NASA Begins Work to Build a Quieter Supersonic Passenger Jet

NASA logo.

Feb. 29, 2016

The return of supersonic passenger air travel is one step closer to reality with NASA's award of a contract for the preliminary design of a “low boom” flight demonstration aircraft. This is the first in a series of ‘X-planes’ in NASA's New Aviation Horizons initiative, introduced in the agency’s Fiscal Year 2017 budget.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden announced the award at an event Monday at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia.

“NASA is working hard to make flight greener, safer and quieter – all while developing aircraft that travel faster, and building an aviation system that operates more efficiently,” said Bolden. “To that end, it’s worth noting that it's been almost 70 years since Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1 as part of our predecessor agency's high speed research. Now we’re continuing that supersonic X-plane legacy with this preliminary design award for a quieter supersonic jet with an aim toward passenger flight."

Image above: This is an artist’s concept of a possible Low Boom Flight Demonstration Quiet Supersonic Transport (QueSST) X-plane design. The award of a preliminary design contract is the first step towards the possible return of supersonic passenger travel – but this time quieter and more affordable. Image Credits: Lockheed Martin.

NASA selected a team led by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company of Palmdale, California, to complete a preliminary design for Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST). The work will be conducted under a task order against the Basic and Applied Aerospace Research and Technology (BAART) contract at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

After conducting feasibility studies and working to better understand acceptable sound levels across the country, NASA's Commercial Supersonic Technology Project asked industry teams to submit design concepts for a piloted test aircraft that can fly at supersonic speeds, creating a supersonic "heartbeat" -- a soft thump rather than the disruptive boom currently associated with supersonic flight.

“Developing, building and flight testing a quiet supersonic X-plane is the next logical step in our path to enabling the industry's decision to open supersonic travel for the flying public," said Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator for NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission.

Lockheed Martin will receive about $20 million over 17 months for QueSST preliminary design work. The Lockheed Martin team includes subcontractors GE Aviation of Cincinnati and Tri Models Inc. of Huntington Beach, California.

The company will develop baseline aircraft requirements and a preliminary aircraft design, with specifications, and provide supporting documentation for concept formulation and planning. This documentation would be used to prepare for the detailed design, building and testing of the QueSST jet. Performance of this preliminary design also must undergo analytical and wind tunnel validation.

In addition to design and building, this Low Boom Flight Demonstration (LBFD) phase of the project also will include validation of community response to the new, quieter supersonic design. The detailed design and building of the QueSST aircraft, conducted under the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Integrated Aviation Systems Program, will fall under a future contract competition.

Quiet Supersonic X-plane To Be Designed

NASA’s 10-year New Aviation Horizons initiative has the ambitious goals of reducing fuel use, emissions and noise through innovations in aircraft design that departs from the conventional tube-and-wing aircraft shape.

The New Aviation Horizons X-planes will typically be about half-scale of a production aircraft and likely are to be piloted. Design-and-build will take several years with aircraft starting their flight campaign around 2020, depending on funding.

For more information about NASA’s aeronautics research, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/aero

Image (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/J.D. Harrington/Sarah Ramsey/Langley Research Center/Kathy Barnstorff.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

MAVEN Observes Mars Moon Phobos in the Mid- and Far-Ultraviolet

NASA - MAVEN Mission logo.

Feb. 29, 2016

NASA scientists are closer to solving the mystery of how Mars’ moon Phobos formed.

In late November and early December 2015, NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission made a series of close approaches to the Martian moon Phobos, collecting data from within 300 miles (500 kilometers) of the moon.

Image above: The orbit of MAVEN sometimes crosses the orbit of Phobos. This image shows the configuration of the two orbits in early December 2015, when MAVEN's Phobos observations were made. Image Credits: CU/LASP and NASA.

Among the data returned were spectral images of Phobos in the ultraviolet. The images will allow MAVEN scientists to better assess the composition of this enigmatic object, whose origin is unknown.

Image above: Phobos as observed by MAVEN's Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph. Orange shows mid-ultraviolet (MUV) sunlight reflected from the surface of Phobos, exposing the moon's irregular shape and many craters. Blue shows far ultraviolet light detected at 121.6 nm, which is scattered off of hydrogen gas in the extended upper atmosphere of Mars. Phobos, observed here at a range of 300km, blocks this light, eclipsing the ultraviolet sky. Image Credits: CU/LASP and NASA.

