Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Photos of the Day: A Vulcan Fuels Up at the Pad...

The Pathfinder Tanking Test (PTT) booster for United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket is loaded with liquid oxygen (LOX) fuel for the first time at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex (SLC)-41 in Florida...on August 30, 2021.
United Launch Alliance

Just thought I'd end this month by sharing these cool images of the Pathfinder Tanking Test (PTT) booster for United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket getting fueled up at the pad for the first time.

It was yesterday that ULA loaded liquid oxygen (LOX) fuel into the PTT booster at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex (SLC)-41 in Florida. Over the coming weeks, liquefied natural gas (LNG, or methane) will be loaded into Vulcan next...and then ULA will conduct a subsequent test where the booster is filled with LOX and LNG at the same time.

The PTT booster at SLC-41 is a flight-worthy core stage that will launch into space on a future Vulcan flight. The Vulcan Centaur rocket that will send Astrobotic's Peregrine lander to the Moon next year is currently undergoing final construction at ULA's assembly facility in Decatur, Alabama. Stay tuned.

With the Vertical Integration Facility in the foreground, the PTT booster for ULA's Vulcan Centaur rocket is loaded with LOX fuel for the first time at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's SLC-41 in Florida...on August 30, 2021.
United Launch Alliance

The PTT booster for ULA's Vulcan Centaur rocket is loaded with LOX fuel for the first time at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's SLC-41 in Florida...on August 30, 2021.
United Launch Alliance

The PTT booster for ULA's Vulcan Centaur rocket is loaded with LOX fuel for the first time at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's SLC-41 in Florida...on August 30, 2021.
United Launch Alliance

Monday, August 30, 2021

FAREWELL, AFGHANISTAN... The Longest War in American History Is Officially Over...

A U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III cargo jet departs from Kabul, Afghanistan...on August 30, 2021.
AAMIR QURESHI / AFP via Getty Images

Statement by President Joe Biden (Press Release)

I want to thank our commanders and the men and women serving under them for their execution of the dangerous retrograde from Afghanistan as scheduled – in the early morning hours of August 31, Kabul time – with no further loss of American lives. The past 17 days have seen our troops execute the largest airlift in US history, evacuating over 120,000 US citizens, citizens of our allies, and Afghan allies of the United States. They have done it with unmatched courage, professionalism, and resolve. Now, our 20-year military presence in Afghanistan has ended.

Tomorrow afternoon, I will address the American people on my decision not to extend our presence in Afghanistan beyond August 31. For now, I will report that it was the unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs and of all of our commanders on the ground to end our airlift mission as planned. Their view was that ending our military mission was the best way to protect the lives of our troops, and secure the prospects of civilian departures for those who want to leave Afghanistan in the weeks and months ahead.

I have asked the Secretary of State to lead the continued coordination with our international partners to ensure safe passage for any Americans, Afghan partners, and foreign nationals who want to leave Afghanistan. This will include work to build on the UN Security Council Resolution passed this afternoon that sent the clear message of what the international community expects the Taliban to deliver on moving forward, notably freedom of travel. The Taliban has made commitments on safe passage and the world will hold them to their commitments. It will include ongoing diplomacy in Afghanistan and coordination with partners in the region to reopen the airport allowing for continued departure for those who want to leave and delivery of humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

For now, I urge all Americans to join me in grateful prayer tonight for three things. First, for our troops and diplomats who carried out this mission of mercy in Kabul and at tremendous risk with such unparalleled results: an airlift that evacuated tens of thousands more people than any imagined possible. Second, to the network of volunteers and veterans who helped identify those needing evacuation, guide them to the airport, and provide support along the way. And third, to everyone who is now – and who will – welcome our Afghan allies to their new homes around the world, and in the United States.

Finally, I want to end with a moment of gratitude for the sacrifice of the 13 service members in Afghanistan who gave their lives last week to save tens of thousands: Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover, Marine Corps Sgt. Johanny Rosariopichardo, Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, Marine Corps Cpl. Hunter Lopez, Marine Corps Cpl. Daegan W. Page, Marine Corps Cpl. Humberto A. Sanchez, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. David L. Espinoza, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Jared M. Schmitz, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Rylee J. McCollum, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Dylan R. Merola, Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Kareem M. Nikoui, Navy Hospitalman Maxton W. Soviak and Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss.

Source: The White House

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Sunday, August 29, 2021

The Psyche Spacecraft Heads to Asteroid Psyche Less Than a Year From Now...

An artist's concept of NASA's Psyche spacecraft.
NASA / JPL - Caltech / ASU

One Year Out: NASA’s Psyche Mission Moves Closer to Launch (News Release - August 24)

As part of NASA’s Discovery Program, the mission to explore a metal-rich asteroid is well on its way to an August 2022 launch.

With NASA’s Psyche mission now less than a year from launch, anticipation is building. By next spring, the fully-assembled spacecraft will ship from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a launch period that opens Aug. 1, 2022.

In early 2026, the Psyche spacecraft will arrive at its target, an asteroid of the same name in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe asteroid Psyche, which is about 140 miles (226 kilometers) wide, is made largely of iron and nickel and could be the core of an early planet.

The spacecraft will spend 21 months orbiting the asteroid and gathering science data with a magnetometer, a multispectral imager, and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer. The information the instruments gather won’t just help scientists understand this particular object; it will lend valuable insight into how Earth and other planets formed.

“It’s incredible to be at this point now, with a big spacecraft coming together and one year until launch,” said Arizona State University’s Lindy Elkins-Tanton, who as principal investigator leads the Psyche mission. “Like everyone in the world, our team has faced many challenges of the COVID pandemic, and we are putting in maximum effort to make it to the finish line. I’m so proud of this incredible group of people!”

In March, Maxar Technologies delivered to JPL the spacecraft’s Solar Electric Propulsion Chassis, with most of the engineering hardware needed for the electrical system, the propulsion systems, the thermal system, and the guidance and navigation system. Psyche will use Maxar’s superefficient electric propulsion system to travel through deep space. The spacecraft’s delivery coincided with the kickoff of the mission phase known as assembly, test, and launch operations.

The mission also will test a sophisticated new laser communications technology, recently completed by JPL, called Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC). The technology demonstration will focus on using lasers to enhance communications speeds and prepare for data-intensive transmissions, which could potentially include livestream videos for future missions.

