Tag: nasa

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Vital-Edible-Health

New Space Beer Is Made With Actual Moondust

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Our friends up the road at ILC Dover, a company that creates space suits for NASA, helped us get this unique and incredibly rare ingredient. We also used German malts and hops, and fermented this beer with our house Doggie yeast, giving Celest-jewel-ale notes of doughy malt, toasted bread, subtle caramel and a light herbal bitterness.

Exclusively served at Dogfish Head’s Rehoboth Beach brewpub, Celest-jewel-ale marks the September night of the harvest moon – the full moon closest to the fall equinox – whose brightness has traditionally helped farmers work into the evening. –

On top of the lunar meteorites, ILC is making sure this is the best-protected beer on the planet with koozies made from the same material as their space suits. The outer layer is Orthofabric, which is specially woven to have white Gore-Tex® PTFE on the exterior and Nomex® with a Kevlar® ripstop on the interior. The Gore-Tex is slippery to prevent friction between parts of the suit during movement and facilitate mobility. Its color also limits the absorption of solar energy.

Text and Image via Dogfish. Continue THERE

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Social/Politics · Technology

Space Ownership and the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 by NASA

Sebastian Alvarez1 Comment

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967

Treaty on principles governing the activities of states in the exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies.

Opened for signature at Moscow, London, and Washington on 27 January, 1967

THE STATES PARTIES. TO THIS TREATY,

INSPIRED by the great prospects opening up before mankind as a result of man’s entry into outer space,

RECOGNIZING the common interest of all mankind in the progress of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes,

BELIEVING that the exploration and use of outer space should be carried on for the benefit of all peoples irrespective of the degree of their economic or scientific development,

DESIRING to contribute to broad international co-operation in the scientific as well as the legal aspects of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes,

BELIEVING that such co-operation will contribute to the development of mutual understanding and to the strengthening of friendly relations between States and peoples,

RECALLING resolution 1962 (XVIII), entitled “Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space”, which was adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly on 13 December 1963,

RECALLING resolution 1884 (XVIII), calling upon States to refrain from placing in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction or from installing such weapons on celestial bodies, which was adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly on 17 October 1963,

TAKING account of United Nations General Assembly resolution 110 (II) of 3 November 1947, which condemned propaganda designed or likely to provoke or encourage any threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, and considering that the aforementioned resolution isapplicable to outer space,

CONVINCED that a Treaty on Principles Governing the Activitiesof States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, will further the Purposes and Principles ofthe Charter of the United Nations,

HAVE AGREED ON THE FOLLOWING:

Bio · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Science · Technology · Theory

Fascinating Theory On Life’s Origins Getting NASA’s Attention and Money

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A unique theory about how life arose on Earth may reveal clues to whether and where else it might have arisen in the universe.

Does life exist elsewhere or is our planet unique, making us truly alone in the universe? Much of the work carried out by NASA, together with other research agencies around the world, is aimed at trying to come to grips with this great and ancient question.

“Of course, one of the most powerful ways to address this question, and a worthy goal in its own right, is to try to understand how life came to be on this planet,” said Elbert Branscomb, an affiliate faculty member at the Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “The answer should help us discover what is truly necessary to spark the fateful transition from the lifeless to the living, and thereby, under what conditions and with what likelihood it might happen elsewhere.”

While many ideas about this fundamental question exist, the real challenge is to move beyond speculation to experimentally testable theories. A novel and potentially testable origin-of-life theory—first advanced more than 25 years ago by Michael Russell, a research scientist in Planetary Chemistry and Astrobiology at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory—was further developed in a recent paper published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (PTRSL-B), the world’s first science journal, by Russell, Wolfgang Nitschke, a team leader at the National Center for Scientific Research in Marseille, France, and Branscomb.

All text via Dan Satterfield at AGU Blogosphere. Read full article HERE

Digital Media · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Photographics · Science · Technology

A Geological Survey of Venus

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Topographic Map of Venus

Radar Image Map

Altimetric and Shaded Relief Map

Geomorphic/Geologic Map of the Northern Hemisphere of Venus

(detail)

The Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG) was established by NASA in July 2005 to identify scientific priorities and strategy for exploration of Venus. VEXAG is currently composed of a chair and five focus groups. The focus groups will actively solicit input from the scientific community. VEXAG will report its findings and provides input to NASA, but will not make recommendations.
The Lunar and Planetary Institute is a research institute that provides support services to NASA and the planetary science community, and conducts planetary science research under the leadership of staff scientists, visiting researchers, and postdoctoral fellows.

