Urban Growth Of New Delhi

as flight directors, you are in charge of a lot of the operations, but do you ever get to experience handling controls or zero gravity simulation? do you have to know every aspect of everyone's job?

Solar System 10 Things: Dust in the Wind, on Mars & Well Beyond

To most of us, dust is an annoyance. Something to be cleaned up, washed off or wiped away. But these tiny particles that float about and settle on surfaces play an important role in a variety of processes on Earth and across the solar system. So put away that feather duster for a few moments, as we share with you 10 things to know about dust.

1. "Dust" Doesn't Mean Dirty, it Means Tiny

Not all of what we call "dust" is made of the same stuff. Dust in your home generally consists of things like particles of sand and soil, pollen, dander (dead skin cells), pet hair, furniture fibers and cosmetics. But in space, dust can refer to any sort of fine particles smaller than a grain of sand. Dust is most commonly bits of rock or carbon-rich, soot-like grains, but in the outer solar system, far from the Sun's warmth, it's also common to find tiny grains of ice as well. Galaxies, including our Milky Way, contain giant clouds of fine dust that are light years across – the ingredients for future generations of planetary systems like ours.

2. Some Are Big, Some Are Small (and Big Ones Tend to Fall)

Dust grains come in a range of sizes, which affects their properties. Particles can be extremely tiny, from only a few tens of nanometers (mere billionths of a meter) wide, to nearly a millimeter wide. As you might expect, smaller dust grains are more easily lifted and pushed around, be it by winds or magnetic, electrical and gravitational forces. Even the gentle pressure of sunlight is enough to move smaller dust particles in space. Bigger particles tend to be heavier, and they settle out more easily under the influence of gravity.

For example, on Earth, powerful winds can whip up large amounts of dust into the atmosphere. While the smaller grains can be transported over great distances, the heavier particles generally sink back to the ground near their source. On Saturn's moon Enceladus, jets of icy dust particles spray hundreds of miles up from the surface; the bigger particles are lofted only a few tens of miles (or kilometers) and fall back to the ground, while the finest particles escape the moon's gravity and go into orbit around Saturn to create the planet's E ring.

3. It’s EVERYWHERE

Generally speaking, the space between the planets is pretty empty, but not completely so. Particles cast off by comets and ground up bits of asteroids are found throughout the solar system. Take any volume of space half a mile (1 kilometer) on a side, and you’d average a few micron-sized particles (grains the thickness of a red blood cell).

Dust in the solar system was a lot more abundant in the past. There was a huge amount of it present as the planets began to coalesce out of the disk of material that formed the Sun. In fact, motes of dust gently sticking together were likely some of the earliest seeds of the planet-building process. But where did all that dust come from, originally? Some of it comes from stars like our Sun, which blow off their outer layers in their later years. But lots of it also comes from exploding stars, which blast huge amounts of dust and gas into space when they go boom.

4. From a Certain Point of View

Dust is easier to see from certain viewing angles. Tiny particles scatter light depending on how big their grains are. Larger particles tend to scatter light back in the direction from which it came, while very tiny particles tend to scatter light forward, more or less in the direction it was already going. Because of this property, structures like planetary rings made of the finest dusty particles are best viewed with the Sun illuminating them from behind. For example, Jupiter's rings were only discovered after the Voyager 1 spacecraft passed by the planet, where it could look back and see them backlit by the Sun. You can see the same effect looking through a dusty windshield at sunset; when you face toward the Sun, the dust becomes much more apparent.

5. Dust Storms Are Common on Mars

Local dust storms occur frequently on Mars, and occasionally grow or merge to form regional systems, particularly during the southern spring and summer, when Mars is closest to the Sun. On rare occasions, regional storms produce a dust haze that encircles the planet and obscures surface features beneath. A few of these events may become truly global storms, such as one in 1971 that greeted the first spacecraft to orbit Mars, our Mariner 9. In mid-2018, a global dust storm enshrouded Mars, hiding much of the Red Planet's surface from view and threatening the continued operation of our uber long-lived Opportunity rover. We’ve also seen global dust storms in 1977, 1982, 1994, 2001 and 2007.

