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Category: space

A group of Traverse City students will kick off their summer vacation with an otherworldly experience – making radio contact with the International Space Station and interviewing NASA astronaut Nick Hague live as he’s in orbit. The special event is one of several opportunities for students to participate in science, nature, and STEM programs this summer in Traverse City.

The Traverse Area District Library’s (TADL’s) Summer Reading Club was chosen through a national competitive application process to be one of 13 U.S. organizations that will host a radio contact event with the International Space Station (ISS) between now and December. Only three libraries were selected, and TADL is the only Michigan-based organization invited to participate. “The closet other events are in Pennsylvania and Missouri,” says TADL Marketing and Communications Manager Matt Wiliford.

Students will talk with ISS crew members via amateur radio on Friday (June 28) from the McGuire Room at the library. Doors will open at 9am, with the event starting at 9:30am. Former NASA astronaut Greg Johnson will be in attendance to discuss his own trips to ISS, then members of the Cherryland Amateur Radio Club will provide an overview of the equipment being used to make radio contact with ISS. At 10:02am, direct radio contact will occur between NA1SS (ISS) and W8TCM (Traverse City). Eight students have been chosen to ask one question each of their own, then a second question submitted by community members through the library’s “Ask an Astronaut” submission contest. TADL staff helped curate the questions to cover a variety of topics and provoke thoughtful conversation, according to Wiliford.

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The European Space Agency (ESA) just tested out a device that’s meant to assist in astronaut rescue missions on the surface of the Moon. The strange contraption, dubbed the Lunar Evacuation System Assembly, is a pyramid-like structure that can be operated by a single astronaut to extricate a fallen comrade — the world’s first, according to the ESA.

The gadget is meant to save incapacitated astronauts by lifting them onto a mobile stretcher. According to an ESA statement, the device can be “transported like a golf caddy.”

“There is no way an astronaut could carry their fallen crewmate over their shoulder while wearing an [extravehicular activity] EVA suit,” said ESA head of spacewalk training Hervé Stevenin in the statement.

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A team of researchers from the University of Glasgow, the University of Strathclyde and Hobart and William Smith Colleges has developed a new coating for mirrors used on gravity detectors that is 25 times less noisy than mirror surfaces used on LIGO. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes how they made it and how well it performed during testing.

The mirrors used in gravity wave detectors are positioned at the ends of its arms. Coherent light rays are reflected from both mirrors and interfere with each other. Gravitational waves are measured by noting how much the mirrors shift, resulting in slight changes in length of the arms to which they are attached, to an accuracy of 10–16 cm. As impressive as that is, researchers want to improve the sensitivity of the detectors used at LIGO/Virgo, even after the recent upgrade.

To that end, members of the European Union have begun developing plans for the construction of what the Einstein Telescope, a gravitational wave with sensitivity 100 times higher than LIGO/Virgo. But for that to happen, improvements in the design of the current are required. One of those improvements is reducing the amount of thermal fluctuations in the mirror coatings. In this new effort, the researchers claim to have done just that.

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Are you — is every person you’ve ever loved, every incredible sight you’ve ever witnessed — part of a hologram? Some scientists think so.

They argue that all the information in the universe may be stored on some sort of two-dimensional object. In this video, NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller delves into frontier science — an unchartered territory that may require a new level of physics to better understand.

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An algae-powered bioreactor, called the Photobioreactor, arrived at the International Space Station on May 6 and represents a major step toward so-called closed-loop life-support systems, which could one day sustain space crews during long-duration missions to the moon and Mars.

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A group of astronomers led by Crystal Martin and Stephanie Ho of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has discovered a dizzying cosmic choreography among typical star-forming galaxies; their cool halo gas appears to be in step with the galactic disks, spinning in the same direction.

The researchers used W. M. Keck Observatory to obtain the first-ever direct observational evidence showing that corotating halo gas is not only possible, but common. Their findings suggest that the whirling gas halo will eventually spiral in towards the disk.

“This is a major breakthrough in understanding how galactic disks grow,” said Martin, Professor of Physics at UC Santa Barbara and lead author of the study. “Galaxies are surrounded by massive reservoirs of gas that extend far beyond the visible portions of galaxies. Until now, it has remained a mystery how exactly this material is transported to galactic disks where it can fuel the next generation of star formation.”

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