NASA – Page 10 – Take off with Natarajan

Image of the Day….” Record-Setting Space walk on May 13 1992…”

May 14, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

On May 13, 1992, following the successful capture of the Intelsat VI satellite, three astronauts continue moving the 4.5 ton communications satellite into the space shuttle Endeavour’s cargo bay. A fellow crew member recorded this 70mm still frame from inside Endeavour’s cabin. Left to right, astronauts Richard J. Hieb, Thomas D. Akers and Pierre J. Thuot, cooperate on the effort to attach a specially designed grapple bar underneath the satellite. Thuot stands on the end of the Remote Manipulator System’s (RMS) arm while Hieb and Akers are on Portable Foot Restraints (PFR) affixed to Endeavour’s portside and the Multipurpose Support Structure (MPESS), respectively. The sections of Earth which form the backdrop for the scene are blanketed with thousands of square miles of clouds.

The Intelsat satellite, stranded in an unusable orbit since its launch aboard a Titan vehicle in March 1990, was equipped with a new perigee kick motor. The satellite was subsequently released into orbit and the new motor fired to put the spacecraft into a geosynchronous orbit for operational use. The capture required three spacewalks: a planned one by astronaut Pierre J. Thuot and Richard J. Hieb who were unable to attach a capture bar to the satellite from a position on the RMS; a second unscheduled but identical attempt the following day; and finally an unscheduled but successful hand capture by Pierre J. Thuot and fellow crewmen Richard J. Hieb and Thomas D. Akers as Commander Daniel C. Brandenstein delicately maneuvered the orbiter to within a few feet of the 4.5 ton communications satellite.

The STS-49 mission, the first flight of shuttle Endeavour, set records for the first (and only, to date) spacewalk involving three astronauts; first shuttle mission to feature four spacewalks; first shuttle mission requiring three rendezvous with an orbiting spacecraft; first attachment of a live rocket motor to an orbiting satellite and first use of a drag chute during a shuttle landing.

Image Credit: NASA

Source…….www.nasa.gov

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” Serene Saturn….”

May 12, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

From a distance Saturn seems to exude an aura of serenity and peace.

In spite of this appearance, Saturn is an active and dynamic world. Its atmosphere is a fast-moving and turbulent place with wind speeds in excess of 1,100 miles per hour (1,800 km per hour) in places. The lack of a solid surface to create drag means that there are fewer features to slow down the wind than on a planet like Earth.

Mimas, to the upper-right of Saturn, has been brightened by a factor of 2 for visibility.

In this view, Cassini was at a subspacecraft latitude of 19 degrees North. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 4, 2015 using a spectral filter centered at 752 nanometers, in the near-infrared portion of the spectrum.

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 96 miles (150 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Source….www.nasa.gov

Natarajan

Image of the Day…” Sunset on Mars…” !!!

May 12, 2015Natarajan1 Comment

You are there! Sunset on Mars

A beautiful new timelapse showing sunset on Mars in mid-April, 2015, from the Mars Curiosity rover.

This new timelapse lets you experience a sunset on our neighboring planet, Mars. NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover captured the images to make this animated gif from the Gale Crater on Mars during Sol 956 – the 956th day of the rover’s activity on the Martian surface. By earthly calendars, it was Wednesday, April 15, 2015.

At the time, the planet Mercury was transiting the sun as seen from Mars. These observations were an attempt to observe Mercury passing in front of the sun, as well as to obtain a Martian sunset with Curiosity’s Mast Cameras.

NASA wrote:

The four images shown in sequence here were taken over a span of 6 minutes, 51 seconds.

This was the first sunset observed in color by Curiosity. The images come from the left-eye camera of the rover’s Mast Camera (Mastcam). The color has been calibrated and white-balanced to remove camera artifacts. Mastcam sees color very similarly to what human eyes see, although it is actually a little less sensitive to blue than people are.

Bottom line: Animated gif of a Martian sunset, April 15, 2015, acquired by the Mars Curiosity rover’s Mast Camera.

Via NASA.

