The International Space Station (ISS)

Toroid

Founding Member
The Cold Atom Lab with be the coldest known place in the universe. :eek:
NASA’s Atomic Fridge Will Make the ISS the Coldest Known Place in the Universe
Later this year, a small part of the International Space Station will become 10 billion times colder than the average temperature of the vacuum of space thanks to the Cold Atom Lab (CAL). Once it’s on the space station, this atomic fridge will be the coldest known place in the universe and will allow physicists to ‘see’ into the quantum realm in a way that would never be possible on Earth.

In a normal room, “atoms are bouncing off one another in all directions at a few hundred meters per second,” Rob Thompson, a NASA scientist working on CAL explained in a statement. CAL, however, can reach temperatures that are just one ten billionth of a degree above absolute zero—the point at which matter loses all its thermal energy—which means that this chaotic atomic motion comes to a near standstill.

CAL uses magnetic fields and lasers traps to capture the gaseous atoms and cool them to nearly absolute zero. Since all the atoms have the same energy levels at that point, these effectively motionless atoms condense into a state of quantum matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate. This state of matter means that the atoms have the properties of one continuous wave rather discrete particles.

Although Bose-Einstein condensates have been made in labs on Earth, gravity causes the particles to sink to the bottom of the device. Yet in the microgravity of low earth orbit, the Bose-Einstein condensate can hold its wave form for much longer—up to ten seconds—which allows researchers to better understand its properties.

CAL will also allow researchers to study Efimov physics, which is concerned with the interactions among three particles. Isaac Newton first described the rules governing interactions between two planetary bodies, but as physicists later discovered, this interaction becomes remarkably more complex when a third body is introduced. (This strange effect plays a central role in Cixin Liu’s phenomenal science fiction trilogy The Three Body Problem.)

Efimov physics is concerned with similar effects, but on the scale of particles, not planets. When three atoms interact, their behavior appears erratic because it is governed by quantum mechanics. CAL will allow researchers to form molecules consisting of three atoms, but which are one thousand times larger than a normal molecule in CAL’s ultracold environment. Using CAL to create molecules in this “fluffy” state will allow physicists like Eric Cornell at the National Institute of Standards and Technology to better understand their strange properties.

Read More: This Strange Sensor Russia Sent to the ISS Is Baffling Military Experts

“The way atoms behave in this state gets very complex, surprising, and counterintuitive,” Cornell, who received the Nobel Prize in 2001 for creating Bose-Einstein condensates, said. “That’s why we’re doing this.”

Ultimately, the researchers collaborating on CAL think the lab will give them major insights into the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravity. CAL successfully produced Bose-Einstein condensates on Earth last year and now just needs to be delivered to orbit.

CAL was originally scheduled to launch in early 2017, but a series of testing setbacks at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has pushed its launch into 2018. Although NASA hasn’t announced a final date for its delivery to the ISS, it is expected that the atomic fridge will be delivered sometime in the next few months.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K04oMDygu9Y
 

nivek

As Above So Below
It's probably because they don't want an alien intelligence to find our space probes. Remember the Star Trek movie about Voyager?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaVqdz_Vk

We it takes about 19 hours for data from voyager 1 to reach the earth, thats our window to know if something happens to the probe, if it stops transmitting for whatever reason, alien or not...
 

ChrisIB

Honorable
Trump likes having his name on things, if NASA want some funding they should suggest calling it the President Trump Whatever.
Gov funding would be provided in hours.
 

Toroid

Founding Member
Just 55 million will buy you a 10 day mission on the ISS.
Want to Take a 10-Day Trip to the Space Station? It'll Cost You $55 Million
aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zcGFjZS5jb20vaW1hZ2VzL2kvMDAwLzA3Ny8xMjUvaTAyL2lzcy1heGlvbS1zdGF0aW9uLW1vZHVsZXMuanBnPzE1Mjg5OTA2OTA=
 

Toroid

Founding Member
The ISS launched a tiny satellite called HaloSat that will investigate the halo of gas around the Milky Way and could help find the missing matter in the universe.
Tiny Satellite Begins Hunt for Missing Milky-Way Matter
A tiny satellite has set out to investigate the halo of incredibly hot gas surrounding the Milky Way — and it could help scientists track down the huge amount of missing matter in the universe.

NASA deployed the 26-lb. (12 kilograms) satellite, called HaloSat, on July 13 from the International Space Station.

Scientists can't find a whopping one-third of all the matter that should exist in the universe. It's not dark matter; it's just … missing. They've calculated how much matter was in the universe 400,000 years after the Big Bang based on information encoded in the cosmic microwave background. And they've calculated how much mass they see now in galaxies, stars, planets, dust and gas. But the numbers do not add up. [Our Milky Way Galaxy Has Cosmic Halo 11.4 Billion Years Old]

"We should have all the matter today that we had back when the universe was 400,000 years old," said Philip Kaaret, HaloSat's principal investigator and an astronomer at the University of Iowa, said in a NASA statement. "Where did it go?"

Scientists have made some progress in tracking down chunks of the missing matter, and they've narrowed it down to two hiding places: within galaxies themselves, or spread out in the space between them. So scientists are starting close to home, by searching for the matter that's missing from the Milky Way.

