[Spacetalk] https://www.nasa.gov/index.html

Wed Apr 12 23:01:27 CDT 2017

Good morning all.
 I know many of you are on Spring Break and now Easter break …enjoy it all, you have earned it….last week was awesome….the visit to Emma Jewel Charter Academy was simply amazing… the connection between the teachers and kids is very special, the kids are taught about life, responsibility, and believing in dreams as well as learning in school…I participated in some of the career day events, which were also great, special thanks to Kimberly who shared her 8th graders with me as I did a presentation for them…they were great, she is such a wonderful inspiration as well as role model…another amazing teacher who gives so much of herself to help the kids she truly cares for...then on Sat it was SunNFun…I want to thank Barbara for inviting me to present and for all she does every year, to help make this event so special...I hope those of you who went enjoyed it, my presentations went well, full house for the first one, even got to see a wonderful friend, Mary…she has been getting this group email for along time, I know some of you from the beginning, about 12-13 years ago…I was so fortunate to share a VIP pass to this first launch….something I will always remember…then I think of how many of you I was able to bring to the Space Center and share, it is wonderful..we always enjoyed it and I know you shared it with your students…there will be opportunities to see activities of a launch and docking of a supply ship on the ISS… https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv <https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv> for information on live feed….see stories below…..wishing those who celebrate….A VERY HAPPY EASTER…. wishing you a wonderful day...we have to remember to always do our best, enjoy everything we do, live in the present, make each day special, let those we care about most know, smile and have fun... Gabe

This Week in NASA History: First Space Shuttle Mission, STS-1, Launches -- April 12, 1981
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This week in 1981, space shuttle Columbia and STS-1 lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, marking the first flight of the Space Shuttle Program. Columbia's 36-orbit flight tested the vehicle's performance as a reusable spacecraft. The orbiter successfully returned to Earth April 14, 1981, and for the next 30 years the program’s five spacecraft carried people into orbit repeatedly, launched, recovered and repaired satellites, conducted cutting-edge research and built the largest structure in space -- the International Space Station. Today, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center's Payload Operations Integration Center serves as "science central" for the space station, working 24/7, 365 days a year in support of the orbiting laboratory's scientific experiments. The NASA History Program is responsible for generating, disseminating, and preserving NASA’s remarkable history and providing a comprehensive understanding of the institutional, cultural, social, political, economic, technological, and scientific aspects of NASA’s activities in aeronautics and space. For more pictures like this one and to connect to NASA’s history, visit the Marshall History Program’s webpage <https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/history/index.html>.

 <https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/04/04/animation-the-flight-of-a-boeing-starliner-capsule-from-launch-to-landing/>
Animation: The flight of a Boeing Starliner capsule from launch to landing <https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/04/04/animation-the-flight-of-a-boeing-starliner-capsule-from-launch-to-landing/> https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/04/04/animation-the-flight-of-a-boeing-starliner-capsule-from-launch-to-landing/ <https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/04/04/animation-the-flight-of-a-boeing-starliner-capsule-from-launch-to-landing/> 

Animation depicts the flight of Boeing’s Starliner commercial crew capsule, ascending into orbit atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket to reach the International Space Station and re-entry to make an airbag-cushioned touchdown on land.
this is about 3 minutes, if you can find time to share it with your students…..

NASA Television to Air Launch of NASA Astronaut Jack Fischer, Crewmate
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In the Integration Building at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Expedition 51 crewmembers Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Jack Fischer of NASA sit for pictures April 6, 2017, in front of their Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft as part of pre-launch preparations.
Credits: NASA
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NASA astronaut Jack Fischer is poised for a journey of exploration and research on the International Space Station <http://www.nasa.gov/station>. Extensive coverage of upcoming prelaunch activities, launch and arrival will air on NASA Television and streamed on the agency’s website <http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv>. Coverage begins Thursday, April 13, with video of prelaunch activities in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, which will air on NASA TV through Wednesday, April 19. Fischer and his Expedition 51-52 crewmate Fyodor Yurchikhin, of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, are scheduled to launch at 3:13 a.m. EDT Thursday, April 20 (1:13 p.m. Baikonur time), from the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard a Soyuz MS-04 spacecraft. NASA TV coverage of the launch will begin at 2:15 a.m. The pair will travel on a fast-track, six-hour course to the space station and dock to the Poisk module at 9:23 a.m. NASA TV coverage of the docking will begin at 8:30 a.m. Once at the station, they will be welcomed by Expedition 51 Commander Peggy Whitson of NASA and Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency). Hatches between the Soyuz and space station will open at 11:05 a.m. NASA TV coverage of hatch opening and welcome ceremonies will begin at 10:45 a.m. Expedition 51 will continue work on hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science aboard the International Space Station, humanity’s only microgravity laboratory. Fischer, a first-time space flier, and Yurchikhin, a veteran of four spaceflights, will spend more than four months aboard the orbiting laboratory before returning to Earth in early September. Get breaking news, images and features from the station on Instagram <http://instagram.com/iss> and Twitter <http://www.twitter.com/Space_Station>. Follow Fischer on social media at: https://twitter.com/Astro2fish <https://twitter.com/Astro2fish> https://www.facebook.com/Astro2fish/ <https://www.facebook.com/Astro2fish/> and https://www.instagram.com/astro2fish/ <https://www.instagram.com/astro2fish/> 

