Detector working after 4 spacewalks

Telescope reveals sun’s turbulent surface

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla, Feb 1, (AP): The cosmic detector that required a series of difficult spacewalking repairs is back in action.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is working better than ever, Samuel Ting, the Nobel laureate who oversees the instrument, said Friday.

The $2 billion spectrometer – the International Space Station’s premier science instrument – has now measured 152 billion charged cosmic rays in its hunt for elusive antimatter and dark matter, said Ting, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

A pair of astronauts conducted four spacewalks, beginning in November, to replace the spectrometer’s failing cooling system.

The final spacewalk, last Saturday, was the only one where Ting was not at NASA’s Mission Control in Houston. Instead, he was in Switzerland at the control room for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, which helps run the spectrometer.

“The only time I was not there, something happened,” Ting said. But he said he was never nervous – even when a leak cropped up in one of the coolant lines last Saturday – and was always confident the spacewalks would succeed.

Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano plugged the leak by repeatedly tightening the fitting for the line.

Authorities said the levels of toxic particles in the air were about 11 times higher than the safe levels on two consecutive days, creating a health hazard.

The government has recommended companies allow pregnant women and persons over the age of 60 to not work, for construction companies to reduce outdoor work and for sport and other outdoor activities to be banned on days of high pollution. The country’s President, Stevo Pendarovski, warned in his annual address before lawmakers last month that air pol

The spectrometer has been at the space station since 2011. Ting expects it to last the lifetime of the station, or another five to 10 years.

Ting said the instrument already has provided strong candidates for antimatter and dark matter.

Meanwhile, a telescope in Hawaii has produced its first images of the sun, revealing its turbulent gas surface in what scientists called unprecedented detail.

Cell-like

They show the surface covered with bright cell-like areas, each about the size of Texas, that result from the transporting of heat from the sun’s interior. The telescope can reveal features as small as 18 miles (30 km) across, according to the National Science Foundation, which released the images Wednesday.

Further observations will help scientists understand and predict solar activity that can disrupt satellite communications and affect power grids, the foundation said. The telescope is on the island of Maui.

NASA is pulling the plug on one of its great observatories – the Spitzer Space Telescope – after 16 years of scanning the universe with infrared eyes.

The end comes Thursday when ground controllers put the aging spacecraft into permanent hibernation.

For years, Spitzer peered through dusty clouds at untold stars and galaxies, uncovered a huge, nearly invisible ring around Saturn, and helped discover seven Earth-size planets around a nearby star.

Spitzer’s last observation was Wednesday. Altogether, Spitzer observed 800,000 celestial targets and churned out more than 36 million raw images as part of the $1.4 billion mission.

An estimated 4,000 scientists around the world took part in the observations and published nearly 9,000 studies, according to NASA.

“You have to be proud ... when you look back and say, ‘Look at the team that’s operating Spitzer, look at the team that’s contributing to having all of this great science,’” said project manager Joseph Hunt.

Designed to last just 2-1/2 to five years, the telescope got increasingly difficult to operate as it drifted farther behind Earth, NASA said. It currently trails Earth by 165 million miles (265 million kilometers), while orbiting the sun.

Spitzer will continue to fall even farther behind Earth, posing no threat to another spacecraft or anything else, officials said.

“Although it would be great to be able to operate all of our telescopes forever, this is not possible,” NASA’s astrophysics director Paul Hertz said in an email.

lution “seriously undermines our nation’s potential.” (AP)

Giraffe found dead in canal:

A giraffe that escaped from a truck while being transported to a zoo in Thailand was found dead in a drainage canal.

The animal was found about 500 meters (yards) from where it and another giraffe fled Tuesday when the truck slowed on a highway, police in Chachoengsao province said. (AP)