On Friday this week, NASA/Goddard filmmakers, writers, and animators will screen what they consider their best work of 2011. It’s called the Best of Goddard Film Festival, and it’s held every year about this time for Goddard employees. (For employees, the festival will run from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm in the Goett Auditorium, Building 3.)
Even if you are “outside the Center” and can’t be here with us, you can still watch and enjoy the entries to the festival that are available on YouTube on the NASA Explorer channel. They’ll run in groups this week on the blog.
Massive Solar Eruption Close-up
Animator:Tom Bridgman (GST)
Video Editor:Scott Wiessinger (USRA)
Producer:Scott Wiessinger (USRA)
Lunar Eclipse Essentials
Animators:Chris Smith (HTSI) Ernie Wright (USRA)
Video Editor:Chris Smith (HTSI)
Narrator:Chris Smith (HTSI)
Producer:Chris Smith (HTSI)
Scientist:Richard Vondrak (NASA/GSFC)
Writer:Chris Smith (HTSI)
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
Steele Hill, NASA Goddard’s salesman of all things solar, just posted his latest weekly release of imagery, courtesy of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Steele creates the still images and video snippets for use in science museums and other public places. Here is his descriptive text for the image and video in this post.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory’s images of this Sun (Dec. 7, 2011) taken at almost the same time in several wavelengths at different temperatures and layers of the Sun. In addition, we superimposed an illustration of the Sun’s magnetic field lines to the view. We start off looking at the 6,000 degrees C. photosphere that shows the various sunspots on the “surface” of the Sun. Then, we transition into the region between the chromosphere and the corona, at about 1 million degrees C. where, in extreme UV light, the active regions appear lighter. We phase in a composite of three different wavelengths showing temperatures up to 2 million degrees C. To top it off, we overlay a science-based estimation of the complex magnetic field lines (partly made visible in the first UV image) extending from and connecting the active regions before going back to the sunspot image. Who says the Sun is boring?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
Yesterday I attended a talk here at Goddard by Michelle Thaller, our Assistant Director for Science Communication. Dr. Thaller trained as an astrophysicist and is a masterful public speaker, mostly because she has devoted her career to public outreach and she works hard at being good at it. She also has a wicked sense of humor and is pretty handy with a light saber.
Yesterday, she merely took on two of the greatest discoveries of modern cosmology: the microwave background “glow” of the Big Bang, and the quickening expansion of space/time due to dark energy.
Research in these areas have won Nobel prizes. Goddard’s John Mathershared one for discoveries made with NASA’s COBE spacecraft (he led the team that built it). More recently, Adam Riess and other scientists used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to make observations that contributed to the Nobel-prize-winning discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe.
(UPDATE 4:30 p.m. — Gogblog sincerely thanks Goddard astronomer Jane Rigby for pointing out an oversimplification in the way I initially described Hubble’s contribution to the discovery of accelerating cosmic expansion. She pointed out that MANY observatories all over the world contributed to the work.)
Thaller had to tap dance pretty nimbly to cover all this ground, while throwing in a discussion of dark matter (which by the way makes up the vast majority of the universe, although we can’t see it much less understand it). Afterward, she kindly agreed to field a few cosmic questions:
gogblog: If you consider all the creative hypotheses bouncing around to explain dark energy, which is the one that you think would be the most strange and therefore the most interesting, if it were true?
Thaller: I’m quite intrigued by the idea that gravity may work differently in different parts of the universe. In college, I believe such theories were called “perverse cosmologies,” so they’ve got to be interesting, right? I’ve heard the words “tame space” and “wild space” thrown around lately. The idea is that gravity acts somewhat differently when you are deep in a gravity well (like we are around the Sun), as opposed to out where there really isn’t any mass around (like between galaxies). Maybe there is a correction factor that we haven’t discovered locally, because it is overwhelmed by other effects, but out in “wild space,” gravity really is weaker, and therefore the galaxies are accelerating away from each other.
gogblog: You mentioned in your talk that you didn’t initially believe the new data from Type 1a supernovae showing that the acceleration of the universe is increasing. Do you recall when you accepted that strange conclusion, and did you immediately grasp the implications of it?
Thaller: I’m still not totally sure I accept the accelerating universe measurement. The thing that sort of got me a bit more comfortable was that the change between the universe slowly decelerating to it beginning to accelerate turns
out to be fairly recent — about 5 billion years ago.
