Hubble Peers at Pair of Closely Interacting Galaxies
2 min read
Hubble Peers at Pair of Closely Interacting Galaxies
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features Arp 72.
ESA/Hubble & NASA, L. Galbany, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features Arp 72, a very selective galaxy group that only includes two galaxies interacting due to gravity: NGC 5996 (the large spiral galaxy) and NGC 5994 (its smaller companion, in the lower left of the image). Both galaxies lie approximately 160 million light-years from Earth, and their cores are separated from each other by a distance of about 67,000 light-years. The distance between the galaxies at their closest points is even smaller, closer to 40,000 light-years. While this might sound vast, in galactic separation terms it is really quite close. For comparison, the distance between the Milky Way and its nearest independent galactic neighbor Andromeda is around 2.5 million light-years. Alternatively, the distance between the Milky Way and its largest and brightest satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (satellite galaxies orbit around another galaxy), is about 162,000 light-years.
Given this and the fact that NGC 5996 is roughly comparable in size to the Milky Way, it is not surprising that NGC 5996 and NGC 5994 — separated by only about 40,000 light-years — are interacting with one another. In fact, the interaction likely distorted NGC 5996’s spiral shape. It also prompted the formation of the very long and faint tail of stars and gas curving away from NGC 5996, up to the top right of the image. This ‘tidal tail’ is a common phenomenon that appears when galaxies closely interact and is visible in other Hubble images of interacting galaxies.
Crew Readies for Departure While Human Research Continues
Astronaut Loral O’Hara conducts leak checks and tries on the Sokol launch and entry suit she will wear when she returns to Earth aboard the Soyuz MS-24 crew ship.
Three International Space Station residents are in their final full day aboard the orbital outpost focusing their attention on Friday night’s departure. The rest of the Expedition 70 crew continued its human research activities ensuring crews remain healthy in space.
NASA Flight Engineer Loral O’Hara is nearing the end of her spaceflight that began on Sept. 15, 2023. She is returning to Earth with Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy and Belarus spaceflight participant Marina Vasilevskaya aboard the Soyuz MS-24 crew ship. The trio will undock from the Rassvet module at 11:54 p.m. EDT on Friday and parachute to landing inside the Soyuz in Kazakhstan at 3:17 a.m. on Saturday (12:17 p.m. Kazakh time).
Novitskiy and Vasilevskaya arrived at the station aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft with NASA astronaut Tracy C. Dyson on March 25. The two international crew members will be completing a 12-day mission full of science, education, and maintenance activities. Dyson will remain aboard the orbital outpost for a six-month space research mission.
While packing personal items for return, O’Hara found time to swap brain organoid samples inside a fluorescence microscope for a neurodegenerative disease study. She was assisted by fellow astronauts Dyson and Matthew Dominick who also set up the samples for imaging following the previous day’s test drug injections into the brain organoids. The new drug therapy may prevent and treat Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis on Earth.
Dyson earlier strapped on a specialized cap and attached sensors to herself to simultaneously measure her blood flow, blood pressure, and electrical heart activity for a brain blood flow regulation study. Dominick joined NASA Flight Engineers Mike Barratt and Jeanette Epps for neck, shoulder, and leg vein scans with the Ultrasound 2 device. The trio then moved on to eye checks as Barratt operated the standard medical imaging hardware and viewed Dominick’s and Epps’ retina, optic nerve, and cornea. The biomedical exams inform doctors of the effects of weightlessness on the human body and may lead to treatments for space-caused and Earthbound conditions.
Station Commander Oleg Kononenko and Flight Engineer Nikolai Chub spent their day on a variety of maintenance activities including inspecting Roscosmos segment windows and updating the station’s inventory management system. Flight Engineer Alexander Grebenkin started his day with orbital plumbing work before moving on and investigating futuristic spacecraft and robotic piloting techniques that may be used on planetary missions.
“… I’ve just seen such tremendous things happen since I’ve been part of the Astrobiology Program, and that’s why I’m pretty confident we’re going to find life elsewhere, because there are just so many brilliant people working on this.” — Melissa Kirven-Brooks, Exobiology Deputy Branch Chief and Future Workforce Lead of the NASA Astrobiology Program, NASA’s Ames Research Center
NASA Employee Grateful for Opportunities at NASA Stennis
3 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Cherie Beech works in the NASA Stennis Office of the Chief Information Officer, where she helps many of the more than 5,200 employees of the NASA Stennis Federal City, as customer engagement and information technology acquisition specialist.
NASA/Danny Nowlin
Cherie Beech knows full well the opportunity that working at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, affords. Since arriving at the federal city as a contractor 26 years ago, she since has expanded her skillset and grown as a member of the NASA Stennis team.
“I always want to make sure, by doing my job, that things are better than the way I found it…That’s what I strive to do. I’m ecstatic to work at NASA Stennis. I’m very humble and grateful for it.”
cherie beech
NASA Stennis Customer Engagement and IT Acquisition Specialist
“We are very blessed to have these opportunities,” said Beech, who works in the NASA Stennis Office of the Chief Information Officer. “It is fascinating because it takes everybody, all of us, to accomplish the work. It took me a long time, but I finally understand that it takes all skillsets to accomplish the job, because it takes all of us to ensure mission success.”
The mission is helping NASA explore the unknown in air and space, innovate for the benefit of humanity, and inspire the world through discovery. Through Artemis, NASA will return America to the Moon to establish the foundation for long-term scientific exploration and then set its sights on Mars for the benefit of all. Such a goal requires a diverse group of people to help make it happen.
“We all bring our unique traits and skills to the table, and that’s what I enjoy,” Beech said. “We all are valued. We are all contributing to the bigger thing, and I find that fascinating.”
Beech, a native of Picayune, Mississippi, grew up less than 15 miles from the south Mississippi NASA center often referenced then as “the test site.” She sometimes heard propulsion testing as a young girl and since has experienced NASA Stennis transforming into a multifaceted aerospace and technology hub.
“It’s a place full of opportunity,” she said.
Beech began her NASA Stennis career as a scheduler with Lockheed Martin. Her role evolved to include work with budget submissions, and communication and outreach, among other functions. Beech continued working across multiple contracts through the years working to support the NASA Stennis Office of the Chief Information Officer. She subsequently was hired as a civil servant by NASA in 2020.
“Once I was at NASA Stennis, then I realized there is a lot here to offer for all careers. There are also chances where you can talk to people and learn from everybody. People are so nice and very willing to help you and mentor and guide you. Since being here, I have learned all the necessary technical knowledge.”
In her role as customer engagement and information technology acquisition specialist with NASA, Beech now helps many of the more than 5,200 employees working across the federal city to ensure all understand the latest technology updates that contribute to their line of work. She also helps ensure employees are aware of all the NASA information technology purchasing regulations for work projects involving hardware and/or software.
“I always want to make sure, by doing my job, that things are better than the way I found it,” Beech said. “That’s what I strive to do. I’m ecstatic to work at NASA Stennis. I’m very humble and grateful for it.”
For information about NASA’s Stennis Space Center, visit:
NASA’s NEOWISE Extends Legacy With Decade of Near-Earth Object Data
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
This artist’s concept depicts the NEOWISE spacecraft in orbit around Earth. Launched in 2009 to survey the entire sky in infrared, the spacecraft took on a more specialized role in 2014 when it was reactivated to study near-Earth asteroids and comets.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
As the infrared space telescope continues its long-duration survey of the universe, it is creating a unique resource for future astronomers to make new discoveries.
NASA’s NEOWISE mission has released its 10th year of infrared data – the latest in a unique long-duration (or “time-domain”) survey that captures how celestial objects change over long periods. Time-domain astronomy can help scientists see how distant variable stars change in brightness and observe faraway black holes flaring as they consume matter. But NEOWISE has a special focus on our planet’s local cosmic neighborhood, producing a time-domain infrared survey used for planetary science, with a particular emphasis on asteroids and comets.
Short for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, NEOWISE is a key component of NASA’s planetary defense strategy, helping the agency refine the orbits of asteroids and comets while also estimating their size. One such example is the potentially hazardous asteroid Apophis, which will make a close approach of our planet in 2029.
