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

Thu Nov 1 10:04:26 CDT 2018

Good morning all,

 I hope you had a Happy Halloween with fun parties and wonderful school events…I think it is great when teachers dress up and share this fun day with the kids…it seems this day is becoming more popular, internationally, so it is awesome to see all the different costumes in so many countries…it has been difficult for me not to be going to schools in the US, since NASA removed my ability to see speaker requests I am finding it very challenging to visit schools in the US, certainly miss being with the kids and more so, changing there lives to give them a belief in themselves and hope for the future….still exploring ways to overcome this and still have many opportunities internationally…I will be leaving for Norway and Denmark on the 12th…I believe my 7th annual trip to Norway and 3rd to Denmark…I am so grateful for the amazing friendships that I have formed, seeing the kids I met in high school, now young adults doing so well as they accomplish their goals and make the world abetter place…so very proud of them and so thankful for staying in touch all these years…for any teachers reading this in Kolding, I will be there on the 22nd & 23rd of Nov, if I can generate visits to schools, if you are interested, please let me know

 So many events within the space program…The Hubble returns to full service; the Kepler telescope ran out of fuel after so many amazing discoveries and sadly, the rover Opportunity, on Mars for 14 years has succumbed to the harsh Mars environment and is  no longer functioning…to all of the school I have visited, we have share the video of its journey to Mars, that it had a life expectancy of 90 days, yet lasted over 14years…amazingly, it was not a mechanical failure but a major sandstorm which covered Opportunity’s solar panels leading to the battery failure…and for all purple lovers, see below… 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

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Returns to Science Operations

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope returned to normal operations late Friday, Oct. 26, and completed its first science observations on Saturday, Oct. 27 at 2:10 AM EDT. The observations were of the distant, star-forming galaxy DSF2237B-1-IR and were taken in infrared wavelengths with the Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. The return to conducting science comes after successfully recovering a backup gyroscope, or gyro, that had replaced a failed gyro three weeks earlier. A gyro is a device that measures the speed at which the spacecraft is turning, which is necessary to help Hubble turn and lock on to new targets. One of Hubble’s gyros failed on Oct. 5, and the spacecraft’s operations team activated a backup gyro the next day. However, the backup incorrectly returned rotation rates that were far in excess of the actual rates. Last week the operations team commanded Hubble to perform numerous maneuvers, or turns, and switched the gyro between different operational modes, which successfully cleared what was believed to be blockage between components inside the gyro that produced the excessively high rate values. Next, the team monitored and tested the gyro with additional maneuvers to make sure that the gyro was stable. The team then installed additional safeguards on the spacecraft in case the excessive rate values return, although this is not anticipated. On Thursday, the operations team conducted further maneuvers to collect gyro calibration data. On Friday, Hubble performed activities similar to science observations, including rotating to point at different sky locations, and locking on to test targets. The team completed all of these activities without issue. Late Friday, the team began the process to restore the scientific instruments to standard operating status. Hubble successfully completed maneuvers to get on target for the first science observations, and the telescope collected its first science data since Oct. 5.  Hubble is now back in its normal science operations mode with three fully functional gyros.  Originally required to last 15 years, Hubble has now been at the forefront of scientific discovery for more than 28 years. The team expects the telescope will continue to yield amazing discoveries well into the next decade, enabling it to work alongside the James Webb Space Telescope. Hubble is managed and operated at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. For more information about Hubble, visit: www.nasa.gov/hubble <http://www.nasa.gov/hubble>

RIP, Kepler: NASA's Revolutionary Planet-Hunting Telescope Runs Out of Fuel <http://click.emails.purch.com/?qs=7d3f54d93b2a99268bd3860a754bd3b1b0fab6444dcb439e27838ddf525c8d2096082ad1f0a02d5138862e7c4caecbd5a94d8ee89120bb390f6ec4cc4b1c576f>

NASA's prolific Kepler Space Telescope has run out of fuel, agency officials announced on Oct. 30, 2018. The planet-hunting space telescope discovered thousands of alien worlds around distant stars since its launch in 2009.

