Another private trip to space

SpaceX launched three rich businessmen and their astronaut escort to the International Space Station on Friday for more than a week’s stay. The three are an American, a Canadian and an Israeli who run investment, real estate and other companies. They’re paying $55 million apiece for the rocket ride and accommodations, all meals included.

As a gift for their seven station hosts, the four visitors are taking up paella and other Spanish cuisine prepared by celebrity chef José Andrés. The rest of their time at the station, NASA’s freeze-dried chow will have to do.

Women at NASA

Trump's latest tweet moves the moon to Mars

"For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!"

 59.8K 1:38 PM - Jun 7, 2019

There is a lot of junk in space

Of the 4,000 satellites orbiting earth, only 1,400 are working. Plus, there are about 5,000 metric tons of garbage from the working satellites. So, maneuvering around this junk to avoid hitting it is not an easy task. Some of our legislators are concerned and have asked the FCC to work with NASA to keep the number of satellites manageable. 

The junk is not necessarily a whole satellite; just a tiny fleck of paint from an old satellite can cause a lot of damage. Yet, many companies, such as SpaceX and Boeing, want to launch even more satelites. SpaceX wants to launch 4,425 more by 2024 to build out a broadband network in space.

It's gotten warmer

The following chart is from Climate Central. It's based on data from NOAA and NASA and shows the degree of warmth each month from 1880 to 2015. The blueish boxes indicate cool months, the reddish warm months. As you can see, the blues have disappeared.

Student finds error in NASA data

In physics class seventeen-year-old Miles Soloman was looking at radiation sensors on the International Space Station (ISS). He found that ISS sensors were recording negative data when there was no radiation present. This is impossible. So, he let NASA know. They told him that while it was aware of the error, its experts had thought the data blips appeared only once or twice a year. But the student informed them it was happening several times a day.

More planets like earth

NASA has announced that it has found seven potentially Earth-like planets orbiting a star 40 light-years away. The system is called Trappst-1. “It’s the first time that so many planets of this kind are found around a same star,” Michaël Gillon, the lead author of the Nature paper announcing the discovery, said in a press conference. “The seven planets … could have some liquid water and maybe life on the surface.”

But it’s a solar system very different from our own. For instance, Trappist-1 is a tiny, “ultra-cool” dwarf star. It’s cool because it’s small: just about a tenth of the mass of our sun and about one-thousandth as bright. But its low mass allows its planets to orbit it very closely and remain in the habitat.

Pumpkins by NASA

NASA Engineers Show You How To Carve a Pumpkin by wired

Results of a year in space

Here are some of the facts NASA has found examining Scott Kelly:

• The fluids in your body shift due to zero gravity.
• Some bones, muscles, and organs deteriorate.
• You get taller.
• Immunity is suppressed.
• Space is a cancer danger.
• The isolation carries psychological effects.

Noise from outer space?

NASA has just released a video with sounds that may be from outer space. The sounds, which lasted an hour, were heard in May 1969 by the Apollo 10 astronauts as they circled the Moon. NASA says the sounds could not have been alien music.They likely came from interference caused by radios that were close to each other in the lunar module and the command module.

Water, Water. Is it everywhere?

NASA has a satellite called GRACE; it is used for gravity recovery and climate experiment. One of the interesting things it can do is predict major flooding, because it can determine saturation of the ground by water and thus its predisposition to flooding.

GRACE recently completed a study of the world's 37 largest aquifers and found that more than a third of them are being used at unsustainable rates — they are being drained far faster than natural processes can restore them. It found that 13 of the 37 aquifers, from California to the Middle East to China, were running out of water. Eight of the 13 were determined to be overstressed, with no replenishment at all. Five were declared extremely stressed or highly stressed, with some replenishment but not enough to sustain their use. An overused aquifer will collapse and no longer retain inflows of water.

The worst one was in the Middle East, the Arabian Aquifer System. It supplies water to 60 million people in the Middle East and was declared in the study to be the most overstressed water supply in the world. The Indus Basin aquifer in India and Pakistan is the second most overstressed system. 

Water is a problem

NASA has done study of the world's largest aquifers, thirty-seven in total - and has found that they are being depleted at alarming rates.

