Daily Archives: April 27, 2022

Artists representation of IXPE in Earth orbit. Credit: NASA

Researchers introduce an imaging X-ray polarimetry mission that enables new measurements of cosmic X-ray sources.

Humankind has long been fascinated by the secrets hidden in the immense expanse of outer space. The invention of the optical telescope during the 17th century allowed humans to see stars appearing as mere twinkling dots in the night sky. Thanks to scientific innovations over the next four centuries, we can now launch telescopes into space to get a better look at astronomical objects and even study them at wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum. The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) launched by NASA on December 9, 2021, is one such expedition into the cosmos.

The IXPE is a space-based observatory developed in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI). It contains three identical telescopes, each with an imaging X-ray detector sensitive to light polarization at its focus. Equipped with these, IXPE can explore some of the brightest cosmic X-ray sources in our universe, such as pulsars, black holes, and neutron stars. With a 2-year baseline mission, IXPE will start off by studying dozens of X-ray sources in its first year, which will be followed by more detailed observations of the chosen targets in the second year.

The IXPE with the deployed coilable boom during testing. The boom provides a focal length of 4 meters and positions each of the mirror module assemblies above its respective X-ray detector unit. Credit: Ball Aerospace

Conceived in 2017, this multi-national project became a reality in 2021 owing to the participation of several space agencies that came together to realize different aspects of the mission. A recent article published in the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems provides a detailed description of the optics and detectors of IXPE and the scientific goals of the mission.

IXPE was launched on a reusable Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center into an equatorial orbit at an altitude of 600 km. This orbit was chosen to reduce the charged-particle background, maximize the lifetime of the explorer and allow easier regular data downloads to primary and backup ground stations (Kenya and Singapore, respectively). The observatory uses an array of 12 sun sensors, a three-axis magnetometer, and two star trackers to maintain its course in space.

Photograph of the IXPE Observatory in the stowed position on a vibration table during observatory environmental testing. Credit: Ball Aerospace

Each telescope in the IXPE observatory comprises a mirror module assembly (MMA). The MMA focuses X-rays into polarization-sensitive detector units (DUs). The DUs, in turn, help in energy and position determination by providing timing information and polarization sensitivity data. The information collected by the DUs is relayed to the detector service unit (DSU), which processes the data and transmits it to the ground. A lightweight, coilable boom is deployed after launch to ensure the correct focal length and to align the MMAs with the DUs. Additionally, a tip-tilt-rotate mechanism exists on board, which can be used to align the mirrors with the detectors as well.

After the initial stages of alignment and calibration, IXPE began its baseline mission, providing high-quality polarization data of various sources. The first imaging data was reported in February. The IXPE team expects that the most striking early images will likely come from the remnants of shell-type supernova (a supernova that emits most of its radiation from a shell of shocked material). They believe that IXPE will also be able to image active galaxies, the galactic center of the Milky Way galaxy, and blazars, a type of galaxy that emits powerful jets of ionized matter and radiation. This will provide an opportunity to push the envelope of observations even further by exploring new source types of particular interest to gain physical insights.

The astrophysics community has been looking forward to this capability IXPE opens a new window on the X-ray sky by providing orders of magnitude higher sensitivity than previous X-ray polarimeters in space, said Megan Eckart, deputy editor for JATIS.

A marvel of science and engineering, IXPE will provide the first information about X-ray polarization for many astronomical sources. With its state-of-the-art telescopes and detectors, IXPE has the potential to expand the horizons of our knowledge about the universe.

