Did You Recently Hear That NASA Changed The Zodiac Signs? Nope, We Definitely Didn’t…

Fun Facts About Mars

Mars is a cold desert world, and is the fourth planet from the sun. It is half the diameter of Earth and has the same amount of dry land. Like Earth, Mars has seasons, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons and weather, but its atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist for long on the surface. There are signs of ancient floods on the Red Planet, but evidence for water now exists mainly in icy soil and thin clouds.

Earth has one, Mars has two…moons of course! Phobos (fear) and Deimos (panic) are the Red Planet’s two small moons. They are named after the horses that pulled the chariot of the Greek war god Ares, the counterpart to the Roman war god Mars.

The diameter of Mars is 4220 miles (6792 km). That means that the Red Planet is twice as big as the moon, but the Earth is twice as big as Mars.

Since Mars has less gravity than Earth, you would weigh 62% less than you do here on our home planet. Weigh yourself here on the Planets App. What’s the heaviest thing you’ve ever lifted? On Mars, you could have lifted more than twice that! Every 10 pounds on Earth only equals 4 pounds on the Red Planet. Find out why HERE.

Mass is the measurement of the amount of matter something contains. Mars is about 1/10th of the mass of Earth.

Mars and Earth are at their closest point to each other about every two years, with a distance of about 33 million miles between them at that time. The farthest that the Earth and Mars can be apart is: 249 million miles. This is due to the fact that both Mars and Earth have elliptical orbits and Mars’ orbit is tilted in comparison with the Earth’s. They also orbit the sun at different rates.

The temperature on Mars can be as high as 70 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) or as low as about –225 degrees Fahrenheit (-153 degrees Celsius). How hot or cold the surface varies between day and night and among seasons. Mars is colder than Earth because it is farther from the sun.

You know that onions have layers, but did you know that Mars has layers too? Like Earth, Mars has a crust, a mantle and a core. The same stuff even makes up the planet layers: iron and silicate.

Ever wonder why it’s so hard launching things to space? It’s because the Earth has a log of gravity! Gravity makes things have weight, and the greater the gravity, the more it weights. On Mars, things weigh less because the gravity isn’t as strong.

Take a deep breath. What do you think you just breathed in? Mostly Nitrogen, about a fifth of that breath was Oxygen and the rest was a mix of other gases. To get the same amount of oxygen from one Earth breath, you’d have to take around 14,500 breaths on Mars! With the atmosphere being 100 times less dense, and being mostly carbon dioxide, there’s not a whole lot of oxygen to breathe in.

Mars has about 15% of Earth’s volume. To fill Earth’s volume, it would take over 6 Mars’ volumes.

For more fun Mars facts, visit HERE.

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Hi Serena, what made you think, yes, I want to be an astronaut? And what's your favourite aquatic animal?

Scary Space Stories to Tell in the Dark

The universe is full of dazzling sights, but there’s an eerie side of space, too. Nestled between the stars, shadowy figures lurk unseen. The entire galaxy could even be considered a graveyard, full of long-dead stars. And it’s not just the Milky Way – the whole universe is a bit like one giant haunted house! Our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will illuminate all kinds of spine-chilling cosmic mysteries when it launches in 2027, but for now settle in for some true, scary space stories.

Flickering Lights

One of the first signs that things are about to get creepy in a scary movie is when the lights start to flicker. That happens all the time in space, too! But instead of being a sinister omen, it can help us find planets circling other stars.

Roman will stare toward the heart of our galaxy and watch to see when pairs of stars appear to align in the sky. When that happens, the nearer star – and orbiting planets – can lens light from the farther star, creating a brief brightening. That’s because every massive object warps the fabric of space-time, changing the path light takes when it passes close by. Roman could find around 1,000 planets using this technique, which is called microlensing.

The mission will also see little flickers when planets cross in front of their host star as they orbit and temporarily dim the light we receive from the star. Roman could find an additional 100,000 planets this way!

