Apollo 12 astronauts (L-R) Charles 'Pete' Conrad Jr., Richard Francis Gordon Jr., and Alan LaVern Bean with their identical 1969 Corvette Stingray coupes. The coupes features a 390-hp, 427 V-8 and black-accented Riverside Gold color scheme designed by Bean. Photo by Ralph Morse / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images.
Corvettes were synonymous with the first US astronauts. Why? The story goes that a Florida car dealer named Jim Rathmann had a great marketing idea and negotiated a special lease arrangement with Chevrolet to provide the Mercury 7 astronauts with sports cars worthy of the performance required by a test pilot. The cars were fast and handled like a dream. Plus, the Corvettes back in the early 1960’s had what many would consider “space age” interiors. Six of the Mercury astronauts would take Rathmann up on his Corvette offer, but stalwart family man John Glenn instead decided he wanted a new station wagon. While there are stories of the Mercury astronauts racing each other in their Corvettes, reportedly Glenn’s wagon proved more useful. It was just the thing for those occasions when the seven astronauts needed to travel together.
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These sports cars would continue to be used by Apollo astronauts, and the association between the car and the space program continues even today. For example, the 1995 movie “Apollo 13” featured two era-authentic Corvettes, one of them used in a scene featuring Tom Hanks as astronaut Jim Lovell. The 2009 movie “Star Trek XI” opens in the year 2245, with a 12-year old James T. Kirk driving a 280-year old 1965 Corvette Sting Ray.
On May 7, 2011, approximately 30 of America’s surviving early astronauts gathered in Cocoa Beach, Florida to participate in a parade commemorating the 50th anniversary of Alan Shepard’s historic first flight for a US astronaut. Enjoy the video above where some of the astronauts are interviewed, briefly, and includes some vintage photographs of hot rod astronauts with their fast cars.
The SOHO spacecraft coronagraph captured a sun-diving comet on May 10th and 11th that met its demise as it plunged into the Sun just as Old Sol released a huge flare. The two events were coincidental and not related, but spectacular to see.
Flood water from the Mississippi river near New Madrid, Missouri, as seen by Paolo Nespoli on board the International Space Station. Credit:ESA/NASA
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Big Muddy, as the Mississippi River is known, looks especially big and muddy these days with record flooding occurring along the largest river in the US. The Mississippi has risen to levels not seen in since the 1920’s and 30’s, fed by heavy spring rains and the spring thaw from heavy snows in the northern US this winter. Here are some new images taken by International Space Station astronaut Paolo Nespoli, which show surprising detail of how the river has spread across farmland and through cities and towns. The image above shows the area around New Madrid, Missouri, along the border of Kentucky.
Flooding near Ridgely, Tennessee. Credit: ESA/NASA
In this image, levees are visible which are containing the flood near Ridgely, Tennessee.
Here, flooded areas from the Mississippi is about 5 miles wide. Credit: ESA/NASAFlooding near Caruthersville, Missouri. Farmland, roads and bridges are under water. Credit: ESA/NASA
Last week, the US Army Corps of Engineers opened floodways in Missouri to keep pressure off levees protecting the town of Cairo, Illinois, flooding thousands of acres of farmland. This week, the Corp is preparing to flood up to three million acres in southern Louisiana in hopes of protecting large cities along the Mississippi River such as Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. More than 25,000 people are preparing to leave the region before the spillways would be opened.
The STS-134 crew arrived at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on May 12, 2011. The crew is preparing for the liftoff of space shuttle Endeavour at 8:56 a.m. EDT on Monday, May 16. From left are, Commander Mark Kelly, Mission Specialists Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel, European Space Agency astronaut Roberto Vittori, Mission Specialist Mike Fincke and Pilot Greg H. Johnson.
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER – The all veteran crew for the last launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour flew back to Florida today for their second try to lift off into space on the STS-134 mission to the International Space Station. This follows the launch scrub called by Shuttle launch managers on April 29 caused by a malfunction of critical heaters inside one of the orbiters three auxiliary power units (APU’s) which power the ships hydraulics.
The weather forecast for Monday morning launch is currently “70% GO” and liftoff is targeted for 8:56 a.m. EDT on Monday, May 16. Stormy weather and rain is expected to sweep across central Florida over the weekend and clear out in time for the launch. But Sunday’s rain could potentially delay the retraction of the Rotating Service Structure – which protects the shuttle from bad weather – for a short time.