Comparing MAVEN's images and spectra of the surface of Phobos to similar data from asteroids and meteorites will help planetary scientists understand the moon's origin – whether it is a captured asteroid or was formed in orbit around Mars. The MAVEN data, when fully analyzed, will also help scientists look for organic molecules on the surface. Evidence for such molecules has been reported by previous measurements from the ultraviolet spectrograph on the Mars Express spacecraft.

The observations were made by the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument aboard MAVEN.

MAVEN's principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the MAVEN project. Partner institutions include Lockheed Martin, the University of California at Berkeley, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

For more information on MAVEN, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/maven

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Nancy Neal Jones/Karl Hille.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Eclipse Season Begins for NASA’s SDO

NASA - Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) patch.

Feb. 29, 2016

The 2016 spring eclipse season of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory began Feb. 19, 2016. These seasons – a time when Earth blocks SDO's view of the sun for a period of time each day – last around three weeks and happen twice a year near the equinoxes. The eclipses are fairly short near the beginning and end of the season but ramp up to 72 minutes in the middle. Most spacecraft observing the sun from an orbit around Earth have to contend with such eclipses, but SDO's orbit is designed to minimize them as much as possible, as they block observations of the sun. The spring season will end on March 12, 2016.

This animation was made with images taken in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths of 304 angstroms on Feb. 22, 2016. This type of light is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in red. The boundaries of Earth blocking the sun are not perfectly sharp, since the sun’s light is able to shine through Earth’s atmosphere in some places.

For more information about Solar Dynamics Observator (SDO), visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/main/index.html

Animation, Text, Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/Steele Hill/Sarah Frazier/Rob Garner.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Different Worlds

NASA - Cassini Mission to Saturn patch.

Feb. 29, 2016

Although Tethys and Janus both orbit Saturn and are both made of more or less the same materials, they are very different worlds. Their contrasts are related, in large part, to their sizes.

Tethys (660 miles or 1,062 kilometers across) is large enough to be spherical and to have varied geology, like chasms and smooth plains, along with some puzzling arc-shaped features (see PIA19637). Much smaller Janus (111 miles or 179 kilometers across) is irregularly shaped and has (so far) shown few signs of geologic activity apart from impact craters.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 1 degree above the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Nov. 23, 2015.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 28,000 miles (44,000 kilometers) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 54 degrees. Image scale is 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) per pixel.

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

Related link:

PIA19637: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19637

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

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

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

SolarImpulse - First training flight is a success!

SolarImpulse - Around The World patch.

Feb. 27, 2016

The first Solar Impulse 2 maintenance flight took place on Friday 26 of February was uneventful. The plane took off from Kalaeloa airport at 4:32PM UTC with our test pilot, Markus Scherdel, in the cockpit, and landed at 6:05PM UTC.

Bertrand Piccard was following this long-awaited flight from the other side of the world and confessed that it was a true relief to see Si2 back in the sky of Hawaii after the last months of uncertainty.

During the hour and a half that it lasted, the team based at the Mission Control Center performed maintenance checks to verify that the technology installed in the aircraft ran smoothly, such as the stabilisation and cooling system, which both performed superbly. Si2 flew up to 8,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean and then returned to the Kalaeloa base.

This positive outcome would not have been possible without the extraordinary effort of the whole team:

- The amazing hosting of the plane on the Kalaeloa airport, thanks to the University of Hawaii and with the support of the Department of Transportation;
- The protection of the aircraft by the team which enabled it to stay safely on land since July;

- The maintenance performed by the engineers and the Mission Control Center’s hard last work to prepare this first training flight

André Borschberg was in Hawaii, following Si2’s first steps back in the air. The flight reminded him of last year’s ocean crossing from Nagoya to Hawaii. As time passes, one sometimes remembers the past as if it were a dream, but today was proof that the record-breaking flight and arrival in Hawaii in July were real!

Related articles:

A battery problem grounded in Hawaii Solar Impulse 2:
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2015/07/a-battery-problem-grounded-in-hawaii.html

Cool New Batteries for Solar Impulse:
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2015/11/cool-new-batteries-for-solar-impulse.html

To get all the latest updates about the flights to come, don’t forget to subscribe here. You won’t regret it: http://www.solarimpulse.com/subscribe

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

Image, Text, Credit: SolarImpulse.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

CERN - In theory: Welcome to the Theory corridor

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo.

25 Feb 2016

Image above: One of CERN’s Theory corridors – along here are the offices of most of CERN’s theory department including those who were interviewed for this series of articles. (Image: Sophia Bennett/CERN).

