A Japanese spacecraft, Hayabusa-2, successfully blasts the surface of an asteroid named Ryugu, creating an artificial crater on the small world’s surface which scientists hope to snag. Japan’s space agency, JAXA, reported that the projectile, a two-kilogram copper cylinder, separated from the Hayabusa-2 spacecraft along with a camera known as DCAM3 to record this “Small Carry-on Impactor” (SCI) operation. Hayabusa-2 flew to the far side of the Asteroid 162173 Ryugu, simply called Ryugu, to retreat from the debris that would be ejected when the projectile hit. “This is the world’s first collision experiment with an asteroid!” JAXA tweeted after the successful blast.
Japanese spacecraft, Hayabusa-2 released photographs
Hayabusa-2 was launched in 2014 and has been studying the 900 meters wide asteroid Ryugu up close since last June. The mission plan includes a touchdown of the spacecraft inside the crater to pick up a pinch of dust samples of the asteroid. In February this year, Hayabusa-2 had touched down on the asteroid’s surface and successfully collected the samples. But the second upcoming touchdown onto the asteroid, preceded by the latest blast on the surface will provide scientists with samples of subsurface dust which has not been exposed to sunlight or other space radiations for billions of years. Scientists hope to additional knowledge about the origin of inner planets, in particular the origin of water and organic compounds on earth, all relevant to the origin of life on earth.
A team of scientists working with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express Orbiter has reported that methane gas episodically wafts into the Mars’ atmosphere within Gale crater, a 96-mile-wide crater near the Martian equator.
Mars Twin Rover
This notion once considered perplexing and bewildering is now widely accepted by scientists because NASA’s Curiosity Rover also measured a marked increase in methane gas around the same crater in 2013. However, quite mysteriously, the methane levels decreased within two months which was bewildering as according to the calculations, it would take a few hundred years for Martian atmosphere to breakdown methane molecules.
Mars methane mystery
Scientists are not sure if both, periodic increases and then subsequent decreases, are due to geological or biological processes. Two theories have been used to explain these findings: it might have been created by a geological process known as serpentinization, which requires both heat and liquid water. Or it could be a product of life — specifically methanogens, microbes that release methane as a waste product. Methanogens thrive in places lacking oxygen, such as rocks deep underground and the digestive tracts of animals.
Possible methane sources
The Mars Express findings also point to a possible source of the methane, about 300 miles east of Gale. In that region, ice must exist just below the surface. Dr. Giuranna, principal investigator for the Mars Express instrument that made the measurements, said: “methane could be released episodically along faults that break through the permafrost due to partial melting of ice”. The findings are especially important as they can help direct future missions and serve as prime locations to search for signs of life.
India joined an elite club of countries with anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities after ― USA, Russia, and China ― when it successfully destroyed one of its old satellite from a missile launched from the Abdul Kalam Island off the eastern coast of India. The March 27 test by India was not it’s first but a second attempt after a failed test on February 12, 2019. ASAT technology launches a missile from the surface which tracks and targets a satellite and destroys it with through collision.
GRAPHIC-INDIA-ANTI-SATELLITE-MISSILE
The capability can not only be used to neutralize old or useless satellites but can also be used to target satellites of any adversary, in case of a conflict, thereby crippling enemies’ missile and radar systems. However, the debris created by such a test remains in the earth’s orbit for days or even years (one-third of the debris in the space was created after China’s anti-satellite test in 2007) and poses a threat to hundreds of other satellites in earth’s orbit as well astronauts working on the International Space Station (ISS).
