Hubble's Successor Has Finally Completed Alignment! The First Official Science Photo Is At Least Two Months Away...

NASA / STScI

NASA’s Webb In Full Focus, Ready for Instrument Commissioning (News Release)

Alignment of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is now complete. After full review, the observatory has been confirmed to be capable of capturing crisp, well-focused images with each of its four powerful onboard science instruments. Upon completing the seventh and final stage of telescope alignment, the team held a set of key decision meetings and unanimously agreed that Webb is ready to move forward into its next and final series of preparations, known as science instrument commissioning. This process will take about two months before scientific operations begin in the summer.

The alignment of the telescope across all of Webb’s instruments can be seen in a series of images (shown above) that captures the observatory’s full field of view.

“These remarkable test images from a successfully-aligned telescope demonstrate what people across countries and continents can achieve when there is a bold scientific vision to explore the universe,” said Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The optical performance of the telescope continues to be better than the engineering team’s most optimistic predictions. Webb’s mirrors are now directing fully-focused light collected from space down into each instrument, and each instrument is successfully capturing images with the light being delivered to them. The image quality delivered to all instruments is “diffraction-limited,” meaning that the fineness of detail that can be seen is as good as physically possible given the size of the telescope. From this point forward the only changes to the mirrors will be very-small, periodic adjustments to the primary mirror segments.

“With the completion of telescope alignment and half a lifetime’s worth of effort, my role on the James Webb Space Telescope mission has come to an end,” said Scott Acton, Webb wavefront sensing and controls scientist, Ball Aerospace. “These images have profoundly changed the way I see the universe. We are surrounded by a symphony of creation; there are galaxies everywhere! It is my hope that everyone in the world can see them.”

Now, the Webb team will turn its attention to science instrument commissioning. Each instrument is a highly sophisticated set of detectors equipped with unique lenses, masks, filters, and customized equipment that helps it perform the science it was designed to achieve. The specialized characteristics of these instruments will be configured and operated in various combinations during the instrument commissioning phase to fully confirm their readiness for science. With the formal conclusion of telescope alignment, key personnel involved with the commissioning of each instrument have arrived at the Mission Operations Center at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and some personnel involved with telescope alignment have concluded their duties.

Though telescope alignment is complete, some telescope calibration activities remain: As part of scientific instrument commissioning, the telescope will be commanded to point to different areas in the sky where the total amount of solar radiation hitting the observatory will vary to confirm thermal stability when changing targets. Furthermore, ongoing maintenance observations every two days will monitor the mirror alignment and, when needed, apply corrections to keep the mirrors in their aligned locations.

Source: NASA.Gov

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The Ingenuity Helicopter Photographs a Crashed Man-made Flying Saucer on the Surface of Mars...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA’s Mars Helicopter Spots Gear That Helped Perseverance Rover Land (News Release)

Eyeing some of the components that enabled the rover to get safely to the Martian surface could provide valuable insights for future missions.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter recently surveyed both the parachute that helped the agency’s Perseverance rover land on Mars and the cone-shaped backshell that protected the rover in deep space and during its fiery descent toward the Martian surface on Feb. 18, 2021. Engineers with the Mars Sample Return program asked whether Ingenuity could provide this perspective. What resulted were 10 aerial color images taken April 19 during Ingenuity’s Flight 26.

“NASA extended Ingenuity flight operations to perform pioneering flights such as this,” said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity’s team lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Every time we’re airborne, Ingenuity covers new ground and offers a perspective no previous planetary mission could achieve. Mars Sample Return’s reconnaissance request is a perfect example of the utility of aerial platforms on Mars.”

Entry, descent, and landing on Mars is fast-paced and stressful, not only for the engineers back on Earth, but also for the vehicle enduring the gravitational forces, high temperatures, and other extremes that come with entering Mars’ atmosphere at nearly 12,500 mph (20,000 kph). The parachute and backshell were previously imaged from a distance by the Perseverance rover.

But those collected by the rotorcraft (from an aerial perspective and closer) provide more detail. The images have the potential to help ensure safer landings for future spacecraft such as the Mars Sample Return Lander, which is part of a multi-mission campaign that would bring Perseverance’s samples of Martian rocks, atmosphere, and sediment back to Earth for detailed analysis.

“Perseverance had the best-documented Mars landing in history, with cameras showing everything from parachute inflation to touchdown,” said JPL’s Ian Clark, former Perseverance systems engineer and now Mars Sample Return ascent phase lead. “But Ingenuity’s images offer a different vantage point. If they either reinforce that our systems worked as we think they worked or provide even one dataset of engineering information we can use for Mars Sample Return planning, it will be amazing. And if not, the pictures are still phenomenal and inspiring.”

In the images of the upright backshell and the debris field that resulted from it impacting the surface at about 78 mph (126 kph), the backshell’s protective coating appears to have remained intact during Mars atmospheric entry. Many of the 80 high-strength suspension lines connecting the backshell to the parachute are visible and also appear intact. Spread out and covered in dust, only about a third of the orange-and-white parachute – at 70.5 feet (21.5 meters) wide, it was the biggest ever deployed on Mars – can be seen, but the canopy shows no signs of damage from the supersonic airflow during inflation. Several weeks of analysis will be needed for a more final verdict.

Flight 26 Maneuvers

Ingenuity’s 159-second flight began at 11:37 a.m. local Mars time April 19, on the one-year anniversary of its first flight. Flying 26 feet (8 meters) above ground level, Ingenuity traveled 630 feet (192 meters) to the southeast and took its first picture. The rotorcraft next headed southwest and then northwest, taking images at pre-planned locations along the route. Once it collected 10 images in its flash memory, Ingenuity headed west 246 feet (75 meters) and landed. Total distance covered: 1,181 feet (360 meters). With the completion of Flight 26, the rotorcraft has logged over 49 minutes aloft and traveled 3.9 miles (6.2 kilometers).

