Gretchen: On The International Space Station, You Have Astronauts From The US And From Other English

What is a Magnetar?

A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field, the decay of which powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.1

History

On March 5, 1979, several months after dropping probes into the toxic atmosphere of Venus, two Soviet spacecraft, Venera 11 and 12, were drifting through the inner solar system on an elliptical orbit. It had been an uneventful cruise. The radiation readings on board both probes hovered around a nominal 100 counts per second. But at 10:51AM EST, a pulse of gamma radiation hit them. Within a fraction of a millisecond, the radiation level shot above 200,000 counts per second and quickly went off scale. 

Eleven seconds later gamma rays swamped the NASA space probe Helios 2, also orbiting the sun. A plane wave front of high-energy radiation was evidently sweeping through the solar system. It soon reached Venus and saturated the Pioneer Venus Orbiter’s detector. Within seconds the gamma rays reached Earth. They flooded detectors on three U.S. Department of Defense Vela satellites, the Soviet Prognoz 7 satellite, and the Einstein Observatory. Finally, on its way out of the solar system, the wave also blitzed the International Sun-Earth Explorer. 

The pulse of highly energetic, or “hard,” gamma rays was 100 times as intense as any previous burst of gamma rays detected from beyond the solar system, and it lasted just two tenths of a second. At the time, nobody noticed; life continued calmly beneath our planet’s protective atmosphere. Fortunately, all 10 spacecraft survived the trauma without permanent damage. The hard pulse was followed by a fainter glow of lower-energy, or “soft,” gamma rays, as well as x-rays, which steadily faded over the subsequent three minutes. As it faded away, the signal oscillated gently, with a period of eight seconds. Fourteen and a half hours later, at 1:17AM on March 6, another, fainter burst of x-rays came from the same spot on the sky. Over the ensuing four years, Evgeny P. Mazets of the Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, and his collaborators detected 16 bursts coming from the same direction. They varied in intensity, but all were fainter and shorter than the March 5 burst. 

Astronomers had never seen anything like this. For want of a better idea, they initially listed these bursts in catalogues alongside the better-known gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), even though they clearly differed in several ways. In the mid-1980s Kevin C.  Hurley of the University of California at Berkeley realized that similar outbursts were coming from two other areas of the sky.  Evidently these sources were all repeating unlike GRBs, which are one-shot events [see “The Brightest Explosions in the Universe,” by Neil Gehrels, Luigi Piro and Peter J. T. Leonard; Scientific American, December 2002]. At a July 1986 meeting in Toulouse, France, astronomers agreed on the approximate locations of the three sources and dubbed them “soft gamma repeaters” (SGRs). The alphabet soup of astronomy had gained a new ingredient.

Another seven years passed before two of us (Duncan and Thompson) devised an explanation for these strange objects, and only in 1998 did one of us (Kouveliotou) and her team find remains of a star that exploded 5,000 years ago. Unless this overlap was pure coincidence, it put the source 1,000 times as far away as theorists had thought—and thus made it a million times brighter than the Eddington limit. In 0.2 second the March 1979 event released as much energy as the sun radiates in roughly 10,000 years, and it concentrated that energy in gamma rays rather than spreading it across the electromagnetic spectrum.2

About 26 magnetars are known (see here).

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar

2 http://solomon.as.utexas.edu/~duncan/sciam.pdf

It’s a long ways down. This is a view from the vantage point of astronaut Shane Kimbrough during his spacewalk last Friday outside the International Space Station. Shane posted this photo and wrote, “ View of our spectacular planet (and my boots) during the #spacewalk yesterday with @Thom_astro.” During the spacewalk with Kimbrough and Thomas Pesquet of ESA, which lasted just over six-and-a-half hours, the two astronauts successfully disconnected cables and electrical connections to prepare for its robotic move Sunday, March 26.

