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Cosmological Enigma Of Milky Way’s Satellite Galaxies Solved

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Cosmological Enigma Of Milky Way’s Satellite Galaxies Solved
One of the new high-resolution simulations of the dark matter enveloping the Milky Way and its neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy. The new study shows that earlier, failed attempts to find counterparts of the plane of satellites which surrounds the Milky Way in dark matter simulations was due to a lack of resolution. CREDIT Till Sawala/Sibelius collaboration. Durham University

Astronomers say they have solved an outstanding problem that challenged our understanding of how the Universe evolved – the spatial distribution of faint satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way.

These satellite galaxies exhibit a bizarre alignment – they seem to lie on an enormous thin rotating plane – called the “plane of satellites”

This seemingly unlikely arrangement had puzzled astronomers for over 50 years, leading many to question the validity of the standard cosmological model that seeks to explain how the Universe came to look as it does today.

Now, new research jointly led by the Universities of Durham, UK, and Helsinki, Finland, has found that the plane of satellites is a cosmological quirk which will dissolve over time in the same way that star constellations also change.

Their research removes the challenge posed by the plane of satellites to the standard model of cosmology.

This model explains the formation of the Universe and how the galaxies we see now formed gradually within clumps of cold dark matter – a mysterious substance that makes up about 27 per cent of the Universe.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The Milky Way’s satellites seem to be arranged in an implausibly thin plane piercing through the galaxy and, oddly, they are also circling in a coherent and long-lived disk.

There is no known physical mechanism that would make satellites planes. Instead, it was thought that satellite galaxies should be arranged in a roughly round configuration tracing the dark matter.

Since the plane of satellites was discovered in the 1970s, astronomers have tried without success to find similar structures in realistic supercomputer simulations that track the evolution of the Universe from the Big Bang to the present day.

The fact that the arrangement of satellites could not be explained led researchers to think that the cold dark matter theory of galaxy formation might be wrong.

However, this latest research saw astronomers use new data from the European Space Agency’s GAIA space observatory. GAIA is charting a six-dimensional map of the Milky Way, providing precise positions and motion measurements for about one billion stars in our galaxy (about one per cent of the total), and its companion systems.

These data allowed scientists to project the orbits of the satellite galaxies into the past and future and see the plane form and dissolve in a few hundred million years – a mere blink of an eye in cosmic time.

The researchers also searched new, tailor-made cosmological simulations for evidence of planes of satellites.

They realised that previous studies based on simulations had been misled by failing to consider the distances of satellites from the centre of the Galaxy, which made the virtual satellite systems appear much rounder than the real one.

Taking this into account, they found several virtual Milky Ways which boast a plane of satellite galaxies very similar to the one seen through telescopes.

The researchers say this removes one of the main objections to the validity of the standard model of cosmology and means that the concept of dark matter remains the cornerstone of our understanding of the Universe.

Study co-author Professor Carlos Frenk, Ogden Professor of Fundamental Physics in the Institute for Computational Cosmology, at Durham University, UK, said: “The strange alignment of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies in the sky had perplexed astronomers for decades, so much so that it was deemed to pose a profound challenge to cosmological orthodoxy.

“But thanks to the amazing data from the GAIA satellite and the laws of Physics, we now know that the plane is just a chance alignment, a matter of being in the right place at the right time, just as the constellations of stars in the sky.

“Come back in a billion years, and the plane will have disintegrated, as will today’s constellations.

“We have been able to remove one of the main outstanding challenges to the cold dark matter theory. It continues to provide a remarkably faithful description of the evolution of our Universe.”

Study lead author Dr Till Sawala, of the University of Helsinki, said: “The plane of satellites was truly mind boggling.

“It is perhaps unsurprising that a puzzle which has endured for almost fifty years required a combination of methods to solve it – and an international team to come together.”

The research was funded by the European Research Council, the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council and made extensive use of the Cosmology Machine (COSMA) supercomputer at Durham University. COSMA is hosted by Durham as part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council-funded DiRAC High-Performance Computing facility to support researchers across the UK.

