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Gravity data collected by NASA’s Juno mission indicates Jupiter’s atmospheric winds penetrate the planet in a cylindrical manner, parallel to its spin axis. A paper on the findings was recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
The violent nature of Jupiter’s roiling atmosphere has long been a source of fascination for astronomers and planetary scientists, and Juno has had a ringside seat to the goings-on since it entered orbit in 2016. During each of the spacecraft’s 55 to date, a suite of science instruments has peered below Jupiter’s turbulent cloud deck to uncover how the gas giant works from the inside out.
NASA’s Juno captured this view of Jupiter during the mission’s 54th close flyby of the giant planet on Sept. 7. The image was made with raw data from the JunoCam instrument that was processed to enhance details in cloud features and colors.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Tanya Oleksuik CC BY NC SA 3.0
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A crane lowers the 112-foot-wide (34-meter-wide) steel framework for the Deep Space Station 23 (DSS-23) reflector dish into position on Dec. 18, 2024, at the Deep Space Network’s (DSN) Goldstone Space Communications Complex near Barstow, California. Once online in 2026, DSS-23 will be the fifth of six new beam waveguide antennas to be added to the network; DSS-23 will boost the DSN’s capacity and enhance NASA’s deep space communications capabilities for decades to come.
The DSN allows missions to track, send commands to, and receive scientific data from faraway spacecraft. More than 100 NASA and non-NASA missions rely on the DSN and Near Space Network, including supporting astronauts aboard the International Space Station and future Artemis missions, supporting lunar exploration, and uncovering the solar system and beyond.
Credit: NASA
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Watch a time-lapse video of construction activities on Dec. 18.
When three galaxies collide, what happens to the huge black holes at the centers of each? A new study using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and several other telescopes reveals new information about how many black holes are furiously growing after these galactic smash ups.
Astronomers want to learn more about galactic collisions because the subsequent mergers are a key way that galaxies and the giant black holes in their cores grow over cosmic time.
“There have been many studies of what happens to supermassive black holes when two galaxies merge,” said Adi Foord of Stanford University, who led the study. “Ours is one of the first to systematically look at what happens to black holes when three galaxies come together.”
She and her colleagues identified triple galaxy merger systems by cross-matching the archives – containing data that is now publicly available – of NASA’s WISE mission and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to the Chandra archive. Using this method they found seven triple galaxy mergers located between 370 million and one billion light years from Earth.
Using specialized software Foord developed for her Ph.D. at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the team went through Chandra data targeting these systems to detect X-ray sources marking the location of growing supermassive black holes. As material falls toward a black hole, it gets heated to millions of degrees and produces X-rays.
Chandra, with its sharp X-ray vision, is ideal for detecting growing supermassive black holes in mergers. The associated X-ray sources are challenging to detect because they are usually close together in images and are often faint. Foord’s software was developed specifically to find such sources. Data from other telescopes was then used to rule out other possible origins of the X-ray emission unrelated to supermassive black holes.
The results from Foord and the team show that out of seven triple galaxy mergers there is one with a single growing supermassive black hole, four with double growing supermassive black holes, and one that is a triple. The final triple merger they studied seems to have struck out with no X-ray emission detected from the supermassive black holes. In the systems with multiple black holes, the separations between them range between about 10,000 and 30,000 light years.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Michigan/A. Foord et al.; Optical: SDSS & NASA/STScI
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NASA’s Europa Clipper has embarked on its long voyage to Jupiter, where it will investigate Europa, a moon with an enormous subsurface ocean that may have conditions to support life. The spacecraft launched at 12:06 p.m. EDT Monday, Oct. 14, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The largest spacecraft NASA ever built for a mission headed to another planet, Europa Clipper also is the first NASA mission dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth. The spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) on a trajectory that will leverage the power of gravity assists, first to Mars in four months and then back to Earth for another gravity assist flyby in 2026. After it begins orbiting Jupiter in April 2030, the spacecraft will fly past Europa 49 times.
Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
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A 2003 Chandra observation revealed X-rays produced by TWA 5B, a brown dwarf orbiting a young binary star system known as TWA 5A. The star system is 180 light years from the Earth and a member of a group of about a dozen young stars in the constellation Hydra. The brown dwarf orbits the binary star system at a distance about 2.75 times that of Pluto's orbit around the Sun.
The sizes of the sources in the image are due to an instrumental effect that causes the spreading of pointlike sources. For a comparison of the actual size of TWA 5B to the Sun and the planet Jupiter, see the illustration below.
Brown dwarfs are often referred to as "failed stars" because they are under the mass limit (about 80 Jupiter masses, or 8 percent of the mass of the Sun) needed to spark the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium which supplies the energy for stars such as the Sun. Lacking any central energy source, brown dwarfs are intrinsically faint and draw their energy from a very gradual shrinkage or collapse.
Young brown dwarfs, like young stars, have turbulent interiors. When combined with rapid rotation, this turbulent motion can lead to a tangled magnetic field that can heat their upper atmospheres, or coronas, to a few million degrees Celsius. The X-rays from both TWA 5A and TWA 5B are from their hot coronas.
TWA 5B is estimated to be only between 15 and 40 times the mass of Jupiter, making it one of the least massive brown dwarfs known. Its mass is rather near the boundary (about 12 Jupiter masses) between planets and brown dwarfs, so these results could have implications for the possible X-ray detection of very massive planets around stars.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/Chuo U./Y.Tsuboi et al.
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Mesas and dunes stand out in the view snapped by HiRISE, one of the imagers aboard the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
After nearly 20 years at the Red Planet, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has snapped its 100,000th image of the surface with its HiRISE camera. Short for High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, HiRISE is the instrument the mission relies on for high-resolution images of features ranging from impact craters, sand dunes, and ice deposits to potential landing sites. Those images, in turn, help improve our understanding of Mars and prepare for NASA’s future human missions there.
Captured Oct. 7, this milestone image from the spacecraft shows mesas and dunes within Syrtis Major, a region about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Jezero Crater, which NASA’s Perseverance rover is exploring. Scientists are analyzing the image to better understand the source of windblown sand that gets trapped in the region’s landscape, eventually forming dunes.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
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Chandra's unique ability to precisely locate and resolve individual X-ray sources in 12 globular clusters in our Galaxy has given astronomers a crucial clue as to the origin of these sources. Two clusters, known as NGC 6266 (or M62) and NGC 7099 (or M30), are shown here in this 2003 image.
A globular cluster is a spherical collection of hundreds of thousands and even millions of stars buzzing around each other in a gravitationally bound stellar beehive that is about a hundred light years in diameter. The stars in a globular cluster are often only about a tenth of a light year apart. For comparison, the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years away.
Most of the point-like sources in these images are binary star systems containing a collapsed star, such as a neutron star or a white dwarf star, that is pulling matter off a normal companion star. While direct, head-on collisions between stars are rare even in these crowded circumstances, close encounters occur and can lead to the formation of binary star systems containing a collapsed star.
The images illustrate a general trend observed for globular clusters. Clusters such as M62 where the stars are packed very closely together and the rate of close encounters is high have more X-ray binaries than those such as M30 in which close encounters occur less often. This is strong evidence that the X-ray binaries in globular clusters are formed by close encounters.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/MIT/D.Pooley et al.
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On Aug. 18, 2023, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured ridged lines carved onto Mars’ landscape by the gradual movement of ice. While surface ice deposits are mostly limited to Mars’ polar caps, these patterns appear in many non-polar Martian regions.
As ice flows downhill, rock and soil are plucked from the surrounding landscape and ferried along the flowing ice surface and within the icy subsurface. While this process takes perhaps thousands of years or longer, it creates a network of linear patterns that reveal the history of ice flow.
Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Arizona
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Cassini orbited in Saturn's ring plane -- around the planet's equator -- for most of 2015. This enabled a season of flybys of the planet's icy moons, but did not allow for angled views of the rings and the planet's poles, like this one. But in early 2016, the spacecraft began to increase its orbital inclination, climbing higher over the poles in preparation for the mission's final spectacular orbits in 2017.
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 16 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 26 2016 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.7 million miles (2.8 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 103 miles (165 kilometers) per pixel.
The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and www.nasa.gov/cassini. The Cassini imaging team homepage ciclops.org.
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights, click here.
This 2002 Chandra image shows the central region - about 1.5 million light years across - of the Coma Cluster. The cluster contains thousands of galaxies enveloped by a vast 100 million-degree Celsius gas cloud.
Of particular interest are the concentrations of cooler (10 to 20 million-degrees) gas around the large galaxies NGC 4889 (left) and NGC 4874 (right). These clumps of gas, which are 10,000 light years in diameter, are thought to be produced by matter ejected from stars in the galaxies over a period of about a billion years.
Image credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/A.Vikhlinin et al.
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With help from AI, scientists discovered a fresh crater made by an impact that shook material as deep as the Red Planet’s mantle.
Meteoroids striking Mars produce seismic signals that can reach deeper into the planet than previously known. That’s the finding of a pair of new papers comparing marsquake data collected by NASA’s InSight lander with impact craters spotted by the agency’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
Captured by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 4, 2021, this impact crater was found in Cerberus Fossae, a seismically active region of the Red Planet. Scientists matched its appearance on the surface with a quake detected by NASA’s InSight lander.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
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A gantlet of tests prepared the spacecraft for its challenging trip to the Jupiter system, where it will explore the icy moon Europa and its subsurface ocean.
In less than six months, NASA is set to launch Europa Clipper on a 1.6-billion-mile (2.6-billion-kilometer) voyage to Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa. From the wild vibrations of the rocket ride to the intense heat and cold of space to the punishing radiation of Jupiter, it will be a journey of extremes. The spacecraft was recently put through a series of hard-core tests at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to ensure it’s up to the challenge.
Called environmental testing, the battery of trials simulates the environment that the spacecraft will face, subjecting it to shaking, chilling, airlessness, electromagnetic fields, and more.
In this image, Europa Clipper is seen in the 25-Foot Space Simulator at JPL in February, before the start of thermal vacuum testing. A battery of tests ensures that the NASA spacecraft can withstand the extreme hot, cold, and airless environment of space.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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The orbiter has performed 56 flybys of Jupiter and documented close encounters with three of the gas giant’s four largest moons.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft will on Saturday, Dec. 30, make the closest flyby of Jupiter’s moon Io that any spacecraft has made in over 20 years. Coming within roughly 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the surface of the most volcanic world in our solar system, the pass is expected to allow Juno instruments to generate a firehose of data.
This image revealing the north polar region of the Jovian moon Io was taken on October 15 by Juno. Three of the mountain peaks visible in the upper part of image, near the day-night dividing line, were observed here for the first time by the spacecraft’s JunoCam.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS, Image processing by Ted Stryk
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2003 Chandra observations reveal evidence of high-speed winds blowing gas away from the supermassive black hole that powers the quasar APM 08279+5255. This discovery suggests that such winds may play a key role in regulating the growth of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies.
The Chandra data imply that the wind is blowing away from the black hole at speeds as high as 40 percent of the speed light, considerably faster than predicted. As gas swirls in a disk toward the black hole, it is heated to millions of degrees Celsius and produces intense X-radiation. The pressure of the X-rays pushes matter away from the inner part of the disk in much the same way as pressure from a garden hose pushes dirt off a driveway. This radiation pressure effect can significantly limit the amount of matter captured by the black hole.
The double image of APM 08279 is caused by the bending of its light by an intervening galaxy, an effect called gravitational lensing. This effect also magnifies the light of the quasar 100 fold allowing for a detailed study of its properties even though it is 12 billion light.
Image credit: CXC/M.Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/PSU/G.Chartas
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Just hours before NASA’s Juno mission completed its 53rd close flyby of Jupiter on July 31, 2023, the spacecraft sped past the planet’s volcanic moon Io and captured this dramatic view of both bodies in the same frame.
The surface of Io, the most volcanically active world in the solar system, is marked by hundreds of volcanoes that regularly erupt with molten lava and sulfurous gases. Juno has provided scientists with the closest looks at Io since 2007, and the spacecraft will gather additional images and data from its suite of scientific instruments during even closer passes in late 2023 and early 2024.
To create this image, citizen scientist Alain Mirón Velázquez processed a raw image from the JunoCam instrument, enhancing the contrast, color, and sharpness. At the time the raw image was taken on July 30, 2023, Juno was about 32,170 miles (about 51,770 kilometers) from Io, and about 245,000 miles (about 395,000 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops.
