Eyes on the Skies & Feet on the Ground

HUMAN COMPUTERS: There's a movie hitting the silver screens right now called "Hidden Figures." Based on a true story, it's about some amazing African American women, including Katherine Johnson, and how they helped NASA. 

Below, Johnson is pictured while working at NASA in 1966.

The NASA Web site has an archival story from 2008, and Johnson's 80th birthday. It noted, her accomplishments included calculating the trajectory of Alan Shepherd's 1961 trip into space, America's first. The story quotes Johnson as saying, "The early trajectory was a parabola, and it was easy to predict where it would be at any point. Early on, when they said they wanted the capsule to come down at a certain place, they were trying to compute when it should start. I said, 'Let me do it. You tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I'll do it backwards and tell you when to take off.' That was my forte."

From a NASA email today, we learned about a neat-o online toolkit called Modern Figures. Its activities highlight the contributions made by the African American women called “human computers," as seen in the new movie “Hidden Figures.”

The toolkit is a collection of resources and educational activities for students in grades K-12. Each educational activity and resource includes a brief description, plus info about how the activities and lessons align to education standards. Resources highlighted include videos, historical references and STEM materials. It can be downloaded here: www.nasa.gov/modernfigures-education-toolkit.

We'll be seeing "Hidden Figures" this week, and it's nice to have this real life info on hand before we see the dramatized version!
https://youtu.be/5wfrDhgUMGI


DO THE MOON WALK: Ever wanted to do the moon walk? Or maybe "just" walk to the moon? Mission X is the way! The multi-agency program encourages students of all ages to pursue a healthy lifestyle by training like an astronaut. The mission includes six- to nine-week "challenges" each fall and spring, schools and student groups from around the world complete Mission X classroom-based science lessons and physical education activities.

It sounds like something MPA could certainly use, so I tried to sign us up (just before the program's Dec. 31 deadline, might I add).

For the "Walk to the Moon" challenge, we will have to help move "Astro Charlie" the 478 million steps (238,857 miles, or 384,403 kilometers) it would take to walk from Earth to the moon, a feat it would take one person about nine years to complete, per NASA's calculations.

Registration and more details here: http://trainlikeanastronaut.org/wttm, and the application to be part of Team USA is here: http://trainlikeanastronaut.org/usa_application. We filed our application tonight. I was kind of surprised it isn't an open-to-all-comers proposition, but it is what it is. Hopefully we make the cut. ...

For 2016, Mission X involved students in 30 countries and more than 53,000 participants. 

LOOKING FOR THE LIGHT: Oh how we here at MPA long to see the Northern Lights. We watch for notices about possibilities of them appearing, and have gotten up in the wee small hours in hopes of seeing them, but they have eluded us to date.

Perhaps it's no wonder that news of NASA's 'Aurorasaurus' Project for citizen scientists grabbed our attention. Per the notice we saw about it, "Aurorasaurus is the first and only citizen science project that tracks auroras around the world via online reports, mobile apps and social media."

Reading more, it turns out the Aurorasaurus project gathers real-time data about aurora sightings and sends out notifications to users when the northern or southern lights are potentially visible in their area. Registered users can get location-based notifications and a real-time monitor of space weather activity, and project participants can help verify tweets and search for real sightings. The Aurorasaurus website also features answers to science and aurora questions. You can check it out here: http://www.aurorasaurus.org/.

We registered for the program, and I already spent a few minutes verifying whether or not tweets mentioning "aurora" were of sightings about the Northern Lights. (So far, all other ones I've seen were about anything *but* the lights!)

USE THE FORCE: Everyone here has a cough or cold, so aerobics seemed like a bad idea, but I thought it would be good to get moving in one way or another. Enter "Star Wars Yoga for Beginners." At least that was the title of the video we found on YouTube.

The instructor was pleasant enough and her instruction was clear and sound, but can we just say that wearing Star Wars leggings and supposedly breathing like Darth Vader doesn't really make it Star Wars yoga in our book. ... It's just yoga, with a couple of quick Star Wars references.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpFV5afUrwU

Here and Gone

CHRISTMAS VACATION: We've been away from the blog for about a week, caught up in Christmas-y doings.

On Christmas eve, we hosted 20 or so people at our place. We had lots of food and fun and watched the Seahawks (lose, on the last play, might I add).

But it's only a game and we had a great time with family and friends. And, unlike the game, the gingerbread didn't leave a bad taste in our mouths. ;)

ALL GONE: In many ways, 2016 has been a cruel year. The world has lost so many icons. It started back in January, with the passing of the magical, irreplaceable David Bowie. I don't think I'll ever get over that. Also gone this year, Prince, a musical phenom, the remarkable Leonard Cohen, and entertainer George Michael, a gifted and long-suffering soul with a philanthropic heart.

But it's not just musical maestros that have passed. Last week, we lost Pier Sellers, a space shuttle astronaut and climate scientist. Sellers was on "our" shuttle flight - STS-132. We got to see him hurtle space-ward, in a column of fire and smoke, from the NASA Causeway in Cape Canaveral in May of 2010.
       CREDIT: NASA

Sellers' death came just under a year after he shared he had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I remember reading the announcement in a poignant editorial he penned for The New York Times. He wrote about how his prognosis added a sense of urgency to his work on climate change, and shared that he had decided he wanted to spend his remaining time with people he loved, and doing the work he was passionate about. 

When he was selected to the elite astronaut corps in 1996, Sellers was the project scientist for Terra, NASA's flagship Earth observing system, Terra. He took a part of Sir Isaac Newton's famous apple tree to space with him. 

All totaled, Sellers spent 35 days, 9 hours and 2 minutes in space. He also had the rare opportunity to be a spacewalker, amassing more than 41 hours on six extravehicular activities. 

On Christmas morning, Earth lost another pioneer. She wasn't a household name, but astronomer Vera Rubin's work led to the theory of dark matter. That's a pretty big deal. 

As a child in Washington D.C., Rubin was fascinated by the stars. Her father helped Vera build a telescope and encouraged her studies. In 1948, Rubin graduated as Vassar's only astronomy major. In subsequent years, Rubin pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. 

I love this Carnegie Institution 1965 photo of Rubin taken at the Lowell Observatory.

We've been reading some Rubin quotes over the past couple of days. Here is a favorite: 

"I live and work with three basic assumptions:
1) There is no problem in science that can be solved by a man that cannot be solved by a woman.
2) Worldwide, half of all brains are in women.
3) We all need permission to do science, but, for reasons that are deeply ingrained in history, this permission is more often given to men than to women."

Also, Rubin was a voice for scientific literacy at all levels. In a commencement address she once said. "We need senators who have studied physics and representatives who understand ecology." 

Amen to that, Vera!