Why is it in the News?

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, carrying two NASA astronauts, will be launched by an Atlas V rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, to the International Space Station (ISS).

What is Boeing’s Starliner?

• Starliner, a reusable spacecraft, has a pusher abort system.
  • This allows the crew to safely escape throughout the launch and the ascent phases of the mission.
• In addition to being software-driven, the Starliner has wireless internet that will help with “crew communication, entertainment and docking with the International Space Station”
• The spacecraft can fly and course-correct on its own.
• It operates like advanced self-driving cars, with features similar to sophisticated cruise control and hands-free driving, allowing astronauts to simply enjoy the ride without intervention.
• It also allows astronauts to choose their level of control.
• Consisting of a crew capsule and a service module, the Starliner aims to revolutionize space travel with its advanced features and capabilities.

Crew Capsule:

• The crew capsule is the heart of the spacecraft, providing housing for astronauts during their journey.
• Designed to withstand the rigours of reentry, the capsule ensures a safe return to Earth for its occupants.

Service Module:

• The service module is equipped with essential systems for astronaut survival, such as air and temperature control, water supply, and sanitation facilities.
• Additionally, it contains the necessary engines and fuel required for manoeuvring the spacecraft in space.
• This module is not reusable and is designed for single use.

Starliner Specifications:

• With a width of over 4 meters, the Starliner can accommodate up to seven astronauts at once.
• The spacecraft boasts a unique weldless structure, making it both durable and reusable, with a potential for up to 10 missions and a six-month turnaround time between launches.
• Furthermore, the Starliner incorporates modern technologies like wireless internet and tablet interfaces for enhanced crew interaction.

Launch Vehicle:

• The Starliner is compatible with the Atlas V rocket, operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA), a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
• This collaboration ensures the seamless integration of the spacecraft and launch vehicle, optimizing mission success.

Why is the mission significant?

• In 2014, NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX to develop spacecraft for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
• While SpaceX has already conducted multiple successful missions with its Dragon crew capsule, the Starliner's success would mark the first time the United States has two domestically produced spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to space.
• Once operational, Boeing and SpaceX will alternate missions to the ISS, with each crew's expedition lasting up to six months.
• This partnership will continue until the ISS is decommissioned in the next decade.

Why in the News?

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently shared a satellite image of Deception Island, one of the only places in the world where a ship can sail directly into the centre of an active volcano.

About Deception Island:

• Deception Island is situated within the South Shetland Islands, forming part of an archipelago northwest of the Antarctic Peninsula.
• This volcanic island is notable for its dynamic features and distinct geography.
• Originating from a colossal volcanic eruption, Deception Island's formation resulted in the collapse of its central structure, allowing seawater to inundate the resulting caldera.
• The landscape is characterized by desolate volcanic slopes, steaming beaches, and glaciers adorned with ash layers, creating a unique horseshoe-shaped entrance to the sea via Neptune’s Bellows.
• The island encircles Port Foster, recognized as one of the safest harbours in the Antarctic, offering vessels a rare opportunity to navigate into the heart of an active volcano.
• Among the few places globally where this is possible, Deception Island has experienced over twenty eruptions since the 19th century.
• Notably, the island witnessed three volcanic eruptions from 1967 to 1970, leading to the destruction of Chilean and British stations.
• Presently, Argentina and Spain maintain summer scientific stations on the island.
• Deception Island is safeguarded under the Antarctic Treaty, designating it as a protected area with restricted human visits and minimized environmental impact.

Why in the News?

Dr Aroh Barjatya, an Indian-origin scientist is set to lead the multi-institution NASA rocket mission on October 14.

