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Space News Update — October 28, 2016 —

Contents

In the News

Story 1: Final Pluto data transmission received from flyby probe

Story 2: GRAIL Insights Into Giant Lunar Impacts

Story 3: Catalog of Known Near-Earth Asteroids Tops 15,000

Departments

The Night Sky

ISS Sighting Opportunities

Space Calendar

NASA-TV Highlights

Food for Thought

Space Image of the Week

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1. Final Pluto data transmission received from flyby probe

Like a cosmic lava lamp, a large section of P luto’s icy surface is being constantly renewed by a process called convection that replaces older surface ices w ith fresher material. Scientists from NASA’s New Horizons mission used state-of-the-art computer simulations to show that the surface of P luto’s informally named Sputnik Planitia is covered w ith churning ice “cells” that are geologically young and turning over due to a process called convection.

The last bits of data collected during NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft’s speedy flyby of Pluto last year are back on Earth, scientists said Thursday, marking the official end of the probe’s prime mission.

It took more than a year for New Horizons to send back the 50-plus gigabits of data collected around the time the spacecraft zipped by Pluto and its five moons on July 14, 2015.

The data downlinks came down at an average of about 2,000 bits per second — a fraction of the speed of a dial-up Internet connection — and were interrupted as the spacecraft conducted maneuvers and as ground antennas were needed by other deep space missions.

The long wait for scientists was part of the plan, as officials knew the data stored aboard the probe’s recorders could only come back to Earth a little at a time.

The final data fragment from the LEISA spectral camera within New Horizons’ Ralph instrument arrived at mission control at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, at 5:48 a.m. EDT (0948 GMT) Tuesday. The downlink came via an antenna at NASA’s Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia, NASA said in a statement Thursday.

It took five hours and eight minutes for the data stream to travel the 3.4-billion-mile (5.5-billion-kilometer) gulf from New Horizons to Earth.

“The Pluto system data that New Horizons collected has amazed us over and over again with the beauty and complexity of Pluto and its system of moons,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “There’s a great deal of work ahead for us to understand

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the 400-plus scientific observations that have all been sent to Earth. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do—after all, who knows when the next data from a spacecraft visiting Pluto will be sent?”

Mission controllers will conduct a final data verification review before erasing the two data recorders aboard New Horizons, clearing room for future science observations from the spacecraft’s extended mission, which includes a close encounter with the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69, a frozen world lurking a billion miles beyond Pluto discovered two years ago by scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope.

The next target for New Horizons measures just 13 to 25 miles (21 to 40 kilometers) across, and experts believe 2014 MU69 is a relic building block from left over from the ancient solar system.

New Horizons will fly by the tiny world on Jan. 1, 2019, at a distance of about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) during an extended mission phase approved by NASA earlier this year.

In the meantime, the New Horizons science team will stay busy combing through the data haul from last year’s Pluto encounter.

“It’s been about a 16-month process, but what rains down are only 1s and 0s,” Stern said in a press conference last week at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences meeting. “Even what comes out of our data reduction pipeline is just raw data. That requires the work of human beings in order to interpret.

“During the entire 16 months, when new datasets were landing several times per week, I think we often felt like doctors in an emergency room, who were just triaging patients one-by-one and stabilizing them as quickly as possible to see what was in those datasets,” Stern said.

Scientists prioritized some observations for New Horizons to send back in the first two months after the Pluto flyby. The bulk of the data trickled down over the last year.

“The hard work of really understanding the Pluto system is going to take years,” Stern said last week. “It’s much more complex and nuanced than we ever expected, and we’re happy about that.”

New Horizons scientists presented their latest results last week at the annual Division for Planetary Sciences meeting.

Researchers said they have found several subtle features in pictures captured by the spacecraft’s black-and-white and color cameras that could be clouds suspended in Pluto’s tenuous atmosphere, which has a surface pressure 100,000 times less than that on Earth.

