#NASA; #TributeToFallenSoldiers; #AnnualDayOfRemembrance 

Washington, Jan 26 (Canadian-Media): NASA will honor members of the NASA family who lost their lives while furthering the cause of exploration and discovery, including the crews of Apollo 1 and space shuttles Challenger and Columbia, during the agency's annual Day of Remembrance Thursday, Jan. 30, NASA News release said on Jan 24.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine speaks to NASA personnel and others during a wreath laying ceremony as part of NASA's Day of Remembrance, Thursday, Feb. 7, 2019, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. The wreaths were laid in memory of those men and women who lost their lives in the quest for space exploration. 
​Credits: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, along with other senior agency officials, will lead an observance at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia beginning at 1 p.m. EST. A wreath-laying ceremony will take place at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, followed by observances for the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia crews.

Media interested in attending the remembrance event must contact Arlington National Cemetery Public Affairs at 703-614-0024 no later than noon Wednesday, Jan. 29.

Various NASA centers also will hold observances on and leading up to the Day of Remembrance for the public, employees and the families of those lost in service to America’s space program.

Kennedy Space Center, Florida

NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in partnership with The Astronauts Memorial Foundation and Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, will host Day of Remembrance observance activities, including a wreath-laying ceremony at 10 a.m. at the Astronauts Memorial Foundation Space Mirror Memorial in the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

​Thad Altman, president and chief executive officer of the Astronauts Memorial Foundation, and Kelvin Manning, Kennedy associate director, technical, will speak at the ceremony. This ceremony is open to the public. Media interested in attending should contact: Rebecca Shireman at RShireman@delawarenorth.com or 321-449-4273.

Johnson Space Center, Houston

NASA’s Johnson Space Center will hold a commemoration for employees at the Astronaut Memorial Grove to honor Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia crews.

Stennis Space Center, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

NASA’s Stennis Space Center will host a Day of Remembrance ceremony memorializing crew members of the Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia missions, as well as members of the Stennis Space Center family lost in the past year. It will feature the laying of a ceremonial wreath in memory of those who have sacrificed in support of the nation’s space program.

Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
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NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will observe Day of Remembrance with a candle-lighting ceremony for employees at 9 a.m. CST. Marshall Associate Director Steve Miley and former astronaut Jan Davis will offer remarks. Media interested in attending should contact Janet Sudnik at 256-544-0034 or janet.m.sudnik@nasa.gov no later than 4 p.m. CST, Wednesday, Jan. 29.

#NASA; #ContractAwarded; #StingerGhaffarianTechnologies

Washington, Jan 22 (Canadian-Media): Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, LLC, a KBRwyle business unit, of Greenbelt, Maryland has been selected by NASA for a contract for intelligent systems research and development support services at the agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, NASA news release said.

This is a cost-plus-fixed-fee (CPFF) hybrid contract consisting of firm-fixed-price (FFP) contract line item numbers (CLINs) for phase-in and core management requirements; and CPFF or FFP CLINs for core technical and indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity requirements. It will begin on March 15 with a 60-day phase-in period followed by a two-year base period and three two-year options. The contract has a maximum value of $400 million.
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The contractor will provide resources and technical expertise to support the Intelligent Systems Division on scientific research, technologies and applications development in a variety of research domains and infusion of advanced information systems technology on NASA missions and other projects within the federal government.

#NASA; #SpaceX; #CrewDragonSpacecraft; #Falcon9; #ISS; NASACommercialCrewProgram

Washington, Jan 19 (Canadian-Media): NASA and SpaceX completed a launch escape demonstration of the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket Sunday. This was the final major flight test of the spacecraft before it begins carrying astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, NASA news reports said.

NASA and SpaceX completed a launch escape demonstration of the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 19, 2020. The test began at 10:30 a.m. EST with liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a mission to show the spacecraft’s capability to safely separate from the rocket in the unlikely event of an inflight emergency. Credits: NASA Television

The launch escape test began at 10:30 a.m. EST with liftoff from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a mission to show the spacecraft’s capability to safely separate from the rocket in the unlikely event of an inflight emergency.