The Milky Way’s plane of satellites is consistent with ΛCDM, Nature Astronomy


By Keith Cowing
Source SpaceRef

Moon Water Imager Integrated With NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer

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Moon Water Imager Integrated With NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer

The side of the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM³) is seen as the instrument gets unwrapped in a clean room. The JPL-developed imaging spectrometer was later integrated with NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft. Credit: Lockheed Martin Space. Full Image Details

JPL’s cutting-edge instrument, which will provide insights into the lunar water cycle and composition of the Moon’s surface, has been incorporated into the small satellite.

Lunar Trailblazer, NASA’s mission to understand lunar water and the Moon’s water cycle led by Caltech in Pasadena, California, is one step closer to launching next year. Earlier this month, the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California delivered a key science instrument to Lockheed Martin Space in Colorado, and the teams integrated it with the small satellite, or SmallSat.

The instrument, called the High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM3), is one of two on Lunar Trailblazer. HVM3 will detect and map water on the Moon’s surface to determine its abundance, location, form, and how it changes over time. This information will provide data on the lunar water cycle and help inform future human missions as to where supplies of water may be found and extracted as a resource.

“The calibration and integration of HVM3 is a major milestone, because after three years of hard work the team delivered our key science instrument. This is a very exciting time,” said Walton Williamson, systems engineer at JPL and the HVM3 instrument manager.

The other instrument, the Lunar Thermal Mapper infrared multispectral imager, is being developed by the University of Oxford in the U.K. and is scheduled for delivery and integration in early 2023.

Exquisite Sensitivity

Selected under NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program in 2019, Lunar Trailblazer measures only 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) wide with its solar panels fully deployed, but this a compact spacecraft with far-reaching goals.

While past observations have confirmed that the Moon has water on its surface, little is known about its distribution or form. HVM3, an imaging spectrometer, will fill this knowledge gap by mapping the spectral fingerprints – or wavelengths of reflected sunlight – of the different forms of water over the lunar landscape to make high-resolution maps.

For instance, water molecules could be locked inside lunar rock and regolith – broken rock and dust – and they may settle for short periods as frost in cold shadows. As the Sun moves across the sky during the lunar day, the shadows move, too, cycling these water molecules into the Moon’s exosphere and transporting them to other cold places where they can settle once more as a frost. The most likely locations to hold water ice in significant quantities are permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles, which are key targets for science and exploration.

The HVM³ instrument sits in a JPL clean room in early December 2022. The instrument was built at JPL then shipped to Lockheed Martin Space in Colorado to be integrated with NASA's Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft.

The HVM³ instrument sits in a JPL clean room in early December 2022. The instrument was built at JPL then shipped to Lockheed Martin Space in Colorado to be integrated with NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech 

Full Image Details

To differentiate between these different forms of water, how they move, and where they are located, HVM3 has two key features that set it apart from other spectrometers. The first is its ability to detect a wide range of infrared wavelengths that are readily absorbed by different forms of water. The second is its sensitivity to those wavelengths: HVM3 is designed to be sensitive to low illumination levels, which will be critical to revealing water that may be found in the Moon’s darkest craters.

“Measuring the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar surface will be the most challenging part of the mission,” said David R. Thompson, senior research scientist at JPL and HVM3 instrument scientist. “To observe any ice on the floors of those craters that haven’t seen sunlight for eons, we’ll be using light scattered off neighboring solar-illuminated crater walls.”

Thompson likens this to a bank shot in basketball, when a player makes a shot that bounces from the backboard into the basket. Solar photons – the quantum particles of light – bounce, or scatter, off the sunlit slopes of the crater and are redirected into the permanently shadowed crater bottoms. This light can be over a thousand times dimmer than direct solar illumination, requiring exquisite instrument sensitivity.

