Month: February 2019

We often hear about the International Space Station (ISS), but personally, I never knew any of the specifics of it. So I have made this post of what I have learned, and hopefully you will learn something as well.

The first piece of the International Space Station was launched into orbit in November of 1998. This was the Russian-built control module. Approximately two weeks later, the U.S.-launched Endeavour shuttle met the Russian control module in orbit, and the Endevour crew connected the control module to the U.S.-built Unity node. More pieces were attached to the station for two years until the station was livable, at which point, on November 2, 2000, the first crew to live aboard the station arrived.

Now would most likely be an appropriate time to explain what the International Space Station is. In short, it is a very large spacecraft in orbit around Earth. It averages at an altitude of about 250 miles above the Earth’s surface, and travels at 17,500 miles per hour, meaning that it orbits the entirety of Earth every 90 minutes. It serves as the home of many astronauts and cosmonauts (230 individuals from 18 countries have visited the ISS) and is a unique science laboratory. NASA is using the space station to learn more about living and working in space, and several nations work/worked together to use and build the space station. What NASA learns about living on the space station will allow us to send humans further into space than ever before.

The Space Station itself is about the size of two Boeing 747 jet airliners, covering the area of a football field including end zones when including the solar arrays at the ends of the station. The solar arrays collect energy from the sun to provide energy to the station, connected to the station by a long truss that regulates the temperature of the station. The ISS can support a crew of six people in addition to visitors. On Earth, it would weigh more than one million pounds. It has laboratory modules from the United States, Russia, Japan, and Europe.

The crew is delivered payloads of supplies to the ISS’s airdocks by four different cargo spacecraft: Orbital ATK’s Cyngus, SpaceX’s Dragon, JAXA’s HTV, and the Russian Progress. These cargo spacecraft contain life-sustaining supplies, cargo, and scientific materials to continue study aboard the station.

A fun aspect of the station is that it also has robotic arms connected to the outside of the station. These arms help to continue to build the station, and can move astronauts when they are moving around outside. Other arms can operate science experiments.

The importance of the station is reflected in the continuity of human presence that has been consistent since November 2, 2000. The International Space Station itself has made it possible for humans to have a continuous presence in space, and the work done on its laboratories cannot be done anywhere on Earth due to the necessity of the conditions of outer space.

The space station is one of the first steps in NASA’s plan to explore other worlds by studying the effect of different levels of gravity (such as microgravity) on the human body.

Sources:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/facts-and-figures

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-the-iss-58.html

Personally, I object to the title of this blog post because I believe Planet Nine will always be Pluto. However, because of Pluto’s downgrade in status from planet to dwarf planet in 2006, we must be scientifically accurate in our identification of phenomena. So here we are.

“But with Pluto downgraded to dwarf planet status, does that not mean there are only eight planets?”

Yes, there are only eight planets in our solar system. That we know of.

In 2015, Caltech astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown declared that they had mathematical and computer simulation evidence of a giant planet making an unusual and elongated orbit far beyond Pluto in the outer reaches of the solar system. The hypothetical planet would be approximately the size of Neptune (nearly four times larger than Earth), 10 times the mass of Earth, and could take between 10,000 and 20,000 Earth years to make a full orbit around the sun.

It’s existence, while entirely theoretical, would explain the unique orbits of at least five discovered smaller objects in the Kuiper Belt (a distant region of icy debris that extends far beyond the orbit of Neptune). These KBO’s (Kuiper Belt Objects) orbit the sun on an elliptical path all facing the same direction, moving at different speeds. They all orbit on the same plane, however the plane is 30 degrees downward from the plane on which the rest of the planets and solar system objects orbit. The probability of these phenomena occurring on random chance alone is 0.007 percent, according to researchers.

While it could just be other small objects in the Belt affecting the orbits, this is unlikely. For that to happen, the Kuiper Belt would have to have approximately 100 times more mass than it is thought to possess, so Batygin and Brown turned to the idea of an undiscovered planet.

Their simulations show that the gravitational influence of a massive planet in an anti-aligned orbit (meaning a planet whose closest approach to the sun is 180 degrees across from that of all the other planets) would cause the unusual orbits of the objects in the Kuiper Belt. The simulation also predicted that some KBO’s would have orbits that are inclined perpendicular relative to the plane of the Solar System’s official planets, and according to scientists, four such bodies have been found recently.

Brown said, “We plotted up the positions of those objects and their orbits, and they matched the simulations exactly. When we found that, my jaw sort of hit the floor.”

The only downside of current studies of Planet Nine (also called Planet X) is that there are no direct observations of its existence.  This is also the reason it does not have a name like Jupiter or Saturn. Once it has been directly observed, the person to observe it receives the honor of naming it. When/if it is observed, it will most likely be named in the style of the other planets (after the gods of Roman mythology. Hopefully, we will be able to observe this planet in our lifetimes, so we can once again have the peace of living in a solar system with nine planets.

Sources:

https://www.space.com/31670-planet-nine-solar-system-discovery.html

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/hypothetical-planet-x/in-depth/

22 degrees south of Jupiter’s equator, and at least 340 years old, a persistent anticyclonic hurricane roars with winds peaking above 400 mph.

The Great Red Spot (GRS) was first spotted in 1830, but observations from the 1600’s (such as Cassini in 1665) describe a spot on Jupiter that may or may not be the same storm system. The storm has been able to last this long on Jupiter due to the massive gas planet’s tens of thousands of miles of atmosphere, the fact that it spins much faster than Earth, and Jupiter’s 300-400 mph jet streams that surround either side of the GRS.

It’s dimensions 24-40,000 km by 12-14,000 km. Recent discoveries in 2017 made by the Juno spacecraft show that the storm is approximately 200 miles deep, 50-100 times deeper than Earth’s deepest ocean. This storm could fit 2 Earth-sized planets, as Jupiter does not have solid ground that the storm could slow down over. Only a massive sea of liquid hydrogen.

But the storm has been shrinking for a long time. Glenn Orton, a lead Juno Mission team member and planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said that, “The GRS will in a decade or two become the GRC (Great Red Circle), maybe sometime after that the GRM (Great Red Memory).” However, this is not new news. When the storm was first assuredly observed in the 1800’s, it was about 4 times the diameter of Earth. In 1979, when the Voyager 2 aircraft flew by Jupiter, the storm had shrunk down to a bit more than twice the width of our planet.

Scientists are still trying to learn more about the GRS. It is difficult to discern much information based on the Juno Spacecraft’s drive-by’s of the planet, as Jupiter is covered in a thick layer of gas that makes it difficult to determine what is at it’s surface or the conditions of it’s lower atmosphere. But recent discoveries have shown scientists another reason why the storm may have been raging for so long.

The Spot is warmer at the base of the storm than at the top. From the top, at the edge of Jupiter’s atmosphere, the storm measures at around -279 degrees Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, at its base, it measures 440 degrees Fahrenheit. This is an indication of the functioning of the hurricane because Jupiter’s weather physics and dynamics are incredibly similar to that of Earth, just millions and millions of miles further from the sun. Meaning that the temperature difference greatly drives winds, and provides an explanation not only to the GRS, but to all of the storms tearing across the gas giant.

But why is this important?

While it may not seem like that big of a deal, the GRS is actually integral to helping us understand planetary weather, resulting in further understanding of extrasolar (found in or taking place outside of the solar system) planetary cases. Amy Simon, an expert in planetary atmospheres at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said that “If you just look at reflected light from an extrasolar planet, you’re not going to be able to tell what it’s made of. Looking at many possible different cases in our own solar system could enable us to then apply that knowledge to extrasolar planets.” Understanding the GRS and how Jupiter’s weather system works could ultimately help us better understand planets even further away, and help us in our search for another Earth.

Sources:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/jupiter-s-great-red-spot-a-swirling-mystery

https://www.space.com/39764-jupiter-great-red-spot-could-disappear.html

https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/great_red_spot.htm

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-lurks-below-jupiters-great-red-spot-180967524/