Engineers already have completed the successful integration of the magnetometer and DSOC with the Psyche spacecraft. The Psyche spectrometer will be integrated over the next few months, along with the imager.

When the spacecraft is fully assembled, it will move into JPL’s huge thermal vacuum chamber for testing that simulates the environment of deep space. The entire spacecraft then will be attached to a large shaker table in an acoustic chamber to simulate the environment of launch.

“We have all been watching the spacecraft come together on the floor of the clean room. It’s tremendously exciting after all the years of hard work designing the system, and building and testing its myriad of components,” said JPL’s Henry Stone, the Psyche project manager. “The pressure is now on to complete assembly and test of the vehicle prior to shipment to Cape Canaveral in less than a year. It’s both exhilarating and stressful for all involved, but I have total confidence in this team’s ability to get the job done in time for our launch. Go, Psyche!”

Source: NASA.Gov

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The Psyche robotic probe undergoes construction inside the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, California...on August 18, 2021.
NASA / JPL - Caltech

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Photo of the Day: Old Glory at Half-Staff...

The U.S. flag is lowered to half-staff at the post office in Walnut, California...on August 28, 2021.

Earlier today, I went to the local post office (in Walnut, California) to mail a letter when I saw that the U.S. flag was lowered to half-staff as ordered by President Biden two days ago.

This was in response to the August 26 suicide bombing at Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai International Airport by an ISIS-K (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan) terrorist. This attack killed at least 170 people...including 13 American soldiers, a couple of British nationals and supposedly 28 members of the Taliban.

In response to the bombing, President Biden ordered an aerial strike by an MQ-9 Reaper drone on August 27 that killed three ISIS-K militants and wounded four others in Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province.

Old Glory will remain at half-staff nationwide till sunset on Monday, August 30. May our 13 U.S. service members, foreign nationals and all the Afghan civilians who tragically lost their lives in this attack rest in peace.

Friday, August 27, 2021

Flying at Light Speed since 2009...

An artist's concept of the Gliese 581 star system.

Twelve Light-Years... That’s how far the Hello From Earth message has traveled since being transmitted from a giant NASA antenna in Australia to the exoplanet Gliese 581d in the summer of 2009. As of 7 PM California time tonight (12 PM Sydney time on Saturday, August 28), the radio signal containing 25,878 goodwill text messages—including one by me—will have ventured across approximately 71 trillion miles (114 trillion kilometers) of deep space...which, as stated at the very start of this Blog entry, equals a distance of twelve light-years. The signal, despite traveling 186,000 miles per second (or 671 million miles per hour, or um, 1 billion kilometers per hour), will still take about 8 years to reach the Gliese 581 star system. Carry on!

The message that I sent to interstellar space through the Hello From Earth project...on August 27, 2009.

Thursday, August 26, 2021

Hubble's Successor Will Soon Head to Its South American Launch Site!

At the Northrop Grumman facility in Redondo Beach, California, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is stowed in its launch configuration prior to being transported to Kourou, French Guiana to be prepped for flight aboard the European Space Agency's Ariane 5 rocket later this year.
NASA / Chris Gunn

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Has Completed Testing (News Release)

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.

After successful completion of its final tests, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is being prepped for shipment to its launch site.

Engineering teams have completed Webb’s long-spanning comprehensive testing regimen at Northrop Grumman’s facilities. Webb’s many tests and checkpoints were designed to ensure that the world’s most complex space science observatory will operate as designed once in space.

Now that observatory testing has concluded, shipment operations have begun. This includes all the necessary steps to prepare Webb for a safe journey through the Panama Canal to its launch location in Kourou, French Guiana, on the northeastern coast of South America. Since no more large-scale testing is required, Webb’s clean room technicians have shifted their focus from demonstrating it can survive the harsh conditions of launch and work in orbit, to making sure it will safely arrive at the launch pad. Webb’s contamination control technicians, transport engineers, and logistics task forces are all expertly prepared to handle the unique task of getting Webb to the launch site. Shipping preparations will be completed in September.

Webb Will Soon Be on its Way

“NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has reached a major turning point on its path toward launch with the completion of final observatory integration and testing,” said Gregory L. Robinson, Webb's program director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We have a tremendously dedicated workforce who brought us to the finish line, and we are very excited to see that Webb is ready for launch and will soon be on that science journey.”

While shipment operations are underway, teams located in Webb’s Mission Operations Center (MOC) at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore will continue to check and recheck the complex communications network it will use in space. Recently this network fully demonstrated that it is capable of seamlessly sending commands to the spacecraft. Live launch rehearsals are underway within the MOC with the explicit purpose of preparing for launch day and beyond. There is much to be done before launch, but with integration and testing formally concluded, NASA’s next giant leap into the cosmic unknown will soon be underway.

Once Webb arrives in French Guiana, launch processing teams will configure the observatory for flight. This involves post-shipment checkouts to ensure the observatory hasn’t been damaged during transport, carefully loading the spacecraft’s propellant tanks with hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer it will need to power its rocket thrusters to maintain its orbit, and detaching ‘remove before flight’ red-tag items like protective covers that keep important components safe during assembly, testing, and transport. Then engineering teams will mate the observatory to its launch vehicle, an Ariane 5 rocket provided by ESA (European Space Agency), before it rolls out to the launch pad. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

The James Webb Space Telescope is an amazing feat of human ingenuity, made more impressive by the obstacles Webb personnel overcame to deliver this amazing space science observatory. Earthquakes, a devastating hurricane, snowstorms, blizzards, wildfires, and a global pandemic are only some of what the people behind Webb endured to ensure success. Webb’s story is one of perseverance – a mission with contributions from thousands of scientists, engineers, and other professionals from more than 14 countries and 29 states, in nine different time zones.

“To me, launching Webb will be a significant life event – I’ll be elated of course when this is successful, but it will also be a time of deep personal introspection. Twenty years of my life will all come down to that moment,” said Mark Voyton, Webb observatory integration and test manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We’ve come a long way and worked through so much together to prepare our observatory for flight. The telescope’s journey is only just beginning, but for those of us on the ground who built it, our time will soon come to an end, and we will have our opportunity to rest, knowing we put everything on the line to make sure our observatory works. The bonds we formed with each other along the way will last far into the future.”

Opening NASA’s New Eye on the Cosmos

After launch, Webb will undergo an action-packed six-month commissioning period. Moments after completing a 26-minute ride aboard the Ariane 5 launch vehicle, the spacecraft will separate from the rocket and its solar array will deploy automatically. After that, all subsequent deployments over the next few weeks will be initiated from ground control located at STScI.

