By Wayne Smith
A brand new flag is flying nearer to the celebs exterior the Huntsville Operations Help Middle at NASA’s Marshall Area Flight Middle following a Might 2 ceremony.
The white flag incorporates a blue emblem of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft and marks contributions from middle workforce members towards the launch of NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Take a look at, now focused to launch no sooner than 5:16 p.m. CDT Might 17. The flag-raising ceremony was held forward of the deliberate launch of the spacecraft atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Area Launch Complicated 41 at Cape Canaveral Area Power Station.
The flight check will carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the Worldwide Area Station for a couple of week to check the Starliner spacecraft and its subsystems earlier than NASA certifies the transportation system for rotational missions to the orbiting laboratory for the company’s Business Crew Program.
The flag elevating has been a practice for missions supported at Marshall’s Huntsville Operations Help Middle, or HOSC, in addition to a practice inside the Business Crew Program to have fun the profitable conclusion of NASA’s Company Flight Readiness Overview previous to launch. The ceremony was a joint effort between the Payload and Mission Operations Division (PMOD) and Business Crew Program workforce.
“The ceremony is particular as a result of it symbolizes the profitable conclusion of NASA’s Flight Readiness Overview, bringing us that a lot nearer to flight,” mentioned Maggie Freeman, a program analyst supporting the Launch Automobile Methods Workplace inside the Business Crew Program at Marshall. “It’s additionally a privilege to have the ability to honor a few of our Marshall workforce members who’ve supported the mission.”
Chris Chiesa and Brandyn Rolling have been honored in the course of the ceremony and raised the Starliner flag after being launched by Lisa McCollum, deputy supervisor for the Exploration & Transportation Improvement Workplace, and George Norris, deputy supervisor for the Payload & Mission Operations Division.
“We search for workforce members who’ve displayed excellence inside their fields, demonstrating their dedication to the objectives of the mission,” Freeman mentioned. “Chris and Brandyn each are phenomenal examples of that sustained dedication to excellence.”
Chiesa is the NASA engine lead for the Starliner spacecraft for the Business Crew Program. Rolling represented PMOD and manages the entire HOSC’s visiting automobile floor interfaces for NASA.
“I really feel tremendously lucky to be surrounded by such an unbelievable workforce and to have the assist of so many wonderful engineers and managers throughout Marshall, Kennedy, and Johnson (house flight facilities),” Chiesa mentioned.
Stated Rolling, “I’m extremely honored to be part of this wonderful PMOD workforce and am excited for the way forward for Boeing’s crewed flights with Starliner.”
The HOSC offers engineering and mission operations assist for the house station, the Business Crew Program, and Artemis missions, in addition to science and know-how demonstration missions. The Payload Operations Integration Middle inside HOSC operates, plans, and coordinates the science experiments onboard the house station 12 months a yr, 24 hours a day.
The Business Crew Program assist workforce at Marshall offers essential programmatic, engineering, and security and mission assurance experience for launch automobiles, spacecraft propulsion, and built-in automobile efficiency.
Smith, a Media Fusion worker and the Marshall Star editor, helps the Marshall Workplace of Communications.
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NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Take a look at is now focused to launch no sooner than 5:16 p.m. CDT Might 17 to the Worldwide Area Station. Following a radical knowledge evaluation accomplished Might 7, ULA (United Launch Alliance) determined to exchange a strain regulation valve on the liquid oxygen tank on the Atlas V rocket’s Centaur higher stage.
ULA deliberate to roll the rocket, with Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, again to its Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Area Power Station on Might 8 to start the substitute. The ULA workforce will carry out leak checks and practical checkouts in assist of the following launch try.
The oscillating habits of the valve throughout prelaunch operations, finally resulted in mission groups calling a launch scrub Might 6. After the bottom crews and astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams safely exited from Area Launch Complicated-41, the ULA workforce efficiently commanded the valve closed and the oscillations have been quickly dampened. The oscillations then re-occurred twice throughout gasoline elimination operations. After evaluating the valve historical past, knowledge signatures from the launch try, and assessing the dangers relative to continued use, the ULA workforce decided the valve exceeded its qualification and mission managers agreed to take away and exchange the valve.
Mission managers mentioned the small print resulting in the choice to clean the Might 6 launch alternative throughout a information convention shortly after the scrub name at NASA’s Kennedy Area Middle.
Wilmore and Williams will stay in crew quarters at Kennedy in quarantine till the following launch alternative. The duo would be the first to launch aboard Starliner to the house station as a part of the company’s Business Crew Program.
