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Ingenuity, NASA’s plucky helicopter, has taken its last flight on Mars
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Christian Davenport, The Washington Post
Published Jan 26, 2024 • 3 minute read
In this image made available by NASA, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter hovers above the surface of the planet during its second flight on April 22, 2021.
In this image made available by NASA, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter hovers above the surface of the planet during its second flight on April 22, 2021. PHOTO BY NASA/JPL-CALTECH/ASU /MSSS via AP, File
Ingenuity, the small but plucky helicopter that became the first aircraft to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet, has taken its last flight on Mars, ending a mission that far exceeded NASA’s expectations, the space agency announced Thursday.
What started out as a test to push the technological envelope – a bold attempt to see if NASA could get a small drone to fly in Mars’ thin atmosphere – became a celebrated endeavour that helped the space agency explore the Red Planet from above.
The four-pound helicopter first took to the skies in April 2021 when it rose to about 10 feet, hovered, turned and then landed softly back on the surface in what NASA called “a Wright Brothers moment.”
This NASA photo obtained on Jan. 25, 2024 shows NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's rotor blade damaged during its Flight 72 landing.
This NASA photo obtained on Jan. 25, 2024 shows NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s rotor blade damaged during its Flight 72 landing. PHOTO BY HANDOUT/NASA/JPL /AFP via Getty Images
NASA was planning to fly it just five times over a period of 30 days. Instead, it flew 72 times, an extraordinary feat considering the Martian atmosphere is just 1 percent the density of Earth’s, making it difficult to generate lift.
On its most recent flight Jan. 18, however, one or more of its blades, designed to spin at 2,500 rotations per minute, “sustained damage during landing, and it is no longer capable of flight,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. It added that Ingenuity remained upright and was in communication with controllers on the ground.
In a video message posted on X, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson eulogized the small drone and praised its endurance. “It acted as a scout for the Perseverance rover – it would go and check out sites,” he said. “Ingenuity demonstrated how flight can enhance operational missions, and it’s helping us in the search for life on Mars.”
Ingenuity flew to Mars tethered to the underbelly of Perseverance, the SUV-sized rover that touched down on Mars in February 2021, after traveling some 300 million miles over seven months.
While Perseverance was the star of the mission, Ingenuity was “built as an experiment,” Lori Glaze, the director of NASA’s planetary science division, told The Washington Post in 2022. As a result, it didn’t “have the flight-qualified parts that we use on the big missions like Perseverance.” Engineers even used components from smartphones that they bought off the shelf. And going into the first flight, there “was a risk that it wasn’t going to work,” she said.
But as Ingenuity kept going, flight after flight, on longer and longer journeys, scientists at NASA began to see it as an important tool for exploring Mars. Over the past three years, the helicopter traversed craters and took photos of regions that would have been hard to reach on the ground. It survived harsh dust storms and frigid nights, proving to be surprisingly resilient.
“I am really thrilled to say Ingenuity absolutely shattered our paradigm of exploration, introducing this new dimension of aerial mobility,” Glaze said during a briefing with reporters Thursday.
Along the way, it overcame several technical problems. On one early flight, because of a computer issue, it looked like it was tipsy, “adjusting its velocity and tilting back and forth in an oscillating pattern,” NASA said in a blog at the time
Another time, it detected an engine issue and did not fly, waiting for ground controllers to fix it.
The more it flew, the more confidence NASA had in it, flying it faster and farther, and over more challenging terrain. Its ninth flight, for example, was “a nail biter,” as NASA said, because it flew over a crater that required flight controllers to reduce its speed and for engineers to tweak the navigation algorithm. The flight was a success, and Ingenuity was able to beam back colored photos of the region, including a location that some think “may record some of the deepest water environments in old Lake Jezero,” NASA wrote.
In all, it spent more than 128 minutes in flight, covering 11 miles and hitting a maximum ground speed of just over 22 mph, NASA said.
Nelson said its contributions would long be remembered. “Ingenuity has paved the way for future flight in our solar system, and it’s leading the way for smarter, safer human missions to Mars, and beyond,” he said.
![Mars-Helicopter[1].jpg](https://forums.canadiancontent.net/data/attachments/19/19175-90c41829d17c7d2a8c9cc92b45ba720f.jpg "Mars-Helicopter[1].jpg")
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Christian Davenport, The Washington Post
Published Jan 26, 2024 • 3 minute read
In this image made available by NASA, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter hovers above the surface of the planet during its second flight on April 22, 2021.
In this image made available by NASA, the Mars Ingenuity helicopter hovers above the surface of the planet during its second flight on April 22, 2021. PHOTO BY NASA/JPL-CALTECH/ASU /MSSS via AP, File
Ingenuity, the small but plucky helicopter that became the first aircraft to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet, has taken its last flight on Mars, ending a mission that far exceeded NASA’s expectations, the space agency announced Thursday.
What started out as a test to push the technological envelope – a bold attempt to see if NASA could get a small drone to fly in Mars’ thin atmosphere – became a celebrated endeavour that helped the space agency explore the Red Planet from above.
The four-pound helicopter first took to the skies in April 2021 when it rose to about 10 feet, hovered, turned and then landed softly back on the surface in what NASA called “a Wright Brothers moment.”
This NASA photo obtained on Jan. 25, 2024 shows NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's rotor blade damaged during its Flight 72 landing.
This NASA photo obtained on Jan. 25, 2024 shows NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s rotor blade damaged during its Flight 72 landing. PHOTO BY HANDOUT/NASA/JPL /AFP via Getty Images
NASA was planning to fly it just five times over a period of 30 days. Instead, it flew 72 times, an extraordinary feat considering the Martian atmosphere is just 1 percent the density of Earth’s, making it difficult to generate lift.
On its most recent flight Jan. 18, however, one or more of its blades, designed to spin at 2,500 rotations per minute, “sustained damage during landing, and it is no longer capable of flight,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. It added that Ingenuity remained upright and was in communication with controllers on the ground.
In a video message posted on X, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson eulogized the small drone and praised its endurance. “It acted as a scout for the Perseverance rover – it would go and check out sites,” he said. “Ingenuity demonstrated how flight can enhance operational missions, and it’s helping us in the search for life on Mars.”
Ingenuity flew to Mars tethered to the underbelly of Perseverance, the SUV-sized rover that touched down on Mars in February 2021, after traveling some 300 million miles over seven months.
While Perseverance was the star of the mission, Ingenuity was “built as an experiment,” Lori Glaze, the director of NASA’s planetary science division, told The Washington Post in 2022. As a result, it didn’t “have the flight-qualified parts that we use on the big missions like Perseverance.” Engineers even used components from smartphones that they bought off the shelf. And going into the first flight, there “was a risk that it wasn’t going to work,” she said.
But as Ingenuity kept going, flight after flight, on longer and longer journeys, scientists at NASA began to see it as an important tool for exploring Mars. Over the past three years, the helicopter traversed craters and took photos of regions that would have been hard to reach on the ground. It survived harsh dust storms and frigid nights, proving to be surprisingly resilient.
“I am really thrilled to say Ingenuity absolutely shattered our paradigm of exploration, introducing this new dimension of aerial mobility,” Glaze said during a briefing with reporters Thursday.
Along the way, it overcame several technical problems. On one early flight, because of a computer issue, it looked like it was tipsy, “adjusting its velocity and tilting back and forth in an oscillating pattern,” NASA said in a blog at the time
Another time, it detected an engine issue and did not fly, waiting for ground controllers to fix it.
The more it flew, the more confidence NASA had in it, flying it faster and farther, and over more challenging terrain. Its ninth flight, for example, was “a nail biter,” as NASA said, because it flew over a crater that required flight controllers to reduce its speed and for engineers to tweak the navigation algorithm. The flight was a success, and Ingenuity was able to beam back colored photos of the region, including a location that some think “may record some of the deepest water environments in old Lake Jezero,” NASA wrote.
In all, it spent more than 128 minutes in flight, covering 11 miles and hitting a maximum ground speed of just over 22 mph, NASA said.
Nelson said its contributions would long be remembered. “Ingenuity has paved the way for future flight in our solar system, and it’s leading the way for smarter, safer human missions to Mars, and beyond,” he said.
Ingenuity, NASA’s plucky helicopter, has taken its last flight on Mars
Ingenuity, the helicopter that became the first aircraft to make a controlled flight on another planet, has taken its last flight on Mars.
Why this year’s total solar eclipse may be extra dramatic
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Kasha Patel, The Washington Post
Published Jan 26, 2024 • 4 minute read
If you haven’t booked your trip to experience the total solar eclipse in April yet, here’s another reason: The sun might put on an extra fun show this time around. This year’s eclipse coincides with a period when the sun will be particularly active – at its most bustling in two decades.
In fact, the active sun will look very spiky, like a “very irritated little hedgehog,” solar physicist Scott McIntosh said.
Every 11 years, the sun’s activity waxes and wanes as its north and south magnetic poles naturally switch places. The beginning of this solar cycle has the lowest activity, known as the solar minimum. Activity ramps up in the middle of the cycle, known as the solar maximum, and decreases again to the minimum.
The sun is approaching its maximum activity of its cycle this year, scientists say. That means it will be sending off more solar flares and eruptions from its surface – potentially making this year’s total solar eclipse much more dynamic.
“In some ways, the sun’s more artistic or more complicated during a maximum,” said Kelly Korreck, NASA program manager for the 2024 total solar eclipse. “So being able to see that with your own eyes, it’s going to be very interesting.”
Here’s what to look for if you’re viewing the eclipse in the path of totality.
Look for the streamers
During a total solar eclipse, the moon blocks light from the sun’s disk, but part of the sun’s outer atmosphere – known as the corona – can be seen. We can’t see the corona under normal conditions because the solar disk’s bright light washes it out. Plus, it’s very dangerous to look at the sun with our naked eyes.
“In the path of totality only, when the moon is completely covering the sun, you will be able to see basically all the structure around the sun,” Korreck said.
The most obvious feature will probably be the presence of streamers, or bright streaks emanating from the sun. These are known as the solar wind, which is a stream of charged particles that is constantly blowing from the sun’s corona into space, Korreck said.
The solar wind, which can travel at more than 1 million mph, helps ward off stray cosmic rays that may bombard Earth. A strong solar wind headed toward Earth can interfere with our satellite communications and impact our magnetosphere to trigger the northern lights.
When the sun’s activity is low, these streamers typically congregate around the poles because that’s where the magnetic field is radial, said Mark Miesch, a researcher with NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. But during a solar maximum, he said, “all bets are off.”
“The streamers are not just at the north and south poles. They’re pretty much all latitudes,” Miesch said.
Watch for gnarly magnetic loops
The magnetic field is not uniform across the sun. Some areas, called active regions, have magnetic fields that are up to 1,000 times stronger than the sun’s average field. Active regions are usually the source for eruptions on the sun’s surface, which can cause disturbances on Earth and trigger the northern lights. The regions are more common during a solar maximum – and you may get the chance to evidence of its magnetic complexity.
Look for loops that leave the sun’s side and connect back to the surface or incomplete loops of fingerlike structures protruding from the surface, Korreck said.
“These are great big loops that the magnets of the sun draw, then the plasma follows it,” she said. “That is part of normally active regions. It’s showing you the fact that the sun is magnetic.”
These loops, called prominences, will occur more often during solar maximum and can appear pinkish only during an eclipse due to glowing hydrogen and atmospheric scattering.
Cross your fingers for an explosive light show
One of the most exciting events on the sun is a coronal mass ejection, or a large explosion of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s corona. These can buffet the solar wind and incite geomagnetic storms on Earth, generating the northern lights or disrupting satellite communications.
Near solar maximum, scientists can observe an average of two to three CMEs per day, according to NASA, but it takes a bit of serendipity for it to be in Earth’s view or path.
“My dream would be a solar maximum where we get one of the coronal mass ejections actively happening” during the eclipse, Korreck said. “It is possible for that to happen, but we have to keep our fingers crossed that sun’s going to put on a good show.”
During an eclipse, people would only see a phase of the eruption from where they’re standing over the course of a few minutes – perhaps something moving away or detached from the sun. A coronal mass ejection from beginning to end occurs over the span of an hour or more, but the entirety could be seen by stitching multiple images together taken by people across the path of totality.
Scientists will have a better idea of whether a coronal mass ejection will occur around a week before the eclipse, Korreck said. Researchers can monitor the location of active regions on the sun, where coronal mass ejections spawn from, and can make predictions on how active the sun will be during the eclipse.
There is potentially an even more exciting scenario: a northern lights display during the eclipse.
If a coronal mass ejection occurs a few days earlier and is directed toward Earth, it could incite a strong geomagnetic storm during the eclipse. Sky watchers in more northern latitudes could see a resulting northern lights, also known as an aurora borealis, during totality as the moon will darken the skies.
“It’s not impossible,” Korreck said. “It’s just maybe improbable that all the things align”
But it’s solar maximum, so crazy things could happen.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Kasha Patel, The Washington Post
Published Jan 26, 2024 • 4 minute read
If you haven’t booked your trip to experience the total solar eclipse in April yet, here’s another reason: The sun might put on an extra fun show this time around. This year’s eclipse coincides with a period when the sun will be particularly active – at its most bustling in two decades.
In fact, the active sun will look very spiky, like a “very irritated little hedgehog,” solar physicist Scott McIntosh said.
Every 11 years, the sun’s activity waxes and wanes as its north and south magnetic poles naturally switch places. The beginning of this solar cycle has the lowest activity, known as the solar minimum. Activity ramps up in the middle of the cycle, known as the solar maximum, and decreases again to the minimum.
The sun is approaching its maximum activity of its cycle this year, scientists say. That means it will be sending off more solar flares and eruptions from its surface – potentially making this year’s total solar eclipse much more dynamic.
“In some ways, the sun’s more artistic or more complicated during a maximum,” said Kelly Korreck, NASA program manager for the 2024 total solar eclipse. “So being able to see that with your own eyes, it’s going to be very interesting.”
Here’s what to look for if you’re viewing the eclipse in the path of totality.
Look for the streamers
During a total solar eclipse, the moon blocks light from the sun’s disk, but part of the sun’s outer atmosphere – known as the corona – can be seen. We can’t see the corona under normal conditions because the solar disk’s bright light washes it out. Plus, it’s very dangerous to look at the sun with our naked eyes.
“In the path of totality only, when the moon is completely covering the sun, you will be able to see basically all the structure around the sun,” Korreck said.
The most obvious feature will probably be the presence of streamers, or bright streaks emanating from the sun. These are known as the solar wind, which is a stream of charged particles that is constantly blowing from the sun’s corona into space, Korreck said.
The solar wind, which can travel at more than 1 million mph, helps ward off stray cosmic rays that may bombard Earth. A strong solar wind headed toward Earth can interfere with our satellite communications and impact our magnetosphere to trigger the northern lights.
When the sun’s activity is low, these streamers typically congregate around the poles because that’s where the magnetic field is radial, said Mark Miesch, a researcher with NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. But during a solar maximum, he said, “all bets are off.”
“The streamers are not just at the north and south poles. They’re pretty much all latitudes,” Miesch said.
Watch for gnarly magnetic loops
The magnetic field is not uniform across the sun. Some areas, called active regions, have magnetic fields that are up to 1,000 times stronger than the sun’s average field. Active regions are usually the source for eruptions on the sun’s surface, which can cause disturbances on Earth and trigger the northern lights. The regions are more common during a solar maximum – and you may get the chance to evidence of its magnetic complexity.
Look for loops that leave the sun’s side and connect back to the surface or incomplete loops of fingerlike structures protruding from the surface, Korreck said.
“These are great big loops that the magnets of the sun draw, then the plasma follows it,” she said. “That is part of normally active regions. It’s showing you the fact that the sun is magnetic.”
These loops, called prominences, will occur more often during solar maximum and can appear pinkish only during an eclipse due to glowing hydrogen and atmospheric scattering.
Cross your fingers for an explosive light show
One of the most exciting events on the sun is a coronal mass ejection, or a large explosion of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s corona. These can buffet the solar wind and incite geomagnetic storms on Earth, generating the northern lights or disrupting satellite communications.
Near solar maximum, scientists can observe an average of two to three CMEs per day, according to NASA, but it takes a bit of serendipity for it to be in Earth’s view or path.
“My dream would be a solar maximum where we get one of the coronal mass ejections actively happening” during the eclipse, Korreck said. “It is possible for that to happen, but we have to keep our fingers crossed that sun’s going to put on a good show.”
During an eclipse, people would only see a phase of the eruption from where they’re standing over the course of a few minutes – perhaps something moving away or detached from the sun. A coronal mass ejection from beginning to end occurs over the span of an hour or more, but the entirety could be seen by stitching multiple images together taken by people across the path of totality.
Scientists will have a better idea of whether a coronal mass ejection will occur around a week before the eclipse, Korreck said. Researchers can monitor the location of active regions on the sun, where coronal mass ejections spawn from, and can make predictions on how active the sun will be during the eclipse.
There is potentially an even more exciting scenario: a northern lights display during the eclipse.
If a coronal mass ejection occurs a few days earlier and is directed toward Earth, it could incite a strong geomagnetic storm during the eclipse. Sky watchers in more northern latitudes could see a resulting northern lights, also known as an aurora borealis, during totality as the moon will darken the skies.
“It’s not impossible,” Korreck said. “It’s just maybe improbable that all the things align”
But it’s solar maximum, so crazy things could happen.
Why this year’s total solar eclipse may be extra dramatic
This year's eclipse coincides with a period when the sun will be particularly active - at its most bustling in two decades.
U.S. company’s lunar lander rockets toward moon for touchdown attempt
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Marcia Dunn
Published Feb 15, 2024 • 2 minute read
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from launch pad LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center with the Intuitive Machines' Nova-C moon lander mission, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on February 15, 2024.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Another private U.S. company took a shot at the moon Thursday, launching a month after a rival’s lunar lander missed its mark and came crashing back.
NASA, the main sponsor with experiments on board, is hoping for a successful moon landing next week as it seeks to jumpstart the lunar economy ahead of astronaut missions.
SpaceX’s Falcon rocket blasted off in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, dispatching Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander on its way to the moon, 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) away.
The lander resembled a stunning six-pointed star jewel — each point a leg — as it successfully separated from the upper stage and drifted off into the black void with the blue Earth far below.
If all goes well, a touchdown attempt would occur Feb. 22, after a day in lunar orbit. Only five countries — the U.S., Russia, China, India and Japan — have scored a lunar landing and no private business has yet done so. The U.S. has not returned to the moon’s surface since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago.
“There have been a lot of sleepless nights getting ready for this,” Intuitive Machines’ co-founder and chief executive Steve Altemus said before the flight.
The Houston-based company aims to put its 14-foot (4.3-metre) tall, six-legged lander down just 186 miles (300 kilometres) shy of the moon’s south pole, equivalent to landing within Antarctica on Earth. This region — full of treacherous craters and cliffs, yet potentially rich with frozen water — is where NASA plans to land astronauts later this decade. The space agency said its six navigation and tech experiments on the lander can help smooth the way.
NASA’s first entry in its commercial lunar delivery service — Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lander — stumbled shortly after liftoff in early January. A ruptured fuel tank and massive leak caused the spacecraft to bypass the moon and come tearing back through the atmosphere 10 days after launching, breaking apart and burning up over the Pacific.
Others made it to the moon before wrecking.
An Israeli nonprofit’s lander crashed in 2019. Last year, a Tokyo company saw its lander smash into the moon followed by Russia’s crash landing.
Only the U.S. has sent astronauts to the moon with Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closing out the program in December 1972. That was it for U.S. moon landings until Astrobotic’s short-lived try last month.
Intuitive Machines nicknamed its lander after Homer’s hero in “The Odyssey.”
“Godspeed, Odysseus. Now let’s go make history,” said Trent Martin, vice president of space systems.
NASA is paying Intuitive Machines $118 million to get its latest set of experiments to the moon. The company also drummed up its own customers, including Columbia Sportswear, which is testing a metallic jacket fabric as a thermal insulator on the lander, and sculptor Jeff Koons, who is sending up 125 inch-sized moon figurines in a see-through cube.
The lander also is carrying Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Eaglecam, which will snap pictures of the lander as they both descend.
The spacecraft will cease operations after a week on the surface.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Marcia Dunn
Published Feb 15, 2024 • 2 minute read
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from launch pad LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center with the Intuitive Machines' Nova-C moon lander mission, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on February 15, 2024.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Another private U.S. company took a shot at the moon Thursday, launching a month after a rival’s lunar lander missed its mark and came crashing back.
NASA, the main sponsor with experiments on board, is hoping for a successful moon landing next week as it seeks to jumpstart the lunar economy ahead of astronaut missions.
SpaceX’s Falcon rocket blasted off in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, dispatching Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander on its way to the moon, 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) away.
The lander resembled a stunning six-pointed star jewel — each point a leg — as it successfully separated from the upper stage and drifted off into the black void with the blue Earth far below.
If all goes well, a touchdown attempt would occur Feb. 22, after a day in lunar orbit. Only five countries — the U.S., Russia, China, India and Japan — have scored a lunar landing and no private business has yet done so. The U.S. has not returned to the moon’s surface since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago.
“There have been a lot of sleepless nights getting ready for this,” Intuitive Machines’ co-founder and chief executive Steve Altemus said before the flight.
The Houston-based company aims to put its 14-foot (4.3-metre) tall, six-legged lander down just 186 miles (300 kilometres) shy of the moon’s south pole, equivalent to landing within Antarctica on Earth. This region — full of treacherous craters and cliffs, yet potentially rich with frozen water — is where NASA plans to land astronauts later this decade. The space agency said its six navigation and tech experiments on the lander can help smooth the way.
NASA’s first entry in its commercial lunar delivery service — Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lander — stumbled shortly after liftoff in early January. A ruptured fuel tank and massive leak caused the spacecraft to bypass the moon and come tearing back through the atmosphere 10 days after launching, breaking apart and burning up over the Pacific.
Others made it to the moon before wrecking.
An Israeli nonprofit’s lander crashed in 2019. Last year, a Tokyo company saw its lander smash into the moon followed by Russia’s crash landing.
Only the U.S. has sent astronauts to the moon with Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closing out the program in December 1972. That was it for U.S. moon landings until Astrobotic’s short-lived try last month.
Intuitive Machines nicknamed its lander after Homer’s hero in “The Odyssey.”
“Godspeed, Odysseus. Now let’s go make history,” said Trent Martin, vice president of space systems.
NASA is paying Intuitive Machines $118 million to get its latest set of experiments to the moon. The company also drummed up its own customers, including Columbia Sportswear, which is testing a metallic jacket fabric as a thermal insulator on the lander, and sculptor Jeff Koons, who is sending up 125 inch-sized moon figurines in a see-through cube.
The lander also is carrying Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Eaglecam, which will snap pictures of the lander as they both descend.
The spacecraft will cease operations after a week on the surface.
U.S. company’s lunar lander rockets toward moon for touchdown attempt
Another private U.S. company took a shot at the moon Thursday, launching a month after a rival's lunar lander missed its mark
U.S. officials sound alarm about new Russian ‘space threat’
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Shane Harris, Ellen Nakashima, John Hudson, The Washington Post
Published Feb 15, 2024 • 4 minute read
Russia is developing a space-based military capability that members of Congress and U.S. officials worry could pose a significant threat to the United States and its allies, possibly by damaging critical intelligence or communications satellites with a nuclear weapon, according to officials familiar with the matter.
The precise nature of the system was unclear. One person referred to it as “a new Russian space threat capability.” Some officials were alarmed after examining classified intelligence on Wednesday and warned of ominous consequences; one member of Congress called it a potential “geo-strategic game changer.” Several lawmakers stressed there was no imminent danger, but they urged the Biden administration to take countermeasures soon.
The Russian government has experimented with the use of nuclear explosions or directed energy to disable satellites, according to one U.S. official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. Experts have raised concerns that a nation could detonate a nuclear weapon in space to interfere with satellites through the emission of radiation.
Russia also has tested anti-satellite weapons. In 2021, after it launched a missile from Earth that destroyed a Soviet-era satellite, a senior U.S. military official warned that Russia was “deploying capabilities to actively deny access to and use of space by the United States and its allies.”
A day of fevered speculation about what the supposed space-weapon might be was triggered by an unusual and cryptic public statement Wednesday by a leading member of Congress, who urged lawmakers to review classified information about what he called a “serious national security threat.”
Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the nature of the threat or the country supposedly wielding it.
In a separate letter to fellow House members, Turner and Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the committee’s top Democrat, said the committee “has identified an urgent matter with regard to a destabilizing foreign military capability that should be known by all congressional policymakers.”
The lawmakers said the full committee voted on Tuesday to make the intelligence available to all House members for their in-person review in a secure room at the Capitol.
The information was obtained using authorities granted to the intelligence community under Section 702 of a key electronic surveillance law that is being hotly debated in Congress, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.
Turner, a strong proponent of the surveillance authority, appears to want to use the information about the adversary capability to convince skeptical colleagues that 702 is an indispensable intelligence tool, one official said.
Himes cautioned that the information Turner highlighted doesn’t concern a “panic now” issue. “It is a serious national security issue in the medium-to-long term that the Congress and the administration need to focus on,” Himes said. “But no need to buy gold.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) also urged caution. “I want to assure the American people there is no need for public alarm. We are going to work together to address this matter, as we do all sensitive matters that are classified,” he told reporters.
One Capitol Hill aide expressed annoyance at Turner for alerting the public about the information ahead of a planned briefing for top House lawmakers in the “Gang of Eight,” who are traditionally privy to some of the most sensitive intelligence information.
Lawmakers in the House and Senate have been in possession of the raw intelligence concerning the foreign capability for several weeks and were preparing to learn how the administration might respond, this aide said. Turner’s disclosure could make that response more difficult if it revealed information about how the intelligence was obtained in the first place, the aide said.
Turner, in his initial statement, called on the Biden administration to declassify all information about the threat.
President Biden was made aware of the threat earlier and directed national security adviser Jake Sullivan to offer a briefing to senior lawmakers last week. “It is highly unusual, in fact, for the national security adviser to do that,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House. He questioned why Turner chose to make the matter public, considering that Sullivan plans to meet with members on the Hill on Thursday, along with intelligence and defence personnel.
That meeting, he said, “has been on the books” for Thursday. “So I am a bit surprised that Congressman Turner came out publicly today in advance of the meeting … for me to go sit with him alongside our intelligence and defence professionals tomorrow. That’s his choice to do that,” Sullivan said.
Asked if the meeting he requested was to discuss the same “serious national security threat” that Turner referred to in his statement, Sullivan demurred. “I’ll leave it to you to draw whatever connections you want,” he said. “I’m not in position to say anything further from this podium at this time.”
Sullivan added that the Biden administration “has gone further, and in more creative, more strategic ways,” to declassify intelligence “in the national interest of the United States than any administration in history.” But “at the same time, we, of course, have to continue to prioritize and focus very much on the issue of sources and methods.”
— The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung, Abigail Hauslohner and Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Shane Harris, Ellen Nakashima, John Hudson, The Washington Post
Published Feb 15, 2024 • 4 minute read
Russia is developing a space-based military capability that members of Congress and U.S. officials worry could pose a significant threat to the United States and its allies, possibly by damaging critical intelligence or communications satellites with a nuclear weapon, according to officials familiar with the matter.
The precise nature of the system was unclear. One person referred to it as “a new Russian space threat capability.” Some officials were alarmed after examining classified intelligence on Wednesday and warned of ominous consequences; one member of Congress called it a potential “geo-strategic game changer.” Several lawmakers stressed there was no imminent danger, but they urged the Biden administration to take countermeasures soon.
The Russian government has experimented with the use of nuclear explosions or directed energy to disable satellites, according to one U.S. official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. Experts have raised concerns that a nation could detonate a nuclear weapon in space to interfere with satellites through the emission of radiation.
Russia also has tested anti-satellite weapons. In 2021, after it launched a missile from Earth that destroyed a Soviet-era satellite, a senior U.S. military official warned that Russia was “deploying capabilities to actively deny access to and use of space by the United States and its allies.”
A day of fevered speculation about what the supposed space-weapon might be was triggered by an unusual and cryptic public statement Wednesday by a leading member of Congress, who urged lawmakers to review classified information about what he called a “serious national security threat.”
Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the nature of the threat or the country supposedly wielding it.
In a separate letter to fellow House members, Turner and Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the committee’s top Democrat, said the committee “has identified an urgent matter with regard to a destabilizing foreign military capability that should be known by all congressional policymakers.”
The lawmakers said the full committee voted on Tuesday to make the intelligence available to all House members for their in-person review in a secure room at the Capitol.
The information was obtained using authorities granted to the intelligence community under Section 702 of a key electronic surveillance law that is being hotly debated in Congress, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.
Turner, a strong proponent of the surveillance authority, appears to want to use the information about the adversary capability to convince skeptical colleagues that 702 is an indispensable intelligence tool, one official said.
Himes cautioned that the information Turner highlighted doesn’t concern a “panic now” issue. “It is a serious national security issue in the medium-to-long term that the Congress and the administration need to focus on,” Himes said. “But no need to buy gold.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) also urged caution. “I want to assure the American people there is no need for public alarm. We are going to work together to address this matter, as we do all sensitive matters that are classified,” he told reporters.
One Capitol Hill aide expressed annoyance at Turner for alerting the public about the information ahead of a planned briefing for top House lawmakers in the “Gang of Eight,” who are traditionally privy to some of the most sensitive intelligence information.
Lawmakers in the House and Senate have been in possession of the raw intelligence concerning the foreign capability for several weeks and were preparing to learn how the administration might respond, this aide said. Turner’s disclosure could make that response more difficult if it revealed information about how the intelligence was obtained in the first place, the aide said.
Turner, in his initial statement, called on the Biden administration to declassify all information about the threat.
President Biden was made aware of the threat earlier and directed national security adviser Jake Sullivan to offer a briefing to senior lawmakers last week. “It is highly unusual, in fact, for the national security adviser to do that,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House. He questioned why Turner chose to make the matter public, considering that Sullivan plans to meet with members on the Hill on Thursday, along with intelligence and defence personnel.
That meeting, he said, “has been on the books” for Thursday. “So I am a bit surprised that Congressman Turner came out publicly today in advance of the meeting … for me to go sit with him alongside our intelligence and defence professionals tomorrow. That’s his choice to do that,” Sullivan said.
Asked if the meeting he requested was to discuss the same “serious national security threat” that Turner referred to in his statement, Sullivan demurred. “I’ll leave it to you to draw whatever connections you want,” he said. “I’m not in position to say anything further from this podium at this time.”
Sullivan added that the Biden administration “has gone further, and in more creative, more strategic ways,” to declassify intelligence “in the national interest of the United States than any administration in history.” But “at the same time, we, of course, have to continue to prioritize and focus very much on the issue of sources and methods.”
— The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung, Abigail Hauslohner and Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.
U.S. officials sound alarm about new Russian ‘space threat’
Russia is developing a space-based military capability that U.S. officials worry could pose a significant threat to the U.S. and its allies.
it also looks like a hotdog.
Yeah. It looks more like a hotdog. That's what I thought.
Astronomers say mysterious galactic ‘wave’ may have once washed over Earth
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post
Published Feb 20, 2024 • 5 minute read
An illustration shows the Radcliffe Wave and its oscillatory pattern as it moves through the galaxy. The light blue curve shows the overall shape of the traveling wave, while the magenta and green lines show the wave's minimum and maximum excursions above and below the galactic plane.
An illustration shows the Radcliffe Wave and its oscillatory pattern as it moves through the galaxy. The light blue curve shows the overall shape of the traveling wave, while the magenta and green lines show the wave's minimum and maximum excursions above and below the galactic plane. Harvard Astronomy Department
Astronomers are still discovering strange things in space, and the latest is something they’ve named the Radcliffe Wave. This wave-shaped chain of star-forming clouds is the largest coherent structure ever seen in our galaxy – 9,000 light-years from end to end, stretching across the night sky from Canis Major to Cygnus, with Orion in between.
Now it turns out the Radcliffe Wave is actually waving. So claims a paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature.
The star-forming clouds are rising far above the plane of the galaxy and then back down again. This kind of oscillation is known as a traveling wave, which is akin to sports fans “doing the wave” by popping up from their seats in a synchronized round-the-stadium pattern.
“This issue of the wave – you can find papers that hint at it in the past – but it’s nailed down now. This is a brick in the wall and it’s not coming out,” said Bob Benjamin, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater who was not part of this new research. “This newest paper is a really neat step in understanding the origin of this structure.”
This structure is within our galaxy and virtually right next door. It’s within spitting distance – if you could spit 500 light-years.
The story has another twist: It appears that our solar system passed through the Radcliffe Wave about 13 million years ago. And that might have been an interesting time for life on Earth. These star-forming regions have more than their fair share of exploding stars.
“Thirteen million years ago, we think we could have passed through a festival of supernovae going off,” said study co-author Catherine Zucker, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Motion in the Milky Way
Until just a few years ago, no one recognized that the many star-forming clouds relatively near the sun were part of a coherent structure. That’s because astronomers can see distant galaxies better than the one that surrounds us, the Milky Way. There is no telescope out there in intergalactic space, a couple million light-years away, obtaining beautiful images of the entirety of our galaxy. (If there is, it’s not one of ours.)
“It’s really hard to see what the structure of your hand is if you put it very close to your face,” explains Alyssa Goodman, an astronomy professor at Harvard and co-author of the new report. “We don’t get to fly outside the galaxy.”
Astronomers have known for a century that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies. They have also known that ours is a large spiral galaxy that’s much like the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy.
The cloudlike ribbon of milky light that you can see on a clear night – and which, as Galileo discovered four centuries ago with a telescope, is filled with individual stars – is an edge-on view of the plane of our home galaxy. The galaxy is a pancake-like disk, made from a relatively thick batter, if you will. We’re right there in the mix, and we can see stars in all directions that are part of the pancake.
But only in recent years has it been possible to create a precise three-dimensional map of stars and gas in our sector of the galaxy. This is in part thanks to the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, which is designed to measure with unprecedented precision the distances to millions of stars in our galaxy and their motion relative to each other.
The “fixed stars,” as astronomers and sailors call them, are not actually just sitting there in deep space. Everything’s moving. Our solar system makes one orbit of the centre of the galaxy over the course of about 226 million Earth-years.
Using Gaia data, Joao Alves, Zucker, Goodman and six colleagues described the Radcliffe Wave in a 2020 paper in Nature. They named it in honor of early 20th-century female astronomers associated with Radcliffe College, including Radcliffe graduate Henrietta Leavitt, who discovered that the periodic brightening of certain stars encoded information about their distance from Earth.
That breakthrough was critical to the discovery that the intriguing “spiral nebulae” seen through telescopes are actually structures outside the Milky Way – distinct galaxies in a universe even more vast than previously imagined.
The Radcliffe Wave appears to be the backbone (or “gas reservoir,” as a 2022 paper put it) of the spiral arm of our galaxy closest to our sun, known as the Orion Arm, or Local Arm. Additional updates from Gaia allowed scientists to create theoretical models to track the motion of star clusters within the wave, revealing its undulations.
The big question now: Why is the Radcliffe Wave waving?
“Who ordered that?” Goodman asked.
Something clearly happened to disturb our galactic neighborhood and impose disorder on the heavens. One possibility is that something – perhaps a dwarf galaxy – came crashing into the Milky Way and caused a big splash, and the wave is a ripple effect.
Another possibility is that a sequence of supernovae – explosions of stars emitting powerful bursts of radiation – shook things up. Or it could be a combination of factors.
“It might be that stars exploded as supernovae, and pushed the gas and the dust out of the galaxy plane,” said Ralf Konietzka, a PhD candidate at Harvard and lead author of the new paper. This wavelike pattern will disappear in a few tens of millions of years, he said.
Earth’s ride through the wave
There’s more digging to be done here, Zucker and her colleagues say – and more scientific papers are in the offing. There could be signs in the geological record of Earth being affected by supernova explosions in that long-ago transit through the Radcliffe Wave.
Earth has a magnetic field that helps protect it from potentially harmful radiation coming from the sun. And the sun’s solar wind creates a great protective bubble around the entire solar system that helps protect us from dangerous particles racing through space from other points in the galaxy.
But here’s where “interstellar weather” complicates the picture. A nearby supernova could have compressed that bubble, called the heliosphere, to the point that our planet was fully exposed to the interstellar medium.
The next step is to look into the geological record for signs that Earth was pelted with an isotope of iron consistent with exposure to a supernova about 13 million years ago. And then cross-tab that with anything interesting in the biological record.
“Galaxies may be even more dynamic than we previously thought,” Konietzka said.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post
Published Feb 20, 2024 • 5 minute read
An illustration shows the Radcliffe Wave and its oscillatory pattern as it moves through the galaxy. The light blue curve shows the overall shape of the traveling wave, while the magenta and green lines show the wave's minimum and maximum excursions above and below the galactic plane.
An illustration shows the Radcliffe Wave and its oscillatory pattern as it moves through the galaxy. The light blue curve shows the overall shape of the traveling wave, while the magenta and green lines show the wave's minimum and maximum excursions above and below the galactic plane. Harvard Astronomy Department
Astronomers are still discovering strange things in space, and the latest is something they’ve named the Radcliffe Wave. This wave-shaped chain of star-forming clouds is the largest coherent structure ever seen in our galaxy – 9,000 light-years from end to end, stretching across the night sky from Canis Major to Cygnus, with Orion in between.
Now it turns out the Radcliffe Wave is actually waving. So claims a paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature.
The star-forming clouds are rising far above the plane of the galaxy and then back down again. This kind of oscillation is known as a traveling wave, which is akin to sports fans “doing the wave” by popping up from their seats in a synchronized round-the-stadium pattern.
“This issue of the wave – you can find papers that hint at it in the past – but it’s nailed down now. This is a brick in the wall and it’s not coming out,” said Bob Benjamin, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater who was not part of this new research. “This newest paper is a really neat step in understanding the origin of this structure.”
This structure is within our galaxy and virtually right next door. It’s within spitting distance – if you could spit 500 light-years.
The story has another twist: It appears that our solar system passed through the Radcliffe Wave about 13 million years ago. And that might have been an interesting time for life on Earth. These star-forming regions have more than their fair share of exploding stars.
“Thirteen million years ago, we think we could have passed through a festival of supernovae going off,” said study co-author Catherine Zucker, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Motion in the Milky Way
Until just a few years ago, no one recognized that the many star-forming clouds relatively near the sun were part of a coherent structure. That’s because astronomers can see distant galaxies better than the one that surrounds us, the Milky Way. There is no telescope out there in intergalactic space, a couple million light-years away, obtaining beautiful images of the entirety of our galaxy. (If there is, it’s not one of ours.)
“It’s really hard to see what the structure of your hand is if you put it very close to your face,” explains Alyssa Goodman, an astronomy professor at Harvard and co-author of the new report. “We don’t get to fly outside the galaxy.”
Astronomers have known for a century that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies. They have also known that ours is a large spiral galaxy that’s much like the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy.
The cloudlike ribbon of milky light that you can see on a clear night – and which, as Galileo discovered four centuries ago with a telescope, is filled with individual stars – is an edge-on view of the plane of our home galaxy. The galaxy is a pancake-like disk, made from a relatively thick batter, if you will. We’re right there in the mix, and we can see stars in all directions that are part of the pancake.
But only in recent years has it been possible to create a precise three-dimensional map of stars and gas in our sector of the galaxy. This is in part thanks to the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, which is designed to measure with unprecedented precision the distances to millions of stars in our galaxy and their motion relative to each other.
The “fixed stars,” as astronomers and sailors call them, are not actually just sitting there in deep space. Everything’s moving. Our solar system makes one orbit of the centre of the galaxy over the course of about 226 million Earth-years.
Using Gaia data, Joao Alves, Zucker, Goodman and six colleagues described the Radcliffe Wave in a 2020 paper in Nature. They named it in honor of early 20th-century female astronomers associated with Radcliffe College, including Radcliffe graduate Henrietta Leavitt, who discovered that the periodic brightening of certain stars encoded information about their distance from Earth.
That breakthrough was critical to the discovery that the intriguing “spiral nebulae” seen through telescopes are actually structures outside the Milky Way – distinct galaxies in a universe even more vast than previously imagined.
The Radcliffe Wave appears to be the backbone (or “gas reservoir,” as a 2022 paper put it) of the spiral arm of our galaxy closest to our sun, known as the Orion Arm, or Local Arm. Additional updates from Gaia allowed scientists to create theoretical models to track the motion of star clusters within the wave, revealing its undulations.
The big question now: Why is the Radcliffe Wave waving?
“Who ordered that?” Goodman asked.
Something clearly happened to disturb our galactic neighborhood and impose disorder on the heavens. One possibility is that something – perhaps a dwarf galaxy – came crashing into the Milky Way and caused a big splash, and the wave is a ripple effect.
Another possibility is that a sequence of supernovae – explosions of stars emitting powerful bursts of radiation – shook things up. Or it could be a combination of factors.
“It might be that stars exploded as supernovae, and pushed the gas and the dust out of the galaxy plane,” said Ralf Konietzka, a PhD candidate at Harvard and lead author of the new paper. This wavelike pattern will disappear in a few tens of millions of years, he said.
Earth’s ride through the wave
There’s more digging to be done here, Zucker and her colleagues say – and more scientific papers are in the offing. There could be signs in the geological record of Earth being affected by supernova explosions in that long-ago transit through the Radcliffe Wave.
