February 2021

Mars seen by Tianwen 1 (Photo courtesy CNSA/CASC)

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Yesterday, the Tianwen 1 mission reached the planet Mars, and the spacecraft which includes a space probe, a lander, and a rover entered its orbit correctly. Launched on July 23, 2020, it’s an ambitious mission for China with plans to explore Mars in various ways after successfully starting various missions to the Moon. The main spacecraft engined burned for about 15 minutes to perform the braking maneuver needed to enter an orbit that will reach up to 400 kilometers of altitude. The landing timeline and location in the Utopia Planitia region of the lander and rover will be decided later for a phase of the mission that could take place in May or June.

Infographic of the Hope space probe's journey

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Yesterday, the Arab space probe Hope, or Al Amal, correctly entered the planet Mars orbit. Launched on July 20, 2020, Hope kept its six engines burning for 27 minutes to slow down to the speed needed to enter orbit, an automated maneuver that required absolute precision to prevent the spacecraft from going over Mars or crashing to the Martian surface. The lights of the tallest skyscraper in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, were switched on to celebrate the success of the first Arab mission.

Sagittarius A East, or simply Sgr A East

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An article to be published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports a study on supernova remnants cataloged as Sagittarius A East, or simply Sgr A East. A team of researchers used observations conducted with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the VLA radio telescope to study those remnants and concluded that they were generated by a rare type of supernova, the type Iax. The results can help astronomers understand the different ways a white dwarf can explode.

Artist's concept of a gas filament disrupted by a star

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” reports the detection of a hydrogen filament about three trillion kilometers long in the cosmic neighborhood. A team of researchers led by Yuanming Wang, a doctoral candidate at the Australian University of Sydney, and Dr. Artem Tuntsov of Manly Astrophysics, used the ASKAP radio telescope to discover this ultra-low-temperature gas just 13 light-years from the Earth. In recent years, a lot of gas that forms the baryonic matter considered to be missing has been discovered in filaments that unite different galaxies, in this case it’s inside the Milky Way and in astronomical terms very close.

Artist's concet of the pulsar PSR J2039-5617 and its companion (Image Knispel/Clark/Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics/NASA GSFC)

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Two articles published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” report different aspects of the study that led to the identification of the rare characteristics of a gamma-ray source that turned out to be a pulsar, cataloged as PSR J2039-5617. Two teams with various researchers in common used data collected by the Fermi Space Telescope and other instruments, and relied on the help of citizen scientists participating in the Einstein@Home project to study the pulsar. It’s a rare type of pulsar because it belongs to the millisecond class and also to the so-called redback class, which has a red dwarf as a companion.