The Webb Telescope Just Identified 6 Giant Gaseous Planets That Are More Massive Than Jupiter

And these strange worlds may be a lot more common than we thought.

by Kiona Smith

 

STSCI

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) peered into a nearby star cluster and found a handful of rogue gas giants — including one with its own disk of dust swirling around it. The results suggests that rogue planets may not only be worlds that got kicked out of their star systems, but worlds that coalesce out of clouds of interstellar gas in the same way stars do — just smaller.

Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Adam Langeveld and his colleagues published their work in The Astronomical Journal.

Lonely Planets Club

Langeveld and his colleagues surveyed a cluster of stars called NGC 1333, which exists 1,000 light years away in the constellation Perseus, with JWST’s Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument. They found six gas giants — each between five and 10 times more massive than Jupiter — drifting through space on their own, not orbiting a star. One of these lonely worlds even had a disk of dust orbiting it, as if in the process of forming its own little family of planets (or moons). And based on their observations, Langeveld and his colleagues say rogue planets, once thought to be rare flukes of nature, might make up about 10 percent of the objects in the cluster.

We know that stars form when dense clumps of gas and dust in clouds called nebulae collapse under their own gravity, creating enough heat and pressure at their centers to kickstart nuclear fusion. And we know that sometimes, a clump of material can form an object that’s just on the threshold of being able to start burning as a star, but doesn’t have quite enough mass to get there: a brown dwarf. But astronomers weren’t sure whether even smaller objects, like giant gas planets, could form the same way.

The team of astrophysicists used JWST “to search for the faintest members of a young star cluster, seeking to address a fundamental question in astronomy: how light an object can form like a star?” says Johns Hopkins University astrophysicist Ray Jayawardhana, the senior author of the recent paper, in a recent statement. “It turns out the smallest free-floating objects that form like stars overlap in mass with giant exoplanets circling nearby stars.”

The smallest rogue planet Langeveld and his colleagues spotted, a gas giant about 5 times the mass of Jupiter (or 1,600 times the mass of Earth, if you prefer), is an important clue. It sits at the heart of a swirling disk of gas and dust, which looks exactly like the disks that form around newborn stars, where material eventually coalesces into planets. That suggests that the planet probably formed like a star, just from a smaller cloud of gas and dust. And it may be forming its own miniature system, like Jupiter or Saturn with their swarms of moons.

In other words, rogue planets may not always be planets that formed in orbit around a star like our Sun, only to get kicked out of the star system by a close encounter with a sibling planet or a passing star (which may have happened at least once in our own Solar System’s history). Instead, they can apparently spawn all alone, from much smaller clouds of gas than the ones that form stars.

“This is important context for understanding both star and planet formation,” says Langeveld in a recent statement.

What’s Next?

Langeveld and his colleagues hope to learn more about these lonely planets’ atmospheres in their next round of observations with JWST. Once they have that information, they’ll compare the rogue gas giants’ atmospheres to brown dwarfs and to “normal” gas giants that orbit stars. That could offer clues about whether gas giants that coalesce alone in the middle of space contain a different mix of elements than those that form in the disks around newborn stars.

The astronomers also hope to find more objects like the small rogue planet with its own little protoplanetary disk. That could shed light on whether, or how, rogue planets might form their own systems of planets (or moons). Picture all the diverse worlds that orbit the gas giants in our Solar System — Jupiter’s icy moon Europa and volcanic hellworld Io, or Saturn’s Titan with its methane seas — orbiting a version of Jupiter all alone in deep space, unlit by any star, heated only by the tidal pull of their planet.

“The diversity of systems that nature has produced is remarkable and pushes us to refine our models of star and planet formation,” says Jayawardhana.

{https://www.inverse.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 00:42 geschreven door peter  

The Event Horizon Telescope Just Made A Major Breakthrough — Black Holes Can Now Be Seen in ‘Color Vision’

The team that delivered the first-ever image of a black hole is getting more ambitious.

by Doris Elín Urrutia

 

EHT, D. Pesce, A. Chael

“This new ‘color vision’ allows us to tease apart the effects of Einstein’s gravity from the hot gas and magnetic fields that feed the black holes and launch powerful jets that stream over galactic distances,” Sheperd “Shep” Doeleman, astrophysicist and Founding Director of the EHT, said in an announcement published Tuesday.

Two is better than one

Doeleman tells Inverse that supermassive black holes are busy places. Seeing two frequencies would reveal more of its organized chaos. The team has published simulation images to depict how the new frequency changes the view.

“When you have two separate frequencies, you’re able to tease apart different effects around the black hole,” Doeleman says.

Albert Einstein predicted that gravity bends all light, across all wavelengths, in the same way. Right around the black hole’s shadow, where gravity is so strong that not even light can reflect back out, data across both frequencies may look the same.

But farther away from the event horizon, other phenomena like the black hole’s jets of superheated plasma will look differently from one frequency to the next.

Seeing in color

Having two sets of information allows for color. The data from the telescopes is radio, a wavelength of light invisible to human eyes. The single color of existing EHT images are packed with information at 230 GHz. But now that EHT can take observations at 345 GHz, imagery specialists can add a new color to the golden ring. This will be exciting to view not only as a still image, but eventually, as a motion picture.

This composite simulated image from the Event Horizon Telescope shows how the supermassive black hole M87* might look at different radio frequencies of 86 GHz (red), 230 GHz (green), and 345 GHz (blue).

EHT, D. Pesce, A. Chael

Doeleman and other researchers hope the telescopes in the EHT network will be able to take not just two radio wavelengths at the same time, but eventually three.

“The EHT's successful observation at 345 GHz is a major scientific milestone,” Lisa Kewley, Director of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, said in the announcement. “By pushing the limits of resolution, we’re achieving the unprecedented clarity in the imaging of black holes we promised early on, and setting new and higher standards for the capability of ground-based astrophysical research.”

{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

01-09-2024 om 00:22 geschreven door peter  

The discovery is in a new article in Nature titled “Earth’s ambipolar electrostatic field and its role in ion escape to space.” The lead author is Glyn Collinson from the Heliophysics Science Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

The Space Age gained momentum back in the 1960s as the USA and USSR launched more and more satellites. When spacecraft passed over the Earth’s poles, they detected an outflow of particles from Earth’s atmosphere into space. Scientists named this the polar wind, but for decades, it was mysterious.

Scientists expect some particles from Earth to “leak” into space. Sunlight can cause this. But if that’s the case, the particles should be heated. The wind is mysterious because many particles in it are cold despite moving at supersonic speeds.

“Something had to be drawing these particles out of the atmosphere,” said lead author Collinson.

Collinson is also the Principal Investigator for NASA’s “Endurance” Sounding Rocket Mission. “The purpose of the Endurance mission was to make the first measurement of the magnitude and structure of the electric field generated by Earth’s ionosphere,” NASA writes in their mission description. Endurance launched on May 22nd, 2022, from Norway’s Svalbard Archipelago.

“Svalbard is the only rocket range in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements we needed,” said Suzie Imber, a space physicist at the University of Leicester, UK, and co-author of the paper.

Svalbard is key because there are open magnetic field lines above Earth’s polar caps. These field lines provide a pathway for ions to outflow to the magnetosphere.

After it was launched, Collinson said, “We got fabulous data all through the flight, though it will be a while before we can really dig into it to see if we achieved our science objective or not.”

Now, the data is in, and the results show that Earth has a global electric field.

Prior to its discovery, scientists hypothesized that the field was weak and that its effects could only be felt over hundreds of kilometres. Even though it was first proposed 60 years ago, scientists had to wait for technology to advance before they could measure it. In 2016, Collinson and his colleagues began inventing a new instrument that could measure the elusive field.

At about 250 km (150 mi) above the Earth’s surface, atoms break apart into negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions. Electrons are far lighter than ions, and the tiniest energetic jolt can send them into space. Ions are more than 1800 times heavier, and gravity draws them back to the surface.

If gravity were the only force at work, the two populations would separate over time and simply drift apart. But that’s not what happens.

Electrons and ions have opposite electrical charges. They’re attracted to one another and an electric field forms that keeps them together. This counteracts some of gravity’s power.

