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By NASA
Tiny satellites, also known as CubeSats, are pictured after being deployed into Earth orbit from a small satellite orbital deployer on the outside of the International Space Station’s Kibo laboratory module. The CubeSats were delivered aboard the Northrop Grumman Cygnus space freighter and will serve a variety of educational and research purposes for public and private organizations around the world.
Image Credit: NASA/Tracy Dyson
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By NASA
A pair of CubeSats from NASA’s Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator series launched on SpaceX’s Transporter-11 rideshare mission at 11:56 a.m. PDT Friday, August 16, from Vandenburg Space Force Base in California. Photo credit: SpaceX A pair of CubeSats from NASA’s Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator, or PTD, series lifted off on SpaceX’s Transporter-11 rideshare mission at 11:56 a.m. PDT Friday, August 16, from Vandenburg Space Force Base in California. The two small satellites, PTD-4 and PTD-R, will help advance NASA’s efforts to validate novel technologies and increase small spacecraft capabilities in order to shape the future of space exploration and technology.
PTD-4 will demonstrate a high-power, low-volume deployable solar array with an integrated antenna, while PTD-R will focus on testing simultaneous ultraviolet and short-wave infrared optical sensing from space for the first time via two 85-mm aperture monolithic telescopes mounted side-by-side. The two CubeSats use a six-unit (6U) spacecraft, named Triumph, common to all PTD satellites.
L2 Solutions DBA SEOPS LLC secured the launch of the two CubeSats for NASA as part of an award on the agency’s VADR (Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare) contract. This is part of an effort to embrace more commercial practices to achieve lower launch costs, which provide new opportunities for these small but highly capable small satellites to find a ride to space. These highly flexible contracts help broaden access to space through lower launch costs and serve as an ideal platform for contributing to NASA’s science research and technology development.
Learn more about the PTD missions at: https://www.nasa.gov/smallspacecraft/pathfinder-technology-demonstrator/
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions The Solar System The Sun Mercury Venus Earth The Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto & Dwarf Planets Asteroids, Comets & Meteors The Kuiper Belt The Oort Cloud 4 min read
Sols 4277-4279: Getting Ready To Say Goodbye to the King!
Left navigation camera image from Sol 4255, showing “Milestone Peak” on the left, the subject of an RMI in this plan NASA/JPL-Caltech Earth planning date: Friday, Aug. 16, 2024
It’s time to move on from our “Kings Canyon” drill site, so today’s plan focused on our usual tidy up routine after a drill campaign. First we need to dump out any material in the drill chambers, in an action called “RAGE” – this sounds aggressive but stands for “Rotation to Agitate Granules for Expulsion,” so it’s more of a gentle turning than an angry shaking. This ensures that the drill chambers won’t spill later and we are ready for the next drill campaign – whenever we find a worthy target! Mastcam will document the entire process, and then image the drill bit that was used, making sure it is still in good condition.
At that point, we are free to use the arm instruments again (no turret movements allowed while there is sample in the drill chamber). So our contact science focuses today on the drill tailings, the pile of ground up rock generated by the drill action. That pile has been sitting there for over two weeks, but luckily it’s not too windy right now and the pile remained more or less intact. MAHLI will image the drill hole and the tailings pile on the first afternoon, APXS will integrate on the tailings on the first night and then MAHLI will image the tailings again on the second day. This post-retract image is just to confirm that APXS did not hit the pile of loose drill fines. As APXS Science Planner today, I worked with RPs to pick out the spot we will focus on and to make sure that we are using the correct sequences to ensure safety of the instrument – but it’s always nice to confirm that we didn’t hit the pile!
ChemCam has a suite of activities, from LIBS activities close to the rover, to “passive” (non destructive) activities and RMI images (which can be relatively near field or long distance). LIBS on the bedrock target “Marck Lake” will be used to compared with the nearby Kings Canyon target and assess homogeneity across the drill block, while the passive observation of “Red Slate Mountain” will examine a large light toned block about 10 metres away from the rover. ChemCam will also acquire a long distance RMI of loose blocks and boulders about 85 metres away, looking towards “Milestone Peak” (shown in the accompanying image).
APXS will acquire an overnight “atmospheric” measurement, looking at levels of argon as part of an ongoing campaign. This is paired with ChemCam’s second passive measurement, this time of the sky. We also have monitoring of dust levels, with Mastcam taus of the atmosphere (which atmospheric scientist Alex Innanen talked about here), and a whole host of Navcam dust devil movies, and suprahorizon and zenith movies (which target different parts of the horizon). All of these … and DAN and REMS activities too – our environmental monitoring team is working hard as usual!
ChemCam has spent the last two weeks or so getting LIBS and passive measurements on “Sam Mack Meadow” – an area of darker toned, sometimes broken up rocks just outside of the current workspace. In fact, ChemCam is getting LIBS on two further targets there in this plan: “Horse Creek Spire” and the somewhat nodular “Kearsarge Pinnacles.” Mastcam will image all of the LIBS targets too. There are some interesting textures here that APXS and MAHLI are keen to sample too, so our next drive is more of a bump to get close enough to allow contact science here too. We will still be able to gaze on the King (Canyon) for another while, so I guess it’s not really goodbye just yet!
Written by Catherine O’Connell-Cooper, Planetary Geologist at University of New Brunswick
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By NASA
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NASA Citizen Scientists Spot Object Moving 1 Million Miles Per Hour
This artist’s concept shows a hypothetical white dwarf, left, that has exploded as a supernova. The object at right is CWISE J1249, a star or brown dwarf ejected from this system as a result of the explosion. This scenario is one explanation for where CWISE J1249 came from. W.M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko Most familiar stars peacefully orbit the center of the Milky Way. But citizen scientists working on NASA’s Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project have helped discover an object moving so fast that it will escape the Milky Way’s gravity and shoot into intergalactic space. This hypervelocity object is the first such object found with the mass similar to or less than that of a small star.
Backyard Worlds uses images from NASA’s WISE, or Wide Field Infrared Explorer, mission, which mapped the sky in infrared light from 2009 to 2011. It was re-activated as NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) in 2013 and retired on Aug. 8, 2024.
A few years ago, longtime Backyard Worlds citizen scientists Martin Kabatnik, Thomas P. Bickle, and Dan Caselden spotted a faint, fast-moving object called CWISE J124909.08+362116.0, marching across their screens in the WISE images. Follow-up observations with several ground-based telescopes helped scientists confirm the discovery and characterize the object. These citizen scientists are now co-authors on the team’s study about this discovery published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters (a pre-print version is available here).
“I can’t describe the level of excitement,” said Kabatnik, a citizen scientist from Nuremberg, Germany. “When I first saw how fast it was moving, I was convinced it must have been reported already.”
CWISE J1249 is zooming out of the Milky Way at about 1 million miles per hour. But it also stands out for its low mass, which makes it difficult to classify as a celestial object. It could be a low-mass star, or if it doesn’t steadily fuse hydrogen in its core, it would be considered a brown dwarf, putting it somewhere between a gas giant planet and a star.
Ordinary brown dwarfs are not that rare. Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 volunteers have discovered more than 4,000 of them! But none of the others are known to be on their way out of the galaxy.
This new object has yet another unique property. Data obtained with the W. M. Keck Observatory in Maunakea, Hawaii, show that it has much less iron and other metals than other stars and brown dwarfs. This unusual composition suggests that CWISE J1249 is quite old, likely from one of the first generations of stars in our galaxy.
Why does this object move at such high speed? One hypothesis is that CWISE J1249 originally came from a binary system with a white dwarf, which exploded as a supernova when it pulled off too much material from its companion. Another possibility is that it came from a tightly bound cluster of stars called a globular cluster, and a chance meeting with a pair of black holes sent it soaring away.
“When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster,” says Kyle Kremer, incoming assistant professor in UC San Diego’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Scientists will look more closely at the elemental composition of CWISE J1249 for clues about which of these scenarios is more likely.
This discovery has been a team effort on multiple levels—a collaboration involving volunteers, professionals, and students. Kabatnik credits other citizen scientists with helping him search, including Melina Thévenot, who “blew my mind with her personal blog about doing searches using Astronomical Data Query Language,” he said. Software written by citizen scientist Frank Kiwy was also instrumental in this finding, he said.
The study is led by Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 science team member Adam Burgasser, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, and includes co-authors Hunter Brooks and Austin Rothermich, astronomy students who both began their astronomy careers as citizen scientists.
Become a citizen scientist
Want to help discover the next extraordinary space object? Join the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 now — participation is open to anyone in any country worldwide.
Podcast
Check out this NASA’s Curious Universe podcast episode to hear personal stories from citizen scientists engaged NASA-related projects.
Media contact
Elizabeth Landau
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0845
elandau@nasa.gov
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By NASA
Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket leaves a glowing trail above the skies of Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on July 3, 2024. Firefly Aerospace/Trevor Mahlmann As part of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative, Firefly Aerospace launched eight small satellites on July 3 aboard the company’s Alpha rocket. Named “Noise of Summer,” the rocket successfully lifted off from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 9:04 p.m. PDT.
The CubeSat missions were designed by universities and NASA centers and cover science that includes climate studies, satellite technology development, and educational outreach to students.
Firefly Aerospace completed its Venture-Class Launch Services Demonstration 2 contract with this launch. The agency’s venture-class contracts offer launch opportunities for new providers, helping grow the commercial launch industry and leading to cost-effective competition for future NASA missions.
NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative provides a low-cost way for universities, non-profits, science centers, and other researchers to conduct science and technology demonstrations in space.
Image Credit: Firefly Aerospace/Trevor Mahlmann
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