NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

December 28, 2024

A December Winter Night

Orion seems to come up sideways, climbing over a distant mountain range in this deep skyscape. The wintry scene was captured from southern Poland on the northern hemisphere's long solstice night. Otherwise unseen nebulae hang in the sky, revealed by the camera modified to record red hydrogen-alpha light. The nebulae lie near the edge of the Orion molecular cloud and join the Hunter's familiar belt stars and bright giants Betelgeuse and Rigel. Eye of Taurus the Bull, yellowish Aldebaran anchors the V-shaped Hyades star cluster near top center. Still, near opposition in planet Earth's sky, the Solar System's ruling gas giant Jupiter is the brightest celestial beacon above this horizon's snowy peaks.

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

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https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/nasas-parker-solar-probe-makes-history-with-closest-pass-to-sun/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c80TzqNoqMg

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Makes History With Closest Pass to Sun

Dec, 27, 2024

Operations teams have confirmed NASA’s mission to “touch” the Sun survived its record-breaking closest approach to the solar surface on Dec. 24, 2024.

Breaking its previous record by flying just 3.8 million miles above the surface of the Sun, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe hurtled through the solar atmosphere at a blazing 430,000 miles per hour — faster than any human-made object has ever moved.

A beacon tone received late on Dec. 26 confirmed the spacecraft had made it through the encounter safely and is operating normally.

This pass, the first of more to come at this distance, allows the spacecraft to conduct unrivaled scientific measurements with the potential to change our understanding of the Sun.

"Flying this close to the Sun is a historic moment in humanity’s first mission to a star,” said Nicky Fox, who leads the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“By studying the Sun up close, we can better understand its impacts throughout our solar system, including on the technology we use daily on Earth and in space, as well as learn about the workings of stars across the universe to aid in our search for habitable worlds beyond our home planet.”

Parker Solar Probe has spent the last six years setting up for this moment. Launched in 2018, the spacecraft used seven flybys of Venus to gravitationally direct it ever closer to the Sun.

With its last Venus flyby on Nov. 6, 2024, the spacecraft reached its optimal orbit.

This oval-shaped orbit brings the spacecraft an ideal distance from the Sun every three months — close enough to study our Sun’s mysterious processes but not too close to become overwhelmed by the Sun’s heat and damaging radiation.

The spacecraft will remain in this orbit for the remainder of its primary mission.

“Parker Solar Probe is braving one of the most extreme environments in space and exceeding all expectations,” said Nour Rawafi, the project scientist for Parker Solar Probe at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which designed, built, and operates the spacecraft from its campus in Laurel, Maryland.

“This mission is ushering a new golden era of space exploration, bringing us closer than ever to unlocking the Sun’s deepest and most enduring mysteries.”

Close to the Sun, the spacecraft relies on a carbon foam shield to protect it from the extreme heat in the upper solar atmosphere called the corona, which can exceed 1 million degrees Fahrenheit.

The shield was designed to reach temperatures of 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit — hot enough to melt steel — while keeping the instruments behind it shaded at a comfortable room temperature.

In the hot but low-density corona, the spacecraft’s shield is expected to warm to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It’s monumental to be able to get a spacecraft this close to the Sun,” said John Wirzburger, the Parker Solar Probe mission systems engineer at APL.

“This is a challenge the space science community has wanted to tackle since 1958 and had spent decades advancing the technology to make it possible.”

By flying through the solar corona, Parker Solar Probe can take measurements that help scientists better understand how the region gets so hot, trace the origin of the solar wind (a constant flow of material escaping the Sun), and discover how energetic particles are accelerated to half the speed of light.

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“The data is so important for the science community because it gives us another vantage point,” said Kelly Korreck, a program scientist at NASA Headquarters and heliophysicist who worked on one of the mission’s instruments.

“By getting firsthand accounts of what’s happening in the solar atmosphere, Parker Solar Probe has revolutionized our understanding of the Sun.”

