One step closer to departing on its trip to Jupiter's ice moon is NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft. Life on Earth requires three things to thrive: a source of energy like sunlight, a liquid solvent like water, and elements like carbon that can form complex molecules known as organics. To find out if Europa can support life, NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will fly in 2024 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The main body of Europa Clipper is an aluminum cylinder that clocks in at 10 feet (3 meters) tall and 5 feet (1.5 m) wide. Early in June, the spacecraft body arrived at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in southern California after being outfitted with integrated electronics, cabling, and a propulsion system. "It's an exciting time for the whole project team and a huge milestone," Jordan Evans, the mission's project manager at JPL, said in a statement(opens in new tab). "This delivery brings us one step closer to launch and the Europa Clipper science investigation." Now that Europa Clipper is assembled, engineers and technicians will begin connecting the mission's nine science instruments in order to get the spacecraft ready for launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in October 2024. The Europa Clipper, which takes its name from the three-masted, ocean-going merchant ships of the 19th century, intends to make roughly 50 flybys of Jupiter's icy moon Europa, which is thought to have an interior ocean with twice as much water as the total volume of Earth's seas. With its expected arrival in the Jupiter system in 2030, the spacecraft will employ its collection of instruments to gather information about Europa's atmosphere, surface, and interior in order to start addressing questions about the moon's habitability. Additionally, the Europa Clipper will scan Europa's broken and crisscrossed crust for any prospective water plumes that might be spewing samples of the hypothesized deep ocean. One of the scientific community's major priorities has long been an expedition to Europa. Members of the Planetary Society contributed to the success of the expedition by writing tens of thousands of letters to their congressional representatives, hosting conferences in Washington, D.C., and lobbying with Congress to get funding for the mission. In 2015, NASA gave the project official approval. cc : NASA, JPL/Caltech, Andrew J
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Since 1989, when the NASA probe Voyager 2 passed by Neptune on its way out of the solar system, no spacecraft has made a stop at the planet. The furthest planet in our solar system, Neptune, is four times as wide as Earth. Astronomers were anxious to find out more information about the ice giant, and Voyager 2's observations whetted their appetites.
The James Webb Space Telescope viewed this distant planet on Wednesday September 21st,2022 with its mighty, gold-plated eye. Some of our best views of Neptune in the past 30 years have been made possible by the power of this infrared telescope, the biggest and most sophisticated telescope ever sent into space. In the past thirty years, numerous photographs of Neptune have been captured by both ground-based observatories and the Hubble Space Telescope. However, the Webb's observations of Neptune from July offer a previously unheard-before look at the planet in infrared light. In just a few minutes, the telescope was able to capture a close-up image of Neptune, and it only took another 20 minutes to capture a larger image, which showed not just the planet but also a vast number of galaxies that extended into space behind it. “It’s aesthetically fascinating to see those distant galaxies and get a sense for how small the ice giant appears,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which runs the Webb telescope. The Neptune rings, which are most noticeable in the telescope's perspective because of the planet's orientation to Earth, are visible encircling it at a slight inclination. Astronomers will be able to measure the ring's reflectance using the Webb telescope, providing a unique perspective on this far-off spectacle. The dimensions and material of these thin bands, which are most likely formed of ice and other debris, may be revealed by new photos. Brilliant lights can be seen all across the planet that soar high into the planet's skies and can last for days. These bright spots are thought to be methane ice clouds. "Nobody really knows what these things are,” said Patrick Irwin, a planetary physicist at Oxford University. “They seem to come and go, a bit like cirrus clouds on Earth.” The Webb telescope’s future observations could uncover how they form and what they are made of. The 14 moons of Neptune are also visible in Webb pictures. The largest moon of the planet, Triton, is the brightest and is thought to have been drawn into the solar system by Neptune's gravity in the early solar system's history. Triton's frozen nitrogen surface makes it appear as a star in infrared photos, shining brighter than Neptune itself because methane makes the planet appear darker in infrared images. There isn't much to learn about Triton from this picture because NASA recently decided against sending a spacecraft to examine it. Future Webb observations, however, should provide some indication of the makeup of Triton's surface and may reveal variations that point to geological activity. These images of Neptune are just the latest in Webb’s tour of the solar system. The observatory will be able to see far more of our solar system, including Saturn, Uranus, and even distant, frigid planets beyond Neptune, such the dwarf planet Pluto. CC to : NASA,ESA Many of us base a lot of our training and zone-setting on Heart Rate. Muscle Oxygen Saturation, however, is a different statistic that can offer more in-depth, real-time insight into performance. Training with heart rate has a number of restrictions that SmO2 monitoring does not. Unlike heart rate, which is a systemic measurement, SmO2 not only may be targeted to individual muscles but also provides readings in real-time. This enables athletes to pinpoint the precise moment the body transitions from anaerobic to aerobic metabolism during an interval, as well as the precise speed and length at which that period is most successful.
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