Shuttle Commander Mark Kelly and his five crewmates arrived at the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center early this morning (May 12) at 9 a.m. aboard the Shuttle Training Aircraft (STA) after flying in from the astronauts training base at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Mark Kelly, Space Shuttle Commander
for the STS-134 mission speaks ro reports after crew arrives at KSC. Credit: Ken Kremer
“It’s great to be back,” said Kelly to the large crowd of reporters, including me, gathered to greet the crew. “We really appreciate all the hard work by the team that’s worked over the last couple of weeks to get shuttle Endeavour ready. We are really excited to be here, excited to launch, hopefully on Monday if the weather holds.
Kelly is joined on the crew by pilot Greg H. “Box” Johnson and Mission Specialists Mike Fincke, Andrew Feustel, Greg Chamitoff and Roberto Vittori. Vittori is a European Space Agency astronaut and spoke first in his native Italian language and then in English.
“Box” celebrated his 49th birthday today. “I can’t think of a more perfect way to spend my birthday then to come here with my crew a get ready to fly Endeavour next week.”
He also thanked the teams for resolving the APU issues. ”Hats off to Dana Hutcherson and her team for preparing Endeavour for this flow and finally a special thanks to the APU team for all the hard work you’ve done getting us to this point. Kudos for solving it and getting us back on track.”
Kelly and Johnson will fly practice landings in the STA in the remaining days prior to Monday’s launch. The STA is a modified Gulfstream II jet which handles like a space shuttle.
Mission Specialist Mike Finke whipped out a camera and photographed the gaggle of media as we were photographing them – a rare and thrilling experience for all of us. Finke tweeted the photo of us a short time later – and is included here.
STS-134 Astronaut Mike Finke snapped this photo of the media gaggle that greeted the crew on their arrival at the Shuttle Landing Facility in Florida. Finke tweeted the photo as “AstroIronMike” and wrote - Astronaut view of our press conference. Ken is 4th from left and left of NASA logo. Credit: NASA/Mike Finke
Technicians at the Kennedy Space Center have been working around the clock since April 29 to determine the cause of the heater failure and fix the problems. The malfunction was traced to a switch box located in the aft section of the shuttle. Shuttle workers swaped out the ALCA -2 load control assembly box. Then they retested the new unit and qualified it for flight.
STS-134 Astronaut Mike Finke (2nd from right) photographs the media
as we photograph the crew upon their arrival in Florida on May 12. See Finke’s twitpic above.
Credit: Ken Kremer
Humongous crowds are again expected to travel to prime viewing locations around the Kennedy Space Center and pack the local hotels, roadways and beaches. Flocks of tourists are already arriving in anticipation on Monday’s launch. About 750,00 folks had swarmed to Florida for the April 29 launch attempt.
STS-134 is the penultimate mission in the Space Shuttle Program. The last shuttle flight by Atlantis is expected to occur in early July, but a firm launch date has not yet been set.
Space Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach greets the STS-134 crew upon arrival at KSC
as they depart the Shuttle Training Aircraft. Credit: Ken Kremer
If you do attend Endeavour’s launch, send me your launch and crowd photos to post in an STS-134 launch gallery here at Universe Today.
This graphic shows the internal structure of Jupiter's moon Io as revealed by data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft. The low-density crust about 30 to 50 kilometers (20 to 30 miles) thick is shown in gray in the cross-section. Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Michigan/UCLA
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Proving that old data never dies, scientists have found something new about Jupiter’s moon Io using data gathered during the Galileo mission, which orbited Jupiter from 1995-2003. New analysis reveals a subsurface ocean of molten or partially molten magma beneath the surface of the volcanic moon, which is the first direct confirmation of this kind of magma layer at Io. Scientists say the molten subsurface ocean explains why the moon is the most volcanic object known in the solar system.
“Scientists are excited we finally understand where Io’s magma is coming from and have an explanation for some of the mysterious signatures we saw in some of the Galileo’s magnetic field data,” said Krishan Khurana, from the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead author of the study published in Science. Khurana was a former co-investigator on Galileo’s magnetometer team at UCLA. “It turns out Io was continually giving off a ‘sounding signal’ in Jupiter’s rotating magnetic field that matched what would be expected from molten or partially molten rocks deep beneath the surface.”
