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Adding more masts could reduce the overall energy use of phone networks by two-thirds and boost handset battery life by 50 per cent

Adding more masts could reduce the overall energy use of phone networks by two-thirds and boost handset battery life by 50 per cent

In 2013, the Hubble Space Telescope spotted water vapour on Jupiter’s moon Europa. The vapour was evidence of plumes similar to the ones on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. That, and other compelling evidence, showed that the moon has an ocean. That led to speculation that the ocean could harbour life.

But the ocean is obscured under a thick, global layer of ice, making the plumes our only way of examining the ocean. The plumes are so difficult to detect they haven’t been confirmed.

The lead author of the paper presenting Hubble’s 2013 evidence is Lorenz Roth of Southwest Research Institute. He said, “By far, the simplest explanation for this water vapour is that it erupted from plumes on the surface of Europa. If those plumes are connected with the subsurface water ocean we are confident exists under Europa’s crust, then this means that future investigations can directly investigate the chemical makeup of Europa’s potentially habitable environment without drilling through layers of ice. And that is tremendously exciting.”

It is, but first, scientists have to find the plumes.

“We pushed Hubble to its limits to see this very faint emission. These could be stealth plumes because they might be tenuous and difficult to observe in visible light,” said Joachim Saur of the University of Cologne, co-author of the 2013 paper.

This artist’s illustration shows plumes erupting through Europa’s icy surface. Gigantic Jupiter lurks in the background. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/K. Retherford/SWRI

Describing them as tenuous stealth plumes turned out to be prophetic.

Recently, a team of researchers went looking for the plumes. Their results are in a presentation given to the IAU Symposium 383 titled “ALMA Spectroscopy of Europa: A Search for Active Plumes.” The lead author is M.A. Cordiner from the Solar System Exploration Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“The subsurface ocean of Europa is a high-priority target in the search for extraterrestrial life, but direct investigations are hindered by the presence of a thick exterior ice shell,” the authors write. The researchers used ALMA to search for molecular emissions from atmospheric plumes. They were investigating processes under the ice that could help them understand Europa’s ocean and its chemistry.

The Solar System is full of icy bodies, including comets, Kuiper Belt Objects, dwarf planets, and moons like Europa. Europa has a high density compared to other icy bodies, indicating a substantial rocky interior. Its ocean makes up about 10% of the moon and is covered by an icy shell of uncertain thickness. It could be several tens of kilometres thick. Scientists learned much of this from NASA’s Galileo mission.

In recent years, Europa and its ocean have leapt to the top of the list of targets in the search for life. The reasons aren’t obscure: liquid water is an irresistible beacon in our search for habitable places. The plumes from Europa’s ocean are our only way to study the ocean and its potential habitability.

This illustration shows what the interior of Europa might look like. Geysers might erupt through cracks and fissures in the ice. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Carroll)

Over the years, different telescopes have examined Europa, searching for more evidence of the plumes. They’ve found potential intermittent plume activity near the moon’s south pole. But confirmation of the plumes the Hubble spotted in 2013 is elusive. In 2023, the JWST examined Europa. Those observations “found no evidence for active plumes, indicating that any present-day activity must be localized and weak; robust confirmation of the initial HST plume results also remains challenging,” the authors write.

In an attempt to find the plumes, the authors employed ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. They observed Europa on four separate days to cover the moon’s surface. Unfortunately, they found no plumes.

These are four ALMA images of Europa. The researchers observed the moon on four different days so they could image almost the entire surface. They found no plumes. Image Credit: Cordiner et al. 2024.

“Despite near-complete coverage of both Europa’s leading and trailing hemispheres, we find no evidence for gas phase molecular absorption or emission in our ALMA data,” the researchers write. “Using ALMA’s unique combination of high spectral/spatial resolution and sensitivity, our observations have enabled the first dedicated search for HCN, H2CO, SO2 and CH3OH in Europa’s exosphere and plumes. No evidence was found for the presence of these molecules.”

Finding no evidence doesn’t quite mean that those molecules aren’t there. Rather, it means that if they are there, their concentrations are so low they’re below the detection threshold. In this case, some concentrations would be lower than those detected in Enceladus’ plumes, which are confirmed.

