OrbitalHub

NASA dicit:

Taking advantage of the total lunar eclipse of January 2019, astronomers, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, have measured the amount of ozone in Earth’s atmosphere. The method used serves as a proxy for how they will observe Earth-like planets around other stars in search for worlds similar to our own.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Paul Morris (USRA): Lead Producer/Krystofer Kim (USRA): Lead Animator/Cassandra Morris: Voice over Talent

NASA dicit:

Sound waves from the nascent universe, called baryon acoustic oscillations (BAOs), left their imprint on the cosmos by influencing galaxy distribution. Researchers have explored this imprint back to when the universe was three billion years old, or roughly 20% of its current age of 13.8 billion years.

For most of its first half-million years, the universe looked extremely different than it does today. Instead of being speckled with stars and galaxies, the cosmos was filled with a sea of plasma – charged particles – that formed a dense, almost uniform fluid.

There were tiny fluctuations of about one part in 100,000. What few variations there were took the form of slightly denser kernels of matter, like a single ounce of cinnamon sprinkled into about 13,000 cups of cookie dough. Since the clumps had more mass, their gravity attracted additional material.

It was so hot that particles couldn’t stick together when they collided – they just bounced off each other. Alternating between the pull of gravity and this repelling effect created waves of pressure – sound – that propagated through the plasma.

Over time, the universe cooled and particles combined to form neutral atoms. Because the particles stopped repelling each other, the waves ceased. Their traces, however, still linger, etched on the cosmos.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Producer/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Animator/Ashley Balzer (ADNET): Lead Science Writer/Jason D. Rhodes (JPL): Scientist/Katarina Markovic (JPL): Scientist/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Narrator

SpaceX dicit:

On Wednesday, May 5, Starship serial number 15 (SN15) successfully completed SpaceX’s fifth high-altitude flight test of a Starship prototype from Starbase in Texas. SN15 ascended, transitioned propellant, and reoriented itself for reentry and a controlled aerodynamic descent. The Raptor engines reignited to perform the landing flip maneuver before touching down for a nominal landing on the pad.

These Starship test flights improve our understanding and development of a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry crew and cargo on long-duration interplanetary flights, help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond.

Video credit: SpaceX

NASA dicit:

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are extraordinary events that generate as much energy in a thousandth of a second as the Sun does in an entire year.

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have traced the locations of five brief, powerful FRBs, which are near or on their host galaxies’ spiral arms. The research helped rule out some of the possible stellar objects originally thought to cause these brilliant flares.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Paul Morris: Lead Producer/Andrea Gianopoulos: Science Writer/Cassandra Morris: Narrator/Sunrise over the Pacific: Artbeats/Animation of Magnetar: Scott Wiessinger/FRB Locations Animation: Scott Wiessinger and Chris Smith/Gamma Ray Burst Illustration: Michael Starobin/Neutron Star Merger: Michael Starobin/Magnetar Flyby Animation: Chris Smith/Magnetar Flare Sequence: Chris Smith

Wikipedia dicit:

OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) is a NASA asteroid-study and sample-return mission. The mission’s primary goal is to obtain a sample of at least 60 g (2.1 oz) from 101955 Bennu, a carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid, and return the sample to Earth for a detailed analysis. The material returned is expected to enable scientists to learn more about the formation and evolution of the Solar System, its initial stages of planet formation, and the source of organic compounds that led to the formation of life on Earth.

OSIRIS-REx was launched on 8 September 2016, flew past Earth on 22 September 2017, and rendezvoused with Bennu on 3 December 2018. It spent the next several months analyzing the surface to find a suitable site from which to extract a sample. On 20 October 2020, OSIRIS-REx touched down on Bennu and successfully collected a sample. Though some of the sample escaped when the flap that should have closed the sampler head was jammed open by larger rocks, NASA is confident that they were able to retain between 400 g and over 1 kg of sample material, well in excess of the 60 g (2.1 oz) minimum target mass. OSIRIS-REx is expected to return with its sample to Earth on 24 September 2023.

Bennu was chosen as the target of study because it is a “time capsule” from the birth of the Solar System. Bennu has a very dark surface and is classified as a B-type asteroid, a sub-type of the carbonaceous C-type asteroids. Such asteroids are considered “primitive”, having undergone little geological change from their time of formation. In particular, Bennu was selected because of the availability of pristine carbonaceous material, a key element in organic molecules necessary for life as well as representative of matter from before the formation of Earth. Organic molecules, such as amino acids, have previously been found in meteorite and comet samples, indicating that some ingredients necessary for life can be naturally synthesized in outer space.

The cost of the mission is approximately US$800 million, not including the Atlas V launch vehicle, which is about US$183.5 million. It is the third planetary science mission selected in the New Frontiers program, after Juno and New Horizons. The principal investigator is Dante Lauretta from the University of Arizona. If successful, OSIRIS-REx will be the first United States spacecraft to return samples from an asteroid. The Japanese probe Hayabusa returned samples from 25143 Itokawa in 2010, and Hayabusa2 returned from 162173 Ryugu in December 2020. On 10 May 2021, OSIRIS-REx successfully completed its departure from Bennu and began its 2 year return to Earth.

Video credit: Aerojet Rocketdyne

NASA dicit:

Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that a planet orbiting a distant star that may have lost its atmosphere but gained a second one through volcanic activity.

The planet, GJ 1132 b, is hypothesized to have begun as a gaseous world with a thick hydrogen blanket of atmosphere. Starting out at several times the diameter of Earth, this so-called “sub-Neptune” is believed to have quickly lost its primordial hydrogen and helium atmosphere due to the intense radiation of the hot, young star it orbits. In a short period of time, such a planet would be stripped down to a bare core about the size of Earth.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Paul Morris