Flying With Fuel From Plants: The Eco-friendly Way To Go

Spacewalk Friday: Installing a New "Parking Spot" on Station

This Friday, Aug. 19, two U.S. astronauts will install a new gateway for American commercial crew spacecraft at the International Space Station. 

Commercial crew flights from Florida’s Space Coast to the International Space Station will restore America’s human spaceflight launch capability and increase the time U.S. crews can dedicate to scientific research.

The adapter being installed (imaged below) was launched on a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft and arrived on orbit July 20. This ring is known as an International Docking Adapter, or IDA, and its main purpose is to provide a port for spacecraft bringing astronauts to the station in the future. Outfitted with a host of sensors and systems, the adapter is built so spacecraft systems can automatically perform all the steps of arrival and docking with the station without input from the astronauts. 

NASA astronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins will perform the spacewalk to install the equipment this Friday, Aug. 19. This will be the fourth spacewalk in Williams’ career and the first for Rubins.

Four previous spacewalks...like the one below...helped set the stage for installation of this docking adapter. During those previous spacewalks, other crew members laid hundreds of feet of power and data cables outside the space station. 

On Wednesday, the robotics team using the Canadarm2 and its attached “Dextre” manipulator, will reach into the SpaceX Dragon trunk and pull out the docking adapter and position it for Friday’s spacewalk activities.

The morning of the spacewalk, while the astronauts are getting suited up, the robotic arm will position the docking adaptor near the port so that it will be ready for installation.

The two astronauts will venture outside the space station to install the first International Docking Adapter (IDA). This new adapter port will provide a parking space for U.S. Commercial Crew vehicles.

Watch LIVE!

Coverage of the spacewalk begins at 6:30 a.m. EDT on Friday, Aug. 19; with the spacewalk scheduled to begin at 8:05 a.m. EDT. Stream live online HERE. 

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10 Things: Calling All Pluto Lovers

June 22 marks the 40th anniversary of Charon’s discovery—the dwarf planet Pluto’s largest and first known moon. While the definition of a planet is the subject of vigorous scientific debate, this dwarf planet is a fascinating world to explore. Get to know Pluto’s beautiful, fascinating companion this week.

1. A Happy Accident

Astronomers James Christy and Robert Harrington weren’t even looking for satellites of Pluto when they discovered Charon in June 1978 at the U.S. Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station in Arizona – only about six miles from where Pluto was discovered at Lowell Observatory. Instead, they were trying to refine Pluto's orbit around the Sun when sharp-eyed Christy noticed images of Pluto were strangely elongated; a blob seemed to move around Pluto. 

The direction of elongation cycled back and forth over 6.39 days―the same as Pluto's rotation period. Searching through their archives of Pluto images taken years before, Christy then found more cases where Pluto appeared elongated. Additional images confirmed he had discovered the first known moon of Pluto.

2. Forever and Always

Christy proposed the name Charon after the mythological ferryman who carried souls across the river Acheron, one of the five mythical rivers that surrounded Pluto's underworld. But Christy also chose it for a more personal reason: The first four letters matched the name of his wife, Charlene. (Cue the collective sigh.)

3. Big Little Moon

Charon—the largest of Pluto’s five moons and approximately the size of Texas—is almost half the size of Pluto itself. The little moon is so big that Pluto and Charon are sometimes referred to as a double dwarf planet system. The distance between them is 12,200 miles (19,640 kilometers).

4. A Colorful and Violent History

Many scientists on the New Horizons mission expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world; instead, they found a landscape covered with mountains, canyons, landslides, surface-color variations and more. High-resolution images of the Pluto-facing hemisphere of Charon, taken by New Horizons as the spacecraft sped through the Pluto system on July 14 and transmitted to Earth on Sept. 21, reveal details of a belt of fractures and canyons just north of the moon’s equator.

5. Grander Canyon

This great canyon system stretches more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) across the entire face of Charon and likely around onto Charon’s far side. Four times as long as the Grand Canyon, and twice as deep in places, these faults and canyons indicate a titanic geological upheaval in Charon’s past.