Webb will take one month to fly to its intended orbital location in space nearly one million miles away from Earth, slowly unfolding as it goes. Sunshield deployments will begin a few days after launch, and each step can be controlled expertly from the ground, giving Webb’s launch full control to circumnavigate any unforeseen issues with deployment.

Once the sunshield starts to deploy, the telescope and instruments will enter shade and start to cool over time. Over the ensuing weeks, the mission team will closely monitor the observatory’s cooldown, managing it with heaters to control stresses on instruments and structures. In the meantime, the secondary mirror tripod will unfold, the primary mirror will unfold, Webb’s instruments will slowly power up, and thruster firings will insert the observatory into a prescribed orbit.

Once the observatory has cooled down and stabilized at its frigid operating temperature, several months of alignments to its optics and calibrations of its scientific instruments will occur. Scientific operations are expected to commence approximately six months after launch.

‘Flagship’ missions like Webb are generational projects. Webb was built on both the legacy and the lessons of missions before it, such as the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and it will in turn provide the foundation upon which future large astronomical space observatories may one day be developed.

“After completing the final steps of the James Webb Space Telescope’s testing regimen, I can’t help but see the reflections of the thousands of individuals who have dedicated so much of their lives to Webb, every time I look at that beautiful gold mirror,” said Bill Ochs, Webb project manager for NASA Goddard.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Wednesday, August 25, 2021

On This Day in 2001: Remembering Aaliyah...

Remembering Aaliyah...the Princess of R&B.

Today marks 20 years since Aaliyah, the music artist once known as the Princess of R&B, tragically lost her life along with eight others to a plane crash in The Bahamas. She was 22.

Rest In Peace, Aaliyah... At Your Best (You Are Love)—which was released around the time I started my high school freshman year in August of 1994—and 2000's Try Again (which was featured in that year's Jet Li action film Romeo Must Die, with Aaliyah in the cast as well) are two of my favorite R&B and hip hop songs, ever.

You will be forever missed, Queen of Urban Pop... Another deserving nickname that was bestowed upon Aaliyah.



Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Happy MAMBA DAY!

August 24 is Kobe Bryant Day, a.k.a. Mamba Day.

Just thought I'd point out that today is an unofficial holiday dedicated to the late and great Kobe Bryant—who would've turned 43 yesterday.

Kobe's legacy will never be forgotten. What he means to the Los Angeles Lakers transcends the five championships that he won for the City of Angels between 2000 and 2010...with his Mamba mentality being utilized as a way to continuously pursue self-improvement so that we can attain our highest potential in life.

In regards to his fellow players, the greatness of other NBA All-Stars such as Kawhi Leonard, Kyrie Irving, Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden and Devin Booker can be attributed to how much Kobe inspired them to perfect their skills over the years and enhance the game of basketball.

As Mr. 81 himself would say, Mamba out!

Monday, August 23, 2021

The Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine, Now Known As COMIRNATY, Has Officially Been Approved for Regular Use by the U.S. Government...

Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine has officially been approved for regular use in the United States...on August 23, 2021.
Getty Images

FDA Approves First COVID-19 Vaccine (Press Release)

Approval Signifies Key Achievement for Public Health

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine has been known as the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, and will now be marketed as Comirnaty (koe-mir’-na-tee), for the prevention of COVID-19 disease in individuals 16 years of age and older. The vaccine also continues to be available under emergency use authorization (EUA), including for individuals 12 through 15 years of age and for the administration of a third dose in certain immunocompromised individuals.

“The FDA’s approval of this vaccine is a milestone as we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. While this and other vaccines have met the FDA’s rigorous, scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product,” said Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D. “While millions of people have already safely received COVID-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated. Today’s milestone puts us one step closer to altering the course of this pandemic in the U.S.”

Since Dec. 11, 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine has been available under EUA in individuals 16 years of age and older, and the authorization was expanded to include those 12 through 15 years of age on May 10, 2021. EUAs can be used by the FDA during public health emergencies to provide access to medical products that may be effective in preventing, diagnosing, or treating a disease, provided that the FDA determines that the known and potential benefits of a product, when used to prevent, diagnose, or treat the disease, outweigh the known and potential risks of the product.

FDA-approved vaccines undergo the agency’s standard process for reviewing the quality, safety and effectiveness of medical products. For all vaccines, the FDA evaluates data and information included in the manufacturer’s submission of a biologics license application (BLA). A BLA is a comprehensive document that is submitted to the agency providing very specific requirements. For Comirnaty, the BLA builds on the extensive data and information previously submitted that supported the EUA, such as preclinical and clinical data and information, as well as details of the manufacturing process, vaccine testing results to ensure vaccine quality, and inspections of the sites where the vaccine is made. The agency conducts its own analyses of the information in the BLA to make sure the vaccine is safe and effective and meets the FDA’s standards for approval.

Comirnaty contains messenger RNA (mRNA), a kind of genetic material. The mRNA is used by the body to make a mimic of one of the proteins in the virus that causes COVID-19. The result of a person receiving this vaccine is that their immune system will ultimately react defensively to the virus that causes COVID-19. The mRNA in Comirnaty is only present in the body for a short time and is not incorporated into - nor does it alter - an individual’s genetic material. Comirnaty has the same formulation as the EUA vaccine and is administered as a series of two doses, three weeks apart.

“Our scientific and medical experts conducted an incredibly thorough and thoughtful evaluation of this vaccine. We evaluated scientific data and information included in hundreds of thousands of pages, conducted our own analyses of Comirnaty’s safety and effectiveness, and performed a detailed assessment of the manufacturing processes, including inspections of the manufacturing facilities,” said Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. “We have not lost sight that the COVID-19 public health crisis continues in the U.S. and that the public is counting on safe and effective vaccines. The public and medical community can be confident that although we approved this vaccine expeditiously, it was fully in keeping with our existing high standards for vaccines in the U.S."

FDA Evaluation of Safety and Effectiveness Data for Approval for 16 Years of Age and Older

The first EUA, issued Dec. 11, for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine for individuals 16 years of age and older was based on safety and effectiveness data from a randomized, controlled, blinded ongoing clinical trial of thousands of individuals.

To support the FDA’s approval decision today, the FDA reviewed updated data from the clinical trial which supported the EUA and included a longer duration of follow-up in a larger clinical trial population.

