From gabe at educatemotivate.com Fri Oct 12 11:11:12 2018 From: gabe at educatemotivate.com (Gabe Gabrielle) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2018 12:11:12 -0400 Subject: [Spacetalk] https://www.nasa.gov ; https://spaceflightnow.com Message-ID: Good morning all, For those of you who may not have been following the launches to the ISS, there was a launch yesterday from Russia in a Soyuz Rocket?since the shuttle stopped flying, the only way for astronauts to go to the ISS is on this Russian rocket, which has been used for over 40 years?it is much different than the shuttle as 3 astronauts are crammed into a tiny ship that takes them to the ISS...It has been the mainstay of the Russian space program, has been remarkably dependable and safe?but yesterday the launch failed 2 minutes into flight, the astronauts had to do an emergency return to earth, which thankfully, went very well?.a true testament to the Russian Space Program and all the many people involved?we are very, very fortunate?now, all Russian rockets are on hold as well as trips to the ISS. Currently there are 3 astronauts on the ISS who will remain until the cause and solution of the failure can be identified?if you have time you can go to these links to see some videos of the launch and return, I hope you can share it with the kids... Soyuz Rocket Launch Failure Forces Emergency Landing for US-Russian Space Station Crew ; Astronaut and Cosmonaut Survive 'Ballistic' Fall to Earth After Failed Soyuz Launch Soyuz Launch Replays and Updates: Crew Safe After Launch Abort and Emergency Landing > wishing you all a wonderful day?. we have to always remember to do our best, enjoy everything we do, live in the > present, be appreciative of the good in our lives, make each day special, smile & have fun! Gabe Go to this link for amazing pictures from this launch?the pictures are amazing but I promise you, seeing it in person is thousands of times more spectacular?. 'Definitely Not Aliens': These Photos of SpaceX's Night Rocket Launch and Landing Are Amazing! Soyuz Rocket Launch Failure Forces Emergency Landing for US-Russian Space Station Crew A Soyuz capsule carrying two astronauts lifted off at 4:39 a.m. EDT on Oct. 11, 2018, before a failure later in the launch sequence. Astronaut and Cosmonaut Survive 'Ballistic' Fall to Earth After Failed Soyuz Launch Russia's Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft carrying Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin and NASA astronaut Nick Hague, blasts off from the launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome on Oct. 11, 2018. Minutes later, it had to make an emergency landing. Credit: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images NASA Television to Air Launch of Global Ice-Measuring Satellite http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv Illustration of NASA?s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), a mission to measure the changing height of Earth's ice. Credits: NASA NASA?s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2 ), a mission to measure the changing height of Earth's ice, is scheduled to launch Monday, Sept. 15, with a 40-minute window opening at 8:46 a.m. EDT (5:46 a.m. PDT). The spacecraft will lift off from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on the final launch of a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. Coverage of prelaunch and launch activities begins Thursday, Sept. 13, on NASA Television and the agency?s website . ICESat-2 will carry a single instrument, the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), which will send 10,000 laser pulses a second to Earth?s surface and measure the height of ice sheets, glaciers, sea ice and vegetation by calculating the time it takes the pulses to return to the spacecraft. The precise and complete coverage afforded by ICESat-2 will enable researchers to track changes in land and sea ice with unparalleled detail, which will inform our understanding of what drives these changes. Mysterious Signals at the Center of Our Galaxy May Be an Optical Illusion Credit: Shutterstock The universe might be tricking us with its optical illusions. Last spring, researchers discovered high abundances of three elements in a group of red giants (dying stars in the last stage of their evolution) less than 3 light-years away from the black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The high levels of these elements ? scandium , vanadium and yttrium ? puzzled astronomers, who tried to explain the phenomenon with various theories. One theory suggested that the abnormally high levels of the elements resulted from the descent of old stars into the black hole, while another posited that the elements were debris from the collision of neutron stars, according to a statement . The latest of such explanations was recently proposed by an international group of astronomers and atomic physicists. They argue that those elements didn't actually exist at the high concentrations observed. Rather, the elements were probably an illusion all along, the researchers reported in a new study published yesterday (Oct. 10) in the Astrophysical Journal .Scientists originally detected these elements by recording "spectral lines" with a spectrometer. With this method, scientists look at the amount of light an object absorbs or emits. Because different elements will emit or absorb light in a slightly different way (called their spectral lines), scientists can use the information to figure out what an object is made of. Scandium will interact with light differently than, say, vanadium would, for example. [Our Milky Way Galaxy: A Traveler's Guide (Infographic) ] The scientists who conducted the new research found similar lines of scandium in red giants in our own solar neighborhood. However, the authors found that if the red giant were below a certain temperature, those spectral lines increased in strength. But this didn't mean that there was more scandium, vanadium or yttrium in the star, they said. As for why temperature would affect the measurements, the researchers suggested that electrons that make up the atoms of these elements behave differently at lower temperatures than at higher ones, according to the statement. So, the lower temperatures of red giants ? which are much, much lower than that of our sun ? could have given off this illusion of spectral lines, according to the statement. The researchers suggest that the high abundance of these elements is not a unique phenomenon in these red giant stars near the black hole, but that it's an illusion in the measurements. The formation of these strong lines currently "escapes accurate theoretical modeling," they wrote in the study. They concluded that those spectral lines shouldn't be used as a measurement of these elements, "until we better understand how these lines are formed," they wrote in the study. The researchers are doing just that, continuing to measure spectral lines from various stars in the Milky Way to better understand their makeup. Tour the International Space Station! I hope you will find a few minutes to share this with your students?.it gives a great perspective of the ISS... The International Space Station floats 220 miles above Earth - wondrous, distant, and unreachable for everyone except astronauts. The privilege of seeing the space station up close has previously only been extended to astronauts -- few of which are allowed on the orbital laboratory at one time. Now, you can join this select group and see the space station in a whole new way. This 3D rendering of the International Space Station allows you to tour one of mankind's greatest achievements from your couch. You can finally see what the world's only space-based laboratory is actually like. Tour the International Space Station! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA3OS85NDcvaTAyL3NveXV6LWxhdW5jaC1tczEwLmpwZz8xNTM5MjUwNjE5.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 25877 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA3OS85NDcvb3JpZ2luYWwvc295dXotbGF1bmNoLW1zMTAuanBnPzE1MzkyNTA2MTk=.jpeg Type: image/jpeg Size: 115558 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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