Glaretum - Glaretum

En esta fotografía podemos apreciar la luz zodiacal, luz reflejada de las partículas de polvo interplanetario. A la derecha a la Vía Láctea y en medio la galaxia de Andrómeda.

Crédito: Jeff Dai

https://instagram.com/jeffdaiphoto

~Antares

Asteroid Bennu, the Storyteller

Asteroids are the storytellers of our solar system’s youth. They are the closest we can get to the original material that makes up the sun, planets, and moons.

This week, our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft made history when it touched a pristine, ancient asteroid named Bennu to collect a sample from the surface. The intrepid spacecraft will now bring the asteroid sample – and its stories – back home to Earth.

Why is it that asteroid Bennu holds the history of our origins? Let’s go back to the beginning…

About 4.5 billion years ago, our solar system began as a spinning, swirling cloud made up of tiny bits of gaseous and rocky material. Most of that material – more than 99% of it – gathered in the center and went on to become the Sun.

The leftovers began to spin around the Sun, colliding into one another and forming larger and larger objects, eventually becoming planets, dwarf planets, and moons.

But asteroids didn’t become part of planets or moons. So, while the material in planets and moons were superheated and altered during the formation of the solar system and weathered by geologic processes over time, asteroids remained pristine.

Each asteroid holds knowledge from that special time in our solar system’s history. Each one contains information about the chemicals, minerals, and molecules that were present when the solar system was just starting to form.

With missions like OSIRIS-REx, we are going on a journey to these ancient worlds, seeking to learn what they remember, seeking to expand our knowledge, and deepen our understanding of our origins.

Learn more about the OSIRIS-REx mission HERE, or follow the mission on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Eclipse del 2 de julio de 2019

Crédito: Thierry Legault

twitter.com/thierrylegault

Rastro estelar sobre los árboles muertos en el embalse de Manasquan, Jersey Shore, NJ. Para esta fotografía fueron tomadas más de 280 fotos en el transcurso de 1.5 horas y apiladas para mostrar el aparente movimiento de las estrellas.

Crédito: John Entwistle.

https://instagram.com/johnentwistle_photography

~Antares

La cooperación internacional en y alrededor de la Luna como parte del programa Artemis está dando un paso adelante hoy con la firma de los Acuerdos de Artemis entre la NASA y varios países socios. Los Acuerdos de Artemis establecen un conjunto práctico de principios para guiar la cooperación de exploración espacial entre las naciones que participan en los planes de exploración lunar del siglo XXI de la agencia.

“Artemis será el programa internacional de exploración espacial humana más amplio y diverso de la historia, y los Acuerdos de Artemis son el vehículo que establecerá esta singular coalición global”, dijo el administrador de la NASA Jim Bridenstine. "Con la firma de hoy, nos estamos uniendo con nuestros socios para explorar la Luna y estamos estableciendo principios vitales que crearán un futuro seguro, pacífico y próspero en el espacio para que lo disfrute toda la humanidad".

Si bien la NASA lidera el programa Artemis, que incluye el envío de la primera mujer y el próximo hombre a la superficie de la Luna en 2024, las asociaciones internacionales desempeñarán un papel clave para lograr una presencia sostenible y sólida en la Luna a finales de esta década mientras se preparan para realizar una misión humana histórica a Marte.

Los países miembros fundadores que han firmado los Acuerdos de Artemis, en orden alfabético, son:

Australia

Canadá

Italia

Japón

Luxemburgo

Emiratos Árabes Unidos

Reino Unido

Estados Unidos de América

La NASA anunció que estaba estableciendo los Acuerdos de Artemis a principios de este año para guiar las futuras actividades de cooperación, que se implementarán a través de acuerdos bilaterales que describirán responsabilidades y otras disposiciones legales. Los socios se asegurarán de que sus actividades cumplan con los acuerdos en el desarrollo de la cooperación futura. La cooperación internacional en Artemisa tiene como objetivo no solo impulsar la exploración espacial, sino también mejorar las relaciones pacíficas entre las naciones.

“Fundamentalmente, los Acuerdos de Artemis ayudarán a evitar conflictos en el espacio y en la Tierra al fortalecer el entendimiento mutuo y reducir las percepciones erróneas. Transparencia, registro público, operaciones de eliminación de conflictos: estos son los principios que preservarán la paz ”, dijo Mike Gold, administrador asociado interino de la NASA para relaciones internacionales e interinstitucionales. "El viaje de Artemisa es a la Luna, pero el destino de los Acuerdos es un futuro pacífico y próspero".

