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By Space Force
Senior leaders speak on the distinct roles and responsibilities of the Space Force and USSPACECOM in a fireside chat at Colorado Springs, Colorado.
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By NASA
Explore Hubble 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 Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 5 Min Read NASA’s Hubble Tracks a Roaming Magnetar of Unknown Origin
This is an artist’s impression of a magnetar, a special type of neutron star with an incredibly strong magnetic field. Credits:
ESA Researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered the magnetar called SGR 0501+4516 is traversing our galaxy from an unknown place of origin. Researchers say that this runaway magnetar is the likeliest candidate in our Milky Way galaxy for a magnetar that was not born in a supernova explosion as initially predicted. It is so strange it might even offer clues to the mechanism behind events known as fast radio bursts.
“Magnetars are neutron stars — the dead remnants of stars — composed entirely of neutrons. What makes magnetars unique is their extreme magnetic fields,” said Ashley Chrimes, lead author of the discovery paper published in the April 15 journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Chrimes is a European Space Agency Research Fellow at the European Space Research and Technology Center in the Netherlands.
Magnetars have comic-book-hero superpowers. A magnetar has a magnetic field about a trillion times more powerful than Earth’s magnetosphere. If a magnetar flew by Earth at half the Moon’s distance, its intense field would wipe out every credit card on our planet. If a human got within 600 miles, the magnetar would become a proverbial sci-fi death-ray, ripping apart every atom inside the body.
The magnetar’s strangeness was identified with the help of Hubble’s sensitive instruments as well as precise benchmarks from ESA’s (European Space Agency) Gaia spacecraft.
Initially, the mysterious magnetar was discovered in 2008 when NASA’s Swift Observatory spotted brief, intense flashes of gamma rays from the outskirts of the Milky Way. The source, which turned out to be one of only about 30 known magnetars in the Milky Way, was dubbed SGR 0501+4516.
This is an artist’s impression of a magnetar, which is a special type of neutron star with an incredibly strong magnetic field. Neutron stars are some of the most compact and extreme objects in the universe. These stars typically pack more than the mass of the Sun into a sphere of neutrons about 12 miles across. The neutron star is depicted as a white-blueish sphere. The magnetic field is shown as filaments streaming out from its polar regions. Illustration: ESA Because magnetars are neutron stars, the natural explanation for their formation is that they are born in supernovae, when a star explodes and can collapse down to an ultra-dense neutron star. This appeared to be the case for SGR 0501+4516, which is located close to a supernova remnant called HB9. The separation between the magnetar and the center of the supernova remnant on the sky is just 80 arcminutes, or slightly wider than your pinky finger when viewed at the end of your outstretched arm.
But a decade-long study with Hubble cast doubt on the magnetar’s birthplace. After initial observations with ground-based telescopes shortly after SGR 0501+4516’s discovery, researchers used Hubble’s exquisite sensitivity and steady pointing to spot the magnetar’s faint infrared glow in 2010, 2012, and 2020. Each of these images was aligned to a reference frame defined by observations from the Gaia spacecraft, which has crafted an extraordinarily precise three-dimensional map of nearly two billion stars in the Milky Way. This method revealed the subtle motion of the magnetar as it traversed the sky.
“All of this movement we measure is smaller than a single pixel of a Hubble image,” said co-investigator Joe Lyman of the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. “Being able to robustly perform such measurements really is a testament to the long-term stability of Hubble.”
By tracking the magnetar’s position, the team was able to measure the object’s apparent motion across the sky. Both the speed and direction of SGR 0501+4516’s movement showed that the magnetar could not be associated with the nearby supernova remnant. Tracing the magnetar’s trajectory thousands of years into the past showed that there were no other supernova remnants or massive star clusters with which it could be associated.
If SGR 0501+4516 was not born in a supernova, the magnetar must either be older than its estimated 20,000-year age, or it may have formed in another way. Magnetars may also be able to form through the merger of two lower-mass neutron stars or through a process called accretion-induced collapse. Accretion-induced collapse requires a binary star system containing a white dwarf: the core of a dead Sun-like star. If the white dwarf pulls in gas from its companion, it can grow too massive to support itself, leading to an explosion — or possibly the creation of a magnetar.
“Normally, this scenario leads to the ignition of nuclear reactions, and the white dwarf exploding, leaving nothing behind. But it has been theorized that under certain conditions, the white dwarf can instead collapse into a neutron star. We think this might be how SGR 0501 was born,” added Andrew Levan of Radboud University in the Netherlands and the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.
Understanding Fast Radio Bursts
SGR 0501+4516 is currently the best candidate for a magnetar in our galaxy that may have formed through a merger or accretion-induced collapse. Magnetars that form through accretion-induced collapse could provide an explanation for some of the mysterious fast radio bursts, which are brief but powerful flashes of radio waves. In particular, this scenario may explain the origin of fast radio bursts that emerge from stellar populations too ancient to have recently birthed stars massive enough to explode as supernovae.
