Friday, December 27, 2019
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Space History Is Made in This NASA Robot Factory
Space History Is Made in This NASA Robot Factory: From rockets to rovers, JPL's Spacecraft Assembly Facility has been at the center of robotic spaceflight. Here's a closer look at what makes it so special.
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Saturday, December 21, 2019
In Praise Of Space-X
Dear:
Your Saturday morning newspaper...I'm always mentioning those very important words:
"The devil is in the detail."
Boeing has been paid some $4,200,000,000 US by NASA to develop a space capsule to take astronauts to the International Space Station. After over three years of work, Boeing launched an unmanned space capsule. The goal was to go into orbit. Then the orbit would be changed to allow the space capsule to dock with the International Space Station. The launch was smooth. The capsule achieved orbit. That was a great start. Then came the time to fire the capsule thrusters to send the capsule to the ISS. Some idiot technician had set the time wrong in a minor subsystem. The capsule failed to change its orbit. Now we have delays and the cost of another test. If astronauts had been on board, they could have caught the error and got the capsule to the ISS.
In contrast, Space-X was awarded a contract of only $2,600,000,000 US to build the Dragon manned capsule to take astronauts to the ISS. On the first attempt to dock a Dragon capsule with the ISS, Space-X ran into a glitch like this. They were able to change some software and get the capsule to the ISS. Space-X has sent Dragon capsules to the ISS since May of 2012.
Friday, December 20, 2019
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Spitzer Studies a Stellar Playground With a Long History
Spitzer Studies a Stellar Playground With a Long History: A star-forming region called the Perseus Molecular Cloud has long been a favorite target for infrared astronomers, due to its close proximity and cosmic puzzles.
NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Completes Its First Drive
NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Completes Its First Drive: In a 10-plus-hour marathon, the rover steered, turned and drove in 3-foot (1-meter) increments over small ramps.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
The Return to Venus and What It Means for Earth
The Return to Venus and What It Means for Earth: Why NASA scientists want to go (back) to this most inhospitable planet.
Two Rovers to Roll on Mars Again: Curiosity and Mars 2020
Two Rovers to Roll on Mars Again: Curiosity and Mars 2020: They look like twins. But under the hood, the rover currently exploring the Red Planet and the one launching there this summer have distinct science tools and roles to play.
NASA's Treasure Map for Water Ice on Mars
NASA's Treasure Map for Water Ice on Mars: A new study identifies frozen water just below the Martian surface, where astronauts could easily dig it up.
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Global Storms on Mars Launch Dust Towers Into the Sky
Global Storms on Mars Launch Dust Towers Into the Sky: Newly documented behavior seen during global dust storms on the Red Planet may play a role in how the planet's water escapes into space.
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Nova: The Apollo rocket that never was
Nova: The Apollo rocket that never was: Before Saturn V, which was the largest rocket ever built, NASA dreamed of another launch vehicle with nearly twice the power called Nova.
Friday, November 15, 2019
Mars Scientists Investigate Ancient Life in Australia
Mars Scientists Investigate Ancient Life in Australia: Teams with NASA's Mars 2020 and ESA's ExoMars practiced hunting for fossilized microbial life in the Australian Outback in preparation for their Red Planet missions.
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Voyager 2 Illuminates Boundary of Interstellar Space
Voyager 2 Illuminates Boundary of Interstellar Space: Five new research papers detail Voyager 2's observations since it exited the heliosphere, or the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by our Sun.
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
The Moon: Walking On Air
Walking on Air
The moon might look barren and very inhospitable for humans, but actually its surface dirt – known as regolith – is rich in oxygen.
Now scientists have figured out how to extract oxygen from lunar soil, Science Alert reported.
Regolith samples collected from previous lunar missions revealed that oxygen in the moon’s surface is chemically bound to other substances in the form of oxides and can’t be used immediately.
Since the real samples are valuable, the researchers used “fake” lunar dirt, created from terrestrial materials, in their study.
The team, led by Bethany Lomax of the University of Glasgow, used an electrolysis technique to extract about 96 percent of the oxygen in the sample in a matter of 50 hours.
Previous methods required higher temperatures and generated low oxygen amounts. The new method provided a higher yield and was more sustainable.
Moreover, Lomax’s team also extracted several metal alloys in the process, which could prove useful for future colonization.
“This process would give lunar settlers access to oxygen for fuel and life support, as well as a wide range of metal alloys for in-situ manufacturing,” said James Carpenter, lunar strategy officer of the European Space Agency, who was not involved in the study.
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Monday, October 7, 2019
NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds an Ancient Oasis on Mars
NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds an Ancient Oasis on Mars: New evidence suggests salty, shallow ponds once dotted a Martian crater - a sign of the planet's drying climate.