About Atmospheric Perturbations around the Eclipse Path (APEP) mission:

• The APEP mission entails the launch of three rockets, each equipped with scientific instruments, to explore changes in the upper atmosphere during a solar eclipse, particularly during the critical phase of sudden light reduction.
• Mission Objective: To investigate alterations in the ionosphere induced by the abrupt decrease in sunlight during an eclipse, leading to the generation of waves in this atmospheric layer.
• Measurements will encompass changes in electric and magnetic fields, as well as variations in density and temperature.
• Launch Details: The launch site is the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, with a specific focus on studying the ionosphere's response during an eclipse.
• Potential Impact on Communications: NASA notes projections indicating a temperature and density reduction in the ionosphere during the eclipse, potentially causing disruptive wave disturbances that could affect GPS and satellite communications.
• Process: Rockets will be strategically positioned just beyond the path of annularity, where the Moon directly aligns with the Sun.
• Each rocket will deploy four compact scientific instruments designed to capture data on electric and magnetic fields, density, and temperature changes.
• NASA's primary objective is to achieve unprecedented simultaneous measurements from multiple ionospheric locations during a solar eclipse.
• Rationale for Rocket Selection: Sounding rockets were chosen for their precision in pinpointing and measuring specific regions of space.
• Their ability to investigate lower altitudes, inaccessible to satellites, makes them ideal for this mission.
• Sounding rockets offer precise data recording as they ascend and descend during suborbital flights, covering altitudes ranging from 45 to 200 miles (70 to 325 kilometres) above Earth's surface along their flight path.

Why is it in the News?

At the recent COP28, NASA and IBM announced that an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool called watsonx.ai would be available on the open-source AI platform Hugging Space.

What is watsonx.ai?

• Watsonx.ai is a collaborative Artificial Intelligence tool developed by IBM and NASA.
• Its primary function is to enable users to monitor Earth from space, assessing past environmental changes and offering predictions about future occurrences.

• User-Friendly Interface: The tool is designed for simplicity, requiring users to select a location and a date.
• Watsonx.ai then highlights changes in floodwater, reforestation efforts, and other pertinent factors.

Functionality:

• Watsonx.ai is built on a foundation model trained on a diverse set of uncategorized data, allowing it to extrapolate information from one context to another.
• NASA provides datasets in the form of satellite images, and IBM developed the foundation model to interpret these visual inputs.
• The model's training involves comprehending visual sequences over time by reconstructing images with blank areas. This process enhances its ability to understand the connections between photos.
• Adjustments were made to the model for specific tasks such as segmenting and categorizing photos.

Additional Components:

• Watsonx.data: A specialized data store optimized for governed data and AI workloads.
  • It facilitates the scaling of AI workloads by leveraging the entire data landscape.
• Watsonx.governance: An end-to-end toolkit encompassing both data and AI governance. It aids clients in establishing responsible, transparent, and explainable AI workflows.
  • The toolkit provides governance capabilities for model management throughout the AI lifecycle.

Why is it in the News?

Atmospheric Waves Experiment is a first-of-its-kind NASA experimental attempt aimed at studying the interactions between terrestrial and space weather.

What is the Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE)?

• AWE is a first-of-its-kind NASA experimental attempt aimed at studying the interactions between terrestrial and Space weather.
• Planned under NASA’s Heliophysics Explorers Program, the $42 million mission will study the links between how waves in the lower layers of the atmosphere impact the upper atmosphere, and thus, Space weather.
• AWE will be launched and mounted on the exterior of the Earth-orbiting International Space Station (ISS).
• From the vantage point, it will look down at the Earth and record the colourful light bands, commonly known as airglow.
• It will try to understand the combination of forces that drive the Space weather in the upper atmosphere.
• “AWE could open a new window of study, wherein scientists are attempting to understand if Space weather is affected by terrestrial and bottom-up forces.
• It will measure the airglow at mesopause (about 85 to 87 km above the Earth’s surface), where the atmospheric temperatures dip to minus 100 degrees Celsius.
• At this altitude, it is possible to capture the faint airglow in the infrared bandwidth, which appears the brightest enabling easy detection.
• AWE will be able to resolve waves at finer horizontal scales than what satellites can usually see at those altitudes, which is part of what makes the mission unique.
• The health of the ionosphere, whose lower layers sit at the edge of Space, is important for maintaining seamless communication.
• It is still not fully understood if the ionosphere is affected by the transient events or intense perturbations resulting from hurricanes or tornadoes.
• It was expected to launch in the month of August 2022, but the fresh launch is planned for later this month.

