December 2022
A Space Station holiday
Friday, December 30: Traveling for the holidays can be a challenge, but what if you're traveling at 17,400 mph above Earth? Clearly, the Christmas and New Year's holiday spirit is not lost in space in this photo taken by Expedition 68 astronauts on the International Space Station.
This photo shows the astronauts inside the Cupola of the station, an observation "deck" with seven massive windows through which the Earth shines a brilliant blue in the distance. Here, the astronauts are dressed in their Christmas finery, complete with mock Christmas sweater and Santa hats! The astronauts actually celebrate two Christmases on the space station, the Dec. 25 holiday and Russian Orthodox Christmas on Jan. 6.
Pictured here are, from NASA, "Expedition 68 Flight Engineers (from left) Josh Cassada, Nicole Mann, and Frank Rubio, all from NASA, and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)." - Tariq Malik
Starry silent night
Thursday, December 27: This stunning view shows the Gemini North telescope (second from left) and five other observatories atop the volcano Mauna Kea in Hawaii, with a long-exposure capturing the trails left by the stars as they moved across the night sky.
Gemini North is part of the International Gemini Observatory operated by the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab. It and the other observatories shown here are based at Mauna Kea because of the volcano summit's height (2.6 miles above sea level) which offers a view above most tropical clouds and humidity, allowing for sharper views and less atmospheric distortion during observations.-- Tariq Malik
Astronaut spots home for Christmas
Wednesday, December 27: Astronaut Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency snapped this image of Tokyo, Japan on Dec. 25, 2022, a view of his home country for Christmas.
"[We] passed over Japan a little while ago on Christmas night," Wakata wrote on Twitter while sharing the photo on Christmas, according to a Google translation from Japanese. "The area around Tokyo was also very bright and shining. It's a little bit more this year. Let's do our best again this week!"
Wakata is one of seven crewmembers on the space station representing Japan, the United States and Russia. The astronauts see 16 sunrises and sunsets a day as they orbit the Earth. -- Tariq Malik
Nebula? No, a SpaceX rocket!
Tuesday, December 27: What looks like an eerie cloud in deep space is actually something much closer to home: a SpaceX rocket.
This photo shows the spectacular exhaust plume of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as it launched a Japanese lander to the moon on Dec. 11, 2022. The mission launched from SpaceX's pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:38 a.m. EST, creating a dazzling nighttime scene for observers.
This view was captured as the second stage of the rocket was powering toward space, its exhaust creating ripples of wispy trails in the upper regions of Earth's atmosphere. The first stage returned to Earth to make a successful landing. – Tariq Malik
'Fried eggs' on Mars?
Monday, Dec. 26: These strange, dark "fried egg" features on Mars are just one oddity created during winter on the Red Planet.
This image, taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, shows a mix of terrain around a round crater-like feature on Mars, including sweeping dunes and hills. But most striking are the dark features to the right of the crater that scientists have nicknamed "fried eggs."
The features occur near the end of winter on Mars, when the ice begins to thaw and sublimate into atmosphere. That sublimation, where the ice turns directly to gas instead of melting into liquid first, can create the "fried egg" features as well as other strange sights like "Dalmatian spots," "spiders" and "Swiss cheese" on Mars. – Tariq Malik
NASA astronauts install new solar array
Friday, December 23, 2022: NASA astronaut Josh Cassada is seen in this image during a space walk on Thursday (Dec. 22) as the International Space Station flew above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Namibia.
Cassada and his colleague Frank Rubio installed a new roll-out solar array during the 7 hour and 8 minute spacewalk, which ended at 3:27 p.m. EST (2027 GMT).
The solar array will help increase the space station power generation capability by up to 30% to 215 kilowatts. – Tereza Pultarova
Mars' ice-covered South Pole
Thursday, December 22, 2022: A new image from Europe's Mars Express orbiter reveals ice-covered ridges sprinkled with dust near the Red Planet's South Pole.
The European Space Agency (ESA) released the image on Dec. 22, but the photo was actually taken in May when spring thawing set in in Mars' southern hemisphere. The image captures a crater in the Ultimi Scopuli region where layers of ice interweave with dunes of red Martian regolith.
The image was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Imaging camera onboard the Mars Express. – Tereza Pultarova
Northern hemisphere's shortest day of the year is here
Wednesday, December 21, 2022: A weather satellite takes a photo of Earth on the shortest day of the year on the Northern Hemisphere.
