SPACE: WHERE ARE WE GOING? : ASTRONAUTS

Sunday, July 12, 2015

LOOKING AT AUSTRALIA FROM THE ISS

FROM: NASA

From the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly (stationcdrkelly on Instagram) took this photograph and posted it to social media on April 6, 2015. Kelly wrote, "Australia. You are very beautiful. Thank you for being there to brighten our day. #YearInSpace" Kelly and Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko began their one-year mission aboard the space station on March 27. Most expeditions to the space station last four to six months. By doubling the length of this mission, researchers hope to better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long-duration spaceflight. Image Credit: NASA.

Monday, June 3, 2013

ASTRONAUTS ATTEND MAXWELL LEADERSHIP REACTION COURSE

FROM: U.S. AIR FORCE
Astronauts attend Maxwell Leadership Reaction Course
By Tech. Sgt. Sarah Loicano
Air University Public Affairs

5/31/2013 - MAXWELL AIR FORCE BASE, Ala. (AFNS) -- In a collaborative training effort, a group of six American and international astronauts participated in an abbreviated version of the Air University Leadership Reaction Course here May 22-23.

Designed to develop leadership skills, the LRC is a field exercise consisting of a series of obstacle course challenges that students navigate as teams during Officer Training School and Reserve Officer Training Corps courses. The astronauts visited the course to evaluate its potential usefulness for future leadership development.

"There are many different types of training and requirements for NASA astronauts, and we are looking at new ways to fulfill leadership obligations," said Peggy Whitson, the training lead for astronaut expeditionary skills at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. The department is responsible for finding leadership opportunities for astronauts.

Whitson joined NASA's astronaut corps in 1996 and served as the chief of the Astronaut Office from 2009-2012. She was the first woman to lead the U.S. Astronaut Corps, as well as the first female commander of the International Space Station.

"This training provides us different scenarios and different ways of meeting core leadership training requirements. It allows us to practice teamwork, leadership, decision making," she said, adding that the test run of the training course might be something NASA would consider sending additional astronauts to attend.

During the course, students, or in this case, astronauts, were given a specific obstacle goal, rules and time limit, with a different team leader selected to take charge for each obstacle.

"This is an opportunity for mentors to see folks thrust into leadership situations and watch how they respond. The situations may change when you're out in the operational Air Force or even at the space station, but the issues don't change," said Maj. Rick Kallstrom, the director of operations for the Academy of Military Science at OTS. "You still need to lead, follow, problem-solve, communicate and build teamwork, and those are the same principles they are learning here."

Although there is a textbook solution for each obstacle, instructors don't necessarily care how students develop a solution. During their time on the course, the astronauts solved several obstacles in a different way than instructors had seen previously.

"It's more about how well did they lead, maintain control of their team and communicate," Kallstrom explained. "It's a good chance to take classroom lessons and apply to real-world scenarios."

Takuya Onishi, an astronaut from the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, attended the course.

"I think this LRC is very good for our leadership and followership skills as well as team building. As we went through the first few tasks, I trusted my teammates very strongly, without any doubt," Onishi said.

That sense of trust and cooperation is essential, he said, for working in environments like the International Space Station, where different cultures and languages come together.

"This is more of a realistic situation that we may be in, and this training is really beneficial for us and for me, especially," he said. "When we have to work in a team in which crew members have different backgrounds, these obstacle courses help us build our relationship."

STAR FLASH

What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this had never been seen before -- supernovas and novas expel matter out into space. Although the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen in the above image from the Hubble Space Telescope is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the complex array of ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros), while the light echo above spans about six light years in diameter. Image Credit: NASA, ESA

THE SPIDERWEB GALAXY

Looking like a spider's web swirled into a spiral, Galaxy IC 342 presents its delicate pattern of dust in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Seen in infrared light, faint starlight gives way to the glowing bright patterns of dust found throughout the galaxy's disk. At a distance of about 10 million light-years, IC 342 is relatively close by galactic standards, however our vantage point places it directly behind the disk of our own Milky Way. The intervening dust makes it difficult to see in visible light, but infrared light penetrates this veil easily. IC 342 belongs to the same group as its even more obscured galactic neighbor, Maffei 2. IC 342 is nearly face-on to our view, giving a clear, top-down view of the structure of its disk. It has a low surface brightness compared to other spirals, indicating a lower density of stars (seen here as a blue haze). Its dust structures show up much more vividly (red). Blue dots are stars closer to us, in our own Milky Way. New stars are forming in the disk at a healthy rate. The very center glows especially brightly in the infrared, highlighting an enormous burst of star formation occurring in this tiny region. To either side of the center, a small bar of dust and gas is helping to fuel this central star formation. Data from Spitzer's infrared array camera are shown in blue (3.6 microns), green (4.5 microns) and red (5.8 and 8.0 microns). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

JUMPING TO WARP SPEED

This cockpit view of a hypothetical spacecraft traveling at eight-tenths the speed of light shows the visual distortions that would be experienced at such high speeds. The star field is actually being wrapped toward the front of the craft in addition to being significantly blue-shifted. NASA Glenn leads the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, NASA's primary effort to produce near-term, credible, and measurable progress toward the technology breakthroughs needed to revolutionize space travel and enable interstellar voyages. NASA Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio.

OBSERVATION FROM THE SPACE STATION