Spacething

New time-lapse movies from NASA’s NEOWISE mission give astronomers the opportunity to see objects, like stars and black holes, as they move and change over time. The videos include previously hidden brown dwarfs, a feeding black hole, a dying star, a star-forming region, and a brightening star. They combine more than 10 years of NEOWISE observations and 18 all-sky images, enabling a long-term analysis and a deeper understanding of the universe. 0:44 – NEOWISE all-sky scan animation 1:03 – Feeding black hole 1:14 – Pulsing star reaches the end of its life 1:21 – Protostars in star-forming region 1:34 – Brown dwarf moves across the sky 2:00 – Unexplained stellar brightening The NEOWISE mission uses a space telescope to hunt for asteroids and comets, including those that could pose a threat to Earth. Launched in December 2009 as the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, the space telescope was originally designed to survey the sky in infrared, detecting asteroids, stars and some of the faintest galaxies in space. WISE did so successfully until completing its primary mission in February 2011. Observations resumed in December 2013, when the telescope was taken out of hibernation and re-purposed for the NEOWISE project as an instrument to study near-Earth objects, or NEOs, as well as more distant asteroids and comets. For more information on the NEOWISE mission go to: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/neowise For more NEOWISE data go to: https://neowise.ipac.caltech.edu Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech WISE-NEOWISE movies compiled by Dan Caselden

On May 16, 2023, NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew past Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io, and then the gas giant soon after. Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Slightly larger than Earth’s moon, Io is a world in constant torment. Not only is the biggest planet in the solar system forever pulling at it gravitationally, but so are its Galilean siblings – Europa and the biggest moon in the solar system, Ganymede. The result is that Io is continuously stretched and squeezed, actions linked to the creation of the lava seen erupting from its many volcanoes. This rendering provides a “starship captain” point of view of the flyby, using images from JunoCam. For both targets, Io and Jupiter, raw JunoCam images were reprojected into views similar to the perspective of a consumer camera. The Io flyby and the Jupiter approach movie were rendered separately and composed into a synchronous split-screen video. Launched on Aug. 5, 2011, Juno embarked on a 5-year journey to Jupiter. Its mission: to probe beneath the planet's dense clouds and answer questions about the origin and evolution of Jupiter, our solar system, and giant planets in general across the cosmos. Juno arrived at the gas giant on July 4, 2016, after a 1.7-billion-mile journey, and settled into a 53-day polar orbit stretching from just above Jupiter’s cloud tops to the outer reaches of the Jovian magnetosphere. Now in its extended mission, NASA’s most distant planetary orbiter continues doing flybys of Jupiter and its moons.

In this video, measurements collected by the Waves instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during its close flyby of Jupiter’s moon Europa on Sept. 29, 2022 have been converted to an audible frequency. As the white line moves across the spectrogram, which is a visual way of representing signal strength over time, the variation of frequency of the plasma waves observed near Europa can be heard as the plasma density varies. The video shows data collected over approximately 1.5 hours during the Europa flyby. For more information about NASA’s Juno mission, visit: http://nasa.gov/juno and https://missionjuno.com Details about the Europa flyby can be found at: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-s-juno-will-perform-close-flyby-of-jupiter-s-icy-moon-europa Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/Univ of Iowa

We’re testing a new way of landing on Mars… by crashing into its surface. The Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device (SHIELD) is a lander concept being tested at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). It could one day provide a new way for low-cost missions to land on Mars. Rather than rely on parachutes or retrorockets, SHIELD would include a collapsible, accordion-like base to absorb the energy of a landing. A full-size prototype of the base was tested on Aug. 12, 2022. The prototype was hurled at the ground from the top of a nearly 90-foot-tall (27-meter-tall) drop tower at JPL. A steel plate ensured the impact was even harder than what would be experienced on Mars. The design worked: After crushing against the steel plate at 110 mph (177 kph), several electronic components inside the SHIELD prototype, including a smartphone, survived the impact. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/California Academy of Sciences

A new Earth science mission, led by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), will help communities plan for a better future by surveying the planet’s salt and freshwater bodies. The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission will measure the height of water in lakes, rivers, reservoirs, and the oceans. As climate change accelerates the water cycle, more communities around the world will be inundated with water while others won’t have enough. SWOT data will be used to improve flood forecasts and monitor drought conditions, providing essential information to water management agencies, civil engineers, universities, the U.S. Department of Defense, disaster preparedness agencies, and others who need to track water in their local areas. In this video, examples of how SWOT data will be used in these communities are shared by a National Weather Service representative in Oregon, an Alaska Department of Transportation engineer, researchers from the University of Oregon and University of North Carolina, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist working with the Department of Defense, and a JPL scientist working with the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Agency. :30 - Flood Watches & Warnings - Portland, Oregon 1:08 - Water Management - Fern Ridge Lake, Oregon 2:05 - Protecting Infrastructure - Alaska 2:54 - National Security - Department of Defense 3:24 - Coastal Protection - Mississippi River Delta SWOT is expected to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in December 2022. The mission is a collaboration between NASA and CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and UK Space Agency. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. To learn more about the mission, visit: https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/CNES/Thales Alenia Space