TIG Post

Tag: NASA

  • Frank Rubio, NASA astronaut, returns from record-breaking space mission

    NASA astronaut Frank Rubio, who broke a record, has now come back to Earth after being away for over a year, and he is able to experience the Earth’s gravity once again.

    Rubio and his two Russian colleagues, Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin, safely landed in Kazakhstan using the Russian Soyuz MS-23 spaceship at 5:17 p. mThey parachuted down to the ground. The current time is 7:17 in the morning. On Wednesday

    The crew arrived and it was the end of a long journey for Rubio. He was only supposed to stay on the International Space Station for six months. Instead, he spent 371 days in space after they found a problem with his spaceship while it was connected to the space station.

    Rubio stayed in microgravity for the longest time ever recorded by a US astronaut. He was the first American to spend a whole year in space.

    Rubio’s mission was the first time he went to space. He joined NASA in 2017 and was chosen as an astronaut. At the start of the mission, he became the first astronaut from El Salvador to travel to low-Earth orbit.

    During an interview with CNN, Rubio mentioned that if he had known he would have to stay on the space station for twice the time he had initially expected, he most likely would have said no to the task before he started preparing for it.

    “He said that the reason for that is solely due to family issues that occurred in the past year. ” “If I had known that I would have to miss those important events, I would have politely declined. ”

    Rubio, who has four kids, is now going to start heading back home from the place where the Soyuz spacecraft landed, which is located near a town called Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. He will fly to Karaganda, which is about 330 miles (530 kilometers) northeast of Dzhezkazgan, and then take another flight to Houston.

    A NASA astronaut has set a new record for spending the most time in space.

    Rubio and his team traveled a really long way, around 157. 4 million miles or 253. 3 million kilometersThey also went around the Earth 5,963 times. This information comes from NASA.

    Rubio stayed in space longer than any other US astronaut before him. The previous record was set by NASA’s Mark Vande Hei in 2022 with a 355-day stay.

    Valeri Polyakov, a Russian astronaut, spent the most time in space compared to anyone else. He lived in Russia’s Mir space station for 437 days without a break, from January 1994 to March 1995.
    USA and Russia work together in space.

    Rubio went to the space station using a Russian spacecraft. NASA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, made an agreement to share rides to the space station. This agreement was made in the summer of 2022 during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The seat-swapping plan was made to keep the long-standing rule of allowing both the United States and Russia to have access to the space station. This rule is in place in case either country has problems with their spacecraft and cannot send astronauts.

    Rubio, Prokopyev, and Petelin traveled to the ISS on September 21, 2022, using the Soyuz MS-22 vehicle. They arrived safely three hours later and left the Soyuz capsule attached to the space station while they started working inside the lab.

    In a recent interview, Rubio expressed his gratitude to his family. He mentioned that their ability to bounce back from challenges and their inner power has been a great support throughout his mission.

    Less than three months after starting their mission, the Soyuz MS-22 started leaking coolant. Roscosmos conducted investigations and NASA later reviewed them. They found that the spacecraft was probably hit by a small object while in orbit. The person responsible was found to be a very tiny space rock or a small piece of space junk, which is becoming a bigger problem as space around Earth gets more crowded.

    The Soyuz MS-22 spaceship couldn’t bring back the astronauts safely, so Roscosmos hurried to send another spacecraft, called the Soyuz MS-23, in February.

    But Rubio and his colleagues couldn’t go back home yet. Officials decided that they would stay longer because Roscosmos was getting ready to send another Soyuz capsule with a new crew to take their place.

    The Soyuz MS-24 spacecraft, which was prepared this month, brought NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub to the space station on September 15. This allowed Rubio to come back on Wednesday.

    Rubio, who is a doctor and helicopter pilot in the military, said that when he comes back from space, he won’t be able to go back to his old life right away. This is because spending a long time in microgravity can have negative effects on the body. So he might need some time to recover before going back to his normal routine.

    “He said that it would take around two to six months before he feels normal because in space, we don’t walk and our own weight is not carried. ”

    But there are many things on Earth that he is excited to experience: “Here in space, we always hear the noise of machines that are keeping us alive,” he said during an interview from space. I’m excited to go outside and enjoy the calm and quiet atmosphere.

  • Large asteroid fragment has touched down on earth

    Large asteroid fragment has touched down on earth

    A big piece of a very large flying rock that comes close to earth every six years has just landed on earth.

    Nasa has collected clean samples of the asteroid called Bennu to study, and the samples have landed in the Utah desert with the help of a parachute.

    The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, sent by NASA, has been collecting rocks and dust from Bennu’s surface since 2020. It was launched in 2016 as part of NASA’s first mission to gather samples from an asteroid.

    During a quick visit to Earth, the main spacecraft released a small container from a distance of 63,000 miles.

    The little capsule landed on the ground after four hours while the main spaceship went on a mission to another asteroid.

    The people at Nasa stood up and clapped when the piece landed safely on time, but even earlier than expected.

    After the capsule lands 70 miles west of Salt Lake City, it will be taken to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, along with the samples it contains.

    We made special tools to study things and one of them can look at really tiny things.
    The team wants to learn more about how asteroids were important in forming the solar system long ago. They think Bennu, which is around 4. 5 billion years old, can give them information like a time capsule about the secrets of the universe.

    It will take Nasa two years to study the asteroid. After that, there is still more than 150 years left before any possible crash could happen.

    One-fourth of the group will be given to more than 200 people from 38 different institutions around the world. These institutions include scientists from the University of Manchester and the Natural History Museum.

    Scientists think that the capsule contains at least a cup of rubble, but they can’t be certain until they open it.

    A few rocks spilled out and floated away because the spacecraft collected too much and the lid got stuck when it picked them up three years ago.
    Japan is the only other country to have collected samples from an asteroid. They collected about a teaspoon’s worth of samples during two missions.

    The rocks and dirt symbolize the largest collection of things found outside of the moon.

    The preserved pieces that were created at the beginning of our solar system 4. 5 billion years ago will assist scientists in gaining a clearer understanding of how the earth and life came to be.

    Scientists think that in the future, a space rock called Bennu could hit our planet. It nearly hit us three times already, in 1999, 2005, and 2011. This was reported by Sky News.

    The asteroid might come near the Earth in September 2182. There is a small chance, about 1 in 2,700, that it could crash into our planet that year.

  • Brian May assists NASA in returning first asteroid sample

    Brian May assists NASA in returning first asteroid sample

    Brian May has once again shown why he is regarded as a rock legend. He is not just the Queen guitarist, but he is also an astrophysicist. He recently helped NASA bring back its first ever asteroid sample to Earth.

    May expressed that he felt extremely proud to be a part of the team that gathered the sample from the asteroid Bennu.

    Hello NASA people, fans of space, and lovers of asteroids. This is Brian May from the band Queen, and I am very proud to be a part of the OSIRIS-REx team, said the 76-year-old musician in a video on NASA TV.

    The OSIRIS-REx spaceship passed close to Earth on Sunday, seven years after it was sent to space to gather samples from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. In 2020, it took a sample from a really old asteroid that is over 4. 5 billion years old. Then in 2021, it started going back to Earth, specifically Utah.

    May was really important in the mission. They took pictures from the spacecraft’s data that helped the leader and the team find a safe place to land and collect a sample.

    In the video, May said sorry for not being with the team on the significant day.

    “I am practicing for a Queen tour, but I miss you deeply as this valuable item is found,” he said.

    “Today is a joyful day for the sample return mission, and I want to congratulate everyone who worked extremely hard on it. I especially want to highlight my dear friend Dante. ”

    “He said, may God bless all of you. ”

    After leaving the sample capsule in Utah, OSIRIS-REx is continuing its journey to study another asteroid, called Apophis, according to the space agency.

  • NASA and SpaceX send four astronauts from four different nations

    NASA and SpaceX send four astronauts from four different nations

    Four astronauts from different countries and space agencies went into space on a SpaceX rocket. They are heading to the International Space Station for a mission that will last more than six months.

    The team is traveling inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance spaceship on a mission called Crew-7. The spaceship was sent into space using a rocket called SpaceX Falcon 9. It was launched from NASA‘s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:27 a. mOn Saturday, at ET time.