“This critical flight test puts us on the cusp of returning the capability to launch astronauts in American spacecraft on American rockets from American soil,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “We are thrilled with the progress NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is making and look forward to the next milestone for Crew Dragon.”

As part of the test, SpaceX configured Crew Dragon to trigger a launch escape about 1.5 minutes after liftoff. All major functions were executed, including separation, engine firings, parachute deployment and landing. Crew Dragon splashed down at 10:38 a.m. just off the Florida coast in the Atlantic Ocean.

“As far as we can tell thus far, it’s a picture perfect mission. It went as well as one can possibly expect," said Elon Musk, Chief Engineer at SpaceX. “This is a reflection of the dedication and hard work of the SpaceX and NASA teams to achieve this goal. Obviously, I’m super fired up. This is great.”

Teams of personnel from SpaceX and the U.S. Air Force 45th Operations Group's Detachment-3 out of Patrick Air Force Base will recover the spacecraft for return to SpaceX facilities in Florida and begin the recovery effort of the Falcon 9, which broke apart as planned.

“The past few days have been an incredible experience for us,” said astronaut Doug Hurley. “We started with a full dress rehearsal of what Bob and I will do for our mission. Today, we watched the demonstration of a system that we hope to never use, but can save lives if we ever do. It took a lot of work between NASA and SpaceX to get to this point, and we can’t wait to take a ride to the space station soon.”

Prior to the flight test, teams completed launch day procedures for the first crewed flight test, from suit-up to launch pad operations. The joint teams now will begin the full data reviews that need to be completed prior to NASA astronauts flying the system during SpaceX’s Demo-2 mission. 

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is working with the American aerospace industry as companies develop and operate a new generation of spacecraft and launch systems capable of carrying crews to low-Earth orbit and the International Space Station. Commercial human space transportation to and from the station will provide expanded utility, additional research time and broader opportunities for discovery on the orbiting laboratory. The program also has the benefit of facilitating and promoting for America a vibrant economy in low-Earth orbit.

#Astronomy; #BlackHole; #FourNewDiscoveries; #BinaryStars

California (U.S.), Jan 18 (Canadian-Media): Unusual objects that look like gas and behave like stars, said the astronomers, have been spotted near our galaxy’s enormous black hole, media reports said.

Closely orbiting a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A* located some 26,000 light years away from Earth, four new discoveries have been found.

Scientists have been intrigued with this, along with G1 and G2, which were found in 2005 and 2014 respectively, because they seem to be compact most of the time but stretch out as they get closer to the black hole during their orbit.
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These orbits are also a much longer than the 365 days Earth takes to move around our sun, ranging from about 100 to 1,000 years.

These four new discoveries had been named as G3, G4, G5 and G6 by the researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The group explained its belief in the Nature journal, that all six were once binary stars – a pair of stars which orbit each other – later merging as one due to the powerful gravitational force of black hole.

Co-author Andrea Ghez said that this merging process is not done overnight and that it takes more than one million years to complete.

“Mergers of stars may be happening in the universe more often than we thought, and likely are quite common,” she explained.

“Black holes may be driving binary stars to merge. It’s possible that many of the stars we’ve been watching and not understanding may be the end product of mergers that are calm now.

“We are learning how galaxies and black holes evolve. The way binary stars interact with each other and with the black hole is very different from how single stars interact with other single stars and with the black hole.”

Other potential objects that may be part of the same family are already being looked into by the team.

The research will help shine a light on what is happening in the majority of galaxies in our universe, says the team, though Earth is quite a distance from the action, “in the suburbs compared to the centre of the galaxy”, Ms Ghez added.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting 8 a.m. EST Saturday, Jan. 18, for launch of the company’s In-Flight Abort Test, which will demonstrate Crew Dragon’s ability to safely escape the Falcon 9 rocket in the event of a failure during launch. The abort test has a four-hour launch window.

The test launch, as well as other activities leading up to the test, will air on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon will launch from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SpaceX will intentionally trigger Crew Dragon to perform the launch escape prior to 1 minute, 30 seconds into flight. Falcon 9 is expected to aerodynamically break up offshore over the Atlantic Ocean. The spacecraft is planned to land under parachutes offshore in the ocean.

