Posted on by Jason Rhian

Former Shuttle Astronaut Reflects on Discovery’s Final Mission

Discovery returns to Earth with the crew of STS-29. Robert Springer was a member of this crew and recently sat down and gave his thoughts about the end of the shuttle era. Photo Credit: NASA

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As he looks back over the years, former shuttle astronaut Robert Springer remembers the shuttle era very clearly. He flew on Atlantis – and Discovery. With the final flight of Discovery only a few days away, he took time out of his busy schedule to reminisce about his time ‘riding rockets.’

“Great memories,” Springer said, “I’m really proud of the opportunity I had and the chance to serve my country, and so it was was special — very special.”

Springer received his aviator’s wings in 1966 with the United States Marine Corps. He flew F-4 Phantoms in Vietnam where he also served as an advisor to the South Korean Marine Corps. Springer would fly some 300 combat missions in F-4s and an additional 250 combat missions in O-1 Bird Dogs, UH-1 “Hueys.” Springer would eventually attend navy Fighter Weapons School – known more commonly as “TOPGUN.” Springer has been awarded numerous awards including the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross and the Bronze Star.

He was selected to become an astronaut in 1980, completing training one a year later in 1981. He served on the support crew for STS-3 working on various aspects of the “Canadarm” remote manipulator system. Between 1984 and 1985 he served as CAPCOM on seven shuttle flights. After waiting nine years he flew his first mission in 1989 aboard Discovery on STS-29.

Crew portrait with Springer in the middle of the top row. Image Credit: NASA

STS-29 was a highly-successful mission that deployed a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) and conducted numerous experiments while on orbit. A year later in 1990 Springer again left Earth for the black sky on STS-38. This mission was aboard Atlantis and was a classified Department of Defense mission. It was the first mission to land at Kennedy Space Center in Florida since 1985. Of the two missions, Springer remembers STS-38 with a bit of a smile.

“My first flight on STS-29 was shortly after the first Return-to-Flight in 1988 and while the media attention was nice, once is enough,” Springer said. “So for STS-38 we were completely cut off from the press – it was fantastic! I just felt kind of bad for the new guys on that flight as they missed that aspect of a shuttle mission.”

When speaking with Springer, you can see the smile fade somewhat when the subject turns to the final flight of Discovery, arguably the most historic of the surviving orbiters.

“It’s going to be a little tough, realizing that this will be the last time that Discovery will be going into space,” Springer said while looking out at Launch Complex 39a. “You know that someday that the program is going to come to an end, but to actually have that take place and come to fruition, while exciting to see it launch – it will be sad.”

He fondly recollected his experience on board Discovery as one of the most amazing experiences in a career that has witnessed some of the most powerful experiences in American history.

“The flight overall was fantastic, it was so incredibly intense,” Springer said with a smile. “We were one of the first flights after the Challenger accident. While we normally plan for a 16 hour day during missions, we were so busy it ended up being an 18 hour day. Whenever we had a free minute we would hog the windows and stare out into space until you couldn’t fight it anymore and you’d drift off to sleep – and around the shuttle cabin.”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Buckyballs Could Be Plentiful in the Universe

An infrared photo of the Small Magellanic Cloud taken by Spitzer is shown here in this artist's illustration, with two callouts. The middle callout shows a magnified view of an example of a planetary nebula, and the right callout shows an even further magnified depiction of buckyballs, which consist of 60 carbon atoms arranged like soccer balls. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Earlier this year, astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope announced they had found – for the first time — carbon molecules, known as “buckyballs,” in space. They were detected in one planetary nebula, and even though they were predicted to be rather prevalent out in space, no one was really sure. Until now. They’ve now been found in the space between stars, and around four more planetary nebulae, with one dying star in a nearby galaxy holding a staggering quantity of buckyballs — the equivalent mass of 15 times that of Earth’s Moon.