6. Officially Official

In April 2018, the International Astronomical Union—the internationally recognized authority for naming celestial bodies and their surface features—approved a dozen names for Charon’s features proposed by our New Horizons mission team. Many of the names focus on the literature and mythology of exploration.

7. Flying Over Charon

This flyover video of Charon was created thanks to images from our New Horizons spacecraft. The “flight” starts with the informally named Mordor (dark) region near Charon’s north pole. Then the camera moves south to a vast chasm, descending to just 40 miles (60 kilometers) above the surface to fly through the canyon system.

8. Strikingly Different Worlds

This composite of enhanced color images of Pluto (lower right) and Charon (upper left), was taken by New Horizons as it passed through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015. This image highlights the striking differences between Pluto and Charon. The color and brightness of both Pluto and Charon have been processed identically to allow direct comparison of their surface properties, and to highlight the similarity between Charon’s polar red terrain and Pluto’s equatorial red terrain.

9. Quality Facetime

Charon neither rises nor sets, but hovers over the same spot on Pluto's surface, and the same side of Charon always faces Pluto―a phenomenon called mutual tidal locking.

10. Shine On, Charon

Bathed in “Plutoshine,” this image from New Horizons shows the night side of Charon against a star field lit by faint, reflected light from Pluto itself on July 15, 2015.

Read the full version of this week’s ‘10 Things to Know’ article on the web HERE.

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It’s Friday...Come Space Out with Us

It’s Friday…which seems like a great excuse to take a look at some awesome images from space.

First, let’s start with our home planet: Earth.

This view of the entire sunlit side of Earth was taken from one million miles away…yes, one MILLION! Our EPIC camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory captured this image in July 2015 and the picture was generated by combining three separate images to create a photographic-quality image.

Next, let’s venture out 4,000 light-years from Earth.

This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is not only stunning…but shows the colorful “last hurrah” of a star like our sun. This star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star’s remaining core. Our sun will eventually burn out and shroud itself with stellar debris…but not for another 5 billion years.

The material expelled by the star glows with different colors depending on its composition, its density and how close it is to the hot central star. Blue samples helium; blue-green oxygen, and red nitrogen and hydrogen.

Want to see some rocks on Mars?

Here’s an image of the layered geologic past of Mars revealed in stunning detail. This color image was returned by our Curiosity Mars rover, which is currently “roving” around the Red Planet, exploring the “Murray Buttes” region.

In this region, Curiosity is investigating how and when the habitable ancient conditions known from the mission’s earlier findings evolved into conditions drier and less favorable for life.

Did you know there are people currently living and working in space?

Right now, three people from three different countries are living and working 250 miles above Earth on the International Space Station. While there, they are performing important experiments that will help us back here on Earth, and with future exploration to deep space.

This image, taken by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins shows the stunning moonrise over Earth from the perspective of the space station.

Lastly, let’s venture over to someplace REALLY hot…our sun.

The sun is the center of our solar system, and makes up 99.8% of the mass of the entire solar system…so it’s pretty huge. Since the sun is a star, it does not have a solid surface, but is a ball of gas held together by its own gravity. The temperature at the sun’s core is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius)…so HOT!

This awesome visualization appears to show the sun spinning, as if stuck on a pinwheel. It is actually the spacecraft, SDO, that did the spinning though. Engineers instructed our Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to roll 360 degrees on one axis, during this seven-hour maneuver, the spacecraft took an image every 12 seconds.

This maneuver happens twice a year to help SDO’s imager instrument to take precise measurements of the solar limb (the outer edge of the sun as seen by SDO).

Thanks for spacing out with us...you may now resume your Friday. 

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Swift: Our Sleuth for the Universe’s Gamma-ray Bursts

The universe is full of mysteries, and we continue to search for answers. How can we study matter and energy that we can’t see directly? What’s it like inside the crushed core of a massive dead star? And how do some of the most powerful explosions in the universe evolve and interact with their surrounding environment? 

Luckily for us, NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is watching the skies and helping astronomers answer that last question and more! As we celebrate its 15-year anniversary, let’s get you up to speed about Swift.

What are gamma-ray bursts and why are they interesting?

Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe. When they occur, they are about a million trillion times as bright as the Sun. But these bursts don’t last long — from a few milliseconds (we call those short duration bursts) to a few minutes (long duration). In the 1960s, spacecraft were watching for gamma rays from Earth — a sign of nuclear testing. What scientists discovered, however, were bursts of gamma rays coming from space!

Gamma-ray bursts eventually became one of the biggest mysteries in science. Scientists wanted to know: What events sparked these fleeting but powerful occurrences?

So how do gamma-ray bursts and Swift connect?

When it roared into space on a rocket, Swift’s main goals included understanding the origin of gamma-ray bursts, discovering if there were additional classes of bursts (besides the short and long ones), and figuring out what these events could tell us about the early universe.

With Swift as our eyes on the sky, we now know that gamma-ray bursts can be some of the farthest objects we’ve ever detected and lie in faraway galaxies. In fact, the closest known gamma-ray burst occurred more than 100 million light-years from us. We also know that these explosions are associated with some of the most dramatic events in our universe, like the collapse of a massive star or the merger of two neutron stars — the dense cores of collapsed stars.

Swift is still a powerful multiwavelength observatory and continues to help us solve mysteries about the universe. In 2018 it located a burst of light that was at least 10 times brighter than a typical supernova. Last year Swift, along with NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, announced the discovery of a pair of distant explosions which produced the highest-energy light yet seen from gamma-ray bursts.

Swift can even study much, much closer objects like comets and asteroids!

Why is Swift unique?

How do we study events that happen so fast? Swift is first on the scene because of its ability to automatically and quickly turn to investigate sudden and fascinating events in the cosmos. These qualities are particularly helpful in pinpointing and studying short-lived events.

The Burst Alert Telescope, which is one of Swift’s three instruments, leads the hunt for these explosions. It can see one-sixth of the entire sky at one time. Within 20 to 75 seconds of detecting a gamma-ray burst, Swift automatically rotates so that its X-ray and ultraviolet telescopes can view the burst.

Because of the “swiftness” of the satellite, it can look at a lot in 24 hours — between 50 and 100 targets each day! Swift has new “targets-of-opportunity” to look at every day and can also look at objects for follow up observations. By doing so, it can see how events in our cosmos change over time.

How did Swift get its name?

You may have noticed that lots of spacecraft have long names that we shorten to acronyms. However, this isn’t the case for Swift. It’s named after the bird of the same name, and because of the satellite’s ability to move quickly and re-point its science instruments.

When it launched, Swift was called NASA’s Swift Observatory. But in January 2018, Swift was renamed the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory in memory of the mission’s original principal investigator, Neil Gehrels.

Follow along with Swift to see a typical day in the life of the satellite:

Roman’s Family Portrait of Millions of Galaxies

About 15 years ago, our Hubble Space Telescope captured this ultra-deep field image of space, revealing thousands of galaxies tucked away in a seemingly empty spot in the sky.

Now, imagine this view of the cosmos – and all the mysteries in it – at a scale 300 times larger than Hubble's.

Our upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Telescope could capture just that.

Roman recently released this gorgeous simulated image that gives us a preview of what the telescope could see. Each tiny speck represents a galaxy filled with billions of stars. And it’s more than just a pretty picture – scientists could learn a lot from an observation like this!

Since Roman can see much more of the sky at a time, it could create an ultra-deep field image that’s far larger than Hubble’s. So instead of revealing thousands of galaxies, Roman would see millions!

Roman’s ability to look far out into space with such an expansive view would help us better understand what the universe was like when it was young. For example, scientists could study a lot of cosmic transitions, like how galaxies switch from star-making factories to a quieter stage when star formation is complete and how the universe went from being mainly opaque to the brilliant starscape we see today.

And these are just a few of the mysteries Roman could help us solve!

Set to launch in the mid-2020s, our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, is designed to unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter, search for and image exoplanets, and explore many topics in infrared astrophysics. You can learn about some of the other science Roman will do here.

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An Addition to our Space Rock Collection

On October 20th, our OSIRIS-REx mission will make its first attempt to collect and retrieve a sample of asteroid Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid. On sample collection day, Bennu will be over 200 million miles away from Earth.  

