truemaskedwabbit

For the young and the young at heart.
The environmental and thermal operating systems, or ETHOS, monitors the life support system and the cooling system on the International Space Station. Find out from ETHOS operator Tess Caswell about the role of chemistry in making sure the astronauts aboard the space station have oxygen to breathe, water to drink, and a comfortable temperature in which to live and work. NASA Now Minutes are excerpts from a weekly current events program available for classroom use at the NASA Explorer Schools.

01.22.12: SOHO \'s View of Earth-directed CME
The Solar Heliospheric Observatory captured the coronal mass ejection (CME) in this video (which shows the sun\'s activity from January 19 to January 23). The CME is associate with an M8.7 class solar flare from AR1402 directed towards Earth where on January 24th we can expect some spectacular auroras.
The end of the video clip shows the interference caused by the onslaught of fast, energetic solar particles emitted from the sun.

Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the flare, shown here in teal as that is the color typically used to show light in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, a wavelength in which it is easy to view solar flares. The flare began at 10:38 PM ET on Jan. 22, peaked at 10:59 PM and ended at 11:34 PM. Credit: SOHO/ESA & NASA

The sun is now in its active stage for the next 11 years and some, this is called the solar maximum stage. This has nothing to do with 2012 doomsday or conspiracy theories. The sun does not cause the polar ice caps to melt, global warming does. The sun does not cause earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, tectonic plates moving cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Neither does the sun cause the geomagnetosphere to vanish nor the poles to flip. The geomagnetosphere has been weakening and regaining its strength for billions of years as has the gradual shifting of the magnetic poles which lasts over hundreds of thousands of years to make a full reversal of the poles. It has done so for billions of years we are all still here. (tmw)

The Solar Flare produced a M2.6-class Coronal Mass Ejection, which appears to be Earth directed. Current forecasts have it to arrive on January 21, 2012 at approx. 22:30 UT (let\'s give or take 7 hours... it\'s over 90 million mile journey after all).

NASA Goddard Space Weather Lab is predicting possible strong geomagnetic storms. What will it mean for us? No the earth\'s core won\'t be heating up because of it and the sun certainly never, ever causes earthquakes and doesn\'t cause disruptions in our geomagnetosphere as some 2012 doomsday sayers are predicting. We\'ll have some beautiful Auroras and perhaps some communications interruption but no major issues are expected.

A view of the Active Regions 1401 and 1402 over the past couple of days shows the development of those beautiful sunspots. Then two views of the solar flare through the SDO instrument before concluding with views from STEREO Ahead and Behind.

Credit: NASA SDO & NASA STEREO & SOHO

Montana Students Pick Winning Names for Moon Craft
PASADENA, Calif. -- Twin NASA spacecraft that achieved orbit around the moon New Year\'s Eve and New Year\'s Day have new names, thanks to elementary students in Bozeman, Mont. Their winning entry, \"Ebb and Flow,\" was selected as part of a nationwide school contest that began in October 2011.

The names were submitted by fourth graders from the Emily Dickinson Elementary School. Nearly 900 classrooms with more than 11,000 students from 45 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia participated in the contest. Previously named Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL-A and -B, the washing machine-sized spacecraft begin science operations in March, after a launch in September 2011.

\"The 28 students of Nina DiMauro\'s class at the Emily Dickinson Elementary School have really hit the nail on the head,\" said Maria Zuber, GRAIL principal investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. \"We were really impressed that the students drew their inspiration by researching GRAIL and its goal of measuring gravity. Ebb and Flow truly capture the spirit and excitement of our mission.\"

Zuber and Sally Ride, America\'s first woman in space and CEO of Sally Ride Science in San Diego, selected the names following the contest, which attracted 890 proposals via the Internet. The contest invited ideas from students ages 5 to 18 enrolled in U.S. schools. Although everything from spelling and grammar to creativity was considered, Zuber and Ride primarily took into account the quality of submitted essays.

\"With submissions from all over the United States and even some from abroad, there were a lot of great entries to review,\" Ride said. \"This contest generated a great deal of excitement in classrooms across America, and along with it an opportunity to use that excitement to teach science.\"

GRAIL is NASA\'s first planetary mission carrying instruments fully dedicated to education and public outreach. Each spacecraft carries a small camera called GRAIL MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school students). Thousands of students in grades five through eight will select target areas on the lunar surface and send requests for study to the GRAIL MoonKAM Mission Operations Center in San Diego.

