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

Mon Mar 6 21:37:42 CST 2017

Good morning all,
 I hope everything is going great for you and the kids are enjoying learning…I know so many of you do things to make it fun, to try to keep the kids focused, and help them get an education to prepare them for life….to me, the most difficult “job” in the world…I am in awe of everything you do….it seems we are rapidly moving through March…and many states will be concentrating on end of year testing….I know a difficult time for kids and teachers…I still hope to visit many schools between now and the end of the school year so please let me know if you would like to schedule a visit…it is still amazing how visiting schools has turned into such an adventure with it continually growing…this week I will be leaving for 10 days to Brazil.  I have been invited by The Brazil-Florida Chamber of Commerce to support an outbound educational project in Brazil, to the cities of Sao Paulo, Sao Jose dos Campos and Sorocaba. I will be participating in a week long event, Science Days Brazil, speaking at schools and supporting activities throughout the week…I spoke with students from 4 high schools in Brazil visiting KSC last summer…it was amazing, the kids are awesome….this will be the 6th country I will visit in addition to traveling all over the US…it has been simply amazing…I can honestly say in almost 10 years since I started, ever single one has been awesome…the interface with the kids has been so very special…I want to thank Jeff and Carla for giving me this opportunity….here are two very interesting links with short movies... I hope you will find a few minutes to share them with the kids…let their imagination take them to very special places….hopefully, it will encourage them to apply themselves more as well as enjoy seeing what it is like to be an astronaut in space…. Stunning Spacewalk Video Shows An Astronaut-Eye View From The ISS <http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a25545/stunning-spacewalk-video/>     Stunning Spacewalk Video Captures Vistas from Space <http://www.space.com/35896-spacewalk-video-astronauts-eye-view.html>  I will stay in touch and still send an email but wanted to share this adventure with you…please think about attending Fun’nSun, see below…have a wonderful day and rest of the week...we must always remember to do our best, enjoy everything we do, live in the present, make each day special, let those we care about most know, be thankful for the good in our lives, smile and have fun....gabe

>> I want to remind everyone of the Sun’nFun Aerospace Educators Workshop, April 8th, 2017 in Lakeland, Florida….It is an amazing day and the evening program will include fireworks with a night air show. https://visitcentralflorida.org/blog/sun-n-fun-international-fly-in-expo <https://visitcentralflorida.org/blog/sun-n-fun-international-fly-in-expo> ...registration form is below….I will be doing two presentations on Sat morning…it is where I have met so many of you and from there arranged to visit schools…I hope as many of you as possible can make it….it would be a preview of what I will do at your school…and so much fun to see you….

Astronaut Robert L. Stewart, mission specialist, participates in a extravehicular activity (EVA), a few meters away from the cabin of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Stewart is centered in a background of clouds and earth in this view of his EVA. He is floating without tethers attaching him to the shuttle.

NASA Wants to Create the Coolest Spot in the
Universe
 <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/cal_main.jpg>
Artist's concept of an atom chip for use by NASA's Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) aboard the International Space Station. CAL will use lasers to cool atoms to ultracold temperatures.
Credits: NASA
Full image and caption <http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA17794>
This summer, an ice chest-sized box will fly to the International Space Station, where it will create the coolest spot in the universe. Inside that box, lasers, a vacuum chamber and an electromagnetic "knife" will be used to cancel out the energy of gas particles, slowing them until they're almost motionless. This suite of instruments is called the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), and was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. CAL is in the final stages of assembly at JPL, ahead of a ride to space this August on SpaceX CRS-12. Its instruments are designed to freeze gas atoms to a mere billionth of a degree above absolute zero. That's more than 100 million times colder than the depths of space. "Studying these hyper-cold atoms could reshape our understanding of matter and the fundamental nature of gravity," said CAL Project Scientist Robert Thompson of JPL. "The experiments we'll do with the Cold Atom Lab will give us insight into gravity and dark energy -- some of the most pervasive forces in the universe.” When atoms are cooled to extreme temperatures, as they will be inside of CAL, they can form a distinct state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate. In this state, familiar rules of physics recede and quantum physics begins to take over. Matter can be observed behaving less like particles and more like waves. Rows of atoms move in concert with one another as if they were riding a moving fabric. These mysterious waveforms have never been seen at temperatures as low as what CAL will achieve. NASA has never before created or observed Bose-Einstein condensates in space. On Earth, the pull of gravity causes atoms to continually settle towards the ground, meaning they're typically only observable for fractions of a second. But on the International Space Station, ultra-cold atoms can hold their wave-like forms longer while in freefall. That offers scientists a longer window to understand physics at its most basic level. Thompson estimated that CAL will allow Bose-Einstein condensates to be observable for up to five to 10 seconds; future development of the technologies used on CAL could allow them to last for hundreds of seconds. Bose-Einstein condensates are a "superfluid" -- a kind of fluid with zero viscosity, where atoms move without friction as if they were all one, solid substance. "If you had superfluid water and spun it around in a glass, it would spin forever," said Anita Sengupta of JPL, Cold Atom Lab project manager. "There's no viscosity to slow it down and dissipate the kinetic energy. If we can better understand the physics of superfluids, we can possibly learn to use those for more efficient transfer of energy.” Five scientific teams plan to conduct experiments using the Cold Atom Lab. Among them is Eric Cornell of the University of Colorado, Boulder and the National Institute for Standards and Technology. Cornell is one of the Nobel Prize winners who first created Bose-Einstein condensates in a lab setting in 1995. The results of these experiments could potentially lead to a number of improved technologies, including sensors, quantum computers and atomic clocks used in spacecraft navigation. Especially exciting are applications related to dark energy detection, said Kamal Oudrhiri of JPL, the CAL deputy project manager. He noted that current models of cosmology divide the universe into roughly 27 percent dark matter, 68 percent dark energy and about 5 percent ordinary matter. "This means that even with all of our current technologies, we are still blind to 95 percent of the universe," Oudrhiri said. "Like a new lens in Galileo's first telescope, the ultra-sensitive cold atoms in the Cold Atom Lab have the potential to unlock many mysteries beyond the frontiers of known physics."  The Cold Atom Lab is currently undergoing a testing phase that will prepare it prior to delivery to Cape Canaveral, Florida. "The tests we do over the next months on the ground are critical to ensure we can operate and tune it remotely while it's in space, and ultimately learn from this rich atomic physics system for years to come," said Dave Aveline, the test-bed lead at JPL. JPL is developing the Cold Atom Laboratory, sponsored by the International Space Station Program at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Space Life and Physical Sciences Division of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington manages the Fundamental Physics Program. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about the Cold Atom Lab, visit: http://coldatomlab.jpl.nasa.gov/ <http://coldatomlab.jpl.nasa.gov/>

This gives you an idea of what the Soyuz looks like after returning from the ISS with THREE astronauts and cargo….cramped quarters….

Unpacking Cargo from Expedition 38 Soyuz Landing <http://links.govdelivery.com/track?type=click&enid=ZWFzPTEmbWFpbGluZ2lkPTIwMTQwMzExLjI5OTIyOTQxJm1lc3NhZ2VpZD1NREItUFJELUJVTC0yMDE0MDMxMS4yOTkyMjk0MSZkYXRhYmFzZWlkPTEwMDEmc2VyaWFsPTE2ODQyOTU0JmVtYWlsaWQ9Z2VvcmdlLmdhYnJpZWxsZS0xQGtzYy5uYXNhLmdvdiZ1c2VyaWQ9Z2VvcmdlLmdhYnJpZWxsZS0xQGtzYy5uYXNhLmdvdiZmbD0mZXh0cmE9TXVsdGl2YXJpYXRlSWQ9JiYm&&&100&&&http://www.nasa.gov/content/unpacking-cargo-from-expedition-38-soyuz-landing>

Engineers document cargo as it is unloaded from the Soyuz TMA-10M spacecraft after it landed with Expedition 38 Commander Oleg Kotov of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos, and Flight Engineers: Mike Hopkins of NASA, and, Sergey Ryazanskiy of Roscosmos, near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Tuesday, March 11, 2014. Hopkins, Kotov and Ryazanskiy returned to Earth after five and a half months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 37 and 38 crews. Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Astronomy Picture of the Day

 <https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1703/AuroraIceland_Brynjarsson_8086.jpg>
Colorful Aurora over Iceland 
Image Credit & Copyright: Sigurdur William Brynjarsson <https://www.facebook.com/pg/SiggiPhoto/about/>; Annotation Advice: Sævar Helgi Bragason
Explanation: You don't always see a scene this beautiful when you hike to an ancient volcano -- you have to be lucky. When the astrophotographer <https://www.flickr.com/photos/sigurdurwilliam/> realized that aurora <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora> were visible two-weeks ago, he made a night-time run for the top of the caldera to see if he could capture them also reflected in the central lake. When he arrived, he found that ... the northern lights were even brighter and more impressive than before! And his image <https://www.facebook.com/SiggiPhoto/photos/a.836573043162643.1073741863.121670627986225/867276946758919/?type=3&theater> of them is the featured 13-frame panoramic mosaic. The crater lake in the center <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbzDtMoOwLI> is called Kerid (Icelandic: Kerið) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keri%C3%B0> and is about 3,000 years old. The aurora <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/aurora-news-stories/index.html> overhead shows impressive colors <http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/211.fall2000.web.projects/Christina%20Shaw/AuroraColors.html> and banding <https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150330.html>, with the red colors occurring higher in the Earth's atmosphere <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/science/atmosphere-layers2.html> than the green <http://cdn.playbuzz.com/cdn/86aed294-ffbe-4652-8fdf-5d51f784d06a/5620785c-0984-448b-b3ca-16c0a987f23d.jpg>. The background sky is filled with icons of the northern night including Polaris <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris>, the Pleiades star cluster <https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap161019.html>, and the stars that compose the handle of the Big Dipper <https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150317.html>. 

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