Artemis launch now possibly Sept. 2nd
Bummed to wake up and find the Artemis launch was scrubbed this morning. But, at the same time, glad the problem was identified and can be fixed.
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A good breakdown of NASA's Artemis program
NASA's new moon program is poised to smash all kinds of records for human spaceflight. Named for the Greek goddess Artemis, Apollo's twin sister, this initiative will put the first woman and first person of color on the moon. If all goes as scheduled, in 2025, these astronauts will become the first humans to step on the lunar regolith—or dusty moon soil—since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt walked there in December 1972.
In addition, the Artemis program will establish the first long-term human presence on the moon, by putting a space station in orbit and constructing a base camp on the lunar surface. These measures will lay the groundwork for yet another first in the future: sending astronauts to Mars.
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First Native American Woman is slated to go to space - Nicole Aunapu Mann
Nicole Aunapu Mann was selected by NASA in June 2013. She is currently training for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission, the fifth rotational mission to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.
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"JWST has released a striking new image of the strange Cartwheel galaxy"
Simply stunning and fascinating to see.
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"Russia to drop out of International Space Station after 2024"
I can't say that is surprising. It's been a nice surprise that we've had international cooperation on it for so long. MIR2 incoming.
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A fascinating summary and overview of the fast and furious science being done with JWST's new data and images
One of JWST’s much-touted abilities is the power to look back in time to the early universe and see some of the first galaxies and stars. Already, the telescope — which launched on Christmas Day 2021 and now sits 1.5 million kilometers from Earth — has spotted the most distant, earliest galaxy known.
Two teams found the galaxy when they separately analyzed JWST observations for the GLASS survey, one of more than 200 science programs scheduled for the telescope’s first year in space. Both teams, one led by Rohan Naidu at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts and the other by Marco Castellano at the Astronomical Observatory of Rome, identified two especially remote galaxies in the data: one so far away that JWST detects the light it emitted 400 million years after the Big Bang (a tie with the oldest galaxy ever seen by the Hubble Space Telescope), and the other, dubbed GLASS-z13, seen as it appeared 300 million years after the Big Bang. “It would be the most distant galaxy ever found,” said Castellano.
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Interview with Jane Rigby about scheduling James Webb's workload
“Give me a telescope, and I can come up with something good to do with it,” says Jane Rigby, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who serves as the agency’s operations project scientist for the $10-billion James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful off-world observatory yet built by humankind.
Later in the interview she delves into the need for thrust for the JWTS, which I knew was a thing, but hearing the in-depth answer is absolutely fascinating
Photons striking Webb’s sunshield apply torque. Now, we could orient the sunshield to cancel out the torques—but we want to point the telescope at targets, not get the sunshield perfectly balanced by sunlight. So the photons hit the sunshield, they apply torque, and Webb’s reaction wheels spin up to counteract this effect and keep the telescope pointed. But the reaction wheels can only spin so fast. They occasionally have to dump their angular momentum. In low-Earth orbit, Hubble just couples the reaction wheels to the Earth’s magnetic field to slow them down. That doesn’t work out in deep space, so instead Webb fires thrusters to push against the spin of the reaction wheels. We do these momentum dumps periodically, each time using little propellant. But, as you mentioned, at this stage we have enough propellant to get into the 2040s, so Webb’s longevity is more likely to be limited by how long components last…. Honestly, though, it feels weird to be plotting the nursing-home days of this telescope when it’s still a newborn just opening its eyes!
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How Many Decimals of Pi Do We Really Need?
For JPL's highest accuracy calculations, which are for interplanetary navigation, we use 3.141592653589793. Let's look at this a little more closely to understand why we don't use more decimal places.
Up to now, I have only ever memorized 3.14159 as that is plenty accurate for any calculation I might need to do. But knowing that NASA uses just ten more digits is a good motivation that I should memorize that far in case I ever need to calculate space travel.
Give the article a read as it goes into great depth as to why fifteen digits is more than enough for NASA.
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James Webb telescope reaches its final destination, 1 million miles away
What an amazing achievement. I cannot wait to see what it starts to see and what we start to learn from it.
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Light Years Ahead | The 1969 Apollo Guidance Computer
The YouTube algorithm knows me well. It gave me an hour long lecture that discusses the amazing engineering of the computer that drove the Apollo mission to the moon. Dense and well communicated, I quite enjoyed it.
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NASA Perseverance rover has Twitter account. Here's what it's saying.
A look at the team behind Perseverance's social posts.
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What Software Languages does NASA Prefer for Rockets?
Watching today's landing of the Perseverance on Mars, I was curious what it was coded in. A quick googling makes it seem like C is what they would be using on the rover. Fascinating stuff.
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Incredible
I watched the entire stream leading up to the landing, and grew increasingly nervous as everything went perfectly. I was afraid of some mysterious event and the loss of signal. With no clear way to know what happened. But instead it went smoothly and to plan. Simply incredible.
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I have turned on the Mars mission's stream on YouTube and will be watching to follow Perseverance's attempted landing. I am incredibly nervous, this would be an amazing engineering and science feat if it works.
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What to expect from the dramatic Mars Perseverance landing on Thursday
I am extremely excited, I checked yesterday and the landing is supposed to take place around 1pm my time and I am going to be riveted following it. Fingers crossed it goes as planned.
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UAE, China, and the US will arrive at Mars this month
A small fleet of spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates, China, and the United States will reach Mars this month after launching from Earth last year. The march to the Red Planet marks a marathon of firsts: it's the UAE's first foray into deep space, China's first independent attempt to land on Mars, and NASA's first shot at deploying a Martian helicopter.
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In case anyone was unsure, Hidden Figures still remains an amazing movie
I put it on the TV while I was making chili this morning. I saw it when it came out in theaters and I came home to immediately told every friend who would listen to go see it and I stand by that assessment. It reminds you simultaneously about the social low of segregation and that what is going on today is not a new issue, while also reminding you the amazing heights to which humanity can rise if given the opportunity.
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Mars Perseverance Rover lands in one month on Feb. 18
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I was reminded today by Bobak Ferdowsi that the next Mars Rover aka Perseverance, lands on February 18.
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