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

Wed Dec 19 11:35:42 CST 2018

good morning all,

 Seems almost impossible, Christmas is only 6 days away…for those who celebrate….wishing you a WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS...and for all…THE HAPPIEST OF NEW YEARS…I know so many of you will start your Holiday break soon and will be away until after the New Year…enjoy your break, you have definitely earned it….

this past year has been filled with so many success, it has been absolutely amazing with mission to the sun, Mars InSight landing, asteroid sampling mission…and the most amazing to me…the successful, safe return of two astronauts after a rocket failure and ballistic return to earth….

to see highlights of NASA’s year go to: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-begins-america-s-new-moon-to-mars-exploration-approach-in-2018 <https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-begins-america-s-new-moon-to-mars-exploration-approach-in-2018>

Thanks to everyone who supported visits, opened up your classrooms and made every visit so amazing…I can never repay you for all your kindness…but I can try :-) :-)
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… :-) :-) love ya, Gabe

II
In Norway at my buddy Aage’s home...

Matter Sucked in by Black Holes May Travel into the Future, Get Spit Back Out

Black holes may not have singularities at their center. Instead, the matter they suck in may be spit out across the universe at some time in the future, a new theory suggests.

Black holes are among the most mysterious places in the universe; locations where the very fabric of space and time are warped so badly that not even light can escape from them. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, at their center lies a singularity, a place where the mass of many stars is crushed into a volume with exactly zero size. However, two recent physics papers <https://physics.aps.org/articles/v11/127>, published on Dec.10 in the journals Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D, respectively, may make scientists reconsider what we think we know about black holes. B <https://www.livescience.com/32164-can-black-holes-transport-you-to-other-worlds.html>lack holes <https://www.livescience.com/32164-can-black-holes-transport-you-to-other-worlds.html> might not last forever, and it's possible that we've completely misunderstood their nature and what they look like at the center, according to the papers. [Stephen Hawking's Most Far-Out Ideas About Black Holes <https://www.livescience.com/62016-stephen-hawking-black-holes.html>]

Tour Jezero Crater! Fly Over the Landing Site of NASA's Next Mars Rover 

An overhead view of Jezero Crater, the landing site for NASA's 2020 Mars rover. This image is a screengrab from a new animation created using imagery from NASA Mars orbiters.

A new video gives a bird's-eye view of the ancient lake bed that NASA's next Mars rover will scour for signs of long-dead life…. email at emails.space.com
Last month, NASA officials announced that the 2020 Mars rover will touch down inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater <https://www.space.com/42486-mars-2020-rover-jezero-crater-landing-site.html>, which lies about 19 degrees north of the Red Planet's equator. "On Earth, lakes are filled with living creatures. Evidence of that life is often preserved in the mud and sand deposited on the bottom of the lake," he added. "So, we'll use the rover's instruments to explore the rocks of the ancient lake bed."
The current plan calls for the car-size Mars 2020 <https://www.space.com/26701-nasa-mars-2020-rover-explained-infographic.html> to land near the rim of Jezero, which was blasted out by an ancient impact, Farley said. The six-wheeled robot will work its way over to a nearby delta, which preserves sediments that were delivered to the ancient lake by a river. The rover will likely then trundle over to explore the ancient lake's shoreline, navigating its way around present-day sand dunes to get there.After that, the mission team plans to explore the rocks of Jezero's rim.  "These rocks would have been hot shortly after the impact and may have hosted hot springs," Farley said. "Deposits from these springs would be another target in our search for possible ancient life on Mars.” Mars 2020 is currently scheduled to launch in July of 2020 and touch down in February of 2021. The robot's body is based heavily on that of NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been exploring the 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater since August 2012. Like Curiosity, Mars 2020 — which will get a more original and inspiring name <https://www.space.com/41920-nasa-contest-name-2020-mars-rover.html>before launch — will land with the aid of a   rocket-powered sky crane. This device will lower the heavy rover onto Jezero's floor on cables, then fly off and crash-land intentionally a safe distance away. (NASA's considerably lighter InSight Mars lander didn't need a sky crane to ace its touchdown last month <https://www.space.com/42541-mars-insight-lander-success.html>; that craft's final landing sequence instead employed onboard descent engines.) Mars 2020 will carry seven scientific instruments, including ground-penetrating radar, high-resolution cameras and several spectrometers. The rover will also tote both a mini-helicopter, which will serve as a scout, and a technology demonstration that will generate oxygen from the carbon-dioxide-dominated Martian air. This latter gear could help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, NASA officials have said. Mars 2020 will also cache samples for eventual return to Earth, though there is no mission currently on NASA's books to go grab this material.  Another life-hunting rover is also slated to launch toward the Red Planet in 2020: the ExoMars rover, which is a joint effort of Europe and Russia. 

