Kennedy Space Center – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com Open Source Entertainment, on Demand. Mon, 22 Feb 2016 02:47:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.3 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cropped-favicon-32x32.png Kennedy Space Center – Jupiter Broadcasting https://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com 32 32 Orion Heat Shield & Dragon V2 | SciByte 133 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/58927/orion-heat-shield-dragon-v2-scibyte-133/ Tue, 03 Jun 2014 21:17:47 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=58927 Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte! We take a look at NASA testing the world’s largest heat shield, ancient evidence of lyme disease, sign language on glasses, story and spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week. Direct Download: MP3 Audio | […]

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Hello everyone and welcome back to SciByte!

We take a look at NASA testing the world’s largest heat shield, ancient evidence of lyme disease, sign language on glasses, story and spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Testing NASA\’s Orion Spacecraft Heat Shield

  • Technicians at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida have attached the world’s largest heat shield to a pathfinding version of NASA’s Orion crew capsule
  • **Delta IV Heavy Rockets***
  • The Delta IV Heavy is the only rocket with sufficient thrust to launch the Orion EFT-1 capsule and its attached upper stage to its intended orbit of 3600 miles altitude above Earth
  • That is 15 times higher than the International Space Station (ISS) and farther than any human spacecraft has journeyed in 40 year
  • Orion Spacecraft
  • Orion is NASA’s next generation human rated vehicle now under development to replace the now retired space shuttle
  • “The Orion heat shield is the largest of its kind ever built. Its wider than the Apollo and Mars Science Lab heat shields,” | Todd Sullivan, heat shield senior manager
  • Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1)
  • The initial test flight later this Fall on a crucial mission dubbed Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1)
  • One of the primary goals of NASA’s eagerly anticipated Orion EFT-1 uncrewed test flight is to test the efficacy of the heat shield in protecting the vehicle – and future human astronauts
  • At the conclusion of the two-orbit, four- hour EFT-1 flight, the detached Orion capsule plunges back and re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere at 20,000 MPH (32,000 kilometers per hour).
  • “That’s about 80% of the reentry speed experienced by the Apollo capsule after returning from the Apollo moon landing missions,” Scott Wilson, NASA’s Orion Manager of Production Operations
  • The big reason to get to those high speeds during EFT-1 is to be able to test out the thermal protection system
  • A trio of parachutes will then unfurl to slow it down for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean
  • The Heat Shield
  • The heat shield is constructed from a single seamless piece of Avcoat ablator and measures 16.5 ft (5 m) in diameter
  • The ablative material will wear away as it heats up during the capsules atmospheric re-entry thereby preventing the 4000* F (2204*C) heat from being transferred to the rest of the capsule
  • Numerous sensors and instrumentation have been specially installed on the EFT-1 heat shield and the back shell tiles to collect measurements of things like temperatures, pressures and stresses during the extreme conditions of atmospheric reentry
  • The Future
  • Data gathered during the flight will aid in confirming. or refuting, design decisions and computer models as the program moves forward to the first flight in late 2017 on the EM-1 mission and more human crewed missions thereafter
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Early in the Process | Textron Team Readies Orion Heat Shield for Shipment to Kennedy Space Center | ReelNASA
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • World Largest Heat Shield Attached to NASA\’s Orion Crew Capsule for Crucial Fall 2014 Test Flight | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

Ancient Lyme Disease

  • New discoveries of ticks fossilized in amber show that the bacteria which cause Lyme disease may have been lurking around for 15 million years
  • Lyme Disease
  • In the United States, Europe and Asia, ticks are a more important insect vector of disease than mosquitos
  • It is a stealthy, often misdiagnosed disease that was only recognized about 40 years ago and can cause problems with joints, the heart and central nervous system
  • **Amber***
  • Plant and animal life forms found preserved in amber are very efficient at maintaining populations of microbes in their tissues, and can infect mammals, birds, reptiles and other animals
  • Bacteria
  • The findings were made when scientists studied 15-20 million-year-old amber
  • They offer the oldest fossil evidence ever found of Borrelia, a type of spirochete-like bacteria that to this day causes Lyme disease
  • This is the oldest fossil evidence of ticks associated with such bacteria
  • In a separate report, scientists announced the first fossil record Rickettsia bacteria, the cause of Rocky Mountain spotted fever and related illnesses
  • **What This Might Mean*
  • In 30 years of studying diseases revealed in the fossil record, the scientist has documented the ancient presence of such diseases as malaria, leishmania, and others.
  • It\’s now worth considering that these tick-borne diseases may be far more common than has been historically appreciated
  • Evidence suggests that dinosaurs could have been infected with Rickettsial pathogens
  • Rickettsia species are carried by many chiggers, ticks, fleas, and lice, and cause diseases in humans such as typhus, spotted fever group, and others
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Amber discovery indicates Lyme disease is older than human race | Phys.org
  • Lyme Disease Bacteria Found in 15-Million-Year-Old Amber | Paleontology | Sci-News.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

\”Signglasses\”

  • Students at Brigham Young University recently launched the \”Signglasses\” project in an attempt to develop a better system of sign language for narration through several types of glasses, including Google Glass.
  • By coincidence, the only two deaf students to ever take Professor Jones’ computer science class signed up just as the National Science Foundation funded Jones’ signglasses research
  • “Having a group of students who are fluent in sign language here at the university has been huge\” | Professor Mike Jones
  • The team tested their system during a field trip visit to the Jean Messieu School for the deaf, where it was revealed that the signer should be displayed in the center of the lens
  • Deaf participants could then look straight through the signer as they focused on a planetarium show.
  • This was particularly surprising for researchers as they believed that deaf students would prefer to have a video displayed at the top, as Google Glass normally presents itself
  • The Future
  • Jones will publish the full results of their research in June at Interaction Design and Children
  • Researchers hope that with further studies, this tool can also be used for literary guidance
  • One idea is when you\’re reading a book and come across a word that you don\’t understand, you point at it, push a button to take a picture
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | BYU Signglasses Project | Austin Balaich
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Google Glass adaptation opens the universe to deaf students | news.byu.edu/
  • \’Signglasses\’ System Helps Deaf Literacy | ScienceWorldReport.com

— Updates —

ISEE-3 Reboot

  • Last Time on SciByte …
  • SciByte 132 | ISEE-3 Back To Life | May 27, 2014
  • The Low Down
  • Approval from NASA to attempt contact, and that go-ahead came on May 29th
  • The ISEE-3 Reboot Project has announced that it has achieved two-way communication with the ISEE-3 at a transmission rate of 512 bits per second.
  • “We have been able to verify modulated data through ground stations in Germany, Morehead State in Kentucky, and the SETI Allen Array in California.” | project member Keith Cowing
  • Eventual goal is to actually change its current trajectory into one that will enable more frequent communication with the probe
  • Transponders
  • The spacecraft has two transponders, transponder A and Transponder B
  • Transponder B is normally the engineering telemetry transponder and transponder A is the ranging transponder
  • The final state of the spacecraft before was to have both of the transponders transmitters active and that is what people around the world have been tracking.
  • Communication
  • The team tried several times to command the spacecraft\’s B transponder into the mode where it normally sends engineering telemetry but that did not work
  • They then tried the same process on transponder A, the initial command was just to turn engineering telemetry, which was successful so they were able to commanded the spacecraft into engineering telemetry mode.
  • Through the A transponder receiver we commanded through the B transponder command decoder to output engineering telemetry through transponder B\’s transmitter
  • The team tried to command the spacecraft into 64 bits/second mode, which was a mode that is much more complicated to set up and they did not get working successfully during the limited time that the spacecraft is visible from Arecibo
  • They need to do this so that the smaller dishes at Morehead State and Bochum will have a positive signal margin so that we can record several hours of data
  • When they later processed the first day\’s data dump from the spacecraft they received 49 full frames of data at a bitrate of 512 bits/second, and there were no errors on the downlink
  • Verified so Far the Following Systems on the Spacecraft
  1. Transponder A receiver
  2. Transponder A\’s Command Decoder and Data Handling Unit
  3. Transponder B\’s Command Decoder and Data Handling Unit

