Videos: “Space to Ground” ISS report – Aug.14.2020

Here is the latest episode in NASA’s Space to Ground weekly report on activities related to the International Space Station:

** A Bridge Above: 20 Years of the International Space Station – NASA

“What if we built a bridge, between and above all nations, to jointly discover the galaxy’s great unknowns?” Join us this fall as we prepare to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the International Space Station. As a global endeavor, 240 people from 19 countries have visited the unique microgravity laboratory, which has hosted more than 2,800 research investigations from scientists in over 100 nations.

** NASA Astronaut Chris Cassidy Answers Recorded Questions from Girl Scouts of the USA – NASA

** Additive Manufacturing In Space Workshop 7/28/2020 – ISS National Lab

The 2020 International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory Additive Manufacturing in Space Workshop was an online, half-day event hosted by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), manager of the ISS National Lab. The workshop discussed how rapid developments in additive manufacturing create new opportunities for advanced materials research and development (R&D) that could drive manufacturing innovation for applications both on Earth and in space.

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“Dark Was the Night” – New book about Blind Willie Johnson and his music on Voyager I

An announcement from Gary Golio:

Black Blues Legend Blind WiIlie Johnson Blasts into Outer Space
in New Picture Book about His Soul-Stirring Song

 Ask Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Lucinda Williams and Jack White to name the slide-guitar player they most admire, and they’ll all say Blind Willie Johnson. What those musicians may not know is that one of his songs found its way to the depths of outer space. In Dark Was the Night – Blind Willie Johnson’s Journey to the Stars, NY Times-bestselling author Gary Golio and Caldecott Honoree E. B. Lewis weave a magical tale of how the healing power of music can turn darkness into light.

Born in 1897, young Willie shone as he sang and played a cigar box guitar made by his father. But his bright childhood fell dark when he lost both his mother and his sight. Fortunately, his love of music led him back into the light. He began singing in churches and later brought his unique blend of gospel-blues to street corners all over Texas. Willie’s powerful voice, joined to the wail of his slide guitar, moved even more people when he cut some records and his songs were played on the radio. Yet by the time he died, he and his music were largely forgotten.

Then, in 1977, Willie’s haunting song, “Dark Was the Night“, was launched into space on the Voyager I space probe’s famous Golden Record. There, along with the many sounds and sights of planet Earth, is the soul-stirring song of a blind man, telling us not to be afraid of the dark, and reminding us that we are never really alone.

“An ode to a too-little-discussed musician and an excellent introduction to his amazing musical talent.”
Kirkus, *starred review*

“An inspiring story of one man’s commitment to lifting up himself and those around him with his music.
An American treasure who shouldn’t go unsung.”
Booklist

“Lewis’s expressive watercolors depict the subject’s humble country beginnings as well as the joy that he felt when he sang and played”
“A beautiful, timely tribute to a little-known musician and space venture.”
School Library Journal, *starred review*

Gary Golio is the author of the NY Times bestseller JIMI: Sounds Like a Rainbow – A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix, winner of a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award; Bird & Diz and Strange Fruit – Billie Holiday and the Power of a Protest Song, both ALA Notables; and other books about legendary artists. A writer and musician, Golio has been featured on NPR’s “Weekend Edition”, CBS-TV’s “Sunday Morning News,” and on radio stations nationwide. He lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife, children’s book author Susanna Reich.

E.B. Lewis is a fine artist and the acclaimed illustrator of over 70 books, among them Coming On Home Soon by Jacqueline Woodson (Caldecott Honor Award), Talkin’ About Bessie by Nikki Grimes (Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award), and The Secret World of Walter Anderson by Hester Bass (Orbis Pictus Award). He is also the recipient of the NY Times Best Illustrated Book Award, Kirkus’ Best Illustrated Book Award, and four additional Coretta Scott King Illustrator Awards. Lewis teaches at the University of Arts in Philadelphia, and lives in Folsom, New Jersey.