Why in the News?

Recently, NASA shared this incredible image of an aurora taken from the International Space Station.

What is Aurora?

• An aurora is a natural light display that shimmers in the sky.
• They are only visible at night, and usually only appear in lower polar regions.
• Auroras come in colors like blue, red, yellow, green, and orange.
• They're mostly visible near the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, known as the aurora borealis and aurora australis, respectively.
• These natural light shows occur when the solar wind from the sun meets Earth's magnetic field, creating a beautiful halo of light around the poles.
• This collision between solar wind ions and Earth's atmosphere atoms leads to stunning auroras.
• Their color depends on altitude and the atoms involved.
• Red comes from oxygen ions higher up, while the familiar green-yellow hues arise from interactions at lower altitudes.
• Sometimes, reddish and bluish tints appear, created by ions colliding with nitrogen atoms.
• The most active auroras happen when the solar wind is strongest, affected by solar weather changes, which follow an 11-year cycle.
• Equinoxes and magnetic storms can cause auroras to be seen even in mid-latitudes, affecting communication signals and occasionally causing disruptions.
• Auroras are a natural spectacle, painted by the collision of solar wind and Earth's atmosphere, creating these dancing lights in the night sky.

Why in the News?

The Euclid mission, which will investigate the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, released its first five science images recently.

About Euclid Mission:

• Euclid is a European mission, built and operated by European Space Agency (ESA), with contributions from NASA.
• Euclid is designed to give important new insights into the "dark side" of the universe -- namely dark matter and dark energy, both thought to be key components of our cosmos.
• It was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, (USA) on 1 July 2023 and the launch vehicle used was ‘SpaceX Falcon 9’.
• The mission derives its name from Euclid of Alexandria, an ancient Greek mathematician from around 300 BC, who laid the foundations of geometry.
• Euclid Mission Objective: The primary goal of the Euclid mission is to create a three-dimensional map of the universe, with time as the third dimension.
• This will be achieved by observing billions of galaxies, extending up to 10 billion light-years away, and covering over a third of the celestial sphere.
• Euclid will explore how the Universe has expanded and how structure has formed over cosmic history, revealing more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.
• The Euclid Consortium – consisting of more than 2,000 scientists from 300 institutes in 13 European countries, the U.S., Canada, and Japan – is responsible for providing the scientific instruments and scientific data analysis.
• NASA provided the detectors of the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer, NISP.
• Euclid is a medium-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision Programme.

Why in the News?

NASA’'s Voyager 2 spacecraft, which is venturing through space between stars, faces communication problems due to antenna misalignment. .

About Voyager 2 Spacecraft:

• Voyager 2 is an iconic interplanetary spacecraft launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, with the primary objective of exploring the outer planets of our solar system.
• It is part of the Voyager program, and along with its twin, Voyager 1, it has provided invaluable insights into the distant regions of our cosmic neighborhood.
• The spacecraft is equipped with a suite of scientific instruments to study various aspects of the planets it encounters, including their atmospheres, magnetic fields, and planetary surfaces.
• Voyager 2 successfully conducted close flybys of Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1981, Uranus in 1986, and Neptune in 1989, becoming the first and only spacecraft to visit these four giant gas planets.
• Beyond its initial mission, Voyager 2 continues to be operational and remains in communication with Earth, traveling at an impressive speed of approximately 34,000 miles per hour (55,000 kilometers per hour).
• It has since left the heliosphere, the region influenced by the Sun's magnetic field, and entered interstellar space, becoming the second human-made object to do so after Voyager 1.
• Throughout its journey, Voyager 2 has provided a wealth of data and discoveries about the outer planets and their moons, as well as valuable information about the space environment outside the solar system.
• It has captured breathtaking images of planetary systems, revealing the beauty and complexity of the outer planets and their fascinating moons.
• The spacecraft continues to be a remarkable testament to human ingenuity and curiosity as it ventures farther into the cosmos, providing us with an enduring legacy of exploration and knowledge about our celestial neighbors.