View allAll Photos Tagged cleanroom
Explored January 24, 2023
#macromondays
#Tape
And once again it's one of the last photos, taken today... I should start earlier in the week to at least think about what I could do for a theme. This time, a leftover piece of sew-on reflective tape came to my rescue. I taped it together to make a Möbius strip. I originally wanted to do something with very thin (only 3 mm / 0,11 inches wide) double-sided adhesive tape that one can use in scale modelling or watch modding or other small-sized DIY projects, but it looked dull. Then I thought I'd use regular clear adhesive tape, but...let's say: Hats off to anyone who has actually used clear adhesive tape for the theme. I found it impossible to present it in a nice-looking way, especially since my "photo studio" aka living room table isn't exactly a cleanroom ;) I already wanted to skip when I remembered my box full of tapes and other stuff which I'm using for makings bags and such, and since I always use reflective material on any bag I make, I also had some reflective tape in that box. Which made my Monday :)
Width of the Möbius strip: 3,5 cm / 1,377 inches; it's a single, handheld shot which I've illuminated with my makeshift colour filters (blue tealight holder on LED lamp from the left, another LED light shone through a green bottle from the right, and a small LED flashlight set on "spotlight" placed in front of the strip. Processed mainly in DXO (the basics such as sharpness and noise reduction) and LR (where I added some "colour oomph" with the primary sliders). And yes, I focused on the lint ;)
HMM, Everyone!
The Tetris Building located at 802 9th Avenue (53rd St) in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan.The 6-story steel and glass building was built in 2013 "up and over" a pre-existing prewar building,built in 1920.Can you imagine the loud noise those poor residents in the red building had to endure during construction.
To see the entire building look here: cleanroom.wordpress.com/category/802-9th-avenue/
The Hell's Kitchen neighborhood in Manhattan stretches from 34th St to 59th between 8th Avenue and the Hudson River.City zoning regulations limits the buildings to six stories in the area,thus generally the buildings there are older walk-up types.
There a few explanations for the Hell's Kitchen name.The name first existed in print on September 22nd,1881 where a newspaper reporter went with a police guide to investigate a multiple-murder incident at a particular tenement building on 39th St between 9th and 10th Avenues to which the reporter referred to as "Hell's Kitchen",and adding that the entire section was "probably the lowest and filthiest in the area".The most common story however traces the name to veteran police officer "Dutch Fred,the Cop" and his rookie partner.In 1881,both policemen saw a small riot on 39th St near 10th Avenue and the rookie supposedly said to Dutch Fred "This place is hell itself" and the veteran cop replied,"Hell's a warmer climate.This is Hell's Kitchen".
-Wikipedia
So I could not decide if these are transport, race or game broomstick as used in Harry Potter series. Actually, I found a video describing 22 different broomstick manufacturers and broomsticks
Oder ist das mehr ein Thema der schwäbischen Kehrwoche, oder Kehrwoch. Die Bezeichnung der wöchentlichen Reinging von Flur und Bürgersteig. Auf jeden Fall bestens gerüstet, für verschiedene Untergründe und Reinigungsbedürfnisse, oder für die gesamte Wohngemeinschaft oder Großfamilie.
And below is a most likely incomplete list of broomsticks mentioned in the Harry Potter novels.
Nimbus, Fambus Stationwagon, Firebold, Firebolt, Harry Potter, High Contrast < Image Property, household, Mac Tawny Broomsticks,, Nimbus 2000, Oakshaft 79, Quidditch
Kehrwoche, Shooting Star, Siberian Arrow, Silver Arrow, thunderbolt, Tinderblast, tool, Toy brooms, , Transylvanie barb, Turbo XXX, Twigger90, Varrapidos, work, Yajirushi
Somebody decided to use an old haz-mat or cleanroom suit for a scarecrow at a vineyard on Hwy 198, near King City, California.
Somebody decided to use an old haz-mat or cleanroom suit for a scarecrow at a vineyard on Hwy 198, near King City, California.
This is a close up look at the edge of a set of 300 mm silicon wafers sitting in a wafer carrier. The top wafer shows some lithographic patterning used for making integrated circuits.
