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Tag: NASA

50 years of Jews in space

50 years of Jews in space

This colour image was obtained by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft early Dec. 12, 1990, when the spacecraft was about 1.6 million miles from the earth. (photo from NASA/JPL)

It’s been 50 years since Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon, on July 20, 1969. But there was another “first” six months earlier – in January 1969, the first Jew journeyed into space, Soviet cosmonaut Boris Volynov.

Since then, there have been 14 Jewish space-bound astronauts, including arguably the most famous, Israeli Ilan Ramon, who died in the explosion of the Columbia Space Shuttle, with six colleagues, in February 2003.

Like many before him, and many since, Ramon’s mission was infused with his Jewish heritage. For the voyage, he packed a pocket-sized Torah smuggled in (and out) of Bergen-Belsen, the Nazi death camp, and brought “Moon Landscape,” drawn by Petr Ginz, a 14-year-old inmate of Auschwitz. He also requested kosher food on the shuttle and NASA contacted Illinois-based My Own Meals, which makes kosher “thermo-stabilized” sealed pouches for campers. Reports say that Ramon also asked Rabbi Zvi Konikov of Satellite Beach, Fla., about keeping Shabbat in space – depending on the shuttle’s position, sunrise can happen 16 times a day.

To mark the 50-year milestone of the moon landing, the Jewish Independent interviewed three Jewish astronauts: Jeffrey Hoffman (the first Jewish male astronaut in space), David Wolf and Mark Polansky.

* * *

Hoffman was sent on five missions, the first in 1985; the last in 1996. In 1993, he repaired the Hubble Space Telescope. He logged more than 1,000 hours (the first to do so) and 21.5 million miles in space.

JI: Did you always want to be an astronaut?

photo - Jeffrey Hoffman
Jeffrey Hoffman (photo from NASA)

JH: Well, if you asked in 1962 … any red-blooded young American boy, or probably Russian boys, for that matter, what they wanted to be when they grew up, 90% would say astronauts. I recognized that all of the early astronauts were military test pilots, and it was not a career I was interested in. I never considered it a realistic career prospect, but it was something I was always fascinated by.

In the late ’70s, NASA was developing what was then the brand new Space Shuttle, which had a crew of up to seven and they only needed two pilots. So, when they put out the first call for shuttle astronauts, all of sudden there were two types of astronauts now they were looking for. They were looking for the pilots, who were the traditional test pilot astronauts just like it had always been in the program, but they were also looking for scientists, engineers, medical doctors…. I all put in an application, and I was lucky enough to get selected.

JI: What was a highlight in space?

JH: The first highlight was riding a rocket into space, which fulfilled a childhood dream. But, the most memorable was, for every shuttle flight, two crew members were trained to use the space suits, just in case something happened. We weren’t planning on doing one on our flight, but one of our satellites malfunctioned and they sent me and my partner out to do what was, for NASA, the very first ever unplanned spacewalk. That was just an extraordinary experience.

JI: How did you get the idea to spin a dreidel in space?

JH: Before my first flight, my rabbi (Shaul Osadchey) asked me if I was interested in taking Jewish artifacts up. There were several dreidels I took up, one from the synagogue. I also took a mezuzah (donated to the Jewish Museum in New York), a Torah, both tallits from my two sons from their bar mitzvah, and a menorah, which is still at the front door of the science museum in Jerusalem. While I was in Jerusalem, I met a couple of Jewish artists who had read about me, a Jewish astronaut who took Jewish things into space. I had planned on being in space during Chanukah and one thing led to another and they presented me with a dreidel and a traveling menorah. It is a beautiful dreidel. It simply would not stop spinning!

JI: What did you do with the other Jewish stuff?

JH: There are only bunks for half the crew, with little places where you would sleep at night, and so we would share those with someone on the other crew. Well, I had a mezuzah with me. Of course, you can’t nail a mezuzah to the door when you are in a spacecraft; you have to use Velcro. So, I put it on the inside of my little sleep compartment and I would remove it every morning, because I figured this was for me and I didn’t want to impose on someone else who might not know what it is about. Fourth day of the mission, the guy who had been using my bunk at night said, “Hey, Jeff, that’s a nice idea putting the mezuzah in there!” I slapped my forehead…. It was Scott Horowitz, another Jewish astronaut. So, after that, we just left the mezuzah Velcroed to the wall for the both of us.

JI: Did you know Ilan Ramon?

