KREUZADER (Posts tagged space)

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“ In this animated GIF of Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule made from two images taken 38 minutes apart, the “Thule” lobe is closest to the New Horizons spacecraft. As Ultima Thule is seen to rotate, hints of the topography can be perceived. The images...

In this animated GIF of Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule made from two images taken 38 minutes apart, the “Thule” lobe is closest to the New Horizons spacecraft. As Ultima Thule is seen to rotate, hints of the topography can be perceived. The images were taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) at 4:23 and 5:01 Universal Time on January 1, 2019 from respective ranges of 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers) and 17,000 miles (28,000 kilometers), with respective original scales of 1017 feet (310 meters) and 459 feet (140 meters) per pixel.

Source: pluto.jhuapl.edu
2014 mu69 new horizons space nasa
Discovered: The Most-Distant Solar System Object Ever Observed “ A team of astronomers has discovered the most-distant body ever observed in our Solar System. It is the first known Solar System object that has been detected at a distance that is more...

Discovered: The Most-Distant Solar System Object Ever Observed

A team of astronomers has discovered the most-distant body ever observed in our Solar System.  It is the first known Solar System object that has been detected at a distance that is more than 100 times farther than Earth is from the Sun.

The new object was announced on Monday, December 17, 2018, by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center and has been given the provisional designation 2018 VG18. The discovery was made by Carnegie’s Scott S. Sheppard, the University of Hawaii’s David Tholen, and Northern Arizona University’s Chad Trujillo.

2018 VG18, nicknamed “Farout” by the discovery team for its extremely distant location, is at about 120 astronomical units (AU), where 1 AU is defined as the distance between the Earth and the Sun.  The second-most-distant observed Solar System object is Eris, at about 96 AU.  Pluto is currently at about 34 AU, making 2018 VG18 more than three-and-a-half times more distant than the Solar System’s most-famous dwarf planet.

Source: carnegiescience.edu
astronomy space
“ This image from Parker Solar Probe’s WISPR (Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe) instrument shows a coronal streamer, seen over the east limb of the Sun on Nov. 8, 2018, at 1:12 a.m. EST. Coronal streamers are structures of solar material within the...

This image from Parker Solar Probe’s WISPR (Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe) instrument shows a coronal streamer, seen over the east limb of the Sun on Nov. 8, 2018, at 1:12 a.m. EST. Coronal streamers are structures of solar material within the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, that usually overlie regions of increased solar activity. The fine structure of the streamer is very clear, with at least two rays visible. Parker Solar Probe was about 16.9 million miles from the Sun’s surface when this image was taken. The bright object near the center of the image is Mercury, and the dark spots are a result of background correction.

Source: nasa.gov
parker solar probe nasa space sun mercury
Russia Just Launched Five Objects Into Space. One Problem, There Were Supposed To Be Four “The Russian military says it successfully placed three classified communications satellites into orbit today, along with the upper stage of the rocket that put...

Russia Just Launched Five Objects Into Space. One Problem, There Were Supposed To Be Four

The Russian military says it successfully placed three classified communications satellites into orbit today, along with the upper stage of the rocket that put them there.  But according to the U.S. military’s Combined Space Operations Center, or CSpOC, a fifth object, possibly another, unannounced satellite, may have hitched a ride into space on the launch.The Rokot/Briz-KM launch vehicle blasted off from Pad 3 at Site 133 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Western Russia at just before 5:30 PM local time on Nov. 30, 2018, according to RussianSpaceWeb.com. At approximately 7:12 PM, the three Rodnik communications satellites had deployed into their assigned orbits. Russia has named the trio of satellites Kosmos-2530, Kosmos-2531, and Kosmos-2532.

This would all be rather banal had the CSpoC, as well as the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), not recorded the launch slightly differently. Information on Space-Track.org, a U.S. government website that publicly releases data on space launches from the CSpoC and NORAD, listed Objects A through E as resulting from the launch from Plesetsk. This would include the three satellites and the upper stage, but the fifth object is unexplained.

[…]

On May 23, 2014, another Rokot/Briz-KM launch vehicle put three Rodnik communications satellites into orbit. Again, the U.S. military tracked five objects, with Object E, in that case, turning out to be an inspector satellite known as Kosmos-2499. The perigees and other data for the five objects are extremely similar in both cases.

[…]

The Kremlin has categorically denied that any of these satellites, which it calls “space apparatus inspectors,” are weapons. Most recently, the Russians denounced concerns that Yleem Poblete, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, raised in August 2018 about the purpose of Kosmos-2519 and its associated sub-satellites as “unfounded, slanderous accusations based on suspicions.”