NASA TV to Air Orbital ATK Resupply Mission Launch, Briefings
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In this Oct. 23, 2016 image, the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm captures Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo spacecraft on its sixth mission to the station. The company’s seventh cargo resupply mission is targeted for launch April 18 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Credits: NASA
NASA commercial cargo provider Orbital ATK <http://www.nasa.gov/orbitalatk> is targeting its seventh commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station <http://www.nasa.gov/station> for 11:11 a.m. EDT Tuesday, April 18. Coverage of the launch begins at 10 a.m. on NASA Television and the agency’s website <https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv>. Two prelaunch briefings will air the day prior to launch. At 10:30 a.m., mission managers will provide an overview and status of launch operations and at 1 p.m., scientists and researchers will discuss some of the investigations to be delivered to the station. Dubbed S.S. John Glenn <https://www.nasa.gov/feature/orbital-atk-dedicates-cygnus-spacecraft-to-john-glenn>, the Cygnus spacecraft name is a tribute to the former astronaut and U.S. Senator from Ohio. It will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Coverage of the spacecraft’s solar array deployment will begin at 12:40 p.m. April 18, and will be followed by a 2 p.m. press conference with mission managers. Under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract, Cygnus will carry more than 7,600 pounds of science research, crew supplies and hardware to the orbiting laboratory in support of the Expedition 50 and 51 crew members. The new experiments will include an antibody investigation <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2347.html> that could increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs for cancer treatment and an advanced plant habitat <https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-plant-habitat-will-increase-harvest-on-international-space-station> for studying plant physiology and growth of fresh food in space. Another new investigation bound for the U.S. National Laboratory will look at using magnetized cells and <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/1929.html> tools to make it easier to handle cells and cultures, and improve the reproducibility of experiments. Cygnus also is carrying 38 CubeSats, including many built by university students from around the world as part of the QB50 <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2539.html> program. The CubeSats are scheduled to deploy from either the spacecraft or space station in the coming months. When it arrives to the space station, Expedition 51 Commander Peggy Whitson of NASA and Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) will grapple Cygnus. Whitson will use the space station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, to take hold of the spacecraft. After Canadarm2 captures Cygnus, ground commands will be sent for the station’s arm to rotate and install it on the bottom of the station’s Unity module. Cygnus will remain on the station until July, when it will depart with several tons of trash for a fiery reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Prior to re-entry, a third experiment will be conducted to study how fire burns in space <https://blogs.nasa.gov/kennedy/2017/02/23/saffire-iii-fire-experiment-prepped-for-flight-to-station/>. This is Orbital ATK’s third launch from Cape Canaveral. Missions from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia are scheduled to resume for the eighth and subsequent contracted flights. For an updated schedule of prelaunch briefings, events and NASA TV coverage, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/content/orbital-atk-crs-7-briefings-and-events <https://www.nasa.gov/content/orbital-atk-crs-7-briefings-and-events> For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv <https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv> Follow countdown coverage on our launch blog at: https://blogs.nasa.gov/orbital <https://blogs.nasa.gov/orbital>