JH: I knew Ilan, and had numerous contacts with his wife, Rona, since Ilan’s death. Although he was a payload specialist astronaut – a non-professional astronaut, on a crew for a special reason, for only one flight – he was totally accepted into the astronaut office culture. A large part of this is because his heroism as an Israeli Air Force pilot impressed the pilot astronauts, and another large part was because he was a genuinely likable person.

* * *

Wolf had four missions from 1993 to 2009, with more than 4,000 hours in space, 168 days in orbit on the space station Mir and seven spacewalks. He was the chief engineer for the orbital medical facility and chief scientist for the International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory bioreactor (tissue-engineering) program. He conducted a number of experiments and studies, including advanced microgravity tissue-engineering techniques.

JI: How did you become an astronaut?

photo - David Wolf
David Wolf (photo from NASA)

DW: I’d been flying in the F4 Phantom in the international guard for many years and had that air force background; I had this mix of medicine, engineering and flying. I wound up in a very unique situation as an astronaut because I had been at NASA for nine years already, building instruments for the shuttle and the space station. Interestingly enough, I went to NASA as a bioengineer and a flight surgeon initially. I was the chief engineer for what became the health medical facility on the space station.

JI: What was terrifying about being in space?

DW: I was trapped outside the airlock on a spacewalk in a Russian space suit in a Russian spacecraft. The airlock was never recovered. It wouldn’t repressurize, so we had to ditch into another module. [It] took like 14 hours; we were [brought in] at the last second. I have had three total power failures of a spacecraft.

JI: Now tell me about the Jewish aspects.

DW: We Jewish astronauts do consider ourselves as representing the Jewish community. We take it seriously. I carried a mezuzah and it’s on my door now. I also carried a yad, a Torah pointer, and gave it to my synagogue in Indianapolis. I had a small menorah up there. I have the world-record dreidel spin.

JI: You might want to ask Hoffman about that.

DW: Hoffman and I are having a running battle, a running argument, on who has the longest dreidel spin. But I know mine went for like an hour and a half until it got sucked into an air intake. It was just floating there spinning.

JI: Did you know Ilan Ramon?

DW: We were good friends, and his office was right down the hall, a few doors down. He was one of the very finest that we ever saw come through. And Israel should be totally proud of providing that kind of quality to the astronaut office.

* * *

Polansky was sent on three missions – in 2001, 2006 and 2009 – all of which contributed to assembly of the ISS. He has logged nearly a thousand hours in space, and served as director of operations at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia. His initial flight was notable for several firsts: the first shuttle to dock with the ISS, the first time that a total of 13 crew members lived and worked onboard the ISS at the same time, and the first time that an astronaut/cosmonaut from every ISS partner agency was in orbit together.

JI: When did you decide to become an astronaut?

photo - Mark Polansky
Mark Polansky (photo from NASA)

MP: I was 13 when we landed on the moon and I got inspired and thought about becoming an astronaut. I’m old enough to remember that everything came to a screeching halt. The teacher would roll in a rickety old black-and-white TV on a stand and plug it in, and pull out rabbit ears….

I was a freshman in college in ’74 and I was living in a dormitory at Purdue University with, of all people, David Wolf, and Gene Cernan came to campus to give a talk. Imagine yourself as a freshman in college being about five feet away from a man who walked on the moon – I still have goosebumps about that. And that led me down a road which went to the air force and beyond to eventually get where I got.

JI: What was a highlight of being in space?

MP: You go over places, especially when you orbit around the Middle East, and you know what goes on, on the ground, and the horrible things humans can do to each other, and the suffering. You see none of that from there. You get this feeling of, it’s almost both hope and sadness. It gives you hope that we as a species can get past this.

JI: Given past disasters, were you afraid?

MP: Flying high-performance aircraft, being a fighter pilot, a test pilot, unfortunately, there are times when there are going to be aviation mishaps, and it’s usually very unforgiving. You realize that, as much as you would like to make things so safe, there is no such thing as absolute safety, where you never get hurt. You don’t want to get hurt in an aviation accident? Well, don’t fly airplanes. I always knew there was a lot of risk to it.

I got to meet a lot of the people who were working on the hardware. This was a calling for them. They could have made a lot more money working in another industry, but they were there because they just lived and breathed working on Space Shuttles, doing everything they could to make sure those Space Shuttles were as safe as they possibly could be.

JI: Did you know Ilan Ramon?

MP: I knew Ilan Ramon and, when he came over, he was flying with a couple of classmates of mine. After that tragedy, I spoke on behalf of the agency at a reception they had in Los Angeles, about Ilan. He was just a normal, great guy, and a man of peace.

