NASA Blogs

More great info on this NASA blog https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/2024/10/

The fixture they used to remove the bolts is pretty interesting. Looks like a milled aluminum two part clamp for a ratchet with a 3in extension. It is interesting that they claim to have milled their own Torq-set bit but the picture shows a commercial/OTS 1/4" to hex adapter. In response, two new multi-part tools were designed and fabricated to support further disassembly of the TAGSAM head. These tools include newly custom-fabricated bits made from a specific grade of surgical, non-magnetic stainless steel; the hardest metal approved for use in the pristine curation gloveboxes. https://blogs.nasa.gov/osiris-rex/2024/01/11/nasas-osiris-rex-team-cle… https://www.phillips-screw.com/drive_systems/torq-set/

Better source: https://blogs.nasa.gov/osiris-rex/2024/01/11/nasas-osiris-rex-team-cle… It took so long because the sample container is inside a clean "glovebox", so the special tools they needed had to be custom built out of specific materials approved for use in that environment.

I’ve been following their progress on this RSS feed: https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/feed/ Strong recommend if you are into RSS.

Great blog post from NASA themselves explaining it: https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/01/06/why-doesnt-webb-have-deployment… the post is really not very long and I would suggest getting it straight from the horse's mouth, but for those not willing to devote a click here are arguably the most relevant bits! "deployment surveillance cameras would not add significant information of value for engineering teams commanding the spacecraft from the ground." "Webb’s built-in sense of ‘touch’ (for example, switches and various mechanical, electrical, and temperature sensors) provides much more useful information than mere surveillance cameras can," said Geithner. "We instrumented Webb like we do many other one-of-a-kind spacecraft, to provide all the specific information necessary to inform engineers on Earth about the observatory’s health and status during all activities."

The White House [1], and just about every US government department and agency (e.g. [2], [3], [4]) already has a blog. The fact that most people are unaware they exist is precisely why they also post to third-party platforms. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ [2] https://www.energy.gov/news-blog [3] https://www.usda.gov/media/blog [4] https://blogs.nasa.gov/

I recommend the ISS blog: https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

I found the NASA blog entry on engine ignition pretty interesting (https://blogs.nasa.gov/J2X/tag/ignition/). Doing that when you have mach 6 winds blowing always seems amazing to me.

I'd love to see a simulation of particles moving around the Pluto Charon system. I've always wondered how they behave near the barycenter. Here's some clues about what could cause the variety: https://blogs.nasa.gov/mission-ames/2013/07/25/playing-marbles-at-plut…

> You can see rivers, mountain ranges, coasts, valleys and walls. But you can't see national borders, Actually, sometimes you can http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/fragileoasis/posts/post_1315437313039.ht… (definitely worth a read)

More detailed post from NASA re: the issue with the fasteners: https://blogs.nasa.gov/osiris-rex/2024/01/11/nasas-osiris-rex-team-cle… > Curation processors paused disassembly of the TAGSAM head hardware in mid-October after they discovered that two of the 35 fasteners could not be removed with the tools approved for use inside the OSIRIS-REx glovebox. > In response, two new multi-part tools were designed and fabricated to support further disassembly of the TAGSAM head. These tools include newly custom-fabricated bits made from a specific grade of surgical, non-magnetic stainless steel; the hardest metal approved for use in the pristine curation gloveboxes. > “In addition to the design challenge of being limited to curation-approved materials to protect the scientific value of the asteroid sample, these new tools also needed to function within the tightly-confined space of the glovebox, limiting their height, weight, and potential arc movement,” said Dr. Nicole Lunning, OSIRIS-REx curator at Johnson. “The curation team showed impressive resilience and did incredible work to get these stubborn fasteners off the TAGSAM head so we can continue disassembly. We are overjoyed with the success.” > Prior to the successful removal, the team at Johnson tested the new tools and removal procedures in a rehearsal lab. After each successful test, engineers increased the assembly torque values and repeated the testing procedures until the…

