| | 10 new stories for 2016/02/09
All Primary Mirrors Fully Installed on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope 
NASA GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER, MD - All 18 of the primary mirrors have been fully installed onto the flight structure of what will become the biggest and most powerful space telescope ever built by humankind - NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).Completion of the huge and complex primary mirror marks a historic milestone and a banner start to 2016 for JWST, commencing the final assembly phase of the colossal observatory that will revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos and our place it in.After JWST launches in slightly less than three years time, the gargantuan observatory will significantly exceed the light gathering power of the currently most powerful space telescope ever sent to space - NASA's Hubble!Indeed JWST is the scientific successor to NASA's 25 year old Hubble Space Telescope.Technicians working inside the massive clean room at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, have been toiling around the clock 24/7 to fully install all 18 primary mirror segments onto the mirror holding backplane structure. This author witnessed ongoing work in progress during installation of the last of the primary mirrors.The engineers and scientists kept up the pace of their assembly work over the Christmas holidays and also during January's record breaking monster Snowzilla storm, that dumped two feet or more of snow across the Eastern US from Washington DC to New York City and temporarily shut down virtually all travel.The team used a specialized robotic arm functioning like a claw to meticulously latch on to, maneuver and attach each of the 18 primary mirrors onto the telescope structure.Each of the 18 hexagonal-shaped primary mirror segments measures just over 4.2 feet (1.3 meters) across and weighs approximately 88 pounds (40 kilograms). They are made of beryllium and about the size of a coffee table.In space, the folded mirror structure will unfold into side by side sections and work together as one large 21.3-foot (6.5-meter) mirror, unprecedented in size and light gathering capability.The telescopes mirror assembly is comprised of three segments - the main central segment holding 12 mirrors and a pair of foldable outer wing-like segments that hold three mirrors each.The painstaking assembly work to piece the primary mirrors together began just before the Thanksgiving 2015 holiday, when the first unit was successfully installed onto the central segment of the mirror holding backplane assembly.One by one the team populated the telescope structure with the primary mirrors at a pace of roughly two per week since the installations started some two and a half months ago.During the installation process each of the gold coated primary mirrors was covered with a black colored cover to protect them from optical contamination.The mirror covers will be removed over the summer for testing purposes, said Lee Feinberg, optical telescope element manager at Goddard, told Universe Today.The two wings were unfolded from their stowed-for-launch configuration to the "deployed" configuration to carry out the mirror installation. They will be folded back over into launch configuration for eventual placement inside the payload fairing of the Ariane V ECA booster rocket that will launch JWST three years from now."Scientists and engineers have been working tirelessly to install these incredible, nearly perfect mirrors that will focus light from previously hidden realms of planetary atmospheres, star forming regions and the very beginnings of the Universe," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, in a statement."With the mirrors finally complete, we are one step closer to the audacious observations that will unravel the mysteries of the Universe."The mirrors were built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado. Ball is the principal subcontractor to Northrop Grumman for the optical technology and lightweight mirror system. The installation of the mirrors onto the telescope structure is performed by Harris Corporation of Rochester, New York. Harris Corporation leads integration and testing for the telescope, according to NASA.Among the next construction steps are installation of the aft optics assembly and the secondary mirror.After that the team will install what's known as the 'heart of the telescope' - the Integrated Science Instrument Module ISIM). Then comes acoustic and vibration tests throughout this year. Eventually the finished assembly will be shipped to Johnson Space Center in Houston "for an intensive cryogenic optical test to ensure everything is working properly," say officials.The flight structure and backplane assembly serve as the $8.6 Billion Webb telescopes backbone.The telescope will launch on an Ariane V booster from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana in 2018.The Webb Telescope is a joint international collaborative project between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).Webb is designed to look at the first light of the Universe and will be able to peer back in time to when the first stars and first galaxies were forming. It will also study the history of our universe and the formation of our solar system as well as other solar systems and exoplanets, some of which may be capable of supporting life on planets similar to Earth."JWST has the capability to look back towards the very first objects that formed after the Big Bang," said Dr. John Mather, NASA's Nobel Prize Winning scientist, in a recent exclusive interview with Universe Today at NASA Goddard.Watch this space for my ongoing reports on JWST mirrors, construction and testing.Stay tuned here for Ken's continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news. Ken KremerThe post All Primary Mirrors Fully Installed on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope appeared first on Universe Today.
