NASA's ComPair gamma-ray hunting mission prepares for balloon flight

 Engineers and scientists have shipped NASA's ComPair instrument to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, ahead of its scheduled August flight early in NASA's 2023 fall balloon campaign.

ComPair's goal is to test new technologies for studying gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light. It was assembled and tested at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"The gamma-ray energy range we're targeting with ComPair isn't well covered by current observatories," said Carolyn Kierans, the instrument's principal investigator at Goddard. "We hope that after a successful balloon test flight, future versions of the technologies will be used in space-based missions."

ComPair is designed to detect gamma rays with energies between 200,000 and 20 million electron volts. (For comparison, the energy of visible light is 2 to 3 electron volts.) Supernovae and gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the cosmos, glow brightest in this range, as do the most massive and distant active galaxies, which are powered by supermassive black holes. Scientists know this because they see a fraction of the light emitted by these galaxies with NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which observes higher-energy gamma rays.

ComPair gets its name from the two ways it detects and measures gamma rays: Compton scattering and pair production. Compton scattering occurs when light hits a particle, such as an electron, and transfers some energy to it. Pair production happens when a gamma ray grazes the nucleus of an atom. The interaction converts the gamma ray into a pair of particles—an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron.

The ComPair instrument has four major components:

• A tracker containing 10 layers of silicon detectors that determines the positions of incoming gamma rays
• A high-resolution calorimeter that precisely measures lower-energy Compton-scattered gamma rays
• Another calorimeter that measures the higher-energies of electron-positron pairs
• An anticoincidence detector that notes the entry of high-energy charged particles called cosmic rays, allowing ComPair's other instruments to ignore them

• The mission team assembled all the components and tested them in a large thermal vacuum chamber at Goddard to assess how they'll function at balloon altitudes. The next step is to fly the instrument. The flight will carry ComPair to a height of about 133,000 feet (40,000 meters), or nearly four times the cruising altitude of a commercial airliner.

  ComPair will piggyback with one of the primary balloon payloads that will fly during NASA's annual Fort Sumner balloon campaign. NASA's scientific balloons offer frequent, low-cost access to near-space to conduct scientific investigations and technology maturation in fields such as astrophysics, heliophysics, and atmospheric research, as well as training for the next generation of leaders in engineering and science.

  ComPair is a collaboration among Goddard, the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

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World's largest hydro-solar power plant is now fully operational in China

 Editor's note: Kela, a mega hydro-photovoltaic (PV) complementary power station constructed by China, will undoubtedly be inked in history for its unprecedented installed capacity scale of 1 million kilowatts. CGTN takes notes on its grand commencement of initial operation on June 25, 2023.

The world's largest and highest-altitude hydro-solar power plant, which generates power through a water-light complementary manner, entered full operation in China on Sunday.

For the first time, the Kela photovoltaic power station boasts of an installed capacity scale of 1 million kilowatts for a hydro-solar power grid. It can fully charge 15,000 electric vehicles with a range of 550 kilometers in just one hour. 

The plant, situated in the Yalong River Basin of the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Garze in southwest China's Sichuan Province's Yajiang County, will cover the needs of 700,000 households for a whole year with its annual generating capacity of 2 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh). 

"This is equivalent to 600,000 tonnes of standard coal and will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 1.6 million tonnes," Yang Zhiwei, the construction project manager, PowerChina Chengdu Engineering Co., (PowerChina Chengdu), told China Media Group (CMG).

With a reliance on sunlight to generate electricity, the power generation of PV stations fluctuates between day and night amid weather events. The hydropower component can help to regulate all instability in such supply manner, therefore, providing stable and high-quality clean energy.

The Kela PV power plant is next to National Highway 318, a key transport route linking Sichuan and the neighboring Xizang Autonomous Region. 

With an area exceeding 16 million square meters, it is bigger than 2,000 standard football fields.

The plant is built at an altitude of around 4,600 meters, which is equal to the altitude of the Ali region in Xizang, the Third Pole in the world, and 1,000 meters above the altitude of the city of Lhasa. 

