Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
First of Its Kind Detection Made in Striking New Webb Image
-
Similar Topics
-
By Space Force
U.S. Space Force Col. Ramsey Horn took command of Space Delta 9 – Orbital Warfare during a change of command ceremony at Schriever Space Force Base, July 2.
View the full article
-
By NASA
NASA astronaut Andre Douglas poses for a portrait at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.Credits: NASA/Josh Valcarcel NASA has selected astronaut Andre Douglas as its backup crew member for the agency’s Artemis II test flight, the first crewed mission under NASA’s Artemis campaign.
Douglas will train alongside NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
In the event a NASA astronaut is unable to take part in the flight, Douglas would join the Artemis II crew.
“Andre’s educational background and extensive operational experience in his various jobs prior to joining NASA are clear evidence of his readiness to support this mission,” said Joe Acaba, chief astronaut at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “He excelled in his astronaut candidate training and technical assignments, and we are confident he will continue to do so as NASA’s backup crew member for Artemis II.”
The CSA announced Jenni Gibbons as its backup crew member in November 2023. Gibbons would step into the mission to represent Canada should Hansen not be available.
“Canada’s seat on the historic Artemis II flight is a direct result of our contribution of Canadarm3 to the lunar Gateway. Jenni Gibbons’ assignment as backup is of utmost importance for our country,” said CSA President Lisa Campbell. “Since being recruited, Jenni has distinguished herself repeatedly through her work with NASA and the CSA. She is also a tremendous role model for Canada’s future scientists, engineers, and explorers.”
The selection of Douglas and Gibbons as backup crew members for Artemis II is independent of the selection of crew members for Artemis III. NASA has not yet selected crew members for Artemis flights beyond Artemis II. All active NASA astronauts are eligible for assignment to any human spaceflight mission.
The approximately 10-day Artemis II test flight will launch on the agency’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, prove the Orion spacecraft’s life-support systems, and validate the capabilities and techniques needed for humans to live and work in deep space.
More on Artemis II backup crew
Douglas graduated from NASA’s astronaut candidate training program in March 2024. He is a Virginia native and earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, as well as four post-graduate degrees from various institutions, including a doctorate in Systems Engineering from George Washington University in Washington. Douglas served in the U.S. Coast Guard as a naval architect, salvage engineer, damage control assistant, and officer of the deck. He also worked as a staff member at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, working on maritime robotics, planetary defense, and space exploration missions for NASA. Douglas participated in the Joint EVA and Human Surface Mobility Test Team 5, working with a specialized group that develops, integrates, and executes human-in-the-loop tests, analog missions, and Moonwalks. Most recently, Douglas worked with teams on the development of the lunar terrain vehicle, pressurized rover, lunar Gateway and lunar spacesuit.
Gibbons was recruited as a CSA astronaut in 2017 and completed her basic training in 2020. Since then, Gibbons has continued to serve Canada’s space program and has worked in different positions, including Mission Control as a capsule communicator (CAPCOM) during spacewalks, and commercial spacecraft and daily International Space Station operations. Gibbons holds an honors bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from McGill University in Montreal. While at McGill, she conducted research on flame propagation in microgravity in collaboration with CSA and Canada’s National Research Council Flight Research Laboratory in Ontario. She holds a doctorate in engineering from Jesus College at the University of Cambridge, England.
Under NASA’s Artemis campaign, the agency is establishing the foundation for long-term scientific exploration at the Moon, land the first woman, first person of color, and its first international partner astronaut on the lunar surface, and prepare for human expeditions to Mars for the benefit of all.
Learn more about NASA’s Artemis campaign at:
https://www.nasa.gov/artemis
-end-
Rachel Kraft/Madison Tuttle
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
rachel.h.kraft@nasa.gov/madison.e.tuttle@nasa.gov
Courtney Beasley
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
courtney.m.beasley@nasa.gov
Share
Details
Last Updated Jul 03, 2024 LocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Artemis 2 Andre Douglas Artemis Astronauts Humans in Space View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
Video: 00:02:05 Space weather can affect satellites in orbit, trigger geomagnetic storms on Earth and interfere with ground infrastructure. We need to understand it better, and the best way to do that is look at where it comes from.
The Sun’s corona, its upper atmospheric layer, gives rise to the solar wind and is where coronal mass ejections are spawned: massive outward explosions of charged plasma. ESA’s Proba-3 double-satellite mission will use formation flying to open up sustained coronal views. Mimicking a total solar eclipse, one satellite will block out the fiery face of the Sun by casting a shadow onto the other. This means the mission can observe the fine-scale structures of the corona without being blinded by the Sun’s glare.
