Scary Soyuz

UH OH: The first news article I read this morning was about the failure of a manned Soyuz launch this morning. Fortunately, both astronauts are reportedly intact.

Per usual for Russian flights, the launch was from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. However, shortly after lift off, one of the rocket boosters failed during the ascent. That meant the launch was aborted, and the capsule had to return to Earth via a ballistic landing. On board were NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksey Ovchinin.

Before the flight, the pair of would-be ISS residents were chilling in Star City, awaiting their assignment.

You can watch it go down (literally, unfortunately) in this video replay.  The video is edited for length, but includes the launch, the initial report of the issue, and the confirmation that the crew landed safely.

They had reached weightlessness when the booster failed, dooming their initial mission.  The time of the failure was 11:42:17 into the flight.


Sure hope the ISS is fully stocked for the three on board it right now. They're going to be short-handed help-wise for awhile, that's for sure.

I was relieved to see this photo of them safe, after their emergency landing.

Expedition 57 Crew Returns to Baikonur 

NASA caption: Expedition 57 Flight Engineer Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos, left, and Flight Engineer Nick Hague of NASA, right. embrace their families after landing at the Krayniy Airport, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018 in Baikonur, Kazakhstan. Hague and Ovchinin arrived from Zhezkazgan after Russian Search and Rescue teams brought them from the Soyuz landing site. During the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft's climb to orbit, an anomaly occurred, resulting in an abort downrange. The crew was quickly recovered and is in good condition. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Below, Cosmonaut Ovchinin is welcomed back.

And here's astronaut Hague and his wife after some harrowing moments.

All photos: NASA

Lovely Ada

Watercolor portrait of Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, circa 1840, possibly by Alfred Edward Chalon

ADA DAY: We have fallen into a productive and comfortable routine of doing our algebra, science and grammar in the mornings, first thing. 

Tuesday, while perusing science topics on BrainPOP, we learned that the second Tuesday of every October 9 is Ada Lovelace day. The day was reportedly founded in 2009 by technologist Suw Charman-Anderson, to celebrate the achievements of women in STEM careers. Lovelace is considered by many to be the world's first computer programmer. 

Ada is no stranger to us. A couple years back, we attended a really fun birthday bash for Ada at the Living Computer Museum.

However, yesterday, we learned more about her, both from the BrainPOP video, Wikipedia, and a couple of other articles online. 

We knew that famed poet Lord Byron was Ada's father. We didn't know that he ditched Ada and her mother, when Ada was just a month old. (One report was that he was disappointed that his wife gave birth to a girl instead of the 'glorious boy' he was expecting. Ada never saw her father again. He died when she was eight years old.

Ada was a mother to three children (one son was named Byron, so I guess she didn't hold a grudge).

Ada was a sickly child, and contracted measles at one point, which left her bedridden for a year. Ada was home schooled, by a contingent of friends of the family, including Mary Somerville, who became a mentor. In 1833, Somerville introduced Lovelace to Charles Babbage, a British mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer. It was Babbage who originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.  We were fortunate to see his Difference Engine No. 1 when visiting the Science Museum in London a few years back.

photo: Science Museum collection, shared under Creative Commons license

Lovelace studied Babbage's The Analytical Engine at length. She provided extensive notes to Babbage about its potential. She realized that the machine "might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine...Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent." ^{(Citation: Lovelace, Ada; Menabrea, Luigi (1842). "Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by} 

^{Charles Babbage Esq". Scientific Memoirs. Richard Taylor: 694.}

So clearly, what Ada Lovelace saw was that numbers could represent entities other than quantity. It was a revolutionary notion.

Ada Lovelace (Augusta Ada Byron), in either 1843 or 1850. This daguerreotype by Antoine Claudet, and was likely taken in his studio in London. It's one of only two photos of Ada.

Unfortunately, Ada died in 1852, at young age of 36. One source said she had been ill for years, and died of uterine cancer.

BIG PANE: The home improvement campaign was in full swing this weekend. We recently replaced the big ol' window in our living room. This weekend, the master bedroom window was the major project.

I've been looking for weeks/months for a perfect (translation: CHEAP but brand new or barely used) replacement for the 55+ year old single pane, aluminum-framed windows that has been in place since 1962.

Finally, late at night last week, I spied a window on Facebook marketplace that would potentially work. We had to drive all the way to rural Bonney Lake, southeast of Auburn, about an hour away from home (with no traffic) to pick it up, but it was less than half of the retail price, so it was well worth the trip. 

In the photo below, the old window is out, and we've expanded the opening to accommodate the slightly-taller new window. 