For one thing, I’m totally thankful that the turn-over isn’t right NOW, because that would make me very nervous about the “privileged viewer” problem. At least it happened a while ago. But 5 billion years ago is recent enough that the universe had pretty much the same chemical content, and I can believe that Type I supernovae weren’t very different.
I think Bob Kirschner (co-discoverer of accelerating cosmic expansion) won me over while we were dancing at one of the last AAS meetings. He was wearing old-style cinema 3D glasses at night, for no reason. He must know what he’s talking about.
gogblog: Finally, the God question. Let us stipulate for argument’s sake that there is an omniscient being you could communicate with meaningfully. And this entity grants you one question about the universe. What do you ask?
Thaller: I have to say that I’m very aware that we aren’t anywhere close to even phrasing the right questions. It’s getting fairly obvious that what we humans define as reality (space, time, causality, etc.) is only a small part of the whole schmiel, whatever that is.
Although I hate the term, there is a reason why people are calling the Higgs particle the God Particle. Somehow energy (which is massless and travels at the speed of light) gets turned into matter. HUGE amounts of energy have to coagulate to give you a tiny amount of mass. And think about what the universe is like to a photon — a bit of pure energy traveling at the speed of light. No space, no time, all the universe is sort of lumped together in a point of reality.
How do you get from there to slow, solid stuff like us? I’d really like to know how that works, and really KNOW why e=mc2.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
Much-magnified view of P-3B flying over Maryland July 14, 2011.
It’ a small world after all. Yesterday at around 5 p.m., I tweeted out the following message for Goddard:
NASA DISCOVER-AQ will conduct air quality flights over NE Maryland Thursday 7/14, 8am-4pm EDT. #MDsmogstudy go.usa.gov/Zle
This morning, 8:38 a.m., I was driving south on I-95, just a couple miles north of Rt. 32, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but the distinctive silhouette and quadraphonic exhaust plumes of a P-3B aircraft — the P-3B that NASA is using to sniff pollution over the region.
I grabbed my handy Canon digital Elph and snapped two photos before the craft roared overhead at low altitude, heading due north. I reckon it was 500 to 1,000 feet above the ground.
Here is the actual “cockpit view” of what the camera saw outside my rolled-down car window:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
This year’s Science and Exploration Directorate (SED) Science Jamboree on June 22 was centered on Building 34. Educational tent exhibitions, Science on a Sphere presentations, special invited lectures, and laboratory tours shared our work with the greater Goddard community, in conjunction with Celebrate Goddard Day on the mall. Here are some images from the Jamboree by science writer Dan Pendick and photographer Debbie McCallum.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
Andrew Hoffmaster and GROVER, Assateague State Park, Md.
Andrew (Andy) Hoffmaster is one of the dozens of interns working this summer in the Engineering Boot Camp at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He recently graduated from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., with a degree in biomedical engineering
It’s Hoffmaster’s third year in Engineering Boot Camp. This year he has stepped up to a leadership role, supervising five different teams of interns who are working on a science robot called GROVER. In a time-honored NASA tradition, “GROVER” is a very impressive-sounding acronym: Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research.
GROVER on the beach.
GROVER, in a nutshell, is a solar-and-wind-powered, caterpillar-tracked rover that carries a ground-penetrating radar device. It is designed to roam alone for months at a time measuring the thickness of the Central Greenland Ice Sheet, which is about the size of Texas. “The problem with sending people is that they run out of food and fuel too fast,” explains “NASA Mike” Comberiati, who runs the internship.
Someday, GROVER will crawl across frigid Greenland at up to 3 mph, 10 hours per day, for 4 months. NASA Mike and his interns are working with NASA cryosphere researchers Lora Koenig and Hans-Peter Marshall on the project. (Koenig is based at Goddard; Marshall is at Boise State University in Idaho.
GROVER being unloaded.
Hoffmaster and GROVER have spent a lot of time together, although in his first year internship (2009), he didn’t work on GROVER at all. He designed and built the mechanical parts for a laser-scanning device on another robot, referred to as “the Mothership.” More on the Mothership in future posts, but you can take a quick look at her HERE.
GROVER 1 & 2
In his second internship season (2010), Hoffmaster started working on GROVER. He built the housing for the rover’s electronics. In January 2011, he accompanied Comberiati to McMurdo Station in Antarctica to help install and configure equipment to communicate with NOAA POES satellites.
