NASA spacecraft rockets toward sun for closest look yet

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A NASA spacecraft rocketed toward the sun Sunday on an unprecedented quest to get closer to our star than anything ever sent before.

The Parker Solar Probe will fly straight through the wispy edges of the corona, or outer solar atmosphere, that was visible during last August’s total solar eclipse. It eventually will get within 3.8 million (6 million kilometers) of the sun’s surface, staying comfortably cool despite the extreme heat and radiation, and allowing scientists to vicariously explore the sun in a way never before possible.

No wonder scientists consider it the coolest, hottest mission under the sun, and what better day to launch to the sun than Sunday as NASA noted.
“Fly baby girl, fly!!” project scientist Nicola Fox of Johns Hopkins University tweeted just before liftoff. She urged it to “go touch the sun!”


Protected by a revolutionary new carbon heat shield and other high-tech wonders, the spacecraft will zip past Venus in October. That will set up the first solar encounter in November. Altogether, the Parker probe will make 24 close approaches to the sun on the seven-year, $1.5 billion undertaking.

For the second straight day, thousands of spectators jammed the launch site in the middle of the night as well as surrounding towns, including 91-year-old astrophysicist Eugene Parker for whom the spacecraft is named. He proposed the existence of solar wind — a steady, supersonic stream of particles blasting off the sun — 60 years ago.

It was the first time NASA named a spacecraft after someone still alive, and Parker wasn’t about to let it take off without him. Saturday morning’s launch attempt was foiled by last-minute technical trouble.

“I’m just so glad to be here with him,” said NASA’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen. “Frankly, there’s no other name that belongs on this mission.”

The Delta IV Heavy rocket thundered into the pre-dawn darkness, thrilling onlookers for miles around. NASA needed the mighty 23-story rocket, plus a third stage, to get the diminutive Parker probe — the size of a small car and well under a ton — racing toward the sun.

From Earth, it is 93 million miles to the sun (150 million kilometers), and the Parker probe will be within 4 percent of that distance. That will be seven times closer than previous spacecraft.

Parker will start shattering records this fall. On its very first brush with the sun, it will come within 15.5 million miles (25 million kilometers), easily beating the current record set by NASA’s Helios 2 spacecraft in 1976. By the time Parker gets to its 22nd orbit of the sun, it will be even deeper into the corona and traveling at a record-breaking 430,000 mph (690,000 kilometers per hour).

Nothing from Planet Earth has ever hit that kind of speed.


Even Fox has difficulty comprehending the mission’s derring-do.

“To me, it’s still mind-blowing,” she said. “Even I still go, really? We’re doing that?”

Zurbuchen considers the sun the most important star in our universe — it’s ours, after all — and so this is one of NASA’s big-time strategic missions. By better understanding the sun’s life-giving and sometimes violent nature, Earthlings can better protect satellites and astronauts in orbit, and power grids on the ground, he noted. In today’s tech-dependent society, everyone stands to benefit.

With this mission, scientists hope to unlock the many mysteries of the sun, a commonplace yellow dwarf star around 4.5 billion years old. Among the puzzlers: Why is the corona hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the sun and why is the sun’s atmosphere continually expanding and accelerating, as the University of Chicago’s Parker accurately predicted in 1958?

“The only way we can do that is to finally go up and touch the sun,” Fox said. “We’ve looked at it. We’ve studied it from missions that are close in, even as close as the planet Mercury. But we have to go there.”

The spacecraft’s heat shield will serve as an umbrella, shading the science instruments during the close, critical solar junctures. Sensors on the spacecraft will make certain the heat shield faces the sun at the right times. If there’s any tilting, the spacecraft will correct itself so nothing gets fried. With a communication lag time of 16 minutes each way, the spacecraft must fend for itself at the sun. The Johns Hopkins flight controllers in Laurel, Maryland, will be too far away to help.

A mission to get close up and personal with our star has been on NASA’s books since 1958. The trick was making the spacecraft small, compact and light enough to travel at incredible speeds, while surviving the sun’s punishing environment and the extreme change in temperature when the spacecraft is out near Venus.

“We’ve had to wait so long for our technology to catch up with our dreams,” Fox said. “It’s incredible to be standing here today.”

