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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
April 25, 2025
Asteroid Donaldjohanson
Main belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson is about 8 kilometers long and 3.5 kilometers across. On April 20, this sharp close-up of the asteroid was captured at a distance of about 1100 kilometers by the Lucy spacecraft's long range camera during its second asteroid encounter. Named after American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson, discoverer of the Lucy hominid fossil, the elongated asteroid was likely formed about 150 million years ago from a gentle collision of two smaller bodies creating its characteristic contact binary shape. Launched in October of 2021, the Lucy spacecraft will continue its travels through the main asteroid belt in 2025, but is on its way to explore Jupiter's swarm of Trojan asteroids. Lucy is expected to encounter its first Trojan asteroid target, 3548 Eurybates, in August 2027.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Hubble Visits Glittering Cluster, Capturing Its Ultraviolet Light
Apr 25, 2025
As part of ESA/Hubble’s 35th anniversary celebrations, the European Space Agency (ESA) shared new images that revisited stunning, previously released Hubble targets with the addition of the latest Hubble data and new processing techniques.
ESA/Hubble released new images of NGC 346, the Sombrero Galaxy, and the Eagle Nebula earlier in the month. Now they are revisiting the star cluster Messier 72 (M72).
M72 is a collection of stars, formally known as a globular cluster, located in the constellation Aquarius roughly 50,000 light-years from Earth.
The intense gravitational attraction between the closely packed stars gives globular clusters their regular, spherical shape.
There are roughly 150 known globular clusters associated with the Milky Way galaxy.
The striking variety in the color of the stars in this image of M72, particularly compared to the original image, results from the addition of ultraviolet observations to the previous visible-light data.
The colors indicate groups of different types of stars. Here, blue stars are those that were originally more massive and have reached hotter temperatures after burning through much of their hydrogen fuel; the bright red objects are lower-mass stars that have become red giants.
Studying these different groups help astronomers understand how globular clusters, and the galaxies they were born in, initially formed.
Pierre Méchain, a French astronomer and colleague of Charles Messier, discovered M72 in 1780. It was the first of five star clusters that Méchain would discover while assisting Messier.
They recorded the cluster as the 72nd entry in Messier’s famous collection of astronomical objects. It is also one of the most remote clusters in the catalog.
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-visits-glittering-cluster-capturing-its-ultraviolet-light/
NASA Orbiter Spots Curiosity Rover Making Tracks to Next Science Stop
Apr 24, 2025
The image marks what may be the first time one of the agency’s Mars orbiters has captured the rover driving.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has never been camera shy, having been seen in selfies and images taken from space.
But on Feb. 28 — the 4,466th Martian day, or sol, of the mission — Curiosity was captured in what is believed to be the first orbital image of the rover mid-drive across the Red Planet.
Taken by the HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the image shows Curiosity as a dark speck at the front of a long trail of rover tracks.
Likely to last for months before being erased by wind, the tracks span about 1,050 feet (320 meters).
They represent roughly 11 drives starting on Feb. 2 as Curiosity trucked along at a top speed of 0.1 mph (0.16 kph) from Gediz Vallis channel on the journey to its next science stop: a region with potential boxwork formations, possibly made by groundwater billions of years ago.
How quickly the rover reaches the area depends on a number of factors, including how its software navigates the surface and how challenging the terrain is to climb.
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads Curiosity’s mission, work with scientists to plan each day’s trek.
“By comparing the time HiRISE took the image to the rover’s commands for the day, we can see it was nearly done with a 69-foot drive,” said Doug Ellison, Curiosity’s planning team chief at JPL.
Designed to ensure the best spatial resolution, HiRISE takes an image with the majority of the scene in black and white and a strip of color down the middle.
While the camera has captured Curiosity in color before, this time the rover happened to fall within the black-and-white part of the image.
In the new image, Curiosity’s tracks lead to the base of a steep slope. The rover has since ascended that slope since then, and it is expected to reach its new science location within a month or so.
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory/nasa-orbiter-spots-curiosity-rover-making-tracks-to-next-science-stop/
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/
Crew Studies Advanced Biotech, Preps for Spacewalk as Station Orbits Higher
April 24, 2025
Biotechnology research exploring DNA-like nanomaterials, microbes, and eye health topped the science schedule aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday.
The Expedition 73 crew is also continuing its spacewalk preparations and unpacking the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft.
Scientists are using the orbital outpost’s microgravity environment to advance the manufacturing of DNA-inspired nanomaterials and improve therapies to treat a variety of ailments in space and on Earth.
NASA Flight Engineers Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers on Thursday set up hardware in the Kibo laboratory module’s Life Science Glovebox and mixed solutions that will be used to create the synthetic nanomaterials that mimic biochemical processes during research operations planned for Friday.
Results may offer the possibility of expanding the commercialization of space and benefit the quality of life for humans living on and off the Earth.
Ayers also scanned the eyes of Commander Takuya Onishi of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) using standard medical imaging gear to understand the risk of spaceflight on an astronaut’s vision.
Researchers are studying why some astronauts are more likely to experience space-caused eye conditions than others and whether it is genetics or a vitamin issue.
