Jamutan: July 2023

Monday, July 31, 2023

Look up to the sky: It’s a rocket launch — and a Supermoon - WTOP

The D.C. region, if weather allows it, has a chance to see a rocket launch that will soar into the sky and be visible to many in the Mid-Atlantic and up the East Coast.

Scheduled for launch at 8:31 p.m. Tuesday from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, this will be Northrop Grumman’s 19th commercial resupply services mission for NASA.

If you are out of the viewing area, you can attend the launch virtually.

The Cygnus spacecraft S.S. Laurel Clark will deliver cargo to the International Space Station on this mission to support scientific investigations and studies of spacecraft fire protection, neural cell models for potential gene therapy, the density of Earth’s upper atmosphere, and other experiments, along with a memory card that contains creative works from students around the world.

Live coverage and countdown commentary will begin at 8 p.m. on Tuesday and air on NASA Television and the agency’s website, as well as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the NASA App.

To see the rocket, find your location on the graphic. Monitor launch progress on social media, and at liftoff, add the necessary time delay for your location but start looking right away towards the east-southeast sky. Using binoculars can provide a better view. Good luck! (Courtesy NASA)

If the launch does take place, viewers in the D.C. region need to check the graphic for what time they should be looking after launch.

As stated by NASA Wallops: “Viewing locations on Chincoteague Island include Robert Reed Park on Main Street or Beach Road spanning the area between Chincoteague and Assateague Islands. The Virginia, Maryland and Delaware Atlantic beaches also provide good viewing locations.”

Also: “Members of the public can experience the thrill of a rocket launch in person from the launch viewing area at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center. The Visitor Center will have special hours on launch day, opening from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. EDT. The Visitor Center will not be open outside of the launch viewing event on Aug. 1 to allow for event preparation. Visitors interested in viewing the launch from the Visitor Center are encouraged to carpool, as parking is limited. More launch viewing information is available on the visitor center website.”

Don’t rush back inside after the rocket fades from view, as August’s Super Blue Sturgeon Moon will be rising in the southeast abut 30 minutes after sunset. Each month’s full Moon has a variety of names associated with it.

But we get a bonus Tuesday, with the full Moon also being a Supermoon, the second of four in a row for 2023. Tuesday’s Supermoon is also the first of two Supermoons in August — we will have a Blue Moon at the end of the month too.

Seeing the Super Blue Sturgeon Moon is easy, as it will rise in the southeastern sky and be up all night. Saturn will be visible to the lower left of the Moon. Try to watch the Moon rise just as it is clearing your horizon, so you can possibly experience the so-called Moon illusion. This is quite a beautiful sight to see and experience.

When looking at the Moon, give it a wink in remembrance of Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk there. Korea, India, China and NASA have current active missions at the Moon while Russia and India will try for unmanned rover and lander touchdowns in August.

I’m hoping to be in Virginia Beach to photograph the rocket launch and the Supermoon as it rises above the sea horizon. Both events should be a sight to behold.

You might want to try photographing them as well, especially if you see them near a landmark or in the mountains or shore. Just set your smartphone or camera to Auto mode and see what you got. Make any necessary adjustments and try again.

Looking ahead in August, join me in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, Aug. 11 to Aug. 13, for the Night Sky Festival and Perseid Meteor Shower. I’ll have more on the Perseids next week, but the meteor shower is currently active.

Follow my daily blog www.whatsupthespaceplace.com and @SkyGuyinVA to keep up with the latest news in astronomy and space exploration. You can email me at skyguyinva@gmail.com.

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NASA listens for Voyager 2 spacecraft after wrong command cuts contact - ABC News

NASA is listening for any peep from Voyager 2 after losing contact with the spacecraft billions of miles away

ByMARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer

July 31, 2023, 4:05 PM

NASA Voyager — FILE - In this Aug. 4, 1977, photo provided by NASA, the "Sounds of Earth" record is mounted on the Voyager 2 spacecraft in the Safe-1 Building at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla., prior to encapsulation in the protective shroud. NASA is listening for any peep from Voyager 2 after losing contact with the spacecraft billions of miles away. (AP Photo/NASA, File)

The Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA is listening for any peep from Voyager 2 after losing contact with the spacecraft billions of miles away.

Hurtling ever deeper into interstellar space, Voyager 2 has been out of touch ever since flight controllers accidentally sent a wrong command more than a week ago that tilted its antenna away from Earth. The spacecraft's antenna shifted a mere 2%, but it was enough to cut communications.

Although it’s considered a long shot, NASA said Monday that its huge dish antenna in Canberra, Australia, is on the lookout for any stray signals from Voyager 2, currently more than 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) distant. It takes more than 18 hours for a signal to reach Earth from so far away.