Galactic Ghosts

Roman is going to be one of the best ghost hunters in the galaxy! Since microlensing relies on an object’s gravity, not its light, it can find all kinds of invisible specters drifting through the Milky Way. That includes rogue planets, which roam the galaxy alone instead of orbiting a star…

…and solo stellar-mass black holes, which we can usually only find when they have a visible companion, like a star. Astronomers think there should be 100 million of these black holes in our galaxy.

Stellar Skeletons

Black holes aren’t the only dead stars hiding in the sky. When stars that aren’t quite massive enough to form black holes run out of fuel, they blast away their outer layers and become neutron stars. These stellar cores are the densest material we can directly observe. One sugar cube of neutron star material would weigh about 1 billion tons (or 1 trillion kilograms) on Earth! Roman will be able to detect when these extreme objects collide.

Smaller stars like our Sun have less dramatic fates. After they run out of fuel, they swell up and shrug off their outer layers until only a small, hot core called a white dwarf remains. Those outer layers may be recycled into later generations of stars and planets. Roman will explore regions where new stars are bursting to life, possibly containing the remnants of such dead stars.

Cosmic Cobwebs

If we zoom out far enough, the structure of space looks like a giant cobweb! The cosmic web is the large-scale backbone of the universe, made up mainly of a mysterious substance known as dark matter and laced with gas, upon which galaxies are built. Roman will find precise distances for more than 10 million galaxies to map the structure of the cosmos, helping astronomers figure out why the expansion of the universe is speeding up.

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.

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What Are the Bright Spots on Ceres?

Dwarf planet Ceres has more than 130 bright areas, and most of them are associated with impact craters. Now, Ceres has revealed some of its well-kept secrets in two new studies in the journal Nature, thanks to data from our Dawn spacecraft.

Two studies have been looking into the mystery behind these bright areas. One study identifies this bright material as a kind of salt, while the other study suggests the detection of ammonia-rich clays. 

Study authors write that the bright material is consistent with a type of magnesium sulfate called hexahydrite. A different type of magnesium sulfate is familiar on Earth as Epsom salt.

Researchers, using images from Dawn’s framing camera, suggest that these salt-rich areas were left behind when water-ice sublimated in the past. Impacts from asteroids would have unearthed the mixture of ice and salt.

An image of Occator Crater (below) shows the brightest material on Ceres. Occator itself is 60 miles in diameter, and its central pit, covered by this bright material, measures about 6 miles wide. With its sharp rim and walls, it appears to be among the youngest features on the dwarf planet.

In the second nature study, members of the Dawn science team examined the composition of Ceres and found evidence for ammonia-rich clays. Why is this important?

Well, ammonia ice by itself would evaporate on Ceres today, because it is too warm. However, ammonia molecules could be stable if present in combination with other minerals. This raises the possibility that Ceres did not originate in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, where it currently resides. But instead, might have formed in the outer solar system! Another idea is that Ceres formed close to its present position, incorporating materials that drifted in from the outer solar system, near the orbit of Neptune, where nitrogen ices are thermally stable.

As of this week, our Dawn spacecraft has reached its final orbital altitude at Ceres (about 240 miles from the surface). In mid-December, it will begin taking observations from this orbit, so be sure to check back for details!

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First piece of Orion’s Artemis III pressure vessel arrives at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2020/08/25/first-piece-of-artemis-iii-orion-delivered-to-nasa/

55 Cancri e: Where Skies Sparkle Above a Never-ending Ocean of Lava

We’ve discovered thousands of exoplanets – planets beyond our solar system – so far. These worlds are mysterious, but observations from telescopes on the ground and in space help us understand what they might look like.

Take the planet 55 Cancri e, for instance. It’s relatively close, galactically speaking, at 41 light-years away. It’s a rocky planet, nearly two times bigger than Earth, that whips around its star every 18 hours (as opposed to the 365 days it takes our planet to orbit the Sun. Slacker).

The planet’s star, 55 Cancri, is slightly smaller than our Sun, but it’s 65 times closer than the Sun is to Earth. Imagine a massive sun on the horizon! Because 55 Cancri e is so close to its star, it’s tidally locked just like our Moon is to the Earth. One side is always bathed in daylight, the other is in perpetual darkness. It’s also hot. Really hot. So hot that silicate rocks would melt into a molten ocean of melted rock. IT’S COVERED IN AN OCEAN OF LAVA. So, it’s that hot (between 3,140 degrees and 2,420 degrees F).