More than 1 million names are aboard the spacecraft, submitted last spring by space enthusiasts, as well as photos of Parker, the man, and a copy of his 1958 landmark paper on solar wind.

“I’ll bet you 10 bucks it works,” Parker said. /ee

source: technology.inquirer.net

Crimson glory: All you need to know about the rare blood moon

SINGAPORE—Across the world on Wednesday, sky-watchers will be casting their gaze towards the heavens for a glimpse of the rare blood moon — where the moon appears reddish as a result of a total lunar eclipse.

This phenomenal cosmic event begins Wednesday before sunrise in North America, and is a cause for excitement among astronomy enthusiasts all over the world.  



Here are some interesting facts about this once-in-a-red-moon occurrence:

What is a blood moon?

When the Sun, Earth and Moon are aligned, a total lunar eclipse occurs and sees the Moon passing close to the centre of the Earth’s inner shadow – the umbra. The filtering and refracting effect of Earth’s atmosphere creates a blush on the face of the Moon, giving it a reddish hue.

Why is it significant?
Not only is this eclipse one of the most striking astronomical events visible from Earth, the blood moon can also be seen by the naked eye and does not require telescopes.

What’s the difference between lunar and solar eclipses?

For a solar eclipse to occur, the Moon must come between the Earth and Sun; for a lunar eclipse to happen, the Earth must come between the Sun and Moon.

In all instances, all three bodies must be nearly in a straight line.

In total solar eclipses, the Sun is darkened save for some wisps of light around its corona – as though a hairy sackcloth was held up in front of it. It is also termed a “sackcloth sun”.

In total lunar eclipses, the Moon is not completely darkened. Depending on the weather, the Earth’s atmosphere filters out blue rays, and what results is the Moon looking faintly dull orange or red. Hence the term, “blood moon”.

What are some noteworthy lunar eclipse dates?

The longest blood moon took place on July 23, 1888, and lasted one hour and 46 minutes.

The year 2011 marked the longest total lunar eclipse in a decade, lasting one hour and 35 minutes.

The shortest one is projected to occur on Nov 9, 2068, and is estimated to last just 18 minutes.

How often does a blood moon tetrad happen?

Blood moons are rare occurrences, and tonight’s one is even more so because it is one in a set of four eclipses – what astronomers call a tetrad.

Tetrads are so uncommon, that there was reportedly no tetrad for 300 years, between 1600 and 1900.

Tonight’s blood moon is said to be the second in a series that will happen over two years, with the first having taken place earlier this year in April. The third is slated for April 4, 2015, and the fourth on Sept 28, 2015.

The next tetrad is predicted for 2032-2033.

Interestingly, the ongoing 2014-2015 tetrad falls in the Hebrew year 5775 – which runs from September 2014 through September 2015 – and will supposedly fall exactly on four major Hebrew festivals.

Where and what time can it be seen?

Tonight’s celestial show can be watched by sky-gazers in the Americas and Asia.

The full eclipse will begin at 3.25am Pacific Daylight Time (6.25pm Singapore time) and will continue for about an hour.

Recent blood moon occurrences in Singapore

In 2007, Singapore caught only the tail end of a blood moon, although people from places such as the United States, South America and Australia witnessed it in its full glory.

In 2011, some 700 people gathered at the Singapore Science Centre to watch the eclipse, but overcast skies resulted in a failed sighting.

In April 2014, the first eclipse in the current 2014-2015 tetrad took place, but it was not visible in Singapore. Although the moon during this eclipse had an unusual tinge, this was said to be attributed to atmospheric effects, dust or particles.

Where to view the blood moon in Singapore?

The Astronomical Society of Singapore (Tasos) has organised an observation gathering tonight for the rare total lunar eclipse at Labrador Park, near the Tanjong Berlayer Beacon facing Sentosa.

The start of tonight’s total lunar eclipse phase is estimated to be at 6.25pm, and since Singapore’s moonrise is estimated to be at 6.52pm tonight, the moon is expected to be in total eclipse phase from the time of its rising.

How else can we view it?

Watch a  live stream of tonight’s blood moon by Slooh, a company that connects telescopes with the Internet to provide access to the broader public.

Alternatively, US space agency  Nasa is also providing a live feed  to the event tonight.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

2 space rocks hours apart point up the danger

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—A space rock even bigger than the meteor that exploded like an atom bomb over Russia could drop out of the sky unannounced at any time and wreak havoc on a city. And Hollywood to the contrary, there isn’t much the world’s scientists and generals can do about it.

But some former astronauts want to give the world a fighting chance.

They’re hopeful Friday’s cosmic coincidence — Earth’s close brush with a 150-foot (46-meter) asteroid, hours after the 49-foot (15-meter) meteor struck in Russia — will draw attention to the dangers lurking in outer space and lead to action, such as better detection and tracking of asteroids.

“After today, a lot of people will be paying attention,” said Rusty Schweickart, who flew on Apollo 9 in 1969, helped establish the planet-protecting B612 Foundation and has been warning NASA for years to put more muscle and money into a heightened asteroid alert.

Earth is menaced all the time by meteors, which are chunks of asteroids or comets that enter Earth’s atmosphere. But many if not most of them are simply too small to detect from afar with the tools now available to astronomers.

The meteor that shattered over the Ural Mountains was estimated to be 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II. It blew out thousands of windows and left more than 1,000 people injured in Chelyabinsk, a city of 1 million. And yet no one saw it coming; it was about the size of a bus.

“This is a tiny asteroid,” said astronomer Paul Chodas, who works in NASA’s Near-Earth Object program in Pasadena, California “It would be very faint and difficult to detect — not impossible, but difficult.”

As for the three-times-longer asteroid that hurtled by Earth later in the day Friday, passing closer to the planet than some communications satellites, astronomers in Spain did not even discover it until a year ago. That would have been too late for pre-emptive action — such as the launch of a deflecting spacecraft — if it had been on a collision course with Earth.

Asteroid 2012 DA14, as it is known, passed harmlessly within 17,150 miles (27,599 kilometers) of Earth, zooming by at 17,400 mph (28,001 kph), or 5 miles (8 kilometers) per second.

Scientists believe there are anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million “near-Earth” asteroids comparable in size to DA14 or bigger out there. But less than 1 percent have actually been spotted. Astronomers have catalogued only 9,600 of them, of which nearly 1,300 are bigger than 0.6 miles (0.97 kilometers).

Earth’s atmosphere gets hit with 100 tons of junk every day, most of it the size of sand, and most of it burning up before it reaches the ground, according to NASA.

“These fireballs happen about once a day or so, but we just don’t see them because many of them fall over the ocean or in remote areas. This one was an exception,” NASA’s Jim Green, director of planetary science, said of the meteor in Russia.

A 100 to 130-foot (30 to 40-meter) asteroid exploded over Siberia in 1908 and flattened 825 square miles (2,137 square kilometers) of forest, while the rock that is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was a monster 6 miles (9.6 kilometers) across.

The chances of Earth getting hit without warning by one of the big ones are “extremely low, so low that it’s ridiculous. But the smaller ones are quite different,” Schweickart said. He warned: “If we get hit by one of them, it’s most likely we wouldn’t have known anything about it before it hit.”

Chodas said the meteor strike in Russia is “like Mother Nature is showing us what a small one — a tiny one, really — can do.”

All this points up the need for more money for tracking of near-Earth objects, according to Schweickart and the former space shuttle and station astronaut who now heads up the B612 Foundation, Ed Lu.

A few years ago, Schweickart and others recommended NASA launch a $250 million-a-year program to survey asteroids and work up a deflection plan. After 10 years of cataloging, the annual price tag could drop to $75 million, they said.

“Unfortunately, NASA never acted on any of our recommendations,” he lamented. “So the result of it is that instead of having $250 million a year and working on this actively, NASA now has $20 million. … It’s peanuts.”

Congress immediately weighed in on Friday.

“Today’s events are a stark reminder of the need to invest in space science,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, A Republican and chairman of the House science, space and technology committee. He called for a hearing in the coming weeks.

Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, said the space agency takes asteroid threats seriously and has poured money into looking for ways to better spot them. Annual spending on asteroid-detection at NASA has gone from $4 million a few years ago to $20 million now.

“NASA has recognized that asteroids and meteoroids and orbital debris pose a bigger problem than anybody anticipated decades ago,” Cooke said.

Schweickart’s B612 Foundation — named after the asteroid in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “Le Petit Prince” — has been unwilling to wait on the sidelines and is putting together a privately funded mission to launch an infrared telescope that would orbit the sun to hunt and track asteroids.

Its need cannot be underestimated, Schweickart warned. Real life is unlike movies such as “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact.” Scientists will need to know 15, 20 or 30 years in advance of a killer rock’s approach to undertake an effective asteroid-deflection campaign, he said, because it would take a long time for the spacecraft to reach the asteroid for a good nudge.

“That’s why we want to find them now,” he said.

As Chodas observed Friday, “It’s like a shooting gallery here.”

source:  http://technology.inquirer.net/23071/2-space-rocks-hours-apart-point-up-the-danger

Earth braces for biggest space storm in five years

WASHINGTON - The biggest space weather storm in five years is hurtling toward Earth, threatening to disrupt power grids, GPS systems, satellites and airline flights, experts say.

The brunt of the storm is expected to strike early Thursday and last through Friday, possibly garbling some of Earthlings' most prized gadgets but also giving viewers in parts of Central Asia a prime look at the aurora borealis, or northern lights, when darkness falls on Thursday.

"Space weather has gotten very interesting over the past 24 hours," said Joseph Kunches, a space weather scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, NASA warned of a "severe" storm event that would impact both the Earth and Mars as well as some key space agency satellites.

The fuss began late Sunday at an active region on the Sun known as 1429, with a big solar flare that was associated with a burst of solar wind and plasma known as a coronal mass ejection that thrust toward the Earth at some four million miles per hour (6.4 million kilometers per hour).

A pair of solar flares and a CME followed overnight Tuesday-Wednesday, setting off a strong geomagnetic and solar radiation storm registering at level three on a five-step scale.

NASA said the first of the two flares on March 6-7 -- classified in the potent X class and facing directly at the Earth -- was the biggest this year and one of the largest of this cycle known as the solar minimum, which began in early 2007.

In fact, it was second only to a stronger one that erupted in August, and the leading edge of the CME it sparked is expected to reach Earth at 0525 GMT on March 8, plus or minus seven hours.

"Such a CME could result in a severe geomagnetic storm, causing aurora at low latitudes, with possible disruption to high frequency radio communication, global positioning systems (GPS) and power grids," NASA said.

The solar flares alone caused brief high frequency radio blackouts that have now passed, according to NOAA.

The storm is likely "the strongest one since December 2006," Kunches said, noting, however, that the Earth experienced a stronger radio blackout last August.

"But en masse, if you put it all together with the geomagnetic effects and the solar radiation effects, I would put it on par with one at the end of the last solar cycle, which was over five years ago."

Satellites, power grids and even astronauts aboard the International Space Station could be affected by the radiation storm, which may cause them to seek shelter in better protected parts of the orbiting lab as they have in the past.

"Flight surgeons in Houston's mission control center have been monitoring the solar activity and will continue to do so," NASA spokesman Mike Curie said.

"They have determined that there presently is no concern for the six crew members aboard the International Space Station."

However, Kunches said some commercial airlines have already taken actions to reroute and fly further away from the poles.

And more such storms could follow in the coming days because region 1429 is expected to stay active, he said.

Geomagnetic and radiation storms are growing more frequent as the Sun leaves its solar minimum period and moves into a solar maximum over the coming years, but people are generally protected by Earth's magnetic field.

"The current increase in the number of X-class flares is part of the Sun's normal 11-year solar cycle, during which activity on the Sun ramps up to solar maximum, which is expected to peak in late 2013," the US space agency said.

However, some experts are concerned that because the world is more reliant on GPS and satellite technology now than it was during the last solar maximum, more disruptions to modern life are likely.

Space storms are not new. The first major solar flare was recorded by British astronomer Richard Carrington in 1859.

Other solar geomagnetic storms have been observed in recent decades. One huge solar flare in 1972 cut off long-distance telephone communication in the midwestern state of Illinois, NASA said.

Another similar flare in 1989 "provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission" and caused blackouts across the Canadian province of Quebec, according to the US space agency said. — AFP

source: gmanetwork.com