April 2018

Magnetic Field Map (Image courtesy MPI for Astrophysics, All rights reserved)

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An article published in the journal “Classical and Quantum Gravity” describes the reconstruction of the map of magnetic fields generated after the Big Bang in the “cosmic neighborhood”. A team of researchers used an algorithm called BORG (Bayesian Origin Reconstruction from Galaxies), developed to work on large-scale structures, to data from the 2M++ galaxy catalog to calculate how these magnetic fields should look like today within a radius of 300 million of light years around the Earth.

Icarus (MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1)

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An article published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” describes the observation of the most distant star and therefore also the oldest observed so far, nicknamed Icarus, about 9 billion light years from Earth. A team of researchers exploited a double gravitational lensing effect that magnified the image of the star, which was called MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1 but for that reason it’s simply called Lensed Star 1 (LS1). That effect made it become bright enough to be detectable by the Hubble Space Telescope.

A Dragon cargo spacecraft starting its CRS-14 mission blasting off atop a Falcon 9 rocket (Photo NASA)

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A few hours ago the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft blasted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in its CRS-14 (Cargo Resupply Service 14) mission, also referred to as SPX-14. After just over ten minutes it separated successfully from the rocket’s last stage and went en route. This is the 14th mission for the Dragon spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station with various cargoes and then return to Earth, again with various cargoes.

The Tiangong 1 space laboratory being prepared for launch (Photo courtesy Dong/Color China Photo/AP Images. All rights reserved)

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Confirmation arrived that the Chinese space laboratory Tiangong 1 has fallen back to Earth. To be precise, at about 0.16 AM UTC it was destroyed over the Pacific Ocean. At the moment there are no information about possible damage caused by its fall but it’s possible that some pieces haven’t disintegrated.

Launched on September 29, 2011, the Tiangong 1 space laboratory was built to test a number of technologies needed to develop the Chinese space program. They concern docking systems, including automatic one, and the habitat inside it with the instruments needed to perform scientific experiments.