The field is called ambipolar because it’s bidirectional. That means it works in both directions. As ions sink down due to gravity, the electrical charges mean that the ions drag some of the electrons down with them. However, at the same time, electrons lift ions high into the atmosphere with them as they attempt to leave the atmosphere and escape into space.

via GIPHY

The result of all this is that the ambipolar field extends the atmosphere’s height, meaning some of the ions escape with the polar wind.

After decades of hypothesizing and theorizing, the Endurance rocket measured a change in electric potential of only 0.55 volts. That’s extremely weak but enough to be measurable.

“A half a volt is almost nothing — it’s only about as strong as a watch battery,” Collinson said. “But that’s just the right amount to explain the polar wind.”

Hydrogen ions are the most plentiful particles in the polar wind. Endurance’s results show that these ions experience an outward force from the magnetic field that’s 10.6 times more powerful than gravity. “That’s more than enough to counter gravity — in fact, it’s enough to launch them upwards into space at supersonic speeds,” said Alex Glocer, Endurance project scientist at NASA Goddard and co-author of the paper.

Hydrogen ions are light, but even the heavier particles in the polar wind are lifted. Oxygen ions in the weak electrical field effectively weigh half as much, yet they’re boosted to greater heights, too. Overall, the ambipolar field makes the ionosphere denser at higher altitudes than it would be without the field’s lofting effect. “It’s like this conveyor belt, lifting the atmosphere up into space,” Collinson added.

“The measurements support the hypothesis that the ambipolar electric field is the primary driver of ionospheric H+ outflow and of the supersonic polar wind of light ions escaping from the polar caps,” the authors explain in their paper.

“We infer that this increases the supply of cold O+ ions to the magnetosphere by more than 3,800%,” the authors write. At that point, other mechanisms come into play. Wave-particle interactions can heat the ions, accelerating them to escape velocity.

These results raise other questions. How does this field affect Earth? Has the field affected the planet’s habitability? Do other planets have these fields?

Back in 2016, the European Space Agency’s Venus Express mission detected a 10-volt electric potential surrounding the planet. This means that positively charged particles would be pulled away from the planet’s surface. This could draw away oxygen.

Scientists think that Venus may have once had plentiful water. However, since sunlight splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, the electric field could’ve siphoned the oxygen away, eliminating the planet’s water. This is theoretical, but it begs the question of why the same thing hasn’t happened on Earth.

The ambipolar field is fundamental to Earth. Its role in the evolution of the planet’s atmosphere and biosphere is yet to be understood, but it must play a role.

“Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field,” Collinson said. “Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time.”

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

31-08-2024 om 23:23 geschreven door peter  

Nu is het mogelijk om wetenschappers te helpen zwarte gaten te vinden: je hebt alleen een telefoon-app nodig

door Janine

University of Warwick/Mark Garlick/Wikimedia Commons - CC BY 4.0

Zwarte gaten vormen een van de meest fascinerende en complexe mysteries van het heelal. We weten dat ze bestaan, maar we kunnen ze niet zien, behalve door de invloed die ze uitoefenen op de omringende ruimte, wat hun zoektocht complexer maakt. Daarom heeft het nieuwe project Black Hole Finder besloten om alle liefhebbers van de astronomie te betrekken bij de ontdekking van nieuwe zwarte gaten in het heelal. Hoe? Door middel van een smartphone-app: laten we eens kijken hoe het werkt!

Op zoek naar zwarte gaten

Met de Black Hole Finder, ontwikkeld door het Dutch Black Hole Consortium, kunnen liefhebbers een app gebruiken om astronomen te helpen zwarte gaten in het heelal te vinden. Het doel is in werkelijkheid veel complexer, namelijk het identificeren van kilonova’s, krachtige stellaire explosies van elektromagnetische straling die ontstaan wanneer twee ongelooflijk dichte objecten met elkaar in botsing komen. We hebben het dan over botsingen tussen twee neutronensterren of bijvoorbeeld tussen een neutronenster en een zwart gat. Maar waarom zouden we kilonova’s bestuderen?

Onderzoekers gebruiken het BlackGEM-netwerk van telescopen om de nachtelijke hemel af te speuren naar deze enorme explosies. Naast het identificeren van het moment van botsing tussen een neutronenster en een zwart gat, kunnen kilonova’s leiden tot de vorming van een nieuw zwart gat met stellaire massa. Het idee is simpel: door kilonova's te detecteren, kunnen nieuwe zwarte gaten worden geïdentificeerd. Mits je onderscheid kunt maken tussen echte en fake beelden, natuurlijk.

Waar of niet waar

ESA/Hubble - CC BY 4.0

Enthousiastelingen die de Black Hole Finder-app gebruiken, kunnen helpen kilonova’s en dus potentiële nieuwe zwarte gaten te lokaliseren. De bijdrage van gebruikers is van fundamenteel belang, omdat sommige door telescopen gemaakte beelden echte explosies laten zien, terwijl andere vervormd kunnen zijn als gevolg van licht dat wordt gereflecteerd door satellieten en andere interferentie. Hoe onderscheid je echte beelden van fake? Op dit moment kunnen algoritmen voor kunstmatige intelligentie niet concurreren met menselijk ingrijpen, dus wordt het noodzakelijk om liefhebbers van de astronomie om hulp te vragen. Steven Bloemen, projectmanager bij BlackGEM, bevestigt:

Mensen zijn nog steeds veel beter in het identificeren van patronen dan onze algoritmes. Met behulp van de app kunnen burgers over de hele wereld helpen onze AI-algoritmes te trainen om onderscheid te maken tussen echte en fake bronnen  en sneller de meest interessante kandidaat-fondsen te identificeren.

Het gebruik van de applicatie is zeer intuïtief: de gebruiker bekijkt drie afbeeldingen van hetzelfde deel van de hemel en moet vaststellen of dit een echte bron is of niet. Een spel van waar of niet waar, zo je wilt. Uiteraard biedt de app alle informatie om kilonova’s te herkennen, die meestal verschijnen als ronde en witte vormen, met een diameter van ongeveer 5-10 pixels.

Waar dient de Black Hole Finder voor

Zoals we in de inleiding al zeiden, is het niet eenvoudig om zwarte gaten te detecteren. Ten eerste zijn ze niet allemaal zoals Sagittarius A*, het superzware zwarte gat in het centrum van de Melkweg. Er zijn ook enkele middelzware zwarte gaten bekend, maar de meeste zwarte gaten hebben een stellaire massa en zijn dus vrij klein. Toch weten we dat ze kunnen ontstaan als gevolg van kilonova’s, explosies die veel helderder zijn dan klassieke nova’s maar veel minder helder dan supernova’s. Hoe kunnen we ze detecteren?

Er komen liefhebbers van de astronomie aan te pas, die experts kunnen helpen bij het analyseren van het hemelgewelf op zoek naar nieuwe zwarte gaten. Elke goed geïdentificeerde kilonova stelt astronomen in staat om hun onderzoek te beperken tot veel kleinere delen van de ruimte. En we weten: het vinden van een zwart gat is niet eenvoudig, maar met de hulp van iedereen is het vandaag de dag iets gemakkelijker.

Source:

• https://www.dbhc.nl/
• https://app.blackholefinder.org/tutorial
• https://play.google.com/store/apps/details

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/ }

31-08-2024 om 22:39 geschreven door peter  

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has fascinated us for decades. Now a team of researchers have used the Murchison Widefield Array in Australia to scan great swathes of sky for alien signals. Unusually for a SETI project, this one focussed attention on 2,800 galaxies instead of stars within our own. They have been on the lookout for advanced civilisations that are broadcasting their existence using the power of an entire star. Alas they weren’t successful but its an exciting new way to search for alien intelligence. 

Our first attempts to search for alien intelligence began back in 1960 with Project Ozma. It was led by astronomer Frank Drake and used the 85 foot radio telescope at Green Bank in West Virginia. The aim was to try and detect alien radio signals from Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti, should they have existed. Alas they found nothing but it marked the first step in a scientific approach to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Typically SETI tends to focus on electromagnetic signals such as radio waves an in particular unusual patterns that could suggest intentional communication. 

This recent attempt to try out a new approach was led by Dr Chenoa Tremblay of the SETI Institute and Prof. Steven Tingay from the Curtin University. The approach was to utilise the magnificent field of view of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) which allows one observation to cover 2,800 galaxies. Among them, there are 1,300 galaxies that we know the distance too. The MWA in Western Australia utilises low frequencies (100MHz) to probe the distant galaxies. 