Specifically, in the FDA’s review for approval, the agency analyzed effectiveness data from approximately 20,000 vaccine and 20,000 placebo recipients ages 16 and older who did not have evidence of the COVID-19 virus infection within a week of receiving the second dose. The safety of Comirnaty was evaluated in approximately 22,000 people who received the vaccine and 22,000 people who received a placebo 16 years of age and older.

Based on results from the clinical trial, the vaccine was 91% effective in preventing COVID-19 disease.

More than half of the clinical trial participants were followed for safety outcomes for at least four months after the second dose. Overall, approximately 12,000 recipients have been followed for at least 6 months.

The most commonly reported side effects by those clinical trial participants who received Comirnaty were pain, redness and swelling at the injection site, fatigue, headache, muscle or joint pain, chills, and fever. The vaccine is effective in preventing COVID-19 and potentially serious outcomes including hospitalization and death.

Additionally, the FDA conducted a rigorous evaluation of the post-authorization safety surveillance data pertaining to myocarditis and pericarditis following administration of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and has determined that the data demonstrate increased risks, particularly within the seven days following the second dose. The observed risk is higher among males under 40 years of age compared to females and older males. The observed risk is highest in males 12 through 17 years of age. Available data from short-term follow-up suggest that most individuals have had resolution of symptoms. However, some individuals required intensive care support. Information is not yet available about potential long-term health outcomes. The Comirnaty Prescribing Information includes a warning about these risks.

Ongoing Safety Monitoring

The FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have monitoring systems in place to ensure that any safety concerns continue to be identified and evaluated in a timely manner. In addition, the FDA is requiring the company to conduct postmarketing studies to further assess the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis following vaccination with Comirnaty. These studies will include an evaluation of long-term outcomes among individuals who develop myocarditis following vaccination with Comirnaty. In addition, although not FDA requirements, the company has committed to additional post-marketing safety studies, including conducting a pregnancy registry study to evaluate pregnancy and infant outcomes after receipt of Comirnaty during pregnancy.

The FDA granted this application Priority Review. The approval was granted to BioNTech Manufacturing GmbH.

Source: FDA.Gov

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Posing with my COVID-19 vaccination record card after I got my second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (now known as Comirnaty)...on April 21, 2021.

Friday, August 20, 2021

On This Day in 2001: IMPORT_JEDI Is Born...

Today marks 20 years since my account for the Jedi Council Forums, IMPORT_JEDI, was created.
So today marks two decades since I created my Import_Jedi account for the Jedi Council Forums on the Star Wars fan site, TheForce.net.

I've actually been browsing the JC Forums since early 1999 (before The Phantom Menace was released in theaters...which was near the end of my first year of college at Cal State Long Beach), but Import_Jedi was born 13 days after Lucasfilm revealed that the official title for Star Wars: Episode II would be Attack of the Clones.

I've been going on the JC Forums regularly till after Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005—and then it was only sporadically that I would frequent threads, most of which had nothing to do with Star Wars.

I started logging on a bit more around the time The Force Awakens and Rogue One were theatrically released almost six and five years ago, respectively (but not as much for 2017's The Last Jedi, and not at all for 2018's Solo and 2019's The Rise of Skywalker), but other than that, I only visit the JC Forums if I'm feeling extremely nostalgic about my good ol' college days.

Click here to view the list of friends that I made on the JC Forums during my 20-year tenure—though I don't know how many of them still go to this message board. I miss the 3SA Sarcasm Knights! Happy Friday.

The 3SA Sarcasm Knights were awesome.

Monday, August 16, 2021

An End of an Era in Afghanistan...

A C-17 Globemaster III aircraft carrying 670 refugees prepares to depart from Kabul Airport in Afghanistan...on August 15, 2021.

Considering the fact that I've been blogging about the war on terror ever since the September 11 attacks almost 20 years ago, it was only fitting that I would lend my two cents about the situation that transpired in Afghanistan over the past weekend.

Clearly, what's going on in the Central Asian country is an absolute clusterf*ck. The Afghan people are so traumatized about returning to the authoritarian rule of the Taliban that they're hanging on the sides of U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo planes and plummeting to their deaths after the aircraft took to the sky just to flee from the resurgent group of religious fanatics now in control of Kabul.

And advertisements showing beautiful women in fashionable attire are now being painted over outside of Afghan storefront windows just so the business owners won't incur the wrath of ultra-conservative Taliban officials passing by. So sad.

With that being said, President Biden was absolutely right in withdrawing U.S. military forces from Afghanistan. 20 years and trillions of dollars later, the American-trained and well-equipped Afghan army didn't even care to put up a fight as the Taliban was sweeping across the country over the past few weeks...easily taking control of every city and province along the way.

And former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani quickly departed from Kabul like a coward—even though his fear of more bloodshed was the reason for resigning from his post.

Just as Biden said in a speech he made at the White House today, why should the brave men and woman of the American armed forces continue to risk their lives in Afghanistan if that country's own national army didn't have the guts to do so as well?

According to Biden, the reason why Afghan translators and their families didn't request Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) to the United States much sooner is because they didn't want to leave Afghanistan yet. The Afghan government also didn't want to convey a "crisis of confidence," and the translators had hoped that the U.S. withdrawal would go much smoother than expected. Boy, were they wrong.

Here's hoping that as many Afghan translators as possible will eventually reach safe haven in the United States...even though 20,000 applicants remain in the pipeline hoping to secure an SIV to this great country. Tragically, it's safe to say that a lot of these applicants won't survive long enough to get an SIV or flee Kabul first now that the Taliban is in control.

I plan on voting for Biden again in three years despite this snafu. He was placed in this position thanks to Donald Trump making a deal with the Taliban through the February 2020 Doha Agreement in Qatar. And Trump himself was placed in this position thanks to another incompetent Republican president, George W. Bush, sabotaging the Afghanistan war by focusing his attention on Iraq less than two years after allied forces ousted the Taliban through a relentless air campaign in late 2001.

The bottom line is that America's longest-running war is now over. The United States sadly joins Britain and the former Soviet Union on the list of countries that make Afghanistan the so-called "graveyard of empires." But on the plus side, our men and women in the U.S. military will no longer be placed in harm's way by being deployed to this beleagured, landlocked nation.

And America will soon be commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9/11 knowing that its mastermind, Osama bin Laden, has been dead for more than a decade—which was the whole point of conducting the U.S. military adventure in Afghanistan. That is all.

