[Spacetalk] https://www.nasa.gov/index.html; https://spaceflightnow.com; https://www.jpl.nasa.gov

[Gabe]

Hi all,

  I know it has been a while…I’ve been trying for months to get something out but life has been full speed with planning visits, car upgrades, house repairs, yard maintenance, gym, swimming, corresponding with hundreds of kids through all social media…it is crazy fun…every minute of every day…I always feel life is going so fast, I don’t know where but it leads me to so many amazing adventures, each equally exciting…

One of the more exciting adventures involves my passport…it doesn’t expire for over 3 years but it is full…the backlog for passport processing in the US is huge..4-6 months…9 weeks for expedite…I have a visit scheduled to Morocco…I was able to get an appointment at the Passport agency to get it in person…I was here at 8 this morning, hoping to get out of here by 5 tonight…so I have some time to say hi and catch up…

It seems many will be going back to school in about 2 weeks…what happened? It is amazing…I’m sure many of you feel the same…I had promised myself I would not travel in July and August, the hottest 2 months in Florida…which I totally love…cut offs, beach time, cruising in my convertible soaking up the sun…I’ve been doing some Zoom presentations, which are so different than being there in person but I’ve learned for those watching…it is still fun and so many send me wonderful letters…one of my favorite things to do is share Kennedy Space Center with all of you…so many visit, go to KSC and we get to hang out…even sometimes see a launch…now there are launches every week, sometimes 2 a week, if you come to the Orlando area…you will have a great chance to see a launch…families and friends have been visiting from Norway, Brazil, South Africa…it’s always so much fun, a chance to give a little something back for all the kindness I receive…


The Milky Way sparkles like fireworks in this desert view of our galaxy (photo)
By Miguel Claro <https://www.space.com/author/miguel-claro> published 2 days ago
It's full of stars.



A panoramic image of single shots taken in a pristine magical sky, features the arch of Milky Way shining bright above Lut desert, in Kerman, Iran, few minutes before the nautical twilight starts. (Image credit: Miguel Claro)
Miguel Claro <http://www.miguelclaro.com/wp/> is a professional photographer, author and science communicator based in Lisbon, Portugal, who creates spectacular images of the night sky. As a European Southern Observatory Photo Ambassador <http://www.miguelclaro.com/wp/?page_id=4461> and member of The World At Night <http://twanight.org/newTWAN/index.asp> and the official astrophotographer of the Dark Sky Alqueva Reserve <http://www.darkskyalqueva.com/en>, he specializes in astronomical "Skyscapes" that connect both Earth and the night sky. Join Miguel here as he takes us through his new image, "Zodiacal Light with Mars and Jupiter in the Pristine Sky of Lut Desert in Iran."This is a panoramic image of single shots taken in a pristine magical sky.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Sees Mars in a New Light.



NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover uses SHERLOC – one of several instruments on the end of its robotic arm – to study rocks in an area nicknamed “Skinner Ridge.”
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
A cutting-edge instrument called SHERLOC, which hunts for molecules potentially related to ancient life, played a key role in a recent study.

In its first 400 days on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance rover may have found a diverse collection of organics – carbon-based molecules considered the building blocks of life – thanks to SHERLOC <https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/the-detective-aboard-nasas-perseverance-rover>, an innovative instrument on the rover’s robotic arm. Scientists with the mission, which is searching for evidence that the planet supported microbial life billions of years ago, aren’t sure whether biological or geological sources formed the molecules, but they’re intrigued.

Short for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, SHERLOC helps scientists decide whether a sample is worth collecting. This makes the instrument essential to the Mars Sample Return <https://mars.nasa.gov/msr/> campaign. The Perseverance rover is the first step of the campaign, a joint effort by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) that seeks to bring scientifically selected samples back from Mars to be studied on Earth with lab equipment far more complex than could be sent to the Red Planet. The samples would need to be brought back to confirm the presence of organics.









Gorgeous photos show SpaceX's next Starship Super Heavy booster on the launch pad
By Mike Wall <https://www.space.com/author/mike-wall> published 2 days ago
SpaceX is prepping Booster 9 for flight.


SpaceX lowers the Booster 9 Starship Super Heavy prototype onto the orbital launch mount at its Starbase site in South Texas. The company posted this photo to Twitter on July 21, 2023. (Image credit: SpaceX via Twitter)
 A rocket glory shot for you.

SpaceX just rolled Booster 9, the latest iteration of its Starship <https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-super-heavy.html> Super Heavy vehicle, out to the launch pad <https://www.space.com/starship-super-heavy-rollout-photos-july-2023> at its Starbase facility in South Texas to gear up for a planned test flight.

On Friday (July 21), SpaceX <https://www.space.com/18853-spacex.html> posted two photos on Twitter <https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1682482786782040065> that capture the very end of that process.

Russia's Luna-25 moon lander reaches launch site for August 11 liftoff 

By Leonard David <https://www.space.com/author/leonard-david> published 7 days ago

Another lunar lander is headed for the moon's south pole.


Russia's Luna-25 moon lander ready for launch next month. (Image credit: NPO Lavochkina)
Russia's long-awaited and delayed robotic re-introduction to moon exploration, Luna-25, is at its launch site!

On July 10, the Luna-25 spacecraft was sent to the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the country's far east and delivered to its takeoff location for a scheduled sendoff this August. In a statement from Russian aerospace company NPO Lavochkina, builder of the moon <https://www.space.com/55-earths-moon-formation-composition-and-orbit.html> lander and part of the Roscosmos State Corporation <https://www.space.com/22724-roscosmos.html>, "work has been completed on the creation of the Luna-25 spacecraft."

"It is planned that the device will be the first in the world to carry out a soft landing on the surface of the moon in the south pole region <https://www.space.com/moon-artemis-3-landing-site-nasa-shadowcam> and conduct contact studies of the lunar soil for the presence of ice at the landing site," the statement adds.



Super-close supernova captivates record number of citizen scientists
By Robert Lea <https://www.space.com/author/robert-lea> published 8 days ago
"It is really incredible what this citizen science network can do. This was the closest supernova of the last decade, and observers took full advantage of the special occasion."


An illustration of a supernova explosion (Image credit: Leslie Proudfit)
The closest cosmic explosion to Earth in the last 10 years became a record breaker for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI). 

The supernova, designated (SN) 2023ixf <https://www.space.com/new-supernova-photo-pinwheel-galaxy-noirlab>, was first spotted on May 19, 2023, by Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki. Just an hour after this manifestation, amateur astronomers taking part in SETI and Unistellar's Cosmic Cataclysms program were on the case. 

A record number of observers, including citizen scientists in the form of amateur astronomers, came together to collect data from a supernova that took place in the Pinwheel Galaxy <https://www.space.com/pinwheel-galaxy-m101-new-supernova-astronomers-excited>, a spiral galaxy located approximately 21 million light-years from Earth. 



India tries for successful Moon mission with second lander launch
July 14, 2023 <https://spaceflightnow.com/2023/07/> Will Robinson-Smith <https://spaceflightnow.com/author/will-the-robinson-smith/>

India’s Chandrayaan-3 moon mission lifts off from the Sriharikota space center. Image: ISRO.
For the third time in its space program, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has launched a mission to the Moon. India is hoping for a more successful outcome this time around after a failed attempt to land safely on the Moon back in 2019.

This new mission is called “Chandrayaan-3” and lifted off at 2:35 p.m. IST (5:05 a.m. EDT). The name of the mission comes from the Sanskrit words “Chandra- Moon, Yaan-vehicle,” according to the ISRO. It launched aboard the Launch Vehicle Mark 3 (LVM3) from the Second Launch Pad at SDSC-SHAR in Sriharikota, India.



Webb Detects Water Vapor in Rocky Planet-Forming Zone
 <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/stsci-01h5mxgsckgd0sxc4v6mbmakdy.jpg>
This artist’s concept portrays the star PDS 70 and its inner protoplanetary disk. New measurements by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have detected water vapor at distances of less than 100 million miles from the star – the region where rocky, terrestrial planets may be forming. This is the first detection of water in the terrestrial region of a disk already known to host two or more protoplanets, one of which is shown at upper right.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI)
Download the full-resolution version from the Space Telescope Science Institute. <https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2023/130/01H5MXEYH94ECTWRFDE1WP33ZW>
The finding shows that a water reservoir is available for terrestrial planets that might be coalescing there.
Water is essential for life as we know it. However, scientists debate how it reached the Earth and whether the same processes could seed rocky exoplanets orbiting distant stars. New insights may come from the planetary system PDS 70, located 370 light-years away. The star hosts both an inner disk and outer disk of gas and dust, separated by a 5 billion-mile-wide (8 billion kilometer) gap, and within that gap are two known gas-giant planets.

New measurements by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) have detected water vapor in the system’s inner disk, at distances of less than 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) from the star – the region where rocky, terrestrial planets may be forming. (The Earth orbits 93 million miles from our Sun.) This is the first detection of water in the terrestrial region of a disk already known to host two or more protoplanets <https://webbtelescope.org/glossary.html#h3-CK-d1c4524f-1efa-42cc-917b-7d4475239383>.

“We’ve seen water in other disks, but not so close in and in a system where planets are currently assembling. We couldn’t make this type of measurement before Webb,” said lead author Giulia Perotti of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany.

“This discovery is extremely exciting, as it probes the region where rocky planets similar to Earth typically form,” added MPIA director Thomas Henning, a co-author on the paper. Henning is co-principal investigator of Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), which made the detection, and the principal investigator of the MINDS (MIRI Mid-Infrared Disk Survey) program that took the data.

A Steamy Environment for Forming Planets

PDS 70 is a K-type star, cooler than our Sun, and is estimated to be 5.4 million years old. This is relatively old in terms of stars with planet-forming disks, which made the discovery of water vapor surprising.

Over time, the gas and dust content of planet-forming disks declines. Either the central star’s radiation and winds blow out such material, or the dust grows into larger objects that eventually form planets. As previous studies failed to detect water in the central regions of similarly aged disks, astronomers suspected it might not survive the harsh stellar radiation, leading to a dry environment for the formation of any rocky planets.

Astronomers haven’t yet detected any planets forming within the inner disk of PDS 70. However, they do see the raw materials for building rocky worlds in the form of silicates. The detection of water vapor implies that if rocky planets are forming there, they will have water available to them from the beginning.

“We find a relatively high amount of small dust grains. Combined with our detection of water vapor, the inner disk is a very exciting place,” said co-author Rens Waters of Radboud University in The Netherlands.




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