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A nearby star that exploded some 3 million years ago could have removed all dust smaller than a millimetre from the outer solar system

A nearby star that exploded some 3 million years ago could have removed all dust smaller than a millimetre from the outer solar system

Microgravity makes water do weird and wonderful things. NASA astronaut Don Pettit took advantage of that fact to create a colorful ball that resembles Jupiter.

A preview of "The Guide to The Orville," a new book written by the sci-fi show's executive producer.

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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The Skydweller Aero solar-powered, autonomous aircraft flies above the Thad Cochran Test Stand (B-1/B-2) at NASA’s Stennis Space Center during a September 2024 test operation. Skydweller Aero has an ongoing airspace agreement with NASA Stennis to conduct test flights of its aircraft in the area.Skydweller Aero

NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, has entered into an agreement with Skydweller Aero Inc. for the company to operate its solar-powered autonomous aircraft in the site’s restricted airspace, a key step towards achieving a strategic center goal.

The Reimbursable Space Act agreement marks the first between NASA Stennis and a commercial company to utilize the south Mississippi center’s unique capabilities to support testing and operation of uncrewed systems.

“There are few locations like NASA Stennis that offer a secure location, restricted airspace and the infrastructure to support testing and operation of various uncrewed systems,” said NASA Stennis Director John Bailey. “Range operations is a critical area of focus as we adapt to the changing aerospace and technology landscape to grow into the future.”

NASA Stennis and Skydweller Aero finalized the agreement in late August, paving the way for the company to begin area test flights of its autonomous, uncrewed solar-powered aircraft, which features a wingspan greater than a 747 jetliner and is designed for long-duration flights. The company announced Oct. 1 it had completed an initial test flight campaign of the aircraft, including two test excursions totaling 16 and 22.5 hours.

NASA Stennis and Skydweller Aero began talks in the summer of 2023 when the company expressed interest in utilizing NASA Stennis airspace for its all-carbon fiber aircraft. The NASA Stennis area fits the company’s needs well since it provides ready access from Stennis International Airport to the Gulf of Mexico area. NASA Stennis airspace also provides a level of privacy for aircraft testing and operation.

“Access to the restricted airspace above NASA Stennis has been tremendously helpful to our uncrewed, autonomous flight operations,” said Barry Matsumori, president and chief operating officer of Skydweller Aero. “The opportunity to use the controlled environment above Stennis helps accelerate our efforts, allowing us to transition the aircraft in and out of civil airspace, while demonstrating its reliability and unblemished safety record to the FAA.”

Companies must be conducting public aircraft operations to use any restricted airspace. In this instance, Skydweller Aero is flying its aircraft in association with the U.S. Department of Defense, allowing for the Reimbursable Space Act agreement with NASA Stennis.

The agreement provides the company Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorization for future test flights in designated areas of the NASA Stennis buffer zone. It also represents a key step in the center’s effort to grow its range operations presence.

“This really opens the door for others to come here,” said Jason Peterson, NASA Stennis range officer. “There are requirements that must be met, but for those who meet them, NASA Stennis is an ideal location for test and flight operations.”

The FAA established restricted airspace at NASA Stennis in 1966 and approved its expansion in 2016. The expansion was necessary to conduct propulsion testing safely, accommodate U.S. Department of Defense missions, and support unmanned aerial systems activities.

Restricted airspace at NASA Stennis allows qualifying organizations to conduct various uncrewed flight activities. NASA Stennis personnel provide scheduling and range operation support, including reviews and evaluations to ensure safe flight operations. Processes are in place to ensure communication between aircraft operators, FAA air traffic controllers, and range safety personnel.

Peterson said he hopes the agreement with Skydweller Aero will clear the way for future collaborations as NASA Stennis continues to expand its customer-based operations. For instance, although Skydweller Aero is not located onsite, NASA Stennis is able to support ground operations for a variety of unmanned aircraft system takeoffs and landings.

Beyond that, the center also hopes to expand its operational capabilities to include marine and ground activities. In addition to a large geographic footprint, the center features a secure 7.5-mile waterway canal system for testing unmanned underwater or surface vehicles.

For information about range operations at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, visit:

Range and Airspace Operations – NASA

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Details Last Updated Oct 23, 2024 EditorNASA Stennis CommunicationsContactC. Lacy Thompsoncalvin.l.thompson@nasa.gov / (228) 688-3333LocationStennis Space Center Related Terms

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Amazon MGM Studios' new live-action "Voltron" movie lands Henry Cavill as its leading man.