“It turns out that buckyballs are much more common and abundant in the universe than initially thought,” said astronomer Letizia Stanghellini of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. “Spitzer had recently found them in one specific location, but now we see them in other environments. This has implications for the chemistry of life. It’s possible that buckyballs from outer space provided seeds for life on Earth.”

Buckyballs are soccer-ball-shaped molecules that were first observed in a laboratory 25 years ago, and are named for their resemblance to architect Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic domes, which have interlocking circles on the surface of a partial sphere. Also known as C60, and Fullerenes, they are the third major form of pure carbon; graphite and diamond are the other two. They have been thought to be common in space since they have been found in meteorites, and also in more everyday materials such as soot.

While two different studies announced today confirm that buckyballs could be widespread in space, they are turning up in places where astronomers thought they couldn’t exist. So, obviously we don’t have these molecules fully figured out yet.

All the planetary nebulae in which buckyballs have been detected are rich in hydrogen. This goes against what researchers thought for decades — they had assumed that, as is the case with making buckyballs in the lab, hydrogen could not be present. The hydrogen, they theorized, would contaminate the carbon, causing it to form chains and other structures rather than the spheres, which contain no hydrogen at all.

“We now know that fullerenes and hydrogen coexist in planetary nebulae, which is really important for telling us how they form in space,” said Anibal García-Hernández from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Spain, lead author, working with Stanghellini on a paper appearing online Oct. 28 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Using Spitzer, this team found the buckyballs around three dying sun-like stars, called planetary nebulae, in the our own Milky Way galaxy, plus in another planetary nebula the Small Magellanic Cloud, a nearby galaxy. This was particularly exciting to the researchers, because, in contrast to the planetary nebulae in the Milky Way, the distance to this galaxy is known. Knowing the distance to the source of the buckyballs meant that the astronomers could calculate their quantity — two percent of Earth’s mass, or the equivalent mass of 15 times that of Earth’s Moon.

Planetary nebulae are made of material shed from the dying stars.

Another Spitzer study about the discovery of buckyballs in space was also recently published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, (October 10, 2010) and was led by Kris Sellgren of Ohio State University, Columbus. This study found that buckyballs are also present in the space between stars, but not too far away from young solar systems.

They were found among two nebulae; NGC 2023, located near the well-known Horsehead Nebula in the constellation of Orion, and the second, NGC 7023, known as the Iris Nebula, in the constellation Cepheus.
These are the largest molecules ever discovered floating between the stars. Astronomers aren’t sure yet if these cosmic balls formed in a nearby planetary nebula and wandered away, or if they perhaps can spring up in interstellar space.

“It’s exciting to find buckyballs in between stars that are still forming their solar systems, just a comet’s throw away,” Sellgren said. “This could be the link between fullerenes in space and fullerenes in meteorites.”
Since carbon is the key building block for life as we know it, their perhaps prevalent existence in space is intriguing.

“Now that there are buckyballs confirmed in the interstellar medium and in circumstellar space, it’s likely that chemists will get more interested in the astrobiological implications of these fascinating molecules,” Sellgren said.

Sources: JPL, NOAO,, CalTech/Spitzer

, Earlier detection of Buckyballs in Space — NASA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Most Intense Storm in History Cuts Across the US — As Seen from Space

Visible satellite image of the October 26, 2010 superstorm taken at 5:32pm EDT. Image credit: NASA/GSFC.

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Yowza! – Here’s a satellite image of a storm of record-breaking proportions. On October 26, 2010, the strongest storm ever recorded in the Midwest spawned 24 tornadoes, 282 reports of damaging winds, violent thunderstorms, and torrential rains. The mega-storm reached peak intensity late yesterday afternoon over Minnesota, resulting in the lowest barometric pressure readings ever recorded in the continental United States (except for from hurricanes and nor’easters affecting the Atlantic seaboard.) The storm continues today (Oct. 27) with more tornado watches posted for Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, a blizzard warning for North Dakota, high wind warnings for most of the upper Midwest, and near-hurricane force winds on Lake Superior.

