OrbitalHub

NASA Goddard dicit:

On schedule to launch in the mid-2020s, NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission will help uncover some of the biggest mysteries in the cosmos. The state-of-the-art telescope on the WFIRST spacecraft will play a significant role in this, providing the largest picture of the universe ever seen with the same depth and precision as the Hubble Space Telescope.

The telescope for WFIRST has successfully passed its preliminary design review, a major milestone for the mission. This means the telescope has met the performance, schedule, and budget requirements to advance to the next stage of development, where the team will finalize its design.

WFIRST is a high-precision survey mission that will advance our understanding of fundamental physics. WFIRST is similar to other space telescopes, like Spitzer and the James Webb Space Telescope, in that it will detect infrared light, which is invisible to human eyes. Earth’s atmosphere absorbs infrared light, which presents challenges for observatories on the ground. WFIRST has the advantage of flying in space, above the atmosphere.

The WFIRST telescope will collect and focus light using a primary mirror that is 2.4 meters in diameter. While it’s the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope’s main mirror, it is only one-fourth the weight, showcasing an impressive improvement in telescope technology.

The mirror gathers light and sends it on to a pair of science instruments. The spacecraft’s giant camera, the Wide Field Instrument (WFI), will enable astronomers to map the presence of mysterious dark matter, which is known only through its gravitational effects on normal matter. The WFI will also help scientists investigate the equally mysterious “dark energy,” which causes the universe’s expansion to accelerate. Whatever its nature, dark energy may hold the key to understanding the fate of the cosmos.

In addition, the WFI will survey our own galaxy to further our understanding of what planets orbit other stars, using the telescope’s ability to sense both smaller planets and more distant planets than any survey before (planets orbiting stars beyond our Sun are called “exoplanets”). This survey will help determine whether our solar system is common, unusual, or nearly unique in the galaxy. The WFI will have the same resolution as Hubble, yet has a field of view that is 100 times greater, combining excellent image quality with the power to conduct large surveys that would take Hubble hundreds of years to complete.

WFIRST’s Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) will directly image exoplanets by blocking out the light of their host stars. To date, astronomers have directly imaged only a small fraction of exoplanets, so WFIRST’s advanced techniques will expand our inventory and enable us to learn more about them. Results from the CGI will provide the first opportunity to observe and characterize exoplanets similar to those in our solar system, located between three and 10 times Earth’s distance from the Sun, or from about midway to Jupiter to about the distance of Saturn in our solar system. Studying the physical properties of exoplanets that are more similar to Earth will take us a step closer to discovering habitable planets.

Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Producer/Michael Lentz (USRA): Lead Animator/Claire Andreoli (NASA/GSFC): Lead Public Affairs Officer/Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park): Science Writer/Ashley Balzer (GSFC Interns): Writer/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Narrator/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Editor

NASA JPL dicit:

Mini robots that can roll, fly, float and swim, then morph into a single machine? Together they form Shapeshifter, a developing concept for a transformational vehicle to explore treacherous, distant worlds.

In a dusty robotics yard at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the Shapeshifter team is testing a 3D-printed prototype of this unusual explorer. A contraption that looks like a drone encased in an elongated hamster wheel rolls across the yard, then splits in half. Once separated, the two halves rise on small propellers, effectively becoming flying drones for aerial exploration. These 3D-printed parts are only the beginning; the team imagines a series of up to 12 robots that could transform into a swimming probe or a team of cave explorers.

Video Credit: NASA

Wikipedia dicit:

Messier 87 (also known as Virgo A or NGC 4486, generally abbreviated to M87) is a supergiant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo. One of the most massive galaxies in the observable universe, it has a large population of globular clusters—about 12,000 compared with the 150–200 orbiting the Milky Way—and a jet of energetic plasma that originates at the core and extends at least 1,500 parsecs (4,900 light-years), traveling at relativistic speed. It is one of the brightest radio sources in the sky and a popular target for both amateur and professional astronomers.

