Month: February 2019

  • NASA wants to get to the moon ‘as fast as possible.’ But countries like China and India are racing there, too.

    Screen Shot 2019-02-27 at 11.49.22 AM

     A Chinese space probe landed on the far side of the moon, a historic first landing on a mission seen as an important step for China's space program. (Reuters)
    During the height of the Space Age, the United States and the Soviet Union bushwhacked a frantic path to the lunar surface, landing nearly 20 spacecraft softly on the moon between 1966 and 1976, including the six carrying NASA’s Apollo astronauts.But after the last of these missions, a robotic Soviet probe that brought back six ounces of lunar soil, Earth’s closest neighbor was virtually abandoned. The public and politicians lost interest.Click here for the complete article:

    February 14

  • ‘FarFarOut’: astronomer finds potential furthest object in solar system

    Screen Shot 2019-02-26 at 11.27.20 AMMystery shrouds ‘very faint’ planetary body that appears to be 140 times further from the sun than Earth

    Artist’s depiction of the solar system. Photograph: Nasa/JPL-Caltech

    by Nicola Davis of The Guardian

    A new object has been discovered in the distant reaches of our solar system and given the name FarFarOut, according to a prominent astronomer.

    At 140 times further away from the sun than our own planet is, the newly identified body – if its discovery is confirmed – will become the furthest known object in our solar system.

    The current record holder – a dwarf planet at 120 times the Earth-sun distance – was named merely FarOut when it was spotted by the same team in December last year.

    The latest discovery was made by Dr Scott Sheppard, of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington DC, who with his team is working on analysing astronomical data to track down a much mooted but as yet unspotted body known as Planet Nine, thought to have 10 times the mass of Earth.

    Sheppard said he made the discovery of FarFarOut when a lecture he was due to give on his team’s work was postponed and he went back to analysing his data.

    “This is hot off the presses,” he said, giving his rescheduled lecture in Washington DC on Thursday. “Yesterday it snowed so I had nothing to do so I went looking through some of our data.”

    He said FarFarOut was somewhat mysterious. “It is very faint; it is on the edge of our ability to detect it,” Sheppard said. “We don’t know anything about the orbit of this object, we just know it is far, far out.”

    Sheppard said further observations were in the offing to shed more light on the find.

  • In Colliding Galaxies, a Pipsqueak Shines Bright

    PIA23005-16Bright green sources of high-energy X-ray light captured by NASA's NuSTAR mission are overlaid on an optical-light image of the Whirlpool galaxy (in the center of the image) and its companion galaxy, M51b (the bright greenish-white spot above the Whirlpool), taken by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech, IPAC

    Click here for the full story:

  • Celebrate 60 years of NASA in photos

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    A man walks by newspapers published the day after the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon. The collection is displayed at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

    We scoured the space agency's archives for the most interesting moments (and it was hard to choose!)

    Click here for the whole article and pictures:

  • US astronomers plot wish list for the next decade

    d41586-019-00172-3_16400386The Hubble telescope, which captured this iconic image of a region in the constellation Ursa Major, was a top priority of a past decadal survey.Credit: NASA/ESA/University of California Santa Cruz/Leiden University/The HUDF09 Team

    Survey to set field’s priorities is haunted by ghosts of past efforts.

    16 January 2019
    NEWS

    Alexandra Witze of Nature

    Click here for the complete story:

  • White spots on Ceres are evidence of ancient ice volcanoes erupting

    Ceres white spot

    This mosaic from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, of Cerealia Facula combines images obtained from altitudes as low as 22 miles (35 kilometers) above Ceres’ surface. NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI

    NASA’s Dawn spacecraft went dark last year, but data collected by the craft is continuing to be used to make discoveries about the dwarf planet Ceres that it orbited.

    Ceres is an object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter with a radius of 473 kilometers (294 miles). This makes it too small to be considered a proper planet but far larger than most asteroids, so it is therefore categorized as a dwarf planet, like Pluto. Ceres is the largest object in its asteroid belt which made it a good target for study, and astronomers have long been interested in its dramatic terrain.

    The Dawn mission captured detailed images of the surface of Ceres which show craters and mountains, and even suggest that the planet may still be active. Now a team is studying this data in depth to learn more about one of the stranger findings on the planet: bright white spots at the bottom of impact craters.

    These spots are the remnants of cryomagma, salty water from underground reservoirs which is moved up to the surface of the planet in a process similar to the movement of magma in a volcano. These ice volcanoes, called cryovolcanoes, form on bodies with icy shells like Ceres or Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter, and are believed to be important for mixing chemicals to create the kinds of complex molecules which are needed for life.

    “Cryovolcanism looks to be a really important system as we look for life,” lead author Marc Hesse, associate professor at the Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, said in a statement. “So we’re trying to understand these ice shells and how they behave.”

    As the white spots were found within craters, this suggests that the cryomagma reservoirs could have been created by powerful asteroid impacts millions of years ago which generated heat and energy to “jumpstart the geology” in the region. When over time fractures formed in the surface, the cryomagma pushed its way up and reached the surface before drying out to leave a deposit of bright white salt on the planet.

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    This image of a bright crater on Ceres was obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on July 17, 2018 from an altitude of about 25 miles (41 kilometers). NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
    15-027-ceres-gif-650.0Ceres, as photographed from about 29,000 miles away by the Dawn spacecraft, (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)
  • The robotic trailblazer's mission comes to an end after more than 14 years on Mars. Goodnight, Oppy.

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    A NASA illustration shows what Opportunity would look like on Mars.  NASA/JPL/Cornell University

    February 13, 2019 3:00 PM PST

  • NASA Selects New Mission to Explore Origins of Universe

    spherex20190213-16NASA's Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission is targeted to launch in 2023. SPHEREx will help astronomers understand both how our universe evolved and how common are the ingredients for life in our galaxy's planetary systems. Credits: Caltech

    NASA has selected a new space mission that will help astronomers understand both how our universe evolved and how common are the ingredients for life in our galaxy's planetary systems.

    The Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission is a planned two-year mission funded at $242 million (not including launch costs) and targeted to launch in 2023.

    "I'm really excited about this new mission," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "Not only does it expand the United States' powerful fleet of space-based missions dedicated to uncovering the mysteries of the universe, it is a critical part of a balanced science program that includes missions of various sizes."

    SPHEREx will survey the sky in optical as well as near-infrared light which, though not visible to the human eye, serves as a powerful tool for answering cosmic questions. Astronomers will use the mission to gather data on more than 300 million galaxies, as well as more than 100 million stars in our own Milky Way.

    "This amazing mission will be a treasure trove of unique data for astronomers," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "It will deliver an unprecedented galactic map containing 'fingerprints' from the first moments in the universe's history. And we'll have new clues to one of the greatest mysteries in science: What made the universe expand so quickly less than a nanosecond after the big bang?"

    SPHEREx will survey hundreds of millions of galaxies near and far, some so distant their light has taken 10 billion years to reach Earth. In the Milky Way, the mission will search for water and organic molecules - essentials for life, as we know it - in stellar nurseries, regions where stars are born from gas and dust, as well as disks around stars where new planets could be forming.

    Every six months, SPHEREx will survey the entire sky using technologies adapted from Earth satellites and Mars spacecraft. The mission will create a map of the entire sky in 96 different color bands, far exceeding the color resolution of previous all-sky maps. It also will identify targets for more detailed study by future missions, such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope.

    NASA's Astrophysics Explorers Program requested proposals for new missions in September 2016. Nine proposals were submitted, and two mission concepts were selected for further study in August 2017. After a detailed review by a panel of NASA and external scientists and engineers, NASA determined that the SPHEREx concept study offered the best science potential and most feasible development plan.

    The mission's principal investigator is James Bock of Caltech in Pasadena, California. Caltech will work with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop the mission payload. JPL will also manage the mission.

    Ball Aerospace in Broomfield, Colorado, will provide the SPHEREx spacecraft and mission integration. The Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute in Daejeon, Republic of Korea, will contribute test equipment and science analysis.

    NASA's Explorer program, managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the agency's oldest continuous program, designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space using principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the Astrophysics and Heliophysics programs in NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

    The program has launched more than 90 missions, beginning in 1958 with Explorer 1, which discovered the Earth's radiation belts. Another Explorer mission, theCosmic Background Explorer, which launched in 1989, led to a Nobel Prize.

    More information about the Explorer program is available online at:

    https://explorers.gsfc.nasa.gov

  • Sailors spread the ancient fashion for monuments like Stonehenge

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    The origins of megaliths like Stonehenge have been a mysteryAndrew Roland / Alamy Stock Photo

    By Alison George

    Thousands of ancient stone structures, such as Stonehenge, are found throughout Europe. Now a long-standing puzzle of where the practise originated and how it spread has been solved.

    Over the last century there have been two main views on the origins of the stone structures, known as megaliths. One was that they started from a single source then spread over sea routes. The other was that megalith construction developed independently in different locations.

    To find out which was correct, Schulz Paulsson of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and colleagues analysed the dates from over 2000 megaliths in Europe. They used statistical methods to narrow down previous estimations and get a better picture of where they built and in what order.

    The team found that megalith construction started in a single location in northwest France over a period of 200-300 years around 4500 BC. The tradition then spread through Europe spanning 2,000 years along the sea routes of the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, concentrated in coastal regions.

    Stone Age Sailors

    The pattern of how the megaliths spread over time also hints that societies developed sophisticated sea-faring technology, far earlier than previously thought.

    “They were moving over the seaway, taking long distance journeys along the coasts,” says Schulz Paulsson. This fits with other research she has carried out on megalithic art in Brittany, which shows engravings of many boats, some large enough for a crew of 12.

    The previous view was that large boats capable of travelling long distance were only developed in the Bronze Age, some 2000 years later.

    More than 35,000 megaliths such as stone circles and underground passage graves still exist throughout Europe, from Sardinia to Scandinavia.

    “There were probably a lot more. This is just a small proportion of what was originally there in the landscape,” says Schulz Paulsson.

    Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ,