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Hubble Captures Three Faces Of Evolving Supernova In Early Universe

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Hubble Captures Three Faces Of Evolving Supernova In Early Universe

Three different moments in a far-off supernova explosion were captured in a single snapshot by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The progenitor star exploded more than 11 billion years ago, when the Universe was less than a fifth of its current age of 13.8 billion years.

This is the first detailed look at a supernova at such an early time in the Universe’s evolution. The data could help scientists learn more about the formation of stars and galaxies in the early Universe.

This observation was possible thanks to the phenomenon called gravitational lensing, as first predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity. In this case, the light took three different paths through the cosmic lens of the massive galaxy cluster Abell 370, bending and magnifying the light from the more distant supernova located behind the cluster. The three paths were of three different lengths, so when the light arrived at Hubble (on the same day in December 2010), the supernova appeared at three different stages of evolution.

The Hubble exposure also captured the fading supernova’s rapid change of colour, which indicates its changing temperature. The bluer the colour, the hotter the supernova is. The earliest phase captured appears blue. As the supernova cooled its light turned redder.

This is also the first time astronomers have been able to measure the size of a dying star in the early Universe. They did this by observing the supernova’s brightness and rate of cooling, both of which depend on the size of the progenitor star. Hubble’s observations show that the red supergiant whose supernova explosion the researchers discovered had a radius about 500 times larger than the Sun.

An international team of astronomers found this supernova by sifting through the Hubble data archives, looking for transient events. The team also has time planned for the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to observe even more distant supernovae. They hope to contribute to a catalogue of very far-off supernovae to help astronomers understand if the stars that existed many billions of years ago are different from those in the nearby Universe. The team’s paper, entitled “Shock cooling of a red-supergiant supernova at redshift 3 in lensed images,” will be published in Nature on 10 November.

More information

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

This image was taken as part of the Hubble observation programme GO-11591 (PI J.-P. Kneib).

The associated science results were also supported by the Hubble Cycle 27 Archival Research programme, as well as by Hubble observation programmes GO-15936 and GO-16278.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Wenlei Chen (UMN), Patrick Kelly (UMN), Hubble Frontier Fields

Links

Contacts

Bethany Downer
ESA/Hubble Chief Science Communications Officer
Email: [email protected]

Missouri Batteries Power NASA’s Artemis-I Mission

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Missouri Batteries Power NASA’s Artemis-I Mission

NASA just launched the Artemis-I, and it was powered by Missouri-made batteries. This is the first in a series of increasingly complex missions that will enable human exploration to the Moon and Mars.

Eight different types of batteries from EaglePicher, an energy manufacturing company based in Joplin, Missouri, are on board the spacecraft, providing power at crucial times during the mission.

EaglePicher batteries are on almost every component of the Artemis-I, including the solid rocket boosters, the rocket itself, and the vehicle that will fly around the moon and return to earth.

“Two are actually on the booster and two are actually on the rocket and they’re flight termination system batteries, and then we also have the four main batteries on the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle,” said Jackie Kennedy, Senior Program Director at EaglePicher.

Missouri has a long history of powering NASA’s space program including the InSight Lander and Perseverance rover, which are currently on the surface of Mars, NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft and the International Space Station. And Missouri has been a key part of the U.S. space program since the 1950s driving the development of the Mercury and Gemini space programs and the CST-100 Starliner.

About Missouri Partnership

Missouri Partnership is a public-private economic development organization focused on attracting new jobs and investment to the state and promoting Missouri’s business strengths. Since 2008, Missouri Partnership has worked with partners statewide to attract companies that have created 31,000+ new jobs, $1.6 billion+ in new annual payroll, and $6 billion+ in new capital investment. Some recent successful projects that led to major investment in Missouri include Accenture Federal Services LLC, American Foods Group, Casey’s, Chewy, Inc., James Hardie, Meta, Square, Swift Prepared Foods, USDA, and Veterans United.

Media Contact: Janelle Higgins | 314.541.4911 | [email protected] Partnership

Artemis I – Flight Day Nine: Orion One Day Away From Distant Retrograde Insertion

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Artemis I – Flight Day Nine: Orion One Day Away From Distant Retrograde Insertion

On Flight Day 8, NASA’s Orion spacecraft remains two days away from reaching its distant retrograde orbit. The Moon is in view as Orion snaps a selfie using a camera mounted on one of its solar array at 10:57 p.m. EST..