In the coming week, the Canberra antenna — part of NASA's Deep Space Network — also will bombard Voyager 2’s vicinity with the correct command, in hopes it hits its mark, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the Voyager missions.

Otherwise, NASA will have to wait until October for an automatic spacecraft reset that should restore communication, according to officials.

Voyager 2 was launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets, just a couple weeks ahead of its identical twin, Voyager 1.

Still in touch with Earth, Voyager 1 is now nearly 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away, making it humanity's most distant spacecraft.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Two rare supermoons will appear this August. Here's when to catch them - GMA

The previous full moon, which some considered a supermoon, occurred on July 3, NASA reported. It is known as a Buck Moon, as Algonquin tribes refer to it, or a Thunder Moon, a reference to the thunderstorms that often develop in the summer.

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6 Great Space Images From July - The New York Times

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Northrop Grumman prepares for final flight of Antares with Russian and Ukrainian components - SpaceNews

WASHINGTON — A Cygnus cargo spacecraft is set to launch to the International Space Station on the final flight of a version of an Antares rocket with Russian and Ukrainian components.

NASA and Northrop Grumman completed a launch readiness review July 30 for the NG-19 mission, approving plans to launch the spacecraft on Aug. 1 at 8:31 p.m. Eastern from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia. Forecasts project an 80% chance of acceptable weather for the scheduled liftoff.

The Cygnus is carrying nearly 3,750 kilograms of cargo to the station, including experiments, hardware and crew supplies. An on-time launch would allow the spacecraft to arrive at the station early Aug. 4 and remain there at least three months.

This is the first Cygnus mission since the launch of NG-18 in November 2022. On that mission, one of two solar arrays on the Cygnus failed to deploy, but the spacecraft was able to carry out its mission with the single array.

The solar array did not deploy because debris that lodged in the hinge of the array, preventing it from unfolding, said Steve Krein, vice president of civil and commercial space at Northrop Grumman, during a July 30 briefing. “There’s really no redesign of modifications required” to the spacecraft, he said.

That debris came from acoustic blankets in the interstage portion of the Antares during stage separation. “It wasn’t a clean separation and we created some debris, and unfortunately a piece of the acoustic blanket became lodged in one of the Cygnus solar arrays,” said Kurt Eberly, director of space launch programs at Northrop Grumman. He said the company implemented unspecified corrective actions that have been reviewed by NASA ahead of the NG-19 launch.

The NG-19 launch will be the last of the current version of the rocket, called Antares 230+. That version of the rocket uses a first stage manufactured by Ukraine’s Yuzhnoye State Design Office and Yuzhmash Machine Building plant, with RD-181 engines from Russian company NPO Energomash.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, triggering sanctions that largely cut off Russia’s space industry from the West, Northrop Grumman said it had components for two more Antares launches, the NG-18 and -19 missions. In August 2022, Northrop announced it was partnering with Firefly Aerospace to develop a new version of the rocket, Antares 330, using a domestically manufactured first stage and engines.

Eberly said the companies have completed critical design reviews (CDRs) for the structure of the first stage as well as Firefly’s Miranda engines that will power it. A system-level CDR is scheduled for September, and Firefly plans to start hot-fire tests of Miranda this fall.

When Northrop and Firefly announced their partnership last August, they expected to start launching the Antares 330 by late 2024. That has now slipped to the summer of 2025, he said.

While Antares 330 is in development, Northrop will launch three Cygnus missions on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. Despite the delay in the introduction of the new Antares, Eberly said Northrop doesn’t anticipate buying additional Falcon 9 launches. “We’re planning NG-20, -21 and -22 missions on Falcon 9, and then the plan is to return to Wallops” for NG-23 and beyond on Antares 330.

The new first stage is more powerful than the existing one, increasing payload performance for the rocket from 8,120 kilograms for Cygnus ISS missions to 10,500 kilograms. “We think that opens the doors for other markets for us,” Eberly said.

The Antares 330 also serves as a transition for a future rocket, currently known simply as the Medium Launch Vehicle, where the solid-fuel upper stage will be replaced by one using a version of the Miranda engine. That will further increase the vehicle’s payload capacity to 16,000 kilograms.

“With that increased capability, coupled with the domestic supply chain, we think we’re going to be able to address other markets, including NASA civil and DOD markets, as well as commercial, in addition to cargo resupply,” he said.

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Saturday, July 29, 2023

A roundworm species was just revived after 46000 years in the Siberian permafrost - Mashable

In the movie Encino Man, Brendan Fraser plays an ice age caveman who gets frozen, wakes up in Los Angeles in the 90s and learns to love things like burritos and being a party animal. This story has now come as true as it is likely to ever come, because a microscopic worm from Siberia just went through a similar experience.

