Archive
That Was The Week That Was, October 25-29, 2010. . . A Digest of Goddard People, Science, & Media, PLUS Historical Tidbits and Our Best Stuff in the Blogpodcastotwitterverse
MONDAY October 25: NASA Blueshift’s Weekly Awesomeness Round Up features the robot-dancing bunny-suited JPL guy, a smokin’ Suzaku blast-off video, and the most distant space thingie every seen.
Rider on the storm: Six months after her boat was damaged in a storm, Abby Sunderland met the NASA team that developed technology used to save her life.
Middle East MODIS: Terra satellite’s MODIS instrument snaps a portrait of the Sinai region on MODIS Image of the Day.
TUESDAY October 26: The sun’s northern hemisphere is crackling with flares!
It burns! Two Goddard Institute for Space Studies scientists produce the first long-term global history of wildfires.
Charred: Bombarded by solar radiation, the surfaces of some comets tend to be a charred carbon-black.
Dancing with the stars: Watch a video of the Artemis mission’s dizzying orbital acrobatics. Then read the details.
WEDNESDAY October 27: The magnetometers developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., for the Juno mission to Jupiter were delivered recently to Lockheed Martin in Denver, Colorado.
THURSDAY October 28: Mangroves protect less of the world’s shorelines, and are vanishing faster than previously thought.
Plume watch: NASA’s Aqua satellite flew over the erupting Shiveluch Volcano in Russia today and captured a visible image of its ash plume.
FRIDAY October 29: Earth Observatory Image of the Day features spectacular image of giant cyclonic storm of the Midwest this week.
Halloween sounds: What on Earth is that spooky sound on NASA’s What On Earth blog? Hint: It’s not a balroq, cave troll, crebain, or even a humpback whale!
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OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA. //
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Our man in England: Guest blogger Phil Evans explains why you should care about a new X-ray nova in the Milky Way spotted by NASA's Swift observatory and a gizmo on the International Space Station
ABOVE: The X-ray nova MAXI J1409-619 before (October 12) and after (October 17) it dramatically brightened.
Ho, hum, another day, another X-ray nova. I’m not an expert in cosmic thingies that emit X-rays, but I know someone who is: Phil Evans, gogblog’s on-tap X-ray astronomer. He’s a post-doctoral research assistant in the X-ray and Observational Astronomy group at the University of Leicester, and has previously appeared on the blog. I asked him to explain why this discovery is interesting. You can also read the Penn State press release for lots of details.
Gogblog: Ok, Phil, so what’s the big deal about this X-ray nova?
Phil Evans: This may be a new Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients, or SFXT. It’s a class of object which INTEGRAL discovered, through their outbursts — Swift has since shown — are actually not so fast or transient at all!
These systems contain a giant star and a compact object such as a neutron star or black hole. Their orbit is rather eccentric — more an oval than a circle. The outbursts here occur because the giant star has a strong wind, blowing its outer layers off. As the stars pass close to each other, the compact object slams into this wind and a shock front forms ahead of it, heating the material up so that it emits X-rays.
What Swift has shown for many of these sources is that actually they emit X-rays outside of outburst as well. For — most of, maybe all of — the rest of the orbit, where the compact object is not shocking the giant star’s wind, it’s actually sucking it up. This wind falls onto the compact object and as it slams into the surface of the compact object it gets heated up and also gives off X-rays, albeit at a much lower rate than in outburst.
Gogblog: Two teams observed this thing, right? First scientists in Japan, who then alerted the Swift observatory to follow up.
Phil Evans: Yes. And this is a great example of why international collaboration is so important. The sky is so big that to spot something like this — a sudden bright outburst in soft X-rays— is almost impossible unless you have some device which looks at a large part of the sky, something like the MAXI instrument, which sits on the ISS and scans the whole sky as the station orbit the Earth. But then, working out what the object is and locating it accurately is impossible unless you have some device that can continue to look at the source for some time and with higher resolution: something like Swift.
Thanks to a collaboration between these two instruments, within hours of the MAXI discovery Dr. Jamie Kennea, a Penn State scientist who leads the MAXI-Swift transient team, had triggered Swift observations of the source. Swift was built to respond rapidly to phenomena it discovers for itself, but it’s pretty cool that it can also respond so fast to phenomena one of its cousins finds.
Learn more about Swift:
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OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
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That Was The Week That Was, October 18-22, 2010. . . A Digest of Goddard People, Science, & Media, PLUS Historical Tidbits and Our Best Stuff in the Blogpodcastotwitterverse
MONDAY October 18: It’s solar week! Celebrate the best star we’ve ever had.
