DART's Collision with Asteroid Dimorphos Has Been Photographed by Hubble and Its Successor...

NASA, ESA, CSA, Cristina Thomas (Northern Arizona University), Ian Wong (NASA-GSFC); Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Webb, Hubble Capture Detailed Views of DART Impact (News Release - September 29)

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

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

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

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

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

Webb Captures Impact Site Before and After Collision

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

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

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

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

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

Hubble Images Show Movement of Ejecta After Impact

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: NASA.Gov

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Science: NASA, ESA, Jian-Yang Li (PSI); animation: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

DART, you rocked out there. 🪨#ICYMI, Webb and @NASAHubble both captured the effects of #DARTMission colliding with an asteroid as a test of planetary defense. This is the first time both telescopes observed the same target at the same time: https://t.co/CuVzJXyK2F pic.twitter.com/QvgoqBQd8r

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) September 29, 2022

An Ocean World Gets Its First Close-Up in Over 20 Years...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / SWRI / MSSS

NASA’s Juno Shares First Image From Flyby of Jupiter’s Moon Europa (News Release)

Observations from the spacecraft’s pass of the moon provided the first close-up in over two decades of this ocean world, resulting in remarkable imagery and unique science.

The first picture NASA’s Juno spacecraft took as it flew by Jupiter’s ice-encrusted moon Europa has arrived on Earth. Revealing surface features in a region near the moon’s equator called Annwn Regio, the image was captured during the solar-powered spacecraft’s closest approach, on Thursday, September 29, at 2:36 a.m. PDT (5:36 a.m. EDT), at a distance of about 219 miles (352 kilometers).

This is only the third close pass in history below 310 miles (500 kilometers) altitude and the closest look any spacecraft has provided at Europa since January 3, 2000, when NASA’s Galileo came within 218 miles (351 kilometers) of the surface.

Europa is the sixth-largest moon in the solar system, slightly smaller than Earth’s moon. Scientists think a salty ocean lies below a miles-thick ice shell, sparking questions about potential conditions capable of supporting life underneath Europa’s surface.

This segment of the first image of Europa [above] taken during this flyby by the spacecraft’s JunoCam (a public-engagement camera) zooms in on a swath of Europa’s surface north of the equator. Due to the enhanced contrast between light and shadow seen along the terminator (the nightside boundary), rugged terrain features are easily seen, including tall shadow-casting blocks, while bright and dark ridges and troughs curve across the surface. The oblong pit near the terminator might be a degraded impact crater.

With this additional data about Europa’s geology, Juno’s observations will benefit future missions to the Jovian moon, including the agency’s Europa Clipper. Set to launch in 2024, Europa Clipper will study the moon’s atmosphere, surface and interior, with its main science goal being to determine whether there are places below Europa’s surface that could support life.

As exciting as Juno’s data will be, the spacecraft only had a two-hour window to collect it, racing past the moon with a relative velocity of about 14.7 miles per second (23.6 kilometers per second).

“It’s very early in the process, but by all indications Juno’s flyby of Europa was a great success,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “This first picture is just a glimpse of the remarkable new science to come from Juno’s entire suite of instruments and sensors that acquired data as we skimmed over the moon’s icy crust.”

During the flyby, the mission collected what will be some of the highest-resolution images of the moon (0.6 miles, or 1 kilometer, per pixel) and obtained valuable data on Europa’s ice shell structure, interior, surface composition and ionosphere, in addition to the moon’s interaction with Jupiter’s magnetosphere.

“The science team will be comparing the full set of images obtained by Juno with images from previous missions, looking to see if Europa’s surface features have changed over the past two decades,” said Candy Hansen, a Juno co-investigator who leads planning for the camera at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. “The JunoCam images will fill in the current geologic map, replacing existing low-resolution coverage of the area.”

Juno’s close-up views and data from its Microwave Radiometer (MWR) instrument will provide new details on how the structure of Europa’s ice varies beneath its crust. Scientists can use all this information to generate new insights into the moon, including data in the search for regions where liquid water may exist in shallow subsurface pockets.

Building on Juno’s observations and previous missions such as Voyager 2 and Galileo, NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, slated to arrive at Europa in 2030, will study the moon’s atmosphere, surface and interior – with a goal to investigate habitability and better understand its global subsurface ocean, the thickness of its ice crust and search for possible plumes that may be venting subsurface water into space.

The close flyby modified Juno’s trajectory, reducing the time it takes to orbit Jupiter from 43 to 38 days. The flyby also marks the second encounter with a Galilean moon during Juno’s extended mission. The mission explored Ganymede in June 2021 and is scheduled to make close flybys of Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system, in 2023 and 2024.

Source: NASA.Gov

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RIP, COOLIO (1963-2022)...

About an hour ago, I found out that Artis Leon Ivey Jr.—a.k.a. Coolio—passed away...apparently due to cardiac arrest at a friend's house in Los Angeles. My condolences to his family and friends.