Different stages of anti satellite missile
NASA said that it had identified 400 pieces of orbital debris from that one event and the risk of small debris impacting ISS is above 44% over a period of 10 days. Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, said: “that is a terrible terrible thing to create an event that sends debris in an apogee that goes above the international space station.” He also said that “We are charged with enabling more activities in space than we’ve ever seen before for the purpose of benefiting the human condition”. Referring to various experi-ments and research being done on ISS, he said “whether it’s pharmace–uticalss or printing human organs in 3-D to save lives here on Earth, or manufacturing capabilities in space that you’re not able to do in a gravity well, all of those are placed at risk when these kinds of events happen”
Top three teams, competing in the latest level of NASA’s “3-D Printed Habitat Challenge”, have been awarded a share of $100,000. Team SEArch+/Apis Corn, who won the first prize in the software modeling, presented a unique shaped habitat which is structurally designed to reinforce itself continuously and allows light to enter through trough-shaped ports on the sides and top. Zopherous won the second price and their design would be autonomously built by a roving printer.
3D-Printing
The roving printer would construct habitat one at a time and then move to the next site. Mars incubators came up with a model consisting of four volumes separated into functional zones which will provide a safe and robust environment for human life on earth.
3D-printed-habitat-challenge
The teams also made short interactive videos providing detailed insights into their designs and 3-D miniature models to showcase the interiors. The 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge is a competition to create sustainable shelters suitable for the Moon, Mars or beyond using resources available on-site in these locations. The multi-level 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge puts teams to the test in several areas of 3D-printing, including modeling software, material development, and construction. In addition to aiding human space exploration, technologies sought from this competition could also lead to lower-cost housing solutions on Earth and other benefits.
zopherus-exterior-NASA-3D Printing
The latest level ― Complete Virtual Construction ― is one of the multi-level competition comprised of three phases and was started in 2015 by NASA in a partnership with NASA’s Centennial Challenges program and Bradley University.
Imperial College London, held fifth annual science competition. The competition invited pupils from secondary schools and for the first time was open to international students. Out of a total of 150 participating teams, from across the globe, seven were chosen to showcase their projects at Imperial College in front of live audience and panel of judges.
The Science steins team
The competition aims to encourage and motivate young students through fun activities involving the solution of global problems. The competition’s aims were aligned with four of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations ― affordable and clean energy, good health, clean water, and sanitation.
Dr Jess Wade trying out the piezo electric plate
The winning team from Pui Ching Middle School, Macau, presented the idea of Zinc-air batteries, powered from reacting zinc and oxygen. These are not only rechargeable but also have low cost, safe and environment-friendly. But the reaction was carried out in the presence of platinum and palladium which are rare and expensive elements. The team has, therefore, replaced platinum and palladium with Metal-Organic Framework (MOF), a crystalline material composed of a 3D network of metal ions.
ICL Fringe March 2018 | Photo by Owen Billcliffe Photography
Sciencesteins, the runner up team, presented an idea for treatment of polluted water through nanorobots―tiny machines designed to perform a specific task at nano-dimensions. Another team, The Handy-Capable, worked on the challenge of clean and affordable energy: their idea was to place the piezoelectric plates (plates made from materials which accum-ulate electric charge in response to certain mechanical stress) before and after ticket barriers at train stations to power London streetlights.
The winners and runners up won trophies while all participants were given certificates and a Schools Science Competition mug.
New images released by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have revealed a beautiful red butterfly in space some 1,400 light years away from the sun. But actually it is not a butterfly, but a massive cloud of dust and gas, in shape of a butterfly, which serves as a nursery for hundreds of baby stars. Officially named Westerhout 40 (W40) the butterfly, is a nebula ― a giant cloud of gas and dust in space where new stars are born.
The butterfly’s two “wings” are giant bubbles of hot interstellar gas blowing from the hottest most massive region of stars. Inside the massive clouds of gas and dust, the force of gravity coalesces materials into dense clumps and clusters. Sometimes, when the clumps reach a critical density, stars are formed at the cores of these dense clumps. Radiations and winds spew out millions of tons of gas and dust out into space when those stars eventually explode and subsequently halts new star formation. The Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) on the Spitzer Space Telescope revealed that the red tinge of the W40 nebula is due to the presence of organic molecules of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in an excited state.
Some of the youngest stars are surrounded by dusty disks of materials, which glow with a yellow or red hue. The Spitzer Space Telescope is managed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California while the Science Operations are conducted at Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena.