Engineers work on the JPL-developed High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM³) for NASA's Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft in a clean room at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, in December 2022.
Engineers work on the JPL-developed High-resolution Volatiles and Minerals Moon Mapper (HVM³) for NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft in a clean room at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, in December 2022.
Credit: Lockheed Martin Space 
Full Image Details

Where HVM3 will look for water, Lunar Thermal Mapper will detail the temperature properties of the Moon’s surface. Together, they will provide scientists with a deeper knowledge of how surface temperature affects the distribution of water on the Moon.

“This mission was tailor-made to unlock the persisting mystery of the Moon’s water by mapping its distribution while also helping us understand if it’s locked within lunar material or covering the surface as ice in cold spots,” said Bethany Ehlmann, the Lunar Trailblazer principal investigator at Caltech. “I am immensely proud of the Trailblazer team for completing this important milestone of instrument delivery. Now we are focusing on the next phases as we approach launch.”

More About the Mission

Lunar Trailblazer will launch as a secondary payload on the second lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines, called IM-2. That launch, which will also carry NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 subsurface ice drill, is scheduled for no earlier than mid-2023.

The mission is managed by JPL and its science investigation is led by Caltech. Managed for NASA by Caltech, JPL also provides system engineering, mission assurance, the HVM3 instrument, as well as navigation. Lockheed Martin Space provides the spacecraft and integrates the flight system, under contract with Caltech.

SIMPLEx mission investigations are managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of the Discovery Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The program conducts space science investigations in the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

For more information about Lunar Trailblazer, visit:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/lunar-trailblazer

News Media Contact

Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
[email protected]


Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501
[email protected] / [email protected]

Construction Begins On NASA’s Next-Generation Asteroid Hunter

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Construction Begins On NASA’s Next-Generation Asteroid Hunter
NASA’s NEO Surveyor is seen in this illustration against an infrared observation of a starfield made by the agency’s WISE mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona Full Image Details

NEO Surveyor is the first purpose-built space telescope that will advance NASA’s planetary defense efforts by finding and tracking hazardous near-Earth objects.

A space telescope designed to search for the hardest-to-find asteroids and comets that stray into Earth’s orbital neighborhood, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor) recently passed a rigorous technical and programmatic review. Now the mission is transitioning into the final design-and-fabrication phase and establishing its technical, cost, and schedule baseline.

The mission supports the objectives of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The NASA Authorization Act of 2005 directed NASA to discover and characterize at least 90% of the near-Earth objects more than 140 meters (460 feet) across that come within 30 million miles (48 million kilometers) of our planet’s orbit. Objects of this size are capable of causing significant regional damage, or worse, should they impact the Earth.

“NEO Surveyor represents the next generation for NASA’s ability to quickly detect, track, and characterize potentially hazardous near-Earth objects,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer at PDCO. “Ground-based telescopes remain essential for us to continually watch the skies, but a space-based infrared observatory is the ultimate high ground that will enable NASA’s planetary defense strategy.”

Find Them First

Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, NEO Surveyor will journey a million miles to a region of gravitational stability – called the L1 Lagrange point – between Earth and the Sun, where the spacecraft will orbit during its five-year primary mission.

From this location, the NEO Surveyor will view the solar system in infrared wavelengths – light that is invisible to the human eye. Because those wavelengths are mostly blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, larger ground-based observatories may miss near-Earth objects that this space telescope will be able to spot by using its modest light-collecting aperture of nearly 20 inches (50 centimeters).

NEO Surveyor’s cutting-edge detectors are designed to observe two heat-sensitive infrared bands that were chosen specifically so the spacecraft can track the most challenging-to-find near-Earth objects, such as dark asteroids and comets that don’t reflect much visible light. In the infrared wavelengths to which NEO Surveyor is sensitive, these objects glow because they are heated by sunlight.

In addition, NEO Surveyor will be able to find asteroids that approach Earth from the direction of the Sun, as well as those that lead and trail our planet’s orbit, where they are typically obscured by the glare of sunlight – objects known as Earth Trojans.

“For the first time in our planet’s history, Earth’s inhabitants are developing methods to protect Earth by deflecting hazardous asteroids,” said Amy Mainzer, the mission’s survey director at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “But before we can deflect them, we first need to find them. NEO Surveyor will be a game-changer in that effort.”

