Testing Spacecraft Solar Arrays for Asteroid Trip | NASA Psyche

Testing Spacecraft Solar Arrays for Asteroid Trip | NASA Psyche

NASA’s Psyche mission is preparing for a 1.5 billion-mile (2.4 billion-kilometer) solar-powered trip to the metal-rich asteroid of the same name.  

In a cleanroom at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in February 2022, twin solar arrays were attached to the spacecraft body, unfolded lengthwise, and then re-stowed as tests on Psyche continue. The five-panel, cross-shaped solar arrays are the largest ever installed on a spacecraft at JPL, so engineers had to test them one at a time.

Psyche is expected to launch no earlier than August 2022. About an hour after launch, the arrays will deploy and latch into place in a sequential process that will take 7½ minutes per array. They will then provide power for the journey to Psyche and for operating the three science instruments. In total, the solar arrays are 37 feet (11.3 meters) long. Only the three center panels can be deployed at JPL; the two cross panels on each wing are deployed using specialized equipment at Maxar Technologies in Palo Alto, California, where the arrays and spacecraft chassis were built. When they deploy fully in flight, the spacecraft will be about the size of a singles tennis court. 

Psyche is scheduled to arrive at the asteroid in 2026 and spend nearly two years making increasingly close orbits? Scientists think the asteroid Psyche could be part of the core of a planetesimal, the building block of an early rocky planet, which would provide a unique opportunity to study how planets like our own Earth formed.

For more information about NASA’s Psyche mission go to: 

nasa.gov/psyche and psyche.asu.edu

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Duration: 1 minute, 26 seconds

Release Date: March 7, 2022

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Asteroid #Science #Psyche #Spacecraft #Solar #Arrays #MaxarTechnologies #Maxar #Technology #Earth #Planets #SolarSystem #Exploration #JPL #Caltech #Pasadena #California #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Spot the Supernova | European Southern Observatory

Spot the Supernova | European Southern Observatory

Around 500 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor lies a rather peculiar looking galaxy, known as the Cartwheel galaxy. It was once a normal spiral galaxy that underwent a head-on interaction with a smaller companion galaxy several million years ago, giving it its signature cartwheel appearance. However, there are other curious things about this object. Something interesting is taking place in the lower left corner of the right image, captured in December 2021 with the European Southern Observatory’s New Technology Telescope (NTT): a supernova. The image on the left, taken in August 2014 by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the galaxy before this supernova took place.

This event, called SN2021afdx, is a type II supernova, which occurs when a massive star reaches the end of its evolution. Supernovae can cause a star to shine brighter than its entire host galaxy and can be visible to observers for months, or even years—a blink of an eye on astronomical timescales. Supernovae are one of the reasons astronomers say we are all made of stardust: they sprinkle the surrounding space with heavy elements forged by the progenitor star, which may end up being part of later generations of stars, the planets around them and life that may exist in those planets. 

Detecting and studying these unpredictable events requires international collaboration. The first time SN2021afdx was spotted was in November 2021 by the ATLAS survey, and it was then followed up by ePESSTO+, the advanced Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey for Transient Objects. ePESSTO+ is designed to study objects that are only in the night sky for very short periods of time, such as this supernova. It does this by using the EFOSC2 and SOFI instruments on the NTT, located at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. EFOSC2 not only took this beautiful image, but also spectra that allowed the PESSTO team to identify this event as a type II supernova.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Release Date: March 7, 2022

#ESO #Astronomy #Space #Astrophysics #Galaxy #Cartwheel #Supernova #SN2021afdx #Star #Sculptor #Constellation #VLT #NTT #Telescope #Cosmos #Universe #Earth #LaSilla #Observatory #Chile #Europe #Astrophotography #STEM #Education

Hubble Snaps a Star's Supersonic Gas Jet

Hubble Snaps a Star's Supersonic Gas Jet

An energetic outburst from an infant star streaks across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This stellar tantrum—produced by an extremely young star in the earliest phase of formation—consists of an incandescent jet of gas travelling at supersonic speeds. As the jet collides with material surrounding the still-forming star, the shock heats this material and causes it to glow. The result is the colourfully wispy structures, which astronomers refer to as Herbig–Haro objects, billowing across the lower left of this image. 

