Category Archives: Space participation

Solar Science, Space participation, Space Systems

Send your name to the Sun on the Parker Solar Probe

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission offers you the opportunity to launch your name this summer on a spaceship heading for the sun :

Public Invited to Come Aboard NASA’s First Mission to Touch the Sun

Want to get the hottest ticket this summer without standing in line?

NASA is inviting people around the world to submit their names online to be placed on a microchip aboard NASA’s historic Parker Solar Probe mission launching in summer 2018. The mission will travel through the Sun’s atmosphere, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions — and your name will go along for the ride.

“This probe will journey to a region humanity has never explored before,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This mission will answer questions scientists have sought to uncover for more than six decades.”

Understanding the Sun has always been a top priority for space scientists. Studying how the Sun affects space and the space environment of planets is the field known as heliophysics. The field is not only vital to understanding Earth’s most important and life-sustaining star, it supports exploration in the solar system and beyond.

Submissions will be accepted until April 27, 2018. Learn more and add your name to the mission here: http://go.nasa.gov/HotTicket 

Star Trek’s William Shatner, on behalf of NASA, invites you to send your name where it’s never gone before: the Sun, by way of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Rich Melnick

The spacecraft, about the size of a small car, will travel directly into the Sun’s atmosphere about 4 million miles from the star’s surface. The primary science goals for the mission are to trace how energy and heat move through the solar corona and to explore what accelerates the solar wind as well as solar energetic particles. The mission will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can spread out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds.

To perform these unprecedented investigations, the spacecraft and instruments will be protected from the Sun’s heat by a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite shield, which will need to withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft that reach nearly 2,500 F. This state-of-the-art heat shield will keep the four instrument suites designed to study magnetic fields, plasma and energetic particles, and image the solar wind at room temperature.

The spacecraft speed is so fast, at its closest approach it will be going at approximately 430,000 mph. That’s fast enough to get from Washington, D.C., to Tokyo in under a minute.

“Parker Solar Probe is, quite literally, the fastest, hottest — and, to me, coolest — mission under the Sun,” said project scientist Nicola Fox, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. “This incredible spacecraft is going to reveal so much about our star and how it works that we’ve not been able to understand.”

Honoring a Science Legend

Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, visits the spacecraft that bears his name, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, on Oct. 3, 2017. Engineers in the clean room at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, where the probe was designed and built, point out the instruments that will collect data as the mission travels directly through the Sun’s atmosphere. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

In May 2017, NASA renamed the spacecraft from the Solar Probe Plus to the Parker Solar Probe in honor of astrophysicist Eugene Parker. The announcement was made at a ceremony at the University of Chicago, where Parker serves as the S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

This was the first time NASA named a spacecraft for a living individual.

NASA missions are most often renamed after launch and certification. In this case, given Parker’s accomplishments within the field, and how closely aligned this mission is with his research, the decision was made to honor him prior to launch, in order to draw attention to his important contributions to heliophysics and space science.

In the 1950s, Parker proposed a number of concepts about how stars — including our Sun — give off energy. He called this cascade of energy the solar wind, and he described an entire complex system of plasmas, magnetic fields and energetic particles that make up this phenomenon. Parker also theorized an explanation for the superheated solar atmosphere, the corona, which is — contrary to what was expected by physics laws — hotter than the surface of the Sun itself. Many NASA missions have continued to focus on this complex space environment defined by our star.

Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA’s Living with a Star Program, or LWS, to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. LWS is managed by the NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, in Laurel, Maryland, manages the Parker Solar Probe mission for NASA. APL is designing and building the spacecraft and will also operate it.

Illustration of the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the Sun.
Credits: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

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Eyes in the Sky, Space participation, Space Science

NASA’s GLOBE Clouds App: Observe clouds for fun and science

Participate in NASA’s GLOBE Clouds program and have a great excuse to go outside on spring days and gaze at the clouds. Researchers working with the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) recently installed on the International Space Station need to calibrate what the sensors observe with what the clouds look like from the ground. You can help out as a citizen scientist by downloading the GLOBE Clouds app for your smartphone and whenever you are outside use it to capture pictures of the clouds currently in view. The program invites participants to enter up to 10 cloud observations per day from March 15, 2018 to April 15, 2018.

More details at

And here is the announcement from NASA:

Calling All Cloud Gazers: NASA Needs Your Help!

It’s almost spring, the time of year when the looming change in seasons could lead to some pretty fascinating cloud activity in the sky. NASA and the GLOBE Program are asking for your help by taking part in a citizen science cloud observation challenge.

During the GLOBE cloud observation challenge, citizen scientists of all ages can make up to 10 cloud observations per day using the GLOBE Observer app or one of the other data entry options (for trained GLOBE members). Credits: NASA/Jessica Taylor

From March 15 through April 15, citizen scientists of all ages can make up to 10 cloud observations per day using the GLOBE Observer app or one of the other data entry options (for trained GLOBE members). Challenge participants with the most observations will be congratulated by a NASA scientist in a video posted on the GLOBE Program’s website and on social media.

