NASA

Artist's concept of a Voyager space probe (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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Five articles published in the journal “Nature Astronomy” report various detections carried out by NASA’s Voyager 2 space probe in interstellar space. A number of teams of researchers examined the data collected by the five instruments still in use with each article dedicated to the data from a single instrument. Taken together, they help to understand interstellar space outside the heliosphere, the bubble in which the influence of the Sun is felt. One year after coming out of that bubble, Voyager 2 sent a lot of data on plasma and cosmic rays showing the differences compared to those within the heliosphere.

The Cygnus Alan Bean cargo spacecraft captured by Canadarm2 robotic arm (Image NASA TV)

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Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, launched last Saturday, November 2, has just reached the International Space Station and was captured by the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Astronaut Jessica Meir, assisted by her colleague Christina Koch, will soon begin the slow maneuver to move the Cygnus until it docks with the Station’s Unity module after about two hours.

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus cargo spacecraft blasting off atop an Antares rocket (Image NASA TV)

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A little while ago Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft blasted off atop an Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), part of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) on Wallops Island. After about nine minutes it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage went en route to its destination. This is its 12th official mission, called NG-12 or CRS NG-12, to transport supplies to the International Space Station for NASA.

Artist's concept of a planetary collision in the BD +20 307 system (Image NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook)

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports a study of the BD +20 307 binary system in which the presence of dust too warm to be the equivalent of the Kuiper belt was detected, therefore they have been interpreted as the remains of a planetary collision. A team of researchers led by Maggie Thompson of the University of California at Santa Cruz used the SOFIA flying telescope to detect infrared emissions, which increased over time.

The L-1011 Stargazer aircraft taking off with the ICON satellite (Photo NASA/Frank Michaux)

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A few hours ago the ICON (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) satellite was launched using a Pegasus XL rocket by Northrop Grumman brought to an altitude of about 11,900 meters by an L-1011 airplane, also by Northrop Grumman, modified for this purpose. After a little more than 11 minutes, ICON was brought into a low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 575 kilometers, where the solar panels regularly deployed and sent the first signals.