Orion is now about one day away from entering into a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. The orbit is “distant” in the sense that it’s at a high altitude approximately 50,000 miles from the surface of the Moon. Due to the distance, the orbit is so large that it will take the spacecraft six days to complete half of a revolution around the Moon before exiting the orbit for the return journey back to Earth.

During the last day in the transit to distant retrograde orbit, flight controllers performed a third in a series of planned star tracker development flight tests relative to the Sun, with a fourth planned for tomorrow. Star trackers are a navigation tool that measure the positions of stars to help the spacecraft determine its orientation. In the first three flight days, engineers evaluated initial data to understand star tracker readings correlated to thruster firings.

The spacecraft completed its sixth outbound trajectory correction burn at 3:52 p.m. CST, firing the European Service Module’s auxiliary engines for 17 seconds to propel the spacecraft at 8.9 feet per second. This is the final trajectory correction before entering distant retrograde orbit. When in lunar orbit, Orion will perform three orbital maintenance burns to keep the spacecraft on course.

Overnight, engineers will begin a 24-hour test of the reaction control system engines to evaluate engine performance for standard and non-standard thruster configurations. This test will provide data to inform procedures and ensure that the reaction control thrusters can control Orion’s orientation in an alternate configuration if there is an issue with the primary configuration.

Just after 1:42 p.m. CST on Nov. 24, Orion was traveling 222,993 miles from Earth and 55,819 miles from the Moon, cruising at 2,610 miles per hour.

NASA Television coverage of the distant retrograde orbit insertion burn, scheduled for 4:30 p.m. EST on Friday, Nov. 25. The burn is scheduled to take place at 4:52 p.m.

Images are sent down to Earth, and uploaded to NASA’s Johnson Space Center Flickr account and Image and Video Library. When bandwidth allows, views of the mission will be available in real-time via video stream.

ABOUT

Artemis is the first step in the next era of human exploration. Together with commercial and international partners, NASA will establish a sustainable presence on the Moon to prepare for missions to Mars.

This blog will be a source of information on Artemis launch and exploration progress, covering updates across our science, technology and human exploration programs. Once we’re ready to fly, check out this blog for launch updates and other mission operations.

Learn more about Artemis

Snoopy Hitches Ride To Space Aboard Artemis I

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Snoopy Hitches Ride To Space Aboard Artemis I

Snoopy, the zero-gravity indicator for NASA’s Artemis I flight test, floats in space on Nov. 20, 2022, while attached to his tether in the Orion spacecraft. In this enhanced image, Snoopy stands out in a custom orange spacesuit, while Orion’s interior has been shaded black and white for contrast. The character’s spacesuit is modeled after the suit astronauts will wear during launch and reentry in Orion on future missions to the Moon. NASA has shared an association with Charles M. Schulz and Snoopy since the Apollo missions and the relationship continues under Artemis. Snoopy was selected as the zero-gravity indicator for the flight because of the inspiration and excitement the character has provided for human spaceflight for more than 50 years.

Image Credit: NASA

By Monika Luabeya
Source NASA

NASA’s Europa Clipper Gets Its Wheels For Traveling In Deep Space

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NASA’s Europa Clipper Gets Its Wheels For Traveling In Deep Space

Engineers install 2 foot-wide reaction wheels onto the main body of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. The orbiter is in its assembly, test, and launch operations phase in preparation for a 2024 launch. NAS/JPL-Calltech

Just as NASA’s Mars rovers rely on robust wheels to roam the Red Planet and conduct science, some orbiters rely on wheels, too – in this case, reaction wheels – to stay pointed in the right direction. Engineers and technicians at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California recently installed four reaction wheels on Europa Clipper, which will rely on them during its journey at Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.

When NASA’s spacecraft heads through deep space, slips into orbit around Jupiter, and collects science observations while flying dozens of times by Europa, the wheels rotate the orbiter so that its antennas can communicate with Earth and its science instruments, including cameras, can stay oriented.

