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NASA Ames Astrogram – September/October 2024
Nov 08, 2024
Contents
TIME Recognizes the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System
Safety Day Organizational Silence Town Hall Held
Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy Visits Ames, Attends Roundtable Discussions
President of Latvia, Edgars Rinkēvičs Visits Ames
Discussions, Lightning Pitches Presented at Ames' Aeronautics Innovation Forum
NASA and Partners Scaling to New Heights in Air Traffic Management
Starship Super Heavy Breezes Through Wind Tunnel Testing at NASA Ames
2024 NASA SmallSat In-Person LEARN Forum Held
NASA Astronauts, Leadership Visit Children’s Hospital, Cancer Moonshot Event
NASA Begins New Deployable Solar Array Tech Demo on Pathfinder Spacecraft
2024 Silver Snoopy Awards Presented by Astronaut Nicole Mann
Jordan Kam Receives a Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) Undergraduate Research Competition Award
Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month: Ignacio Lopez-Francos Featured in Newsweek En Español
Congratulations to Major Crystal A. Armendariz on her Promotion to Army Major!
Faces of NASA - Ames' Dr. Donald Mendoza, Chief Engineer
Cybersecurity Specialist Jonathan Kaldani Inspires Students at CSU East Bay
We Are All Made of Cells: Space and the Immune System
Wildly Popular 21st Annual Chili Cook-Off and Car Show Held
Employees Participate in the October Fun Run/Walk & Roll
In Memoriam …
Laura Lewis, Science Directorate Project Manager, Dies
Former Technology Partnerships Manager Robin Orans Passes Away
Joseph (Jay) Skiles, Senior Research Scientist, Dies
https://www.nasa.gov/general/nasa-ames-astrogram-september-october-2024/
Space mystery as Britain's oldest satellite is moved halfway around the world - 'Ticking time bomb!'
Updated: 09/11/2024 - 21:32
Scientists are scrambling for answers after the UK's oldest satellite was found to have moved halfway around the world without explanation.
The Skynet-1A satellite, compared to a "ticking time bomb", had been launched in 1969 and was stationed over the east coast of Africa for years to facilitate British military communications.
Scientists are scrambling for answers after the UK's oldest satellite was found to have moved halfway around the world without explanation.
The Skynet-1A satellite, compared to a "ticking time bomb", had been launched in 1969 and was stationed over the east coast of Africa for years to facilitate British military communications.
But now, Skynet-1A sits half the world away, some 22,369 miles above the Americas - a position it's unlikely it could have reached by drifting alone.
It's thought that it was told to fire its thrusters to shift it west in the 1970s, but any records as to who signed off on the order have long since disappeared.
But, speaking to the BBC, a number of astronomers have offered up explanations as to what happened - and why it is where it is now.
Space consultant Dr Stuart Eves, who has scoured satellite catalogues, the National Archives and more to no avail, told the broadcaster: "Whoever did move Skynet-1A did us few favours.
"It's now in what we call a 'gravity well' at 105 degrees west… wandering backwards and forwards like a marble at the bottom of a bowl. And unfortunately this brings it close to other satellite traffic on a regular basis.
"Because it's dead, the risk is it might bump into something, and because it's 'our' satellite, we're still responsible for it," he warned.
Skynet-1A was manufactured in the US by the now-defunct Philco Ford aerospace firm - and was hauled into space by a US Air Force Delta rocket.
Graham Davison who flew the satellite in the early 1970s from its British operations centre at RAF Oakhanger in Hampshire, said: "The Americans originally controlled the satellite in orbit.
"They tested all of our software against theirs, before then eventually handing over control to the RAF.
"In essence, there was dual control, but when or why Skynet-1A might have been handed back to the Americans, which seems likely - I'm afraid I can't remember."
University College London PhD researcher Rachel Hill offered the BBC an answer: "A Skynet team from Oakhanger would go to the USAF satellite facility in Sunnyvale (colloquially known as the Blue Cube) and operate Skynet during 'Oakout'.
"This was when control was temporarily transferred to the US while Oakhanger was down for essential maintenance. Perhaps the move could have happened then?"
Meanwhile, official logs of Skynet-1A's status suggest that its final commanding was left in the US's hands when Oakhanger lost sight of it in June 1977.
But the University of Texas at Austin's aerospace engineering professor Moriba Jah warned that its current status comes with a high risk.
He said: "Pieces of space junk are like ticking time bombs… We need to avoid what I call super-spreader events.
"When these things explode or something collides with them, it generates thousands of pieces of debris that then become a hazard to something else that we care about."