Gravitational Waves and How They Distort Space 
It's official: on February 11, 10:30 EST, there will be a big press conference about gravitational waves by the people running the gravitational wave detector LIGO. It's a fair bet that they will announce the first direct detection of gravitational waves, predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago. If all goes as the scientists hope, this will be the kick-off for an era of gravitational wave astronomy: for learning about some of the most extreme and violent events in the cosmos by measuring the tiny ripples of space distortions that emanate from them.Time to brush up on your gravitational wave knowledge, if you haven't already done so! Here's a visualization to help you - and we'll go step by step to see what it means:  Einstein's distorted spacetime In the words of the eminent relativist John Wheeler, Einstein's theory of general relativity can be summarized in two statements: Matter tells space and time how to curve. And (curved) space and time tell matter how to move. ( Here is a slightly longer version on Einstein Online.)Einstein published the final form of his theory in November 1915. By spring 1916, he had realized another consequence of distorting space and time: general relativity allows for gravitational waves, rhythmic distortions which propagate through space at the speed of light.For quite some time, physicists weren't sure whether these gravitational waves were real or a mathematical artifact within Einstein's theory. (For more about this controversy, see Daniel Kennefick's book "Traveling at the Speed of Thought and this article.) But since the 1980s, there has been indirect evidence for these waves (which earned its discoverers a Nobel prize, no less, in 1993).Gravitational waves are emitted by orbiting bodies and certain other accelerated masses. Right now, major international efforts are underway to detect gravitational waves directly. Once detection is possible, the scientists hope to use gravitational waves to "listen" to some of the most violent processes in the universe: merging black holes and/or neutron stars, or the core region of supernova explosions.Just as regular astronomy uses light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation to learn about distant objects, gravitational wave astronomy will decipher the information contained within gravitational waves. And if you go by recent rumors, gravitational wave astronomy might already have kicked off in mid-September 2015. What do gravitational waves do? But what do gravitational waves do? For that, let us look at a simplified, entirely hypothetical situation. (The following are variations on images and animations originally published here on Einstein Online.) Consider particles drifting in space, far from any sources of gravity. Imagine that the particles (red) are arranged in a circle around a center (marked in black):  If a simple gravitational wave were to pass through this image, coming directly at the reader, distances between these particles would change rhythmically as follows:  Note the distinctive pattern: When the circle is stretched in the vertical direction, it is compressed in the horizontal direction, and vice versa. That's typical for gravitational waves ("quadrupole distortion").It's important to keep in mind that this animation, and the ones that will follow, exaggerate the gravitational wave's effect quite considerably. The gravitational waves detectors such as aLIGO hope to measure are much, much weaker. If our hypothetical circle of particles were as large as the Earth's orbit around the Sun, a realistic gravitational wave would distort it by less than the diameter of a hydrogen atom. Gravitational waves moving through space The animation above shows what could be called a "gravitational oscillation." To see the whole wave, we need to consider the third dimension.We talk about a wave when oscillations propagate through space. Consider a water wave: At each point of the surface, we have an oscillation, with the surface rising and falling rhythmically. But it's only the fact that this oscillation propagates, and that we can see a crest moving over the surface, that makes this into a wave.It's the same with gravitational waves. To see that, we will look not at a single circle of freely floating particles, but at many such circles, stacked one behind the other, forming the surface of a cylinder:  In this image, it's hard to see which points are in front and which in the back. Let us join each particle to its nearest neighbors with a blue line, and let us also fill out the area between those lines. That way, the geometry is much more obvious:  Just remember that neither the lines nor the whitish surface is physical. On the contrary, if we want the particles to be maximally susceptible to the effect of the gravitational wave, we should make sure they are truly floating freely, and certainly they shouldn't be linked in any way!Now, let us see what the same gravitational wave we saw before does to this assembly of particles. From this perspective, the wave is passing from the right-hand side in the back towards the left-hand side on the front:  As you can see, the wave is propagating through space. For instance, the point where the vertical distances within the circle of particles is maximal is moving towards the observer. The wave nature can be seen even more clearly if we look at this cylinder directly from the side:  What the animations show is just one kind of simple gravitational wave ("linearly polarized"). Here is another kind ("circularly polarized"):  This, then, is what the gravitational wave hunters are looking for. Except that they do not have particles floating in free space. Instead, their detectors contain test masses (notably large mirrors) elaborately suspended here on Earth, with laser light to detect the minute distance changes caused by gravitational waves.More realistic gravitational wave signals, which contain information about merging black holes or the bulk motion of matter inside a supernova explosion, are more complicated still. They combine many simple waves of different frequencies, and the strength of such waves (their amplitude) will change over time in a characteristic fashion.In these animations, gravitational waves look a bit like wriggling space worms. But these space worms could become the astronomers' best friends, carrying information about the cosmos that is hard or even impossible to obtain in any other way. The post Gravitational Waves and How They Distort Space appeared first on Universe Today.
