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10 Things: Mysterious 'Oumuamua

The interstellar object 'Oumuamua perplexed scientists in October 2017 as it whipped past Earth at an unusually high speed. This mysterious visitor is the first object ever seen in our solar system that is known to have originated elsewhere.  Here are five things we know and five things we don’t know about the first confirmed interstellar object to pass through our solar system.

1. We know it’s not from around here.

 The object known as 1I/2017 U1 (and nicknamed ‘Oumuamua) was traveling too fast (196,000 mph, that’s 54 miles per second or 87.3 kilometers per second) to have originated in our solar system. Comets and asteroids from within our solar system move at a slower speed, typically an average of 12 miles per second (19 kilometers per second) . In non-technical terms, 'Oumuamua is an “interstellar vagabond.”

Artist impression of the interstellar object ‘Oumuamua. Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESO, M. Kornmesser

2. We’re not sure where it came from.

'Oumuamua entered our solar system from the rough direction of the constellation Lyra, but it’s impossible to tell where it originally came from. Thousands of years ago, when 'Oumuamua started to wander from its parent planetary system, the stars were in a different position so it’s impossible to pinpoint its point of origin. It could have been wandering the galaxy for billions of years.

3. We know it’s out of here.

'Oumuamua is headed back out of our solar system and won’t be coming back. It’s rapidly headed in the direction of the constellation Pegasus and will cross the orbit of Neptune in about four years and cover one light year’s distance in about 11,000 years.

4. We don’t really know what it looks like.

We’ve only seen it as a speck of light through a telescope (it is far away and less than half a mile in length), but its unique rotation leads us to believe that it’s elongated like a cigar, about 10 times longer than it is wide. We can’t see it anymore. Artist’s concepts are the best guesses at what it might look like.

5. We know it got a little speed boost.

A rapid response observing campaign allowed us to watch as 'Oumuamua got an unexpected boost in speed. The acceleration slightly changed its course from earlier predictions.

“This additional subtle force on ′Oumuamua likely is caused by jets of gaseous material expelled from its surface,” said Davide Farnocchia of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “This same kind of outgassing affects the motion of many comets in our solar system.”

6. We know it’s tumbling.

Unusual variations in the comet’s brightness suggest it is rotating on more than one axis.

This illustration shows ‘Oumuamua racing toward the outskirts of our solar system. As the complex rotation of the object makes it difficult to determine the exact shape, there are many models of what it could look like. Credits: NASA/ESA/STScI

7. We don’t know what it’s made of.

Comets in our solar system kick off lots of dust and gas when they get close to the Sun, but 'Oumuamua did not, which led observers to consider defining it as an asteroid.

Karen Meech, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii’s Institute of Astronomy, said small dust grains, present on the surface of most comets, may have eroded away during ′Oumuamua's long journey through interstellar space. "The more we study ′Oumuamua, the more exciting it gets." she said. It could be giving off gases that are harder to see than dust, but it’s impossible to know at this point.

8. We knew to expect it.

Just not when. The discovery of an interstellar object has been anticipated for decades. The space between the stars probably has billions and billions of asteroids and comets roaming around independently. Scientists understood that inevitably, some of these small bodies would enter our own solar system. This interstellar visit by ‘Oumuamua reinforces our models of how planetary systems form.

9. We don’t know what it’s doing now.

After January 2018, 'Oumuamua was no longer visible to telescopes, even in space. But scientists continue to analyze the data gathered during the international observing campaign and crack open more mysteries about this unique interstellar visitor.

10. We know there’s a good chance we’ll see another one...eventually.

Because ′Oumuamua is the first interstellar object ever observed in our solar system, researchers caution that it’s difficult to draw general conclusions about this newly-discovered class of celestial bodies. Observations point to the possibility that other star systems regularly eject small comet-like objects and there should be more of them drifting among the stars. Future ground- and space-based surveys could detect more of these interstellar vagabonds, providing a larger sample for scientists to analyze. Adds, Karen Meech, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii’s Institute of Astronomy: “I can hardly wait for the next interstellar object!"

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Aboard the International Space Station this morning, Astronaut Kimiya Yui of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully captured JAXA's Kounotori 5 H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV-5) at 6:28 a.m. EDT.

Yui commanded the station's robotic arm, Canadarm2, to reach out and grapple the HTV-5, while NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren provided assistance and Scott Kelly monitored HTV-5 systems. The HTV-5 launched aboard an H-IIB rocket at 7:50 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 19, from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan. Since then, the spacecraft has performed a series of engine burns to fine-tune its course for arrival at the station.

