the Yarkovsky effect, such as composition, energy transport through the surface, temperature, and Bennu's topography. If astronomers someday identify an asteroid that presents a significant impact hazard to Earth, the first step will be to gather more information about that asteroid. Fortunately, the OSIRIS-REx mission will have given us the experience and tools needed to do the job."

The animation ends with the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft entering orbit around Bennu to tell the tale of the asteroid’s long, strange trip, a journey that promises to reveal the secrets of the solar system and perhaps our own origins.

Image above: This is an artist's concept of NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid-sample-return spacecraft arriving at the asteroid Bennu. Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab.

The animation is among the most highly detailed productions created by Goddard's Conceptual Image Laboratory (CI Lab), and as such presented significant challenges to realize. Rendered in an 8 by 3 Cinemascope aspect ratio at 5,670 by 2,180 pixels, it has even higher resolution than the 4K "Ultra High Definition" (4K UHD) resolution now being introduced as the next-generation high-definition television format.

"This was done for two reasons; first, with the cinemascope aspect ratio we could take advantage of the extra screen room for a more cinematic design and it would also play well on larger-format screens like IMAX and NASA's hyperwall," said CI Lab Senior Animator Walt Feimer, who was also a producer on the project. "The second advantage was by mastering at the higher resolution we only had to render one time. By keeping the action in the animation in the 16 by 9 aspect ratio, we could cut the animation down to 4K UHD and from there it could be scaled to any of our usual animation products."

One of the major challenges in the movie was with the texture maps; since the format was so large the textures had to dramatically increase in size to hold up at resolution without breaking down visually, according to Feimer. The team also spent a lot of time creating the look and feel of the gases used in the nebula and early solar system scenes.

The enormous size of the animation required significant computer time to render, so it was important to minimize changes through close coordination among the science team, the production team, and the script writers.

"Ed Beshore and Dante Lauretta, the OSIRIS-REx Principal Investigator, held a series of early meetings with me and the animation team – Walt Feimer and Michael Lentz – to discuss the history of Bennu and sketch out the video's narrative arc," said Daniel Gallagher of Goddard Media Studios, a writer and a producer on the project. "Then Walt and Michael began creating storyboards and I began writing narration, based on our meetings and on various science articles. The earliest scripts were densely packed with information but didn't quite capture the epic feel that we were aiming for, so we brought in fellow writer/producer Michael Starobin to rethink the tone of the narration. After some back and forth, the team arrived at a script that retained the most important points scientifically, but also delivered them in a more epic, evocative voice."

"Through a lot of collaborative back-and-forth effort with Dante and Ed we defined the story we wanted to tell and created our shot list," adds Feimer. "We ended up with 31 different shots. Spending the extra time upfront on the storyboards really paid off. It kept changes to a minimum and in the end we only added two shots and dropped one."

The team's efforts have resulted in a signature animation that explains how exploring an asteroid can shed light on how we came to be.

The animation was funded by the OSIRIS-REx project. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will provide overall mission management, systems engineering, safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta is the mission's principal investigator at the University of Arizona. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver will build the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more images, posters, and a 3D-printable model of Bennu, refer to the Bennu's Journey resource page at:  http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=20218

For more information about NASA's asteroid-sample-return mission OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security – Regolith Explorer), visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/osiris-rex/

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Bill Steigerwald.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Mixing Paints

NASA - Cassini Mission to Saturn patch.

November 18, 2014

Nature is an artist, and this time she seems to have let her paints swirl together a bit.

What the viewer might perceive to be Saturn's surface is really just the tops of its uppermost cloud layers. Everything we see is the result of fluid dynamics. Astronomers study Saturn's cloud dynamics in part to test and improve our understanding of fluid flows. Hopefully, what we learn will be useful for understanding our own atmosphere and that of other planetary bodies.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 25 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in red light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 23, 2014.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 127 degrees. Image scale is 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, 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, D.C. 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, Colo.

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

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

Cheers, Orbiter.ch

NASA Computer Model Provides a New Portrait of Carbon Dioxide

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center logo / NASA - OCO-2 Mission logo.

November 17, 2014

An ultra-high-resolution NASA computer model has given scientists a stunning new look at how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere travels around the globe.

Plumes of carbon dioxide in the simulation swirl and shift as winds disperse the greenhouse gas away from its sources. The simulation also illustrates differences in carbon dioxide levels in the northern and southern hemispheres and distinct swings in global carbon dioxide concentrations as the growth cycle of plants and trees changes with the seasons.