The image, taken by the GOES East satellite of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows the planet as it approaches the winter solstice, the start of the astronomical winter. The winter solstice is the moment when the Earth's north pole reaches its maximum tilt away from the sun, resulting in the shortest day on the Northern and longest day in the Southern Hemisphere.
The 2021 Northern Hemisphere's winter solstice occurs on Wednesday, Dec. 21, at 4:48 EST (2148 GMT).
The axis of the Earth is tilted by 23,5 degrees toward the plane in which the planet orbits the sun. As a result of this tilt, the sun's rays reach the planet at a varying angle throughout the year, causing the differing lengths of the day and night at different latitudes. From tomorrow onward, the length of the day in the Northern Hemisphere will slowly start to creep up again. On Monday, March 20, the day and night will have the same duration all over the world. – Tereza Pultarova
NASA's Insight lander's farewell photo
Tuesday, December 20, 2022: NASA's InSight Marsquake detecting lander InSight may have sent its last ever photo from the red planet's surface.
NASA released this image on Monday (Dec. 19), saying that no communication has been received from the lander since Thursday (Dec. 15). InSight's death has been expected for many months now as the lander has been struggling with lack of energy due to its solar panels being covered with a thick layer of Martian dust.
InSight, which touched down on Mars in 2018, was built to monitor tectonic activity on the planet for one Martian year (about two Earth years). The mission has exceeded its designed lifetime and kept going for over four years. Still, the scientific community seems to grieve the lander's "passing" as the announcement on Twitter elicited an avalanche of emotional memes. – Tereza Pultarova
Ice-berg protecting giant Antarctic glacier from sliding into the sea is melting fast
Monday, December 19, 2022: Iceberg B-22A, which protects the so-called Doomsday Glacier in Antarctica from sliding into the sea, has been quickly breaking apart in recent months, satellite images reveal.
This time lapse sequence taken by the European Sentinel-3 satellite between Nov. 30 and Dec. 17, shows a steady stream of icy bits drifting away from the iceberg, which broke off from the tongue of the Doomsday Glacier (officially known as the Thwaites Ice Shelf) in 2002.
The Thwaites Ice Shelf is one of the largest glaciers in West Antarctica but also one of the most rapidly thawing.
The B-22A iceberg has played an important role in protecting the Thwaites Ice Shelf against warmer sea water, which would speed up its melting. Scientists worry that a disintegration of the Thwaites Ice Shelf would lead to a significant acceleration of global sea level rise. – Tereza Pultarova
This is where Perseverance will stash its Mars samples
Friday, December 16, 2022: NASA's Mars rover Perseverance is scouting the location where it will stash its precious Mars samples for a future retrieval mission that will deliver them to Earth.
The photo was taken by Perseverance's Mastcam-Z camera on Dec. 14, the rover's 646th Martian day, or sole, on the planet.
The colors of the image were digitally enhanced for a better viewer experience and don't represent the actual colors of the scene as it would appear to a human eye, NASA said in a statement.
The location, where this extra-terrestrial sample depot is being built, is called Three Forks, and over the course of the next month, Perseverance is expected to deposit a total of 10 sample tubes there. Each of these tubes holds a fragment of Jezero Crater, a site that could harbor traces of past Martian life which Perseverance has been exploring since its landing on the Red Planet in February 2021. – Tereza Pultarova
Coolant leaks from Russian crew spacecraft docked to space station
Thursday, December 15, 2022: Frozen flakes of coolant spraying from the Russian Soyuz crew capsule that is currently docked to the International Space Station can be seen in this video sequence captured by an onboard camera.
The leak occurred on Thursday (Dec. 14) and only stopped when all the coolant escaped from the spacecraft's tanks. The incident is considered a serious safety issue as Soyuz is an escape vehicle for astronauts and cosmonauts if anything goes wrong at the space station.
Several astronauts commented on the situation on Twitter expressing concern.
"Serious coolant leak from the Russian Soyuz crew capsule docked to the Space Station. Not good, lots of fast decision-making going on," Canadian astronaut Chris Hatfield tweeted.
His NASA colleague Scott Kelly said: "Coolant leak on Russian Soyuz docked to the ISS. Serious situation."
The affected spacecraft brought to the space station cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and NASA astronaut Frank Rubio in September. Prokopyev and Petelin were just preparing for a spacewalk when the leak started.