    The space mission has four astronauts. The mission commander is Jasmin Moghbeli from NASA. Andreas Mogensen is from the European Space Agency. Satoshi Furukawa is from JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Konstantin Borisov is a Russian cosmonaut representing Roscosmos.

    After the Crew Dragon capsule was in space, it separated from the Falcon 9 rocket and started to travel on its own in space. The spacecraft will spend more than 24 hours moving carefully towards the space station, which is circling about 220 nautical miles (420 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth.

    Moghbeli told SpaceX mission control that space travel is hard, but they make it seem easy.

    “We’re a group that works together towards the same goal,” she said. Cheer for Crew-7. Fun ride

    The crew will arrive at the space station at approximately 8:39 in the morning. On Sunday at 8 PM.

    After getting on the spaceship, Moghbeli, Mogensen, Furukawa, and Borisov will meet the seven astronauts who are already in space.

    The Crew-7 astronauts will be taking charge from the SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts, who have been on the space station for a few months. They will spend approximately five days in this transition.

    This mission is the eighth time NASA and SpaceX are working together to take astronauts to the space station. This program has been going on since SpaceX’s first mission with crew in 2020.

    The Crew-7 astronauts are the most diverse group of SpaceX crew members so far.

    “We are very proud and I personally feel honored to be part of this amazing team. When you look at our four patches, you’ll see a different country’s flag on each one,” Moghbeli said during a news conference after the crew arrived in Florida on Sunday. The leader of the mission was talking about the flag patches on the left shoulder of the astronauts’ suits. We believe this shows what we can achieve when we collaborate and work together as a team. And we believe that this is the true purpose of the International Space Station.

    The team also collaborated to create its official mission patch. It shows a picture of a dragon sitting on top of the Earth.

    “We wanted the design to show that everything we do on this mission is aimed at helping our planet and the people on it,” Moghbeli explained. She said that the red, white, and blue stripes on the dragon’s tail symbolize the colors of the flags of the four countries participating in the Crew-7 mission.

    During their time on the space station, which is predicted to be around 190 days, the Crew-7 astronauts will carefully go through a list of experiments. The study will look into the possibility of bacteria and fungi spread from space missions involving humans. The team will check if it is possible to remove the tiny living things from the vents in the space station and release them into space where there is no air.

    The ESA has another project that will study how sleeping in space is different from sleeping on Earth. They will analyze the brain waves of astronauts while they fall asleep. Another test will examine how biofilms form in wastewater on the space station. This could help us find improved methods for recycling water for drinking and hygiene while in space. Yes, the space travelers on the station have been using reused sweat and urine to drink and clean themselves for a long time.

    Commander Moghbeli was born in Germany, near Frankfurt. Her parents are from Iran. However, she considers Baldwin, New York, on Long Island as her hometown.

    She completed high school and then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study aerospace engineering. After that, she earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

    Moghbeli has experience in the military, where she worked as a pilot for the Marine Corps. She completed over 150 missions in combat and flew for a total of 2,000 hours.

    In 2017, she was chosen to join NASA’s group of astronauts. The Crew-7 mission is her first time going into space.

    Moghbeli said during a news conference on July 25 that she had always wanted to do this for a very long time. I am really thrilled to be able to see our amazing planet again. Everyone I have spoken to who has flown before has said that it gave them a different and transformative way of looking at things.

    Borisov became the third astronaut from Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, to travel in a spacecraft made in the United States. This happened because NASA and Roscosmos made an agreement to swap seats in 2022.

    Sharing rides to the space station has been a tradition for NASA and Roscosmos. After NASA stopped their space shuttle program in 2011, Roscosmos was the only transportation provider for a long time. This new partnership between rideshare companies was a big concern for NASA last year because there were growing problems between the United States and Russia due to the war in Ukraine.

    NASA has consistently stated that conflicts on Earth have not impacted the ongoing teamwork between countries in space.

    Borisov, just like Moghbeli, is going on his first trip to space.

    I’m really, really happy and thrilled. “I feel very proud to be a member of the international team,” he said on Sunday. Experienced astronauts and cosmonauts say that when you go to the ISS and look at the planet, you can see that there are no boundaries. And honestly, I want to express that strong sensation and intense sentiment.

    Currently, only SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Russia’s Soyuz can transport astronauts to and from the space station. However, NASA plans to have another company that can do this soon. Boeing’s Starliner is going to start operating soon, like SpaceX, with the help of NASA’s commercial crew program. It was delayed for many years.

    Mogensen is the pilot of the Crew-7 mission. He is from Copenhagen and attended Copenhagen International School for his bachelor’s degree. Later, he studied aeronautical engineering at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom and got his master’s degree. He also got a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

    Before he got chosen to be trained as an astronaut by ESA in 2009, he worked as a researcher at the Surrey Space Centre in the UK. His work involved studying how spacecraft can navigate and be controlled when landing on the moon.

    This is his second trip to space. He went to the space station before on a 10-day Russian Soyuz mission in 2015.

    Mogensen said at a news conference on Sunday that it is difficult to explain how amazing the International Space Station is. I didn’t understand it until we were about to dock on my first space mission. Then, when I looked out the windows, I saw huge solar panels floating in space beside me.

    “I came to understand how amazing and one-of-a-kind the laboratory that we, as humans, have created in space close to Earth is, in the last 20 to 25 years. ”

    Furukawa is one of the few astronauts in the Crew-7 team who has been to space before. He was born in Kanagawa, Japan, which is not too far from Tokyo. He went to school to become a doctor and studied a lot to learn about medicine. After that, he worked in a hospital as a surgeon.

    In 1999, he was chosen to be a JAXA astronaut. In 2011, he went on his first mission to the space station, where he stayed for 165 days. He got there by going on NASA’s last space shuttle mission, STS-135.

    Furukawa said he is excited about living in the space station’s zero gravity and doing scientific studies. He wants to research things that could help make new medicine and learn how humans can explore the moon in the future.

    After arriving at the space station, the Crew-7 astronauts will say goodbye to the SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts. The Crew-6 astronauts will go back home on their spacecraft, called Crew Dragon Endeavour, in the next few days.

    In the middle of September, the team on the space station will welcome three new members. One is an astronaut from NASA named Loral O’Hara, and the other two are cosmonauts named Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub. They will all be traveling to the space station in a Russian capsule called Soyuz MS-24.

  • Astronomical mystery discovered by NASA telescope in outer space

    Astronomical mystery discovered by NASA telescope in outer space

    One of the most recent photographs taken by NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope was photobombed by a cosmic object that resembled a luminous question mark, and scientists believe they know what it could be.

    Herbig-Haro 46/47, a pair of young stars, were shown in the initial near-infrared photograph, which was published on July 26. The stars, which can be found 1,470 light-years away in the Vela constellation of the Milky Way galaxy, are still actively developing and are in close orbits around one another.

    Since the 1950s, ground- and space-based telescopes have viewed and studied the two, but the very sensitive Webb telescope has produced the sharpest and most detailed image ever. Compared to other space telescopes, it can observe the universe using longer wavelengths of light.

    The Webb telescope sheds light on knowledge about the universe’s beginnings, but the presence of this enigmatic object in the image’s background raises more questions than it does answers. Since the cosmic question mark hasn’t been closely seen or investigated, scientists are unsure of the object’s history and composition.

    But based on its form and location, they do have a few theories.

    According to Matt Caplan, an assistant professor of physics at Illinois State University, “the very first thing you can rule out is that it’s a star in the Milky Way.” Because stars are point-like, they constantly have these enormous spikes. Diffraction is a phenomenon that mostly results from the edges of the mirrors and the struts that support the type of camera in the middle.

    If you look closely, you can typically see six or eight stellar “prongs” with the Webb telescope, Caplan added. He described the apparition as having the shape of a question mark as “it tells you immediately that it’s not a star.”

    According to Christopher Britt, an education and outreach scientist in the office of public outreach at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which oversees the science operations of the Webb telescope, it could be a merger of two galaxies that are much more distant than Herbig-Haro 46/47 at a distance of likely billions of light-years apart.

    “Many, many galaxies outside of our own Milky Way,” stated Britt. As galaxies expand and change over cosmic time, they occasionally collide with their nearby neighbours, and this seems to be a rather common occurrence.

    And when that occurs, they can deform into a variety of shapes, including, presumably, a question mark.

