>>21868731

TYB

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

October 31, 2024

Rigel and the Witch Head Nebula

By starlight, this eerie visage shines in the dark with a crooked profile evoking its popular name, the Witch Head Nebula. In fact, this entrancing telescopic portrait gives the impression that a witch has fixed her gaze on Orion's bright supergiant star Rigel. More formally known as IC 2118, the Witch Head Nebula spans about 50 light-years and is composed of interstellar dust grains reflecting Rigel's starlight. The color of the Witch Head Nebula is caused not only by Rigel's intense blue light, but because the dust grains scatter blue light more efficiently than red. The same physical process causes Earth's daytime sky to appear blue, although the scatterers in Earth's atmosphere are molecules of nitrogen and oxygen. Rigel and this dusty cosmic crone are about 800 light-years away. You may still see a few witches in your neighborhood tonight though, so have a safe and Happy Halloween!

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

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/spain-flash-floods_n_6723646ce4b02f5ab1d266ae

Flood Of The Century Kills At Least 95 In Spain, Search For Bodies Continues

Oct 31, 2024, 07:14 AM EDT

Survivors of the worst natural disaster to hit Spain this century awoke to scenes of devastation on Thursday after villages were wiped out by monstrous flash floods that claimed at least 95 lives.

The death toll is expected to rise as search efforts continue with officials removing bodies from vehicles and an unknown number of people still missing.

Cars piled on one another like broken toys, uprooted trees, downed power lines and household items all mired in a layer of mud covered the streets of Barrio de la Torre, a suburb of Valencia, just one of dozens of damaged localities in the hard-hit region of Valencia, where 92 people died between late Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

Walls of rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that ripped into the ground floors of homes and swept away cars, people and anything else in its path. It knocked down bridges and made roads unrecognizable.

“The neighborhood is destroyed, all the cars are on top of each other, it’s literally smashed up,” said Christian Viena, a bar owner in Barrio de la Torre.

Regional authorities said late Wednesday it appeared there was no one left stranded on rooftops or in cars in need of rescue after helicopters had saved some 70 people.

But ground crews and citizens continued to inspect vehicles and homes that were damaged by the onslaught of water.

Over a thousand soldiers from Spain’s emergency rescue units joined regional and local emergency workers in the search for bodies and survivors.

The defense minister said that soldiers alone had recovered 22 bodies and rescued 110 people by Wednesday night.

“We are searching house by house,” Ángel Martínez, official of a military emergency unit, told Spain’s national radio broadcaster RNE on Thursday from the town of Utiel, where at least six people died.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is heading to the region to witness the destruction firsthand as the nation starts a three-day period of official mourning.

Thousands of people were left without water and electricity and hundreds were stranded after their cars were wrecked or roads were blocked.

The region remained partly isolated with several roads cut off and train lines interrupted, including the high-speed service to Madrid, which officials say won’t be repaired for several days.

While Valencia took the brunt of the storm, another two casualties were reported in the neighboring Castilla La Mancha region. Southern Andalusia reported one death.

While the greatest human and material suffering was inflicted on the dozens of municipalities near Valencia city, the storms unleashed their fury over huge swathes of the south and eastern coast of the Iberian peninsula.

Homes were left without water as far southwest as Malaga in Andalusia, where a high-speed train derailed on Tuesday night although none of the nearly 300 passengers were hurt.

The greenhouses and fields of farmers all over the southern arc of Spain, which is known as Europe’s garden for its exported produce, were also ruined by heavy rains, flooding and winds.

The storms spawned a freak tornado in Valencia and a hail storm that punched holes in cars in Andalusia.

The skies showed some mercy for the worst-hit areas by stopping early on Wednesday.

But heavy rains continued Thursday farther north and the Spanish weather agency issued a red alert for several counties in Castellón, the northernmost province in the Valencia region, and an orange alert for the south of Tarragona, in northeast Catalonia, and the west coast of Cádiz, in the southwest.

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding. But this was the most powerful flash flood event in recent memory.

Scientists link it to climate change, which is also behind increasingly high temperatures and droughts in Spain and the heating up of the Mediterranean Sea.

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>>21868940

Officials questioned over late flood warnings

The violence of the weather event surprised regional government officials. Spain’s national weather service said it rained more in eight hours in the Valencian town of Chiva than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.”