** *

Other Jewish astronauts:

Jerome Apt: Four missions, 1991 to 1996. Author of Orbit: NASA Astronauts Photograph the Earth (National Geographic Society). Received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1997. In 2012, the International Astronomical Union approved the name “Jeromeapt” for the main-belt asteroid 116903.

Martin Fettman: 1993 mission. Has published more than 100 articles in refereed scientific journals.

Scott J. Horowitz: three missions, 1996-2001. Four Space Shuttle flights. A retired U.S. air force colonel.

Garrett Reisman: 2008 and 2010 missions. Joined SpaceX in 2011 as a senior engineer working on astronaut safety.

Gregory Chamitoff: 2008 and 2011 missions. The Lawrence Hargrave Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Sydney, Australia; professor of engineering practice in aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University.

Ellen Louise Shulman Baker: three missions, 1989-1995, the last of which was the first Space Shuttle mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir, and involved an exchange of crews. Logged almost 700 hours in space.

Marsha Ivins: five missions, 1990-2001. Spent 55 days in orbit, on missions devoted to such diverse tasks as deploying satellites, conducting scientific research, and docking with Mir and the ISS.

John M. Grunsfeld: five missions, 1995-2002. In January 2012, returned to NASA and served as associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Judith Resnik: first Jewish American and the first Jewish woman in space. Died on Challenger, January 1986.

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 publications around the world.

Format ImagePosted on July 12, 2019July 10, 2019Author Dave GordonCategories WorldTags David Wolf, Jeffrey Hoffman, Judaism, Mark Polansky, NASA, space
?תחנת חלל חדש

?תחנת חלל חדש

התחנה תאפשר לאסטרונאוטים לאסוף סלעים מהירח, כמו הדוגמיות שהובאו בתכנית “אפולו”, ולמיין ולנתח אותן בתחנה, לפני החזרתן לכדור הארץ – נאס”א

תחנת החלל הבינלאומית המקיפה את כדור הארץ מאז 1998 ומאוישת דרך קבע מאז שנת 2000, מתקרבת לימי קיצה. שתי השותפות העיקריות בתחנה, סוכנות החלל האמריקנית נאס”א וסוכנות החלל הרוסית רוסקוסמוס, מתכננות להפסיק לתקצב את המבנה היקר ביותר בהיסטוריה – שבנייתו נמשכת כל הזמן עד ל-2024.

מה תוכנן להמשך הדרך בחלל? נאס”א מעוניינת לבנות את תחנת החלל הבינלאומית הבאה סמוך ירח. התחנה תשמש את המדינות החברות בה כפלטפורמה למשימות מאוישות לירח, וכן גם עבור המשימה המאוישת הראשונה המתוכננת למאדים. לאחרונה החליטה ממשלת קנדה להצטרף רשמית למאמצים, עם התחייבות של ראש הממשלה, ג’סטין טרודו, להשקיע מיליארד וחצי דולר בבניית זרוע רובוטית חכמה, שתשמש לתיקונים ולתחזוקת התחנה, בדומה לזרוע שיוצרה על ידי קנדה וממשמשת כיום את תחנת החלל הבינלאומית.

קנדה מבטיחה עוד לבנות זרוע רובוטית קטנה ורגישה יותר, בדומה לרובוט הפועל בתחנת החלל הבינלאומית הנוכחית. הזרוע הרובוטית החכמה המיועדת לתחנת החלל החדשה, שלא כמו זו של התחנה הקיימת, תהיה אוטונומית לחלוטין. למה כוונה בעצם? לפי התכניות תחנת החלל שתמוקם לייד הירח, תהיה מבצעית בכל מצב וגם כשלא יהיו אסטרונאוטים על סיפונה.

כחלק מההתחייבות בת העשרים וארבע השנים, קנדה מתכוונת להקצות משאבים גם לעידוד עסקים קנדיים קטנים ובינוניים לפיתוח טכנולוגיות למשימות מאוישות לירח. זאת בדומה למכרזים שפרסמה לאחרונה נאס”א לפיתוח מערכת נחיתה מאוישת לירח.

בשנת 2017 חתם נשיא ארה”ב, דונלד טראמפ, על צו נשיאותי המורה לנאס”א לחזור ולנחות על הירח. לכן ייתכן שכבר בשנים הקרובות נראה אסטרונאוטים אמריקניים על הירח, עוד לפני השלמת התחנה הסמוכה לו. קנדה היא המדינה הראשונה שמצטרפת לארה”ב בהתחייבות כספית לבניית תחנת החלל החדשה.

