NASA

Europa Clipper is on its way

It's a busy week for space enthusiasts (have you spotted Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS?). The long-anticipated Europa Clipper mission is officially underway. The craft launched Monday morning on a Falcon Heavy rocket, bound for that most beguiling of icy Jupiter moons, Europa. It will arrive at its destination in 2030 (!?! We seriously need faster spacecraft engines pronto - or engines that use much less fuel, thus are able to take more fuel and travel faster....)

Once there, Europa Clipper will hunt for organic chemicals on the icy surface, as well as other signs of a habitable environment and evidence for the ingredients of life. It will also characterize Europa's ice shell in detail. This work could identify good spots at which a life-hunting lander could touch down and operate - BUT IT WILL ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

...not yet.

Cartwheel Galaxy

The latest from the Webb Telescope:

“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has peered into the chaos of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing new details about star formation and the galaxy’s central black hole. Webb’s powerful infrared gaze produced this detailed image of the Cartwheel and two smaller companion galaxies against a backdrop of many other galaxies. This image provides a new view of how the Cartwheel Galaxy has changed over billions of years.”

https://www.nasa.gov/universe/webb-captures-stellar-gymnastics-in-the-cartwheel-galaxy/

Note: There are 3 versions of the image. The composite from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and the MIRI-only image are shown in the article, and the NIRI-only image is shown below and in this NASA tweet.

Saturn's Rings

It’s your periodic Cassini Appreciation Post (no, Cassi, it’s not about you!).

From Jason Major: “Here's a view of Saturn's rings made from images captured with Cassini on July 4, 2008. Prometheus is visible inside the F ring at the bottom; the even smaller Atlas is on the left along the outer edge of the A ring. Saturn's shadow falls across the rings at upper right.”

Odysseus

For the first time in 52 years, an American craft has landed on the moon. And for the first time EVER, it's a private, commercial craft. The company is Intuitive Machines, and the craft is Odysseus.

It was a "spicy" landing, in the words of IM's CEO. As the target landing time neared, they realized that its laser rangefinders weren't working properly. So they implemented a workaround to get the required altitude and velocity data, pressing into service an experimental NASA instrument aboard Odysseus called NDL ("Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing)."

The team delayed the planned touchdown by two hours to make the fix, which required them to beam a software patch to Odysseus from mission control in Houston. That is a heroic effort and an incredible achievement by the engineers at IM.

Now, Odysseus IS somewhat...sideways. See the pic for the adorable reenactment IM performed at the press conference yesterday. But slightly off-kilter or not, the craft is very much alive and doing science. It's solar panels are exposed and drawing power, virtually all of its payloads are accessible, and nothing got crushed. IM expects the craft to operate for several days before it loses that precious sunlight needed to power it.

This mission was part of a NASA initiative called the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, or CLPS, in which the space agency is paying private companies to deliver science experiments and other cargo to the lunar surface. (The failed Astrobotic Peregrine mission last month was the first CLPS mission, and there are I think 7 more scheduled over the next 18 months.)

Odysseur landed at the lunar south pole, which is about to be the hottest real estate in space, for one reason: water!

Link to a great article about the mission and the landing: https://www.universetoday.com/165864/odysseus-moon-lander-is-tipped-over-but-still-sending-data/

And a fascinating article out today with a behind-the-scenes look at the people at Intuitive Machines who saved the mission over and over again: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/

The Spirals

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning new series of near- and mid-infrared images that depict 19 nearby spiral galaxies in vivid detail.

The achievement provides a level of clarity and detail in the new imagery that offers astronomers unprecedented insights into the structure and dynamics of this group of celestial bodies.

Read much more about these images here: https://thedebrief.org/james-webb-space-telescope-captures-amazing-new-images-of-19-distant-spiral-galaxies/. And download high res versions of your favorite galaxies from the mosaic on Webb’s Flikr page.

That'll do, Ingenuity. That'll do.

Who's ready to cry over another anthropomorphized space robot? * raises hand *

Ingenuity's incredible Martian mission has come to an end. It was intended as a technology "proof of concept," with a mission span of 30 days and a max of 5 test flights. Many believed the little helicopter wouldn't fly at all in the thin Martian atmosphere.

Instead, it flew 72 missions in 3 years, traversing over 11 miles and reaching as high as 79 feet in the air. It flew in treacherous terrain, dealt with a dead sensor, cleaned itself off after dust storms, operated from 48 different airfields, performed three emergency landings, and survived a frigid Martian winter. Through all that, it wormed its way into our hearts and inspired our imagination.

On January 18th, it sustained rotor damage during landing and lost contact with Perseverance and NASA. Communications were re-established the next day, and imagery revealed damage to one of its blades severe enough to render it unable to take off again.

With such an amazing performance that silenced every doubter, Ingenuity is only the first craft to fly on Mars; it will not be the last.

That'll do, Ingenuity. That'll do.

Learn more here: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/after-three-years-on-mars-nasas-ingenuity-helicopter-mission-ends

Io's Close-Up

On December 30, NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter for the better part of a decade, made its closest flyby of Io, the innermost moon in the Jovian system.

The spacecraft came to within 930 miles (1,500 km) of the surface of Io, a dense moon that is the fourth largest in the Solar System. Unlike a lot of moons around Jupiter and Saturn, which have surface ice or subsurface water, Io is a very dry world. It is also extremely geologically active. Io has more than 400 active volcanoes and is therefore an object of great interest to astronomers and planetary scientists.

Read more about the flyby here.

Webb's Incredible View of Cassiopeia A

Isn’t this just an astonishing image? We thought we knew Cassiopeia A, but we were wrong.

“Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) view of Cas A displays a very violent explosion at a resolution previously unreachable at these wavelengths. This high-resolution look unveils intricate details of the expanding shell of material slamming into the gas shed by the star before it exploded.” Learn much more about the image and the history of our study of Cas A, go here: https://esawebb.org/news/weic2330/

The Rhapsody of Space

See what I did there? ;)

From NASA: “For millennia, musicians have looked to the heavens for inspiration. Now a new collaboration is enabling actual data from NASA telescopes to be used as the basis for original music that can be played by humans.

Since 2020, the “sonification” project at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center has translated the digital data taken by telescopes into notes and sounds. This process allows the listener to experience the data through the sense of hearing instead of seeing it as images, a more common way to present astronomical data.

A new phase of the sonification project takes the data into different territory. Working with composer Sophie Kastner, the team has developed versions of the data that can be played by musicians.”

Listen and learn more here.

Jupiter In Ultraviolet

This newly released image from the NASA Hubble Space Telescope shows the planet Jupiter in a color composite of ultraviolet wavelengths. Released in honor of Jupiter reaching opposition, which occurs when the planet and the Sun are in opposite sides of the sky, this view of the gas giant planet includes the iconic, massive storm called the “Great Red Spot.” Though the storm appears red to the human eye, in this ultraviolet image it appears darker because high altitude haze particles absorb light at these wavelengths. The reddish, wavy polar hazes are absorbing slightly less of this light due to differences in either particle size, composition, or altitude. 

For more, go here: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-provides-unique-ultraviolet-view-of-jupiter/

Webb's Stunning Infrared View of the Crab Nebula

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gazed at the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Since the recording of this energetic event in 1054 CE by 11th-century astronomers, the Crab Nebula has continued to draw attention and additional study as scientists seek to understand the conditions, behavior, and after-effects of supernovae through thorough study of the Crab, a relatively nearby example.

Now exquisite, never-before-seen details help unravel the supernova remnant’s puzzling history. For more, go here: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/the-crab-nebula-seen-in-new-light-by-nasas-webb/

Webb's Spectacular View of M51

How incredibly lucky we are to have the Webb telescope in our lives, bringing us incredible images like this one! Damn, I love space.

What is it, besides breathtaking? M51, a nearby spiral galaxy (close enough to spot with binoculars if conditions are right), taken by Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument.

See the article by the always great Phil Plait for all sorts of details on how the image was captured and what it actually shows us: https://badastronomy.substack.com/p/jwsts-view-of-the-magnificently-dusty

Protostar

From Webb’s newest observation:

Herbig-Haro (HH) objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars, formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shock waves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. This image of HH 211 from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals an outflow from a Class 0 protostar, an infantile analog of our Sun when it was no more than a few tens of thousands of years old and with a mass only 8% of the present-day Sun (it will eventually grow into a star like the Sun).

The image showcases a series of bow shocks to the southeast (lower-left) and northwest (upper-right) as well as the narrow bipolar jet that powers them. Webb reveals this scene in unprecedented detail — roughly 5 to 10 times higher spatial resolution than any previous images of HH 211. The inner jet is seen to “wiggle” with mirror symmetry on either side of the central protostar. This is in agreement with observations on smaller scales and suggests that the protostar may in fact be an unresolved binary star.

Learn more: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-s-webb-snaps-supersonic-outflow-of-young-star

Cassiopeia A

Damn. The wonder of the universe, that a single star can create such powerful beauty.

Webb is having a * stellar * week. A new mid-infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provides one stunning example. It shows the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A), created by a stellar explosion 340 years ago from Earth’s perspective.. Cas A is the youngest known remnant from an exploding, massive star in our galaxy, which makes it a unique opportunity to learn more about how such supernovae occur. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-reveals-never-before-seen-details-in-cassiopeia-a

Originally posted on Twitter.

Sunrise on Mars

Stunning morning clouds over Jezero Crater, captured by the Perseverance rover’s NavCams on March 18 (Sol 738). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Kevin M. Gill

As Professor of Physics Brian Cox so eloquently said: “A beautiful photograph of clouds in the Martian sky, 200 years after the first photograph was taken and just over a century after the first powered flight. We can do wonderful things when we put our minds to it.”

High-res version: https://flic.kr/p/2onS6xJ

Originally posted on Twitter.