Designing A NASA Mission Using The Engineering Design Process Is Just Part Of A Day's Work For Educators
Designing a NASA mission using the engineering design process is just part of a day's work for educators @nasajohnson attending our #nasamei2017 (at NASA - Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX)
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Chasing Storms at 17,500mph
Flying 250 miles above the Earth aboard the International Space Station has given me the unique vantage point from which to view our planet. Spending a year in space has given me the unique opportunity to see a wide range of spectacular storm systems in space and on Earth.
The recent blizzard was remarkably visible from space. I took several photos of the first big storm system on Earth of year 2016 as it moved across the East Coast, Chicago and Washington D.C. Since my time here on the space station began in March 2015, I’ve been able to capture an array of storms on Earth and in space, ranging from hurricanes and dust storms to solar storms and most recently a rare thunder snowstorm.
Blizzard 2016
Hurricane Patricia 2015
Hurricane Joaquin 2015
Dust Storm in the Red Sea 2015
Dust Storm of Gobi Desert 2015
Aurora Solar Storm 2015
Aurora Solar Storm 2016
Thunderstorm over Italy 2015
Lightning and Aurora 2016
Rare Thunder Snowstorm 2016
Follow my Year In Space on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Solar System: Life Among the Stars
Let us lead you on a journey of our solar system. Here are some things to know this week:
1. Amateur" Means “One Who Loves”
We release thousands of breathtaking solar system images every year and not all of them are the exclusive result of work by scientists. Amateur image processors around the world take raw data from deep space missions and turn it into striking visuals.
Amateur images from Cassini
Get current unprocessed images
2. Prepare to Weigh Anchor
OSIRIS-REx, our first spacecraft destined to rendezvous with, study and return a sample of an asteroid, will launch. The mission to asteroid Bennu will yield the largest sample returned from space since the Apollo era. Tune in four our media briefing about OSIRIS-REx for 2 p.m. EDT on Aug. 17.
Learn more and tune in.
3. Out for a Walk
Join us for live coverage on Aug. 19 as our astronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins install a new gateway for American commercial crew spacecraft at the International Space Station.
Live coverage of the spacewalk.
4. The Weather Out There
Aug. 17 marks 50 years since the launch of Pioneer 7, a robotic spacecraft that lived up to its name by exploring the solar magnetic field, the solar wind and cosmic rays in deep space. Along with Pioneers 6, 8, and 9, the spacecraft formed a ring of solar weather stations spaced along Earth’s orbit. Measurements by the craft were used to predict solar storms for organizations ranging from commercial airlines to power companies.
Learn more.
5. Destination: The Red Planet
The European Space Agency’s ExoMars/Trace Gas Orbiter mission to Mars performed a critical engine burn to keep it on course. The maneuver was a success, and ExoMars remains on target for an October arrival.
Learn more.
Discover the full list of 10 things to know about our solar system this week HERE.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Not to spoil the movie, because it & the book are awesome. This is just something you can learn about Mars before or after you watch the movie, “The Martian.”
What’s Up for April 2016?
Jupiter, Mars, the Lyrid meteor shower and 2016’s best views of Mercury are all visible in the sky this month.
Jupiter, where our Juno mission will begin orbiting on July 4, continues to shine almost as brightly this month as last. And eagle-eyed telescope viewers will see a transit, a shadow transit, an occultation and an eclipse of Jupiter’s moons- all in one night: April 6-7.
Io transits first, crossing the planet beginning at 9:52 p.m. EDT. It’s shadow can be seen less than an hour later.
Next Jupiter occults, or eclipses, Europa as Europa slips behind the giant planet at 10:48 p.m. EDT. At 3 a.m. Europa reappears from its eclipse, dramatically leaving the shadow of Jupiter.
Ganymede transits the planet beginning at 1:01 EDT April 7.
Check out the other planets in April, too! Mercury is always a challenging object to view, but this month you can spot it after sunset about 10 degrees above the horizon. Through a telescope you can see its phase. It will appear like a tiny crescent moon, with about 1/3 of its disk illuminated.