A paper published Thursday in PLOS Genetics tells an extreme survival story: 46,000 years ago, a member of the species Panagrolaimus kolymaensis was in a gopher hole, and felt it necessary to put herself into a state of suspended animation for whatever reason. She then remained frozen until she was found 130 feet under the surface in a permafrost deposit next to a river. In human terms, this worm slept from the time we were creating the earliest known cave paintings, until just now.

Then she partied. She ate some bacteria from a plate in a lab, reproduced asexually, and died, leaving generations of descendants for biologists to study.

Panagrolaimus kolymaensis is a novel species, either extinct and now resurrected, or simply never classified. Since Panagrolaimus nematodes like this one live in their own niches — like rodent burrows — eating microbes and truly not bothering us humans in any way, we really only encounter them by taking samples of their environment, and looking at them under microscopes. According to the Washington Post, the "vast majority" of nematode species are unclassified.

The paper, by Anastasia Shatilovich of the Russian Academy of Sciences and 14 other authors, notes that this particular worm is a record-crusher. The previous sleep record for a nematode was 39 years. Like another roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans, this new worm has a preconditioning process that helps it survive when it comes time to enter suspended animation: it allows itself to dry out and secrete a carbohydrate called trehalose.

According to the paper these findings could be quite significant. "Our findings here are important for the understanding of evolutionary processes because generation times could be stretched from days to millennia, and long-term survival of individuals of species can lead to the refoundation of otherwise extinct lineages," the authors write.

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Scientists unveil synergistic method for non-canonical amino acid synthesis - Phys.org

New chemistry, new enzymology. With a new method that merges the best of two worlds—the unique and complementary activities of enzymes and small-molecule photochemistry—researchers at UC Santa Barbara have opened the door to new catalytic reactions. Their synergistic method allows for new products and can streamline existing processes, in particular, the synthesis of non-canonical amino acids, which are important for therapeutic purposes.

"This method solves what in my opinion is one of the most important problems in our field: how to develop new catalytic reactions in a general sense that are new to both biology and chemistry," said chemistry Professor Yang Yang, an author of a paper that appears in the journal Science. "On top of that, the process is stereoselective, meaning it can select for a preferred "shape" of the resulting amino acid."

The synergistic photobiocatalytic method consists of two co-occurring catalytic reactions. The photochemical reaction generates a short-lived intermediate molecule that works with the reactive intermediate of the enzymatic process, resulting in the amino acid.

The biocatalysis side starts with an enzyme to activate an abundant natural amino acid substrate and form an enzymatic intermediate. Meanwhile, on the synthetic side, a small molecule photocatalyst is made to absorb visible light in order to use the energy to activate another substrate. This reaction creates a short-lived radical species—a transient, highly reactive molecule that is the Yang Lab's tool of choice.

The thing about radicals (also known as "free radicals") is that not only do they tend to be short-lived, they're also hard to corral.

"The general consensus has been that if you form a radical in the solution or outside the protein pocket, there would be so many things that could happen to it before it could do something productive, like undergo side reactions, or be destroyed," Yang said.

But the lab's ace in the hole is the intermediate molecule generated by the enzymatic reaction, which can capture the freewheeling radical.

"So now the most important and interesting step is that once we form this transient and short-lived free radical species, it can travel to the enzyme's active site and react with the enzymatically formed, activated covalent intermediate molecule," Yang said. We've essentially engineered a system where the radical can efficiently react with the enzymatically formed intermediate and do stereoselective chemistry."

It's this efficiency that the Yang Lab is after in its bid to create a platform for stereoselective non-canonical amino acid synthesis ("noncanonical" simply means that these protein building blocks are not found in the genes of organisms). For one thing, the process is selective for different 'shapes,' or arrangements of atoms relative to each other within the resulting molecules—an important factor in the world of stereochemistry (also known as 3D chemistry). Secondly, the conventional method of synthesizing non-canonical amino acids is a complicated multi-step process.

"Our process shortcuts non-canonical amino acid synthesis by three to five steps. For amino acids with multiple stereogenic centers, there are essentially no chemical means to prepare these compounds with stereocontrol." Yang said. For makers of peptide therapies, this could be a game-changer. Yang has received inquiries from the pharmaceutical and biotech industries about potentially applying these technologies for amino acid synthesis.

And it doesn't stop there. This method could open new doors in both bio- and synthetic catalysis, allowing researchers to work with tricky radicals, access formerly unreachable compounds and molecules, and discover previously unknown reactions.

