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Aurora police say gang activity ‘isolated’ as Denver police deny apartment takeovers
Updated: Aug 29, 2024 / 08:30 AM MDT
The Denver Police Department said in a statement Wednesday that it was “not aware” of any Denver apartment buildings being taken over by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Despite this, the department stated that it takes the presence of the gang in the city seriously and that the safety of residents and officers is its “top priority.”
“There are reasons to believe that members of this gang are tied to crimes in the area,” the statement said. “However, DPD is not aware of any apartment buildings being ‘taken over’ by this gang in Denver.”
The Aurora Police Department also responded to the situation and said they are “aware that components” of the gang are operating in the city, and are gathering evidence to connect it to crimes.
APD did say, however, that it believes reports of influence in Aurora are “isolated.”
Law enforcement linked the gang to a violent jewelry store heist that happened in Denver on June 24. Four Venezuelan nationals have been indicted in connection to the crime.
The same gang also triggered a law enforcement safety bulletin that warned police in Denver that members had been “given a green light to fire or attack law enforcement.”
Denver Mayor Mike Johnston spoke to FOX31 about the situation in early August. He said the city was watching the situation “very closely” and he had been in contact with Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas about concerns and potential options.
Denver is not the only city that has addressed people’s concerns about the gang’s presence in the area.
On Aug. 19, the Aurora Police Department announced that it would join forces with the Colorado State Patrol and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for a special task force to address concerns about the Tren de Aragua gang.
Police said the task force’s main goal would be assisting agencies around the area and maximizing resources through sharing intelligence in ongoing investigations.
On Wednesday, the department reiterated that it is working with other agencies but that “it would be improper” for the city or APD to make any statements on specific incidents or law enforcement strategies.
While Denver has not stated outright that it was joining any specific task force, it said that it “continues actively investigating” the gang alongside its law enforcement partners in the area.
The city of Aurora closed the Fitzsimons apartment complex off Colfax Avenue and Nome Street on Aug. 13 and said dozens of code violations were to blame.
CBZ Management, the company that operated the building, told FOX31 that they had not been able to conduct maintenance or repairs because the complex had been overrun by gang activity.
However, Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman said that was misleading, and that the problem preceded “any problems with Venezuelan gangs” and even the migrant crisis at large.
Denver police said the community can assist the department’s efforts by submitting tips through Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.
People can remain anonymous when submitting tips. Denver police also urged officers not to ask witnesses or victims of crime about their immigration status in order to remove any potential barrier to reporting.
The Aurora Police Department urged people to “not remain silent victims” and to report crimes to local law enforcement agencies.
https://kdvr.com/news/local/denver-police-not-aware-of-any-apartment-takeovers-by-gangs-in-the-city/
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
August 29, 2024
Star Factory Messier 17
A nearby star factory known as Messier 17 lies some 5,500 light-years away in the nebula-rich constellation Sagittarius. At that distance, this 1.5 degree wide field-of-view would span about 150 light-years. In the sharp color composite image faint details of the region's gas and dust clouds are highlighted with narrowband image data against a backdrop of central Milky Way stars. The stellar winds and energetic radiation from hot, massive stars already formed from M17's stock of cosmic gas and dust have slowly carved away at the remaining interstellar material, producing the nebula's cavernous appearance and the undulating shapes within. A popular stop on telescopic tours of the cosmos, M17 is also known as the Omega or the Swan Nebula.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
NASA, Boeing Optimizing Vehicle Assembly Building High Bay for Future SLS Stage Production
Aug 27, 2024
NASA is preparing space at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for upcoming assembly activities of the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket core stage for future Artemis missions, beginning with Artemis III.
Teams are currently outfitting the assembly building’s High Bay 2 for future vertical assembly of the rocket stage that will help power NASA’s Artemis campaign to the Moon.
During Apollo, High Bay 2, one of four high bays inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, was used to stack the Saturn V rocket.
