Image (Credit): The TROPICS launch this week from New Zealand. (Rocket Lab)
The second and final TROPICS satellites, also known as Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats, were launched late yesterday via a Rocket Lab rocket in New Zealand. The first pair were launched earlier this month.
Payload deployment confirmed! Congratulations to the launch team on our 37th Electron launch, and to our mission partners at @NASA @NASA_LSP @NASAAmes: the TROPICS constellation is officially on orbit!
NASA now has more eyes on the world’s weather patterns. The lead of NASA’s Earth Science Division, Karen St. Germain, stated:
As we move into hurricane season for 2023, TROPICS will be in position to provide unprecedented detail on these storms, helping us better understand how they form, intensify, and move across the ocean.
Image (Credit): NGC 1333 as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA, STScI)
This week’s image is from the Hubble Space Telescope. It captures the colorful, star-filled NGC 1333, which is about 960 light-years away. Quite a lot is going on in this image – both seen and unseen.
This explanations from the European Space Agency (ESA) will hopefully answer many of your questions regarding this image:
Hubble’s colourful view, showcasing its unique capability to obtain images in light from ultraviolet to near-infrared, unveils an effervescent cauldron of glowing gases and pitch-black dust stirred up and blown around by several hundred newly forming stars embedded within the dark cloud. Even then, Hubble just scratches the surface; most of the star-birthing firestorm is hidden behind clouds of fine dust — essentially soot — that are thicker toward the bottom of the image. The black areas of the image are not empty space, but are filled with obscuring dust.
To capture this image, Hubble peered through a veil of dust on the edge of a giant cloud of cold molecular hydrogen — the raw material for fabricating new stars and planets under the relentless pull of gravity. The image underscores the fact that star formation is a messy process in a rambunctious Universe.
Ferocious stellar winds, likely from the bright blue star at the top of the image, are blowing through a curtain of dust. The fine dust scatters the starlight at blue wavelengths.
Farther down, another bright super-hot star shines through filaments of obscuring dust, looking like the Sun shining through scattered clouds. A diagonal string of fainter accompanying stars looks reddish because the dust is filtering their starlight, allowing more of the red light to get through.
The bottom of the picture presents a keyhole peek deep into the dark nebula. Hubble captures the reddish glow of ionised hydrogen. It looks like the finale of a fireworks display, with several overlapping events. This is caused by pencil-thin jets shooting out from newly forming stars outside the frame of view. These stars are surrounded by circumstellar discs, which may eventually produce planetary systems, and powerful magnetic fields that direct two parallel beams of hot gas deep into space, like a double lightsaber from science fiction films. They sculpt patterns on the hydrogen cocoon, like laser lightshow tracings. The jets are a star’s birth announcement.
This view offers an example of the time when our own Sun and planets formed inside such a dusty molecular cloud, 4.6 billion years ago. Our Sun didn’t form in isolation but was instead embedded inside a mosh pit of frantic stellar birth, perhaps even more energetic and massive than NGC 1333.
Image (Credit): Preview for the new television series Stars on Mars. (Fox)
The silly reality shows are now reaching for the stars, or at least a distant planet, with William Shatner leading the way. Fox’s new program Stars on Mars, premiering on June 5th, will feature numerous celebrities trying to survive in a “Mars-like” atmosphere. Planned guests include Lance Armstrong, Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon, professional football player Richard Sherman, and others.
I have no plans to watch this show, but I expect it may encourage support for space travel given that many of those who do watch the show will want to quickly leave this planet in the hopes of finding intelligent life somewhere.
NASA may be having funding problems, but bad TV always seems to find someone with deep pockets.
Image (Credit): Martian base for Stars on Mars. (Fox)
Efforts to insulate Artemis from possible cuts, delays and cancellation are facing a major test with the current budget fight on Capitol Hill. If NASA’s funding is stalled at the 2022 enacted level or reduced, agency administrator Bill Nelson has warned Artemis II and Artemis III could be delayed. The current launch dates are 2024 for Artemis II and 2025 for Artemis III.
A private rocket carrying the first Arab woman astronaut has blasted off on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Rayyanah Barnawi, a breast cancer researcher from Saudi Arabia, was joined on Sunday’s mission by fellow Saudi Ali al-Qarni, a fighter pilot.The pair are the first Saudi astronauts to voyage into space in decades.
ispace’s attempt to become the first private company to safely land a robot on the Moon left a mark: A NASA space telescope orbiting Earth’s nearest neighbor in space spotted the impact of the vehicle on the lunar surface…NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been circling the Moon since 2009, carefully mapping its surface. Today, it released the first images of the impact site, which required scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center and Arizona State University to carefully hunt for changes to the lunar surface.
If you are looking for a new podcast as well as a new book, the two come together via the podcast Alienating the Audience. Comedian Andrew Heaton and his buddies have plenty of fun poking various science fiction topics, including Star Wars and Star Trek.
One of the recent episodes discussed a new book, The Sparrow, by author Mary Doria Russell. The story is about a group of Jesuits exploring a new planet with all of the mayhem that follows.
Here is a quick summary from the book itself:
A visionary work that combines speculative fiction with deep philosophical inquiry, The Sparrow tells the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who leads a scientific mission entrusted with a profound task: to make first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. The mission begins in faith, hope, and beauty, but a series of small misunderstandings brings it to a catastrophic end.
You can listen for yourself to this episode here at Jesuits in Space. But be careful, because there are a number of spoilers. You can always start with the book first, which is part of a series.
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