NASA Northrop Grumman launch Space Station National Lab Cargo
The Northrop Grumman Antares rocket, with Cygnus resupply spacecraft onboard, launches from Pad-0A, Saturday, Nov. 17, 2018, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Northrop Grumman's 10th contracted cargo resupply mission for NASA. photo: NASA
(PRNEWS) WASHINGTON, November 21, 2018 - Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station with about 7,400 pounds of cargo after launching at 4:01 a.m. EST Saturday from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore. br> The spacecraft launched on an Antares 230 Rocket from the Virginia Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's Pad 0A at Wallops on the company's 10th cargo delivery flight, and is scheduled to arrive at the orbital laboratory Monday, Nov. 19. Expedition 57 astronauts Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA and Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency) will use the space station's robotic arm to grapple Cygnus about 5:20 a.m.
Installation coverage will begin at 4 a.m. on NASA Television and the agency's website. This Commercial Resupply Services contract mission will support dozens of new and existing investigations as Expeditions 57 and 58 contribute to some 250 science and research studies. Highlights from the new experiments include a demonstration of 3D printing and recycling technology and simulating the creation of celestial bodies from stardust.
Recycling and Fabrication in Space
The Refabricator is the first-ever 3D printer and recycler integrated into one user-friendly machine. Once it's installed in the space station, it will demonstrate recycling of waste plastic and previously 3D printed parts already on-board into high-quality filament (i.e. 3D printer 'ink'). This recycled filament will then be fed into the printer to make new tools and parts on-demand in space. This technology could enable closed-loop, sustainable fabrication, repair and recycling on long-duration space missions, and greatly reduce the need to continually launch large supplies of new material and parts for repairs and maintenance.
The demonstration, which NASA's Space Technology Mission and Human Exploration and Operations Directorates co-sponsored, is considered a key enabling technology for in-space manufacturing. NASA awarded a Small Business Innovation Research contract valued to Tethers Unlimited Inc. to build the recycling system.
Formation of the Early Solar System
The Experimental Chondrule Formation at the International Space Station (EXCISS) investigation will explore how planets, moons and other objects in space formed by simulating the high-energy, low-gravity conditions that were present during formation of the early solar system. Scientists plan to zap a specially formulated dust with an electrical current, and then study the shape and texture of the resulting pellets.
Understanding Parkinson's Disease
The Crystallization of LRRK2 Under Microgravity Conditions-2 (PCG-16) investigation grows large crystals of an important protein, leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2), in microgravity for analysis back on Earth. This protein is implicated in development of Parkinson's disease, and improving our knowledge of its structure may help scientists better understand the pathology of the disease and develop therapies to treat it. LRRK2 crystals grown in gravity are too small and too compact to study, making microgravity an essential part of this research. This investigation is sponsored by the U.S. National Laboratory on the space station, which Congress designated in 2005 to maximize its use for improving quality of life on Earth.
The Cygnus spacecraft will remain at the space station until February before its destructive reentry into Earth's atmosphere, disposing of several thousand pounds of trash. This is the seventh flight of an enhanced Cygnus spacecraft, and the fourth using Northrop Grumman's upgraded Antares 230 launch vehicle featuring new RD-181 engines that provide increased performance and flexibility.
The spacecraft for this mission is named in honor of astronaut John Young. Young was selected for NASA's second astronaut class and flew during the Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. He walked on the Moon during Apollo 16 in 1972 and commanded the first space shuttle mission in 1981. Young passed away in January.
For more than 18 years, humans have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth that will enable long-duration human and robotic exploration into deep space. A global endeavor, 230 people from 18 countries have visited the unique microgravity laboratory that has hosted more than 2,500 research investigations from researchers in 106 countries.
Mars mission will drill deep for inside information
An artist’s concept shows the InSight spacecraft, which will provide the best look yet at the insides of Mars. photo: discovery©
by elizabeth howell
(DISCOVERY) August 6, 2015 - Besides some Martian meteorites collected on Earth, some gravity data from spacecraft and other bits of information, our knowledge of the planet’s insides is small, said Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator of a new lander called InSight, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. But that's about to change.
InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will launch for Mars in March on a quick six-month journey to the Red Planet. Upon arriving at the Martian equator, the spacecraft will deploy a small drill to probe the planet’s interior and a seismometer to measure any “marsquakes” that occur.
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Accidental discovery dramatically improves conductivity
While a doctoral student, Marianne Tarun accidentally discovered that the electrical conductivity of a crystal increases 400-fold when it’s exposed to light. photo: WSU
(WSU) PULLMAN, Wash. November 21, 2013 - Quite by accident, Washington State University researchers have achieved a 400-fold increase in the electrical conductivity of a crystal simply by exposing it to light. The effect, which lasted for days after the light was turned off, could dramatically improve the performance of devices like computer chips.
