A new selection of short films:
** Alientologists
** Robot & Scarecrow
** Human Interviews – Jessica Zollman
** The Stowaway
** AstroKnot
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Here is this week’s Space to Ground report from NASA on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Checkout the Aeon video of magnificent earth imagery and astronauts describing their experiences of seeing such views from space: The majestic Earth as seen through the eyes of astronauts orbiting above | Aeon Videos
‘Even if you’re a tough person you can’t avoid becoming a child again…’
In this video composed of time-lapse imagery recorded from the International Space Station, four veteran astronauts – Helen Sharman, Michael Barratt, Jean-François Clervoy and Daniel Tani – describe the singular, life-changing experience of looking down at Earth. In providing context for these images of our planet (the station orbits Earth every 92 minutes, for instance) and trying to find words for the profound sense of wonder that has come to be known as ‘the overview effect’, the astronauts strive valiantly to share their rarified perspective, giving us just a glimmer of an experience that many people think is just around the corner for a much greater number of us.
** An intro to how NASA can help researchers get their experiments to the ISS and to communicate what they are doing to other researchers and the general public: ISS R&T Opportunities | NASA:
Your science is heading to space, now let’s make sure you get the most from it. We have a team of communicators who are ready to take your science and share it with the world, sparking potential collaboration and new opportunities. See how we take the information you provide to feed stories, videos, social media, and other communications efforts across NASA’s highly visible platforms. Your science has a story. Help us share it.
** NASA’s Launch Services Program arranges for the agency’s uncrewed spacecraft to fly on commercial rockets. In this video, Tim Dunn of LSP talks about this week’s TESS launch on a Falcon 9 (see earlier posting) and about other spacecraft launches this year:
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Some beautiful pictures of the Lagoon Nebula from the Hubble:
Hubble celebrates 28th anniversary
with a trip through the Lagoon Nebula
To celebrate its 28th anniversary in space the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope took this amazing and colourful image of the Lagoon Nebula. The whole nebula, about 4000 light-years away, is an incredible 55 light-years wide and 20 light-years tall. This image shows only a small part of this turbulent star-formation region, about four light-years across. This stunning nebula was first catalogued in 1654 by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna, who sought to record nebulous objects in the night sky so they would not be mistaken for comets. Since Hodierna’s observations, the Lagoon Nebula has been photographed and analysed by many telescopes and astronomers all over the world. The observations were taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 between 12 February and 18 February 2018. [Larger versions]
This colourful cloud of glowing interstellar gas is just a tiny part of the Lagoon Nebula, a vast stellar nursery. This nebula is a region full of intense activity, with fierce winds from hot stars, swirling chimneys of gas, and energetic star formation all embedded within a hazy labyrinth of gas and dust. Hubble used both its optical and infrared instruments to study the nebula, which was observed to celebrate Hubble’s 28th anniversary.
Since its launch on 24 April 1990, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionised almost every area of observational astronomy. It has offered a new view of the Universe and has reached and surpassed all expectations for a remarkable 28 years. To celebrate Hubble’s legacy and the long international partnership that makes it possible, each year ESA and NASA celebrate the telescope’s birthday with a spectacular new image. This year’s anniversary image features an object that has already been observed several times in the past: the Lagoon Nebula.
To celebrate its 28th anniversary in space the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope took this amazing and colourful image of the Lagoon Nebula. Using its infrared capabilities, the telescope was able to peer through the thick clouds of dust and gas. The most obvious difference between Hubble’s infrared and visible images of this region is the abundance of stars that fill the field of view in the infrared. Most of them are more distant, background stars located behind the nebula. However, some of them are young stars within the Lagoon Nebula itself. [Larger images]
The inspiration for this nebula’s name may not be immediately obvious in this image. It becomes clearer only in a wider field of view, when the broad, lagoon-shaped dust lane that crosses the glowing gas of the nebula can be made out. This new image, however, depicts a scene at the very heart of the nebula.