For more of my creative projects, visit my short stories website: 500ironicstories.com
'grmble mmmbl... aiming for Jupiter indeed... It's like giving a sprinter concrete shoes!'
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I have spend far too long trying to design a spaceship with a visible and external 'hyper drive'. I had to order lots of parts, and whatever I came up with would be pretty flimsy. And than one day it hit me, just show the technicians working on one of those designs in their clean room! Pretty much a hyper drive as it was standing on my work table, waiting for other ides...
Works well enough, and this will be 'unseen inside' the space ship. No need for complicated external stuff!
'Hey Syl, where did we put that experimental hyper drive? I can't find it in storage and its not on the list here either?'
'We put in in that external rocked drive for the space station, remember? To see if it would fit?'
'We did take it out again, right?
'Oh, uh, oops...'
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Posted: May 28, 2009
Job fair to Help M+W Zander fill 40 project management positions in new chip facility
(Nanowerk News) The College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering ("CNSE") of the University at Albany today announced plans to host a Job Fair to assist M+W Zander in building its project management team to support the construction of GlobalFoundries' computer chip manufacturing facility in Malta.
The Job Fair, to be held on Wednesday, June 10 from 5 to 8 p.m. at CNSE's Albany NanoTech Complex, will help recruit candidates for 40 high-tech design and construction management positions, including electrical and mechanical designers, engineers and estimators; construction and design project managers and coordinators; architectural project managers, planners and interns; and, accounting, purchasing, document control and administrative personnel. The positions carry salaries that range from $40,000 to more than $100,000 annually.
Officials from M+W Zander will be on hand to accept resumes and conduct initial interviews on site, with representatives of CNSE also providing assistance at the event. This marks the fifth high-tech job fair to be held at CNSE in just the past three years, with previous events in May 2006, January 2007, September 2007 and October 2008.
Candidates interested in attending and interviewing at the Job Fair are encouraged to pre-register online by visiting cnse.albany.edu/events/jobfair2009.html.
Assembly Majority Leader Ron Canestrari said, "That still another Job Fair is necessary to fill these high-tech positions is a great testament to the investments made in the rapidly growing nanotechnology sector in the Capital Region and New York State. I hope local residents will take full advantage of this opportunity to learn more about exciting careers in the nanotechnology industry."
Assemblyman John J. McEneny said, "The investments in nanotechnology are once again paying dividends in the form of exciting new high-tech career opportunities for residents of Albany and the Capital Region. It is an enormous source of pride to know that New York State is leading the worldwide nanotechnology revolution, which is creating new jobs and attracting new investments."
Rick Whitney, President and CEO of M+W Zander U.S. Operations said, "It is a pleasure to work in partnership with the UAlbany NanoCollege, the world leader in nanotechnology education, research and development, as M+W Zander builds its construction management team to support GlobalFoundries' world-class computer chip manufacturing facility at the Luther Forest Technology Campus. As a company that works on high-tech projects and facilities around the world, there is no question that the Capital Region and New York are recognized globally as the place to be for nanotechnology."
Dr. Alain E. Kaloyeros, Senior Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of CNSE, said, "With the vision, leadership and support of Speaker Silver, Assembly Majority Leader Canestrari, Assemblyman McEneny and the New York State Assembly, M+W Zander has become a valuable partner in building high-tech facilities that are critical to New York's global leadership in nanotechnology education, research and development, and economic outreach. The UAlbany NanoCollege is pleased to host this Job Fair, which will provide exciting career opportunities for local residents, and ensure that M+W Zander has a highly skilled management team in place to build GlobalFoundries' state-of-the-art computer chip manufacturing plant."
With headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, M+W Zander is one of the world's foremost companies for the design and construction of high-tech buildings and cleanroom facilities for research and development, pilot manufacturing, manufacturing, and assembly and testing operations. M+W Zander's Northeastern U.S. headquarters is located at the Watervliet Arsenal, where it employs more than 250 people.
