Space @ interstellar news

NOAA set to update space weather fleet BOSTON – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is preparing to update its aging space weather fleet with instruments to gather imagery of coronal mass ejection and monitor solar winds. Congress provided NOAA funding in the 2020 budget for Space Weather Follow On (SWFO), a satellite destined for Earth-Sun Lagrange Point 1. The Commerce Department also gave NOAA the green light in 2019 to begin procuring elements of SWFO, which is designed to carry on work performed by NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory launched in 2015 and the joint European Space Agency-NASA Solar and Heliophysics Observatory launched in 1995. SWFO, a small satellite, is scheduled to ride into orbit in 2024 as a secondary payload on the launch of NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), a heliophysics mission. The SWFO satellite will house the Naval Research Laboratory’s Compact Coronagraph and suite of instruments to measure solar win

NASA selects space science cubesat mission WASHINGTON — NASA announced March 30 it will fund the development of a cluster of six cubesats that will fly in formation above geostationary orbit to study solar storms. NASA said it selected for development the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) mission as a “mission of opportunity” for its heliophysics program. The mission, with a total cost of $62.6 million, will launch by July 2023. SunRISE will consist of six cubesats, each six units in size, just above geostationary orbit. The six cubesats, flying in a formation about ten kilometers across, will form a virtual radio telescope to detect and pinpoint emissions from the sun associated with solar storms. Those radio waves can’t be detected on Earth because of interference from the Earth’s ionosphere. Scientists believe such observations can help them better understand what solar activity can lead to major solar storms. “We can see a solar flare start, and a cor

In Exactly A Year Our Knowledge Of The Cosmos Will Change Forever. This Is The $10 Billion Reason In precisely one year—on Tuesday, March 30, 2021—the almost US$10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or “Webb” for short) will launch on a  European Ariane 5 rocket  from the Guiana Space Centre to the northwest of Kourou in French Guiana. The successor to the  Hubble Space Telescope , “Webb” will study the solar system, directly image exoplanets, photograph the first galaxies, and explore the mysteries of the  origins of the Universe. By detecting  infrared light, Webb will be able to look further back in time than any other telescope thus far. Webb is the most ambitious and complex space science telescope ever constructed, and tantalisingly soon it will the plaything of scientists … or, at least, that’s the plan. It’s highly possible. Originally conceived in the 1990s and at first expected to launch in 2007, Webb has been beset by delays—the latest being COVID-19—but

NASA AT HOME: Even in self-isolation, the universe can be yours TYLER, Texas (KETK) – If you’re having some difficulty with the self-isolation and social distancing we’re all called to practice now, then here’s some help from the folks who are experts at both. NASA has made history launching astronauts into the kind of isolation that most of us can’t imagine and hurling spacecraft across distances that dwarf 6 feet by orders of magnitude. So now the agency that put a  man on the moon , has a  spacecraft  in orbit around Jupiter, and is working on  returning astronauts to the Moon  as the first step toward Mars is offering to bring the universe it is constantly expanding into our homes. Parents, if you’re looking for ways to keep your young ones engaged during this enforced break from school, NASA has got you covered. It has put together a range of  resources and activities  for students of every age, focusing (naturally) on STEM, with videos, activities, crafts, and so m

NASA's Curiosity Rover Takes a Selfie on Mars — Here's How It Happened NASA’s Curiosity rover recently set a record for the steepest hill it’s ever climbed, and  to commemorate the achievement, the rover took a selfie — naturally. During its explorations of the red planet, Curiosity had to climb over the Greenheugh Pediment at a 31-degree tilt. The only other steep climb that had been previously done was completed by the Opportunity rover when it scaled a 32-degree hill on Mars in 2016. It took three drives, and was worth it,”  Curiosity ‘wrote’ on Twitter.  “Before I scaled the hill, I took this self-portrait.” But no normal selfie-stick snapshot would do for the Curiosity rover. The selfie is a 360-degree panorama stitched together from 86 images taken by a robotic arm. The photos were shot using a Mars Hand Lens Camera, or MAHLI, at the end of the robotic arm. The MAHLI is able to take close-up pictures of Mars’s sand grains and rock textures, similar to how

Uranus is losing its atmosphere because of its weird wobbly magnetic field Voyager 2 may have long ago left our solar system and  headed out into interstellar space  to explore the unknown, but scientists are still learning from the data it collected as it passed by the other planets in our system. A new analysis of 30-year-old data has revealed a surprising finding about the planet Uranus — the huge magnetic bubble surrounding it is siphoning its atmosphere off into space. Atmospheres being lost into space can have a profound effect on the development of a planet. As an example, Mars is thought to have started out as an  ocean-covered planet similar to Earth  but  lost its atmosphere over time . “Mars used to be a wet planet with a thick atmosphere,” Gina DiBraccio, space physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and project scientist for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN mission, said in a  statement . “It evolved over time to become the dry planet we

