SpaceX capsule with 4 astronauts reaches space station

NOV 17, 2020 SpaceX's newly launched capsule with four astronauts arrived Monday at the International Space Station, their new home until spring. The Dragon capsule pulled up and docked late Monday night, following a 27-hour, completely automated flight from NASA''s Kennedy Space Center. The linkup occurred 262 miles (422 kilometers) above Idaho. "Oh, what a good voice to hear," space station astronaut Kate Rubins called out when the Dragon''s commander, Mike Hopkins, first made radio contact. "We can''t wait to have you on board," she added after the two spacecraft were latched together. This is the second astronaut mission for SpaceX. But it''s the first time Elon Musk''s company delivered a crew for a full half-year station stay. The two-pilot test flight earlier this year lasted two months. The three Americans and one Japanese astronaut will remain at the orbiting lab until their replacements arrive on another Dragon in April. And so it will go, with SpaceX - and eventually Boeing - transporting astronauts to and from the station for NASA. This regular taxi service got underway with Sunday night''s launch. Hopkins and his crew - Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japan''s Soichi Noguchi - join two Russians and one American who flew to the space station last month from Kazakhstan. Glover is the first African-American to move in for a long haul. A space newcomer, Glover was presented his gold astronaut pin Monday. The four named their capsule Resilience to provide hope and inspiration during an especially difficult year for the whole world. They broadcast a tour of their capsule Monday, showing off the touchscreen controls, storage areas and their zero gravity indicator: a small plush Baby Yoda. Walker said it was a little tighter for them than for the two astronauts on the test flight. "We sort of dance around each other to stay out of each other''s way," she said. For Sunday''s launch, NASA kept guests to a minimum because of coronavirus, and even Musk had to stay away after tweeting that he "most likely" had an infection. He was replaced in his official launch duties by SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who assured reporters he was still very much involved with Sunday night''s action, although remotely. As they prepared for the space station linkup, the Dragon crew beamed down live window views of New Zealand and a brilliant blue, cloud-streaked Pacific 250 miles below. "Looks amazing," Mission Control radioed from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. "It looks amazing from up here, too," Hopkins replied. Source: Jammu Links News

Read More........→November 17, 2020

Astronaut trainees complete abnormal descent module landing

Four Indian astronauts who were undergoing training in Russia since February 2020 have successfully completed the training on crew actions in case of abnormal descent module landing on different terrains, said Glavkosmos.

The company is a subsidiary of Russian space corporation Roscosmos and the Indian astronauts are being trained at Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (GCTC).

According to Glavkosmos, the prospective Indian astronauts have been trained in abnormal descent module landing - in wooded and marshy areas in winter; on water surface and in the steppe in summer.

"In June 2020, all Indian astronauts-elect passed training in short-term weightlessness mode aboard the IL-76MDK special laboratory aircraft, and in July, they were trained to lift aboard a helicopter while evacuating from the descent module landing point," Glavkosmos said.

According to Glavkosmos, the upcoming programme for the prospective Indian astronauts who will be part of India's human space mission Gaganyaan includes training in a centrifuge and in a hyperbaric chamber to prepare their organisms for sustaining spaceflight factors, such as G-force, hypoxia and pressure drops.

The regular courses comprise medical and physical training, learning Russian (as one of the main international languages of communication in space), and studying the configuration, structure and systems of the Soyuz crewed spacecraft.

The health of prospective Indian astronauts is monitored on a daily basis, and once every three months, GCTC doctors conduct their thorough medical examination.

According to Glavkosmos, all the Indian trainees are in good health.

The Indians undergo the general space training programme and of the systems of the Soyuz MS crewed spacecraft.The completion of their training at GCTC is scheduled for the first quarter of 2021.

The contract for the training of Indian astronauts between Glavkosmos and the Human Spaceflight Centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation was signed on June 27, 2019 and four pilots from the Indian Air Force (IAF) were sent to GCTC for training in space travel and other aspects as part of India's maiden human space mission Gaganyaan.(IANS) Source: https://southasiamonitor.org

Read More........→August 08, 2020

Black Hole in 'Mirachs Ghost' Galaxy Hints at How It Was Born

Credit: Cardiff University

Astronomers zoom in on black hole with one of the lowest masses ever observed in nearby "ghost" galaxy.

"On the left is shown a color composite Hubble Space Telescope image of the centre of `Mirachs Ghost'. On the right is shown the new ALMA image of this same region, revealing the distribution of the cold, dense gas that swirls around this centre of this object in exquisite detail."

A research team led by Cardiff University scientists say they are closer to understanding how a supermassive black hole (SMBH) is born thanks to a new technique that has enabled them to zoom in on one of these enigmatic cosmic objects in unprecedented detail.

Scientists are unsure as to whether SMBHs were formed in the extreme conditions shortly after the big bang, in a process dubbed a 'direct collapse', or were grown much later from 'seed' black holes resulting from the death of massive stars.

If the former method were true, SMBHs would be born with extremely large masses - hundreds of thousands to millions of times more massive than our Sun - and would have a fixed minimum size.

If the latter were true then SMBHs would start out relatively small, around 100 times the mass of our Sun, and start to grow larger over time by feeding on the stars and gas clouds that live around them.

Astronomers have long been striving to find the lowest mass SMBHs, which are the missing links needed to decipher this problem.

In a study published today, the Cardiff-led team has pushed the boundaries, revealing one of the lowest-mass SMBHs ever observed at the centre of a nearby galaxy, weighing less than one million times the mass of our sun.

The SMBH lives in a galaxy that is familiarly known as "Mirach's Ghost", due to its close proximity to a very bright star called Mirach, giving it a ghostly shadow.

The findings were made using a new technique with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a state-of-the-art telescope situated high on the Chajnantor plateau in the Chilean Andes that is used to study light from some of the coldest objects in the Universe.

"The SMBH in Mirach's Ghost appears to have a mass within the range predicted by 'direct collapse' models," said Dr Tim Davis from Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy.

"We know it is currently active and swallowing gas, so some of the more extreme 'direct collapse' models that only make very massive SMBHs cannot be true.

"This on its own is not enough to definitively tell the difference between the 'seed' picture and 'direct collapse' - we need to understand the statistics for that - but this is a massive step in the right direction."

Black holes are objects that have collapsed under the weight of gravity, leaving behind small but incredibly dense regions of space from which nothing can escape, not even light.

An SMBH is the largest type of black hole that can be hundreds of thousands, if not billions, of times the mass of the Sun.

It is believed that nearly all large galaxies, such as our own Milky Way, contain an SMBH located at its centre.

"SMBHs have also been found in very distant galaxies as they appeared just a few hundred million years after the big bang", said Dr Marc Sarzi, a member of Dr. Davis' team from the Armagh Observatory & Planetarium.

"This suggest that at least some SMBHs could have grown very massive in a very short time, which is hard to explain according to models for the formation and evolution of galaxies."

"All black holes grow as they swallow gas clouds and disrupt stars that venture too close to them, but some have more active lives than others."

"Looking for the smallest SMBHs in nearby galaxies could therefore help us reveal how SMBHs start off," continued Dr. Sarzi.

In their study, the international team used brand new techniques to zoom further into the heart of a small nearby galaxy, called NGC404, than ever before, allowing them to observe the swirling gas clouds that surrounded the SMBH at its centre.

The ALMA telescope enabled the team to resolve the gas clouds in the heart of the galaxy, revealing details only 1.5 light years across, making this one of the highest resolution maps of gas ever made of another galaxy.

Being able to observe this galaxy with such high resolution enabled the team to overcome a decade's worth of conflicting results and reveal the true nature of the SMBH at the galaxy's centre.

"Our study demonstrates that with this new technique we can really begin to explore both the properties and origins of these mysterious objects," continued Dr Davis.

"If there is a minimum mass for a supermassive black hole, we haven't found it yet."

###

The results of the study have been published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Contacts and sources: Michael Bishop, Cardiff University

:Source: https://www.ineffableisland.com

Read More........→July 17, 2020

Universe is expanding faster than expected

Photo Source: Thinkstock

Washington: The universe is expanding 5 to 9 per cent faster than thought, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered. "This surprising finding may be an important clue to understanding those mysterious parts of the universe that make up 95 per cent of everything and don't emit light, such as dark energy, dark matter, and dark radiation," said study leader and Nobel Laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University in the US. Researchers made the discovery by refining the universe's current expansion rate to unprecedented accuracy, reducing the uncertainty to only 2.4 per cent. The team made the refinements by developing innovative techniques that improved the precision of distance measurements to faraway galaxies. They looked for galaxies containing both Cepheid stars and Type Ia supernovae. Cepheid stars pulsate at rates that correspond to their true brightness, which can be compared with their apparent brightness as seen from Earth to accurately determine their distance. Type Ia supernovae, another commonly used cosmic yardstick, are exploding stars that flare with the same brightness and are brilliant enough to be seen from relatively longer distances. By measuring about 2,400 Cepheid stars in 19 galaxies and comparing the observed brightness of both types of stars, researchers accurately calculated distances to roughly 300 Type Ia supernovae in far-flung galaxies. They compared those distances with the expansion of space as measured by the stretching of light from receding galaxies. The team used these two values to calculate how fast the universe expands with time, or the Hubble constant. The improved Hubble constant value is 73.2 km per second per megaparsec. A megaparsec equals 3.26 million light-years. The new value means the distance between cosmic objects will double in another 9.8 billion years. This refined calibration presents a puzzle, however, because it does not quite match the expansion rate predicted for the universe from its trajectory seen shortly after the Big Bang. Measurements of the afterglow from the Big Bang by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and the European Space Agency's Planck satellite mission yield predictions for the Hubble constant that are 5 per cent and 9 per cent smaller. "If we know the initial amounts of stuff in the universe, such as dark energy and dark matter, and we have the physics correct, then you can go from a measurement at the time shortly after the big bang and use that understanding to predict how fast the universe should be expanding today," said Riess. "However, if this discrepancy holds up, it appears we may not have the right understanding, and it changes how big the Hubble constant should be today," he said. The research appears in The Astrophysical Journal. — PTI. Source: http://www.tribuneindia.com/

Read More........→July 21, 2016

New dwarf galaxy found orbiting the Milky Way

Original image by Andrew Z. Colvin [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons. Adapted version by Gabriel Torrealba and Will Fox.

A never-before-seen galaxy has been spotted orbiting the Milky Way. With a diameter of around 7,000 light years, it becomes the fourth largest known satellite of the Milky Way, surpassed only by the Large Magellanic Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud and the Sagittarius Dwarf. Known as "Crater 2", it was discovered by the University of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy. Crater 2 is extremely faint compared to other members of the Local Group. Its diffuseness allowed it to remain hidden, but it was identified in recent data from the VST ATLAS survey. A computer algorithm processed images taken by the Very Large Telescope in Chile, pinpointing regions that might have unusual clustering of stars. This revealed an entire new satellite galaxy, located 380,000 light years away. "This is indeed a very rare discovery. A galaxy like Crater 2 is a sort of invisible object," says Dr. Vasily Belokurov. "We have found many similar objects in the last 10 years, but never such a large beast. It is orders of magnitude less luminous compared to most objects of similar size. It is extremely diffuse. We believe it was born that fluffy. But why, we do not yet know."

If the brightness of Crater 2 were increased by 1,000 times, its angular diameter would be twice that of the full Moon, as shown in the illustration below. This suggests there might be other dark neighbours lurking nearby. Indeed, Dr. Belokurov and his team are now using their technique to hunt for additional objects that might have been missed. It is hoped these discoveries could lead to a better understanding of the origin and evolution of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. "In the last two years alone, the number of known Milky Way satellite galaxies has doubled, largely thanks to the Dark Energy Camera on the Blanco 4m telescope in Chile," Dr. Evan Kirby, assistant 

Credit: Vasily Belokurov, et al.

professor at Caltech, who was not involved in the research, told the Huffington Post. "These galaxies are intense concentrations of dark matter," he added. "If there's a place in the universe where we can look to learn about dark matter, it's dwarf galaxies. How is it distributed? What is it made of? Future observations, especially spectroscopy, will help answer those questions." Crater 2 seems to be aligned in 3-D with the globular cluster Crater, the pair of dwarfs Leo IV and Leo V and the classical dwarf Leo II. The researchers argue that such arrangement "is probably not accidental and, in fact, can be viewed as evidence for the accretion of the Crater-Leo group." Their study is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Source: http://www.futuretimeline.net/

Read More........→May 29, 2016