Advertisements featuring female models are painted over on storefront windows in Kabul, Afghanistan...on August 15, 2021.







Friday, August 13, 2021

DART News: A NASA Spacecraft Continues to Get Prepped for Its Upcoming Asteroid-Deflection Mission...

Engineers prepare to install one of two Roll-Out Solar Arrays to NASA's DART spacecraft...at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory.
NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Ed Whitman

DART Gets Its Wings: Spacecraft Integrated with Innovative Solar Array Technology and Camera (Press Release - August 12)

Perched atop a stand in the middle of a high-ceilinged clean room, DART is beginning to look like the intrepid spacecraft that will aim itself directly into an asteroid next fall. With the addition of its compact Roll-Out Solar Arrays (ROSA) coiled into two gold cylinders that flank the sides of the spacecraft, and its less visible but still integral imager, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical (DRACO) navigation tucked safely beneath its panels, the spacecraft is close to fully integrated.

This mix of current and new technologies, some of which it will demonstrate for the first time, will see DART through its 10-month journey toward its asteroid target.

NASA’s DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, is a carefully planned demonstration that will help determine whether kinetic impactor technology — flying a spacecraft directly into a small solar system body at speeds of about 15,000 miles per hour with the intention of changing its course — can serve as a reliable method of asteroid deflection in the event that such a hazard ever heads for Earth. NASA is constantly monitoring the skies and has already identified nearly 40% of potentially hazardous asteroids larger than 140 meters (459 feet) in size, none of which are slated to impact our planet, including the binary system selected for this first-ever deflection test.

But to prove that our planet can expect the unexpected, the DART mission will set out to push an asteroid and safely change its motion in space. For the last two years, the spacecraft destined for this undertaking has been developed and built at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. APL, which leads the mission for NASA, is now putting the finishing touches on the spacecraft.

The recently installed ROSA and DRACO are two critical technologies that will enable the spacecraft to navigate through space and reach the Didymos asteroid system. The flexible and rollable modular “wings” are lighter, more compact and stiffer than traditional solar arrays despite their size; in space, each array will slowly unfurl to reach 28 feet in length — about the size of a bus. The technology was first successfully tested in 2017 on the International Space Station (ISS), and newer versions were installed this past June for full-time use on the ISS. DART will be the first spacecraft to fly the new arrays, paving the way for their use on future missions. Redwire developed the technology at their Goleta, California, facility and delivered ROSA to APL in May, working closely with the APL team in the following weeks to carefully install them onto the spacecraft.

And while DRACO is not entirely “new” (it was inspired by the New Horizons LORRI camera), this upgraded imager will be the sole instrument onboard the spacecraft. Combined with the autonomous navigation software SMART Nav (Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real-Time Navigation), it will play the key role in helping DART navigate through space and identify the correct asteroid to aim itself toward.

“Traditional navigation techniques would only get DART somewhere within about 9 miles of the target asteroid,” said APL’s Zach Fletcher, DRACO lead engineer. “To achieve our mission objectives, we need to remove the rest of that error via onboard optical navigation. DRACO starts supplying images to DART’s onboard autonomous navigation system more than 50,000 miles from its target, four hours before the impact, and is key to DART achieving a kinetic impact on Dimorphos.”

The images DRACO returns of the target asteroid Dimorphos, including the last-second glimpse of its own impact site on the asteroid, will be crucial toward analyzing the results of the DART test and understanding how the asteroid was affected.

DART has been through its paces in the last several months, enduring a battery of environmental testing and analysis as the final pieces of the craft started coming together. Likewise, the SMART Nav software has seen its fair share of testing so the team can confidently relinquish the reins on DART in the final hours before it collides into Dimorphos. With DRACO and ROSA on board, the DART spacecraft completed vibration testing in late July to ensure that all of its hardware is secure and ready for the rigors of launch.

The Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids, or LICIACube, contributed by the Italian Space Agency, will be one of the final components to hitch a ride on DART before it is delivered to the launch site this October. LICIACube will deploy roughly five days before the DART impact and capture images of the spacecraft’s final moments, the resulting ejecta plume, and the back side of the asteroid that DRACO will never see.

“DART is the result of years of work by a dedicated team and partners who have overcome unique challenges to accomplish firsts in both technology development and planetary defense,” said DART mechanical engineer Betsy Congdon, who led the team during the installation. “With the successful installation and testing of two critical technologies, DRACO and ROSA, we’re very confident that DART is ready to complete its final system testing and reviews before shipping to the launch site.”

This November, the spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Lompoc, California. In the fall of 2022, DART will have its sights set on Dimorphos, the smaller moonlet orbiting the larger Didymos asteroid. Its collision with Dimorphos will change the speed of the moonlet’s orbit around the main body by several minutes. And despite being approximately 6.8 million miles away from Earth at the time of impact, the asteroid system will be visible to ground-based telescopes, which scientists will use to determine the exact change in the orbital period.

Source: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

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Thursday, August 12, 2021

Dragonfly Update: New Flight Objectives Are Planned for NASA's Titan-bound Quadcopter...

An artist's concept of NASA's Dragonfly rotorcraft on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.
NASA / Johns Hopkins APL

Dragonfly Mission to Titan Announces Big Science Goals (News Release - August 10)

Among our solar system’s many moons, Saturn’s Titan stands out – it’s the only moon with a substantial atmosphere and liquid on the surface. It even has a weather system like Earth’s, though it rains methane instead of water. Might it also host some kind of life?

NASA’s Dragonfly mission, which will send a rotorcraft relocatable lander to Titan’s surface in the mid-2030s, will be the first mission to explore the surface of Titan, and it has big goals.

On July 19, the Dragonfly science team published “Science Goals and Objectives for the Dragonfly Titan Rotorcraft Relocatable Lander” in The Planetary Science Journal. The paper’s lead author is Jason Barnes, Dragonfly deputy principal investigator and a professor of physics at the University of Idaho.

The goals for Dragonfly include searching for chemical biosignatures; investigating the moon’s active methane cycle; and exploring the prebiotic chemistry currently taking place in Titan’s atmosphere and on its surface.

“Titan represents an explorer’s utopia,” said co-author Alex Hayes, associate professor of astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences and a Dragonfly co-investigator. “The science questions we have for Titan are very broad because we don’t know much about what is actually going on at the surface yet. For every question we answered during the Cassini mission’s exploration of Titan from Saturn orbit, we gained 10 new ones.”

