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For First Time Ever, K-12 Students Get Hands on the Hubble Space Telescope as Part of Innovative "Passport to Knowledge" Project
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By NASA
NASA astronaut and Expedition 72 Flight Engineer Nick Hague pedals on the Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization (CEVIS), an exercise cycle located aboard the International Space Station’s Destiny laboratory module. CEVIS provides aerobic and cardiovascular conditioning through recumbent (leaning back position) or upright cycling activities.NASA Lee esta historia en español aquí.
The International Space Station is humanity’s home in space and a research station orbiting about 250 miles above the Earth. NASA and its international partners have maintained a continuous human presence aboard the space station for more than 24 years, conducting research that is not possible on Earth.
The people living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory also are part of the research being conducted, helping to address complex human health issues on Earth and prepare humanity for travel farther than ever before, including the Moon and Mars.
Here are a few frequently asked questions about how NASA and its team of medical physicians, psychologists, nutritionists, exercise scientists, and other specialized caretakers ensure astronauts’ health and fitness aboard the orbiting laboratory.
How long is a typical stay aboard the International Space Station?
A typical mission to the International Space Station lasts about six months, but can vary based on visiting spacecraft schedules, mission priorities, and other factors. NASA astronauts also have remained aboard the space station for longer periods of time. These are known as long-duration missions, and previous missions have given NASA volumes of data about long-term spaceflight and its effects on the human body, which the agency applies to any crewed mission.
During long-duration missions, NASA’s team of medical professionals focus on optimizing astronauts’ physical and behavioral health and their performance to help ensure mission success. These efforts also are helping NASA prepare for future human missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
How does NASA keep astronauts healthy while in space?
NASA has a team of medical doctors, psychologists, and others on the ground dedicated to supporting the health and well-being of astronauts before, during, and after each space mission. NASA assigns physicians with specialized training in space medicine, called flight surgeons, to each crew once named to a mission. Flight surgeons oversee the health care and medical training as crew members prepare for their mission, and they monitor the crew’s health before, during, and after their mission to the space station.
How does NASA support its astronauts’ mental and emotional well-being while in space?
The NASA behavioral health team provides individually determined psychological support services for crew members and their families during each mission. Ensuring astronauts can thrive in extreme environments starts as early as the astronaut selection process, in which applicants are evaluated on competencies such as adaptability and resilience. Astronauts receive extensive training to help them use self-assessment tools and treatments to manage their behavioral health. NASA also provides training in expeditionary skills to prepare every astronaut for missions on important competencies, such as self-care and team care, communication, and leadership and followership skills.
To help maintain motivation and morale aboard the space station, astronauts can email, call, and video conference with their family and friends, receive crew care packages aboard NASA’s cargo resupply missions, and teleconference with a psychologist, if needed.
How does microgravity affect astronaut physical health?
In microgravity, without the continuous load of Earth’s gravity, there are many changes to the human body. NASA understands many of the human system responses to the space environment, including adaptations to bone density, muscle, sensory-motor, and cardiovascular health, but there is still much to learn. These spaceflight effects vary from astronaut to astronaut, so NASA flight surgeons regularly monitor each crew member’s health during a mission and individualize diet and fitness routines to prioritize health and fitness while in space.
Why do astronauts exercise in space?
Each astronaut aboard the orbiting laboratory engages in specifically designed, Earth-like exercise plans. To maintain their strength and endurance, crew members are scheduled for two and a half hours of daily exercise to support muscle, bone, aerobic, and sensorimotor health. Current equipment onboard the space station includes the ARED (Advanced Resistive Exercise Device), which mimics weightlifting; a treadmill, called T2; and the CEVIS (Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization System) for cardiovascular exercise.
What roles do food and nutrition play in supporting astronaut health?
Nutrition plays a critical role in maintaining an astronaut’s health and optimal performance before, during, and after their mission. Food also plays a psychosocial role during an astronaut’s long-duration stay aboard the space station. Experts working in NASA’s Space Food Systems Laboratory at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston develop foods that are nutritious and appetizing. Crew members also have the opportunity to supplement the menu with personal favorites and off-the-shelf items, which can provide a taste of home.
NASA astronaut and Expedition 71 Flight Engineer Tracy C. Dyson is pictured in the galley aboard the International Space Station’s Unity module showing off food packets from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).NASA How does NASA know whether astronauts are getting the proper nutrients?
NASA’s nutritional biochemistry dietitians and scientists determine the nutrients (vitamins, minerals, calories) the astronauts require while in space. This team tracks what each crew member eats through a tablet-based tracking program, which each astronaut completes daily. The data from the app is sent to the dietitians weekly to monitor dietary intake. Analyzing astronaut blood and urine samples taken before, during, and after space missions is a crucial part of studying how their bodies respond to the unique conditions of spaceflight. These samples provide valuable insight into how each astronaut adapts to microgravity, radiation, and other factors that affect human physiology in space.
How do astronauts train to work together while in space?
In addition to technical training, astronauts participate in team skills training. They learn effective group living skills and how to look out for and support one another. Due to its remote and isolated nature, long-duration spaceflight can make teamwork difficult. Astronauts must maintain situational awareness and implement the flight program in an ever-changing environment. Therefore, effective communication is critical when working as a team aboard station and with multiple support teams on the ground. Astronauts also need to be able to communicate complex information to people with different professional backgrounds. Ultimately, astronauts are people living and working together aboard the station and must be able to do a highly technical job and resolve any interpersonal issues that might arise.
What happens if there is a medical emergency on the space station?
All astronauts undergo medical training and have regular contact with a team of doctors closely monitoring their health on the ground. NASA also maintains a robust pharmacy and a suite of medical equipment onboard the space station to treat various conditions and injuries. If a medical emergency requires a return to Earth, the crew will return in the spacecraft they launched aboard to receive urgent medical care on the ground.
Expedition 69 NASA astronaut Frank Rubio is seen resting and talking with NASA ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano, kneeling left, NASA Flight Surgeon Josef Schmid, red hat, and NASA Chief of the Astronaut Office Joe Acaba, outside the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft after he landed with Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan on Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023.NASA/Bill Ingalls Learn more about NASA’s Human Health and Performance Directorate at:
www.nasa.gov/hhp
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By NASA
Hubble Space Telescope Home NASA’s Hubble Finds… 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 5 Min Read NASA’s Hubble Finds Sizzling Details About Young Star FU Orionis
An artist’s concept of the early stages of the young star FU Orionis (FU Ori) outburst, surrounded by a disk of material. Credits:
NASA-JPL, Caltech In 1936, astronomers saw a puzzling event in the constellation Orion: the young star FU Orionis (FU Ori) became a hundred times brighter in a matter of months. At its peak, FU Ori was intrinsically 100 times brighter than our Sun. Unlike an exploding star though, it has declined in luminosity only languidly since then.
Now, a team of astronomers has wielded NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope‘s ultraviolet capabilities to learn more about the interaction between FU Ori’s stellar surface and the accretion disk that has been dumping gas onto the growing star for nearly 90 years. They find that the inner disk touching the star is extraordinarily hot — which challenges conventional wisdom.
The observations were made with the telescope’s COS (Cosmic Origins Spectrograph) and STIS (Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph) instruments. The data includes the first far-ultraviolet and new near-ultraviolet spectra of FU Ori.
“We were hoping to validate the hottest part of the accretion disk model, to determine its maximum temperature, by measuring closer to the inner edge of the accretion disk than ever before,” said Lynne Hillenbrand of Caltech in Pasadena, California, and a co-author of the paper. “I think there was some hope that we would see something extra, like the interface between the star and its disk, but we were certainly not expecting it. The fact we saw so much extra — it was much brighter in the ultraviolet than we predicted — that was the big surprise.”
A Better Understanding of Stellar Accretion
Originally deemed to be a unique case among stars, FU Ori exemplifies a class of young, eruptive stars that undergo dramatic changes in brightness. These objects are a subset of classical T Tauri stars, which are newly forming stars that are building up by accreting material from their disk and the surrounding nebula. In classical T Tauri stars, the disk does not touch the star directly because it is restricted by the outward pressure of the star’s magnetic field.
The accretion disks around FU Ori objects, however, are susceptible to instabilities due to their enormous mass relative to the central star, interactions with a binary companion, or infalling material. Such instability means the mass accretion rate can change dramatically. The increased pace disrupts the delicate balance between the stellar magnetic field and the inner edge of the disk, leading to material moving closer in and eventually touching the star’s surface.
This is an artist’s concept of the early stages of the young star FU Orionis (FU Ori) outburst, surrounded by a disk of material. A team of astronomers has used the Hubble Space Telescope’s ultraviolet capabilities to learn more about the interaction between FU Ori’s stellar surface and the accretion disk that has been dumping gas onto the growing star for nearly 90 years. They found that the inner disk, touching the star, is much hotter than expected—16,000 kelvins—nearly three times our Sun’s surface temperature. That sizzling temperature is nearly twice as hot as previously believed. NASA-JPL, Caltech
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The enhanced infall rate and proximity of the accretion disk to the star make FU Ori objects much brighter than a typical T Tauri star. In fact, during an outburst, the star itself is outshined by the disk. Furthermore, the disk material is orbiting rapidly as it approaches the star, much faster than the rotation rate of the stellar surface. This means that there should be a region where the disk impacts the star and the material slows down and heats up significantly.
“The Hubble data indicates a much hotter impact region than models have previously predicted,” said Adolfo Carvalho of Caltech and lead author of the study. “In FU Ori, the temperature is 16,000 kelvins [nearly three times our Sun’s surface temperature]. That sizzling temperature is almost twice the amount prior models have calculated. It challenges and encourages us to think of how such a jump in temperature can be explained.”
To address the significant difference in temperature between past models and the recent Hubble observations, the team offers a revised interpretation of the geometry within FU Ori’s inner region: The accretion disk’s material approaches the star and once it reaches the stellar surface, a hot shock is produced, which emits a lot of ultraviolet light.
Planet Survival Around FU Ori
Understanding the mechanisms of FU Ori’s rapid accretion process relates more broadly to ideas of planet formation and survival.
“Our revised model based on the Hubble data is not strictly bad news for planet evolution, it’s sort of a mixed bag,” explained Carvalho. “If the planet is far out in the disk as it’s forming, outbursts from an FU Ori object should influence what kind of chemicals the planet will ultimately inherit. But if a forming planet is very close to the star, then it’s a slightly different story. Within a couple outbursts, any planets that are forming very close to the star can rapidly move inward and eventually merge with it. You could lose, or at least completely fry, rocky planets forming close to such a star.”
Additional work with the Hubble UV observations is in progress. The team is carefully analyzing the various spectral emission lines from multiple elements present in the COS spectrum. This should provide further clues on FU Ori’s environment, such as the kinematics of inflowing and outflowing gas within the inner region.
“A lot of these young stars are spectroscopically very rich at far ultraviolet wavelengths,” reflected Hillenbrand. “A combination of Hubble, its size and wavelength coverage, as well as FU Ori’s fortunate circumstances, let us see further down into the engine of this fascinating star-type than ever before.”
These findings have been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The observations were taken as part of General Observer program 17176.
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.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Media Contacts:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
Abigail Major, Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
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Last Updated Nov 21, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Hubble Space Telescope
Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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This e-book highlights the mission’s recent discoveries and observations related to the birth, evolution, and death of stars.
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By NASA
2 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
ESI24 Haghighi Quadchart
Azadeh Haghighi
University of Illinois, Chicago
In-space manufacturing and assembly are vital to NASA’s long-term exploration goals, especially for the Moon and Mars missions. Deploying welding technology in space enables the assembly and repair of structures, reducing logistical burdens and supply needs from Earth. The unique challenges and extreme conditions of space–high thermal variations, microgravity, and vacuum–require advanced welding techniques and computational tools to ensure reliability, repeatability, safety, and structural integrity in one-shot weld scenarios. For the first time, this project investigates these challenges by focusing on three key factors: (1) Very low temperatures in space degrade the weldability of high thermal conductivity materials, like aluminum alloys, making it harder to achieve strong, defect-free welds. (2) The extreme vacuum in space lowers the boiling points of alloying elements, altering the keyhole geometry during welding. This selective vaporization changes the weld’s final chemical composition, affecting its microstructure and properties. (3) Microgravity nearly eliminates buoyancy-driven flow of liquid metal inside the molten pool, preventing gas bubbles from escaping, which leads to porosity and defects in the welds. By examining these critical factors using multi-scale multi-physics models integrated with physics-informed machine learning, and forward/inverse uncertainty quantification techniques, this project provides the first-ever real-time digital twin platform to evaluate welding processes under extreme space/lunar conditions. The models are validated through Earth-based experiments, parabolic flight tests, and publicly available data from different databases and agencies worldwide. Moreover, the established models will facilitate extendibility to support in-situ resource utilization on the Moon, including construction and repair using locally sourced materials like regolith. The established fundamental scientific knowledge will minimize trial-and-error, enable high-quality one-shot welds in space, and reduce the need for reworks, significantly reducing the costs and time needed for space missions.
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By Space Force
SSC and USC partnered up to pair USC Trojans with SSC Guardians to work within real USSF programs. This partnership team acted as a “living laboratory” to identify strategies for implementing agile development into complex defense projects.
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By NASA
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The guitar shape in the “Guitar Nebula” comes from bubbles blown by particles ejected from the pulsar through a steady wind as it moves through space. A movie of Chandra (red) data taken in 2000, 2006, 2012, and 2021 has been combined with a single image in optical light from Palomar. X-rays from Chandra show a filament of energetic matter and antimatter particles, about two light-years long, blasting away from the pulsar (seen as the bright white dot). The movie shows how this filament has changed over two decades. X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./M. de Vries et al.; Optical full field: Palomar Obs./Caltech & inset: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare) Normally found only in heavy metal bands or certain post-apocalyptic films, a “flame-throwing guitar” has now been spotted moving through space. Astronomers have captured movies of this extreme cosmic object using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope.
The new movie of Chandra (red) and Palomar (blue) data helps break down what is playing out in the Guitar Nebula. X-rays from Chandra show a filament of energetic matter and antimatter particles, about two light-years or 12 trillion miles long, blasting away from the pulsar (seen as the bright white dot connected to the filament).
Astronomers have nicknamed the structure connected to the pulsar PSR B2224+65 as the “Guitar Nebula” because of its distinct resemblance to the instrument in glowing hydrogen light. The guitar shape comes from bubbles blown by particles ejected from the pulsar through a steady wind. Because the pulsar is moving from the lower right to the upper left, most of the bubbles were created in the past as the pulsar moved through a medium with variations in density.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./M. de Vries et al.; Optical: (Hubble) NASA/ESA/STScI and (Palomar) Hale Telescope/Palomar/CalTech; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare At the tip of the guitar is the pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star left behind after the collapse of a massive star. As it hurtles through space it is pumping out a flame-like filament of particles and X-ray light that astronomers have captured with Chandra.
How does space produce something so bizarre? The combination of two extremes — fast rotation and high magnetic fields of pulsars — leads to particle acceleration and high-energy radiation that creates matter and antimatter particles, as electron and positron pairs. In this situation, the usual process of converting mass into energy, famously determined by Albert Einstein’s E = mc2 equation, is reversed. Here, energy is being converted into mass to produce the particles.
Particles spiraling along magnetic field lines around the pulsar create the X-rays that Chandra detects. As the pulsar and its surrounding nebula of energetic particles have flown through space, they have collided with denser regions of gas. This allows the most energetic particles to escape the confines of the Guitar Nebula and fly to the right of the pulsar, creating the filament of X-rays. When those particles escape, they spiral around and flow along magnetic field lines in the interstellar medium, that is, the space in between stars.
The new movie shows the pulsar and the filament flying towards the upper left of the image through Chandra data taken in 2000, 2006, 2012 and 2021. The movie has the same optical image in each frame, so it does not show changes in parts of the “guitar.” A separate movie obtained with data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (obtained in 1994, 2001, 2006, and 2021) shows the motion of the pulsar and the smaller structures around it.
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Hubble Space Telescope data: 1994, 2001, 2006, and 2021.X-ray: NASA/CXC/Stanford Univ./M. de Vries et al.; Optical full field: Palomar Obs./Caltech & inset: NASA/ESA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare) A study of this data has concluded that the variations that drive the formation of bubbles in the hydrogen nebula, which forms the outline of the guitar, also control changes in how many particles escape to the right of the pulsar, causing subtle brightening and fading of the X-ray filament, like a cosmic blow torch shooting from the tip of the guitar.
The structure of the filament teaches astronomers about how electrons and positrons travel through the interstellar medium. It also provides an example of how this process is injecting electrons and positrons into the interstellar medium.
A paper describing these results was published in The Astrophysical Journal and is available here.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Learn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
https://www.nasa.gov/chandra
https://chandra.si.edu
Visual Description:
This release features two short videos and a labeled composite image, all featuring what can be described as a giant flame-throwing guitar floating in space.
In both the six second multiwavelength Guitar Nebula timelapse video and the composite image, the guitar shape appears at our lower left, with the neck of the instrument pointing toward our upper left. The guitar shape is ghostly and translucent, resembling a wispy cloud on a dark night. At the end of the neck, the guitar’s headstock comes to a sharp point that lands on a bright white dot. This dot is a pulsar, and the guitar shape is a hydrogen nebula. The nebula was formed when particles being ejected by the pulsar produced a cloud of bubbles. The bubbles were then blown into a curvy guitar shape by a steady wind. The guitar shape is undeniable, and is traced by a thin white line in the labeled composite image.
The pulsar, known as PSR B2224+65, has also released a long filament of energetic matter and antimatter particles approximately 12 trillion miles long. In both the composite image and the six second video, this energetic, X-ray blast shoots from the bright white dot at the tip of the guitar’s headstock, all the way out to our upper righthand corner. In the still image, the blast resembles a streak of red dots, most of which fall in a straight, densely packed line. The six second video features four separate images of the phenomenon, created with Chandra data gathered in 2000, 2006, 2012, and 2021. When shown in sequence, the density of the X-ray blast filament appears to fluctuate.
A 12 second video is also included in this release. It features four images that focus on the headstock of the guitar shape. These images were captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994, 2001, 2006, and 2021. When played in sequence, the images show the headstock shape expanding. A study of this data has concluded that the variations that drive the formation of bubbles in the hydrogen nebula also control changes in the pulsar’s blast filament. Meaning the same phenomenon that created the cosmic guitar also created the cosmic blowtorch shooting from the headstock.
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