The French astronomer Charles Messier discovered M87 in 1781, and cataloged it as a nebula. M87 is about 16.4 million parsecs (53 million light-years) from Earth and is the second-brightest galaxy within the northern Virgo Cluster, having many satellite galaxies. Unlike a disk-shaped spiral galaxy, M87 has no distinctive dust lanes. Instead, it has an almost featureless, ellipsoidal shape typical of most giant elliptical galaxies, diminishing in luminosity with distance from the center. Forming around one-sixth of its mass, M87’s stars have a nearly spherically symmetric distribution. Their population density decreases with increasing distance from the core. It has an active supermassive black hole at its core, which forms the primary component of an active galactic nucleus. The black hole was imaged using data collected in 2017 by the Event Horizon Telescope, with a final, processed image released on 10 April 2019.

The galaxy is a strong source of multiwavelength radiation, particularly radio waves. Its galactic envelope extends to a radius of about 150 kiloparsecs (490,000 light-years), where it is truncated—possibly by an encounter with another galaxy. Its interstellar medium consists of diffuse gas enriched by elements emitted from evolved stars.

Video Credit: NASA

NASA dicit:

In April, instruments aboard NASA’s Operation IceBridge airborne campaign and the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 succeeded in measuring the same Arctic sea ice at the same time, a tricky feat given the shifting sea ice. Scientists have now analyzed airborne and spaceborne height measurements, and found that the two datasets match almost exactly, demonstrating how precisely ICESat-2 can measure the heights of the sea ice’s bumpy, cracked surface.

Video Credit: NASA Goddard

Today we are joined by Logan Ryan Golema, Founder & Principal, and Vishal Singh, Chief Scientist at Lunargistics. Lunargistics is the Space Division of Hercules Supply Chain Protocol, and it is aiming to provide swift logistics in cislunar space. Logan and Vishal were kind to answer a few questions about Lunargistics and the supply chain in the cislunar space.

Orbital Hub: How big of a risk are the counterfeit components in the aerospace supply chain?

Logan Ryan Golema: You’d be surprised, I know I was. The Aerospace industry has three types of companies; those that make their own parts, those that buy their parts, and those that sell parts. And some of them do all three! These industries are often involved with local manufacturers hence the risk of fraud is very high.

Vishal Singh: More often than not everything is OK and well documented, but when there’s a mistake or a fraudulent document on a fake part disaster can happen. Those disasters can be catastrophic as any aerospace structures when in air or in orbit can take lives on land catastrophically. So if a fraudulent document or some error comes it is a man made disaster. When we talk about a space mission; an inch of error in calculation due to fraudulent documents can lead to a war between States or even worse taking lives of thousands of innocents.

O.H.: How is blockchain technology used to mitigate the risk of counterfeit components in the aerospace supply chain?

L.R.G.: Blockchain solves a lot of issues; from fraudulent documents to manufacturing and maintenance of Airplanes to rockets. It is like providing a birth certificate and an IMEI to each component and will result in understanding the root cause of every single problem occurred while in flight or in manufacturing.

V.S.: Let’s take the example of India’s ambitious mission Chandrayaan-2, which failed probably due to failure of power and communication systems. Using the blockchain in the industry will make the “may” in the statement a definite answer to the cause of failure.

O.H.: What blockchain infrastructure is Lunargistics using?

L.R.G.: Lunargistics will be leveraging the Hercules Blockchain Protocol (https://herc.one). Onboarding existing Aerospace companies in Europe and across the globe to this powerful tool with Enterprise level APIs and high performance apps is our aim. We’re set up with the client in mind so they can focus on their mission while we handle the blockchain side of things.

O.H.: What are the defining features of this blockchain infrastructure?