The mission will also help to characterize the composition, shape, rotation, and orbit of near-Earth objects. While the mission’s primary focus is on planetary defense, this information can be used to better understand the origins and evolution of asteroids and comets, which formed the ancient building blocks of our solar system.

When it launches, NEO Surveyor will build upon the successes of its predecessor, the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE). Repurposed from the WISE space telescope after that mission ended in 2011, NEOWISE proved highly effective at detecting and characterizing near-Earth objects, but NEO Surveyor is the first space mission built specifically to find large numbers of these hazardous asteroids and comets.

Already in the Works

After the mission passed this milestone on Nov. 29, key instrument development got under way. For instance, the large radiators that will allow the system to be passively cooled are being fabricated. To detect the faint infrared glow of asteroids and comets, the instrument’s infrared detectors need to be much cooler than the spacecraft’s electronics. The radiators will perform that important task, eliminating the need for complex active cooling systems.

Additionally, construction of the composite struts that will separate the telescope’s instrumentation from the spacecraft has begun. Designed to be poor heat conductors, the struts will isolate the cold instrument from the warm spacecraft and sunshield, the latter of which will block sunlight that might otherwise obscure the telescope’s view of near-Earth objects and heat up the instrument.

Progress has also been made developing the instrument’s infrared detectors, beam splitters, filters, electronics, and enclosure. And work has begun on the space telescope’s mirror, which will be formed from a solid block of aluminum and shaped by a custom-built diamond-turning machine.

“The project team, including all of our institutional and industrial collaborators, is already very busy designing and fabricating components that will ultimately become flight hardware,” said Tom Hoffman, NEO Surveyor project manager at JPL. “As the mission enters this new phase, we’re excited to be working on this unique space telescope and are already looking forward to our launch and the start of our important mission.”

More About the Mission

The mission is tasked by NASA’s Planetary Science Division within the Science Mission Directorate; program oversight is provided by the PDCO, which was established in 2016 to manage the agency’s ongoing efforts in planetary defense. NASA’s Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center provides program management for NEO Surveyor.

The project is being developed by JPL and is led by survey director Amy Mainzer at the University of Arizona. Established aerospace and engineering companies have been contracted to build the spacecraft and its instrumentation, including Ball Aerospace , Space Dynamics Laboratory, and Teledyne. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder will support operations, and IPAC-Caltech in Pasadena, California, is responsible for processing survey data and producing the mission’s data products. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information about NEO Surveyor is available at: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/neo-surveyor

Webb Space Telescope Views Star Formation In NGC 7469

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Webb Space Telescope Views Star Formation In NGC 7469
This image is dominated by NGC 7469. ESA.

This image is dominated by NGC 7469, a luminous, face-on spiral galaxy approximately 90 000 light-years in diameter that lies roughly 220 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. Its companion galaxy IC 5283 is partly visible in the lower left portion of this image.

By Keith Cowing
Source SpaceRef

A Close Glimpse Of A Black Hole Devouring A Star

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A Close Glimpse Of A Black Hole Devouring A Star
A disk of hot gas swirls around a black hole in this illustration. The stream of gas stretching to the right is what remains of a star that was pulled apart by the black hole. A cloud of hot plasma (gas atoms with their electrons stripped away) above the black hole is known as a corona. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Recent observations of a black hole devouring a wandering star may help scientists understand more complex black hole feeding behaviors.

Multiple NASA telescopes recently observed a massive black hole tearing apart an unlucky star that wandered too close. Located about 250 million light-years from Earth in the center of another galaxy, it was the fifth-closest example of a black hole destroying a star ever observed.

Once the star had been thoroughly ruptured by the black hole’s gravity, astronomers saw a dramatic rise in high-energy X-ray light around the black hole. This indicated that as the stellar material was pulled toward its doom, it formed an extremely hot structure above the black hole called a corona. NASA’s NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescopic Array) satellite is the most sensitive space telescope capable of observing these wavelengths of light, and the event’s proximity provided an unprecedented view of the corona’s formation and evolution, according to a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal.