The HTV-5 is delivering more than 8,000 pounds of equipment, supplies and experiments in a pressurized cargo compartment. The unpressurized compartment will deliver the 1,400-pound CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) investigation, an astrophysics mission that will search for signatures of dark matter and provide the highest energy direct measurements of the cosmic ray electron spectrum.

Below is a breathtaking image shared by Astronaut Scott Kelly of the HTV-5 and Canadarm2, which reached out and grappled the cargo spacecraft.

The Abyss of Time

Scotland is part of the bedrock of geology, so to speak.

In the late 18th century, Scottish farmer and scientist James Hutton helped found the science of geology. Observing how wind and water weathered rocks and deposited layers of soil at his farm in Berwickshire, Hutton made a conceptual leap into a deeper and expansive view of time. After spending decades observing the processes of erosion and sedimentation, and traveling the Scottish countryside in search of fossils, stream cuts and interesting rock formations, Hutton became convinced that Earth had to be much older than 6,000 years, the common belief in Western civilization at the time.

In 1788, a boat trip to Siccar Point, a rocky promontory in Berwickshire, helped crystallize Hutton’s view. The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this image of the area on June 4, 2018, top. A closer view of Siccar Point is below.

At Siccar Point, Hutton was confronted with the juxtaposition of two starkly different types of rock—a gently sloping bed of young red sandstone that was over a near vertical slab of older graywacke that had clearly undergone intensive heating, uplift, buckling, and folding. Hutton argued to his two companions on the boat that the only way to get the two rock formations jammed up against one another at such an odd angle was that an enormous amount of time must have elapsed between when they had been deposited at the bottom of the ocean.

He was right.

Read more: https://go.nasa.gov/2OBnyJ8

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You’re Always Surrounded by Neutrinos!

This second, as you’re reading these words, trillions of tiny particles are hurtling toward you! No, you don’t need to brace yourself. They’re passing through you right now. And now. And now. These particles are called neutrinos, and they’re both everywhere in the cosmos and also extremely hard to find.

Neutrinos are fundamental particles, like electrons, so they can’t be broken down into smaller parts. They also outnumber all the atoms in the universe. (Atoms are made up of electrons, protons, and neutrons. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks … which maybe we’ll talk about another time.) The only thing that outnumbers neutrinos are all the light waves left over from the birth of the universe! 

Credit: Photo courtesy of the Pauli Archive, CERN

Physicist Wolfgang Pauli proposed the existence of the neutrino, nearly a century ago. Enrico Fermi coined the name, which means “little neutral one” in Italian, because these particles have no electrical charge and nearly no mass.

Despite how many there are, neutrinos are really hard to study. They travel at almost the speed of light and rarely interact with other matter. Out of the universe’s four forces, ghostly neutrinos are only affected by gravity and the weak force. The weak force is about 10,000 times weaker than the electromagnetic force, which affects electrically charged particles. Because neutrinos carry no charge, move almost as fast as light, and don’t interact easily with other matter, they can escape some really bizarre and extreme places where even light might struggle getting out – like dying stars!

Through the weak force, neutrinos interact with other tiny fundamental particles: electrons, muons [mew-ons], and taus [rhymes with “ow”]. (These other particles are also really cool, but for right now, you just need to know that they’re there.) Scientists actually never detect neutrinos directly. Instead they find signals from these other particles. So they named the three types, or flavors, of neutrinos after them.

Neutrinos are made up of each of these three flavors, but cycle between them as they travel. Imagine going to the store to buy rocky road ice cream, which is made of chocolate ice cream, nuts, and marshmallows. When you get home, you find that it’s suddenly mostly marshmallows. Then in your bowl it’s mostly nuts. But when you take a bite, it’s just chocolate! That’s a little bit like what happens to neutrinos as they zoom through the cosmos.

Credit: CERN

On Earth, neutrinos are produced when unstable atoms decay, which happens in the planet’s core and nuclear reactors. (The first-ever neutrino detection happened in a nuclear reactor in 1955!) They’re also created by particle accelerators and high-speed particle collisions in the atmosphere. (Also, interestingly, the potassium in a banana emits neutrinos – but no worries, bananas are perfectly safe to eat!)

Most of the neutrinos around Earth come from the Sun – about 65 billion every second for every square centimeter. These are produced in the Sun’s core where the immense pressure squeezes together hydrogen to produce helium. This process, called nuclear fusion, creates the energy that makes the Sun shine, as well as neutrinos.

The first neutrinos scientists detected from outside the Milky Way were from SN 1987A, a supernova that occurred only 168,000 light-years away in a neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. (That makes it one of the closest supernovae scientists have observed.) The light from this explosion reached us in 1987, so it was the first supernova modern astronomers were able to study in detail. The neutrinos actually arrived a few hours before the light from the explosion because of the forces we talked about earlier. The particles escape the star’s core before any of the other effects of the collapse ripple to the surface. Then they travel in pretty much a straight line – all because they don’t interact with other matter very much.

Credit: Martin Wolf, IceCube/NSF

How do we detect particles that are so tiny and fast – especially when they rarely interact with other matter? Well, the National Science Foundation decided to bury a bunch of detectors in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice to create the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The neutrinos interact with other particles in the ice through the weak force and turn into muons, electrons, and taus. The new particles gain the neutrinos’ speed and actually travel faster than light in the ice, which produces a particular kind of radiation IceCube can detect. (Although they would still be slower than light in the vacuum of space.)

In 2013, IceCube first detected high-energy neutrinos, which have energies up to 1,000 times greater than those produced by Earth’s most powerful particle collider. But scientists were puzzled about where exactly these particles came from. Then, in 2017, IceCube detected a high-energy neutrino from a monster black hole powering a high-speed particle jet at a galaxy’s center billions of light-years away. It was accompanied by a flash of gamma rays, the highest energy form of light.

But particle jets aren’t the only place we can find these particles. Scientists recently announced that another high-energy neutrino came from a black hole shredding an unlucky star that strayed too close. The event didn’t produce the neutrino when or how scientists expected, though, so they’ve still got a lot to learn about these mysterious particles!

Keep up with other exciting announcements about our universe by following NASA Universe on Twitter and Facebook.

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Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Follow our Juno craft during a close flyby of Jupiter, learn about Cassini’s final mission during a Facebook live event (in case you missed it) and more!

1. Jupiter, Up Close

Our Juno mission completed a close flyby of Jupiter on Thursday, February 2, its latest science orbit of the mission. All of Juno's science instruments and the spacecraft's JunoCam were operating during the flyby to collect data that is now being returned to Earth. 

Want to know more? Using NASA's Eyes on the Solar System and simulated data from the Juno flight team you can ride onboard the Juno spacecraft in real-time at any moment during the entire mission.

2. In Case You Missed It--Cassini Facebook Live

Cassini Project Scientist Linda Spilker and mission planner Molly Bittner take questions about the mission's "Ring-Grazing" orbits during Facebook Live. Watch it now: www.facebook.com/NASA/videos/10154861046561772/

3. Cassini Scientist for a Day Essay Contest 

The deadline is Friday, February 24 for U.S. student in grades 5 to 12. For international students, visit the page for more info! 

More: solarsystem.nasa.gov/educ/Scientist-For-a-Day/2016-17/videos/intro

4. Cassini Spies Dione

Dione's lit hemisphere faces away from Cassini's camera, yet the moon's darkened surface are dimly illuminated in this image, due to the phenomenon of Saturnshine. Although direct sunlight provides the best illumination for imaging, light reflected off of Saturn can do the job as well. In this image, Dione (698 miles or 1,123 kilometers across) is above Saturn's day side, and the moon's night side is faintly illuminated by sunlight reflected off the planet's disk.

Discover the full list of 10 things to know about our solar system this week HERE.

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How will Cygnus Spacecraft Dock to Space Station?

Orbital ATK’s Cygnus CRS-6 spacecraft launched to the International Space Station on March 22. 

Cygnus will carry almost 7,500 pounds of science and research, crew supplies and vehicle hardware to the orbiting laboratory.

After launch in Florida, the spacecraft will arrive to the station on Saturday, March 26. Upon arrival, NASA astronaut and Expedition 46 Commander Tim Kopra will capture Cygnus at about 6:40 a.m. using the space station's Canadarm2 robotic arm to take hold of the spacecraft. Astronaut Tim Peake of ESA (European Space Agency) will support Kopra in a backup position. 

Installation (when Cygnus is connected to space station) is expected to begin at 9:25 a.m. NASA TV coverage for installation resumes at 9:15 a.m.