A Year in the Life of Earth's CO2

Video above: An ultra-high-resolution NASA computer model has given scientists a stunning new look at how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere travels around the globe. Plumes of carbon dioxide in the simulation swirl and shift as winds disperse the greenhouse gas away from its sources. Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/K. Sharghi.

Scientists have made ground-based measurements of carbon dioxide for decades and in July NASA launched the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite to make global, space-based carbon observations. But the simulation – the product of a new computer model that is among the highest-resolution ever created – is the first to show in such fine detail how carbon dioxide actually moves through the atmosphere.

“While the presence of carbon dioxide has dramatic global consequences, it’s fascinating to see how local emission sources and weather systems produce gradients of its concentration on a very regional scale,” said Bill Putman, lead scientist on the project from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Simulations like this, combined with data from observations, will help improve our understanding of both human emissions of carbon dioxide and natural fluxes across the globe.”

The carbon dioxide visualization was produced by a computer model called GEOS-5, created by scientists at NASA Goddard’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. In particular, the visualization is part of a simulation called a “Nature Run.” The Nature Run ingests real data on atmospheric conditions and the emission of greenhouse gases and both natural and man-made particulates. The model is then is left to run on its own and simulate the natural behavior of the Earth’s atmosphere. This Nature Run simulates May 2005 to June 2007.

While Goddard scientists have been tweaking a “beta” version of the Nature Run internally for several years, they are now releasing this updated, improved version to the scientific community for the first time. Scientists are presenting a first look at the Nature Run and the carbon dioxide visualization at the SC14 supercomputing conference this week in New Orleans.

“We’re very excited to share this revolutionary dataset with the modeling and data assimilation community,” Putman said, “and we hope the comprehensiveness of this product and its ground-breaking resolution will provide a platform for research and discovery throughout the Earth science community.”

In the spring of 2014, for the first time in modern history, atmospheric carbon dioxide – the key driver of global warming – exceeded 400 parts per million across most of the northern hemisphere. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide concentrations were about 270 parts per million. Concentrations of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere continue to increase, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.

Artist's view of OCO-2 spacecraft in orbit. Image Credit: NASA

Despite carbon dioxide’s significance, much remains unknown about the pathways it takes from emission source to the atmosphere or carbon reservoirs such as oceans and forests. Combined with satellite observations such as those from NASA’s recently launched OCO-2, computer models will help scientists better understand the processes that drive carbon dioxide concentrations.

The Nature Run also simulates winds, clouds, water vapor and airborne particles such as dust, black carbon, sea salt and emissions from industry and volcanoes.

The resolution of the model is approximately 64 times greater than that of typical global climate models. Most other models used for long-term, high-resolution climate simulations resolve climate variables such as temperatures, pressures, and winds on a horizontal grid consisting of boxes about 50 kilometers (31 miles) wide.  The Nature Run resolves these features on a horizontal grid consisting of boxes only 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) wide.

NASA's GEOS-5 computers. Image Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

The Nature Run simulation was run on the NASA Center for Climate Simulation’s Discover supercomputer cluster at Goddard Space Flight Center. The simulation produced nearly four petabytes (million billion bytes) of data and required 75 days of dedicated computation to complete.

In addition to providing a striking visual description of the movements of an invisible gas like carbon dioxide, as it is blown by the winds, this kind of high-resolution simulation will help scientists better project future climate. Engineers can also use this model to test new satellite instrument concepts to gauge their usefulness. The model allows engineers to build and operate a “virtual” instrument inside a computer.

Using GEOS-5 in tests known as Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSE) allows scientists to see how new satellite instruments might aid weather and climate forecasts.

“While researchers working on OSSEs have had to rely on regional models to provide such high-resolution Nature Run simulations in the past, this global simulation now provides a new source of experimentation in a comprehensive global context,” Putman said. “This will provide critical value for the design of Earth-orbiting satellite instruments.”

For detailed views of various parts of the world, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/a-closer-look-at-carbon-dioxide

For more information about NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/oco or http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/

For more information about OSSEs, visit: http://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/projects/osse/

Image (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Patrick Lynch.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

Geologic Maps of Vesta from NASA’s Dawn Mission Published

NASA - Dawn Mission patch.

November 17, 2014

Image above: This high-resolution geological map of Vesta is derived from Dawn spacecraft data. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU.

Images from NASA’s Dawn Mission have been used to create a series of high-resolution geological maps of the large asteroid Vesta, revealing the variety of surface features in unprecedented detail.  These maps are included with a series of 11 scientific papers published this week in a special issue of the journal Icarus.