More information: Lei Cheng et al, Stereoselective amino acid synthesis by synergistic photoredox-pyridoxal radical biocatalysis, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.adg2420

Provided by University of California - Santa Barbara

Citation: Scientists unveil synergistic method for non-canonical amino acid synthesis (2023, July 29) retrieved 29 July 2023 from https://ift.tt/42Nq7Wx

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Hubble Space Telescope sees planet around red dwarf star getting hiccups - Fox News

The Hubble Space Telescope has seen a young planet whirling around a red dwarf star "getting the hiccups."

The agency said the exoplanet is so close to its parent star, AU Microscopii, that is experiencing a consistent and torrential blast of energy.

That blast evaporates its hydrogen atmosphere, causing it to puff off the planet.

While, during one orbit, the planet looked as if it wasn't losing any material at all, observations a year and a half later showed clear signs of atmospheric loss.

WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE TAKES STUNNINGLY DETAILED INFRARED IMAGE OF ACTIVELY FORMING STARS

An illustration of a planet passing in front of the red dwarf star AU Microscopii

This artist's illustration shows a planet (dark silhouette) passing in front of the red dwarf star AU Microscopii. The planet is so close to the eruptive star a ferocious blast of stellar wind and blistering ultraviolet radiation is heating the planet's hydrogen atmosphere, causing it to escape into space. Four times Earth's diameter, the planet is slowly evaporating its atmosphere, which stretches out linearly along its orbital path. This process may eventually leave behind a rocky core. The illustration is based on measurements made by the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA, and Joseph Olmsted (STScI))

NASA explained that such extreme variability between orbits was a shock to astronomers.

"We've never seen atmospheric escape go from completely not detectable to very detectable over such a short period when a planet passes in front of its star," Keighley Rockcliffe, of Dartmouth College, said. "We were really expecting something very predictable, repeatable. But it turned out to be weird. When I first saw this, I thought 'That can't be right.'"

She noted that it was also puzzling to see the atmosphere puffing off the planet, adding that the observation is kind of a stress-test case for the modeling and the physics about planetary evolution.

The parent star – located 32 light-years from Earth – hosts one of the youngest planetary systems ever observed and is less than 100 million years old.

HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE FINDS BOULDERS POTENTIALLY SHAKEN OFF ASTEROID FOLLOWING DART EXPERIMENT

Picture taken by the STS-31 crew aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery showing the Hubble Space Telescope being deployed on April 25, 1990, from the payload bay. (NASA/AFP via Getty Images)

Its innermost planet, AU Mic b, is just six million mays away from the star and is about four times the Earth's diameter.

Stellar flares from young red dwarfs like AU Microscopii blast out radiation and are powered by magnetic fields that get tangled by the motions of the stellar atmosphere.

When the tangling is too intense, the fields break and reconnect. That unleashes energy around 100 to 1,000 times more energetic than our sun unleashes in its outbursts.

"This creates a really unconstrained and, frankly, scary stellar wind environment that's impacting the planet's atmosphere," Rockcliffe stated. Such an event within the first 100 million years of the star's birth could end up stripping a planet of its atmosphere.

Rockcliffe said that scientists want to figure out what kinds of planets can survive such conditions and if there is any chance of habitability there.

In this handout from the National Aeronautical Space Administration (NASA), the Hubble Space Telescope drifts through space in a picture taken from the Space Shuttle Discovery during Hubble's second servicing mission in 1997. (NASA via Getty Images)

Changes in atmospheric outflow from the planet may indicate variability in the host red dwarf's outbursts, with one possible explanation for missing hydrogen that a flare may have photoionized the escaping hydrogen to the point where it became transparent to light and undetectable. Another explanation is that the stellar wind itself is shaping the planetary outflow and causing some of it to "hiccup" ahead of the planet.

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Although the star's glare prevents a direct view of the planet, Hubble can measure changes in the star's apparent brightness caused by hydrogen bleeding off the planet and dimming the starlight when the planet transits the star.

Julia Musto is a reporter for Fox News and Fox Business Digital.

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Another ‘super’ moon coming soon - WKBN.com

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Another ‘super’ moon coming soon WKBN.com
The 'Sturgeon Supermoon' — August's 1st of 2 full supermoons — swims into the sky Aug. 1 Livescience.com
Two supermoons, including rare blue moon, in store for August night skies MLive.com
Two supermoons in August mean double the stargazing fun ABC News
Look up in the sky: August will have two supermoons in one month NBC4 WCMH-TV
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Friday, July 28, 2023

The 'Sturgeon Supermoon' — August's 1st of 2 full supermoons — swims into the sky Aug. 1 - Livescience.com

August's full moon, known as the Sturgeon Supermoon, will be at its fullest on Tuesday (August 1). The second supermoon of the year (after July's Buck Moon), it will be almost as large as 2023's biggest supermoon — which will be the next full moon, rising on Aug. 30. The Sturgeon Supermoon is also the first of two full moons in August, making the Aug. 30 full moon a somewhat rare Blue Moon.

