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The Marshall Star for September 18, 2024
NASA Chief Scientist and Senior Climate Advisor Kate Calvin, center left, joins team members at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center for a Climate and Science Town Hall on Sept. 17 in Activities Building 4316. Calvin took part in a question-and-answer session during her visit that was live streamed agencywide. Joining her in the session were, from left, Rahul Ramachandran, research scientist and senior data science strategist for the Science Research and Project Division at Marshall; Marshall Earth Science Branch Chief Andrew Molthan; Marshall Chief Scientist Renee Weber; Marshall Center Director Joseph Pelfrey; and Marshall Science and Technology Office Manager Julie Bassler, who moderated the panel. (NASA/Krisdon Manecke)
Molthan answers a question during the Climate Town Hall. Topics discussed during the town hall included the response by NASA and Marshall to climate change, the effects of climate change on NASA and Marshall objectives, and how NASA and Marshall are helping organizations around the world respond to climate change. (NASA/Krisdon Manecke)
Space Station Payload Operations Director at Marshall Carries on Family LegacyBy Celine Smith
Jacob Onken remembers his father, Jay Onken, waking him up one morning at 3 a.m. when he was 9 years old to watch the International Space Station fly overhead. At the time, his dad was a POD – a payload operations director – at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center leading flight controllers who support science experiments aboard the orbiting laboratory 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Jacob Onken is a second-generation payload operations director at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. His father, Jay Onken, also served in the role in 1999. The father and son are the first family members at Marshall to both hold that position. NASA/Danielle Burleson
Now, the younger Onken has started a new chapter in his career as a POD at Marshall, following in his father’s footsteps. The father and son are the first family members to serve in this role at Marshall. Onken said that happened by chance, despite growing up NASA-adjacent.
Jacob Onken began his aerospace career with an internship at Teledyne Brown Engineering while earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Auburn University in Alabama. The internship took him to Marshall’s Payload Operations Integration Center – a place his father had worked and often taken him when he was younger. Colleagues warmly remembered the veteran POD and welcomed to the role.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 2018, Onken worked as a contractor with Teledyne for NASA. As a data management coordinator (DMC) he sat console and learned to operate data and video systems aboard the space station.
“I really found myself out here, and I loved it,” he said. “Working in space flight operations is insanely cool and beneficial to humanity.”
A young Jacob Onken smiles for a family photo while visiting Marshall with his father, Jay Onken, and sister, Elizabeth Onken, in 1998. Photo courtesy of Jacob Onken
After training for over a year, he earned his DMC certification and later was assigned as the lead DMC for space station Expeditions 62 and 63. He later served as the DMC training lead, preparing new flight controllers for certification. In this role, he trained 13 DMCs for certification, using a people-based leadership approach he learned from his father.
Well before the space station flew, Jay Onken was an aerospace engineer whose early career assignments included orbit analysis for the space shuttle and attitude selection for several Spacelab missions. He later was one of the first flight directors for NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory, and following its launch, joined the first group of space station PODs.
He went on to become the director of Marshall’s Mission Operations Laboratory in 2005, deputy chief engineer for the Space Launch System in 2014, and director of Marshall’s Space Systems Department in 2016. He retired in 2018 and died in 2021 after battling cancer.
Jacob Onken continues Jay Onken’s legacy. Colleagues say he embodies similar traits. He often reflects on his father’s advice.
From left, Jacob Onken during his payload operations director (POD) certification ceremony with former PODs Carrie Olsen, Sam Digesu, Pat Patterson, and Tina Melton in the Payload Operations Center at Marshall. NASA/Craig Cruzen
“I was lucky to have my dad, who understood the environment that I was working in,” he said. “I knew his work meant a lot to him. We were always close, but we got even closer. Bonding over the same things was special.”
In 2022, Onken became the DMC flight operations lead, supporting real-time console and planning operations for that team. In 2023, he joined the Operations Directors Office. After another rigorous training curriculum, he completed his POD certification in January 2024.
“It’s rewarding and heartwarming to know that the future of space flight operations is in good hands with the new generation,” said Craig Cruzen, the POD training lead who oversaw Onken’s instruction and certification.
Onken leads a team that communicates with astronauts about the scientific experiments they’re performing on the space station and ensures their safety from the ground.
As a payload operations director at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Jacob Onken leads flight controllers in the International Space Station Payload Operations and Integration Team, following in his father’s footsteps. Onken and his father, Jay Onken, are the first family members to both serve in the role at Marshall. (NASA)“My role requires teamwork, trust, and communication,” he said. “I ask myself, ‘How can we work together effectively to get the job done?’”
While he holds the same position his father held, the space station has evolved, becoming a convergence of science, technology, and innovation. “Jay Onken was a POD when the International Space Station was just beginning,” said former POD Carrie Olsen, now manager of NASA’s Next Gen STEM K-12 education project and a family friend to the Onkens. “The challenge the space station faced back then was its newness,” Olsen explained. “We were still figuring out how to best work with Johnson Space Center, scientists around the world, international partners, and the space station program.”
Though Marshall had a rich operations history working programs like Apollo, Space Shuttle, Skylab, and Chandra, the space station was truly unlike anything that had come before.
“Jay’s leadership qualities and integrity helped to build trust across the organization and the agency. This allowed Marshall’s operations team to excel and be recognized as the premier space station science operations center across the globe,” said his former colleague Sam Digesu, currently technical manager of the Payload and Mission Operations Division. “Jacob is on the that same path.”
Jacob Onken says one of his career goals is to support payload operations on the lunar surface for the Artemis missions. “My dad was around when it started, and hopefully, I’m around to see it through.”
NASA Hosts Observe the Moon Night at U.S. Space & Rocket Center
The Science Wizard, David Hagerman, right center, entertains the crowd with one of his shows Sept. 14 during Observe the Moon Night at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville. The free public event was part of International Observe the Moon Night, a worldwide celebration encouraging observation, appreciation, and understanding of the Moon and its connection to NASA exploration and discovery. NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office hosted the event at the rocket center. The Planetary Missions Program Office is located at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. (NASA/Lane Figueroa)
Audience members react during one of Hagerman’s demonstrations at Observe the Moon Night. (NASA/Lane Figueroa)
Attendees visit a NASA display during the Observe the Moon Night event. (NASA/Daniel Horton)
‘Legacy of the Invisible’ Event to Celebrate Marshall’s Contributions to AstrophysicsThe public is invited to join NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center for a special celebration of art and astronomy in downtown Huntsville on Sept. 20 from 6 to 8 p.m. The event will include a dedication of Huntsville’s newest art installation, “No Straight Lines,” by local artist Float.
The celebratory event, “Legacy of the Invisible,” will take place at the corner of Clinton Avenue and Washington Street, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Attendees will have a chance to meet and hear from NASA experts, as well as meet Float, the artist behind “No Straight Lines,” which aims to honor Huntsville’s rich scientific legacy in astrophysics and highlight the groundbreaking discoveries made possible by Huntsville scientists and engineers.
Enjoy live music, art vendors, food, and more.
Learn more about Chandra’s 25th Anniversary.
SLS Program Manager John Honeycutt Delivers Keynote at National Space Club Breakfast
John Honeycutt, front center, manager of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) Program at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center, delivers the keynote address at the National Space Club Breakfast on Sept. 17 in Huntsville. Honeycutt provided a detailed presentation to the audience with insight into the operations, accomplishments, and future goals for the SLS Program. The SLS rocket is a powerful, advanced launch vehicle for a new era of human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit. “All elements of the SLS Block I for the first crewed lunar mission of the 21st century are either complete and ready for stacking or are nearing completion,” Honeycutt said. “For more than 60 years, this town – this community – has led the effort to explore space. We aren’t done. SLS and Artemis are the next chapter in that legacy. Led and enabled by folks in this room, at Marshall, and here in North Alabama, we will launch missions to the Moon that will re-write history books, lead to scientific discoveries, and pave the way to Mars.” (NASA/Serena Whitfield)
NASA’s Lunar Challenge Participants to Showcase Innovations During AwardsNASA‘s Watts on the Moon Challenge, designed to advance the nation’s lunar exploration goals under the Artemis campaign by challenging United States innovators to develop breakthrough power transmission and energy storage technologies that could enable long-duration Moon missions, concludes Sept. 20 at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Sun rises above the Flight Research Building at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.Credit: NASA
“For astronauts to maintain a sustained presence on the Moon during Artemis missions, they will need continuous, reliable power,” said Kim Krome-Sieja, acting program manager, Centennial Challenges at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “NASA has done extensive work on power generation technologies. Now, we’re looking to advance these technologies for long-distance power transmission and energy storage solutions that can withstand the extreme cold of the lunar environment.”