One chemical in particular illustrates this point: CH3OH (methanol.) “For the CH3OH abundance, on the
other hand, our ALMA upper limit of < 0.86% would not have been sensitive enough to detect this molecule at the Enceladus plume abundance of 0.02%,” the authors write.

There are some interesting relationships between Europa and other icy objects in the Solar System. It has to do with abundance limits. The researchers established upper limits for H2CO (formaldehyde) on Europa. “Indeed, our H2CO abundance upper limit is significantly lower than measured by Cassini in the Enceladus plume, implying a possible chemical difference.”

Despite the fact that it didn’t find any plumes, the observations were still valuable. By setting detection limits it helps subsequent efforts to search for them. And this won’t be scientists’ final attempt at finding plumes. Anything that provides clues to Europa’s ocean is too tantalizing to ignore, and this research shows that ALMA is suited to this type of investigation.

“Our results show that ALMA is a powerful tool in the search for outgassing from icy bodies within the Solar System and that follow-up searches for other molecules at additional epochs (on Europa and other icy bodies) are justified,” the researchers conclude.

The post If Europa has Geysers, They’re Very Faint appeared first on Universe Today.

Several satellites caught the April 8 total solar eclipse from space, and scientists have shared the incredible footage.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has been in studying the Sun for the last six years. In 2021 it was hit directly by a coronal mass ejection when it was a mere 10 million kilometres from the solar surface. Luckily it was gathering data and images enabling scientists to piece together an amazing video. The interactions between the solar wind and the coronal mass ejection were measured giving an unprecedented view of the solar corona. 

The Sun is a fascinating object and as our local star, has been the subject of many studies. There are still mysteries though and it was hoping to unravel some of these that the NASA Parker Solar Probe was launched. It was sent on its way by the Delta IV heavy back in 2018 and has flown seven times closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before it. 

Illustration of the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the Sun. Credits: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

By the time Parker completes its seven year mission it will have completed 24 orbits of the Sun and flown to within 6.2 million kilometres to the visible surface. For this to happen, its going to get very hot so the probe has a 11.4cm thick carbon composite shield to keep its components as cool as possible in the searing 1,377 Celsius temperatures. 

Flying within the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, the probe picked up turbulence inside a coronal mass ejection as it interacted with the solar wind. These events are eruptions of large amounts of highly magnetised and energetic plasma from within the Sun’s corona. When directed toward Earth they can cause magnetic and radio disruptions in many ways from communications to power systems. 

Image of a coronal mass ejection being discharged from the Sun. (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Solar Dynamics Observatory)

Using the Wide Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) and its prime position inside the solar atmosphere, unprecedented footage was captured (click on this link for the video). The science team from the US Naval Research Laboratory revealed what seemed like turbulent eddies, so called Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities (KHIs) in one of the images. Turbulent eddy structures like these have been seen in the atmosphere of terrestrial planets. Strong wind shear between upper and lower cloud levels causes thin trains of crescent wave like clouds. 

Member of the WISPR team Evangelos Paouris PhD was the eagle eyed individual that spotted the disturbance. Paouris and team analysed the structure to verify the waves. The discovery of these rare features in the CME have opened up a whole new field of investigations.  

The KHIs are the result of turbulence which plays a key role in the movement of CMEs as they flow through the ambient solar wind. Understanding the CMEs and their dynamics of CMEs and a more fuller understanding of the Sun’s corona. This doesn’t just help us understand the Sun but also helps to understand the effect of CMEs on Earth and our space based technology.

Source : WISPR Team Images Turbulence within Solar Transients for the First Time

The post WISPR Team Images Turbulence within Solar Transients for the First Time appeared first on Universe Today.

In a couple billion years, our Sun will be unrecognizable. It will swell up and become a red giant, then shrink again and become a white dwarf. The inner planets aren’t expected to survive all the mayhem these transitions unleash, but what will happen to them? What will happen to the outer planets?

Right now, our Sun is about 4.6 billion years old. It’s firmly in the main sequence now, meaning it’s going about its business fusing hydrogen into helium and releasing energy. But even though it’s about 330,000 times more massive than the Earth, and nearly all of that mass is hydrogen fuel, it will eventually run out.

In another five billion years or so, its vast reservoir of hydrogen will suffer depletion. As it burns through its hydrogen, the Sun will lose mass. As it loses mass, its gravity weakens and can no longer counteract the outward force driven by fusion. A star is a balancing act between the outward expansion of fusion and the inward force of gravity. Eventually, the Sun’s billions-of-years-long balancing act will totter.