Like a lot of other fans of the Monessen, Pennsylvania-born rapper, I'll always remember the song Gangsta's Paradise that Coolio did for the 1995 Michelle Pfeiffer film Dangerous Minds.

Not only is Gangsta's Paradise one of my favorite beats to sing whenever I did karaoke with friends, but this awesome rap song also made me nostalgic for the summer of 1995...when I started sophomore year in high school. I have great memories of 10th grade.

Here's the music video for Gangsta's Paradise. May You Rest In Peace, Coolio.

On This Day in 2007: A Journey to Vesta and Ceres Begins from Cape Canaveral in Florida...

NASA

15 Years Ago: Dawn Begins Voyage to Asteroid Vesta and Dwarf Planet Ceres (News Release)

The history-making Dawn mission, part of NASA’s Discovery Program and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Pasadena, California, left Earth on September 27, 2007, to study the two largest objects in the asteroid belt, asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres, providing scientists with an opportunity to learn more about the solar system’s formation.

Dawn used solar electric propulsion for most of its trajectory control, supplemented by a gravity-assist from Mars.

Dawn spent 14 months orbiting Vesta before moving on to orbit Ceres, the first spacecraft to orbit two different celestial bodies. It observed the dwarf planet until October 2018, when it ran out of attitude control fuel. The Dawn mission proved the value of ion propulsion to explore bodies in the solar system.

Managers named the ninth mission in the Discovery Program Dawn because they hoped it would reveal clues about the physical and chemical conditions in the earliest days of the solar system. Its two targets, the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres, the two largest objects in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, together comprise 45% of the mass in the asteroid belt. They have survived relatively intact from the solar system’s early days yet have remarkably different compositions, providing scientists with an opportunity to learn more about the processes of early planetary formation.

Because chemical engines would have required a prohibitively large amount of fuel to enable Dawn’s dual-target mission to the asteroid belt, the spacecraft relied on solar electric propulsion instead, using an ion propulsion system with 937 pounds of Xenon gas as a fuel source and power from its solar arrays. Between 1998 and 2001, Dawn’s predecessor the Deep Space 1 spacecraft demonstrated the utility of ion propulsion for an interplanetary mission by operating its ion engine for more than 16,000 hours, enabling it to fly by the asteroid Braille and the comet Borrelly.

Dawn lifted off on September 27, 2007, atop a Delta II rocket from Launch Complex 17B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, in Florida.

After insertion into heliocentric orbit, Dawn unfurled its solar arrays, the most powerful flown on an interplanetary mission. For the next 80 days, flight managers checked out Dawn’s systems including its three ion propulsion system thrusters and reaction wheel assemblies used for attitude control.

A long-duration system test of one of the ion thrusters began on November 6 and ended 165 hours later. Flight directors tested each of Dawn’s science instruments and found them in good working order.

With the initial checkout complete, Dawn turned on one of its ion thrusters on December 17, operating it until October 31, 2008, to align the spacecraft for its gravity-assist encounter with Mars.

Dawn carried three instruments to study the geology, elemental and mineral composition, shape, surface topography, geomorphology and tectonic history of Vesta and Ceres. The spacecraft’s orbital characteristics aided in determining the bodies’ masses and gravity fields.

The instruments included:

- A gamma-ray and neutron detector (GRaND).
- A visible and infrared (VIR) mapping spectrometer.
- Two identical framing cameras (FC).

After thrusting nearly continuously for 270 days, Dawn turned its ion engine off and began a coast phase toward its first planetary encounter, a gravity-assist flyby of Mars. On February 18, 2009, Dawn passed within 337 miles of the Red Planet. The close flyby not only increased Dawn’s velocity, it also changed the plane of its orbit, setting it up for its journey to Vesta.

The Mars flyby also provided an opportunity to calibrate Dawn’s instruments. The GRaND instrument collected data that scientists correlated with similar data collected by Mars Odyssey in orbit around Mars. The spacecraft entered a safe mode due to problems with its star trackers, causing some loss of science calibration data, but the event did not impact the gravity-assist flyby itself.

Dawn performed some tests of its thrusters after the flyby and resumed thrusting on June 8, 2009, continuing until arrival at Vesta. Although one of the spacecraft’s four reaction wheel assemblies failed on June 17, 2010, this did not affect operations as the three remaining ones adequately controlled its attitude.

On May 3, 2011, Dawn acquired its first targeting image of Vesta still half a million miles away. As it approached the asteroid, the spacecraft returned progressively higher resolution images. Dawn used its ion thrusters to enter orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011, the first spacecraft to orbit any main belt object.

During its nearly 14 months at Vesta, Dawn operated in six distinct science orbits to optimize data gathering by its science instruments. The spacecraft returned more than 30,000 images of the asteroid, far more than planned and fully mapping its surface, and much additional science information. It determined that Vesta has an iron-nickel core, its size large enough to allow it to differentiate.