Also appearing bright and full on Monday and Wednesday, August's full moon is most commonly named after North America's prolific sturgeon family of fish, which are found in the Great Lakes at this time of year, according to timeanddate.com. The Anishinaabeg people call it Minoomini Giizis and the Grain (Wild Rice) Moon, according to the Center for Native American Studies.

The Sturgeon Moon will be at its fullest at 1:33 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. From North America, it will be best seen as it rises in the east that evening — though the exact time will depend on the location of the viewer. As it appears, the moon will be over 99% illuminated as it rises in the east at dusk, opposite the setting sun.

At its peak, the Sturgeon Moon will be 222,023 miles (357,311 kilometers) from Earth's center, making it the second-largest supermoon of 2023. A supermoon orbits a little closer to Earth than the moon does on average, so appears slightly bigger and brighter. It occurs because the moon has an elliptical orbit of Earth.

Each month, the moon has a perigee (closest) and apogee (farthest) point. The mean distance of perigee and apogee can range from 225,800 to 251,800 miles (363,400 to 405,500 km), respectively. A full moon that comes within 90% of perigee in a given month qualifies as a supermoon, according to Fred Espenak, an astronomer and former eclipse calculator for NASA.

After the Sturgeon Moon, the next full moon will be the Blue Moon on Aug. 30. The biggest and brightest supermoon of 2023, the Blue Moon will be 222,043 miles (357,344 km) from Earth. That's 20 miles (33 km) closer than the Sturgeon Moon.

The full moon is always visible with the naked eye (weather permitting), but those looking to get an extra detailed view of the Supermoon should consider investing in a pair of stargazing binoculars, or a good small telescope, to improve their skywatching experience.

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Two supermoons, including rare blue moon, in store for August night skies - MLive.com

August will be bookended by two very special full moons.

The month will kick off with the full Sturgeon Moon on Tuesday, August 1, and it will end with another full moon — a rare celestial event known as a blue moon — on Wednesday, August 30.

What’s more, both of these full moons will be supermoons: the term for when a full moon happens at the same time it reaches its closest point to Earth in a month. Supermoons can occur a few times each year, according to EarthSky.org, and can cause the moon to appear brighter and larger, especially when it’s rising up along the horizon.

These two full moons are the second and third supermoons to fall in a row this summer, to be followed by one more supermoon in September.

The August moon cycle was traditionally called the Sturgeon Moon because historically that was the time of year for catching these prehistoric fish, according to The Old Farmers Almanac.

Meanwhile, according to NASA, “blue moon” has been used since the 1940′s as a name for the second full moon in a calendar month. Blue moons are fairly rare, typically happening just once every two to three years.

For a little extra summer stargazing magic, this particular blue moon will be Earth’s closest full moon in 2023, and will share the sky with the tail end of the beloved annual Perseid meteor shower.

You can do full moon, stargazing guided kayak trips around a Michigan island chain this summer

Leland Blue stone: What is this beach treasure everyone is looking for Up North?

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Thursday, July 27, 2023

City-size comet headed toward Earth 'grows horns' after massive volcanic eruption - Livescience.com

A blurry image of a comet that appears to have two horns — The comet 12P/Pons-Brook (12P) photographed on July 26, with the comet's "horns" clearly visible. The image was captured by the Las Cumbres Observatory as part of the Faulkes telescope Project. (Image credit: Comet Chasers/Richard Miles)

An unusual volcanic comet flying toward the sun appears to have "grown horns" after it exploded, causing it to shine like a small star and shower supercold "magma" into space. It is the first time this comet has been seen erupting in almost 70 years.

The comet, named 12P/Pons-Brooks (12P), is a cryovolcanic — or cold volcano — comet. Like all other comets, the icy object is made up of a solid nucleus, filled with a mix of ice, dust and gas, and is surrounded by a fuzzy cloud of gas called a coma, which leaks out of the comet's interior. But unlike most other comets, the gas and ice inside 12P's nucleus build up so much that the celestial object can violently explode, shooting out its frosty guts, known as cryomagma, through large cracks in the nucleus's shell.

