#space

isaackuo@diaspora.glasswings.com

So, I was browsing Atomic Rockets and came across the idea of spraying instant landing pads by injecting stuff into the lander's exhaust:

https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/landing.php#instapad1

This is relevant to a pet ISRU idea I have for CO/LOX+regolith dust propellant, mining Deimos for regolith dust and using its momentum to gather CO2 while aeroscooping to low Mars orbit.

If you dump the dust overboard, the CO/LOX lacks "oomph", but injecting it into the exhaust gives you nice performance. Good enough to supply a deliver drone to Earth orbit as well as for the mining drone to get back to Deimos (completing the cycle).

#gizmo #Space #SpaceExploration

psychmesu@diaspora.glasswings.com

https://mastodon.online/@umplus/112175055235649848 umplus@mastodon.online - #UMPlus - Magical night in Atacama

https://www.universomagico.net/2024/03/noche-magica-en-atacama.html

Astronomer Petr Horálek has produced a magical image. The Atacama Desert has been the setting chosen to photograph a spectacularly colorful sky in which the bright stars, which give light to the sky, become the protagonists. In addition, the red color of the hydrogen atoms ionized by the energetic stars is distributed throughout the galaxy, tinting the.....
#astronomy #space #astrophysics #astrophotography

esa@social.gibberfish.org

ESA and NASA team up to study solar wind

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Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe

In the run up to April’s total solar eclipse, ESA-led Solar Orbiter and NASA-led Parker Solar Probe are both at their closest approach to the Sun. Tomorrow, they are taking the opportunity to join hands in studying the driving rain of plasma that streams from the Sun, fills the Solar System, and causes dazzlement and destruction at Earth.

#news #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

esa@social.gibberfish.org

Information session on the outcome of ESA's 323rd Council

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Video: 00:38:30

ESA Member States met in Paris, France, for the 323rd session of the ESA Council on 26 and 27 March 2024.

Watch the replay of the information session in which ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and ESA Council Chair Renato Krpoun share the outcome of the meeting. They gave an update to media about ESA's vision for the European space sector by 2040 and the status of actions provided in the roadmap for the implementation of the Resolution on present and future European Space Transportation.

They also addressed the progress made in addressing critical challenges faced by ESA in preparation for the next Ministerial Council in 2025. This includes the establishment of the Independent Project Management Authority (IPMA), updating procurement and geo-return rules, service procurement and agreements with Member States.

#news #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

esa@social.gibberfish.org

Integral spots giant explosions feeding neutron star jets

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ESA’s gamma-ray space telescope Integral ** has played a decisive role in capturing jets of matter being expelled into space at one-third the speed of light. The material and energy were liberated when huge explosions occurred on the surface of a neutron star. This world-first observation proved to be “a perfect experiment” for exploring astrophysical jets of all descriptions.**

#news #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

esa@social.gibberfish.org

SOHO reaches 5000 comets

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Image:

A citizen scientist digging through data from the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory has found the mission’s 5000th comet.

The tiny comet – indicated between the vertical lines in the inset – belongs to the ‘Marsden group’, named after the British astronomer Brian Marsden, who first recognised the group based on SOHO observations. Marsden group comets are thought to be pieces shed by the much bigger Comet 96P/Machholz, which SOHO observes as it passes close to the Sun every 5.3 years.

This 5000th comet was discovered by Hanjie Tan, an astronomy PhD student in Prague, Czechia. Hanjie has been comet hunting since he was just 13 years old, discovering over 200 comets since 2009.

Hanjie explains how he felt upon spotting this comet in the data: “The Marsden group comets represent only about 1.5% of all SOHO comet discoveries, so finding this one as the 5000th SOHO comet felt incredibly fortunate. It's really exciting to be the first to see comets get bright near the Sun after they've been travelling through space for thousands of years.”

Launched in 1995, SOHO studies the Sun from its interior to its outer atmosphere, providing unique views and investigating the cause of the solar wind. During the last three decades, SOHO has become the most prolific discoverer of comets in astronomical history.

The telescope’s prowess as a comet-hunter was unplanned, but turned out to be an unexpected success. With its clear view of the Sun’s surroundings, SOHO can easily spot a special kind of comet called a sungrazer – so-called because of their close approach to the Sun.

Like most who have discovered comets in SOHO’s data, Hanjie Tan is a volunteer citizen scientist, searching for comets in his free time with the Sungrazer Project. This NASA-funded citizen science project, managed by Karl Battams from the US Naval Research Lab, grew out of the huge number of comet discoveries by citizen scientists early into SOHO’s mission.

“Prior to the launch of the SOHO mission and the Sungrazer Project, there were only a couple dozen sungrazing comets on record – that’s all we knew existed,” said Karl Battams, who is the principal investigator for the Sungrazer Project. “The fact that we’ve finally reached this milestone – 5000 comets – is just unbelievable to me.”

SOHO is a cooperative effort between ESA and NASA. Mission control is based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment, or LASCO, which is the instrument that provides most of the comet imagery, was built by an international consortium, led by the US Naval Research Lab.