Though Cassini has been orbiting Saturn for 13 years, the thick methane atmosphere on Titan made it impossible to reliably identify the materials on its surface. While Cassini’s radar enabled scientists to penetrate the atmosphere and identify Earth-like morphologic structures, including dunes, lakes and mountains, the data could not reveal their composition.

“In fact, at the time Cassini was launched we didn’t even know if the surface of Titan was a global liquid ocean of methane and ethane, or a solid surface of water ice and solid organics,” said Hayes, also director of the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science and the Spacecraft Planetary Image Facility in A&S.

The Huygens probe, which landed on Titan in 2005, was designed to either float in a methane/ethane sea or land on a hard surface. Its science experiments were predominantly atmospheric, because they weren’t sure it would survive the landing. Dragonfly will be the first mission to explore the surface of Titan and identify the detailed composition of its organic-rich surface.

“What’s so exciting to me is that we’ve made predictions about what’s going on at the local scale on the surface and how Titan works as a system,” Hayes said, “and Dragonfly’s images and measurements are going to tell us how right or wrong they are.”

Hayes has been working on Titan for almost the entirety of his career. He’s particularly eager to answer some of the questions raised by Cassini in the area of his specialty: planetary surface processes and surface-atmosphere interactions.

“My primary science interests are in understanding Titan as a complex Earth-like world and trying to understand the processes that are driving its evolution,” he said. “That involves everything from the methane cycle’s interactions with the surface and the atmosphere, to the routing of material throughout the surface and potential exchange with the interior.”

Hayes will be contributing significant expertise in another area as well: operational experience from Mars rover missions.

“The Dragonfly mission benefits from and represents the intersection of Cornell’s substantial history with rover operations and Cassini science,” Hayes said. “It brings those two things together by exploring Titan with a relocatable moving craft.”

Cornell astronomers are currently involved in the the Mars Science Laboratory and Mars 2020 missions, and led the Mars Exploration Rovers mission. The lessons learned from these rovers on Mars are being relocated to Titan, Hayes said.

Dragonfly will spend a full Titan day (equivalent to 16 Earth days) in one location conducting science experiments and observations, and then fly to a new location. The science team will need to make decisions about what the spacecraft will do next based on lessons from the previous location – “which is exactly what the Mars rovers have been doing for decades,” Hayes said.

Titan’s low gravity (around one-seventh of Earth’s) and thick atmosphere (four times denser than Earth’s) make it an ideal place for an aerial vehicle. Its relatively quiet atmosphere, with lighter winds than Earth, make it even better. And while the science team doesn’t expect rain during Dragonfly’s flights, Hayes noted that no one really knows the local-scale weather patterns on Titan – yet.

Many of the science questions outlined in the group’s paper address prebiotic chemistry, an area that keenly interests Hayes. Many of the prebiotic chemical compounds that formed on early Earth are also formed in Titan’s atmosphere, and Hayes is eager to see how far down the road of prebiotic chemistry Titan has really gone. Titan’s atmosphere might be a good analogue for what happened on early Earth.

Dragonfly’s search for chemical biosignatures will also be wide-ranging. In addition to examining Titan’s habitability in general, they’ll be investigating potential chemical biosignatures, past or present, from both water-based life to that which might use liquid hydrocarbons as a solvent, such as within its lakes, seas or aquifers.

Source: Cornell University

Wednesday, August 11, 2021

OSIRIS-REx Update: More Info Is Revealed About the Hazardous Asteroid the Earth-bound Robotic Explorer Collected Soil Samples From Last Year...

An animated GIF showing the rotation of asteroid Bennu...using photos taken by NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from 50 miles (80 kilometers) away.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / University of Arizona

NASA Spacecraft Provides Insight into Asteroid Bennu’s Future Orbit (Press Release)

In a study released Wednesday, NASA researchers used precision-tracking data from the agency’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft to better understand movements of the potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu through the year 2300, significantly reducing uncertainties related to its future orbit, and improving scientists’ ability to determine the total impact probability and predict orbits of other asteroids.

The study, titled “Ephemeris and hazard assessment for near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu based on OSIRIS-REx data,” was published in the journal Icarus.

“NASA’s Planetary Defense mission is to find and monitor asteroids and comets that can come near Earth and may pose a hazard to our planet,” said Kelly Fast, program manager for the Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We carry out this endeavor through continuing astronomical surveys that collect data to discover previously unknown objects and refine our orbital models for them. The OSIRIS-REx mission has provided an extraordinary opportunity to refine and test these models, helping us better predict where Bennu will be when it makes its close approach to Earth more than a century from now.”

In 2135, asteroid Bennu will make a close approach with Earth. Although the near-Earth object will not pose a danger to our planet at that time, scientists must understand Bennu’s exact trajectory during that encounter in order to predict how Earth’s gravity will alter the asteroid’s path around the Sun – and affect the hazard of Earth impact.

Using NASA’s Deep Space Network and state-of-the-art computer models, scientists were able to significantly shrink uncertainties in Bennu’s orbit, determining its total impact probability through the year 2300 is about 1 in 1,750 (or 0.057%). The researchers were also able to identify Sept. 24, 2182, as the most significant single date in terms of a potential impact, with an impact probability of 1 in 2,700 (or about 0.037%).

Although the chances of it hitting Earth are very low, Bennu remains one of the two most hazardous known asteroids in our solar system, along with another asteroid called 1950 DA.

Before leaving Bennu May 10, 2021, OSIRIS-REx spent more than two years in close proximity to the asteroid, gathering information about its size (it is about one-third of a mile, or 500 meters, wide), shape, mass, and composition, while monitoring its spin and orbital trajectory. The spacecraft also scooped up a sample of rock and dust from the asteroid’s surface, which it will deliver to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, for further scientific investigation.

“The OSIRIS-REx data give us so much more precise information, we can test the limits of our models and calculate the future trajectory of Bennu to a very high degree of certainty through 2135,” said study lead Davide Farnocchia, of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We’ve never modeled an asteroid’s trajectory to this precision before.”

Gravitational keyholes

The precision measurements on Bennu help to better determine how the asteroid’s orbit will evolve over time and whether it will pass through a “gravitational keyhole” during its 2135 close approach. These keyholes are areas in space that would set Bennu on a path toward a future impact with Earth if the asteroid were to pass through them at certain times, due to the effect of Earth’s gravitational pull.