All images via Venus Map Catalog

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Science · Technology

Mars Rover Finds Evidence of Ancient Habitability

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NASA’s Curiosity rover has found what it went to Mars to look for: evidence of an environment that could have once supported life.

Chemical analyses show that a greyish powder taken from the rover’s first drilled rock sample contains clay minerals formed in water that was slightly salty, and neither too acidic nor too alkaline for life.

“If this water was around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it,” says Curiosity project scientist John Grotzinger, a planetary geologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He and other NASA researchers announced the findings today at a news briefing in Washington DC.

Previous missions to Mars have spotted clay minerals. And Curiosity itself had already found signs that liquid water once flowed across the surface. But the pinch of powder tested by Curiosity, from a rock nicknamed John Klein, is the first hard evidence of water-borne clays in a benign pH environment. “This is the only definitive habitable environment that we’ve described and recorded,” says David Blake, principal investigator for the rover’s Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument (CheMin) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

Excerpt from an article written by Alexandra Witze and Nature magazine. Continue THERE

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Science

Before Deep Space, NASA Heads Deep Under Water

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NASA may have retired its shuttles, but it has its sights on sending astronauts deeper into space than ever before.

These voyages are years away, but on Monday, astronauts are heading underwater to take part in a simulation that will help them figure out how they might explore one possible new destination: a near-Earth asteroid.

It’ll be the space agency’s 16th NEEMO expedition — NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations — commanded by astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger. She flew on one of the last space shuttle missions, and even helped prepare Atlantis for its final launch.

“It was a very bittersweet time,” says Metcalf-Lindenburger, who wants to go into space again. In the meantime, she’s commanding a four-person crew that’s putting on scuba gear instead of space suits. She says we all have to move on.

“Like in all things. I just had my daughter finish up her last day of preschool before she goes off to kindergarten. We have to shut chapters and begin new chapters and we had to do that in the space program, too,” Metcalf-Lindenburger says.

Excerpt of an article written by Elizabeth Shogren, at NPR. Continue HERE

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Photographics

ISS Star Trails

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Expedition 31 Flight Engineer Don Pettit relayed some information about photographic techniques used to achieve the images: “My star trail images are made by taking a time exposure of about 10 to 15 minutes. However, with modern digital cameras, 30 seconds is about the longest exposure possible, due to electronic detector noise effectively snowing out the image. To achieve the longer exposures I do what many amateur astronomers do. I take multiple 30-second exposures, then ‘stack’ them using imaging software, thus producing the longer exposure.”

Via Flickr

Photographics · Technology

Dusty Mars Rover’s Self Portrait

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This self portrait from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows dust accumulation on the rover’s solar panels as the mission approached its fifth Martian winter. The dust reduces the rover’s power supply, and the rover’s mobility is limited until the winter is over or wind cleans the panels.

This is a mosaic of images taken by Opportunity’s panoramic camera (Pancam) during the 2,111th to 2,814th Martian days, or sols, of the rover’s mission (Dec. 21 to Dec. 24, 2011). The downward-looking view omits the mast on which the camera is mounted.

The portrait is presented in approximate true color, the camera team’s best estimate of what the scene would look like if humans were there and able to see it with their own eyes.

Opportunity has worked through four Martian southern hemisphere winters since it landed in in January 2004 about 14 miles (23 kilometers) northwest of its current location. Closer to the equator than its twin rover, Spirit, Opportunity has not needed to stay on a sun-facing slope during the previous winters. Now, however, Opportunity’s solar panels carry a thicker coating of dust, and the team is using a strategy employed for three winters with Spirit: staying on a sun-facing slope. The sun will pass relatively low in the northern sky from the rover’s perspective for several months of shortened daylight before and after the southern Mars winter solstice on March 30, 2012. Opportunity is conducting research while located on the north-facing slope of a site called “Greeley Haven.”

