Tag: NASA

Space agency NASA routinely captures stunning images of our universe, leaving space lovers mesmerized. The Instagram handle of NASA is a treasure trove for those who love to watch educational videos and fascinating images showcasing Earth and space. On Monday, NASA shared two images captured by its Hubble telescope showing a ”cosmic reef’ 163,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Dorado. NASA called it the ”cosmic reef” for its resemblance to a coral reef in Earth’s oceans.
Notably, the telescope captured two neighbouring clouds of cosmic dust and gas, the giant red nebula NGC 2014 and a smaller blue nebula nearby called NGC 2020. These nebulae are part of a vast star-forming region, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way full of massive stars.?
As per NASA, the stars near the center of the image are around 10 to 20 times the size of our Sun, and their intense radiation heats surrounding dense gases like oxygen seen in light blue to 20,000°F (11,000°C). The nebula in the lower left was created from a star 200,000 times brighter than our Sun, which ejected gas in a series of eruptive events.?
Describing the image, NASA wrote, ”An image is split in two. In the bottom left of the first image, a bright blue ring appears, slightly fading in all directions, with a small blue dot in the middle. Red and orange waves of gas ripple, arcing from top left to top right. A light blue center appears out of the sea of red, and several bright white dots shine through. In the top right, dark blue gas emanates from the blackness of space.?”
As per Space.com, the image was taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to mark the telescope’s 30 years in space.
Reacting to the image, one user wrote, ”Awesome capture. Colors are beautiful.” Another commented, ”That’s beautiful!!!” A third wrote, ”Ice & Fire.”
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched on April 24, 1990, has made more than 1.4 million observations of nearly 47,000 celestial objects. It was named after American astronomer Edwin P Hubble, who confirmed that our universe was constantly expanding. In its 30-year lifetime, the telescope has racked up more than 175,000 trips around our planet, totaling about 4.4 billion miles. Source: NDTV

An initial study of the samples of asteroid Bennu brought back to Earth has revealed evidence of high carbon content and water. This indicates that the building blocks of life on our planet can also be found on the 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) made the announcement from its Johnson Space Center in Houston. Scientists and leaders from the space agency showed off the asteroid material for the first time since the OSIRIS-REx mission dropped it to Earth.
“The OSIRIS-REx sample is the biggest carbon-rich asteroid sample ever delivered to Earth and will help scientists investigate the origins of life on our own planet for generations to come. Almost everything we do at NASA seeks to answer questions about who we are and where we come from. NASA missions like OSIRIS-REx will improve our understanding of asteroids that could threaten Earth while giving us a glimpse into what lies beyond. The sample has made it back to Earth, but there is still so much science to come – science like we’ve never seen before,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a press statement.
The objective of the OSIRIS-REx mission was to collect 60 grams of asteroid material from Bennu and bring it back to Earth for analysis. NASA experts have spent more than ten days carefully disassembling the hardware used to return the sample. When the lid of the sample canister was first opened, scientists discovered “bonus” material covering the outside of the collector head, lid and base. There was so much material that it slowed the collection process, according to the space agency.
Scientists began with a “quick-look” analysis of the initial material, where they collected images from a scanning electron microscope along with infrared measurements, X-ray diffraction and chemical element analysis. They also used X-ray computed tomography to produce a 3D computer model of one of the particles. This early “quick-look” gave evidence for the abundant presence of carbon and water in the sample.

Nasa’s Perseverance rover has discovered diverse organic matter in the planet’s Jezero Crater. Organic molecules are the key building blocks of life on Earth that are made primarily of carbon and hydrogen and often other elements like oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulphur. The discovery, which was published in the journal Nature, has implications in the search for potential signs of life on the Red Planet, researchers said.
”The presence and distribution of preserved organic matter on the surface of Mars can provide key information about the Martian carbon cycle and the potential of the planet to host life throughout its history,” the authors wrote.
Several different types of organic molecule have already been found in Martian meteorites on Earth as well as the Gale crater on the surface of the Red Planet. However, researchers are unable to rule out that the materials have a “biotic” origin or are the result of life on the planet. They also suggested a number of different explanations for the origins of organic matter on the red planet.
The molecules might have been formed by the interactions between water and dust or having been dropped onto the planet by dust or meteors.
“These potential organic molecules are largely found within minerals linked to aqueous processes, indicating that these processes may have had a key role in organic synthesis, transport, or preservation,” they wrote.
Dr. Sunanda Sharma from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that there are multiple origin hypotheses for the presence of organic matter on Mars from meteorite and mission studies.
Perseverance detected evidence of diverse types of organic compounds in the huge Jezero crater, which the rover has been exploring since it landed on Mars in February 2021.
Signals of organic molecules were detected on all 10 targets that Sherloc observed in the Jezero crater floor. Notably, The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (Sherloc) instrument on the rover is the first tool to enable fine-scale mapping and analysis of organic molecules and minerals on Mars.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a key life-building block carbon molecule in space for the first time. The team of researchers found this compound in the Orion Nebula about 1,350 light-years away. According to a news release from NASA, these carbon compounds are known as methyl cation (pronounced cat-eye-on) (CH3+), the molecule is important because it aids the formation of more complex carbon-based molecules. Methyl cation was detected in a young star system, with a protoplanetary disk, known as d203-506- located about 1,350 light-years away in the Orion Nebula.
Now astronomers are on a quest to find signals of carbon compounds in the greater universe.
Carbon compounds form the foundations of all known life, and as such are particularly interesting to scientists working to understand both how life developed on Earth, and how it could potentially develop elsewhere in our universe. The study of interstellar organic (carbon-containing) chemistry, which Webb is opening in new ways, is an area of keen fascination to many astronomers.
The team of researchers says that Webb’s unique capabilities made it an ideal observatory to search for this crucial molecule. Webb’s exquisite spatial and spectral resolution, as well as its sensitivity, all contributed to the team’s success. In particular, Webb’s detection of a series of key emission lines from CH3+ cemented the discovery.
“This detection not only validates the incredible sensitivity of Webb but also confirms the postulated central importance of CH3+ in interstellar chemistry,” said Marie-Aline Martin-Drumel of the University of Paris-Saclay in France, a member of the science team. While the star in d203-506 is a small red dwarf, the system is bombarded by strong ultraviolet (UV) light from nearby hot, young, massive stars. Scientists believe that most planet-forming disks go through a period of such intense UV radiation since stars tend to form in groups that often include massive, UV-producing stars. Typically, UV radiation is expected to destroy complex organic molecules, in which case the discovery of CH3+ might seem to be a surprise. However, the team predicts that UV radiation might actually provide the necessary source of energy for CH3+ to form in the first place. Once formed, it then promotes additional chemical reactions to build more complex carbon molecules. Broadly, the team notes that the molecules they see in d203-506 are quite different from typical protoplanetary disks. In particular, they could not detect any signs of water.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently captured “never-before-seen” detail of Cassiopeia A (Cas A), a remnant of a massive star that exploded some 340 years ago. Taking Instagram, the US space agency shared a stunning image of the exploding supernova.
“As the youngest known remnant from an exploded, massive star in our galaxy, Cas A offers unique clues into a star’s death. By studying Cas A, Webb astronomers may also learn more about the origins and production of cosmic dust – which forms the elements we’re made of,” the caption of the post read.
According to NASA’s press release, Cas A is the youngest remnant of a massive star in our galaxy known to mankind. It offers a peek into the supernovae phenomenon and its complexities.
“Cas A represents our best opportunity to look at the debris field of an exploded star and run a kind of stellar autopsy to understand what type of star was there beforehand and how that star exploded,” said Danny Milisavljevic of Purdue University who led the investigation of the Webb program that was responsible for the mid-infrared image. “Compared to previous infrared images, we see incredible detail that we haven’t been able to access before,” added Tea Temim of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, a co-investigator on the program.
As per the space agency, Cas A belongs to the prototypical type of supernova remnant and has been extensively studied by a number of ground-based and space-based observatories, including NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The remnant spans about 10 light-years and is located 11,000 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia.

For the past 10 years, NASA’s Curiosity rover has been trundling around the surface of Mars, taking photos in its quest to understand the history and geology of the red planet and perhaps even find signs of life. Last week, it took a photo, which appeared to show a doorway carved into the rock. It’s the sort of thing that on Earth might indicate an underground bunker, such as an air-raid shelter.

Seeing is not always believing

At first sight, the picture is totally convincing. At second sight, maybe not. The passage seems to go in only a short way before the steeply descending roof meets the floor.

And then those killjoys at NASA tell us its only about 45 cm high. Still, who said Martians had to be the same height as us? But then geologists point out several straight-line fractures can be seen in this site, and the “doorway” is where they happen to intersect. Such a pity. It would have been so exciting if it had been a real doorway. Instead it joins the face on Mars, the spoon on Mars, the cube on the Moon, and all the other things seen in photos from space that turn out not to be as exciting as we thought.

Faces in the clouds

Worse, the “doorway” joins the even longer list of wacky images like the cornflake that looks like Australia, the cats that look like Hitler, and so on. And who hasn’t seen a face in the clouds?

The sad fact is that when presented with an unclear or unfamiliar image, humans try to turn it into a familiar-looking object. Scientists call our tendency to do this “pareidolia”.

It’s easy to understand why it happens. We likely evolved this tendency because spotting important things like predators or faces, even when the light is poor or they are partly obscured, gave us an advantage. And getting false positives – seeing a predator where there is none – is better than not seeing a predator who then eats you.

No signs of life

Reasonable explanations won’t deter the conspiracy theorists who say the doorway really is evidence of life on Mars, and maintain that scientists are engaged in some sort of cover-up. If I were trying to do a cover-up, I wouldn’t be releasing the photos! So a conspiracy doesn’t seem very likely.

But there’s also a lesson here for serious searchers for alien life. As astronomer Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

          Source: PTI