Astronaut Chris Cassidy

Expedition 35 Flight Engineer Chris Cassidy, who currently is living and working aboard the International Space Station, is captured in a close-up image in the Quest Airlock prior to a spacewalk.

On Thursday, May 16, 2013, at noon EDT, NASA is hosting a Google+ Hangout connecting the Space Station and “Star Trek Into Darkness” crews. Cassidy; astronauts Michael Fincke and Kjell Lindgren at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; director J.J. Abrams, screenwriter and producer Damon Lindelof; and stars of the film, Chris Pine, Alice Eve and John Cho will take part in the event. The participants will ask questions of each other and take questions from the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City (home of the space shuttle Enterprise), the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, and social media followers. 

Image Credit: NASA

Black Hole-Powered Jets Plow Into Galaxy

This composite image of a galaxy illustrates how the intense gravity of a supermassive black hole can be tapped to generate immense power. The image contains X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), optical light obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (gold) and radio waves from the NSF’s Very Large Array (pink). 

This multi-wavelength view shows 4C+29.30, a galaxy located some 850 million light years from Earth. The radio emission comes from two jets of particles that are speeding at millions of miles per hour away from a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The estimated mass of the black hole is about 100 million times the mass of our Sun. The ends of the jets show larger areas of radio emission located outside the galaxy. 

The X-ray data show a different aspect of this galaxy, tracing the location of hot gas. The bright X-rays in the center of the image mark a pool of million-degree gas around the black hole. Some of this material may eventually be consumed by the black hole, and the magnetized, whirlpool of gas near the black hole could in turn, trigger more output to the radio jet. 

Most of the low-energy X-rays from the vicinity of the black hole are absorbed by dust and gas, probably in the shape of a giant doughnut around the black hole. This doughnut, or torus blocks all the optical light produced near the black hole, so astronomers refer to this type of source as a hidden or buried black hole. The optical light seen in the image is from the stars in the galaxy. 

The bright spots in X-ray and radio emission on the outer edges of the galaxy, near the ends of the jets, are caused by extremely high energy electrons following curved paths around magnetic field lines. They show where a jet generated by the black hole has plowed into clumps of material in the galaxy (mouse over the image for the location of these bright spots). Much of the energy of the jet goes into heating the gas in these clumps, and some of it goes into dragging cool gas along the direction of the jet. Both the heating and the dragging can limit the fuel supply for the supermassive black hole, leading to temporary starvation and stopping its growth. This feedback process is thought to cause the observed correlation between the mass of the supermassive black hole and the combined mass of the stars in the central region or bulge or a galaxy. 

These results were reported in two different papers. The first, which concentrated on the effects of the jets on the galaxy, is available online and was published in the May 10, 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. It is led by Aneta Siemiginowska from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, MA and the co-authors are Łukasz Stawarz, from the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Yoshinodai, Japan; Teddy Cheung from the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC; Thomas Aldcroft from CfA; Jill Bechtold from University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ; Douglas Burke from CfA; Daniel Evans from CfA; Joanna Holt from Leiden University in Leiden, The Netherlands; Marek Jamrozy from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland; and Giulia Migliori from CfA. The second, which concentrated on the supermassive black hole, is available online and was published in the October 20, 2012 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. It is led by Malgorzata Sobolewska from CfA, and the co-authors are Aneta Siemiginowska, Giulia Migliori, Łukasz Stawarz, Marek Jamrozy, Daniel Evans, and Teddy Cheung. 

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra’s science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass. 

Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/A. Siemiginowska et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA

Expedition 35 Crew Lands

Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), left, Russian Flight Engineer Roman Romanenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), center, and NASA Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn sit in chairs outside the Soyuz Capsule just minutes after they landed in a remote area outside the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday, May 14, 2013. Hadfield, Romanenko and Marshburn are returning from five months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 34 and 35 crews.

Photo Credit: (NASA/Carla Cioffi)

Expedition 35 Landing

The Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 35 Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), NASA Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn and Russian Flight Engineer Roman Romanenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday, May 14, 2013. Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko returned from five months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 34 and 35 crews. 

