Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
Intergalactic 'Pipeline' Funnels Matter Between Colliding Galaxies
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The six SCALPSS cameras mounted around the base of Blue Ghost will collect imagery during and after descent and touchdown. Using a technique called stereo photogrammetry, researchers at Langley will use the overlapping images to produce a 3D view of the surface. Image courtesy of Firefly. Say cheese again, Moon. We’re coming in for another close-up.
For the second time in less than a year, a NASA technology designed to collect data on the interaction between a Moon lander’s rocket plume and the lunar surface is set to make the long journey to Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor for the benefit of humanity.
Developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) is an array of cameras placed around the base of a lunar lander to collect imagery during and after descent and touchdown. Using a technique called stereo photogrammetry, researchers at Langley will use the overlapping images from the version of SCALPSS on Firefly’s Blue Ghost — SCALPSS 1.1 — to produce a 3D view of the surface. An earlier version, SCALPSS 1.0, was on Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft that landed on the Moon last February. Due to mission contingencies that arose during the landing, SCALPSS 1.0 was unable to collect imagery of the plume-surface interaction. The team was, however, able to operate the payload in transit and on the lunar surface following landing, which gives them confidence in the hardware for 1.1.
The SCALPSS 1.1 payload has two additional cameras — six total, compared to the four on SCALPSS 1.0 — and will begin taking images at a higher altitude, prior to the expected onset of plume-surface interaction, to provide a more accurate before-and-after comparison.
These images of the Moon’s surface won’t just be a technological novelty. As trips to the Moon increase and the number of payloads touching down in proximity to one another grows, scientists and engineers need to be able to accurately predict the effects of landings.
How much will the surface change? As a lander comes down, what happens to the lunar soil, or regolith, it ejects? With limited data collected during descent and landing to date, SCALPSS will be the first dedicated instrument to measure the effects of plume-surface interaction on the Moon in real time and help to answer these questions.
“If we’re placing things – landers, habitats, etc. – near each other, we could be sand blasting what’s next to us, so that’s going to drive requirements on protecting those other assets on the surface, which could add mass, and that mass ripples through the architecture,” said Michelle Munk, principal investigator for SCALPSS and acting chief architect for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “It’s all part of an integrated engineering problem.”
Under the Artemis campaign, the agency’s current lunar exploration approach, NASA is collaborating with commercial and international partners to establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. On this CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative delivery carrying over 200 pounds of NASA science experiments and technology demonstrations, SCALPSS 1.1 will begin capturing imagery from before the time the lander’s plume begins interacting with the surface until after the landing is complete.
The final images will be gathered on a small onboard data storage unit before being sent to the lander for downlink back to Earth. The team will likely need at least a couple of months to
process the images, verify the data, and generate the 3D digital elevation maps of the surface. The expected lander-induced erosion they reveal probably won’t be very deep — not this time, anyway.
One of the SCALPSS cameras is visible here mounted to the Blue Ghost lander.Image courtesy of Firefly. “Even if you look at the old Apollo images — and the Apollo crewed landers were larger than these new robotic landers — you have to look really closely to see where the erosion took place,” said Rob Maddock, SCALPSS project manager at Langley. “We’re anticipating something on the order of centimeters deep — maybe an inch. It really depends on the landing site and how deep the regolith is and where the bedrock is.”
But this is a chance for researchers to see how well SCALPSS will work as the U.S. advances human landing systems as part of NASA’s plans to explore more of the lunar surface.
“Those are going to be much larger than even Apollo. Those are large engines, and they could conceivably dig some good-sized holes,” said Maddock. “So that’s what we’re doing. We’re collecting data we can use to validate the models that are predicting what will happen.”
The SCALPSS 1.1 project is funded by the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development Program.
NASA is working with several American companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface under the CLPS initiative. Through this opportunity, various companies from a select group of vendors bid on delivering payloads for NASA including everything from payload integration and operations, to launching from Earth and landing on the surface of the Moon.