לפי התכנית החלק הראשון של התחנה שיכלול את מערכות ההנעה והחשמל, ישוגר בשנת 2022. מעבורת החלל המאוישת הראשונה שתהיה אמריקנית, תצטרף אליו כבר בשנת 2024. התחנה תקיף את הירח במסלול אליפטי מאוד סביב נקודת לגראנז’ 2, נקודה יציבה יחסית בין מסות הארץ והירח (כשהוא נע במשך שישה ימים במרחק של בין 70,000 ק”מ ל-1,500 ק”מ מפני השטח של הירח). משימות מאוישות ובלתי-מאוישות יעגנו בדרכן לירח, למאדים וליעדים רחוקים יותר, כאשר בשנות ה-30 של המאה ה-21 צפויה המשימה המאוישת הראשונה למאדים להשתגר מהתחנה. לתחנת החלל סמוך לירח יכולים להיות יתרונות גדולים ומשמעותיים על פני שיגורים ישירים מהארץ לירח או מהארץ למאדים. כך למשל התחנה תאפשר לאסטרונאוטים לאסוף סלעים מהירח, כמו הדוגמיות שהובאו בתכנית “אפולו”, ולמיין ולנתח אותן בתחנה, לפני החזרתן לכדור הארץ. בנוסף כפי שיודע כל מי שצפה בסרט האימה המדע הבדיוני “לייף”, את הדוגמיות הראשונות ממאדים רצוי לנתח בתחנת חלל לפני שמנחיתים אותן על כדור הארץ. זאת בשל החשש לזיהום ביולוגי כאן.

אבל אולי היתרון הגדול ביותר של התכנית, לדעת התומכים הרבים שלה, נעוץ באפשרות לבנות מחדש ובביטחה יחסית את יכולות האסטרונאוטים וסוכנויות החלל בחלל העמוק. יש לזכור שמאז סיום תוכנית מעבורת החלל בשנת 2011, הנוכחות האנושית בחלל הוגבלה לשיגורים של חלליות רוסיות מסוג “סויוז” לתחנת החלל הבינלאומית, שמקיפה את כדור הארץ במסלול לווייני נמוך מאוד של כ-400 ק”מ מפני הים. התחנה תאפשר לבדוק את הכלים החדשים, כמו מעבורת החלל “אוריו” בחלל העמוק, ומבלי לסכן את אנשי הצוות במשימה ישירה לירח. בוודאי גם לא לסכנם במשימה בת שנה ויותר למאדים.

Format ImagePosted on March 20, 2019March 20, 2019Author Roni RachmaniCategories עניין בחדשותTags Canada, Israel, Mars, NASA, space, Trump, United States, ארה"ב, דונלד טראמפ, חלל, ישראל, מאדים, נאס"א, קנדה
Cassini’s view of Saturn

Cassini’s view of Saturn

Saturn’s main rings, along with its moons, are much brighter than most stars. As a result, much shorter exposure times (10 milliseconds, in this case) are required to produce an image and not saturate the detectors of the imaging cameras on Cassini. A longer exposure would be required to capture the stars as well. (photo from NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

Grand Finale was the official name of Cassini’s last act: a risky orbit between Saturn’s rings and atmosphere in an attempt to explore the planet up close, right before the craft went up in flames.

Prof. Yohai Kaspi and Dr. Eli Galanti of the Weizmann Institute’s earth and planetary sciences department led one of the studies on Cassini’s final mission, revealing the depth of Saturn’s jet streams – the strongest measured in the solar system, with winds of up to 1,500 kilometres per hour – and found them to reach a depth of around 9,000 kilometres. Teaming up with research partners in Italy and the United States, their study also helped reveal the age of the planet’s rings. The findings of these studies were published this month in Science.

Cassini was one of the more successful planetary missions, orbiting and returning information on Saturn and its moons for the last 20 years. As the mission was approaching its end, it was decided to end its life with a non-circular orbit swinging in very close to the planet, followed by a final plunge into the gaseous mass. Kaspi and Galanti joined the Cassini team following their work as part of NASA’s Juno science team, which had employed a similar orbit to produce the most reliable measurements yet of Jupiter’s atmospheric depth. The Cassini scientists thought it would be possible to do the same for Saturn, and the Weizmann scientists were called in to apply their methodology to the Saturn measurements.