Happily, the installation went really well (despite having to cut through stone to do it [the siding on our house is all rock]). The new window is in, and today I painted its new trim and caulked around it. I will give it another coat tomorrow, seal it up some more, and then the scaffolding comes down. What a great project to have in the rear view mirror!

INKTOBER: Annabelle is participating in a drawing 'challenge' this month. Called "Inktober," the month-long challenge where artists post one ink-drawn work for each day of October.

She's on day 8 and has done a drawing a day so far. She's using drawing prompts from this list.

Below is her drawing from Day 3, where the topic was "scarf."

You can find her on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/spooked.unicorn/

HUBBLE TROUBLE: Headlines have started to pop up over the past couple of days, pointing toward Big Trouble with the Hubble Space Telescope. Some of them made it sound like the Hubble was about to go lights out. 

Hubble Trouble: A Crisis in Cosmology?

Hubble trouble: Gyro failure puts space telescope out of action

The Butterfly Nebula, NASA/Hubble Space Telescope

The Hubble has had trouble before. Really Big Trouble. Right after it launched, back in 1990, it was clear there was a significant problem with its mirrors. But that was remedied by a successful space telescope rescue mission by NASA astronauts on spacewalks.

However, the Really Big Problem right now is that the U.S. doesn't have a way to service the telescope. For years now, there have been no manned space launches from our shores. We buy seats on a Russian Soyuz. Our space program's fate is literally not in the driver's seat.

While headlines make it sound like Hubble is darn near a goner, the NASA press release from today makes it sounds less critical. ... 

Hubble in Safe Mode as Gyro Issues are Diagnosed

NASA is working to resume science operations of the Hubble Space Telescope after the spacecraft entered safe mode on Friday, October 5, shortly after 6:00 p.m. EDT. Hubble’s instruments still are fully operational and are expected to produce excellent science for years to come.Hubble entered safe mode after one of the three gyroscopes (gyros) actively being used to point and steady the telescope failed. Safe mode puts the telescope into a stable configuration until ground control can correct the issue and return the mission to normal operation.Built with multiple redundancies, Hubble had six new gyros installed during Servicing Mission-4 in 2009. Hubble usually uses three gyros at a time for maximum efficiency, but can continue to make scientific observations with just one.The gyro that failed had been exhibiting end-of-life behavior for approximately a year, and its failure was not unexpected; two other gyros of the same type had already failed. The remaining three gyros available for use are technically enhanced and therefore expected to have significantly longer operational lives.
Two of those enhanced gyros are currently running. Upon powering on the third enhanced gyro that had been held in reserve, analysis of spacecraft telemetry indicated that it was not performing at the level required for operations. As a result, Hubble remains in safe mode. Staff at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute are currently performing analyses and tests to determine what options are available  to recover the gyro to operational performance.
Science operations with Hubble have been suspended while NASA investigates the anomaly. An Anomaly Review Board, including experts from the Hubble team and industry familiar with the design and performance of this type of gyro, is being formed to investigate this issue and develop the recovery plan. If the outcome of this investigation results in recovery of the malfunctioning gyro, Hubble will resume science operations in its standard three-gyro configuration.   
If the outcome indicates that the gyro is not usable, Hubble will resume science operations in an already defined “reduced-gyro” mode that uses only one gyro. While reduced-gyro mode offers less sky coverage at any particular time, there is relatively limited impact on the overall scientific capabilities.

One of my favorite Hubble photos ever is below! 

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Credits: NASA

These towering tendrils of cosmic dust and gas sit at the heart of M16, or the Eagle Nebula. The aptly named Pillars of Creation, featured in this stunning Hubble image, are part of an active star-forming region within the nebula and hide newborn stars in their wispy columns.
Although this is not Hubble’s first image of this iconic feature of the Eagle Nebula, it is the most detailed. The blue colors in the image represent oxygen, red is sulfur, and green represents both nitrogen and hydrogen. The pillars are bathed in the scorching ultraviolet light from a cluster of young stars located just outside the frame. The winds from these stars are slowly eroding the towers of gas and dust.
Stretching roughly 4 to 5 light-years, the Pillars of Creation are a fascinating but relatively small feature of the entire Eagle Nebula, which spans 70 by 55 light-years. The nebula, discovered in 1745 by the Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Chéseaux, is located 7,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Serpens. With an apparent magnitude of 6, the Eagle Nebula can be spotted through a small telescope and is best viewed during July. A large telescope and optimal viewing conditions are necessary to resolve the Pillars of Creation.
Credits: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Last Updated: Feb. 22, 2018Editor: Brian Dunbar