2024

The SpaDeX satellites blasting off atop a PSLV-CA rocket (Photo courtesy ISRO)

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It was night in India when the two satellites of the SpaDeX (Space Docking Experiment) mission were launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Center atop a PSLV-CA rocket. The two satellites separated from the rocket’s final stage and entered a circular orbit at an altitude of about 475 kilometers. Another 24 experiments were launched on the same mission, but the SpaDeX satellites are the most important because they will serve to test the docking technologies necessary for the progress of the Indian space program.

The Australe Scopuli region on Mars (Image ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO))

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ESA has published reprocessed images of the Australe Scopuli region of Mars captured by its Mars Express space probe’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The area is covered in what appears to be snow but is actually carbon dioxide ice and dust. Despite the differences, the view is reminiscent of a Christmas landscape, especially the kind common at altitudes where it normally snows on Earth. It’s still a significant day because, on December 25, 2003, Mars Express entered Mars’ orbit.

Artist's concept of the most distant blazar (Image U.S. National Science Foundation/NSF National Radio Astronomy Observatory, B. Saxton)

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Two articles – one published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” and one in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” – report different aspects of a study of the blazar cataloged as VLASS J041009.05−013919.88, or simply J0410−0139, the most distant found so far. Two teams of researchers used several space and ground-based telescopes and some radio telescopes to obtain detections in various electromagnetic bands.

The Dragon cargo spacecraft as seen by astronaut Don Pettit while departing the International Space Station to end its CRS-31 mission

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A few hours ago, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft ended its CRS-31 (Cargo Resupply Service 31) mission for NASA splashing down smoothly off the Florida Coast. The Dragon left the International Space Station about 24 hours earlier. For SpaceX, this was the 11th mission of the 2nd contract with NASA to transport supplies to the Station with the new version of the Dragon cargo spacecraft.

Shortly after the splashdown, SpaceX’s “MV Megan” recovery ship went to retrieve the Dragon to transport it to the coast. The cargo brought back to Earth will be delivered to NASA within a few hours. The Dragon spacecraft reached the International Space Station on November 5, 2024.

The NGC 346 cluster with 10 circled stars surrounded by protoplanetary disks (Image NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, O. C. Jones (UK ATC), G. De Marchi (ESTEC), M. Meixner (USRA))

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the results of the study of a group of protoplanetary disks with an age of up to 30 million years, even 10 times older than current models of planet formation predict. A team led by Guido De Marchi of ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre used observations conducted with the James Webb space telescope of the cluster NGC 346, in the Small Magellanic Cloud. That region is characterized by a limited amount of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, just like the early universe. This study confirms that in those conditions, protoplanetary disks can last much longer than astronomers thought.