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Sabtu, 31 Agustus 2019

NASA's $10 billion successor to the Hubble Telescope is finally assembled after more than a decade of delays - Business Insider

James Webb telescope The launch was initially planned for 2007.Getty

NASA's $10 billion successor to the Hubble Space Telescope has finally been fully assembled, after 12 years of delays and cost overruns.
The two halves that make up the next-generation space telescope have been brought together by NASA engineers for the very first time.
The tennis-court-sized James Webb Space Telescope will be able to see seven times further than the Hubble Space Telescope, capturing more concise pictures of the deep universe.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

After 12 years of delays and cost overruns, the $9.7 billion successor to the Hubble Space Telescope — the James Webb Space Telescope — has finally been fully assembled.

The two halves that make up the next-generation space telescope have been brought together by NASA engineers for the very first time, something which took many years and countless hours of planning to achieve.

"This is an exciting time to now see all Webb's parts finally joined together into a single observatory for the very first time," said Gregory Robinson, the Webb program director at NASA.

"The engineering team has accomplished a huge step forward and soon we will be able to see incredible new views of our amazing Universe."

The telescope will "explore the cosmos using infrared light, from planets and moons within our solar system", according to the NASA press release. It will be able to take very precise pictures of the deep universe, something which only the Hubble Space Telescope was able to achieve before. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into Earth's orbit in 1990 and remains in operation.

The James Webb Space Telescope is not a replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, but an upgrade. While Hubble captures optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, James Webb will capture the universe in infrared. It will also be able to look even deeper into the universe.

While Hubble's 7-foot-wide mirror is limited in the amount of light that it can capture, the James Webb Space Telescope has a 21-foot-wide mirror that can see seven times as far.

NASA engineers are still working on putting in a five-layer sun shield to protect the telescope from the infrared light coming from the Sun.Getty

As of now, the telescope has only been connected "mechanically", according to NASA. Engineers working for the space agency still have to connect the wires and links within the telescope for it to be fully functional.

The next step for engineers at NASA is to put together the James Webb Space Telescope's five-layer sun shield. The sun shield is an integral part of the telescope since it will protect the telescope's mirrors and scientific instruments from the infrared light coming from the Sun.

James Webb is the size of a tennis court and will only work once it unfurls itself in space without tearing or falling apart — a feat it has yet to accomplish.

"The more we learn more about our universe, the more we realize that Webb is critical to answering questions we didn't even know how to ask when the spacecraft was first designed," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in a statement last month.

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2019-08-31 07:06:45Z
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Jumat, 30 Agustus 2019

Northern lights will be visible in parts of Maine this weekend - WGME

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http://wgme.com/news/local/northern-lights-will-be-visible-in-parts-of-maine-this-weekend

2019-08-30 08:07:00Z
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Kamis, 29 Agustus 2019

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says Starship could be followed by a dramatically larger rocket - Teslarati

By Eric Ralph

Posted on August 29, 2019

Hinted at in a brief tweet on August 28th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX’s massive Starship and Super Heavy launch vehicle – set to be the most powerful rocket ever built upon completion – could eventually be followed by a rocket multiple times larger.

SpaceX is currently in the process of assembling the first full-fidelity prototypes of Starship, a 9m (30 ft) diameter, 55m (180 ft) tall reusable spacecraft and upper stage. Two prototypes – Mk1 and Mk2 – are simultaneously being built in Texas and Florida, respectively, while the beginnings of the first Super Heavy prototype has visibly begun to take shape at SpaceX’s Florida campus.

Once complete, Starship’s Super Heavy booster will be the single most powerful rocket booster ever built, standing at least 70m (230 ft) tall on its own and capable of producing as much as ~90,000 kN (19,600,000 lbf) of thrust with 30 250-ton-thrust and 7 200-ton-thrust Raptor engines installed. Assuming 31 throttleable 200-ton Raptors, Super Heavy’s minimum max thrust is a still record-breaking ~62,000 kN (13.7 million lbf).

In fewer words, a full Starship/Super Heavy ‘stack’ would be the tallest (~118m/390ft), heaviest (~5000 tons/11 million lbs), and most powerful rocket ever assembled.

Starship was never meant to lower SpaceX's annual launch cadence. (SpaceX) — Starship separates from its Super Heavy booster in this updated render. (SpaceX)

And yet, despite its size, orbital-class rocketry in Earth gravity will almost never fail to benefit from more thrust; more propellant; more rocket. In light of this, CEO Elon Musk says that a theoretical next- next-generation SpaceX rocket – to potentially follow some years after Starship and Super Heavy – could be a full 18m (60 ft) wide, twice the diameter of its predecessors.

