Hubble's Successor Captures Saturn's Most Enigmatic Moon Spewing Water Over 6,000 Miles Into Space...

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and G. Villanueva (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center). Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI)

Webb Maps Surprisingly Large Plume Jetting From Saturn’s Moon Enceladus (News Release)

A water vapor plume from Saturn’s moon Enceladus spanning more than 6,000 miles – nearly the distance from Los Angeles, California to Buenos Aires, Argentina – has been detected by researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Not only is this the first time such a water emission has been seen over such an expansive distance, but Webb is also giving scientists a direct look, for the first time, at how this emission feeds the water supply for the entire system of Saturn and its rings.

Enceladus, an ocean world about four percent the size of Earth, just 313 miles across, is one of the most exciting scientific targets in our solar system in the search for life beyond Earth. Sandwiched between the moon’s icy outer crust and its rocky core is a global reservoir of salty water.

Geyser-like volcanoes spew jets of ice particles, water vapor and organic chemicals out of crevices in the moon’s surface informally called ‘tiger stripes.’

Previously, observatories have mapped jets hundreds of miles from the moon’s surface, but Webb’s exquisite sensitivity reveals a new story.

“When I was looking at the data, at first, I was thinking I had to be wrong. It was just so shocking to detect a water plume more than 20 times the size of the moon,” said lead author Geronimo Villanueva of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The water plume extends far beyond its release region at the southern pole.”

The length of the plume was not the only characteristic that intrigued researchers. The rate at which the water vapor is gushing out, about 79 gallons per second, is also particularly impressive.

At this rate, you could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in just a couple of hours. In comparison, doing so with a garden hose on Earth would take more than 2 weeks.

The Cassini orbiter spent over a decade exploring the Saturnian system, and not only imaged the plumes of Enceladus for the first time but flew directly through them and sampled what they were made of. While Cassini’s position within the Saturnian system provided invaluable insights into this distant moon, Webb’s unique view from the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 one million miles from Earth, along with the remarkable sensitivity of its Integral Field Unit aboard the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) Instrument, is offering new context.

“The orbit of Enceladus around Saturn is relatively quick, just 33 hours. As it whips around Saturn, the moon and its jets are basically spitting off water, leaving a halo, almost like a donut, in its wake,” said Villanueva. “In the Webb observations, not only was the plume huge, but there was just water absolutely everywhere.”

This fuzzy donut of water that appeared ‘everywhere,’ described as a torus, is co-located with Saturn’s outermost and widest ring – the dense “E-ring.

” The Webb observations directly demonstrate how the moon’s water vapor plumes feed the torus. By analyzing the Webb data, astronomers have determined roughly 30 percent of the water stays within this torus, and the other 70 percent escapes to supply the rest of the Saturnian system with water.

In the coming years, Webb will serve as the primary observation tool for the ocean moon Enceladus, and discoveries from Webb will help inform future solar system satellite missions that will look to explore the subsurface ocean’s depth, how thick the ice crust is, and more.

“Right now, Webb provides a unique way to directly measure how water evolves and changes over time across Enceladus' immense plume, and as we see here, we will even make new discoveries and learn more about the composition of the underlying ocean,” added co-author Stefanie Milam at NASA Goddard. “Because of Webb’s wavelength coverage and sensitivity, and what we’ve learned from previous missions, we have an entire new window of opportunity in front of us.”

Webb’s observations of Enceladus were completed under Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) program 1250. The initial goal of this program is to demonstrate the capabilities of Webb in a particular area of science and set the stage for future studies.

“This program was essentially a proof of concept after many years of developing the observatory, and it’s just thrilling that all this science has already come out of quite a short amount of observation time,” said Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Webb interdisciplinary scientist and leader of the GTO program.

The team’s results were recently accepted for publication in Nature Astronomy on May 17, and a pre-print is available here.

Source: NASA.Gov

Nova-C Will Touch Down at a New Region on the Moon...

Intuitive Machines

Intuitive Machines Lunar Landing Site Moves to South Pole (News Release - May 25)

NASA, in cooperation with Intuitive Machines, is moving the landing site for the first Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission to the Moon’s South Pole as an important first step in managing risks for future Artemis landings.

One of the first lunar payload deliveries under NASA’s CLPS initiative was awarded to Intuitive Machines in May 2019. The company’s first flight, Intuitive Machines-1 (IM-1) will carry six NASA payloads on its Nova-C lunar lander to a site near the Malapert A crater.

This relatively flat and safe region is within the heavily-cratered southern highlands on the side of the Moon visible from Earth.

