Image (Credit): Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; D. Milisavljevic (Purdue University), T. Temim (Princeton University), I. De Looze (University of Gent))
This week’s image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope is both violent yet beautiful. It is also NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for today.
Here are some details about the image from NASA:
Massive stars in our Milky Way Galaxy live spectacular lives. Collapsing from vast cosmic clouds, their nuclear furnaces ignite and create heavy elements in their cores. After only a few million years for the most massive stars, the enriched material is blasted back into interstellar space where star formation can begin anew. The expanding debris cloud known as Cassiopeia A is an example of this final phase of the stellar life cycle. Light from the supernova explosion that created this remnant would have been first seen in planet Earth’s sky about 350 years ago, although it took that light 11,000 years to reach us. This sharp NIRCam image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the still hot filaments and knots in the supernova remnant. The whitish, smoke-like outer shell of the expanding blast wave is about 20 light-years across. Light echoes from the massive star’s cataclysmic explosion are also identified in Webb’s detailed image of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A.
NASA is experiencing communication issues with the distant Voyager 1 spacecraft. As a result, NASA reports that no science or engineering data is being sent back to Earth.
Voyager 1 is about 15 billion miles from Earth, so its binary code signals take about 22.5 hours to reach Earth.
The communication issue with the spacecraft is expected to be resolved in the next few weeks. Of course, Voyager dates back to 1977. At some point we will need to say goodbye to our friend, but no one is ready for that.
Engineers expect each spacecraft to continue operating at least one science instrument until around 2025. Even if science data won’t likely be collected after 2025, engineering data could continue to be returned for several more years. The two Voyager spacecraft could remain in the range of the Deep Space Network through about 2036, depending on how much power the spacecraft still have to transmit a signal back to Earth.
It would be great to have another 13 years of discussions with humanity’s most distant probes.
Image (Credit): Scene from episode five of A Murder a the End of the World. (Hulu)
If you are looking for a new television series, you cannot go wrong with FX’s A Murder at the End of the World. You can catch it on Hulu.
Here is the paltry description from Hulu:
A young woman accepts a mysterious invitation from a billionaire and his wife.
Fortunately, the FX trailer is better (as is the trailer description):
A Murder at the End of the World is a mystery series featuring a Gen Z amateur sleuth and tech-savvy hacker “Darby Hart.” Darby and eight other guests are invited by a reclusive billionaire to participate in a retreat at a remote location. When one of the other guests is found dead, Darby must use her skills to prove it was murder before the killer takes another life.
However, even this longer description is too minimal and does not encourage an audience. I have watched six of the seven episodes and can say (without spoiling anything) that the retreat itself as well as the underlying purpose of the retreat may remind you of space colonies and their issues. It might also remind you of present day billionaires who want to hide from the world they have helped to create (think Don’t Look Up.)
The series is already on some of the top 10 lists for 2023, and I expect it will be on mine as well, as long as it has a good finale.
If you like murder mysteries, it is for you. If you like love stories, ditto. Technology, ditto. And if you miss shows that touch on space travel, this has enough sci-fi elements in that realm to keep you interested.
Update: I can report that the series had a great ending. Give it a try if you are looking for a new show. You will not be disappointed.
Archive footage of space rockets taking off beam across giant walls in a new immersive show in London, as Hollywood actor Tom Hanks narrates the story of human voyages to the moon. “The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks” looks at the first moon landings of the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972 and their successor, NASA’s human spaceflight program, Artemis. The next mission – the Artemis II lunar flyby – is planned for next year and interviews with the four-member team are also projected on the walls at the Lightroom gallery space in London’s King Cross area.
Just as it can be assumed that the stars in our Milky Way are orbited by planets, moons around these exoplanets should not be uncommon. This makes it all the more difficult to detect them. So far, only two of the more than 5300 known exoplanets have been found to have moons. A new data analysis now demonstrates that scientific statements are rarely black or white, that behind every result there is a greater or lesser degree of uncertainty and that the path to a statement often resembles a thriller. In observations of the planets Kepler-1625b and Kepler-1708b from the Kepler and Hubble space telescopes, researchers had discovered traces of such moons for the first time. A new study now raises doubts about these previous claims. As scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and the Sonnenberg Observatory, both in Germany, report in the journal Nature Astronomy, “planet-only” interpretations of the observations are more conclusive.
Human beings first disturbed moon dust Sept. 13, 1959, when the USSR’s unmanned spacecraft Luna 2 alighted on the lunar surface. In the following decades, more than a hundred other spacecraft have touched the moon — both crewed and uncrewed, sometimes landing and sometimes crashing. The most famous of these were NASA’s Apollo Lunar Modules, which transported humans to the moon’s surface to the astonishment of humankind. In the coming years, missions and projects already planned will change the face of the moon in more extreme ways. Now, according to anthropologists and geologists at the University of Kansas, it’s time to acknowledge humans have become the dominant force shaping the moon’s environment by declaring a new geological epoch for the moon: the Lunar Anthropocene.
Image (Credit): The X-37B orbital test vehicle on the tarmac. (US Space Force)
SpaceX was scheduled to launch the US Space Forces’ secretive X-37B orbital test vehicle (OTV) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center earlier today, but stormy weather postponed the launch until tomorrow.
What does this spacecraft do? Given it is with the Space Force and not NASA, it clearly has a national defense mission, yet it has also worked with NASA on scientific missions. This seventh launch of the spacecraft, designated OTV-7, will be “…operating in new orbital regimes, experimenting with space domain awareness technologies and investigating the radiation effects to NASA materials” according to a Space Force press release.
That’s about as clear as mud, and also the way the US Government wants to keep it. If this means the Chinese and Russians are scratching their heads, then that is all the better for our defense officials.
By the way, it is not clear why it is still called a “test vehicle” given it has been around since 2010 and already served multiple missions. Maybe this relates to the mission contents, though I expect the International Space Station is conducting many more tests.
I guess this will just have to be one more mystery.
Update: The spacecraft is still on the ground at the moment after numerous delays. The launch is now planned for December 13.
Second Update: The mission has been scrubbed for now. SpaceX stated the following:
We are standing down from tomorrow’s Falcon Heavy launch of USSF-52 to perform additional system checkouts. The payload remains healthy while teams work toward the next best launch opportunity. We’re also keeping an eye on the weather and will announce a new launch date once confirmed with the Range.
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