What's the Weather On Mars? How NASA's Insight Lander Will Find Out

A still from NASA's Experience InSight app <https://eyes.nasa.gov/insight> shows the instrument deck with the seismometer's cover still over the pressure sensor inlet; eventually that metal shield will be placed over the seismometer on the Martian surface.

NASA's new Mars lander isn't quite ready to probe the Red Planet's interior yet, but it's starting to get the lay of the land on the surface — and in the atmosphere. The InSight lander is already deploying its powerful meteorology package to monitor the Red Planet's weather. InSight touched down on the Martian surface <https://www.space.com/42541-mars-insight-lander-success.html> Nov. 26, and since then it has been carefully analyzing its environment and setting up its sensitive suite of instruments. The mission's seismometer still sits on the lander's deck, measuring InSight's vibrations rather than the planet's, and the heat-sensing mole <https://www.space.com/42709-insight-mars-lander-mole-heat-probe-prep.html> remains undeployed as well. But the lander's meteorology suite is already gearing up to measure the pressure, temperature and three-dimensional wind patterns on the Red Planet. Part of that suite — the pressure sensor — played a starring role in new "sounds from Mars <https://www.space.com/42666-insight-mars-lander-hears-martian-wind.html>" recently released by the InSight team. That sensor and the seismometer both caught the vibrations of wind rushing across the instrument deck and the seismometer's protective cover. [NASA's InSight Mars Lander: The Mission in Photos <https://www.space.com/17199-nasa-mars-insight-lander-mission-gallery.html>]

It's Official! NASA's Famed Voyager 2 Spacecraft Reaches Interstellar Space

This NASA graphic shows the locations of NASA's Voyager spacecraft in interstellar space. NASA announced the arrival of Voyager 2 in interstellar space on Dec. 10, 2018. Voyager 1 reached the milestone in 2012.

WASHINGTON — It's time to say goodbye to one of the most storied explorers of our age: Voyager 2 <https://www.space.com/17693-voyager-2.html> has entered interstellar space, NASA announced today (Dec. 10).
Voyager 2, which launched in 1977, has spent more four decades exploring our solar system <https://www.space.com/56-our-solar-system-facts-formation-and-discovery.html>, most famously becoming the only probe ever to study Neptune and Uranus during planetary flybys. Now, it has joined its predecessor Voyager 1 <https://www.space.com/17688-voyager-1.html> beyond the bounds of our sun's influence, a milestone scientists weren't able to precisely predict when would occur. And intriguingly, humanity's second crossing doesn't look precisely like data from the first journey out. [Watch: Voyager 2 Reaches Interstellar Space! <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWFqT354Jxc&feature=youtu.be>]

The unmanned Voyager 1 and 2 probes were launched in 1977 on a mission to visit all the outer planets of the solar system. See how the Voyager spacecraft worked in this SPACE.com infographic here <https://www.space.com/17458-voyager-spacecraft-explained-solar-system-infographic.html>.
Credit: Karl Tate, SPACE.com 
"Very different times, very different places, similar in characteristics," Ed Stone, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology and project scientist for the Voyager mission, said during a scientific talk before the announcement here at the 2018 meeting of the American Geophysical Meeting. "The next months ahead could be very revealing as well. … More to come!" 

Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited all four gas giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — and discovered 16 moons, as well as phenomena like Neptune's mysteriously transient Great Dark Spot, the cracks in Europa's ice shell, and ring features at every planet.

Scientists have been watching for Voyager 2's grand departure since late August <https://www.space.com/42040-voyager-2-approaching-solar-system-edge.html>, when data beamed back by the probe suggested it was nearing what scientists call the heliopause <https://www.space.com/22729-voyager-1-spacecraft-interstellar-space.html>, a bubble created by the solar wind of charged particles flowing out from our sun and influencing the environment within our solar system. Scientists use the heliopause to mark where interstellar space begins, although depending on how you define our solar system it can stretch all the way to the Oort Cloud, which begins 1,000 times farther away from the sun than Earth's orbit.

Beyond that bubble, spacecraft fly through many more cosmic rays — much higher-energy particles — than the lower-energy particles of our own neighborhood. Two instruments onboard the Voyager 2 probe track these particles as they collide with the spacecraft. The transition from mostly lower-energy particles to nearly none of these and a sudden surge of cosmic rays tells scientists the probe has crossed the heliopause.

An artist's depiction of NASA's Voyager 2 probe on its long journey out of the solar system.

It's a difficult transition to predict, since Voyager 2 is only the second spacecraft to cross that bubble with its instruments alert and communicative. Voyager 1 <https://www.space.com/17205-voyager-spacecraft.html> made the same journey in 2012 <https://www.space.com/39161-fate-of-the-voyager-spacecraft.html>. But the heliopause doesn't form a perfect sphere, and it shrinks and expands with the ebb and flow of the solar wind. So scientists had to wait and see what the data said, and beginning in August the data began to tell that story of cosmic departure, with a general increase in cosmic rays and decrease in local particles. But the grand exit took time. [Voyager 2 in Pictures: 40 Photos from Its Epic 'Grand Tour' <https://www.space.com/37847-nasa-voyager-mission-40-years-photos.html>]

"Something weird happened around day 310 [Nov. 5]," Rob Decker, who works with one of Voyagers particle detectors, said during the scientific talk. That something was crossing the heliopause. Scientists are particularly excited for this second crossing because Voyager 2 still carries an instrument that on Voyager 1 had stopped working long before the heliopause — the Plasma Science Experiment. That means Voyager 2's journey will create not just new data, but a new type of data, NASA officials said in the statement <https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7301>.

Where the two trips can be compared, however, instruments have shown how uneven that journey can be. Voyager 1 ran into flux tubes that created dynamic data, which Voyager 2 has not flown through. But the second probe has seen a strange bump in some of the data. "We haven't yet sorted out what these features are," Stone said. Voyager 2 also may not have as straightforward an exit as its predecessor because the current solar cycle phase means that the sun's bubble is growing a little. "We were probably chasing it and we may see it again," he said of the heliopause.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20181219/c3c59be4/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: fullsizeoutput_194d6.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 139409 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20181219/c3c59be4/attachment.jpeg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: blk hl.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 58227 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20181219/c3c59be4/attachment-0001.jpeg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: mars LS.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 65930 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20181219/c3c59be4/attachment-0002.jpeg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Mrs lander.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 100660 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20181219/c3c59be4/attachment-0003.jpeg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: voy2.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 50015 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20181219/c3c59be4/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzAyMS8zMjgvaTMwMC92b3lhZ2VyLWludGVyc3RlbGxhci0xMzA5MTFhLTAyLmpwZz8xMzc5MDEwNjE0.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 46431 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20181219/c3c59be4/attachment-0004.jpeg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: voyager-interstellar-130911a-02.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 68824 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20181219/c3c59be4/attachment-0005.jpeg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: MTU0NDQ1MjE3Nw==.jpeg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 33185 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://educatemotivate.com/pipermail/spacetalk_educatemotivate.com/attachments/20181219/c3c59be4/attachment-0006.jpeg>