Spacewalk Friday: Installing A New "Parking Spot" On Station

The Exoplanetary Menagerie

Today a massive discovery was announced: 39 light years away in the TRAPPIST-1 star system seven terrestrial planets all orbit extremely close to each other.

…and three are well within their star’s “habitable zone”.

TRAPPIST-1 is an ultra-cool dwarf star. Because its temperature is so much lower than a typical star like the sun (it’s roughly 2550 K while the sun’s 5772 K) planets are able to orbit much closer than they could in our Solar System and sustain habitable conditions. All seven of the discovered exoplanets orbit closer to TRAPPIST-1 than Mercury does to the sun.

Of the different planets discovered, one is immensely Earthlike, having a similar size and receiving roughly the same amount of light as Earth. This place could be a whole lot more like home than anything we’ve found yet. Another planet is a potential water-world, getting about as much light as does Mars (with an atmosphere, yes, it could be a liquid water world).

So close do these planets all orbit near to each other that if you were to go to one and look up, you could see the other planets in the sky above you… and they’d be as big as *or larger than the Moon is in our sky*. It must be one of the most beautiful sights.

So what’s the big deal right? NASA’s already found over 3000 exoplanets - what makes these ones special?

A few remarkable things:

One, TRAPPIST-1 is a member of the M-class stars - stars which make up 70% or so of all the stars out in the Milky Way. Knowing that such stars can host magnificent habitable planetary systems means the search for life just got blown wide open to 70% of the stars in our galaxy.

Two, though 39 light years seems far, this is actually unimaginably close. We’re basically neighbors. The fact that TRAPPIST-1 is so close means that astronomers will be able to subject this place to decades of intense research.

As NASA begins to turn space telescopes such as Hubble, Kepler and Spitzer on TRAPPIST-1, I think we’ll be hearing a lot more from it soon.

Before you go, please consider joining the Planetary Society. If TRAPPIST-1 intrigues you, just wait until you see what else we have happening. 

At the Planetary Society we have a radio show with some of the most groundbreaking material to include exoplanet hunters, engineers designing interstellar missions and interviews with astronauts. Most important though, we go to D.C. and make sure the politicians continue funding NASA and space science, and we reach out to people and try to show them what could be.

On that note, here are some artist conceptions of the TRAPPIST-1 star system and what could be:

So good job to the team that made this discovery (especially lead author Michaël Gillon) and I can’t wait to learn more about this place soon.

(Image credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech, NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC), NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (IPAC), NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC), ESO/M. Kornmesser and NASA-JPL/Caltech respectively)

@laurathia I'VE BEEN WANTING THESE POSTERS FORVER

That’s it. That’s the best tweet. We can all go home now.

Pitted Cones in Melas Chasma

Space Station Research: Cardiovascular Health

Each month, we highlight a different research topic on the International Space Station. In February, our focus is cardiovascular health, which coincides with the American Hearth Month.

Like bones and muscle, the cardiovascular system deconditions (gets weaker) in microgravity. Long-duration spaceflight may increase the risk of damage and inflammation in the cardiovascular system primarily from radiation, but also from psychological stress, reduced physical activity, diminished nutritional standards and, in the case of extravehicular activity, increased oxygen exposure.

Even brief periods of exposure to reduced-gravity environments can result in cardiovascular changes such as fluid shifts, changes in total blood volume, heartbeat and heart rhythm irregularities and diminished aerobic capacity.

The weightless environment of space also causes fluid shifts to occur in the body. This normal shift of fluids to the upper body in space causes increased inter-cranial pressure which could be reducing visual capacity in astronauts. We are currently testing how this can be counteracted by returning fluids to the lower body using a “lower body negative pressure” suit, also known as Chibis.

Spaceflight also accelerates the aging process, and it is important to understand this process to develop specific countermeasures. Developing countermeasures to keep astronauts’ hearts healthy in space is applicable to heart health on Earth, too!

On the space station, one of the tools we have to study heart health is the ultrasound device, which uses harmless sound waves to take detailed images of the inside of the body. These images are then viewed by researchers and doctors inside Mission Control. So with minimal training on ultrasound, remote guidance techniques allow astronauts to take images of their own heart while in space. These remote medicine techniques can also be beneficial on Earth.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

How Do You Stay Fit on a Mission to Mars?

This mini exercise device could be the key!