Peculiar 'Cauliflower Rocks' May Hold Clues To Ancient Mars Life 
Evidence of water and a warmer, wetter climate abound on Mars, but did life ever put its stamp on the Red Planet? Rocks may hold the secret. Knobby protuberances of rock discovered by the Spirit Rover in 2008 near the rock outcrop Home Plate in Gusev Crater caught the attention of scientists back on Earth. They look like cauliflower or coral, but were these strange Martian rocks sculpted by microbes, wind or some other process?When analyzed by Spirit's mini-TES (Mini- Thermal Emission Spectrometer), they proved to be made of nearly pure silica (SiO2), a mineral that forms in hot, volcanic environments. Rainwater and snow seep into cracks in the ground and come in contact with rocks heated by magma from below. Heated to hundreds of degrees, the water becomes buoyant and rises back toward the surface, dissolving silica and other minerals along the way before depositing them around a vent or fumarole. Here on Earth, silica precipitated from water leaves a pale border around many Yellowstone National Park's hot springs.Both at Yellowstone, the Taupo Volcanic Zone in New Zealand and in Iceland, heat-loving bacteria are intimately involved in creating curious bulbous and branching shapes in silica formations that strongly resemble the Martian cauliflower rocks. New research presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting last month by planetary geologist Steven Ruff and geology professor Jack Farmer, both of Arizona State University, explores the possibility that microbes might have been involved in fashioning the Martian rocks, too.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y97xEqXAACU A sizzling visit to El Tatio's geysersThe researchers ventured to the remote geyser fields of El Tatio in the Chilean Atacama Desert to study an environment that may have mimicked Gusev Crater billions of years ago when it bubbled with hydrothermal activity. One of the driest places on Earth, the Atacama's average elevation is 13,000 feet (4 km), exposing it to considerably more UV light from the sun and extreme temperatures ranging from -13°F to 113°F (-10° to 45°C). Outside of parts of Antarctica, it's about as close to Mars as you'll find on Earth.Ruff and Farmer studied silica deposits around hot springs and geysers in El Tatio and discovered forms they call "micro-digitate silica structures" similar in appearance and composition to those on Mars ( Here's a photo). The infrared spectra of the two were also a good match. They're still analyzing the samples to determine if heat-loving microbes may have played a role in their formation, but hypothesize that the features are "micro-stromatolites" much like those found at Yellowstone and Taupo.Stromatolites form when a sticky film of bacteria traps and cements mineral grains to create a thin layer. Other layers form atop that one until a laminar mound or column results. The most ancient stromatolites on Earth may be about 3.5 billion years old. If Ruff finds evidence of biology in the El Tatio formations in the punishing Atacama Desert environment, it puts us one step closer to considering the possibility that ancient bacteria may have been at work on Mars.Silica forms may originate with biology or from non-biological processes like wind, water and other environmental factors. Short of going there and collecting samples, there's no way to be certain if the cauliflower rocks are imprinted with the signature of past Martian life. But at least we know of a promising place to look during a future sample return mission to the Red Planet. Indeed, according to Ruff, the Columbia Hills inside Gusev Crater he short list of potential sites for the 2020 Mars rover.More resources: The post Peculiar ‘Cauliflower Rocks’ May Hold Clues To Ancient Mars Life appeared first on Universe Today.