The work demonstrates how the destruction of a star by a black hole – a process formally known as a tidal disruption event – could be used to better understand what happens to material that’s captured by one of these behemoths before it’s fully devoured.

Most black holes that scientists can study are surrounded by hot gas that has accumulated over many years, sometimes millennia, and formed disks billions of miles wide. In some cases, these disks shine brighter than entire galaxies. Even around these bright sources, but especially around much less active black holes, a single star being torn apart and consumed stands out. And from start to finish, the process often takes only a matter of weeks or months. The observability and short duration of tidal disruption events make them especially attractive to astronomers, who can tease apart how the black hole’s gravity manipulates the material around it, creating incredible light shows and new physical features.

“Tidal disruption events are a sort of cosmic laboratory,” said study co-author Suvi Gezari, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “They’re our window into the real-time feeding of a massive black hole lurking in the center of a galaxy.”

When a star wanders too close to a black hole, the intense gravity will stretch the star out until it becomes a long river of hot gas, as shown in this animation. The gas is then whipped around the black hole and is gradually pulled into orbit, forming a bright disk. Credits: Science Communication Lab/DESY

A Surprising Signal

The focus of the new study is an event called AT2021ehb, which took place in a galaxy with a central black hole about 10 million times the mass of our Sun (about the difference between a bowling ball and the Titanic). During this tidal disruption event, the side of the star nearest the black hole was pulled harder than the far side of the star, stretching the entire thing apart and leaving nothing but a long noodle of hot gas.

Scientists think that the stream of gas gets whipped around a black hole during such events, colliding with itself. This is thought to create shock waves and outward flows of gas that generate visible light, as well as wavelengths not visible to the human eye, such as ultraviolet light and X-rays. The material then starts to settle into a disk rotating around the black hole like water circling a drain, with friction generating low-energy X-rays. In the case of AT2021ehb, this series of events took place over just 100 days.

The event was first spotted on March 1, 2021, by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), located at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California. It was subsequently studied by NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) telescope (which observes longer X-ray wavelengths than Swift).

Then, around 300 days after the event was first spotted, NASA’s NuSTAR began observing the system. Scientists were surprised when NuSTAR detected a corona – a cloud of hot plasma, or gas atoms with their electrons stripped away – since coronae usually appear with jets of gas that flow in opposite directions from a black hole. However, with the AT2021ehb tidal event, there were no jets, which made the corona observation unexpected. Coronae emit higher-energy X-rays than any other part of a black hole, but scientists don’t know where the plasma comes from or exactly how it gets so hot.

“We’ve never seen a tidal disruption event with X-ray emission like this without a jet present, and that’s really spectacular because it means we can potentially disentangle what causes jets and what causes coronae,” said Yuhan Yao, a graduate student at Caltech in Pasadena, California, and lead author of the new study. “Our observations of AT2021ehb are in agreement with the idea that magnetic fields have something to do with how the corona forms, and we want to know what’s causing that magnetic field to get so strong.”

Yao is also leading an effort to look for more tidal disruption events identified by ZTF and to then observe them with telescopes like Swift, NICER, and NuSTAR. Each new observation offers the potential for new insights or opportunities to confirm what has been observed in AT2021ehb and other tidal disruption events. “We want to find as many as we can,” Yao said.

More About the Mission

A Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, NuSTAR was developed in partnership with the Danish Technical University and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Virginia. NuSTAR’s mission operations center is at the University of California, Berkeley, and the official data archive is at NASA’s High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. ASI provides the mission’s ground station and a mirror data archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about the NuSTAR mission, visit: https://www.nustar.caltech.edu/

By Keith Cowing
Source SpaceRef

Saying ‘Farewell’ To InSight Mars Lander

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Saying ‘Farewell’ To InSight Mars Lander

On Dec. 18, 2022,  InSight did not respond to communications from Earth. As expected, the lander’s power has been declining for months, and it’s assumed InSight may have reached its end of operations. NASA will declare the mission over when InSight misses two consecutive communication sessions with the spacecraft orbiting Mars, part of the Mars Relay Network – but only if the cause of the missed communication is the lander itself. After that, NASA’s Deep Space Network will listen for a time, just in case.

InSight launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on May 5, 2018. After a six-month cruise, InSight landed on Mars on Nov. 26, 2018, and immediately began surface operations at Elysium Planitia, but science data collection didn’t start fully until about 10 weeks after landing. That’s because InSight’s science goals and instruments are very different from other Mars landers or rovers. In some ways, InSight’s science activities were designed to be more like a marathon than a sprint. Over the past four years, the lander data has yielded details about Mars’ interior layers, its liquid core, the surprisingly variable remnants beneath the surface of its mostly extinct magnetic field, weather on this part of Mars, and lots of quake activity.

Learn more about InSight, the first mission to explore Mars’ deep interior.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

By Dacia Massengill
Source NASA

Artemis I Orion Spacecraft Departs Naval Base San Diego 

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Artemis I Orion Spacecraft Departs Naval Base San Diego 


The Artemis I Orion spacecraft is on its way back to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  After completing a 25.5-day, 1.4-million-mile journey beyond the Moon and back Dec. 11, the spacecraft was recovered from the Pacific Ocean and transported to U.S. Naval Base San Diego, where engineers prepared the spacecraft for its trek by truck to Kennedy. Orion is scheduled to arrive to Kennedy’s Multi Payload Processing Facility by the end of the year.  

Once at Kennedy, technicians will open the hatch and unload several payloads, including Commander Moonikin Campos, zero-gravity indicator Snoopy, and the official flight kit as part of de-servicing operations. In addition to removing the payloads, Orion’s heat shield and other elements will be removed for analysis, and remaining hazards will be offloaded.  

NASA also has released new aerial footage of Orion’s descent through the clouds and splashdown taken from an Unmanned Aircraft System or drone. View the new imagery of spacecraft’s return to Earth here.  


By Antonia Jaramillo Botero
Source NASA

Building The Space Infrastructure Of Tomorrow: Sierra Space Recruits Proven Executive To Lead Expansion Of Space Applications Business

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Building The Space Infrastructure Of Tomorrow: Sierra Space Recruits Proven Executive To Lead Expansion Of Space Applications Business
Former Lockheed Martin and Boeing Executive Erik Daehler Named Vice President of Orbital Systems and Services

Sierra Space, a leading pure play space company building the first end-to-end business and technology platform in space, announced today a key hire for its expanding space applications line of business. Erik Daehler becomes the company’s Vice President of Orbital Systems and Services, a role that highlights Sierra Space’s commitment to expanding its growth and diversified offerings within a business unit that has already accrued more than 30 years and 500 missions of space flight heritage.

In his new role, Daehler will be responsible for the innovation, development, production and operation of Sierra Space’s satellite products and services. He brings more than two decades of aerospace and defense experience to the company, with a broad background in program management, business development and product innovation.

Erik Daehler Headshot

“Our innovative and rapidly expanding space applications business is accelerating toward a position as a key prime system and services provider for the space industry,” said Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice. “Erik brings a wealth of knowledge and proven execution experience to our team across not only satellite products and services but also in space systems engineering with applications in communication systems, space protection, re-entry vehicles and exquisite Earth Observation systems. Sierra Space is committed to bringing our customers affordable, resilient, and responsive systems that meet their commercial and national security needs.”

Most recently at Lockheed Martin Space, Daehler served as Senior Director of Protected Communication, where he led development of next-generation satellite communications product offerings, technology solutions, satellite design and system architectures for the U.S. Space Force, U.S. Navy and the Space Development Agency. Prior to that role, he was Director of Product Innovation for Boeing Space, and worked on new satellite platforms such as the first-of-a-kind 702SP all-electric, dual-stacked satellite and the 502 Phoenix remote sensing and servicing satellites. He also developed next-generation space systems at Boeing Space, including the X-37B.

