NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

June 20, 2024

Sandy and the Moon Halo

Last April's Full Moon shines through high clouds near the horizon, casting shadows in this garden-at-night skyscape. Along with canine sentinel Sandy watching the garden gate, the wide-angle snapshot also captured the bright Moon's 22 degree ice halo. But June's bright Full Moon will cast shadows too. This month, the Moon's exact full phase occurs at 01:08 UTC June 22. That's a mere 28 hours or so after today's June solstice (at 20:51 UTC June 20), the moment when the Sun reaches its maximum northern declination. Known to some as a Strawberry Moon, June's Full Moon is at its southernmost declination, and of course will create its own 22 degree halos in hazy night skies.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?

=NASA Releases Hubble Image Taken in New Pointing Mode

JUN 18, 2024

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken its first new images since changing to an alternate operating mode that uses one gyro.

The spacecraft returned to science operations June 14 after being offline for several weeks due to an issue with one of its gyroscopes (gyros), which help control and orient the telescope.

This new image features NGC 1546, a nearby galaxy in the constellation Dorado. The galaxy’s orientation gives us a good view of dust lanes from slightly above and backlit by the galaxy’s core.

This dust absorbs light from the core, reddening it and making the dust appear rusty-brown. The core itself glows brightly in a yellowish light indicating an older population of stars.

Brilliant-blue regions of active star formation sparkle through the dust. Several background galaxies also are visible, including an edge-on spiral just to the left of NGC 1546.

Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 captured the image as part of a joint observing program between Hubble and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

The program also uses data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, allowing scientists to obtain a highly detailed, multiwavelength view of how stars form and evolve.

The image represents one of the first observations taken with Hubble since transitioning to the new pointing mode, enabling more consistent science operations.

The NASA team expects that Hubble can do most of its science observations in this new mode, continuing its groundbreaking observations of the cosmos.

“Hubble’s new image of a spectacular galaxy demonstrates the full success of our new, more stable pointing mode for the telescope,” said Dr. Jennifer Wiseman, senior project scientist for Hubble at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“We’re poised now for many years of discovery ahead, and we’ll be looking at everything from our solar system to exoplanets to distant galaxies. Hubble plays a powerful role in NASA’s astronomical toolkit.”

Launched in 1990, Hubble has been observing the universe for more than three decades, recently celebrating its 34th anniversary.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasa-releases-hubble-image-taken-in-new-pointing-mode/

The Marshall Star for June 18, 2024

CONTENTS

California Teams Win $1.5 Million in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge

NASA Announces Winners of 2024 Student Launch Competition

Keith Savoy Named Deputy Director at Michoud Assembly Facility

‘NASA in the Park’ Returns to Rocket City June 22

Mission Success is in Our Hands: Baraka Truss

That’s the Spirit: Marshall Team Members Show Support at Community Softball Game

Coming in Hot: NASA’s Chandra Checks Habitability of Exoplanets

NASA Announces New System to Aid Disaster Response

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/marshall/the-marshall-star-for-june-18-2024/

NASA Selects Lockheed Martin to Build Next-Gen Spacecraft for NOAA

JUN 18, 2024

NASA, on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has selected Lockheed Martin Corp. of Littleton, Colorado, to build the spacecraft for NOAA’s Geostationary Extended Observations (GeoXO) satellite program.

This cost-plus-award-fee contract is valued at approximately $2.27 billion. It includes the development of three spacecraft as well as four options for additional spacecraft.

The anticipated period of performance for this contract includes support for 10 years of on-orbit operations and five years of on-orbit storage, for a total of 15 years for each spacecraft.

The work will take place at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Littleton and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The GeoXO constellation will include three operational satellites — east, west and central. Each geostationary, three-axis stabilized spacecraft is designed to host three instruments.

The centrally-located spacecraft will carry an infrared sounder and atmospheric composition instrument and can also accommodate a partner payload.

Spacecraft in the east and west positions will carry an imager, lightning mapper, and ocean color instrument.

They will also support an auxiliary communication payload for the NOAA Data Collection System relay, dissemination, and commanding.

The contract scope includes the tasks necessary to design, analyze, develop, fabricate, integrate, test, evaluate, and support launch of the GeoXO satellites; provide engineering development units; supply and maintain the ground support equipment and simulators; and support mission operations at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Maryland.

NASA and NOAA oversee the development, launch, testing, and operation of all the satellites in the GeoXO program. NOAA funds and manages the program, operations, and data products.

On behalf of NOAA, NASA and commercial partners develop and build the instruments and spacecraft and launch the satellites.

As part of NOAA’s constellation of geostationary environmental satellites to protect life and property across the Western Hemisphere, the GeoXO program is the follow-on to the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites – R (GOES-R) Series Program.

The GeoXO satellite system will advance Earth observations from geostationary orbit. The mission will supply vital information to address major environmental challenges of the future in support of weather, ocean, and climate operations in the United States.

The advanced capabilities from GeoXO will help assess our changing planet and the evolving needs of the nation’s data users.

Together, NASA and NOAA are working to ensure GeoXO’s critical observations are in place by the early 2030s when the GOES-R Series nears the end of its operational lifetime.

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-lockheed-martin-to-build-next-gen-spacecraft-for-noaa/

NASA discussing asteroid-threat exercise today

June 20, 2024

NASA will discuss the results of a recent asteroid-threat exercise today (June 20), and you can watch it live.

The simulation, called the Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise, was held April 2 and April 3 at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland.

It aimed "to inform and assess our ability as a nation to respond effectively to the threat of a potentially hazardous asteroid or comet," NASA officials said in a statement.

Officials from NASA and other organizations will discuss the results of the exercise during a briefing today at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1930 GMT). You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA.

Participating in the briefing will be:

Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer Emeritus, NASA Headquarters, Washington

Leviticus "L.A." Lewis, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) detailee to NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, NASA Headquarters

Terik Daly, planetary defense section supervisor, APL

NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office and FEMA organized the April exercise, with the help of the U.S. Department of State Office of Space Affairs. It was the fifth such simulation that researchers have conducted.

"While there are no known significant asteroid impact threats for the foreseeable future, hypothetical exercises like this one, which are conducted about every two years, provide valuable insights on how the United States could respond effectively if a potential asteroid impact threat is identified," NASA officials wrote in the same statement.

"This year’s exercise was the first to include participation by NASA's international collaborators in planetary defense and the first to have the benefit of actual data from NASA's successful DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, the world's first in-space technology demonstration for defending Earth against potential asteroid impacts," they added.

https://www.space.com/nasa-asteroid-threat-exercise-webcast-preview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21X5lGlDOfg

i5 Space expands to 1,000 members nationwide

June 17, 2024

A space policy and strategy club founded at the U.S. Air Force Academy has expanded to a nationwide organization with over 1,000 members at dozens of U.S. Air Force ROTC detachments.

Originally called the Institute for Applied Space Policy in Strategy in 2021, the club was rebranded i5 Space a year later.

It now has almost 70 host detachments across the nation, including at the U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Military Academy, Harvard, Yale University, Cornell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Oklahoma, University of Texas at Austin, and others.

Developing space domain awareness

“Today, we are a cadet-created club that is now a national organization,” said Cadet 2nd Class John Stevenson, i5 Space Director of Staff.

“We focus on undergraduate space education to build better leaders aware of the space domain through our many educational programs and media content.”

The Academy is the premier U.S. Space Force’s Academy, the largest commissioning source for the service’s officers. The i5 Space program is initiated by Academy cadets and grown by ROTC cadets. But members do not have to be in an ROTC program to join.

“Civilian students play a key role in the current i5 leadership, and we want to ensure we highlight the critical role civilians play in the U.S. Space Force where half of our workforce is civilian,” said Col. Marc Sands, the U.S. Air Force Academy’s U.S. Space Force Space Delta 13 Detachment 1 commander.

“We are also excited to include our Five Eyes partners —Australia, Canada, the UK and New Zealand — because we want the program to reflect the U.S. commitment to partners and allies.”

The path for commissioning as Guardians

The Class of 2020, the first to graduate from the Academy after the Space Force was established in December 2019, commissioned 86 officers into the new service.

To date, 485 Academy graduates have commissioned as Guardians. The i5 Space mission is to produce educated and inspired leaders prepared to define the character of warfighting in space.

Sands wants “space-minded Airmen and air-minded Guardians.” But the organization targets any students interested in learning how space contributes to the Joint fight, he said.

Everything i5 Space does is focused around their five I’s: innovating, informing, influencing, impacting and inspiring, Stevenson said.

The organization is not just designed for cadets and students who aim for a Space Force career but to educate Department of Defense officers on the necessity of space.

It is an officially recognized Space Training and Readiness Command activity.

Programs include cyber training exercises and wargaming, a Space Force doctrine and Air Force Instruction chatbot, a four-course educational curriculum, officer mentorship and more.

Additionally, i5 Space maintains research partnerships with the Space Force and NATO.

Education, research and connection

In 2021, a year after the original club began at the Academy, cadets began reaching out to ROTC detachments at other academic institutions nationwide. The original mission of a focus on space policy transitioned into providing educational content and programs.

Every i5 Space squadron operates differently, but at the U.S. Air Force Academy, their operations focus on the three pillars of education, research and connection, said USAFA i5 Squadron Commander 2nd Lt. (then Cadet 1st Class) Abigail Ryan.

“In the beginning, the club showed cadets the Space Force as a legitimate thing,” Ryan said. “A lot of people didn’t know what it would be when it began. The club’s original focus was space policy, and it just grew from there.”

Expanding beyond space policy

The i5 teams work on programs that expanded from policy and research to space’s artificial intelligence and cyber aspect. An educational curriculum called the STAR program teaches everything about space from history to orbital mechanics and joint relations.

During the summer, i5 Space members focus on the Azimuth Space Program. U.S. Army and U.S. Navy cadets join AFROTC and USAFA students considering a Space Force commission in a joint undergraduate nationwide space education and training program.

The program inspires cadets to become Space Force officers of character.

Preparing and recruiting future Guardians

Now, members said they have observed increased interest and recruitment since the organization began as an Academy club. They expect the trend to continue.

“People have a better understanding of the Space Force,” Stevenson said. “We do a better job of preparing and recruiting people to join the Space Force.

We will continue to raise the standard of what the Space Force can expect from i5 Space cadets.”

https://www.starcom.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3809124/i5-space-expands-to-1000-members-nationwide/

https://www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3811359/98th-space-range-squadron-takes-warfighter-readiness-to-next-level/

98th Space Range Squadron takes warfighter readiness to next level

June 18, 2024

For decades, Air Force test and training ranges, like the Nevada Test and Training Range and the Utah Test and Training Range, have provided aircrews with flexible, realistic, multidimensional battle spaces to conduct testing and advanced training.

Though only a few years old, the National Space Test and Training Complex functions as a space-based counterpart, providing unique opportunities for Guardians to hone their warfighting skills in the era of Great Power Competition.

The Orbital Warfare Range of the National Space Test and Training Complex provides operational environment presentation, dedicated space domain awareness, time space position information data, safety of flight, security and range control in support of Space Force test, training and experimentation activities.

NSTTC-O is operated and managed by the Range and Aggressor Delta, Space Delta 11, under the authority of Space Training and Readiness Command. DEL 11 is comprised of five squadrons, and the newest is the 98th Space Range Squadron, activated in 2022.

The 98th SRS provides a safe and secure operationally representative live-on-orbit environment to test developmental and operational space systems.

Capt. Anthony Guglielmo, 98th Space Range Squadron mission safety officer, acknowledges the concept of a space range can seem abstract to those outside of space-related career fields.

He says it helps people to better conceptualize the range when he describes it like a “sandbox at the playground.”

“In simple terms, it means that if you’re a space operator or a test engineer, who wants to come and test out your new equipment in space, we provide a safe, secure, supervised area with lots of different toys for your equipment to interact with,” Guglielmo said.

Basic examples of equipment considered ideal for testing in the range might include an optical payload (essentially a telescope or camera), or a satellite communications relay.

For partners like Space Operations Command, STARCOM, Space Systems Command and the test community at large, the ability to determine if equipment behaves as expected in a live environment is an important part of the development process because it allows operators to try new and different things traditionally only available through computer simulation.

Institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory and the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing site enable the 98th SRS to provide cutting-edge, high fidelity sensor data for real time situational awareness and analysis.

This data enables users to gain a deeper understanding of their tactics and equipment.

In addition, creative thinking and well cultivated relationships have yielded the incorporation of residual assets, such as research and development satellites that are past their standard life span, into the inventory of “toys” in the sandbox.

“Since these assets are past their design life, there’s significant utility in giving them new life within the range for a variety of experimentation purposes,” Guglielmo said.

“At the end of one or two years, it’s still a hunk of metal in space that can do maneuvers, and that makes a great surrogate for us to utilize.”

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>>21055454

Scarlet Stars is one example of a tactics and development event that harnesses residual assets in support of Space Delta 2. Introduced by the 57th Space Aggressor Squadron, also a part of DEL 11, and executed in collaboration with the 98th SRS and operators from SSC. Scarlet Stars provides an opportunity for all three organizations to work closely with DEL 2 to customize a training plan and create a threat-based training scenario.

“Tracking things in space is a challenge,” said Tech. Sgt. David Morrison, 98th SRS plans and scheduling flight chief. “Tracking really small things in space is exponentially harder.”

One of the residual assets in use is a 27U Satellite — about the size of two shoeboxes taped together — set out 36,000 kilometers above the surface of the earth, making it an ideal training aid.

“DEL 2 has been working to sharpen their skills in identifying something very small and determining if that small thing just maneuvered,” Morrison said.

“With the help of the 57th Space Aggressor Squadron, we can use the ‘shoe boxes’ to provide that exact scenario, including truth data that helps operators determine if they were indeed able to get their sensors to align accurately and quickly enough to capture the movement.”

Because of the significance of range activities on Guardian readiness, both the size of the 98th SRS and the number of requests to utilize the range are growing exponentially.

The squadron of 28 is increasing, and opportunities to host multiple entities and more intricate range scenarios are expanding.

“We’ve had great success with Scarlet Stars for DEL 2, and we’re looking forward to helping others with their training goals as well,” Guglielmo said.

“We want to open the aperture even wider. For example, we’re currently working with Space Delta 9 to execute their Protect and Defend advanced training objectives.”

Though the standard planning timeline for range coordination can take months depending on users’ specifications, some test and training objectives can be shortened. Interested parties are encouraged to reach out directly to the 98th SRS to explore collaboration opportunities.

“It’s truly meaningful to be part of the team building the squadron, range, and unique set capabilities from the ground up,” Guglielmo said. “The role we play in sharpening warfighters’ swords has a direct and lasting impact on our nation’s space superiority.”

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