A total of 527,000 photovoltaic foundation piles are installed in the power station, which has the same weight as 222 C919 aircraft, China's first domestically constructed large passenger plane that just completed its initial commercial flight.

If these photovoltaic piles were connected, the total length would exceed 1,400 kilometers, which is 11 times the total length of the Beijing-Tianjin Railway.

Nearly 50,000 tonnes of steel were used for the PV powerhouse, enough to build another grand venue of the National Stadium (Bird's Nest) which held the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics opening ceremony

More than 2 million photovoltaic modules were assembled, and the components can cover the area of three Beijing Daxing International Airports, with a transportation distance of 2,400 kilometers, spanning half of China.

Construction of this grand power station has been quick and efficient. Despite encountering extreme cold weather, the project team undertook and fulfilled the tough task in just six months. 

To the highest efficiency, a total of 7,000 PV bracket foundations were installed within 24 hours, together with 1,200 sets of PV brackets, 33,000 pieces of PV modules and 30 box transformers.

As China strives to ensure energy security and achieve its dual carbon goals, Kela is the first hydropower station built during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025) on the Yalong River Clean Energy Base.

The Design and Research Institute of the PowerChina Chengdu began project planning for Kela in 2016, with construction starting in July 2022.

Being the first phase project of the Yalong River's Lianghekou Hydropower Station, which was put into operation in March with a total installed capacity of three million kilowatts, electricity generated by Kela will be connected to the Lianghekou and then integrated into the power grid.

The two will help to shape a grand renewable energy base.Upon completion, the Yalong River Clean Energy Base, with an installed capacity exceeding 100 million kilowatts and annual power generation of around 300 billion kWh, will be sufficient to serve 100 million households for a year. 

In addition, the project will ultimately emerge into one of the world's largest green, clean, and renewable energy bases, leading to achieve the goals of peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality, optimizing national energy structure, and boosting industries including agriculture, tourism, and transportation.

#ChinaHydroSolarPowerPlant
#WorldsLargestHydroSolarPlant
#RenewableEnergyChina
#HydroSolarProject
#CleanEnergyChina

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As Chandrayaan-3 braces to land on moon, here's why Pakistan lagged behind

 While 'Chandrayaan-3' - India's moon mission is paving its way through the space towards Moon, neighbouring country Pakistan is still struggling with a dwindling economy, the huge pile of debt and religious extremism-fuelled politics.

Qaisar Rashid in his piece in the Daily Times said that while India ticked one after the other boxes right from ISRO, focusing on IT to opting for a modern education system, Pakistan kept on struggling with its internal conflicts and orthodox education system.

On July 14, the Chandrayaan-3 spaceship lifted off from the launchpad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. The moon mission is expected to reach the Moon's South Pole for a soft landing with a lander and rover on the lunar surface (where water is expected) by August 23-24. By doing so, India would join the group of elite nations (United States, Russia and China) that had achieved the feat.

According to the author, this moon mission means that India remained unfaltering in trying again and again to taste success. It also means that India relied on its scientists working in the space program to justify high expenditures in carrying out space research against all odds.

Taking forward the initiative of first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who founded the Indian National Committee for Space Research in 1962, India founded the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on August 15, 1969.

The main objective of the ISRO was to develop space technology and apply it to study space and its phenomena to meet various national needs such as developing satellite launching vehicles, throwing unipurpose or multi-purpose satellites into required orbits, and sending space missions for exploration of extra-terrestrial life. Currently, ISRO happens to be the world's sixth-largest space agency, Daily Times reported.

As per the author, India also benefitted a lot by focusing on Information Technology. It helped ISRO in satellite communication, satellite tracking and navigation, remote sensing, spacecraft monitoring and control, ground station operations, and data analytics and processing.

Even in the Chandrayaan-3 space mission, IT would help it to explore the Moon through a lander and a rover. These machines would not only communicate with each other the gathered data through sensors but they would also communicate with the ISRO ground station through relay centers and satellites to transmit the data.

India's IT industry was born in 1967 in Mumbai, with the help of Tata Industries. The first software export zone called Santacruz Electronics Export Processing Zone (SEEPZ) was developed in 1973 also in Mumbai. The SEEPZ is the precursor to the modern-day IT park. Rajiv Gandhi is greeted as the Father of Information Technology and the Telecom Revolution of India because, in August 1984, he established the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), which made possible the concept of Digital In ..

Notably, it was the time of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union also helped India in developing its space program. After the end of the Cold War in 1991, India laid more emphasis on the IT sector, especially on software development.

The Indian education system with a focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) offered a large pool of highly skilled and educated IT professionals. By formulating and implementing various policies (such as offering tax incentives, subsidies and other benefits) to grow the IT sector, the Indian government hastened the entry of the Indian IT workforce into the export sector, Daily Times reported.

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The moment when lightning strikes a tree is captured in unprecedented detail.

Hot lightning" or long continuing current strikes can last from around 40 milliseconds to nearly a third of a second and are more likely to ignite wildfires than typical lightning strikes. Here's why.

Soaring global temperatures could lead to more “hot lightning” strikes in many parts of the world, a new study has found. It added that this type of lightning is more likely to ignite wildfires than typical lightning.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, the study, ‘Variation of lightning-ignited wildfire patterns under climate change’, has been done by Francisco J. Pérez-Invernón and Francisco J. Gordillo-Vázquez of the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (Spain), Heidi Huntrieser and Patrick Jöckel of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (Germany).

According to the researchers, lightning is a major cause of triggering wildfires and is responsible for producing the largest wildfires in some regions, including the Western United States. Lightning-caused wildfires are dangerous as they spread rapidly before a strong response can be implemented and release substantial amounts of carbon, nitrogen oxides and other trace gases into the atmosphere.

Although previous studies have demonstrated that climate change might lead to an increase in lightning strike incidents, the latest research is the first time that scientists have focused on the relationship between “hot lightning” strikes and rising global temperatures. Moreover, they have also examined how this form of lightning might affect the incidents of wildfires across the world.

What are the findings of the latest study?

The researchers analysed 5,858 selected lightning-ignited fires based on satellite images of US wildfires between 1992 and 2018 and found that approximately 90 per cent of them might have started by “hot lightning” strikes. Also known as long continuing current (LCC), this type of lightning strike can last from around 40 milliseconds to nearly a third of a second.

Explaining why “hot lighting” has more potential of triggering a wildfire than typical lightning, Francisco J Pérez-Invernón, co-author of the new study, told The Indian Express, “Lightning with continuing currents can transport more energy from cloud to ground than typical lightning. When lightning with continuing currents attach to ground or vegetation, they produce more Joule heating and higher temperature than typical lightning, increasing the probability of ignition.”

With the help of computer simulations, the researchers also looked at the frequency of “hot lightning” strikes and observed that as the atmosphere warms, there might be an increase of 41 per cent in the incidents of LCC strikes by 2090. This means that the rate of such lightning flashes could jump from three strikes per second globally to four strikes per second. Meanwhile, the frequency of all cloud-to-ground strikes might increase to nearly eight flashes per second, a 28 per cent jump.

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Astronauts explain why nobody has visited the moon in more than 45 years - and the reasons are depressing

 The last time a person visited the moon was in December 1972, during NASA's Apollo 17 mission. Over the decades, NASA planned to send people back to the moon but has yet to succeed. Astronauts often say the biggest reasons why humans haven't returned to the lunar surface are budgetary and political hurdles - not scientific or technical challenges. Private companies like Blue Origin or SpaceX may be the first entities to return people to the moon.

Landing 14 people on the moon remains one of NASA's greatest achievements, if not the greatest.Astronauts collected rocks, took photos, performed experiments, planted some flags, and then came home. But those week-long stays during the Apollo program didn't establish a lasting human presence on the moon.

