Image (Credit): View of Jupiter’s moon Io. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS)
Last week, NASA released this video showing the Juno spacecraft’s view of Jupiter and its moon Io as it flew by on May 16, 2023. The clip includes music by Vangelis. It is short but stunning video.
Juno was launched back in 2011 and first started orbiting Jupiter in 2016. Sent to study Jupiter, the current flyby is part of the spacecraft’s extended mission.
Juno’s closest approach to Io will occur today, so you can expect more images shortly.
If you want to read more about Io and the mission, visit this NASA site.
Image (Credit): July 15, 2023 fire in the Canary Islands. (NASA Earth Observatory images by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview)
This week’s image is from NASA’s Earth Observatory showing the recent fires in the Canary Islands. The image below provides great detail regarding what you are seeing.
In the early hours of July 15, 2023, a wildfire broke out on La Palma, the most northwesterly of the Canary Islands….The bright areas near islands south of La Palma resemble smoke, but they are actually the result of an optical phenomenon caused by sunglint.
The fire burned through pine forests west of a large caldera on the northern part of the island. At least 20 buildings were destroyed and 4,000 people evacuated their homes, according to Reuters. On July 16, authorities reported that the fire had charred at least 4,650 hectares (18 square miles)…
Fires on La Palma are common in summer due to the island’s dry climate. One analysis of tree rings suggests that intense fires burn the island’s forests roughly every 7 years on average, with less intense fires burning every 2-4 years.
Image (Credit): Greater details showing the July 15, 2023 fire in the Canary Islands. (NASA Earth Observatory images by Wanmei Liang, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview)
New predictions suggest an upcoming NASA space telescope could spot over 400 Earth-mass worlds hidden throughout the Milky Way that have “gone rogue” and therefore wander our galaxy alone. Such orphan worlds are thought to start their lives in a planetary system, akin to the solar system, but get kicked at some point out by a mechanism thus far unknown. Despite the familiar picture of planets neatly orbiting a star, new research suggests such orphaned starless worlds may outnumber stars in the Milky Way by 20 to 1. This implies untethered worlds in our galaxy are around six times more common than planets orbiting parent stars.
A NASA power outage disrupted communication between Mission Control and the International Space Station on Tuesday. Mission Control couldn’t send commands to the station and talk with the seven astronauts in orbit. The power outage hit as upgrade work was underway in the building at Houston’s Johnson Space Center. Space station program manager Joel Montalbano said neither the astronauts nor station were ever in any danger and that backup control systems took over within 90 minutes. The crew was notified of the problem through Russian communication systems, within 20 minutes of the outage.
Boeing and NASA say they’ll collaborate with Seattle-based Alaska Airlines and four other major airlines on the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, which aims to put Boeing’s innovative X-66 braced-wing aircraft design through flight tests in the 2028-2029 time frame. The X-66A makes use of a concept known as the Transonic Truss-Braced Wing, or TTBW, which features ultra-long, ultra-thin, drag-reducing wings that are stabilized by diagonal struts.
Image (Credit): Pluto as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft. (NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)
You may enjoy last week’s Astronomy magazine video that is part of This Week in Astronomy with Dave Eicher titled “Is Pluto a Planet?“. The issue on the table is whether scientists were a little too quick to dismiss Pluto’s status under new criteria given that we may have not understood whether the Earth even met this criteria. Is Earth a dwarf planet?
Check out the video and the accompanying article, and then visit the NASA page on the earlier New Horizons mission for some interesting background on the little planet, or dwarf planet, depending on your view.
While both Buzz Aldrin and I believe that lunar and Martian colonies are important, it would appear the public has other ideas about NASA’s priorities. The graphic above shows in a recent Pew Research Center study indicates the more Americans are interested in monitoring the Earth’s climate as well as watching for asteroids.
Even finding exoplanets that could support life seems to be more important than occupying local moons and planets. I am not sure how that would help us now if we want to spread the risk of living on one planet, as some propose. We are nowhere near sending a probe to exoplanets, let alone getting humans there.
The study has quite a bit to ponder, including:
58% of U.S. adults believe it is essential to include the use of human astronauts in the U.S. space program, while 41% say astronauts are not essential;
Some 44% of Americans have a great deal of confidence private companies will make a profit in their space-related ventures;
As the public considers the possibilities ahead for ordinary citizens to orbit the Earth in a spacecraft, more Americans say they would not want to orbit the Earth than say they would (58% to 42%); and
About seven-in-ten Americans (72%) say it is essential for the U.S. to continue to be a world leader in space exploration, and eight-in-ten (80%) say the space station has been a good investment for the country.
I am not sure the survey shows a lot of consistency in the answers, but this can be a difficult topic at the outset. NASA should just be worried if Americans saw no reason for a space program, which does not seem to be the case. As noted above, the majority of Americans want a strong space program. Let’s see if that helps with the ongoing congressional budget discussions.
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