BepiColombo Mercury Mission Liftoff | European Space Agency

A Joint European-Japanese Mission to Explore Planet Mercury
The BepiColombo spacercraft lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on an Ariane 5 rocket at 01:45 GMT on October 20, 2018.

BepiColombo is a joint endeavor between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). It is the first European mission to Mercury, the smallest and least explored planet in the inner Solar System, and the first to send two spacecraft to make complementary measurements of the planet and its dynamic environment at the same time.

“Launching BepiColombo is a huge milestone for ESA and JAXA, and there will be many great successes to come,” says Jan Wörner, ESA Director General.

“Beyond completing the challenging journey, this mission will return a huge bounty of science. It is thanks to the international collaboration and the decades of efforts and expertise of everyone involved in the design and building of this incredible machine, that we are now on our way to investigating planet Mercury’s mysteries.”

Learn more about Bepi Colombo: http://bit.ly/ESAsBepiColombo

ESA is Europe's gateway to space. Our mission is to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.

Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Arianespace
Duration: 1 minute, 44 seconds
Release Date: October 19, 2018

#ESA #Space #Astronomy #Science #Planet #Mercury #BepiColombo #Rocket #Launch #Ariane5 #Arianespace #Kourou #Spaceport #FrenchGuiana #SouthAmerica #Europe #JAXA #Japan #日本 #STEM #Education #HD #Video

NASA's Space to Ground: "A Successful Failure"

Week of October 19, 2018: NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

Three Expedition 57 crew members are staying busy aboard the International Space Station after the climb to orbit of two crewmates was aborted last Thursday morning, October 11. American Nick Hague and Russian Alexey Ovchinin made an emergency landing shortly after launch, but are in excellent shape. The trio in orbit is continuing science and maintenance aboard the orbital laboratory.

NASA astronaut Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Ovchinin are safe and returned to Moscow with mission officials after their aborted mission. The Soyuz MS-10 rocket booster experienced a failure about two minutes after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Investigations into the cause of the failure are beginning, and the space station international partner agencies are evaluating what changes to the station’s operating plan will need to be adopted.

The three humans still orbiting Earth are safe with plenty of supplies and work to do on orbit.

Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)
Duration: 2 minutes
Release Date: October 19, 2018
#NASA #Space #ISS #Science #Roscosmos #Роскосмос #Soyuz #SoyuzMS08 #Союз #Rocket #Launch #Kazakhstan #Astronaut #NickHague #Cosmonaut #AlexeyOvchinin #Russia #Россия #Astronauts #Expedition57 #Human #Spaceflight #Spacecraft #JSC #Houston #Texas #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Earth's Glow and The Milky Way

Celestial view of Earth's atmospheric glow and the Milky Way
The International Space Station was orbiting about 256 miles above South Australia when a camera on board the orbital complex captured this celestial view of Earth's atmospheric glow and the Milky Way.

Credit: NASA/JSC
Image Date: October 7, 2018

#NASA #Space #ISS #Science #Earth #Planet #Atmosphere #Glow #Australia #Stars #MilkyWay #Galaxy #SolarSystem #Orbit #Astronauts #UnitedStates #Expedition57 #Human #Spaceflight #Spacecraft #Photography #STEM #Education #OrbitalPerspective #OverviewEffect

NASA's Webb Telescope to Examine Active Galaxy NGC 4151

Distance: 62 million light-years
Galaxies and their central, supermassive black holes are inextricably linked. Both grow in lockstep for reasons that are not yet understood. To gain new insights, Webb will turn its infrared gaze to the center of a nearby galaxy called NGC 4151, whose supermassive black hole is actively feeding and glowing brightly. By measuring the motions of stars clustered around the black hole and comparing them to computer models, astronomers can determine the black hole’s mass. This challenging measurement will test the capabilities of Webb’s innovative instrument called an integral field unit.

NGC 4151
At first glance, the galaxy NGC 4151 looks like an average spiral. Examine its center more closely, though, and you can spot a bright smudge that stands out from the softer glow around it. That point of light marks the location of a supermassive black hole weighing about 40 million times as much as our Sun.