“To get the shots we needed, Ingenuity did a lot of maneuvering, but we were confident because there was complicated maneuvering on flights 10, 12, and 13,” said Håvard Grip, chief pilot of Ingenuity at JPL. “Our landing spot set us up nicely to image an area of interest for the Perseverance science team on Flight 27, near ‘Séítah’ ridge.”

The new area of operations in Jezero Crater’s dry river delta marks a dramatic departure from the modest, relatively flat terrain Ingenuity had been flying over since its first flight. Several miles wide, the fan-shaped delta formed where an ancient river spilled into the lake that once filled Jezero Crater. Rising more than 130 feet (40 meters) above the crater floor and filled with jagged cliffs, angled surfaces, projecting boulders, and sand-filled pockets, the delta promises to hold numerous geologic revelations – perhaps even proof that microscopic life existed on Mars billions of years ago.

Upon reaching the delta, Ingenuity’s first orders may be to help determine which of two dry river channels Perseverance should climb to reach the top of the delta. Along with route-planning assistance, data provided by the helicopter will help the Perseverance team assess potential science targets. Ingenuity may even be called upon to image geologic features too far afield for the rover to reach or to scout landing zones and sites on the surface where sample caches could be deposited for the Mars Sample Return program.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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We spy with our little eyes…rover landing gear!
During the #MarsHelicopter’s 26th flight, it took photos of the entry, descent, & landing gear @NASAPersevere needed to safely land on Mars. You can see the protective backshell & massive dusty parachute. https://t.co/1r5uoc5FyM pic.twitter.com/ePlEASIrr0

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 27, 2022

OSIRIS-REx Will Study Asteroid Apophis Up-Close in 2029! And Much More...

Lockheed Martin

NASA Extends Exploration for 8 Planetary Science Missions (News Release)

Following a thorough evaluation, NASA has extended the planetary science missions of eight of its spacecraft due to their scientific productivity and potential to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the solar system and beyond.

The missions – Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN, Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity rover), InSight lander, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, OSIRIS-REx, and New Horizons – have been selected for continuation, assuming their spacecraft remain healthy. Most of the missions will be extended for three years; however, OSIRIS-REx will be continued for nine years in order to reach a new destination, and InSight will be continued until the end of 2022, unless the spacecraft’s electrical power allows for longer operations.

Each extended mission proposal was reviewed by a panel of independent experts drawn from academia, industry, and NASA. In total, more than 50 reviewers evaluated the scientific return of the respective proposals. Two independent review chairs oversaw the process and, based on the panel evaluations, validated that these eight science missions hold substantial potential to continue bringing new discoveries and addressing compelling new science questions.

Beyond providing important programmatic benefit to NASA, several of these missions promise multi-divisional science benefits across NASA’s entire Science Mission Directorate (SMD), including their use as data relays for Mars surface landers and rovers, as well as to support other NASA initiatives such as the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS).

“Extended missions provide us with the opportunity to leverage NASA’s large investments in exploration, allowing continued science operations at a cost far lower than developing a new mission,” said Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA’s Headquarters in Washington. “Maximizing taxpayer dollars in this way allows missions to obtain valuable new science data, and in some cases, allows NASA to explore new targets with totally new science goals.”

Two of the extended missions, MAVEN and OSIRIS-REx, welcome new principal investigators (PIs).

OSIRIS-APEX (Principal Investigator: Dr. Daniella DellaGiustina, University of Arizona): The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission is currently on its way back to Earth to deliver the samples of asteroid Bennu that it collected in 2020. Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx PI, will remain in place for the primary mission, while DellaGiustina begins her role as the newly-named PI for OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer (OSIRIS-APEX). With a new name to reflect the extended mission’s new goals, the OSIRIS-APEX team will redirect the spacecraft to encounter Apophis, an asteroid roughly 1,200 feet (roughly 370 meters) in diameter that will come within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of Earth in 2029. OSIRIS-APEX will enter orbit around Apophis soon after the asteroid’s Earth flyby, providing an unprecedented close-up look at this S-type asteroid. It plans to study changes in the asteroid caused by its close flyby of Earth and use the spacecraft’s gas thrusters to attempt to dislodge and study the dust and small rocks on and below Apophis’ surface.

MAVEN (Principal Investigator: Dr. Shannon Curry, University of California, Berkeley): The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission plans to study the interaction between Mars’ atmosphere and magnetic field during the upcoming solar maximum. MAVEN’s observations as the Sun’s activity level increases toward the maximum of its 11-year cycle will deepen our understanding of how Mars’ upper atmosphere and magnetic field interact with the Sun.

InSight (Principal Investigator: Dr. Bruce Banerdt, JPL): Since landing on Mars in 2018, the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission has operated the only active seismic station beyond Earth. Its seismic monitoring of “marsquakes” has provided constraints on Mars’ interior, formation, and current activity. The extended mission will continue InSight’s seismic and weather monitoring if the spacecraft remains healthy. However, due to dust accumulation on its solar panels, InSight’s electrical power production is low, and the mission is unlikely to continue operations for the duration of its current extended mission unless its solar panels are cleared by a passing ‘dust devil’ in Mars’ atmosphere.

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) (Project Scientist: Dr. Noah Petro, GSFC): LRO will continue to study the surface and geology of the Moon. The evolution of LRO’s orbit will allow it to study new regions away from the poles in unprecedented detail, including the Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs) near the poles where water ice may be found. LRO will also provide important programmatic support for NASA’s efforts to return to the Moon.

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) (Project Scientist: Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, JPL): The Mars Science Laboratory and its Curiosity rover have driven more than 16 miles (27 km) on the surface of Mars, exploring the history of habitability in Gale Crater. In its fourth extended mission, MSL will climb to higher elevations, exploring the critical sulfate-bearing layers which give unique insights into the history of water on Mars.