Scientists identified seven cloud candidates from New Horizons’ imagery, and all are located near the terminator, the boundary between day and night that moves around Pluto during its 6.4-day rotation. They also appear to be lying at low altitudes, and some are in basins surrounded by mountains, but Stern said scientists cannot be sure if the bright regions are clouds floating above the surface, fog at ground level, or some other phenomenon.

Experts would have predicted any clouds at Pluto might form at dawn or dusk at low altitudes, Stern said. A model produced by Erica Barth, a planetary scientist at SWRI, suggests the most likely molecules to form clouds at Pluto would be hydrogen cyanide, light hydrocarbons like acetylene and ethane, or perhaps methane.

Stern said the evidence so far “makes a strong but not airtight case” that some of the features may be clouds.

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“We can’t be certain,” Stern said. “There’s a strong circumstantial case that these are clouds, but it’s only a circumstantial case. We can’t definitely say that these are features above the ground. They certainly could be low-lying. In fact, if you take a look at several of the cloud candidates, it looks like they occur in what apepar to be topographic lows surrounding constructional mountain features on the horizon.”

While nearly all of Pluto’s atmosphere seen by New Horizons is clear of clouds, the isolated features discovered so far — if they are clouds — could hint to a more complicated and dynamic atmosphere around the frigid dwarf planet.

Some of the earliest images of Pluto beamed back from New Horizons revealed distinct haze layers stretching more than 100 miles above the icy world’s rugged surface.

A final determination of whether the bright patches are clouds will likely require a follow-up mission. That was a common theme of Stern’s presentation last week.

“Like many aspects of the Pluto system, the first flyby has given us a fantastic taste of what’s there in a very dynamic and changing environment, but it’s not enough,” Stern said. “In order to confirm whether there are clouds, we would have to go back, go back with new instrumentation and be there for a longer period with something like a Pluto orbiter.”

Long-range views from the Hubble Space Telescope taken before New Horizons arrived at Pluto showed the dwarf planet to have bright and dark patches, but the probe’s pictures found Pluto to have some of the brightest and darkest areas of any planet-sized object in the solar system.

Bonnie Buratti, a co-investigator on the New Horizons science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the brightness of some regions on Pluto — like the Sputnik Planitia area inside the dwarf planet’s famous heart-shaped feature — is tied to geologic activity.

“This active area of Pluto — the heart, or Sputnik Planitia, with the glaciers — is very bright,” Buratti said.

She said other solar system objects, such as Saturn’s moon Enceladus, with similarly reflective regions also exhibit geologic activity. In the case of Enceladus, the activity is manifested in geysers that erupt from a global ocean of liquid water buried beneath the moon’s icy shell.

On Pluto, the bright Sputnik Planitia region has the tell-tale signature of ice flows, likely from slow-moving nitrogen glaciers.

Buratti said the pattern of surface brightness equating to activity could be extended to unexplored worlds residing in the Kuiper Belt, a doughnut-shaped ring of icy proto-planets beyond the orbit of Neptune.

One such world is Eris, the most massive known object in the Kuiper Belt and the largest known dwarf planet not visited by a spacecraft.

“We wouldn’t be surprised if we went to Eris and saw that it’s also active,” Buratti said. “This is something we can infer just looking at a pinpoint of light and combining it with our spacecraft observations (at Pluto).”

Scientists also announced the discovery of landslides on Pluto’s largest moon Charon.

New Horizons’ LORRI imager detected signs of long run-out landsides on the walls of a canyon on Charon named Serenity Chasma, where rocks and other surface material fell down a 30-degree slope and left a deposit as thick as 650 feet (200 meters).

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The slides could have been triggered billions of years ago by a quake or a violent impact that shook Charon, according to Ross Beyer, a science team researcher from Sagan Center at the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center.

No such landslides have been found on Pluto.

“Landslides have been detected on Charon,” Beyer said. “They are the first landslides that we have seen in the Kuiper Belt. We wonder if they will be detected elsewhere in the Kuiper Belt if we go to other places there and see their geology, but of course, to do so requires new missions to the Kuiper Belt to find that out.”

