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The James Webb Space Telescope: A Story of Art & Science
Artists of all kinds were invited to apply for the chance to visit our Goddard Space Flight Center to be inspired by the giant, golden, fully-assembled James Webb Space Telescope mirror.
Art/Photo Credit: Jedidiah Dore
Webb has a mirror that is nearly 22 feet high and (to optimize it for infrared observations) is covered in a microscopic layer of actual gold.
Art/Photo Credit: Susan Lin
Because of Webb’s visually striking appearance, the project hosted a special viewing event on Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016.
Photo Credit: Maggie Masetti
There was an overwhelming response to the event invitation and ultimately twenty-four people were selected to attend. They represented a broad range of artistic media and styles, including: watercolor, 3D printed sculpture, silk screening, acrylics, sumi-e (East Asian brush technique), comics, letterpress, woodwork, metalwork, jewelry making, fiber art, ink, mural painting, kite-making, tattooing, scientific illustration, poetry, songwriting, and video making.
Art/Photo Credit: Sue Reno
Project scientists and engineers spoke with visitors to give context to what they were seeing and explain why Webb is an engineering marvel, and how it will change our view of the universe.
Among other things, Webb will see the first stars and galaxies that formed in the early universe and help us to better understand how planetary systems form and evolve. It will help us answer questions about who we, as humans, are and where we came from.
Art Credit: Jessica Lee Photo Credit: Maggie Masetti
The artists spent several hours sitting right in front of the telescope, where they sketched, painted, took photos and even filmed a music video.
Art Credit: Joanna Barnum Photo Credit: Maggie Masetti
While some of the pieces of art are finished, most of the artists went home with their heads full of ideas and sketchbooks full of notes. Stay tuned for more info on where you can see their final works displayed!
Art/Photo Credit: Susan Lin
Finished art from the event continues to be added HERE.
The James Webb Space Telescope is finishing environmental testing at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Next it will head to our Johnson Space Center in Houston for an end-to-end test at cryogenic temperatures. After that, it goes to Northrop Grumman to be mated with the giant tennis court-sized sunshield and the spacecraft bus. The observatory will launch in October of 2018 from a European Space Agency (ESA) launch site in French Guiana, aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. Webb is a collaboration of NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
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Hunting for Organic Molecules on Mars
Did Mars once have life? To help answer that question, an international team of scientists created an incredibly powerful miniature chemistry laboratory, set to ride on the next Mars rover.
The instrument, called the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer Mass Spectrometer (MOMA-MS), will form a key part of the ExoMars Rover, a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Roscosmos. A mass spectrometer is crucial to send to Mars because it reveals the elements that can be found there. A Martian mass spectrometer takes a sample, typically of powdered rock, and distinguishes the different elements in the sample based on their mass.
After 8 years of designing, building, and testing, NASA scientists and engineers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said goodbye to their tiny chemistry lab and shipped it to Italy in a big pink box. Building a tiny instrument capable of conducting chemical analysis is difficult in any setting, but designing one that has to launch on a huge rocket, fly through the vacuum of space, and then operate on a planet with entirely different pressure and temperature systems? That’s herculean. And once on Mars, MOMA has a very important job to do. NASA Goddard Center Director Chris Scolese said, “This is the first intended life-detecting instrument that we have sent to Mars since Viking.”
The MOMA instrument will be capable of detecting a wide variety of organic molecules. Organic compounds are commonly associated with life, although they can be created by non-biological processes as well. Organic molecules contain carbon and hydrogen, and can include oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements.
To find these molecules on Mars, the MOMA team had to take instruments that would normally occupy a couple of workbenches in a chemistry lab and shrink them down to roughly the size of a toaster oven so they would be practical to install on a rover.
MOMA-MS, the mass spectrometer on the ExoMars rover, will build on the accomplishments from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM), an instrument suite on the Curiosity rover that includes a mass spectrometer. SAM collects and analyzes samples from just below the surface of Mars while ExoMars will be the first to explore deep beneath the surface, with a drill capable of taking samples from as deep as two meters (over six feet). This is important because Mars’s thin atmosphere and spotty magnetic field offer little protection from space radiation, which can gradually destroy organic molecules exposed on the surface. However, Martian sediment is an effective shield, and the team expects to find greater abundances of organic molecules in samples from beneath the surface.
On completion of the instrument, MOMA Project Scientist Will Brinckerhoff praised his colleagues, telling them, “You have had the right balance of skepticism, optimism, and ambition. Seeing this come together has made me want to do my best.”
In addition to the launch of the ESA and Roscosmos ExoMars Rover, in 2020, NASA plans to launch the Mars 2020 Rover, to search for signs of past microbial life. We are all looking forward to seeing what these two missions will find when they arrive on our neighboring planet.
Learn more about MOMA HERE.
Learn more about ExoMars HERE.
Follow @NASASolarSystem on Twitter for more about our missions to other planets.
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Solar System: Things to Know This Week
Ready for a free show? Here’s our guide to the brightest shows on Earth for 2017–meteor showers! And, there’s no telescope required.
