NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

April 19, 2024

The Great Carina Nebula

A jewel of the southern sky, the Great Carina Nebula is more modestly known as NGC 3372. One of our Galaxy's largest star forming regions, it spans over 300 light-years. Like the smaller, more northerly Great Orion Nebula, the Carina Nebula is easily visible to the unaided eye. But at a distance of 7,500 light-years it lies some 5 times farther away. This stunning telescopic view reveals remarkable details of the region's glowing filaments of interstellar gas and obscuring cosmic dust clouds. The Carina Nebula is home to young, extremely massive stars, including the still enigmatic variable Eta Carinae, a star with well over 100 times the mass of the Sun. Eta Carinae is the bright star above the central dark notch in this field and left of the dusty Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324).

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?

Hubble Captures a Bright Galactic and Stellar Duo

APR 19, 2024

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features NGC 3783, a bright barred spiral galaxy about 130 million light-years from Earth that also lends its name to the eponymous NGC 3783 galaxy group. Like galaxy clusters, galaxy groups are aggregates of gravitationally bound galaxies. Galaxy groups, however, are less massive and contain fewer members than galaxy clusters do: whereas galaxy clusters can contain hundreds or even thousands of constituent galaxies, galaxy groups do not typically include more than 50. The Milky Way is actually part of a galaxy group, known as the Local Group, which also holds two other large galaxies (Andromeda and the Triangulum galaxy), as well as several dozen satellite and dwarf galaxies. The NGC 3783 galaxy group contains 47 galaxies. It also seems to be at a fairly early stage of its evolution, making it an interesting object to study.

While the focus of this image is the spiral galaxy NGC 3783, the eye is equally drawn to the very bright object in the lower right part of this image. This is the star HD 101274. The perspective in this image makes the star and the galaxy look like close companions, but this is an illusion. HD 101274 lies only about 1,530 light-years from Earth, it is about 85,000 times closer than NGC 3783. This explains how a single star can appear to outshine an entire galaxy!

NGC 3783 is a type-1 Seyfert galaxy, which is a galaxy with a bright central region. Hubble captures it in incredible detail, from its glowing central bar to its narrow, winding arms and the dust threaded through them, thanks to five separate images taken in different wavelengths of light. In fact, the galactic center is so bright that it exhibits diffraction spikes, normally only seen on stars such as HD 101274.

https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble-captures-a-bright-galactic-and-stellar-duo/

Water Touches Everything

April 18, 2024

Real satellite imagery from NASA’s Terra, Aqua, and Landsat missions takes the shape of whales and swirling clouds in the agency’s Earth Day 2024 poster, “Water Touches Everything.”

The major ocean basins – Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, Indian, and Southern – shape our planet’s climate and weather by absorbing, storing, and moving heat, water, and carbon dioxide. For nearly five decades, NASA missions have enabled researchers to observe from above and measure changes in the ocean across days, months, seasons, and years. Scientists use our satellite and sub-orbital data and climate models to study ocean dynamics, sea level rise, hydrological cycles, marine life, and the intersections of land and sea.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/water-touches-everything/

https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-day/earth-day-poster-2024/

Two NASA Sounding Rockets Launch from Alaska During Solar Flare

APR 18, 2024

Two Black Brant IX sounding rockets launched from Poker Flat Research Range in Fairbanks, Alaska, April 17, 2024, during an M-class solar flare for NASA’s sounding rocket solar flare campaign. The first rocket launched at 2:13 p.m. local Alaska time for the Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager (FOXSI) mission that used X-ray vision to observe the Sun during the solar flare event by focusing directly on high-energy X-rays. The second rocket launched at 2:14 p.m. for the High Resolution Coronal Imager, or Hi-C, mission designed to observe a large, active region in the Sun’s corona. The rockets reached altitudes up to 168 miles (271 km) and were able to successfully observe the solar flare.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/two-nasa-sounding-rockets-launch-from-alaska-during-solar-flare/

NASA’s Juno Gives Aerial Views of Mountain, Lava Lake on Io

APR 18, 2024

Scientists on NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter have transformed data collected during two recent flybys of Io into animations that highlight two of the Jovian moon’s most dramatic features: a mountain and an almost glass-smooth lake of cooling lava. Other recent science results from the solar-powered spacecraft include updates on Jupiter’s polar cyclones and water abundance.

The new findings were announced Wednesday, April 16, by Juno’s principal investigator Scott Bolton during a news conference at the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna.

Juno made extremely close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, getting within about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of the surface, obtaining the first close-up images of the moon’s northern latitudes.

“Io is simply littered with volcanoes, and we caught a few of them in action,” said Bolton. “We also got some great close-ups and other data on a 200-kilometer-long (127-mile-long) lava lake called Loki Patera. There is amazing detail showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The specular reflection our instruments recorded of the lake suggests parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.”

Maps generated with data collected by Juno’s Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument reveal Io not only has a surface that is relatively smooth compared to Jupiter’s other Galilean moons, but also has poles that are colder than middle latitudes.

Pole Position

During Juno’s extended mission, the spacecraft flies closer to the north pole of Jupiter with each pass. This changing orientation allows the MWR instrument to improve its resolution of Jupiter’s northern polar cyclones. The data allows multiwavelength comparisons of the poles, revealing that not all polar cyclones are created equal.

“Perhaps most striking example of this disparity can be found with the central cyclone at Jupiter’s north pole,” said Steve Levin, Juno’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It is clearly visible in both infrared and visible light images, but its microwave signature is nowhere near as strong as other nearby storms. This tells us that its subsurface structure must be very different from these other cyclones. The MWR team continues to collect more and better microwave data with every orbit, so we anticipate developing a more detailed 3D map of these intriguing polar storms.”

Jovian Water

One of the mission’s primary science goals is to collect data that could help scientists better understand Jupiter’s water abundance. To do this, the Juno science team isn’t hunting for liquid water. Instead, they are looking to quantify the presence of oxygen and hydrogen molecules (the molecules that make up water) in Jupiter’s atmosphere. An accurate estimate is critical to piecing together the puzzle of our solar system’s formation.

Jupiter was likely the first planet to form, and it contains most of the gas and dust that wasn’t incorporated into the Sun. Water abundance also has important implications for the gas giant’s meteorology (including how wind currents flow on Jupiter) and internal structure.

cont.

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/juno/nasas-juno-gives-aerial-views-of-mountain-lava-lake-on-io/

Inside The World’s First Civil Space Traffic Coordination System

April 19, 2024

Government IT projects are known for being challenging, and one of the biggest currently underway is the US effort to forge a civil space traffic coordination platform.

It’s been nearly six years since the Trump administration made the decision to transfer US space coordination out of the military, but now the Commerce Department is hiring contractors and tapping companies for pathfinder demonstrations. The goal is to begin implementing the system by the end of the fiscal year.

The Traffic Coordination System for Space (aka TraCSS) is designed to rely on minimal government infrastructure. It will run on the AWS cloud, and a $15.5M system integrator contract was awarded to Parsons Corporation this month. Meanwhile, a pathfinder project is now demoing data collection and fusion from a handful of SSA companies.

“The idea for the Pathfinder project was born to move away from the paradigm of, ‘you have a pilot project, and suddenly a big giant thing comes right after that,’ which from my experience as an engineer, that’s not how scaling works,” explained Christine Joseph, a policy advisor in NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce who works on the project. “How do we actually be a good government customer when we do the long-term sustained project contract for what plugs and plays into the operational system?“

The final piece of the infrastructure puzzle is up next: What is the user experience, not just for satellite operators, but also for OSC staff and the general public? How will satellite operators pull data from APIs, or message each other? Those demonstrations wrapped up this week.

Safety first: OSC’s agile acquisition process is intended to save money, but it will have to be careful to avoid replacing commercial SSA companies. An ongoing back-and-forth between vendors and OSC has helped the organization work toward defining the specific safety metrics needed.

“As we’re peeling away the layers of the onion of all the different things that DoD is doing and what’s necessary for space flight safety, we’re gonna keep evaluating what that scope of SSA basic safety services is going to be,” Joseph said. “We’re not trying to get into business optimization for your entire fleet.”

Obtaining orbital traffic data (and keeping it secure and continuously available) is just part of the challenge. The formatting of orbital tracking data is under scrutiny to ensure clear communication among the multiple stakeholders here, and OSC is planning another pathfinder focused on getting the best data from satellite operators into the system.

Talking to the neighbors: Another new development at TraCSS is its plan for global coordination, announced April 8.

“We are not the only SSA capability out there being developed,” Joseph says.”We have to avoid the situation where a satellite operator gets a [Conjunction Data Message] from TraCSS and gets a CDM from Japan or the EUSST, and it’s conflicting information. How do we avoid chaos for the operator?”

One tricky conversation will be coordination with China, which operates a growing number of spacecraft and plans to launch large LEO constellations.

“There is a high need for coordination with China and we are very open to working with the right parties there,” Joseph said.

Needs must: Part of the delay in standing up a civil STM system can be attributed to Congress, which took a few years to appropriate the funds to start the hand-over process. The Biden administration asked for $75.6M for OSC in this year’s budget.

But TraCSS also needs statutory support: It still doesn’t have Congressional authority to do its job. The National Space Council has asked Congress to give OSC similar authorities for coordination that the DoD has now.

The other challenge—even with minimal government infrastructure—is that hiring is a bear. It’s not just budgets and bureaucratic inertia. “This is a very specific type of mission and it sometimes feels like a startup in the middle of government, and there’s a particular type of energy needed for that,” Joseph says.

https://payloadspace.com/inside-the-worlds-first-civil-space-traffic-coordination-system/

FAA to require reentry vehicles licensed before launch

April 18, 2024

The Federal Aviation Administration is revising its licensing regulations to prevent a repeat of a situation last year where a spacecraft launched without approvals to return.

In a notice published in the Federal Register April 17, the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation announced it will no longer approve the launch of spacecraft designed to reenter unless they already have a reentry license. The office said that it will, going forward, check that a spacecraft designed to return to Earth has a reentry license as part of the standard payload review process.

In the notice, the FAA said that decision was linked to safety concerns of allowing spacecraft to launch without approvals to return. “Unlike typical payloads designed to operate in outer space, a reentry vehicle has primary components that are designed to withstand reentry substantially intact and therefore have a near-guaranteed ground impact as a result of either a controlled reentry or a random reentry,” it states.

The FAA stated that an uncontrolled reentry, such as one that would occur if a controlled reentry is not authorized, “will likely result in risks above those accepted for FAA licensed-reentry operations.”

“Therefore, it is crucial to evaluate the safety of the reentry prior to launch,” the agency concluded in the notice. “This way, the FAA is able to work with the reentry operator to meet the required risk and other criteria.”

The notice did not state what prompted the change. However, it comes after Varda Space Industries launched its first spacecraft in June 2023 but did not get a reentry license for it until February after months of effort and an earlier, rejected reentry license application. Varda’s capsule safely landed at the Utah Test and Training Range a week after receiving the license.

In an April 10 briefing at the 39th Space Symposium, Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, said that policy changes were planned given the experience with Varda.

“We did allow them to launch on a SpaceX Falcon vehicle without a reentry license,” he said of Varda. “There were some lessons that we learned from that. We will probably shortly have a policy statement that will come out from our office that will speak to reentry and how we will tackle that challenge of companies needing to have their reentry licenses prior to launch.”

In the case of Varda’s mission last year, he said the company was under a tight schedule for their launch, so the FAA allowed the company to launch “at risk” without a reentry license. “We probably won’t let companies launch at risk because there’s some things from a public safety standpoint that we learned from the Varda experience.”

“Last year, FAA gave Varda formal, written permission to launch W-1 and Varda complied with all requirements in place to do so,” the company said in a statement to SpaceNews. “Once FAA issued a license early this year, our flight-proven reentry system safely and successfully landed at the Utah Test and Training Range. Varda will continue working with FAA and other federal regulators as their policies regarding reentry operations continue to evolve.”

Commercial spacecraft reentries remain rare. The FAA currently lists only two active reentry licenses, one for Varda and the other for SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft. However, the FAA expects demand for those licenses to increase as more companies seek to return cargo or crew from space.

“We’re seeing more and more companies want to do that,” Coleman said. “I expect to see a ramp up, which is why we have to really get out in front and clarify our policies around reentry and what’s needed prior to launch.”

One example if that growing interest is another startup, Inversion, which announced April 17 it would launch its first reentry vehicle on SpaceX’s Transporter-12 mission, currently planned for October. That tech demo spacecraft, called Ray, will perform tests in orbit before being commanded to perform a controlled reentry and splash down off the California coast. Inversion did not disclose the status of its licensing efforts for that mission.

https://spacenews.com/faa-to-require-reentry-vehicles-licensed-before-launch/

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/17/2024-08156/launch-of-a-reentry-vehicle-as-a-payload-that-requires-a-reentry-authorization-to-return-to-earth