Herbig–Haro objects are seen to evolve and change significantly over just a few years. This particular object, called HH34, was previously captured by Hubble between 1994 and 2007, and again in glorious detail in 2015. HH34 resides approximately 1250 light-years from Earth in the Orion Nebula, a large region of star formation visible to the unaided eye. The Orion Nebula is one of the closest sites of widespread star formation to Earth, and as such has been pored over by astronomers in search of insights into how stars and planetary systems are born. 

The data in this image are from a set of Hubble observations of four nearby bright jets with the Wide Field Camera 3 taken to help pave the way for future science with the NASA, European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency supported James Webb Space Telescope. Webb—which will observe at predominantly infrared wavelengths—will be able to peer into the dusty envelopes surrounding still-forming protostars, revolutionising the study of jets from these young stars. Hubble’s high-resolution images of HH34 and other jets will help astronomers interpret future observations with Webb.

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini

Release Date: March 7, 2022

#NASA #Hubble #Astronomy #Space #Science #Galaxy #Galaxies #Jet #Gas #Star  #HerbigHaroObjects #HH34 #Nebula #Orion #Constellation #Stars #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #ESA #Goddard #GSFC #STScI #STEM #Education

Earth and Moon through Saturn's Rings | NASA Cassini

Earth and Moon through Saturn's Rings | NASA Cassini

What are those dots between Saturn's rings? Our Earth and Moon. Just over five years ago, because the Sun was temporarily blocked by the body of Saturn, the robotic Cassini spacecraft was able to look toward the inner Solar System. There, it spotted our Earth and Moon—just pin-pricks of light lying about 1.4 billion kilometers distant. Toward the right of the featured image is Saturn's A ring, with the broad Encke Gap on the far right and the narrower Keeler Gap toward the center. On the far left is Saturn's continually changing F Ring. From this perspective, the light seen from Saturn's rings was scattered mostly forward , and so appeared backlit. 

Learn more about the Cassini Mission:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html

After 20 years in space—13 of those years exploring Saturn—Cassini exhausted its fuel supply. And so, to protect moons of Saturn that could have conditions suitable for life, Cassini was sent on a daring final mission that would seal its fate. After a series of nearly two dozen nail-biting dives between the planet and its icy rings, Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere on Sept. 15, 2017, returning science data to the very end.

Image Credit: 

NASA, ESA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Institute (SSI), Cassini Imaging Team; Processing & License: Kevin M. Gill

Release Date: June 2, 2020

#NASA #Astronomy #Science #Space #Saturn #Planet #Rings #Earth #Moon #SolarSystem #Exploration #Cassini #Spacecraft #JPL #California #SSI #UnitedStates #ESA #KevinGill #History #STEM #Education

Nancy Grace Roman: NASA's First Chief Astronomer, The Mother of Hubble

Nancy Grace Roman: NASA's First Chief Astronomer, The Mother of Hubble  

In a time when women were discouraged from studying math and science, Nancy Grace Roman became a research astronomer and the first Chief of Astronomy at NASA. Known today as the "Mother of Hubble," she was instrumental in taking the Hubble Space Telescope from an idea to reality and establishing NASA's program of space-based astronomical observatories. Celebrate Women's History Month by listening to more of her story.

The Roman Space Telescope is a NASA observatory designed to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. The telescope has a primary mirror that is 2.4 meters in diameter (7.9 feet), and is the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope's primary mirror. The Roman Space Telescope will have two instruments, the Wide Field Instrument, and the Coronagraph Instrument.

The Wide Field Instrument will have a field of view that is 100 times greater than the Hubble infrared instrument, capturing more of the sky with less observing time. As the primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument will measure light from a billion galaxies over the course of the mission lifetime. It will perform a microlensing survey of the inner Milky Way to find ~2,600 exoplanets. The Coronagraph Instrument will perform high contrast imaging and spectroscopy of individual nearby exoplanets.

The Roman Space Telescope will have a primary mission lifetime of 5 years, with a potential 5 year extended mission. It is set for launch in the mid-2020s.