Skynet-1A is constantly monitored by the UK's National Space Operations Centre, the Ministry of Defence says - but it may have to act to move it in future.
https://www.gbnews.com/science/space-mystery-britains-oldest-satellite-moved-halfway-around-earth
New telescope findings suggest universe is older by double what scientists thought
November 9, 2024
New findings captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) suggest the universe is older by almost double what scientists previously thought.
For years, cosmologists thought the universe was around 13.8 billion years old.
But new research suggests the universe could actually be 26.7 billion years old which takes into account new findings from observations seen through the JWST.
The presence of 'impossible early galaxies', named because of their strange formation periods, are said to have emerged during the cosmic dawn, roughly 500-800 million years after the Big Bang, according to existing models.
A theory known as the 'tired light' theory suggested light loses energy during its long cosmic journeys, leading to redshift, where light experiences frequency shifts, and this indicates a celestial body moving away from us.
But as it's not been able to explain a number of observations, this theory was largely dismissed.
Rajendra Gupta, from the University of Ottawa, said: "I attempted to marry the conventional big-bang model with the tired light theory, hoping to account for both supernovae and JWST data.
While this expanded our universe's age to 19.3 billion years, it couldn’t entirely account for the JWST data."
So, combining the 'tired light' theory with an evolving cosmological model based on the evolving coupling constants, this new model accounted for new observations seen from the JWSR which raised the universe's age to 26.7 billion years.
Although the Hubble Space Telescope had already guessed the 'impossible early galaxy' issue, the JWST has strengthened these claims.
This could help scientists with future research such as recalculating the data of how old emerging planets are.
https://www.indy100.com/science-tech/james-webb-space-telescope-age-of-universe
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad778b
SpaceX Starlink Mission
SpaceX is targeting Sunday, November 10 for a Falcon 9 launch of 24 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Liftoff is targeted for 6:56 p.m. ET, with backup opportunities available until 8:22 p.m. ET.
If needed, additional opportunities are also available on Monday, November 11 starting at 4:02 p.m. ET.
A live webcast of this mission will begin about five minutes prior to liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX.
You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app.
This is the 12th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Euclid, Axiom-2, Axiom-3, Cygnus NG-21, SES 24, CRS-30, and five Starlink missions.
Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=sl-6-69
That's the alternate timeline Negasonic, after Juggernaut destroyed the mansion and sent her on a mutant crack binge
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https://avi-loeb.medium.com/avi-loebs-statement-on-uap-to-the-house-oversight-and-accountability-committee-3cc124e8cdd8
Avi Loeb’s Statement on UAP to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee
November 10, 2024
Over the past few months, I was asked multiple times by Staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability whether I am available to testify before the U.S. Congress on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP).
As a result, I cleared my calendar for November 13, 2024 and prepared the following written statement. At the end, I was not called to testify before Congress and so I am posting below my intended statement.
The Galileo Project under my leadership is about to release this week unprecedented results from commissioning data of its unique Observatory at Harvard University.
Half a million objects were monitored on the sky and their appearance was analyzed by state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms. Are any of them UAP and if so — what are their flight characteristics?
Unfortunately, the congressional hearing chairs chose not to hear about these scientific results, nor about the scientific findings from our ocean expedition to the site of the first reported meteor from interstellar space.
Stay tuned for the first extensive paper on the commissioning data from the first Galileo Project Observatory, to be posted publicly in the coming days. Here is my public statement.
Distinguished Members of the House Oversight Committee, Cyber Subcommittee Chair Rep. Mace and National Security Subcommittee Chair Rep. Grothman,
Thank you for holding this public hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs).
My name is Abraham (Avi) Loeb and I am the Baird Professor of Science and director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at Harvard University, as well as the head of the Galileo Project.
I chaired the Harvard Astronomy department for nine years and wrote more than a thousand scientific papers and eight books during my scientific career, which started with work on President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, also dubbed as “Star Wars.”
In Washington DC, I served as a member of the President’s Council of Science and Technology and chaired the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies.
Following the discovery of the first interstellar object (ISO), `Oumuamua, on October 19, 2017, I became interested in the scientific study of anomalous objects that visit us from outside the Solar System.
The brightness of sunlight reflected off Oumuamua changed by a factor of ten as this football-field-size object tumbled every eight hours. These extreme brightness variations implied thatOumuamua was shaped like a pancake.
This mysterious object accelerated away from the Sun without signs of cometary evaporation, and receded from Earth faster than any human-made rocket.
A similar push by reflection of sunlight was detected three years later for another object, 2020 SO, which was verified to be a rocket booster from a 1966 launch by NASA.
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In addition, archival data from sensors aboard U.S. Government satellites indicated that on January 8, 2014, a meter-size object from outside the Solar System collided with Earth.
