WoW ! Strong Solar Storm Will Hit Earth Starting Thursday Night, Scientists Say

“An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun on Sept. 10, 2014. This image was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and shows light in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, which is typically colorized in teal.”

Energy from two significant solar flares is hurtling toward the Earth, and is predicted to hit the planet’s magnetic field beginning on Thursday night and
lasting through Saturday, scientists said Thursday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA), which monitors space weather, has issued a G3 or “strong” geomagnetic storm watch for Friday, due to the combined influence of two coronal mass ejections, or CMEs,
that were associated with the solar flares.

Coronal mass ejections, which are essentially magnetic clouds ejected at high velocity from the sun, can affect the electricity grid, radio transmissions and GPS signals, among other things,
when they interact with the planet’s magnetic field.

One benefit of this event, though, could be a significant display of the Northern Lights, also known as the Aurora Borealis. According to NOAA scientists, the Northern Lights may be visible on
Friday night as far south as New York City, Chicago, Illinois and Seattle, Washington.

The geomagnetic storm is expected to cause some fluctuations in the electrical grid, particularly across far northern areas of the globe, but overall its effects
should be “manageable,” said Thomas Berger, director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. “We don’t expect any unmanageable impacts” to the U.S., Berger said.

There is a possibility, though, that because the solar flares and their associated CMEs occurred in such rapid succession — the first on Monday evening and the second, an X-Class solar flare, which is the strongest possible class, at 1:48 p.m. ET on Tuesday, he said, they may interact in a way that produces a larger solar storm than currently anticipated.

According to Berger, it is unusual to see two CMEs so close together, and it’s unclear how they may be interacting. Still, this event is nowhere near the strength that would be required to create a nightmare scenario that space weather specialists have been warning
about for years, in which a powerful geomagnetic storm, a G5 on the five-point scale, shuts down the electrical grid, wreaks havoc on radio communications, GPS devices, and aerial navigation systems, costing billions in damage.

Such a storm last occurred in 1859, and is known as The Carrington Event. In that event, a CME was so powerful that it raced from the Sun to the Earth — a
90 million mile journey — in just 18 hours. The incoming CMEs are expected to be slower, taking about 60 hours to make the same journey. Recent research showed that the Earth narrowly missed a similar event in 2012, but the burst of solar energy was directed far enough away from Earth’s magnetic field that disaster was averted.

“Neither one of these [CMEs] is anywhere near the Carrington level,” Berger said.

Source: Mashable

WoW ! It’s HerexG

WoW ! Multinational crew blasts off, arrives at space station

Leaving politics
behind, a veteran Russian cosmonaut and a pair of
rookie astronauts from the United States and
Germany blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome
in Kazakhstan on Wednesday for a six-month mission
aboard the International Space Station.
The crew’s Russian Soyuz rocket lifted off at 3:57 p.m.
EDT and headed into orbit, a live broadcast on NASA
Television showed.
Perched on top of the rocket was a Russian Soyuz
capsule holding cosmonaut Maxim Suraev, a retired
Russian Air Force colonel; NASA astronaut and U.S.
Navy pilot Reid Wiseman; and German astronaut and
geophysicist Alexander Gerst.
“Adrenaline is rising but feel relaxed,” Gerst, 38,
posted on Twitter as he and his crewmates rode a bus
out to the launch pad.
Less than six hours after liftoff, Gerst and his
crewmates reached the station, a $100 billion
research laboratory as it flew about 260 miles (418
km) above the Pacific Ocean west of Peru.
The Soyuz slipped into a berthing port on the station’s
Rassvet module at 9:44 p.m. EDT.
The station, a project of 15 nations, is overseen by the
United States and Russia.
Tensions between the countries have been strained
following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea
peninsula and economic sanctions imposed by the
United States as punishment. But until recently, the
space partnership was largely exempt from the
political rancor and the sanctions’ financial impacts.
That ended earlier this month when Russian officials
said they would not support a U.S. proposal to keep
the station operating beyond 2020. Russia also
imposed its own ban on selling Russian rocket motors
for U.S. military launches, a more immediate concern
since one of two primary rockets currently flying U.S.
military missions use Russian-made engines.
At a prelaunch press conference on Tuesday, the new
space station crew was asked if the escalating
tensions were having any impact on their mission.
In response, Suraev, Reid and Gerst slapped their
arms around each other and hugged.
Aboard the space station, currently staffed by NASA
astronaut Steven Swanson and two Russian
cosmonauts, it’s business as usual, Swanson said
during an inflight interview broadcast on NASA
Television on Tuesday.
“We don’t talk about it much, honestly,” Swanson
said. “It does not affect our working relationship. We
get along very well. There are no issues at all up here.”

