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Comet Nishimura photobombs NASA spacecraft after its close encounter with the sun
Sep 20, 2023
The recently discovered Comet Nishimura has surprised scientists by photobombing a NASA spacecraft as it took images of the sun.
Comet Nishimura, also known as C/2023 P1, which appears to have recently survived a close encounter with the sun, was seen by one of two Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft — STEREO-A — as it took images of the sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, on Sept. 19.
The STEREO images show the comet moving away from the sun and seem to imply that the comet survived its brush with the star on Sept. 17, when it reached its closest point to the sun, or "perihelion," and passed within 20.5 million miles (33 million km) of it.
"So yes, the object you see in those STEREO-A/HI1 observations is indeed comet Nishimura. At the time of writing, the most recent image shows it appears pretty healthy at-a-glance," Karl Battams, an astrophysicist with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, told Space.com by email.
Battams said that at the moment, from these preliminary images, Nishimura looks how scientists would expect an intact comet to look, but noted that he is wary of drawing any meaningful conclusions about how it is holding together after being heated by the sun.
"First, it's crucial to keep in mind that the images you're seeing right now are what we call our 'beacon' images," Battams continued. "These are low cadence, ultra-low resolution images, designed to just give a near-real-time snapshot of what the camera is seeing."
According to Battams, it will be late on Thursday (Sept. 21) before the team gets their first look at the comet in much better resolution, and even then, it might not fully reveal the fate of the comet.
"My mind goes back to comet Lovejoy in 2011, which appeared quite healthy as it flew right through the solar corona, only to then disintegrate a couple of weeks later," he added. "The same, ultimately destructive, processes could certainly be happening here, and we simply wouldn't know it. Thus, the high-res data might clue us in a bit, but not even that gives us any fine details on what's happening behind the glare of the bright tail and coma."
With a few days of science data under their belts, the team will still be able to look at the brightness of Nishimura to see if that yields any clues or surprises. "That only tells part of the story," Battams added. "Ultimately, we just have to wait this out and see what happens, but of course, I very much hope it remains a happy and healthy comet!"
Throughout the images captured by STEREO, it is clear to see Nishimura is moving downwards in relation to the spacecraft as it moves away from the sun. This trajectory will continue until it moves out of the field of view of the NASA observatory in early October, according to Battams.
The comet is also moving away from the spacecraft, so it will likely grow smaller and fainter in the images delivered by STEREO over the coming days. As of Sept. 20, it was about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from STEREO-A and by Oct. 1, the comet and the NASA craft will be separated by a distance of 130 million miles (209 million km).
"Folks trying to interpret the comet's health from this data will need to appreciate the changing viewing geometry, as well as the fact that we'd naturally expect it to start fading as it recedes from the sun," Battams pointed out.
It is lucky that STEREO caught an image of the comet; it was missed by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and its LASCO coronagraph, which studies the outer atmosphere of the sun.
"Sadly, this one managed to avoid the SOHO/LASCO field of view," Battams concluded. "We may have or may get, observations from some of our other spacecraft or instruments, but nothing that returns data in real-time like SOHO and STEREO."
After it escapes the view of STEREO in October, comet Nishimura will continue to make its way back to the outer edges of the solar system. The comet, discovered on Aug. 12 as it brightened while hurtling toward the sun, will next return to the inner solar system Earth and the sun in 2458 thanks to its estimated 435-year-long orbit.
https://www.space.com/comet-nishimura-photobombs-sun-spacecraft
India tries waking up Chandrayaan-3 moon lander, without success (so far)
Sep 22, 2023
Engineers at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) have begun attempts to wake the Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander and rover from hibernation after the two-week frosty lunar night.
On Friday (Sept. 22), ISRO said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that it has made attempts "to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover to ascertain their wake-up condition."
So far, the engineers haven't heard back from the iconic duo, the first two human-made objects to land in the moon's south polar region.
"Efforts to establish contact will continue," ISRO said in the post.
Chandrayaan-3 landed near the lunar south pole on Aug. 23, making India only the fourth nation in history to stick a lunar landing, after the U.S., Russia and China.
In the two weeks that followed, Pragyan explored the landing site, beaming images back to Earth, while Vikram performed a set of scientific experiments including measuring the temperature of the top layer of the lunar regolith. The probe also analyzed the chemical composition of the lunar dust and found traces of sulfur, which might hold clues to past volcanic activity.
The Pragyan rover was put to sleep on Sept. 2, when all of its instruments were turned off. The Vikram lander followed suit two days later. The mission completed its primary mission goals, but ISRO hopes that the two spacecraft may have been able to survive the frosty lunar night.
