The Plasma Jets of Active Supermassive Black Holes

Transform surrounding regions and actively evolve host galaxies 

This artist’s rendition illustrates a rare galaxy that is extremely dusty and produces radio jets. Scientists suspect that these galaxies are created when two smaller galaxies merge.
A few billion years after the Big Bang, astronomers suspect that small galaxies across the Universe regularly collided forcing the gas, dust, stars, and black holes within them to unite. The clashing of galactic gasses was so powerful it ignited star formation while fusing central black holes developed an insatiable appetite for gas and dust. With stellar nurseries and black holes hungry for galactic gas, a struggle ensued.
Scientists say this struggle for resources is relatively short-lived, lasting only 10 to 100 million years. Eventually, much of the gas will be pushed out of the galaxy by the powerful winds of newborn stars, stars going supernovae (dying in a cataclysmic explosion), or radio jets shooting out of central supermassive black holes. The removal of gas will stunt the growth of black holes by “starving” them and quench star formation.
They believe that these early emerging structures eventually grew into some of the most massive galaxies in the Universe. Credits: NASA/JPL

Space news (astrophysics: spinning black holes; bigger, brighter plasma jets) – in the core of galaxies across the cosmos, observing the spin of supermassive black holes – 

In this radio image, two jets shoot out of the center of active galaxy Cygnus A. GLAST may solve the mystery of how these jets are produced and what they are made of. Credit: NRAO

Have you ever had the feeling the world isn’t the way you see it? That reality’s different than the view your senses offer you? The universe beyond the Earth is vast beyond comprehension and weird in ways human imagination struggles to fathom. Beyond the reach of your senses, the fabric of spacetime warps near massive objects, and even light bends to the will of gravity. In the twilight zone where your senses fear to tread, the cosmos twists and turns in weird directions and appears to leave the universe and reality far behind. Enigmas wrapped in cosmic riddles abound and mysteries to astound and bewilder the human soul are found. 

The galaxy NGC 4151 is located about 45 million light-years away toward the constellation Canes Venatici. Activity powered by its central black hole makes NGC 4151 one of the brightest active galaxies in X-rays. Credit: David W. Hogg, Michael R. Blanton, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Collaboration. Credits: NASA/JPL

Imagine an object containing the mass of millions even billions of stars like the Sun. Squeeze that matter into a region of infinitely small volume, a region so dense the gravitational force it exerts warps spacetime and prevents even light from escaping its grasp. This object’s what astronomers call a supermassive black hole, a titanic monster your eyes can’t see with a gravitational pull that would stretch your body to infinity as you approached and crossed its outer boundary, the event horizon. Beyond this point, spacetime and reality take a turn toward the extreme, and the rules of science don’t apply. You have entered the realm of one of the most mysterious and enigmatic objects discovered during the human journey to the beginning of space and time.  

In the newly discovered type of AGN, the disk and torus surrounding the black hole are so deeply obscured by gas and dust that no visible light escapes, making them very difficult to detect. This illustration shows the scene from a more distant perspective than does the other image. Click on image for high-res version. Image credit: Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University.

Astronomers hunting for supermassive black holes have pinpointed their realms to be the center of massive galaxies and even the center of galaxy clusters. From this central location in each galaxy, the gravitational well of each supermassive black hole appears to act as an anchor point for the billions of stars within, and astronomers believe a force for change and evolution of every galaxy and galaxy cluster in which they exist. Surrounded and fed by massive clouds of gas and matter called accretion disks, with powerful particle jets streaming from opposite sides like the death ray in Star Wars, fierce, hot winds sometimes moving at millions of miles per hour blow from these supermassive monsters in all directions. 

These galaxy clusters show that younger, more distant galaxy clusters contained far more active galactic nuclei (AGN) than older, nearby ones. It was found that the clusters at 58% of the Universe’s current age contained about 20 times more AGN than those at 82% of Universe’s age. The galaxies in the earlier Universe contained much more gas that allowed for more star formation and black hole growth. In the Chandra X-ray images, red, green, and blue represent low, medium, and high-energy X-rays. Credits: NASA/Chandra

“A lot of what happens in an entire galaxy depends on what’s going on in the minuscule central region where the black hole lies,” said theoretical astrophysicist David Garofalo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Garofalo is the lead author of a new paper that appeared online May 27 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Other authors are Daniel A. Evans of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., and Rita M. Sambruna of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. 

