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From war zones to outer space, radio remains essential

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Every 13 February marks World Radio Day, a celebration timed to the moment UN Radio first crackled to life 80 years ago.

UN News teams have gathered stories from every corner of the world that reveal a simple truth: in places fractured by conflict, disasters or deep digital divides, radio remains a steady, reliable pulse – carrying information, reassurance and connection where other signals cannot reach.

From UN Radio to UN News

This enduring role is deeply woven into the history of the United Nations itself. Eighty years ago, as the world emerged from the devastation of the Second World War, UN Radio began broadcasting from modest studios at UN Headquarters in New York, reaching audiences with news bulletins and feature programmes in five languages, often transmitting entire Security Council proceedings.

L to R: UN Radio staff José Quijano-Santos, Luis Marron, Hernando Solano, Jorge A. Carvallo, Luis Carlos Sanchez, Osvaldo Lopez Noguerol, Beatrix Alcapra Cuellar and Guillermo Caram, record a special broadcast for Latin American radio networks.

Over the decades, iconic voices such as Edward R. Murrow, Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn and Frank Sinatra helped narrate global stories, while listeners heard historic speeches from leaders including John F. Kennedy, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul II.

That legacy evolved into what is now UN News, a multimedia platform publishing in 10 languages and connecting with audiences in more than 170 countries. It brings breaking news, interviews, live coverage and richer storytelling on the world’s most urgent challenges – and the efforts under way to solve them.

For all the transformations brought by new technology, one guiding principle endures: providing dependable information to the people who need it most, through audio formats that bridge both heritage and innovation.

Rebuilding radio broadcasting in Gaza

Nowhere is this mission more urgent than in conflict zones. In Gaza, before October 7, 2023, a total of 23 local radio stations operated across the territory. Following the war triggered by Hamas attacks on Israel, every station was destroyed.

Yet Rami Al‑Sharafi, director of Zaman FM, is working to piece broadcasting back together – a fragile but determined effort in the midst of profound damage.

Journalist Rami Al-Sharfi, is the director of radio at Gaza’s ZMN 90.60 FM radio station.

When UN News Arabic visited the station, he put it plainly: “Zaman FM has resumed broadcasting, and we are currently the only radio station transmitting FM frequencies from inside the Gaza Strip after this massive destruction.”

The need for reliable broadcasting is profound, particularly as Gaza faces the spread of diseases, the collapse of educational structures, and disrupted public services.

A crucial tool for peacekeeping

Across other conflict zones, radio serves as a steadying presence. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Radio Okapi, has become a trusted voice since its creation in 2002 as part of the UN peacekeeping mission there, known as MONUSCO.

Broadcasting in French and four national languages, the station offers reliable information in regions of the country affected by violence and displacement, according to testimonies gathered by UN News French.

In Bukavu, deep in the country’s restive eastern region, one listener described how Radio Okapi “plays a key role in promoting peace by broadcasting information that is reliable and impartial,” noting that “when people want to be sure that information is true, they often turn to Radio Okapi.”

Radio Okapi and Radio nationale congolaise have made a commitment to broadcast didactic sequences on the main subjects of the primary and secondary cycle in the DRC during the Covid-19 pandemic

For many communities, the station is also a vital channel for civic participation and accountability. “It ensures that victims of war can express their suffering so that it can reach the authorities,” said another Bukavu resident.

The station’s influence extends beyond information, actively countering hate speech and strengthening social cohesion. In Lubumbashi, a listener credited Radio Okapi with helping “stop or reduce messages inciting hatred,” while praising programmes like Inter-Congolese Dialogue, which he said, “allow national cohesion to produce outcomes of peace.”

Lifesaving information in conflict zones

For refugees such as Bahati Yohane, now living in Kyangwali Refugee camp in Uganda, Okapi became a literal lifeline during escalating violence in DRC. In an interview to UN News Kiswahili, he said: “To be honest, if there had been no radio to tell us anything about security, we would not be alive in this world today”.

In the Central African Republic, radio continues to bridge isolation in remote and insecure areas. The UN Mission, MINUSCA, supports both its own station, Guira FM, and local broadcasters to strengthen access to trusted information.

Radio GUIRA-FM – 4 years anniversary

Through recent campaigns that put more than 500 radios into local hands, communities have not only improved the flow of reliable information but also curbed the kinds of rumors that can disrupt travel, trade and relations between neighbours.

These efforts revive a tradition that began decades ago, when UN News Kiswahili partnered with Radio Tanzania – now the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation – to air the weekly programme Mwangaza wa Umoja wa Mataifa from the 1970s through the 1990s.Former programme controller Edda Sanga remembers that “the program helped build hope and aspirations for many people,” offering stories of progress and practical solutions.

It became, she said, a programme “eagerly awaited” by listeners looking for reliable updates on peace, human rights, environmental issues and conflicts unfolding in neighbouring countries.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, is also a key partner for radio stations across fragile environments, helping them remain operational during crises and continue delivering life‑saving information. In Afghanistan, the agency backs 10 stations that broadcast guidance on basic services, reaching as many as 20 million listeners, about 40 per cent of whom are women and girls.

Radio amateurs as national heroes

Outside conflict areas, radio’s quiet strength becomes even clearer during climate‑driven emergencies. As storms or floods knock out phone lines and internet connections, radio signals frequently remain the last dependable link to the outside world.

Eloísa Farrera/CINU México

Jesús Miguel Sarmiento, with the call sign XE1EW as a radio operator, presides over the Mexican Federation of Radio Experimenters

In Mexico, amateur radio operators were recognized as national heroes following the 1985 earthquake, when traditional communication systems failed entirely.

Today, the Mexican Federation of Radio Amateurs coordinates the National Emergency Network, due to its ability of transmitting vital information during hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes.

During Hurricane Otis in 2023, operators quickly improvised communication systems under extreme conditions. As Federation President Jesús Miguel Sarmiento Montesinos told UN News Spanish, “They turned copper wires into antennas, used their equipment and batteries, and immediately began transmitting, reporting on the situation in the affected areas, the extent of the flooding, and whether the areas were accessible or inaccessible”.

An inclusive platform

Radio also serves as a powerful force for accessibility and inclusion. In India, Radio Udaan was launched in 2014 as the country’s first online station operated entirely by visually impaired presenters and staff. Today, it reaches 125,000 listeners across 120 countries, addressing disability rights, education, technology and social inclusion, and challenging stereotypes through fashion shows, singing competitions, matchmaking, talent hunts and other community‑driven programmes.

UN News Hindi spoke with Founder Danish Mahajan, who explained that his lived experience as a visually impaired person helps shape programming tailored to audience needs.

An Online Radio Station Giving Voice to India’s Visually Impaired.

He highlighted the importance of UN News content, noting, “Whenever there is a programme, discussion, or special UN commemoration related to disability, the themes, dialogues, and inspirational talks produced by the United Nations greatly benefit the community”.

Mr. Mahajan also sees new opportunities through artificial intelligence, AI, describing it as a “game-changing technology” capable of expanding accessibility through tools such as smart glasses that help visually impaired individuals make sense of their surroundings.

Empathy that algorithms can’t replicate

Artificial intelligence is transforming the global audio landscape. In China, these shifts are unfolding at remarkable speed, with the podcast audience already exceeding 150 million and expected to grow further.

UN News Chinese heard from Professor Sun Shaojing of Fudan University that audio content is becoming deeply woven into daily life – from electric vehicles navigating crowded cities to smart devices accompanying moments of solitude.

The UN Global Digital Compact aims to bring together governments and industry to ensure that technology, like AI, works for all humanity.

He notes that AI‑generated news presenters and synthetic voices are becoming increasingly common, offering accuracy, efficiency and multilingual reach on a scale once unimaginable. Yet within this technological precision, Professor Sun identifies a paradox: the very imperfections of human speech – the pauses, hesitations and emotional textures – are what give voice its soul.

“When reporting on disaster scenes, affected individuals, their suffering, and their needs, AI would lose many of the emotional and empathetic dimensions that require human compassion and connection. It would not achieve the same depth of emotional impact or resonance”, he said.

Demand increases for radio communications in outer space

Even beyond Earth, radio continues to underpin communication and discovery. From the moment the first satellite broke through the atmosphere in 1957, radio waves have carried the quiet work of exploration, becoming the unseen bridge behind space communications, Earth monitoring and navigation.

As space exploration accelerates, these frequencies are becoming even more critical. Alexandre Vallet, Chief of Space Services at the International Telecommunication Union, ITU, told UN News Portuguese that satellites equipped with highly sensitive sensors rely on ITU’s protected spectrum bands to accurately track the accelerating impacts of climate change.

A satellite, as seen from space, tracks over South America.

He explained that expanding lunar plans by major space powers – including proposals from the United States and China to build permanent bases – are likely to drive a steep increase in radio‑communication needs. That surge, he warned, could threaten the Moon’s Shielded Zone, protected under a 1970s ITU treaty to preserve the lunar silence essential for studying the universe’s earliest moments.

“For the next conference on the radio regulations, at the end of 2027, we will discuss establishing for the first time a regulatory framework for radio spectrum management on the moon. So, this will include finding a good balance between the need for communication links and also the need to protect the spectrum for scientific purposes,” he said.

Looking ahead, the rapid transformation of the space economy will only deepen humanity’s reliance on radio spectrum. Mr. Vallet added that emerging industries such as space tourism, orbital manufacturing, space mining, and even data centers beyond Earth will depend on reliable radio-based communication channels.

