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Read an extract from All Systems Red by Martha Wells
Read an extract from All Systems Red by Martha Wells
'The first time I read the script ... I sobbed.' 'Atlas' stars Jennifer Lopez and Sterling K. Brown on AI paranoia and their film's emotional core' (exclusive)
Cape Cod Weighs Big-Ticket Pollution Solutions
Toxic algal blooms are forcing Cape Cod communities to consider expensive sewer and septic system projects.
Unravelling the mysteries of clouds
Clouds are one of the biggest mysteries in the climate system. They play a key role in the regulating the temperature of our atmosphere. But we don’t know how their behaviour will change over time as Earth’s atmosphere gets warmer. This is where EarthCARE comes in.
Launching on 28 May 2024, ESA’s Earth Cloud, Aerosol and Radiation Explorer will help quantify the role that clouds and aerosols play in heating and cooling Earth’s atmosphere. With its suite of four cutting-edge instruments, EarthCARE is a groundbreaking advancement in satellite technology.
It promises to deliver unprecedented data – unravelling the complexities of both clouds and aerosols. With this, we can refine our atmospheric models and climate forecasts, giving us the tools to tackle the challenges of a changing climate with greater accuracy and precision.
Watch EarthCARE launch live on ESA WebTV or ESA YouTube. For more information on how to stream the launch, click here.
Spacemanic startup wins Pierre Cardin Prix Bulles prize
Spacemanic, a Slovak and Czech startup company, won this year’s Prix Bulles Cardin award of €20 000 on 17 May for its ocean WaterCube.
This device, which is based on space hardware, has sensors which measure pollution levels in sea water allowing the identification of pollution hotspots. With this data, action can be taken to safeguard habitats and species critical for the long-term sustainability of marine ecosystems and fisheries.
This Week's Sky at a Glance, May 24 – June 2
The Big Dipper twists around fast near the zenith, Arcturus almost claims the zenith, the Coma Star Cluster not far away can't quite hide, and T Cor Bor simmers ominously dim.
The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, May 24 – June 2 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Three years of high temperatures will mean we have breached 1.5°C
Three years of high temperatures will mean we have breached 1.5°C
Earth from Space: Changing Iceland in colour
Asteroid-bound Psyche spacecraft fires up ion thrusters, starts cruising through space
Rae Ann Meyer Named Deputy Director of NASA Marshall
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Portrait: Rae Ann Meyer NASA
Rae Ann Meyer has been selected as deputy director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, effective June 2.
In this role, Meyer will assist in leading Marshall’s nearly 7,000 on-site and near-site civil service and contractor employees and an annual budget of approximately $5 billion. She will also help guide the center as it continues to deliver vital propulsion systems and hardware, flagship launch vehicles, world-class space systems, state-of-the-art engineering technologies and cutting-edge science and research projects and solutions.
“I am thrilled to partner with Rae Ann in leading Marshall into this new era of space exploration,” said Center Director Joseph Pelfrey. “I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside her on Marshall’s executive leadership team for the last couple years, and her dedication, intelligence and care for our teams is unmatched. Marshall has a bright future with Rae Ann in this role.”
Meyer previously served as Marshall’s associate director from 2022-2024, where she led execution and integration of the center’s business operations, mission support enterprise functions, and budget management.
Throughout her NASA career, Meyer has served in multiple leadership positions at Marshall. She was previously deputy manager of Marshall’s Science and Technology Office. Named to the Senior Executive Service position in May 2019, she assisted in leading the organization responsible for planning, developing, and executing a broad range of science and technology investigations, programs, projects, and activities in support of NASA’s science, technology, and exploration goals. The office also leads the pursuit of new partnership opportunities with other government agencies and private industry. Meyer helped oversee an annual budget of more than $475 million and managed a diverse, highly technical workforce of approximately 300 civil service and contractor employees.
Among her other roles over the years, she was manager of Marshall’s Science and Technology Partnerships and Formulation Office from 2017-2019, worked a detail as technical advisor in 2016 for the Office of Strategy and Plans at NASA Headquarters in Washington, and was chief of key Engineering Directorate structure and flight analysis divisions at Marshall from 2007-2017. Meyer was manager of the Constellation Support Office in Marshall’s Science and Mission Systems Office from 2006-2007. She led Marshall’s In-Space Propulsion Technology Office from 2004-2006 and was assistant manager of the Space Transfer Technology Project from 2000-2002, managing in-space technology program funding at NASA centers nationwide. Meyer’s NASA career began in 1989 as a control mechanisms engineer in Marshall’s Propulsion Laboratory.
