NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

February 26, 2025

Einstein Ring Surrounds Nearby Galaxy Center

Do you see the ring? If you look very closely at the center of the featured galaxy NGC 6505, a ring becomes evident. It is the gravity of NGC 6505, the nearby (z = 0.042) elliptical galaxy that you can easily see, that is magnifying and distorting the image of a distant galaxy into a complete circle. To create a complete Einstein ring there must be perfect alignment of the nearby galaxy's center and part of the background galaxy. Analysis of this ring and the multiple images of the background galaxy help to determine the mass and fraction of dark matter in NGC 6505's center, as well as uncover previously unseen details in the distorted galaxy. The featured image was captured by ESA's Earth-orbiting Euclid telescope in 2023 and released earlier this month.

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

US pulls back from gold-standard scientific climate panel

26 February 2025

A major United Nations climate assessment is moving forwards in China this week without the United States, after the administration of President Donald Trump blocked US officials’ participation and shut down a team providing technical support for the next international climate assessment.

Reports emerged last week that the Trump administration had banned NASA chief scientist Katherine Calvin from attending a planning meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that began on Monday in Hangzhou, China.

Nature has now confirmed with several sources that the US State Department delegation is not attending the meeting, which is slated to end with the adoption of an outline for the panel’s seventh climate assessment, due for completion by late 2029.

The IPCC assessments, which are the gold-standard guide to the pace and effects of climate change, are used by governments to shape their climate policies.

NASA has also cancelled a contract that funded a team including scientists and others to provide administrative and technical support to the climate-assessment effort, according to a US official who is familiar with the situation but asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

The team would have supported Calvin and her co-chair, Joy Jacqueline Pereira, a geologist at the University Kebangsaan Malaysia in Bangi.

The cancellation was reported by the Washington Post and independently confirmed by Nature. A NASA spokesperson said that the move was prompted by guidance “to eliminate non-essential consulting contracts”.

The absence of the US delegation from the meeting “is obviously a loss for the international community,” says Li Shuo, the director of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s China Climate Hub in Washington DC.

“The US plays an important role in the IPCC process, contributing both financial and intellectual support.”

IPCC spokesperson Andrej Mahecic declined to comment, except to say that the United States has not notified the organization of any decisions regarding participation in this week’s meeting or the broader climate assessment.

For now, the process is moving forwards, Mahecic says. NASA officials confirmed that Calvin would not be attending the meeting in China but declined to make her available for an interview.

The White House referred Nature's queries to the State Department; officials there declined to comment.

Outsized role

The United States has historically made substantial scientific and monetary contributions to the IPCC. US scientists publish research that informs the assessment and run computer simulations of the climate that feed into it.

For the seventh report, Calvin was co-chairing one of three IPCC working groups; hers was assessing the scientific literature on options to reduce emissions and halt global warming.

Calvin’s support team would have helped with everything from reviewing the literature and designing graphics to managing travel logistics.

The group was funded by a NASA contract but situated in the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), a White House organization that coordinates climate work across federal agencies.

That contract has now been ended, according to the US official. “We don’t know if Kate will be allowed to continue as a co-chair” of the working group, they said.

“It would be a real shame if the administration pulled Kate out of that role, not just for her, but for the US,” says Andy Miller, who was one of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s liaisons to the USGCRP until his retirement in December.

“And it would be a loss for IPCC to lose someone of Kate's caliber.”

paywall

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00596-0

NASA’s X-59 Completes Electromagnetic Testing

Feb 25, 2025

NASA’s quiet supersonic X-59 research aircraft has cleared electromagnetic testing, confirming its systems will work together safely, without interference across a range of scenarios.

“Reaching this phase shows that the aircraft integration is advancing,” said Yohan Lin, NASA’s X-59 avionics lead. “It’s exciting to see the progress, knowing we’ve cleared a major hurdle that moves us closer to X-59’s first flight.”

Electromagnetic interference occurs when an electric or magnetic field source affects an aircraft’s operations, potentially impacting safety.

This interference, whether from an external source or the aircraft’s own equipment, can disrupt the electronic signals that control critical systems – similar to effects that lead to static or crackling on a radio from a nearby emitting device, like a phone.

The tests, conducted at contractor Lockheed Martin Skunk Works’ facility in Palmdale, California, ensured that the X-59’s onboard systems – such as radios, navigation equipment, and sensors – did not interfere with one another or cause unexpected problems.

During these tests, engineers activated each system on the aircraft one at a time while they monitored the other systems for possible interference.

“This testing helped us determine whether the systems within the X-59 are interfering with each other,” Lin said.

“It’s called a source-victim test – essentially, we activate one system and monitor the other for issues like noise, glitches, faults, or errors.” The X-59 will generate a quieter thump rather than a loud boom while flying faster than the speed of sound.