These galaxy clusters show that younger, more distant galaxy clusters contained far more active galactic nuclei (AGN) than older, nearby ones. It was found that the clusters at 58% of the Universe’s current age contained about 20 times more AGN than those at 82% of Universe’s age. The galaxies in the earlier Universe contained much more gas that allowed for more star formation and black hole growth. In the Chandra X-ray images, red, green, and blue represent low, medium, and high-energy X-rays. Credits: NASA/Chandra

Astronomers studying powerful particle jets streaming from supermassive black holes use to think these monsters spin either in the same direction as their accretion disks, called prograde black holes, or against the flow, retrograde black holes. For the past few decades, Garofalo and team have worked with a theory that the faster the spin of a black hole, the more powerful the particle jets streaming from it. Unfortunately, anomalies in the form of some prograde black holes with no jets have been discovered. This has scientists turning their ideas upside down and sideways, to see if flipping their “spin paradigm” model on its head explains recent anomalies in the theory. 

This composite image shows a vast cloud of hot gas (X-ray/red), surrounding high-energy bubbles (radio/blue) on either side of the bright white area around the supermassive black hole. By studying the inner regions of the galaxy with Chandra, scientists estimated the rate at which gas is falling toward the galaxy’s supermassive black hole. These data also allowed an estimate of the power required to produce the bubbles, which are each about 10,000 light years in diameter. Surprisingly, the analysis indicates that most of the energy released by the infalling gas goes into producing jets of high-energy particles that create the huge bubbles, rather than into an outpouring of light as observed in many active galactic nuclei. X-ray: NASA/CXC/KIPAC/S.Allen et al; Radio: NRAO/VLA/G.Taylor; Infrared: NASA/ESA/McMaster Univ./W.Harris

Using data collected during a more recent study that links their previous theory with observations of galaxies at varying distances from Earth across the observable universe. Astronomers found more distant radio-loud galaxies with jets are powered by retrograde black holes, while closer radio-quiet black holes have prograde black holes. The study showed supermassive black holes found at the core of galaxies evolve over time from a retrograde to prograde state.  

This illustration shows the different features of an active galactic nucleus (AGN), and how our viewing angle determines what type of AGN we observe. The extreme luminosity of an AGN is powered by a supermassive black hole at the center. Some AGN have jets, while others do not. Click on image for unlabeled, high-res version. Image credit: Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University.

“This new model also solves a paradox in the old spin paradigm,” said David Meier, a theoretical astrophysicist at JPL not involved in the study. “Everything now fits nicely into place.” 

A mere 11 million light-years away, Centaurus A is a giant elliptical galaxy – the closest active galaxy to Earth. This remarkable composite view of the galaxy combines image data from the x-ray ( Chandra), optical(ESO), and radio(VLA) regimes. Centaurus A’s central region is a jumble of gas, dust, and stars in optical light, but both radio and x-ray telescopes trace a remarkable jet of high-energy particles streaming from the galaxy’s core. The cosmic particle accelerator’s power source is a black hole with about 10 million times the mass of the Sun coincident with the x-ray bright spot at the galaxy’s center. Blasting out from the active galactic nucleus toward the upper left, the energetic jet extends about 13,000 light-years. A shorter jet extends from the nucleus in the opposite direction. Other x-ray bright spots in the field are binary star systems with neutron stars or stellar mass black holes. Active galaxy Centaurus A is likely the result of a merger with a spiral galaxy some 100 million years ago. Credits: X-ray – NASA, CXC, R.Kraft (CfA), et al.; Radio – NSF, VLA, M.Hardcastle (U Hertfordshire) et al.; Optical – ESO, M.Rejkuba (ESO-Garching) et al.

Astrophysicists studying backward spinning black holes believe more powerful particle jets stream from these supermassive black holes because additional space exists between the monster and the inner edge of the accretion disk. This additional space between the monster and accretion disk provides more room for magnetic fields to build-up, which fuels the particle jet and increases its power. This idea is known as Reynold’s Conjecture, after the theoretical astrophysicist Chris Reynolds of the University of Maryland, College Park. 

The optical counterparts of many active galactic nuclei (circled) detected by the Swift BAT Hard X-ray Survey clearly show galaxies in the process of merging. These images, taken with the 2.1-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, show galaxy shapes that are either physically intertwined or distorted by the gravity of nearby neighbors. These AGN were known prior to the Swift survey, but Swift has found dozens of new ones in more distant galaxies. Credit: NASA/Swift/NOAO/Michael Koss and Richard Mushotzky (Univ. of Maryland)

“If you picture yourself trying to get closer to a fan, you can imagine that moving in the same rotational direction as the fan would make things easier,” said Garofalo. “The same principle applies to these black holes. The material orbiting around them in a disk will get closer to the ones that are spinning in the same direction versus the ones spinning the opposite way.”  

Swift’s Hard X-ray Survey offers the first unbiased census of active galactic nuclei in decades. Dense clouds of dust and gas, illustrated here, can obscure less energetic radiation from an active galaxy’s central black hole. High-energy X-rays, however, easily pass through. Credit: ESA/NASA/AVO/Paolo Padovani

Scientists believe the powerful particle jets and winds emanating from supermassive black holes found at the center of galaxies also play a key role in shaping their evolution and eventual fate. Often even slowing the formation rate of new stars in a host galaxy and nearby island universes as well.  

