(2016-12-15) Pegasus-XL, CYGNSS
A constellation of eight small satellites making up NASA’s CYGNSS mission was delivered to LEO by an air-launched Pegasus rocket flying Orbital ATK’s second and final mission of the year. The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System is intended to improve hurricane forecasting by measuring GPS signals reflected off Earth’s sea surface near the centers of storms.
Space hamburger: tortilla, rehydrated beef, fresh onion from #HTV6, @ISS_Research lettuce & sauce. Tasted like heaven, flew like an angel ;)
The vortex at Saturn’s north pole, observed by the Cassini space probe on December 30, 2013.
The first time you see Planet Earth from space, it’s stunning; when you’ve spent 534 days in space—more than any other American—it still is! On his most recent trip the International Space Station NASA astronaut Jeff Williams used an Ultra High Definition video camera that he pointed at the planet 250 miles below; here he shares some of those images, and talks about the beauty of the planet, the variety of things to see, and the value of sharing that perspective with everyone who can’t go to orbit in person.
As 2016 ends, I can’t help but point out an interesting symmetry in where the mission has recently been and where we are going. Exactly two years ago we had just taken New Horizons out of cruise hibernation to begin preparations for the Pluto flyby. And exactly two years from now we will be on final approach to our next flyby, which will culminate with a very close approach to a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) called 2014 MU69 – a billion miles farther out than Pluto – on Jan. 1, 2019. Just now, as 2016 ends, we are at the halfway point between those two milestones.
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The year ahead will begin with observations of a half-dozen KBOs by our LORRI telescope/imager in January. Those observations, like the ones we made in 2016 of another half-dozen KBOs, are designed to better understand the orbits, surface properties, shapes, satellite systems and frequency of rings around these objects. These observations can’t be done from any groundbased telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, or any other spacecraft – because all of those other resources are either too far away or viewing from the wrong angles to accomplish this science. So this work is something that only New Horizons can accomplish.
Enceladus, moon of Saturn, observed by the Cassini space probe on December 26, 2016.
“They call it the Death Star…”.. err, actually:
NASA’s Cloud-Aerosol LIdar with Orthogonal Polarization, an instrument aboard the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation satellite launched in 2006, uses a laser to take measurements of polar plankton.
On Christmas Day, astronaut Cady Coleman peeks out from her sleeping quarters on the International Space Station, December 25, 2010. (NASA)
CHRISTMAS IN SPACE: Scenes of the international crew of the ISS celebrating Christmas. I hear things got pretty out of hand.
Training for Deep Space by okan170
One way Human space exploration could possibly look in the 2020s, based on NASA papers. Orion visits a Cis-Lunar station (orbiting high above the Moon), consisting of a Deep Space Cygnus as Augmentation Service Module (ASM), a modified Boeing NEXT-Step designed Node Module (NM) in the center providing a base for a robot arm, and a NASA Habitat Module (HM) that would be reconfigurable for many missions. A Deep Space Cargo Dragon (based on Dragon 2) has docked to the station to provide supplies.
This configuration shows the 7.2m diameter Habitat module design, based on SLS tooling, but designed to fit under the 8.4m payload fairing (NASA is also investigating an 8.4m variant, and a privately designed module). The ISS partners are also interested in becoming involved with this by contributing hardware.
Using this setup, or something similar to it, NASA intends to stress-test the most cutting edge life support systems far away from the Earth’s magnetic field. They propose a series of longer missions, eventually up to a year, which would prove that the systems are robust enough to handle something like a Mars flyby. During this time, the station would make an ideal location to study the surface of the Moon and perhaps control robotic landers on the surface.
Southern Jupiter looms some 37,000 kilometers away in this JunoCam image from December 11. The image data was captured near Juno’s third perijove or closest approach to Jupiter, the spacecraft still in its 53 day long looping orbit. With the south polar region on the left, the large whitish oval toward the right is massive, counterclockwise rotating storm system. Smaller than the more famous Great Red Spot, the oval storm is only about half the diameter of planet Earth, one of a string of white ovals currently in the southern hemisphere of the Solar System’s, ruling gas giant.
At first glance, Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt, may not look icy. Images from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft have revealed a dark, heavily cratered world whose brightest area is made of highly reflective salts – not ice. But newly published studies from Dawn scientists show two distinct lines of evidence for ice at or near the surface of the dwarf planet. Researchers are presenting these findings at the 2016 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
“These studies support the idea that ice separated from rock early in Ceres’ history, forming an ice-rich crustal layer, and that ice has remained near the surface over the history of the solar system,” said Carol Raymond, deputy principal investigator of the Dawn mission, based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
Water ice on other planetary bodies is important because it is an essential ingredient for life as we know it. “By finding bodies that were water-rich in the distant past, we can discover clues as to where life may have existed in the early solar system,” Raymond said.
Yesterday marked the launch of a new constellation of eight microsatellites, the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), designed to monitor hurricanes in Earth’s tropics. The constellation will provide unprecedented capability to monitor conditions inside hurricanes–information that will hopefully help scientists improve hurricane prediction models. Each CYGNSS microsat monitors GPS signals that it receives from the GPS satellite system and from the reflection of that signal off the Earth. By comparing these signals, the satellites can determine wave heights in the ocean, and from that wave information, they can measure surface wind speeds. By peering inside the hurricane as it forms and travels, scientists hope they will be better able to estimate not only a hurricane’s path but how strong it will be when it makes landfall. (Image credits: NASA)
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