NASA's Push to Save the Mars InSight Lander's Heat Probe
NASA's Push to Save the Mars InSight Lander's Heat Probe: The scoop on the end of the spacecraft's robotic arm will be used to 'pin' the mole against the wall of its hole.
Sunday, October 6, 2019
NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Tests Descent-Stage Separation
NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Tests Descent-Stage Separation: A crane lifts the rocket-powered descent stage away from NASA's Mars 2020 rover after technicians tested the pyrotechnic charges that separate the two spacecraft.
Thursday, October 3, 2019
New Organic Compounds Found in Enceladus Ice Grains
New Organic Compounds Found in Enceladus Ice Grains: Cassini scientists have found the ingredients for amino acids condensed onto ice grains emitted by Saturn's sixth-largest moon.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
NASA's InSight 'Hears' Peculiar Sounds on Mars
NASA's InSight 'Hears' Peculiar Sounds on Mars: Listen to the marsquakes and other, less-expected sounds that the Mars lander has been detecting.
Friday, September 27, 2019
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Shapeshifters from Science Fiction to Science Fact: Globetrotting from Titan's Rugged Cliffs to its Deep Seafloors
Shapeshifters from Science Fiction to Science Fact: Globetrotting from Titan's Rugged Cliffs to its Deep Seafloors: Shapeshifters from Science Fiction to Science Fact: Globetrotting from Titan's Rugged Cliffs to its Deep Seafloors
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Monday, September 23, 2019
Friday, September 20, 2019
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
NASA Wins Two Emmy Awards for Interactive Mission Coverage
NASA Wins Two Emmy Awards for Interactive Mission Coverage: NASA-JPL's coverage of the Mars InSight landing earns one of the two wins, making this the NASA center's second Emmy.
Friday, September 13, 2019
How Long Before People Will Be Living On Mars?
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NASA's Mars 2020 Comes Full Circle
NASA's Mars 2020 Comes Full Circle: Aiming to pinpoint the Martian vehicle's center of gravity, engineers took NASA's 2,300-pound Mars 2020 rover for a spin in the clean room at JPL.
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Send Your Name to Mars: Mars 2020
Send Your Name to Mars: Mars 2020: Send Your Name to Mars. View and share your Boarding Pass. See your Frequent Flyer points: go.nasa.gov/Mars2020Pass
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Can Low Gravity Kill Cancer?
Can low gravity kill cancer?
We’ve been sending humans to space for more than half a century now, but there is still so much to learn about how a low-gravity environment impacts our physiology. An Australian scientist has been looking into such matters through simulation studies here on Earth, and with early indications that space can kill off the majority of cancer cells without the need for drugs, is now preparing to launch his experiments toward the International Space Station for further investigation.
There are quite a few studies that have been completed or are ongoing at the International Space Station that explore the effects of low-gravity on living organisms and human physiology.
NASA has previously studied cellular changes of mice and mussels on the ISS to gain new insights into the human immune system and looked into how the microgravity environment can lead to vision impairment. The agency’s twin study, meanwhile, comparing the biology of an identical twin who spent almost a year at the ISS with the other who did not, continues to be one of the more intriguing examples.
But the intricacies of how cancer cells behave in the microgravity environment remains largely unexplored. Biomedical engineer Joshua Chou has been conducting experiments in his laboratory at the University of Technology Sydney to advance our understanding of this, using a micro-gravity simulator to observe how cancer cells respond and the potential reasons why.
“Prior to this research, most focus has been on the genetic expression of cancer under microgravity,” Chou explains to New Atlas. “But no one has looked at the mechanisms, and the strategy of how we are approaching this is to identify the sensing receptors in the cancer, in hope of tricking them.”
Chou and his student Anthony Kirollos exposed ovarian, breast, nose and lung cancer cells to the micro-gravity simulator for a 24-hour period, and found that it caused 80 to 90 percent of them to die, as first reported by the ABC. The scientists believe this is because the lack of gravitational force on the cells influences how they communicate with one another and makes them unable to sense their surroundings, something they call mechanical unloading.
“I have to clarify that microgravity does affect other cells, like bone cells, that is why astronauts lose bone,” Chou tells us. “But having said that, the different tissues and organs in the body respond differently, and it’s just that we found bone and cancers are super sensitive to the effects of microgravity.”
Why this mechanical unloading effect hits cancer cells harder than most is one of the questions Chou hopes to shed some light on when he launches his experiment for the ISS next year. In the first Australian research mission to the ISS, the cells will be packed into a device smaller than a tissue box and studied within the micro-gravity environment for a period of one week.
