Juno returns to 'Clyde's Spot' on Jupiter
Thursday, 27 May 2021 11:24
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During its 33rd low pass over the cloud tops of Jupiter on April 15, 2021, NASA's Juno spacecraft captured the intriguing evolution of a feature in the giant planet's atmosphere known as "Clyde's Spot."
The feature is informally named for amateur astronomer Clyde Foster of Centurion, South Africa, who discovered it in 2020 using his own 14-inch telescope. On June 2, 2020, just two days after Foster's initial discovery, Juno provided detailed observations of Clyde's Spot (upper image), which scientists determined was a plume of cloud material erupting above the top layers of the Jovian atmosphere just southeast of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, which is currently about 1.3 times as wide as Earth. These powerful convective outbreaks occasionally occur in this latitude band, known as the South Temperate Belt. The initial plume subsided quickly, and within a few weeks it was seen as a dark spot.
Many features in Jupiter's highly dynamic atmosphere are short lived, but the April 2021 observation from the JunoCam instrument (lower image) revealed that nearly one year after its discovery, the remnant of Clyde's Spot had not only drifted away from the Great Red Spot but had also developed into a complex structure that scientists call a folded filamentary region.
GAO report identifies technical and management risks with Artemis
Thursday, 27 May 2021 10:45 Write a comment
WASHINGTON — A Government Accountability Office report warns that NASA’s Artemis program faces technical risks as well as management issues that raise doubts about achieving the goal of returning humans to the moon by 2024.
The May 26 report by the GAO, requested by Congress in a 2018 appropriations bill, concluded that NASA’s approach to managing the various projects involved with the overall Artemis effort increased the odds of cost increases and schedule slips.
Adapting to changing climates: Q&A with Eumetsat’s Phil Evans
Thursday, 27 May 2021 10:43 Write a comment
It will take decades to fully deploy a next-generation weather-tracking constellation for Europe’s Eumetsat, which aims to launch its first of six new MTG satellites for geostationary orbit (GEO) next year.
Rampant satellite innovation swirling around the intergovernmental meteorological organization headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany, and the changing role of the private sector pose novel challenges as it charts this long-term course.
Cramming it all into three hundred and thirty seconds of microgravity
Thursday, 27 May 2021 08:49 Write a comment
On 24 May 2021, three experiments from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) set off on their short journey into microgravity and back again. The DLR sounding rocket MAPHEUS 11 lifted off from the Esrange Space Center in northern Sweden and carried the materials science experiments MARS, X-RISE and SOMEX to an altitude of 221 kilometres. In the 15 minutes b SpaceX cargo mission to carry water bears, baby squids to space station
Thursday, 27 May 2021 08:49 Write a comment
SpaceX's 22nd cargo resupply mission, slated to launch no earlier than June 3, will see several unique science experiments - involving water bears, baby squids and kidney stones - ferried to the International Space Station.
Like so many experiments before them, the bulk of the experimental setups being carried aboard SpaceX CRS-22 are designed to illuminate the health risks facing ast Similar states of activity identified in supermassive and stellar mass black holes
Thursday, 27 May 2021 08:49 Write a comment
The researchers Juan A. Fernandez-Ontiveros, of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) in Rome and Teo Munoz-Darias, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), have written an article in which they describe the different states of activity of a large sample of supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies.
They have classified them using the behaviour of their closest " How ESA boosts climate education
Thursday, 27 May 2021 07:37 Write a comment
A series of fascinating new learning resources are enabling teachers in the UK to encourage the next generation of climate pioneers.
The freely available lesson plans and activities – which add to ESA’s portfolio of space-powered climate learning materials – were highlighted at the Climate Change Teacher Conference, a live-streamed online summit for British primary and secondary school educators that took place this week.
Quantum communication in space moves ahead
Thursday, 27 May 2021 07:00 Write a comment
Keeping information secure in today’s interconnected world is becoming ever more important, so ESA is supporting efforts to ensure that future communications are kept confidential.
Canada to send rover to Moon by 2026: minister
Thursday, 27 May 2021 06:28 Write a comment
Canada will land a robotic rover on the Moon within five years, its industry minister said Wednesday, announcing that Ottawa plans to "dream big" as it advances its competitive stake in the growing global space market.
"Canada will be part of space history," Francois-Philippe Champagne told a news conference.
"We recognize that global interest in space and in the space industry is on the rise," he said. "As the whole world looks to the stars we are ready to make Canada a world leader in research, technology and innovation so that we can be there as well."
"Let's seize the moment. I don't think there's ever been a better time to be Canadian, and dream big."
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) will partner with the United States' NASA on the mission, according to a statement.
Two Canadian companies will first be selected to develop concepts for the rover and science instruments for the mission.
Jupiter antenna that came in from the cold
Thursday, 27 May 2021 05:55 Write a comment
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Jupiter antenna that came in from the cold Looming US intelligence report to address UFOs
Thursday, 27 May 2021 02:23 Write a comment
Are aliens watching us?
That's what Americans hope to find out when a report on the US government's secret files on UFOs goes to Congress next month after years of sightings and videos suggesting that highly advanced extraterrestrials are, indeed, out there.
But the report from the Director of National Intelligence, pulled together with classified military files, could fall short of exp Roscosmos Chief invites NASA Counterpart to Russia to discuss space cooperation
Thursday, 27 May 2021 02:23 Write a comment
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian state space agency Roscosmos, announced on Tuesday that he invited the newly appointed head of NASA, Bill Nelson, to visit Russia to discuss cooperation in space.
"The new head of NASA, Mr. Nelson, is a respected and honored person and specialist. I will be glad to meet him. We have already invited him to Russia and are ready to discuss openly and constr Newly discovered glaciers could aid human survival on Mars
Thursday, 27 May 2021 02:23 Write a comment
With Elon Musk keen to settle on Mars, and NASA planning its own human missions, there's more to it than finding a safe place to land on the red planet. When it's no longer just robots, rovers and drones arriving, accessing the untapped abundance of ice that lies beneath the Martian surface will be key for astronauts too.
Expertly checking both boxes, planetary geologists at Western have n Measuring Moon dust to fight air pollution
Thursday, 27 May 2021 02:23 Write a comment
Moon dust isn't like the stuff that collects on a bookshelf or on tables - it's ubiquitous and abrasive, and it clings to everything. It's so bad that it even broke the vacuum NASA designed to clean the Moon dust off Apollo spacesuits.
With NASA's return to the Moon and its orbit, it will need to manage the dust, which is dangerous for people too. The first step is knowing how much is arou Experiments validate the possibility of helium rain inside Jupiter and Saturn
Thursday, 27 May 2021 02:23 Write a comment
Nearly 40 years ago, scientists first predicted the existence of helium rain inside planets composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, such as Jupiter and Saturn. However, achieving the experimental conditions necessary to validate this hypothesis hasn't been possible - until now.
In a paper published by Nature, scientists reveal experimental evidence to support this long-standing predicti