TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
Nov 7, 2023
A Martian Dust Devil Spins By
It moved across the surface of Mars what was it? A dust devil. Such spinning columns of rising air are heated by the warm surface and are also common in warm and dry areas on planet Earth. Typically lasting only a few minutes, dust devils become visible as they pick up loose red-colored dust, leaving the darker and heavier sand beneath intact. Dust devils not only look cool they can leave visible trails, and have been credited with unexpected cleanings of the surfaces of solar panels. The images in the featured AI-interpolated video were captured in early August by the Perseverance rover currently searching for signs of ancient life in Jezero Crater. The six-second time-lapse video encapsulates a real duration of just over one minute. Visible in the distance, the spinning dust devil was estimated to be passing by at about 20 kilometers per hour and extend up about 2 kilometers high.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
Skies Turn Blood Red as Northern Lights Hit Southern Europe
Nov 06, 2023 at 5:43 AM EST
The skies over much of Europe were lit up on Sunday night as far as southern Slovakia, as the northern lights were spotted by stargazers across the continent.
A bright red magnetic storm tinged with green and purple was captured by a meteorological camera near the village of Stanča, near Slovakia's south-eastern border with Hungary, shortly after 6 p.m. local time (12 p.m. ET). A similar display was caught over Krakow, Poland, seemingly from a plane.
In the U.K., an amateur photographer caught a snap of red bands of light hovering over the ancient Stonehenge prehistoric circle in Salisbury, in the south of England.
"Most of the drive was misty and thick fog," the photographer wrote on Facebook. "But on arrival it wasn't too bad so set my camera up and was just happy to see the aurora once more after missing out on the last few storms due to clouds."
Red and green glows were seen in places across the rest of the British Isles, with one person sharing an image of their "blissful evening" in Castle Creavie, in the southwest of Scotland.
In the Netherlands, Dutch photographer Rick Bekker captured some faint pink bands arching over several of the country's iconic windmills in Kinderdijk, a village just outside of Rotterdam. He described the sight as "unprecedentedly beautiful."
Elsewhere, the government of Kazakhstan posted an image of red and green lights over the nation, but did not specify where. Newsweek approached the Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs via email for comment on Monday.
The Russian news agency RIA Novosti said the meteorological phenomenon had been seen "over almost all" of the nation, sharing images from Kaliningrad, Russia's exclave in northern Europe, and the rural Perm region to the north of Kazakhstan.
The northern lights—or aurora borealis—are caused by solar winds interacting with the Earth's magnetic poles, which is why they typically occur over northern regions such as Scandinavia. A similar phenomenon, aurora australis, occurs around the south pole.
When solar wind particles hit the upper atmosphere, the resulting reaction emits photons of light. Many of the greens and reds recently seen were likely due to interaction with oxygen gas, though these colors can be created with nitrogen as well.
Depending on the viewing point and the intensity of the display, the northern lights can appear as a glow in the sky, or as an arc or ribbon of light. Perhaps the most famous examples are when they form a curtain of light across the sky.
This winter's auroras are expected to be more prominent than those seen in the past decade, as a higher amount of solar radiation is expected to crash into Earth's magnetic spheres, making the lights brighter. Scientists have recorded a greater amount of activity on the surface of the sun, with the expected peak in solar activity to come next year.
"Tonight had the strongest Northern Lights I've ever seen!" Max Wernerson, a landscape photographer based in Tromso, Norway, wrote. "[I've been] chasing them now for nearly 6 years on almost every winter night, but I have never seen the oxygen red as strong to the naked eye before."
https://www.newsweek.com/skies-turn-red-northern-lights-europe-1841050
Some more cool images
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/11/06/aurora-northern-lights-europe-unitedstates/
Ireland’s first satellite on its way to launch
07/11/2023
After years of development with the support of the ESA Education programme, the Educational Irish Research Satellite 1 (EIRSAT-1) is set to launch in November, marking Ireland’s first steps into space.
EIRSAT-1 was built by students from University College Dublin under the framework of ESA Academy’s Fly Your Satellite! programme (FYS) - a fully hands-on initiative supporting university student teams in the development of their own satellites.
Lead by students from the UCD School of Physics and the UCD College of Engineering, the project began in 2017 when the team’s proposal to build a CubeSat to perform gamma ray astronomy was accepted as part of the 2nd cycle of FYS.
The 2-unit CubeSat carries three experiments – or ‘payloads’. The primary science payload GMOD is a gamma ray detector that will study the most luminous explosions in the universe, gamma ray bursts. Secondary payloads include a thermal coating study that will assess the performance of surface treatments for satellites as well as an alternative system for controlling spacecraft orientation.
