Category: space.com

The U.S. Air Force has given SpaceX a qualified vote of confidence in the wake of the presumed loss of the mysterious Zuma satellite, according to Bloomberg News.

The news bolsters SpaceX’s claim that its Falcon 9 rocket performed just fine during the Jan. 7 launch of Zuma, which apparently never reached orbit, according to unconfirmed reports.

“Based on the data available, our team did not identify any information that would change SpaceX’s Falcon 9 certification status,” Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center, told Bloomberg News in a statement. [See amazing photos of SpaceX’s Zuma launch]

This assessment came after “a preliminary review of telemetry that was available to us from” the Zuma liftoff, Thompson told Bloomberg News, stressing that “the Air Force will continue to evaluate data from all launches.”

The Zuma payload was built by aerospace company Northrop Grumman, which also provided the adapter that connected Zuma to the Falcon 9’s second stage. Thompson’s statement will therefore likely focus more attention on Northrop Grumman, which has so far declined to comment on the mission, citing its classified nature.

The secrecy surrounding Zuma is extreme. Pretty much all we know is that Northrop Grumman built it for the U.S. government (which agency was in charge is unclear) and that the payload was headed to low Earth orbit. 

Nobody has even confirmed that Zuma failed to reach orbit as planned, though the scuttlebutt in the spaceflight community posits that the satellite failed to separate from the Falcon 9’s second stage and, as a result, ended up plummeting to Earth along with the launch gear. (The Falcon 9’s reusable first stage, meanwhile, made a pinpoint landing at Landing Zone 1, a SpaceX facility at Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40.)

SpaceX has stressed that any blame for the Zuma failure — if indeed the mission failed — falls on someone else’s shoulders.

“For clarity: After review of all data to date, Falcon 9 did everything correctly on Sunday night,” SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said in a statement on Jan. 9. 

“If we or others find otherwise based on further review, we will report it immediately,” Shotwell added. “Information published that is contrary to this statement is categorically false. Due to the classified nature of the payload, no further comment is possible.”

Zuma was SpaceX’s third national-security mission for the U.S. government. The California-based company also launched the NROL-76 satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office in May 2017 and the Air Force’s robotic X-37B space plane in September of that year. Both of those liftoffs were successful.

You can read Bloomberg News’ full story here:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-22/spacex-keeps-u-s-air-force-s-confidence-after-satellite-s-loss

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

If you’re looking to beat the heat on exoplanet CoRoT-2b, astronomers found the hottest spot in a surprising location. Their discovery could help scientists better understand how winds blow on “hot Jupiters” or massive gas giants that orbit very close to their parent stars.

Planets like CoRoT-2b can take three days or less to finish an orbit. (By contrast, Mercury in our solar system makes a single orbit around the sun in 88 days.) So it’s no surprise that these hot Jupiters are extremely hot, especially on their daytime side. One side always faces the star, making that area especially warm.

Other hot Jupiters have strong eastward winds at the equators, which sometimes means the winds displace the hottest area on the planet to just east of the planet’s closest spot to the star. Not on CoRoT-2b, however. Its hotspot is to the west, according to new data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. [The Strangest Alien Planets We Know]

The team studying it suggests CoRoT-2b’s wind blows in the opposite direction to other hot Jupiters. Why? That remains a mystery.

“We’ve previously studied nine other hot Jupiter, giant planets orbiting super close to their star. In every case, they have had winds blowing to the east, as theory would predict,” co-author Nicolas Cowan, an astronomer at McGill University in Montreal, said in a statement. 

“On this planet, the wind blows the wrong way. Since it’s often the exceptions that prove the rule, we are hoping that studying this planet will help us understand what makes hot Jupiters tick.”

“Something unusual happening”

Astronomers already knew that weird things are happening at CoRoT-2b, which the French-led space observatory CoRoT (the name is short for Convection Rotation and planetary Transits) discovered in 2007. It’s inflated and there are some emissions of light from its surface that astronomers can’t explain. “Both of these factors suggest there is something unusual happening in the atmosphere of this hot Jupiter,” said lead author Lisa Dang, a McGill doctoral student, in the same statement.

The researchers suggest three ways that CoRoT-2b could have a hotspot in a different spot. First, maybe the planet rotates so slowly that it orbits faster than it spins around. If this were the case, winds could blow in the opposite direction ― west, instead of east. If this is the case, however, astronomers would need to refine their theories about how stars and planets interact when they are close together.

Other explanations include large clouds on the east side of the planet (which contradicts atmospheric circulation models), or maybe interference between the planet’s atmosphere and its magnetic field.

“We’ll need better data to shed light on the questions raised by our finding,” Dang said. “Fortunately, the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch next year, should be capable of tackling this problem. Armed with a mirror that has 100 times the collecting power of Spitzer’s, it should provide us with exquisite data like never before.”

A study based on the research was published in Nature Astronomy on Monday (Jan. 22). 

