Which Do You Think You'll Miss More After Your First Trip? Space When You're Back On Earth Or Earth When

Ad Astra, John Glenn (1921-2016)

An astronaut. 

A pilot. 

A husband. 

A father. 

A United States Senator.

An American hero. 

An original.

John Glenn (1921-2016) was all those things and more. When he rocketed into space on Feb. 20, 1962, to become the first American to orbit Earth, the flight set the nation on course to meet ever-more ambitious goals.

The life and career of Senator Glenn eclipses those of many. In spite of his accomplishments, he was a humble and gracious man (and 4-term U.S. senator).

During Glenn’s first flight, a scheduled 30-minute test to determine whether Glenn could fly the capsule manually became a matter of life and death when the automatic system malfunctioned after the first orbit.

"I went to manual control and continued in that mode during the second and third orbits, and during re-entry," Glenn recalled later.  "The malfunction just forced me to prove very rapidly what had been planned over a longer period of time." Another problem seemed even more serious -- telemetry indicated the spacecraft's heat shield was loose. It seemed possible that Glenn and the spacecraft would be incinerated on re-entry.  Glenn left the retrorocket pack in place to steady the heat shield during re-entry. "It made for a very spectacular re-entry from where I was sitting," he said. Big chunks of the burning material came flying by the window.

He wasn't sure whether the flaming debris was the rocket pack or the heat shield breaking up. "Fortunately," he told an interviewer," it was the rocket pack -- or I wouldn't be answering these questions."

In the words of President Obama, who awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012: “When John Glenn blasted off from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas rocket in 1962, he lifted the hopes of a nation. And when his Friendship 7 spacecraft splashed down a few hours later, the first American to orbit the Earth reminded us that with courage and a spirit of discovery there's no limit to the heights we can reach together. With John's passing, our nation has lost an icon and Michelle and I have lost a friend. John spent his life breaking barriers, from defending our freedom as a decorated Marine Corps fighter pilot in World War II and Korea, to setting a transcontinental speed record ... The last of America's first astronauts has left us, but propelled by their example we know that our future here on Earth compels us to keep reaching for the heavens.  On behalf of a grateful nation, Godspeed, John Glenn.”

Glenn left the Astronaut Corps in 1964 and resigned from the Marine Corps in 1965. And, after some time in private industry ran for and was elected ti the U.S. Senate in 1974, carrying all 88 counties of Ohio. He was re-elected in 1980 with the largest margin in Ohio history. Ohio returned him to the Senate for a third term in 1986. In 1992 he was elected again, becoming the first popularly elected senator from his state to win four consecutive terms. During his last term he was the ranking member of both the Governmental Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Air/Land Forces in the Senate Armed Services Committee. He also served on the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Special Committee on Aging. He was considered one of the Senate's leading experts on technical and scientific matters, and won wide respect for his work to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

In 1998, Glenn flew on the STS-95 Discovery shuttle flight, a 9-day mission during which the crew supported a variety of research payloads including deployment of the Spartan solar-observing spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope Orbital Systems Test Platform, and Glenn's investigations on space flight and the aging process.

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden remembers, “Senator Glenn's legacy is one of risk and accomplishment, of history created and duty to country carried out under great pressure with the whole world watching.”

Today, we honor him for all that he stood for and continues to stand for -- grace under pressure, humility, ability, strength. 

Godspeed, John Glenn.

Pluto Continues to Amaze

This dwarf planet sure knows how to get a BIG reaction because we’re stunned by the latest images from our New Horizons spacecraft!

Back on July 14, the spacecraft completed it’s historic Pluto flyby, and is now in an intensive downlink phase. During this time, New Horizons will send us some of the best data and images we’ve seen!

These latest images were taken just 15 minutes after New Horizons’ closest approach to Pluto. The spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view. Icy mountains, flat plains and the horizon can all be seen in detail.

When we take a closer look, these features truly begin to stand out. Mountains up to 11,000 feet high are met by flat icy plains that extend out to Pluto’s horizon. There, more than a dozen layers of haze in the dwarf planet’s atmosphere can be seen. It’s almost as if we’re flying over the surface with the New Horizons spacecraft.

Speaking of flyover, this new animation of Pluto has been created from images returned from the spacecraft this month. This view shows us what it might be like to take an aerial tour through Pluto’s thin atmosphere and soar above the surface. 

These images and videos are not only stunning, but also provide us with important information about the dwarf planet. So far, scientists can tell that the weather changes from day to day on Pluto. These images, combined with others that have been downloaded, provide evidence for a remarkably Earth-like “hydrological” cycle on Pluto.

For updates on the data and images received by the New Horizons spacecraft, check our blog: https://blogs.nasa.gov/pluto/

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

It’s kick-off time! Pilot Dean “Gucci” Neeley is reporting for duty with answers to your questions in today’s Tumblr Answer Time!

@saraxmix: What is it that makes you go back up there once you're home?

Becoming a Space Scientist

Astronauts train all over the world, including at Johnson Space Center. Here, they learn not just how to live aboard the International Space Station, but also how to conduct science in microgravity.

Astronauts serve as the eyes and hands of researchers while their experiments are in space, so they must be trained in everything from using a microscope, to maintaining the equipment for combustion experiments.

Check out this week’s episode of NASA Explorers as we go to class with an astronaut.

Follow NASA Explorers on Facebook to catch new episodes of season 4 every Wednesday! 

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

A Hitchhiker’s Ride to Space

This month, we are set to launch the latest weather satellite from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Joint Polar Satellite System-1, or JPSS-1, satellite will provide essential data for timely and accurate weather forecasts and for tracking environmental events such as forest fires and droughts.

What popular film is the closest to reality for you?

You’re Always Surrounded by Neutrinos!