Chandrayaan-3 was India's second attempt to land on the moon. The mission's predecessor, Chandrayaan-2, crashed in 2019 due to a software glitch. The Chandrayaan-2 orbiter, however, is still studying the moon from lunar orbit.
https://www.space.com/india-tries-waking-up-chandrayaan-3-moon-lander-rover
https://twitter.com/isro/status/1705209835783078092?
NASA’s Webb Finds Carbon Source on Surface of Jupiter’s Moon Europa
Sep 21, 2023
Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of a handful of worlds in our solar system that could potentially harbor conditions suitable for life. Previous research has shown that beneath its water-ice crust lies a salty ocean of liquid water with a rocky seafloor. However, planetary scientists had not confirmed if that ocean contained the chemicals needed for life, particularly carbon.
Astronomers using data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have identified carbon dioxide in a specific region on the icy surface of Europa. Analysis indicates that this carbon likely originated in the subsurface ocean and was not delivered by meteorites or other external sources. Moreover, it was deposited on a geologically recent timescale. This discovery has important implications for the potential habitability of Europa’s ocean.
“On Earth, life likes chemical diversity – the more diversity, the better. We’re carbon-based life. Understanding the chemistry of Europa’s ocean will help us determine whether it’s hostile to life as we know it, or if it might be a good place for life,” said Geronimo Villanueva of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of one of two independent papers describing the findings.
“We now think that we have observational evidence that the carbon we see on Europa’s surface came from the ocean. That's not a trivial thing. Carbon is a biologically essential element,” added Samantha Trumbo of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, lead author of the second paper analyzing these data.
NASA plans to launch its Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will perform dozens of close flybys of Europa to further investigate whether it could have conditions suitable for life, in October 2024.
A Surface-Ocean Connection
Webb finds that on Europa’s surface, carbon dioxide is most abundant in a region called Tara Regio – a geologically young area of generally resurfaced terrain known as “chaos terrain.” The surface ice has been disrupted, and there likely has been an exchange of material between the subsurface ocean and the icy surface.
“Previous observations from the Hubble Space Telescope show evidence for ocean-derived salt in Tara Regio,” explained Trumbo. “Now we’re seeing that carbon dioxide is heavily concentrated there as well. We think this implies that the carbon probably has its ultimate origin in the internal ocean.”
“Scientists are debating how much Europa’s ocean connects to its surface. I think that question has been a big driver of Europa exploration,” said Villanueva. “This suggests that we may be able to learn some basic things about the ocean’s composition even before we drill through the ice to get the full picture.”
Both teams identified the carbon dioxide using data from the integral field unit of Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). This instrument mode provides spectra with a resolution of 200 x 200 miles (320 x 320 kilometers) on the surface of Europa, which has a diameter of 1,944 miles, allowing astronomers to determine where specific chemicals are located.
Carbon dioxide isn’t stable on Europa’s surface. Therefore, the scientists say it’s likely that it was supplied on a geologically recent timescale – a conclusion bolstered by its concentration in a region of young terrain.
“These observations only took a few minutes of the observatory’s time,” said Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, a Webb interdisciplinary scientist leading Webb’s Cycle 1 Guaranteed Time Observations of the solar system. “Even with this short period of time, we were able to do really big science. This work gives a first hint of all the amazing solar system science we’ll be able to do with Webb.”
Searching for a Plume
Villanueva’s team also looked for evidence of a plume of water vapor erupting from Europa’s surface. Researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reported tentative detections of plumes in 2013, 2016, and 2017. However, finding definitive proof has been difficult.
The new Webb data shows no evidence of plume activity, which allowed Villanueva’s team to set a strict upper limit on the rate of material potentially being ejected. The team stressed, however, that their non-detection does not rule out a plume.
“There is always a possibility that these plumes are variable and that you can only see them at certain times. All we can say with 100% confidence is that we did not detect a plume at Europa when we made these observations with Webb,” said Hammel.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/nasa-s-webb-finds-carbon-source-on-surface-of-jupiter-s-moon-europa
Oops! US Space Force may have accidentally punched a hole in the upper atmosphere
Thu, September 21, 2023 at 7:27 AM PDT
A rocket carrying a U.S. Space Force satellite into orbit may have punched a hole in Earth's upper atmosphere, after lifting off with just 27 hours' notice — a new record for the shortest amount of time from getting the go-ahead to actually launching.
Firefly Aerospace, a company contracted by Space Force, launched one of its Alpha rockets from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Sept. 14 at 10:28 p.m. local time, Live Science's sister site Space.com reported. The launch was not publicized or live-streamed, making it a complete surprise to the space exploration community.
The rocket was carrying Space Force's Victus Nox satellite (Latin for "conquer the night"), which will run a "space domain awareness" mission to help Space Force keep tabs on what is happening in the orbital environment.
The surprise rocket initially caught people's eye after creating an enormous exhaust plume that could be seen from more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away. But after the plume dissipated, a faint red glow remained in the sky, which is a telltale sign that the rocket created a hole in the ionosphere — the part of Earth's atmosphere where gases are ionized, which stretches between 50 and 400 miles (80 and 645 km) above Earth's surface — Spaceweather.com reported.
This is not the first "ionospheric hole" observed this year. In July, the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket created an enormous blood-red patch above Arizona that could be seen for hundreds of miles.
Rockets create ionospheric holes when fuel from their second stages burns in the middle part of the ionosphere, between 125 and 185 miles (200 and 300 km) above Earth's surface, Live Science previously reported. At this height, the carbon dioxide and water vapor from the rocket's exhaust cause ionized oxygen atoms to recombine, or form back into normal oxygen molecules. This process excites the molecules and leads them to emit energy in the form of light. This is similar to how auroras form, except the dancing lights are caused by solar radiation heating up gases rather than their recombination.
The holes pose no threat to people on Earth's surface and naturally close up within a few hours as the recombined gases get re-ionized.
Firefly Aerospace was awarded the Victus Nox contract in October 2022 but was told that it would have to launch the satellite at an unknown point in the future with less than 24 hours' warning. To accomplish this, the launch team had to update the rocket's trajectory software, encapsulate the satellite, get the satellite to the launch pad, place it in the rocket and go through the final checks within that time, according to a company statement. Even then, bad weather meant they had to launch later than planned.
The aim of the mission was to "demonstrate the United States' ability to rapidly place an asset in orbit when and where we need it, ensuring we can augment our space capabilities with very little notice," Lt. Col. MacKenzie Birchenough, an officer with Space Force's Space Systems Command, said last year when the mission was first announced.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/oops-us-space-force-may-142706243.html
Government's secret UFO dump: Border security quietly releases tranche of 10 videos of mysterious 'craft' whizzing around US skies - as ex-intelligence officer says they are a THREAT
UPDATED: 20:15 EDT, 22 September 2023
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US Customs and Border Protection quietly fulfilled a UFO FOIA request
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CBP's release includes 10 videos 'pertaining to Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon'
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The mysterious release also includes 389-pages of partially redacted records
A tranche of UFO videos — including never-before-seen footage — has been quietly released by federal law enforcement.
US Customs and Border Protection, the agency responsible for keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the country, uploaded 10 videos that appear to show craft moving in strange ways in our skies.
The videos were released on August 9 without warning, a press release or much in the way of context, only to be discovered by UFO enthusiasts and online sleuths earlier this week.
The videos document a fighter jet pursued by an apparently baffling flying orb, as well as something that appears to be a propeller-powered hang-glider, and yet another apparent floating orb, hovering this time near a parked 16-wheeler truck.
But the enigmatic nature of the drop — which offered little detail regarding the times and locations of these sightings, plus more than a few sweeping redactions — has left more questions than answers.
The quiet video drop follows rising tensions within the corridors of power in Washington on the once taboo subject of UFOs.
Open congressional hearings, federal legislation and even brand new government offices have now been dedicated openly to the investigation of these aerial mysteries, with at least one former senior US intelligence official calling the strange sightings 'a national security issue.'
The videos were released on a dedicated site for agency records made public via requests under the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
But perhaps most significantly, the release confirms, at least tacitly, the veracity of a heavily-scrutinized, 2013 thermal UFO video leaked to UFO researchers in 2015.
For the first time since that leak, the April 25, 2013 Aguadilla, Puerto Rico UFO video first investigated by the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies has now been confirmed by the US government as genuinely unidentified.
Asked by NBC News, Chris Mellon, a former official with the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, described the release as 'very significant.'
'This will help the public understand what our military personnel are encountering all over the world,' Mellon said.
'We're getting, on the Defense Department side, 50 to 100 [UFO] reports per month — and this is happening globally.'
'It's happening overseas. It's happening off the east coast and the west coast,' he elaborated. 'This will help people better understand why Congress takes the issue seriously [and] why it's a national security issue.'
While Mellon praised US Customs' show of openness and transparency with the official release of these 10 videos, America's dedicated community of UFO skeptics were less impressed.
Mick West, a prolific and dedicated examiner of UFO claims and the owner of the skeptics forum Metabunk, described the videos as 'mostly not new.'
'And those that are new are not particularly interesting,' West told the DailyMail.com, noting that several had already been the subject of unofficial leaks to reporters and researchers on the UFO beat.
West, a retired computer programmer and video game designer, described the first of US Customs' UAP videos as something that 'looks like a microlight aircraft.'
Several others, he noted, appeared to be 'ambiguous white dots, […] a balloon or a plastic bag.'
The second video, West said, was the so-called 'Rubber Duck' UAP, which the noted skeptic devoted considerable time to investigating on his YouTube channel and in Metabunk's forum back in 2021.
West identified CBP video 9 as the 'infamous 'Aguadilla' video,' which he has argued reveals a thermal signature 'consistent with a pair of wedding lanterns drifting in the wind.'
West has taken the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU) to task for errors located in an Appendix to their lengthy report on the Aguadilla case, but at least according to the SCU's co-founder, engineer Robert Powell, those errors do not undermine the remainder of his team's assessment.
'The report does not depend on Appendix L,' Powell told the DailyMail.com, stating that West did not have an answer for why floating wedding lanterns would veer from west to north, as the Aguadilla UFO is recorded doing in the video's final moments.
'The second reason it's not Chinese lanterns,' according to Powel, 'is that Chinese lanterns can't survive the wind speeds that were occurring that day. The wind speeds were around 13 miles an hour.'
'It's basically a little candle that sits on these little wires, and you've got a very light [plastic or paper] bag around it,' Powell said. 'Heavy winds will collapse the outside of your Chinese lantern.'
Whatever the mystery of Aguadilla proves to be, US Customs' 10 videos were not the only agency records quietly released this August under FOIA.
The agency's official confirmation of these previously only leaked thermal videos and security recordings were also accompanied by a 389-page PDF document, ostensibly of UAP records held internally by US Customs.
While the paperwork includes much chaff — news clippings, and already public government reports — the FOIA drop also included internal emails detailing internal deliberations on the law enforcement agency's UFO cases.
Several agency emails from August 2021, document an exchange between a UFO enthusiast and his superior regarding efforts to comply with spirit of the then-recent congressional legislation on UFOs and the resulting UAP Task Force report.
'As a pet project, or for fun, do all the research you want,' the redacted official wrote to the CBP's equivalent to X-Files FBI agent Fox Mulder. 'I know this topic is of great interest to you and there's a ton of information to sift through.'
'There just isn't an avenue for any formal research or reporting any type of findings or conclusions,' the redacted official stressed.
The also-redacted CPB employee responded, 'T4… I apologize, and took The Director of National Intelligence's UAP report seriously.'
But the release also includes over two dozen tantalizing pages that have been redacted in their entirety.
Per statute, each page lists the legal exemption under which US CBP is permitted to withhold certain records relevant to an open records request.
The majority of these redactions, in this case, were justified under the b(5) and b(7)e exemptions clauses of federal FOIA law.
Investigative reporters and open government advocates have dubbed the b(5) exemption the 'The Withhold It Because You Want To Exemption' as its guidelines were even described by the US Justice Department as 'opaque.'
The b(7)e exemption pertains effectively to law enforcement's own 'sources and methods,' as it withholds details that would 'disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions' and other material that officials believe 'could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law.'
To this end, several of the released videos have notably redacted the majority of the heads-up-display information from US CBP's infrared or thermal video recordings: which would likely include data on the altitude, bearing and range of these UAP.
All summer long, a sweltering UFO fever has gripped Washington DC, stoked in no small measure by a series of extraordinary claims and revelations from lawmakers, former US intelligence and Navy personnel.
This past June, charges of an illegal, hidden UFO crash retrieval program operating within the shadows exploded across television airwaves and online as made by Air Force and intelligence agency veteran David Grusch.
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Soon thereafter, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Marco Rubio revealed he too had been briefed by several other US government officials with top-level security clearances, who professed that they personally had 'first-hand' knowledge of UFO programs.
By late July, Grusch was reasserting many of his claims under oath before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, along with Ryan Graves, an esteemed former pilot, and veteran Navy fighter pilot Commander David Fravor, who witnessed the now famous 2004 'Tic Tac' UFO.
In his further comments on the new CPB videos, former DOD intelligence official Chris Mellon hoped that the newly official US Customs videos would spur the Pentagon toward greater transparency itself.
Mellon noted that these mysterious UFO videos highlight 'the challenges we are facing monitoring and controlling our airspace.'
He cited both last February's infamous Chinese spy balloon affair (and still-as-yet-unidentified UAP), and 'of course the explosion of drone use around the world,' as examples of the new threats to US sovereignty posed by the weak official reporting and widespread stigma surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena.
'I hope that the Defense Department and [US] Intelligence Community are paying attention,' Mellon told NBC.
'They have many videos that are of a similar, unclassified nature,' he noted, 'or were, until they — out of nowhere — created this new classification guide.'
Echoing comments by Grusch on the legality of the Pentagon's actions, Mellon went on to express the opinion that the DoD's new and more expansive classification standards for its own UAP or UFO videos might not be 'lawful.'
'I don't think that's consistent with the executive order governing classification,' the former intelligence official said. 'But they are withholding a lot of similar kinds of videos from the public on that basis.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12550205/New-ufo-videos-released-government.html
https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2023-Aug/Records%20pertaining%20to%20Unidentified%20Aerial%20Phenomenon.pdf
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