The Swift

3 Tiny Mental Habits I Practice Every Morning – In Less Than 5 Minutes

If you want to change your mindset, it’s often best to start as small as possible. Here are 3 tiny mental habits that I practice every morning – and they only take 5 minutes!

The Disintegration of the Community: Why We Feel Alone Even When Surrounded By People

Do you feel like you’re a part of your community? If your answer is “no,” you’re not alone or defective, this is actually how many people feel nowadays. Why has our sense of community disintegrated over the years?

NASA - Artemis Program logo. April 30, 2020 NASA has selected three U.S. companies to design and develop human landing systems (HLS) for the agency’s Artemis program, one of which will land the first woman and next man on the surface of the Moon by 2024. NASA is on track for sustainable human exploration of the Moon for the first time in history.

Image above: Illustration of Artemis astronauts on the Moon. Image Credit: NASA. The human landing system awards under the Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP-2) Appendix H Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) are firm-fixed price, milestone-based contracts. The total combined value for all awarded contracts is $967 million for the 10-month base period. The following companies were selected to design and build human landing systems: - Blue Origin of Kent, Washington, is developing the Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV) – a three-stage lander to be launched on its own New Glenn Rocket System and ULA Vulcan launch system. - Dynetics (a Leidos company) of Huntsville, Alabama, is developing the Dynetics Human Landing System (DHLS) – a single structure providing the ascent and descent capabilities that will launch on the ULA Vulcan launch system. - SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, is developing the Starship – a fully integrated lander that will use the SpaceX Super Heavy rocket. “With these contract awards, America is moving forward with the final step needed to land astronauts on the Moon by 2024, including the incredible moment when we will see the first woman set foot on the lunar surface,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “This is the first time since the Apollo era that NASA has direct funding for a human landing system, and now we have companies on contract to do the work for the Artemis program.”

Artemis Announcement: NASA Selects Human Landing Systems

Video above: NASA has selected three American companies – Blue Origin, Dynetics and SpaceX – to design and develop human landing systems for the Artemis program. With these awards, NASA is on track to land the next astronauts on the lunar surface by 2024, and establish sustainable human exploration of the Moon by the end of the decade. Video Credit: NASA. Fifty years ago, NASA’s Apollo Program proved it is possible to land humans on the Moon and return them safely to Earth. When NASA returns to the Moon in four years with the Artemis program, it will go in a way that reflects the world today – with government, industry, and international partners in a global effort to build and test the systems needed for challenging missions to Mars and beyond. “We are on our way.” said Douglas Loverro, NASA’s associate administrator for Human Explorations and Operations Mission Directorate in Washington. “With these awards we begin an exciting partnership with the best of industry to accomplish the nation’s goals. We have much work ahead, especially over these next critical 10 months. I have high confidence that working with these teammates, we will succeed.”  NASA’s commercial partners will refine their lander concepts through the contract base period ending in February 2021. During that time, the agency will evaluate which of the contractors will perform initial demonstration missions. NASA will later select firms for development and maturation of sustainable lander systems followed by sustainable demonstration missions. NASA intends to procure transportation to the lunar surface as commercial space transportation services after these demonstrations are complete. During each phase of development, NASA and its partners will use critical lessons from earlier phases to hone the final concepts that will be used for future lunar commercial services.

Blue Origin - Integrated Lander Vehicle (ILV). Image Credit: Blue Origin

Nuclear Fusion Energy logo. 19 March 2020 Permanent magnets could help to optimize the geometry of a future fusion reactor.

Image above: Visualization of how a stellarator’s plasma (orange) can be manipulated using a combination of permanent magnets (red and blue) and superconducting coils (grey rings). Image Credits: C. Zhu/PPPL. Researchers have proposed a simplified design for nuclear-fusion reactors, based on powerful permanent magnets. Fusion reactors are still at the prototype stage. They confine plasma inside a doughnut-shaped magnetic field and heat it to millions of degrees, with the goal of fusing light atomic nuclei into heavier ones and releasing vast amounts of energy. One promising design, called a stellarator, normally requires sophisticated superconducting coils to make the plasma twist as it moves inside the doughnut. While helping his son with a science-fair project, Michael Zarnstorff at the Max Planck Princeton Research Center for Plasma Physics in New Jersey realized that neodymium–boron permanent magnets had become powerful enough to help. His team’s conceptual design combines simpler, ring-shaped superconducting coils with pancake-shaped magnets attached outside the plasma’s vacuum vessel. Like refrigerator magnets — which stick on only one side — these would produce their magnetic field mainly inside the vessel.

NASA - InSight Mission patch. Feb. 21, 2020 After nearly a year of trying to dig into the Martian surface, the heat probe belonging to NASA’s InSight lander is about to get a push. The mission team plans to command the scoop on InSight’s robotic arm to press down on the “mole,” the mini pile driver designed to hammer itself as much as 16 feet (5 meters) down. They hope that pushing down on the mole’s top, also called the back cap, will keep it from backing out of its hole on Mars, as it did twice in recent months after nearly burying itself.

Animation above: NASA InSight recently moved its robotic arm closer to its digging device, called the “mole,” in preparation to push on its top, or back cap. Animation Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Part of an instrument called the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, or HP3, the mole is a 16-inch-long (40-centimeter-long) spike equipped with an internal hammering mechanism. While burrowing into the soil, it is designed to drag with it a ribbonlike tether that extends from the spacecraft. Temperature sensors are embedded along the tether to measure heat coming deep from within the planet’s interior to reveal important scientific details about the formation of Mars and all rocky planets, including Earth. HP3 was provided to NASA by the German Aerospace Center, or DLR. The team has avoided pushing on the back cap until now to avoid any potential damage to the tether.

Image above: This test using an engineering model of the InSight lander here on Earth shows how the spacecraft on Mars will use its robotic arm to press on a digging device, called the “mole.” Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech. The mole found itself stuck on Feb. 28, 2019, the first day of hammering. The InSight team has since determined that the soil here is different than what has been encountered on other parts of Mars. InSight landed in an area with an unusually thick duricrust, or a layer of cemented soil. Rather than being loose and sandlike, as expected, the dirt granules stick together. The mole needs friction from soil in order to travel downward; without it, recoil from its self-hammering action causes it to simply bounce in place. Ironically, loose soil, not duricrust, provides that friction as it falls around the mole. This past summer, the InSight team started using the robotic arm’s scoop to press on the side of the mole, a technique called “pinning” that added just enough friction to help it dig without coming in contact with the fragile science tether connected to the mole’s back cap.   While pinning helped, the mole popped back out of the Martian soil on two occasions, possibly from soil building up from beneath. With few alternatives left, the team has decided to try helping the mole dig by carefully pressing on its back cap while attempting to avoid the tether.

Mars InSight lander & logo. Animation Credits: NASA/JPL

You don’t swallow 8 spiders a year  in your sleep. It’s so unlikely for a  spider to crawl into your mouth at  night that there’s no formal medical  or scientific record of it ever actually  happening. Spiders get most of the  information about their surroundings  through vibrations - so your snoring, breathing, and heartbeat usually  scares them away. 

Castle Neuschwanstein

Spent the morning creating the latest page for my grimoire! This is my personal interpretations from my research, and anyone is welcome to use it provided you give me credit! Also please forgive my awful handwriting!

Old Gods: Day 28 - Black Woodpecker