I Swear It Makes (some) Sense In Context: Voyager Edition

This broke my heart and made me cry 💔

@yellowtreeelectricityfeminist replied to your post “Why are you celebrating woman scientists? How is that not…”

well i mean, non-able-bodied men are still men and still seen as capable of being scientists. and able-bodied men can still have been bullied or picked on or gone to the hospital as much as those who arent able-bodied.. i find sexism and ableism to be very very different issues and shouldnt have to be mentioned in the same post like this. not to mention that racism and sexism are different too since black men can still be sexist even if they face racism every day

Yes, that is true.  But we’re not playing Oppression Olympics here.  “Different” doesn’t mean “worse” or “less bad.”  I didn’t want to oversimplify by saying “all men” (I know I’m sorry lol), because intersectional feminism is so very important now.  But yes, intersectional bigotry is also a thing: brown men can be sexist and homophobic, gay men can be racist and misogynistic, and white women can be EXTREMELY RACIST.  (I’m not yelling at you personally, I’m yelling at my fellow white women who didn’t disavow a very bigoted presidential candidate.)  That is something that now, more than ever, I never want this blog to lose sight of.

what did vincent say when he lost his car in the parking lot 

Chronic illness, chronic pain, and mental illnesses can create a sense of low energy in those who suffer from them.

The spoon theory is a way to discuss the use of energy in tasks as a kind of currency. People who do not have energy draining conditions have, in theory, infinite spoons to expend on whatever they please. People who have chronic conditions may awake with 10, 5, or 2 spoons on any given day.

Somehow our society has formed a one-sided view of the human personality, and for some reason everyone understood giftedness and talent only as it applied to the intellect. But it is possible not only to be talented in one’s thoughts but also to be talented in one’s feelings as well.

Lev Vygotsky, Russian psychologist (1896-1934)

Extreme Science: Launching Sounding Rockets from The Arctic

This winter, our scientists and engineers traveled to the world’s northernmost civilian town to launch rockets equipped with cutting-edge scientific instruments.

This is the beginning of a 14-month-long campaign to study a particular region of Earth’s magnetic field — which means launching near the poles. What’s it like to launch a science rocket in these extreme conditions?

Our planet is protected by a natural magnetic field that deflects most of the particles that flow out from the Sun — the solar wind — away from our atmosphere. But near the north and south poles, two oddities in Earth’s magnetic field funnel these solar particles directly into our atmosphere. These regions are the polar cusps, and it turns out they’re the ideal spot for studying how our atmosphere interacts with space.

The scientists of the Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp are using sounding rockets to do their research. Sounding rockets are suborbital rockets that launch to a few hundred miles in altitude, spending a few minutes in space before falling back to Earth. That means sounding rockets can carry sensitive instruments above our atmosphere to study the Sun, other stars and even distant galaxies.

They also fly directly through some of the most interesting regions of Earth’s atmosphere, and that’s what scientists are taking advantage of for their Grand Challenge experiments.

One of the ideal rocket ranges for cusp science is in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, off the coast of Norway and within the Arctic circle. Because of its far northward position, each morning Svalbard passes directly under Earth’s magnetic cusp.

But launching in this extreme, remote environment puts another set of challenges on the mission teams. These launches need to happen during the winter, when Svalbard experiences 24/7 darkness because of Earth’s axial tilt. The launch teams can go months without seeing the Sun.

Like for all rocket launches, the science teams have to wait for the right weather conditions to launch. Because they’re studying upper atmospheric processes, some of these teams also have to wait for other science conditions, like active auroras. Auroras are created when charged particles collide with Earth’s atmosphere — often triggered by solar storms or changes in the solar wind — and they’re related to many of the upper-atmospheric processes that scientists want to study near the magnetic cusp.

But even before launch, the extreme conditions make launching rockets a tricky business — it’s so cold that the rockets must be encased in styrofoam before launch to protect them from the low temperatures and potential precipitation.

When all is finally ready, an alarm sounds throughout the town of Ny-Ålesund to alert residents to the impending launch. And then it’s up, up and away! This photo shows the launch of the twin VISIONS-2 sounding rockets on Dec. 7, 2018 from Ny-Ålesund.

These rockets are designed to break up during flight — so after launch comes clean-up. The launch teams track where debris lands so that they can retrieve the pieces later.

The next launch of the Grand Challenge Initiative is AZURE, launching from Andøya Space Center in Norway in April 2019.

 For even more about what it’s like to launch science rockets in extreme conditions, check out one scientist’s notes from the field: https://go.nasa.gov/2QzyjR4

For updates on the Grand Challenge Initiative and other sounding rocket flights, visit nasa.gov/soundingrockets or follow along with NASA Wallops and NASA heliophysics on Twitter and Facebook.

@NASA_Wallops | NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility | @NASASun | NASA Sun Science

As a scientist I can tell you this photo is 100% accurate. Photo cred: texashumor