Space and astronomy news
Scientists and engineers for the James Webb Space Telescope revealed that since its deployment in space, the telescope has been struck at least five times by micrometeroids, with one recent strike by an object that was larger than what pre-launch models suggested that the telescope would likely encounter.
Continue reading “JWST was Recently Hit by a Surprisingly Large Micrometeoroid”
On May 23, 2022, the Juno spacecraft made another close pass of Jupiter, with its suite of scientific instruments collecting data and its JunoCam visible light camera snapping photos all the while. This close pass, called a perijove, is the 42nd time the spacecraft has swung past Jupiter since Juno’s arrival in 2016.
Continue reading “Juno’s Entire 42nd Flight Past Jupiter in One Amazing Mosaic”
While the Mars InSight lander is still waiting for a passing dust devil to clean off its solar panels, it appears the Perseverance rover sees dust devils several times a day.
A new paper detailing the first 216 days of Perseverance’s mission in Jezero Crater reports how the newest rover on Mars appears to be located in a “dust storm track” that runs north to south across the planet. Jezero Crater has particularly high levels of dust and wind activity.
Continue reading “Perseverance is Seeing A LOT of Dust Devils”
Two peculiar spiral galaxies are in the latest image release from the Hubble Space Telescope. The two galaxies, collectively known as Arp 303, are located about 275 million light-years away from Earth. IC 563 is the odd-shaped galaxy on the bottom right while IC 564 is a flocculent spiral at the top left.
Fittingly, these two oddball galaxies are part of the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, which is a catalog of unusual galaxies produced by astronomer Halton Arp in 1966. He put together a total of 338 galaxies for his atlas, which was originally published in 1966 by the California Institute of Technology.
Continue reading “Hubble Sees Two Spiral Galaxies Together”
Now less than one year until the projected launch date, ESA’s JUICE mission is in the final phases of development. The JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) is now fully built with all ten instruments integrated into the spacecraft bus. Next comes all-up testing in a full flight configuration.
Launch is currently scheduled for April of 2023, with the mission slated to conduct detailed investigations of Jupiter and its system of moons, focusing on Europa, Callisto and especially Ganymede.
Continue reading “ESA's Juice Mission is Fully Integrated and Ready for Testing. Soon it'll fly to Space on a Mission to Jupiter's Moons”
Here’s Hubble doing what Hubble does best.
Some of the Hubble Space Telescope’s most famous and stunning images are of distant galaxies, and this one is drop-dead gorgeous too.
Continue reading “Gaze Into the Heart of a Grand Spiral Galaxy”
NASA is planning a mission to demonstrate the ability to repair and upgrade satellites in Earth orbit. The mission, called OSAM-1 (On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing-1), will send a robotic spacecraft equipped with robotic arms and all the tools and equipment needed to fix, refuel or extend satellites’ lifespans, even if those satellites were not designed to be serviced on orbit.
Continue reading “NASA is Building a Mission That Will Refuel and Repair Satellites in Orbit”
If you were able to witness the lunar eclipse on May 15-16, 2022, the view of the dark red Moon was stunning. But what would such an eclipse look like from space?
Wonder no longer. ESA/Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti captured a series of photos of the lunar eclipse from her unique vantage point aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Continue reading “The Lunar Eclipse, Seen From the International Space Station”
The InSight Mars lander will cease science operations sometime in the next few months due to a decreasing power supply, mission managers said at a news conference on May 17. Martian dust covering the solar panels has reduced the amount of power to roughly 500 watt-hours per Mars day or sol. When InSight landed in November of 2018, the solar panels produced around 5,000 watt-hours each sol.
“At the end of the calendar year, we do anticipate having to conclude all InSight operations,” said Kathya Zamora Garcia, InSight’s deputy project manager said at the briefing, “not because we want to turn it off but unfortunately we don’t have the energy to run it.”
Continue reading “InSight is Losing Power, it Probably Will be Shut Down in a Few Months”
On July 7, 2020, the X-ray instrument eROSITA captured an astronomical event that – until then – had only been theorized and never seen. It saw the detonation of a nova on a white dwarf star, which produced a so-called fireball explosion of X-rays.
“It was to some extent a fortunate coincidence, really,” said Ole König from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), who led the team of scientists who have published a new paper on the discovery. “These X-ray flashes last only a few hours and are almost impossible to predict, but the observational instrument must be pointed directly at the explosion at exactly the right time.”
Continue reading “Astronomers Finally Catch a Nova Detonating on a White Dwarf as it's Happening”