Greenland Refrozen

5 Years, 8 Discoveries: NASA Exoplanet Explorer Sees Dancing Stars & a Star-Shredding Black Hole

This all-sky mosaic was constructed from 912 Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) images. Prominent features include the Milky Way, a glowing arc that represents the bright central plane of our galaxy, and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds – satellite galaxies of our own located, respectively, 160,000 and 200,000 light-years away. In the northern sky, look for the small, oblong shape of the Andromeda galaxy (M 31), the closest big spiral galaxy, located 2.5 million light-years away. The black regions are areas of sky that TESS didn’t image. Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (University of Maryland College Park)

On April 18, 2018, we launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, better known as TESS. It was designed to search for planets beyond our solar system – exoplanets – and to discover worlds for our James Webb Space Telescope, which launched three years later, to further explore. TESS images sections of sky, one hemisphere at a time. When we put all the images together, we get a great look at Earth’s sky!

In its five years in space, TESS has discovered 326 planets and more than 4,300 planet candidates. Along the way, the spacecraft has observed a plethora of other objects in space, including watching as a black hole devoured a star and seeing six stars dancing in space. Here are some notable results from TESS so far:

During its first five years in space, our Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has discovered exoplanets and identified worlds that can be further explored by the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

1. TESS’ first discovery was a world called Pi Mensae c. It orbits the star Pi Mensae, about 60 light-years away from Earth and visible to the unaided eye in the Southern Hemisphere. This discovery kicked off NASA's new era of planet hunting.

2. Studying planets often helps us learn about stars too! Data from TESS & Spitzer helped scientists detect a planet around the young, flaring star AU Mic, providing a unique way to study how planets form, evolve, and interact with active stars.

Located less than 32 light-years from Earth, AU Microscopii is among the youngest planetary systems ever observed by astronomers, and its star throws vicious temper tantrums. This devilish young system holds planet AU Mic b captive inside a looming disk of ghostly dust and ceaselessly torments it with deadly blasts of X-rays and other radiation, thwarting any chance of life… as we know it! Beware! There is no escaping the stellar fury of this system. The monstrous flares of AU Mic will have you begging for eternal darkness. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

3. In addition to finding exoplanets on its own, TESS serves as a pathfinder for the James Webb Space Telescope. TESS discovered the rocky world LHS 3844 b, but Webb will tell us more about its composition. Our telescopes, much like our scientists, work together.

4. Though TESS may be a planet-hunter, it also helps us study black holes! In 2019, TESS saw a ‘‘tidal disruption event,’’ otherwise known as a black hole shredding a star.

When a star strays too close to a black hole, intense tides break it apart into a stream of gas. The tail of the stream escapes the system, while the rest of it swings back around, surrounding the black hole with a disk of debris. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

5. In 2020, TESS discovered its first Earth-size world in the habitable zone of its star – the distance from a star at which liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Earlier this year, a second rocky planet was discovered in the system.

You can see the exoplanets that orbit the star TOI 700 moving within two marked habitable zones, a conservative habitable zone, and an optimistic habitable zone. Planet d orbits within the conservative habitable zone, while planet e moves within an optimistic habitable zone, the range of distances from a star where liquid surface water could be present at some point in a planet’s history. Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

6. Astronomers used TESS to find a six-star system where all stars undergo eclipses. Three binary pairs orbit each other, and, in turn, the pairs are engaged in an elaborate gravitational dance in a cosmic ballroom 1,900 light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.

7. Thanks to TESS, we learned that Delta Scuti stars pulse to the beat of their own drummer. Most seem to oscillate randomly, but we now know HD 31901 taps out a beat that merges 55 pulsation patterns.

Sound waves bouncing around inside a star cause it to expand and contract, which results in detectable brightness changes. This animation depicts one type of Delta Scuti pulsation — called a radial mode — that is driven by waves (blue arrows) traveling between the star's core and surface. In reality, a star may pulsate in many different modes, creating complicated patterns that enable scientists to learn about its interior. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

8. Last is a galaxy that flares like clockwork! With TESS and Swift, astronomers identified the most predictably and frequently flaring active galaxy yet. ASASSN-14ko, which is 570 million light-years away, brightens every 114 days!