Many will recollect that doubling the diameter of a circle quadruples its area, meaning that a theoretical Starship 2.0 would have four times the surface area and four times the propellant tank volume, requiring roughly four times as much thrust and making the vehicle four times as heavy as Starship 1.0. Assuming that Starship’s successor retains its fineness ratio (height/width), an unlikely end result but still interesting to ponder, the vehicle would measure 18m (60 ft) in diameter and a terrifying ~236m (780 ft) tall, literally more than twice as tall as Saturn V. An 18m diameter would also make it the widest rocket ever built, with Saturn V’s S-IC first stage measuring 10m wide and the Soviet Union’s N1 ‘Block A’ first stage measuring an impressive ~17m in diameter at its widest point.

If the above assumptions are correct, a very rough estimate would peg Starship 2.0’s gross (fueled) mass at a gobsmacking ~20,000 metric tons (~45 million pounds). In the unlikely event that SpaceX would use the current generation of Raptor to power such a colossal rocket, the booster would need a bare minimum of 100+ Raptors just to lift off at all. Using Saturn V’s F-1, still the most powerful single-chamber rocket engine ever built, Starship 2.0 would need a minimum of 30+ engines to lift off, comparable to Super Heavy’s 31-37 Raptors.

*A roughly to-scale comparison of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets and proposed BFR variants, including Starship (BFR 2018) and an 18m-wide rocket teased by Elon Musk.* (Teslarati/SpaceX)

For the time being, Starship and Super Heavy are plenty ambitious on their own, but it’s unsurprising to hear that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk already has some thoughts on what could follow that next-generation launch vehicle in the new decade. Still, it’s worth noting that quite possibly the craziest aspect of Starship – SpaceX’s utterly non-traditional attempt at rewriting the book on rocket manufacturing – could eventually make an 18m-diameter vehicle far more practical, assuming the company proves it’s methods can be used to build reliable, high-performance rockets.

Check out Teslarati’s newsletters for prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket launch and recovery processes.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says Starship could be followed by a dramatically larger rocket

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2019-08-29 10:31:12Z
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Mars Helicopter Drone Installed on NASA's Next Red Planet Rover - Space.com

The first-ever off-Earth helicopter just hooked up with its traveling companion.

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, attached the tiny Mars Helicopter to the agency's car-size Mars 2020 rover today (Aug. 28), agency officials announced.

The duo will launch together in July 2020 and touch down inside the Red Planet's Jezero Crater in February 2021. Once on Mars, the solar-powered, 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) helicopter will detach and begin flying test sorties.

"Our job is to prove that autonomous, controlled flight can be executed in the extremely thin Martian atmosphere," Mars Helicopter project manager, of JPL, said in a statement. (Mars' air is just 1% as dense as that of Earth at sea level.)

"Since our helicopter is designed as a flight test of experimental technology, it carries no science instruments," she added. "But if we prove powered flight on Mars can work, we look forward to the day when Mars helicopters can play an important role in future explorations of the Red Planet."

For example, helicopters could serve as scouts for robots or human pioneers on Mars. Red Planet rotorcraft could also carry instruments and conduct a variety of science work of their own, NASA officials have said.

Mas 2020, which will soon get a catchier moniker via a student naming competition, will hunt for signs of long-dead Red Planet life in Jezero Crater, which hosted a river delta in the ancient past. The rover will also characterize the site's geology, collect and cache samples for future return to Earth and demonstrate gear that will generate oxygen from the carbon-dioxide-dominated Martian air, among other tasks.

"With this joining of two great spacecraft, I can say definitively that all the pieces are in place for a historic mission of exploration," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA's headquarters in Washington, D.C, said in the same statement. "Together, Mars 2020 and the Mars Helicopter will help define the future of science and exploration of the Red Planet for decades to come."

NASA plans to launch another rotorcraft soon as well — Dragonfly, which will soar through the thick atmosphere of Saturn's huge moon Titan. The life-hunting Dragonfly is scheduled to lift off in 2026 and land on Titan's frigid surface in 2034.

Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

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2019-08-29 11:12:00Z
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Astronomers Baffled by 'Cosmic Mountain Ranges' Jutting Through the Milky Way - Livescience.com

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Astronomers Baffled by 'Cosmic Mountain Ranges' Jutting Through the Milky Way Livescience.com

To us, the night sky may look like a random splattering of stars, but astronomers are learning that in some regions of our galaxy, stars have clumped into features ...

https://www.livescience.com/milky-way-has-geographic-features.html

2019-08-29 11:00:00Z
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Russian humanoid robot boards space station after delay - MENAFN.COM

(MENAFN - Jordan Times) MOSCOW — It was second time lucky on Tuesday as an unmanned spacecraft carrying Russia's first humanoid robot docked at the International Space Station following a failed attempt over the weekend.