During the Space Shuttle Program, the high bay was used for external tank checkout and storage and as a contingency storage area for the shuttle.
Michigan-based Futuramic is constructing the tooling that will hold the core stage in a vertical position, allowing NASA and Boeing, the SLS core stage lead contractor, to integrate the SLS rocket’s engine section and four RS-25 engines to finish assembly of the rocket stage.
Vertical integration will streamline final production efforts, offering technicians 360-degree access to the stage both internally and externally.
“The High Bay 2 area at NASA Kennedy is critical for work as SLS transitions from a developmental to operational model,” said Chad Bryant, deputy manager of the SLS Stages Office.
“While teams are stacking and preparing the SLS rocket for launch of one Artemis mission, the SLS core stage for another Artemis mission will be taking shape just across the aisleway.”
Under the new assembly model beginning with Artemis III, all the major structures for the SLS core stage will continue to be fully produced and manufactured at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.
Upon completion of manufacturing and thermal protection system application, the engine section will be shipped to NASA Kennedy for final outfitting. Later, the top sections of the core stage – the forward skirt, intertank, liquid oxygen tank, and liquid hydrogen tank – will be outfitted and joined at NASA Michoud and shipped to NASA Kennedy for final assembly.
The fully assembled core stage for Artemis II arrived at Kennedy on July 23. NASA’s Pegasus barge delivered the SLS engine section for Artemis III to Kennedy in December 2022.
Teams at NASA Michoud are outfitting the remaining core stage elements and preparing to horizontally join them.
The four RS-25 engines for the Artemis III mission are complete at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and will be transported to NASA Kennedy in 2025.
Major core stage and exploration upper stage structures are in work at NASA Michoud for Artemis IV and beyond.
NASA is working to land the first woman, first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut on the Moon under Artemis.
SLS is part of NASA’s backbone for deep space exploration, along with the Orion spacecraft, supporting ground systems, advanced spacesuits and rovers, the Gateway in orbit around the Moon, and commercial human landing systems.
SLS is the only rocket that can send Orion, astronauts, and supplies to the Moon in a single launch.
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/esdmd/common-exploration-systems-development-division/space-launch-system/nasa-boeing-optimizing-vehicle-assembly-building-high-bay-for-future-sls-stage-production/
The Marshall Star for August 28, 2024
Contents
Marshall Leadership Updates Team Members on Culture, Strategy
NASA Moves Artemis II Rocket Adapter to Pegasus Barge for Shipment
Cassiopeia A,Thenthe Cosmos: 25 Years of Chandra X-ray Science
The Legacy Continues: Space & Rocket Center Event Highlights Chandra’s 25th Anniversary
Take 5 with April Hargrave
Over the Moon: Photographer Captures Supermoon Rising Near Marshall
NASA, Boeing Optimizing Vehicle Assembly Building High Bay for Future SLS Stage Production
How Students Learn to Fly NASA’s IXPE Spacecraft
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/marshall/the-marshall-star-for-august-28-2024/
First NASA-Supported Researcher to Fly on Suborbital Rocket
Aug 28, 2024
For the first time, a NASA-funded researcher will fly with their experiment on a commercial suborbital rocket.
The technology is one of two NASA-supported experiments, also known as payloads, funded by the agency’s Flight Opportunities program that will launch aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket system on a flight test no earlier than Thursday, Aug. 29.
The researcher-tended payload, from the University of Florida in Gainesville, seeks to understand how changes in gravity during spaceflight affect plant biology.
Researcher Rob Ferl will activate small, self-contained tubes pre-loaded with plants and preservative to biochemically freeze the samples at various stages of gravity.
During the flight, co-principal investigator Anna-Lisa Paul will conduct four identical experiments as a control.
After the flight, Ferl and Paul will examine the preserved plants to study the effect of gravity transitions on the plants’ gene expression.
Studying how changes in gravity affect plant growth will support future missions to the Moon and Mars.
