NASA’s Big New Rocket
I hope many of you are not feeling green after celebrating St. Patrick’s Day last night. 😊 There are three quick news items of note today:
Yesterday CASCA members were delighted to learn that certain folks connected to HAA by varying degree have been selected for three of its annual awards. Namely, we learned that JJ Kavelaars has been awarded this year’s Dunlap Award for Innovation in Astronomical Tools, for his leadership of the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre. Next, Karun Thanjavur, a UVic faculty member and frequent user of the Plaskett Telescope has won this year’s Qilak Awrad for Astronomy Communications, Public Education, and Outreach for his role in connecting Indigenous communities around BC with the University of Victoria. Finally, UBC graduate student Deborah Good has won this year’s J. S. Plaskett Medal for Most Outstanding PhD Thesis, a work entitled “Timing Pulsars and Detecting Radio Transits with CHIME.” The three will receive their respective awards at the upcoming annual CASCA meeting, to be held May 17-20, 2022 online. Congratulations to all three for their well-deserved recognitions! (For more info, I’ve included below the three official notifications about these awards we received yesterday.)
Also yesterday, NASA rolled out the huge rocket of the kind it intends to use to send humans back to the Moon later this decade. The Space Launch System (SLS) is massive, about 100 metres tall or just a little under the 110 metre height of the old Saturn V rocket from the 1960s Apollo missions. SLS will produce about 8.8 million pounds of thrust at launch, or about 15% more than the Saturn V, enabling to carry about 24 tonnes of cargo to the Moon. It will be topped by the Orion spacecraft, the command module that will house up to four future astronauts. This rollout yesterday was a full dress rehearsal for an actual launch that will occur this summer. That unmanned launch will be “Artemis I,” and will be followed by future missions to send astronauts (including Canadians!) around the Moon and back (Artemis II), and to the lunar surface and back (Artemis III). Here are links to the nice CBC story about yesterday’s rollout and a short video showing the rocket leaving is hangar for those who’d like to see more. (The latter has a suitably spacey soundtrack.)
Tomorrow evening, Garima Singh will give a presentation for this month’s online Saturday Night Star Party hosted by the Friends of the DAO organization. She will be talking about her research, i.e., how exoplanets can be discovered using a combination of adaptive optics, which correct for the flickering introduced to the light from astronomical objects by our constantly shifting atmosphere, and coronagraphy, where the light from stars is significantly blocked using clever optical tricks that allow objects adjacent to them to be seen. Here are links to the abstract of Garima’s talk and the live YouTube stream you can watch starting at 7 pm. (The talk will likely begin around 7:20 pm.) As always, the online star party should be a great time!