Category: Space
Image: Hubble hones in on a hypergiant’s home
This beautiful Hubble image reveals a young super star cluster
known as Westerlund 1, only 15,000 light-years away in our Milky Way
neighborhood, yet home to one of the largest stars ever discovered.
NASA mission named ‘Europa Clipper’
NASA’s upcoming mission to investigate the habitability of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa now has a formal name: Europa Clipper.
The future of space colonization – terraforming or space habitats?
The idea of terraforming Mars – aka “Earth’s Twin” – is a
fascinating idea. Between melting the polar ice caps, slowly creating an
atmosphere, and then engineering the environment to have foliage,
rivers, and standing bodies of water, there’s enough there to inspire
just about anyone! But just how long would such an endeavor take, what
would it cost us, and is it really an effective use of our time and
energy?
Image: Cassini reveals strange shape of Saturn’s moon Pan
These raw, unprocessed images of Saturn’s tiny moon, Pan, were
taken on March 7, 2017, by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The flyby had a
close-approach distance of 24,572 kilometers (15,268 miles).
Sentinel-2B satellite declared fit and ready for commissioning
Following three days of intensive work, mission control today
declared the newly launched Sentinel-2B satellite fit and ready for
commissioning.
High performance of single stage sounding hybrid rockets using design informatics
Single-stage sounding rockets are used to transport scientific
equipment into, or just beyond, Earth’s atmosphere to measure phenomena
such as aurora. Recently, scientists have begun designing rockets with
hybrid engines, which work by alternating between different phases of
solid fuel and liquid or gas oxidizers. Hybrid rockets are cheaper,
safer and cleaner than those with conventional solid fuel engines.
New NASA radar technique finds lost lunar spacecraft
Finding derelict spacecraft and space debris in Earth’s orbit can
be a technological challenge. Detecting these objects in orbit around
Earth’s moon is even more difficult. Optical telescopes are unable to
search for small objects hidden in the bright glare of the moon.
However, a new technological application of interplanetary radar
pioneered by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena,
California, has successfully located spacecraft orbiting the moon—one
active, and one dormant. This new technique could assist planners of
future moon missions.
Keeping liquids off the wall
On Earth, liquid flows downhill thanks to gravity. Creating an
effective liquid fuel tank involves little more than putting a hole at
the bottom of a container.
Hubble dates black hole’s last big meal
For the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way
galaxy, it’s been a long time between dinners. NASA’s Hubble Space
Telescope has found that the black hole ate its last big meal about 6
million years ago, when it consumed a large clump of infalling gas.
After the meal, the engorged black hole burped out a colossal bubble of
gas weighing the equivalent of millions of suns, which now billows above
and below our galaxy’s center.
Studying magnetic space explosions with NASA missions
Every day, invisible magnetic explosions are happening around
Earth, on the surface of the sun and across the universe. These
explosions, known as magnetic reconnection, occur when magnetic field
lines cross, releasing stored magnetic energy. Such explosions are a key
way that clouds of charged particles—plasmas—are accelerated throughout
the universe. In Earth’s magnetosphere—the giant magnetic bubble
surrounding our planet—these magnetic reconnections can fling charged
particles toward Earth, triggering auroras.