About M+W Zander
The M+W Zander Group offers its customers worldwide integrated life-cycle solutions for high-tech production plants and infrastructure complexes including all necessary service and modernization support. The customer base focuses primarily on leading electronics, photovoltaic, pharmaceutical, chemical, automobile and communication companies, as well as research institutes and universities. The company ranks among the market leaders in various market sectors which include semiconductors, photo-voltaics and pharmaceuticals. MWZ Group GmbH, Stuttgart, manages the global activities of the group as a holding company. The group has three main divisions based on Facility Solutions, Process Solutions and Product Solutions which together generated 2008 revenues of $2.32 billion with a workforce of approximately 4,500.
Source: CNSE
Here are the boys in my Univ101 class posing in front of the cleanroom at BYU. One of them is wearing a cleanroom bunnysuit.
Neon sign for Thunderbird Motel, along Wyatt Earp Blvd on the west side of town, at dusk.
Dodge City, Kansas
Tuesday evening 15 March 2022
You can have a clean room or see Snooki's room, but not both. Seen at the Seaside Heights Boardwalk last weekend.
Riffing off the new City space sets. I'd like to enlarge this to a 48x48 baseplate (more room to add gantry cranes, etc) but I need to pick up a couple more of those "bunny suit" figs. Also the back wall should suggest air filters more than what I chucked onto this one.
nikon n90s + sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 + circular polarizer. film: fujichrome velvia RVP 50. lab: A&I color, hollywood, ca. scan: nikon coolscan 4000. exif tags: lenstagger.
'Grumblemumblefilthyroversgrumblemumblemudanddustmumblegrumbleourbeautifulcleanroomgrumble....
AND YOU GET THAT HOTDOG OUT OF HERE!!!'
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nb: notice how little dust there is in this picture compared to ALL my other pictures...
Satellite from a little polybag, set 30365. The set was bought because I wanted another astronaut in a white EVA-suit, but that little satellite was nice too!
Riffing off the new City space sets. I'd like to enlarge this to a 48x48 baseplate (more room to add gantry cranes, etc) but I need to pick up a couple more of those "bunny suit" figs. Also the back wall should suggest air filters more than what I chucked onto this one.
ESA’s Biomass satellite has left the Airbus Defence and Space site in Stevenage, UK and is on its way to Toulouse, France for final testing ahead of launch, scheduled for 2024.
ESA’s forest mission, Biomass, will use a novel measuring technique to deliver completely new information on forest height and above-ground forest biomass from space. This will lead to a better understanding of the state of Earth’s forests, how they are changing over time, and advance our knowledge of the carbon cycle.
Credit: Airbus
This is BYU's mascot, Cosmo the Cougar, trying to put on a bunnysuit in our cleanroom. We had to get an XXXL version to fit over his tail. Helping him get dressed is Sage Romney.
For more of my creative projects, visit my short stories website: 500ironicstories.com
Just two days after leaving the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, in a specialized container carefully strapped to the deck of a semi-trailer truck, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft arrived in California — its final stop here on Earth.
DART will be the world’s first mission to test planetary defense techniques, demonstrating one mitigation method of asteroid deflection, called kinetic impact. DART will impact the small asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, which orbits a larger companion, Didymos, in a binary asteroid system to change its orbital period.
Inside a cleanroom at Johns Hopkins APL, the DART spacecraft being moved into a specialized shipping container that headed across the country to Vandenberg Space Force Base near Lompoc, California, where DART is scheduled to launch from late next month.
Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman
#NASA #MarshallSpaceFlightCenter #MSFC #Marshall #DART #DoubleAsteroidRedirectionTest #asteroid
In a Swiss cleanroom, this historic object has been taking shape. Made of carbon fibre reinforced polymer, this is the central core of ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence.
NASA’s DART spacecraft is currently on its way to the Didymos asteroid pair in deep space, to test the kinetic impact technique of asteroid deflection on the smaller of the two bodies on 26 September this year.
Hera will fly to the same asteroid system in the aftermath of the impact to perform a close-up ‘crime scene investigation’, including close-up mapping of DART’s crater and assessing the asteroid’s make-up and internal structure.
