KREUZADER (Posts tagged space)

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Helium discovered in the tail of an exoplanet “ Helium is ubiquitous in the Universe. Large amounts were generated in the Big Bang1, and nearly every star begins its life by producing helium in its core through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen. The...

Helium discovered in the tail of an exoplanet

Helium is ubiquitous in the Universe. Large amounts were generated in the Big Bang1, and nearly every star begins its life by producing helium in its core through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen. The atmospheres of giant exoplanets are expected to have an abundance of helium2, because these planets formed from recycled gas and dust from a previous generation of stars. However, searches for helium in such atmospheres have been unsuccessful3. In a paper in Nature, Spake et al.4 report the discovery of helium atoms in the eroding atmosphere of the giant exoplanet WASP-107b. Their work opens a new chapter in the study of exoplanetary atmospheres.

Source: nature.com
astronomy space

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite - TESS - will fly in an orbit that completes two circuits around Earth every time the Moon orbits once. This special orbit will allow TESS’s cameras to monitor each patch of sky continuously for nearly a month at a time. To get into this orbit, TESS will make a series of loops culminating in a lunar gravity assist, which will give it the final push it needs. TESS will reach its orbit about 60 days after launch.

nasa tess space astronomy
Three years of staring lets scientists capture a neutron star “glitch” “The same magnetic fields that power the pulsar produce a bit of drag as they sweep across the environment, gradually slowing the pulsar down. And theorists have proposed that...

Three years of staring lets scientists capture a neutron star “glitch” 

The same magnetic fields that power the pulsar produce a bit of drag as they sweep across the environment, gradually slowing the pulsar down. And theorists have proposed that neutron stars can “glitch,” experiencing a sudden speed-up. This occurs due to movement in the star’s interior, which can exchange momentum between the superfluid there and the crust surrounding it. Until now, however, our understanding of glitches had remained limited to theory.

To understand glitches, a team of astronomers arranged to track the Vela pulsar for a period of three years using two radio telescopes (the Mount Pleasant observatory in Tasmania and the Ceduna Observatory in Australia. During those three years, the astronomers observed a grand total of one glitch. In a first, they managed to catch both the glitch and every pulse that surrounded it, along with the polarization of the light in each pulse.

The event lasted just a fraction of a second and was presaged by a weak and very broad pulse. Ninety milliseconds later, when the next pulse was expected to arrive, nothing happened. The next few pulses were weak and had little indication of the strong polarization that was seen in the pulses that arrived before the glitch. Checking through 100,000 pulses that were recorded during their observations showed there was nothing like this behavior in the records.

Source: Ars Technica
astronomy astrophysics space
Russia Conducts New Test of ‘Nudol’ Anti-Satellite System“Russia carried out the sixth flight test of its new anti-satellite missile system on March 26 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, The Diplomat has learned from U.S. defense officials with knowledge of...

Russia Conducts New Test of ‘Nudol’ Anti-Satellite System

Russia carried out the sixth flight test of its new anti-satellite missile system on March 26 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, The Diplomat has learned from U.S. defense officials with knowledge of ongoing Russian weapons development.

The test, which involved the system known as PL19/Nudol, was the first to see the direct ascent anti-satellite weapon launched from the transporter-erector-launcher system designed for its eventual deployment, U.S. defense officials familiar with details of the latest test confirmed. The test was the fourth successful flight test of the system.

The Nudol was first successfully tested in late-2015 and is part of a suite of next-generation kinetic interceptor systems in development by Russia, which also include the S-500/55R6M surface-to-air missile system and the A-235 next-generation anti-ballistic missile system, which will replace the A-135 systems that protect Moscow today.

While the Nudol has features in common with midcourse ballistic missile interceptors, U.S. military intelligence assesses the system to be focused primarily on an anti-satellite mission.

Source: thediplomat.com
russia space
“While cruising around Saturn, be on the lookout for picturesque juxtapositions of moons, rings, and shadows. One quite picturesque arrangement occurred in 2005 and was captured by the then Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. In the featured image,...

While cruising around Saturn, be on the lookout for picturesque juxtapositions of moons, rings, and shadows. One quite picturesque arrangement occurred in 2005 and was captured by the then Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft. In the featured image, moons Tethys and Mimas are visible on either side of Saturn’s thin rings, which are seen nearly edge-on. Across the top of Saturn are dark shadows of the wide rings, exhibiting their impressive complexity. The violet-light image brings up the texture of the backdrop: Saturn’s clouds. Cassini orbited Saturn from 2004 until September of last year, when the robotic spacecraft was directed to dive into Saturn to keep it from contaminating any moons.

Source: apod.nasa.gov
saturn cassini space nasa
A Victory for Dark Matter in a Galaxy Without Any“Galaxy NGC 1052–DF2, a half-transparent smear of light 65 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus, hosts some 200 million suns’ worth of stars, and negligible amounts of gas and dust. And...

A Victory for Dark Matter in a Galaxy Without Any

Galaxy NGC 1052–DF2, a half-transparent smear of light 65 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus, hosts some 200 million suns’ worth of stars, and negligible amounts of gas and dust. And that’s it. According to the new study by Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum and colleagues, the galaxy’s visible matter accounts for its entire mass, a commonsense conclusion that turns out to be deeply strange.

In theories of galaxy formation, heavy clumps of dark matter first attract luminous stuff to them, seeding new galaxies and creating a kind of skeleton for the entire visible universe to hang on. Observations back up this picture. Galaxies around the size of the Milky Way, for example, seem to be nestled inside clouds of dark matter about 30 times heavier than all their stars combined. NGC 1052–DF2, a smaller galaxy, should have 400 times more dark matter than stars, based on observations of dozens of comparable objects. Instead, the new paper suggests, what you see in NGC 1052–DF2 is what you get.

Source: quantamagazine.org
dark matter astronomy space astrophysics
lordtableshark
infinity-imagined: “ This animation of radar images shows the Tiangong-1 space station tumbling out of control on March 27th, 2018. The re-entry will be on or around April 1st, located somewhere between 43°N and 43°S. It is expected that at least...
infinity-imagined

This animation of radar images shows the Tiangong-1 space station tumbling out of control on March 27th, 2018.  The re-entry will be on or around April 1st, located somewhere between 43°N and 43°S.  It is expected that at least some of the 8.5 ton spacecraft will impact the Earth’s surface.

Image credit: Fraunhofer FHR

Source: fhr.fraunhofer.de
tiangong 1 space space station cnsa
Tiangong-1 Reentry“It is a well known scientific principle that any measurement or prediction will always have an associated uncertainty. In the case of most reentering objects, the uncertainty associated with predicting reentry location is extremely...

Tiangong-1 Reentry

It is a well known scientific principle that any measurement or prediction will always have an associated uncertainty. In the case of most reentering objects, the uncertainty associated with predicting reentry location is extremely large and precludes an accurate location prediction until shortly before the reentry has occured. In general, it is much easier to predict an accurate reentry time rather than an accurate reentry location. Based on Tiangong-1’s inclination, however, we can confidently say that this object will reenter somewhere between 43° North and 43° South latitudes.

Source: aerospace.org
tiangong-1 space station space cnsa