Destination Europa

Just a reminder that tonight at 10PM EST, JPL will be broadcasting a talk regarding the upcoming mission to Europa slated for sometime in the 2020s.

After many years of study, NASA has approved a new start for a spaceflight mission to investigate the mysteries of Jupiter's moon Europa. Future exploration of Europa has been deemed an extremely high priority for planetary science, given the potential for revolutionizing our understanding of habitats for life. The mission would also investigate current activity, such as plumes, and would provide the high-resolution surface characterization necessary to enable future Europa landers.

Speakers:
Barry Goldstein, Europa Mission Project Manager

Dr. Bob Pappalardo, Europa Mission Project Scientist

Recorded event in the frame below.

http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

Advanced LIGO Press Briefing

At 10h00AM EST, the National Science Foundation (wikipedia) will present findings from the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (wikipedia) or Advanced LIGO.

Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein as a mathematical phenomena. However, their true presence in our universe has continued to be elusive, primarily due to the difficulty in detecting the very long and subtle propagating ripples in space-time which are prone to being overwhelmed by noise from other sources. Being able to detect gravitational waves opens the door to a lot of new possible discoveries in understanding the universe.

At LIGO, two 4-kilometer tunnels come together to form an L. In these two tunnels is a laser that shines down both 4-kilometer pathways, striking a mirror at the end of each tunnel and bounces back to a detector. The detector very accurately measures the time and distortion from the initialization of the laser beam to the return travel into the sensor. The nature of gravitational waves suggests that they will cause a 'ripple' through space-time, which would potentially stretch and compress matter as it propagates through the medium. With this being the nature of gravitational waves, LIGO provides detection through measuring any deviations in the direction of the laser between the two tunnels and the time it took for the laser to return to the sensor, as a gravitational wave would potentially disturb the pathway and travel time of the laser ever-so-slightly.

Last year the observatory was upgraded to Advanced LIGO, installing much more sensitive detectors. Full sensitivity and calibration of these detrectors isn't expected until 2019. However, last week it was announced there would be a press briefing today over a possible detection.

LIGO February 11, 2016 Press Conference

Drexel: New Horizons & the Exploration of the Pluto System

Short notice on this event but Alan stern will be giving a lecture at Drexel University regarding the New Horizons mission to Pluto. The lecture will be streamed live at 12PM EST.

New Horizons & the Exploration of the Pluto System

State of NASA: UPDATE

Fiscal Year 2017 NASA Agency Fact Sheet
Budget Estimates
More Documents

The short story on the NASA 2017 budget, is a fair bit more money for Earth sciences, astrophysics, heliophysics, space technology and aeronautics. And a fair bit less money for planetary sciences, SLS and Orion. I must say this seems strange and disappointing as the items receiving the dramatic cuts tend to bring the most public support to NASA. This isn't to suggest that I feel other areas should have been cut. NASA receives too little money as an organization overall already and it stings to see items receive further reduced funding.

The Planetary Society has a decent writeup regarding the FY2017 budget for NASA here.

14th SBAG meeting update

I just wanted to post a short update in regards to the SBAG meeting last week. The videos have all been linked in the meeting agenda. I know I'm not the only person that asked for these videos but I mark this as a great win for access to space sciences. Thank you SBAG members for your hard work.

14th Small Bodies Assessment Group Meeting 

I have lower hopes for this weeks OPAG meeting but at worst, I'm looking at possible options to record these meetings and provide them to the public. I'll update in regards to this in the future.

14th SBAG: Day 3

The 14th SBAG meeting continues on day 3 today.

Agenda (pdf)

Live video feed

Of most interest to me is the presentation from the Dawn mission at the start of the meeting today (currently ongoing). Following this presentation is an update to the James Webb Space Telescope construction, which just this morning, finished installing the final mirror on the monolithic assembly.  Later this morning is several presentations on small satellite concepts and the meeting will wrap up at noon-time PST. 

I received further comment from an SBAG committee member in regards to accessing the recorded presentations. The request was forwarded on to the NASA public affairs office which should provide an answer to whether these videos can be distributed.

UPDATE

Dawn presentation

I unfortunately did not get to see the entire presentation this morning. I am very hopeful that it will be possible to get a link to the recording for later viewing. For the portion of the presentation that I did see, there was a plentiful amount of new information with a lot of really great slides as well. Those slides aren't yet posted but I was told they should be up by the end of the day. Watch for another update here for that. One slide I screencapped was a previously unreleased LAMO image of a portion of Haulani. Its low in resolution from the video feed, but I can imagine it is much better in appearance in the PDF slide presentation. And once again, if I receive a link for the recorded presentation, you can expect it to be in an update here as well.

Haulani crater on Ceres from the Dawn mission in LAMO

SBAG 14: Day 2

The Small Bodies Assessment Group meeting continues today.

Agenda (pdf)

Live video feed

Yesterday's presentations about New Horizons by Alan Stern can be watched here.

Several interesting presentations should happen today. A presentation from the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) team, Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment by Andy Rivkin, and current Phase A Discovery class missions to small bodies where we will hopefully get more details about them.

I will attempt to track down all of yesterday's talks and all future talks from the meeting and post them here in an easy to locate place. It was suggested that there will be a location on the SBAG website with links to them, but I haven't yet seen anything from this meeting or previous meetings that would facilitate this.

Update: I've been in contact with SBAG in regards to the recorded video material. Apparently there is no intention to provide links to this video content. I have an email out to several committee members in regards to this as well. I'm unsure if there are restrictions to the presentations that would prevent the videos from being distributed, but I suspect that there just isn't any plan to provide access. The New Horizons presentation link was provided in error yesterday. However, I will leave the link live for as long as it works.

Requiring people to watch these meetings live to gain access to the discussed information is rather unfortunate in my opinion. Most people have jobs that would essentially prevent access the information entirely, aside from the provided PDF slide presentations, which may or may not include descriptive text for each panel. I am absolutely sure there are many people out there that have an interest in the information being discussed at the SBAG meeting but are unable to attend or watch due to schedule conflicts. By denying access to the video content, I feel that its just another closed door in the face of an interested public. Outreach is imperative to maintain an interested public and all they need to do for outreach, is to provide content to keep the public interested and wanting more. /endrant

Going On Now: New Horizons Talk @ SBAG16

Rather short notice here, but in about half an hour, there will be a presentation from Alan Stern about New Horizons at the Small Bodies Assessment Group 2016 meeting.

Agenda (pdf)

New Horizons Slide Presentation

Live Event Feed