Tag: nasa’s
Argentinian Taxi Radio Interferes With NASA’s Spacewalk Broadcast
NASA’s Mars Sample Return Mission Is Already Facing a Serious Cash Crunch
NASA’s quest to return rocky samples from the surface of Mars to Earth in 2033 is already running up the bill, with the project needing a lot more money than what was allocated to the mission for 2023.
Remembering Virginia Norwood, the ‘mother’ of NASA’s Landsat program
If you haven’t heard of Virginia Norwood, it’s about time you did. An aerospace pioneer whose career would have been historic even without its undercurrent of triumph over misogynistic discrimination, she invented the Landsat satellite program that monitors the Earth’s surface today. Norwood passed away on March 27th at the age of 96, as reported by NASA and The New York Times.
She achieved all this despite significant pushback from the male-dominated industry before and after her rise. Despite her obvious talent, numerous employers declined to hire her after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For example, Sikorsky Aircraft told her they would never pay her requested salary, equivalent to the lowest rank in the civil service. Another food lab she applied for asked her to promise not to get pregnant as a condition of her employment. (She withdrew her application.) Finally, the gun manufacturer Remington appreciated her “brilliant” ideas in an interview but told her they were hiring a man instead.
Her career finally progressed after landing jobs with the US Army Signal Corps Laboratories (where she designed a radar reflector for weather balloons) and Sylvania Electronic Defense Labs (where she set up the company’s first antenna lab). Norwood began working in the 1950s as one of a small group of women at Hughes Aircraft Company, where she gained a reputation as a resourceful problem-solver. “She said, ‘I was kind of known as the person who could solve impossible problems,’” her daughter, Naomi Norwood, told NASA. “So people would bring things to her, even pieces of other projects.”
In the late 1960s, the director of the Geological Survey wanted to take photographs of the Earth from space to help manage land resources; partnering with NASA, a plan was hatched to send satellites into space. Then working on an advanced design team in Hughes’ space and communications division, Norwood formed the idea that would define her legacy. She gathered feedback from agriculture, meteorology and geology experts to develop a scanner to record different light and energy spectra. Although it used existing technology made for (lower-altitude) agricultural observations, she adapted the tech to meet the Geological Survey’s and NASA’s goals.
However, she faced numerous obstacles in securing a spot for her Multispectral Scanner System (MSS) on the launch satellite. It was already hauling an enormous three-camera system developed by RCA using television tube technology, which the agencies viewed as the primary imaging source. To get the MSS onboard, Norwood was tasked with scaling back its size to no more than 100 lbs, a significant downsizing; the RCA system took up most of the satellite’s 4,000 lb. payload.
She reduced the device to recording only four energy bands (down from its original seven) to ensure it would make the trip as a secondary measurement system. The satellite launched on July 23rd, 1972, and the MSS captured its first images — of Oklahoma’s Ouachita Mountains — two days later. The results exceeded all expectations, forcing a quick reevaluation of the satellite payload’s hierarchy. Norwood’s system performed better and was more reliable than the clunky RCA project, which caused power surges and had to be shut down for good two weeks into the mission.
Landsat quickly became the de facto method of surveying the Earth’s surface. Norwood continued to improve the system, leading the development of Landsat 2, 3, 4 and 5. Landsat 8 and 9, the current versions monitoring the effects of climate change today, are still based on her initial concept. Her other projects included leading the microwave group in Hughes Aircraft’s missile lab and designing the ground-control communications equipment for NASA’s Surveyor lunar lander.
She reportedly had no issue with the “the mother of Landsat” moniker her peers gave her. “Yes, I like it, and it’s apt,” she said. “I created it, I birthed it, and I fought for it.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/remembering-virginia-norwood-the-mother-of-nasas-landsat-program-213705046.html?src=rss
Remembering Virginia Norwood, the ‘mother’ of NASA’s Landsat program
If you haven’t heard of Virginia Norwood, it’s about time you did. An aerospace pioneer whose career would have been historic even without its undercurrent of triumph over misogynistic discrimination, she invented the Landsat satellite program that monitors the Earth’s surface today. Norwood passed away on March 27th at the age of 96, as reported by NASA and The New York Times.
