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China and Chile Reach for the Stars Together: Partnerships for Astronomy
In the Belt and Road Initiative, two nations under different skies have formed a special scientific friendship. Half a world apart, yet firmly connected, Chile and China have become trusted collaborators in exploring the cosmos. From building telescopes to exchanging scientists, they are proving that when Chinese innovation meets the Latin American spirit, the universe is never out of reach.
Video Credit: CGTN Duration: 2 minutes, 44 seconds Release Date: May 9, 2025
Addressing the Proposed NASA Science Budget Cuts | StarTalk
"What do we lose with the proposed budget cuts to NASA? Neil deGrasse Tyson breaks down the US government’s history of funding the sciences and what the impact of these budget cuts could mean for our future."
Timestamps:
00:00 - What’s Up With The NASA Budget Cuts?
02:15 - The Proposed Cuts
03:25 - Our History Funding Science
06:07 - The Ramifications
Learn more about NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD):
Contact your representatives in the United States Congress, House and Senate, to express your concerns for NASA's future: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials/
Video Credit: StarTalk Duration: 10 minutes Release Date: May 8, 2025
China's Tiandu-1 Conducts First Daylight Laser Ranging in Earth-Moon Space
A Chinese communication and navigation technology test satellite, known as the Tiandu-1, has recently conducted a laser ranging technology test in the Earth-Moon space under strong daylight interference conditions, marking a world first, according to the satellite's developer, China’s Deep Space Exploration Lab (DSEL), on Tuesday, April 29, 2025.
Satellite laser ranging measures the distance to orbiting satellites. It involves a laser at an observatory sending pulses of light to the satellite that then bounce back, allowing for distance to be calculated.
While satellite laser ranging tracks Earth-orbiting satellites during the day, conducting these experiments in Earth-Moon space has previously been limited to nighttime, as strong daylight can interfere with the laser signal and cause signals to be lost in background noise.
This allows limited observation windows and data collection for satellites in Earth-Moon and lunar orbit. These are vital to China’s push for expanding its presence on the Moon.
The test expands the limits of the technology and will help with carrying out future deep space missions.
The Tiandu-1 and Tiandu-2 satellites were launched into space alongside the Queqiao-2 relay satellite on March 20, 2024. They entered their target circumlunar orbits on March 29 and separated on April 3. The Tiandu-1 has already completed multiple new technology tests in orbit. The mission was intended to help verify new technologies in the construction of an Earth-Moon communication and navigation system.
Since their launch, the satellites have been involved in several technological verification experiments, including sending back images of the Moon.
Satellite laser ranging technology is an important part of future space missions, as it is the most accurate method to determine the orbit of satellites, and could be used to help control networks of satellites or spacecraft positioning.
The latest test could help with projects, such as the International Lunar Research Station, a planned lunar station being developed by China and Russia to set up a long-term human presence at the Moon’s south pole, DSEL told state media.
Li Yuqiang, a researcher at the Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua on Tuesday a research team had successfully captured a laser return signal from the retroreflector on the satellite that was around 130,000km from Earth.
The Tiandu satellites were launched to help in the development of China’s communications and navigation satellite constellation for deep space exploration, Queqiao, supports operations for future lunar missions.
China aims to land its first astronauts on the Moon by 2030, and could be conducting research operations at the lunar south pole by 2035.
What Happened During the Biggest Geomagnetic Storm in 20 Years | NASA
On May 10, 2024, the first G5 or “severe” geomagnetic storm in over two decades hit Earth. The event did not cause any catastrophic damages, but it did produce surprising effects on our planet. The storm has been called the best-documented geomagnetic storm in history. It spread auroras to unusually low latitudes and produced effects spanning from the ground to near-Earth space. Data captured during this historic event will be analyzed for years to come, revealing new lessons about the nature of geomagnetic storms and how best to weather them.
Exploring Planet Jupiter: Perijove 72 | NASA Juno Mission
Jupiter - PJ72-24
Jupiter - PJ72-24
Jupiter - PJ72-20
Jupiter - PJ72-24
Jupiter - PJ72-20
Since it arrived at Jupiter in 2016, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been probing beneath the dense, forbidding clouds encircling the giant planet—the first orbiter to peer so closely. It seeks answers to questions about the origin and evolution of Jupiter, our solar system, and giant planets across the cosmos. Each perijove passes near a new part of Jupiter's cloud tops. A perijove indicates the point in the Juno spacecraft's orbit when it comes closest to planet Jupiter's center. If we measure by volume, approximately 1,300 Earths could fit inside Jupiter.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott J. Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program. This is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spacecraft.