Officials are already discussing the next step in the exploration of the Kuiper Belt after New Horizons, but a decision to fund any NASA-led mission to return to the outer frontier of the solar system will be weighed against the merits of launching probes to other planets, such as orbiters to conduct the first in-depth surveys of Uranus, Neptune and their extensive moon systems.

NASA is already looking at concepts for potential missions to Uranus and Neptune for consideration by the National Research Council’s decadal survey, a major review held every 10 years to set priorities for the space agency’s solar system research and exploration.

Source: Spaceflight Now Return to Contents

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2. GRAIL Insights Into Giant Lunar Impacts

New results from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission are providing insights into the huge impacts that dominated the early history of Earth's moon and other solid worlds, like Earth, Mars, and the satellites of the outer solar system.

In two papers, published this week in the journal Science, researchers examine the origins of the moon's giant Orientale impact basin. The research helps clarify how the formation of Orientale, approximately 3.8 billion years ago, affected the moon's geology. Located along the moon's southwestern limb -- the left-hand edge as seen from Earth -- Orientale is the largest and best-preserved example of what's known as a "multi-ring basin." Impact craters larger than about 180 miles (300 kilometers) in diameter are referred to as basins. With increasing size, craters tend to have increasingly complex structures, often with multiple concentric, raised rings. Orientale is

about 580 miles (930 kilometers) wide and has three distinct rings, which form a bullseye-like pattern. Multi-ring basins are observed on many of the rocky and icy worlds in our solar system, but until now scientists had not been able to agree on how their rings form. What they needed was more information about the crater's structure beneath the surface, which is precisely the sort of information contained in gravity science data collected during the GRAIL mission. The powerful impacts that created basins like Orientale played an important role in the early geologic history of our moon. They were extremely disruptive, world-altering events that caused substantial fracturing, melting and shaking of the young moon's crust. They also blasted out material that fell back to the surface, coating older features that were already there; scientists use this layering of ejected material to help determine the age of lunar features as they work to unravel the moon's complex history. The Importance of Orientale Because scientists realized that Orientale could be quite useful in understanding giant impacts, they gave special importance to observing its structure near the end of the GRAIL mission. The orbit of the mission's two probes was lowered so they passed less than 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) above the crater's mountainous rings. "No other planetary exploration mission has made gravity science observations this close to the moon. You

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could have waved to the twin spacecraft as they flew overhead if you stood at the ring's edge," said Sami Asmar, GRAIL project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Of particular interest to researchers has been the size of the initial crater that formed during the Orientale impact. With smaller impacts, the initial crater is left behind, and many characteristics of the event can be inferred from the crater's size. Various past studies have suggested each of Orientale's three rings might be the remnant of the initial crater. In the first of the two new studies, scientists teased out the size of the transient crater from GRAIL's gravity field data. Their analysis shows that the initial crater was somewhere between the size of the basin's two innermost rings. "We've been able to show that none of the rings in Orientale basin represent the initial, transient crater," said GRAIL Principal Investigator Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, lead author of the first paper. "Instead, it appears that, in large impacts like the one that formed Orientale, the surface violently rebounds, obliterating signs of the initial impact." The analysis also shows that the impact excavated at least 816,000 cubic miles (3.4 million cubic kilometers) of material -- 153 times the combined volume of the Great Lakes. "Orientale has been an enigma since the first gravity observations of the moon, decades ago," said Greg Neumann, a co-author of the paper at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "We are now able to resolve the individual crustal components of the bullseye gravity signature and correlate them with computer simulations of the formation of Orientale." The second study describes how scientists successfully simulated the formation of Orientale to reproduce the crater's structure as observed by GRAIL. These simulations show, for the first time, how the rings of Orientale formed, which is likely similar for multi-ring basins in general. "Because our models show how the subsurface structure is formed, matching what GRAIL has observed, we're confident we've gained understanding of the formation of the basin close to 4 billion years ago," said Brandon Johnson of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, lead author of the second paper. The results also shed light on another moon mystery: Giant impacts like Orientale should have dredged up deep material from the moon's mantle, but instead, the composition of the crater's surface is the same as that of the lunar crust. So, scientists have wondered, where did the mantle material go? The simulation shows that the deep, initial crater quickly collapses, causing material around the outside to flow inward, and covering up the exposed mantle rock. The new GRAIL insights about Orientale suggest that other ringed basins, invisible in images, could be discovered by their gravity signature. This may include ringed basins hidden beneath lunar maria -- the large, dark areas of solidified lava that include the Sea of Tranquility and the Sea of Serenity. "The data set we obtained with GRAIL is incredibly rich," said Zuber. "There are many hidden wonders on the moon that we'll be uncovering for years to come." The twin GRAIL probes were launched in 2011. The mission concluded in 2012.