Full coverage is as follows. All times are EST:

Friday, Jan. 17

• 1 p.m. – Pre-test briefing at Kennedy, with the following representatives:
  • Kathy Lueders, manager, NASA Commercial Crew Program
  • Benji Reed, director, Crew Mission Management, SpaceX
  • Mike McAleenan, launch weather officer, 45th Weather Squadron

Saturday, Jan. 18

• 7:45 a.m. – NASA TV test coverage begins for the 8 a.m. liftoff
• 9:30 a.m. – Post-test news conference at Kennedy, with the following representatives:
  • Jim Bridenstine, administrator, NASA
  • SpaceX representative
  • Kathy Lueders, manager, NASA Commercial Crew Program
  • Victor Glover, astronaut, NASA Commercial Crew Program
  • Mike Hopkins, astronaut, NASA Commercial Crew Program

The deadline for media to apply for accreditation for this launch has passed, but more information about media accreditation is available by emailing ksc-media-accreditat@mail.nasa.gov.

The goal of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is safe, reliable and cost-effective transportation to and from the International Space Station, which could allow for additional research time and increase the opportunity for discovery aboard humanity’s orbiting testbed for exploration.

#NASA; #11NewAstronauts; #LunarExploration; #SpaceWalking; #Robotics; #RussianLanguage; #T-38JetProficiency

Washington, Jan 10 (Canadian-Media): NASA welcomed 11 new astronauts to its ranks Friday, increasing the number of those eligible for spaceflight assignments that will expand humanity’s horizons in space for generations to come, NASA reports said.

 NASA's new class of astronauts – the first to graduate since the agency announced its Artemis program – appear on stage during their graduation ceremony at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Jan. 10, 2020. The class includes 11 NASA astronauts, as well as two Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronauts, selected in 2017. They will join the active astronaut corps, beginning careers in exploration that may take them to the International Space Station, on missions to the Moon under the Artemis program, or someday, Mars. Pictured from left are: Kayla Barron of NASA, Zena Cardman of NASA, Raja Chari of NASA, Matthew Dominick of NASA, Bob Hines of NASA, Warren Hoburg of NASA, Jonny Kim of NASA, Joshua Kutryk of CSA, Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA, Loral O’Hara of NASA, Jessica Watkins of NASA, Jennifer Sidey-Gibbons of CSA, and Frank Rubio of NASA. Credits: NASA

The new astronauts successfully completed more than two years of required basic training and are the first to graduate since the agency announced its Artemis program.

The new graduates may be assigned to missions destined for the International Space Station, the Moon, and ultimately, Mars. With a goal of sustainable lunar exploration later this decade, NASA will send the first woman and next man to the surface on the Moon by 2024. Additional lunar missions are planned once a year thereafter and human exploration of Mars is targeted for the mid-2030s.

“These individuals represent the best of America, and what an incredible time for them to join our astronaut corps,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston where the graduation ceremony took place. “2020 will mark the return of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil, and will be an important year of progress for our Artemis program and missions to the Moon and beyond.”

During Friday’s ceremony, each new astronaut received a silver pin, a tradition dating back to the Mercury 7 astronauts, who were selected in 1959. They will receive a gold pin once they complete their first spaceflights.

This was the first public graduation ceremony for astronauts the agency has ever hosted, and Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas were among the speakers at the event.

“For generations, the United States has been the world leader in space exploration, and Johnson Space Center will always be both the heart and home of human spaceflight activity,” said Cornyn. “I have no doubt the newly minted astronauts will add to that history and accomplish incredible things.”

Selected for training in 2017, the NASA astronaut candidates were chosen from a record-setting pool of more than 18,000 applicants.

“I congratulate these exceptional men and women on being the first graduating class of the Artemis program,” Cruz said. “They are the pioneers of the final frontier whose work will help fortify America's leadership in space for generations to come. I am excited for the opportunities ahead of them, including landing the first woman ever on the surface of the Moon, and having the first boots to step on Mars.”

Including the current class, NASA now has 48 active astronauts in its corps. NASA is also considering plans to open the application process this spring for the next class of astronaut candidates.

Training alongside the NASA astronaut candidates for the past two years were two Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronauts who also participated in the graduation ceremony.

NASA’s newest astronauts are:
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• Kayla Barron, a U.S. Navy lieutenant, originally is from Richland, Washington. She graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with a bachelor’s degree in systems engineering. A Gates Cambridge Scholar, Barron earned a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. As a submarine warfare officer, Barron served aboard the USS Maine (SSBN 741), completing three strategic deterrent patrols. She came to NASA from the U.S. Naval Academy, where she was serving as the flag aide to the superintendent.

 

• Zena Cardman calls Williamsburg, Virginia, home. She completed a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in marine sciences at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Cardman was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, working at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research focused on microorganisms in subsurface environments, ranging from caves to deep sea sediments. Her field experience includes multiple Antarctic expeditions, work aboard research vessels as both a scientist and crew member, and NASA analog missions in British Columbia, Idaho and Hawaii.

 

• Raja Chari, a U.S. Air Force colonel, hails from Cedar Falls, Iowa. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy with bachelor’s degrees in astronautical engineering and engineering science. He continued on to earn a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. Chari served as the commander of the 461st Flight Test Squadron and the director of the F-35 Integrated Test Force at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB) in California.

 

• Matthew Dominick, a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, was born and grew up in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of San Diego and a master’s degree in systems engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He also graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. Dominick served on the USS Ronald Reagan as department head for Strike Fighter Squadron 115.

 

• Bob Hines, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, attended high school in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania, but considers Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, his hometown. He has a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Boston University and a master’s degree in flight test engineering from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB. Hines served as a developmental test pilot on all models of the F-15 while earning a master’s in aerospace engineering from the University of Alabama. He has deployed in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Prior to being selected as an astronaut, he was a Federal Aviation Administration flight test pilot and a NASA research pilot at Johnson.

 

• Warren Hoburg originally is from Pittsburgh. He earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT, and a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a commercial pilot, and spent several seasons serving on the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit and Yosemite Search and Rescue. Hoburg came to NASA from MIT, where he led a research group as an assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics.

 

• Dr. Jonny Kim, a U.S. Navy lieutenant, was born and grew up in Los Angeles. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy, then trained and operated as a Navy SEAL, completing more than 100 combat operations and earning a Silver Star and Bronze Star with Combat V. Afterward, he went on to complete a degree in mathematics at the University of San Diego and a doctorate of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Kim was a resident physician in emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

 

• Jasmin Moghbeli, a U.S. Marine Corps major, considers Baldwin, New York, her hometown. She earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering with information technology at MIT and a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. She also is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School. Moghbeli came to NASA from Yuma, Arizona, where she tested H-1 helicopters and served as the quality assurance and avionics officer for Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1.

 

• Loral O’Hara was born in Houston. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kansas and a master’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue University. Prior to joining NASA, O’Hara was a Research Engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where she worked on the engineering, test, and operations of deep-ocean research submersibles and robots.

 

• Dr. Francisco “Frank” Rubio, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, originally is from Miami. He earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and a doctorate of medicine from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. Rubio has accumulated more than 1,100 hours as a Blackhawk helicopter pilot, including 600 hours of combat and imminent danger time. He was serving as a surgeon for the 3rd Battalion of the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group at Fort Carson, Colorado, before coming to NASA.

 

• Jessica Watkins hails from Lafayette, Colorado. She graduated from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, with a bachelor’s degree in geological and environmental sciences, then went on to earn a doctorate in geology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Watkins has worked at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology, where she collaborated on NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity.

CSA’s newest astronauts are:

• Joshua Kutryk, a Royal Canadian Air Force lieutenant colonel, is from Beauvallon, Alberta. He has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, as well as master’s degrees in space studies, flight test engineering, and defense studies. Prior to joining CSA, Kutryk worked as an experimental test pilot and a fighter pilot in Cold Lake, Alberta, where he led the unit responsible for the operational flight-testing of fighter aircraft in Canada.

 

• Jennifer Sidey-Gibbons hails from Calgary, Alberta. She holds an honors bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from McGill University in Montreal and a doctorate in engineering from the University of Cambridge. While at McGill, she conducted research on flame propagation in microgravity, in collaboration with CSA and the National Research Council Flight Research Laboratory. Prior to joining CSA, Sidey-Gibbons worked as an assistant professor in combustion in the Department of Engineering at Cambridge.

