Cometary Globules

Gibbous by Abi Ashra (Tumblr)

Fading Females

As the daughter of our town’s E.S.D.A. Coordinator, I have always been intrigued by ham radio. My father (and elmer) has been a ham for about 40 years. He actually received his license when he was in high school!

After studying for three weeks, I went to take the ham test. I was very discouraged to see that I was the only girl in the room. However, I was treated like a queen by the group that was hosting the test. They seemed excited to have a female in their midst.

Upon receiving my Technician license, I eagerly awaited the Tuesday night ARES net (which my dad happens to be the Net Control of). Again, I was saddened to hear but a few female voices. Over time, I noticed that the female hams rarely checked in to the net. I wondered why these women who worked so hard to achieve their licenses would not want to take advantage of all that ham radio has to offer.

I hope that women are being encouraged to be active hams. Whether they join a club or simply make contacts, females are providing a fresh voice and perspective to the hobby. So, ladies, do not be shy! Proudly check in with your call sign. You have earned it!

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot as Viewed by Voyager 1 in February, 1979. The Great Red Spot is an anticyclone, three and a half times the size of Earth located in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere. [1920 × 1080]

Catching Up: Weather is weird... TWWN continues... 80 Meter woes...

-=> Weather is just plain odd around here. We’re supposed to get up to 7 inches of snow, but nothing so far. Here in town it’s actually pretty nice

Out in the country it’s a different story. Not snowing, but 30+ MPH winds are whipping the snow we do have into near blizzard like conditions in some areas. Went down to Stockbridge to my favorite coffee shop, Mud Creek, and if I hadn’t been driving the Jeep I don’t think I would have made it. Was bucking drifts a foot or more deep in some areas, and visibility was down to just a few feet in places.

Problem with the Jeep is I get overconfident. I was bashing along around 40 mph in four wheel drive, and nearly lost it when I nailed a 2 foot deep drift. Wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d been driving slow, but at 40 the front end wiped out and I nearly went sideways before I got it straightened out again. Needless to say, I slowed down a bit after that.

So, snow storms today, and by Thursday it’s supposed to be 40 degrees and raining.

Sigh…

Noticed they got the street dug up just down the road from the house here. Another water main break. Must be the fifth one we’ve had in town in the last two months. Feel sorry for the water utility guys. And I stocked up on bottled water just in case…

-=> Work on The World’s Worst Novel continues unabated. I’ve been having way too much fun with this thing. It’s an SF novel in the worst sense of the word, harking back to the old space opera days with ridiculous space battles, paying very little attention to whether or not the ‘science’ bears any relationship to actual physics. It’s also gotten very, very dirty. Well, not by modern standards. Compared to modern fiction it’s actually pretty mild, but for me… I keep wondering where this stuff comes from.

Curiously, I just realized that almost all of the main characters are female. The protagonist is female, her spouse is female, almost all the heads of government are female… Not sure why. Didn’t do it deliberately. 

-=> Amateur Radio stuff… I have, alas, been doing very little of late except listening. I’ve discovered that my Comet vertical antenna is total crap below about 20 meters or so, which is understandable when you look at how the thing is built. Most of the energy going into the thing, especially at lower frequencies, is never getting into the air. Frankly, it’s surprising I can get a decent SWR at all with the thing on the lower bands. I ran some generic calculations and if I got the formulas right (which I probably didn’t) if I put 200 watts into the thing down at 3.8 mHz I’m lucky if I get 20 out of it.

Weather has been so nasty I’ve never even tried to get the dipole up. For one thing, mounting it is going to be a problem. I’m going to have to put up some kind of mast to try to get the center of the thing up to around 35 feet, and then it’s going to have to be configured as an inverted V because there’s nothing I can hook the ends to.

I picked up a Gap Titan multi band vertical that I’m going to give a try. It’s far more efficient than the Comet and even better, I can finally use my big amplifier with it. It’s rated to handle 1,500 watts so I can finally fire up the Ameritron. If it works, that is. Considering Ameritron’s reputation, you never know what’s going to happen. I talked to a guy who used to sell the things and they’d go through every one before they sent it out because they were having a 25% failure rate straight form the factory. I looked it over carefully when I put it together and didn’t see any obvious issues, and it does come up in standby mode, but until I actually try using it, whether it’ll work or not is anyones guess.

