This Week at NASA | Drone Technology, Understanding Io, Orion Capsule, more
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On Aug. 2, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Aeronautics Jaiwon Shin, representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), aviation industry leaders and the academic research community participated in a workshop hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to discuss Drones and the Future of Aviation. The event was designed to explore airspace integration issues; public and commercial uses; and safety, security, and privacy concerns related to this emerging technology. NASA is working with the FAA on a traffic management system that will enable pilots of these aircraft to fly safely in the national airspace. Also, Maryland Storms Imaged from Space, Io’s Collapsing Atmosphere, Orion Crew Module Moved, AstrOlympics, and more.
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Drone Technology and Future Aviation On Aug. 2, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Aeronautics Jaiwon Shin, representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), aviation industry leaders and the academic research community participated in a workshop hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to discuss Drones and the Future of Aviation. The event was designed to explore airspace integration issues; public and commercial uses; and safety, security, and privacy concerns related to this emerging technology. NASA is working with the FAA on a traffic management system that will enable pilots of these aircraft to fly safely in the national airspace. Maryland Storms Imaged from Space After analyzing data from space, NASA has created images and animations of the slow-moving storms that dumped as much as 6 to 7 inches of rain over central Maryland in about two hours’ time, on July 30 – causing devastating flooding in historic Ellicott City. The imagery was created from data captured by sensors on the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission satellite, and others. GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. According to a new study by NASA-funded researchers, Jupiter’s shadow has a freezing effect on the atmosphere surrounding Io, the planet’s volcanic moon. Observations during the study confirmed that Io’s thin atmosphere, which consists primarily of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas emitted from volcanoes, collapses as the gas freezes onto the moon’s surface, due to the drop in temperature when Jupiter shades Io during daily eclipses. Then the atmosphere is restored when the ice warms and transforms from solid back to gas as the moon moves out of eclipse back into sunlight. The observations, which occurred over two nights in November 2013, are the first time scientists have witnessed this phenomenon directly, improving our understanding of this geologically active moon. At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, time-lapse footage was captured as the Orion crew module was moved from the birdcage test stand to an enclosed clean room inside the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building high bay. Work will continue to prepare Orion for the first un-crewed flight on the agency’s Space Launch System rocket, targeted for November 2018. Orion is the spacecraft that will carry astronauts on missions to deep space destinations, including on NASA’s Journey to Mars. With the 2016 summer Olympic games underway, NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory program has posted the AstrOlympics project. This online resource compares the physics involved in the impressive feats performed by Olympic athletes to similar movement that takes place in cosmic events throughout the universe. The project shows how athletic and cosmic activities involve speed, mass, time, pressure, rotation, distance, and more – and how studying these forces of nature can help us learn more about the world around us, and the universe we live in. August 5th: Curiosity and Juno Anniversaries NASA celebrates two significant anniversaries on Aug. 5. That date is the four-year anniversary of the Curiosity rover’s landing on Mars. Curiosity touched down in 2012 at 10:32 p.m. PDT on that date. In its first year, the mission achieved its goal by finding the Gale Crater region of the planet offered conditions suitable for microbial life in the past. NASA recently approved an additional two-year extension for Curiosity’s mission. Aug. 5 also is the five-year anniversary of the launch of NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which arrived at Jupiter on July 4 of this year for its 20-month mission to study our solar system’s largest planet. And that’s what’s up this week @NASA.
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