Starburst spiral NGC 4536 is bright with blue clusters of star formation and pink clumps of ionized hydrogen.
NASA, ESA, and J. Lee (Space Telescope Science Institute); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
Sweeping spiral arms extend from NGC 4536, littered with bright blue clusters of star formation and red clumps of hydrogen gas shining among dark lanes of dust. The galaxy’s shape may seem a little unusual, and that’s because it’s what’s known as an “intermediate galaxy”: not quite a barred spiral, but not exactly an unbarred spiral, either ― a hybrid of the two.
NGC 4536 is also a starburst galaxy, in which star formation is happening at a tremendous rate that uses up the gas in the galaxy relatively quickly, by galactic standards. Starburst galaxies can happen due to gravitational interactions with other galaxies or ― as seems to be the case for NGC 4536 ― when gas is packed into a small region. The bar-like structure of NGC 4536 may be driving gas inwards toward the nucleus, giving rise to a crescendo of star formation in a ring around the nucleus. Starburst galaxies birth lots of hot blue stars that burn fast and die quickly in explosions that unleash intense ultraviolet light (visible in blue), turning their surroundings into glowing clouds of ionized hydrogen, called HII regions (visible in red).
NGC 4536 is approximately 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It was discovered in 1784 by astronomer William Herschel. Hubble took this image of NGC 4536 as part of a project to study galactic environments to understand connections between young stars and cold gas, particularly star clusters and molecular clouds, throughout the local universe.
An open cluster of stars shines through misty, cocoon-like gas clouds in this Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 460.
NGC 460 is located in a region of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. This particular region contains a number of young star clusters and nebulae of different sizes ― all likely related to each other. The clouds of gas and dust can give rise to stars as portions of them collapse, and radiation and stellar winds from those hot, young bright stars in turn shape and compress the clouds, triggering new waves of star formation. The hydrogen clouds are ionized by the radiation of nearby stars, causing them to glow.
The NGC 460 star cluster resides in one of the youngest parts of this interconnected complex of stellar clusters and nebulae, which is also home to a number of O-type stars: the brightest, hottest and most massive of the normal, hydrogen-burning stars (called main-sequence stars) like our Sun. O-type stars are rare ― out of more than 4 billion stars in the Milky Way, only about 20,000 are estimated to be O-type stars. The area that holds NGC 460, known as N83, may have been created when two hydrogen clouds in the region collided with one another, creating several O-type stars and nebulae.
Open clusters like NGC 460 are made of anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand stars loosely knitted together by gravity. Open clusters generally contain young stars, which may migrate outward into their galaxies as time progresses. NGC 460’s stars may someday disperse into the Small Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s closest galactic neighbors at about 200,000 light-years away. Because it is both close and bright, it offers an opportunity to study phenomena that are difficult to examine in more distant galaxies.
Six overlapping observations from a study of the gas and dust between stars, called the interstellar medium, were combined to create this Hubble image. The study aims to understand how gravitational forces between interacting galaxies can foster bursts of star formation. This highly detailed 65 megapixel mosaic includes both visible and infrared wavelengths. Download the 400 MB file and zoom in to see some of the intricacies captured by Hubble.
Station Swaps Commanders and Keeps Up Research Before Crew Swap
Cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin (left) speaks to mission controllers after astronaut Suni Williams (right) handed over command of the International Space Station to the veteran crew member while the rest of the Expedition 72 crew looks on.
NASA+
Expedition 72 changed commanders today as a new crew prepares to launch to the International Space Station and four orbital residents get ready to return to Earth. Meanwhile, human research, fluid physics, and spacesuits wrapped up the end of the week aboard the orbital outpost.
NASA astronaut Suni Williams handed over command of the space station to Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin during the change of command ceremony today. Williams remarked during the event, “Just wanted to say thank you to everybody around the world, all the control centers, friends and family who are out there, all our trainers, all of the folks who have gotten us ready to come here and fly in space.”
Williams now turns her attention to her return to Earth with fellow crewmates Nick Hague and Butch Wilmore from NASA and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. The homebound SpaceX Crew-9 members will wait for the launch and arrival of the SpaceX Crew-10 mission targeted for March 12 and 13 before returning to Earth after a handover period.
