TYB
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
November 13, 2024
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1365 from Webb
A mere 56 million light-years distant toward the southern constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is an enormous barred spiral galaxy about 200,000 light-years in diameter. That's twice the size of our own barred spiral Milky Way. This sharp image from the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reveals stunning details of this magnificent spiral in infrared light. Webb's field of view stretches about 60,000 light-years across NGC 1365, exploring the galaxy's core and bright newborn star clusters. The intricate network of dusty filaments and bubbles is created by young stars along spiral arms winding from the galaxy's central bar. Astronomers suspect the gravity field of NGC 1365's bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, funneling gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the active galaxy's central, supermassive black hole.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/stennis/stennis-powers-nations-space-dreams/
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/propulsion-powering-space-dreams/
NASA Stennis Adapts with Purpose to Power Nation’s Space Dreams
Nov 13, 2024
Workers making way for NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, likely did not realize they were building something that would not only withstand the test of time but transcend it.
Mosquitoes, snakes, hurricanes, and intense south Mississippi heat – early crews faced all with a spirit of resilience and adaptability that remains a hallmark characteristic of NASA Stennis six decades later.
“From going to the Moon for the first time and now returning to the Moon, you can trace a straight line of propulsion testing at NASA Stennis,” said Maury Vander, chief of the NASA Stennis Test Operations Division.
“We still stand on the front lines of support for this country’s space program.”
For five decades and counting, the versatile NASA Stennis test stands have been used for stage, engine, and component testing on multiple NASA and commercial projects.
Three NASA Stennis stands – Fred Haise (formerly the A-1 Test Stand), A-2, and Thad Cochran (B-1/B-2) – date to the 1960s, when they were built to test Saturn V rocket stages for Apollo missions to the Moon.
The Fred Haise and A-2 stand were single-position stands for testing one Saturn V second stage at a time.
The Thad Cochran featured two positions – (B-1 and B-2) – that could each house a Saturn V first stage, although only the B-2 position was used during Apollo testing.
When the Apollo Program ended, the Fred Haise, A-2, and Thad Cochran (B-1) stands were modified to test single engines rather than rocket stages.
All three were used in subsequent years to test space shuttle main engines and others. Meanwhile, the Thad Cochran (B-2) stand was maintained for full stage testing.
The space shuttle Main Propulsion Test Article was tested on the stand, as was the Common Core Booster for the Delta IV rocket.
Most recently, the stand was used to test the first SLS (Space Launch System) stage that helped launch the Artemis I mission in 2022.
In 2024, the Fred Haise Test Stand is dedicated to RS-25 engine testing for NASA’s Artemis initiative. Every RS-25 engine that will help launch an SLS rocket during Artemis will be tested on the stand.
The A-2 stand has been leased to Relativity Space, which is modifying it to support stage testing for its new rocket.
In 2023, the Thad Cochran (B-1) stand concluded more than 20 years of RS-68 testing for Aerojet Rocketdyne (now known as L3Harris) and now is open for commercial use.
The Thad Cochran (B-2) stand is being prepared to test NASA’s new SLS exploration upper stage before it flies on a future Artemis mission.
“When you think about the work at NASA Stennis, this is a place that helps write history,” Vander said.
“And in a sense, these test stands are timeless, still operating as designed 60 years after they were built, so there is more history yet to come.”
NASA Stennis also constructed a fourth large test structure in the 2010s. The A-3 Test Stand is uniquely designed to simulate high altitudes up to 100,000 feet for testing engines and stages that need to fire in space.
Rocket Lab currently leases the A-3 Test Stand area for construction of its Archimedes Test Complex.
NASA Stennis also operates a smaller test area to conduct component, subsystem, and system level testing.
The area is now known as the E Test Complex and features four facilities, all developed from the late 1980s to the early 1990s.
Construction of the E-1 Test Stand, then known as the Component Test Facility, began to support a joint project involving NASA and the U.S. Air Force project.
Although the project was canceled, a second joint endeavor allowed completion of the test facility.
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Development of the E-2 Test Stand, originally known as the High Heat Flux Facility, began to support the National Aerospace Plane project.
Following cancelation of the project, the facility was completed to support testing for component and engine development efforts.
An E-3 Test Facility was constructed to support various component and small/subscale engine and booster test projects.