HaloSat will try to find the missing matter by mapping the galaxy's halo of superhot gas, which can reach 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius), according to NASA. That's hot enough for oxygen gas to produce X-rays, which HaloSat will measure across the sky to figure out the shape of the halo and determine whether it's spread evenly around the Milky Way or in a flattened disk, like a fried egg.

"If you think of the galactic halo in the fried egg model, it will have a different distribution of brightness when you look straight up out of it from Earth than when you look at wider angles," Keith Jahoda, a HaloSat co-investigator and a NASA astrophysicist, said in the statement. "If it's in some quasi-spherical shape, compared to the dimensions of the galaxy, then you expect it to be more nearly the same brightness in all directions."

Once scientists know how the halo is arranged, they can estimate its mass and determine whether it's hiding all that missing matter.

But to make those measurements, HaloSat needs to be careful not to fall for an imposter signal. That signal is caused by the solar wind, the constant stream of highly charged particles produced by the sun, which produces X-ray signatures that mimic that of the galactic halo.

To avoid being tricked, HaloSat will switch tasks according to where it is in its orbit around Earth: When it's over the night side, it will gather data, and when it's over the daylight side, it will charge up and send that information home. That should make HaloSat's data much cleaner than other X-ray observations, the researchers think.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhMk8FT9f1w
 

nivek

As Above So Below
This is cool...:smile8:

 

Toroid

Founding Member
A small leak aboard the ISS was discovered in the Soyuz MS-09 module.
https://gizmodo.com/small-oxygen-leak-detected-on-the-international-space-s-1828715191
A tiny pressure leak has been detected on the Russian side of the International Space Station. It sounds alarming, but flight controllers say the astronauts aren’t in any immediate danger.

When the six astronauts aboard the ISS woke up at the usual time this morning, they were greeted with some rather disquieting news. At about 7:00 p.m. ET yesterday evening, flight controllers at Mission Control in Houston and at the Russian Mission Control Center outside Moscow detected a small leak in the complex. The situation wasn’t considered serious or life threatening, so the decision was made to let the Expedition 56 crew sleep. Once awake, the astronauts were filled in on the situation and procedures began to determine the location of the leak.

“An emergency situation occurred on the ISS at night and in the morning: a drop in pressure and an air leak aboard the station. Measures were taken to determine the origin of the leak,” explained Dmitry Rogozin, Head of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos, in a TASS report. “The U.S. crew gathered in the Russian segment and subsequently compartments were sealed off one by one to understand what happened and where. As a result, we localized the problem.”

The leak was found on the Russian side of the orbital outpost, specifically, a compartment of the Soyuz MS-09 module, which arrived at the ISS in June of this year. In classic handyman fashion, the crew used Kapton tape to seal-up the tiny hole while a better solution is being contemplated, ABC News reports. The Soyuz module isn’t needed to get the crew back down to the surface, so the crew just needs to make sure the leak is stopped. The fate of the module is not yet known.

The tiny fracture is thought to have formed on the outside when a micro-meteorite struck the ISS. Both NASA and Roscosmos are assuring the public that the astronauts aren’t in any danger, and that the space station isn’t at risk of depressurizing.

“A spacewalk for the purposes of repairs won’t be required,” Rogozin told Tass. “If an air leak goes from the inside into outer space, then it is better to install a plate precisely from the inside. Owing to the pressure factor, it will be fastened better.”

It sounds like everything’s going to be okay, but this episode is yet another stark reminder that space is a dangerous place.
 

Toroid

Founding Member
Here's a picture of the leak aboard the ISS. They believe it was caused by a tiny meteorite. The article said the astronaut plugged the hole with his thumb and not much air leaked into space. This doesn't sound right. The sun facing side of the ISS is 250 F and the dark side -250 F. Wouldn't his thumb burn or freeze? o_O
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station had to plug this hole with their thumb
screen-shot-2018-08-31-at-9-20-21-am.png

A small leak aboard the ISS was discovered in the Soyuz MS-09 module.
https://gizmodo.com/small-oxygen-leak-detected-on-the-international-space-s-1828715191
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Here's a picture of the leak aboard the ISS. They believe it was caused by a tiny meteorite. The article said the astronaut plugged the hole with his thumb and not much air leaked into space. This doesn't sound right. The sun facing side of the ISS is 250 F and the dark side -250 F. Wouldn't his thumb burn or freeze? o_O

I would think so, about the freezing part, most likely his thumb would freeze, but depending on cabin pressure it would seen that a small hole like that would exhaust the air rapidly and pull his thumb right through the hole like when a person gets sucked out of a airplane at high altitudes...

...
 

Toroid

Founding Member
I would think so, about the freezing part, most likely his thumb would freeze, but depending on cabin pressure it would seen that a small hole like that would exhaust the air rapidly and pull his thumb right through the hole like when a person gets sucked out of a airplane at high altitudes...

...
The vacuum would seal his thumb to the hole. Atmospheric pressure at sea level is 14.7 psi which is the same pressure aboard the ISS. Debris from the object would be in the ISS unless it had enough velocity to go through the other side of the capsule which would mean they had two holes. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often considering how much crap we have up there.
As of 5 July 2016, the United States Strategic Command tracked a total of 17,852 artificial objects in orbit above the Earth, including 1,419 operational satellites.
 
Top