Yet the relative calm of the day after also gave time to reflect and question if authorities could have done more to save lives. The Valencian regional government is being criticized for not sending out flood warnings to people’s mobile phones until 8 p.m. on Tuesday, when the flooding had already started in some parts and well after the national weather agency had issued a red alert for heavy rains.

Andreu Salom, mayor of the Valencian village of L’Alcudia, told national broadcaster RTVE that his town had lost at least two residents, a daughter and her elderly mother who lived together, and that police were still searching for the missing truck driver.

He also complained that he and his villagers had no warning of the disaster, that struck as evening fell Tuesday when the Magro river burst its banks.

“I myself was on my way to check the river level because I had no information,” Salom said. “I went with the local police but we had to turn back because a tsunami of water, mud, reeds and dirt was already entering the town.”

Mari Carmen Pérez said by phone from her ruined home in Barrio de la Torre that her phone buzzed with the flood warning after the rushing water had already forced open the front door and flooded her living room, kitchen and bathroom.

“They didn’t have any idea of what was going on,” Pérez, a professional cleaner, said about the authorities. “Everything is ruined. The people here, we have never seen anything like this. It was like a disaster film.”

Valencia regional President Carlos Mazón defended his administration’s management of the crisis, saying “all our supervisors followed the standard protocol.”

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>>21868907

>>21868940

>>21868942

Valencia flood disaster

31/10/2024

Spain is suffering its worst flood in decades after torrential rains struck the eastern province of Valencia.

The death toll is climbing and people remain missing.

In response, the Copernicus Emergency Rapid Mapping Service has been activated to provide satellite imagery that can support rescue and recovery efforts.

According to Spain’s national weather agency, Aemet, on 29 October 2024, Valencia received a year’s worth of rain in just eight hours.

This deluge caused devastating flash floods, turning streets into rivers, destroying homes, and sweeping away vehicles.

These images from the US Landsat-8 satellite vividly illustrate the scale of the disaster, with images from 8 October and 30 October showing the dramatic transformation of the landscape.

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/10/Valencia_flood_disaster

'Blood-Soaked' Eyes: NASA's Webb, Hubble Examine Galaxy Pair

October 31, 2024 10:00AM

Stare deeply at these galaxies. They appear as if blood is pumping through the top of a flesh-free face.

The long, ghastly “stare” of their searing eye-like cores shines out into the supreme cosmic darkness.

It’s good fortune that looks can be deceiving.

These galaxies have only grazed one another to date, with the smaller spiral on the left, cataloged as IC 2163, ever so slowly “creeping" behind NGC 2207, the spiral galaxy at right, millions of years ago.

The pair’s macabre colors represent a combination of mid-infrared light from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope with visible and ultraviolet light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Look for potential evidence of their “light scrape” in the shock fronts, where material from the galaxies may have slammed together.

These lines represented in brighter red, including the “eyelids,” may cause the appearance of the galaxies’ bulging, vein-like arms.

The galaxies’ first pass may have also distorted their delicately curved arms, pulling out tidal extensions in several places.

The diffuse, tiny spiral arms between IC 2163’s core and its far left arm may be an example of this activity.

Even more tendrils look like they’re hanging between the galaxies’ cores. Another extension “drifts” off the top of the larger galaxy, forming a thin, semi-transparent arm that practically runs off screen.

Both galaxies have high star formation rates, like innumerable individual hearts fluttering all across their arms.

Each year, the galaxies produce the equivalent of two dozen new stars that are the size of the Sun.

Our Milky Way galaxy only forms the equivalent of two or three new Sun-like stars per year.

Both galaxies have also hosted seven known supernovae in recent decades, a high number compared to an average of one every 50 years in the Milky Way.

Each supernova may have cleared space in their arms, rearranging gas and dust that later cooled, and allowed many new stars to form.

To spot the star-forming “action sequences,” look for the bright blue areas captured by Hubble in ultraviolet light, and pink and white regions detailed mainly by Webb’s mid-infrared data.

Larger areas of stars are known as super star clusters. Look for examples of these in the top-most spiral arm that wraps above the larger galaxy and points left.

Other bright regions in the galaxies are mini starbursts — locations where many stars form in quick succession.

Additionally, the top and bottom “eyelid” of IC 2163, the smaller galaxy on the left, is filled with newer star formation and burns brightly.