The technologies developed through the Watts on the Moon Challenge were the first power transmission and energy storage prototypes to be tested by NASA in an environment that simulates the extreme cold and weak atmospheric pressure of the lunar surface, representing a first step to readying the technologies for future deployment on the Moon. Successful technologies from this challenge aim to inspire, for example, new approaches for helping batteries withstand cold temperatures and improving grid resiliency in remote locations on Earth that face harsh weather conditions.
During the final round of competition, finalist teams refined their hardware and delivered a full system prototype for testing in simulated lunar conditions at NASA’s Glenn Research Center. The test simulated a challenging power system scenario where there are six hours of solar daylight, 18 hours of darkness, and the user is three kilometers from the power source.
“Watts on the Moon was a fantastic competition to judge because of its unique mission scenario,” said Amy Kaminski, program executive, Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing, Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “Each team’s hardware was put to the test against difficult criteria and had to perform well within a lunar environment in our state-of-the-art thermal vacuum chambers at NASA Glenn.”
Each finalist team was scored based on Total Effective System Mass (TESM), which determines how the system works in relation to its mass. At the awards ceremony, NASA will award $1 million to the top team who achieves the lowest TESM score, meaning that during testing, that team’s system produced the most efficient output-to-mass ratio. The team with the second lowest mass will receive $500,000. The awards ceremony stream live on NASA Glenn’s YouTube channel and NASA Prize’s Facebook page.
The Watts on the Moon Challenge is a NASA Centennial Challenge led by NASA Glenn. NASA Marshall manages Centennial Challenges, which are part of the agency’s Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program in the Space Technology Mission Directorate. NASA has contracted HeroX to support the administration of this challenge.
Technicians Work to Prepare Europa Clipper for Propellant LoadingNASA’s Europa Clipper mission moves closer to launch as technicians worked Sept. 11 inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility to prepare the spacecraft for upcoming propellant loading at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center.
Technicians work to complete operations before propellant load occurs ahead of launch for NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 11.NASA/Kim ShiflettThe spacecraft will explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, which is considered one of the most promising habitable environments in the solar system. The mission will research whether Europa’s subsurface ocean could hold the conditions necessary for life. Europa could have all the “ingredients” for life as we know it: water, organics, and chemical energy.
Europa Clipper’s launch period opens Oct. 10. It will lift off on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A. The spacecraft then will embark on a journey of nearly six years and 1.8 billion miles before reaching Jupiter’s orbit in 2030.
The spacecraft is designed to study Europa’s icy shell, underlying ocean, and potential plumes of water vapor using a gravity science experiment alongside a suite of nine instruments including cameras, spectrometers, a magnetometer, and ice-penetrating radar. The data Europa Clipper collects could improve our understanding of the potential for life elsewhere in the solar system.
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with APL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.
Learn more about the mission here.
Marshall to Present 2024 Small Business Awards Sept. 19NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will host its annual Small Business Industry and Advocate Awards ceremony Sept. 19. The awards recognize small businesses and small business champions from government and industry for their outstanding achievements in fiscal year 2024.
The ceremony will take place during the 38th meeting of Marshall’s Small Business Alliance, from 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. CDT at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center’s Davidson Center for Space Exploration in Huntsville. The event will also highlight new opportunities for small businesses to take part in NASA’s procurement processes. Afterward, attendees will have the open opportunity to network with NASA officials, prime contractors, and other members of Marshall’s small business community. Exhibitors will provide valuable information to support their business.
