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

Wed Apr 27 00:15:36 CDT 2022

Good evening all,

 I hope all is well…I have fully recovered from all the challenges of the Brazil :-) back to the gym and swimming, continuing to make repairs to the house and cars…getting warmer every day here, I love the summer…hot weather, sunshine, and beaches…as well as the many amazing missions with both commercial and NASA’s Space program. 

It Is 11:40pm  (23:40) in 5 hours SpaceX will launch crew 4 to the ISS…I am waiting until 1am to meet friends from Brazil so I can take them to a great viewing site to see this launch…the night launches are spectacular…I love sharing them with friends from around the world…

We have to stay positive and always be thankful… remembering to 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… STAY SAFE, TAKE CARE, Love ya, Gabe 

Coverage Updated for NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 Briefing, Events, Broadcast
 <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/52025339824_283853353a_k.jpg>
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft onboard is seen on the launch pad at Launch Complex 39A as preparations continue for the Crew-4 mission, Saturday, April 23, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Credits: NASA/Joel Kowsky
NASA will provide coverage of the upcoming prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission, which will send astronauts to the International Space Station. The launch is targeted for 3:52 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 27, from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Dragon spacecraft, dubbed Freedom by the mission’s crew, is scheduled to dock to the space station at 8:15 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 27. Prelaunch activities, launch, and docking will air live on NASA Television, the NASA app <https://www.nasa.gov/connect/apps.html>, and the agency’s website <https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive>. The Crew-4 flight will carry Mission Commander Kjell Lindgren <https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/kjell-n-lindgren/biography>, Pilot Bob Hines <https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/bob-hines>, and Mission Specialist Jessica Watkins <https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/jessica-watkins>, all NASA astronauts, and Mission Specialist Samantha Cristoforetti <https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Commanding_role_for_ESA_astronaut_Samantha_Cristoforetti> of ESA (European Space Agency). The mission is the fourth crew rotation to fly on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket, and the fifth SpaceX flight with NASA astronauts – including the Demo-2 test flight <https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-astronauts-launch-from-america-in-historic-test-flight-of-spacex-crew-dragon> in 2020 to the space station  –  as part of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program <https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/crew/index.html>. 

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4 mission coverage is as follows (all times Eastern):

Wednesday, April 27
12 a.m. – NASA Television mission commentary coverage begins
3:52 a.m. – Launch
5:30 a.m. (approximately) - Postlaunch news conference
Bill Nelson, NASA administrator
Kathryn Lueders, associate administrator, Space Operations Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Steve Stich, manager, Commercial Crew Program, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston
Joel Montalbano, manager, International Space Station Program, NASA Johnson
Jessica Jensen, vice president, customer operations and integration, SpaceX
Josef Aschbacher, director general, ESA
8:15 p.m. (approximately) – Docking
9:45 p.m. (approximately) – Hatch Opening
Thursday, April 28
2:40 a.m. (approximately) – Welcome Ceremony from the International Space Station
NASA TV Launch Coverage NASA TV live coverage will begin at 12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 27. For NASA TV downlink information, schedules, and links to streaming   video, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/live <https://www.nasa.gov/live>
Meet the astronauts of SpaceX's Crew-4 mission for NASA
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(Orlando Sentinel/Getty Images)

Three NASA astronauts and one from the European Space Agency (ESA) will soon head to the International Space Station (ISS) on the Crew-4 mission, which SpaceX is conducting for NASA.

Artemis I
Artemis I
Artemis I
ARTEMIS 1 ON THE PAD…MAJESTIC...

