Новости МКС

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Randy Bresnik‏Подлинная учетная запись @AstroKomrade 8 ч. назад

The shadow of this thunderstorm over central India, visible even from 250 miles high. Had to be much taller than Everest, it was massive!

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Jack Fischer‏Подлинная учетная запись @Astro2fish 6 ч. назад

I'm so proud to be a part of this international team -Expedition 52: Fyodor Yurchikhin, @Astro_Paolo, @AstroPeggy, @SergeyISS, @AstroKomrade

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Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass for the International Space Station (ISS-CREAM)

NASA.gov Video

Опубликовано: 11 авг. 2017 г.

Meet Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass for the International Space Station (ISS-CREAM), an experiment designed to provide an unprecedented look at cosmic ray particles approaching energies of 1,000 trillion electron volts (1 PeV). ISS-CREAM detects these particles when they slam into the matter making up its instruments. They can distinguish electrons, protons and atomic nuclei as massive as iron as they crash through the detector stack.

(1:18 )

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ScienceCasts: The Mystery of High-Energy Cosmic Rays

ScienceAtNASA

Опубликовано: 11 авг. 2017 г.

The cosmic ray detector known as CREAM is headed for the International Space Station, with a goal of measuring the highest energy possible for direct measurement of high-energy cosmic rays.

(3:39)

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https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2017/new-mission-going-to-the-space-station-to-explore-mysteries-of-cosmic-rain

Aug. 11, 2017

New Mission Going to the Space Station to Explore Mysteries of 'Cosmic Rain'

A new experiment set for an Aug. 14 launch to the International Space Station will provide an unprecedented look at a rain of particles from deep space, called cosmic rays, that constantly showers our planet. The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass mission destined for the International Space Station (ISS-CREAM) is designed to measure the highest-energy particles of any detector yet flown in space.

Спойлер

CREAM was originally developed as a part of NASA's Balloon Program, during which it returned measurements from around 120,000 feet in seven flights between 2004 and 2016.


Meet Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass for the International Space Station (ISS-CREAM), an experiment designed to provide an unprecedented look at cosmic ray particles approaching energies of 1,000 trillion electron volts (1 PeV). ISS-CREAM detects these particles when they slam into the matter making up its instruments. They can distinguish electrons, protons and atomic nuclei as massive as iron as they crash through the detector stack.
Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Download this video in HD formats from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio

"The CREAM balloon experiment achieved a total sky exposure of 191 days, a record for any balloon-borne astronomical experiment," said Eun-Suk Seo, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland in College Park and the experiment's principal investigator. "Operating on the space station will increase our exposure by over 10 times, taking us well beyond the traditional energy limits of direct measurements."


Technicians lower ISS-CREAM into a chamber that simulates the space environment during system-level testing at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in summer 2015.
Credits: University of Maryland Cosmic Ray Physics Laboratory


The ISS-CREAM payload was delivered to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in August 2015. The experiment is shown wrapped in plastic layers used to protect its sensitive electronics during shipment.
Credits: University of Maryland Cosmic Ray Physics Laboratory

Sporting new instruments, as well as refurbished versions of detectors originally used on balloon flights over Antarctica, the refrigerator-sized, 1.4-ton (1,300 kilogram) ISS-CREAM experiment will be delivered to the space station as part of the 12th SpaceX commercial resupply service mission. Once there, ISS-CREAM will be moved to the Exposed Facility platform extending from Kibo, the Japanese Experiment Module.

From this orbital perch, ISS-CREAM is expected to study the "cosmic rain" for three years — time needed to provide unparalleled direct measurements of rare high-energy cosmic rays.

At energies above about 1 billion electron volts, most cosmic rays come to us from beyond our solar system. Various lines of evidence, including observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, support the idea that shock waves from the expanding debris of stars that exploded as supernovas accelerate cosmic rays up to energies of 1,000 trillion electron volts (PeV). That's 10 million times the energy of medical proton beams used to treat cancer. ISS-CREAM data will allow scientists to examine how sources other than supernova remnants contribute to the population of cosmic rays.