Engineers and technicians work together to install reaction wheels on the underside of the main body of NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft, which is in its assembly, test, and launch operations phase.
Engineers and technicians work together to install reaction wheels on the underside of the main body of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, which is in its assembly, test, and launch operations phase. 
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 
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Two feet wide and made of steel, aluminum, and titanium, the wheels spin rapidly to create torque that causes the orbiter to rotate in the opposite direction. Isaac Newton’s third law of motion also applies in deep space and explains the underlying phenomenon: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The reaction wheels cause the spacecraft to react to the spinning action of the wheels.

Here’s one way to visualize how reaction wheels work: Imagine you are sitting in a swivel chair and lift your feet off the floor so that you are free to rotate. If you jerk your torso one direction, the chair and your legs will rotate the opposite direction. The reaction wheels work the same way: As the reaction wheel’s motor accelerates the metal wheel in one direction, the spacecraft experiences an acceleration in the opposite direction.

Without those reaction wheels, Europa Clipper wouldn’t be able to do its science investigations when it arrives at the Jupiter system in 2030 after its 2024 launch. Scientists believe Europa harbors a vast internal ocean that may have conditions suitable for supporting life. The spacecraft will gather data on the moon’s atmosphere, surface, and interior – information that will help scientists learn more about the ocean, the ice crust, and potential plumes that may be venting subsurface water into space.

During its orbits around Jupiter, Europa Clipper will rely on reaction wheels to help it perform thousands of turns, or “slews.” Although the spacecraft could perform some of those maneuvers with thrusters, its thrusters need fuel – a finite resource aboard the orbiter. The reaction wheels will run on electricity provided by the spacecraft’s vast solar arrays.

Watch live: Europa Clipper being built in the clean room

See more images of Europa Clipper coming together

The trade-off is that the reaction wheels work slowly. Europa Clipper’s reaction wheels will take about 90 minutes to rotate the craft 180 degrees – a movement so gradual that, from a distance, it would be imperceptible to the human eye. The rotation of the spacecraft will be three times slower than the minute hand on a clock.

Also, they can wear out over time. It happened on NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, requiring engineers to figure out how to rotate using thrusters with the available fuel. To address this, engineers have installed four wheels on Europa Clipper even though only three are needed to maneuver. They alternate which three wheels are in operation to even the wear. That leaves them with a “spare” wheel if one of the others fails.

Installing the wheels was one of the most recent steps of the phase known as assembly, test, and launch operations. Science instruments continue to arrive at JPL to be added to the spacecraft. Next, a variety of tests will be conducted, as the spacecraft moves toward its October 2024 launch period. After traveling over 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers), Europa Clipper will be set to begin unlocking the secrets of this icy world.

More About the Mission

Missions such as Europa Clipper contribute to the field of astrobiology, the interdisciplinary research field that studies the conditions of distant worlds that could harbor life as we know it. While Europa Clipper is not a life-detection mission, it will conduct a detailed exploration of Europa and investigate whether the icy moon, with its subsurface ocean, has the capability to support life. Understanding Europa’s habitability will help scientists better understand how life developed on Earth and the potential for finding life beyond our planet.

Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.

More information about Europa can be found here:

europa.nasa.gov

Method For Decoding Asteroid Interiors Could Help Aim Asteroid-Deflecting Missions

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Method For Decoding Asteroid Interiors Could Help Aim Asteroid-Deflecting Missions

MIT astronomers have found a way to determine an asteroid’s interior structure based on how its spin changes during a close encounter with Earth. The tool may improve the aim of future asteroid-targeting missions like the recent DART mission. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

NASA hit a bullseye in late September with DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, which flew a spacecraft straight at the heart of a nearby asteroid. The one-way kamikaze mission smashed into the stadium-sized space rock and successfully reset the asteroid’s orbit. DART was the first test of a planetary defense strategy, demonstrating that scientists could potentially deflect an asteroid headed for Earth.

Now MIT researchers have a tool that may improve the aim of future asteroid-targeting missions. The team has developed a method to map an asteroid’s interior structure, or density distribution, based on how the asteroid’s spin changes as it makes a close encounter with more massive objects like the Earth.

