TYB
Streamed live 2 hours ago
Kamala Harris Delivers Remarks at a Transmission Line Groundbreaking Event
Tonopah, AZ
https://youtu.be/LPk4ns6yGIs
NASA’s Geotail Mission Operations Come to an End After 30 Years
Jan 18, 2023
After 30 years in orbit, mission operations for the joint NASA-JAXA Geotail spacecraft have ended, after the failure of the spacecraft’s remaining data recorder.
Since its launch on July 24, 1992, Geotail orbited Earth, gathering an immense dataset on the structure and dynamics of the magnetosphere, Earth’s protective magnetic bubble. Geotail was originally slated for a four-year run, but the mission was extended several times due to its high-quality data return, which contributed to over a thousand scientific publications.
While one of Geotail’s two data recorders failed in 2012, the second continued to work until experiencing an anomaly on June 28, 2022. After attempts to remotely repair the recorder failed, the mission operations were ended on November 28, 2022.
“Geotail has been a very productive satellite, and it was the first joint NASA-JAXA mission,” said Don Fairfield, emeritus space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and NASA’s first project scientist for Geotail until his retirement in 2008. “The mission made important contributions to our understanding of how the solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field to produce magnetic storms and auroras.”
With an elongated orbit, Geotail sailed through the invisible boundaries of the magnetosphere, gathering data on the physical process at play there to help understand how the flow of energy and particles from the Sun reach Earth. Geotail made many scientific breakthroughs, including helping scientists understand how quickly material from the Sun passes into the magnetosphere, the physical processes at play at the magnetosphere’s boundary, and identifying oxygen, silicon, sodium, and aluminum in the lunar atmosphere.
The mission also helped identify the location of a process called magnetic reconnection, which is a major conveyor of material and energy from the Sun into the magnetosphere and one of the instigators of the aurora. This discovery laid the way for the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, or MMS, which launched in 2015.
Over the years, Geotail collaborated with many of NASA’s other space missions including MMS, Van Allen Probes, Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms mission, Cluster, and Wind. With an orbit that took it as far as 120,000 miles from Earth at times, Geotail helped provide complementary data from remote parts of the magnetosphere to give scientists a complete picture of how events seen in one area affect other regions. Geotail also paired with observations on the ground to confirm the location and mechanisms of how aurora form.
Although Geotail is done gathering new data, the scientific discoveries aren’t over. Scientists will continue to study Geotail’s data in the coming years.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/sun/nasa-s-geotail-mission-operations-come-to-an-end-after-30-years
Missouri manhunt underway for 5 escaped inmates, including three 'known sex offenders'
Published January 19, 2023 2:20pm EST
A manhunt is underway Thursday in Missouri for five escaped inmates — including three which authorities describe as "known sex offenders" — who busted out of a prison south of St. Louis.
The St. Francois County Sheriff’s Department says the jailbreak at the county’s detention center in Farmington began around 7 p.m. Tuesday when the group entered a secured cell, then "made their way through a secured door by use of force."
From there, the sheriff of the jail told FOX 2 News, it is believed they got onto the jail’s roof through corridors containing the facility’s plumbing before making their way back to the ground and out of the area.
A statement from the Sheriff’s Department said the inmates eventually stole a gray 2009 Scion TC with Missouri temporary tags from the parking lot of the Centene Corporation — a nearby healthcare business — and were last seen "traveling in a southerly direction."
"All inmates were being held on felony charges. Three inmates, LuJuan Tucker, Aaron Sebastian and Kelly McSean — AKA: Larry Bemboom — are known sex offenders being held for crimes committed while confined in the Missouri Department of Corrections Sexual Offender Treatment Center," the department said. "Dakota Pace and Michael Wilkins were being held on felony warrants."
Investigators say each of the inmates discarded their orange prison clothing and were observed on surveillance cameras "wearing white thermal leggings, white boxer and/or basketball shorts and white t-shirts," while "Tucker was wearing a black t-shirt."
The St. Francois County Sheriff's Department says the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the United States Marshals Service are assisting in the investigation, with the latter offering rewards of up to $5,000 for information leading to the inmates’ captures.
The Marshals Service is describing each of the men as "dangerous," and authorities are asking anyone who spots them to keep distance and call 911.
The Marshals Service also said Tucker previously has been charged with the rape of a 12-year-old girl, while McSean was being held on charges linked to the sexual assault of a 39-year-old woman.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/missouri-manhunt-underway-5-escaped-inmates-including-three-known-sex-offenders