Relativity Space leased a partially developed E-4 test area in 2018 and has since completed construction to support its commercial testing.
All in all, the E Test Complex stands feature 12 active cells capable of various component and engine testing.
The versatility of the complex infrastructure and test team allows it to support test projects for a range of commercial aerospace companies, large and small. Currently, both E-2 cells 1 and 2 are leased to Relativity Space through 2028.
“These facilities really do not exist anywhere else in the United States,” said Kevin Power, assistant director, Office of Project Management in the NASA Stennis Engineering and Test Directorate.
“Customers come to us with requirements for certain tests of an article, and we look at what is the best place to test it based on the facility infrastructure. We have completed component level testing, all the way up to full engines.”
The list of companies who have conducted – or are now conducting – propulsion projects in the E Test Complex reads like a who’s who of commercial aerospace leaders.
“The E Complex illustrates the NASA Stennis story,” Power said. “We have very valuable infrastructure and resources, chief of which is the test team, who adapt to benefit NASA and meet the needs of the growing commercial aerospace industry.”
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https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpl-workforce-update_-/
JPL Workforce Update
Nov. 12, 2024
While we have taken various measures to meet our current FY’25 budget allocation, we have reached the difficult decision to reduce the JPL workforce through layoffs.
This reduction affects approximately 325 of our colleagues, an impact of about 5% of our workforce. The impacts are occurring across technical, business, and support areas of the Laboratory.
These are painful but necessary adjustments that will enable us to adhere to our budget while continuing our important work for NASA and our nation.
The following is a memo sent earlier today from JPL Director Laurie Leshin to employees:
Dear Colleagues,
This is a message I had hoped not to have to write. I’m reaching out to share the difficult news that JPL will be taking a workforce action tomorrow, Nov. 13, resulting in a layoff of approximately 325 of our colleagues, or ~5% of our workforce.
Despite this being incredibly difficult for our community, this number is lower than projected a few months ago thanks in part to the hard work of so many people across JPL.
The workforce assessment conducted as part of this process has been both extensive and thorough, and although we can never have perfect insight into the future, I sincerely believe that after this action we will be at a more stable workforce level moving forward.
How we got here:
During our last town hall, I discussed our continued funding challenges and projections of what the potential impact on our workforce could look like.
I shared that we had been working through multiple workforce scenarios to address the dynamic funding environment, and that we have been doing everything we can, in partnership with our colleagues at NASA and elsewhere, to minimize adverse effects on JPL’s capabilities and team.
Unfortunately, despite all these efforts, we need to make one further workforce reduction to meet the available funding for FY’25.
This reduction is spread across essentially all areas of the Lab including our technical, project, business, and support areas.
We have taken seriously the need to re-size our workforce, whether direct-funded (project) or funded on overhead (burden).
With lower budgets and based on the forecasted work ahead, we had to tighten our belts across the board, and you will see that reflected in the layoff impacts.
As part of our workforce assessment and determining where reductions are being made, we have taken time to complete a full review of our competencies, future mission needs, and we have established guidance for our core capabilities across the Laboratory.
We have worked closely with the Executive Council, division managers, project leadership and others to ensure we maintain the appropriate levels of technical expertise, capacity for innovation, and ability to deliver on an exciting future for JPL.
Our focus will continue to be on empowering managers to support their teams through this action and equipping all of us with a variety of resources as we move forward together.
Here are the details about what will happen tomorrow:
Unless notified otherwise, all employees are required to work from home tomorrow Nov. 13, regardless of their telework status.
Tomorrow you will be invited to a short, virtual, Lab-wide meeting with myself and Deputy Director Leslie Livesay at 9:30 a.m. We will relay the details of where we are in the process and what to expect.
Please look out for the meeting notification that will follow this memo. There will not be organization-level notification meetings as in February. This one meeting will provide the information needed for the entire Lab at once.
Our approach is to prioritize notifying everyone via email as quickly as possible whether their role is being affected by the layoff or not.
Then we can rapidly shift to providing personalized support to our laid-off colleagues who are part of the workforce reduction, including offering dedicated time to discuss their benefits, and several other forms of assistance.
Because of system limitations, the individual email notifications will take place over several hours tomorrow. A schedule of the notifications, which will occur by organization, will be shared in the virtual briefing tomorrow morning and also posted on JPL Space, the JPL HR Website, and Slack.
You can also find answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on our website here.
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Our JPL Community:
I know the absence of our colleagues will be acutely felt, especially after a very challenging year for the Lab.
To those leaving JPL as a result of this action, we are grateful for your many vital contributions to JPL and to NASA.
We will be here to support you during this time to ensure this transition is as smooth as possible.
To reiterate to you all, I believe this is the last cross-Lab workforce action we will need to take in the foreseeable future. After this action, we will be at about 5,500 JPL regular employees.
I believe this is a stable, supportable staffing level moving forward. While we can never be 100% certain of the future budget, we will be well positioned for the work ahead.
This may not help much in this difficult moment, but I do want to be crystal clear with my thoughts and perspective. If we hold strong together, we will come through this, just as we have done during other turbulent times in JPL’s nearly 90-year history.
Finally, even though the coming leadership transition at NASA may introduce both new uncertainties and new opportunities, this action would be happening regardless of the recent election outcome.
While I know many of us are feeling anger or disappointment with this news, I encourage everyone to act with grace and empathy toward one another, and to lean on each other for support.
I will be speaking with you again very soon to discuss our path ahead.
Until then, know that we are an incredibly strong organization – our dazzling history, current achievements, and relentless commitment to exploration and discovery position us well for the future.
Laurie
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>#143
Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth
November 13, 2024
Live in 22 minutes
Witnesses and testimonies:
Dr. Tim Gallaudet
Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (RET.)
Chief Executive Officer, Ocean STL Consulting, LLC
Luis Elizondo
Author, and Former Department of Defense Official
Michael Gold
Former NASA Associate Administrator of Space Policy and Partnerships; Member of NASA UAP
Independent Study Team
Michael Shellenberger
Founder of Public
https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-exposing-the-truth/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kT2iWKZr0qA
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/armd/nasa-funds-new-studies-looking-at-future-of-sustainable-aircraft/
NASA Funds New Studies Looking at Future of Sustainable Aircraft
Nov 12, 2024
Picture yourself at an airport a few decades from now. What does your airliner look like? It’s more efficient, with lower emissions than today’s aircraft – what kinds of designs or technology make that possible?
NASA is working to answer those questions by commissioning five new design studies looking to push the boundaries of possibility for sustainable aircraft.
Through NASA’s Advanced Aircraft Concepts for Environmental Sustainability (AACES) 2050 initiative, the agency asked industry and academia to come up with studies looking at aircraft concepts, key technologies, and designs that could offer the transformative solutions needed to secure commercial aviation’s sustainable future by 2050.
NASA issued five awards, worth a total of $11.5 million, to four companies and one university.
These new NASA-funded studies will help the agency identify and select promising aircraft concepts and technologies for further investigations.
“Through initiatives like AACES, NASA is positioned to harness a broad set of perspectives about how to further increase aircraft efficiency, reduce aviation’s environmental impact and enhance U.S. technological competitiveness in the 2040s, 2050s, and beyond,” said Bob Pearce, NASA associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.
“As a leader in U.S. sustainable aviation research and development, these awards are one example of how we bring together the best ideas and most innovative concepts from the private sector, academia, research agencies, and other stakeholders to pioneer the future of aviation.”
For decades, NASA has connected government agencies, industry, and academia to develop sustainable aviation technologies.
In 2021, NASA launched its Sustainable Flight National Partnership, focused on technologies that could be incorporated into aircraft by the 2030s.
The partnership’s research and development led to current NASA work including the experimental X-66 Sustainable Flight Demonstrator aircraft, its Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration project, and the development of more efficient engine cores and processes for the rapid manufacturing of lightweight composite materials.
The new AACES awards are initiating a similar process, but on a longer timeline, focusing on technologies to help transform aviation beyond SFNP with aircraft that could enter service by 2050.
The kinds of partnerships NASA develops through SFNP and AACES are critical for the agency to support the U.S. goal of net-zero aviation emissions by 2050 and to help put aviation on a path toward energy-resilience.
“The AACES 2050 solicitation drew significant interest from the aviation community and as a result the award process was highly competitive,” said Nateri Madavan, director for NASA’s Advanced Air Vehicles Program.
