
NASA Wants Your Help to Name a Space Object, What Could Go Wrong

British Lyric Poet
Percy Shelly
Prometheus Unbound, 1820
America’s famous inventor, Thomas Edison, The Wizard of Menlo Park, had long admired the somber, romantic words penned by England’s master poet Percy Shelly. And, like Shelly, he, too, was enchanted with the sensual experiences conjured up by the periodic eclipses that blotted out the sun and the moon. In 1878 Edison clambered aboard the newly constructed transcontinental railroad headed from New Jersey to Wyoming where he hoped to utilize his newly constructed infrared sensor to study the total solar eclipse he knew would soon sweep across America’s western landscape. When he arrived in Wyoming, the only building he could rent was an old chicken coop at the edge of the prairie. And, as soon as the moon slipped in front of the sun causing the sky to darken, the chickens decided to come to roost. Soon The Wizard of Menlo Park was so busy trying to quiet his squawking companions, he caught only a fleeting glimpse of the rare and colorful spectacle lighting up the darkened daytime sky. His infrared sensor, unfortunately, remained untested that day. Even if those agitated Wyoming chickens had behaved themselves with proper decorum during that unusual event, Thomas Edison’s sensor would have been entirely ineffective because most of the infrared frequencies emanating from the sun and the stars are absorbed by the atmosphere surrounding the earth. However, sensors of similar design can, and do, handle important astronomical tasks when they are installed in cryogenically cooled telescopes launched into space by powerful and well-designed rockets. The infrared rays streaming down to earth from distant stars and galaxies lie just beyond the bright red colors at the edge of in the electromagnetic spectrum our eyes can see. As such, they penetrate the clouds of dust found, in such abundance, in interstellar space. The dust that has accumulated under your bed is not particularly valuable or interesting. But the dust found in outer space is far more beneficial – and exciting, too! The Spitzer Space Telescope – a giant thermos bottle in space – now following along behind planet earth as it circles the sun, was an effective infrared telescope until it used up its entire supply of liquid helium coolant. In the meantime, it has become a “warm” space-age telescope seeking out previously undiscovered exoplanets orbiting around suns trillions of miles away. This is accomplished by observing their shadows periodically dimming the star’s visible light as the various planets coast in between the Spitzer and the celestial body being observed.See all the ATI open-enrollment course schedule
See all the ATI courses on 1 page. What courses would you like to see scheduled as an open-enrollment or on-site course near your facility? ATI is planning its schedule of technical training courses and would like your recommendations of courses that will help your project and/or company. These courses can also be held on-site at your facility.Using actual New Horizons data and digital elevation models of Pluto and its largest moon Charon, mission scientists have created flyover movies that offer spectacular new perspectives of the many unusual features that were discovered and which have reshaped our views of the Pluto system – from a vantage point even closer than the spacecraft itself.
This dramatic Pluto flyover begins over the highlands to the southwest of the great expanse of nitrogen ice plain informally named Sputnik Planitia. The viewer first passes over the western margin of Sputnik, where it borders the dark, cratered terrain of Cthulhu Macula, with the blocky mountain ranges located within the plains seen on the right. The tour moves north past the rugged and fractured highlands of Voyager Terra and then turns southward over Pioneer Terra — which exhibits deep and wide pits — before concluding over the bladed terrain of Tartarus Dorsa in the far east of the encounter hemisphere. Digital mapping and rendering were performed by Paul Schenk and John Blackwell of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston.Background
New Horizons is a space probe launched by NASA on 19 January 2006, to the dwarf planet Pluto and on an escape trajectory from the Sun. It is the first man-made spacecraft to go to Pluto. Its flight took eight years. It arrived at the Pluto–Charon system on July 14, 2015. It flew near Pluto and took photographs and measurements while it passed. At about 1 kilobit per second, it took 15 months to transmit them back to Earth. The primary mission of New Horizons is to study Pluto and its system of moons. The secondary mission is to study any objects in the Kuiper Belt if something became available for a flyby. The space probe set the record for the fastest man-made object ever launched, with the Earth-relative speed of about 16.26 km/s, although, arguably, the Helios probes got a faster Sun-relative speed. It used a gravity assist from Jupiter to get its high speeds without having to burn as much monopropellant (weak rocket fuel) as needed to fly directly to Pluto. ATI instructors who helped plan, develop and engineer the New Horizons Mission. These include the following engineers and scientists, with their bios and links to their related ATI courses.Due to government shutdown, we will not be posting or responding from this account. Farewell, humans. Sort it out yourselves. — NASAVoyager2 (@NASAVoyager2) October 1, 2013Of course, it wasn’t Voyager sending the tweet, it was Voyager’s handlers here on Earth. But the slight whiff of snarkiness coming from the intrepid spacecraft that’s hurtling through deep space — and depending very much on government funding to do so — highlights the powerful impact this shutdown has on science and the nation’s scientific agencies. At NASA, Mission Control in Houston remains active to support the crew aboard the International Space Station. But nearly all other space agency operations have ground to a halt. NASA has 18,250 civil servants around the country, and the furlough means 90 percent are now sitting at home wondering what will happen at next. Visiting nasa.gov redirects users to a placeholder screen, saying that the website is not available, “due to the lapse in federal government funding.” The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s website still functions, but will not be updated. “We also cannot respond to comments/questions. We sincerely regret this inconvenience,” adds JPL. ABC News reached out to its press contacts and sources involved at NASA but only received an automated response in reply. “I am in furlough status; therefore, I am unable to respond to your message at this time,” wrote one employee. Spacecrafts and satellites not yet launched are grounded and while the Hubble Space Telescope will continue peering into far flung galaxies, no one will be there to collect the data.
“If a satellite mission has not yet been launched, work will generally cease on that project,” NASA’s shutdown plan reads. “The extent of support necessary and the time needed to safely cease project activities will depend on whether any of the activities are of a hazardous nature (e.g., parts of the satellite may need to be cooled).”Work preparing for the Mars MAVEN mission, which was slated for a Nov. 18 launch, for example, has stopped, and could delay the craft’s planned mission to Mars. How did furlough effect you? Please let us know by commenting below.
“It appears that [Voyager 1] has exited the main solar modulation region, revealing [hydrogen] and [helium] spectra characteristic of those to be expected in the local interstellar medium.”And so there you have it, humans are an interstellar species. This is the century in which we have sent a machine on the path to the stars. Will a spacecraft carrying humans join it next century? We can only hope. UPDATE: NASA says not so fast, reiterating a position it took last December when questions arose about Voyager’s exit from the solar system:
“The Voyager team is aware of reports today that NASA’s Voyager 1 has left the solar system,” said Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. “It is the consensus of the Voyager science team that Voyager 1 has not yet left the solar system or reached interstellar space. In December 2012, the Voyager science team reported that Voyager 1 is within a new region called ‘the magnetic highway’ where energetic particles changed dramatically. A change in the direction of the magnetic field is the last critical indicator of reaching interstellar space, and that change of direction has not yet been observed.”Well, that’s interesting.