A little while ago, SpaceX’s Dragon 2 spacecraft docked with the International Space Station’s Harmony module completing the first part of its CRS-31 mission. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and his colleague Nick Hague monitored the operation but the cargo spacecraft, which blasted off almost 13 hours earlier, completed the maneuvers automatically without any problem.
A little while ago, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft concluded its Crew-8, or SpaceX Crew-8, mission for NASA by landing without problems. On board were astronauts Matthew Dominick, Mike Barratt, and Jeanette Epps and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, who had reached the International Space Station on March 5, 2024, and were part of Expedition 70/71/72. The four of them finished the 8th regular crewed mission of SpaceX in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Florida. The Crew Dragon departed the Station about 34 hours earlier.
Shortly after the splashdown, SpaceX’s “MV Megan” ship went to recover the Endeavour and its crew to transport them to the coast. The astronauts also received their first medical checkup aboard the ship.
An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” reports the results of a study on the region of very hot plasma that surrounds a black hole called the corona. A group of researchers used detections conducted with the IXPE space telescope to obtain precise information on the corona of 12 black holes ranging from stellar-mass ones to supermassive black holes. For the first time, it was possible to observe the geometry of the corona of black holes and its relationship with the accretion disk that surrounds them. The geometry seems very similar regardless of the size of the black holes but this is still a tentative result.
A few hours ago, NASA’s Europa Clipper space probe blasted off atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center. After just over an hour, it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage and set off on its route that will take it into deep space, to Europa, Jupiter’s moon with an icy surface that hides an ocean of liquid water to understand if it’s habitable.
An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the discovery of the triple system cataloged as TIC 290061484, the most compact of its kind found so far. A team of researchers coordinated by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center used observations with NASA’s TESS space telescope, applied a machine learning technique, and involved citizen scientists who participated in the Planet Hunters project in a new project called the Visual Survey Group. This rare triple system will help astronomers better understand the processes of formation and evolution of multiple systems.