    The merging of galaxies into a question mark-like shape has occurred previously, including a reverse version made by the Antennae Galaxies in the Corvus constellation, however it is likely the first time this particular item has been seen, according to specialists. Additionally, Britt noted that most galaxies have seen a number of brief contacts like this during their histories.

    Nothing can be anchored in space, according to Caplan. “The sun is moving as it orbits the galaxy, and the galaxy, being made of stars, is moving in whichever direction gravity pulls it.”

    Our galaxy will eventually merge with the Andromeda galaxy in around 4 billion years, although it is unknown how they will look. This integration is also our galaxy’s ultimate fate, according to Britt.

    It’s also possible that the shape of the question mark is “indicative of a merger where these two galaxies are interacting gravitationally,” according to Britt. “That hook of the question mark on top looks a lot like what we refer to as a tidal tail, where the stream of stars and gas has kind of been ripped off and flown out into space,” the observer said.

    More spectroscopic information on the object would provide additional information, including its distance and chemical make-up, according to Britt and Caplan.

    However, no one will do this since it is extremely similar to the story of the “local man who finds a chicken tender that looks like George Washington,” Caplan added. But if you were driven enough, you could make some observations.

  • Russia finally launches Luna 25 mission to the moon 

    Russia finally launches Luna 25 mission to the moon 

    Russia successfully launched Luna 25, the nation’s first lunar lander in 47 years.

    The unmanned spacecraft took launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Russian Amur Oblast. At 7:10 p.m. ET on Thursday, Luna 25 launched into space on a Soyuz-2 Fregat rocket at 8:10 a.m. local time on Friday.

    According to Reuters, there is a “one in a million chance” that one of Luna 25’s rocket stages may land there, thus residents of a Russian village were temporarily evacuated on Friday morning.

    The spacecraft is anticipated to first enter an orbit around Earth before changing to a lunar orbit and eventually dropping to the moon’s surface. On August 18, 1976, Luna 24, Russia‘s final lunar lander, touched down there.

    According to Reuters, there is a race to see which nation will arrive first when India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission and Luna 25 both intend to touch down at the lunar south pole on August 23. However, Roscomos stated that because their exact landing zones differ, it is not anticipated that the two missions will interfere with one another, according to Reuters.

    For one year, Luna 25, also known as the Luna-Glob-Lander, will investigate the elements that make up the lunar polar soil as well as the plasma and particles that make up the moon’s meagre atmosphere.

    According to NASA, the four-legged lander is equipped with landing rockets, fuel tanks, solar panels, computers, a robotic arm with a scoop to gather lunar samples, as well as a variety of equipment to analyse the samples and the exosphere.

    Initially, Luna 25, Luna 26, Luna 27, and the ExoMars rover were all going to be jointly developed by Roscosmos and the European Space Agency.

    But after Russia invaded Ukraine in April 2022, this collaboration came to an end, and the ESA Council decided to “discontinue cooperative activities with Russia.”

    Chandrayaan-3, which launched on July 14 and entered lunar orbit over the weekend, consists of a lander, rover, and propulsion module.

    India’s effort to make a landing at the lunar south pole follows Chandrayaan-2’s moon crash in September 2019. If the new mission is successful, India would become just the fourth nation, after the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China, to accomplish the challenging accomplishment. Chandrayaan-3 will spend a few weeks on the moon’s surface performing a number of scientific investigations to find out more about the moon’s makeup.

    In late 2025, during the Artemis III mission, NASA intends to place a woman and a person of colour on the moon for the first time at the lunar south pole.

    Due to its prospective riches, this region of the moon has been the subject of numerous missions. A crucial factor to take into account as organisations like NASA look to stably study the moon for extended lengths of time in the future is the possibility that deep, permanently shadowed craters in the lunar south pole contain ice that might be utilised for fuel, oxygen, and drinking water.

    “We’re going to see several spacecraft, some perhaps from other nations, that are going to be landing on the south pole in the near future,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a news conference on Tuesday. “There is a resurgence of interest in the moon, which is naturally due to the possibility of water. To prepare for a trip to Mars and a safe return, we’re travelling back to Earth to study how to survive in a deep space environment for extended periods of time.

    Nelson responded, “We wish them well,” when questioned about the forthcoming Luna 25 launch, stating that NASA and its Russian counterpart had been working together since 1975, going back to the Soviet era.

  • Voyager 2: NASA reestablishes full contact with the missing space probe

    Voyager 2: NASA reestablishes full contact with the missing space probe

    NASA has successfully reestablished full contact with its lost Voyager 2 probe, months ahead of the original expectations, the space agency reported.

    Back in July, an incorrect command had altered the spacecraft’s position and severed communication with Earth.

    However, on Tuesday, a signal was detected, and an “interstellar shout” – a powerful instruction – allowed the probe’s antenna to realign with Earth.

    NASA had initially anticipated a possible self-reset of the spacecraft in October. It took mission controllers 37 hours to confirm whether the interstellar command had been effective, considering Voyager 2’s vast distance from Earth.

    Utilizing the “highest-power transmitter,” the space agency sent a precisely timed message during optimal conditions to align the spacecraft’s antenna with the command.

    Prior to this breakthrough, the probe had been unable to receive instructions or transmit data due to the severed communication with NASA’s Deep Space Network, an array of large radio antennas scattered across the globe.

    On 4 August, NASA confirmed the receipt of data from Voyager 2, confirming its normal operations. The spacecraft, equipped with various scientific instruments, is expected to continue on its planned trajectory through the universe.

    NASA’s large dish in Canberra, Australia, had been actively seeking any stray signals from Voyager 2. The first faint “heartbeat” signal was detected during this process. The antenna had been persistently sending the correct command to the spacecraft, hoping for a connection.

    Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, are the only spacecraft to have ventured beyond the heliosphere, the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields generated by the Sun. Voyager 2 has flown by Neptune and Uranus, while Voyager 1, currently over 15 billion miles away from Earth, holds the record as humanity’s most distant spacecraft.

    Even after their power runs out, expected after 2025, both Voyager probes will continue their journey through space.

  • Nasa shares photo of star-forming region

    Nasa shares photo of star-forming region

    Nasa unveiled an “unprecedented” close-up image of the nearest star-forming region to Earth to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the James Webb space telescope’s operation.

    The image showcases the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, located 390 light years away, and provides researchers with a detailed view of “sun-like” stars within the region, devoid of any foreground star interference.

    Accompanying the release of the image, Nasa issued a statement describing it as a “dynamic image” that defies the apparent tranquility of the region and ignites curiosity about its composition. The image invites further exploration and inquiry into understanding the enigmatic elements captured within.

    “Webb’s image of Rho Ophiuchi allows us to witness a very brief period in the stellar lifecycle with new clarity,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, a Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “Our own sun experienced a phase like this, long ago, and now we have the technology to see the beginning of another star’s story.”

    Some stars in the image displayed “tell-tale shadows indicating protoplanetary discs”, potential future planetary systems in the making, Nasa said.

    Within the region depicted in the image, there exists a collection of approximately 50 youthful stars, sharing similarities in mass with the sun or being even smaller.

    Notably, the image highlights the presence of immense red bipolar jets composed of molecular hydrogen. These jets manifest when a star emerges from its original dust-filled cocoon, propelling a pair of opposing jets into the surrounding space.

    The launch of the £6.8bn James Webb telescope, a collaborative effort between Nasa, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, took place on Christmas Day 2021.

    Despite its substantial budget and prolonged development timeline, the telescope has impressively surpassed expectations, captivating skeptics with a series of groundbreaking images captured from the depths of the cosmos.

    By enabling us to peer further back into the origins of the universe, the Webb telescope has offered mesmerizing high-resolution photographs of distant worlds and the enigmatic structures encircling them.

    It has facilitated the observation of stars in a fleeting stage just before their demise, unveiled the formation of early galaxies a mere 350 million years after the big bang, and provided evidence of “universe breaker galaxies” of unprecedented size that have the potential to challenge current cosmological theories.

    Last week Nasa revealed that Webb had discovered the most distant active supermassive black hole to date, Ceers 1019, which existed just over 570m years from the big bang.

    “In just one year, the James Webb space telescope has transformed humanity’s view of the cosmos, peering into dust clouds and seeing light from faraway corners of the universe for the very first time,” Nasa’s administrator, Bill Nelson, said in a statement. “Every new image is a new discovery, empowering scientists around the globe to ask and answer questions they once could never dream of.

