Article of the week

Do you know about NASA - CHIPS Mission. I bet you dont...

CHIPS (Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer) is an American (NASA) astrophysics spacecraft that was launched by a Delta 2 rocket from Vandenberg AFB at 00:45 UT on 13 January 2003. The 60 kg, triaxially-stabilized spacecraft has a spectrograph covering the 9-26 nm wavelength band at a resolution of 0.1 nm, scanning the entire sky in chunks of 5 degree x 27 degree segments during each orbit. The targets are the hot and diffuse nebulae at about a million degrees temperature. The band covers several strong emission lines. Launch Date:   2003-01 13     Launch Vehicle:  Delta II Launch Site:   Vandenberg AFB, United States Mass:   60 kg  CHIPS carried out an all-sky survey of the diffuse background at wavelengths from  90  to 260 Å at a spectral resolution between about λ / 150 and λ / 40, and a spatial resolution of 5 to 15 degrees. CHIPS detected diffuse emission near 170 Å, but this turned out to be a...
0

Jupiters moon (Europa) exploding water in space, says astronomers

Jupiter’s moon Europa might once again be exploding water into space, which refers to the idea that an ocean is hiding beneath its thick shell of ice, researchers reported September 26 at a news conference. 

Plumes erupting from the moon’s surface, silhouetted against background light from Jupiter, appear in several images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in early 2014. The eruptions also appear to be intermittent, appearing in only three out of 10 images. Material hovering over the moon’s southern hemisphere and absorbing ultraviolet light coming from Jupiter made these plumes visible to us.

“The plumes are a sign that we may be able to explore the ocean without a need to drill through unknown miles of ice,” said William Sparks, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “We presume it to be water or ice particles because that’s what Europa is made of and those molecules do absorb at the wavelengths we observed,”. In the future, we might be able to built spacecraft which could plow through the plumes and sample the water to better understand its chemistry and look for by-products of life.

Whatever it may be, but if its water then it may show us a new place to live in.

Comments

Post a Comment