There are corridors at CERN lined with wooden doors and rusted metal cabinets, where aged, peeling leaflets for long-a-go conferences paper the walls next to comic strips and photos.

Image above: Many of the doors along the corridor have comic strips, posters for events, or cheeky notes to the office-owners. Often the office has been held by one physicist for several years, and space on the door runs out posters spread beyond, onto the walls around until they almost merge into each other. (Image: Sophia Bennett/CERN).

Known at CERN as ‘the Theory corridor’, this is the home at CERN for some of the world’s most brilliant minds.

Image above: One of the first offices you come across belongs to Wolfgang Lerche,Head of Theory until December 2015. Lerche grew up in Munich and stands alone amongst the theorists we spoke to in that he enjoyed being practical and tinkering with radios and electronics as a child – a trait more commonly associated with experimentalists. (Image: Sophia Bennett/CERN).

Behind these heavy wooden doors, theoreticians are using equations, computer modelling and logic to try and understand the underlying laws of our  universe. Here ideas, such as supersymmetry, are born, often decades before technology and experiments can provide the evidence to back those ideas up.

Image above: Many theoreticians have to travel regularly or move to different countries for their work. While senior members of staff get an office, the PhD students, summer students and visiting researchers all share offices. The white strips of paper stuck to this door are nameplates – instead of re-printing one each time, when someone moves into the office they swap their name into position, and take it out to stick back on the door once they leave. (Image: Sophia Bennett/CERN).

Theoreticians are an integral part of particle physics, providing experimentalists with a background to their research. Their work has always been a starting point for CERN physics – the "Group of Theoretical Studies" was created even before a location had been determined for CERN itself – showing physicists what and where they should be looking for the next discovery.

Image above: One of the most recognizable offices along the corridor belongs to John Ellis, of Kings College London. He has wanted to be a physicist since he was 12 years old when he took physics books out of the library as he wasn’t yet old enough to loan “good fiction”. (Image: Sophia Bennett/CERN).

Over the coming weeks, the "In Theory" series will introduce you to the Theory department and give you a behind-the-scenes glimpse of what life is like for some of the individuals within it.

Image above: His office at CERN is piled with books and papers and his blackboard is covered with notes from students – often teasing him about his research into the theory of supersymmetry (SUSY). (Image: Sophia Bennett/CERN).

Image above: The Theory Secretariat are the last office along the corridor and the hub of the department. They are vital in organising the life of the corridors – from arranging seminars to welcoming visiting theorists. (Image: Sophia Bennett/CERN).

Image above: “We’re after bigger questions, why things work the way they work, and that’s the essence of theoretical physics” - Gian Giudice is the new Head of the Theory department, seen here being interviewed for the In Theory series in his office. (Image: Sophia Bennett/CERN).

Over the next six weeks the In Theory series will publish a new article weekly on a different aspect of the Theory department, starting next week with what makes a theoretical physicist.

Note:

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

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

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

Related links:

Supersymmetry: http://home.cern/about/physics/supersymmetry

CERN's "Group of Theoretical Studies": http://home.cern/cern-people/opinion/2014/10/theory-cern-turns-62

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

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/Harriet Jarlett/Sophia Bennett.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA’s IBEX Observations Pin Down Interstellar Magnetic Field

NASA - IBEX Mission logo.

Feb. 26, 2016

Immediately after its 2008 launch, NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spotted a curiosity in a thin slice of space: More particles streamed in through a long, skinny swath in the sky than anywhere else. The origin of the so-called IBEX ribbon was unknown – but its very existence opened doors to observing what lies outside our solar system, the way drops of rain on a window tell you more about the weather outside.

Now, a new study uses IBEX data and simulations of the interstellar boundary – which lies at the very edge of the giant magnetic bubble surrounding our solar system called the heliosphere – to better describe space in our galactic neighborhood. The paper, published Feb. 8, 2016, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, precisely determines the strength and direction of the magnetic field outside the heliosphere. Such information gives us a peek into the magnetic forces that dominate the galaxy beyond, teaching us more about our home in space.

Image above: (Artist concept) Far beyond the orbit of Neptune, the solar wind and the interstellar medium interact to create a region known as the inner heliosheath, bounded on the inside by the termination shock, and on the outside by the heliopause. Image Credits: NASA/IBEX/Adler Planetarium.

The new paper is based on one particular theory of the origin of the IBEX ribbon, in which the particles streaming in from the ribbon are actually solar material reflected back at us after a long journey to the edges of the sun’s magnetic boundaries. A giant bubble, known as the heliosphere, exists around the sun and is filled with what’s called solar wind, the sun’s constant outflow of ionized gas, known as plasma. When these particles reach the edges of the heliosphere, their motion becomes more complicated. 

