Nov 19 2009
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(New page: NASA astronauts Michael J. Foreman and Robert L. Satcher Jr. undertook the first spacewalk of STS-129. They installed a replacement communications antenna on the ISS’s ce...)
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NASA astronauts Michael J. Foreman and Robert L. Satcher Jr. undertook the first spacewalk of STS-129. They installed a replacement communications antenna on the ISS’s central truss, connected cables and a handrail, and lubricated the wire snares of two devices that grab and move cargo. Because preliminary checks of tiles and panels covering the Shuttle’s wings, nose cap, and underside did not show any signs of serious damage from launch, NASA considered a more detailed inspection unnecessary. Finding themselves 2 hours ahead of schedule, Foreman and Satcher also released a cargo platform—a task that NASA had designated for the second spacewalk. The spacewalk lasted a few minutes longer than its scheduled 6 hours and 30 minutes.
Marcia Dunn for Associated Press, “Astronauts Get Extra Work Done in 1st Spacewalk,” 20 November 2009; James Dean, “Astronauts Finish First Spacewalk,” Florida Today (Brevard, FL), 20 November 2009.
NASA’s GSFC announced that NASA’s STEREO mission had confirmed the existence of the so-called solar tsunami, a controversial phenomenon that the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission had first observed in 1997. In May of that year, the SOHO craft had recorded a tsunami-type wave rippling away from a CME blast site on an active region of the solar surface. At that time, scientists wondered whether the phenomenon had been an actual wave or a shadow of the CME. SOHO’s single point of view was insufficient to provide an answer to that question. However, in February 2009, the twin craft of the STEREO mission had recorded a wave from two positions, separated by 90 degrees, when sunspot 11012 suddenly erupted, giving researchers an unprecedented view of the event. The technical name for a solar-tsunami wave is “fast-mode magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) wave.” STEREO had captured a solar-tsunami wave climbing 100,000 kilometers high (62,137 miles high), racing outward at 250 kilometers per second (155.34 miles per second)—560,000 miles per hour (901,233 kilometers per hour) — and generating energy equivalent to 2.4 million megatons of TNT. Joseph B. Gurman of the Solar Physics Laboratory at NASA’s GSFC explained that, although solar tsunamis pose no direct threat to Earth, they help scientists diagnose conditions on the Sun and forecast of space weather more accurately.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, “Mystery of the Solar Tsunami—Solved,” GSFC news release, 19 November 2009, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/STEREO/news/solar_tsunami.html (accessed 21 December 2011); Space.com, “Solar Tsunamis Are Real, NASA Says,” 25 November 2009, http://www.space.com/7602-solartsunamis-real-nasa.html (accessed 21 December 2011).
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