Previous passes have already aided scientists’ understanding of the Sun. When the spacecraft first passed into the solar atmosphere in 2021, it found the outer boundary of the corona is wrinkled with spikes and valleys, contrary to what was expected.

Parker Solar Probe also pinpointed the origin of important zig-zag-shaped structures in the solar wind, called switchbacks, at the visible surface of the Sun — the photosphere.

Since that initial pass into the Sun, the spacecraft has been spending more time in the corona, where most of the critical physical processes occur.

“We now understand the solar wind and its acceleration away from the Sun,” said Adam Szabo, the Parker Solar Probe mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“This close approach will give us more data to understand how it’s accelerated closer in.”

Parker Solar Probe has also made discoveries across the inner solar system.

Observations showed how giant solar explosions called coronal mass ejections vacuum up dust as they sweep across the solar system, and other observations revealed unexpected findings about solar energetic particles.

Flybys of Venus have documented the planet’s natural radio emissions from its atmosphere, as well as the first complete image of its orbital dust ring.

So far, the spacecraft has only transmitted that it’s safe, but soon it will be in a location that will allow it to downlink the data it collected on this latest solar pass.

“The data that will come down from the spacecraft will be fresh information about a place that we, as humanity, have never been,” said Joe Westlake, the director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. “It’s an amazing accomplishment.”

The spacecraft’s next planned close solar passes come on March 22, 2025, and June 19, 2025.

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Hubble Spies a Cosmic Eye

Dec 27, 2024

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 2566, which sits 76 million light-years away in the constellation Puppis.

A prominent bar of stars stretches across the center of this galaxy, and spiral arms emerge from each end of the bar.

Because NGC 2566 appears tilted from our perspective, its disk takes on an almond shape, giving the galaxy the appearance of a cosmic eye.

As NGC 2566 appears to gaze at us, astronomers gaze right back, using Hubble to survey the galaxy’s star clusters and star-forming regions.

The Hubble data are especially valuable for studying stars that are just a few million years old; these stars are bright at the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths to which Hubble is sensitive.

Using these data, researchers can measure the ages of NGC 2566’s stars, which helps piece together the timeline of the galaxy’s star formation and the exchange of gas between star-forming clouds and the stars themselves.

Hubble regularly teams up with other astronomical observatories to examine objects like NGC 2566, including the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.

Webb data complements Hubble’s by going beyond the infrared wavelengths of light Hubble can see, better defining areas of warm, glowing dust.

At even longer wavelengths, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of 66 radio telescopes that work together can capture detailed images of the clouds of gas and dust in which stars form.

Together, Hubble, Webb, and ALMA provide an overview of the formation, lives, and deaths of stars in galaxies across the universe.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/hubble-spies-a-cosmic-eye/

Nelson: Decision on Mars Sample Return expected before new administration takes office

December 27, 2024

One of the biggest decision points for the space community, how to redesign the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, may be weeks away from an inflection point, according to outgoing NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

During a roundtable discussion with reporters on Dec. 18 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Nelson said the agency will announce the path forward on the U.S.-led initiative to return samples from the Red Planet “in the first part of January, before I leave.”

“As a matter of fact, one of the major briefings is going to occur Friday morning (Dec. 20) here at KSC,” Nelson said.

“I’ve already been briefed in part. At the end of the day, I’m the decider on this stage and then we had that off to the new administration.”

A consensus inside NASA and in the broader scientific community was that the timeline for MSR and its cost was untenable.

The report of the Independent Review Board, published in September 2023, suggested a mission cost of $11 billion and a return date of 2040.

Nelson said that was “way too expensive.” He also noted that NASA intended to have astronauts on Mars by the 2040s and NASA wants to be able to have those samples to study before crews start arriving.

“And so, I pulled the plug on it. And lo and behold what’s coming out and we’ll give you the results in probably the first week in January,” Nelson said.

“What’s coming out is by involving industry, and not NASA centers like [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory], combining with others, they’re coming out with much more practical (proposals), where they can speed up the time and considerably lower the cost.”

Changing course

Mars Sample Return was first laid out back in 2009 as part of what was known as the ExoMars program, a partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Fast forward to August 2020, NASA established the Independent Review Board to evaluate the early architecture for the mission.

It would require a robotic rover to collect samples, the NASA Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) with a so-called “fetch” rover to retrieve the samples and then ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter (ERO) to bring them back to Earth.

By this point, about a third of the architecture, connected to the collection of samples was in motion.

The Mars Perseverance rover launched atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket less than a month before. It went onto reach the Red Planet with its 43 cylindrical collection tubes in February 2021.

Back on Earth, before Perseverance arrived at Mars, the first Independent Review Board included that the cost of MSR for the United States would be at least $2.9-3.3 billion, nearly a billion more than initial estimates.

Additionally that review board cautioned that “we do not believe the program’s schedule and cost are aligned with its scope,” arguing that launching the in 2026 timeframe was “not achievable.”

In March 2021, Northrop Grumman received a contract from NASA valued at up to $84.5 million to provide first- and second-stage solid-fuel motors for the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), which would take the samples from the SRL up to Mars orbit where the ERO would be waiting.

Nearly a year later, in February 2022, NASA awarded a trio of contracts to Lockheed Martin connected to the SRL and the MAV. I

t received $35 million from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to “produce the cruise stage and its comprehensive elements, including the solar arrays, structure, propulsion and thermal properties” for the SRL.

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For the MAV, Lockheed Martin received $194 million from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to “design, build, test and deliver the rocket” and $2.6 million from JPL for preliminary design work on the Earth Entry System, which would shield the samples as they made their return to Earth.

“It’s a great responsibility to be entrusted to solve the technical challenges of this groundbreaking mission.

We’re looking forward to helping NASA blaze new trails in scientific discovery,” said Lisa Callahan, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and general manager of the company’s Commercial Civil Space business at the time.

In order to get a more wholistic view of the mission ahead of the confirmation process (formally establishing schedule, cost and technical baselines), NASA convened a second Independent Review Board, chaired by NASA’s former Mars Czar, Orlando Figueroa, in spring 2023.

It was through that analysis that the new timeline of returning samples in the 2040s emerged, along with the cost ballooning to around $11 billion.

The report was made public in the fall and discussed during an Oct. 20 meeting of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group Steering Committee.

“Technical issues indicated to us that the early planning dates for a ’27 or ’28 launch were simply not credible, a near zero probability that we’d be able to do it,” Figueroa said during the meeting.

“Moving to 2030 offers an opportunity, and looks it is possible, but [President Biden’s] budget doesn’t quite support that.”

Because Congress is still mired in its budgeting process, opting instead to pass continuing resolutions instead of a new, complete package of spending bills, the funds available to NASA for MSR remains uncertain.

New players enter the picture

In an announcement made in April 2024, NASA stated that it was going back to the drawing board on MSR and was reaching out to industry players as well as the various NASA centers to provide alternative architectures that would get samples back from Mars cheaper and faster.

By June, the agency listed 11 studies that it was examining to find that new path. The agency awarded $1.5 million contracts to eight companies to further their studies in addition to supporting studies from JPL and Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

Those companies included big names, like Aerojet Rocketdyne, Blue Origin, Northrop Grumman and SpaceX as well as those like Quantum Space and Whittinghill Aerospace.

Rocket Lab’s proposal was accepted after the initial announcement and made public in October.

In regard to Nelson’s announcement earlier this month about the forthcoming decision and its timing, the administrator said it was part of the “normal cycle of making decisions” and said it was “unrelated to the new administration.”

https://spaceflightnow.com/2024/12/27/nelson-decision-on-mars-sample-return-expected-before-new-administration-takes-office/

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ULA Wants to Make Its Rocket ‘Lethal’ to Defend U.S. Assets in Space

December 28, 2024

The 200-foot Vulcan Centaur rocket could do more than just launch satellites to orbit.

As the rocket awaits certification to launch military payloads, United Launch Alliance (ULA) suggests that Vulcan can also be used to ward off space enemies and protect U.S. assets in orbit.

During the Spacepower Conference held earlier this month, ULA CEO Tory Bruno revealed that he had alternative plans for the heavy-lift launch vehicle, SpaceNews reported.

Bruno’s suggestion includes utilizing the rocket’s upper stage as a “space interceptor” to thwart attacks against the U.S. Space Force’s assets in space.

“Our vision is the ability to have a platform that is lightning fast, long range, and, if necessary, very lethal,” he said during the conference. “What I’ve been working on is essentially a rocket that operates in space.”

Well, that’s certainly an idea. The 202-foot-tall (61.6-meter) Vulcan Centaur is an expendable heavy-lift launch vehicle that was first conceived in 2006.

The rocket borrows design elements from both ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV rockets, and finally made its debut on January 8, launching Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander toward the Moon.

The rocket’s inaugural flight was originally scheduled to take place in 2019, but Vulcan faced several challenges and hiccups that delayed its big day.

Vulcan Centaur is crucial to the commercial space industry as well as U.S. national security. With its Vulcan rocket, ULA is hoping to compete with industry favorite SpaceX.

The U.S. military has grown more dependent on SpaceX to launch its payload to orbit, a market share that used to be dominated by ULA.

However, Vulcan is not yet ready to launch military payloads. The rocket carried out its second certification flight in October, but ULA’s marquee flight vehicle hit a snag.

Following a nominal liftoff, the rocket experienced an issue about 35 seconds after launch, when a plume of material suddenly appeared to be coming off one of its two boosters.

The main purpose of the Cert-2 mission was for the U.S. Space Force to certify Vulcan for national security missions, with the rocket slated to carry two U.S. military payloads to orbit this year.

The not-so-ideal flight has delayed the rocket’s certification process.

Bruno’s recent suggestion to turn the rocket into a space superhero may be an act of desperation as ULA continues to fall behind its main competitor, SpaceX.

During the conference, the ULA CEO suggested that Vulcan’s upper stage could be upgraded to serve as a long-endurance vehicle that operates in space and respond rapidly to incoming threats.

“We know that the Chinese are going to come after us in space,” Bruno said, according to SpaceNews.

“If we watch an attack developing where a Chinese asset is spending a few days or a week approaching something we care about, we have something we can move there in a few hours and interrupt that attack before it starts.”

Mentioning China’s increasing capabilities in space is one way to get folks behind your plan.

Still, Bruno’s remarks reflect a larger concern shared by both national and commercial spaceflight players: that space is headed toward a militarized future where orbital warfare may be inevitable.

https://gizmodo.com/ula-wants-to-make-its-rocket-lethal-to-defend-u-s-assets-in-space-2000543718

https://www.earth.com/news/organic-molecules-found-throughout-the-universe-hint-that-life-began-in-deep-space/

Organic molecules found throughout the universe hint that life began in deep space

12-28-2024

The universe is packed with intricate, carbon-based compounds, including organic molecules, that hold clues about life’s raw materials. Some of these compounds are found in space.

Over the past few years, robotic missions have taken samples from comets and asteroids to learn how these compounds formed and whether our planet might owe its biological chemistry to faraway dust clouds.

The findings hint that organic molecules appear in every corner of space, which suggests that our own evolution may fit into a larger cosmic narrative.

Organic molecules in space

Scientists studying bits of interstellar dust, comets, and asteroids keep finding the same theme: these objects contain a variety of organic molecules.

The story began in 1986 when the European Giotto spacecraft conducted the first in-situ analysis of a comet, 1P/Halley, during its apparition (when it was visible from Earth).

It revealed an unexpected abundance of organic species in the coma, but their exact origins — whether from polymeric matter or smaller molecules — remained unclear.

The small spacecraft followed the comet for two years, capturing the dust and gas it shed. Instruments recorded dozens of molecules that contained carbon, leading scientists to look deeper for connections to the early solar system.

Past records of organic molecules in space

The Rosetta spacecraft was the first to orbit and land on a comet, namely 67P. In 2015, it detected simple organic compounds, including glycine, which is a building block of proteins. This discovery marked the first direct detection of this molecule on a comet.

By 2022, researchers analyzing high-resolution mass spectrometry data identified 44 organic compounds in just one day’s worth of Rosetta data, with some molecules weighing up to 140 Daltons (Da).

“Rosetta really changed the view,” said Dr. Nora Hänni, a chemist at the University of Bern. Soon after this, her team identified dimethyl sulfide, a gas that, on Earth, is generally produced by living organisms.

Asteroids as cosmic sample returns

Japan’s Hayabusa2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx missions offered a similar look at ancient space rocks. They scooped material from asteroids Ryugu and Bennu and brought the samples back to Earth.

Early analyses suggested that both asteroids have a wide range of organics present. Scientists studying Ryugu found at least 20,000 varieties of carbon-based compounds, including 15 different amino acids.

“It’s just everything possible from which life could emerge,” said Philippe Schmitt-Kopplin, an organic geoscientist at the Technical University of Munich.

Questions about planetary origins

Those organic-rich rocks may date back to a time before planets fully formed. Scientists wonder if these compounds started in cold, dark clouds between stars, or if they originated in energetic zones near young suns.

“Those of us interested in searching for life have to understand how planets could acquire organics in the absence of life,” said Christopher Glein, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute.

Many experts ask whether the early Earth became habitable partly because of organic molecules that arrived from space.

“I would like to know where we come from as a planetary species,” said Karin Öberg, an astrochemist at Harvard University.

Early chemistry across the cosmos

Astronomers have traced certain hefty carbon structures called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) back to about 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.

Carbon atoms often form large, sturdy rings and chains in the outflows of dying stars.

“It’s actually not too different from combustion as we understand it here on Earth,” said Öberg, referring to the ways these molecules can build up in stellar winds.

Observations confirm that interstellar space has more than 200 carbon-containing compounds.

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Icy labs in the dark

In molecular clouds, simple ingredients gather on cold dust grains. Once stuck together, atoms can combine to form key molecules like methane.

Over time, ultraviolet radiation and cosmic rays split molecules into radical fragments, which recombine to form something new. Experiments hint that this can produce anything from methanol to glycine

“You can build complexity without much going on in just a cold, dark cloud,” said Alice Booth, an astronomer at Harvard University.

Planetary disks and newborn worlds

Observations of protoplanetary disks — thick, spinning layers of dust and gas around baby stars — show that methanol and other organics survive the intense heat of stellar births.

Recent modeling suggests these compounds may grow into even more sophisticated structures when disk materials cycle between hot surface zones and cooler midplane regions.

This process could be one reason comets and asteroids wind up so chemically rich by the time they form. “Comets are, I think, the best that we can do to go back in time,” said Hänni.

Origins of organic molecules in space

When organic chemicals land on a planet, they might set the stage for the emergence of living systems. A few theories propose that meteorites or comets delivered certain amino acids or PAHs to early Earth.

Astrobiologists debate about which molecules represent a solid proof of life, and which might be possible false positives.

The presence of dimethyl sulfide from comet 67P, supports the idea that lifeless processes can make molecules that we tend to associate with living organisms.

In 2016, Rosetta concluded its mission with a controlled impact on comet 67P’s surface, which resulted in a rich legacy of data for further analysis.

Since then, scientists have connected these findings to other Solar System reservoirs of organics, such as Saturn’s ring rain and meteoritic material, revealing their shared prestellar origins.

Future research on organic molecules in space

Scientists will continue exploring these mysteries with missions like NASA’s Europa Clipper, the European Space Agency’s Juice, and a future rotorcraft bound for Saturn’s moon Titan.

Researchers hope to spot organic compounds that might give hints about oceans hiding beneath icy crusts.

Such discoveries could bring us closer to answering one of humanity’s oldest questions: are we alone in the universe?

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