Image credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Image processing by Alain Mirón Velázquez © CC BY
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NASA’s Juno mission captured these views of Jupiter during its 59th close flyby of the giant planet on March 7, 2024. They provide a good look at Jupiter’s colorful belts and swirling storms, including the Great Red Spot. Close examination reveals something more: two glimpses of the tiny moon Amalthea.
With a radius of just 52 miles (84 kilometers), Amalthea has a potato-like shape, lacking the mass to pull itself into a sphere. In 2000, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft revealed some surface features, including impact craters, hills, and valleys. Amalthea circles Jupiter inside Io’s orbit, which is the innermost of the planet’s four largest moons, taking 0.498 Earth days to complete one orbit.
Amalthea is the reddest object in the solar system, and observations indicate it gives out more heat than it receives from the Sun. This may be because, as it orbits within Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field, electric currents are induced in the moon’s core. Alternatively, the heat could be from tidal stresses caused by Jupiter’s gravity.
At the time that the first of these two images was taken, the Juno spacecraft was about 165,000 miles (265,000 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, at a latitude of about 5 degrees north of the equator.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS. Image processing by Gerald Eichstädt
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NASA’s Psyche spacecraft passed its six-month checkup with a clean bill of health, and there’s no holding back now. Navigators are firing its futuristic-looking electric thrusters, which emit a blue glow, nearly nonstop as the orbiter zips farther into deep space. The spacecraft already is beyond the distance of Mars and is using ion propulsion to accelerate toward a metal-rich asteroid, where it will orbit and collect science data. This photo captures an operating electric thruster identical to those being used to propel NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. The blue glow comes from the charged atoms, or ions, of xenon.
The spacecraft launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy on Oct. 13, 2023. After leaving our atmosphere, Psyche made the most of its rocket boost and coasted beyond the orbit of Mars.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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This photo illustration of Jupiter and the three Jovian moons NASA's Juno mission has flown past was generated from data collected by the spacecraft's JunoCam imager.
Ganymede, the moon furthest to the left, was imaged by JunoCam as it flew past on June 8, 2021. Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from JunoCam.
The moon second from the left is Europa, which Juno imaged on Sept. 29, 2022. Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from JunoCam.
The image of Io was captured during a flyby of the moon on May 16, 2023. Citizen scientist Thomas Thomopoulos created this image using data from JunoCam.
The image of Jupiter was captured on Dec. 15, 2022. Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from JunoCam.
Image credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing: Kevin M. Gill (CC BY), Thomas Thomopoulos (CC BY)
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Capable of receiving both radio frequency and optical signals, the DSN's hybrid antenna has tracked and decoded the downlink laser from DSOC, aboard NASA's Psyche mission.
An experimental antenna has received both radio frequency and near-infrared laser signals from NASA's Psyche spacecraft as it travels through deep space. This shows it's possible for the giant dish antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN), which communicate with spacecraft via radio waves, to be retrofitted for optical, or laser, communications.
By packing more data into transmissions, optical communication will enable new space exploration capabilities while supporting the DSN as demand on the network grows.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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More about NASA’s optical communications projects
NASA's first spacecraft designed to return a piece of an asteroid to Earth arrived Friday, May 20, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and has begun final preparations in advance of its September launch.
The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security – Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will undergo final testing and fueling prior to being moved to its launch pad. The mission has a 34-day launch period beginning on Sept. 8.
After launch, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and retrieve at least 60 grams (2.1 ounces) of pristine surface material and return it to Earth for study. Scientists expect that Bennu may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of the water and organic molecules that may have made their way to Earth.
To read the full article, click here.
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These official NASA photographs are being made available for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photographs. The photographs may not be used in materials, advertisements, products, or promotions that in any way suggest approval or endorsement by NASA. All Images used must be credited. For information on usage rights, click here.
A NASA study expands the search for life beyond our solar system by indicating that 17 exoplanets (worlds outside our solar system) could have oceans of liquid water, an essential ingredient for life, beneath icy shells. Water from these oceans could occasionally erupt through the ice crust as geysers. The science team calculated the amount of geyser activity on these exoplanets, the first time these estimates have been made. They identified two exoplanets sufficiently close where signs of these eruptions could be observed with telescopes.
