Air Force, Space Force raise max enlistment age to 42

Oct 30, 08:33 AM

Aspiring airmen and guardians now have until the age of 42 to join the Department of the Air Force.

Department leadership quietly upped the age limit for new enlisted and officer recruits by three years on Oct. 25. The change arrives around a month after the Air Force missed its recruiting target for the first time since 1999.

“This opens the aperture to allow more Americans the opportunity to serve,” Leslie Brown, the chief of public affairs for the Air Force recruiting service, wrote in an email to Air Force Times. “The accession age of 42 allows an Airman or Guardian to serve a full 20 years since the retirement age is 62.”

The Air Force fell roughly 2,700 airmen short of its recruitment goal this year. Its space-focused sister service fared better, surpassing its 472 enlisted recruit benchmark.

Service recruiters continue to fight a confluence of headwinds on the way to reaching recruiting targets, including a strong job market and waning youth interest in military service.

Air Force officials anticipate that the new age ceiling will attract around 50 more recruits per year. In recent months, they also softened once strict rules surrounding tattoos and past drug use to lower barriers to entry without, they hope, compromising the quality of recruits.

The Air Force last revised its age cutoff for service in 2014, raising the bar from 27 to 39. Hundreds of recruits in their late thirties have joined the ranks since.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2023/10/30/air-force-space-force-raise-max-enlistment-age-to-42/

Cosmonauts on ISS spacewalk encounter coolant 'blob' while inspecting leaky radiator

Oct 26, 2023

Two cosmonauts conducting a spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday (Oct. 25) got an up-close view of a coolant leak that was first observed flowing from an external radiator earlier this month.

Oleg Kononenko came so close to the growing "blob" or "droplet" — as the pooling liquid was described — that one of his tethers became contaminated, necessitating it being bagged and left outside of the space station when the spacewalk ended.

Kononenko and his fellow Expedition 70 spacewalker, Nikolai Chub, also of the Russian federal space corporation Roscosmos, began the extravehicular activity (EVA) at 1:49 p.m. EDT (1749 GMT) on Wednesday, knowing that one of their first tasks was to isolate and photo document the radiator, which was first observed leaking coolant on Oct. 9. Used as a backup to a main body radiator that regulates the temperature inside Russia's Nauka multipurpose laboratory module, Kononenko and Chub configured a number of valves to cut off the external radiator from its ammonia supply.

After that was complete and before noticing the growing deposit of liquid coolant, Kononenko reported seeing a myriad of small holes on the surface of the radiator's panels.

"The holes have very even edges, like they've been drilled through," Kononenko radioed to the flight controllers working in Moscow Mission Control. "There are lots of them. They are spread in a chaotic manner."

The "blob" was believed to have formed from the residual coolant that was disturbed when the work was done to close the valves. Knowing in advance they might come in contact with the liquid, the cosmonauts were prepared with tissues and cloths to wipe down their spacesuits and tools so as to not bring any the material back inside the space station.

Russian engineers on the ground will use the data collected by the cosmonauts to further determine the cause for the leak and what steps might be taken to return the radiator to use in the future.

In addition to the radiator inspection, Kononenko and Chub also worked to install a synthetic radar communications system and released a nanosatellite to test solar sail technology. The radar, which will be used to monitor Earth's environment, was the first science payload to be mounted on Nauka's exterior. The radar's panels only partially deployed, and an attempt by the cosmonauts to get it to fully deploy was not successful.

The cube-shaped smallsat, which was developed by a team at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, was designed to test a means for deploying an experimental solar sail. With a little coaxing, the nanosatellite emerged from its housing and slowly tumbled away from the space station, but the solar wings did not extend when planned.

The 7-hour, 41-minute spacewalk came to its end with the hatch being closed to the Poisk module airlock at 9:30 p.m. EDT (0130 GMT on Oct. 26).

The EVA was the 268th in support of space station assembly, maintenance and upgrades. It was the first by Chub and the sixth spacewalk by Kononenko, who has now logged a total of 41 hours and 43 minutes working in Orlan spacesuits in the vacuum of space.

https://www.space.com/russian-spacewalk-nauka-radiator-leak-october-2023

Hubble Captures a Galactic Dance

OCT 27, 2023

This striking image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the interacting galaxy pair known as Arp-Madore 2339-661. The Arp-Madore catalog is a collection of peculiar galaxies, and this group’s particular peculiarity might be odder than first meets the eye, as there are three galaxies interacting here, not just two.