Leaarn more about the Roman Space Telescope:

https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Katrina Jackson

Duration: 6 minutes, 21 seconds

Release Date: Feb 11, 2018

#NASA #Hubble #Astronomy #Space #Science #Women #Leaders #Pioneers #NancyGraceRoman #Astronomer #RomanSpaceTelescope #WomensHistoryMonth #Exoplanets #Planets #SolarSystem #Galaxy #Constellations #Stars #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #ESA #Goddard #GSFC #STScI #History #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Cislunar Highway Patrol System (CHPS) | US Space Force

Cislunar Highway Patrol System (CHPS) | US Space Force

"Until now, the United States Space Missions extended 22,000 miles above Earth. That was then, this is now."

The Cislunar Highway Patrol System (CHPS), is here to improve the United States Space Force's ability to track and identify artificial objects around the moon and beyond.

The United States Space Force (USSF) is tasked with protecting and defending US interests in space. Until now, the limits of that mission have been in near Earth, out to approximately geostationary (GEO) range.  With new US public and private sector operations extending into cislunar space, the reach of USSF’s sphere of interest will also extend to the Moon and beyond. There are a number of technical challenges to overcome with cislunar domain awareness operations, including the effects of a three-body gravitational environment. The large range of trajectories can have periods anywhere from hours to a month, and the new region encompasses a volume 1000x larger than is traditionally monitored by the USSF. Finally, the Moon creates observational challenges simply due to exclusion zones created by varying lighting conditions that occur due to the Moon’s orbit around the Earth. This creates a substantial observational challenge that can only be overcome by observations from orbits beyond GEO, such as halo orbits around Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1.

As part of an overarching research program addressing these challenges, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Cislunar Highway Patrol System (CHPS) will demonstrate core competencies for conducting space domain awareness (SDA) operations in the cislunar regime. The CHPS project will demonstrate sensing techniques and methods for detection and tracking in the region near the Moon that cannot be viewed optically from the Earth or traditional orbits like GEO.

The CHPS Other Transaction Authority (OTA) is being sought to mature and deliver this novel capability to the USSF. The primary mission objectives are to search for and maintain custody of objects down to 18th and 21st visual magnitudes, respectively. To support this mission, the vehicle must facilitate precise pointing, position, navigation, and timing in the cislunar operational environment. CHPS is seeking solutions to maximize on-board image processing, orbit determination, and catalog maintenance in conjunction with necessary communications to the ground. It is expected that the vehicle fit in a form factor of The Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Secondary Payload Adaptor (ESPA) and leverage commercial off the shelf (COTS) parts to the extent feasible.

The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is a scientific research organization operated by the United States Air Force Materiel Command dedicated to leading the discovery, development, and integration of aerospace warfighting technologies, planning and executing the Air Force science and technology program, and providing warfighting capabilities to United States air, space, and cyberspace forces. It controls the entire Air Force science and technology research budget.

Credit: Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)/National Security Technology Accelerator (NSTXL)

Release Date: March 1, 2022

#Space #Earth #Moon #Lunar #Satellite #GEO #LEO #SpaceForceDoD #USSF #AFResearchLab #CHPS #USAF #AWS22 #AFRL #AFRLSpace #AFRLTech #NSTXL #Science #Technology #Engineering #Military #Defense #NationalSecurity #Aerospace #UnitedStates #SDA #STEM #Education #HD #Video

BREEZE: Ray-inspired Airship Concept for Venus Exploration | NASA

BREEZE: Ray-inspired Airship Concept for Venus Exploration | NASA

Venus is home to one of the most extreme environments in the solar system. It is permanently shrouded in dense, toxic clouds and its surface is nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers are working on a concept that could change the way we explore the intense environment of Earth’s closest planetary neighbor. Studying Venus will help us better understand why it harbors such an extreme environment and unlock the mysteries of how planets evolve, including Earth.

NASA 360 takes a look at the NASA Innovative Advanced Concept (NIAC) called BREEZE, the Bio-inspired Ray for Extreme Environments and Zonal Exploration. 