'Sorry for the delay. Got stuck in traffic. Am ready to carry on with work,' the robot's Twitter account said in a jokey first Tweet from space.

Copying human movements and designed to help with high-risk tasks, the lifesize robot, Fedor, is due to stay on the ISS until September 7.

Speaking to Russian cosmonauts on the ISS via a video link-up, President Vladimir Putin lavished praise on them for the way they handled the glitch.

The problems with docking were 'in some way abnormal', he said, adding that 'as usual for our cosmonauts, you dealt with this work magnificently'.

The robot sat in the commander's seat of an unmanned Soyuz spaceship that blasted off Thursday from a Russian spaceport in southern Kazakhstan.

'Let's go. Let's go,' the robot was heard saying during the launch, repeating the phrase used by the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin.

Soyuz capsules are normally manned on such trips, but this time no humans were travelling in order to test a new emergency rescue system.

The ship was carrying scientific and medical equipment and components for the space station's life-support system, as well as food, medicines and personal hygiene products for crew members, Russia's Roscosmos space agency said.

After the successful docking at the second attempt, a NASA TV commentator praised the vessel's 'flawless approach to the ISS'.

'Second time was a charm... the crew is up to seven,' he said, referring to the six astronauts aboard the space station.

Putin told the crew he hoped Fedor 'will give you the help you need and support in your interesting work that is needed by all of us'.

Failed attempt

An aborted attempt to dock on Saturday raised more questions over the future of Russia's space programme, which has suffered a number of recent setbacks.

Last October, a Soyuz rocket carrying an American and a Russian had to make an emergency landing shortly after lift-off — the first failure in the history of manned Russian flights.

On Saturday, NASA had said the Soyuz craft was 'unable to lock onto its target at the station'.

Russian flight controllers had told the ISS crew it appeared the problem that prevented automated docking was in the station and not the Soyuz spacecraft, NASA added.

Fedor — short for Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research — can be operated manually by ISS astronauts wearing robotic exoskeleton suits and it mirrors their movements.

Robots like Fedor will eventually carry out dangerous operations such as space walks, according to the Russian space agency.

Its head Dmitry Rogozin told Interfax news agency that the next stage for Fedor could be further tests on the Federatsiya — the manned transport ship Russia is developing — or a spacewalk to work on the outside of the ISS.

'That's what he's being created for. We don't really need him inside the station,' Rogozin said.

Fedor is not the first robot to go into space. In 2011, NASA sent up Robonaut 2, a humanoid developed with General Motors that had a similar aim of working in high-risk environments.

It was flown back to Earth in 2018 after experiencing technical problems.

In 2013, Japan sent up a small robot called Kirobo along with the ISS's first Japanese space commander. Developed with Toyota, it was able to hold conversations — albeit only in Japanese.

The International Space Station has been orbiting Earth at about 28,000 kilometres per hour since 1998.

By Maxime Popov

MENAFN2808201900280000ID1098939013

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2019-08-29 03:20:54Z
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Rabu, 28 Agustus 2019

Newfound Alien Planet Has a Bizarre Looping Orbit - Scientific American

Here’s yet another reminder that alien worlds are far stranger and more diverse than our own solar system might suggest.

Astronomers just found a giant exoplanet three times more massive than Jupiter that loops around its host star on a highly elliptical path.

If this alien planet, known as HR 5183 b, were magically dropped into our solar system, its orbit would reach inside that of Jupiter but extend way out beyond the path of Neptune, discovery team members said.

“This planet is unlike the planets in our solar system, but more than that, it is unlike any other exoplanets we have discovered so far,” Sarah Blunt, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena and lead author of a new study announcing the existence of HR 5183 b, said in a statement.

“Other planets detected far away from their stars tend to have very low eccentricities, meaning that their orbits are more circular,” Blunt added. “The fact that this planet has such a high eccentricity speaks to some difference in the way that it either formed or evolved relative to the other planets.”

HR 5183 b orbits a star that lies about 100 light-years from Earth. Blunt and her colleagues found the planet using the radial velocity method, which looks for the gravitational tugs a world exerts on its host star.

The research team has been watching the parent star with several different telescopes since the 1990s. That’s not long enough to capture a full orbit of the newfound world, which takes between 45 and 100 Earth years.