NASA Astronaut to Star in First Ultra-High-Definition Live Stream from Space
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NASA astronaut and Expedition 51 commander Peggy Whitson will speak to viewers in the highest resolution video ever broadcast live from space.
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NASA astronaut and Expedition 51 commander Peggy Whitson will take viewers 250 miles off the Earth to the International Space Station in the highest resolution video ever broadcast live from space at 1:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 26. During this event, Whitson will speak with Sam Blackman, chief executive officer and co-founder of AWS Elemental, via an ultra-high-definition (UHD) broadcast transmitted in 4K from the 2017 National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas. Watch Amazon Web Services’ live stream of the event at: https://live.awsevents.com/nasa4k <https://live.awsevents.com/nasa4k> The conversation with Whitson will take place as part of a panel called “Reaching for the Stars: Connecting to the Future with NASA and Hollywood.” The panel will explore how advanced imaging and cloud technologies are taking scientific research and filmmaking to the next level, and will be moderated by Carolyn Giardina, technology editor for the Hollywood Reporter. To experience the full effect online, devices capable of viewing 4K UHD content will be required, however, lower resolution streams of the live broadcast will be available on NASA Television, NASA’s Facebook page and the agency’s website. NanoRacks, a provider of commercial access to the International Space Station through its status as a U.S. National Laboratory, helped certify for launch a UHD-capable video encoder from AWS Elemental. The encoder and a RED Epic Dragon Digital Cinema camera were delivered to the station aboard a Japanese cargo craft in December 2016.  Get breaking news, images and features from the station on Instagram and Twitter: http://instagram.com/iss <http://instagram.com/iss> and http://www.twitter.com/Space_Station <http://www.twitter.com/Space_Station>

Earth-Sized 'Tatooine' Planets Could Be Habitable 
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This artist's concept shows a hypothetical planet covered in water around the binary star system of Kepler-35A and B.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
With two suns in its sky, Luke Skywalker's home planet Tatooine in "Star Wars" looks like a parched, sandy desert world. In real life, thanks to observatories such as NASA's Kepler space telescope, we know that two-star systems can indeed support planets, although planets discovered so far around double-star systems are large and gaseous. Scientists wondered: If an Earth-size planet were orbiting two suns, could it support life? It turns out, such a planet could be quite hospitable if located at the right distance from its two stars, and wouldn't necessarily even have deserts. In a particular range of distances from two sun-like host stars, a planet covered in water would remain habitable and retain its water for a long time, according to a new study in the journal Nature Communications. "This means that double-star systems of the type studied here are excellent candidates to host habitable planets, despite the large variations in the amount of starlight hypothetical planets in such a system would receive," said Max Popp, associate research scholar at Princeton University in New Jersey, and the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. Popp and Siegfried Eggl, a Caltech postdoctoral scholar at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, created a model for a planet in the Kepler-35 system. In reality, the stellar pair Kepler-35A and B host a planet called Kepler-35b, a giant planet about eight times the size of Earth, with an orbit of 131.5 Earth days. For their study, researchers neglected the gravitational influence of this planet and added a hypothetical water-covered, Earth-size planet around the Kepler-35 A and B stars. They examined how this planet’s climate would behave as it orbited the host stars with periods between 341 and 380 days. "Our research is motivated by the fact that searching for potentially habitable planets requires a lot of effort, so it is good to know in advance where to look," Eggl said. "We show that it's worth targeting double-star systems.” In exoplanet research, scientists speak of a region called the "habitable zone," the range of distances around a star where a terrestrial planet is most likely to have liquid water on its surface. In this case, because two stars are orbiting each other, the habitable zone depends on the distance from the center of mass that both stars are orbiting. To make things even more complicated, a planet around two stars would not travel in a circle; instead, its orbit would wobble through the gravitational interaction with the two stars. Popp and Eggl found that on the far edge of the habitable zone in the Kepler-35 double-star system, the hypothetical water-covered planet would have a lot of variation in its surface temperatures. Because such a cold planet would have only a small amount of water vapor in its atmosphere, global average surface temperatures would swing up and down by as much as 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) in the course of a year. "This is analogous to how, on Earth, in arid climates like deserts, we experience huge temperature variations from day to night," Eggl said. "The amount of water in the air makes a big difference.” But, closer to the stars, near the inner edge of the habitable zone, the global average surface temperatures on the same planet stay almost constant. That is because more water vapor would be able to persist in the atmosphere of the hypothetical planet and act as a buffer to keep surface conditions comfortable. As with single-star systems, a planet beyond the outer edge of the habitable zone of its two suns would eventually end up in a so-called "snowball" state, completely covered with ice. Closer than the inner edge of the habitable zone, an atmosphere would insulate the planet too much, creating a runaway greenhouse effect and turning the planet into a Venus-like world inhospitable to life as we know it. Another feature of the study's climate model is that, compared to Earth, a water-covered planet around two stars would have less cloud coverage. That would mean clearer skies for viewing double sunsets on these exotic worlds. NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler telescope <https://www.nasa.gov/kepler> is managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, managed Kepler mission development. For more information about exoplanets, visit: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov <http://exoplanets.nasa.gov/>

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