To learn more visit: https://go.nasa.gov/2PT0PyB

Read the BREEZE NIAC Phase I Final Report (PDF): 

https://go.nasa.gov/3Cirtor

To watch the in-depth presentation about this topic please visit the 2019 NIAC Symposium Livestream site: https://bit.ly/2KHdVfD

This video represents a research study within the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. NIAC is a visionary and far-reaching aerospace program, one that has the potential to create breakthrough technologies for possible future space missions. However, such early stage technology developments may never become actual NASA missions.

Credit: NASA Space Tech/NASA 360

Duration: 1 minute, 24 seconds

Release Date: Feb. 25, 2022

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Engineering #Technology #Kinematics #Venus #Atmosphere #BREEZE #Airship #Concept #Extreme #Environment #NIAC #Research #SolarSystem #Planet #Planetary #Exploration #Robotics #UAV #Inflatable #AI #UnitedStates #NASA360 #STEM #Education #HD #Video

NASA Sounding Rocket Launches into Aurora Borealis

NASA Sounding Rocket Launches into Aurora Borealis

March 5, 2022: The LAMP mission, short for Loss through Auroral Microburst Pulsations, launched at 2:27 a.m. AKST (6:27 a.m. EST) Saturday, Mar. 5, 2022, on a Black Brant IX suborbital sounding rocket. The rocket launched to a nominal apogee and the principal investigator confirmed that good data was received from the experiment. 

The mission hopes to understand an often overlooked kind of aurora, called a pulsating aurora, and to test a theory on what causes them. 

The aurora borealis, or northern lights, is a familiar treat to those who call northern latitudes home. Auroras come in different shapes and colors, waving their ribbons of vibrant green, red and purple across the sky. But one variety of aurora displays a peculiar behavior: it pulsates.

“It’s sort of hypnotic, pulsating every few seconds,” said Dr. Alexa Halford, space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and principal investigator for the mission. “The blobs and colors remind me of a lava lamp, where you can just sit and stare at it for hours.” 

Like all aurora, pulsating aurora are set alight by electrons (and occasionally protons) from near-Earth space. These electrons plunge into our atmosphere and collide with atoms and molecules, causing them to glow in their distinctive colors—red and green by oxygen, blue by nitrogen—as they release their excess energy.

But what sets those electrons into motion in the first place? For pulsating aurora, the going theory points to chorus waves, so named because they were first detected as audio signals in radio receivers during World War I.

The LAMP instrument will fly aboard a sounding rocket, a small rocket launched into space for a targeted few minutes of measurements before falling back to Earth. Watching ground-based cameras at the Poker Flat Research Range and at a downrange site called Venetie, the team will wait until they see auroras start to pulsate. Then it’s go time.

The sounding rocket will fly above the pulsating aurora, measuring the low-energy particles that cause them as well as the medium- and high-energy electrons that should also come from a chorus wave. On the ground, a riometer will provide an independent measure of high-energy electrons, so the rocket team can confirm their measurements.

The only thing they will not measure is the chorus wave itself, though the team is hoping for a chance flyby of a satellite that could potentially provide those observations.

“We have all but one piece of the puzzle that we’re hoping to catch simultaneously…but any of it is going to provide us new information and hopefully help us test that theory that it’s the chorus waves behind it all,” Halford said.

The LAMP mission is an international collaboration with contributions from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Dartmouth College, University of New Hampshire, and University of Iowa, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tohoku University, Nagoya University, and Kyutech in Japan.

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

Release Date: March 5, 2022

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Aurora #AuroraBorealis #NorthernLights #LAMP #LAMPMission #GSFC #Goddard #Research #Physics #Rocket #BlackBrantIX #Suborbital #Sounding #Launch #Alaska #UnitedStates #Japan #日本 #STEM #Education

Galaxy-rise at Badwater Basin

Galaxy-rise at Badwater Basin

Astrophotographer Preston Dyches:

"In late February 2022, I trekked out to Badwater Basin in Death Valley with my NASA colleague and fellow nightscape shooter, Bill Dunford to try and capture the rising galaxy over the salt pans. Since it wasn't really Milky Way core season yet, we had only about an hour to capture it before morning twilight."

"We scouted the shot in daylight and planned to head back around 2:30 a.m., knowing it would take us a good 20 minutes to walk from the parking lot to the location, and then set up and take foregrounds before shooting the galaxy."