Knowing how the density is distributed inside an asteroid could help scientists plan the most effective defense. For instance, if an asteroid were made of relatively light and uniform matter, a DART-like spacecraft could be aimed differently than if it were deflecting an asteroid with a denser, less balanced interior.

“If you know the density distribution of the asteroid, you could hit it at just the right spot so it actually moves away,” says Jack Dinsmore ’22, who developed the new asteroid-mapping technique as an MIT undergraduate majoring in physics.  

The team is eager to apply the method to Apophis, a near-Earth asteroid that is estimated to pose a significant hazard if it were to make impact. Scientists have ruled out the likelihood of a collision during Apophis’ next flybys for at least a century. Beyond that, their forecasts grow fuzzy.   

“Apophis will miss Earth in 2029, and scientists have cleared it for its next few encounters, but we can’t clear it forever,” says Dinsmore, who is now a graduate student at Stanford University. “So, it’s good to understand the nature of this particular asteroid, because if we ever need to redirect it, it’s important to understand what it’s made of.”

Dinsmore and Julien de Wit, assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), detail their new method in a study appearing today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The unedited version is also available on arXiv.org.

Spinning boiled versus raw

The seeds of the team’s asteroid-mapping method grew out of an MIT class Dinsmore took last year, taught by de Wit. The class, 12.401 (Essentials of Planetary Sciences), introduces the basic principles and formation mechanisms of planets, asteroids, and other objects in the solar system. As a final project, Dinsmore explored how an asteroid behaves during a close encounter.

In class, he wrote a code to simulate various shapes and sizes of asteroids as well as how their orbital and spin dynamics change when influenced by the gravitational pull of a more massive object like the Earth.

“I initially just tried to ask, what happens when an asteroid passes by Earth? Does it respond at all? Because I wasn’t sure,” Dinsmore recalls. “And the answer is, it does, in a way that depends very strongly on the shape and physical properties of the asteroid.”

That initial realization prompted another question: Could the dynamics of an asteroid’s close encounter be used to predict not just its shape and size, but also its internal makeup? To get at an answer, Dinsmore continued the project with de Wit, through the MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), which enables students to perform original research with a faculty member.

He and de Wit took a deeper dive into the dynamics of a close encounter, writing out a more complex code, which they used to simulate a zoo of different asteroids, each with a different size, shape, and internal composition, or distribution of density. They then ran the simulation forward to see how each asteroid’s spin should wobble or shift as it passes close to an object of a certain mass and gravitational pull.  

“It’s similar to how you can tell the difference between a raw and boiled egg,” de Wit offers. “If you spin the egg, the egg responds and spins differently depending on its interior properties. The same goes for an asteroid during a close encounter: You can get a grasp of what’s happening on the inside just by looking on how it responds to the strong gravitational forces it experiences during a flyby.”

A close match

The team is presenting their results in a new software “toolkit,” which they name AIME, for Asteroid Interior Mapping from Encounters (the acronym also translates as “love” in French). The software can be used to reconstruct the internal density distribution of an asteroid, from observations of its spin change during a close encounter.

The researchers say that, if scientists can take more detailed measurements of asteroids and their spin dynamics during close encounters, these measurements could be used to improve AIME’s reconstructions of asteroid interiors.

Their best chance, they say, may come with Apophis. During its forthcoming close encounters, de Wit and Dinsmore hope astronomers will point their telescopes at the space rock to measure its size, shape, and spin evolution as it streaks past. They could then feed these measurements into AIME to find a match — a simulated asteroid with the same size, shape, and spin dynamics as Apophis, that also relates to a particular interior density distribution.

“Then, with AIME, you could publish a density map that most likely represents Apophis’ interior,” Dinsmore says.

“Understanding the interior properties of asteroids helps us understand the extent to which close encounters could be of concern, and how to deal with them, as well as where they formed and how they got here,” de Wit adds. “Now with this framework, there’s a new way of getting a look inside an asteroid.”

This research was supported, in part, by the MIT UROP office.

Reprinted with permission of MIT News
By Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office
Source MIT News

NASA, ESA Reveal Tale Of Death, Dust In Orion Constellation

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NASA, ESA Reveal Tale Of Death, Dust In Orion Constellation

This infrared image of the Orion Nebula features plenty of dust but no stars. In these infrared wavelengths, it’s possible to see hot spots where new stars are forming, while unseen bright, massive stars have carved out caverns of empty space. Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

In a tale of cosmic proportions, the region is being transformed by the massive stars that live and die within it.

