Data glitch aboard Voyager 1 fixed

Image courtesy of NASA/JPL Caltech

NASA announced that they have found a solution to a glitch causing the Voyager 1 probe to send faulty telemetry data back to Earth.

The glitch was caused by the 45-year-old craft's altitude articulation and control system (AACS) sending data to an onboard computer that had stopped functioning properly years ago, causing the data to become corrupted. The problem was solved by simply commanding Voyager 1 to send the data to the correct computer.

The reason Voyager 1 decided to send data to a non-functioning computer is currently unknown but is hypothesized by the Voyager 1 team to be an incorrect command from another onboard computer. Regardless, the issue appears to not be a threat to the long term health of the probe.

“We’ll do a full memory readout of the AACS and look at everything it’s been doing. That will help us try to diagnose the problem that caused the telemetry issue in the first place," project director Suzanne Dodd says.

Voyager 1 as well as its sister probe Voyager 2 can be tracked on their interstellar mission via the Voyager mission status page on NASA JPL's website.

NASA scrubs Artemis launch due to engine problem

Image courtesy of NASA

The launch of NASA's Artemis I mission has unfortunately been delayed from its planned launch date of August 29, 2022 due to unexpected issues with spacecraft's RS-25 engines.

According to engineers at NASA, the problems arose during the pre-flight stage and included multiple leakages in the fuel system as well as a possible crack in the thermal protection of the craft. The issue that halted the launch, however, was a failure to get the hydrogen within one Artemis I's engines, specifically engine #3, to the correct temperature.

The Artemis I mission management team is set to convene on Tuesday to discuss the issue and develop a plan to ensure that Artemis I is spaceborne.

Update 9/3/22: NASA's attempted launch on September 3, 2022 was scrapped due to a fuel leak.

First confirmed trace of carbon dioxide found outside our solar sytem

Render of JWST fully deployed. Image courtesy of NASA.

 NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found the first ever clear traces of carbon dioxide (CO2) in a planet's atmosphere outside of our solar system on the exoplanet WASP-39 b, a gas giant exoplanet roughly 700 light years away from our solar system.

The data was captured via JWST's onboard Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument which analyzes the various wavelengths of light that hit it. When JWST was aimed at WASP-39 b, it revealed that the amount of light blocked by the atmosphere was indicative of the presence of CO2 gas as it absorbs light of a certain wavelength.

Graph courtesy of NASA

“Detecting such a clear signal of carbon dioxide on WASP-39 b bodes well for the detection of atmospheres on smaller, terrestrial-sized planets," JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science team leader and UC Santa Cruz student Natalie Batalha says.

The JWST's current location and more can be tracked via NASA's "Where is Webb?" page.

James Webb snaps groundbreaking images of Jupiter

 

Image courtesy of NASA

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured two composite images of the planet Jupiter. The images were captured via JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and analyzed with the help of Judy Schmidt, a participant in the US government's "Citizen Science" program that allows the general public to aid agencies in various scientific endeavours.

In these images, various strands of infrared light invisible to the human eye have been mapped to colored filters based upon their wavelength. The longer wavelengths appear in a reddish filter while shorter ones appear with a blue tint.

The first image (shown above) is a standalone shot of Jupiter that reveals the planet's aurora (red) reaching high into the atmosphere above the poles as well as several white spots and streaks on the planet that scientists say are likely to be representative of local stormclouds. In contrast, black dots and streaks are areas of the planet that have less cloud cover than the rest of the Jupiter.

Image courtesy of NASA.

The second image (shown above) is a wide-angle shot of Jupiter that, in addition to the planet's aurora, shows off Jupiter's rings, its moons Amalthea (bright white dot to the left of Jupiter) and Adrastea (small white dot at the pinnacle of inner ring) and several "photobombing" distant galaxies.

"It’s really remarkable that we can see details on Jupiter together with its rings, tiny satellites, and even galaxies in one image,” UC Berkley professor emritus and astronomer Imke de Pater said, having worked on preliminary observations of Jupiter as part of JWST's Early Science Release Program with fellow scientist Thierry Fouchet.

