“Intelsat 30/DLA-1 and Intelsat 31/DLA-2 are high-power, advanced satellites that will provide Direct-to-Home (DTH) television service in Latin America. The satellites are being built for and will be operated by Intelsat, which will lease a majority of the satellite capacity to DIRECTV Latin America, a leading DTH digital television services operator in Latin America. Using spot-beam frequency reuse and the industry’s best technologies, the Ku-band payloads will greatly expand DTH entertainment offerings in Latin America and provide backup and restoration services. The two satellites are designed based on the flight-proven SSL 1300 platform and are contracted to provide service for a minimum of 15 years. […] The satellites will be co-located with Intelsat’s Galaxy 3C satellite at 95 degrees West.”
“After saying farewell to NASA’s Jeff Williams and the rest of the crew onboard the International Space Station on June 18. Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra of NASA, Soyuz Commander Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) undocked from the ISS for the return trip to Earth. Kopra, Malenchenko and Peake spent 186 days in space aboard the orbital laboratory.
[They] landed safely near the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan June 18, hours after leaving the International Space Station in their Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft.”
“At the International Space Station, Expedition 47 Commander Tim Kopra used the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release the Orbital/ATK Cygnus cargo craft June 14, just hours after it was detached from the station. The spacecraft is loaded with trash and other unneeded items. Cygnus is also serving as a platform for an investigation called the Spacecraft Fire Experiment (SAFFIRE), that will deliberately ignite a fire in an enclosed environment so that instruments can measure flame growth and oxygen usage. This experiment is designed to improve the understanding of fire growth in microgravity and to safeguard future space missions. A group of nanosatellites is also being released from Cygnus which will be deorbited June 22 to send the craft into a destructive re-entry over the Pacific Ocean. Cygnus was launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida atop an Atlas V rocket March 23, arriving at the station March 26 to deliver tons of experiments and supplies for the station’s residents.”
“This artist’s rendering illustrates new findings about a star shredded by a black hole. When a star wanders too close to a black hole, intense tidal forces rip the star apart. In these events, called “tidal disruptions,” some of the stellar debris is flung outward at high speed while the rest falls toward the black hole. This causes a distinct X-ray flare that can last for a few years. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Swift Gamma-ray Burst Explorer, and ESA/NASA’s XMM-Newton collected different pieces of this astronomical puzzle in a tidal disruption event called ASASSN-14li, which was found in an optical search by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) in November 2014. The event occurred near a super-massive black hole estimated to weigh a few million times the mass of the sun in the center of PGC 043234, a galaxy that lies about 290 million light-years away. Astronomers hope to find more events like ASASSN-14li to test theoretical models about how black holes affect their environments.
During the tidal disruption event, filaments containing much of the star’s mass fall toward the black hole. Eventually these gaseous filaments merge into a smooth, hot disk glowing brightly in X-rays. As the disk forms, its central region heats up tremendously, which drives a flow of material, called a wind, away from the disk.”
“The sun is always changing and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is always watching. Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO keeps a 24-hour eye on the entire disk of the sun, with a prime view of the graceful dance of solar material coursing through the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. SDO’s sixth year in orbit was no exception. This video shows that entire sixth year — from Jan. 1, 2015, to Jan. 28, 2016, as one time-lapse sequence. At full quality on YouTube, this video is ultra-high definition 3840×2160 and 29.97 frames per second. Each frame represents 2 hours. […]
SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) captures a shot of the sun every 12 seconds in 10 different wavelengths. The images shown here are based on a wavelength of 171 angstroms, which is in the extreme ultraviolet range and shows solar material at around 600,000 kelvins (about 1,079,540 degrees F). In this wavelength it is easy to see the sun’s 25-day rotation.
During the course of the video, the sun subtly increases and decreases in apparent size. This is because the distance between the SDO spacecraft and the sun varies over time. The image is, however, remarkably consistent and stable despite the fact that SDO orbits Earth at 6,876 mph, and Earth orbits the sun at 67,062 mph.
Scientists study these images to better understand the complex electromagnetic system causing the constant movement on the sun, which can ultimately have an effect closer to Earth, too. Flares and another type of solar explosion called coronal mass ejections can sometimes disrupt technology in space. Moreover, studying our closest star is one way of learning about other stars in the galaxy. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, built, operates and manages the SDO spacecraft for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.”
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Wiessinger
Music credit: “Tides,” a track available from Killer Tracks
“Around 13 times per century, Mercury passes between Earth and the sun in a rare astronomical event known as a planetary transit. The 2016 Mercury transit occurred on May 9, between roughly 7:12 a.m. and 2:42 p.m. EDT.”
“A transit of Mercury across the Sun takes place when the planet Mercury passes directly between the Sun and a superior planet, becoming visible against (and hence obscuring a small portion of) the solar disk. During a transit, Mercury can be seen as a very small black disk moving across the face of the Sun. Transits of Mercury with respect to Earth are much more frequent than transits of Venus, with about 13 or 14 per century, in part because Mercury is closer to the Sun and orbits it more rapidly. Transits of Mercury occur in May or November. The last four transits occurred in 1999, 2003, 2006, and May 9, 2016. The next will occur on November 11, 2019, and then on November 13, 2032. A typical transit lasts several hours.
On June 3, 2014, the Mars rover Curiosity observed the planet Mercury transiting the Sun, marking the first time a planetary transit has been observed from a celestial body besides Earth.”
Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Genna Duberstein
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