Scientists think 55 Cancri e also may harbor a thick atmosphere that circulates heat from the dayside to the nightside. Silicate vapor in the atmosphere could condense into sparkling clouds on the cooler, darker nightside that would reflect the lava below. It’s also possible that it would rain sand on the nightside, but … sparkling skies!

Check out our Exoplanet Travel Bureau's latest 360-degree visualization of 55 Cancri e and download the travel poster at https://go.nasa.gov/2HOyfF3.

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Tomorrow’s Technology on the Space Station Today

Tablets, smart appliances, and other technologies that are an indispensable part of daily life are no longer state-of-the-art compared to the research and technology development going on over our heads. As we celebrate 20 years of humans continuously living and working in space aboard the International Space Station, we’re recapping some of the out-of-this-world tech development and research being done on the orbiting lab too.

Our Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) helps redefine state-of-the-art tech for living and working in space. Here are 10 technologies tried and tested on the space station with helping hands from its astronaut occupants over the years.

1. Astronaut Wanna-Bees

Astronauts on the space station are responsible for everything from conducting science experiments and deploying satellites to tracking inventory and cleaning. While all are necessary, the crew can delegate some jobs to the newest robotic inhabitants – Astrobees.

These cube-shaped robots can work independently or in tandem, carrying out research activities. Once they prove themselves, the bots will take on some of the more time-consuming tasks, such as monitoring the status of dozens of experiments. The three robots – named Bumble, Honey, and Queen – can operate autonomously following a programmed set of instructions or controlled remotely. Each uses cameras for navigation, fans for propulsion, and a rechargeable battery for power. The robots also have a perching arm that lets them grip handrails or hold items. These free-flying helpers take advantage of another STMD technology called Gecko Grippers that “stick” to any surface.

2. Getting a Grip in Microgravity

We wanted to develop tools for grabbing space junk, and something strong and super-sticky is necessary to collect the diverse material orbiting Earth. So, engineers studied the gecko lizard, perhaps the most efficient “grabber” on this planet. Millions of extremely fine hairs on the bottom of their feet make an incredible amount of contact with surfaces so the gecko can hold onto anything. That inspired our engineers to create a similar material.

Now the Gecko Gripper made by OnRobot is sold on the commercial market, supporting industrial activities such as materials handling and assembly. The NASA gecko adhesive gripper that’s being tested in microgravity on the Astrobee robots was fabricated on Earth. But other small plastic parts can now be manufactured in space.

3. Make It, or Don’t Take It

Frequent resupply trips from Earth to the Moon, Mars, and other solar system bodies are simply not realistic. In order to become truly Earth-independent and increase sustainability, we had to come up with ways to manufacture supplies on demand.

A demonstration of the first 3D printer in space was tested on the space station in 2014, proving it worked in microgravity. This paved the way for the first commercial 3D printer in space, which is operated by Made In Space. It has successfully produced more than 150 parts since its activation in 2016. Designs for tools, parts, and many other objects are transmitted to the station by the company, which also oversees the print jobs. Different kinds of plastic filaments use heat and pressure in a process that’s similar to the way a hot glue gun works. The molten material is precisely deposited using a back-and-forth motion until the part forms. The next logical step for efficient 3D printing was using recycled plastics to create needed objects.

4. The Nine Lives of Plastic

To help fragile technology survive launch and keep food safe for consumption, NASA employs a lot of single-use plastics. That material is a valuable resource, so we are developing a number of ways to repurpose it. The Refabricator, delivered to the station in 2018, is designed to reuse everything from plastic bags to packing foam. The waste plastic is super-heated and transformed into the feedstock for its built-in 3D printer. The filament can be used repeatedly: a 3D-printed wrench that’s no longer needed can be dropped into the machine and used to make any one of the pre-programmed objects, such as a spoon. The dorm-fridge-sized machine created by Tethers Unlimited Inc. successfully manufactured its first object, but the technology experienced some issues in the bonding process likely due to microgravity’s effect on the materials. Thus, the Refabricator continues to undergo additional testing to perfect its performance.