Onishi also collected hardware and retrieved microbe samples from a science freezer to begin exploring how weightlessness affects microorganisms that decompose organic matter potentially benefitting space agriculture.
Onishi then joined NASA Flight Engineer Jonny Kim and reviewed the procedures they will use to assist McClain and Ayers who are scheduled to exit the orbital outpost for a spacewalk on May 1.
Onishi and Kim will help the spacewalkers suit up, guide them in and out of the Quest airlock, and monitor their tasks during the six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk.
McClain and Ayers will install a modification kit on the station’s port side truss structure preparing it for a new rollout solar array then relocate an antenna that communicates with visiting vehicles.
Kim also continued unpacking some of the 6,700 pounds of science and supplies packed aboard the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft that arrived on Tuesday.
The three cosmonauts aboard the space station took a test on a computer tablet measuring how they are socially adapting to living in space.
Veteran cosmonaut Sergey Ryzhikov partnered with first-time space flyers Alexey Zubritsky and Kirill Peskov for the study exploring how international crews communicate with each other and mission controllers from around the world.
Results may inform crew selection methods, improve mission training techniques, and benefit inflight support.
The International Space Station is orbiting higher after the Progress 91 resupply ship fired its engines for over ten minutes on Wednesday while docked to the Zvezda service module’s aft port.
The reboost places the orbiting laboratory at the correct altitude for the arrival of the Progress 92 cargo craft planned for July.
https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/04/24/crew-studies-advanced-biotech-preps-for-spacewalk-as-station-orbits-higher/
China shares rare Moon rocks with US despite trade war
April 24, 2025
China will let scientists from six countries, including the US, examine the rocks it collected from the Moon - a scientific collaboration that comes as the two countries remain locked in a bitter trade war.
Two Nasa-funded US institutions have been granted access to the lunar samples collected by the Chang'e-5 mission in 2020, the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said on Thursday.
CNSA chief Shan Zhongde said that the samples were "a shared treasure for all humanity," local media reported.
Chinese researchers have not been able to access Nasa's Moon samples because of restrictions imposed by US lawmakers on the space agency's collaboration with China.
Under the 2011 law, Nasa is banned from collaboration with China or any Chinese-owned companies unless it is specifically authorised by Congress.
But John Logsdon, the former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, told BBC Newshour that the latest exchange of Moon rocks have "very little to do with politics".
While there are controls on space technology, the examination of lunar samples had "nothing of military significance", he said. "It's international cooperation in science which is the norm."
Washington has imposed tariffs Chinese goods that go up to 245%, while Beijing has hit back with 125% tariffs on US goods.
US President Donald Trump previously hinted at a de-escalation in the trade war, but Beijing has denied that there were negotiations between the two sides.
In 2023, the CNSA put out a call for applications to study its Chang'e-5 moon samples.
What's special about the Chang'e-5 Moon samples is that they "seem to be a billion years younger" than those collected from Apollo missions, Dr Logsdon said.
"So it suggests that volcanic activity went on in the moon more recently than people had thought".
Space officials from the US and China had reportedly tried to negotiate an exchange of moon samples last year - but it appears the deal did not materialise.
Besides Brown University and Stony Brook University in the US, the other winning bids came from institutions in France, Germany, Japan, Pakistan, the UK.
Shan, from the CNSA, said the agency will "maintain an increasingly active and open stance" in international space exchange and cooperation, including along the space information corridor under the Belt and Road Initiative
"I believe China's circle of friends in space will continue to grow," he said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8v691qmg5o
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3307819/us-scientists-given-access-moon-rocks-brought-back-chinas-change-5-probe
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/roman-space-telescope/nasas-roman-mission-shares-detailed-plans-to-scour-skies/
NASA’s Roman Mission Shares Detailed Plans to Scour Skies
Apr 24, 2025
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team shared Thursday the designs for the three core surveys the mission will conduct after launch.
These observation programs are designed to investigate some of the most profound mysteries in astrophysics while enabling expansive cosmic exploration that will revolutionize our understanding of the universe.
“Roman’s setting out to do wide, deep surveys of the universe in a way that will help us answer questions about how dark energy and dark matter govern cosmic evolution, and the demographics of worlds beyond our solar system,” said Gail Zasowski, an associate professor at the University of Utah and co-chair of the ROTAC (Roman Observations Time Allocation Committee).
“But the overarching goal is that the surveys have broad appeal and numerous science applications. They were designed by and for the astronomical community to maximize the science they’ll enable.”
Roman’s crisp, panoramic view of space and fast survey speeds provide the opportunity for astronomers to study the universe as never before.
The Roman team asked the science community to detail the topics they’d like to study through each of Roman’s surveys and selected committees of scientists across many organizations to evaluate the range of possibilities and formulate three compelling options for each.
In April, the Roman team received the recommendations and has now determined the survey designs.
These observations account for no more than 75 percent of Roman’s surveys during its five-year primary mission, with the remainder allocated to additional observations that will be proposed and developed by the science community in later opportunities.
“These survey designs are the culmination of two years of input from more than 1,000 scientists from over 350 institutions across the globe,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard.
“We’re thrilled that we’ve been able to hear from so many of the people who’ll use the data after launch to investigate everything from objects in our outer solar system, planets across our galaxy, dark matter and dark energy, to exploding stars, growing black holes, galaxies by the billions, and so much more.”
With all major hardware now delivered, Roman has entered its final phase of preparation for launch, undergoing integration and key environmental testing at NASA Goddard.
Roman is targeted to launch by May 2027, with the team working toward a potential launch as early as October 2026.
High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey
Roman’s largest survey, the High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey, combines the powers of imaging and spectroscopy to unveil more than a billion galaxies strewn across a wide swath of cosmic time.
Roman can look far from the dusty plane of our Milky Way galaxy (that’s what the “high-latitude” part of the survey name means), looking up and out of the galaxy rather than through it to get the clearest view of the distant cosmos.
The distribution and shapes of galaxies in Roman’s enormous, deep images can help us understand the nature of dark energy — a pressure that seems to be speeding up the universe’s expansion — and how invisible dark matter, which Roman will detect by its gravitational effects, influences the evolution of structure in our universe.
For the last two years, researchers have been discussing ways to expand the range of scientific topics that can be studied using the same dataset.
That includes studying galaxy evolution, star formation, cosmic voids, the matter between galaxies, and much more.
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High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey
Roman’s High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey can probe our dynamic universe by observing the same region of the cosmos repeatedly.
Stitching these observations together to create movies can allow scientists to study how celestial objects and phenomena change over time periods of days to years.
This survey can probe dark energy by finding and studying many thousands of a special type of exploding star called type Ia supernovae.
These stellar cataclysms allow scientists to measure cosmic distances and trace the universe’s expansion.
“Staring at a large volume of the sky for so long will also reveal black holes being born as neutron stars merge, and tidal disruption events –– flares released by stars falling into black holes,” said Saurabh Jha, a professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and ROTAC co-chair.
“It will also allow astronomers to explore variable objects, like active galaxies and binary systems.
And it enables more open-ended cosmic exploration than most other space telescopes can do, offering a chance to answer questions we haven’t yet thought to ask.”
Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey
Unlike the high-latitude surveys, Roman’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will look inward to provide one of the deepest views ever of the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.
Roman’s crisp resolution and infrared view can allow astronomers to watch hundreds of millions of stars in search of microlensing signals — gravitational boosts of a background star’s light that occur when an intervening object passes nearly in front of it.
While astronomers have mainly discovered star-hugging worlds, Roman’s microlensing observations can find planets in the habitable zone of their star and farther out, including analogs of every planet in our solar system except Mercury.
The same set of observations can reveal “rogue” planets that drift through the galaxy unbound to any star, brown dwarfs (“failed stars” too lightweight to power themselves by fusion the way stars do), and stellar corpses like neutron stars and white dwarfs.
And scientists could discover 100,000 new worlds by seeing stars periodically get dimmer as an orbiting planet passes in front of them, events called transits.
Scientists can also study the stars themselves, detecting “starquakes” on a million giant stars, the result of sound waves reverberating through their interiors that can reveal information about their structures, ages, and other properties.
Data from all of Roman’s surveys will be made public as soon as it is processed, with no periods of exclusive access.
“Roman’s unprecedented data will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to explore all kinds of cosmic topics,” McEnery said.
“We stand to learn a tremendous amount of new information about the universe very rapidly after the mission launches.”
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SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches 28 Starlink satellites, aces droneship booster landing
April 24, 2025
SpaceX continues its steady pace of Starlink launches, ever growing the company's orbital internet constellation.
A Falcon 9 rocket launched SpaceX's Starlink 6-74 mission Thursday night, April 24, out of Florida's Space Coast.
Liftoff occurred at 9:52 p.m. ET (0152 GMT, April 25) from Launch Complex-40 (LC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Stacked 28-tall inside the Falcon 9 fairing, the newest additions to SpaceX's Starlink megaconstellation headed toward low Earth orbit (LEO), powered by the Falcon 9's nine first-stage Merlin engines.
The rocket's first stage booster, tail number B1069, executed main engine cutoff and separated from the rocket's upper stage about 2.5 minutes into flight.
Approximately six minutes later, B1069 landed safely on SpaceX's A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship, stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
This was the 23rd launch of B1069, and the booster's 19th Starlink mission.
The rocket's upper stage continued into LEO with its 28 Starlink satellites, releasing them from the rocket's payload adapter one hour into flight.
They will spend the next few days maneuvering into more specific orbits to join SpaceX's growing megaconstellation.
SpaceX's Starlink network consists of more than 7,000 satellites and counting. As a whole, they operate in a grid that blankets nearly all of the planet, save for the poles.
Starlink offers users a high-speed internet connection from anywhere (other than the poles) they are able to point their Starlink receiver toward the sky.
Thursday's launch was SpaceX's 47th Falcon 9 mission of 2025, and the company's 30th Starlink launch so far this year.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/spacex-starlink-6-74-b1069-ccsfs
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=sl-6-74