Mars is finally visible before midnight this month. It rises in the southeast at about 10 p.m. by the end of April. The best observing of Mars will be when it is highest in the sky. This means a few hours before dawn. Its brightness and apparent size increase dramatically this month. By month’s end, Mars appears nearly twice as bright as at the beginning of the month.
About mid-month you’ll see Mars near its rival in the sky: the similar-colored red supergiant star Antares. The name “Antares” means “equal to or rival of Mars”.
Earth moves almost twice as fast as Mars does, so it often passes Mars in their race around the sun. This causes “retrograde motion”: an illusion we see from our viewpoint on Earth.
Retrograde motion happens as Earth catches up to Mars, causing Mars to appear slow to slow its eastward motion against the stars. After a few days, when Earth has overtaken Mars, the Red Planet seems to move westward. Eventually, Earth moves far enough around its orbit that Mars appears to be moving eastward again.
April features one meteor shower, the Lyrids. This year the Lyrids are marred by the full moon. The best time to view will be just before dawn on April 23, when the constellation Lyra is overhead and the moon will be near to setting.
With all of these great things to spot in the sky this month, be sure to get outside and look up!
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
It’s a U.S. Record! Cumulative Days in Space: 383
Today, Astronaut Scott Kelly has broken the record for longest time spent in space by a U.S. astronaut! Over the course of his four missions, Kelly has spent 383 cumulative days in space. This record was previously held by Astronaut Mike Fincke, with 382 days in space over three flights. Here are some more fun facts about this milestone:
4: The number of humans that have spent a year or more in orbit on a single mission
215 Days: The record currently held by Mike Lopez-Alegria for most time on a single spaceflight by U.S. astronaut. On Oct. 29, Kelly will break this record
377 Days: The current record for most days in space by a U.S. female astronaut, held by Peggy Whitson
879 Days: The record for most cumulative days in space by a human, currently held by Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka
Why Spend a Year in Space?
Kelly’s One-Year Mission is an important stepping stone on our journey to Mars and other deep space destinations. These investigations are expected to yield beneficial knowledge on the medical, psychological and biomedical challenges faced by astronauts during long-duration spaceflight.
Kelly is also involved in the Twins Study, which consists of ten separate investigations that are being conducted with his twin brother, who is on Earth. Since we are able to study two individuals who have the same genetics, but are in different environments for one year, we can gain a broader insight into the subtle effects and changes that may occur in spaceflight.
For regular updates on Kelly’s one-year mission aboard the space station, follow him on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
It’s May the 4th: Are Star Wars Planets Real?
Look at what we’ve found so far.
Is your favorite Star Wars planet a desert world or an ice planet or a jungle moon?
It’s possible that your favorite planet exists right here in our galaxy. Astronomers have found over 3,400 planets around other stars, called “exoplanets.”
Some of these alien worlds could be very similar to arid Tatooine, watery Scarif and even frozen Hoth, according to NASA scientists.
Find out if your planet exists in a galaxy far, far away or all around you. And May the Fourth be with you!
Planets With Two Suns
From Luke Skywalker’s home world Tatooine, you can stand in the orange glow of a double sunset. The same could said for Kepler-16b, a cold gas giant roughly the size of Saturn, that orbits two stars. Kepler-16b was the Kepler telescopes’s first discovery of a planet in a “circumbinary” orbit (that is, circling both stars, as opposed to just one, in a double star system).
The best part is that Tatooine aka Kepler-16b was just the first. It has family. A LOT of family. Half the stars in our galaxy are pairs, rather than single stars like our sun. If every star has at least one planet, that’s billions of worlds with two suns. Billions! Maybe waiting for life to be found on them.