The bolide, called IM1, was moving relative to the Sun faster than 95% of nearby stars and exhibited material strength beyond all documented meteorites in NASA’s CNEOS catalog.
Its interstellar origin was confirmed by the U.S. Space Command in an official memorandum to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, dated March 1, 2022.
The anomalies displayed by these first two ISOs triggered my curiosity on whether any of them might have been manufactured technologically by an extraterrestrial (ET) NASA-like agency from a distant star.
The puzzling appearance of unfamiliar objects close to Earth was admitted publicly by U.S. government officials.
Reports on UAPs from the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines, led in 2022 to the establishment of a new office under DNI and the Department of Defense, called the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO).
The official statement from AARO so far is: “To date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”
There is a world in which both ET-related witnesses and AARO officials are sincere. In that world, some UAPs are unrecognized by U.S. National Intelligence agencies but the vast majority of them are human-made.
Retrieval and reverse engineering programs do exist. These programs study crash sites of vehicles produced by adversarial nations, and any recovered biologics are terrestrial in origin.
The concentration of UAPs near nuclear or military assets is a natural byproduct of espionage. Some of the advanced technologies displayed by UAPs are unknown to U.S. corporations and labeled as anomalous just to hide the confusion about their terrestrial origin.
In that world, the apparent vulnerability of the U.S. to national security threats explains why the Department of Defense would suppress disclosure of related details.
Any public admission on the unknown terrestrial origin of UAPs would serve the military interests of adversarial nations who produced them.
However, from a scientific perspective, even if one in a million objects in our sky is of extraterrestrial origin, its discovery will change the future of humanity.
The U.S. government is not tasked to discover what lies outside the Solar System. This is my day job as an astrophysicist.
Scientific quality data is key for clarifying whether some of these anomalous objects represent extraterrestrial technologies.
Given the enormous interest in this possibility by taxpayers, federal funding agencies such as NSF, NASA, DOE or DoD, should allocate funds to related scientific research.
We have been searching for ET radio signals for sixty-four years, but such searches are equivalent to waiting for a phone call. Alternatively, we could also search for packages in our back yard from a sender that might not be alive anymore.
Additional work is needed to understand why `Oumuamua and IM1 appeared anomalous relative to familiar rocks from the Solar System. There are currently of order a few million IM1-like objects within the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.
We could find out whether any of them is technological in origin using our best telescopes.
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To gain better knowledge, scientists must collect new high-quality data. The sky and our oceans are not classified.
The Galileo Project is currently operating a new observatory at Harvard University and constructing two other observatories in other U.S. locations to monitor the entire sky continuously in the infrared, optical, radio and audio.
We are about to release a new scientific paper, where we used machine-learning algorithms to check whether half a million objects in the sky are all of familiar origin.
A year ago, I led a Galileo Project expedition to the Pacific Ocean which retrieved anomalous millimeter-size droplets from IM1’s crash site. Last month, we published a detailed peer-reviewed paper on these findings.
We are currently planning a second expedition in summer 2025 to find larger pieces within the wreckage of IM1. Also in 2025, NSF’s Rubin Observatory in Chile will employ a 3.2 gigapixel camera to survey the entire southern sky every four days.
Our scientists will be searching for `Oumuamua-like objects and UAPs in its data stream.
A common question is: “can humanity handle the truth?” I regard this question as irrelevant, since it is always beneficial to know the truth about our cosmic neighborhood.
Humanity went through a similar learning experience when Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei used scientific evidence to infer that we are not at the physical center of the Universe.
Today, this knowledge allows NASA to reach other planets. We would never reach these planets if we assumed that they move around the Earth.
On February 18, 2024, I gave a public lecture in Torun, Poland, the birth town of Nicolaus Copernicus, during an official celebration of 550 years to his birth.
The title of my lecture was: “The Next Copernican Revolution,” which might imply that we are not at the intellectual center of the Universe.
In that case, extraterrestrials might serve as better role models for a prosperous future than our elected officials.
Two days earlier, I made a presentation about the scientific search for extraterrestrial technological civilizations at the 2024 Munich Security Conference.
The back-to-back scheduling of these events signifies the two facets of UAPs and Unidentified Submerged Objects (USOs), which carry important implications for either national security or our place in the Universe.
Here’s hoping that federal funding will be allocated to scientific research that will answer open questions on national security and extraterrestrials. We owe the answers on both fronts to the public.
Thank you so much for your attention.
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Public hearing in the Peruvian Republic Congress of the Tridactyl Beings of Nazca
Nov 9, 2024
In English.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyJfFfViMfA