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

Tue May 9 23:11:45 CDT 2017

Good morning all,
 I Hope you are enjoying your week….I know some of the schools have just two weeks left, while some schools in Norway go thru the end of June….it seems like it was New Year, just a blink ago….I have been so fortunate to have visited so many schools this school year, I think the most ever :-) today I will be at Mims Elementary speaking with the 3rd-6th graders…plus I get to see a good friend/teacher, Danine…who I met many years ago when I first started visiting schools…it is wonderful to think how long we have been corresponding through the group emails….as with so many of you…thanks for all the positive feed back I got on the newsletter….I hope you will be able to share some of the spacewalk with the kids on Friday (come on, it’s Friday…lol) https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv <https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv>    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

NASA TV Coverage Set for 200th Spacewalk at International Space Station
 <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/whitson-spacewalk.jpg>
NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson is seen during a Jan. 6, 2017, spacewalk during Expedition 50 aboard the International Space Station.
Credits: NASA
 <applewebdata://D0F8D8CE-24A5-458D-BDED-B79D849742A3>
NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Jack Fischer will perform a landmark 200th spacewalk at the International Space Station Friday, May 12. Live coverage will begin at 6:30 a.m. EDT on NASA Television and the agency’s website <https://www.nasa.gov/live>. Whitson, Expedition 51 commander, and Fischer will venture outside the Quest airlock to replace a large avionics box that supplies electricity and data connections to the science experiments, and replacement hardware stored outside the station. The ExPRESS Carrier Avionics, or ExPCA is located on the starboard 3 truss of the station on one of the depots housing critical spare parts. It will be replaced with a unit delivered to the station last month aboard the Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo spacecraft. In addition, Whitson and Fischer will install a connector that will route data to the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer <https://www.nasa.gov/feature/space-station-experiment-marks-five-years-probing-cosmic-ray-mysteries> and help the crew determine the most efficient way to conduct future maintenance on cosmic ray detector. During the planned 6.5-hour spacewalk, the astronauts also will install a protective shield on the Pressurized Mating Adapter-3, which was moved from the Tranquility to the Harmony module in March. This adapter will host a new international docking port for the arrival of commercial crew spacecraft. Whitson and Fischer also will rig a new high-definition camera and pair of wireless antennas to the exterior of the outpost. Whitson, who already holds the U.S. record for most spacewalks by a female astronaut, will make this ninth excursion as extravehicular crew member 1, wearing the suit with red stripes. Fischer, extravehicular crew member 2, will wear the suit with no stripes on his first-ever spacewalk. The first spacewalk in support of International Space Station assembly and maintenance was conducted on Dec. 7, 1998, by NASA astronauts Jerry Ross and Jim Newman during space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-88 mission. Astronauts completed attaching and outfitting of the first two components of the station, the Russian Zarya module and the U.S. Unity module. Get NASA TV streaming video, schedule and downlink information at: https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv <https://www.nasa.gov/nasatv> Learn more about the International Space Station, its crew and their research at: https://www.nasa.gov/station <https://www.nasa.gov/station>

Merging Galaxies Have Enshrouded Black Holes
 <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/nustar20170509.jpg>
This illustration compares growing supermassive black holes in two different kinds of galaxies. A growing supermassive black hole in a normal galaxy would have a donut-shaped structure of gas and dust around it (left). In a merging galaxy, a sphere of material obscures the black hole (right).
Credits: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
Black holes get a bad rap in popular culture for swallowing everything in their environments. In reality, stars, gas and dust can orbit black holes for long periods of time, until a major disruption pushes the material in. A merger of two galaxies is one such disruption. As the galaxies combine and their central black holes approach each other, gas and dust in the vicinity are pushed onto their respective black holes. An enormous amount of high-energy radiation is released as material spirals rapidly toward the hungry black hole, which becomes what astronomers call an active galactic nucleus (AGN). A study using NASA's NuSTAR telescope shows that in the late stages of galaxy mergers, so much gas and dust falls toward a black hole that the extremely bright AGN is enshrouded. The combined effect of the gravity of the two galaxies slows the rotational speeds of gas and dust that would otherwise be orbiting freely. This loss of energy makes the material fall onto the black hole. "The further along the merger is, the more enshrouded the AGN will be," said Claudio Ricci, lead author of the study published in the Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Society. "Galaxies that are far along in the merging process are completely covered in a cocoon of gas and dust.” Ricci and colleagues observed the penetrating high-energy X-ray emission from 52 galaxies. About half of them were in the later stages of merging. Because NuSTAR is very sensitive to detecting the highest-energy X-rays, it was critical in establishing how much light escapes the sphere of gas and dust covering an AGN. The study was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society <https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/468/2/1273/2939810/Growing-supermassive-black-holes-in-the-late>. Researchers compared NuSTAR observations of the galaxies with data from NASA's Swift and Chandra and ESA's XMM-Newton observatories, which look at lower energy components of the X-ray spectrum. If high-energy X-rays are detected from a galaxy, but low-energy X-rays are not, that is a sign that an AGN is heavily obscured. The study helps confirm the longstanding idea that an AGN's black hole does most of its eating while enshrouded during the late stages of a merger. "A supermassive black hole grows rapidly during these mergers," Ricci said. "The results further our understanding of the mysterious origins of the relationship between a black hole and its host galaxy.” NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NuSTAR was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp., Dulles, Virginia. NuSTAR's mission operations center is at UC Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center. ASI provides the mission's ground station and a mirror archive. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA. For more information on NuSTAR, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/nustar <http://www.nasa.gov/nustar> & http://www.nustar.caltech.edu <http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/>

NASA Delivers Detectors for ESA's Euclid Spacecraft 
 <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/euclid20170509-full.jpg>
This artist's concept shows ESA's Euclid spacecraft, to which NASA is contributing.
Credits: ESA/C. Carreau
Three detector systems for the Euclid mission, led by ESA (European Space Agency), have been delivered to Europe for the spacecraft's near-infrared instrument. The detector systems are key components of NASA's contribution to this upcoming mission to study some of the biggest questions about the universe, including those related to the properties and effects of dark matter and dark energy -- two critical, but invisible phenomena that scientists think make up the vast majority of our universe. "The delivery of these detector systems is a milestone for what we hope will be an extremely exciting mission, the first space mission dedicated to going after the mysterious dark energy," said Michael Seiffert, the NASA Euclid project scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, which manages the development and implementation of the detector systems. Euclid will carry two instruments: a visible-light imager (VIS) and a near-infrared spectrometer and photometer (NISP). A special light-splitting plate on the Euclid telescope enables incoming light to be shared by both instruments, so they can carry out observations simultaneously. The spacecraft, scheduled for launch in 2020, will observe billions of faint galaxies and investigate why the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace. Astrophysicists think dark energy is responsible for this effect, and Euclid will explore this hypothesis and help constrain dark energy models. This census of distant galaxies will also reveal how galaxies are distributed in our universe, which will help astrophysicists understand how the delicate interplay of the gravity of dark matter, luminous matter and dark energy forms large-scale structures in the universe. Additionally, the location of galaxies in relation to each other tells scientists how they are clustered. Dark matter, an invisible substance accounting for over 80 percent of matter in our universe, can cause subtle distortions in the apparent shapes of galaxies. That is because its gravity bends light that travels from a distant galaxy toward an observer, which changes the appearance of the galaxy when it is viewed from a telescope. Euclid's combination of visible and infrared instruments will examine this distortion effect and allow astronomers to probe dark matter and the effects of dark energy. Detecting infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, is especially important for studying the universe's distant galaxies. Much like the Doppler effect for sound, where a siren's pitch seems higher as it approaches and lower as it moves away, the frequency of light from an astronomical object gets shifted with motion. Light from objects that are traveling away from us appears redder, and light from those approaching us appears bluer. Because the universe is expanding, distant galaxies are moving away from us, so their light gets stretched out to longer wavelengths. Between 6 and 10 billion light-years away, galaxies are brightest in infrared light. JPL procured the NISP detector systems, which were manufactured by Teledyne Imaging Sensors of Camarillo, California. They were tested at JPL and at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, before being shipped to France and the NISP team. Each detector system consists of a detector, a cable and a "readout electronics chip" that converts infrared light to data signals read by an onboard computer and transmitted to Earth for analysis. Sixteen detectors will fly on Euclid, each composed of 2040 by 2040 pixels. They will cover a field of view slightly larger than twice the area covered by a full moon. The detectors are made of a mercury-cadmium-telluride mixture and are designed to operate at extremely cold temperatures. "The U.S. Euclid team has overcome many technical hurdles along the way, and we are delivering superb detectors that will enable the collection of unprecedented data during the mission," said Ulf Israelsson, the NASA Euclid project manager, based at JPL. Delivery to ESA of the next set of detectors for NISP is planned in early June. The Centre de Physique de Particules de Marseille, France, will provide further characterization of the detector systems. The final detector focal plane will then be assembled at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, and integrated with the rest of NISP for instrument tests. For more information about Euclid, visit: http://sci.esa.int/Euclid <http://sci.esa.int/Euclid>

NASA Receives Proposals for Future Solar System Mission

 <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/edu_solar_system_large_0.png>

NASA has received and is reviewing 12 proposals for future unmanned solar system exploration. The proposed missions of discovery – submitted under NASA’s New Frontiers <https://discoverynewfrontiers.nasa.gov/index.cfml> program – will undergo scientific and technical review over the next seven months. The goal is to select a mission for flight in about two years, with launch in the mid-2020s. “New Frontiers is about answering the biggest questions in our solar system today, building on previous missions to continue to push the frontiers of exploration,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “We’re looking forward to reviewing these exciting investigations and moving forward with our next bold mission of discovery.” Selection of one or more concepts for Phase A study will be announced in November. At the conclusion of Phase A concept studies, it is planned that one New Frontiers investigation will be selected to continue into subsequent mission phases. Mission proposals are selected following an extensive competitive peer review process. Investigations for this announcement of opportunity were limited to six mission themes:

Comet Surface Sample Return
Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin Sample Return
Ocean Worlds (Titan and/or Enceladus)
Saturn Probe
Trojan Tour and Rendezvous
Venus In Situ Explorer
The New Frontiers Program conducts principal investigator (PI)-led space science investigations in SMD’s planetary program under a development cost cap of approximately $1 billion. This would be the fourth mission in the New Frontiers portfolio; its predecessors are the New Horizons <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html> mission to Pluto, the Juno <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html>mission to Jupiter, and OSIRIS-REx <https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex>, which will rendezvous with and return a sample of asteroid Bennu. New Frontiers Program investigations must address NASA’s planetary science objectives as described in the 2014 NASA Strategic Plan and the 2014 NASA Science Plan. <http://science1.nasa.gov/about-us/science-strategy/> The New Frontiers Program is managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center for NASA’s Planetary Science Division.  Read more about NASA’s New Frontiers Program and missions at: https://discoverynewfrontiers.nasa.gov/index.cfml <https://discoverynewfrontiers.nasa.gov/index.cfml>

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