Jefferson Zuñiga Coronado

Revista Cientifica

Hubble Sees the Eye of the Storm in Galaxy Cluster

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope could seem like a quiet patch of sky at first glance. But zooming into the central part of a galaxy cluster — one of the largest structures of the Universe — is rather like looking at the eye of the storm.

Clusters of galaxies are large groups consisting of dozens to hundreds of galaxies, which are bound together by gravity. The galaxies sometimes stray too close to one another and the huge gravitational forces at play can distort them or even rip matter off when they collide with one another.

This particular cluster, called Abell 1185, is a chaotic one. Galaxies of various shapes and sizes are drifting dangerously close to one another. Some have already been ripped apart in this cos-mic maelstrom, shedding trails of matter into the void following their close encounter. They have formed a familiar shape called The Guitar, located just outside the frame of this image.

Abell 1185 is located approximately 400 million light-years away from Earth and spans one million light-years across. A few of the elliptical galaxies that form the cluster are visible in the corners of this image, but mostly, the small elliptical shapes seen are faraway galaxies in the bac-kground, located much further away, in a quieter area of the Universe.

Hubble to Use Moon as Mirror to See Venus Transit

This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. Credit: NASA/ESA/D. Ehrenreich

This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our moon. Astronomers didn’t aim NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to study Ty-cho, however. The image was taken in prepara-tion to observe the transit of Venus across the sun’s face on June 5-6.

Hubble cannot look at the sun directly, so astro-nomers are planning to point the telescope at the Earth’s moon, using it as a mirror to capture reflected sunlight and isolate the small fraction of the light that passes through Venus’s atmos-phere. Imprinted on that small amount of light are the fingerprints of the planet’s atmospheric makeup.

These observations will mimic a technique that is already being used to sample the atmosphe-res of giant planets outside our solar system passing in front of their stars. In the case of the Venus transit observations, astronomers already know the chemical makeup of Venus’s atmosphere, and that it does not show signs of life on the planet. But the Venus transit will be used to test whether this technique will have a chance of detecting the very faint fingerprints of an Earth-like planet, even one that might be habitable for life, outside our solar system that similarly transits its own star. , Venus is an excellent proxy because it is similar in size and mass to our planet.

The astronomers will use an arsenal of Hubble instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, Wide Field Camera 3, and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, to view the transit in a range of wavelengths, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. During the transit, Hubble will snap images and perform spectroscopy, dividing the sunlight into its constituent co-lors, which could yield information about the makeup of Venus’s atmosphere.

Hubble will observe the moon for seven hours, before, during, and after the transit so the as-tronomers can compare the data. Astronomers need the long observation because they are looking for extremely faint spectral signatures. Only 1/100,000th of the sunlight will filter through Venus’s atmosphere and be reflected off the moon.

This image, taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, reveals lunar features as small as roughly 560 feet (170 meters) across. The large “bulls-eye” near the top of the pic-ture is the impact crater, caused by an asteroid strike about 100 million years ago. The bright trails radiating from the crater were formed by material ejected from the impact area during the asteroid collision. Tycho is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide and is circled by a rim of material rising almost 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the crater floor. The image measures 430 miles (700 kilometers) across, which is slightly larger than New Mexico.

Because the astronomers only have one shot at observing the transit, they had to carefully plan how the study would be carried out. Part of their planning included the test observations of the moon, made on Jan. 11, 2012, as shown in the release image.

Hubble will need to be locked onto the same location on the moon for more than seven hours, the transit’s duration. For roughly 40 mi-nutes of each 96-minute orbit of Hubble around the Earth, the Earth occults Hubble’s view of the moon. So, during the test observations, the astronomers wanted to make sure they could point Hubble to precisely the same target area.

This is the last time this century sky watchers can view Venus passing in front of the sun. The

next transit won’t happen until 2117. Venus transits occur in pairs, separated by eight years. The last event was witnessed in 2004.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astro-nomy, Inc., in Washington, D.C.