“Jets transport huge amounts of energy to the outskirts of galaxies, displace large volumes of the intergalactic gas, and act as feedback agents between the galaxy’s very center and the large-scale environment,” said Sambruna. “Understanding their origin is of paramount interest in modern astrophysics.” 

What lies just beyond the reach of our senses and technology, beneath the exterior of these supermassive black holes? Scientists presently study these enigmatic stellar objects looking for keys to the doors of understanding beyond the veil of gas and dust surrounding these titanic beasts. Keys they hope one day to use to unlock even greater secrets of reality just beyond hidden doors of understanding.  

Watch this video on active galactic nuclei.

Read and learn more about the supermassive black holes astronomers detect in a region called the COSMOS field.

Read about the recent detection by astronomers of read-end collisions between knots in the particle jets of supermassive black holes.

Learn what astronomers have discovered about feedback mechanisms in the feeding processes of active supermassive black holes.

You can join the voyage of NASA across the cosmos here. 

Learn more about supermassive black holes. 

Discover more about what scientists have discovered about the powerful particle jets emanating from supermassive black holes here. 

Discover NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

Learn about astronomy at Caltech. 

Read and learn more about galaxies here. 

Discover more about spinning black holes.  

Astronomers Discover an Extremely Unusual Galaxy

Sitting in the arms of Cassiopeia (The Seated Queen) 

This image, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, shows a spiral galaxy named NGC 278. This cosmic beauty lies some 38 million light-years away in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia (The Seated Queen). Credits: NASA/Hubble/ESA

Space news (galaxy evolution: unusual galaxies; spiral galaxy NGC 278) – 38 million light-years away, sitting in the arms of northern constellation Cassiopeia (The Seated Queen) – 

The image above shows spiral galaxy NGC 278, a very unusual island universe astronomers are currently studying looking for clues to its unique nature. This unusual galaxy looks quiet and serene from here, but there’s unusual starburst activity taking place astronomers are currently trying to explain.  

Each of the unmistakable blue knots seen strewn across NGC 278’s spiral arms is a clump of hot, newly born stars. These blue knots of young stars doesn’t extend to the outer edges of the galaxy but only reside within an inner ring some 6,500 light-years across. The two-tiered structure astronomers have identified within NGC 278 shows a bright galactic center, with much darker outer regions. 

Astrophysicists studying this unusual spiral galaxy think this weird two-tiered structure and current starburst activity is due to a recent merger with a smaller, gas-rich galaxy. A merger that has ignited starburst within the center of this island universe, while the leftovers of the galactic snack dispersed into its outer regions. This activity created the ring of blue knots of newly formed stars seen here, which astronomers have dubbed a nuclear ring. A very unusual structure not often observed in galaxies with a bar across their center region. Making NGC 278 an unusual, intriguing galactic specimen they plan on studying closer for clues to its unusual nature. 

Learn more about why simple elliptical galaxy UGC 1382 astonishes astronomers?

Read about the transition phase older spiral galaxy NGC 5010 is going through.

Read about how galaxy CGCG254-021 got its tail?

Learn about the things NASA has discovered during the human journey to the beginning of space and time here.  

Read and learn more about galaxies. 

Discover everything they know about spiral galaxy NGC 278 here. 

Learn more about the northern constellation Cassiopeia (The Seated Queen). 

Read, learn and discover more about starburst galaxies here. 

Common Chemicals Were Evenly Distributed Across the Early Cosmos

By stars that went supernovae at the end of their life cycles 

This visible light view shows the central part of the Virgo Cluster. The brightest object is the giant elliptical galaxy M87 (left of center). The image spans approximately 1.2 degrees or about 2.4 times the apparent diameter of a full moon.
Credits: NOAO/AURA/NSF
Download the image in HD at NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

Space news (astrophysics: creation and distribution of heavier chemical elements; supernovae) – watching as the elements of creation were spread evenly across millions of light-years more than ten billion years ago – 

This illustration depicts the Suzaku spacecraft. Suzaku (originally known as Astro-E2) was launched July 10, 2005, and maintains a low-Earth orbit while it observes X-rays from the universe. The satellite was developed at the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA) in collaboration with Japanese and U.S. institutions, including NASA.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Astronomers using Japan’s Suzaku X-ray Satellite to survey hot, x-ray emitting gas in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster over 54 million light-years away have discovered something about the early universe. The survey showed the building blocks of the cosmos needed to make the planets, stars, and living things were evenly distributed across the cosmos over 10 billion years ago.  