To calculate exactly where the asteroid will be during its 2135 close approach – and whether it might pass through a gravitational keyhole – Farnocchia and his team evaluated various types of small forces that may affect the asteroid as it orbits the Sun. Even the smallest force can significantly deflect its orbital path over time, causing it to pass through or completely miss a keyhole.

Among those forces, the Sun’s heat plays a crucial role. As an asteroid travels around the Sun, sunlight heats up its dayside. Because the asteroid spins, the heated surface will rotate away and cool down when it enters the nightside. As it cools, the surface releases infrared energy, which generates a small amount of thrust on the asteroid – a phenomenon called the Yarkovsky effect. Over short timeframes, this thrust is minuscule, but over long periods, the effect on the asteroid’s position builds up and can play a significant role in changing an asteroid’s path.

“The Yarkovsky effect will act on all asteroids of all sizes, and while it has been measured for a small fraction of the asteroid population from afar, OSIRIS-REx gave us the first opportunity to measure it in detail as Bennu travelled around the Sun,” said Steve Chesley, senior research scientist at JPL and study co-investigator. “The effect on Bennu is equivalent to the weight of three grapes constantly acting on the asteroid – tiny, yes, but significant when determining Bennu’s future impact chances over the decades and centuries to come.”

The team considered many other perturbing forces as well, including the gravity of the Sun, the planets, their moons, and more than 300 other asteroids, the drag caused by interplanetary dust, the pressure of the solar wind, and Bennu’s particle-ejection events. The researchers even evaluated the force OSIRIS-REx exerted when performing its Touch-And-Go (TAG) sample collection event Oct. 20, 2020, to see if it might have slightly altered Bennu’s orbit, ultimately confirming previous estimates that the TAG event had a negligible effect.

“The force exerted on Bennu’s surface during the TAG event were tiny even in comparison to the effects of other small forces considered,” said Rich Burns, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “TAG did not alter Bennu’s likelihood of impacting Earth.”

Tiny risk, huge gain

Although a 0.057% impact probability through the year 2300 and an impact probability of 0.037% on Sept. 24, 2182, are low, this study highlights the crucial role that OSIRIS-REx operations played in precisely characterizing Bennu’s orbit.

“The orbital data from this mission helped us better appreciate Bennu’s impact chances over the next couple of centuries and our overall understanding of potentially hazardous asteroids – an incredible result,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator and professor at the University of Arizona. “The spacecraft is now returning home, carrying a precious sample from this fascinating ancient object that will help us better understand not only the history of the solar system but also the role of sunlight in altering Bennu’s orbit since we will measure the asteroid’s thermal properties at unprecedented scales in laboratories on Earth.”

More about OSIRIS-REx

Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Lauretta is the principal investigator, and the University of Arizona also leads the science team and the mission's science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft and is providing flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace in Tempe, Arizona are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the agency's New Frontiers Program for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

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Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Intuitive Machines Looks Ahead to the Third Flight of Its Nova-C Lunar Lander...

An artist's concept of Intuitive Machines' Nova-C lander on the surface of the Moon.
Intuitive Machines

Three-peat: Intuitive Machines Selects SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket for Third Moon Mission (News Release)

Intuitive Machines continues its mission to build a cislunar economy with its third mission (IM-3) to the Moon that will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket.

“We’re offering our customers more than lunar surface payload delivery and extreme surface mobility,” said Steve Altemus, the president and CEO of Intuitive Machines. “Our turnkey solution for delivering, communicating, and commanding customer payloads on and around the Moon is revolutionary. Now, we’re proving we can do it at an annual cadence.”

The IM-3 mission includes a Nova-C class lander to land 130kg of payloads on the lunar surface. It also has excess capacity on the launch vehicle that accommodates 1000kg of payloads on a rideshare dispenser ring that deploys into a lunar transfer orbit. Intuitive Machines’ “rideshare” option puts customers in a high-energy orbit to efficiently proceed to lunar capture, redirect to points elsewhere in high-Earth orbit, or depart for destinations in the solar system.

By expanding on Intuitive Machines’ capability developed through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, we can offer an annual launch cadence starting with IM-1 and extending beyond our first three missions. The reliable cadence allows industry partners and customers the lead times needed to secure funding, develop advanced technologies, and become part of building the cislunar economy.

Source: Intuitive Machines

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Intuitive Machines will launch three Nova-C landers to the Moon by early 2024.
Intuitive Machines

Sunday, August 08, 2021

Next Up: PARIS 2024! The TOKYO 2020 Games Have Officially Come to an End...

Japan has one final message for the world before the 2020 Tokyo Summer Games officially come to an end...on August 8, 2021.

Earlier today, the closing ceremony for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games was held at Japan National Stadium in Tokyo...with the baton passed to the city that will host the Games of the 33rd Olympiad in 2024: Paris.

As an American, this year's Olympic Games were very memorable. From Simone Biles and her gymnastics teammate Suni Lee inspiring the nation with Olympic medals and Biles putting the spotlight on mental health, runner Allyson Felix winning her eleventh medal to break the tie with track and field legend Carl Lewis, Katie Ledecky winning two gold and two silver medals in swimming, the U.S. men's basketball team winning its fourth consecutive gold medal since the 2008 Beijing Games, the U.S. women's basketball team winning its seventh consecutive gold medal since the 1996 Atlanta Games, to the U.S. women's volleyball team winning the gold medal that helped the United States surpass China on this year's medals list (view it at the bottom of this entry), the 2020 Games did not disappoint.

I'm absolutely excited for the Paris Games! The first reason being that I just enjoy watching the best athletes on this planet doing amazing and seemingly-impossible feats on the global stage every two years (I'm including both the Summer and Winter Games; the 2022 Winter Games will be in Beijing), and the second reason being that I've never been to France and I can't wait to see NBC's coverage of competitions that will no doubt be held in different regions around the country.

And of course, I'm gonna be even more stoked for the 2028 Games—which take place here in Southern California!

While the majority of games will obviously take place in and around metropolitan Los Angeles, some competitions—specifically mountain biking events—will probably be conducted in San Dimas, which is less than a 10-minute drive down the 71 and 57 Freeways from me (in the city of Pomona, which is 31 miles from L.A.)!

I should definitely check out a few of the competitions when the 2028 Summer Games arrive in the City of Angels. Happy Sunday!