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.
Text and Image via NASA

Bio · Digital Media · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Photographics · Technology

NASA Mars Orbiter Catches Twister in Action or Mars Fertilization

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A towering dust devil casts a serpentine shadow over the Martian surface in this image acquired by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona. Via NASA

Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph of a human sperm fertilizing a human egg. The sperm has fused to the egg cell membrane (oolemma) prior to becoming incorporated almost completely into the egg. The zona pellucida has been removed in this preparation. The surface of the egg is covered with dense microvilli. Once the sperm has fused to the egg cell membrane the “zona reaction” takes place which prevents other sperm from entering the egg. Credit: Yorgos Nikas. Wellcome Images. Via Science Museum

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Science · Technology

Project Icarus: Laying the Plans for Interstellar Travel.

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“Why do we pay this obsessive attention to backing up a document, which we can reproduce, when we pay no attention to backing up our civilization?” — Andreas Tziolas.

Ross Andersen: Project Icarus, which will focus on the mission’s technological challenges, is a theoretical engineering study that was launched in 2009 by the British Interplanetary Society with the purpose of designing an interstellar spacecraft. It brings together an international group of volunteer aerospace engineers from government space agencies, universities and the private sector with the purpose of generating technical reports on the engineering layout, functionality, physics, operation, and mission profile of an interstellar probe. You can think of it as a kind of repository for bleeding-edge thinking about interstellar travel.

Project Icarus takes its inspiration from Project Daedalus, a five-year study launched by the British Interplanetary Society in 1973 to determine whether interstellar travel was feasible at all. Project Daedalus ultimately concluded that interstellar was possible, but acknowledged that the technical challenges were significant. Icarus aims to pick up where Daedalus left off, by trying to chip away at some of those technical challenges. Andreas Tziolas, a former research fellow at NASA who holds a Ph.D. in Gravitation and Cosmology, is the Project Leader for Project Icarus. Yesterday I spoke to Tziolas about how and, more interestingly, why we might someday send a mission to the stars.

Click HERE to read the full article and for an interview with Andreas Tziolas who is drafting a blueprint for a mission to a nearby star. Via The Atlantic

Book-Text-Read-Zines · Earthly/Geo/Astro · Fashion · Performativity · Technology

Spacesuit : Fashioning Apollo

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On July 20, 1969, the bodies of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were protected from a lunar vacuum by only twenty-one layers of fabric, each with a distinct yet interrelated function, custom-sewn for them by seamstresses whose usual work was fashioning bras and girdles. This book is the story of those spacesuits. It is a story of the triumph over the military-industrial complex by the International Latex Corporation, best known by its consumer brand of “Playtex”—a victory of elegant softness over engineered hardness, of adaptation over cybernetics.

Spacesuit tells the story of the twenty-one-layer spacesuit in twenty-one chapters addressing twenty-one topics relevant to the suit, the body, and the technology of the twentieth century. The book touches, among other things, on eighteenth-century androids, Christian Dior’s New Look, Atlas missiles, cybernetics and cyborgs, latex, JFK’s carefully cultivated image, the CBS lunar broadcast soundstage, NASA’s Mission Control, and the applications of Apollo-style engineering to city planning. Through it all, the twenty-one-layer spacesuit offers an object lesson. It tells us about redundancy and interdependence and about the distinctions between natural and man-made complexity; it teaches us to know the virtues of adaptation and to see the future as a set of possibilities rather than a scripted scenario.

Nicholas de Monchaux, the author of this book, is an architect and urbanist whose work concerns the nature of cities. He is Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UC Berkeley, and has worked as with Michael Hopkins & Partners in London, and Diller + Scofidio in New York.
de Monchaux’s design work and criticism have been published in Architectural Design, Log, the New York Times, and The New York Times Magazine. His parametric study of ecologically transformed “gutterspace,” Local Code/Real Estates, was a finalist in the WPA 2.0 Competition in 2009 and was featured at the 2010 Biennial of the Americas.

Text taken from Fashioning Apollo

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Science

Earth’s Clouds Are Getting Lower, NASA Satellite Finds

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Earth’s clouds got a little lower — about one percent on average — during the first decade of this century, finds a new NASA-funded university study based on NASA satellite data. The results have potential implications for future global climate.

Scientists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand analyzed the first 10 years of global cloud-top height measurements (from March 2000 to February 2010) from the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument on NASA’s Terra spacecraft. The study, published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, revealed an overall trend of decreasing cloud height. Global average cloud height declined by around one percent over the decade, or by around 100 to 130 feet (30 to 40 meters). Most of the reduction was due to fewer clouds occurring at very high altitudes.

