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Signs of Life on Mars? NASA’s Perseverance Rover Begins the Hunt

Wednesday, July 21st 2021 04:55 PM

Signs of Life on Mars? NASA’s Perseverance Rover Begins the Hunt The robotic arm on NASA’s Perseverance rover reached out to examine rocks in an area on Mars nicknamed the “Cratered Floor Fractured Rough” area in this image captured on July 10, 2021 (the 138th sol, or Martian day, of its mission). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech After testing a bristling array of instruments on its robotic arm, NASA’s latest Mars rover gets down to business: probing rocks and dust for evidence of past life. NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has begun its search for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet. Flexing its 7-foot (2-meter) mechanical arm, the rover is testing the sensitive detectors it carries, capturing their first science readings. Along with analyzing rocks using X-rays and ultraviolet light, the six-wheeled scientist will zoom in for closeups of tiny segments of rock surfaces that might show evidence of past microbial activity.   WATSON Views &lsq...

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Hubble Returns to Full Science Observations and Releases New Images

Tuesday, July 20th 2021 04:41 PM

Hubble Returns to Full Science Observations and Releases New Images NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is back in business, exploring the universe near and far. The science instruments have returned to full operation, following recovery from a computer anomaly that suspended the telescope’s observations for more than a month.   These images, from a program led by Julianne Dalcanton of the University of Washington in Seattle, demonstrate Hubble's return to full science operations. [Left] ARP-MADORE2115-273 is a rarely observed example of a pair of interacting galaxies in the southern hemisphere. [Right] ARP-MADORE0002-503 is a large spiral galaxy with unusual, extended spiral arms. While most disk galaxies have an even number of spiral arms, this one has three. Credits: Science: NASA, ESA, STScI, Julianne Dalcanton (UW) Image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Science observations restarted the afternoon of Saturday, July 17. The telescope’s targets this past weekend...

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NASA to Brief Early Science From Perseverance Mars Rover

Monday, July 19th 2021 04:33 PM

NASA to Brief Early Science From Perseverance Mars Rover   This illustration depicts NASA’s Mars 2020 rover studying rocks with its robotic arm. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Full Image Details Panelists will discuss the rover’s recently started science campaign and groundwork for its next major milestone. NASA will hold a virtual media briefing at 1 p.m. EDT (10 a.m. PDT) Wednesday, July 21, to discuss early science results from the agency’s Perseverance Mars rover and its preparations to collect the first-ever Martian samples for planned return to Earth. The briefing will originate from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission is managed. It will air live on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website and livestream on multiple agency social media platforms, including JPL’s YouTube and Facebook channels. Briefing participants include: -     &n...

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'Best meteor shower of the year' | When to see the Perseids

Friday, July 16th 2021 04:16 PM

'Best meteor shower of the year' | When to see the Perseids The Perseids are considered "the best meteor shower of the year," with 50-100 meteors every hour during its peak, according to NASA. WASHINGTON — One of the year's most exciting celestial shows is getting underway. The Perseid meteor shower peaks in mid-August, but the annual event is considered to be active starting on July 14, according to NASA. It's considered "the best meteor shower of the year," with 50-100 meteors able to be seen every hour during the warm summertime peak, the space agency explains on its website. This year, the Perseid meteor shower is projected to peak around August 11, 12. The Perseids appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus, which is where the event gets its name, but tracking down the constellation isn't necessary because the meteors will appear throughout the sky. These particular meteors are the result of space debris from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which orbits our sun every...

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How to view Pluto at opposition this week

Thursday, July 15th 2021 04:18 PM

How to view Pluto at opposition this week   Prior to New Horizons’ flyby of Pluto in 2015, the best images of the dwarf planet (left) and its moon Charon (right) were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope — and they resolved little more than blurry bright and dark patches. Fortunately, New Horizons brought these features into crisp view. On July 14, 2015, the New Horizons probe swept within 7,700 miles (12,400 kilometers) of Pluto’s surface. With the flyby, features that the Hubble Space Telescope previously saw as fuzzy spots suddenly resolved into broad canyons, flowing ice, expansive craters, mountains of frozen water, and a giant glacier only 10 million years old. The spacecraft proved that Pluto is still a geologically active world, but it also provided a list of questions that will take scientists decades to answer. Still, researchers aren’t the only ones entranced by the wondrous world of Pluto — amateur astronomers across the globe are eager...

