Space

cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/9722844

Today, ESA’s Science Programme Committee approved the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, the first scientific endeavour to detect and study gravitational waves from space.

This important step, formally called ‘adoption’, recognises that the mission concept and technology are sufficiently advanced, and gives the go-ahead to build the instruments and spacecraft. This work will start in January 2025 once a European industrial contractor has been chosen.

The video in this article brings me joy; it's just so good and fun to watch.

An asteroid discovered earlier this month will reach its closest point to Earth on Saturday (Jan. 27), when it will soar through the sky at a distance closer to us than the moon.

You can watch the airplane-size asteroid as it sails just 220,000 miles (354,000 kilometers) from Earth — more than nine tenths of the average distance between our planet and the moon — on a Virtual Telescope Project live feed from 12:15 p.m. EST. The flying space rock will reach its closest point to Earth at 12:30 p.m. EST, according to NASA.

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/after-three-years-on-mars-nasas-ingenuity-helicopter-mission-ends/

Dang! So close.

In the wee morning hours on Sunday (Jan. 21), a tiny asteroid came hurtling through the sky and smashed into Earth's atmosphere near Berlin, producing a bright but harmless fireball visible for miles around. Such sightings typically occur a few times a year — but this one was unique because it was first detected by scientists roughly three hours before impact — only the eighth time that researchers have spotted one of these space rocks before it hit.

The asteroid, dubbed 2024 BXI, was first discovered by self-proclaimed asteroid hunter Krisztián Sárneczky, an astronomer at the Piszkéstető Mountain Station, part of Konkoly Observatory in Hungary. He identified the cosmic rock using the 60-cm Schmidt telescope at the observatory. Shortly after the space rock's discovery, NASA gave a detailed prediction of where and when the meteor would strike.

An interesting story about a rarely discussed feature of the Space Shuttle, that lives on in the commercial crew capsules, to prevent travelers from killing everyone onboard.

Japan's space agency said early Saturday that its spacecraft is on the moon, but is still "checking its status." More details will be given at a news conference, officials said.

The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, came down onto the lunar surface at around 12:20 a.m. Tokyo time Saturday (1520 GMT Friday). No astronauts were onboard the spacecraft.

If SLIM landed successfully, Japan would become the fifth country to accomplish the feat after the United States, the Soviet Union, China and India.

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Just under an hour until the launch of Axiom Space's third private crew rotation to the International Space Station!

Launch thread with more info and webcast links has been posted over at [email protected]: Axiom-3 Launch Discussion and Updates Thread!

Columbia researchers analyzing images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have found that galaxies in the early universe are often flat and elongated, like breadsticks—and are rarely round, like balls of pizza dough.

"Roughly 50 to 80% of the galaxies we studied appear to be flattened in two dimensions," explained Viraj Pandya, a NASA Hubble Fellow at Columbia University and the lead author of a new paper slated to appear in The Astrophysical Journal that outlines the findings. The paper is currently published on the arXiv preprint server.

A public lecture from a scientist adding to the conversation. What makes this lecture interesting is he is not disproving that alien life can exist, but instead trying to curb expectations because of the little data we have to back up claims. More importantly is the message that it is important for scientists to be care of biases when discussing this topic.