+ Milestones Related to Commanding and Receiving Data
1. Successful commanding multiple times of ISEE-3/ICE
2. Received engineering telemetry from both data multiplexing units on the spacecraft
3. Successful demodulation on the ground of the received data, through the output of bits
4. Verification of good data at 512 bits/sec, including frame synchronization, correct number of bits/frame, and with no errors, showing a very strong 30+ db link margin through Arecibo
+ The Future
+ If they can maneuver the spacecraft by June 17th they can get the very small delta V number, however if this starts to climb rapidly as the spacecraft gets closer to the moon they cannot at this time rule out a lunar impact.
+ Multimedia
+ Image | \”ISEE-3 Mission Control\” | Space College: ISEE-3 Reboot Project Archives | spacecollege.org
+ YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot | Mike Loucks Mike
+ Twitter | ISEE3 Reboot Project (ISEE3Reboot)
+ YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot | Mike Loucks
+ YouTube | ISEE-3 Reboot Project – Recovering a 30 year old space probe Scott Manley
+ Further Reading / In the News
+ Space College: ISEE-3 Reboot Project Archives | spacecollege.org
+ Citizen Scientists Take Command Of Decades-Old NASA Probe | Forbes.com
+ 35-year-old ISEE 3 Craft Phones Home | Sky & Telescope

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

SpaceX Dragon V2

  • The previous version of the Dragon capsule was flightworthy enough to deliver supplies, its life support system wasn’t reliable for human passengers
  • Dragon V2, on the other hand, will be able to carry seven astronauts for seven days.
  • General Capabilities
  • The vehicle holds seats for 7 passengers, and includes an Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) that provides a comfortable environment for crewmembers
  • When the capsule reaches the ISS, it will dock with the station autonomously. Unlike its predecessor, it won’t need the ISS’s robotic arm to reach out and grab it
  • To land back on Earth, a backup technique for the new capsule is to slow its speed with parachutes before splashing into the ocean
  • The main technique for landing uses its engines to land propulsively which will will make it quickly reusable
  • “You’ll be able to land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter,” | SpaceX CEO Elon Musk
  • The Future
  • Dragon V2’s robust thermal protection system is capable of lunar missions, in addition to flights to and from Earth orbit
  • According to Ars Technica, NASA pays Russia about $71 million per astronaut for trips to the ISS. Musk thinks he can drop that number to $20 million or less.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | SpaceX Dragon V2 | Flight Animation | spacexchannel·
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Dragon V2: SpaceX\’s Next Generation Manned Spacecraft | SpaceX
  • Inside The New Dragon Spacecraft | Popular Science

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • June 7, 1958 : 56 years ago : Ultrasound Article : A seminal article that launched the widespread use of ultrasound in medical diagnosis was published in The Lancet by Ian Donald, an English physician. After a few years developing the experimental use of ultrasound, Donald had applied it to treat patients in his hospital. In the Lancet article, Investigation of Abdominal Masses by Pulsed Ultrasound, he described how he was able to make the life-saving diagnosis of a huge, easily removable, ovarian cyst in a woman who had been diagnosed by others as having inoperable stomach cancer. Donald knew about sonar from his service in WW II, and industrial use of reflected ultrasound waves for flaw detection in materials, and with help from others, he launched its use in medicine

Looking up this week

The post Orion Heat Shield & Dragon V2 | SciByte 133 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Hearing Fear & Mitochondrial DNA | SciByte 100 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/40152/hearing-fear-mitochondrial-dna-scibyte-100/ Tue, 09 Jul 2013 20:49:08 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=40152 We take a look at fear and hearing, legislation about embryos with three parents, a flashlight without batteries, spacecraft updates, and more!

The post Hearing Fear & Mitochondrial DNA | SciByte 100 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at fear and hearing, legislation about embryos with three parents, a flashlight without batteries, spacecraft updates, viewer feedback, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

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Show Notes:

Sound and Fear

  • Researchers are looking into how our emotions can actually affect how we hear and process sound
  • The study showed that when certain types of sounds become associated in our brains with strong emotions, hearing similar sounds can evoke those same feelings
  • This phenomenon commonly seen in combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
  • The Study
  • Now a pair of researchers has discovered how fear can actually increase or decrease the ability to discriminate among sounds depending on context
  • The study used emotional conditioning in mice to investigate how hearing acuity (the ability to distinguish between tones of different frequencies) can change following a traumatic event, known as emotional learning
  • In these experiments animals learn to distinguish between potentially dangerous and safe sounds-called \”emotional discrimination learning.\”
  • This type of conditioning tends to result in relatively poor learning, but they designed a series of learning tasks intended to create progressively greater emotional discrimination in the mice, varying the difficulty
  • What They Found
  • The researchers found that, as expected, fine emotional learning tasks produced greater learning specificity than tests in which the tones were farther apart in frequency
  • Animals presented with sounds that were very far apart generalize the fear that they developed to the danger tone over a whole range of frequencies
  • Animals presented with the two sounds that were very similar exhibited specialization of their emotional response
  • Pitch discrimination abilities were measured in the animals, the mice with more specific responses displayed much finer auditory acuity than the mice who were frightened by a broader range of frequencies
  • Sound, Fear, and the Brain
  • Another interesting finding of this study is that the effects of emotional learning on hearing perception were mediated by a specific brain region, the auditory cortex
  • The auditory cortex has been known as an important area responsible for auditory plasticity
  • Surprisingly researchers found that the auditory cortex did not play a role in emotional learning
  • The specificity of emotional learning is controlled by the amygdala and sub-cortical auditory areas
  • Research shows that amygdala performs a primary role in the processing of memory and emotional reactions
  • The researchers hypothesize is that the amygdala and cortex are modifying subcortical auditory processing areas.
  • The sensory cortex is responsible for the changes in frequency discrimination, but it\’s not necessary for developing specialized or generalized emotional responses
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Researchers discover link between fear, sound perception | MedicalXPress

— NEWS BYTE —

DNA Splicing

Student Develops No-Battery Flashlight

  • Ann Makosinski from Victoria, British Columbia, has an LED flashlight powered by body heat her flashlight has got her into the finalist ranks for the Google Science Fair
  • The Hollow Flashlight, which works according to the thermoelectric effect-creating electric voltage out of temperature difference
  • How it Works : The Basics
  • Thermoelectric effect is the direct conversion of temperature differences to electric voltage and vice-versa
  • At the atomic scale, an applied temperature gradient causes charge carriers in the material to diffuse from the hot side to the cold side
  • The flashlight Uses four Peltier tiles and the temperature difference between the palm of the hand and ambient air
  • It only needs a five degree temperature difference to work and produce up to 5.4 mW at 5 foot candles of brightness
  • Design
  • She bought Peltier tiles and tested them to see if they could produce sufficient power to light an LED
  • While power was not a problem, getting the needed voltage was, as the tiles did not generate enough of the voltage needed
  • Research and experiments on different designs for the circuit design lead to a circuit that could provide enough voltage when used with a recommended transformer
  • Final Design
  • The final design included mounting the Peltiers on a hollow aluminum tube which was inserted in a larger PVC pipe with an opening that allowed ambient air to cool the tube
  • The palm wrapped around a cutout in the PVC pipe and warmed the tiles.
  • The result was a bright light at 5 degree Celcius [sic] of Peltier differential
  • Materials for the flashlight project cost her $26
  • Google Science Fair
  • The top winner gets a $50,000 scholarship and trip to the Galapagos Islands
  • The prize ceremony takes place in September. Winners will be chosen in different age categories-13-14, 15-16, 17-18.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | The Human Heat Powered Flashlight | smustube
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Student\’s flashlight works by body heat, not batteries | Phys.org