From what I’ve been hearing, the Titan has some issues when it comes to tuning it to work on the various bands. One fellow I talked to told me he never could get the thing down to a reasonable SWR on 80 meters. Other people tell me they had no problems at all. So we’ll see. SWR doesn’t bother me that much. I’ve got a massive Palstar auto tuner that can handle up to 2,000 watts output to hang behind the Ameritron.

I really wish now that I’d spent a little bit more and gone for the solid state amplifier rather than the tube based one. The solid state amps are a lot easier to work with. They’re pretty much plug and play, just turn them on, select the band you want, and go. Tube amps are fussy, requiring a lot of fiddling whenever you change bands, even changing frequencies. It’s easy to mess them up and end up blowing a $300 tube. Still, it was almost a grand cheaper than the solid state amp I was looking at, so we’ll see.

NASA’S MAVEN MISSION REVEALS MARS HAS METAL IN ITS ATMOSPHERE

Mars has electrically charged metal atoms (ions) high in its atmosphere, according to new results from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft. The metal ions can reveal previously invisible activity in the mysterious electrically charged upper atmosphere (ionosphere) of Mars.

“MAVEN has made the first direct detection of the permanent presence of metal ions in the ionosphere of a planet other than Earth,” said Joseph Grebowsky of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and lead author of a new study detailing MAVEN’s results.

“Because metallic ions have long lifetimes and are transported far from their region of origin by neutral winds and electric fields, they can be used to infer motion in the ionosphere, similar to the way we use a lofted leaf to reveal which way the wind is blowing,” Grebowsky said. The new study was published today in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) is exploring the Martian upper atmosphere to understand how the planet lost most of its air, transforming from a world that could have supported life billions of years ago into a cold desert planet today. Understanding ionospheric activity is shedding light on how the Martian atmosphere is being lost to space, according to the MAVEN team.

The metal comes from a constant rain of tiny meteoroids onto the red planet. When a high-speed meteoroid hits the Martian atmosphere, it vaporizes. Metal atoms in the vapor trail get some of their electrons torn away by other charged atoms and molecules in the ionosphere, transforming the metal atoms into electrically charged ions.

MAVEN has detected iron, magnesium, and sodium ions in the upper atmosphere of Mars over the last two years using its Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer instrument, giving the team confidence that the metal ions are a permanent feature. “We detected metal ions associated with the close passage of Comet Siding Spring in 2014, but that was a unique event and it didn’t tell us about the long-term presence of the ions,” Grebowsky said.

The interplanetary dust that causes the meteor showers is common throughout our solar system, so it’s likely that all solar system planets and moons with substantial atmospheres have metal ions, according to the team.

Sounding rockets, radar and satellite measurements have detected metal ion layers high in the atmosphere above Earth. There’s also been indirect evidence for metal ions above other planets in our solar system. When spacecraft are exploring these worlds from orbit, sometimes their radio signals pass through the planet’s atmosphere on the way to Earth, and sometimes portions of the signal have been blocked. This has been interpreted as interference from electrons in the ionosphere, some of which are thought to be associated with metal ions. However, long-term direct detection of the metal ions by MAVEN is the first conclusive evidence that these ions exist on another planet and that they are a permanent feature there.

The team found that the metal ions behaved differently on Mars than on Earth. Earth is surrounded by a global magnetic field generated in its interior, and this magnetic field together with ionospheric winds forces the metal ions into layers. However, Mars has only local magnetic fields fossilized in certain regions of its crust, and the team only saw the layers near these areas.

“Elsewhere, the metal ion distributions are totally unlike those observed at Earth,” Grebowsky said.

The research has other applications as well. For example, it is unclear if the metal ions can affect the formation or behavior of high-altitude clouds. Also, detailed understanding of the meteoritic ions in the totally different Earth and Mars environments will be useful for better predicting consequences of interplanetary dust impacts in other yet-unexplored solar system atmospheres.

“Observing metal ions on another planet gives us something to compare and contrast with Earth to understand the ionosphere and atmospheric chemistry better,” Grebowsky said.

Cassini gets up close & personal with icy Mimas

The first two images show off the giant Herschel crater, a distinguishing feature of this moon. The second gives a better view of the mountain peak within the crater. The shadows cast by the crater and mountain peak give a glimpse into just how massive this crater truly is. The last image is one of the clearest images of Mimas to date.