WSU doctoral student Marianne Tarun chanced upon the discovery when she noticed that the conductivity of some strontium titanate shot up after it was left out one day. At first, she and her fellow researchers thought the sample was contaminated, but a series of experiments showed the effect was from light.
“It came by accident,” said Tarun. “It’s not something we expected. That makes it very exciting to share.”
The phenomenon they witnessed—“persistent photoconductivity”—is a far cry from superconductivity, the complete lack of electrical resistance pursued by other physicists, usually using temperatures near absolute zero. But the fact that they’ve achieved this at room temperature makes the phenomenon more immediately practical.
And while other researchers have created persistent photoconductivity in other materials, this is the most dramatic display of the phenomenon.
The research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, appears this month in the journal Physical Review Letters.
“The discovery of this effect at room temperature opens up new possibilities for practical devices,” said Matthew McCluskey, co-author of the paper and chair of WSU’s physics department.
“In standard computer memory, information is stored on the surface of a computer chip or hard drive. A device using persistent photoconductivity, however, could store information throughout the entire volume of a crystal.”
This approach, called holographic memory, “could lead to huge increases in information capacity,” McCluskey said.
Strontium titanate and other oxides, which contain oxygen and two or more other elements, often display a dizzying variety of electronic phenomena, from the high resistance used for insulation to superconductivity’s lack of resistance.
“These diverse properties provide a fascinating playground for scientists but applications so far have been limited,” said McCluskey.
McCluskey, Tarun and physicist Farida Selim, now at Bowling Green State University, exposed a sample of strontium titanate to light for 10 minutes. Its improved conductivity lasted for days. They theorize that the light frees electrons in the material, letting it carry more current.
First results from LUX experiment inSouth Dakota
LUX researchers, seen here in a clean room on the surface at the Sanford Lab, work on the interior of the detector, before it is inserted into its titanium cryostat. photo: matt kapust, Sanford Underground Research Facility
World's most sensitive dark matter detector operating at the Sanford Underground Research Faciility
Rendering of HIV capsid with pentamers and hexamers
Credit: Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group (www.ks.uiuc.edu), Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology,University of Illinois
(NSF) October 29, 2013- A rendering of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) capsid with pentamers in green and hexamers in tan, the building blocks of the capsid. Researchers have determined the precise chemical structure of the HIV capsid, a protein shell that protects the virus's genetic material and is a key to its ability to infect and debilitate the human body's defense mechanism.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks to creating truly effective therapies to combat the virus is that the exact structure of the HIV capsid was unknown...until now. Researchers Klaus Schulten and Juan Perilla at theUniversity of Illinois
The sustained petascale performance of Blue Waters enabled the researchers to explore new methods, combined with structural and electron microscopy data, to reliably model the chemical structure of the HIV capsid in great detail. NSF funding (grants PHY 08-22613, MCB 07-44057 and OCI 07-25070) supported the development of the HIV capsid model, through funding of personnel, equipment and computing resources.
Located at the at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC, Blue Waters has been configured to solve the most challenging compute-, memory- and data-intensive problems in science and engineering. It has tens of thousands of chips (CPUs & GPUs), more than a petabyte of memory, tens of petabytes of disk storage and hundreds of petabytes of archival storage.
The Northrop Grumman Antares rocket, with Cygnus resupply spacecraft onboard, launches from Pad-0A, Saturday, Nov. 17, 2018, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Northrop Grumman's 10th contracted cargo resupply mission for NASA. photo: NASA
(PRNEWS) WASHINGTON, November 21, 2018 - Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station with about 7,400 pounds of cargo after launching at 4:01 a.m. EST Saturday from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore. br> The spacecraft launched on an Antares 230 Rocket from the Virginia Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's Pad 0A at Wallops on the company's 10th cargo delivery flight, and is scheduled to arrive at the orbital laboratory Monday, Nov. 19. Expedition 57 astronauts Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA and Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency) will use the space station's robotic arm to grapple Cygnus about 5:20 a.m.
Installation coverage will begin at 4 a.m. on NASA Television and the agency's website. This Commercial Resupply Services contract mission will support dozens of new and existing investigations as Expeditions 57 and 58 contribute to some 250 science and research studies. Highlights from the new experiments include a demonstration of 3D printing and recycling technology and simulating the creation of celestial bodies from stardust.