The search for life elsewhere in the Universe typically focuses on exoplanets that are in a star’s “habitable zone,” a distance where temperatures allow liquid water to persist on their surfaces. However, it’s possible for an exoplanet that’s too distant and cold to still have an ocean underneath an ice crust if it has enough internal heating. Such is the case in our solar system where Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, have subsurface oceans because they are heated by tides from the gravitational pull of the host planet and neighboring moons.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this image of Enceladus on Nov. 30, 2010. The shadow of the body of Enceladus on the lower portions of the jets is clearly visible.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
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Excitement is mounting as the largest spacecraft NASA has ever built for a planetary mission gets readied for an October launch.
Here, members of the media visited a clean room at JPL April 11 to get a close-up look at NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft and interview members of the mission team. The spacecraft is expected to launch in October 2024 on a six-year journey to the Jupiter system, where it will study the ice-encased moon Europa.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Even by the standards of Io, the most volcanic celestial body in the solar system, recent events observed on the Jovian moon are extreme.
Scientists with NASA’s Juno mission have discovered a volcanic hot spot in the southern hemisphere of Jupiter’s moon Io. The hot spot is not only larger than Earth’s Lake Superior, but it also belches out eruptions six times the total energy of all the world’s power plants. The discovery of this massive feature comes courtesy of Juno’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument, contributed by the Italian Space Agency.
A massive hotspot — larger the Earth’s Lake Superior — can be seen just to the right of Io’s south pole in this annotated image taken by the JIRAM infrared imager aboard NASA’s Juno on Dec. 27, 2024, during the spacecraft’s flyby of the Jovian moon.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM
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On Jan. 16, 2020, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured this image of two types of sand dunes on Mars: barchan and linear dunes.
The small dots are called barchan dunes, and from their shape we can tell that they are upwind. The downwind dunes are long and linear. These two types of dune each show the wind direction in different ways: the barchans have a steep slope and crescent-shaped “horns” that point downwind, while the linear dunes are stretched out along the primary wind direction. Linear dunes, however, typically indicate at least two different prevailing winds, which stretch out the sand along their average direction.
Barchan and linear dunes aren’t just a Martian phenomenon – we can also see them on Earth. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have snapped photos of them occurring in Brazil and Saudi Arabia.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
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NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is on its voyage to an asteroid of the same name, a metal-rich world that could tell us more about the formation of rocky planets. Psyche successfully launched 10:19 a.m. EDT Friday aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Integrated onto the spacecraft is the agency’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration, a test of deep space laser communications that could support future exploration missions by providing more bandwidth to transmit data than traditional radio frequency communications.
Image Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
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NASA’s Europa Clipper mission moves closer to launch as technicians worked on Wednesday, Sept. 11, inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility to prepare the spacecraft for upcoming propellant loading at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The spacecraft will explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, which is considered one of the most promising habitable environments in the solar system. The mission will research whether Europa’s subsurface ocean could hold the conditions necessary for life. Europa could have all the “ingredients” for life as we know it: water, organics, and chemical energy.
Europa Clipper’s launch period opens on Thursday, Oct. 10. It will lift off on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A. The spacecraft then will embark on a journey of nearly six years and 1.8 billion miles before reaching Jupiter’s orbit in 2030.
In this image, technicians work to complete operations before propellant load occurs ahead of launch for NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2024.
Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
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Crews rotated to vertical then lifted NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft from its protective shipping container after it arrived at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility (PHSF) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 28.
The spacecraft, which will collect data to help scientists determine if Jupiter’s icy moon Europa could support life, arrived in a United States Air Force C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane at Kennedy’s Launch and Landing Facility on May 23. The Europa Clipper spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A. The launch period opens Thursday, Oct. 10.
Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
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Images from the JunoCam visible-light camera aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft supports the theory that the icy crust at the north and south poles of Jupiter’s moon Europa is not where it used to be. Another high-resolution picture of the icy moon, by the spacecraft’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU), reveals signs of possible plume activity and an area of ice shell disruption where brine may have recently bubbled to the surface. The SRU’s image is a high-quality baseline for specific places NASA’s Europa Clipper mission can target to search for signs of change and brine.
The black-and-white image of Europa’s surface was taken by the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during the Sept. 29, 2022, flyby. The chaos feature nicknamed “the Platypus” is seen in the lower right corner (orange box). The annotated image also shows the location of a double ridge running east-west (blue box) with possible plume stains. These features hint at current surface activity and the presence of subsurface liquid water on the icy Jovian moon.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI
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The science performed by the complex suite of instruments recently added to the spacecraft will reveal whether Jupiter’s moon Europa has conditions that could support life.
With less than nine months remaining in the countdown to launch, NASA’s Europa Clipper mission has passed a major milestone: Its science instruments have been added to the massive spacecraft, which is being assembled at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Set to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in October, the spacecraft will head to Jupiter's ice-encased moon Europa, where a salty ocean beneath the frozen surface may hold conditions suitable for life. Europa Clipper won't be landing; rather, after arriving at the Jupiter system in 2030, the spacecraft will orbit Jupiter for four years, performing 49 flybys of Europa and using its powerful suite of nine science instruments to investigate the moon's potential as a habitable environment.
In this image, the Europa Clipper, with all of its instruments installed, is visible in the clean room of High Bay 1 at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Jan. 19. The tent around the spacecraft was erected to support electromagnetic testing.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Bound for a metal-rich asteroid of the same name, the Psyche mission is targeting Oct. 5 to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The spacecraft’s solar arrays are folded like an envelope into their stowed position. Xenon gas – fuel for the journey to the asteroid belt – is loaded. All four thrusters have passed their final tests. Engineers have confirmed the massive high-gain antenna is set to transmit data. The software is tested and ready. The science instruments – a multispectral imager, magnetometer, and gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer – that will investigate the asteroid Psyche are poised for action.
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft has less than 30 days to go before the opening of its launch period, which runs from Thursday, Oct. 5 through Wednesday, Oct. 25. What the mission learns from the metal-rich asteroid may tell us more about how planets form.
Here, Psyche mission team members prepare the spacecraft at a facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in late July, just after the solar arrays were folded and stowed.
Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
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XRISM, led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in collaboration with NASA and with contributions from ESA (European Space Agency), launched successfully on Sept. 6, at 7:42 p.m. EDT (Sept. 7, 8:42 a.m. in Japan). The spacecraft separated from the rocket at 7:56 p.m. EDT and is on track to observe the universe’s largest structures, hottest regions, and objects with the strongest gravity.
By combining XRISM’s data with that from other NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration observatories, which all collect different types of information, we’ll unlock new insights about the universe that weren’t possible before.
In this image is the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) spacecraft as it appeared in May at Tsukuba Space Center, Japan. The open compartment near the bottom houses its Goddard-developed Resolve instrument.
Image Credit: JAXA/NEC
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On March 6, technicians working inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida unfolded and fully extended the first of two five-panel solar arrays for the agency's Europa Clipper spacecraft. Each solar array measures 46.5 feet in length. For the operation, the team suspended the solar array on a gravity offload support system that helps support the weight of the solar array while it's here on Earth. Up next, technicians will begin inspecting and cleaning as part of assembly, test, and launch operations. Planned to arrive at Jupiter in April 2030, the mission will study Jupiter's moon Europa, which shows strong evidence beneath its icy crust of a global ocean over twice the volume of all Earth's oceans. The spacecraft will ship to Florida later this year from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California in preparation for launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy's Launch Complex 39A.
Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
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In this image from July 18, 2023, a NASA team helps attach solar arrays for the agency’s Psyche spacecraft onto a stand inside the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The solar arrays are part of the solar electric propulsion system, provided by Maxar Technologies. They will power the spacecraft on its journey to explore a metal-rich asteroid.
Psyche is scheduled to lift off at 10:38 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Oct. 5, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy.
Image Credit: NASA/Isaac Watson
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Now that fueling and testing are complete, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is ready to meet its ride – a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Launch is now targeting 10:34 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 5 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida after optimizing the trajectory for the mission to study a metal-rich asteroid.