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

A “blood moon” happens when Earth’s moon is in full eclipse. While it has no special astronomical significance, the view in the sky is striking as the usually whiteish moon becomes red or ruddy-brown. The next “blood moon” will happen during the total lunar eclipse of Jan. 31, which will be visible from parts of North America, Australia, the Pacific and Asia.

When is the next lunar eclipse?

The last lunar eclipse (a partial eclipse) was on Aug. 7, 2017. NASA has a list of all the lunar eclipses until 2100, and here are a few coming up:

• Jan. 31, 2018: Total eclipse. Visible from Asia, Australia, Pacific Ocean, western North America.
• July 27, 2018: Total eclipse. Visible from South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia.
• Jan. 19, 2019: Total eclipse. Visible from North and South America, Europe, Africa.
• July 16, 2019: Partial eclipse. Visible from South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia.

Why the moon turns red

The moon orbits around Earth, while Earth orbits around the sun. The moon takes about 27 days to orbit Earth and goes through regular phases in a 29.5-day cycle. The difference in these two cycles has to do with the relative positions of the sun, Earth and moon, which change during the moon’s orbit.

Lunar eclipses can only happen during a full moon, when the sun fully illuminates the surface. Usually a full moon has no eclipse because the moon orbits in a slightly different plane than the Earth and the sun do. However, at times the planes coincide. Earth passes in between the moon and the sun and cuts off the sunlight, causing an eclipse.

If Earth partially blocks the sun, and the darkest part of its shadow falls across the moon’s surface, it is called a partial eclipse. You will see a black shadow taking a bite out of the moon. Sometimes, the moon passes through the lighter part of Earth’s shadow, causing a penumbral eclipse. Only seasoned skywatchers will be able to tell the difference, because the moon only darkens very slightly.

This global map shows the areas of visibility (weather permitting) for the “super blue blood moon” eclipse of Jan. 31, 2018.

Credit: NASA

During a full eclipse, however, something spectacular happens. The moon is fully in Earth’s shadow. At the same time, a little bit of light from Earth’s sunrises and sunsets (on the disk of the planet) falls on the surface of the moon. Because the light waves are stretched out, they look red. When this red light strikes the moon’s surface, it also appears red. 

How red the moon appears can depend on how much pollution, cloud cover or debris there is in the atmosphere. For example, if an eclipse takes place shortly after a volcanic eruption, the particles in the atmosphere will make the moon look darker than usual.

While there are planets and moons all over the solar system, only Earth is lucky enough to experience lunar eclipses because its shadow is just large enough to cover the moon completely. The moon is slowly drifting away from our planet (at roughly 1.6 inches or 4 centimeters a year) and this situation won’t persist forever. There are roughly two to four lunar eclipses every year, according to NASA, and each one is visible over about half the Earth.

Saving Columbus

Ancient cultures often didn’t understand why the moon turned red, causing fear. At least one explorer — Christopher Columbus — used this to his advantage in 1504. 

According to a Space.com Skywatching columnist Joe Rao, Columbus and his crew were stranded on Jamaica. At first the people there were welcoming, but over time, Columbus’ crew grew restless and murdered or robbed some of the natives. Understandably, the natives weren’t eager to help the crew search for food, and Columbus realized famine was drawing near. 

Columbus had an almanac with him foretelling when the next lunar eclipse would take place. Armed with this information, he told the Jamaicans that the Christian god was unhappy that Columbus and his crew received no food. God would turn the moon red as a symbol of his anger, Columbus said. As the event took place, the frightened Jamaicans “with great howling and lamentation came running from every direction to the ships laden with provisions, praying to the Admiral to intercede with his god on their behalf,” according to an account by Columbus’ son Ferdinand.

The annual Draconid meteor shower peaks in October, but don’t get your hopes up for a spectacular sky show.

Even at their peak — which, this year, occurs Tueday, Oct. 9 —  the Draconids are usually modest, generating just a few meteors per hour. Still, it’s worth looking up, because the shower occasionally puts on an incredible display.

In 1933, for example, skywatchers in Europe saw up to 500 Draconids per minute, according to Space.com skywatching columnist Joe Rao. And observers throughout the Western United States saw thousands of Draconids per hour at the shower’s peak in 1946, he added. [How to See the Best Meteor Showers of 2017]

The Draconids occur when Earth plows through the stream of debris shed over the eons by Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner. Dramatic outbursts like those of 1933 and 1946 — and lesser ones in 1926, 1952, 1985, 1998 and 2011 — seem “to occur only when the Earth passes just inside Comet Giacobini-Zinner’s orbit shortly after the comet itself has gone by,” Rao wrote.

This long-exposure image taken by Jesper Grønne in Denmark shows Draconid meteors streaking through the sky in October 2011. The Draconids were unusually active that year.

Credit: Jesper Grønne

Experts aren’t predicting that such a close pass will happen this year. So, again: Don’t expect a dazzling Draconid storm. In fact, according to NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke, the meteors will likely not be noticeable over the normal background of 5-8 meteors per hour.

“The Draconids are one of those showers where you either see a bunch of them or none of them, and no outburst is predicted this year so Draconid activity is expected to be extremely weak; not even noticeable to the casual observer,” Cooke told Space.com. “Of course this can change — as people do their predictions, things change. I’ll keep you posted if they do.”

Most meteor showers are best viewed in the early morning hours. But to maximize your Draconid experience, start observing in the evening this weekend, as soon as it gets dark. That’s because the constellation Draco — the shower’s “radiant,” or point from which the meteors appear to radiate — is highest in the sky shortly after nightfall.

Editor’s note: If you snap an amazing photo of a Draconid meteor or any other night-sky sight and you’d like to share it with Space.com for a story or image gallery, send images, comments and location information to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

A project designed to help uncover the nature of dark energy and dark matter in our universe has found that alien stars from other galaxies have been infiltrating the Milky Way. The Dark Energy Survey has found 11 new streams of stars that do not originate from our own galaxy. These stellar streams are ribbons of stars that are the remnants of nearby dwarf galaxies or star clusters that have been gravitationally altered — or destroyed — by the larger Milky Way.

“We’re interested in these streams because they teach us about the formation and structure of the Milky Way and its dark matter halo. Stellar streams give us a snapshot of a larger galaxy being built out of smaller ones,” University of Chicago graduate student Nora Shipp said in a statement. Shipp led a large collaboration of astronomers studying the DES dataset to look for new stellar streams. “These discoveries are possible because DES is the widest, deepest, and best-calibrated survey out there.”

The majority of the new stellar streams are found in the Milky Way halo, the outer part of our galaxy that contains gas and stars and is several times wider than the disk of our galaxy. The halo is also home to the Milky Way’s globular clusters — tightly packed balls of hundreds of thousands of stars.

The main component of the halo, however, seems to be dark matter, the mysterious substance that appears to pervade the universe. It produces no visible energy, but its gravity tugs at the visible matter around it. Helping to understand dark matter and its equally mysterious companion dark energy are DES’s primary goals.

This image shows the full area of sky mapped by the Dark Energy Survey and the 11 newly discovered stellar streams. Four of the streams in this diagram — ATLAS, Molonglo, Phoenix, and Tucana III — were previously known. The others were discovered using the Dark Energy Camera, one of the most powerful astronomical cameras on Earth.

Credit: Dark Energy Survey

The announcement of the discovery came in conjunction with the public release of the first three years of data from the survey. DES uses one of the world’s most powerful digital cameras, the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam), mounted on the 4-meter Blanco Telescope, located at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in northern Chile. Each of its images records data from an area 20 times the size of the moon as seen from earth. The data release includes information on millions of astronomical objects, including distant galaxies billions of light-years away, as well as stars in our own galaxy.

“The DES data release includes measurements of 400 million stars and galaxies, about twice the number of objects in the [Sloan Digital Sky Survey], the premier survey of the last decade,” Knut Olsen said team leader from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s data lab, said in a statement. “The survey data extend deep and wide to stars 40 million times fainter than the human eye can see, covering one-eighth of the entire sky.”

The Dark Energy Camera is mounted on the Blanco telescope in Chile.

Credit: Fermilab

DES has already released a series of detailed maps charting the distribution of dark matter in the universe and has mapped millions of galaxies.

Shipp’s team wrote in their paper that “while DES was designed to provide the evolution of the universe, it has already had a major impact on near-field cosmology and galactic archaeology.”

Specifically DES, which has been scanning the sky since 2013, has nearly doubled the number of known ultra-faint dwarf galaxies and increased the number of known faint outer-halo star clusters.

The team said while finding dwarf galaxies is extremely challenging because they are faint and diffuse, stellar streams are even more difficult to pick out because their stars are spread out over a much larger area of sky. According to the team’s paper, the number of main sequence stars in each stream varies from about 1,000 to 10,000 from stream to stream.

“In big picture terms, these are small numbers of stars compared to the total number of stars in the Milky Way halo,” Joan Najita from NOAO told Seeker.

The Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile houses the Dark Energy Camera.

Credit: Fermilab

Previous to the discovery of the 11 new streams, just 23 other stellar streams have been found. The new streams are the faintest and most distant streams ever discovered.

“In general, these newly detected streams are wider and lower surface brightness than those detected in previous surveys,” the team wrote in their paper.

Alex Drlica-Wagner, a member of the DES team, said: “These discoveries are possible because the Dark Energy Survey is the widest, deepest, and best-calibrated survey out there.”

The streams provide important information about the history of the Milky Way’s formation and can be used to trace the local distribution of dark matter. The streams form when a small nearby galaxy or star cluster ventures too close to the Milky Way and the gravitational pull of our larger galaxy pulls out streams of stars from the wandering galaxy. Astronomers think that many interactions like these have contributed stars to the halo of the Milky Way.

RELATED: The Youngest Galaxies in the Universe Spin Like the Mature Milky Way

The new stellar streams have names such as Molonglo, Jhelum, Aliqa Uma, and Wambelong. The DES team reached out to schools in Chile and Australia and asked young students to select names. The names are aquatic words in native languages from northern Chile and aboriginal Australia.