A signal that endures

Across conflict zones, disaster response, accessibility efforts, digital innovation and even the far reaches of space, radio continues to demonstrate its quiet but remarkable strength.

Amid a world overwhelmed by images and accelerating technology, these invisible waves endure as a reminder that the simplest forms of communication often hold the greatest power to inform, protect and unite.

Listen to daily news bulletins and podcasts on SoundCloud or here.

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Cosmic girls: UN nurtures next generation of space professionals

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Now 18, she’s involved in aerospace projects with other young women through the Shakthi SAT initiative and she’s keen to explore the intersection between computer engineering and science, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous robotics and embedded systems that control satellites, drones and rockets.

“I’m learning things I once only dreamed of, and we’re going to launch our own satellite. How cool is that!” she told UN News.

But, prospects at home in Nepal, an impoverished nation with a nascent space industry, are very limited.

“Our parents usually don’t want us to pursue ‘risky’ careers,” she said.

‘My interest is to make humans multiplanetary’

As a little girl growing up in Hasselt, Belgium, Kaat DeGros thought becoming an astronaut in the highly competitive, male-dominated space field would never happen.

Today, at 15, she’s already designed her own sustainable research base on Mars, hailed by the Oxford Academy of Excellence.

“My interest is to make humans multiplanetary,” she said.

Demystifying space careers

A new partnership between the Space4Women project of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the Cosmic Girls Foundation is bringing together young women and girls like Ms. Maharjan and Ms. DeGros from across the globe to explore how they can shape the future of space and thrive in diverse roles, from space economics and law to engineering, policy and innovation.

Over 30 girls participated in a global webinar in late July on “demystifying space careers: not just astronauts”, the first in a series of collaborations to unite UNOOSA’s global reach and Cosmic Girls’ grassroots network.

Two women leaders, a space economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and legal officer at the Kenya Space Agency, shared practical advice on how to enter the sector regardless of background and fielded questions on academic and professional paths, networking, accessing resources and dealing with rejection.

NASA astronauts Tracy Caldwell Dyson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Naoko Yamazaki and Stephanie Wilson pose for a photo at the International Space Station.

Building a space ecosystem

The girls left with several messages: be your own cheerleader, seek out mentors and allies, stay disciplined but follow your passion and join space communities.

“We are building an ecosystem that equips girls worldwide with STEM skills, astronaut training and the mindset to innovate for humanity’s future among the stars,” said Mindy Howard, founder and chief executive officer of the Netherlands- and US-based Cosmic Girls Foundation.

The partnership will influence policymakers to adopt a new vision of the space sector where men and women are equal partners, said UNOOSA programme officer Anne-Claire Grossias.

“It’s a very human-focused project. Through this connection we can move forward toward gender equality,” she explained.

Landmark study: Space sector still gender blind

Despite progress in recent years, women are still significantly under-represented in the field, especially in leadership roles. Only 11 per cent of astronauts have been women, and they represent just 30 per cent of the workforce in public space sector organizations, according to the Space4Women project’s 2024 landmark study on gender equality.

Ensuring a meaningful role for women not only fuels productivity and profit; it leads to greater global collaboration, consensus-building and lasting peace, the study found.

The idea for the survey was conceived at the 2023 Space4Women Expert Meeting. The meeting united global experts to prepare the UN’s first gender mainstreaming toolkit to help space organizations dismantle gender bias and discriminatory practices and create environments where women can succeed alongside male colleagues in space science, technology, innovation and exploration.

Mindy Howard during parabolic flight training.

Fostering the female astronaut pipeline

Since its inception in 2017, the Space4Women project has worked with committed space sector professionals to mentor over 270 girls from 68 countries.

Ms. Howard, a mentor since 2020, has brought together nearly 1,000 girls from 139 countries through her Cosmic Girls educational and networking forum. With programme partners in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas and Oceania, the Cosmic Girls Foundation has launched the first global competition to train six girls, one from each continent, with the rocket science knowledge, life skills and mental preparedness to become astronauts. The grand prize for one will be a trip to space.

“The competition is such a dream come true,” said Ms. DeGros. “It gave me hope that I will succeed as an astronaut and astrophysicist.”

Building confidence in a safe environment

Supporting girls from an early age in a welcoming, nurturing environment is crucial to help them gradually test the waters and bring much-needed feminine traits and collaborative approaches for problem-solving to the field, said Ms. Howard.

“Girls are often told by their parents they are not good enough, not smart enough. This is a safe environment for them to hone their skills, which will help them later on,” she said.

Already they are feeling confident.

“This feels like something extraordinary – a real step towards a future I once thought was out of reach,” said Ms. Maharjan.

“I think there will be equality in space exploration in not so long of a time,” added Ms. DeGros.

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‘Our work is largely invisible’: Journey from outer space to frontline aid worker

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Ahead of donning a beige WFP vest and boots to face hurricanes, wars and refugee camps, the Portuguese scientist worked with satellite imagery and cartography, creating maps to support humanitarian missions, until he realised he didn’t want to stay behind a computer screen.

On the occasion of World Humanitarian Day, marked annually on 19 August, Mr. Matos shared his story with UN News.

Pedro Matos joined the WFP response team following the deadly Cyclone Idai in Mozambique in 2019. (file)

From hurricanes to war

“At a certain point, it just wasn’t enough,” he recalled about his space engineering job. “I didn’t want to be making maps for other people to go and do humanitarian responses. I want to take those maps and be the one to do the responding.”

That’s exactly what he did. At WFP, he first developed maps on the ground and then went on to coordinate the agency’s emergency operations.

Since then, he has visited dozens of countries often at the epicentre of crises, from Hurricane Idai in Mozambique to the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

In 2018, Pedro Matos looks at the Kutupalong refugee camp where Rohingya refugees live. (file)

‘Like moving an entire government’

Coordinating in an emergency response is like “moving an entire government”, where each UN agency represents a “ministry” and the response only works when everyone comes together over the four essential areas in a crisis response: food, shelter, water and health.

Having just returned from a mission in Bangladesh, he described efforts to respond at Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee camp and home to 700,000 people who fled violence in Myanmar.

“We’ve been able to provide better conditions for people to live in this limbo with a little more comfort,” he said, also remembering his visit there in 2018 at the height of the crisis.

At the time, “a million people crossed the border in a month.” Today, although they remain in “limbo”, he pointed to improvements such as more monsoon-resistant homes and roads, gas stoves and reforestation.

Pedro Matos on board a humanitarian aid flight after Cyclone Idai in Mozambique. (file)

Heart-shredding challenges and profound rewards

The job has meant both challenges and rewards.

“We’ve also had a few instances where we’ve been kidnapped, or come under fire, but it’s not the things that happen to us that impact us the most,” he said. “It’s the things that happen to others that have the most impact.”

Hurricane Idai in Mozambique was a Category 5 hurricane that hit Beira in 2019 was one of the biggest and most intense crisis, but also most rewarding, he said.

“There’s this mix of something that was very intense and hard because we couldn’t reach everyone, but at the same time, the fact was that there were many people – tens or hundreds of thousands of people – who would have died if we hadn’t been there,” he said. “That was the most impactful response in my 17 years at the United Nations.”

When he was in Yemen, “we were bombed 20 times a day” in the capital, Sana’a, he said, adding that “there’s a strange normalcy” that develops.

“We find ourselves saying things like, ‘no, that wasn’t very far; it was only 500 metres from here,’” he said. “It’s something I never thought I’d think or say before doing this work.”

When reaching central Ukraine several weeks after Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022, he called the situation “very intense”. Within a week, he and his colleagues began distributing money to people coming from the frontlines.

We couldn’t reach everyone, but there were tens or hundreds of thousands of people who would have died if we hadn’t been there.

“When we interviewed people and asked them what they were doing with the money we gave them, it was very gratifying,” he said. “It was beautiful.”

Those who had been wounded in the war were using the money to buy painkillers. Others used it to pay for gas to escape the frontlines. One mother had been able to buy her daughter a scoop of ice cream for the first time since the war began.

“Her daughter was delighted,” he said. “There are very rewarding moments.”

Feeding millions every day

“We all think we know what the humanitarian or aid sector is,” Mr. Matos explained, adding that the scale during a crisis is much, much larger.

“I thought we’d be rehabilitating schools, feeding 100 people,” he continued. “I never imagined I’d be feeding 13 million people a day in Yemen. The scale is absolutely incredible.”

However, humanitarian work is often seen as a separate job, he said. Almost every profession that exists in private and government sectors also exists in an aid landscape, from lawyers, those who work in procurement, like in supermarkets, and human resources.

“I basically do the same work as social workers or firefighters,” he said. “They do it here every day, and I do it elsewhere. But, our work is in the same field and very similar.”

A toddler eats a food supplement, as part of WFP’s nutrition programme, in Mokha, Taiz, in Yemen.

The value of a Nobel Prize

WFP was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020, a recognition that Mr. Matos received with humility.

“Our work is largely invisible, despite feeding 120 million people every day,” he said. “It gave us a platform to raise awareness about crises like Congo, Myanmar, Sudan and Gaza, which often go unnoticed.”

Our work is largely invisible, despite feeding 120 million people every day.

He said his job is to give voice to the voiceless when crises fade from news headlines. Despite the difficulties and risks across his career, Mr. Matos has no doubt about the most important lesson he learned.

“People are essentially good,” he said. “When faced with the imminence of tragedy, people are fundamentally good and want to help others, even if that other person is very different. It was good to realise this because it’s not always obvious when we’re far from these crises.”

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Space is not the final frontier – it is the foundation of our future: UN deputy chief

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Addressing delegates at a UN forum on peaceful uses of outer space, Amina Mohammed urged greater international cooperation as the world becomes increasingly reliant on satellites for everything from disaster response to climate monitoring.

“Space is not the final frontier. It is the foundation of our present,” she said.

“Without satellites orbiting overhead right now, global food systems would collapse within weeks. Emergency responders would lose their lifelines. Climate scientists would be flying blind. And our hopes of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) would be out of reach,” she added.

Expanding access to space

For nearly seven decades, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space – the forum’s official name, has advanced international cooperation through five space treaties, sustainability guidelines and the Space 2030 Agenda.

Ms. Mohammed highlighted the UN’s efforts through the Office for Outer Space Affairs (OOSA), in helping make space more accessible – particularly for the more than half of UN Member States that still lack a satellite in orbit.

OOSA’s programmes are opening opportunities for youth and women in developing countries, cultivating a more inclusive new generation of space leaders.

It also supports countries in building their space capabilities through technical workshops and assistance for emerging programmes, having assisted Kenya, Guatemala, Moldova and Mauritius in launching their first satellites.

Similarly, it is helping countries like Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago and Ghana, use satellite data to create detailed digital models of entire cities, allowing faster disaster response and saving lives.

Space and sustainable development

Fresh from the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Sevilla, Spain, Ms. Mohammed stressed that the areas the UN defines as critical for sustainable development acceleration all depend on space technologies.

She also relayed a critical message from the conference: “In an era of constrained investment, we must align capital with high-impact solutions,” she said. “Space is one of them.”

“The view from space shows no countries, no borders – only one shared planet, one common home. Let that perspective guide you as you build the governance frameworks for space exploration and use,” she concluded.

“Let us make space a catalyst for achieving the SDGs.” 

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Human Rights Council hears alarming updates on executions in Iran and global civic space crackdown

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At least 975 people were executed in Iran in 2024, the highest number reported since 2015, according to a report Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada Al-Nashif, presented to the Geneva-based Council on Wednesday. 

Of the total executions, just over half were for drug-related offenses, 43 per cent for murder, two per cent for sexual offenses, and three per cent for security-related charges. At least four executions were carried out publicly. 

“These cases are marked by serious allegations of torture and due process violations, including lack of access to a lawyer,” said Ms. Al-Nashif. 

Violence and discrimination against women

At least 31 women were reportedly executed in Iran last year, up from 22 in 2023. Of the 19 women executed for murder, nine had been convicted of killing their husbands in cases involving domestic violence or forced or child marriage, areas in which Iranian women have no legal protections.

Some executions were reportedly linked to protests that began in September 2022 under the banner “Women, Life, and Freedom.”

Beyond executions, femicide cases surged, with 179 reported in 2024 compared to 55 the year before. Many stemmed from so-called “honour” crimes or family disputes, often involving women and girls seeking divorce or rejecting marriage proposals.

Ms. Al-Nashif also warned that the suspended Chastity and Hijab Law, if enacted, would pose a serious threat to women’s rights. Penalties for violations such as improper dress could include heavy fines, travel bans, long-term imprisonment, or even the death penalty.

In addition, of the 125 journalists prosecuted in 2024, 40 were women, many reporting on human rights and women’s rights issues.

Religious and ethnic minorities

“In 2024, the death penalty continued to have a disproportionate impact on minority groups,” Ms. Al-Nashif told the Council.

At least 108 Baluchi and 84 Kurdish prisoners were executed in 2024, representing 11 and 9 per cent of the total, respectively.

The report also raised concerns over the lack of official data on the socioeconomic conditions of ethnic and ethno-religious minorities and non-citizens, which hampers efforts to assess their situation and measure the impact of targeted policies and programmes.

Looking ahead

While Iran continued engagement with the Office of the UN High Commissioner and other human rights mechanisms, it denied access to the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“Our Office remains ready to continue and build on its engagement with the Iranian authorities on the range of issues highlighted in the report of the Secretary-General for the promotion and protection of all human rights,” Ms. Al-Nashif concluded. 

Global ‘Super Election’ cycle undermined democratic participation

In the Council’s afternoon session, Gina Romero, UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, presented her report on how the 2023–2025 “super election” cycle has affected civic space around the world.  

In 2024, half of the world’s population elected their local, national and international representatives. While Ms. Romero’s report on this cycle does not assess the integrity of the elections, it identifies troubling global patterns of systematic repression of the exercise of peaceful assembly and association.

“The misuse of restrictive laws, smear campaigns, disinformation targeting civil society intensified globally in the super electoral cycle, undermining electoral participation and freedom of association,” she said.  

Political repression and violence

As criminal justice systems are used to repress the opposition, leaders and members of political parties faced undue restrictions and political persecution. Civil society activists and election observers have also faced harassment, arbitrary detention, torture and murder.  

“When political parties, civil society, and peaceful assemblies are suppressed, genuine political pluralism and competition cannot exist,” argued Ms. Romero. “I stress that these conditions are incompatible with free and genuine elections and risk legitimising undemocratic rule.”

Minority representation

Ms. Romero also underscored that women’s political leadership remains severely underrepresented, while LGBTIQ individuals and their organizations faced attacks during the super electoral cycle.  

Both groups experienced physical and online political violence, restricting their electoral participation and accelerating the decline of their rights after the elections.

Calls to protect freedoms  

Amid global crises and a rapid democratic decline, Ms. Romero emphasized the urgent need to protect the rights to peaceful assembly and association throughout the entire electoral cycle.  

She outlined key recommendations, including strengthening legal protections before elections, ensuring accountability afterward, regulating digital technologies and promoting non-discriminatory participation throughout.  

“Dissent is a fundamental element of democratic societies,” she concluded in Spanish. “Rather than being suppressed, it should be welcomed and permanently protected.” 

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NASA’s Perseverance Rover Gets the Dirt on Mars

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The mission’s first two samples of regolith – broken rock and dust – could help scientists better understand the Red Planet and engineers prepare for future missions there.

NASA’s Perseverance rover snagged two new samples from the Martian surface on Dec. 2 and 6. But unlike the 15 rock cores collected to date, these newest samples came from a pile of wind-blown sand and dust similar to but smaller than a dune. Now contained in special metal collection tubes, one of these two samples will be considered for deposit on the Martian surface sometime this month as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.

Scientists want to study Martian samples with powerful lab equipment on Earth to search for signs of ancient microbial life and to better understand the processes that have shaped the surface of Mars. Most of the samples will be rock; however, researchers also want to examine regolith – broken rock and dust – not only because of what it can teach us about geological processes and the environment on Mars, but also to mitigate some of the challenges astronauts will face on the Red Planet. Regolith can affect everything from spacesuits to solar panels, so it’s just as interesting to engineers as it is to scientists.

Two holes are left in the Martian surface after NASA’s Perseverance rover used a specialized drill bit to collect the mission’s first samples of regolith on Dec. 2 and 6, 2022. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

As with rock cores, these latest samples were collected using a drill on the end of the rover’s robotic arm. But for the regolith samples, Perseverance used a drill bit that looks like a spike with small holes on one end to gather loose material.

Engineers designed the special drill bit after extensive testing with simulated regolith developed by JPL. Called Mojave Mars Simulant, it’s made of volcanic rock crushed into a variety of particle sizes, from fine dust to coarse pebbles, based on images of regolith and data collected by previous Mars missions.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this image of regolith – broken rock and dust – on Dec. 2, 2022. This regolith will be considered for deposit on the Martian surface as part of the Mars Sample Return campaign. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

“Everything we learn about the size, shape, and chemistry of regolith grains helps us design and test better tools for future missions,” said Iona Tirona of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the Perseverance mission. Tirona was the activity lead for operations to collect the recent regolith sample. “The more data we have, the more realistic our simulants can be.”

The Challenge of Dust

Studying regolith up close could help engineers design future Mars missions – as well as the equipment used by future Martian astronauts. Dust and regolith can damage spacecraft and science instruments alike. Regolith can jam sensitive parts and slow down rovers on the surface. The grains could also pose unique challenges to astronauts: Lunar regolith was discovered to be sharp enough to tear microscopic holes in spacesuits during the Apollo missions to the Moon.

Regolith could be helpful if packed against a habitat to shield astronauts from radiation, but it also contains risks: The Martian surface contains perchlorate, a toxic chemical that could threaten the health of astronauts if large amounts were accidentally inhaled or ingested.

“If we have a more permanent presence on Mars, we need to know how the dust and regolith will interact with our spacecraft and habitats,” said Perseverance team member Erin Gibbons, a McGill University doctoral candidate who uses Mars regolith simulants as part of her work with the rover’s rock-vaporizing laser, called SuperCam.

“Some of those dust grains could be as fine as cigarette smoke, and could get into an astronaut’s breathing apparatus,” added Gibbons, who was previously part of a NASA program studying human-robot exploration of Mars. “We want a fuller picture of which materials would be harmful to our explorers, whether they’re human or robotic.”

Besides answering questions about health and safety hazards, a tube of Martian regolith could inspire scientific wonder. Looking at it under a microscope would reveal a kaleidoscope of grains in different shapes and colors. Each one would be like a jigsaw puzzle piece, all of them joined together by wind and water over billions of years.

“There are so many different materials mixed into Martian regolith,” said Libby Hausrath of University of Nevada, Las Vegas, one of Perseverance’s sample return scientists. “Each sample represents an integrated history of the planet’s surface.”