6th Man on Moon Edgar Mitchell, Dies at 85 on Eve of 45th Lunar Landing Anniversary 
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL - NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the 6th man to walk on the Moon, passed away on Thursday, Feb. 4, on the eve of the 45th anniversary of his Apollo 14 mission lunar landing.Mitchell passed away in West Palm Beach, Fla., just 1 day prior to the 45th anniversary of the Feb. 5, 1971 landing of Apollo 14's Lunar Module "Antares." Mitchell was accompanied by Apollo 14 commander Alan Shephard, Jr., the first American in space, for the descent to the Moon's surface inside "Antares."Meanwhile the third Apollo 14 crewmember command module pilot Stuart A. Roosa, flew solo in orbit around the moon while remaining inside the Command and Service Module "Kitty Hawk" during the lunar landing trek by his two crewmates.Shephard and Mitchell safely touched down in the Fra Mauro highlands on Feb. 5, 1971 and spent a record 33 hours on the Moon. "It's the 45th Anniv of the #Apollo14 landing on the moon & yesterday we lost another Lunar Pioneer Edgar Mitchell," tweeted Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon along with humanities first moon walker Neil Armstrong, during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.Apollo 14 marked NASA's third successful lunar landing mission, following the ill fated Apollo 13 mission, which abandoned its originally planned third moon landing flight after a sudden in flight emergency and explosion in the service module on the way to the Moon.Apollo 14 launched on Jan. 31, 1971 from launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on a 9 day mission to the Moon and back.Altogether only 12 humans, all American's, have walked on the Moon during a total of six NASA lunar landing missions in the 1960s and 1970s. No human has visited the Moon since the Apollo 17 lunar landing in 1972."On behalf of the entire NASA family, I would like to express my condolences to the family and friends of NASA astronaut Edgar Mitchell," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "As a member of the Apollo 14 crew, Edgar is one of only 12 men to walk on the moon and he helped to change how we view our place in the universe."The lead photo was taken by long time space photographer Julian Leek, who was an eyewitness as the Apollo 14 crew departed the Operations and Checkout (O & C) Building at the Kennedy Space Center to board the astrovan transporting them to the launch pad 39. Leek's historic photos are shared exclusively with Universe Today."Again we were off to the moon with Apollo 14 this was my 5th mission to take photographs on a freelance basis, Leek told Universe Today exclusively."The crowds at the O & C building for walk out for Apollo 14, had the same excitement as for Apollo 11 as NASA had just recovered from the near loss of Apollo 13."Another photo from Leek shows the Apollo 14 spacecraft and the Saturn V Moon rocket at the launch pad prior to lift off on Jan. 31, 1971."Every mission was different but on this mission had the first man in space as the commander Alan Shepard," Leek told me."Those days we used film so it was always a race to see who could get it processed the fastest and out to the news services. I have covered Apollo , shuttle and unmanned launches from KSC and CCAFS since 1968."Shepard and Mitchell were assigned to traverse the lunar surface to deploy scientific instruments and perform a communications test on the surface, as well as photograph the lunar surface and any deep space phenomena, according to a NASA description."Mitchell and Shephard set mission records for the time of the longest distance traversed on the lunar surface; the largest payload returned from lunar surface; and the longest lunar stay time (33 hours). They were also the first to transmit color TV from the lunar surface.""Mitchell helped collect 94 pounds of lunar rock and soil samples that were distributed across 187 scientific teams in the United States and 14 other countries for analysis."The Apollo 14 mission ended with a splashdown on Feb. 9, 1971 at 3:04:39 p.m. (CST) in the South Pacific Ocean, approximately 765 nautical miles from American Samoa.Mitchell applied to be an astronaut after President Kennedy issued his famous 1961 call to send astronauts to the moon "before this decade is out.""After Kennedy announced the moon program, that's what I wanted, because it was the bear going over the mountain to see what he could see, and what could you learn, and I've been devoted to that, to exploration, education, and discovery since my earliest years, and that's what kept me going," Mitchell said in 1997 interview for NASA's oral history program."To me, that (spaceflight) was the culmination of my being, and what can I learn from this? What is it we are learning? That's important, because I think what we're trying to do is discover ourselves and our place in the cosmos, and we don't know. We're still looking for that."In his book "The Way of the Explorer", Mitchell wrote, "There was a sense that our presence as space travelers, and the existence of the universe itself, was not accidental but that there was an intelligent process at work."Mitchell retired from NASA in 1973 and resided in Palm Beach County, Florida, since 1975. He is survived by his four daughters, Karlyn Mitchell, Elizabeth Kendall, Kimberly Mitchell, Mary Beth Johnson; two sons, Paul Mitchell and Adam Mitchell; and nine grandchildren.Stay tuned here for Ken's continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news. Ken KremerThe post 6th Man on Moon Edgar Mitchell, Dies at 85 on Eve of 45th Lunar Landing Anniversary appeared first on Universe Today.
