Science At NASA

Homeschool Day Brings STEM Activities to Virginia Air & Space Center

Jacob Earley, left, Frank Jones and his mother, Maria Jones, learned about the effects of gravity on other planets from NASA intern Jessica Hathaway during Homeschool Appreciation Day, which took place May 6 at the Virginia Air & Space Center (VASC) in Hampton, Virginia. Hathaway was one of several volunteers from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton who taught homeschooled children and their parents interactive lessons about everything from ultraviolet radiation to engineering satellites to navigating a rover on Mars. Approximately 300 people registered for the event, which has a focus on activities involving science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The VASC is the official visitor center for NASA Langley.

Joe Atkinson NASA Langley Research Center

See what goes on behind the gates of the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC)!

A Laser-Sharp View of Blended Wing Body Plane Design

Engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, used lasers inside the 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Tunnel to map how air flows over a Boeing Blended Wing Body (BWB) model – a greener, quieter airplane design under development. The name for the technique is called particle image velocimetry. If you look closely you can see the light bouncing off tracer particles. Cameras record the movement of those particles as the laser light pulses across the model. This allows researchers to accurately measure the flow over the model once the images are processed. A smoother flow over the wing means less fuel will be needed to power the aircraft.

Image credit: NASA/David C. Bowman

NASA Camera Shows Moon Crossing Face of Earth for 2nd Time in a Year

For only the second time in a year, a NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a view of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth. 

The images were captured by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four-megapixel CCD camera and telescope on the DSCOVR satellite orbiting 1 million miles from Earth. From its position between the sun and Earth, DSCOVR conducts its primary mission of real-time solar wind monitoring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The first image is from July 2016 and the second image (moon traveling diagonally Northeast in the image) is from July 2015

Credits: NASA

Power of Pink Provides NASA with Pressure Pictures

They say you show your true colors when you’re under pressure.

Turns out the old saying works for models being tested in wind tunnels as well, specifically those coated with a unique Pressure-Sensitive Paint (PSP) that NASA engineers have used for more than 25 years.

Read more: https://www.nasa.gov/aero/power-of-pink-provides-nasa-with-pressure-pictures

Voyager 2 Photograph of Jupiter

A photo of Jupiter. Took by Voyager with VGISS on July 02, 1979 at 06:01:35. Detail page on OPUS database.

Museum Exhibit Reveals the NASA Langley Human Computers from "Hidden Figures"

Sam McDonald NASA Langley Research Center

A new display at the Hampton History Museum offers another view of African-American women whose mathematical skills helped the nation’s early space program soar.

“When the Computer Wore a Skirt: NASA’s Human Computers” opens to the public Saturday, Jan. 21, and focuses on three women — Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson — who were illuminated in Margot Lee Shetterly’s book “Hidden Figures” and the major motion picture of the same name. Located in the museum's 20th century gallery, it was created with support from the Hampton Convention and Visitor Bureau and assistance from NASA's Langley Research Center.

“Langley’s West Computers were helping America dominate aeronautics, space research, and computer technology, carving out a place for themselves as female mathematicians who were also black, black mathematicians who were also female,” Shetterly wrote.

The modestly sized exhibit is comprised of four panels with photos and text along with one display case containing artifacts, including a 1957 model Friden mechanical calculator. That piece of equipment represented state-of-the-art technology when then original human computers were crunching numbers. A three-minute video profiling Johnson —a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner — is also part of the exhibit.

A display case at left contains a 1957 Friden STW-10 mechanical calculator, the type used by NASA human computers including Katherine Johnson. "If you were doing complicated computations during that time, this is what you used," said Hampton History Museum Curator Allen Hoilman. The machine weighs 40 pounds.

Credits: NASA/David C. Bowman

Museum curator Allen Hoilman said his favorite artifact is a May 5, 1958 memo from Associate Director Floyd Thompson dissolving the West Area Computers Unit and reassigning its staff members to other jobs around the center.

“It meant that the segregated work environment was coming to an end,” Hoilman said. “That’s why this is a significant document. It’s one of the bookends.”

That document, along with several others, was loaned to the museum by Ann Vaughan Hammond, daughter of Dorothy Vaughan. Hoilman said family members of other human computers have been contacted about contributing artifacts as well.

Ann Vaughan Hammond worked hard to find meaningful items for the display. “She really had to do some digging through the family papers,” Hoilman said, explaining that the women who worked as human computers were typically humble about their contributions. They didn’t save many mementos.

“They never would have guessed they would be movie stars,” Hoilman said.

For more information on Katherine Johnson, click here.

Credits:

Sam McDonald NASA Langley Research Center

This Day in NASA History: February 10, 1959

On this day, 1959, wind tunnel tests of Project Mercury configuration models were started.

By the end of the year, over 70 different models had been tested by facilities at the Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center and the NASA Langley, Ames, and Lewis Research Centers.

Here at NASA Langley Research Center, a lot of those tests took place in our 7 X 10-Foot High Speed Tunnel (pictured above).

Some tests also took place in our 20-Foot Vertical Spin Tunnel.

Just me meeting my hero Katherine Johnson after interviewing her in the newsroom for another article I’m writing. nbd ((VERY BIG DEAL)) •🚀•🚀• Katherine G. Johnson is a pioneer in American space history. A NASA mathematician, Johnson’s computations have influenced every major space program from Mercury through the Shuttle. She even calculated the flight path for the first American mission space. In 1953, Johnson was contracted as a research mathematician at the Langley Research Center with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the agency that preceded NASA. She worked in a pool of women performing math calculations until she was temporarily assigned to help the all-male flight research team, and wound up staying there. Johnson’s specialty was calculating the trajectories for space shots which determined the timing for launches, including the Mercury mission and Apollo 11, the mission to the moon. (at NASA Langley Research Center)

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 2016 April 6 

Auroras and the Magnetosphere of Jupiter 

Jupiter has auroras. Like near the Earth, the magnetic field of our Solar System’s largest planet compresses when impacted by a gust of charged particles from the Sun. This magnetic compression funnels charged particles towards Jupiter’s poles and down into the atmosphere. There, electrons are temporarily excited or knocked away from atmospheric gases, after which, when de-exciting or recombining with atmospheric ions, auroral light is emitted. The featured illustration portrays the magnificent magnetosphere around Jupiter in action. In the inset image released last month, the Earth-orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory shows unexpectedly powerful X-ray light emitted by Jovian auroras, depicted in false-colored purple. That Chandra inset is superposed over an optical image taken at a different time by the Hubble Space Telescope. This aurora on Jupiter was seen in October 2011, several days after the Sun emitted a powerful Coronal Mass Ejection (CME).