“University College Dublin has immense expertise in the domains of space science of astrophysics, and with EIRSAT-1 they overcame the challenges of a very complex engineering project,” recalls Joost Vanreusel, Head of the ESA Academy, preparing the next generation of Europe’s space workforce. “And that’s what made it a very appealing project for the Fly Your Satellite! educational programme: the combination of the scientific expertise at the university with ESA’s experience and expertise in the building and testing of small spacecraft.”
Over the past six years, the students have worked with ESA experts to design and build the satellite, and participated in test campaigns at ESA Education’s CubeSat Support Facility in Belgium and other ESA sites.
But the support and guidance did not stop there. A core tenant of the Fly Your Satellite! programme is exposing students to the full life cycle of a space mission, and this includes guidance and support for launch and beyond.
As Ireland’s first ever satellite, EIRSAT-1 posed unique regulatory challenges. ESA worked closely with Irish authorities to legally establish EIRSAT-1 as Ireland’s first satellite.
The student team also attended dedicated spacecraft communications and other training courses at ESA Academy’s Training and Learning Centre in Belgium, and later at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt Germany, to help establish Ireland’s first spacecraft operations procedures.
In the process, the team has built vital space infrastructure at UCD Dublin, including a cleanroom and Mission Control, where current and incoming students have been training to operate EIRSAT-1 once in orbit - a major step for space education and capacity building on Irish soil.
“It is a matter of pride for the Education team to be involved in the launch of the first satellite of a nation,” says Head of the ESA Education Office Hugo Maree. “The Irish students who arrived at ESA in 2017 are now in the lab, running tests with strong engineering skills, and preparing to operate a satellite like a proper Mission Control team. Seeing such young bright minds, readying for a career in the space sector and reaching so high, is so inspiring – the ultimate meaning of our Education programme.”
The satellite has left Ireland and is on its way to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA. Launch is currently slated for launch on 29 November on a Space X Falcon 9 rocket.
https://www.esa.int/Education/CubeSats_-_Fly_Your_Satellite/Ireland_s_first_satellite_on_its_way_to_launch
National Weather Service radar in Montana
What is STEVE, and how is it different from the aurora?
The aurora might be the most famous atmospheric phenomenon in our night sky, but it certainly isn't the only one. If you've not yet been introduced, we'd love you to meet STEVE.
STEVE — Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement — is an aurora-like glow that often accompanies the northern lights, yet is a distinct phenomenon, according to the American Geophysical Union (AGU). STEVE was discovered between 2015 and 2016, not by professional astronomers or physicists, but by citizen scientists in Canada chasing the aurora, according to the first study published on STEVE in Science Advances in 2018.
Now, researchers are studying STEVE with vigor, and keeping a close eye on the night sky to see it themselves.
STEVE is a streak of purplish light in the night sky that's similar to an aurora. In fact, STEVE has only ever been observed in conjunction with an aurora. That's because both phenomena are thought to be created by the same space weather events, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).
When energized particles from the sun crash into Earth, our magnetic field redirects the particles toward the north and south poles.
The electrically charged particles then enter Earth's atmosphere, exciting gas atoms and molecules and generating the aurora borealis (northern lights) and the aurora australis (southern lights). The process is similar to how neon lights work: When the molecules and atoms get "excited" by electrons, they must return to their original energy (ground state) and do so by releasing the energy as photons (light).
At the same time, some of these solar emissions (in the form of super-speedy streams of plasma) heat gas in the upper atmosphere, and that's what creates STEVE, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Thus, STEVE is hot, glowing gas.
The first paper about STEVE was published in 2018, but it was inspired by the work of amateur aurora chasers and citizen scientists from the Facebook group Alberta Aurora Chasers, according to the CBC. The group had photographed the phenomenon multiple times between 2015 and 2016, and they brought their observations to space scientists Elizabeth MacDonald from NASA and Eric Donovan from the University of Calgary at a pub one night after a lecture. The researchers began an investigation into STEVE — then known as just plain-old Steve (more on that later) — which led to that first paper.
Interestingly, mentions of STEVE (though not by that name), exist in the historical record — we just forgot all about them. "After STEVE became popular, scientists went back to historical observations of aurora and realized that a STEVE-like phenomenon had been reported back in the 1890s and 1910s," STEVE researcher Toshi Nishimura of Boston University and a co-author on the original STEVE paper told Space.com. "There were no colored photographs back then, so it is difficult to confirm if it was really STEVE or not. But the description they made about the emission, 'a luminous band…like a straight tail of a large comet,' matches how we now characterize STEVE."