What’s the big idea? On this day in 1899, 17-year-old Robert H. Goddard got a crazy idea.
Wavy: A sinuous satellite view of Fort Yukon, Alaska, featured on the ASTER Image of the Day.
Celebrity star: A SOHO solar snapshot makes it onto the massively popular website, Astronomy Picture of the Day.
TUESDAY October 19: Goddard Flickr page posts bloody false-color image of Susitna Glacier in Alaska, captured previously by NASA’s Terra satellite.
Awesomeness Update: NASA Blueshift’s round-up of the previous week’s astro-highlights features a new Webb Telescope video, an asteroid collision, and award-winning Goddard science.
On the edge: This day in 2008, the International Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft launched on a journey to study the border between our solar system and interstellar space.
THURSDAY October 21: The What On Earth blog Earth Buzz features weather satellites, pyrocumulonimbus clouds, a solar stumper, and more.
Just the facts, ma’am: NASA Blueshift ponders whether the science on the “Big Bang Theory” show is accurate.
Slammed: The LCROSS mission slammed a spent booster into the moon; here’s what they stirred up.
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OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
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Rare archival footage of Robert Goddard launching his "model" rockets: Quick, fellas, jump in the Model T and let's get outta here!
Earlier this week, I posted a podcast about “Goddard Dream Day.” Then I shared a newspaper feature story about how people in Worcester, Mass., celebrated Dream Day — with help from Goddard astrogeologist and Desert RAT Jim Rice. And here is some rare archival footage of Robert Goddard shooting off his experimental liquid-fueled rockets in the 20s and 30s.
This video is an excerpt from a film made by NASA in the 1970s about the Apollo 11 moon landing: Episode 1—The Day Before. I particularly enjoy the part where the rocketeers prepare a test shot and then practically leap into a waiting Model T Ford to withdraw to a safe spot. Early rockets had this bad habit of blowing up!
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OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
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Goddard astrogeologist James Rice speaks in Worcester about his work for NASA at an event celebrating the life and work of Robert Goddard
Yesterday was Goddard Dream Day. One of Goddard Space Flight Center’s own, James Rice, was on hand in Worcester, Massachusetts, to speak about his work for NASA and to help celebrate the life of rocketman Robert H. Goddard. There’s a nice little story about it in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
WORCESTER — One hundred eleven years ago yesterday, 17-year-old Robert H. Goddard, the father of modern rocketry, was pruning a cherry tree when he imagined a machine that might travel to Mars. The moment gave purpose to his life, and he later marked the date as his “Anniversary Day.”
Yesterday, a 51-year-old employee of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland visited Worcester to tell how Mr. Goddard’s life helped sustain his own ambitions and career, which focuses on rocks on the red planet. . . . .
James Rice appears in this video about NASA’s Desert RATS project:
http://blip.tv/play/AYH7vXkC
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OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
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Happy Goddard Dream Day! On this day in 1899, Bob Goddard had a crazy idea: that people would some day fly without wings
Goddard Space Flight Center is named after Robert Goddard, the liquid-fuel rocketry pioneer. And on this day in 1899, he had a crazy idea. It occurred to him in a cherry tree. Bob Goddard wondered if it would be possible to fly without wings to Mars. And he marked this day, October 19, for the rest of his life, calling it his “anniversary day.”
click to go to podcast
I explain the whole thing in a podcast airing today on “365 Days of Astronomy,” which is a project of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. You can also just download the .mp3 file here and listen to it on your iPod or other media player.
A trail of irony led me to learn about Robert Goddard’s dreamy day in 1899. I am a science writer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. When I started here, I would tell people that I work at Goddard Space Flight Center. Their reaction: awkward pause, puzzled look. Goddard what? Goddard who?
This is ironic, given that Robert Goddard was the most famous scientist in America between the world wars, according to David Clary, one of Goddard’s biographers. In his time, Goddard got more press coverage than Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein. He died in 1945.
Goddard helped to develop rockets that burned liquid fuel. In 1926, he launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket, and many more after that.
Liquid-fueled rockets rained V2 bombs on London. Liquid-fueled rockets took us to the moon. Today they take astronauts to and from the space station. And they may someday bring us to asteroids and to Mars.
The roots of Robert Goddard, rocket scientist, trace back to a cherry tree. On October 19, 1899, Goddard climbed into the tree to prune away some dead branches. He was 17 years old, and looking out over a meadow he was struck by a thought.