Suzaku mapped iron, magnesium, silicon and sulfur in four directions all across the Virgo galaxy cluster for the first time. The northern arm of the survey (top) extends 5 million light-years from M87 (center), the massive galaxy at the cluster’s heart. Ratios of these elements are constant throughout the cluster, which means they were mixed well early in cosmic history. The dashed circle shows what astronomers call the virial radius, the boundary where gas clouds are just entering the cluster. Some prominent members of the cluster are labeled as well. The background image is part of the all-sky X-ray survey acquired by the German ROSAT satellite. The blue box at center indicates the area shown in the visible light image.
Credits: A. Simionescu (JAXA) and Hans Boehringer (MPE)
Download the graphic in HD at NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

A team of astronomers led by Aurora Simionescu of Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in Sagamihara acquired data of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster along four arms extending up to 5 million light-years from its center. Data they used to show the elements of creation were evenly distributed across millions of light-years early in the cosmos. 

Aurora Simionescu of Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in Sagamihara
Credits Image: NASA/JAXA

“Heavier chemical elements from carbon on up are produced and distributed into interstellar space by stars that explode as supernovae at the ends of their lifetimes,” Simionescu said. “This chemical dispersal continues at progressively larger scales through other mechanisms, such as galactic outflows, interactions and mergers with neighboring galaxies, and stripping caused by a galaxy’s motion through the hot gas filling galaxy clusters.” 

Astronomers study the distribution of the elements of creation during the early moments of the cosmos by shifting through the remains of giant stars that explode at the moment of their death supernovae. The core of a giant star born with more than eight times the mass of the Sun collapses near the end of its lifespan and then expands rapidly in an event called a core-collapse supernova. This rapid expansion scatters elements ranging from oxygen to silicon across the surrounding regions, while other types of supernovae spread elements of creation like iron and nickel across the universe. By surveying a vast region of space, like the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, scientists reconstruct how, when and where the elements of creation were created and distributed during the first moments of the universe.  

Astrophysicists believe the overall elemental composition of a large volume of space depends on the mixture of different supernovae types contributing elements. For example, they have determined the overall chemical makeup of the Sun and solar system required a combination of one Type Ia supernovae for every five core-collapse types.  

“One way to think about this is that we’re looking for the supernova recipe that produced the chemical makeup we see on much larger scales, and comparing it with the recipe for our own sun,” said co-author Norbert Werner, a researcher at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford University in California. 

Norbert Werner, a researcher at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford University in California. Credits: KIPAC/NASA/Stanford University

Werner led an earlier study using Suzaku that showed iron was distributed evenly throughout the Perseus Galaxy Cluster. The new Suzuka data provided by the study led by Simionescu and her team shows iron, magnesium, silicon and sulfur spread evenly across the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. The elemental ratios obtained during the study are constant across the entire volume of the cluster and roughly consistent with the levels detected in the composition of the Sun and stars in the Milky Way. Extrapolated to the larger cosmos, scientists believe this shows the elements of creation were mixed well during the early moments of the cosmos over ten billion years ago.   

“This means that elements so important to life on Earth are available, on average, in similar relative proportions throughout the bulk of the universe,” explained Simionescu. “In other words, the chemical requirements for life are common throughout the cosmos.” 

Launched on July 10, 2005, the Suzaku mission showed us things about the universe during a space journey lasting over five times its intended lifespan, to become the longest-operating Japanese x-ray observatory in history. A space collaboration between Japan’s Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA, the Suzaku X-ray Satellite scanned the x-ray cosmos until retiring from space service on August 26, 2015. Leaving a legacy of revolutionary x-ray discoveries its successor ASTRO-H (HITOMI), Japan’s sixth x-ray astronomy satellite is currently adding to since its launch in February 2016. 

What’s next?

“Suzaku provided us with a decade of revolutionary measurements,” said Robert Petre, chief of Goddard’s X-ray Astrophysics Laboratory. “We’re building on that legacy right now with its successor, ASTRO-H, Japan’s sixth X-ray astronomy satellite, and we’re working toward its launch in 2016.” 

Artist concept of Hitomi
Credits: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Credits: NASA/JAXA

Proving the saying, “Old Japanese x-ray satellites don’t retire, they sit back and keep watching the show.” 

Learn more about the birth and evolution of black holes and other stellar objects over 11 billion years ago.

Learn and understand more about the clues the Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered about the formation of the Milky Way galaxy.

Learn more about the things scientists have discovered about the crucible of the building blocks of life on Earth.

Take the space voyage of NASA here. 

Learn more about JAXA. 

Learn more about the discoveries of the Suzaku X-ray Satellite here. 

Read and discover more about HITOMI (ASTRO-H). 

Learn more about the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford University in California here. 

Discover more about the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. 

