Hello, astro-nuts!

As I'm sure many of you know by now, giant Hurricane Ike made landfall this morning. During the storm's approach, a number of buildings and command centers for various NASA missions were closed. Meanwhile, Phoenix spotted a dust devil whirling over the Martian landscape, and NASA has been developing ideas for using fission power on the Moon.

Check This Out!

Solar cycle 24 has been less than impressive thus far, and this pattern seems to be continuing with the emergence of sunspot 1001. Don't hold your breath for this one, its not expected to last very long. Meanwhile, a coronal hole is expected to send a blast of solar wind our way this weekend, which could trigger auroras in the higher latitude locations. Keep your eyes to the sky!

Not too long ago, I mentioned the eruption of the Kasatochi Volcano in Alaska, and the resulting beautiful sunsets. I found a really cool animation on Spaceweather.com that shows the movement of the aerosol cloud as it moved around the Earth throughout August. The animation shows that there are still some particles out and about, so a few pretty sunsets (and sunrises!) are not out of the question in the near future. Catch them while you can!

Astronews!

Hurricane Ike made landfall as a strong Category 2 storm at about 3:10am Eastern Time on Saturday at Galveston, Texas. As you may know, NASA's Johnson Space Center is housed in Houston, Texas, about 55 miles from Galveston. The astronaut training and Mission Control center has been closed since Thursday and will likely remain closed until Ike has moved away from the area; perhaps Monday. Mission control for the International Space Station was also closed, but backup teams have been set up in Austin, Texas and Huntsville, Alabama. This has caused the delay of the Progress ATV docking at the ISS until Wednesday, not to mention there is now a delay in training activities for the Hubble Space Telescope shuttle mission in October. It is not certain whether or not this delay will result in the launch date being pushed back. Keep checking the NASA site (if you can even get to it; it has been finicky of late, again) to catch footage of the ATV docking.

The Phoenix Martian Lander continues to sniff the soil and collect samples as the winter closes in on the Arctic region; in the meantime, some interesting footage of dust devils has been captured. Much like those I have seen in the Desert Southwest, the dust devils on Mars develop when the soil warmed by the sunlight heats up. The warmed surface in turn heats the atmosphere just around it, and the warm air rises in a whirling motion, which picks up dust and other particles and hurls them high into the air. Phoenix took 29 images on September 8th, and 12 of the images contained shots of dust devils that ranged in diameter from 7 to 16 feet. The dust devils spotted by Phoenix are not as large as those captured by the Mars Rover Spirit near the equatorial region of the planet.

Meanwhile, should NASA send astronauts back to the Moon to build an outpost there, it will be necessary to power the facility. There are ideas in place that involve the use of nuclear fission, which is thought to be able to provide 40 kilowatts of electricity; about the amount used by eight homes on Earth. Fission works by splitting Uranium atoms in a reactor to generate heat, which is then converted to electricity. This type of power system does not rely on sunlight, so it will be able to produce the needed power in adverse conditions, such as those found on Mars and the Moon. The hope is to begin non-nuclear testing and simulations on Earth around 2012 or 2013 at NASA's Glenn Center, with teams from private contractors, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and Glenn Center providing insight as well as the needed components for the test converters.

Keep your eyes to the sky and enjoy the view!
~Lisa C.

Posted by Lisa Beightol on Saturday, September 13, 2008 6:54 AM
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