NASA researchers developed a Quiet Space Fan to reduce the noise inside crewed spacecraft, sharing the results with industry for potential use on future commercial space stations.

Controlling noise inside spacecraft helps humans talk to each other, hear alarms clearer, get restful sleep, and minimizes the risk of hearing loss. It is best to control the noise at the source, and in spacecraft the noise often comes from cabin ventilation and equipment cooling fans.

Since the earliest days of human spaceflight, there has been noise from the Environmental Control and Life Support System ventilation. NASA is working to design highly efficient and quiet fans by building on technology initially developed at the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and sharing it with companies that are developing new spacecraft and space stations.

The Quiet Space Fan prototype, initially developed at Glenn, to reduce noise inside spacecraft.Credits: NASA

“As NASA continues to support the design and development of multiple commercial space stations, we have intentional and focused efforts to share technical expertise, technologies, and data with industry,” said Angela Hart, manager of NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “The Quiet Space Fan research is one more example of how we are actively working with private companies to foster the development of future destinations.”

The initial fan prototype was designed at Glenn in 2009 using tools developed for aircraft turbofan engines. The fan design size, flow rate – how much air the fan moves – and pressure rise – the increase in pressure across the fan – were designed similarly to the original Orion cabin fan design point (150 cubic feet per minute, 3.64 inches of water column). Acoustic measurements showed that the new design was approximately 10 decibels quieter than a similar-sized commercial off-the-shelf fan.

To take the research a step further, a larger fan was recently designed with almost twice the flow rate and pressure rise capability (250 cubic feet per minute, 7 inches of water column) compared to the initial prototype. For example, the original fan could provide enough airflow for a large car or van, and the larger fan could provide enough airflow for a house.

NASA’s quiet fan design aims to maintain high performance standards while significantly reducing everyday noise levels and can potentially be used on the International Space Station and future commercial destinations.

The Quiet Space Fan helps to control noise that often comes from cabin ventilation and equipment cooling fans, and the research is being shared with industry. Credits: NASA

“This work will lead to significant benefits including volume and mass savings from noise controls that are no longer as large or needed at all, reduced system pressure loss from mufflers and silencers that don’t need to be as restrictive, reduced power draw because of the reduced system pressure loss and the highly efficient fan design, and satisfying spaceflight vehicle acoustic requirements to provide a safe and habitable acoustic environment for astronauts,” said Chris Allen, Acoustics Office manager at NASA Johnson.

Developing quieter fans is one of many efforts NASA is making to improve human spaceflight and make space exploration more innovative and comfortable for future missions to low Earth orbit. Helping private companies provide reliable and safe services at a lower cost will allow the agency to focus on Artemis missions to the Moon while continuing to use low Earth orbit as a training and proving ground for deep space missions.

Learn more about NASA’s commercial space strategy at:

https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/commercial-space

Moon landing attempts are becoming so frequent that the players involved — private companies and government agencies alike — are learning from each other's efforts.

Everything you need to know about Rwanda's outbreak of Marburg virus, which has been described as one of the deadliest human pathogens

Everything you need to know about Rwanda's outbreak of Marburg virus, which has been described as one of the deadliest human pathogens

China rolled out the rocket and crew capsule for the Shenzhou-19 mission, the nation's next astronaut launch to the Tiangong space station.

An epidemiologist explores a troubling rise in early-onset breast cancer diagnoses and discusses the potential link to chronic exposure to endocrine disruptors.

In a wetland on the south coast of England, archaeologists dug up one of the oldest and most complete wooden tools ever found in Britain, which is around 3500 years old

In a wetland on the south coast of England, archaeologists dug up one of the oldest and most complete wooden tools ever found in Britain, which is around 3500 years old

Sometimes the night sky is full of surprises.

The James Webb Space Telescope has discovered lonely quasars in the early universe, with "empty larders" that defy theories surrounding their growth to monster sizes.

SpaceX's Starlink satellites provided internet service on a Boeing 777 jet for the first time today (Oct. 22), during a Qatar Airways flight from Doha to London.

Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who has worked on the JWST, catalogues the science behind its most stunning images in her new book, Webb's Universe. Here's her pick of the telescope’s best shots

Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who has worked on the JWST, catalogues the science behind its most stunning images in her new book, Webb's Universe. Here's her pick of the telescope’s best shots

Between 2011 and 2018, NASA’s Dawn mission conducted extended observations of Ceres and Vesta, the largest bodies in the Main Asteroid Belt. The mission’s purpose was to address questions about the formation of the Solar System since asteroids are leftover material from the process, which began roughly 4.5 billion years ago. Ceres and Vesta were chosen because Ceres is largely composed of ice, while Vesta is largely composed of rock. During the years it orbited these bodies, Dawn revealed several interesting features on their surfaces.

This included mysterious flow features similar to those observed on other airless bodies like Jupiter’s moon Europa. In a recent study, Michael J. Poston, a researcher from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI), recently collaborated with a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to attempt to explain the presence of these features. In the paper detailing their findings, they outlined how post-impact conditions could temporarily produce liquid brines that flow along the surface, creating curved gullies and depositing debris fans along the impact craters’ walls.

Michael J. Poston, the lead author of the study, is the Group Leader of Laboratory Studies (Space Science) at the SwRI. He was joined by a team of researchers from NASA JPL at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Airborne Snow Observatories, including Jennifer Scully – a NASA JPL planetary geologist and an Associate on the Dawn science mission team. The paper that describes their findings, “Experimental Examination of Brine and Water Lifetimes after Impact on Airless Worlds,” was published on October 21st in The Planetary Science Journal.

The planetoid Vesta, which was studied by the Dawn probe between July 2011 and September 2012. Credit: NASA

Airless bodies are frequently struck by asteroids, meteorites, and other debris that form impact craters and cause temporary atmospheres to form above them. On icy bodies or those with sufficient amounts of volatile elements (possibly beneath the surface), this will trigger temporary outflows of liquid water. However, water and other volatiles (like ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane, etc.) will lose stability in strong vacuum conditions. For their study, the team sought to examine how long liquid could potentially flow on the surfaces of airless bodies (such as Ceres and Vesta) before refreezing.

To this end, they simulated the pressures that ice on Vesta experiences after a meteoroid impact and how long it would take the liquid released from the subsurface to refreeze. “We wanted to investigate our previously proposed idea that ice underneath the surface of an airless world could be excavated and melted by an impact and then flow along the walls of the impact crater to form distinct surface features,” said Scully in a recent SwRI press release.

To this end, the team placed liquid-filled sample containers in a modified test chamber at NASA JPL to simulate the rapid pressure decreases that occur after an impact on airless bodies. In so doing, they were able to simulate how liquid behaves as the temporary atmosphere created by an impact dissipates. According to their results, the pressure drop was so fast that test liquids immediately and dramatically expanded, ejecting material from the sample containers. As Poston explained:

“Through our simulated impacts, we found that the pure water froze too quickly in a vacuum to effect meaningful change, but salt and water mixtures, or brines, stayed liquid and flowing for a minimum of one hour. This is sufficient for the brine to destabilize slopes on crater walls on rocky bodies, cause erosion and landslides, and potentially form other unique geological features found on icy moons.”

This image of the Cornelia Crater on Vesta shows lobate deposits (right) and curvilinear gullies (indicated by white arrows, left). Credit: SwRI/NASA JPL-Caltech/Poston et al. (2024)

These findings could help explain the origins of similar features on other airless bodies, like Europa’s smooth plains and the spider-like feature in its Manannán impact crater (which is due to “dirty ice” existing alongside “pure” water ice). They could also shed light on post-impact processes on bodies with very thin atmospheres, like Mars. This includes its gullies, which have dark features that flow downhill, and fan-shaped debris deposits that form in the presence of flowing water. Last, the study could support the existence of subsurface water in other inhospitable environments throughout the Solar System.

“If the findings are consistent across these dry and airless or thin-atmosphere bodies, it demonstrates that water existed on these worlds in the recent past, indicating water might still be expelled from impacts,” said Poston. “There may still be water out there to be found.” This could have profound implications for future missions to these bodies, including NASA’s Europa Clipper mission. This mission launched on October 14th, 2024, and will establish orbit around Europa by April 2030.

Further Reading: SwRI, The Planetary Science Journal

The post New Research Reveals Provides Insight into Mysterious Features on Airless Worlds appeared first on Universe Today.