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James Webb Space Telescope shows Jupiter’s auroras, tiny moons

Editor — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 01:29:02 +0000

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CAPE CANAVERAL: The world’s newest and biggest space telescope is showing Jupiter as never before, auroras and all.
Scientists released the shots Monday of the solar system’s biggest planet.
The James Webb Space Telescope took the photos in July, capturing unprecedented views of Jupiter’s northern and southern lights, and swirling polar haze. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm big enough to swallow Earth, stands out brightly alongside countless smaller storms.
One wide-field picture is particularly dramatic, showing the faint rings around the planet, as well as two tiny moons against a glittering background of galaxies.
“We’ve never seen Jupiter like this. It’s all quite incredible,” said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, of the University of California, Berkeley, who helped lead the observations.
“We hadn’t really expected it to be this good, to be honest,” she added in a statement.
The infrared images were artificially colored in blue, white, green, yellow and orange, according to the U.S.-French research team, to make the features stand out.
NASA and the European Space Agency’s $10 billion successor to the Hubble Space Telescope rocketed away at the end of last year and has been observing the cosmos in the infrared since summer. Scientists hope to behold the dawn of the universe with Webb, peering all the way back to when the first stars and galaxies were forming 13.7 billion years ago.
The observatory is positioned 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth.

News Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Back to Moon: Nasa set to launch Artemis-1 lunar mission on Monday

Editor — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 18:56:23 +0000

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In a step towards sending humans back to Moon over half a century later, Nasa is set to launch Artemis-1 mission on Monday, which will be the US space agency’s first non-crew mission to the Moon in recent times that will pave the way for the manned orbital mission (Artemis-2) and manned landing mission (Artemis 3) in 2025.
The new Space Launch System (SLS) will be the most powerful rocket engine ever flown to space, even more powerful than Apollo‘s Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s. The Orion spacecraft that will be launched by the rocket is scheduled to travel to the Moon, deploy some small satellites and then settle into orbit.
“Artemis-I will be the first in a series of increasingly complex missions to build a long-term human presence at the Moon for decades to come. The primary goals for Artemis I are to demonstrate Orion’s systems in a spaceflight environment and ensure a safe re-entry, descent, splashdown and recovery prior to the first flight with crew on Artemis II,” says Nasa.
“This is a mission that truly will do what hasn’t been done and learn what isn’t known,” said Mike Sarafin, Artemis I mission manager at Nasa headquarters in Washington.
Artemis-1 will test how well SLS and Orion can complete a mission to the Moon and back and will ensure that both rocket and the spacecraft can safely ferry astronauts that far into space and back. The spacecraft will stay in orbit for approximately six days to collect data and allow mission controllers to assess the performance of the spacecraft.
The SLS is a new type of rocket system because it has both a combination of liquid oxygen and hydrogen main engines and two strap-on solid rocket boosters derived from the space shuttle. It’s really a hybrid between the space shuttle and Apollo’s Saturn V rocket.
The mission is also going to carry a series of small satellites that will be placed in orbit of the Moon. Those will do some useful precursor science, everything from looking further into the permanently shadowed craters where scientists think there is water to just doing more measurements of the radiation environment.
The Artemis programme is driven by a number of different goals. It includes in situ resource utilisation, which means using resources at hand like water ice and lunar soil to produce food, fuel and building materials. The Nasa administration has said that in that first crewed flight, on Artemis-3, there will be at least one woman and very likely a person of colour.
Though no humans will be aboard in the Artemis-1, a mannequin — nicknamed Commander Moonikin Campos to honor a legendary Nasa engineer who helped bring Apollo-13 safely back to Earth — will be on board, sitting inside the commander’s seat. Various sensors on its seat and spacesuit will gather data about vibrations, acceleration and radiation throughout the mission. Two additional mannequin torsos will be on board, outfitted with thousands of sensors to record even more details.The main objective of the uncrewed mission is to test the rocket’s heat shield, which will protect astronauts upon re-entry, Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said.
Additionally, a package called Callisto, named for the companion of Artemis in Greek mythology, will be flying inside Orion. Callisto houses both an Amazon Alexa and a touchscreen that will host Cisco’s Webex software. The payload is meant to test out smart tools that future astronauts might use on Orion in order to communicate over video with the mission control and get information about where they are in space.

News Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

NASA scrubs launch of new moon rocket after engine problem

Editor — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 04:41:47 +0000

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CAPE CANAVERAL: NASA called off the launch of its mighty new moon rocket on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard Monday after a last-minute cascade of problems culminating in unexplained trouble related to an engine.
The next launch attempt will not take place until Friday at the earliest and could be delayed until mid-September or later.
The mission will be the first flight in NASA’s Artemis project, a quest to put astronauts back on the moon for the first time since the Apollo program ended 50 years ago.
As precious minutes ticked away Monday morning, NASA repeatedly stopped and started the fueling of the Space Launch System rocket because of a leak of highly explosive hydrogen, eventually succeeding in reducing the seepage. The leak happened in the same place that saw seepage during a dress rehearsal in the spring.
The fueling already was running nearly an hour late because of thunderstorms off Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.
Then, NASA ran into new trouble when it was unable to properly chill one of the rocket’s four main engines, officials said. Engineers struggled to pinpoint the source of the problem well after the launch postponement was announced.
Mission manager Mike Sarafin said the fault did not appear to be with the engine itself but with the plumbing leading to it.
Complicating matters, as engineers were trying to troubleshoot that problem on the launch pad, yet another hydrogen leak developed, this one involving a vent valve higher up on the rocket, Sarafin said.
“This is a very complicated machine, a very complicated system, and all those things have to work, and you don’t want to light the candle until it’s ready to go,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Referring to launch delays, he said: “It’s just part of the space business and it’s part of, particularly, a test flight.”
The rocket was set to lift off on a flight to propel a crew capsule into orbit around the moon. The six-week mission was scheduled to end with the capsule returning to Earth in a splashdown in the Pacific in October.
The 322-foot (98-meter) spaceship is the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA, out-muscling even the Saturn V that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon.
The dummies inside the Orion capsule were fitted with sensors to measure vibration, cosmic radiation and other conditions during the shakedown flight, meant to stress-test the spacecraft and push it to its limits in ways that would never be attempted if humans were aboard.
Asked about the possibility of another launch attempt on Friday, mission manager Sarafin said, “We really need time to look at all the information, all the data. We’re going to play all nine innings here.”
Even though no one was on board, thousands of people jammed the coast to see the rocket soar. Vice President Kamala Harris and Apollo 10 astronaut Tom Stafford were among the VIPs who arrived.
Assuming the shakedown flight goes well, astronauts will climb aboard for the second Artemis mission and fly around the moon and back as soon as 2024. A two-person lunar landing could follow by the end of 2025.
The problems seen Monday were reminiscent of NASA’s space shuttle era, when hydrogen fuel leaks disrupted countdowns and delayed a string of launches back in 1990.
Later in the morning, NASA also officials spotted what they feared was a crack or some other defect on the core stage — the big orange fuel tank with four main engines on it — but they later said it appeared to be just a buildup of frost in a crevice of the insulating foam.
Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and her team also had to deal with sluggish communication between the Orion capsule and launch control. The problem required what turned out to be a simple fix.
Even if there had been no technical snags, thunderstorms ultimately would have prevented a liftoff, NASA said. Dark clouds and rain gathered over the launch site as soon as the countdown was halted, and thunder echoed across the coast.

News Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com