Dawn confirmed Vesta as the parent body of the most numerous type of meteorite found on Earth.

On September 5, 2012, Dawn departed Vesta using its ion engines to begin its two-and-a-half-year journey to its next and final destination, the dwarf planet Ceres, discovered in 1801 and the largest body in the asteroid belt.

Although a second reaction wheel assembly failed just prior to Dawn’s departure from Vesta, flight controllers devised a workaround to maintain the spacecraft’s attitude. The spacecraft’s ion thruster fired continuously – with a short interruption in September 2014 when it entered a safe mode – until it arrived in orbit around Ceres.

Because of the two failed reaction wheel assemblies, Dawn took fewer images during its approach to Ceres than it did for Vesta, but by January 26, 2015, those images exceeded the highest-resolution photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope. Dawn entered orbit around Ceres on March 6, 2015, marking the first time a single spacecraft orbited two different celestial bodies and, coming four months before New Horizons flew by dwarf planet Pluto, the first time a spacecraft observed a dwarf planet.

Dawn completed the first topographic map of Ceres during this initial polar orbit. Over the next three years, Dawn repositioned itself into nine different orbits for different phases of its science mission. Its primary mission ended in June 2016, but managers granted it a one-year extension to continue its exploration of Ceres as the dwarf planet approached its perihelion, or closest distance to the Sun.

Managers extended its mission once again in 2017, and placed it in a relatively stable orbit, ensuring that it would not impact the dwarf planet for at least 20 years and most likely 50 years.

Dawn discovered bright spots on Ceres, such as Cerealia Facula inside the Occator Crater, salty deposits composed mainly of sodium carbonate that made their way to the surface in a slushy brine from within or below the crust. This computer-generated video made from images returned by Dawn simulate a flyover of Cerealia Facula.

On October 31, 2018, Dawn finally ran out of attitude control fuel, ending its highly successful and history-making mission.

Dawn’s legacy encompasses not only the scientific knowledge gained about the solar system’s early days by exploring Vesta and Ceres, but also includes its engineering accomplishments. The spacecraft’s ion propulsion system operated for 51,385 hours (5.9 years), or for about 54% of its time in space, allowing it to enter orbit around the two largest objects in the asteroid belt.

More specifically, Dawn holds the honor as the first and so far only spacecraft to orbit an asteroid and a dwarf planet, and the first to reach a dwarf planet. The more than 100,000 images and other scientific data Dawn beamed back to Earth of its two distinct targets shed much light on the origins of the solar system.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA


NASA


NASA

DART News: Humanity Has Finally Avenged the Dinosaurs! Sort of...

NASA / Johns Hopkins APL

NASA’s DART Mission Hits Asteroid in First-Ever Planetary Defense Test (Press Release)

After 10 months flying in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration – successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday, the agency’s first attempt to move an asteroid in space. Mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, announced the successful impact at 7:14 p.m. EDT.

As a part of NASA’s overall planetary defense strategy, DART’s impact with the asteroid Dimorphos demonstrates a viable mitigation technique for protecting the planet from an Earth-bound asteroid or comet, if one were discovered.

“At its core, DART represents an unprecedented success for planetary defense, but it is also a mission of unity with a real benefit for all humanity,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “As NASA studies the cosmos and our home planet, we’re also working to protect that home, and this international collaboration turned science fiction into science fact, demonstrating one way to protect Earth.”

DART targeted the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, a small body just 530 feet (160 meters) in diameter. It orbits a larger, 2,560-foot (780-meter) asteroid called Didymos. Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth.

The mission’s one-way trip confirmed that NASA can successfully navigate a spacecraft to intentionally collide with an asteroid to deflect it, a technique known as kinetic impact.

The investigation team will now observe Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes to confirm that DART’s impact altered the asteroid’s orbit around Didymos. Researchers expect the impact to shorten Dimorphos’ orbit by about 1%, or roughly 10 minutes; precisely measuring how much the asteroid was deflected is one of the primary purposes of the full-scale test.

“Planetary Defense is a globally unifying effort that affects everyone living on Earth,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Now we know we can aim a spacecraft with the precision needed to impact even a small body in space. Just a small change in its speed is all we need to make a significant difference in the path an asteroid travels.”

The spacecraft’s sole instrument, the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO), together with a sophisticated guidance, navigation and control system that works in tandem with Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation (SMART Nav) algorithms, enabled DART to identify and distinguish between the two asteroids, targeting the smaller body.

These systems guided the 1,260-pound (570-kilogram) box-shaped spacecraft through the final 56,000 miles (90,000 kilometers) of space into Dimorphos, intentionally crashing into it at roughly 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) per hour to slightly slow the asteroid’s orbital speed. DRACO’s final images, obtained by the spacecraft seconds before impact, revealed the surface of Dimorphos in close-up detail.