5. Speed Metal

An upcoming hardware test on the station will try out a new kind of 3D printer. The on-demand digital manufacturing technology is capable of using different kinds of materials, including plastic and metals, to create new parts. We commissioned TechShot Inc. to build the hardware to fabricate objects made from aerospace-grade metals and electronics. On Earth, FabLab has already demonstrated its ability to manufacture strong, complex metal tools and other items. The unit includes a metal additive manufacturing process, furnace, and endmill for post-processing. It also has built-in monitoring for in-process inspection. When the FabLab is installed on the space station, it will be remotely operated by controllers on Earth. Right now, another printer created by the same company is doing a different kind of 3D printing on station.

6. A Doctor’s BFF

Today scientists are also learning to 3D print living tissues. However, the force of gravity on this planet makes it hard to print cells that maintain their shape. So on Earth, scientists use scaffolding to help keep the printed structures from collapsing.

The 3D BioFabrication Facility (BFF) created by TechShot Inc. could provide researchers a gamechanger that sidesteps the need to use scaffolds by bioprinting in microgravity. This first American bioprinter in space uses bio-inks that contain adult human cells along with a cell-culturing system to strengthen the tissue over time. Eventually, that means that these manufactured tissues will keep their shape once returned to Earth’s gravity! While the road to bioprinting human organs is likely still many years away, these efforts on the space station may move us closer to that much-needed capability for the more than 100,000 people on the wait list for organ transplant.

7. Growing Vitamins

Conditions in space are hard on the human body, and they also can be punishing on food. Regular deliveries of food to the space station refresh the supply of nutritious meals for astronauts. But prepackaged food stored on the Moon or sent to Mars in advance of astronauts could lose some nutritional value over time.

That’s why the BioNutrients experiment is underway. Two different strains of baker’s yeast which are engineered to produce essential nutrients on demand are being checked for shelf life in orbit. Samples of the yeast are being stored at room temperature aboard the space station and then are activated at different intervals, frozen, and returned to Earth for evaluation. These tests will allow scientists to check how long their specially-engineered microbes can be stored on the shelf, while still supplying fresh nutrients that humans need to stay healthy in space. Such microbes must be able to be stored for months, even years, to support the longer durations of exploration missions. If successful, these space-adapted organisms could also be engineered for the potential production of medicines. Similar organisms used in this system could provide fresh foods like yogurt or kefir on demand. Although designed for space, this system also could help provide nutrition for people in remote areas of our planet.

8. Rough and Ready

Everything from paints and container seals to switches and thermal protection systems must withstand the punishing environment of space. Atomic oxygen, charged-particle radiation, collisions with meteoroids and space debris, and temperature extremes (all combined with the vacuum) are just some conditions that are only found in space. Not all of these can be replicated on Earth. In 2001, we addressed this testing problem with the Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE). Technologists can send small samples of just about any technology or material into low-Earth orbit for six months or more. Mounted to the exterior of the space station, MISSE has tested more than 4,000 materials. More sophisticated hardware developed over time now supports automatic monitoring that sends photos and data back to researchers on Earth. Renamed the MISSE Flight Facility, this permanent external platform is now owned and operated by the small business, Alpha Space Test & Research Alliance LLC. The woman-owned company is developing two similar platforms for testing materials and technologies on the lunar surface.

9. Parachuting to Earth

Small satellites could provide a cheaper, faster way to deliver small payloads to Earth from the space station. To do just that, the Technology Education Satellite, or TechEdSat, develops the essential technologies with a series of CubeSats built by college students in partnership with NASA. In 2017, TechEdSat-6 deployed from the station, equipped with a custom-built parachute called exo-brake to see if a controlled de-orbit was possible. After popping out of the back of the CubeSat, struts and flexible cords warped the parachute like a wing to control the direction in which it travelled. The exo-brake uses atmospheric drag to steer a small satellite toward a designated landing site. The most recent mission in the series, TechEdSat-10, was deployed from the station in July with an improved version of an exo-brake. The CubeSat is actively being navigated to the target entry point in the vicinity of the NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

10. X-ray Vision for a Galactic Position System

Independent navigation for spacecraft in deep space is challenging because objects move rapidly and the distances between are measured in millions of miles, not the mere thousands of miles we’re used to on Earth. From a mission perched on the outside of the station, we were able to prove that X-rays from pulsars could be helpful. A number of spinning neutron stars consistently emit pulsating beams of X-rays, like the rotating beacon of a lighthouse. Because the rapid pulsations of light are extremely regular, they can provide the precise timing required to measure distances.