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Can You Guess Which Football Signals Robonaut Is Doing?

Meet Robonaut, our humanoid robot (which means it’s built to look like a person). This makes it easier for Robonaut to do the same jobs as a person. 

Robonaut could help with anything from working on the International Space Station to exploring other worlds…and now he might even take up a job as a referee!

We had Robonaut act out a few football signals. Can you guess what they are?!

Signal #1

Signal #2

Signal #3

Signal #4

Signal #5

Signal #6

Signal #7

Signal #8

Signal #9

Get the answers:

But it’s not all fun and games for Robonaut...from performing movements like a referee to helping astronauts on the space station, it’s important to have a robot that can perform the same tasks as humans. Why?  

Robonaut could someday be tested outside the space station. This testing would determine how well Robonaut could work with, or instead of, spacewalking astronauts. Designers even have ideas for sending a robot like Robonaut to another world someday. If testing goes well, who knows where Robonaut - or a better robot based on Robonaut - could end up?

To learn more about connections between space and football, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/football   

To learn more about Robonaut, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/robonaut2 

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Today we successfully tested one of our RS-25 engines, four of which will help power our Space Launch System (SLS) to deep space destinations, like Mars! This 500-second engine test concludes a summer of successful hot fire testing for flight controllers at our Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.

The controller serves as the “brain” of the engine, communicating with SLS flight computers to ensure engines are performing at needed levels. The test marked another step toward the nation’s return to human deep-space exploration missions.

We launched a series of summer tests with a second flight controller unit hot fire at the end of May, then followed up with three additional tests. The flight controller tests are critical preparation for upcoming SLS flights to deep space– the uncrewed Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), which will serve as the first flight for the new rocket carrying an uncrewed Orion spacecraft, and EM-2, which will transport a crew of astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft. 

Each SLS rocket is powered at launch by four RS-25 engines firing simultaneously and working in conjunction with a pair of solid rocket boosters. The engines generate a combined 2 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. With the boosters, total thrust at liftoff will exceed 8 million pounds!

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Weathering the Storm with our Global Precipitation Measurement Mission

How much rain falls in a hurricane? How much snow falls in a nor’easter? What even is a nor’easter? These are the sorts of questions answered by our Global Precipitation Measurement Mission, or GPM.

GPM measures precipitation: Rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain, hail, ice pellets. It tells meteorologists the volume, intensity and location of the precipitation that falls in weather systems, helping them improve their forecasting, gather information about extreme weather and better understand Earth’s energy and water cycles.

And putting all that together, one of GPM’s specialties is measuring storms.

GPM is marking its fifth birthday this year, and to celebrate, we’re looking back on some severe storms that the mission measured in its first five years.

1. The Nor’easter of 2018

A nor’easter is a swirling storm with strong northeasterly winds and often lots of snow. In January 2018, the mission’s main satellite, the Core Observatory, flew over the East Coast in time to capture the development of a nor’easter. The storm dumped 18 inches of snow in parts of New England and unleashed winds up to 80 miles per hour!

2. Hurricane Harvey 

Hurricane Harvey came to a virtual halt over eastern Texas in August 2017, producing the largest rain event in U.S. history. Harvey dropped up to 5 feet of rain, causing $125 billion in damage. The Core Observatory passed over the storm several times, using its radar and microwave instruments to capture the devastating deluge.

3. Typhoon Vongfong

In October 2014, GPM flew over one of its very first Category 5 typhoons – tropical storms with wind speeds faster than 157 miles per hour. The storm was Typhoon Vongfong, which caused $48 million in damage in Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. We were able to see both the pattern and the intensity of Vongfong’s rain, which let meteorologists know the storm’s structure and how it might behave.

4. Near Real-Time Global Precipitation Calculations

The Core Observatory isn’t GPM’s only satellite! A dozen other satellites from different countries and government agencies come together to share their microwave measurements with the Core Observatory. Together, they are called the GPM Constellation, and they create one of its most impressive products, IMERG.