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40-Year Mystery Solved: Source of Jupiter’s X-Ray Flares Uncovered

Wednesday, July 14th 2021 04:16 PM

40-Year Mystery Solved: Source of Jupiter’s X-Ray Flares Uncovered   The purple hues in this image show X-ray emissions from Jupiter’s auroras, detected by NASA’s Chandra Space Telescope in 2007. They are overlaid on an image of Jupiter taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Jupiter is the only gas giant planet where scientists have detected X-ray auroras. Credit: (X-ray) NASA/CXC/SwRI/R.Gladstone et al.; (Optical) NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage (AURA/STScI) A puzzler about the gas giant’s intense northern and southern lights has been deciphered. Planetary astronomers combined measurements taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter, with data from ESA’s (the European Space Agency’s) Earth-orbiting XMM-Newton mission, to solve a 40-year-old mystery about the origins of Jupiter’s unusual X-ray auroras. For the first time, they have seen the entire mechanism at work: The electrically charged atoms, or ions, responsible for th...

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Seeing Some Cosmic X-Ray Emitters Might Be a Matter of Perspective

Monday, July 12th 2021 04:29 PM

Seeing Some Cosmic X-Ray Emitters Might Be a Matter of Perspective   This illustration shows SS 433, a black hole or neutron star, as it pulls material away from its companion star. The stellar material forms a disk around SS 433, and some of the material is ejected into space in the form of two thin jets (pink) traveling in opposite directions away from SS 433. Credit: DESY/Science Communication Lab Known as ultraluminous X-ray sources, the emitters are easy to spot when viewed straight on, but they might be hidden from view if they point even slightly away from Earth. It’s hard to miss a flashlight beam pointed straight at you. But that beam viewed from the side appears significantly dimmer. The same holds true for some cosmic objects: Like a flashlight, they radiate primarily in one direction, and they look dramatically different depending on whether the beam points away from Earth (and nearby space telescopes) or straight at it. New data from NASA’s NuSTAR spa...

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NASA, Northrop Grumman Finalize Moon Outpost Living Quarters Contract

Friday, July 9th 2021 04:51 PM

NASA, Northrop Grumman Finalize Moon Outpost Living Quarters Contract   Illustration showing a close-up of the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), one of the elements of Gateway. NASA and Northrop Grumman of Dulles, Virginia, have finalized a contract to develop the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) for Gateway, which will be a critical way station and outpost in orbit around the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program. NASA and its commercial and international partners are building Gateway to support science investigations and enable surface landings at the Moon, which will help prepare astronauts for future missions to Mars. The firm, fixed-price contract is valued at $935 million. Under the contract, Northrop Grumman will be responsible for attaching and testing the integrated HALO with the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE), being built by Maxar Technologies. Northrop Grumman will also lead the integrated PPE and HALO spacecraft turnover and launch prepara...

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Giant comet found hidden in dark energy data

Thursday, July 8th 2021 04:46 PM

Giant comet found hidden in dark energy data   Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, shown in this artist’s impression, is 10 times larger than most comets and 1,000 times as massive. Astronomers searching through six years of images from one of the best astro-cameras in the world have just made a massive discovery — literally. Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein, both of the University of Pennsylvania, have spotted a giant comet traveling inward from the fringes of our solar system, headed for a close encounter with the Sun in 2031. Based on the amount of light it reflects, the pair estimates the comet, called C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), is some 60 to 120 miles (100 to 200 kilometers) across. That’s roughly 10 times the average diameter of other known comets. The researchers also estimate Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is some 1,000 times more massive than the average comet. That means it's not only the largest comet discovered in modern times, but al...

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Tropical Storm Elsa from the International Space Station

Wednesday, July 7th 2021 10:24 PM

Tropical Storm Elsa from the International Space Station As tropical storm Elsa made its way through the Caribbean Sea, NASA astronaut Megan McArthur shared a series of four images of the storm taken from her vantage point aboard the International Space Station on July 4, 2021. She wrote, "Tropical Storm Elsa from the @Space_Station today. Stay safe everyone." Credit: NASA

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