Notices by AkaSci 🛰️ (akasci@fosstodon.org)

"The Treasury Dept instructed employees not to share photos of the demolition of parts of the White House’s East Wing after images of construction equipment dismantling the facade of the building went viral online.

Treasury’s HQ is located next door to the East Wing, giving employees there a front-row seat to the construction of Trump’s $250 million ballroom. The new project is set to replace parts of the East Wing."

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/treasury-tells-employees-not-to-share-photos-of-white-house-ballroom-construction-1d4f2c49?st=woEQcR
More pics at https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/10/21/white-house-east-wing-demolition-trump-ballroom-photos/
#UsPol
1/n

It appears that the object that struck flight UA1093 on Thursday, October 16 was not a meteorite or space debris or hail but it was most likely a weather balloon from WindBorne Systems.

The flight was en route from DEN to LAX.

Investigations are in progress.

#UA1093
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The possibility of UA1093 being struck by a weather balloon from WindBorne Systems was pointed out earlier in the evening by Mark Jessop, Amateur Radio Operator (VK5QI) and RF Engineer in Adelaide, South Australia.
👏
2/n

FYI - JPL laid off 550 employees this week, ~10% of its workforce. This is the fourth round in a series of layoffs that cut 25% of employees over two years.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpl-workforce--update/
2/n

What fresh hell?

Department of Transportation secretary, acting NASA administrator and former television presenter Sean Duffy is pushing for NASA to be folded into the DoT.

#UsPol
1/n

WaPo doing its part in killing Democracy.
#UsPol
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One of the tricky steps in the deployment and commissioning of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar NISAR satellite over the next few weeks is the unfurling and deployment of the 12m gold-plated wire mesh antenna reflector at the end of the 9m boom, both of which are stowed in folded condition.

Here is an animation from NASA/JPL showing the steps in the deployment of the boom and reflector.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QdrHd-Rj1Q
3/n

A few pics and graphics of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar NISAR satellite -

1. The ISRO GSLV-F16 rocket before launch.

2. Graphic of the NISAR satellite flying high above the clouds, which it can see through.

3. Diagram of the NISAR spacecraft with 2 synthetic aperture radar instruments (24 cm wavelength L-SAR and 10 cm wavelength S-SAR), the 12-m deployable mesh reflector and the 9-m deployable boom.

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/nisar/about-the-satellite/
2/n

Here is an intriguing hi-res photograph of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite with its 12m antenna fully unfurled in space. The pic was taken on Aug 21 by one of the earth observation satellites in the Worldview Legion Constellation owned and operated by Vantor (formerly Maxar).
😮 🛰️
Most satellites also carry their own engineering cameras to help diagnose deployment problems.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn🇱🇮activity:7384564743874973697/
https://vantor.com/
5/n

Here is a graphic illustrating the comms and processing infrastructure for NISAR.

L-band data reception NASA sites: Fairbanks Alaska, Svalbard Norway, Wallops VA and Punta Arenas, Chile.

S-band data: Antarctica (ISRO Bharti station?)

Data is received over Ka band and transferred to processing sites in U.S and India, via fiber and geo satellites.

Why earth stations near the poles? Because comms is possible in almost every orbital pass of polar orbit satellites!

https://polinsar-biomass2023.esa.int/iframe-agenda/files/225-Lavalle_NISAR_RosenLavalle_PolInSAR2023.pdf
4/n

"U.S. Capitol Police were called about an American flag altered to include a swastika and displayed inside the office of Rep. Dave Taylor (R-Ohio).

POLITICO obtained an image taken during a virtual meeting that shows the flag behind Angelo Elia, one of Taylor’s staffers."

Yesterday, POLITICO reported on a Telegram group chat in which Young Republican group leaders traded racial epithets, joked about the Holocaust and praised Adolf Hitler.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/15/capitol-police-investigating-swastika-in-gop-congressional-office-00609704
#UsPol
1/n

Is this insanity or a wily post to demonstrate that his supporters will believe anything, no questions asked?

Will right-wing media and GOP leaders keep parroting these words, the way they have been amplifying his statements calling Democrats terrorists and Jan 6 insurrectionists patriots?

Does he really write these posts or is it someone else more sinister?
#UsPol #NoKings
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The VP today on ABC - is he naturally dim-witted or is Tom Homan guilty as charged?

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com
#UsPol
2/n

RFK Jr. claimed today at a cabinet meeting that "two studies show that children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism. It’s highly likely because they are given Tylenol."

At point does the electorate come to the realization that these guys are bat-shit-crazy?
#UsPol
1/n

Coming up this week - The Nobel Prizes.

PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE – Monday, 6 Oct, 11:30 CEST
PHYSICS – Tuesday, 7 Oct, 11:45 CEST
CHEMISTRY – Wednesday, 8 Oct, 11:45 CEST
LITERATURE – Thursday, 9 Oct, 13:00 CEST
PEACE – Friday, 10 Oct, 11:00 CEST
ECONOMIC SCIENCES – Monday, 13 Oct, 11:45 CEST

https://www.nobelprize.org/
1/n

Why does the immune system not attack our own cells?

A central immune tolerance mechanism was known earlier that recognizes T cells capable of attacking body cells and deactivates them as they leave the thymus.

The Nobel Prize winners discovered the peripheral immune tolerance system that uses regulatory T cells to deactivate such cells if they escape the test in the thymus. They also isolated a gene on the X chromosome that creates these regulatory T cells.
🤔🧬
https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2025/10/popular-medicineprize2025.pdf
2/n

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has decided to award the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to:

Mary E. Brunkow
Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, USA

Fred Ramsdell
Sonoma Biotherapeutics, San Francisco, USA

Shimon Sakaguchi
Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

“for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance”

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2025/press-release/
2/n

Things are about to get worse in Chicago. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker wrote that trump intends to nationalize hundreds of National Guard members against the wishes of state officials.

"In the coming hours, the Trump Administration intends to federalize 300 members of the Illinois National Guard.

I will not call up our National Guard to further Trump’s acts of aggression against our people."

https://bsky.app/profile/govpritzker.illinois.gov/post/3m2f6l2t6h22k
#Politics

Here is the opinion by the three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (Barron, Rikelman and Aframe) on the trump's shameful EO to end birthright citizenship.

It is the 5th federal court since June to either issue or uphold orders blocking the president’s birthright order.

Will the republican Supreme Court justices once again overrule lower courts and 150+ years of precedence?

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26180175-birthright/
#Politics
1/n

Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) President Heinz Faßmann thanks trump for Austria's brain gain - 25 top researchers from Harvard, Princeton and MIT.

“Our scholarship program has succeeded in bringing these outstanding individuals from the US to Austria. They are bringing new ideas, new perspectives, and international networks—this is a great gain for Austrian science. Thanks to Trump we are seeing this brain gain.”

Grant = 500,000 euros each for 2 years.

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/news/harvard-princeton-mit-25-top-researchers-are-moving-from-the-us-to-austria-with-oeaw-scholarships
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