A little while ago the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft ended its CRS-10 (Cargo Resupply Service 10) mission for NASA splashing down smoothly in the Pacific Ocean a little more than 420 kilometers (about 326 miles) off the coast of California. The Dragon left the International Space Station a few hours before.
An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” describes a study of the IRAS 04191+1523 system, consisting of two low-mass newborn stars. A team of astronomers led by Jeong-Eun Lee of Kyung Hee University, Korea, used the ALMA radio telescope to figure out how pairs of little stars form. The discovery that the two stars’ rotation axes are misaligned led them to conclude that a turbulence caused the fragmentation of the gas cloud from which they were born.
An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” describes a study of the star Betelgeuse conducted using the ALMA radio telescope. This extraordinary instrument studied for the first time the surface of a star to get the highest resolution images ever obtained of Betelgeuse. This made it possible to obtain new data about its atmosphere and its asymmetries that will help to better understand red supergiants in the phases preceding a supernova.
An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes the discovery of the first pair of supermassive black holes orbiting each other at the center of the galaxy hosting them, called 0402+379. A team of astronomers used the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope to locate the two black holes about 750 million light years from Earth. Their combined mass is about 15 billion times the Sun’s.
NASA’s Mars Rover Opportunity is working in an ancient valley on the edge of Endeavour Endeavour’s rim called “Perseverance Valley” examining rocks and driving around the area to carry out a survey of the place. According to plans, once these tasks are completed Opportunity will go down to the lower part of the valley but the maneuver will have to be even more cautious than expected due to a problem encountered in one of the wheels’ steering system.