With weakened gravity, the Sun will begin to expand and become a red giant.

This illustration shows the current-day Sun at about 4.6 billion years old. In the future, the Sun will expand and become a red giant. Image Credit: By Oona Räisänen (User:Mysid), User:Mrsanitazier. – Vectorized in Inkscape by Mysid on a JPEG by Mrsanitazier (en:Image: Sun Red Giant2.jpg). CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2585107

The Sun will almost certainly consume Mercury and Venus when it becomes a red giant. It will expand and become about 256 times larger than it is now. The inner two planets are too close, and there’s no way they can escape the swelling star. Earth’s fate is less certain. It may be swallowed by the giant Sun, or it may not. But even if it isn’t consumed, it will lose its oceans and atmosphere and become uninhabitable.

The Sun will be a red giant for about one billion years. After that, it will undergo a series of more rapid changes, shrinking and expanding again. But the mayhem doesn’t end there.

The Sun will pulse and shed its outer layers before being reduced to a tiny remnant of what it once was: a white dwarf.

An artist’s impression of a white dwarf star. The material inside white dwarfs is tightly packed, making them extremely dense. Image credit: Mark Garlick / University of Warwick.

This will happen to the Sun, its ilk, and almost all stars that host planets. Even the long-lived red dwarfs (M-dwarfs) will eventually become white dwarfs, though their path is different.

Astronomers know the fate of planets too close to the stars undergoing these tumultuous changes. But what happens to planets further away? To their moons? To asteroids and comets?

New research published in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society digs into the issue. The title is “Long-term variability in debris transiting white dwarfs,” and the lead author is Dr. Amornrat Aungwerojwit of Naresuan University in Thailand.

“Practically all known planet hosts will evolve eventually into white dwarfs, and large parts of the various components of their planetary systems—planets, moons, asteroids, and comets—will survive that metamorphosis,” the authors write.

There’s lots of observational evidence for this. Astronomers have detected planetary debris polluting the photospheres of white dwarfs, and they’ve also found compact debris disks around white dwarfs. Those findings show that not everything survives the main sequence to red giant to white dwarf transition.

“Previous research had shown that when asteroids, moons and planets get close to white dwarfs, the huge gravity of these stars rips these small planetary bodies into smaller and smaller pieces,” said lead author Aungwerojwit.

This Hubble Space Telescope shows Sirius, with its white dwarf companion Sirius B to the lower left. Sirius B is the closest white dwarf to the Sun. Credit: NASA, ESA, H. Bond (STScI) and M. Barstow (University of Leicester).

In this research, the authors observed three white dwarfs over the span of 17 years. They analyzed the changes in brightness that occurred. Each of the three stars behaved differently.

When planets orbit stars, their transits are orderly and predictable. Not so with debris. The fact that the three white dwarfs showed such disorderly transits means they’re being orbited by debris. It also means the nature of that debris is changing.

“The unpredictable nature of these transits can drive astronomers crazy—one minute they are there, the next they are gone.”

Professor Boris Gaensicke, University of Warwick

As small bodies like asteroids and moons are torn into small pieces, they collide with one another until nothing’s left but dust. The dust forms clouds and disks that orbit and rotate around the white dwarfs.

Professor Boris Gaensicke of the University of Warwick is one of the study’s co-authors. “The simple fact that we can detect the debris of asteroids, maybe moons or even planets whizzing around a white dwarf every couple of hours is quite mind-blowing, but our study shows that the behaviour of these systems can evolve rapidly, in a matter of a few years,” Gaensicke said.

“While we think we are on the right path in our studies, the fate of these systems is far more complex than we could have ever imagined,” added Gaensicke.

This artist’s illustration shows the white dwarf WD J0914+1914 (Not part of this research.) A Neptune-sized planet orbits the white dwarf, and the white dwarf is drawing material away from the planet and forming a debris disk around the star. Image Credit: By ESO/M. Kornmesser – https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1919a/, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84618722

During the 17 years of observations, all three white dwarfs showed variability.