The NASA payloads will focus on demonstrating communication, navigation and precision landing technologies, and gathering scientific data about rocket plume and lunar surface interactions, as well as space weather and lunar surface interactions affecting radio astronomy. Through the CLPS initiative, NASA is supporting the development of a lunar economy by working with American companies to deliver scientific, exploration and technology payloads to the Moon’s surface and lunar orbit.

The decision to move from the original landing site in Oceanus Procellarum was based on a need to learn more about terrain and communications near the lunar South Pole, which is expected to be one of the best locations for a sustained human presence on the Moon. Landing near Malapert A will also help mission planners understand how to communicate and send data back to Earth from a location that is low on the lunar horizon.

The landing date is expected in the third quarter of 2023.

While NASA is the primary customer purchasing lunar delivery services, CLPS vendors also work with other customers to send non-NASA payloads to the Moon. CLPS providers are responsible for managing their activities to ensure they are compliant with NASA schedule requirements.

Intuitive Machines will confirm the launch date, lunar landing date and duration of lunar surface operations, as well as updates on the thermal environment that the payloads will experience, given the temperature extremes for lunar transit and at the lunar South Pole.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Lunar and Planetary Institute Regional Planetary Image Facility

On This Day in 2008: The Phoenix Spacecraft Successfully Lands on Mars...

James Canvin / NASA / JPL - Caltech / University of Arizona / Texas A&M University

15 years ago today, NASA's Phoenix Mars lander safely touched down on the Northern Plains of the Red Planet...successfully carrying out a mission that resulted in the confirmation of water ice beneath the soil of the Martian arctic.

Phoenix's mission lasted for almost six months—until NASA received a final radio signal from the spacecraft on November 2, 2008.

Sitting on Phoenix's flight deck as a legacy to this exciting endeavor is the Phoenix DVD.

Fabricated by The Planetary Society—a non-profit space advocacy group based in the California city of Pasadena (a few miles away from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory)—the Phoenix DVD is a silicate disc designed to last for up to 500 years on the Martian surface!

The Phoenix DVD contains the names of 250,000 people who submitted them online between late 2006 and early 2007, as well as the literary works of such sci-fi authors as Isaac Asimov. This collection aboard the disc has been called the Visions of Mars by The Planetary Society.

It is a tremendous feeling to be a part of this time capsule on Mars' Northern Plains... Hail, Phoenix!


Richard Par / NASA / JPL - Caltech / University of Arizona / The Planetary Society


NASA / The Planetary Society

Photos of the Day: Snapshots from Comic Con Revolution...

Earlier today, I went to the Ontario Convention Center in San Bernardino County, CA, to attend Comic Con Revolution. As shown above, the highlight of this visit was meeting Mercedes Varnado...who played Koska Reeves on The Mandalorian and wrestled as Sasha Banks for World Wrestling Entertainment!

While the main goal of my trip to the city of Ontario was to get a photo op with Ms. Varnado, that didn't stop me from taking pictures of all the cosplayers who attended Comic Con Revolution. Lots of fans showed up as Mandalorians—not just Din Djarin and Boba Fett, but also as their own customized Star Wars commandos.

And of course, there were other comic book geeks who dressed as Deadpool, Batman, Nightwing, Robin as well as other Marvel and DC superheroes. And replicas of the Chevy Camaro used in the 2007 Transformers movie and the DeLorean that was immortalized in the Back to the Future trilogy also made appearances at the expo.

From Long Beach Comic Con in 2015 to Comic Con Revolution, it's amusing that I've been to comic cons other than San Diego Comic-Con itself! Well, that's not entirely true— I went to San Diego back in 2014 to check out most of the activities that took place outside of Comic-Con, but I never went into the convention center itself.

That trip from almost 9 years ago was still fun, nonetheless. Have a nice weekend!

A Real-Life Mustafar from STAR WARS Has Been Found Orbiting a Red Dwarf 90 Light-Years Away...

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Chris Smith (KRBwyle)

NASA’s Spitzer, TESS Find Potentially Volcano-Covered Earth-Size World (News Release)

Astronomers have discovered an Earth-size exoplanet, or world beyond our solar system, that may be carpeted with volcanoes. Called LP 791-18 d, the planet could undergo volcanic outbursts as often as Jupiter’s moon Io, the most volcanically-active body in our solar system.

They found and studied the planet using data from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and retired Spitzer Space Telescope, as well as a suite of ground-based observatories.

A paper about the planet – led by Merrin Peterson, a graduate of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) based at the University of Montreal – appears in the May 17 edition of the scientific journal Nature.