Space Station Back At Dusk / See Orion's Curlicue and Five Dawn Planets 
I hadn't been paying attention, so I was pleasantly surprised two nights ago to see the International Space Station (ISS) made a bright pass in the southwestern sky. A quick check revealed that another round of evening passes had begun for locations across the central and northern U.S., Canada and Europe. I like the evening ones because they're so much convenient to view than those that occur at dawn. You can find out when the space station passes over your house at NASA's Spot the Station site or Heavens Above.The six-member Expedition 46 crew are wrapping up their work week on different types of research including botany, bone loss and pilot testing. Plants are being grown on the International Space Station so future crews can learn to become self-sustainable as they go farther out in space. While they work their jobs speeding at more than 17,000 mph overhead, we carry on here on the surface of the blue planet.U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly regularly tweets photos from the station and recently noted the passing of Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who died Thursday at age 85 on the eve of the 45th anniversary of his lunar landing on February 5, 1971. Mitchell was one of only 12 people to walk on the moon and described the experience to the UK Telegraph in 2014:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1NGXL3wc0M Relive the Mitchell's Apollo 14 mission to the moon in 9 minutes and 57 seconds"Looking at Earth from space and seeing it was a planet in isolation ... that was an experience of ecstasy, realizing that every molecule in our bodies is a system of matter created from a star hanging in space. The experience I had was called Samadhi in the ancient Sanskrit, a feeling of overwhelming joy at seeing the Earth from that perspective."Only a human could stand in so barren and forbidding a place and experience such profound joy. You don't have to go to the moon to be moved by sights in the night. Just step outside and watch the ISS glide by or grab a pair of binoculars and aim them at Orion's Belt. Orion stands due south around 8 o'clock in in mid-February practically shouting to be looked at.The Belt is lovely enough, but its surroundings glitter with stars just below the naked eye limit, in particular a little curlicue or "S" between Alnilam and Mintaka composed of 6th and 7th magnitude stars. Look for it in any pair of binoculars and don't stop there. Take a few minutes to sweep the area and enjoy the starry goodness about then drop a field of view south for a look at the Orion Nebula. Inside this fuzzy spot 10 light years across and 1,350 light years away, hundreds of new stars are incubating, waiting for the day they can blaze forth like their compadres that make up the rest of Orion.After touting the advantages of evening sky watching, forgive me if I also direct you to the morning sky and potential sleep loss. Although the waning crescent moon has now departed the scene, the wonderful alignment of Mercury, Venus, Saturn, Mars and Jupiter remains visible in the coming week even as Mercury slowly sinks back toward the eastern horizon. If you haven't seen this "gang of 5", set your alarm for a look starting about an hour before sunrise.Find a location with as wide open a view as possible of the southeastern horizon. Jupiter, Mars and Saturn are plenty high up at that time and easy to spot, but Venus and Mercury hover only 5°-10° high. Both will pose no problem if you can get the trees and buildings out of the way! By the end of the coming week, Mercury will become challenging and then slip away.Clear skies! The post Space Station Back At Dusk / See Orion’s Curlicue and Five Dawn Planets appeared first on Universe Today.
NASA Says "No Chance" Small Asteroid Will Hit Earth On March 5th 
On October 6th, 2013, the Catalina Sky Survey discovered a small asteroid which was later designated as 2013 TX68. As part Apollo group this 30 meter (100 ft) rock is one of many Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that periodically crosses Earth's orbit and passes close to our planet. A few years ago, it did just that, flying by our planet at a safe distance of about 2 million km (1.3 million miles).And according to NASA's Center for NEO Studies (CNEOS) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it will be passing us again in a few weeks time, specifically between March 2nd and 6th. Of course, asteroids pass Earth by on a regular basis, and there is very rarely any cause for alarm. However, there is some anxiety about 2013 TX68's latest flyby, mainly because its distance could be subject to some serious variation. Basically, the asteroid is expected to make its closest approach on March 5th, and will pass Earth at a distance of between 14 million km (9 million) and 17,000 km (11,000 miles). By comparison, the Earth's Moon lies at an average distance of 384,399 km (238,854 miles) from