This second, as you’re reading these words, trillions of tiny particles are hurtling toward you! No, you don’t need to brace yourself. They’re passing through you right now. And now. And now. These particles are called neutrinos, and they’re both everywhere in the cosmos and also extremely hard to find.

Neutrinos are fundamental particles, like electrons, so they can’t be broken down into smaller parts. They also outnumber all the atoms in the universe. (Atoms are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks … which maybe we’ll talk about another time.) The only thing that outnumbers neutrinos are all the light waves left over from the birth of the universe! 

Credit: Photo courtesy of the Pauli Archive, CERN

Physicist Wolfgang Pauli proposed the existence of the neutrino, nearly a century ago. Enrico Fermi coined the name, which means “little neutral one” in Italian, because these particles have no electrical charge and nearly no mass.

Despite how many there are, neutrinos are really hard to study. They travel at almost the speed of light and rarely interact with other matter. Out of the universe’s four forces, ghostly neutrinos are only affected by gravity and the weak force. The weak force is about 10,000 times weaker than the electromagnetic force, which affects electrically charged particles. Because neutrinos carry no charge, move almost as fast as light, and don’t interact easily with other matter, they can escape some really bizarre and extreme places where even light might struggle getting out – like dying stars!

Through the weak force, neutrinos interact with other tiny fundamental particles: electrons, muons [mew-ons], and taus [rhymes with “ow”]. (These other particles are also really cool, but for right now, you just need to know that they’re there.) Scientists actually never detect neutrinos directly. Instead they find signals from these other particles. So they named the three types, or flavors, of neutrinos after them.

Neutrinos are made up of each of these three flavors, but cycle between them as they travel. Imagine going to the store to buy rocky road ice cream, which is made of chocolate ice cream, nuts, and marshmallows. When you get home, you find that it’s suddenly mostly marshmallows. Then in your bowl it’s mostly nuts. But when you take a bite, it’s just chocolate! That’s a little bit like what happens to neutrinos as they zoom through the cosmos.

Credit: CERN

On Earth, neutrinos are produced when unstable atoms decay, which happens in the planet’s core and nuclear reactors. (The first-ever neutrino detection happened in a nuclear reactor in 1955!) They’re also created by particle accelerators and high-speed particle collisions in the atmosphere. (Also, interestingly, the potassium in a banana emits neutrinos – but no worries, bananas are perfectly safe to eat!)

Most of the neutrinos around Earth come from the Sun – about 65 billion every second for every square centimeter. These are produced in the Sun’s core where the immense pressure squeezes together hydrogen to produce helium. This process, called nuclear fusion, creates the energy that makes the Sun shine, as well as neutrinos.

The first neutrinos scientists detected from outside the Milky Way were from SN 1987A, a supernova that occurred only 168,000 light-years away in a neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. (That makes it one of the closest supernovae scientists have observed.) The light from this explosion reached us in 1987, so it was the first supernova modern astronomers were able to study in detail. The neutrinos actually arrived a few hours before the light from the explosion because of the forces we talked about earlier. The particles escape the star’s core before any of the other effects of the collapse ripple to the surface. Then they travel in pretty much a straight line – all because they don’t interact with other matter very much.

Credit: Martin Wolf, IceCube/NSF

How do we detect particles that are so tiny and fast – especially when they rarely interact with other matter? Well, the National Science Foundation decided to bury a bunch of detectors in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice to create the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The neutrinos interact with other particles in the ice through the weak force and turn into muons, electrons, and taus. The new particles gain the neutrinos’ speed and actually travel faster than light in the ice, which produces a particular kind of radiation IceCube can detect. (Although they would still be slower than light in the vacuum of space.)

In 2013, IceCube first detected high-energy neutrinos, which have energies up to 1,000 times greater than those produced by Earth’s most powerful particle collider. But scientists were puzzled about where exactly these particles came from. Then, in 2017, IceCube detected a high-energy neutrino from a monster black hole powering a high-speed particle jet at a galaxy’s center billions of light-years away. It was accompanied by a flash of gamma rays, the highest energy form of light.

But particle jets aren’t the only place we can find these particles. Scientists recently announced that another high-energy neutrino came from a black hole shredding an unlucky star that strayed too close. The event didn’t produce the neutrino when or how scientists expected, though, so they’ve still got a lot to learn about these mysterious particles!

Keep up with other exciting announcements about our universe by following NASA Universe on Twitter and Facebook.

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

Happy Martian New Year!

For any planet, a year is the time it takes to make one orbit around the sun. Because Mars is farther away from the sun, it has to travel a greater distance than Earth. It takes Mars about twice as long as it does for Earth to make one circle around the sun…therefore, a year on Mars lasts twice as long.

On May 5, Mars passes solar longitude 0 as the sun crosses the equator on Mars. This is the vernal equinox and was chosen by planetary scientists as the start of a new year.

Mars has four seasons, roughly twice as long as those on Earth, but with more variation given Mars’ eccentric orbit and the fact its orbital speed varies more as a result.

Did you know that there’s a U.S. city named Mars? Mars, PA hosts an annual Mars New Year celebration and we’re participating in this two-day science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) event to inspire young people to pursue innovation and exploration.

More info on Mars, PA: http://www.marsnewyear.com/

Get updated images from the events in Mars, PA here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/sets/72157683457751005/

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

Our water-seeking robotic Moon rover just booked a ride to the Moon’s South Pole. Astrobotic of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been selected to deliver the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, to the Moon in 2023. During its 100-Earth-day mission, the approximately 1,000-pound rover will roam several miles and use its four science instruments to sample various soil environments in search of water ice. Its survey will help pave the way for a new era of human missions to the lunar surface and will bring us a step closer to developing a sustainable, long-term robotic and human presence on the Moon as part of the Artemis program.

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