NSS – Phoenix Chapter Meeting – Saturday 24 October

The next meeting of the Phoenix Chapter of the National Space Society will be this coming Saturday at 11:00 AM at the Noble Library (quadrant 5E on the map, on McCalister Mall, about two blocks west of the light rail station near Tyler St).

It will be held in conjunction with the Earth and Space Exploration Day at ASU (10:00 AM – 4:00 PM).

The agenda will cover:

1. Welcome

2. More arrangements for Holiday Party. It will be either December 5th or 12th. It will be held at Dave Fischer’s house. We need the physical directions and map to Dave’s house. The time will be from 5pm-?. Veronica Ann is collecting names and what people are bringing. Please email her at: Veronica.Zabala@NSS.org with your RSVP and what you are bringing. There will be a 50/50 raffle at this party! All tickets are as follows:

$1.00 each ticket

$5.00 for 6 tickets

Everyone is encouraged to participate in this raffle. 50% of the proceeds go to the NSS Phoenix Chapter !!!

3. We are currently accepting applications for the following NSS Phoenix Chapter Positions:

Educational Outreach Officer
Media/PR Officer
Recruitment Officer
IT Officer

Please email Veronica Ann if you are interested.

4. We are currently seeking Speakers at our January 2010 Chapter Meeting. Sian Proctor had indicated that she would be interested in giving a talk based on her experiences getting into the Astronaut Corps. Is she still interested and what dates is she available?

5. All Chapter Members are encouraged to seek donations and sponsors for the chapter. If you are interested in helping out, please contact Veronica Ann. We need to start earning revenue for our Chapter to promote education outreach as well as to alleviate costs for upcoming field trips. It is the Chapter President’s hope to also create a scholarship for those interested in going to ISDC 2010.

6. Who is going to ISDC 2010. Thus far, the Chapter President is going and would like to know who else is going?

7. Yuri’s Night 2010: Veronica Ann would like to hold an organizational meeting sometime in January 2010 for the NSS Phoenix Chapter to hold a Yuri’s Night 2010 in the Phoenix Region. We would like to invite the following NSS Affiliates to participate:

The Mars Society
The Planetary Society
The National Space Society
SEDS
AIAA
The Moon Society

We need to find a place we can hold the event. Either at a local science center or at a college/university. Does anyone have any ideas?

8. Donate Sci-Fi books! Veronica Ann is collecting all Sci-Fi books to loan schools to promote reading (especially in Science Fiction). If you have any Sci-Fi books that you no longer need, please contact Veronica Ann.

9. All NSS Phoenix Chapter members need to send the Chapter President their updated contact information by the end of October 2009. Please included the following in your email:

Name
Mailing Address
Phone Number
Email Address
Please send this information to: Veronica.Zabala@asu.edu

10. Chapter website update:

How many people have visited our site
From where are people visiting our site from

Any new developments, new features to the site?

11. Chapter dues? Should we begin to incorporate Chapter dues to our Chapter again to help raise funding? if so, does $5.00 every six months sound like a plan? we can collect these Chapter dues January 1st and July 1st of every year.

12. The NSS Chapter needs to get more involved in schools. Veronica Ann would like to know who would be interested in giving lectures about human and robotic space exploration? No experience necessary. Veronica Ann will train! Please contact her for more information and the dates that you may be available to give lectures to school children.

13. Veronica Ann is working to redo the Chapter Bylaws. If you would like to help out and proof the Bylaws, please let Veronica Ann know.

14. Next Chapter Meeting will be held on January 30, 2009, from 11AM – 1PM. Location TBD.

15. Q & A session

16. Reminder that the ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration is holding their Earth & Space Exploration day in front of the Physical Sciences F-wing (across from the library) from 9-3pm. All members are encouraged to participate in this venue after the meeting.

17. Meeting adjourned!

The World At Night

Christown Spectrum Mall is hosting the internationally renowned photography exhibit, The World at Night, from 3-18 October 2009. The World at Night is part of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). On Saturday, 3 October, from 11 AM to 3 PM the Challenger Space Center will conduct liquid nitrogen demonstrations and dry ice comet simulations. The ASU School of Earth and Space Exploration will conduct a meteorite dig, work with Hubble Space Telescope floor puzzle images and more. The Phoenix chapter of the National Space Society will host its next member meeting at the event and participate in the exhibits. Some delightful images from The World at Night: For those of us living north of the equator, the site of the Magellanic clouds is not something we are privileged to see. Comet McNaught above Perth, Australia in 2007 Yosemite in winter. Other aspects of the IYA include the Galileoscope project and the Dark Skies Awareness project. If you are interested in astronomical viewing, the Clear Dark Sky website will be a valued tool.

