“On Friday, August 18, NASA launched the third in a series of three advanced, Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, known as TDRS-M, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida. This latest addition to the fleet will augment a space communications network that provides the critical path for high data-rate communication to a host of spacecraft including the International Space Station and its resupply vehicles, the Hubble Space Telescope and many of NASA’s Earth-observing fleet spacecraft.”
“An active region on the sun — an area of intense and complex magnetic fields — has rotated into view on the sun and seems to be growing rather quickly in this video captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory between July 5-11, 2017. Such sunspots are a common occurrence on the sun, but are less frequent as we head toward solar minimum, which is the period of low solar activity during its regular approximately 11-year cycle. This sunspot is the first to appear after the sun was spotless for two days, and it is the only sunspot group at this moment. Like freckles on the face of the sun, they appear to be small features, but size is relative: The dark core of this sunspot is actually larger than Earth.”
“The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on August 14, sent an unpiloted Dragon cargo vehicle on a delivery run to the International Space Station. Loaded with more than three tons of supplies and scientific investigations, the Dragon is scheduled to arrive at the station on August 16 where it will be captured by Expedition 52 crewmembers Jack Fischer of NASA and Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency operating the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm. Dragon will spend about a month attached to the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module.”
“A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Aug. 14, sending an unpiloted Dragon cargo spacecraft on a delivery run to the International Space Station. Loaded with more than three tons of supplies and scientific investigations, the Dragon is scheduled to arrive at the station Aug. 16 where it will be captured by Expedition 52 crewmembers Jack Fischer of NASA and Paolo Nespoli of ESA (European Space Agency) operating the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm. Dragon will spend about a month attached to the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module.”
“A solar flare is a sudden flash of brightness observed near the Sun’s surface. It involves a very broad spectrum of emissions, an energy release of typically 1 Ă— 1020 joules of energy for a well-observed event. A major event can emit up to 1 Ă— 1025 joules (the latter is roughly the equivalent of 1 billion megatons of TNT, or over 400 times more energy than released from the impact of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with Jupiter). Flares are often, but not always, accompanied by a coronal mass ejection. The flare ejects clouds of electrons, ions, and atoms through the corona of the sun into space. These clouds typically reach Earth a day or two after the event. The term is also used to refer to similar phenomena in other stars, where the term stellar flare applies.
Solar flares affect all layers of the solar atmosphere (photosphere, chromosphere, and corona), when the plasma medium is heated to tens of millions kelvins, while the cosmic-ray-like electrons, protons, and heavier ions are accelerated to near the speed of light. They produce radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum at all wavelengths, from radio waves to gamma rays, although most of the energy is spread over frequencies outside the visual range and for this reason the majority of the flares are not visible to the naked eye and must be observed with special instruments. Flares occur in active regions around sunspots, where intense magnetic fields penetrate the photosphere to link the corona to the solar interior. Flares are powered by the sudden (timescales of minutes to tens of minutes) release of magnetic energy stored in the corona. The same energy releases may produce coronal mass ejections (CME), although the relation between CMEs and flares is still not well established.
X-rays and UV radiation emitted by solar flares can affect Earth’s ionosphere and disrupt long-range radio communications. Direct radio emission at decimetric wavelengths may disturb the operation of radars and other devices that use those frequencies.
Solar flares were first observed on the Sun by Richard Christopher Carrington and independently by Richard Hodgson in 1859 as localized visible brightenings of small areas within a sunspot group. Stellar flares can be inferred by looking at the lightcurves produced from the telescope or satellite data of variety of other stars.
The frequency of occurrence of solar flares varies, from several per day when the Sun is particularly “active” to less than one every week when the Sun is “quiet”, following the 11-year cycle (the solar cycle). Large flares are less frequent than smaller ones. On July 23, 2012, a massive, and potentially damaging, solar superstorm (solar flare, coronal mass ejection, solar EMP) barely missed Earth, according to NASA. According to NASA, there may be as much as a 12% chance of a similar event occurring between 2012 and 2022, although because this particular figure was based on an extreme extrapolation of the calculated frequency of future storms, the actual probability of this is quite uncertain.”
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Genna Duberstein
“The 8.5-minute test conducted at NASA’s Stennis Space Center is part of a series of tests designed to put the upgraded former space shuttle engines through the rigorous temperature and pressure conditions they will experience during a launch. The tests also support the development of a new controller, or “brain,” for the engine, which monitors engine status and communicates between the rocket and the engine, relaying commands to the engine and transmitting data back to the rocket.”
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