    “Webb is an investment in American innovation but also a scientific feat made possible with Nasa’s international partners that share a can-do spirit to push the boundaries of what is known to be possible.

    “Thousands of engineers, scientists and leaders poured their life’s passion into this mission, and their efforts will continue to improve our understanding of the origins of the universe and our place in it.”

    The space agency has arranged a week-long “celebration” of the anniversary of Webb’s first images, including a livestream event on Wednesday night with scientists to discuss the telescope’s impact on exploration and human understanding of the solar system.

  • Clever helicopter calls home from Mars after 63 days without communication

    Clever helicopter calls home from Mars after 63 days without communication

    After 63 days of stillness, an inventive helicopter calls home from Mars. The Mars Ingenuity chopper has resumed talking after 63 days of quiet.

    On April 26, the small chopper launched on its 52nd voyage to Mars, but it lost contact with mission controllers before landing, resulting in a communication blackout that lasted for months.

    On June 28, however, Ingenuity called home once more, allaying any worries about the first aircraft’s safety and whereabouts. To humans on Earth, that is still a very long time to wait for word that Ingenuity arrived successfully.

    The flight was intended to reposition the helicopter and capture images of the Martian surface.

    The mission team anticipated that radio silence might occur.

    That’s because Ingenuity communicates with mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, by relaying all messages through the Perseverance rover.

    And when Ingenuity took off for flight 52, a hill presented an obstacle blocking the helicopter and rover from communicating with each other.

    “The portion of Jezero Crater the rover and helicopter are currently exploring has a lot of rugged terrain, which makes communications dropouts more likely,” said Josh Anderson, the Ingenuity team lead at JPL, in a statement.

    While the two robots make for a dynamic duo that can investigate Mars from the surface and its atmosphere in search of signs of ancient life, it’s difficult for them to stick close together.

    Ingenuity began as a technology demonstration to test if a small rotorcraft could fly on Mars. After surpassing all expectations across five successful flights in the spring of 2021, Ingenuity transitioned to become an aerial scout, flying ahead of the Perseverance rover and plotting out safe and scientifically interesting pathways for the rover’s exploration.

    Sometimes, Ingenuity is off exploring and taking images of sites that the rover may not reach for weeks.

    Once Perseverance crested the obstructive hill, the helicopter and rover had a chance to communicate and relay Ingenuity’s messages back to Earth — including the data captured during its 139-second-long flight spanning 1,191 feet (363 meters) on April 26.

    “The team’s goal is to keep Ingenuity ahead of Perseverance, which occasionally involves temporarily pushing beyond communication limits,” Anderson said.
    “We’re excited to be back in communications range with Ingenuity and receive confirmation of Flight 52.”

    What’s next for Ingenuity and Perseverance

    It’s not the first time the mission team has experienced communication drops with Ingenuity that last an “agonizingly long time,” like the gaps that occurred before the helicopter’s historic 50th flight in April, according to Travis Brown, chief engineer for Ingenuity at JPL.

    The chopper is also still contending with a buildup of dust on its solar panel that occurred during the Martian winter, causing the helicopter to experience a “transitional power state” that may endure even as Martian summer arrives.

    “This means that, much to the chagrin of her team, we are not yet done playing this high-stakes game of hide and seek with the playful little helicopter,” Brown wrote in a NASA blog.

    But Ingenuity has overcome landing on Mars, survived frigid nights, flying on Mars for the first time and numerous record-breaking flights since, and its journey to explore Mars like never before continues.

    Hoping that the rest of Ingenuity’s system will appear to be in good shape, flight engineers are already planning another aerial excursion for the chopper in another couple weeks. Ingenuity’s next few flights will bring it closer to a rocky outcrop that NASA is keen for Perseverance to explore.

  • SpaceX returns from space station with former NASA astronaut and paying customers

    SpaceX returns from space station with former NASA astronaut and paying customers

    Tuesday marked the end of the crew’s historic week-long journey when a SpaceX capsule carrying a decorated former NASA astronaut and three paying customers returned from the International Space Station.

    Tuesday morning, the Crew Dragon spacecraft blasted off from the space station. The crew spent over 12 hours in orbit as the capsule made its way back towards Earth. At 11:04 p.m. ET, the Crew Dragon and its passengers safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico outside Panama City, Florida, following a fiery reentry.

    This mission, dubbed Axiom Mission 2, or AX-2, launched from Florida on May 21.AX-2 was put together by the Houston-based company Axiom Space and marked the second all-private mission to the orbiting outpost, meaning solely commercial companies, rather than a government agency, have been leading the mission.

    This mission was also a milestone in the history of spaceflight as stem cell researcher Rayyanah Barnawi became the first woman from Saudi Arabia to travel to space.

    The AX-2 mission is one in a lineup of commercial missions designed to spur private sector participation in spaceflight — particularly in low-Earth orbit, where the International Space Station orbits.

    Former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, 63, led the AX-2 crew. Whitson, now an Axiom Space employee, also became the first woman to command a private spaceflight.

    “I’m really excited about returning to space, but even more excited about welcoming three new astronauts,” Whitson said in a May 21 statement from the Crew Dragon spacecraft after launch.

    One of the three paying customers joining Whitson was John Shoffner, an American who made his fortune in the international telecom business and founded the hardware company Dura-Line Corp.

    Saudi Arabia also paid to fly two of its citizens: Barnawi and Ali AlQarni, a fighter pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force.

    “I am very honored and happy to be representing all the dreams and all the hopes of all the people in Saudi Arabia and all the women back home,” Barnawi told reporters at a May 16 news conference.

    During the mission, Barnawi led stem cell research suited for the microgravity environment aboard the space station. Theorbiting laboratory has long been a key venue for various scientific experiments, as the lack of gravity can give researchers a better fundamental understanding of the topic at hand. Barnawi and AlQarni also engaged in outreach projects, including testing out a kite in microgravity and capturing video for viewers back home.

    The AX-2 crew spent about eight days working alongside astronauts representing NASA, Russia’s Roscomos space agency and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency aboard the space station, though they operated on different schedules. The AX-2 crew worked through a lineup of more than 20 investigations and science projects — including stem cell and other biomedical research.

    This mission marked Whitson’s first return to space since 2017. Her extensive prior experience on the station made her a US record holder in 2017 for the most cumulative days logged in space, and she ranks eighth on the all-time list, according to NASA.

    Whitson has flown on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft as well as NASA’s space shuttle, but she said preparing for this mission was “obviously different” because it involved training to operate SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which has only been flying astronauts since 2020.

    “That’s been one of the biggest challenges for me is learning this particular spacecraft,” she said. “But I’ve really enjoyed it.”

    Barnawi and AlQarni are only the second and third Saudi nationals to travel to space. The first was Prince Sultan bin Salman, who spent about a week on a NASA space shuttle mission in 1985.

    Saudi Arabia has faced a barrage of criticism from the Biden administration and Congress over its human rights record, though the ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia remain strong.

    AlQarni said in a news conference earlier in May that he believes Arabs’ participation in spaceflight is a “great opportunity” that can inspire the region.

    The mission will “hold a big message. … We are holding hands, we are working together for the betterment of humanity and just trying to innovate,” he said during a mid-May news briefing.

    This mission isn’t the first time individuals have paid their way to space. A company called Space Adventures brokered several such missions to the space station in the early 2000s, booking rides for wealthy thrill seekers on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft.

    Axiom brought that business model to the United States, partnering with SpaceX to establish a framework for getting an array of customers to the space station. The company’s first foray, Axiom Mission 1, or AX-1, launched in April 2022 and marked the first time private citizens traveled to the space station from US soil.

    Axiom’s goal is to make these missions routine, offering more opportunities for people who are not professional astronauts to experience spaceflight. During a prelaunch news conference, Derek Hassmann, chief of mission integration and operations at Axiom Space, said his company expects to see more customers sponsored by governments, similar to the AX-2 passengers from Saudi Arabia.

    “Government astronauts are indeed a key piece of our business plan,” he said. “Early in the program … it wasn’t clear to us what the balance would be between private individuals and government astronauts since nothing like this had ever been done before. But it’s become clear to us that the government … market is key, and we’re pursuing that actively.”