The university’s flight test was funded by a grant awarded through the Flight Opportunities program’s TechFlights solicitation with additional support from NASA’s Division of Biological and Physical Sciences.
This experiment builds on NASA’s long history of supporting plant research and aims to accelerate the pace and productivity of space-based research.
The other Flight Opportunities supported payload is from HeetShield, a small business in Flagstaff, Arizona.
Two new thermal protection system materials will be mounted to the outside of New Shepard’s propulsion module to assess their thermal performance in a relevant environment, since conditions will be similar to planetary entry.
After the flight, HeetShield will analyze the structure of the materials to determine how they were affected by the flight.
Flight Opportunities, within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, facilitates demonstration of technologies for space exploration and the expansion of space commerce through suborbital testing with industry flight providers.
Through various mechanisms, the program funds flight tests for internal and external technology payloads.
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/first-nasa-supported-researcher-to-fly-on-suborbital-rocket/
NASA Assigns Astronaut Jonny Kim to First Space Station Mission
Aug 28, 2024
During his first mission to the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will serve as a flight engineer and member of the upcoming Expedition 72/73 crew.
Kim will launch on the Roscosmos Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft in March 2025, accompanied by Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky.
The trio will spend approximately eight months at the space station.
While aboard the orbiting laboratory, Kim will conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations to help prepare the crew for future space missions and provide benefits to people on Earth.
NASA selected Kim as an astronaut in 2017.
After completing the initial astronaut candidate training, Kim supported mission and crew operations in various roles including the Expedition 65 lead operations officer, T-38 operations liaison, and space station capcom chief engineer.
A native of Los Angeles, Kim is a United States Navy lieutenant commander and dual designated naval aviator and flight surgeon.
Kim also served as an enlisted Navy SEAL.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the University of San Diego and a medical degree from Harvard Medical School in Boston, and completed his internship with the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
For more than two decades, humans have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge, and making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth.
The station is a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and to expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit.
As commercial companies focus on providing human space transportation services and destinations as part of a robust low Earth orbit economy, NASA is able to more fully focus its resources on deep space missions to the Moon and Mars.
https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-assigns-astronaut-jonny-kim-to-first-space-station-mission/
NASA Project in Puerto Rico Trains Students in Marine Biology
Aug 28, 2024
Tainaliz Marie Rodríguez Lugo took a deep breath, adjusted her snorkel mask, and plunged into the ocean, fins first.
Three weeks earlier, Rodríguez Lugo couldn’t swim. Now the college student was gathering data on water quality and coral reefs for a NASA-led marine biology project in Puerto Rico, where she lives.
“There is so much life down there that I never knew about,” Rodríguez Lugo said. “And it’s beautiful.”
The sea whip and purple sea fans in the photo above are found off the coast of Playa Melones, Culebra, a small island off the east cost of Puerto Rico and a popular destination for snorkelers.
Puerto Rico is home to more than 1,300 square miles of coral reefs, which play a vital role in protecting the island from storms, waves, and hurricanes. Reef-related tourism provides nearly $2 billion in annual income for the island.
But coral reefs in Puerto Rico and around the world are experiencing more frequent and severe bleaching events.
High ocean temperatures in regions around the globe have led to coral bleaching, which is when corals expel zooxanthellae – the colorful, symbiotic microscopic algae that live inside coral tissues and provide 80-90% of its nutrients.
When stressors persist, the corals eventually starve and turn bone-white.
In April 2024, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) announced that the world was experiencing a global bleaching event, the fourth on record.
You can see bleached spots in the lobed star coral pictured above, which is also colonized by Ramicrusta, an invasive, burnt orange algae that poses an additional threat to reefs.
Beginning in June, the month-long program that Rodriguez and 29 other local students participated in is called the Ocean Community Engagement and Awareness using NASA Earth Observations and Science for Hispanic/Latino Students (OCEANOS).
