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Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble, MAVEN… Missions Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts E-books Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More Online Activities 6 min read
NASA’s Hubble, MAVEN Help Solve the Mystery of Mars’ Escaping Water
NASA, ESA, STScI, John T. Clarke (Boston University); Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) Mars was once a very wet planet as is evident in its surface geological features. Scientists know that over the last 3 billion years, at least some water went deep underground, but what happened to the rest? Now, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) missions are helping unlock that mystery.
“There are only two places water can go. It can freeze into the ground, or the water molecule can break into atoms, and the atoms can escape from the top of the atmosphere into space,” explained study leader John Clarke of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University in Massachusetts. “To understand how much water there was and what happened to it, we need to understand how the atoms escape into space.”
Clarke and his team combined data from Hubble and MAVEN to measure the number and current escape rate of the hydrogen atoms escaping into space. This information allowed them to extrapolate the escape rate backwards through time to understand the history of water on the Red Planet.
Escaping Hydrogen and “Heavy Hydrogen”
Water molecules in the Martian atmosphere are broken apart by sunlight into hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Specifically, the team measured hydrogen and deuterium, which is a hydrogen atom with a neutron in its nucleus. This neutron gives deuterium twice the mass of hydrogen. Because its mass is higher, deuterium escapes into space much more slowly than regular hydrogen.
Over time, as more hydrogen was lost than deuterium, the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen built up in the atmosphere. Measuring the ratio today gives scientists a clue to how much water was present during the warm, wet period on Mars. By studying how these atoms currently escape, they can understand the processes that determined the escape rates over the last four billion years and thereby extrapolate back in time.
Although most of the study’s data comes from the MAVEN spacecraft, MAVEN is not sensitive enough to see the deuterium emission at all times of the Martian year. Unlike the Earth, Mars swings far from the Sun in its elliptical orbit during the long Martian winter, and the deuterium emissions become faint. Clarke and his team needed the Hubble data to “fill in the blanks” and complete an annual cycle for three Martian years (each of which is 687 Earth days). Hubble also provided additional data going back to 1991 – prior to MAVEN’s arrival at Mars in 2014.
The combination of data between these missions provided the first holistic view of hydrogen atoms escaping Mars into space.
These are far-ultraviolet Hubble images of Mars near its farthest point from the Sun, called aphelion, on December 31, 2017 (top), and near its closest approach to the Sun, called perihelion, on December 19, 2016 (bottom). The atmosphere is clearly brighter and more extended when Mars is close to the Sun.
Reflected sunlight from Mars at these wavelengths shows scattering by atmospheric molecules and haze, while the polar ice caps and some surface features are also visible. Hubble and MAVEN showed that Martian atmospheric conditions change very quickly. When Mars is close to the Sun, water molecules rise very rapidly through the atmosphere, breaking apart and releasing atoms at high altitudes. NASA, ESA, STScI, John T. Clarke (Boston University); Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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A Dynamic and Turbulent Martian Atmosphere
“In recent years scientists have found that Mars has an annual cycle that is much more dynamic than people expected 10 or 15 years ago,” explained Clarke. “The whole atmosphere is very turbulent, heating up and cooling down on short timescales, even down to hours. The atmosphere expands and contracts as the brightness of the Sun at Mars varies by 40 percent over the course of a Martian year.”
The team discovered that the escape rates of hydrogen and deuterium change rapidly when Mars is close to the Sun. In the classical picture that scientists previously had, these atoms were thought to slowly diffuse upward through the atmosphere to a height where they could escape.
But that picture no longer accurately reflects the whole story, because now scientists know that atmospheric conditions change very quickly. When Mars is close to the Sun, the water molecules, which are the source of the hydrogen and deuterium, rise through the atmosphere very rapidly releasing atoms at high altitudes.
The second finding is that the changes in hydrogen and deuterium are so rapid that the atomic escape needs added energy to explain them. At the temperature of the upper atmosphere only a small fraction of the atoms have enough speed to escape the gravity of Mars. Faster (super-thermal) atoms are produced when something gives the atom a kick of extra energy. These events include collisions from solar wind protons entering the atmosphere or sunlight that drives chemical reactions in the upper atmosphere.