Protons are the most common cosmic ray particles, but electrons, helium nuclei and the nuclei of heavier elements make up a small percentage. All are direct samples of matter from interstellar space. But because the particles are electrically charged, they interact with galactic magnetic fields, causing them to wander in their journey to Earth. This scrambles their paths and makes it impossible to trace cosmic ray particles back to their sources.

"An additional challenge is that the flux of particles striking any detector decreases steadily with higher energies," said ISS-CREAM co-investigator Jason Link, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "So to better explore higher energies, we either need a much bigger detector or much more observing time. Operating on the space station provides us with this extra time."

Large ground-based systems study cosmic rays at energies greater than 1 PeV by making Earth's atmosphere the detector. When a cosmic ray strikes the nucleus of a gas molecule in the atmosphere, both explode in a shower of subatomic shrapnel that triggers a wider cascade of particle collisions. Some of these secondary particles reach detectors on the ground, providing information scientists can use to infer the properties of the original cosmic ray.

These secondaries also produce an interfering background that limited the effectiveness of CREAM's balloon operations. Removing that background is another advantage of relocating to orbit.

With decreasing numbers of particles at increasing energies, the cosmic ray spectrum vaguely resembles the profile of a human leg. At PeV energies, this decline abruptly steepens, forming a detail scientists call the "knee." ISS-CREAM is the first space mission capable of measuring the low flux of cosmic rays at energies approaching the knee.

"The origin of the knee and other features remain longstanding mysteries," Seo said. "Many scenarios have been proposed to explain them, but we don't know which is correct."

Astronomers don't think supernova remnants are capable of powering cosmic rays beyond the PeV range, so the knee may be shaped in part by the drop-off of their cosmic rays in this region.

"High-energy cosmic rays carry a great deal of information about our interstellar neighborhood and our galaxy, but we haven't been able to read these messages very clearly," said co-investigator John Mitchell at Goddard. "ISS-CREAM represents one significant step in this direction."

ISS-CREAM detects cosmic ray particles when they slam into the matter making up its instruments. First, a silicon charge detector measures the electrical charge of incoming particles, then layers of carbon provide targets that encourage impacts, producing cascades of particles that stream into electrical and optical detectors below while a calorimeter determines their energy. Two scintillator-based detector systems provide the ability to discern between singly charged electrons and protons. All told, ISS-CREAM can distinguish electrons, protons and atomic nuclei as massive as iron as they crash through the instruments.

ISS-CREAM will join two other cosmic ray experiments already working on the space station. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02), led by an international collaboration sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, is mapping cosmic rays up to a trillion electron volts, and the Japan-led Calorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET), also located on the Kibo Exposed Facility, is dedicated to studying cosmic ray electrons.


Credits: NASA

Overall management of ISS-CREAM and integration for its space station application was provided by NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore. ISS-CREAM was developed as part of an international collaboration led by the University of Maryland at College Park, which includes teams from NASA Goddard, Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, and Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, as well as collaborating institutions in the Republic of Korea, Mexico and France.

Banner image: From its new vantage point on the International Space Station's Japanese Experiment Module - Exposed Facility, the Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass (ISS-CREAM) mission, shown in the inset illustration, will study cosmic rays to determine their sources and acceleration mechanisms. Credit: NASA

By Francis Reddy
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

[свернуть]

Last Updated: Aug. 11, 2017
Editor: Rob Garner

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https://www.nasa.gov/feature/wallops/2017/wallops-supports-cream-from-balloon-to-space-station-flight

Aug. 13, 2017

Wallops Supports CREAM from Balloon to Space Station Flight

Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility has played an integral role in the development of the Cosmic-Ray Energetics and Mass investigation (CREAM) instrument, which started as a balloon payload and is now heading to the International Space Station.

Спойлер

For more than six years Wallops has managed the CREAM instrument for the International Space Station (ISS-CREAM) project, working with the principal investigator Eun-Suk Seo at the University of Maryland, College Park.


Technicians lower ISS-CREAM into a chamber that simulates the space environment during system-level testing at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in summer 2015.
Credits: University of Maryland Cosmic Ray Physics Laboratory

Bill Wrobel, director of Wallops, said, "The facility has supported the development of CREAM, first as a scientific balloon payload and now as an instrument to be flown on the International Space Station. It's exciting to support taking this cosmic ray instrument from suborbital to orbital flight."

