{"id":460,"date":"2014-09-18T23:31:32","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T04:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/?p=460"},"modified":"2014-09-18T23:31:32","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T04:31:32","slug":"space-hear-clean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/2014\/09\/18\/space-hear-clean\/","title":{"rendered":"In space, no one can hear you clean."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mirror\"<\/a>The first thing you need if you\u2019re building the largest, most powerful telescope in the known universe is a very large, very\u00a0clean room. In the world’s largest such\u00a0room, it\u00a0takes 4,800 HEPA filters running nonstop to achieve \u201cClass 10\u201d clean – a level of clean that makes a hospital operating room look\u00a0like pig sty.<\/p>\n

Thus began our behind-the-scenes tour of the Goddard Space Flight Center<\/a>, led by a tour guide who also knows his way around the universe. Nobel Laureate John C. Mather<\/a> – honored for confirming the Big Bang theory to \"clean<\/a>extraordinary accuracy – took time out of his busy schedule overseeing completion of the James Webb Space Telescope<\/a> to show his fellow members of the American Institute of Physics development board<\/a> what\u2019s happening at NASA.<\/a> (Dr. Mather takes development as seriously as he does astrophysics; he donated<\/a><\/p>\n

a house and every penny of his Nobel prize money to student scholarships via the John and Jane Mather Foundation for Science and the Arts.)<\/p>\n

I peered through the window of the cavernous \u201cclean room\u201d \"photo_2-6\"<\/a>where a single gold hexagon awaited its place in history. I\u2019m now monitoring the Webb\u2019s progress on\u00a0NASA\u2019s \u201cWebb-cam\u201d<\/a> which provides photo updates of the telescope being constructed in the clean room, in real time.<\/p>\n

The Webb is so advanced, it will leave the Hubble in the galactic dust. A million miles away (compared<\/a> to just 340 miles for the Hubble) and 100 times more powerful, the Webb will be able to examine every phase of our history, from the Big Bang to the formation of our solar system. Its gold-coated, ultra-light beryllium optics will unfold in space, forming a 6.5-meter, 18-segment mirror<\/a>\u00a0that can pick up a galaxy 13 billion light years away. On this video<\/a>, you can see how the segments move to mimic a perfect primary mirror.<\/p>\n

\"James<\/a>The mirror\u00a0is cooled to -400 Fahrenheit by a 5-layer sunshield<\/a> that folds origami style to fit inside the rocket. It will take ten days to unfold to the size of a tennis court in outer space, and two months to cool down the mirror and instruments<\/a>\u00a0with its astronomically high SPF. (Overprotective moms take note: SPF 1 million does exist.) Dr. Mather said \u201cWe\u2019re on the fourth version of the sunshield.\u201d Nevertheless, the Webb is right on schedule for its 2018 launch from French Guiana \u2013 chosen for the extra boost the rocket will receive close to the equator where the earth\u2019s spin is a few miles per hour faster; the European Space Agency is contributing the rocket.<\/p>\n

Everything about the Webb telescope has to be perfect \"photo_5\"<\/a>because human beings cannot visit it and tweak it in outer space the way they can the Hubble. Scientists have just one $8 billion shot at getting it right (not too much pressure, Dr. Mather), so one of the most time-consuming aspects of building this telescope is putting its components through torture tests.<\/a> Dr. Mather brought us into the building where he said \u201cwe try to break stuff with sound waves.\u201d All instruments destined for the Webb are subjected to up to 150 decibels of noise, launch vibrations, and six months inside a simulator for the cold vacuum they\u2019ll experience in outer space. The historic chamber was built in the 1960\u2019s, and most of our science missions have gone through it before launch.<\/p>\n

How will the mirror and instruments\u00a0withstand what the universe will put them through? Dr. Mather lauded the properties of beryllium. \u201cElement number four behaves beautifully at low temperatures,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen a mirror segment is warm, it\u2019s the wrong shape. When cold, it\u2019s the right shape.\u201d To test the mirrors, a helium-cooled refrigerator goes to -434F; its gigantic compressor resides in NASA\u2019s basement. I wonder if they sprung for the two-year extended warranty.<\/p>\n

\"photo_3-3\"<\/a>We did a 180, or rather a 360, when we walked into a vast, circular room that houses a massive centrifuge. <\/a>It spins at about the rate of an old-fashioned record player, but imagine the g-forces that result when an object the size of a car twirls around on a 120-foot axis. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration \u00a0did exactly\u00a0that – borrowing NASA\u2019s centrifuge to test rollover limits <\/a>of SUVs and trucks. And every time they took an SUV for a spin in the high capacity centrifuge, they used the power of a million lightbulbs.<\/p>\n

Viewing another clean room at NASA, we witnessed the assembly of four identical\"photo_4-4\"<\/a> spacecraft for the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission.<\/a> They\u2019ll fly in a precise tetrahedron formation to gather data that will be used to greatly improve the models which predict space weather.<\/a> Perhaps improving the prediction of earth\u2019s weather will be next. Using the earth\u2019s magnetosphere as a laboratory, the four craft will orbit the earth once a day for two years, and then will burn up on their trip back to earth.<\/p>\n