“LP 791-18 d is tidally locked, which means the same side constantly faces its star,” said Björn Benneke, a co-author and astronomy professor at iREx who planned and supervised the study. “The day side would probably be too hot for liquid water to exist on the surface. But the amount of volcanic activity we suspect occurs all over the planet could sustain an atmosphere, which may allow water to condense on the night side.”

LP 791-18 d orbits a small red dwarf star about 90 light-years away in the southern constellation Crater. The team estimates it’s only slightly larger and more massive than Earth.

Astronomers already knew about two other worlds in the system before this discovery, called LP 791-18 b and c. The inner planet b is about 20% bigger than Earth.

The outer planet c is about 2.5 times Earth’s size and more than seven times its mass.

During each orbit, planets d and c pass very close to each other. Each close pass by the more massive planet c produces a gravitational tug on planet d, making its orbit somewhat elliptical.

On this elliptical path, planet d is slightly deformed every time it goes around the star. These deformations can create enough internal friction to substantially heat the planet’s interior and produce volcanic activity at its surface.

Jupiter and some of its moons affect Io in a similar way.

Planet d sits on the inner edge of the habitable zone, the traditional range of distances from a star where scientists hypothesize liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. If the planet is as geologically active as the research team suspects, it could maintain an atmosphere.

Temperatures could drop enough on the planet’s night side for water to condense on the surface.

Planet c has already been approved for observing time on the James Webb Space Telescope, and the team thinks planet d is also an exceptional candidate for atmospheric studies by the mission.

“A big question in astrobiology, the field that broadly studies the origins of life on Earth and beyond, is if tectonic or volcanic activity is necessary for life,” said co-author Jessie Christiansen, a research scientist at NASA’s Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “In addition to potentially providing an atmosphere, these processes could churn up materials that would otherwise sink down and get trapped in the crust, including those we think are important for life, like carbon.”

Spitzer’s observations of the system were among the last the satellite collected before it was decommissioned in January 2020.

“It is incredible to read about the continuation of discoveries and publications years beyond Spitzer’s end of mission,” said Joseph Hunt, Spitzer project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “That really shows the success of our first-class engineers and scientists. Together they built not only a spacecraft but also a data set that continues to be an asset for the astrophysics community.”

TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.

The entire body of scientific data collected by Spitzer during its lifetime is available to the public via the Spitzer data archive, housed at the Infrared Science Archive at IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech, managed Spitzer mission operations for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Science operations were conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at IPAC at Caltech. Spacecraft operations were based at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Lucasfilm Ltd.

Hubble's Successor Observes a Watery Celestial Body Between the Orbits of Mars and Jupiter...

NASA, ESA

NASA’s Webb Finds Water, and a New Mystery, in Rare Main Belt Comet (News Release - May 15)

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has enabled another long-sought scientific breakthrough, this time for solar system scientists studying the origins of Earth’s abundant water. Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument, astronomers have confirmed gas – specifically water vapor – around a comet in the main asteroid belt for the first time, indicating that water ice from the primordial solar system can be preserved in that region.

However, the successful detection of water comes with a new puzzle: unlike other comets, Comet 238P/Read had no detectable carbon dioxide.

“Our water-soaked world, teeming with life and unique in the universe as far as we know, is something of a mystery – we’re not sure how all this water got here,” said Stefanie Milam, Webb deputy project scientist for planetary science and a co-author on the study reporting the finding. “Understanding the history of water distribution in the solar system will help us to understand other planetary systems, and if they could be on their way to hosting an Earth-like planet,” she added.

Comet Read is a main belt comet – an object that resides in the main asteroid belt but which periodically displays a halo, or coma, and tail like a comet. Main belt comets themselves are a fairly new classification, and Comet Read was one of the original three comets used to establish the category.

Before that, comets were understood to reside in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud, beyond the orbit of Neptune, where their ices could be preserved farther from the Sun. Frozen material that vaporizes as they approach the Sun is what gives comets their distinctive coma and streaming tail, differentiating them from asteroids.

Scientists have long speculated that water ice could be preserved in the warmer asteroid belt, inside the orbit of Jupiter, but definitive proof was elusive – until Webb.

“In the past, we’ve seen objects in the main belt with all the characteristics of comets, but only with this precise spectral data from Webb can we say yes, it’s definitely water ice that is creating that effect,” explained astronomer Michael Kelley of the University of Maryland, lead author of the study.

“With Webb’s observations of Comet Read, we can now demonstrate that water ice from the early solar system can be preserved in the asteroid belt,” Kelley said.

