The first episode of “Hubble – Eye in the Sky” is here! 🎥
Have you ever wondered how a telescope in space is operated from down on Earth? Welcome to the Hubble control center. Find out how extraordinarily detailed observations are made with an orbiting space telescope, and get a look at Hubble’s on-the-ground replica that engineers and scientists use down here to fix problems up there.
For more on this video series, visit https://go.nasa.gov/3eveFO1.
A new spin on the magnetic compression of plasmas could improve materials science, nuclear fusion research, X-ray generation and laboratory astrophysics, research led by the University of Michigan suggests.
The study shows that a spring-shaped magnetic field reduces the amount of plasma that slips out between the magnetic field lines.
Known as the fourth state of matter, plasma is a gas so hot that electrons rip free of their atoms. Researchers use magnetic compression to study extreme plasma states in which the density is high enough for quantum mechanical effects to become important. Such states occur naturally inside stars and gas giant planets due to compression from gravity.
It turns out the moon is a little younger than scientists previously thought — about 85 million years younger, to be precise.
When NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover launches to the Red Planet, an innovative experiment will ride along: the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter — the first aircraft to attempt controlled flight on another planet.
Get up to speed with these key facts about its plans: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/6-things-to-know-about-nasas-ingenuity-mars-helicopter #CountdownToMars
The Universe isn’t just a random scattering of galaxies sprinkled throughout an expanding void. The closer we look, the more we see that there are structures — some of which are incomprehensibly vast groupings and clusters of galaxies that are gravitationally bound together.
Such a structure has just been discovered arcing across the southern edge of the sky, and it’s a colossus, spanning an immense 1.37 billion light-years from end to end. Its discoverers have named it the South Pole Wall.
Although the size is remarkable — it’s one of the largest structures in space we’ve ever seen — we know exactly what the South Pole Wall is. It’s a galaxy filament, a huge formation of galaxies that forms a border between the empty spaces of cosmic voids that together form the cosmic web. Hence, we call it a wall.
“We believe we are uncovering the tip of the iceberg in terms of distant SGRBs,” said Kerry Paterson, the study’s first author. “That motivates us to further study past events and intensely examine future ones.”
NASA’s most advanced Mars rover, Perseverance, will launch from Earth on 30 July on a mission to seek out signs of ancient microbial life on what was once a river delta three-and-a-half billion years ago.
NASA’s next rover to the Red Planet is slated to launch no earlier than July 30. These highlights will get you up to speed on the ambitious mission.
In less than a month, NASA expects to launch the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Loaded with scientific instruments, advanced computational capabilities for landing, and other new systems, the Perseverance rover is the largest, heaviest, most sophisticated vehicle NASA has ever sent to the Red Planet.
“Perseverance sets a new bar for our ambitions at Mars,” said Lori Glaze, planetary science director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We will get closer than ever before to answering some of science’s longest-standing questions about the Red Planet, including whether life ever arose there.”
Circa 2019
The European Space Agency (ESA) study is investigating how practical constructing a manned base on the moon only using 3D printing technology could be, given that it would rely primarily on lunar dirt for building materials.
“Terrestrial 3D printing technology has produced entire structures,” Laurent Pambaguian, who heads the project for ESA, said in a statement. “Our industrial team investigated if it could similarly be employed to build a lunar habitat.”
Circa 2016
“In 2050 there will be trillions of self-replicating robot factories on the asteroid belt,” he tells the audience at WIRED2016.
“A few million years later, AI will colonise the galaxy. Humans are not going to play a big role there, but that’s ok. We should be proud of being part of a grand process that transcends humankind more than the industrial revolution. It is comparable to the invention of life itself, and I am privileged to live this moment and witness the beginnings of this.” — Jürgen Schmidhuber
Let’s go behind the scenes. 🎬
Starting on July 15, a new video miniseries explores the intricate world of Hubble Space Telescope operations. What does it take to keep such a complex machine working for more than 30 years? In three episodes, “Hubble – Eye in the Sky” takes a never-before-seen look at how this groundbreaking space telescope operates.
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