Source: SpaceRef.com Return to Contents

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3. Catalog of Known Near-Earth Asteroids Tops 15,000

The number of discovered near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) now tops 15,000, with an average of 30 new discoveries added each week. This milestone marks a 50 percent increase in the number of known NEAs since 2013, when discoveries reached 10,000 in August of that year.

Surveys funded by NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program (NEOs include both asteroids and comets) account for more than 95 percent of discoveries so far.

The 15,000th near-Earth asteroid is designated 2016 TB57. It was discovered on Oct. 13 by observers at the Mount Lemmon Survey, an element of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona. 2016 TB57 is a rather small asteroid -- about 50 to 115 feet (16 to 36 meters) in size -- that will come closest to Earth on Oct. 31 at just beyond five times the distance of the moon. It will safely pass Earth.

A near-Earth asteroid is defined as one whose orbit periodically brings it within approximately 1.3 times Earth's average distance to the sun -- that is within 121 million miles (195 million kilometers) -- of the sun (Earth's average distance to the sun is about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers). This distance also then brings the asteroid within roughly 30 million miles (50 million kilometers) of Earth's orbit. Observers have already discovered more than 90 percent of the estimated population of the large NEOs -- those larger than 0.6 miles (one kilometer).

"The rising rate of discovery is due to dedicated NEO surveys and upgraded telescopes coming online in recent years," said NASA's NEO Observations Program Manager Kelly Fast. "But while we're making great progress, we still have a long way to go." It is estimated by astronomers that only about 27 percent of the NEAs that are 460 feet (140 meters) and larger have been found to date. Congress directed NASA to find over 90 percent of objects this size and larger by the end of 2020.

Currently, two NASA-funded NEO surveys -- the Catalina Sky Survey and the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii -- account for about 90 percent of new NEO discoveries. Both projects upgraded their telescopes in 2015, improving their discovery rates.

A recent upgrade to one of the Catalina Sky Survey's telescopes resulted in a tripling of its average monthly NEO discovery rate. When the Pan-STARRS system increased the observing time it devoted to NEO searching to 90 percent, it increased its rate of discovery by a factor of three. Pan-STARRS also will add a second telescope to the hunt this fall. As more capable telescopes are deployed, the overall NEO survey effort will be able to find more objects as small as and smaller than 140 meters (460 feet).

The NEO Observations Program is a primary element of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which is responsible for finding, tracking and characterizing potentially hazardous NEOs, issuing warnings about possible impacts, and coordinating U.S. government planning for response to an actual impact threat.

"While no known NEO currently poses a risk of impact with Earth over the next 100 years," says NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson, "we've found mostly the larger asteroids, and we have a lot more of the smaller but still potentially hazardous ones to find."

Source: JPL Return to Contents

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The Night Sky Friday, October 28 • In twilight this evening, Saturn, brilliant Venus, and Antares form a nearly vertical, curving line low in the southwest — in that order top to bottom. Yesterday they formed an almost straight line.

Watch their configuration change rapidly day by day, as Venus speeds eastward (upper left) with respect to the other two. By Wednesday November 2nd they'll form almost a right triangle, as shown at right.

Saturday, October 29 • The Ghost of Summer Suns. Halloween is approaching, and this means that Arcturus, the star sparkling low in the west-northwest in twilight, is taking on its role as "the Ghost of Summer Suns." For several days centered on October 29th every year, Arcturus occupies a special place above your local landscape. It closely marks the spot where the Sun stood at the same time, by the clock, during hot June and July — in broad daylight, of course.