Earth has a magnetic field that helps protect it from potentially harmful radiation coming from the sun. And the sun’s solar wind creates a great protective bubble around the entire solar system that helps protect us from dangerous particles racing through space from other points in the galaxy.
But here’s where “interstellar weather” complicates the picture. A nearby supernova could have compressed that bubble, called the heliosphere, to the point that our planet was fully exposed to the interstellar medium.
The next step is to look into the geological record for signs that Earth was pelted with an isotope of iron consistent with exposure to a supernova about 13 million years ago. And then cross-tab that with anything interesting in the biological record.
“Galaxies may be even more dynamic than we previously thought,” Konietzka said.
Astronomers say mysterious galactic ‘wave’ may have once washed over Earth
Astronomers are still discovering strange things in space, and the latest is something they've named the Radcliffe Wave.
Astronomers say mysterious galactic ‘wave’ may have once washed over Earth
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Joel Achenbach, The Washington Post
Published Feb 20, 2024 • 5 minute read
An illustration shows the Radcliffe Wave and its oscillatory pattern as it moves through the galaxy. The light blue curve shows the overall shape of the traveling wave, while the magenta and green lines show the wave's minimum and maximum excursions above and below the galactic plane.
An illustration shows the Radcliffe Wave and its oscillatory pattern as it moves through the galaxy. The light blue curve shows the overall shape of the traveling wave, while the magenta and green lines show the wave's minimum and maximum excursions above and below the galactic plane. Harvard Astronomy Department
Astronomers are still discovering strange things in space, and the latest is something they’ve named the Radcliffe Wave. This wave-shaped chain of star-forming clouds is the largest coherent structure ever seen in our galaxy – 9,000 light-years from end to end, stretching across the night sky from Canis Major to Cygnus, with Orion in between.
Now it turns out the Radcliffe Wave is actually waving. So claims a paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature.
The star-forming clouds are rising far above the plane of the galaxy and then back down again. This kind of oscillation is known as a traveling wave, which is akin to sports fans “doing the wave” by popping up from their seats in a synchronized round-the-stadium pattern.
“This issue of the wave – you can find papers that hint at it in the past – but it’s nailed down now. This is a brick in the wall and it’s not coming out,” said Bob Benjamin, an astronomer at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater who was not part of this new research. “This newest paper is a really neat step in understanding the origin of this structure.”
This structure is within our galaxy and virtually right next door. It’s within spitting distance – if you could spit 500 light-years.
The story has another twist: It appears that our solar system passed through the Radcliffe Wave about 13 million years ago. And that might have been an interesting time for life on Earth. These star-forming regions have more than their fair share of exploding stars.
“Thirteen million years ago, we think we could have passed through a festival of supernovae going off,” said study co-author Catherine Zucker, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Motion in the Milky Way
Until just a few years ago, no one recognized that the many star-forming clouds relatively near the sun were part of a coherent structure. That’s because astronomers can see distant galaxies better than the one that surrounds us, the Milky Way. There is no telescope out there in intergalactic space, a couple million light-years away, obtaining beautiful images of the entirety of our galaxy. (If there is, it’s not one of ours.)
“It’s really hard to see what the structure of your hand is if you put it very close to your face,” explains Alyssa Goodman, an astronomy professor at Harvard and co-author of the new report. “We don’t get to fly outside the galaxy.”
Astronomers have known for a century that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies. They have also known that ours is a large spiral galaxy that’s much like the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy.
The cloudlike ribbon of milky light that you can see on a clear night – and which, as Galileo discovered four centuries ago with a telescope, is filled with individual stars – is an edge-on view of the plane of our home galaxy. The galaxy is a pancake-like disk, made from a relatively thick batter, if you will. We’re right there in the mix, and we can see stars in all directions that are part of the pancake.
But only in recent years has it been possible to create a precise three-dimensional map of stars and gas in our sector of the galaxy. This is in part thanks to the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft, which is designed to measure with unprecedented precision the distances to millions of stars in our galaxy and their motion relative to each other.
The “fixed stars,” as astronomers and sailors call them, are not actually just sitting there in deep space. Everything’s moving. Our solar system makes one orbit of the centre of the galaxy over the course of about 226 million Earth-years.
Using Gaia data, Joao Alves, Zucker, Goodman and six colleagues described the Radcliffe Wave in a 2020 paper in Nature. They named it in honor of early 20th-century female astronomers associated with Radcliffe College, including Radcliffe graduate Henrietta Leavitt, who discovered that the periodic brightening of certain stars encoded information about their distance from Earth.
That breakthrough was critical to the discovery that the intriguing “spiral nebulae” seen through telescopes are actually structures outside the Milky Way – distinct galaxies in a universe even more vast than previously imagined.
The Radcliffe Wave appears to be the backbone (or “gas reservoir,” as a 2022 paper put it) of the spiral arm of our galaxy closest to our sun, known as the Orion Arm, or Local Arm. Additional updates from Gaia allowed scientists to create theoretical models to track the motion of star clusters within the wave, revealing its undulations.
The big question now: Why is the Radcliffe Wave waving?
“Who ordered that?” Goodman asked.
Something clearly happened to disturb our galactic neighborhood and impose disorder on the heavens. One possibility is that something – perhaps a dwarf galaxy – came crashing into the Milky Way and caused a big splash, and the wave is a ripple effect.
Another possibility is that a sequence of supernovae – explosions of stars emitting powerful bursts of radiation – shook things up. Or it could be a combination of factors.
“It might be that stars exploded as supernovae, and pushed the gas and the dust out of the galaxy plane,” said Ralf Konietzka, a PhD candidate at Harvard and lead author of the new paper. This wavelike pattern will disappear in a few tens of millions of years, he said.
Earth’s ride through the wave
There’s more digging to be done here, Zucker and her colleagues say – and more scientific papers are in the offing. There could be signs in the geological record of Earth being affected by supernova explosions in that long-ago transit through the Radcliffe Wave.
Earth has a magnetic field that helps protect it from potentially harmful radiation coming from the sun. And the sun’s solar wind creates a great protective bubble around the entire solar system that helps protect us from dangerous particles racing through space from other points in the galaxy.
But here’s where “interstellar weather” complicates the picture. A nearby supernova could have compressed that bubble, called the heliosphere, to the point that our planet was fully exposed to the interstellar medium.
The next step is to look into the geological record for signs that Earth was pelted with an isotope of iron consistent with exposure to a supernova about 13 million years ago. And then cross-tab that with anything interesting in the biological record.
“Galaxies may be even more dynamic than we previously thought,” Konietzka said.
View attachment 21252
Astronomers say mysterious galactic ‘wave’ may have once washed over Earth
Astronomers are still discovering strange things in space, and the latest is something they've named the Radcliffe Wave.
| EarthSky
Researchers have found evidence of a cataclysmic flare that punched outward in both directions from our galaxy's center, reaching so far into intergalactic space that its impact was felt 200,000 light-years away.
earthsky.org
Private lander makes first U.S. moon landing in more than 50 years
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Marcia Dunn
Published Feb 22, 2024 • Last updated 2 days ago • 3 minute read
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A private lander on Thursday made the first U.S. touchdown on the moon in more than 50 years, but managed just a weak signal back until flight controllers scrambled to gain better contact.
Despite the spotty communication, Intuitive Machines, the company that built and managed the craft, confirmed that it had landed upright. But it did not provide additional details, including whether the lander had reached its intended destination near the moon’s south pole. The company ended its live webcast soon after identifying a lone, weak signal from the lander.
“We can confirm, without a doubt, our equipment is on the surface of the moon,” mission director Tim Crain reported as tension built in the company’s Houston control center.
Added Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus: “I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface and we are transmitting. Welcome to the moon.”
Data was finally starting to stream in, according to a company announcement two hours after touchdown.
The landing put the U.S. back on the surface for the first time since NASA’s famed Apollo moonwalkers.
Intuitive Machines also became the first private business to pull off a lunar landing, a feat achieved by only five countries. Another U.S. company, Astrobotic Technology, gave it a shot last month, but never made it to the moon, and the lander crashed back to Earth. Both companies are part of a NASA-supported program to kick-start the lunar economy.
Astrobotic was among the first to relay congratulations. “An incredible achievement. We can’t wait to join you on the lunar surface in the near future,” the company said via X, formerly Twitter.
Intuitive Machines “aced the landing of a lifetime,” tweeted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
The final few hours before touchdown were loaded with extra stress when the lander’s laser navigation system failed. The company’s flight control team had to press an experimental NASA laser system into action, with the lander taking an extra lap around the moon to allow time for the last-minute switch.
With this change finally in place, Odysseus descended from a moon-skimming orbit and guided itself toward the surface, aiming for a relatively flat spot among all the cliffs and craters near the south pole.
As the designated touchdown time came and went, controllers at the company’s command center anxiously awaited a signal from the spacecraft some 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away. After close to 15 minutes, the company announced it had received a weak signal from the lander.
Launched last week, the six-footed carbon fiber and titanium lander — towering 14 feet (4.3 meters) — carried six experiments for NASA. The space agency gave the company $118 million to build and fly the lander, part of its effort to commercialize lunar deliveries ahead of the planned return of astronauts in a few years.
Intuitive Machines’ entry is the latest in a series of landing attempts by countries and private outfits looking to explore the moon and, if possible, capitalize on it. Japan scored a lunar landing last month, joining earlier triumphs by Russia, U.S., China and India.
The U.S. bowed out of the lunar landscape in 1972 after NASA’s Apollo program put 12 astronauts on the surface. Astrobotic of Pittsburgh gave it a shot last month, but was derailed by a fuel leak that resulted in the lander plunging back through Earth’s atmosphere and burning up.
Intuitive Machines’ target was 186 miles (300 kilometers) shy of the south pole, around 80 degrees latitude and closer to the pole than any other spacecraft has come. The site is relatively flat, but surrounded by boulders, hills, cliffs and craters that could hold frozen water, a big part of the allure. The lander was programmed to pick, in real time, the safest spot near the so-called Malapert A crater.
The solar-powered lander was intended to operate for a week, until the long lunar night.
Besides NASA’s tech and navigation experiments, Intuitive Machines sold space on the lander to Columbia Sportswear to fly its newest insulating jacket fabric; sculptor Jeff Koons for 125 mini moon figurines; and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for a set of cameras to capture pictures of the descending lander.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Marcia Dunn
Published Feb 22, 2024 • Last updated 2 days ago • 3 minute read
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A private lander on Thursday made the first U.S. touchdown on the moon in more than 50 years, but managed just a weak signal back until flight controllers scrambled to gain better contact.
Despite the spotty communication, Intuitive Machines, the company that built and managed the craft, confirmed that it had landed upright. But it did not provide additional details, including whether the lander had reached its intended destination near the moon’s south pole. The company ended its live webcast soon after identifying a lone, weak signal from the lander.
“We can confirm, without a doubt, our equipment is on the surface of the moon,” mission director Tim Crain reported as tension built in the company’s Houston control center.
Added Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus: “I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface and we are transmitting. Welcome to the moon.”
Data was finally starting to stream in, according to a company announcement two hours after touchdown.
The landing put the U.S. back on the surface for the first time since NASA’s famed Apollo moonwalkers.
Intuitive Machines also became the first private business to pull off a lunar landing, a feat achieved by only five countries. Another U.S. company, Astrobotic Technology, gave it a shot last month, but never made it to the moon, and the lander crashed back to Earth. Both companies are part of a NASA-supported program to kick-start the lunar economy.
Astrobotic was among the first to relay congratulations. “An incredible achievement. We can’t wait to join you on the lunar surface in the near future,” the company said via X, formerly Twitter.
Intuitive Machines “aced the landing of a lifetime,” tweeted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
The final few hours before touchdown were loaded with extra stress when the lander’s laser navigation system failed. The company’s flight control team had to press an experimental NASA laser system into action, with the lander taking an extra lap around the moon to allow time for the last-minute switch.
With this change finally in place, Odysseus descended from a moon-skimming orbit and guided itself toward the surface, aiming for a relatively flat spot among all the cliffs and craters near the south pole.
As the designated touchdown time came and went, controllers at the company’s command center anxiously awaited a signal from the spacecraft some 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away. After close to 15 minutes, the company announced it had received a weak signal from the lander.
Launched last week, the six-footed carbon fiber and titanium lander — towering 14 feet (4.3 meters) — carried six experiments for NASA. The space agency gave the company $118 million to build and fly the lander, part of its effort to commercialize lunar deliveries ahead of the planned return of astronauts in a few years.
Intuitive Machines’ entry is the latest in a series of landing attempts by countries and private outfits looking to explore the moon and, if possible, capitalize on it. Japan scored a lunar landing last month, joining earlier triumphs by Russia, U.S., China and India.
The U.S. bowed out of the lunar landscape in 1972 after NASA’s Apollo program put 12 astronauts on the surface. Astrobotic of Pittsburgh gave it a shot last month, but was derailed by a fuel leak that resulted in the lander plunging back through Earth’s atmosphere and burning up.
Intuitive Machines’ target was 186 miles (300 kilometers) shy of the south pole, around 80 degrees latitude and closer to the pole than any other spacecraft has come. The site is relatively flat, but surrounded by boulders, hills, cliffs and craters that could hold frozen water, a big part of the allure. The lander was programmed to pick, in real time, the safest spot near the so-called Malapert A crater.
The solar-powered lander was intended to operate for a week, until the long lunar night.
Besides NASA’s tech and navigation experiments, Intuitive Machines sold space on the lander to Columbia Sportswear to fly its newest insulating jacket fabric; sculptor Jeff Koons for 125 mini moon figurines; and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for a set of cameras to capture pictures of the descending lander.
Private lander makes first U.S. moon landing in more than 50 years
The landing put the U.S. back on the surface for the first time since NASA’s famed Apollo moonwalkers.
Lander ’alive and well’ after company scores first U.S. moon landing since Apollo era
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Marcia Dunn
Published Feb 23, 2024 • 2 minute read
In this photo courtesy of Intuitive Machines, Odysseus passes over the near side of the Moon following lunar orbit during the IM-1 mission on Feb. 21, 2024.
In this photo courtesy of Intuitive Machines, Odysseus passes over the near side of the Moon following lunar orbit during the IM-1 mission on Feb. 21, 2024. PHOTO BY HANDOUT/INTUITIVE MACHINES /AFP via Getty Images
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —- The moon’s newest arrival was said to be “alive and well” a day after making the first U.S. landing in half a century, but flight controllers were still trying to get a better handle on its bearings.
Intuitive Machines reported Friday that it’s communicating with its lander, Odysseus, and sending commands to acquire science data. But it noted: “We continue to learn more about the vehicle’s specific information” regarding location, overall health and positioning.
The Houston company was shooting for the south polar region, near the Malapert A crater, closer to the pole than anyone else so NASA could scout out the area before astronauts show up later this decade.
With Thursday’s touchdown, Intuitive Machines became the first private business to pull off a moon landing, a feat previously achieved by only five countries. The mission was sponsored in large part by NASA, whose experiments were on board. NASA paid $118 million for the delivery under a program meant to jump-start the lunar economy.
In this Feb. 21, 2024, photo courtesy of Intuitive Machines, shows an image by the Odysseus' Terrain Relative Navigation camera of the Bel'kovich K crater in the Moon's northern equatorial highlands as the lunar lander prepares for its landing.
In this Feb. 21, 2024, photo courtesy of Intuitive Machines, shows an image by the Odysseus’ Terrain Relative Navigation camera of the Bel’kovich K crater in the Moon’s northern equatorial highlands as the lunar lander prepares for its landing. PHOTO BY HANDOUT/INTUITIVE MACHINES /AFP via Getty Images
One of the NASA experiments was pressed into service when the lander’s navigation system failed in the final few hours before touchdown. The lander took an extra lap around the moon to allow time for the last-minute switch to NASA’s laser system.
“Odie is a scrapper,” mission director Tim Crain said late Thursday via X, formerly Twitter.
Another experiment, a cube with four cameras, was supposed to pop off 30 seconds before touchdown to capture pictures of Odysseus’ landing. But Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s EagleCam was deliberately powered off during the final descent because of the navigation switch and stayed attached to the lander.
Embry-Riddle’s Troy Henderson said his team will try to release EagleCam in the coming days, so it can photograph the lander from roughly 26 feet (8 meters) away.
With lingering uncertainty over Odysseus’ position on the moon, “getting that final picture of the lander on the surface is still an incredibly important task for us,” Henderson told The Associated Press.
Intuitive Machines anticipates just a week of operations on the moon for the solar-powered lander, before lunar nightfall hits.
The company was the second business to aim for the moon under NASA’s commercial lunar services program. Last month, Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology gave it a shot, but a fuel leak on the lander cut the mission short and the craft ended up crashing back to Earth.
Until Thursday, the U.S. had not landed on the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out NASA’s famed moon-landing program in December 1972. NASA’s new effort to return astronauts to the moon is named Artemis after Apollo’s mythological twin sister. The first Artemis crew landing is planned for 2026 at the earliest.
![moon-lander2-scaled-e1708716514435[1].jpg](https://forums.canadiancontent.net/data/attachments/19/19550-a9d8841fdefe1355ffe18d825cd8349a.jpg "moon-lander2-scaled-e1708716514435[1].jpg")
![moon-lander-scaled[1].jpg](https://forums.canadiancontent.net/data/attachments/19/19549-e249a7df84a801becd9855f9243a4bb7.jpg "moon-lander-scaled[1].jpg")
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Marcia Dunn
Published Feb 23, 2024 • 2 minute read
In this photo courtesy of Intuitive Machines, Odysseus passes over the near side of the Moon following lunar orbit during the IM-1 mission on Feb. 21, 2024.
In this photo courtesy of Intuitive Machines, Odysseus passes over the near side of the Moon following lunar orbit during the IM-1 mission on Feb. 21, 2024. PHOTO BY HANDOUT/INTUITIVE MACHINES /AFP via Getty Images
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —- The moon’s newest arrival was said to be “alive and well” a day after making the first U.S. landing in half a century, but flight controllers were still trying to get a better handle on its bearings.
Intuitive Machines reported Friday that it’s communicating with its lander, Odysseus, and sending commands to acquire science data. But it noted: “We continue to learn more about the vehicle’s specific information” regarding location, overall health and positioning.
The Houston company was shooting for the south polar region, near the Malapert A crater, closer to the pole than anyone else so NASA could scout out the area before astronauts show up later this decade.
With Thursday’s touchdown, Intuitive Machines became the first private business to pull off a moon landing, a feat previously achieved by only five countries. The mission was sponsored in large part by NASA, whose experiments were on board. NASA paid $118 million for the delivery under a program meant to jump-start the lunar economy.
In this Feb. 21, 2024, photo courtesy of Intuitive Machines, shows an image by the Odysseus' Terrain Relative Navigation camera of the Bel'kovich K crater in the Moon's northern equatorial highlands as the lunar lander prepares for its landing.
In this Feb. 21, 2024, photo courtesy of Intuitive Machines, shows an image by the Odysseus’ Terrain Relative Navigation camera of the Bel’kovich K crater in the Moon’s northern equatorial highlands as the lunar lander prepares for its landing. PHOTO BY HANDOUT/INTUITIVE MACHINES /AFP via Getty Images
One of the NASA experiments was pressed into service when the lander’s navigation system failed in the final few hours before touchdown. The lander took an extra lap around the moon to allow time for the last-minute switch to NASA’s laser system.
“Odie is a scrapper,” mission director Tim Crain said late Thursday via X, formerly Twitter.
Another experiment, a cube with four cameras, was supposed to pop off 30 seconds before touchdown to capture pictures of Odysseus’ landing. But Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s EagleCam was deliberately powered off during the final descent because of the navigation switch and stayed attached to the lander.
Embry-Riddle’s Troy Henderson said his team will try to release EagleCam in the coming days, so it can photograph the lander from roughly 26 feet (8 meters) away.
With lingering uncertainty over Odysseus’ position on the moon, “getting that final picture of the lander on the surface is still an incredibly important task for us,” Henderson told The Associated Press.
Intuitive Machines anticipates just a week of operations on the moon for the solar-powered lander, before lunar nightfall hits.
The company was the second business to aim for the moon under NASA’s commercial lunar services program. Last month, Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology gave it a shot, but a fuel leak on the lander cut the mission short and the craft ended up crashing back to Earth.
Until Thursday, the U.S. had not landed on the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out NASA’s famed moon-landing program in December 1972. NASA’s new effort to return astronauts to the moon is named Artemis after Apollo’s mythological twin sister. The first Artemis crew landing is planned for 2026 at the earliest.
Lander ’alive and well’ after company scores first U.S. moon landing since Apollo era
The moon's newest arrival was said to be "alive and well" a day after making the first U.S. landing in half a century.