She achieved all this despite significant pushback from the male-dominated industry before and after her rise. Despite her obvious talent, numerous employers declined to hire her after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For example, Sikorsky Aircraft told her they would never pay her requested salary, equivalent to the lowest rank in the civil service. Another food lab she applied for asked her to promise not to get pregnant as a condition of her employment. (She withdrew her application.) Finally, the gun manufacturer Remington appreciated her “brilliant” ideas in an interview but told her they were hiring a man instead.
Her career finally progressed after landing jobs with the US Army Signal Corps Laboratories (where she designed a radar reflector for weather balloons) and Sylvania Electronic Defense Labs (where she set up the company’s first antenna lab). Norwood began working in the 1950s as one of a small group of women at Hughes Aircraft Company, where she gained a reputation as a resourceful problem-solver. “She said, ‘I was kind of known as the person who could solve impossible problems,’” her daughter, Naomi Norwood, told NASA. “So people would bring things to her, even pieces of other projects.”
In the late 1960s, the director of the Geological Survey wanted to take photographs of the Earth from space to help manage land resources; partnering with NASA, a plan was hatched to send satellites into space. Then working on an advanced design team in Hughes’ space and communications division, Norwood formed the idea that would define her legacy. She gathered feedback from agriculture, meteorology and geology experts to develop a scanner to record different light and energy spectra. Although it used existing technology made for (lower-altitude) agricultural observations, she adapted the tech to meet the Geological Survey’s and NASA’s goals.
However, she faced numerous obstacles in securing a spot for her Multispectral Scanner System (MSS) on the launch satellite. It was already hauling an enormous three-camera system developed by RCA using television tube technology, which the agencies viewed as the primary imaging source. To get the MSS onboard, Norwood was tasked with scaling back its size to no more than 100 lbs, a significant downsizing; the RCA system took up most of the satellite’s 4,000 lb. payload.
She reduced the device to recording only four energy bands (down from its original seven) to ensure it would make the trip as a secondary measurement system. The satellite launched on July 23rd, 1972, and the MSS captured its first images — of Oklahoma’s Ouachita Mountains — two days later. The results exceeded all expectations, forcing a quick reevaluation of the satellite payload’s hierarchy. Norwood’s system performed better and was more reliable than the clunky RCA project, which caused power surges and had to be shut down for good two weeks into the mission.
Landsat quickly became the de facto method of surveying the Earth’s surface. Norwood continued to improve the system, leading the development of Landsat 2, 3, 4 and 5. Landsat 8 and 9, the current versions monitoring the effects of climate change today, are still based on her initial concept. Her other projects included leading the microwave group in Hughes Aircraft’s missile lab and designing the ground-control communications equipment for NASA’s Surveyor lunar lander.
She reportedly had no issue with the “the mother of Landsat” moniker her peers gave her. “Yes, I like it, and it’s apt,” she said. “I created it, I birthed it, and I fought for it.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/remembering-virginia-norwood-the-mother-of-nasas-landsat-program-213705046.html?src=rss
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter reaches 50th-flight milestone
Upper Stage of NASA’s Artemis 2 Megarocket Is Ready for Tests
NASA’s Artemis 2 is feeling realer by the minute. The next upper stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) megarocket is now ready for tests at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in advance of the upcoming mission.
NASA’s Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman isn’t perfect
The stereotype of an astronaut is apple pie and American exceptionalism — a perfect and fearless adventurer, neatly encapsulated in a bubble helmet. That’s not Reid Wiseman.
He is not some perfect Buzz Lightyear clone. He didn’t make straight-As, he’s occasionally late, and, yes, the idea of dying in space scares him.
There’s a refreshing realness to Wiseman, the commander of the first human mission to the moon in over a half-century, the person NASA chose to lead the Artemis II crew on a test drive of the spanking-new spaceship Orion, 230,000 miles from Earth.
This is the Artemis generation, Wiseman says, as if to clarify that many of the Apollo ways of doing spaceflight are history. Just look at his crewmates, a “slice of North America,” to literally see what’s changed, he says. Christina Hammock Koch and Victor Glover will be the first woman and person of color to travel in deep space, and Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian astronaut, represents NASA’s new commitment to international cooperation.