Lead researcher Roger Davies said that while the record is too short to be definitive, it provides a hint that something quite important might be going on. Longer-term monitoring will be required to determine the significance of the observation for global temperatures.

Continue at Science Daily

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Paint/Illust./Mix-Media · Technology

Space Colony Art from the 1970s

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A couple of space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made. These have been converted to jpegs and are available as thumbnails, quarter page, full screen and publication quality images. Illustrations by Don Davis.

Interior including human powered airplane

Colony construction crew at work

Colony construction crew at work

Interior view including looking through large windows

Interior view with long suspension bridge

Toroidal Colonies. Cutaway view, exposing the interior

Please credit photos to NASA Ames Research Center

Human-ities · Science

Can A Scientist Define “Life”? by Carl Zimmer

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Curiosity rover: Will it know life if it finds it? Courtesy NASA

Carl Zimmer: In November 2011, NASA launched its biggest, most ambitious mission to Mars. The $2.5 billion Mars Science Lab spacecraft will arrive in orbit around the Red Planet this August, releasing a lander that will use rockets to control a slow descent into the atmosphere. Equipped with a “sky crane,” the lander will gently lower the one-ton Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. Curiosity, which weighs five times more than any previous Martian rover, will perform an unprecedented battery of tests for three months as it scoops up soil from the floor of the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater. Its mission, NASA says, will be to “assess whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life.”

For all the spectacular engineering that’s gone into Curiosity, however, its goal is actually quite modest. When NASA says it wants to find out if Mars was ever suitable for life, they use a very circumscribed version of the word. They are looking for signs of liquid water, which all living things on Earth need. They are looking for organic carbon, which life on Earth produces and, in some cases, can feed on to survive. In other words, they’re looking on Mars for the sorts of conditions that support life on Earth. Continue HERE

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Sonic/Musical

This Is What Saturn Sounds Like

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Below are radio waves from Saturn recorded by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, time compressed, and shifted down in frequency to an audible range.

Saturn by EverydayElk

From NASA:

The Cassini spacecraft began detecting these radio emissions in April 2002, when Cassini was 374 million kilometers (234 million miles) from the planet, using the Cassini radio and plasma wave science instrument. The radio and plasma wave instrument has now provided the first high resolution observations of these emissions, showing an amazing array of variations in frequency and time. The complex radio spectrum with rising and falling tones, is very similar to Earth’s auroral radio emissions. These structures indicate that there are numerous small radio sources moving along magnetic field lines threading the auroral region.

Via MotherBoard

Earthly/Geo/Astro

How to see the best meteor showers of 2012: Tools, tips and ‘save the dates’

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Whether you’re watching from a downtown area or the dark countryside, here are some tips to help you enjoy these celestial shows of shooting stars. Those streaks of light are really caused by tiny specks of comet-stuff hitting Earth’s atmosphere at very high speed and disintegrating in flashes of light.

Major Meteor Showers (2012)

Quadrantids

Comet of Origin: 2003 EH1
Radiant: constellation Bootes
Active: Dec. 28, 2011-Jan. 12, 2012
Peak Activity: Jan. 4, 2012
Peak Activity Meteor Count: 120 meteors per hour
Meteor Velocity: 25.5 miles (41 kilometers) per second

Notes: A waxing gibbous moon will set at about 3 a.m. local time, allowing for several dark-sky hours of observing before dawn. This shower has a very sharp peak, usually only lasting a few hours, and is often obscured by winter weather. The alternate name for the Quadrantids is the Bootids. Constellation Quadrant Murales is now defunct, and the meteors appear to radiate from the modern constellation Bootes.

Lyrids

Comet of Origin: C/1861 G1 Thatcher
Radiant: constellation Lyra
Active: April 16-25, 2012
Peak Activity: April 21-22, 2012
Peak Activity Meteor Count: 10-20 meteors per hour
Meteor Velocity: 30 miles (49 kilometers) per second

Notes: A new moon on April 21 guarantees a dark sky in the late night and early morning hours, making this year ideal for observing from 10 p.m. to dawn. Lyrid meteors often produce luminous dust trains observable for several seconds.

