A spacesuit designer on what first responders and hospital staff should wear during a pandemic 1SEP21

WANT something to inspire pride in America? How about tax dollars being spent on developing light weight, easy to suit up,  safe and secure PPE for first responders and hospital staff not only for the coronavirus covid-19 pandemic but also for all other pandemics anywhere in the world. But wait you silly dreamers, that would require dealing with reality. Our government is wasting at least a billion dollars on developing a new spacesuit because nasa, astronauts and getting to the Moon and Mars are more important than human life here on Earth. Read about our government's misguided priorities here

SPACE STATION SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS: PROGRESS ON RENEWABLE ENERGY, NEW TREATMENTS FOR COVID-19, CANCER AND ALZHEIMER'S, AND MORE FOR HUMANITY! 15MAR21

 NOT REALLY. One would think nasa would be ashamed publishing this when they are unable to justify the billions wasted on the iss and the plans to send people to the Moon and Mars. I just wish the people running nasa would be the ones sent on these "missions" with no plans to bring them back.... 

Mar 19, 2021

Space Station Science Highlights: Week of March 15, 2021

The colored strips visible on the exterior of the space station in this image are different coatings exposed to the environment of space for the STP-H5 ICE investigation, conducted to determine their stability for use protecting the outside of spacecraft and as markings to guide robotic and human navigation.

Credits: NASA

NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins is shown with the HUNCH Tape Dispenser developed by high school students to enable one-handed operation for crew members.

Credits: NASA

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi and NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins pose with plants growing inside a container for Asian Herb in Space, a study on cultivating fast-growing plants used for traditional medicine and food flavoring.

Credits: NASA

This image shows the mouth of the Mississippi River emptying into the Gulf of Mexico south of New Orleans, Louisiana, as the International Space Station orbits 262 miles above.

Credits: Roscosmos

The week of March 15, crew members aboard the International Space Station conducted scientific investigations, including studies of the melting-solidification process and changes in muscle properties in microgravity and tests of protective coatings and robot maneuvers.  

The seven crew members currently inhabiting the station include four from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, providing increased crew time for science activities on the orbiting lab. The space station has been continuously inhabited by humans for 20 years and has supported many scientific breakthroughs during that time. The station provides a platform for long-duration research in microgravity and for learning to live and work in space, experience that supports Artemis, NASA’s program to go forward to the Moon and on to Mars.

Here are details on some of the microgravity investigations currently taking place:

Melting and solidifying transparent materials

Crew members installed hardware for Transparent Alloys, a set of five experiments from ESA (European Space Agency) to improve the understanding of melting-solidification processes in plastics. Microgravity removes the effects of walls and convection during the process, enabling better observation of the dynamics of pattern formation. Solidification of organic transparent substances serves as a model for solidification of metallic alloys, so these studies add to basic knowledge for solidification dynamics and microstructure formation. Results could have implications for industrial casting processes and the metallic products manufactured using them.

Monitoring markers for muscle health

Existing data on muscle atrophy caused by disuse suggest that during spaceflight, muscle stiffness decreases, particularly in those muscles most important for postural support and movement, such as running and walking. Myotones, an investigation from ESA, uses biomarkers to observe the biochemical properties of muscles during long-term spaceflight. Exercise countermeasures performed during flight may improve or even recover these properties. By providing insight into principles of human resting muscle tone, results could help support development of new treatments for rehabilitation, both on Earth and for future space missions. Crew members marked locations of the seven muscles, two tendons, and one area of fascia studied in the investigation and took measurements with the Myotones device during the week.

Better paint protection in space

In space, harsh radiation and extreme temperatures corrode paint and coatings protecting the outside of spacecraft, which could potentially damage the hull and pose a risk to crew members. STP-H5 ICE exposes new coatings to space for two years to determine their stability in that environment. Optical coatings also are used for special markings that robotic and human navigators rely on to capture or repair spacecraft. Results could contribute to further improvement in coatings for both uses. Crew members documented samples during the week.

Great hopping robots!

Robots used in space either free-fly or zero-g climb by grasping handrails with their robotic manipulators. Hopping maneuvers offer a potentially faster method of movement that uses less propellant or fuel. Astrobatics tests these maneuvers using one of the station’s free-flying Astrobee robots, which uses its perching arms and handrails on the space station to demonstrate vehicle guidance and control. The ability to hop between locations in a spacecraft or on a planet expands the mobility of a robotic vehicle. Robotics have a wide range of applications on space missions, including assisting crew on intra- or extravehicular activities, equipment servicing, removal of orbital debris, conducting on-orbit assembly, grappling and moving equipment and samples, and exploration. During the week, crew members conducted a session for the experiment.