The stiff, strong core serves as a backbone to the spacecraft, built for ESA by a team from RUAG Space in Switzerland and OHB in the Czech Republic. Once current ‘static load’ testing confirms its performance, the core will be shipped to OHB in Germany to assemble the spacecraft’s primary structure around it.
It will then be passed on to Avio in Italy to integrate its propulsion module. The bottom aluminum cone includes the Launcher Interface Ring, providing all necessary connections with the launcher.
Hera is scheduled for launch in October 2024, due to reach the Didymos asteroids in December 2026.
Credits: RUAG Space
Here are my Univ101 students posing in front of the BYU cleanroom with one of them dressed in a cleanroom bunnysuit.
The first Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite being fitted to the Ariane 5 launch adapter in preparation for liftoff in mid-December 2022. The satellite has been at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana since the middle of October being readied for liftoff. The image shows the satellite being fitted to the Ariane 5 launch adapter.
This new satellite carries two completely new instrument that will deliver high-quality data to improve weather forecasts: a Flexible Combined Imager and Europe’s first Lightning Imager.
The Flexible Combined Imager has more spectral channels and is capable of imaging in higher resolution compared to current Meteosat Second Generation’s Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared instrument.
The Lightning Imager offers a completely new capability for European meteorological satellites. It will continuously monitor more than 80% of the Earth disc for lightning discharges, taking place either between clouds or between clouds and the ground.
The full MTG system will span more than 20 years and hence comprises six satellites, four MTG-I and two sounding satellites, MTG-S.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique video du CSG-P.Piron
European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton coming face to the face with the atomic clocks at the heart of Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system.
On Tuesday 7 September ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher took Commissioner Breton on a tour of ESA’s European Space Technology and Research Centre, ESTEC, at Noordwijk in the Netherlands.
Seen from left to right: Internal Market Cabinet Member Fabrice Comptour; ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher; Commissioner Breton and Andrea Contellessa, heading ESA’s Galileo Space Segment Management Office.
They looked in at ESTEC’s Navigation Laboratory, which includes the complete navigation module of a Galileo satellite, kept in cleanroom conditions for technical experiments and trouble shooting.
On the left side sits Galileo’s passive hydrogen maser atomic clock, sufficiently accurate that it would lose only one second over three million years. To the right is a rubidium atomic clock, which would only lose three seconds in one million years. Each satellite carries two each of these two clock types for maximum redundancy.
Commissioner Breton also inspected the six Galileo ‘Batch 3’ satellites currently being tested for space at ESTEC’s Test Centre, the largest satellite test facility in Europe. Two of these Galileo satellites are due for launch later this year.
About Galileo
The Galileo system is operated by the EU Agency for the Space Programme, EUSPA, based in Prague. ESA and EUSPA are partnering on respectively the development and operations of Galileo.
ESA is in charge of the design, development, procurement and qualification of Galileo satellites and their associated ground infrastructure on behalf of the European Union, the system’s owner.
Credits: ESA-G. Porter
ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) being fuelled inside the payload preparation facility at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana ahead of its launch on an Ariane 5 on 13 April.
Juice will use this propellant to make critical course manoeuvres on its journey to and around the Jupiter system, and to go into orbit around Jupiter then its largest moon, Ganymede. Juice has a bi-propellant chemical propulsion system, using mono-methyl hydrazine (MMH) fuel and mixed oxides of nitrogen (MON) oxidiser. This results in a propellant that spontaneously ignites when the two come into contact with each other.
Fuelling any satellite is a particularly delicate operation requiring setup of the equipment and connections, fuelling, and then pressurisation. The propellants are extremely toxic so only a few specialists wearing protective Self-Contained Atmospheric Protective Ensemble, or ‘scape’ suits, remained in the dedicated hall for fuelling.
Juice is humankind’s next bold mission to the outer Solar System. It will make detailed observations of gas giant Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons: Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. This ambitious mission will characterise these moons with a powerful suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments to discover more about these compelling destinations as potential habitats for past or present life. Juice will monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.