Eta Aquarids

Comet of Origin: 1P Halley

Radiant: constellation Aquarius
Active: April 19-May 28, 2012
Peak Activity: May 5-6, 2012
Peak Activity Meteor Count: 10 meteors per hour
Meteor Velocity: 44 miles (66 kilometers) per second

Note: While the shower peaks an hour or two before dawn, the year’s closest and largest full moon will be out all night, resulting in a moonlit sky that will wash out all but the brightest meteors. Meteor watchers in the Southern Hemisphere stand the best chance of seeing any meteors.

Delta Aquarids

Comet of Origin: unknown, 96P Machholz suspected
Radiant: constellation Aquarius
Active: July 12-Aug. 23, 2012
Peak Activity: July 28-29, 2012
Peak Activity Meteor Count: Approximately 20 meteors per hour
Meteor Velocity: 25 miles (41 kilometers) per second

Notes: It’s not a good year for the Delta Aquarids — light from the August full moon make them nearly impossible to see.

Perseids

Comet of Origin: 109P/Swift-Tuttle
Radiant: constellation Perseus
Active: July 17-Aug. 24, 2012
Peak Activity: Aug. 12, 2012
Peak Activity Meteor Count: Approximately 100 meteors per hour
Meteor Velocity: 37 miles (59 kilometers) per second

Notes: Moonlight won’t be as big a problem as last year, as its waning crescent won’t rise until after midnight, and the shower peaks from about 10-11 p.m. local on the night of Aug. 12.

Orionids

Comet of Origin: 1P/Halley
Radiant: Just to the north of constellation Orion’s bright star Betelgeuse
Active: Oct. 2-Nov. 7, 2012
Peak Activity: Oct. 21, 2012
Peak Activity Meteor Count: Approximately 25 meteors per hour
Meteor Velocity: 41 miles (66 kilometers) per second

Note: With the second-fastest entry velocity of the annual meteor showers, meteors from the Orionids produce yellow and green colors and have been known to produce an odd fireball from time to time.

Leonids

Comet of Origin: 55P/Tempel-Tuttle
Radiant: constellation Leo
Active: Nov. 6-30, 2012
Peak Activity: Night of Nov. 17, 2012
Peak Activity Meteor Count: Approximately 15 per hour
Meteor Velocity: 44 miles (71 kilometers) per second

Note: The Leonids have not only produced some of the best meteor showers in history, but they have sometimes achieved the status of meteor storm. During a Leonid meteor storm, many thousands of meteors per hour can shoot across the sky. Scientists believe these storms recur in cycles of about 33 years, though the reason is unknown. The last documented Leonid meteor storm occurred in 2002.

Geminids

Comet of Origin: 3200 Phaethon
Radiant: constellation Gemini
Active: Dec. 4-17, 2012
Peak Activity: Dec. 13-14, 2012
Peak Activity Meteor Count: Approximately 120 meteors per hour
Meteor Velocity: 22 miles (35 kilometers) per second

Note: The Geminids are typically one of the best, and most reliable, of the annual meteor showers. This year’s peak falls perfectly with a new moon, guaranteeing a dark sky for the show in the nights on either side of the peak date. This shower is considered one of the best opportunities for younger viewers because the show gets going around 9 or 10 p.m.

Check tips at Physorg

Earthly/Geo/Astro · Photographics

Martian sunrise

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A Martian sunrise was captured in this Viking 2 Lander picture taken June 14, 1978, at the spacecraft’s Utopia Planitia landing site. The data composing this image were acquired just as the Sun peaked over the horizon on the Lander’s 631st sol (Martian solar day). Pictures taken at dawn (or dusk) are quite dark except where the sky is brightened above the Sun’s position. The glow in the sky results as light from the Sun is scattered and preferentially absorbed by tiny particles of dust and ice in the atmosphere. When the Viking cameras are calibrated for darker scenes, the “sky glow” tends to saturate their sensitivity and produce the bright regions seen here. The “banding” and color separation effects are also artifacts, rather than real features, and are introduced because the cameras are not able to record continuous gradations of light. The cameras must represent such gradations in steps (bands) of brightness and color, and the process sometimes produces some “false” colors within the bands. The scattering of light closest to the Sun’s position tends to enhance blue wavelengths. The narrowing sky glow nearer the horizon above the Sun’s position occurs as a result of light extinction. At that elevation, the optical path of sunlight through the atmosphere is at its longest penetration angle, and a substantial portion of the light is simply prevented from reaching the cameras by the dust, ice particles and other material in its way.

NASA’s Langley Research Center was the primary and extended mission manager; JPL assumed management for continued mission operations.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL