Solar System: Things To Know This Week

Ever get a random craving for a food when in space?

Watch the Perseids Meteor Shower With Us!

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The Perseids meteor shower is here! It's one of the biggest of the year, and will peak early in the morning on Thursday, August 12, 2021 and Friday, August 13, 2021. To spot them, find a dark area away from bright lights (yes, that includes your phone), and let your eyes acclimate to the night sky. But don't worry – if you can't get away from lights, join us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for a meteor shower livestream hosted by our Marshall Space Flight Center's Meteoroid Environment Office. Get all the details on our Watch the Skies blog.

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Apollo 12: The Next Step after the Giant Leap

Launched less than four months after Apollo 11 put the first astronauts on the Moon, Apollo 12 was more than a simple encore. After being struck by lightning on launch -- to no lasting damage, fortunately -- Apollo 12 headed for a rendezvous with a spacecraft that was already on the Moon. The mission would expand the techniques used to explore the Moon and show the coordination between robotic and human exploration, both of which continue today as we get return to return astronauts to the Moon by 2024. 

Launch Day

Apollo 12 lifted off at 11:22 a.m. EST, Nov. 14, 1969, from our Kennedy Space Center. Aboard the Apollo 12 spacecraft were astronauts Charles Conrad Jr., commander; Richard F. Gordon Jr., command module pilot; and Alan L. Bean, lunar module pilot.

Barely 40 seconds after liftoff, lightning struck the spacecraft. Conrad alerted Houston that the crew had lost telemetry and other data from the mission computers. As the Saturn V engines continued to push the capsule to orbit, ground controllers worked out a solution, restarting some electrical systems, and Apollo 12 headed toward the Moon.

Cameras at the Kennedy Space Center captured this image of the same lightning bolt that struck Apollo 12 striking the mobile platform used for the launch.

On the Moon

Apollo 12 landed on the Moon on Nov. 19, and on the second moonwalk Conrad and Bean walked approximately 200 yards to the Surveyor 3 spacecraft. One of seven Surveyor spacecraft sent to land on the Moon and to gather data on the best way to land humans there, Surveyor 3 had been on the Moon for more than two years, exposed to cosmic radiation and the vacuum of space. Scientists on the ground wanted to recover parts of the spacecraft to see what effects the environment had had on it.

Apollo 12 commander Pete Conrad examines the Surveyor 3 spacecraft before removing its camera and other pieces for return to Earth. In the background is the lunar module that landed Conrad and lunar module pilot Alan Bean on the Moon.

Splashdown

Apollo 12 splashed down on Nov. 24. When Artemis returns astronauts to the Moon in 2024, it will be building on Apollo 12 as much as any of the other missions. Just as Apollo 12 had to maneuver off the standard “free return” trajectory to reach its landing site near Surveyor, Artemis missions will take advantage of the Gateway to visit a variety of lunar locations. The complementary work of Surveyor and Apollo -- a robotic mission preparing the way for a crewed mission; that crewed mission going back to the robotic mission to learn more from it -- prefigures how Artemis will take advantage of commercial lunar landers and other programs to make lunar exploration sustainable over the long term.

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The Universe's Brightest Lights Have Some Dark Origins

Did you know some of the brightest sources of light in the sky come from black holes in the centers of galaxies? It sounds a little contradictory, but it's true! They may not look bright to our eyes, but satellites have spotted oodles of them across the universe. 

One of those satellites is our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi has found thousands of these kinds of galaxies in the 10 years it's been operating, and there are many more out there!

Black holes are regions of space that have so much gravity that nothing - not light, not particles, nada - can escape. Most galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers - these are black holes that are hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of our sun - but active galactic nuclei (also called "AGN" for short, or just "active galaxies") are surrounded by gas and dust that's constantly falling into the black hole. As the gas and dust fall, they start to spin and form a disk. Because of the friction and other forces at work, the spinning disk starts to heat up.

The disk's heat gets emitted as light - but not just wavelengths of it that we can see with our eyes. We see light from AGN across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from the more familiar radio and optical waves through to the more exotic X-rays and gamma rays, which we need special telescopes to spot.

About one in 10 AGN beam out jets of energetic particles, which are traveling almost as fast as light. Scientists are studying these jets to try to understand how black holes - which pull everything in with their huge amounts of gravity - somehow provide the energy needed to propel the particles in these jets.

Many of the ways we tell one type of AGN from another depend on how they're oriented from our point of view. With radio galaxies, for example, we see the jets from the side as they're beaming vast amounts of energy into space. Then there's blazars, which are a type of AGN that have a jet that is pointed almost directly at Earth, which makes the AGN particularly bright.  

Our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has been searching the sky for gamma ray sources for 10 years. More than half (57%) of the sources it has found have been blazars. Gamma rays are useful because they can tell us a lot about how particles accelerate and how they interact with their environment.

So why do we care about AGN? We know that some AGN formed early in the history of the universe. With their enormous power, they almost certainly affected how the universe changed over time. By discovering how AGN work, we can understand better how the universe came to be the way it is now.

Fermi's helped us learn a lot about the gamma-ray universe over the last 10 years. Learn more about Fermi and how we're celebrating its accomplishments all year.

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Check out tiny-house-looking satellite Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich

It might look like something you’d find on Earth, but this piece of technology has a serious job to do: track global sea level rise with unprecedented accuracy. It’s #SeeingTheSeas mission will:

Provide information that will help researchers understand how climate change is reshaping Earth's coastlines – and how fast this is happenin.

Help researchers better understand how Earth's climate is changing by expanding the global atmospheric temperature data record

Help to improve weather forecasts by providing meteorologists information on atmospheric temperature and humidity.

Tune in tomorrow, Nov. 21 at 11:45 a.m. EST to watch this U.S.-European satellite launch to space! Liftoff is targeted for 12:17 p.m. EST. Watch HERE. 

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I am interested in learning how to grow plants in space. How can I be involved in this as a college student, or independently?

Meet the people behind our next Mars rover – Perseverance.

Sending a rover to the Red Planet is more than just 3…2…1… Liftoff 🚀 

It takes thousands of people and years of hard work to get a spacecraft from Earth to Mars. So when our Perseverance (Percy) rover touches down on the Martian surface, it will be because of the talented minds that helped to make it happen. 

The team is on track to launch Perseverance on July 20 and land in Mars’ Jezero Crater in February 2021. Each week leading up to launch, learn not only what it’s like to work on this mission but also about the diverse background and career trajectories of the team members at our Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

Want to stay up to date on Percy’s mission? Follow her on Twitter and Facebook. For more information, visit the official mission site, HERE. 

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We're sorry, but we will not be posting updates to Tumblr during the government shutdown. Also, all public NASA activities and events are cancelled or postponed until further notice. We'll be back as soon as possible! Sorry for the inconvenience.

Flying Observatory Has Big Plans for New Zealand

Our flying observatory, called SOFIA, carries a 100-inch telescope inside a Boeing 747SP aircraft. Scientists onboard study the life cycle of stars, planets (including the atmospheres of Pluto and Jupiter), nearby planetary systems, galaxies, black holes and complex molecules in space.

Flying South

Usually based in California, SOFIA and its team are returning to the Southern Hemisphere to study objects that aren't visible from the Northern Hemisphere and to take advantage of the long winter nights. The team operates from Christchurch, New Zealand, regularly between June and August and continues with more big plans for this year.

Working with New Horizons 

Our SOFIA and New Horizons teams are working together again, to learn more about the next object that the New Horizons spacecraft will fly past, Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69, or MU69. This will be the farthest object ever encountered by any spacecraft, but little is known about it. Our team on SOFIA will be searching for possible debris around MU69 that could damage the spacecraft and will measure its size, helping the New Horizons team plan their next flyby.

How We Study Distant Celestial Objects from Earth

Our SOFIA team will study MU69 on July 10, 2017, well before New Horizons arrives in January 2019. We can study this distant object from Earth by flying in the faint shadow that it will cast on Earth’s surface as it passes in front of a star. SOFIA will fly directly into the center of this shadow as it moves across the Pacific Ocean. From inside the shadow, the team onboard will study how the light from the star changes as MU69 passes in front it, allowing them to measure its size and to establish if there are any rings or debris around it. The observations will work in the same way that we studied Pluto using SOFIA two weeks before New Horizon’s Pluto Flyby in 2015.

Observing Other Galaxies

The Magellanic Clouds are neighboring galaxies to our own Milky Way Galaxy. We’re studying how stars are forming in the Large and Small Magellanic clouds to compare those processes to star formation in our own galaxy. The Magellanic Clouds are best observed from the southern hemisphere.

And Supernova 1987A

Inside the Large Magellanic Cloud is Supernova 1987A, the closest supernova explosion witnessed in almost 400 years. Our team onboard SOFIA will continue studying this supernova to better understand the material expanding out from it, which may become the building blocks of future stars and planets. Many of our telescopes have studied Supernova 1987A, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and SOFIA’s predecessor, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, but the instruments on SOFIA are the only tools we can use to study the debris around it at infrared wavelengths, to better understand characteristics of the dust that cannot be measured using other wavelengths of light.

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Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Discoveries in planetary science are often both weird and wonderful, and these newest announcements are no exception. This week we present a few of the most interesting recent scientific findings from our missions and NASA-funded planetary science. Take a look:

1. Seeing Spots

Scientists from our Dawn mission unveiled new images from the spacecraft’s lowest orbit at the dwarf planet Ceres, including highly anticipated views of the famous “bright spots” of Occator Crater. Take a look HERE.

2. Pluto’s Secrets Brought to Light

A year ago, Pluto was just a bright speck in the cameras of our approaching New Horizons spacecraft, not much different than its appearances in telescopes since Clyde Tombaugh discovered the dwarf planet in 1930. Now, New Horizons scientists have authored the first comprehensive set of papers describing results from last summer’s Pluto system flyby. Find out more HERE.

3. Rising Above the Rest

In a nod to extraterrestrial mountaineers of the future, scientists working on our Cassini mission have identified the highest point on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. The tallest peak is 10,948 feet (3,337 meters) high and is found within a trio of mountainous ridges called the Mithrim Montes, named for the mountains in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

4. Does the “Man in the Moon” Have a New Face?

New NASA-funded research provides evidence that the spin axis of Earth’s moon shifted by about five degrees roughly three billion years ago. The evidence of this motion is recorded in the distribution of ancient lunar ice, evidence of delivery of water to the early solar system.

5. X-Ray Vision

Solar storms are triggering X-ray auroras on Jupiter that are about eight times brighter than normal over a large area of the planet and hundreds of times more energetic than Earth’s “northern lights,” according to a new study using data from our Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Want to learn more? Read our full list of things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

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