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Showing posts from December, 2021

NASA’s Webb telescope takes flight—a Christmas gift to astronomers everywhere

https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-webb-telescope-takes-flight-christmas-gift-astronomers-everywhere Daniel Clery, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Infrared scope will target alien worlds and the universe’s first galaxies—if it survives a month of nerve-racking maneuvers ...The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, an instrument  expected to revolutionize astronomy  by gathering light from the atmospheres of alien worlds and the universe’s first galaxies, launched at 7:20 a.m. EST on a sultry Christmas morning from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. Some 30 minutes after launch, the telescope detached from the top of its Ariane 5 rocket and deployed its solar array, which is needed to charge its batteries and support communication with Earth. Webb is now en route to its observing station, a gravitational balance point known as L2 at 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Before it gets there, mission controllers will have a tense month, as they unfurl parts of the telescope too

Opening a 50-year-old Christmas present from the Moon

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Opening_a_50-year-old_Christmas_present_from_the_Moon By European Space Agency.  Excerpt: A pretty special gift unwrapping will soon take place – a piercing tool built by ESA will open a Moon soil container from Apollo 17 that has gone untouched for nearly 50 years. The opening will allow the extraction of precious lunar gases which may have been preserved in the sample.…

NASA probe that ‘touched the sun’ for first time could help people better understand the solar system.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/12/15/nasa-touches-sun-spacecraft-parker By  Timothy Bella , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: A NASA spacecraft became the first to “touch the sun,” scientists announced Tuesday — a long-awaited milestone and a potential giant leap in understanding the sun’s influence on the solar system. The Parker Solar Probe successfully flew through the sun’s corona, or upper atmosphere, in April to sample particles and its magnetic fields, according to research published in the journal  Physical Review Letters . The findings were also announced Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans. ...The spacecraft, launched three years ago in an effort to study the sun and its dangers, will help scientists uncover significant and unknown information about Earth’s closest star, including how the flow of the sun’s particles can influence the planet. ...The spacecraft’s brush with the sun is the culmination of a mission more than 60 year

Metal Planet Orbits Its Star Every 7.7 Hours

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/science/iron-exoplanet-super-mercury.html By  Adam Mann , The NewYork Times.  Excerpt: Astronomers call it a “super-Mercury” and think it holds clues to how planets form close in to their stars. ...Because it sits so close to its parent, one side of GJ 367 b likely always faces the blazing star. Its dayside temperatures should soar toward 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt rock and metal, making it a potential lava world…