Source….www.earthskynews.org

Natarajan

This seaweed farm looks amazing from space…

May 9, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

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Seaweed farms in South Korea

In January 2014, the Operational Land Imager on NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite captured a series of photos from around South Korea’s Sisan Island. The shallow coastal waters were filled with arrays of evenly spaced patches, like plots in a garden. The verdict? It’s a seaweed farm.
Seaweed Farms in South Korea

The Goddard Space Flight Center’s Flickr page, where the photos are posted, explains that seaweed farming is pretty popular in South Korea. Seaweed patches are rigged up to ropes and buoys to help them stay put and grow better under the constant fluctuation of the tides. More than 90 percent of the seaweed consumed worldwide is farmed, and more than 90 percent of South Korea’s crop, which includes the sushi seaweed known as nori is found off the south coast, where these pictures were taken.

Read the original article on Modern Notion.

Source….

AMANDA HUTCHINSON, MODERN NOTION in

http://www.businessinsider.com

Natarajan

Doomed Russian Spacecraft about to fall….

May 7, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Progress 59 re-supply craft, launched April 28, quickly lost control. Soon it will fall from space and may produce a fiery streak in our sky

Progress is a series of unmanned cargo craft used to resupply the International Space Station.

A unpiloted Russian re-supply ship – carrying 6,000 pounds of food, fuel, and supplies for International Space Station – was declared lost when, shortly after its April 28 launch, it began spinning out of control. This craft will reenter Earth’s atmosphere between May 7 and May 9 and may produce a bright meteor – or fiery streak – across Earth’s sky. But where will it fall, and who will see it? No one knows. Look below for information on what observers might see when the spacecraft re-enters.

The reentry will not be controlled, which means its exact time and location is unknown. Scientists that predict the reentry of orbital objects like this one – damaged satellites and other space debris – have calculated that the Progress 59 may reenter around May 8, but the time uncertainty of some predictions may be +/- 24 hours.

Because over 70% of the surface of Earth is covered by water, there is a high probability that the Progress 59P, also known as Progress M-27M, will reenter over an ocean. But the spacecraft’s orbital inclination also causes it to pass over land areas, so this may slightly increase the chance of reentry over populated areas. The European Space Agency (ESA), which is in close contact with Russian and U.S. authorities regarding the Progress M-27M / 59P mission situation, said on April 30:

In an uncontrolled reentry, the vessel in principle could reenter over any point of land or sea between approximately 51 deg N and 51 deg S latitudes, corresponding to its current orbit.

… We cannot exclude the chance that some portion of (Progress 59) structure, for example the heavy docking mechanism or tanks and thrusters, could survive reentry to reach the surface.

However, according to ESA, disintegration over the oceans is still the most likely scenario.

Progress 59 launch on April 28, via ESA

The Progress 59 spacecraft was launched from Kazakhstan on April 28 and was heading to the International Space Station (ISS) with food, fuel and supplies. An unexpected incident occurred during the spacecraft separation, and video sent back by the spacecraft showed it was spinning out of control.

Russian officials declared on April 29 that they were unable to regain the spacecraft control. It was clear that the doomed spacecraft would return fall back into Earth’s atmosphere. Normally, after delivering its cargo to the ISS, Progress spacecraft would be undocked from the orbital laboratory and then a command is sent to purposely send it to reenter the atmosphere and disintegrate over the South Pacific area, so that any surviving debris would not pose a danger to populated areas.

What observers might see when the spacecraft re-enters. You can track the location of Progress 59 as its orbits is decaying, and even verify predictions to see if it the spacecraft can be seen on its final orbits from your location. Track Progress 59 prior to reentry here.

Or just keep an eye on your skies in the next few days, just in case you happen to be in the spacecraft’s reentry area. The Russian cargo spacecraft should disintegrate around May 8 (+/- 24 hours), as soon as it enters the densest part of our atmosphere, about 70 – 75 miles (112-120 km) high.

A disintegrating spacecraft will look like a spectacular meteor, or fiery streak, across Earth’s sky. It may be visible in daytime. One way of identifying it as a possible manmade object, and not a natural meteor, is that reentering manmade objects appear considerably slower upon reentry than natural space rocks. The re-entry might appear slow enough to allow you to quickly grab a camera and take pictures or video, something that usually is very difficult with much faster natural meteors.