Kaspi described the challenge: “We detect small variations in the gravity field as the craft orbits Saturn, and translate these into the atmospheric wind that produces them. There was no guarantee it would work for Saturn, as the gravity signal on Saturn is more difficult to interpret than what we had on Jupiter. We discovered that not only did it work for both planets, but that same physical processes control the depth of the flows on these two planets.”

To calculate the depth of the winds, the gravity measurements undertaken by Cassini were analyzed with the theoretical model developed by the Weizmann researchers. “We also teamed up with a second group investigating the internal structure of the planet,” said Galanti. “Together, we calculated that the depth of the atmosphere is up to around 9,000 kilometres. That is three times deeper than that of Jupiter. We also found that, just as on Jupiter, a strong internal magnetic field is what limits the depth of this layer of the atmosphere. Our theory worked twice, which provides strong support for its validity.”

In the same study, the researchers analyzed the Grand Finale data from Saturn’s rings, finding they are at most 100 million years old. That is quite recent in the 4.5-billion-year history of the solar system. The planet in the night sky at the time of the first dinosaurs was, apparently, without the rings we know today.

For more on the research being conducted at the Weizmann Institute, visit wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il.

– Weizmann Institute

Saturn losing its rings

New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 and 2 observations made decades ago. The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn’s magnetic field.

photo - Saturn’s northern hemisphere in 2016, as that part of the planet nears its northern hemisphere summer solstice in May 2017. Since NASA’s Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in mid-2004, the shifting angle of sunlight as the seasons march forward has illuminated the giant hexagon-shaped jet stream around the north polar region, and the subtle bluish hues seen earlier in the mission have continued to fade
Saturn’s northern hemisphere in 2016, as that part of the planet nears its northern hemisphere summer solstice in May 2017. Since NASA’s Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in mid-2004, the shifting angle of sunlight as the seasons march forward has illuminated the giant hexagon-shaped jet stream around the north polar region, and the subtle bluish hues seen earlier in the mission have continued to fade. (photo from NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

“We estimate that this ‘ring rain’ drains an amount of water products that could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool from Saturn’s rings in half an hour,” said James O’Donoghue of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Md. “From this alone, the entire ring system will be gone in 300 million years, but add to this the Cassini-spacecraft measured ring-material detected falling into Saturn’s equator, and the rings have less than 100 million years to live. This is relatively short, compared to Saturn’s age of over four billion years.” O’Donoghue is lead author of a study on Saturn’s ring rain appearing in Icarus Dec. 17.

Scientists have long wondered if Saturn was formed with the rings or if the planet acquired them later in life. The new research favours the latter scenario, indicating that they are unlikely to be older than 100 million years, as it would take that long for the C-ring to become what it is today assuming it was once as dense as the B-ring. “We are lucky to be around to see Saturn’s ring system, which appears to be in the middle of its lifetime. However, if rings are temporary, perhaps we just missed out on seeing giant ring systems of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, which have only thin ringlets today,” O’Donoghue added.

Various theories have been proposed for the ring’s origin. If the planet got them later in life, the rings could have formed when small, icy moons in orbit around Saturn collided, perhaps because their orbits were perturbed by a gravitational tug from a passing asteroid or comet.

– NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre

Format ImagePosted on January 25, 2019January 24, 2019Author Weizmann Institute and NASACategories WorldTags Cassini, NASA, Saturn, science, Weizmann Institute
Getting closer look at Jupiter

Getting closer look at Jupiter

This JunoCam image highlights Oval BA. (photo from nasa.gov)

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently released the first findings of the Juno research spacecraft, which entered Jupiter’s atmosphere last year.

The Weizmann Institute of Science’s Dr. Yohai Kaspi is a senior member of the Juno mission team. The reason why this research is so important, he said, is because it will allow us to better understand how the solar system was formed.

“To do that, we really need to understand Jupiter and how it was formed because, then, we can understand earth, in sequence,” said Kaspi.

photo - Dr. Yohai Kaspi of the Weizmann Institute of Science
Dr. Yohai Kaspi of the Weizmann Institute of Science. (photo from WIS)

For Kaspi, the fascination with space came at the early age of 7, when his dad shared some pictures of the Voyager I and II and took him stargazing. His interest grew from there, including when he was navigating in the Negev while in the Israel Defence Forces.

“My hobby growing up was competitive sailing,” said Kaspi. “That drew my interest into meteorology and understanding why the wind blows the way it does. Growing up in Nahariya, which borders Lebanon … all kinds of stuff [are] coming from Lebanon – currents, trash. It was very obvious where the wind or current was coming from and that connected to sailing.”

