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By NASA
2 Min Read Students Become FjordPhyto Volunteers and Discover that Antarctica Is Much Colder Than Texas
Texas A&M sent 31 students to the Antarctic this year—and they did some vital NASA science while they were there.
Meteorology students, oceanography students and education psychology students worked with Dr. Chrissy Wiederwohl to collect data for NASA’s FjordPhyto project. The data reveal how meltwater from glaciers affects phytoplankton, the base of the Antarctic food chain.
“We were actually collecting samples for them to look at these phytoplankton communities and how they are changing over time,” said Dr. Wiederwohl, an oceanographer at Texas A&M University. “Phytoplankton are these tiny microscopic plants in the ocean that photosynthesize and produce about half of our oxygen worldwide. So every other breath we take is actually oxygen coming from the ocean.”
Korina Zhang and Adam Neuville collecting data for NASA’s FjordPhyto project. They are students with Texas A&M’s American Universities International Program in Antarctica. Credit: Dr Chrissy Wiederwhol, Texas A&M FjordPhyto has also recently involved students from Penn State University and Virginia Tech.
The students spent sixty days in a research vessel through the American Universities International Program (AUIP) limited study abroad program. The effort was coordinated with the FjordPhyto team at Scripps Institution of Oceaongraphy and Isidro Bosch of State University of New York in Geneseo, New York.
Going to Antarctica? You can join the FjordPhyto project, too.
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Last Updated Mar 07, 2024 Related Terms
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The Kepler mission enabled the discovery of thousands of exoplanets, revealing a deep truth about our place in the cosmos: there are more planets than stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The road to this fundamental change in our understanding of the universe, however, required almost 20 years of persistence before the mission became a reality with its selection in 2001.
The Kepler spacecraft at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado. The Kepler mission surveyed a region of the Milky Way galaxy, discovering the first Earth-size exoplanets and determining that there are more planets than stars in our galaxy.NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ball Astronomers had assumed, but still had not confirmed, the existence of exoplanets when the mission concept that would become Kepler was first suggested in 1983. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the first confirmations of planets orbiting stars outside of our solar system were made, most of them gas giants orbiting close to their host star, not at all similar to what we know from our own solar system.
When Kepler launched in 2009, fewer than 400 exoplanets had been discovered. Today, there are more than 5,500 confirmed exoplanets and over half of them were discovered from Kepler data. Many of these confirmed exoplanets reside in the so-called “habitable zone” of their star, making them prime candidates for future observations to uncover more of the universe’s mysteries, including the potential for life.
The Kepler mission was designed to address the questions “How prevalent are other worlds?” and “How unique is our solar system?” Even if Kepler had found the opposite—that exoplanets were rare—Kepler still would have been an historic mission since the question it addressed was so scientifically profound.
This image shows the Kepler telescope’s “first light”—a full field of view of an expansive star-rich patch of sky in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra stretching across 100 square degrees. The 42 individual rectangles are due to the charge-coupled devices (CCDs) with a total of 95 megapixels.NASA/J.Jenkins Earlier versions of the mission proposal had been rejected four times beginning in 1992. Back then, the mission was known as the FRequency of Earth-Sized Inner Planets (FRESIP). After its second rejection in 1994, team members David Koch, Jill Tarter, and Carl Sagan, suggested the name change from FRESIP to Kepler.
One of the technical changes made to the 1994 proposal before the 1996 submission included changing the orbit from the Lagrange L2 point to a heliocentric orbit. This allowed Kepler to use reaction wheels for pointing the spacecraft, which reduced the thruster fuel consumption and saved on cost.
This wasn’t enough to convince NASA. To address concerns about the mission as proposed, two major demonstrations, one each after the 1996 and 1998 rejections, followed. The demonstrations reduced the risk that gave some reviewers pause and provided the Kepler team the opportunity to refine their operations.
Kepler team member Jeff Van Cleve in the Precision Photometry Lab at Ames Research Center in February 2007. The apparatus behind him is the Kepler Testbed Facility, a system mock-up that provided a key demonstration of Kepler’s capability.NASA/Ames The first demonstration showed that the continuous, automatic monitoring of thousands of stars was possible. For that demonstration, an instrument called the Vulcan photometer was installed at Lick Observatory in California, which radioed its data to NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley for automated analysis. The second demonstration (following the 1998 rejection) was the construction of the Kepler Testbed Facility.
The testbed proved that existing charge-coupled device (CCD) technology no different from a consumer digital camera could achieve the precision necessary to detect Earth-size planets in the midst of the various kinds of noise expected in the whole system, from vibrations to image motion to cosmic ray strikes. The Kepler team at Ames built an intricate simulated sky and Ball Aerospace, the industry partner throughout the many years of proposals and the mission itself, built the numerical simulator for the demonstration. The testbed from the laboratory at Ames is now on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
The 42 CCDs of the Kepler focal plane are approximately one square foot in size. There are four fine guidance modules in the corners of the focal plane that are much smaller CCDs compared to the 42 CCDs used for science. Those smaller CCDs were used to track Kepler’s position and relay that information to its guidance system to keep the spacecraft accurately pointed. NASA/Kepler mission These demonstrations finally put the remaining concerns to rest. In 2001, Kepler was selected more than 17 years after its principal investigator, William Borucki, had written a paper that considered a space-based photometer for detecting Earth-size planets with his colleague Audrey Summers of the Theoretical and Planetary Studies Branch in the Space Science Division at Ames.