NASA speakers include:
- Dwight Deneal, assistant administrator, Office of Small Business Programs, NASA Headquarters
- Joseph Pelfrey, center director, NASA Marshall
- John Cannaday, director, Office of Procurement, NASA Marshall
- Davey Jones, strategy lead, NASA Marshall
- David Brock, small business specialist, Office of Small Business Programs, NASA Marshall
For 17 years, the Marshall Small Business Alliance has aided small businesses in pursuit of NASA procurement and subcontracting opportunities. Its primary focus is to inform, educate, and advocate on behalf of the small business community. At each half day meeting, businesses will gain valuable insight to guide them in their marketing endeavors.
Learn more about Marshall’s small business initiatives.
Printed Engines Propel Next Industrial RevolutionIn the fall of 2023, NASA hot fire tested an aluminum 3D printed rocket engine nozzle. Aluminum is not typically used for 3D printing because the process causes it to crack, and its low melting point makes it a challenging material for rocket engines. Yet the test was a success.
Printing aluminum engine parts could save significant time, money, and weight for future spacecraft. Elementum 3D Inc., a partner on the project, is now making those benefits available to the commercial space industry and beyond.
A rocket engine nozzle 3D printed from Elementum 3D’s A6061 RAM2 aluminum alloy undergoes hot fire testing at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.Credit: NASA
The hot fire test was the culmination of a relationship between NASA and Elementum that began shortly after the company was founded in 2014 to make more materials available for 3D printing. Based in Erie, Colorado, the company infuses metal alloys with particles of other materials to alter their properties and make them amenable to additive manufacturing. This became the basis of Elementum’s Reactive Additive Manufacturing (RAM) process.
NASA adopted the technology, qualifying the RAM version of a common aluminum alloy for 3D printing. The agency then awarded funding to Elementum 3D and another company to print the experimental Broadsword rocket engine, demonstrating the concept’s viability.
Meanwhile, a team at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center was working to adapt an emerging technology to print larger engines. In 2021, Marshall awarded an Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity to Elementum 3D to modify an aluminum alloy for printing in what became the Reactive Additive Manufacturing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution project.
The project also made a commonly used aluminum alloy available for large-scale 3D printing. It is already used in large satellite components and could be implemented into microchip manufacturing equipment, Formula 1 race car parts, and more. The alloy modified for the Broadsword engine is already turning up in brake rotors and lighting fixtures. These various applications exemplify the possibilities that come from NASA’s collaboration and investment in industry.
Read more here.
Hubble Finds More Black Holes than Expected in Early UniverseWith the help of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of researchers led by scientists in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University has found more black holes in the early universe than has previously been reported. The new result can help scientists understand how supermassive black holes were created.
This is a new image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The first deep imaging of the field was done with Hubble in 2004. The same survey field was observed again by Hubble several years later, and was then reimaged in 2023. By comparing Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 near-infrared exposures taken in 2009, 2012, and 2023, astronomers found evidence for flickering supermassive black holes in the hearts of early galaxies. The survey found more black holes than predicted. NASA, ESA, Matthew Hayes (Stockholm University); Acknowledgment: Steven V.W. Beckwith (UC Berkeley), Garth Illingworth (UC Santa Cruz), Richard Ellis (UCL); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
Currently, scientists do not have a complete picture of how the first black holes formed not long after the big bang. It is known that supermassive black holes, that can weigh more than a billion suns, exist at the center of several galaxies less than a billion years after the big bang.
“Many of these objects seem to be more massive than we originally thought they could be at such early times – either they formed very massive or they grew extremely quickly,” said Alice Young, a PhD student from Stockholm University and co-author of the study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Black holes play an important role in the lifecycle of all galaxies, but there are major uncertainties in our understanding of how galaxies evolve. In order to gain a complete picture of the link between galaxy and black hole evolution, the researchers used Hubble to survey how many black holes exist among a population of faint galaxies when the universe was just a few percent of its current age.
Initial observations of the survey region were re-photographed by Hubble after several years. This allowed the team to measure variations in the brightness of galaxies. These variations are a telltale sign of black holes. The team identified more black holes than previously found by other methods.
The new observational results suggest that some black holes likely formed by the collapse of massive, pristine stars during the first billion years of cosmic time. These types of stars can only exist at very early times in the universe, because later-generation stars are polluted by the remnants of stars that have already lived and died. Other alternatives for black hole formation include collapsing gas clouds, mergers of stars in massive clusters, and “primordial” black holes that formed (by physically speculative mechanisms) in the first few seconds after the big bang. With this new information about black hole formation, more accurate models of galaxy formation can be constructed.
