Artemis Astronauts Have Drills, Too!

Is there a pot of gold at the end of a green aurora? Not sure, but these dancing green lights provide a spectacular view fitting for the St. Patrick’s Day holiday. 

This stunning aurora was captured by NASA astronaut Jeff Williams during his 2016 mission on the International Space Station. 

Even though auroras are best seen at night, they are actually caused by the sun. The sun sends us more than just heat a light…it sends lots of other energy and small particles toward Earth. The protective magnetic field around Earth shields us from most of the energy and particles. Sometimes, the particles interact with gases in our atmosphere resulting in beautiful displays of light in the sky. Oxygen gives off green and red light, while nitrogen glows blue and purple.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

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What specific area of space research most excites you? Could be something being explored currently, or something you would like to see work done on in the future.

My twin sister worked on genetics in graduate school, and she continues to research ideas in genetics. She comes up with a lot of great ideas for what we can study in space, especially now since genetics is a focus on the space station. I’m looking forward to continuing with the genetics experiments and seeing what we learn.

Hopefully not a total dumb question but, YOUR ultimate goal as an astronaut?

It’s official - we’re headed to do science on the Sun! ☀️

At 11:03 p.m. EST on Sunday, Feb. 9, Solar Orbiter, an international collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA, launched aboard United Launch Alliance’s #AtlasV rocket for its journey to our closest star. The spacecraft will help us understand how the Sun creates and controls the constantly changing space environment throughout the solar system. The more we understand about the Sun’s influence on the planets in our solar system and the space we travel through, the more we can protect our astronauts and spacecraft as we journey to the Moon, to Mars and beyond. More here. 

Image Credit: NASA Social participant, Jared Frankle

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If #NationalCheeseDay has you thinking about the Moon, you're not alone. 🧀

In 1965, the Ranger 9 probe captured these sharp images of a cratered lunar surface just moments before its planned impact. What we learned paved the way for Apollo. #Apollo50th

10 Things: CubeSats — Going Farther

Now that the MarCOs — a pair of briefcase-sized interplanetary CubeSats — seem to have reached their limit far beyond Mars, we’re looking forward to an expanding era of small, versatile and powerful space-based science machines.

Here are ten ways we’re pushing the limits of miniaturized technology to see  just how far it can take us.

1. MarCO: The Farthest (So Far)

MarCO, short for Mars Cube One, was the first interplanetary mission to use a class of mini-spacecraft called CubeSats.

The MarCOs — nicknamed EVE and WALL-E, after characters from a Pixar film — served as communications relays during InSight's November 2018 Mars landing, beaming back data at each stage of its descent to the Martian surface in near-real time, along with InSight's first image.

WALL-E sent back stunning images of Mars as well, while EVE performed some simple radio science.

All of this was achieved with experimental technology that cost a fraction of what most space missions do: $18.5 million provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which built the CubeSats.

WALL-E was last heard from on Dec. 29; EVE, on Jan. 4. Based on trajectory calculations, WALL-E is currently more than 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) past Mars; EVE is farther, almost 2 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) past Mars.

MarCO-B took these images as it approached Mars in November 2018. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

2. What Are CubeSats?

CubeSats were pioneered by California Polytechnic State University in 1999 and quickly became popular tools for students seeking to learn all aspects of spacecraft design and development.

Today, they are opening up space research to public and private entities like never before. With off-the-shelf parts and a compact size that allows them to hitch a ride with other missions — they can, for example, be ejected from the International Space Station, up to six at a time — CubeSats have slashed the cost of satellite development, opening up doors to test new instruments as well as to create constellations of satellites working together.

CubeSats can be flown in swarms, capturing simultaneous, multipoint measurements with identical instruments across a large area. Sampling entire physical systems in this way would drive forward our ability to understand the space environment around us, in the same way multiple weather sensors help us understand global weather systems.

Ready to get started? Check out NASA’s CubeSats 101 Guide.

Engineer Joel Steinkraus uses sunlight to test the solar arrays on one of the Mars Cube One (MarCO) spacecraft at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

3. Measuring Up

The size and cost of spacecraft vary depending on the application; some are the size of a pint of ice cream while others, like the Hubble Space Telescope, are as big as a school bus.

Small spacecraft (SmallSats) generally have a mass less than 400 pounds (180 kilograms) and are about the size of a large kitchen fridge.

CubeSats are a class of nanosatellites that use a standard size and form factor.  The standard CubeSat size uses a "one unit" or "1U" measuring 10x10x10 centimeters (or about 4x4x4 inches) and is extendable to larger sizes: 1.5, 2, 3, 6, and even 12U.

The Sojourner rover (seen here on Mars in 1997) is an example of small technology that pioneered bigger things. Generations of larger rovers are being built on its success.