So, in the last days of October each year, you can think of Arcturus as the chilly Halloween ghost of the departed summer Sun, sinking low and setting after dinnertime.

Sunday, October 30 • Spot bright Altair high in the southwest soon after dark. Two distinctive little constellations glimmer above it: Delphinus the Dolphin, hardly more than a fist at arm's length to Altair's upper left, and fainter Sagitta the Arrow, slightly closer to Altair's upper right. In your sky too bright for them? Use binoculars.

• New Moon (exact at 1:38 p.m. EDT).

Monday, October 31 • There's no Moon this Halloween. Vega is the brightest star high in the west. Less high in the southwest is Altair, not quite as bright. Just upper right of Altair, by a finger-width at arm's length, is orange Tarazed, looking like Altair's little sidekick but actually a much bigger and brighter star far in the background. Altair is 17 light-years away. Tarazed is about 360 light-years away, and it's 100 times as luminous!

Tuesday, November 1 • Venus, Saturn, and the thin crescent Moon shine through the fading twilight low in the southwest, as shown at the top of this page.

• Draw a line from Altair, the brightest star high in the southwest after dark, to Vega, the brightest high in the west. Continue the line onward half as far, and you hit the Lozenge: the pointy-nosed head of Draco, the Dragon.

Source: Sky & Telescope Return to Contents

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ISS Sighting Opportunities

For Denver: Date Visible Max Height Appears Disappears

Sun Oct 30, 6:49 AM 2 min 17° 10° above S 17° above SE

Tue Nov 1, 6:40 AM 4 min 45° 11° above SSW 37° above E

Sighting information for other cities can be found at NASA’s Satellite Sighting Information

NASA-TV Highlights (all times Eastern Daylight Time)

• 3 p.m., Friday, October 28 - Replay of the Video B-Roll Feed of Training and Previous Missions of ISS Expedition 50-51 Astronaut Peggy Whitson of NASA (all channels)

• 3:30 p.m., Friday, October 28 - ISS Expedition 49-50 Change of Command Ceremony (Ivanishin hands over ISS command to Kimbrough) (all channels)

• 7 p.m., 11 p.m., Friday, October 28 - Replay of the ISS Expedition 49-50 Change of Command Ceremony (Ivanishin hands over ISS command to Kimbrough) (all channels)

• 11 a.m., Saturday, October 29 - Replay of the NASA Television Video File News Feed of the ISS Expedition 50-51 Crew Qualification Training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia (Whitson, Novitskiy, Pesquet; recorded on Oct. 24-25) (NTV-1 (Public))

• 2 a.m., 7 a.m., 11 a.m., 3 p.m., Saturday, October 29 - Replay of the ISS Expedition 50-51 Crew News Conference at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia (Whitson, Novitskiy, Pesquet) (NTV-1 (Public))

• 2:45 a.m., 7:45 a.m., 3:45 p.m., Saturday, October 29 - Replay of the NASA Television Video File News Feed of the ISS Expedition 50-51 Crew’s (Whitson, Novitskiy, Pesquet) Ceremonial Visit to the Gagarin Museum at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center and their Visit to Red Square and the Kremlin in Moscow (NTV-1 (Public))

• 8 a.m., Saturday, October 29 - Replay of “STEM in 30” – Seven Minutes of Terror: The Engineering Behind Landing on Other Planets (NTV-1 (Public))

• 9 a.m., Saturday, October 29 - Replay of the NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Panel on Solar Hazards in Exploration (all channels)

• 4:30 p.m., Saturday, October 29 - ISS Expedition 49 Farewells and Hatch Closure Coverage (Rubins, Ivanishin, Onishi); hatch closure scheduled at appx. 5:15 p.m. ET) (starts at 4:45 p.m.) (all channels)