Astronomers will use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to measure that black hole’s mass. The result might seem like a piece of trivia, but its mass determines how a black hole feeds and affects the surrounding galaxy. And since most galaxies contain a supermassive black hole, learning about this nearby galaxy will improve our understanding of many galaxies across the cosmos.

“Some central questions in astrophysics are: How does a galaxy’s central black hole grow with time; how does the galaxy itself grow with time; and how do they affect each other? This project is a step toward answering those questions,” explained Misty Bentz of Georgia State University, Atlanta, the principal investigator of the project.

Probing a galaxy’s core
There are several methods of weighing supermassive black holes. One technique relies on measuring the motions of stars in the galaxy’s core. The heavier the black hole, the faster nearby stars will move under its gravitational influence.

NGC 4151 represents a challenging target, because it contains a particularly active black hole that is feeding voraciously. As a result, the material swirling around the black hole, known as an accretion disk, shines brightly. The light from the accretion disk threatens to overwhelm the fainter light from stars in the region.

“With Webb’s beautifully shaped mirrors and sharp ‘vision,’ we should be able to probe closer to the galaxy’s center even though there’s a really bright accretion disk there,” said Bentz.

The team expects to be able to investigate the central 1,000 light-years of NGC 4151, and be able to resolve stellar motions on a scale of about 15 light-years.

A thousand spectra at once
To achieve this feat, the team will use Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) integral field unit, or IFU. It will be the first IFU flown in space, and it has a unique capability.

Webb’s IFU takes the light from every location in an image and splits it into a rainbow spectrum. To do this it employs almost 100 mirrors, each of them precision crafted to a specific shape, all squeezed into an instrument the size of a shoebox. Those mirrors effectively slice a small square of the sky into strips, then spread the light from those strips out both spatially and in wavelength.

In this way a single image yields 1,000 spectra. Each spectrum tells astronomers not only about the elements that make up the stars and gas at that exact point of the sky, but also about their relative motions.

Despite Webb’s exquisite resolution, the team won’t be able to measure the motions of individual stars. Instead, they will get information about groups of stars very close to the center of the galaxy. They will then apply computer models to determine the gravitational field affecting the stars, which depends on the size of the black hole.

“Our computer code generates a bunch of mock stars—tens of thousands of stars, mimicking the motions of real stars in the galaxy. We put in a variety of different black holes and see what matches the observations the best,” said Monica Valluri of the University of Michigan, a co-investigator on the project.

The result of this technique will be compared with a second one that focuses on the gas at the galaxy’s center, rather than the stars.

“We should get the same answer, no matter what technique we use, if we’re looking at the same black hole,” said Bentz. “NGC 4151 is one of the best targets for making that comparison.”

These observations will be taken as part of the Director’s Discretionary-Early Release Science program. The DD-ERS program provides time to selected projects enabling the astronomical community to quickly learn how best to use Webb’s capabilities, while also yielding robust science.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries of our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Learn more: www.jwst.nasa.gov

Credit: NASA/ESA
Release Date: October 17, 2018

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Galaxy #NGC4151 #Spiral #BlackHole #Hubble #JamesWebb #JWST #Telescope #Spacecraft #Cosmos #Universe #Observatory #GSFC #ESA #CSA #Technology #Engineering #International #STEM #Education

New Simulation Creates "Pulsar in a Box" | NASA Goddard

Scientists studying what amounts to a computer-simulated "pulsar in a box" are gaining a more detailed understanding of the complex, high-energy environment around spinning neutron stars, also called pulsars. The model traces the paths of charged particles in magnetic and electric fields near the neutron star, revealing behaviors that may help explain how pulsars emit gamma-ray and radio pulses with ultraprecise timing.

A pulsar is the crushed core of a massive star that exploded as a supernova. The core is so compressed that more mass than the Sun's squeezes into a ball no wider than Manhattan Island in New York City. This process also revvs up its rotation and strengthens its magnetic and electric fields.

Various physical processes ensure that most of the particles around a pulsar are either electrons or their antimatter counterparts, positrons. To trace the behavior and energies of these particles, the researchers used a comparatively new type of pulsar model called a "particle in cell" (PIC) simulation.