    Axiom leadership envisions private spaceflight will continue even after the space station is retired, which NASA anticipates will happen in late 2030. Axiom is one of several US companies gunning to create a new, privately owned space station. It’s an effort supported by NASA, which aims to bolster private sector participation closer to home so the agency can focus on investing in deep-space exploration.

  • NASA astronaut activated to International Space Station cancelled at last minute

    NASA astronaut activated to International Space Station cancelled at last minute

    Following the discovery of a problem with the rocket’s ground system, SpaceX and NASA decided to cancel a crew launch to the International Space Station.

    The launch was aborted with around two minutes left in the countdown due to an issue with the TEA-TEB ignition fluid, which is used to ignite the SpaceX Falcon 9’s rocket engines during takeoff.

    SpaceX systems engineer Kate Tice commented on Monday’s webcast that the decision to cancel the launch was made “out of an excess of caution.”

    The four astronauts, who were strapped into their Crew Dragon capsule atop the rocket in the hours leading up to launch, disembarked from the spacecraft after waitingfor the 230-foot-tall (70-meter) rocket to be drained of its fuel. They’ll stay on site at Kennedy Space Center until the next launch attempt.

    NASA said it would now look to launch the SpaceX Crew-6 mission at 12:34 a.m. EST Thursday, March 2 “pending resolution of the technical issue preventing Monday’s launch.”

    The agency said it would skip a launch opportunity on Tuesday because of an unfavorable weather forecast.

    “I’m proud of the NASA and SpaceX teams’ focus and dedication to keeping Crew-6 safe,” NASA’s Administrator Bill Nelson said in a blog post.

    “Human spaceflight is an inherently risky endeavor and, as always, we will fly when we are ready.”

    The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule were slated to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:45 a.m. ET Monday. But the clock was stopped by engineers that oversee the ground systems with less than three minutes left.

    This mission is expected to mark the seventh astronaut flight SpaceX has carried out on NASA’s behalf since 2020.

    The Crew-6 team that will launch onthe SpaceX capsuleinclude NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen, a veteran of three space shuttle missions, and first-time flier Warren Hoburg, as well as Sultan Alneyadi, who will be the second astronaut from the UAE ever to travel to space, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

    Once Bowen, Hoburg, Fedyaev and Alneyadi are on board the ISS, they’ll work to take over operations from the SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts who arrived at the space station in October 2022.

    They’re expected to spend up to six months on board the orbiting laboratory, carrying out science experiments and maintaining the two-decade-old station.

    The mission comes as the astronauts currently on the ISS have been grappling with a separate transportation issue.

    In December, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft that had been used to transport two cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut to the space station sprang a coolant leak. After the capsule was deemed unsafe to return the astronauts, Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, launched a replacement vehicle on February 23. It arrived at the ISS on Saturday.

  • Re-entry of decades-old NASA satellite promises only a slight danger

    Re-entry of decades-old NASA satellite promises only a slight danger

    Some of the satellite’s 2,450kg (5,400lb) mass is projected to survive re-entry but the majority will burn up in the atmosphere.

    A defunct NASA satellite that has spent nearly 40 years in orbit is poised to hit the ground.

    According to a statement released by NASA on Saturday, the likelihood of a risk to “anyone on Earth” from falling satellite debris is extremely low.

    According to NASA, some components of the 2,450kg (5,400lb) satellite are anticipated to survive the re-entry but the most will burn up.

    The United States space agency put the odds of injury from falling debris at about one-in-9,400. The science satellite is expected to come down on Sunday night at approximately 18:40 EST (23:40 GMT), give or take 17 hours, according to the US defence department.

    The California-based Aerospace Corporation, however, has predicted Monday morning, US time, for the satellite’s re-entry, give or take 13 hours, along a track that passes over Africa, Asia the Middle East and the westernmost areas of North and South America.

    The Earth Radiation Budget Satellite, known as ERBS, was launched in 1984 on board the space shuttle Challenger.

    Although its expected working lifetime was two years, the satellite kept making ozone and other atmospheric measurements until its retirement in 2005. The satellite studied how Earth absorbed and radiated energy from the sun.

    “ERBS far exceeded its expected two-year service life, operating until its retirement in 2005,” NASA said in a statement.

    “Its observations helped researchers measure the effects of human activities on Earth’s radiation balance,” NASA said.

    The satellite got a special send-off when it was launched from the Challenger 38 years ago.

    The first woman in space, US astronaut Sally Ride, released the satellite into orbit using the shuttle’s robot arm.

    That same mission also featured the first spacewalk by a US woman Kathryn Sullivan. It was the first time two female astronauts flew in space together.

    Source: Aljazeera

  • Ghana has spent over $323m spent on HIV/AIDS response in 3 years – AIDS Commission

    The Ghana AIDS Commission has said it has spent $323.7 million on HIV/AIDS-related activities in the last three years.

    According to the Commission, the total HIV/AIDS-related expenditure for 2019, 2020, and 2021 will be $88,648,568, $107,280,242, and $127,828,300, respectively.

    Director General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Dr Kyeremeh Atuahene, who disclosed this, also revealed that the spending for the years mentioned came from the government, the private sector, and international donors.

    Dr. Atuahene stated this during the launch and distribution of the National AIDS Spending Assessment (NASA) report for 2019-2021.

    NASA is a comprehensive and systemic resource tracking method for HIV/AIDS programmes that describes the financial flow, actual disbursements, and expenditures.

    The report is hinged on three dimensions, including financing, provision, and consumption, and the overall estimates of the expenditures of the public, private sectors, and international donors on the national HIV and AIDS response.

  • NASA’s mightiest rocket lifts off 50 years after Apollo

    NASA’s new moon rocket blasted off on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard Wednesday, bringing the U.S. a big step closer to putting astronauts back on the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program 50 years ago.

    If all goes well during the three-week, make-or-break shakedown flight, the crew capsule will be propelled into a wide orbit around the moon and then return to Earth with a Pacific splashdown in December.

    After years of delays and billions in cost overruns, the Space Launch System rocket thundered skyward, rising from Kennedy Space Center on 8.8 million pounds (4 million kilograms) of thrust and hitting 100 mph (160 kph) within seconds. The Orion capsule was perched on top and, less than two hours into the flight, busted out of Earth’s orbit toward the moon.

    “It’s a great day,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

    The moonshot follows nearly three months of vexing fuel leaks that kept the rocket bouncing between its hangar and the pad. Forced back indoors by Hurricane Ian at the end of September, the rocket stood its ground outside as Nicole swept through last week with gusts of more than 80 mph (130 kph). Although the wind caused some damage, managers gave the green light for the launch.

     

    An estimated 15,000 people jammed the launch site, with thousands more lining the beaches and roads outside the gates, to witness NASA’s long-awaited sequel to Project Apollo, when 12 astronauts walked on the moon from 1969 and 1972. Crowds also gathered outside NASA centers in Houston and Huntsville, Alabama, to watch the spectacle on giant screens.

    Cheers accompanied the rocket as it rode a huge trail of flames toward space, with a half-moon glowing brightly and buildings shaking as though hit by a major quake.

    “For the Artemis generation, this is for you,” launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson called out, referring to all those born after Apollo.

    The liftoff marked the start of NASA’s Artemis lunar-exploration program, named after Apollo’s mythological twin sister. The space agency is aiming to send four astronauts around the moon on the next flight, in 2024, and land humans there as early as 2025.

    “You have earned your place in history,” Blackwell-Thompson told her team following liftoff.

    The 322-foot (98-meter) SLS is the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA, with more thrust than either the space shuttle or the mighty Saturn V that carried men to the moon. A series of hydrogen fuel leaks plagued the summertime launch attempts as well as countdown tests. A fresh leak erupted at a new location during Tuesday night’s fueling, but an emergency team managed to tighten the faulty valve on the pad. Then a U.S. Space Force radar station went down, resulting in another scramble, this time to replace an ethernet switch.

    “The rocket, it’s alive. It’s creaking. It’s making venting noises. It’s pretty scary. … My heart was pumping. My nerves were going,” said Trent Annis, one of the three men who entered the blast danger zone to fix Tuesday night’s leak.

    Orion should reach the moon by Monday, more than 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) from Earth. After coming within 80 miles (130 kilometers) of the moon, the capsule will enter a far-flung orbit stretching about 40,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) beyond.

