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Hypersonic Reentry: How OSIRIS-REx Transformed Space Science
Space

Hypersonic Reentry: How OSIRIS-REx Transformed Space Science

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OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Capsule Maximum Heating in Earth’s Atmosphere
The OSIRIS-REx mission achieved a significant milestone by returning the first U.S. asteroid sample, accompanied by groundbreaking research. A large-scale observation campaign, involving over 80 collaborators and 400 sensors, provided invaluable data about the entry of a meter-sized object into Earth’s atmosphere. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab

The OSIRIS-REx mission returned asteroid samples, enabling a vast observation campaign that provided new insights into atmospheric entry using innovative distributed acoustic sensing technology.

This success prepares the spacecraft, now OSIRIS-APEX, for its 2029 mission to asteroid Apophis.

The OSIRIS-REx mission achieved a historic milestone last year as the first U.S. mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth, bringing with it a wealth of groundbreaking data. An international team, led by Sandia National Laboratories and including researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, has now shared preliminary findings from the capsule’s atmospheric reentry.

Unprecedented Geophysical Campaign

The capsule’s return marked the largest geophysical observation effort of its kind. “This project was a unique opportunity for us to observe the geophysical signals produced by a meter-sized object traveling at hypersonic speeds,” said Chris Carr, lead researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “There are few chances for scientists to be prepared to collect this type of data that we need to propel scientific inquiry for years to come.”

The campaign involved over 400 sensors, many of which were stationed near Eureka, NV along the “loneliest road in America.” Given the size of the project, there were many objectives among the more than 80 collaborators. One team of Los Alamos scientists focused on distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), and the paper as a whole encompasses many methods to obtain data during the capsule’s return.

OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Landing
The sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is seen shortly after touching down in the desert on September 24, 2023, at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber

Breakthrough in Space Matter Observation

Though space matter does pass through Earth’s atmosphere, it is difficult to determine where and when the object will make its entry. Even when it is possible to determine those factors, the financial and logistic constraints will almost certainly render it a non-starter. This results in very limited real-time observational data about the behavior of foreign objects entering the atmosphere. The OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule gave researchers a unique opportunity to collect this data.

“For our DAS sub-team, it was the fact that we recorded the signal using a surface-laid cable,” Carr said. “This was the first time such a signal was recorded by DAS, and going into the fieldwork, we weren’t sure if we’d be successful. We were very excited to see the first plots of our data and see that we recorded it.”

OSIRIS REx Spacecraft Leaving Bennu Surface
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft leaving the surface of asteroid Bennu after collecting a sample. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab/SVS

Enhancing Future Space Research

The preliminary findings of the campaign show implications for future projects in space and on the ground; specifically, aiding the development of entry and propagation models. This paper documents the process used to detect and record the entry of the capsule, and it shows that the methods are capable of handling the kind of observation needed in this large of a campaign. It has substantially increased knowledge of entry detection for space objects and will allow researchers to better understand how objects enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

OSIRIS-APEX Asteroid Apophis
OSIRIS-APEX carries out its extended mission to near-Earth asteroid Apophis. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab
Preparing for the Next Mission

Now that the capsule has touched down and the data is ready for release, OSIRIS-REx is being made ready for its next mission. NASA renamed the spacecraft OSIRIS-APEX as it is prepared for a 2029 arrival to the asteroid Apophis.

Reference: “Geophysical Observations of the 2023 September 24 OSIRIS-REx Sample Return Capsule Reentry” by Elizabeth A. Silber, Daniel C. Bowman, Chris G. Carr, David P. Eisenberg, Brian R. Elbing, Benjamin Fernando, Milton A. Garcés, Robert Haaser, Siddharth Krishnamoorthy, Charles A. Langston, Yasuhiro Nishikawa, Jeremy Webster, Jacob F. Anderson, Stephen Arrowsmith, Sonia Bazargan, Luke Beardslee, Brant Beck, Jordan W. Bishop, Philip Blom, Grant Bracht, David L. Chichester, Anthony Christe, Jacob Clarke, Kenneth Cummins, James Cutts, Lisa Danielson, Carly Donahue, Kenneth Eack, Michael Fleigle, Douglas Fox, Ashish Goel, David Green, Yuta Hasumi, Chris Hayward, Dan Hicks, Jay Hix, Stephen Horton, Emalee Hough, David P. Huber, Madeline A. Hunt, Jennifer Inman, S. M. Ariful Islam, Jacob Izraelevitz, Jamey D. Jacob, James Johnson, Real J. KC, Attila Komjathy, Eric Lam, Justin LaPierre, Kevin Lewis, Richard D. Lewis, Patrick Liu, Léo Martire, Meaghan McCleary, Elisa A. McGhee, Ipsita Mitra, Amitabh Nag, Luis Ocampo Giraldo, Karen Pearson, Mathieu Plaisir, Sarah K. Popenhagen, Hamid Rassoul, Miro Ronac Giannone, Mirza Samnani, Nicholas Schmerr, Kate Spillman, Girish Srinivas, Samuel K. Takazawa, Alex Tempert, Reagan Turley, Cory Van Beek, Loïc Viens, Owen A. Walsh, Nathan Weinstein, Robert White, Brian Williams, Trevor C. Wilson, Shirin Wyckoff, Masa-yuki Yamamoto, Zachary Yap, Tyler Yoshiyama and Cleat Zeiler, 30 September 2024, The Planetary Science Journal.
DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ad5b5e
Funding: Center for Space and Earth Science and LDRD award 20220188DR

