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Astronaut shares view of Cali wildfires from space
Jan 10, 2025
American spaceman Don Pettit snapped images of the region at night and shared them today (10 Jan).
He said: "Los Angeles fires from Space Station. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by this."
https://www.nbcrightnow.com/national/astronaut-shares-view-of-cali-wildfires-from-space/article_ec329c16-254d-5763-a5d0-dd8a994e3ff2.html
https://x.com/astro_Pettit/status/1877584401669710298
Hubble Rings In the New Year
Jan 10, 2025
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image reveals a tiny patch of sky in the constellation Hydra. The stars and galaxies depicted here span a mind-bending range of distances.
The objects in this image that are nearest to us are stars within our own Milky Way galaxy.
You can easily spot these stars by their diffraction spikes, lines that radiate from bright light sources, like nearby stars, as a result of how that light interacts with Hubble’s secondary mirror supports.
The bright star that sits just at the edge of the prominent bluish galaxy is only 3,230 light-years away, as measured by ESA's Gaia space observatory.
Behind this star is a galaxy named LEDA 803211.
At 622 million light-years distant, this galaxy is close enough that its bright galactic nucleus is clearly visible, as are numerous star clusters scattered around its patchy disk.
Many of the more distant galaxies in this frame appear star-like, with no discernible structure, but without the diffraction spikes of a star in our galaxy.
Of all the galaxies in this frame, one pair stands out: a smooth golden galaxy encircled by a nearly complete ring in the upper-right corner of the image.
This curious configuration is the result of gravitational lensing that warps and magnifies the light of distant objects.
Einstein predicted the curving of spacetime by matter in his general theory of relativity, and galaxies seemingly stretched into rings like the one in this image are called Einstein rings.
The lensed galaxy, whose image we see as the ring, lies incredibly far away from Earth: we are seeing it as it was when the universe was just 2.5 billion years old.
The galaxy acting as the gravitational lens itself is likely much closer.
A nearly perfect alignment of the two galaxies is necessary to give us this rare kind of glimpse into galactic life in the early days of the universe.
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-rings-in-the-new-year/
Artemis Teams Successfully Test Uninterruptible Power for Mobile Launcher
January 10, 2025 10:31 am
Teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) Program at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, successfully tested the new uninterruptible power supply for mobile launcher 1 while it’s in Kennedy’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB).
This marks the next set of integrated ground systems testing the EGS teams are conducting to prepare for the Artemis II crewed mission.
During this test, engineers turned off the power to the mobile launcher and verified new batteries, which are located in High Bay 3 of the VAB, did not negatively impact any systems.
These batteries provide power to the mobile launcher, SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft and allow teams to safe all systems in the unlikely event the structure loses power while it’s inside the VAB.
There are similar batteries that are used for the same purpose at Launch Complex 39B, from which crewed Artemis missions will launch.
The Artemis II test flight will be NASA’s first mission with crew under the Artemis campaign, sending NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, on a 10-day journey around the Moon.
https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/2025/01/10/artemis-teams-successfully-test-uninterruptable-power-on-mobile-launcher/
NASA and Italian Space Agency Test Future Lunar Navigation Technology
Jan 10, 2025
As the Artemis campaign leads humanity to the Moon and eventually Mars, NASA is refining its state-of-the-art navigation and positioning technologies to guide a new era of lunar exploration.
A technology demonstration helping pave the way for these developments is the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) payload, a joint effort between NASA and the Italian Space Agency to demonstrate the viability of using existing GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals for positioning, navigation, and timing on the Moon.
During its voyage on an upcoming delivery to the Moon as part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative, LuGRE would demonstrate acquiring and tracking signals from both the U.S.
GPS and European Union Galileo GNSS constellations during transit to the Moon, during lunar orbit, and finally for up to two weeks on the lunar surface itself.
The LuGRE payload is one of the first demonstrations of GNSS signal reception and navigation on and around the lunar surface, an important milestone for how lunar missions will access navigation and positioning technology.
If successful, LuGRE would demonstrate that spacecraft can use signals from existing GNSS satellites at lunar distances, reducing their reliance on ground-based stations on the Earth for lunar navigation.
Today, GNSS constellations support essential services like navigation, banking, power grid synchronization, cellular networks, and telecommunications.
Near-Earth space missions use these signals in flight to determine critical operational information like location, velocity, and time.
NASA and the Italian Space Agency want to expand the boundaries of GNSS use cases.
In 2019, the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission broke the world record for farthest GPS signal acquisition 116,300 miles from the Earth’s surface — nearly half of the 238,900 miles between Earth and the Moon.
Now, LuGRE could double that distance.
“GPS makes our lives safer and more viable here on Earth,” said Kevin Coggins, NASA deputy associate administrator and SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“As we seek to extend humanity beyond our home planet, LuGRE should confirm that this extraordinary technology can do the same for us on the Moon.”
Reliable space communication and navigation systems play a vital role in all NASA missions, providing crucial connections from space to Earth for crewed and uncrewed missions alike.
Using a blend of government and commercial assets, NASA’s Near Space and Deep Space Networks support science, technology demonstrations, and human spaceflight missions across the solar system.
“This mission is more than a technological milestone,” said Joel Parker, policy lead for positioning, navigation, and timing at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“We want to enable more and better missions to the Moon for the benefit of everyone, and we want to do it together with our international partners.”
"This mission is more than a technological milestone. We want to enable more and better missions to the Moon for the benefit of everyone…" JOEL PARKER, PNT Policy Lead at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
The data-gathering LuGRE payload combines NASA-led systems engineering and mission management with receiver software and hardware developed by the Italian Space Agency and their industry partner Qascom — the first Italian-built hardware to operate on the lunar surface.
Any data LuGRE collects is intended to open the door for use of GNSS to all lunar missions, not just those by NASA or the Italian Space Agency.
Approximately six months after LuGRE completes its operations, the agencies will release its mission data to broaden public and commercial access to lunar GNSS research.
“A project like LuGRE isn’t about NASA alone,” said NASA Goddard navigation and mission design engineer Lauren Konitzer.
“It’s something we’re doing for the benefit of humanity. We’re working to prove that lunar GNSS can work, and we’re sharing our discoveries with the world.”
The LuGRE payload is one of 10 NASA-funded science experiments launching to the lunar surface on this delivery through NASA’s CLPS initiative.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/nasa-and-italian-space-agency-test-future-lunar-navigation-technology/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM0tejemjS4