NASA ISS Astronauts Answer Twitter Questions - Video

NASA astronauts Don Pettit and Mike Massimino answer questions submitted via Twitter.

NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman Answers Questions From Space

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman is pictured while floating freely in the Unity node of the International Space Station.

Image Credit: NASA

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman has been living and working on the International Space Station since May 28.

Wiseman is constantly conducting research to benefit us on Earth and posting images on social media to entertain us on Earth.

Now you have a chance to ask him a question while he orbits the Earth in a laboratory 240 miles in space.

NASA will host an in-flight social media event live with the International Space Station between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. CDT, Tuesday, Sept. 23.

This event will connect NASA's social media followers with Wiseman as he orbits the Earth.

NASA's social media followers may submit video questions prior to the event. During the event, several video questions will be selected and answered by Wiseman.

Unique and original questions are more likely to be selected.

The deadline to submit video questions is Sept. 15. To be considered, video clips must be no longer than 30 seconds and must be uploaded to YouTube and tagged with #askAstro.

Submitters should introduce themselves and mention their location before asking their question.

The event can be viewed live on NASA Television. Follow Wiseman and NASA Johnson Space Center on Twitter for more at @astro_reid and @NASA_Johnson.

Murchison Widefield Array (MWA): Radio galaxy discovery near Earth spurs more questions

A radio galaxy is a galaxy which is associated with jets of emission which show up in radio wavelengths. 

ICRAR Astronomers have worked out that these jets come from super massive black holes at the centres of these galaxies. 

The region around the black hole is also visible in the radio, and this shows up as a bright 'core' in between the wider plumes. 

Credit: Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker

Western Australia astronomers have discovered a radio galaxy near Earth by accident.

The previously unknown radio galaxy is considered quite close to Earth, and was discovered late last year.

ICRAR astronomer Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker spotted the galaxy while in a team meeting last year looking at a digital image captured by the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA).

"I just saw this thing out of the corner of my eye and thought, that doesn't look right and it turns out it is one of these radio galaxies and it is very, very faint and it is very nearby," she says.

But while astronomers consider the galaxy quite close, it is redshift 0.0178 from earth and would take 248 million light years to get there.

Dr Hurley-Walker says the radio galaxy, named NGC1434 after the galaxy it is in, is very large, which may explain why astronomers had not spotted it in the past.

It is not dissimilar to earth in that it has star formation going on, and it has what is called a dust blain, which suggests it has not been agitated by galaxies colliding (mergers).

"The interesting thing about the object I found is that it's being hosted by a spiral galaxy, like our own," she says.

"This is a very rare occurrence—this is only the fifth of this type to be discovered, and by far the faintest."

Because it is quite near earth, it means the galaxy is quite old, possibly forming within a billion years after the big bang.

Dr Hurley-Walker says the discovery is also intriguing because at some point in its history the central black hole switched off but the radio jets have persisted.

Jets are narrow beams of matter spat out at high speed from near a black hole.

"That is kind of unusual because normally when we see these things, they are usually still on, have been for quite some time and that tells us the jets have persisted for a very long time.

"[This] is kind of interesting because it tells us that the electrons out there must have been very hot originally so there could still be radiation now," she says.

She does not know why the black hole switched off.

But to unlock the reasons and to find out more, she says researchers will need to observe the galaxy's central core with a high-resolution instrument with a very narrow field of view.

News Gathering Drone use highlights questions for journalists

In this March 2012 photo provided by the University of Missouri, in Columbia, Mo., is a DJI 550 drone with an attached camera mount that the university says is probably the model it will file for permission to use. 

The FAA is developing new rules as the technology makes drones far more versatile, but for now operators can run afoul of regulations by using them for commercial purposes, including journalism. 

AP Photo /University of Missouri, Zach Garcia

As police responded to a deadly car crash, they noticed an increasingly familiar sight: a remote-controlled aircraft, equipped with a video camera, hovering over the wreckage.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has opened an investigation of the drone, which was used by an on-call employee for a Connecticut television station.

The FAA is developing new rules as the technology makes drones far more versatile, but for now operators can run afoul of regulations by using them for commercial purposes, including journalism.

The case of the Hartford crash, in which the victim's body was left hanging out of a mangled car, highlights some of the safety, privacy and ethical issues that journalists will wrestle with as interest grows in using drones for news gathering.

"Here was a dead body still on the scene. We had covered it the best we could," said Lt. Brian Foley, a Hartford police spokesman, who said drones have been appearing more frequently at crime scenes. "You don't want the family to see that."

Hartford officers questioned the man operating the drone on Feb. 1 but did not ask him to take it down, Foley said. The man identified himself as an employee of WFSB-TV but said he was not working for them that day.

The station's general manager, Klarn DePalma, said it constantly evaluates new technology and is eager to see regulations spelled out for drones, but he said the temporary employee in question was not on assignment for them and has never been paid for drone video.

"We don't even own a drone," he said.

Aerial drones, long associated with the military, increasingly have been adapted for civilian use. They have been deployed widely to document the scale of disasters and, at the Sochi Olympics, they are being used to help broadcast the events.

Media outside the United States have been using drones in news coverage, including news organizations in Thailand covering political protests in Bangkok over the past three months.

In the U.S., the FAA said Monday that it has issued 12 warning letters to drone operators, which can include orders to stop operations. It said in a statement that its investigations are intended to determine whether operators violated FAA safety regulations.

A law passed by Congress two years ago requires the FAA to integrate unmanned aircraft of all sizes into the domestic airspace by late 2015, but it's clear the agency won't meet that deadline.

The FAA has been working for more than four years on regulations to permit small drones - those weighing less than 55 pounds - to be used for commercial purposes, but it has missed deadline after deadline for proposing those regulations.