Other investigations on which the crew performed work:

• An investigation from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Asian Herb in Space studies several fast-growing plants used for traditional medicine and flavoring food, examining differences in their aroma that may result from microgravity-related cellular changes. Results could benefit future plant growth efforts in space.
• Ribosome Profiling, an investigation from JAXA, aims to provide insight into how gravity affects gene expression, with a special focus on translation regulation, using a state-of-art technique. The work could help researchers understand why aging-related changes often occur in space and may lead to better treatments for those changes.
• Crew members regularly use tape for a variety of tasks, but tape currently used often must be cut with scissors, requiring two hands. HUNCH Tape Dispenser tests a dispenser designed by high school students that crew members can operate with one hand. It could improve efficiency of operations and scientific research on the space station.
• Standard Measures collects a set of core measurements from astronauts before, during, and after long-duration missions to create a data repository to monitor and interpret how humans adapt to living in space.
• Loss of muscle mass and strength represent a major challenge for astronauts on future long space voyages. Micro-16 uses a model organism, the C. elegans worm, to test whether decreased expression of muscle proteins is associated with decreased strength.
• Antimicrobial Coatings tests a coating to control microbial growth on several different materials that represent high-touch surfaces. Some microbes change characteristics in microgravity, potentially creating new risks to crew health and spacecraft.
• Food Acceptability looks at how the appeal of food changes during long-duration missions. Whether crew members like and actually eat foods directly affects caloric intake and associated nutritional benefits.

For daily updates, follow @ISS_Research, Space Station Research and Technology News or our Facebook. Follow ISS National Lab for information on its sponsored investigations. For opportunities to see the space station pass over your town, check out Spot the Station.

John Love, ISS Research Planning Integration Scientist

Last Updated: Mar 19, 2021

Editor: Michael Johnson

SPACEWALKERS WRAP UP COVID-19 RESEARCH AND VACCINATION CENTER INSTALLATIONS 1FEB21

ANOTHER example of the waste of money the iss and our involvement with it is. What have the billions of dollars spent on the iss brought us. Cures for cancer, diabetes, alzheimer's, covid-19? Anyone? What have the billions of dollars brought to the struggle with climate change, famine, homelessness? Again, anyone???? Search on the nasa site if you want to read the article, I will not post nasa propaganda here...

Spacewalkers Wrap Up Battery Work and Camera Installations

THIS SHOULD PISS YOU OFF.....

JUST another example of why I hate the waste and absurdity of nasa's programs searching for water on Mars and extraterrestrial life in space....

Colbert: Mars rover’s penis doodle proves America’s ‘galactic supremacy’ & Mars Rover 'Draws' Penis On Red Planet & NASA Picture Goes Viral (PHOTO, VIDEO) 25APR13

WHAT more can be said about nasa's rover drawing a penis on Mars?
 

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On Wednesday night’s edition of “The Colbert Report,” host Stephen Colbert presented a segment called “Tiny Triumphs,” in which he celebrated the fact that the Mars rover is now drawing penises on the face of the planet, meaning that America is now treating the Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor like a passed-out frat boy.
“Humanity has accomplished so much over the years,” Colbert began. “We’ve split the atom. We’ve mapped the human genome. We even put pizza on a bagel. Now we can have pizza anytime.”
Our next great frontier, he said, is Mars. Humans began to send probes and exploration satellites to the planet in the 1970s. Most recently has been the Curiosity rover, which has been driving over the planet in search of signs of life.
With its eight wheels, the Curiosity has “left humanity’s mark” on the planet, Colbert said proudly.
“We drew a penis!” he said.
“This giant graffiti peenie proves our galactic supremacy,” he went on to say. “America took a pristine planet, 140 million miles away and scribbled on it, like it was the face of a passed-out frat boy.”
Watch the video, embedded below via Comedy Central:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/425786/april-24-2013/tiny-triumphs---nasa-s-giant-penis-doodle

 http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/25/colbert-mars-rovers-penis-doodle-proves-americas-galactic-supremacy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29