4. A Legacy of Small Pathfinders

Not unlike a CubeSat, NASA’s first spacecraft — Explorer 1 — was a small, rudimentary machine. It launched in 1958 and made the first discovery in outer space, the Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth. It was the birth of the U.S. space program.

In 1997, a mini-rover named Sojourner rolled onto Mars, a trial run for more advanced rovers such as NASA's Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity.

Innovation often begins with pathfinder technology, said Jakob Van Zyl, director of the Solar System Exploration Directorate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Once engineers prove something can be done, science missions follow.

5. Testing in Space

NASA is continually developing new technologies — technologies that are smaller than ever before, components that could improve our measurements, on-board data processing systems that streamline data retrievals, or new methods for gathering observations. Each new technology is thoroughly tested in a lab, sometimes on aircraft, or even at remote sites across the world. But the space environment is different than Earth. To know how something is going to operate in space, testing in space is the best option.

Sending something unproven to orbit has traditionally been a risky endeavor, but CubeSats have helped to change that. The diminutive satellites typically take less than two years to build. CubeSats are often a secondary payload on many rocket launches, greatly reducing cost. These hitchhikers can be deployed from a rocket or sent to the International Space Station and deployed from orbit.

Because of their quick development time and easy access to space, CubeSats have become the perfect platform for demonstrating how a new technological advancement will perform in orbit.

RainCube is a mini weather satellite, no bigger than a shoebox, that will measure storms. It’s part of several new NASA experiments to track storms from space with many small satellites, instead of individual, large ones. Credit: UCAR

6. At Work in Earth Orbit

A few recent examples from our home world:

RainCube, a satellite no bigger than a suitcase, is a prototype for a possible fleet of similar CubeSats  that could one day help monitor severe storms, lead to improving the accuracy of weather forecasts and track climate change over time.

IceCube tested instruments for their ability to make space-based measurements of the small, frozen crystals that make up ice clouds. Like other clouds, ice clouds affect Earth’s energy budget by either reflecting or absorbing the Sun’s energy and by affecting the emission of heat from Earth into space. Thus, ice clouds are key variables in weather and climate models.

Rocket Lab's Electron rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 1 for the NASA ELaNa19 mission. Credit: Trevor Mahlmann/Rocket Lab

7. First Dedicated CubeSat Launch

A series of new CubeSats is now in space, conducting a variety of scientific investigations and technology demonstrations following a Dec. 17, 2018 launch from New Zealand — the first time CubeSats have launched for NASA on a rocket designed specifically for small payloads.

This mission included 10 Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa)-19 payloads, selected by NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative:

CubeSat Compact Radiation Belt Explorer (CeREs) — High energy particle measurement in Earth’s radiation belt

Simulation-to-Flight 1 (STF-1) — Software condensing to support CubeSat implementations

Advanced Electrical Bus (ALBus) — Advances in solar arrays and high capacity batteries

CubeSat Handling Of Multisystem Precision Time Transfer (CHOMPTT) — Navigation plans for exo-planetary implementation

CubeSail — Deployment and control of a solar sail blade

NMTSat — Magnetic field, high altitude plasma density

Rsat — Manipulation of robotic arms

Ionospheric Scintillation Explorer (ISX) — Plasma fluctuations in the upper atmosphere

Shields-1 — Radiation shielding

DaVinci — High School to Grade School STEM education

8. The Little CubeSat That Could

CubeSat technology is still in its infancy, with mission success rates hovering near 50 percent. So, a team of scientists and engineers set out on a quest. Their goal? To build a more resilient CubeSat — one that could handle the inevitable mishaps that bedevil any spacecraft, without going kaput.

They wanted a little CubeSat that could.

They got to work in 2014 and, after three years of development, Dellingr was ready to take flight.

Read the Full Story: Dellingr: The Little CubeSat That Could

Artist's concept of Lunar Flashlight. Credit: NASA

9. Going Farther

There are a handful of proposed NASA missions could take CubeSat technology farther:

CUVE would travel to Venus to investigate a longstanding mystery about the planet’s atmosphere using ultraviolet-sensitive instruments and a novel, carbon-nanotube light-gathering mirror.

Lunar Flashlight would use a laser to search for water ice in permanently shadowed craters on the south pole of Earth’s Moon.

Near-Earth Asteroid Scout, a SmallSat, would use a solar sail to propel it to do science on asteroids that pass close to Earth.

All three spacecraft would hitch rides to space with other missions, a key advantage of these compact science machines.