NASA Awards Artemis Contract for Gateway Logistics Services NASA has selected SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, as the first U.S. commercial provider under the Gateway Logistics Services contract to deliver cargo, experiments and other supplies to the agency’s  Gateway  in lunar orbit. The award is a significant step forward for NASA’s Artemis program that will land the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024 and build a sustainable human lunar presence. At the Moon, NASA and its partners will gain the experience necessary to mount a historic human mission to Mars. SpaceX will deliver critical pressurized and unpressurized cargo, science experiments and supplies to the Gateway, such as sample collection materials and other items the crew may need on the Gateway and during their expeditions on the lunar surface.  “This contract award is another critical piece of our plan to return to the Moon sustainably,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “The Gateway is the

The Reversed Changes in Southern Hemisphere Winds There have been changes in the atmospheric circulation in the Southern Hemisphere caused by the same chemicals that destroy the ozone layer that protects the Earth. A new study recently published in the  Nature journal reports that there has been a break in such changes, which could even reverse, thanks to the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty that successfully eradicated the use of ozone-depleting chemicals. Banerjee also works in NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Division. This study was started while she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University. The ozone hole was first discovered in 1985 and has been forming in the atmosphere high over Antarctica every spring. Due to ozone depletion, the air cools down, which strengthens the winds of the polar vortex and has an impact on the winds all the way down to the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Eventually, as a result of ozone depletion, the dry regions at the edge

NASA Data Shows Something Leaking Out of Uranus Ayy NASA scientists digging back through decades-old data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft have made an eyebrow-raising discovery: Something appeared to have been sucking  Uranus’ atmosphere  out into space. When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, it seems to have passed through something called a plasmoid — a gigantic blob of plasma, essentially — that escaped Uranus and likely pulled a giant gassy cloud of the planet’s  fart-like atmosphere  along with it,  Space.com  reports . Cosmic Wind Based on the data Voyager 2 collected as it flew through the planetary flatulence, NASA thinks that the plasmoid itself was about 127,000 miles long and twice as wide, according to  Space.com . And while the data,  first published in August  in the journal  Geophysical Research  Letters, can give NASA a better understanding of Uranus’ atmosphere, one gas bubble won’t tell them everything. “Imagine if one spacecraft just flew through t

10.9 Million Names Now Aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover As part of NASA's 'Send Your Name to Mars' campaign, they've been stenciled onto three microchips along with essays from NASA's 'Name the Rover' contest. Next stop: Mars. NASA's "Send Your Name to Mars" campaign invited people around the world to submit their names to ride aboard the agency's next rover to the Red Planet. Some 10,932,295 people did just that. The names were stenciled by electron beam onto three fingernail-sized silicon chips, along with the essays of the 155 finalists in NASA's  "Name the Rover" contest . The chips were then were attached to an aluminum plate on NASA's Perseverance Mars rover at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 16. Scheduled to launch this summer, Perseverance will land at Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. The three chips share space on the anodized plate with a laser-etched graphic depicting Earth and Mar

In space, at sea: tips on isolation from the pros Paris (AFP) With billions of people around the world suddenly adjusting to social distancing measures as part of the battle to slow the spread of COVID-19, some professionals who are used to confinement have some tips. From astronauts to submariners, here are some practical ways to boost your well-being and stave off cabin fever during those weeks stuck at home. - 'Have a schedule' - Scott Kelly, a retired NASA astronaut, spent nearly a year aboard the International Space Station. He told AFP that mindset was crucial. "People need to have the right expectation, we don't know when this is gonna be over," he said. "We could be in this for the long haul so your mindset needs to be: I'm living a similar thing to living in space for a year, I need to have a schedule, I need to get up at a regular time, to go to sleep at a regular time." He also said exercise was key

This Weird Shape Might Actually Be What Our Sun's Magnetic Bubble Looks Like Every planet in our Solar System, including our own, is enclosed in a  bubble of solar wind , emanating from our Sun at supersonic speeds. The particles making up this wind create an invisible magnetic field, which protects us from the rest of interstellar space. For decades now, astronomers have been analysing this system of radiation and magnetism known as a  heliosphere , mapping its boundaries in an effort to figure out what it looks like. A collaborative new model from experts at several different universities now suggests it's a weird amalgamation of pretty much all our theories.  For many years, scientists  thought  the heliosphere looked more like a comet or a wind sock, with a round nose at one end and a trailing tail at the other. This is how it is usually depicted in textbooks and articles, but in recent years, there are two other shapes that seem more likely.