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MIT Unveils Breakthrough in Detecting Tiny Asteroids, Boosting Planetary Defense
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MIT Unveils Breakthrough in Detecting Tiny Asteroids, Boosting Planetary Defense

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James Webb Space Telescope Revealing Small Asteroids
An artist’s illustration of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope revealing, in the infrared, a population of small main-belt asteroids. Credit: Ella Maru and Julien de Wit

Researchers at MIT have developed a method to detect small asteroids in the main asteroid belt, significantly improving our ability to spot objects as little as 10 meters across.

This new technique, which identified 138 space rocks ranging from bus- to stadium-sized, allows for earlier detection and better tracking of potential near-Earth objects, enhancing planetary defense. The approach, using data from telescopes initially aimed at exoplanets, has uncovered over a hundred new asteroids, with implications for understanding asteroid origins and collision processes.

Advancements in Asteroid Detection

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs is estimated to have been about 10 kilometers (6 miles) wide — roughly the width of Brooklyn, New York. Fortunately, impacts from such massive objects are extremely rare, occurring only once every 100 million to 500 million years.

In comparison, much smaller asteroids, about the size of a bus, hit Earth far more often — approximately every few years. These “decameter” asteroids, measuring 10 to 100 meters (30 to 330 feet) across, are more likely to break free from the main asteroid belt and become near-Earth objects. When they do collide with Earth, they can cause significant damage, as seen in the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia and the 2013 Chelyabinsk explosion over Russia. Studying decameter-sized asteroids in the main belt could help scientists better understand the origins of meteorites and the processes that shape our solar system.

Now, an international team led by physicists at MIT have found a way to spot the smallest decameter asteroids within the main asteroid belt — a rubble field between Mars and Jupiter where millions of asteroids orbit. Until now, the smallest asteroids that scientists were able to discern there were about a kilometer in diameter. With the team’s new approach, scientists can now spot asteroids in the main belt as small as 10 meters across.

In a paper published on December 9 in the journal Nature, the researchers report that they have used their approach to detect more than 100 new decameter asteroids in the main asteroid belt. The space rocks range from the size of a bus to several stadiums wide, and are the smallest asteroids within the main belt that have been detected to date.

The researchers envision that the approach can be used to identify and track asteroids that are likely to approach Earth.

“We have been able to detect near-Earth objects down to 10 meters in size when they are really close to Earth,” says the study’s lead author, Artem Burdanov, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. “We now have a way of spotting these small asteroids when they are much farther away, so we can do more precise orbital tracking, which is key for planetary defense.”

The study’s co-authors include MIT professors of planetary science Julien de Wit and Richard Binzel, along with collaborators from multiple other institutions, including the University of Liege in Belgium, Charles University in the Czech Republic, the European Space Agency, and institutions in Germany including Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and the University of Oldenburg.

TRAPPIST La Silla Observatory
One of the observing domes of La Silla Observatory, the TRAPPIST. Credit: ESO
Integrating Exoplanet and Asteroid Research

De Wit and his team are primarily focused on searches and studies of exoplanets — worlds outside the solar system that may be habitable. The researchers are part of the group that in 2016 discovered a planetary system around TRAPPIST-1, a star that’s about 40 light years from Earth. Using the TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile, the team confirmed that the star hosts rocky, Earth-sized planets, several of which are in the habitable zone.

Scientists have since trained many telescopes, focused at various wavelengths, on the TRAPPIST-1 system to further characterize the planets and look for signs of life. With these searches, astronomers have had to pick through the “noise” in telescope images, such as any gas, dust, and planetary objects between Earth and the star, to more clearly decipher the TRAPPIST-1 planets. Often, the noise they discard includes passing asteroids.

“For most astronomers, asteroids are sort of seen as the vermin of the sky, in the sense that they just cross your field of view and affect your data,” de Wit says.

De Wit and Burdanov wondered whether the same data used to search for exoplanets could be recycled and mined for asteroids in our own solar system. To do so, they looked to “shift and stack,” an image processing technique that was first developed in the 1990s. The method involves shifting multiple images of the same field of view and stacking the images to see whether an otherwise faint object can outshine the noise.

Breakthroughs in Asteroid Imaging

Applying this method to search for unknown asteroids in images that are originally focused on far-off stars would require significant computational resources, as it would involve testing a huge number of scenarios for where an asteroid might be. The researchers would then have to shift thousands of images for each scenario to see whether an asteroid is indeed where it was predicted to be.

Several years ago, Burdanov, de Wit, and MIT graduate student Samantha Hasler found they could do that using state-of-the-art graphics processing units that can process an enormous amount of imaging data at high speeds.