The first ever all-female spacewalk, a historical leap for womankind, has been canceled for now due to lack of space-suit of the right size. The spacewalk, although, was not meant to be a historical moment and was scheduled as a routine to change the powerful lithium-ion batteries of the International Space Station (ISS). The significance of the original lineup for the Friday’s “extravehicular activity” (EVA) was recognized only after the schedule was discussed in a meeting, said NASA officials at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The two astronauts, Anne C. McClain, and Christina H. Koch would both need to wear a medium-size torso―essentially the shirt of the spacesuit― component. Ms. McClain had thought that she would be able to work in a large sized torso, but after her spacewalk last Friday, she wore a medium-size torso and learned that it fit her better. Of the two medium-size torso only one is readily available at the International Space Station. The other one has yet to be configured properly for a spacewalk and could take hours. Instead of that NASA decided to simply switch out the astronauts. The mission itself is unchanged.
On Friday, Ms. Koch is still scheduled to participate, along with a fellow male astronaut Nick Hague. In the end, both women will have done a spacewalk ― just not together. The lithium-ion batteries being installed on this mission store solar energy when the space station, orbiting earth at a distance of 200 miles is not directly receiving sunlight.
NASA’s spaceship New Horizon, launched in 2006, started its voyage with the aim to explore the uncharted territories beyond the solar system. On January 1, 2019, this spaceship threw a New Year gift to astronomy enthusiast across the globe when it flew-by close to a mysterious tiny rock revolving around the sun for billions of years in the dusk. The powerful cameras of New horizon captured closest images of the body, named as Ultima Thule – officially known as MU69. It is the farthest object visited by mankind.
It was reported on March 18th, 2019 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference that this double-lobed distant world caught by New Horizon space draft created in the early days of the solar system. That gentle crash, plus the Frankenstein body, suggests that planetesimals like Ultima Thule form from clouds of dust and rock clumping together under the force of their own gravity. Before New Horizons, it wasn’t clear if these proto-planets formed from cloud collapse or from small rocks slowly sticking together to form larger rocks over time.
Ultima Thule
The further new analyses by a team of researchers
show that this tiny space rock formed from a rotating cloud of even
smaller rocks that collapsed into two individual objects. Those objects then
gently collided in the early days of the solar system. The first map of the
space rock’s geology may help explain that flatness. The map shows distinct
mounds on both lobes whose borders are still visible today.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory or JPL is a unique research laboratory situated in the California Institute of Technology. Its main aim is to carry out robotic space and Earth science missions. JPL is managed for NASA by Caltech. JPL; A Federally funded center is aiming to carry out developments in the area of research. JPL has also helped America in opening the space age by the development of America’s first Earth-orbiting science satellite. Its main aim is to be involved in many other interplanetary missions by creating first interpl-anetary spacecraft and in sending various robotic missions in order to study all the planets of the solar system as well as comets, asteroids and Earth’s moon. In addition to all these missions, JPL has also developed and managed NASA’s spacecraft Network, which is a worldwide system of Antennas communicating with interplanetary spacecraft. The developing technology of JPL’s new missions are being applied on Earth to benefit our daily lives.
MAJOR MISSIONS OF 2018
Some of the major missions done by JPL in 2018 are enlisted as follow:
ECOSTRESS (The ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Experiment on Space Station.
GRACE-FO (The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On
InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigation, Geodesy and Heat Transport)
Mar-CO (Mars Cube One)
CAL (Cold Atom Laboratory)
TEMPEST-D (Temporal Experiments for Storms and Tropical Systems Demonstration)
ECOSTRESS
ECOSTRESS
ABOUT THE MISSION
The ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station aims in monitoring one of the most basic processes in living plants, the water loss through the small pores in leaves. The process of removal of water in humans is known as Sweating. The same process in plants is known as Transpiration. The water evaporating from the soil around plants also affects the water usage of plants, ECOSTRESS measures the combined evaporation and transpiration, known as EVAPOTRANSPIRATION (ET).