Asteroids are the building blocks of our solar system. A sample of this ancient material can tell us about the history of our planet and the origins of life. Science results published from the mission on October 8th confirm that Bennu contains carbon in a form often found in biology or in compounds associated with biology.

To collect a sample, OSIRIS-REx will attempt a method NASA has never used before – called Touch-And-Go (TAG).  First, the spacecraft extends its robotic sampling arm, the Touch-And-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism (TAGSAM) – from its folded storage position. The spacecraft’s two solar panels then move into a “Y-wing” configuration over the spacecraft’s body, which positions them safely up and away from the asteroid’s surface during touch down. This configuration also places the spacecraft’s center of gravity directly over the TAGSAM collector head, which is the only part of the spacecraft that will contact Bennu’s surface.

Finding a safe sample collection site on Bennu’s rocky landscape was a challenge. During the sampling event, the spacecraft, which is the size of a large van, will attempt to touch down in an area that is only the size of a few parking spaces, and just a few steps away from enormous boulders.

The spacecraft will only make contact with Bennu for a matter of seconds - just long enough to blow nitrogen gas onto the surface to roil up dust and small pebbles, which will then be captured for a return to Earth.

We need to conduct a few tests before we can confirm we collected a large enough sample (about 2 oz). First, OSIRIS-REx will take images of the collector head to see if it contains rocks and dust. Second, the spacecraft will spin with the TAGSAM extended to determine the mass of collected material. If these measures show a successful collection, we will stow the sample for return to Earth. If sufficient sample has not been collected, the spacecraft has onboard nitrogen charges for two more attempts. The next TAG attempt would be made no earlier than January 2021.

Despite the many challenges, the OSIRIS-REx team is ready. They’ve practiced and prepared for this moment.

Join in with #ToBennuAndBack and tune in on October 20th.

Learn more about the OSIRIS-REx countdown to TAG HERE.

Learn more about the OSIRIS-REx mission HERE, or follow the mission on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Is the earth really as beautiful as they say from space?

The 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season: What We Learned

The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was among the top ten most active seasons in recorded history. Our experts are exploring what made this year particularly active and the science behind some of the biggest storms to date.

After a period of 12 years without a Category 3 or higher hurricane making landfall in the U.S., Hurricane Harvey made landfall over Texas as a Category 4 hurricane this August.

Harvey was also the biggest rainfall event ever to hit the continental U.S. with estimates more than 49 inches of rain.

Data like this from our Global Precipitation Measurement Mission, which shows the amount of rainfall from the storm and temperatures within the story, are helping scientists better understand how storms develop. 

The unique vantage point of satellites can also help first responders, and this year satellite data helped organizations map out response strategies during hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria. 
 

In addition to satellites, we use ground stations and aircraft to track hurricanes.

We also use the capabilities of satellites like Suomi NPP and others that are able to take nighttime views. In this instance, we were able to view the power outages in Puerto Rico. This allowed first responders to see where the location of impacted urban areas.

The combined effort between us, NOAA, FEMA and other federal agencies helps us understand more about how major storms develop, how they gain strength and how they affect us. 

To learn more about how we study storms, go to www.nasa.gov/Hurricanes.

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See the Universe in a New Way with the Webb Space Telescope's First Images

Are you ready to see unprecedented, detailed views of the universe from the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful space observatory ever made? Scroll down to see the first full-color images and data from Webb. Unfold the universe with us. ✨

Carina Nebula

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars, called the Cosmic Cliffs, is the edge of the star-birthing Carina Nebula. Usually, the early phases of star formation are difficult to capture, but Webb can peer through cosmic dust—thanks to its extreme sensitivity, spatial resolution, and imaging capability. Protostellar jets clearly shoot out from some of these young stars in this new image.

Southern Ring Nebula

The Southern Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula: it’s an expanding cloud of gas and dust surrounding a dying star. In this new image, the nebula’s second, dimmer star is brought into full view, as well as the gas and dust it’s throwing out around it. (The brighter star is in its own stage of stellar evolution and will probably eject its own planetary nebula in the future.) These kinds of details will help us better understand how stars evolve and transform their environments. Finally, you might notice points of light in the background. Those aren’t stars—they’re distant galaxies.