Amazingly, Io produces about 100 times more lava each year than all the volcanoes on Earth, and the new study shows that a global magma ocean exists about 30 to 50 kilometers (20 to 30 miles) beneath the moon’s crust. This explains why Io’s volcanoes are distributed all around its surface, unlike Earth’s volcanoes that occur in localized hotspots like the “Ring of Fire” around the Pacific Ocean.
The volcanoes on Io were discovered in 1979 by Linda Morabito, an optical navigation engineer working on the Voyager mission. Looking at images that were to be used for navigating Voyager, Morabito noted what appeared to be a crescent cloud extending beyond the edge of Io. After conferring with her colleagues, they realized that since Io has no atmosphere, the cloud rising hundreds of kilometers above the surface must be evidence of an incredibly powerful volcano.
The energy for the volcanic activity comes from the squeezing and stretching of the moon by Jupiter’s gravity as Io orbits the largest planet in the solar system.
Galileo was launched in 1989 and began orbiting Jupiter in 1995. Scientists noticed unexplained signatures in magnetic field data from Galileo flybys of Io in October 1999 and February 2000.
“During the final phase of the Galileo mission, models of the interaction between Io and Jupiter’s immense magnetic field, which bathes the moon in charged particles, were not yet sophisticated enough for us to understand what was going on in Io’s interior,” said Xianzhe Jia, a co-author of the study at the University of Michigan.
Recent work in mineral physics showed that a group of rocks known as “ultramafic” rocks become capable of carrying substantial electrical current when melted. Ultramafic rocks are igneous in origin, or form through the cooling of magma. On Earth, they are believed to originate from the mantle. The finding led Khurana and colleagues to test the hypothesis that the strange signature was produced by current flowing in a molten or partially molten layer of this kind of rock.
Tests showed that the signatures detected by Galileo were consistent with a rock such as lherzolite, an igneous rock rich in silicates of magnesium and iron found in Spitzbergen, Norway. The magma ocean layer on Io appears to be more than 50 kilometers (30 miles thick), making up at least 10 percent of the moon’s mantle by volume. The blistering temperature of the magma ocean probably exceeds 1,200 degrees Celsius (2,200 degrees Fahrenheit).
In the animation above, Io is bathed in magnetic field lines (shown in blue) that connect the north polar region of Jupiter to the planet’s south polar region. As Jupiter rotates, the magnetic field lines draping around Io strengthen and weaken. Because Io’s magma ocean has a high electrical conductivity, it deflects the varying magnetic field, shielding the inside of the moon from magnetic disturbances. The magnetic field inside of Io maintains a vertical orientation, even as the magnetic field outside of Io dances around. These variations in the external magnetic field signatures enabled scientists to understand the moon’s internal structure. In the animation, the magnetic field lines move with Jupiter’s rotation period of about 13 hours in Io’s rest frame.
Io is the only body in the solar system other than Earth known to have active magma volcanoes, and it has been suggested both the Earth and its moon may have had similar magma oceans billions of years ago at the time of their formation, but they have long since cooled.
“Io’s volcanism informs us how volcanoes work and provides a window in time to styles of volcanic activity that may have occurred on the Earth and moon during their earliest history,” said Torrence Johnson, a former Galileo project scientist who was not directly involved in the study.
The Galileo spacecraft was intentionally sent into Jupiter’s atmosphere in 2003 to avoid any contamination of any of Jupiter’s moons.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured some plasma streaming off the Sun, doing a quick dance, and diving back into the surface. This video zooms into an active region over two days (Apr. 30 – May 2, 2011). The cloud of ionized gas, or plasma that comes off the Sun is caused by an active, erupting sunspot. Why does the plasma return instead of streaming off into space? Magnetic forces are pulling the material along magnetic field lines on the Sun, and the plasma follows the Sun’s magnetic fields as it flies outwards, and either returns to the Sun or goes out into space. Here, the plasma returned. What you are seeing is ionized Helium at about 60,000 degrees C. in extreme ultraviolet light.
Here’s this week’s image for the Where In The Universe Challenge, to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. You know what to do: take a look at this image and see if you can determine where in the universe this image is from; give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft/telescope responsible for the image. We’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until later. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.
UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below.
I admit, I too thought this was the Lights of Zetar at first glance, but then learned it is a Hubble close-up of ancient white dwarf stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Hubble peered deep into the globular star cluster M4 and was able to detect the white dwarfs which are no more luminous than a 100-watt light bulb seen at the moon’s distance from Earth. Hubble reveals a total of 75 white dwarfs in one small area within M4 out of a total of about 40,000 white dwarfs that the cluster is predicted to contain.
Hubble's view of NGC 4214, Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs). Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration
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Lots of activity taking place inside NGC 4214, and Hubble has peered inside this dwarf galaxy to see stars in all stages of their evolution, as well as gas clouds with huge cavities blown out by stellar winds. Wow! Also visible are bright stellar clusters and complex patterns of glowing hydrogen, some forming a candy-cane-like structure in the upper right of this optical and near-infrared image. NGC 4214 is located in the constellation of Canes Venatici (The Hunting Dogs), about 10 million light-years away. Hubble scientists say this galaxy is an ideal laboratory to research the triggers of star formation and evolution.
Observations of this dwarf galaxy have also revealed clusters of much older red supergiant stars. Additional older stars can be seen dotted all across the galaxy. The variety of stars at different stages in their evolution indicates that the recent and ongoing starburst periods are not the first, and the galaxy’s abundant supply of hydrogen means that star formation will continue into the future.
New research reveals the possible cause of retrograde "hot Jupiters"
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It was once thought that our planet was part of a “typical” solar system. Inner rocky worlds, outlying gas giants, some asteroids and comets sprinkled in for good measure. All rotating around a central star in more or less the same direction. Typical.
But after seeing what’s actually out there, it turns out ours may not be so typical after all…
Astronomers researching exoplanetary systems – many discovered with NASA’s Kepler Observatory – have found quite a few containing “hot Jupiters” that orbit their parent star very closely. (A hot Jupiter is the term used for a gas giant – like Jupiter – that resides in an orbit very close to its star, is usually tidally locked, and thus gets very, very hot.) These worlds are like nothing seen in our own solar system…and it’s now known that some actually have retrograde orbits – that is, orbiting their star in the opposite direction.
“That’s really weird, and it’s even weirder because the planet is so close to the star. How can one be spinning one way and the other orbiting exactly the other way? It’s crazy. It so obviously violates our most basic picture of planet and star formation.”
– Frederic A. Rasio, theoretical astrophysicist, Northwestern University
Now retrograde movement does exist in our solar system. Venus rotates in a retrograde direction, so the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east, and a few moons of the outer planets orbit “backwards” relative to the other moons. But none of the planets in our system have retrograde orbits; they all move around the Sun in the same direction that the Sun rotates. This is due to the principle of conservation of angular momentum, whereby the initial motion of the disk of gas that condensed to form our Sun and afterwards the planets is reflected in the current direction of orbital motions. Bottom line: the direction they moved when they were formed is (generally) the direction they move today, 4.6 billion years later. Newtonian physics is okay with this, and so are we. So why are we now finding planets that blatantly flaunt these rules?
The answer may be: peer pressure.
Or, more accurately, powerful tidal forces created by neighboring massive planets and the star itself.
By fine-tuning existing orbital mechanics calculations and creating computer simulations out of them, researchers have been able to show that large gas planets can be affected by a neighboring massive planet in such a way as to have their orbits drastically elongated, sending them spiraling closer in toward their star, making them very hot and, eventually, even flip them around. It’s just basic physics where energy is transferred between objects over time.
It just so happens that the objects in question are huge planets and the time scale is billions of years. Eventually something has to give. In this case it’s orbital direction.
“We had thought our solar system was typical in the universe, but from day one everything has looked weird in the extrasolar planetary systems. That makes us the oddball really. Learning about these other systems provides a context for how special our system is. We certainly seem to live in a special place.”
– Frederic A. Rasio
Yes, it certainly does seem that way.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation. Details of the discovery are published in the May 12th issue of the journal Nature.