After the Cygnus spacecraft is berthed (connected) to the space station, the contents will be emptied and brought inside for use. Any trash that is on the space station, can be put inside the empty Cygnus before it is undocked from station and sent to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Watch Capture

You can watch the capture of Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft online. Stream live coverage starting at 5:30 a.m. EDT on Saturday, March 26. Capture is scheduled for 6:40 a.m. 

Tune in again at 9:15 a.m. to watch #Cygnus installation to the station. 

Watch online: nasa.gov/nasatv

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Kill the lights – We’re Simulating a Moonwalk!

At the bottom of a very dark swimming pool, divers are getting ready for missions to the Moon. Take a look at this a recent test in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. NASA astronauts are no strangers to extreme environments. We best prepare our astronauts by exposing them to training environments here on Earth that simulate the 1/6th gravity, suit mobility, lighting and lunar terrain they'll expect to see on a mission to the Moon. Practice makes perfect.

The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at NASA's Johnson Space Center is where astronauts train for spacewalks, and soon, moonwalks.

When astronauts go to the Moon’s South Pole through NASA’s Artemis program, the Sun will only be a few degrees over the horizon, creating long, dark shadows. To recreate this environment, divers at the lab turned off the lights, put up black curtains on the pool walls to minimize reflection, and used powerful underwater lamps to simulate the environment astronauts might experience on lunar missions.

These conditions replicate the dark, long shadows astronauts could see and lets them evaluate the different lighting configurations. The sand at the bottom is common pool filter sand with some other specialized combinations in the mix.

This was a test with divers in SCUBA gear to get the lighting conditions right, but soon, NASA plans to conduct tests in this low-light environment using spacesuits.

Neutral buoyancy is the equal tendency of an object to sink or float. Through a combination of weights and flotation devices, an item is made to be neutrally buoyant and it will seem to "hover" under water. In such a state, even a heavy object can be easily manipulated, much as it is in the zero gravity of space, but will still be affected by factors such as water drag.

The Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory is 202 ft in length, 102 ft in width and 40 ft in depth (20 ft above ground level and 20 ft below) and holds 6.2 million gallons of water.

Why Do We Study Ice?

Discover why we study ice and how this research benefits Earth. 

We fly our DC-8 aircraft very low over Antarctica as part of Operation IceBridge – a mission that’s conducting the largest-ever airborne survey of Earth’s polar ice.

Records show that 2015 was the warmest year on record, and this heat affects the Arctic and Antarctica – areas that serve as a kind of air conditioner for Earth and hold an enormous of water.

IceBridge flies over both Greenland and Antarctica to measure how the ice in these areas is changing, in part because of rising average global temperatures.

IceBridge’s data has shown that most of Antarctica’s ice loss is occurring in the western region. All that melting ice flows into the ocean, contributing to sea level rise.

IceBridge has been flying the same routes since the mission began in 2009. Data from the flights help scientists better measure year-to-year changes.

IceBridge carries the most sophisticated snow and ice instruments ever flown.  Its main instrument is called the Airborne Topographic Mapper, or ATM.The ATM laser measure changes in the height of the ice surface by measuring the time it takes for laser light to bounce off the ice and return to the plane – ultimately mapping ice in great detail, like in this image of Antarctica's Crane Glacier.

For the sake of the laser, IceBridge planes have to fly very low over the surface of snow and ice, sometimes as low as 1,000 feet above the ground. For comparison, commercial flights usually stay around 30,000 feet! Two pilots and a flight enginner manage the many details involved in each 10- to 12-hour flight.

One of the scientific radars that fly aboard IceBridge helped the British Antarctic Survey create this view of what Antarctica would look like without any ice.

IceBridge also studies gravity using a very sensitive instrument that can measure minuscule gravitational changes, allowing scientists to map the ocean cavities underneath the ice edges of Antarctica. This data is essential for understanding how the ice and the ocean interact. The instrument’s detectors are very sensitive to cold, so we bundle it up to keep it warm!

Though the ice sheet of Antarctica is two miles thick in places, the ice still “flows” – faster in some places and slower in others. IceBridge data helps us track how much glaciers change from year-to-year.

Why do we call this mission IceBridge? It is bridging the gap between our Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat – which gathered data from 2003 to 2009 – and ICESat-2, which will launch in 2018.

Learn more about our IceBridge mission here: www.nasa.gov/icebridge and about all of our ice missions on Twitter at @NASA_Ice.

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Asteroid Terms: Explained

There are interesting asteroid characters in our solar system, including an asteroid that has its own moon and even one that is shaped like a dog bone! Our OSIRIS-REx mission launches at 7:05 p.m. EDT today and will travel to asteroid Bennu.

Scientists chose Bennu as the target of the OSIRIS-REx mission because of its composition, size and proximity to Earth. Bennu is a rare B-type asteroid (primitive and carbon-rich), which is expected to have organic compounds and water-bearing minerals like clays.

Our OSIRIS-REx mission will travel to Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study.

When talking about asteroids, there are some terms scientists use that might not be in your typical vocabulary…but we’ll help with that!

Here are a few terms you should know:

Orbital Eccentricity: This number describes the shape of an asteroid’s orbit by how elliptical it is. For asteroids in orbit around the sun, eccentricity is a number between 0 and 1, with 0 being a perfectly circular orbit and 0.99 being a highly elliptical orbit.

Inclination: The angle, in degrees, of how tilted an asteroid’s orbit is compared to another plane of reference, usually the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the sun.

Orbital Period: The number of days it takes for an asteroid to revolve once around the sun. For example, the Earth’s orbital period is 365 days.

Perihelion Distance: The distance between an asteroid and the sun when the asteroid is closest to the sun.

Aphelion Distance: The distance between the asteroid and the sun when the asteroid is farthest away from the sun.

Astronomical unit: A distance unit commonly used to describe orbits of objects around the sun. The distance from the Earth to the sun is one astronomical unit, or 1 AU, equivalent to about 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers.

Diameter: A measure of the size of an asteroid. It is the length of a line from a point on the surface, through the center of the asteroid, extending out to the opposite surface. Irregularly shaped asteroids may have different diameters depending on which direction they are measured.

Rotation Period: The time it takes for an asteroid to complete one revolution around its axis of rotation. For example, the rotation period of the Earth is approximately 24 hours, or 1 day.

Spectral Type: The classification of an asteroid, based on a measurement of the light reflected by the asteroid. 

Watch live launch coverage of OSIRIS-REx to asteroid Bennu starting at 5:30 p.m, on NASA TV: http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv 

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Exploring an Asteroid Without Leaving Earth

This 45 day mission – which began May 5, 2018 and ends today, June 18 – will help our researchers learn how isolation and close quarters affect individual and group behavior. This study at our Johnson Space Center prepares us for long duration space missions, like a trip to an asteroid or even to Mars.

The Human Research Exploration Analog (HERA) that the crew members will be living in is one compact, science-making house. But unlike in a normal house, these inhabitants won’t go outside for 45 days. Their communication with the rest of planet Earth will also be very limited, and they won’t have any access to internet. So no checking social media, kids!

The only people they will talk with regularly are mission control and each other.

The HERA XVII crew is made up of 2 men and 2 women, selected from the Johnson Space Center Test Subject Screening (TSS) pool. The crew member selection process is based on a number of criteria, including criteria similar to what is used for astronaut selection. The four would-be astronauts are:

William Daniels

Chiemi Heil

Eleanor Morgan

Michael Pecaut

What will they be doing?

The crew are going on a simulated journey to an asteroid, a 715-day journey that we compress into 45 days. They will fly their simulated exploration vehicle around the asteroid once they arrive, conducting several site surveys before 2 of the crew members will participate in a series of virtual reality spacewalks.

They will also be participating in a suite of research investigations and will also engage in a wide range of operational and science activities, such as growing and analyzing plants and brine shrimp, maintaining and “operating” an important life support system, exercising on a stationary bicycle or using free weights, and sharpening their skills with a robotic arm simulation.

During the whole mission, they will consume food produced by the Johnson Space Center Food Lab – the same food that the astronauts enjoy on the International Space Station – which means that it needs to be rehydrated or warmed in a warming oven.

This simulation means that even when communicating with mission control, there will be a delay on all communications ranging from 1 to 5 minutes each way.

A few other details:

The crew follows a timeline that is similar to one used for the space station crew.

They work 16 hours a day, Monday through Friday. This includes time for daily planning, conferences, meals and exercise.

Mission: May 5 - June 18, 2018

But beware! While we do all we can to avoid crises during missions, crews need to be able to respond in the event of an emergency. The HERA crew will conduct a couple of emergency scenario simulations, including one that will require them to respond to a decrease in cabin pressure, potentially finding and repairing a leak in their spacecraft.

Throughout the mission, researchers will gather information about living in confinement, teamwork, team cohesion, mood, performance and overall well-being. The crew members will be tracked by numerous devices that each capture different types of data.

Learn more about the HERA mission HERE.

Explore the HERA habitat via 360-degree videos HERE.

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