Stephan’s Quintet

Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies near each other, was discovered in 1877 and is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” This new image brings the galaxy group from the silver screen to your screen in an enormous mosaic that is Webb’s largest image to date. The mosaic covers about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter; it contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. Never-before-seen details are on display: sparkling clusters of millions of young stars, fresh star births, sweeping tails of gas, dust and stars, and huge shock waves paint a dramatic picture of galactic interactions.

WASP-96 b

WASP-96 b is a giant, mostly gas planet outside our solar system, discovered in 2014. Webb’s Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) measured light from the WASP-96 system as the planet moved across the star. The light curve confirmed previous observations, but the transmission spectrum revealed new properties of the planet: an unambiguous signature of water, indications of haze, and evidence of clouds in the atmosphere. This discovery marks a giant leap forward in the quest to find potentially habitable planets beyond Earth.

Webb's First Deep Field

This image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, looks 4.6 billion years into the past. Looking at infrared wavelengths beyond Hubble’s deepest fields, Webb’s sharp near-infrared view reveals thousands of galaxies—including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared—in the most detailed view of the early universe to date. We can now see tiny, faint structures we’ve never seen before, like star clusters and diffuse features and soon, we’ll begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions.

These images and data are just the beginning of what the observatory will find. It will study every phase in the history of our Universe, ranging from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own Solar System.

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Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

How We’re Accelerating Our Missions to the Moon

Our Space Launch System isn’t your average rocket. It is the only rocket that can send our Orion spacecraft, astronauts and supplies to the Moon. To accomplish this mega-feat, it has to be the most powerful rocket ever built. SLS has already marked a series of milestones moving it closer to its first launch, Artemis.

Here are four highlights you need to know about — plus one more just on the horizon.

Counting Down

Earlier this month, Boeing technicians at our Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans successfully joined the top part to the core stage with the liquid hydrogen tank. The core stage will provide the most of the power to launch Artemis 1. Our 212-foot-tall core stage, the largest the we have ever built, has five major structural parts. With the addition of the liquid hydrogen tank to the forward join, four of the five parts have been bolted together. Technicians are finishing up the final part — the complex engine section — and plan to bolt it in place later this summer.  

Ready to Rumble

This August, to be exact. That’s when the engines for Artemis 1 will be added to the core stage. Earlier this year, all the engines for the first four SLS flights were updated with controllers, tested and officially cleared “go” for launch. We’ve saved time and money by modifying 16 RS-25 engines from the space shuttle and creating a more powerful version of the solid rocket boosters that launched the shuttle. In April, the last engine from the shuttle program finished up a four-year test series that included 32 tests at our Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. These acceptance tests proved the engines could operate at a higher thrust level necessary for deep space travel and that new, modernized flight controllers —the “brains” of the engine — are ready to send astronauts to the Moon in 2024.

Getting a Boost

Our industry partners have completed the manufacture and checkout of 10 motor segments that will power two of the largest propellant boosters ever built. Just like the engines, these boosters are designed to be fast and powerful. Each booster burns six tons of propellant every second, generating a max thrust of 3.6 million pounds for two minutes of pure awesome. The boosters will finish assembly at our Kennedy Space Center in Florida and readied for the rocket’s first launch in 2020. In the meantime, we are well underway in completing the boosters for SLS and Orion’s second flight in 2022.

Come Together

Meanwhile, other parts of the rocket are finished and ready for the ride to the Moon. The final piece of the upper part of the rocket, the launch vehicle stage adapter, will soon head toward Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Two other pieces, including the interim cryogenic propulsion stage that will provide the power in space to send Orion on to the Moon, have already been delivered to Kennedy.

Looking to the Future

Our engineers evaluated thousands of designs before selecting the current SLS rocket design. Now, they are performing critical testing and using lessons learned from current assembly to ensure the initial and future designs are up to the tasks of launching exploration missions for years to come. This real-time evaluation means engineers and technicians are already cutting down on assembly time for future mission hardware, so that we and our partners can stay on target to return humans to the Moon by 2024 — to stay so we can travel on to Mars.

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