KREUZADER (Posts tagged space)

1.5M ratings
277k ratings

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
New study suggests Jupiter’s formation divided Solar System in two“Gas giants like Jupiter have to grow fast. Newborn stars are embedded in a disk of gas and dust that goes on to form planets. But the ignition of the star releases energy that drives...

New study suggests Jupiter’s formation divided Solar System in two

Gas giants like Jupiter have to grow fast. Newborn stars are embedded in a disk of gas and dust that goes on to form planets. But the ignition of the star releases energy that drives away much of the gas within a relatively short time. Thus, producing something like Jupiter involved a race to gather material before it was pushed out of the Solar System entirely.

Simulations have suggested that Jupiter could have won this race by quickly building a massive, solid core that was able to start drawing in nearby gas. But, since we can’t look at the interior or Jupiter to see whether it’s solid, finding evidence to support these simulations has been difficult. Now, a team at the University of Münster has discovered some relevant evidence in an unexpected location: the isotope ratios found in various meteorites. These suggest that the early Solar System was quickly divided in two, with the rapidly forming Jupiter creating the dividing line.

Source: Ars Technica
astronomy space jupiter
Hubble Applauds Waltzing Dwarfs“This seemingly unspectacular series of dots with varying distances between them actually shows the slow waltz of two brown dwarfs. The image is a stack of 12 images made over the course of three years with the NASA/ESA...

Hubble Applauds Waltzing Dwarfs

This seemingly unspectacular series of dots with varying distances between them actually shows the slow waltz of two brown dwarfs. The image is a stack of 12 images made over the course of three years with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Using high-precision astrometry, an Italian-led team of astronomers tracked the two components of the system as they moved both across the sky and around each other.

The observed system, Luhman 16AB, is only about six light-years away and is the third closest stellar system to Earth — after the triple star system Alpha Centauri and Barnard’s Star. Despite its proximity, Luhman 16AB was only discovered in 2013 by the astronomer Kevin Luhman. The two brown dwarfs that make up the system, Luhman 16A and Luhman 16B, orbit each other at a distance of only three times the distance between the Earth and the sun, and so these observations are a showcase for Hubble’s precision and high resolution.

Source: nasa.gov
nasa space astronomy hubble space telescope
Planarian regeneration in space: Persistent anatomical, behavioral, and bacteriological changes induced by space travel“Regeneration is regulated not only by chemical signals but also by physical processes, such as bioelectric gradients. How these...

Planarian regeneration in space: Persistent anatomical, behavioral, and bacteriological changes induced by space travel

Regeneration is regulated not only by chemical signals but also by physical processes, such as bioelectric gradients. How these may change in the absence of the normal gravitational and geomagnetic fields is largely unknown. Planarian flatworms were moved to the International Space Station for 5 weeks, immediately after removing their heads and tails. A control group in spring water remained on Earth. No manipulation of the planaria occurred while they were in orbit, and space-exposed worms were returned to our laboratory for analysis. One animal out of 15 regenerated into a double-headed phenotype—normally an extremely rare event. Remarkably, amputating this double-headed worm again, in plain water, resulted again in the double-headed phenotype. Moreover, even when tested 20 months after return to Earth, the space-exposed worms displayed significant quantitative differences in behavior and microbiome composition. These observations may have implications for human and animal space travelers, but could also elucidate how microgravity and hypomagnetic environments could be used to trigger desired morphological, neurological, physiological, and bacteriomic changes for various regenerative and bioengineering applications.

image

Originally posted by kurtc0bae

…I might have two heads, or no head!

Source: onlinelibrary.wiley.com
biology regeneration space
Close Encounters of the Classified Kind: a post-event analysis of the close approach of USA 276 to the ISS on June 3“Something odd happened a few days ago, high above our heads. In an earlier blogpost, I discussed in detail how the odd spy satellite...

Close Encounters of the Classified Kind: a post-event analysis of the close approach of USA 276 to the ISS on June 3

Something odd happened a few days ago, high above our heads. In an earlier blogpost, I discussed in detail how the odd spy satellite USA 276 (2017-022A) was set to make a peculiarly close approach to the International Space Station ISS on 3 June 2017. The spy satellite was recently launched for the NRO as NROL-76 by SpaceX, on 1 May 2017.

With the close approach moment now in history and post-approach observations of USA 276 available (as well as an orbit for ISS based on tracking data, rather than an orbital prognosis), I present my final analysis of the situation in the current post.

With the new data included, we can establish the moment of closest approach as 3 June 2017, 14:01:52 UT. It happened over the southern Atlantic north of the Falklands, near 43o.75 S, 45o.45 W, with a miss distance of only 6.4 ± 2 km (the  ± 2 km stems from the fact that TLE predicted positions have a typical positional accuracy of no more than 1 km at epoch).

[…]

While USA 276 remained just outside the safety concern box, it is weird to have your just launched classified payload pass so close (6.4 ± 2 km) to a high profile, crewed object like the ISS.

[…]

It is also an extremely sloppy thing to do because this close an approach to a high profile object like ISS is politically risky. As the ISS is an international cooperation which includes two parties (the United States and the Russian Federation) that are currently geopolitically on an uneasy footing, sending your military payload so close to the ISS as one party is eyebrow raising.

Source: sattrackcam.blogspot.nl
international space station space satellite reconnaissance satellite nro spacex
Inside the plot to steal Soviet planetary data“It was in 1962 that the Americans first became aware that the Soviets were communicating with their spacecraft through a hidden signal. That year the Soviets launched their eighth interplanetary probe,...

Inside the plot to steal Soviet planetary data

It was in 1962 that the Americans first became aware that the Soviets were communicating with their spacecraft through a hidden signal. That year the Soviets launched their eighth interplanetary probe, Mars 1, which eventually failed like the seven probes before it. (Of the first seven Soviet probes bound for Mars and Venus, only Venus 1 ever even left earth orbit.) At 66 million miles out, the Mars 1 probe lost its antennae lock on Earth and was never heard from again. But before it twirled off into the endless darkness of night, “the Soviets announced that [the Mars 1 probe] would be communicating on four radio frequencies: [at] 163, 32, 8, and 5 centimeters,” recounts an undated NSA report.

Source: astronomy.com
cia nsa soviet union radio space cold war
“As NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew through the narrow gap between Jupiter’s radiation belts and the planet during its first science flyby, Perijove 1, on August 27, 2016, the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU-1) star camera collected the first image of...

As NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew through the narrow gap between Jupiter’s radiation belts and the planet during its first science flyby, Perijove 1, on August 27, 2016, the Stellar Reference Unit (SRU-1) star camera collected the first image of Jupiter’s ring taken from the inside looking out. The bright bands in the center of the image are the main ring of Jupiter’s ring system.

While taking the ring image, the SRU was viewing the constellation Orion. The bright star above the main ring is Betelgeuse, and Orion’s belt can be seen in the lower right. Juno’s Radiation Monitoring Investigation actively retrieves and analyzes the noise signatures from penetrating radiation in the images of the spacecraft’s star cameras and science instruments at Jupiter.

Source: jpl.nasa.gov
jupiter juno nasa space astronomy