The goal of OCEANOS is twofold: to teach Puerto Rican students about marine ecology and conservation, and to train students through hands-on fieldwork how to use marine science tools to monitor the health of coral reefs.
The course included classroom instruction, scientific fieldwork, collecting and analyzing ocean data from La Parguera and Culebra Island, and a final presentation.
In the photo, OCEANOS instructor Samuel Suleiman shows a 3D-printed clump of staghorn coral to a group of students off the coast of Culebra. In areas where coral habitats have been damaged, conservationists use 3D-printed corals to attract and protect fish, algae, and other wildlife.
To practice coral surveying techniques and evaluate biodiversity,students used compact cameras to snap a photo every half second, recording seven-meter by seven-meter quadrants of the ocean floor. Back on land, the students stitched these images – roughly 600 images per quadrant – into high-resolution mosaics, which they then used to catalog the types and distributions of various coral species.
Students also built their own low-cost instruments, with sensors on each end to measure temperature and light, to help assess water quality and characteristics.
The ideal temperature range for coral falls between 77- 82 degrees Fahrenheit (25-28 degrees Celsius).
Water above or below this range is considered a potential stressor for coral and can impair growth.
It can also increase the risk of disease, bleaching, and reproductive issues.
Coral relies on light for growth. Less light means less photosynthesis for the zooxanthellae that live inside the coral, which in turn means less food for the coral itself.
Cloudy water due to excessive sediment or phytoplankton can dim or block sunlight.
In the photo above, OCEANOS instructor Juan Torres-Pérez holds two clumps of cyanobacteria, a type of bacteria that has choked a section of reef near Playa Melones.
The exact cause of this excessive cyanobacteria growth is unclear, but it is likely due to land-based pollution leaching into nearby waters, he said. In the background, dark brown piles of cyanobacteria littering the ocean floor are visible.
Suleiman walked students through the process of planting new coral, which involved tying loose staghorn and elkhorn corals into a square frame. Each frame holds about 100 individual pieces of coral.
Suleiman leads a group called Sociedad Ambiente Marino (SAM), which has been working for more than 20 years to cultivate and plant more than 160,000 corals around Puerto Rico.
cont.
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-project-in-puerto-rico-trains-students-in-marine-biology/
Work Is Under Way on NASA’s Next-Generation Asteroid Hunter
Aug 28, 2024
NASA’s new asteroid-hunting spacecraft is taking shape at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Called NEO Surveyor (Near-Earth Object Surveyor), this cutting-edge infrared space telescope will seek out the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to our planet.
In fact, it is the agency’s first space telescope designed specifically for planetary defense.
Targeting launch in late 2027, the spacecraft will travel a million miles to a region of gravitational stability — called the L1 Lagrange point — between Earth and the Sun.
From there, its large sunshade will block the glare and heat of sunlight, allowing the mission to discover and track near-Earth objects as they approach Earth from the direction of the Sun, which is difficult for other observatories to do.
The space telescope also may reveal asteroids called Earth Trojans, which lead and trail our planet’s orbit and are difficult to see from the ground or from Earth orbit.
NEO Surveyor relies on cutting-edge detectors that observe two bands of infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye.
Near-Earth objects, no matter how dark, glow brightly in infrared as the Sun heats them.
Because of this, the telescope will be able to find dark asteroids and comets, which don’t reflect much visible light.
It also will measure those objects, a challenging task for visible-light telescopes that have a hard time distinguishing between small, highly reflective objects and large, dark ones.
“NEO Surveyor is optimized to help us to do one specific thing: enable humanity to find the most hazardous asteroids and comets far enough in advance so we can do something about them,” said Amy Mainzer, survey director for NEO Surveyor and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“We aim to build a spacecraft that can find, track, and characterize the objects with the greatest chance of hitting Earth. In the process, we will learn a lot about their origins and evolution.”
