2015

The Falcon 9 rocket blasting off with 11 ORBCOMM satellites (Image courtesy SpaceX. All rights reserved)

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The new version of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral in its return to the activity after the June 28, 2015 mishap. It was carrying 11 satellites ORBCOMM, part of the OG2 mission. A secondary objective was the new controlled landing test of the rocket’s first stage, which for the first time had to reach the mainland. The mission was a triumph with the success in the landing and the satellites deployment.

The Progress MS-1 space cargo ship blasting off atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket (Image NASA TV)

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A little while ago the Progress MS-1 spaceship blasted off atop a Soyuz 2.1a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After about ten minutes it separated successfully from the rocket’s last stage and and got in route. This is the latest evolution of the Progress space freighter which began the resupply mission to the International Space Station also referred to as Progress 62. The spacecraft was launched on the route that requires a two-day journey.

The area called "Bridger Basin" that includes the target for the Mars Rover Curiosity's research called "Big Sky" and "Greenhorn" (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

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The Mars Rover Curiosity has been finding many rocks rich in silica, a compound formed from silicon and oxygen, in an area of ​​Mount Sharp on Mars that it’s been exploring for some months. A few months ago the discovery of that kind of rocks was a surprise, so much so that mission managers changed the Curiosity’s research schedule to perform further analyzes. That decision led to the discovery of other silica-rick rocks and to further studies to try to explain their presence.

Galaxy NGC 1068 seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. In the circle there's an artist concept of the doughnut of gas and dust surrounding the supermassive black hole at its center (ImageNASA/JPL-Caltech)

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society letters” describes a research on the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy NGC 1068. An international team of astronomers led by Andrea Marinucci of the Roma Tre University in Italy used ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s NuSTAR space telescopes to study the giant doughnut-shaped structure around the supermassive black hole.

Image showing the observations of the supernova SN Refsdal. In the uppermost circle there's the possible observation happened in 1998, in the middle circe the 2015 observation and in the lowermost circle the 2014 observation

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The Hubble Space Telescope allowed us to observe a supernova just during the explosion. This is due to the fact that its appearance was foretold. For the first time, the use of complex calculations related to the theory of relativity made it possible to capture the supernova nicknamed Refsdal when it exploded. It’s the first time such a feat was achieved by exploiting the gravitational lensing of that galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5 + 2223, which bent the light from that star showing the explosion several times in different areas of the sky.