A new image combining previously released data from three telescopes shows a region that includes the Orion Nebula, named after the mighty hunter from Greek mythology who was felled by a scorpion’s sting. But the story of how this dusty region came to be is just as dramatic.

The Orion Nebula is located in the constellation Orion, which takes the appearance of a hunter raising a club and shield at an unseen target. Three stars in a line are together known as Orion’s belt; the region shown in the image aligns with another series of stars perpendicular to the belt, known as Orion’s sword. If you could see it in the sky, the region would appear about the size of the full moon.

There’s a lot to see in this fly-through of a new infrared image of the Orion Nebula, like cavities carved out by unseen massive stars and bright spots where new stars are forming. The colors represent infrared wavelengths not visible to the human eye, captured by three infrared space telescopes. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Two enormous caverns that dominate the cloud were carved out by giant stars (unseen in this image) that can release up to a million times more light than our Sun. All that radiation breaks apart dust grains there, helping to create the pair of cavities. Much of the remaining dust is swept away by winds from stars or when the stars die explosive deaths as supernovae.

The blue light in these areas indicates warm dust. Observed in infrared light – a range of wavelengths outside what human eyes can detect – the views were provided by NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), which now operates under the moniker NEOWISE. Spitzer and WISE were both managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

NASA Telescope Takes 12-Year Time-Lapse Movie of Entire Sky

Around the edge of the two cavernous regions, the dust that appears green is slightly cooler. Red indicates cold dust that reaches temperatures of about minus 440 Fahrenheit (minus 260 Celsius). The red and green light shows data from the now-retired Herschel Space Telescope, an ESA (European Space Agency) observatory that captured wavelengths of light in the far-infrared and microwave ranges, where cold dust radiates. Herschel’s large mirror provided high-resolution views of these clouds, which are full of contours, nooks, and crannies. The cold dust appears mostly on the outskirts of the dust cloud, away from the regions where stars form.

In between the two hollow regions are orange filaments where dust condenses and forms new stars. Over time, these filaments may produce new giant stars that will once again reshape the region.

More About the Missions

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, managed Spitzer mission operations for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington until the spacecraft was retired in 2020. Science operations were conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at IPAC at Caltech. Spacecraft operations were based at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado. The Spitzer data archive is housed at the Infrared Science Archive at IPAC at Caltech.

For more information about NASA’s Spitzer mission, go to:

https://www.ipac.caltech.edu/project/spitzer

Launched in 2009, the WISE spacecraft was placed into hibernation in 2011 after completing its primary mission. In September 2013, NASA reactivated the spacecraft with the primary goal of scanning for near-Earth objects, or NEOs, and the mission and spacecraft were renamed NEOWISE. The mission was selected competitively under NASA’s Explorers Program managed by the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NEOWISE is a project of JPL and the University of Arizona and is supported by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

For more information about WISE, go to:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/main/index.html

NASA’s Herschel Project Office was based at JPL. The NASA Herschel Science Center was based at IPAC.

NASA’s Webb Reveals An Exoplanet Atmosphere As Never Seen Before

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NASA’s Webb Reveals An Exoplanet Atmosphere As Never Seen Before

Observations of WASP-39b show fingerprints of atoms and molecules, as well as signs of active chemistry and clouds

WASP-39 b is a planet unlike any in our solar system – a Saturn-sized behemoth that orbits its star closer than Mercury is to our Sun. This exoplanet was one of the first examined by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope when it began regular science operations. The results have excited the exoplanet science community. Webb’s exquisitely sensitive instruments have provided a profile of WASP-39 b’s atmospheric constituents and identified a plethora of contents, including water, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, sodium and potassium. The findings bode well for the capability of Webb’s instruments to conduct the broad range of investigations of all types of exoplanets, including small, rocky worlds like those in the TRAPPIST-1 system.

Exoplanet WASP-39 b and its Star (Illustration)

Full Article

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope just scored another first: a molecular and chemical profile of a distant world’s skies.