The first white dwarf (ZTF J0328?1219) was steady and stable until a major catastrophic event around 2011. “This might suggest that the system underwent a large collisional event around 2011, resulting in the production of large amounts of dust occulting the white dwarf, which has since then gradually dispersed, though leaving sufficient material to account for the ongoing transit activity, which implies continued dust production,” the researchers explain.

The second white dwarf (ZTF J0923+4236) dimmed irregularly every couple of months and displayed chaotic variability on the timescale of minutes. “These long-term changes may be the result of the ongoing disruption of a planetesimal or the collision between multiple fragments, both leading to a temporarily increased dust production,” the authors explain in their paper.

The third star (WD 1145+017) showed large variations in numbers, shapes and depths of transits in 2015. This activity “concurs with a large increase in transit activity, followed by a subsequent gradual re-brightening,” the authors explain, adding that “the overall trends seen in the brightness of WD?1145+017 are linked to varying amounts of transit activity.”

But now all those transits are gone.

“The unpredictable nature of these transits can drive astronomers crazy—one minute they are there, the next they are gone,” said Gaensicke. “And this points to the chaotic environment they are in.”

But astronomers have also found planetesimals, planets, and giant planets around white dwarfs, indicating that the stars’ transitions from main sequence to red giant don’t destroy everything. The dust and debris that astronomers see around these white dwarfs might come from asteroids or from moons pulled free from their giant planets.

“For the rest of the Solar System, some of the asteroids located between Mars and Jupiter, and maybe some of the moons of Jupiter may get dislodged and travel close enough to the eventual white dwarf to undergo the shredding process we have investigated,” said Professor Gaensicke.

When our Sun finally becomes a white dwarf, it will likely have debris around it. But the debris won’t be from Earth. One way or another, the Sun will destroy Earth during its red giant phase.

“Whether or not the Earth can just move out fast enough before the Sun can catch up and burn it is not clear, but [if it does] the Earth would [still] lose its atmosphere and ocean and not be a very nice place to live,” explained Professor Gaensicke.

The post What Happens to Solar Systems When Stars Become White Dwarfs? appeared first on Universe Today.

Nobel prizewinning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs has died aged 94. He proposed the particle that gives other particles mass – now named the Higgs boson and discovered by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2012

Nobel prizewinning theoretical physicist Peter Higgs has died aged 94. He proposed the particle that gives other particles mass – now named the Higgs boson and discovered by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2012

An oral vaccine in the form of a pineapple-flavoured spray prevented recurrent urinary tract infections in 53.9 per cent of clinical trial participants

An oral vaccine in the form of a pineapple-flavoured spray prevented recurrent urinary tract infections in 53.9 per cent of clinical trial participants

2 min read

Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The DC-8 aircraft returned to NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Building 703 in Palmdale, California, on April 1, 2024, after completing its final mission supporting Airborne and Satellite Investigation of Asian Air Quality (ASIA-AQ). The aircraft and crew were welcomed back with a celebratory water salute by the U.S. Air Force Plant 42 Fire Department.NASA/Steve Freeman 

After 37 years of successful airborne science missions, NASA’s DC-8 aircraft completed its final mission and returned to the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Building 703 in Palmdale, California, on April 1.

The DC-8 and crew were welcomed back with a celebratory water salute by the U.S Air Force Plant 42 Fire Department after completing an air quality study, the Airborne and Satellite Investigation of Asian Air Quality, or ASIA-AQ mission. The aircraft is set to retire after concluding operations in May.

As the largest flying science laboratory in the world, the DC-8 has been used to support the agency’s Airborne Science mission since 1987. This unique aircraft was first acquired by NASA in 1985 and collected data for experiments in support of scientific projects serving the world’s scientific community – including scientists, researchers, and students from NASA and other federal, state, academic, and foreign institutions.

The DC-8 will continue its educational legacy as it retires to its new home at Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, where it will be used to train future aircraft technicians by providing real-world experience in the college’s Aircraft Maintenance Technology Program.

For more information about the DC-8 aircraft, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/dc-8-aircraft/

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Details Last Updated Apr 09, 2024 Related Terms

• Aeronautics
• Airborne Science
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• Langley Research Center
• Science in the Air

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An excavation on an island in the Coral Sea shows that Indigenous Australians were producing ceramics long before the arrival of Europeans

An excavation on an island in the Coral Sea shows that Indigenous Australians were producing ceramics long before the arrival of Europeans

Galactic collisions, meteor impacts and even stellar mergers are not uncommon events. neutron stars colliding with black holes however are a little more rare, in fact, until now, we have never observed one. The fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing detected gravitational waves from a collision between a black hole and neutron star 650 million light years away. The black hole was tiny though with a mass between 2.5 to 4.5 times that of the Sun. 

