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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
June 14, 2024
RCW 85
From the 1960 astronomical catalog of Rodgers, Campbell and Whiteoak, emission region RCW 85 shines in southern night skies between bright stars Alpha and Beta Centauri. About 5,000 light years distant, the hazy interstellar cloud of glowing hydrogen gas and dust is faint. But detailed structures along well-defined rims within RCW 85 are traced in this cosmic skyscape composed of 28 hours of narrow and broadband exposures. Suggestive of dramatic shapes in other stellar nurseries where natal clouds of gas and dust are sculpted by energetic winds and radiation from newborn stars, the tantalizing nebula has been called the Devil's Tower. This telescopic frame would span around 100 light-years at the estimated distance of RCW 85.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html?
Voyager 1 Returning Science Data From All Four Instruments
JUN 13, 2024
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is conducting normal science operations for the first time following a technical issue that arose in November 2023.
The team partially resolved the issue in April when they prompted the spacecraft to begin returning engineering data, which includes information about the health and status of the spacecraft. On May 19, the mission team executed the second step of that repair process and beamed a command to the spacecraft to begin returning science data. Two of the four science instruments returned to their normal operating modes immediately. Two other instruments required some additional work, but now, all four are returning usable science data.
The four instruments study plasma waves, magnetic fields, and particles. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the only spacecraft to directly sample interstellar space, which is the region outside the heliosphere — the protective bubble of magnetic fields and solar wind created by the Sun.
While Voyager 1 is back to conducting science, additional minor work is needed to clean up the effects of the issue. Among other tasks, engineers will resynchronize timekeeping software in the spacecraft’s three onboard computers so they can execute commands at the right time. The team will also perform maintenance on the digital tape recorder, which records some data for the plasma wave instrument that is sent to Earth twice per year. (Most of the Voyagers’ science data is sent directly to Earth and not recorded.)
Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and Voyager 2 is more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from the planet. The probes will mark 47 years of operations later this year. They are NASA’s longest-running and most-distant spacecraft. Both spacecraft flew past Jupiter and Saturn, while Voyager 2 also flew past Uranus and Neptune.
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/voyager-program/voyager-1/voyager-1-returning-science-data-from-all-four-instruments/
NASA Announces New System to Aid Disaster Response
JUN 13, 2024
In early May, widespread flooding and landslides occurred in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, leaving thousands of people without food, water, or electricity.
In the following days, NASA teams provided data and imagery to help on-the-ground responders understand the disaster’s impacts and deploy aid.
Building on this response and similar successes, on June 13, NASA announced a new system to support disaster response organizations in the U.S. and around the world.
“When disasters strike, NASA is here to help — at home and around the world,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “As challenges from extreme weather grow, so too does the value of NASA’s efforts to provide critical Earth observing data to disaster-response teams on the frontlines.
We’ve done so for years. Now, through this system, we expand our capability to help power our U.S. government partners, international partners, and relief organizations across the globe as they take on disasters — and save lives.”
The team behind NASA’s Disaster Response Coordination System gathers science, technology, data, and expertise from across the agency and provides it to emergency managers.
The new system will be able to provide up-to-date information on fires, earthquakes, landslides, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other extreme events.
“The risk from climate-related hazards is increasing, making more people vulnerable to extreme events,” said Karen St. Germain, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division.
“This is particularly true for the 10% of the global population living in low-lying coastal regions who are vulnerable to storm surges, waves and tsunamis, and rapid erosion.
NASA’s disaster system is designed to deliver trusted, actionable Earth science in ways and means that can be used immediately, to enable effective response to disasters and ultimately help save lives.”
Agencies working with NASA include the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Agency for International Development — as well as international organizations such as World Central Kitchen.
“With this deliberate and structured approach, we can be even more effective in putting Earth science into action,” said Josh Barnes, at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. Barnes manages the Disaster Response Coordination System.
NASA Disasters Team Aiding Brazil
When the floods and landslides ravaged parts of Brazil in May, officials from the U.S. Southern Command — working with the U.S. Space Force and Air Force, and regional partners — reached out to NASA for Earth-observing data.
NASA’s response included maps of potential power outages from the Black Marble project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Disaster response coordinators at NASA Goddard also reviewed high-resolution optical data — from the Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program — to map more than 4,000 landslides.
Response coordinators from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, both in Southern California, produced flood extent maps using data from the NASA and U.S. Geological Survey Landsat mission and from ESA’s (the European Space Agency) Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite.
Response coordinators at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston also provided photographs of the flooding taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Building on Previous Work
The Brazil event is just one of hundreds of responses NASA has supported over the past decade. The team aids decision-making for a wide range of natural hazards and disasters, from hurricanes and earthquakes to tsunamis and oil spills.
“NASA’s Disasters Program advances science for disaster resilience and develops accessible resources to help communities around the world make informed decisions for disaster planning,” said Shanna McClain, manager of NASA’s Disasters Program.
“The new Disaster Response Coordination System significantly expands our efforts to bring the power of Earth science when responding to disasters.”
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/natural-disasters/nasa-announces-new-system-to-aid-disaster-response/
NASA’s Webb Reveals Long-Studied Star Is Actually Twins
JUN 13, 2024
Scientists recently got a big surprise from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope when they turned the observatory toward a group of young stars called WL 20.
The region has been studied since the 1970s with at least five telescopes, but it took Webb’s unprecedented resolution and specialized instruments to reveal that what researchers long thought was one of the stars, WL 20S, is actually a pair that formed about 2 million to 4 million years ago.
The discovery was made using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and was presented at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on June 12.
MIRI also found that the twins have matching jets of gas streaming into space from their north and south poles. “Our jaws dropped,” said astronomer Mary Barsony, lead author of a new paper describing the results.
“After studying this source for decades, we thought we knew it pretty well. But without MIRI we would not have known this was two stars or that these jets existed. That’s really astonishing. It’s like having brand new eyes.”
The team got another surprise when additional observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a group of more than 60 radio antennas in Chile, revealed that disks of dust and gas encircle both stars.
Based on the stars’ age, it’s possible that planets are forming in those disks.
The combined results indicate that the twin stars are nearing the end of this early period of their lives, which means scientists will have the opportunity to learn more about how the stars transition from youth into adulthood.
“The power of these two telescopes together is really incredible,” said Mike Ressler, project scientist for MIRI at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-author of the new study.
“If we hadn’t seen that these were two stars, the ALMA results might have just looked like a single disk with a gap in the middle.
Instead, we have new data about two stars that are clearly at a critical point in their lives, when the processes that formed them are petering out.”
Stellar Jets
WL 20 resides in a much larger, well-studied star-forming region of the Milky Way galaxy called Rho Ophiuchi, a massive cloud of gas and dust about 400 light-years from Earth.
In fact, WL 20 is hidden behind thick clouds of gas and dust that block most of the visible light (wavelengths that the human eye can detect) from the stars there.
Webb detects slightly longer wavelengths, called infrared, that can pass through those layers. MIRI detects the longest infrared wavelengths of any instrument on Webb and is thus well equipped for peering into obscured star-forming regions like WL 20.
Radio waves can often penetrate dust as well, though they may not reveal the same features as infrared light.
The disks of gas and dust surrounding the two stars in WL 20S emit light in a range that astronomers call submillimeter; these, too, penetrate the surrounding gas clouds and were observed by ALMA.
But scientists could easily have interpreted those observations as evidence of a single disk with a gap in it had MIRI not also observed the two stellar jets.
The jets of gas are composed of ions, or individual atoms with some electrons stripped away that radiate in mid-infrared wavelengths but not at submillimeter wavelengths. Only an infrared instrument with spatial and spectral resolution like MIRI’s could see them.
ALMA can also observe clouds of leftover formation material around young stars. Composed of whole molecules, like carbon monoxide, these clouds of gas and dust radiate light at these longer wavelengths.
The absence of those clouds in the ALMA observations shows that the stars are beyond their initial formation phase.
“It’s amazing that this region still has so much to teach us about the life cycle of stars,” said Ressler. “I’m thrilled to see what else Webb will reveal.”
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-reveals-long-studied-star-is-actually-twins/
Sea Ice Swirls
JUN 13, 2024
NASA’s Terra satellite captured floating fragments of sea ice as ocean currents carried them south along Greenland’s east coast on June 4, 2024.
This ice traveled from the Fram Strait, a 450-kilometer (280-mile)-wide passage between Greenland and Svalbard, to the Arctic Ocean. Along the journey, it breaks into smaller pieces and starts to melt in warmer ocean waters, creating the wispy patterns seen here.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/sea-ice-swirls/
Hubble Observes a Cosmic Fossil
JUN 14, 2024
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the globular cluster NGC 2005. It’s not an unusual globular cluster in and of itself, but it is a peculiarity when compared to its surroundings.
NGC 2005 is located about 750 light-years from the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which is the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxy some 162,000 light-years from Earth.
Globular clusters are densely-packed groups of stars that can hold tens of thousands or millions of stars. Their density means they are tightly bound by gravity and therefore very stable.
This stability contributes to their longevity: globular clusters can be billions of years old, and are often comprised of very old stars.
Studying globular clusters in space can be a little like studying fossils on Earth: where fossils give insights into the characteristics of ancient plants and animals, globular clusters illuminate the characteristics of ancient stars.
Current theories of galaxy evolution predict that galaxies merge with one another. Astronomers think the relatively large galaxies we observe in the modern universe formed when smaller galaxies merged.
If this is correct, then we would expect to see evidence that the most ancient stars in nearby galaxies originated in different galactic environments. Because globular clusters hold ancient stars, and because of their stability, they are an excellent laboratory to test this hypothesis.
NGC 2005 is such a globular cluster, and its very existence provides evidence that supports the theory of galaxy evolution via mergers.
Indeed, what makes NGC 2005 a bit peculiar from its surroundings, is the fact that its stars have a chemical composition that is distinct from the stars around it in the LMC.
This suggests that the LMC underwent a merger with another galaxy somewhere in its history. That other galaxy has long-since merged and otherwise dispersed, but NGC 2005 remains behind as an ancient witness to the long-past merger.
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-observes-a-cosmic-fossil/
SpaceX Starlink Mission
SpaceX is targeting Friday, June 14 for a Falcon 9 launch of 22 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Liftoff is targeted for 4:35 p.m. ET with opportunities available until 8:19 p.m. ET.
A live webcast of this mission will begin on X @SpaceX about five minutes prior to liftoff. Watch live.
This is the 16th flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched SES-22, ispace's HAKUTO-R MISSION 1, Amazonas-6, CRS-27, Bandwagon-1, and 10 Starlink missions. Following stage separation, the first stage will land on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which will be stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=sl-10-2
Warfighting, collaboration demoed at NSTTC Users’ Conference
June 13, 2024
Space Delta 11 held its annual National Space Test and Training Complex (NSTTC) Users’ Conference from June 4-7, 2024, concentrating on current and future range and aggressor users.
The event aimed to educate attendees on range and aggressor capabilities, provide onboarding guidance, and foster discussions among key stakeholders who rely on Delta 11 for realistic training.
The NSTTC integrates various test and training range services across multiple environments. Unlike traditional air and ground ranges, it combines space and ground nodes to create unique environments tailored to specific testing and training needs.
U.S. Space Force Brig. Gen. Todd Moore, former deputy commander of Space Training and Readiness Command, opened the conference by emphasizing the importance of realistic training environments.
“From the very beginning of standing up STARCOM and developing operational test and training infrastructure, it was clear this was one of the most important investments we needed to make,” Moore said.
“If we don’t have a place where we can punish each other for bad decisions, where we can acknowledge what does and does not work, we are never going to be ready for combat.”
Delta 11 officials stated that this year’s conference aimed to identify warfighter needs and align range capabilities to enhance combat readiness and effectiveness.
Over 300 attendees, including space professionals and industry leaders, convened to discuss initiatives across multiple NSTTC domains, including space electromagnetic warfare, orbital warfare, and cyber and digital operations.
Domain-specific working groups were organized to provide detailed insights, encourage collaboration, and address essential requirements for diverse operations.
The conference featured a capabilities event, offering demonstrations of NSTTC equipment such as the 25th Space Range Squadron’s Range Closed Loop Environment, Transportable Range Operations Center, the 57th Space Aggressor Squadron’s Aggressor Relative Trajectory System, 98th Space Range Squadron’s Range Control Software and HARRIER Command and Control Software, and the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron’s SATCOM EMI Demo.
The NSTTC Cyber Range also hosted a “Capture the Flag” event for conference participants.
Delta 11 commander, U.S. Space Force Col. Jay Steingold, said the conference successfully established new relationships and initiated dialogues with a diverse group of Department of Defense personnel and industry partners.
“Delta 11 is dedicated to advancing our capabilities and ensuring our warfighters are prepared for the challenges of today and tomorrow,” Steingold said. “This conference is a testament to our commitment to continuous improvement and collaboration across the space domain.”
The vision for the NSTTC is built around four focus areas: Service Capability, Joint Applicability, Integrated Test, and Threat Representation.
These areas ensure that the NSTTC provides interconnected, scalable, and distributed physical and digital ranges for full-spectrum test and training, helping space warfighters develop, validate, and sharpen joint warfighting solutions to prevail in conflict.
https://www.starcom.spaceforce.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3805755/warfighting-collaboration-demoed-at-nsttc-users-conference/
>IMPAULSIVE EP. 418