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

[Gabe Gabrielle]

Hi all,

 Greetings from a plane heading to Amsterdam, then to Oslo, Norway for 8 days and on to Denmark…I apologize for the long time between newsletters….I have been doing so much International travel with very full schedules, time slips away…

My last trip was to India, it was so amazing…I have been trying for about 5 years to get to India…I was contacted by a wonderful organization, The Society for Space Education, Research and Development (SSERD) <https://www.sserd.org/>, asking me if I would like tp visit India…SSERD is simply awesome….made up of 2 people who pretty much do everything to promote science to kids of all ages…they travel to many countries and throughout India giving kids a chance to learn science in a fun and educational way…without them, the trip to India and everything I did could never happen…

I think the last email I sent was from Australia or Brazil…the last 5 months has been so crazy, with 2-3 days between countries as well as house, shop, and car renovations at home…everything went so well, I am always so thankful for the wonderful support I receive…i have a 2 hour layover so hopefully, I can get the newsletter done and sent before I have to board… :-)  that didn’t happen, now in Norway to finish and get this off...

We have added many new members since the last email…so I will repeat some of the wonderful options for keeping up with ongoing activities…we have to remember to always do our best, enjoy everything we do, believe in ourselves, and let those we care about most know (I always say this, we all need to take it to heart)…hugs & smiles… :-) :-) love ya, Gabe


MARS 2020 Rover
Naming the Mars 2020 Rover In January 2020, people all over the world will have an opportunity to vote on the nine finalist names.  https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/participate/name-the-rover/#Public-Poll <https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/participate/name-the-rover/#Public-Poll>
This is super cool, watch the rover being assemble at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnuLxzocuhY <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnuLxzocuhY> 


This is a wonderful link with great graphics and links about NASA going to the moon
https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/ <https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/> 
for NASA TV: nasa.gov/nasatv <http://nasa.gov/nasatv> 
To see the ISS: www.spotthestation.nasa.gov


The 1st Sun Details from NASA's Parker Solar Probe Are Out. And They're Hot!

An artist's depiction of NASA's Parker Solar Probe gathering data about the sun.
(Image: © Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory)
Want to see the sun in a whole new way?

Now you can do just that by looking through a host of science data newly made available to the public. That information was gathered by NASA's Parker Solar Probe <https://www.space.com/40437-parker-solar-probe.html> during its first two close passes of the sun. The flybys brought the spacecraft closer to the sun than any previous vehicle had gone, offering scientists an incredible opportunity to learn more about our star. "Parker Solar Probe is crossing new frontiers of space exploration, giving us so much new information about the sun," Nour E. Raouafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a statement <https://blogs.nasa.gov/parkersolarprobe/2019/11/12/first-parker-solar-probe-science-data-released-to-public/>. "Releasing this data to the public will allow them not only to contribute to the success of the mission along with the scientific community, but also to raise the opportunity for new discoveries to the next level."

Black Holes Grow Hair, Then Go Bald Again


Thanks to their tendency to suck in everything around them — even light — black holes <https://www.space.com/15421-black-holes-facts-formation-discovery-sdcmp.html> don't divulge clues about their origins or histories. This frustrating fact led scientists in the 1960s to declare that black holes "have no hair." By this, researchers meant that black holes had very few distinguishing characteristics to separate one from another. Now, new calculations suggest that some black holes can grow hair, but they can't keep it for long. According to the new work, black holes that spin at nearly (but not quite) the maximum rotation possible show some unique properties. But these properties don't persist long before the black hole goes "bald" <https://www.livescience.com/no-hair-theorem-hidden-gravitational-wave-overtone.html> and becomes indistinguishable from others of its sort. "This is an interesting find, because it's a transient behavior," said study author Lior Burko, a physicist at Theiss Research in California.

Related: 9 Ideas About Black Holes That Will Blow Your Mind <https://www.livescience.com/65170-9-weird-facts-black-holes.html>
The metaphor for black hole hair grew out of math <https://www.livescience.com/38936-mathematics.html> done by physicists Jacob Bekenstein and John Wheeler in the 1960s and early 1970s. The researchers argued that under Einstein's general theory of relativity <https://www.livescience.com/32216-what-is-relativity.html>, black holes can be described by just three observable parameters: their mass, their angular momentum and their electric charge. Everything else, all other information, is trapped within the black hole's gravitational pull and is thus impossible to observe. Given two black holes that matched on all three values, it would be functionally impossible to differentiate one from the other.