Geological mapping is a technique used to derive the geologic history of a planetary object from detailed analysis of surface morphology, topography, color and brightness information.  A team of 14 scientists mapped the surface of Vesta using Dawn spacecraft data, led by three NASA-funded participating scientists:  David A. Williams of Arizona State University, Tempe; R. Aileen Yingst of the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Arizona; and W. Brent Garry of the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.

“The geologic mapping campaign at Vesta took about two-and-a-half years to complete, and the resulting maps enabled us to recognize a geologic timescale of Vesta for comparison to other planets,” said Williams.

Scientists discovered through these maps that impacts from several large meteorites have shaped Vesta's history. Asteroids like Vesta are remnants of the formation of the solar system, giving scientists a peek at its history. Asteroids could also harbor molecules that are the building blocks of life and reveal clues about the origins of life on Earth.

The geologic mapping of Vesta is enabled by images obtained by the framing camera provided by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research of the German Max Planck Society and the German Aerospace Center.  This camera takes panchromatic images and seven bands of color-filtered images.  Stereo photos are used to create topographic models of the surface that aid in the geologic interpretation.

Graphic above: The geological time scale of asteroid Vesta derived from geological mapping, from Williams et al. (2014) in the journal Icarus. The uncertainty in the model age dates stems from the uncertainty of the flux of impacting small asteroids. Ga = billions of years ago. Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU.

Vesta’s geologic timescale is determined by the sequence of large impact events, primarily by the Veneneia and Rheasilvia impacts in Vesta's early history and the Marcia impact in its late history.  The oldest crust on Vesta pre-dates the Veneneia impact.The relative timescale is supplemented by model-based absolute ages from two different approaches that apply crater statistics to date the surface.

"This mapping was crucial for getting a better understanding of Vesta’s geological history, as well as providing context for the compositional information that we received from other instruments on the spacecraft: the visible and infrared (VIR) mapping spectrometer and the gamma-ray and neutron detector (GRaND)," said Carol Raymond, Dawn’s deputy principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The objective of NASA’s Dawn mission is to characterize the two most massive objects in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. The spacecraft launched in 2007. Vesta, orbited by the Dawn spacecraft between July 2011 and September 2012, was thought to be the source of a unique set of basaltic meteorites (called HEDs, for howardite-eucrite-diogenite), and Dawn confirmed the Vesta-HED connection.

The Dawn spacecraft is currently on its way to Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt.  Dawn will arrive at Ceres in March 2015.

Image above: Artist's conception of the Dawn spacecraft approaching the asteroid Ceres. Image Credit: NASA/JPL.

Dawn uses ion propulsion in spiraling trajectories to travel from Earth to Vesta, orbit Vesta and then continue on to orbit the dwarf planet Ceres.  Ion engines use very small amounts of onboard fuel, enabling a mission that would be unaffordable or impossible without them.

JPL manages the Dawn mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.

For more information about Dawn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/JPL/Elizabeth Landau/Arizona State University/Robert Burnham.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

3D Printer Installed on International Space Station

ISS - International Space Station logo.

November 17, 2014

Image above: Commander Barry WIlmore works on Monday to install a 3D printer inside the Destiny laboratory’s Microgravity Science Glovebox. Image Credit: NASA TV.

NASA TV: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

Commander Barry Wilmore worked throughout Monday to install a 3D printer to get the International Space Station and future crews ready for self-sufficiency. Wilmore will work to calibrate the printer and set up a demonstration of the additive manufacturing technology.

Read about 3D Printing In Zero-G: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1115.html

His fellow crew members, Flight Engineers Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova, worked on routine maintenance tasks and cargo transfers in the station’s Russian segment. They also paired up for a cardiovascular exam on an exercise bike, sampled the station’s atmosphere and tested television downlink signals.

Image above: NASA TV will provide live televised coverage of the launch of Expedition 42 on Nov. 23 at 3:01 p.m. CST. Image Credit: NASA TV.

The next trio to join Expedition 42 is in Kazakhstan counting down to a Nov. 23 launch aboard a Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft. They are set for a near six-hour ride to the International Space Station where they will live and work until May 2015.

Space Station Live: Setting up a Machine Shop in Space

Video above: Niki Werkheiser, NASA’s 3-D Printing Project Manager, talks with Marshall Space Flight Center’s Bill Hubscher about today’s on-orbit set-up and first test run of the International Space Station’s 3-D Printer, a technology demonstration that is the first step toward establishing an on-demand machine shop in space to manufacture spare parts, a critical technology to enable future exploration of deep space.