“The formation mechanism of early black holes is an important part of the puzzle of galaxy evolution,” said Matthew Hayes from the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University and lead author of the study. “Together with models for how black holes grow, galaxy evolution calculations can now be placed on a more physically motivated footing, with an accurate scheme for how black holes came into existence from collapsing massive stars.”
Astronomers are also making observations with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to search for galactic black holes that formed soon after the big bang, to understand how massive they were and where they were located.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center was the lead field center for the design, development, and construction of the space telescope.
NASA's 'Hidden Figures' women awarded Congressional Gold Medals
The Early Universe Had a Lot of Black Holes
The Hubble Deep Field and its successor, the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, showed us how vast our Universe is and how it teems with galaxies of all shapes and sizes. They focused on tiny patches of the sky that appeared to be empty and revealed the presence of countless galaxies. Now, astronomers are using the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field and follow-up images to reveal the presence of a large number of supermassive black holes in the early Universe.
This is a shocking result because, according to theory, these massive objects shouldn’t have been so plentiful billions of years ago.
The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) was released in 2004 and required almost one million seconds of exposure over 400 of the telescope’s orbits. Over the years, the same region has been imaged with other wavelengths and been updated and refined in other ways.
The Hubble has re-imaged the region multiple times, and astronomers have compared the new images to older images and identified more SMBHs from the Universe’s early times.
The results are in a paper titled “Glimmers in the Cosmic Dawn: A Census of the Youngest Supermassive Black Holes by Photometric Variability, ” which was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Matthew Hayes, an associate professor in the Department of Astronomy at Stockholm University, Sweden, is the lead author.
Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) sit in the center of large galaxies like ours. While the hole itself isn’t visible, material being drawn into the hole collects in an accretion disk. As that material heats, it gives off light as an active galactic nucleus (AGN). Since black holes feed sporadically, only a portion of them were visible in the original HUDF. By re-imaging the same field at different times, the Hubble captured additional SMBHs that weren’t originally visible.
Our understanding of the ancient Universe and how it and its galaxies evolved depends on several factors. One of them is the requirement for an accurate idea of the number of AGN. AGN can be difficult to spot, and this method overcomes some of the obstacles.
AGN can emit X-ray, radio, and other emissions, but they don’t always stand out. “The challenge to this field comes from the fact that identifying AGN at the luminosity regimes of typical galaxies is observationally difficult,” the authors write. “This leads to SMBHs probably being undercounted, with potentially large numbers going unnoticed among the ostensibly star-forming galaxy population at high-z.”
The authors’ photometric variability method circumvents that. Since AGN accrete material at variable rates, observing changes in output from AGN is a better method of determining how many there are. “Here, we argue that the photometric variability that results from changes in the mass accretion rate of SMBHs can provide a completely independent and complementary probe of AGN,” Hayes and his co-authors write. “Monitoring for variability selects AGN from imaging data directly by phenomena related to the SMBH, without any biases of photometric preselection (color, luminosity, compactness, etc).”
This figure from the research article shows how effective photometric variability can be at detecting SMBH. It shows the photometric variability of two objects found in the field: 1051264 at z = 2 (upper panels) and 1052126 at z = 3.2. Image Credit: Hayes et al. 2024.The new paper presents preliminary results and reports the detection of eight interesting targets that display variability. Three of the eight are probably supernovae, two are clear AGN at about z = 2–3, and three more are likely AGN at redshifts greater than 6.
These findings are significant because they impact our understanding of black holes, how they form, and their place in the history of the Universe.
Astronomers understand how stellar-mass black holes form. They also believe that supermassive black holes grow so massive through mergers with other black holes. They’re even making progress in finding the in-between black holes called intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs).
Since astronomers think that SMBHs grow through mergers, there should be more of them in the modern Universe and comparatively few, if any, in the ancient Universe. There simply hadn’t been enough time for enough mergers to take place to create SMBHs. That’s why there are alternate theories to explain black holes in the early Universe.
