The death of the universe - Renée Hlozek

Published on Dec 12, 2013

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-death-o...

The shape, contents and future of the universe are all intricately related. We know that it's mostly flat; we know that it's made up of baryonic matter (like stars and planets), but mostly dark matter and dark energy; and we know that it's expanding constantly, so that all stars will eventually burn out into a cold nothingness. Renée Hlozek expands on the beauty of this dark ending.

Lesson by Renée Hlozek, animation by Giant Animation Studios.

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Light waves, visible and invisible - Lucianne Walkowicz

Published on Sep 19, 2013

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/light-waves...

Each kind of light has a unique wavelength, but human eyes can only perceive a tiny slice of the full spectrum -- the very narrow range from red to violet. Microwaves, radio waves, x-rays and more are hiding, invisible, just beyond our perception. Lucianne Walkowicz shows us the waves we can't see.

Lesson by Lucianne Walkowicz, animation by Pew36 Animation Studios.

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Why extremophiles bode well for life beyond Earth - Louisa Preston

Published on Oct 7, 2013

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-extremo...

Life on Earth requires three things: liquid water, a source of energy within a habitable range from the sun and organic carbon-based material. But life is surprisingly resilient, and organisms called extremophiles can be found in hostile living conditions (think extreme temperatures and little access to oxygen). Louisa Preston argues why extremophiles give astrobiologists hope for life in the universe.

Lesson by Louisa Preston, animation by Emanuel Friberg.

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Imagine Taking a Vacation to the Moon by 2043

By Dave Gilbert, CNN
December 9, 2013

England (CNN) -- Imagine the delight at unwrapping your Christmas present in 2043 and discovering you've been gifted a trip around the Moon.

It may seem a little far-fetched right now but it could become a reality if space companies like Virgin Galactic realize their aspirations over the next 30 years or so.

Richard Branson and his children are due to fly in his company's spaceship on its first commercial flight currently slated for 2014. But speaking to CNN outside a space conference in the UK last week, the company's CEO George Whitesides said their ambitions extended beyond sub-orbital flights for those first customers.

"If we can make significant progress on the challenge of reusable space access then I think that opens up all kinds of opportunities in the future," he said.

"One of the directions that might open up is high-speed point-to-point travel on Earth -- so that you could go from London to Singapore in an hour or go from London to Los Angeles in a couple of hours.

"We may be able to open up the opportunity for habitats in low Earth orbit, we could make it more affordable to do longer term flights -- even trips around the Moon. I think he [Branson] has high aspirations for a lot of these different activities."

Continue Learning: http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/09/tech/space-tourism/

Goddard Planetary Instruments Score a Hat Trick

Dec. 5, 2013

Three mass spectrometers built at Goddard were operating on the same day at the moon, on Mars and en route to Mars.
Image Credit: NASA

Planetary instruments from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., hit the trifecta on Dec. 4, running three experiments of the same kind at different places in space.

The instruments, all flying on NASA missions, are mass spectrometers, designed to take in atmospheric, rock or soil samples and identify particular molecules in them. The investigations lined up because of the operating schedules for the three, which must take turns with other instruments on their respective spacecraft.

“At the moon and Mars and part way in between, we had three mass spectrometers happily operating in their other-worldly environments or being checked out for the first time in space on the same day,” said Paul Mahaffy, the principal investigator for the instruments.

Goddard’s Planetary Environments Lab, headed by Mahaffy, built all three instruments. The mass spectrometers identify gases in atmospheric samples or gases that get released from rock or soil samples as they are processed. To pick out individual components in a sample, an electron beam is used to break the large molecules into smaller fragments. Then high-frequency electric fields are applied to the resulting mixture to sort the fragments by mass and electric charge, producing a fingerprint of the molecules present.

Stationed at the moon was NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, which entered an equatorial orbit on Nov. 20 and began science operations the following day. On Dec. 4, the mission’s Neutral Mass Spectrometer was checking out the moon’s thin atmosphere. The instrument will continue to collect samples over multiple orbits with the moon in different space environments.

En route to Mars was NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, mission. Launched on Nov. 18, the spacecraft is in the early cruise phase and is scheduled to arrive at the Red Planet in September 2014. The mission’s Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer was turned on for the first time on Dec. 4 and measured calibration gases in the instrument.

Upon the spacecraft’s arrival at Mars, the instrument will study the planet’s fragile upper atmosphere, examining its composition and determining how quickly some of the gases are escaping into space over time. This information will help scientists understand what the Martian atmosphere looked like billions of years ago and how most of it has been lost since then.

On the surface of Mars was NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory’s Curiosity rover, which carries the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite. SAM has been analyzing multiple samples of the atmosphere and soils and rocks to help scientists understand how habitable Mars was in the past.

“With these studies, mass spectrometry is helping us piece together the histories of the moon and Mars and offers a vision of their futures,” said Mahaffy. “It’s a perfect example of how invaluable these instruments are for space science.”