Mars Rover 'Draws' Penis On Red Planet & NASA Picture Goes Viral (PHOTO, VIDEO)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/mars-rover-penis-draws-nasa_n_3148422.html
NASA's high-tech Curiosity rover may be getting a little cheeky over there on Mars.
In a photo of Curiosity's track patterns, published on the robotics section of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory site, the Mars rover appears to have traced out a very phallic design on the Red Planet's dusty surface.
The rover's picture went viral after being posted to Reddit's r/funny subreddit page Tuesday, earning close to 40,000 "upvotes" in a matter of a few hours. According to The Huffington Post UK, NASA's website crashed due to increased traffic as word of the "drawing" spread.
The car-sized rover landed on Mars last August with a mandate to explore the planet and analyze whether or not Mars could have supported life forms. Curiosity is controlled by a team of NASA engineers, who send two sets of instructions to the exploratory craft each day, according to Space.com.
Some of the tracks made by Curiosity's six wheels can be seen from space and were documented by the HiRise camera of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in January.
LOOK:

AWSOME PHOTOS FROM MARS!!!!! CURIOSITY?

Awesome photography! Great photos from Mars Incredible images from the latest batch of photographs sent back from the Mars lander. This camera is totally fantastic. THESE pics go out to all of those who think that spending $2.6 Billion on this single "mission to Mars is worth the price for a bunch of pictures, because that is all we will get. Nobody can name one benefit for Earth or it's inhabitants from the curiosity project. We will learn nothing by sending curiosity to Mars that will bring improvements in health care, innovation in clean, alternative energy, nothing to stop global warming or in dealing with its effects, and will provide absolutely no knowledge about our oceans and the potential they may hold for us if we stop using them as a giant sewer / garbage dump. Some will say this a huge boost in national pride. Bullshit. I would take pride in a country that educates its children, where nobody goes hungry, nobody lacks health care, and the government and corporations invested more in research on meeting our human and environmental needs than in researching new weapons systems and then looking for ways to use them. I know $2.6 Billion won't take care of all or even any of the needs listed above, but it would be a start and at least there would be real results and not just pictures.

Nabro Volcano Eruption: NASA Satellite Over Eritrea Snaps Photos Of The Violent Explosion 28JUN11

AMAZING satellite photos of the Nabro volcano in Eitrea erupting on 12JUN11.....
On June 12, a series of earthquakes struck the region in East Africa where Eritrea's Nabro Volcano is located. Since then, the volcano has been erupting, spewing massive plumes of ash into the sky over East Africa and the Middle East.
Flights have been grounded or rerouted around the gaseous cloud, and local residents have been evacuated from the surrounding region as lava pours from the volcano.
NASA's Advanced Land Imager aboard the Earth Observing-1 satellite passed over Eritrea on June 24 and captured stunning, high-res images of the volcanic activity below.
"Despite the volcano's widespread effects, little is known about the eruption," according to NASA. "Nabro is located in an isolated region along the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and few English-language reports have been published. Satellite remote sensing is currently the only reliable way to monitor the ongoing eruption."
View the images (below) to observe the Nabro eruption. The top image displays intense heat from the lava flow in false-color red; condensed water vapors escaping from the volcano appear blue-white and very thick, while gasses rising from the lava appear wispier and green-blue in color. The bottom image shows the eruption as it appears to the naked eye.
FALSE-COLOR IMAGE:


NATURAL COLOR IMAGE:

A Very Scary Light Show: Exploding H-Bombs In Space 1JUL10

LET'S pray we never see these flashes anywhere on Earth again.....

by Robert Krulwich

July 1, 2010

Listen To The Bomb Watchers

All Things Considered

[6 min 12 sec]

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July 1, 2010

Since we're coming up on the Fourth of July, and towns everywhere are preparing their better-than-ever fireworks spectaculars, we would like to offer this humbling bit of history. Back in the summer of 1962, the U.S. blew up a hydrogen bomb in outer space, some 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean. It was a weapons test, but one that created a man-made light show that has never been equaled — and hopefully never will. Here it is:

 

Source: NPR
Credit: Reporter: Robert Krulwich, Producers: Jessica Goldstein, Maggie Starbard Supervising producers: Vikki Valentine, Alison Richards Production Assistant: Ellen Webber Researcher: Meagen Voss

(Some of the images in this video were until recently top secret. Peter Kuran of Visual Concept Entertainment collected them for his documentary Nukes In Space.)
If you are wondering why anybody would deliberately detonate an H-bomb in space, the answer comes from a conversation we had with science historian James Fleming of Colby College:
"Well, I think a good entry point to the story is May 1, 1958, when James Van Allen, the space scientist, stands in front of the National Academy in Washington, D.C., and announces that they’ve just discovered something new about the planet," he told us.
Van Allen described how the Earth is surrounded by belts of high-energy particles — mainly protons and electrons — that are held in place by the magnetic fields.