For images and more information about Hubble’s view of the Moon and the Venus transit, visit: http://hubblesite.org/news/2012/22For more information about the Hubble Space Telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Boeing Tests Parachute System for CST-100 Spacecraft

The Boeing Company successfully completed the second parachute drop test for its Crew Space Transportation (CST) spacecraft May 2, part of its effort to develop commercial crew transportation capabilities that could ferry U.S. astronauts to and from low Earth orbit (LEO) and the International Space Station.

A helicopter lifted the CST-100 crew capsule to about 10,000 feet above the Delmar Dry Lake Bed near Alamo, Nev. A drogue parachute de-ployment sequence was initiated, followed by deployment of the main parachute. The capsule descended to a smooth ground landing, cushioned by six inflated air bags. The test demonstrated the performance of the entire landing system.

“Boeing’s parachute demonstrations are a clear sign NASA is moving in the right direction of enabling the American aerospace transporta-tion industry to flourish under this partnership,” NASA’s Commercial Crew Program Manager Ed Mango said. “The investments we’re making now

Image above: Boeing’s CST-100 crew cap-sule floats to a landing above the Delmar Dry Lake Bed near Alamo, Nev, on May 2.

are enabling this new path forward of getting our crews to LEO and potentially the space station as soon as possible.”

Boeing’s CST system is designed to be a reusable, capsule-shaped spacecraft capable of taking up to seven people, or a combination of people and cargo, to and from low Earth orbit, including the space station. HDT Airborne Sys-tems of Solon, Ohio, designed, fabricated and integrated the parachute system, including the two drogue parachutes. ILC Dover of Frederi-ca, Del., designed and fabricated the landing air bag system.

The first test, on April 3, validated the architec-ture and deployment of the parachute system, characterized pyrotechnic shock loads, confir-med parachute size and design, and identified potential forward compartment packaging and deployment issues. The company inspected and re-packed the full parachute system for this second test.

“This second parachute drop test validates Boeing’s innovative system architecture and deployment plan,” said John Mulholland, vice president and program manager of Boeing Commercial Programs. “Boeing’s completion of this milestone reaffirms our commitment to provide safe, reliable and affordable crewed access to space.”

The company has scheduled additional tests to be performed in 2012 that will provide more data on elements of the spacecraft’s design.

Boeing’s spacecraft was designed to be com-patible with a variety of expendable launch vehicles. The company selected United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket for initial CST-100 test flights.

Image above: The main parachutes deploy for Boeing’s CST-100 crew capsule during a parachute drop test on May 2. Image credit: Boeing

Image above: A helicopter drops Boeing’s CST-100 crew capsule from about 10,000 feet du-ring the company’s second parachute drop test

Dancing Droplets Rock Out on Space Station

“I use my off duty time to investigate scienti-fic curiosities of my own design,” Pettit said. “[These are] my own investigations that I do simply because I’m here and I can and these things tickle my imagination and enrich my mind.”

In the short, downloadable videos, Pettit has used knitting needles and water droplets to examine static electricity, demonstrated capillary flow by creating a zero-gravity tea cup, used thin water films to experiment with fluid motion, shared infrared imagery of Earth and more.

“The physics community is absolutely loving seeing what’s going on, and loving having a different way of looking at concepts that they’ve

Expedition 31 crew member Don Pettit has taught more than half a million internet viewers how microgravity affects scientific principles by using everyday objects on the Internatio-nal Space Station. In the latest video, “Space Soundwaves,” Pettit takes his demonstrations to the next level by using sound to oscillate water placed on a speaker and letting the droplets fly.

The investigation is part of “Science off the Sphere,” a video series featuring experiments of Pettit’s own design intended to show scientific possibilities on the frontier of space. NASA and the American Physical Society, or APS, develo-ped a partnership to share the videos with stu-dents, educators and science enthusiasts across the globe. In the latest episode, Pettit’s water droplets dance to music by Texas rock band ZZ Top.

NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Expedition 30 flight engineer, enters data in a computer while wor-king with Robonaut 2 humanoid robot in the Destiny laboratory of the International Space

Station. (NASA).