The winning prize for the Dickinson students is to choose the first camera images. Dickinson is one of nearly 2,000 schools registered for the MoonKAM program, which is led by Ride and her team at Sally Ride Science in collaboration with undergraduate students at the University of California in San Diego.

\"These spacecraft represent not only great science, but great inspiration for our future,\" said Jim Green, director of NASA\'s Planetary Science Division in Washington. \"As they study our lunar neighbor, Ebb and Flow will undergo nearly the same motion as the tides we feel here on Earth.”

Launched in September 2011, Ebb and Flow will be placed in a near-polar, near-circular orbit with an altitude of about 34 miles (55 kilometers). During their science mission, the duo will answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

NASA\'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the GRAIL mission for NASA\'s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA\'s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA. To read the winning submission visit: https://moonkam.ucsd.edu/about/spacecraft_names . Information about MoonKAM is available online at: https://moonkam.ucsd.edu . For more information about GRAIL visit: nasa.gov/grail [nasa.gov/grail] and grail.nasa.gov [grail.nasa.gov] .

As early as Sept. 8th, NASA\'s GRAIL mission will blast off to uncover some of the mysteries beneath the surface of the Moon. That cratered gray exterior hides some tantalizing things -- even, perhaps, a long-lost companion.


\"It\'s an intriguing idea,\" says David Smith, GRAIL\'s deputy principal investigator at MIT. \"And it would be a way to explain one of the great perplexities of the Earth-Moon system -- the Moon\'s strangely asymmetrical nature. Its near and far sides are substantially different.\"

The Moon\'s near side, facing us, is dominated by vast smooth \'seas\' of ancient hardened lava. In contrast, the far side is marked by mountainous highlands. Researchers have long struggled to account for the differences, and the \"two moon\" theory introduced by Martin Jutzi and Erik Asphaug of the University of California at Santa Cruz is the latest attempt.

Scientists agree that when a Mars-sized object crashed into our planet about 4 billion years ago, the resulting debris cloud coalesced to form the Moon. Jutzi and Asphaug posit that the debris cloud actually formed two moons. A second, smaller chunk of debris landed in just the right orbit to lead or follow the bigger Moon around Earth.

\"Normally, such moons accrete into a single body shortly after formation,\" explains Smith. \"But the new theory proposes that the second moon ended up at one of the Lagrange points in the Earth-Moon system.\"

Lagrange points are a bit like gravitational fly traps. They can hold an object for a long time--but not necessarily forever. The second moon eventually worked its way out and collided with its bigger sister. The collision occurred at such a low velocity that the impact did not form a crater. Instead, the smaller moon \'went splat,\' forming the contemporary far side highlands.

In short, the lunar highlands are the lost moon\'s remains.


Flying in formation around the Moon, NASA\'s twin GRAIL spacecraft will make precise measurements of the lunar gravitational field.
\"By probing the Moon\'s gravity field, GRAIL will \'see\' inside the Moon, illuminating the differences between the near and far sides.\"

GRAIL will fly twin spacecraft around the Moon for several months. All the while, a microwave ranging system will precisely measure the distance between the two spacecraft. By watching that distance expand and contract as the pair fly over the lunar surface, researchers can map the Moon\'s underlying gravity field.**

\"These measurements will tell us a lot about the distribution of material inside the Moon, and give us pretty definitive information about the differences in the two sides of the Moon\'s crust and mantle. If the density of crustal material on the lunar far side differs from that on the near side in a particular way, the finding will lend support to the \'two moon\' theory.\"

But this information is just one \"piece of the jigsaw puzzle.\" To prove a sister ever existed, other pieces are needed. NASA\'s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has already provided key information on the Moon\'s surface topography. Scientists can also refer to lunar surface chemistry data and look at old seismic information from Apollo for clues.

But what\'s really needed, says Smith, is a sample return mission to the far side to determine the ages of rocks there.

\"The smaller moon, if there was one, was about 1/3 the size of our current Moon. So upon collision it would have cooled down faster, and the rocks on the far side, where its remains are thought to have spread, would be older than the ones on the near side.\"

In any case, we have something new to think about. Shall we try singing \"fly me to the moons\" or \"shine on harvest moons\"?