What’s next for these spirals? Over many millions of years, the galaxies may swing by one another repeatedly.

It’s possible that their cores and arms will meld, leaving behind completely reshaped arms, and an even brighter, cyclops-like “eye” at the core.

Star formation will also slow down once their stores of gas and dust deplete, and the scene will calm.

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-136

Sols 4348-4349: Smoke on the Water

Oct 30, 2024

Before the science team starts planning, we first look at the latest Navcam image downlinked from Curiosity to see where the rover is located.

It can be all too easy to get lost in the scenery of the Navcam and find new places in the distance we want to drive towards, but there’s so much beauty in the smaller things.

Today I’ve chosen to show a photo from Curiosity’s hand lens camera, MAHLI, that takes photos so close that we can see the individual grains of the rock.

The planning day usually starts by thinking about these smaller features: What rocks are the closest to the rover?

What can we shoot with our laser? What instruments can we use to document these features?

Today we planned two sols, and the focus of the close-up contact science became a coating of material that in some image stretches looks like a deep-purple color.

We planned lots of activities to characterize this coating including use of the dust removal tool (DRT) and the APXS instrument on a target called “Reds Meadow.”

This target will also be photographed by the MAHLI instrument.

The team planned a ChemCam LIBS target on “Midge Lake” as well as a passive ChemCam target on “Primrose Lake” to document this coating with a full suite of instruments.

Mastcam will then document the ChemCam LIBS target Midge Lake, and take a mosaic of the vertical faces of a few rocks near to the rover called “Peep Sight Peak” to observe the sedimentary structures here.

Mastcam will also take a mosaic of “Pinnacle Ridge,” an area seen previously by the rover, from a different angle.

ChemCam is rounding off the first sol with two long-distance RMI mosaics to document the stratigraphy of two structures we are currently driving between: Texoli butte and the Gediz Vallis channel.

In the second sol of the plan, after driving about 20 meters (about 66 feet), Curiosity will be undertaking some environmental monitoring activities before an AEGIS activity that automatically selects a LIBS target in our new workspace prior to our planning on Wednesday morning.

https://science.nasa.gov/blog/sols-4348-4349-smoke-on-the-water/

>>21869206

A Spooky Soliday: Haunting Whispers from the Martian Landscape

Oct 30, 2024

The Perseverance rover lurks in the quiet, cold, desolate landscape of Jezero crater on Mars, a place masked in shadows and haunted by past mysteries.

Built to endure the planet’s harsh conditions, Perseverance braves the thin atmosphere and extreme temperature swings.

Its microphone captures the eerie whispers of martian winds, sending shivers down your spine, and records ghostly dust devils swirling across the barren terrain.

Has the microphone caught the sound of a skeleton rattling its bones? We’ll leave that up to your imagination.

Recently, Perseverance navigated the sinister slopes of the Jezero crater rim, seeking out a series of ramshackle ridges to uncover the rim’s hidden geological secrets.

The rover emerged from the shadows to descend into a field of light-toned rocks, illuminating the landscape reminiscent of bones and tombstones.

Along the way, the rover encountered dark bedrock at Mist Park. Perseverance will then face another daunting climb back up the crater rim, venturing deeper into the great unknown.

Unlike vampires or other creatures of the night, Perseverance needs rest after long days of exploring the mystifying martian landscape.

As night falls, the rover sleeps after watching the Sun sink below the horizon, casting ominous shadows across the landscape.

The chilling winds howl through the night like a haunting lullaby for the fearless explorer.

However, Perseverance sometimes wakes up from things that go bump in the night.

While instruments mostly conduct their scientific measurements during the day, they are not afraid of the dark, often tasked with observing what lurks in the shadows and gazing at the martian night sky.

Perseverance occasionally looks up to image the auroras and to get a glimpse of Phobos and Deimos, Mars’ two Moons.

Mars is like a hotel you can check in and out of, but you can never leave.

It has become a graveyard of long-dead landers and rovers, but Perseverance is nowhere near ready to leave the land of the living.

In fact, the ghosts of past rovers and landers guide Perseverance on its journey.

As we continue to uncover the secrets of Mars, we are reminded of its past and the mysteries that still linger.