New Horizons (Principal Investigator: Dr. Alan Stern, SwRI): New Horizons flew past Pluto in 2015 and the Kuiper belt object (KBO) Arrokoth in 2019. In its second extended mission, New Horizons will continue to explore the distant solar system out to 63 astronomical units (AU) from Earth. The New Horizons spacecraft can potentially conduct multi-disciplinary observations of relevance to the solar system and NASA’s Heliophysics and Astrophysics Divisions. Additional details regarding New Horizons’ science plan will be provided at a later date.

Mars Odyssey (Project Scientist: Dr. Jeffrey Plaut, JPL): Mars Odyssey’s extended mission will perform new thermal studies of rocks and ice below Mars’ surface, monitor the radiation environment, and continue its long-running climate monitoring campaign. The Odyssey orbiter also continues to provide unique support for real-time data relay from other Mars spacecraft. The length of Odyssey’s extended mission may be limited by the amount of propellant remaining aboard the spacecraft.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) (Project Scientist: Dr. Rich Zurek, JPL): MRO has provided a wealth of data regarding the processes on Mars’ surface. In its sixth extended mission, MRO will study the evolution of Mars’ surface, ices, active geology, and atmosphere and climate. In addition, MRO will continue to provide important data-relay service to other Mars missions. MRO’s CRISM instrument will be shut down entirely, after the loss of its cryocooler has ended the use of one of its two spectrometers.

NASA’s Planetary Science Division currently operates 14 spacecraft across the solar system, has 12 missions in formulation and implementation, and partners with international space agencies on seven others.

Source: NASA.Gov

Perseverance Update: The Wheeled Robotic Explorer Watched the Martian Moon Phobos Transit the Sun Three Weeks Ago...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / ASU / MSSS / SSI

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Captures Video of Solar Eclipse on Mars (News Release - April 20)

The Mastcam-Z camera recorded video of Phobos, one of the Red Planet’s two moons, to study how its orbit is changing over time.

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has captured dramatic footage of Phobos, Mars’ potato-shaped moon, crossing the face of the Sun. These observations can help scientists better understand the moon’s orbit and how its gravity pulls on the Martian surface, ultimately shaping the Red Planet’s crust and mantle.

Captured with Perseverance’s next-generation Mastcam-Z camera on April 2, the 397th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, the eclipse lasted a little over 40 seconds – much shorter than a typical solar eclipse involving Earth’s Moon. (Phobos is about 157 times smaller than Earth’s Moon. Mars’ other moon, Deimos, is even smaller.)

The images are the latest in a long history of NASA spacecraft capturing solar eclipses on Mars. Back in 2004, the twin NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity took the first time-lapse photos of Phobos during a solar eclipse. Curiosity continued the trend with videos shot by its Mastcam camera system.

But Perseverance, which landed in February 2021, has provided the most zoomed-in video of a Phobos solar eclipse yet – and at the highest-frame rate ever. That’s thanks to Perseverance’s next-generation Mastcam-Z camera system, a zoomable upgrade from Curiosity’s Mastcam.

“I knew it was going to be good, but I didn’t expect it to be this amazing,” said Rachel Howson of Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, one of the Mastcam-Z team members who operates the camera.

Howson noted that although Perseverance first sends lower-resolution thumbnails that offer a glimpse of the images to come, she was stunned by the full-resolution versions: “It feels like a birthday or holiday when they arrive. You know what’s coming, but there is still an element of surprise when you get to see the final product.”

Color also sets this version of a Phobos solar eclipse apart. Mastcam-Z has a solar filter that acts like sunglasses to reduce light intensity. “You can see details in the shape of Phobos’ shadow, like ridges and bumps on the moon’s landscape,” said Mark Lemmon, a planetary astronomer with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who has orchestrated most of the Phobos observations by Mars rovers. “You can also see sunspots. And it’s cool that you can see this eclipse exactly as the rover saw it from Mars.”

As Phobos circles Mars, its gravity exerts small tidal forces on the Red Planet’s interior, slightly deforming rock in the planet’s crust and mantle. These forces also slowly change Phobos’ orbit. As a result, geophysicists can use those changes to better understand how pliable the interior of Mars is, revealing more about the materials within the crust and mantle.

Scientists already know that Phobos is doomed: The moon is getting closer to the Martian surface and is destined to crash into the planet in tens of millions of years. But eclipse observations from the surface of Mars over the last two decades have also allowed scientists to refine their understanding of Phobos’ slow death spiral.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Peregrine Update: Taking Our First Official Glimpse of the Moon-bound Robotic Spacecraft...

Astrobotic / Keystone Space Collaborative

Astrobotic Unveils Peregrine Lunar Lander Flight Model (News Release)

Pittsburgh, PA - Astrobotic unveiled the flight model of its Peregrine lunar lander on Wednesday morning during a visit by top NASA and government officials to the company’s headquarters. The flight model, as opposed to earlier test models, is the version of Peregrine that will actually fly to the Moon on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket. Its unveiling is a sign of Peregrine’s state of readiness as it moves closer to its launch date, scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year. Peregrine is the first lander in NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative to unveil its flight model, and could become the first American spacecraft to land on the Moon since the Apollo program.

Attendees of Peregrine’s unveiling included Congressman Matt Cartwright, Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science, Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator and former U.S. senator, Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, and James Reuter, Associate Administrator for the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate. The officials also attended the inaugural conference of the Keystone Space Collaborative, a consortium of Pennsylvania companies dedicated to growing the local commercial space industry, of which Astrobotic is a member.

Peregrine’s unveiling took place at Astrobotic’s Pittsburgh, PA, headquarters, an approximately 50,000 square-foot state-of-the-art facility dedicated to developing and operating lunar spacecraft. Because the flight model must be kept free of contamination of sensitive spacecraft components, attendees were required to suit up in white coveralls and hairnets to enter the cleanroom where Peregrine is being assembled.