On July 20, multiple astronomers detected a major outburst from the comet, which suddenly became around 100 times brighter than it usually appears, Spaceweather.com reported. This increase in brightness occurred when the comet's coma suddenly swelled up with gas and ice crystals released from the comet's interior, allowing it to reflect more sunlight back to Earth.

A zoomed out image of the comet with an orange circle around it — An image of 12P (circled) taken on July 24. The coma's horns are clearly visible despite the low resolution of the photo. (Image credit: Thomas Wildoner/The Dark Side Observatory)

As of July 26, the comet's coma had grown to around 143,000 miles (230,000 kilometers) across, or more than 7,000 times wider than its nucleus, which has an estimated diameter of around 18.6 miles (30 km), Richard Miles, an astronomer with the British Astronomical Association who studies cryovolcanic comets, told Live Science in an email.

But interestingly, an irregularity in the shape of the expanded coma makes the comet look as though it has sprouted horns. Other experts have also likened the deformed comet to the Millennium Falcon, one of the iconic spaceships from Star Wars, Spaceweather.com reported.

The unusual shape of the comet's coma is likely due to an irregularity in the shape of 12P's nucleus, Miles said. The outflowing gas was likely partially obstructed by an out-sticking lobe on the nucleus, which created a "notch" in the expanded coma. As the gas continued to move away from the comet and grow, the notch, or "shadow," became more noticeable, he added. But the expanded coma will eventually disappear as the gas and ice becomes too dispersed to reflect sunlight.

An infrared image of the coma and tail of comet 29P after an eruption on Dec. 8 2003. — An infrared image of the coma and tail of volcanic comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann after an eruption on Dec. 8, 2003. (Image credit: NASA/Spitzer Space Telescope )

This is the first major eruption detected from 12P in 69 years, Miles said, mainly because its orbit takes it too far away from Earth for its outbursts to be noticed.

12P has one of the longest known orbital periods of any comet. It takes around 71 years for the floating volcano to fully orbit the sun, during which time it is catapulted out to the farthest reaches of the solar system. The comet is due to reach its closest point to the sun on April 21, 2024 and make its closest approach to Earth on June 2, 2024, at which point it will be visible in the night sky, Spaceweather.com reported. Earthlings could, therefore, get a front-row seat to more eruptions over the next few years.

But 12P is not the only volcanic comet researchers have their eyes on right now. Over the past few years, there have been several notable eruptions from 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann (29P) — the most volatile volcanic comet in the solar system.

In December 2022, astronomers witnessed the largest eruption from 29P in around 12 years, which sprayed around 1 million tons of cryomagma into space. And in April this year, for the first time ever, scientists were able to accurately predict one of 29P's eruptions before it actually happened, thanks to a slight increase in brightness, which suggested more gas was leaking out of the comet's nucleus as it prepared to pop.

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Falcon Heavy seen from space with satellite operated by company who built satellite launching on Falcon Heavy - Space.com

Before SpaceX's Falcon Heavy made its seventh flight to space, space decided to send some Falcon Heavy to Earth.

In photographs beamed back from one of Maxar Technologies' imaging satellites, SpaceX's heavy-lift Falcon Heavy rocket can be seen standing at Launch Launch Complex-39A, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, in Florida.

SpaceX was poised to launch Falcon Heavy Wednesday night, but was scrubbed barely a minute before liftoff. Another attempt will occur Thursday night at 11:04 p.m. ET (0304 UTC on July 28). The rocket's payload, the Jupiter 3 communications satellite, will join the Hughes Jupiter fleet, which provides communications services to North and South America.

Jupiter 3 is the largest communication satellite ever, built by Maxar Technologies. Maxar designs and manufactures satellites and other components for spacecraft, and has 285 satellites in orbit, according to the company's website.

A high-altitude aerial view of SpaceX's triple-booster Falcon Heavy rocket can be seen standing in the center of the wide landscaped launch complex. Roads, pipes and other infrastructure extend outward from the rocket and adjacent launch tower. — Image taken at 11:57 a.m. EDT (1557 GMT), July 26, of Falcon Heavy rocket standing at LC-39A. (Image credit: Maxar Technologies)

Wednesday morning, before the first launch attempt, Maxar posted images of Falcon Heavy to their social media.

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Earth's plate tectonics traced back to 'tipping point' 3.2 billion years ago - Livescience.com

Earth shown with no water with cracks in the surface where orange magma can be seen on black background of space — The fingerprints of Earth's plate tectonics have been found in deposits dating back 3.2 billion years. (Image credit: visdia/Getty Images)

Earth's surface is ever-changing, with tectonic plates grinding and shifting, building mountain ranges, pulling apart sea floors and causing dramatic earthquakes.