But the astronomers were still able to confirm HR 5183 b’s existence, showing that the radial-velocity method can identify planets even with such partial information.

“This planet spends most of its time loitering in the outer part of its star’s planetary system in this highly eccentric orbit; then, it starts to accelerate in and does a slingshot around its star,” study team member Andrew Howard, an astronomy professor at Caltech, said in the same statement.

“We detected this slingshot motion,” Howard added. “We saw the planet come in, and now it’s on its way out. That creates such a distinctive signature that we can be sure that this is a real planet, even though we haven’t seen a complete orbit.”

The magnitude of HR 5183 b’s gravitational tug allowed the team to calculate the planet’s mass: about three times that of Jupiter.

The exoplanet almost certainly started life on a circular path but then had its orbit reshaped by a gravitational encounter, probably with a similarly sized neighbor world, study team members said.

HR 5183 b reinforces a cosmic truth: Our Milky Way galaxy is studded with a staggering array of planets. There are worlds with three parent stars and "rogues" that zoom through space alone, forever in the dark. There are huge "hot Jupiters” that circle their parents in just a few Earth days, and there are big worlds like HR 5183 b that take decades to complete a lap.

“Copernicus taught us that Earth is not the center of the solar system, and as we expanded into discovering other solar systems of exoplanets, we expected them to be carbon copies of our own solar system,” Howard said.

“But it’s just been one surprise after another in this field,” he added. “This newfound planet is another example of a system that is not the image of our solar system but has remarkable features that make our universe incredibly rich in its diversity.”

The new study will appear in The Astronomical Journal.

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/newfound-alien-planet-has-a-bizarre-looping-orbit/

2019-08-28 18:30:56Z
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Selasa, 27 Agustus 2019

Video: The latest look at 'first light' from Chandra - Phys.org

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has captured many spectacular images of cosmic phenomena over its two decades of operations, but perhaps its most iconic is the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A.

Located about 11,000 light-years from Earth, Cas A (as it's nicknamed) is the glowing debris field left behind after a massive star exploded. When the star ran out of fuel, it collapsed onto itself and blew up as a supernova, possibly briefly becoming one of the brightest objects in the sky. (Although astronomers think that this happened around the year 1680, there are no verifiable historical records to confirm this.)

The shock waves generated by this blast supercharged the stellar wreckage and its environment, making the debris glow brightly in many types of light, particularly X-rays. Shortly after Chandra was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia on July 23, 1999, astronomers directed the observatory to point toward Cas A. It was featured in Chandra's official "First Light" image, released Aug. 26, 1999, and marked a seminal moment not just for the observatory, but for the field of X-ray astronomy. Near the center of the intricate pattern of the expanding debris from the shattered star, the image revealed, for the first time, a dense object called a neutron star that the supernova left behind.

Since then, Chandra has repeatedly returned to Cas A to learn more about this important object. A new video shows the evolution of Cas A over time, enabling viewers to watch as incredibly hot gas—about 20 million degrees Fahrenheit—in the remnant expands outward. These X-ray data have been combined with data from another of NASA's "Great Observatories," the Hubble Space Telescope, showing delicate filamentary structures of cooler gases with temperatures of about 20,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Hubble data from a single time period are shown to emphasize the changes in the Chandra data.

Credit: Chandra X-ray Center

The video shows Chandra observations of Cas A from 2000 to 2013. In that time, a child could enter kindergarten and graduate from high school. While the transformation might not be as apparent as that of a student over the same period, it is remarkable to watch a cosmic object change on human time scales.

The blue, outer region of Cas A shows the expanding blast wave of the explosion. The blast wave is composed of shock waves, similar to the sonic booms generated by a supersonic aircraft. These expanding shock waves produce X-ray emission and are sites where particles are being accelerated to energies that reach about two times higher than the most powerful accelerator on Earth, the Large Hadron Collider. As the blast wave travels outwards at speeds of about 11 million miles per hour, it encounters surrounding material and slows down, generating a second shock wave—called a "reverse shock"—that travels backwards, similar to how a traffic jam travels backwards from the scene of an accident on a highway.

Credit: Chandra X-ray Center

These reverse shocks are usually observed to be faint and much slower moving than the blast wave. However, a team of astronomers led by Toshiki Sato from RIKEN in Saitama, Japan, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, have reported reverse shocks in Cas A that appear bright and fast moving, with speeds between about 5 and 9 million miles per hour. These unusual reverse shocks are likely caused by the blast wave encountering clumps of material surrounding the remnant, as Sato and team discuss in their 2018 study. This causes the blast wave to slow down more quickly, which re-energizes the reverse shock, making it brighter and faster. Particles are also accelerated to colossal energies by these inward moving shocks, reaching about 30 times the energies of the LHC.