By repeatedly observing the sky from its location in low-Earth orbit, NEOWISE has made 1.45 million infrared measurements of over 44,000 solar system objects. That includes more than 3,000 NEOs, 215 of which the space telescope discovered. Twenty-five of those are comets, including the famous comet NEOWISE.
“The space telescope has been a workhorse for characterizing NEOs that may pose a hazard to Earth in the future,” said Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE’s principal investigator at the University of Arizona and University of California, Los Angeles. “The data that NEOWISE has generated for free use by the scientific community will pay dividends for generations.”
From Data to Discovery
Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the mission sends data three times a day to the U.S. Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) network, which then delivers it to IPAC, an astronomical data research center at Caltech in Pasadena, California. IPAC processes the raw data into fully calibrated images that are accessible online. It also generates NEO detections, sending them to the Minor Planet Center – the internationally recognized clearinghouse for the position measurements of solar system bodies. By searching multiple images of the same patch of sky at different times, scientists capture the motions of individual asteroids and comets.
This top-down animated view of the solar system shows the positions of all the asteroids and comets detected by NEOWISE in the decade since its reactivation in 2014. Credit: IPAC/Caltech/University of Arizona
“The science products we generate identify specific infrared sources in the sky with precisely determined positions and brightnesses that enable discoveries to be made,” said Roc Cutri, lead scientist for the NEOWISE Science Data System at IPAC. “The most fun thing when I look at the data for the first time is knowing that no one has seen this before. It puts you in a unique position of doing real exploration.”
IPAC will also produce data products for NASA’s NEO Surveyor, which is targeting a launch no earlier than 2027. Managed by JPL, with Mainzer serving as principal investigator, the next-generation space survey telescope will seek out some of the hardest-to-find near-Earth objects, such as dark asteroids and comets that don’t reflect much visible light but shine brighter in infrared light.
Two Missions, One Spacecraft
The NEOWISE spacecraft launched in 2009, but as a different mission and with a different name: the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, which set out to survey the entire sky. As an infrared telescope, WISE studied distant galaxies, comparatively cool red dwarf stars, exploding white dwarfs, and outgassing comets, as well as NEOs.
An infrared telescope requires cryogenic coolant to prevent the spacecraft’s heat from disrupting its observations. After the WISE telescope’s ran out of coolant and was no longer able to observe the universe’s coldest objects, NASA put the spacecraft into hibernation in 2011. But because the telescope could still detect the infrared glow of comets and asteroids as they are heated by the Sun, Mainzer proposed to restart the spacecraft to keep an eye on them. The mission was reactivated in 2014 and renamed NEOWISE, extending the life of a spacecraft that was initially planned for less than a year of operation.
“We are 14 years into a seven-month mission,” said Joseph Masiero, NEOWISE’s deputy principal investigator and a scientist at IPAC. He started at JPL as a postdoctoral researcher working on WISE just two months before the spacecraft launched on Dec. 14, 2009. “This little mission has been with me my entire career – it just kept going, making new discoveries, helping us better understand the universe,” Masiero added. “And if it wasn’t for the tyranny of orbital dynamics, I’m sure the spacecraft would continue to operate for years to come.”
Solar activity is causing NEOWISE to fall out of orbit, and the spacecraft is expected to drop low enough into Earth’s atmosphere that it will eventually become unusable.
“NEOWISE has lasted way past its original spacecraft design lifetime,” said Joseph Hunt, NEOWISE project manager at JPL. “But as we didn’t build it with a way to reach higher orbits, the spacecraft will naturally drop so low in the atmosphere that it will become unusable and entirely burn up in the months following decommissioning. Exactly when depends on the Sun’s activity.”
More About the Mission
NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor support the objectives of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The NASA Authorization Act of 2005 directed NASA to discover and characterize at least 90% of the near-Earth objects more than 140 meters (460 feet) across that come within 30 million miles (48 million kilometers) of our planet’s orbit. Objects of this size can cause significant regional damage, or worse, should they impact the Earth.
JPL manages and operates the NEOWISE mission for PDCO within the Science Mission Directorate. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Science data processing takes place at IPAC at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