Now, new research adds to the growing body of evidence that these dynamics started 3.2 billion years ago. While there is controversy within the geoscience community about exactly when Earth became more than just a blob of hot, undifferentiated rock, the new study suggests that this transition happened about 1.3 billion years after the planet formed.

"Three-point-two billion is the tipping point," study co-author Zheng Xiang Li, a geodynamicist at Curtin University in Australia, told Live Science.

In 2020, Li and his colleagues reported there was a shift in the chemistry of the rocks that formed in the mantle about 3.2 billion years ago, hinting that a "remixing" process took place. This process would have involved minerals being transported from the crust down into the mantle, and mantle rocks moving up to the surface — the fingerprints of plate tectonics. Other researchers have also seen evidence of a shift at this same time period; for example, a 2020 study in the journal Science Advances found magnetic evidence for large-scale plate motion 3.2 billion years ago.

But there is still debate about when and how these processes started, Li said.

When did plate tectonics begin?

In the new study, he and Luc Doucet, a geochemist at Curtin University, along with their colleagues, focused on large lead-zinc deposits in Australia. The scientists used the ratios of molecular variations of uranium, thorium and lead as a clock to measure events that happened deep in Earth's history.

The deposits in Australia span from 3.4 billion years ago to 285 million years ago, study co-author Denis Fougerouse of Curtin University said in a statement.

The new analysis again pointed at 3.2 billion years as a turning point, Li said. Before then, Earth had differentiated into the "layer cake" pattern of core, mantle and crust that is still seen today. This layering was driven by gravity, with heavier elements sinking to the core and lighter elements rising to the crust, Li said.

However, 3.2 billion years ago, these layers started to remix, with plate tectonics driving slabs of crust back into the mantle, and forces such as volcanism bringing mantle elements up to the surface.

The researchers also found that the initiation of this process was complicated and not necessarily timed exactly the same all across the planet. The new findings, reported in the August edition of the journal Earth-Science Reviews, show that researchers need to recalibrate the uranium-thorum-lead dating system to capture these nuances.

"If we don't deal with it carefully, we might have tens of millions or hundreds of millions of years of error in the age," Li said.

The researchers are now using computer simulations to understand how plate tectonics likely started 3.2 billion years ago. The cooling of the planet from a magma ocean to something more temperate and solid may have played a major role, Li said.

"Our first motivation is to document how the whole Earth evolved from the early red ball through plate tectonics to the green marble we have now," he said.

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Sol 3898: A Stop Along the Road – NASA Mars Exploration - NASA Mars Exploration

Elena Amador-French

Science Operations Coordinator; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Ryan Anderson

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Mariah Baker

Planetary Geologist; Center for Earth & Planetary Studies, Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum; Washington, DC

Michael Battalio

Planetary Climatologist; Yale University; New Haven, CT

Keri Bean

Rover Planner Deputy Team Lead; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Kristen Bennett

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Fred Calef

Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Brittney Cooper

Atmospheric Scientist; York University; Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Sean Czarnecki

Planetary Geologist; Arizona State University; Tempe, AZ

Lauren Edgar

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Christopher Edwards

Planetary Geologist; Northern Arizona University; Flagstaff, AZ

Abigail Fraeman

Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Scott Guzewich

Atmospheric Scientist; NASA/GSFC; Greenbelt, MD

Samantha Gwizd

Planetary Geologist; University of Tennessee; Knoxville, TN

Ken Herkenhoff

Planetary Geologist; USGS; Flagstaff, AZ

Evan Hilgemann

Rover Planner; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Alex Innanen

Atmospheric Scientist; York University; Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Rachel Kronyak

Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Michelle Minitti

Planetary Geologist; Framework; Silver Spring, MD

Natalie Moore

Mission Operations Specialist, Malin Space Science Systems; San Diego, CA

Claire Newman

Atmospheric Scientist, Aeolis Research; Pasadena, CA

Catherine O'Connell-Cooper

Planetary Geologist; University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

Melissa Rice

Planetary Geologist; Western Washington University; Bellingham, WA

Mark Salvatore

Planetary Geologist; Northern Arizona University; Flagstaff, AZ

Susanne Schwenzer

Planetary Geologist; The Open University; Milton Keynes, U.K.

Ashley Stroupe

Mission Operations Engineer; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Dawn Sumner

Planetary Geologist; University of California Davis; Davis, CA

Vivian Sun

Planetary Geologist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Lucy Thompson

Planetary Geologist; University of New Brunswick; Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

Scott VanBommel

Planetary Scientist; Washington University; St. Louis, MO

Ashwin Vasavada

MSL Project Scientist; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Roger Wiens

Geochemist; LANL; Los Alamos, NM

Sharon Wilson

Planetary Geologist; Center for Earth & Planetary Studies, Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum; Washington, DC

Alivia Eng

Graduate Student; Georgia Tech; Atlanta, GA

Remington Free

Operations Systems Engineer; NASA/JPL; Pasadena, CA

Emma Harris

Graduate Student; Natural History Museum; London, UK

Conor Hayes

Graduate Student; York University; Toronto, ON, Canada

Abigail Knight

Graduate Student; Washington University; St. Louis, MO

Amelie Roberts

Planetary Geologist; Imperial College; London, UK

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Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Astronomers discover never-before-seen two-faced star - CNN

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CNN —

Astronomers have made a first-of-its-kind discovery — a white dwarf star with two completely different faces.

White dwarfs are burnt remains of dead stars. Our sun will become a white dwarf in about 5 billion years after it swells into a red giant star, blows out its outer material and, with only the core left, shrinks back into a blinding white-hot remnant.

The newly discovered white dwarf has two sides, one made of hydrogen and the other made of helium. Researchers have nicknamed the star Janus, for the Roman god of transition, which has two faces. A study detailing the findings was published July 19 in the journal Nature.

“The surface of the white dwarf completely changes from one side to the other,” said lead study author Ilaria Caiazzo, a postdoctoral scholar research associate in astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, in a statement. “When I show the observations to people, they are blown away.”

White dwarfs are incredibly dense, compressing a mass comparable to our sun’s into something equivalent to an Earth-size planet.

The strong gravitational influence at play during the death of a star means that the remaining heavy elements move toward the center while lighter elements like hydrogen or helium rise to the upper layer. Given the blazing temperatures of white dwarfs, the hottest ones have hydrogen atmospheres. As the stars cool over time, they tend to have helium atmospheres.

But typical white dwarfs don’t have one side of the star devoted to one element, and the other dominated by another.

The unusual stellar remnant was first detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility, located at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory. Caiazzo used the instrument, which scans the skies each night, for a recent survey of highly magnetized white dwarfs when an object appeared that rapidly changed in brightness.

Follow-up observations were conducted by Caiazzo and her team using Palomar’s CHIMERA instrument, the HiPERCAM located on the Gran Telescopio Canarias in Spain’s Canary Islands and W.M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaii.

The three observatories showed that Janus was rotating on its axis every 15 minutes — and showcased the star’s double-faced nature and composition. Astronomers used a spectrometer to separate the light of the white dwarf into different wavelengths, which revealed the chemical signature of hydrogen on one side and helium on the other.

The star has a scorching temperature of 62,540 degrees Fahrenheit (34,726 degrees Celsius), which researchers determined with help from the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.

How Janus formed two faces

The researchers aren’t quite sure why the star has two completely different sides. It’s possible that Janus is experiencing a rare form of evolution.

“Not all, but some white dwarfs transition from being hydrogen- to helium-dominated on their surface,” Caiazzo said. “We might have possibly caught one such white dwarf in the act.”

As the white dwarf cools over time, the heavier and lighter materials may mix together. During this transition, it’s possible for hydrogen to become diluted within the interior, allowing helium to become the dominant element.

If this is occurring on Janus, one side of the star is evolving before the other side.

Scientists think that magnetic fields may explain the unusual two-face appearance of the white dwarf nicknamed Janus.

Magnetic fields, depicted here as lines around the star, may explain the unusual appearance of Janus.

K. Miller, Caltech/IPAC

“Magnetic fields around cosmic bodies tend to be asymmetric, or stronger on one side,” Caiazzo said. “Magnetic fields can prevent the mixing of materials. So, if the magnetic field is stronger on one side, then that side would have less mixing and thus more hydrogen.”

Another possibility is that the magnetic fields are shifting the pressure and density of these atmospheric gases on Janus.

“The magnetic fields may lead to lower gas pressures in the atmosphere, and this may allow a hydrogen ‘ocean’ to form where the magnetic fields are strongest,” said study coauthor James Fuller, professor of theoretical astrophysics at Caltech, in a statement. “We don’t know which of these theories are correct, but we can’t think of any other way to explain the asymmetric sides without magnetic fields.”

The team will continue the search for more white dwarfs like Janus using the Zwicky Transient Facility because the instrument is “very good at finding strange objects,” Caiazzo said.

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Monday, July 31, 2023

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Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Earth's plate tectonics traced back to 'tipping point' 3.2 billion years ago - Livescience.com

When did plate tectonics begin?

Sol 3898: A Stop Along the Road – NASA Mars Exploration - NASA Mars Exploration

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Astronomers discover never-before-seen two-faced star - CNN

How Janus formed two faces

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