This recent study of Cas A adds to a long collection of Chandra discoveries over the course of the telescope's 20 years. In addition to finding the central neutron star, Chandra data have revealed the distribution of elements essential for life ejected by the explosion (shown above), have constructed a remarkable three dimensional model of the supernova remnant, and much more.

[embedded content]

Credit: Chandra X-ray Center

Scientists also created a historical record in optical light of Cas A using photographic plates from the Palomar Observatory in California from 1951 and 1989 that had been digitized by the Digitized Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard (DASCH) program, located at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA). These were combined with images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope between 2000 and 2011. This long-term look at Cas A allowed astronomers Dan Patnaude of CfA and Robert Fesen of Dartmouth College to learn more about the physics of the explosion and the resulting remnant from both the X-ray and optical data.

This recent study of Cas A adds to a long collection of Chandra discoveries over the course of the telescope's 20 years. In addition to finding the central neutron star, Chandra data have revealed the distribution of elements essential for life ejected by the explosion, clues about the details of how the star exploded, and much more.

Explore further

Image: Chandra's view of the Tycho Supernova remnant

Provided by Chandra X-ray Center

Citation: Video: The latest look at 'first light' from Chandra (2019, August 27) retrieved 27 August 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2019-08-video-latest-chandra.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

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2019-08-27 10:46:32Z
CAIiEFJFdBCr_rbGz2FcgCkdhXQqFwgEKg8IACoHCAowpbDpAzCm_hwwj9kp

Senin, 26 Agustus 2019

Starhopper flight test appears to be imminent - Ars Technica

Starhopper 150-meter hop test.

4:20pm ET Monday Update: Per SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the company is working toward a "hop" test at 6pm ET (22:00 UTC) Monday.

Original post: As soon as Monday afternoon, SpaceX may attempt a second flight for its Starship prototype named "Starhopper." The stubby vehicle, which resembles a water tower, will seek to make a controlled flight to 150 meters above the ground before returning to land safely at SpaceX's test site in South Texas.

One month ago, Starhopper made its first untethered flight, rising about 20 meters. Although smoke from the vehicle's single Raptor engine shrouded most of that test flight from view, it came off successfully and validated the company's ability to control the Raptor engine in flight.

This weekend, Cameron County officials notified residents in Boca Chica Village, near the test site, that the company plans to conduct a flight test from 4pm to 4:15pm CT Monday, and "there is a risk that a malfunction of the SpaceX vehicle during flight will create an overpressure event that can break windows." The Brownsville Herald reported that residents were advised to go outside during the test, which would be signaled 10 minutes in advance by a siren, for their safety. In its latest approval, the Federal Aviation Administration mandated that SpaceX purchase $100 million in liability insurance.

Although SpaceX does not anticipate losing the Starhopper vehicle, which measures 20 meters tall, this will be the vehicle's last flight. This fall, the company hopes to begin flying suborbital tests of larger Starship prototypes that have similar dimensions to the actual vehicle that will launch into space.

After the 150-meter Starhopper test, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has said he will provide an update on the development of Starship during a presentation in Boca Chica. He has not set a firm date for the presentation but has said it probably will occur in mid-September.

In recent months, separate teams of SpaceX engineers in Boca Chica, as well as Cocoa, Florida, have been working on their full-sized prototypes—Starship Mk 1 and Mk 2 respectively. These vehicles will fly, initially at least, with a complement of three Raptor engines. The full-scale Starship, which will launch into space on a rocket called "Super Heavy," is planned to have six engines; it will be capable of landing on and taking off of distant worlds, including the Moon and Mars.

By using two different teams of engineers, SpaceX is following a rapid, iterative process of technology development for the unprecedented spacecraft. it is unclear how long it will take to get everything right, including the difficult process of re-entering Earth's atmosphere without burning up the vehicle, but orbital flights of Starship could occur as early as next year.

The next step, however, is a much more modest hop a few hundred meters above a Texas beach. A list of livestreams for Monday's potential test has been curated by the SpaceX subreddit. Hopefully, the company won't break any windows.

Listing image by Trevor Mahlmann for Ars

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2019-08-26 20:20:00Z
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Jumat, 23 Agustus 2019

Exoplanets could have better conditions for life than Earth, study says - CNN

Researchers used NASA-developed software called ROCKE-3D to simulate ocean circulation and climates on different types of exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system.

Oceanic life on Earth depends on an upward flow, or upwelling, which moves nutrients from the dark depths to sunlit portions where photosynthetic life thrives. More upwelling means more nutrient resupply, which means more biological activity, researchers say.

So, a research team used the software to identify "which (types of) planets will have the most efficient upwelling and thus offer particularly hospitable oceans," Stephanie Olson, lead researcher at the University of Chicago, said Thursday while presenting the research at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference in Barcelona.

"We found that higher atmospheric density, slower rotation rates, and the presence of continents all yield higher upwelling rates," Olson said.

"A further implication is that Earth might not be optimally habitable -- and life elsewhere may enjoy a planet that is even more hospitable than our own."

Like Mercury, a nearby 'lava world' is probably lacking an atmosphere

"This is a surprising conclusion," Olson said. "It shows us that conditions on some exoplanets with favorable ocean circulation patterns could be better suited to support life that is more abundant or more active than life on Earth."

NASA has said that the best chance for finding life elsewhere in our own solar system could be on ocean worlds like Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. But the search for life has largely involved seeking out exoplanets within the habitable zone of the stars they orbit, existing at just the right distance for a surface temperature that can support liquid water on the surface.

"NASA's search for life in the universe is focused on so-called habitable zone planets, which are worlds that have the potential for liquid water oceans. But not all oceans are equally hospitable -- and some oceans will be better places to live than others due to their global circulation patterns," Olson said. "These are the conditions we need to look for on exoplanets."

Investigating exoplanets has to happen from afar because with current technology, we can't reach them. Telescopes can help determine what the conditions might be like on exoplanets, but that data also has to be applied to models of potential climates and evolution that takes place on planets different from our own. Combined, data and models can inform scientists of which planets could host life.

Current telescopes can't identify exoplanets to test Olson's theory, but ideally this finding could help in developing future telescopes that could seek out types of exoplanets defined in this research.

"There will always be limitations to our technology, so life is almost certainly more common than 'detectable' life," Olson said. "This means that in our search for life in the universe, we should target the subset of habitable planets that will be most favorable to large, globally active biospheres because those are the planets where life will be easiest to detect -- and where non-detections will be most meaningful."

New telescope could look for atmospheres around these exoplanets in a year

This finding continues the interesting work being done around ocean worlds.

"We expect oceans to be important in regulating some of the most compelling remotely detectable signs of life on habitable worlds, but our understanding of oceans beyond our solar system is currently very rudimentary," said Chris Reinhard, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor who was not involved in the study. "Dr. Olson's work represents a significant and exciting step forward in our understanding of exoplanet oceanography."

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https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/world/exoplanets-diverse-life-scn-trnd/index.html

2019-08-23 20:15:00Z
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NASA's Artemis Moon Program Just Photobombed a Spacewalk (Photo) - Space.com

NASA's mission patch for the Artemis moon program saw space for the first time during a dramatic spacewalk earlier this week.

The agency, which plans to send crews to the moon's surface by 2024, unveiled the new logo last month. NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Drew Morgan conducted the first spacewalk since then on Wednesday (Aug. 21), with Hague showing off the patch that those future moon landers will wear.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague sports an Artemis program logo during his spacewalk on Aug. 22, 2019.

(Image credit: NASA)

The patch shows a dramatic white "A" floating in black space above a blue horizon that represents Earth. A red ribbon, which denotes the new crews' path to the moon, flows from Earth's horizon to a small, white moon near the back of the patch.

"The work happening now is paving the way for the future," NASA said in a statement. "We are going to the moon to stay, by 2024. NASA's Artemis lunar exploration program will send the first woman and the next man to [the] surface of the Moon within five years, and prepare for human exploration of Mars."

Morgan and Hague took a picture of the patch (with Hague holding it) during their 6-hour-and-32-minute spacewalk to install a new International Docking Adapter (IDA) on the International Space Station. The IDA is the second adapter specifically designed to allow commercial crew vehicles from SpaceX and Boeing to dock with the space station and use ports of entry originally designed for the now-retired space shuttle.

The new dock will also be used by visiting cargo vehicles and possibly by future private flights to the space station, NASA has said. But the most pressing use will be for the first crewed commercial vehicles, which may arrive at the space station as soon as this year if all goes according to plan.

The Artemis program's first major mission is an uncrewed loop around the moon that is expected to fly no earlier than 2020, with test crewed missions expected later in the 2020s.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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https://www.space.com/astronaut-artemis-moon-patch-on-spacewalk.html

2019-08-23 19:11:00Z
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Exoplanets could host abundant life – even BETTER than Earth, scientists discover - RT

Exoplanets in our universe may be home to abundant life that enjoys a more hospitable home than we do on Earth, surprising research has revealed. The news may help in the search for alien life.