Also, reentering spacecraft have shown significant fragmentation. It is possible to see chunks – possibly in varying colors – creating bursts of light as they fly off the main meteor.

A reentry trajectory from southwest to northeast – as well as from northwest to southeast – is consistent with the orbit of this type of spacecraft.

Before the Progress vehicle reenters the atmosphere, the spacecraft may be visible to the unaided eye from some (unknown) locations as it is still orbiting Earth. Remember that orbiting objects and satellites appear as slowly “moving stars” in our sky. During the last days of the Progress M-27M / 59P mission, the craft should appear to move somewhat faster than other satellites – faster than the apparent speed of ISS – because you are looking at an object that is more than twice as close as other orbiting objects.

While still in orbit, it may show show variations of brightness, which would confirm the object is still tumbling in space and thus reflecting sunlight intermittently.

If you see a slow and bright, fragmenting “meteor” as described here, please share your sighting reports and location in the comments below, or visit EarthSky communities on Facebook, Twitteror Google+.

By the way, according to NASA, the ISS crew is not in danger of running out of food or supplies. SpaceX already had a scheduled launch to bring more supplies to the ISS on June 19.

Bottom line: A Progress 59 re-supply craft, launched from Kazakhstan on April 28, quickly lost control. Soon it will fall from space and may produce a fiery streak in our sky. ESA, NASA and Russian authorities cannot rule out the possibility that some portion of the craft survive reentry to reach Earth’s surface. This post contains information on how to track the spacecraft before re-entry, and on what you might see if you are in the reentry area.

Source….www.earthsky.org

Natarajan

This Day …May 6 1968…in Science…Neil Armstrong’s Close Call…

May 6, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

May 6, 1968. More than a year before he became the first human to set foot on the moon, Neil Armstrong had a narrow escape in the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) at Ellington Air Force Base near Houston. The LLRV had been designed to simulate a descent to the moon’s surface, and all the lunar astronauts trained in it. That day, while Armstrong was piloting, a leaking propellant caused a total failure of his flight controls and forced an ejection.

Armstrong was fine. He bit his tongue hard during his landing by parachute, but otherwise was uninjured. Airspacemag.com described this encounter between Armstrong and another astronaut later that day:

… astronaut Alan Bean saw Armstrong that afternoon at his desk in the astronaut office. Bean then heard colleagues in the hall talking about the accident, and asked them, ‘When did this happen?’ About an hour ago, they replied.

Bean returned to Armstrong and said, ‘I just heard the funniest story!’ Armstrong said, ‘What?’

‘I heard that you bailed out of the LLTV an hour ago.’

‘Yeah, I did,’ replied Armstrong. ‘I lost control and had to bail out of the darn thing.’

Bean later recalled: ‘I can’t think of another person, let alone another astronaut, who would have just gone back to his office after ejecting a fraction of a second before getting killed.’

No doubt … Armstrong had the right stuff!

Bottom line: On May 6, 1968 – more than a year before his famous first moonwalk – Neil Armstrong narrowly escaped disaster while training in the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV).

source….www.earthsky.org

Natarajan

” MARS Matters….” !!!

May 6, 2015May 6, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

On May 5 NASA Administrator and senior science advisor to President Obama, Charles Bolden asked those at The Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C., to repeat after him:

“Mars matters.”

The summit, which is happening from May 5 through 7, features discussions about current and future NASA efforts on the journey to Mars.

So, why does Mars matter to Bolden? Several reasons. Here are a few of the ones he mentioned on Tuesday:

“Because its formulation and evolution are comparable to Earth’s”
“Because we know that at one time it had conditions suitable for life”
“Because what we learn about the Red Planet may tell us more about our own home planet’s history and future”
“Because it might just help us unravel the age-old mystery about whether life exists beyond Earth”

Bolden isn’t the only one who thinks Mars matters.

Some of the most innovative, intelligent, outspoken minds of our age –Buzz Aldrin, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson – have similar ideas on why humans not only need to visit the Red Planet but to colonize it as well.

Here are five of the main reasons they cite:

1. Ensuring the survival of our species

The only home humans have ever known is Earth. But history shows that surviving as a species on this tiny blue dot in the vacuum of space is tough and by no means guaranteed.

The dinosaurs are a classic example: They roamed the planet for 165 million years, but the only trace of them today are their fossilized remains. A colossal asteroid wiped them out.

Putting humans on more than one planet would better ensure our existence thousands if not millions of years from now.

“Humans need to be a multiplanet species,” Musk recently toldastronomer and Slate science blogger Phil Plait. Musk founded the space transport company SpaceX to help make this happen.

Mars is an ideal target because it has a day about the same length as Earth’s and water ice on its surface. Moreover, it’s the best available option: Venus and Mercury are too hot, and the Moon has no atmosphere to protect residents from destructive meteor impacts.

2. Discovering life on Mars

Nye, the CEO of The Planetary Society, said during an episode of StarTalk Radio in March that humanity should focus on sending humans instead of robots to Mars because humans could make discoveries 10,000 times as fast as the best spacecraft explorers we have today. Though he was hesitant to say humans should live on Mars, he agreed there were many more discoveries to be made there.

One monumental discovery scientists could make is determining whether life currently exists on Mars. If we’re going to do that, we’ll most likely have to dig much deeper than NASA’s rovers can. The theory there is thatlife was spawned not from the swamps on adolescent Earth, but from watery chasms on Mars.

The Mars life theory suggests that rocks rich with microorganisms could have been ejected off the planet’s surface from a powerful impact, eventually making their way through space to Earth. It’s not a stretch to imagine, because Martian rocks can be found on Earth. None of those, however, have shown signs of life.

“You cannot rule out the fact that a Mars rock with life in it landing on the Earth kicked off terrestrial life, and you can only really test that by finding life on Mars,” Christopher Impey, a British astronomer and author of over a dozen books in astronomy and popular science, told Business Insider.

3. Improving the quality of life on Earth

“Only by pushing mankind to its limits, to the bottoms of the ocean and into space, will we make discoveries in science and technology that can be adapted to improve life on Earth.”

British doctor Alexander Kumar wrote that in a 2012 article for BBC News where he explored the pros and cons of sending humans to Mars.

At the time, Kumar was living in the most Mars-like place on Earth, Antarctica, to test how he adapted to the extreme conditions both physiologically and psychologically. To better understand his poignant remark, let’s look at an example:

During its first three years in space, NASA’s prized Hubble Space Telescope snapped blurry pictures because of a flaw in its engineering. The problem was fixed in 1993, but to try to make use of the blurry images during those initial years, astronomers developed a computer algorithm to better extract information from the images.

It turns out the algorithm was eventually shared with a medical doctor who applied it to the X-ray images he was taking to detect breast cancer.

The algorithm did a better job at detecting early stages of breast cancerthan the conventional method, which at the time was the naked eye.

“You can’t script that. That happens all the time – this cross pollination of fields, innovation in one, stimulating revolutionary changes in another,”Tyson, the StarTalk radio host, explained during an interview with Fareed Zakaria in 2012.

It’s impossible to predict how cutting-edge technologies used to develop manned missions to Mars and habitats on Mars will benefit other fields like medicine or agriculture. But we’ll figure that out only by “pushing humankind to its limits” and boldy going where we’ve never been before.

4. Growing as a species

Another reason we should go to Mars, according to Tyson, is to inspire the next generation of space explorers. When asked in 2013 whether we should go to Mars, he answered:

“Yes, if it galvanizes an entire generation of students in the educational pipeline to want to become scientists, engineers, technologists, and mathematicians,” he said. “The next generation of astronauts to land on Mars are in middle school now.”

Humanity’s aspirations to explore space are what drive us toward more advanced technological innovations that will undoubtedly benefit mankind in one way or another.

“Space is like a proxy for a lot of what else goes on in society, including your urge to innovate,” Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria. He added: “There’s nothing that drives ambitions the way NASA does.”

