Oct 27 2014
From The Space Library
MEDIA ADVISORY M14-179 NASA Administrator to Visit Marshall Space Flight Center; Talks Space Station Oct. 28
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will get a behind-the-scenes look at the science command post for the International Space Station when he visits NASA's Payload Operations Integration Center at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Oct. 28.
Journalists are invited to participate in the tour and media availability with Bolden at 11 a.m. CDT. Bolden will call space station Expedition 41 Flight Engineer Barry E. "Butch" Wilmore, who currently is living and working on the orbiting laboratory, at 11:30 a.m. from the control center. The phone call will be carried live on NASA Television.
The Marshall Payload Operations Integration Center allows researchers around the world to perform cutting-edge science in space by providing communications between investigators and the astronauts in orbit. Bolden also will chat with the expert payload operations team, which has helped conduct more than 1,500 science investigations and student experiments from 82 countries.
Media interested in attending must contact Jennifer Stanfield in Marshall's Public and Employee Communications Office at 256-544-0034 no later than 3 p.m. Monday, Oct. 27. Media must report to the Redstone Arsenal Joint Visitor Control Center at Gate 9, Interstate 565 interchange at Rideout Road/Research Park Boulevard by 10 a.m. on Oct. 28. Vehicles are subject to a security search at the gate. Media will need two photo identifications and proof of car insurance.
RELEASE 14-296 NASA’S Chandra Observatory Identifies Impact of Cosmic Chaos on Star Birth
The same phenomenon that causes a bumpy airplane ride, turbulence, may be the solution to a long-standing mystery about stars’ birth, or the absence of it, according to a new study using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe, held together by gravity. These behemoths contain hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies that are immersed in gas with temperatures of millions of degrees.
This hot gas, which is the heftiest component of the galaxy clusters aside from unseen dark matter, glows brightly in X-ray light detected by Chandra. Over time, the gas in the centers of these clusters should cool enough that stars form at prodigious rates. However, this is not what astronomers have observed in many galaxy clusters.
“We knew that somehow the gas in clusters is being heated to prevent it cooling and forming stars. The question was exactly how,” said Irina Zhuravleva of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who led the study that appears in the latest online issue of the journal Nature. “We think we may have found evidence that the heat is channeled from turbulent motions, which we identify from signatures recorded in X-ray images.”
Prior studies show supermassive black holes, centered in large galaxies in the middle of galaxy clusters, pump vast quantities of energy around them in powerful jets of energetic particles that create cavities in the hot gas. Chandra, and other X-ray telescopes, have detected these giant cavities before.
The latest research by Zhuravleva and her colleagues provides new insight into how energy can be transferred from these cavities to the surrounding gas. The interaction of the cavities with the gas may be generating turbulence, or chaotic motion, which then disperses to keep the gas hot for billions of years.
“Any gas motions from the turbulence will eventually decay, releasing their energy to the gas,” said co-author Eugene Churazov of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Munich, Germany. “But the gas won’t cool if turbulence is strong enough and generated often enough.”
The evidence for turbulence comes from Chandra data on two enormous galaxy clusters named Perseus and Virgo. By analyzing extended observation data of each cluster, the team was able to measure fluctuations in the density of the gas. This information allowed them to estimate the amount of turbulence in the gas.
“Our work gives us an estimate of how much turbulence is generated in these clusters,” said Alexander Schekochihin of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. “From what we’ve determined so far, there’s enough turbulence to balance the cooling of the gas.
These results support the “feedback” model involving supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxy clusters. Gas cools and falls toward the black hole at an accelerating rate, causing the black hole to increase the output of its jets, which produce cavities and drive the turbulence in the gas. This turbulence eventually dissipates and heats the gas. While a merger between two galaxy clusters may also produce turbulence, the researchers think that outbursts from supermassive black holes are the main source of this cosmic commotion in the dense centers of many clusters.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.
MEDIA ADVISORY M14-181 Launch of Third Orbital Sciences Mission to Space Station Rescheduled; NASA TV Coverage Reset
The third Orbital Sciences cargo mission to the International Space Station under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract is scheduled to launch at 6:22 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Oct. 28, from Pad 0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
NASA Television coverage of Tuesday's launch will begin at 5:30 p.m. A post-launch news conference will follow at approximately 8 p.m.
A Monday launch attempt was scrubbed because of a boat down range in the trajectory Orbital’s Antares rocket would have flown had it lifted off.
A Tuesday launch will result in the Cygnus spacecraft arriving at the space station early Sunday, Nov. 2. NASA TV coverage of rendezvous and berthing will begin at 3:30 a.m. with grapple at approximately 4:58 a.m.
CONTRACT RELEASE C14-042 NASA Awards Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Support Contract
NASA has awarded the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Support Contract to Science Systems and Applications, Inc., of Greenbelt, Maryland.
This contract is a cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract with a maximum ordering value of $210 million. The period of performance will be five years from the effective date of December 1, 2014. This competitive follow-on procurement was 100 percent set-aside for small businesses.
The contractor will support satellite remote sensing instrument development as well as field and aircraft instruments and activities for measuring Earth, oceanic, biospheric and atmospheric processes. The work will include scientific and engineering support for the design, development and testing of remote sensors and sensor systems, including mechanical, electronic, optical, laser and electro-optical, and data system engineering.
It also includes software support for the development and testing of space-based instrument systems as well as sensor calibration and on-orbit performance analysis. The work will be performed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.