The spacecraft’s only instrument is its telescope. About the size of a washer-and-dryer set, the telescope’s blocky aluminum body, called the optical bench, was built in a JPL clean room.
Known as a three-mirror anastigmat telescope, it will rely on curved mirrors to focus light onto its infrared detectors in such a way that minimizes optical aberrations.
“We have been carefully managing the fabrication of the spacecraft’s telescope mirrors, all of which were received in the JPL clean room by July,” said Brian Monacelli, principal optical engineer at JPL.
“Its mirrors were shaped and polished from solid aluminum using a diamond-turning machine. Each exceeds the mission’s performance requirements.”
Monacelli inspected the mirror surfaces for debris and damage, then JPL’s team of optomechanical technicians and engineers attached the mirrors to the telescope’s optical bench in August.
Next, they will measure the telescope’s performance and align its mirrors.
Complementing the mirror assembly are the telescope’s mercury-cadmium-telluride detectors, which are similar to the detectors used by NASA’s recently retired NEOWISE (short for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission.
An advantage of these detectors is that they don’t necessarily require cryogenic coolers or cryogens to lower their operational temperatures in order to detect infrared wavelengths.
Cryocoolers and cryogens can limit the lifespan of a spacecraft. NEO Surveyor will instead keep its cool by using its large sunshade to block sunlight from heating the telescope and by occupying an orbit beyond that of the Moon, minimizing heating from Earth.
The telescope will eventually be installed inside the spacecraft’s instrument enclosure, which is being assembled in JPL’s historic High Bay 1 clean room where NASA missions such as Voyager, Cassini, and Perseverance were constructed.
Fabricated from dark composite material that allows heat to escape, the enclosure will help keep the telescope cool and prevent its own heat from obscuring observations.
Once it is completed in coming weeks, the enclosure will be tested to make sure it can withstand the rigors of space exploration.
Then it will be mounted on the back of the sunshade and atop the electronic systems that will power and control the spacecraft.
“The entire team has been working hard for a long time to get to this point, and we are excited to see the hardware coming together with contributions from our institutional and industrial collaborators from across the country,” said Tom Hoffman, NEO Surveyor’s project manager at JPL.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/neo-surveyor/work-is-under-way-on-nasas-next-generation-asteroid-hunter/
New NASA Study Tallies Carbon Emissions From Massive Canadian Fires
Aug 28, 2024
Stoked by Canada’s warmest and driest conditions in decades, extreme forest fires in 2023 released about 640 million metric tons of carbon, NASA scientists have found.
That’s comparable in magnitude to the annual fossil fuel emissions of a large industrialized nation. NASA funded the study as part of its ongoing mission to understand our changing planet.
The research team used satellite observations and advanced computing to quantify the carbon emissions of the fires, which burned an area roughly the size of North Dakota from May to September 2023.
The new study, published on Aug. 28 in the journal Nature, was led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
They found that the Canadian fires released more carbon in five months than Russia or Japan emitted from fossil fuels in all of 2022 (about 480 million and 291 million metric tons, respectively).
While the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from both wildfires and fossil fuel combustion cause extra warming immediately, there’s an important distinction, the scientists noted.
As the forest regrows, the amount of carbon emitted from fires will be reabsorbed by Earth’s ecosystems.
The CO2 emitted from the burning of fossil fuels is not readily offset by any natural processes.
An ESA (European Space Agency) instrument designed to measure air pollution observed the fire plumes over Canada.
The TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument, or TROPOMI, flies aboard the Sentinel 5P satellite, which has been orbiting Earth since 2017.
TROPOMI has four spectrometers that measure and map trace gases and fine particles (aerosols) in the atmosphere.
The scientists started with the end result of the fires: the amount of carbon monoxide (CO) in the atmosphere during the fire season.
Then they “back-calculated” how large the emissions must have been to produce that amount of CO.
They were able to estimate how much CO2 was released based on ratios between the two gases in the fire plumes.
“What we found was that the fire emissions were bigger than anything in the record for Canada,” said Brendan Byrne, a JPL scientist and lead author of the new study. “We wanted to understand why.”
Wildfire is essential to the health of forests, clearing undergrowth and brush and making way for new plant life.
In recent decades, however, the number, severity, and overall size of wildfires have increased, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Contributing factors include extended drought, past fire management strategies, invasive species, and the spread of residential communities into formerly less developed areas.
To explain why Canada’s fire season was so intense in 2023, the authors of the new study cited tinderbox conditions across its forests.
Climate data revealed the warmest and driest fire season since at least 1980.
Temperatures in the northwest part of the country — where 61% of fire emissions occurred — were more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.6 degrees Celsius) above average from May through September.
Precipitation was also more than 3 inches (8 centimeters) below average for much of the year.
Driven in large part by these conditions, many of the fires grew to enormous sizes.
The fires were also unusually widespread, charring some 18 million hectares of forest from British Columbia in the west to Quebec and the Atlantic provinces in the east.
The area of land that burned was more than eight times the 40-year average and accounted for 5% of Canadian forests.
“Some climate models project that the temperatures we experienced last year will become the norm by the 2050s,” Byrne said.
“The warming, coupled with lack of moisture, is likely to trigger fire activity in the future.”
If events like the 2023 Canadian forest fires become more typical, they could impact global climate.
That’s because Canada’s vast forests compose one of the planet’s important carbon sinks, meaning that they absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere than they release.
The scientists said that it remains to be seen whether Canadian forests will continue to absorb carbon at a rapid rate or whether increasing fire activity could offset some of the uptake, diminishing the forests’ capacity to forestall climate warming.
https://www.nasa.gov/earth/new-nasa-study-tallies-carbon-emissions-from-massive-canadian-fires/
Astronomers back call for review of bonkers rule that means satellite swarms fly without environment checks
Thu 29 Aug 2024 // 07:28 UTC
Astronomy researchers from several US universities have joined a campaign coordinated by US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG) to pause low Earth satellite launches and convince the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reconsider exempting swarms of small satellites from environmental review requirements.
Astronomers from Princeton University, University of California, Berkeley, and University of Arizona, among others, have added their names to a public letter that will be presented at some point to FCC space bureau chief Julie Kearney.
The letter asks the FCC to follow prior recommendations from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which in 2022 issued a report calling for the telecom regulator to revisit its decision to exempt large constellations of satellites from environmental review.
The exemption was created way back in 1986, when far fewer satellites were being launched.
The GAO, however, urged the FCC to review the exemption, citing the recent proliferation of satellites and the questions that have been raised about the sustainability of the exemption.
That recommendation was recently echoed by US PIRG, which earlier this month made a similar request to the FCC.
US PIRG notes that the number of satellites in low Earth orbit has increased by a factor of 127 over the past five years, driven largely by the deployment of mega-constellations of communications satellites from SpaceX's Starlink subsidiary.
Launching large numbers of small satellites presents potential pollution and safety risks, and spoils stargazing. With 6,000 SpaceX satellites in orbit – a number planned to reach 40,000 in a few years – and a satellite lifespan of just five years, US PIRG expects tons of satellite debris will be burned daily upon re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.
That's in addition to the pollution caused by satellite launches, which US PIRG projects will be "equivalent to seven million diesel dump trucks circling the globe each year."
The advocacy group's lobbying has been endorsed by several astronomers, and US PIRG is also seeking support from the public.
"We don’t know the long-term effects of the huge number of proposed satellites on our ozone, climate, and environment," argued Samantha Lawler, associate professor of astronomy at University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, in a statement.
"What we do know is relying on a decades-old decision to exclude 50,000 satellites from environmental review defies common sense."