Kaspi studied math and physics at Hebrew University before heading to the United States, seeking adventure and a doctorate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Soon after, he was recruited to be a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

While at MIT, Kaspi became connected to the Juno mission, developing instruments to help measure atmospheric conditions on Jupiter.

“I was interested in space and the weather,” said Kaspi. “I studied meteorology, as it kind of brings them together … [with] planetary science. We have planets, which resemble earth in some aspects, but we don’t understand their features and circulation.”

While Jupiter is by far the biggest planet in the solar system (11 times the diameter of earth) and has the greatest mass (300 times that of earth), it is a gas planet (i.e. it has no liquid or solid parts). Kaspi has studied Jupiter’s different weather zones and deltas.

“I developed a theory for understanding how deeply they extend,” said Kaspi. “When you look at Jupiter, you have this red and white belt, or zone. That’s all at the cloud level, so it condensates at the same temperature. But, we have no information what’s happening underneath them. What we needed was a global way to survey what was happening underneath the cloud layer. And that’s exactly what Juno is.

“During my PhD, I developed a new method to relate between the gravity field of the planet and the flows underneath this cloud layer. To understand Jupiter, we need to understand what’s happening in its interior.”

Kaspi has been involved with Juno since 2008, along with 30 to 40 other scientists who form the core of the mission, developing and designing the experiments, and interpreting the data.

photo - This enhanced colour view of Jupiter’s south pole was created by citizen scientist Gabriel Fiset using data from the JunoCam on NASA’s Juno spacecraft
This enhanced colour view of Jupiter’s south pole was created by citizen scientist Gabriel Fiset using data from the JunoCam on NASA’s Juno spacecraft. (photo from nasa.gov)

“We’re trying to deduce the depths of the flows from the gravity measurements of the planet,” explained Kaspi. “The purpose is to see what’s happening inside the planet. It has nine instruments and each one probes in different ways what is happening in the planet’s interior.

“One is a gravity instrument…. We send a beam from the spacecraft to earth. The beam travels 800 million kilometres and reaches earth. A desert in California captures that beam.

“We try to see the accelerations and decelerations of the spacecraft around the planet … trying to understand … the flow field and the gravity field of Jupiter.”

It was only when we first saw earth from space that we were able to understand the changing atmospheric conditions that are part of what is largely considered part of climate change, said Kaspi.

“We’d be able to understand how the solar system was formed, including earth,” he said of one of the project’s possible results. “For example, it’s really important for us to know if there’s a core inside Jupiter. A planet with a big or small core would have a different effect on the gravity field. When we measure the gravity field, we can deduce what’s happening deep inside the planet, which would lead us to different theories of how the solar system was formed.

“The connection to earth is we see the objects of Jupiter’s atmospheres … we don’t understand their strengths, how wide they are and how deep they are. We don’t have theories for that. If you want to have a good understanding of objects on earth, you have to look at the sister planet.”

The data-collecting portion of the Juno mission will come to a close at the end of this year. After 10 years of research and six orbits, the data will be analyzed to determine the direction of the mission going forward.

“We have already a lot of good data and we’re reaching a point where we can have significant results for understanding the structure, depths and composition of the atmosphere, but it’s a process,” said Kaspi. “Basically, we have one measurement every 53 days. So, every 53 days, I get my stuff and go to the U.S. and stay there for a week, analyzing the data and analyzing it for the rest of the 45 days, and then go back.”

Regardless of the results, Kaspi will continue the work he is doing at the Weizmann Institute on climate change and working on an instrument that will be sent to Jupiter on board the 2022 spacecraft being built by the European Space Agency.

“It will be the first Israeli instrument that will go beyond earth’s orbit,” said Kaspi. “That’s exciting. So, we’re involved in that and a variety of projects, trying to achieve fundamental understanding.”

As far as space exploration for the purpose of finding another planet fit for human dwelling, Kaspi said, “I’m just going to say that, if there is life in the solar system, it might be in the moons of Jupiter … because they have liquid water, a deep ocean, tens to hundreds of kilometres deep. Maybe there is life there.”

The public can follow the Juno mission on Facebook at facebook.com/nasajuno.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Format ImagePosted on July 14, 2017July 11, 2017Author Rebeca KuropatwaCategories WorldTags Israel, Juno, Jupiter, NASA, science, space, Weizmann Institute
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