As an expert on Earth’s soils, Hausrath is most interested in finding signs of interaction between water and rock. On Earth, life is found practically everywhere there’s water. The same could have been true for Mars billions of years ago, when the planet’s climate was much more like Earth’s.

Also Read:

Wind blows, ground moves on Mars, says study after INSIGHT lander findings

Mars cracks show water dried up 3.5 billion years ago on Red Planet

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Watching water droplets merge on the International Space Station

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Understanding how water droplets spread and coalesce is essential for scenarios in everyday life, such as raindrops falling off cars, planes, and roofs, and for applications in energy generation, aerospace engineering, and microscale cell adhesion. However, these phenomena are difficult to model and challenging to observe experimentally.

In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Cornell University and Clemson University designed and analyzed droplet experiments that were done on the International Space Station.

Droplets usually appear as small spherical caps of water because their surface tension exceeds gravity.

“If the drops get much larger, they begin to lose their spherical shape, and gravity squishes them into something more like puddles,” said author Josh McCraney of Cornell University. “If we want to analyze drops on Earth, we need to do it at a very small scale.”

Droplets (on the centimeter scale) merge during an experiment on the International Space Station./CREDIT:Josh McCraney

But at small scales, droplets dynamics are too fast to observe. Hence, the ISS. The lower gravity in space means the team could investigate larger droplets, moving from a couple millimeters in diameter to 10 times that length.

The researchers sent four different surfaces with various roughness properties to the ISS, where they were mounted to a lab table. Cameras recorded the droplets as they spread and merged.

“NASA astronauts Kathleen Rubins and Michael Hopkins would deposit a single drop of desired size at a central location on the surface. This drop is near, but not touching, a small porthole pre-drilled into the surface,” said McCraney. “The astronaut then injected water through the porthole, which collects and essentially grows an adjacent drop. Injection continues until the two drops touch, at which point they coalesce.”

NASA/Photo: Nasa.gov

The experiments aimed to test the Davis-Hocking model, a simple way to simulate droplets. If a droplet of water sits on a surface, part of it touches the air and creates an interface, while the section in contact with the surface forms an edge or contact line. The Davis-Hocking model describes the equation for the contact line. The experimental results confirmed and expanded the parameter space of the Davis-Hocking model.

As the original principal investigator of the project, the late professor Paul Steen of Cornell University had written grants, traveled to collaborators worldwide, trained doctoral students, and meticulously analyzed related terrestrial studies, all with the desire to see his work successfully conducted aboard the ISS. Tragically, Steen died only months before his experiments launched.

“While it’s tragic he isn’t here to see the results, we hope this work makes him and his family proud,” said McCraney.

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Webb offers never-before-seen details of early universe, distant galaxy MACS0647-JD

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was specially designed to detect the faint infrared light from very distant galaxies and give astronomers a glimpse at the early universe. The nature of galaxies during this early period of our universe is not well known nor understood. But with the help of gravitational lensing by a cluster of galaxies in the foreground, faint background galaxies can be magnified and also appear multiple times in different parts of the image.

Today, we sit down with three astronomers working on Webb to talk about their latest findings. The team members are Dan Coe of AURA/STScI for the European Space Agency and the Johns Hopkins University; Tiger Hsiao of the Johns Hopkins University; and Rebecca Larson of the University of Texas at Austin. These scientists have been observing the distant galaxy MACS0647-JD with Webb, and they’ve found something interesting.

Dan Coe: I discovered this galaxy MACS0647-JD 10 years ago with the Hubble Space Telescope. At the time, I’d never worked on high redshift galaxies, and then I found this one that was potentially the most distant at redshift 11, about 97 percent of the way back to the big bang. With Hubble, it was just this pale, red dot. We could tell it was really small, just a tiny galaxy in the first 400 million years of the universe. Now we look with Webb, and we’re able to resolve TWO objects! We’re actively discussing whether these are two galaxies or two clumps of stars within a galaxy. We don’t know, but these are the questions that Webb is designed to help us answer.

Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao: You can also see that the colors between the two objects are so different. One’s bluer; the other one is redder. The blue gas and the red gas have different characteristics. The blue one actually has very young star formation and almost no dust, but the small, red object has more dust inside, and is older. And their stellar masses are also probably different.

It’s really interesting that we see two structures in such a small system. We might be witnessing a galaxy merger in the very early universe. If this is the most distant merger, I will be really ecstatic!

Dan Coe: Due to the gravitational lensing of the massive galaxy cluster MACS0647, it’s lensed into three images: JD1, JD2, and JD3. They’re magnified by factors of eight, five, and two, respectively.

Rebecca Larson: Up to this point, we haven’t really been able to study galaxies in the early universe in great detail. We had only tens of them prior to Webb. Studying them can help us understand how they evolved into the ones like the galaxy we live in today. And also, how the universe evolved throughout time.

The U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp highlighting NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope on Sept. 8, 2022. U.S. Postal Service Art Director Derry Noyes designed the stamp using existing art by James Vaughan and an image provided by NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Credits: U.S. Postal Service

I think my favorite part is, for so many new Webb image we get, if you look in the background, there are all these little dots—and those are all galaxies! Every single one of them. It’s amazing the amount of information that we’re getting that we just weren’t able to see before. And this is not a deep field. This is not a long exposure. We haven’t even really tried to use this telescope to look at one spot for a long time. This is just the beginning!

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s largest, most powerful, and most complex space science telescope ever built. 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.

NASA: Are you in an area of Lucy then take a photograph, post it to social media

NASA’s Swift, Fermi missions detect exceptional cosmic blast

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Astronomers around the world are captivated by an unusually bright and long-lasting pulse of high-energy radiation that swept over Earth Sunday, Oct. 9. The emission came from a gamma-ray burst (GRB) – the most powerful class of explosions in the universe – that ranks among the most luminous events known.

On Sunday morning Eastern time, a wave of X-rays and gamma rays passed through the solar system, triggering detectors aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, and Wind spacecraft, as well as others. Telescopes around the world turned to the site to study the aftermath, and new observations continue.

Called GRB 221009A, the explosion provided an unexpectedly exciting start to the 10th Fermi Symposium, a gathering of gamma-ray astronomers now underway in Johannesburg, South Africa. “It’s safe to say this meeting really kicked off with a bang – everyone’s talking about this,” said Judy Racusin, a Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who is attending the conference.


Swift’s X-Ray Telescope captured the afterglow of GRB 221009A about an hour after it was first detected. The bright rings form as a result of X-rays scattered from otherwise unobservable dust layers within our galaxy that lie in the direction of the burst./Credit: NASA/Swift/A. Beardmore (University of Leicester)

The signal, originating from the direction of the constellation Sagitta, had traveled an estimated 1.9 billion years to reach Earth. Astronomers think it represents the birth cry of a new black hole, one that formed in the heart of a massive star collapsing under its own weight. In these circumstances, a nascent black hole drives powerful jets of particles traveling near the speed of light. The jets pierce through the star, emitting X-rays and gamma rays as they stream into space.

The light from this ancient explosion brings with it new insights into stellar collapse, the birth of a black hole, the behavior and interaction of matter near the speed of light, the conditions in a distant galaxy – and much more. Another GRB this bright may not appear for decades.

According to a preliminary analysis, Fermi’s Large Area Telescope (LAT) detected the burst for more than 10 hours. One reason for the burst’s brightness and longevity is that, for a GRB, it lies relatively close to us.

NASA

“This burst is much closer than typical GRBs, which is exciting because it allows us to detect many details that otherwise would be too faint to see,” said Roberta Pillera, a Fermi LAT Collaboration member who led initial communications about the burst and a doctoral student at the Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy. “But it’s also among the most energetic and luminous bursts ever seen regardless of distance, making it doubly exciting.”

The burst also provided a long-awaited inaugural observing opportunity for a link between two experiments on the International Space Station – NASA’s NICER X-ray telescope and a Japanese detector called the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI). Activated in April, the connection is dubbed the Orbiting High-energy Monitor Alert Network (OHMAN). It allows NICER to rapidly turn to outbursts detected by MAXI, actions that previously required intervention by scientists on the ground.

“OHMAN provided an automated alert that enabled NICER to follow up within three hours, as soon as the source became visible to the telescope,” said Zaven Arzoumanian, the NICER science lead at Goddard. “Future opportunities could result in response times of a few minutes.”

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NASA: Are you in an area of Lucy then take a photograph, post it to social media

NASA: Are you in an area of Lucy then take a photograph, post it to social media

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On Oct. 16, at 7:04 a.m. EDT, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, the first mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, will skim the Earth’s atmosphere, passing a mere 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the surface. By sling-shotting past Earth on the first anniversary of its launch, Lucy will gain some of the orbital energy it needs to travel to this never-before-visited population of asteroids.

The Trojan asteroids are trapped in orbits around the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter, either far ahead of or behind the giant planet. Lucy is currently one year into a twelve-year voyage. This gravity assist will place Lucy on a new trajectory for a two-year orbit, at which time it will return to Earth for a second gravity assist. This second assist will give Lucy the energy it needs to cross the main asteroid belt, where it will observe asteroid Donaldjohanson, and then travel into the leading Trojan asteroid swarm. There, Lucy will fly past six Trojan asteroids: Eurybates and its satellite Queta, Polymele and its yet unnamed satellite, Leucus, and Orus. Lucy will then return to Earth for a third gravity assist in 2030 to re-target the spacecraft for a rendezvous with the Patroclus-Menoetius binary asteroid pair in the trailing Trojan asteroid swarm.

This illustration shows the Lucy spacecraft passing one of the Trojan Asteroids near Jupiter./CREDIT:Southwest Research Institute

For this first gravity assist, Lucy will appear to approach Earth from the direction of the Sun. While this means that observers on Earth will not be able to see Lucy in the days before the event, Lucy will be able to take images of the nearly full Earth and Moon. Mission scientists will use these images to calibrate the instruments.

Lucy’s trajectory will bring the spacecraft very close to Earth, lower even than the International Space Station, which means that Lucy will pass through a region full of earth-orbiting satellites and debris. To ensure the safety of the spacecraft, NASA developed procedures to anticipate any potential hazard and, if needed, to execute a small maneuver to avoid a collision.

“The Lucy team has prepared two different maneuvers,” says Coralie Adam, Lucy deputy navigation team chief from KinetX Aerospace in Simi Valley, California. “If the team detects that Lucy is at risk of colliding with a satellite or piece of debris, then–12 hours before the closest approach to Earth –the spacecraft will execute one of these, altering the time of closest approach by either two or four seconds. This is a small correction, but it is enough to avoid a potentially catastrophic collision.”

NASA/Photo: Nasa.gov

Lucy will be passing the Earth at such a low altitude that the team had to include the effect of atmospheric drag when designing this flyby. Lucy’s large solar arrays increase this effect.

“In the original plan, Lucy was actually going to pass about 30 miles closer to the Earth,” says Rich Burns, Lucy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “However, when it became clear that we might have to execute this flyby with one of the solar arrays unlatched, we chose to use a bit of our fuel reserves so that the spacecraft passes the Earth at a slightly higher altitude, reducing the disturbance from the atmospheric drag on the spacecraft’s solar arrays.”

At around 6:55 a.m. EDT, Lucy will first be visible to observers on the ground in Western Australia (6:55 p.m. for those observers). Lucy will quickly pass overhead, clearly visible to the naked eye for a few minutes before disappearing at 7:02 a.m. EDT as the spacecraft passes into the Earth’s shadow. Lucy will continue over the Pacific Ocean in darkness and emerge from the Earth’s shadow at 7:26 a.m. EDT. If the clouds cooperate, sky watchers in the western United States should be able to get a view of Lucy with the aid of binoculars.

“The last time we saw the spacecraft, it was being enclosed in the payload fairing in Florida,” said Hal Levison, Lucy principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Boulder, Colorado office. “It is exciting that we will be able to stand here in Colorado and see the spacecraft again. And this time Lucy will be in the sky.”

Lucy will then rapidly recede from the Earth’s vicinity, passing by the Moon and taking a few more calibration images before continuing out into interplanetary space.

“I’m especially excited by the final few images that Lucy will take of the Moon,” said John Spencer, acting deputy project scientist at SwRI. “Counting craters to understand the collisional history of the Trojan asteroids is key to the science that Lucy will carry out, and this will be the first opportunity to calibrate Lucy’s ability to detect craters by comparing it to previous observations of the Moon by other space missions.”

The public is invited to join the #WaveToLucy social media campaign by posting images of themselves waving towards the spacecraft and tagging the @NASASolarSystem account. Additionally, if you are in an area where Lucy will be visible, take a photograph of Lucy and post it to social media with the #SpotTheSpacecraft hashtag.

Instructions for observing Lucy from your location are available here.

 

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Are we alone in the universe? JPL’s OWLS, other tools to help search for life in deep space

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A team at the Lab has invented new technologies that could be used by future missions to analyze liquid samples from watery worlds and look for signs of alien life.

Are we alone in the universe? An answer to that age-old question has seemed tantalizingly within reach since the discovery of ice-encrusted moons in our solar system with potentially habitable subsurface oceans. But looking for evidence of life in a frigid sea hundreds of millions of miles away poses tremendous challenges. The science equipment used must be exquisitely complex yet capable of withstanding intense radiation and cryogenic temperatures. What’s more, the instruments must be able to take diverse, independent, complementary measurements that together could produce scientifically defensible proof of life.

To address some of the difficulties that future life-detection missions might encounter, a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has developed OWLS, a powerful suite of science instruments unlike any other. Short for Oceans Worlds Life Surveyor, OWLS is designed to ingest and analyze liquid samples. It features eight instruments – all automated – that, in a lab on Earth, would require the work of several dozen people.

JPL’s OWLS combines powerful chemical-analysis instruments that look for the building blocks of life with microscopes that search for cells. This version of OWLS would be miniaturized and customized for use on future missions. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

One vision for OWLS is to use it to analyze frozen water from a vapor plume erupting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. “How do you take a sprinkling of ice a billion miles from Earth and determine – in the one chance you’ve got, while everyone on Earth is waiting with bated breath – whether there’s evidence of life?” said Peter Willis, the project’s co-principal investigator and science lead. “We wanted to create the most powerful instrument system you could design for that situation to look for both chemical and biological signs of life.”

OWLS has been funded by JPL Next, a technology accelerator program run by the Lab’s Office of Space Technology. In June, after a half-decade of work, the project team tested its equipment – currently the size of a few filing cabinets – on the salty waters of Mono Lake in California’s Eastern Sierra. OWLS found chemical and cellular evidence of life, using its built-in software to identify that evidence without human intervention.

“We have demonstrated the first generation of the OWLS suite,” Willis said. “The next step is to customize and miniaturize it for specific mission scenarios.”

https://indiainternationaltimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/e2-OWLS_microscope_video-9s-1.mp4?_=1
Challenges, Solutions

A key difficulty the OWLS team faced was how to process liquid samples in space. On Earth, scientists can rely on gravity, a reasonable lab temperature, and air pressure to keep samples in place, but those conditions don’t exist on a spacecraft hurtling through the solar system or on the surface of a frozen moon. So the team designed two instruments that can extract a liquid sample and process it in the conditions of space.

Since it’s not clear what form life might take on an ocean world, OWLS also needed to include the broadest possible array of instruments, capable of measuring a size range from single molecules to microorganisms. To that end, the project joined two subsystems: one that employs a variety of chemical analysis techniques using multiple instruments, and one with several microscopes to examine visual clues.

Water ice and vapor are seen spraying from Saturn’s frozen moon Enceladus, which hosts a hidden subsurface ocean, in this image captured by NASA’s Cassini mission during a 2010 flyby. OWLS is designed to ingest and analyze liquid samples from such plumes. Credit:NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute 

Full Image Details

OWLS’ microscope system would be the first in space capable of imaging cells. Developed in conjunction with scientists at Portland State University in Oregon, it combines a digital holographic microscope, which can identify cells and motion throughout the volume of a sample, with two fluorescent imagers, which use dyes to observe chemical content and cellular structures. Together, they provide overlapping views at a resolution of less than a single micron, or about 0.00004 inches.

Dubbed Extant Life Volumetric Imaging System (ELVIS), the microscope subsystem has no moving parts – a rarity. And it uses machine-learning algorithms to both home in on lifelike movement and detect objects lit up by fluorescent molecules, whether naturally occurring in living organisms or as added dyes bound to parts of cells.

“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack without having to pick up and examine every single piece of hay,” said co-principal investigator Chris Lindensmith, who leads the microscope team. “We’re basically grabbing big armfuls of hay and saying, ‘Oh, there’s needles here, here, and here.’”

To examine much tinier forms of evidence, OWLS uses its Organic Capillary Electrophoresis Analysis System (OCEANS), which essentially pressure-cooks liquid samples and feeds them to instruments that search for the chemical building blocks of life: all varieties of amino acids, as well as fatty acids and organic compounds. The system is so sensitive, it can even detect unknown forms of carbon. Willis, who led development of OCEANS, compares it to a shark that can smell just one molecule of blood in a billion molecules of water – and also tell the blood type. It would be only the second instrument system to perform liquid chemical analysis in space, after the Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument on NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander.

OCEANS uses a technique called capillary electrophoresis – basically, running an electric current through a sample to separate it into its components. The sample is then routed to three types of detectors, including a mass spectrometer, the most powerful tool for identifying organic compounds.

Sending It Home

These subsystems produce massive amounts of data, just an estimated 0.0001% of which could be sent back to faraway Earth because of data transmission rates that are more limited than dial-up internet from the 1980s. So OWLS has been designed with what’s called “onboard science instrument autonomy.” Using algorithms, computers would analyze, summarize, prioritize, and select only the most interesting data to be sent home while also offering a “manifest” of information still on board.

“We’re starting to ask questions now that necessitate more sophisticated instruments,” said Lukas Mandrake, the project’s instrument autonomy system engineer. “Are some of these other planets habitable? Is there defensible scientific evidence for life rather than a hint that it might be there? That requires instruments that take a lot of data, and that’s what OWLS and its science autonomy is set up to accomplish.”

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No Picnic in the Clouds! It’s JPL aerobot

No Picnic in the Clouds! It’s JPL aerobot

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JPL’s Venus Aerial Robotic Balloon Prototype Aces Test Flights

A scaled-down version of the aerobot that could one day take to the Venusian skies successfully completed two Nevada test flights, marking a milestone for the project.

The intense pressure, heat, and corrosive gases of Venus’ surface are enough to disable even the most robust spacecraft in a matter of hours. But a few dozen miles overhead, the thick atmosphere is far more hospitable to robotic exploration.