 NASA's Kepler space telescope <https://www.space.com/24903-kepler-space-telescope.html>, which has discovered 70 percent of the 3,800 confirmed alien worlds to date, has run out of fuel, agency officials announced today (Oct. 30). Kepler can no longer reorient itself to study cosmic objects or beam its data home to Earth, so the legendary instrument's in-space work is done after nearly a decade. Kepler has taught us that planets are ubiquitous and incredibly diverse," Kepler project scientist Jessie Dotson, who's based at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, told Space.com. "It's changed how we look at the night sky." oday's announcement was not unexpected. Kepler has been running low on fuel for months, and mission managers put the spacecraft to sleep several times recently to extend its operational life as much as possible. But the end couldn't be forestalled forever; Kepler's tank finally went dry two weeks ago, mission team members said during a telecon with reporters today. "This marks the end of spacecraft operations for Kepler, and the end of the collection of science data," Paul Hertz, head of NASA's Astrophysics Division, said during the telecon. nd Kepler will continue to live on in the exoplanet revolution it helped spark. For example, in April, NASA launched a new spacecraft called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite <https://www.space.com/40182-nasa-tess-exoplanet-mission-images.html> (TESS), which is hunting for alien worlds circling stars that lie relatively close to the sun (using the transit method, just like Kepler). Some of TESS' most promising finds will be scrutinized by NASA's $8.9 billion James Webb Space Telescope <https://www.space.com/41016-nasa-delays-james-webb-space-telescope-2021.html>, which is scheduled to launch in 2021. Webb will be able to scan the atmospheres of nearby alien worlds, looking for methane, oxygen and other gases that may be signs of life. Kepler's death "is not the end of an era," Kepler system engineer Charlie Sobeck, also of NASA Ames, told Space.com. "It's an occasion to mark, but it's not an end.”

A NASA Spacecraft Just Broke the Record for Closest Approach to Sun <http://click.emails.purch.com/?qs=e432385c61e7ca26257ebf573ececcc19f4a42ce0ef5a714166b07cec81e24538832175d713c66a5eb6d7347c17d33f361ae7fdc63a767e685eb0549b13ec2c1>

An artist’s illustration of NASA's Parker Solar Probe approaching the sun.
A NASA sun-studying spacecraft just entered the record books. In April of 1976, the German-American Helios 2 probe made spaceflight's closest-ever solar approach, cruising within 26.55 million miles (42.73 million kilometers) of the sun. But NASA's Parker Solar Probe <https://www.space.com/41454-nasa-parker-solar-probe-launches-to-sun.html> zoomed inside that distance today (Oct. 29), crossing the threshold at about 1:04 p.m. EDT (1704 GMT), agency officials said. Helios 2 also set the mark back then for fastest speed relative to the sun, at 153,454 mph (246,960 km/h). The Parker Solar Probe is expected to best that today as well, reaching higher speeds at about 10:54 p.m. EDT (0254 GMT on Oct. 30), NASA officials said. (NASA's Juno Jupiter spacecraft <https://www.space.com/33336-nasa-juno-probe-jupiter-orbit-tonight.html> currently holds the record for top speed relative to Earth; the probe reached 165,000 mph, or 265,000 km/h, during its arrival at the giant planet in July 2016.) [NASA's Parker Solar Probe Mission to the Sun in Pictures <https://www.space.com/37037-nasa-parker-solar-probe-mission-pictures.html>] These records will fall again and again over the course of the Parker Solar Probe's $1.5 billion mission, which began Aug. 12 with a liftoff from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft will study the sun during 24 close flybys over the next seven years, getting closer and closer to our star with each encounter. It's been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we've now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history," mission project manager Andy Driesman, from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, said in a statement <https://www.nasa.gov/feature/parker-solar-probe-breaks-record-becomes-closest-spacecraft-to-sun>. "It's a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on Oct. 31.” The spacecraft sports a special carbon-composite shield to protect itself and its instruments from intense heat and radiation during its close flybys. Those instruments will make a variety of measurements during the encounters. The Parker Solar Probe's observations will help researchers better understand the sun's structure, composition and activity, NASA officials have said. And the data could help solve two long-standing solar mysteries — why the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is so much hotter than the surface, and what accelerates the charged particles of the solar wind <https://www.space.com/22215-solar-wind.html> to such tremendous speeds.

NASA to Soon End Active Efforts to Restore Contact with Opportunity <http://click.emails.purch.com/?qs=e2a0564cad1db42170ee59bcc3186319cb830d2f976fbb984fb31a629020ffa3ed23bf0acc0479d1f9cfe545378b0c86fa37c61030d5eaad0ae4068bca50701e>

NASA expects to end daily "pinging" of the Opportunity rover in the next one to two weeks, but will keep listening for any signals from the rover for several more months.
NASA expects to soon end efforts <https://spacenews.com/nasa-to-soon-end-active-efforts-to-restore-contact-with-opportunity/> to contact the Opportunity Mars rover, silent for more than four months after a major dust storm, but will continue to listen for signals from the spacecraft for months to come. Opportunity, which has been on Mars since January 2004, last contacted Earth June 10. A powerful globe-spanning dust storm <https://www.space.com/41647-mars-rover-opportunity-dust-storm-survival.html> blocked the sun and deprived the rover of solar power, putting it into a low-power mode. On Sept. 11, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that the optical depth, a measure of the haziness of Martian skies, had dropped to a level low enough to allow enough sunlight to reach the rover for it to generate power. At that point, controllers started an effort known as "active listening" where they transmitted commands to the rover in the event it was unable to revive itself and listened for any transmissions by the rover in response. [Mars Dust Storm 2018: What It Means for Opportunity Rover <https://www.space.com/40888-mars-dust-storm-2018-and-opportunity-rover-images.html>] After more than a month, Opportunity has not responded to those commands, and that active listening effort will soon end. "We intend to keep pinging Opportunity on a daily basis for at least another week or two," said Lori Glaze, acting director of NASA's planetary science division, during a presentation Oct. 22 at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences here. Glaze said that a factor in ending the active listening campaign is to prepare for the landing of the InSight spacecraft on Mars <https://www.space.com/17199-nasa-mars-insight-lander-mission-gallery.html> Nov. 26. "We want to wind that down before InSight gets to Mars and make sure all our orbital assets are focused on a successful landing of InSight," she said. That schedule is consistent with previous plans for attempting to restore contact with Opportunity. NASA said Aug. 30 that, once skies cleared sufficiently, it would attempt active listening for 45 days <https://spacenews.com/nasa-to-soon-start-45-day-campaign-to-revive-the-opportunity-mars-rover/>. "If we do not hear back after 45 days, the team will be forced to conclude that the sun-blocking dust and the Martian cold have conspired to cause some type of fault from which the rover will more than likely not recover," John Callas, Opportunity project manager, said in a statement outlining those plans. Some former rover controllers were critical about that plan, arguing that it wasn't enough time to see if Opportunity could be revived, particularly if its solar panels were coated in dust. NASA countered that, once the active listening effort ends, it will continue to listen for any transmissions by Opportunity for months to come, but not transmit any commands to it. That remains the case, Glaze said. "Just because we're not actively pinging Opportunity, no one is giving up," she said. "We're going to keep listening for quite a while just to see if there's a chance that the solar panels might get some dust blown off and it may be able to recharge the batteries."  One challenge to those efforts is the health of those batteries. Glaze noted that, while the dust storm moderated temperatures, the return of clear skies means sharp drops in temperature each night. "The batteries may be getting too cold, and that may be too much for the little rover that could," she said. For now, the active listening effort continues, with rover controllers following a tradition similar to past NASA human spaceflight missions by playing a "wakeup song" each day. After playing a song by the classic rock band The Who one night, the band's Twitter account responded, "Wake up, Mars! The Who are here."

Extraterrestrial Life Could Be Purple <http://click.emails.purch.com/?qs=e2a0564cad1db421c60cc94a83e15052b83a07e3a280459bc35a513cc9e77011adcacb1fb016f6e3dfc49e0b70f210fd0b021c0ccfb1dab2678988b85b39bd7f>

Extraterrestrial life may use purple pigments to harvest energy

Alien life might be purple. That's the conclusion of a new research paper that suggests that the first life on Earth <https://www.livescience.com/57942-what-was-first-life-on-earth.html> might have had a lavender hue. In the International Journal of Astrobiology <https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/early-evolution-of-purple-retinal-pigments-on-earth-and-implications-for-exoplanet-biosignatures/63A1AD8AF544BEEF4C6D4A2D53130327>, microbiologist Shiladitya DasSarma of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and postdoctoral researcher Edward Schwieterman at the University of California, Riverside, argue that before green plants started harnessing the power of the sun for energy, tiny purple organisms <https://www.livescience.com/39145-why-are-plants-purple.html> figured out a way to do the same. Alien life could be thriving in the same way, DasSarma said. "Astronomers have discovered thousands of new extrasolar planets recently and are developing the capacity to see surface biosignatures" in the light reflected from these planets, he told Live Science. There are already ways to detect green life from space, he said, but scientists might need to start looking for purple, too. [7 Wild Theories on the Origin of Life <https://www.livescience.com/13363-7-theories-origin-life.html>]

Purple Earth

The idea that the early Earth was purple is not new, DasSarma and his colleagues advanced the theory in 2007 <https://www.livescience.com/1398-early-earth-purple-study-suggests.html>. The thinking goes like this: Plants and photosynthesizing algae use chlorophyll to absorb energy from the sun, but they don't absorb green light. That's odd, because green light is energy-rich. Perhaps, DasSarma and his colleagues reasoned, something else was already using that part of the spectrum when chlorophyll photosynthesizers evolved. That "something else" would be simple organisms that captured solar energy with a molecule called retinal. Retinal pigments absorb green light best. They're not as efficient as chlorophylls in capturing solar energy, but they are simpler, the researchers wrote in their new paper published Oct. 11. Retinal light-harvesting is still widespread today among bacteria and the single-celled organisms called Archaea. These purple organisms have been discovered everywhere from the oceans to the Antarctic Dry Valley to the surfaces of leaves, Schwieterman told Live Science. Retinal pigments are also found in the visual system of more complex animals. The appearance of the pigments across many living organisms hints that they may have evolved very early on, in ancestors common to many branches of the tree of life, the researchers wrote. There is even some evidence that modern purple-pigmented salt-loving organisms called halophiles <https://www.livescience.com/60341-secret-vatican-manuscript-purple-spots-decoded.html> might be related to some of the earliest life on Earth, which thrived around methane vents in the ocean, Schwieterman said.

Purple aliens

Regardless of whether the first life on Earth was purple, it's clear that lavender life suits some organisms just fine, Schwieterman and DasSarma argue in their new paper. That means that alien life <https://www.livescience.com/63208-alien-life-excuses.html> could be using the same strategy. And if alien life is using retinal pigments to capture energy, astrobiologists will find them only by looking for particular light signatures, they wrote. Chlorophyll, Schwieterman said, absorbs mostly red and blue light. But the spectrum reflected from a plant-covered planet displays what astrobiologists call a "vegetation red edge." This "red edge" is a sudden change in the reflection of light at the near-infrared part of the spectrum, where plants suddenly stop absorbing red wavelengths and start reflecting them away. Retinal-based photosynthesizers, on the other hand, have a "green edge," Schwieterman said. They absorb light up to the green portion of the spectrum, and then start reflecting longer wavelengths away. Astrobiologists have long been intrigued by the possibility of detecting extraterrestrial life by detecting the "red edge," <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15941381> Schwieterman said, but they may need to consider searching for the "green edge," too. "If these organisms were present in sufficient densities on an exoplanet, those reflection properties would be imprinted on that planet's reflected light spectrum," he said.   

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