Astronomy

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SpaceX is getting ready to launch its massive Starship rocket tomorrow and we have all the details on the mission

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Five children have had gene therapy to treat inherited deafness, this time in both ears, following the success of earlier treatments in just one ear

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On January 19th, 2024, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully landed its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on the lunar surface. In so doing, JAXA became the fifth national space agency to achieve a soft landing on the Moon – after NASA, the Soviet space program (Interkosmos), the European Space Agency, and the China National Space Agency (CNSA). SLIM has since experienced some technical difficulties, which included upending shortly after landing, and had to be temporarily shut down after experiencing power problems when its first lunar night began.

On the Moon, the day/night cycle lasts fourteen days at a time, which has a drastic effect on missions that rely on solar panels. Nevertheless, SLIM managed to reorient its panels and recharge itself and has survived three consecutive lunar nights since it landed. However, when another lunar night began on May 27th, JAXA announced that they had failed to establish communications with the lander. As a result, all science operations were terminated while mission controllers attempt to reestablish communications, which could happen later this month.

As JAXA stated via its official X account (formerly Twitter):

“We tried again on the night of the 27th, but there was no response from #SLIM. As the sun went down around SLIM on the night of the 27th, it became impossible to generate electricity, so unfortunately this month’s operation will end. Thank you very much for the overwhelming support you have shown us since our post the day before.”

27??????????????????#SLIM ???????????????27??????SLIM??????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????#JAXA

— ????????SLIM (@SLIM_JAXA) May 28, 2024

JAXA further indicated that the command transmission to restore communication was performed using an “unplanned ground station antenna” and with the cooperation of JAXA’s tracking network.” They also indicated that they plan to try reestablishing communications once the current lunar night ends later this month – at which point, they expect the lander will be recharged. “The power was turned off overnight, so we hope that the whole system will be reset and restarted,” they wrote.

The SLIM mission also carried two rovers, which separated from it in lunar orbit and landed independently on the same day. Known as the Lunar Excursion Vehicle-1 and -2 (LEV-1 and LEV-2), these rovers are the first Japanese robotic missions to traverse and explore the lunar surface. According to JAXA, LEV-1 is the world’s first “hopping exploration rover” while LEV-2 is the world’s smallest and lightest. During the four months since they landed, LEV-1 has measure the local temperatures, topography, and taken images.

The rovers can conduct operations autonomously and transmit data to Earth directly without assistance from the lander. As such, JAXA’s mission controllers are still likely to hear from LEV-1 and LEV-2 while attempting to restore communications with SLIM.

Further Reading: Twitter.com

The post Japan’s Lunar Lander Fails to Check-in appeared first on Universe Today.

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For a small, lumpy chunk of rock that barely reflects any light, Mars’ Moon Phobos draws a lot of attention. Maybe because it’s one of only two moons to orbit the planet, and its origins are unclear. But some of the attention is probably because we have such great images of it.

Phobos is the largest of Mars’ two moons, the other one being Deimos. Scientists are uncertain about their history. They could be a pair of captured main-belt asteroids, two lobes of what once was a binary asteroid until capture separated them, or a second-generation object formed after Mars had already formed. Or they could be surviving fragments from an ancient collision between more massive objects.

Phobos isn’t very large. It’s about 26 km × 23 km × 18 km and not massive enough to be rounded. Studies of its density show that it’s a rubble-pile body loosely held together by its own gravity.

When the ESA launched its Mars Express Orbiter in 2003, its mission was to study Mars. One of its instruments is the High-Resolution Stereo Camera, a German contribution that produces colour images with up to two meters resolution. The instrument also has a black-and-white mode, and the original image of Phobos was black-and-white.

Andrea Luck is a skilled image processor from Glasgow, Scotland, with a healthy enthusiasm for space images. He decided the original B&W image, which he describes as epic, needed to be updated to colour. “I was kinda tired of seeing this epic photo online only in black and white, so I decided to jazz it up with some colours!” he wrote on his Flickr page.

It’s interesting to note that it’s a single image, not a composite.

Here’s the original B&W image.

This is the original image from the High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. It caught Phobos over Mars’ limb on March 26, 2010. The waviness of Mars in the background is a by-product of HRSC’s line-scanning operation. Image Credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin (G. Neukum)

The HRSC’s mission is to take stereographic images of Mars’ surface, capturing geological and morphological details. The goal is to map as much of the surface as possible. But at the bottom of its list of objectives are images of Phobos and Deimos.

The HRSC captured this image of Phobos in 2017. It shows the Stickney Crater, Phobos’ largest impact crater, and the unusual grooves on the moon’s surface. Mars Express images helped scientists conclude that the grooves are likely from impact ejecta. Image Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin. CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Images of Phobos have helped scientists better understand the odd moon, but they’re not enough to reach solid conclusions. Fortunately, a mission to Phobos and its sibling Deimos will be launched in a couple of years.

JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, is launching the MMX mission in 2026. MMX stands for Martian Moons Exploration. Its goal is to understand the origins of Phobos and Deimos. MMX will also return a sample from Phobos in 2031. Once in Earthly labs, those samples should reveal a lot.

But for now, we can enjoy this processed image of Phobos, which captures its nature as a fast-moving, rubble-pile moon with uncertain origins.

The post How Mars’ Moon Phobos Captures Our Imaginations appeared first on Universe Today.