While Webb and other space telescopes, including NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer, previously have revealed isolated ingredients of this broiling planet’s atmosphere, the new readings from Webb provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds.

The latest data also give a hint of how these clouds might look up close: broken up rather than a single, uniform blanket over the planet.

The telescope’s array of highly sensitive instruments was trained on the atmosphere of WASP-39 b, a “hot Saturn” (a planet about as massive as Saturn but in an orbit tighter than Mercury) orbiting a star some 700 light-years away. 

The findings bode well for the capability of Webb’s instruments to conduct the broad range of investigations of all types of exoplanets – planets around other stars – hoped for by the science community. That includes probing the atmospheres of smaller, rocky planets like those in the TRAPPIST-1 system.

“We observed the exoplanet with multiple instruments that, together, provide a broad swath of the infrared spectrum and a panoply of chemical fingerprints inaccessible until [this mission],” said Natalie Batalha, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who contributed to and helped coordinate the new research. “Data like these are a game changer.”

The suite of discoveries is detailed in a set of five new scientific papers, three of which are in press and two of which are under review. Among the unprecedented revelations is the first detection in an exoplanet atmosphere of sulfur dioxide (SO2), a molecule produced from chemical reactions triggered by high-energy light from the planet’s parent star. On Earth, the protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere is created in a similar way.

“This is the first time we see concrete evidence of photochemistry – chemical reactions initiated by energetic stellar light – on exoplanets,” said Shang-Min Tsai, a researcher at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and lead author of the paper explaining the origin of sulfur dioxide in WASP-39 b’s atmosphere. “I see this as a really promising outlook for advancing our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres with [this mission].” 

This led to another first: scientists applying computer models of photochemistry to data that requires such physics to be fully explained. The resulting improvements in modeling will help build the technological know-how to interpret potential signs of habitability in the future.

“Planets are sculpted and transformed by orbiting within the radiation bath of the host star,” Batalha said. “On Earth, those transformations allow life to thrive.”

The planet’s proximity to its host star – eight times closer than Mercury is to our Sun – also makes it a laboratory for studying the effects of radiation from host stars on exoplanets. Better knowledge of the star-planet connection should bring a deeper understanding of how these processes affect the diversity of planets observed in the galaxy.

To see light from WASP-39 b, Webb tracked the planet as it passed in front of its star, allowing some of the star’s light to filter through the planet’s atmosphere. Different types of chemicals in the atmosphere absorb different colors of the starlight spectrum, so the colors that are missing tell astronomers which molecules are present. By viewing the universe in infrared light, Webb can pick up chemical fingerprints that can’t be detected in visible light.

Other atmospheric constituents detected by the Webb telescope include sodium (Na), potassium (K), and water vapor (H2O), confirming previous space- and ground-based telescope observations as well as finding additional fingerprints of water, at these longer wavelengths, that haven’t been seen before.

Webb also saw carbon dioxide (CO2) at higher resolution, providing twice as much data as reported from its previous observations. Meanwhile, carbon monoxide (CO) was detected, but obvious signatures of both methane (CH4) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) were absent from the Webb data. If present, these molecules occur at very low levels.

To capture this broad spectrum of WASP-39 b’s atmosphere, an international team numbering in the hundreds independently analyzed data from four of the Webb telescope’s finely calibrated instrument modes.

“We had predicted what [the telescope] would show us, but it was more precise, more diverse, and more beautiful than I actually believed it would be,” said Hannah Wakeford, an astrophysicist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom who investigates exoplanet atmospheres.

Having such a complete roster of chemical ingredients in an exoplanet atmosphere also gives scientists a glimpse of the abundance of different elements in relation to each other, such as carbon-to-oxygen or potassium-to-oxygen ratios. That, in turn, provides insight into how this planet – and perhaps others – formed out of the disk of gas and dust surrounding the parent star in its younger years. 

WASP-39 b’s chemical inventory suggests a history of smashups and mergers of smaller bodies called planetesimals to create an eventual goliath of a planet.

