Asteroid Ryugu’s landscape of boulders and craters comes into focus. Hayabusa2 is now just 3 days from arrival!

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NASA – JUNO Mission logo.

June 22, 2018

This image captures swirling cloud belts and tumultuous vortices within Jupiter’s northern hemisphere.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft took this color-enhanced image at 10:23 p.m. PDT on May 23, 2018 (1:23 a.m. EDT on May 24), as the spacecraft performed its 13th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 9,600 miles (15,500 kilometers) from the planet’s cloud tops, above a northern latitude of 56 degrees.

The region seen here is somewhat chaotic and turbulent, given the various swirling cloud formations. In general, the darker cloud material is deeper in Jupiter’s atmosphere, while bright cloud material is high. The bright clouds are most likely ammonia or ammonia and water, mixed with a sprinkling of unknown chemical ingredients.

A bright oval at bottom center stands out in the scene. This feature appears uniformly white in ground-based telescope observations. However, with JunoCam we can observe the fine-scale structure within this weather system, including additional structures within it. There is not significant motion apparent in the interior of this feature; like the Great Red Spot, its winds probably slows down greatly toward the center.

Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager.

JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at http://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam

More information about Juno is at:

https://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu

Image, Animation, Credits: NASA/Tony Greicius/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt /Seán Doran.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch
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Washington DC (SPX) Jun 22, 2018

A large multidisciplinary team of scientists, equipped with advanced underwater robotics and an array of analytical instrumentation, will set sail for the northeastern Pacific Ocean this August.

The team’s mission for NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) is to study the life and death of the small organisms that play a critical role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
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Washington DC (SPX) Jun 22, 2018

New work from an international team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Jaehan Bae used archival radio telescope data to develop a new method for finding very young extrasolar planets. Their technique successfully confirmed the existence of two previously predicted Jupiter-mass planets around the star HD 163296. Their work is published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Of the thousands
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Geneva, Switzerland (SPX) Jun 22, 2018

Each exoplanet revolves around a star, like the Earth around the Sun. This is why it is generally impossible to obtain images of an exoplanet, so dazzling is the light of its star. However, a team of astronomers, led by a researcher from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and member of NCCR PlanetS, had the idea of detecting certain molecules that are present in the planet’s atmosphere in order to
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Tokyo (AFP) June 21, 2018

Japan has halted evacuation drills simulating a North Korean missile attack in the wake of historic talks between Washington and Pyongyang, local media reported Thursday.

Government officials did not immediately confirm the reports, but authorities in one town told AFP they were suspending a drill planned for next week on orders from Tokyo.

The decision comes after US President Donald Tr
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Sao Paulo, Brazil (SPX) Jun 22, 2018

The use of particle accelerators is not confined to basic research in high-energy physics. Large-scale accelerators and gigantic devices, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), are used for this purpose, but relatively small accelerators are used in medicine (diagnostic imaging, cancer treatment), industry (food sterilization, cargo scanning, electronic engineering), and various types of inves
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ISS – Expedition 56 Mission patch.

June 21, 2018

Quite a wide variety of science activities took place today aboard the International Space Station exploring time perception, exercise and eyesight. The Expedition 56 crew members also worked on station plumbing, stowed satellite deployer gear and checked out communications gear.

Two-time station resident Alexander Gerst started his morning helping doctors understand how living in space alters time perception and impacts crew performance. Later he strapped himself into an exercise bike and attached electrodes to his chest to monitor his pulmonary function during the workout session.

Image above: This fish-eye lens view from a window on the Cupola shows the U.S. Cygnus commercial space freighter with its cymbal-like Ultra-Flex solar arrays attached to the Unity module. To its right is the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft docked to the Rassvet module. Image Credit: NASA.

NASA astronauts Ricky Arnold, Drew Feustel and Serena Auñón-Chancellor teamed up for eye exams with an ultrasound device to study microgravity’s effects on eyesight. The scans were downlinked real-time to scientists on Earth observing the retina and optic nerve while monitoring the health of the astronaut’s eyes.

Auñón-Chancellor started her day changing out a filter and valve in the station’s bathroom located in the Tranquility module. She then checked out Wi-Fi gear connected to antennas installed during a March 29 spacewalk after assisting Feustel in the Japanese Kibo lab module. The duo stowed gear after Wednesday’s successful deployment of a satellite to demonstrate space junk clean up.

Arnold was set to install radio frequency tags today to improve tool tracking but that task was postponed till after the Cygnus cargo ship departs July 15. He then moved on to emergency communication tests with control centers around the world before light maintenance work on a 3D manufacturing device.

Related links:

Time perception: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7504

Satellite: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/2456.html

Expedition 56: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition56/index.html

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch
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Houston TX (SPX) Jun 22, 2018

A tool that has helped guide sailors across oceans for centuries is now being tested aboard the International Space Station as a potential emergency navigation tool for guiding future spacecraft across the cosmos. The Sextant Navigation investigation tests use of a hand-held sextant aboard the space station.

Sextants have a small telescope-like optical sight to take precise angle measureme
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