Join us in pondering the mysteries of Mars as we explore its haunted history.

https://science.nasa.gov/blog/a-spooky-soliday-haunting-whispers-from-the-martian-landscape/

NASA Technologies Named Among TIME Inventions of 2024

Oct 30, 2024

As NASA continues to innovate for the benefit of humanity, agency inventions that use new structures to harness sunlight for space travel, enable communications with spacecraft at record-breaking distances, and determine the habitability of a moon of Jupiter, were named Wednesday among TIME’s Inventions of 2024.

“The NASA workforce — wizards, as I call them — have been at the forefront of invention and technology for more than 65 years,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

“From developing Europa Clipper, the largest satellite for a planetary mission that NASA has ever launched, to the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, and communicating with lasers from deep space, NASA is improving our understanding of life on Earth — and the cosmos — for the benefit of all.”

Solar Sailing with Composite Booms

NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System is testing technologies that could allow spacecraft to “sail on sunlight,” using the Sun’s rays for propulsion.

Like a sailboat turning to catch the wind, a solar sail adjusts its trajectory by angling its sail supported by booms deployed from the spacecraft.

This demonstration uses a composite boom technology that is stiffer, lighter, and more stable in challenging thermal environments than previous designs.

After launching on April 23, aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, the mission team met its primary objective by deploying the boom and sail system in space in August.

Next, they will work to prove performance by using the sail to maneuver in orbit.

Results from this mission could provide an alternative to chemical and electric propulsion systems and inform the design of future larger-scale missions that require unique vantage points, such as space weather early warning satellites.

Communicating with Lasers from Deep Space

Since launching aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft on Oct. 13, 2023, a Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration has delivered record-breaking downlink data rates to ground stations as the Psyche spacecraft travels through deep space.

To demonstrate the high data rates that are possible with laser communications, photos, telemetry data from the spacecraft, and ultra-high-definition video, including a streamed video of Taters the cat chasing a laser pointer, have been downlinked over hundreds of millions of miles.

The mission, which is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, has also sent and received optical communications out to Mars’ farthest distance from Earth, fulfilling one of the project’s primary goals.

Searching for Life’s Ingredients at Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa

The largest NASA spacecraft ever built for a mission headed to another planet, Europa Clipper also is the agency’s first mission dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth.

Using a suite of nine science instruments and a gravity experiment, the mission seeks to determine whether Jupiter’s moon, Europa, has conditions that could support life.

There’s strong evidence that under Europa’s ice lies an enormous, salty ocean. Scientists also have found evidence that Europa may host organic compounds and energy sources under its surface.

Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the spacecraft launched on Oct. 14, and will begin orbiting Jupiter in 2030, flying by the icy moon 49 times to learn more about it.

Europa Clipper’s main science objectives are to determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its interactions with the ocean below, to investigate its composition, and to characterize its geology.

The detailed exploration will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.

https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-technologies-named-among-time-inventions-of-2024/

Hello Earth? Space Calling

Oct 30, 2024

How it started versus how it’s going for astronaut Nick Hague with ISS Ham Radio on the space station.

Since November 2000, crew members like Hague have used ham radio to communicate with people on Earth through this educational program, also known as Amateur Radio on the International Space Station or ARISS.

So far, there have been more than 1,700 events, directly engaging students and listeners from 49 U.S. states, 63 countries, and all seven continents.

Students study the space station, radio waves, amateur radio technology, and related topics before their call from space, which encourages interest in STEM.

Now through Nov 17, 2024, ARISS is accepting applications from formal and informal educational institutions and organizations that want to host events in summer or fall of 2025.

There is no charge for these calls from space, although host locations may incur some equipment-related costs.

Local amateur radio clubs help hosts prepare for their contacts.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/hello-earth-space-calling/

NASA Relaunches Mentor-Protégé Program to Fill Supply Chain Gaps

Oct 29, 2024

In an effort to grow new commercial markets that support the future of space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research, NASA is preparing to relaunch its Mentor-Protégé Program for contractors on Friday, Nov. 1.

The program originally was launched to encourage NASA prime contractors, or mentors, to enter into agreements with eligible small businesses, or protégés.

These agreements were created to enhance the protégés’ performance on NASA contracts and subcontracts, foster the establishment of long-term business relationships between small businesses and NASA prime contractors, and increase the overall number of small businesses that receive NASA contracts and subcontract awards.

“The NASA Mentor-Protégé Program is a critical enabling tool that allows experienced companies to provide business developmental assistance to emerging firms,” said Dwight Deneal, assistant administrator for NASA’s Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP).

“The program enables NASA to expand its industrial base of suppliers, as prime and subcontractors, to assist in executing the mission and programs throughout the agency.”

The program’s relaunch follows an assessment of its policies and procedures by OSBP to ensure it continues to support NASA’s missions and addresses any supply chain gaps at an optimal level.

To provide more information about the program and its relaunch, OSBP will host an online lunch and learn event on Thursday, Nov. 7, at 1:00 p.m. EST.

The event is open to all current and potential mentors and protégés who want to learn more about changes in the program, qualifications to participate, and how to apply.

“We are excited about rolling out the enhanced NASA Mentor-Protégé Program,” said David Brock, lead small business specialist for OSBP.

“The program’s new focus will allow large businesses to mentor smaller firms in key areas that align with NASA’s mission and opportunities within the agency’s supply chain.”

One key change expands eligibility to all small businesses, in addition to minority-serving institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Ability One entities.

This expansion enables the program to support an inclusive environment for more small businesses and underserved communities to interact with NASA and its contractors.

The program also will focus on engaging businesses within a select number of North American Industry Classifications System (NAICS) codes and specific industry sectors, such as research and development and aerospace manufacturing.

These adjustments will allow the program to better support NASA’s long-term strategic goals and mission success.

The program is designed to benefit both the mentor and the protégé by fostering productive networking and contract opportunities.

In a mentor-protégé agreement, mentors build relationships with small businesses, developing a subcontracting base and accruing credit toward their small business subcontracting goals.

In addition, protégés receive technical and developmental assistance while also gaining sole-source contracts from mentors and additional contracting opportunities.

https://www.nasa.gov/organizations/osbp/nasa-relaunches-mentor-protege-program-to-fill-supply-chain-gaps/

https://www.nasa.gov/osbp/mentor-protege-program/

Buckle Up: NASA-Funded Study Explores Turbulence in Molecular Clouds

Oct 30, 2024

On an airplane, motions of the air on both small and large scales contribute to turbulence, which may result in a bumpy flight.

Turbulence on a much larger scale is important to how stars form in giant molecular clouds that permeate the Milky Way.

In a new NASA-funded study in the journal Science Advances, scientists created simulations to explore how turbulence interacts with the density of the cloud.

Lumps, or pockets of density, are the places where new stars will be born. Our Sun, for example, formed 4.6 billion years ago in a lumpy portion of a cloud that collapsed.

“We know that the main process that determines when and how quickly stars are made is turbulence, because it gives rise to the structures that create stars,” said Evan Scannapieco, professor of astrophysics at Arizona State University and lead author of the study.

“Our study uncovers how those structures are formed.”

Giant molecular clouds are full of random, turbulent motions, which are caused by gravity, stirring by the galactic arms and winds, jets, and explosions from young stars.

This turbulence is so strong that it creates shocks that drive the density changes in the cloud.

The simulations used dots called tracer particles to traverse a molecular cloud and travel along with the material.

As the particles travel, they record the density of the part of the cloud they encounter, building up a history of how pockets of density change over time.

The researchers, who also included Liubin Pan from Sun Yat Sen University in China, Marcus Brüggen from the University of Hamburg in Germany, and Ed Buie II from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, simulated eight scenarios, each with a different set of realistic cloud properties.

The team found that the speeding up and slowing down of shocks plays an essential role in the path of the particles.

Shocks slow down as they go into high-density gas and speed up as they go into low-density gas.

This is akin to how an ocean wave strengthens when it hits shallow water by the shore.

When a particle hits a shock, the area around it becomes more dense.

But because shocks slow down in dense regions, once lumps become dense enough, the turbulent motions can’t make them any denser.

These lumpiest high-density regions are where stars are most likely to form.

While other studies have explored molecular cloud density structures, this simulation allows scientists to see how those structures form over time.

This informs scientists’ understanding of how and where stars are likely to be born.

“Now we can understand better why those structures look the way they do because we’re able to track their histories,” said Scannapieco.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is exploring the structure of molecular clouds.

It is also exploring the chemistry of molecular clouds, which depends on the history of the gas modeled in the simulations.

New measurements like these will inform our understanding of star formation.

https://science.nasa.gov/universe/stars/nasa-funded-study-explores-turbulence-in-molecular-clouds/

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado3958