“This lunar lander build is a dream come true,” said John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic. “This is why our company was founded 15 years ago. It represents the culmination of countless hours over many years by hundreds of people to design and assemble the lander, to create the lunar delivery market, and to establish the facilities and supply chain needed to ensure the success of commercial space missions like Peregrine’s long into the future.”

Also present in the cleanroom were the 24 payloads that Peregrine will be delivering to the lunar surface. These include scientific instruments from three national space agencies – including 11 from NASA alone – a rover from Carnegie Mellon University, several payloads from commercial companies, and cultural messages from individuals around the Earth. The payloads are already integrated onto Peregrine’s flight decks, which are awaiting installation on the greater lander. Once Peregrine’s integration is complete, it will head to spacecraft environmental testing, before being shipped to Cape Canaveral in Florida to begin its final preparations for launch in Q4 2022.

Source: Astrobotic

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Astrobotic

NASA Is Heading Back to Uranus Next Decade (Hopefully)!

NASA / JPL

Report Identifies Priority Planetary Science Missions, Planetary Defense Efforts, and Strategic Investments for the Next Decade (News Release)

WASHINGTON — A new decadal survey from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine identifies scientific priorities and opportunities and makes funding recommendations to maximize the advancement of planetary science, astrobiology, and planetary defense in the next 10 years.

The recommendations by the steering committee for the decadal survey draw on input from the scientific community through the advice of six panels, hundreds of white papers, invited speakers, outreach to advisory groups and professional society conferences, and work with mission-design teams.

“This report sets out an ambitious but practicable vision for advancing the frontiers of planetary science, astrobiology, and planetary defense in the next decade,” said Robin Canup, assistant vice president of the Planetary Sciences Directorate at the Southwest Research Institute, and co-chair of the National Academies’ steering committee for the decadal survey. “This recommended portfolio of missions, high-priority research activities, and technology development will produce transformative advances in human knowledge and understanding about the origin and evolution of the solar system, and of life and the habitability of other bodies beyond Earth.”

The report identifies three high-level scientific themes — origins, worlds and processes, and life and habitability — and defines 12 priority science questions to help guide mission selection and research efforts in planetary science and astrobiology.

Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032 recommends NASA missions that are balanced across three cost classes, and considers both ongoing and potential future missions in order to enable a steady stream of new discoveries and support the capability to make major scientific advances. The small-class Discovery program supports principal investigator (PI)-led missions that address focused science objectives with a high launch cadence. Medium-class missions like those in the New Frontiers program are PI-led and address broader science goals. Large-class flagship missions address broad, high-priority science objectives with sophisticated instrument payloads and mission designs.

Priority Flagship Missions

The Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) should be the highest-priority large mission, the report says. The UOP would conduct a multi-year orbital tour to transform knowledge of ice giants in general, and the Uranian system in particular, through flybys and the delivery of an atmospheric probe. The report states that UOP would be programmatically complementary to the flagship missions underway, and that a launch within the 2023-2032 decade is viable on currently available launch vehicles.

The Enceladus Orbilander should be NASA’s second-highest priority large mission, the report says. The Orbilander would search for evidence of life on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, from orbit and during a two-year landed mission that would perform detailed studies of fresh plume material originating from Enceladus’ interior ocean.

State of the Profession

The state of the profession — including its diversity, equity, inclusivity, and accessibility (DEIA) — is central to the success of the planetary science enterprise. The report encourages the engagement of students from underrepresented communities at secondary and college levels to support and retain them along planetary science and astrobiology pathways, and to create and sustain a diverse planetary science community.

“While scientific understanding is the primary motivation for what our community does, we must also work to boldly address issues concerning our community’s most important resource — the people who propel its planetary science and exploration missions,” said Philip Christensen, Regents Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and steering committee co-chair. “Ensuring broad access and participation in the field is essential to maximizing scientific excellence and safeguarding the nation’s continued leadership in space exploration.”

A healthy scientific community needs an environment free of hostility and harassment, the report says. It recommends that NASA’s Planetary Science Division (PSD) implement codes of conduct for its missions, conferences, and field campaigns, and that NASA, NSF, affiliated institutions, and professional societies work to mitigate bias at all levels. This effort should include analysis of decision-making practices and procedures, and engagement with the community to develop creative initiatives to uncover and mitigate bias.

There is a pressing need for data-gathering efforts on the size, identity, and demographics of the planetary science and astrobiology community, as well as a surveying of workplace climate, the report states, as any efforts toward equity and accountability in the community rely on having complete data.

Planetary Defense

Planetary defense is part of an international cooperative effort to detect and track objects that could pose a threat to life on Earth and an element of NASA’s planetary science endeavors concerned with human health and safety. The report’s recommendations focus on enhancing near-Earth object (NEO) detection, tracking, and characterization capabilities; improving NEO modeling, prediction, and information integration; and developing technologies for NEO deflection and disruption missions.

NASA should fully support the development, timely launch, and subsequent operation of the NEO Surveyor, a dedicated, space-based mid-infrared survey, to achieve the highest-priority planetary defense NEO survey goals, the report says. Following the NEO Surveyor and Double Asteroid Redirection Test, the highest-priority planetary defense demonstration mission should be a rapid-response, flyby reconnaissance mission targeted to a challenging NEO of 50 to 100 meters in diameter — which is representative of the population of objects posing the highest probability of a destructive Earth impact. Such a mission should assess the capabilities and limitations of flyby characterization methods to better prepare for a short-warning time NEO threat.

New Frontiers and Discovery Programs

As mission themes for the New Frontiers program, the report recommends that NASA include a Centaur Orbiter and Lander, Ceres sample return, comet surface sample return, Enceladus multiple flyby, Lunar Geophysical Network, Saturn probe, Titan orbiter, and Venus In Situ Explorer. These mission themes were chosen based on how well each would address the priority-science questions identified, and a consideration of programmatic balance, destination class, cost, technical readiness, and scientific merit.

