NASA’s telescope is now studying the 168,000-light-year-distant Supernova 1987A, which was discovered almost 40 years ago and has been observed ever since. NASA’s blog says training the James Webb Space Telescope on it has already borne fruit.
The Crew-7 mission successfully docked with the ISS this morning at 9:16AM PT, bringing four new crew members to the station.
Video from the docking procedure shows the capsule approaching the station while in Earth orbit, then footage from the capsule as it made its final approach. It’s perfect Sunday viewing.
There are plenty of pollution blind spots that ground monitors miss. So NASA launched a powerful new instrument in April to track air pollution from space. The new tool, called TEMPO, monitors three smog-forming pollutants: nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde, and ground-level ozone. NASA released the first data maps from TEMPO today. They show pollution building up over major cities in North America, including Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, DC.
NASA’s Voyager 2 probe is showing signs of a “heartbeat,” according to a tweet from the agency’s Jet Propulsion Lab. The interstellar probe had inadvertently lost contact with Earth last week after a series of planned commands were transmitted to it on July 21st — shifting the Voyager 2’s antenna two degrees away from Earth.
Voyager 2 is expected to reorient and resume communications in October.
The 45-year-old interstellar probe lost contact after a “routine sequence of commands,” according to Gizmodo. Its antenna currently isn’t facing Earth, which makes it impossible to communicate across the approximately 12.4 billion miles between us. But fortunately, Voyager 2 is programmed to reorient itself toward Earth a few times a year, so we should presumably regain contact in October.
That’s a few months from now, and if NASA regains contact it won’t be the longest we’ve gone without communicating with the probe. That record was established back in 2020 when Voyager 2 went over 8 months without contact during a necessary communications update.
Stay safe out there, little buddy.
Lockheed Martin has been awarded a contract from DARPA to “develop and demonstrate a nuclear-powered spacecraft” for the joint DARPA and NASA DRACO project. The first demonstration will “take place no later than 2027.”
What is nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP)?
[NTP] uses a nuclear reactor to quickly heat hydrogen propellant to very high temperatures... then funnels that gas through the engine nozzle to create powerful thrust... The reactor will not be turned on until the spacecraft has reached a nuclear safe orbit, making the NTP system very safe.
That last bit is important — see the 1978 Kosmos 954 accident that spread radioactive debris all over the Canadian wilderness.
We’ve been following the story of NASA’s next-gen James Webb Space Telescope for years, but now it’s been in operation for an entire year.
You can watch Loren Grush talk through those first images, check out the first Earth-sized exoplanet it discovered, or check out our breakdown of major highlights from its first year.
Data from NASA’s Cassini probe shows signatures of phosphorous in a subsurface ocean on Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. According to planetary scientist Frank Postberg of Freie Universität Berlin, “It’s the first time this essential element has been discovered in an ocean beyond Earth.”
Six years after its mission ended with a dive into Saturn’s atmosphere, the list of Cassini discoveries keeps growing. You can read the scientist’s paper here or check out this video from a few years ago explaining how Cassini collected those particles.
The Washington Post points out this 25-page document (PDF) released Tuesday by the State Department. The Post reports this signals further involvement of the diplomatic corps in a realm that until now, has been largely managed by NASA and the Pentagon.
This first Strategic Framework for Space Diplomacy outlines how State Department diplomacy will advance continued U.S. space leadership and will expand international cooperation on mutually beneficial space activities, while promoting responsible behavior from all space actors, strengthening the understanding of, and support for, U.S. national space policies and programs, and promoting international use of U.S. space capabilities, systems, and services.
[Washington Post]
NASA’s 530km-high TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) system reached a staggering 200Gbps downlink to a receiver on the ground, IEEE Spectrum reports. This doubles last June’s 100Gbps throughput, which “was 100 times faster than the quickest internet speeds in most cities.”
Less than ten years ago, NASA was celebrating just over 600Mbps, but it now thinks the tech could eventually enable up to 5Gbps throughput from the moon:
Moreover, Mitchell says, they are looking at ways to push TBIRD’s capabilities as far away as the moon, in order to support future missions there. The rates under consideration are in the 1 to 5 gigabit per second range, which “may not seem like much of an improvement, but remember the moon is roughly 400,000 km away from Earth, which is quite a long distance to cover,” Mitchell says.
[IEEE Spectrum]
While ever-so-optimistically noting this is a preview of the Earth’s fate (in another 5 billion years or so), scientists at MIT, Harvard, and Caltech say that for the first time, they were able to see a star expand and engulf a nearby planet.
This horror show was captured within our own galaxy and included the use of NASA’s asteroid-hunting Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) to capture infrared light indicating dust released from the disintegrating planet.
Whether you put this up on the big screen now or bookmark it for a later session, NASA’s put together nearly an hour of 4K footage of the Earth with some relaxing music for your screensaving needs.
The videos were captured over the last year from the International Space Station during Expeditions 67 and 68.
In a very Apple event-esque livestream, NASA announced the crew of the Artemis II mission, which will ride the costly and enormous SLS rocket to the Moon and back in 2024. Notably this is the first lunar mission to include a woman, a Black man, and a Canadian. The crew is Mission Specialist Christina Koch, Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen, Pilot Victor Glover, and Commander Reid Wiseman.
The recent discovery of volcanic activity on the planet should have been a cause of celebration. But instead, the scientific community is in shock after NASA delayed funding for a key mission to Venus.
NASA and SpaceX called off Monday’s launch intended to take the Crew-6 mission to the International Space Station following a last-minute technical issue with Falcon 9’s engine ignition system.
Providing the issue is resolved, the teams will attempt another launch at 12:34AM ET on Thursday, March 2nd.
There was a lot going on in the space industry this year — here are some of the highlights.
It landed on Mars in 2018 to detect marsquakes — rumblings in the planet’s crust. But now, the robot seismologist is running low on power and sent what may be its final image of the red planet’s surface. While InSight surpassed its two-year primary mission, it’s still hard not to feel sad for the lil’ guy in its final hours. You did good bud.