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

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

Study Investigates How Men and Women Adapt Differently to Spaceflight

NSBRI - National Space Biomedical Research Institute logo.

November 17, 2014

In 2011, a report from a National Academy of Sciences’ decadal survey emphasized the need to examine and understand the influences that sex and gender have on physiological and psychological or behavioral changes that occur during spaceflight. In response, NASA and NSBRI assembled six workgroups to investigate and summarize the current body of published and unpublished human and animal spaceflight research data. The groups focused on cardiovascular, immunological, sensorimotor, musculoskeletal, reproductive and behavioral implications on spaceflight adaptation for men and women. In June 2013, NASA and NSBRI hosted a virtual workshop to present the groups’ findings. The Journal of Women's Health published the manuscripts in the Nov. 2014 issue, available here: http://online.liebertpub.com/toc/jwh/23/11

As NASA sets its sights on longer-duration spaceflight deeper into the solar system, the health and safety considerations for its astronauts grow increasingly complex. The agency, in partnership with the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), is researching risk-reducing countermeasures and developing technologies to advance human health and ensure operational performance in deep space. Together they are investigating personalized medicine for astronauts who may spend years living and working autonomously away from planet Earth.

A key consideration in personalized medicine is the crewmember’s sex and gender. Although in recent years the definitions have become more nuanced in the clinical community, “sex” is defined here as the classification of male or female according to an individual's genetics and "gender" refers to a person's self-representation as male or female based upon social interactions. We know that on Earth, major components of the human body are influenced by sex and gender factors. Taking gravity away from the equation imposes an entirely new element on our understanding of the health implications of sex and gender differences.

Images above: This diagram shows key differences between men and women in cardiovascular, immunologic, sensorimotor, musculoskeletal, and behavioral adaptations to human spaceflight. Image Credit: NASA/NSBRI.

“Fortunately, we have the International Space Station,” said Dr. Marshall Porterfield, Director of Space Life and Physical Sciences Research at NASA Headquarters. “Station provides us with years of biological data on male and female astronauts, and many of them continue to participate in ground-based studies to evaluate the lasting effects of spaceflight.”

Much of this data is available to the public through the Life Sciences Data Archive (LSDA) and the Lifetime Surveillance of Astronaut Health (LSAH), but there is an imbalance of data available for men and women, primarily due to fewer women who have flown in space.

Image above: Visual Impairment Intracranial Pressure (VIIP) Syndrome was identified in 2005. It is currently NASA’s leading spaceflight-related health risk, and is more predominant among men than women in space. Here, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg of NASA uses a fundoscope to image her eye while in orbit. Image Credit: NASA.

The “Impact of Sex and Gender on Adaptation to Space” is a compendium of the work groups’ six individual manuscripts, an executive summary, and a commentary.  It is the most current, comprehensive report on sex and gender differences related to human physiology and psychology in spaceflight and on Earth.

The full compendium is available at http://online.liebertpub.com/toc/jwh/23/11.

Each workgroup included scientists and clinicians from academia, NASA or NSBRI, and other federal agencies and was co-chaired by one representative from NASA or NSBRI and one from the external scientific community. The groups identified certain sex- and gender-related differences that impact the risks and the optimal medical care required by space-faring women and men. It represents innovative research in sex- and gender-based biology that impacts those individuals that are at the forefront of space exploration.

“Harnessing the power of 21st century personalized medicine, as practiced at leading medical schools and hospitals, will further mitigate the human health risks inherent to long duration deep space missions,” said Jeffrey P. Sutton, M.D., Ph.D., NSBRI’s President, CEO, and Institute Director.

The groups observed that the disparity of spaceflight data available for men and women who have flown in space – 477 men vs. 57 women as of June 2013 – makes it difficult to derive concrete conclusions based on sex and gender alone. In the latest crew selection, NASA selected eight astronauts, comprising four women and four men. This is a positive step toward increasing the participation of female astronauts in spaceflight and experimentation.

Image above: The 2013 astronaut candidate class, shown here in front of a Orion crew capsule mockup, comprises four women and four men. Image Credit: NASA.

“This is the first major integrated examination of the issues of sex and gender in relationship to space exploration,” said Dr. Mark Shelhamer Chief Scientist for NASA’s Human Research Program at Johnson Space Center. “There are, in many cases, sex-based differences in the response to the stressors of space flight.” He believes that is important to recognize—not ignore—such differences, and to provide countermeasures that are appropriate for each subpopulation or even to each individual.

The Sex & Gender work groups released five recommendations:

- Select more female astronauts for spaceflight missions.