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Space Shuttle Atlantis

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

Voyager 1\’s Journey, It\’s Not There Yet

  • Voyager 1 is 11.6 billion miles (18.6 billion kilometers) from the Sun, poised to become Earth\’s first robotic mission to interstellar space
  • Data from the Voyager 1 spacecraft continues to provide new insight on the outskirts of our solar system
  • New Publications
  • In papers published in the journal Science, scientists have provided more clarity on the region they named the \”magnetic highway\” in December 2012.
  • The new Science papers focus on observations from the summer and fall of 2012 by LECP as well as Voyager 1\’s Cosmic Ray and Magnetometer instruments, with additional LECP data through April 2013.
  • Voyager has detected, for the first time, low-energy galactic cosmic rays, now that particles of the same energy from inside the bubble around our Sun disappeared
  • The most dramatic part was how quickly the solar-originating particles disappeared; they decreased in intensity by more than 1,000 times
  • Voyager\’s Low-Energy Charged Particle (LECP)
  • Voyager\’s Low-Energy Charged Particle (LECP) instrument, LECP detector, was designed at APL in the 1970s.
  • It includes a stepper motor that rotates the instrument through 45-degree steps every 192 seconds
  • It allows it to gather data in all directions and pick up something as dynamic as the solar wind and galactic particles
  • The device, designed and tested to work for 500,000 steps and last four years, has been working for nearly 36 years and well past 6 million steps
  • That\’s 12 times the number of steps and 9 times the number of years as of early July 2013
  • Important to remember
  • Voyager 1 may be months or years from leaving the solar system
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • At the solar system\’s edge, more surprises from Voyager | Phys.org
  • Voyager 1 Reaches Gateway to the Galaxy – News Watch | newswatch.NationalGeographic.com
  • News in Brief: Voyager 1 on fast track toward interstellar space | Science News
  • Voyager 1 Entered Weird Region In Space Last Summer | Popular Science

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

Did You See This? | Radio Signals from Outside the Milky Way

  • Sent in From Nick Tanin
  • Four powerful radio pulses emanating from sources outside of the Milky Way, 5 billion to nearly 11 billion light years away, have been picked up by an international team of astronomers at the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia
  • What Was Seen
  • These bursts gave off more energy in a millisecond than the sun does in 300,000 years
  • The bursts ranged from 5.5 to 10 billion light-years away, meaning it took the light from some of them 10 billion years to reach Earth. [The Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago]
  • To determine whether the new signals came from inside or outside the Milky Way scientists studied how the radio waves were affected by the material they pass through
  • This technique allows these new objects to shed light on the components of space.
  • As radio waves travel in space, they are stretched and slowed by the ionized material through which they move
  • Using models, the team concluded that the fast radio bursts, FRBs, traveled billions of light-years – much farther than the edge of Earth\’s galaxy, and likely are located in another galaxy
  • Although the explosions were brief, the astronomers can pinpoint the bursts\’ locations pretty accurately
  • They are so bright and narrow that we can limit the size of the emission region at the source to just a few hundred kilometers
  • No corresponding object could be observed in optical, gamma or X-ray wavelengths, so the explosions\’ origins remain unknown to scientists
  • Additional observations were performed approximately a year after the FRBs were first spotted, looked at whether the objects continued to produce emission, but the signals appear to be non repeating
  • Efforts are ongoing at the moment to detect FRBs in close to real time, such that they can be followed up quickly
  • Have we Observed This Kind of Event Before?
  • Since there had been only one burst during the last observation seven years ago scientists had wondered if the reading was simply an artifact in the data
  • Now the four new blips may add weight to that observation
  • Possible Sources
  • Intersecting magnetic fields from two neutron stars, extremely dense city-size bodies packing the mass of the sun.
  • A special kind of supernova orbited by a neutron star could potentially produce radio bursts as the star\’s magnetic field interacts with the explosion of the supernova
  • Such combinations would be rare
  • The current leading explanation is that a giant burst from a magnetar, a highly magnetized type of neutron star
  • Are There Other Events Like This?
  • These newfound objects allowed the researchers to calculate that an FRB should occur once every 10 seconds
  • Telescopes capture radio waves from such a small fraction of the sky so one-time radio pulses have been hard to detect
  • Instruments lack the ultrafast time resolution required to pinpoint the short-lived bursts
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • News in Brief: Distant radio-wave pulses spotted | Atom & Cosmos | Science News
  • Mysterious Extragalactic Explosions Baffle Astronomers | Fast Radio Bursts | Space.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • July 14, 1965 : 48 years ago : First Mars close-up photo : The Mariner 4 satellite sent a transmission of the first close-up photograph of Mars. It consisting of 8.3 dots per second of varying degrees of darkness. The transmission lasted for 8.5 hours and depicted the regions on Mars known as Cebrenia, Arcadia, and Amazonis. The satellite was 134 million miles away from earth and 10,500 miles from Mars. The 574-pound spacecraft had been launched at 9:22am on 28 Nov 1964, from Cape Canaveral, FL, by a two-stage Atlas-Agena D rocket. In addition to its camera with digital tape recorder (about 20 pictures), it carried instruments for studying cosmic dust, solar plasma, trapped radiation, cosmic rays, magnetic fields, radio occultation and celestial mechanics

Looking up this week

The post Hearing Fear & Mitochondrial DNA | SciByte 100 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes | SciByte 92 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/36836/habitable-exoplanets-diabetes-scibyte-92/ Tue, 07 May 2013 21:35:10 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=36836 We take a look at habitable zone exoplanets, diabetes treatment advances, water in Jupiter, living on Mars, and spacecraft updates.

The post Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes | SciByte 92 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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We take a look at habitable zone exoplanets, diabetes treatment advances, water in Jupiter, living on Mars, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

Direct Download:

MP3 Audio | OGG Audio | Video | Torrent | YouTube

RSS Feeds:

MP3 Feed | OGG Feed | Video Feed | Torrent Feed | iTunes

Support the Show:

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Show Notes:

More Habitable Zone Exoplanets

  • Astronomers have announced that they have found three new, potentially rocky, planets in the habitable zone of their stars by analyzing nearly three years’ worth of data
  • Kepler Space Telescope
  • As of April 2013, Kepler data has uncovered more than 2,700 potential planets, with about 120 of them having been confirmed to date
  • Mission scientists expect that more than 90 percent of the planets detected are real and not illusions in the data
  • Until now planets in the habitable zone were discovered by what is known as the radial velocity method, which gives a lower limit for the planet’s mass, but no information about its radius
  • While a small radius (less than 2 Earth radii) is a strong indicator that a planet around is indeed rocky it is difficult to assess whether or not a planet is rocky, like the Earth.
  • Finding planets in the habitable zones of larger stars is harder because those planets have relatively long orbits and barely cast a shadow as they pass across the faces of their suns
  • Kepler-62
  • Kepler62 is a red dwarf star, about two-thirds the size of the sun and several hundred degrees Celsius cooler
  • It is only 20 percent as bright as the sun and is about 1,200 light years away and contains five planets currently identified
  • Two of the worlds, Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f are the smallest exoplanets yet found in a habitable zone, and they might both be covered in water or ice, depending on what kind of atmosphere they might have
  • Life on these worlds would be under water with no easy access to metals, to electricity, or fire for metallurgy
  • The biggest uncertainty right now is about both planets composition, early evidence suggests that at least 62f is rocky
  • Kepler-62e and Kepler-62f would exhibit distinctly different colors and make our search for signatures of life easier on such planets in the near future
  • Kepler-62e
  • Orbit is 122 days
  • 1.6 times the diameter of Earth
  • Kepler-62e would have a bit more clouds than Earth according to computer models to sustain an ocean
  • An astronomer at the University of Washington not involved in the research says that Kepler-62e may be too close to its star – and therefore too hot – to sustain life
  • If 62e is a rocky planet, it’s almost certainly tidally locked with its star, half of its surface always facing the star, and the other always facing away
  • Kepler62-f
  • Orbit is 267 days
  • 1.4 times the diameter of Earth
  • Kepler-62f would need the greenhouse effect from plenty of carbon dioxide to warm it enough to host an ocean
  • Kepler-69 System
  • Kepler-36 is a sun-like star located 2,700 light-years away,
  • The Kepler-69 system contains one known planet in that star\’s habitable zone
  • Kepler-69c
  • 1.7 times bigger than Earth, sits on the inner edge of the habitable zone and is almost certainly a super-Venus rather than a super-Earth
  • Habitable Zone Types
  • The \”empirical habitable zone\” is where liquid water can exist on the surface of a planet if that planet has sufficient cloud cover
  • The \”narrow habitable zone\” is where liquid water can exist on the surface even without the presence of a cloud cover
  • Of Note
  • According to the Planetary Habitability Laboratory, there are now nine potential habitable worlds outside of our solar system, with 18 more potentially habitable planetary candidates found by Kepler waiting to be confirmed
  • Astronomers predict there are 25 potentially habitable exomoons
  • Kepler cannot search for signs of life on worlds like Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Kepler-69c, but the telescope is paving the way for future missions that should do just that
  • Next-generation missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which NASA approved earlier this month for launch in 2017, will take on the task of finding nearer planets that astronomers can study in depth
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Animation of the Kepler 62 Planetary System | UniverseTodayVideos
  • YouTube | NASA\’s Kepler Discovers Its Smallest \’Habitable Zone\’ Planets to Date | NASASolarSystem
  • Infographic | 3 Potentially Habitable Super-Earth Planets Explained | Space.com
  • IMAGE | Diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-69 | Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
  • IMAGE | Diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-62 | Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
  • IMAGE | Current known potentially habitable exoplanets | Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory/University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo.
  • IMAGE | The habitable zone for different types of stars | Image: L. Kaltenegger (MPIA)
  • YouTube | Full Anouncement | Kepler Makes Discoveries Inside the Habitable Zone | NASAtelevision
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Discovered! Most Earth-Like Alien Planet & 2 Other Possibly Habitable Worlds | Space.com
  • Most Earthlike planets yet seen bring Kepler closer to its holy grail | Atom & Cosmos | Science News
  • Habitable Worlds? New Kepler Planetary Systems in Images | UniverseToday.com
  • Kepler Team Finds System with Two Potentially Habitable Planets | UniverseToday.com

— NEWS BYTE —

New Possible Diabetes Treatment Option

  • Researchers have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes and believe that the hormone might also have a role in treating type 1, or juvenile, diabetes
  • Type 1 Diabetes
  • While betatrophin primarily as a treatment for type 2 diabetes, it is believed it might play a role in the treatment of type 1 diabetes as well
  • Perhaps boosting the number of beta cells and slowing the progression of that autoimmune disease when it\’s first diagnosed
  • Type 2 Diabetes
  • Type 2 diabetes is usually caused by a combination of excess weight and lack of exercise and causes patients to slowly lose beta cells and the ability to produce adequate insulin
  • Provide this hormone, the type 2 diabetic will make more of their own insulin-producing cells, and this will slow down, if not stop, the progression of their diabetes
  • Betatrophin
  • The hormone, called betatrophin, causes mice to produce insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells at up to 30 times the normal rate
  • In addition the new beta cells only produce insulin when called for by the body, offering the potential for the natural regulation of insulin
  • The researchers know that the hormone exists in human plasma; betatrophin definitely exists in humans
  • The Research
  • The team wasn\’t just looking at what happens when an animal doesn\’t have enough insulin, they were able to find this a gene that had largely gone unnoticed before
  • Another hint came from studying what happens during pregnancy, when there are more beta cells needed, and it turns out that this hormone goes up
  • When a woman gets pregnant, her carbohydrate load, her call for insulin, can increase an enormous amount because of the weight and nutrition needs of the fetus
  • The Future
  • Betatrophin could be in human clinical trials within three to five years, an extremely short time in the normal course of drug discovery and development
  • If it works as they hope it will it could eventually mean that instead of taking insulin injections three times a day, you might take an injection of this hormone once a week or month, or even year
  • The researchers who discovered betatrophin caution that much work remains to be done before it could be used as a treatment in humans
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Potential Diabetes Breakthrough | Harvard
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Potential diabetes breakthrough: Researchers discover new hormone spurring beta cell production | MedicalXPress.com

Soaking up Venom in Blood

  • A tiny sponge camouflaged as a red blood cell could soak up toxins ranging from anthrax to snake venom, new research suggests
  • Bacteria and Poisons
  • One of the mainstay strategies of bacteria and poison is to poke holes in cells, disrupting their internal chemical balance and causing them to burst
  • So far, researchers haven\’t had much success creating all-purpose treatments to exploit this vulnerability
  • Nanosponges
  • Researchers created a tiny spherical core of a lactic acid byproduct, which forms naturally during metabolism in the human body
  • To get the outer skin of red blood cells, they used a difference in particle concentration inside and outside the cells to cause them to burst, and then collected their outer membranes
  • They then wrapped the cores in the outer surface of the red blood cell
  • The nanoparticles, also called nanosponges, act as decoys that lure and inactivate the deadly compounds
  • The entire ensemble became a tiny nanosponge, which was about 85 nanometers in diameter, or 100 times smaller than a human hair
  • The sponges\’ tiny size means a small amount of blood, for camouflage, can be used to make an effective dose
  • In cell cultures, the camouflaged sponges act as decoys, luring the toxins from the bacteria that causes strep throat and bee venom
  • The toxins then bind to the structure the \”poisons\” normally use to poke through cells
  • When they stick onto the nanosponge, that particular damaging structure gets preoccupied, since the sponges are so small they can circulate freely through blood vessels, and then the body can digest the entire particle
  • Experiment
  • The team injected 18 mice with a lethal dose of a MRSA, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, toxin. Half the mice then got a dose of the nanosponges
  • Whereas all the mice in the control group died, all but one that received the treatment survived
  • When injected into mice, the tiny decoys protect mice against lethal doses of a toxin produced by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
  • The Future
  • The researchers want to see whether the method works in human blood, and against other toxic chemicals, such as scorpion venom and anthrax, which use similar attack strategies
  • Because so many bacteria use the same pore-forming strategy, the nanosponges could be used as a universal treatment option when doctors don\’t know exactly what is causing an illness
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Tiny Sponge Soaks Up Venom in Blood | Scientific American

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Water in Jupiter\’s Clouds

  • How Did It Get There?
  • In July 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 plowed into Jupiter leaving behind millions of gallons of water.
  • Water from the impact still makes up at least 95 percent of the water in the planet’s upper atmosphere
  • Telescopes had previously spotted water in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, some 100 kilometers above the planet’s ammonia cloud tops, but those surveys could not determine where the water came from
  • Now astronomers have created a high-resolution map of water vapor distribution throughout Jupiter’s atmosphere
  • They found that the concentration of water peaked in the planet’s southern hemisphere, right in the region where the comet struck
  • More water also appeared at higher altitudes around the planet, which supports the comet as its origin.
  • Water from other sources such as Jupiter’s icy moons would likely spread out more evenly around the planet and would gradually filter down to lower altitudes
  • Multimedia
  • Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 – How The Universe Works | DiscoveryTV
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • News in Brief: Comet\’s water still hanging around on Jupiter | Atom & Cosmos | Science News

MarsOne and Life on Mars and Science

  • Mars colony project will do its best to avoid disturbing potential Red Planet life rather than aggressively hunt it down
  • Science and Life
  • The Netherlands-based nonprofit Mars One opened its astronaut-selection process on April 22
  • They plan to land four people on the Red Planet in 2023 to make a permanent human colony on the Red Planet, with new crews arriving every two years thereafter
  • Human explorers will doubtless contaminate whatever site is chosen for the settlement, so the organization will try to pick a place unlikely to host indigenous life to localize the pollution
  • Mars One is working with experts to minimize the risks its colonization effort may pose to potential Red Planet lifeforms
  • While Mars One hasn\’t picked a precise location for its settlement yet, the organization is targeting a swath of the Red Planet between 40 and 45 degrees north latitude
  • Mars One astronauts will not necessarily be scientists
  • Anyone over the age of 18 is eligible to apply, with the selection committee prizing traits such as intelligence, resourcefulness, determination and psychological stability over academic background
  • Science is not the main focus of what we are doing; although, crewmembers will take some scientific gear with them
  • Mars One officials won\’t dictate what the experiments should be, but there will be a budget for equipment that they want to take for scientific research
  • Multimedia
  • Mars 2023 – Inhabitants wanted | MarsOneProject
  • YouTube Channel | Mars One – Human Settlement of Mars
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars One
  • Private Mars Colony Won\’t Seek Martian Life | Mars One | Space.com

— VIEWER FEEDBACK—

Peter, AKA \”Korlus\” | Check This Out!