By searching these galaxies for signs of alien signals we are actually looking for advanced civilisations. It’s one thing to be able to send radio signals across interstellar space, indeed we have been doing that for decades since the advent of radio communication. As radio signals propagate across space, they weaken and certainly could not traverse the immense distances between the galaxies. It’s just possible that advanced civilisations might have the technology to harness the power of their Sun and perhaps other stars in their galaxy to send signals powerful enough to travel the millions of light years between galaxies. 

I quite love the idea of advanced civilisations that may have developed the technology to transmit ‘technosignatures’ or signs of alien technology across the Universe but alas the study did not find any. Queue sad emoji 🙁  It did however provide valuable insight into just how we may be able to widen our search for alien intelligence beyond the Milky Way. 

The MWA uses thousands of dipole antennae that are spread across several kilometres giving it a wide 30 degree field of view. It has been designed to operate between 70 and 300 MHz allowing it to participate in studies of the early universe, mapping the cosmos, and detecting solar activity. It helped advance radio and interferometry technology facilitating the development of the Square Kilometre Array. 

Using MWA and other radio installations to study the properties of stars and galaxies also allows for the search for technosignatures. It’s a new approach and it highlights the importance of continuing the development of new technology to open up new ways to search for ET.

Source : 

• First low frequency search for alien technology in distant galaxies

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

31-08-2024 om 21:04 geschreven door peter  

“By studying how Salsa burns up, which parts might survive, for how long and in what state, we will learn much about how to build ‘zero debris’ satellites,” says Tim Flohrer, (ESA-Space Debri Office) in a recent press release.

A Pioneering Mission

ESA designed the Cluster mission to explore space weather interactions with the Earth’s magnetic environment as the four spacecraft fly in a tetrahedral configuration through the planet’s magnetosphere. The four spacecraft fly out to a distant apogee of about 117,000 kilometers (over three times farther out versus geosynchronous orbit), and orbit the Earth once every 54 hours.

Launched in the summer of 2000, the Cluster satellites had a 5-year nominal mission, which lasted well over two decades. The missions have since proven to be pioneers in space weather research. The mission also escaped glitches and software failures over the years, including a bug requiring a “dirty hack” in 2010. Cluster II was also a replacement for the original set of Cluster satellites, which were lost on the inaugural launch of the Ariane-5 rocket on June 4^th, 1996 from the Kourou Space Center. The mission ended in an explosion 37 seconds after liftoff.

Controlling Reentries

This sort of ‘targeted reentry’ for a long duration mission is one of the first of its kind for ESA. The zero-debris conclusion to the mission exceeds international standards. Furthermore, it also addresses issues surrounding the mitigation of debris in low Earth orbit. On Earth, ESA’s worldwide Estrack network will follow Salsa during its final orbits, and an airborne campaign is underway to spot the final reentry. ESA made a similar effort to image the Aeolus satellite in 2023, shortly before reentry.

Engineers will apply a similar technique to the SMILE (Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) and Proba-3 missions. These are also set to enter a similar far-ranging orbit around the Earth. SMILE is the follow-on mission to Cluster, and is launching in late 2025. ESA will launch the Proba-3 solar observatory next month. The mission will feature a free-flying, solar eclipsing disk.

You can spot the cluster satellites including Salsa on their final days. Salsa is COSPAR ID 2000-041A/26411in the NORAD satellite catalog, and listed in Heavens-Above. The satellites reach naked eye visibility on a good perigee pass.

After the demise of Salsa, Rumba will also reenter in November of next year, followed by Tango and Samba in August 2026.

While this is the ‘Last Dance’ for Salsa, the efforts to study space weather and come to terms with space debris continue.

• Follow @ESAOperations and @ESA_Cluster on Twitter for the latest updates on Salsa leading up to reentry.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

31-08-2024 om 18:25 geschreven door peter  

China transformeerde maangrond in water: de eerste stap naar echte kolonisatie?

door Janine

Dat China plannen heeft om de maan en haar grondstoffen te gebruiken is zeker geen mysterie. Tegelijkertijd heeft het Aziatische land de afgelopen jaren verschillende sondes naar onze satelliet gestuurd, waaronder naar de verborgen kant. Meer recent is echter het nieuws dat een team van Chinese wetenschappers enkele monsters die door de Chang'e 5-missie naar de aarde zijn teruggebracht, heeft gebruikt om water te produceren. Zou dit de eerste stap kunnen zijn naar een toekomstige menselijke aanwezigheid op de maan? Laten we het samen uitzoeken!

Chang'e 5 en de maanmonsters teruggebracht naar de aarde

Zoals de naam al doet vermoeden, is de Chang'e 5-missie zeker niet de eerste die op de maan is gearriveerd. Het bijzondere aan deze missie is dat er voor het eerst in 44 jaar monsters van de maanbodem naar de aarde zijn teruggebracht. Ondanks de daaropvolgende Chang'e 6-missie, waarbij in plaats daarvan de verborgen kant van onze satelliet werd betrokken, zijn de resultaten van Chang'e 5 simpelweg buitengewoon. Zoals te lezen is in een recente studie gepubliceerd in het tijdschrift The Innovation, hebben Chinese wetenschappers ontdekt dat de mineralen waaruit de bodem van de maan bestaat rijk zijn aan waterstof en kunnen worden gebruikt om ter plekke water te produceren. Maar hoe?

De methode waarmee je water uit eenvoudige grond kunt halen, vereist het verwarmen van de mineralen waaruit het bestaat tot extreem hoge temperaturen, om een ​​chemische reactie van de elementen met waterstof te veroorzaken en daardoor tot de vorming van waterdamp te leiden.

Hoe je water van de Maan krijgt

Chen et al./The Innovation - 2024

Dankzij de innovatieve methode van Chinese wetenschappers kan uit elke ton maangrond ongeveer 50 liter water worden gewonnen. Het lijkt misschien niet veel, en het is ongetwijfeld een proces dat om verschillende redenen op aarde geen zin zou hebben. Op de maan verandert dit echter: 50 liter water kan voorzien in de dagelijkse behoeften van de leden van een hypothetische menselijke missie op een hypothetische maanbasis. De maanbasis vormt een concreet doel van de Chinese ruimteverkenning: het ter plekke kunnen produceren van water zou een enorm voordeel betekenen.

In feite wil China vòòr 2035 een permanent onderzoeksstation op de maan bouwen, terwijl China vòòr 2045 een ruimtestation in een baan rond de satelliet wil bouwen. Als Chang'e 5 na 44 jaar de eerste missie was die maanmonsters terugbracht, is de Chang'e 6-missie de eerste die monsters van de andere kant van de maan terugbracht. Kortom: China lijkt het serieus te nemen.

Naar een toekomstige maanbasis... en verder

Dat het mogelijk is om water rechtstreeks uit de maanbodem te halen is buitengewoon nieuws dat echter ook een aantal overwegingen met zich meebrengt. Allereerst moeten we begrijpen hoeveel energie er nodig is om de bodem te verwarmen en welke andere elementen betrokken zijn bij het proces van waterdampvorming. Ten tweede mogen we de geopolitieke implicaties niet vergeten van de belangstelling die China toont voor onze satelliet: de concurrentie om maanbronnen zal in de toekomst steeds levendiger worden. En mogelijk ook heviger.

Kortom, de resultaten van de Chinese Academie van Wetenschappen laten zien hoe het mogelijk is om steeds dichter bij het idee van een permanente aanwezigheid van de mens op de maan te komen. Aan de andere kant zijn er tientallen jaren verstreken sinds de laatste keer dat een astronaut een wandeling maakte op onze satelliet. De volgende zou wel eens een ruimtestation op de maan kunnen bewonen, op haar grond kunnen lopen... en haar water kunnen drinken.

{ https://www.curioctopus.nl/ }

30-08-2024 om 22:29 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE: I lived like an astronaut stuck on the ISS for a day  

By Ellyn Lapointe For Dailymail.Com

A fiery explosion of a Space X rocket this week could spell even more misery for the two NASA astronauts stranded in space.

The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket failed to land successfully after launching satellites into space, bursting into flames before toppling over on its side. 