Dark Was the Night: Blind Willie Johnson’s Journey to the Stars[Amazon commission link]
Written by Gary Golio
Illustrated by E.B. Lewis
Published by Penguin/Nancy Paulsen Books
August 2020 • Ages 5-8 • 32 pages • $17.99 hardcover/$10.99 Ebook • ISBN: 978-1524738884

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Here is a short video about Johnson and his music on the Voyager spacecraft: Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground, and brilliant is that song drifting through space | Aeon Videos

Johnson’s recording of Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground:

Here is a nicely played cover of Dark was the Night (hat tip Behind the Black):

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Dark Was the Night:
Blind Willie Johnson’s Journey to the Stars

ESO: Very early galaxy looks surprisingly like our Milky Way

A new report from the European Southern Observatory (ESO):

ALMA sees most distant Milky Way look-alike

Astronomers using ALMA, in which the ESO is a partner, have revealed an extremely distant galaxy that looks surprisingly like our Milky Way. The galaxy, SPT0418-47, is gravitationally lensed by a nearby galaxy, appearing in the sky as a near-perfect ring of light. The research team reconstructed the distant galaxy’s true shape, shown here, and the motion of its gas from the ALMA data using a new computer modelling technique.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, have revealed an extremely distant and therefore very young galaxy that looks surprisingly like our Milky Way. The galaxy is so far away its light has taken more than 12 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was just 1.4 billion years old. It is also surprisingly unchaotic, contradicting theories that all galaxies in the early Universe were turbulent and unstable. This unexpected discovery challenges our understanding of how galaxies form, giving new insights into the past of our Universe.

“This result represents a breakthrough in the field of galaxy formation, showing that the structures that we observe in nearby spiral galaxies and in our Milky Way were already in place 12 billion years ago,”

says Francesca Rizzo, PhD student from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany, who led the research published today in Nature. While the galaxy the astronomers studied, called SPT0418-47, doesn’t appear to have spiral arms, it has at least two features typical of our Milky Way: a rotating disc and a bulge, the large group of stars packed tightly around the galactic centre.

This is the first time a bulge has been seen this early in the history of the Universe, making SPT0418-47 the most distant Milky Way look-alike.

“The big surprise was to find that this galaxy is actually quite similar to nearby galaxies, contrary to all expectations from the models and previous, less detailed, observations,”

says co-author Filippo Fraternali, from the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen in the Netherlands. In the early Universe, young galaxies were still in the process of forming, so researchers expected them to be chaotic and lacking the distinct structures typical of more mature galaxies like the Milky Way.

Studying distant galaxies like SPT0418-47 is fundamental to our understanding of how galaxies formed and evolved. This galaxy is so far away we see it when the Universe was just 10% of its current age because its light took 12 billion years to reach Earth. By studying it, we are going back to a time when these baby galaxies were just beginning to develop.

Because these galaxies are so far away, detailed observations with even the most powerful telescopes are almost impossible as the galaxies appear small and faint. The team overcame this obstacle by using a nearby galaxy as a powerful magnifying glass — an effect known as gravitational lensing — allowing ALMA to see into the distant past in unprecedented detail. In this effect, the gravitational pull from the nearby galaxy distorts and bends the light from the distant galaxy, causing it to appear misshapen and magnified.

The gravitationally lensed, distant galaxy appears as a near-perfect ring of light around the nearby galaxy, thanks to their almost exact alignment. The research team reconstructed the distant galaxy’s true shape and the motion of its gas from the ALMA data using a new computer modelling technique. “When I first saw the reconstructed image of SPT0418-47 I could not believe it: a treasure chest was opening,” says Rizzo.

“What we found was quite puzzling; despite forming stars at a high rate, and therefore being the site of highly energetic processes, SPT0418-47 is the most well-ordered galaxy disc ever observed in the early Universe,”

stated co-author Simona Vegetti, also from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.

“This result is quite unexpected and has important implications for how we think galaxies evolve.”

The astronomers note, however, that even though SPT0418-47 has a disc and other features similar to those of spiral galaxies we see today, they expect it to evolve into a galaxy very different from the Milky Way, and join the class of elliptical galaxies, another type of galaxies that, alongside the spirals, inhabit the Universe today.

Astronomers using ALMA, in which the ESO is a partner, have revealed an extremely distant galaxy that looks surprisingly like our Milky Way. The galaxy, SPT0418-47, is gravitationally lensed by a nearby galaxy, appearing in the sky as a near-perfect ring of light.

This unexpected discovery suggests the early Universe may not be as chaotic as once believed and raises many questions on how a well-ordered galaxy could have formed so soon after the Big Bang. This ALMA finding follows the earlier discovery announced in May of a massive rotating disc seen at a similar distance. SPT0418-47 is seen in finer detail, thanks to the lensing effect, and has a bulge in addition to a disc, making it even more similar to our present-day Milky Way than the one studied previously.