Webb Telescope’s Coldest Instrument Reaches Operating Temperature
 <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/webb-illustration-1041.jpg>
In this illustration, the multilayered sunshield on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope stretches out beneath the observatory’s honeycomb mirror. The sunshield is the first step in cooling down Webb’s infrared instruments, but the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) requires additional help to reach its operating temperature.
Credits: NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope <https://jwst.nasa.gov/index.html> will see the first galaxies to form after the big bang, but to do that its instruments first need to get cold – really cold. On April 7, Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) – a joint development by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) – reached its final operating temperature below 7 kelvins (minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 266 degrees Celsius). Along with Webb’s three other instruments, MIRI initially cooled off in the shade of Webb’s tennis-court-size sunshield, dropping to about 90 kelvins (minus 298 F, or minus 183 C). But dropping to less than 7 kelvins required an electrically powered cryocooler <https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/innovations/cryocooler.html>. Last week, the team passed a particularly challenging milestone called the “pinch point <https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/04/06/webbs-mid-infrared-instrument-cooldown-continues/>,” when the instrument goes from 15 kelvins (minus 433 F, or minus 258 C) to 6.4 kelvins (minus 448 F, or minus 267 C). “The MIRI cooler team has poured a lot of hard work into developing the procedure for the pinch point,” said Analyn Schneider, project manager for MIRI at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The team was both excited and nervous going into the critical activity. In the end it was a textbook execution of the procedure, and the cooler performance is even better than expected.” The low temperature is necessary because all four of Webb’s instruments <https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/observatory/instruments/index.html> detect infrared light <https://webbtelescope.org/webb-science/the-observatory/infrared-astronomy> – wavelengths slightly longer than those that human eyes can see. Distant galaxies, stars hidden in cocoons of dust, and planets outside our solar system all emit infrared light. But so do other warm objects, including Webb’s own electronics and optics hardware. Cooling down the four instruments’ detectors and the surrounding hardware suppresses those infrared emissions. MIRI detects longer infrared wavelengths than the other three instruments, which means it needs to be even colder <https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-webb-telescope-will-have-the-coolest-camera-in-space>.  Another reason Webb’s detectors need to be cold is to suppress something called dark current, or electric current created by the vibration of atoms in the detectors themselves. Dark current mimics a true signal in the detectors, giving the false impression that they have been hit by light from an external source. Those false signals can drown out the real signals astronomers want to find. Since temperature is a measurement of how fast the atoms in the detector are vibrating, reducing the temperature means less vibration, which in turn means less dark current. MIRI’s ability to detect longer infrared wavelengths also makes it more sensitive to dark current, so it needs to be colder than the other instruments to fully remove that effect. For every degree the instrument temperature goes up, the dark current goes up by a factor of about 10. Once MIRI reached a frigid 6.4 kelvins, scientists began a series of checks to make sure the detectors were operating as expected. Like a doctor searching for any sign of illness, the MIRI team looks at data describing the instrument’s health, then gives the instrument a series of commands to see if it can execute tasks correctly. This milestone is the culmination of work by scientists and engineers at multiple institutions in addition to JPL, including Northrop Grumman, which built the cryocooler, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which oversaw the integration of MIRI and the cooler to the rest of the observatory. “We spent years practicing for that moment, running through the commands and the checks that we did on MIRI,” said Mike Ressler, project scientist for MIRI at JPL. “It was kind of like a movie script: Everything we were supposed to do was written down and rehearsed. When the test data rolled in, I was ecstatic to see it looked exactly as expected and that we have a healthy instrument.” There are still more challenges that the team will have to face before MIRI can start its scientific mission. Now that the instrument is at operating temperature, team members will take test images of stars and other known objects that can be used for calibration and to check the instrument’s operations and functionality. The team will conduct these preparations alongside calibration of the other three instruments, delivering Webb’s first science images this summer. “I am immensely proud to be part of this group of highly motivated, enthusiastic scientists and engineers drawn from across Europe and the U.S.,” said Alistair Glasse, MIRI instrument scientist at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (ATC) in Edinburgh, Scotland. “This period is our ‘trial by fire’ but it is already clear to me that the personal bonds and mutual respect that we have built up over the past years is what will get us through the next few months to deliver a fantastic instrument to the worldwide astronomy community.”  

More About the Mission
The James Webb Space Telescope is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA <https://www.esa.int/> and the Canadian Space Agency <https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/Default.asp>. MIRI was developed through a 50-50 partnership between NASA and ESA. JPL leads the U.S. efforts for MIRI, and a multinational consortium of European astronomical institutes contributes for ESA. George Rieke with the University of Arizona is the MIRI science team lead. Gillian Wright is the MIRI European principal investigator. Laszlo Tamas with UK ATC manages the European Consortium. The MIRI cryocooler development was led and managed by JPL, in collaboration with Northrop Grumman in Redondo Beach, California, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. For more information about the Webb mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/webb <https://www.nasa.gov/webb>

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Hightails It to Martian Delta
 <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/pia25171-1-1041.jpg>
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover looks back at its wheel tracks on March 17, 2022, the 381st Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The rover’s self-driving capabilities will be put to the test this month as it begins a record-breaking series of sprints to its next sampling location.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover is trying to cover more distance in a single month than any rover before it – and it’s doing so using artificial intelligence. On the path ahead are sandpits, craters, and fields of sharp rocks that the rover will have to navigate around on its own. At the end of the 3-mile (5-kilometer) journey, which began March 14, 2022, Perseverance will reach an ancient river delta within Jezero Crater, where a lake existed billions of years ago. This delta is one of the best locations on Mars for the rover to look for signs of past microscopic life. Using a drill <https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/arm/> on the end of its robotic arm and a complex sample collection system <https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8682/the-extraordinary-sample-gathering-system-of-nasas-perseverance-mars-rover/> in its belly, Perseverance is collecting rock cores for return to Earth – the first part of the Mars Sample Return campaign <https://mars.nasa.gov/msr/>. “The delta is so important that we’ve actually decided to minimize science activities and focus on driving to get there more quickly,” said Ken Farley of Caltech, Perseverance’s project scientist. “We’ll be taking lots of images of the delta during that drive. The closer we get, the more impressive those images will be.”  For more about Perseverance: mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/ <http://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/> and nasa.gov/perseverance <http://nasa.gov/perseverance>

Finding the Origins of Supermassive Black Holes

Finding the Origins of Supermassive Black Holes

 <http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/oXhDCKojllDsrDaZCifPauBWcNmTbB?format=multipart>Earliest documented aurora found in ancient Chinese text
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 <http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/oXhDCKojllDsrDaZCifPauBWcNmTbB>
(Elena Pueyo via Getty Images)

The earliest documented case of an aurora, the fleeting but brilliantly colored lights that sometimes illuminate the night sky, dates to the early 10th century B.C., a new study on an ancient Chinese text reveals. 

The text describes "five-colored light" witnessed in the northern part of the night sky toward the end of the reign of King Zhāo, the fourth king of the Chinese Zhou dynasty. The exact dates of Zhāo's reign aren't known, but it's likely that this "five-colored light" event happened in either 977 B.C. or 957 B.C., according to the study.

NASA's Pegasus barge delivered the #AtlasV <https://twitter.com/hashtag/AtlasV?src=hashtag_click> first stage to Cape Canaveral for launch of 
@BoeingSpace <https://twitter.com/BoeingSpace>'s #Starliner <https://twitter.com/hashtag/Starliner?src=hashtag_click> on #OFT2 <https://twitter.com/hashtag/OFT2?src=hashtag_click>. Unique circumstances required ingenuity to develop a different transportation plan from the ULA factory.

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