Astronaut Anne McClain: The Tale of Spacewalk Selfies | International Space Station
Expedition 73 flight engineer and NASA astronaut Anne McClain: "EVA Perspective 1: EVA time is precious and requires uninterrupted focus, so sometimes there just is not an opportunity to take many photos. We normally carry a camera attached to our suit for a variety of reasons—we get to see parts of the International Space Station that our permanently mounted cameras cannot see, so we take them for the ground teams, or we install some hardware and take closeout photos to verify the final configuration, or we see some damage from a micrometeorite and snap a shot. In between all that work, we try to find a moment here or there for some fun photos—spacewalking is rare, and we want to capture the moment. The opportunity normally presents itself when ground is talking through the plan and we are waiting on our next instructions—if you listen closely to a spacewalk, you are apt to hear something like 'this will take a couple minutes, you can hold there and take some photos.' That is our cue to pull out the camera to capture everything around us, and perhaps turn the camera back on ourselves."
"Grabbing a selfie during a spacewalk is not as easy as it looks. We use commercial cameras wrapped in a thermal blanket, and with our gloves it is hard to tell where the button is or if we successfully clicked it. If we try to hold the camera in one hand, it feels like holding a basketball with a ski glove, so two-handed is the way to go. Our arms also don’t extend super far in the suit; if your wingspan is 6 feet normally, you can expect a wingspan of 3.5-4 feet in a suit. So in a two-handed selfie pose, the camera ends up pretty close, and we aren’t quite sure where its aimed. The technique is to just start clicking and hope for the best."
1st photo: "My first spacewalk selfie in 2019, and I remember it because it was the first time I went 'hands free'from ISS. Meaning, connect a local (short) tether, let go and back away a little bit, hold the camera in two hands, and start clicking. I think I took about 25 of these, 3-4 of which turned out okay. This was taken while I was at the airlock waiting for my crewmate to translate back."
2nd photo: "From our May 1 spacewalk, a shot into the sun visor. I had actually forgotten to put it up, but love the reflections that resulted. It also shows the camera set up well as well as my crewmate, Nichole Ayers. We were located over Arizona at the time, and over my right shoulder you can see Baja California."
3rd photo: "Also from May 1, taken when we were both given a few minutes by the ground while they re-worked the forward plan. It is rare to both get a break at the same time, and even rarer to be co-located. So, we had to try for an epic shot. Amongst many photos of helmet lights, fingers, space, and bag straps was this gem . . . the extremely rare two-person spacewalk selfie! Note Nichole’s hand—she was having to hold me in place because I had two hands on the camera—and on just a tether, we are basically a balloon on a string."
4th photo: "Bonus content, a spacewalk fist bump. This required one-handed camera ops, so while I thought I took about 30 photos, I actually took only 5. This one is the only relatively decent one! My tether was connected far off to my side, so it did not provide any stability, and I was not in an area that had handrails. I floated away every time we bumped. So, our technique was to bump then Nichole would pull me back over and we would try again. This will be a treasured memory for me!"
NASA Flight Engineers: Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Jonny Kim
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.
Europe-China SMILE Mission Launching in 2025 to Study Solar Wind
A new satellite will be launched in 2025 to study charged particles emitted by the Sun—known as the solar wind. It is the first full space partnership between China and the European Space Agency (ESA). It will investigate how the solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetic field.
The Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer is better known by its initials: SMILE. It will measure the solar wind and its dynamic interaction with Earth for the next three years. The satellite is the European Space Agency's first mission-level cooperation with China.
David Agnolon is the SMILE project manager, and he hailed the collaboration in the satellite program.
"It's a 50-50 collaboration between China and the European Space Agency," he said, "so it brings new challenges—but also very interesting ways of working together. Hopefully we will bring back outstanding science for the scientific community both in China and in Europe."
SMILE will investigate magnetic storms driven by clouds of plasma hurled into space from the sun at around 400 kilometers per second. These are called 'coronal mass ejections' and the planet is protected from these by its magnetic field.
The interaction of charged particles slamming into the Earth's atmosphere can be seen in the auroras—the northern and southern lights.
The European Space Agency says Europe and China worked together to minimize the challenges encountered in the project.
"I think we have retired and registered a lot of risks by closely working together, understanding each other and each other's practices, standards and engineering methods," said Agnolon.
"And I think with a lot of patience, a lot of interaction and compromises we have managed to overcome all these obstacles."
The mission is due to be launched from the ESA space port in French Guiana by the end of this year.