Reference: Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer: prelaunch by Martin C. Weisskopf, Paolo Soffitta, Luca Baldini, Brian D. Ramsey, Stephen L. ODell, Roger W. Romani, Giorgio Matt, William D. Deininger, Wayne H. Baumgartner, Ronaldo Bellazzini, Enrico Costa, Jeffery J. Kolodziejczak, Luca Latronico, Herman L. Marshall, Fabio Muleri, Stephen D. Bongiorno, Allyn Tennant, Niccolo Bucciantini, Michal Dovciak, Frdric Marin, Alan Marscher, Juri Poutanen, Pat Slane, Roberto Turolla, William Kalinowski, Alessandro Di Marco, Sergio Fabiani, Massimo Minuti, Fabio La Monaca, Michele Pinchera, John Rankin, Carmelo Sgr, Alessio Trois, Fei Xie, Cheryl Alexander, D. Zachery Allen, Fabrizio Amici, Jason Andersen, Angelo Antonelli, Spencer Antoniak, Primo Attin, Mattia Barbanera, Matteo Bachetti , Randy M. Baggett, Jeff Bladt, Alessandro Brez, Raffaella Bonino, Christopher Boree, Fabio Borotto, Shawn Breeding, Daniele Brienza, H. Kyle Bygott, Ciro Caporale, Claudia Cardelli, Rita Carpentiero, Simone Castellano, Marco Castronuovo, Luca Cavalli, Elisabetta Cavazzuti, Marco Ceccanti, Mauro Centrone, Saverio Citraro, Fabio DAmico, Elisa DAlba, Laura Di Gesu, Ettore Del Monte, Kurtis L. Dietz, Niccol Di Lalla, Giuseppe Di Persio, David Dolan, Immacolata Donnarumma, Yuri Evangelista, Kevin Ferrant, Riccardo Ferrazzoli, MacKenzie Ferrie, Joseph Footdale, Brent Forsyth, Michelle Foster, Benjamin Garelick, Shuichi Gunji, Eli Gurnee, Michael Head, Grant Hibbard, Samantha Johnson, Erik Kelly, Kiranmayee Kilaru, Carlo Lefevre, Shelley Le Roy, Pasqualino Loffredo, Paolo Lorenzi, Leonardo Lucchesi, Tyler Maddox, Guido Magazzu, Simone Maldera, Alberto Manfreda, Elio Mangraviti, Marco Marengo, Alessandra Marrocchesi, Francesco Massaro, David Mauger, Jeffery McCracken, Michael McEachen, Rondal Mize, Paolo Mereu, Scott Mitchell, Ikuyuki Mitsuishi, Alfredo Morbidini, Federico Mosti, Hikmat Nasimi, Barbara Negri, Michela Negro, Toan Nguyen, Isaac Nitschke, Alessio Nuti, Mitch Onizuka, Chiara Oppedisano, Leonardo Orsini, Darren Osborne, Richard Pacheco, Alessandro Paggi, Will Painter, Steven D. Pavelitz, Christina Pentz, Raffaele Piazzolla, Matteo Perri, Melissa Pesce-Rollins, Colin Peterson, Maura Pilia, Alessandro Profeti, Simonetta Puccetti, Jaganathan Ranganathan, Ajay Ratheesh, Lee Reedy, Noah Root, Alda Rubini, Stephanie Ruswick, Javier Sanchez, Paolo Sarra, Francesco Santoli, Emanuele Scalise, Andrea Sciortino, Christopher Schroeder, Tim Seek, Kalie Sosdian, Gloria Spandre, Chet O. Speegle, Toru Tamagawa, Marcello Tardiola, Antonino Tobia, Nicholas E. Thomas, Robert Valerie, Marco Vimercati, Amy L. Walden, Bruce Weddendorf, Jeffrey Wedmore, David Welch, Davide Zanetti and Francesco Zanetti, 14 April 2022, Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems.DOI: 10.1117/1.JATIS.8.2.026002

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X-Ray Polarimetry: Pushing the Boundaries of Space Exploration - SciTechDaily

NASA Glenn Research Center is set to host the third annual Ohio Space Forum, an event highlighting the state's role in space exploration, security and developing a future space workforce.

The two-day event on May 17-18 includes a tour of the NASA Glenn facility and brings together military, industry and academic leaders in the fields of space research, operations, intelligence, exploration and defense.

The forum provides companies in the space and aerospace industry, or those interested in working directly with NASA Glenn, the opportunity to hear from and speak with NASA and industry leaders.