Like many stellar nurseries, the nebula boasts many large, hot stars. Their ultraviolet radiation ionises the surrounding gas, causing it to shine brightly and sculpting it into ghostly and other-worldly shapes. The bright star embedded in dark clouds at the centre of the image is Herschel 36. Its radiation sculpts the surrounding cloud by blowing some of the gas away, creating dense and less dense regions.
This image from the Digitized Sky Survey shows the area around the Lagoon Nebula, otherwise known as Messier 8. This nebula is filled with intense winds from hot stars, churning funnels of gas, and energetic star formation, all embedded within an intricate haze of gas and pitch-dark dust. [ Larger images ]
Hubble observed the Lagoon Nebula not only in visible light but also at infrared wavelengths. While the observations in the optical allow astronomers to study the gas in full detail, the infrared light cuts through the obscuring patches of dust and gas, revealing the more intricate structures underneath and the young stars hiding within it. Only by combining optical and infrared data can astronomers paint a complete picture of the ongoing processes in the nebula.
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Check out this Slider comparison of the Lagoon Nebula in optical and infrared images. This video also shows a slide comparison:
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On Wednesday at Cape Canaveral, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully put TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) on the first (big) step to its final operational orbit, which will have an apogee nearly as far out as the Moon and an perigee far beyond that of geostationary satellites. (See the recent post here about TESS.)
Here is a NASA release about the launch of TESS:
NASA Planet Hunter on Its Way to Orbit
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched on the first-of-its-kind mission to find worlds beyond our solar system, including some that could support life.
TESS, which is expected to find thousands of new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, lifted off at 6:51 p.m. EDT Wednesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. At 7:53 p.m., the twin solar arrays that will power the spacecraft successfully deployed.
“We are thrilled TESS is on its way to help us discover worlds we have yet to imagine, worlds that could possibly be habitable, or harbor life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “With missions like the James Webb Space Telescope to help us study the details of these planets, we are ever the closer to discovering whether we are alone in the universe.”
Over the course of several weeks, TESS will use six thruster burns to travel in a series of progressively elongated orbits to reach the Moon, which will provide a gravitational assist so that TESS can transfer into its 13.7-day final science orbit around Earth. After approximately 60 days of check-out and instrument testing, the spacecraft will begin its work.
“One critical piece for the science return of TESS is the high data rate associated with its orbit,” said George Ricker, TESS principal investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in Cambridge. “Each time the spacecraft passes close to Earth, it will transmit full-frame images taken with the cameras. That’s one of the unique things TESS brings that was not possible before.”
For this two-year survey mission, scientists divided the sky into 26 sectors. TESS will use four unique wide-field cameras to map 13 sectors encompassing the southern sky during its first year of observations and 13 sectors of the northern sky during the second year, altogether covering 85 percent of the sky.
TESS will be watching for phenomena called transits. A transit occurs when a planet passes in front of its star from the observer’s perspective, causing a periodic and regular dip in the star’s brightness. More than 78 percent of the approximately 3,700 confirmed exoplanets have been found using transits.
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft found more than 2,600 exoplanets, most orbiting faint stars between 300 and 3,000 light-years from Earth, using this same method of watching for transits. TESS will focus on stars between 30 and 300 light-years away and 30 to 100 times brighter than Kepler’s targets.
The brightness of these target stars will allow researchers to use spectroscopy, the study of the absorption and emission of light, to determine a planet’s mass, density and atmospheric composition. Water, and other key molecules, in its atmosphere can give us hints about a planets’ capacity to harbor life.
“The targets TESS finds are going to be fantastic subjects for research for decades to come,” said Stephen Rinehart, TESS project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s the beginning of a new era of exoplanet research.”
Through the TESS Guest Investigator Program, the worldwide scientific community will be able to conduct research beyond TESS’s core mission in areas ranging from exoplanet characterization to stellar astrophysics, distant galaxies and solar system science.
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT and managed by Goddard. George Ricker, of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, serves as principal investigator for the mission. TESS’s four wide-field cameras were developed by MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. Additional partners include Orbital ATK, NASA’s Ames Research Center, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Space Telescope Science Institute. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.
