July 2021

Nauka/MLM blasting off atop a Proton-M rocket (Image NASA TV)

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Yesterday, the Russian Nauka module, formally called the Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM), was launched atop a Proton-M rocket from the Kazakh cosmodrome of Baikonur. After about nine minutes it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage and set off on its course. Its journey will take about 8 days to reach the International Space Station on July 29, where it will become part of the Russian section many years behind schedule. The launch included the European Robotic Arm (ERA) developed under the auspices of ESA, a robotic arm that will be used for operations in the area of ​​the Station’s Russian section.

The New Shepard rocket blasting off (Image courtesy Blue Origin)

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A little while ago, Blue Origin conducted the first crewed flight, which included owner Jeff Bezos, of its New Shepard rocket. It blasted off from the company’s spaceport in Van Horn, Texas, and after about 3 minutes the spacecraft named “RSS First Step” separated from the rocket and reached an altitude of a little more than 106 kilometers, more than the 100 kilometers of the Kármán Line that officially marks the boundary with space. Both the single-stage rocket and the spacecraft are reusable, so both landed at the end of the flight.

The giant comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein)

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The Las Cumbres Observatory has captured a new image of the giant comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) that shows its activity despite its considerable distance given that it’s far beyond Saturn’s orbit. The information collected also by looking into archive images such as the ones that allowed to identify it in an image from 2014 is useful to better understand its characteristics. In particular, initial estimates suggested that its diameter was at least 100 kilometers, three times the largest known comet, but these are estimates based on the absence of a coma. C/2014 UN271 will remain far from the Sun, arriving close to Saturn’s orbit at the beginning of 2031, so it can only be admired with telescopes but it could still be very interesting because it probably comes from the Oort cloud.

The galaxies NGC 1300, and NGC 1087, NGC 3627 (top), NGC 4254 and NGC 4303 (bottom)

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ESO has published some images created during the PHANGS project using the MUSE instrument on the VLT. These are images of galaxies in the nearby universe in which researchers from the PHANGS project tried to identify stellar nurseries. The aim is to get answers to the questions that still exist about star formation. For this reason, the investigation conducted with the MUSE instrument is a part of a larger project that includes other parallel investigations conducted with the ALMA radio telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.

The central area of ​​the Milky Way with SgrA*

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An article accepted for publication in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” reports a study on Sagittarius A*, or SgrA*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, observed during a flare after it swallowed gas and dust in large quantities. A team of researchers used observations conducted simultaneously in 2019 with the GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s VLT interferometer and with the Spitzer, NuSTAR, and Chandra space telescopes to obtain infrared and X-ray data of the flare. This made it possible to create a detailed model of that type of flare.