"When we arrived that night, we had the place to ourselves. We joked that there weren't a lot of other people so crazy to be out there at that time of night in the late-winter cold."

"We hiked out into the basin, found a good spot, set up low-level lights, and started shooting. Really magical. The Milky Way was rising roughly parallel to the mountains by about 3:30. It was super late, cold, and we were sleep deprived from shooting the previous night, but glad to have captured this shot."

Technical details:

This image is a blend of:

- A focus-stacked foreground, with 3 stacked exposures to reduce noise at each of three depths (9 exposures total)

- A stacked sky consisting of 20 exposures stacked with Starry Sky Stacker

All exposures are 10 sec at 20 mm, f/2.8, ISO 3200.

The Fading Milky Way

Light pollution is a growing environmental problem that threatens to erase the night sky before its time. A recent study revealed that perhaps two-thirds of the world's population can no longer look upwards at night and see the Milky Way—a hazy swath of stars that on warm summer nights spans the sky from horizon to horizon.

The Milky Way is dimming, not because the end of the Universe is near, but rather as a result of light pollution: the inadvertent illumination of the atmosphere from street lights, outdoor advertising, homes, schools, airports and other sources. Every night billions of bulbs send their energy skyward where microscopic bits of matter—air molecules, airborne dust, and water vapor droplets—reflect much of the wasted light back to Earth. 

(Source: NASA)

Credit: Preston Dyches

Location: Death Valley, California, USA

Image Capture Date: February 27, 2022

#NASA #Space #Astronomy #Science #MilkyWay #Stars #LightPollution #CitizenScience #Astrophotographer #PrestonDyches #Astrophotography #Skywatching #Cosmos #Universe #SolarSystem #Earth #DeathValley #California #JPL #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

Launching a New Earth-Observing Satellite | This Week @NASA

Launching a New Earth-Observing Satellite | This Week @NASA

Week of March 4, 2022: Launching a new Earth-observing satellite, things continue to line up for the James Webb Space Telescope, and imagining the future of aviation . . . a few of the stories to tell you about—This Week at NASA!

Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Producer: Andre Valentine

Editor: Lacey Young

Music: Universal Production Music

Duration: 3 minutes, 7 seconds

Release Date: March 4, 2022

#NASA #NOAA #Earth #Science #Space #Satellite #Weather #Meteorology #GOES #GOEST #GOES18  #JWST #Aviation #Aerospace #Goddard #GSFC #CapeCanaveral #Spaceport #Kennedy #KSC #Florida #UnitedStates #STEM #Education #HD #Video

Hubble Space Telescope Calendar 2022—Free Download

Hubble Space Telescope Calendar 2022

Still need a new calendar? It is not too late! The 2022 calendar features Hubble imagery of planets, star clusters, galaxies, and more. It is available for anyone to print, share and enjoy for free.

Download Free Adobe PDF Version (3MB):

https://esahubble.org/media/archives/calendars/pdf/cal2022.pdf 

The Hubble Space Telescope is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It is a long-term, space-based observatory. The observations are carried out in visible, infrared and ultraviolet light. In many ways Hubble has revolutionized modern astronomy, by not only being an efficient tool for making new discoveries, but also by driving astronomical research in general.

Credit: NASA & ESA

#NASA #Hubble #Astronomy #Calendar #Calendar2022 #Space #Science #Planets #SolarSystem #Galaxy #Constellations #Stars #Cosmos #Universe #Telescope #ESA #Goddard #GSFC #STScI #STEM #Education

NASA's Space to Ground: Spanning the Globe | International Space Station

 NASA's Space to Ground: Spanning the Globe | International Space Station

Week of March 4, 2022: NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station. 

NASA Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei will break NASA’s all-time single spaceflight record of 340 days on March 15, 2022, set by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly back on March 1, 2016. Vande Hei will return to Earth on March 30 having achieved a NASA record-breaking 355 days on orbit.

Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth:

https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov

Expedition 66 Crew:

Commander: Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos (Russia)

Roscosmos (Russia) Flight Engineer Pyotr Dubrov 

European Space Agency (ESA) Flight Engineer Matthias Maurer (DLR/German Aerospace Center)

NASA (U.S.) Flight Engineers: Thomas Marshburn, Raja Chari, Kayla Barron, and Mark Vande Hei.

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/stemonstation

Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) Education

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.

Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)

Duration: 2 minutes, 46 seconds

Release Date: March 4, 2022

#NASA #Space #ISS #Earth #Photography #EarthObservation #Roscosmos #Cosmonauts #Astronauts #Роскосмос #Russia #Россия #ESA #DLR #Germany #Deutschland #Science #Research #Cargo #SoyuzMS21 #Soyuz #Spacecraft #EVA #JSC #Houston #Texas #UnitedStates #Expedition66 #International #STEM #Education #HD #Video

NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI) Sagan 2022 Summer Workshop: Exoplanet Science in the Gaia Era | July 25-29, 2022

Sagan 2022 Summer Workshop | NASA Exoplanet Science Institute

NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI): Registration open for hybrid Sagan 2022 Summer Workshop: Exoplanet Science in the Gaia Era. The July 25-29, 2022, workshop will be in-person and virtual. 

Details here: 

https://nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2022/

Location: Caltech, Pasadena, California, USA

Registration is free and in-person attendees can apply for travel funds by March 24. The Sagan Summer Workshops are aimed at advanced undergraduates, grad students, and postdocs, however all are welcome to attend.

Credit: NASA Exoplanet Science Institute 

Release Date: February 18, 2022

#NASA #NExScI #Space #Science #Astronomy #Exoplanet #Sagan2022 #CarlSagan #Workshops #Summer #Pasadena #California #UCLA #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

NASA Begins Assembly of Europa Clipper Spacecraft | JPL

NASA Begins Assembly of Europa Clipper Spacecraft | JPL

March 3, 2022: Clockwise from left: the propulsion module for NASA’s Europa Clipper, the ultraviolet spectrograph (called Europa-UVS), the high-gain antenna, and an illustration of the spacecraft. 

Science instruments and other hardware for the spacecraft will come together in the mission’s final phase before a launch to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa in 2024.

When it is fully assembled, NASA’s Europa Clipper will be as large as an SUV with solar arrays long enough to span a basketball court—all the better to help power the spacecraft during its journey to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. And just about every detail of the spacecraft will have been hand-crafted.

The assembly effort is already underway in clean rooms at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Now, engineering components and science instruments are beginning to stream in from across the country and Europe. Before year’s end, most of the flight hardware—including a suite of nine science instruments—is expected to be complete.

The main body of the spacecraft is a giant 10-foot-tall (3-meter-tall) propulsion module, designed and constructed by Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, with help from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and JPL. The module, fitted with electronics, radios, cabling, and the propulsion subsystem, will ship to JPL this spring. Europa Clipper’s 10-foot-wide (3-meter-wide) high-gain antenna also will be arriving at the Lab soon.

“We’re moving into the phase where we see the pieces all come together as a flight system,” said Europa Clipper Project Manager Jan Chodas of JPL. “It will be very exciting to see the hardware, the flight software, and the instruments get integrated and tested. To me, it’s the next level of discovery. We’ll learn how the system we designed will actually perform.”

Europa, which scientists are confident harbors an internal ocean with twice the amount of water in Earth’s oceans combined, may currently have conditions suitable for supporting life. Europa Clipper will orbit Jupiter and conduct multiple close flybys of Europa to gather data on the moon’s atmosphere, surface, and interior. Its sophisticated payload will investigate everything from the depth and salinity of the ocean to the thickness of the ice crust to the characteristics of potential plumes that may be venting subsurface water into space.

The first science instrument to be completed was delivered to JPL last week by a team at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. The ultraviolet spectrograph, called Europa-UVS, will search above the surface of Europa for signs of plumes. The instrument collects ultraviolet light, then separates the wavelengths of that light to help determine the composition of the moon’s surface and gases in the atmosphere.

As each instrument arrives at JPL, it will be integrated with the spacecraft and re-tested. Engineers need to be sure the instruments can communicate with the flight computer, spacecraft software, and the power subsystem.

Once all the components have been integrated to form the large flight system, Europa Clipper will move to JPL’s enormous thermal vacuum chamber for testing that simulates the harsh environment of deep space. There also will be intense vibration testing to ensure Europa Clipper can withstand the jostling of launch. Then it’s off to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for an October 2024 launch.