What is STEVE in an aurora?
STEVE is not an aurora, though they both are glowing atmospheric phenomena. It does, however, occur simultaneously with an aurora, as the same process fuels both phenomena. That said STEVE does not always appear when there is an aurora, and we're not sure why.
What's the difference between STEVE and the aurora?
Visually, STEVE appears to be a mauve or magenta streak across the sky, whereas the aurora usually appears as green ribbons. Physically, STEVE is created by heated gas that glows, whereas the aurora is created by charged particles that glow.
Why is STEVE rare?
While we haven't seen very much of STEVE yet, it might not be as rare as you might think. We hadn't noticed it for so long because scientists simply hadn't been looking in the right part of the night sky. Now that we're studying STEVE more, we may discover it's not very rare at all, just like the aurora. Anecdotally, though, it does appear less frequently than the aurora, but we aren't sure why.
Today, STEVE stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. But the name has a fun backstory — STEVE is a backronym, or a reverse-engineered acronym.
According to the CBC, the Canadian aurora chasers who photographed the phenomenon were the first to dub it "Steve." Why? In the animated film "Over the Hedge", animal characters discover a mysterious hedge, and they decide to name it "Steve" in an attempt to make it seem less scary. The same could be said for the celestial Steve.
Once Steve became a true scientific discovery, researchers gave the phenomenon the acronym STEVE as a nod to the work of the Alberta Aurora Chasers.
https://www.space.com/what-is-steve
New commercial space bill addresses mission authorization and SSA
November 5, 2023
The Republican leadership of the House Science Committee has introduced legislation that would create a mission authorization system for commercial space activities and alter plans for a space traffic coordination system.
Reps. Brian Babin (R-Texas) and Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), the chairs of the House Science Committee space subcommittee and the full committee, respectively, introduced the Commercial Space Act of 2023 Nov. 2. The bill may be considered by the committee as soon as this week, although a markup has not yet been announced.
“This bill crafts a favorable and competitive environment right here at home by streamlining our regulatory process and clarifying federal roles in licensing commercial space activities,” Lucas said in the statement about the bill.
A key part of the bill would be to create a “certification” process for commercial spacecraft not licensed by other agencies, such as the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Companies would provide basic information about their spacecraft to the Office of Space Commerce, including a debris mitigation plan, and the office would have 60 days to either grant or deny the application.
The certification process is intended to address uncertainty about who is responsible in the government for providing authorization and continuing supervision of commercial space activities, as required under Article 6 of the Outer Space Treaty, but not currently regulated by other agencies. The National Space Council is working on its own approach, which it calls mission authorization, but has yet to publish a proposal.
“To continue strengthening American leadership in space, we must modernize our commercial space framework. The Commercial Space Act will do just that by addressing outdated laws, enhancing innovation, and ensuring our partners are not stymied by regulatory hurdles,” Babin said in a statement about the bill.
Another section of the bill addresses civil space situational awareness (SSA) work led by the Office of Space Commerce. The bill would direct the office to select a consortium led by an academic or nonprofit organization to provide SSA “data, information and services.” That would appear to supersede the office’s own work on an SSA system, called the Traffic Coordination System for Space, currently in development.
The bill would elevate the Office of Space Commerce, currently within NOAA, into the main Department of Commerce, with the director of the office reporting directly to the Secretary of Commerce. That had long been sought by advocates of the office to elevate its profile.
The bill includes several other provisions. One would direct NASA to establish a “Space Situational Awareness Institute” that would lead research on improving SSA. The bill extends the “learning period” restricting the FAA’s ability to regulate commercial spaceflight participant safety from Jan. 1, 2024, to Oct. 1, 2031, a long-term extension that many in industry have sought.
Another section of the bill would establish new requirements if the United States signs on to any non-binding international agreement on norms or rules of behavior in space. Specifically, it would require the president to certify to relevant congressional committees that the agreement is non-binding and for other agencies to confirm that the agreement has “no economically significant impact” on the ability of U.S. non-governmental entities to work in space.
https://spacenews.com/new-commercial-space-bill-addresses-mission-authorization-and-ssa/
https://republicans-science.house.gov/_cache/files/5/4/54a60442-19b8-47ea-a21c-19b38c298d82/0260EA77510C0982D504F703238E205C.commercial-space-activities-xml.pdf