In the eight years between selection and launch on March 6, 2009, the mission responded to a number of challenges and changes that were largely beyond the team’s control, such as NASA instituting a policy that required either NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to manage planetary missions, changes in accounting requirements, and increasing launch costs. Those pieces of Kepler’s story are told in detail in the latest book from the NASA History Office, NASA’s Discovery Program: The First Twenty Years of Competitive Planetary Exploration.
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Last Updated Mar 05, 2024 Related Terms
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What’s Made in a Thunderstorm and Faster Than Lightning? Gamma Rays!
A flash of lightning. A roll of thunder. These are normal stormy sights and sounds. But sometimes, up above the clouds, stranger things happen. Our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has spotted bursts of gamma rays – some of the highest-energy forms of light in the universe – coming from thunderstorms. Gamma rays are usually found coming from objects with crazy extreme physics like neutron stars and black holes. So why is Fermi seeing them come from thunderstorms?
About a thousand times a day, thunderstorms fire off fleeting bursts of some of the highest-energy light naturally found on Earth. These events, called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, last less than a millisecond and produce gamma rays with tens of millions of times the energy of visible light. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Thunderstorms form when warm, damp air near the ground starts to rise and encounters colder air. As the warm air rises, moisture condenses into water droplets. The upward-moving water droplets bump into downward-moving ice crystals, stripping off electrons and creating a static charge in the cloud.
Updrafts and downdrafts within thunderstorms force rain, snow and ice to collide and acquire an electrical charge, which can cause lightning. Under just the right conditions, the fast-moving electrons can create a terrestrial gamma-ray flash. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center The top of the storm becomes positively charged, and the bottom becomes negatively charged, like two ends of a battery. Eventually the opposite charges build enough to overcome the insulating properties of the surrounding air – and zap! You get lightning.
This illustration shows electrons accelerating upwards from a thunderhead. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientists suspect that lightning reconfigures the cloud’s electrical field. In some cases, this allows electrons to rush toward the upper part of the storm at nearly the speed of light. That makes thunderstorms the most powerful natural particle accelerators on Earth!
Interactions with matter can produce gamma rays and vice versa, as shown here in this illustration. High-energy electrons traveling close to the speed of light can be deflected by passing near an atom or molecule, producing a gamma ray. And a gamma ray passing through the electron shell of an atom transforms into two particles: an electron and a positron. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center When those electrons run into air molecules, they emit a terrestrial gamma-ray flash, which means that thunderstorms are creating some of the highest energy forms of light in the universe. But that’s not all – thunderstorms can also produce antimatter! Yep, you read that correctly! Sometimes, a gamma ray will run into an atom and produce an electron and a positron, which is an electron’s antimatter opposite!
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, illustrated here, scans the entire sky every three hours as it orbits Earth. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab Fermi can spot terrestrial gamma-ray flashes within 500 miles (800 kilometers) of the location directly below the spacecraft. It does this using an instrument called the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor which is primarily used to watch for spectacular flashes of gamma rays coming from the universe.
Visualization of ten years of Fermi observations of terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center There are an estimated 1,800 thunderstorms occurring on Earth at any given moment. Over its first 10 years in space, Fermi spotted about 5,000 terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. But scientists estimate that there are 1,000 of these flashes every day – we’re just seeing the ones that are within 500 miles of Fermi’s regular orbits, which don’t cover the U.S. or Europe.
The map above shows all the flashes Fermi saw between 2008 and 2018. (Notice there’s a blob missing over the lower part of South America. That’s the South Atlantic Anomaly, a portion of the sky where radiation affects spacecraft and causes data glitches.)
Storm clouds produce some of the highest-energy light naturally made on Earth: terrestrial gamma-ray flashes. The tropical disturbance that would later become Hurricane Julio in 2014 produced four flashes within 100 minutes, with a fifth the next day. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Fermi has also spotted terrestrial gamma-ray flashes coming from individual tropical weather systems. In 2014 Tropical Storm Julio produced four flashes in just 100 minutes!
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Last Updated Feb 05, 2024 Related Terms
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How is the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse Different than the 2017 Eclipse?
On April 8, the Moon’s shadow will sweep across the United States, as millions will view a total solar eclipse. For many, preparing for this event brings memories of the magnificent total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017.
The total solar eclipse on Aug. 21, 2017, was photographed from Madras, Oregon. The black circle in the middle is the Moon. Surrounding it are white streams of light belonging to the Sun’s outer atmosphere, called the corona. NASA/Aubrey Gemignani In 2017, an estimated 215 million U.S. adults (88% of U.S. adults) viewed the solar eclipse, either directly or electronically. They experienced the Moon pass in front of the Sun, blocking part or all of our closest star’s bright face. The eclipse in 2024 could be even more exciting due to differences in the path, timing, and scientific research.