• 8 p.m., Saturday, October 29 - ISS Expedition 49/Soyuz MS-01 Undocking Coverage (Rubins, Ivanishin, Onishi); undocking scheduled at 8:35 p.m. ET) (starts at 8:15 p.m.) (all channels)

• 10:30 p.m., Saturday, October 29 - ISS Expedition 49/Soyuz MS-01 Deorbit Burn and Landing Coverage (Rubins, Ivanishin, Onishi); deorbit burn scheduled at 11:06 p.m. ET; landing near Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan scheduled at 11:59 p.m. ET) (starts at 10:45 p.m.) (all channels)

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• 2 a.m., 7 a.m., 11 a.m., 7 p.m., 11 p.m., Sunday, October 30 - NASA Television Video File News Feed of the ISS Expedition 49/Soyuz MS-01 Landing and Post-Landing Activities (Rubins, Ivanishin, Onishi) (all channels)

• 9 a.m., 4 p.m., Sunday, October 30 - Replay of the NASA Television Video File News Feed of the ISS Expedition 50-51 Crew Qualification Training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia (Whitson, Novitskiy, Pesquet; recorded on Oct. 20-21) (all channels)

• 10 a.m., 8 p.m., Sunday, October 30 - Replay of “STEM in 30” – Seven Minutes of Terror: The Engineering Behind Landing on Other Planets (NTV-1 (Public))

• 1 p.m., 3 p.m., Sunday, October 30 - NASA Television Video File News Feed of the ISS Expedition 49/Soyuz MS-01 Post-Landing Activities in Kazakhstan and Interviews; scheduled to include post-landing interviews with Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace (all channels)

• 5 p.m., 9 p.m., Sunday, October 30 - Replay of the NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Panel on Solar Hazards in Exploration (all channels)

• 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 7 a.m., 11 a.m., 3 p.m., 7 p.m., 11 p.m., Monday, October 31 - Replay of the NASA Television Video File News Feed of the ISS Expedition 49/Soyuz MS-01 Landing and Post-Landing Activities (Rubins, Ivanishin, Onishi) (NTV-1 (Public))

• 12 p.m., Tuesday, November 1 - NASA Innovation Mission Day - Deputy Administrator Dava Newman’s Keynote on Agency Innovation Mission Day (all channels)

• 4 p.m., 8 p.m., 10 p.m., Tuesday, November 1 - Replay of the NASA Innovation Mission Day - Deputy Administrator Dava Newman’s Keynote on Agency Innovation Mission Day (all channels)

Watch NASA TV on the Net by going to the NASA website. Return to Contents

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Space Calendar • Oct 28 - Comet 73P-BG/Schwassmann-Wachmann Perihelion (0.996 AU) • Oct 28 - Comet C/2016 T3 (PANSTARRS) At Opposition (3.194 AU) • Oct 28 - Comet P/2015 TP200 (LINEAR) Perihelion (3.385 AU) • Oct 28 - Asteroid 1419 Danzig Occults HIP 13327 (5.5 Magnitude Star) • Oct 28 - Asteroid 4871 Riverside Closest Approach To Earth (1.026 AU) • Oct 28 - Apollo Asteroid 1620 Geographos Closest Approach To Earth (1.339 AU) • Oct 28 - Asteroid 274300 UNESCO Closest Approach To Earth (1.478 AU) • Oct 28 - Asteroid 184784 Bettiepage Closest Approach To Earth (1.860 AU) • Oct 28 - Neptune Trojan 2014 QO441 At Opposition (32.286 AU) • Oct 28 - 45th Anniversary (1971), Prospero Launch (Great Britian's First Space Launch)

