Hubble Sees a Celestial Cannonball

The spiral galaxy in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is IC 3225. It looks remarkably as if it was launched from a cannon, speeding through space like a comet with a tail of gas streaming from its disk behind it. The scenes that galaxies appear in from Earth’s point of view are fascinating; many seem to hang calmly in the emptiness of space as if hung from a string, while others star in much more dynamic situations!

Appearances can be deceiving with objects so far from Earth — IC 3225 itself is about 100 million light-years away — but the galaxy’s location suggests some causes for this active scene, because IC 3225 is one of over 1,300 members of the Virgo galaxy cluster. The density of galaxies in the Virgo cluster creates a rich field of hot gas between them, called ‘intracluster medium’, while the cluster’s extreme mass has its galaxies careening around its center in some very fast orbits. Ramming through the thick intracluster medium, especially close to the cluster’s center, places enormous ‘ram pressure’ on the moving galaxies that strips gas out of them as they go.

As a galaxy moves through space, the gas and dust that make up the intracluster medium create resistance to the galaxy’s movement, exerting pressure on the galaxy. This pressure, called ram pressure, can strip a galaxy of its star-forming gas and dust, reducing or even stopping the creation of new stars. Conversely, ram pressure can also cause other parts of the galaxy to compress, which can boost star formation. IC 3225 is not so close to the cluster core right now, but astronomers have deduced that it has undergone ram pressure stripping in the past. The galaxy looks compressed on one side, with noticeably more star formation on that leading edge (bottom-left), while the opposite end is stretched out of shape (upper-right). Being in such a crowded field, a close call with another galaxy may also have tugged on IC 3225 and created this shape. The sight of this distorted galaxy is a reminder of the incredible forces at work on astronomical scales, which can move and reshape entire galaxies!

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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Back on Earth: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 Mission Splashes Down Off Florida

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission successfully splashed down at 3:29 a.m. EDT Friday, off Pensacola, Florida, concluding a nearly eight-month science mission and the agency’s eighth commercial crew rotation mission to the International Space Station.  

After launching March 3 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA astronauts Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt, and Jeanette Epps, as well as Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, spent 232 days aboard the space station.

Recovery teams from NASA and SpaceX quickly secured the spacecraft and assisted the astronauts during exit. The crew now will head to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, while the Dragon spacecraft will return to SpaceX facilities at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida for inspection and refurbishment for future missions.

During their mission, crew members traveled nearly 100 million miles and completed 3,760 orbits around Earth. They conducted new scientific research to advance human exploration beyond low Earth orbit and benefit human life on Earth. Research and technology demonstrations included conducting stem cell research to develop organoid models for studying degenerative diseases, exploring how fuel temperature affects material flammability, and studying how spaceflight affects immune function in astronauts. Their work aims to improve astronaut health during long-duration spaceflights, contributing to critical advancements in space medicine and benefitting humanity.

Crew-8’s return follows the arrival of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 to the orbiting laboratory Sept. 29. These missions are part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which provides reliable access to space, maximizing the use of the station for research and development and supporting future missions beyond low Earth orbit by partnering with private companies to transport astronauts to and from the space station. 

Learn more about NASA’s Commercial Crew program at:

https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

-end-

Josh Finch / Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov

Leah Cheshier / Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111 
leah.d.cheshier@nasa.gov / sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov  

Steve Siceloff / Stephanie Plucinsky
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-867-2468
steven.p.siceloff@nasa.gov / stephanie.n.plucinsky@nasa.gov

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Sols 4341-4342: A Bumpy Road

Earth planning date: Monday, Oct. 21, 2024

After Curiosity’s busy weekend, the team is ready for another day of planning. We are able to take advantage of the Earth-Mars time offset to full plan on both sols of our plan today. For this plan, I served as Mobility Rover Planner, and planned Curiosity’s drive. 

The first sol begins with some remote science. In this block, there is a ChemCam LIBS and Mastcam joint observation of “Ewe Lake,” to look for variation across the different layers in the rock. There is also a ChemCam RMI and a Mastcam of the “Olmstead Point” target, to see if there are chemical differences that make it darker than the surrounding rocks. Mastcam also is taking a stereo image of “Depressed Lake” (in order to see if this loose block belongs to the Stimson or the Sulfate units) and an image of the ChemCam AEGIS target the rover automatically found after the last drive. 

After a nap, Curiosity wakes up to do some contact science on the “Chuck Pass” target, which is a piece of bedrock with laminations and nodules. We perform DRT brushing, MAHLI, and APXS observations of this rock before stowing the arm so we can be ready to drive on the second sol. In the late afternoon, to take advantage of the lighting conditions, we have another short set of Mastcam imaging — an atmospheric sky column observation and a stereo mosaic of “Fascination Turret” from this new angle.

The second sol also kicks off with some remote sensing. We follow up the contact science with ChemCam LIBS and Mastcam of Chuck Pass. ChemCam also takes an RMI looking east back to the area of the white sulfur stones below “Whitebark Pass” to get yet another viewing angle. There is also some atmospheric imaging, Navcam deck monitoring (to see how the dust is moving around on the rover’s deck) and a large dust devil survey. 

After the imaging, we are ready to drive. This terrain has been very tricky. While the slopes are not steep, this is a very rocky area, as you can see in the image, making finding a safe path difficult. We don’t only need to worry about driving over things that are too big or too sharp, but we also have to make sure not to scrape the wheels along the side of a rock or steer them into a rock, making them wedge and stall. It also means that we do not have good stereo data out very far because the rocks block our view. The last complication is that we have to drive backwards — otherwise, the rover hardware will block Curiosity’s view of Earth during the time we want to send her the new plan. When we drive backwards, the rover hardware will block Curiosity’s view, so we need to turn to get a clear view in our images. We also take additional frames to be sure we can find the best path for the next drive. With all this, we ended up being able to drive about 32 meters today (about 105 feet). After a short diversion to get around a steering hazard, we were able to drive a fairly straight route along the path to our next major imaging stop. After the drive, we have our normal post-drive imaging, including a twilight MARDI image. 

We have been lucky so far on this terrain and been able to successfully complete our recent drives. Hopefully this drive will also be successful!

Written by Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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