These supernova remnants are moving at extraordinary speeds only visible to us in long-term timelapses.
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A recent $32 million contract between the U.S. Space Force and Rocket Lab will lead to the creation of a spacecraft to enhance national security supporting space domain awareness.
Space telescopes detect on average one gamma-ray burst per day, adding to thousands of bursts detected throughout the years, and a community of volunteers are making research into these bursts possible.
The private ADRAS-J probe snapped an epic, up-close image of its rendezvous target, a Japanese rocket stage that's been circling Earth since 2009.
NASA's DSOC experiment passed yet another milestone, interfacing with the Psyche spacecraft and beaming data back to Earth from 140 million miles away.
Seasonal spider-like features were spotted sprouting up through surface cracks near Mars’ Inca City region.
Researchers might have located the birthplace of 469219 Kamo‘oalewa, a small asteroid that has been described as Earth’s “mini-moon.”
The post Earth’s Mini-Moon Linked to Farside Lunar Crater appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
This is the way to celebrate Star Wars Day in style, with the 6187-piece Lego Ultimate Collector Series Razor Crest, now $130 off
We're constantly talking about good movies that deserve a sequel, but what about the divisive ones that, while not great, had cool ideas worth building upon?
The first woman slated to launch to the moon has delivered one of the first trees grown from seeds recently flown there. NASA astronaut Christina Koch presented an "Artemis 1 Moon Tree."
Space travel and exploration was never going to be easy. Failures are sadly all too common but it’s wonderful to see missions exceed expectations. The Japanese Space Agency’s SLIM lunar lander was only supposed to survive a single day but it’s survived three brutal, harsh lunar nights and is still going. The temperatures plummet to -170C at night and the lander was never designed to operate into the night. Even sat upside down on the surface it’s still sending back pictures and data.
The Japanese agency’s lunar lander known as SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon) began its lunar journey on 19 January 2024 when it touched down on the surface of the Moon. Its mission was to test the lunar landing technology and to collect data about the surface geology.
An artist’s conception shows Japan’s SLIM lander in its upended position on the lunar surface. (Credit: JAXA)Unfortunately, soon after landing it became clear that the probe had landed at a strange angle, leaning forwards, resting on its face. The orientation of the solar panels was all wrong and it meant they could not generate as much electricity as expected allowing it to operate for a few hours just after dawn and just before sunset.
Of course it is important to note that a day on the Moon lasts many days compared to a day here on Earth and so, the first night for SLIM began on 31 January. Surprisingly, SLIM survived the first long night where temperatures to -170 degrees. SLIM was never designed to survive the cold harsh nights on the Moon so it was with some surprise that it powered back up successfully on the 15 February.
The operations team for SLIM were disbanded in March but to their surprise, after the second lunar night, a signal was received again. Surpassing everyones expectations it seems SLIM wasn’t going to give up yet and still sending images. The lander was even picked up after its second night by cameras on board the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter as it flew over.
It’s difficult to actually visualise a universe that is changing. Things tend to happen at snails pace albeit with the odd exception. Take the formation of galaxies growing in the early universe. Their immense gravitational field would suck in dust and gas from the local vicinity creating vast collections of stars. In the very centre of these young galaxies, supermassive blackholes would reside turning the galaxy into powerful quasars. A recent survey by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveals that black holes can create a powerful solar wind that can remove gas from galaxies faster than they can form into stars, shutting off the creation of new stars.
To remove the confusion and mystique around black holes, they are the corpse of massive stars. When supermassive stars collapse at the end of their lives their core turns into a point source that is so incredibly dense that even light, travelling at 300,000 kilometres per second, is unable to escape. It’s believed that many galaxies have supermassive black holes at their core.
Swift scene change to the earlier part of the life of a star. Fusion in the core generates incredible amounts of energy as new elements are synthesised. Along with new elements, heat and light, a powerful outflow of electrically charged particles rushes away and permeates the surrounding space. Here in our Solar System, charged particles rush Earthward and on arrival we experience the glorious display of the northern lights.
Visualization of the solar wind encountering Earth’s magnetic “defenses” known as the magnetosphere. Clouds of southward-pointing plasma are able to peel back layers of the Sun-facing bubble and stack them into layers on the planet’s nightside (center, right). The layers can be squeezed tightly enough to reconnect and deliver solar electrons (yellow sparkles) directly into the upper atmosphere to create the aurora. Credit: JPLA team of astronomers using the JWST have found that, over 90 percent of the wind that flows through a distant galaxy is made of neutral gas and to date, has been invisible. Until recently it was only possible to detect ionised gas – gas which carries an electric charge – which is warm. The neutral gas in the study revealed that neutral gas was cold but JWST was able to detect it.
The powerful outflow of neutral gas is thought to come from the supermassive blackholes at the core of some galaxies at the edge of the Universe. The team, led by Dr Rebecca Davies from Swinburne University first identified that black hole driven outflow in a distant galaxy over 10 billion light years away. The paper published in Nature explains how ‘The outflow is removing gas faster than gas is being converted into stars, indicating that the outflow is likely to have a very significant impact on the evolution of the galaxy.’
All the planets now huddle around our line of sight toward the Sun. However, these moonless evenings present us the Spring Triangle, the Great Diamond with a sugar sprinkle on its edge, and the Pointers aligned vertically.
The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, April 26 – May 5 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Image: The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over part of the Seychelles, an island republic in the western Indian Ocean.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore (left) and Suni Williams (right) pose by their mission patch following their arrival at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in the run-up to the Starliner Crew Flight Test on May 6. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now
For the first time since the end of the shuttle program, a trio of T-38 jets cruised down the former Shuttle Landing Facility carrying astronauts who were preparing for launch. As they climbed out of their aircraft, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, each donned back ball caps emblazoned with “Crew Flight Test,” the name of their forthcoming mission.
The pair will serve as the commander and pilot respectively as they fly Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station no earlier than May 6. As the mission name suggests, this will be the first time the spacecraft ferries astronauts to the orbiting outpost.
“We love Florida. We love Kennedy Space Center because this is where you launch humans into space,” Wilmore said. “And the opportunity finally to fly in here again in our T-38s and we know that in less than two weeks, the next flight we take, we’ll be laying on our backs this time when we launch into the heavens and we leave this planet.”
Wilmore and Williams were joined by some of the T-38 training crew as well as fellow NASA astronauts Mike Fincke, the backup astronaut for the CFT mission, and Jessica Wittner, a member of the class of the 2021 astronaut candidate class.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams taxi in their T-38 jet, coming off the runway at the Launch and Landing Facility on April 25, 2024. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight NowWith them in spirit was the last crew to fly a test mission for NASA: Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley of the SpaceX Demo-2 flight. During their remarks to the press on Thursday, Williams said they offered words of comfort.
We are all very familiar with the concept of the Earth’s magnetic field. It turns out that most objects in space have magnetic fields but it’s quite tricky to measure them. Astronomers have developed an ingenious way to measure the magnetic field of the Milky Way using polarised light from interstellar dust grains that align themselves to the magnetic field lines. A new survey has begun this mapping process and has mapped an area that covers the equivalent of 15 times the full Moon.
Many people will remember experiments in school with iron filings and bar magnets to unveil their magnetic field. It’s not quite so easy to capture the magnetic field of the Milky Way though. The new method to measure the field relies upon the small dust grains which permeate space between the stars. The grains of dust are similar in size to smoke particles but they are not spherical. Just like a boat turning itself into the current, the dust particles’ long axis tends to align with the local magnetic field. As they do, they emit a glow in the same frequency as the cosmic background radiation and it is this that astronomers have been tuning in to.
Infrared image of the shockwave created by the massive giant star Zeta Ophiuchi in an interstellar dust cloud. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech; NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); C. R. O’Dell, Vanderbilt UniversityNot only do the particles glow but they also absorb starlight that passes through them just like polarising filters. The polarisation of light is familiar to photographers that might use polarising filters to darken skies and manage reflections. The phenomenon of polarisation refers to the propagation of light. As it moves through a medium it carries energy from one place to another but on the way it displays wave like characteristics. The wave nature is made up of alternating displacements of the medium through which they are travelling (imagine a wave in water). The displacement is not always the same as the direction of travel; sometimes it is parallel and at other times it is perpendicular. In polarisation, the displacement is limited to one direction only.
In the particles in interstellar space, the polarising properties capture the magnetic field and polarise the light that travels through them revealing the details of the magnetic field. Just as they are on Earth, magnetic field lines are of crucial importance to galactic evolution. They regulate star formation, shape the structure of a galaxy and like gigantic galactic rivers, shape and direct the flow fo gas around the galaxy.
Researchers from the Inter-University Institute for High Energies in Belgium used the PASIPHAE survey – an international collaboration to explore the magnetic field from the polarisation in interstellar dust – to start the process. They measured the polarisation of more than 1500 stars which covered an area of the sky no more than 15 times the size of the full Moon. The team then used data from the Gaia astrometry satellite and a new algorithm to map the magnetic fields in the galaxy in that part of the sky.
Boeing's Starliner capsule has been cleared for its first-ever crewed launch, a test flight scheduled to send two astronauts toward the International Space Station on May 6.
Solar Sails are an enigmatic and majestic way to travel across the gulf of space. Drawing an analogy to the sail ships of the past, they are one of the most efficient ways of propelling craft in space. On Tuesday a RocketLab Electron rocket launched NASA’s new Advanced Composite Solar Sail System. It aims to test the deployment of large solar sails in low-earth orbit and on Wednesday, NASA confirmed they had successfully deployed a 9 metre sail.
In 1886 the motor car was invented. In 1903 humans made their first powered flight. Just 58 years later, humans made their first trip into space on board a rocket. Rocket technology has changed significantly over the centuries, yes centuries. The development of the rocket started way back in the 13th Century with the Chinese and Mongolians firing rocket propelled arrows at each other. Things moved on somewhat since then and we now have solid and liquid rocket propellant, ion engines and solar sails with more technology in the wings.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rises from its Florida launch pad to send Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus moon lander spaceward. (NASA via YouTube)Solar sails are of particular interest because they harness the power of sun, or star light to propel probes across space. The idea isn’t knew though, Johannes Kepler (of planetary motion fame) first suggested that sunlight could be used to push spacecraft in the 17th Century in his works entitled ‘Somnium’. We had to wait until the 20h Century though before Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky outlined the principle of how solar sails might actually work. Carl Sagan and other members of the Planetary Society start to propose missions using solar sails in the 70’s and 80’s but it wasn’t until 2010 that we saw the first practical solar sail vehicle, IKAROS.
Image of the fully deployed IKAROS solar sail, taken by a separation camera. Credit: JAXAThe concept of solar sails is quite simple to understand, relying upon the pressure of sunlight. The sails are angled such that photons strike the reflective sail and bounce off it to push the spacecraft forward. It does of course take a lot of photons to accelerate a spacecraft using light but slowly, over time it is a very efficient propulsion system requiring no heavy engines or fuel tanks. This reduction of mass makes it easier for solar sails to be accelerated by sunlight but the sail sizes have been limited by the material and structure of the booms that support them.
NASA have been working on the problem with their Next Generation Solar Sail Boom Technology. Their Advanced Composite Solar Sail System uses a CubeSat built by NanoAvionics to test a new composite boom support structure. It is made from flexible polymer and carbon fibre materials to create a stiffer, lighter alternative to existing support structure designs.