Source : Reuters

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WoW ! NASA tries space kits to engage kids in science and space

Making mini satellite dishes
that collect signals or building remote-controlled mini
Rovers such as the kind NASA has used on Mars are
the types of activities that could interest kids in
science, but their complexity can derail all but the
most enthusiastic hobbyist.
Now, NASA, the U.S. space agency, hopes it has found
a workaround through new space kits and a
collaboration with a New York-based startup called
LittleBits.
NASA, through its Aura mission to study the Earth’s
ozone layer and climate, is working with LittleBits to
develop activities around a new $189 space kit,
announced on Thursday.
Using electronic modules such as motors and
dimmers that snap together, the creations will
perform functions that normally might require hours
of tedious tinkering or piles of electronics
components.
The new kits are more demanding than playing with
snappable blocks like Legos, but far easier than
wiring, soldering or programming.
“You don’t have that frustration level,” said Steve
Heck, a 5th and 6th grade math and science teacher
at Mulberry Elementary in Ohio who says too many
students lose interest in science and space
experiments when the projects become too difficult.
“You’re going to get a much better student in the long
run.”
For NASA, the partnership has a more specific goal.
“From our perspective, it was to engage kids in how
NASA uses the electromagnetic spectrum,” said
Ginger Butcher, education and public outreach lead
for the Aura mission. “We can see how much ozone is
in the atmosphere. We can see features on Mars.”
NASA reached out to LittleBits after Butcher saw its
chief executive and founder, Ayah Bdeir, give a talk in
2012 about the company’s online modules and
decided they could be helpful for Aura’s educational
goals.
LittleBits is building and selling the kit while NASA is
developing the activities that go along with them.
NASA will not benefit financially from the sale of the
kits, Butcher said.
While the playthings are designed to stay earthbound,
a few lucky kids could see their creations end up in
space.
Working with a company called Xcor Aerospace, Heck
said he hopes to get 10 student projects onto a
suborbital flight in 2015. The students will be selected
through a contest, and Heck said he believes many
will submit LittleBits-based projects.
LittleBits says the kits will boost revenue as well as
the company’s missions of incorporating better design
into electronics and increasing familiarity with
electronics among the public.
“Not understanding electronics is a form of illiteracy,”
said CEO Bdeir. Her company is backed by venture-
capital firms including the Foundry Group, Khosla
Ventures and True Ventures.
It is unclear what demand may emerge for the kits –
Bdeir said she expects to sell tens of thousands – or if
they really will help children better understand the
electromagnetic spectrum or outer space.
They go on sale at a time when space-related issues
are increasingly coming into the public eye.
A few days ago, scientists announced they have found
an earthlike planet known as Kepler-186f.

Source : Reuters

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WoW ! NASA photo of strange light on Mars has UFO buffs talking

Original: This image was taken by Navcam: Right B
(NAV_RIGHT_B) onboard NASA’s Mars rover
Curiosity on Sol 589 (2014-04-03 10:00:03 UTC).
Note: Click on for closer looks …
Microbes, faces and rusted cars have all appeared as
images on the surface of Mars, and now an official
NASA photograph shows a bright light shining from
the Martian surface.
It has – as they say – gone viral.
UFO buffs claim the light could be proof that some
form of “intelligent life” is living underground and
uses light “just as we do.”
But scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, who have discovered evidence that
ancient streams of water once flowed across the
slopes of a vast Martian crater, are suggesting more
prosaic explanations for the light.
A NASA spokesman said the bright spot appears in
two images taken April 2 and 3 by the specialized
Navigation Camera on the Curiosity rover, which has
been exploring the planet’s surface for nearly two
years.
The image was picked up from NASA and posted by
Scott C. Waring, who maintains a website called UFO
Sightings Daily with the motto “The Truth Is Within
Our Grasp.”
In his blog, Waring said the light seems to be shining
upward from the Martian ground and appears flat at
the bottom.
“This could indicate there is intelligent life below the
ground and uses light as we do,” Waring wrote. “This
is not a glare from the sun, nor is it an artifact of the
photo process.”
Rover mission spokesman Guy Webster told The
Chronicle in an e-mail that “among the thousands of
images received from Curiosity, ones with bright
spots show up nearly every week.”
The bright light appears in two images taken by the
“right eye” of the Rover’s stereoscopic camera, but
not in its left one. Both lens systems, Webster said,
are focused on the same spot of what appears to be
the top of a nearby ridge, but is actually at ground
level in front of a crater rim on the horizon.
“One possibility,” Webster said, “is that the light is
the glint from a rock surface reflecting the sun. When
these images were taken each day, the sun was in
the same direction as the bright spot, west-
northwest from the rover, and relatively low in the
sky.
“The rover science team is also looking at the
possibility that the bright spots could be caused by
cosmic rays striking the camera’s detector,” he said.
NASA has sent six unmanned missions to the surface
of Mars since 1976, when the two Viking spacecraft
landed there seeking chemical evidence of living
organisms but finding none.
The six-wheeled Curiosity rover, weighing more than
a ton, landed inside Gale Crater on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012.

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