Wider, More Populated Path
The path of totality – where viewers can see the Moon totally block the Sun, revealing the star’s outer atmosphere, called the corona – is much wider during the upcoming total solar eclipse than it was during the eclipse in 2017. As the Moon orbits Earth, its distance from our planet varies. During the 2017 total solar eclipse, the Moon was a little bit farther away from Earth than it will be during upcoming total solar eclipse, causing the path of that eclipse to be a little skinnier. In 2017, the path ranged from about 62 to 71 miles wide. During the April eclipse, the path over North America will range between 108 and 122 miles wide – meaning at any given moment, this eclipse covers more ground.
The 2024 eclipse path will also pass over more cities and densely populated areas than the 2017 path did. This will make it easier for more people to see totality. An estimated 31.6 million people live in the path of totality this year, compared to 12 million in 2017. An additional 150 million people live within 200 miles of the path of totality.
This map shows the path of the 2017 total solar eclipse, crossing from Oregon to South Carolina, and the 2024 total solar eclipse, crossing from Mexico into Texas, up to Maine, and exiting over Canada. To see a map showing which areas will experience the partial solar eclipse and which areas will experience the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, click the arrows.
Ernest Wright/NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio This map illustrates the paths of the Moon’s shadow across the U.S. during the 2024 total solar eclipse. On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will cross North and Central America creating a path of totality. During a total solar eclipse, the Moon completely blocks the Sun while it passes between the Sun and Earth. The sky will darken as if it were dawn or dusk and those standing in the path of totality may see the Sun’s outer atmosphere (the corona) if weather permits. To see a map comparing the 2024 eclipse and the 2017 eclipse paths, click the arrows.
NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio/Michala Garrison; Eclipse Calculations By Ernie Wright, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
You don’t need to live within the path of totality to see the eclipse – in April, 99% of people who reside in the United States will be able to see the partial or total eclipse from where they live. Every contiguous U.S. state, plus parts of Alaska and Hawaii, will experience at least a partial solar eclipse.
Longer Time in Totality
In April, totality will last longer than it did in 2017. Seven years ago, the longest period of totality was experienced near Carbondale, Illinois, at 2 minutes, 42 seconds.
For the upcoming eclipse, totality will last up to 4 minutes, 28 seconds, in an area about 25 minutes northwest of Torreón, Mexico. As the eclipse enters Texas, totality will last about 4 minutes, 26 seconds at the center of the eclipse’s path. Durations longer than 4 minutes stretch as far north as Economy, Indiana. Even as the eclipse exits the U.S. and enters Canada, the eclipse will last up to 3 minutes, 21 seconds.
During any total solar eclipse, totality lasts the longest near the center of the path, widthwise, and decreases toward the edge. But those seeking totality shouldn’t worry that they need to be exactly at the center. The time in totality falls off pretty slowly until you get close to the edge.
Heightened Solar Activity
NASA/ESA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured this video of a coronal mass ejection on March 13, 2023. NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
Every 11 years or so, the Sun’s magnetic field flips, causing a cycle of increasing then decreasing solar activity. During solar minimum, there are fewer giant eruptions from the Sun, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. But during solar maximum, the Sun becomes more active.
In 2017, the Sun was nearing solar minimum. Viewers of the total eclipse could see the breathtaking corona – but since the Sun was quiet, streamers flowing into the solar atmosphere were restricted to just the equatorial regions of the star. The Sun is more magnetically symmetrical during solar minimum, causing this simpler appearance. During the 2024 eclipse, the Sun will be in or near solar maximum, when the magnetic field is more like a tangled hairball. Streamers will likely be visible throughout the corona. In addition to that, viewers will have a better chance to see prominences – which appear as bright, pink curls or loops coming off the Sun.
With lucky timing, there could even be a chance to see a coronal mass ejection – a large eruption of solar material – during the eclipse.
Expanded Scientific Research
The third rocket launched on Oct. 14, 2023, during the annular solar eclipse leaves the launch pad. WSMR Army Photo During the total eclipse in 2024, NASA is funding several research initiatives that build on research done during the 2017 eclipse. The projects, which are led by researchers at different academic institutions, will study the Sun and its influence on Earth with a variety of instruments, including cameras aboard high-altitude research planes, ham radios, and more. In addition to those projects, instruments that were launched during the 2023 annular solar eclipse on three sounding rockets will again be launched during the upcoming total solar eclipse.
Two spacecraft designed to study the Sun’s corona – NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA’s Solar Orbiter – have also launched since the 2017 solar eclipse. These missions will provide insights from the corona itself, while viewers on Earth see it with their own eyes, providing an exciting opportunity to combine and compare viewpoints.
To learn more about the 2024 total solar eclipse and how you can safely watch it, visit NASA’s eclipse website.
By Abbey Interrante
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Special thanks to Michael Zeiler for his calculations on the populations in the eclipse path.
The 2017 total solar eclipse viewing analysis was conducted by Professor Jon D. Miller of the University of Michigan. This study was supported by a collaborative agreement between the University of Michigan and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (award NNX16AC66A).
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