Neutron stars and black holes have something in common; they are both the remains of a massive star that has reached the end of its life. During the main part of a stars life the inward pull of gravity is balanced by the outward push of the thermonuclear pressure that makes the star shine. The thermonuclear pressure overcomes gravity for low mass stars like the Sun but for more massive stars, gravity wins. The core collapses compressing it into either a neutron star or a black hole (depending on the progenitor star mass) and explodes as a supernova – in the blink of an eye. 

In May 2023, as a result of the fourth observing session of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory-Virgo Gravitational Wave Interferometer and Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector) network, gravitational waves were picked up from a merger event. The signal came from an object 1.2 times the mass of the Sun and another slightly more massive object. Further analysis revealed the likelihood that one was a neutron star and the other a low mass black hole. The latter falls into the so called ‘mass gap’, more massive than the most massive neutron star and less massive than the least massive black hole.

Interactions between objects can generate gravitational waves. Before they were detected back in 2015, stellar mass black holes were typically found through X-ray observations. Neutron stars on the other hand, were usually found with radio observations. Between the two, was the mass gap with objects lacking between three and five solar masses. 

It has been the subject of debate among scientists with the odd object found which fell within the gap, fuelling debate about its existence. The gap has generally been considered to separate the neutron stars from the black holes and items in this mass group have been scarce. This gravitational wave discovery suggests maybe objects in this gap are not so rare after-all. 

One of the challenges of detecting mass gap objects and mergers between them is the sensitivity of detectors. The LIGO team at the University of British Columbia researchers are working hard to improve the coatings used in mirror production. Enhanced performance on future LIGO detectors will further enhance detection capabilities. It’s not just optical equipment that is being developed, infrastructure changes are also being addressed including data analysis software too. Improving sensitivity in all aspects of the gravity wave network is sure to yield results in future runs. However for now, the rest of the first half of the observing run needs analysing with 80 more candidate signals to study. 

Source : New gravitational wave signal helps fill the ‘mass gap’ between neutron stars and black holes

The post A Neutron Star Merged with a Surprisingly Light Black Hole appeared first on Universe Today.

Even among hundreds of people, experiencing an eclipse is a joyous solitude

The urban-rural mortality rate gap in the U.S. is increasing, especially among young women and Native Americans. Limited access to health care could help explain why

Sometimes, the easy calculations are the most interesting. A recent paper from Balázs Bradák of Kobe University in Japan is a case in point. In it, he takes an admittedly simplistic approach but comes up with seven known exoplanets that could hold the key to the biggest question of them all – are we alone?

Dr. Bradák starts with a simple premise – there is a chance that life on Earth might have started via panspermia. There is also a case that panspermia was intention – an advanced civilization could theoretically have purposefully sent a biological seed ship to our local solar system to spread life here, essentially from scratch.

With those admittedly very large assumptions in place, Dr. Bradák works out a few characteristics about the planets that could have been the starting point for such a civilization. First, he assumes, as much of the astrobiological community does, that for an advanced civilization to arise on a planet, that planet has to be at least partially covered in an ocean. 

Sun-like stars aren’t the only potential hosts for habitable planets, as Fraser discusses here.

To meet that requirement, the planet has to be both the right size and the right temperature. The two size categories of exoplanets that Dr. Bradák originally selected were “terrestrial” – planets similar to Earth, including so-called “Super-Earths” – and “sub-Neptunes” – planets that are significantly larger than Earth but smaller than the ice giant in the outer fringes of our solar system.

Any such exoplanet also has to be in the habitable zone of its parent star. That alone dramatically narrows the potential field of planetary candidates. For simplicity’s sake, Dr. Bradák also eliminates sub-Neptunes as a potential planetary class. However, one other factor comes into play as well: age.

We know it took around 4.6 billion years for life to evolve to a point where it could theoretically send objects to other star systems – as we have now with Voyager. Since the original planet would also have to have evolved such a civilization, it would be double the time for its minimum age – or 9.2 billion years old.