IMERG stands for “Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM,” and it uses the info from all the satellites in the Constellation to calculate global precipitation in near real time. In other words, we can see where it’s raining anywhere in the world, practically live.

5. Hurricane Ophelia

Hurricane Ophelia hit Ireland and the United Kingdom in October 2017, pounding them with winds up to 115 miles per hour, reddening the skies with dust from the Sahara Desert and causing more than $79 million in damages. Several satellites from the Constellation passed over Ophelia, watching this mid-latitude weather system develop into a Category 3 hurricane – the easternmost Category 3 storm in the satellite era (since 1970).

From the softest snow to the fiercest hurricanes, GPM is keeping a weather eye open for precipitation around the world. And we’re on cloud nine about that.

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We Just Took a Major Step Forward in our Moon Landing Program

As part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, we’ve selected the first American companies that will deliver our science and technology payloads to the Moon.

Seen above from left to right are lander prototypes from:

Astrobotic of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Intuitive Machines of Houston, Texas

Orbit Beyond of Edison, New Jersey

Astrobotic of Pittsburgh has proposed to fly as many as 14 payloads to a large crater on the near side of the Moon.

Intuitive Machines of Houston has proposed to fly as many as five payloads to a scientifically intriguing dark spot on the Moon.

Orbit Beyond of Edison, New Jersey, has proposed to fly as many as four payloads to a lava plain in one of the Moon’s craters.

Each company is charged with demonstrating technology that will shape the development of future landers and other exploration systems needed for humans to return to the Moon’s surface under the new Artemis program. Artemis is the program that will send the first woman and the next man to the Moon by 2024 and develop a sustainable human presence on the Moon by 2028. The program takes its name from the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the Moon in Greek mythology.

Together we are going to the Moon—to stay.

Watch the CLPS announcement on our YouTube channel to learn about how each company will prepare us for human missions to the Moon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qODDdqK9rL4

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What was your favorite part of being a Flight Director?

How exactly will it work? And whats the goal of the project?

Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. 🌟 The final stages of a star’s life allow us a glimpse into the future of our own solar system. This image from our Hubble Space Telescope shows what’s left of a star 10,000 light-years from Earth.

A star like our Sun will, at the end of its life, transform into a red giant. The core of the star will eventually collapse in on itself, ejecting the surface layers outward. After that, all that remains of the star is what we see here: glowing outer layers surrounding a white dwarf star. In just a few thousand years they will have dissipated, and all that will be left to see is the dimly glowing white dwarf. More on this image, here. 

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A Mesmerizing Model of Monster Black Holes

Just about every galaxy the size of our Milky Way (or bigger) has a supermassive black hole at its center. These objects are ginormous — hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of the Sun! Now, we know galaxies merge from time to time, so it follows that some of their black holes should combine too. But we haven’t seen a collision like that yet, and we don’t know exactly what it would look like. 

A new simulation created on the Blue Waters supercomputer — which can do 13 quadrillion calculations per second, 3 million times faster than the average laptop — is helping scientists understand what kind of light would be produced by the gas around these systems as they spiral toward a merger.

The new simulation shows most of the light produced around these two black holes is UV or X-ray light. We can’t see those wavelengths with our own eyes, but many telescopes can. Models like this could tell the scientists what to look for. 

You may have spotted the blank circular region between the two black holes. No, that’s not a third black hole. It’s a spot that wasn’t modeled in this version of the simulation. Future models will include the glowing gas passing between the black holes in that region, but the researchers need more processing power. The current version already required 46 days!

The supermassive black holes have some pretty nifty effects on the light created by the gas in the system. If you view the simulation from the side, you can see that their gravity bends light like a lens. When the black holes are lined up, you even get a double lens!

But what would the view be like from between two black holes? In the 360-degree video above, the system’s gas has been removed and the Gaia star catalog has been added to the background. If you watch the video in the YouTube app on your phone, you can moved the screen around to explore this extreme vista. Learn more about the new simulation here. 

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Go green — in space!

Good things come in mini-fridge-sized packages. This small spacecraft is our Green Propellant Infusion Mission and will test a low toxicity propellant. This technology could lengthen mission durations by using less propellant.

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