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Buried within NOIRLab’s unWISE archive lies a remarkable tidal disruption event, overlooked for many years because of its unusual location and characteristics. In galaxy NGC 7392 located just 137 million light-years away, astronomers witnessed a burst of electromagnetic radiation as a supermassive black hole pulled apart and devoured a star. The event, named WTP14adbjsh, was seen as a bright infrared flare.
This discovery suggests that we may be missing other tidal disruption events (TDEs), because we are not looking in the right part of the electromagnetic spectrum. This could help explain the TDEs we have detected to date.
Video Credits:
Images and Videos: ESO/M. Kornmesser, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR), Th. Matsopoulos/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab
NASA's "Espacio a Tierra" | Bucear profundo: 4 de agosto de 2023
Espacio a Tierra, la versión en español de las cápsulas Space to Ground de la NASA, te informa semanalmente de lo que está sucediendo en la Estación Espacial Internacional.
Meet the Mars Perseverance Rover Sample—Kukaklek (Sample 16) | NASA/JPL
Meet one of the Martian samples that has been collected and is awaiting return to Earth as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign. As of late July 2023, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover has collected and sealed 20 scientifically selected samples inside pristine tubes. The next stage is to get them back for study.
Considered one of the highest priorities by the scientists in the Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032, Mars Sample Return would be the first mission to return samples from another planet and provides the best opportunity to reveal the early evolution of Mars, including the potential for ancient life. NASA is teaming with the European Space Agency (ESA) on this important endeavor.
Learn more about Sample No. 16—“Kukaklek”—a sedimentary rock core collected from a rock at the Jezero Crater “Delta Front.” This sample came from a rock with various textures and colors of the mineral sulfate, possibly indicating that it interacted with water more than once. Was Jezero Crater filled with water multiple times? This rock may hold clues to Mars’ watery past.
A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover characterizes the planet's geology and past climate, paves the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and is the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Jupiter 'Ocean Moon' Mission: Testing Europa Clipper’s Magnetometer | NASA/JPL
Join team members from NASA’s Europa Clipper mission in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to learn about testing of the spacecraft’s magnetometer, which will help scientists answer the question, “Does Europa have an ocean?”
The magnetometer is made up of a long, 28-foot (6.5-meter) boom and three fluxgate sensors, which are compressed in a canister on the side of the spacecraft until the boom is deployed after launch. The electronics for the instrument are contained in the vault of the spacecraft, along with electronics for the other science instruments.
Europa Clipper will explore this icy moon of Jupiter to see if there are conditions suitable for life. Scientists have evidence that a global ocean lies under the moon’s surface, and the mission aims to confirm the existence of the ocean.
The spacecraft needs to be hardy enough to survive a 1.6-billion-mile, six-year journey to Jupiter – and sophisticated enough to perform a detailed science investigation of Europa once it arrives at the Jupiter system in 2030.
Europa Clipper is expected to launch in October 2024 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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.
This is a good week to see meteors. Comet dust will rain down on planet Earth, streaking through dark skies during peak nights of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. This composite image was taken during the 2018 Perseids from the Poloniny Dark Sky Park in Slovakia. The dome of the observatory in the foreground is on the grounds of Kolonica Observatory. Although the comet dust particles travel parallel to each other, the resulting shower meteors clearly seem to radiate from a single point on the sky in the eponymous constellation Perseus. The radiant effect is due to perspective, as the parallel tracks appear to converge at a distance, like train tracks. The Perseid Meteor Shower is expected to reach its highest peak on Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023, after midnight. Since a crescent Moon will rise only very late that night, cloudless skies will be darker than usual, making a high number of faint meteors potentially visible this year.
The Perseids, which peak during mid-August, are considered the best meteor shower of the year. With very fast and bright meteors, Perseids frequently leave long "wakes" of light and color behind them as they streak through Earth's atmosphere. The Perseids are one of the most plentiful showers (50-100 meteors seen per hour) and occur with warm summer nighttime weather, allowing sky watchers to easily view them.
Perseids are also known for their fireballs. Fireballs are larger explosions of light and color that are brighter and can persist longer than an average meteor streak. This is due to the fact that fireballs originate from larger particles of cometary material.
Image Credit & Copyright: Petr Horálek/Institute of Physics in Opava
How Will We Extract Water on The Moon? We Asked a NASA Technologist
We know the Moon contains water, but, could future astronauts access and make use of it? That is the goal. At NASA, we are actively trying to answer this question. Once it lands at the lunar south pole, our PRIME-1—Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1—will robotically sample and analyze ice from beneath the lunar surface, contributing to our search for water on the Moon:
Zoom to The Sunrise Arc—Home to The Most Distant Star Detected | NASA Webb
Travel 12.9 billion light years to the massive galaxy cluster called WHL0137-08, which contains the most strongly magnified galaxy known in the universe’s first billion years—the Sunrise Arc, and within that galaxy, the most distant star ever detected—Earendel. The journey begins with a ground-based image by astrophotographer Akira Fujii, then transitions into a plate from the Digitized Sky Survey. Next, an image from the Dark Energy Camera on the Victor M. Blanco observatory appears, and then finally the video arrives at the James Webb Space Telescope’s image of the galaxy cluster in the constellation Cetus.
Video Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
The Sunrise Arc & Earendel: The Most Distant Star Ever Detected | NASA Webb
The first image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows a massive galaxy cluster called WHL0137-08. It contains the most strongly magnified galaxy known in the universe’s first billion years—the Sunrise Arc, and within that galaxy, the most distant star ever detected—Earendel. The Sunrise Arc appears just below the diffraction spike at the 5 o’clock position. The fuzzier, white galaxies at the center of the image are part of the galaxy cluster bound together by gravity. The various redder, curved galaxies are background galaxies picked up by Webb’s sensitive mirror.
The second image from the Webb Telescope shows an inset on the right side of the most strongly magnified galaxy known in the universe’s first billion years—the Sunrise Arc. Within that galaxy is the most distant star ever detected—Earendel—first discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Observations using Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) reveals the star to be a massive B-type star more than twice as hot as our Sun, and about a million times more luminous. The star is approximately 12.9 billion light-years away. Earendel is positioned along a wrinkle in spacetime that gives it extreme magnification, allowing it to emerge into view from its host galaxy, which appears as a red smear across the sky. The star is detectable only due to the combined power of human technology and nature via an effect called gravitational lensing.
Credits: NASA, European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency
Dan Coe (STScI/AURA for ESA, JHU), Brian Welch (NASA-GSFC, UMD)
The Waxing Gibbous Moon above Earth's Horizon | International Space Station
The waxing gibbous Moon is pictured above Earth's horizon in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 261 miles above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Namibia.
Station Commander: Sergey Prokopyev of Roscosmos (Russia)
Roscosmos (Russia): Flight Engineers Dmitri Petelin & Andrey Fedyaev
Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
NASA: Flight Engineers Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen, Warren Hoburg
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.
NASA's Artemis II Moon Mission: Astronauts Visit Crew Spacecraft | NASA Kennedy
From left are: Jeremy Hansen (Canada), mission specialist; Victor Glover, pilot; Reid Wiseman, commander; and Christina Hammock Koch, mission specialist
From left are: Victor Glover, pilot; Reid Wiseman, commander; Christina Hammock Koch, mission specialist; and Jeremy Hansen (Canada), mission specialist
The European Service Module (ESM) for NASA’s Artemis II mission is shown inside Kennedy Space Center’s Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building on Aug. 8, 2023
The Artemis II crew—NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Hammock Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen—visited the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on Aug. 8, 2023. The crew module is undergoing acoustic testing ahead of integration with the European Service Module. Artemis II is the first crewed mission on NASA’s path to establishing a long-term lunar presence for science and exploration under Artemis.
Artemis II will be NASA’s first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft around the Moon to verify today’s capabilities for humans to explore deep space and pave the way for long-term exploration and science on the lunar surface.
Artemis II will launch no earlier than December 2024.
Solar Science: Introducing the Heliophysics Big Year! | NASA Goddard
In October 2023, NASA is launching the Heliophysics Big Year—a global celebration of solar science and the Sun’s influence on Earth, our solar system, and beyond. Modeled after the “Big Year” concept from citizen scientists in the bird-watching community, the Heliophysics Big Year challenges everyone to get involved with fun Sun-related activities.
SpaceX Test Fires Starship Super Heavy Booster 9 in Texas
SpaceX conducted a static-fire test of their Starship Super Heavy Booster 9 on Aug. 6, 2023. The test was conducted at the Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX briefly ignited the booster's 33 Raptor engines while anchored to the orbital launch mount at its Starbase site in South Texas.
Not all of the engines performed perfectly; four of them shut down prematurely, SpaceX representatives said during a webcast of today's test.
"A big congrats to the Starship team for getting through today's test," SpaceX's John Insprucker said during today's webcast. "That moves us another step closer to our next flight test."
SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket—collectively referred to as Starship—represent a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond. Starship will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed, with the ability to carry up to 150 metric tonnes to Earth orbit reusable, and up to 250 metric tonnes expendable.
Starship is essential to both SpaceX’s plans to deploy its next-generation Starship system as well as for NASA, which will use a lunar lander version of Starship for landing astronauts on the moon during the Artemis III mission through the Human Landing System (HLS) program.
Mars: A Look at Steep North Polar Cliffs | NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
This very steep (more than 60 degrees) scarp shows mass wasting activity every year in the early northern spring, when it is first illuminated after the period of winter darkness. This observation was an attempt to image in late northern winter, in spite of poor illumination. The solar incidence angle is 91.3 degrees, meaning that the Sun is just below the horizon and there was no direct lighting when this image was acquired. However, the atmosphere scatters light to create some diffuse lighting, and the surface is very bright from winter frost deposition, so a useful image of the surface was obtained.
The image reveals relatively dark streaks down the steep slope, so mass wasting activity has already started. There is some direct illumination here close to noontime at this time of year, which may be sufficient to initiate some activity.
Black and white images are 5 km across; enhanced color images are 1 km.
Image Date: Nov. 22, 2022
Latitude (centered) 83.882°
Longitude (East) 235.184°
Spacecraft altitude: 316.7 km (196.8 miles)
This image was taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a spacecraft designed to study the geology and climate of Mars, to provide reconnaissance of future landing sites, and to relay data from surface missions back to Earth. It was launched on August 12, 2005, and reached Mars on March 10, 2006.
The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
“For 17 years, MRO has been revealing Mars to us as no one had seen it before,” said the mission’s project scientist, Rich Zurek of JPL.
Astronaut Sultan Alneyadi Answers International Space University Student Questions
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 69 Flight Engineer Sultan Alneyadi of United Arab Emirates (UAE) answered questions about life and work on the orbiting laboratory during an in-flight event Aug. 1, 2023, with International Space University students in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Alneyadi is in the midst of a science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies. Such research benefits people on Earth and lays the groundwork for future human exploration through the agency’s Artemis missions, which will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future expeditions to Mars.
Alneyadi is in the midst of his first long-duration mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions. Such research benefits people on Earth and lays the groundwork for future human exploration through NASA’s Artemis missions, which will send astronauts to the Moon to prepare for future expeditions to Mars.
Sultan Alneyadi is making history as the first astronaut from the Arab world to spend six months aboard the International Space Station.
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.
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