NASA There are two Van Allen radiation belts that circle the Earth (shown here in purple): an inner belt and an outer belt. The belts are contained by the Earth’s magnetic field (pictured as gray lines). Red marks a radiation-safe orbit path for satellites.

Today these radiation belts are called Van Allen belts. Now comes the surprise: While looking through the Van Allen papers at the University of Iowa to prepare a Van Allen biography, Fleming discovered "that [the] very same day after the press conference, [Van Allen] agreed with the military to get involved with a project to set off atomic bombs in the magnetosphere to see if they could disrupt it."
Discover It, Then Blow It Up
The plan was to send rockets hundreds of miles up, higher than the Earth's atmosphere, and then detonate nuclear weapons to see: a) If a bomb's radiation would make it harder to see what was up there (like incoming Russian missiles!); b) If an explosion would do any damage to objects nearby; c) If the Van Allen belts would move a blast down the bands to an earthly target (Moscow! for example); and — most peculiar — d) if a man-made explosion might "alter" the natural shape of the belts.

Why Starfish Prime Created Rainbow Skies

To understand where the colors come from in Starfish Prime, you first have to know a little bit about Earth's atmosphere. Nitrogen and oxygen are the two most abundant gases in our air. The concentration of each gas is different depending on the altitude.
When Starfish Prime detonated, charged particles — electrons — were released from the explosion. According to NASA astrophysicist David Sibeck, those particles came streaming down through the Earth's atmosphere, energizing oxygen and nitrogen atoms, causing them to glow in different colors.
But why?
As electrons collide with the atoms, energy is transferred to the atoms. After holding onto it for a moment, the excess energy is released as light. When many excited atoms release energy together, the light is visible to the naked eye. Depending on the type of atom and the number of atoms, you get different colors.
It's similar to what causes the aurora borealis, although those electrons are coming from the solar wind pounding into Earth. The electrons first encounter a high concentration of oxygen at the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere, causing the atoms to release a red light. Then green appears as the electrons travel to lower altitudes where there are fewer oxygen atoms. Even lower, where more nitrogen atoms are present, the collisions throw off a blue light.
But in the Starfish Prime explosion, charged particles went in every direction. That's why you see the sky filled with a rainbow of colors nearly all at once in the footage. — Meagen Voss

The scientific basis for these proposals is not clear. Fleming is trying to figure out if Van Allen had any theoretical reason to suppose the military could use the Van Allen belts to attack a hostile nation. He supposes that at the height of the Cold War, the most pressing argument for a military experiment was, "if we don’t do it, the Russians will." And, indeed, the Russians did test atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs in space.
In any case, says the science history professor, "this is the first occasion I've ever discovered where someone discovered something and immediately decided to blow it up."
Code Name: Starfish Prime
The Americans launched their first atomic nuclear tests above the Earth's atmosphere in 1958. Atom bombs had little effect on the magnetosphere, but the hydrogen bomb of July 9, 1962, did. Code-named "Starfish Prime" by the military, it literally created an artificial extension of the Van Allen belts that could be seen across the Pacific Ocean, from Hawaii to New Zealand.
In Honolulu, the explosions were front page news. "N-Blast Tonight May Be Dazzling: Good View Likely," said the Honolulu Advertiser. Hotels held what they called "Rainbow Bomb Parties" on rooftops and verandas. When the bomb burst, people told of blackouts and strange electrical malfunctions, like garage doors opening and closing on their own. But the big show was in the sky.
To hear eyewitness accounts of what it looked like, listen to our broadcast on All Things Considered by clicking the Listen button on the top of this page.

NASA AND THE GULF OIL SPILL

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

We can fly to the moon and back how many times? And we cannot stop up a damn well.

- Eric Authement, owner of a shrimp processing plant in Dulac, Louisiana, that his family has run for generations. (Source: New York Times)

A simple comment proving the hundreds of millions wasted on space travel by NASA haven't brought us any benefits here on Earth.

Shocking NASA Image: Never-Seen-Before Southeast Oil Slick Arm 19MAI10

A startling new image released by NASA today shows a massive column of oil extending out Southeast towards the open ocean.
This column has not been visible in any satellite photos taken so far and will no doubt change the estimated extent of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.

(click here to make the image even bigger)
According to NASA the column is visible because it was taken when the sun was reflecting off the oil making the sheen much more prominent. The photo was taken by NASA's Terra satellite yesterday (May 18th, 2010)