Astro Wonders

2022-06-04 05:31:10 The flight of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter station over one of the craters of the Red Planet.

@thewonderofspace Open / Comment

2022-06-03 15:32:48 Risky Winter on Mars: Each Sol Could Be Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s Last

Although NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has defied expectations, proved that powered, controlled flight of an aircraft was possible on Mars, and has been an incredible success all around, the approaching Mars winter brings additional challenges. Each sol (Mars-day) could be Ingenuity’s last.

With less daylight reaching the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s solar array during the winter on Mars, it will likely be deficient in keeping its batteries charged. It is believed to already suffering from battery brownouts at night, where the low voltage caused the electronics to reset. It is also likely that there will be insufficient power for the heater to keep the electronics in their safe temperature range. This cold cycling each night could cause the electronics to fail.

@thewonderofspace Open / Comment

2022-06-03 15:23:51 @thewonderofspace Open / Comment

2022-06-03 15:22:34 Jupiter is a whirling world in stunning (and woozy) footage from Juno spacecraft

This sped-up view shows the perspective of NASA's Juno spacecraft as it flew just 3,300 kilometers above the gas giant's cloud tops on April 9. This was Juno's 41st flyby above the radiation-spewing planet, during which the spacecraft soared at a top speed of 210,000 km/h relative to Jupiter.

That's about five times faster than the crewed Apollo missions were traveling as they left Earth for the moon, NASA officials said.

The colorful imagery was created from the JunoCam instrument's raw images, which officials upload to an image processing gallery that allows citizen scientists to add their insights to the raw data.

While Juno's initial main target has been Jupiter, in January 2021 NASA authorized an extension of the mission's mandate to focus a little more closely on the planet's four large moons, especially Ganymede, Europa and Io. Juno will run until September 2025, assuming it remains in good health.
@thewonderofspace Open / Comment

2022-06-03 05:34:53 The system of Saturn's moons.

@thewonderofspace Open / Comment

2022-06-02 18:00:54 New and improved satellites will help track storms this hurricane season

Hurricanes, also called tropical cyclones, are large, rotating storms that form when water from the surface of the ocean in the tropics evaporates and condenses to form clouds and rain. Satellites provide vital data on current weather conditions, allowing meteorologists to predict the path and severity of these storms more accurately.

Several recently launched satellites are providing more accurate data than ever, including the satellites of COSMIC-2, which launched in 2019. TROPICS, a network of six small satellites, will also launch in the next few months.

Around 160 satellites currently collect data on Earth's weather and atmosphere and beam that information back to us. Those include satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), like the GOES series, and by NASA, such as the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission, among others.
@thewonderofspace Open / Comment

2022-06-02 17:52:32 James Webb Space Telescope will release its 1st science-quality images July 12

NASA will release the first operational images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope on July 12 according to an agency statement posted on June 1. While Webb officials are still keeping those first imaging targets secret the agency emphasized that it took five years of work among the participating space agencies to decide what those first images will show.

"Our goals for Webb's first images and data are both to showcase the telescope's powerful instruments and to preview the science mission to come" astronomer Klaus Pontoppidan Webb project scientist said. "They are sure to deliver an awaited wow for astronomers and the public."

Although the Webb team has shared several images already these were all interim alignment images taken to evaluate the observatory's capabilities. The July 12 images will come after each instrument is calibrated tested and given the green light by its science and engineering team.
@thewonderofspace Open / Comment

2022-06-01 15:38:55 NASA's sun-grazing Parker Solar Probe will zip through its 12th stellar closeup today

NASA's sun-grazing spacecraft will make its 12th close flyby of our star on June 1 marking the halfway point of the mission.

During this flyby, the Parker Solar Probe, will get as close as 5.3 million miles of the solar surface, which is about as near as it drew during the last close approach on Feb. 25.

Flying 14 times closer than the orbit of Mercury, Parker will reach a top speed of 364,660 mph. The exact time of the closest approach will be 2250 GMT, according to Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory which oversees the mission.

Parker isn't set to break its speed record again this time, as it has done several times. But what's more valuable that how so many close passes are providing information about the sun's complex behavior, which leads to phenomena such as superheating the million-degree corona that is much hotter than the plasma on the sun's surface.
@thewonderofspace Open / Comment

2022-06-01 14:30:52 Chinese scientists call for plan to destroy Elon Musk's Starlink satellites

Chinese military researchers have called for the development of a hard kill weapon to destroy Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system. The researchers drew attention to Starlink's huge potential for military applications and the need for China to develop countermeasures to surveil disable or even destroy the growing satellite megaconstellation. Starlink is a broadband satellite internet network developed by Musk's SpaceX company that aims to beam internet access to customers anywhere in the world. SpaceX has put more than 2300 of them into low-Earth orbit and the company plans to send up to 42000 satellites into space.

The Chinese researchers were particularly concerned by the potential military capabilities of the constellation which they claim could be used to track hypersonic missiles dramatically boost the data transmission speeds of U.S. drones and stealth fighter jets or even destroy Chinese satellites.
@thewonderofspace Open / Comment

2022-05-31 18:04:22 Strange Radio-Emitting Neutron Star Discovered in Stellar Graveyard

An international team of astronomers has discovered a strange radio-emitting neutron star, which rotates extremely slowly, completing one rotation every 76 seconds.

The team of researchers says it is an unusual discovery as it resides in the neutron star graveyard where they do not expect to see any radio emission at all. The discovery was made using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa.

The source was initially found from a single flash, or pulse, by the MeerTRAP instrument whilst piggybacking on imaging observations being led by a different team, ThunderKAT. MeerTRAP and ThunderKAT then worked closely together to puzzle out its origin. Combining the data from the two teams, it was then possible to confirm the pulsations and get an accurate position for the source, enabling detailed and more sensitive follow-up observations.

Neutron stars are extremely dense remnants of a supernova explosion of a massive star. They can produce beams of radio waves that sweep around the sky as the neutron star spins, producing regular flashes like cosmic lighthouses.However, the new discovery is unlike anything seen so far. The team thinks it could belong to the theorized class of ultra-long period magnetars with extremely strong magnetic fields.
@thewonderofspace Open / Comment