For more information on TESS, go to: https://www.nasa.gov/tess
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Here is a view of the return and landing of the Falcon 9 first stage onto the unmanned droneship “Of Course I Still Love You”. The view is primarily from a camera on the rocket with a brief view from the ship before the shaking caused by the engine plume knocks the transmitter antenna off target:
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The Breakthrough Junior Challenge is
an annual global competition for students to inspire creative thinking about science. Students ages 13 to 18 from countries across the globe are invited to create and submit original videos (3 minutes in length maximum) that bring to life a concept or theory in the life sciences, physics or mathematics. The submissions are judged on the student’s ability to communicate complex scientific ideas in engaging, illuminating, and imaginative ways. The Challenge is organized by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.
If your video is selected as the winner, you will receive a $250,000 college scholarship, $50,000 prize for your teacher, and $100,000 for your school’s laboratory facilities. In addition, a get a free trip for you and a parent or guardian to receive your award at the live televised Breakthrough Prize Ceremony in November of 2018 (date to be announced).
Here is a video about the competition:
The competition began on April 1, 2018 and will end on July 1, 2018 at 11:59 pm PDT. This video describes the registration process:
Check the Breakthrough Junior Challenge website and FAQ for further details.
Many of the compositions of Nigel Stanford appear to be space inspired as seen in this video, which really stands as a nicely made sci-fi short film:
One Hundred Hunters comes from the Automatica
Aurora from Solar Echoes
Sea of Tranquility from Solar Echoes:
Deep Space from Solar Echoes:
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The Venus Transit hosts the latest Carnival of Space.
“Perseus’s Cosmic Dance Helps Reveal the Secrets of Galaxy Cluster Astrophysics”
The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:
1. Monday, April 16, 2018; 2-3:30 pm PDT (4-5:30 PM CDT, 5-6:30 pm EDT): We welcome Dr. Kirsten Howley of the Lawrence Livermore Lab to discuss Project Hammer for asteroid deflection and more with us.
2. Tuesday, April 17, 2018: 7-8:30 pm PDT; 9-10:30 pm CDT; 10-11:30 pm EDT: We welcome back Dr. Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA.
3. Wednesday, April 18, 2018: Hotel Mars. See Upcoming Show Menu and the website newsletter for details. Hotel Mars is pre-recorded by John Batchelor. It is archived on The Space Show site after John posts it on his website.
4. Friday, April 20, 2018; 9:30 am -11 am PDT, (12:30 -2 pm EDT; 11:30 am -1 pm CDT): We welcome back Jose Ocasio-Christain to the show for updates on the Caelus Partners “Community in Space” Project.
5. Sunday, April 22, 2018: 12-1:30 pm PDT; 2-3:30 pm CDT; 3-4:30 pm EDT. Welcome to our OPEN LINES program. All callers welcome, especially first time callers. Space and Science topics welcome.
See also:
* The Space Show on Vimeo – webinar videos
* The Space Show’s Blog – summaries of interviews.
* The Space Show Classroom Blog – tutorial programs
The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.
David Livingston
The latest episode of TMRO.tv is now available in the archive: Rod Pyle’s Amazing Stories of the Space Age – Orbit 11.15 – TMRO
Author Rod Pyle joins us to talk about many topics including the Space 2.0 Revolution, International Space Development Conference and how to build a Death Star.
Launches and news topics covered:
Launches:
Long March 4C Launches Yaogan-31 Trio
PSLV-XL Launches IRNSS-1I
News:
Orion Span Announces Plan for Space Hotel
Elon Musk Posts Picture of BFR layup tool
New Lunar Tour from LRO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr5Pj…)
Tiangong 1 Burns Up on Re-entry over Pacific
TMRO is viewer supported:
TMRO shows are crowd funded. If you like this episode consider contributing to help us to continue to improve. Head over to http://www.patreon.com/tmro for per-episode contribution or http://www.makersupport.com/tmro or monthly contributions and reward information.
TMRO short reports:
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Here is this week’s episode of NASA’s Space to Ground report on activities related to the International Space Station:
NASA astronaut Joe Acaba uses the unique environment of weightless on the ISS to give a STEM demonstration of the relationship between kinetic and potential energy:
Wheat is now growing on the ISS: Giving Roots and Shoots Their Space: The Advanced Plant Habitat | NASA
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The Breakthrough Initiatives is holding a symposium at Stanford today and tomorrow. The theme is “Alien Life” – Diversity in the Universe.
You can watch the presentations via the live webcast:
Here is the schedule:
Day 1 Schedule: Presenters/Panelists
Live on YouTube: youtu.be/nFoTyKGHdLc
Pacific Time USA
- 09:00 Welcome to Breakthrough Discuss 2018: Hosts Charles Alcock, Penelope Boston, Jamie Drew, Peter Michelson, S. Pete Worden
- 09:15 Keynote: Carolyn Porco, “Enceladus: Little Moon, Big Possibilities”
- 10:00 Session One: Search for Life in our Solar System: Chairs Penelope Boston, Chris McKay
- 10:10 David Smith, “Why Aren’t Clouds Green?”
- 10:30 David Grinspoon, “The Case for Venus: Life in Acid Clouds?”
- 10:50 Britney Schmidt, “Robots Under the Ice, and One Day, In Space?”
- 11:25 Alfonso Davila, “Search for Life Beyond Earth: Motive, Means and Opportunity”
- 11:45 Morgan Cable, “Dragonfly: In situ exploration of Titan’s prebiotic organic chemistry and habitability”
- 12:05 Penelope Boston, “Wherever You Go, There You Are: The Questions That Drive the Destinations”
- 13:40 Panel One: Search for Life in our Solar Systems: Chairs Penelope Boston, Chris McKay, Panelists Dale Anderson, Steven Benner, Nathalie Cabrol, Cynthia Philips, Carol Stoker
- 15:10 Session Two: Possibilities for Non-Terran Life in the Universe: Chairs Svetlana Berdyugina, Lisa Kaltenegger
- 15:20 Lynn Rothschild, “Universal Biology: Investigating Life as it Must Be”
- 15:40 Steve Benner, “Chemical Constraints on Non-Earth Life”
- 16:00 Sara Seager, “A New View of Life’s Journey Through Chemical Space”
- 16:30 Charles Ofria, “Using Artificial Life to Uncover Universal Evolutionary Dynamics”
- 16:50 Emilio Enriquez, “Searching for lifeform-independent technosignatures
- 17:10 Lee Cronin, “The Evolution of Inorganic Life in the Universe
Day 2 Schedule: Presenters/Panelists
Live on YouTube: youtu.be/3GiN-tWAV_k
Pacific Time USA
- 09:00 Welcome Remarks, S. Pete Worden
- 09:10 Keynote: Martin Rees, “Will SETI Detect Organic or Electronic Intelligence?”
- 10:05 Panel Two: Possibilities for Non-Terran Life in the Universe:
- Chairs Svetlana Berdyugina, Lisa Kaltenegger, Panelists Penelope Boston, Chris McKay, Anders Sandberg , Clara Sousa-Silva, Sara Walker
- 12:30 Session Three: Progress in Novel Space Propulsion: Chairs Sigrid Close, Zachary Manchester
- 12:40 Sonny White, “Pilot Wave Model for Impulsive Thrust from RF Test Device”
- 13:00 Ryan Weed, “Scaled Radioisotope Positron Propulsion for Interstellar Spacecraft”
- 13:20 Geoffrey Landis, “Sails: From the Solar System to the Stars”
- 13:50 Robert Zubrin, “Dipole Drive for Space Propulsion”
- 14:10 Kevin Parkin “Progress in Beamed Energy Propulsion”
- 14:30 Les Johnson, “Solar and Electric Sailing: Stepping Stones to the Stars”
- 15:00 Panel Three: Progress in Novel Space Propulsion:
- Chairs Sigrid Close, Zachary Manchester, Panelists Elena Ancona, Harry Atwater, Heidi Fearn, Mateusz Józefowicz, Kelvin Long
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The latest TMRO.tv episode is now available: Neumann Space – Orbit 11.14 – TMRO
Paddy Neumamm, Chief Scientist and Founder of Neumann Space joins us to talk about their solar-electric ion drive. The Neumann Drive can run on a variety of solid metallic fuels. This means that the Neumann Drive can run on nearly any metal likely to be found in asteroids, as well as on sintered-down space junk. So not only can you go further with a Neumann Drive, but you can refuel with whatever you find when you get there.