“The theory says that some solar wind protons are sent flying back towards the sun as neutral atoms after a complex series of charge exchanges, creating the IBEX ribbon,” said Eric Zirnstein, a space scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and lead author on the study. “Simulations and IBEX observations pinpoint this process – which takes anywhere from three to six years on average – as the most likely origin of the IBEX ribbon.”

Outside the heliosphere lies the interstellar medium, with plasma that has different speed, density, and temperature than solar wind plasma, as well as neutral gases. These materials interact at the heliosphere’s edge to create a region known as the inner heliosheath, bounded on the inside by the termination shock – which is more than twice as far from us as the orbit of Pluto – and on the outside by the heliopause, the boundary between the solar wind and the comparatively dense interstellar medium.

Some solar wind protons that flow out from the sun to this boundary region will gain an electron, making them neutral and allowing them to cross the heliopause. Once in the interstellar medium, they can lose that electron again, making them gyrate around the interstellar magnetic field. If those particles pick up another electron at the right place and time, they can be fired back into the heliosphere, travel all the way back toward Earth, and collide with IBEX’s detector. The particles carry information about all that interaction with the interstellar magnetic field, and as they  hit the detector they can give us unprecedented insight into the characteristics of that region of space.

Image above: This simulation shows the origin of ribbon particles of different energies or speeds outside the heliopause (labeled HP). The IBEX ribbon particles interact with the interstellar magnetic field (labeled ISMF) and travel inwards toward Earth, collectively giving the impression of a ribbon spanning across the sky. Image Credits: SwRI/Zirnstein.

“Only Voyager 1 has ever made direct observations of the interstellar magnetic field, and those are close to the heliopause, where it’s distorted,” said Zirnstein. “But this analysis provides a nice determination of its strength and direction farther out.”

The directions of different ribbon particles shooting back toward Earth are determined by the characteristics of the interstellar magnetic field. For instance, simulations show that the most energetic particles come from a different region of space than the least energetic particles, which gives clues as to how the interstellar magnetic field interacts with the heliosphere.

For the recent study, such observations were used to seed simulations of the ribbon’s origin. Not only do these simulations correctly predict the locations of neutral ribbon particles at different energies, but the deduced interstellar magnetic field agrees with Voyager 1 measurements, the deflection of interstellar neutral gases, and observations of distant polarized starlight.

However, some early simulations of the interstellar magnetic field don’t quite line up. Those pre-IBEX estimates were based largely on two data points – the distances at which Voyagers 1 and 2 crossed the termination shock. 

Artist's impression of the IBEX spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA

“Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock at 94 astronomical units, or AU, from the sun, and Voyager 2 at 84 AU,” said Zirnstein. One AU is equal to about 93 million miles, the average distance between Earth and the sun. “That difference of almost 930 million miles was mostly explained by a strong, very tilted interstellar magnetic field pushing on the heliosphere.”

But that difference may be accounted for by considering a stronger influence from the solar cycle, which can lead to changes in the strength of the solar wind and thus change the distance to the termination shock in the directions of Voyager 1 and 2. The two Voyager spacecraft made their measurements almost three years apart, giving plenty of time for the variable solar wind to change the distance of the termination shock.

“Scientists in the field are developing more sophisticated models of the time-dependent solar wind,” said Zirnstein.

The simulations generally jibe well with the Voyager data.

Image above: The IBEX ribbon is a relatively narrow strip of particles flying in towards the sun from outside the heliosphere. A new study corroborates the idea that particles from outside the heliosphere that form the IBEX ribbon actually originate at the sun – and reveals information about the distant interstellar magnetic field. Image Credit: SwRI.

“The new findings can be used to better understand how our space environment interacts with the interstellar environment beyond the heliopause,” said Eric Christian, IBEX program scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was not involved in this study. “In turn, understanding that interaction could help explain the mystery of what causes the IBEX ribbon once and for all.”

The Southwest Research Institute leads IBEX with teams of national and international partners. NASA Goddard manages the Explorers Program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Related Link:

- IBEX mission website: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/index.html

- Article: The Astrophysical Journal Letters - "Local Interstellar Magnetic Field Determined From the Interstellar Boundary Explorer Ribbon": http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8205/818/1/L18/meta

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Sarah Frazier/Rob Garner.


Greetings, Orbiter.ch