Fifteen days before impact, DART’s CubeSat companion Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), provided by the Italian Space Agency, deployed from the spacecraft to capture images of DART’s impact and the asteroid’s resulting cloud of ejected matter. In tandem with the images returned by DRACO, LICIACube’s images are intended to provide a view of the collision’s effects to help researchers better characterize the effectiveness of kinetic impact in deflecting an asteroid. Because LICIACube doesn’t carry a large antenna, images will be downlinked to Earth one by one in the coming weeks.

“DART’s success provides a significant addition to the essential toolbox we must have to protect Earth from a devastating impact by an asteroid,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer. “This demonstrates we are no longer powerless to prevent this type of natural disaster. Coupled with enhanced capabilities to accelerate finding the remaining hazardous asteroid population by our next Planetary Defense mission, the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, a DART successor could provide what we need to save the day.”

With the asteroid pair within 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) of Earth, a global team is using dozens of telescopes stationed around the world and in space to observe the asteroid system. Over the coming weeks, they will characterize the ejecta produced and precisely measure Dimorphos’ orbital change to determine how effectively DART deflected the asteroid. The results will help validate and improve scientific computer models critical to predicting the effectiveness of this technique as a reliable method for asteroid deflection.

“This first-of-its-kind mission required incredible preparation and precision, and the team exceeded expectations on all counts,” said APL Director Ralph Semmel. “Beyond the truly exciting success of the technology demonstration, capabilities based on DART could one day be used to change the course of an asteroid to protect our planet and preserve life on Earth as we know it.”

Roughly four years from now, the European Space Agency’s Hera project will conduct detailed surveys of both Dimorphos and Didymos, with a particular focus on the crater left by DART’s collision and a precise measurement of Dimorphos’ mass.

Johns Hopkins APL manages the DART mission for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency's Planetary Missions Program Office.

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Bullseye 🎯

Mission control at #JHUAPL announced #DARTMission successfully impacted its asteroid target on Monday, 26 Sep 2022 at 7:14 p.m. EDT. This is @NASA's first attempt to move an asteroid in space.@NASASolarSystem @AsteroidWatch pic.twitter.com/bcXF1ZBuig

— Johns Hopkins APL (@JHUAPL) September 27, 2022

ATLAS observations of the DART spacecraft impact at Didymos! pic.twitter.com/26IKwB9VSo

— ATLAS Project (@fallingstarIfA) September 27, 2022

Your Google search could reveal something smashing! Search for "NASA DART" on @Google to see a demonstration of browser, uh, planetary defense. pic.twitter.com/ZuxtlgaLJ1

— NASA (@NASA) September 27, 2022

Photos of the Day: A Raptor Takes to the Skies in the 2022 Miramar Air Show!

Richard T. Par

Just thought I'd share these photos that I took at the Miramar Air Show in San Diego, California, yesterday!

I shot over 1,300 pictures with my Nikon D3300 during this event (due to me using 'burst mode' on my DSLR camera)...with more than 600 of those images being of the F-22 Raptor during its aerial demonstration!

My main reason for attending the air show yesterday was to see the Raptor take flight in person (I went to the 2018 Miramar Air Show for this objective, but the F-22 demo team didn't show up when it was scheduled to appear that year), and it didn't disappoint.

I also wanted to see the F-35B Lightning II's hovering demonstration as well, but the traffic from the freeway to the parking lot at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar was so bad when I arrived in the morning that the F-35B was already in the air by the time I parked my car. (I exited the freeway around 10 AM; I didn't get to my parking spot till a little after 11 AM—near the scheduled time the F-35B demo began.)

Oh well. I already saw the F-35B show off its abilities up-close during the 2016 Miramar Air Show as well as the event four years ago. In the meantime, enjoy these pics of the F-22 soaring through the skies alone, as well as with a World War II-era P-51 Mustang in a U.S. Air Force Heritage Flight demonstration. Happy Sunday!


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par


Richard T. Par

Hubble's Successor Captures a Photo of My Favorite Ice Giant and Its Largest Moon...

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

First and foremost, I would like to point out that this awesome new photo of Neptune and its moon Triton by the James Webb Space Telescope makes me even sadder that NASA didn't select the Trident flyby spacecraft as its next Discovery-class mission last year... Oh well.

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New Webb Image Captures Clearest View of Neptune’s Rings in Decades (News Release - September 21)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: NASA.Gov

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What could've been...


L.M. Prockter et al. LPI / JPL / SwRI

NASA's Asteroid-Deflection Spacecraft Captures a Composite Image of the Gas Giant and Its Galilean Moons...

NASA / JHUAPL

DART Tests Autonomous Navigation System Using Jupiter and Europa (News Release)

After capturing images of one of the brightest stars in Earth’s night sky, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test’s (DART) camera recently set its sights on another eye-catching spectacle: Jupiter and its four largest moons.