Full story

SOHO’s 4000th comet

SOHO’s 3000th comet

[Image description: A bright orange circle covers almost the whole image, with a smaller disc in the middle. Out of the smaller disc protrude wisps of the Sun's atmosphere. To the upper right of the inner circle, an inset zooms in on a small square, with vertical lines surrounding a faint smudge.]

#news #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

esa@social.gibberfish.org

Radar journey to centre of Hera’s asteroid with Juventas CubeSat

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Juventas CubeSat deployment

A small, shoebox-sized spacecraft delivered to ESA’s Hera mission this week promises to make a giant leap forward in planetary science. Once deployed from the Hera spacecraft at the Didymos binary asteroid system, the Juventas CubeSat perform the first radar probe within an asteroid, peering deep into the heart of the Great-Pyramid-sized Dimorphos moonlet.

#news #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

esa@social.gibberfish.org

Vegetation gets a boost with data from space

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Accounting for vegetation in the climate puzzle

When it comes to predicting what our climate will be like in the future, vegetation matters. Plants and trees exert a powerful influence over both the energy cycle and the water cycle. And, crucially, it is estimated that vegetation draws down well over three billion tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere each year – this is equivalent to a third of greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity.

Accounting for vegetation growth is clearly important in the complex climate puzzle – and the release of a new satellite dataset is set to help climate modellers with the challenge of evaluating the impacts of climate change.

#news #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

esa@social.gibberfish.org

Marvel at stunning echo of 800-year-old explosion

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Image:

In the year 1181 a rare supernova explosion appeared in the night sky, staying visible for 185 consecutive days. Historical records show that the supernova looked like a temporary ‘star’ in the constellation Cassiopeia shining as bright as Saturn.

Ever since, scientists have tried to find the supernova’s remnant. At first it was thought that this could be the nebula around the pulsar (dead star) 3C 58. However closer investigations revealed that the pulsar is older than supernova 1181.

In the last decade, another contender was discovered; Pa 30 is a nearly circular nebula with a central star in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is pictured here combining images from several telescopes. This composite image uses data across the electromagnetic spectrum and shows a new spectacular view of the supernova remnant. Allowing us to marvel at the same object that appeared in our ancestors’ night sky more than 800 years ago.

X-ray observations by ESA’s XMM-Newton (blue) show the full extent of the nebula and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (cyan) pinpoints its central source. The nebula is barely visible in optical light but shines bright in infrared light, collected by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Space Explorer (red and pink). Interestingly, the radial structure in the image consists of heated sulphur that glows in visible light, observed with the ground-based Hiltner 2.4 m telescope at the MDM Observatory (green) in Arizona, USA, as do the stars in the background by Pan-STARRS (white) in Hawaii, USA.

Studies of the composition of the different parts of the remnant have led scientists to believe that it was formed in a thermonuclear explosion, and more precisely a special kind of supernova called a sub-luminous Type Iax event. During this event two white dwarf stars merged, and typically no remnant is expected for this kind of explosion. But incomplete explosions can leave a kind of ‘zombie’ star, such as the massive white dwarf star in this system. This very hot star, one of the hottest stars in the Milky Way (about 200 000 degrees Celsius), has a fast stellar wind with speeds up to 16 000 km/h. The combination of the star and the nebula makes it a unique opportunity for studying such rare explosions.

[Image description: A composite image of the remnant of supernova 1181. A spherical bright nebula sits in the middle surrounded by a field of white dotted stars. Within the nebula several rays point out like fireworks from a central star.]

#news #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

esa@social.gibberfish.org

Best geologic map for a European rover on Mars

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Oxia Planum map flyover

A team of European scientists have published the most detailed geologic map of Oxia Planum – the landing site for ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover on Mars. This thorough look at the geography and geological history of the area will help the rover scout the once water-rich terrain, in the search for signs of past and present life.

#human #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

esa@social.gibberfish.org

SMOS and Swarm team up to spot huge solar storm

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Solar flare captured by ESA’s Proba-2 SWAP

The Sun erupted over the weekend, flinging electromagnetic radiation towards Earth, even illuminating skies with spectacular aurora borealis. For the first time, ESA’s unlikely space weather duo of SMOS and Swarm tracked the severe solar storm — which warped Earth’s magnetic field.

#earth #science #space #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2

esa@social.gibberfish.org

Euclid's sight restored

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A newly devised procedure to de-ice Euclid's optics has performed significantly better than hoped. Light coming in to the visible ‘VIS’ instrument from distant stars was gradually decreasing due small amounts of water ice building up on its optics. Mission teams spent months devising a procedure to heat up individual mirrors in the instrument’s complex optical system, without interfering with the finely tuned mission’s calibration or potentially causing further contamination. After the very first mirror was warmed by just 34 degrees, Euclid's sight was restored.

#news #space #science #esa #europeanspaceagency
posted by pod_feeder_v2