A close look at this four-inch polished metal sphere onboard the International Space Station reveals a reflected image of NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Expedition 30 flight engineer. Using

a 25-mm lens, Pettit took a series of pictures.

spent their lives studying,” said Becky Thomp-son-Flagg, head of public outreach at APS.

The website includes a physics challenge ques-tion at the end of each video for viewers.

“One of the ways that we can see who’s viewing the videos and who’s really engaging is by loo-king at the people that are responding to the cha-llenge questions,” said Thompson-Flagg. “And what’s neat is that we get a wide range. We have middle school science classes that are also sub-mitting answers.”

APS, the professional society for physicists, shares new “Science off the Sphere” videos on its outreach website, Physics Central.

“Science off the Sphere” is a successor to Pettit’s science demonstrations performed during his stay on the space station during Expedition 6 in 2002 and 2003 and during the STS-126 space shuttle mission.

Pettit launched to the space station to join the Expedition 30 crew on Dec. 23, 2011, with Russian Flight Engineer Oleg Kononenko and European Space Agency Flight Engineer André Kuipers. The crew will be joined by NASA’s Joseph Acaba and Russian cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Sergei Revin as part of Expedition 31, who are scheduled to launch on May 14. Pettit, Kuipers and Kononenko will remain on the station until July.

To view Pettit’s science demonstrations performed during his current mission, visit: http://www.physicscentral.com/sots

NASA astronaut Don Pettit, Expedition 30 flight engineer, holds a Microgravity Science Glove-box (MSG) glove in the Columbus laboratory of

the International Space Station. (NASA)

Cancer Treatment Delivery

Humanity is on the constant search for impro-vements in cancer treatments, and the Interna-tional Space Station has provided a microgra-vity platform that has enabled advancements in the cancer treatment process.

The oncology community has a recent history of using different microencapsulation tech-niques as an approach to cancer treatment. Microencapsulation is a single step process that forms tiny liquid-filled, biodegradable micro-balloons containing various drug solutions that can provide better drug delivery and new medical treatments for solid tumors and resis-tant infections. In other words, by using micro-capsules containing antitumor treatments and

visualization markers, the treatment can be directed right to the tumor, which has several benefits over systemic treatment such as chemotherapy. Testing in mouse models has shown that these unique microcapsules can be injected into human prostate tumors to actually inhibit tumor growth or can be injected following cryo-surgery (freezing) to improve the destruction of the tumors much better than freezing or local chemotherapy alone. The microcapsules also contain a contrast agent that enables C-T, X-ray or ultrasound imaging to monitor the distribution within the tissues to ensure that the entire tumor is treated when the microcapsules release their drug contents.

The Microencapsulation Electrostatic Processing System-II experiment, or MEPS-II, led by Dennis Morrison, Ph.D. (retired), at NASA Johnson Space Center, was performed on the station in 2002 and included innovative encapsulation of several different anti-cancer drugs, magnetic triggering particles, and encapsulation of genetically engineered DNA. The experiment system improved on existing microencapsulation technology by using microgravity to modify the fluid mechanics, interfacial behavior, and biological processing methods as compared to the way the microcapsules would be formed in gravity.

In effect, the MEPS-II system on the station combined two immiscible liquids in such a way that surface tension forces (rather than fluid shear) dominated at the interface of the fluids. The sig-nificant performance of the space-produced microcapsules as a cancer treatment delivery system motivated the development of the Pulse Flow Microencapsulation System, or PFMS, which is an Earth-based system that can replicate the quality of the microcapsules created in space.

Single cell microencapsulation. (NASA) ‘

As a result of this space station research, the results from the MEPS-II experiments have provided new insight into the best formu-lations and conditions required to produce microcapsules of different drugs, particularly special capsules containing diagnostic imaging materials and triggered release particles. Co-encapsulation of multiple drugs and Photody-namic Therapy, or PDT, drugs has enabled new engineering strategies for production of micro-capsules on Earth designed for direct delivery into cancer tissues. Other microcapsules have now been made for treatment of deep tissue infections and clotting disorders and to provide delivery of genetically engineered materials for potential gene therapy strategies. Micro-capsules that were made on the space station and are targeted at inhibiting the growth of human prostate tumors have been successfully demonstrated in laboratory settings. Although Morrison’s team had performed several simi-lar microencapsulation experiments on space shuttle missions, because of the space station’s ability to support long-term experiments, more progress was made by the eight microencap-sulation experiments conducted on the station in 2002 than from the 60+ prior experiments conducted on the four space shuttle missions -- STS-77, STS-80, STS-95 and STS 107.

Benefits of Space Station Research

The microgravity environment on the station was an enabling environment that led the way to better methods of microcapsule development on Earth. The capability to perform sequential mi-croencapsulation experiments on board the station has resulted in new, Earth-based technology for making these unique microballoons that provide sustained release of drugs over a 12–14 day period. The station research led directly to five U.S. patents that have been licensed by NASA and two more that are pending. NuVue Therapeutics, Inc., is one of several commercial companies that have licensed some of the MEPS technologies and methods to develop new applications, such as innovative ultrasound enhanced needles and catheters that will be used to deliver the microcapsules of anti-tumor drugs directly to tumor sites. More recent research uses a new device for freezing tumors (“cryo-ablation”) followed by ultrasound-guided deposition of the multi-

Dr. Morrison with MEPS flight hardware ready to pack for the International Space Station UF-2

mission. (NASA)

Microencapsulation containing anti-tumor drugs made on the space station. (NASA)

layered microcapsules containing different chemotherapy drugs outside the freeze zone within a human prostate or lung tumor. In a 28-day study, combination therapy resulted in retarding tumor growth 78 percent and complete tumor regression of up to 30 percent after only three weekly injections of microencapsulated drug at tiny quantities that should not have slowed down tumor growth by more than 5–10 percent. NuVue Technologies, Inc., has now obtained two U.S. patents based on the combination therapy that includes the delivery of the NASA-type microcapsules. Upon securing funding, clinical trials to inject microcapsules of anti-tumor drugs directly into tumor sites will begin at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and the Mayo Cancer Center in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Other potential uses of this microencapsulation technology include microencapsulation of gene-tically engineered living cells for injection or transplantation into damaged tissues, enhancement of human tissue repair, and real-time microparticle analysis in flowing sample streams that would allow petrochemical companies to monitor pipeline volume flow.

In 1980, Lim and Sun introdu-ced a microcapsule coated with an alginate/polylysine complex for encapsulation of pancreatic islets. Characteristic to this type of capsule is, that it consists of a plain membrane which is formed during a single proce-dural step. With such a simple process it is difficult to obtain instantly a membrane optimized with respect to all the properties requested for islet transplanta-tion. To overcome these diffi-

culties, it is recommended to build up the membrane in several consecutive steps, each optimized for a certain property. In this study, we have analysed such a multilayer microcapsule for the encapsulation of pancreatic islets. Therefore, empty and islet containing alginate beads were coa-ted with alternating layers of polyethyleneimine, polyacrylacid or carboxymethylcellulose and al-ginate. By scanning electron microscopy the thickness of the covering multilayer-membrane was estimated to be less than 800 nm by comparison with an apparatus scale. Ellipsometric measure-ments showed that the membrane thickness is in the range of 145 nm. Neither the encapsulation procedure, nor the membrane-forming step did impede the stimulatory response of the islets.

The encapsulation even lead to a significantly better stimulatory response of the encapsulated islets during week three and five of cell culture. Furthermore, the multilayer-membrane did not deteriorate the biocompatibility of the transplanted microcapsules, allowing an easy tuning of the molecular cut-off and the mechanical stability depending on the polycation-polyanion combina-tion used. The multilayer membrane capsule has obvious advantages compared.

Tara Ruttley, Ph.D., Associate International Space Station Program Scientist

NASA

Cheryl Gundy, STScI

Candrea ThomasKennedy Space Center, Fla.

Candrea.K.Thomas@nasa.gov

Rachel KraftNASA’s Johnson Space Center

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