L.R.G.: The interoperability and layering of modular based components. The Hercules Protocol acts sort of like a LAMP stack of old. Today with Lunargistics managing your HERC stack you’ll have:
– indisputable data integrity,
– timestamped uploads,
– files that will be accessible without fail,
– portfolios of persons involved in the manufacturing of something so small as a screw to the powerhouse of an engine.

It’s like having the birth certificate and report card of each component. By having a blockchain system based on the Hercules module will lead in minimising the failures like Israel’s moon mission and Chandrayaan-2.

O.H.: Is it possible to use a public bockchain infrastructure and, at the same time, address the privacy concerns in the aerospace industry?

L.R.G.: We’ve found a way to integrate a hybrid model of privacy while leveraging public chains. On the flip side, we do offer build outs of private infrastructure that can be available just to the client’s network. Its wholly up to the necessities of the mission and we pride ourselves in our ability to adapt.

O.H.: Is the cislunar space the first step? Does Lunargistics have plans to expand beyond that?

L.R.G.: I’d say if we can manage the market on Earth’s Cislunar space we’re doing good. Lunargistics doesn’t just have to be our Moon though. We’d love to scale to Titan or Europa when the timing is right.

V.S.: Even in the dawn of next decade we may have begun our plans of working with NEO mining companies and fulfilling needs of our the Econosphere. Our expert team has enough time to plan giving a robust buffer which will help us reach the desired goals.

O.H.: What does the near future hold for Lunargistics? Can you share any exciting plans with our readers?

L.R.G.: We’re hard at work onboarding the team that will bring us closer to our goals. As a ‘New Space’ company we’re excited to be accepted into the community by your readers.

Any aerospace companies that want to understand blockchain while keeping focused on their own mission should email us at partnerships@lunargistics.lu.

We’re also hiring! So suit up for the next mission and submit your CVs to careers@lunargistics.lu!

NASA Goddard dicit:

When a new NASA space telescope opens its eyes in the mid 2020s, it will peer at the universe through some of the most sophisticated sunglasses ever designed. This multi-layered technology, the coronagraph instrument, might more rightly be called “starglasses”: a system of masks, prisms, detectors and even self-flexing mirrors built to block out the glare from distant stars — and reveal the planets in orbit around them. Normally, that glare is overwhelming, blotting out any chance of seeing orbiting planets. The star’s photons — particles of light — swamp those from the planet when they hit the telescope.

WFIRST’s coronagraph just completed a major milestone: a preliminary design review by NASA. The instrument has met all design, schedule and budget requirements, and can now proceed to the next phase, b uilding hardware for flight. The WFIRST mission’s coronagraph is meant to demonstrate the power of increasingly advanced technology. As it captures light directly from large, gaseous exoplanets, and from disks of dust and gas surrounding other stars, it will point the way to the future: single pixel “images” of rocky planets the size of Earth. Then the light can be spread into a rainbow spectrum, revealing which gases are present in the planet’s atmosphere — perhaps oxygen, methane, carbon dioxide, and maybe even signs of life.

The two flexible mirrors inside the coronagraph are key components. As light that has traveled tens of light-years from an exoplanet enters the telescope, thousands of actuators move like pistons, changing the shape of the mirrors in real time. The flexing of these “deformable mirrors” compensates for tiny flaws and changes in the telescope’s optics. Changes on the mirrors’ surfaces are so precise they can compensate for errors smalle r than the width of a strand of DNA. These mirrors, in tandem with high-tech “masks,” another major advance, squelch the star’s diffraction as well – the bending of light waves around the edges of light-blocking elements inside the coronagraph.

The result: blinding starlight is sharply dimmed, and faintly glowing, previously hidden planets appear. The star-dimming technology also could bring the clearest-ever images of distant star systems’ formative years — when they are still swaddled in disks of dust and gas as infant planets take shape inside.

The instrument’s deformable mirrors and other advanced technology — known as “active wavefront control” — should mean a leap of 100 to 1,000 times the capability of previous coronagraphs.

Video Credit: NASA Goddard