NASA Highlights Science on 19th SpaceX Resupply Mission to Space Station



SpaceX is targeting 12:51 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 4, for the launch of its Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft also will carry crew supplies and hardware to the orbiting laboratory to support the Expedition 61 crew for the 19th mission under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract. The space station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and enables research not possible on Earth. The orbiting laboratory has been occupied continuously since November 2000. In that time, more than 230 people, and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft, have visited the orbiting laboratory. The space station remains the springboard to NASA's next great leap in exploration, including future missions to the Moon and eventually to Mars. For launch countdown coverage, NASA's launch blog, and more information about the mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/spacex <https://www.nasa.gov/spacex>

Astronauts Complete Intricate Tasks During Second Cosmic Repair Spacewalk <https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2019/11/22/astronauts-complete-intricate-tasks-during-second-cosmic-repair-spacewalk/>

Expedition 61 <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition61/index.html> Commander Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA Flight Engineer Andrew Morgan <http://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/andrew-r-morgan/biography> concluded their spacewalk at 1:35 p.m. EST. During the six-hour and 33-minute spacewalk, the two astronauts successfully cut a total of eight stainless steel tubes, including one that vented the remaining carbon dioxide from the old cooling pump. The crew members also prepared a power cable and installed a mechanical attachment device in advance of installing the new cooling system. Today’s work clears the way for Parmitano and Morgan’s next spacewalk in the repair series Monday Dec. 2. The plan is to bypass the old thermal control system by attaching a new one off the side of AMS during the third spacewalk, and then conduct leak checks on a fourth spacewalk. 

Keep up with the crew aboard the International Space Station <http://www.nasa.gov/station> on the agency’s blog, follow @ISS <https://www.instagram.com/iss/> on Instagram, and @space_station <https://twitter.com/Space_Station> on Twitter.


Two of a Space Kind: Apollo 12 and Mars 2020

Fifty years ago today, during their second moonwalk, Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr. and Alan Bean became the first humans to reach out and touch a spacecraft that had previously landed on another celestial body. NASA's 1969 Apollo 12 Moon mission and the upcoming Mars 2020 mission to the Red Planet may be separated by half a century and targets that are 100 million miles apart, but they share several mission goals unique in the annals of space exploration. "We on the Mars 2020 project feel a special kinship with the crew of Apollo 12," said John McNamee, Mars 2020 project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "They achieved the first precision landing, deployed the most advanced suite of science instruments of the time, and were the first to interact with another spacecraft that put down on another world. That's all part of the Mars 2020 playbook as well.”  NASA needed Apollo 12 to prove a precision landing was possible because future Apollo missions would target locations in the lunar highlands, where mountains, massive craters, boulder fields and rilles could ruin their day if the lunar modules strayed from their prescribed landing path. And while the previous mission, Apollo 11, was a monumental success, it overshot its intended landing site in the Sea of Tranquility by about 4 miles (6 kilometers).

 <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/apollo12b-16.jpg>
Apollo 12 lunar module pilot Alan Bean holds a container of lunar soil, with the reflection of mission commander Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr. visible on his visor. The image was taken on the Moon's Ocean of Storms on Nov. 20, 1969. Apollo 12's lunar activities included the deployment of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP), finding NASA's Surveyor 3 spacecraft (which landed on the Moon on April 19, 1967), and collecting 75 pounds (34 kilograms) of rock samples.
Credits: NASA
To demonstrate a precision landing, Apollo 12 mission planners could have chosen just about anywhere on the nearside of the Moon by targeting any of literally millions of known geologic features. In the end, they chose for Pete and Al a relatively nondescript crater in the Ocean of Storms because JPL had plunked down a spacecraft there two-and-a-half years earlier. "When Pete and Al put the lunar module Intrepid down within about 520 feet [160 meters] of Surveyor 3, it gave NASA the confidence to later send Apollo 15 to Hadley Rille, Apollo 16 to go to the Descartes Highlands and Apollo 17 to land at Taurus Littrow," said McNamee. "We also have to be precise with our landing on Mars — not only to pave the way for future precision landings on the Red Planet for both robotic and human-crewed missions, but also because Mars 2020's scientifically appealing landing site at Jezero Crater <https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7539> has all sorts of cliffsides, sand dunes, boulders and craters that can adversely affect us during landing.” Mars 2020 will be history's first planetary mission to include terrain relative navigation <https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7442>, a computerized autopilot that utilizes optical imagers and computers to help Mars 2020 avoid landing hazards and make the most accurate landing on a planetary body in history.
Sweet Suite Science
There are other similarities. During their first moonwalk, Conrad and Bean deployed the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments package (ALSEP). Powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, the five science instruments (seismometer, atmospheric sensor, solar wind spectrometer, lunar dust collector and magnetic field sensor) were the most advanced ever to be carried to another celestial body, and they sent back groundbreaking data on the lunar environment from November 1969 to September 1977. When Mars 2020 alights at Jezero Crater, it also will be equipped with the most advanced science instruments <https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/> ever to travel to another world. "The science instruments we carry benefit not only from advances in technology, but the hard lessons learned by those missions of exploration, including Apollo, that preceded us," said Ken Farley, project scientist for Mars 2020 from Caltech in Pasadena. "Our seven state-of-the-art science tools will help us acquire the most information possible about Martian geology, atmosphere, environmental conditions, and potential biosignatures, giving us insight into the Red Planet like never before."
 <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/apollo12c-16.jpg>
Apollo 12 astronauts (left to right) lunar module pilot Alan Bean, command module pilot Richard Gordon and commander Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr. relax during a flight rehearsal in the Apollo mission simulator.
Credits: NASA