“The abundance of sulfur [relative to] hydrogen indicated that the planet presumably experienced significant accretion of planetesimals that can deliver [these ingredients] to the atmosphere,” said Kazumasa Ohno, a UC Santa Cruz exoplanet researcher who worked on Webb data. “The data also indicates that the oxygen is a lot more abundant than the carbon in the atmosphere. This potentially indicates that WASP-39 b originally formed far away from the central star.” 

In so precisely parsing an exoplanet atmosphere, the Webb telescope’s instruments performed well beyond scientists’ expectations – and promise a new phase of exploration among the broad variety of exoplanets in the galaxy.

“We are going to be able to see the big picture of exoplanet atmospheres,” said Laura Flagg, a researcher at Cornell University and a member of the international team. “It is incredibly exciting to know that everything is going to be rewritten. That is one of the best parts of being a scientist.”

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

By Christine Pulliam Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
Source James Webb Space Telescope

Orion’s Optical Navigation Camera Captures Earth

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Orion’s Optical Navigation Camera Captures Earth

NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft snapped this black and white photo of Earth on Nov. 17, 2022, the second day of the 25.5-day Artemis I mission. The optical navigation camera is used to capture imagery of the Earth and the Moon at different phases and distances, which help establish its effectiveness as a way of determining its position in space for future missions under differing lighting conditions.

Follow Orion’s journey by visiting the Artemis I blog.

Image Credit: NASA
By Monika Luabeya

NASA Invites Public Comment On Plans For Mars Sample Return Campaign

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NASA Invites Public Comment On Plans For Mars Sample Return Campaign

This illustration shows the concept of NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission to ferry to Earth samples collected from the Martian surface by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover.

Credits: NASA

NASA is seeking public comments on a draft environmental impact statement for the agency’s Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign. Comments are due by Monday, Dec. 19.

Comments can be submitted online, through the mail, or through participation in a series of virtual and in-person meetings. Advanced registration for meeting options, including in-person meetings in Utah, is not required.

Two virtual meetings to discuss the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the campaign will take place on Wednesday, Nov. 30. The first begins at 1 p.m. MST, followed by a second opportunity at 6 p.m. MST. Participate online at either time by joining the following link:

Mars Sample Return WebEx

The WebEx will be accessible to participants about 15 minutes before the event begins, and will include real-time automated closed captioning. To access audio-only dial 510-210-8882, and use meeting number 901-525-785.

The in-person meetings will be held at 6 p.m. MST on Tuesday, Dec. 6, at the Wendover Community Center, 112 E Moriah Avenue, Wendover, Utah, and on Wednesday, Dec. 7, at the Clark Planetarium, 110 S 400 W, Salt Lake City, Utah.

All public meetings will include a 15-minute presentation on the purpose of the meetings, the MSR campaign project schedule, opportunities for public involvement, a summary of the proposed action and alternatives, discussion of potential environmental impacts from the proposed action, and an overview of the programmatic approach to National Environmental Policy Act compliance in general, and NASA’s proposed action specifically. The in-person meetings also will include a 45-minute open house before the official public comment portion of the meeting.

Subject matter experts will be available on-site during the open house to answer questions from the public, and to discuss informational posters and distribute related materials about the draft statement and the proposed Mars Sample Return campaign. These materials are also available online.

NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) are planning to use robotic Mars orbiter and lander missions launched in 2027 and 2028 to retrieve samples of rocks and atmosphere being gathered by NASA’s Perseverance rover and return them to Earth. The samples of Mars material, securely isolated inside a robust Earth Entry System using a layered “container within a container” approach, could be brought to Earth in the early 2030s, landing notionally at the Utah Test and Training Range operated by the U.S. Air Force. The Earth Entry System would then be transported to a specialized MSR sample receiving facility.

NASA will consider all comments received during the PEIS public comment period in the subsequent development of the MSR Final Environmental Impact Statement.

In addition to receiving comments during the public meetings, comments may be sent to NASA in the following ways:

  • Federal e-Rulemaking Portal: Follow the online instructions for submitting comments and include Docket No. NASA-2022-0002. Please note that NASA will post all comments online without changes, including any personal information provided.
  • By mail to Steve Slaten, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, M/S: 180-801, Pasadena, CA 91109–8099

Additional information on the agency’s National Environmental Policy Act process and the proposed campaign is available online.

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