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NASA's Space to Ground: A Full House | Week of Oct. 14, 2022
NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station. NASA and SpaceX now are targeting no earlier than 11:35 a.m. EDT Friday, Oct. 14, for the agency’s Crew-4 undocking from the International Space Station to begin their return trip to Earth completing a nearly six-month science mission in orbit. Splashdown is targeted several hours later at approximately 4:50 p.m. off the coast of Florida.
NASA will provide live coverage of the upcoming return activities for the Crew-4 mission with NASA astronauts Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren, and Jessica Watkins, as well as European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.
Dragon’s hatch closing, undocking, and splashdown coverage will air live on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. NASA also will host an audio only post-splashdown news teleconference.
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Chinese Astronaut Liu Yang Shows Progress of Plant Growth | China Space Station
How does rice grow in space? Astronaut Liu Yang in China's space station shows the progress of plant growth in the new Wentian lab module, during a livestreamed science class to students on Earth.
Liu became the first Chinese woman in space during the Shenzhou-9 Mission in 2012. Shenzhou-14 is her second space mission.
Our Sun: A Strong X1 Solar Flare | NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory
The Sun released an X1 solar flare, a powerful burst of energy, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on Oct. 2, 2022. X-class are the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. For instance, an X1 flare is half as strong as an X2. While solar flares can affect radio communications, power grids, and navigation signals, harmful radiation from a solar flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground. By studying flares and how they affect our planet and nearby space, the SDO helps us to better prepare for and mitigate these potential disruptions.
Image Description:
The Sun is gold with a mottled, swirling surface. Glowing particles burst out from the edge on the lower right and most of the upper left against the black background of space.
Pair of Interacting Stars Create Concentric Rings of Dust | NOIRLab
Ryan Lau, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, has led some of the first observations with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, finding at least 17 rings of dust emanating from a binary star system. The new data show that the dust is rich in carbon and seems to be surviving to seed space far beyond its parent star with heavy elements, meaning it could play a role in the formation of later stars and planets.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JPL-Caltech; NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Season 5, Episode 4: When Artemis astronauts land on the Moon, they will travel to sites never before visited by humans. Namely, they will explore the South Pole region, home to the Moon’s largest crater, areas of near-constant light and deep shadows, and some of the coldest temperatures in the solar system.
Exploring the South Pole will teach us more about the Moon’s history, as well as the history of our solar system. It is home to frozen water, which is crucial for living sustainably on the lunar surface and exploring deeper into the solar system.
Artemis astronauts will explore the Moon on behalf of all of us and bring back lunar rocks and soil for analyses by generations of scientists who will help us gain unimaginable insights into our cosmic history.
Series Executive Producers: Katy Mersmann/Lauren Ward
Season Producers: Lonnie Shekhtman/Stephanie Sipila/James Tralie/Molly Wasser
Explorers: Jose Aponte/Natalie Curran/Julie Mitchell/Adam Naids/Noah Petro/Kelsey Young/Jessica Watkins
Credit: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
SpaceX Crew-5 Dragon Endurance Approaches International Space Station
SpaceX Dragon Endurance and the waxing gibbous Moon
SpaceX Dragon Endurance and the waxing gibbous Moon
SpaceX Dragon Endurance and the Earth's horizon
SpaceX Dragon Endurance above Pacific Ocean
SpaceX Dragon Endurance approaches International Space Station
SpaceX Dragon Endurance approaches International Space Station
NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Koichi Wakata, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina (Russia) arrived at the International Space Station Thursday Oct. 6, 2022, as the SpaceX Dragon Endurance docked to the complex at 5:01 p.m. EDT while the spacecraft were flying 258 miles above the west coast of Africa.
Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)/Kjell Lindgren
Tour: NASA's Chandra Finds Galaxy Cluster Collision on a "WHIM"
Astronomers taking inventory of the material in the local universe keep coming up short. A new result from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory about a system of colliding galaxy clusters may help explain this shortfall.
Although scientists know a great deal about the composition of the universe, there has been a vexing problem they have struggled to explain— there is a significant amount of matter that has not yet been accounted for.
This missing mass is not the invisible dark matter, which makes up a majority of the matter in the universe. This is a separate puzzle where about a third of the "normal" matter that was created in the first billion years or so after the Big Bang has yet to be detected by observations of the local universe, that is, in regions less than a few billion light-years from Earth. This matter is made up of hydrogen, helium, and other elements and makes up objects like stars, planets, and humans.
Scientists have proposed that at least some of this missing mass could be hidden in gigantic strands, or filaments, of gas in the space in between galaxies and clusters of galaxies with temperatures between 10,000 and 10 million degrees. They have dubbed this the "warm-hot intergalactic medium," or WHIM.
A team of astronomers using Chandra to observe a system of colliding galaxy clusters has likely found evidence of this WHIM residing in the space between them. The researchers used Chandra to study Abell 98, which contains colliding galaxy clusters about 1.4 billion light years from Earth. The Chandra data reveal a bridge of X-ray emission between two of the colliding clusters containing gas at a temperature of about twenty million degrees and cooler gas with a temperature of about ten million degrees. The hotter gas in the bridge is likely from gas in the two clusters overlapping with each other. The temperature and density of the cooler gas agree with predictions for the hottest and densest gas in the WHIM. Only a few detections of the WHIM have previously been made.
In addition, the Chandra data show the presence of a shock wave, which is similar to a sonic boom from a supersonic plane. This shock wave is driven by and located ahead of one of the galaxy clusters as it is starting to collide with another cluster. This would be the first time that astronomers have found such a shock wave in the early stages of a galaxy cluster collision, before the centers of the clusters pass by one another.
Galaxy clusters—which contain thousands of galaxies, huge amounts of hot gas, and enormous reservoirs of dark matter—are the largest structures in the universe held together by gravity. Scientists think they are able to reach their colossal size by merging with one another over millions or billions of years. When galaxy clusters collide, astronomers get a chance to see extreme physics that they rarely see in any other cosmic setting.
Quick Look: NASA's Chandra Finds Galaxy Cluster Collision on a "WHIM"
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is helping to reconcile the Universe’s inventory of matter.
A new result shows evidence of "missing" mass made up of regular atoms. Researchers think this matter may be found in gigantic strands of superheated gas.
These strands are very difficult to find and require X-ray telescopes like Chandra.
Zooming in on Star WASP-76 with Exoplanet WASP-76b | ESO
The ultra-hot giant exoplanet WASP-76b orbits the star WASP-76, located some 390 light-years away in the constellation of Pisces. This video takes us on a journey to this system.
Observations of WASP-76b using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) suggest it rains iron on this extreme exoplanet.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/L.Calçada/spaceengine.org
Interacting Galaxies: NGC 5754 & NGC 5752 | Hubble
This beautiful pair of interacting galaxies consists of NGC 5754, the large spiral on the top and NGC 5752, the smaller companion in the bottom left corner of the image. NGC 5754's internal structure has hardly been disturbed by the interaction. The outer structure does exhibit tidal features, as does the symmetry of the inner spiral pattern and the kinked arms just beyond its inner ring. In contrast, NGC 5752 has undergone a starburst episode, with a rich population of massive and luminous star clusters clumping around the core and intertwined with intricate dust lanes. The contrasting reactions of the two galaxies to their interaction are due to their differing masses and sizes. NGC 5754 is located in the constellation Boötes, the Herdsman, some 200 million light-years away.
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and W. Keel (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa)
The galaxy NGC 1156 resembles a delicate cherry blossom tree flowering in springtime in this Hubble image. The many bright "blooms" within the galaxy are in fact stellar nurseries—regions where new stars are springing to life. Energetic light emitted by newborn stars in these regions streams outwards and encounters nearby pockets of hydrogen gas, causing it to glow with a characteristic pink hue.
NGC 1156 is located in the constellation of Aries (The Ram). It is classified as a dwarf irregular galaxy, meaning that it lacks a clear spiral or rounded shape, as other galaxies have, and is on the smaller side, albeit with a relatively large central region that is more densely packed with stars.
Some pockets of gas within NGC 1156 rotate in the opposite direction to the rest of the galaxy, suggesting that there has been a close encounter with another galaxy in NGC 1156's past. The gravity of this other galaxy—and the turbulent chaos of such an interaction—could have scrambled the likely more orderly rotation of material within NGC 1156, producing the odd behavior we see today.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble, NASA, R. Jansen
Northeastern China with the Bohai Sea and Yellow Sea between mainland China and the Korean peninsula, as seen from the International Space Station by the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti of Italy for her Minerva Mission.
An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/NASA-S.Cristoforetti
New Commander: Cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev | International Space Station
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 68 astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency (ESA) handed over command of the station to Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev (Russia) during a change of command ceremony on October 12, 2022. Farewell remarks by Cristoforetti and NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Bob Hines and Jessica Watkins preceded the change of command. The off-going Crew-4 astronauts are headed home to complete a six-month mission on the orbital outpost.
NASA and SpaceX now are targeting no earlier than 10:05 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 13, for the agency’s Crew-4 undocking from the International Space Station to begin the return trip to Earth completing a nearly six-month science mission in orbit. Splashdown is targeted several hours later at 5:43 p.m. Thursday off the coast of Florida.
Hubble Reveals Ultra-Relativistic Jet from Collision of Neutron Stars | NASA
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found a jet propelled through space at nearly the speed of light by the titanic collision between two neutron stars, which are the collapsed cores of massive supergiant stars.
Panning across Star Duo Wolf-Rayet 140's Space ‘Fingerprint’ | Webb Telescope
A new image from the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope reveals a remarkable cosmic sight: at least 17 concentric dust rings emanating from a pair of stars. Located just over 5,000 light-years from Earth, the duo is collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140.
Each ring was created when the two stars came close together and their stellar winds (streams of gas they blow into space) met, compressing the gas and forming dust. The stars’ orbits bring them together about once every eight years; like the rings of a tree’s trunk, the dust loops mark the passage of time.
In addition to Webb’s overall sensitivity, its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) is uniquely qualified to study the dust rings, what Ryan Lau, an astronomer at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, and his colleagues call shells, because they are thicker and wider than they appear in the image. Webb’s science instruments detect infrared light, a range of wavelengths invisible to the human eye.
MIRI detects the longest infrared wavelengths, which means it can often see cooler objects—including the dust rings—than Webb’s other instruments can. MIRI’s spectrometer also revealed the composition of the dust, formed mostly from material ejected by a type of star known as a Wolf-Rayet star.
A Wolf-Rayet star is born with at least 25 times more mass than our Sun and is nearing the end of its life, when it will likely explode as a supernova and then collapse into a black hole. Burning hotter than in its youth, a Wolf-Rayet star generates powerful winds that push huge amounts of gas into space. The Wolf-Rayet star in this particular pair may have shed more than half its original mass via this process.
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA)/Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)-Caltech
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