Bill Nye explains the basics of a solar eclipses, the path of totality, and how to safely view a solar eclipse with National Park Ranger Coral O’Riley.
Bill Nye loves syzygy and Dr. Ashwin Vasavada from JPL talks about a curious eclipse on Mars
Bill Nye explains how to see the Milky Way after a solar eclipse and Dr. Tyler Nordgren shows an ancient eclipse petroglyph.
An announcement from the STEAMSPACE™ Education Outreach program:
Future Space Pioneers Coming to Texas
Austin, Texas – July 5, 2017–More than seven hundred students and their teachers and mentors from around the world will come to Austin November 10th to present their innovative designs for off-world habitats and colonies.
It is the third annual “Cities in Space” competition and seminar that brings together tomorrow’s space colonists with NASA scientists, engineers and astronauts as well as NewSpace innovators and business leaders.
The “Cities in Space 2017” seminar and competition marks the first day of an annual conference that includes a Space Settlement Symposium by “NewWorlds.org” where government and private sector leaders come together to discuss the human settlement of space.
“We are one important part of a larger effort to see humans settle off-world by 2030,” said Holly Melear, founder and Executive Director of STEAMSPACE™ Education Outreach. “Our role is to introduce tomorrow’s off-world leaders to the brightest lights in space exploration today.”
Students competing will present detailed engineering and concept papers for off-world human habitation. Winners will be recognized, meet with NASA leaders and private sector space entrepreneurs, and see their designs carried to the lunar surface in a future flight aboard a lunar-lander now under development by Astrobotic, Inc.
“These extraordinary students will compete with each other, learn from each other and gain entry into one of the most exclusive clubs on Earth—those determined to see humans prosper in space and on other worlds.” Said Amos Behana, Director of Operations for STEAMSPACE™
The New Worlds Conference and Space Settlement Seminar, which hosts the Cities in Space 2017 competition and conference, is a two day event held at the Renaissance Hotel and Conference Center in Austin, Texas on November 10 and 11th.
Media representative are welcome to attend and encouraged to get in touch in advance of the event.
Asteroid Day is a global awareness campaign where people from around the world come together to learn about asteroids, the impact hazard they may pose, and what we can do to protect our planet, families, communities, and future generations from future asteroid impacts. Asteroid Day is held each year on the anniversary of the largest impact in recent history, the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia.
Asteroid Day LIVE will be the first-ever 24-hour live broadcast about space, and specifically asteroids, airing on June 30, 2017 made possible by support from OHB, SES, BCE and the Luxembourg Government. Asteroid Day LIVE includes six hours from Luxembourg in addition to live programming from ESA, JAXA and NASA. The six-hour broadcast from Luxembourg plus hours of other international programming is creating a global conversation about some of the most important asteroid missions and new discoveries, with scientists and experts around the world.
Here is a set of videos about the annual event:
The Planetary Society has also released a new set of short videos about asteroids:
Checkout the full-length feature film 51 Degrees North, which inspired Asteroid Day:
Damon Miller is a filmmaker grappling with the pressures of an impoverished profession and a dissolving relationship. One routine assignment will change his life as he is involved in the disturbing research into Near-Earth Objects.
Spaceport America, N.M. (June 24, 2017) – A 53-foot-tall high-power sport rocket carried payloads thousands of feet above the New Mexico desert today at Spaceport America. United Launch Alliance (ULA) summer interns designed, built and launched the Future Heavy rocket, which carried 16 payloads (experiments and instruments) built by K-12 students, Ball Aerospace mentors and a combined ULA/Roush Industries team. The rocket launched at the Spaceport America Cup International Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition in association with the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA).
ULA Interns’ Future Heavy rocket vertical on its launch rail.
Future Heavy is the largest sport rocket to launch anywhere in the world, breaking the record set previously by ULA in 2016, when the rocket towered at 50 feet. The launch marked the culmination of an experience designed to simulate a real-life launch campaign and inspire students from kindergarten through graduate school to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
“The future of the space industry lies in the interns and students designing, building, and launching Future Heavy and the payloads it carried,” said Tory Bruno, ULA president and CEO. “United Launch Alliance continuously works to encourage the next generation of rocket scientists, astronauts, space entrepreneurs and enthusiasts. The sky (and physics) is the limit on the creativity and ingenuity at the Student Rocket Launch.”
Working on their own time, ULA interns designed, built and launched the rockets with the guidance of mentors, and Ball Aerospace mentors volunteered their time to create and test their payload. Altogether, more than 50 interns and 8 mentors from ULA along with Ball mentors participated in the 2017 event.
Parachutes deployed and returning to earth.
ULA and Roush Industries teamed up on a payload to test next-generation technology planned for use on future ULA rockets. The ULA and Roush payload will test a number of Integrated Vehicle Fluids (IVF) system components. IVF uses an internal combustion engine, manufactured by Roush Industries, that runs on propellant boil-off, otherwise vented to waste, to provide power to enable long-duration missions for the upper stage.
The Future Heavy and its payloads weighed in at more than 1,350 pounds and generated approximately 8,000 pounds of thrust off the launch pad. The K-12 payloads included a swarm of small gliders to gather atmospheric data, a test of various methods to harvest the energy of descent and a kindergarten parachute experiment.
“This program demonstrates a collaborative real-world aerospace industry partnership and experience,” said Rob Strain, president of Ball Aerospace. “We are proud to be supporting the next generation of space leaders.”
Ball designed, built and tested the largest payloads including: a black box data recorder; an environmental sensor suite with on-board data storage; accelerometer, pressure, temperature and humidity sensors; and a parafoil using ram-air inflation.
Earlier this year, ULA’s Greg Arend, who leads the Student Rocket Launch project, received the Distinguished Engineering Educator Award by the Engineers’ Council for his work on the program over the last five years. Over that time, hundreds of interns across all five of ULA’s sites participated in this unique, hands-on STEM activity and worked to build Future Heavy, the world’s largest high-powered sport rocket.
ULA interns lift the fuselage of the Future Heavy rocket that they built.