Launches and news topics covered:
Launches:
SpaceX CRS-14 mission
Ariane 5 launches Superbird 8/DSN 1 and Hylas 4 satellites
News:
British-led exoplanet telescope selected as ESA’s next space science mission
VSS Unity has first powered flight
Does Venus’ Clouds Have Life?
TMRO is viewer supported:
TMRO shows are crowd funded. If you like this episode consider contributing to help us to continue to improve. Head over to http://www.patreon.com/tmro for per-episode contribution or http://www.makersupport.com/tmro for monthly contributions and reward information.
A couple of short SpacePod reports:
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Latest findings from NASA’s Juno probe orbiting Jupiter:
NASA Juno Gives Infrared Tour of Jupiter’s North Pole
In this animation the viewer is taken low over Jupiter’s north pole to illustrate the 3-D aspects of the region’s central cyclone and the eight cyclones that encircle it. The movie utilizes imagery derived from data collected by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard NASA’s Juno mission during its fourth pass over the massive planet. Infrared cameras are used to sense the temperature of Jupiter’s atmosphere and provide insight into how the powerful cyclones at Jupiter’s poles work. In the animation, the yellow areas are warmer (or deeper into Jupiter’s atmosphere) and the dark areas are colder (or higher up in Jupiter’s atmosphere). In this picture the highest “brightness temperature” is around 260K (about -13°C) and the lowest around 190K (about -83°C). The “brightness temperature” is a measurement of the radiance, at 5 µm, traveling upward from the top of the atmosphere towards Juno, expressed in units of temperature.
Scientists working on NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter shared a 3-D infrared movie depicting densely packed cyclones and anticyclones that permeate the planet’s polar regions, and the first detailed view of a dynamo, or engine, powering the magnetic field for any planet beyond Earth. Those are among the items unveiled during the European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, on Wednesday, April 11.
Juno mission scientists have taken data collected by the spacecraft’s Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument and generated the 3-D fly-around of the Jovian world’s north pole. Imaging in the infrared part of the spectrum, JIRAM captures light emerging from deep inside Jupiter equally well, night or day. The instrument probes the weather layer down to 30 to 45 miles (50 to 70 kilometers) below Jupiter’s cloud tops. The imagery will help the team understand the forces at work in the animation – a north pole dominated by a central cyclone surrounded by eight circumpolar cyclones with diameters ranging from 2,500 to 2,900 miles (4,000 to 4,600 kilometers).
“Before Juno, we could only guess what Jupiter’s poles would look like,” said Alberto Adriani, Juno co-investigator from the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Rome. “Now, with Juno flying over the poles at a close distance it permits the collection of infrared imagery on Jupiter’s polar weather patterns and its massive cyclones in unprecedented spatial resolution.”
Another Juno investigation discussed during the media briefing was the team’s latest pursuit of the interior composition of the gas giant. One of the biggest pieces in its discovery has been understanding how Jupiter’s deep interior rotates.
“Prior to Juno, we could not distinguish between extreme models of Jupiter’s interior rotation, which all fitted the data collected by Earth-based observations and other deep space missions,” said Tristan Guillot, a Juno co-investigator from the Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France. “But Juno is different — it orbits the planet from pole-to-pole and gets closer to Jupiter than any spacecraft ever before. Thanks to the amazing increase in accuracy brought by Juno’s gravity data, we have essentially solved the issue of how Jupiter’s interior rotates: The zones and belts that we see in the atmosphere rotating at different speeds extend to about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers).
“At this point, hydrogen becomes conductive enough to be dragged into near-uniform rotation by the planet’s powerful magnetic field.”
The same data used to analyze Jupiter’s rotation contain information on the planet’s interior structure and composition. Not knowing the interior rotation was severely limiting the ability to probe the deep interior.
“Now our work can really begin in earnest — determining the interior composition of the solar system’s largest planet,” said Guillot.
At the meeting, the mission’s deputy-principal investigator, Jack Connerney of the Space Research Corporation, Annapolis, Maryland, presented the first detailed view of the dynamo, or engine, powering the magnetic field of Jupiter.
NASA’s Juno mission has provided the first view of the dynamo, or engine, powering Jupiter’s magnetic field. The new global portrait reveals unexpected irregularities and regions of surprising magnetic field intensity. Red areas show where magnetic field lines emerge from the planet, while blue areas show where they return. As Juno continues its mission, it will improve our understanding of Jupiter’s complex magnetic environment.
Connerney and colleagues produced the new magnetic field model from measurements made during eight orbits of Jupiter. From those, they derived maps of the magnetic field at the surface and in the region below the surface where the dynamo is thought to originate. Because Jupiter is a gas giant, “surface” is defined as one Jupiter radius, which is about 44,400 miles (71,450 kilometers).
These maps provide an extraordinary advancement in current knowledge and will guide the science team in planning the spacecraft’s remaining observations.
“We’re finding that Jupiter’s magnetic field is unlike anything previously imagined,” said Connerney. “Juno’s investigations of the magnetic environment at Jupiter represent the beginning of a new era in the studies of planetary dynamos.”
The map Connerney’s team made of the dynamo source region revealed unexpected irregularities, regions of surprising magnetic field intensity, and that Jupiter’s magnetic field is more complex in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere. About halfway between the equator and the north pole lies an area where the magnetic field is intense and positive. It is flanked by areas that are less intense and negative. In the southern hemisphere, however, the magnetic field is consistently negative, becoming more and more intense from the equator to the pole.
The researchers are still figuring out why they would see these differences in a rotating planet that’s generally thought of as more-or-less fluid.
“Juno is only about one third the way through its planed mapping mission and already we are beginning to discover hints on how Jupiter’s dynamo works,” said Connerney. “The team is really anxious to see the data from our remaining orbits.”
Juno has logged nearly 122 million miles (200 million kilometers) to complete those 11 science passes since entering Jupiter’s orbit on July 4, 2016. Juno’s 12th science pass will be on May 24.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The Italian Space Agency (ASI), contributed two instruments, a Ka-band frequency translator (KaT) and the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM). Lockheed Martin Space, Denver, built the spacecraft.
The public can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:
More information on Jupiter can be found at: https://www.nasa.gov/jupiter
NextBigFuture.com hosts the latest Carnival of Space.
“This image shows the incredibly distant and ancient supernova DES16C2nm. The supernova was discovered by the Dark Energy Survey. Image: Mat Smith and DES collaboration.” – Universe Today
Videos: TMRO Orbit 11.11: Why we need to humanize space exploration + 11.10: Searching for Skylab
Apr11
The latest episode of TMRO.tv Space is now available: Space: Why we need to humanize space exploration – Orbit 11.11
This week Lisa chats to Dr Niamh Shaw about her new theatre show ‘Diary of a Martian Beekeeper’ and why we need to include the humanities in space exploration.
News topics and launches covered:
News:
Microbe That Could Survive On Enceladus
Lightfoot to retire as Bridenstine nomination stalled
S-2 Is Single and Ready to Mingle…With Our SMBH
International interest for Lunar Gateway grows
Launches:
Long March 2 Launches LKW-4
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And here is the previous week’s episode: Searching for Skylab updates – Orbit 11.10 – TMRO
This week Jared gets an update from Dwight Steven-Boniecki about the upcoming documentary “Searching for Skylab”, including some exclusive sneak peaks from the film!