Earth, ranging from about 362,600 km (225,309 mi) at perigee to 405,400 km (251,904 mi) at apogee.This means that there is a chance that, between March 2nd and 6th, this small asteroid will get far closer to Earth than the Moon ever does. The reason for this variation in estimates has to do with the trajectory of the asteroid, which scientists cannot entirely predict. This in turn is due to the fact that they have only been able to track it since its discovery, just three years ago.But before anyone starts contemplating building bomb shelters in their backyard and stocking up on dry goods and bottled water, there are few things that need to be clarified. For one, scientists at CNEOS have determined that there is NO CHANCE the asteroid will impact on the Earth on this pass.And while NASA has identified an extremely remote possibility that 2013 TX68 could impact Earth when it passes us again on Sep. 28th, 2017, the odds of that actually happening are no more than 1-in-250-million. To top it off, the asteroid will be making flybys again in 2046 and 2097, and in both cases the odds of an impact are even lower.As Paul Chodas, manager of the CNEOS, explained in a recent NASA press release: "The possibilities of collision on any of the three future flyby dates are far too small to be of any real concern. I fully expect any future observations to reduce the probability even more... This asteroid's orbit is quite uncertain, and it will be hard to predict where to look for it. There is a chance that the asteroid will be picked up by our asteroid search telescopes when it safely flies past us next month, providing us with data to more precisely define its orbit around the sun." In addition, in the unlikely event that the asteroid does hit Earth, it is too small to cause any significant damage. Consider the asteroid that broke up in the atmosphere over the Russian town of Chelyabinsk in 2013. That asteroid measured roughly 20 meters across (65 feet), and caused significant property damage and over 1500 injuries. However, this damage was limited to the effects of the sonic boom caused by its explosion in the atmosphere.What's more, much of the damage caused by the Chelyabink asteroid was due to the fact that it was undetected before its atmospheric entry - in part because its radiant was close to the Sun. As such, much the harm it caused was the result of panic and the townspeople being unprepared.At roughly 30 meters (100 feet) in diameter, 2013 TX68 would likely produce an air burst with about twice the energy of the Chelyabink asteroid. However, since scientists are actively monitoring this and other NEOs, the odds of it exploding above a community without warning are even worse than it actually entering our atmosphere.Above all, we should remind ourselves that Near-Earth Asteroids pass by Earth all the time and cause no damage. In fact, NASA's Near Earth Object Program (NEOP) indicated that in 2016 alone, NEO's have passed Earth on ten occasions. What's more, the JPL's Asteroid Watch program has listed the next five approaches that will take place in February, and has concluded that these will all take place at distances of between 7,338,608 km ( 4,560,000 mi) and 151,440 km ( 94,100 mi).And before 2016 is out, NEOP anticipates that NEOS will make another 80 passes of Earth. In the vast majority of these cases, the asteroids will be well outside of the Moon's orbit. Of course, if you still feel concerned, you can always check Asteroid Watch's Twitter account for news and updates on the possible approach of asteroids.In the meantime, rest easy. We're not due for Armageddon or an Extinction Level Event anytime soon! Further Reading: NASA, NASA Planetary DefenseThe post NASA Says “No Chance” Small Asteroid Will Hit Earth On March 5th appeared first on Universe Today.
ULA Atlas V Delivers Final GPS IIF Navigation Satellite to Orbit for USAF – Critical to Military/Civilian Users 
CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION - Despite howling winds and unseasonably frigid temperatures in the 'sunshine state', United Launch Alliance's workhorse Atlas V rocket successfully blasted off this morning, Friday, Feb 5, and delivered the final GPS satellite in the IIF series to orbit for the US Air Force.The ULA Atlas V carried the Global Positioning System (GPS) IIF-12 navigation satellite to orbit as the booster beautifully pierced the Florida skies - thus completing the constellation of next generation GPS IIF satellites that are critical to both military and civilian users on a 24/7 basis. These GPS IIF satellites incorporate numerous improvements over the initial series of GPS satellites to provide greater accuracy, increased signals and enhanced performance for users."The GPS IIF series of satellites provides positional accuracy to with 1.5 meters (4 feet)," Lt. Col. Tom Ste. Marie told Universe Today during an interview at the media's launch viewing site.The commercial Atlas V rocket thundered aloft from the seaside Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida at 8:38 a.m. EST, providing a spectacular treat to hordes of eager spectators packing local hotels. Today's launch was the first launch of 2016 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It also marks ULA's first mission of 2016 and the 60th operational GPS mission to launch on a ULA or heritage rocket. It is also the 104th successful launch since the company was formed in December 2006.The first GPS IIF satellite was launched in May 2010.The Global Positioning System GPS IIF-12 satellite was encapsulated inside the 4 meter diameter nosecone atop the twenty story tall Atlas V rocket.Today's picture perfect launch into clear blue skies took place just hours after widespread, drenching showers inundated the Florida space coast and threatened to scrub the mission."Congratulations to the ULA, Boeing and Air Force teams on the successful launch of GPS IIF-12," said Laura Maginnis, ULA vice president, Custom Services, in a statement."We began launching the IIF satellites in May 2010 and have appreciated the outstanding teamwork of everyone involved as we have worked together to deliver all 12 IIF satellites. This system provides incredible capabilities to our women and men in uniform while enabling so many technologies that impact all of our daily lives. We are proud to be GPS's ride to space."These GPS satellites are manufactured by Boeing."This GPS IIF milestone builds on our 40-plus years of GPS experience and a strong government-Boeing partnership," said Dan Hart, vice president, Boeing Government Satellite Systems, in a statement."We continue investing in GPS innovation while driving down costs, keeping GPS prepared to meet current and future demands."Boeing says the GPS IIF-12 will be formally declared operational in approximately one month after completing on-orbit tests.The GPS constellation is currently comprised of 31 satellites including several still functioning satellites from the inaugural series. Altogether Boeing has delivered 50 GPS satellites to the Air Force.The Atlas V rocket delivered the GPS IIF-12 satellite to a semi-synchronous circular orbit at an altitude of approximately 11,000 nautical miles above Earth.The two stage Atlas V launch in the 401 configuration. This includes the first stage powered by the RD AMROSS RD-180 engine and a single engine Centaur upper stage powered by the Aerojet Rocketdyne RL10C-1 engine.There were no strap on solid rocket motors used for this mission. The payload is encapsulated in a 4-meter diameter payload fairing.The launcher also utilizes a newly designed suite of avionics, flight software and ground systems. This upgraded command and control system was designed to reduce cost and improve reliability, says ULA.Starting later in 2017, the Atlas V rocket will power US astronauts back to orbit. They will ascend the newly built crew access tower at pad 41 to board the Boeing-built CST-100 Starliner space taxi bolted atop the Atlas V.Stay tuned here for Ken's continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news. Ken KremerThe post ULA Atlas V Delivers Final GPS IIF Navigation Satellite to Orbit for USAF – Critical to Military/Civilian Users appeared first on Universe Today.
Weekly Space Hangout – Feb. 5, 2016: Dr. Or Graur Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain) Special Guest: Dr. Or Graur, Research Associate at the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University; Researches what type of star leads to a thermonuclear, or “Type Ia,” supernova. Guests:
Carolyn Collins Petersen (thespacewriter.com / space.about.com / @spacewriter )
Morgan Rehnberg (cosmicchatter.org / @MorganRehnberg )
Jolene Creighton (fromquarkstoquasars.com / @futurism)
Alessondra Springmann (@sondy)
Their stories this week: Creating the Moon in a Head-on Collision Space Chimps NASA’s shaky plans for Mars How dense are Saturn’s rings? 67P is fluffy to its core Oh, those cunning, Earth hiding stars Black hole emits jet 3 times longer than milky way We’ve had an abundance of news stories for the past few months, and not enough time to get to them all. So we’ve started a new system. Instead of adding all of the stories to the spreadsheet each week, we are now using a tool called Trello to submit and vote on stories we would like to see covered each week, and then Fraser will be selecting the stories from there. Here is the link to the Trello WSH page (http://bit.ly/WSHVote), which you can see without logging in. If you’d like to vote, just create a login and help us decide what to cover! We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Friday at 12:00 pm Pacific / 3:00 pm Eastern. You can watch us live on Google+, Universe Today, or the Universe Today YouTube page. You can also join in the discussion between episodes over at our Weekly Space Hangout Crew group in G+! The post Weekly Space Hangout – Feb. 5, 2016: Dr. Or Graur appeared first on Universe Today.
What Are The Constellations? 