Though the report does not make specific recommendations for small missions, the committee found that the Discovery program has made important scientific contributions and that future missions can address a rich array of science. Therefore, NASA should continue to support Discovery at a high cadence of two missions per announcement of opportunity, in which NASA publicly solicits proposals.

Exploration Programs

Mars and the Moon each provide the opportunity to investigate a wide range of priority-science questions at relatively easy-to-reach destinations, and these justify the Mars Exploration Program (MEP) and the Lunar Discovery Exploration Program (LDEP) as dedicated programs, according to the report. It recommends NASA develop scientific exploration strategies in other areas of broad scientific importance, such as Venus and ocean worlds, that have an increasing number of U.S. missions and international collaboration opportunities.

NASA should maintain the MEP and prioritize the Mars Life Explorer (MLE) as the next medium-class MEP mission. While the Mars Sample Return (MSR) looks for ancient biosignatures, the MLE would seek extant life and assess modern habitability. The prior decadal survey recommended a Mars sample-caching rover as NASA’s top priority flagship mission, which is being implemented as the MSR program. The new decadal survey reaffirms the broad and fundamental scientific importance of MSR, and says the highest scientific priority of NASA’s robotic exploration efforts this decade should be MSR’s completion as soon as practicably possible with no change in scope. However, it cautions that the cost of MSR should not be allowed to undermine the long-term programmatic balance of the planetary portfolio. If costs increase substantially, NASA should take strong efforts to secure a budget augmentation to ensure the success of this strategic mission.

PSD should execute a strategic program to accomplish lunar planetary science and implement a structured, science-led approach to provide scientific requirements for the Artemis program. This effort should have an organizational structure that aligns responsibility, authority, and accountability.The report prioritizes implementation of Endurance-A as the highest-priority medium-class mission for the LDEP. Endurance-A would utilize commercial lunar payload services to deliver a rover that would collect a substantial mass of high-value samples across a long traverse, delivering them to astronauts for return to Earth. This coordinated approach provides a large opportunity to expand the partnership between NASA’s human exploration and scientific efforts at the Moon. The report notes that this coordination will require an organizational structure that empowers PSD and LDEP to provide scientific requirements to the Artemis program.

Funding, Infrastructure, and Technology

The report contains a suite of recommendations aimed at ensuring there is the funding, infrastructure, and technology needed to support the prioritized missions and other research efforts going forward. For example, PSD should progressively ramp up its investment in research and analysis (R&A) activities to a minimum annual-funding level of 10% of its budget. Strong, steady investment in R&A is needed to ensure a maximal return of mission data, that data drives understanding and novel testable hypotheses, and that advances feed into future mission development.

NASA’s level of planetary technology funding has declined over recent years to just 4% and now falls short of recommended levels of investment. The report says PSD should fund technology advancement at an average of 6% to 8% of its budget in order to achieve the significant technology advancements that will be needed to accomplish strategic research and missions prioritized in the report.

NSF-supported, ground-based telescopic observations provide critical data that help in addressing important planetary science questions, and NSF should continue, and if possible expand, funding to support existing and future observatories and related programs.

The study — undertaken by the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032 Steering Committee — was sponsored by NASA and NSF. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.

Source: NationalAcademies.org

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QueSST Update: America's Next X-Plane Is Back in the Golden State for Final Assembly...

NASA / Lauren Hughes

NASA’s X-59 Arrives Back in California Following Critical Ground Tests (News Release)

The X-59, NASA’s quiet supersonic experimental aircraft, has arrived back at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, following several months of critical ground tests in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Ground tests on the X-59 were done to ensure the aircraft’s ability to withstand the loads and stresses of supersonic flight – or flight at speeds faster than Mach 1. The vehicle’s fuel systems were also calibrated and tested at Lockheed Martin’s Ft. Worth facilities. With its return to California, the X-59 will undergo further ground tests as it approaches full completion of its development and continues to make progress on its way to first flight.

The X-59 is designed to fly faster than the speed of sound without producing the typically loud sonic booms that occur when an aircraft flies at supersonic speeds. The advanced X-plane will instead reduce that sound to a quiet sonic “thump”, which will be demonstrated in flights over communities around the U.S. starting in 2024. NASA’s goal is to collect and provide data to regulators that may finally solve the sonic boom challenge and open the future to commercial supersonic flight over land, reducing flight times drastically.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Guess who's back? Back again? X-59, tell a friend!

The X-59 is back home in California. It has returned to @LockheedMartin’s Skunk Works after completing fuel & structural testing in Texas. Next up-final assembly, engine install & system checkouts. More: https://t.co/O3YJXFI86S pic.twitter.com/RyxmiE5jfc

— NASA Aeronautics (@NASAaero) April 18, 2022

Hubble's Successor Is At Least Two Months Away from Giving Us Its Official Infrared View of Our Universe...

ESA / ATG medialab

Webb Telescope’s Coldest Instrument Reaches Operating Temperature (News Release - April 13)

With help from a cryocooler, the Mid-Infrared Instrument has dropped down to just a few degrees above the lowest temperature matter can reach and is ready for calibration.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will see the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang, but to do that its instruments first need to get cold – really cold. On April 7, Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) – a joint development by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) – reached its final operating temperature below 7 kelvins (minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 266 degrees Celsius).

Along with Webb’s three other instruments, MIRI initially cooled off in the shade of Webb’s tennis-court-size sunshield, dropping to about 90 kelvins (minus 298 F, or minus 183 C). But dropping to less than 7 kelvins required an electrically-powered cryocooler. Last week, the team passed a particularly challenging milestone called the “pinch point,” when the instrument goes from 15 kelvins (minus 433 F, or minus 258 C) to 6.4 kelvins (minus 448 F, or minus 267 C).

“The MIRI cooler team has poured a lot of hard work into developing the procedure for the pinch point,” said Analyn Schneider, project manager for MIRI at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “The team was both excited and nervous going into the critical activity. In the end it was a textbook execution of the procedure, and the cooler performance is even better than expected.”