Speakers at the event include James Free, NASA's associate administrator for exploration systems development; Col. (retired) Pamela Melroy, NASA's deputy administrator and former astronaut; and Col. Maurizio D. Calabrese, commander of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The agenda features an examination of Ohio's role in space exploration, including an update on the state's part in designing systems to help the country return to the moon in 2024. Other topics include Ohio's role in commercial low-Earth orbit space stations; national security work with the National Air and Space Intelligence Center; and developing a future space workforce.

The program is organized by Dayton Development Coalition and its partners: Ohio Aerospace Institute, Team NEO, Greater Cleveland Partnership and JumpStart. Registration for the event ends May 10.

Originally posted here:

NASA Glenn hosts forum on Ohio's role in space travel and defense - Crain's Cleveland Business

Bernie is whining about the Space Race again.

In a column for The Guardian, Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders lauded the 1969 moon landing as a triumph of the state, a shining example of political will and democratic socialist ideals. Now, he says, the capitalists have moved in after a huge effort to privatize space exploration, with the risks being socialized and shouldered by taxpayers.

It is an irresistible narrative: tax-dodging billionaires using tax money to colonize the universe! How could Sanders resist it? How could The Guardian? How could Twitter?

Scratch the surface, though, and you find shallow populist posturing. Sanders is rewriting history and cynically framing a net positive win-win as exploitation.

To start, the moon landing involved numerous private space contractors, as Tim Fernholz of Quartz pointed out last year, when Sanders ally Rep. Jamaal Bowman said, We got to the moon without private contractors. NASA administrator Bill Nelson retorted, We got to the moon with American corporations.

The fact is, there was only one fully public space program that tried to land on the moonand it was run by the Soviet Union. Sanders and Bowman were echoing the same kind of politically convenient revisionist history.

But theres another hole in Sanders narrative.

The huge effort to privatize space exploration was, in part, the result of efforts to defund NASA, which Sanders voted to do in 1996, 2000, and 2012. Ironically, it was this chronic underfunding that prompted Elon Musk to create SpaceXafter he discovered that NASA didnt have a deadline to land on Mars.

When confronted about his voting record, Sanders said it was due to a difficult choice about whether you vote to provide food for hungry kids or health care for people who have none and other programs. He qualified the statement by saying that in general he supported increased funding for NASA.

The implication: we have bigger fish to fry before spending tax money on space.

Sanders was more explicit last year, when he tweeted: Space travel is an exciting idea, but right now we need to focus on Earth and create a progressive tax system.

It is unsurprising that Sanders would prioritize inequality over space exploration, but it begs the question of whether he would have supported the moon missionor even the creation of NASAhad he been an elected official at the time.

The financing and political will Sanders lauded in his articlethe democratic collectivist spirit of yoreis another feel good myth not backed by facts.

A 1965 Harris poll showed 57 percent of Americans believed money would be better spent on a less literal moonshot: new water desalination systems. A few years later, in 1967, only 43 percent of the public supported landing a man on the moon, according to another Harris poll. It was popularly referred to as a moondoggle. Fiscal conservatives argued it was a waste. As for the left, many couldnt square the budget with existing prioritieslike inequality. This attitude was encapsulated in the 1970 spoken word poem by Gil Scott Heron, Whitey on the Moon, a song that has gained renewed popularity in context of the new space race.

Ironically, The Guardian in July 1969 called a teachers union official a cynic for saying the moon landing was, A trivial prestige exercise which ignored the social conditions existing in the world.

It doesnt take a leap of imagination to believe Sanders would have taken this very same stand back in the 1960sespecially because the moon mission did actually involve corporate contractors.

The Vermont senator repeatedly voted to defund NASA, opposed public private space exploration, and said Bezos and Musk shouldnt be rich enough to fund space exploration. But even with a huge tax on unrealized gains, would Sanders be in favor of using any of the new tax revenue for space exploration?

Sanders helped create the vacuum that Musk and Bezos are fillingand both of the latter took on great financial risk to do so.

The abundance and equality Sanders and company seek is within reach, but only if they dont treat every private endeavor as exploitation, every technology as dystopian, and every government contract as corporate welfare.