They initially tried their approach on data from the SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) survey — a system of ground-based telescopes that takes many images of a star over time. This effort, along with a second application using data from a telescope in Antarctica, showed that researchers could indeed spot a vast amount of new asteroids in the main belt.

Webb Telescope in Space
James Webb Space Telescope artist concept. Credit: NASA
“An Unexplored Space”

For the new study, the researchers looked for more asteroids, down to smaller sizes, using data from the world’s most powerful observatory — NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is particularly sensitive to infrared rather than visible light. As it happens, asteroids that orbit in the main asteroid belt are much brighter at infrared wavelengths than at visible wavelengths, and thus are far easier to detect with JWST’s infrared capabilities.

The team applied their approach to JWST images of TRAPPIST-1. The data comprised more than 10,000 images of the star, which were originally obtained to search for signs of atmospheres around the system’s inner planets. After processing the images, the researchers were able to spot eight known asteroids in the main belt. They then looked further and discovered 138 new asteroids around the main belt, all within tens of meters in diameter — the smallest main belt asteroids detected to date. They suspect a few asteroids are on their way to becoming near-Earth objects, while one is likely a Trojan — an asteroid that trails Jupiter.

“We thought we would just detect a few new objects, but we detected so many more than expected, especially small ones,” de Wit says. “It is a sign that we are probing a new population regime, where many more small objects are formed through cascades of collisions that are very efficient at breaking down asteroids below roughly 100 meters.”

“Statistics of these decameter main belt asteroids are critical for modeling,” adds Miroslav Broz, co-author from the Prague Charles University in Czech Republic, and a specialist of the various asteroid populations in the solar system. “In fact, this is the debris ejected during collisions of bigger, kilometers-sized asteroids, which are observable and often exhibit similar orbits about the Sun, so that we group them into ‘families’ of asteroids.”

“This is a totally new, unexplored space we are entering, thanks to modern technologies,” Burdanov says. “It’s a good example of what we can do as a field when we look at the data differently. Sometimes there’s a big payoff, and this is one of them.”

Reference: “JWST sighting of decameter main-belt asteroids and view on meteorite sources” by Artem Y. Burdanov, Julien de Wit, Miroslav Brož, Thomas G. Müller, Tobias Hoffmann, Marin Ferrais, Marco Micheli, Emmanuel Jehin, Daniel Parrott, Samantha N. Hasler, Richard P. Binzel, Elsa Ducrot, Laura Kreidberg, Michaël Gillon, Thomas P. Greene, Will M. Grundy, Theodore Kareta, Pierre-Olivier Lagage, Nicholas Moskovitz, Audrey Thirouin, Cristina A. Thomas and Sebastian Zieba, 9 December 2024, Nature.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08480-z

This work was supported, in part, by the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Czech Science Foundation, and the NVIDIA Academic Hardware Grant Program.

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Illuminating the Abyss: Photon Rings and the Future of Black Hole Imaging
Space

Illuminating the Abyss: Photon Rings and the Future of Black Hole Imaging

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Black Hole Photon Ring Art Concept
Using a global array of radio telescopes, astronomers captured the first-ever image of a black hole. Future plans involve moving part of the telescope into space and using advanced laser data transmission to improve image quality and test theories of gravity. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

TBIRD, a laser communications system developed by Lincoln Laboratory, transmits data at unprecedented speeds, enabling scientists to capture black holes’ elusive photon rings.

The Event Horizon Telescope network captured groundbreaking images of a black hole in 2019 and 2021. Plans to enhance these observations include placing telescopes in space and employing advanced laser communication technology from MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. This will enable detailed tests of gravitational theories through high-resolution imaging of black holes.

First Image of a Black Hole

In April 2019, astronomers from around the world made history by capturing the first-ever image of a black hole — a gravitational giant so powerful that not even light can escape its pull. This groundbreaking image revealed the glowing gas surrounding the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87). Two years later, in March 2021, the same team released another remarkable image showing polarized light near the black hole, offering the first glimpse of its magnetic field.

The instrument behind these stunning images is the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a global network of radio telescopes that work together to form a virtual Earth-sized observatory. By combining data from telescopes around the globe, the EHT can create incredibly detailed images of distant black holes. Now, scientists are planning to extend the EHT into space to achieve even sharper views of M87’s black hole. However, transmitting the enormous amounts of data collected by space-based telescopes back to Earth is a major technical challenge. To solve this, researchers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory have developed a cutting-edge laser communications (lasercom) system capable of transmitting data at the extremely high speeds required for this ambitious mission.

Black Hole M87 Photon Ring
Astronomers imaged the black hole at the center of galaxy M87 in 2019 (left) and its magnetic field in 2021 (center). A major goal is to image its photon ring (simulated at right).
Credit: Event Horizon Telescope; Science Advances, vol. 6, no. 12
Expanding Imaging Techniques into Space

The EHT created the two existing images of M87’s black hole via interferometry — specifically, very long-baseline interferometry. Interferometry works by collecting light in the form of radio waves simultaneously with multiple telescopes in separate places on the globe and then comparing the phase difference of the radio waves at the various locations in order to pinpoint the direction of the source. By taking measurements with different combinations of the telescopes around the planet, the EHT collaboration — which included staff members at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and MIT Haystack Observatory — essentially created an Earth-sized telescope in order to image the incredibly faint black hole 55 million light-years away from Earth.