For the leaders of this mission, seeing the engineering components come together with the fleet of instruments will be especially moving, knowing how hard their teams have pushed to work through the coronavirus pandemic.

“I don’t know how I’ll feel, seeing this come together. I suspect it will be somewhat overwhelming,” said JPL’s Robert Pappalardo, the Europa Clipper project scientist. “It’s happening – it’s becoming real. It’s becoming tangible.”

At the same time, the level of difficulty kicks up several notches as the layers of the project merge.

“All of the parallel paths of hardware and software development will start to join together in a way that’s very visible to the team,” said JPL’s Jordan Evans, the deputy project manager. “Everybody’s eyes turn toward the integrated system that’s coming together, which is exciting.”

More About the Mission

Missions such as Europa Clipper contribute to the field of astrobiology, the interdisciplinary research on the variables and conditions of distant worlds that could harbor life as we know it. While Europa Clipper is not a life-detection mission, it will conduct detailed reconnaissance of Europa and investigate whether the icy moon, with its subsurface ocean, has the capability to support life. Understanding Europa’s habitability will help scientists better understand how life developed on Earth and the potential for finding life beyond our planet.

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with APL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.

More information about Europa can be found here: europa.nasa.gov

Download Europa Clipper Ocean World poster: go.nasa.gov/3Gsjzt5

Credit: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)/Caltech /Johns Hopkins APL

Image Release Date: March 3, 2022

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Jupiter #Europa #Moon #Ocean #Astrobiology #Biosignatures #Habitability #Radiation #EuropaClipper #Spacecraft #SolarSystem #Exploration #APL #Marshall #MSFC #JPL #Pasadena #California #UnitedStates #STEM #Education

Skywatching: What's Up for March 2022 | NASA/JPL

Skywatching: What's Up for March 2022 | NASA/JPL

What are some skywatching highlights in March 2022? 

Look for Saturn to join Venus and Mars in the morning sky around mid-month. In the evenings, find the Y-shaped constellation Taurus, the bull, high in the southwest. The Hyades star cluster forms the bull's face. Then take a tour of four easy-to-find stars that have known planets of their own orbiting them.

0:00 Intro

0:11 Morning planets

0:37 Hyades star cluster 

2:11 Easy to find exoplanets

3:30 Moon phases

Learn more about exoplanets:

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov

Credit: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

Duration: 3 minutes, 52 seconds

Release Date: March 2, 2022

#NASA #Astronomy #Space #Science #Skywatching #Earth #Moon #Planets #Saturn #Venus #Mars #Taurus #Hyades #Pleiades #Star #Cluster #Exoplanets #SolarSystem #Stars #Constellations #MilkyWay #Galaxy #JPL #Pasadena #California #UnitedStates #Canada #Mexico #NorthernHemisphere #STEM #Education #HD #Video

NASA's SpaceX Crew-4 | International Space Station

NASA's SpaceX Crew-4 | International Space Station

Here are the SpaceX Crew-4 astronauts representing NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Crew Photo: From left are, Pilot Robert Hines, Mission Specialists Samantha Cristoforetti and Jessica Watkins, and Commander Kjell Lindgren. Hines, Watkins, and Lindgren are NASA astronauts and Cristoforetti (Italy) is a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut. Preparations for Crew-4 mission to the International Space Station are underway. NASA and SpaceX are targeting launch of the Crew-4 mission Friday, April 15, 2022, to the International Space Station.

The Commercial Crew Program (CCP) is a project in which NASA is working with business partners to build rockets and spacecraft. The Commercial Crew Program has made it possible for astronauts to launch to space from the United States again. 

Learn more about the Commercial Crew Program (CCP):

https://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/crew/index.html

Samantha Cristoforetti's Biography (ESA)

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Astronauts/Samantha_Cristoforetti

Jessica Watkins' Biography (NASA)

https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/jessica-watkins/biography

Kjell Lindgren's Biography (NASA)

https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/kjell-n-lindgren/biography

Robert Hines' Biography (NASA)

https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/bob-hines

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the  International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.

Learn more about the important research being operated on ISS:

https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science

Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)

Release Date: March 1, 2022

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