Twenty-one of them have passed their sustainability tipping points, meaning more water was removed than replaced during the decade-long study period. Thirteen aquifers declined at rates that put them into the most troubled category. The researchers said this indicated a long-term problem that’s likely to worsen as reliance on aquifers grows.Underground aquifers supply 35 percent of the water used by humans worldwide. Demand is even greater in times of drought. Rain-starved California is currently tapping aquifers for 60 percent of its water use.The aquifers under the most stress are in poor, densely populated regions, such as northwest India, Pakistan and North Africa, where alternatives are limited and water shortages could quickly lead to instability.The world’s most stressed aquifer — defined as suffering rapid depletion with little or no sign of recharging — was the Arabian Aquifer, a water source used by more than 60 million people. That was followed by the Indus Basin in India and Pakistan, then the Murzuk-Djado Basin in Libya and Niger.

Be cold! Lose weight!

That's the mantra of an increasing number of scientists these days. The basic idea is that because your body uses energy to maintain a normal body temperature, exposure to cold expends calories. Ergo, you'll lose weight if you spend some time each day being cold. There is even a product to provide that daily cold. The ice vest is loaded with ice packs. The inventor of the product, a UCAL professor, claims that wearing it for an hour burns up to 250 calories. Do it twice a day and you've lost 500 calories.

The leader in this movement is Ray Cronise, a former NASA scientist, whose job was to keep astronauts healthy in sub-zero temperatures of space. Cronise's first test of his theory was to take cold showers and shirtless walks in winter, and he lost 26.7 pounds in six weeks. He points out that other animals make changes depending on the season, we don't because we live mainly in a warm environment. Note that Cronise is not saying we should try to live in very cold temperatures, the 50s are low enough for losing weight.

Airglow

This is not an edited photograph. It is NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

It was taken by Jeff Dai after a thunderstorm over Bangladesh in late April. The picture shows the air over Tibet and China. NASA says that "The unusual pattern is created by waves of alternating air pressure that can grow with height as the air thins, in this case about 90 kilometers up."

Junkyard in the Sky

Except that stuff in a junkyard stays more or less put. The junk in space moves around. And it moves fast, very fast, 18,000 miles per hour fast. NASA says that at that speed, even a half-inch piece of debris would have the kinetic force of a bowling ball thrown 300 miles per hour. And there is a lot of it - 135,000,000 pieces. 

These pieces can hang around for centuries and, at some point, collide with other debris or, maybe, a spacecraft. In 2011, the National Research Council estimated that portions of the space debris environment had already reached this "tipping point," with enough in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris.

Cooking a comet

NASA is excited about Comet ISON which they refer to as a sun grazer. It should be visible with binoculars or telescopes in the next day or two. The scientists there are hoping that the comet is not destroyed by the sun but that it will emerge from its trip by the sun as being visible in daylight. 

Can it be true?

Will we find a twin of the Earth in the next few years?  Some scientists think that is a possibility as they have found many - perhaps a few thousand, perhaps billions - planets that are about our size and may have liquid water.  They've come to that conclusion from work done with NASA's Kepler spacecraft.  One of these planets may be as 'close' as 12 light years and visible to the naked eye.

While almost ecstatic, the scientists have doubts as, although these planets are Earth-size, nobody knows what their masses are and thus whether they are rocky like the Earth, or balls of ice or gas, let alone whether anything can, or does — or ever will — live on them.

Vital Employees

If the government shutdown occurs, which seems more likely day by day, in which departments would you furlough employees and how many of the employees would you furlough?  Here is what the government is planning:

97% of NASA employees
94% of EPA
87% of Commerce
82% of Labor
81% of Interior
80% of Treasury
69% of Energy
52% of Health and Human Services
50% of Defense
33% of Transportation
29% of Social Security
15% of Justice
14% of Homeland Security
4% of VA

NASA studies the sun

Now it's really huge or so they say

A later report on the meteorite crashing in Russia has upped the injury toll to 1,200.  That I can understand.  What I can't understand is that the article claims that NASA has estimated that the amount of energy released from impact with the atmosphere was about 30 times greater than the force of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.  That bomb destroyed Hiroshima almost totally.  It killed over 100,000 on the day of the explosion and many more from its aftereffects. No one has been reported killed by the crash.  No buildings have been obliterated.  Was this a different kind of energy?