JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency is like the 'little space agency that could'. They've had some great success' and they've had some great loses, including a couple of probes that missed their mark, one completely sailing past the planet it was supposed to visit. Another probe's programming malfunctioned and it too became some huemahn waste out among the stars.
But the Hayabusa2 space probe has just plopped two hopping landers on the Near Earth Asteroid 'Ryugu'! It's quite a mission!
Read my friends and learn the secrets of the Milky Way (ok, really just some news on this space probe, but learning is fun!0
They Made It! Japan's Two Hopping Rovers Successfully Land on Asteroid Ryugu
(CNN)The Japanese space agency JAXA said it made history Saturday by successfully landing two unmanned rovers on an asteroid.
"The two rovers are in good condition and are transmitting images and data," a JAXA statement said after the rovers separated from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft and landed on the asteroid Ryugu.
The rovers are collectively known as MINERVA-II1. The space agency reported that MINERVA-II1 is the world's first mobile exploration robot to land on the surface of an asteroid.
"I felt awed by what we had achieved in Japan. This is just a real charm of deep space exploration," said Takashi Kubota, a spokesman for the space agency.
The Hayabusa2 began its approach to Ryugu from an orbiting altitude of around 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) on Thursday afternoon.
As the craft approached to within 100 meters (328 feet) of the space rock, it sent back a photo showing Hayabusa2's shadow projected onto its barren, cratered surface.
Japan's Hayabusa-2 probe touching down on distant asteroid
Beneath their desolate surfaces, asteroids are believed to contain a rich treasure-trove of information about the formation of the solar system billions of years ago.
The 1 kilometer-wide space rock, which is shaped like a diamond, is expected to be "rich in water and organic materials," allowing scientists to "clarify interactions between the building blocks of Earth and the evolution of its oceans and life, thereby developing solar system science," JAXA said in a statement.
A series of specially designed cameras -- four on the first rover and three on the second -- will take stereo images of the asteroid's surface. The rovers are also equipped with temperature gauges and optical sensors as well as an accelerometer and a set of gyroscopes.
A third rover called MASCOT will be launched from Hayabusa2 in early October.
Later in the mission, scheduled for the end of October, the spacecraft will land on the asteroid after blowing a small crater in it using explosives, so samples that haven't been exposed to space can be gathered from below the object's surface.
After examining the far distant object and taking samples, Hayabusa2 will depart Ryugu in December 2019 before returning to Earth by the end of 2020 with its cargo of samples.
If successful, JAXA has said it will be the "world's first sample return mission to a C-type asteroid."
Japanese scientists are racing NASA for that achievement, with the US agency's sample retrieval mission due to arrive back on Earth in 2023.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/22/asia/japan-rovers-asteroid/index.html
I know, it's from CNN, but it was the easiest to grab...
Three NASA Missions Return First Light Data
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) took this snapshot of the Large Magellanic Cloud (right) and the bright star R Doradus (left) with just a single detector of one of its cameras on Tuesday, Aug. 7. The frame is part of a swath of the southern sky TESS captured in its "first light" science image as part of its initial round of data collection. Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS
(phys.org) - - NASA's continued quest to explore our solar system and beyond received a boost of new information this week with three key missions proving not only that they are up and running, but that their science potential is exceptional. On Sept. 17, 2018, TESS—the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite—shared its first science observations. Later in the week, the latest two missions to join NASA's heliophysics fleet returned first light data: Parker Solar Probe, humanity's first mission to "touch" the Sun, and GOLD, a mission that studies the dynamic boundary between Earth and space.
First light data from GOLD was captured at 6 a.m. local time, near sunrise in eastern South America, and shows the ultraviolet atomic oxygen emission from Earth's upper atmosphere. Colors correspond to emission brightness, with the strongest in red and the weakest in blue. The emission is produced at altitudes around 100 miles above the surface (note how it extends above Earth's surface on the horizon), when Earth's upper atmosphere absorbs high energy photons and particles. The aurora, at the top and bottom of the image, and daytime airglow, on the right-hand side, are also visible. An ultraviolet star, 66 Ophiuchi, is visible above the western horizon of Earth. Credit: NASA/LASP/GOLD
Part of the data from TESS's initial science orbit includes a detailed picture of the southern sky taken with all four of the planet-hunter's wide-field cameras. The image captures a wealth of stars and other objects, including systems previously known to have exoplanets, planets beyond our solar system. TESS will spend the next two years monitoring the nearest, brightest stars for periodic dips in their brightness, known as transits. Such transits suggest a planet may be passing in front of its parent star. TESS is expected to find thousands of new planets using this method.
Together, the two other missions represent two key observation points in the giant system of space—dominated by particles and magnetic energy from the Sun—studied by the field of heliophysics. Parker Solar Probe will help us understand how the Sun's atmosphere drives particles out into space; GOLD monitors changes in the space close to Earth, much of them driven by ever-changing solar activity. The two viewpoints support heliophysics' focus on our star and how it influences the very nature of space—and, in turn, the atmospheres of planets and human technology.
In early September, each of Parker Solar Probe's four instrument suites powered on and returned their first observations on the spacecraft's journey to the Sun. While the data are not yet examples of the key science observations the spacecraft will take closer to the Sun, they show that each of the instruments is working well.
The instruments work in tandem to measure the Sun's electric and magnetic fields, and particles from the Sun and solar wind. They also capture images of the solar wind environment around the spacecraft. The mission's first close approach to the Sun will be in early November 2018, but even now, still outside the orbit of Venus, the instruments indicate they're ready to gather measurements of what's happening in the solar wind.
"All instruments returned data that not only serves for calibration, but also captures glimpses of what we expect them to measure near the Sun to solve the mysteries of the solar atmosphere, the corona," said Nour Raouafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland.
WISPR, the mission's only onboard imager, captured the first snapshots from its journey to the Sun on Sept. 9, 2018. Similarly, the FIELDS instrument suite provided the first magnetic field observations and even captured a burst of radio waves, signatures of a solar flare. One of the SWEAP instruments sampled its first gust of solar wind, and the IS?IS instrument—pronounced "ee-sis" and including the symbol for the Sun in its acronym—successfully measured the energetic particle environment.
GOLD's first light closely followed Parker Solar Probe's. On Sept. 11, the GOLD—short for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk—instrument powered on and opened its cover to scan Earth for the first time, returning a full-disk image of the Western Hemisphere in ultraviolet. In this wavelength of light, which is invisible to the human eye, GOLD enables researchers to view global-scale temperature and composition at the dynamic region where Earth's upper atmosphere meets space.
GOLD commissioning began Sept. 4 and will run through early October, as the team continues to prepare the instrument for its planned two-year science mission.
"The GOLD mission is a game-changer, providing never-before-seen footage of upper atmospheric weather similar to the very first terrestrial weather satellites," said Sarah Jones, GOLD mission scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "These global-scale pictures of the boundary between Earth and space will allow scientists to start teasing out the effects coming from the Sun versus those coming from Earth's weather below."
With missions both near and far, like bookends in the vast stretch of space between the Sun and Earth, researchers are eager to fill knowledge gaps in our understanding of the complex relationship between solar activity and conditions at Earth.
Historically difficult to observe, the region GOLD studies is little-understood and can undergo dramatic change in as little as an hour. GOLD—which occupies geostationary orbit, hovering 22,000 miles over the Western Hemisphere—will provide hour-by-hour updates on the ever-changing conditions in near-Earth space, known as space weather. Shifts in space weather can garble space-traveling communications signals, interfere with electronics onboard satellites, endanger astronauts and at their most severe, disrupt power grids.
Meanwhile, Parker Solar Probe will travel into the blazing corona, closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before it. The mission seeks to answer fundamental questions about the Sun—questions that lie at the root of understanding how solar activity shapes space weather across the solar system.
The first images from WISPR, short for the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe. Researchers studied the images to determine the instrument was pointed as expected, using celestial landmarks as their guide. The left image shows the Milky Way, looking at the galactic center. In the right image, there is a distinctive cluster of four stars near the right edge that is in the constellation Scorpius. The planet Jupiter is also visible in the right image as the bright object slightly right of center. The Sun, not visible in the image, is far off to the right of the image's right edge. Credit: NASA/Naval Research Laboratory/Parker Solar Probe
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by Goddard. Dr. George Ricker of MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research serves as principal investigator for the mission. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT's Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.
Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA's Living with a Star Program, or LWS, to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. LWS is managed by Goddard for the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Johns Hopkins APL manages the Parker Solar Probe mission for NASA. APL designed, built and operates the spacecraft.
GOLD is a NASA mission of opportunity as part of the heliophysics Explorer Program. Goddard manages the Explorer Program for the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. It is designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space using principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the agency's astrophysics and heliophysics programs. GOLD is led by the University of Central Florida. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder built and operates the instrument. The GOLD instrument is hosted on a commercial communications satellite, SES-14, built by Airbus for Luxembourg-based satellite operator, SES.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-nasa-missions-first-light.html#jCp
Smashing Pumpkins killin' it in 1994!
But the Hayabusa2 space probe has just plopped two hopping landers on the Near Earth Asteroid 'Ryugu'! It's quite a mission!
Read my friends and learn the secrets of the Milky Way (ok, really just some news on this space probe, but learning is fun!0
They Made It! Japan's Two Hopping Rovers Successfully Land on Asteroid Ryugu
An artists rendering of the two 'hopping' space probes MINERVA-II1 -IMmge: JAXA
"The two rovers are in good condition and are transmitting images and data," a JAXA statement said after the rovers separated from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft and landed on the asteroid Ryugu.
The rovers are collectively known as MINERVA-II1. The space agency reported that MINERVA-II1 is the world's first mobile exploration robot to land on the surface of an asteroid.
"I felt awed by what we had achieved in Japan. This is just a real charm of deep space exploration," said Takashi Kubota, a spokesman for the space agency.
The Hayabusa2 began its approach to Ryugu from an orbiting altitude of around 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) on Thursday afternoon.
As the craft approached to within 100 meters (328 feet) of the space rock, it sent back a photo showing Hayabusa2's shadow projected onto its barren, cratered surface.
Japan's Hayabusa-2 probe touching down on distant asteroid
First photo from MINERVA-II1 caught in mid 'hop' - Image: JAXA
Beneath their desolate surfaces, asteroids are believed to contain a rich treasure-trove of information about the formation of the solar system billions of years ago.
The 1 kilometer-wide space rock, which is shaped like a diamond, is expected to be "rich in water and organic materials," allowing scientists to "clarify interactions between the building blocks of Earth and the evolution of its oceans and life, thereby developing solar system science," JAXA said in a statement.
A series of specially designed cameras -- four on the first rover and three on the second -- will take stereo images of the asteroid's surface. The rovers are also equipped with temperature gauges and optical sensors as well as an accelerometer and a set of gyroscopes.
A third rover called MASCOT will be launched from Hayabusa2 in early October.
Later in the mission, scheduled for the end of October, the spacecraft will land on the asteroid after blowing a small crater in it using explosives, so samples that haven't been exposed to space can be gathered from below the object's surface.
After examining the far distant object and taking samples, Hayabusa2 will depart Ryugu in December 2019 before returning to Earth by the end of 2020 with its cargo of samples.
If successful, JAXA has said it will be the "world's first sample return mission to a C-type asteroid."
Japanese scientists are racing NASA for that achievement, with the US agency's sample retrieval mission due to arrive back on Earth in 2023.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/22/asia/japan-rovers-asteroid/index.html
I know, it's from CNN, but it was the easiest to grab...
Three NASA Missions Return First Light Data
(phys.org) - - NASA's continued quest to explore our solar system and beyond received a boost of new information this week with three key missions proving not only that they are up and running, but that their science potential is exceptional. On Sept. 17, 2018, TESS—the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite—shared its first science observations. Later in the week, the latest two missions to join NASA's heliophysics fleet returned first light data: Parker Solar Probe, humanity's first mission to "touch" the Sun, and GOLD, a mission that studies the dynamic boundary between Earth and space.
Part of the data from TESS's initial science orbit includes a detailed picture of the southern sky taken with all four of the planet-hunter's wide-field cameras. The image captures a wealth of stars and other objects, including systems previously known to have exoplanets, planets beyond our solar system. TESS will spend the next two years monitoring the nearest, brightest stars for periodic dips in their brightness, known as transits. Such transits suggest a planet may be passing in front of its parent star. TESS is expected to find thousands of new planets using this method.
Together, the two other missions represent two key observation points in the giant system of space—dominated by particles and magnetic energy from the Sun—studied by the field of heliophysics. Parker Solar Probe will help us understand how the Sun's atmosphere drives particles out into space; GOLD monitors changes in the space close to Earth, much of them driven by ever-changing solar activity. The two viewpoints support heliophysics' focus on our star and how it influences the very nature of space—and, in turn, the atmospheres of planets and human technology.
In early September, each of Parker Solar Probe's four instrument suites powered on and returned their first observations on the spacecraft's journey to the Sun. While the data are not yet examples of the key science observations the spacecraft will take closer to the Sun, they show that each of the instruments is working well.
The instruments work in tandem to measure the Sun's electric and magnetic fields, and particles from the Sun and solar wind. They also capture images of the solar wind environment around the spacecraft. The mission's first close approach to the Sun will be in early November 2018, but even now, still outside the orbit of Venus, the instruments indicate they're ready to gather measurements of what's happening in the solar wind.
"All instruments returned data that not only serves for calibration, but also captures glimpses of what we expect them to measure near the Sun to solve the mysteries of the solar atmosphere, the corona," said Nour Raouafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland.
WISPR, the mission's only onboard imager, captured the first snapshots from its journey to the Sun on Sept. 9, 2018. Similarly, the FIELDS instrument suite provided the first magnetic field observations and even captured a burst of radio waves, signatures of a solar flare. One of the SWEAP instruments sampled its first gust of solar wind, and the IS?IS instrument—pronounced "ee-sis" and including the symbol for the Sun in its acronym—successfully measured the energetic particle environment.
GOLD's first light closely followed Parker Solar Probe's. On Sept. 11, the GOLD—short for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk—instrument powered on and opened its cover to scan Earth for the first time, returning a full-disk image of the Western Hemisphere in ultraviolet. In this wavelength of light, which is invisible to the human eye, GOLD enables researchers to view global-scale temperature and composition at the dynamic region where Earth's upper atmosphere meets space.
GOLD commissioning began Sept. 4 and will run through early October, as the team continues to prepare the instrument for its planned two-year science mission.
"The GOLD mission is a game-changer, providing never-before-seen footage of upper atmospheric weather similar to the very first terrestrial weather satellites," said Sarah Jones, GOLD mission scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "These global-scale pictures of the boundary between Earth and space will allow scientists to start teasing out the effects coming from the Sun versus those coming from Earth's weather below."
With missions both near and far, like bookends in the vast stretch of space between the Sun and Earth, researchers are eager to fill knowledge gaps in our understanding of the complex relationship between solar activity and conditions at Earth.
Historically difficult to observe, the region GOLD studies is little-understood and can undergo dramatic change in as little as an hour. GOLD—which occupies geostationary orbit, hovering 22,000 miles over the Western Hemisphere—will provide hour-by-hour updates on the ever-changing conditions in near-Earth space, known as space weather. Shifts in space weather can garble space-traveling communications signals, interfere with electronics onboard satellites, endanger astronauts and at their most severe, disrupt power grids.
Meanwhile, Parker Solar Probe will travel into the blazing corona, closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before it. The mission seeks to answer fundamental questions about the Sun—questions that lie at the root of understanding how solar activity shapes space weather across the solar system.
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by Goddard. Dr. George Ricker of MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research serves as principal investigator for the mission. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT's Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.
Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA's Living with a Star Program, or LWS, to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. LWS is managed by Goddard for the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Johns Hopkins APL manages the Parker Solar Probe mission for NASA. APL designed, built and operates the spacecraft.
GOLD is a NASA mission of opportunity as part of the heliophysics Explorer Program. Goddard manages the Explorer Program for the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. It is designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space using principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the agency's astrophysics and heliophysics programs. GOLD is led by the University of Central Florida. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder built and operates the instrument. The GOLD instrument is hosted on a commercial communications satellite, SES-14, built by Airbus for Luxembourg-based satellite operator, SES.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-09-nasa-missions-first-light.html#jCp
Smashing Pumpkins killin' it in 1994!
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