Two astronauts will venture outside the space station again this Thursday, March 30 for the second of three spacewalks. Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson will begin spacewalk preparation live on NASA Television starting at 6:30 a.m. EST, with activities beginning around 8 a.m. Watch live online here.

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Ten minutes till this happens! I can’t watch it live but I’m excited to see what happens in the aftermath…

In about 20 minutes SpaceX will attempt to reuse a rocket booster they’ve already used before. If they succeed it could be a very serious step forward in space exploration capabilities.

Go SpaceX. Pleassssse…

Allow us to reintroduce someone … the name’s Perseverance. 

With this new name, our Mars 2020 rover has now come to life! Chosen by middle school student Alex Mather, Perseverance helps to remind ourselves that no matter what obstacles we face, whether it’s on the way to reaching our goals or on the way to Mars, we will push through. In Alex’s own words, ⁣⁣

“We are a species of explorers, and we will meet many setbacks on the way to Mars. However, we can persevere. We, not as a nation but as humans, will not give up. The human race will always persevere into the future.” ⁣

Welcome to the family.⁣ ❤️

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SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft Departs Space Station

SpaceX - CRS-10 Dragon Mission patch. March 19, 2017

Image above: The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft was released from space station at 5:11 a.m. ET on March 19 after delivering more than 5,500 pounds of cargo. Image Credit: NASA TV. Expedition 50 astronauts Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) and Shane Kimbrough of NASA released the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft from the International Space Station‘s robotic arm at 5:11 a.m. EDT.

U.S. Commercial Cargo Ship Departs the International Space Station

With the spacecraft a safe distance from the station, SpaceX flight controllers in Hawthorne, California, will command its deorbit burn around 10 a.m. The capsule will splash down at about 10:54 a.m. in the Pacific Ocean, where recovery forces will retrieve the capsule and its more than 5,400 pounds of cargo. The cargo includes science samples from human and animal research, external payloads, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities. The deorbit burn and splashdown will not be broadcast on NASA TV.

Image above: Image above: The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft released (Archive image). Image Credit: NASA. NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the non-profit organization that manages research aboard the U.S. national laboratory portion of the space station, will receive time-sensitive samples and begin working with researchers to process and distribute them within 48 hours of splashdown. Dragon, the only space station resupply spacecraft able to return to Earth intact, launched Feb. 19 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and arrived at the station Feb. 23 for the company’s 10th NASA-contracted commercial resupply mission. Related links: Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS): http://www.iss-casis.org/ NASA TV: https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html SpaceX: https://www.nasa.gov/spacex Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html Images (mentioned), Video (NASA TV), Text, Credits: NASA/Hayley Fick. Best regards, Orbiter.ch Full article

New Horizons Flyover of Pluto

Using actual New Horizons data and digital elevation models of Pluto and its largest moon Charon, mission scientists have created flyover movies that offer spectacular new perspectives of the many unusual features that were discovered and which have reshaped our views of the Pluto system – from a vantage point even closer than the spacecraft itself. This dramatic Pluto flyover begins over the highlands to the southwest of the great expanse of nitrogen ice plain informally named Sputnik Planitia. The viewer first passes over the western margin of Sputnik, where it borders the dark, cratered terrain of Cthulhu Macula, with the blocky mountain ranges located within the plains seen on the right. The tour moves north past the rugged and fractured highlands of Voyager Terra and then turns southward over Pioneer Terra – which exhibits deep and wide pits – before concluding over the bladed terrain of Tartarus Dorsa in the far east of the encounter hemisphere. Digital mapping and rendering were performed by Paul Schenk and John Blackwell of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.

How does a microgravity garden grow when there’s no up or down? An advanced chamber, about the size of a mini-fridge, is giving us a clearer perspective of plant growth habits. Without gravity and the addition of a wide variety of light and humidity settings, the plants cultivated on the International Space Station provide a world of opportunity to study space-based agricultural cycles.

Learn more about our space garden HERE.