As NASA’s DART spacecraft cruises toward its highly-anticipated September 26 encounter with the binary asteroid Didymos, the spacecraft’s imager — the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation, or DRACO — has snapped thousands of pictures of stars. The pictures give the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) team leading the mission for NASA the data necessary to support ongoing spacecraft testing and rehearsals in preparation for the spacecraft’s kinetic impact into Dimorphos, the moon of Didymos. As the only instrument on DART, DRACO will capture images of Didymos and Dimorphos; it will also support the spacecraft's autonomous guidance system — the Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation (SMART Nav) — to guide DART to impact.

On July 1 and August 2 the mission operations team pointed the DRACO imager to Jupiter to test the SMART Nav system. The team used it to detect and target Jupiter’s moon Europa as it emerged from behind Jupiter, similar to how Dimorphos will visually separate from the larger asteroid Didymos in the hours leading up to impact. While the test obviously didn’t involve DART colliding with Jupiter or its moons, it did give the JHUAPL-led SMART Nav team the chance to assess how well the SMART Nav system performs in flight. Before this Jupiter test, SMART Nav testing was done via simulations on the ground.

The SMART Nav team gained valuable experience from the test, including for how the SMART Nav team views data from the spacecraft. “Every time we do one of these tests, we tweak the displays, make them a little bit better and a little bit more responsive to what we will actually be looking for during the real terminal event,” said Peter Ericksen, SMART Nav software engineer at JHUAPL.

The DART spacecraft is designed to operate fully autonomously during the terminal approach, but the SMART Nav team will be monitoring how objects are tracked in the scene, including their intensities, number of pixels, and how consistently they’re being identified. Corrective action using preplanned contingencies will only be taken if there are significant and mission-threatening deviations from expectations. With Jupiter and its moons, the team had a chance to better understand how the intensities and number of pixels of objects might vary as the targets move across the detector.

The image above—taken when DART was approximately 16 million miles (26 million km) from Earth with Jupiter approximately 435 million miles (700 million km) away from the spacecraft—is a cropped composite of a DRACO image centered on Jupiter taken during one of these SMART Nav tests. Two brightness and contrast stretches, made to optimize Jupiter and its moons, respectively, were combined to form this view. From left to right are Ganymede, Jupiter, Europa, Io and Callisto.

“The Jupiter tests gave us the opportunity for DRACO to image something in our own solar system,” said Carolyn Ernst, DRACO instrument scientist at JHUAPL. “The images look fantastic, and we are excited for what DRACO will reveal about Didymos and Dimorphos in the hours and minutes leading up to impact!”

DRACO is a high-resolution camera inspired by the imager on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft that returned the first close-up images of the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth.

DART was developed and is managed by JHUAPL for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office. DART is the world's first planetary defense test mission, intentionally executing a kinetic impact into Dimorphos to slightly change its motion in space. While no known asteroid poses a threat to Earth, the DART mission will demonstrate that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a kinetic impact on a relatively small target asteroid, and that this is a viable technique to deflect a genuinely dangerous asteroid, if one were ever discovered. DART will reach its target on September 26, 2022.

Source: NASA.Gov

On This Day in 2012: Endeavour Arrives Home in the City of Angels...

It was 10 years ago today that a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA)—known as NASA 905—with the retired orbiter Endeavour sitting atop of it ceremoniously landed at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)!

One of my former coworkers and I joined a large throng of people at a residential area overlooking LAX to see the SCA and Endeavour perform a flyover of the airport before touching down on the runway...their escort of two F-18 jets flying away to return to NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) at Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert afterwards.

And a few weeks later, Endeavour would begin her much-celebrated parade down the streets of L.A. to her final home at the California Science Center.

The video (below) posted by AFRC's Twitter account nicely sums up what an amazing and emotional day it was a decade ago to see such a historic spacecraft do a victory lap around most of California (San Diego was excluded) before arriving at her last destination in the City of Angels.

This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime event.

10 years ago today @NASA's space shuttle Endeavour took its last flight.

On its final flight on September 21,2012 to the California Science Center, Endeavour was escorted by a combination of F/A-18s and an F-15 from NASA Armstrong.

More: https://t.co/x7JovPKJLS @NASAhistory pic.twitter.com/ZXYHnpMqAo

— NASA Armstrong (@NASAArmstrong) September 21, 2022

InSight Continues to Make Martian Discoveries Till the Very End...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / University of Arizona

NASA's InSight 'Hears' Its First Meteoroid Impacts on Mars (News Release - September 19)

The Mars lander’s seismometer has picked up vibrations from four separate impacts in the past two years.

NASA’s InSight lander has detected seismic waves from four space rocks that crashed on Mars in 2020 and 2021. Not only do these represent the first impacts detected by the spacecraft’s seismometer since InSight touched down on the Red Planet in 2018, it also marks the first time seismic and acoustic waves from an impact have been detected on Mars.

A new paper published Monday in Nature Geoscience details the impacts, which ranged between 53 and 180 miles (85 and 290 kilometers) from InSight’s location, a region of Mars called Elysium Planitia.