Expedition 56 Flight Engineer Serena Auñón-Chancellor installs the NanoRacks Cubesat Deployer-14 (NRCSD-14) on the Multipurpose Experiment Platform inside the Japanese Kibo laboratory module. The NRCSD-14 was then placed in the Kibo airlock and moved outside of the space station to deploy a variety of CubeSats into Earth orbit. Credit: NASA

10. And We’re Just Getting Started

Even if they're never revived, the team considers MarCO a spectacular success.

A number of the critical spare parts for each MarCO will be used in other CubeSat missions. That includes their experimental radios, antennas and propulsion systems. Several of these systems were provided by commercial vendors, making it easier for other CubeSats to use them as well.

More small spacecraft are on the way. NASA is set to launch a variety of new CubeSats in coming years.

"There's big potential in these small packages," said John Baker, the MarCO program manager at JPL. "CubeSats — part of a larger group of spacecraft called SmallSats — are a new platform for space exploration affordable to more than just government agencies."

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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

Solar System: Things to Explore on Your Phone This Week

Let our apps lead you on a journey of exploration across the Earth, through the solar system and beyond. Here are some to download today:

1. Actually, it is rocket science Rocket Science 101 let’s you select your favorite mission and build a rocket to take you to destinations near and far. Learn how launch vehicles are configured and how their boosters and other component parts work together to successfully launch spacecraft. 

iOS Google Play

2. Go to Mars (sort of) Be A Martian lets you experience Mars as if you were there! Join an international community of explorers. See the latest images of the Red Planet! Learn about Mars, ask questions, and check out behind-the-scenes videos of the missions.

iOS Google Play

3. All the Earth science With Earth Now, watch Earth science satellites in real time as they gather data about our home planet. Get real-time images of the places we call home. Check out global climate data, including surface air temperature, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, ozone, and sea level variations.

iOS Google Play

4. Pretty pictures Discover stunning images and videos of our planet Earth, space, stars and planets with Space Images. Find your favorite galaxies and explore our celestial neighborhood.

iOS Google Play

5. Ch-ch-ch-changes Images of Change give you a close-up view of our ever-changing planet. Inside this app, before and after image pairs show areas that have been subject to natural disasters or seen significant change over time.

iOS

Last but not least: NASA on the go With our official NASA app, explore and discover the latest images, videos, mission information, news, feature stories, tweets, NASA TV and featured content from across America’s space program.

iOS Google Play

Our apps let you explore our latest images, videos,and mission news.

Discover the full list of 10 apps showcasing our solar system this week HERE.

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Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Learn the latest on Cassini’s Grand Finale, Pluto, Hubble Space Telescope and the Red Planet.

1. Cassini’s Grand Finale

After more than 12 years at Saturn, our Cassini mission has entered the final year of its epic voyage to the giant planet and its family of moons. But the journey isn't over. The upcoming months will be like a whole new mission, with lots of new science and a truly thrilling ride in the unexplored space near the rings. Later this year, the spacecraft will fly repeatedly just outside the rings, capturing the closest views ever. Then, it will actually orbit inside the gap between the rings and the planet's cloud tops.

Get details on Cassini’s final mission

The von Kármán Lecture Series: 2016

2. Chandra X-Rays Pluto

As the New Horizon’s mission headed to Pluto, our Chandra X-Ray Observatory made the first detection of the planet in X-rays. Chandra’s observations offer new insight into the space environment surrounding the largest and best-known object in the solar system’s outermost regions.

See Pluto’s X-Ray

3. ... And Then Pluto Painted the Town Red

When the cameras on our approaching New Horizons spacecraft first spotted the large reddish polar region on Pluto's largest moon, Charon, mission scientists knew two things: they'd never seen anything like it before, and they couldn't wait to get the story behind it. After analyzing the images and other data that New Horizons has sent back from its July 2015 flight through the Pluto system, scientists think they've solved the mystery. Charon's polar coloring comes from Pluto itself—as methane gas that escapes from Pluto's atmosphere and becomes trapped by the moon's gravity and freezes to the cold, icy surface at Charon's pole.

Get the details

4. Pretty as a Postcard

The famed red-rock deserts of the American Southwest and recent images of Mars bear a striking similarity. New color images returned by our Curiosity Mars rover reveal the layered geologic past of the Red Planet in stunning detail. 

More images

5. Things Fall Apart

Our Hubble Space Telescope recently observed a comet breaking apart. In a series of images taken over a three-day span in January 2016, Hubble captured images of 25 building-size blocks made of a mixture of ice and dust drifting away from the comet. The resulting debris is now scattered along a 3,000-mile-long trail, larger than the width of the continental U.S.

Learn more

Discover the full list of 10 things to know about our solar system this week HERE.