Read more about this super-storm on Weather Underground, but see below for what extremely low air pressure means.

Air pressure is one of the most important factors which determines what the weather is like. A mass of low pressure is an area of air that is rising. As it rises, it expands and cools. Cooler air cannot hold as much water as warmer air, so as the air rises the water will condense and form clouds. This is why an area of low pressure will often be accompanied by clouds and rain — which is what occurred on October 26 — lots of clouds and lots of rain and even snow.

But winds were even a bigger factor in this superstorm. Our atmosphere really doesn’t like big differences in air pressure, so where areas of low pressure meet up with areas of high pressure, winds blow in an attempt to combat the differences in the air pressure. The larger the difference in pressure the stronger the winds will blow. So, the extreme low pressure readings yesterday meant the winds were really howling — and they were. In my neighborhood in Illinois, we had a fairly study flagpole get bent from the winds. But that was nothing compared to the hurricane-like winds other places experienced: for example, Grand Marais, Minnesota — near the Great Lakes and near the area of the lowest air pressure readings — had sustained winds of 43 mph gusting to 59 mph, lasting for over 7 hours. Today, that region is still getting pummeled by winds and snow.

You can see the link to Weather Underground above to see what other weather extremes were experienced during this storm.

Posted on by Mark Thompson

Super Star Smashes into the Record Books.

Pulses from neutron star (rear) are slowed as they pass near foreground white dwarf. This effect allowed astronomers to measure masses of the system. CREDIT: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

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The discovery of a super massive neutron star has thrown our understanding of stellar evolution into turmoil. The new star, called PSR J1614-2230 contains twice the mass of the Sun but compressed down into a star that is smaller than the Earth (you could fit over a million Earth’s inside the Sun by comparison). It is estimated a thimbleful of material from the star could weigh more than 500 million tons — that equates to about a million airliners. The study has cast serious doubt over how matter reacts under extreme densities.

The study by a team of astronomers using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico focussed its attention on the star which is about 3,000 light years away (the distance light can travel in 3,000 years at a speed of 300,000 km per second). The stellar corpse whose life ended long ago is now rotating at an incredible speed, completing 317 rotations every second. Its emitting an intense beam of energy from its polar regions which just happens to point in the direction of us here on Earth. We can detect this radiation beam as it flashes on and off like a celestial lighthouse. This type of neutron star is classed a pulsar.

Artist impression of Pulsar
Artist impression of Pulsar

Rather fortuitously, the star is part of a binary star system and is orbited by a white dwarf star which completes one orbit in just nine days. Its through the measurements of the interaction of the two which gave astronomers the clue as to the pulsar’s mass. The orbit of the white dwarf takes it between the beam of radiation and us here on Earth so that the energy from the beam has to pass close by the companion star. By measuring the delay in the beam’s arrival caused by distortion of space-time in the proximity of the white dwarf, scientists can determine the mass of both objects. Its an effect called the Shapiro Delay and its simply luck that the orientation of the stars to the Earth allows the effect to be measured.

Dave Finley, Public Information Officer from NRAO told Universe Today ‘Pulsars are neutron stars, whose radiation beams emerge from the poles and sweep across the Earth.  The orientation of the poles (and thus of the beams) is a matter of chance. We just got very lucky with this system.’

The discovery which was made possible by the new ‘Green Bank Ultimate Pulsar Processing Instrument (GUPPI) was able to measure the pulses from the pulsar with incredible accuracy and thus come to the conclusion that the star weighed in at a hefty two times the mass of the Sun. Current theories suggested a mass of around one and a half solar masses were possible but this new discovery changes the understanding of the composition of such stars, even to the subatomic level.

Neutron stars or pulsars are extreme objects at the very edges of the conditions that matter can exist. They really test our knowledge of the physical Universe and slowly but surely, through dedicated work of teams of astronomers, we are not only learning more about the stars above our heads but more and more about matter in the Universe in which we live.