The notion that NASA is socializing risk ignores the fact Musk endured three failed rocket launches and was only saved from bankruptcy thanks to a NASA contract, awarded after a fourth launch (this one, successful). This privatized risk, paved the way to reusable rockets, and reduced launch costs by orders of magnitude for NASA. Or, in other words, it socialized enormous gains.

Bezos similarly sank some $7 billion into his Blue Origin space exploration project before getting its big moon lander contract with NASA. If only Sanders and his ilk appreciated reusable rockets as much as reusable straws.

Outrage about portions of the federal budget going to American companies employing American workers is similarly disingenuous, because it ignores the alternative. That money could have been going to the genocidal Russian government instead.

Prior to the tech-bros showing up on the space scene, NASA was hopelessly dependent on Russia for space travel. The few contracts NASA still has with Russia are now in doubt, as the head of its space program threatened to dash the International Space Station into the sea and refuse to bring US astronauts back to earththreats Elon Musk has offered to mitigate.

In the final paragraphs of his opinion column, Sen. Sanders conceded space exploration offers massive potential to improve life on earth, but also warned it could make the rich richeras if those are always mutually exclusive choices.

You only have to look to Ukrainewhere SpaceXs satellite internet system Starlink has provided rapidly deployed and crucial internet connections for journalists and the militaryto refute this binary notion.

Sanders rails against a greed is good mindset, with an equally shallow and reductive mindset of profit is bad. It epitomizes a Marxist view of technology that has become increasingly influential, where people yearn for public versions of technologies that governments could never have producedsuch as the EUs failed Google competitor.

To the technological Marxists, every quid pro quo is exploitation and every user is being used, no matter the upsides to consumers. Theyre fiscally progressive, until private contractors offer the best means to a public endthen the likes of Bezos and Musk are cast as welfare kings. They prefer government-built disposable rockets over privately built reusable ones; $20,000 per kilogram nonprofit payloads over $2,000 per kilogram for-profit ones; for human consciousness to remain grounded on earth rather than for capitalists to reach the moon or Mars.

The abundance and equality Sanders and company seek is within reach, but only if they dont treat every private endeavor as exploitation, every technology as dystopian, and every government contract as corporate welfare.

Reusable rocketsborn of private enterprisehave created a new reality where space exploration wont need to use so much of the federal budget, and portend a more abundant future where we dont have to make tradeoffs between exploring the stars, feeding the hungry, or developing new desalination technology.

If it turns a billionaire into a trillionaire, so what? Thats just more wealth for Sanders and his ilk to tax!

Continued here:

Bernie Sanders Would Have Voted Against the Moon Landing - The Daily Beast

The famous Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky once said, Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever. Tsiolkovsky is often hailed as one of the fathers of rocketry and cosmonautics and remembered for believing in the dominance of humanity throughout space, also known as anthropocosmism. His work in the late-19th and early-20th centuries helped shape space exploration several decades before humanity first walked on the Moon.

The second half of Tsiolkovskys famous quote refers to not just living on the Earth but relying on it as we venture farther out into the cosmos. Even today, as the International Space Station orbits above at 28,000 kilometers per hour (17,500 miles per hour), those astronauts require constant resupply from the ground to stay alive. Future astronauts on the Moon might only have to wait three days to receive supplies from Earth, but as we move farther out into space, especially to Mars, this reliance will undoubtedly become far more tedious, time-consuming, and costly. Therefore, if humanity is to establish a long-term presence in space, we have to learn to use the on-hand resources we have at our disposal.

A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has developed a sustainable method for making bricks out of Martian soil, using bacteria and urea. Mammals, including humans, are the primary producers of urea. Because they secrete urea as the primary nitrogenous waste product, they are called ureotelic animals. Urea serves an important role in the metabolism of nitrogen-containing compounds by animals. These so-called space bricks can be used to construct building-like structures on Mars that could facilitate human settlement on the Red Planet.

The method for making these space bricks was published in PLOS One. A slurry is first created by mixing Martian soil (simulant) with guar gum, a bacterium calledSporosarcina pasteurii, urea and nickel chloride (NiCl2). This slurry can be poured into molds of any desired shape, and over a few days the bacteria convert the urea into crystals of calcium carbonate. These crystals, along with biopolymers secreted by the microbes, act as cement holding the soil particles together. An advantage of this method is the reduced porosity of the bricks, which has been a problem with other methods used to consolidate Martian soil into bricks.