The aircraft is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which will provide regulators with information that could help lift current bans on commercial supersonic flight over land.

Currently, the aircraft is progressing through ground tests to ensure safety and performance. These included the recent, successful completion of a set of engine tests. The electromagnetic interference testing to examine the X-59’s internal electronic systems followed.

Other electromagnetic interference testing involved the team looking at the operation of the X-59’s landing gear, ensuring this critical component can extend and retract without affecting other systems.

And they tested that the fuel switch shutoff was functioning properly without interference.

Electromagnetic compatibility was also assessed during this testing – making sure the X-59’s systems will function properly when it eventually flies near NASA research aircraft.

Researchers staged the X-59 on the ground in front of NASA’s F-15D, placing them 47 feet apart, then 500 feet apart.

The proximity of the two aircraft replicated conditions needed for the F-15D to use a special probe to gather measurements about the shock waves the X-59 will produce.

“We want to confirm there’s compatibility between the two aircraft, even at close proximity,” Lin said.

For the electromagnetic compatibility testing, the team powered up the X-59’s engine while turning on the F-15D’s radar, C-band radar transponder, and radios.

Data from the X-59 were transmitted to NASA’s Mobile Operations Facility, where control room staff and engineers monitored for anomalies.

“You want to make discoveries of any potential electromagnetic interference or electromagnetic compatibility issues on the ground first,” Lin said. “This reduces risk and ensures we’re not learning about problems in the air.”

Now that electromagnetic testing is complete, the X-59 is ready to move on to aluminum bird tests – during which data will be fed to the aircraft on the ground under both normal and failure conditions – and then taxi tests before flight.

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/nasas-x-59-completes-electromagnetic-testing/

Progress Cargo Craft Departs Station After Six Months

February 25, 2025

The unpiloted Roscosmos Progress 89 spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station at 3:17 p.m. EST, Feb. 25, backing away from the station for a deorbit maneuver and destructive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere to dispose of trash loaded by the crew.

The spacecraft launched Aug. 14 on a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying about three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the crew aboard the International Space Station.

After a two-day in-orbit journey to the station, the spacecraft arrived at the orbiting laboratory Aug. 17 and automatically docked to the aft port of the orbiting laboratory’s Zvezda Service module.

https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/02/25/progress-cargo-craft-departs-station-after-six-months/

https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/nasas-ezie-launching-to-study-magnetic-fingerprints-of-earths-aurora/

NASA’s EZIE Launching to Study Magnetic Fingerprints of Earth’s Aurora

Feb 25, 2025

High above Earth’s poles, intense electrical currents called electrojets flow through the upper atmosphere when auroras glow in the sky.

These auroral electrojets push about a million amps of electrical charge around the poles every second. They can create some of the largest magnetic disturbances on the ground, and rapid changes in the currents can lead to effects such as power outages.

In March, NASA plans to launch its EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) mission to learn more about these powerful currents, in the hopes of ultimately mitigating the effects of such space weather for humans on Earth.

Results from EZIE will help NASA better understand the dynamics of the Earth-Sun connection and help improve predictions of hazardous space weather that can harm astronauts, interfere with satellites, and trigger power outages.

The EZIE mission includes three CubeSats, each about the size of a carry-on suitcase. These small satellites will fly in a pearls-on-a-string formation, following each other as they orbit Earth from pole to pole about 350 miles (550 kilometers) overhead.

The spacecraft will look down toward the electrojets, which flow about 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the ground in an electrified layer of Earth’s atmosphere called the ionosphere.

During every orbit, each EZIE spacecraft will map the electrojets to uncover their structure and evolution. The spacecraft will fly over the same region 2 to 10 minutes apart from one another, revealing how the electrojets change.

Previous ground-based experiments and spacecraft have observed auroral electrojets, which are a small part of a vast electric circuit that extends 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometers) from Earth to space.

But for decades, scientists have debated what the overall system looks like and how it evolves. The mission team expects EZIE to resolve that debate.

“What EZIE does is unique,” said Larry Kepko, EZIE mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “EZIE is the first mission dedicated exclusively to studying the electrojets, and it does so with a completely new measurement technique.”

This technique involves looking at microwave emission from oxygen molecules about 10 miles (16 kilometers) below the electrojets. Normally, oxygen molecules emit microwaves at a frequency of 118 Gigahertz.

However, the electrojets create a magnetic field that can split apart that 118 Gigahertz emission line in a process called Zeeman splitting. The stronger the magnetic field, the farther apart the line is split.

Each of the three EZIE spacecraft will carry an instrument called the Microwave Electrojet Magnetogram to observe the Zeeman effect and measure the strength and direction of the electrojets’ magnetic fields.

Built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, each of these instruments will use four antennas pointed at different angles to survey the magnetic fields along four different tracks as EZIE orbits.

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The technology used in the Microwave Electrojet Magnetograms was originally developed to study Earth’s atmosphere and weather systems.

Engineers at JPL had reduced the size of the radio detectors so they could fit on small satellites, including NASA’s TEMPEST-D and CubeRRT missions, and improved the components that separate light into specific wavelengths.

The electrojets flow through a region that is difficult to study directly, as it’s too high for scientific balloons to reach but too low for satellites to dwell.

“The utilization of the Zeeman technique to remotely map current-induced magnetic fields is really a game-changing approach to get these measurements at an altitude that is notoriously difficult to measure,” said Sam Yee, EZIE’s principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

The mission is also including citizen scientists to enhance its research, distributing dozens of EZIE-Mag magnetometer kits to students in the U.S. and volunteers around the world to compare EZIE’s observations to those from Earth.

“EZIE scientists will be collecting magnetic field data from above, and the students will be collecting magnetic field data from the ground,” said Nelli Mosavi-Hoyer, EZIE project manager at APL.

The EZIE spacecraft will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California as part of the Transporter-13 rideshare mission with SpaceX via launch integrator Maverick Space Systems.

The mission will launch during what’s known as solar maximum — a phase during the 11-year solar cycle when the Sun’s activity is stronger and more frequent. This is an advantage for EZIE’s science.

“It’s better to launch during solar max,” Kepko said. “The electrojets respond directly to solar activity.”

The EZIE mission will also work alongside other NASA heliophysics missions, including PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere), launching in late February to study how material in the Sun’s outer atmosphere becomes the solar wind.

According to Yee, EZIE’s CubeSat mission not only allows scientists to address compelling questions that have not been able to answer for decades but also demonstrates that great science can be achieved cost-effectively.

“We’re leveraging the new capability of CubeSats,” Kepko added. “This is a mission that couldn’t have flown a decade ago. It’s pushing the envelope of what is possible, all on a small satellite. It’s exciting to think about what we will discover.”

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Free Flying Robotics, Space Agriculture Ahead of Cargo Mission Swap

February 25, 2025

Free flying robotics and space agriculture topped Tuesday’s research schedule as the Expedition 72 crew helps advance the space industry.

The International Space Station will also see the departure of a cargo craft and the arrival of its replacement this week.

NASA’s station Commander Suni Williams began her day setting up and activating the Astrobee robotic assistant, a cube-shaped, toaster-sized technology demonstration device, inside the Kibo laboratory module.

Next, she outfitted the Astrobee with tentacle-like grippers for a test of its ability to autonomously detect and capture simulated orbital debris.

Afterward, ground controllers took control of Astrobee and programmed the robotic free flyer to perform maneuvers to locate a capture target then reach out and grapple the free-floating object.

Researchers are testing the ability of robots to safely remove orbital debris and protect satellites.

Following the robotics demonstration, NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit worked in Kibo installing research components on the Advanced Plant Habitat hosting growing Red Romaine lettuce.

The space botany hardware divided the young plants into quadrants for observation and provided a temperature sensor device measuring leaf temperature between watering periods.

Insights from the Plant Habitat-07 investigation may inform ways to grow crops on future space missions.

NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Butch Wilmore spent their day primarily focusing on science hardware, life support maintenance, and cargo transfers.

Hague started his shift in the Columbus laboratory module partially uninstalling the Navigation and Communication Testbed that could provide a more accurate alternative to satellite systems for lunar navigation.

Hague then powered up a pair of incubators for biology research later in the week. Wilmore began his day draining recycling tanks then loaded trash inside the Cygnus space freighter ahead of its departure next month.

Wilmore wrapped up his shift installing software on a science laptop computer in the Destiny laboratory module.

Roscosmos’ Progress 89 cargo craft is poised to depart the space station at 3:17 p.m. EST today when it undocks from the Zvezda service module’s aft port completing a six-month cargo mission.

It will be replaced by the Progress 91 cargo craft after it launches at 4:24 p.m. on Thursday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The Progress 91, carrying three tons of food, fuel, and supplies, will dock to Zvezda’s vacant port at 6:03 p.m. on Saturday where it will stay for another six months.

Cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Ivan Vagner prepared on Tuesday for the Progress 91’s arrival setting up the TORU, or tele-robotically operated rendezvous unit, inside Zvezda.

The TORU can be used to command and control an approaching spacecraft from Roscosmos if necessary.

Vagner then moved on and scanned cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov’s eyes with the Ultrasound 2 device for a regularly schedule exam.

Gorbunov also completed a 24-hour session that measured his cardiac activity and blood pressure with portable electrodes.

https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/02/25/free-flying-robotics-space-agriculture-ahead-of-cargo-mission-swap/

https://spacenews.com/second-intuitive-machines-lunar-lander-ready-for-launch/

https://www.nasa.gov/general/intuitive-machines-im-2-mission/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OapwBAVQI4

Second Intuitive Machines lunar lander ready for launch

February 26, 2025

The second lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines is set to launch, taking to the moon NASA and commercial payloads as well as several rideshare spacecraft.

At a Feb. 25 briefing, NASA and Intuitive Machines said they were still working towards a launch of the IM-2 mission on the evening of Feb. 26 on a Falcon 9 from the Kennedy Space Center.

Curiously, they declined to give a specific launch time, deferring to SpaceX, which did not participate in the briefing.

SpaceX has not published a launch time for the mission as of early Feb. 26, but other sources, including the website of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex that is selling launch viewing tickets, list a launch time of 7:17 p.m. Eastern.

The mission has a four-day launch period, Trent Martin, senior vice president of space systems at Intuitive Machines, said at the briefing.

A launch in the first three days of the window would set up a landing attempt at Mons Mouton in the south polar region of the moon March 6 around midday Eastern time, he said, while a launch on the last day would lead to a landing attempt March 7.

The IM-2 lander, called Athena by Intuitive Machines, is carrying NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1 (PRIME-1) payload as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

PRIME-1 features a drill designed to penetrate up to a meter into the surface and a spectrometer to measure any volatiles, like water ice, the drill passes through below the surface.

In addition to PRIME-1, the lander is carrying a laser retroreflector, a passive instrument similar to those NASA has flown on other lunar landers as part of CLPS.

Intuitive Machines is flying several commercial payloads on IM-2, including its own Micro Nova Hopper, a vehicle designed to hop across the lunar surface using its own propulsion system.

The hopper, named Grace, carries a camera system and instruments the German aerospace agency DLR and Hungarian company Puli Space.

Martin said they hope to perform five hops of Grace, which could include going into a crater near the planned landing site. It will “demonstrate the technology of this hopping capability, to hop down into places where wheeled vehicles cannot go,” he said.

Another commercial payload is a communications system from Nokia, which will test the ability to use 4G/LTE networks on the moon.

It will attempt communications both with the Grace hopper and another commercial payload, the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform rover from Lunar Outpost.

Other commercial payloads on IM-2 is a very small rover, called Yaoki, from Japanese company Dymon Co. Ltd.; Freedom, a data center from Lonestar Data Holdings; and thermal protection technologies from Columbia Sportwear.

Intuitive Machines purchased the entire Falcon 9 for the IM-2 launch, which resulted in an extra 800 to 900 kilograms of payload capacity to go into a translunar injection trajectory, Martin said.

The company is carrying three rideshare payloads on the launch on an adapter ring separate from the lander.

One of those payloads is NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft, a smallsat that will take a low-energy trajectory over the next four months before entering lunar orbit in early July.

The 200-kilogram spacecraft will measure the distribution of water on the moon using an imaging spectrometer and thermal mapper.

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“Our data set is going to answer fundamental questions about water on the moon and provide maps for the next generation of landed lunar robotic and astronaut missions,” said Bethany Ehlmann, the Caltech professor who is the principal investigator for Lunar Trailblazer, at the briefing.

That includes providing additional context for the measurements made by the PRIME-1 instrument on the IM-2 lander.

AstroForge, an asteroid mining company, is flying its Odin spacecraft as another secondary payload on the IM-2 launch, sending the spacecraft towards the near Earth asteroid 2022 OB5 for a lunar flyby about 300 days later.

Epic Aerospace’s Chimera orbital transfer vehicle is the other rideshare payload on the launch.

Those commercial payloads supplement the NASA CLPS award for the IM-2 mission, which when awarded in 2020 was worth $47 million.

Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate said at the briefing that the CLPS task order is worth $62.5 million.

The increase, he said, came from several changes NASA made to the original order, including buying data from the Grace hopper.

IM-2 is the second lunar lander mission for Intuitive Machines, launching just over a year after the IM-1 mission made to the lunar surface, although leaning on its side.

That flawed landing was blamed on a laser altimeter that was inoperable because safety devices were not removed before launch as intended, depriving the lander of accurate altitude data.

“We identified 85 specific things that didn’t go like we wanted to on IM-1,” Martin said, all of which were addressed for IM-2.

That included the laser altimeter as well as inaccurate navigation data that resulted in the lander going into a much lower orbit around the moon than planned.

He said the company will augment position data obtained from its own commercial network of ground stations with the “gold standard” of data from NASA’s Deep Space Network to more accurately determine its location in space.

The laser altimeter, he added, has been tested on the ground several times, including during final launch preparations in Florida. “We’re pretty confident those things won’t happen again.”

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