• Oct 29 - [Oct 22] Soyuz MS-1 Return to Earth (International Space Station) • Oct 29 - Cassini, Distant Flyby of Titan • Oct 29 - Comet 73P-V/Schwassmann-Wachmann Perihelion (0.974 AU) • Oct 29 - Comet 209P/LINEAR At Opposition (3.981 AU) • Oct 29 - Aten Asteroid 2016 TZ19 Near-Earth Flyby (0.049 AU) • Oct 29 - Asteroid 24663 Philae Closest Approach To Earth (0.959 AU) • Oct 29 - Asteroid 16543 Rosetta Closest Approach To Earth (1.061 AU) • Oct 29 - Asteroid 75564 Audubon Closest Approach To Earth (1.529 AU) • Oct 29 - Asteroid 7359 Messier Closest Approach To Earth (1.563 AU) • Oct 29 - Plutino 47171 (1999 TC36) At Opposition (29.578 AU) • Oct 29 - Kuiper Belt Object 42301 (2001 UR163) At Opposition (51.522 AU) • Oct 29 - 25th Anniversary (1991), Galileo, Asteroid Gaspra Flyby • Oct 29 - Carl Witt's 150th Birthday (1866) • Oct 30 - European Summer Time Ends - Set Clock Back 1 Hour (European Union) • Oct 30 - SES-10 Falcon 9 Launch • Oct 30 - Venus Passes 3.0 Degrees From Saturn • Oct 30 - Comet 30P/Reinmuth At Opposition (2.012 AU) • Oct 30 - Comet C/2015 VL62 At Opposition (3.108 AU) • Oct 30 - Comet 79P/du Toit-Hartley At Opposition (3.543 AU) • Oct 30 - Comet 231P/LINEAR-NEAT At Opposition (3.672 AU) • Oct 30 - [Oct 24] Apollo Asteroid 2016 UQ5 Near-Earth Flyby (0.036 AU) • Oct 30 - Asteroid 21459 Chrisrussell Closest Approach To Earth (1.357 AU) • Oct 30 - Asteroid 2866 Hardy Closest Approach To Earth (1.562 AU) • Oct 30 - Asteroid 4252 Godwin Closest Approach To Earth (2.055 AU) • Oct 30 - Asteroid 4999 MPC Closest Approach To Earth (2.062 AU) • Oct 30 - Centaur Object 20461 Dioretsa At Opposition (27.633 AU) • Oct 30 - 35th Anniversary (1981), Venera 13 Launch (USSR Venus Lander/Flyby Mission) • Oct 31 - Comet 2P/Encke Closest Approach To Earth (1.301 AU) • Oct 31 - [Oct 28] Apollo Asteroid 2016 UR36 Near-Earth Flyby (0.003 AU) • Oct 31 - Apollo Asteroid 2016 TB57 Near-Earth Flyby (0.013 AU) • Oct 31 - [Oct 28] Apollo Asteroid 2016 UP36 Near-Earth Flyby (0.013 AU) • Oct 31 - Apollo Asteroid 164121 (2003 YT1) Near-Earth Flyby (0.035 AU) • Oct 31 - [Oct 26] Aten Asteroid 2016 UC31 Near-Earth Flyby (0.057 AU) • Oct 31 - Apollo Asteroid 2016 PN38 Near-Earth Flyby (0.079 AU) • Oct 31 - Aten Asteroid 3753 Cruithne Closest Approach To Earth (0.511 AU) • Oct 31 - Asteroid 443 Photographica Closest Approach To Earth (1.277 AU) • Oct 31 - Asteroid 1489 Attila Closest Approach To Earth (2.551 AU) • Oct 31 - 80th Anniversary (1936), 1st Successful Rocket Engine Test in Pasadena, California (JPL's

Beginnings)

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• Nov 01 - OFT 1 (Dreamchaser CCiCAP Uncrewed Mission) Atlas 5 Launch • Nov 01 - Himawari 9 H-2A Launch • Nov 01 - Cassini, Distant Flyby of Telesto & Polydeuces • Nov 01 - Comet C/2016 S1 (PANSTARRS) Closest Approach To Earth (2.219 AU) • Nov 01 - Comet 221P/LINEAR At Opposition (2.791 AU) • Nov 01 - Comet P/2005 S3 (Read) Perihelion (2.821 AU) • Nov 01 - Apollo Asteroid 2006 KC Near-Earth Flyby (0.086 AU) • Nov 01 - Asteroid 73491 Robmatson Closest Approach To Earth (1.730 AU) • Nov 01 - Asteroid 12818 Tomhanks Closest Approach To Earth (1.751 AU) • Nov 01 - Asteroid 13801 Kohlhase Closest Approach To Earth (1.935 AU) • Nov 01 - Kuiper Belt Object 120348 (2004 TY364) At Opposition (38.179 AU) • Nov 01 - Kuiper Belt Object 2014 UM33 At Opposition (43.002 AU) • Nov 01 - 75th Anniversary (1941), Ansel Adams Takes Moonrise Photo Over Hernandez, New Mexico

Source: JPL Space Calendar Return to Contents

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Food for Thought

Science: Public interest high, literacy stable

While public interest in science continues to grow, the level of U.S. scientific literacy remains largely unchanged, according to a survey by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.

Funded by NASA, the study found that 51 percent of Americans are interested in science, but only 28 percent have a sufficient level of scientific understanding to follow and engage in debates about current science and technology policy issues.

The level of scientific literacy has remained constant for nearly a decade.

Recent reports from the National Science Foundation reinforce the U-M findings. Analyses since the 1980s have shown that the adult literacy rate is driven primarily by the completion of college-level science

courses and completion of a baccalaureate degree. It is this group that follows science and technology news closely in the media, both traditional and online.

After NASA's 2011 Mars Curiosity Landing and 2015's first-ever close up images of Pluto, Americans' interest in science spiked--but scientific literacy still lagged. Why the disconnect? NASA wanted to know.

In September 2015, NASA's Science Mission Directorate selected 27 organizations across the nation to implement a new strategic approach to more effectively engage learners of all ages on NASA science education programs and activities.

U-M was one of those selected and was tasked to study ways to boost science literacy, with the support of a $5.2 million five-year cooperative grant from NASA.

"NASA plays a key role in addressing these issues because of the exciting and accessible activities that their earth and space science activities afford," said Jon Miller, director of the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy at U-M's Institute for Social Research.

NASA's current science portfolio consists of more than 100 missions. In 2015, SMD required all of its science education-related activities to compete in a reassessment to better align science content and experts with learners' needs.

An examination of the pattern of growth in adult scientific literacy indicates that levels increased steadily between 1988 and 2008, but has plateaued since then.

"The stability observed in these results suggests that less growth in these factors may, in part, reflect the impact of the recession on educational enrollments," U-M's Miller said. "We will continue to examine the factors associated with the stalled rate of growth in scientific literacy and expect to be able to identify and discuss causal factors in subsequent reports."

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The U-M survey builds on several decades of work that was initiated by a survey sponsored by the National Association of Science Writers in 1957, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, and conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan.

The 1957 study was conducted only a few months prior to the launch of Sputnik and provides an essential baseline. In 1979, Miller and colleague Kenneth Prewitt resumed the series with support from the National Science Board.

With the issuance of the five-year NASA grant, Miller is continuing this work with an eye to the future.

"NASA has provided lifelong learners around the globe the information to become science literate, a key asset being the inspiration NASA science missions provide," said Kristen Erickson, director of Science Engagement and Partnerships at NASA. "Our diverse portfolio gives us the opportunity to accomplish that mission in many ways--not only to the scientific community but to the public worldwide."

Source: EurekAlert Return to Contents

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Space Image of the Week

Haunting the Cepheus Flare Image Credit & Copyright: Thomas Lelu

Explanation: Spooky shapes seem to haunt this jeweled expanse, drifting through the night in the royal constellation Cepheus. Of course, the shapes are cosmic dust clouds faintly visible in dimly reflected starlight. Far from your own neighborhood on planet Earth, they lurk along the plane of the Milky Way at the edge of the Cepheus Flare molecular cloud complex some 1,200 light-years away. Over 2 light-years across and brighter than the other ghostly apparitions, vdB 141 or Sh2-136 is also known as the Ghost Nebula, seen at the right of the starry field of view. Within the nebula are the telltale signs of dense cores collapsing in the early stages of star formation.

Source: APOD Return to Contents