Archive | Space | Armed with Science

Saturday Space Sight: Water Bubble In Space!

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on February 9, 2013 at 7:30 am {no comments}

Hey Instagramers, take a look at this one!

NASA astronaut Kevin Ford, Expedition 34 commander, watches a water bubble float freely between him and the camera, showing his image refracted, in the Unity node of the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA

This sure beats a picture of pancakes with an X-Pro II filter on them if you ask me.

Jessica L. Tozer is a blogger for DoDLive and Armed With Science. She is an Army veteran and an avid science fiction fan, both of which contribute to her enthusiasm for technology in the military.

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Saturday Space Sight: PUMA Headgear

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on February 2, 2013 at 7:52 am {no comments}

NASA engineer Dan Dietrich and a team of scientists at Glenn developed the Portable Unit for Metabolic Analysis (PUMA) to monitor the oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production rates of astronauts exercising during long missions.

The portable unit was designed to give the crew the ability to move around the spacecraft without being tethered to a large immovable unit.

PUMA measures six components to evaluate metabolic function: oxygen and carbon dioxide partial pressure, volume flow rate, heart rate, and gas pressure and temperature. From those measurements, PUMA can compute the oxygen uptake, carbon dioxide output and minute ventilation (average expired gas flow rate).

A small, embedded computer takes readings of each sensor and relays the data wirelessly to a remote computer via Bluetooth.

Image Credit: NASA

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Science Fiction: The Aperture For Science Future

Filed under Featured, Space, STEM, Technology by jtozer on February 1, 2013 at 7:06 am {no comments}

We’ve been talking a lot about the future lately.

Which makes sense. The future is kind of an “in thing” when it comes to science.

But for as much as I love my gaming technology and directed energy weapons, there is one part of the future of the force that I haven’t talked about extensively: space.

If this is the future of the force then we need to talk about a Red Shirt sustainability plan. Or maybe the possibility of seat belts.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m going to go off on a tangent about Star Fleet or the Twelve Colonies or the Browncoats and we’ll lose all semblance of scientific practicality by the time I’m done.

Well thanks for the vote of confidence <sarcasm>, but it turns out that the possibility of a future space force isn’t as fanciful as you might think.

Air Force Lt. Col. Peter Garretson is the Division Chief for Air Force Irregular Warfare Strategy, Plans and Policy. That title doesn’t exactly scream “space expert”, but once upon a time (meaning previously), he was the Chief of Future Science and Technology Exploration for Air Force Strategic Planning.

Yeah, how’s that for applicable practicality, hmm?

Anyway, one of Lt. Col. Garretson’s jobs when he was the Chief of Future Science and Technology was to write papers about various things that should be considered when thinking about the future of the force. Especially when space is involved.

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Saturday Space Sight: Blazing Black Holes Spotted in Spiral Beauty

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on January 26, 2013 at 7:14 am {no comments}

This new view of spiral galaxy IC 342, also known as Caldwell 5, includes data from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. High-energy X-ray data from NuSTAR have been translated to the color magenta, and superimposed on a visible-light view highlighting the galaxy and its star-studded arms.

NuSTAR is the first orbiting telescope to take focused pictures of the cosmos in high-energy X-ray light; previous observations of this same galaxy taken at similar wavelengths blurred the entire object into one pixel.

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Saturday Space Sight: Robonaut Operates Task Board in Space

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on January 19, 2013 at 7:01 am {no comments}

Hey, it’s my old friend Robonaut in action!

In the International Space Station‘s Destiny laboratory, Robonaut 2 is pictured on Jan. 2, during a round of testing for the first humanoid robot in space. Ground teams put Robonaut through its paces as they remotely commanded it to operate valves on a task board.

Robonaut is a testbed for exploring new robotic capabilities in space, and its form and dexterity allow it to use the same tools and control panels as its human counterparts do aboard the station.

Photo Credit: NASA
From www.nasa.gov

Jessica L. Tozer is a blogger for DoDLive and Armed With Science. She is an Army veteran and an avid science fiction fan, both of which contribute to her enthusiasm for technology in the military.

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Saturday Space Sight: Curiosity Self-Portrait, Wide View

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on January 12, 2013 at 7:04 am {no comments}

On the 84th and 85th Martian days of the NASA Mars rover Curiosity’s mission on Mars (Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, 2012), NASA’s Curiosity rover used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to capture dozens of high-resolution images to be combined into self-portrait images of the rover.

The mosaic shows the rover at “Rocknest,” the spot in Gale Crater where the mission’s first scoop sampling took place. Four scoop scars can be seen in the regolith in front of the rover. A fifth scoop was collected later.

Self-portraits like this one document the state of the rover and allow mission engineers to track changes over time, such as dust accumulation and wheel wear.

Due to its location on the end of the robotic arm, only MAHLI (among the rover’s 17 cameras) is able to image some parts of the craft, including the port-side wheels.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
From www.nasa.gov

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Saturday Space Sight: Ion Thruster Sets World Record

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on January 5, 2013 at 7:26 am {no comments}

While the Dawn spacecraft is visiting the asteroids Vesta and Ceres, NASA Glenn has been developing the next generation of ion thrusters for future missions. NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) Project has developed a 7-kilowatt ion thruster that can provide the capabilities needed in the future.

An ion thruster produces small levels of thrust relative to chemical thrusters, but does so at higher specific impulse (or higher exhaust velocities), which means that an ion thruster has a fuel efficiency of 10-12 times greater than a chemical thruster.

The higher the rocket’s specific impulse (fuel efficiency), the farther the spacecraft can go with a given amount of fuel.

Given that an ion thruster produces small levels of thrust relative to chemical thrusters, it needs to operate in excess of 10,000 hours to slowly accelerate the spacecraft to speeds necessary to reach the asteroid belt or beyond.

The NEXT ion thruster has been operated for over 43,000 hours, which for rocket scientists means that the thruster has processed over 770 kilograms of xenon propellant and can provide 30 million-newton-seconds of total impulse to the spacecraft. This demonstrated performance permits future science spacecraft to travel to varied destinations, such as extended tours of multi-asteroids, comets, and outer planets and their moons.

Image Credit: NASA

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Saturday Space Sight: Giant Stellar Nursery

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on December 29, 2012 at 7:17 am {no comments}

Stars are sometimes born in the midst of chaos. About 3 million years ago in the nearby galaxy M33, a large cloud of gas spawned dense internal knots which gravitationally collapsed to form stars. NGC 604 was so large, however, it could form enough stars to make a globular cluster.

Many young stars from this cloud are visible in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope, along with what is left of the initial gas cloud.

Some stars were so massive they have already evolved and exploded in a supernova. The brightest stars that are left emit light so energetic that they create one of the largest clouds of ionized hydrogen gas known, comparable to the Tarantula Nebula in our Milky Way’s close neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Image Credit: NASA

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