It is not clear yet, what the accident means for the current space station crew. In addition to the three crew members who traveled to the orbital outpost on the affected Soyuz, three NASA astronauts and one Japanese astronaut that arrived on SpaceX's Crew Dragon are also currently onboard. The Soyuz was supposed to take Prokopyev, Petelin and Rubio back to Earth in March. – Tereza Pultarova
Weather satellite sees European rocket blast off with its 'brother' aboard
Wednesday, December 14, 2022: This image is not a piece of modern art but a photograph of cloud-covered central America taken by a weather forecasting satellite. The tiny bright streak toward the bottom of the image is a trail of Europe's Ariane 5 rocket shooting toward the sky with three satellites aboard.
The image was taken by the GOES-16 weather satellite of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Ariane 5 rocket, which can be seen blasting off the launch pad in the image, was carrying Europe's new-generation weather satellite Meteosat Third Generation, which will soon join GOES-16 in the geostationary orbit some 22,000 miles (36,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface. The satellite will help European meteorologists considerably improve their weather forecasts and better predict extreme weather events, such as summer storms, that hit the continent more frequently and with greater force than in the past because of progressing climate change. – Tereza Pultarova
Ariane 5 ready to launch Europe's new high-tech weather satellite
Tuesday, December 13, 2022: Europe's Ariane 5 rocket has been rolled out to the launch pad in Kourou, French Guiana, ahead of its launch that will deliver a new cutting-edge weather satellite into orbit.
If all goes to plan, the rocket will lift-off on Tuesday 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT) and lift Europe's new Meteosat Third Generation satellite (MTG-1) into geostationary orbit.
MTG-1 is the first in a planned fleet of three spacecraft that will replace Europe's aging family of geostationary weather spacecraft. The new satellites will constantly monitor the entire European and African continent as well as parts of Asia and the Middle East, and will enable European weather forecasters to better predict severe weather events. – Tereza Pultarova
Orion returns!
Friday, December 9, 2022: NASA's Orion spaceship was retrieved from the Pacific Ocean on Sunday (Dec. 11) shortly after it splashed down off the coast of California after its triumphant debut lunar round trip.
The capsule, which flew uncrewed to the moon and back as part of the Artemis 1 mission, was recovered by the USS Portland transport dock ship from the waters of Baja California and is currently being transported to San Diego, from where it will continue to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a truck.
The capsule will be subjected to extensive tests after its 25-day spaceflight to help NASA prepare for the Artemis 2 mission, which will take a human crew for a similar lunar round trip in 2024 or 2025.
The Artemis 1 mission launched atop NASA's Space Launch System rocket on Nov. 16 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The capsule suffered only a few minor technical problems during its journey, which allowed it to break the record for the farthest distance from Earth ever achieved by a human-rated spacecraft. – Tereza Pultarova
Snoopy enjoying weightless fun inside Orion space capsule
Friday, December 9, 2022: Snoopy the dog, clad in an orange space suit, can be seen in this image sequence floating weightlessly inside the Orion space capsule.
Snoopy is one of five crew members of the current Artemis 1 mission, which is testing the Orion spaceship prior to a future flight with humans. Commander Moonikin Campos, a figurine fitted with sensors to measure parameters of the space environment inside the capsule, sits in his seat wearing a similar orange space suit as Snoopy. Also in the capsule are two dummy torsos called Helga and Zohar, and a Shaun the Sheep toy. The crew has an artificially intelligent assistant, the Callisto demonstration (in the middle of the control panel), which combines features of Amazon's digital assistant Alexa and the Webex video-conferencing software.
Orion is finishing its ground-breaking lunar roundtrip and will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California on Sunday (Dec. 11). The capsule has performed with only minor glitches during its debut flight so we can likely expect the crewed Artemis 2 mission about two years from now. – Tereza Pultarova
Astronomers track Orion as it begins journey back home
Thursday, December 8, 2022: The Italy-based virtual telescope managed to photograph the Orion spaceship as it commenced its journey back home.
Orion was about 237,000 miles (382,000 kilometers) away from Earth, about as far as the moon, when the image was taken on Wednesday (Dec. 7). The imaging operation was further complicated by the fact that the moon was full at that time and shining brightly only 28 degrees away from the spacecraft.
Orion appears as a tiny little dot at the center of the image, highlighted with an arrow, while the stars dotting the surrounding universe appear as short lines. The telescope tracked the moving capsule during a 60-second period, which is why the capsule appears like a dot while the static stars look like lines.