“I imagined,” he later recalled, “how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet. . . I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended, for existence at last seemed very purposive.”
His dream was to break free of gravity and take to the sky. He was not the first person to have this dream. But that dream, Clary wrote in his book Rocket Man, “would not let him go.”
Goddard’s big dream was achieved eventually — well, except for the part about people going to Mars. And he celebrated this day, October 19, throughout his life. It was the day he thought his most important and biggest thought. Let’s call it Goddard’s Dream Day.
At its best, NASA runs on big dreams. One of the biggest at the moment is the James Webb Space Telescope. It’s an infrared space observatory that will unfold its mirrors like flower petals, 1 million miles from Earth, and look back to the beginning of the universe. The technology is advanced and it’s risky. But without big dreams, where would we be?
It’s October 19, Robert Goddard’s dream day, and it’s a good day to dream a big dream. What’s yours?
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OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
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SDO sees a solar eclipse from space: watch the dark shadow of the moon chug across the surface of our sun
On October 7, 2010, the moon passed between NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and its target. And SDO saw the equivalent of a partial solar eclipse — from space. The SDO “Pick of the Week” write-up below provides additional details. Watch the incredible video to see the dark shadow of the moon chug across the surface of our sun.
This was a first for SDO and it was visually engaging too. On October 7, 2010, SDO observed its first lunar transit when the new Moon passed directly between the spacecraft (in its geosynchronous orbit) and the Sun. With SDO watching the Sun in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light, the dark Moon created a partial eclipse of the Sun.
These images, while unusual and cool to see, have practical value to the SDO science team. Karel Schrijver of Lockheed-Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Lab explains: “The very sharp edge of the lunar limb allows us to measure the in-orbit characteristics of the telescope e.g., light diffraction on optics and filter support grids. Once these are characterized, we can use that information to correct our data for instrumental effects and sharpen up the images to even more detail.”
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OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
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Visit the supercomputer (construction site) down the hall
Blinky lights all aglow inside the Discover supercomputer.
In a recent post I introduced you to the supercomputer down the hall — seriously, it’s right down the hall from my office and down one flight of stairs. The machine is called Discover, and scientists at Goddard’s NASA Center for Climate Simulation use it to study climate change, weather, and other basic questions about our planet.
Discover’s component parts are spread across several rooms, connected by a high-speed data network. People can network into the system from across Goddard’s campus or the country via data superhighways. In recent weeks, Discover has turned into a construction site. The upgrade now underway will double the system’s computing capacity.
Here’s a quick tour of the project and a refresher on what a supercomputer looks like and how it works.
This is what Discover looks like: metal cabinets, called racks, full of shallow rectangular devices called nodes. Think of a node as the equivalent of a souped-up desktop computer. The heart of each node is a processor, or “core.” (The MacBook Pro laptop I wrote this blog on contains an Intel Core 2 Duo chip with two cores.) The four rows of 18 cabinets, or “racks,” above contain 8,256 cores, or roughly 4,000 times the processing capability of my laptop. Another room contains an additional 32 racks. These two rooms, with 50 racks of processing nodes, comprise the current Discover “cluster,” with a total of 14,968 cores.
This is “Scalable Unit 7,” the newest addition to the Discover cluster. These 18 racks contain 14,400 cores — roughly the same capacity of the 50 preexisting racks of equipment. The reason is that chip manufacturers can now put more processors on the same slab of silicon. Again, back to my MacBook Pro: its chip contains two cores. Older chips in Discover contain up to four cores. Scalable Unit 7 contains nodes with Intel Xeon Westmere processors, which contain SIX cores per chip. The bottom line is you can pack more computing power in the same space. The upgrade will nearly double Discover’s capacity to 29,368 cores, with a peak speed of 320 trillion calculations per second.
Here are the backs of the racks. You can see the nodes, connected by wire and fiber optics. Cooling fans inside the nodes blow hot air toward the backs of the cabinets. Special refrigerated cooling doors will absorb that heat and remove it using Goddard’s chilled water AC system.
That big cable snake will connect Scalable Unit 7 to the rest of the supercomputer. The final incarnation of Discover, with nearly 30,000 cores, will require more than 5 miles of copper wire cable and 6 miles of fiber optics to connect all the components of the system. That includes 12 petabytes of mass data storage capacity, or the equivalent of 3.2 billion iTunes song downloads.
Right now, the installation is still underway. The NCCS computer technologists and researchers will put the new and improved Discover through its paces over the coming months and have it running at full capacity by the end of the year.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
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That Was The Week That Was, October 4-8, 2010. . . A Digest of Goddard People, Science, & Media, PLUS Historical Tidbits and Our Best Stuff in the Blogpodcastotwittersphere
MONDAY October 4: On this day in 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. Meanwhile, engineers and scientists with the Naval Research Laboratory in the U.S. continued to work on Project Vanguard, which boosted the satellite Vanguard 3 into orbit on March 17, 1958.
Just like the real thing: NASA Earth Observatory features the work of Goddard’s Modern Era Retrospective-analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) global simulation project.
Hot solar science: The four Cluster spacecraft scrutinize how protons are heated in the solar wind.
Chemistry on ice: Goddard’s Mark Loeffler and Reggie Hudson discover that ice chemistry on Jupiter’s giant moon Europa is more lively than we thought.
And the winners are. . . NASA Blueshift announces the winners of the cosmic beachball contests. And the Weekly Awesomeness Round Up features Optimus Prime, alien views of our solar system, and other highlights from the previous week.
TUESDAY October 5: Why does the Red Planet’s atmosphere bleed into space? The MAVEN mission will find out. And a new Goddard video explains the whole thing. And if you’re still curious, see the new video about how NASA makes sure its spacecraft designs are top notch.
Blowing in the wind: NASA’s “A-Train” satellites will search for 770 million tons of dust blown into the air from the Sahara Desert.
See Hartley glow: The Hubble Space Telescope snaps an image of Comet 103P/Hartley 2 to help scientists plan for the November 4 flyby of the comet by NASA’s Deep Impact eXtended Investigation (DIXI) spacecraft.
WEDNESDAY October 6: The wobble of Saturn’s moon Enceladus may keep it warm.
So long and thanks for all the data: The WMAP mission concludes its observations of the cosmic microwave background.
Arctic retreat: NASA’s Aqua satellite confirms that Arctic sea ice retreated to its third-lowest extent in the satellite record on September 29. A new video shows all.
CERN special: On NASA Blueshift, former Goddard intern Faith Tucker visits the Conseil European pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN) — home of the Large Hadron Collider.
THURSDAY October 7: Fox 2 news St. Louis airs a segment about the Webb Telescope. Jim Pontius from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explains.
FRIDAY October 8: The Webb Telescope’s high-tech accordion sun shield passes its latest tests.
Pass the packing tape: The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument is almost ready to ship to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to be attached to the Mars Science Laboratory rover bound for the Red Planet.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
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That Was The Week That Was, September 27-October 1, 2010. . . A Digest of Goddard People, Science, & Media, PLUS Historical Tidbits and Our Best Stuff in the Blogpodcastotwittersphere
MONDAY September 27: See photos from the set of the TV show Big Bang Theory on the NASA Blueshift blog. And Blueshift kicks off a week of contests to win a cosmic beach ball signed by Nobel laureate John Mather.
Hurricane hunters: Meet NASA hurricane scientists.
Off to an asteroid: On this day in 2007, the Dawn spacecraft began its journey to the giant asteroids Ceres and Vesta.
TUESDAY September 28: Read about the bleeding-edge engineering that created the Webb Telescope’s erector-set-like instrument carriage, the ISIM. . . and the ISIM just passed deep-freeze testing at Goddard. And visit the deep-freeze vacuum test chamber in a new video.
Fluffy clouds: The MODIS instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite captures swirly patterns over the southeastern United States.
Cool tool: NASA’s new Global Ice Viewer features lots of Goddard science and visualizations of Earth’s cold spots.
WEDNESDAY September 29: NASA Earth Observatory features the St. Anthony Sand Dunes in Idaho.
Ready for prime time: NASA and the makers of the Optimus Prime transformer character team up to sponsor a contest for kids.
THURSDAY September 30: How hot was it this past summer? NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies tells all.
Ibex update: NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer reveals changes in the collision zone between the solar system and interstellar space.
Catch the Earth buzz: The What On Earth Blog team rounds up recent interesting Earthiness, including the 2012 apocalypse hoax, the robots on the roof, and the NASA tweet of the week.
On edge: See the cosmic ray attack at the boundaries of the solar system! And don’t miss this gorgeous artistic portrait of the boundary zone where the solar system ends and the rest of the universe begins.
FRIDAY October 1: On this day in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration began operations. The National Aeronautics and Space Act created NASA on July 29, 1958, replacing its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).
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OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
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