Astronomers using ALMA, in which the ESO is a partner, have revealed an extremely distant galaxy that looks surprisingly like our Milky Way. The galaxy, SPT0418-47, is gravitationally lensed by a nearby galaxy, appearing in the sky as a near-perfect ring of light (left). The research team reconstructed the distant galaxy’s true shape and the motion of its gas (right) from the ALMA data using a new computer modelling technique. The observations indicate that SPT0418-47 is a disc galaxy with a central bulge and the material in it rotates around the centre. Gas moving away from us is shown in red, while gas moving in the direction of the observer is shown in blue.

Future studies, including with ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, will seek to uncover how typical these ‘baby’ disc galaxies really are and whether they are commonly less chaotic than predicted, opening up new avenues for astronomers to discover how galaxies evolved.

Links

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Student and amateur CubeSat news roundup – Aug.11.2020

A sampling of recent articles, press releases, etc. related to student and amateur CubeSat / SmallSat projects and programs (find previous smallsat roundups here):

** Univ. Southern California students to build CubeSats in partnership with Lockheed Martin and Momentus. For the La Jument project, students in  USC’s SERC (Space Engineering Research Center) nanosatellite program will assemble four spacecraft using payloads with the LM’s  SmartSat technology.  This technology uses a

software-defined satellite architecture on both their payload and bus. SmartSat lets satellite operators quickly change missions while in orbit with the simplicity of starting, stopping or uploading new applications.

The system is powered by the NVIDIA® Jetson™ platform built on the CUDA-X™ capable software stack and supported by the NVIDIA JetPack™ software development kit (SDK), delivering powerful AI at the edge computing capabilities to unlock advanced image and digital signal processing.

The spacecraft will launch over the next two years:

The first of the four La Jument nanosatellites is a student-designed and built 1.5U CubeSat that will be launched with a SmartSat payload to test the complete system from ground to space, including ground station communications links and commanding SmartSat infrastructure while in-orbit. The second is a 3U nanosat, the size of three small milk cartons stacked on top of each other, with optical payloads connected to SmartSat that will allow AI/ML in-orbit testing. Finally, two 6U CubeSats are being designed jointly with USC that will be launched mid-2022. The pair will launch together and incorporate future research from USC and Lockheed Martin, including new SmartSat apps, sensors and bus technologies.

Momentus has arranged for the first CubeSat to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission scheduled for Feb. 2021. A Momentus space tug will take it to a 550 km high sun synchronous orbit.

More about the project:

La Jument nanosatellite rendering. Courtesy: University of Southern California & LM

** TechEdSat-10 deployed “exo-brake” de-orbit sail: TechEdSat-10 Deploys from the Space Station | NASA. Discussed here earlier, the TechEdSat-10 cubesat was developed by NASA Ames in collaboration with student teams at San Jose State University and the University of Idaho. The 10th in a series of technology demo spacecraft, the 6U CubeSat tested several devices including the Exo-Brake,

a tension-based, flexible braking device resembling a cross-parachute that deploys from the rear of a satellite to increase the drag. It is a de-orbit device that replaces the more complicated rocket-based systems that would normally be employed during the de-orbit phase of re-entry.

Here are four photos showing the deployment of the chute:

“TechEdSat-10’s exo-brake precision de-orbit technology demonstration deploying in orbit around Earth.” Credits: NASA

** Successful demonstration of HARP earth imaging on a CubeSat. Cubesat demonstrates Earth science instrument – SpaceNews.  The HyperAngular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP) device,  discussed here last year, was developed by Utah State and Univ. Maryland at Baltimore County teams. The goal was to measure the microphysical properties of cloud water and ice particles. Since its deployment from the ISS last February, the HARP has proven this capability.

The three-unit cubesat is managed by the Space Dynamics Lab (SDL) of Utah State University, which built the spacecraft, while the payload was developed and is operated by the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). The payload achieved “first light” in April and took its first images in May.

Tim Neilsen, program manager for HARP at SDL, said the spacecraft demonstrates that cubesats can provide useful data in the Earth sciences. “The application of space-based Earth observation technology has historically been the domain of large satellites,” he said in a statement. “HARP helps to confirm that miniaturized sensors on small satellites can provide a high degree of fidelity at a fraction of the cost and time it takes to build larger satellites.”

The instrument’s utility comes from its ability to measure the size distribution of cloud droplets, which can provide information on the properties of ice and water clouds. That can, in turn, improve modeling of aerosol processes and help reduce uncertainties in climate modeling.

A larger system called HARP2 is to be mounted on NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystems (PACE) spacecraft to launch in 2022.

** AMSAT news on student and amateur CubeSat/smallsat projects: ANS-222 AMSAT News Service Special Bulletin

  • German Satellite Demonstrates Orbit Control on 1U CubeSat
  • AMSAT CubeSat Simulator Now Transmits SSTV
  • AMSAT-UK OSCAR Satellite QSO Party Ongoing
  • Hamfests, Conventions, Maker Faires, and Other Events
  • Upcoming Satellite Operations
  • Satellite Shorts from All Over

See also: Radio Amateur Takes Part in Successful Commercial Spaceflight to ISS – ARRL

General CubeSat/SmallSat info:

** Launch industry panel + SmallSat preview – Space News

SpaceNews Senior Staff Writer Jeff Foust talks with executives of several launch companies about the state of the smallsat launch sector. Panelists include:

Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab
Brad Schneider, chief revenue officer of Firefly Aerospace
Dan Hart, CEO of Virgin Orbit

The webinar begins with a brief interview with SmallSat conference organizer Marianne Sidwell about how to get the most out of this year’s virtual Small Satellite Conference.

The session concludes with a SpaceNews reporter roundtable about what to expect in the week ahead.

** SN @ SmallSat: Smallsat builders panel + show wrap-up – Space News

SpaceNews Staff Writer Caleb Henry and Silicon Valley correspondent Debra Werner lead a panel discussion with a cross section of smallsat builders. Panelists include:

– Marco Villa, Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems COO
– Brian Rider, LeoStella CTO
– F. Brent Abbott, NanoAvionics US CEO
– Craig Clark, AAC Clyde Space founder and chief strategy officer
– Tim Lynch, L3Harris Technologies Space and Airborne Systems Multi-Domain Architecture Group executive director
– Chester Gillmore, Planet vice president of spacecraft development and manufacturing

The webinar concludes with a 15-minute SpaceNews reporters roundtable on key takeaways from this year’s Small Satellite Conference.

** Preparing CySat 1: A Look at Iowa State University’s First CubeSat

** A Methodology for Successful University Graduate CubeSat Programs

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The Space Show this week – Aug.10.2020

The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:

1. Monday, Aug. 30, 2020; 7 pm PDT (9 pm CDT, 10 pm EDT: No special programming.

2. Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2020; 7 pm PDT (9 pm CDT, 10 pm EDT): We welcome Brian Barnett of Solstar Space, specializing in space to space communications and more.

3. Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2020: Hotel Mars TBA pre-recorded. See upcoming show menu on the home page for program details.

4. Thursday, Aug. 2, 2020; 7-8:30 pm PDT (9-10:30 pm CDT, 10-11:30 pm EDT): No special programming.

5. Friday, Aug.3, 2020; 9:30-11 am PDT (11:30 am-1 pm CDT, 12:30-2 pm EDT): We welcome back Charles Miller to discuss his new space company, Lynk Global Inc. Lynk strives for everywhere “connectivity directly to the existing 5.2 billion mobile phone users on the planet, and to billions more who will now have a compelling reason to buy a mobile phone.”

6. Sunday, Aug.5, 2020; 12-1:30 pm PDT (3-4:30 pm EDT, 2-3:30 pm CDT): We welcome Dr. Anthony Paustian to discuss his book A Quarter Million Steps: Creativity, Imagination, & Leading Transformative Change[Amazon commission link]. Please note the applications for space commerce and more.

Some recent shows:

**Tues. Aug.4.2020John Strickland talked about “Terraforming Mars, Mars buffer gas, nitrogen, human landing sites on Mars, common hardwarefor the Moon and Mars, Mars sample returns to Earth, Covid vaccines, the Beirut explosion and much more”.

** Wed. Aug.5.2020 – Hotel Mars – John Batchelor Show/The Space Show – John Batchelor and David Livingston spoke with CBS News space correspondent William Harwood about “the return of the Crew Dragon Demo 2 flight and splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. … Our next topic focused on the SpaceX Starship hop testing in Texas.”

** Fri. Aug.7.2020Mark Bray talked about the “SLS, rocket design and engineering, testing, landers, commercial launchers, and more”.

**  Sun. Aug.9.2020 – Open lines discussion with listeners including “a call from Robert Jacobson about his book and book offer, Crew Dragon splashdown, SpaceX, SLS, terraforming vs. paraterraforming on Mars, cosmology, Starship & more”.

** See also:
* The Space Show Archives
* The Space Show Newsletter
* The Space Show Shop

The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.

The Space Show - David Livingston
The Space Show – David Livingston

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