Astro Wonders

2022-06-10 13:27:58 A Venus-bound mission from NASA will carry a tiny sensor built by students to the planet's hellish surface

NASA's DAVINCI mission to Venus will carry a dime-sized, student-built sensor to study the ​​planet's near-surface environment.

The DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gasses, Chemistry, and Imaging) mission, which is slated to launch in 2029, aims to investigate Venus' atmosphere-climate system and shed new light on the scorching planet's potentially habitable past. It is the first Venus mission that will use both spacecraft flybys and a descent probe.

The miniature sensor, called the Venus Oxygen Fugacity (VfOx) instrument, will be mounted on the outside of the spacecraft's Descent Sphere, the probe that will enter Venus' atmosphere. The sensor will be designed, built, tested and operated by students as a part of the mission's Student Collaboration Experiment, according to NASA.

The spacecraft will perform two flybys of Venus before its probe plunges through the planet's dense atmosphere about two years after launch. The probe is expected to take measurements of clouds and ultraviolet absorption on the Venusian dayside, along with measurements of heat emanating from the planet's surface on the nightside. The probe will also ingest and analyze gasses in the planet's atmosphere while capturing images of its descent to an area known as Alpha Regio, which is composed largely of rugged, mountainous terrain called tessera.
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2022-06-10 13:27:52 @thewonderofspace Open / Comment

2022-06-10 07:28:40 Clearly about how well we examined Pluto with the New Horizons spacecraft.

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2022-06-09 20:35:36 NASA Completes Main Body of Europa Clipper Spacecraft – Will Search for Life on Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa

Europa Jupiter’s icy moon, almost certainly has a vast ocean beneath its icy shell. In fact, scientists believe this ocean contains more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. The complex chemistry required for life as we know it to exist requires liquid water, making this ocean one of the key reasons astrobiologists want to study Europa.

NASA’s Europa Clipper is expected to launch in 2024 and take several years to reach Jupiter. It will orbit the planet, during each flyby, it will scan the moon and then report the data back to Earth.

Standing 10 feet tall and 5 feet wide, it’s an aluminum cylinder integrated with electronics, radios, thermal loop tubing, cabling, and the propulsion system. With its solar arrays and other deployable equipment stowed for launch, Europa Clipper will be as large as an SUV; when extended, the solar arrays make the craft the size of a basketball court.
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2022-06-09 20:16:04 James Webb Space Telescope hit by micrometeoroid just months into flight

NASA's next-generation space observatory has sustained its first noticeable micrometeoroid impact less than six months after launch, but the agency isn't too concerned.

The James Webb Space Telescope, also known as Webb or JWST, launched on Dec. 25, 2021. It has spent the intervening months trekking out to its deep-space post and preparing for science observations, a complicated process that has gone remarkably smoothly; recently, NASA said it expects to unveil the first science-quality images from the telescope on July 12.

Now, the agency announced on June 8 that the observatory has experienced its first few impacts from tiny pieces of space debris called micrometeoroids. But don't panic: Neither the observatory's schedule nor its scientific legacy is expected to suffer.

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