The bacteria seep deep into the pore spaces, using their own proteins to bind the particles together, decreasing porosity and leading to stronger bricks, says Aloke Kumar, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IISc, one of the senior authors of the paper.

The group plans to investigate the effect of Mars atmosphere and low gravity on the strength of the space bricks. The Martian atmosphere is 100 times thinner than Earths atmosphere, and contains over 95% carbon dioxide, which may significantly affect bacterial growth. The researchers have constructed a device called MARS (Martian AtmospheRe Simulator), which consists of a chamber that reproduces the atmospheric conditions found on Mars in the lab.

In-Situ Resource Utilization

The IISc study published in PLOS One is based on a practice known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), which refers to generating products from local materials, or essentially living off the land. As stated earlier, the farther humanity ventures out into space, the more important it will be to generate products from local materials as resupplies from Earth will be tedious, time-consuming, and costly. The European Space Agency is currently working on the ISRU Demonstration Mission, whose goal is to show, by 2025, that water or oxygen production on the Moon is feasible. NASAsLunar Surface Innovation Initiativewill also develop and demonstrate technologies to use the Moons resources to produce water, fuel, and other supplies as well as capabilities to excavate and construct structures on the Moon.

Indian Institute of Science

The Indian Institute of Science is a public, deemed, research university for higher education and research in science, engineering, design, and management. It is located in Bengaluru, in the Indian state of Karnataka. The IISc Department of Mechanical Engineering conducts research in areas such as Biomechanics and Medical Devices; Fluid Mechanics and Flow Physics; Heat Transfer and Energy Systems; Manufacturing and Materials; Mechanics of Solids and Structures; Mechanisms, Designs, and Optimization; Micro- and Nanoscale Processes and Devices; Robotics and Autonomous Systems; and Vibrations, Acoustics, and Control. Nitin Gupta, who is second author on the study, is a PhD student in the IISc Department of Mechanical Engineering whose research focuses on mechanical and materials characterization of bio-consolidates, made up of lunar soil regolith, using techniques such as XRD, micro-CT, SEM, UTM, TGA, and high-rate testing.

What will future ISRU studies reveal about how we can live and work in outer space for the long-term? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

Sources: Indian Institute of Science (1), Indian Institute of Science (2), NASA (1), LibreTexts, PLOS One, NASA (2), European Space Agency, NASA (3), Indian Institute of Science (3), LinkedIn

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Explorers Could Build Bricks on Mars with Bacteria and Pee - Universe Today

Bethesda Softworks newest look at its space-exploration role-playing game Starfield is primarily for your ears, but a new discussion between composer Inon Zur and audio director Mark Lampert also has some treats for the eye, in the form of enticing concept art of alien worlds and vast, unexplored space.

In a new episode released Tuesday from Bethesdas Into the Starfield series previous episodes have highlighted the games visual design and its companions and conversations Zur and Lampert wax on the emotional dimension of Starfield. Thats music, of course, and the latest look at/listen to Starfield offers plenty of it. Zur discusses the challenges of creating the signature and themes, and breaks down how elements of the orchestra represent everything from the particles of space to the journey to and return from the far reaches of space.

Starfield will have its share of interactive and hopefully memorable companions as players embark on their adventure, but Lampert hopes that the games music and sound design will serve as a different sort of ever-present companion.

We dont have control over how the player chooses to experience the game, Lampert said. The music has a funny way of playing the right chord change at the right time, and a lot of that just happens at random. You look over the valley at just the right moment, and that just happens to be when this one chord change happens, and there are times like that that feel scripted and theyre not. And I like that each player has that experience for themselves, personally.

Starfield will be released Nov. 11 on Windows PC and Xbox Series X, and will be playable at launch through Xbox Game Pass.

The rest is here:

Starfields music will be your companion in Bethesdas new space RPG - Polygon