Taking Super Sharp Astronomical Images with Adaptive Optics | ESO
Turbulence in our atmosphere blurs images of the cosmos, but astronomers have a trick up their sleeve: adaptive optics. Using powerful lasers and fast deformable mirrors we can correct this blurring in real time and obtain extremely sharp astronomical images. In this episode of Chasing Starlight, we show you how this amazing technology works and how it is implemented in our telescopes.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO) Directed by: L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser Hosted by: S. Randall Written by: H. Huysegoms Editing: M. Kornmesser, L. Calçada Videography: A. Tsaousis Animations & Footage: ESO, E. Garcés, L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser, Nick Risinger, Microgate, P. Weilbacher (AIP), P. Horálek, Roland Bacon, Zdeněk Bardon, C. Malin, M. Zamani, A. de Burgos Sierra, CIMOLAI, S. Petković, E. Garcés, ESA, J. C. Muñoz-Mateos, S. Guisard, Focuslight Scientific consultant: P. Amico Release Date: May 9, 2025
NASA Flight Engineers: Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Jonny Kim
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 Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft is pictured docked to the Prichal module as the International Space Station orbited 264 miles above French Polynesia, France's oveseas collectivity of over 100 islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Soyuz launched NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky of Russia to the orbital outpost on April 8.
The Soyuz MS-27 spacecraft is pictured docked to the Prichal module as the International Space Station orbited 269 miles above the Indian Ocean off the coast of South Africa. The Soyuz launched NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritsky of Russia to the orbital outpost on April 8.
Egypt's Nile Delta region, home to about 39 million people and where the Nile, Africa's longest river, drains into the Mediterranean Sea, is pictured from the International Space Station at 11:01 p.m. local time as it orbited 261 miles above.
The Moon's light is refracted by the Earth's atmosphere giving it a spheroid shape in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited into a sunset 264 miles above the border between Bolivia and Brazil in South America.
The Sun's glint beams off one of the many rivers that snake throughout South America's fertile, low grasslands region, also known as the Pampas. The International Space Station was orbiting 261 miles above the border of Paraguay and Argentina at the time of this photograph.
This is the one-millionth image taken during the Expedition 72 mission aboard the International Space Station. The clouds covering the island nation of Cuba hide its capital and largest city Havana (far left) on the Florida Strait. To the south are the marshlands and forests of Cuba's Zapata Swamp that leads to the Caribbean Sea. NASA astronaut and Expedition 72 Flight Engineer Nichole Ayers took this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 261 miles above the Bahamas.
NASA Flight Engineers: Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Jonny Kim
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 Large Magellanic Cloud among a starry backdrop above Earth's atmospheric glow highlights this long duration photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico.
The non-periodic Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) is pictured seemingly above Earth's atmosphere though it was actually about 235 million miles away and heading for a trip around the Sun. The International Space Station was orbiting 272 miles above the southern Atlantic Ocean in between the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands at the time of this photograph.
The non-periodic Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS), or the "Great Comet of 2025," is pictured seemingly above Earth's atmosphere though it was actually about 87 million miles away and five days past its closest approach, or perihelion, to the Sun. The International Space Station was orbiting 261 miles above Kazakhstan at the time of this photograph.
An aurora shimmers and dances above the city lights of Canada in this photograph from the International Space Station as it orbited 259 miles above Vancouver, British Columbia, about 1:55 a.m. local time.
NASA Flight Engineers: Anne McClain, Nichole Ayers, Jonny Kim
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.
NASA Telescopes Tune into a Black Hole "Prelude & Fugue"
Three new pieces of cosmic sound are being released to celebrate black holes, the densest and darkest members of our universe. These scientific productions are sonifications—or translations—of data collected by NASA telescopes in space including the Chandra X-ray Observatory, James Webb Space Telescope, Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE, and others.
Black holes are neither static nor monolithic. They form and they evolve, and are found in a range of sizes and environments. This new trio of sonifications represent different aspects of black holes.
The first object is a prelude to the potential birth of a black hole. WR124 is an extremely bright, short-lived massive star known as a Wolf-Rayet at a distance of about 28,000 light-years from Earth. These stars fling their outer layers out into space, creating spectacular arrangements seen in an image in infrared light from the Webb telescope. At the center of WR124 is a hot core of the star that may explode as a supernova and potentially leave behind a black hole in its wake.
SS 433 is a binary, or double, system about 18,000 light-years away that sings out in X-rays. The two members of SS 433 include a star like our Sun in orbit around a much heavier partner, either a neutron star or a black hole. This orbital dance causes undulations in X-rays that Chandra, IXPE and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton telescopes are tuned into. These X-ray notes have been combined with radio and infrared data to provide a backdrop for this celestial waltz.
