TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
July 3, 2024
M83: Star Streams and a Thousand Rubies
Big, bright, and beautiful, spiral galaxy M83 lies a mere twelve million light-years away, near the southeastern tip of the very long constellation Hydra. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is known as the Southern Pinwheel for its pronounced spiral arms. But the wealth of reddish star forming regions found near the edges of the arms' thick dust lanes, also suggest another popular moniker for M83, the Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. This new deep telescopic digital image also records the bright galaxy's faint, extended halo. Arcing toward the bottom of the cosmic frame lies a stellar tidal stream, debris drawn from massive M83 by the gravitational disruption of a smaller, merging satellite galaxy. Astronomers David Malin and Brian Hadley found the elusive star stream in the mid 1990s by enhancing photographic plates.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
Freedom and shit
New report details minutes leading up to plane crash that killed NASA astronaut Bill Anders
6:54 PM PDT July 2, 2024
Everything about the day was typical, family and friends of Bill Anders said.
It was typical for him to take a plane from the Heritage Flight Museum he founded in Skagit County to fly his typical "Orcas run," past his previous home in the San Juan Islands.
He texted a family friend, and former neighbor, who lived on Orcas Island, letting her know he would be flying by soon. That was typical, she told investigators.
It was all typical until it wasn't.
At about 11:40 a.m. on June 7, Anders' plane crashed into the Puget Sound waters of Deer Harbor.
The latest preliminary report from the National Transportation Security Board (NTSB) shares new details about the minutes leading up to the fatal crash.
The new report said Anders’ son was working at the Heritage Flight Museum on the day of the crash and Anders, a NASA astronaut and accomplished pilot, told him he was heading out that morning for an “Orcas run,” a description he used for a route around the San Juan Islands that included a fly over his previous home.
Anders boarded the Beech A45 plane around 10:50 a.m. and sent a text to a family friend about 10 minutes later, stating he would soon be flying past her house around 11:40 a.m., the report said.
On the western shore of Orcas Island, the friend heard Anders' plane — a familiar sound from previous flyovers — and watched at 11:37 a.m. as he flew north along the shoreline.
She later told investigators Anders would usually do two flybys and while he sometimes rocks the airplane’s wings, “he never performed any kind of aerobatic maneuvers,” the report said.
Anders’ flew out of sight behind trees, but the friend heard, what she believed to be, the plane turning left to the south.
His airplane came back into view as it flew south, but the plane was flying higher than usual over the water, the report said.
After the plane passed by the friend said she saw the left wing drop – and continue to descend toward the water where it crashed.
William "Bill" Anders, 90, was killed and his body was recovered a few hours later by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife dive team.
Another witness about a third of a mile away heard a vintage airplane flying by and went to his deck to see it, recording what would be its final moments.
Video showed the airplane turned upside down as if doing a loop, with its nose down and heading south.
“Over the next three seconds, the airplane had transitioned to an almost vertical dive,” the report states. While appearing to pull out of the drive, the airplane’s right wingtip struck the water and crashed going north.
The NTSB said the airplane’s fuselage was located about 1,700 feet west of the last radar in about 30 feet of water.
Most of the plane’s wreckage was recovered from the area during the following week. The NTSB said it is under further investigation.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/ntsb-releases-preliminary-report-fatal-plane-crash-nasa-astronaut-bill-anders/281-cbe13ba9-9538-447d-aac4-8d5400227f34
NASA’s ECOSTRESS Maps Burn Risk Across Phoenix Streets
JUL 02, 2024
Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California have mapped scorching pavement in Phoenix where contact with skin — from a fall, for example — can cause serious burns.
The image shows land surface temperatures across a grid of roads and adjacent sidewalks, revealing how urban spaces can turn hazardous during hot weather.
Data for this visualization of the Phoenix area — the fifth most populous city in the United States — was collected at 1:02 p.m. local time on June 19, 2024, by a NASA instrument aboard the International Space Station.
Called ECOSTRESS (short for the Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station), the instrument measures thermal infrared emissions from Earth’s surface.
The image shows how miles of asphalt and concrete surfaces (colored here in yellow, red, and purple, based on temperature) trap heat.
The surfaces registered at least 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius) to the touch — hot enough to cause contact burns in minutes to seconds.
The image also shows cooling effects of green spaces in communities like Encanto and Camelback East, in contrast to the hotter surface temperatures seen in Maryvale and Central City, where there are fewer parks and trees.
“We create these maps to be intuitive to users and help make data more accessible to the public and citizens scientists,” said Glynn Hulley, a JPL climate researcher.
“We see them as a vital tool for planning effective heat interventions, such as tree planting, that can cool down the hottest roads and sidewalks.”
Homing in on Heat
At the lower right of the image is Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport, where ECOSTRESS recorded some of the hottest land surface temperatures within the city —around 140 F (60 C).
The air temperature on June 19 at the airport reached 106 F (43 C). Air temperature, which is measured out of direct sunlight, can differ significantly from the temperature at the land surface.
Streets are often the hottest surfaces of the built environment due to dark asphalt paving that absorbs more sunlight than lighter-colored surfaces; asphalt absorbs up to 95% of solar radiation.