 

 

 

NASA”s ‘Disk Detective’ Invites You to Help Astronomers Classify Embryonic Planetary Systems

To determine which young planetary systems to study closer with the Hubble Space Telescope and in a few years time its successor the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) 

Herbig-Haro 30 is the prototype of a gas-rich young stellar object disk. The dark disk spans 40 billion miles in this image, cutting the bright nebula in two and blocking the central star from direct view. Volunteers can help astronomers find more disks like this through DiskDetective.org.
Image Credit: NASA/ESA/C. Burrows (STScI)

Space news (NASA crowdsourcing projects: Disk Detective.org; help discover new planetary nurseries) – scanning over 745 million stellar objects across the cosmos looking for new planet nurseries to study – 

Debris disks, such as this one around the bright star Fomalhaut, tend to be older than 5 million years, possess little or no gas, and contain belts of rocky or icy debris that resemble the asteroid and Kuiper belts found in our own solar system. The radial streaks are scattered starlight. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/UC Berkeley/Goddard/LLNL/JPL

NASA invites all peoples to join the human journey to the beginning of space and time by helping astronomers discover new planetary systems by joining their largest crowd-sourcing project to date Disk Detective. Volunteers view brief animations of stellar objects called flip books and then classify each object based on simple criteria. This simple classification system helps astronomers determine which objects, from around 500,000, they need to have a closer look at to see if it might be a planetary nursery.  

“Through Disk Detective, volunteers will help the astronomical community discover new planetary nurseries that will become future targets for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope,” said James Garvin, the chief scientist for NASA Goddard’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate. 

Projected to launch in 2018, JWST is an infrared telescope that will observe the early universe, between one million and a few billion years in age.
Credit: NASA

The objects volunteers help classify were originally narrowed down from around 345 million initially identified by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) during a survey of the entire sky between 2010 and 2011. Astronomers used computers to search through WISE data to find the objects volunteers classify through this citizen science initiative to identify more planetary nurseries for astronomers to study. 

“Planets form and grow within disks of gas, dust and icy grains that surround young stars, but many details about the process still elude us,” said Marc Kuchner, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “We need more examples of planet-forming habitats to better understand how planets grow and mature.”

DiskDetective with P.I. Marc Kuchner, and James Garvin, Goddard Chief Scientist, NASA/GSFC Marc Kuchner, the principal investigator for DiskDetective.org (left) and James Garvin, the chief scientist for NASA Goddard’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate, discuss the crowdsourcing project in front of the hyperwall at Goddard’s Sciece Visualization Lab. Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/David Friedlander

Join today!

NASA needs your help. You can check out DiskDetective.org to get a better idea of the requirements of taking part in this citizen science initiative. The interface used is relatively user-friendly, but the instructions were excellent, so you shouldn’t have any trouble. Just follow the instructions provided. This is your chance to join the human journey to the beginning of space and time. 

“Disk Detective’s simple and engaging interface allows volunteers from all over the world to participate in cutting-edge astronomy research that wouldn’t even be possible without their efforts,” said Laura Whyte, director of citizen science at Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Ill., a founding partner of the Zooniverse collaboration. 

Read about NASA’s recent selection of five American aerospace firms to study Mars orbiter concepts.

Learn more about NASA’s selection of seven American university teams to design and engineer space habitat prototypes.

Read and learn more about NASA’s selection of eight teams of ambitious young university students to design space habitats for colonizers heading to Mars.

Join NASA’s voyage through the cosmos here. 

Check out DiskDetective.org. 

Discover the Hubble Space Telescope here. 

Learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope. 

Discover NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center here. 

Learn more about NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. 

 

ESA’s ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter Prepares to Descend to the Red Planet

Schiaparelli module separates from Trace Gas Orbiter in preparation for orbit-raising maneuver 

This artist’s concept from the European Space Agency (ESA) depicts the Trace Gas Orbiter and its entry, descent and landing demonstrator module, Schiaparelli, approaching Mars. The separation occurred on Oct. 16, 2016. The orbiter and the lander are components of the ExoMars 2016 mission of ESA and Roscosmos.
Image Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

Space news (space exploration: ExoMars 2016; orbit insertion and Schiaparelli module descent to surface) – Over 34 million miles (56 million kilometers) from Earth, preparing to descend to the surface of the Red Planet – 

This image shows a fan-shaped deposit where a channel enters a crater, which suggests to planetary scientists and geologists that water once flowed through the channel into a crater lake, depositing material in a similar manner to river deltas on Earth. Credits: NASA/ESA/medialab

NASA’s Curiosity rover and other Mars explorers are about to get a little help from their European and Russian brothers and sisters in the form of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). One of two joint space missions between Europe and Russia designed to explore Mars for signs that life once existed, the ExoMars TGO will investigate the environment, and blaze a path for a future 2020s mission to return a sample of Martian terrain for planetary scientists to examine in detail for signs of life. 