The low temperature is necessary because all four of Webb’s instruments detect infrared light – wavelengths slightly longer than those that human eyes can see. Distant galaxies, stars hidden in cocoons of dust, and planets outside our solar system all emit infrared light. But so do other warm objects, including Webb’s own electronics and optics hardware. Cooling down the four instruments’ detectors and the surrounding hardware suppresses those infrared emissions. MIRI detects longer infrared wavelengths than the other three instruments, which means it needs to be even colder.

Another reason Webb’s detectors need to be cold is to suppress something called dark current, or electric current created by the vibration of atoms in the detectors themselves. Dark current mimics a true signal in the detectors, giving the false impression that they have been hit by light from an external source. Those false signals can drown out the real signals astronomers want to find. Since temperature is a measurement of how fast the atoms in the detector are vibrating, reducing the temperature means less vibration, which in turn means less dark current.

MIRI’s ability to detect longer infrared wavelengths also makes it more sensitive to dark current, so it needs to be colder than the other instruments to fully remove that effect. For every degree the instrument temperature goes up, the dark current goes up by a factor of about 10.

Once MIRI reached a frigid 6.4 kelvins, scientists began a series of checks to make sure the detectors were operating as expected. Like a doctor searching for any sign of illness, the MIRI team looks at data describing the instrument’s health, then gives the instrument a series of commands to see if it can execute tasks correctly. This milestone is the culmination of work by scientists and engineers at multiple institutions in addition to JPL, including Northrop Grumman, which built the cryocooler, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which oversaw the integration of MIRI and the cooler to the rest of the observatory.

“We spent years practicing for that moment, running through the commands and the checks that we did on MIRI,” said Mike Ressler, project scientist for MIRI at JPL. “It was kind of like a movie script: Everything we were supposed to do was written down and rehearsed. When the test data rolled in, I was ecstatic to see it looked exactly as expected and that we have a healthy instrument.”

There are still more challenges that the team will have to face before MIRI can start its scientific mission. Now that the instrument is at operating temperature, team members will take test images of stars and other known objects that can be used for calibration and to check the instrument’s operations and functionality. The team will conduct these preparations alongside calibration of the other three instruments, delivering Webb’s first science images this summer.

“I am immensely proud to be part of this group of highly-motivated, enthusiastic scientists and engineers drawn from across Europe and the U.S.,” said Alistair Glasse, MIRI instrument scientist at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (ATC) in Edinburgh, Scotland. “This period is our ‘trial by fire’, but it is already clear to me that the personal bonds and mutual respect that we have built up over the past years is what will get us through the next few months to deliver a fantastic instrument to the worldwide astronomy community.”

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Cool news! Webb’s MIRI instrument recently passed through its critical “pinch point” and cooled to just a few kelvins above absolute zero, which is the coldest you can go: https://t.co/jjE7xTal0O

Wondering why MIRI is extremely chill? Thread ❄️ pic.twitter.com/a9l7lcZ645

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) April 13, 2022

Webb's Predecessor Observes a Large Celestial Visitor Heading into Our Solar System...

NASA, ESA, Zena Levy (STScI)

Hubble Confirms Largest Comet Nucleus Ever Seen (News Release - April 12)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has determined the size of the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers. The estimated diameter is approximately 80 miles across, making it larger than the state of Rhode Island. The nucleus is about 50 times larger than found at the heart of most known comets. Its mass is estimated to be a staggering 500 trillion tons, a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet found much closer to the Sun.

The behemoth comet, C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is barreling this way at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system. But not to worry. It will never get closer than 1 billion miles away from the Sun, which is slightly farther than the distance of the planet Saturn. And that won't be until the year 2031.

The previous record holder is comet C/2002 VQ94, with a nucleus estimated to be 60 miles across. It was discovered in 2002 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project.

"This comet is literally the tip of the iceberg for many thousands of comets that are too faint to see in the more distant parts of the solar system," said David Jewitt, a professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and co-author of the new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We've always suspected this comet had to be big because it is so bright at such a large distance. Now we confirm it is."

Comet C/2014 UN271 was discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein in archival images from the Dark Energy Survey at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. It was first serendipitously observed in November 2010, when it was a whopping 3 billion miles from the Sun, which is nearly the average distance to Neptune. Since then, it has been intensively studied by ground and space-based telescopes.

"This is an amazing object, given how active it is when it's still so far from the Sun," said the paper's lead author Man-To Hui of the Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau. "We guessed the comet might be pretty big, but we needed the best data to confirm this." So, his team used Hubble to take five photos of the comet on January 8, 2022.

The challenge in measuring this comet was how to discriminate the solid nucleus from the huge dusty coma enveloping it. The comet is currently too far away for its nucleus to be visually resolved by Hubble. Instead, the Hubble data show a bright spike of light at the nucleus' location. Hui and his team next made a computer model of the surrounding coma and adjusted it to fit the Hubble images. Then, the glow of the coma was subtracted to leave behind the starlike nucleus.

Hui and his team compared the brightness of the nucleus to earlier radio observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. This combined data constrains the diameter and the reflectivity of the nucleus. The new Hubble measurements are close to the earlier size estimates from ALMA, but convincingly suggest a darker nucleus surface than previously thought. "It's big and it's blacker than coal," said Jewitt.

The comet has been falling toward the Sun for well over 1 million years. It is coming from the hypothesized nesting ground of trillions of comets, called the Oort Cloud. The diffuse cloud is thought to have an inner edge at 2,000 to 5,000 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth. Its outer edge might extend at least a quarter of the way out to the distance of the nearest stars to our Sun, the Alpha Centauri system.

The Oort Cloud's comets didn't actually form so far from the Sun; instead, they were tossed out of the solar system billions of years ago by a gravitational "pinball game" among the massive outer planets, when the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn were still evolving. The far-flung comets only travel back toward the Sun and planets if their distant orbits are disturbed by the gravitational tug of a passing star – like shaking apples out of a tree.

Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein follows a 3-million-year-long elliptical orbit, taking it as far from the Sun as roughly half a light-year. The comet is now less than 2 billion miles from the Sun, falling nearly perpendicular to the plane of our solar system. At that distance temperatures are only about minus 348 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet that's warm enough for carbon monoxide to sublimate off the surface to produce the dusty coma.

Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein provides an invaluable clue to the size distribution of comets in the Oort Cloud and hence its total mass. Estimates for the Oort Cloud's mass vary widely, reaching as high as 20 times Earth's mass.

First hypothesized in 1950 by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, the Oort Cloud still remains a theory because the innumerable comets that make it up are too faint and distant to be directly observed. Ironically, this means the solar system's largest structure is all but invisible. It's estimated that NASA's pair of Voyager spacecraft won't reach the inner realm of the Oort Cloud for another 300 years and could take as long as 30,000 years to pass through it.

Circumstantial evidence come from infalling comets that can be traced back to this nesting ground. They approach the Sun from all different directions meaning the cloud must be spherical in shape. These comets are deep-freeze samples of the composition of the early solar system, preserved for billions of years. The reality of the Oort Cloud is bolstered by theoretical modeling of the formation and evolution of the solar system. The more observational evidence that can be gathered through deep sky surveys coupled with multiwavelength observations, the better astronomers will understand the Oort Cloud's role in the solar system's evolution.

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

Source: NASA.Gov

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Big News for SHIB Today!

So after several months of anticipation, Shiba Inu has finally been listed on the Robinhood app! We'll see how high its price will go over the next few days...

I'd be more ecstatic over this news had I not withdrawn $2,500 from my $SHIB holdings to help pay for my trip to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida last month, but it's all good. The expense was worth it...just click on that link to find out!

Here's hoping that the remaining amount of SHIB I have will be worth a whole lot more by the end of this year! We'll see. Now when will Robinhood list Saitama and SHINJA next?

Woof! Shiba Inu $SHIB now listed on @RobinhoodApp. https://t.co/brxIOxy1oC

— Shib (@Shibtoken) April 12, 2022

ROBINHOOD LISTED $SHIB LET’S GOOO!!

— MAJESTIC (@MajesticDrama) April 12, 2022

BREAKING: Robinhood has listed Shiba Inu.

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) April 12, 2022

🚨 Robinhood lists SHIBA INU — apparently adding their second dog-memecoin to their offering 🐕

Read more on @CMCAlexandria 👇https://t.co/z8Z7hvrmNb

— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) April 12, 2022

America's Next Asteroid Explorer Is Unveiled at JPL...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA Shows Off Psyche Spacecraft to Media (News Release)

Members of the media were invited to a clean room at JPL to interview mission leaders and see the asteroid-orbiting spacecraft before it ships to Florida for its August launch.

Engineers are putting the final touches on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, which is set to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in August on its journey to a metal-rich asteroid of the same name. Members of the media got a chance to see the spacecraft up close in a clean room at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Monday, April 11. Reporters also interviewed mission leaders, including Psyche’s principal investigator, Lindy Elkins-Tanton from Arizona State University, and its project manager, Henry Stone from JPL.

“Welcoming reporters into the clean room gives the public a glimpse of the years of hard work that have gone into this mission,” said Brian Bone, Psyche’s assembly, test, and launch operations manager at JPL. “Thanks to the Psyche team’s determination and skill, we’re in the final stretch of readying the spacecraft to head out to our launch site in Florida."

To prevent the van-size spacecraft from bringing Earth bacteria into space, reporters wiped down their equipment with isopropyl alcohol and donned protective smocks and hair coverings before entering the High Bay 2 clean room in the Lab’s storied Spacecraft Assembly Facility. NASA is set to ship Psyche to the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch this summer.

The spacecraft will fly by Mars for a gravity assist in May 2023 and, in early 2026, orbit around asteroid Psyche in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists think the asteroid, which is about 173 miles (280 kilometers) at its widest point, may consist largely of metal from the core of a planetesimal, one of the building blocks of the rocky planets in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. If so, it could provide a unique opportunity to study how planets like our own Earth formed.

The mission has been in the phase known as assembly, test, and launch operations since March 2021. Optimal launch periods to the main asteroid belt are limited, so over the last year, the team has worked against the clock to complete assembly. They recently attached the largest solar arrays ever installed at JPL and have put the spacecraft through a series of rigorous tests to simulate the extreme conditions that a NASA spacecraft endures. After undergoing electromagnetic, thermal-vacuum, vibration, shock, and acoustic testing, Psyche has been cleared to proceed. The launch period opens Aug. 1.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Lights, camera, action! 🎥

Today, we invited members of the media to a JPL clean room to see the #MissionToPsyche spacecraft & interview mission leaders. Events like this give the public a glimpse of the years of hard work that go into missions. More at https://t.co/13J5pNBwGt pic.twitter.com/xIBZTuIWO4

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) April 12, 2022

Photos of the Day: Batman in Burbank...

Just thought I'd share these photos that I took yesterday showing the Batman statue standing tall near the AMC 16 theater at downtown Burbank in California.

This statue has been on display at this San Fernando Valley location for about two years, I think...but it was only this weekend that I finally drove down to Burbank to see this cool sculpture in person.

I wanted to pose with this Caped Crusader statue without my face mask on—which I would've been loathe to do at the start of the pandemic back in 2020, even though I was outdoors. Better late than never!

A Historic Day for the United States Supreme Court...

Congratulations to Ketanji Brown Jackson...who will become the first-ever Black woman in the 233-year history of the U.S. Supreme Court to preside as Justice!