Researchers are looking for oceans on exoplanets which have “the greatest capacity to host globally abundant and active life,”said geophysicist Stephanie Olson from the University of Chicago.

Also on rt.com NASA discovers ‘first nearby super-Earth’ which could be ripe for human colonization

Her team used special NASA software to model a range of exoplanets to see which would be most likely to develop and sustain life. This led to a “surprising conclusion,” which revealed “conditions on some exoplanets with favorable ocean circulation patterns could be better suited to support life that is more abundant or more active than life on Earth,” Olson said.

These oceans have similar upswelling to Earth’s, and because this creates an upward flow of nutrients from the depths of oceans to the sunlit portions where photosynthetic life lives, meaning there is a nutrient resupply and more biological activity.

Also on rt.com ‘Hot Saturn’ exoplanet 60 times bigger than Earth discovered

The research found that thicker atmospheres, slower rotations and the presence of continents all created higher upswelling rates.

The new research will help extend the current parameters used in the search for habitable exoplanets, which currently focus on temperatures and the potential for liquid oceans. “Not all oceans are equally hospitable,” Olson explains, “and some oceans will be better places to live than others due to their global circulation patterns.”

Scientists have estimated that up to 35 percent of all known exoplanets that are bigger than Earth should be rich in water, so there’s plenty of potential out there.

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2019-08-23 11:24:00Z
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Kamis, 22 Agustus 2019

Images from the surface of asteroid Ryugu show rocks similar to carbonaceous chondrite meteorites - Science Magazine

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https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6455/817

2019-08-22 18:01:04Z
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For an asteroid, Ryugu has surprisingly little dust on its surface - Science News

Ryugu is a neat freak. The surface of the small, near-Earth asteroid is surprisingly free of dust, observations from Germany’s MASCOT lander show.

The asteroid, thought to have formed from the breakup of a larger body around 700 million years ago, has no atmosphere to protect it from interplanetary dust streaming through the solar system (SN: 4/27/19, p. 4). These miniature missiles pummel exposed space rocks at high speed, breaking down their surfaces into thin layers of dust and dirt, such as those found on the moon and the asteroid Vesta.

But when MASCOT bounced across Ryugu in October 2018 (SN Online: 9/24/18), the lander took high-resolution photos that show no sign of any dust-sized particles, down to a resolution of about 100 micrometers, about the thickness of a sheet of paper, researchers report in the Aug. 23 Science.

“After a few tens of millions of years, you should have dust on the surface,” says planetary scientist Ralf Jaumann of the German Aerospace Center in Berlin. “If it’s not there, you should have some kind of physical, geological processes which clean up these bodies.”

The MASCOT lander took many pictures as it bounced over Ryugu’s surface, and revealed a rugged terrain largely free of dust.R. Jaumann *et al*/*Science* 2019

Ryugu could hide its dust in larger, porous rocks or deep in its interior, Jaumann and colleagues say. Shaking due to a meteorite impact may shuffle the particles into bigger surface rocks or down through small surface cracks to the asteroid’s center and out of sight, the way small nuts end up at the bottom of a cup of trail mix.

Or Ryugu could spray dust into space when sunlight heats patches of trapped ice and releases volatile gases. A similar asteroid, Bennu, seems to spew plumes of small rocks into space, according to NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft (SN: 4/13/19, p. 10). But Jaumann thinks that explanation is less likely for Ryugu. Observations from the Japanese Hayabusa2 craft, which has been orbiting Ryugu since June 2018 and brought MASCOT along, suggest that Ryugu has less water in its minerals than Bennu (SN: 1/19/19, p. 6).

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There’s another possible explanation for Bennu’s dust sprays, says OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona. He thinks frequent temperature changes on Bennu’s surface as the different sides of the asteroid rotate in and out of sunlight could make the asteroid’s larger rocks fracture like a snapped cracker, spraying crumbs into space.

If something similar happens on Ryugu, “then Ryugu should also be ejecting particles,” he says. Hayabusa2 may just not be in the right position to see the sprays. “It would be very cool if we saw it.”

But snapping rocks might create more dust, not less, he notes. An answer to the mystery may not come until after Hayabusa2 returns to Earth with samples of Ryugu’s surface and subsurface in late 2020 (SN: 8/17/19, p. 14).