“Twenty-four hours before launch, we will introduce the cells into microfluidic devices, they will go up to the ISS and the experiment will be carried out for seven days, but won’t return until after 28 days at the ISS,” Chou says. “Then of course we will do analysis upon its return. But we also designed technologies to study them while they are alive on the ISS.”
Sending cancer patients to space for treatment certainly seems a fanciful idea, and Chou isn’t looking to change that through his inventive line of investigation. The hope is that the experiments can shed light on the specific receptors and sensors behind the mechanical unloading effect on cancer cells, so scientists can design drugs that mimic the same effects here on Earth.
"I see what we are developing on working in conjunction with existing therapies and not replacing anything,“ Chou says. “What we hope is that it will increase efficiency of current drugs to give the patient an added advantage by disrupting the normal function of the cancer. Because if the cells can't 'function as a team' then it becomes easier to kill them.”
...
Friday, August 30, 2019
NASA Mars 2020 Rover Gets Saddled With Helicopter Sidekick
NASA's Mars 2020 rover gets saddled with helicopter sidekick
Engineers have attached what could be the first ever helicopter to fly on another world, to NASA’s Mars 2020 rover. The robotic duo is set to be launched into space atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in July next year, and will arrive at their destination on February 18, 2021.
The Mars Helicopter has no scientific goals of its own beyond proving that it is possible to fly an autonomous aircraft through the super-thin Martian atmosphere. The drone carries a single 13-megapixel camera, no science instruments, and weighs in at just under 4 lb (1.8 kg).
The dual-blade, solar-powered helicopter has been subjected to stringent testing designed to assess not only its ability to fly, but also whether it can survive the tumultuous environment of launch and re-entry, not to mention the frigid space environment that it must endure during transit.
NASA engineers attached the helicopter and its delivery system to a plate on the rover’s underbelly. The now integrated drone will remain in its protective cocoon while traveling through interplanetary space, and during re-entry and landing.
The target site for the mission is an impact site known as Jezero Crater. The region boasts ancient terrain formations, some of which are thought to date back 3.6 billion years. An analysis of the landing site could provide clues as to the habitability of ancient Mars and how that world evolved into the one we know today.
The helicopter will be released from the rover between 60-90 Martian days after landing on the Red Planet. Having dropped the drone to the surface, the rover will drive a short distance away, allowing its aerial accomplice to spread its rotors, and prepare to explore its new home.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
If successful, the Mars Helicopter is expected to attempt up to five flights over the course of a 30-day period. Each foray will last up to 90 seconds, and could see the drone rise up to 15 ft (4.5 m) above the barren Martian surface.
Should these tests be a success, future crewed and robotic missions could make use of the next generation of autonomous drones to add an aerial element to exploration and path finding tasks. For example, the helicopters could be used to explore regions that would be too hazardous to the wheels of a rover, or that could even put an astronaut’s safety at risk.
Alongside receiving its aerial sidekick, the Mars 2020 rover is also due to get a new name. NASA is inviting kindergarten and school students living in the US to submit essays to rename the rover prior to launch. The deadline is November 1, 2019, and the winner of the competition will be invited to watch the rover launch from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in July 2020.
Leading up to the launch you can sign up to become part of the mission by submitting your name to be etched in microscopic size on a chip that will be mounted on the robotic explorer as it trundles across the surface of the Red Planet.
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Thursday, August 29, 2019
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
NASA's Mars Helicopter Attached to Mars 2020 Rover
NASA's Mars Helicopter Attached to Mars 2020 Rover: The helicopter will be first aircraft to perform flight tests on another planet.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Friday, August 23, 2019
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Huge Subsurface Lake Found On Mars
Huge lake of liquid water found on Mars
A huge liquid water lake has been found on Mars, stretching 20 km (12.4 mi) and buried beneath 1.5 km (0.9 mi) of ice at the Red Planet's south pole(Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
A huge lake of liquid water has been found on Mars. The groundbreaking discovery comes after years of evidence of the Red Planet's watery past and icy present, but this is the first time a significant amount of the life-giving liquid has been detected. Discovered through satellite radar readings, the lake lies beneath the ice caps at the south pole of Mars, and has profound implications for future missions and the search for extraterrestrial life.
According to its discoverers, the lake lies below 1.5 km (0.9 mi) of solid ice, and stretches 20 km (12.4 mi) wide. Although temperatures at that spot plummet to about -68° C (-90° F), the water remains in a liquid form thanks to the heavy presence of sodium, magnesium and calcium salts. This, along with the immense pressure of the ice from above, lowers the freezing point.