Source: thedrive.com
russia space satellite
“ (Oct. 4, 2018) — The International Space Station photographed by Expedition 56 crew members from a Soyuz spacecraft after undocking. NASA astronauts Andrew Feustel and Ricky Arnold and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev executed a fly around of the...

(Oct. 4, 2018) — The International Space Station photographed by Expedition 56 crew members from a Soyuz spacecraft after undocking. NASA astronauts Andrew Feustel and Ricky Arnold and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev executed a fly around of the orbiting laboratory to take pictures of the station before returning home after spending 197 days in space. The station will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the launch of the first element Zarya in November 2018.

Source: nasa.gov
nasa roscosmos space international space station
Astronomers Creep Up to the Edge of the Milky Way’s Black Hole “For the first time, scientists have spotted something wobbling around the black hole at the core of our galaxy. Their measurements suggest that this stuff — perhaps made of blobs of...

Astronomers Creep Up to the Edge of the Milky Way’s Black Hole

For the first time, scientists have spotted something wobbling around the black hole at the core of our galaxy. Their measurements suggest that this stuff — perhaps made of blobs of plasma — is spinning not far from the innermost orbit allowed by the laws of physics. If so, this affords astronomers their closest look yet at the funhouse-mirrored space-time that surrounds a black hole. And in time, additional observations will indicate whether those known laws of physics truly describe what’s going on at the edge of where space-time breaks down.

Astronomers already knew that the Milky Way hosts a central black hole, weighing some four million suns. From Earth, this black hole is a dense, tiny thing in the constellation Sagittarius, only as big on the sky as a strawberry seed in Los Angeles when viewed from New York. But interstellar gas glows as it swirls into the black hole, marking the dark heart of the galaxy with a single, faint point of infrared light in astronomical images. Astronomers call it Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A-star”).

For 15 years researchers have watched that point flicker — and wondered why. Occasionally, it flares up 30 times brighter in infrared light and then subsides, all within just a few minutes. Now, though, a team based at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, has measured not just this speck’s brightness but its position with staggering precision. When it flares, it also moves clockwise on the sky, tracing out a tiny circle, they find.

Source: quantamagazine.org
black hole astronomy space
Parker Solar Probe Breaks Record, Becomes Closest Spacecraft to Sun “Parker Solar Probe now holds the record for closest approach to the Sun by a human-made object. The spacecraft passed the current record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun’s...

Parker Solar Probe Breaks Record, Becomes Closest Spacecraft to Sun

Parker Solar Probe now holds the record for closest approach to the Sun by a human-made object. The spacecraft passed the current record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun’s surface on Oct. 29, 2018, at about 1:04 p.m. EDT, as calculated by the Parker Solar Probe team.

The previous record for closest solar approach was set by the German-American Helios 2 spacecraft in April 1976. As the Parker Solar Probe mission progresses, the spacecraft will repeatedly break its own records, with a final close approach of 3.83 million miles from the Sun’s surface expected in 2024.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” said Project Manager Andy Driesman, from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on Oct. 31.”  

Parker Solar Probe is also expected to break the record for fastest spacecraft traveling relative to the Sun on Oct. 29 at about 10:54 p.m. EDT. The current record for heliocentric speed is 153,454 miles per hour, set by Helios 2 in April 1976.

Source: nasa.gov
parker solar probe nasa space sun
The Grave Farthest From Earth “No human has ever flown closer to Pluto than Clyde Tombaugh did in 2015, 18 years after his death. That’s fitting, because he was also the first person to lay eyes on it. When he first glimpsed Planet X, which would go...

The Grave Farthest From Earth

No human has ever flown closer to Pluto than Clyde Tombaugh did in 2015, 18 years after his death. That’s fitting, because he was also the first person to lay eyes on it.

When he first glimpsed Planet X, which would go on to be christened Pluto, Tombaugh was just barely 24 and largely self-taught. A farm kid from Streator, Illinois, Tombaugh had once rigged up a backyard telescope made out of parts from a cream separator and a 1910 Buick. He’d earned a gig at the Lowell Observatory, in Flagstaff, Arizona, on the strength of his independent studies. That’s where he spent months sifting through images of the night sky, looking for changes in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune that could potentially be chalked up to the presence of a planet that hadn’t yet been identified.

[…]

Tombaugh died in 1997. Nearly two decades later, one ounce of his cremated remains journeyed to the outer edge of our solar system inside an aluminum capsule aboard the New Horizons spacecraft. The capsule’s inscription eulogizes Tombaugh as a husband, father, astronomer, teacher, punster, and friend.

Source: atlasobscura.com
pluto astronomy new horizons space