Astronaut candidate training for the new graduates included instruction, practice, and testing in spacewalking, robotics, International Space Station systems, T-38 jet proficiency, and Russian language. As astronauts, they will help develop spacecraft, support the teams currently in space and ultimately join the ranks of only about 500 people who have had the honor of going into space. NASA continues its work aboard the space station, which, in November, will celebrate 20 consecutive years of human occupation. The agency also is on the verge of launching astronauts again from American soil aboard American commercial spacecraft, and is preparing to send humans to the Moon as part of the Artemis program.

#NASA; #VertexAerospaceLLCOfMadison; #ArmstrongFlightResearchCenter 

Washington, Jan 10 (Canadian-Media): NASA has awarded a contract to Vertex Aerospace LLC of Madison, Mississippi, for aircraft operations support at the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, and other NASA centers, as needed, NASA reports said.

NASA. Courtesy of NASA

The five-year, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract has a value of $150 million and begins March 1.

Vertex will support all NASA-assigned aircraft operations, including maintenance, modification, and flight line operations.

#UniverseEmergedFromAPeriodofDarkness; #​EGS77; reionization

Arizona (U.S.), Jan 9 (Canadian-Media): About 13 billion years ago, the universe emerged from a period of darkness, ushering in a cosmic dawn. As galaxies lit up with stars, they changed the chemical composition of their surroundings, allowing light to shine clearly throughout the universe,   astronomy.com/news reports said.

This illustration of the EGS77 galaxy group shows the galaxies surrounded by overlapping bubbles of ionized hydrogen. Credit: NASA, ESA and V. Tilvi (ASU)

Looking in on that period is difficult. But, with telescopes that can peer billions of light-years away — and therefore back billions of years in time — scientists are getting a better idea of what the universe’s early days looked like.

In research highlighted Sunday at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, astronomers led by Vithal Tilvi at Arizona State University have spotted the most distant group of galaxies ever found. These young, bright objects are in the act of clearing away the fog of the early universe, showing astronomers just how the transition from darkness to light came about.

The work has been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal and is available on the preprint website arXiv.

Clearing the way

During the universe’s so-called “dark ages,” which began about half a billion years after the Big Bang, the abundant hydrogen that fills the cosmos was neutral (containing a proton and electron).

Neutral hydrogen scatters light like headlights in fog, so a universe filled with it is difficult to peer through. As the first galaxies formed stars, those young, bright suns began to emit energetic light. Their light ionized the hydrogen around them, knocking away electrons. Ionized hydrogen no longer scatters light, so by about one billion years after the Big Bang the fog had been cleared and light could travel freely.

“It’s somewhat akin to a frozen lake melting in the spring: The material is there, it’s the same set of atoms, but they’ve changed their physical conditions,” said team member James Rhoads of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, during a press conference. “They’ve changed their properties in a way that hasn’t gone back in the subsequent 13 billion years."

Blowing bubbles

Although astronomers have made progress in understanding this transition, called reionization, they have yet to decipher how exactly it occurred.

According to simulations, early galaxies ionized their environment in bubbles that ballooned and connected until the entire universe had been ionized. But those simulations offer several possible ways that reionization could have progressed.

To find out which scenario is correct, the team used the National Optical Astronomy Observatory’s Extremely Wide Field Infrared Imager, or NEWFIRM, on the 4-meter Mayall Telescope on Kitt Peak to search for a specific wavelength of light. Called Lyman-alpha, it is produced by young galaxies and stars. Although the light is emitted in ultraviolet wavelengths, it has been redshifted, or stretched, over time. Astronomers today must search for it as infrared light. And any early galaxies that popped up in the survey must have already ionized enough of their surroundings to let their Lyman-alpha light shine through, rather than scattering away.

The team spotted three distant galaxies that matched what they were looking for. Together, they form a galaxy group called EGS77. It is the most distant group of galaxies ever seen. Because looking at faraway galaxies is like looking back in time, astronomers are seeing EGS77 as it appeared about 680 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was just 5 percent its current age. 