In addition to Lawler, signatories include: Minkwan Kim from University of Southampton (lead researcher on the first international study into the environmental impact of space debris disposal using atmospheric ablation); Joshua Reding, AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation; and Roohi Dalal from the Outer Space Institute.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/29/astronomers_space_pollution/
Hubble Observes An Oddly Organized Satellite
Aug 29, 2024
Andromeda III is one of at least 13 dwarf satellite galaxies in orbit around the Andromeda galaxy, or Messier 31, the Milky Way’s closest grand spiral galactic neighbor.
Andromeda III is a faint, spheroidal collection of old, reddish stars that appears devoid of new star formation and younger stars. In fact, Andromeda III seems to be only about 3 billion years younger than the majority of globular clusters ― dense knots of stars thought to have been mostly born at the same time, which contain some of the oldest stars known in the universe.
Astronomers suspect that dwarf spheroidal galaxies may be leftovers of the kind of cosmic objects that were shredded and melded by gravitational interactions to build the halos of large galaxies.
Curiously, studies have found that several of the Andromeda Galaxy’s dwarf galaxies, including Andromeda III, orbit in a flat plane around the galaxy, like the planets in our solar system orbit around the Sun.
The alignment is puzzling because models of galaxy formation don’t show dwarf galaxies falling into such orderly formations, but rather moving around the galaxy randomly in all directions.
As they slowly lose energy, the dwarf galaxies merge into the larger galaxy.
The odd alignment could be because many of Andromeda’s dwarf galaxies fell into orbit around it as a single group, or because the dwarf galaxies are scraps left over from the merger of two larger galaxies.
Either of these theories, which are being researched via NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, would complicate theories of galaxy formation but also help guide and refine future models.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took this image of Andromeda III as part of an investigation into the star formation and chemical enrichment histories of a sample of M31 dwarf spheroidal galaxies that compared their first episodes of star formation to those of Milky Way satellite galaxies.
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-observes-an-oddly-organized-satellite/
Trump says he'd create a Space National Guard if elected
August 29, 2024
Former President Donald Trump wants a Space National Guard.
Trump stated his intention to create the Space National Guard while speaking at the 146th National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS) General Conference and Exhibition in Detroit, Michigan on Monday (Aug. 26).
"Now that Space Force is up and running, I agree with your leadership — you want this very badly — but I agree that the time has come to create a Space National Guard as the primary combat reserve of the U.S. Space Force," Trump told attendees at the conference according to The Hill.
Trump also touted the creation of the Space Force during the speech. The former president signed legislation in 2019 that created the U.S. military's newest branch.
"One of my proudest achievements in my first term was to create Space Force, the first new branch of the armed forces in over 70 years; it's a big deal," Trump said.
"So as president, I will sign historic legislation creating a Space National Guard," he continued. "So we're going to do that. Space Force has been very important, very, very important."
The idea to create a Space National Guard is not new. Lawmakers in the U.S. Congress have been proposing the idea since 2021, but it has yet to receive enough support to pass.
Last year, the office of President Joe Biden issued a statement arguing against the creation of a Space National Guard, writing it would only "create a new bureaucracy with far-reaching and enduring implications and expense."
Many of the same arguments were made in opposition to the creation of the Space Force.
Secretary of the U.S. Air Force Frank Kendall made similar comments during a media roundtable at the Space Foundation's annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs in April 2024.
"I have no indication that either the Air Force or the Army Guard, anybody's contemplating any other changes. And the impact is really, I think, negligible."
"I don't see — governors may have a different view — but I don't see a reason why a state needs a Space Force militia.
I think that part of the reason these units exist in the states is kind of an artifact of history in some way," Kendall said.
National Guard personnel differ from active military servicemembers in that, for one, they can hold civilian jobs or attend school while also serving in the guard part-time.
National Guard units also report to state governments in addition to the federal government, and can be called upon by state governors to respond to civilian emergencies.
https://www.space.com/space-force-national-guard-trump-2024