Los Acuerdos de Artemisa refuerzan y aplican el Tratado de 1967 sobre los principios que rigen las actividades de los Estados en la exploración y utilización del espacio ultraterrestre, incluida la Luna y otros cuerpos celestes, también conocido como Tratado del Espacio Ultraterrestre. También refuerzan el compromiso de los EE. UU. Y los países socios con la Convención de Registro, el Acuerdo sobre el Rescate de Astronautas y otras normas de comportamiento que la NASA y sus socios han apoyado, incluida la divulgación pública de datos científicos.

Los principios de los Acuerdos de Artemisa son:

Exploración pacífica: Todas las actividades realizadas bajo el programa Artemis deben tener fines pacíficos.

Transparencia: Los firmantes de los Acuerdos de Artemis llevarán a cabo sus actividades de manera transparente para evitar confusiones y conflictos.

Interoperabilidad: Las naciones que participan en el programa Artemis se esforzarán por respaldar sistemas interoperables para mejorar la seguridad y la sostenibilidad.

Asistencia de emergencia: Los signatarios de los Acuerdos de Artemis se comprometen a prestar asistencia al personal en peligro.

Registro de objetos espaciales: Cualquier nación que participe en Artemis debe ser signataria de la Convención de Registro o convertirse en signataria con prontitud.

Liberación de datos científicos: Los signatarios de los Acuerdos de Artemis se comprometen a la divulgación pública de información, permitiendo que todo el mundo se una a nosotros en el viaje de Artemis.

Preservar el patrimonio: los firmantes de los Acuerdos de Artemis se comprometen a preservar el patrimonio del espacio exterior.

Recursos espaciales: extraer y utilizar los recursos espaciales es clave para una exploración segura y sostenible y Los signatarios de los Acuerdos de Artemis afirman que dichas actividades deben llevarse a cabo de conformidad con el Tratado sobre el espacio ultraterrestre.

Desconflicto de actividades: Las naciones de los Acuerdos de Artemis se comprometen a prevenir la interferencia perjudicial y a apoyar el principio de la debida consideración, como lo exige el Tratado sobre el espacio ultraterrestre.

Comprometerse a planificar la eliminación segura de escombros.

Otros países se unirán a los Acuerdos de Artemisa en los meses y años venideros, mientras la NASA continúa trabajando con sus socios internacionales para establecer un futuro seguro, pacífico y próspero en el espacio. Trabajar con agencias espaciales emergentes, así como con socios existentes y agencias espaciales bien establecidas, agregará nueva energía y capacidades para garantizar que todo el mundo pueda beneficiarse del viaje de exploración y descubrimiento de Artemis.

Black Holes Dine on Stellar Treats!

See that tiny blob of light, circled in red? Doesn’t look like much, does it? But that blob represents a feast big enough to feed a black hole around 30 million times the mass of our Sun! Scientists call these kinds of stellar meals tidal disruption events, and they’re some of the most dramatic happenings in the cosmos.

Sometimes, an unlucky star strays too close to a black hole. The black hole’s gravity pulls on the star, causing it to stretch in one direction and squeeze in another. Then the star pulls apart into a stream of gas. This is a tidal disruption event. (If you’re worried about this happening to our Sun – don’t. The nearest black hole we know about is over 1,000 light-years away. And black holes aren’t wild space vacuums. They don’t go zipping around sucking up random stars and planets. So we’re pretty safe from tidal disruption events!)

The trailing part of the stream gets flung out of the system. The rest of the gas loops back around the black hole, forming a disk. The material circling in the disk slowly drifts inward toward the black hole’s event horizon, the point at which nothing – not even light – can escape. The black hole consumes the gas and dust in its disk over many years.

Sometimes the black hole only munches on a passing star – we call this a partial tidal disruption event. The star loses some of its gas, but its own gravity pulls it back into shape before it passes the black hole again. Eventually, the black hole will have nibbled away enough material that the star can’t reform and gets destroyed.

We study tidal disruptions, both the full feasts and the partial snacks, using many kinds of telescopes. Usually, these events are spotted by ground-based telescopes like the Zwicky Transient Facility and the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae network.

They alert other ground- and space-based telescopes – like our Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (illustrated above) and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton – to follow up and collect more data using different wavelengths, from visible light to X-rays. Even our planet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has observed a few of these destructive wonders!

We’re also studying disruptions using multimessenger astronomy, where scientists use the information carried by light, particles, and space-time ripples to learn more about cosmic objects and occurrences.

But tidal disruptions are super rare. They only happen once every 10,000 to 100,000 years in a galaxy the size of our own Milky Way. Astronomers have only observed a few dozen events so far. By comparison, supernovae – the explosive deaths of stars – happen every 100 years or so in a galaxy like ours.

That’s why scientists make their own tidal disruptions using supercomputers, like the ones shown in the video here. Supercomputers allow researchers to build realistic models of stars. They can also include all of the physical effects they’d experience whipping ‘round a black hole, even those from Einstein’s theory of general relativity. They can alter features like how close the stars get and how massive the black holes are to see how it affects what happens to the stars. These simulations will help astronomers build better pictures of the events they observe in the night sky.

Keep up with what’s happening in the universe and how we study it by following NASA Universe on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

This is Herschel’s Garnet Star! 🌟🌟🌟

If Herschel’s Garnet Star and the Sun were placed both at a same distance of 10 parsecs, this star would be 100,000 times brighter than our Sun! It is so big that if it were in the Solar System, it would engulf up to the orbit of Jupiter! ✨✨✨

Taken by me (Michelle Park) using the Slooh Canary Two telescope on October 26th, 2020 at 23:47 UTC.

Dreaming of going to space? – Astronaut Victor Glover has you covered. 

In his first video from space, take a look at our home through the window of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Resilience” spacecraft. Victor arrived to the International Space Station alongside his fellow Crew-1 astronauts on Nov. 16, 2020. 

This is his first trip to space and his first mission on the orbital lab! 

Follow his Instagram account HERE to stay up-to-date on station life and for more behind-the-scenes content like this. 

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Arco de la Vía Láctea sobre el Parque Nacional del Teide, el cual es el mayor de Canarias. Es una excursión obligada para todos los que visiten Tenerife.

Un paisaje único de cráteres, volcanes y ríos de lava petrificada que rodean la impresionante silueta del Volcán Teide, que se alza hasta los 3.718 m de altitud. 

Crédito: Benjamin Barakat

https://instagram.com/benjaminbarakat

~Antares

What Would These Astronauts Put in Their #NASAMoonKit?

NASA is hard at work to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon, and we want to know: what would you pack for a trip to the Moon?   

We will be soon conducting our last in a series of Green Run tests for the core stage of our Space Launch System (SLS) — the most powerful rocket ever built.

The series of tests is designed to gradually bring the rocket stage and all its systems to life for the first time — ensuring that it’s ready for missions to the Moon through the Artemis program.  

To mark this critical time in the history of American spaceflight, we’ve been asking people like you — what would you take with you on a trip to the Moon? Social media users have been regaling us with their images, videos, and illustrations with the hashtag #NASAMoonKit!

Looking for a little inspiration? We asked some of our astronauts and NASA leaders the same question:

1. NASA Astronaut Chris Cassidy

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy recently took this photo from the International Space Station and posted it to his Twitter account with this caption:

“If I was on the next mission to the Moon, I would have to bring this tiny spaceman with me! He’s flown with me on all of my missions and was in my uniform pocket for all the SEAL missions I have been a part of. Kind of like a good luck charm.”

2. European Space Agency Astronaut Tim Peake

European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake asked his two sons what they would take with them to the Moon. This is what they decided on!

3. NASA Astronaut Scott Tingle

Based on previous missions to space, NASA astronaut Scott Tingle would put a can of LiOH, or Lithium Hydroxide, into his #NASAMoonKit. 

A LiOH can pulls carbon dioxide out of the air — very important when you’re in a closed environment for a long time! Apollo 13 enthusiasts will remember that the astronauts had to turn off their environmental system to preserve power. To keep the air safe, they used LiOH cans from another part of the vehicle, but the cans were round and the fitting was square. Today we have interoperability standards for space systems, so no more square pegs in round holes!

4. NASA Astronaut Drew Morgan

NASA astronaut Drew Morgan received some feedback from his youngest daughter when she was in kindergarten about she would put into her #NASAMoonKit.

5. Head of Human Spaceflight Kathy Lueders

Although Kathy Lueders is not an astronaut, she is the head of human spaceflight at NASA! Her #NASAMoonKit includes activities to keep her entertained as well as her favorite pillow.

How to Show Us What’s In Your #NASAMoonKit:

There are four social media platforms that you can use to submit your work:

Instagram: Use the Instagram app to upload your photo or video, and in the description include #NASAMoonKit  

Twitter: Share your image on Twitter and include #NASAMoonKit in the tweet  

Facebook: Share your image on Facebook and include #NASAMoonKit in the post  

Tumblr: Share your image in Tumblr and include #NASAMoonKit in the tags

If your #NASAMoonKit catches our eye, we may share your post on our NASA social media accounts or share it on the Green Run broadcast!

Click here for #NASAMoonKit Terms and Conditions.  

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com