    The $4.1 billion test flight is set to last 25 days, roughly the same as when crews will be aboard. The space agency intends to push the spacecraft to its limits and uncover any problems before astronauts strap in. The mannequins — NASA calls them moonequins — are fitted with sensors to measure such things as vibration, acceleration and cosmic radiation.

    The rocket was supposed to have made its dry run by 2017. Government watchdogs estimate NASA will have spent $93 billion on the project by 2025.

    Ultimately, NASA hopes to establish a base on the moon and send astronauts to Mars by the late 2030s or early 2040s.

    But many hurdles still need to be cleared. The Orion capsule will take astronauts only to lunar orbit, not the surface.

    NASA has hired Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop Starship, the 21st-century answer to Apollo’s lunar lander. Starship will carry astronauts back and forth between Orion and the lunar surface, at least on the first trip in 2025. The plan is to station Starship and eventually other companies’ landers in orbit around the moon, ready for use whenever new Orion crews pull up.

    Reprising an argument that was made during the 1960s, Duke University historian Alex Roland questions the value of human spaceflight, saying robots and remote-controlled spacecraft could get the job done more cheaply, efficiently and safely.

    “In all these years, no evidence has emerged to justify the investment we have made in human spaceflight — save the prestige involved in this conspicuous consumption,” he said.

    NASA is waiting until this test flight is over before introducing the astronauts who will be on the next one and those who will follow in the bootsteps of Apollo 11′s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

    Most of NASA’s corps of 42 active astronauts and 10 trainees were not even born yet when Apollo 17 moonwalkers Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out the era, 50 years ago next month.

    “We are jumping out of our spacesuits with excitement,” astronaut Christina Koch said Tuesday.

    After a nearly yearlong space station mission and all-female spacewalk, Koch, 43, is on NASA’s short list for a lunar flight. So is astronaut Kayla Barron, 35, who finally got to witness her first rocket launch, not counting her own a year ago.

    “It took my breath away, and I was tearing up,” Barron said. “What an amazing accomplishment for this team.”

     

    Source: woodtv.com

  • Ugandan, Zimbabwean satellites launched into orbit by NASA rocket.

    A NASA rocket carried it first-ever domestic satellites of Zimbabwe and Uganda into orbit.

    Three Zimbabwean scientists who received support and training in Japan created and put together the country’s first satellite, known as ZimSat-1.

    Uganda’s satellite, the PearlAfricaSat-1 was also built by three of its own aerospace engineers, and hope that it will be able to set up its own command station to manage it.

    Once in orbit, the two satellites will collect images to help support research into weather forecasting, as well as monitoring border security, and disaster prevention for their countries.

    Outrage on social media

    But for Zimbabweans, facing tough economic times, the launch was not without controversy and has provoked strong reactions on social networks. The cost of the project was not disclosed.

    ‘Launching a satellite when the economy is fragile is stupid. Poverty has increased in the last five years. You can’t buy a car when your family is starving,’ posted @patriot263.

    Zimbabwe has been in a deep economic crisis for the past two decades and remains under international sanctions. In September, the IMF announced that growth forecasts were still down due to a drop in agricultural production.

     

    Source: Africa News

  • A Canadian deflected an Asteroid in a Planetary Defence test for NASA

    It wasn’t quite the asteroid that wiped out humanity in Don’t Look Up, but Canadian Julie Bellerose was at the controls of a NASA space probe that deflected an asteroid during a planetary defence test.

    On Sept. 26, a space probe called Dart hit an asteroid moving faster than 22,500 km/h, millions of kilometres away from the planet.

    In an interview with The Canadian Press, Bellerose said she said she “shed a tear” and was “relieved to see that everything went well.”

    The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the goal of the mission was to hit the Dimorphos asteroid and change its trajectory. While this asteroid caused no immediate danger to Earth, they conducted the test to see how its direction would change in case an asteroid one day threatened to hit the Earth.

    Bellerose is from Sainte-Julie, Quebec and developed an interest in space during her teens. She’s also a big Star Wars fan. She completed her Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at McGill University and got her Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan.

    The probe was launched last November. The $325 million USD mission was NASA’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space.

    Source: Complex.com

  • Hurricane Ian forces Nasa to shelter Artemis Moon rocket

    The American space agency is to pull its Artemis-I Moon rocket off the launch pad in Florida because of an approaching hurricane.

    Nasa says the Space Launch System (SLS) vehicle will be rolled back into its engineering workshop to protect it.

    Hurricane Ian is moving through the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to make landfall in Florida on Thursday.

    High winds and heavy rain are forecast for the Kennedy Space Center.

    Although the spaceport will probably escape the worst of the storm’s impacts, Nasa can’t risk its multi-billion-dollar rocket being damaged.

    The return to Kennedy’s famous Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) likely now moves the maiden flight of the SLS to November.

    Nasa had hoped the storm’s track through the Gulf would take it sufficiently westwards so that the rocket could stay out on the pad, enabling a lift-off to take place sooner.

    But the medium-range forecast models have, in recent hours, seen the expected track shift eastwards, putting the west coast of Florida, or its panhandle, directly in the firing line.

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has already declared a “state of emergency”.

    Nasa has one of its giant tractors on standby at the pad, ready to initiate the roll-back.

    The slow speed at which this Crawler Transporter moves means the 6.7km (4.2 miles) journey to the VAB takes the best part of half a day. Engineers will therefore want to get it under way as soon as possible.

    The retreat is expected to begin at 0400BST (2300EDT).

    Artemis-I is the first in a series of missions that will eventually see humans return to the lunar surface after an absence of 50 years.

    The initial flight of the SLS is uncrewed: it’s billed as a safety demonstration of the hardware and will send a capsule called Orion out to and beyond the Moon before coming home to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

    Assuming everything works as it should, astronauts will then climb aboard the next scheduled SLS-Orion outing in 2024. This again will do a simple loop around the Moon.

    It’s on Artemis-III, possibly in late 2025, that astronauts will make the trip down to the lunar surface.

    Source: BBC

  • NASA reveals what a black hole 200 million light-years away sounds like

    Blackholes may still be one of the great mysteries of space, but at least scientists now know what they sound like.

    On Sunday, NASA tweeted a 34-second audio clip featuring the sound of a black hole located 200 million light-years away.

    “The misconception that there is no sound inspace originates because most space is a ~vacuum, providing no way for sound waves to travel,” the agency said in a post on its NASA Exoplanets Twitter page.

    “A galaxy cluster has so much gas that we’ve picked up actual sound,” they wrote. “Here it’s amplified, and mixed with other data, to hear a black hole!”

    The post quickly went viral, garnering more than 429,000 likes and 101,000 retweets on the platform.

    Many on social media shared their differing opinions on the sound featured in the clip, which many described as being eery.

    “I’m not religious, but I’m starting to think that those souls sent to Hell actually end up in a black hole,” wrote one user. “Sound ON to be horrified.”

    Added another: “Everyone keeps talking about how scary this sounds but genuinely to me it just sounds like the song it makes. Everything vibrates and has a hum to it, she’s just singing to us.”

    According to NASA, the black hole is located at the center of the Perseus galaxy, located 240 million light-years from Earth.

    Scientists have known since 2003 that the area is filled with sound after pressure waves sent out by the black hole “caused ripples in the cluster’s hot gas that could be translated into a note,” the agency said in a news release from May.

    But the note was one that the human ear can’t pick up, NASA explained, which is why they used technology to interpret the sound.

    Source: People.com

  • Nasa launches first rocket from Australian commercial spaceport

    An unassuming patch of red dirt in remote Australia has made history as the site of Nasa’s first rocket launch from a commercial spaceport outside the US.

    The sub-orbital rocket blasted off from the tiny site early on Monday local time.

    It will enable astrophysics studies that can only be undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere, Nasa says.

    The launch was also the first in Australia in more than 25 years.

    The rocket is Nasa’s first of three to blast off from the newly constructed Arnhem Space Centre on the edge of the Northern Territory.

    Scientists hope it will help them study the impact of a star’s light on the habitability of nearby planets.

    Onlookers who travelled to the remote site glimpsed the rocket for only about 10 seconds before it shot out of view.

    “It was in the blink of an eye, but to me, it was like it was in slow motion because the whole area just lit up,” Yirrkala School co-principal Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

    “It went up, and then the sound, it was just like a rumbling boom, like nothing I’ve ever heard. And I just shook with amazement.”

    Map

    The sounding rocket’s tenure in space was similarly short – the 13m-long projectile fell back to Earth after a planned 15 minutes.

    But the data gathered in that time will help illuminate the secrets of star constellations 430 million light years away, says the chief executive of Equatorial Launch Australia, which runs the space centre.

    “Without getting too deep into the science, it was effectively a large X-ray camera looking at various… phenomenon and trying to capture parts of boulders in the Milky Way and particularly the star cluster of Alpha Centauri,” Michael Jones told the local network Nine.

    Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles hailed the launch as an “extremely proud” moment for Australia, adding it was conducted with the blessing of the region’s Aboriginal traditional owners.

    “Here on Yolngu land, young Territorians can look up at the sky and know what can be done,” Ms Fyles said.

    “When we see the oldest living culture combining with the science of space, as we have here, it’s something we can all reflect on and be very proud.”

    Equipment pictured at the Arnhem Space Centre
    IMAGE SOURCE,NASA Image caption, Nasa consulted with Aboriginal custodians of the land before the launch

    Australia has stepped up its space efforts in recent times, unveiling a defence agency focused on countering Russia and China’s ambitions in space.

    The Arnhem Space Centre is the first and only commercially owned and run equatorial launch site in the world.

    “We have achieved a remarkable feat and made a huge mark in the history of Australia’s journey in space,” Mr Jones said in a statement.

    “[It] confirms that we and Australia can provide access to space and this is just the beginning for us.”

    The next launch is expected to take place on 4 July.

    Nasa has pledged to collect all material and debris and return them to the US.

    Source: BBC

  • Meet the first Nigerien scientist to work for NASA

    Fadji Maina has become the first scientist from Niger to work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).

    The 29-year-old hydrologist earned her PhD in 2016, and joined the world-famous space agency in the US at the end of last month.

    She told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme she will use her new job to give back to her country and the continent:

    “I will say to them to not give up to keep going because everyone would think people from Niger, or a young girl from Niger, would not be able to do this. But just believe in yourself and find an environment that will support you,” she said.

    Ms Maina said she is the only African in Nasa.

    “You get used to it also I think we need to have more people coming from different backgrounds to be able to solve the problems that we are looking at – because different people will have different perspectives.”

    Source: bbc.com

  • NASA to name HQ after first black female engineer

    Nasa is to name its headquarters in Washington DC after its first black female engineer, Mary Jackson.

    Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine said Jackson had helped to break down barriers for African Americans and women in engineering and technology.

    The story of Mary Jackson was told in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. Born in Hampton, Virginia, she died in 2005.

    Last year, Nasa renamed the street outside its headquarters as Hidden Figures Way.

    “Hidden no more, we will continue to recognise the contributions of women, African Americans, and people of all backgrounds who have made Nasa’s successful history of exploration possible,” Mr Bridenstine said in a statement.

     

    “Mary W Jackson was part of a group of very important women who helped Nasa succeed in getting American astronauts into space,” Mr Bridenstine added.

    “Mary never accepted the status quo, she helped break barriers and open opportunities for African Americans and women in the field of engineering and technology.”

    The move comes at a time of introspection across the US about historical injustices suffered by African Americans.

    The recent death in police custody of George Floyd triggered protests around the world and renewed demands for an end to institutional racism.

    An exterior view of the Nasa headquarters in Washington DCImage copyrightREUTERS
    Image captionThe building will be called the Mary W Jackson Nasa Headquarters

    Nasa began recruiting some college-educated African American women in the 1940s as “human computers”, but they experienced both racial and gender discrimination at work.

    Mary Jackson was recruited in 1951 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics which was succeeded by Nasa in 1958. She worked under Dorothy Vaughan – whose story was also told in Hidden Figures – in the segregated West Area Computing Unit at Langley, Virginia.

    Jackson died in 2005 and in 2019 she was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

    Her daughter, Carolyn Lewis, said the family was honoured that Nasa was continuing to celebrate Mary Jackson’s legacy.

    “She was a scientist, humanitarian, wife, mother, and trailblazer who paved the way for thousands of others to succeed, not only at Nasa, but throughout this nation,” she said.

    Source: BBC

     

  • SpaceX Nasa Mission: Astronaut capsule docks with space station

    US astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken have docked with the International Space Station (ISS).

    Their Dragon capsule – supplied and operated by the private SpaceX company – edged them into port on the high-flying lab’s bow section.

    The men will have to wait for leak and pressure checks to be completed before they can disembark and join the Russian and American crew already on the ISS.

    Hurley and Behnken launched from Florida on Saturday.

    It was the first time since the retirement of the shuttles nine years ago that the US space agency has sent up astronauts from home soil.

    The mission marks the beginning of a new era in which Nasa will be purchasing transport services from the commercial sector. No more will it own and operate the vehicles that run to and from the station.

    This will be done, as in this case, by firms like California’s SpaceX outfit, which is led by tech billionaire Elon Musk.

    Confirmation of the Dragon’s attachment at the ISS came at 14:16 GMT (15:16 BST), slightly ahead of schedule, 422km (262 miles) above the border between northern China and Mongolia.

    It was a fully automated process; Hurley and Behnken had no need to get involved – although they had practiced some manual flying on approach.

    SpaceX flew the first demonstration of its new crew vehicle last year, but that had only a dummy aboard. This sortie is the first to carry humans.

    Hurley’s and Behnken’s job on the mission is to test all onboard systems and to give their feedback to engineers.

    SpaceX and Nasa want to move swiftly to the next phase of the $2.6bn contract which will see six crew taxi flights, with the first to occur at the end of August.

    Source: bbc.com

    Disclaimer : “Opinions expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not in any way reflect those of backend.theindependentghana.com. Our outfit will hereby not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article.”

  • Nasa: Doug Loverro steps down days before crewed launch

    The head of Nasa’s human spaceflight program has stepped down just days before a “historic” launch.

    Doug Loverro resigned on Monday, Nasa announced, less than a year after his appointment.

    Next week, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will travel to the International Space Station (ISS).

    The mission, using a rocket and capsule from private firm SpaceX, will be the first crewed mission to orbit to depart from US soil since 2011.

    No official reason for Mr Loverro’s departure has been announced, but a leaked copy of an email sent to Nasa employees mentioned a risk taken earlier in the year “because I judged it necessary to fulfil our mission”.

    “Now, over the balance of time, it is clear that I made a mistake in that choice for which I alone must bear the consequences,” the message continued.

    While Mr Loverro offered no further explanation, he told the Axios news website that his decision to leave the agency was unrelated to the upcoming launch. “I have 100% faith in the success of that mission,” he said.

    Mr Loverro was appointed in October last year. His deputy, Ken Bowersox, will become the acting head of human spaceflight.

    Next week’s launch, which is set for 27 May, will mark the first time that Nasa has launched people from its own territory since the retirement of the shuttles almost a decade ago. The rocket and spacecraft for next Wednesday’s flight were both designed and built by SpaceX, the private company owned by billionaire Elon Musk.

    Loverro had been expected to chair the “flight readiness review” on Thursday, which will check on preparations and clear Behnken and Hurley for the mission. A replacement will now have to step in.

    Nasa has been using Russian rockets for crewed flights since 2011 and recently purchased one more ride for later in the year.

    In 2017, US President Donald Trump ordered Nasa to plan a crewed mission to the Moon for the first time since 1972. The Artemis mission will see the first woman and the next man step on to the lunar surface and is due to take place by 2024.

    Source: bbc.com

  • Tom Cruise and Nasa join forces to shoot movie in space

    Tom Cruise is hoping to blast into the Hollywood record books by shooting the first action movie in space.

    Nasa is working with Cruise to film aboard the International Space Station.

    There are no details of the film, but Deadline – which first reported the story – said it would not be a new instalment of Mission: Impossible.

    The report also said Cruise, 57, is also working with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which will transport two US astronauts to the ISS for Nasa later this month.

    Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote on Twitter: “Nasa is excited to work with Tom Cruise on a film aboard the Space Station!”

    Musk replied to say the project “should be a lot of fun!”

    Cruise played an astronaut in 2013 film Oblivion, when he safeguarded Earth’s natural resources from alien invaders.

    He also narrated the 2002 Imax documentary Space Station 3D. It’s not known when the star will blast off to the ISS for real.

    Despite the pandemic, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon is due to take Nasa astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS on 27 May. The spacecraft can accommodate seven people.

    Risky business: 4 daredevil stunts from Cruise’s career/b>

    As well as being one of Hollywood’s most popular action heroes, Cruise is known as a daredevil who does many of his own stunts.

    In an interview about his new Top Gun sequel, co-star Miles Teller says: “I think when Tom hears that something’s impossible or can’t be done, that’s when he gets to work.”

    That sounds not unlike his Mission: Impossible character Ethan Hunt, who has been seen in many of the most daring scenes.

    1. Leaping off a roof (and breaking an ankle)

    In 2017, he broke his ankle while jumping from one rooftop to another (attached to a cable) for Mission: Impossible – Fallout.

    Despite instantly knowing he was injured, he carried on by hauling himself onto the roof and running off.

    “I knew it was broken,” he later told The Graham Norton Show. “I just said, ‘Ugh,’ and I ran past the camera. We got the shot, it’s in the movie.”

    His co-star Simon Pegg joked: “Everyone said, when you got up and ran out of shot, ‘Oh, that’s so him. To complete the shot with your foot hanging off – that’s so him.’”

    2. Climbing a skyscraper

     

    In 2011’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Hunt is seen scaling the Burj Khalifa in Dubai – the world’s tallest building – from the outside.

    Although Cruise trained for four months and was wearing a harness – which was edited out – he said he struggled with crosswinds as he tried to swing in through a window.

    “It took a while to work out how not to come slamming into the building head first,” he said.

    3. Hanging off a plane during take-off

    In Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Cruise hangs from the side of a plane by his fingertips as it takes off. It was really him, and it was a real plane.

    He performed the stunt four times over two days, again wearing a harness, but the crew had to scour the runway for the tiniest items that could have been thrown up and hit him.

    “While we are going down the runway, we’re worried about bird strikes, any kind of particle that the propellers could pick up, any kind of stone,” Cruise told USA Today.

    “I remember I got hit by a stone that was so tiny, you cannot believe. I thought it broke my rib. Lucky it went to my vest and not my hands or my face, it would have penetrated and gone right through.”

    4. Falling off a cliff

    One of his other famous stunts appears in the opening scene of Mission: Impossible 2, where Hunt climbs – and then almost falls off – a vertigo-inducing cliff, apparently with no ropes.

    Cucumber-cool Cruise was actually attached to a thin safety wire, which was later erased – but that did little to calm director John Woo’s nerves.

    “I was really mad that he wanted to do it, but I tried to stop him and I couldn’t,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I was so scared I was sweating. I couldn’t even watch the monitor when we shot it.”

    Source: bbc.com

  • ‘Planet’ disappears from sight prompting surprise and suspicions that it never actually existed

    What was thought to be a planet beyond our solar system appears to have disappeared, astronomers say.

    And the unexpected behaviour has led them to conclude that what they thought was a distant world never actually existed at all.

    Instead, astronomers think that the phantom planet was actually a cloud of dust left in the aftermath of a cosmic collision that has since billowed out so much that it is now invisible.

    When the exoplanet known as Fomalhaut b was first discovered, in the mid 2000s, it made history as one of the first worlds outside of our solar system to be seen directly. Researchers had previously mostly inferred the existence of planets through their effects on stars or their shadows as they moved in front of stars, but this suspected planet was seen through numerous years of observations from Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope.

    But astronomers now think that those observations were actually the result of two icy bodies smashing into each other. When they did, they left behind a cloud of fine dust particles that was visible through space and it was that which was mistaken for another planet by astronomers on Earth, 25 light years away.

    Though the discovery means that the original discovery appears to have been mistaken, it also opens up an entirely new and perhaps more surprising kind of discovery, in seeing such a crash. The Hubble images might not show a planet but do show the aftermath of the suspect collision, allowing researchers a new phenomenon to research.

    “These collisions are exceedingly rare and so this is a big deal that we actually get to see evidence of one,” said Andras Gaspar, an assistant astronomer at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory and lead author of the new paper. “We believe that we were at the right place at the right time to have witnessed such an unlikely event with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.”

    The discovery might help shine a light not on where planets exist but how they stop existing, when they destroy each other.

    “The Fomalhaut star system is the ultimate test lab for all of our ideas about how exoplanets and star systems evolve,” said George Rieke, a Regents Professor of Astronomy at Steward Observatory. “We do have evidence of such collisions in other systems, but none of this magnitude has been observed in our solar system. This is a blueprint of how planets destroy each other.”

    The scientists whose research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences came to the conclusion after spotting a variety of unusual characteristics of the supposed exoplanet. The fact it could be seen in visible light was strange, given that any exoplanet should be too small to reflect enough light to be seen; on the other hand, its heat could not be seen in infrared, but researchers expected any planet would be warm enough to shine that way.

    Initially, those supportive of the existence of the planet argued that it could have a shell or ring of dust surrounding it from a crash. But new images helped argue that the planet did not exist at all.

    Hubble images from 2014 showed the planet had disappeared entirely. Before that, it had faded away.

    “Clearly, Fomalhaut b was doing things a bona fide planet should not be doing,” said Gaspar.

    Instead, the new paper proposes that the planet was actually the slowly expanding dust from a long ago collision that sent dust billowing into space. It gradually disappeared as the debris cloud expanded to be so large that it could no longer be seen, and scientists now suspect that it would be a size larger than the orbit of Earth around the Sun.

    Source: .independent.co.uk

  • SpaceX plans first manned flight to space station in May

    Elon Musk’s SpaceX will send astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time in May, NASA said, announcing the first crewed launch from the United States to the platform since 2011.

    The tech entrepreneur’s company will launch a Falcon 9 rocket to transport NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley in a first for the space agency as it looks to cut costs.

    “NASA and SpaceX are currently targeting no earlier than mid-to-late May for launch,” the US space agency said in a statement Wednesday.

    In March, Musk’s Crew Dragon capsule made a round trip to the ISS, which is in orbit more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, with a mannequin on board, before returning to the Atlantic after six days in space.

    Since the last US space shuttle mission in 2011, after 30 years of service, only the Russians have been going back and forth to the ISS.

    SpaceX has made the trip 15 times since 2012, but only to refuel the station.

    It is not the only private company servicing NASA: Boeing has also won a contract and is developing its own Starliner capsule.

    Source: France24

  • NASA images show fall in China pollution over virus shutdown

    NASA satellite images show a dramatic fall in pollution over China that is “partly related” to the economic slowdown due to the coronavirus outbreak, the space agency said.

    The reduction in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution was first noticed near Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, but eventually spread across China, according to NASA scientists who examined data collected by their and European Space Agency satellites.

    Maps comparing NO2 concentrations showed a marked decline between January 1-20, before a sweeping quarantine was imposed on Wuhan and other cities, and February 10-25.

    “There is evidence that the change is at least partly related to the economic slowdown following the outbreak of coronavirus,” NASA’s Earth Observatory said in a statement.

    Chinese authorities have taken drastic steps to contain the virus, curbing the movement of people, temporarily closing factories across the country and quarantining central Hubei province, a key industrial region where the epidemic first appeared.

    NO2 is a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion in vehicles and power plants and can cause respiratory problems, such as asthma.

    “This is the first time I have seen such a dramatic drop-off over such a wide area for a specific event,” Fei Liu, an air quality researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said.

    The 2008 global financial crisis saw a decrease in NO2 over several countries but it was a gradual fall, she said.

    This year’s fall came during the Lunar New Year, when factories and businesses close, but researchers believe the decline is far greater than could be attributed to the holiday period.

    NO2 concentrations over eastern and central China were 10-30 percent lower than what is normally observed over the time period.

    And there has not been a rebound in levels after the holiday.

    “This year, the reduction rate is more significant than in past years and it has lasted longer,” Liu said.

    “I am not surprised because many cities nationwide have taken measures to minimize spread of the virus.”

    A separate study in February found China’s carbon emissions had dropped by least 100 million metric tonnes in the previous fortnight — nearly six percent of global emissions during the same period last year.

    According to a study by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Finland, the rapid spread of the coronavirus led to a drop in demand for coal and oil, resulting in the emissions slump.

    Source: France24