More than 45 years after the most recent crewed moon landing - Apollo 17 in December 1972 - there are plenty of reasons to return people to Earth's giant, dusty satellite and stay there.Researchers and entrepreneurs think a crewed base on the moon could evolve into a fuel depot for deep-space missions, lead to the creation of unprecedented space telescopes, make it easier to live on Mars, and solve longstanding scientific mysteries about Earth and the moon's creation. A lunar base could even become a thriving off-world economy, perhaps one built around lunar space tourism.

A permanent human research station on the moon is the next logical step. It's only three days away. We can afford to get it wrong, and not kill everybody," former astronaut Chris Hadfield recently told Business Insider. "And we have a whole bunch of stuff we have to invent and then test in order to learn before we can go deeper out."

But many astronauts and other experts suggest the biggest impediments to crewed moon missions over the last four-plus decades have been banal if not depressing.

It's really expensive to get to the moon - but not that expensive

A tried-and-true hurdle for any spaceflight program, especially for missions that involve people, is the steep cost.

A law signed in March 2017 by President Donald Trump gives NASA an annual budget of about $19.5 billion, and it may rise to $19.9 billion in 2019.Either amount sounds like a windfall - until you consider that the total gets split among all of the agency's divisions and ambitious projects: the James Webb Space Telescope, the giant rocket project called Space Launch System, and far-flung missions to the sun, Jupiter, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, the Kuiper Belt, and the edge of the solar system. (By contrast, the US military gets a budget of about $600 billion per year. One project within that budget - the modernization and now expansion of America's nuclear arsenal- may even cost as much as $1.7 trillion over 30 years.)

Plus, NASA's budget is somewhat small relative to its past.

"NASA's portion of the federal budget peaked at 4% in 1965. For the past 40 years it has remained below 1%, and for the last 15 years it has been driving toward 0.4% of the federal budget," Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham said during a 2015 congressional testimony.

Trump's budget calls for a return to the moon, and then later an orbital visit to Mars. But given the ballooning costs and snowballing delays related to NASA's SLS rocket program, there may not be enough funding to make it to either destination, even if the International Space Station gets defunded early.

A 2005 report by NASA estimated that returning to the moon would cost about $104 billion (which is $133 billion today, with inflation) over about 13 years. The Apollo program cost about $120 billion in today's dollars.

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Venera timeline: The Soviet Union's Venus missions in pictures

 Learn all about the Venera missions, which launched between 1961 and 1983.

Of the 30 space missions to successfully fly by or orbit Venus to date, more than one-third were part of the former Soviet Union's Venera series of robotic probes.

Launched between 1961 and 1983, the Venera (or "Venus" in Russian") missions were focused on studying the second planet from our sun. Of the 28 spacecraft launched, 13 entered the Venusian atmosphere and eight successfully touched down on the surface.

The Soviet program set several firsts, including the first probe to descend into the atmosphere of a planet other than Earth; the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on another planet; and the first missions to return images and sounds from the surface of another planet.

Roscosmos, Russia's federal space corporation, is now developing the first new Venera mission since the fall of the Soviet Union. Venera-D, targeted for launch in 2029, would include an orbiter and a lander and serve as a model for future missions to Venus.

Click through the slideshow to learn all about the Venera probes and their discoveries.

Venera 13 was a Soviet space probe that successfully landed on the surface of Venus on March 1, 1982. It was part of the Venera program, which consisted of a series of missions designed to explore Venus. Once Venera 13 reached Venus, it deployed a lander, which descended through the planet's thick atmosphere. The lander collected and transmitted data about the Venusian environment, including temperature, pressure, and composition. It also took photographs of the surface using color cameras. The Venera 13 lander operated for approximately two hours before succumbing to the harsh conditions on Venus. During that time, it sent back valuable information and captured several images of the surface. These images provided the first-ever glimpse of the Venusian landscape from ground level.

#Venus #SpaceExploration #PlanetaryScience #Astrobiology #ExploringVenus #Venera13 #Venus

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