The idea of panspermia has been around for decades, as Fraser discusses.

Dr. Bradák adds some additional argument that lowers the required age of the system – and he also assumes that the planetary system of a star forms at a similar time gap as our planetary system did. The distance to most of these stars is inconsequential on the scale of billions of years, so the travel time for the seed ship was discounted in this calculation. 

After all that pruning, Dr. Bradák turned to NASA’s Exoplanet Archive, which currently contains 5271 known exoplanets. Of those 5271, only 7 meet the specified age, size, and habitable zone placement criteria. In other words, according to our current knowledge of exoplanets and how life evolved, only a few planets could potentially have been the starting point for an intentional panspermia campaign.

One planet in particular stands out – Kepler-452 b, which has a star similar to ours and an orbit similar to ours. That system is only 1,400 light years away, relatively close by astronomical standards. If nothing else, it points to that system as a potentially interesting focal point for exoplanet surveys, including assessments of exoplanet atmospheres. However, we’ll likely have to wait for the next generation of grand telescopes.

For now, this was an interesting, though brief, speculative exercise. Astronomers are always looking for exciting things, and this paper contributes to the arguments about why it’s so important to spend time looking in detail at some of the exoplanets we already know about.

Learn More:
B. Bradák – A BOLD AND HASTY SPECULATION ABOUT ADVANCED CIVILIZATION-BEARING PLANETS
APPEARING IN EXOPLANET DATABASES
UT – A Super-Earth (and Possible Earth-Sized) Exoplanet Found in the Habitable Zone
UT – A New Place to Search for Habitable Planets: “The Soot Line.”
UT – Want to Find Life? Compare a Planet to its Neighbors

Lead Image:
Artist’s illustration of a habitable planet.
Credit – Wikipedia / VP8/Vorbis

The post The Seven Most Intriguing Worlds to Search for Advanced Civilizations (So Far) appeared first on Universe Today.

NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara is pictured inside the cupola aboard the International Space Station.Credit: NASA

After spending six-and-a-half-months aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara will participate in a news conference at 10:45 a.m. EDT Monday, April 15, at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The news conference will air live on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA TV through a variety of platforms including social media.

Media interested in participating in person must contact the NASA Johnson newsroom no later than 5 p.m. Friday, April 12, by calling 281-483-5111 or emailing: jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov.

Media wishing to participate virtually must contact the newsroom no later than two hours before the start of the event. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. Questions may also be submitted on social media by using #AskNASA.

O’Hara launched Sept. 15, 2023, alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub, and returned to Earth April 6 with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya of Belarus. Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya launched with NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson to the station aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft on March 23.

O’Hara completed 204 days in space, 3,264 orbits of the Earth, and 86.5 million miles during her first spaceflight. She witnessed the arrival of eight visiting spacecraft and the departure of seven visiting spacecraft, including both crewed and cargo missions. O’Hara also completed one spacewalk totaling six hours, 42 minutes.

While aboard the orbiting lab, O’Hara conducted dozens of science and technology activities to benefit future exploration in space and life back on Earth. O’Hara is among the first astronauts to participate in CIPHER, or the Complement of Integrated Protocols for Human Exploration Research program, an investigation that studies the psychological and physiological changes humans experience during spaceflight. Collecting data from astronauts on missions of different durations supports the development of ways to protect crew health on long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.

O’Hara conducted experiments bioprinting cardiac tissues in microgravity which could advance technology for creating replacement organs and tissues for transplant on Earth. She also studied the effects of microgravity on bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to improve our understanding of the mechanisms behind bone loss and support the development of ways to better protect crew members and people on Earth from its effects.

Get the latest NASA space station news, images, and features on Instagram, Facebook, and X.

-end-

Joshua Finch / Julian Coltre / Claire O’Shea
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / julian.n.coltre@nasa.gov / claire.a.o’shea@nasa.gov

Courtney Beasley
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
courtney.m.beasley@nasa.gov

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Details Last Updated Apr 09, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms

• Humans in Space
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• ISS Research

The total solar eclipse of April 8, 2024, is over, meaning we can now marvel at the incredible videos and images taken during the event.

After a year planning the perfect proposal for the April 8 solar eclipse, it couldn't have gone better.