In Case You Missed It: A Weekly Summary of Top Content from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
Week of August 7 - August 11, 2023.
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Huge Solar Arrays Permanently Installed on NASA’s Psyche Spacecraft
The Psyche mission is speeding toward its Oct. 5 launch date, preparing for the last of its launch-preparation milestones. Robotically unfurling in a clean room near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Psyche spacecraft’s jumbo solar arrays were tested and permanently installed on the orbiter in preparation for its 2.5 billion-mile (4 billion-kilometer) journey to study a metal-rich asteroid. The launch period opens Oct. 5. After passing the deployment test, the twin wings were re-stowed and will remain tucked away on the sides of the orbiter until the spacecraft leaves Earth. Psyche is scheduled to reach its destination – a mysterious asteroid of the same name, in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – in July 2029. Then the spacecraft will orbit the asteroid from various altitudes for 26 months to gather images and other data.
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NASA’s Deep Space Communications to Get a Laser Boost
The agency is testing technologies in space and on the ground that could increase bandwidth to transmit more complex science data and even stream video from Mars. Set to launch this fall, NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) project will test how lasers could speed up data transmission far beyond the capacity of current radio frequency systems used in space. What’s known as a technology demonstration, DSOC may pave the way for broadband communications that will help support humanity’s next giant leap: when NASA sends astronauts to Mars. The DSOC near-infrared laser transceiver (a device that can send and receive data) will “piggyback” on NASA’s Psyche mission when it launches to a metal-rich asteroid of the same name in October. During the first two years of the journey, the transceiver will communicate with two ground stations in Southern California, testing highly sensitive detectors, powerful laser transmitters, and novel methods to decode signals the transceiver sends from deep space.
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Webb Spotlights Gravitational Arcs in ‘El Gordo’ Galaxy Cluster
A new image of the galaxy cluster known as “El Gordo” is revealing distant and dusty objects never seen before, and providing a bounty of fresh science. The infrared image, taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, displays a variety of unusual, distorted background galaxies that were only hinted at in previous Hubble Space Telescope images. El Gordo is a cluster of hundreds of galaxies that existed when the universe was 6.2 billion years old, making it a “cosmic teenager.” It’s the most massive cluster known to exist at that time. (“El Gordo” is Spanish for the “Fat One.”) The team targeted El Gordo because it acts as a natural, cosmic magnifying glass through a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Its powerful gravity bends and distorts the light of objects lying behind it, much like an eyeglass lens.
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Best Meteor Shower of the Year Peaks This Weekend
The NASA All Sky Fireball Network is already detecting the first meteors of this year’s Perseid meteor shower! The meteor shower peaks on the night of August 12 as the Earth passes through the dustiest debris of comet Swift-Tuttle’s trails. The Perseid meteor shower is often considered to be the best meteor shower of the year due to its high rates and pleasant late-summer temperatures. Unlike last year’s shower coinciding with the full moon, this year’s moon will be a waning crescent, allowing even some of the fainter meteors to be seen. So, how many can you see?
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InSight Study Finds Mars is Spinning Faster
Scientists have made the most precise measurements ever of Mars’ rotation, for the first time detecting how the planet wobbles due to the “sloshing” of its molten metal core. The findings, detailed in a recent Nature paper, rely on data from NASA’s InSight Mars lander, which operated for four years before running out of power during its extended mission in December 2022. To track the planet’s spin rate, the study’s authors relied on one of InSight’s instruments: a radio transponder and antennas collectively called the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment, or RISE. They found the planet’s rotation is accelerating by about 4 milliarcseconds per year² – corresponding to a shortening of the length of the Martian day by a fraction of a millisecond per year. It’s a subtle acceleration, and scientists aren’t entirely sure of the cause. But they have a few ideas, including ice accumulating on the polar caps or post-glacial rebound, where landmasses rise after being buried by ice. The shift in a planet’s mass can cause it to accelerate a bit like an ice skater spinning with their arms stretched out, then pulling their arms in.
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