Image from IYA 2009 used by permission

Earth and Space Exploration Day

This afternoon, Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto, President of the Phoenix chapter of the National Space Society, posted an article on Examiner.com about Earth and Space Exploration Day at Arizona State University, in October, 2009. The date is Saturday, 24 October, and as Veronica says in the article:

Mark your calendars for one of Arizona State University’s most interactive, educational outreach event of the year. On October 24, 2009, the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE) will be holding its annual Earth and Space Exploration Day event from around 9:00 am – 3:00 pm. A family event hailed as a great Saturday to spend with the kids and at the same time learn about the Earth and our Solar System, this day is filled with many hands-on activities such as panning for gold, identifying your rock or mineral by Dr. Rock and the exhibit of actual meteorites that you can touch!

More information can be found at the ASU SESE web site.

Take Your Class to Mars – Reminder

Just a reminder to all you science educators in the land of the intertubes (as posts fall off the bottom of the stack) about the Take Your Class to Mars symposium at ASU this coming September. Follow that link and register for the Saturday event on the 26th of September.

LROC Tour

Last week, we facilitated two tours of the LROC Lab and the Mars Space Flight Facility. Our interested party were science geeks and folks interested in space from The Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix.

Below left, is the view of the LROC Lab where the image download link resides. The students and faculty monitor the image download from these computer screens. We want to thank Steven and Veronica for their lively commentary at LROC. On the right is one of the screens tracking the image download parameters.

You can book your own tour of the LROC facility here.

On the left is one of the incoming images of the Moon’s surface from the NAC (Narrow Angle Camera). Overlain are targets previously identified and cataloged for researchers. If you are interested in an object or location on the surface of the Moon, you can request to be notified when it is imaged. Below on the right are some of the folks on the tour.

Over at the Mars Space Flight Facility, Meg Hubbard took us in tow and gave an hour over to discussion of the three operating instruments at Mars. Two instruments are the mini-TES (Thermal Imaging Spectroscopes) instruments on the Mars rovers Spirit (model below left) and Opportunity. This is the tool that “… collects high-resolution infrared spectra that will help identify the mineralogy of all geologic materials including silicates, carbonates, sulfates, phosphates, oxides and hydroxides. Mini-TES will also measure the lower atmospheric boundary layer and provide information on suspended dust, water ice, and water vapor opacity. “

The other instrument is the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on the Mars Odyssey satellite. This instrument “… is a thermal emission imaging system. It contains two independent multi-spectal imaging sub-systems: a 10-band thermal infrared imager (IR), and a 5-band visible imager”.

Earlier, the Mars Global Surveyor carried the full sized Thermal Emission Spectrometer, Modeled below, right. “Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) launched from Cape Canaveral Air Station on 7 November 1996 and was successfully put into orbit around Mars on 12 September 1997. On 31 January 2001, MGS completed the mapping phase of the mission, which lasted one martian year (two Earth years). On 2 November 2006, mission controllers lost contact with the spacecraft, ending the mission”.

Thank you to all the people at ASU and these two great facilities for their time and effort. It was worth every minute.

LROC – Videos




The LRO Laboratory posted this view of the Tsiolkovskiy crater on July 3 at 20:32:11.289 UTC. The images were obtained at an altitude of 83 km. Tsiolkovskiy is located at 21.2°S/128.9°E , and details such as individual boulders, boulder trails, hummocks, and possibly small outcrops can be readily identified in the ejecta blanket of Tsiolkovskiy crater on the lunar farside. Named after Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the Russian father of astronautics, the crater, 185 km in diameter, is a major feature of the far side of the Moon. It is distinguished by its deep, dark crater and high island peak.




