NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

April 29, 2024

Comet, Planet, Moon

Three bright objects satisfied seasoned stargazers of the western sky just after sunset earlier this month. The most familiar was the Moon, seen on the upper left in a crescent phase. The rest of the Moon was faintly visible by sunlight first reflected by the Earth. The bright planet Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, is seen to the upper left. Most unusual was Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks, below the Moon and showing a stubby dust tail on the right but an impressive ion tail extending upwards. The featured image, a composite of several images taken consecutively at the same location and with the same camera, was taken near the village of Llers, in Spain's Girona province. Comet Pons-Brooks passed its closest to the Sun last week and is now dimming as it moves into southern skies and returns to the outer Solar System.

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

Hubble Space Telescope Finds ‘Complex’ Galaxy in Virgo Cluster

Apr 29, 2024

IC 776 is located approximately 100 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Virgo.

Otherwise known as ALFALFA 3-210, LEDA 39613 or UGC 7352, this galaxy was discovered on May 4, 1893 by the French astronomer Stéphane Javelle.

IC 776 is a member of the Virgo Cluster, the closest and best-studied great cluster of galaxies.

While a dwarf galaxy, it’s also been classified as an SAB-type or ‘weakly barred’ spiral, one study naming it a ‘complex case’ in morphology.

“This highly detailed view from Hubble demonstrates that complexity well,” the Hubble astronomers said in a statement.

“IC 776 has a ragged, disturbed disk that nevertheless looks to spiral around the core, and arcs of star-forming regions.”

The color image of IC 776 was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and near-infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).

Two filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.

“This image is from an observation program dedicated to the study of dwarf galaxies in the Virgo cluster, searching for sources of X-rays in such galaxies,” the researchers said.

“X-rays are often emitted by accretion disks, where material that is drawn into a compact object by gravity crashes together and forms a hot, glowing disk.”

“The compact object can be a white dwarf or neutron star in a binary pair, stealing material from its companion star, or it can be the supermassive black hole at the heart of a galaxy, devouring all around it.”

“Dwarf galaxies like IC 776, traveling through the Virgo cluster, experience a pressure from the intergalactic gas which can both stimulate star formation and feed the central black hole in a galaxy,” they added.

“That can create energetic accretion disks, hot enough to emit X-rays.”

“While Hubble is not able to see X-rays, it can coordinate with X-ray telescopes such as NASA’s Chandra, revealing the sources of this radiation in high resolution using visible light.”

“Dwarf galaxies are thought to be very important for our understanding of cosmology and the evolution of galaxies.”

“As with many areas of astronomy, the ability to examine these galaxies across the electromagnetic spectrum is critical to their study.”

https://www.sci.news/astronomy/hubble-complex-galaxy-virgo-cluster-12889.html#google_vignette

Saudi Arabia seeks to bolster space credentials through WEF partnership

Apr 29, 2024

Saudi Arabia will partner with the World Economic Forum for the creation of an entity called the Centre of Space Futures, which will be hosted by the Saudi Space Agency.

The centre will be a part of WEF’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution network (C4IR), a future-oriented platform for dialogue and co-operation that seeks to make the most of technology to transform economies and societies among various countries and regions.

It is the first C4IR segment to focus solely on space exploration and research.

“Today is a remarkable day for us at the Saudi Space Agency,” said Mohammed Al Tamimi, chief executive of the Saudi Space Agency.

“This will help to establish a global platform to engage both private and public sector in space discussions,” he told a news conference on the second day of the World Economic Forum’s special meeting in Riyadh.

“We’re going to make sure we come together to make sure we engage in the space economy.”

While rising geopolitical tensions took centre stage at the WEF special meetings, themes of global collaboration, growth and energy were also in the discussion mix, along with space travel and digital health care.

Mr Al Tamimi spoke about the need for collaboration, particularly between the private and public sector in the space sector.

“We strongly believe in Saudi Arabia in the commitment that the space economy is the collaborative economy, and we have to make sure that it flourishes … we need well-crafted policies, when you go to the private sector they want their voice to be heard to adopt new technology through balanced regulation to access the space industry,” he said.

Jeremy Jurgens, managing director of the World Economic Forum, also reflected on the space partnership with Saudi Arabia.

“From monitoring the effects of climate change to increasing human connectivity via satellites, the impact of the global space sector on Earth cannot be overstated,” said Mr Jurgens.

“The addition of the Centre for Space Futures into the C4IR network recognises the importance of addressing various topics, such as space technological innovation, policies and regulatory, as well as sustainability.”

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has sought to bolster its efforts on space research and space travel.

In 2023, the kingdom made history when Saudi astronaut Rayyanah Barnawi became the first Arab woman to go on a space mission, as part of a private endeavor by Axiom Space, a Houston company.

Ms Barnawi was joined by another Saudi astronaut, Ali Al Qarni, on an eight-day mission to the International Space Station. They were the first Saudis to go to space since 1985.

Following Ms Barnawi and Mr Al Qarni’s visit to the International Space Station, Saudi Arabia announced a scholarship programme with hopes that it would encourage more young people in the kingdom to pursue space, science and engineering careers.

Saudi Arabia's recent efforts in the space sector can be traced back to 2016, when the kingdom announced its Vision 2030 goals to diversity the economy away from oil and reduce the unemployment rate among Saudi citizens.