“None of us are these crazy, hair-on-fire test pilots of the 1950s that you read about,” he said. “We are calculated. We will not fly this vehicle until NASA engineering and the industry partners are ready for us to fly. We will know everything we can about the systems. We will have trained in every possible failure mode.”
On Tuesday of last week, he sat down to chat with Mashable about the upcoming mission: ten minutes to tell a reporter everything about his life, the mission, and thoughts on space travel. Wiseman’s morning was a blitz of such fleeting interviews, following the crew announcement the day before. He had likely lost count of how many times he had told the one about how he was 50 minutes late for the meeting with his boss — and his boss’s boss — to learn he was picked to go to the moon.
“Are you recording my image, my visuals?” he asks as our video conference begins, amid champs.
“No,” I say.
“OK, awesome,” says Wiseman, 47, basking in a rare respite from the camera. In 24 hours, he’d be flashing his smile and putting on the charm for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “I’m going to keep chewing this gum. I’ve been hearing a lot of comments.”
Credit: NASA
The Artemis II mission, slated for November 2024, will be Wiseman’s second trip into space. He served previously as a flight engineer at the International Space Station in 2014. There he spent 165 days, conducting experiments on human physiology and fluid dynamics while the station whizzed 18,000 mph around Earth. Twice, he ventured out on spacewalks, with nothing standing between him and the overwhelming overview effect.
Want more science and tech news delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for Mashable’s Top Stories newsletter today.
But what he became known for was his candid and frequent use of social media, sharing his boyish wonder through photos — lava-spewing volcanoes, storms swirling, the neon Northern Lights, and landmarks like the Great Pyramid of Giza, seen from the top down. It’s what kept him hopeful and curious while toiling those six months away from his family.
“I used to think I was scared of heights, but now I know I was just scared of gravity,” he tweeted Oct. 10, 2014.
Credit: NASA
Most people might assume to reach the pinnacle of his career, Wiseman must have finished top of his class, graduated with honors, and excelled in athletics and academics. He knew from an early age he wanted to fly in space, even with the memory of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster burned into his brain. He watched the Blue Angels soar over Annapolis every year, their wings cutting spectacular formations overhead, and he dreamed of gliding as high, if not higher.
So he took Russian in high school, thinking it might help with his future aspirations. A former teacher told The Baltimore Sun in 2014 that Wiseman wasn’t the top student but had an “unbelievable” personality.
“I used to think I was scared of heights, but now I know I was just scared of gravity.”
Credit: NASA / ESA / Alexander Gerst
It was his older brother, Bill, who more typically fit the destined-for-greatness mold, eventually becoming a U.S. Navy SEAL. Wiseman, who wasn’t a straight-A student and seemed more like marching band material than an athlete, hoped to follow his footsteps into the Naval Academy.
But Wiseman was rejected. Instead, he went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, where he received a bachelor’s degree in computer and systems engineering.
He joined the Navy and became a pilot, deploying three times to the Middle East, flying jets off a carrier deck, and eventually rose to the rank of captain. Later he earned a master’s degree in systems engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
When he goes back to his stomping grounds around Baltimore, where 20 percent of the city is in poverty and neighborhoods are riddled with violent crime, he urges young people to see there isn’t a single trajectory to this dream job: Take five minutes and Google all of the crew members on Artemis II to see how varied their paths were to the astronaut corps.
“Don’t just look at the faces,” he said. “Just really try to see what we’ve done in our lives because we are four unique people.”
He’s eager for the opportunity to pass around the far side of the moon and see the Earth as a small pearl in the blackest sea. Maybe somehow he’ll even be able to beam back pictures, living up to his reputation as Twitter king.
He and his crewmates will join the ranks of only 24 other humans who have traveled to deep space. Wiseman, who is a widower, will leave his two teenage daughters back on Earth while he leads the 10-day mission.
He admits he often wrestles with thoughts of why go on this dangerous, albeit historic, spaceflight.
“I also just think about, ‘Why do you get in a car and drive to work? That’s pretty risky,'” he said. “Life is filled with risks, so why would anybody choose to not live? Go out there and explore. Go do great things.”