If you've been following along, you'll know that the Artemis II mission did not launch during the first launch window in early February of this year.  The second window was for early March, but it is looking like the rocket will not be launching yet.  Engineers have encountered an issue with the flow of helium to the rocket's upper stages.

To address the issue, the SLS (Space Launch System) and the Orion spacecraft need to be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building.  NASA expects this to be a relatively quick issue to fix, so the next possible launch window will be the beginning of April.

The Artemis II crew has been in quarantine leading up to the launch window.  They were released form quarantine on Feb. 21.

You might think that there isn't a way to celebrate President's Day with science projects, but you'd be wrong.  Everyday, you are likely to encounter the face of Abraham Lincoln or George Washington...on a coin!  Here are some fun and easy science activities that use coins.

Green and Clean Pennies
Supplies
4 or more pennies (some from before 1982)
Vinegar
Salt
2 small, non-metal bowls
Paper Towel

Process
1. Put a piece of the paper towel in the bottom of each bowl.
2. Place two pennies in each bowl.
3. In the first bowl, pour in a little bit of vinegar to soak the paper towel.  Allow the bowl to sit for an hour.
4. In the second bowl, pour in some vinegar and salt.  Swirl the bowl to dissolve the salt.  The vinegar and salt dissolve the outer layer of dirt on the pennies.  It should take about 30 seconds for them to start to shine.  Flip them over and wait another 30 seconds.
5. Remove the pennies from the second bowl, rinse them with water, and let them dry.  You now have two clean, shiny pennies!
6. After an hour, the pennies in the first bowl should be starting to turn green.

What is happening?
In the first bowl, the vinegar speeds up a chemical reaction that happens between pennies and oxygen called oxidation.  When copper oxidizes, it turns a greenish color, forming a compound called malachite.  There is more copper in pennies created before 1982, so the reaction is more visible.

In the second bowl, the vinegar and salt create a chemical reaction that dissolves the copper oxide (the dirty spots) and some of the copper on the outside of the penny, giving you a shiny penny.

Flowers and Copper
Supplies
Fresh flowers
2 glass cups
Water
1 penny from before 1981
Toothpaste

Process
1. Prepare your coin.  Use a small bit of toothpaste to clean the coin by rubbing the toothpaste onto the penny and letting it sit for three minutes.  Rinse the toothpaste off.
2. Trim your flowers to fit the two cups.
3. Put about an inch of water into each container.  Make sure the same amount of water is in each cup.
4. Place flowers in each container.  One container is the "control".  This container will not have a coin in it, so that we can see what happens to the flowers with no intervention.  The other container is the "variable".  Put your penny at the bottom of the variable container.  Keep both containers in the same place.
5. Observe what happens to the flowers over the next seven days.

What is happening?
Copper has antibacterial properties, which can potentially keep flowers fresh longer by killing germs that would break the flowers down faster!

Coin Power
​Supplies
6-8 pennies
6-8 nickels
Strip of aluminum foil
Paper towels
¼ cup white vinegar
1 tablespoon of salt
Multimeter (voltage tester)
Small LED pin light (optional)
Small bowl
Small plate

Process
1. In a small bowl, combine the salt and vinegar and stir until the salt is dissolved.
2. Cut the paper towels or paper napkins into small squares slightly smaller than the coins. You will need at least 20 squares.
3. Dip the squares into the vinegar and salt mixture.
4. Place a dry paper towel on a plate. Take a strip of aluminum foil that's about 1 inch x 3 inches and fold it lengthwise in thirds. Place the foil on the paper towel. Then layer the coins and the paper on top of the foil in a pattern: first a penny, then paper, then a nickel. Repeat the pattern until you run out of paper squares. The stack should have a penny on the bottom and a nickel on the top. The paper squares should not overlap or hang over the edge of the coins.
5. Test the voltage of the battery. Touch the black lead to the strip of the aluminum foil and touch the red lead to the nickel on the top of the stack. Set the multimeter to a low voltage of direct current.

What is happening?
Nickels are made of a mixture of metals, including zinc. Pennies are made from several metals, including copper. Both zinc and copper conduct electricity. When two different metals are connected by an electrolyte (in this experiment, it's the vinegar and salt solution), a chemical reaction occurs at the surface of the metals. The metals are the electrodes. When these electrodes are connected by a wire, they create an electrical current.

For more fun coin activities, check out the U.S. Mint's kid webpage!

Punxsutawney Phil woke up today and saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of winter, right?  Well, maybe.  Actually, the groundhog is wrong more often than he is right.  Over the last century, he's only been right about 39% of the time, making his predictive power worse than a coin flip!  So why do we even have Groundhog Day?

February 2nd is based on "cross-quarter" days.  It's a midpoint between the solstices and equinoxes.  The first cross-quarter day of the year happens in the period of February 2-6.  It has many traditional names including Candlemas, Imbolc, St. Brigid's Day, and Setsubun (in Japan).

In the traditional Japanese Lunar Calendar, cross-quarter days mark the beginning of seasons, unlike here, where we base the start dates on solstices and equinoxes.  According to the traditional Lunar Calendar, spring begins on the first cross-quarter day, roughly the beginning of February.  If you go by the solstices and equinoxes, this would be roughly the midpoint of winter.

Long before the groundhog was chosen as the predictor of spring's arrival, Europeans believed that clear weather on Candlemas forebode a long winter.  When German-speaking settlers arrived in the New World, they brought the superstition with them.  While it would be nice to have such a simple way of predicting the weather, unfortunately, Phil's predictions are not grounded in science.

When groundhogs emerge from their burrows at this time of year, they're not really looking for their shadows; they're looking for mates.  The first groundhogs to emerge are typically males.  They take a few days to mark their territories, and then head back underground to hibernate for another month.

One last thing you should know: groundhogs do not enjoy being handled by people.  Punxsatawney Phil has definitely been known to bite his handlers during Groundhog Day observations.

With the Artemis II spacecraft on the launchpad and engineers doing final checks in preparation for spaceflight, the crew of the upcoming mission have gone into quarantine.  NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen have entered the pre-flight period called the health stabilization program.  This is a period of isolation to help prevent the astronauts from picking up any illnesses that could delay their flight.

Typically, astronauts go into quarantine about 14 days before launch.  If all goes well with the wet dress rehearsal, they will fly to Kennedy Space Center in Florida about six days ahead of the spaceflight.  There, they live in astronaut crew quarters until launch.  During quarantine, they can continue regular contact with family (provided they follow quarantine rules), but they avoid public places, wear masks, and maintain distance with people they come in contact with.

If the wet dress rehearsal shows that the spacecraft is not ready for launch, the astronauts can come out of quarantine and will reenter quarantine 14 days before the next flight window.  The first flight window opens up in early February.

You can read more about the Artemis II mission preparations here. 

The Artemis II mission is set to launch this year, marking the first manned return to the moon since the end of the Apollo program.  As we get closer to the first possible launch window, there is still a lot to do to get ready!1

The SLS system and Orion spacecraft are currently at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  Soon, (no earlier than Saturday, January 17th) the agency will send both parts of the rocket from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B.  Though the two sites are only four miles apart, the journey takes up to twelve hours to complete!

Once the integrated rocket and spacecraft reach the launch pad, there is a long list of preparations that need to happen.  These include connecting ground support equipment, powering up integrated systems, and a final walkdown at the pad by the crew.

At the end of January, NASA will perform what is called a "wet dress rehearsal".  This is a prelaunch test to fuel the rocket.  Teams load more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellants into the rocket, perform a countdown, and practice safely removing propellant from the rocket.  The astronauts are not onsite for this rehearsal.  There will be multiple runs of this rehearsal.  NASA engineers will use lessons they learned from the unmanned Artemis I launch to ensure that the vehicle is as safe as possible for the astronauts.  If needed, the SLS system and Orion will be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to make any necessary adjustments.

Following a successful wet dress rehearsal, there is a flight readiness review, where all systems are checked.  If everything is working properly, a launch date will be set.  The earliest possible launch date is February 6th.  If the spacecraft is not ready, there are also possible launch windows in March and April.  Check out this article for more info.  We'll keep you up to date with Artemis's activity here as well!

The first crewed Artemis mission is scheduled to launch no later than April of 2026.  The four astronauts aboard will travel around the moon on a ten day mission.  Their job will be to confirm that all of the spacecraft's system work as designed while in deep space with crew aboard.

The crew will include NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.  The Artemis astronauts are preparing for their trip through intensive training in simulators, geology field trips, practicing emergency procedures, and mastering the Orion spacecraft's systems.

The earliest possible launch window for Artemis II is the beginning of February.  We will be watching for updates from NASA here.

It's been a pretty non-snowy winter so far, and we know some of you are missing it.  To keep busy until school starts back up again, here are a couple of snow-related STEM activities (that don't require real snow) to give you that winter wonderland feeling.

Foaming fake snow
Materials:
Two large plastic or glass containers
Measuring cup
Baking soda
Teaspoon
Tablespoon
Sticky note
Pen or pencil
Dish soap
Vinegar

Process:
1. Write "soap" on a sticky note and stick it on one of the containers.
2. Scoop one cup of baking soda in the container without the sticky note.  Add three tablespoons of water and mix to make a dough.  (It should feel like modeling clay.)  Add water in small amounts if needed to get to the right consistency.
3. Play with your fake snow!  Make a snowman, polar bear, anything you want!  Keep your creation in the container.
4. In the container labeled "soap", add one cup of baking soda,  a teaspoon of dish soap, and three tablespoons of water.  Mix the ingredients to make a dough.  Again, you can add water in small amounts until the dough molds well.
5. Make another critter.  Try and keep it a similar height and size as the first one.  Keep it in the container.
6. Take one cup of vinegar and pour it over your first creation.
7. Take another cup of vinegar and pour it over your second creation.  How did they react differently?
8. Find out what happens if you pour water over what remains instead of vinegar.

What's going on here?
When vinegar touches baking soda, the two chemicals react with each other.  You end up getting gas bubbling up in a watery solution.  Dish soap allows soapy solutions to spread out, so instead of a watery solution, you get gas and foam.


Why are skis so long?
Materials:
Deep plate, glass baking tray, or baking pan
Flour
Action figure or doll that can stand upright (preferably a heavier one)
Cardboard
Scissors
School glue

Process:
1. Cut two identical rectangles out of cardboard.  The length should be a little shorter than the height of your action figure.  The width should be about double the width of the feet of the action figure.
2. Pour a layer of flour about 3/4 inch deep on the plate.  Use a piece of cardboard to smooth out the surface.
3. Imagine that the flour is snow.  Place your action figure on the flour.  Pick it back up and observe what kind of marks are left in the flour.
4. Put the action figure back on the flour, but this time, press it down.  Was it easy to make it sink?
5. Pick up your action figure and let it stand on the flour.  To to knock it over in various directions.
6. Glue the skis on to the feet of your action figure.  The feet should be about halfway along the length of the skis.  Let the glue dry.
7. Smooth the flour out again.
8. Stand the action figure up on the flour with the skis on and try and knock it over again. 

What's going on here?
Skis create a large contact area between the skier and the snow.  The weight of the skier is spread out over a larger area.  The skier presses less on each square inch of snow, so instead of sinking into it, they can glide over it.  The skis also make it harder to push the action figure over.  It's easier to keep balance when you have a bigger contact area.  It's much harder to fall backward or forward, but, since the skis barely extend past your feet on the sides, skiers still fall easily from side to side

To wrap up (see what we did there) the year in time for the holidays, here are some fun Christmas numbers that you can bring up at holiday parties.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas, thanks to time zones and the rotation of the earth.  This works out to 822.6 visits per second.

His sleigh would have to travel at 650 miles per second, which is 3,000 times the speed of light!

If Santa was carrying just a medium-sized Lego set to every child he visits, his sleigh would be carrying 321,300 tons.

If he was to eat a cookie in each of the 112 million homes in the US, he would consume 3 billion calories in one night!

And finally, no matter how carefully you pack Christmas lights, they're almost certainly going to tangle.  For any cord longer than 2 meters, physicists have proven that knots are almost mathematically guaranteed.

Have a very merry Christmas!

Ho, ho, ho!  It's time to learn about Santa's big helpers: reindeer!  There are so many cool things to learn about these Christmas heroes.  

First of all, let's get one thing straight.  Reindeer are real.  They are also known as caribou.  They are large members of the deer family, and live in herds of up to a few hundred.  In the spring, they sometimes form giant herds of many thousands!

As land mammals, they don't actually live at the North Pole; the North Pole is in the middle of the ice-covered Arctic Ocean.  Instead, they live in the arctic and subarctic regions of Europe, Asia, and North America.  The largest herds of reindeer live in Russia.

Unfortunately, reindeer can't really fly.  They are mammals, and the only mammals that fly are bats.  They can float though!  One of their two coat layers is made up of hollow hairs that trap air.  These hairs hold in body heat and give them some buoyancy.

There are actually some reindeer that have red noses!  Some scientists think the red hue is caused by a lot of blood vessels packed into a tight space to help regulate their body temperature in cold climates.  Other scientists think the red-nosed reindeer might be suffering from a parasitic infection.

And finally, reindeer have really cool eyes.  They change color!  In the summer,  their eyes are gold.  In the winter, their eyes turn blue, which increases the scatter of reflected light and helps them to see better in the near constant darkness.  They are also the only mammals that can see ultraviolet light, which helps them to see objects in the dark arctic winter.