Each galaxy is blowing a bubble of ionized hydrogen about 2 to 3 million light-years across, which is large enough that light can escape freely from the region.

What’s more, the bubbles are so big that they overlap, creating a larger, single region of space filled with ionized hydrogen around the group. 

EGS77 is the first galaxy group caught in the process of reionization. The finding opens the door to a better understanding of this vital yet difficult-to-see transition in the early universe. 

“Reionization was the last time that anything interesting happened in the life of a typical hydrogen atom, and it’s important to understand that history,” Rhoads said. “And if you look at how many galaxies there are where you see Lyman-alpha, you can start to do a census of what part of the universe must be ionized. So, what we do by doing this at different epochs of cosmic history is to map out the progress of reionization.”

That will ultimately help astronomers reveal exactly how the first stars and galaxies turned on, and with their light forever changed the cosmos.

#NASA; #InternationalSpaceStation; #CosmicRayDetector; #ExtravehicularCrewMember

Washington, Jan 8 (Canadian-Media): Four astronauts will venture outside the International Space Station for three spacewalks in January to complete battery upgrades and finalize repairs to an invaluable cosmic ray detector, NASA reports said.

NASA astronaut Jessica Meir takes an out-of-this-world "space-selfie" with her spacesuit helmet visor down reflecting her camera and International Space Station hardware. She and fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch (out of frame) ventured into the vacuum of space for seven hours and 17 minutes to swap a failed battery charge-discharge unit (BCDU) with a spare during the first all-woman spacewalk. Credits: NASA

Expedition 61 Flight Engineers Jessica Meir and Christina Koch of NASA are scheduled to conduct spacewalks Wednesday, Jan. 15, and Monday, Jan. 20, to finish replacing nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion batteries that store power generated by the station’s solar arrays on the station’s port truss.

Assuming the battery work goes as planned, NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan and space station Commander Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency) will exit the station Saturday, Jan. 25, to finish installing the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer’s (AMS) new cooling apparatus and lines begun in November and December, and verify they are ready for use.

Live coverage of all three spacewalks will begin at 5:30 a.m. EST on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

These will be the second and third spacewalks for Meir, who will be extravehicular crew member 1 (EV1) for both spacewalks. Koch, who will be extravehicular crew member 2 (EV2), will perform the fifth and sixth spacewalks of her career.
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Morgan, who will be EV1 for the AMS spacewalk, and Parmitano, who will be EV2, performed the three previous spacewalks to repair the spectrometer, which is searching for dark matter and antimatter in the universe using the station’s unique location and capabilities for scientific research.
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The spacewalks will be the 225th, 226th and 227th in support of space station assembly and maintenance.

#InterconnectedStellarNurseries; #RadcliffeWave; #MilkyWay's 3DStructure; #Gould'sBelt

Harvard University (U.S., Jan 7 (Canadian-Media): Astronomers at Harvard University have discovered a monolithic, wave-shaped gaseous structure—the largest ever seen in our galaxy—made up of interconnected stellar nurseries, phys.org/news reports.

Visualization of the Radcliffe Wave: a massive, wave-shaped gaseous structure made up of stellar nurseries, forming one of the largest coherent structures ever observed in our galaxy. This image, taken from the World Wide Telescope, represents the study data overlaid on an artist's illustration of the Milky Way and our sun. Credit: Alyssa Goodman / Harvard University

Dubbed the "Radcliffe wave" in honor of the collaboration's home base, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the discovery transforms a 150-year-old vision of nearby stellar nurseries as an expanding ring into one featuring an undulating, star-forming filament that reaches trillions of miles above and below the galactic disk.

The work, published in Nature on 7 January, was enabled by a new analysis of data from the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft, launched in 2013 with the mission of precisely measuring the position, distance, and motion of the stars. The research team combined the super-accurate data from Gaia with other measurements to construct a detailed, 3-D map of interstellar matter in the Milky Way, and noticed an unexpected pattern in the spiral arm closest to the Earth.

The researchers discovered a long, thin structure, about 9,000 light years long and 400 light years wide, with a wave-like shape, cresting 500 light years above and below the mid-plane of our Galaxy's disk. The Wave includes many of the stellar nurseries that were previously thought to form part of "Gould's Belt", a band of star-forming regions believed to be oriented around the Sun in a ring.

"No astronomer expected that we live next to a giant, wave-like collection of gas—or that it forms the Local Arm of the Milky Way," said Alyssa Goodman, the Robert Wheeler Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy at Harvard University, research associate at the Smithsonian Institution, and co-director of the Science Program at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. "We were completely shocked when we first realized how long and straight the Radcliffe Wave is, looking down on it from above in 3-D—but how sinusoidal it is when viewed from Earth. The Wave's very existence is forcing us to rethink our understanding of the Milky Way's 3-D structure."

"Gould and Herschel both observed bright stars forming in an arc projected on the sky, so for a long time, people have been trying to figure out if these molecular clouds actually form a ring in 3-D," said João Alves, professor of stellar astrophysics at the University of Vienna and Radcliffe Fellow (2018-2019). "Instead, what we've observed is the largest coherent gas structure we know of in the galaxy, organized not in a ring but in a massive, undulating filament. The Sun lies only 500 light years from the Wave at its closest point. It's been right in front of our eyes all the time, but we couldn't see it until now."

The new, 3-D map shows our galactic neighborhood in a new light, giving researchers a revised view of the Milky Way and opening the door to other major discoveries.

"We don't know what causes this shape but it could be like a ripple in a pond, as if something extraordinarily massive landed in our galaxy," said Alves. "What we do know is that our Sun interacts with this structure. It passed by a festival of supernovae as it crossed Orion 13 million years ago, and in another 13 million years it will cross the structure again, sort of like we are 'surfing the wave'."

An insider's view of the galaxy

Disentangling structures in the "dusty" galactic neighborhood within which we sit is a long-standing challenge in astronomy. In earlier studies, the research group of Douglas Finkbeiner, professor of astronomy and physics at Harvard, pioneered advanced statistical techniques to map the 3-D distribution of dust using vast surveys of stars' colors. Armed with new data from Gaia, Harvard graduate students Catherine Zucker and Joshua Speagle recently augmented these techniques, dramatically improving the ability of astronomers to measure distances to star-forming regions. That work, led by Zucker, is published in the Astrophysical Journal.

"We suspected there might be larger structures that we just couldn't put in context. So, to create an accurate map of our solar neighborhood, we combined observations from space telescopes like Gaia with astrostatistics, data visualization, and numerical simulations." explained Zucker, who is an NSF Graduate Fellow and Ph.D. candidate at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences based in Harvard's department of Astronomy.

Zucker played a key role in compiling the largest-ever catalog of accurate distances to local stellar nurseries—the basis for the 3-D map used in the study. She has set herself the goal of painting a new picture of the Milky Way Galaxy, near and far. "We pulled this team together so we could go beyond processing and tabulating the data to actively visualizing it—not just for ourselves but for everyone. Now, we can literally see the Milky Way with new eyes," she said.
"Studying stellar births is complicated by imperfect data. We risk getting the details wrong, because if you're confused about distance, you're confused about size." said Finkbeiner.

Goodman agreed, "All of the stars in the universe, including our Sun, are formed in dynamic, collapsing, clouds of gas and dust. But determining how much mass the clouds have, how large they are—has been difficult, because these properties depend on how far away the cloud is."

A universe of data

According to Goodman, scientists have been studying dense clouds of gas and dust between the stars for over a hundred years, zooming in on these regions with ever-higher resolution. Before Gaia, there were no significant datasets expansive enough to reveal the galaxy's structure on large scales. Since its launch in 2013, the space observatory has enabled measurements of the distances to one billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
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The flood of data from Gaia served as the perfect testbed for innovative, new statistical methods that reveal the shape of local stellar nurseries and their connection to the Milky Way's galactic structure. In this data-science-oriented collaboration, the Finkbeiner, Alves, and Goodman groups collaborated closely. The Finkbeiner group developed the statistical framework needed to infer the 3-D distribution of the dust clouds; the Alves group contributed deep expertise on stars, star formation, and Gaia; and the Goodman group developed the 3-D visualizations and analytic framework, called "glue", that allowed the Radcliffe Wave to be seen, explored, and quantitatively described.