The sky may not be falling, but it can certainly seem that way during a meteor shower. Shooting stars, as meteors are sometimes called occur when rock and debris in space fall through the Earth’s atmosphere, leaving a bright trail as they are heated to incandescence by friction with the air. Sometimes the number of meteors in the sky increases dramatically, becoming meteor showers. Some showers occur annually or at regular intervals as the Earth passes through the trail of dusty debris left by a comet. Here’s a guide to the top meteor showers expected in 2017.
1. Quadrantids, January 3-4
At its peak this shower will have about 40 meteors per hour. The parent comet is 2003 EH1, which was discovered in 2003. First quarter moon sets after midnight and meteors radiate from the constellation Bootes.
2. Eta Aquarids, May 6-7
This shower will have up to 60 meteors per hour at its peak and is produced by dust particles left behind by comet Halley, which has been known and observed since ancient times. The shower runs annually from April 19 to May 28. The waxing gibbous moon will block out many of the fainter meteors this year. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Aquarius.
3. Perseids, August 12-13
The annual Perseid shower will have up to 60 meteors per hour at its peak. It is produced by comet Swift-Tuttle. The Perseids are famous for producing a large number of bright meteors. The shower runs annually from July 17 to August 24. The waning gibbous moon will block out many of the fainter meteors this year, but the Perseids are so bright and numerous that it should still be a good show. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Perseus.
4. Draconids, October 7
This is a minor shower that will produce only about 10 meteors per hour. It is produced by dust grains left behind by comet 21P Giacobini-Zinner, which was first discovered in 1900. The Draconids is an unusual shower in that the best viewing is in the early evening instead of early morning like most other showers. The shower runs annually from October 6-10 and peaks this year on the the night of the 7th. Unfortunately, the nearly full moon will block all but the brightest meteors this year. If you are extremely patient, you may be able to catch a few good ones. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Draco.
5. Geminids, December 13-14
The Geminids may be the best shower, producing up to 120 meteors per hour at its peak. It is produced by debris left behind by an asteroid known as 3200 Phaethon, which was discovered in 1982. The shower runs annually from December 7-17. The waning crescent moon will be no match for the Geminids this year. The skies should still be dark enough for an excellent show. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Gemini, but can appear anywhere in the sky.
Discover the full list of 10 things to know about our solar system this week HERE.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Pirates didn’t make their captives walk the plank. Though big fans of torture methods like flogging and marooning, there are no actual records of pirates using a plank. The first mention of plank walking was in a 1724 fictional novel by author Daniel Defoe, but if real-life pirates wanted to drown someone, they probably just threw them off the boat. Source Source 2
10 Times More Galaxies!
The universe suddenly looks a lot more crowded…
We already estimated that there were about 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, but new research shows that this estimate is at least 10 times too low!
First, what is the observable universe? Well, it is the most distant part of the universe we can see from Earth because, in theory, the light from these objects have had time to reach Earth.
In a new study using surveys taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories, astronomers came to the surprising conclusion that there are at least 10 times more galaxies in the observable universe than previously thought. This places the universe’s estimated population at, minimally, 2 trillion galaxies!
The results have clear implications for galaxy formation, and also helps shed light on an ancient astronomical paradox – why is the sky dark at night?
Most of these newly discovered galaxies were relatively small and faint, with masses similar to those of the satellite galaxies surrounding the Milky Way.
Using deep-space images from the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories, astronomers converted the images into 3-D, in order to make accurate measurements of the number of galaxies at different epochs in the universe’s history.
In addition, they used new mathematical models, which allowed them to infer the existence of galaxies that the current generation of telescopes cannot observe. This led to the surprising conclusion that in order for the numbers of galaxies we now see and their masses to add up, there must be a further 90% of galaxies in the observable universe that are too faint and too far away to be seen with present-day telescopes.
The myriad small faint galaxies from the early universe merged over time into the larger galaxies we can now observe.
That means that over 90% of the galaxies in the universe have yet to be studied! In the near future, the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to study these ultra-faint galaxies and give us more information about their existence.
So back to the question…Why is the sky dark at night if the universe contains an infinity of stars? Researchers came to the conclusion that indeed there actually is such an abundance of galaxies that, in principle, every patch in the sky contains part of a galaxy.
However, starlight from the galaxies is invisible to the human eye and most modern telescopes due to other known factors that reduce visible and ultraviolet light in the universe. Those factors are the reddening of light due to the expansion of space, the universe’s dynamic nature, and the absorption of light by intergalactic dust and gas. All combined, this keeps the night sky dark to our vision.
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Wifi evolve to LiFi
post by worl of facts
Li-Fi Is The New Insanely Fast Wireless Internet
Wi-Fi has revolutionized the experience of connecting online, but it has already been one-upped. The radiowave technology may be soon replaced with Li-Fi, the wireless internet alternative that is 100 times faster than the Wi-Fi we use today.
Keep reading
A real tool which has the potential to turn dreams to reality is called Imagination.
-F>Taser
and they ar using the technology invented by nikola tesla
post by unbelivable facts
Japanese are working on developing technology to transmit electricity wirelessly. Their goal is to transmit energy from orbiting solar panels to Earth by 2030. They have successfully transmitted 10 kW of energy 500 meters away.
Cosmicportal said "True love is not blind" yeah, he is absolutely right, but we could also add something to it so i think its better to say "True love is not blind enough to ignore feelings"...this could make that evenmore beautiful.
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