Dust storms will likely present challenges for future astronauts on the Red Planet. Although the force of the wind on Mars is not as strong as portrayed in an early scene in the movie "The Martian," dust lofted during storms could affect electronics and health, as well as the availability of solar energy.

6. Dust From the Sahara Goes Global

Earth's largest, hottest desert is connected to its largest tropical rain forest by dust. The Sahara Desert is a near-uninterrupted brown band of sand and scrub across the northern third of Africa. The Amazon rain forest is a dense green mass of humid jungle that covers northeast South America. But after strong winds sweep across the Sahara, a dusty cloud rises in the air, stretches between the continents, and ties together the desert and the jungle.

This trans-continental journey of dust is important because of what is in the dust. Specifically, the dust picked up from the Bodélé Depression in Chad -- an ancient lake bed where minerals composed of dead microorganisms are loaded with phosphorus. Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for plant proteins and growth, which the nutrient-poor Amazon rain forest depends on in order to flourish.

7. Rings and Things

The rings of the giant planets contain a variety of different dusty materials. Jupiter's rings are made of fine rock dust. Saturn's rings are mostly pure water ice, with a sprinkling of other materials. (Side note about Saturn's rings: While most of the particles are boulder-sized, there's also lots of fine dust, and some of the fainter rings are mostly dust with few or no large particles.) Dust in the rings of Uranus and Neptune is made of dark, sooty material, probably rich in carbon.

Over time, dust gets removed from ring systems due to a variety of processes. For example, some of the dust falls into the planet's atmosphere, while some gets swept up by the planets' magnetic fields, and other dust settles onto the surfaces of the moons and other ring particles. Larger particles eventually form new moons or get ground down and mixed with incoming material. This means rings can change a lot over time, so understanding how the tiniest ring particles are being moved about has bearing on the history, origins and future of the rings.

8. Moon Dust is Clingy and Might Make You Sick

So, dust is kind of a thing on the Moon. When the Apollo astronauts visited the Moon, they found that lunar dust quickly coated their spacesuits and was difficult to remove. It was quite abrasive, causing wear on their spacesuit fabrics, seals and faceplates. It also clogged mechanisms like the joints in spacesuit limbs, and interfered with fasteners like zippers and Velcro. The astronauts also noted that it had a distinctive, pungent odor, not unlike gunpowder, and it was an eye and lung irritant.

Many of these properties apparently can be explained by the fact that lunar dust particles are quite rough and jagged. While dust particles on Earth get tumbled and ground by the wind into smoother shapes, this sort of weathering doesn't happen so much on the Moon. The roughness of Moon dust grains makes it very easy for them to cling to surfaces and scratch them up. It also means they're not the sort of thing you would want to inhale, as their jagged edges could damage delicate tissues in the lung.

9. Dust is What Makes Comets So Pretty

Most comets are basically clods of dust, rock and ice. They spend most of their time far from the Sun, out in the refrigerated depths of the outer solar system, where they're peacefully dormant. But when their orbits carry them closer to the Sun -- that is, roughly inside the orbit of Jupiter -- comets wake up. In response to warming temperatures, the ices on and near their surfaces begin to turn into gases, expanding outward and away from the comet, and creating focused jets of material in places. Dust gets carried away by this rapidly expanding gas, creating a fuzzy cloud around the comet's nucleus called a coma. Some of the dust also is drawn out into a long trail -- the comet's tail.

10. We're Not the Only Ones Who're So Dusty

Dust in our solar system is continually replenished by comets whizzing past the Sun and the occasional asteroid collision, and it's always being moved about, thanks to a variety of factors like the gravity of the planets and even the pressure of sunlight. Some of it even gets ejected from our solar system altogether.