Mars was once a very wet planet. Scientists know that over the last 3 billion years, some of the water went underground, but what happened to the rest? Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Lead Producer: Paul Morris; Mars Animations Producer: Dan Gallagher Serving as a Proxy
Studying the history of water on Mars is fundamental not only to understanding planets in our own solar system but also the evolution of Earth-size planets around other stars. Astronomers are finding more and more of these planets, but they’re difficult to study in detail. Mars, Earth and Venus all sit in or near our solar system’s habitable zone, the region around a star where liquid water could pool on a rocky planet; yet all three planets have dramatically different present-day conditions. Along with its sister planets, Mars can help scientists grasp the nature of far-flung worlds across our galaxy.
These results appear in the July 26 edition of Science Advances, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
About the Missions
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, Colorado, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
MAVEN’s principal investigator is based at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado Boulder. LASP is also responsible for managing science operations and public outreach and communications. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the MAVEN mission. Lockheed Martin Space built the spacecraft and is responsible for MAVEN mission operations at Goddard. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California provides navigation and Deep Space Network support. The MAVEN team is preparing to celebrate the spacecraft’s 10th year at Mars in September 2024.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contacts:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Ann Jenkins and Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
Science Contact:
John T. Clarke
Boston University, Boston, MA
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Last Updated Sep 05, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Space Telescope Mars MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) Missions Planetary Science Planets Science Mission Directorate The Solar System Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble and Maven
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Hubble Science Highlights
MAVEN
The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission is the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere.
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun, and the seventh largest. It’s the only planet we know of inhabited…
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By NASA
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A mirror that was later installed inside the telescope for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor shows a reflection of principal optical engineer Brian Monacelli during an inspection of the mirror’s surface at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on July 17.NASA/JPL-Caltech A technician operates articulating equipment to rotate NEO Surveyor’s aluminum optical bench — part of the spacecraft’s telescope — in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on July 17.NASA/JPL-Caltech The mirrors for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope are being installed and aligned, and work on other spacecraft components is accelerating.
NASA’s new asteroid-hunting spacecraft is taking shape at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Called NEO Surveyor (Near-Earth Object Surveyor), this cutting-edge infrared space telescope will seek out the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that might pose a hazard to our planet. In fact, it is the agency’s first space telescope designed specifically for planetary defense.
Targeting launch in late 2027, the spacecraft will travel a million miles to a region of gravitational stability — called the L1 Lagrange point — between Earth and the Sun. From there, its large sunshade will block the glare and heat of sunlight, allowing the mission to discover and track near-Earth objects as they approach Earth from the direction of the Sun, which is difficult for other observatories to do. The space telescope also may reveal asteroids called Earth Trojans, which lead and trail our planet’s orbit and are difficult to see from the ground or from Earth orbit.
NEO Surveyor relies on cutting-edge detectors that observe two bands of infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. Near-Earth objects, no matter how dark, glow brightly in infrared as the Sun heats them. Because of this, the telescope will be able to find dark asteroids and comets, which don’t reflect much visible light. It also will measure those objects, a challenging task for visible-light telescopes that have a hard time distinguishing between small, highly reflective objects and large, dark ones.
This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s NEO Surveyor in deep space. The black-paneled angular structure in the belly of the spacecraft is the instrument enclosure that is being built at JPL. The mission’s infrared telescope will be installed inside the enclosure.NASA/JPL-Caltech “NEO Surveyor is optimized to help us to do one specific thing: enable humanity to find the most hazardous asteroids and comets far enough in advance so we can do something about them,” said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator for NEO Surveyor and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We aim to build a spacecraft that can find, track, and characterize the objects with the greatest chance of hitting Earth. In the process, we will learn a lot about their origins and evolution.”
Coming Into Focus
The spacecraft’s only instrument is its telescope. About the size of a washer-and-dryer set, the telescope’s blocky aluminum body, called the optical bench, was built in a JPL clean room. Known as a three-mirror anastigmat telescope, it will rely on curved mirrors to focus light onto its infrared detectors in such a way that minimizes optical aberrations.
“We have been carefully managing the fabrication of the spacecraft’s telescope mirrors, all of which were received in the JPL clean room by July,” said Brian Monacelli, principal optical engineer at JPL. “Its mirrors were shaped and polished from solid aluminum using a diamond-turning machine. Each exceeds the mission’s performance requirements.”
Monacelli inspected the mirror surfaces for debris and damage, then JPL’s team of optomechanical technicians and engineers attached the mirrors to the telescope’s optical bench in August. Next, they will measure the telescope’s performance and align its mirrors.
Complementing the mirror assembly are the telescope’s mercury-cadmium-telluride detectors, which are similar to the detectors used by NASA’s recently retired NEOWISE (short for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission. An advantage of these detectors is that they don’t necessarily require cryogenic coolers or cryogens to lower their operational temperatures in order to detect infrared wavelengths. Cryocoolers and cryogens can limit the lifespan of a spacecraft. NEO Surveyor will instead keep its cool by using its large sunshade to block sunlight from heating the telescope and by occupying an orbit beyond that of the Moon, minimizing heating from Earth.
The telescope will eventually be installed inside the spacecraft’s instrument enclosure, which is being assembled in JPL’s historic High Bay 1 clean room where NASA missions such as Voyager, Cassini, and Perseverance were constructed. Fabricated from dark composite material that allows heat to escape, the enclosure will help keep the telescope cool and prevent its own heat from obscuring observations.
Once it is completed in coming weeks, the enclosure will be tested to make sure it can withstand the rigors of space exploration. Then it will be mounted on the back of the sunshade and atop the electronic systems that will power and control the spacecraft.
“The entire team has been working hard for a long time to get to this point, and we are excited to see the hardware coming together with contributions from our institutional and industrial collaborators from across the country,” said Tom Hoffman, NEO Surveyor’s project manager at JPL. “From the panels and cables for the instrument enclosure to the detectors and mirrors for the telescope — as well as components to build the spacecraft — hardware is being fabricated, delivered, and assembled to build this incredible observatory.”
Assembly of NEO Surveyor can be viewed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via JPL’s live cam.
More About NEO Surveyor
The NEO Surveyor mission marks a major step for NASA toward reaching its U.S. Congress-mandated goal to discover and characterize at least 90% of the near-Earth objects more than 460 feet (140 meters) across that come within 30 million miles (48 million kilometers) of our planet’s orbit. Objects of this size can cause significant regional damage, or worse, should they impact the Earth.
The mission is tasked by NASA’s Planetary Science Division within the Science Mission Directorate; program oversight is provided by the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which was established in 2016 to manage the agency’s ongoing efforts in planetary defense. NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center provides program management for NEO Surveyor.
The project is being developed by JPL and is led by principal investigator Amy Mainzer at UCLA. Established aerospace and engineering companies have been contracted to build the spacecraft and its instrumentation, including BAE Systems, Space Dynamics Laboratory, and Teledyne. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder will support operations, and IPAC-Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for processing survey data and producing the mission’s data products. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
More information about NEO Surveyor is available at:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/neo-surveyor
News Media Contacts
Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600 / 202-358-1501
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 28, 2024 Related Terms
NEO Surveyor (Near-Earth Object Surveyor Space Telescope) Comets Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) Planetary Defense Planetary Defense Coordination Office Explore More
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4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Meet four employees from NASA’s Glenn Research Center who have a personal connection to aviation, at work and beyond.Credit: (Left to right): Waldo Acosta, Jared Berg, Lori Manthey, Lindsay Kaldon The first “A” in NASA stands for aeronautics. Glenn Research Center in Cleveland is just one of several NASA centers conducting revolutionary research to make flight cleaner, safer, and quieter.
But an interest in flying goes beyond the professional for many at NASA. Meet a handful of NASA Glenn employees who have a personal connection to aviation, at work and beyond.
Jared Berg
“I think my flying and engineering work positively influence each other. Flying integrates a lot of technical disciplines and serves as a real-word application of things I know theoretically about aerodynamics or heat transfer.”
jared berg
Thermal Subsystem Manager for Gateway’s Power and Propulsion Element
Left photo: Jared Berg flying above the clouds in the the NASAIRS Flying Club’s Cessna 172. Right photo: A view out the plane window.Credit: Jared Berg Planting the Seed: Berg grew up reading aviation books with his family and building model planes. Attending the EAA AirVenture airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, throughout childhood inspired him to pursue flight training once he had a full-time NASA job.
Joining the Club: Berg is currently a member of the NASAIRS Flying Club at NASA Glenn, which he says helps make flying more accessible and lets him constantly learn from other pilots.
Flying High: Berg has now been flying recreationally for over a decade and considers it a part of his everyday life. “Flying allows an escape from the mundane and brings a sense of adventure to traveling,” Berg said. “You also get to experience nature, specifically weather but also the land you’re flying over, in a way that’s relatively raw and somehow personal.”
Lindsay Kaldon
"I love the feeling after takeoff and when you’ve reached cruising altitude. It’s as if all the stresses of life wash away when you’re up there in the sky. Being up in the clouds with all the beauty of the Earth below, it’s as if you’re in heaven.”
Lindsay Kaldon
Fission Surface Power Project Manager
Left photo: Lindsay Kaldon after her first solo flight. Right photo: Kaldon celebrates passing her private pilot exam.Credit: Lindsay Kaldon Air Force and Astronauts: Kaldon’s father was an Air Force F-16 crew chief and a member of the Thunderbirds demonstration team, so Kaldon was no stranger to jets growing up. “Every day was an airshow living on the base that they trained out of,” Kaldon said. After earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, Kaldon joined the Air Force herself with hopes of one day becoming an astronaut.
Going Solo: Kaldon later earned her private pilot’s license and says she’ll always remember her first solo cross-country flight. She chose Kitty Hawk, the site of the Wright brothers’ first flight, as her destination.
Keeping the Energy: A monument that stands along the runway at Kitty Hawk is inscribed with words Kaldon remembers whenever solving difficult challenges through her work at NASA. “It says, ‘Achieved by Dauntless Resolution and Unconquerable Faith.’ The Wright brothers were faced with a lot of doubters who didn’t think flight was possible. Yet they proved them wrong and never gave up,” Kaldon said. “I love that. When things get tough, I just close my eyes and think about that phrase.”
Lori Manthey
“I encourage anyone who has an interest in flying to take a discovery flight at your local airport. If you get bitten by the flying bug, it just may become a life-long obsession. Ask me how I know!”
Lori Manthey
Chief of Administrative Services and Exchange Operations Manager
Left photo: Lori Manthey with a Grumman Cheetah plane. Right photo: Lori Manthey at the Grumman Cheetah controls.Credit: Lori Manthey Head in the Clouds: After a discovery flight in a small Cessna 150 plane, Manthey was hooked on flying. On weekends and evenings after beginning a full-time NASA job, she hopped in a Piper Tomahawk single-engine trainer at Lorain County Regional Airport to earn her private pilot certificate. “I love the feeling of floating in the air and seeing the world below,” she said.
Women in Aero: Manthey is passionate about advancing and supporting female pilots and currently serves as membership chair of the Lake Erie chapter of the Ninety-Nines, an organization started by Amelia Earhart in 1929. She is also a member of the Cleveland chapter of Women in Aviation.
Looking to the Future: Every year, Manthey participates in Girls in Aviation Day at Cleveland’s Burke Lakefront Airport to introduce girls to the world of aviation. “I think it is so important to help encourage young women and girls to become part of the next generation of female pilots,” she said.
Back in the Cockpit: Manthey is currently working to earn her instrument rating, which will let her fly “blind” in cloudy and foggy weather conditions.
Waldo J. Acosta
“Flying gives me a thrill. The perspective you’re able to see of the world from up in the sky is a special feeling. Aircraft have the ability to take us all over the world so we can experience different cultures and meet different people, and that has shaped me into who I am today.”
Waldo J. Acosta
Icing Research Tunnel Lead Facility Engineer
Left photo: Waldo J. Acosta, right, stands beside his father before taking him for a ride in a DA20 aircraft. Top right photo: A young Acosta and his father at the EAA AirVenture airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Lower right photo: Acosta (center) works with colleagues Tadas Bartkus (left) and Emily Timko in the control room of NASA Glenn Research Center’s Icing Research Tunnel. Credit: Waldo J. Acosta, NASA/Jef Janis Family Ties: Throughout Acosta’s childhood, Acosta’s father, a former researcher at NASA Glenn, brought his family along on work trips to the EAA AirVenture airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. “I fell in love with everything related to flying during those trips, and they set the tone early on my path to working in aviation,” Acosta said.
Next Steps: Acosta started taking flying lessons while studying aerospace engineering at The Ohio State University, eventually receiving his private pilot’s license.
Safety First: Overseeing testing and maintenance operations at NASA Glenn’s Icing Research Tunnel, Acosta is now directly involved in aviation safety research. The facility, the longest-running icing wind tunnel in the world, helps NASA and industry study how ice affects aircraft and test ice protection systems and tools.
Flying Full Circle: Acosta still attends airshows every chance he can get and has taken both his father and wife soaring into the clouds.
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Science in Space: August 2024
Life on the International Space Station is quite different from life on the ground. Crew members experience multiple sunrises and sunsets each day, spend their time in a confined space, have packed schedules, and deal with microgravity.
These and other conditions during spaceflight can negatively affect the performance and well-being of crew members. Many studies on the space station work to characterize and understand those effects and others try out new technologies and practices to help counter them.
Light Up My Life
A current investigation from ESA (European Space Agency), Circadian Light tests a new lighting system to help astronauts maintain a more normal daily or circadian rhythm. An LED panel automatically and gradually changes the light spectrum and varies from day to day to better mimic natural conditions on Earth. The study seeks insight into this system’s effect on circadian rhythm regulation, sleep, stress, and overall well-being of crew members. The findings also could reveal ways to improve lighting for shift workers and those in extreme or remote environments.
Circadian Light experiment installed inside a crew cabinESA Daily Rhythms
An earlier ESA investigation, Circadian Rhythms, examined how daily rhythms change during long-duration spaceflight and its non-24-hour cycles of light and dark. This understanding could support countermeasures to improve performance and health on future missions.
A well-established way to determine circadian rhythms is by continuously recording core body temperature, but methods to do so can be invasive and inconvenient. For this investigation, researchers developed non-invasive skin sensor technology for measuring body core temperature over extended periods of time.
CSA astronaut Chris Hadfield is wearing a forehead sensor for the Circadian Rhythms experiment.NASA Astronaut, Phone Home
Missions to the Moon or Mars will experience delays in communications with Earth – as much as 30 minutes each way from Mars. The Comm Delay Assessment investigation looked at how such delays might affect crew members handling medical and other emergencies to help psychologists develop ways to manage the stress of completing these critical tasks without immediate advice from Earth. Results showed that the space station could provide a platform to test communications delay countermeasures. The research also confirmed that communication delays increased individual stress and frustration and reduced task efficiency and teamwork, and suggested that enhanced training, teamwork, and technology could mitigate or prevent these problems.
This is Your Brain in Space
NeuroMapping studied changes to brain structure and function, motor control, and multi-tasking abilities during spaceflight and measured how long it took crew members to recover after a mission. Results published from this work include a study that found no effect on spatial working memory from spaceflight but that did identify significant changes in brain connectivity. Another paper reported substantial increases in brain volume that increased with mission duration and with longer intervals between missions. The researchers suggest that intervals of less than 3 years between missions may not be sufficient for full recovery.
NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins performs operations for the NeuroMapping investigation. NASA Dear Diary
For the Journals investigation, crew members wrote daily entries that researchers analyzed to identify issues related to well-being. The study provided the first quantitative data for ranking the behavioral issues associated with spending lengthy time in space. Most journal entries dealt with ten categories: work, outside communications, adjustment, group interaction, recreation/leisure, equipment, events, organization/management, sleep, and food. The report provided insight into how these factors affect human performance and included recommendations to help crews prepare for spaceflight and to improve living and working in space.
Don’t Throw Away This Shot
Crew members on the space station take photographs of their home planet for Crew Earth Observations (CEO). These images record how humans and natural events change Earth over time and support a wealth of research on the ground, including studies of urban growth, natural systems such as coral reefs and icebergs, land use, and ocean events. Over time, researchers realized that taking these photographs also improves the mental well-being of crew members. Many of them spend much of their free time shooting from the station’s cupola.
Almost like Being There
ESA’s VR Mental Care tests the use of virtual reality (VR) technology to provide mental relaxation and better general mental health for astronauts during their missions. Participating crew members use a headset to view 360-degree, high-quality video and sound scenarios and fill out questionnaires about the experience. In addition to helping astronauts, this tool could be used to deal with psychological issues such as stress, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder on Earth.
ESA astronaut Andreas Mogenson wears a VR headset.ESA
Melissa Gaskill
International Space Station Research Communications Team
NASA’s Johnson Space Center
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By NASA
NASA/CXC/M.Weiss By using new data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory as well as ESA’s XMM-Newton, a team of researchers have made important headway in understanding how — and when — a supermassive black hole obtains and then consumes material, as described in our latest press release.
This artist’s impression shows a star that has partially been disrupted by such a black hole in the system known as AT2018fyk. The supermassive black hole in AT2018fyk — with about 50 million times more mass than the sun — is in the center of a galaxy located about 860 million light-years from Earth.
Astronomers have determined that a star is on a highly elliptical orbit around the black hole in AT2018fyk so that its point of farthest approach from the black hole is much larger than its closest. During its closest approach, tidal forces from the black hole pull some material from the star, producing two tidal tails of “stellar debris”.
The illustration shows a point in the orbit soon after the star is partially destroyed, when the tidal tails are still in close proximity to the star. Later in the star’s orbit, the disrupted material returns to the black hole and loses energy, leading to a large increase in X-ray brightness occurring later in the orbit (not shown here). This process repeats each time the star returns to its point of closest approach, which is approximately every 3.5 years. The illustration depicts the star during its second orbit, and the disk of X-ray emitting gas around the black hole that is produced as a byproduct of the first tidal encounter.
Researchers took note of AT2018fyk in 2018 when the optical ground-based survey ASAS-SN detected that the system had become much brighter. After observing it with NASA’s NICER and Chandra, and XMM-Newton, researchers determined that the surge in brightness came from a “tidal disruption event,” or TDE, which signals that a star was completely torn apart and partially ingested after flying too close to a black hole. Chandra data of AT2018fyk is shown in the inset of an optical image of a wider field-of-view.
X-ray: NASA/SAO/Kavli Inst. at MIT/D.R. Pasham; Optical: NSF/Legacy Survey/SDSS When material from the destroyed star approached close to the black hole, it got hotter and produced X-ray and ultraviolet (UV) light. These signals then faded, agreeing with the idea that nothing was left of the star for the black hole to digest.
However, about two years later, the X-ray and UV light from the galaxy got much brighter again. This meant, according to astronomers, that the star likely survived the initial gravitational grab by the black hole and then entered a highly elliptical orbit with the black hole. During its second close approach to the black hole, more material was pulled off and produced more X-ray and UV light.
Based on what they had learned about the star and its orbit, a team of astronomers predicted that the black hole’s second meal would end in August 2023 and applied for Chandra observing time to check. Chandra observations on August 14, 2023, indeed showed the telltale sign of the black hole feeding coming to an end with a sudden drop in X-rays. The researchers also obtained a better estimate of how long it takes the star to complete an orbit, and predicted future mealtimes for the black hole.
A paper describing these results appears in the August 14, 2024 issue of The Astrophysical Journal and is available online. The authors are Dheeraj Passam (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Eric Coughlin (Syracuse University), Muryel Guolo (Johns Hopkins University), Thomas Wevers (Space Telescope Science Institute), Chris Nixon (University of Leeds, UK), Jason Hinkle (University of Hawaii at Manoa), and Ananaya Bandopadhyay (Syracuse).
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science from Cambridge Massachusetts and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
For more Chandra images, multimedia and related materials, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/mission/chandra-x-ray-observatory/
Visual Description:
In this digital illustration, a star sheds stellar debris as it orbits a supermassive black hole. This artist’s impression represents the center of a galaxy about 860 million light-years from Earth.
The supermassive black hole sits at our upper left. It resembles an irregular, pitch-black sphere at the heart of an almond-shaped pocket of swirling sand and dirt. Though gritty in texture, the swirling brown and grey pocket is actually a disk of hot gas.
Near our lower right is the orbiting star. In this illustration, the star is relatively close to us, with the black hole far behind it. The star is a blue-white ball that, from this perspective, appears slightly larger than the distant black hole.
Two tapered streaks peel off of the glowing star like the pulled-back corners of a smile. These streaks represent tidal tails of stellar debris; material pulled from the surface of the star by the gravity of the black hole. This partial destruction of the star occurs every 3.5 years, when the star’s orbit brings it closest to the supermassive black hole.
During the orbit, the stellar debris from the tidal tails is ingested by the black hole. A byproduct of this digestion is the X-ray gas which swirls in a disk around the black hole.
At the upper left of the grid is an image of the distant galaxy cluster known as MACS J0416. Here, the blackness of space is packed with glowing dots and tiny shapes, in whites, purples, oranges, golds, and reds, each a distinct galaxy. Upon close inspection (and with a great deal of zooming in!) the spiraling arms of some of the seemingly tiny galaxies are revealed in this highly detailed image. Gently arched across the middle of the frame is a soft band of purple; a reservoir of superheated gas detected by Chandra.
News Media Contact
Megan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
Lane Figueroa
Marshall Space Flight Center
Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
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