The missing carbon dioxide was a bigger surprise. Typically, carbon dioxide makes up about 10 percent of the volatile material in a comet that can be easily vaporized by the Sun’s heat.

The science team presents two possible explanations for the lack of carbon dioxide. One possibility is that Comet Read had carbon dioxide when it formed but has lost that because of warm temperatures.

“Being in the asteroid belt for a long time could do it – carbon dioxide vaporizes more easily than water ice, and could percolate out over billions of years,” Kelley said. Alternatively, he said, Comet Read may have formed in a particularly warm pocket of the solar system, where no carbon dioxide was available.

The next step is taking the research beyond Comet Read to see how other main belt comets compare, says astronomer Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), lead for Webb’s Guaranteed Time Observations for solar system objects and co-author of the study. “These objects in the asteroid belt are small and faint, and with Webb we can finally see what is going on with them and draw some conclusions. Do other main belt comets also lack carbon dioxide? Either way it will be exciting to find out,” Hammel said.

Co-author Milam imagines the possibilities of bringing the research even closer to home. “Now that Webb has confirmed there is water preserved as close as the asteroid belt, it would be fascinating to follow up on this discovery with a sample-collection mission, and learn what else the main belt comets can tell us.”

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA, ESA, CSA, M. Kelley (University of Maryland). Image processing: H. Hsieh (Planetary Science Institute), A. Pagan (STScI)

Astrobotic Has Begun Work on Its Next Lunar Lander!

Astrobotic

Over the past two weeks, Astrobotic has begun sharing photos of its next Moon lander, Griffin, as it began assembly inside a cleanroom at Astrobotic's headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

While only two pics of components—Griffin's flight deck and two 'wings' attached to a central cone—have been revealed, this clearly indicates that Astrobotic is on track to fabricate the lander that NASA's VIPER Moon rover will be attached to when they launch aboard SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket in late 2024.

Meanwhile, Astrobotic's first lander, Peregrine, continues to share the same cleanroom as Griffin. The company is still waiting for United Launch Alliance (ULA) to give the greenlight to ship Peregrine to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) in Florida so that it can finally be mated to ULA's Vulcan Centaur rocket.

While the Vulcan Centaur enjoyed a successful Flight Tanking Test last week, the rocket was rolled back to the Vertical Integration Facility at CCSFS' Space Launch Complex (SLC)-41 earlier today so that ULA can make some adjustments to testing procedures before the vehicle rolls back out to its pad at SLC-41 to undergo a Flight Readiness Firing of its two BE-4 main engines. This engine test is scheduled to take place later this week.

Stay tuned!


Astrobotic


Astrobotic

Good #VulcanRocket Flight Tanking Tests last Friday & Saturday. Will need to adjust a handful of parameters and set points for a reliable FRF count. (Which is is the purpose of this run). Rolling back to the VIF today to work on that. FRF in a few days or so.

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) May 15, 2023

And Vulcan is heading back to the barn, as planned. Will rollout back to SLC-41 later this week for the FRF.https://t.co/tANS0dWyIH https://t.co/FOsphIOeGL pic.twitter.com/XiFDVYadQP

— Chris Bergin - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) May 15, 2023

Photos of the Day: Peregrine's Rocket Resumes Testing in Preparation for a Hopeful Summer Launch to the Moon...

United Launch Alliance

Over one month after an anomaly occurred with a Centaur V structural article during a ground test at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama (delaying a May 4 launch), United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket has resumed testing on its pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station's Space Launch Complex (SLC)-41 in Florida.

The Vulcan rocket rolled back to its pad at SLC-41 yesterday, with a cryogenic fueling test now being conducted on the first stage booster and Centaur V upper stage motor as of this Blog entry. Should everything go well with today's wet dress rehearsal, ULA will perform a Flight Readiness Firing of Vulcan's two BE-4 main engines sometime next week.

Even though the investigation into the March anomaly is still ongoing, a successful hot fire of Vulcan's engines will pave the way for a hopeful launch of the new vehicle—with Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander and a few other payloads onboard—on ULA's Cert-1 mission this summer. Stay tuned!


United Launch Alliance


United Launch Alliance


United Launch Alliance


United Launch Alliance


United Launch Alliance

With success here, and a resolution of the Centaur V ground test anomaly, we are protecting for a #Vulcan Cert-1 Launch this summer.

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) May 11, 2023

#VulcanRocket is in position atop
SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Space
Force Station to undergo a full launch day rehearsal tomorrow and Flight Readiness Firing test of its main engines planned for next week. https://t.co/WhedmKhWQj pic.twitter.com/h4DJlQXg0p

— ULA (@ulalaunch) May 11, 2023

And you can watch Vulcan testing live, here:https://t.co/tANS0dWyIH pic.twitter.com/rvSK6ulOlb

— Chris Bergin - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) May 12, 2023

Apollo 15 moon rock at the science center, and lunar landers at @astrobotic @MoonshotMuseum 😍 pic.twitter.com/84agUZV5Au

— Jack J (@Jack_Frodo) May 6, 2023

New Evidence of Water on the Red Planet Has Been Photographed by the Mars 2020 Rover...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / ASU / MSSS

Images From NASA’s Perseverance May Show Record of Wild Martian River (News Release)

Evidence left in rocks is leading scientists to rethink what watery environments looked like on ancient Mars.

New images taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover may show signs of what was once a rollicking river on Mars, one that was deeper and faster-moving than scientists have ever seen evidence for in the past. The river was part of a network of waterways that flowed into Jezero Crater, the area the rover has been exploring since landing more than two years ago.

Understanding these watery environments could help scientists in their efforts to seek out signs of ancient microbial life that may have been preserved in Martian rock.

Perseverance is exploring the top of a fan-shaped pile of sedimentary rock that stands 820 feet (250 meters) tall and features curving layers suggestive of flowing water. One question scientists want to answer is whether that water flowed in relatively shallow streams – closer to what NASA’s Curiosity rover has found evidence of in Gale Crater – or a more powerful river system.

Stitched together from hundreds of images captured by Perseverance’s Mastcam-Z instrument, two new mosaics suggest the latter, revealing important clues: coarse sediment grains and cobbles.

“Those indicate a high-energy river that’s truckin’ and carrying a lot of debris. The more powerful the flow of water, the more easily it’s able to move larger pieces of material,” said Libby Ives, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which operates the Perseverance rover. With a background in studying Earth-based rivers, Ives has spent the last six months analyzing images of the Red Planet’s surface.

“It’s been a delight to look at rocks on another planet and see processes that are so familiar,” Ives said.

Following the Curves

Years ago, scientists noticed a series of curving bands of layered rock within Jezero Crater that they dubbed “the curvilinear unit.” They could see these layers from space but are finally able to see them up close, thanks to Perseverance.

One location within the curvilinear unit, nicknamed “Skrinkle Haven,” is captured in one of the new Mastcam-Z mosaics. Scientists are sure the curved layers here were formed by powerfully-flowing water, but Mastcam-Z’s detailed shots have left them debating what kind: a river such as the Mississippi, which winds snakelike across the landscape, or a braided river like Nebraska’s Platte, which forms small islands of sediment called sandbars.

When viewed from the ground, the curved layers appear arranged in rows that ripple out across the landscape. They could be the remnants of a river’s banks that shifted over time – or the remnants of sandbars that formed in the river.

The layers were likely much taller in the past. Scientists suspect that after these piles of sediment turned to rock, they were sandblasted by wind over the eons and carved down to their present size.

“The wind has acted like a scalpel that has cut the tops off these deposits,” said Michael Lamb of Caltech, a river specialist and Perseverance science team collaborator. “We do see deposits like this on Earth, but they’re never as well exposed as they are here on Mars. Earth is covered in vegetation that hides these layers.”

A second mosaic captured by Perseverance shows a separate location that is part of the curvilinear unit and about a quarter mile (450 meters) from Skrinkle Haven. “Pinestand” is an isolated hill bearing sedimentary layers that curve skyward, some as high as 66 feet (20 meters).

Scientists think these tall layers may have also been formed by a powerful river, although they’re exploring other explanations, as well.

“These layers are anomalously tall for rivers on Earth,” Ives said. “But at the same time, the most common way to create these kinds of landforms would be a river.”

The team is continuing to study Mastcam-Z’s images for additional clues. They’re also peering below the surface, using the ground-penetrating radar instrument on Perseverance called RIMFAX (short for Radar Imager for Mars’ Subsurface Experiment).

What they learn from both instruments will contribute to an ever-expanding body of knowledge about Mars’ ancient, watery past.

“What’s exciting here is we’ve entered a new phase of Jezero’s history. And it’s the first time we’re seeing environments like this on Mars,” said Perseverance’s deputy project scientist, Katie Stack Morgan of JPL. “We’re thinking about rivers on a different scale than we have before.”

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA / JPL - Caltech / ASU / MSSS

Hubble's Successor Gazes at a Sub-Neptunian World...

NASA / JPL - Caltech / R. Hurt (IPAC)

NASA’s Webb Takes Closest Look Yet at Mysterious Planet (News Release)

A science team gains new insight into the atmosphere of a “mini-Neptune,” a class of planet common in the galaxy but about which little is known.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has observed a distant planet outside our solar system – and unlike anything in it – to reveal what is likely a highly-reflective world with a steamy atmosphere. It’s the closest look yet at the mysterious world, a “mini-Neptune” that was largely impenetrable to previous observations.

And while the planet, called GJ 1214 b, is too hot to harbor liquid-water oceans, water in vaporized form could still be a major part of its atmosphere.

“The planet is totally blanketed by some sort of haze or cloud layer,” said Eliza Kempton, a researcher at the University of Maryland and lead author of a new paper, published in Nature, on the planet. “The atmosphere just remained totally hidden from us until this observation.”

Kempton noted that, if indeed water-rich, the planet could have been a “water world,” with large amounts of watery and icy material at the time of its formation.

To penetrate such a thick barrier, the research team took a chance on a novel approach: In addition to making the standard observation – capturing the host star’s light that has filtered through the planet’s atmosphere – they tracked GJ 1214 b through nearly its entire orbit around the star.

The observation demonstrates the power of Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which views wavelengths of light outside the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that human eyes can see. Using MIRI, the research team was able to create a kind of “heat map” of the planet as it orbited the star.

The heat map revealed – just before the planet’s orbit carried it behind the star, and as it emerged on the other side – both its day and night sides, unveiling details of the atmosphere’s composition.

“The ability to get a full orbit was really critical to understand how the planet distributes heat from the day side to the night side,” Kempton said. “There’s a lot of contrast between day and night. The night side is colder than the day side.”

In fact, the temperatures shifted from 535 to 326 degrees Fahrenheit (from 279 to 165 degrees Celsius).

Such a big shift is only possible in an atmosphere made up of heavier molecules, such as water or methane, which appear similar when observed by MIRI. That means the atmosphere of GJ 1214 b is not composed mainly of lighter hydrogen molecules, Kempton said, which is a potentially important clue to the planet’s history and formation – and perhaps its watery start.

“This is not a primordial atmosphere,” she said. “It does not reflect the composition of the host star it formed around. Instead, it either lost a lot of hydrogen, if it started with a hydrogen-rich atmosphere, or it was formed from heavier elements to begin with – more icy, water-rich material.”

Cooler Than Expected

And while the planet is hot by human standards, it is much cooler than expected, Kempton noted. That’s because its unusually shiny atmosphere, which came as a surprise to the researchers, reflects a large fraction of the light from its parent star rather than absorbing it and growing hotter.

The new observations could open the door to deeper knowledge of a planet type shrouded in uncertainty. Mini-Neptunes – or sub-Neptunes as they’re called in the paper – are the most common type of planet in the galaxy, but mysterious to us because they don’t occur in our solar system.

Measurements so far show they are broadly similar to, say, a downsized version of our own Neptune. Beyond that, little is known.

“For the last almost decade, the only thing we really knew about this planet was that the atmosphere was cloudy or hazy,” said Rob Zellem, an exoplanet researcher who works with co-author and fellow exoplanet researcher Tiffany Kataria at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “This paper has really cool implications for additional detailed climate interpretations – to look at the detailed physics happening inside this planet’s atmosphere.”

The new work suggests the planet might have formed farther from its star, a type known as a red dwarf, then spiraled gradually inward to its present, close orbit. The planet’s year – one orbit around the star – takes only 1.6 Earth days.

“The simplest explanation, if you find a very water-rich planet, is that it formed farther away from the host star,” Kempton said.

Further observations will be needed to pin down more details about GJ 1214 b as well as the formation histories of other planets in the mini-Neptune class. While a watery atmosphere seems likely for this planet, a significant methane component is also possible.

And drawing broader conclusions about how mini-Neptunes form will require more of them to be observed in depth.

“By observing a whole population of objects like this, hopefully we can build up a consistent story,” Kempton said.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Hubble's Successor Spies on Debris Disks Carved Out by Unseen Planets 25 Light-Years Away...

NASA, ESA, CSA, A. Gáspár (University of Arizona). Image processing: A. Pagan (STScI)

Webb Looks for Fomalhaut’s Asteroid Belt and Finds Much More (News Release)

Astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to image the warm dust around a nearby young star, Fomalhaut, in order to study the first asteroid belt ever seen outside of our solar system in infrared light. But to their surprise, the dusty structures are much more complex than the asteroid and Kuiper dust belts of our solar system.

Overall, there are three nested belts extending out to 14 billion miles (23 billion kilometers) from the star; that’s 150 times the distance of Earth from the Sun. The scale of the outermost belt is roughly twice the scale of our solar system’s Kuiper Belt of small bodies and cold dust beyond Neptune.

The inner belts – which had never been seen before – were revealed by Webb for the first time.

The belts encircle the young hot star, which can be seen with the naked eye as the brightest star in the southern constellation Piscis Austrinus. The dusty belts are the debris from collisions of larger bodies, analogous to asteroids and comets, and are frequently described as ‘debris disks.’

“I would describe Fomalhaut as the archetype of debris disks found elsewhere in our galaxy, because it has components similar to those we have in our own planetary system,” said András Gáspár of the University of Arizona in Tucson and lead author of a new paper describing these results. “By looking at the patterns in these rings, we can actually start to make a little sketch of what a planetary system ought to look like – If we could actually take a deep enough picture to see the suspected planets.”

The Hubble Space Telescope and Herschel Space Observatory, as well as the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), have previously taken sharp images of the outermost belt. However, none of them found any structure interior to it.

The inner belts have been resolved for the first time by Webb in infrared light. “Where Webb really excels is that we're able to physically resolve the thermal glow from dust in those inner regions. So you can see inner belts that we could never see before,” said Schuyler Wolff, another member of the team at the University of Arizona.

Hubble, ALMA and Webb are tag-teaming to assemble a holistic view of the debris disks around a number of stars. “With Hubble and ALMA, we were able to image a bunch of Kuiper Belt analogs, and we've learned loads about how outer disks form and evolve,” said Wolff. “But we need Webb to allow us to image a dozen or so asteroid belts elsewhere. We can learn just as much about the inner warm regions of these disks as Hubble and ALMA taught us about the colder outer regions.”

These belts are most likely carved by the gravitational forces produced by unseen planets. Similarly, inside our solar system Jupiter corrals the asteroid belt, the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt is sculpted by Neptune, and the outer edge could be shepherded by as-yet-unseen bodies beyond it.

As Webb images more systems, we will learn about the configurations of their planets.

Fomalhaut's dust ring was discovered in 1983 in observations made by NASA's Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). The existence of the ring has also been inferred from previous and longer-wavelength observations using submillimeter telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Caltech's Submillimeter Observatory.

“The belts around Fomalhaut are kind of a mystery novel: Where are the planets?” said George Rieke, another team member and U.S. science lead for Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which made these observations. “I think it's not a very big leap to say there's probably a really interesting planetary system around the star.”

“We definitely didn't expect the more complex structure with the second intermediate belt and then the broader asteroid belt,” added Wolff. “That structure is very exciting because any time an astronomer sees a gap and rings in a disk, they say, ‘There could be an embedded planet shaping the rings!’”

Webb also imaged what Gáspár dubs “the great dust cloud,” which may be evidence for a collision occurring in the outer ring between two protoplanetary bodies. This is a different feature from a suspected planet first seen inside the outer ring by Hubble in 2008.

Subsequent Hubble observations showed that by 2014 the object had vanished. A plausible interpretation is that this newly-discovered feature, like the earlier one, is an expanding cloud of very fine dust particles from two icy bodies that smashed into each other.

The idea of a protoplanetary disk around a star goes back to the late 1700s when astronomers Immanuel Kant and Pierre-Simon Laplace independently developed the theory that the Sun and planets formed from a rotating gas cloud that collapsed and flattened due to gravity. Debris disks develop later, following the formation of planets and dispersal of the primordial gas in the systems.

They show that small bodies like asteroids are colliding catastrophically and pulverizing their surfaces into huge clouds of dust and other debris. Observations of their dust provide unique clues to the structure of an exoplanetary system, reaching down to Earth-sized planets and even asteroids, which are much too small to see individually.

Source: NASA.Gov

Astrobotic's First Robotic Moon Lander Won't Launch on Star Wars Day as Scheduled...

Astrobotic

Peregrine Mission One Update (Press Release)

Peregrine is assembled and ready for its journey to Florida for integration with our launch vehicle, United Launch Alliance (ULA)’s Vulcan Centaur. While the Astrobotic team is looking forward to launch, we understand that ULA is conducting an investigation following a test article anomaly.

The ULA team is no longer targeting a May 4, 2023 launch date and will provide a new date once the investigation is complete. We have confidence that they will move through the investigation and Vulcan will fly when it is safe to launch.

Source: Astrobotic

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Keeping you posted: During Qual testing of Centaur V structural article at MSFC, the hardware experienced an anomaly. This is is why we thoroughly & rigorously exercise every possible condition on the ground before flight. Investigation is underway. Vulcan will fly when complete.

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) March 30, 2023

Outside of the test rig/ stand. Test article is inside (you can’t see it). Hydrogen leak. H2 accumulated inside the rig. Found an ignition source. Burned fast. Over pressure caved in our forward dome and damaged the rig. pic.twitter.com/0d0KpI1ggj

— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) April 13, 2023

Hubble's Successor Had Made Another Potential Exoplanet (or Red Dwarf) Discovery...

NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

Webb Finds Water Vapor, But From a Rocky Planet or Its Star? (News Release)

The most common stars in the universe are red dwarf stars, which means that rocky exoplanets are most likely to be found orbiting such a star. Red dwarf stars are cool, so a planet has to hug it in a tight orbit to stay warm enough to potentially host liquid water (meaning it lies in the habitable zone).

Such stars are also active, particularly when they are young, releasing ultraviolet and X-ray radiation that could destroy planetary atmospheres. As a result, one important open question in astronomy is whether a rocky planet could maintain, or reestablish, an atmosphere in such a harsh environment.

To help answer that question, astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to study a rocky exoplanet known as GJ 486 b. It is too close to its star to be within the habitable zone, with a surface temperature of about 800 degrees Fahrenheit (430 degrees Celsius).

And yet, their observations using Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) show hints of water vapor. If the water vapor is associated with the planet, that would indicate that it has an atmosphere despite its scorching temperature and close proximity to its star.

Water vapor has been seen on gaseous exoplanets before, but to date no atmosphere has been definitely detected around a rocky exoplanet. However, the team cautions that the water vapor could be on the star itself – specifically, in cool starspots – and not from the planet at all.

“We see a signal, and it’s almost certainly due to water. But we can't tell yet if that water is part of the planet's atmosphere, meaning the planet has an atmosphere, or if we’re just seeing a water signature coming from the star,” said Sarah Moran of the University of Arizona in Tucson, lead author of the study.

“Water vapor in an atmosphere on a hot rocky planet would represent a major breakthrough for exoplanet science. But we must be careful and make sure that the star is not the culprit,” added Kevin Stevenson of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, principal investigator on the program.

GJ 486 b is about 30% larger than Earth and three times as massive, which means it is a rocky world with stronger gravity than Earth. It orbits a red dwarf star in just under 1.5 Earth days.

GJ 486 b is expected to be tidally-locked, with a permanent day side and a permanent night side.

GJ 486 b transits its star, crossing in front of the star from our point of view. If it has an atmosphere, then when it transits starlight would filter through those gasses, imprinting fingerprints in the light that allow astronomers to decode its composition through a technique called transmission spectroscopy.

The team observed two transits, each lasting about an hour. They then used three different methods to analyze the resulting data.

The results from all three are consistent in that they show a mostly flat spectrum with an intriguing rise at the shortest infrared wavelengths. The team ran computer models considering a number of different molecules, and concluded that the most likely source of the signal was water vapor.

While the water vapor could potentially indicate the presence of an atmosphere on GJ 486 b, an equally plausible explanation is water vapor from the star. Surprisingly, even in our own Sun, water vapor can sometimes exist in sunspots because these spots are very cool compared to the surrounding surface of the star.

GJ 486 b’s host star is much cooler than the Sun, so even more water vapor would concentrate within its starspots. As a result, it could create a signal that mimics a planetary atmosphere.

“We didn't observe evidence of the planet crossing any starspots during the transits. But that doesn't mean that there aren't spots elsewhere on the star. And that's exactly the physical scenario that would imprint this water signal into the data and could wind up looking like a planetary atmosphere,” explained Ryan MacDonald of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, one of the study’s co-authors.

A water vapor atmosphere would be expected to gradually erode due to stellar heating and irradiation. As a result, if an atmosphere is present, it would likely have to be constantly replenished by volcanoes ejecting steam from the planet’s interior.

If the water is indeed in the planet’s atmosphere, additional observations are needed to narrow down how much water is present.

Future Webb observations may shed more light on this system. An upcoming Webb program will use the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to observe the planet’s day side.

If the planet has no atmosphere, or only a thin atmosphere, then the hottest part of the day side is expected to be directly under the star. However, if the hottest point is shifted, that would indicate an atmosphere that can circulate heat.

Ultimately, observations at shorter infrared wavelengths by another Webb instrument, the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), will be needed to differentiate between the planetary atmosphere and starspot scenarios.

“It’s joining multiple instruments together that will really pin down whether or not this planet has an atmosphere,” said Stevenson.

Source: NASA.Gov

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NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)