Astronomers theorize that a different type of star existed in the early universe. These massive, pristine stars could only form in the conditions that dominated the early Universe. They could’ve collapsed and become massive black holes.
Another theory suggests that massive gas clouds in the early Universe could have collapsed directly into black holes. Yet another theory suggests that so-called ‘primordial black holes’ could have formed in the first seconds after the Big Bang through purely speculative mechanisms.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field with annotation showing the location of a supermassive black hole. Image Credit: Hayes et al. 2024.The new observations should help clarify some of these ideas.
“The formation mechanism of early black holes is an important part of the puzzle of galaxy evolution,” said study lead author Hayes. “Together with models for how black holes grow, galaxy evolution calculations can now be placed on a more physically motivated footing, with an accurate scheme for how black holes came into existence from collapsing massive stars.”
“These sources provide a first measure of nSMBH in the reionization epoch by photometric variability,” the authors explain in their paper. They say the sources identified in their work indicate the largest black hole population ever reported for these redshifts. “This SMBH abundance is also strikingly similar to estimates of nSMBH in the local Universe,” the authors write.
Some theoretical models suggest that there were large numbers of AGN in the reionization epoch. The JWST shows us that there seem to be more SMBHs and AGN than astronomers thought. By finding more SMBHs and AGN, this research is adding to our understanding of black holes and the evolution of the Universe.
But there’s still more work to be done. The researchers think that a larger sample of AGN at high redshifts is needed to reduce uncertainties and strengthen their results, and the JWST can help. “JWST is required to push to detection of fainter AGN via variability,” the authors explain, adding that it would take years of monitoring for the space telescope to do so.
This work also underlines the HST’s ongoing contribution to astronomy. It may not be as powerful as the JWST, but it has the benefit of many years of observations already under its belt and keeps proving its worth as a powerful observatory in its own right.
“In contrast, HST’s legacy of deep NIR imaging already stretches back about 15 yr, providing an excellent baseline for monitoring.”
The post The Early Universe Had a Lot of Black Holes appeared first on Universe Today.
Bird flu virus that infected a person in Missouri had a rare mutation
Bird flu virus that infected a person in Missouri had a rare mutation
'Transformers One' is an end of summer sensation certain to please fans (review)
NASA Deputy Administrator Talks Future of Agency in Silicon Valley
NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy spent time at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, on Sept. 16, 2024, engaging with center leaders and employees to discuss strategies that could drive meaningful changes to ensure NASA remains the preeminent institution for research, technology, and engineering, and to lead science, aeronautics, and space exploration for humanity. Melroy’s visit also provided an opportunity to meet with early- and mid-career employees, who shared their perspectives and feedback.
#726 What happened during our Summer Hiatus
We’re back from our summer hiatus. Before we left, we gave you a bunch of stories we thought might be important. Now let’s look back and see how our predictions went. And what surprises did happen?
The post #726 What happened during our Summer Hiatus appeared first on Astronomy Cast.
BONUS: June 10 Pre-Show Rant on Starliner, Starship, & more
Prior to recording their exoplanets episode, Fraser and Pamela discussed their wild week of space flight news and discussed their concerns about the Starliner and StarShip programs. This is particularly timely as we prepare to look back on what actually happened with all these missions.
The post BONUS: June 10 Pre-Show Rant on Starliner, Starship, & more appeared first on Astronomy Cast.
The largest volcano on Mars may sit above a 1,000-mile magma pool. Could Olympus Mons erupt again?
NASA Shares Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal Remarks
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson released his remarks as prepared for Wednesday’s Hidden Figures Congressional Gold Medal ceremony in Washington. The awards recognized the women who contributed to the space race, including the NASA mathematicians who helped land the first astronauts on the Moon under the agency’s Apollo Program.
“Good afternoon.
“The remarkable things that NASA achieves…and that America achieves…build on the pioneers who came before us.
“People like the women of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo.
“People like Mary Jackson. Dr. Christine Darden. Dorothy Vaughan. Katherine Johnson.
“Thanks to all the Members of Congress who made today possible. The late Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, who we miss, and who led the effort in 2019 alongside Senator Chris Coons to bring these medals to life. Thanks to the champions for the legislation, then-Senator Kamala Harris, Senators Lisa Murkowski and Shelley Moore Capito, and Congressman Frank Lucas.