  • On April 4, 2012 he Fermi spacecraft almost ended it\’s mission to map the highest-energy light in the universe because of a collision with a dead Cold-War spy satellite
  • What Happened?
  • An automatically generated report arrived from NASA\’s Robotic Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) team based at NASA\’s Goddard Space Flight Center was sent to the FERMI team just one week away from an unusually close encounter with Cosmos 1805, a defunct spy satellite dating back to the Cold War.
  • The two objects, speeding around Earth at thousands of miles an hour in nearly perpendicular orbits, were expected to miss each other by a mere 700 feet
  • An update days later indicated the satellites would occupy the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of each other
  • Using thrusters for use at the end of Fermi\’s operating life designed to take it out of orbit and allow it burn up in the atmosphere they were able to adjust the orbit just slightly enough to evade a collision
  • The U.S. Space Surveillance Network continues to keep tabs on every artificial object larger than 4 inches across in Earth orbit. Of the 17,000 objects currently tracked, only about 7 percent are active satellites
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube | Near Miss – Dead Russian Spy Satellite Forces NASA Probe Move | VideoFromSpace
  • YouTube | Animation of Earth with Near-Earth Orbital Debris [HD] | TheMarsUnderground
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars One
  • Private Mars Colony Won\’t Seek Martian Life | Mars One | Space.com

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

New Atlantis Exhibit Prep

  • The Space shuttle Atlantis is set to go on public display June 29 at NASA\’s Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida
  • Shuttle Reveal
  • It was revealed Friday, April 26 after workers spent two days peeling off its protective shrink-wrap cover of the past five months.
  • Workers began carefully cutting back the 16,000 square feet (1,486 square meters) of shrink wrap that protected Atlantis as its $100 million exhibition building was completed around it
  • By the end of the first day, the shuttle\’s nose, tail, aft engines and left wing were exposed, the workers completed the process the next day, revealing Atlantis\’ right wing and its 60-foot-long (18 meter) payload bay
  • Opening the payload bay is set to begin in May, will take about two weeks, as the doors are very slowly hoisted open, one by one.
  • Atlantis has been mounted. Thirty feet (9 meters) in the air, the space shuttle has been tilted 43.21 degrees, such that its left wing extends toward the ground.
  • Atlantis will appear to be back in space – an effect that will be enhanced by lighting and a mural-size digital screen that will project the Earth\’s horizon behind the shuttle
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Clip | Uncovering the Nose
  • YouTube Clip | Uncovering a Wing
  • YouTube Clip | Peeling Back the Layers
  • YouTube | Shuttle Atlantis Unwrapped & Revealed at Kennedy Visitor Center | SpaceVidsNet
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Atlantis Exposed: Space Shuttle Fully Unwrapped for NASA Exhibit | Kennedy Space Center | Space.com

SpaceShipTwo

Opportunity Rover Back Fron Glitch

  • Mars rover Opportunity has overcome a glitch that put the robot into standby mode late last month
  • What Happened?
  • Opportunity apparently put itself into standby auto mode, in which it maintains power balance but waits for instructions from the ground, on April 22, after sensing a problem during a routine camera check, mission officials said.
  • The rover\’s handlers didn\’t notice the problem until April 27, when Opportunity got back in touch after a nearly three-week communications moratorium
  • They then prepared a new set of commands on April 29 designed to get things back to normal, and the fix has apparently worked
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Mars Rover Opportunity Back in Action After Glitch | Mars Solar Conjunction | Space.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • May 01, 1958 : 55 years ago : Van Allen radiation belts : The discovery of the powerful Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth was published in the Washington Evening Star. The article covered the report made by their discoverer James. A. Van Allen to the joint symposium of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society in Washington DC. He used data from the Explorer I and Pioneer III space probes of the earth\’s magnetosphere region to reveal the existence of the radiation belts – concentrations of electrically charged particles. Van Allen (born 7 Sep 1914) was also featured on the cover of the 4 May 1959 Time magazine for this discovery. He was the principal investigator on 23 other space probes

Looking up this week

The post Habitable Exoplanets & Diabetes | SciByte 92 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Exoplanet & Bee Venom | SciByte 86 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/33896/exoplanet-bee-venom-scibyte-86/ Tue, 19 Mar 2013 20:47:03 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=33896 We take a look at an exoplanets atmosphere, HIV killing bee venom, ancient sundials, viewer feedback, and much more!

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We take a look at an exoplanets atmosphere, HIV killing bee venom, ancient sundials, viewer feedback, spacecraft updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes:

Exoplanet Atmosphere

  • A team led by an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, has found hints of ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide and acetylene in an exo-planets’ atmosphere in the sharpest spectrum ever obtained of an extrasolar planet
  • Searching for Exoplanets
  • In the past, astronomers inferred the existence of exoplanets and their gases by looking for subtle changes in the light streaming from the planet’s star
  • Now, with improved instruments, a team has detected light coming directly from a planet light-years away
  • The data have high enough resolution to reveal not only the presence but the abundance of carbon monoxide and water in the planet’s atmosphere
  • Such information could shed light on how the planet formed
  • Studies could also reveal the presence of life on a distant planet, but this planet’s size and orbit have already ruled it out as a habitable world
  • The System
  • In 2008 the first image of a multi planet system outside the solar system, showing three gas giants orbiting the star HR 8799
  • The results suggest the HR 8799 system is like a scaled-up Solar System
  • HR 8799 is about 130 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Pegasus
  • The planets are scorching hot, making them bright enough for astronomers to detect directly
  • In 2010, the researchers imaged a fourth planet around HR 8799, a new study focused on one of these planets, HR 8799c.
  • HR 8799c
  • Five to 10 times as massive as Jupiter, HR 8799c sits about eight times farther away from its star than Jupiter does from the sun
  • Because of that great distance, the astronomers could block the star’s light and record infrared light
  • Even with water present on this world, it is incredibly hostile to life
  • Like Jupiter, it has no solid surface, and it has a temperature of more than a thousand degree
  • The Studies
  • Because different gases absorb and emit light in distinct ways, the team could identify carbon monoxide and water but found no methane, which scientists had thought might be present.
  • In another new study researchers simultaneously collected infrared light from the atmospheres of all four planets
  • The chemistry of each planet varies different from anything in our own solar system
  • Although the teams looked at different wavelengths of light, which pick up different types of molecules, the two studies appear consistent
  • By peering at just one planet, one team obtained more detailed data that allowed the researchers to get a sense of how much carbon and oxygen is in HR 8799c’s atmosphere
  • Knowing the ratio of carbon to oxygen in the atmosphere may reveal how the planet formed
  • Planetary Formation Theories
  • Astronomers have two competing theories of how planets arise from the disk of gas and dust encircling a young star
  • In the gravitational instability model, some of the gas and dust suddenly clumps and collapses, simultaneously creating a planet’s core and atmosphere
  • In this scenario, the chemical composition of a planet should match that of its star
  • In the other model, known as core accretion, planets are built in two-steps
  • First, material from the disk accumulates into a core, later the core captures gases swirling in the disk to form an atmosphere.
  • In this case, the carbon-to-oxygen ratio of the planet may differ from the star because the accretion of cores may deplete the disk of certain elements
  • What This Planet\’s Data Tells Us
  • Compared with its star, HR 8799c appears to have slightly more carbon relative to oxygen, suggesting the planet originated via core accretion
  • It is surmises that when the disk around HR 8799 formed, water froze into particles of ice, the bits of ice then collided to form the planet’s core, leaving behind little water vapor, and therefore less oxygen, when the planet accumulated its atmosphere later on
  • Other researchers are not convinced by this conclusion saying “We don’t really understand planetary formation enough to make a strong case either way,”
  • The Future
  • Either Way the data from both new studies may help astronomers refine their simulations of planetary formation
  • Not that astronomers have directly imaged planets around three distant stars researchers are poised to capture light from many more planets
  • Project 1640, is looking for Jupiter-sized planets around some 200 stars
  • “Ultimately, with better instruments, people will be able to use these methods on Earthlike planets.”
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Remote Reconnaissance of Another Solar System | AMNHorg
  • Video Clip Nearby Stars with planets| AMNHorg
  • Video Clip HR 8799 System| AMNHorg
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Exoplanet Atmospheres Provide Clues to Solar System Formation | UniverseToday.com
  • Distant planets\’ atmospheres revealed | Atom & Cosmos | ScienceNews.org