The sun just launched three huge solar flares in 24 hours. What it means
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Matthew Cappucci, The Washington Post
Published Feb 23, 2024 • 3 minute read
Solar flares
Three top-tier X-class solar flares launched off the sun between Wednesday and Thursday. The first two occurred seven hours apart, coming in at X1.9 and X1.6 magnitude respectively. The third, the most powerful of the current 11-year “solar cycle,” ranked an impressive X6.3.
Solar flares, or bursts of radiation, are ranked on a scale that goes from A, B and C to M and X, in increasing order of intensity. They usually originate from sunspots, or bruiselike discolorations on the surface of the sun.
Sunspots are most common near the height of the 11-year solar cycle. The current cycle, number 25, is expected to reach its peak this year. The more sunspots, the more opportunities for solar flares.
Solar flares and accompanying coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, can influence “space weather” across the solar system, and even here on Earth. CMEs are slower shock waves of magnetic energy from the sun. Flares can reach Earth in minutes, but CMEs usually take at least a day.
All three of the X-class solar flares disrupted shortwave radio communications on Earth. But the first two flares did not release a CME; the verdict is still out regarding whether the third flare did.
Three flares, three radio blackouts
High-frequency radio waves propagate by bouncing off electrons in Earth’s ionosphere. That’s a layer of Earth’s atmosphere between 50 and 600 miles above the ground
When a solar flare occurs, that radiation travels toward Earth at the speed of light. It can ionize additional particles in the lower ionosphere. Radio waves sent from devices below it then impact that extra-ionized layer and lose energy, and aren’t able to be bent by ions at the top of the ionosphere. That means signals can’t travel very far, and radio blackouts are possible.
Three back-to-back radio blackouts occurred in response to the trio of flares, but primarily over the Pacific and Indian oceans. They were rated “R3” or greater on a 1 through 5 scale.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, that results in a “wide area blackout of [high frequency] radio communication, [and] loss of radio contact for about an hour on sunlit side of Earth.” Low-frequency navigation signals, like those used on aircraft traveling overseas, can be degraded too.
Disruptions to AT&T cell service?
There was rampant speculation that Thursday morning’s pervasive AT&T blackout was tied to Wednesday’s solar flares. The Space Weather Prediction Center, however, released a statement noting that “it is unlikely that these flares contributed to the widely reported cellular network outage.”
Joe Kunches, former chief of operations at the center, told The Washington Post that “there is no chance” of any connection.
“First it occurred in the night hours for North America, so any possible impact would have not occurred here. Flares and their associated radio bursts only impact dayside systems if at all,” Kunches said in an email. “And, even if this was to occur during your daylight hours, chances are near nil that cell service would be affected.”
Solar flares don’t usually affect cellphone frequencies. Radio blackouts associated with solar flares affect transmissions in the high-frequency 3 to 30 megahertz band. Most cellphone carriers operate between 698 and 806 megahertz.
Finally, Wednesday’s flares didn’t unleash CMEs. Such blasts can induce electric currents that can overwhelm circuitry in satellites and even knock them offline or destroy them. In February of 2022, 40 SpaceX satellites were knocked out by a CME. Even had there been a CME, it probably would have taken more than a day to reach Earth.
Potential Earth effects
Because the first two flares on Wednesday didn’t release CMEs, it means skywatchers won’t be treated to displays of the northern lights, as is often the case when such geomagnetic storms reach Earth.
The third solar flare, which was the biggest and occurred Thursday evening Eastern time, may have launched a CME, but forecasters don’t know yet. They’re awaiting coronagraph data. Since CMEs are slower-moving than solar flares it generally takes several hours for them to fully radiate away from the solar disk and become visible on sensors.
Still, there are more opportunities for X-class flares and CMEs in the days ahead. The parent sunspot cluster that launched all three, dubbed “Active Region 3590,” is still crackling.
The sunspot is so big that you can view it with your own eyes – but you’ll need eclipse glasses to do so safely.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Washington Post
Washington Post
Matthew Cappucci, The Washington Post
Published Feb 23, 2024 • 3 minute read
Solar flares
Three top-tier X-class solar flares launched off the sun between Wednesday and Thursday. The first two occurred seven hours apart, coming in at X1.9 and X1.6 magnitude respectively. The third, the most powerful of the current 11-year “solar cycle,” ranked an impressive X6.3.
Solar flares, or bursts of radiation, are ranked on a scale that goes from A, B and C to M and X, in increasing order of intensity. They usually originate from sunspots, or bruiselike discolorations on the surface of the sun.
Sunspots are most common near the height of the 11-year solar cycle. The current cycle, number 25, is expected to reach its peak this year. The more sunspots, the more opportunities for solar flares.
Solar flares and accompanying coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, can influence “space weather” across the solar system, and even here on Earth. CMEs are slower shock waves of magnetic energy from the sun. Flares can reach Earth in minutes, but CMEs usually take at least a day.
All three of the X-class solar flares disrupted shortwave radio communications on Earth. But the first two flares did not release a CME; the verdict is still out regarding whether the third flare did.
Three flares, three radio blackouts
High-frequency radio waves propagate by bouncing off electrons in Earth’s ionosphere. That’s a layer of Earth’s atmosphere between 50 and 600 miles above the ground
When a solar flare occurs, that radiation travels toward Earth at the speed of light. It can ionize additional particles in the lower ionosphere. Radio waves sent from devices below it then impact that extra-ionized layer and lose energy, and aren’t able to be bent by ions at the top of the ionosphere. That means signals can’t travel very far, and radio blackouts are possible.
Three back-to-back radio blackouts occurred in response to the trio of flares, but primarily over the Pacific and Indian oceans. They were rated “R3” or greater on a 1 through 5 scale.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, that results in a “wide area blackout of [high frequency] radio communication, [and] loss of radio contact for about an hour on sunlit side of Earth.” Low-frequency navigation signals, like those used on aircraft traveling overseas, can be degraded too.
Disruptions to AT&T cell service?
There was rampant speculation that Thursday morning’s pervasive AT&T blackout was tied to Wednesday’s solar flares. The Space Weather Prediction Center, however, released a statement noting that “it is unlikely that these flares contributed to the widely reported cellular network outage.”
Joe Kunches, former chief of operations at the center, told The Washington Post that “there is no chance” of any connection.
“First it occurred in the night hours for North America, so any possible impact would have not occurred here. Flares and their associated radio bursts only impact dayside systems if at all,” Kunches said in an email. “And, even if this was to occur during your daylight hours, chances are near nil that cell service would be affected.”
Solar flares don’t usually affect cellphone frequencies. Radio blackouts associated with solar flares affect transmissions in the high-frequency 3 to 30 megahertz band. Most cellphone carriers operate between 698 and 806 megahertz.
Finally, Wednesday’s flares didn’t unleash CMEs. Such blasts can induce electric currents that can overwhelm circuitry in satellites and even knock them offline or destroy them. In February of 2022, 40 SpaceX satellites were knocked out by a CME. Even had there been a CME, it probably would have taken more than a day to reach Earth.
Potential Earth effects
Because the first two flares on Wednesday didn’t release CMEs, it means skywatchers won’t be treated to displays of the northern lights, as is often the case when such geomagnetic storms reach Earth.
The third solar flare, which was the biggest and occurred Thursday evening Eastern time, may have launched a CME, but forecasters don’t know yet. They’re awaiting coronagraph data. Since CMEs are slower-moving than solar flares it generally takes several hours for them to fully radiate away from the solar disk and become visible on sensors.
Still, there are more opportunities for X-class flares and CMEs in the days ahead. The parent sunspot cluster that launched all three, dubbed “Active Region 3590,” is still crackling.
The sunspot is so big that you can view it with your own eyes – but you’ll need eclipse glasses to do so safely.
The sun just launched three huge solar flares in 24 hours. What it means
Three top-tier X-class solar flares launched off the sun between Wednesday and Thursday.
Astronomers spot new tiny moons around Neptune and Uranus
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Christina Larson
Published Feb 23, 2024 • 1 minute read
The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced Friday , Feb. 23, 2024, that astronomers have found three previously unknown moons in our solar system -- two additional moons circling Neptune and one around Uranus. (NASA via AP)
The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced Friday , Feb. 23, 2024, that astronomers have found three previously unknown moons in our solar system -- two additional moons circling Neptune and one around Uranus. (NASA via AP) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Astronomers have found three previously unknown moons in our solar system — two additional moons circling Neptune and one around Uranus.
The distant tiny moons were spotted using powerful land-based telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, and announced Friday by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.
The latest tally puts Neptune at 16 known moons and Uranus at 28.
One of Neptune’s new moons has the longest known orbital journey yet. It takes around 27 years for the small outer moon to complete one lap around Neptune, the vast icy planet farthest from the sun, said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington who helped make the discovery.
The new moon orbiting Uranus, with an estimated diameter of just 5 miles (8 kilometers), is likely the smallest of the planet’s moons.
“We suspect that there may be many more smaller moons” yet to be discovered, he said.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Christina Larson
Published Feb 23, 2024 • 1 minute read
The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced Friday , Feb. 23, 2024, that astronomers have found three previously unknown moons in our solar system -- two additional moons circling Neptune and one around Uranus. (NASA via AP)
The International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center announced Friday , Feb. 23, 2024, that astronomers have found three previously unknown moons in our solar system -- two additional moons circling Neptune and one around Uranus. (NASA via AP) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Astronomers have found three previously unknown moons in our solar system — two additional moons circling Neptune and one around Uranus.
The distant tiny moons were spotted using powerful land-based telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, and announced Friday by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.
The latest tally puts Neptune at 16 known moons and Uranus at 28.
One of Neptune’s new moons has the longest known orbital journey yet. It takes around 27 years for the small outer moon to complete one lap around Neptune, the vast icy planet farthest from the sun, said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington who helped make the discovery.
The new moon orbiting Uranus, with an estimated diameter of just 5 miles (8 kilometers), is likely the smallest of the planet’s moons.
“We suspect that there may be many more smaller moons” yet to be discovered, he said.
Astronomers spot new tiny moons around Neptune and Uranus
The latest tally puts Neptune at 16 known moons and Uranus at 28.
Sideways moon landing cuts mission short, private U.S. lunar lander will stop working Tuesday
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Marcia Dunn
Published Feb 26, 2024 • 3 minute read
Moon-Landing
This image provided by Intuitive Machines shows its Odysseus lunar lander which captured this image approximately 35 seconds after pitching over during its approach to the landing site.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private U.S. lunar lander is expected to stop working Tuesday, its mission cut short after landing sideways near the south pole of the moon.