“The women we honor today made it possible for Earthlings to lift beyond the bounds of Earth, and for generations of trailblazers to follow.
“We did not come this far only to come this far.
“We continue this legacy, as one member of the audience here with us does every single day – the remarkable Andrea Mosie.
“Andrea, who has worked at NASA for nearly 50 years, is the lead processor for the Apollo sample program. She oversees the Moon rocks and lunar samples NASA brought back from Apollo, 842 pounds of celestial science! These samples are national treasures. So is Andrea.
“The pioneers we honor today, these Hidden Figures – their courage and imagination brought us to the Moon. And their lessons, their legacy, will send us back to the Moon… and then…imagine – just imagine – when we leave our footprints on the red sands of Mars.
“Thanks to these people who are part of our NASA family, we will continue to sail on the cosmic sea to far off cosmic shores.”
For more information about NASA missions, visit:
-end-
Meira Bernstein / Cheryl Warner
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / cheryl.m.warner@nasa.gov
Giant Leaps Start at Johnson for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Commander Nick Hague
As the hub of human spaceflight, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston holds a variety of unique responsibilities and privileges. Those include being the home of NASA’s astronaut corps.
One of those astronauts – Nick Hague – is now preparing to launch to the International Space Station along with Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov on the ninth rotational mission under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. This will be the third launch and second mission to the space station for Hague, who was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2013 and has spent 203 days in space.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 Commander Nick Hague smiles and gives two thumbs up during the crew equipment interface test at SpaceX’s Dragon refurbishing facility at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.SpaceX
Hague was born and raised in Kansas but has crisscrossed the country for college and career. He earned degrees from the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and he attended the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Hague’s military career has taken him to New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and included a five-month deployment to Iraq. Hague transferred from the Air Force to the U.S. Space Force in 2020 after serving as the Space Force’s director of test and evaluation at the Pentagon.
No stranger to new places, Hague vividly recalls making his first trip to Johnson when he was interviewing to join NASA’s astronaut corps. “I had no idea what to expect, and it was a bit overwhelming. I knew everyone was watching me and judging me,” he said. “Luckily, even though I wasn’t selected then, I got another chance a few years later. It’s a pretty magical place.”
Hague completed his astronaut training in July 2015 as part of NASA’s 21st astronaut class. He was the first astronaut from that group to be assigned to a mission, which launched in October 2018 but was aborted shortly after takeoff. His next spaceflight occurred in 2019, when he joined three of his classmates – NASA astronauts Jessica Meir, Christina Koch, and Andrew Morgan – aboard the International Space Station for Expeditions 59 and 60.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague suits up for spacewalk training in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory. NASA/James Blair
Hague has made many memories at Johnson, but one that stands out is his experience working onsite amid the 2013 government shutdown. “I’m active-duty military so I still came to work,” he explained. “I remember being onsite and the center being completely empty. Being able to ride around an empty campus on the free-range bikes – it was peaceful and surreal.” It was also a preview of what many Johnson employees experienced during the pandemic and how NASA maintains round-the-clock support for spaceflight operations regardless of extenuating circumstances.
Hague now looks ahead to another journey to low Earth orbit. NASA and SpaceX officials currently plan to launch the Crew-9 mission no earlier than Wednesday, Sept. 25. The crew will lift off from Launch Complex 40 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft.
Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov (left) and NASA astronaut Nick Hague during a visit to Kennedy Space Center for training. SpaceX
Hague and Gorbonov will become members of the Expedition 72 crew aboard the station. They will join NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams, and Don Pettit, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner, and will spend about six months conducting scientific research in microgravity and completing a range of operational activities before returning home.
More details about the mission and crew can be found by following the Crew-9 blog, @commercial_crew on X, or commercial crew on Facebook. You can also follow @astrohague on X and Instagram.
Hubble Examines a Busy Galactic Center
Hubble Examines a Busy Galactic Center
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy IC 4709 located around 240 million light-years away in the southern constellation Telescopium. Hubble beautifully captures its faint halo and swirling disk filled with stars and dust bands. The compact region at its core might be the most remarkable sight. It holds an active galactic nucleus (AGN).
If IC 4709’s core just held stars, it wouldn’t be nearly as bright. Instead, it hosts a gargantuan black hole, 65 million times more massive than our Sun. A disk of gas spirals around and eventually into this black hole, crashing together and heating up as it spins. It reaches such high temperatures that it emits vast quantities of electromagnetic radiation, from infrared to visible to ultraviolet light and X-rays. A lane of dark dust, just visible at the center of the galaxy in the image above, obscures the AGN in IC 4709. The dust lane blocks any visible light emission from the nucleus itself. Hubble’s spectacular resolution, however, gives astronomers a detailed view of the interaction between the quite small AGN and its host galaxy. This is essential to understanding supermassive black holes in galaxies much more distant than IC 4709, where resolving such fine details is not possible.
This image incorporates data from two Hubble surveys of nearby AGNs originally identified by NASA’s Swift telescope. There are plans for Swift to collect new data on these galaxies. Swift houses three multiwavelength telescopes, collecting data in visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray light. Its X-ray component will allow SWIFT to directly see the X-rays from IC 4709’s AGN breaking through the obscuring dust. ESA’s Euclid telescope — currently surveying the dark universe in optical and infrared light — will also image IC 4709 and other local AGNs. Their data, along with Hubble’s, provides astronomers with complementary views across the electromagnetic spectrum. Such views are key to fully research and better understand black holes and their influence on their host galaxies.
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Light has been seen leaving an atom cloud before it entered
Light has been seen leaving an atom cloud before it entered
AI is on the hunt for dark matter
SETI Scientists Scan TRAPPIST-1 for Technosignatures
If you are going to look for intelligent life beyond Earth, there are few better candidates than the TRAPPIST-1 star system. It isn’t a perfect choice. Red dwarf stars like TRAPPIST-1 are notorious for emitting flares and hard X-rays in their youth, but the system is just 40 light-years away and has seven Earth-sized worlds. Three of them are in the potentially habitable zone of the star. They are clustered closely enough to experience tidal forces and thus be geologically active. If intelligent life arises easily in the cosmos, then there’s a good chance it exists in the TRAPPIST-1 system.
But finding evidence of intelligent life on a distant planet is difficult. Unless Mr. Mxyzptlk or the Great Gazoo want to talk about your car’s extended car warranty, any signal we detect will likely be subtle, similar to the stray radio signals we emit from Earth. So the challenge is to distinguish actual signals from aliens, known as technosignatures, from the naturally occuring emissions of stars and planets. Recently a team used the Allen Telescope Array to capture 28 hours of TRAPPIST-1 signals in an effort to find the elusive aliens.
The study began with a few assumptions. The biggest one was to presume that if TRAPPIST-1 has an intelligent civilization it is likely spread across more than one world. Given how compact the system is, that isn’t too outlandish. Getting from one world to another wouldn’t be much more difficult than it is for us to get to the Moon. With that assumption, the team then assumed that the worlds would transmit radio messages between each other. Since the signals would need to transverse interplanetary distances, they would be the strongest and most clear technosignatures in the system. So the team focused on signals during a planet-planet occultation (PPO). That is when two planets line up from our vantage point. During a PPO any signal sent from the far planet to the closer planet would spill over and eventually reach us.
Illustration of a PPO event. Credit: Tusay, et alWith 28 hours of observation data in hand, the team filtered out more than 11,000 candidate signals. Signals that were stronger than the expected range for natural signals. Then using computer models of the system they determined 7 possible PPO events and further narrowed things down to about 2,200 potential signals occurring during a PPO window. From there they went on to determine whether any of those signals were statistically unusual enough to suggest an intelligent origin. The answer to that was sadly no.
Alas, if there are aliens in the TRAPPIST-1 system, we haven’t found them yet. But the result shouldn’t minimize this study. It is the longest continuous survey of the system to date, which is pretty cool. And it’s kind of amazing that we’ve reached the point where we’re able to do this study. We are actively searching known exoplanets in detail.
Reference: Tusay, Nick, et al. “A Radio Technosignature Search of TRAPPIST-1 with the Allen Telescope Array.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.08313 (2024).
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