ECOSTRESS mainly addresses three questions:
How does the terrestrial biosphere respond to changes in the availability of water?
How the global carbon cycle is impacted by changes in diurnal vegetation water stress?
Can advanced monitoring of agricultural water reduce agricultural vulnerability? The science objective has been identified to address these questions:
By identifying the water usage and water stress in key climate-sensitive biomes as in tropical forests and boreal forests.
By detecting the location, various predictive factors, and timing that cause a decline in water uptake by leading to a cessation in the diurnal cycle.
By measuring the consumption of water at the spatiotemporal scale that can improve drought estimation accuracy.
GRACE-FO
ABOUT THE MISSION
The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow On (GRACE-FO) is a collaboration between NASA and the German Research Center of Geoscience (GFZ). This mission focuses on measuring the variations in gravity over the Earth’s surface thus produces a new map of the gravity field every 30 days.
GRACE-FO shows that the gravity of planets not only changes from one location to another but also changes from one period to another.
LAUNCH DATE: May 22, 2018. This mission is the extension of actual GRACE mission which was started, that began orbiting around Earth on March 17, 2002.
Instrument and Global Positioning System Receivers.
InSight (Mars Rover/Lander):
About the Mission
Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport; is a Mars lander project designed to give the Hot and Red planet its first checkup since it formed 4 billion years ago. It is the first outer space robotic apparatus that mainly focuses on the exploration of “inner space” of Mars, its mantle, crust, and core. Insight also measures its tectonic activity and meteorite impacts on Mars these days. The measurement is done by using the sharp cutting edgy instruments that indulge deep beneath the surface and imprints the processes that are formed by the planets. It is done by measuring the planet’s vital signs: it’s “pulse” (seismology), “temperature” (heat flow), and “reflexes” (precision taking).
LAUNCH DATE: March 29, 2018. Insight mission badge.
MarCO
ABOUT THE MISSION
Mars Cube One. CubeSat; an interplanetary mission was designed to monitor Insight for a short period around the period of Red Planet’s landing if the MarCO makes pair to Mars. This mission is quite different from InSight. The MARCO-RED PLANET pair will carry their own communi-cations and navigation experiments as they fly independently to the Red Planet. This process lies on the twin communications-relay Cube-Sats, built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Many of such have been launched into Earth Orbit by using extra payload mass available.
MARCO, A Mission To Mars.
ABOUT THE MISSION
Cold Atom Laboratory. It makes the use of the space station’s unique microgravity environment in order to observe the quantum phenomenon that is not detectable by Earth otherwise. The laboratory was installed successfully and now serving as an experiment in the use of laser-cooled atoms for future quantum sensors.
MarCO- Mission badge
TEMPEST-DTemporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems Demonstration.
ABOUT THE MISSION
It was launched in Wallops Island, Virginia. TEMPEST-D is such a unique technology mission that allows millimeter wave radiometer to be subjected to a low cost. This mission was carried out in collaboration with JPL and BCT. This mission provides the first ever temporal observations of clouds and precipitation processes on a global scale.
The quickening development of the universe is the perception that the extension of the universe is to such an extent that the speed at which a far off cosmic system is subsiding from the eyewitness is constantly expanding with time.
The expanding universe
The quickened development was found amid 1998, by two autonomous activities, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team, which both utilized far off sort Ia supernova to quantify the acceleration. The thought was that as sort 1a supernovae have nearly the equivalent natural brilliance (a standard flame), and since articles that further away seem dimmer, we can utilize the watched splendor of these supernovae to gauge the separation to them. The separation would then be able to be contrasted with the supernovae’s cosmological redshift, which estimates how much the universe has extended since the supernova occurred. The surprising outcome was that objects known to mankind are moving far from another at a quickened rate.
Cosmologists at the time expected that subsidence speed would dependably be decelerating to the gravitational fascination of the issue known to man. Three individuals from these two gatherings have consequently been granted Nobel Prizes for their discovery. Confirmatory proof has been found in baryon acoustic motions, and in examinations of the grouping of cosmic systems.
