Image (Credit): Baltimore Oriole, the Maryland State Bird. (Statesymbolsusa.org).
You may not have heard the news, but the U.S. Space Force now has its own anthem, similar to other military services. Here are the lyrics to the new song called “Semper Supra” (Latin for “Always Above”) first unveiled at the 2022 Air & Space Forces Association Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, September 20th:
We’re the mighty watchful eye, Guardians beyond the blue, The invisible front line, Warfighters brave and true. Boldly reaching into space, There’s no limit to our sky. Standing guard both night and day, We’re the Space Force from on high.
You can hear the anthem here. It is not something I will be humming in the shower, but maybe some will like knowing the words to this new song, like knowing the name of the Maryland State Bird (Baltimore Oriole) or Maryland State Reptile (Diamondback Terrapin Turtle).
And you can read more about the anthem itself here.
Image (Credit): Diamondback Terrapin Turtle, the Maryland State Reptile. (Statesymbolsusa.org)
Take a look at the image above. Can you determine where this image originated? Take a guess and then check your answer by going to the menu and selecting the “Where is This? The Answer Sheet” page.
October 1 is a significant date for two of the world’s largest space agencies.
On this day in 1958, NASA had its first day of operations after being created a few months earlier by President Eisenhower in the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. Here is more about the creation of the Agency as noted by NASA’s History Division:
On this date the National Aeronautics and Space Administration began operation. At the time it consisted of only about 8,000 employees and an annual budget of $100 million. In addition to a small headquarters staff in Washington that directed operations, NASA had at the time three major research laboratories inherited from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics-the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory established in 1918, the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory activated near San Francisco in 1940, and the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory built at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1941-and two small test facilities, one for high-speed flight research at Muroc Dry Lake in the high desert of California and one for sounding rockets at Wallops Island, Virginia. It soon added several other government research organizations.
Today NASA has a budget of about $24 billion and approximately 17,000 employees.
And on this day in 2003, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was formed from a merger of three previous Japanese space agencies – the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan, and National Space Development Agency of Japan.
Image (Credit): The Hubble Space Telescope orbiting Earth. (Hubblesite.org)
The Washington Postreports that NASA and SpaceX are looking into the idea of extending the life of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which has already been in service more than 30 years. The space telescope’s orbit has been deteriorating since 2009, when it was last visited for repairs. The current orbit should be okay until the mid-2030s, and then it will fall to Earth.
To keep the Hubble in service for even more years, it would need to be pushed into a higher orbit. This is where SpaceX comes in. It can assist NASA by moving Hubble just 40 miles higher in order to get another 15 to 20 years out of the space telescope.
The article notes that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was not developed to replace Hubble but rather to complement it. Hence, the extra life for Hubble means more and better astronomical observations over additional years in conjunction with the JWST. For instance, we will get more shots like the one below where the Hubble captured the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission before and after it struck the asteroid.
Update: I have also included the JWST DART image below just to show the two space telescopes can work in tandem.
Image (Credit): This animated GIF combines three of the images NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured after NASA’s DART spacecraft intentionally impacted Dimorphos, a moonlet asteroid in the double asteroid system of Didymos. The animation spans from 22 minutes after impact to 8.2 hours after the collision took place. As a result of the impact, the brightness of the Didymos-Dimorphos system increased by 3 times. The brightness also appears to hold fairly steady, even eight hours after impact. (NASA, ESA, Jian-Yang Li (PSI); animation: Alyssa Pagan (STScI))
Image (Credit): This animation gif is a timelapse of images from NASA’s JWST. It covers the time spanning just before impact at 7:14 p.m. EDT, Sept. 26, through 5 hours post-impact. Plumes of material from a compact core appear as wisps streaming away from where the impact took place. An area of rapid, extreme brightening is also visible in the animation. (NASA, ESA, CSA, Cristina Thomas (Northern Arizona University), Ian Wong (NASA-GSFC); Joseph DePasquale (STScI))
Image (Credit): Artist’s impression of NASA’s Orbiting Solar Observatory 7 circling the Earth. (NASA)
On this day in 1971, NASA launched the Orbiting Solar Observatory 7 satellite to study the Sun. It successfully completed its mission and remained in orbit through July 9, 1974.
According to a December 31, 1972 report by Ball Brothers Research Corporation, the goal of the Orbiting Solar Observatory program was to make observations and measurements contributing to:
Determination of details of the sun’s atmospheric structure, composition and physical state and the process of energy transport radially outward and inward;
Determination of origin, energy supply, and solar/terrestrial consequences of transient solar phenomena such as sun spots, flares, radio bursts, and particle bursts;
Prediction of transient solar events and their consequences by combining data with those from other spacecraft, rockets, balloons, and ground-based observations; and
Secondary objectives including study of the earth and celestial objects.
You can read more about the Orbiting Solar Observatory 7 mission here.
NASA launched eight successful Orbiting Solar Observatory missions in all, but the program had some problems along the way. One satellite launched in 1965 failed to reach orbit, with the satellite burning up in the atmosphere. In another case, a rocket motor test in 1964 went awry, killing three men and wounding eight others.
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