A native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Meyer earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1989.
Learn more about Marshall’s work to support the nation’s mission in space at:
https://www.nasa.gov/marshall/
Lance Davis
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-640-9065
lance.d.davis @nasa.gov
Hannah Maginot
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-932-1937
hannah.l.maginot @nasa.gov
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International Space Development Conference 2024 beams up Star Trek's William Shatner and more in Los Angeles
NASA Selects Technology Transfer Services Contractor
NASA has awarded the Consolidated Agency Technology Transfer Services contract to Summit Technologies & Solutions, Inc. in Alexandria, Virginia, to provide support for the agency’s Technology Transfer Program.
The performance-based firm-fixed price contract has a potential mission services value of $26 million and a maximum potential indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity value of $55 million. The contract begins on Saturday, June 1, with a one-year base period followed by four one-year option periods that may be exercised at NASA’s discretion.
Summit Technologies & Solutions will provide NASA tech transfer support at multiple centers including the agency’s headquarters in Washington, Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and Stennis Space Center in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, with the potential to support other agency field centers under the enterprise contract.
Under this HUBZone small business set-aside contract, the company will be responsible for supporting NASA’s mission to identify and protect NASA’s intellectual property with commercial potential and transfer those technologies to entrepreneurs, companies, universities, non-profits, business incubators and innovation ecosystems, and state and local governments to create jobs, promote economic development, create technological advantages for American companies, and improve life here on Earth.
For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
-end-
Tiernan Doyle
Headquarters, Washington
202-774-8357
tiernan.doyle@nasa.gov
Molly Porter
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-424-5158
molly.a.porter@nasa.gov
China launches test satellite to very low Earth orbit (video)
Astronomers Propose a 14-Meter Infrared Space Telescope
The Universe wants us to understand its origins. Every second of every day, it sends us a multitude of signals, each one a clue to a different aspect of the cosmos. But the Universe is the original Trickster, and its multitude of signals is an almost unrecognizable cacophony of light, warped, shifted, and stretched during its long journey through the expanding Universe.
What are talking apes to do in this situation but build another telescope adept at understanding a particular slice of all this noisy light? That’s what astronomers think we should do, to nobody’s surprise.
Due to the size of the Universe and its ongoing expansion, light from the Universe’s first galaxies is stretched into the infrared. This ancient light holds clues to the Universe’s origins and, by extension, our origins. It takes a powerful infrared telescope to sense and decipher this light. Earth’s atmosphere blocks infrared light which is why we keep building infrared space telescopes.
Infrared telescopes are also well-suited to observing planets as they form. Dense environments like protoplanetary disks are opaque to most light, but infrared light can reveal what’s going on in these planet-forming environments. The dust absorbs light, then emits it in the infrared, and also scatters it. That confounds optical telescopes, but infrared telescopes like SALTUS are designed to deal with it.
A team of astronomers from the USA and Europe has joined the chorus calling for a new infrared space telescope. It’s tentatively called SALTUS, the Single Aperture Large Telescope for Universe Studies. In a new paper, the astronomers outline the science case for SALTUS.
“The SALTUS Probe mission will provide a powerful far-infrared (far-IR) pointed space observatory to explore our cosmic origins and the possibility of life elsewhere,” write the authors of the new paper.
The paper is titled “Single Aperture Large Telescope for Universe Studies (SALTUS): Science Overview.” Gordon Chin from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center is the lead author. It’s in pre-print at arxiv.org.
If built, SALTUS will be different from the powerful JWST. The JWST has four instruments that cover an infrared frequency range from 600 to 28,500 nanometers, or 0.6 to 28.5 microns, which is from the near-infrared (NIR) to the mid-infrared (MIR). SALTUS would cover 34 to 660 ?m, which is in the far-infrared (FIR). SALTUS’ range is unavailable to any current observatory, space or ground-based.
