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

[Gabe Gabrielle]

hi all,

 Greetings from Bodo, Norway…it has been a very interesting trip…I arrived in Umea, Sweden after an enjoyable trip although some challenges along the way…I found out it is a very long walk from the domestic terminal to the international in Chicago…I had about 1 1/2 hours between flights which I thought was plenty of time…as it turns out, it was barely enough as by the time I got to the international terminal, they were already boarding…Sweden was fantastic…waiting 5 years for an opportunity, it could not have been better…the day before I left to go to Norway, the airline went on strike which created major issues throughout Scandinavia, Europe, and the US…it caused me to have to get a train resulting in a 27 hour excursion which was ok but then when I had to transfer to another train, I was given bad info, got on the wrong train and my 27 hour excursion turned in 58 hours…so many friends helped me along the way…it actually was pretty good although I did arrive in Norway a day late, so we had to adjust the schedule…everything has been wonderful here but the strike is still on and that is the airline I am flying back to the states… to complicate it more, the airline refuses to give refunds until the day before the scheduled departure meaning you risk losing the air fare if you book with another airline…some of life’s interesting challenges…

It has been an interesting time in the space program with ups and downs, as is with everything in life…I think the biggest challenge is withe the Space X Dragon Capsule which was supposed to take astronauts to the ISS in June…it would be the first time US astronauts launched from the US in 7 years…during a test last week, there was an explosion which is still under investigation…it seems it will definitely set back this event to send astronauts from US soil…NASA was directed to accelerate the program to have astronauts on the moon in 2024 to establish a base which would be used to send astronauts to Mars…NASA also was successful in replacing a failed power distribution unit on the Space Station…you can go to the subject links to get all the latest updates on the space program…
 we have to remember to always do our best, enjoy everything we do, believe in ourselves, and let those we care about most know…hugs & smiles…:-) :-)  love ya, Gabe

to see the latest live feed on launches or space related activities go to: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv <http://www.nasa.gov/ntv>
 
to see the ISS go over your house:  www.spotthestation.nasa.gov <http://www.spotthestation.nasa.gov/>


Why Does the Earth Rotate?

Credit: Shutterstock

Every day, the Earth spins once around its axis, making sunrises and sunsets a daily feature of life on the planet. It has done so since it formed 4.6 billion years ago, and it will continue to do so until the world ends — likely when the sun swells into a red giant star and swallows the planet. But why does it rotate at all?

The Earth formed out of a disk of gas and dust that swirled around the newborn sun. In this spinning disk, bits of dust and rock stuck together to form the Earth, according to Space.com, a sister site of Live Science <https://www.space.com/19175-how-was-earth-formed.html>. As it grew, space rocks continued colliding with the nascent planet, exerting forces that sent it spinning, explained Smadar Naoz, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Because all the debris in the early solar system was rotating around the sun in roughly the same direction, the collisions also spun the Earth — and most everything else in the solar system — in that direction. [Photo Timeline How the Earth Formed <https://www.livescience.com/46593-how-earth-formed-photo-timeline.html>]


Black Hole Spits Out High-Energy Jets at Near Light-Speed

A NASA image shows the M87 galaxy, in the middle of which is the black hole that was imaged for the first time earlier this month (bottom-most box). The top zoomed-in box shows the shockwaves caused by jets of plasma spewed out from the black hole.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IPAC/Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
A stunning new image reveals two jets of high-energy material being spewed at nearly light-speed from the first-ever photographed black hole <https://www.livescience.com/65196-black-hole-event-horizon-image.html>. The supermassive black hole, M87 — dubbed Pōwehi — lives 55 million light-years away from Earth in a galaxy called Messier 87. The new image <https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/figures/PIA23122_fig2.jpg> of M87 was released by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Supermassive black holes gobble up everything around them. But some particles don't fall into the black hole and instead — for reasons still unknown to scientists — are propelled out of the hole at a high speed, in opposite directions. [All Your Questions About the New Black Hole Image Answered <https://www.livescience.com/65211-questions-answered-first-black-hole-image.html>] When the particles in these high-speed jets interact with gas in the vast, empty space around a black hole, the particles slow down and create shockwaves.Those shockwaves give off radiation that our devices can detect. This photo of M87 shows those shockwaves created by the jets flying out of Pōwehi's grasp — one aiming almost straight toward our planet and the other flying away from Earth, according to a statement <https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA23122> from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The high-speed jet that's racing toward Earth is visible on the right of the zoomed-in photo. The straight part of the line reveals the high-speed jet <https://www.livescience.com/65353-black-hole-eats-star-belches-plasma.html> itself; where the line begins to curve — because the particles are slowing down — is where the shockwave begins. The brightness of the jet is amplified because it's traveling at high speed in our direction, according to the statement. But the jet traveling in the opposite direction (on the left-hand side of the image) is moving so quickly away from us that it's invisible. The shockwave it creates, however, is visible and resembles the letter "C.” NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope measured the infrared light emanating from this galaxy. That’s in contrast to the radio waves <https://www.livescience.com/65199-why-black-hole-orange.html> that were stitched together to produce the first-ever photo of a black hole, which was released earlier this month. These jets are not a new discovery, however. Astronomer Heber Curtis first discovered "a curious straight ray" emanating from the center of M87 more than a century ago, according to the statement. Since then, astronomers have been working to understand how and why they form.

