Armed with Science | Tag Archive

NRL’s MIGHTI Is A Go For Launch

Filed under Space, Technology by jtozer on May 20, 2013 at 7:37 am {no comments}

Space is about to get a little more…MIGHTI.

Conceptual design of NRL’s Michelson Interferometer for Global High-resolution Thermospheric Imaging (MIGHTI), that is part of NASA’s ICON mission.
(Photo: U.S. Naval Research Laboratory)

A Naval Research Laboratory instrument designed to study the Earth’s thermosphere is part of a satellite mission that NASA has selected to move forward into development (Phase B), with launch expected in 2017.

The NRL Space Science Division (SSD) developed Michelson Interferometer for Global High-resolution Thermospheric Imaging (MIGHTI) satellite instrument is part of NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission.

The ICON mission, led by Dr. Thomas Immel at the University of California, Berkeley, will fly a suite of instruments designed to determine the conditions in space modified by weather on the planet, and to understand the way space weather events grow to envelop regions of our planet with dense ionospheric plasma.

Ionospheres act as a boundary between planetary atmospheres and space.

They contain weakly ionized plasmas that are strongly coupled to their neutral atmospheres, but also influenced by the conditions in the space environment. They experience a constant tug-of-war between these external and internal influences, and exhibit a remarkable set of non-linear behaviors, explains NRL’s Dr. Christoph Englert.

The unpredictable variability of the Earth’s ionosphere interferes with communications and geo-positioning signals and is a national concern. ICON makes a complete set of measurements of the state of the ionosphere and all of the critical drivers that affect it to understand this variability.

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Saturday Space Sight: A Rose By Any Other Name

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on May 18, 2013 at 7:36 am {no comments}

The spinning vortex of Saturn’s north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Measurements have sized the eye at a staggering 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second).

This image is among the first sunlit views of Saturn’s north pole captured by Cassini’s imaging cameras. When the spacecraft arrived in the Saturnian system in 2004, it was northern winter and the north pole was in darkness. Saturn’s north pole was last imaged under sunlight by NASA’s Voyager 2 in 1981; however, the observation geometry did not allow for detailed views of the poles.

Consequently, it is not known how long this newly discovered north-polar hurricane has been active.

The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 27, 2012, using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light. The images filtered at 890 nanometers are projected as blue. The images filtered at 728 nanometers are projected as green, and images filtered at 752 nanometers are projected as red. In this scheme, red indicates low clouds and green indicates high ones.

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Saturday Space Sight: Hubble Sees a Horsehead of a Different Color

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on May 11, 2013 at 7:20 am {no comments}

Astronomers have used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the iconic Horsehead Nebula in a new, infrared light to mark the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory’s launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.

Looking like an apparition rising from whitecaps of interstellar foam, the iconic Horsehead Nebula has graced astronomy books ever since its discovery more than a century ago. The nebula is a favorite target for amateur and professional astronomers. It is shadowy in optical light. It appears transparent and ethereal when seen at infrared wavelengths. The rich tapestry of the Horsehead Nebula pops out against the backdrop of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies that easily are visible in infrared light.

Hubble has been producing ground-breaking science for two decades.

During that time, it has benefited from a slew of upgrades from space shuttle missions, including the 2009 addition of a new imaging workhorse, the high-resolution Wide Field Camera 3 that took the new portrait of the Horsehead.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team

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SPACE MATTERS

Filed under Featured, Space by jtozer on April 29, 2013 at 7:45 am {no comments}

Artist’s rendering of Orbital’s Antares medium-
class space launch vehicle. (graphic by Orbital Sciences)

When someone asks you if you want to go see a rocket launch, what else can you say except ABSOLUTELY.

Which, incidentally, is exactly how I responded when I was given the opportunity to get a (reasonably distanced) front row seat to the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket launch at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

As many of might already have noticed, space is sort of a big deal to me. The chance to reach out and touch the stars. To be a part of something greater than the world in which we’re tethered. To move forward as a species.

Now that’s something I want to be a part of, and the Antares rocket launch was a way to make that happen.

So why is the Antares rocket such a big deal, you ask? Let’s break it down.

First of all, it’s a rocket. Rocket = big deal.

This is no ordinary rocket. This is one in a series of rockets that are being used – quite fiscally responsibly, I might add – to push the human race out of lower Earth orbit and into the Solar System.

Antares is a two stage vehicle, with optional third stage, that provides low-Earth orbit (LEO) launch capability for payloads weighing over 5,000 kg.

Antares is one of 10 projects with the same point and purpose: risk-reduction missions designed for easy resupply services to the International Space Station. It has the added benefit of delivering substantial payloads into a variety of low inclination, low-Earth, sun-synchronous and interplanetary trajectories.

It has streamlined vehicle/payload integration and testing via simplified interfaces to reduce time from encapsulation to lift-off.

It can also accommodate major payloads, so it can carry more things than the average rocket might. It’s also capable of launching single and multiple payloads.

So I guess you could say it’s a multi-tasking rocket. (more…)

Saturday Space Sight: Saturn’s Hexagon

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on April 27, 2013 at 7:57 am {no comments}

Saturn’s north polar hexagon basks in the Sun’s light now that spring has come to the northern hemisphere. Many smaller storms dot the north polar region and Saturn’s signature rings, which appear to disappear on account of Saturn’s shadow, put in an appearance in the background.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft‘s wide-angle camera using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 750 nanometers.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 403,000 miles (649,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 21 degrees. Image scale is 22 miles (35 kilometers) per pixel.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

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Saturday Space Sight: Space Station Solar Arrays

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on April 20, 2013 at 7:34 am {no comments}

This close-up picture of a Zvezda Service Module array, reflecting bright rays of the sun, thus creating an artistic scene, was photographed by one of the Expedition 35 crew members as part of an External Survey from International Space Station windows that was recently added to the crew’s task list.

Image Credit: NASA

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Saturday Space Sight: New York City Nightlife

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on April 13, 2013 at 7:42 am {no comments}

One of the Expedition 35 crew members aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station exposed this 400 millimeter night image of the greater New York City metropolitan area.

For orientation purposes, note that Manhattan runs horizontal through the frame from left to the midpoint. Central Park is just a little to the left of frame center.

Image Credit: NASA

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NRL Scientists “See” Flux Rope Formation for the First Time

Filed under Space, Videos by jtozer on April 12, 2013 at 7:20 am {no comments}

Naval Research Laboratory scientists have observed, for the very first time, the formation of solar flux ropes, which are a type of solar magnetic field.

Models of flux ropes have been drawn by theorists in the past, but scientists had never before observed them at the time they formed.

The NRL team made their discovery using high-resolution images from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) aboard NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and from the NRL-developed Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) telescopes aboard NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO).

These flux ropes have been seen with coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, before, but scientists had argued for years about whether the flux ropes formed before the CME or were formed on-the-fly as the eruption occurred.

The answer will determine whether the dominant mechanism for CMEs is plasma instability or changes in the magnetic field connectivity via magnetic reconnection, respectively.

The observations made by visiting scientist Dr. Spiro Patsourakos, and NRL researchers Drs. Angelos Vourlidas and Guillermo Stenborg clearly reveal that the flux rope forms before the CME occurs.

In observations from July 18, 2012, the NRL team observed a small burst of light off the West limb of the sun. These flares of light are usually the evidence of an eruption of solar material, in a CME. But the July 18th burst of light was not a CME.

As the scientists continued their observations, they saw magnetic field lines that twisted and kinked to form slinky shapes.

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