The PIC technique lets scientists explore the pulsar from first principles, starting with a spinning, magnetized neutron star. The computer code injects electrons and positrons at the pulsar's surface and tracks how they interact with the electric and magnetic fields. It's computationally intensive because the particle motions affect the fields and the fields affect the particles, and everything is moving near the speed of light.

The simulation shows that most of the electrons tend to race outward from the magnetic poles. Some medium-energy electrons scatter wildly, even heading back to the pulsar.

The positrons, on the other hand, mostly flow out at lower latitudes, forming a relatively thin structure called the current sheet. In fact, the highest-energy positrons here—less than 0.1 percent of the total—are capable of producing gamma rays similar to those detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which has discovered 216 gamma-ray pulsars.

The simulation ran on the Discover supercomputer at NASA's Center for Climate Simulation at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California. The model actually tracks "macroparticles," each of which represents many trillions of electrons or positrons.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Music: "Reaching for the Horizon" and "Leaving Earth" from Killer Tracks
Duration: 2 minutes, 53 seconds
Release Date: October 10, 2018

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Stars #Pulsars #Neutron #Astrophysics #Physics #Cosmos #Universe #Model #Simulation #PIC #Computer #Supercomputer #Pleiades #Goddard #GSFC #Greenbelt #Maryland #Ames #MountainView #California #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

NASA's Kennedy Spaceport Magazine: October 2018

NASA's Kennedy Spaceport Magazine: October 2018
Read KSC's October 2018 Spaceport Magazine (Free 16-Page PDF)
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/spaceport-magazine.html
Direct Download:
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/spm_october2018_web.pdf
In the October 2018 issue:
· ICESat-2 launches on final flight of Delta II rocket

· Commercial Crew flights draw nearer

· NASA: 60 Years and Counting

· Kennedy team puts space sensor to use on ground

· Innovators' Launchpad: Michael Hogue

· Mobile launcher on the move to Vehicle Assembly Building

· Students turn NASA robotic experience to high altitude technology

· Apollo 7 launches as race to Moon reached final stretch

Spaceport Magazine is a monthly NASA publication that serves Kennedy Space Center employees and the American public. The magazine’s wide topic variety mirrors Kennedy's diverse spaceport operations. From launch processing to center development and employee stories, Spaceport Magazine covers it all.

Credit: NASA/Kennedy Space Center (KSC)
Release Date: October 12, 2018

#NASA #KSC #Space #Science #Astronomy #Earth #ICESat2 #DeltaII #Rocket #ULA #SLS #Orion #EM1 #MobileLauncher #ISS #CommercialCrew #Mars #Moon #Astronauts #NASA60 #Kennedy #Spaceport #Florida #UnitedStates #Magazine #PDF #STEM #Education

Inside NASA's Kennedy Space Center | Week of Oct. 12, 2018

Kennedy Space Center’s scenic location on central Florida’s east coast is perfect for launching rockets, but beach erosion is a concern—especially during hurricane season. That’s why NASA is managing a project to revitalize the shoreline with beach-quality sand, building up the dune that helps to protect vital spaceport infrastructure.

Credit: NASA's Kennedy Space Center
Duration: 1 minute, 19 seconds
Release Date: October 12, 2018

#NASA #Astronomy #Science #Space #NASA60th #Beach #Erosion #Hurricanes #Environment #SLS #Rockets #Launch #Orion #Spacecraft #EM1 #Moon #Mars #JourneyToMars #SolarSystem #Exploration #CapeCanaveral #AirForce #Kennedy #KSC #Spaceport #Florida #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Soyuz ISS Crew Lands Safely After Launch Anomaly This Week @NASA

Week of Oct. 12, 2018: Soyuz crew is safe following a launch anomaly, another major hurricane seen from space, and testing continues for the rocket engine that will power us to deep space . . . a few of the stories to tell you about—This Week at NASA!

Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Duration: 4 minutes, 6 seconds
Release Date: October 12, 2018

#NASA #Space #Science #ISS #HurricaneMichael #Weather #Soyuz #Rocket #Astronaut #Cosmonaut #Roscosmos #Роскосмос #Russia #Россия #Kazakhstan #Expedition57 #Human #Spaceflight #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Hurricane Michael Makes Landfall | NOAA

Oct. 10, 2018: Early Wednesday afternoon, powerful Hurricane Michael made landfall along the Florida Panhandle as a record-setting Category 4 storm. The National Hurricane Center reported Michael's sustained winds were near 155 mph as the eye of the storm moved ashore near Mexico City, Florida at 1:30 p.m. ET October 10. According to NOAA's historical hurricane tracks database, Michael is the first Category 4 storm to make landfall along the Florida Panhandle since records began in 1851.

This GOES East satellite imagery shows Hurricane Michael just as the storm made landfall at 1:30 p.m. ET October 10.

Michael is expected to drop heavy rains across the Florida Panhandle, southeast Alabama and portions of southwest and central Georgia, with widespread totals of 4 to 8 inches expected. As the storm moves inland through the southeastern U.S., the storm will produce 3 to 6 inches of rain across northern Georgia, the Carolinas and southern Virginia.

This geocolor-enhanced imagery was created by NOAA's partners at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere. The GOES East geostationary satellite, also known as GOES-16, provides coverage of the Western Hemisphere, including the United States, the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern Pacific. The satellite's high-resolution imagery provides optimal viewing of severe weather events, including thunderstorms, tropical storms and hurricanes.

Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/CIRA
Release Date: October 10, 2018
#NASA #NOAA #Space #Satellite #Science #Earth #HurricaneMichael #Hurricane #Category4 #Storm #Gulf #Mexico #Florida #Panhandle #MexicoCity #Weather #Meteorology #GOESEast #CIRA #Geocolor #Goddard #GSFC #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

SpaceX Falcon 9 Launch: SAOCOM 1A Mission

Liftoff is at the 17 minute mark.
The October 7, 2018 Falcon 9 rocket Block 5 launch was of a synthetic aperture radar remote sensing satellite, SAOCOM 1A, for Argentina’s space agency Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB).

SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 rocket back at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California for the first time. While the company’s launches and landings on the East Coast have become almost routine, this is the first time it attempted a landing at its Landing Zone 4 at VAFB.

Credit: SpaceX
Duration: 32 minutes
Release Date: October 7, 2018

#SpaceX #Space #Satellite #Earth #Rocket #Launch #SAOCOM1A #Argentina #CONAE #Falcon9 #Block5 #Commercial #Vandenberg #AirForce #VAFB #California #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Hurricane Michael in Gulf of Mexico | NOAA

Oct. 9, 2018: Hurricane Michael, seen here by NOAA's GOES East weather satellite, is strengthening as it moves over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico. The center of the Category 2 storm is expected to move inland over the Florida Panhandle on Wednesday, October 10, 2018. Maximum sustained winds: 85 knots; 100 mph

GeoColor is a multispectral product composed of True Color (using a simulated green component) during the daytime, and an Infrared product that uses bands 7 and 13 at night. During the day, the imagery looks approximately as it would appear when viewed with human eyes from space.

Geocolor was developed at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) and STAR's Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch (RAMMB).

Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/CIRA
Image Date: October 9, 2018

#NASA #NOAA #Space #Satellite #Science #Earth #HurricaneMichael #Hurricane #Storm #Gulf #Mexico #Florida #Weather #Meteorology #GOESEast #CIRA #Geocolor #Goddard #GSFC #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

An Orbital Sunrise | International Space Station

European Space Agency Astronaut Alexander Gerst: "I don't know any words, in any language, to match the beauty of an orbital sunrise."

"Eines Sonnenaufgangs im Orbit"
"Ich kenne kein Wort, in keiner Sprache, das die Schönheit eines Sonnenaufgangs im Orbit auch nur ansatzweise beschreiben könnte."

Credit: ESA/NASA-A.Gerst
Image Date: September 14, 2018

#NASA #ESA #Space #ISS #Science #Earth #Sun #Sunrise #Orbital #Planet #Atmosphere #Clouds #Astronaut #AlexanderGerst #Horizons #Europe #Germany #Deutschland #DLR #Expedition56 #Human #Spaceflight #Spacecraft #Photography #STEM #Education #International #OrbitalPerspective #OverviewEffect

NASA's Space to Ground: Hello, Goodbye | Week of Oct 5, 2018

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

Three crew members who have been living and working aboard the International Space Station have landed safely in Kazakhstan.

Expedition 56 Commander Drew Feustel and Flight Engineer Ricky Arnold of NASA, along with Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Oleg Artemyev of the Russian space agency Roscosmos landed at 7:44 a.m. EDT (5:44 p.m. in Kazakhstan) southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan.

The crew completed hundreds of experiments during its 197-day expedition. Highlights included an investigation to study ultra-cold quantum gases using the first commercial European facility for microgravity research, and a system that uses surface forces to accomplish liquid-liquid separation.

Expedition 57 continues station research and operations with a crew comprised of Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA, Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency) and Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos. Gerst assumed command of the station as Feustel prepared to depart.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin are scheduled to launch Oct. 11 for a same-day arrival, increasing the crew size to five.

For more information about the International Space Station, visit www.nasa.gov/station.

Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:
https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science

For more information about STEM on Station:
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/stem_on_station/index.html

Credit: NASA/Johnson Space Center (JSC)
Duration: 2 minutes, 40 seconds
Release Date: October 5, 2018

#NASA #Space #ISS #Science #Roscosmos #Роскосмос #Soyuz #SoyuzMS08 #Союз #Landing #Kazakhstan #Astronauts #RickyArnold #DrewFeustel #Cosmonaut #OlegArtemyev #Russia #Россия #Astronauts #Expedition56 #Expedition57 #Human #Spaceflight #Spacecraft #JSC #Houston #Texas #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Rings upon rings | Hubble

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals a spiral galaxy named Messier 95 (also known as M95 or NGC 3351). Located about 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion), this swirling spiral was discovered by astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1781, and cataloged by French astronomer Charles Messier just four days later. Messier was primarily a comet hunter, and was often left frustrated by objects in the sky that resembled comets but turned out not to be. To help other astronomers avoid confusing these objects in the future, he created his famous catalog of Messier objects.

Most definitely not a comet, Messier 95 is actually a barred spiral galaxy. The galaxy has a bar cutting through its center, surrounded by an inner ring currently forming new stars. Also our own Milky Way is a barred spiral.

As well as hosting this stellar nursery, Messier 95 is a known host of the dramatic and explosive final stages in the lives of massive stars: supernovae. In March 2016 a spectacular supernova named SN 2012aw was observed in the outer regions of one of Messier 95’s spiral arms. Once the light from the supernova had faded, astronomers were able to compare observations of the region before and after the explosion to find out which star had “disappeared”— the progenitor star. In this case, the star was an especially huge red supergiant up to 26 times more massive than the Sun.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA
Release Date: October 8, 2018

#NASA #Hubble #Astronomy #Space #Science #Galaxy #Messier95 #M95 #NGC3351 #Spiral #Barred #Leo #SN2012aw #Supernova #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #ESA #Goddard #GSFC #STScI #STEM #Education

Sixty Years of NASA and Counting, on This Week @NASA

NASA's 60th Anniversary (1958-2018)

Week of October 5, 2018: Celebrating sixty years of NASA, space station crew makes a safe return to Earth, and evidence of a possible discovery outside our solar system . . . a few of the stories to tell you about—This Week at NASA!

Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Duration: 3 minutes, 38 seconds
Release Date: October 5, 2018
#NASA #Space #Science #Earth #ISS #Moon #Mars #SolarSystem #Astronomy #History #NASA60 #Anniversary #President #Eisenhower #Government #UnitedStates #Civilian #Agency #Research #Exploration #Aerospace #Aeronautics #Aviation #Astronauts #JourneyToMars #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Glory Days | International Space Station

U.S. Astronaut Drew Feustel: "I have had my 'glory days in the hot sun' and now it’s time to come home. Thank you everybody for following along on Expedition 56’s journey living on the International Space Station. I hope you continue to follow NASA as we explore the great depths of space for the benefit of humanity."

Credit: A.J. (Drew) Feustel/NASA/JSC
Release Date: October 4, 2018

#NASA #Space #ISS #Science #Earth #Humanity #Astronaut #DrewFeustel #UnitedStates #Expedition56 #Human #Spaceflight #Spacecraft #Photography #STEM #Education #International #OrbitalPerspective #OverviewEffect