The Sun emitted a significant solar flare on March 30, 2022, peaking at 1:35 p.m. EST. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy. Flares and solar eruptions can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to …
By Emmanuel Masongsong Using a NASA-funded CubeSat, scientists have uncovered a new source of super-fast, energetic electrons raining down on our planet, which can have implications for space infrastructure and atmospheric modeling. Scientists from the University of California Los Angles (UCLA) observed this rain, known as "electron precipitation", from low-Earth orbit using the Electron Losses …
While telescope alignment continues, Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) is still in cooldown mode. MIRI, which will be the coldest of Webb's four instruments, is the only instrument that will be actively cooled by a cryogenic refrigerator, or cryocooler. This cryocooler uses helium gas to carry heat from MIRI's optics and detectors out to the warm …
NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission, a joint effort with the Italian Space Agency, has returned data that no other spacecraft has obtained before from a few extreme cosmic objects. Launched in December 2021, IXPE has detected polarized X-rays from three of its first six targets. Polarized X-rays carry unique details about where the …
After meeting the major milestone of aligning the telescope to NIRCam, the Webb team is starting to extend the telescope alignment to the guider (the Fine Guidance Sensor, or FGS) and the other three science instruments. This six-week-long process is called multi-instrument multi-field (MIMF) alignment. When a ground-based telescope switches between cameras, sometimes the instrument …
NASA's Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program Airborne Data Management Group (ADMG) and the Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project are holding a two-day NASA Airborne and Field Data Workshop March 29-30, 2022. This workshop offers an opportunity for stakeholders to provide input on ways to improve the usability of NASA airborne and …
This week the Webb team continued to make progress in aligning the telescope to the NIRCam instrument. Between taking the data to understand the optical components, we continue to check out the science instruments. The NIRSpec instrument includes a microshutter array of a quarter-million miniature movable windows, each 0.1 by 0.2 millimeters in size. The …
By Gabrielle Antonioli, Montana State University /BOISE, IDAHO/ "Watch me," I say to Megan as I tip my skis over the edge of snow at the top of a steep gully in the southern portion of the Sawtooth Mountains in Idaho. She nods knowingly from the ridge above. Not letting her eyes leave me, she …
This week, the Webb team has been working on the fourth stage of mirror alignment, called Coarse Phasing, which measures and corrects smaller height differences between the mirror segments. In the meantime this past week, Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) team successfully finished the check-out and initial characterization of three crucial onboard mechanisms. Today, members of …
As NASA's Parker Solar Probe completes its latest swing around the Sun, it's doing so in full view of dozens of other spacecraft and ground-based telescopes.
