Multiple Choice: What name below is not the name of a real asteroid?
A. Broccoli
B. Nordic
C. Jetta
D. Mr. Spock
Take a guess and then check your answer by going to the “Astronomy Question Answer Sheet” page.
Astronomy Question: Naming Asteroids
The Recently Created iSpace Crater Has Been Spotted
It doesn’t look like much, but NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter recently spotted the small crater made by the crashed ispace lunar lander named Resilience. The Japanese lander crashed on the Moon’s surface earlier this month after the company’s second try at a lunar landing.
The Moon is littered with debris and pockmarks from various successful and failed missions. The Apollo crew alone left enormous amounts of trash, debris, and space equipment scattered around the Moon. The Russians also left quite a bit of space equipment on the Moon many years ago, as well as its most recent Luna-25 mission, which crash-landed.
We can only hope that the Artemis mission will soon enough be adding to the equipment on the Moon without the drama of crash landings.
Space Quote: The Pope Discusses the JWST
“Do not the James Webb images also fill us with wonder, and indeed a mysterious joy, as we contemplate their sublime beauty?…The authors of sacred Scripture, writing so many centuries ago, did not have the benefit of this privilege, yet their poetic and religious imagination pondered what the moment of creation must have been like.”
–Statement by Pope Leo XIV to astronomy students who are part of a summer program hosted by the Vatican Observatory. This year the students are studying data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Pic of the Week: Mars or Bust?
As shown in the image above, SpaceX lost one of its Starships yesterday in a massive explosion at the Brownsville, Texas Starbase, making the Moon and Mars seem even farther away. Fortunately, no one was injured during this failed test firing of the Starship 36 rocket engines.
We should expect some problems along the way, but the trend is going backwards for Mr. Musk.
In a press release, SpaceX stated:
Engineering teams are actively investigating the incident and will follow established procedures to determine root cause. Initial analysis indicates the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship’s nosecone area, but the full data review is ongoing. There is no commonality between the COPVs used on Starship and SpaceX’s Falcon rockets.
In separate comments, Mr. Musk initially stated:
Just a scratch.
Yes, the scratch heard round the world.
Space Stories: Newly Discovered Volcano on Mars, Universe’s Missing Matter Found, and Congress Expects a NASA Nominee
Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.
—Georgia Tech: “Volcano ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’ Could Help Date Mars — and its Habitability“
Georgia Tech scientists have uncovered evidence that a mountain on the rim of Jezero Crater — where NASA’s Perseverance Rover is currently collecting samples for possible return to Earth — is likely a volcano. Called Jezero Mons, it is nearly half the size of the crater itself and could add critical clues to the habitability and volcanism of Mars, transforming how we understand Mars’ geologic history. The study, “Evidence for a composite volcano on the rim Jezero crater on Mars,” was published this May in the Nature-family journal Communications Earth & Environment, and underscores how much we have left to learn about one of the most well-studied regions of Mars.
—Caltech: “Missing Matter in Universe Found“
Due to its diffuse nature, roughly half of ordinary matter in the universe went unaccounted for and had been considered “missing”—until now. In a new study in Nature Astronomy, a team of astronomers at Caltech and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) has, for the first time, directly detected and accounted for all the missing matter. To do this, the team used brief, bright radio flashes in the distant cosmos, called fast radio bursts (FRBs), to illuminate the matter lying between the FRBs and us. “The FRBs shine through the fog of the intergalactic medium, and by precisely measuring how the light slows down, we can weigh that fog, even when it’s too faint to see,” says Liam Connor, assistant professor at Harvard and lead author of the study, who performed much of the work while a Caltech research assistant professor working with Vikram Ravi, assistant professor of astronomy at Caltech.
—Space News: “Members of Congress Want White House to Quickly Nominate New NASA Administrator“
Members of the House and Senate called in the White House to promptly offer a new candidate for NASA administrator after the surprise withdrawal of Jared Isaacman’s nomination. In briefings organized by the Aerospace Industries Association June16, representatives of House and Senate delegations to the Paris Air Show said it was critical that the agency get permanent leadership as it deals with potential significant cuts to its budget in the coming fiscal year.
Our Awesome Universe 