Space news topic and space related news

[Toliman]

NASA's InSight Spacecraft Now on its Way to Mars
https://blogs.nasa.gov/insight/2018/05/05/nasas-insight-spacecraft-now-on-its-way-to-mars/

[Toliman]

New evidence for existence of Planet Nine

A large international team of researchers has found what they are describing as more evidence of the existence of Planet Nine. In their paper posted on the arXiv preprint server, the group describes the behavior of a newly discovered distant object as suggestive of an influence of a large planet.

more here:
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-evidence-planet.html

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

The orbit suggests that, if this object is present, it was captured by our star, rather than formed with it, like the other true planets.

[`Eylan Ayfalulukanä]

First image taken by the TESS camera, and it is stunning!
https://tess.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/tess-centaurus-field-full-res.jpg

You can find more here:
https://tess.mit.edu/science/useful-materials/

[Toliman]

Good to heard good news about tess!

First image taken by the TESS camera, and it is stunning!
https://tess.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/tess-centaurus-field-full-res.jpg

Yaea, it's stunning

[Toliman]

Engineers Solve Excessive Heat Removal from NASA's Webb Telescope

How will NASA's James Webb Space Telescope shed the heat generated by its science instruments and their supporting electronics? To anyone who is not an engineer or scientist, the answer might be complex and "baffling," and it turns out the process is exactly that.

Webb's four science instruments are held within a support structure called the integrated science instrument module (ISIM), located behind the telescope's primary mirror. The ISIM and Webb's optics form the science payload of the observatory. To keep heat away from the sensitive instruments, a majority of the electronics used to power and operate the instruments are housed in a compartment below ISIM, where specially designed baffles direct the heat safely into space and away from any cold surfaces of the observatory.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/engineers-solve-excessive-heat-removal-from-nasa-s-webb-telescope

[Toliman]

NASA Hosts Media Teleconference on Status of James Webb Space Telescope

NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, June 27, to provide an update on the agency's James Webb Space Telescope and the findings of an external independent review board. Webb will be the world's premier infrared space observatory and the largest astronomical space science telescope ever built.

Audio of the call will stream live on NASA's website.

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-hosts-media-teleconference-on-status-of-james-webb-space-telescope-0

[Toliman]

NASA's TESS Spacecraft Starts Science Operations
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/nasa-s-tess-spacecraft-starts-science-operations

Finally! And now I would like to hear same news about JWST

[Vawmataw]

``Oort Clouds around other stars should be visible in the cosmic microwave background`` (Fraser Cain)
https://twitter.com/fcain/status/1025184486206726145

[Toliman]

Interesting, thanks for sharing!

[Vawmataw]

sorry guys, but Mars will never be terraformed.
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/07/terraforming-mars-is-a-no-go

[Toliman]

Astronomers uncover new clues to the star that wouldn't die

What happens when a star behaves like it exploded, but it's still there?

About 170 years ago, astronomers witnessed a major outburst by Eta Carinae, one of the brightest known stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The blast unleashed almost as much energy as a standard supernova explosion.

Yet Eta Carinae survived.

An explanation for the eruption has eluded astrophysicists. They can't take a time machine back to the mid-1800s to observe the outburst with modern technology.

However, astronomers can use nature's own "time machine," courtesy of the fact that light travels at a finite speed through space. Rather than heading straight toward Earth, some of the light from the outburst rebounded or "echoed" off of interstellar dust, and is just now arriving at Earth. This effect is called a light echo. The light is behaving like a postcard that got lost in the mail and is only arriving 170 years later.
...

More here:
http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-33

[archaic]

sorry guys, but Mars will never be terraformed.
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/07/terraforming-mars-is-a-no-go

 
Venus has too much CO₂, Mars has too little CO₂.
A pipeline between the two is probably unrealistic, sadly.





You may remember a while ago, a Brown Dwarf was discovered around twenty light years away and was given the catchy name SIMP J01365663+0933473. It has since been discovered to have an aurora, weather, and a magnetic field almost four million times the strength of Earth's.
With a mass equivalent to 12.7 Jupiters (but only 22% larger in diameter than Jupiter), it is right on the fuzzy boarder between Brown Dwarf and Planet, so it has been reclassified as a Planet. This also means that any orbiting bodies are now Moons, not Planets in their own right.
(I will wait and see if this reclassification is reversed, as happened with Pluto)
Found here .....

[Vawmataw]

(I will wait and see if this reclassification is reversed, as happened with Pluto)

A large dwarf planet?

[Toliman]

(I will wait and see if this reclassification is reversed, as happened with Pluto)

A large dwarf planet?

HRHN

Venus has too much CO₂, Mars has too little CO₂.
A pipeline between the two is probably unrealistic, sadly.

Sadly yes.

[Toliman]

You may remember a while ago, a Brown Dwarf was discovered around twenty light years away and was given the catchy name SIMP J01365663+0933473. It has since been discovered to have an aurora, weather, and a magnetic field almost four million times the strength of Earth's.
With a mass equivalent to 12.7 Jupiters (but only 22% larger in diameter than Jupiter), it is right on the fuzzy boarder between Brown Dwarf and Planet, so it has been reclassified as a Planet. This also means that any orbiting bodies are now Moons, not Planets in their own right.
Found here .....

There is some other about it:
https://public.nrao.edu/news/planetary-mass-powerhouse/#PRimageSelected

[Toliman]

Hubble Paints Picture of the Evolving Universe

Astronomers have just assembled one of the most comprehensive portraits yet of the universe's evolutionary history, based on a broad spectrum of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope and other space and ground-based telescopes. In particular, Hubble's ultraviolet vision opens a new window on the evolving universe, tracking the birth of stars over the last 11 billion years back to the cosmos' busiest star-forming period, about 3 billion years after the big bang. This photo encompasses a sea of approximately 15,000 galaxies — 12,000 of which are star-forming — widely distributed in time and space.

http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2018-35

[Toliman]

Found also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJtjJSHsm9c

[Toliman]

Success in Critical Communications Tests for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

When NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launches in 2021, it will write a new chapter in cosmic history. This premier space science observatory will seek the first stars and galaxies, explore distant planets around other stars, and solve mysteries of own solar system. Webb will be controlled from the Mission Operations Center (MOC) at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

To prepare for launch, the flight operations team recently conducted two successful communications tests. The first simulated the complex communications among numerous entities in the critical period of launch through the first six hours of flight. The second demonstrated that the MOC could successfully communicate with the telescope. ...

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/success-in-critical-communications-tests-for-nasas-james-webb-space-telescope


Nice to hear, however I would rather see JWST finally work at space.

[BlueHusky2154]

I would like to see JWST actually launch.