One concept envisions pairing a balloon with a Venus orbiter, the two working in tandem to study Earth’s sister planet. While the orbiter would remain far above the atmosphere, taking science measurements and serving as a communication relay, an aerial robotic balloon, or aerobot, about 40 feet (12 meters) in diameter would travel into it.

To test this concept, a team of scientists and engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the Near Space Corporation in Tillamook, Oregon, recently carried out two successful flights of a prototype balloon that’s about a third of that size.

The shimmering silver balloon ascended more than 4,000 feet (1 kilometer) over Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to a region of Earth’s atmosphere that approximates the temperature and density the aerobot would experience about 180,000 feet (55 kilometers) above Venus. Coordinated by Near Space, these tests represent a milestone in proving the concept’s suitability for accessing a region of Venus’ atmosphere too low for orbiters to reach, but where a balloon mission could operate for weeks or even months.

“We’re extremely happy with the performance of the prototype. It was launched, demonstrated controlled-altitude maneuvers, and was recovered in good condition after both flights,” said robotics technologist Jacob Izraelevitz, who leads the balloon development as the JPL principal investigator of the flight tests. “We’ve recorded a mountain of data from these flights and are looking forward to using it to improve our simulation models before exploring our sister planet.”

The only balloon-borne exploration of Venus’ atmosphere to date was a part of the twin Soviet Vega 1 and 2 missions that arrived at the planet in 1985. The two balloons (which were about 11.5 feet, or 3.6 meters, in diameter when filled with helium) lasted a little over 46 hours before their instruments’ batteries ran out. Their short time in the Venusian atmosphere provided a tantalizing hint of the science that could be achieved by a larger, longer-duration balloon platform floating within the planet’s atmosphere.

A prototype aerial robotic balloon, or aerobot, is readied for a sunrise test flight at Black Rock Desert, Nevada, in July 2022, by team members from JPL and Near Space Corporation. The aerobot successfully completed two flights, demonstrating controlled altitude flight. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

‘Roving’ the Skies

The ultimate goal of the aerobot would be to travel on the Venusian winds, floating from east to west, circumnavigating the planet for at least 100 days. The aerobot would serve as a platform for a range of science investigations, from monitoring the atmosphere for acoustic waves generated by venusquakes to analyzing the chemical composition of the clouds. The accompanying orbiter would receive data from the aerobot and relay it to Earth while providing a global view of the planet.

Much like a Mars rover is commanded to drive to an interesting rock or other feature, the aerobot can be directed to raise and lower its altitude – something the Vega balloons couldn’t do – to conduct science between about 171,000 and 203,000 feet (52 and 62 kilometers) within Venus’ atmosphere.

The prototype balloon was fabricated using Near Space’s techniques for performance aerospace inflatables. Designed as a “balloon within a balloon,” it has a rigid inner reservoir filled with helium under high pressure and an encapsulating outer helium balloon that can expand and contract. To increase altitude, helium vents from the inner reservoir into the outer balloon, which expands to give the aerobot additional buoyancy. When it’s time to reduce altitude, helium is pumped back into the reservoir, causing the outer balloon to shrink and decrease the aerobot’s buoyancy.

“The success of these test flights is a huge deal for us: We’ve successfully demonstrated the technology we’ll need for investigating the clouds of Venus,” said Paul Byrne, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis and aerobot science collaborator. “These tests form the foundation for how we can achieve long-term robotic exploration high above Venus’ hellish surface.”

The one-third scale prototype aerobot is designed to withstand the corrosive chemicals in Venus’ atmosphere. During the flights, the balloon’s materials were tested for the first time, giving the team confidence that a larger aerobot design could operate in Venus skies. Credit: Near Space Corporation

No Picnic in the Clouds

While this region of Venus’ atmosphere is more forgiving than its lower reaches, long-duration flights in the rocky planet’s clouds, which contain sulfuric acid and other corrosive chemicals, would be no picnic. So the multilayered material developed for the aerobot’s outer balloon includes an acid-proof coating, a metallization layer to reduce solar heating, and a structural inner layer that keeps it strong enough to carry the science instruments below. New techniques have also been developed to ensure a long-duration acid-proof seal with minimal helium leakage from the seams.

“The materials being used for Venus survivability are challenging to fabricate with, and the robustness of handling we’ve demonstrated in the Nevada launch and recovery gives us confidence for balloon’s reliability on Venus,” said co-investigator Tim Lachenmeier, chief executive officer of Near Space.

While the recent Nevada tests were a milestone for a future concept designed with Venus in mind, the researchers say the technology could also be used by high-altitude science balloons that need to control their altitude in Earth’s skies.

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Webb Telescope, Hubble Telescope Capture Detailed images of DART Impact

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Two of NASA’s Great Observatories, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, have captured views of a unique NASA experiment designed to intentionally smash a spacecraft into a small asteroid in the world’s first-ever in-space test for planetary defense. These observations of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impact mark the first time that Webb and Hubble simultaneously observed the same celestial target.

On Sept. 26, 2022, at 7:14 pm EDT, DART intentionally crashed into Dimorphos, the asteroid moonlet in the double-asteroid system of Didymos. It was the world’s first test of the kinetic impact mitigation technique, using a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid that poses no threat to Earth, and modifying the object’s orbit. DART is a test for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards.

The coordinated Hubble and Webb observations are more than just an operational milestone for each telescope – there are also key science questions relating to the makeup and history of our solar system that researchers can explore when combining the capabilities of these observatories.

“Webb and Hubble show what we’ve always known to be true at NASA: We learn more when we work together,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “For the first time, Webb and Hubble have simultaneously captured imagery from the same target in the cosmos: an asteroid that was impacted by a spacecraft after a seven-million-mile journey. All of humanity eagerly awaits the discoveries to come from Webb, Hubble, and our ground-based telescopes – about the DART mission and beyond.”

Observations from Webb and Hubble together will allow scientists to gain knowledge about the nature of the surface of Dimorphos, how much material was ejected by the collision, and how fast it was ejected. Additionally, Webb and Hubble captured the impact in different wavelengths of light – Webb in infrared and Hubble in visible. Observing the impact across a wide array of wavelengths will reveal the distribution of particle sizes in the expanding dust cloud, helping to determine whether it threw off lots of big chunks or mostly fine dust. Combining this information, along with ground-based telescope observations, will help scientists to understand how effectively a kinetic impact can modify an asteroid’s orbit.

Webb Captures Impact Site Before and After Collision

Webb took one observation of the impact location before the collision took place, then several observations over the next few hours. Images from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) show a tight, compact core, with plumes of material appearing as wisps streaming away from the center of where the impact took place.

Observing the impact with Webb presented the flight operations, planning, and science teams with unique challenges, because of the asteroid’s speed of travel across the sky. As DART approached its target, the teams performed additional work in the weeks leading up to the impact to enable and test a method of tracking asteroids moving over three times faster than the original speed limit set for Webb.

“I have nothing but tremendous admiration for the Webb Mission Operations folks that made this a reality,” said principal investigator Cristina Thomas of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. “We have been planning these observations for years, then in detail for weeks, and I’m tremendously happy this has come to fruition.”

Scientists also plan to observe the asteroid system in the coming months using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). Spectroscopic data will provide researchers with insight into the asteroid’s chemical composition.

Webb observed the impact over five hours total and captured 10 images. The data was collected as part of Webb’s Cycle 1 Guaranteed Time Observation Program 1245 led by Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA).

Hubble Images Show Movement of Ejecta After Impact

Hubble also captured observations of the binary system ahead of the impact, then again 15 minutes after DART hit the surface of Dimorphos. Images from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 show the impact in visible light. Ejecta from the impact appear as rays stretching out from the body of the asteroid. The bolder, fanned-out spike of ejecta to the left of the asteroid is in the general direction from which DART approached.

Some of the rays appear to be curved slightly, but astronomers need to take a closer look to determine what this could mean. In the Hubble images, astronomers estimate that the brightness of the system increased by three times after impact, and saw that brightness hold steady, even eight hours after impact.

Description of the above images:  These images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, taken (left to right) 22 minutes, 5 hours, and 8.2 hours after NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally impacted Dimorphos, show expanding plumes of ejecta from the asteroid’s body. The Hubble images show ejecta from the impact that appear as rays stretching out from the body of the asteroid. The bolder, fanned-out spike of ejecta to the left of the asteroid is in the general direction from which DART approached. These observations, when combined with data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, will allow scientists to gain knowledge about the nature of the surface of Dimorphos, how much material was ejected by the collision, how fast it was ejected, and the distribution of particle sizes in the expanding dust cloud.
Credits: Science: NASA, ESA, Jian-Yang Li (PSI); image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Hubble plans to monitor the Didymos-Dimorphos system 10 more times over the next three weeks. These regular, relatively long-term observations as the ejecta cloud expands and fades over time will paint a more complete picture of the cloud’s expansion from the ejection to its disappearance.

“When I saw the data, I was literally speechless, stunned by the amazing detail of the ejecta that Hubble captured,” said Jian-Yang Li of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, who led the Hubble observations. “I feel lucky to witness this moment and be part of the team that made this happen.”

Hubble captured 45 images in the time immediately before and following DART’s impact with Dimorphos. The Hubble data was collected as part of Cycle 29 General Observers Program 16674.

“This is an unprecedented view of an unprecedented event,” summarized Andy Rivkin, DART investigation team lead of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

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).

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble and Webb science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.