This stereo scene recorded by the Pancam on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on Aug. 15, 2014, looks back toward part of the west rim of Endeavour Crater marked with the rover’s wheel tracks. It appears three-dimensional when seen through blue-red glasses with the red lens on the left. Credits: NASA/ESA

The ExoMars TGO completed its final trajectory maneuver at 08.:45 GMT on October 14 and at 14:42 GMT/16:42 CEST today the Schiaparelli module separated from the orbiter. Tomorrow around 02:42 GMT/04:42 CEST the robotic spacecraft will conduct an orbit-raising maneuver in preparation for orbit insertion and the descent of Schiaparelli to the surface of Mars at around 14:48 GMT/16:48 CEST. The module is scheduled to land in a region of Mars near the equator called Meridiani Planum, where it will search for signs of life once having existed on the Red Planet. 

On Nov. 1, 2016, the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observed the impact site of Europe’s Schiaparelli test lander, gaining the first color view of the site since the lander’s Oct. 19, 2016, arrival.
These cutouts from the observation cover three locations where parts of the spacecraft reached the ground: the lander module itself in the upper portion, the parachute and back shell at lower left, and the heat shield at lower right. The heat shield location was outside of the area covered in color. The scale bar of 10 meters (32.8 feet) applies to all three cutouts. Where the lander module struck the ground, dark radial patterns that extend from a dark spot are interpreted as “ejecta,” or material is thrown outward from the impact, which may have excavated a shallow crater. From the earlier image, it was not clear whether the relatively bright pixels and clusters of pixels scattered around the lander module’s impact site are fragments of the module or image noise. Now it is clear that at least the four brightest spots near the impact are not noise. These bright spots are in the same location in the two images and have a white color, unusual for this region of Mars. The module may have broken up at impact, and some fragments might have been thrown outward like impact ejecta. At lower right are several bright features surrounded by dark radial impact patterns, located where the heat shield was expected to impact. The bright spots appear identical in the Nov. 1 and Oct. 25 images, which were taken from different angles, so these spots are now interpreted as bright material, such as insulation layers, not glinting reflections. Credits: NASA/ESA/JPL/Caltech

Unfortunately, after the separation from the ExoMars TGO, the Schiaparelli module didn’t return telemetry (onboard status information) and only sent its carrier signal, which indicates it’s operational and waiting for commands. Mission control’s currently looking into this anomaly and a resolution to the problem’s expected within a few hours. You can check for updates to this on the ESA website here. 

This Oct. 25, 2016, image shows the area where the European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli test lander reached the surface of Mars, with magnified insets of three sites where components of the spacecraft hit the ground. It is the first view of the site from the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter taken after the Oct. 19, 2016, landing event. This Oct. 25 observation shows three locations where hardware reached the ground, all within about 0.9 miles (1.5 kilometers) of each other, as expected. The annotated version includes insets with six-fold enlargement of each of those three areas. Brightness is adjusted separately for each inset to best show the details of that part of the scene. North is about 7 degrees counterclockwise from straight up. The scale bars are in meters.
At lower left is the parachute, adjacent to the back shell, which was its attachment point on the spacecraft. The parachute is much brighter than the Martian surface in this region. The smaller circular feature just south of the bright parachute is about the same size and shape as the back shell, (diameter of 7.9 feet or 2.4 meters).
At upper right are several bright features surrounded by dark radial impact patterns, located about where the heat shield was expected to impact. The bright spots may be part of the heat shield, such as insulation material, or gleaming reflections of the afternoon sunlight. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

What’s next for ExoMars?

If everything goes as planned, mission control should get an update from the ExoMars TGO on October 20, along with images of the surface of the planet as Schiaparelli descended to Mars. Continuous updates from the orbiter and module are expected through the duration of the ExoMars TGO mission. The events of the mission will also be live streamed on the ESA website here, along with reports on Twitter using the hashtag #ExoMars. 

Watch this YouTube video on ten magnificent years of exploration for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Read about NASA’s recent selection of five US-based aerospace firms to work on Mars Orbiter concepts.

Read and learn more about NASA’s selection of eight US university teams to work on the newest, latest space habitats.

Are you a concerned human thinking it might be a good idea to find another planet in the near future?

Follow the journey of NASA across the cosmos here. 

Learn more about the space mission of the ESA. 

Learn more about the ExoMars 2016 TGO and the Schiaparelli module here. 

Learn more about the things planetary scientists have discovered about Mars. 

The Next Generation of Electric Aircraft

A more energy efficient, light-weight electric engine for larger, commercial aircraft 

Dr. Rodger Dyson, NASA Glenn Hybrid Gas Electric Propulsion technical lead., and the science boys of NASA’s Glenn Research Center are using Plum Brook Station’s newest test bed to design and engineer the next generation of aviation propulsion. Credits: NASA

Space news (new aeronautics technology: Glenn Research Center; NASA’s Electric Aircraft Testbed (NEAT) – 6,400-acre site near Sandusky, Ohio, home to four world-class test facilities –  

The drive to create more energy efficient, light-weight electric engines for quieter cars that emit less carbon’s heading upward into the friendly skies. Engineers and scientists working at NASA’s Glenn Research Center are conducting the first tests of a new electric aircraft engine in their Electric Aircraft Testbed (NEAT) at Plum Brook Station. A new electric engine capable of powering a small aircraft carrying up to two people into the skies and possibly one day even larger commercial aircraft carrying travelers around the world. The successors of this amazing new technology could one-day power manned flight to the planets in the solar system and the stars beyond. 

Engineers conduct the first test of an electric aircraft engine in NASA’s Electric Aircraft Testbed (NEAT) at Plum Brook Station.
Credits: NASA

“As large airline companies compete to reduce emissions, fuel burn, noise and maintenance costs, it is expected that more of their aircraft systems will shift to using electrical power,” said Dr. Rodger Dyson, NASA Glenn Hybrid Gas-Electric Propulsion technical lead.  

Dr. Rodger Dyson, NASA Glenn Hybrid Gas-Electric Propulsion technical lead. Credits: NASA

What’s next?

The team of engineers he leads hope to spark a change in the commercial aircraft industry and manned space flight that will make a significance difference in aviation and aeronautics. 

“What we’re hoping to learn now is how to make it more efficient and light-weight,” said Dyson. “Next year we’re going to upgrade the size of these motors — we’ll use the same technology to test the higher-power stuff next.” 

“We look forward to making a difference in aviation,” said Dyson. 

Read about the X-57 Electric Propulsion Aircraft being assembled by engineers and scientists at NASA.

Read and learn more about China’s long march to the stars.

Learn how astronomers study the stars?

Learn more about NASA’s Glenn Research Center. 

Join the voyage of NASA across the cosmos here. 

Discover NASA’s Plum Book Station. 

 

 

 

Rosetta Spacecraft Says Its Final Goodbye

An image of the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko worth a thousand words

The OSIRIS narrow-angle camera aboard the Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft captured this image of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on September 30, 2016, from an altitude of about 10 miles (16 kilometers) above the surface during the spacecraft’s controlled descent. The image scale is about 12 inches (30 centimeters) per pixel and the image itself measures about 2,000 feet (614 meters) across.
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Space news (solar system science: planetary science; cometary science) – 66 feet above the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; in a controlled descent –

Rosetta’s last image of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, taken shortly before impact, at an estimated altitude of 66 feet (20 meters) above the surface. The image was taken with the OSIRIS wide-angle camera on 30 September. The image scale is about 5 mm/pixel and the image measures about 2.4 m across.
Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

The image above is the last thing the OSIRIS narrow-angle camera aboard the European Space Agency”s (ESA)Rosetta spacecraft captured before it hit the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at 4:19 a.m. PDT (7:19 a.m. EDT/1:19 p.m. CEST) on September 30, 2016. During this controlled crash landing of the first spacecraft in history to rendezvous and escort a comet as it orbits the Sun. Astronomers were able to conduct an additional study of the gas, dust and plasma environment close to the surface of the comet and take these high-resolution images.

Comet from 5.7 km – narrow-angle camera
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

The OSIRIS narrow-angle camera also captured the image shown at the top of the page from a height of around 10 miles (16 kilometers) from the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This image spans a distance of around 2,000 feet (614 meters) across the comet’s icy and volatile surface. Attempting to walk across such a surface as Bruce Willis and his drilling crew did in the movie Armageddon is going to be tricky at best.

OSIRIS narrow-angle camera image with Philae, 2 September
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

It might seem like a waste to purposely crash the Rosetta spacecraft on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, but in the end, it’s probably the best solution. This comets headed out beyond the orbit of Jupiter, which is further from the Sun than the spacecraft has traveled before, and there wouldn’t be enough solar power to operate its systems. Communicating with the spacecraft’s also about to become difficult for a month, with the Sun being close to the line-of-sight between Earth and Rosetta during this time period.

Close-up of the Philae lander, imaged by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on 2 September 2016 from a distance of 2.7 km. The image scale is about 5 cm/pixel. Philae’s 1 m-wide body and two of its three legs can be seen extended from the body. The images also provide proof of Philae’s orientation.
The image is a zoom from a wider-scene, and has been interpolated.
More information: Philae found!
Credit: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

Rosetta mission complete

Feel happy for Rosetta and team, they both did the job, and then some in the end. It took a decade of careful planning and travel to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and write history. Just one month and two days later, a smaller lander named Philae touched down on the surface of the comet. It bounced on the surface a few times, before finally setting down. During the next few days, it took the first images ever of a comet’s surface up close and sent back important data planetary scientists will use to look for clues to the role comets played in the formation of the planets 4.5 billion years ago. Clues they hope to use to learn more about the origin and evolution of our solar system and possibly the formation of solar systems in general.