This view of Jupiter shows the giant planet’s cloud tops taken by the Pioneer 10 spacecraft as it flew past Jupiter. This view was taken from 2,695,000 kilometers (1,842,451 miles) away. It shows the 25,000 mile long Great Red Spot, which is large enough to swallow up several Earths. Individual cloud formations are visible in some detail. The bright zones appear to become split up into the detailed flow patterns of Jupiter’s atmosphere and clouds. The area surrounding the Spot in the bright South Tropical Zone, suggests a flow pattern about the Spot which is bulged toward the north by the Spot. The Spot may be a gigantic “permanent hurricane.” The gigantic cloud swirls are thousands or more miles across. Pioneer 10 flew past Jupiter in December 1974 and flew past the orbit of Pluto in 1987. A sister spacecraft, Pioneer 11 reached Jupiter in December 1975. The Pioneer Project was managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center, Mountain View, Calafornia. The spacecraft was built by TRW Systems.

Amédée Guillemin, Les comètes (1875)

10 Out of this World NASA Spinoff Technologies

What is a spinoff? Great question! A NASA spinoff is a technology, originally developed to meet our mission needs that has been transferred to the public and now provides benefits as a commercial product or service. Basically, we create awesome stuff and then share it with the world. Here’s a list of just a few NASA spinoff technologies (in no particular order): 

1. Enriched Baby Food

While developing life support for Mars missions, NASA-funded researchers discovered a natural source for an omega-3 fatty acid that plays a key role in infant development. The ingredient has since been infused in more than 99% of infant formula on the market and is helping babies worldwide develop healthy brains, eyes and hearts. 

2. Digital Camera Sensors

Whether you take pictures and videos with a DSLR camera, phone or even a GoPro, you’re using NASA technology. The CMOS active pixel sensor in most digital image-capturing devices was invented when we needed to miniaturize cameras for interplanetary missions. 

3. Airplane Wing Designs

Did you know that we’re with you when you fly? Key aerodynamic advances made by our researchers - such as the up-turned ends of wings, called “winglets” - are ubiquitous among modern aircraft and have saved many billions of dollars in fuel costs. 

4. Precision GPS

Uncorrected GPS data can be off by as much as 15 meters thanks to data errors, drift in satellite clocks and interference from Earth’s atmosphere. One of our software packages developed in the 1990s dials in these locations to within centimeters, enabling highly accurate GPS readings anywhere on the planet. One of our most important contributions to modern society, precise GPS is used in everything from personal devices and commercial airplanes to self-driving tractors. 

5. Memory Foam

Possibly the most widely recognized spinoff, memory foam was invented by our researchers looking for ways to keep its test pilots and astronauts comfortable as they experienced extreme acceleration. Today, memory foam cushions beds, chairs, couches, car and motorcycle seats, shoes and even football helmets. 

6. International Search and Rescue System

We pioneered the technology now used internationally for search and rescue operations. When pilots, sailors or other travelers and adventurers are stranded, they can activate a personal locator bacon that uses overhead satellites to relay their call for help and precise location to authorities. 

7. Improvements to Truck Aerodynamics

Nearly every truck on the road has been shaped by NASA - literally. Agency research in vehicle aerodynamic design led to the curves and contours that help modern big rigs cut through the air with less drag. Our contributions to truck design have greatly reduced fuel consumption, perhaps by as much as 6,800 gallons per year for an average vehicle. 

8. Shock Absorbers for Buildings and Bridges

Shock absorbers originally designed to survive the extreme conditions of space shuttle launches are now bracing hundreds of buildings and bridges in earthquake-prone regions all over the world. None of which have suffered even minor damage during an earthquake. 

9. Advanced Water Filtration

We have recently discovered sources of water on the moon and Mars, but even so space is still practically a desert for human explorers, and every drop possible must be recycled and reused. A nanofiber filer devised to purify water in orbit is currently at work on Earth. From devices that supply water to remote villages, to a water bottle that lets hikers and adventurers stay hydrated using streams and lakes, our technology is being utilized. 

10. Invisible Braces

A company working with NASA invented the translucent ceramic that became the first invisible dental braces, which would go on to become one of the best-selling orthodontic products of all time. 

So, now that you know a few of the spinoff technologies that we helped develop, you can look for them throughout your day. Visit our page to learn about more spinoff technologies: https://spinoff.nasa.gov

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

A Look Back At Astronaut Scott Kelly’s #YearInSpace