These types of surfaces can easily be 40 to 60 degrees F (22 to 33 degrees C) hotter than the air temperature on a very hot day.
Launched to the International Space Station in 2018, ECOSTRESS has as its primary mission the identification of plants’ thresholds for water use and water stress, giving insight into their ability to adapt to a warming climate.
But the instrument is also useful for documenting other heat-related phenomena, like patterns of heat absorption and retention.
To produce the image of Phoenix, scientists used a machine learning algorithm that incorporates data from additional satellites: NASA/USGS Landsat and Sentinel-2.
The combined measurements were used to “sharpen” the surface temperatures to a resolution of 100 feet (30 meters) by 100 feet (30 meters).
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/ecostress/nasas-ecostress-maps-burn-risk-across-phoenix-streets/
Studying Hurricane Beryl from Space
JUL 02, 2024
NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this image of Hurricane Beryl in the Caribbean on July 1, 2024, while aboard the International Space Station, and posted it to X.
The Category 4 hurricane had winds of about 130 mph (215 kph).
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/studying-hurricane-beryl-from-space/
NASA’s Boeing Test Flight Crew to Discuss Starliner Mission from Space
JUL 02, 2024
Media are invited to hear from NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts discussing their mission during an Earth to space call at 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday, July 10.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will participate in the news conference from aboard the International Space Station in low Earth orbit.
NASA will stream the event on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA TV through a variety of platforms including social media.
Media interested in participating must RSVP no later than 5 p.m., Tuesday, July 9, to the newsroom at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston at 281-483-5111 or jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov.
To ask questions, reporters must dial into the news conference no later than 10 minutes before the start of the call.
Wilmore and Williams have been living and working aboard the station since docking on June 6, contributing to the expedition crew’s research and maintenance activities, while helping ground teams collect critical data for long-duration Starliner flights to the orbiting complex.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasas-boeing-test-flight-crew-to-discuss-starliner-mission-from-space/
NASA Asteroid Experts Create Hypothetical Impact Scenario for Exercise
JUL 02, 2024
A large asteroid impacting Earth is highly unlikely for the foreseeable future.
But because the damage from such an event could be great, NASA leads hypothetical asteroid impact “tabletop” exercises every two years with experts and decision-makers from federal and international agencies to address the many uncertainties of an impact scenario.
The most recent exercise took place this past April, with a preliminary report being issued on June 20.
Making such a scenario realistic and useful for all involved is no small task.
Scientists from the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which specializes in the tracking and orbital determination of asteroids and comets and finding out if any are hazards to Earth, have played a major role in designing these exercises since the first 11 years ago.
“These hypothetical scenarios are complex and take significant effort to design, so our purpose is to make them useful and challenging for exercise participants and decision-makers to hone their processes and procedures to quickly come to a plan of action while addressing gaps in the planetary defense community’s knowledge,” said JPL’s Paul Chodas, the director of CNEOS.
The Impact Scenario
This year’s scenario: A hypothetical asteroid, possibly several hundred yards across, has been discovered, with an estimated 72% chance of impacting Earth in 14 years.
Potential impact locations include heavily populated areas in North America, Southern Europe, and North Africa, but there is still a 28% chance the asteroid will miss Earth.
After several months of being tracked, the asteroid moves too close to the Sun, making further observations impossible for another seven months. Decision-makers must figure out what to do.
Leading the exercise was NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), the Federal Emergency Management Agency Response Directorate, and the Department of State Office of Space Affairs.
Over the course of two days in April, participants gathered at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which hosted the event, to consider the potential national and global responses to the scenario.
“This was a very successful tabletop exercise, with nearly 100 participants from U.S. government agencies and, for the first time, international planetary defense experts,” said Terik Daly from APL, who coordinated the exercise.
“An asteroid impact would have severe national and international ramifications, so should this scenario play out for real, we’d need international collaboration.”
Reality Informs Fiction
In real life, CNEOS calculates the orbit of every known near-Earth object to provide assessments of future potential impact hazards in support of NASA’s planetary defense program.
To make this scenario realistic, the CNEOS team simulated all the observations in the months leading up to the exercise and used orbital determination calculations to simulate the probability of impact.
“At this point in time, the impact was likely but not yet certain, and there were significant uncertainties in the object’s size and the impact location,” said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at JPL and CNEOS, who led the design of the asteroid’s orbit.
“It was interesting to see how this affected the decision-makers’ choices and how the international community might respond to a real-world threat 14 years out.”
Options to Deflect
Preparation, planning, and decision-making have been key focal points of all five exercises that have taken place over the past 11 years.
For instance, could a reconnaissance spacecraft be sent to the asteroid to gather additional data on its orbit and better determine its size and mass? Would it also be feasible to attempt deflecting the asteroid so that it would miss Earth?
The viability of this method was recently demonstrated by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which impacted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, slightly changing its trajectory.
Other methods of deflection have also been considered during the exercises.
https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/nasa-asteroid-experts-create-hypothetical-impact-scenario-for-exercise/