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Physics Astronomy Space Exploration Technology

Soon, the ISS Will Be the Coldest Known Place in the Universe

Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL)
NASA is going to launch a facility to the International Space Station (ISS) that will contain a spot 10 billion times colder than the outer space. The new Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) facility, which will operate in microgravity, could help answer some big questions in modern physics, allowing researchers to dive deep into the quantum realm in a way that would never be possible here on Earth. Inside the Cold Atom Lab, scientists will use lasers and magnetic traps to slow atoms down until they are almost motionless.Notes 1 Then, the atoms can form a distinct state of matter called Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).Notes 2 In this state, the wave characteristics of matter become more noticeable. On Earth, the pull of gravity causes atoms to settle toward the ground, ad the freely evolving BECs are typically only observable for fractions of a second. But, inside the CAL, ultra-cold atoms can hold their wave-like forms longer while in a freefall (microgravity), giving scientists more time to observe and understand physics at its most basic level.

Where is the coldest known place in the Universe? It may sound strange, but today, it is here on Earth: in 1995, in a laboratory in M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the German physicist Wolfgang Ketterle and his colleagues have cooled a sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded, only half-a-billionth of a degree above absolute zero.

But, soon, this record will be broken. NASA is going to launch a facility to the International Space Station (ISS) that will contain a spot 10 billion times colder than outer space. The new Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) facility, which will operate in microgravity, could help answer some big questions in modern physics, allowing researchers to dive deep into the quantum realm in a way that would never be possible here on Earth.

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Space Exploration Communication This Day in Science, Technology, Astronomy, and Space Exploration History

TDRS-6 was launched on January 13, 1993

TDRS-6 launch on January 13, 1993 (featurd image)
TDRS-6, known before launch as TDRS-F, is an American communications satellite which is operated by NASA as part of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. It was constructed by TRW, the American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace, automotive, and credit reporting – now known as Northrop Grumman. It was deployed from Space Shuttle Endeavour during the Space Transportation System 54 (STS-54) mission in 1993. The TDRS-6 is based on a custom satellite bus which was used for all seven first generation TDRS satellites.

On January 13, 1993, Tracking and Data Relay Satellite 6 (TDRS-6), the American communications satellite launched by Space Shuttle Endeavour. TDRS-6 is still operational today, well past its intended design life”.

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Astronomy Artificial Intelligence

Kepler-90i, the 8th Planet Orbiting a Distant Star was Discovered [using AI and Kepler data]

Kepler-90i surface (artist conception)
An artist's concept of the surface of Kepler-90i (also known by its Kepler Object of Interest designation KOI-351 l), a super-Earth exoplanet with a radius 1.34 that of Earth, orbiting the early G-type main sequence star Kepler-90 every 14.45 days, discovered using Artificial Intelligence and the data collected by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. It has an equilibrium temperature of 709 K (436 °C; 817 °F), similar to the average temperature of Venus.

Using data from the exoplanet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope and a machine learning algorithm from Google, researchers discovered an 8th planet orbiting a distant star. The newly discovered planet is circling Kepler-90, a G-type main-sequence star (Sun-like star), 2,545 light-years from Earth. It is named Kepler-90i.

According to the press release from NASA, Kepler-90i is “a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days“. In this case, computers using Google’s machine learning algorithm, “learned” to identify planets by finding in Kepler data instances where the telescope recorded signals from planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets.

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