Find out more about Juice in ESA’s launch kit
Credits: 2023 ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE / Optique vidéo du CSG - JM GUILLON
This is Kristen, a student who works for the BYU ECE department doing graphic design and advertising. One of her fondest dreams was to go into our cleanroom so I took her on a little tour and also snapped a few pictures. Here she is posing next to our currently broken e-beam evaporator. Her happy smile tells me the tour was all she was hoping for.
For more of my creative projects, visit my short stories website: 500ironicstories.com
Sometimes doing science is as simple as wiping up. NASA astronaut Jack Fisher is seen here using a wet wipe on the surfaces of the European Cupola module of the International Space Station.
Doubling as both Station maintenance and science experiment, Jack collected microbes living on the surfaces of his orbital home for ESA’s Extremophiles experiment. Headed by Dr. Christine-Moissl Eichinger from the Medical University of Graz, Austria, the experiment studies how microbes settle into the harsh environment of space.
Cosmic radiation exposes not only humans but also bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms to cellular stress. A typical stay in microgravity for an astronaut weakens the immune system and causes more health issues, prompting researchers to ask whether the same was happening to microbiomes, or the organisms found in a particular environment, and whether they resist treatment, becoming ‘super bugs.’
Because the Space Station is a closed environment, microbes can only arrive with new crew and cargo. The Station has accumulated a core group of 55 microbes over 20 years of continuous human inhabitants.
Researchers tested these against microbes found in a similar environment on Earth: spacecraft cleanrooms. They found that space-based microbes did not have a higher resistance and were not more stressed than Earth-based ones.
In short, microbes are no more extremophilic – able to survive in uninhabitable environments – in the weightless and radiative environment of space. The results were recently published in a paper in Nature Communications.
Interestingly, researchers found that space-based microbiomes can react negatively to metal surfaces, especially when those surfaces are wet. As they struggle to adapt to their environment, they attack the metal surfaces they find themselves on by corroding them or creating biofilm.
Researchers and crew are monitoring the situation by keeping metal surfaces dry and easily accessible for regular cleaning and sampling.
After all, there is no getting rid of microbes or any need to. They are a fact of human life.
Credits: ESA/NASA
What looks like a teleporter from science fiction being draped over NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, is actually a "clean tent." The clean tent protects Webb from dust and dirt when engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland transport the next generation space telescope out of the relatively dust-free cleanroom and into the shirtsleeve environment of the vibration and acoustics testing areas. In two years, a rocket will be the transporter that carries the Webb into space so it can orbit one million miles from Earth and peer back over 13.5 billion years to see the first stars and galaxies forming out of the darkness of the early universe.
For more information about the Webb telescope, visit: www.jwst.nasa.gov or www.nasa.gov/webb.
Photo Credit: NASA/Goddard/Chris Gunn
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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Aaron Ruben is putting a wafer into the new E-beam evaporator which was just installed in the BYU cleanroom. This model was built by FerroTec, which took over Temescal. This is the first of these models ever sold. Sure hope they worked out the bugs so we don't have to!
For more of my creative projects, visit my short stories website: 500ironicstories.com
Inside a massive clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland the James Webb Space Telescope team used a robotic am to install the last of the telescope's 18 mirrors onto the telescope structure.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the scientific successor to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It will be the most powerful space telescope ever built. Webb will study many phases in the history of our universe, including the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets similar to Earth, as well as the evolution of our own solar system. It’s targeted to launch from French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket in 2018. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency.
Credit: NASA/C. Gunn
Riffing off the new City space sets. I'd like to enlarge this to a 48x48 baseplate (more room to add gantry cranes, etc) but I need to pick up a couple more of those "bunny suit" figs. Also the back wall should suggest air filters more than what I chucked onto this one.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, in the cleanroom at ESTEC, in May 2021.
Juice will make detailed observations of Jupiter and its three large ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – with a suite of remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments. The mission will investigate the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants and the Jupiter system as an archetype for the numerous giant exoplanets now known to orbit other stars.