Daehler has a strong background in optical physics with broad applications in communication and space remote sensing missions. He first joined Lockheed Martin at NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center in 2000, where he performed radiometric calibrations of space and aircraft based multispectral and hyperspectral earth observation systems.

About Sierra Space

Sierra Space (www.sierraspace.com) is a leading commercial space company at the forefront of innovation and the commercialization of space in the Orbital AgeTM, building platforms in space to benefit life on Earth. With more than 30 years and 500 missions of space flight heritage, the company is enabling the future of space transportation with Dream Chaser®, the world’s only winged commercial spaceplane. Under construction at its Colorado headquarters and expected to launch in 2023 on the first of a series of NASA missions to the International Space Station, Dream Chaser can safely carry cargo – and eventually crew – to on-orbit destinations, returning to land on compatible commercial airport runways worldwide. Sierra Space is also building an array of in-space destinations for low-Earth orbit (LEO) commercialization including the LIFE™ habitat (Large Integrated Flexible Environment), a three-story commercial habitation and science platform designed for LEO. Both Dream Chaser and LIFE are central components to Orbital Reef, a mixed-use business park in LEO being developed by principal partners Sierra Space and Blue Origin, which is expected to be operational by the end of the decade.

NASA To Air Live Coverage Of US Spacewalk For Solar Array Installation

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NASA To Air Live Coverage Of US Spacewalk For Solar Array Installation
NASA astronaut and Expedition 68 Flight Engineer Josh Cassada is photographed on Dec. 3, holding a roll-out solar array as he rides the Canadarm2 robotic arm toward the Starboard-4 truss segment installation site. Credits: NASA

NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station will conduct a spacewalk on Wednesday, Dec. 21, to install a rollout solar array to increase electrical power in support of operations and scientific research. The spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 7:45 a.m. EST and last about seven hours.

The agency will provide live coverage of the spacewalk beginning at 6:30 a.m. on NASA Television, the app, and the agency’s website.

Expedition 68 Flight Engineers Frank Rubio and Josh Cassada will exit the station’s Quest airlock to install an International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) to augment power generation for the 4A power channel on the station’s port truss.

Rubio will serve as extravehicular crew member 1 (EV 1) and will wear a suit with red stripes. Cassada will serve as extravehicular crew member 2 (EV 2) and will wear an unmarked suit. The spacewalk will be the third in both Cassada and Rubio’s careers.

If more time is needed to complete the iROSA installation, a second spacewalk may be conducted on Tuesday, Dec. 27.

This will be the fourth iROSA installed on station out of a total six planned for installation. Overall, the iROSAs will increase power generation capability by up to 30%, increasing the station’s total available power from 160 kilowatts to up to 215 kilowatts.

The iROSA arrived at the space station Nov. 27, following a launch aboard the agency’s 26th SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply mission Nov. 26.

Cassada and Rubio are in the midst of a science mission living and working aboard the microgravity laboratory to advance scientific knowledge and demonstrate new technologies for future human and robotic exploration missions, including NASA’s Artemis missions to the Moon.

Get breaking news, images and features from the space station on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Learn more about the International Space Station and its crew at: https://www.nasa.gov/station

Lora Bleacher
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
[email protected]

Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
[email protected]

By Gerelle Dodson
Source NASA

40-Year Study Finds Mysterious Patterns In Temperatures At Jupiter

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40-Year Study Finds Mysterious Patterns In Temperatures At Jupiter
These infrared images of Jupiter with color added were obtained by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in 2016 and contributed to the new study. The colors represent temperatures and cloudiness: The bluer areas are cold and cloudy, and the orange areas are warmer and cloud-free. Credit: ESO / L.N. Fletcher

Based partly on data from generations of NASA missions, including NASA’s Voyager and Cassini, the work could help scientists determine how to predict weather on Jupiter.