The first of the four confirmed meteoroids – the term used for space rocks before they hit the ground – made the most dramatic entrance: It entered Mars’ atmosphere on September 5, 2021, exploding into at least three shards that each left a crater behind.

Then, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter flew over the estimated impact site to confirm the location. The orbiter used its black-and-white Context Camera to reveal three darkened spots on the surface. After locating these spots, the orbiter’s team used the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera, or HiRISE, to get a color close-up of the craters (the meteoroid could have left additional craters in the surface, but they would be too small to see in HiRISE’s images).

“After three years of InSight waiting to detect an impact, those craters looked beautiful,” said Ingrid Daubar of Brown University, a co-author of the paper and a specialist in Mars impacts.

After combing through earlier data, scientists confirmed three other impacts had occurred on May 27, 2020; February 18, 2021; and August 31, 2021.

Researchers have puzzled over why they haven’t detected more meteoroid impacts on Mars. The Red Planet is next to the solar system’s main asteroid belt, which provides an ample supply of space rocks to scar the planet’s surface. Because Mars’ atmosphere is just 1% as thick as Earth’s, more meteoroids pass through it without disintegrating.

InSight’s seismometer has detected over 1,300 marsquakes. Provided by France’s space agency, the Centre National d’Études Spatiales, the instrument is so sensitive that it can detect seismic waves from thousands of miles away. But the September 5, 2021, event marks the first time an impact was confirmed as the cause of such waves.

InSight’s team suspects that other impacts may have been obscured by noise from wind or by seasonal changes in the atmosphere. But now that the distinctive seismic signature of an impact on Mars has been discovered, scientists expect to find more hiding within InSight’s nearly four years of data.

Science Behind the Strikes

Seismic data offer various clues that will help researchers better understand the Red Planet. Most marsquakes are caused by subsurface rocks cracking from heat and pressure. Studying how the resulting seismic waves change as they move through different material provides scientists a way to study Mars’ crust, mantle and core.

The four meteoroid impacts confirmed so far produced small quakes with a magnitude of no more than 2.0. Those smaller quakes provide scientists with only a glimpse into the Martian crust, while seismic signals from larger quakes, like the magnitude 5 event that occurred in May 2022, can also reveal details about the planet’s mantle and core.

But the impacts will be critical to refining Mars’ timeline. “Impacts are the clocks of the solar system,” said the paper’s lead author, Raphael Garcia of Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace in Toulouse, France. “We need to know the impact rate today to estimate the age of different surfaces.”

Scientists can approximate the age of a planet’s surface by counting its impact craters: The more they see, the older the surface. By calibrating their statistical models based on how often they see impacts occurring now, scientists can then estimate how many more impacts happened earlier in the solar system’s history.

InSight’s data, in combination with orbital images, can be used to rebuild a meteoroid’s trajectory and the size of its shock wave. Every meteoroid creates a shock wave as it hits the atmosphere and an explosion as it hits the ground. These events send sound waves through the atmosphere. The bigger the explosion, the more this sound wave tilts the ground when it reaches InSight. The lander’s seismometer is sensitive enough to measure how much the ground tilts from such an event and in what direction.

“We’re learning more about the impact process itself,” Garcia said. “We can match different sizes of craters to specific seismic and acoustic waves now.”

The lander still has time to study Mars. Dust buildup on the lander’s solar panels is reducing its power and will eventually lead to the spacecraft shutting down. Predicting precisely when is difficult, but based on the latest power readings, engineers now believe the lander could shut down between October of this year and January 2023.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Hubble's Successor Studies the Red Planet for the Very First Time...

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Mars JWST / GTO team

Mars Is Mighty in First Webb Observations of Red Planet (News Release)

This post highlights data from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured its first images and spectra of Mars on September 5. The telescope, an international collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), provides a unique perspective with its infrared sensitivity on our neighboring planet, complementing data being collected by orbiters, rovers and other telescopes.

Webb’s unique observation post nearly a million miles away at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2) provides a view of Mars’ observable disk (the portion of the sunlit side that is facing the telescope). As a result, Webb can capture images and spectra with the spectral resolution needed to study short-term phenomena like dust storms, weather patterns, seasonal changes and, in a single observation, processes that occur at different times (daytime, sunset, and nighttime) of a Martian day.

Because it is so close, the Red Planet is one of the brightest objects in the night sky in terms of both visible light (which human eyes can see) and the infrared light that Webb is designed to detect. This poses special challenges to the observatory, which was built to detect the extremely faint light of the most distant galaxies in the universe. Webb’s instruments are so sensitive that without special observing techniques, the bright infrared light from Mars is blinding, causing a phenomenon known as “detector saturation.” Astronomers adjusted for Mars’ extreme brightness by using very short exposures, measuring only some of the light that hit the detectors, and applying special data analysis techniques.

Webb’s first images of Mars [above], captured by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), show a region of the planet’s eastern hemisphere at two different wavelengths, or colors of infrared light. This image shows a surface reference map from NASA and the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) on the left, with the two Webb NIRCam instrument field of views overlaid. The near-infrared images from Webb are shown on the right.

The NIRCam shorter-wavelength (2.1 microns) image [top right] is dominated by reflected sunlight, and thus reveals surface details similar to those apparent in visible-light images [left]. The rings of the Huygens Crater, the dark volcanic rock of Syrtis Major and brightening in the Hellas Basin are all apparent in this image.

The NIRCam longer-wavelength (4.3 microns) image [lower right] shows thermal emission – light given off by the planet as it loses heat. The brightness of 4.3-micron light is related to the temperature of the surface and the atmosphere. The brightest region on the planet is where the Sun is nearly overhead, because it is generally warmest. The brightness decreases toward the polar regions, which receive less sunlight, and less light is emitted from the cooler northern hemisphere, which is experiencing winter at this time of year.

However, temperature is not the only factor affecting the amount of 4.3-micron light reaching Webb with this filter. As light emitted by the planet passes through Mars’ atmosphere, some gets absorbed by carbon dioxide (CO₂) molecules. The Hellas Basin – which is the largest well-preserved impact structure on Mars, spanning more than 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) – appears darker than the surroundings because of this effect.

“This is actually not a thermal effect at Hellas,” explained the principal investigator, Geronimo Villanueva of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who designed these Webb observations. “The Hellas Basin is a lower altitude, and thus experiences higher air pressure. That higher pressure leads to a suppression of the thermal emission at this particular wavelength range [4.1-4.4 microns] due to an effect called pressure broadening. It will be very interesting to tease apart these competing effects in these data.”

Villanueva and his team also released Webb’s first near-infrared spectrum of Mars, demonstrating Webb’s power to study the Red Planet with spectroscopy.

Whereas the images show differences in brightness integrated over a large number of wavelengths from place to place across the planet at a particular day and time, the spectrum shows the subtle variations in brightness between hundreds of different wavelengths representative of the planet as a whole. Astronomers will analyze the features of the spectrum to gather additional information about the surface and atmosphere of the planet.

This infrared spectrum was obtained by combining measurements from all six of the high-resolution spectroscopy modes of Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). Preliminary analysis of the spectrum shows a rich set of spectral features that contain information about dust, icy clouds, what kind of rocks are on the planet’s surface and the composition of the atmosphere. The spectral signatures – including deep valleys known as absorption features – of water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide are easily detected with Webb. The researchers have been analyzing the spectral data from these observations and are preparing a paper they will submit to a scientific journal for peer review and publication.

In the future, the Mars team will be using this imaging and spectroscopic data to explore regional differences across the planet, and to search for trace gases in the atmosphere, including methane and hydrogen chloride.

These NIRCam and NIRSpec observations of Mars were conducted as part of Webb’s Cycle 1 Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) solar system program led by Heidi Hammel of AURA.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Mars JWST / GTO team

Photos of the Day: Screenshots from MADE FOR LOVE...

Just thought I'd share these screen captures from the episodes I worked on as a background actor for HBO Max's sci-fi comedy drama, Made for Love!

I was lucky enough to work on Made for Love during its second and final season...with me playing a so-called Gogol employee at an underground lab called the Hub.

Gogol comes from the last name of Byron Gogol (Billy Magnussen), a mysterious billionaire who was responsible for the creation of the Hub and was also the husband of Hazel Green (Cristin Milioti)—who didn't enter this marriage through the most pleasant of circumstances.

Ray Romano of Everybody Loves Raymond portrayed Hazel's mannequin-dating father, Herbert.

What's interesting about how Made for Love was filmed is that all the shots I appeared in weren't just for two episodes, even though I only spent two days working on set for this show...at Occidental Studios in Los Angeles. (I was booked on this production in early November of 2021 and this past January; both one-day gigs.)

I appeared in episodes 2.1: I Have a Rotting Finger, 2.7: Under Open Sky and 2.8: Hazel vs. Hazel—though as shown below, I only grabbed screenshots for I Have a Rotting Finger and Hazel vs. Hazel.

I didn't watch Season 1 of Made for Love, but I might view the very first episode just to see how the story started (before I cancel my HBO Max subscription, again). Happy Sunday!

Recent Discoveries at Jezero Crater Continue to Pave the Way for the Mars Sample Return Mission...

NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Investigates Geologically Rich Mars Terrain (Press Release)

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Is Organic Matter?

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

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

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

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

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

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

More About the Mission

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

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

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

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

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NASA / JPL - Caltech

Gettin' Closure on LOVE...

Yesterday, I finally binge-watched the third and last season of the Netflix series LOVE.

Needless to say, I enjoyed it very much! It was a satisfying conclusion to the story of Mickey and Gus.

Along with the fact that I thought it was a nice touch that Mickey Dobbs (Gillian Jacobs) and Gus Cruikshank (Paul Rust) tied the knot at Catalina Island (yes, this episode was shot on location at California's famous off-shore tourist destination), as opposed to eloping in Las Vegas, I also thought it was cool that my lead actress from my short film Envious had a guest role in one of the episodes!