Recycling and Fabrication in Space
The Refabricator is the first-ever 3D printer and recycler integrated into one user-friendly machine. Once it's installed in the space station, it will demonstrate recycling of waste plastic and previously 3D printed parts already on-board into high-quality filament (i.e. 3D printer 'ink'). This recycled filament will then be fed into the printer to make new tools and parts on-demand in space. This technology could enable closed-loop, sustainable fabrication, repair and recycling on long-duration space missions, and greatly reduce the need to continually launch large supplies of new material and parts for repairs and maintenance.
The demonstration, which NASA's Space Technology Mission and Human Exploration and Operations Directorates co-sponsored, is considered a key enabling technology for in-space manufacturing. NASA awarded a Small Business Innovation Research contract valued to Tethers Unlimited Inc. to build the recycling system.
Formation of the Early Solar System
The Experimental Chondrule Formation at the International Space Station (EXCISS) investigation will explore how planets, moons and other objects in space formed by simulating the high-energy, low-gravity conditions that were present during formation of the early solar system. Scientists plan to zap a specially formulated dust with an electrical current, and then study the shape and texture of the resulting pellets.
Understanding Parkinson's Disease
The Crystallization of LRRK2 Under Microgravity Conditions-2 (PCG-16) investigation grows large crystals of an important protein, leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2), in microgravity for analysis back on Earth. This protein is implicated in development of Parkinson's disease, and improving our knowledge of its structure may help scientists better understand the pathology of the disease and develop therapies to treat it. LRRK2 crystals grown in gravity are too small and too compact to study, making microgravity an essential part of this research. This investigation is sponsored by the U.S. National Laboratory on the space station, which Congress designated in 2005 to maximize its use for improving quality of life on Earth.
The Cygnus spacecraft will remain at the space station until February before its destructive reentry into Earth's atmosphere, disposing of several thousand pounds of trash. This is the seventh flight of an enhanced Cygnus spacecraft, and the fourth using Northrop Grumman's upgraded Antares 230 launch vehicle featuring new RD-181 engines that provide increased performance and flexibility.
The spacecraft for this mission is named in honor of astronaut John Young. Young was selected for NASA's second astronaut class and flew during the Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. He walked on the Moon during Apollo 16 in 1972 and commanded the first space shuttle mission in 1981. Young passed away in January.
For more than 18 years, humans have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth that will enable long-duration human and robotic exploration into deep space. A global endeavor, 230 people from 18 countries have visited the unique microgravity laboratory that has hosted more than 2,500 research investigations from researchers in 106 countries.
Mars mission will drill deep for inside information
An artist’s concept shows the InSight spacecraft, which will provide the best look yet at the insides of Mars. photo: discovery©
by elizabeth howell
(DISCOVERY) August 6, 2015 - Besides some Martian meteorites collected on Earth, some gravity data from spacecraft and other bits of information, our knowledge of the planet’s insides is small, said Bruce Banerdt, the principal investigator of a new lander called InSight, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. But that's about to change.
InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) will launch for Mars in March on a quick six-month journey to the Red Planet. Upon arriving at the Martian equator, the spacecraft will deploy a small drill to probe the planet’s interior and a seismometer to measure any “marsquakes” that occur.
Read more
Massive Antarctic Glacier uncontrollably retreating, study suggests
A NASA satellite image snapped Nov. 13, 2013, shows open water between Pine Island Glacier and its massive iceberg. Photo: NASA modis
A NASA satellite image snapped Nov. 13, 2013, shows open water between Pine Island Glacier and its massive iceberg. Photo: NASA modis
by laura poppick, staff writer
(LIVE SCIENCE) January 16, 2014 -The glacier that contributes more to sea level rise than any
other glacier on Antarctica has hit a tipping
point of uncontrollable retreat, and could largely collapse within the span of
decades, a new study suggests.
Pine Island Glacier accounts for about 20 percent of the total
ice flow on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet — an amalgam of glaciers that covers
roughly 800,000 square miles (2 million square kilometers) and makes up about
10 percent of the total ice on Antarctica. Many researchers think that, given
the size of Pine Island Glacier, its demise could have a domino effect on
surrounding glaciers and ultimately — over the course of many years — lead to
the collapse
of the entire ice sheet, which would raise average global sea level by
between 10 and 16 feet (3 and 5 meters). [Photo
Gallery: Antarctic's Pine Island Glacier Cracks]
Read more
Accidental discovery dramatically improves conductivity
While a doctoral student, Marianne Tarun accidentally discovered that the electrical conductivity of a crystal increases 400-fold when it’s exposed to light. photo: WSU
(WSU) PULLMAN, Wash. November 21, 2013 - Quite by accident, Washington State University researchers have achieved a 400-fold increase in the electrical conductivity of a crystal simply by exposing it to light. The effect, which lasted for days after the light was turned off, could dramatically improve the performance of devices like computer chips.
