Stars, Mercury, And Solar Corona, Photographed By Stereo A, January 2009.

El 22 de Febrero se publicó esta imagen por la Agencia de Exploración Aeroespacial de Japón (JAXA) donde se muestra la sombra en el centro, de la nave espacial Hayabusa2 después de su aterrizaje exitoso en el asteroide Ryugu. La nave espacial japonesa se está acercando a la Tierra después de un viaje de un año a casa desde un asteroide distante que lleva muestras de suelo y datos que podrían proporcionar pistas sobre los orígenes del sistema solar, dijo un funcionario de la agencia espacial el viernes 27 de noviembre de 2020.

Fuente: JAXA vía AP

Black Holes: Seeing the Invisible!

Black holes are some of the most bizarre and fascinating objects in the cosmos. Astronomers want to study lots of them, but there’s one big problem – black holes are invisible! Since they don’t emit any light, it’s pretty tough to find them lurking in the inky void of space. Fortunately there are a few different ways we can “see” black holes indirectly by watching how they affect their surroundings.

Speedy stars

If you’ve spent some time stargazing, you know what a calm, peaceful place our universe can be. But did you know that a monster is hiding right in the heart of our Milky Way galaxy? Astronomers noticed stars zipping superfast around something we can’t see at the center of the galaxy, about 10 million miles per hour! The stars must be circling a supermassive black hole. No other object would have strong enough gravity to keep them from flying off into space.

Two astrophysicists won half of the Nobel Prize in Physics last year for revealing this dark secret. The black hole is truly monstrous, weighing about four million times as much as our Sun! And it seems our home galaxy is no exception – our Hubble Space Telescope has revealed that the hubs of most galaxies contain supermassive black holes.

Shadowy silhouettes

Technology has advanced enough that we’ve been able to spot one of these supermassive black holes in a nearby galaxy. In 2019, astronomers took the first-ever picture of a black hole in a galaxy called M87, which is about 55 million light-years away. They used an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope.

In the image, we can see some light from hot gas surrounding a dark shape. While we still can’t see the black hole itself, we can see the “shadow” it casts on the bright backdrop.

Shattered stars

Black holes can come in a smaller variety, too. When a massive star runs out of the fuel it uses to shine, it collapses in on itself. These lightweight or “stellar-mass” black holes are only about 5-20 times as massive as the Sun. They’re scattered throughout the galaxy in the same places where we find stars, since that’s how they began their lives. Some of them started out with a companion star, and so far that’s been our best clue to find them.

Some black holes steal material from their companion star. As the material falls onto the black hole, it gets superhot and lights up in X-rays. The first confirmed black hole astronomers discovered, called Cygnus X-1, was found this way.

If a star comes too close to a supermassive black hole, the effect is even more dramatic! Instead of just siphoning material from the star like a smaller black hole would do, a supermassive black hole will completely tear the star apart into a stream of gas. This is called a tidal disruption event.

Making waves

But what if two companion stars both turn into black holes? They may eventually collide with each other to form a larger black hole, sending ripples through space-time – the fabric of the cosmos!

These ripples, called gravitational waves, travel across space at the speed of light. The waves that reach us are extremely weak because space-time is really stiff.

Three scientists received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for using LIGO to observe gravitational waves that were sent out from colliding stellar-mass black holes. Though gravitational waves are hard to detect, they offer a way to find black holes without having to see any light.

We’re teaming up with the European Space Agency for a mission called LISA, which stands for Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. When it launches in the 2030s, it will detect gravitational waves from merging supermassive black holes – a likely sign of colliding galaxies!

Rogue black holes

So we have a few ways to find black holes by seeing stuff that’s close to them. But astronomers think there could be 100 million black holes roaming the galaxy solo. Fortunately, our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will provide a way to “see” these isolated black holes, too.

Roman will find solitary black holes when they pass in front of more distant stars from our vantage point. The black hole’s gravity will warp the starlight in ways that reveal its presence. In some cases we can figure out a black hole’s mass and distance this way, and even estimate how fast it’s moving through the galaxy.

For more about black holes, check out these Tumblr posts!

⚫ Gobble Up These Black (Hole) Friday Deals!

⚫ Hubble’s 5 Weirdest Black Hole Discoveries

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

En septiembre de 2006 como parte de la Misión STS-115, el astronauta de la CSA, Steve MacLean se convirtió en el primer canadiense en operar Canadarm2 en el espacio y el segundo canadiense en realizar una caminata espacial.

Crédito: @NASA

Increíble fotografía de la conjuncion de Jupiter y Saturno que nos acaban de compartir. Este tipo de fenómeno ocurre entre 4 y 5 veces en 100 años, pero es inusual ver los planetas tan cercas como en esta ocasión. La última vez que se vieron así de cerca fue hace más de 400 años.

Crédito: @ThierryLegault

https://www.facebook.com/thierry.legault.5

5 Out of this World Experiments Awaiting Crew-1 Space Scientists

NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, and Mike Hopkins, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Soichi Noguchi embark on a historic mission on November 14, 2020 aboard the Crew Dragon. NASA’s Crew-1 mission marks the first certified crew rotation flight to the International Space Station. During their 6-month stay on orbit, these crew members will don their science caps and complete experiments in microgravity.  Check out five out of this world experiments you can expect to see these space scientists working on during Expedition 64.

1. Space Gardening

The Crew-1 astronauts will become space farmers with the responsibility of tending to the rad(ish) garden located in a facility known as the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH). Researchers are investigating radishes in the Plant Habitat-02 experiment as a candidate crop for spaceflight applications to supplement food sources for astronauts. Radishes have the benefits of high nutritional content and quick growth rates, making these veggies an intriguing option for future space farmers on longer missions to the Moon or Mars.

2. Micro Miners

Microbes can seemingly do it all, including digging up the dirt (so to speak).  The BioAsteroid investigation looks at the ability of bacteria to break down rock.  Future space explorers could use this process for extracting elements from planetary surfaces and refining regolith, the type of soil found on the moon, into usable compounds.  To sum it up, these microbial miners rock.

3. Cooler Exploration Spacesuits

The iconic spacesuits used to walk on the moon and perform spacewalks on orbit are getting an upgrade. The next generation spacesuit, the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU), will be even cooler than before, both in looks and in terms of ability to regulate astronaut body temperature.  The Spacesuit Evaporation Rejection Flight Experiment (SERFE) experiment is a technology demonstration being performed on station to look at the efficiency of multiple components in the xEMU responsible for thermal regulation, evaporation processes, and preventing corrosion of the spacesuits.

4. Chips in Space

Crew-1 can expect to get a delivery of many types of chips during their mission.  We aren’t referring to the chips you would find in your pantry.  Rather, Tissue Chips in Space is an initiative sponsored by the National Institutes of Health to study 3D organ-like constructs on a small, compact devices in microgravity. Organ on a chip technology allows for the study of disease processes and potential therapeutics in a rapid manner. During Expedition 64, investigations utilizing organ on a chip technology will include studies on muscle loss, lung function, and the blood brain barrier – all on devices the size of a USB flashdrive.

5. The Rhythm of Life

Circadian rhythm, otherwise known as our “internal clock,” dictates our sleep-wake cycles and influences cognition. Fruit flies are hitching a ride to the space station as the subjects of the Genes in Space-7 experiment, created by a team of high school students.  These flies, more formally known as the Drosophila melanogaster, are a model organism, meaning that they are common subjects of scientific study. Understanding changes in the genetic material that influences circadian rhythm in microgravity can shed light on processes relevant to an astronaut’s brain function.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space:  http://nasa.tumblr.com

For updates on other platforms, follow @ISS_Research, Space Station Research and Technology News, or our Facebook to keep up with the science happening aboard your orbiting laboratory, and step outside to see the space station passing over your town using Spot the Station.

Conjunción de La Luna y Marte.

Crédito: César Cantú

Asteroid Bennu, the Storyteller

Asteroids are the storytellers of our solar system’s youth. They are the closest we can get to the original material that makes up the sun, planets, and moons.

This week, our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made history when it touched a pristine, ancient asteroid named Bennu to collect a sample from the surface. The intrepid spacecraft will now bring the asteroid sample – and its stories – back home to Earth.

Why is it that asteroid Bennu holds the history of our origins? Let’s go back to the beginning…

About 4.5 billion years ago, our solar system began as a spinning, swirling cloud made up of tiny bits of gaseous and rocky material. Most of that material – more than 99% of it – gathered in the center and went on to become the Sun.

The leftovers began to spin around the Sun, colliding into one another and forming larger and larger objects, eventually becoming planets, dwarf planets, and moons.

But asteroids didn’t become part of planets or moons. So, while the material in planets and moons were superheated and altered during the formation of the solar system and weathered by geologic processes over time, asteroids remained pristine.

Each asteroid holds knowledge from that special time in our solar system’s history. Each one contains information about the chemicals, minerals, and molecules that were present when the solar system was just starting to form.

With missions like OSIRIS-REx, we are going on a journey to these ancient worlds, seeking to learn what they remember, seeking to expand our knowledge, and deepen our understanding of our origins.

Learn more about the OSIRIS-REx mission HERE, or follow the mission on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Vía Láctea en Lake Mohave, Arizona.

Crédito: Julio C. Lozoya.

Vía Láctea sobre campos de lavanda, Bulgaria.

Crédito: Mihail Minkov

https://instagram.com/fineartshot

~Antares

Luna y el Starship SN8 de SpaceX

Crédito: Tommy J. Saenz