— NEWS BYTE —

Bees Against HIV

  • Nanoparticles carrying a toxin found in bee venom can destroy human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) while leaving surrounding cells unharmed
  • What it Does
  • Bee venom contains a potent toxin called melittin that can poke holes in the protective envelope that surrounds HIV, and other viruses
  • The new study shows that melittin loaded onto these nanoparticles does not harm normal cells, because added protective bumpers to the nanoparticle surface
  • When the nanoparticles come into contact with normal cells, which are much larger in size, the particles simply bounce off
  • HIV, on the other hand, is even smaller than the nanoparticle, so HIV fits between the bumpers and makes contact with the surface of the nanoparticle, where the bee toxin awaits
  • The advantage of this approach is that the nanoparticle attacks an essential part of the virus\’ structure. In contrast, most anti-HIV drugs inhibit the virus\’s ability to replicate.
  • Drawbacks
  • This anti-replication strategy does nothing to stop initial infection, and some strains of the virus have found ways around these drugs and reproduce anyway.
  • Where it does work, because it attacks the inherent physical property of HIV, theoretically, there isn\’t any way for the virus to adapt to this treatment
  • The potential for using nanoparticles with melittin as therapy for existing HIV infections, especially those that are drug-resistant
  • Other Uses
  • The hope is that in places where HIV is running rampant, people could use this gel as a preventive measure to stop the initial infection
  • Since melittin attacks double-layered membranes indiscriminately, this concept is not limited to HIV.
  • Many viruses, including hepatitis B and C, rely on the same kind of protective envelope and would be vulnerable to melittin-loaded nanoparticles
  • In addition to antiviral therapy, the paper\’s senior author has shown melittin-loaded nanoparticles to be effective in killing tumor cells.
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Nanoparticles loaded with bee venom kill HIV | MedicalXPress.com

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Worlds Oldest Egyptian Sundials

  • Telling Time in Ancient Egypt
  • During archaeological excavations in the Kings\’ Valley in Upper Egypt a team of researchers found one of the world\’s oldest ancient Egyptian sundials
  • During this year\’s excavations the researchers found a flattened piece of limestone (so-called Ostracon) on which a semicircle in black color had been drawn
  • The semicircle is divided into twelve sections of about 15 degrees each.
  • A dent in the middle of the approximately 16 centimeter long horizontal baseline served to insert a wooden or metal bolt that would cast a shadow to show the hours of the day
  • Small dots in the middle of each section were used for even more detailed time measuring
  • It was found in an area of stone huts that were used in the 13th century BC to house the men working at the construction of the graves, possibly used to measure their work hours
  • The division of the sun path into hours also played a crucial role in the so-called netherworld guides that were drawn onto the walls of the royal tombs
  • These guides are illustrated texts that chronologically describe the nightly progression of the sun-god through the underworld.
  • The sundial could also have served to further visualize this phenomenon.
  • Multimedia
  • Image Ancients Egyptian sun dial | Phys.org | Credit: University of Basel
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • One of the world\’s oldest sun dial dug up in Kings\’ Valley | Phys.org

— VIEWER FEEDBACK —

ESTCube

  • Karl Sakrits
  • Estonia is sending up their first satellite, a CubeSat, made by University students to test the electric solar wind sail
  • CubeSat
  • The CubeSat standard for nanosatellites was followed during the engineering of ESTCube-1,
  • The CubeSat standard has three different sizes corresponding to size 1U, 2U and 3U. Base side lengths are the same but height is 2 to 3 times bigger than 1U CubeSats
  • Mass is also set in CubeSat standard, the highest possible mass for 1U CubeSat is 1300 grams, 2U CubeSat 2600 grams and 3U CubeSat 4000 grams
  • CubeSat base side length must be 100.0 +/- 0.1 millimeters and satellite height must be 113.5±0.1 mm
  • Purpose
  • Although its main purpose was to educate students, the satellite does have a scientific purpose.
  • On board of the satellite is an electric solar wind sail (e-sail) which was created by a Finnish scientist Pekka Janhunen, which will be the first real experimentation of the e-sail
  • Subsystems
  • ADCS – attitude determination and control system, determines and modifies satellite\’s alignment
  • CAM – onboard camera for taking pictures of the Earth and the unreeled tether
  • CDHS – command and data handling system, the satellite\’s main onboard computer
  • COM – communications system for up- and downlinks
  • EPS – electrical power system, provides electrical power for the satellite
  • PL – payload, the satellite\’s experiment module, that contains the tether and everything else related to the experiment
  • STR – satellite\’s structure
  • Solar Wind Sail
  • 10 meters of e-sail 50 to 20 micrometers thick wire of high-technology structure so-called Heytether will be deployed from the satellite.
  • The deployment of the Heytether can be detected by decrease of the satellite\’s speed of rotation or by a on-board camera
  • To control the loaded solar wind sail elements interaction with the plasma surrounding the earth and the effect it has on the spacecraft spinning speed the spacecraft has two on-board nanotechnologic electron emitters/gun
  • The electron emitters are connected to the e-sail element and by shooting out electrons it loads the e-sail element positively to 500 volts
  • The positive ions in the plasma push the e-sail element and have an influence on the satellites rotation speed
  • The effect of the e-sail is measured by the change in rotation speed
  • The camera is used to take a picture of Earth and the successfully deployed Heytether.
  • Mission
  • ESTCube-1 will be sent to orbit by the European Space Agency\’s rocket Vega in spring of 2013
  • Half an hour after the satellites deployment from the start capsule satellites antennas will be opened and radio transmitter and important subsystems will be switched on
  • The first days or weeks will be used to test the satellite and set it to work on full capacity
  • They will then orient the satellite so the on-board camera will be faced to earth so that they can try to take a picture of Estonia
  • They will rotate the satellite on an axis with a speed of 1 revolution per second
  • The E-sail element will deploy from the satellite by a centrifugal force and will confirm the deployment via the on-board camera
  • Then they will activate the electron emitter and loading the e-sail, measuring the e-sails and Lorentz force by satellites revolutions per second
  • If possible they will use the negatively charged e-sail to take the satellite off orbit and burn it in the earths atmosphere
  • Should everything go perfect the mission could be completed within a few weeks to a month
  • Communication
  • Communicating with the satellite will be held by two International Amateur Radio Unions three registered frequencies [437.250 MHz, 437.505 MHz]
  • The maximum possible connection speed is 19,200 bits per second, only to be used when the satellite has been given a specific order
  • Important satellite parameters will be transmitted every 3 to 5 minutes, and periodic but slow communication can be done on a telegraphic signal
  • A 9600 baud connection speed and AX.25 standard is used, a slower communication frequency which allow a maximum of 25 kiloherz bandwidth, fast connection will only be used when the satellite has been given a specific
  • Software
  • FreeRTOS on the satellite\’s Command and Data Handling System and camera module
    TinyOS on the satellite\’s communication module
  • Financing and costs
  • This option is the cheapest possibility to send a satellite into orbit is offered by European Space Agency
  • Estonia is an associated member of ESA most of the launch expenses (about 70,000 euros) will be covered from Estonian member fee for educational expenses
  • The total expense, with launch cost, for the project are approximately 100,000 euros
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube estcube dissection2 | taavi torim
  • YouTube Packing ESTCube-1 for shipping. Tallinn TV Tower 21.1.2013. | AjattaraQuad
  • ESTCube.eu | Video Library
  • Twitter
  • ESTCube @ESTCube
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • ESTCube.eu