Congrats to Sheena Chou—who played Jeanine on Envious—for her role as Patty in episode 3.8: Stunt Show. Happy Hump Day!

Here's the poster for my short film "Envious." Awesome work on #LOVEonNetflix, Sheena! 😄https://t.co/7qil4QynDP#ShortFilm #Filmmaking pic.twitter.com/bT6MGqUZEx

— Richard Par (@RichTPar) September 14, 2022

I remember being this pissed on one of my student film shoots back in the day... 😆

(Not #BrokenTableFilm, FYI)#LOVEonNetflix #filmmaking pic.twitter.com/ZSLM9j7aL0

— Richard Par (@RichTPar) September 14, 2022

Photos of the Day: Screenshots from PURPLE HEARTS...

Just thought I'd share these screenshots from the Netflix movie Purple Hearts, which I finally watched online yesterday.

As you can see from these images, I got to be an extra in Purple Hearts! The scene in question was a concert that was held at the Hollywood Bowl.

Reshoots were conducted at the historic Hollywood arena back in November of last year, and I was one of around 200 background actors who played concertgoers for this scene.

As someone who's done background acting work for almost 11 years now, I'll tell you that I am not a huge fan of "cattle calls" (which usually consists of 200 or more extras for a particular scene during the day) like the one I was in for Purple Hearts. However, that kinda changed after I was one of the folks who was lucky enough to stand near the stage to watch actress Sofia Carson (who plays Cassie in the movie) perform two songs for us!

While Sofia performed to pre-recorded music for most of the day, she was amazing when she sang live for us during a couple of takes. Even though Ms. Carson does not yet have the same celebrity status as say, Vanessa Hudgens, Ariana Grande or Miley Cyrus, I was still starstruck by her whenever she appeared on stage!

Which is why I waited till Purple Hearts was finally released on Netflix almost two months ago...so that I could see if I was visible in the crowd during this concert scene. These screenshots obviously show that I was!

Those red squares were added through Microsoft Paint, heh. You can read my review for Purple Hearts here!

A NASA Spacecraft Remains on a Collision Course with a Near-Earth Object...

NASA JPL DART Navigation Team

DART Sets Sights on Asteroid Target (News Release - September 7)

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft recently got its first look at Didymos, the double-asteroid system that includes its target, Dimorphos. On September 26, DART will intentionally crash into Dimorphos, the asteroid moonlet of Didymos. While the asteroid poses no threat to Earth, this is the world’s first test of the kinetic impact technique, using a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid for planetary defense.

This image of the light from asteroid Didymos and its orbiting moonlet Dimorphos is a composite of 243 images taken by the Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO) on July 27, 2022.

From this distance—about 20 million miles away from DART—the Didymos system is still very faint, and navigation camera experts were uncertain whether DRACO would be able to spot the asteroid yet. But once the 243 images DRACO took during this observation sequence were combined, the team was able to enhance it to reveal Didymos and pinpoint its location.

“This first set of images is being used as a test to prove our imaging techniques,” said Elena Adams, the DART mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. “The quality of the image is similar to what we could obtain from ground-based telescopes, but it is important to show that DRACO is working properly and can see its target to make any adjustments needed before we begin using the images to guide the spacecraft into the asteroid autonomously.”

Although the team has already conducted a number of navigation simulations using non-DRACO images of Didymos, DART will ultimately depend on its ability to see and process images of Didymos and Dimorphos, once it too can be seen, to guide the spacecraft toward the asteroid, especially in the final four hours before impact. At that point, DART will need to self-navigate to impact successfully with Dimorphos without any human intervention.

“Seeing the DRACO images of Didymos for the first time, we can iron out the best settings for DRACO and fine-tune the software,” said Julie Bellerose, the DART navigation lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, California. “In September, we’ll refine where DART is aiming by getting a more precise determination of Didymos’ location.”

Using observations taken every five hours, the DART team will execute three trajectory-correction maneuvers over the next three weeks, each of which will further reduce the margin of error for the spacecraft’s required trajectory to impact. After the final maneuver on September 25, approximately 24 hours before impact, the navigation team will know the position of the target Dimorphos within 2 kilometers. From there, DART will be on its own to autonomously guide itself to its collision with the asteroid moonlet.

DRACO has subsequently observed Didymos during planned observations on August 12, August 13 and August 22.

Johns Hopkins University APL manages the DART mission for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency's Planetary Missions Program Office. DART is the world's first planetary defense test mission, intentionally executing a kinetic impact into Dimorphos to slightly change its motion in space. While the asteroid does not pose any threat to Earth, the DART mission will demonstrate that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a kinetic impact on a relatively small asteroid and prove this is a viable technique to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth if one is ever discovered. DART will reach its target on September 26, 2022.

Source: NASA.Gov