Jackson will have to wait till June or July to finally be sworn in as a SCOTUS judge (since outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer won't be retiring till this summer), but in the meantime, she'll serve as a shining beacon for young African-American women who aspire to pursue law and earn such an esteemed position in the highest levels of the U.S. government when they grow up.

And this is yet another win for President Biden—who fulfilled his campaign plege of putting a Black woman on the Supreme Court after passing a long-anticipated infrastructure bill and ending the 20-year war in Afghanistan during his 14 months in office. Well done.

WATCH: The U.S. Senate confirms Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court https://t.co/mgNRUzBe8g pic.twitter.com/NA3OElNKyU

— Bloomberg (@business) April 7, 2022

Photos of the Day: Webb's Predecessor Captures Images of a Distant Protoplanet That's Nine Times More Massive Than Jupiter...

Science: NASA, ESA, Thayne Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc.); Image Processing: Thayne Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc.), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Hubble Finds a Planet Forming in an Unconventional Way (News Release)

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has directly photographed evidence of a Jupiter-like protoplanet forming through what researchers describe as an "intense and violent process." This discovery supports a long-debated theory for how planets like Jupiter form, called "disk instability."

The new world under construction is embedded in a protoplanetary disk of dust and gas with distinct spiral structure swirling around surrounding a young star that’s estimated to be around 2 million years-old. That's about the age of our solar system when planet formation was underway. (The solar system's age is currently 4.6 billion years.)

"Nature is clever; it can produce planets in a range of different ways," said Thayne Currie of the Subaru Telescope and Eureka Scientific, lead researcher on the study.

All planets are made from material that originated in a circumstellar disk. The dominant theory for jovian planet formation is called "core accretion," a bottom-up approach where planets embedded in the disk grow from small objects – with sizes ranging from dust grains to boulders – colliding and sticking together as they orbit a star. This core then slowly accumulates gas from the disk. In contrast, the disk instability approach is a top-down model where as a massive disk around a star cools, gravity causes the disk to rapidly break up into one or more planet-mass fragments.

The newly-forming planet, called AB Aurigae b, is probably about nine times more massive than Jupiter and orbits its host star at a whopping distance of 8.6 billion miles – over two times farther than Pluto is from our Sun. At that distance it would take a very long time, if ever, for a Jupiter-sized planet to form by core accretion. This leads researchers to conclude that the disk instability has enabled this planet to form at such a great distance. And, it is in a striking contrast to expectations of planet formation by the widely-accepted core accretion model.

The new analysis combines data from two Hubble instruments: the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph. These data were compared to those from a state-of-the-art planet imaging instrument called SCExAO on Japan's 8.2-meter Subaru Telescope located at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. The wealth of data from space and ground-based telescopes proved critical, because distinguishing between infant planets and complex disk features unrelated to planets is very difficult.

"Interpreting this system is extremely challenging," Currie said. "This is one of the reasons why we needed Hubble for this project – a clean image to better separate the light from the disk and any planet."

Nature itself also provided a helping hand: the vast disk of dust and gas swirling around the star AB Aurigae is tilted nearly face-on to our view from Earth.

Currie emphasized that Hubble's longevity played a particular role in helping researchers measure the protoplanet's orbit. He was originally very skeptical that AB Aurigae b was a planet. The archival data from Hubble, combined with imaging from Subaru, proved to be a turning point in changing his mind.

"We could not detect this motion on the order of a year or two years," Currie said. "Hubble provided a time baseline, combined with Subaru data, of 13 years, which was sufficient to be able to detect orbital motion."

"This result leverages ground and space observations and we get to go back in time with Hubble archival observations," Olivier Guyon of the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Subaru Telescope, Hawaii added. "AB Aurigae b has now been looked at in multiple wavelengths, and a consistent picture has emerged – one that's very solid."

The team's results are published in the April 4 issue of Nature Astronomy.

"This new discovery is strong evidence that some gas giant planets can form by the disk instability mechanism," Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science in Washington, D.C. emphasized. "In the end, gravity is all that counts, as the leftovers of the star-formation process will end up being pulled together by gravity to form planets, one way or the other."

Understanding the early days of the formation of Jupiter-like planets provides astronomers with more context into the history of our own solar system. This discovery paves the way for future studies of the chemical make-up of protoplanetary disks like AB Aurigae, including with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

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

Source: NASA.Gov

Hubble's Successor Is Now One Stage Away from Completing Its Seven Mirror Alignment Phases...

NASA

Webb Completes First Multi-Instrument Alignment (News Release)

The sixth stage of aligning NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s mirrors to its scientific instruments so they will create the most accurate and focused images possible has concluded. While the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) continues its cooldown, optics teams have successfully aligned the rest of the observatory’s onboard instruments to Webb’s mirrors. Previous alignment efforts were so accurate that the team concluded no additional adjustments to the secondary mirror are necessary until the seventh and final stage, which will involve MIRI when it has fully cooled.

“As a general rule, the commissioning process starts with coarse corrections and then moves into fine corrections. The early secondary mirror coarse corrections, however, were so successful that the fine corrections in the first iteration of Phase Six were unnecessary,” said Chanda Walker, Webb wavefront sensing and control scientist, Ball Aerospace. “This accomplishment was due to many years of planning and great teamwork among the wavefront sensing team.”

Throughout the majority of the alignment process, Webb’s 18 hexagonal mirrors and secondary mirror were focused into alignment to the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument only. Upon completing this most recent step, the observatory is now aligned to the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS), the Near-Infrared Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), and the Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) as well as NIRCam.

Once MIRI fully cools to its cryogenic operating temperature in the weeks ahead, a second multi-instrument alignment will occur to make final adjustments to the instruments and mirrors if needed. When the telescope is fully aligned and able to deliver focused light to each instrument, a key decision meeting will occur to confirm the end of aligning the James Webb Space Telescope. The team will then transition from alignment efforts to commissioning each instrument for scientific operations, which are expected to begin this summer.

Source: NASA.Gov

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ESA / ATG medialab