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Five Reasons You Wouldn’t Want to Live Near a Black Hole

Black holes are mystifying yet terrifying cosmic phenomena. Unfortunately, people have a lot of ideas about them that are more science fiction than science. Black holes are not cosmic vacuum cleaners, sucking up anything and everything nearby. But there are a few ways Hollywood has vastly underestimated how absolutely horrid black holes really are.

Black holes are superdense objects with a gravitational pull so strong that not even light can escape them. Scientists have overwhelming evidence for two types of black holes, stellar and supermassive, and see hints of an in-between size that’s more elusive. A black hole’s type depends on its mass (a stellar black hole is five to 30 times the mass of the Sun, while a supermassive black hole is 100,000 to billions of times the mass of the Sun), and can determine where we’re most likely to find them and how they formed. 

Let's focus on supermassive black holes for now, shall we? Supermassive black holes exist in the centers of most large galaxies. Some examples are Sagittarius A* (that’s pronounced “A-star”) at the center of our Milky Way and the black hole at the center of galaxy Messier 87, which became famous earlier this year when the Event Horizon Telescope released an image of it. As the name suggests, these black holes are — well — supermassive. Why are they so enormous? Scientists suspect it has something to do with their locations in the centers of galaxies. With so many stars and lots of gas there, they can grow large rapidly (astronomically speaking).

You may have seen a portrayal of planets around supermassive black holes in the movies. But what would the conditions on those worlds actually look like? What kinds of problems might you face?

1. 100% chance for cosmic winds

“Space weather” describes the changing conditions in space caused by stellar activity. Solar eruptions produce intense radiation and clouds of charged particles that sweep through our planetary system and can affect technology we rely on, damaging satellites and even causing electrical blackouts. Thankfully, Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field protect us from most of the storms produced by the Sun.

Now, space weather near a black hole would be interesting if the black hole is consuming matter. It could be millions — perhaps even billions — of times stronger than the Sun’s, depending on how close the planet is. Even though black holes don’t emit light themselves, their surroundings can be very bright and hot. Accretion disks — swirling clouds of matter falling toward black holes — emit huge amounts of radiation and particles and form incredible magnetic fields. In them, you’d also have to worry about debris traveling at nearly the speed of light, slamming into your planet. It’d be hard to avoid getting hit by anything coming at you that fast!

2. Hello? Can you still hear us?

We launched the Parker Solar Probe to learn more about the Sun. If you lived on a world around a supermassive black hole, you'd probably want to study it too. But it would be a lot more challenging!

You’d have to launch satellites that could withstand the extreme space weather. And then there would be major communication issues — a time-delay in messages sent between the spacecraft and your planet.

On Earth we experience time gaps when talking to missions on Mars. It takes up to 22 minutes to hear back from them. Around a black hole, that effect would be much more extreme. Objects closer to the black hole would experience time differently, making things seem slower than they actually are. That means the delay in communications with a satellite launched toward a black hole would become longer and longer as it got closer and closer. By the time you hear back from your satellite, it might be gone!

3. Can someone turn off the lights?

Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies typically have a lot of nearby stars. In fact, if you were to live on a planet near the center of the Milky Way, there would be so many stars you could read at night without using electricity.

That sounds kind of cool, right? Maybe — unless your planet is actually orbiting the supermassive black hole. Being that close, the light from all those stars would be concentrated and amplified due to the extreme gravity around the black hole, making the light stronger and even causing scary beams of strong radiation. You would want to have a bucket of sunscreen ready to apply often — or simply never leave your home.

4. Did someone leave the oven on?

And not only would it be really bright, it would also be really toasty, thanks to radioactive heating! Those stars hanging around the black hole emit not just light but ghostly particles called neutrinos— speedy, tiny particles that weigh almost nothing and rarely interact with anything. While neutrinos coming from our Sun aren't enough to harm us, the volume that would be coming from the cluster of stars near a black hole would be enough to radioactively heat up whatever they slam into.

The planet would absorb neutrinos, which would, in turn, warm up the core of the planet eventually making it unbearably hot. It would be like living in a nuclear reactor. At least you’d be warm and could toss your winter coats?

5. You are what you eat?

If your planet got too close to a black hole, you’d likely face a gruesome fate. The forces from the black hole's gravity stretch matter, essentially turning it into a noodle. We call this spaghettification. (Beware the cosmic pasta-making machine?) Imagine yourself falling feet-first toward a black hole. Spaghettification happens because the gravity at your feet is sooooo much stronger than that at your head that you start to stretch out!

Maybe you wish you could simply drift around a black hole in a spacecraft and enjoy the view, or travel through one like science fiction depicts. Sadly, even if we had the means to get close to a black hole, it clearly wouldn’t be that simple or even very enjoyable.

Watch Dr. Jeremy Schnittman’s talk on the science behind the black hole from the movie Interstellar here.

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