Mr Al Tamimi spoke about the potential economic impact of being a major player the space sector.

“We want to diversify our economy,” he said. “We're looking for a strategic sectors with expected high-growth returns, one of those sectors is the space economy.”

https://www.thenationalnews.com/future/space/2024/04/29/saudi-arabia-seeks-to-bolster-space-credentials-through-wef-partnership/

NASA seeks input on space technology shortfalls

April 29, 2024

NASA is seeking public input on how to prioritize nearly 200 topics in space technology to improve how it invests limited funding on them.

The agency has released a list of 187 “technology shortfalls,” or topics where current technology requires additional development to meet NASA’s future needs. The shortfalls are in 20 areas ranging from space transportation and life support to power and thermal management.

Through a website, the agency is inviting people to review the listed technologies and rate their importance through May 13. NASA will use that input to help prioritize those technologies for future investment to bridge the shortfalls.

This is part of an effort by the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) to provide a more rigorous approach to how it supports technology development. “NASA has gotten into a battle rhythm with our stakeholders where we are setting our priorities more in the space of the activities that we’re engaging in and not, initially, about the problem space: the problems that we are solving,” said Kurt “Spuds” Vogel, NASA associate administrator for space technology, at an April 23 meeting of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium.

The old approach, he said, runs the risk of turning NASA’s space technology program into a “hobby shop,” he said, subject to whims from policymakers. “That’s the wrong focus.”

By prioritizing technology shortfalls, he argued NASA will be better able to invest its funding on the most important ones. “We’re level of effort. That means we do not have a budget to tackle all of these problems all at once, so we have to prioritize the limited dollars that we are blessed with to attack the problems that are most important to our stakeholders.”

Through this process, people will be able to rate the importance of some or all of the technology shortfalls NASA has identified. They can also list technologies they think should be included or identify those shortfalls that they believe have already been solved.

NASA will use the input from that process, as well as a separate internal agency effort, to develop a ranked list of technologies. That should be ready by this summer, said Alesyn Lowry, director of strategic planning and integration at STMD, at a separate presentation at the meeting April 24.

While NASA will not release individual inputs, it does plan to disclose how different stakeholder groups in industry and academia ranked technologies. But Vogel emphasized the public inputs will be just one factor in the overall prioritization.

“It’s a tool, not the tool,” he said, describing the inputs as part of an “audit trail” used to link technologies to problems. “It’s going to influence what we do, but we’re going to make the final decisions.”

The number of shortfalls could change in future years based on the inputs to this shortfall analysis, he said, going up or down. Vogel said he expected NASA to update the prioritization annually. “The first year or two is going to be where most of the changes are going to happen. After that it will smooth out, and you’ll see it as a tool you can use in a similar way we’re going to use it as well.”

https://spacenews.com/nasa-seeks-input-on-space-technology-shortfalls/

https://spacetechpriorities.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Shortfall-Details.pdf

>>20794776

lasers and gators with live feeds, please

Probing the effects of interplanetary space on asteroid Ryugu

APRIL 29, 2024

Analyzing samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu by the Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft has revealed new insights into the magnetic and physical bombardment environment of interplanetary space. The results of the study, carried out by Professor Yuki Kimura at Hokkaido University and co-workers at 13 other institutions in Japan, are published in the journal Nature Communications.

The investigations used electron waves penetrating the samples to reveal details of their structure and magnetic and electric properties, a technique called electron holography.

Hayabusa2 reached asteroid Ryugu on 27 June 2018, collected samples during two delicate touchdowns, and then returned the jettisoned samples to Earth in December 2020. The spacecraft is now continuing its journey through space, with plans for it to observe two other asteroids in 2029 and 2031.

One advantage of collecting samples directly from an asteroid is that it allows researchers to examine long-term effects of its exposure to the environment of space. The "solar wind" of high energy particles from the sun and bombardment by micrometeoroids cause changes known as space-weathering.

It is impossible to study these changes precisely using most of the meteorite samples that land naturally on Earth, partly due to their origin from the internal parts of an asteroid, and also due to the effects of their fiery descent through the atmosphere.

"The signatures of space weathering we have detected directly will give us a better understanding of some of the phenomena occurring in the solar system," says Kimura. He explains that the strength of the magnetic field in the early solar system decreased as planets formed, and measuring the remnant magnetization on asteroids can reveal information about the magnetic field in the very early stages of the solar system.

Kimura adds, "In future work, our results could also help to reveal the relative ages of surfaces on airless bodies and assist in the accurate interpretation of remote sensing data obtained from these bodies."

One particularly interesting finding was that small mineral grains called framboids, composed of magnetite, a form of iron oxide, had completely lost their normal magnetic properties. The researchers suggest this was due to collision with high velocity micrometeoroids between 2 and 20 micrometers in diameter.

The framboids were surrounded by thousands of metallic iron nanoparticles. Future studies of these nanoparticles will hopefully reveal insights into the magnetic field that the asteroid has experienced over long periods of time.

"Although our study is primarily for fundamental scientific interest and understanding, it could also help estimate the degree of degradation likely to be caused by space dust impacting robotic or manned spacecraft at high velocity," Kimura concludes.

https://phys.org/news/2024-04-probing-effects-interplanetary-space-asteroid.html

>>20793860