Desert Worlds
Mars is a cold desert planet in our solar system, and we have plenty of examples of scorching hot planets in our galaxy (like Kepler-10b), which orbits its star in less than a day)! Scientists think that if there are other habitable planets in the galaxy, they’re more likely to be desert planets than ocean worlds. That’s because ocean worlds freeze when they’re too far from their star, or boil off their water if they’re too close, potentially making them unlivable. Perhaps, it’s not so weird that both Luke Skywalker and Rey grew up on planets that look a lot alike.
Ice Planets
An icy super-Earth named OGLE-200-BLG-390Lb reminded scientists so much of the frozen Rebel base they nicknamed it “Hoth,” after its frozen temperature of minus 364 degrees Fahrenheit. Another Hoth-like planet was discovered last month; an Earth-mass icy world orbiting its star at the same distance as Earth orbits the sun. But its star is so faint, the surface of OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is probably colder than Pluto.
Forest worlds
Both the forest moon of Endor and Takodana, the home of Han Solo’s favorite cantina in “Force Awakens,” are green like our home planet. But astrobiologists think that plant life on other worlds could be red, black, or even rainbow-colored!
In February 2017, the Spitzer Space Telescope discovered seven Earth-sized planets in the same system, orbiting the tiny red star TRAPPIST-1.
The light from a red star, also known as an M dwarf, is dim and mostly in the infrared spectrum (as opposed to the visible spectrum we see with our sun). And that could mean plants with wildly different colors than what we’re used to seeing on Earth. Or, it could mean animals that see in the near-infrared.
What About Moons?
In Star Wars, Endor, the planet with the cute Ewoks, is actually a habitable moon of a gas giant. Now, we’re looking for life on the moons of our own gas giants. Saturn’s moon Enceladus or Jupiter’s moon Europa are ocean worlds that may well support life. Our Cassini spacecraft has explored the Saturn system and its moons. Watch the video and learn more about the missions’s findings.
And Beyond
The next few years will see the launch of a new generation of spacecraft to search for planets around other stars. TESS and the James Webb Telescope are slated to launch in 2018, and WFIRST in the mid-2020s. That’s one step closer to finding life.
You might want to take our ‘Star Wars: Fact or Fiction?’ quiz. Try it! Based on your score you may obtain the title of Padawan, Jedi Knight, or even Jedi Master!
You don’t need to visit a galaxy far, far away to find wondrous worlds. Just visit this one … there’s plenty to see.
Discover more about exoplanets here: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Read about the 2015 HESTEC conference and the educators workshops we conducted on-site for the High School STEM Educators in attendance. @NASAEPDC @NASAEDU
How Well Do you Know Neptune?
Dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds, Neptune is the last of the hydrogen and helium gas giants in our solar system. More than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth, the planet takes almost 165 Earth years to orbit our sun! In fact, in 2011, Neptune completed its first orbit since its discovery in 1846.
Here are a few things you might not know about the windiest planet:
If the sun were as tell as a typical front door, the Earth would be the size of a nickel and Neptune would be about as big as a baseball.
Neptune orbits our sun, a star. Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun at a distance of about 4.5 billion km (2.8 billion miles) or 30.07 AU.
One day on Neptune takes about 16 hours (the time it takes for Neptune to rotate or spin once)
Neptune makes a complete orbit around the sun (a year in Neptunian time) in about 165 Earth years (60,190 Earth days)
Neptune has six rings
Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Neptune
Neptune has 13 moons. They are named after various sea gods and nymphs in Greek mythology
Did you know that Neptune has storms?
Similar to Jupiter, Neptune has storms that create gigantic spots in its atmosphere…well, it did. When Voyager 2 flew past Neptune in 1989, it tracked and imaged the “Great Dark Spot” — a storm larger than the entire Earth! When the Hubble Space Telescope imaged Neptune the spot had disappeared, only to be replaced with two smaller storms, which in turn also disappeared.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
NASA BEST engineering design challenges offer a transdisciplinary STEM approach that's fun and engaging! #nasamei2017 (at NASA - Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX)
(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEHNfIUA6gM)