9 Ideas About Black Holes That Will Blow Your Mind <https://www.livescience.com/65170-9-weird-facts-black-holes.html>
11 Fascinating Facts About Our Milky Way Galaxy <https://www.livescience.com/63847-facts-about-the-milky-way.html>
15 Amazing Images of Stars <https://www.livescience.com/64955-stellar-star-images.html>
What Is the Biggest Thing in the Universe?
Scientists have created the first map of a colossal supercluster of galaxies known as Laniakea, the home of Earth's Milky Way galaxy and many other. This computer simulation, a still from a Nature journal video, depicts the giant supercluster, with the Milky Way's location shown as a red dot.(Image: © Nature Video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rENyyRwxpHo>)

In space, we're used to dealing with large distances and objects. In the cosmic scheme of things, Earth is small. Even in our solar system, we are easily dwarfed by the planet Jupiter (more than 1,000 Earths would fit in the planet, according to NASA <http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/what-is-jupiter-k4.html>) and our sun (more than a million Earths would fit in there, according to Cornell University <http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/36-our-solar-system/the-earth/general-questions/2-how-many-earths-fit-into-the-sun>). Even our sun looks puny when it is compared to the biggest stars we know of. The sun is a G-type star <https://www.space.com/17001-how-big-is-the-sun-size-of-the-sun.html>, a yellow dwarf — pretty average sized on the cosmic scale. But some "hypergiant" stars are much, much larger. Perhaps the biggest star known is UY Scuti, which could fit more than 1,700 of our suns <http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-big-is-the-biggest-star-we-have-ever-found-1684653072>. (Note that the margin of error is roughly 192 sun-widths, so at the lower end of the margin UY Scuti would move several ranks down the list of the biggest stars.) UY Scuti is only about 30 times more massive than our sun, however, so that shows that mass and size don't necessarily correlate in space. Progressing up the list of big cosmic objects, other things to consider are black holes and, in particular, supermassive black holes that typically reside in the center of a galaxy. (Our Milky Way hosts one that is about 4 million times the mass of the sun.) One of the biggest supermassive black holes ever found resides in NGC 4889 <https://www.space.com/32267-sleeping-supermassive-black-hole-photo.html>, which has a black hole roughly 21 billion times the mass of the sun. There are things out there bigger than even supermassive black holes. Galaxies are collections of star systems and everything that is inside those systems (such as planet, stars, asteroids, comets, dwarf planets, gas, dust and more). Our own Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across, NASA says <http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/cosmic/milkyway_info.html>; a light-year is the distance light travels in a year. It's difficult to characterize what the largest galaxies are because they don't really have precise boundaries, but the largest galaxies we know of are millions of light-years across. The biggest known galaxy is IC 1101, which is 50 times the Milky Way's size and about 2,000 times more massive. It is about 5.5 million light-years across. Nebulas, or vast clouds of gas, also have impressively large sizes. NGC 604 in the Triangulum Galaxy is commonly cited as one of the largest; it's roughly 1,520 light-years across. Now at last we are starting to approach the biggest structures in the universe. Galaxies are often bound to each other gravitationally in groups that are called galaxy clusters. (The Milky Way, for example, is part of the small Local Group that comprises about two dozen galaxies, including the Andromeda Galaxy.) At first glance, astronomers thought that these structures were the biggest thing out there. In the 1980s, however, astronomers realized that groups of galaxy clusters are also connected by gravity and connected in a supercluster.

What is the biggest supercluster?The biggest supercluster known in the universe is the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. It was first reported in 2013 <https://www.space.com/23754-universe-largest-structure-cosmic-conundrum.html> and has been studied several times. It's so big that light takes about 10 billion years to move across the structure. For perspective, the universe is only 13.8 billion years old.

It's Time to Get Serious About Asteroid Threats, NASA Chief Says <http://click.emails.purch.com/?qs=3945d24cbb04833d818694bbf5b1229087a3ea295d0df6507db2f0841e2e976a7194158b53bdf8a0e729ae110bc161a5f94d99e4f368a8dacae1b70239fe4f1f>




NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine had been a congressional representative for just one month when a large asteroid fell through the atmosphere and exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk <https://www.space.com/33623-chelyabinsk-meteor-wake-up-call-for-earth.html>, flashing brighter in the sky than the sun — and that experience has clearly stuck with him. Bridenstine spoke about that impact and the importance of using the science of planetary defense to protect against future similar impacts during introductory comments today (April 29) at the International Academy of Astronautics' 2019 Planetary Defense Conference <https://www.space.com/asteroid-impact-simulation-nasa-planetary-defense-2019.html> held in College Park, Maryland. "We have to make sure that people understand that this is not about Hollywood, it's not about movies," Bridenstine said, referencing the so-called "giggle factor <https://www.space.com/how-to-nuke-an-asteroid.html>" that he believes causes the public to write off the severity of the risk from an asteroid impact. "This is about ultimately protecting the only planet we know right now to host life, and that is the planet Earth."

Life May Have Evolved Before Earth Finished Forming

Artist's concept showing a young sun-like star surrounded by a planet-forming disk of gas and dust.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Life may have arisen in our solar system before Earth even finished forming. Planetesimals, the rocky building blocks of planets, likely had all the ingredients necessary for life as we know it way back at the dawn of the solar system <https://www.space.com/35526-solar-system-formation.html>, said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University (ASU). And clement conditions may have persisted inside some planetesimals for tens of millions of years — perhaps long enough for life to emerge, said Elkins-Tanton, the director of ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration and the principal investigator of NASA's upcoming mission to the odd metallic asteroid Psyche <https://www.space.com/40272-metal-asteroid-psyche-nasa-mission-video.html>