Scientists have completed the longest-ever study tracking temperatures in Jupiter’s upper troposphere, the layer of the atmosphere where the giant planet’s weather occurs and where its signature colorful striped clouds form. The work, conducted over four decades by stitching together data from NASA spacecraft and ground-based telescope observations, found unexpected patterns in how temperatures of Jupiter’s belts and zones change over time. The study is a major step toward a better understanding of what drives weather at our solar system’s largest planet and eventually being able to forecast it.

Jupiter’s troposphere has a lot in common with Earth’s: It’s where clouds form and storms churn. To understand this weather activity, scientists need to study certain properties, including wind, pressure, humidity, and temperature. They have known since NASA’s Pioneer 10 and 11 missions in the 1970s that, in general, colder temperatures are associated with Jupiter’s lighter and whiter bands (known as zones), while the darker brown-red bands (known as belts) are locations of warmer temperatures.

But there weren’t enough data sets to understand how temperatures vary over the long-term. The new research, published Dec. 19 in Nature Astronomy, breaks ground by studying images of the bright infrared glow (invisible to the human eye) that rises from warmer regions of the atmosphere, directly measuring Jupiter’s temperatures above the colorful clouds. The scientists collected these images at regular intervals over three of Jupiter’s orbits around the Sun, each of which lasts 12 Earth years.

In the process, they found that Jupiter’s temperatures rise and fall following definite periods that aren’t tied to the seasons or any other cycles scientists know about. Because Jupiter has weak seasons – the planet is tilted on its axis only 3 degrees, compared to Earth’s jaunty 23.5 degrees – scientists didn’t expect to find temperatures on Jupiter varying in such regular cycles.

The study also revealed a mysterious connection between temperature shifts in regions thousands of miles apart: As temperatures went up at specific latitudes in the northern hemisphere, they went down at the same latitudes in the southern hemisphere – like a mirror image across the equator.

“That was the most surprising of all,” said Glenn Orton, senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and lead author of the study. “We found a connection between how the temperatures varied at very distant latitudes. It’s similar to a phenomenon we see on Earth, where weather and climate patterns in one region can have a noticeable influence on weather elsewhere, with the patterns of variability seemingly ‘teleconnected’ across vast distances through the atmosphere.”

The next challenge is to find out what causes these cyclical and seemingly synchronized changes.

“We’ve solved one part of the puzzle now, which is that the atmosphere shows these natural cycles,” said co-author Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester in England. “To understand what’s driving these patterns and why they occur on these particular timescales, we need to explore both above and below the cloudy layers.”

One possible explanation became apparent at the equator: The study authors found that temperature variations higher up, in the stratosphere, seemed to rise and fall in a pattern that is the opposite of how temperatures behave in the troposphere, suggesting changes in the stratosphere influence changes in the troposphere and vice versa.

Decades of Observations

Orton and his colleagues began the study in 1978. For the duration of their research, they would write proposals several times a year to win observation time on three large telescopes around the world: the Very Large Telescope in Chile as well as NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility and the Subaru Telescope at the Maunakea Observatories in Hawaii.

During the first two decades of the study, Orton and his teammates took turns traveling to those observatories, gathering the information on temperatures that would eventually allow them to connect the dots. (By the early 2000s, some of the telescope work could be done remotely.)

Then came the hard part – combining multiple years’ worth of observations from several telescopes and science instruments to search for patterns. Joining these veteran scientists on their long-duration study were several undergraduate interns, none of whom had been born when the study began. They are students at Caltech in Pasadena, California; Cal Poly Pomona in Pomona, California; Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio; and Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Scientists hope the study will help them eventually be able to predict weather on Jupiter, now that they have a more detailed understanding of it. The research could contribute to climate modeling, with computer simulations of the temperature cycles and how they affect weather – not just for Jupiter, but for all giant planets across our solar system and beyond.

“Measuring these temperature changes and periods over time is a step toward ultimately having a full-on Jupiter weather forecast, if we can connect cause and effect in Jupiter’s atmosphere,” Fletcher said. “And the even bigger-picture question is if we can someday extend this to other giant planets to see if similar patterns show up.”

News Media Contact

Gretchen McCartney
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-6215
[email protected]

Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501
[email protected] / [email protected]

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