Credits: ESA
The ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover is seen here sitting on top of the Kazachok surface science platform in stowed configuration, rather similar to how it will journey to Mars in 2022.
The duo were mated in a dedicated clean room at Thales Alenia Space (TAS), Cannes, together forming the so-called ‘landing module’. The latest round of tests include electrical, power and data transfer checks between the two elements.
The landing module will later be integrated inside the descent module for mass balancing checks, together with the carrier module that will transport the mission to Mars.
This is not the last time the two flight models will be mated. After completion of the tests in Cannes, the rover will return to the TAS cleanrooms in Turin, Italy, for further functional testing, before being shipped to the launch site in Baikonur.
In this image, the back right solar panel of the landing platform is seen partially deployed. The front of the rover is seen, with its iconic drill stowed in horizontal position. A first in Mars exploration, the drill will extract samples down to a maximum of two metres, where ancient biomarkers may still be preserved from the harsh radiation on the surface, and deliver them to the rover’s sophisticated laboratory for analysis.
The mission is targeting a September 2022 launch window, landing on Mars in June 2023. Its goal is to determine the geological history of the landing site at Oxia Planum, once thought to host an ancient ocean, and to determine if life could ever have existed on Mars.
The ExoMars programme is a joint endeavour between ESA and the Russian State Space Corporation, Roscosmos.
The integration activities at Cannes were carried out by Thales Alenia Space and Airbus Defence and Space teams.
Credits: Thales Alenia Space
Human Spaceflight image of the week:
The focus of this image is the suspended European Columbus module being moved onto a work stand in a cleanroom at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA.
Of course, a cylindrical module of more than 10 t (without payloads) for housing laboratory equipment, storage units and three working astronauts is big, but the contrast between Columbus and the people in the image is startling. Even more so when we remember that Columbus is one of 16 similarly sized modules orbiting 400 km over our heads.
Countless teams across Europe were involved in the planning, building and assembly of the parts that make up this orbital lab. Teams of people were involved in shipping Columbus across the Atlantic, where it was carefully received by even more partners in the greatest human endeavour.
This image of Columbus was taken in the summer of 2006, shortly after the module arrived at the launch site. Teams at NASA put Columbus through its final paces to ensure it was airtight and ready for flight.
It would be another year and half before Columbus made its way to the International Space Station, in 2008. Ten remarkable years later, there is much to celebrate about this long-planned and hard-earned European contribution to the international space community.
To mark the occasion, ESA is hosting a get-together of the larger Columbus family of planners, builders, scientists, support teams and astronauts at our technical heart in the Netherlands on 7 February. The event will be livestreamed to the public, with more details coming soon.
Join us in the celebrations on Twitter by following the #Columbus10Years hashtag and stay tuned for more exciting details.
Credit: NASA
MMS Spacecraft Animation
The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission is a Solar Terrestrial Probes mission comprising four identically instrumented spacecraft that will use Earth's magnetosphere as a laboratory to study the microphysics of three fundamental plasma processes: magnetic reconnection, energetic particle acceleration, and turbulence. These processes occur in all astrophysical plasma systems but can be studied in situ only in our solar system and most efficiently only in Earth's magnetosphere, where they control the dynamics of the geospace environment and play an important role in the processes known as "space weather."
Learn more about MMS at www.nasa.gov/mms
Learn more about MMS at www.nasa.gov/mms
Credit NASA/Chris Gunn
The Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, will study how the sun and the Earth's magnetic fields connect and disconnect, an explosive process that can accelerate particles through space to nearly the speed of light. This process is called magnetic reconnection and can occur throughout all space.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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This is a set of silicon wafers from the cleanroom facility at BYU. They are sitting in quartz holders or boats after being in a silicon dioxide growth furnace. The high heat from the furnace combined with oxygen converts the surface of the wafers to silicon dioxide. The wafer colors are dictated by the thickness of the silicon dioxide layer and the viewing angle. The purples and greens shown on these wafers are quite common and give the cleanroom a colorful and artistic touch.
For more of my creative projects, visit my short stories website: 500ironicstories.com
The first Meteosat Third Generation Imager (MTG-I1) satellite has been at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana since the middle of October being readied for liftoff. A critical milestone in preparing for launch is fuelling the satellite for its life in space. The image shows specialists kitted out for the hazardous task of fuelling. Liftoff on scheduled for mid-December 2022 on an Ariane 5 rocket.
This new satellite carries two completely new instrument that will deliver high-quality data to improve weather forecasts: a Flexible Combined Imager and Europe’s first Lightning Imager.
The Flexible Combined Imager has more spectral channels and is capable of imaging in higher resolution compared to current Meteosat Second Generation’s Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared instrument.
The Lightning Imager offers a completely new capability for European meteorological satellites. It will continuously monitor more than 80% of the Earth disc for lightning discharges, taking place either between clouds or between clouds and the ground.
Credits: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Optique video du CSG-P.Piron
Here is a shot of some of the chip camp participants entering the BYU cleanroom wearing bunnysuits. Always a fun picture.
This is a shot of Matt Stott pretending to work hard in the BYU cleanroom. This in the lab on campus where we do our microfabrication work on wafers. Matt is dressed in a bunnysuit to keep contaminants from falling on the pink colored wafer which he is holding with tweezers. He is operating one of our PECVD machines which put down a thin coating of glass. Keep up the good work, Matt!
For more of my creative projects, visit my short stories website: 500ironicstories.com
The Smile mission team takes a quick break from testing the spacecraft’s instruments to smile for a group photo in front of the spacecraft.
Read more about the final stages of the Smile test campaign
Smile (the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
[Image description: A group of 16 people wearing white cleanroom suits pose for a photo inside a bright laboratory. They are standing and kneeling in front of a large spacecraft covered in shiny silver and gold thermal material, mounted on a vertical support structure. Some team members wear masks, and the background shows technical equipment and cleanroom walls.]
Credits: ESA-M.Roos
This is a shot of the Chip Camp guests in the BYU Cleanroom. Always a fun time to let them dress in bunnysuits and see the microfabrication equipment.
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The ESTEC Test Centre is expanding. A new 350 sq. m cleanroom is being added to the Netherlands-based site, already Europe’s largest facility for satellite testing.
To begin with, 110 foundation piles have been inserted into the sandy soil, ranging in depth from 10 to 17 m. Now ground is being excavated to dig a connecting tunnel bringing power, data, heating and cooling infrastructure to the new cleanroom.
The ESTEC Test Centre is a 3000 sq. m environmentally-controlled complex nestled in dunes along the Dutch coast, filled with test equipment to simulate all aspects of spaceflight. It is part of ESA’s main technical centre, but is maintained and operated on a commercial basis on the Agency’s behalf by private company European Test Services (ETS) B.V.
Most of the time the ESTEC Test Centre has several test items within its walls simultaneously. Complex planning and traffic management are necessary to ensure every project get access to the facility they need at the time they need it. So sufficient room is required needs to accommodate the different programmes and allow their movement between test facilities.
“The new clean room will offer extra space to host satellites as they come on site,” explains Gaetan Piret, overseeing the Test Centre . “It will also host our sensitive micro-vibration measurement facilities, used to characterise the very low vibration generated by mechanisms mounted aboard satellites.”
The building work, led by Dutch company Heijmans, is intended to have as little impact on the rest of the site as possible, allowing the rest of the Test Centre to continue nominal operations.
“For this reason we rejected hammering in the piles,” explains Jan Trautmann of ESA Facilities Management, managing the construction project. “Instead ‘cast in place’ piles were used, involving drilling deep holes, then lowering a steel reinforcement and filling them with concrete. This method generates much less noise and vibration.”
Planned to take account of current COVID-19 restrictions, the aim is to complete the new building by next summer, which will then be linked via large corridor to the current building.
Credits: ESA
Here's another shot of some of the students in BYU Chip Camp 2021. In this scene they are touring the cleanroom after getting dressed in our special Chip Camp bunnysuits.
For more of my creative projects, visit my short stories website: 500ironicstories.com