“The more we see other planets, the more the question comes into focus: Maybe we’re the weird one? Decades of observing Earth from space has informed our search for signs of habitability and life on exoplanets and even planets in our own solar system. We’re taking a closer look at what we’ve learned about Earth – our only example of a planet with life – to our search for life the universe.”
Music credit: Curious Events by Independent Film Score – Andrew Skeet; Teapot Waltz by Benjamin James Parsons; Patisserie Pressure by Benjamin James Parsons
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/LK Ward
“By combining the visible and infrared capabilities of the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers and visualization specialists from NASA’s Universe of Learning program have created a spectacular, three-dimensional, fly-through movie of the magnificent Orion nebula, a nearby stellar nursery. Using actual scientific data along with Hollywood techniques, a team at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and the Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, has produced the best and most detailed multi-wavelength visualization yet of the Orion nebula.”
Video credit: NASA/Space Telescope Science Institute
“When exoplanet scientists first spotted patterns in disks of dust and gas around young stars, they thought newly formed planets might be the cause. But a recent NASA study cautions that there may be another explanation: one that doesn’t involve planets at all. An alternative explanation suggests the dust and gas in the disk can form the patterns themselves when they interact with starlight.
When high-energy UV starlight hits dust grains, it strips away electrons. Those electrons collide with and heat nearby gas. As the gas warms, its pressure increases and it traps more dust, which in turn heats more gas. The resulting cycle, called the photoelectric instability (PeI), can work in tandem with other forces to create some of the features astronomers have previously associated with planets in debris disks.
A 2013 study suggested PeI could explain the narrow rings seen in some disks. The model also predicted that some disks would have arcs, or incomplete rings, which weren’t directly observed in a disk until 2016. The new simulation includes an additional new factor: radiation pressure, a force caused by starlight striking dust grains. Light exerts a minute physical force on everything it encounters. This radiation pressure propels solar sails and helps direct comet tails so they always point away from the Sun. The same force can push dust into highly eccentric orbits, and even blow some of the smaller grains out of the disk entirely. The new research modeled how radiation pressure and PeI work together to affect the movement of dust and gas, and also found that the two forces manifest different patterns depending on the physical properties of the dust and gas.”
Music credit: “Hyperborea” from Killer Tracks
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessenger
“Observations by NASA’s Swift spacecraft, now renamed the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory after the mission’s late principal investigator, have captured an unprecedented change in the rotation of a comet. Images taken in May 2017 reveal that comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresak — 41P for short — was spinning three times slower than it was in March, when it was observed by the Discovery Channel Telescope at Lowell Observatory in Arizona. The abrupt slowdown is the most dramatic change in a comet’s rotation ever seen.
Comet 41P orbits the Sun every 5.4 years. As a comet nears the Sun, increased heating causes its surface ice to change directly to a gas, producing jets that launch dust particles and icy grains into space. This material forms an extended atmosphere, called a coma.
Ground-based observations established the 41P’s initial rotational period at about 20 hours in early March 2017 and detected its slowdown later the same month. The comet passed 13.2 million miles (21.2 million km) from Earth on April 1, and eight days later made its closest approach to the Sun. Swift’s Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope imaged the comet from May 7 to 9, revealing brightness variations associated with material recently ejected into the coma. These slow changes indicated 41P’s rotation period had more than doubled, to between 46 and 60 hours.
UVOT-based estimates of 41P’s water production, coupled with the body’s small size, suggest that more than half of its surface area contains sunlight-activated jets. That’s a far greater fraction of active real estate than on most comets, which typically support jets over only about 3 percent of their surfaces. Astronomers suspect these active areas are favorably oriented to produce torques that slowed 41P’s spin.
Such a slow spin could make the comet’s rotation unstable, allowing it to begin tumbling with no fixed rotational axis. This would produce a dramatic change in the comet’s seasonal heating and may result in future outbursts of activity.”
Music credit: “Valley of Crystals” from Killer Tracks
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger
“Through its Clean Space initiative, ESA is pioneering an eco-friendly approach to space activities. On the ground, that means adopting greener industrial materials, processes and technologies. In space, it means preserving Earth’s orbital environment as a safe zone, free of debris.
In the modern world, the quest to be environmentally friendly has been transforming the competitive landscape, as eco-friendly design turns into a new frontier of innovation. ESA is embracing this trend. Information on the environmental impact of Agency activities is, and will be, increasingly requested by ESA’s industrial, institutional and international partners, under pressure from customers, stakeholders and citizens.
Numerous analyses worldwide have shown the need for space debris removal, to contend with the proliferation of space debris. The only way to preserve key orbits for future use is to shrink the current amount of debris in absolute terms, which will require novel technologies and approaches for the removal of debris and the design of non-debris creating missions.
There is also substantial industrial potential: companies and organisations that take swift action towards meeting emerging regulations will obtain the competitive advantage of being first into the market. By fostering innovation, Clean Space aims to turn environmental challenges into opportunities for European space industry, to ensure a safer and cleaner environment both on Earth and in space.”
“Scientists are closely monitoring positive signs of recovery of the Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer, which is depleted by the use of chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) for a range of industrial and commercial purposes. Even after the landmark Montreal Protocol banned these substances in the late 1980s, threats to the ozone layer persist. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center including Susan Strahan and Qing Liang (both NASA/USRA) are weighing in to an ongoing debate about the relative impacts of continuing sources of ozone depletion, including short-lived chemicals not banned by the Protocol, the effects of climate change, and banned chemicals that are still being released into the atmosphere. All could potentially delay the recovery of the seasonal ozone hole over Antarctica.”
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