 |
| The Parker Solar Probe has gotten closer to the sun than any other spacecraft in history |
A NASA probe has boldly gone where no spacecraft has gone before by flying to within a record distance of the sun.
Less than three months after lift-off, the Parker Solar Probe has managed to get within 15 million miles of the surface of the star.
As far away as that sounds (approximately 600 trips around the world), it is the closest any vessel has ever gotten to the sun.
Its speed hit 213,000 miles per hour as it penetrated the outer solar atmosphere, which made it more than 900 times faster than the top speed ever recorded by a Formula One car.
NASA will not re-establish contact with the probe until it is far enough from the sun to avoid any potential radio interference, but heliophysics division director Nicola Fox said scientists "cannot wait to get the data".
But the journey is far from over for Parker, which - assuming it survives the harsh conditions - will make 23 even closer approaches to the sun over the next seven years.
 |
| Parker took off from Cape Canaveral in Florida in August |
The next one is scheduled to happen in April.
NASA is also expecting Parker - which launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida in August - to repeatedly break its own speed records, achieving a top speed of about 430,000 miles per hour in 2024.
It has already become the fastest spacecraft of all-time, besting the speeds recorded by the German-American Helios 2 mission in April 1976.
Meanwhile, in other news from the final frontier, staff at the ALMA Observatory in Chile have used data from the European Southern Observatory to reveal a never-before-seen colossal fountain of molecular gas.
Powered by a black hole in the brightest galaxy of the Abell 2597 cluster some one billion light-years away, it is hoped that the unprecedented observation could shed light on the life cycle of galaxies.
 |
Phobos
The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took two images of Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons, within 10 minutes of each other on March 23, 2008. This is the first, taken from a distance of about 6,800 kilometers (about 4,200 miles). It is presented in color by combining data from the camera's blue-green, red, and near-infrared channels.
The illuminated part of Phobos seen in the image is about 21 kilometers (13 miles) across. The most prominent feature in the images is the large crater Stickney in the lower right. With a diameter of 9 kilometers (5.6 miles), it is the largest feature on Phobos.
|
 |
Galaxy NGC 4993
This wide-field image generated from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 shows the sky around the galaxy NGC 4993. This galaxy was the host to a merger between two neutron stars, which led to a gravitational wave detection, a short gamma-ray burst and an optical identification of a kilonova event.
|
 |
Geology of the Victoria Quadrangle on Mercury
Mercury, the innermost planet of our Solar System is a grey, barren world to our human eyes. In stark contrast, this map shows a portion of the surface in a patchwork of colour, each shade corresponding to a different type of geological feature.
The image is an excerpt from a detailed geological map that is the first complete geological survey of this region made using data from NASA’s Messenger mission, which orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015. It covers a section in the planet’s northern hemisphere known to planetary geologists as the Victoria Quadrangle, and is centred on about 45ºW / 45ºN. From impact craters in various states of degradation (dark red/green/yellow/beige) to smooth volcanic plains (pink/peach) and rougher plains materials (browns), the scene captures billions of years of rich geological history. For scale, the large crater just right of centre is about 150 km wide.
In total, 867 craters larger than 5 km are mapped in this image – the full Victoria Quadrangle contains 1789. Of those, 519 are larger than 20 km (268 in this particular section), and for those the pattern of the ejected material is mapped and classified as well. Mapping the density and characteristics of craters helps to determine the relative age of a surface: in general, the more craters, the older the surface.
The map also indicates surface features such as hollows, pits, faults and wrinkle ridges, which were imaged in high resolution by Messenger, many identified for the first time. (For a full description of the annotations see the complete geological map of this region.) For example, Messenger discovered hollows that appear to be young and unique to Mercury, and may be due to a sublimating material weakening parts of the surface such that it collapses.
|
 |
Juno Observes Jupiter, Io and Europa
This color-enhanced image of Jupiter and two of its largest moons -- Io and Europa -- was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft as it performed its eighth flyby of the gas giant planet. Closer to the planet, the Galilean moon of Io can be seen at an altitude of 298,880 miles (481,000 kilometers) and at a spatial scale of 201 miles (324 kilometers) per pixel. In the distance (to the left), another one of Jupiter's Galilean moons, Europa, is visible at an altitude of 453,601 miles (730,000 kilometers) and at a spatial scale of 305 miles (492 kilometers) per pixel.
|
 |
Facing the Sun
Now being fitted with its state-of-the-art instruments, ESA’s Solar Orbiter is set to provide new views of our star, in particular providing close-up observations of the Sun’s poles. Following its launch in February 2019 and three-year journey using gravity swingbys at Earth and Venus, Solar Orbiter will operate from an elliptical orbit around the Sun. At its closest it will approach our star within 42 million kilometres, closer than planet Mercury. An artist’s impression of Solar Orbiter in front of the stormy Sun is depicted here. The image of the Sun is based on one taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. It captures the beginning of a solar eruption that took place on 7 June 2011. At lower right, dark filaments of plasma arc away from the Sun. During this particular event, it watched the plasma lift off, then rain back down to create ‘hot spots’ that glowed in ultraviolet light.
|
 |
Sputnik, the Dawn of the Space Age
History changed on Oct. 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball, about 23 inches in diameter and weighing less than 190 pounds. It took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R. space race.
|