The Station Explorer for X-Ray Timing and Navigation (SEXTANT) demonstration conducted on the space station in 2017 successfully measured pulsar data and used navigation algorithms to locate the station as it moved in its orbit. The washing machine-sized hardware, which also produced new neutron star science via the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), can now be miniaturized to develop detectors and other hardware to make pulsar-based navigation available for use on future spacecraft.

As NASA continues to identify challenges and problems for upcoming deep space missions such as Artemis, human on Mars, and exploring distant moons such as Titan, STMD will continue to further technology development on the space station and Earth.

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Solar System: 5 Things to Know This Week

The solar system is huge, so let us break it down for you. Here are 5 things you should know this week:

1. Mini-Moons

This week, the robotic spacecraft Cassini will pass a pair of tiny Saturnian moons. Daphnis, only 5.7 miles (9.2 km) across, orbits within the Keeler Gap in Saturn's outer A ring. Daphnis' slight gravity maintains that gap. Cassini will then swing by Telesto, a small moon that shares its orbit with Tethys. Cassini's cameras should get some good pictures of these tiny worlds.

2. Stardust Memories

Jan. 15 is the 10th anniversary of the day the Stardust capsule returned to Earth, carrying pieces of a comet. The Stardust spacecraft passed right through the gas and dust surrounding the icy nucleus of Wild 2 (pronounced "Vilt-2") in January 2004, then sent the samples it collected home for laboratory analysis.

3. Sun Surfing in the 70s

Jan. 15 is the 40th anniversary of the launch of Helios 2, the second of a pair of spacecraft launched by NASA and built by Germany to investigate the sun. Helios 2 flew to within about 27 million miles (44 million km) of the sun's surface in 1976. The spacecraft provided important information on solar plasma, the solar wind, cosmic rays, and cosmic dust, and also performed magnetic field and electrical field experiments. A NASA mission set to launch in 2018 will dare an even closer approach.

4. To Space, to Watch the Seas

Jason 3, an international mission to continue U.S.- European satellite measurements of the topography of the ocean surface, is scheduled to launch on Jan. 17. The mission will make highly detailed measurements of sea-level on Earth to gain insight into ocean circulation and climate change.

5. Getting Serious About Ceres

This is getting good. Over the past few weeks, the Dawn mission has been tantalizing us with ever-closer images of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt and a small world in its own right. Now, the robotic spacecraft has used its ion engines to ease down into its lowest mapping orbit in order to scrutinize Ceres up close, and already the pictures are spectacular. Odd mountains, deep craters and fissures—not to mention those famous bright spots—will all be coming into sharper focus during the coming days.

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Happy “Back to the Future Day”!

Find out more about @nasa​‘s real journey to Mars:

https://www.nasa.gov/journeytomars

Astronaut Journal Entry - Spacewalking

Currently, six humans are living and working on the International Space Station, which orbits 250 miles above our planet at 17,500mph. Below you will find a real journal entry, written in space, by NASA astronaut Scott Tingle.

To read more entires from this series, visit our Space Blogs on Tumblr.

We just finished a 20-hour work day. I spent nearly 11 hours in the spacesuit, and 7 hours and 24 minutes doing a spacewalk. The view was amazing. The changes from day to night, and back to day were phenomenal. 

My fellow astronaut Mark Vande Hei and I completed the primary task of replacing the Latching End Effector, or hand, for the robotic arm, but a software glitch kept us waiting and we were unable to complete any get-ahead tasks. I thought we had plenty of time and estimated that we had only been outside for a few hours. I was very surprised to find that we had worked for over 7 hours. Wow, I guess time really does fly by when you are having fun!

Find more ‘Captain’s Log’ entries HERE.

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