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25 Years in Space for ESA & NASA’s Sun-Watching SOHO

A quarter-century ago, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) launched to space. Its 25 years of data have changed the way we think about the Sun — illuminating everything from the Sun’s inner workings to the constant changes in its outermost atmosphere.

SOHO — a joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA — carries 12 instruments to study different aspects of the Sun. One of the gamechangers was SOHO’s coronagraph, a type of instrument that uses a solid disk to block out the bright face of the Sun and reveal the relatively faint outer atmosphere, the corona. With SOHO’s coronagraph, scientists could image giant eruptions of solar material and magnetic fields, called coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. SOHO’s images revealed shape and structure of CMEs in breathtaking detail.

These solar storms can impact robotic spacecraft in their path, or — when intense and aimed at Earth — threaten astronauts on spacewalks and even disrupt power grids on the ground. SOHO is particularly useful in viewing Earth-bound storms, called halo CMEs — so called because when a CME barrels toward us on Earth, it appears circular, surrounding the Sun, much like watching a balloon inflate by looking down on it.

Before SOHO, the scientific community debated whether or not it was even possible to witness a CME coming straight toward us. Today, SOHO images are the backbone of space weather prediction models, regularly used in forecasting the impacts of space weather events traveling toward Earth.

Beyond the day-to-day monitoring of space weather, SOHO has been able to provide insight about our dynamic Sun on longer timescales as well. With 25 years under its belt, SOHO has observed a full magnetic cycle — when the Sun’s magnetic poles switch places and then flip back again, a process that takes about 22 years in total. This trove of data has led to revolutions in solar science: from revelations about the behavior of the solar core to new insight into space weather events that explode from the Sun and travel throughout the solar system.

Data from SOHO, sonified by the Stanford Experimental Physics Lab, captures the Sun’s natural vibrations and provides scientists with a concrete representation of its dynamic movements.

The legacy of SOHO’s instruments — such as the extreme ultraviolet imager, the first of its kind to fly in orbit — also paved the way for the next generation of NASA solar satellites, like the Solar Dynamics Observatory and STEREO. Even with these newer instruments now in orbit, SOHO’s data remains an invaluable part of solar science, producing nearly 200 scientific papers every year.

Relatively early in its mission, SOHO had a brush with catastrophe. During a routine calibration procedure in June 1998, the operations team lost contact with the spacecraft. With the help of a radio telescope in Arecibo, the team eventually located SOHO and brought it back online by November of that year. But luck only held out so long: Complications from the near loss emerged just weeks later, when all three gyroscopes — which help the spacecraft point in the right direction — failed. The spacecraft was no longer stabilized. Undaunted, the team’s software engineers developed a new program that would stabilize the spacecraft without the gyroscopes. SOHO resumed normal operations in February 1999, becoming the first spacecraft of its kind to function without gyroscopes.

SOHO’s coronagraph have also helped the Sun-studying mission become the greatest comet finder of all time. The mission’s data has revealed more than 4,000 comets to date, many of which were found by citizen scientists. SOHO’s online data during the early days of the mission made it possible for anyone to carefully scrutinize a image and potentially spot a comet heading toward the Sun. Amateur astronomers from across the globe joined the hunt and began sending their findings to the SOHO team. To ease the burden on their inboxes, the team created the SOHO Sungrazer Project, where citizen scientists could share their findings.

Keep up with the latest SOHO findings at nasa.gov/soho, and follow along with @NASASun on Twitter and facebook.com/NASASunScience.

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It takes strength and courage to admit the truth.

Rick Riordan (via quotemadness)

石川恋

Dreaming of going to space? – Astronaut Victor Glover has you covered. 

In his first video from space, take a look at our home through the window of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Resilience” spacecraft. Victor arrived to the International Space Station alongside his fellow Crew-1 astronauts on Nov. 16, 2020. 

This is his first trip to space and his first mission on the orbital lab! 

Follow his Instagram account HERE to stay up-to-date on station life and for more behind-the-scenes content like this. 

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Roman's primary structure hangs from cables as it moves into the big clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

What Makes the Clean Room So Clean?

When you picture NASA’s most important creations, you probably think of a satellite, telescope, or maybe a rover. But what about the room they’re made in? Believe it or not, the room itself where these instruments are put together—a clean room—is pretty special. 

A clean room is a space that protects technology from contamination. This is especially important when sending very sensitive items into space that even small particles could interfere with.

There are two main categories of contamination that we have to keep away from our instruments. The first is particulate contamination, like dust. The second is molecular contamination, which is more like oil or grease. Both types affect a telescope’s image quality, as well as the time it takes to capture imagery. Having too many particles on our instruments is like looking through a dirty window. A clean room makes for clean science!

Two technicians clean the floor of Goddard’s big clean room.

Our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has the largest clean room of its kind in the world. It’s as tall as an eight-story building and as wide as two basketball courts.

Goddard’s clean room has fewer than 3,000 micron-size particles per cubic meter of air. If you lined up all those tiny particles, they’d be no longer than a sesame seed. If those particles were the size of 16-inch (0.4-meter) inflatable beach balls, we’d find only 3,000 spread throughout the whole body of Mount Everest!

A clean room technician observes a sample under a microscope.

The clean room keeps out particles larger than five microns across, just seven percent of the width of an average human hair. It does this via special filters that remove around 99.97% of particles 0.3 microns and larger from incoming air. Six fans the size of school buses spin to keep air flowing and pressurize the room. Since the pressure inside is higher, the clean air keeps unclean air out when doors open.