Main image credit: Jason Major. Created from SDO (AIA 304) image of the Sun from October 17, 2010 (NASA/SDO and the AIA science team) and an image of Jupiter taken by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft on October 23, 2000 (NASA/JPL/SSI).
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory reveals the complex X-ray-emitting central region of the Crab Nebula. This image is 9.8 light-years across. Chandra observations were not compatible with the study of the nebula's X-ray variations. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/F. Seward et al.
The famous Crab Nebula supernova remnant has erupted in an enormous flare five times more powerful than any flare previously seen from the object. On April 12, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope first detected the outburst, which lasted six days. Several other satellites also made observations, which has astonished astronomers by revealing unexpected changes in X-ray emission the Crab, once thought to be the steadiest high-energy source in the sky.
The nebula is the wreckage of an exploded star that emitted light which reached Earth in the year 1054. It is located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. At the heart of an expanding gas cloud lies what is left of the original star’s core, a superdense neutron star that spins 30 times a second. With each rotation, the star swings intense beams of radiation toward Earth, creating the pulsed emission characteristic of spinning neutron stars (also known as pulsars).
Apart from these pulses, astrophysicists believed the Crab Nebula was a virtually constant source of high-energy radiation. But in January, scientists associated with several orbiting observatories, including NASA’s Fermi, Swift and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, reported long-term brightness changes at X-ray energies.
X-ray data from NASA's Fermi, RXTE, and Swift satellites and the European Space Agency's International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) confirm that the Crab Nebula's output has declined about 7 percent in two years at energies from 15,000 to 50,000 electron volts. They also show that the Crab has brightened or faded by as much as 3.5 percent a year since 1999. Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) has detected powerful gamma-ray flares (magenta lines) as well. (Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)
“The Crab Nebula hosts high-energy variability that we’re only now fully appreciating,” said Rolf Buehler, a member of the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) team at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, a facility jointly located at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University.
Since 2009, Fermi and the Italian Space Agency’s AGILE satellite have detected several short-lived gamma-ray flares at energies greater than 100 million electron volts (eV) — hundreds of times higher than the nebula’s observed X-ray variations. For comparison, visible light has energies between 2 and 3 eV.
On April 12, Fermi’s LAT, and later AGILE, detected a flare that grew about 30 times more energetic than the nebula’s normal gamma-ray output and about five times more powerful than previous outbursts. On April 16, an even brighter flare erupted, but within a couple of days, the unusual activity completely faded out.
“These superflares are the most intense outbursts we’ve seen to date, and they are all extremely puzzling events,” said Alice Harding at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “We think they are caused by sudden rearrangements of the magnetic field not far from the neutron star, but exactly where that’s happening remains a mystery.”
The Crab’s high-energy emissions are thought to be the result of physical processes that tap into the neutron star’s rapid spin. Theorists generally agree the flares must arise within about one-third of a light-year from the neutron star, but efforts to locate them more precisely have proven unsuccessful so far.
Since September 2010, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory routinely has monitored the nebula in an effort to identify X-ray emission associated with the outbursts. When Fermi scientists alerted astronomers to the onset of a new flare, Martin Weisskopf and Allyn Tennant at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., triggered a set of pre-planned observations using Chandra.
It was also observed by NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) and Swift satellites and the European Space Agency’s International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL). The results confirm a real intensity decline of about 7 percent at energies between 15,000 to 50,000 eV over two years. They also show that the Crab has brightened and faded by as much as 3.5 percent a year since 1999.
“Thanks to the Fermi alert, we were fortunate that our planned observations actually occurred when the flares were brightest in gamma rays,” Weisskopf said. “Despite Chandra’s excellent resolution, we detected no obvious changes in the X-ray structures in the nebula and surrounding the pulsar that could be clearly associated with the flare.”
Scientists think the flares occur as the intense magnetic field near the pulsar undergoes sudden restructuring. Such changes can accelerate particles like electrons to velocities near the speed of light. As these high-speed electrons interact with the magnetic field, they emit gamma rays.
To account for the observed emission, scientists say the electrons must have energies 100 times greater than can be achieved in any particle accelerator on Earth. This makes them the highest-energy electrons known to be associated with any galactic source. Based on the rise and fall of gamma rays during the April outbursts, scientists estimate that the size of the emitting region must be comparable in size to the solar system.