With interferometry, the bigger the telescope, the better the resolution of the image. Therefore, in order to focus in on even finer characteristics of these black holes, a bigger instrument is needed. Details that astronomers hope to resolve include the turbulence of the gas falling into a black hole (which drives the accumulation of matter onto the black hole through a process called accretion) and a black hole’s shadow (which could be used to help pin down where the jet coming from M87 is drawing its energy from). The ultimate goal is to observe a photon ring (the place where light orbits closest before escaping) around the black hole. Capturing an image of the photon ring would enable scientists to put Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity to the test.

TBIRD Communications Payload
The TBIRD communications payload is approximately the size of a tissue box. Credit: Lincoln Laboratory

Advantages of Space-Based Observatories

With Earth-based telescopes, the farthest that two telescopes could be from one another is on opposite sides of the Earth, or about 13,000 kilometers apart. In addition to this maximum baseline distance, Earth-based instruments are limited by the atmosphere, which makes observing shorter wavelengths difficult. Earth’s atmospheric limitations can be overcome by extending the EHT’s baselines and putting at least one of the telescopes in space, which is exactly what the proposed CfA-led Black Hole Explorer (BHEX) mission aims to do.

One of the most significant challenges that comes with this space-based concept is transfer of information. The dataset to produce the first EHT image was so massive (totaling 4 petabytes) that the data had to be put on disks and shipped to a facility for processing. Gathering information from a telescope in orbit would be even more difficult; the team would need a system that can downlink data from the space telescope to Earth at approximately 100 gigabits per second (Gbps) in order to image the desired aspects of the black hole.

Breakthroughs in Data Transfer Technologies

Here is where Lincoln Laboratory comes in. In May 2023, the laboratory’s TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) lasercom payload achieved the fastest data transfer from space, transmitting at a rate of 200 Gbps — which is 1,000 times faster than typical satellite communication systems — from low Earth orbit (LEO).

“We developed a novel technology for high-volume data transport from space to ground,” says Jade Wang, assistant leader of the laboratory’s Optical and Quantum Communications Group. “In the process of developing that technology, we looked for collaborations and other potential follow-on missions that could leverage this unprecedented data capability. The BHEX is one such mission. These high data rates will enable scientists to image the photon ring structure of a black hole for the first time.”

A lasercom team led by Wang, in partnership with the CfA, is developing the long-distance, high-rate downlink needed for the BHEX mission in middle Earth orbit (MEO).

Future Prospects and Technology Development

“Laser communications is completely upending our expectations for what astrophysical discoveries are possible from space,” says CfA astrophysicist Michael Johnson, principal investigator for the BHEX mission. “In the next decade, this incredible new technology will bring us to the edge of a black hole, creating a window into the region where our current understanding of physics breaks down.”

Though TBIRD is incredibly powerful, the technology needs some modifications to support the higher orbit that BHEX requires for its science mission. The small TBIRD payload (CubeSat) will be upgraded to a larger aperture size and higher transmit power. In addition, the TBIRD automatic request protocol — the error-control mechanism for ensuring data make it to Earth without loss due to atmospheric effects — will be adjusted to account for the longer round-trip times that come with a mission in MEO. Finally, the TBIRD LEO “buffer and burst” architecture for data delivery will shift to a streaming approach.

“With TBIRD and other lasercom missions, we have demonstrated that the lasercom technology for such an impactful science mission is available today,” Wang says. “Having the opportunity to contribute to an area of really interesting scientific discovery is an exciting prospect.”

References:

“High Data Rate Laser Communications for the Black Hole Explorer” by Jade Wang, Bryan Bilyeu, Don Boroson, Dave Caplan, Kat Riesing, Bryan Robinson, Curt Schieler, Michael D. Johnson, Lindy Blackburn, Kari Haworth, Janice Houston, Sara Issaoun, Daniel Palumbo, Elliot Richards, Ranjani Srinivasan, Jonathan Weintroub and Dan Marrone, 13 June 2024, Astrophysics > Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics.
arXiv:2406.09572