Dark energy expansion
Supernova observations.
The first evidence for acceleration came from the observation of Type Ia supernovae, which are exploding white dwarfs that have exceeded their stability limit. Because they all have similar masses, their intrinsic luminosity is standardizable. Repeated imaging of selected areas of the sky is used to discover the supernovae, then follow-up observations give their peak brightness, which is converted into a quantity is known as luminosity distance. Spectral lines of their light can be used to determine their redshift.
Bryon acoustic osscillations
In the early universe, before recombination and decoupling occurred, photons and matter existed in a primordial plasma. Purposes of higher thickness in the photon-baryon plasma would contract, being compacted by gravity until the weight turned out to be excessively substantial and they extended again. This constriction and extension made vibrations in the plasma similar to sound waves. Since dim issue just communicates gravitationally it remained at the focal point of the sound wave, the cause of the first overdensity. While decoupling happened, around 380,000 years after the Big Bang, photons isolated from the issue and could stream uninhibitedly through the universe, making the astronomical microwave foundation as we probably are aware it.
Supernova expansion
This left shells of baryonic matter at a fixed span from the overdensities of a dull issue, a separation known as the sound skyline. As time passed and the universe extended, it was at these anisotropies of issue thickness where systems began to shape. So by taking a gander at the separations at which worlds at various redshifts will in general bunch, it is conceivable to decide a standard precise measurement separation and utilize that to contrast with the separations anticipated by various cosmological models.
Dark energy
The most imperative property of dim vitality is that it has negative weight (frightful activity) which is circulated moderately homogeneously in space. P=wc^2p where c is the speed of light and ρ is the vitality thickness. Diverse hypotheses of dull vitality recommend distinctive estimations of w, with w < − 1/3 for vast speeding up. The most straightforward clarification for dull vitality is that it is a cosmological steady or vacuum vitality; for this situation w = −1. This prompts the Lambda-CDM display, which has for the most part been known as the Standard Model of Cosmology from 2003 through the present since it is the least difficult model in great concurrence with an assortment of late perceptions. Riess et al. discovered that their outcomes from supernovae perceptions favored growing models with positive cosmological consistent (Ωλ > 0) and a current quickened development (q0 < 0).
Phantom energy
Current perceptions permit the likelihood of a cosmological model containing a dull vitality part with the condition of state w < −1. This ghost vitality thickness would end up unbounded in limited time, causing such a gigantic gravitational aversion, that the universe would lose all structure and end in a Big Rip. For instance, for w = − 3/2 what’s more, H0 =70 km·s−1·Mpc−1, the time staying before the universe finishes in this Big Rip is 22 billion years. Theories for the consequence to the universe As the universe extends, the thickness of radiation and standard dull issue decays more rapidly than the thickness of dim vitality and, in the long run, dim vitality commands. In particular, when the size of the universe pairs, the thickness of issue is decreased by a factor of 8, yet the thickness of dim vitality is about unal-tered (it is actually steady if the dull vitality is a cosmological consistent).
In models where dull vitality is a cosmological consistent, the universe will extend exponentially with time in the far future, coming ever nearer to a de Sitter spacetime. This will, in the long run, lead to all proof for the Big Bang vanishing, as the inestimable microwave foundation is redshifted to bring down forces and longer wavelengths. In the long run, its recurrence will be low enough that it will be consumed by the interstellar medium, as for being screened from any onlooker inside the universe. This will happen when the universe is under multiple times its present age, prompting the finish of cosmology as we probably am aware it as the far off universe turns dim.
An always growing universe with non-zero cosmological steady has mass thickness diminishing after some time, to a dubious moment that zero issue thickness is come to. Every issue (electron, protons, and neutrons) would ionize and break down, with articles disseminating without end. Options for a definitive destiny of the universe incorporate the Big Rip referenced over, a Big Bounce, Big Freeze or Big Crunch.
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