The discovery was made by astronomers using the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) onboard the Mars Express orbiter. This instrument beams radar pulses down to the planet's surface and measures how the waves reflect back to the spacecraft, which can tell scientists what kind of materials lie down there, even below the surface.
Using MARSIS to survey a region around the south pole of the Red Planet, the team collected 29 sets of radar samplings between May 2012 and December 2015. A section of this area returned very sharp changes in the radar signals, showing up as a bright spot in the image that's consistent with a water interface. The radar profile, the researchers say, closely matches those of subglacial lakes here on Earth, beneath the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.
Although it seems like "water found on Mars" headlines have been doing the rounds for years, this discovery is really what it's all been building to. The majority of modern Mars is dry and barren, but plenty of evidence has been found that the Red Planet used to be a much wetter place. NASA studies suggest a vast ocean covered the planet's northern hemisphere some 4.3 billion years ago, and lakes may have filled and emptied repeatedly over tens of millions of years in places like Gale Crater, the landing site of the Curiosity rover.
Nowadays, water exists on the Red Planet in the form of trace amounts of vapor in the atmosphere, or locked away in underground ice sheets and mineral compounds. Any liquid water was believed to be transitional, pooling in short-lived microscopic puddles or flowing down hillsides in the Martian summer.
The discovery of a large, stable reserve of liquid water on Mars is massive, giving us new potential targets for future missions and places to search for signs of past or present microbial life – although the sheer saltiness of it might kill those hopes.
The research was published in the journal Science.
...
Friday, August 16, 2019
Lost In Space
Lost in Space
There may well be life on the moon now, and humans are responsible for it.
Recently, the privately funded Israeli lander Beresheet released one of Earth’s hardiest creatures after accidentally crash-landing on the moon’s surface, the Guardian reported.
Scientists believe that thousands of tiny tardigrades – also known as water bears or moss piglets – are the only survivors of the incident since they are almost indestructible.
The microscopic eight-legged creatures can shrug off fatal conditions by turning into a dormant seed-like pod, which allows them to survive high temperatures, radiation and the vacuum of space – to name just a few calamities. To bring them back to life, just add water.
“Tardigrades can survive pressures that are comparable to those created when asteroids strike Earth, so a small crash like this is nothing to them,” according to tardigrade researcher Lukasz Kaczmarek.
In their dormant state, it appears that even the aging process stops – a trait with obvious implications for any future space colonization efforts.
“It may be that we can use this in the future if we plan missions to different planets, because we will need to be young when we get there,” Kaczmarek said.
Despite the tiny animals’ superhuman abilities, any sleeping survivors of Beresheet’s crash won’t be colonizing the moon. Earth’s satellite lacks the liquid water needed to reactivate them.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Robotic Toolkit Added to NASA's Mars 2020 Rover
Robotic Toolkit Added to NASA's Mars 2020 Rover: The bit carousel, which lies at the heart of the rover's Sample Caching System, is now aboard NASA's newest rover.
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
New Finds for Mars Rover, Seven Years After Landing
New Finds for Mars Rover, Seven Years After Landing: NASA's Curiosity rover is discovering odd rocks halfway into a region called the 'clay-bearing unit.'
Saturday, August 3, 2019
MEDLI2 Installation on Mars 2020 Aeroshell Begins
MEDLI2 Installation on Mars 2020 Aeroshell Begins: Hardware installed onto NASA's Mars 2020 entry vehicle this week will help to increase the safety of future Mars landings.
Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Saturday, July 27, 2019
A Close Call With An Asteroid
Forget about Mars, spend more time on asteroids!!
Alan Duffy was confused. On Thursday, the astronomer’s phone was suddenly flooded with calls from reporters wanting to know about a large asteroid that had just whizzed past Earth, and he couldn’t figure out “why everyone was so alarmed.”
“I thought everyone was getting worried about something we knew was coming,” Duffy, who is lead scientist at the Royal Institution of Australia, told The Washington Post. Forecasts had already predicted that a couple of asteroids would be passing relatively close to Earth this week.
Then, he looked up the details of the hunk of space rock named Asteroid 2019 OK.
“I was stunned,” he said. “This was a true shock.”
This asteroid wasn’t one that scientists had been tracking, and it had seemingly appeared from “out of nowhere,” Michael Brown, a Melbourne-based observational astronomer, told The Washington Post. According to data from NASA, the craggy rock was large, an estimated 57 to 130 meters wide (187 to 427 feet), and moving fast along a path that brought it within about 73,000 kilometers (45,000 miles) of Earth. That’s less than one-fifth of the distance to the moon and what Duffy considers “uncomfortably close.”