Onboard the International Space Station, astronauts need to work out to maintain their bone density and muscle mass, usually exercising 2 hours every single day. Throughout the week, they exercise on three different pieces of equipment–a bike, a treadmill and the Advanced Restive Exercise Device (ARED).

All these devices are needed to keep an astronaut healthy.

However, deep-space vehicles like our Orion Spacecraft aren’t as roomy as station, so everything — including exercise equipment — needs to be downsized. The Miniature Exercise Device (MED-2) is getting us one step closer to being able to keep astronauts’ bodies healthy on long journeys to the moon, Mars and beyond.

MED-2 is a compact, all-in-one exercise device that we developed and will be launching to the space station Tuesday, March 22. Onboard the station, we’ll see how MED-2 will perform in microgravity and how it will need to be further adapted for our Journey to Mars. However, it’s already pretty well equipped for deep space missions.

So what makes MED-2 so great for deep space travel and our Journey to Mars?

1. It is an all-in-one exercise device, meaning it can do both aerobic and resistive workouts. When we go to Mars, the less equipment we need, the better.

2. It’s incredibly light. The MED-2 weighs only 65 pounds, and every pound counts during space missions.

3. It has 5 - 350 pounds of resistance, despite weighing only 65 pounds. Astronauts don’t all lift the same amount, making the flexibility in MED-2’s “weights” essential.

4. It’s tiny. (Hence its name Miniature Exercise Device.) Not only is MED-2 incredibly light, but it also won’t take up a lot of space on any craft.

5. It powers itself. During an aerobic workout, the device charges, and then that power is used to run the resistive exercises. When traveling to space, it’s good when nothing goes to waste, and now astronauts’ workouts will help power the Journey to Mars.

MED-2 is only one of many devices and experiments flying on Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft. To find out more about the science on the space station, follow @ISS_Research and @Space_Station on Twitter.

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NASA Is Considering A Deep Sleep Option for Mars Mission Crew

A NASA-backed study is exploring an innovative way to dramatically cut the cost of a human expedition to Mars — put the crew in stasis.

The deep sleep, called torpor, would reduce astronauts’ metabolic functions with existing medical procedures. Torpor also can occur naturally in cases of hypothermia.

“Therapeutic torpor has been around in theory since the 1980s and really since 2003 has been a staple for critical care trauma patients in hospitals,” aerospace engineer Mark Schaffer, with SpaceWorks Enterprises in Atlanta, said at the International Astronomical Congress in Toronto this week. “Protocols exist in most major medical centers for inducing therapeutic hypothermia on patients to essentially keep them alive until they can get the kind of treatment that they need.”

Coupled with intravenous feeding, a crew could be put in hibernation for the transit time to Mars, which under the best-case scenario would take 180 days one-way.

So far, the duration of a patient’s time in torpor state has been limited to about one week.

“We haven’t had the need to keep someone in (therapeutic torpor) for longer than seven days,” Schaffer said. “For human Mars missions, we need to push that to 90 days, 180 days. Those are the types of mission flight times we’re talking about.”

Impressive Payoffs

Economically, the payoff looks impressive. Crews can live inside smaller ships with fewer amenities like galleys, exercise gear and of course water, food and clothing. One design includes a spinning habitat to provide a low-gravity environment to help offset bone and muscle loss.

SpaceWorks’ study, which was funded by NASA, shows a five-fold reduction in the amount of pressurized volume need for a hibernating crew and a three-fold reduction in the total amount of mass required, including consumables like food and water.

Overall, putting a crew in stasis cuts the baseline mission requirements from about 400 tons to about 220 tons.

“That’s more than one heavy-lift launch vehicle,” Schaffer said.

The Big Chill

The study looked at a two-part system for putting Mars-bound astronauts in stasis and bringing them out. The cooling would be done through an internasal system, which Schaffer admits is “not very comfortable,” but inhaling a coolant has several advantages over reducing body temperatures with external cooling pads. Cooled from the outside, the body is more susceptible to shivering and possible tissue damage, Schaffer notes.

The so-called RhinoChill System lowers body temperature about 1 degree Fahrenheit per hour. Reaching torpor state — between 89 degrees and 93 degrees Fahrenheit — takes about six hours.

Simply stopping the flow of coolant will bring a person out of stasis, though the SpaceWorks study included rewarming pads as a backup and to speed up the waking process in case of an emergency.

An alternative to having the whole crew in stasis is to have one person awake for two to three days, then hibernate for 14 days. By staggering the shifts, no one person would be in stasis for more than 14 days at a time and one crewmember would be awake to monitor the ship, conduct science experiments and handle maintenance chores.

Schaffer also points to a potential psychological advantage to stasis.

“Rather than being stuck in a can for 180 days, you go to sleep, you wake up and you’re there,” he said. More research is needed to assure prolonged stasis is safe, but initial results are promising, Schaffer added.

“We have not seen any show-stoppers on the medical side or on the engineering side,” he said.

Scientists find another sign suggesting life existed on Mars

According to new research published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, scientists are getting even more indicators that life once existed on Mars. The latest proof? Carbonates found in 3.8 billion-year-old rock in the Huygens basin.

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Telescope Instruments Part One: 

What they are (humor me)

Astronomy is an old field. For ages astronomers have had to be satisfied looking at the sky and interpreting what they saw as somehow connected to their Earthly lives. Zeus carried Ganymede off into the heavens and similarly the sky was a place of supernatural awe, somewhere that held your fortunes, a place the dead go, somewhere a child could be carried off to by a god.

Remarkable natural events like storms and lightning blistering over our us long seemed to confirm any and all suspicion and belief. For what could be responsible for something like lightning but a god? What else could the Sun be, but some divine light? Though the atoms in our bodies don’t remember where they come from, the answers have always been there, elusive.

When people finally started looking from the Sun to the stars in skeptical comparison, it was symbolically the beginning of a new age for astronomy. The stars weren’t pinholes in the sky, nor were they jewels (well some are “diamonds” but that was just a remarkably good guess!). Stars, people gradually realized, were kin to our own Sun. Could there be other Earths?

This truth is so grand, and it implies a universe so vast that it was more unbelievable to people than to simply go on assuming the lightning came from the likes of a “Zeus”. Human creativity, intellect and curiosity grew, however. We kept exploring and questioning until at last the technology we created harnessed the very electricity we used to fear.

In a sublime twist of irony Polyphemus, fire in hand, took to the heavens.

We have learned, in our exploration of nature, that we are not helpless. The divinity we saw in the heavens is literally same stuff that makes our blood red. We were of the sky all along and all it took was the most human part of us to figure this out: our curiosity.

Embracing our knack for exploration, however wasn’t exactly an easy truth. Our stories of gods in chariots dragging the Sun across the sky weren’t simply backwards: they were entirely simplistic. The universe astounded us for so long because our imaginations failed in grandiosity. The universe was the better magician and we simply didn’t know the tricks.

The technology which has resulted from our scientific exploration has similarly become more sophisticated. Out of necessity, we constantly invent new tools to solve old problems, which traditionally reveal another problem hitherto unknown.

The progression looks like this:

Astronomers stare up and wonder if the bright dot is a god or another planet.

Galileo invents the telescope and realizes that yes, there are other planets, but only a couple of the dots were visible - for most of them distance was too great to discern anything.

As math and science progressed, we became able to calculate the brightness, accounted for distance and it was obvious that all the bright dots unobservable with telescopes were roughly as bright as our Sun. Not all the dots fit this description though as some were very hazy and smoky looking.

Hubble then figures out that some of those hazy things are other galaxies, not just stars, but this extraordinary realization meant the universe was larger than the Milky Way! How could it be that another galaxy was all the way across space like that? Why did they seem to be moving farther from us faster, the farther they were?

I’ll stop there. You get the point. The progression of science has been met a proportional progression of mystery. This is as true today as it’s been since the dawn of science. The question then becomes this:

What is it that allows us to repeatedly push the darkness of ignorance away, to repeatedly domesticate the mysterious and turn the mystical forces of the universe to our personal use?

Our technology. Again, using our creativity and intellect as hammer and anvil, we forge miraculous solutions to unsolvable problems.

In astronomy, our resources are especially limited given the incredible distances that separate us from our targets. How can we possibly know anything about a planet orbiting a star hundreds of light years away?

In a way mother nature almost commit the perfect crime. It left one prolific clue behind though: light. Because of things like light’s dual wave-particle nature, techniques like spectroscopy and our growing ability to respond to and control our optics’ environments, astronomers are hot on multiple trails.

I want to explore and introduce you to some basic principles of the special mechanical eyes astronomers build which turn an otherwise invisible universe, into a bright, transparent scroll to our curiosity.

(Will be continued in part two)

(Image credit: NASA and Chris Gunn)