Scientists using NASA’s telescope on an airplane, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, discovered water on a sunlit surface of the Moon for the first time. SOFIA is a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft that allows astronomers to study the solar system and beyond in ways that are not possible with ground-based telescopes. Molecular water, H2O, was found in Clavius Crater, one of the largest craters visible from Earth in the Moon’s southern hemisphere. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed places.
The Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment (SAGE) is a series of remote sensing satellite instruments used to study the chemical composition of Earth’s atmosphere. Specifically, SAGE has been used to study the Earth’s ozone layer and aerosols at the troposphere through the stratosphere. The SAGE instruments use solar occultation measurement technique to determine chemical concentrations in the atmosphere. Solar occultation measurement technique measures sunlight through the atmosphere and ratios that measurement with a sunlight measurement without atmospheric attenuation. This is achieved by observing sunrises and sunsets during a satellite orbit. Physically, the SAGE instruments measure ultraviolet/visible energy and this is converted via algorithms to determine chemical concentrations. SAGE data has been used to study the atmospheres aerosols, ozone, water vapor, and other trace gases.
The Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, carried atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, lifts off from Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on November 21, 2020. Launch occurred at 9:17 a.m. PST (12:17 p.m. EST). The mission is an international collaboration between NASA and several partners, and it will collect the most accurate data yet on global sea level and how our oceans are rising in response to climate change. NASA’s Launch Services Program based at Kennedy Space Center was responsible for launch management.
NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission gets underway with the successful liftoff of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft carrying NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi. Launch occurred November 15, 2020, at 7:27 p.m. EST from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Crew-1 is the first regular crew mission of a U.S. commercial spacecraft with astronauts to the International Space Station as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
While NASA is working aggressively to meet our near-term goal of landing the first woman and next man on the Moon by 2024, our Artemis program also is focused on taking steps that will establish a safe and sustainable lunar exploration architecture. NASA is taking a critical step forward by releasing a solicitation for commercial companies to provide proposals for the collection of space resources.
To meet NASA’s requirements, a company will collect a small amount of Moon “dirt†or rocks from any location on the lunar surface, provide imagery to NASA of the collection and the collected material, along with data that identifies the collection location, and conduct an “in-place†transfer of ownership of the lunar regolith or rocks to NASA. After ownership transfer, the collected material becomes the sole property of NASA for our use.
NASA’s goal is that the retrieval and transfer of ownership will be completed before 2024. The solicitation creates a full and open competition, not limited to U.S. companies, and the agency may make one or more awards. The agency will determine retrieval methods for the transferred lunar regolith at a later date.
Over the next decade, the Artemis program will lay the foundation for a sustained long-term presence on the lunar surface and use the Moon to validate deep space systems and operations before embarking on the much farther voyage to Mars. The ability to conduct in-situ resources utilization (ISRU) will be incredibly important on Mars, which is why we must develop techniques and gain experience with ISRU on the surface of the Moon.
Dark matter is hypothesized to be a form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe and about a quarter of its total mass–energy density or about 2.241×10−27 kg/m3. Support for its presence is drawn from a variety of astrophysical observations, including gravitational effects that under current theories of gravity do not make sense, unless more matter is present than can be seen. For this reason, the hypothesis has been created that dark matter exists, is abundant in the universe, and has had a strong influence on its structure and evolution. The name is due to the fact that by all observations, should dark matter exist, it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not absorb, reflect or emit electromagnetic radiation, and is therefore difficult to detect.
Primary support for dark matter comes from calculations showing that many galaxies would fly apart, or that they would not have formed or would not move as they do, if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter. Other lines of evidence include observations in gravitational lensing and in the cosmic microwave background, along with astronomical observations of the observable universe’s current structure, the formation and evolution of galaxies, mass location during galactic collisions, and the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters. In the standard Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, the total mass–energy of the universe contains 5% ordinary matter and energy, 27% dark matter and 68% of a form of energy known as dark energy. Thus, dark matter constitutes 85% of total mass, while dark energy plus dark matter constitute 95% of total mass–energy content.
Because dark matter has not yet been observed directly, if it exists, it must barely interact with ordinary baryonic matter and radiation, except through gravity. Most dark matter is thought to be non-baryonic in nature; it may be composed of some as-yet undiscovered subatomic particles. The primary candidate for dark matter is some new kind of elementary particle that has not yet been discovered, in particular, weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). Many experiments to directly detect and study dark matter particles are being actively undertaken, but none have yet succeeded. Dark matter is classified as “cold”, “warm”, or “hot” according to its velocity (more precisely, its free streaming length). Current models favor a cold dark matter scenario, in which structures emerge by gradual accumulation of particles.
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Paul Morris (USRA): Lead Producer/Cassandra Morris: Voice over Talent/Visualizations and Additional Footage: ESA/Hubble — Gravitational Lensing Animation/ESA/Hubble — Gravitational Lensing Simplified Visualization/R. Wesson/ESO — Very Large Telescope Footage
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