JWST can be tracked via NASA's "Where is Webb" page.

NASA chooses four new proposals for Explorers Program

UVEX, one of two medium explorer missions selected. Image courtesy of Caltech.

 NASA has selected two missions for its Medium Class Explorers (MIDEX) branch of the Explorers Program as well as two missions of opportunity to undergo further conceptual study. The MIDEX proposals will receive $3 million for nine month studies while the missions of opportunity will recieve $750,000.

The MIDEX missions are the UltraViolet EXplorer (UVEX), a spacecraft that would survey the sky with two bands of ultraviolet light in order to obtain new information on the life cycle of galaxies and stars, and the Survey and Time-domain Astrophysical Research Explorer (STAR-X) which would work in tandem with NASA's currently in-development Roman Space Telescope (RST) to map out distant galaxy clusters.

The missions of opportunity are the Moon Burst Energetics All-sky Monitor (MoonBEAM), a satellite that would scan for bursts of gamma radiation in order to guide other telescopes to the source, and a Large Area burst Polarimeter (LEAP) that would be mounted on the Internation Space Station (ISS) for the study of gamma ray bursts spawned from the creation of black holes.

Despite being faced with the likely possibility of delays due to budget cuts, NASA is expected to select one MIDEX mission and one mission of opportunity by 2024.

NASA to announce potential landing zones for Artemis III mission

 

NASA will be holding a media teleconference on July 19, 2022 in order to announce possible landing zones near the Moon's south pole for the 2025 "Artemis III" lunar mission. 

In attendance will be Mark Kirasich, the deputy associate administrator for the Artemis Campaign Development Division, Jacob Bleacher, the mission's chief exploration scientist, Sarah Noble, Artemis's lunar science lead, and Prasun Desai, the deputy associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate.

The teleconference can be viewed on NASA Live. Updates on the Artemis mission will be posted on the official blog.

Rocket Lab releases new details on Venus mission

 

Aerospace manufacturer Rocket Lab has released new details on its upcoming mission with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to search for signs of life on the planet Venus.

Utilizing the same "Photon" spacecraft utilized in NASA's "CAPSTONE" lunar mission, Rocket Lab's project is projected to arrive at the gas giant sometime during October 2023, where it will then deploy a probe into Venus's atmosphere. As the probe descends, it will utilize the 1 kg of scientific equipment mounted onboard to scan Venus's cloud layer for organic particles and transmit as much data back to Earth as possible.

The project is the first Venus atmospheric mission in 4 decades. It is also the first ever private sector mission to Venus.

Artemis rollout moved to tomorrow

Image courtesy of NASA

The rollout of NASA's Artemis I mission has been moved to August 16, 2022, ahead of its scheduled August 29 launch date. This comes after NASA's completion of all preliminary checks on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket's flight termination system over the previous weekend.

Artemis I and its payload will be carried to its launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida via crawler at 9 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time.

Hubble data showcases new insight into an aging star's life cycle

Images and graph courtesy of NASA

NASA has received data (pictured above) from its famous Hubble Space Telescope (HST) that showcases the state of the star Betelgeuse both during and after a coronal mass ejection (CME).

Originally captured in 2019 and 2020, the images showcase Betelgeuse, a star making up the "shoulder" of the constellation "Orion",  undergoing a particularly violent CME as part of its life cycle as a red supergiant star while the graph shows the effects the ejected particles had on the star's brightness, nicknamed the "Great Dimming" by observers.

The event, classified by scientists as Surface Mass Ejection (SME) due to its depth and size, was estimated by scientists to be almost 400 million times as powerful as an average CME from our sun, something never before seen in the field of astronomy.

"It's a totally new phenomenon that we can observe directly and resolve surface details with Hubble."  assistant director of Harvard's Center for Astrophysics Andrea Dupree said. 

Although Hubble is credited as the main contributor, the STELLA robotic observatory, the Fred L. Whipple Observatory's Tillinghast Reflector Echelle Spectrograph (TRES), NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft (STEREO-A) and the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) all contributed their own stereoscopic and imaging data.

New anti-collision tech for satellites revealed

 

Image courtesy of Benchmark Space Systems

Benchmark Space Systems has unveiled its new Collision Avoidance Kit (ColA) thruster package for satellites. As the name suggests, this package is intended to aid commercial and research satellites in avoiding the large amount of debris drifting in Earth's orbit.

Due to being fueled by hydrogen peroxide, ColA allows for much quicker emergency manuevers than electronic propulsion and comes in four sizes depending on the mission profiles of prospective clients.

"They are flying these high cost, high value assets, but they have this vulnerability to them that's just not acceptable," Benchmark executive vice president of business and strategy Chris Carella told SpaceNexus in an interview.

Benchmark is set to begin shipping ColA to clients in early 2023.

NASA PUNCH mission launch date set to 2025

 

NASA's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission has set its estimated launch date to April of 2025. The mission was originally set to launch in early 2023 but has been moved forward in order to accomodate the rideshare with the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Re-ionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission.

PUNCH consists of four 40 kg satellites launched into Earth orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket where they will be deployed along the planet's day/night line. One satellite is equipped with one Narrow Field Imager (NFI) coronagraph. Three other satellites are equipped with Wide Field Imager (WFI) heliospheric imagers. All of these cameras will be synchronized in-flight to provide NASA with a single large field of view.

The objective of PUNCH is to track and analyze coronal mass ejections, also called "solar flares", in order to better understand them and develop means of predicting them in order to minimize damage caused by the geomagnetic storms that sometimes spawn as a result of these solar flares buffeting Earth.

South Korea's first lunar mission is now spaceborne

 

Image courtesy of Kennedy Space Center

South Korea's "Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter" (KPLO) has launched from Cape Canevaral at 7:08 P.M. EST and has been succesfully deployed. The orbiter is expected to attain lunar orbit in December of this year.

Managed by the Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), KPLO is a 500 kg cube satellite containing multiple scientific instruments and experiments designed for the purpose of scientific investigations into lunar topography, terrain and resources in order facilitate future missions to the moon's surface. It is the first lunar mission mounted by the agency.

KPLO was carried into orbit via a SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket. Its current trajectory and position can be viewed via "Flight Club".

James Webb telescope snaps a photo of unique "Cartwheel Galaxy"

Image courtesy of NASA

NASA's "James Webb Space Telescope" (JWST) has captured this composite image of the elusive "Cartwheel Galaxy" located 500 million light years away from Earth via its Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).

Previously observed by the Hubble space telescope in 1996, the Cartwheel Galaxy is believed to have resulted from the collison of a large spiral galaxy not unlike our own with a much smaller galaxy. Unlike our own, however, the result is classified as a "ring galaxy", the rarest galaxy classification, due to possessing both a bright inner ring and colorful outer ring comprised of star clusters, both of which are showcased in detail here.

Also showcased in detail via MIRI is the large amount of chemical compounds within the Cartwheel Galaxy's "spokes", colored red in this image. These spokes contain, among various other compounds, hydrocarbons and sillicate dust similar to those found on Earth.

JWST's current status can be tracked via NASA's "Where is Webb" page.

NASA releases new Mars weather data for "Citizen Science" program "Cloudspotting on Mars"

Image courtesy of NASA

NASA has announced that more data on Mars weather patterns is now available for viewing and analysis by the public via the "Cloudspotting on Mars" project of NASA's "Citizen Science" program  which encourages volunteers from the general public to aid NASA in various scientific endeavours.

The data, obtained from the "Mars Climate Sounder" (MCS) onboard the "Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter" (MRO), contains information on the temperature, water-ice and dust content of Mars' atmosphere. Within this data, viewers are encouraged to find "loops" which are understood to be clouds in order to assist scientists in the analysis of Mars' weather patterns.

Image courtesy of Zooniverse/NASA

The data is available for viewing here. Updates on the project are posted via Twitter.