Photo: SpaceX CAPTURED:First thing this morning, we checked out the status of the SpaceX cargo re-supply mission. We were happy to learn that after a one-day delay due to trouble with its navigation system, Dragon did, indeed, link up with the International Space Station this morning. We wound up watching an hour or so of NASA TV programming today, including a half hour show about the total solar eclipse coming up this August. The area just south of Portland and Boise is in the path of totality, so we are already making plans to check it out. https://youtu.be/vKAk_-zFWVI
Another show we watched was all about nutrition on the ISS, and part of it was about what they send up on cargo resupply missions like the one Dragon completed today. The woman packing the food noted that only three whole apples were going up for a crew of six, so some rationing would take place up there. Fresh apples aren't great for spaceflight, as they have a lot of mass and weight, compared to the nutrition they provide. HOW IT'S MADE: We also watched about 20 minutes of "How It's Made" today. The kids love that show, where they can find out how various processed food products are made. Today, the episode included a segment on Funyuns, which are faux onion rings. Frito Lay has shared the process on their YouTube site. https://youtu.be/YF5i6QXgR8c
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
ENGINEERED: Sunday morning we headed to Pacific Science Center to check out their weekend event: Engineer It! I'll let Annabelle tell you a bit more about it. ...
Engineer It! Was an event at Pacific Science Center
featuring engineering students from the University of Washington, setting up multiple
booths for education about all kinds of engineering. There was a spot where you
could work with others to build a free-standing arch out of foam blocks. A
free-standing arch is one without adhesives or anything but physics holding it
together. Another booth was much larger, and there were Lego robotics fighting
a la the TV show “BattleBots”. The robots had sensors to look for the other
bot, and a sensor on the bottom to determine when they hit the edge of the
arena.
We also visited a station where some Bioengineering students had an
ultrasound machine to look at your muscles, and a second table where they explained
microparticles in medicine. The microparticles can slowly release medcine, and
then they just fade away and the medicine is dispersed throughout your
bloodstream. Engineer It! Was super cool, but I wonder if they’re going to make
it an annual event.
End of Annabelle's summary. ;) To clarify, not all of the booths or stations were manned, and of the ones that were, they weren't all UW students or profs. Many seemed to be staffed by young PacSci volunteers. But many were DIY, including the one below about television signals.
And the 'gear factory' was a spot on the floor for self-directed fun.
Annabelle worked with a young stranger to build this arch. Their teamwork worked!
The self-serve hand battery was cool.
There were UW biomed students demonstrating an ultra sound. The kids each got to see some tendons in their wrists and found their carotid arteries.
NEVER FORGET: While we were at Engineer It! a reminder popped up on my phone letting me know that A Day of Remembrance event was starting at 2 p.m., at Fisher Pavilion. That's just footsteps away from PacSci. We had planned to go grocery shopping after Engineer It! but when I saw that reminder and knew the event was so close, we quickly switched gears. Obviously, learning about the internment camps during WWII was more important than getting some groceries. "Never Forget" was the message this afternoon at Fisher Pavilion where a Day of Remembrance was held marking the 75th anniversary of the President of the United States authorizing our government to incarcerate Americans simply because they looked like the enemy. We walked into Fisher Pavilion at about 1:50 and every seat in the big hall was already filled. Fine by me/us - I was happy there was such a great turnout! More than 1,300 people turned out for the standing-room-only event. One of the first stops we made was at a banner. It will be carried at future civil rights marches. We were happy to have a chance to sign it.
The event started promptly at 2. Michele Storms, deputy director of the ACLU of Washington, was the afternoon's emcee.
The first speaker was poet Troy Asaki. He shared a compelling story about his family and his heritage. It starts at about the 12 minute mark in the video I've shared below. While the event's speakers included Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray. However, the most poignant speech came from Tom Ikeda. His grandparents, and their six children, were incarcerated in Idaho.
One of his uncles volunteered for military service. He was killed in action. Ikeda said one of the hardest moments of the horrible ordeal was his grandparents having to hold their soldier son's funeral in the indignity of the internment camp.
During World War II, more than 120,000 American citizens and immigrants of Japanese ancestry were rounded up, forced to give up their homes, businesses, and ways of life. They were herded into inhospitable internment camps, forced to endure years of incarceration. Mayor Murray and Congresswoman Jayapal noted how here and now have eerie parallels to conditions that led to the awful internment camps.
Following is CJ's report on the event:
On February 19, 1942, Franklin D. Roosevelt, then-President of the United States, signed Executive Order
9066 into law, which forced approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans
into concentration camps located across the country.
Seventy five years later, some of the racist sentiments present in WWII-era America
are echoed in Donald Trump's Executive Order 13769, which was an attempt
to bar travelers from 7 different (predominantly Muslim) countries from
entering the United States.
Yesterday, my
family visited Seattle Center's Fisher Pavilion for the "Never Again:
Japanese American WWII History and American Muslim Rights Today" event.
According to the ACLU of Washington's website, Never Again was a
presentation and conversation examining Japanese American incarceration
during World War II and how it relates to racism today.
To
my knowledge, three different organizations sponsored Never Again. The
first of them, Densho, is a group seeking to preserve the testimonies of
Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II
before their memories are extinguished. The second of them, the Council
on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), seeks to to enhance understanding
of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American
Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual
understanding. The third group, the ACLU of Washington, is dedicated to
protecting and advocating civil rights in the State of Washington.
There
were multiple speakers at Never Again. One of them was Pramila Jayapal,
who represents Washington's 7th District in the federal House of
Representatives. Prior to entering politics, in 2001, Jayapal founded
Hate Free Zone (now OneAmerica), which builds power within immigrant
communities in collaboration with key allies. At Never Again, Jayapal
referred to Seattle as the "moral conscience of America", presumably
referring to the stance several Seattlites (myself included) and the
Seattle City Government has taken in response to Donald Trump's racism.
Additionally, Jayapal said that her offices had received over 14,000
pieces of mail/email so far, likely urging her to take action against Donald
Trump. This caught my attention because I had actually sent her a letter
encouraging her to take action against Donald Trump, and I think I know
why I haven't heard anything back yet.
ON AIR: After the Day of Remembrance event, we walked across the Seattle Center campus to where independent radio station KEXP's cool new digs are. The station's lobby is a busy coffee shop.
You can watch the DJs broadcast live, there's a record store on site, and some cool art.
