December 14, 1972 – The Apollo 17 command module, photographed from the lunar module as they maneuver to rendezvous with each other. (NASA)
This image, taken by the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft, highlights the seventh of Jupiter’s eight ‘string of pearls’ – massive counterclockwise rotating storms that appear as white ovals in the gas giant’s southern hemisphere. Since 1986, these white ovals have varied in number from six to nine. There are currently eight white ovals visible.
The image was taken on Dec. 11, 2016, at 9:27 a.m. PST (12:27 EST), as the Juno spacecraft performed its third close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 15,300 miles (24,600 kilometers) from the planet.
OSIRIS-REx to Hunt for Earth ‘Trojans’
The University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission will take advantage of its two-year outbound cruise to the asteroid Bennu in order to conduct a search for elusive solar system objects. Between Feb. 9 and 20, the NASA spacecraft will activate its onboard camera suite and commence a search for Earth-Trojan asteroids.
Trojan asteroids are travel companions to planets as they orbit the sun, remaining near a stable point 60 degrees in front of or behind the planet. Because they constantly lead or follow in the same orbit, they never will collide with their companion planet. The term “Trojan asteroid” was established when it was decided to name Jupiter’s companion asteroids after warriors of the Trojan war in Greek mythology.
Six planets in our solar system are known to harbor Trojan asteroids — Jupiter, Neptune, Mars, Venus, Uranus and Earth. Although more than 6,000 Trojan asteroids are known to be orbiting along with Jupiter, scientists have discovered only one Earth Trojan to date: 2010 TK7, found by NASA’s NEOWISE project in 2010.
Scientists predict that there should be more Trojans orbiting Earth, but these asteroids are difficult to detect because they appear close to the sun from Earth’s point of view. In mid-February 2017, however, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will be ideally positioned to undertake a survey of the stable point in front of Earth.
Researchers Are Preparing for Trump to Delete Government Science From the Web
With the Trump presidency looming, many scientists who studied Bush’s policies are starting a mad dash to preserve climate science that has been made available under President Obama based on fears that it might no longer be publicly accessible. Several professors I spoke to say that officials who work for the government’s science departments are privately imploring researchers outside the government to download what they can now, or risk losing access to it later. NOAA and the EPA did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for NASA told me the agency is “apolitical” and that it is “committed to doing whatever we can to assist in making the Executive Branch transition a smooth transition.”
December 12, 1972 – During the second spacewalk of the Apollo 17 mission, astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt appear to have a little fun with a Moon rock. In the moment, Cernan remarks, “That boulder’s going to roll. Man, that is hard.” Hard, but obviously rather “light” due to the lunar gravity. After returning to Earth, Cernan recalled, “The boulder was just sitting on the soil and, as I remember, when I hit it with the hammer, it moved. That’s how I knew we would be able to roll it if we wanted to.”
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has sent to Earth its first views of Saturn’s atmosphere since beginning the latest phase of its mission. The new images show scenes from high above Saturn’s northern hemisphere, including the planet’s intriguing hexagon-shaped jet stream.
Cassini Makes First Ring-Grazing Plunge
NASA’s Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft has made its first close dive past the outer edges of Saturn’s rings since beginning its penultimate mission phase on Nov. 30.
Cassini crossed through the plane of Saturn’s rings on Dec. 4 at 5:09 a.m. PST (8:09 a.m. EST) at a distance of approximately 57,000 miles (91,000 kilometers) above Saturn’s cloud tops. This is the approximate location of a faint, dusty ring produced by the planet’s small moons Janus and Epimetheus, and just 6,800 miles (11,000 kilometers) from the center of Saturn’s F ring.
The Heart Cells investigation uses human skin cells that are induced to become stem cells, which can then differentiate into any type of cell. Researchers forced the stem cells to grow into human heart cells, which Rubins cultured aboard the space station for one month. Rubins described seeing the heart cells beat for the first time as “pretty amazing. First of all, there’s a few things that have made me gasp out loud up on board the [space] station. Seeing the planet was one of them, but I gotta say, getting these cells in focus and watching heart cells actually beat has been another pretty big one.”
At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, technologist Douglas Hofmann and his collaborators are building a better gear. Hofmann is the lead author of two recent papers on gears made from bulk metallic glass (BMG), a specially crafted alloy with properties that make it ideal for robotics.
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How can this mystery material be both a metal and a glass? The secret is in its atomic structure. Metals have an organized, crystalline arrangement. But if you heat them up into a liquid, they melt and the atoms become randomized. Cool them rapidly enough –about 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius) per second – and you can trap their non-crystalline, “liquid” form in place.
This produces a random arrangement of atoms with an amorphous, or non-crystalline microstructure. That structure gives these materials their common names: “amorphous metals,” or metallic glass.
By virtue of being cooled so rapidly, the material is technically a glass. It can flow easily and be blow-molded when heated, just like windowpane glass. When this glassy material is produced in parts greater than about .04 inches (1 millimeter), it’s called “bulk” metallic glass, or BMG.
Spacecraft’s ‘Ring-Grazing’ Maneuver to Deliver New Science from Saturn
Next week, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will go where no spacecraft has gone before when it flies just past the edge of Saturn’s main rings. The maneuver is a first for the spacecraft, which has spent more than 12 years orbiting the ringed giant planet. And it’s part of a lead-up to a series of increasingly awesome feats that make up the mission’s “Grand Finale” ending with Cassini’s plunge into Saturn on Sept. 15, 2017.
BEAM Update: Expandable Habitat Reveals Important Early Performance Data
Just five months into its two-year demonstration mission on the International Space Station, the first human-rated expandable habitat in low-Earth orbit is already returning valuable information about expandable technology performance and operations in space. Developed through a public-private partnership between NASA and Bigelow Aerospace, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) launched to the station April 8, 2016, in the “trunk” of the Dragon capsule during the eighth SpaceX Commercial Resupply Service mission.
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NASA and Bigelow Aerospace are pleased to report that, overall, BEAM is operating as expected and continues to produce valuable data. Structural engineers at NASA JSC confirmed that BEAM deployment loads upon the space station were very small, and continue to analyze the module’s structural data for comparison with ground tests and models. Researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, have found no evidence of large debris impacts in the DIDS data to date—good news for any spacecraft. And radiation researchers at JSC have found that the dosage due to Galactic Cosmic Rays in BEAM is similar to other space station modules, and continue to analyze local “trapped” radiation particles, particularly from the South Atlantic Anomaly, to help determine additional shielding requirements for long-duration exploration missions.
NASA engineer Margaret Hamilton, who helped land Apollo 11 on the moon, receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom, November 22, 2016.
This image of Ceres approximates how the dwarf planet’s colors would appear to the eye. This view of Ceres, produced by the German Aerospace Center in Berlin, combines images taken during Dawn’s first science orbit in 2015 using the framing camera’s red, green and blue spectral filters. The color was calculated using a reflectance spectrum, which is based on the way that Ceres reflects different wavelengths of light and the solar wavelengths that illuminate Ceres.
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