These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights, that give a name to every fixed star, have no more profit of their shining nights than those that walk and know not what they are.

— William Shakespeare

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H5N1 Bird Flu Isn’t a Human Pandemic—Yet

Scientific American.com - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 7:00am

Americans don’t like being told what to do, and many don’t trust government. These stubborn attitudes might turn H5N1 bird flu into a pandemic

Categories: Astronomy

Glasses coated in lithium could let us see in the dark

New Scientist Space - Cosmology - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 6:47am
A film made of lithium niobate and gratings of silicon dioxide converts infrared light into visible light better than the other leading compound, potentially allowing nighttime vision
Categories: Astronomy

Glasses coated in lithium could let us see in the dark

New Scientist Space - Space Headlines - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 6:47am
A film made of lithium niobate and gratings of silicon dioxide converts infrared light into visible light better than the other leading compound, potentially allowing nighttime vision
Categories: Astronomy

New ‘FLiRT’ COVID Variants Could Be Driving an Uptick in Cases. Here’s How to Avoid Them

Scientific American.com - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 6:45am

COVID numbers are low, but some evidence suggests they could be rising. Here’s how to protect yourself this summer, according to experts

Categories: Astronomy

Empathetic Parenting Benefits Teens into Adulthood

Scientific American.com - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 6:45am

A 25-year study shows that teens who receive empathy from their parents give more empathy to their peers and, later, their own children

Categories: Astronomy

Starship launch 4: What time is the SpaceX flight tomorrow?

New Scientist Space - Cosmology - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 6:01am
SpaceX is getting ready to launch its massive Starship rocket tomorrow and we have all the details on the mission
Categories: Astronomy

Starship launch 4: What time is the SpaceX flight tomorrow?

New Scientist Space - Space Headlines - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 6:01am
SpaceX is getting ready to launch its massive Starship rocket tomorrow and we have all the details on the mission
Categories: Astronomy

Gene therapy enables five children who were born deaf to hear

New Scientist Space - Cosmology - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 6:00am
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
Categories: Astronomy

Gene therapy enables five children who were born deaf to hear

New Scientist Space - Space Headlines - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 6:00am
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
Categories: Astronomy

Aurora-like STEVE phenomenon has a 'secret twin' that appears only before dawn, study finds

Space.com - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 6:00am
An atmospheric phenomenon known as STEVE has a secret twin that appears before the break of dawn and flows in the opposite direction, new research finds.
Categories: Astronomy

Eating Cicadas and Other Bugs Could Be Sustainable and Delicious

Scientific American.com - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 6:00am

Make the best of the “double brood” of cicadas with insect kimchi and tempura-fried bugs.

Categories: Astronomy

Father's Day telescope deals: Save $400 on Unistellar smart telescopes

Space.com - Wed, 06/05/2024 - 5:45am
These Father's Day Unistellar smart telescope deals are sitewide
Categories: Astronomy

Japan’s Lunar Lander Fails to Check-in

Universe Today - Tue, 06/04/2024 - 10:42pm

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.

Categories: Astronomy

Human-caused global warming at all-time high, new report concludes

Space.com - Tue, 06/04/2024 - 7:01pm
We have about five years worth of carbon emissions before we drive global warming beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), a new report concluded.
Categories: Astronomy

SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites, including 13 direct-to-cell craft

Space.com - Tue, 06/04/2024 - 6:32pm
SpaceX launched another batch of its Starlink internet satellites on June 4, including 13 that can beam service directly to smartphones.
Categories: Astronomy

The Hubble Space Telescope is old. Here's NASA's new plan to keep it alive through 2035

Space.com - Tue, 06/04/2024 - 6:09pm
The Hubble Space Telescope will soon go into one-gyroscope mode, a move that will decrease the iconic observatory's productivity but give it margin for the future.
Categories: Astronomy

How Mars’ Moon Phobos Captures Our Imaginations

Universe Today - Tue, 06/04/2024 - 5:41pm

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.

Categories: Astronomy

SpaceX lands FAA license for next Starship megarocket launch on June 6

Space.com - Tue, 06/04/2024 - 5:22pm
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), on Tuesday (June 4), issued a launch license to SpaceX for its Starship Flight 4 test mission currently scheduled to lift off no earlier than Thursday, June 6.
Categories: Astronomy

Intricate lava trails on Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io seen from Earth (image)

Space.com - Tue, 06/04/2024 - 5:00pm
Extremely high quality images of Jupiter's moon Io, taken by the SHARK-VIS camera on Earth, reveal a major resurfacing event.
Categories: Astronomy

NASA to Change How It Points Hubble Space Telescope

NASA - Breaking News - Tue, 06/04/2024 - 4:59pm

3 min read

NASA to Change How It Points Hubble Space Telescope This image of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was taken on May 19, 2009 after deployment during Servicing Mission 4. NASA

After completing a series of tests and carefully considering the options, NASA announced Tuesday work is underway to transition its Hubble Space Telescope to operate using only one gyroscope (gyro). While the telescope went into safe mode May 24, where it now remains until work is complete, this change will enable Hubble to continue exploring the secrets of the universe through this decade and into the next, with the majority of its observations unaffected.

Of the six gyros currently on the spacecraft, three remain active. They measure the telescope’s slew rates and are part of the system that determines and controls the direction the telescope is pointed. Over the past six months, one particular gyro has increasingly returned faulty readings, causing the spacecraft to enter safe mode multiple times and suspending science observations while the telescope awaits new instructions from the ground.

This one gyro is experiencing “saturation,” where it indicates the maximum slew rate value possible regardless of how quickly the spacecraft is slewing. Although the team has repeatedly been able to reset the gyro’s electronics to return normal readings, the results have only been temporary before the problem reappears as it did again in late May.

To return to consistent science operations, NASA is transitioning the spacecraft to a new operational mode it had long considered: Hubble will operate with only one gyro, while keeping another gyro available for future use. The spacecraft had six new gyros installed during the fifth and final space shuttle servicing mission in 2009. To date, three of those gyros remain operational, including the gyro currently experiencing problems, which the team will continue to monitor. Hubble uses three gyros to maximize efficiency but can continue to make science observations with only one gyro. NASA first developed this plan more than 20 years ago, as the best operational mode to prolong Hubble’s life and allow it to successfully provide consistent science with fewer than three working gyros. Hubble previously operated in two-gyro mode, which is negligibly different from one-gyro mode, from 2005-2009. One-gyro operations were demonstrated in 2008 for a short time with no impact to science observation quality.

While continuing to make science observations in one-gyro mode, there are some expected minor limitations. The observatory will need more time to slew and lock onto a science target and won’t have as much flexibility as to where it can observe at any given time. It also will not be able to track moving objects closer than Mars, though these are rare targets for Hubble.

The transition involves reconfiguring the spacecraft and ground system as well as assessing the impact to future planned observations. The team expects to resume science operations again by mid-June. Once in one-gyro mode, NASA anticipates Hubble will continue making new cosmic discoveries alongside other observatories, such as the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope and future Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, for years to come.

Launched in 1990, Hubble has more than doubled its expected design lifetime, and has been observing the universe for more than three decades, recently celebrating its 34th anniversary. Read more about some of Hubble’s greatest scientific discoveries.

Learn more about NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on the agency’s website:

https://www.nasa.gov/hubble

Resources
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Hubble Pointing and Control


Operating Hubble with Only One Gyroscope


Hubble Science Highlights


Hubble Images

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Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight CenterGreenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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Last Updated

Jun 04, 2024

Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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