With telescopes, we also observe dusty debris disks around many other stars. As in our own system, the dust in such disks should evolve over time, settling on planetary surfaces or being ejected, and this means the dust must be replenished in those star systems as well. So studying the dust in our planetary environs can tell us about other systems, and vice versa. Grains of dust from other planetary systems also pass through our neighborhood -- a few spacecraft have actually captured and analyzed some them -- offering us a tangible way to study material from other stars.

Read the full version of ‘Solar System: 10 Things to Know’ article HERE. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

What Space Weather Means for You

In space, invisible, fast-moving particles from the Sun and other sources in deep space zip around, their behavior shaped by dynamic electric and magnetic fields. There are so few of these particles that space is considered a vacuum, but what’s there packs a punch. Together, we call all of this invisible activity space weather — and it affects our technology both in space and here on Earth.

This month, two new missions are launching to explore two different kinds of space weather.

Scrambled signals

Many of our communications and navigation systems — like GPS and radio — rely on satellites to transmit their signals. When signals are sent from satellites down to Earth, they pass through a dynamic zone on the upper edge of Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere.

Gases in the ionosphere have been cooked into a sea of positive- and negative-charged particles by solar radiation. These electrically charged particles are also mixed in with neutral gases, like the air we breathe. The charged particles respond to electric and magnetic fields, meaning they react to space weather. Regular weather can also affect this part of the atmosphere.

Influenced by this complicated web of factors, structured bubbles of charged gas sometimes form in this part of the atmosphere, particularly near the equator. When signals pass through these bubbles, they can get distorted, causing failed communications or inaccurate GPS fixes.

Right now, it's hard to predict just when these bubbles will form or how they'll mess with signals. The two tiny satellites of the E-TBEx mission will try to shed some light on this question.

As these CubeSats fly around Earth, they'll send radio signals to receiving stations on the ground. Scientists will examine the signals received in order to see whether — and if so, how much — they were jumbled as they traveled through the upper atmosphere and down to Earth.

All together, this information will give scientists a better idea of how these bubbles form and change and how much they disrupt signals — information that could help develop strategies for mitigating these bubbles' disruptive effects.

Damaged satellites

The high-energy, fast-moving particles that fill space are called radiation. Every single spacecraft — from scientific satellites sprinkled throughout the solar system to the communications satellites responsible for relaying the GPS signals we use every day — must weather the harsh radiation of space.

Strikes from tiny, charged particles can spark memory damage or computer upsets on spacecraft, and over time, degrade hardware. The effects are wide-ranging, but ultimately, radiation can impact important scientific data, or prevent people from getting the proper navigation signals they need.

Space Environment Testbeds — or SET, for short — is our mission to study how to better protect satellites from space radiation.

SET aims its sights on a particular neighborhood of near-Earth space called the slot region: the gap between two of Earth’s vast, doughnut-shaped radiation belts, also known as the Van Allen Belts. The slot region is thought to be calmer than the belts, but known to vary during extreme space weather storms driven by the Sun. How much it changes exactly, and how quickly, remains uncertain.

The slot region is an attractive one for satellites — especially commercial navigation and communications satellites that we use every day — because from about 12,000 miles up, it offers not only a relatively friendly radiation environment, but also a wide view of Earth. During intense magnetic storms, however, energetic particles from the outer belt can surge into the slot region. 

SET will survey the slot region, providing some of the first day-to-day weather measurements of this particular neighborhood in near-Earth space. The mission also studies the fine details of how radiation damages instruments and tests different methods to protect them, helping engineers build parts better suited for spaceflight. Ultimately, SET will help other missions improve their design, engineering and operations to avoid future problems, keeping our space technology running smoothly as possible.

For more on our space weather research, follow @NASASun on Twitter and NASA Sun Science on Facebook.

Meet the other NASA missions launching on the Department of Defense's STP-2 mission and get the latest updates at nasa.gov/spacex.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Solar System 10 Things to Know This Week: Humans of NASA

Meet some of the amazing humans behind our exploring machines.