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A Lunar Eclipse Animation

Credit & Copyright: Larry Koehn

     Meet SA-500D, the first Saturn V rocket. Wernher von Braun designed her as the dynamic test article for the program. She was assembled stage by stage inside the Dynamic Test Stand at NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center, then subjected to lateral, longitudinal, and torsional vibrations equal of that of launch for a total of 450 hours.

     The first time I visited SA-500D in 1999, she was outside on the US Space and Rocket Center property. Her paint was faded and worn, having sat there since 1969. In 2005, full restoration began, and she was moved inside her new facility, the Davidson Center for Space Exploration in Huntsville, Alabama. I’m happy to report that as of Sunday, April 27, 2014, she looks great. Viewing the newly restored rocket is magnitudes more impactful. The difference is incredible.

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Like sailors of old, the Cassini mission team fondly thinks of the spacecraft as “she."  On April 22, she begins her Grand Finale, a spectacular end game—22 daring dives between the planet’s atmosphere and innermost rings. Here are 10 things to know about her Grand Finale.

1. She’s Broadcasting Live This Week

On Tuesday, April 4 at 3 p.m. EDT  (noon PDT), At Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Cassini team host a news briefing to discuss the mission’s Grand Finale.

Tune in Tuesday: youtube.com/nasajpl/live

2. She’s Powered in Part By … Titan

Cassini left Earth with less than 1/30th of the propellant needed to power all her adventures at Saturn. The navigation team used the gravity of Saturn’s giant moon Titan to change course and extend the spacecraft’s exploration of Saturn. Titan also provides the gravity assist to push Cassini into its final orbits.

More on Cassini’s navigation: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/navigation/

3. She’s a Robot

Cassini is an orbiter that was named for 18th century astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. She was designed to be captured by Saturn’s gravity and then explore it in detail with a suite of 12 powerful science instruments.

More on the Spacecraft: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/cassini-orbiter/

4. She Brought a Friend to Saturn

Cassini carried the European Space Agency’s Huygens Probe, which in 2005 descended through Titan’s thick, perpetual clouds and made the most distant landing to date in our solar system.

More on Huygens: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/huygens-probe/

5. She’s a Great Photographer

Your mobile phone likely captures dozens of megapixels in images. Cassini, using 1990s technology closer to one megapixel cameras, has returned some of the most stunning images in the history of solar system exploration.

Cassini Hall of Fame Images: go.nasa.gov/2oec6H2 More on Cassini’s Cameras: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/imaging-science-subsystem/

6. She’s an Inspiration

Those great images have inspired artist’s and amateur image processors to create truly fantastic imagery inspired by the beauty of Saturn. Feeling inspired? There’s still time to share your Cassini-inspired art with us.

Cassini Inspires Campaign: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/cassiniinspires/

7. She’s Got a Long History

Two decades is a long time to live in the harsh environment of outer space (respect to the fast-approaching 40-year-old twin Voyager spacecraft). Launched in 1997, Cassini logged a lot of milestones over the years.

Explore the Cassini Timeline: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/the-journey/timeline/

8. She Keeps a Diary

And, you can read it. Week after week going back to 1997, Cassini’s adventures, discoveries and status have been chronicled in the mission’s weekly significant events report.

Read It: https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/?topic=121

9. She’s Got a Fancy New App

Cassini was the prototype for NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System 3-D visualization software, so it’s fitting the latest Cassini module in the free, downloadable software is the most detailed, elaborate visualization of any mission to date.

Fly the Mission - Start to Finish: http://eyes.nasa.gov/cassini

10. She’s Going Out in a Blaze of Glory

In addition to all the new information from 22 orbits in unexplored space, Cassini’s engineers reprogrammed the spacecraft to send back details about Saturn’s atmosphere to the very last second before the giant planet swallows her up on Sept. 15, 2017.

More on the Grand Finale: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/grandfinale

Discover more lists of 10 things to know about our solar system HERE.

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