Fie on burned-through delays. A pox on them and their progeny! It was an absolutely beautiful day out at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field for the monthly LUNAR launch. Cloudless, light winds (almost no wind until about 11!), pleasantly warm but not hot, fun people, a good crowd. Paul Pittenger started us off [...]
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 Launching Balloons to Study Space Weather  In Antarctica in January, 2013 – the summer at the South Pole – scientists released 20 balloons, each eight stories tall, into the air to help answer an enduring space weather question: when the giant radiation belts surrounding Earth lose material, where do the extra particles actually go? This NASA-funded mission is called BARREL, for Balloon Array for Radiation belt Relativistic Electron Losses. Each balloon launched by the BARREL team floated for anywhere from three to 40 days, measuring X-rays produced by fast-moving electrons high up in the atmosphere.BARREL works hand in hand with another NASA mission called the Van Allen Probes, which travels directly through the Van Allen radiation belts. The belts wax and wane over time in response to incoming energy and material from the sun, sometimes intensifying the radiation through which satellites orbiting Earth must travel. Scientists need to understand this process better, and even provide forecasts of such space weather, in order to protect our spacecraft.› Read MoreImage Credit: NASA Read More |
Removal of the vast majority of the damage to the forward portion of the S-II is complete. This entailed cutting around the S-II aft skirt wrap, which is the most complicated of the cylindrical (as opposed to conical) wraps, and probably the most complicated of all the wraps. The S-II aft skirt wrap has a [...] |
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Copyright © 2008-2013 Alan M. Marcum. All rights reserved. |
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