What comes to mind when you look up at the night sky and spot the constellations? Is it a grand desire to explore deep into space? Is it the feeling of awe and wonder, that perhaps these shapes in the sky represent something? Or is the sense that, like countless generations of human beings who have come before you, you are staring into the heavens and seeing patterns? If the answer to any of the above is yes, then you are in good company!While most people can name at least one constellation, very few know the story of where they came from. Who were the first people to spot them? Where do their names come from? And just how many constellations are there in the sky? Here are a few of the answers, followed by a list of every known constellation, and all the relevant information pertaining to them. Definition: A constellation is essentially a a specific area of the celestial sphere, though the term is more often associated with a chance grouping of stars in the night sky. Technically, star groupings are known as asterisms, and the practice of locating and assigning names to them is known as asterism. This practice goes back thousands of years, possibly even to the Upper Paleolithic. In fact, archaeological studies have identified markings in the famous cave paintings at Lascaux in southern France (ca. 17,300 years old) that could be depictions of the Pleiades cluster and Orion's Belt.There are currently 88 officially recognized constellations in total, which together cover the entire sky. Hence, any given point in a celestial coordinate system can unambiguously be assigned to a constellation. It is also a common practice in modern astronomy, when locating objects in the sky, to indicate which constellation their coordinates place them in proximity to, thus conveying a rough idea of where they can be found.The word constellation has its roots in the Late Latin term constellatio, which can be translated as "set of stars". A more functional definition would be a recognizable pattern of stars whose appearance is associated with mythical characters, creatures, or certain characteristics. It's also important to note that colloquial usage of the word "constellation" does not generally differentiate between an asterism and the area surrounding one.Typically, stars in a constellation have only one thing in common - they appear near each other in the sky when viewed from Earth. In reality, these stars are often very distant from each other and only appear to line up based on their immense distance from Earth. Since stars also travel on their own orbits through the Milky Way, the star patterns of the constellations change slowly over time. History of Observation: It is believed that since the earliest humans walked the Earth, the tradition of looking up at the night sky and assigning names and characters to them existed. However, the earliest recorded evidence of asterism and constellation-naming comes to us from ancient Mesopotamia, and in the form of etchings on clay tablets that are dated to around ca. 3000 BCE.However, the ancient Babylonians were the first to recognize that astronomical phenomena are periodic and can be calculated mathematically. It was during the middle Bronze Age (ca. 2100 - 1500 BCE) that the oldest Babylonian star catalogs were created, which would later come to be consulted by Greek, Roman and Hebrew scholars to create their own astronomical and astrological systems.In ancient China, astronomical traditions can be traced back to the middle Shang Dynasty (ca. 13th century BCE), where oracle bones unearthed at Anyang were inscribed with the names of star. The parallels between these and earlier Sumerian star catalogs suggest they did no arise independently. Astronomical observations conducted in the Zhanguo period (5th century BCE) were later recorded by astronomers in the Han period (206 BCE - 220 CE), giving rise to the single system of classic Chinese astronomy.In India, the earliest indications of an astronomical system being developed are attributed to the Indus Valley Civilization (3300–1300 BCE). However, the oldest recorded example of astronomy and astrology is the Vedanga Jyotisha, a study which is part of the wider Vedic literature (i.e. religious) of the time, and which is dated to 1400-1200 BCE.By the 4th century BCE, the Greeks adopted the Babylonian system and added several more constellations to the mix. By the 2nd century CE, Claudius Ptolemaus (aka. Ptolemy) combined all 48 known constellations into a single system. His treatise, known as the Almagest, would be used by medieval European and Islamic scholars for over a thousand years to come.Between the 8th and 15th centuries, the Islamic world experienced a burst of scientific development, reaching from the Al-Andus region (modern-day Spain and Portugal) to Central Asia and India. Advancements in astronomy and astrology closely paralleled those made in other fields, where ancient and classical knowledge was assimilated and expanded on.In turn, Islamic astronomy later had a significant influence on Byzantine and European astronomy, as well as Chinese and West African astronomy (particularly in the Mali Empire). A significant number of stars in the sky, such as Aldebaran and Altair, and astronomical terms such as alidade, azimuth, and almucantar, are still referred to by their Arabic names.From the end of the 16th century onward, the age of exploration gave rise to circumpolar navigation, which in turn led European astronomers to witness the constellations in the South Celestial Pole for the first time. Combined with expeditions that traveled to the Americas, Africa, Asia, and all other previously unexplored regions of the planet, modern star catalogs began to emerge. IAU Constellations: The International Astronomical Union (IAU) currently has a list of 88 accepted constellations. This is largely due to the work of Henry Norris Russell, who in 1922, aided the IAU in dividing the celestial sphere into 88 official sectors. In 1930, the boundaries between these constellations were devised by Eugène Delporte, along vertical and horizontal lines of right ascension and declination.The IAU list is also based on the 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy in his Almagest, with early modern modifications and additions by subsequent astronomers - such as Petrus Plancius (1552 - 1622), Johannes Hevelius (1611 - 1687), and Nicolas Louis de Lacaille (1713 - 1762).However, the data Delporte used was dated to the late 19th century, back when the suggestion was first made to designate boundaries in the celestial sphere. As a consequence, the precession of the equinoxes has already led the borders of the modern star map to become somewhat skewed, to the point that they are no longer vertical or horizontal. This effect will increase over the centuries and will require revision.Not a single new constellation or constellation name has been postulated in centuries. When new stars are discovered, astronomers simply add them to the constellation they are closest to. So consider the information below, which lists all 88 constellations and provides information about each, to be up-to-date! We even threw in a few links about the zodiac, its meanings, and dates.Enjoy your reading! The post What Are The Constellations? appeared first on Universe Today.
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