Intuitive Machines, the Houston company that built and flew the spacecraft, said Monday it will continue to collect data until sunlight no longer shines on the solar panels. Based on the position of Earth and the moon, officials expect that to happen Tuesday morning. That’s two to three days short of the week or so that NASA and other customers had been counting on.
The lander, named Odysseus, is the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon in more than 50 years, carrying experiments for NASA, the main sponsor. But it came in too fast last Thursday and the foot of one of its six legs caught on the surface, causing it to tumble over, according to company officials.
Based on photos from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter flying overhead, Odysseus landed within a mile or so (1.5 kilometers) of its intended target near the Malapert A crater, just 185 miles or so (300 kilometers) from the moon’s south pole.
The LRO photos from 56 miles (90 kilometers) up are the only ones showing the lander on the surface, but as little more than a spot in the grainy images. A camera-ejecting experiment by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, to capture images of the lander as they both descended, was called off shortly before touchdown because of a last-minute navigation issue.
According to NASA, the lander ended up in a small, degraded crater with a 12-degree slope. That’s the closest a spacecraft has ever come to the south pole, an area of interest because of suspected frozen water in the permanently shadowed craters there.
NASA, which plans to land astronauts in this region in the next few years, paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six experiments to the surface. Other customers also had items on board.
Instead of landing upright, the 14-foot (4.3-meter) Odysseus came down on its side, hampering communication with Earth. Some antennas were covered up by the toppled lander, and the ones still exposed ended up near the ground, resulting in spotty communications. The solar panels also ended up much closer to the surface than anticipated, less than ideal in the hilly terrain. Even under the best of circumstances, Odysseus only had a week to operate on the surface before the long lunar night set in.
Since the 1960s, only the U.S., Russia, China, India and Japan have successfully pulled off moon landings, and only the U.S. with crews. Japan’s lander ended up on the wrong side, too, just last month.
Despite its slanted landing, Intuitive Machines became the first private business to join the elite group. Another U.S. company, Astrobotic Technology, gave it a try last month, but didn’t make it to the moon because of a fuel leak.
Intuitive Machines almost failed, too. Ground teams did not turn on the switch for the lander’s navigating lasers before the Feb. 15 liftoff from Florida. The oversight was not discovered until Odysseus was circling the moon, forcing flight controllers to rely on a NASA laser-navigating device that was on board merely as an experiment.
As it turned out, NASA’s test lasers guided Odysseus to a close to bull’s-eye landing, resulting in the first moon landing by a U.S. spacecraft since the Apollo program.
Twelve Apollo astronauts walked on the moon from 1969 through 1972. While NASA went on to put an occasional satellite around the moon, the U.S. did not launch another moon-landing mission until last month. Astrobotic’s failed flight was the first under NASA’s program to promote commercial deliveries to the moon.
Both Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic hold NASA contracts for more moon landings.
torontosun.com
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Marcia Dunn
Published Feb 26, 2024 • 3 minute read
Moon-Landing
This image provided by Intuitive Machines shows its Odysseus lunar lander which captured this image approximately 35 seconds after pitching over during its approach to the landing site.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private U.S. lunar lander is expected to stop working Tuesday, its mission cut short after landing sideways near the south pole of the moon.
Intuitive Machines, the Houston company that built and flew the spacecraft, said Monday it will continue to collect data until sunlight no longer shines on the solar panels. Based on the position of Earth and the moon, officials expect that to happen Tuesday morning. That’s two to three days short of the week or so that NASA and other customers had been counting on.
The lander, named Odysseus, is the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon in more than 50 years, carrying experiments for NASA, the main sponsor. But it came in too fast last Thursday and the foot of one of its six legs caught on the surface, causing it to tumble over, according to company officials.
Based on photos from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter flying overhead, Odysseus landed within a mile or so (1.5 kilometers) of its intended target near the Malapert A crater, just 185 miles or so (300 kilometers) from the moon’s south pole.
The LRO photos from 56 miles (90 kilometers) up are the only ones showing the lander on the surface, but as little more than a spot in the grainy images. A camera-ejecting experiment by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, to capture images of the lander as they both descended, was called off shortly before touchdown because of a last-minute navigation issue.
According to NASA, the lander ended up in a small, degraded crater with a 12-degree slope. That’s the closest a spacecraft has ever come to the south pole, an area of interest because of suspected frozen water in the permanently shadowed craters there.
NASA, which plans to land astronauts in this region in the next few years, paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six experiments to the surface. Other customers also had items on board.
Instead of landing upright, the 14-foot (4.3-meter) Odysseus came down on its side, hampering communication with Earth. Some antennas were covered up by the toppled lander, and the ones still exposed ended up near the ground, resulting in spotty communications. The solar panels also ended up much closer to the surface than anticipated, less than ideal in the hilly terrain. Even under the best of circumstances, Odysseus only had a week to operate on the surface before the long lunar night set in.
Since the 1960s, only the U.S., Russia, China, India and Japan have successfully pulled off moon landings, and only the U.S. with crews. Japan’s lander ended up on the wrong side, too, just last month.
Despite its slanted landing, Intuitive Machines became the first private business to join the elite group. Another U.S. company, Astrobotic Technology, gave it a try last month, but didn’t make it to the moon because of a fuel leak.
Intuitive Machines almost failed, too. Ground teams did not turn on the switch for the lander’s navigating lasers before the Feb. 15 liftoff from Florida. The oversight was not discovered until Odysseus was circling the moon, forcing flight controllers to rely on a NASA laser-navigating device that was on board merely as an experiment.
As it turned out, NASA’s test lasers guided Odysseus to a close to bull’s-eye landing, resulting in the first moon landing by a U.S. spacecraft since the Apollo program.
Twelve Apollo astronauts walked on the moon from 1969 through 1972. While NASA went on to put an occasional satellite around the moon, the U.S. did not launch another moon-landing mission until last month. Astrobotic’s failed flight was the first under NASA’s program to promote commercial deliveries to the moon.
Both Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic hold NASA contracts for more moon landings.
Sideways moon landing cuts mission short, private U.S. lunar lander will stop working Tuesday
Private U.S. lunar lander will stop working Tuesday.
How and where to watch upcoming solar eclipse – a 'rare celestial event'
The eclipse will peak at 3:19 in Toronto
Author of the article:Jane Stevenson
Published Mar 03, 2024 • Last updated 16 hours ago • 2 minute read
The total solar eclipse slated to darken Ontario’s skies on April 8 will provide a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see such a celestial event.
The last total solar eclipse visible in our province was in 1979 and the next one will be in 2099.
In other words, this is not one to miss.
“A total solar eclipse is when the moon aligns perfectly between the Earth and the sun, casting its shadow onto our planet and creating a path of totality,” said Daliah Bibas, the Ontario Science Centre’s astronomy and space sciences researcher-programmer.
“And this path of totality will be over Mexico, the United States and Canada. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness this for sure,” added Bibas. “So it’ll be a pretty spectacular view. I think it’s so important because these rare celestial events bring people together to watch and witness and reflect on our place in the cosmos.”
The eclipse will be visible in Toronto between 2:04 p.m. and 4:31 p.m., with the peak occurring at 3:19 p.m.
But don’t look directly at the eclipse without the protection of safe solar view glasses or a filter that meets the international standard — ISO 12312-2 — or through appropriate handheld solar eclipse viewers or lenses.
“Sunglasses — no matter how dark they are — are not safe to use during an eclipse, even if you’re at 99% totality,” said Bibas.
“It’s important to use solar eclipse glasses that are ISO compliant, which is an international standard, which ensures the filters meet strict safety requirements for viewing the sun.”
If you plan to view the eclipse in Toronto, Bibas recommended going to a location which provides an open view of the sky such as a park or maybe even a backyard.
“We are actually encouraging people to watch the solar eclipse safely from home or go to the path of totality, which is so close,” said Bibas. “Cities like Hamilton and Fort Erie and Niagara Falls, Oakville, Burlington — all of the cities — are in the path of totality. So we’re encouraging people to take a little field trip and view the total solar eclipse there.”
Bibas said eclipse viewers may also notice or hear nocturnal animals like frogs and crickets come out during the darkness, and to see day dwellers like birds go to sleep or stay quiet until the light returns.
The Ontario Science Centre will have pre-eclipse programming on April 6–7, at the Special Exhibition Hall, level 6, from 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
torontosun.com
The eclipse will peak at 3:19 in Toronto
Author of the article:Jane Stevenson
Published Mar 03, 2024 • Last updated 16 hours ago • 2 minute read
The total solar eclipse slated to darken Ontario’s skies on April 8 will provide a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see such a celestial event.
The last total solar eclipse visible in our province was in 1979 and the next one will be in 2099.
In other words, this is not one to miss.
“A total solar eclipse is when the moon aligns perfectly between the Earth and the sun, casting its shadow onto our planet and creating a path of totality,” said Daliah Bibas, the Ontario Science Centre’s astronomy and space sciences researcher-programmer.
“And this path of totality will be over Mexico, the United States and Canada. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness this for sure,” added Bibas. “So it’ll be a pretty spectacular view. I think it’s so important because these rare celestial events bring people together to watch and witness and reflect on our place in the cosmos.”
The eclipse will be visible in Toronto between 2:04 p.m. and 4:31 p.m., with the peak occurring at 3:19 p.m.
But don’t look directly at the eclipse without the protection of safe solar view glasses or a filter that meets the international standard — ISO 12312-2 — or through appropriate handheld solar eclipse viewers or lenses.
“Sunglasses — no matter how dark they are — are not safe to use during an eclipse, even if you’re at 99% totality,” said Bibas.
“It’s important to use solar eclipse glasses that are ISO compliant, which is an international standard, which ensures the filters meet strict safety requirements for viewing the sun.”
If you plan to view the eclipse in Toronto, Bibas recommended going to a location which provides an open view of the sky such as a park or maybe even a backyard.
“We are actually encouraging people to watch the solar eclipse safely from home or go to the path of totality, which is so close,” said Bibas. “Cities like Hamilton and Fort Erie and Niagara Falls, Oakville, Burlington — all of the cities — are in the path of totality. So we’re encouraging people to take a little field trip and view the total solar eclipse there.”
Bibas said eclipse viewers may also notice or hear nocturnal animals like frogs and crickets come out during the darkness, and to see day dwellers like birds go to sleep or stay quiet until the light returns.
The Ontario Science Centre will have pre-eclipse programming on April 6–7, at the Special Exhibition Hall, level 6, from 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
How and where to watch upcoming solar eclipse – a 'rare celestial event'
The total solar eclipse slated to darken Ontario's skies on April 8 will provide a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see such a celestial event.