The Crew-10 members Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers of NASA, Takuya Onishi of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and Kirill Peskov of Roscosmos will officially become Expedition 72 crew members when they open the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft hatch and enter the orbiting lab. Ovchinin will stay in space until mid-April with Flight Engineers Don Pettit of NASA and Ivan Vagner of Roscosmos.
Advanced microgravity science continued on Friday as the astronauts and cosmonauts studied the effects of exercising in space, space-caused bone loss, futuristic piloting techniques, and more at the end of the week.
Hague began his day collecting his blood samples for processing and later analysis. The specimens will be examined as part of a study exploring bone loss during space missions and bone recovery after returning to Earth’s gravity. Next, Hague pedaled on an exercise cycle while attached to electrodes and sensors measuring how weightlessness affects his aerobic fitness.
Wilmore spent most of his day swapping radio gear on a pair of spacesuits in the Quest airlock before packing his personal items ahead of his upcoming departure. Williams took a test measuring how living in space affects her cognitive abilities, inspected the Harmony module’s forward hatch, then replaced orbital plumbing components in the Tranquility module.
Gorbunov tried on a specialized suit, with assistance from Vagner, that may prevent fluids from accumulating in a crew member’s upper body caused by living in weightlessness. The lower body negative pressure suit is being tested for its ability to pull fluid from the upper body counteracting space-caused head and eye pressure. Ovchinin spent his day on science exploring how future crews may pilot spacecraft and robots, blood circulation in microgravity, and hybrid life support systems.
NASA Earns Best Place to Work in Government for 13th Consecutive Year
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft lifts off on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 14, 2024.
NASA/Kim Shiflett
For the 13th straight year, NASA has earned the title of Best Place to Work in the Federal Government – large agency – from the Partnership for Public Service. The ranking reflects employee satisfaction and workplace elements across the agency while executing NASA’s mission to explore the unknown and discover new knowledge for the benefit of humanity.
“NASA’s greatest asset has always been its people – those who rise to the challenge of leading in air and space,” said NASA acting Administrator Janet Petro. “This recognition reflects a culture of collaboration, innovation, and excellence that fuels our mission every day and defines NASA as the best place to work in the federal government. I’m honored to lead this remarkable team as we continue benefiting humanity and inspiring the world in the process.”
Throughout 2024, NASA’s workforce supported the agency’s groundbreaking accomplishments, including landing new science and technology on the Moon with an American company for the first time and launching a new mission to study Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. NASA teams also collaborated to maintain more than 24 years of continuous human exploration and scientific research aboard the International Space Station and unveiled its supersonic quiet aircraft.
The agency also shared the wonder of a total eclipse with millions of Americans, conducted the final flight of its Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, and announced the newest class of Artemis Generation astronauts. With the release of its latest Economic Impact Report, NASA demonstrated how its work impacts the U.S. economy, creates value to society, and returns investment to taxpayers.
The Partnership for Public Service began to compile the Best Places to Work rankings in 2003 to analyze federal employee’s viewpoints of leadership, work-life balance, and other factors of their job. A formula is used to evaluate employee responses to a federal survey, dividing submissions into four groups: large, midsize, and small agencies, in addition to their subcomponents.
Read about the Best Places to Work for 2024 online.
Cosmic Mapmaker: NASA’s SPHEREx Space Telescope Ready to Launch
6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Ahead of launch, NASA’s SPHEREx is enclosed in a payload fairing at Vandenberg Space Force Base on March 2. The observatory is stacked atop the four small satellites that make up the agency’s PUNCH mission.
NASA/BAE Systems/Benjamin Fry
NASA’s latest space observatory is targeting a March 8 liftoff, and the agency’s PUNCH heliophysics mission is sharing a ride. Here’s what to expect during launch and beyond.
In a little over a day, NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope is slated to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The observatory will map the entire celestial sky four times in two years, creating a 3D map of over 450 million galaxies. In doing so, the mission will provide insight into what happened a fraction of a second after the big bang, in addition to searching interstellar dust for the ingredients of life, and measuring the collective glow from all galaxies, including ones that other telescopes cannot easily detect.
The launch window opens at 7:09:56 p.m. PST on Saturday, March 8, with a target launch time of 7:10:12 p.m. PST. Additional opportunities occur in the following days.
Launching together into low Earth orbit, NASA’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions will study a range of topics from the early universe to our nearest star. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Sharing a ride with SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) is NASA’s PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere), a constellation of four small satellites that will map the region where the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, transitions to the solar wind, the constant outflow of material from the Sun.
The SPHEREx observatory detects infrared light — wavelengths slightly longer than what the human eye can see that are emitted by warm objects including stars and galaxies. Using a technique called spectroscopy, SPHEREx will separate the infrared light emitted by hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies into 102 individual colors — the same way a prism splits sunlight into a rainbow. Observing those colors separately can reveal various properties of objects, including their composition and, in the case of galaxies, their distance from Earth. No other all-sky survey has performed spectroscopy in so many wavelengths and on so many sources.
The mission’s all-sky spectroscopic map can be used for a wide variety of science investigations. In particular, SPHEREx has its sights set on a phenomenon called inflation, which caused the universe to expand a trillion-trillionfold in a fraction of a second after the big bang. This nearly instantaneous event left an impression on the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe. The mission will map the distribution of more than 450 million galaxies to improve scientists’ understanding of the physics behind this extreme cosmic event.
Additionally, the space telescope will measure the total glow from all galaxies, including ones that other telescopes cannot easily detect. When combined with studies of individual galaxies by other telescopes, the measurement of this overall glow will provide a more complete picture of how the light output from galaxies has changed over the universe’s history.
At the same time, spectroscopy will allow SPHEREx to seek out frozen water, carbon dioxide, and other key ingredients for life. The mission will provide an unprecedented survey of the location and abundance of these icy compounds in our galaxy, giving researchers better insight into the interstellar chemistry that set the stage for life.
Launch Sequence
But, first, SPHEREx has to get into space. Prelaunch testing is complete on the spacecraft’s various systems, and it’s been encapsulated in the protective nose cone, or payload fairing, atop the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will get it there from Vandenberg’s Space Launch Complex-4 East.
NASA’s SPHEREx mission will lift off from Space Launch Complex-4 East at Vanden-berg Space Force Base in California aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, just as the Sur-face Water and Ocean Topography mission, shown here, did in December 2022.
NASA/Keegan Barber
A little more than two minutes after the Falcon 9 lifts off, the main engine will cut off. Shortly after, the rocket’s first and second stages will separate, followed by second-stage engine start. The reusable first stage will then begin its automated boost-back burn to the launch site for a propulsive landing.
Once the rocket is out of Earth’s atmosphere, about three minutes after launch, the payload fairing that surrounds the spacecraft will separate into two halves and fall back to Earth, landing in the ocean. Roughly 41 minutes after launch, SPHEREx will separate from the rocket and start its internal systems so that it can point its solar panel to the Sun. After this happens, the spacecraft can establish communications with ground controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission for the agency. This milestone, called acquisition of signal, should happen about three minutes after separation.
About 52 minutes after liftoff, PUNCH should separate as well from the Falcon 9.
Both spacecraft will be in a Sun-synchronous low Earth orbit, where their position relative to the Sun remains the same throughout the year. Each approximately 98-minute orbit allows the SPHEREx telescope to view a 360-degree strip of the celestial sky. As Earth’s orbit around the Sun progresses, that strip slowly advances, enabling SPHEREx to image almost the entire sky in six months. For PUNCH, the orbit provides a clear view in all directions around the Sun.
About four days after launch, SPHEREx should eject the protective cover over its telescope lens. The observatory will begin science operations a little over a month after launch, once the telescope has cooled down to its operating temperature and the mission team has completed a series of checks.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based out of the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is providing the launch service for SPHEREx and PUNCH.
For more information about the SPHEREx mission, visit:
SPHEREx is managed by NASA JPL for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive.
