BYO Death Ray: NASA News

Dylan is back with some recent news from NASA.

A 'creature' with large tentacles has appeared 600 km off the Australian coast. It was spotted in the south-eastern Indian Ocean by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) module on a NASA satellite. The 'creature' is more than 100 km wide and is quite bright in the ocean, sparking questions about whether there are large life-forms under the earth, like in the 2013 movie Pacific Rim.

A giant monster from the deep? Source: NASA

Even though it looks like tentacles or a whirlpool, it is actually a large bloom of plankton forming in a spiral current called an eddy. Like land plants, these plankton (which are called phytoplankton) need sunlight, water and nutrients to grow. Sunlight is strong in the Indian Ocean at the moment, and the eddy is bringing nutrients to the surface of the ocean. This has created the perfect conditions for a bloom.

Eddies can stretch for hundreds of kilometres and can last for months, all the while drawing up nutrients from deep beneath the ocean and fertilizing surface water phytoplankton blooms.

Close up of the phytoplankton bloom. Source: NASA

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In further news, the CYGNUS space craft - and Christmas - finally arrived on the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday night (AEDT), three days after blasting off from Virginia.

The space station crew used a robot arm to capture the Cygnus capsule as the two craft zoomed side-by-side in orbit at 28,200 km/h. The CYGNUS is a resupply shuttle managed by NASA, Orbital Space Corp and SpaceX, whose main job is to carry cargo to the ISS. It is carrying 1260 kg of equipment and experiments but this cargo is special as it also includes Christmas presents for the astronauts on the ISS.

Orbital Space Corp was supposed to make the delivery last month, well before Christmas but was delayed due to a problem with the cooling system on the ISS. To make matters worse, weather caused a further delay. Even worse, a strong solar storm interfered with the launch.

When it finally arrived at the ISS, the CYGNUS was grabbed by a robotic arm operated by Michael Hopkins and Koichi Wakata and then docked to the ISS. As a holiday treat, NASA included fresh fruit for the two Americans, three Russians and one Japanese, which may not seem like such a big deal down on Earth but is a great deal up in space.

CYGNUS docking with the ISS. Source: NASA

This is the second ISS trip from Orbital Science. The first was a test in September 2013 and this one is the first official supply run under a AU$2.1 billion contract with NASA. NASA is paying Orbital Science to keep the ISS well stocked and they will make several more deliveries in upcoming months.

CYGNUS will be filled with trash and sent back down to Earth for a flaming re-entry in February.

These videos show the CYGNUS arriving at the ISS and docking and give you an idea of what it’s like at the command centre and in the ISS.



Billion dollar links

• Don’t get the Pacific Rim reference? Read more about it here
• Wikipedia also has everything you ever wanted to know about CYGNUS.
• Read Dylan's first hand account of his encounter with the ISS.

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