“The GLOBE Program is offering this challenge to show people how important it is to NASA to have citizen scientist observations; observations from the ground up,” said Marilé Colón Robles, lead for the GLOBE Clouds team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “We’re going from winter to spring, so the types of storms will change, which will also change the types of clouds.”

Researchers use, and value, this citizen science cloud data because it helps to validate data from Earth-observing instruments. Scientists at Langley work with a suite of six instruments known as the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES).

The GLOBE Observer app.

Even though CERES’ instruments use advanced technology, it is not always easy for researchers to positively identify all types of clouds in their images. For example, it can be difficult to differentiate thin, wispy cirrus clouds from snow since both are cold and bright; even more so when cirrus clouds are above a surface with patchy snow or snow cover. One solution to this problem is to look at satellite images from a particular area and compare them to data submitted by citizen scientists on the ground.

“Looking at what an observer recorded as clouds and looking at their surface observations really helps us better understand the images that were matched from the satellite,” said Colón Robles.

Citizen science observations are especially needed now because scientists are starting to verify data from a new CERES instrument. CERES FM6 launched to orbit Nov. 18, 2017 and began taking measurements Jan. 5.

You don’t have to be a cloud-gazing pro to participate. For those who want to be part of the challenge but don’t have a lot of experience identifying clouds, Colón Robles offers the following advice: “Just go outside.” The more clouds you observe, she said, the more comfortable you’ll be collecting data.

  • Read more about the challenge here.
  • Find tips for making good cloud observations here.
 NASA sponsors the GLOBE Program. The GLOBE Program is an international science and education program that provides students and the public with the opportunity to participate in data collection and the scientific process. NASA GLOBE Observer is a free smartphone app that lets anybody make citizen science observations from the palm of their hand.
Space participation, Space Systems, The Moon

Video: Driving the Audi Lunar Quattro

Jonny Smith of the Fully Charged Show on line program visited the Part Time Scientists group in Berlin, which is partnering with Audi and Vodafone on a private mission to the Moon. In this video, Smith gets to drive the Audi Lunar Quattro, “a remote controlled solar powered electric moon buggy”.

PT Scientists began as a team competing for the Google Lunar XPRIZE, which ended without any winners, However, like several other GLXP teams, a commercial company emerged from the effort and will continue to pursue lunar ventures.

“Equipped with a four-wheel electrical drive chain, tilt-able solar panels, rechargeable batteries and science-grade high definition cameras, the Audi lunar quattro rovers will deploy and operate a series of scientific and technological payloads on the Moon.”

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Events, Space participation

The first Las Cruces Space Festival – April 12-14, 2018

The Las Cruces Space Festival in Las Cruces, New Mexico, near Spaceport America, will celebrate “Space for Everyone” : 

The first Las Cruces Space Festival (LCSF) will be held from April 12 – 14, 2018 to celebrate space-related activity and interest in the Las Cruces region. Locals as well as visitors are invited to join this inaugural celebration of all things space! We’re making space for everyone!

Space activity is an area of huge interest for many people, part of our culture and of our heritage. We all benefit from previous space innovations, including cell phones, GPS and weather tracking, just to name a few!

There is already much space-related activity in the area, and it’s also set to increase over the coming years, offering new prospects to our youth and drawing in experienced experts in the field to this area to help achieve our space goals.

More details about the Festival and events will continue to be updated on this site as they become available. Check back often for new events and details! We can’t wait for LCSF 2018 – it’s going to be out of this world!

More at Organizers release details of three-day Las Cruces Space Festival :

On Thursday, April 12, events will be geared toward children and families in a celebration of the anniversary of human space flight. Yuri’s Night, celebrated worldwide, marks the 1961 date when the Soviet Union launched Yuri Gagarin into orbit around the Earth. 

Events will take place on the New Mexico State University campus and will include a mobile planetarium and a tech center featuring a space flight simulation. There will also be educational NMSU Space Talks and stargazing. Las Cruces Public Schools is also planning events earlier in the week.

On Friday, April 13, a Space Showcase at Mesilla Valley Mall will offer an opportunity for budding astronauts, curious minds and science buffs to interact with and ask questions from experts in space travel, aerospace and space exploration.

Virgin Galactic is bringing a full-scale replica of a SpaceShipTwo suborbital rocketship.

And there will be tours of the spaceport:

Festival organizers are also aiming to set up a space tour from Las Cruces to Spaceport America. KTAL 101.5 Community Radio in Las Cruces will broadcast special features and interviews throughout the week of the festival.

