Ever Want To Ask A Real Life Astronaut A Question? Here’s Your Chance!

Marcos Berrios

Marcos Berrios is from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, and received his Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford. Berríos has logged over 1,400 hours of flight time in over 20 different aircraft. https://go.nasa.gov/49DEAAt

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

@lmndmlk: How many hours a day do you spend working?

Are the rumors about the ozone layer being totally fixed true ? If yes , is it susceptible of being opened again ans if no, is it suspecte

Whats the best metaphor/ explanation of blackholes youve ever heard?

Astronaut out! Thank you for all the amazing questions.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Five Famous Pulsars from the Past 50 Years

Early astronomers faced an obstacle: their technology. These great minds only had access to telescopes that revealed celestial bodies shining in visible light. Later, with the development of new detectors, scientists opened their eyes to other types of light like radio waves and X-rays. They realized cosmic objects look very different when viewed in these additional wavelengths. Pulsars — rapidly spinning stellar corpses that appear to pulse at us — are a perfect example.

The first pulsar was observed 50 years ago on August 6, 1967, using radio waves, but since then we have studied them in nearly all wavelengths of light, including X-rays and gamma rays.

Typical Pulsar

Most pulsars form when a star — between 8 and 20 times the mass of our sun — runs out of fuel and its core collapses into a super dense and compact object: a neutron star. 

These neutron stars are about the size of a city and can rotate slowly or quite quickly, spinning anywhere from once every few hours to hundreds of times per second. As they whirl, they emit beams of light that appear to blink at us from space.

First Pulsar

One day five decades ago, a graduate student at the University of Cambridge, England, named Jocelyn Bell was poring over the data from her radio telescope - 120 meters of paper recordings.

Image Credit: Sumit Sijher

She noticed some unusual markings, which she called “scruff,” indicating a mysterious object (simulated above) that flashed without fail every 1.33730 seconds. This was the very first pulsar discovered, known today as PSR B1919+21.

Best Known Pulsar

Before long, we realized pulsars were far more complicated than first meets the eye — they produce many kinds of light, not only radio waves. Take our galaxy’s Crab Nebula, just 6,500 light years away and somewhat of a local celebrity. It formed after a supernova explosion, which crushed the parent star's core into a neutron star. 

The resulting pulsar, nestled inside the nebula that resulted from the supernova explosion, is among the most well-studied objects in our cosmos. It’s pictured above in X-ray light, but it shines across almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays.

Brightest Gamma-ray Pulsar

Speaking of gamma rays, in 2015 our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovered the first pulsar beyond our own galaxy capable of producing such high-energy emissions. 

Located in the Tarantula Nebula 163,000 light-years away, PSR J0540-6919 gleams nearly 20 times brighter in gamma-rays than the pulsar embedded in the Crab Nebula.

Dual Personality Pulsar

No two pulsars are exactly alike, and in 2013 an especially fast-spinning one had an identity crisis. A fleet of orbiting X-ray telescopes, including our Swift and Chandra observatories, caught IGR J18245-2452 as it alternated between generating X-rays and radio waves. 

Scientists suspect these radical changes could be due to the rise and fall of gas streaming onto the pulsar from its companion star.

Transformer Pulsar

This just goes to show that pulsars are easily influenced by their surroundings. That same year, our Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope uncovered another pulsar, PSR J1023+0038, in the act of a major transformation — also under the influence of its nearby companion star. 

The radio beacon disappeared and the pulsar brightened fivefold in gamma rays, as if someone had flipped a switch to increase the energy of the system. 

NICER Mission

Our Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) mission, launched this past June, will study pulsars like those above using X-ray measurements.

With NICER’s help, scientists will be able to gaze even deeper into the cores of these dense and mysterious entities.

For more information about NICER, visit https://www.nasa.gov/nicer

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Want to watch me make a big splash? Tuesday we will doing a water drop test NASA Langley Recearch Center’s gantry. This is the second of four tests, which are aimed to help our team prepare for Artemis II, NASA’s first Artemis mission with crew. Watch here: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-virtual-viewing-of-orion-spacecraft-drop-test

Unveiling the Center of Our Milky Way Galaxy

We captured an extremely crisp infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Spanning more than 600 light-years, this panorama reveals details within the dense swirls of gas and dust in high resolution, opening the door to future research into how massive stars are forming and what’s feeding the supermassive black hole at our galaxy’s core.

Among the features coming into focus are the jutting curves of the Arches Cluster containing the densest concentration of stars in our galaxy, as well as the Quintuplet Cluster with stars a million times brighter than our Sun. Our galaxy’s black hole takes shape with a glimpse of the fiery-looking ring of gas surrounding it.

The new view was made by the world’s largest airborne telescope, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or SOFIA.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

@saraxmix: What is it that makes you go back up there once you're home?

Space-Grown Crystals May Lead to More Efficient Drug Development

The International Space Station is a perfect environment for creating protein crystal structures for research.

In microgravity, protein molecules form more orderly, high-quality crystals. Studying these structures helps scientists understand their function and contributes to development of more effective treatments for diseases.

Experiments often need more than one try to generate ideal crystals, though. Researchers may have to return samples to Earth for analysis and then try again on a later mission on the space station.

Scientists are testing new methods of growing crystals that allow crew members to observe imperfections, make real-time adjustments, and try growing them again right away. This dramatically reduces the time and cost of conducting experiments aboard the space station and opens up the orbiting lab to more users. More efficient use of time and resources can produce research results in less time and lead to development of better drugs sooner.

Learn more @ISS_Research!