The two clearly defined galaxies are NGC 7733 (smaller, lower right) and NGC 7734 (larger, upper left). The third galaxy is currently referred to as NGC 7733N and is visible if you look carefully at the upper arm of NGC 7733. There you can spot knot-like structure, glowing with a different color than the arm and obscured by dark dust. This could easily pass as part of NGC 7733, but analysis of the velocities (speed and direction) involved reveals that this knot has a considerable additional redshift. This means it is very likely its own entity and not part of NGC 7733. This galaxy group presents one of the many challenges that observational astronomers face: working out whether an astronomical object really is just one, or multiple objects, one lying in front of another as seen from Earth’s perspective!

All three galaxies lie quite close to each other, roughly 500 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Tucana, and, as this image shows, they are interacting gravitationally with one another. In fact, some science literature refers to them as a ‘merging group,’ which means they will ultimately become a single entity.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-captures-a-galactic-dance-2/

The Crab Nebula Seen in New Light by NASA's Webb

October 30, 2023 10:00AM (EDT)

Exquisite, never-before-seen details help unravel the supernova remnant’s puzzling history.

Although the Crab Nebula is one of the most well-studied supernova remnants, questions about its progenitor and the nature of the explosion that created it still remain unanswered. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is on the case as it sleuths for any clues that remain within the supernova remnant. Webb’s infrared sensitivity and spatial resolution are offering astronomers a more comprehensive understanding of the still-expanding scene.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Since the recording of this energetic event in 1054 CE by 11th-century astronomers, the Crab Nebula has continued to draw attention and additional study as scientists seek to understand the conditions, behavior, and after-effects of supernovae through thorough study of the Crab, a relatively nearby example.

Using Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), a team led by Tea Temim at Princeton University is searching for answers about the Crab Nebula’s origins.

“Webb’s sensitivity and spatial resolution allow us to accurately determine the composition of the ejected material, particularly the content of iron and nickel, which may reveal what type of explosion produced the Crab Nebula,” explained Temim.

At first glance, the general shape of the supernova remnant is similar to the optical wavelength image released in 2005 from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope: In Webb’s infrared observation, a crisp, cage-like structure of fluffy gaseous filaments are shown in red-orange. However, in the central regions, emission from dust grains (yellow-white and green) is mapped out by Webb for the first time.

Additional aspects of the inner workings of the Crab Nebula become more prominent and are seen in greater detail in the infrared light captured by Webb. In particular, Webb highlights what is known as synchrotron radiation: emission produced from charged particles, like electrons, moving around magnetic field lines at relativistic speeds. The radiation appears here as milky smoke-like material throughout the majority of the Crab Nebula’s interior.

This feature is a product of the nebula’s pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star. The pulsar’s strong magnetic field accelerates particles to extremely high speeds and causes them to emit radiation as they wind around magnetic field lines. Though emitted across the electromagnetic spectrum, the synchrotron radiation is seen in unprecedented detail with Webb’s NIRCam instrument.

To locate the Crab Nebula’s pulsar heart, trace the wisps that follow a circular ripple-like pattern in the middle to the bright white dot in the center. Farther out from the core, follow the thin white ribbons of the radiation. The curvy wisps are closely grouped together, outlining the structure of the pulsar’s magnetic field, which sculpts and shapes the nebula.

At center left and right, the white material curves sharply inward from the filamentary dust cage’s edges and goes toward the neutron star’s location, as if the waist of the nebula is pinched. This abrupt slimming may be caused by the confinement of the supernova wind’s expansion by a belt of dense gas.

The wind produced by the pulsar heart continues to push the shell of gas and dust outward at a rapid pace. Among the remnant’s interior, yellow-white and green mottled filaments form large-scale loop-like structures, which represent areas where dust grains reside.

The search for answers about the Crab Nebula’s past continues as astronomers further analyze the Webb data and consult previous observations of the remnant taken by other telescopes. Scientists will have newer Hubble data to review within the next year or so from the telescope’s reimaging of the supernova remnant. This will mark Hubble’s first look at emission lines from the Crab Nebula in over 20 years, and will enable astronomers to more accurately compare Webb and Hubble’s findings.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-137

European Space Agency - Kawah Ijen: One of the Spookiest Places on Earth

Oct 28, 2023

Mirror mirror on the wall, what’s the spookiest of them all 👻?

Today we travel to a volcanic crater, full of acid that also spits blue flames!

Welcome to Kawah Ijen Lake, in East Java, Indonesia.

Geologists call it the “The largest acid barrel on Earth”, due to its high concentration of sulfuric acid and various minerals, which also give the lake its stunning blue-greenish colour.

One of the most spectacular phenomena at Kawah Ijen is its famous blue flames. These eerie blue flames are ignited by sulfuric gases escaping from the cracks in the volcanic crater , creating a surreal nighttime spectacle.

Credits: @europeanspaceagency

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cy8CwL0oO_e/