KREUZADER (Posts tagged space)

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“Extremely unusual circumstances were required to get this shot of Enceladus floating in front of a field of stars. The Cassini spacecraft is flying in space, of course, and regularly captures images of star fields. It also regularly captures images...

Extremely unusual circumstances were required to get this shot of Enceladus floating in front of a field of stars. The Cassini spacecraft is flying in space, of course, and regularly captures images of star fields. It also regularly captures images of Enceladus. But Enceladus is so brightly reflective that, under normal circumstances, it is impossible to see both features on Enceladus’ surface and a dense field of stars in the same image. To see Enceladus’ surface, the camera team would select a short exposure setting; to see the stars, they would select a long exposure setting. This photo is possible because Enceladus was actually in Saturn’s shadow when it was taken; the only light reaching its surface (and reflecting from there to Cassini’s camera) is sunlight that has first been reflected off of Saturn or its rings. A long exposure revealed both Enceladus’ surface and the background field of stars.

saturn cassini enceladus space nasa jpl
“The powerful gravity of a galaxy embedded in a massive cluster of galaxies in this Hubble Space Telescope image is producing multiple images of a single distant supernova far behind it. Both the galaxy and the galaxy cluster are acting like a giant...

The powerful gravity of a galaxy embedded in a massive cluster of galaxies in this  Hubble Space Telescope image is producing multiple images of a single distant  supernova far behind it. Both the galaxy and the galaxy cluster are acting like a giant  cosmic lens, bending and magnifying light from the supernova behind them, an effect called   gravitational lensing.

The image shows the galaxy’s location within a hefty cluster of galaxies called MACS  J1149.6+2223, located more than 5 billion light-years away. In the enlarged inset view  of the galaxy, the arrows point to the multiple copies of the exploding star, dubbed  Supernova Refsdal, located 9.3 billion light-years from Earth. The images are arranged  around the galaxy in a cross-shaped pattern called an Einstein Cross. The blue  streaks wrapping around the galaxy are the stretched images of the supernova’s host  spiral galaxy, which has been distorted by the warping of space.

The four images were spotted on Nov. 11, 2014. This Hubble image combines data  from three months of observations taken in visible light by the Advanced Camera for  Surveys and in near-infrared light by the Wide Field Camera 3.

nasa hubble einstein supernova space astrophysics
dawn.jpl.nasa.gov

NASA Spacecraft Becomes First to Orbit a Dwarf Planet

March 6, 2015—NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has become the first mission to achieve orbit around a dwarf planet. The spacecraft was approximately 38,000 miles (61,000 kilometers) from Ceres when it was captured by the dwarf planet’s gravity at about 4:39 a.m. PST (7:39 a.m. EST) Friday.

Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California  received a signal from the spacecraft at 5:36 a.m. PST (8:36 a.m. EST) that  Dawn was healthy and thrusting with its ion engine, the indicator Dawn had  entered orbit as planned.

“Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres was known as a planet, then an asteroid and later a dwarf planet,” said Marc Rayman, Dawn chief engineer and mission director at JPL. “Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometers) and 7.5 years, Dawn calls Ceres, home.”

In addition to being the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet, Dawn also has the distinction of being the first mission to orbit two extraterrestrial targets. From 2011 to 2012, the space-craft explored the giant asteroid Vesta, delivering new insights and thousands of images from that distant world. Ceres and Vesta are the two most massive residents of our solar system’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

dawn ceres nasa space
nasaspaceflight.com

Commercial crew demo missions manifested
Mission planners at NASA have installed four Commercial Crew demonstration missions into the International Space Station (ISS) manifest.

[…]

That first Dragon 2 mission, designated “SpX-DM1″, has a December, 2016 launch date, ahead of a 30 day mission – most of which will be docked to the ISS – ending with a parachute assisted landing in the Pacific ocean.

This would be followed by “SpX-DM2″, a crewed flight, launching in April of 2017, on a 14 day mission. This would mark the first time astronauts have launched from American soil on a US built spacecraft since Atlantis’ STS-135 mission in 2011.
nasa spacex iss international space station space
“In this view, looking down on the north pole of Ceres, the sun is off the figure to the left and Ceres’ counterclockwise orbital motion around the sun takes it from the bottom of the figure to the top. Dawn flies in from the left, traveling behind...

In this view, looking down on the north pole of Ceres, the sun is off the figure to the left and Ceres’ counterclockwise orbital motion around the sun takes it from the bottom of the figure to the top. Dawn flies in from the left, traveling behind Ceres, and then is captured on the way to the apex of its orbit. The white circles are at one-day intervals, illustrating how Dawn slows down gradually at first. (When the circles are closer together, Dawn is moving more slowly.) After capture, both Ceres’ gravity and the ion thrust slow it even more before the craft accelerates to the end of the approach phase. (You can think of this perspective as being from above. Then the next figure shows the view from the side, which here would mean looking toward the action from a location off the bottom of the graphic.) Credit: NASA/JPL -

See more at: http://dawnblog.jpl.nasa.gov/2014/11/28/dawn-journal-november-28/

nasa dawn ceres space
news.cornell.edu

Life 'not as we know it' possible on Saturn's moon Titan | Cornell Chronicle
Taking a simultaneously imaginative and rigidly scientific view, Cornell chemical engineers and astronomers offer a template for life that could thrive in a harsh, cold world – specifically Titan, the giant moon of Saturn. A planetary body awash with seas not of water, but of liquid methane, Titan could harbor methane-based, oxygen-free cells that metabolize, reproduce and do everything life on Earth does.
cornell aliens nasa space titan saturn xenobiology
nasaspaceflight.com

Spacewalkers prepare for future vehicles
NASA astronauts Terry Virts and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have stepped outside the ISS on Sunday on what is the final in a series of three spacewalks to prepare the station for the arrival of future cargo and crew vehicles. EVA-31, which began at 11:52 PM GMT, is focus on installing a new communications system for the future vehicles.
international space station nasa space iss spacex

This morning (2015 February 17), a space rock about 2 feet in diameter and weighing roughly 500 pounds entered Earth’s atmosphere above western Pennsylvania. First detected by 3 NASA meteor cameras at an altitude of 60 miles above Beaver Falls, the fireball moved almost due east at a speed of 45,000 miles per hour. It flared brighter than the Full Moon before the cameras lost track of it at an altitude of 13 miles above the town of Kittanning; there may be fragments (meteorites) scattered on the ground east of that location. This celestial visitor had an orbit that took it out to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter - it came a mightly [sic] long way to a fiery end in the predawn Pennsylvania sky.

space nasa meteor
“Robotic probes launched by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and others are gathering information all across the solar system. We currently have spacecraft in orbit around the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, a comet, and Saturn, and two...

Robotic probes launched by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and others are gathering information all across the solar system. We currently have spacecraft in orbit around the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, a comet, and Saturn, and two operational rovers on Mars. Several others are on their way to smaller bodies, and a few are heading out of the solar system entirely. Although the Space Shuttle no longer flies, astronauts are still at work aboard the International Space Station, performing experiments and sending back amazing photos. With all these eyes in the sky, I’d like to take another opportunity to put together a recent photo album of our solar system—a set of family portraits, of sorts—as seen by our astronauts and mechanical emissaries.

space esa nasa