Nearing the end of our tour, we were led down a hallway into a lab that brought home what space exploration is all about. Scientists at the Astrobiology Analytical Lab<\/a> handed us several 4.5-billion-year-old meteorites and described how the hunks of iron and other elements might hold clues to the origin of life.\u00a0\u00a0 I shook a vial of cometary dust and \"photo_1-5\"<\/a>watched the translucent flakes floating, almost weightless, as \u00a0 Dr. Jamie Cook told us comets can contain amino acids, and meteorites have millions of organic components in them. Each one is like a snapshot of the chemistry of the solar system, helping to build our understanding of the ingredients of early earth and how we got from there to earliest life.<\/p>\n

Dr. Cook explained how 40-year-old lunar samples continue to expand our knowledge of the universe: \u201cThey were collected before I was born\"photo_3-5\"<\/a> and analyzed with instruments that didn\u2019t exist at the time to answer questions that hadn\u2019t even been asked.\u201d Patience seems to be a virtue in sciences involving the prefix \u201castro.\u201d She and astrobiologist Dr. Daniel Glavin are awaiting the return of samples from MSL\/Curiosity<\/a> \u2013 the robot now seeking signs of life on Mars. The first samples scooped from Mars\u2019 soil, drilled from its rocks and pulled from its atmosphere will not be delivered to the lab until 2030.<\/p>\n

We passed around a small replica of an asteroid whose actual size is\u00a0half a kilometer in diameter. It\u2019s of interest to the lab because there\u2019s a very small chance it will hit earth in the late 2100\u2019s. But they\u2019ll receive enough information about it in the next ten years to know if it\u2019s on a collision path. And there\u2019s a team of scientists somewhere at NASA that knows what to do if it is. (If not, call FEMA.)<\/p>\n

Amid the jumble of lab equipment and space debris, the subject of cleanliness came up again. Scientists must follow strict rules set forth by \u201cplanetary protection officers\u201d – intergalactic cops in charge of preventing terrestrial contamination. The Viking Mars missions<\/a> could not touch areas of the planet where life may potentially begin, to avoid contamination.<\/p>\n

\"photo_2-4\"<\/a>With all this talk of higher levels of clean, I asked Dr. Mather what NASA used to clean the clean room. Pledge? 409? A Swiffer? He said only organic compounds are allowed, never bleach or ammonia. The secret to Class 10 clean is ordinary alcohol. And lots of it. (There were far\u00a0more probing questions from the physicists on the tour; my advertising background is to blame for my curiosity about levels of \u00a0clean.)<\/p>\n

The tour over, we all piled into the van and headed back to the American Institute of Physics’<\/a> headquarters. As we entered the high tech, ultra-modern building that houses one of the most important science libraries<\/a> in the world, we were greeted with news that an enormous snake had found its way inside and somehow slithered up three floors and into an office.\"AIP<\/a><\/p>\n

I thought about asteroids<\/a> that may threaten mankind, hazards the Webb will face in outer space, and what would happen if a dog hair showed up in the clean room. As scientists battle, harness, and attempt to control the forces of nature, they bring us an ever-increasing number of answers to questions that have been asked for millennia, as well as new \u00a0questions. Fortunately, science has also brought us the internet, which gives us a ringside seat to NASA\u2019s missions<\/a> and to learning what NASA <\/a>and its partners in science around the world have accomplished so far.<\/a> I hope you’ll enjoy exploring some of the links and videos I’ve provided. Small groups\u00a0can schedule a tour of the Goddard Space Flight\u00a0Center. The Visitor Center<\/a> is open to all. A\u00a0virtual tour<\/a>\u00a0is a good\u00a0starting point.<\/p>\n

Nicole Cranberg Crosby<\/a> is a member of the development board of the American Institute of Physics and is also\u00a0President of the Texas Fireframe<\/a> Company, \u00a0founded by her physicist-inventor father, Lawrence Cranberg.<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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The first thing you need if you\u2019re building the largest, most powerful telescope in the known universe is a very large, very\u00a0clean room. In the world’s largest such\u00a0room, it\u00a0takes 4,800 HEPA filters running nonstop to achieve \u201cClass 10\u201d clean – … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,1],"tags":[104,105,123,129,120,118,119,125,121,35,124,122,127,113,128,130,126,56],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-uncategorized","tag-aip","tag-american-institute-of-physics","tag-astrobiology-analytical-lab","tag-centrifuge","tag-clean-room","tag-goddard-space-flight-center","tag-james-webb-space-telescope","tag-jamie-cook","tag-john-d-mather","tag-lawrence-cranberg","tag-magnetospheric-multiscale-mission","tag-mms","tag-mslcuriosity","tag-nasa","tag-nicole-cranberg-crosby","tag-nobel","tag-space-weather","tag-texas-fireframe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/www.texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":506,"href":"https:\/\/www.texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions\/506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.texasfireframe.com\/fireplace-grate-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}