The Tokyo closing ceremony will re-air on NBC at 5:00 PM, Pacific Daylight Time (8:00 PM, Eastern Daylight Time).

The Olympic flame is extinguished during the closing ceremony inside Japan National Stadium at Tokyo...on August 8, 2021.

Fireworks erupt above Japan National Stadium during the closing ceremony in Tokyo...on August 8, 2021.

A composite image showing that Paris is ready to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.

The final medal count for the top 5 countries in the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

Saturday, August 07, 2021

On This Day in 2001: The STAR WARS - EPISODE II Title Is Revealed...

The logo for STAR WARS: EPISODE II – ATTACK OF THE CLONES was revealed on August 7, 2001.

Just thought I'd point out that today marks 20 years since Lucasfilm revealed Attack of the Clones as the official title for Star Wars - Episode II. I was neither disappointed nor excited about this title when it was unveiled, and this movie is my least favorite among the Star Wars prequels (and the 11 current live-action Star Wars films, overall), but I'm a nostalgic fool and wanted to commemorate this date anyway.

I would've mentioned this in my Film Notes blog instead, but today's post on that page is devoted to my review of The Suicide Squad. It's a very entertaining movie! Kudos to director James Gunn for a job well-done... Happy Saturday.

Natalie Portman as Padmé Amidala in STAR WARS: EPISODE II – ATTACK OF THE CLONES.

The clone army in action on planet Geonosis in STAR WARS: EPISODE II – ATTACK OF THE CLONES.

Friday, August 06, 2021

Perseverance Update: Issues Arise as the Mars Rover Sets Out to Collect Its First Rock Specimen...

A close-up of the 'paver rock' where NASA's Perseverance Mars rover drilled a hole in preparation for its first rock-sampling attempt...on August 6, 2021.
NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA’s Perseverance Team Assessing First Mars Sampling Attempt (Press Release)

Data sent to Earth by NASA’s Perseverance rover after its first attempt to collect a rock sample on Mars and seal it in a sample tube indicate that no rock was collected during the initial sampling activity.

The rover carries 43 titanium sample tubes, and is exploring Jezero Crater, where it will be gathering samples of rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) for future analysis on Earth.

“While this is not the ‘hole-in-one’ we hoped for, there is always risk with breaking new ground,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “I’m confident we have the right team working this, and we will persevere toward a solution to ensure future success.”

Perseverance’s Sampling and Caching System uses a hollow coring bit and a percussive drill at the end of its 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm to extract samples. Telemetry from the rover indicates that during its first coring attempt, the drill and bit were engaged as planned, and post-coring the sample tube was processed as intended.

“The sampling process is autonomous from beginning to end,” said Jessica Samuels, the surface mission manager for Perseverance at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “One of the steps that occurs after placing a probe into the collection tube is to measure the volume of the sample. The probe did not encounter the expected resistance that would be there if a sample were inside the tube.”

The Perseverance mission is assembling a response team to analyze the data. One early step will be to use the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) imager – located at the end of the robotic arm – to take close-up pictures of the borehole. Once the team has a better understanding of what happened, it will be able to ascertain when to schedule the next sample collection attempt.

“The initial thinking is that the empty tube is more likely a result of the rock target not reacting the way we expected during coring, and less likely a hardware issue with the Sampling and Caching System,” said Jennifer Trosper, project manager for Perseverance at JPL. “Over the next few days, the team will be spending more time analyzing the data we have, and also acquiring some additional diagnostic data to support understanding the root cause for the empty tube.”

Previous NASA missions on Mars have also encountered surprising rock and regolith properties during sample collection and other activities. In 2008, the Phoenix mission sampled soil that was "sticky" and difficult to move into onboard science instruments, resulting in multiple tries before achieving success. Curiosity has drilled into rocks that turned out to be harder and more brittle than expected. Most recently, the heat probe on the InSight lander, known as the “mole,” was unable to penetrate the Martian surface as planned.

“I have been on every Mars rover mission since the beginning, and this planet is always teaching us what we don’t know about it,” said Trosper. “One thing I’ve found is, it’s not unusual to have complications during complex, first-time activities.”

First Science Campaign

Perseverance is currently exploring two geologic units containing Jezero Crater’s deepest and most ancient layers of exposed bedrock and other intriguing geologic features. The first unit, called the “Crater Floor Fractured Rough,” is the floor of Jezero. The adjacent unit, named “Séítah” (meaning “amidst the sand” in the Navajo language), has Mars bedrock as well, and is also home to ridges, layered rocks, and sand dunes.

Recently, the Perseverance science team began using color images from the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter to help scout for areas of potential scientific interest and to look for potential hazards. Ingenuity completed its 11th flight Wednesday, Aug. 4, traveling about 1,250 feet (380 meters) downrange of its current location so that it could provide the project aerial reconnaissance of the southern Séítah area.

The rover’s initial science foray, which spans hundreds of sols (or Martian days), will be complete when Perseverance returns to its landing site. At that point, Perseverance will have traveled between 1.6 and 3.1 miles (2.5 and 5 kilometers) and may have filled up to eight of its sample tubes.

Next, Perseverance will travel north, then west, toward the location of its second science campaign: Jezero Crater’s delta region. The delta is the fan-shaped remains of the confluence of an ancient river and a lake within Jezero Crater. The region may be especially rich in carbonate minerals. On Earth, such minerals can preserve fossilized signs of ancient microscopic life and are associated with biological processes.

More About the Mission

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

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Tuesday, August 03, 2021

Forget Tokyo-- The REAL Team USA Basketball Team Will Be in Los Angeles This Fall!

Carmelo Anthony will team up with LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook on the Los Angeles Lakers next season.

Over the past two days, it was revealed that lots of players—both Lakers veterans and newcomers to the team—will be playing in Los Angeles during the 2021-'22 NBA season.

Wayne Ellington, Dwight Howard and Trevor Ariza (who won two titles with Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol over a decade ago) will be re-signing with the Lakers, while 10-time NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony will be joining the Lake Show for a one-year stint.

Kendrick Nunn, whose Miami Heat battled the Lakers in the 2020 NBA Finals, will be playing in Los Angeles on a two-year contract.

I have no clue what Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka and LeBron James have been saying to lure all of these high-caliber NBA players to the City of Angels, but more power to them!

Here's hoping that this Lakers squad will be like LeBron's Miami Heat almost ten years ago, and not last season's Brooklyn Nets come the 2022 NBA Playoffs. Carry on!