Technicians connected Psyche to the payload attach fitting at Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Florida. This hardware allows Psyche to connect to the top of the rocket once it’s secure inside the protective payload fairings.
Psyche’s journey through space will last nearly six years and about 2.2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers) before reaching an asteroid of the same name, which is orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe Psyche could be part of the core of a planetesimal, likely made of iron-nickel metal. The ore will not be mined but studied from orbit in hopes of giving researchers a better idea of what may make up Earth’s core.
Additionally, the Psyche spacecraft will host a pioneering technology demonstration: NASA’s Read more (Deep Space Optical Communications) experiment. This laser communications system will test high-bandwidth optical communications to Earth for the first two years of Psyche’s journey.
Image Credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
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The spacecraft’s high-gain antenna was installed yesterday – a major milestone in preparation for the mission’s 1.8 billion mile journey to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, an ocean world that may have conditions that could support life. The precision-engineered dish was attached to the spacecraft in carefully choreographed stages over the course of several hours in a spacecraft assembly bay at JPL.
Stretching 10 feet (3 meters) across, the dish-shaped antenna will allow the spacecraft to communicate with mission controllers hundreds of millions of miles away on Earth. Once the spacecraft reaches Jupiter, the antenna’s radio beam will be narrowly directed toward Earth. The concentrated beam is what high-gain antennas are all about. The name refers to the antenna’s ability to focus power to its receiver, raising the strength of signals it receives, and also to transmit high-powered signals. That will mean a torrent of science data at a high rate of transmission.
Europa Clipper has a few more steps and a few more tests ahead. But it’s closer than ever for its trip to the outer solar system!
Video: A timelapse from inside the JPL clean room shows the 10-foot (3-meter), dish-shaped high-gain antenna moving from one side of the room over to the spacecraft. The antenna is held by a crane attached to the ceiling and several ropes. In the sped-up video, it moves through the air toward the spacecraft, where four team members gently hold it into place and attach it to the spacecraft.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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The solar arrays for NASA’s Psyche mission underwent a final deployment test and were permanently installed on the spacecraft at Astrotech Space Operations near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Psyche is preparing for a 2.5 billion-mile (4 billion-kilometer) solar-powered trip to the metal-rich asteroid of the same name. In a clean room at Astrotech, the solar arrays were attached to the spacecraft body, unfolded lengthwise, and then re-stowed. This timelapse video was shot over about eight days in late July 2023. The solar arrays provide power for the journey to the asteroid and for operating the spacecraft’s science instruments. When unfolded, each array is 37 feet (11.3 meters) long.
Psyche expects to launch from Kennedy no earlier than Oct. 5, 2023.
Image Credit: NASA/Glenn Benson and Cory Huston
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Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
Paul Hertz, director of Astrophysics at NASA Headquarters, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
Jeffrey Newmark, interim director of Heliophysics at NASA Headquarters, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky}
John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky}
Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist, right, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
Jeffrey Newmark, interim director of Heliophysics at NASA Headquarters, center, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Newmark, along with John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, James Green, director of Planetary Science at NASA Headquarters, Paul Hertz, director of Astrophysics at NASA Headquarters, and Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist, discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky}
John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, far left, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky}
Paul Hertz, director of Astrophysics at NASA Headquarters, center, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
James Green, director of Planetary Science at NASA Headquarters, center, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky}
Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist, far right, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Stofan and fellow panelists John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, James Green, director of Planetary Science at NASA Headquarters, Jeffrey Newmark, interim director of Heliophysics at NASA Headquarters, and Paul Hertz, director of Astrophysics at NASA Headquarters, discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky}
Panelists from left: John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, James Green, director of Planetary Science at NASA Headquarters, Jeffrey Newmark, interim director of Heliophysics at NASA Headquarters, Paul Hertz, director of Astrophysics at NASA Headquarters, and Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist, are seen at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky}
Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky}
John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky}
Paul Hertz, director of Astrophysics at NASA Headquarters, right, speaks during a panel discussion at the "Solar System and Beyond: NASA's Search for Water and Habitable Planets" event on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. Panelists discussed the recent discoveries of water and organics in our solar system, the role our sun plays in water-loss in neighboring planets, and our search for habitable worlds among the stars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky}