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By NASA
2024 Year in Review – Highlights from NASA in Silicon Valley
by Tiffany Blake
As NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley enters its 85th year since its founding, join us as we take a look back at some of our highlights of science, engineering, research, and innovation from 2024.
Ames Arc Jets Play Key Role in Artemis I Orion Spacecraft Heat Shield Findings
A block of Avcoat undergoes testing inside an arc jet test chamber at NASA Ames. The test article, configured with both permeable (upper) and non-permeable (lower) Avcoat sections for comparison, helped to confirm understanding of the root cause of the loss of charred Avcoat material that engineers saw on the Orion spacecraft after the Artemis I test flight beyond the Moon. photo credit: NASA Researchers at Ames were part of the team tasked to better understand and identify the root cause of the unexpected char loss across the Artemis I Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. Using Avcoat material response data from Artemis I, the investigation team was able to replicate the Artemis I entry trajectory environment — a key part of understanding the cause of the issue — inside the arc jet facilities at NASA Ames.
Starling Swarm Completes Primary Mission
The four CubeSat spacecraft that make up the Starling swarm have demonstrated success in autonomous operations, completing all key mission objectives. Image credit: NASA After ten months in orbit, the Starling spacecraft swarm successfully demonstrated its primary mission’s key objectives, representing significant achievements in the capability of swarm configurations in low Earth orbit, including distributing and sharing important information and autonomous decision making.
Another Step Forward for BioNutrients
Research scientists Sandra Vu, left, Natalie Ball, center, and Hiromi Kagawa, right, process BioNutrients production packs.Image credit: NASA NASA’s BioNutrients entered its fifth year in its mission to investigate how microorganisms can produce on-demand nutrients for astronauts during long-duration space missions. Keeping astronauts healthy is critical and as the project comes to a close, researchers have processed production packs on Earth on the same day astronauts processed production packs in space on the International Space Station to demonstrate that NASA can produce nutrients after at least five years in space, providing confidence it will be capable of supporting crewed missions to Mars.
Hyperwall Upgrade Helps Scientists Interpret Big Data
The newly upgraded hyperwall visualization system provides four times the resolution of the previous system. Image credit: NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete Ames upgraded its powerful hyperwall system, a 300-square foot wall of LCD screens with over a billion pixels to display supercomputer-scale visualizations of the very large datasets produced by NASA supercomputers and instruments. The hyperwall is just one way researchers can utilize NASA’s high-end computing technology to better understand their data and advance the agency’s missions and research.
Ames Contributions to NASA Artificial Intelligence Efforts
This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls Ames contributes to the agency’s artificial intelligence work through ongoing research and development, agencywide collaboration, and communications efforts. This year, NASA announced David Salvagnini as its inaugural chief artificial intelligence officer and held the first agencywide town hall on artificial intelligence sharing how the agency is safely using and developing artificial intelligence to advance missions and research.
Advanced Composite Solar Sail System Successfully Launches, Deploys Sail
Illustration: NASA NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System successfully launched from Māhia, New Zealand, in April, and successfully deployed its sail in August to begin mission operations. The small satellite represents a new future in solar sailing, using lightweight composite booms to support a reflective polymer sail that uses the pressure of sunlight as propulsion.
Understanding Our Planet
Samuel Suleiman, an instructor on NASA’s OCEANOS student training program, gathers loose corals to place around an endangered coral species to help attract fish and other wildlife, giving the endangered coral a better chance of survivalphoto credit: NASA/Milan Loiacono In 2024, Ames researchers studied Earth’s oceans and waterways from multiple angles – from supporting NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem, or PACE, mission to bringing students in Puerto Rico experiences in oceanography and the preservation of coral reefs. Working with multiple partners, our scientists and engineers helped inform ecosystem management by joining satellite measurements of Earth with animal tracking data. In collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey, a NASA team continued testing a specialized instrument package to stay in-the-know about changes in river flow rates.
Revealing the Mysteries of Asteroids in Our Solar System
Image credit: NASA Ames researchers used a series of supercomputer simulations to reveal a potential new explanation for how the moons of Mars may have formed: The first step, the findings say, may have involved the destruction of an asteroid.
Using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope, another Ames scientist helped reveal the smallest asteroids ever found in the main asteroid belt.
Ames Helps Emerging Space Companies ‘Take the Heat’
A heat shield made by NASA is visible on the blunt, upward-facing side of a space capsule after its landing in the Utah desert.Image credit: Varda Space Industries/John Kraus A heat shield material invented and made at Ames helped to safely return a spacecraft containing the first product processed on an autonomous, free-flying, in-space manufacturing platform. February’s re-entry of the spacecraft from Varda Space Industries of El Segundo, California, in partnership with Rocket Lab USA of Long Beach, California, marked the first time a NASA-manufactured thermal protection material, called C-PICA (Conformal Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator), ever returned from space.
Team Continues to Move Forward with Mission to Learn More about Our Star
This illustration lays a depiction of the sun’s magnetic fields over an image captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on March 12, 2016.Image credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/LMSAL HelioSwarm’s swarm of nine spacecraft will provide deeper insights into our universe and offer critical information to help protect astronauts, satellites, and communications signals such as GPS. The mission team continues to work toward launching in 2029.
CAPSTONE Continues to Chart a New Path Around the Moon
CAPSTONE revealed in lunar Sunrise: CAPSTONE will fly in cislunar space – the orbital space near and around the Moon. The mission will demonstrate an innovative spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation solution at the Moon from a near rectilinear halo orbit slated for Artemis’ Gateway.Illustration credit: NASA Ames/Daniel Rutter The microwave sized CubeSat, CAPSTONE, continues to fly in a cis-lunar near rectilinear halo orbit after launching in 2022. Flying in this unique orbit continues to pave the way for future spacecraft and Gateway, a Moon-orbiting outpost that is part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, as the team continues to collect data.
NASA Moves Drone Package Delivery Industry Closer to Reality
A drone is shown flying during a test of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management (UTM) technical capability Level 2 (TCL2) at Reno-Stead Airport, Nevada in 2016. During the test, five drones simultaneously crossed paths, separated by different altitudes. Two drones flew beyond visual line of sight and three flew within line-of-sight of their operators. More UTM research followed, and it continues today. Image credit: NASA Ames/Dominic Hart NASA’s uncrewed aircraft system traffic management concepts paved the way for newly-approved package delivery drone flights in the Dallas area.
NASA’s uncrewed aircraft system traffic management concepts paved the way for newly-approved package delivery drone flights in the Dallas area.
NASA Technologies Streamline Air Traffic Management Systems
This image shows an aviation version of a smartphone navigation app that makes suggestions for an aircraft to fly an alternate, more efficient route. The new trajectories are based on information available from NASA’s Digital Information Platform and processed by the Collaborative Departure Digital Rerouting tool.Illustration credit: NASA Managing our busy airspace is a complex and important issue, ensuring reliable and efficient movement of commercial and public air traffic as well as autonomous vehicles. NASA, in partnership with AeroVironment and Aerostar, demonstrated a first-of-its-kind air traffic management concept that could pave the way for aircraft to safely operate at higher altitudes. The agency also saw continued fuel savings and reduction in commercial flight delays at Dallas Fort-Worth Airport, thanks to a NASA-developed tool that allows flight coordinators to identify more efficient, alternative takeoff routes.
Small Spacecraft Gathers Big Solar Storm Data from Deep Space
Illustration of NASA’s BioSentinel spacecraft as it enters a heliocentric orbit.Illustration credit: NASA Ames/Daniel Rutter BioSentinel – a small satellite about the size of a cereal box – is currently more than 30 million miles from Earth, orbiting our Sun. After launching aboard NASA’s Artemis I more than two years ago, BioSentinel continues to collect valuable information for scientists trying to understand how solar radiation storms move through space and where their effects – and potential impacts on life beyond Earth – are most intense. In May 2024, the satellite was exposed to a coronal mass ejection without the protection of our planet’s magnetic field and gathered measurements of hazardous solar particles in deep space during a solar storm.
NASA, FAA Partner to Develop New Wildland Fire Technologies
Artist’s rendering of remotely piloted aircraft providing fire suppression, monitoring and communications capabilities during a wildland fire. Illustration credit: NASA NASA researchers continued to develop and test airspace management technologies to enable remotely-piloted aircraft to fight and monitor wildland fires 24 hours a day.
The Advanced Capabilities for Emergency Response Operations (ACERO) project seeks to use drones and advanced aviation technologies to improve wildland fire coordination and operations.
NASA and Forest Service Use Balloon to Help Firefighters Communicate
The Aerostar Thunderhead balloon carries the STRATO payload into the sky to reach the stratosphere for flight testing. The balloon appears deflated because it will expand as it rises to higher altitudes where pressures are lower.Image credit: Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting/Austin Buttlar The Strategic Tactical Radio and Tactical Overwatch (STRATO) technology is a collaborative effort to use high-altitude balloons to improve real-time communications among firefighters battling wildland fires. Providing cellular communication from above can improve firefighter safety and firefighting efficiency.
A Fully Reimagined Visitor Center
The NASA Ames Visitor Center includes exhibits and activities, sharing the work of NASA in Silicon Valley with the public.Image credit: NASA Ames/Don RIchey The NASA Ames Visitor Center at Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California includes a fully reimagined 360-degree experience, featuring new exhibits, models, and more. An interactive exhibit puts visitors in the shoes of a NASA Ames scientist, designing and testing rovers, planes, and robots for space exploration.
Ames Collaborations in the Community
Former NASA astronauts Yvonne Cagle and Kenneth Cockrell pose with Eli Toribio and Rhydian Daniels at the University of California, San Francisco Bakar Cancer Hospital. Patients gathered to meet the astronauts and learn more about human spaceflight and NASA’s cancer research effortsImage credit: NASA Ames/Brandon Torres Navarrete NASA astronauts, scientists, and researchers, and leadership from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) met with cancer patients and gathered in a discussion about potential research opportunities and collaborations as part of President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative on Oct. 4. During the visit with patients, NASA astronaut Yvonne Cagle and former astronaut Kenneth Cockrell answered questions about spaceflight and life in space.
Ames and the University of California, Berkeley, expanded their partnership, organizing workshops to exchange on their areas of technical expertise, including in Advanced Air Mobility, and to develop ideas for the Berkeley Space Center, an innovation hub proposed for development at Ames’ NASA Research Park. Under a new agreement, NASA also will host supercomputing resources for UC Berkeley, supporting the development of novel computing algorithms and software for a wide variety of scientific and technology areas.
NASA’s Ames Research Center Celebrates 85 Years of Innovation
by Rachel Hoover
Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley pre-dates a lot of things. The center existed before NASA – the very space and aeronautics agency it’s a critical part of today. And of all the marvelous advancements in science and technology that have fundamentally changed our lives over the last 85 years since its founding, one aspect has remained steadfast; an enduring commitment to what’s known by some on-center simply as, “an atmosphere of freedom.”
The NACA Ames laboratory in 1944.Image credit: NASA Years before breaking ground at the site that would one day become home to the world’s preeminent wind tunnels, supercomputers, simulators, and brightest minds solving some of the world’s toughest challenges, Joseph Sweetman Ames, the center’s namesake, described a sentiment that would guide decades of innovation and research:
“My hope is that you have learned or are learning a love of freedom of thought and are convinced that life is worthwhile only in such an atmosphere,” he said in an address to the graduates of Johns Hopkins University in June 1935.
That spirit and the people it attracted and retained are a crucial part of how Ames, along with other N.A.C.A. research centers, ultimately made technological breakthroughs that enabled humanity’s first steps on the Moon, the safe return of spacecraft through Earth’s atmosphere, and many other discoveries that benefit our day-to-day lives.
Russell Robinson momentarily looks to the camera while supervising the first excavation at what would become Ames Research Center.Image credit: NACA “In the context of my work, an atmosphere of freedom means the freedom to pursue high-risk, high-reward, innovative ideas that may take time to fully develop and — most importantly — the opportunity to put them into practice for the benefit of all,” said Edward Balaban, a researcher at Ames specializing in artificial intelligence, robotics, and advanced mission concepts.
Balaban’s career at Ames has involved a variety of projects at different stages of development – from early concept to flight-ready – including experimenting with different ways to create super-sized space telescopes in space and using artificial intelligence to help guide the path a rover might take to maximize off-world science results. Like many Ames researchers over the years, Balaban shared that his experience has involved deep collaborations across science and engineering disciplines with colleagues all over the center, as well as commercial and academic partners in Silicon Valley where Ames is nestled and beyond. This is a tradition that runs deep at Ames and has helped lead to entirely new fields of study and seeded many companies and spinoffs.
Before NASA, Before Silicon Valley: The 1939 Founding of Ames Aeronautical Laboratory “In the fields of aeronautics and space exploration the cost of entry can be quite high. For commercial enterprises and universities pursuing longer term ideas and putting them into practice often means partnering up with an organization such as NASA that has the scale and multi-disciplinary expertise to mature these ideas for real-world applications,” added Balaban.
“Certainly, the topics of inquiry, the academic freedom, and the benefit to the public good are what has kept me at Ames,” reflected Ross Beyer, a planetary scientist with the SETI Institute at Ames. “There’s not a lot of commercial incentive to study other planets, for example, but maybe there will be soon. In the meantime, only with government funding and agencies like NASA can we develop missions to explore the unknown in order to make important fundamental science discoveries and broadly share them.”
For Beyer, his boundary-breaking moment came when he searched – and found – software engineers at Ames capable and passionate about open-source software to generate accurate, high-resolution, texture-mapped, 3D terrain models from stereo image pairs. He and other teams of NASA scientists have since applied that software to study and better understand everything from changes in snow and ice characteristics on Earth, as well as features like craters, mountains, and caves on Mars or the Moon. This capability is part of the Artemis campaign, through which NASA will establish a long-term presence at the Moon for scientific exploration with commercial and international partners. The mission is to learn how to live and work away from home, promote the peaceful use of space, and prepare for future human exploration of Mars.
“As NASA and private companies send missions to the Moon, they need to plan landing sites and understand the local environment, and our software is freely available for anyone to use,” Beyer said. “Years ago, our management could easily have said ‘No, let’s keep this software to ourselves; it gives us a competitive advantage.’ They didn’t, and I believe that NASA writ large allows you to work on things and share those things and not hold them back.”
When looking forward to what the next 85 years might bring, researchers shared a belief that advancements in technology and opportunities to innovate are as expansive as space itself, but like all living things, they need a healthy atmosphere to thrive. Balaban offered, “This freedom to innovate is precious and cannot be taken for granted. It can easily fall victim if left unprotected. It is absolutely critical to retain it going forward, to ensure our nation’s continuing vitality and the strength of the other freedoms we enjoy.”
Ames Aeronautical Laboratory.Image credit: NACA Today Marks the Retirement of the Astrogram Newsletter
by Astrid Albaugh
For 66 years, the Astrogram has told the story of NASA’s Ames Research Center. Over those six-plus decades, the newsletter has documented hundreds of missions led by Ames, the progression of Hangar One’s reclamation, space shuttle launches with Ames’ payloads aboard them, countless VIP visits, and everything in between.
Ames published the first edition of the Astrogram in October 1958, coinciding with the transition of the center from its original incarnation as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Ames Aeronautical Laboratory to a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) research center.
The newsletter has evolved over time, alongside the center. From October 1958 through January 2016, the Astrogram was published in print, before a digital edition was developed. In January 2016, the Astrogram transitioned to a digital-only format. Below are examples of some of the Astrogram issues from over the years. More are forthcoming from 1998 and prior once they are retrieved from the archives.
October 2014 Astrogram September 2010 Astrogram I have served as the editor of the Astrogram since February 1998. Over the past quarter century, it has been an interesting, and sometimes quite challenging, task for me to capture the breadth and depth of Ames’s story and ensure that we always published the newsletter on time. I still remember trekking over to the center’s imaging office to review the physical negatives and images that the Ames photographers had taken of events onsite and select the most compelling photos. I used a very early version of visual design software to craft the layout. When the paper was completed, I’d file it onto a CD and then hand it to the courier who would drive from the San Francisco printshop to pick it up from me. Once and awhile, someone would request to have an additional feature added, requiring multiple trips up the 101 and back. Sometimes I’d come in on the weekends to work on the paper, due to late submissions, much to the chagrin of my kids.
July 2007 Astrogram It has been a pleasure serving as the editor over the past quarter century, almost as many years as my kids are old. A person once asked me if I had changed my name to Astrid since it’s so like the word Astrogram. Any relationship between the newsletter and my name is simply serendipity. I have enjoyed being behind the scenes, mostly working diligently at my computer. Many at Ames know my name because of the newsletter but may have never met me in person. It’s been amusing sometimes when I encounter someone who can’t put a finger as to why they knew my name but didn’t recognize me standing in front of them. Their usual response when they realized why they know me was, “Ah, Astrid of the Astrogram.”
March 20, 1998 Astrogram Just as NASA innovates, the content of the Astrogram has to innovate as well. Many of the stories that you used to read in the Astrogram, you can now find on our NASA Ames web page here. If you would like to access past, archived issues of the Astrogram, going back to 1958, please consult the Ames Research Center Archives. I will continue to help tell Ames’s story, just using new platforms.
Whether this is your first issue or you have been an Astrogram supporter for decades, thank you for reading!
– Astrid of the Astrogram officially signing off
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
It’s a new year on Mars, and while New Year’s means winter in Earth’s northern hemisphere, it’s the start of spring in the same region of the Red Planet. And that means ice is thawing, leading to all sorts of interesting things. JPL research scientist Serina Diniega explains. NASA/JPL-Caltech Instead of a winter wonderland, the Red Planet’s northern hemisphere goes through an active — even explosive — spring thaw.
While New Year’s Eve is around the corner here on Earth, Mars scientists are ahead of the game: The Red Planet completed a trip around the Sun on Nov. 12, 2024, prompting a few researchers to raise a toast.
But the Martian year, which is 687 Earth days, ends in a very different way in the planet’s northern hemisphere than it does in Earth’s northern hemisphere: While winter’s kicking in here, spring is starting there. That means temperatures are rising and ice is thinning, leading to frost avalanches crashing down cliffsides, carbon dioxide gas exploding from the ground, and powerful winds helping reshape the north pole.
“Springtime on Earth has lots of trickling as water ice gradually melts. But on Mars, everything happens with a bang,” said Serina Diniega, who studies planetary surfaces at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Mars’ wispy atmosphere doesn’t allow liquids to pool on the surface, like on Earth. Instead of melting, ice sublimates, turning directly into a gas. The sudden transition in spring means a lot of violent changes as both water ice and carbon dioxide ice — dry ice, which is much more plentiful on Mars than frozen water — weaken and break.
“You get lots of cracks and explosions instead of melting,” Diniega said. “I imagine it gets really noisy.”
Using the cameras and other sensors aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which launched in 2005, scientists study all this activity to improve their understanding of the forces shaping the dynamic Martian surface. Here’s some of what they track.
Frost Avalanches
In 2015, MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera captured a 66-foot-wide (20-meter-wide) chunk of carbon dioxide frost in freefall. Chance observations like this are reminders of just how different Mars is from Earth, Diniega said, especially in springtime, when these surface changes are most noticeable.
Martian spring involves lots of cracking ice, which led to this 66-foot-wide (20-meter-wide) chunk of carbon dioxide frost captured in freefall by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2015NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona “We’re lucky we’ve had a spacecraft like MRO observing Mars for as long as it has,” Diniega said. “Watching for almost 20 years has let us catch dramatic moments like these avalanches.”
Gas Geysers
Diniega has relied on HiRISE to study another quirk of Martian springtime: gas geysers that blast out of the surface, throwing out dark fans of sand and dust. These explosive jets form due to energetic sublimation of carbon dioxide ice. As sunlight shines through the ice, its bottom layers turn to gas, building pressure until it bursts into the air, creating those dark fans of material.
As light shines through carbon dioxide ice on Mars, it heats up its bottom layers, which, rather than melting into a liquid, turn into gas. The buildup gas eventually results in explosive geysers that toss dark fans of debris on to the surface.light shines through carbon dioxide ice on Mars But to see the best examples of the newest fans, researchers will have to wait until December 2025, when spring starts in the southern hemisphere. There, the fans are bigger and more clearly defined.
Spiders
Another difference between ice-related action in the two hemispheres: Once all the ice around some northern geysers has sublimated in summer, what’s left behind in the dirt are scour marks that, from space, look like giant spider legs. Researchers recently re-created this process in a JPL lab.
Sometimes, after carbon dioxide geysers have erupted from ice-covered areas on Mars, they leave scour marks on the surface. When the ice is all gone by summer, these long scour marks look like the legs of giant spiders.NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Powerful Winds
For Isaac Smith of Toronto’s York University, one of the most fascinating subjects in springtime is the Texas-size ice cap at Mars’ north pole. Etched into the icy dome are swirling troughs, revealing traces of the red surface below. The effect is like a swirl of milk in a café latte.
“These things are enormous,” Smith said, noting that some are a long as California. “You can find similar troughs in Antarctica but nothing at this scale.”
As temperatures rise, powerful winds kick up that carve deep troughs into the ice cap of Mars’ north pole. Some of these troughs are as long as California, and give the Martian north pole its trademark swirls. This image was captured by NASA’s now-inactive Mars Global Surveyor.NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Fast, warm wind has carved the spiral shapes over eons, and the troughs act as channels for springtime wind gusts that become more powerful as ice at the north pole starts to thaw. Just like the Santa Ana winds in Southern California or the Chinook winds in the Rocky Mountains, these gusts pick up speed and temperature as they ride down the troughs — what’s called an adiabatic process.
Wandering Dunes
The winds that carve the north pole’s troughs also reshape Mars’ sand dunes, causing sand to pile up on one side while removing sand from the other side. Over time, the process causes dunes to migrate, just as it does with dunes on Earth.
This past September, Smith coauthored a paper detailing how carbon dioxide frost settles on top of polar sand dunes during winter, freezing them in place. When the frost all thaws away in the spring, the dunes begin migrating again.
Surrounded by frost, these Martian dunes in Mars’ northern hemisphere were captured from above by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter using its HiRISE camera on Sept. 8, 2022. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Each northern spring is a little different, with variations leading to ice sublimating faster or slower, controlling the pace of all these phenomena on the surface. And these strange phenomena are just part of the seasonal changes on Mars: the southern hemisphere has its own unique activity.
More About MRO
The University of Arizona, in Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., in Boulder, Colorado. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
For more information, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-reconnaissance-orbiter
News Media Contacts
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Dec 20, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
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 Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Glossary Posters Hubble on the NASA App More 35th Anniversary 2 min read
Hubble Spies a Cosmic Eye
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 2566. ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy NGC 2566, which sits 76 million light-years away in the constellation Puppis. A prominent bar of stars stretches across the center of this galaxy, and spiral arms emerge from each end of the bar. Because NGC 2566 appears tilted from our perspective, its disk takes on an almond shape, giving the galaxy the appearance of a cosmic eye.
As NGC 2566 appears to gaze at us, astronomers gaze right back, using Hubble to survey the galaxy’s star clusters and star-forming regions. The Hubble data are especially valuable for studying stars that are just a few million years old; these stars are bright at the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths to which Hubble is sensitive. Using these data, researchers can measure the ages of NGC 2566’s stars, which helps piece together the timeline of the galaxy’s star formation and the exchange of gas between star-forming clouds and the stars themselves.
Hubble regularly teams up with other astronomical observatories to examine objects like NGC 2566, including the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Webb data complements Hubble’s by going beyond the infrared wavelengths of light Hubble can see, better defining areas of warm, glowing dust. At even longer wavelengths, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of 66 radio telescopes that work together can capture detailed images of the clouds of gas and dust in which stars form. Together, Hubble, Webb, and ALMA provide an overview of the formation, lives, and deaths of stars in galaxies across the universe.
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Hubble Focus E-Book: Galaxies through Space and Time
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Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
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Last Updated Dec 19, 2024 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:01:22 An ethereal dance of misty clouds of interstellar dust with a myriad of distant stars and galaxies speckled like paint drops over a black canvas. This is a sonification of a breathtaking image king image taken by ESA's Euclid space telescope of the young star-forming region Messier 78.
The sonification offers a different representation of the data collected by Euclid, and lets us explore the stellar nurseries in M78 through sound. Close your eyes and listen to let the cosmic image be drawn by your mind’s eye, or watch as the traceback line in this video follows the sounds to colour the image from left to right.
The twinkling sounds of various pitches and volumes represent the galaxies and stars in the frame. The pitch of the sound points towards where we see the dot of light in the image. Higher pitches tell us that a star or galaxy appears further at the top in the image along the traceback line.
The brightness of these objects in and around M78 are represented by the volume of the twinkles. Whenever we hear a particularly loud clink, the star or galaxy that Euclid observed appears particularly bright in the image.
Underlying these jingling sounds, we can hear a steady undertone, made up of two chords which represent different regions in Messier 78. This sound intensifies as the traceback line approaches first the brightest, and later the densest regions in the nebula.
The first two deeper crescendos in this undertone indicate two patches in the image where the most intense colour is blue/purple. These appear as two ‘cavities’ in M78, where newly forming stars carve out and illuminate the dust and gas in which they were born.
The chords intensify a third time at a slightly higher pitch corresponding to the red-orange colours in the image, as the sound draws over the densest star-forming region of the frame. This stellar nursery is hidden by a layer of dust and gas that is so thick that it obscures almost all the light of the young stars within it.
As the sound traces over the entire Euclid image, these different tones together form a cosmic symphony that represents the image of Messier 78, and the stars and galaxies that lie behind and within it. You can read more about this image that was first revealed to the eyes of the world earlier this year here.
Many thanks to Klaus Nielsen (DTU Space / Maple Pools) for making the sonification in this video. If you would like to hear more sonifications and music by this artist, please visit: https://linktr.ee/maplepools
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By NASA
ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeidler This new image of star cluster NGC 602, released on Dec. 17, 2024, combines data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with a previously released image from the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb data provide the ring-like outline of the “wreath,” while X-rays from Chandra (red) show young, massive stars that are illuminating the wreath, sending high-energy light into interstellar space.
NGC 602 lies on the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, about 200,000 light-years from Earth.
See another new, festive image: the “Christmas tree cluster.”
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC; Infrared: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeilder, E.Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/L. Frattare and K. Arcand
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