WSU doctoral student Marianne Tarun chanced upon the discovery when she noticed that the conductivity of some strontium titanate shot up after it was left out one day. At first, she and her fellow researchers thought the sample was contaminated, but a series of experiments showed the effect was from light.
“It came by accident,” said Tarun. “It’s not something we expected. That makes it very exciting to share.”
The phenomenon they witnessed—“persistent photoconductivity”—is a far cry from superconductivity, the complete lack of electrical resistance pursued by other physicists, usually using temperatures near absolute zero. But the fact that they’ve achieved this at room temperature makes the phenomenon more immediately practical.
And while other researchers have created persistent photoconductivity in other materials, this is the most dramatic display of the phenomenon.
The research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, appears this month in the journal Physical Review Letters.
“The discovery of this effect at room temperature opens up new possibilities for practical devices,” said Matthew McCluskey, co-author of the paper and chair of WSU’s physics department.
“In standard computer memory, information is stored on the surface of a computer chip or hard drive. A device using persistent photoconductivity, however, could store information throughout the entire volume of a crystal.”
This approach, called holographic memory, “could lead to huge increases in information capacity,” McCluskey said.
Strontium titanate and other oxides, which contain oxygen and two or more other elements, often display a dizzying variety of electronic phenomena, from the high resistance used for insulation to superconductivity’s lack of resistance.
“These diverse properties provide a fascinating playground for scientists but applications so far have been limited,” said McCluskey.
McCluskey, Tarun and physicist Farida Selim, now at Bowling Green State University, exposed a sample of strontium titanate to light for 10 minutes. Its improved conductivity lasted for days. They theorize that the light frees electrons in the material, letting it carry more current.
First results from LUX experiment in
LUX researchers, seen here in a clean room on the surface at the Sanford Lab, work on the interior of the detector, before it is inserted into its titanium cryostat. photo: matt kapust, Sanford Underground Research Facility
World's most sensitive dark matter detector operating at the Sanford Underground Research Faciility
(SURF) LEAD, S.D. October 30, 2013 - After its first run of more than three months, operating a mile underground in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a new experiment named LUX has proven itself the most sensitive dark matter detector in the world.
“LUX is blazing the path to illuminate the nature of dark matter,” says Brown University physicist Rick Gaitskell, co-spokesperson for LUX with physicist Dan McKinsey of Yale University
Gaitskell and McKinsey announced the LUX first-run results, on behalf of the collaboration, at a seminar today at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (Sanford Lab) in Lead, S.D. The Sanford Lab is a state-owned facility, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) supports its operation. The LUX scientific collaboration, which is supported by the National Science Foundation and DOE, includes 17 research universities and national laboratories in the United States , the United Kingdom , and Portugal .
Dark matter, so far observed only by its gravitational effects on galaxies and clusters of galaxies, is the predominant form of matter in the universe. Weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs – so-called because they rarely interact with ordinary matter except through gravity – are the leading theoretical candidates for dark matter. The mass of WIMPs is unknown, but theories and results from other experiments suggest a number of possibilities.
LUX has a peak sensitivity at a WIMP mass of 33 GeV/c2 (see below), with a sensitivity limit three times better than any previous experiment. LUX also has a sensitivity that is more than 20 times better than previous experiments for low-mass WIMPs, whose possible detection has been suggested by other experiments. Three candidate low-mass WIMP events recently reported in ultra-cold silicon detectors would have produced more than 1,600 events in LUX’s much larger detector, or one every 80 minutes in the recent run. No such signals were seen.
“This is only the beginning for LUX,” McKinsey says. “Now that we understand the instrument and its backgrounds, we will continue to take data, testing for more and more elusive candidates for dark matter.”
In both theory and practice, collisions between WIMPs and normal matter are rare and extremely difficult to detect, especially because a constant rain of cosmic radiation from space can drown out the faint signals. That’s why LUX is searching for WIMPs 4,850 feet underground in the Sanford Lab, where few cosmic ray particles can penetrate. The detector is further protected from background radiation from the surrounding rock by immersion in a tank of ultra-pure water.
“This supremely quiet environment substantially improves our ability to see WIMPs scattering with xenon nuclei,” says Gaitskell.
At the heart of the experiment is a 6-foot-tall titanium tank filled with almost a third of a ton of liquid xenon, cooled to minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit. If a WIMP strikes a xenon atom it recoils from other xenon atoms and emits photons (light) and electrons. The electrons are drawn upward by an electrical field and interact with a thin layer of xenon gas at the top of the tank, releasing more photons.