Shipp and her colleagues wrote that they expect additional DES observations, improved data reduction techniques, and improved stream detection algorithms will allow fainter and more distant streams to be detected in the near future.

“While the DES data currently provide the most sensitive wide-area view of the southern sky,” the team wrote, “they are merely a precursor for larger sky coverage that can be achieved with DECam and, eventually, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.”

The LSST is currently under construction on Cerro Pachon in Chile.

“In the 2020s, LSST will deliver a yet wider and deeper view of the Universe — from distant galaxies, to our Milky Way, down to the solar system,” said Adam Bolton, associate director for the Community Science and Data Center at NOAO, ” and not just as a still photo, but as a high-definition movie that will capture the rich variability of the sky.”

Originally published on Seeker.

Update: NASA TV is back on the air this morning after the government shutdown was lifted last night. You can now watch the live webcast here, courtesy of NASA TV.

Two NASA astronauts will head outside the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday (Jan. 23) to conduct the first spacewalk of the year.  

Expedition 54 crewmembers Scott Tingle and Mark Vande Hei will spend about 6.5 hours outside the ISS, working on the station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2. Tingle, who will be conducting the first spacewalk of his career, was expected to follow Vande Hei out of the station’s Quest airlock shortly after 7 a.m. EST (1200 GMT). NASA TV was not yet on the air as the spacewalk due to the now-resolved government shutdown, which ended overnight Monday. But about one hour into the spacewalk, the agency’s live webcast with commentary was back online.

“This is going to be a lifetime memory for sure, and I’m looking forward to getting out there and fixing up the systems that we’ll be working on,” Tingle told Space.com in a live, in-flight interview last Thursday (Jan. 18). [Gallery: The Most Memorable Spacewalks in History]

The two spacewalkers will replace one of two “hands” on the end of Canadarm2 known as latching end effectors (LEEs). Canadarm2’s other “hand,” LEE-A, was replaced during another spacewalk on Oct. 5, 2017. That was Vande Hei’s first spacewalk, and Tuesday’s spacewalk will be his third.

LEE-A and LEE-B are identical grappling devices located at opposite ends of Canadarm2, each weighing about 440 lbs. (200 kilograms) and measuring about 3 feet (1 meter) long. They’re used to latch on to incoming cargo spacecraft, but they also allow Canadarm2 to move around the outside of the station in an inchworm-like motion. 

A view of the Canadarm2 robotic arm, with a latching end effector in the foreground.

Credit: ESA/NASA

Tingle and Vande Hei will replace LEE-B with a spare that has been stored outside the ISS since 2009, when it was delivered by the space shuttle, Tim Braithwaite, the ISS program liaison for the Canadian Space Agency, said Thursday at a news conference previewing the spacewalks. The former LEE-B will also be stored outside the ISS after it is replaced, Braithwaite said.

Both astronauts have trained extensively for this spacewalk, but Tingle said he still anticipates that some of the tasks will prove challenging. “There’s a point in the spacewalk where I have to get out of my boot restraint, and I have to go over to my partner’s boot restraint, and I have to move him while he’s holding a massive piece of equipment from the robotic arm, so there’s a lot of mass there,” he said. “I think that will be tricky. I’ll probably take that slow and be very cautious.” 

Anchored to the International Space Station with a portable foot restraint, NASA astronaut Joe Acaba prepares to work on the Canadarm2 robotic arm during a spacewalk on Oct. 20, 2017.

Credit: NASA

Although NASA does not schedule in much spare time to kick back and enjoy the view during spacewalks, Tingle said the astronauts will have a few minutes of “adaptation time” at the beginning of the spacewalk. That time is intended to “make sure we get our bearings right, and we kind of get adjusted on what kind of forces we need to move our body around with the suit on,” Tingle said.

They’ll likely have a few minutes of downtime in between tasks, Tingle said. “I do expect a little bit of time to kind of look down at the Earth and look up at the stars and the moon and whatever else we can see there.”

This will be the 206th spacewalk conducted by astronauts at the International Space Station in support of the station’s assembly and maintenance. On Jan. 29, Vande Hei will conduct another spacewalk with astronaut Norishige Kanai of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, during which the two crewmembers will store the degraded LEE-B outside the ISS as a spare.  

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

WASHINGTON – As the federal government began its first shutdown in more than four years Jan. 20, NASA’s operating plans are little changed from that earlier shutdown, with most agency employees set to be furloughed.

The continuing resolution (CR) that had been funding the federal government expired late Jan. 19 with no new appropriations bill taking its place. The House had passed Jan. 18 a CR that would have extended funding through Feb. 16, but the Senate could not win the necessary 60 votes to approve the bill, with most Senate Democrats and a handful of Republicans voting to block consideration because of debates on immigration issues and a broader budget plan.