Image Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi

Repairing the Station in Orbit

Expedition 35 Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy (pictured) and Tom Marshburn (out of frame) completed a spacewalk at 2:14 p.m. EDT May 11, 2013 to inspect and replace a pump controller box on the International Space Station’s far port truss (P6) leaking ammonia coolant. The two NASA astronauts began the 5-hour, 30-minute spacewalk at 8:44 a.m. 

A leak of ammonia coolant from the area near or at the location of a Pump and Flow Control Subassembly was detected on Thursday, May 9, prompting engineers and flight controllers to begin plans to support the spacewalk. The device contains the mechanical systems that drive the cooling functions for the port truss.

Image Credit: NASA

NASA’s GROVER Debuts On Greenland’s Ice Sheet

NASA’s new Earth-bound rover began testing on the Greenland ice sheet this week. 

GROVER, which stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research, is an autonomous, solar-operated robot that carries a ground-penetrating radar to examine the layers of Greenland’s ice sheet. Its findings will help scientists understand how the massive ice sheet gains and loses ice. 

The GROVER team, led by glaciologist Lora Koenig from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., arrived in Summit Camp, the highest spot in Greenland, on May 6, 2013. After loading and testing the rover’s radar and fixing a minor communications glitch, the team began the robot’s tests on the ice on May 8, defying winds of up to 23 mph (37 kph) and temperatures as low as minus 22 F (minus 30 C).

The GROVER tests will continue through June 8. GROVER, a prototype, was first developed in 2010 and 2011 during summer engineering boot camps at Goddard, before further refinement, with NASA funding, at Boise State University. Its trial in Greenland will also serve as a test of using rovers in harsh polar regions to gather data.

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Image Credit: Lora Koenig / NASA Goddard

Sunrise Over the South Pacific Ocean

The sun is about to come up over the South Pacific Ocean in this colorful scene photographed by one of the Expedition 35 crew members aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station between 4 and 5 a.m. local time, May 5, 2013.

The space station was at a point above Earth located at 27.4 degrees south latitude and 110.1 degrees west longitude, a few hundred miles east of Easter Island.

Image Credit: NASA

Sounding Rockets Launch from the Marshall Islands

Red and white vapor clouds filled the skies over the Marshall Islands as part of NASA’s Equatorial Vortex Experiment (EVEX). The red cloud was formed by the release of lithium vapor and the white tracer clouds were formed by the release of trimethyl aluminum (TMA). These clouds allowed scientists on the ground from various locations in the Marshall Islands to observe the neutral winds in the ionosphere. 

The EVEX was successfully conducted during the early morning hours on May 7 from Roi Namur, Republic of the Marshall Islands. A NASA Terrier-Oriole sounding rocket was launched at 3:39 a.m. EDT and was followed by a launch of Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket 90 seconds later. Preliminary indications are that both rockets released their vapor clouds of lithium or trimethyl aluminum, which were observed from various locations in the area, and all science instruments on the rockets worked as planned.

Image Credit: NASA/John Grant

Orion Crew Module at Kennedy Space Center

Astronaut Don Pettit watches as a technician works on the Orion crew module inside the Operations and Checkout Building high bay at Kennedy Space Center on March 21, 2013.

The last of eight reaction control system (RCS) pods for the first flight test of Orion has arrived at Kennedy Space Center’s Operations and Checkout Building from the manufacturer, Aerojet, in Redmond, Wash. The pods will provide the critical maneuvers necessary for Orion’s re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere during Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), scheduled to launch in 2014.

Orion is the exploration spacecraft designed to carry humans farther into space than ever before. The spacecraft will provide emergency abort capability, sustain crews during space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep-space return velocities.

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Image Credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis

LAGEOS I, 1976

The LAGEOS I, Laser Geodynamics Satellite, was launched on May 4, 1976 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The two-foot diameter, 900-pound satellite orbited the Earth from pole to pole and measured the movements of the Earth’s surface relative to earthquakes, continental drift, and other geophysical phenomena.

The mirrored surface of the satellite precisely reflected laser beams from ground stations for accurate ranging measurements. Scientists at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. came up with the idea for the satellite and built it at the Marshall Center. 

Image Credit: NASA/MSFC