This video of Compton Crater was posted on Youtube by the LROC lab on 2009 July 5 21:39:49 UTC. Orbit 136 took LRO over Compton Crater at an altitude of 172 kilometers. The crater floor, central peak, and distinctive tectonic features are visible. Compton is 182 km in diameter, and located on the far side of the Moon, in the Northern Hemisphere at 55.3°N/103.8°E . Other interesting aspects of the Compton Crate include the existance of a small-scale Thorium anomaly near the craters Compton and Belkovich

Take Your Class to Mars

To all the science teachers out there, Arizona State University is hosting Take Your Class To Mars on Saturday, the 26th of September 2009.

Agenda

8:15 – 9:00 Registration

9:00 – 9:15 Introduction and overview

9:30 – 10:30 Lunar keynote – Dr. Mark Robinson
Download the presentation (.ppt)

10:30 – 11:30 Mars keynote – Dr. Phil Christensen
Download the presentation (.ppt) 73.1MB

11:30 -12:15 Lunch with author Chris Gall and Arizona Museum of Natural History representatives

12:15 -12:30 Classroom resources highlighted and discussed

12:30 – 1:30 Presentations

MSIP: Data Analysis with JMARS (Jonathon Hill, Mars Space Flight Facility) Download

Modeling the Solar System (Karen Knierman, Mars Education Program)

Uncovering the Mysteries of the Martian Arctic: NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander Green (Carla Bitter, Phoenix Mars Lander, University of Arizona)

Search for a Habitable Planet (Brian Grigsby, Mars Education Program)

MSIP: Introduction to Image Analysis (Craig Weeks and Gaylene Swensen, Peoria Unified School District) Download

4:10 – 4:30 Closing Remarks, evaluations, materials distribution
Location:
Memorial Union, Arizona State University
Street Address:
1290 S. Normal Ave.
Tempe, Arizona 85281 United States

Registration: Registration

LROC Photos

Veronica Ann Zabala-Aliberto’s latest comment on her Facebook Wall shows the latest LROC photos. Here is one:

Credit: Mosaic of a floor-fractured crater, acquired by the Wide Angle Camera 560 nm filter. Scene is approximately 160 km across [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

As this post is being written, we are 2 days and 22 hours from the launch of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Phoenix has a special interest in this because Arizona State University (ASU) is responsible for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera.

[edit] And with the slip of the Space Shuttle launch, we are still 2 days and 22 hours away from LRO launch (18 June if all goes well).

The LRO is the first step on NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration. It is designed to create a comprehensive mapping of the lunar surface and potential resources. The LROC is one of six instruments in the payload:

Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation
This telescope will characterize the lunar radiation environment allowing scientists to determine potential biological impacts.

Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment
This device will measure surface and subsurface temperatures from orbit. And will identify potential ice deposits.

Lyman Alpha Mapping Project
This will map the entire lunar surface in the far ultraviolet spectrum.

Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector
This instrument will search for hydrogen as evidence of water ice near the moon’s surface.

Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter
This will search for potential landing sites.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera
Two narrow angle cameras will make high resolution black-and-white images of the surface. A third, wide angle camera, will take color and ultraviolet images over the complete lunar surface.

Sally Ride Science Festival at ASU

The Sally Ride Science Festival on March 1, 2008 was well attended. Under a bright, warm sun, hundreds of local school girls with parents, siblings, friends and teachers in tow explored the exhibits and displays, took in Sally Ride’s lecture and went off to workshops in the afternoon. Not for the faint of heart, some of the workshops had titles such as “Properties of Light, Gases & Vacuum and Heat Transfer & Cryogenics”, “Exploding Stars”, “Extreme Astronomy: Monstrous Black Holes and Spectacular Supernovae” and “Stem Cells”.

The National Space Society of Phoenix, along with the Moon Society, the Mars Society and the Planetary Society all contributed to the buzz, chatter, questions and answers. We passed out back issues of Ad Astra along with student membership applications for NSS, talked with the girls and their parents, and answered questions about the Moon and Mars and space exploration.

Perhaps the largest draw was Menkes van den Briel’s “How High Can You Jump on Mars”? Using a standing jump tape measure device, the girls jumped and then translated the height of the jump on Earth into height on Mars, the Moon and the moons of Mars. A twelve inch jump on Earth becomes thirty two inches on Mars. The best jump of the day was equal to five feet three inches on Mars. The exhibit was packed for several hours, right up until the announcement of Sally Ride’s lecture.

Our next adventure is Yuri’s Night, at the Challenger Space Center in Peoria on April 12th.