Return to Sender 
During their second moonwalk, Conrad and Bean reached the Surveyor 3 lander <https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/surveyor-3/in-depth/> — one of the robotic missions that explored the Moon in advance of astronauts. They not only collected images and samples of the lunar surface surrounding the spacecraft, but cut, sawed and hacked parts off the three-legged spacecraft, including Surveyor's TV camera and its surface-soil sampling scoop. "NASA wanted to see what happened to materials that were exposed to the lunar environment for an extended period," said McNamee. "To this day, the samples of Surveyor 3, which endured 31 months at the Ocean of Storms, are our best and only demonstrations of the natural processes that can affect spacecraft components left on the Moon.” One of Mars 2020's major mission goals is to seek signs of past microscopic life, collecting the most compelling rock core and Martian dust samples. Subsequent missions, currently under consideration by NASA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis. To help engineers design spacesuits to shield astronauts from the elements, NASA is sending five samples of spacesuit material along with one of Mars 2020's science instruments, called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals (SHERLOC) <https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/sherloc/>. A piece of an astronaut's helmet and four kinds of fabric are mounted on the calibration target <https://www.nasa.gov/feature/johnson-built-device-to-help-mars-2020-rover-search-for-signs-of-life> for this instrument. Scientists will use SHERLOC, as well as a camera that photographs visible light, to study how the materials degrade in ultraviolet radiation. It will mark the first time spacesuit material has been sent to Mars for testing and will provide a vital comparison for ongoing testing at NASA's Johnson Space Center.
Robots First, Astronauts Later
Just as NASA's Surveyor missions helped blaze a trail for Neil and Buzz on Apollo 11, Pete and Al on 12, as well as Al and Ed (Apollo 14 <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo14.html>), Dave and Jim (Apollo 15 <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo15.html>), John and Charlie (Apollo 16 <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo16.html>), and Gene and Harrison (Apollo 17 <https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo17.html>), Mars 2020 is helping set the tone for future crewed missions to Mars <https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7422>. Mars 2020's landing system includes a suite of sensors that will document the descent to the surface in never-seen-before detail so that future robotic and crewed missions factor those details into their landings. When on the surface, the rover's MOXIE <https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/moxie/> instrument is designed to demonstrate that converting Martian carbon dioxide to pure oxygen is possible, and RIMFAX <https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/instruments/rimfax/> could teach us how to use ground-penetrating radar so that future missions can use it to find sources of fresh water. "Isaac Newton once wrote, 'If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants,'" said McNamee. "When Mars 2020 flies, it will allow us to see farther into the geologic history of the Red Planet than ever before — and that is happening because we too are standing on the shoulders of giants — giants like the crew of Apollo 12.” The launch period for Mars 2020 opens on July 17, 2020. It will land at Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. For more information about the mission, visit: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ <https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/>
 

Hubble Eyes an Emitting Galaxy


Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Rosario et al. Text credit: ESA (European Space Agency)
For this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope turned its powerful eye toward an emission-line galaxy called NGC 3749. 

When astronomers explore the contents and constituent parts of a galaxy somewhere in the universe, they use various techniques and tools. One of these is to spread out the incoming light from that galaxy into a spectrum and explore its properties. This is done in much the same way as a glass prism spreads white light into its constituent wavelengths to create a rainbow. By hunting for specific signs of emission from various elements within a galaxy’s spectrum of light —so-called emission lines — or, conversely, the signs of absorption from other elements — so-called absorption lines — astronomers can start to deduce what might be happening within. If a galaxy’s spectrum shows many absorption lines and few emission lines, this suggests that its star-forming material has been depleted and that its stars are mainly old, while the opposite suggests it might be bursting with star formation and energetic stellar newborns. This technique, known as spectroscopy, can tell us about a galaxy’s type and composition, the density and temperature of any emitting gas, the star formation rate, or how massive the galaxy’s central black hole might be.  While not all galaxies display strong emission lines, NGC 3749 does. It lies over 135 million light-years away and is moderately luminous. The galaxy has been used as a “control” in studies of especially active and luminous galaxies — those with centers known as active galactic nuclei, which emit copious amounts of intense radiation. In comparison to these active cousins, NGC 3749 is classified as inactive, and has no known signs of nuclear activity.