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Category: space – Page 194

Record-Setting Mars Orbiter Captures New View of Monster Volcano

Earth’s largest volcano is Hawaii’s Mauna Loa, a shield volcano with a volume of 18,000 cubic miles. Olympus Mons is 100 times larger. It covers an area 373 miles (600 kilometers) across, about the size of the state of Arizona, and its summit is 17 miles (27 kilometers) high. That is twice the altitude at which commercial jets fly on Earth. Those are both huge measurements for a volcanic feature, but the incredible surface area makes the height look less impressive.

“Normally we see Olympus Mons in narrow strips from above, but by turning the spacecraft toward the horizon we can see in a single image how large it looms over the landscape,” said Odyssey project scientist Jeffrey Plaut.

Odyssey has been orbiting Mars for more than 20 years, having arrived in 2001 to search for water ice buried under the surface. It has spent all these years looking straight down, but NASA fired the probe’s thrusters to reorient it to point the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) at the horizon. That’s how mission managers got the panorama below.

Quick-Cooling Oddballs Rewrite Neutron Star Physics

Recent observations by ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA ’s Chandra have revealed three unusually cold, young neutron stars, challenging current models by showing they cool much faster than expected.

This finding has significant implications, suggesting that only a few of the many proposed neutron star models are viable, and pointing to a potential breakthrough in linking the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics through astrophysical observations.

Discovery of unusually cold neutron stars.

NASA announces Artemis 2 moon mission backup astronaut — Andre Douglas will support 2025 lunar liftoff

Related: New NASA astronauts celebrate moon missions, private space stations as they get ready for liftoff (exclusive)

“I’ve always been fascinated with new things. I like to develop things,” Douglas told Space.com in March about the Artemis program, which later this decade aims to put astronauts on the moon’s surface for the first time since 1972. “I really believe in pushing ourselves, in understanding what is our true potential: both me as an individual, [and] within all of us as a species.”

“This is the perfect place to be, where we’re going to push that boundary,” he said.

NASA Astronauts Send Fourth of July Wishes From the International Space Station

NASA astronauts Mike Barratt, Matt Dominick, Tracy C. Dyson, Jeanette Epps, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams share a Fourth of July message and extend their best wishes to those back on Earth in a video recorded on June 28, 2024.

The crew members are currently living and working aboard the International Space Station. Their missions aim to advance scientific knowledge and test new technologies for future human and robotic missions to the Moon and Mars, including NASA’s Artemis lunar missions.

Learn more about the International Space Station: https://www.nasa.gov/international-sp…

Credit: NASA

#Space #SpaceStation #Astronauts

Quantum Vortex Mystery: Unveiling the Twisted Roots of Neutron Stars’ Puzzling Pulses

A recent study has unveiled the origins of the mysterious “heartbeats” observed in neutron stars, relating them to glitches caused by the dynamics of superfluid vortices.

Researchers found that these glitches follow a power-law distribution similar to other complex systems and developed a model based on quantum vortex networks that aligns with observed data without extra tuning.

Discovering Neutron Stars’ Heartbeats

Extremely Large Telescope: World’s Largest Telescope Mirror Will Bring the Stars Closer to Earth

Set for completion this decade, the Extremely Large Telescope in Chile will be the largest telescope globally, with a main mirror spanning 39 meters and made from 798 precision-engineered segments. It represents a significant international effort in astronomy.

Currently under construction in the Chilean Atacama Desert, the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope (ESO ’s ELT) is one step closer to completion. German company SCHOTT has successfully delivered the blank for the last of the 949 segments commissioned for the telescope’s primary mirror (M1). With a diameter of more than 39 meters, M1 will be by far the largest mirror ever made for a telescope.

Innovations in Telescope Mirror Design.

The Whole Surface of This Hellish Moon Is Covered in Lakes of Lava

As bristling with volcanoes as a porcupine with quills, Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanically active world in the Solar System. At any given time, around 150 of the 400 or so active volcanoes on Io are erupting. It’s constantly spewing out lava and gas; a veritable factory of volcanic excretions.

And, thanks to the Juno probe’s Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) imaging Jupiter and its surrounding environment, we now know a lot more about what a gloriously hot mess Io is.

“The high spatial resolution of JIRAM’s infrared images, combined with the favorable position of Juno during the flybys, revealed that the whole surface of Io is covered by lava lakes contained in caldera-like features,” says astrophysicist Alessandro Mura of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy.

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