“The proposals selected come from a diverse set of organizations that will provide exciting and wide-ranging explorations of the scenarios, technologies, and aircraft concepts that will advance aviation towards its transformative sustainability goals.”
The AACES 2050 awards went to organizations that will form networks of university and corporate partners to advance their studies.
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The new awardee institutions are:
Aurora Flight Sciences, a Boeing Company, whose team will perform a comprehensive, “open-aperture” exploration of technologies and aircraft concepts for the 2050 timeframe.
This will include examining new alternative aviation fuels, propulsion systems, aerodynamic technologies, and aircraft configurations along with other technology areas that arise throughout the study.
The Electra-led team will explore extending Electra’s novel distributed electric propulsion and its unique aerodynamic design capabilities to develop innovative wing and fuselage integrations that deliver sustainable aviation focused on enabling community-friendly emission reduction, noise reduction, and improved air travel access.
The company’s existing small aircraft prototype has been flying for over a year, demonstrating Electra’s technology that aims to transform air travel with reduced environmental impact and improved operational efficiency.
Georgia Institute of Technology will perform a comprehensive exploration of sustainability technologies, including alternative fuels, propulsion systems, and aircraft configurations.
The institute’s team will then explore new aircraft concepts incorporating the selected technologies with their Advanced Technology Hydrogen Electric Novel Aircraft (ATH2ENA) as a starting point.
JetZero will explore technologies that enable cryogenic, liquid hydrogen to be used as a fuel for commercial aviation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
These technologies will be evaluated on both tube-and wing and JetZero’s blended wing body – an airplane shape that provides more options for larger hydrogen fuel tanks within the aircraft.
Pratt and Whitney a division of RTX Corporation, will explore a broad suite of commercial aviation propulsion technologies targeting thermal and propulsive efficiency improvements to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
The Pratt & Whitney team will then down-select high-priority and alternative propulsion concepts for potential integration studies with various airframe concepts for aircraft in 2050 and beyond.
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The Next Full Moon Will Be the Last of Four Consecutive Supermoons
Nov 13, 2024
The Next Full Moon is a Supermoon; the Beaver, Frost, Frosty, or Snow Moon; Kartik Purnima; Loy Krathong; the Bon Om Touk (”Boat Racing Festival”) Moon, the Tazaungdaing Festival Moon; and Ill Poya.
The next full Moon will be Friday afternoon, November 15, 2024, at 4:29 PM EST. This will be early Saturday morning from Kamchatka and Fiji Time eastwards to the International Date Line.
The Pleiades star cluster will appear near the full Moon. The Moon will appear full for about 3 days around this time, from a few hours before sunrise on Thursday morning to a few hours before sunrise on Sunday morning.
This full Moon will be the last of four consecutive supermoons, slightly closer and brighter than the first of the four in mid-August.
The Maine Farmers' Almanac began publishing Native American names for full Moons in the 1930s.
Over time these names have become widely known and used. According to this almanac, as the full Moon in November this is the Beaver Moon, the Frost or Frosty Moon, or the Snow Moon.
For the Beaver Moon, one interpretation is that mid-Fall was the time to set beaver traps before the swamps freeze to ensure a supply of warm winter furs.
Another interpretation suggests that the name Beaver Moon came from how active the beavers are in this season as they prepare for winter.
The Frost, Frosty, or Snow Moon names come from the frosts and early snows that begin this time of year, particularly in northeastern North America.
This is Kartik Purnima (the full Moon of the Hindu lunar month of Kartik) and is celebrated by Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs (each for different reasons).
In Thailand and nearby countries this full Moon is Loy Krathong, a festival that includes decorating baskets and floating them on a river.
In Cambodia this full Moon corresponds with the 3-day Bon Om Touk (“Boat Racing Festival”), the Cambodian Water Festival featuring dragon boat races.
In Myanmar this is the Tazaungdaing Festival, a festival that predates the introduction of Buddhism and includes the launching of hot air balloons (sometimes flaming or laden with fireworks).
In Sri Lanka this is Ill (or Il) Poya, commemorating the Buddha's ordination of sixty disciples as the first Buddhist missionaries.
In many traditional Moon-based calendars the full Moons fall on or near the middle of each month.
This full Moon is near the middle of the tenth month of the Chinese year of the Dragon, Marcheshvan in the Hebrew calendar, a name often shortened to Cheshvan or Heshvan, and Jumādā al-ʾŪlā, the fifth month of the Islamic year.