Making tracks!
GROVER 1 (shown in the video and images in this post) weighs about 700 pounds. Its solar panels and wind turbines — the spinning blades produce power when it’s cloudy — provide ample power. It has performed admirably in testing.
But GROVER 1 is too heavy and too big, and it takes too long and too much work to unload and assemble. This summer, the interns assigned to build a better GROVER.
GROVER 2.0 will be lighter and smaller. It will sport more efficient solar panels and a lower center of gravity to resist tip-overs in gusty Greenland winds. The rover will also gain software to allow it to operate without constant human monitoring, and to uplink data via the Iridium satellite network.
Also, GROVER 2 will be fabricated in three sections to enable rapid assembly by people wearing bulky cold-weather gloves. After all, standing around in the cold in Greenland can be a health hazard!
This, and more, will require the labor of five intern teams to design, build, and test the electrical components and systems (headed by Hoffmaster) and four mechanical teams (headed by senior intern Guillermo Diaz, a student at Tec de Monterrey in Mexico). It all has to happen in about 5 weeks’ time.
Last year’s crop of interns completed construction of GROVER 1, which today sits on the front lawn of Building 25 in Goddard’s wooded east Campus. The rover will serve this year as a test bed for some of GROVER 2′s new systems.
On the beach with GROVER
It was a chilly day, April 1, 2011. Hoffmaster and three other interns drove with NASA Mike down to Assateague State Park, with GROVER on a flatbed truck. While backing GROVER down the ramps onto the beach, they paused cautiously to check the rover’s orientation.
Then something weird happened, Hoffmaster says. One of the twin caterpillar tracks switched into full reverse and tipped GROVER off the ramps and onto the sand. Thankfully, the robot was unscathed except for a piece of bent metal.
The culprit: “anomalous cold bit.” To us non-specialists, that means that because of cold temperatures, the caterpillar track’s electronic controller sent an incorrect instruction. It’s just the sort of thing that can happen during the development of new technology, and the interns will work to solve it this summer.
On the beach, GROVER proved itself, with enough traction to drag Andy across the sand. Sand, it turns out, is close enough to snow (from GROVER’s point of view) to provide a decent simulation of the rover’s performance in Greenland. They tested it until 3:30 that afternoon and headed for home.
Andy says Engineering Boot Camp gave him valuable engineering insights and skills that he will be able to apply to his new job with Aretech in Dulles, Virginia, developing physical therapy equipment for rehabilitating stroke patients. He’ll work on a device called a “body weight support gait trainer.” It’s a harness on a motorized trolley track that supports patients safely as they re-learn how to walk after brain injury. “I took what I learned at Goddard and can apply it to human kinematics.”
Explore@NASA Goddard Day this past Sunday was a huge success, with an estimated 15,000 people coming to Goddard Space Flight Center to meet astronauts, tour the facilities we use to build and test spacecraft, and — on my end of the campus — see the biggest computer monitor you can imagine.
They call it the hyperwall. It’s a bank of HD monitors banked together to create a huge viewing surface to observe and discuss scientific data and visualizations. It consists of fifteen 46-inch high-definition LCD screens — five across, three high — to create a combined 17-by-6 foot surface. The visualization wall displays both high-definition movies of computer simulation results and interactive data visualizations.
The wall can display a single visualization across all 15 screens or up to 15 or more different visualizations at once for comparison. (No, we don’t sneak in after hours to watch Star Wars or play video games.)
Like hundreds of my colleagues, I was pitching in to Explore@NASA Goddard Day. Mission: meet, greet, and guide people to the hyperwall. Below are a few photos I snapped between helping visitors.
Phil Webster (above left), chief of the NASA Center for Climate Simulation, explains how NCCS research and technology helps scientists and meteorologists. (NCCS built and operates the hyperwall.)
Horace Mitchell (above right) is the Director of the crack team of scientists, animators, and artists in Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio. They make stunning images and movies from actual data collected by NASA spacecraft of Earth and the wider universe.
Polar-orbiting satellites swoop over a glowing HD Earth on the hyperwall during the presentations for Explore@NASA Goddard Day.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
On Friday this week, NASA/Goddard filmmakers, writers, and animators will screen what they consider their best work of 2011. It’s called the Best of Goddard Film Festival, and it’s held every year about this time for Goddard employees. (For employees, the festival will run from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm in the Goett Auditorium, Building 3.)