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Activism, Solar Sci-Fi, Space participation

Arch Mission sends data crystal disk with Asimov’s Foundation into space on Falcon Heavy

Along with the Tesla Roadster launched yesterday into deep space by the SpaceX Falcon Heavy, there was a unique optical recording disk made of long lasting quartz. The Arch Mission Foundation disk contains a copy of the famous Foundation Trilogy books by Isaac Asimov.  Arch Mission co-founder Nova Spivack describes the payload and goals of the organization:

Arch Mission Foundation Announces Our Payload On SpaceX Falcon Heavy

Arc Mission library disk on Falcon Heavy payload with recording of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy.

Our goal at the Arch Mission Foundation™ is to permanently archive human knowledge for thousands to billions of years. We exist to preserve and disseminate humanity’s knowledge across time and space, for the benefit of future generations.

To accomplish this we have begun building special Arch™ libraries (pronounced: “Arks”). Our first Arch libraries are data crystals that last billions of years. We plan to use many media types over time however — whatever material is the best available for the goal.

We are very happy to announce that our first Arch library, containing the Isaac Asimov Foundation Trilogy, was carried as payload on today’s SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch, enroute to permanent orbit around the Sun.

We are eternally grateful to Elon Musk and his incredible team for advocating the Arch Mission Foundation and giving us our first ride into space.

Watch as SpaceX describes the inclusion of the Arch payload during their launch event here [at 19:51 into webcast video]:

Here is a short video about what the Arch Mission is doing:

The Arch library that was included on the Falcon Heavy today was created using a new technology, 5D optical storage in quartz, developed by our advisor Dr. Peter Kazansky and his team, at the University of Southampton, Optoelectronics Research Centre.

This Arch library will orbit the Sun for at least millions of years alongside Elon’s Tesla Roadster. The Roadster will likely be the oddest object in the solar system, and thus is the perfect place to put an Arch library so that it can be noticed and retrieved in the distant future.

We are so honored that Elon is the recipient of the first 2 Arch libraries ever made. If anyone deserves them, it’s him. Arch1.1 now resides in Elon’s personal library, while Arch 1.2 is enroute with SpaceX to permanent Solar orbit.

Arch 1.1 and 1.2 are the first in a series of 5, and are two of the longest-lasting storage objects ever created by humans. They are immensely valuable artifacts; the product of decades of work to invent a new form of storage capable of serving the needs of the growth of big data.

We also owe a debt of gratitude to our incredible group of renowned advisors, without whom none of this would be possible. We would especially like to thank Michael Paul and Stephen Wolfram for their close support and advice.

Asimov’s Foundation Series was the inspiration for the Arch Mission Foundation, many years ago when we first conceived of this project. It is a metaphor for what we hope this can become, and it is the perfect cornerstone as our mission begins.

Layout diagram for the Arch Mission disk.

For this, we would also like to thank Asimov’s agent, Mel Berger, at WME Entertainment, for giving us permission to send this epic trilogy, to space, as an homage to Asimov’s brilliance and vision.

If you are not familiar, Asimov’s Foundation Series is important for its symbolism. The series’ protagonist Hari Seldon endeavors to preserve and expand upon all human culture and knowledge through a 30,000 year period of turmoil. We felt this was a very fitting first payload to include in the Arch.

What’s Next?

In subsequent Arch Mission updates we’ll add more curated information in more locations around the solar system, and on Earth as well, and using more forms of next-generation long-term storage media as well.

5D optical storage in quartz, decoding key

This will backup our civilization for eternity in a manner that will make it impossible to ever be lost or not rediscovered, and that will also make it impossible for anyone in the future who does find it to hoard the knowledge — the Arch libraries will be in too many locations for anyone to control access to them.

You can read all about our plans on our website, www.archmission.com, but a brief summary is provided here.

The Solar Library™ will orbit the Sun for billions of years. We will continue to add to it over time with additional Arch libraries. Think of it as a ring of knowledge around the sun. This is only the first step of an epic human project to curate, encode, and distribute our data across the Solar system, and beyond.

We are developing a special Arch library that will be delivered to the surface of the Moon by 2020. This Arch will start the Lunar Library™, a collection of the most important documents, photos, videos and data of our species and will last for as long as the Moon itself.

We are also designing an Arch library to land on Mars. The Mars Library™ will be designed to supply a future human settlement on Mars with a vast collection of important knowledge from Earth — including perhaps a copy of a large portion of the Internet.

The Mars Library will seed a backup of Earth on Mars, in the event that the connection between Mars and Earth is ever lost in the future. It will also provide colonists on Mars with a massive data set with which to seed a local Internet and Web on Mars.

By eventually connecting the Arch Libraries, and the Arch storage devices they contain, through a decentralized read-write data sharing network, that spans the Solar system, we can begin to grow and share a collective decentralized library of everything humanity learns, on every planet in our solar system, and even beyond, as we spread.

This truly can evolve into Asimov’s vision of an Encyclopedia Galactica someday — an encyclopedia containing all the knowledge accumulated by a galaxy-spanning civilization.

Continue to the posting…

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