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/asteroid-ryugu-surface-has-surprisingly-little-dust

2019-08-22 18:00:00Z
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Maximum mass of lightest neutrino revealed using astronomical big data - Phys.org

Neutrinos come in three flavours made up of a mix of three neutrino masses. While the differences between the masses are known, little information was available about the mass of the lightest species until now.

It's important to better understand neutrinos and the processes through which they obtain their mass as they could reveal secrets about astrophysics, including how the universe is held together, why it is expanding and what dark matter is made of.

First author, Dr. Arthur Loureiro (UCL Physics & Astronomy), said: "A hundred billion neutrinos fly through your thumb from the Sun every second, even at night. These are very weakly interactive ghosts that we know little about. What we do know is that as they move, they can change between their three flavours, and this can only happen if at least two of their masses are non-zero."

"The three flavours can be compared to ice cream where you have one scoop containing strawberry, chocolate and vanilla. Three flavours are always present but in different ratios, and the changing ratio-and the weird behaviour of the particle-can only be explained by neutrinos having a mass."

The concept that neutrinos have mass is a relatively new one with the discovery in 1998 earning Professor Takaaki Kajita and Professor Arthur B. McDonald the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics. Even so, the Standard Model used by modern physics has yet to be updated to assign neutrinos a mass.

The study, published today in Physical Review Letters by researchers from UCL, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris and Universidade de Sao Paulo, sets an upper limit for the mass of the lightest neutrino for the first time. The particle could technically have no mass as a lower limit is yet to be determined.

The team used an innovative approach to calculate the mass of neutrinos by using data collected by both cosmologists and particle physicists. This included using data from 1.1 million galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) to measure the rate of expansion of the universe, and constraints from particle accelerator experiments.

"We used information from a variety of sources including space- and ground-based telescopes observing the first light of the Universe (the cosmic microwave background radiation), exploding stars, the largest 3-D map of galaxies in the Universe, particle accelerators, nuclear reactors, and more," said Dr. Loureiro.

"As neutrinos are abundant but tiny and elusive, we needed every piece of knowledge available to calculate their mass and our method could be applied to other big questions puzzling cosmologists and particle physicists alike."

The researchers used the information to prepare a framework in which to mathematically model the mass of neutrinos and used UCL's supercomputer, Grace, to calculate the maximum possible mass of the lightest neutrino to be 0.086 eV (95% CI), which is equivalent to 1.5 x 10-37 Kg. They calculated that three neutrino flavours together have an upper bound of 0.26 eV (95% CI).

Second author, Ph.D. student Andrei Cuceu (UCL Physics & Astronomy), said: "We used more than half a million computing hours to process the data; this is equivalent to almost 60 years on a single processor. This project pushed the limits for big data analysis in cosmology."

The team say that understanding how neutrino mass can be estimated is important for future cosmological studies such as DESI and Euclid, which both involve teams from across UCL.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will study the large scale structure of the universe and its dark energy and dark matter contents to a high precision. Euclid is a new space telescope being developed with the European Space Agency to map the geometry of the dark Universe and evolution of cosmic structures.

Professor Ofer Lahav (UCL Physics & Astronomy), co-author of the study and chair of the UK Consortiums of the Dark Energy Survey and DESI said: "It is impressive that the clustering of galaxies on huge scales can tell us about the mass of the lightest neutrino, a result of fundamental importance to physics. This new study demonstrates that we are on the path to actually measuring the neutrino masses with the next generation of large spectroscopic galaxy surveys, such as DESI, Euclid and others."

Arthur Loureiro et al., 'On The Upper Bound of Neutrino Masses from Combined Cosmological Observations and Particle Physics Experiments' will be published in Physical Review Letters on Thursday 22 August 2019.

Explore further

Scientists in Germany seek to find mass of neutrino

More information: On The Upper Bound of Neutrino Masses from Combined Cosmological Observations and Particle Physics Experiments, arXiv:1811.02578 [astro-ph.CO] arxiv.org/abs/1811.02578

Provided by University College London

Citation: Maximum mass of lightest neutrino revealed using astronomical big data (2019, August 22) retrieved 22 August 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2019-08-maximum-mass-lightest-neutrino-revealed.html

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2019-08-22 15:00:18Z
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Rabu, 21 Agustus 2019

EVA-55 installing second IDA to allow for additional commercial crew vehicle options - NASASpaceflight.com

EVA-55 installing second IDA to allow for additional commercial crew vehicle options - NASASpaceFlight.com

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https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2019/08/eva-55-ida-additional-commercial-crew-options/

2019-08-21 12:29:10Z
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