“The Black Hole Explorer: Motivation and Vision” by Michael D. Johnson, Kazunori Akiyama, Rebecca Baturin, Bryan Bilyeu, Lindy Blackburn, Don Boroson, Alejandro Cardenas-Avendano, Andrew Chael, Chi-kwan Chan, Dominic Chang, Peter Cheimets, Cathy Chou, Sheperd S. Doeleman, Joseph Farah, Peter Galison, Ronald Gamble, Charles F. Gammie, Zachary Gelles, Jose L. Gomez, Samuel E. Gralla, Paul Grimes, Leonid I. Gurvits, Shahar Hadar, Kari Haworth, Kazuhiro Hada, Michael H. Hecht, Mareki Honma, Janice Houston, Ben Hudson, Sara Issaoun, He Jia, Svetlana Jorstad, Jens Kauffmann, Yuri Y. Kovalev, Peter Kurczynski, Robert Lafon, Alexandru Lupsasca, Robert Lehmensiek, Chung-Pei Ma, Daniel P. Marrone, Alan P. Marscher, Gary J. Melnick, Ramesh Narayan, Kotaro Niinuma, Scott C. Noble, Eric J. Palmer, Daniel C. M. Palumbo, Lenny Paritsky, Eliad Peretz, Dominic Pesce, Alexander Plavin, Eliot Quataert, Hannah Rana, Angelo Ricarte, Freek Roelofs, Katia Shtyrkova, Laura C. Sinclair, Jeffrey Small, Sridharan Tirupati Kumara, Ranjani Srinivasan, Andrew Strominger, Paul Tiede, Edward Tong, Jade Wang, Jonathan Weintroub, Maciek Wielgus, George Wong and Xinyue Alice Zhang, 13 June 2024, Astrophysics > Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics.
arXiv:2406.12917

The BHEX mission concept has been in development since 2019. Technical and concept studies for BHEX have been supported by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the Internal Research and Development program at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Arizona, and the ULVAC-Hayashi Seed Fund from the MIT-Japan Program at MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives. BHEX studies of lasercom have been supported by Fred Ehrsam and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
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Disturbing simulation shows what happens to your head if you end up in space without a suit
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Disturbing simulation shows what happens to your head if you end up in space without a suit

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Disturbing simulation shows what happens to your head if you end up in space without a suit

The video gives a gruesome yet fascinating insight into the human body’s response to the extreme conditions of space

A chilling simulation is making waves online, revealing the horrifying reality of what would happen to your head if you ended up in outer space without a suit.

Now, we all know that we’d be pretty much toast if we were to be exposed in space without a spacesuit on… but how exactly would our bodies react to the sudden lack of gravity, oxygen and atmospheric pressure?

Shared on YouTube by Zack D. Films, the video gives a gruesome yet fascinating insight into the human body’s response to the extreme conditions of space – and it’s not pretty.

(NASA/Space Frontiers/Getty Images)

(NASA/Space Frontiers/Getty Images)

In the simulation, the animated man’s head is exposed to the vacuum of of space, where there’s no atmospheric pressure to keep bodily fluids and gases in check.

The video graphically depicts a sudden swelling, discolouration, and eventually what looks like an explosive release of pressure. It’s both horrifying and mesmerising, like watching a sci-fi nightmare unfold in real life.

Without a spacesuit, the human body is entirely unequipped to handle the vacuum of space.

The lack of pressure causes body fluids like blood and saliva to boil at normal body temperature in a process called ebullism. While this doesn’t mean your blood will reach boiling point like a pot of tea, the vaporisation can cause tissues to swell dramatically.

The simulation shows this swelling in gruesome detail, with the head puffing up grotesquely as gases expand. Your eyes, skin and internal organs are also at risk of severe damage, all within seconds of exposure.

Your lungs would essentially shrivel if exposed to outer space (YouTube/@‌zackdfilms)

Your lungs would essentially shrivel if exposed to outer space (YouTube/@‌zackdfilms)

Add to that the freezing cold of space (or burning heat, depending on proximity to the sun), and it’s clear you wouldn’t last long.

According to NASA, you’d lose consciousness in about 15 seconds due to oxygen deprivation, and within a couple of minutes, the outcome would be fatal.

Despite the dramatics of the simulation, experts say your head wouldn’t actually ‘explode’ in space.

Instead, you’d experience extreme swelling as gases and fluids expand. The visual in the video is likely an exaggerated representation to drive the point home – and it certainly does.

Dr. Kevin Fong, a space medicine expert, explains: “Your body is resilient in many ways, but the vacuum of space overwhelms our natural defenses. Swelling, unconsciousness, and organ failure would occur rapidly.”

The simulation underscores the importance of spacesuits for astronauts. These suits are designed to maintain internal pressure, regulate temperature, and supply oxygen, effectively keeping the body’s delicate systems intact.

Without them, even a brief exposure to space could cause catastrophic damage.

In fact, NASA astronauts undergo rigorous training to prepare for emergencies like a breach in their suit, though modern designs make such incidents extremely rare.

The simulation might be terrifying, but it also highlights the incredible challenges of venturing into space. From Hollywood depictions to scientific discussions, the risks of space exploration are no joke.

So, the next time you fantasise about becoming an astronaut, remember this simulation…

Featured Image Credit: YouTube/@‌zackdfilms

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Hubble Telescope sees 'weird things' in closest-ever look at a quasar from monster black hole
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Hubble Telescope sees ‘weird things’ in closest-ever look at a quasar from monster black hole

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A Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of quasar 3C 273. A coronagraph on Hubble blocks out the glare coming from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the quasar.

A Hubble Space Telescope image of the core of quasar 3C 273. A coronagraph on Hubble blocks out the glare coming from the supermassive black hole at the heart of the quasar.  (Image credit: NASA, ESA, Bin Ren (Université Côte d’Azur/CNRS); Acknowledgment: John Bahcall (IAS); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

The Hubble Space Telescope has stared deeper into a quasar than ever before, discovering “weird” features in its vicinity.

Quasars are the superbright centers of active galaxies, and they’re powered by feeding supermassive black holes. The one Hubble studied, designated 3C 273, is one of the closest of these extreme objects to Earth. 3C 273 is incredibly luminous — so much so that, if it were tens of thousands of light-years from Earth instead of several billion, it would be as bright as the sun in our sky.

Hubble’s imaging spectrograph was the instrument used to dive into 3C 273. This instrument acted like a coronagraph, a cover that astronomers use to block the sun’s photosphere to observe its dimmer outer atmosphere, or corona. This effect is similar to the moon blocking out the sun’s light during a solar eclipse.

With the imaging spectrograph blocking out the bright light from the region at the heart of the quasar, Hubble was able to see the structure around the black hole like never before.

Bin Ren of the Côte d’Azur Observatory and Université Côte d’Azur in France explained in a NASA statement that Hubble found lots of “weird things” around the feeding supermassive black hole powering 3C 273.

“We’ve got a few blobs of different sizes and a mysterious L-shaped filamentary structure,” Ren said. “This is all within 16,000 light-years of the black hole.”

Not all supermassive black holes are hungry

There are around 1 million quasars scattered around the sky over Earth, but these supermassive black hole-powered events were even more abundant around 3 billion years after the Big Bang.

Supermassive black holes with masses equivalent to millions or even billions of suns are thought to sit at the heart of all large galaxies, but not all galaxies host a quasar. That is because not all supermassive black holes are surrounded by a larder of gas, dust and even stars to feed upon.

For instance, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) sits at the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way. Even when seen at a distance, Sgr A* wouldn’t be a quasar, because it’s surrounded by so little matter that if it were a human, it would be on a diet equivalent to one grain of rice every million years!

When supermassive black holes are surrounded by a flattened cloud of gas and dust called an accretion disk, their immense gravity generates tremendous tidal forces in this material. This heats it and causes it to glow brightly.

An illustration of a galaxy with a quasar, a bright and distant active supermassive black hole, at its heart

An illustration of a galaxy with a quasar — a bright, active supermassive black hole — at its heart (Image credit: NASA, ESA and J. Olmsted (STScI))

Additionally, material that isn’t fed to the black hole is channeled to the poles of this cosmic titan by powerful magnetic fields that also accelerate these particles to near the speed of light.

From the poles, this superheated gas or plasma is blasted out as two astrophysical jets that can stretch out for many hundreds of light-years. This is coupled with an energetic emission of light.

That makes these regions, known as active galactic nuclei (AGN), seen as quasars incredibly bright. They are often so bright that they outshine the combined light of every star in the galaxies around them.

The new Hubble observations have granted Ren and colleagues a rare insight into the 300,000-light-year-long jet blasting out of 3C 273 and far beyond the galaxy it sits in.

Two views of the quasar 3C 273. The first shows how Hubble sees the quasar without the use of a coronagraph. The second shows a new view of the quasar when the coronagraph is enabled.

Two views of the quasar 3C 273. The first shows how Hubble sees the quasar without the use of a coronagraph. The second shows a new view of the quasar when the coronagraph is enabled. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, Bin Ren (Université Côte d’Azur/CNRS); Acknowledgment: John Bahcall (IAS); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

The team compared the new images of 3C 273 to archival images with a 22-year separation between the two. This led Ren and colleagues to conclude that the jet moves faster when it is farther away from the supermassive black hole at the heart of this quasar.

“Our previous view was very limited, but Hubble is allowing us to understand the complicated quasar morphology and galactic interactions in detail,” Ren concluded “In the future, looking further at 3C 273 in infrared light with the James Webb Space Telescope might give us more clues.”

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Mysterious fast radio bursts could be caused by asteroids slamming into dead stars
News / Space

Mysterious fast radio bursts could be caused by asteroids slamming into dead stars

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An asteroid hitting a neutron star could release enough energy to power humanity for 100 million years, more than enough to explain fast radio bursts!

A glowing blue sphere intersected by an oblong grey rock causing a red and orange eruption

a large space rock slams into a mottled blue star, releasing a massive explosion  (Image credit: Robert Lea (Created with Canva))

Scientists have discovered that mysterious blasts of energy called fast radio bursts (FRBs) may be created when asteroids slam into ultradense, extreme dead stars called neutron stars. Such a collision releases enough energy to supply humanity’s power needs for 100 million years!

FRBs are transient pulses of radio waves that can last from a fraction of a millisecond to a few seconds. In this period, an FRB can release the same amount of energy that it would take the sun several days to radiate.

The first FRB was observed in 2007, and since then, these blasts of energy have maintained their aura of mystery because they were infrequently detected until 2017. That was the year when the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) came online and began making frequent FRB discoveries.

“FRBs so far defy explanation, with over 50 potential hypotheses of where they come from—we counted!” team leader and University of Toronto scientist Dang Pham told Space.com.

The possible connection between FRBs and asteroids, as well as comets slamming into neutron stars, has been suggested before. This new research by Pham and colleagues further solidifies that link.

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“It’s been known for many years that asteroids and comets impacting neutron stars can cause FRB-like signals, but until now, it was unclear if this happened often enough across the universe to explain the rate at which we observe FRBs occurring,” Pham said. “We have shown that interstellar objects (ISOs), an understudied class of asteroids and comets thought to be present between stars in galaxies throughout the universe, could be numerous enough that their impacts with neutron stars could explain FRBs!”

Pham added that the team’s research also showed other expected properties of these impacts that match up with observations of FRBs, such as their durations, energies, and the rate at which they occur over the lifetime of the universe.

The question is: Even though asteroid impacts can be devastating (just ask the dinosaurs), how could they possibly release the same amount of energy that a star takes days to radiate?

Extreme stars mean extreme explosions

Neutron stars are created when massive stars die and their cores collapse, creating dense bodies with the mass of the sun, only crammed into a width no larger than the average city on Earth.

The result is a stellar remnant with extreme properties, such as the densest matter in the known universe (one teaspoon would weigh 10 million tons if brought to Earth) and magnetic fields that are the strongest in the universe, trillions of times more powerful than Earth’s magnetosphere.

“Neutron stars are extreme places, with over the mass of the sun squeezed into a sphere about 12 miles (20 km) across, giving them some of the strongest gravitational and magnetic fields in the universe,” team member and Oxford University astrophysicist Matthew Hopkins told Space.com. “This means that a huge amount of potential energy is released when an asteroid or comet drops onto one, in the form of a flash of radio waves bright enough to be seen across the universe.”

So, how much energy are we talking about here? To consider this, let’s swap out an asteroid for something a touch sweeter.

A bright blue sphere next to an irregular pink cube

If that ordinary marshmellow reaches the neutron star in the distance, it willl stike with the same energy released when thousands of atomic bombs are detonated. (Image credit: Robert Lea (created with Canva))

According to NASA’s Goddard Flight Center, if a normal-sized marshmallow were dropped to the surface of a neutron star, the gravitational influence of the dead star is so great that the treat would accelerate to speeds of millions of miles per hour. That means when the marshmallow hits the neutron star, the collision releases the energy equivalent to the simultaneous explosion of a thousand hydrogen bombs!

Exactly how much energy the asteroid/neutron star smash-up releases depends on several factors.

“The energy released depends on the size of the asteroid and the strength of the magnetic field on the neutron star, both of which can vary by a lot, by several orders of magnitude,” Hopkins added. “For an asteroid 0.62 miles (1 km) across and a neutron star with a surface magnetic field strength over one trillion times the Earth’s magnetic field strength, we calculate the energy released to be about 10^29 Joules (that’s 10 followed by 28 zeroes).

“This is a huge number, about one hundred million times all the energy used by all of humanity over a year!”

Clearly, asteroids slamming into neutron stars can release enough energy to explain FRBs, but are these collisions frequent enough to account for FRB observations?

Could asteroid ‘combo attack’ neutron stars to create repeat FRBs?

Astronomers have detected FRBs from all over the sky, with some scientists estimating that 10,000 FRBs could occur at random points in the sky over Earth each day. If this team is right, that’s a lot of collisions between neutron stars and asteroids.

Interstellar rocks are certainly abundant enough in the Milky Way to account for this rate; there are about 10^27 (10 followed by 26 zeroes) in our galaxy alone. But how often do these encounter a neutron star?

“The collision between one neutron star and an interstellar object is rare. We estimate it to be about one collision every 10 million years in the Milky Way,” Pham said. “However, there are many neutron stars in the galaxy, and there are many galaxies! Taken together, we find that the neutron star-interstellar object collision rate in the universe is comparable with currently observed FRB rates.”

Additionally, the researcher pointed out that the number of neutron stars and interstellar objects increases over the lifetime of the universe. That means the rate of neutron stars and interstellar object collisions should also increase over cosmic time.

“If this model is true, then we should observe FRB rates increase as the universe ages,” Pham said. “This remains an open research question that could benefit from more observations!”

This image shows the location of fast radio bursts across the night sky.

This image shows the location of fast radio bursts across the night sky.  (Image credit: NRAO Outreach/T. Jarrett (IPAC/Caltech); B. Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Even if this theory is correct, it doesn’t answer everything about FRBs. That is mainly because there are two types of these energetic blasts of radiowaves.

Thus far, we have been talking about single-occurrence FRBs. However, there are also repeating FRBs that fire off more than once. Could asteroid incursions also explain repeat FRBs?

“We find that this model cannot account for repeating FRBs because a neutron star colliding with an interstellar rock is a rare, random event,” Hopkins explained. “It is rare for an individual neutron star to collide with an interstellar object. In comparison, repeating FRBs generally occur at a much faster rate, with some observed to be as fast as two bursts per hour.”

Prior research has suggested that if a single-occurrence FRB is caused by collisions between a neutron star and an asteroid, then repeating FRBs could represent these dead stars colliding with an asteroid belt, like the one in our solar system between Mars and Jupiter.

“There are still some debates around this idea, specifically on how dense these debris fields must be. This scenario is beyond what we considered in our model, which is neutron stars colliding with interstellar objects,” Pham said. “Further observations are needed to understand the emission mechanisms of FRBs and their sources.”

Pham and Hopkins pointed out that the neutron star-interstellar object collision rates will depend on the kinds of galaxies, such as elliptical or spiral galaxies, in which they occur. That means astronomers will need to observe more FRBs and track them back to host galaxies to determine what type of galaxies are most associated with these blasts of energy.

“Understanding the evolution of FRB rates over cosmic time can also help us understand more about this model,” Pham added. “More FRB observations could also place more constraints on how energetic these events are, which will inform us about how FRBs are emitted.” The research team told Space.com this will be done with FRB observational projects, such as CHIME, the Canadian Hydrogen Observatory and Radio-transient Detector (CHORD), and the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP).

“Additional works to constrain how populated galaxies are with interstellar objects will also give us better information on how often neutron stars can collide with these objects in the universe,” Pham concluded.

The team’s results have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. A preprint version of the team’s paper is available on the repository site arXiv.

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Falcon 9 reaches a flight rate 30 times higher than shuttle at 1/100th the cost
News / Space

Falcon 9 reaches a flight rate 30 times higher than shuttle at 1/100th the cost

- by USA Facts News - Leave a Comment

The Falcon 9 rocket is truly delivering on the promise of rapid, reusable launch.

A Falcon 9 rocket launches its 400th successful mission on Nov. 26, 2024. Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX recently hit some notable milestones with its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, and even in the full context of history, the performance of the vehicle is pretty incredible.

Last Tuesday, the company launched a batch of Starlink v2-mini satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket, marking the 400th successful mission by the Falcon 9 rocket. Additionally, it was the Falcon program’s 375th booster recovery, according to SpaceX. Finally, with this mission, the company shattered its record for turnaround time from the landing of a booster to its launch to 13 days and 12 hours, down from 21 days.

But even though it was mere hours before the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, SpaceX was not done for the month. On Saturday, November 30, the company launched twice more in a little more than three hours. The payloads were more Starlink Internet satellites in addition to two Starshield satellites—a custom version of Starlink for the US Department of Defense—for the US military.

Every 2.3 days

This brought the company’s total of monthly Falcon 9 launches in November to 16, a new record for SpaceX. (The company also launched its larger Starship rocket a single time last month.) The previous record for monthly launches by the Falcon 9 rocket was 14.

The company’s vice president of launch, Kiko Dontchev, said on the social media site X that SpaceX plans to attempt 15 additional Falcon rocket launches in December.

So far this year, SpaceX has launched a total of 119 Falcon 9 rockets, for an average of a launch every 2.3 days. The company has already superseded its previous record total for annual Falcon 9 launches, 92, completed last year. If SpaceX achieves its goal of 15 additional Falcon 9 launches this month, it would bring the company’s total this year to 134 flights. If you add two Falcon Heavy missions to that, it brings the total to 136 launches.

That is a meaningful number, because over the course of the three decades it flew into orbit, NASA’s Space Shuttle flew 135 missions.

The space shuttle was a significantly more complex vehicle, and unlike the Falcon 9 rocket, humans flew aboard it during every mission. However, there is some historical significance in the fact that the Falcon rocket may fly as many missions in a single year as the space shuttle did during its lifetime.

Delivering on rapid, low-cost reuse

The principal goal of the Falcon program was to demonstrate rapid, low-cost reusability. By one estimate, it cost NASA about $1.5 billion to fly a single space shuttle mission. (Like the Falcon 9, the shuttle was mostly but not completely reusable.) SpaceX’s internal costs for a Falcon 9 launch are estimated to be as low as $15 million. So SpaceX has achieved a flight rate about 30 times higher than the shuttle at one-hundredth the cost.

Space enthusiast Ryan Caton also crunched the numbers on the number of SpaceX launches this year compared to some of its competitors. So far this year, SpaceX has launched as many rockets as Roscosmos has since 2013, United Launch Alliance since 2010, and Arianespace since 2009. This year alone, the Falcon 9 has launched more times than the Ariane 4, Ariane 5, or Atlas V rockets each did during their entire careers.

The increase in cadence has not occurred without a few bumps in the road for SpaceX. In July, a failure of the rocket’s second stage caused the loss of 20 Starlink satellites. This was the first Falcon 9 launch failure since a rocket exploded on the pad during testing in 2016. Then, in August, a first-stage booster landing ended in failure after it caught fire and tipped over during the attempt. This was the 23rd flight of this particular first stage, a record at the time.

In November, however, another rocket achieved this feat. Booster no. 1067 completed its 23rd flight by launching the Koreasat 62 mission into geostationary transfer orbit. Maybe we’ll see it go for two dozen before 2024 is out?

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