Mark Thompson is a writer and the astronomy presenter on the BBC One Show. See his website, The People’s Astronomer, and you can follow him on Twitter, @PeoplesAstro

Source: NRAO

Posted on by Jon Voisey

Where’s M31’s Thick Disc?

Within our own galaxy, the thick disc is a distinct population of stars that resides above and below the main (thin) disc. Its stars have a larger range of velocities, are generally older and more metal poor. While astronomers aren’t entirely sure how it formed (remnants of accretion of small galaxies or ejection from the thin disc), it’s certainly there and analogues have been observed in other galaxies, more than 10 megaparsecs away. If these thick discs are truly a product of mergers, then galaxies showing evidence of mergers in other regards should show the presence of this second population as well. Yet in the case of M31, the Andromeda galaxy, the closest major galaxy to our own, which is thought to have a rich merger history, traces of the thick disc have proved elusive. So where is it?


Part of the problem in finding this galactic component is the angle at which the galaxy is presented to us. The galaxies for which a thick disc component have been detected (aside from our own) all lie edge on. This makes the process of finding the thick component greatly simplified. Astronomers can use photometric systems designed for detecting different populations of stars (young vs. old) and observe the change in distribution. When galaxies are presented closer to face on, the projection of the thick component onto the thin makes the identification far more difficult. The Andromeda galaxy is somewhere in between these two extremes and makes an angle of 77° on the sky (where 90° is edge on).

Due to this difficulty, another method is necessary to search for this extended population. Since 2002, a team led by Michelle Collins of Cambridge university has been using the Keck II telescope to search for the expected disc. To do this, the team has been using spectroscopic observations of numerous red giant stars to determine if a specific sub-population can be found with thick disc characteristics. While a sub-population has been discovered before in M31, its velocity dispersion was too low, and the distribution was too closely tied to the classical thin disc to truly be considered the missing component. Instead, it is referred to as the “extended disc”.

But where others have failed, Collins’ team has prevailed. From her team’s study, a recent paper claims to have discovered the thick disc and with such a large sample, have made some interesting observations about its nature. The first is that M31’s thick disc is nearly three times as thick. Additionally, the average velocity of both the thin and thick discs are notably higher (thinM31 = 32.0 kms-1, thinMW = 20.0 kms-1; thickM31 = 45.7 kms-1, thickMW = 40.0 km-1). If the thick disc is indeed related to mergers, then this may indicate that M31 has undergone a more intensive period of recent interactions than our own galaxy. However, the team notes that, from their observations alone, they are unable to constrain the formation methods of this component. While other studies have shown that accretion and ejection each leave distinct fingerprints, the necessary components were not mapped in sufficient detail to distinguish between the two.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Spacecraft Calibrations Provide Unique Solar “Artwork”

Sun 'artwork' by the Solar Dynamics Observatory

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If you check out the Solar Dynamics Observatory website today to get an update of what the Sun is doing, (which you should -everyday!) you may have noticed a few of the daily images appeared to be “sliding” across the screen. That’s because yesterday the team from the AIA instrument (Atmospheric Imaging Assembly) performed several instrument calibration maneuvers, in which the AIA boresight was moved away from the center of the Sun. When the images are re-centered some of them have lines to the edges of the picture, creating some very nifty solar artwork. Enjoy them now, as this effect will only show up in the “rapid” images shown on their website, and later, they’ll be corrected in the science database. See more below.

More SDO artwork.

SDO takes images of the Sun in several different wavelengths, which highlights different features. On SDO’s Facebook page, the team wrote, “It appears that the re-centering of the images is copying the value at the edge of the field of view rather than zero while the image is being shifted to the center of the picture.”

And even though the images will be fixed, they won’t be able to fix them completely. The information that is missing from images can’t be recovered because the instrument wasn’t pointed at the Sun at the time the image was taken.