“It snuck up on us pretty quickly,” said Brown, an associate professor in Australia with Monash University’s School of Physics and Astronomy. He later noted, “People are only sort of realizing what happened pretty much after it’s already flung past us.”
The asteroid’s presence was discovered only earlier this week by separate astronomy teams in Brazil and the United States. Information about its size and path was announced just hours before it shot past Earth, Brown said.
“It shook me out my morning complacency,” he said. “It’s probably the largest asteroid to pass this close to Earth in quite a number of years.”
So how did the event almost go unnoticed?
First, there’s the issue of size, Duffy said. Asteroid 2019 OK is a sizable chunk of rock, but it’s nowhere near as big as the ones capable of causing an event like the dinosaurs’ extinction. More than 90 percent of those asteroids, which are more than half a mile wide or larger, have already been identified by NASA and its partners.
“Nothing this size is easy to detect,” Duffy said of Asteroid 2019 OK. ″You’re really relying on reflected sunlight, and even at closest approach it was barely visible with a pair of binoculars.”
Brown said the asteroid’s “eccentric orbit” and speed were also likely factors in what made spotting it ahead of time challenging. Its “very elliptical orbit” takes it “from beyond Mars to within the orbit of Venus,” which means the amount of time it spends near Earth where it is detectable isn’t long, he said. As it approached Earth, the asteroid was traveling at about 24 kilometers per second, he said, or nearly 54,000 mph. By contrast, other recent asteroids that flew by Earth clocked in between 4 and 19 kilometers per second (8,900 to 42,500 mph).
“It’s faint for a long time,” Brown said of Asteroid 2019 OK. “With a week or two to go, it’s getting bright enough to detect, but someone needs to look in the right spot. Once it’s finally recognized, then things happen quickly, but this thing’s approaching quickly so we only sort of knew about it very soon before the flyby.”
The last-minute detection is yet another sign of how much remains unknown about space and a sobering reminder of the very real threat asteroids can pose, Duffy said.
“It should worry us all, quite frankly,” he said. “It’s not a Hollywood movie. It is a clear and present danger.”
Duffy said astronomers have a nickname for the kind of space rock that just came so close to Earth: “City-killer asteroids.” If the asteroid had struck Earth, most of it would have probably reached the ground, resulting in devastating damage, Brown said.
“It would have gone off like a very large nuclear weapon” with enough force to destroy a city, he said. “Many megatons, perhaps in the ballpark of 10 megatons of TNT, so something not to be messed with.”
In 2013, a significantly smaller meteor — about 20 meters (65 feet) across, or the size of a six-story building — broke up over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk and unleashed an intense shock wave that collapsed roofs, shattered windows and left about 1,200 people injured. The last space rock to strike Earth similar in size to Asteroid 2019 OK was more than a century ago, Brown said. That asteroid, known as the Tunguska event, caused an explosion that leveled 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles) of forest land in Siberia.
Although the chances of a large asteroid landing on a city are “modest,” Brown said it is still worthwhile to devote resources toward detection and prevention. Brown said Asteroid 2019 OK proves there are “still dangerous asteroids out there that we don’t know of” that “can arrive on our doorstep unannounced.”
Scientists are working on developing at least two approaches to deflecting potentially harmful asteroids, Duffy said. One strategy involves gently pushing the asteroid slowly over time off its course and away from Earth, he said. The other, which he called a “very elegant solution,” is the gravity tractor. If an asteroid is detected early enough, it could be possible to divert it using the gravity of a spacecraft, according to NASA.
People shouldn’t try to “blast it with a nuke,” Duffy said.
“It makes for a great Hollywood film,” he said. “The challenge with a nuke is that it may or may not work, but it would definitely make the asteroid radioactive.”
In light of Asteroid 2019 OK, Duffy stressed the importance of investing in a “global dedicated approach” to detecting asteroids because “sooner or later there will be one with our name on it. It’s just a matter of when, not if.”
“We don’t have to go the way of the dinosaurs,” he said. “We actually have the technology to find and deflect certainly these smaller asteroids if we commit to it now.”
Emily Lakdawalla, senior editor of the Planetary Society, which promotes space exploration, said the recent near miss is a reminder that “it’s an important activity to be watching the skies.” The more that can be learned about an asteroid, the better prepared people can be to prevent potential disasters, she told The Post.
Still, Lakdawalla said that while the asteroid’s close brush with Earth may have sparked some concern, “it is zero percent danger to us.”
“It’s the kind of thing where you learn about something that you didn’t know about, like things flying close by us, and your inclination is to be scared,” she said. “But just like sharks in the ocean, they’re really not going to hurt you and they’re really fascinating to look at.”
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