Astronomers Detect Protective Shield Defending Pair of ‘Dwarf Galaxies’ with help of FUSE, Hubble

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For billions of years, the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxies – the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds – have followed a perilous journey. Orbiting one another as they are pulled in toward our home galaxy, they have begun to unravel, leaving behind trails of gaseous debris. And yet – to the puzzlement of astronomers – these dwarf galaxies remain intact, with ongoing vigorous star formation.

“A lot of people were struggling to explain how these streams of material could be there,” said Dhanesh Krishnarao, assistant professor at Colorado College. “If this gas was removed from these galaxies, how are they still forming stars?”

With the help of data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and a retired satellite called the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE), a team of astronomers led by Krishnarao has finally found the answer: the Magellanic system is surrounded by a corona, a protective shield of hot supercharged gas. This cocoons the two galaxies, preventing their gas supplies from being siphoned off by the Milky Way, and therefore allowing them to continue forming new stars.

Description of the above image:

Researchers have used spectroscopic observations of ultraviolet light from quasars to detect and map out the Magellanic Corona, a diffuse halo of hot, supercharged gas surrounding the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds. Shown here in purple, the corona stretches more than 100,000 light-years from the main mass of stars, gas, and dust that make up the Magellanic Clouds, intermingling with the hotter and more extensive corona that surrounds the Milky Way. The Magellanic Clouds, dwarf galaxies roughly 160,000 light-years from Earth, are the largest of the Milky Way’s satellites and are thought to be on their first in-falling passage around the Milky Way. This journey has begun to unravel what were once barred spirals with multiple arms into more irregular-shaped galaxies with long tails of debris. The corona is thought to act as a buffer protecting the dwarf galaxies’ vital star-forming gas from the gravitational pull of the much larger Milky Way. The detection of the Magellanic Corona was made by analyzing patterns in ultraviolet light from 28 distant background quasars. As the quasar light passes through the corona, certain wavelengths (colors) of ultraviolet light are absorbed. The quasar spectra become imprinted with the distinct signatures of carbon, oxygen, and silicon ions that make up the corona gas. Because each quasar probes a different part of the corona, the research team was also able to show that the amount of gas decreases with distance from the center of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This study used archival observations of quasars from Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE). Quasars have also been used to probe the Magellanic Stream, outflows from the Milky Way , and the halo surrounding the Andromeda Galaxy./Illustration Credits: STScI, Leah Hustak

 

This discovery, which was just published in Nature, addresses a novel aspect of galaxy evolution. “Galaxies envelope themselves in gaseous cocoons, which act as defensive shields against other galaxies,” said co-investigator Andrew Fox of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

Astronomers predicted the corona’s existence several years ago. “We discovered that if we included a corona in the simulations of the Magellanic Clouds falling onto the Milky Way, we could explain the mass of extracted gas for the first time,” explained Elena D’Onghia, a co-investigator at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “We knew that the Large Magellanic Cloud should be massive enough to have a corona.”

But although the corona stretches more than 100,000 light-years from the Magellanic clouds and covers a huge portion of the southern sky, it is effectively invisible. Mapping it out required scouring through 30 years of archived data for suitable measurements.

Researchers think that a galaxy’s corona is a remnant of the primordial cloud of gas that collapsed to form the galaxy billions of years ago. Although coronas have been seen around more distant dwarf galaxies, astronomers had never before been able to probe one in as much detail as this.

There’re lots of predictions from computer simulations about what they should look like, how they should interact over billions of years, but observationally we can’t really test most of them because dwarf galaxies are typically just too hard to detect,” said Krishnarao. Because they are right on our doorstep, the Magellanic Clouds provide an ideal opportunity to study how dwarf galaxies interact and evolve.

In search of direct evidence of the Magellanic Corona, the team combed through the Hubble and FUSE archives for ultraviolet observations of quasars located billions of light-years behind it. Quasars are the extremely bright cores of galaxies harboring massive active black holes. The team reasoned that although the corona would be too dim to see on its own, it should be visible as a sort of fog obscuring and absorbing distinct patterns of bright light from quasars in the background. Hubble observations of quasars were used in the past to map the corona surrounding the Andromeda galaxy.

By analyzing patterns in ultraviolet light from 28 quasars, the team was able to detect and characterize the material surrounding the Large Magellanic Cloud and confirm that the corona exists. As predicted, the quasar spectra are imprinted with the distinct signatures of carbon, oxygen, and silicon that make up the halo of hot plasma that surrounds the galaxy.

The ability to detect the corona required extremely detailed ultraviolet spectra. “The resolution of Hubble and FUSE were crucial for this study,” explained Krishnarao. “The corona gas is so diffuse, it’s barely even there.” In addition, it is mixed with other gases, including the streams pulled from the Magellanic Clouds and material originating in the Milky Way.

By mapping the results, the team also discovered that the amount of gas decreases with distance from the center of the Large Magellanic Cloud. “It’s a perfect telltale signature that this corona is really there,” said Krishnarao. “It really is cocooning the galaxy and protecting it.”

How can such a thin shroud of gas protect a galaxy from destruction?

“Anything that tries to pass into the galaxy has to pass through this material first, so it can absorb some of that impact,” explained Krishnarao. “In addition, the corona is the first material that can be extracted. While giving up a little bit of the corona, you’re protecting the gas that’s inside of the galaxy itself and able to form new stars.”

NASA-Built ‘Weather Sensors’ Capture Vital Data on Hurricane Ian

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A pair of microwave radiometers collected data on the storm as they passed over the Caribbean Sea aboard the International Space Station.

Two recently launched instruments that were designed and built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to provide forecasters data on weather over the open ocean captured images of Hurricane Ian on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022, as the storm approached Cuba on its way north toward the U.S. mainland.

COWVR (short for Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer) and TEMPEST (Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems) observe the planet’s atmosphere and surface from aboard the International Space Station, which passed in low-Earth orbit over the Caribbean Sea at about 12:30 a.m. EDT.

Ian made landfall in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province at 4:30 a.m. EDT, according to the National Hurricane Center. At that time, it was a Category 3 hurricane, with estimated wind speeds of 125 mph (205 kph).

From aboard the International Space Station, NASA-built instruments Compact Ocean Wind Vector Radiometer (COWVR) and Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems (TEMPEST) captured wind and water vapor data from Hurricane Ian as the storm neared Cuba. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The image above combines microwave emissions measurements from both COWVR and TEMPEST. White sections indicate the presence of clouds. Green portions indicate rain. Yellow, red, and black indicate where air and water vapor were moving most swiftly. Ian’s center is seen just off of Cuba’s southern coast, and the storm is shown covering the island with rain and wind.

Space News: Planetary-scale ‘heat wave’ discovered in Jupiter’s atmosphere

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An unexpected ‘heat wave’ of 700 degrees Celsius, extending 130,000 kilometres (10 Earth diameters) in Jupiter’s atmosphere, has been discovered. James O’Donoghue, of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has presented the results this week at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2022 in Granada.

Jupiter’s atmosphere, famous for its characteristic multicoloured vortices, is also unexpectedly hot: in fact, it is hundreds of degrees hotter than models predict. Due to its orbital distance millions of kilometres from the Sun, the giant planet receives under 4% of the amount of sunlight compared to Earth, and its upper atmosphere should theoretically be a frigid -70 degrees Celsius. Instead, its cloud tops are measured everywhere at over 400 degrees Celsius.

“Last year we produced – and presented at EPSC2021 – the first maps of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere capable of identifying the dominant heat sources,” said Dr O’Donoghue. “Thanks to these maps, we demonstrated that Jupiter’s auroras were a possible mechanism that could explain these temperatures.”

Just like the Earth, Jupiter experiences auroras around its poles as an effect of the solar wind. However, while Earth’s auroras are transient and only occur when solar activity is intense, auroras at Jupiter are permanent and have a variable intensity. The powerful auroras can heat the region around the poles to over 700 degrees Celsius, and global winds can redistribute the heat globally around Jupiter.

A panning-view of Jupiter’s upper atmospheric temperatures, 1000 kilometers above the cloud tops. Jupiter is shown on top of a visible image for context. In this snapshot, the auroral region (near the northern pole, in yellow/white) appears to have shed a massive, planetary-scale wave of heating towards the equator. The feature is over 130,000 kilometers long, or 10-Earth diameters, and is hundreds of degrees warmer than the background. For video see: https://youtu.be/gWT0QwSoVls/CREDIT:Hubble / NASA / ESA / A. Simon (NASA GSFC) / J. Schmidt. Credit: James O’Donoghue

Looking more deeply through their data, Dr O’Donoghue and his team discovered the spectacular ‘heat wave’ just below the northern aurora, and found that it was travelling towards the equator at a speed of thousands of kilometres per hour.

The heat wave was probably triggered by a pulse of enhanced solar wind plasma impacting Jupiter’s magnetic field, which boosted auroral heating and forced hot gases to expand and spill out towards the equator.

“While the auroras continuously deliver heat to the rest of the planet, these heat wave ‘events’ represent an additional, significant energy source,” added Dr O’Donoghue. “These findings add to our knowledge of Jupiter’s upper-atmospheric weather and climate, and are a great help in trying to solve the ‘energy crisis’ problem that plagues research into the giant planets.”

Opportunity to Space enthusiasts: Join the exciting challenge to explore the Moon! [Details]

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Lunar enthusiasts of all ages are challenged to help identify features on the Moon that might pose a hazard to rovers or astronauts exploring the surface.

The 2022 EXPLORE Lunar Data Challenge is focused on the Archytas Dome region, close to the Apollo 17 landing site where the last humans set foot on the Moon 50 years ago this December.