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By Jessica Barnett
After months of preparation and years since its final flight, the upgraded Excessive Decision Coronal Imager Flare mission – Hello-C Flare, for brief – took to the skies for a never-before-seen view of a photo voltaic flare.
The low-noise cameras – constructed at NASA’s Marshall Area Flight Middle – are a part of a set of state-of-the-art devices on board the Black Brant IX sounding rocket that launched April 17 from Poker Flat Analysis Vary in Alaska. Utilizing the brand new know-how, investigators hoped to review the intense energies concerned with photo voltaic flares. The Hello-C Flare experiment mission was led by Marshall.
“It is a pioneering marketing campaign,” mentioned Sabrina Savage, principal investigator at Marshall for Hello-C Flare. “Launching sounding rockets to look at the Solar to check new applied sciences optimized for flare observations has not even been an possibility till now.”
It was the third iteration of the Hello-C instrument to take flight, however its first flight with trip alongside devices, together with the COOL-AID (Coronal OverLapagram – Ancillary Imaging Diagnostics), CAPRI-SUN (high-CAdence low-energy Passband x-Ray detector with Built-in full-SUN subject of view), and SSAXI (Swift Photo voltaic Exercise X-ray Imager). Following a month of payload integration and testing in White Sands, New Mexico, investigators accomplished remaining launch web site integration on the Poker Flat Analysis Vary in Alaska.
Every morning of the two-week launch marketing campaign window, the workforce spent about 5 hours getting ready the experiment for launch, adopted by as much as 4 hours of monitoring photo voltaic knowledge for a flare that registers as C5-class or larger with period longer than the rocket flight. The launch lastly occurred on the penultimate day of the marketing campaign window.
“The Solar was unusually quiet all through the marketing campaign regardless of quite a few energetic areas,” Savage mentioned. “Each groups have been getting nervous that we’d not launch, however we lastly acquired a pleasant long-duration M-class flare proper earlier than the window closed.”
The Hello-C Flare mission launched at 2:14 p.m. AKDT, only one minute after the FOXSI-4 (Focusing Optics X-ray Photo voltaic Imager) mission led by the College of Minnesota. As soon as in air, sensors on the Hello-C Flare rocket pointed cameras towards the Solar and stabilized instrumentation. Then, a shutter door opened to permit the cameras to assemble about 5 minutes of knowledge earlier than the door closed and the rocket fell again to Earth.
The rocket landed within the Alaskan tundra, the place it remained till circumstances have been protected sufficient for the workforce to retrieve it and start processing the collected knowledge.
“For launches into the tundra, now we have to attend just a few days for the instrument to get again to us after which to be dried out sufficient to activate,” Savage mentioned. “It was an anxious few days, however the knowledge are lovely and have been definitely worth the wait.”
Investigators weren’t simply testing new know-how, both. Additionally they used a brand new algorithm to foretell the habits of a photo voltaic flare, permitting them to launch the rocket on the ideally suited time.
“To catch a flare in motion is basically onerous, as a result of you possibly can’t predict them,” mentioned Genevieve Vigil, technical and digital camera lead for Hello-C 3 and COOL-AID at Marshall. “We needed to wait round for a photo voltaic flare to begin going, then launch because it’s taking place. Nobody has tried to try this earlier than.”
Luckily, their methodology was a hit.
“We’re nonetheless processing the information from all 4 devices, however the knowledge from Hello-C 3 and COOL-AID already look unbelievable,” Savage mentioned.
“The COOL-AID knowledge is the primary spectrally pure picture in a sizzling spectral line that we all know of,” mentioned Amy Winebarger, challenge scientist at Marshall for Hello-C Flare.
The Hello-C experiment is led by Marshall in partnership with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Montana State College in Bozeman, Montana. Launch assist is supplied at Poker Flat Analysis Vary in Alaska by NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program on the company’s Wallops Flight Facility, which is managed by NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Middle. NASA’s Heliophysics Division manages the sounding-rocket program for the company.
Barnett, a Media Fusion worker, helps the Marshall Workplace of Communications.
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By Jessica Barnett
NASA has awarded practically $1.5 million to educational, non-profit, and enterprise organizations to advance state-of-the-art know-how that may play a key function within the company’s return to the Moon underneath Artemis, in addition to future missions to Mars.
Twenty-four initiatives from 21 organizations have been awarded underneath NASA’s Twin-Use Know-how Improvement Cooperative Settlement Notices, or CANs. The awardees additionally will obtain help from propulsion, house transportation, and science specialists at NASA’s Marshall Area Flight Middle.
“The Twin-Use Know-how Improvement Cooperative Settlement Discover permits NASA to collaboratively work with U.S. trade and academia to develop wanted applied sciences,” mentioned Daniel O’Neil, supervisor, NASA Marshall’s Know-how Improvement Twin-Use CAN Program. “Merchandise from these cooperative agreements assist the closure of recognized know-how gaps and allow the event of elements and methods for NASA’s Moon to Mars structure.”
These revolutionary initiatives embrace methods to make use of lunar regolith for building on the Moon’s floor, utilizing smartphone video steerage sensors to fly robots on the Worldwide Area Station, figuring out new battery supplies, and bettering a neutrino particle detector.
The next is a whole listing of awardees:
- Auburn College in Alabama
- Florida Institute of Know-how in Melbourne, Florida
- Florida Worldwide College in Miami
- Fronius USA in Portage, Indiana
- Gloyer-Taylor Laboratories in Tullahoma, Tennessee
- Louisiana State College in Baton Rouge
- Morgan State College in Baltimore
- Nanoracks (Voyager Area) in Houston
- Northwestern College in Chicago
- Purdue College in West Lafayette, Indiana
- Southwest Analysis Institute in San Antonio
- Tethon 3D in Omaha, Nebraska
- College of Alabama in Huntsville
- College of California in Irvine
- College of Florida in Gainesville
- College of Illinois in Chicago
- College of North Texas in Denton
- College of Tennessee in Knoxville
- College of Tennessee Area Institute
- Victory Options in Huntsville, Alabama
- Wichita State College in Kansas
The Florida Institute of Know-how, Northwestern College, and the College of Alabama have been awarded funding for 2 initiatives every.
Funding was accessible for organizations targeted on supporting entrepreneurial analysis and innovation concepts that might advance the industrial house sector and profit future NASA missions.
Purposes are now open for the 2024 solicitation cycle.
Barnett, a Media Fusion worker, helps the Marshall Workplace of Communications.
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By Rick Smith
Launched in late 2021, the science actions for NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) mission have been directed by researchers at NASA and the Italian Area Company by way of February 2024. Now, in the course of the Basic Observer part of the mission, IXPE’s remark program primarily is guided by the broader scientific neighborhood.
“We’re within the means of turning X-ray polarization into a normal a part of the toolkit for X-ray astronomers across the globe,” mentioned Philip Kaaret, IXPE principal investigator at NASA’s Marshall Area Flight Middle. “The response throughout the high-energy astrophysics neighborhood has been large.”
The Basic Observer Program, which formally started in February, invitations astrophysicists and house scientists around the globe to suggest thrilling new investigations of black holes, neutron stars, energetic galactic nuclei, and different high-energy X-ray sources utilizing the IXPE telescope.
Within the spacecraft’s first two years of operation, NASA’s analysis companions included greater than 175 scientists in 13 international locations – and curiosity continues to swell. Proposed investigations submitted thus far to the Basic Observer Program contain greater than 1,400 researchers at 174 distinctive establishments in 30 international locations.
“Our chief purpose to allow each social gathering to make use of, analyze, and interpret IXPE knowledge,” mentioned Kavitha Arur, program lead at NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Middle. “We need to maximize science outputs and canopy the widest attainable vary of targets.”
In June 2023, NASA issued an open invitation to researchers to suggest new IXPE missions and targets of remark. By the October 2023 deadline, the Basic Observer Program workforce had acquired 135 proposals for Cycle 1, overlaying the primary yr of this system. Every proposal was exhaustively peer-reviewed by NASA astrophysicists and related specialists within the subject.
Researchers proposed research primarily based on the variety of seconds of IXPE goal remark they estimated they would want to acquire the information essential to confirm a speculation or mannequin.
For Cycle 1, the workforce chosen 39 proposals, totaling about 15 million seconds of complete remark time. That determine will embrace some overlap amongst chosen targets – and the targets chosen included just a few surprises.
“A few of the chosen proposals have been for varieties of targets we hadn’t beforehand thought of, resembling tidal disruption occasions,” Kaaret mentioned. A tidal disruption occasion is when a star is pulled right into a supermassive black gap and torn aside.
Cycle 1 researchers additionally will, for the primary time, use IXPE to review a white dwarf, a stellar core remnant roughly the dimensions of Earth however with a mass corresponding to that of our Solar. That white dwarf is a part of the binary system T Coronae Borealis, roughly 3,000 mild years from our photo voltaic system. “T CrB,” because it’s recognized to astronomers, additionally consists of an historical crimson big which emits a nova eruption each 80 years or so. It was final seen in 1946, and astronomers anticipate one other eruption between now and September 2024. For stargazers on Earth, this nova will seem like a star that wasn’t there earlier than.
That broad window of time makes T CrB a “goal of alternative” for IXPE – an unpredictable wrinkle within the meticulously plotted Cycle 1 schedule. Such an occasion requires fast response on the a part of the workforce to allow IXPE to level at it with out a number of superior scheduling.
Allyn Tennant, who heads IXPE’s science operations middle at Marshall, is tasked with mapping out IXPE’s timetable. He components within the exact period of every remark, the time wanted to obtain its findings, and the mandatory repositioning time between targets.
What does it take to execute such a posh plan? “A specific amount of thought, a specific amount of swearing, and a complete lot of replanning,” Tennant mentioned.
“We began this system the primary week of February and by late April, Allyn had already rescheduled the plan seven instances,” Kaaret added. “It makes for some aggravating weekends, however a number of actually thrilling outcomes come from these unanticipated occasions.”
IXPE spends a couple of week on every goal, on common, so it’s not onerous to schedule roughly 40 targets in a 52-week window, Tennant mentioned – till one encounters these targets of alternative. There’s additionally the problem of managing the influx of knowledge from every remark. The brighter the goal, the larger the amount of incoming knowledge that have to be captured, verified, and distributed to the investigators.
The spacecraft’s busy schedule additionally components in joint astronomical observations with different NASA devices conducting their very own orbiting science missions. These joint efforts additional lengthen the worth of knowledge gathered throughout IXPE’s Basic Observer Program research however add one other degree of complexity when targets of alternative name for reshuffling the schedule.
Throughout Cycle 1 and Cycle 2, IXPE is teaming with NASA’s NICER (Neutron Star Inside Composition Explorer) X-ray observatory, which research neutron stars, black holes, and different phenomena from its everlasting vantage level aboard the Worldwide Area Station. In Cycle 2, starting in February 2025, this system additionally will companion with NASA’s orbiting Swift and NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) imagers, which monitor gamma-ray bursts and high-energy cosmic X-ray occasions, respectively.
The rising curiosity in IXPE’s success led USRA’s Science and Know-how Institute to announce the primary IXPO (Worldwide X-ray Polarimetry Symposium), to be held in Huntsville on Sept. 16-19. Astronomers, engineers, and X-ray technologists are inspired to attend.
View the whole listing of chosen IXPE Cycle 1 analysis proposals. Study extra about program tips for submitting Cycle 2 proposals.
IXPE, led by NASA Marshall, is a collaboration between NASA and the Italian Area Company. The Area & Mission Methods division of BAE Methods Inc., in Broomfield, Colorado, manages spacecraft operations along with the College of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Area Physics in Boulder.
Smith, a Manufacturing Technical Options Inc. worker, helps the Marshall Workplace of Communications.
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NASA has chosen 40 undergraduate college students for the primary yr of its Europa ICONS (Inspiring Clipper: Alternatives for Subsequent-generation Scientists) internship program, supporting the company’s Europa Clipper mission. Europa ICONS matches college students with mentors from the mission’s science workforce for a 10-week program to conduct unique scientific analysis on subjects associated to the mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa.
This system is deliberate to run yearly till Europa Clipper completes its prime mission in 2034 and is open to functions from all U.S. undergraduate STEM majors, with desire given to college students from non-high analysis exercise universities and underserved establishments.
ICONS internships could also be in-person on the mentor’s establishment, digital, or hybrid, relying on the analysis challenge and desires of the mentor and intern. As a part of this system, college students and mentors will convene for a two-day assembly at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The primary Europa ICONS internship will run June 3 by way of Aug. 9.
The scholars chosen for the Europa ICONS program in 2024 are:
- Sarah Ruetschle, John Carroll College in College Heights, Ohio
- Cole Anderson, College of California, Santa Cruz
- Hamza Ouriour, Wentworth Institute of Know-how in Boston
- Ethan Piacenti, Olivet Nazarene College in Bourbonnais, Illinois
- Jared Bouck, Northern Arizona College in Flagstaff, Arizona
- Kayla Blair, Northern Arizona College
- Carly Davis, McNeese State College in Lake Charles, Louisiana
- Matthew Perkins, Purple Rocks Neighborhood Faculty in Lakewood, Colorado
- Angela Zhang, Cornell College in Ithaca, New York
- Arianna Rodriguez Ortiz, College of Puerto Rico–Mayaguez
- Beverly Malugin Ayala, College of Puerto Rico–Mayaguez
- Jeansel Johnson-Ayala, College of Puerto Rico–Rio Piedras
- Akemi Takeuchi, College of Maryland, Faculty Park
- Sofia Service provider-Dest, College of Maryland–College Faculty in Adelphi
- Gradon Robbins, College of Florida in Gainesville
- Jason Sioeng, California State Polytechnic College, Pomona
- Tyler Yuen, San Jose State College in San Jose, California
- Dallin Nelson, Southern Utah College in Cedar Metropolis
- Eric Stinemetz, College of Houston–Downtown
- Lucas Nerbonne, Middlebury Faculty in Middlebury, Vermont
- Hope Jerris, Middlebury Faculty
- Jacob Dietrich, Indiana College, Southeast in New Albany
- Jocelyn Mateo, Lorain County Neighborhood Faculty in Elyria, Ohio
- Samuel Brown, San Diego Mesa Faculty in San Diego
- Madison Stanford, Loyola Marymount College in Los Angeles
- Bryce McGimsey, Solano Neighborhood Faculty in Fairfield, California
- Noah Alayon, CUNY LaGuardia Neighborhood Faculty in Queens, New York
- Trevor Erwin, College of Texas at Austin
- Ava Frost, Mount Holyoke Faculty in South Hadley, Massachusetts
- Brianna Casey, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York
- Fatima Mendoza, Texas Tech College in Lubbock
- Daniel Voyles, Harvey Mudd Faculty in Claremont, California
- Swaroop Sathyanarayanan, Georgia Institute of Know-how in Atlanta
- Jay Patel, Louisiana State College Faculty of Engineering in Baton Rouge
- Juliane Keiper, Amherst Faculty in Amherst, Massachusetts
- Emori Lengthy, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College in Tallahassee
- Scott Chang, College of Wisconsin–Madison
- Hayden Ferrell, Arizona State College in Tempe
- Isabella Musto, Denison College in Granville, Ohio
- Elizabeth Kirby, Faculty of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina
The Europa Clipper mission’s three fundamental science aims are to find out the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its floor interactions with the ocean under, to analyze its composition, and to characterize its geology. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will assist scientists higher perceive the astrobiological potential for liveable worlds past our planet.
The Europa ICONS program is managed by the Planetary Science Division inside NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and is an element of a bigger effort often known as Clipper Subsequent Gen, a decade-long technique utilizing the Europa Clipper mission to coach and diversify the following era of planetary scientists.
Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the event of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Utilized Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. APL designed the primary spacecraft physique in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Middle. The Planetary Missions Program Workplace at NASA’s Marshall Area Flight Middle executes program administration of the Europa Clipper mission.
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Shiny, starry spiral arms encompass an energetic galactic middle in a brand new NASA Hubble Area Telescope picture of the galaxy NGC 4951.
Positioned within the Virgo constellation, NGC 4951 is positioned roughly 50 million light-years away from Earth. It’s categorised as a Seyfert galaxy, which signifies that it’s an especially energetic sort of galaxy with an energetic galactic nucleus (AGN). Nonetheless, Seyfert galaxies are distinctive from different types of AGNs as a result of the galaxy itself can nonetheless be clearly seen – various kinds of AGNs are so shiny that it’s practically not possible to look at the precise galaxy that they reside inside.
AGNs like NGC 4951 are powered by supermassive black holes. As matter whirls into the black gap, it generates radiation throughout all the electromagnetic spectrum, making the AGN shine brightly.
Hubble helped show that supermassive black holes exist on the core of just about each galaxy in our universe. Earlier than the telescope launched into low-Earth orbit in 1990, astronomers solely theorized about their existence. The mission verified their existence by observing the plain results of black holes, like jets of fabric ejecting from black holes and disks of gasoline and dirt revolving round these black holes at very excessive speeds.
These observations of NGC 4951 have been taken to offer precious knowledge for astronomers learning how galaxies evolve, with a specific concentrate on the star formation course of. Hubble gathered this info, which is being mixed with observations with the James Webb Area Telescope (JWST) to assist a JWST Treasury program. Treasury packages acquire observations that concentrate on the potential to resolve a number of scientific issues with a single, coherent dataset and allow a wide range of compelling scientific investigations.
NASA’s Marshall Area Flight Middle was the lead subject middle for the design, improvement, and building of the house telescope.
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