\"Don\'t go changing any song lyrics just yet,\" says Smith.

Forty light years from Earth, a rocky world named \"55 Cancri e\" circles perilously close to a stellar inferno. Completing one orbit in only 18 hours, the alien planet is 26 times closer to its parent star than Mercury is to the Sun. If Earth were in the same position, the soil beneath our feet would heat up to about 3200 F. Researchers have long thought that 55 Cancri e must be a wasteland of parched rock.

Now they\'re thinking again. New observations by NASA\'s Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that 55 Cancri e may be wetter and weirder than anyone imagined.

Spitzer recently measured the extraordinarily small amount of light 55 Cancri e blocks when it crosses in front of its star. These transits occur every 18 hours, giving researchers repeated opportunities to gather the data they need to estimate the width, volume and density of the planet.

According to the new observations, 55 Cancri e has a mass 7.8 times and a radius just over twice that of Earth. Those properties place 55 Cancri e in the \"super-Earth\" class of exoplanets, a few dozen of which have been found. Only a handful of known super-Earths, however, cross the face of their stars as viewed from our vantage point in the cosmos, so 55 Cancri e is better understood than most.

When 55 Cancri e was discovered in 2004, initial estimates of its size and mass were consistent with a dense planet of solid rock. Spitzer data suggest otherwise: About a fifth of the planet\'s mass must be made of light elements and compounds--including water. Given the intense heat and high pressure these materials likely experience, researchers think the compounds likely exist in a \"supercritical\" fluid state.

A supercritical fluid is a high-pressure, high-temperature state of matter best described as a liquid-like gas, and a marvelous solvent. Water becomes supercritical in some steam turbines--and it tends to dissolve the tips of the turbine blades. Supercritical carbon dioxide is used to remove caffeine from coffee beans, and sometimes to dry-clean clothes. Liquid-fueled rocket propellant is also supercritical when it emerges from the tail of a spaceship.

On 55 Cancri e, this stuff may be literally oozing--or is it steaming?--out of the rocks.

With supercritical solvents rising from the planet\'s surface, a star of terrifying proportions filling much of the daytime sky, and whole years rushing past in a matter of hours, 55 Cancri e teaches a valuable lesson: Just because a planet is similar in size to Earth does not mean the planet is like Earth.

It\'s something to re-think about.


Dr. Tony Phillips Science@NASA
Credits: The original research reported in this story has been accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. The lead author is Brice-Olivier Demory, a post-doctoral associate in Professor Sara Seager\'s group at MIT.

For its first mission to the International Space Station, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft will use deployable solar arrays as its primary power source for running sensors, driving heating and cooling systems, and communicating with SpaceX’s Mission Control Center and the Space Station. Dragon’s solar arrays generate up to 5,000 watts of power — enough to power over 80 standard light bulbs. The solar arrays, shielded by protective covers during launch, deploy just minutes after Dragon separates from the Falcon 9 second stage, as it heads towards its rendezvous with the Space Station.

While many commercial satellites and NASA missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope use solar arrays, Dragon will be the first American commercial transport vehicle to do so.

Past American spacecraft like Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle used fuel cells or battery packs. Fuel cells are limited by the amount of chemical reactants (typically oxygen and hydrogen) that the vehicle can carry. Batteries alone are limiting due to their mass and the amount of power they can carry.

Solar energy provides a key benefit — long-term power. Combining Dragon’s solar arrays with a compact and efficient battery pack provides a reliable and renewable source of power. When in the sun, Dragon’s solar arrays recharge the battery pack, and the charged batteries provide power while Dragon passes through the Earth’s shadow. With solar panels, Dragon will have the power it needs for longer trips, whether to the Space Station or future missions to Mars.

Dragon’s deployable solar arrays were developed from scratch by a small team of SpaceX engineers. To ensure they will survive the harsh environment of space, our engineers put the solar arrays through hundreds of hours of rigorous testing including thermal, vacuum, vibration, structural and electrical testing.

A very special treat from the Interantional Space Station with the cast of Dextre the Canadian Robot, CSA/ASC Canadarm1 and Canadarm2. Comet Lovejoy captured by the International Space Station Commander Dan Burbank, Elves above our clouds and more. Accompanied by the exquisite orchestra of Ravel\'s Bolero.