A technician analyzes a sample under ultraviolet light.

In addition, anyone who enters must wear a “bunny suit” to keep their body particles away from the machinery. A bunny suit covers most of the person inside. Sometimes scientists have trouble recognizing each other while in the suits, but they do get to know each other’s mannerisms very well.

This illustration depicts the anatomy of a bunny suit, which covers clean room technicians from head to toe to protect sensitive technology.

The bunny suit is only the beginning: before putting it on, team members undergo a preparation routine involving a hairnet and an air shower. Fun fact – you’re not allowed to wear products like perfume, lotion, or deodorant. Even odors can transfer easily!

Six of Goddard’s clean room technicians (left to right: Daniel DaCosta, Jill Bender, Anne Martino, Leon Bailey, Frank D’Annunzio, and Josh Thomas).

It takes a lot of specialists to run Goddard’s clean room. There are 10 people on the Contamination Control Technician Team, 30 people on the Clean Room Engineering Team to cover all Goddard missions, and another 10 people on the Facilities Team to monitor the clean room itself. They check on its temperature, humidity, and particle counts.

A technician rinses critical hardware with isopropyl alcohol and separates the particulate and isopropyl alcohol to leave the particles on a membrane for microscopic analysis.

Besides the standard mopping and vacuuming, the team uses tools such as isopropyl alcohol, acetone, wipes, swabs, white light, and ultraviolet light. Plus, they have a particle monitor that uses a laser to measure air particle count and size.

The team keeping the clean room spotless plays an integral role in the success of NASA’s missions. So, the next time you have to clean your bedroom, consider yourself lucky that the stakes aren’t so high!

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We Just Found Water on the Moon’s Sunlit Surface

When the first Apollo astronauts returned from the Moon in 1969, the Moon’s surface was thought to be completely dry. Over the last 20 years, orbital and impactor missions confirmed water ice is present inside dark, permanently shadowed craters around the poles. But could water survive in the Moon’s sunnier regions? Using SOFIA, the world’s largest flying observatory, we found water on a sunlit lunar surface for the first time. The discovery suggests water may be distributed across the Moon’s surface, which is a whopping 14.6 million square miles. Scientists think the water could be stored inside glass beadlike structures within the soil that can be smaller than the tip of a pencil. The amount of water detected is equivalent to about a 12-ounce bottle trapped in a cubic meter volume of soil. While that amount is 100 times less than what’s found in the Sahara Desert, discovering even small amounts raises new questions about how this precious resource is created and persists on the harsh, airless lunar surface. Learn more about the discovery: 

Water was found in Clavius Crater, one of the Moon’s largest craters visible from Earth.

The water may be delivered by tiny meteorite impacts… 

…or formed by the interaction of energetic particles ejected from the Sun. 

Follow-up observations by SOFIA will look for water in additional sunlit locations on the Moon.

We are eager to learn all we can about the presence of water in advance of sending the first woman and next man to the lunar surface in 2024 under our Artemis program. What we learn on and around the Moon will help us take the next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars.

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The Rover Doctor is in: The Anatomy of a NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge Rover

Exploration and inspiration collide head-on in our Human Exploration Rover Challenge held near Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, each April. The annual competition challenges student teams from around the world to design, build and drive a human-powered rover over a punishing half-mile course with tasks and obstacles similar to what our astronauts will likely have on missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

The anatomy of the rover is crucial to success. Take a look at a few of the vital systems your rover will need to survive the challenge!

The Chassis

A rover’s chassis is its skeleton and serves as the framework that all of the other rover systems attach to. The design of that skeleton incorporates many factors: How will your steering and braking work? Will your drivers sit beside each other, front-to-back or will they be offset? How high should they sit? How many wheels will your rover have? All of those decisions dictate the design of your rover’s chassis.

Wheels

Speaking of wheels, what will yours look like? The Rover Challenge course features slick surfaces, soft dunes, rocky craters and steep hills – meaning your custom-designed wheels must be capable of handling diverse landscapes, just as they would on the Moon and Mars. Carefully cut wood and cardboard, hammer-formed metal and even 3-D printed polymers have all traversed the course in past competitions.

Drivetrain

You’ve got your chassis design. Your wheels are good to go. Now you have to have a system to transfer the energy from your drivers to the wheels – the drivetrain. A good drivetrain will help ensure your rover crosses the finish line under the 8-minute time limit. Teams are encouraged to innovate and think outside the traditional bike chain-based systems that are often used and often fail. Exploration of the Moon and Mars will require new, robust designs to explore their surfaces. New ratchet systems and geared drivetrains explored the Rover Challenge course in 2019.

Colors and Gear

Every good rover needs a cool look. Whether you paint it your school colors, fly your country’s flag or decorate it to support those fighting cancer (Lima High School, above, was inspired by those fighting cancer), your rover and your uniform help tell your story to all those watching and cheering you on. Have fun with it!

Are you ready to conquer the Rover Challenge course? Join us in Huntsville this spring! Rover Challenge registration is open until January 16, 2020 for teams based in the United States.

If building rovers isn’t your space jam, we have other Artemis Challenges that allow you to be a part of the NASA team – check them out here.

Want to learn about our Artemis program that will land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024? Go here to read about how NASA, academia and industry and international partners will use innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. Through collaborations with our commercial, international and academic partners, we will establish sustainable lunar exploration by 2028, using what we learn to take astronauts to Mars. 

The students competing in our Human Exploration Rover Challenge are paramount to that exploration and will play a vital role in helping NASA and all of humanity explore space like we’ve never done before!

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