More SDO artwork.
Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

HAWK-I Hunts Down Spiral Galaxies in Stunning Detail

Six spectacular spiral galaxies are seen in a clear new light in images from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Credit: ESO

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Just like its ornithological namesake, the HAWK-I imager on the Very Large Telescope uses its piercing eyesight to hunt down its prey. But the High-Acuity Wide-field K-band Imager draws on its infrared vision to provide new insights into the spiral structures of galaxies. Today, ESO released six stunning new images of bright galaxies, showing exquisite detail with a clarity that is only possible by observing in the infrared.
Usually, dust in the arms of spiral galaxies blocks out much of the detail from our view, but observing in infrared light, much of the obscuring dust becomes transparent to its detectors. Compared to another VLT infrared camera called ISAAC, HAWK-I has sixteen times as many pixels to cover a much larger area of sky in one shot and, by using newer technology than ISAAC, it has a greater sensitivity to faint infrared radiation.

The six galaxies are part of a study of spiral structure led by Preben Grosbøl at ESO. Because HAWK-I can study galaxies stripped bare of the confusing effects of dust and glowing gas it is ideal for studying the vast numbers of stars that make up spiral arms, as well as helping astronomers to understand the complex and subtle ways in which the stars in these systems form into such perfect spiral patterns.

NGC 5247. Credit: ESO

The first image shows NGC 5247, a spiral galaxy dominated by two huge arms, located 60–70 million light-years away. The galaxy lies face-on towards Earth, thus providing an excellent view of its pinwheel structure. It lies in the zodiacal constellation of Virgo (the Maiden).

Messier 100, also known as NGC 4321. Credit: ESO

The galaxy in the second image is Messier 100, also known as NGC 4321, which lies about 55 million light-years from Earth in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. It is an example of a “grand design” spiral galaxy — a class of galaxies with very prominent and well-defined spiral arms.

NGC 1300. Credit: ESO

The third image is of NGC 1300, a spiral galaxy with arms extending from the ends of a spectacularly prominent central bar. It is considered a prototypical example of barred spiral galaxies and lies at a distance of about 65 million light-years, in the constellation of Eridanus (the River).

NGC 4030. Credit: ESO

The spiral galaxy in the fourth image, NGC 4030, lies about 75 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Virgo.

NGC 2997. Credit: ESO

The fifth image, NGC 2997, is a spiral galaxy roughly 30 million light-years away in the constellation of Antlia. NGC 2997 is the brightest member of a group of galaxies of the same name in the Local Supercluster of galaxies. Our own Local Group, of which the Milky Way is a member, is itself also part of the Local Supercluster.

NGC 1232. Credit: ESO

Last but not least, NGC 1232 is a beautiful galaxy some 65 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus (the River). The galaxy is classified as an intermediate spiral galaxy — somewhere between a barred and an unbarred spiral galaxy.

Source: ESO

Posted on by Jason Rhian

ISS Particle Detector Ready to Unveil Wonders of the Universe

The AMS-02 will be mounted on the outside of the International Space Station's S3 Truss element. Image Credit: NASA

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The Principal Investigator (P.I.) for the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS-02) experiment, Professor Samuel Ting, says that the experiment is already accruing data as it awaits its February 2011 launch date. Scheduled to fly aboard the final flight of the space shuttle Endeavour, STS-134, AMS-02 will search through cosmic rays for exotic particles, antimatter and dark matter. The experiment will be mounted to the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) and will require no spacewalks to attach.
Continue reading “ISS Particle Detector Ready to Unveil Wonders of the Universe”

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Carnival of Space #175

This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Ken Murphy over at Out of the Cradle, and he says this Carnival is the Dodransbicentiquasihebdomadibus edition, which is “bad linguistics and butchered Latin for ‘175th sort-of-weekly.’” Cool!

Click here to read the Carnival of Space #175.

And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let Fraser know if you can be a host, and he’ll schedule you into the calendar.