News topics and Launches covered:
News:
Interstellar donuts
World’s First Air Breathing Electric Thruster Tested
Schrödinger in Space
Launches:
SpaceX Launches Hispasat 30W-6
Soyuz Launches O3b Satellites
TMRO is viewer supported:
TMRO shows are crowd funded. If you like this episode consider contributing to help us to continue to improve. Head over to http://www.patreon.com/tmro for per-episode contribution or http://www.makersupport.com/tmro for monthly contributions and reward information.
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A new documentary movie about pioneering space artist Chesley Bonestell will debut May 1st at the Newport Beach Film Festival.
The film is titled Chesley Bonestell: A Brush With The Future:
Behind every architect and builder is an artist who takes designs and ideas, morphing them into beautiful images for everyone to understand. Chesley Bonestell was this artist, yet very few know his name. He worked on the Golden Gate Bridge and the Chrysler Building, as a matte artist on famous movies like Citizen Kane, and his mesmerizing paintings of planets and star systems helped jumpstart America’s space program. His iconic “Saturn As Seen From Titan”, became known as “the painting that launched a thousand careers.” Discover the power of the forgotten man whose art inspired Americans to conquer “The Final Frontier”.
“Saturn As Seen From Titan” by Chesley Bonestell
Note that back in 2013 the AIAA Houston Section‘s Horizons Newsletter posted hi-res reproductions of the famous and influential series of articles on spaceflight by Wernher von Braun in Colliers Magazine in 1952-54, which included many illustrations by Bonestell. I wrote about this in these postings:
- Colliers Magazine space series reproduction – issue number 3
- Horizons Newsletter Jan/Feb 2013 with 4th part of Colliers Magazine space series
- Horizons reproduction of Colliers Magazine space series – issues 5 & 6
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The latest report from ESO (European Southern Observatory):
SPHERE Reveals Fascinating Zoo of Discs Around Young Stars
New images from the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope are revealing the dusty discs surrounding nearby young stars in greater detail than previously achieved. They show a bizarre variety of shapes, sizes and structures, including the likely effects of planets still in the process of forming. [Larger images]
The SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile allows astronomers to suppress the brilliant light of nearby stars in order to obtain a better view of the regions surrounding them. This collection of new SPHERE images is just a sample of the wide variety of dusty discs being found around young stars.
These discs are wildly different in size and shape — some contain bright rings, some dark rings, and some even resemble hamburgers. They also differ dramatically in appearance depending on their orientation in the sky — from circular face-on discs to narrow discs seen almost edge-on.
SPHERE’s primary task is to discover and study giant exoplanets orbiting nearby stars using direct imaging. But the instrument is also one of the best tools in existence to obtain images of the discs around young stars — regions where planets may be forming. Studying such discs is critical to investigating the link between disc properties and the formation and presence of planets.
This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the dusty disc around the young star IM Lupi in finer detail than ever before. [Larger versions]
These images also show what our own Solar System may have looked like in the early stages of its formation, more than four billion years ago.
Most of the images presented were obtained as part of the DARTTS-S (Discs ARound T Tauri Stars with SPHERE) survey. The distances of the targets ranged from 230 to 550 light-years away from Earth. For comparison, the Milky Way is roughly 100 000 light-years across, so these stars are, relatively speaking, very close to Earth. But even at this distance, it is very challenging to obtain good images of the faint reflected light from discs, since they are outshone by the dazzling light of their parent stars.
This SPHERE observation is the discovery of an edge-on disc around the star GSC 07396-00759, which is a member of a multiple star system included in the DARTTS-S sample. Oddly, this new disc appears to be more evolved than the gas-rich disc around the T Tauri star in the same system, although they are the same age. The disc extends from the lower-left to the upper-right and the central grey region shows where the star was masked out. [Larger images]
Astronomers have used SPHERE to obtain many other impressive images, as well as for other studies including the interaction of a planet with a disc, the orbital motions within a system, and the time evolution of a disc.
The new results from SPHERE, along with data from other telescopes such as ALMA, are revolutionising astronomers’ understanding of the environments around young stars and the complex mechanisms of planetary formation.
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The annual Yuri’s Night – World Space Party happens this week in honor of the first human – Yuri Gagarin – to go into space on April 12, 1961.
Yuri’s Night is the World Space Party. We hope to see you dream, explore, and celebrate with us at the hundreds of YN events held around the world each April.
“Circling the Earth in my orbital spaceship I marveled at the beauty of our planet. People of the world, let us safeguard and enhance this beauty — not destroy it!” — Yuri Gagarin, 1st human in space.
Find a party near you at yurisnight.net/events/
Here is a message from the National Space Society about the global event:
The National Space Society has teamed with Yuri’s Night!
The crew of Expedition 27 celebrates Yuri’s Night aboard the International Space Station in 2011
The National Space Society invites you to celebrate Yuri’s Night in your local area. Yuri’s Night is a global celebration of humanity’s past, present, and future in space. Yuri’s Night parties and events are held around the world every April in commemoration of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first human to venture into space on April 12, 1961, and the inaugural launch of the first Space Shuttle on April 12, 1981.
Yuri’s Night events combine space-themed partying with education and outreach. These events can range from an all-night mix of techno and technology at a NASA Center, to a movie showing and stargazing at your local college, to a gathering of friends at a bar or barbecue.
In 2011, the 50th anniversary of human spaceflight, over 100,000 people attended 567 officially-recognized events in 75 countries on all 7 continents, while tens of thousands more watched the 12-hour live Yuri’s Night Global Webcast and participated online in the virtual world of Second Life.
The list of North American events this year can be accessed at https://yurisnight.net/events/#north_america
Yuri’s Night would like to thank the National Space Society for helping make Yuri’s Night in Los Angeles on April 7 the best event ever in the long history of Los Angeles Yuri’s Nights. The massive dance under the space shuttle Endeavour was truly awesome. (For details see www.la.yurisnight.net.)
This is just the beginning! On April 13 the Yuri’s Night celebration will rock the Space Coast in Florida with a dance under the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Help the National Space Society make this party one for the history books.
For more information and to get tickets see www.la.yurisnight.net/spacecoast.
Chantelle Baier
Director, National Space Society
Event Coordinator, Yuri’s Night
Here is a video tour of important sites on the Moon as seen in the imagery and sensor data collected by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) since it reached the Moon in September of 2009: NASA — A Tour of our Moon
From the caption:
Take a virtual tour of the Moon in all-new 4K resolution, thanks to data provided by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. As the visualization moves around the near side, far side, north and south poles, we highlight interesting features, sites, and information gathered on the lunar terrain.
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The guests and topics of discussion on The Space Show this week:
1. Monday, April 9, 2018; 2-3:30 pm PDT (4-5:30 pm CDT, 5-6:30 pm EDT): We welcome back Dr. Geoffrey Landis of NASA for a variety of discussion topics.
2. Tuesday, April 10, 2018: 7-8:30 pm PDT; 9-10:30 pm CDT; 10-11:30 PM EDT: We welcome back Casey Dreier of The Planetary Society.
3. Wednesday, April 11, 2018: Hotel Mars. See Upcoming Show Menu and the website newsletter for details. Hotel Mars is pre-recorded by John Batchelor. It is archived on The Space Show site after John posts it on his website.
4. Friday, April 13, 2018; 9:30 AM-11 am PDT, (12:30 -2 pm EDT; 11:30 am -1 pm CDT): We welcome Dr. Dirk Schulze-Makuch from Germany. Our guest is the author of The Cosmic Zoo
5. Sunday, April 15, 2018: 12-1:30 pm PDT; 2-3:30 pm CDT; 3-4:30 pm EDT. We welcome back Dr. Alan Stern to update us on New Horizons and talk about his new book with Dr. David Grinspoon, Chasing New Horizons
See also:
* The Space Show on Vimeo – webinar videos
* The Space Show’s Blog – summaries of interviews.
* The Space Show Classroom Blog – tutorial programs
The Space Show is a project of the One Giant Leap Foundation.
David Livingston
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