JPL/NASA Rosetta Team
From left to right:
Dongsuk (Don) Han- Outer Planet Navigation
Bruce Tsurutani – Rpc-mag
Essam Heggy – Consert
Sam Gulkis – Miro
Danny Tran – Aspen
Josh Doubleday – Aspen
Gregg Rabideau – Aspen
Tim Koch – Miro
Martina Troesch – Software
Barbara Hesselgesser – Acquisitions
Paul Von Allmen – Miro
Belinda Arroyo – DSN
Sophia Lee – Scheduling
Paul Friz-Rosetta Shadow Project
Liz Barrios – Illustrator
Paul Springer – Miro
Steve Chien – Aspen
Cynthia Kahn-Former SE
David Delgado – Public Engagement
Claudia Alexander – Project Scientist
Grant Faris – MA
Shyam Bhaskaran – NAV
Mark Hofstadter – Miro
Seungwon Lee – Miro
Lei Pan – Miro
Jacky Bagumyan – Assistant
Adans Ko – MA
Sarah Marcotte – Mars consultant
Charlene Barone – Rosetta Web Project Lead
Dan Goods – Creative Director
Virgil Adumitroale – Miro
Richard Flores – Acquisitions
Artur Chmielewski – Rosetta Project Manager
Veronica McGregor – Social Media
Credits: NASA/JPL

Watch this YouTube video of the last few hours of ESA’s Rosetta mission.

Read and learn more about planetary scientists anticipation of studying a sample of material from the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, material left over from the early moments of the birth of the solar system.

Read about comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Prepare to journey to comet 103P/Hartley.

Join the space journey of NASA.

Learn more about comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko here.

Read and learn more about the discoveries of the Rosetta spacecraft.

Learn more about the work of the ESA.

Read and learn more about comets here.

 

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Launches Toward 2018 Rendezvous with Asteroid Bennu

Expected 2023 return to Earth with the largest sample returned from space since the era of the Apollo missions

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission launches from NASA Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Credits: NASA

Space news (planetary science missions: sampling asteroid that was remnant of early solar system; OSIRIS-REx spacecraft’s seven-year mission to asteroid Bennu) – 7:05 p.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida – 

Post launch conference inside the KSCTV Auditorium after the successful launch of OSIRIS-REx. Credits: Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

NASA launched its OSIRIS-REx mission to return a sample of a nearby asteroid that formed part of the early solar system more than 4.5 billion years ago at 7:05 on Thursday. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will be the agency’s first automated envoy to rendezvous with a nearby asteroid and return a sample for planetary scientists to study and discuss.  

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx tests onboard thrusters during its journey to asteroid Bennu in this image. Credits: NASA

“Today, we celebrate a huge milestone for this remarkable mission, and for this mission team,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “We’re very excited about what this mission can tell us about the origin of our solar system, and we celebrate the bigger picture of science that is helping us make discoveries and accomplish milestones that might have been science fiction yesterday, but are science facts today.” 

How do you study the topography of an asteroid millions of miles away? Map it with a robotic cartographer! The OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter, or OLA, is provided by the Canadian Space Agency and will be used to create three-dimensional global topographic maps of Bennu and local maps of candidate sample sites. Credits: NASA

Scientists suspect asteroids like Bennu could have been the source of much of the water and possibly organic molecules of the Genesis of Earth-based life. An uncontaminated asteroid sample to precisely analysis might provide results far beyond those achieved by spacecraft instruments or studying meteorites that have fallen to Earth.  

Dante Lauretta
Professor, Principal Investigator, OSIRIS-REx. Credits: The University of Arizona

“With today’s successful launch, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft embarks on a journey of exploration to Bennu,” said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “I couldn’t be more proud of the team that made this mission a reality, and I can’t wait to see what we will discover at Bennu.” 

Doing a gravitational dance with asteroid Bennu

After rendezvousing with asteroid Bennu sometime in 2018, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will begin a delicate gravitational dance with the asteroid, mapping and studying its surface in preparation for collecting a sample. Around July 2020, the spacecraft will perform an intricate, daring maneuver designed to stir up surface material for collection. Plans are to scoop up at least two ounces (60 grams) of small rocks and dust in its onboard sample return container for planetary scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas to examine in depth.  

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission will map the surface of asteroid Bennu and retrieve a sample of surface material for planetary scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to examine in depth. Credits: NASA

“It’s satisfying to see the culmination of years of effort from this outstanding team,” said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We were able to deliver OSIRIS-REx on time and under budget to the launch site, and will soon do something that no other NASA spacecraft has done – bring back a sample from an asteroid.” 

Learn about small, near-Earth asteroid 25143 Itokawa.

Learn about NASA’s NEOWISE and its one year mission to detect near-Earth asteroids.

Read about US Congress recognizing the right of Americans to own asteroid resources.

Watch this video of the liftoff of the OSIRIS-REx mission from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.  

Join the space mission of NASA here. 

Learn more about NASA’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. 

Read more about the OSIRIS-REx mission. 

Discover NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. 

Read and learn more about asteroid Bennu.