There are no precise definitions of what exact ranges constitute NIR, MIR, and FIR, but this table is a useful representation. Image Credit: WikipediaInfrared telescopes need to be kept cool. They use sunshades and cryogenic coolers to keep temperatures down and IR light detectable. The longer the wave of infrared light, the cooler the sensor needs to be. Sunshades are passive and cool the primary mirror, but the instruments require active cryogenic cooling, and those systems have a limited lifetime that restricts mission length. In SALTUS’s case, the baseline mission length is five years.
During those five years, SALTUS will make use of its 14-meter primary mirror and its pair of instruments to open a “powerful window to the Universe through which we can explore our cosmic origins,” according to the paper’s authors.
The two instruments are the SAFARI-Lite spectrometer (SALTUS Far-Infrared Lite) and HiRX (High-Resolution receiver.) Using these instruments, SALTUS will complement the observing capabilities of the JWST and ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array.
Its aperture is so large that it’ll be the only Far-IR observatory with arcsec-scale spatial resolution. One arcsecond is defined as the ability to show two posts standing 4.8mm apart from 1km away as separate posts. “This will permit an unmasking of the true nature of the cold Universe, which holds the answers to many of the questions concerning our cosmic origins,” the authors write.
SALTUS has a unique design among space telescopes. It features an inflatable primary mirror, which is new to space telescopes but has been proven during decades of use in ground-based telecommunications. A two-layer sunshield will keep the inflatable mirror cool.
SALTUS large aperture will provide high sensitivity and is aimed at a couple of foundational questions.
How does habitability develop while planets are forming? To address this question, SALTUS will trace carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen in 1,000 different protoplanetary disks. It has the power to recognize numerous molecular and atomic species and different lattice modes of ice and some minerals. No existing telescope has this capability.
SALTUS’ far IR observing capabilities will let it see a portion of protoplanetary disks that are obscured in other wavelengths. This will open a new window into planet formation and how habitability develops. Image Credit: Chin et al. 2025/Miotello et al. Protostars and Planets 2023.Habitability, as far as we understand it, revolves around water. Water begins its journey in the same molecular clouds where stars form. SALTUS will follow water’s journey from molecular cloud to protoplanetary disks to icy planetesimals and comets that deliver water to planets like Earth. A key part of SALTUS’s work will be deriving deuterium/hydrogen ratios.
This simple graphic shows how water arrives on planets and can lead to habitability. SALTUS will follow the water’s journey by observing hundreds of protoplanetary disks. Image Credit: Chin et al. 2024.How do galaxies form and evolve? SALTUS will measure how galaxies form and acquire more mass. It’ll measure heavy elements and interstellar dust from the Universe’s first galaxies to today. The telescope will also probe the co-evolution of galaxies and their supermassive black holes (SMBHs.)
Tracking the rapid evolution of dust grains in galaxies in the Universe’s first billion years is part of understanding galaxy formation and evolution. SALTUS can do that by observing PAHs, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and their spectral lines. Some PAH spectral lines are very faint but entirely visible to SALTUS.
There’s a causal link between star formation and active galactic nuclei (AGN) that influences galaxy growth and evolution. But the two phenomena take place on wildly different spatial scales, and the phase that links them together is obscured by dust. SALTUS’s high resolution and sensitive far-IR spectroscopy will give astronomers a clearer view of AGN and how they shape galaxies.
SALTUS would be placed into a Sun-Earth Halo L2 orbit. Its maximum distance from Earth would be 1.8 million km (1.12 million miles). That orbit would give the telescope two continuous 20º viewing zones around the ecliptic poles, resulting in full sky coverage every six months.
The SALTUS concept is designed in response to the 2020 Decadal Survey and NASA’s Astrophysical Roadmap. It’s a direct response to NASA’s 2023 Astrophysics Probe Explorer (APEX) solicitation. The questions it’ll help answer come directly from those works.
“SALTUS has both the sensitivity and spatial resolution to address not just the open science questions of the year 2023 but, more importantly, the unknown questions that will be raised in the 2030s,” the authors write in their summary. “SALTUS is forward-leaning and well-suited to serving the current and future needs of the astronomical community.”
The post Astronomers Propose a 14-Meter Infrared Space Telescope appeared first on Universe Today.