This is bad news for the two astronauts that Boeing's faulty Starliner left stranded aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for almost three months.

Their only hope is to return to Earth on SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which will take off using the Falcon 9 rocket, and is supposed to get them home by February 2025.

But the latest setback threatens to push that date back even further.

A full timeline of Boeing's Starliner program, from the singing of their massive contact to the incident that left two astronauts stranded aboard the ISS. 

The FAA now has to launch an investigation into what went wrong with Falcon 9, which could interfere with SpaceX's rescue mission schedule, and ultimately delay Crew Dragon's launch date significantly.

'Depending on circumstances, some mishap investigations might conclude in a matter of weeks. Other more complex investigations might take several months,' the agency's website states. 

Read More

• SpaceX's historic private spacewalk is DELAYED at the eleventh hour: Daring Polaris Dawn mission is pushed back to Wednesday after a leak is discovered - as Elon Musk claims 'we are triple-checking everything' 

What's more, SpaceX plans to use Falcon 9 to launch the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which means the Starliner crew's return to Earth is incumbent upon the booster actually working. 

But the booster's recent technical issues suggest that a successful launch in September isn't exactly guaranteed. 

The worst case scenario - a lengthy FAA investigation followed by more issues with Falcon 9 - could delay Crew Dragon's launch even further. 

NASA will want to be certain the rocket is flawless before allowing it to carry a manned crew, which could mean several more tests between now and that rescue mission.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment about a time frame.

NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore launched toward the ISS aboard Boeing's Starliner on June 5.

The scandal-laden Starliner - which was built and developed using over $4 billion of taxpayer money - had been plagued by helium leaks and thruster issues in the weeks leading up to launch, and even on the day of. 

The spacecraft safely delivered Williams and Wilmore to the ISS, but by the time it got there, it had sprung more helium leaks and five of its 28 thrusters had failed.

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft was plagued by technical issues even before in launched on June 5. NASA ultimately deemed it unsafe to return its crew to Earth. 

Williams and Wilmore were originally supposed to spend only eight days on the ISS, but the technical issues with their spacecraft have left them stuck up there for nearly three months now. 

In a press conference on August 24, NASA officials announced that it would be too risky to bring the astronauts home on faulty Starliner. 

Instead, they will return home on SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov toward the ISS on September 24, according to a NASA statement released today. 

The means that Williams and Wilmore will remain on the ISS until February 2025 at the earliest. 

The decision was humiliating for Boeing, which has struggled for years to get their Starliner program off the ground only to be bailed out at the eleventh hour by their biggest competitor. 

'We have had so many embarrassments lately, we're under a microscope. This just made it, like, 100 times worse,' one employee anonymously told the New York Post. 

'We hate SpaceX,' he added. 'We talk s*** about them all the time, and now they're bailing us out.'

At this point, it's unclear whether Starliner will ever be able to complete a crewed mission to the ISS.  

NASA is planning to decommission the ISS by 2030, giving Boeing just five years to fix Starliner's technical issues and successfully send and return astronauts to space.

To put that in perspective, it's already been five years since Starliner's first failed uncrewed test flight. 

But it's possible that Boeing could retire Starliner before they even hit that deadline, as the company has already sunk $1.6 billion into the spacecraft's development.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 burst into flames in a landing mishap that occurred after a launch that delivered 21 Starlink Satellites to low-Earth orbit. The FAA plans to investigate the incident

The Falcon 9 booster failed after a successful launch from Cape Canaveral Florida early Wednesday morning as part of a mission to deliver 21 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit. This was the rocket's 23rd launch. 

The launch went smoothly, and the booster was able to separate from the upper stage before beginning its return to Earth. But it was all downhill from there. 

The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket failed to properly land on its intended target: an uncrewed drone ship named 'A Shortfall of Gravitas.' 

Instead, the booster exploded into flames and then tumbled onto its side. 

Although the overall mission was a success, the Federal Aviation Administration has halted any more Falcon 9 launches until it determines the cause of the mishap.

'A return to flight of the Falcon 9 booster rocket is based on the FAA determining that any system, process or procedure related to the anomaly does not affect public safety,' FAA officials said in written statement. 

The launch of the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission (pictured) has been delayed indefinitely pending an FAA investigation into a Falcon 9 landing mishap

The crew for the Polaris Dawn mission are (from left to right) billionaire Jared Isaacman, SpaceX engineers Anna Menon, and Sarah Gillis, and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Scott Poteet

This is the second time the FAA has grounded Falcon 9 in the last two months. 

The agency halted Falcon 9 launches for two weeks in July after one of the rocket's  upper-stage liquid oxygen tanks leaked, preventing a batch of satellites from deploying properly and causing them to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

It's unclear how long this new investigation will take. In the meantime, a crew of four SpaceX astronauts awaits the launch of the Polaris Dawn mission, in which Falcon 9 will carry them to orbit for five days. 

The mission, funded and crewed by entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, is expected to make history by reaching higher altitudes than humans have traveled since NASA's Apollo program in the 1970s, and performing the first commercial spacewalk. 

Life on board the ISS is very cramped, and astronauts Barry Wilmore (left) and Sunita Williams (right) will endure another six months on board

But Polaris Dawn has already been delayed several times due to unfavorable weather conditions and technical issues. It was originally scheduled to launch on Tuesday.

Friday would have been the earliest date that Polaris Dawn could launch, but the FAA's investigation has now put the mission in limbo. 

As for the stranded Starliner crew, they'll just have to hope that the FAA investigation drag on, and that Falcon 9 successfully launches the Crew Dragon mission in September. 

Meanwhile, Boeings Starliner is set to return to Earth uncrewed on September 6, according to NASA. 

NASA officials have reported that the astronauts are 'doing fine' and keeping busy with day-to-day tasks and science experiments. 

But it's only plausible that they're feeling some frustration after a mission that was supposed to last about a week transformed into an eight-month-long nightmare.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

30-08-2024 om 21:14 geschreven door peter  

NASA’s Endurance Mission Measures Earth’s Ambipolar Electric Field for First Time

First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the polar wind, a steady outflow of charged particles into space that occurs above Earth’s poles. This electric field lifts charged particles in our upper atmosphere to greater heights than they would otherwise reach and may have shaped our planet’s evolution in ways yet to be explored.

Collinson et al. report the existence of a +0.55 ± 0.09 V electric potential drop between 250 km and 768 km from a planetary electrostatic field generated exclusively by the outward pressure of ionospheric electrons; they experimentally demonstrate that the ambipolar field of Earth controls the structure of the polar ionosphere, boosting the scale height by 271%.

Image credit: NASA.

Since the 1960s, spacecraft flying over Earth’s poles have detected a stream of particles flowing from our atmosphere into space.

Theorists predicted this outflow, which they dubbed the polar wind, spurring research to understand its causes.

Some amount of outflow from our atmosphere was expected. Intense, unfiltered sunlight should cause some particles from our air to escape into space, like steam evaporating from a pot of water. But the observed polar wind was more mysterious.

Many particles within it were cold, with no signs they had been heated — yet they were traveling at supersonic speeds.

“Something had to be drawing these particles out of the atmosphere,” said Endurance principal investigator Dr. Glyn Collinson, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The hypothesized electric field, generated at the subatomic scale, was expected to be incredibly weak, with its effects felt only over hundreds of miles.

For decades, detecting it was beyond the limits of existing technology.

In 2016, Dr. Collinson and colleagues got to work inventing a new instrument they thought was up to the task of measuring Earth’s ambipolar field.

The team’s instruments and ideas were best suited for a suborbital rocket flight launched from the Arctic.

In a nod to the ship that carried Ernest Shackleton on his famous 1914 voyage to Antarctica, the researchers named their mission Endurance.

They set a course for Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago just a few hundred miles from the north pole and home to the northernmost rocket range in the world.

“Svalbard is the only rocket range in the world where you can fly through the polar wind and make the measurements we needed,” said Dr. Suzie Imber, a space physicist at the University of Leicester.

On May 11, 2022, Endurance launched and reached an altitude of 768.03 km (477.23 miles), splashing down 19 minutes later in the Greenland Sea.

Across the 518.2-km (322-mile) altitude range where it collected data, Endurance measured a change in electric potential of only 0.55 volts (V).

“A half a volt is almost nothing — it’s only about as strong as a watch battery. But that’s just the right amount to explain the polar wind,” Dr. Collinson said.

Hydrogen ions, the most abundant type of particle in the polar wind, experience an outward force from this field 10.6 times stronger than gravity.

“That’s more than enough to counter gravity – in fact, it’s enough to launch them upwards into space at supersonic speeds,” said Endurance project scientist Dr. Alex Glocer, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Heavier particles also get a boost. Oxygen ions at that same altitude, immersed in this half-a-volt field, weigh half as much.

In general, the scientists found that the ambipolar field increases what’s known as the scale height of the ionosphere by 271%, meaning the ionosphere remains denser to greater heights than it would be without it.

“It’s like this conveyor belt, lifting the atmosphere up into space,” Dr. Collinson said.

Endurance’s discovery has opened many new paths for exploration.

The ambipolar field, as a fundamental energy field of our planet alongside gravity and magnetism, may have continuously shaped the evolution of our atmosphere in ways we can now begin to explore.

Because it’s created by the internal dynamics of an atmosphere, similar electric fields are expected to exist on other planets, including Venus and Mars.

“Any planet with an atmosphere should have an ambipolar field. Now that we’ve finally measured it, we can begin learning how it’s shaped our planet as well as others over time,” Dr. Collinson said.

• The team’s results appear in the journal Nature.
• G.A. Collinson et al. 2024. Earth’s ambipolar electrostatic field and its role in ion escape to space. Nature 632, 1021-1025; doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07480-3
• This article is a version of a press-release from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

29-08-2024 om 22:56 geschreven door peter  

Was the moon a blisteringly hot world? Our lunar neighbour was once covered with an ocean of molten rock, data from India's Chandrayaan-3 rover suggests

• India's Chandrayaan-3 moon mission has revealed the moon's mineral makeup
• This supports the theory that the moon was once covered in an ocean of magma 

By Wiliam Hunter

While the moon might now seem like a cold, dusty, desert, new evidence from India's Chandrayaan-3 mission has revealed this was not always the case.

Analysis of the lunar surface shows that the moon's south pole was once completely covered by an ocean of molten magma. 

When Chandrayaan-3 landed near the moon's south pole in August last year, India's space agency gathered 23 measurements of a never-before-studied region.

Their measurements discovered a uniform layer of ferroan anorthosite, a white rock believed to have floated to the surface of the molten rock during the moon's formation. 

This supports the 'Lunar Magma Ocean' (LMO) theory which claims the whole of the moon's surface was formed from a cooling layer of magma that formed 4.5 billion years ago.

New analysis of data from Indian's Chandrayaan-3 mission has revealed the moon was once covered in an ocean of molten lava

(pictured: artist's impression) 

Read More

• Has the mystery of how the moon formed finally been solved? Scientists find new evidence our lunar satellite was created during a giant impact between Earth and a Mars-sized planet 4.5 billion years ago 

The LMO theory is not new – it dates back to the 1970s – but the new findings now bolster the theory with evidence of molten rock at another region of the moon (its south pole).  

On August 23, 2023, the Vikram lander successfully touched down on a region of the moon's south pole as part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission.

Vikram's landing site, at about 70 degrees south, was the furthest south any landing craft had ever been.

Over 10 days, Vikram's smaller Pragyaan rover travelled over the lunar landscape, constantly recording and transmitting data back to Earth.

That data included 23 measurements from a device called the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.

This lightweight instrument used a radioactive source to bombard the lunar surface with radiation, exciting the atoms in the ground, and measuring the energy they release.

By recording that emitted energy, researchers have been able to calculate the mineral composition of the lunar soil.

After landing in August last year at a site near the Moon's south pole (illustrated in yellow) the Vikram lander deployed a rover which collected data about the moon's mineral composition 

That analysis revealed that the area around the Chandrayaan-3 landing site was relatively uniform and composed largely of ferroan anorthosite.

The researchers also found that the mineral composition at the Chandrayaan-3 site was similar to that found by NASA's Apollo 16 and the Soviet Luna-20 mission.

What is unusual about that finding is that those two landing sites are both in the moon's equatorial region, a long way away from where Chandrayaan-3 touched down.

The fact that these three distant sites all have roughly the same material composition suggests that they might have all come from the same lunar magma ocean.

The moon is believed to have been formed 4.5 billion years ago when a Mars-sized planet collided with Earth and knocked a chunk of material out into space.

As that material coalesced, the intense energies involved melted the rocks into a vast ocean of magma which covered the entire moon.

As the surface cooled over tens to hundreds of millions of years, the cooler ferroan anorthosite rose to the surface while heavier minerals like olivine and pyroxene sank deep below to form the moon's mantle.

The current lunar highlands are believed to be what remains of this ancient crust after billions of years.

The Pragyaan (pictured) found that the area around the landing site was uniform and made of ferroan anorthosite, a white rock believed to have formed the ancient moon's crust 

Experts believe the moon was formed when a Mars-sized planet called Theia collided with the Earth and knocked material out into space 

The data collected by Chandrayaan-3 (pictured) suggests that the moon was once covered by an ocean of lava. As it cooled the lighter ferroan anorthosite rose to the surface and formed the ancient crust 

The Moon theories 

Co-author of the paper Dr Santosh Vadawale from the Physical Research Laboratory, told the BBC: 'The theory of early evolution of the moon becomes much more robust in the light of our observation.'

Alpha particle x-ray data also provides evidence for an enormous meteor strike near the lunar south pole.

The data gathered by the rover showed that the area around the landing site was much higher in magnesium than would have been expected for pure ferroan anorthosite.

In their paper, published in Nature, the researchers argue that this material could have been blasted out of the ground by a huge impact which excavated the magnesium-rich materials deep in the mantle.

The researchers believe that magnesium in the soil was deposited by the same impact which formed the South Pole-Aitken basin over 217 miles (350 km) away. This magnesium was then further mixed into the area by impacts like the Schomberger crater (impact illustrated) 

Read More

• First EVER elements are discovered on the Moon's South Pole: India's Chandrayaan-3 rover confirms the presence of sulphur in the lunar surface 

This impact could have been the same meteor strike which formed the 1,600-mile (2,500km) wide South Pole-Aitken basin over 217 miles (350 km) away from the Chandrayaan-3 landing site.

The mineral findings are consistent with the idea that magnesium-rich rocks were scattered over the site before being mixed by further meteor impacts.

These findings are also important to the future of India's space research because they provide a basis for future observations.

Previously, the Indian space agency had made observations of the lunar surface from orbit on Chandryaan-1 and 2.

However, without measurements from the ground, interpreting those observations required some scientific guess work.

Beautiful: Image provided by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) taken by the Pragyan rover shows the Vikram lander. Photo released on August 30, 2023

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

27-08-2024 om 23:14 geschreven door peter  

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-08-2024 om 01:06 geschreven door peter  

Posted by Nancy Atkinson

NASA Decides to Play it Safe. Wilmore and Williams are Coming Home on a Crew Dragon in February

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will remain on board the International Space Station until February, returning to Earth on a SpaceX Crew Dragon. NASA announced its decision over the weekend, citing concerns about the safety of the Boeing Starliner capsule due to helium leaks and thruster issues. The troublesome Starliner is slated to undock from the ISS without a crew in early September and attempt to return on autopilot, landing in the New Mexico desert.

NASA said this allows them and Boeing to continue gathering test data on Starliner during its uncrewed flight home, while also not accepting more risk than necessary for the crew.

“Decisions like this are never easy, but I want to commend our NASA and Boeing teams for their thorough analysis, transparent discussions, and focus on safety during the Crew Flight Test,” Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate said in a NASA press release. “We’ve learned a lot about the spacecraft during its journey to the station and its docked operations. We also will continue to gather more data about Starliner during the uncrewed return and improve the system for future flights to the space station.”

Wilmore, 61, and Williams, 58, flew to the ISS in June on Starliner for the long-awaited Boeing Crew Flight Test. The two astronauts are not strangers to long-duration missions, as they have both served on ISS expeditions and they will now officially join the Expedition 71/72 crew on board the space station. Their ride home is scheduled to launch in late September with two astronauts instead of the usual four to make room for Wilmore and Williams to return home with the two Crew-9 members in February 2025.

“This has not been an easy decision, but it is absolutely the right one,” Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator said at the briefing on Saturday.

The decision is especially disappointing for Boeing, as the company has been plagued with problems with its airplanes and was counting on Starliner’s first crewed trip to revive the troubled spacecraft program, which has suffered years of delays due to issues with Starliner. The company had asserted Starliner was safe based on all the recent thruster tests both in space and on the ground.

While Boeing did not participate in Saturday’s news conference, they released a statement saying, “Boeing continues to focus, first and foremost, on the safety of the crew and spacecraft.” The company said it is preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful return.

NASA and Boeing identified the helium leaks during the flight to the ISS, and the thruster issues after the spacecraft experienced issues with its reaction control thrusters as Starliner approached the space station on June 6.

“Since then, engineering teams have completed a significant amount of work, including reviewing a collection of data, conducting flight and ground testing, hosting independent reviews with agency propulsion experts, and developing various return contingency plans,” NASA said in their press release. “The uncertainty and lack of expert concurrence does not meet the agency’s safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight, thus prompting NASA leadership to move the astronauts to the Crew-9 mission.”

The fact that Starliner will return home without a crew is not an issue, as is designed to operate autonomously and previously completed two uncrewed flights. This mission is the second time the Starliner has flown to the ISS and the third flight test overall. During the first uncrewed test flight (OFT-1), which took place back in December 2019, the Starliner launched successfully but failed to make it to the ISS because of software issues. After making 61 corrective actions recommended by NASA, another attempt was made (OFT-2) on May 22nd, 2022. That flight successfully docked to the ISS, staying there for four days before undocking and landing in the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

This first crewed flight of Starliner was supposed to validate the spacecraft as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP), with the hope of it working alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to make regular deliveries of cargo and crew to the ISS. The launched was delayed when parachute and other issues cropped up, including a helium leak in the capsule’s propellant system that scrubbed a launch attempt in May. The leak eventually was deemed to be isolated and small enough to pose no concern. But more leaks occurred following liftoff, and five thrusters also failed.

NASA and Boeing will work together to adjust end-of-mission planning and Starliner’s systems to set up for the uncrewed return in the coming weeks. Starliner must return to Earth before the Crew-9 mission launches to ensure a docking port is available on station.

“Starliner is a very capable spacecraft and, ultimately, this comes down to needing a higher level of certainty to perform a crewed return,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “The NASA and Boeing teams have completed a tremendous amount of testing and analysis, and this flight test is providing critical information on Starliner’s performance in space. Our efforts will help prepare for the uncrewed return and will greatly benefit future corrective actions for the spacecraft.”

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-08-2024 om 00:57 geschreven door peter  

It’s the first spacecraft ever to use the Earth and the Moon for a gravitational slingshot, and it captured some images to share with us.

JUICE stands for Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, and it’s on a mission to study three moons with suspected oceans buried under layers of ice. It’s got a long way to go, and on long-duration missions, economical use of propellant is critical. This Earth-lunar slingshot maneuver is all about saving propellant.

“The gravity assist flyby was flawless, everything went without a hitch, and we were thrilled to see Juice coming back so close to Earth,” says Ignacio Tanco, Spacecraft Operations Manager for the mission.

At its closest approach to Earth, JUICE passed overhead of Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean at only 6840 km (4250 miles) altitude. It was a risky maneuver but one that saved the mission between 100 and 150 kg of propellant.

This lunar-Earth flyby isn’t JUICE’s only gravity-assist maneuver. Next August, it will slingshot past Venus, and on September 26th and January 2029, it will slingshot past Earth. All these gravity-assist maneuvers will give JUICE momentum for its journey to Jupiter. JUICE will reach Jupiter in 2031, and because of all of these maneuvers it will have more propellant left when it gets there.

“Thanks to very precise navigation by ESA’s Flight Dynamics team, we managed to use only a tiny fraction of the propellant reserved for this flyby. This will add to the margins we keep for a rainy day, or to extend the science mission once we get to Jupiter,” said Ignacio Tanco, Spacecraft Operations Manager for the JUICE mission.

Modern orbiters bristle with science instruments, antennae, and cameras. JUICE is no exception. Among all its instruments and science cameras, it carries two monitoring cameras called JMCs, or JUICE Monitoring Cameras. They’re 1024×1024 pixel cameras with different fields of view. Their job is to monitor the spacecraft’s booms and antennae, and their job was especially critical when they were deployed after launch.

During the flyby, JUICE used its JMCs to capture images of the Earth and the Moon.

It also used eight of its ten instruments to collect scientific data from Earth and all ten for the Moon.

“The timing and location of this double flyby allows us to thoroughly study the behaviour of Juice’s instruments,” explains Claire Vallat, Juice Operations Scientist.

JUICE’s main science camera is JANUS, a high-resolution optical camera. Its role is to capture detailed images of the surface of Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. The JUICE team used JANUS to capture more than 400 preliminary views of the Earth and the Moon.

“After more than 12 years of work to propose, build and verify the instrument, this is the first opportunity to see first-hand data similar to those we will acquire in the Jupiter system starting in 2031,” says Pasquale Palumbo, a researcher at INAF in Rome and principal investigator of the team that designed, tested and calibrated the Janus camera.

“Even though the flyby was planned exclusively to facilitate the interplanetary journey to Jupiter, all the instruments on board the probe took advantage of the passage near the Moon and Earth to acquire data, test operations and processing techniques with the advantage of already knowing what we were observing,” said Palumbo.

These early-mission images are whetting our appetite for when the real fun starts in seven years. JUICE will reach the Jovian system in July 2031 and will do 35 flybys of the gas giant’s icy moons. Then, in December 2034, it will enter orbit around Ganymede.

There is growing evidence that Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto have warm, salty oceans buried under thick layers of ice. These are prime targets in our search for life. But, maddeningly, we don’t know for sure if they could support life or even if the oceans are real.

Hopefully, JUICE can tell us. But it can’t do that without these risky, early-mission maneuvers.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

27-08-2024 om 00:48 geschreven door peter  

A ‘Speckling of Stars’ At the Edge of the Milky Way Is Still Puzzling Astronomers

Leo A is small, dim and young.

by Doris Elín Urrutia

 

NASA, ESA, A. del Pino Molina (CEFCA), K. Gilbert and R. van der Marel (STScI), A. Cole (University of Tasmania);

Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

This “speckling of stars,” the European Space Agency wrote in 2016, forms a single entity. “The relatively open distribution of stars in this diminutive galaxy allows light from distant background galaxies to shine through,” NASA Goddard Space Flight Center officials wrote in Thursday’s image description.

This image comes from data Hubble took during four observation programs. Three of these looked at star formation and its history, in relatively nearby dwarf galaxies, including Leo A.

Although sparsely populated, Leo A’s stars have an order. They make a spherical shape in space. A pattern also emerged when astronomers peered at their ages.

The recent Hubble observations have revealed that Leo A’s younger stars are located in the middle, and they are older the farther they are from the dwarf galaxy’s center. This could offer clues about how galaxies evolve.

Perhaps stars formed from “the outside-in,” NASA wrote. Or, perhaps, older stars migrated towards the edges of Leo A.

But older is a relative term. According to NASA, “around 90 percent of the stars in Leo A are less than eight billion years old — young in cosmic terms!” Astronomers are puzzled about why this small galaxy, one of the most isolated galaxies in our local group of galaxies, didn’t form stars on a “usual” timescale.

“Instead,” NASA says, Leo A “waited until it was good and ready.”

{ https://www.inverse.com/ )

26-08-2024 om 20:51 geschreven door peter  

NASA’s Stranded Astronauts Have Another Major Problem — This Time With Their Spacesuits

The Boeing Starliner saga continues.

by Doris Elín Urrutia

 

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

If an emergency happens on the International Space Station (ISS) sometime in the next six weeks, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams may have to flee without the added safety of in-flight spacesuits.

At a media teleconference NASA held on August 14, agency officials said the spacesuits that Williams and Wilmore wore inside the Boeing Starliner are not compatible with other spacecraft.

This complicates NASA’s decision on whether the astronauts should fly home aboard Starliner or on a SpaceX vehicle. Starliner encountered technical problems shortly after it brought Wilmore and Williams into low-Earth orbit almost three months ago. If teams deem Starliner unfit to carry them back, they’d likely come home on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

The Dragon of the Crew-8 mission is in space now, but it is the contingency plan for Wilmore and Williams if Starliner isn’t suitable to carry them home, NASA officials said. To complicate matters, there aren't any spare SpaceX suits. Those arrive no earlier than September 24, when the Dragon of Crew-9 launches towards the ISS with two empty seats and two extra spacesuits.

If Starliner flies home uncrewed, and their Dragon Crew-9 rescue vessel hasn’t yet reached the station with its specific spacesuits in tow, Wilmore and Williams would have no choice but to enter the Crew-8 Dragon without spacesuits in an emergency situation.

That is, unless NASA decides Starliner will return with its crew after all. The space agency is expected to make a final decision about Starliner coming back to Earth empty, or with Wilmore and Williams inside, by the end of this month.

Why do spacesuits differ?

Onboard the orbiting laboratory, a spacesuit is not necessary. Regular clothing or a uniform suffices.

When astronauts make repairs outside the station, they wear extravehicular spacesuits to remain alive and tethered to the station during their spacewalk.

Another type of spacesuit is used when launching up towards the station, aborting a flight or landing back to Earth. These are sometimes referred to as intravehicular spacesuits — and they’re tailor-designed for the spacecraft the astronauts are riding. These indoor spacesuits provide an extra layer of protection. They’re an additional buffer from the potentially hazardous launch or reentry environments around them.

Why would Starliner undock without Wilmore and Williams?

Starliner suffered helium leaks and thruster anomalies not long after launching on June 5. Since the technical dilemmas began, the aerospace giant and the space agency continue to pore over data from a slew of tests to determine if Starliner will return to Earth with its test pilots onboard.

Although designed originally as an eight-day mission, their trip has now entered its 12th week.

{ https://www.inverse.com/ )

26-08-2024 om 20:44 geschreven door peter  

The two NASA astronauts stuck aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, won’t be coming home anytime soon. During a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center on Saturday, Aug. 24, NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced that the space agency was giving up on the idea of bringing Wilmore and Williams home aboard their balky Boeing Starliner spacecraft—which has been experiencing thruster problems since its launch on June 5. Instead, the Starliner will be flown home uncrewed, and Wilmore and Williams will hitch a ride back to Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, which will launch to the ISS in September for a five-month station stay, returning in February. This extends what was supposed to be an eight-day ISS rotation for Wilmore and Williams to a whopping eight months.

“NASA has worked very hard with Boeing to reach this decision,” Nelson said. “The decision is a result of a commitment to safety.”

The ruling rested on what NASA calls a flight readiness review (FRR). As agency brass explained at an Aug. 14 news conference, FRR’s are typically held before launch, when officials gather for a final go or no-go on the planned mission.

“We bring in representatives from all of the related centers, the technical authorities, the NASA engineering, and safety center flight operations,” explained Ken Bowersox, a former astronaut and an associate administrator for NASA’s space operations mission directorate. “We listen to the status of the mission, go through some special topics, and then we poll everybody at the end on whether or not they think we're ready to undertake the mission.”

On one occasion, that panel’s decision led to disaster. The FRR for the final mission of the space shuttle Challenger was held on Jan. 15, 1986, and the ship was cleared to launch. Thirteen days later, on Jan. 28, that liftoff took place, ending in a fuel tank explosion and the death of all seven crew members just 73 seconds after the ship left the pad. That tragedy, followed by the breakup of the shuttle Columbia and a similar loss of all hands on Feb. 1, 2003, left NASA much more risk-averse than it had been before.

Read More: 

• The Polaris Dawn Mission Opens a New Chapter in Private Space Flight

“We did not have the governance structure that we have today with technical authorities,” said Russ DeLoach, chief of NASA safety and mission assurance, during the earlier press conference. “So at that time, the program managers pretty much had near-unilateral decision making. And so if there were views that maybe a path we were taking was not correct, there was really no strong additional authority to step in and say, ‘Wait a minute.’”

That additional authority exists today, in the form of FRRs that take place mid-mission—though they often go by a different name: a mission risk acceptance forum. Whatever they’re called, the official panels are intended to bring the scrutiny of an FRR to bear at any point between the time a crew leaves the ground and the time they return to Earth. For the past several weeks, NASA has been under the gun to make such a decision about the hobbled Starliner—and to do it fast. The spacecraft’s batteries have a limited lifespan, and if the ship was not deemed fit to carry the crew home, it would have to fly back empty soon.

The FRR that resulted in the decision not to bring Wilmore and Williams home on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft was held on Aug. 23, and Nelson was very much in the loop. If there are dissenting opinions during the review, the decision goes first to Jim Free, NASA associate administrator. After him, Nelson could step in, and clearly he did.

Ahead of the decision being finalized, it was still possible that NASA could surprise the public—not to mention Wilmore and Williams—and announce that the stranded astronauts would be flying their dodgy Starliner home. But that was never likely. NASA’s institutional sorrow runs deep—back far before the Challenger and Columbia disasters, to the Jan. 27, 1967, launch pad fire that claimed the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, when they were conducting a dress rehearsal for the launch of their Apollo 1 spacecraft. Shortly after that tragedy, legendary flight director Gene Kranz gathered the grieving NASA staffers together for a grim but bracing post-mortem.

Read More: 

• Fly Me to the Moon Is a Lighthearted Conspiracy Romp. But It Speaks to a Spiritual Sickness

“From this day forward, flight control will be known by two words: Tough and competent,” Kranz said, chalking the words on a blackboard. “Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write ‘tough and competent’ on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room, these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.”

That price still stands. NASA could have decided to spare Boeing the embarrassment of flying their Starliner home empty, and Wilmore and Williams the ordeal of spending six more months in space, but that’s not the route the agency chose. Astronaut lives are on the line. A chastened NASA chose not to risk them again.

• Write to Jeffrey Kluger at jeffrey.kluger@time.com.

{ https://www.msn.com/en-us/channel/ }

25-08-2024 om 21:34 geschreven door peter  

Once astronomers began to map deep into the universe, however, the cosmic web could not be ignored. While some galaxies found their homes in the clusters, most inhabited long, thin filaments and broad walls. This cosmic web was defined by the voids, the vast regions of almost-nothing that dominate the volume of the universe.

The largest portions of the cosmic web are the superclusters. But unlike the clusters, they are not gravitationally bound. That means that the member galaxies in a supercluster have not yet finished their building project. The superclusters are still in the process of forming. This fact makes it difficult to pick out exactly what a supercluster is.

Recently astronomers have turned to dynamical definitions of a supercluster. This means that they don’t just consider the position in space of a particular galaxy, but also its movement. Since superclusters are in the process of continual construction, this method looks at what galaxies are trying to build.

This method allows astronomers to distinguish one supercluster from another, and that’s how we’ve recognized that the Virgo supercluster is just one individual branch of a much larger structure known as Laniakea, which contains an astounding 100,000 galaxies. And that is our home in the universe.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

25-08-2024 om 21:10 geschreven door peter  

Ever since the Apollo missions brought samples of lunar rocks and soil back to Earth for analysis, scientists have known that there is abundant water on the Moon. These findings were confirmed by several subsequent robotic sample-return missions, including China’s Chang’e-5 mission. However, much of this water consists of hydroxyl (OH) created through the interaction of solar wind (ionized hydrogen) and elemental oxygen in the regolith. There is also plenty of water in the form of ice that can be found in permanent shadowed regions (PSRs), such as the craters that cover the South Pole-Aitken Basin.

Unfortunately, lunar regolith contains very little hydroxyl that can be converted into water, ranging from 0.0001% to 0.02%. Moreover, the icy patches found in cratered regions are mixed with regolith, forming layers that extend beneath the surface. As such, extraction is a challenge regardless of where the water is coming from. After they examined the samples returned by the Chang’e-5 mission, the team led by Wang determined that the highest concentrations of water were contained in ilmenite (FeTiO₃), a titanium-iron oxide mineral found in lunar regolith.

According to the research team, this is due to “its unique lattice structure with sub-nanometer tunnels.” The team then conducted a series of in-situ heating experiments that revealed how hydrogen in lunar minerals could be used to produce water on the Moon. According to their study, the process consists of heating lunar regolith to temperatures exceeding 1,200 K (~930° C; 1700° F) with concave mirrors. This led to the formation of iron crystals and water bubbles in the material, the latter being released as water vapor. The chemical process is expressed mathematically as:

FeO/Fe₂O₃ + H –> Fe + H₂O.

The resulting water vapor is then reclaimed at a rate of 51-76 mg of water for every gram of lunar soil. That works out to 50 liters (13.2 gallons) of water for every ton of processed regolith, enough to sustain 50 people daily. As the team noted in their paper, “[t]his amount is ~10,000 times the naturally occurring hydroxyl (OH) and H₂O on the Moon.” In addition to drinking water, this process could provide the necessary irrigation water for growing crops, another important task for future lunar settlements to lessen their dependence on Earth.

This same process could be used to chemically separate hydrogen and oxygen gas from regolith, which could then be fashioned into propellant – liquid hydrogen (LH₂) and liquid oxygen (LOX) – or used as fuel and for maintaining supplies of breathable oxygen. “Our findings suggest that the hydrogen retained in [lunar regolith] is a significant resource for obtaining H2O on the Moon, which is helpful for establishing scientific research stations on the Moon,” they conclude.

Another benefit is that the process is driven almost entirely by focused sunlight, while solar arrays can provide the additional power that drives the retention process. The one limiting factor is that this process will only be possible during a lunar day in the southern polar region (where China, NASA, and the ESA plan to build their bases). This means that the facility could run for two weeks straight, followed by a two-week lull.

However, this can be mitigated by stationing processing facilities away from the polar regions or possibly creating a network of solar mirrors or satellites that can direct light toward the southern polar region. In any case, this method presents a potential means of harvesting water on the Moon that is cost-effective compared to heating regolith in industrial furnaces and could be paired with ice extraction and processing to ensure future settlements have plenty of water.

Further Reading: 

• NIMTE, 
• The Innovation

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

25-08-2024 om 21:04 geschreven door peter  

Super-Earths and Sub-Neptunes Contain Much More Water than Previously Thought

Water is an important component of exoplanets, with its distribution, that is, whether at the surface or deep inside, fundamentally influencing the planetary properties. According to new research, for Earth-size planets and planets more massive than 6 times the mass of Earth, the majority of water resides deep in the cores of planets.

The majority of water can be stored deep within the exoplanet’s core and mantle, and not at the surface.

Image credit: Sci.News.

“Most of the exoplanets known today are located close to their star,” said ETH Zurich’s Professor Caroline Dorn.

“This means they primarily comprise hot worlds of oceans of molten magma that have not yet cooled to form a solid mantle of silicate bedrock like the Earth.”

“Water dissolves very well in these magma oceans — unlike, for instance, carbon dioxide, which quickly outgasses and rises into the atmosphere.”

“The iron core is located beneath the molten mantle of silicates. So how is the water distributed between the silicates and the iron?”

“The iron core takes time to develop. A large share of the iron is initially contained in the hot magma soup in the form of droplets.”

“The water sequestered in this soup combines with these iron droplets and sinks with them to the core. The iron droplets behave like a lift that is conveyed downwards by the water.”

Until now this behavior had only been known to be the case for moderate pressures of the sort that also prevail in the Earth.

It was not known what happens in the case of larger planets with higher pressure interior conditions.

“This is one of the key results of our study,” Professor Dorn said.

“The larger the planet and the greater its mass, the more the water tends to go with the iron droplets and become integrated in the core.”

“Under certain circumstances, iron can absorb up to 70 times more water than silicates.”

“However, owing to the enormous pressure at the core, the water no longer takes the form of water molecules but is present in hydrogen and oxygen.”

This study was triggered by investigations of the Earth’s water content, which yielded a surprising result four years ago: the oceans on the Earth’s surface only contain a small fraction of our planet’s overall water.

The content of more than 80 of the Earth’s oceans could be hidden in its interior.

This is shown by simulations calculating how water behaves under conditions of the kind that prevailed when the Earth was young. Experiments and seismological measurements are accordingly compatible.

The new findings concerning the distribution of water in planets have dramatic consequences for the interpretation of astronomical observation data.

Using their telescopes in space and on the Earth, astronomers can under certain conditions measure the weight and size of an exoplanet.

They use these calculations to draw up mass-radius diagrams that permit conclusions to be drawn about the planet’s composition.

“If in doing so — as has been the case so far — the solubility and distribution of water are ignored, the volume of water can be dramatically underestimated by up to ten times,” Professor Dorn said.

“Planets are much more water-abundant than previously assumed.”

Water distribution is also important if we wish to understand how planets form and develop. The water that has sunk to the core remains trapped there forever.

However, the water dissolved in the magma ocean of the mantle can degas and rise to the surface during mantle cooling.

“So if we find water in a planet’s atmosphere, there is probably a great deal more in its interior,” Professor Dorn said.

Water is one of the preconditions for life to develop. There has long been speculation about the potential habitability of water-rich super-Earths.

Then calculations suggested that too much water could be hostile to life. The argument was that in these water worlds a layer of exotic high-pressure ice would prevent the exchange of vital substances at the interface between the ocean and the planet’s mantle.

The current study reaches a different conclusion: planets with deep water layers are likely to be a rare occurrence as most of the water on super-Earths is not located on the surface, as has been assumed until now, but is trapped within the core.

This leads the astronomers to assume that even planets with a relatively high water content could have the potential to develop Earth-like habitable conditions.

“Their study thus casts a new light on the potential existence of water-abundant worlds that could support life,” the authors said.

• The study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
• H. Luo et al. The interior as the dominant water reservoir in super-Earths and sub-Neptunes. Nat Astron, published online August 20, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41550-024-02347-z

{ https://www.sci.news/ }

24-08-2024 om 17:57 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE:  Only people with high IQ can solve stargazer test in 30 seconds

By Nikki Main Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com

An eye-popping video of seven suns taken from a hospital in China has captured the attention and baffled viewers around the world.

A woman was recording the sun’s descent over the horizon when something spectacular occurred - the image showed more than one sun in the sky.

However, the minute-long video which seemed like a cosmic miracle was actually an optical illusion created by the glass window through which it was filmed.

The phenomenon was caused by the light refracting through the window’s layered glass.

A woman in China captured an image of what appeared to be seven suns in the sky. The image was caused by refracted light through the paned glass window

The video was captured from the 11th floor of a hospital in Chengdu, China southwest of Sichuan on August 18, showing the sun duplicated with varying levels of intensity.

The woman who reportedly captured the video, known as Wang, said viewers were transfixed by the surreal display, according to Jam Press, as many have offered theories about how the phenomenon occurred.

‘This happened because of a magnetic field glitch that made parallel universes visibly manifest,’ one person wrote on the Chinese social media platform Weibo.

‘The Cosmic Bureau has fixed the issue, and those responsible have been reprimanded,’ they added.

Read More

• NASA's James Webb snaps two galaxies coming together to form image of a beloved animal 

Others argued on Reddit that the fragmented suns were a sign of ‘immense pollution’ in China and another person wrote: ‘The truth about global warming has finally been revealed.

Meanwhile, one person simply joked: ‘Will the real Sun shady please rise up?’ in a nod to rapper Eminem’s famed hit ‘The Real Slim Shady.’

However, one commenter did correctly address the question of how a video showed seven suns, writing: ‘This is caused by the reflection/refraction in glass in a multi-pane window. Light from the sun bounces between layers causing the distinct visual separation of the reflections.’

Similar to how you would see a reflection in a mirror, the light refracted and reflected off the layered glass, with each layer creating another copy of the image.

Except for the brightest sun in the center, which is the real one, the others are part of the optical illusion.

Although there is a scientific explanation for the seven suns, some people still preferred to believe that the spectacle fell under the story of Hou Yi.

In Chinese mythology, Hou Yi was portrayed as the god of archery who was sent from the Heavens to help humans.

He is said to have stopped 10 suns from burning up the earth and according to the tale, shot them down with his magic bows and arrows.

The tenth sun begged for its life and agreed to separate the day from the night as punishment for attempting to burn up the earth.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

24-08-2024 om 17:22 geschreven door peter