The Wallops team was responsible for the system-level integration and environmental test program of the ISS-CREAM payload.  It oversaw the technical and programmatic aspects of the mission, such as systems engineering, safety assurance, systems integration and launch vehicle integration activities.
 
It provided project management, systems engineering, quality assurance, business management, and scheduling for the project.  It also was responsible for thermal and mechanical engineering, to include structure and hardware interfacing to the instrument, and it provided harnessing cabling for the payload.
 
In addition, Wallops was responsible for environmental qualification of the payload to include mechanical, vibration and acoustic, and finally thermal-vacuum testing.
 
Lastly, it served as the prime project interface with the NASA Johnson Space Center International Space Station Program Office, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and SpaceX.

Although CREAM was balloon-borne during its seven prior missions, the current payload will take the technology past Earth's atmosphere and into space. ISS-CREAM will directly sample fast-moving matter from outside the solar system, called cosmic rays, from its new vantage point on the Japanese Experiment Module - Exposed Facility.

Cosmic rays are high-energy particles traveling at nearly the speed of light that constantly shower Earth. But precisely how they originate and accelerate through space requires more study, as does their abrupt decline at energies higher than 1,000 trillion electron volts. These particles have been boosted to more than 100 times the energy achievable by the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

ISS-CREAM — about the size of a refrigerator — will carry repackaged versions of the silicon charge detectors and ionization calorimeter from the previous balloon missions over Antarctica. The orbital edition of CREAM will contain two new instruments: the top/bottom counting detectors, contributed by Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea, and a boronated scintillator detector to distinguish electrons from protons, constructed by a team from Goddard, Pennsylvania State University in University Park and Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights.

The international collaboration includes teams from numerous institutions in the United States as well as collaborating institutions in the Republic of Korea, Mexico and France.

According to co-investigator Jason Link, a University of Maryland, Baltimore County research scientist working at Goddard, CREAM's evolution demonstrates the power of NASA's Balloon Program, managed from Wallops, as a developmental test bed for space instrumentation.

"A balloon mission can go from an idea in a scientist's head to a flying payload in about five years," Link said. "In fact, many scientists who design experiments for space missions get their start in ballooning. It's a powerful training ground for researchers and engineers."

Keith Koehler
 NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia

Raleigh McElvery
 NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

[свернуть]

Last Updated: Aug. 13, 2017
Editor: Jeremy Eggers

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Предпусковая пресс-конференция началась
 

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‏ @CwG_NSF 4 мин. назад

Tomorrow is our ONLY attempt until 19-20 August! #SpaceX #CRS12 #Falcon9 #Dragon

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 @CwG_NSF 2 мин. назад

Berthing Wed. Hatch opening Thurs. But there's ice cream on board, so crew may be incentized to get hatch open Wed. #SpaceX #CRS12 #Dragon

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Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 8 мин. назад

ISS deputy manager confirms this is a "one off" launch due to Russian EVA/TDRS-M. Scrub means move to 19th/20th. Instant window, one shot.

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Spacenews360‏ @SpaceNews360 8 мин. назад

Press conference at KSC press site. Dan Hartman and Hans Koenigsmann.

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‏ @CwG_NSF 11 мин. назад

Mission will be a little longer than 30 days due to science return needs. #SpaceX #CRS12 #Falcon9 #Dragon


11 мин. назад

Working 1 @Space_Station issue that is NOT a constraints to Dragon's launch. #SpaceX #CRS12 #Falcon9 #Dragon


Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 9 мин. назад

Per how it was explained by CAPCOM to the crew:

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 @CwG_NSF 8 мин. назад

Exact launch time is 12:32:37 EDT tomorrow for #SpaceX #CRS12 #Falcon9 #Dragon. The ONLY DAY of the launch window until 19-20 August.

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Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 7 мин. назад

Hans lives one mile from the Port that Dragon's are returned to after splashdown "So I can see it happening".

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‏ @CwG_NSF 2 мин. назад

ISS crew will get to see 21 Aug #SolarEclipse2017. Station will NOT intersect the path of totality.

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Chris G

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Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 6 мин. назад

ISS crew will get three passes to observe the upcoming Eclipse. The third will be the best. They have special filters to photograph it.