— Updates —

Space Shuttle Atlantis

— SPACECRAFT UPDATE—

SpaceX’s Grasshopper Hops Higher

  • GrassHopper
  • Grasshopper stands 10 stories tall and consists of a Falcon 9 rocket first stage tank, Merlin 1D engine, four steel and aluminum landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure
  • The goal of Grasshopper is to eventually create a reusable first stage for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which would be able to land safely instead of falling back into the ocean and not being usable again
  • On March 7, 2013, the vertical and takeoff and landing (VTVL) vehicle, rose 24 stories, 263 ft / 80m, hovered for approximately 34 seconds and then landed safely, and more accurately than ever before
  • Previous Tests
  • This is Grasshopper’s fourth in a series of test flights, with each test demonstrating exponential increases in altitude
  • September 2012 | Flew to 8.2 ft / 2.5 meters
  • November 2012 | Flew to 17.7 ft / 5.4 meters
  • December 2012 | Flew to 131 ft / 40 meters
  • Multimedia
  • Ring of Fire | spacexchannel
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • SpaceX Grasshopper Takes a Leap Into a \’Ring of Fire\’ | UniverseToday.com

— CURIOSITY UPDATE —

  • Analyzing the Drill Sample
  • Curiosity obtained her first drill sample and passed that sample on to her onboard analytical lab instruments, called CheMin and SAM
  • These powerful instruments can tell about what minerals are present in these rocks and whether they contain the ingredients necessary to sustain life as we know it.
  • When the rover science team combine the data from remote sensing and contact science instruments from CheMin and SAM, we get a picture of an ancient watery environment, which would have been habitable had life been present in it.
  • At that site of Opportunity rover, the sedimentary rocks record evidence of an environment that was only wet on a very intermittent basis, and when it was, the waters that were there were highly acidic, very salty, and not favorable for the survival of organic compounds.
  • CheMin instrument, tells us that the minerals that are present in this lakebed sedimentary rock at John Klein are very different from just about anything we\’ve ever analyzed before on Mars and was deposited in a freshwater environment
  • The SAM instrument is telling us that these rocks contained all of the ingredients necessary for a habitable environment
  • The science team found carbon, sulfur and oxygen, all present and a number of other elements in states that life could have taken advantage of.
  • Image Mosaic
  • The mosaic of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA\’s Mars rover Curiosity shows Mount Sharp in raw color as recorded by the camera.
  • This mosaic was assembled from dozens of images from the 100-millimeter-focal-length telephoto lens camera mounted on the right side of the Mastcam instrument
  • Raw color shows the scene\’s colors as they would look in a typical smart-phone camera photo, before any adjustment.
  • White-balancing helps scientists recognize rock materials based on their experience looking at rocks on Earth
  • White balancing yields an overly blue hue in images that have very little blue information, such as Martian landscapes, because the white balancing tends to overcompensate for the low inherent blue content.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (Mar. 15, 2013) | Rover Hits Paydirt | JPLnews
  • Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
  • Social Media
  • Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
  • Further Reading / In the News

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • March 23, 2001 : 12 years ago : Mir destroyed : The Russian space station, Mir, ended 15 years in orbit by burning up in Earth\’s atmosphere as the way chosen to end its life. Mir, launched in 1986, had far exceeded its original planned five year lifespan. The Russian government decided in Oct 2000 that its poor condition could no longer justify the expense to maintain its use. A docked Progress tanker had been remotely commanded by mission controllers to fire rockets and lower its orbit and cause re-entry into the atmosphere. The debris that did not burn up during reentry fell harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean at the planned target zone between New Zealand and Chile. For safety, airlines had rerouted Pacific flights in anticipation of the event, and ships had been warned earlier

Looking up this week

The post Exoplanet & Bee Venom | SciByte 86 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

]]> Huntington’s & Heart Disease Treatment | SciByte 59 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/23501/huntingtons-heart-disease-treatment-scibyte-59/ Tue, 21 Aug 2012 21:03:55 +0000 https://original.jupiterbroadcasting.net/?p=23501 We take a look at Possible Treatment for Huntington's disease, Heart Disease Treatment, Male Contraceptive, Kennedy Space Center, Curiosity rover, and more!

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We take a look at Possible Treatment for Huntington’s disease, Heart Disease Treatment, Male Contraceptive, pythons, Kennedy Space Center, spacecraft and Curiosity updates and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.

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Show Notes

Possible Treatment for Huntington’s disease



Credit: Flickr/amandabhslater

Credit: Study Using Robotic Microscope Shows How Mutant Huntington’s Disease Protein Affects Neurons

  • A compound already in biomedical laboratories and emergency room supplies seems to interrupt the formation of neurodegenerative protein clumps found in Huntington’s disease
  • Huntington’s disease
  • Huntington’s disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative genetic disorder that affects muscle coordination and leads to cognitive decline and psychiatric problems
  • It occurs when the C-A-G sequence of DNA base pairs repeat too often on the HTT gene
  • The repeated pairs result in an abnormally long version of the huntingtin protein, that therefore folds incorrectly and forms clumps in the brain
  • It usually begins to affect people in their 30s and 40s, causing movement problems and early death
  • No drug is currently available to stop the disease from progressing
  • Methylene blue
  • Methylene blue has many uses in a range of different fields, such as biology and chemistry.
  • At room temperature it appears as a solid, odorless, dark green powder, that yields a blue solution when dissolved in water.
  • It has been mentioned in medical literature as early as 1897 and was used to treat, at one time or another, ailments ranging from malaria to cyanide poisoning
  • It has not yet been formally approved as a therapy for any illnesses.
  • Because of existing knowledge of methylene blue and the fact that it’s not harmful to humans, I would hope that progress toward clinical trials could go relatively quickly," says
  • Test
  • Researchers fed methylene blue mixed with food for a week to Drosophila flies
  • Their brains showed that protein clumps had been reduced by 87 percent compared with a control group
  • In a similar study using mice those given methylene blue underwent several tests to assess mobility
  • At two months of age, the treated mice showed abnormal clasping of their hind claws only 20 percent of the time while the
    untreated counterparts clasped at a 60 percent rate
  • The number of mice used was not sufficient to provide statistically significant results
  • Also the difference in the test quickly dropped off at nine weeks of age
  • Even as a temporary delaying measure this study shows promise because even a delay in Huntington’s symptoms would be very helpful
  • Of Note
  • Methylene blue need more testing in mouse models with safety and efficacy trial before it could be used for humans
  • Follow-up studies are also needed in a more representative mouse model that expresses the full-length Huntingtin protein
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Common Lab Dye Found to Interrupt Formation of Huntington’s Disease Proteins | ScienticicAmerican
  • Methylene Blue Modulates Huntingtin Aggregation Intermediates and Is Protective in Huntington’s Disease Models | NCDI.nlm.nih.gov

— NEWS BYTE —

Heart Disease Treatment

  • Researchers at King’s College London have developed the first artificial functioning blood vessel outside of the body, made from reprogrammed stem cells from human skin
  • Stem Cell Therapy
  • Stem cell therapy to treat heart disease is already being carried out in the clinic using bone marrow cells
  • The long-term effectiveness of stem cells are minimal and some types of stem cells have the potential to become a tumour
  • A new type of partial stem cell developed from fibroblasts (skin cells) can be reprogrammed into vascular cells before going into the body, which have no risk turning into tumours.
  • The process of developing vascular cells from skin cells took two weeks
  • Potential
  • This could have real potential to treat patients with heart disease by either injecting the reprogrammed cells into the leg or heart to restore blood flow
  • It could also be used to graft an artificially developed vessel into the body to replace blocked or damaged vessels
  • Diabetic patients with poor circulation could also benefit by preventing leg amputation
  • The next step
  • The next step is to test this approach in cells from patients with vascular disease
  • The aim is to be able to inject reprogrammed cells into areas of restricted blood flow, or even graft an entirely new blood vessel into a patient to treat serious cardiovascular diseases
  • This is an early study and more research needs to be done into how this approach works in patients
  • The discovery could help lead towards future therapies to repair hearts after they are damaged by a heart attack
  • Possible future regenerative treatment, these cells might also be used in drug screening to find new treatments to tackle inherited diseases
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Pioneering heart disease treatment | MedicalXPress

— TWO-BYTE NEWS —

Male Contraceptive

  • A compound called JQ1, which was originally developed as a cancer therapy, can also cause reversible infertility in male mice without apparent side effects for the rodents or their offspring
  • JQ1
  • JQ1 originally developed as an anticancer agent
  • It was designed to inhibit a protein which helps regulate cell division and is known to be involved in a type of aggressive skin cancer
  • Significance
  • The compound seems to target developing sperm both before and after meiosis
  • After 6 weeks of daily injections of JQ1 the animals’ sperm counts were reduced by nearly 90%. Only 5% of the remaining sperm were able to swim properly, compared with 85% of sperm in control mice.
  • After 3 months of treatment, none of the mice were able to sire offspring
  • JQ1 had no apparent effect on the production of testosterone or other hormones
  • A month or two after treatment stopped, all of the mice were again able to father as many pups as control mice
  • There were no obvious side effects in the mice, and the offspring of the treated animals showed no abnormalities.
  • Of Note
  • The lifespans of mice aren’t sufficient to test the possible long-term effects of drugs that people might want to be able to take for decades
  • Primate experiments, are prohibitively expensive, and funding is scarce
  • Although the compound isn’t ready for testing in healthy men it does offer a promising lead
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • ‘The Pill’ for Men Is Closer to Reality | ScienceMag.org
  • Cancer-Fighting Compound Might Double as Reversible Male Contraceptive | ScientificAmerircan.com

Phobia for snakes? Turn away for a moment

  • A 17.7-foot-long (5.4-meter-long) over 160 pound [72.5kg] Burmese python has been captured in Everglades National Park in Florida
  • To date this is the biggest snake of that species ever found in the southeastern U.S. state,
  • The low down
  • The Everglades is home to a growing population of the invasive Asian pythons, many of which originate from snakes that either escaped into or were dumped into the wild in the 1990s
  • The “monstrous” constrictor will eventually be displayed at the Florida Museum of Natural History,
  • A necropsy on the euthanized python revealed she was carrying 87 eggs, also a state record for the species
  • To biologists those 87 eggs are "just more evidence that they are pretty much established—they’re breeding in the Everglades
  • Of Note
  • Python Patrol, focuses not on eradicating invasive pythons but on stopping the spread of the snake to sensitive areas, such as bird breeding spots
  • It is believed that pythons are going to be part of the native fauna in the next few decades
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Huge Python Caught in Florida Everglades | AssociatedPress
  • Further Reading / In the News
    +Biggest Burmese Python Found in Florida—17.7 Feet, 87 Eggs | NationalGeographic.com

Digital Vacation to Kennedy Space Center

  • Among the images
  • The space shuttle launch pad
  • Vehicle Assembly Building
  • Launch Firing Room #4
  • Gaze down from the top of the enormous launch pad,
  • Peer up at the towering ceiling of the Vehicle Assembly Building (taller than the Statue of Liberty)
  • Get up close to one of the space shuttle’s main engines, which is powerful enough to generate 400,000 lbs of thrust.
  • Even though they recently entered retirement, you can still get an up-close, immersive experience with two of the Space Shuttle Orbiters—the Atlantis and Endeavour —with Street View.
  • Multimedia
  • Kennedy space center ‘Google Street View’
  • YouTube Explore Kennedy Space Center with Street View | Google
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • Kennedy space center ‘Google Street View’

Hover Technology!?

– SPACECRAFT UPDATE –

X–51A WaveRider hypersonic scramjet woes




Credit: theworacle | Credit: PWRocketdyne

  • Scramjet
  • Scramjet (short for “supersonic combustion ramjet”) is an air-breathing engine, where intake air blows through its combustion chamber at supersonic speeds
  • The engine has no moving parts and the only oxygen needed by the engine to combust is taken from the atmosphere passing through the vehicle, instead of from a tank onboard
  • Some designers have predicted it could reach speeds of anywhere from Mach 12 to Mach 24.
  • Mach 24 is more than 18,000 miles per hour [29,000 km/hour]
  • X–51 Waverider
  • The X–51 Waverider program is a cooperative effort of the Air Force, DARPA, NASA, Boeing and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
  • In May 2010, the first test of the vehicle had sort of a “successful” flight of 200 seconds of autonomous flight while another test in 2011 failed
  • The craft was carried to about 15,240 meters (50,000 ft.) by a B–52 from Edwards Air Force Base in California then dropped over the Pacific Ocean
  • The August 15th Test
  • The August 15 flight of the X–51A Waverider scramjet ended abruptly after the experimental aircraft suffered a control failure and broke apart
  • The team was hoping that the latest test would have the hit Mach 6
  • A faulty control fin prevented it from starting its unique “airbreathing” scramjet engine caused the craft to break apart about 15 seconds after it was launched
  • Of Note
  • Should this be successful enough it could eventually be used for more efficient transport of payloads into orbit
  • This could cut an 18-hour trip to Tokyo from New York City to less than 2 hours.
  • Multimedia
  • YouTube Scramjet Engine Operation | PWRocketdyne
  • YouTube X–51A WaveRider hypersonic scramjet testbed | theworacle
  • Further Reading / In the News
  • X–51 Waverider ‘Scramjet’ Test Flight Fails | UniverseToday.com

Voyager II

  • Voyager 2 spacecraft celebrated its 35th birthday Monday (Aug. 20) in a milestone for NASA’s longest-running mission ever
  • The previous record of 12,758 days of operation was set by the Pioneer 6 probe, which launched on Dec. 16, 1965, and sent its last signal home on Dec. 8, 2000
  • Voyager 2 launched in 1977 just 16 days before Voyager 1 and are now about to cross into interstellar space. Voyager 1 is due to cross first
  • 35-Year-Old Voyager 2 Probe Is NASA’s Longest Mission Ever | Space.com

New Mars lander approved

  • NASA’s next low-budget planetary mission, called InSight, will attempt to determine whether Mars’ core is liquid or solid
  • The lander will carry four instruments, which will determine Mars’ rotation axis and measure the seismic waves and heat flowing through and from the planet’s interior
  • The craft will also sport a robotic arm and two cameras
  • NASA Unveils New Mars Mission to Probe Red Planet’s Core | Space.com

– CURIOSITY UPDATE –



Credit: JPLnews

SCIENCE CALENDAR

Looking back

  • August 24, 2006 : 6 years ago : Minor planet Pluto : Pluto was declassified as a planet by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) following a vote at their 10-day General Assembly in Prague. It was given status instead as a “dwarf planet,” on account of its small size—smaller than the Moon—and highly elliptical, tilted orbit which overlaps with that of Neptune. However, only 424 of 2,700 astronomers who remained in Prague for the last day of the meeting took part. Those who voted were about only 4% of the world’s 10,000 astronomers. The decision was criticized, and a petition was started. The vote established other dwarf planets: Ceres (a small body between Mars and Jupiter) and 2003 UB313 (a small body beyond Pluto, where dozens more potential dwarf planets exist).

Looking up this week

The post Huntington’s & Heart Disease Treatment | SciByte 59 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

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