“Magnetar birth rates and formation scenarios are among the most pressing questions in high-energy astrophysics, with implications for many of the universe’s most powerful transient events, such as gamma-ray bursts, super-luminous supernovae, and fast radio bursts,” said Nanda Rea of the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain.
The research team has further Hubble observations planned to study the origins of other magnetars in the Milky Way, helping to understand how these extreme magnetic objects form.
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, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
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This is an artist’s impression of a magnetar, which is a special type of neutron star with an incredibly strong magnetic field.
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Last Updated Apr 15, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Contact Media Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Bethany Downer
ESA/Hubble
bethany.downer@esahubble.org
Garching, Germany
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
Science Ashley Chrimes
ESA-ESTEC/Radboud University
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By NASA
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test required extreme precision in mission planning to achieve its mission of impacting an asteroid. The founders of Continuum Space worked on astrodynamics relating to this mission, which they used to inform their product.NASA Planning space missions is a very involved process, ensuring orbits are lined up and spacecraft have enough fuel is imperative to the long-term survival of orbital assets. Continuum Space Systems Inc. of Pasadena, California, produces a cloud-based platform that gives mission planners everything they need to certify that their space resources can accomplish their goals.
Continuum’s story begins at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Loic Chappaz, the company’s co-founder, started at JPL as an intern working on astrodynamics related to NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test. There he met Leon Alkalai, a JPL technical fellow who spent his 30-year career at the center planning deep space missions. After Alkalai retired from NASA, he founded Mandala Space Ventures, a startup that explored several avenues of commercial space development. Chappaz soon became Mandala’s first employee, but to plan their future, Mandala’s leadership began thinking about the act of planning itself.
Because the staff had decades of combined experience at JPL, they knew the center had the building blocks for the software they needed. After licensing several pieces of software from JPL, the company began building planning systems that were highly adaptable to any space mission they could come up with. Mandala eventually evolved into a venture firm that incubated space-related startups. However, because Mandala had invested considerably in developing mission-planning tools, further development could be performed by a new company, and Continuum was fully spun off from Mandala in 2021.
Continuum’s platform includes several features for mission planners, such as plotting orbital maneuvers and risk management evaluations. Some of these are built upon software licensed from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.Continuum Space Systems Inc. Continuum’s tools are designed to take a space mission from concept to completion. There are three different components to their “mission in a box” — design, build and test, and mission operations. The base of these tools are several pieces of software developed at NASA. As of 2024, several space startups have begun planning missions with Continuum’s NASA-inspired software, as well as established operators of satellite constellations. From Continuum to several startups, NASA technologies continue to prove a valuable foundation for the nation’s space economy.
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Last Updated Mar 25, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
LOCATION: Texas State Capitol – Austin, Texas SUBJECT: Space Day activities at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, Texas PHOTOGRAPHER: Lauren HarnettNASA March 17, 2025
NASA is heading back to the state capitol in March for Space Day Texas, a recognition of achievements throughout Texas and a look ahead to the impact future human space exploration has on the Lone Star state.
The two-day schedule of events and exhibits focusing on exploration, astronauts, and science, technology, engineering, and math education will include astronaut visits, interactive exhibits, and legislative proclamations.
NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston will share its accomplishments on the Capitol grounds from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. CDT Tuesday, March 25, joining academic and commercial partners from across the state to share Texas’ blueprint for expanding humanity’s frontier in space.
On Monday, March 24, exhibits will feature the Texas High School Aerospace Scholars program at the University of Texas Elementary Charter school, along with NASA Johnson’s Office of STEM Engagement, Orion program, and Lockheed Martin. Interactive events will feature NASA STEM engagement programs and hands-on exhibits.
At 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 25, proclamations celebrating NASA’s 25th anniversary of continuous human presence on the International Space Station, the High School Aerospace Scholars program, and the continued progression of the Artemis campaign through NASA’s commercialization of cargo, crew, landers, spacesuits, and rovers will be read in the Texas House and Senate chambers, respectively. Following the proclamations, an Artemis II crew astronaut will participate in a live question and answer session on the front steps of the Capitol.
NASA’s impact in Texas is strong. NASA Johnson has served as the iconic site for some of the greatest moments in American history, from landing humans on the Moon to assembling the International Space Station.
For more than 60 years, NASA has led the world in human space exploration. Today, it is testing technologies on the Space Station that will help humanity push forward to the Moon and Mars. NASA’s workforce in Texas includes more than 10,000 aerospace employees and more than $2 billion in contracts and federal salaries in 2024.
Learn more about NASA Johnson and its impact in Texas at:
https://www.nasa.gov/johnson
-end-
Kelly Humphries
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
kelly.o.humphries@nasa.gov
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By European Space Agency
Image: Webb wows with incredible detail in star-forming system View the full article
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