1—Small Town to Small Satellites

“I grew up in a small town where working at NASA was unheard of. I worked hard, persevered, and eventually made it to where I am despite many obstacles along the way. Through that process, never forget to enjoy what you are doing. It is my passion for space exploration that has helped me keep motivated and that brings me happiness every day that I come to work.”

—Farah Alibay, Engineer

2—Scientist. Mountain Unicyclist

“I do a rather unusual sport for fun—mountain unicycling. I love it because it's incredibly challenging, requiring strength, stamina and focus. I also enjoy surfing, caving, flying and teaching a space camp in South Korea each summer.”

—Morgan Cable, Research Scientist

3—"Eat. Breathe. Do Science. Sleep later."

“I do SCIENCE! No, seriously, I travel and explore for fun. It's a fascinating world and I can't get enough of it. But I'm always doing "science" of some kind no matter where I am. I love it —— can't escape it and wouldn't want to. Eat. Breathe. Do Science. Sleep later.”

—Derek Pitts, Solar System Ambassador

4—In the Room Where It Happened

“It was the summer of 2013, when I was the media rep for the Voyager mission. I was with Ed Stone, the mission's project scientist, when he came to the conclusion that Voyager 1 had crossed the threshold into interstellar space. For the first time, a human—made object flew beyond the plasma bubble our sun blows around itself. Voyager 1 is now bathed in the remnants of the explosions of other stars. I really appreciated seeing the scientific process—and Ed’s mind—at work.”

—Jia-Rui Cook, Supervisor of News Events and Projects at JPL

5—All About the Math. And Determination.

"From an academic point of view, it's all about doing well in math and science. However, there is absolutely no substitute for being determined. Being determined to be successful is at least half the game."

— James Green, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division

6—Problem Solver

“Opportunity [rover] was designed to live for 90 days in the harsh Martian environment but she is still exploring now 11 years later! Because of her age, software and hardware components are degrading on the vehicle and more recently, the flash memory. I had the incredible opportunity to lead the team to figure out how to solve these flash problems and get Opportunity back into an operational state.”

—Bekah Sosland Siegfriedt, Engineer

7—Never Give Up

"When you encounter difficulties or failures, do not take no for an answer. If you truly want to accomplish something and are passionate about it, you need to believe in yourself, put your mind to it, and you can accomplish anything! I failed A LOT, but I NEVER GAVE UP. It took three years and over 150 applications to NASA before I received my first internship"

—Kevin DeBruin, Systems Engineer

8—More Than Mohawk Guy

"The great thing about being at NASA is that there are jobs for all types —— whether it's engineering, science, finance, communication, law, and so forth. All of them are necessary and all of them involve working on some of the coolest things humans can do. So pick the area you love, but also know that you can still be a part of exploring the universe."

—Bobak Ferdowsi, Systems Engineer

9—The Power of One

“When my older sister claimed she would one day be an astronaut, on the heels of Sally Ride's launch into space, I made the same claim. Though, it was more because I dreamed to be just like my sister! In turned out that she outgrew the crazy dream, and my desire only got stronger.”

—Mamta Patel Nagaraja, Science Communications

10—Dedication and Choices

“Body-building is a favorite pasttime: it's a great stress reliever and a hobby that I can take with me when I travel for work or for pleasure. It's also a great expression of responsibility and ownership: What I've accomplished is due entirely to my dedication and choices, and it belongs to no one but me.”

—Troy Hudson, Instrument System Engineer

Check out the full version of Ten Things to Know HERE. 

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Ever want to ask a real life astronaut a question? Here’s your chance!

Astronauts Drew Feustel & Ricky Arnold will be taking your questions in a Video Answer Time session. We’ll collect your questions and send them to space to be answered by the astronauts on Friday, May 18. We’ll record their answers and post them on Wednesday, May 23 here on NASA’s Tumblr. Make sure to ask your question now by visiting http://nasa.tumblr.com/ask!

Andrew J. Feustel was selected by NASA in 2000.  He has been assigned to Expedition 55/56, which launched in March 2018. The Lake Orion, Michigan native has a Ph.D. in the Geological Sciences, specializing in Seismology, and is a veteran of two spaceflights. Follow Feustel on Twitter and Instagram.