5. Demonstrating political and economic leadership

At a February 24 hearing, Aldrin told the US Senate’s Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness that getting to Mars was a necessity not only for science, but also for policy.

“In my opinion, there is no more convincing way to demonstrate American leadership for the remainder of this century than to commit to a permanent presence on Mars,” he said.

If Americans do not go to Mars, someone else will. And that spells political and economic benefit for whoever succeeds.

“If you lose your space edge,” Tyson said during his interview with Zakaria, “my deep concern is that you lose everything else about society that enables you to compete economically.”

With NASA making significant efforts to send American astronauts to Mars by the 2030s – a goal that President Obama set five years ago – Bolden had encouraging words:

“It is my firm belief that we are closer to getting there today than we’ve ever been before in the history of human civilization.”

Source….www.businessinsider.in

Natarajan

” NASA Has no Idea of These Creepy Sounds….”

May 6, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

Scientists at NASA are baffled after a student recorded never-before-heard hissing noises 22 miles above earth.

The eerie noises were recorded using infrasound microphones aboard a NASA student balloon experiment in Arizona and New Mexico and are only audible to the human ear after speeding up the recordings.

It is important to note that infrasounds are capable of travelling extremely long distances, making it even more difficult to pinpoint where the sound originates from.

David Bowman, the student at North Carolina who captured the creepy noises told Live Science: “It sounds kind of like The X-Files.”

There haven’t been acoustic recordings in the stratosphere for 50 years,” he explained to Live Science. “Surely, if we place instruments up there, we will find things we haven’t seen before.”

The balloon, which has infrasound sensors attached to it, reached altitudes of over 123,000 feet (37,500 meters).

It’s the first time infrasound recordings have ever been captured at such a height.

Researchers, who say they’ve never heard many of the strange noises captured by Bowman, have been working to find out what could be creating the sounds. Live Science say their guesses so far include a wind-farm emitting signals below the balloon’s flight path, ocean waves, wind turbulence, and vibrations caused by the balloon’s cables.

Source….www.businessinsider.in

Natarajan

Image of the Day….Last Image from MESSENGER Spacecaft…!!!

May 1, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

MESSENGER’s final image from Mercury

A last image from the MESSENGER spacecraft before crashing onto Mercury’s surface on Thursday. So long, MESSENGER, and thank you.

Here is the final image acquired and transmitted back to Earth by the MESSENGER spacecraft on April 30, 2015, shortly before it struck the planet. MESSENGER spent over four years orbiting Mercury. The image is located within the floor of the 93-kilometer-diameter crater Jokai. The spacecraft struck the planet just north of Shakespeare basin.

The MESSENGER mission was planned originally for a one-year orbit around Mercury. NASA said:

As the first spacecraft ever to orbit Mercury, MESSENGER revolutionized our understanding of the solar system’s innermost planet, as well as accomplished technological firsts that made the mission possible.

Source….www.earthsky.org

Natarajan

Image of the Day….Progress 59 Launch on 28 April 2015…

April 28, 2015NatarajanLeave a comment

An unpiloted ISS Progress 59 cargo craft launched at 3:09 a.m. EDT (7:09 UTC, 1:09 p.m. local time in Baikonur) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. At the time of launch, the International Space Station? was flying about 257 miles over northeast Kazakhstan near the Russian border, having flown over the launch site two and a half minutes before lift off.

Less than 10 minutes after launch, the resupply ship reached preliminary orbit and deployed its solar arrays and navigational antennas as planned.

Russian flight controllers notified the crew members that Progress will make a two-day, 34-orbit rendezvous to the station instead of the planned four-orbit, six-hour journey after telemetry could not confirm the Kurs automated rendezvous antennas deployed.

The Russian cargo craft now is scheduled to arrive at the space station Thursday morning at approximately 5:03 a.m. EDT/9:03 UTC.

Image and launch details via NASA on G+

Bottom line: An unpiloted ISS Progress 59 cargo craft launched at 3:09 a.m. EDT (7:09 UTC, 1:09 p.m. local time in Baikonur) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying food and supplies for the International Space Station.

Source……www.earthsky.org

Natarajan