MAVEN's principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder. Goddard manages the MAVEN mission. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., built the Curiosity rover and manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project. NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in California manages the LADEE mission.

By Elizabeth Zubritsky, NASA

(www.nasa.gov)

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Laser communication mission targets 2017 launch

December 3, 2013

This is an artist rendering of the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration hosted aboard a Space Systems Loral commercial communications satellite.
Credit: Space Systems/Loral

NASA's next laser communication mission recently passed a Preliminary Design Review (PDR), another major milestone towards the launch of the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) scheduled for 2017.

The PDR is a major agency evaluation milestone of the engineering plan to execute the build and launch of LCRD onboard a Space Systems Loral commercial satellite. "The board concluded that the LCRD review was a resounding success," said Tupper Hyde, chairperson of the PDR. "They met all review success criteria and the LCRD team is ready to proceed with mission plans to conduct this ground-breaking demonstration."

The LCRD project is NASA's first long duration optical communications mission. This demonstration will build from NASA's highly successful Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD) mission. LCRD will conduct a two-year demonstration of optical relay services to determine how well the system operates and collect long-term performance data. The Goddard team leads the project with significant support from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Space Systems/Loral (SSL).

Continue Learning: http://phys.org/news/2013-12-laser-mission.html

Spacesuit of the future could power gadgetry with body heat

by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore December 3, 2013 10:33 AM PST

Researchers at Kansas State are investigating how the difference in temperature between body heat and a spacesuit's cooling garment could run the suit's electronics.

Kansas State engineering students work with a model spacesuit to explore the potential integration of wearable medical sensors.
Credit: Kansas State University

Wondering what's next in wearable electronics? Fitness trackers like the Fitbit Force and the Nike+ FuelBand SE may be fine for the earthbound, but for the astronauts among us, NASA's working on a different kind of fashionable circuitry.

At Kansas State University, researchers are just over two years into a three-year, $750,000 NASA grant to turn current spacesuits into even better readers of astronauts' vital signs -- and on top of that, make use of the inner workings of the suits themselves to power radios and other embedded electronics.

"Right now the spacesuits pretty much only measure heart rate," said William Kuhn, professor of electrical and computer engineering and part of the spacesuit team, which includes engineering professors and a dozen-plus students. "In this project we're focused on EMGs [electromyography] that can monitor muscle activity. The biggest problem that the astronauts have when they're doing their work is they get very fatigued because of the pressure in the suits, so we're focusing on being able to predict when they're going to be fatigued so we can help them reorder their tasks in space."

Continue Learning: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57613825-76/spacesuit-of-the-future-could-power-gadgetry-with-body-heat/

Spacelab: Space Shuttle Flew Europe's First Space Module 30 Years Ago

by Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com Editor | December 02, 2013 01:17pm ET

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Spacelab module is seen in the payload bay of space shuttle Columbia during the lab's first spaceflight on the STS-9 mission in 1983.
Credit: NASA/RetroSpaceImages.com

It doesn't seem out of place today, but the sight 30 years ago of a cylindrical module mounted inside the space shuttle's cargo bay was described as an "odd-appearing assemblage" in 1983.

The unusual payload was Spacelab, a $1 billion European built, NASA-operated space-borne science platform, which would not only set the stage for investigations onboard the space shuttle, but would lay the foundation for major parts of today's International Space Station.

Space shuttle Columbia launched on Nov. 28, 1983, lifting into orbit the Spacelab and six astronauts. Under the lead of commander John Young, the STS-9 crew included pilot Brewster Shaw and mission specialists Owen Garriott and Robert Parker.

Continue Learning: http://www.space.com/23796-spacelab-space-shuttle-30-years-anniversary.html

NASA Issues Human Exploration Rover Challenge To Students

November 30, 2013

Image Credit: Thinkstock.com

Susan Bowen for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Students, some of whom will have only recently earned their driver’s licenses, will soon have the opportunity to test drive vehicles for use on other planets, asteroids, moons and comets.

NASA has issued a new engineering design challenge for teams of high school and college students: to design, build and test vehicles on the simulated surface of another world.

Registration for the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge will be open until early in 2014 and will provide students with an authentic engineering challenge.

“We designed this engineering challenge to align with NASA’s commitment of sending humans to Mars by the 2030s,” said Rocky Lind, who manages education and outreach efforts in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The student teams will be timed, ranked and scored based on design, safety and how well they traverse the set course. The results of the competition will contribute to the design process for NASA’s future exploration goals.”

Continue Learning: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113016275/stem-nasa-human-exploration-rover-challenge-113013/

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Russian Cargo Spacecraft Heads to Space Station with Holiday Goodies

Published on Nov 25, 2013

The Russian Progress 53 cargo craft blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Nov. 25, hauling almost three tons of food, fuel, supplies and holiday gifts to the International Space Station's Expedition 38 crew. The unpiloted spacecraft will test upgraded automated rendezvous equipment at a distance of a mile from the complex on Nov. 27 before docking to the aft port of the Zvezda Service Module on Nov. 29.

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