The Machine Learning Lunar Data Challenge is open to students, researchers and professionals in areas related to planetary sciences, but also to anyone with expertise in data processing. There is also a Public Lunar Data Challenge to plot the safe traverse of a lunar rover across the surface of the Moon, open to anyone who wants to ‘have a go’, as well as a Classroom Lunar Data Challenge for schools, with hands-on activities about lunar exploration and machine learning.

Announcing the EXPLORE Machine Learning Lunar Data Challenge during the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2022 in Granada, Spain, this week Giacomo Nodjoumi said: “The Challenge uses data of the Archytas Dome taken by the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission. This area of the Moon is packed craters of different ages, boulders, mounds, and a long, sinuous depression, or rille. The wide variety of features in this zone makes it a very interesting area for exploration and the perfect scenario for this Data Challenge.”

The Archytas Dome region of the lunar surface is the target area for the EXPLORE Lunar Data Challenges 2022./CREDIT: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University/EXPLORE/Jacobs University. https://exploredatachallenges.space/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Archytas2.png

The Machine Learning Lunar Data Challenge is in three steps:

  1. Participants should train and test a model capable of recognising craters and boulders on the lunar surface.
  2. They should use their model to label craters and boulders in a set of images of the Archytas zone.
  3. Finally, they should use the outputs of their models to create a map of an optimal traverse across the lunar surface to visit defined sites of scientific interest and avoid hazards, such as heavily cratered zones.

The public and schools are also invited to use lunar images to identify features and plot a journey for a rover. Prizes for the challenges include vouchers totalling 1500 Euros, as well as pieces of real Moon rock from lunar meteorites.

The EXPLORE project, which is funded through the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Programme, gathers experts from different fields of science and technical expertise to develop new tools that will promote the exploitation of space science data. 

This composite image of the moon using Clementine data from 1994 is the view we are most likely to see when the moon is full.
Credit: NASA

“Through the EXPLORE Data Challenges, we aim to raise awareness of the scientific tools that we are developing, improve their accuracy by bringing in expertise from other communities, and involve schools and the public in space science research,” said Nick Cox, the Coordinator of the EXPLORE project.

The deadline for entries closes on 21 November 2022 and winners will be announced in mid-December on the anniversaries of the Apollo 17 mission milestones.

The 2022 EXPLORE Data Challenges can be found at: https://exploredatachallenges.space

Webb space Telescope Captures Clearest View of Neptune’s Rings, Unusual Moon ‘Triton’

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows off its capabilities closer to home with its first image of Neptune. Not only has Webb captured the clearest view of this distant planet’s rings in more than 30 years, but its cameras reveal the ice giant in a whole new light.

Most striking in Webb’s new image is the crisp view of the planet’s rings – some of which have not been detected since NASA’s Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune during its flyby in 1989. In addition to several bright, narrow rings, the Webb image clearly shows Neptune’s fainter dust bands.

“It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared,” notes Heidi Hammel, a Neptune system expert and interdisciplinary scientist for Webb. Webb’s extremely stable and precise image quality permits these very faint rings to be detected so close to Neptune.

Neptune has fascinated researchers since its discovery in 1846. Located 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth, Neptune orbits in the remote, dark region of the outer solar system. At that extreme distance, the Sun is so small and faint that high noon on Neptune is similar to a dim twilight on Earth.

Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) images objects in the near-infrared range from 0.6 to 5 microns, so Neptune does not appear blue to Webb. In fact, the methane gas so strongly absorbs red and infrared light that the planet is quite dark at these near-infrared wavelengths, except where high-altitude clouds are present. Such methane-ice clouds are prominent as bright streaks and spots, which reflect sunlight before it is absorbed by methane gas.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

This planet is characterized as an ice giant due to the chemical make-up of its interior. Compared to the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune is much richer in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This is readily apparent in Neptune’s signature blue appearance in Hubble Space Telescope images at visible wavelengths, caused by small amounts of gaseous methane.

Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) images objects in the near-infrared range from 0.6 to 5 microns, so Neptune does not appear blue to Webb. In fact, the methane gas so strongly absorbs red and infrared light that the planet is quite dark at these near-infrared wavelengths, except where high-altitude clouds are present. Such methane-ice clouds are prominent as bright streaks and spots, which reflect sunlight before it is absorbed by methane gas. Images from other observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory, have recorded these rapidly evolving cloud features over the years.

More subtly, a thin line of brightness circling the planet’s equator could be a visual signature of global atmospheric circulation that powers Neptune’s winds and storms. The atmosphere descends and warms at the equator, and thus glows at infrared wavelengths more than the surrounding, cooler gases.

Neptune’s 164-year orbit means its northern pole, at the top of this image, is just out of view for astronomers, but the Webb images hint at an intriguing brightness in that area. A previously-known vortex at the southern pole is evident in Webb’s view, but for the first time Webb has revealed a continuous band of high-latitude clouds surrounding it.

What do we see in Webb’s latest image of the ice giant Neptune? Webb captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons: Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, Larissa, and Triton. Neptune’s large and unusual moon, Triton, dominates this Webb portrait of Neptune as a very bright point of light sporting the signature diffraction spikes seen in many of Webb’s images.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Webb also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons. Dominating this Webb portrait of Neptune is a very bright point of light sporting the signature diffraction spikes seen in many of Webb’s images, but this is not a star. Rather, this is Neptune’s large and unusual moon, Triton.

Covered in a frozen sheen of condensed nitrogen, Triton reflects an average of 70 percent of the sunlight that hits it. It far outshines Neptune in this image because the planet’s atmosphere is darkened by methane absorption at these near-infrared wavelengths. Triton orbits Neptune in an unusual backward (retrograde) orbit, leading astronomers to speculate that this moon was originally a Kuiper belt object that was gravitationally captured by Neptune. Additional Webb studies of both Triton and Neptune are planned in the coming year.

 

 

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Investigates Geologically Rich Mars Terrain; Collects ‘Wildcat Ridge’, analyzes with SHERLOC instrument

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NASA’s Perseverance rover is well into its second science campaign, collecting rock-core samples from features within an area long considered by scientists to be a top prospect for finding signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. The rover has collected four samples from an ancient river delta in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater since July 7, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12.

“We picked the Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples – and now we know we sent the rover to the right location,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington. “These first two science campaigns have yielded an amazing diversity of samples to bring back to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign.”

Twenty-eight miles (45 kilometers) wide, Jezero Crater hosts a delta – an ancient fan-shaped feature that formed about 3.5 billion years ago at the convergence of a Martian river and a lake. Perseverance is currently investigating the delta’s sedimentary rocks, formed when particles of various sizes settled in the once-watery environment. During its first science campaign, the rover explored the crater’s floor, finding igneous rock, which forms deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the surface.

“The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks – formed from crystallization of magma – discovered on the crater floor,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena, California. “This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite. For example, we found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater – and a mudstone that includes intriguing organic compounds.”

NASA’s Perseverance rover puts its robotic arm to work around a rocky outcrop called “Skinner Ridge” in Mars’ Jezero Crater. Composed of multiple images, this mosaic shows layered sedimentary rocks in the face of a cliff in the delta, as well as one of the locations where the rover abraded a circular patch to analyze a rock’s composition.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

“Wildcat Ridge” is the name given to a rock about 3 feet (1 meter) wide that likely formed billions of years ago as mud and fine sand settled in an evaporating saltwater lake. On July 20, the rover abraded some of the surface of Wildcat Ridge so it could analyze the area with the instrument called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC.  

SHERLOC’s analysis indicates the samples feature a class of organic molecules that are spatially correlated with those of sulfate minerals. Sulfate minerals found in layers of sedimentary rock can yield significant information about the aqueous environments in which they formed.

What Is Organic Matter?

Organic molecules consist of a wide variety of compounds made primarily of carbon and usually include hydrogen and oxygen atoms. They can also contain other elements, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. While there are chemical processes that produce these molecules that don’t require life, some of these compounds are the chemical building blocks of life. The presence of these specific molecules is considered to be a potential biosignature – a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.

In 2013, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover found evidence of organic matter in rock-powder samples, and Perseverance has detected organics in Jezero Crater before. But unlike that previous discovery, this latest detection was made in an area where, in the distant past, sediment and salts were deposited into a lake under conditions in which life could potentially have existed. In its analysis of Wildcat Ridge, the SHERLOC instrument registered the most abundant organic detections on the mission to date.

“In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,” said Farley. “The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock – known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth – is important. However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding what is contained in the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until it’s returned to Earth for in-depth study as part of the agency’s Mars Sample Return campaign.”

Rendering of Perseverance, whose RIMFAX technology is exploring what lies beneath the Martian surface. Photo: NASA/JPL/Caltech/FFI

The first step in the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign began when Perseverance cored its first rock sample in September 2021. Along with its rock-core samples, the rover has collected one atmospheric sample and two witness tubes, all of which are stored in the rover’s belly.

The geologic diversity of the samples already carried in the rover is so good that the rover team is looking into depositing select tubes near the base of the delta in about two months. After depositing the cache, the rover will continue its delta explorations.

“I’ve studied Martian habitability and geology for much of my career and know first-hand the incredible scientific value of returning a carefully collected set of Mars rocks to Earth,” said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “That we are weeks from deploying Perseverance’s fascinating samples and mere years from bringing them to Earth so scientists can study them in exquisite detail is truly phenomenal. We will learn so much.”

More About the Mission

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

NASA/Photo: Nasa.gov

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.