Share
Details
Last Updated Dec 19, 2024 EditorAngelique HerringLocationNASA Langley Research Center Related Terms
General Explore More
4 min read Statistical Analysis Using Random Forest Algorithm Provides Key Insights into Parachute Energy Modulator System
Article 6 hours ago 1 min read Program Manager at NASA Glenn Earns AIAA Sustained Service Award
Article 8 hours ago 2 min read An Evening With the Stars: 10 Years and Counting
Article 8 hours ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home Hubble Takes a Look at Tangled… Hubble Space Telescope 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 2 min read
Hubble Takes a Look at Tangled Galaxies
This Hubble image features a pair of interacting spiral galaxies called MCG+05-31-045. ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. J. Foley (UC Santa Cruz)
Download this image
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image depicts the cosmic tangle that is MCG+05-31-045, a pair of interacting galaxies located 390 million light-years away and a part of the Coma galaxy cluster.
The Coma Cluster is a particularly rich cluster that contains over a thousand known galaxies. Amateur astronomers can easily spot several of these in a backyard telescope (See Caldwell 35). Most of them are elliptical galaxies, and that’s typical of a dense galaxy cluster like the Coma Cluster: many elliptical galaxies form through close encounters between galaxies that stir them up, or even collisions that rip them apart. While the stars in interacting galaxies can stay together, their gas is twisted and compressed by gravitational forces and rapidly used up to form new stars. When the hot, massive, blue stars die, there is little gas left to form new generations of young stars to replace them. As spiral galaxies interact, gravity disrupts the regular orbits that produce their striking spiral arms. Whether through mergers or simple near misses, the result is a galaxy almost devoid of gas, with aging stars orbiting in uncoordinated circles: an elliptical galaxy.
It’s very likely that a similar fate will befall MCG+05-31-045. As the smaller spiral galaxy is torn up and integrated into the larger galaxy, many new stars will form, and the hot, blue ones will quickly burn out, leaving cooler, redder stars behind in an elliptical galaxy, much like others in the Coma Cluster. But this process won’t be complete for many millions of years.
Explore more Coma Cluster images from Hubble.
Hubble Uncovers Thousands of Globular Star Clusters Scattered Among Galaxies Hubble’s Galaxies With Knots, Bursts Hubble Sees Near and Far Hubble Sees Plunging Galaxy Losing Its Gas Hubble Catches Galaxies Swarmed by Star Clusters Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Share
Details
Last Updated Nov 14, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Astrophysics Astrophysics Division Hubble Space Telescope Spiral Galaxies Keep Exploring Discover More Topics From Hubble
Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
Galaxy Details and Mergers
Hubble’s Galaxies
Explore the Night Sky
View the full article
-
By NASA
AMS-02 mounted on the outside of the space station.NASA Visible matter in the form of stars and planets adds up to about five percent of the total known mass of the Universe. The rest is either dark matter, antimatter, or dark energy. The exact nature of these substances is unknown, but the International Space Station’s Alpha-Magnetic Spectrometer or AMS-02 is helping to solve the mystery.
AMS-02 collects data on charged particles from cosmic ray events, which helps scientists understand the origin of those rays and could ultimately reveal whether dark matter and antimatter exist.
To date, the instrument has collected data on about 573 events per second on average – just over 18 billion per year. This high volume of data enables highly precise statistical analyses, and multiple groups of researchers independently process the raw data to ensure accurate results.
Learn more about astrophysics research on the space station.
This view shows the core of AMS-02, a massive magnet that bends particles from space to reveal whether their charge is positive or negative.NASA AMS-02 is the hexagonal shape visible on one of the space station’s trusses, just to the right of the center.NASA Keep Exploring Discover More Topics
Latest News from Space Station Research
Station Science 101: Earth and Space Science
Dark Energy and Matter Stories
Universe
View the full article
-
By NASA
5 Min Read Webb Finds Early Galaxies Weren’t Too Big for Their Britches After All
This image shows a small portion of the field observed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) for the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey. The full image appears below. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, S. Finkelstein (University of Texas) It got called the crisis in cosmology. But now astronomers can explain some surprising recent discoveries.
When astronomers got their first glimpses of galaxies in the early universe from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, they were expecting to find galactic pipsqueaks, but instead they found what appeared to be a bevy of Olympic bodybuilders. Some galaxies appeared to have grown so massive, so quickly, that simulations couldn’t account for them. Some researchers suggested this meant that something might be wrong with the theory that explains what the universe is made of and how it has evolved since the big bang, known as the standard model of cosmology.
According to a new study in the Astrophysical Journal led by University of Texas at Austin graduate student Katherine Chworowsky, some of those early galaxies are in fact much less massive than they first appeared. Black holes in some of these galaxies make them appear much brighter and bigger than they really are.
“We are still seeing more galaxies than predicted, although none of them are so massive that they ‘break’ the universe,” Chworowsky said.
The evidence was provided by Webb’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, led by Steven Finkelstein, a professor of astronomy at UT Austin and study co-author.
Image A : CEERS Deep Field (NIRCam)
This image shows a small portion of the field observed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) for the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey. It is filled with galaxies. Some galaxies appear to have grown so massive, so quickly, that simulations couldn’t account for them. However, a new study finds that some of those early galaxies are in fact much less massive than they first appeared. Black holes in some of those galaxies make them appear much brighter and bigger than they really are. NASA, ESA, CSA, S. Finkelstein (University of Texas)
View 8k pixel full resolution version of the image
Black Holes Add to Brightness
According to this latest study, the galaxies that appeared overly massive likely host black holes rapidly consuming gas. Friction in the fast-moving gas emits heat and light, making these galaxies much brighter than they would be if that light emanated just from stars. This extra light can make it appear that the galaxies contain many more stars, and hence are more massive, than we would otherwise estimate. When scientists remove these galaxies, dubbed “little red dots” (based on their red color and small size), from the analysis, the remaining early galaxies are not too massive to fit within predictions of the standard model.
“So, the bottom line is there is no crisis in terms of the standard model of cosmology,” Finkelstein said. “Any time you have a theory that has stood the test of time for so long, you have to have overwhelming evidence to really throw it out. And that’s simply not the case.”
Efficient Star Factories
Although they’ve settled the main dilemma, a less thorny problem remains: There are still roughly twice as many massive galaxies in Webb’s data of the early universe than expected from the standard model. One possible reason might be that stars formed more quickly in the early universe than they do today.
“Maybe in the early universe, galaxies were better at turning gas into stars,” Chworowsky said.
Star formation happens when hot gas cools enough to succumb to gravity and condense into one or more stars. But as the gas contracts, it heats up, generating outward pressure. In our region of the universe, the balance of these opposing forces tends to make the star formation process very slow. But perhaps, according to some theories, because the early universe was denser than today, it was harder to blow gas out during star formation, allowing the process to go faster.
More Evidence of Black Holes
Concurrently, astronomers have been analyzing the spectra of “little red dots” discovered with Webb, with researchers in both the CEERS team and others finding evidence of fast-moving hydrogen gas, a signature of black hole accretion disks. This supports the idea that at least some of the light coming from these compact, red objects comes from gas swirling around black holes, rather than stars – reinforcing Chworowsky and their team’s conclusion that they are probably not as massive as astronomers initially thought. However, further observations of these intriguing objects are incoming, and should help solve the puzzle about how much light comes from stars versus gas around black holes.
Often in science, when you answer one question, that leads to new questions. While Chworowsky and their colleagues have shown that the standard model of cosmology likely isn’t broken, their work points to the need for new ideas in star formation.
“And so there is still that sense of intrigue,” Chworowsky said. “Not everything is fully understood. That’s what makes doing this kind of science fun, because it’d be a terribly boring field if one paper figured everything out, or there were no more questions to answer.”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.
View/Download the research results from the Astrophysical Journal .
Media Contacts
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro – rob.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Marc Airhart – mairhart@austin.utexas.edu
University of Texas at Austin
Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Related Information
VIDEO: CEERS Fly-through data visualization
ARTICLE: Webb Science – Galaxies Through Time
INFOGRAPHIC: Learn More about black holes
VIDEO: Webb Science Snippets Video: “The Early Universe”
INFOGRAPHIC: What is Cosmological Redshift?
More Webb News
More Webb Images
Webb Science Themes
Webb Mission Page
Related For Kids
What is a galaxy?
What is the Webb Telescope?
SpacePlace for Kids
En Español
Para Niños : Qué es una galaxia?
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…
Exoplanets
Exoplanet Stories
Universe
Share
Details
Last Updated Aug 26, 2024 Editor Stephen Sabia Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
Astrophysics Galaxies Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Research Goddard Space Flight Center James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Science & Research 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.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.