View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
Thousands of visitors flocked to ESA’s establishment in the UK last Saturday to experience first-hand how the agency is pushing the boundaries of exploration and using space to improve life on Earth.
View the full article
-
By NASA
4 Min Read NASA’s Webb Captures Celestial Fireworks Around Forming Star
L1527, shown in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). The colors within this mid-infrared image reveal details about the central protostar’s behavior.
The cosmos seems to come alive with a crackling explosion of pyrotechnics in this new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Taken with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), this fiery hourglass marks the scene of a very young object in the process of becoming a star. A central protostar grows in the neck of the hourglass, accumulating material from a thin protoplanetary disk, seen edge-on as a dark line.
The protostar, a relatively young object of about 100,000 years, is still surrounded by its parent molecular cloud, or large region of gas and dust. Webb’s previous observation of L1527, with NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), allowed us to peer into this region and revealed this molecular cloud and protostar in opaque, vibrant colors.
Image A: L1527 – Webb/MIRI
L1527, shown in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), is a molecular cloud that harbors a protostar. It resides about 460 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus. The more diffuse blue light and the filamentary structures in the image come from organic compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), while the red at the center of this image is an energized, thick layer of gases and dust that surrounds the protostar. The region in between, which shows up in white, is a mixture of PAHs, ionized gas, and other molecules. This image includes filters representing 7.7 microns light as blue, 12.8 microns light as green, and 18 microns light as red.
Both NIRCam and MIRI show the effects of outflows, which are emitted in opposite directions along the protostar’s rotation axis as the object consumes gas and dust from the surrounding cloud. These outflows take the form of bow shocks to the surrounding molecular cloud, which appear as filamentary structures throughout. They are also responsible for carving the bright hourglass structure within the molecular cloud as they energize, or excite, the surrounding matter and cause the regions above and below it to glow. This creates an effect reminiscent of fireworks brightening a cloudy night sky. Unlike NIRCam, however, which mostly shows the light that is reflected off dust, MIRI provides a look into how these outflows affect the region’s thickest dust and gases.
The areas colored here in blue, which encompass most of the hourglass, show mostly carbonaceous molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The protostar itself and the dense blanket of dust and a mixture of gases that surround it are represented in red. (The sparkler-like red extensions are an artifact of the telescopes’s optics). In between, MIRI reveals a white region directly above and below the protostar, which doesn’t show as strongly in the NIRCam view. This region is a mixture of hydrocarbons, ionized neon, and thick dust, which shows that the protostar propels this matter quite far away from it as it messily consumes material from its disk.
As the protostar continues to age and release energetic jets, it’ll consume, destroy, and push away much of this molecular cloud, and many of the structures we see here will begin to fade. Eventually, once it finishes gathering mass, this impressive display will end, and the star itself will become more apparent, even to our visible-light telescopes.
The combination of analyses from both the near-infrared and mid-infrared views reveal the overall behavior of this system, including how the central protostar is affecting the surrounding region. Other stars in Taurus, the star-forming region where L1527 resides, are forming just like this, which could lead to other molecular clouds being disrupted and either preventing new stars from forming or catalyzing their development.The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
Downloads
Right click any image to save it or open a larger version in a new tab/window via the browser’s popup menu.
View/Download all image products at all resolutions for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Media Contacts
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Hanna Braun hbraun@stsci.edu Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Related Information
ARTICLE/IMAGE: Webb’s previous observation of L1527, with NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera)
VIDEO: Fly-through the star-forming Pillars of Creation
INTERACTIVE: Explore star formation via a multi-wavelength view of Herbig-Haro 46/47
POSTER: L1527 NIRCam poster
VIDEO: Science Snippets Video: Dust and the formation of Planetary Systems
More Webb News
More Webb Images
Webb Mission Page
Related For Kids
What is a nebula?
What is the Webb Telescope?
SpacePlace for Kids
En Español
¿Qué es una nebulosa?
Ciencia de la NASA
NASA en español
Space Place para niños
Keep Exploring Related Topics
James Webb Space Telescope
Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…
Galaxies
Stars
Universe
Share
Details
Last Updated Jul 02, 2024 Editor Stephen Sabia Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
Astrophysics James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Nebulae Protostars Science & Research Star-forming Nebulae Stars The Universe
View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.