Negotiations continued after midnight on the Senate floor, with the hope that an alternative deal could be reached, perhaps in time to pass a funding bill before the next working day Jan. 22. Nonetheless, the lapse in appropriations is the first for the federal government since a 17-day shutdown in October 2013. [How a Gevernment Shutdown Affects NASA]

With the shutdown underway, NASA will now enact a plan submitted Nov. 30 to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). That plan would furlough most of the agency’s workforce, leaving only those needed for the safety of human life or protection of property.

Specific exemptions included in the plan include launch processing activities “necessary to prevent harm to life or property,” the operation and support of the International Space Station and other ongoing missions, and completion or “phase-down” of research where a temporary suspension could result in serious damage to property.

Activities that would not continue, according to the plan, include educational work, public access to NASA centers and operation of NASA Television and the agency’s websites. As of early Jan. 20, though, both NASA TV and the main NASA website were still operational. The memo states that NASA will “carefully evaluate the circumstances” of the shutdown before determining when to begin the “orderly shutdown of non-excepted activities.” In most cases, that orderly shutdown would be no earlier than Jan. 22, the first working day after the lapse in funding.

NASA officials said at a Jan. 18 briefing that a pair of spacewalks outside the ISS, scheduled for Jan. 23 and 29, would take place even if a government shutdown were in effect. “We’ll see all the same normal mission critical folks on site, and we’ll continue to execute the EVA plan and everything that’s coming in the near term after that,” said Kenny Todd, operations and integration manager for the ISS.

However, the spacewalks may not be broadcast on NASA TV since it would be turned off under the terms of the agency’s shutdown plan. Agency spokesperson Gary Jordan said at the briefing that coverage of the spacewalks, should the shutdown continue, “is still being assessed at the Headquarters level.”

That plan should be familiar to those at the agency. The Nov. 30 memo to OMB is almost identical to one the agency submitted to OMB in September 2013 in advance of the previous government shutdown. The new plan includes no major additions or deletions from the 2013 plan, and in many places is word-for-word identical to the older memo.

One difference is the number of people who are considered essential and would continue to work during a shutdown. The 2013 memo identified 367 full time equivalent (FTE) positions exempt from furlough out of an agency total of 18,250 FTEs, or two percent of the NASA workforce.

The new plan counted 800 FTE positions exempt from furlough, out of 17,524 FTEs, or 4.5 percent. However, these figures are from September 2015, the last time the shutdown plan was updated prior to November 2017. Numbers of exempted employees are larger at most centers under the plan, with Goddard seeing the biggest increase, from 80 to 334 FTEs, which may reflect ongoing spacecraft development and testing activity there at that time.

The plan also instructs NASA contractors – which the plan includes the staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is operated by Caltech for NASA – to take “all prudent and possible steps” to minimize costs during the shutdown. That includes limiting awards of new contracts and changes to existing ones. Contractor travel, the plan states, should be delayed during the shutdown unless there would be “severe adverse impact on the remaining permissible effort.”

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

Located in Huntsville, Alabama, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center has played a significant role in the American space program. Marshall helped to develop the rockets that carried the first U.S. astronaut into space and those that delivered humans to the moon. Today, the agency is working on the Space Launch System that could one day carry astronauts to Mars.

Shortly before opening the new agency, NASA described the Marshall Center as “the only self-contained organization in the nation which was capable of conducting the development of a space vehicle from the conception of the idea through production of hardware, testing, and launching operations.”

In addition to developing space vehicles, Marshall also participates in scientific programs, helping to develop and test hardware and instruments for projects like the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Japanese-led Hinode mission.

History

Although the Marshall Space Flight Center wasn’t activated until 1960, its roots were well developed. Years before NASA was established, German immigrant Werhner Von Braun and his rocket team, who had developed the V-2 rocket during World War II, had come to the United States with hopes of developing rockets that would one day travel to space. 

Initially assigned at Fort Bliss, Texas, the Von Braun team was later transferred to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. In the 1950s, the team expanded to include hundreds of American engineers and scientists. On Jan. 31, 1958, they used a modified Redstone rocket called Jupiter-C to launch America’s first orbiting satellite, Explorer 1.

Two years later, Von Braun became the director of NASA’s new George C. Marshall Flight Center in Huntsville. On July 1, 1960, the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency transferred the ownership of buildings, land, space projects, property and personnel to the new agency, which was named for Gen. George C. Marshall. Marshall had been the Army chief of staff during World War II, secretary of state under President Harry Truman, and Nobel Prize winner for the economic recovery program that became known as the Marshall Plan. He died in 1959. President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated the fledgling agency on Sept. 8, 1960.

In 1961, Marshall’s Mercury-Redstone vehicle carried America’s first astronaut, Alan Shepard, on a suborbital flight. Visitors today can still see the Historic Redstone Test Stand, where the rockets that sent Shepard into space were tested.

Marshall played a vital role in achieving President John F. Kennedy’s admonition of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.” The center built the Saturn V rocket that would carry the astronauts on their way to the moon.

“Engineers, scientists, administrators and contractors worked night and day to develop the technology powerful enough to lift the 363-foot tall, 6.2-million pound Saturn V rocket into space,” according to Marshall’s historical website.

Marshall also helped to develop the Lunar Roving Vehicle that carried astronauts across the surface of the moon during the last three Apollo missions. The rover allowed astronauts to travel several miles from their landing craft, set up experiments in a wider area and carry home several pounds of rocks.

In the 1970s, Marshall participated in Skylab, the United States’ first crewed orbiting space station and the first U.S. space program completely dedicated to scientific research. Marshall supplied the Skylab workshop, the four Saturn launch vehicles, the solar observatory, and many of the scientific experiments for each of the three astronaut crews.

“Skylab results included significant discoveries in all experiment disciplines and far more data than anticipated,” NASA said. “It opened the era of comprehensive scientific research in space.”

Women scientists train in the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator in 1975.

Credit: NASA.

Also during the ’70s, Marshall helped to develop the space shuttle‘s main engines, its solid rocket booster, and its external tanks, as well as a variety of scientific payloads. The agency was responsible for Spacelab, a laboratory carried inside the cargo bay of the shuttle.

When the space shuttle launched on April 12, 1981, it “marked a new era in the history of space flight,” NASA said. “The world’s first reusable space vehicle, powered by Marshall-developed propulsion systems, was thrust into orbit with two astronauts aboard. This new chapter in the history of the Center would feature Marshall at the forefront of the nation’s space exploration efforts.”

After the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster, “Marshall and other NASA centers dedicated their work to ensure that the Space Shuttle propulsion elements would perform safely in the future,” the center’s website says.

On Jan. 22, 1986, four Marshall Center facilities were designated as National Historic Landmarks. The Redstone Test Stand static-tested the first rocket that launched Shepard into space, the last step before flight. The Neutral Buoyancy Simulator mimics the weightless environment as preparation for astronauts traveling into space. The Dynamic Test Stand was used for ground vibration tests of the Saturn V launch vehicle and Apollo spacecraft, for tests involving Skylab, and for ground vibration testing of the complete space shuttle vehicle. The Propulsion and Structural Test Facility became the primary center responsible for large vehicles and rocket propulsion systems. On June 15, 1987, the Saturn V Display, an actual test rocket used in the dynamic testing of the Saturn facilities at Marshall, was also designated as a historical landmark.

Marshall continued to propel science forward by playing a role in the development of the Hubble Space Telescope. Launched in 1990, Hubble continues to awe the world with impressive astronomical images after more than 25 years. Marshall also developed and manages NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, which probes the depths of space in the X-ray spectrum. 

Marshall today

Marshall is one of NASA’s largest field centers, with over 4.5 million square feet of space. The center boasts test, manufacturing and research facilities. It employs nearly 6,000 civil and contractor employees.

The Space Launch System (SLS) is currently under development at Marshall. The rockets of SLS will carry missions deep into the outer solar system. With the aid of the Orion crew module, also under development at Marshall, the SLS will be able to carry the first humans to Mars.

In 2018, the SLS and Orion were both in the final stages of completion. Marshall plays an important role in the final steps of both.

“SLS testing will continue as the core stage structural test articles for the liquid hydrogen tank, intertank, and liquid oxygen tank arrive at Marshall and are loaded into towering test stands to be pushed, pulled and twisted to simulate flight,” NASA said in a press release.

To test the SLS fuel tank, Marshall constructed a pair of twin towers soaring to 221 feet (67.4 meters) in height. The stand simulated the powerful dynamics of launch and flight. For this test, Marshall was crucial.

“There is no other facility that can handle something as big as the SLS hydrogen tank,” SLS engineer Sam Stephens said in a statement.

The primary elements of Orion’s structure are being assembled at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, and will be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center by the end of 2018.

The agency manages the Discovery program of focused scientific investigations that complement NASA’s larger planetary exploration missions. Active Discovery missions include the Dawn mission to Ceres and the Kepler planet hunting space telescope. It also manages the New Frontiers program that conducts robotic missions to explore the solar system. The New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, Juno’s mission to Jupiter, and OSIRIS-Rex, the first U.S. mission to return a sample of an asteroid, are all New Frontiers missions.

Marshall also plays a role in the International Space Station (ISS), the space home for astronauts in orbit. Marshall supports hardware development, workspace nodes, oxygen generation, water recovery systems, and manages science operations for the space station at its Payload Operations Integration Center, which maintains year-round, 24/7 contact with the ISS.

Visiting Marshall

Marshall Space Flight Center is not open to the general public. However, the U.S. Space & Rocket Center serves as the center’s visitor information center. Here, interactive exhibits and unique historical artifacts help visitors to learn more about Marshall’s legacy and ongoing projects. The center’s admission is:

• Adults (13 and up) – $25
• Children (5 to 12) – $17
• Children 4 and under – FREE

Discounts are available for NASA civil servants, retirees, contractors, active military and families. The center is open seven days a week, from 9 to 5, though it is closed for some major holidays.

The Space Rocket Center is home of the U.S. Space Camp and the site of the NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge.

Educational Escapes is a program for elementary and secondary group tours to the Marshall Space Center, and is conducted by the Huntsville/Madison County Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Access to Redstone Arsenal requires a badge and prior approval.

Additional resources

Follow Nola Taylor Redd at @NolaTRedd, Facebook, or Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+.

IRVINE, Calif. — Mary Voytek, NASA’s senior scientist for astrobiology, likes to tell other researchers that “everyone is an astrobiologist; they just don’t know it yet.”

What she means is that answering the question currently at the heart of astrobiology — Does life exist beyond Earth? — requires input from an incredibly wide range of disciplines, including astrophysics, geology, exoplanet science, planetary science, chemistry and various subfields of biology.

On the plus side, that means astrobiologists have a lot of resources to draw on. But it also means that people like Voytek have to deal with a flood of relevant information coming in from all of those scientific fields and figure out how to get scientists from those disciplines to work together. Voytek and other NASA representatives discussed how they are dealing with that information influx, and the interdisciplinary nature of the field, at the Astrobiology Science Strategy for the Search for Life in the Universe meeting, hosted  by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, here at the University of California, Irvine this week. [Are We Alone? Scientists Discuss the Search for Life and Odds of E.T.]

An influx of information

In 2017, Congress made an update to the law that defines NASA’s purpose and objectives:  the new language specified that the agency should pursue an understanding of the nature and distribution of life beyond Earth, if it exists. Of course, NASA has been searching for alien life for a very long time, but the new wording may reflect the fact that even members of the public (and members of Congress) are aware that the field of astrobiology is heating up.

“For a long time, the sort of research we do in astrobiology was technology-limited,” Voytek told Space.com in an interview. But modern technological innovations have “blown things open for us,” she said, meaning astrobiology is seeing huge amounts of relevant information come from every direction, from medicine to planetary science.

Here are a few examples of the places where that information is coming from:

• NASA’s Kepler mission has revealed the presence of thousands of worlds beyond Earth’s solar system, which provides astrobiologists with statistical information about different types of planets in the universe, including a better idea of how common Earth-like worlds may be and where scientists are most likely to find them.
• Studies by biologists on Earth have revealed life-forms on our own planet that can survive in extreme environments such as the bottom of the ocean or the ice fields of Antarctica. At the same time, studies of the icy moons around Saturn and Jupiter have revealed the presence of subsurface liquid-water oceans on those moons, fundamentally changing ideas about what it means for a world to be “habitable.” One of those moons, Europa, is the subject of an upcoming NASA probe mission, and two other “icy moon” mission proposals are in various stages of development.
• In astrophysics and planetary science, researchers are working together to figure out if there are types of stars that are more likely to host habitable planets and to answer questions about how a planet’s habitability could change over the course of its lifetime — if, for example, the planet’s parent star changes in temperature (which most stars do) or if the planets around a star change their position relative to the star, thus changing their surface temperature. There is also a widespread effort involving planetary scientists and chemists, to figure out how lifeforms might change the atmosphere of a planet, such that scientists could detect those biosignatures from Earth.
• Investigations in biology and chemistry are helping scientists better understand how astrobiologists might identify signs of microbial life on other planets, regardless of whether those life-forms resemble those seen here on Earth.

And that, as they say, is just the tip of the iceberg. In her talk, Voytek drew a comparison to a famous quote from the astronomer Carl Sagan: “If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” When applied to the search for life, the quote essentially means that understanding how life formed in the universe (and if it is unique to Earth) requires an understanding of the entire history of the universe. (Voytek said research into the Big Bang is just about the only area of space science that might not be applicable to astrobiology — but you never know.)

The interdisciplinary nature of astrobiology has a concrete impact on Voytek’s job. She has spent a great deal of time coming up with ways to get people from different scientific disciplines to work together. The biggest example of that effort was the establishment of a program called NExSS, or the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science. The program brings together researchers from Earth science, planetary science, heliophysics and astrophysics, to pursue specific goals that support the larger pursuit of looking for alien life. That can be difficult when people from diverse disciplines are traditionally separated from one another even within NASA, according to Natalie Batalha, a NASA astrophysicist and project scientist for NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler mission. Batalha, who is part of the NExSS leadership team, spoke via telephone during the conference about some of the programmatic goals of NExSS, in addition to the program’s science objectives.

“We set out to define common goals across divisions within the NASA Science Mission Directorate,” Batalha said. The program also aims to “break down barriers” between divisions at NASA, because those divisions can “lead to stovepipe thinking with regard to research.”

“So the idea is to always be mindful of these strategic objectives in addition to the science that we’re trying to accomplish,” she said.  

In the fall of 2017, the agency approved funding for the Center for Life Detection at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. It will be headed by exobiology research scientist Tori Hoehler, who also spoke via telephone at the conference. One of the center’s main objectives will be to provide an online organization system for scientific papers relating to the search for extraterrestrial life. Instead of just searching through scientific papers that share similar keywords, NASA’s new online system will group papers based on shared hypotheses that they investigate or discuss, regardless of the scientific discipline they come from or if they specifically reference astrobiology, Hoehler said.

Another initiative that Voytek oversaw was a program called the Ideas Lab on the Origins of Life, a collaboration with the National Science Foundation (NSF). The program brought together scientists from different disciplines and let them work together to come up with creative research projects that focused on the question of how life emerged on Earth. Specifically, the participants were supposed to try to address issues relating to the “giant chasm between the reactions of small molecules that can generate nucleic or amino acids and, possibly, polymerize them, and a fully developed system that satisfies the working definition of ‘life,’” according to the program website. The 2016 program produced five research projects that will be funded by NASA and the NSF for two years.

Defining life

Coming up with a “working definition” of “life” is another major goal of the astrobiology community, and Voytek said this is one area that is far from settled. On a subcellular level, it’s extremely difficult to come up with a list of characteristics that would describe all known life-forms that would also exclude things that would be considered abiotic, she said.

“If you ask 100 scientists for a definition of life, you’ll get 110 definitions of life,” Voytek said during her talk.

Even if scientists can’t agree on a good definition of life quite yet, Voytek said it’s important for the community to work with a clear and specific definition when executing an experiment or designing an instrument, even if that definition turns out to be wrong. That way, researchers can at least look back and learn something from the data they collected, because their hypothesis (and the form of “life” they were looking for) was specific and clear. A muddy definition of life will make it more difficult to interpret those results later, Voytek said.

“This is a rapidly changing field, and anything you put down at any moment, by the time it’s published, needs to evolve,” she told Space.com. “The point of my presentation was, the definition of life that we use needs to be clear and reasonably well-defended, and everything needs to flow from that [definition] from that point forward.”

Douglas Hudgins, program scientist for NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program, spoke at the meeting via telephone and discussed the ways that past, current and future NASA missions are contributing to astrobiology. From the agency’s biggest telescopes, like the Hubble Space Telescope and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, to robotic missions to Mars, there are many space-based missions that can contribute to the quest to find out if life exists beyond Earth.

“It is a complicated question; it’s not an easy question,” Hudgins said. “But what that means is, we need lots of different expertise, we need lots of different tools, and we need lots of different scientific perspectives to all come together and interface effectively.”

Voytek said most researchers are enthusiastic when she tells them how their field of study can factor into the search for life in the universe.

“Everybody gets really excited about being a part of answering this really big question,” she said. “It’s very unifying.”

Follow Calla Cofield @callacofield.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force says it has made contact with a new missile-warning satellite that was launched Friday night from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

The Air Force 460th Space Wing at Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado, reported late Friday it was “talking” with the billion-dollar space based infrared system geosynchronous satellite known as SBIRS GEO Flight 4. It the fourth in a constellation of similar satellites built by Lockheed Martin Corp. They are equipped with powerful scanning and staring infrared surveillance sensors. SBIRS GEO Flights 1, 2 and 3 were launched in 2011, 2013 and 2017.

The 460th Space Wing is responsible for global missile warning, space surveillance and communications. It reports to the 14th Air Force and Air Force Space Command.

The SBIRS GEO Flight 4 satellite flew aboard a U.S. Air Force Atlas V rocket. This was the 75th launch carried out by the Atlas V, provided by the United Launch Alliance. Laura Maginnis, vice president of ULA said this was the company’s 125th launch, and the second one of 2018. The SBIRS GEO 4 was ULA’s 46th launch for the U.S. Air Force.

The Atlas booster for this mission was powered by the RD AMROSS RD-180 engine. Aerojet Rocketdyne provided the AJ-60A solid rocket booster and RL10C-1 engine for the Centaur upper stage.

The mission differed from previous SBIRS launches in that a solid rocket strap-on motor was used to increase the vehicle’s lifting power, reducing the amount of fuel needed by the rocket’s Centaur upper stage to place the satellite into its proper transfer orbit. Once the satellite separated, the Centaur had sufficient fuel left over to propel itself into the ocean, reducing the risk of colliding with other spacecraft in an increasingly congested orbital environment, Eileen Drake, CEO and president of Aerojet Rocketdyne, said in a statement.

ULA announced that the satellite is “responding to the wing’s commands as planned” and signal acquisition was confirmed approximately 37 minutes after the satellite’s 7:48 p.m. EST launch.

The satellite will transition to its final location in geosynchronous orbit, approximately 22,000 miles above the Earth. There, the satellite’s solar arrays, light shade and antennas will be deployed to begin on-orbit testing.

Col. Dennis Bythewood, director of the remote sensing systems directorate at the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, said that after separation, it takes about 10 days for the satellite to reach geosynchronous station. Turning on the equipment on the satellite is about “a month of activity,” and beyond that, several months of on-orbit system tests.

Lockheed Martin is already half-way through the production of SBIRS 5 and 6, scheduled to be delivered in 2020 and 2021.

ULA’s next launch is the GOES-S mission for NASA and NOAA on an Atlas V rocket. The launch is scheduled for March 1 from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.