As usual, the wearing of suitably celebratory celestial attire is encouraged in honor of the full Moon.
cont.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/skywatching/the-next-full-moon-will-be-the-last-of-four-consecutive-supermoons/
https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/2024/11/12/you-woodnt-want-to-miss-the-beaver-moon-last-supermoon-of-2024/
Artemis II Orion Spacecraft Undergoes Testing
Nov 12, 2024
Teams lifted NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis II test flight out of the Final Assembly and System Testing cell and moved it to the altitude chamber to complete further testing on Nov. 6 inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Engineers returned the spacecraft to the altitude chamber, which simulates deep space vacuum conditions, to complete the remaining test requirements and provide additional data to augment data gained during testing earlier this summer.
The Artemis II test flight will be NASA’s first mission with crew under the Artemis campaign, sending NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Reid Wiseman, as well as CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/artemis-ii-orion-spacecraft-undergoes-testing/
NASA James Webb Telescope Revelations Challenge Theory of Gravity
Updated Nov 13, 2024 at 6:19 AM EST
Observations of the early universe made by NASA's flagship James Webb Space Telescope are challenging the traditional theory of gravity and how the first galaxies formed.
This is the conclusion of a new study by astrophysicist Stacy McGaugh—of Ohio's Case Western Reserve University—and his colleagues.
According to the team, the standard model of early galaxy formation predicted that, staring at the distant (and therefore, given how light takes time to travel, young) universe, Webb should have seen only dim signals from small and primitive galaxies 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than half-a-billion years old.
"The expectation was that every big galaxy we see in the nearby universe would have started from these itty-bitty pieces," McGaugh said in a statement.
What astronomers have observed instead, however, is that these early galaxies are large and bright—meaning something is amiss in our understanding of the universe's evolution.
The largest and most powerful space telescope ever built, Webb's infrared instruments are capable of seeing objects so distant the light from them takes up to 13.5 billion years to reach us, effectively providing a window back into the infancy of the universe.
This has allowed us to see, for the first time, how the first stars and galaxies formed — and test the hypothesis that invisible "dark matter" helped normal matter clump together bit by bit, building up increasingly large structures until galaxies formed.
"Astronomers invented dark matter to explain how you get from a very smooth early universe to big galaxies with lots of empty space between them that we see today," said McGaugh.
However, he said: "What the theory of dark matter predicted is not what we see."
The large, bright signals that Webb keeps seeing, even as it looks deeper and deeper into the universe's past, are, however, compatible with another theory: Modified Newtonian Dynamics, or "MOND", for short.
"If MOND is indeed the correct theory—the status we usually confer to theories that get so many a priori predictions right—then the broader implications are enormous," McGaugh told Newsweek.
"For one, it implies that we have been barking up the wrong tree with dark matter. The reason we haven't detected dark matter in the laboratory despite decades of dedicated searches is because it is not there."
"The discrepancies we attribute to invisible dark matter are in fact due to a change in the force law. That in turn implies that our theory of gravity is incomplete."
Filling in these potential gaps, McGaugh added, will require a "major change in thinking" of the likes physics hasn't seen since the development of quantum mechanics a century ago.
The standard cosmological model invokes invisible dark matter to explain why galaxies appear to spin faster than they should based on what they can be seen to contain.
In MOND, meanwhile, this discrepancy is explained away by suggesting that Newton's law of gravity breaks down in situations where the pull of gravity is very weak—such as, for example, in the outer regions of galaxies.
Models suggest that in a MOND universe, cosmic structures like burgeoning galaxies would be built up much faster—first expanding outward with the rest of the universe, before collapsing in on itself under a stronger force of gravity to form a galaxy.
This would produce the same large and bright structures seen now by Webb, proponents of MOND first argued more than 25 years ago.
"The bottom line is: 'I told you so'," said McGaugh. He added: "I was raised to think that saying that was rude, but that's the whole point of the scientific method: make predictions and then check which come true."
https://www.newsweek.com/nasa-james-webb-galaxies-gravity-mond-universe-1984318
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad834d
In Shellenberger's testimony, I think
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO12/20241113/117721/HHRG-118-GO12-Wstate-ShellenbergerM-20241113.pdf