Latest news with #AlanStern
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Space photo of the day for April 30, 2025
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A new study from the NASA New Horizons mission team at the Southwest Research Institute have resulted in a first-of-its-type map from the Milky Way galaxy in an ultraviolet wavelength, revealing details in the region around our solar system. This spectrograph map, generated from data collected by NASA's New Horizons probe, depicts the relatively uniform brightness of the ultraviolet (UV) "Lyman-alpha" background surrounding the sun and its area of influence."Understanding the Lyman-alpha background helps shed light on nearby galactic structures and processes," said Dr. Randy Gladstone with the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Colorado. "This research suggests that hot interstellar gas bubbles like the one our solar system is embedded within may actually be regions of enhanced hydrogen gas emissions at a wavelength called Lyman alpha." Lyman-alpha is a specific wavelength of UV light emitted and scattered by hydrogen atoms. It is useful when studying distant stars, galaxies and the interstellar medium, as it can help detect the composition, temperature and movement of these distant this spectrograph map, the black dots represent approximately 90,000 known UV-bright stars in our galaxy. New Horizons, which began as the first mission to flyby Pluto, collected baseline data about Lyman-alpha emissions during its initial journey to the small, icy world. After the spacecraft's primary objectives at Pluto were completed, New Horizons' ultraviolet spectrograph (named "Alice") was used to make more frequent surveys of Lyman-alpha emissions as New Horizons traveled farther from the sun. These observations included an extensive set of scans in 2023 that mapped roughly 83% of the sky. Before this map was released, scientists theorized that a wall of interstellar hydrogen atoms would accumulate as they reached the edge of our heliosphere — the region of our galaxy where the solar wind from our sun reaches and interacts with the interstellar medium. New Horizons data saw nothing to indicate that this "wall" was an important source of Lyman-alpha emissions."These are really landmark observations, in giving the first clear view of the sky surrounding the solar system at these wavelengths, both revealing new characteristics of that sky and refuting older ideas that the Alice New Horizons data just doesn't support," said Dr. Alan Stern. the mission's principal investigator at SwRI. "This Lyman-alpha map also provides a solid foundation for future investigations to learn even more." Read more about New Horizons' mission after leaving Pluto and other recent research based on Lyman-alpha emissions. You can also find the scientific paper describing the SwRI map and its findings in The Astronomical Journal.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Leaving Pluto in the dust: New Horizons probe gearing up for epic crossing of 'termination shock'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft conducted the first and only flyby of the Pluto system, culminating at the closest approach of that distant world in July 2015. Sailing onward, the probe carried out a Jan. 1, 2019 flyby of Arrokoth, a Kuiper Belt Object, or KBO, located in a region of space beyond Neptune called the Kuiper Belt. There are scads of other icy worlds residing in the Kuiper Belt, celestial leftovers from the formation of our solar system. For New Horizons, the gathering of more exploration science is, pun intended, on the horizon. Late last year, a study by the U.S. National Academies titled "The Next Decade of Discovery in Solar and Space Physics: Exploring and Safeguarding Humanity's Home in Space" observed that "key challenges are to keep receiving the invaluable observations from the New Horizons and Voyager spacecraft, which are the only means to gain firsthand knowledge of the environment in the outer heliosphere and outside the heliospheric bubble." Related: New Horizons: Exploring Pluto and beyond That report also noted that "moving outward, the boundary of the solar system where the sun's influence wanes and is replaced by the interstellar environment, there is much to be discovered." The heliospheric decadal report is important for several reasons, said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado."It's a completely independent validation by the community about how important and unique the New Horizons science is to that field," he told New Horizons is gearing up to cross the sun's "termination shock," Stern said, where the subsonic solar wind slows down and becomes subsonic as it rams into the interstellar medium. Related: New Horizons Pluto probe notches 3 new discoveries in outer solar system Though New Horizons is now in hibernation mode, the spacecraft is still collecting heliophysics data around the clock, Stern said, squirreling that data into onboard solid state memory — basically a big flash drive. "We went into hibernation mode on October 3 of last year. We exit that mode on April 2 of this year. When we wake up, we'll transmit the backlogged New Horizons data down to NASA's Deep Space Network," said Stern. "But actual crossing of the termination shock, the timing is a guessing game. No one can fully predict that, but it could potentially be as early as 2027 … and we want to be on guard then so we don't miss it," Stern noted. Meanwhile, New Horizons is in perfect health. "There's nothing broken on the spacecraft and the seven instruments that it's carrying," he