Image (Credit): NASA Astronaut Mark Vande Hei aboard the International Space Station. (NASA)
“They were, are and will continue to be very dear friends of mine. We support each other throughout everything. And I never had any concerns about my ability to continue working with them – very good professionals and technically competent and wonderful human beings.”
-NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who returned to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) last week, regarding his US and Russian crew mates, as quoted in the Washington Post. As a result of his latest ISS mission, Mr. Vande Hei has now spent more time in space on a single mission than any other US astronaut.
Image (Credit): The International Space Station. (NASA)
If you are standing outside in your yard looking for the International Space Station (ISS) at dawn or dusk (which is necessary to see the sun’s reflection on the station), this NASA site called Spot the Station may help. The site provides a global tracking map created by the European Space Agency (ESA) showing the current location of the ISS as well as its spot 90 minutes ago and 90 into the future.
NASA notes that the ISS circles the Earth every 90 minutes, traveling at about 17,500 miles per hour. While you experience one sunrise per day, an astronaut on the ISS will experience 16 sunrises each day.
Image (Credit): Artist’s drawing of a possible future giant telescope being created in space using fluids. (NASA & Studio Ella Maru)
NASA has an interesting storyabout the development of liquid lenses for space telescopes. It’s a fascinating idea as we watch the slow assembly of the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) 18-part mirror. This new approach, which could increase a telescope’s size 100 fold, will be tested aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
Edward Balaban, principal investigator of the Fluidic Telescope Experiment, or FLUTE, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley stated:
We thought, why not take advantage of the way liquids naturally behave in microgravity and apply it to the construction of large-scale telescopes or space-manufactured optical components that can have all kinds of uses. In microgravity, liquids take on shapes that are useful for making lenses and mirrors, so if we make them in space, they could be used to build telescopes that are dramatically bigger than was previously thought possible.
We are already expecting great things from the JWSP, but what could we learn with a telescope that is 100 times larger? I look forward to the results from the experiment aboard the ISS.
Image (Credit): View of the Earendel star from the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA)
This week’s image is the most distant star ever detected. It is from light that traveled 12.9 billion years to get to us, representing a star that existed about 1 billion years after the formation of the universe. It has been named Earendel, or “morning star” in Old English. You can learn more about this image from NASA’s Hubble site:
The find is a huge leap further back in time from the previous single-star record holder; detected by Hubble in 2018…The newly detected star is so far away that its light has taken 12.9 billion years to reach Earth, appearing to us as it did when the universe was only 7 percent of its current age, at redshift 6.2. The smallest objects previously seen at such a great distance are clusters of stars, embedded inside early galaxies…The research team estimates that Earendel is at least 50 times the mass of our Sun and millions of times as bright, rivaling the most massive stars known. But even such a brilliant, very high-mass star would be impossible to see at such a great distance without the aid of natural magnification by a huge galaxy cluster, WHL0137-08, sitting between us and Earendel. The mass of the galaxy cluster warps the fabric of space, creating a powerful natural magnifying glass that distorts and greatly amplifies the light from distant objects behind it…Astronomers expect that Earendel will remain highly magnified for years to come. It will be observed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb’s high sensitivity to infrared light is needed to learn more about Earendel, because its light is stretched (redshifted) to longer infrared wavelengths due to the universe’s expansion.
Image (Credit): Detailed view pinpointing the Earendel star from the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA)
Image (Credit): NASA’s Perseverance Rover on Mars. (NASA)
Now that we have learned a little more about China’s Martian rover, maybe we should check on NASA’s Perseverance Rover. According to a recent press release from NASA, earlier this month Perseverance started its three-mile trip to the river delta on the rim of Jezero Crater after already exploring the Martian surface for about 13 months. This delta may contain evidence of ancient microbial life. As with the Chinese rover mission, the collected samples will be returned to Earth via a later mission.
The Perseverance arrived on the Martian surface February 18, 2021. The mission has already shown success with the Ingenuity Helicopter, while the rover is showing greater abilities to self-navigate. All of this is proving to be promising for future robotic exploration of the planet.
You can get facts about the Perseverance mission here and ongoing updates here.
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