The third and final movement of the black hole-themed release crescendos with a distant galaxy known as Centaurus A, about 12 million light-years away from Earth. At the center of Centaurus A is an enormous black hole that is sending a booming jet across the entire length of the galaxy. X-rays from both Chandra and IXPE have been combined with visible light data from the European Southern Observatory’s MPG telescope.
Sonifications give us a different way to explore data that we collect from space using Chandra and other telescopes. Pull up a chair and lend an ear to what the universe can sound like.
Video Credit: NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared: (Herschel) ESA/NASA/Caltech, (Spitzer) NASA/JPL/Caltech, (WISE) NASA/JPL/Caltech; Infrared: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb ERO Production Team; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major; Sonification: NASA/CXC/SAO/K.Arcand, SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida) Duratiuon: 3 minutes, 25 seconds Release Date: May 8, 2025
NASA Telescopes Pinpoint Free-Roaming Massive Black Hole
Astronomers have discovered a black hole has torn apart a star in a surprising location. When an unlucky star strays too close to a giant black hole and gets destroyed, scientists call these tidal disruption events, or TDEs. This particular TDE is unusual because it did not happen at the center of the galaxy where supermassive black holes are generally found. Instead, it occurred about 2,600 light-years away from the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy. This suggests this galaxy, located about 600 million light-years from Earth, has a second giant black hole lurking within it.
A TDE happens when an infalling star is stretched or “spaghettified” by a black hole’s immense gravitational tidal forces. The shredded stellar remnants are pulled into a circular orbit around the black hole. This generates shocks and outflows with high temperatures that can be seen in ultraviolet and visible light. X-rays are produced when material from the destroyed star falls toward the black hole and is heated to millions of degrees.
The new TDE is called AT2024tvd and to determine its exact location within the galaxy, researchers turned to the best telescopes, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, or VLA. Chandra is the only X-ray telescope with vision sharp enough to distinguish between the offset TDE and the center of the galaxy.
Based on what they observed, the team estimates that the supermassive black hole responsible for the TDE has a mass of about a million Suns. This is large, but smaller than the black hole they think exists in the center of the galaxy that about 100 times more massive.
How did the black hole get off-center? Scientists have created models that show that black holes can be ejected out of the centers of galaxies when a supermassive black hole encounters a pair of supermassive black holes. Under the right conditions, the lowest-mass member in this scenario gets kicked out. This may be the case here, given the stealthy black hole’s close proximity to the central black hole. An alternative explanation is that the black hole is the surviving remnant of a smaller galaxy that merged with the host galaxy more than 1 billion years ago.
While scientists continue to get to the bottom of things with AT2024tvd, they will keep looking for other examples of TDEs like it. Chandra, Hubble, and these other telescopes online will soon be joined by other facilities like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile and the Roman Space Telescope that will help investigate mysteries like these.
Credits: NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ. of California, Berkeley/Y. Yao et al.; Optical/UV: NASA/ESA/STScI/HST; Image Processing: NASA/STScI/J. DePasquale Duration: 3 minutes, 23 seconds Release Date: May 8, 2025
Flight to The Carina Nebula Complex | Space Telescope Science Institute
This visualization travels across interstellar space to the vast star-forming region of the Carina Nebula Complex. Starting with the 2D sky as seen from Earth, the sequence traces out the nearby constellations and identifies prominent star clusters in the widefield view. Shifting into 3D, the video flies through the star field with distances based upon the Gaia star catalog. Arriving some 7,600 light-years away, the scene shifts into the infrared light view of the Spitzer Space Telescope to showcase the dust clouds that stretch across the region. The sequence finishes by illustrating the locations of multiwavelength observations from four NASA space telescopes.
This video is a product of the AstroViz Project of NASA’s Universe of Learning.
Video Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) Producer: NASA’s Universe of Learning Visualization: Christian Nieves, Joseph Olmsted, Alyssa Pagan, Frank Summers (STScI) Duration: 1 minute, 20 seconds Release Date: May 7, 2025
Relive the Action of NASA's Student Launch 2025 | Marshall Space Flight Center
🚀 25 years of launching dreams: "This year’s Student Launch was unforgettable. More than 40 rockets soared into the sky, powered by the passion and dedication of incredible teams! 🏆 The journey is not over yet! Join us in June as we honor all the Student Launch teams’ hard work at our online awards event—and celebrate 25 years of innovation, perseverance, and spectacular launches."
🎥 Relive the action with our recap video, capturing the excitement from cheers to the roar of high-powered rockets.