What could we unite and do against a solar flare? We get some advanced warning but not that much. The sun had a massive solar flare just in this past week that we got lucky was on the opposite side of our orbit whose shockwave still hit the Earth, and that can reach us in about 30 minutes according to the following article. That's not a lot of time to unite and take action. "Even though the CME erupted from the opposite side of the Sun, its impacts were felt at Earth. As CMEs blast through space, they create a shockwave that can accelerate particles along the CME’s path to incredible speeds, much the way surfers are pushed along by an incoming ocean wave. Known as solar energetic particles, or SEPs, these speedy particles can make the 93-million-mile journey from the Sun to Earth in around 30 minutes."[1] [1] https://blogs.nasa.gov/sunspot/2023/03/14/a-powerful-solar-eruption-on…

Here are some official sources for you on there also being hardware problems > The review team also is continuing its investigation of the intermittent space-to-ground forward link issue that impeded the flight control team’s ability to command and control the spacecraft. The team has identified the technical root cause as radiofrequency interference with the communications system. While the team has recommended specific hardware improvements already in work by the company, the full assessment and resulting recommendations will continue through March. https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/category/boeing/ and > The NASA source said eight or more thrusters on the service module failed at one point and that one thruster never fired at all. > In response to a question about thruster performance, Boeing provided the following statement to Ars: "After the anomaly, many of the elements of the propulsion system were overstressed, with some thrusters exceeding the planned number of burns for a service module mission. We took a few cautionary measures to make sure the propulsion system stayed healthy for the remainder of the mission, including re-pressurizing the manifold, recovering that manifold’s thrusters. Over the course of the mission we turned off 13 thrusters and turned all but one back on after verifying their health." https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/nasa-and-boeing-are-closely-lo…

There are some decent arguments that the Moon should be considered to be a planet, which would make the Earth/Moon two planets sharing an orbit rather than a planet and its satellite. The Moon, if ever recognized as a planet, will of course be the closest one. Here are some of the ways the Moon is more like a planet than a satellite [1]. I also remember an essay by Isaac Asimov that brought up another one. For all the other satellites in the solar system, if you compute the ratio of gravitation force on them from the planet they orbit to the gravitation force from the Sun on them, that ratio is greater than one. For the Moon, it is less than one! The Sun exerts more force on the Moon than the Earth does. Related to this, if you look at the path traced out by all the other satellites in the solar system as their planet makes one orbit around the Sun, that path is sometimes concave and sometimes convex, as the satellite circles the planet. The planet takes a convex path around the Sun, and the satellite makes a little circle around it. An observer on the Sun would see the planet moving always moving forward, and see the satellite sometimes moving forward and sometimes moving backward. For the Moon, that path is convex. It's basically a rounded dodecagon, as is the path of Earth. They are out of phase with each other, so that when one is near a vertex of the rounded dodecagon, the other is in the middle of a side, and so can slip past the other. An observer on the Sun…

> www vs. no-www, as a matter of "putting the customer first" is so INCREDIBLY insignificant I don't know, I've always been fascinated by the premium of domains that are just one character shorter, and all of the startups that exclude a vowel to get a compressed (or maybe just available) name. That could reflect actual user preferences. UX theorists convinced me over the last decade that user behavior is shaped by tiny moments and irritations that we think are insignificant at first glance. A few 100 ms extra in delays may seem barely perceptible, but they can kill a site. It's not implausible that a few extra keystrokes could do the same.[0] On the other hand, redirects seem like a happy medium, so long as they're fast enough. nasa.gov uses a redirect, that seems fine. Note that they were driven to that (from 'www'-only) after confused fans kept writing in to complain that "http://nasa.gov" was a dead end and that they didn't "even know the basics of running a website."[1] [0] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/response-times-3-important-limits/ N.B.: In that link, Jakob Nielsen recommended making "www" optional through redirects. It's been a while, so not sure his current thoughts, but the same reasons would apply today. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/compound-domain-names/ [1] https://blogs.nasa.gov/nasadotgov/2011/05/31/post_1306860816073/ NASA's case provides a real example of something Jakob Nielsen pointed out in the first link: usability is a slave to…

I found this very interesting on how the coronagraph referenced in the above article actually works - https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2023/03/24/how-webbs-coronagraphs-reveal-e…

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spherex/2025/03/12/signal-acquired-nasas-sphere… ("Signal Acquired: NASA’s SPHEREx Begins Science Mission") Success!

https://blogs.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/2025/02/24/latest-calculations… (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170798)

Not any more it's at 0.28% https://blogs.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/2025/02/20/additional-observat… NASA Downgrades the Risk of 2024 YR4 to Below 1% (45 points, 11 hours ago, 54 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43148259

My understanding is that it was due to the moon being full which caused them to not have as much of an ability to observe it during the past few estimations. In an article[0] linked from the above link they state: > Now that skies are darker after a week of limited visibility around full moon, astronomers have resumed observations The estimates changed a lot because they were being very transparent about the information as they were discovering it. [0]: https://blogs.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/2025/02/19/dark-skies-bring-ne…

From 1% to 2.3% chance of impact since last month https://blogs.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/2025/01/29/nasa-shares-observa…

Only one astronaut "experienced a medical issue." The other crew members were also evaluated -- and soon released -- "out of an abundance of caution." (Only one spent the night in the hospital.) https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2024/10/25/nasa-provides-update-… The next day NASA announced "The crew member is in good health and will resume normal post-flight reconditioning with other crew members." https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2024/10/26/nasas-spacex-crew-8-ast…

NASA Blog: ''After Pause, NASA’s Voyager 1 Communicating With Mission Team'' https://blogs.nasa.gov/voyager/2024/10/28/after-pause-nasas-voyager-1-…

Original NASA blog post: https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2024/10/15/nasa-updates-2025-com…

They also removed the gridfins and their engines. https://blogs.nasa.gov/europaclipper/wp-content/uploads/sites/378/2024…

The good thing about NASA is that they always also give you the metric measurements (and sometimes, as a bonus, some real-world thing they're comparable to). To quote https://blogs.nasa.gov/smallsatellites/2024/08/29/nasa-composite-booms… > From above, the sail will appear as a square, with an area of approximately 860 square feet (80 square meters) – about half the size of a tennis court. Not bad for a device the size of a microwave...

I saw part of a video on youtube yesterday but it sounded like a spacex fan saying spacex would have to save he day with a rescue mission. There was not much info. So looking at more official sources. I suspect (read my guess from my armchair) every one involved wants to avoid a tragic disaster but things look sort of OK. I am wondering how close this is to being more or less normal (space is hard) and we just do not normally hear the details NASA normally worry about or is this extra scrutiny in the media because "Boeing". NASA Blog: https://blogs.nasa.gov/boeing-crew-flight-test/category/boeing/ "The extra time allows the team to finalize departure planning and operations while the spacecraft remains cleared for crew emergency return scenarios within the flight rules." Boeing: https://starlinerupdates.com/

Nasa's report, which BI cites (and blocks the link behind a regwall) is here: "View Nova Explosion, ‘New’ Star in Northern Crown" <https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/2024/02/27/view-nova-explosion-… This also adds the useful information that this is a recurring nova, though I'd like to know how the forecast is being made and what it's based on.

This has been a large frustration of mine: I know from talks that filaments[0], galactic lobes[1], structure of arms[2], etc relate to EM — but finding anything at the layperson level is basically impossible. Just short blog posts, but no real explanation of how this all relates or what drives it. Harumph, I say! [0] - https://www.livescience.com/radio-filaments-milky-way-center [1] - https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=10918 [2] - https://blogs.nasa.gov/sofia/2022/04/05/make-no-bones-about-it-sofia-m…

>Alaska Airlines doesn't trust Boeing enough that they're sending their audit team to Boeing to check for quality. Granted they are different divisions, but after the CST-100 debacle [1], NASA also sent a team to audit them [2]. Some of the off-channel remarks by NASA were striking. [1] https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/boeing-starliner-error-would-have-be… [2] https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2020/02/07/nasa-shares-initial-f…