Richard R. Arnold II was selected as an astronaut by NASA in May 2004. The Maryland native worked in the marine sciences and as a teacher in his home state, as well as in countries such as Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. Follow Arnold on Twitter and Instagram.

And don’t forget to submit your questions by 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, May 15 at http://nasa.tumblr.com/ask!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.  

Hi Mr Neeley, thank you for answering questions! I’ve got two things I want to know- how does the cockpit differ form a normal one? Are there special instruments in there? And do you get tired in long flights? What sort of system is in place to make sure you get sufficient rest if you are flying 12+ hours?

It’s Not a Phase – We Love the Moon

International Observe the Moon Night is Oct. 21 and everyone's invited! Find a Moon-gazing party near you, learn about lunar science and exploration, and honor cultural connections to the moon.

This year, we want to know what the Moon looks like around you. Take a look at these photography tips, then snap a picture of the Moon and tag us! You may be featured on Tumblr’s Today page on Oct. 21.

Not a question, but I just want to say that today is my daughter Erin's 7th birthday and she's wearing her NASA shirt and I want to thank you so much for being such an amazing inspiration to my daughter, myself, and women and girls everywhere. <3

Adorable! Please continue to encourage her to reach for the stars. 

You’re Always Surrounded by Neutrinos!

This second, as you’re reading these words, trillions of tiny particles are hurtling toward you! No, you don’t need to brace yourself. They’re passing through you right now. And now. And now. These particles are called neutrinos, and they’re both everywhere in the cosmos and also extremely hard to find.

Neutrinos are fundamental particles, like electrons, so they can’t be broken down into smaller parts. They also outnumber all the atoms in the universe. (Atoms are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks … which maybe we’ll talk about another time.) The only thing that outnumbers neutrinos are all the light waves left over from the birth of the universe! 

Credit: Photo courtesy of the Pauli Archive, CERN

Physicist Wolfgang Pauli proposed the existence of the neutrino, nearly a century ago. Enrico Fermi coined the name, which means “little neutral one” in Italian, because these particles have no electrical charge and nearly no mass.

Despite how many there are, neutrinos are really hard to study. They travel at almost the speed of light and rarely interact with other matter. Out of the universe’s four forces, ghostly neutrinos are only affected by gravity and the weak force. The weak force is about 10,000 times weaker than the electromagnetic force, which affects electrically charged particles. Because neutrinos carry no charge, move almost as fast as light, and don’t interact easily with other matter, they can escape some really bizarre and extreme places where even light might struggle getting out – like dying stars!

Through the weak force, neutrinos interact with other tiny fundamental particles: electrons, muons [mew-ons], and taus [rhymes with “ow”]. (These other particles are also really cool, but for right now, you just need to know that they’re there.) Scientists actually never detect neutrinos directly. Instead they find signals from these other particles. So they named the three types, or flavors, of neutrinos after them.

Neutrinos are made up of each of these three flavors, but cycle between them as they travel. Imagine going to the store to buy rocky road ice cream, which is made of chocolate ice cream, nuts, and marshmallows. When you get home, you find that it’s suddenly mostly marshmallows. Then in your bowl it’s mostly nuts. But when you take a bite, it’s just chocolate! That’s a little bit like what happens to neutrinos as they zoom through the cosmos.

Credit: CERN

On Earth, neutrinos are produced when unstable atoms decay, which happens in the planet’s core and nuclear reactors. (The first-ever neutrino detection happened in a nuclear reactor in 1955!) They’re also created by particle accelerators and high-speed particle collisions in the atmosphere. (Also, interestingly, the potassium in a banana emits neutrinos – but no worries, bananas are perfectly safe to eat!)

Most of the neutrinos around Earth come from the Sun – about 65 billion every second for every square centimeter. These are produced in the Sun’s core where the immense pressure squeezes together hydrogen to produce helium. This process, called nuclear fusion, creates the energy that makes the Sun shine, as well as neutrinos.

The first neutrinos scientists detected from outside the Milky Way were from SN 1987A, a supernova that occurred only 168,000 light-years away in a neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. (That makes it one of the closest supernovae scientists have observed.) The light from this explosion reached us in 1987, so it was the first supernova modern astronomers were able to study in detail. The neutrinos actually arrived a few hours before the light from the explosion because of the forces we talked about earlier. The particles escape the star’s core before any of the other effects of the collapse ripple to the surface. Then they travel in pretty much a straight line – all because they don’t interact with other matter very much.

Credit: Martin Wolf, IceCube/NSF

How do we detect particles that are so tiny and fast – especially when they rarely interact with other matter? Well, the National Science Foundation decided to bury a bunch of detectors in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice to create the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The neutrinos interact with other particles in the ice through the weak force and turn into muons, electrons, and taus. The new particles gain the neutrinos’ speed and actually travel faster than light in the ice, which produces a particular kind of radiation IceCube can detect. (Although they would still be slower than light in the vacuum of space.)

In 2013, IceCube first detected high-energy neutrinos, which have energies up to 1,000 times greater than those produced by Earth’s most powerful particle collider. But scientists were puzzled about where exactly these particles came from. Then, in 2017, IceCube detected a high-energy neutrino from a monster black hole powering a high-speed particle jet at a galaxy’s center billions of light-years away. It was accompanied by a flash of gamma rays, the highest energy form of light.

But particle jets aren’t the only place we can find these particles. Scientists recently announced that another high-energy neutrino came from a black hole shredding an unlucky star that strayed too close. The event didn’t produce the neutrino when or how scientists expected, though, so they’ve still got a lot to learn about these mysterious particles!

Keep up with other exciting announcements about our universe by following NASA Universe on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

The Adventures of Commander Moonikin Campos

Artemis I will be an enormous step toward humanity’s return to the Moon. This mission will be the first flight test of the integrated Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft — the same system that will send future Artemis astronauts to the Moon. That’s why NASA needs someone capable to test the vehicle. Someone with the necessary experience. Someone with the Right Stuff. (Or... stuffing).

Meet Commander Moonikin Campos. He is a manikin, or a replica human body. Campos is named after Arturo Campos, a trailblazing NASA employee who worked on Apollo missions. Arturo Campos’ skill as an electrical engineer was pivotal in the rescue efforts to help guide the Apollo 13 astronauts home.

As the leader of the mission, Commander Campos will be flying in the pilot’s seat for the length of the mission: a journey of 1.3 million miles (~2 million km) around the Moon and back to Earth. He's spent years training for this mission and he loves a challenge. Campos will be equipped with two radiation sensors and will have additional sensors under his headrest and behind his seat to record acceleration and vibration data throughout the mission.

Traveling with Campos are his quirky companions, Zohar and Helga. They’re part of a special experiment to measure radiation outside of the protective bubble of Earth’s atmosphere. Together with their commander, they’re excited to play a role in humanity’s next great leap. (And hopefully they can last the entire flight without getting on each other's nerves.)

Will our brave explorers succeed on their mission and ensure the success of future Artemis operations? Can Commander Moonikin Campos live up to the legacy of his heroic namesake?? And did anyone remember to bring snacks??? Get the answers in this thrilling three-part series!

In the first part of Commander Moonikin Campos’ journey, our trailblazing hero prepares for liftoff from NASA’s spaceport at Kennedy Space Center  in Florida, gets acquainted with the new hardware aboard the Orion spacecraft, and meets his crewmates: Helga and Zohar!

In the second part of the trio’s adventure, Campos, Helga, and Zohar blast out of the Earth’s atmosphere with nearly 8.8 million pounds (4 million kg) of thrust powering their ascent. Next stop: the Moon!

In the final chapter of the Artemis I mission, Campos and friends prepare for their return home, including the last and most dangerous part of their journey: reentering Earth’s atmosphere at a screeching 25,000 miles per hour (40,000 kph).

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!