Photo: Ben Cooper www.LaunchPhotography.com
WAYWARD DRAGON: Sunday morning, we watched coverage of SpaceX's historic launch. For the first time, using the iconic former Mercury and Apollo launch pad 39A, SpaceX sent a Dragon capsule to space, destination International Space Station, for a cargo re-supply mission.
The launch went like clockwork - as did the landing! Once again, SpaceX managed to land the first stage of their rocket back on Earth. It's just so remarkable to watch!
Turns out, it didn't. :/
I expected the ISS crew to be snacking on fresh fruit for breakfast our time, but Dragon was having some trouble navigating, unfortunately. And if there's one thing you don't want, it's a big spaceship traveling toward the ISS not 100 percent in control.
It turns out an incorrect data point that had been entered in the capsule's computer caused the problem, per NASA. SpaceX will try again Thursday morning. Hopefully the fresh produce will be just as tasty tomorrow. ;)
WHAT'S NEW: This morning, the kids and I tuned in for what was billed as a Really Big Deal press conference from NASA, about new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun (also known as exoplanets).
We knew that the news had to be about Goldilocks worlds - planets that were places our science deems to be 'habitable zones.' The news was exciting, indeed.
It turns out that NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these seven planets are located within the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water. That's a pretty darn big deal in the 'are we alone/is there other life out there' area of stargazing.
This illustration shows the possible surface of TRAPPIST-1f, one of the newly discovered planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes have discovered that there are seven Earth-size planets in the system.
The artists' renditions of the Trappist system are compelling.
Too bad it's 36 light years away. We really need to get on that 'folding space' concept, a la "Dune."
We love this NASA travel poster.
I just love the fact that this is the #1 trending video on YouTube tonight.
https://youtu.be/bnKFaAS30X8
For more information on exoplanets, check out this NASA site: http://exoplanets.nasa.gov
NASA NEEDS YOU: A new citizen science project has been announced by our friends at NASA. The agency is inviting the public to help search for possible undiscovered worlds in the outer reaches of our solar system and in neighboring interstellar space.
To get involved, go to their new website, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. It lets everyone participate in the search by viewing brief movies made from images captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.
One of the first things we checked this morning was how the docking of SpaceX's resupply mission to the ISS went.
Turns out, it didn't. :/
I expected the ISS crew to be snacking on fresh fruit for breakfast our time, but Dragon was having some trouble navigating, unfortunately. And if there's one thing you don't want, it's a big spaceship traveling toward the ISS not 100 percent in control.
It turns out an incorrect data point that had been entered in the capsule's computer caused the problem, per NASA. SpaceX will try again Thursday morning. Hopefully the fresh produce will be just as tasty tomorrow. ;)
WHAT'S NEW: This morning, the kids and I tuned in for what was billed as a Really Big Deal press conference from NASA, about new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun (also known as exoplanets).
We knew that the news had to be about Goldilocks worlds - planets that were places our science deems to be 'habitable zones.' The news was exciting, indeed.
It turns out that NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these seven planets are located within the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water. That's a pretty darn big deal in the 'are we alone/is there other life out there' area of stargazing.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The artists' renditions of the Trappist system are compelling.
Too bad it's 36 light years away. We really need to get on that 'folding space' concept, a la "Dune."
We love this NASA travel poster.
https://youtu.be/bnKFaAS30X8
For more information on exoplanets, check out this NASA site: http://exoplanets.nasa.gov
NASA NEEDS YOU: A new citizen science project has been announced by our friends at NASA. The agency is inviting the public to help search for possible undiscovered worlds in the outer reaches of our solar system and in neighboring interstellar space.
To get involved, go to their new website, called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9. It lets everyone participate in the search by viewing brief movies made from images captured by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.
The website uses the data to search for unknown objects in and beyond our own solar system. "AIn 2016, astronomers at Caltech in Pasadena, California, showed that several distant solar system objects possessed orbital features indicating they were affected by the gravity of an as-yet-undetected planet, which the researchers nicknamed "Planet Nine." If Planet Nine — also known as Planet X — exists and is as bright as some predictions, it could show up in WISE data," NASA explained in a press release.
WISE scanned the entire sky between 2010 and 2011, producing the most comprehensive survey at mid-infrared wavelengths currently available. Interestingly, after it completed its primary mission, WISE was shut down in 2011. However, it was reactivated in 2013 and given a new mission assisting NASA's efforts to identify potentially hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs), such as asteroids and comets on orbits that bring them into the vicinity of Earth’s orbit. The mission was renamed the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE).
So why the need for human eyes when computers can scan images? It turns out "machines are often overwhelmed by image artifacts, especially in crowded parts of the sky," explans NASA. This includes brightness spikes associated with star images and blurry blobs caused by light scattered inside WISE's instruments. And unlike more distant objects, those in or closer to the solar system appear to move across the sky at different rates. Therefore, the best way to discover them is through a systematic search of moving objects in WISE images, and humans can do a good job of that "because we easily recognize the important moving objects while ignoring the artifacts," per NASA. That same skill is what allowed astronomer Clyde Tombaugh to find Pluto in 1930, a discovery made 87 years ago this week.
Here's what lead researcher Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has to say in a NASA press release about the citizen scientist project. "There are just over four light-years between Neptune and Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, and much of this vast territory is unexplored. Because there's so little sunlight, even large objects in that region barely shine in visible light. But by looking in the infrared, WISE may have imaged objects we otherwise would have missed."
It's hoped the search also may discover more distant objects like brown dwarfs, sometimes called failed stars, in nearby interstellar space.
So check it out! On the website, you can work your way through millions of "flipbooks," which are brief animations showing how small patches of the sky changed over several years. Participants can flag moving objects. Those objects will be prioritized by the science team for follow-up observations by professional astronomers. Participants will share credit for their discoveries in any scientific publications that result from the project. Pretty cool!
Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is a collaboration between NASA, UC Berkeley, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Arizona State University, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and Zooniverse, a collaboration of scientists, software developers and educators who collectively develop and manage citizen science projects on the internet.
For more information about Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, visit: http://backyardworlds.org
For more information about NASA's WISE mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/wise
Here's what lead researcher Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has to say in a NASA press release about the citizen scientist project. "There are just over four light-years between Neptune and Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, and much of this vast territory is unexplored. Because there's so little sunlight, even large objects in that region barely shine in visible light. But by looking in the infrared, WISE may have imaged objects we otherwise would have missed."
It's hoped the search also may discover more distant objects like brown dwarfs, sometimes called failed stars, in nearby interstellar space.
So check it out! On the website, you can work your way through millions of "flipbooks," which are brief animations showing how small patches of the sky changed over several years. Participants can flag moving objects. Those objects will be prioritized by the science team for follow-up observations by professional astronomers. Participants will share credit for their discoveries in any scientific publications that result from the project. Pretty cool!
Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 is a collaboration between NASA, UC Berkeley, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Arizona State University, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and Zooniverse, a collaboration of scientists, software developers and educators who collectively develop and manage citizen science projects on the internet.
For more information about Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, visit: http://backyardworlds.org
For more information about NASA's WISE mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/wise
Pinned Backyard Worlds to my Start menu. Will do a few a day for a while. (If my eyes can handle it.)
ReplyDelete