added. "They are working super-well, as well as when they were launched." Related: New Horizons Pluto probe notches 3 new discoveries in outer solar system But New Horizons is low on propellant. "And that just means we have to be miserly with that fuel. Any fuel we spend is not going to get us to a new flyby of a KBO, so it reduces the odds of a flyby," said Stern. Being tight on fuel means that Stern has adopted a new title to go along with principal investigator: "Fuel hoarder in chief." Regarding the spacecraft's power and data transmission, the long-distance craft is good to go. Its nuclear power generating system will perhaps last into 2050, Stern advised. So, could New Horizons perform a flyby of another far-flung KBO? Possibly, if the mission gets some help from Earth-based observatories, particularly the soon-to-come online Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Rubin's detection of KBOs along an attainable New Horizons flight path would "significantly raise the odds of getting a flyby," Stern added. "But it's a needle in the haystack search," he added, "even using the world's best tools." Related: Just how dark is the universe? NASA's New Horizons probe gives us best estimate yet Meanwhile, a New Horizons heliophysics team consisting of about a dozen scientists and engineers are intently focused on spacecraft measurements taken in the outer heliosphere, said Andrew Poppe of the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a co-investigator and heliophysics science lead on the New Horizons mission. That team is gearing up for New Horizons' crossing of the termination shock, one of the key outer boundaries between our heliosphere and interstellar space, Poppe told "Both Voyager spacecraft crossed this boundary and revealed a wealth of new physics," he said. "However, due to certain limitations in the Voyager instrumentation, key questions regarding a population of ions known as 'pickup ions' were left unanswered." Poppe added that, since the Voyager measurements, it has become increasingly clear that these pickup ions may in fact dominate the transfer of energy and momentum across the termination shock. Fortunately, New Horizons carries key instrumentation — the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) and Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) — that will conduct the first-ever measurements of these critical pickup ions in the outer heliosphere and across the termination shock. "With this in mind, the New Horizons heliophysics team has been planning out specific instrument observing modes, planning data downlink budgets (no easy feat from 60-plus astronomical units!), and engaging the broader outer heliospheric theoretical community to prepare for the groundbreaking measurements that New Horizons will return in the near future," Poppe said. Overall, the New Horizons team is humbled to follow in the footsteps of Voyager, said Poppe, "but extraordinarily excited to contribute first-of-a-kind measurements of the outer boundaries of the heliosphere we call 'home.'" The crossing of the termination shock itself could be as short as 10 minutes, said Pontus Brandt, the New Horizons project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. "But there will likely be multiple crossings as the shock moves back and forth over the spacecraft for multiple days and surely will be another historic encounter for New Horizons," said Brandt. "The data from the termination shock encounter will be a treasure trove for space physicists worldwide who are eager to understand how this vast boundary works," Brandt told "All these discoveries from pioneering missions like Voyager and New Horizons teach us how little we know about what lies beyond, and pave the way for a future dedicated Interstellar Probe mission," he said. Brandt underscored another possible New Horizons exploration bonus. "I think we may have only seen the tip of the iceberg of the Kuiper Belt, which could be much more extended than we ever could imagine," Brandt said. "Dust hits measured by the spacecraft just keep being elevated, defying all our expectations of a 'Kuiper Cliff.' One must always give oneself the opportunity of discovery," Brandt added, "the essence of exploration." In a few years, New Horizons could very well find itself in the midst of a new region of the Kuiper Belt, Brandt suggested. That would be "a historic opportunity for planetary science with important implications for understanding exoplanetary systems." RELATED STORIES: — NASA images Uranus with epic team up of Hubble Telescope and New Horizons Pluto probe — NASA celebrates New Horizons' historic Pluto flyby in 2015 with awesome new videos — Far beyond Pluto: What's next for NASA's New Horizons probe? As a "first responder" and record title holder of a spacecraft, New Horizons has already chalked up history-making observations as the first spacecraft to explore Pluto and its moons up close. Also, after a nine-year journey, the probe passed its second major science target, zipping by the KBO Arrokoth in 2019, the most distant object ever inspected up close. New Horizons' findings are taking center stage at an upcoming 10th anniversary of the Pluto flyby science meeting now being planned for this July at APL, which designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA. "We're pulling together everything that has been learned since the flyby of New Horizons. And not just from the spacecraft, but also from the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and from Earth-based observations, too," Stern said. "So stand by. I'm betting on some new surprises!"