Light detectors in the top and bottom of the tank are each capable of detecting a single photon, so the locations of the two photon signals – one at the collision point, the other at the top of the tank – can be pinpointed to within a few millimeters. The energy of the interaction can be precisely measured from the brightness of the signals.
“LUX is a complex instrument,” says McKinsey, “but it ensures that each WIMP event’s unique signature of position and energy will be precisely recorded.”
LUX’s biggest advantage as a dark matter detector is its size, a large xenon target whose outer regions further shield the interior from gamma rays and neutrons. Installed in the Sanford Lab in the summer of 2012, the experiment was filled with liquid xenon in February, and its first run of three months was conducted this spring and summer, followed by intensive analysis of the data. The dark matter search will continue through the next two years.
"The universe's mysterious dark sector presents us with two of the most thrilling challenges in all of physics," says Saul Perlmutter of DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the accelerating expansion of the universe. "We call it the dark sector precisely because we don't know what accounts for most of the energy and mass in the universe. Dark energy is one challenge, and as for the other, the LUX experiment's first data now take the lead in the hunt for the dark matter component of the dark sector."
South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard says his state is proud to play a role in this important research. Homestake Mining Co. donated its gold mine in Lead to the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority, which reopened it in 2007 with funding from the state Legislature and a $70 million donation from philanthropist T. Denny Sanford. “We congratulate the LUX researchers, and we look forward to working with dark matter scientists and other partners in the years to come,” Daugaard says.
The LUX announcement is major step forward for the Sanford Lab’s science program, which Laboratory Director Mike Headley points out has its roots in a famous physics experiment installed in the same experiment hall in the 1960s. “These are the first physics results achieved at Homestake since the Ray Davis solar neutrino experiment, which earned him a Nobel Prize for Physics,” Headley says. “I’m very proud of our staff’s work to help LUX reach this major milestone.”
Planning for the next-generation dark matter experiment at the Sanford Lab already is under way. Compared to LUX’s third of a ton of liquid xenon, the LUX-ZEPLIN, or LZ, experiment would have a 7-ton liquid xenon target inside the same 72,000-gallon tank of pure water used by LUX. Case Western Reserve University
LUX and LZ are among 14 active research groups at the Sanford Lab, including the Majorana Demonstrator collaboration, which is looking for one of the rarest forms of radioactive decay in an experiment hall adjacent to LUX. Other teams of researchers are planning experiments in physics, geology and biology that could extend the future of the lab for decades.
“LUX's first result is a great reward for the Department of Energy's leadership of the Sanford Underground Research Facility,” says Berkeley Lab physicist Kevin Lesko, who oversees operations at the Sanford Lab for DOE’s Office of Science. “The collaborations and especially the staff of the Sanford Lab are to be commended for their determination in pursuing research, and especially for creating a deep underground facility for the world-wide physics community that provides US scientists with opportunities for continued leadership in their pursuit of the most compelling physics questions.”
Regarding a WIMP mass of “33 GeV/c2 ”: Physicists express the mass of subatomic particles in electron volts (eV) divided by the speed of light squared (c2 ) A gigaelectron volt (GeV) is a billion electron volts, or about the mass of a proton.
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States , and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov.
The Sanford Underground Research Facility’s mission is to enable safe and compelling underground research and to foster transformational science education. For more information, please visit the Sanford Lab website at sanfordlab.org.
Rendering of HIV capsid with pentamers and hexamers
Credit: Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group (www.ks.uiuc.edu), Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology,
(NSF) October 29, 2013- A rendering of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) capsid with pentamers in green and hexamers in tan, the building blocks of the capsid. Researchers have determined the precise chemical structure of the HIV capsid, a protein shell that protects the virus's genetic material and is a key to its ability to infect and debilitate the human body's defense mechanism.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks to creating truly effective therapies to combat the virus is that the exact structure of the HIV capsid was unknown...until now. Researchers Klaus Schulten and Juan Perilla at the
The sustained petascale performance of Blue Waters enabled the researchers to explore new methods, combined with structural and electron microscopy data, to reliably model the chemical structure of the HIV capsid in great detail. NSF funding (grants PHY 08-22613, MCB 07-44057 and OCI 07-25070) supported the development of the HIV capsid model, through funding of personnel, equipment and computing resources.
Located at the at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC, Blue Waters has been configured to solve the most challenging compute-, memory- and data-intensive problems in science and engineering. It has tens of thousands of chips (CPUs & GPUs), more than a petabyte of memory, tens of petabytes of disk storage and hundreds of petabytes of archival storage.
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