- Encourage and facilitate the participation of more female and male subjects in both ground and flight research studies.

- Focus on the responses of individual astronauts to spaceflight and return to Earth.

- Include sex and gender factors in the design of the experiments.

- Incorporate sex and gender and other individual risk factors into NASA-funded research programs.

International Space Station (ISS). Image Credit: NASA

A summary of the Sex & Gender work groups' major findings is listed below:

- Orthostatic Intolerance, or the inability to stand without fainting for protracted periods, is more prevalent upon landing in female astronauts than in their male counterparts. One possible reason for this observed difference in orthostatic intolerance between the sexes is reduced leg vascular compliance, which was demonstrated in bed-rest studies – which is a ground analog for spaceflight.

- Women have greater loss of blood plasma volume than men during spaceflight, and women’s stress response characteristically includes a heart rate increase while men respond with an increase in vascular resistance. Still, these Earth observations require further study in space.

- The VIIP syndrome (visual impairment / intracranial pressure) manifests with anatomical ocular changes, ranging from mild to clinically significant, with a range of corresponding changes in visual function. Currently 82% of male astronauts vs. 62% of women astronauts (who have flown in space) are affected. However, all clinically significant cases so far have occurred in male astronauts.

- Changes in function and concentration of key constituents of the immune system related to spaceflight have been reported. However, differences between male and female immune responses have not been observed in space.  On the ground, women mount a more potent immune response than men, which makes them more resistant to viral and bacterial infections; once infected, women mount an even more potent response. This response, however, makes women more susceptible to autoimmune diseases. It is not clear if these changes on the ground will occur during longer space missions, or missions that involve planetary exploration (exposure to gravity).

- Radiation presents a major hazard for space travel. It has been reported that female subjects are more susceptible to radiation-induced cancer than their male counterparts; hence radiation permissible exposure levels are lower for women than men astronauts.

- Upon transition to microgravity after arriving at the International Space Station (ISS), female astronauts reported a slightly higher incidence of space motion sickness (SMS) compared with men. Conversely, more men experience motion-sickness symptoms upon return to Earth. These data were however not statistically significant, due both to the relatively small sample sizes and small differences in the incidence of SMS reported by the men and women astronauts.

- Hearing sensitivity, when measured at several frequencies, declines with age much more rapidly in male astronauts than it does in female astronauts. No evidence suggests that the sex-based hearing differences in the astronaut population are related to microgravity exposure.

- The human musculoskeletal response to gravity unloading is highly variable among individuals and a sex-based difference was not observed.

- Urinary tract infections in space are more common in women and have been successfully treated with antibiotics.

- There is no evidence of sex differences in terms of behavioral or psychological responses to spaceflight. Analysis of ISS astronauts’ neurobehavioral performance and sleep measures showed no sex or gender differences using the Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) of alertness and Visual Analog Scales of workload, stress, and sleep quality. Since all all astronaut candidates undergo a robust process of psychological screening and selection,  the likelihood of an adverse behavioral health condition or psychiatric disorder is greatly diminished.

Related links:

Life Sciences Data Archive (LSDA): http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/

Lifetime Surveillance of Astronaut Health (LSAH): http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/lsah_home1.aspx

Images (mentioned), Text, Credit: NASA.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Brilliant Leonids Meteor Shower Peak Occurs Morning of Nov. 18

Asteroid & Comet Watch logo.

November 14, 2014

A Leonid meteor. Image Credit: NASA

This year’s Leonids meteor shower peaks on the morning of Nov. 18. If forecasters are correct, the shower should produce a mild but pretty sprinkling of meteors. The waning crescent moon will not substantially interfere with viewing the Leonid shower.

“We’re predicting 10 to 15 meteors per hour,” says Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.  “For best viewing, wait until after midnight on Nov. 18, with the peak of the shower occurring just before sunrise.”

Cooke also recommends going to a location away from city lights, dressing warmly, and lie flat on your back and look straight up. No special viewing equipment needed —  just your eyes.

Leonids are bits of debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Every 33 years the comet visits the inner solar system and leaves a stream of dusty debris in its wake. Many of these streams have drifted across the November portion of Earth’s orbit. Whenever our planet hits one, meteors appear to be flying out of the constellation Leo.

A live viewing opportunity is available via Ustream from a telescope at Marshall Space Flight Center. The Ustream feed will be live beginning Monday, November 17 at 6:30 p.m. CST and will continue until sunrise on Tuesday Nov. 18: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-msfc

For more information about Marshall Space Flight Center, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/home/

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center/Janet Anderson.

Cheers, Orbiter.ch