NEW FROM NASA
Latest News Releases: https://www.nasa.gov/news/releases/latest/index.html
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JPL News: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news
New NASA Administrator Named: President-elect Trump has named Jared Isaacman to be the next NASA Administrator. While he has no prior government experience, he has flown in Space twice and was one of the four private citizens to make a Spacewalk, further cementing his close ties with Elon Musk and SpaceX. He is a billionaire from his on-line payment company, Shift 4, and has personally invested $27.5 million in SpaceX as of 2021. Shift 4 has also entered a five-year partnership with SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink, to serve as the Starlink payment platform. The NASA Administrator’s position requires Congressional approval, pretty much assured. Isaacman did post this statement on X: “With the support of President Trump, I can promise you this: We will never again lose our ability to journey to the stars and never settle for second place.” [Who’s gonna tell him?] For more information on Isaacman and the appointment, see: https://www.npr.org/2024/12/04/nx-s1-5215889/trump-chooses-billionaire-astronaut-jared-isaacman-to-run-nasa.
HST and Quasar 3C 273: The very first quasar, 3C 273, was identified in 1963 by astronomer Maarten Schmidt. It looked like a star, but its red shift indicated it was extremely far away. Its apparent brightness, combined with its distance, means it was much brighter than any star, or any entire galaxy for that matter. Schmidt called it a ‘quasi-stellar object,’ or quasar for short. Fast-forward 60+ years to today. Even though the JWST gets the lion’s share of attention to Space-borne telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope is still in productive operation, as evidenced by its recent high-resolution image of 3C 273. The key instrument involved is HST’s coronagraph, which can create the artificial eclipse of a very bright object in order to observe much fainter items nearby. We now know that the source of a quasar’s huge energy output is a gigantic galactic-core black hole assimilating a galactic-sized mass. For more information, and a look at the HST image mentioned, see: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-takes-the-closest-ever-look-at-a-quasar . See also a previous Item of the Week about two Schmidts, one the type of a telescopic camera, the other the afore-mentioned Maarten; see here.
NASA Puts Three on TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions List: For the past two decades, TIME Magazine selects 200 new inventions in a wide variety of fields to promote as the “best” inventions of the year. NASA placed three of the seven selected inventions in the “Aerospace” category!
NASA Deep Space Optical Communications: A test version of this device was installed on the Psyche spacecraft now en route to the asteroid Psyche. When tested last year, it achieved a data transmission rate of 267 megabits/second, in the same ballpark as internet broadband. For an example of how much of an improvement the new system could be, it could deliver ultra-high-definition video from Mars, rather than the one or two large images per day now being delivered! But wait, there’s more! Psyche uses a new type of thruster, where solar panels generate electricity which will create a strong electromatic field that accelerates xenon ions to provide thrust, rather than use a chemical reaction. It’s been tested before in Earth orbit, but Psyche’s will be the first use beyond the Moon. For more about Psyche’s new communications system, see: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/deep-space-optical-communications-dsoc and for TIME’s entry on it see: https://time.com/7094951/nasa-deep-space-optical-communications. BTW: DSOC was designed and built at JPL…!
NASA Advanced Composite Solar Sail System: Using sunlight to propel a spacecraft has been a staple of old-time science fiction for decades. NASA recently conducted a small-scale test of concept to make a solar sail-powered spacecraft a reality. Last April, the Advanced Composite Solar Sail spacecraft was launched conventionally. In August, the spacecraft, about the size of a bank box, unfurled its 860 square-foot sail and off it went. Managing a sail of that size was no mean feat, but its success paves the way for CubeSats to ply the Solar System without conventional power. Concept proved! See TIME’s Best Invention entry here: https://time.com/7094949/nasa-advanced-composite-solar-sail-system.
JPL LAYOFFS! The Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently laid off 325 scientists, technicians, and other key personnel last week, 5% of their total workforce, including a number of friends of mine. A very sad day, indeed! See the JPL announcement of 11/12 here: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpl-workforce-update_-/. Sigh.
Apollo 12 Graphic Novel Updated! Tuesday (11/19) was the 55th anniversary of the landing on the Moon of Apollo 12’s LM, Intrepid, with astronauts Pete Conrad and Al Bean aboard. Celebrate this milestone two ways: See the two previous Items of the Week that spotlight the mission here and my personal hero, Al Bean, here. Also, check out the NASA graphic novel of the Apollo 12 mission augmented by info about Artemis (The NASA links to it are dead, but I downloaded it from Wikipedia Commons, and it is listed as being fully in the public domain; you can find it in the “Archive: Other Stuff” section of my website at: https://www.airandspacethisweek.com/otherstuff.
NASA Europa Clipper: This was NASA’s largest Solar System exploration spacecraft launched to date, on a mission to examine Jupiter’s moon, Europa, in more detail, looking for evidence that Europa could actually support life! Europa Clipper was the subject of a recent Item of the Week, here. See TIME’s bit about it here: https://time.com/7094953/nasa-europa-clipper, and for the mission website, see: https://europa.nasa.gov/mission/about. BTW: Europa Clipper was built at JPL…!
As only NASA can!
The other four selectees in the Aerospace category are no slouches either: the DESI 3D Map of the Universe, ZeroAvia’s ZA600 no emission engine, a new aircraft de-icing system by De-Ice, and Drone, Google’s partner in residential drone delivery now in use by Walmart and others. For more on TIME’s inventions list, see: https://time.com/7099118/how-we-picked-best-inventions-2024.
Water and Potential Martian Life: The evidence for ground ice on Mars has grown considerable over the past few years, both only slightly buried and more deeply seated. The former is thought to come from snow mixing with dust falling on the surface during the last few million years. Over time, a near-surface layer of considerable thickness could persist in some areas. Sunlight cannot penetrate such a layer fully, but for ice/dust near the surface (three meters or less), there could be enough solar energy penetration to cause some melting while the cover is thick enough to prevent immediate sublimation. Such water could make for an environment favorable for the development of life.
Such a scenario may sound far-fetched at first, but there is a terrestrial analog to this process. Dust particles within ice near the surface can pick up enough heat relative to the surround ice to melt a small pocket around them, allowing more dust grains to congregate and melt further, eventually growing into big enough pockets to support biological activity. For information about this interesting possibility, see: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/could-life-exist-below-mars-ice-nasa-study-proposes-possibilities.
NASA Info Helps All! NASA has awarded $15.6 M in grants for 15 projects that support the maintenance of open-source tools, frameworks, and libraries that are freely available to everyone as part of the goals of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. For more on this story, see: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-funds-open-source-software-underpinning-scientific-innovation.
PLANETARY PROTECTION ITEMS
NEW! NASA Documentary: Planetary DefendersHow would NASA respond to a threat of impact of an asteroid/comet? Planetary Defenders will be a program that showcases the challenges and triumphs of those on the front lines of planetary defense. It will be released in Spring, 2025 on NASA+ and other streaming platforms.
NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is building a spacecraft specifically designed to seek out the hardest to find asteroids that may pose a danger to Earth. It’s NASA’s first Space telescope built exclusively for planetary defense. A number of ground-based telescopes are involved in this effort, and they cover much of the sky extremely well, but smaller asteroid approaching from the direction of the Sun are very difficult to detect in advance, making defensive efforts problematic. The 2012 Chelyabinsk impact event is an example, a damage-causing-sized impactor came in without being detected until it was sonic-booming its way across the sky.
The NEO Surveyor will be launched in 2027, and placed at the Sun-Earth L-1 point of gravitational stability, directly on a line between the Earth and Sun. It will have a sunshade and a near-IR imaging system that should let it see small asteroids otherwise undetectable from the ground. For a summary of the NEO Surveyor Program, see: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/work-is-under-way-on-nasas-next-generation-asteroid-hunter . For the NEO Surveyor Program’s website, see: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/neo-surveyor.
Policy Food for Thought: The scientifically-important “pristine” surface environment of the Moon and Mars can easily be contaminated badly by human activity, even presence. The trapped water at the lunar south pole took billions of years to accumulate; is it OK to use it for a quick visit that has short-term political more than scientific importance, and then it’s lost and gone forever? Such planetary protection issues have caused some scientists to “call for strengthening existing planetary protection policies beyond the space surrounding Earth to include requirements for preserving the lunar and martian environments. In addition to biological contamination, they argue that guidelines should be expanded to address more than orbital debris, crowding, and security issues. They also recommend adding compliance incentives to all existing and improved sustainability policies.” Find out more here and here, and for a similar idea …
Planetary Protection Matters! Some of you may remember The Andromeda Strain and the efforts NASA exerted to make sure the Apollo astronauts didn’t bring a pathogen back from the Moon (shades of War of the Worlds!). Planetary Protection is a big deal at NASA, both protecting Earth from Space germs but also protecting the contamination of other places by Earth pollution. Dylan Taylor published an interesting article on the topic in The Space Review recently; you can see it at: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4798/1! However, …
Another Aspect of “Planetary Protection”: LEO and higher orbits are increasingly congested with large constellations of active satellites and many tons of debris, large and small, from previous missions. Spacefaring nations can have the value of their assets aloft negated by a rogue operator who detonates fragmentation bombs in orbit (or sets off large electromagnetic pulses). The need for a technology that can remove such debris safely and economically is becoming more and more apparent to all.
A number of companies are working on this problem. One of them, Astroscale Japan, was in the news lately, with their ADRAS-J satellite “successfully completed the safe and controlled approach to an unprepared space debris object – a rocket upper stage – to a relative distance of approximately 50 meters.” The spent upper stage was from the Japanese H-2A rocket that launched the GEOSAT Earth-observation satellite in 2009. For more about Astroscale and the ADRAS-J, see: https://www.space.com/astroscale-space-junk-probe-photo and https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/02/27/1089065/first-mission-dead-rocket
Farewell, NEOWISE! The highly-successful planetary defense satellite was turned off recently, capping a mission spanning almost fifteen years. At launch (10/2009), it was known as the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), with a seven-month planned mission of scanning the entire sky at infrared wavelengths that was completed successfully. It carried enough coolant necessary for its IR sensor to operate efficiently for one year; when that ran out NASA gave it a second assignment and new name. The NEOWISE satellite sensors without coolant were still good enough to provide data on asteroids and comets heated by their passage near the Sun. It found a third purpose in 2013 under NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program, collecting asteroid/comet data for what would become NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Newer tools are coming on line to continue the work that was started WISEly. For more information on NEOWISE, see here; for more info on the PDCO, see here.
NOTE:WISE data are still being processed by citizen scientists, and still yielding important results; see the Citizen Science section below!
NASA eClips Newsletter is Out: Check it out at: https://nasaeclips.arc.nasa.gov/resources/downloadNewsletter/25! It’s also posted on the Archive: Other Stuff section of the A+StW website, here. The latest newsletter is chockablock with educational videos, resources, summer activities, NASA Spotlite Design Challenges and more!
JPL’s Theodore von Kármán Lecture Series is an outstanding educational resource. One recent lecture was “Shake & Bake: How Spacecraft Are Tested to Handle the Harsh Environment of Space,” mentioned below. JPL has posted 115 past von Kármán lectures, covering a wide range of topics; see: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jpl-and-the-community/lecture-series.
Preparing for Space: Space is hostile to people and equipment alike. Have you ever wondered about how NASA makes sure its spacecraft can survive and operate successful in interplanetary Space and on other planets? NASA recently streamed one of the JPL von Kármán Lecture Series entitled “Shake & Bake: How Spacecraft are Tested to Handle the Harsh Environment of Space.” The featured lecturers are Brad Kinter, a Group Supervisor in JPL’s Environmental Thermal Testing unit at JPL and Pete Landry, Systems Integration and Test Engineer at JPL. The lecture is now available on YouTube at: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jpl-and-the-community/lecture-series/the-von-karman-lecture-series-2024/may-2024-shake-bake-how-spacecraft-are-tested-to-handle-the-harsh-environment-of-space.
Theodore von Kármán was an aerodynamics expert who came to the USA in 1930, fleeing rising tide of Nazism. He was a member of the National Academy of Science and one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The lecture series named for him routinely offers a number of interesting Space-related lectures, “Shake and Bake,” being one of the most recent. For more information on von Kármán, see: https://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/von-karman-theodore.pdf.
No Surprise Here! NASA Earns “Best Place to Work in Government for the 12th Straight Year! The Partnership for Public Service has been compiling Federal employees’ viewpoints regarding Agency leadership, work/life balance, and other job factors since 2003, and I am NOT surprised that NASA has won AGAIN. For more on PPS and their evaluation, see here.
Did you know that NASA has an entire Scientific Visualization Studio at the Goddard Space Flight Center? The data they make relatable is really terrific, check it out at: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov.
NASA’s Six New Innovative Tech Concepts have been selected for additional development funding by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program. NIAC is one of the reasons NASA can seem to do the impossible for the benefit of us all. The ideas sound like science fiction: a Space telescope that uses a fluid shaped by ionic liquids as its mirror; a pulsed plasma rocket that could significantly reduce Earth-Mars travel time; an orbital radio telescope comprising thousands of SmallSats; an advanced Radioisotope Thermal Generator; a lunar maglev railway system; and a solar sail with quantum dot sensors for exploration of the outer Solar System. What an exciting time to be alive!
Introducing NASA On-Demand Streaming Service: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrlDv-ts2f0&ab_channel=NASA! As only NASA can.