The telescope, located near Rome, Italy, previously photographed Orion on Nov. 27, when the capsule was approaching its farthest distance from Earth. – Tereza Pultarova
50 years since Apollo 17
Wednesday, December 7, 2022: 50 years ago today, the final Apollo mission, Apollo 17, launched to the moon. The crew, commander Gene Cernan, lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt, and command module pilot Ronald Evan, took the above image of Earth while speeding away from the planet on their way to its natural satellite.
The Apollo 17 mission culminated with Cernan and Schmitt descending onto the moon's surface in humankind's final lunar landing to date.
According to the original caption released with the photograph, the Apollo 17 mission followed a unique trajectory, which enabled astronauts for the first time to directly view and photograph Earth's South Pole. -- Tereza Pultarova
Moonikin Campos rests inside Orion capsule during lunar round-trip
Tuesday, December 6, 2022: NASA's dummy Moonikin Campos is resting inside the Orion spaceship during the Artemis 1 lunar roundtrip in a new image released by NASA.
The doll, strapped into the commander seat of the Orion crew capsule, is wearing a real space suit designed for future moon-bound astronauts. Named after NASA electrical engineer Arturo Campos who played a key role in rescuing the troubled Artemis 13 mission in 1970, the mannequin is fitted with dozens of sensors designed to assess the effects of the deep space environment on the human body. Unlike astronauts working on the International Space Station, who are protected by Earth's magnetic field, space travelers on lunar round trips will be subject to much higher levels of cosmic radiation, which can be harmful to their health.
The image, captured by an onboard camera inside Orion, also reveals the Callisto technology demonstration developed by Lockheed Martin in collaboration with Amazon and Cisco, which is essentially a space-grade combination of the Alexa digital assistant and the Webex video-conferencing tool.
Moonikin Campos' other companions are two dummy torsos named Helga and Zohar, which are making additional measurements of the environment, and two plush toys, Snoopy and Shaun the Sheep. – Tereza Pultarova
Indonesian volcano spouts lava one year after deadly eruption
Monday, December 5, 2022: The Landsat 9 satellite captured an eruption of the Semeru volcano on Indonesia's Java island on Sunday, Dec. 4.
Landsat 9 is a joint mission by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. The spacecraft, which orbits Earth at the altitude of 440 miles (705 kilometers), spotted the thick plume of volcanic ash rising from the volcano shortly after local authorities raised the warning status to the highest level.
The volcano, one of the most active in the region, started spurting lava at 2:46 am local time, Monday, Dec.5 (2:46 pm EST, on Sunday, Dec.4) . No injuries have been reported so far, according to news reports, but authorities ordered about 2,000 people to evacuate from a 5 mile wide (8 km) zone around the volcano. The eruption began exactly a year after the tragic eruption of December 2021, which killed dozens of people in nearby villages.
Experts estimate that the ash plume from the eruption could have reached altitudes of about 9 miles (15 km). – Tereza Pultarova
New view of Pillars of Creation combines images from two Webb's instruments
Friday, December 2, 2022: By combining images of the iconic Pillars of Creation taken by the two main cameras on the James Webb Space Telescope, scientists created a new view of the imposing dust structure that reveals its complexity in unprecedented detail.
The new image is a composite of previously released photographs taken by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). NIRCam detects the shorter wavelengths of the near infrared light emitted by objects in the universe and is a specialist in finding stars and warmer, denser dust accumulations where stars form. MIRI scans the universe in the longer, mid-infrared wavelengths and excels at detecting cosmic dust.
Images obtained by these two instruments were previously released separately, with the one taken by NIRCam studded with stars, while MIRI's image was a ghostlike cloud of gray.
Adding NIRCam's view to that of MIRI enlivens the deadness of the dusty Pillars with the sparkle of hundreds of stars, big and small. Newborn stars can be seen as tiny reddish dots scattered in the thickest, darkest parts of the dust cloud.
Pillars of Creation, first imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in the mid-1990s, are one of the nearest star-forming regions to Earth. Located in the Eagle Nebula, some 6,500 light-years away, the Pillars serve as a cosmological lab that will help Webb unravel the processes of star creation in a way impossible before. – Tereza Pultarova
Cavorting galaxies
Thursday, 1 December: This dramatic image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope displays a galactic merger of cosmic proportions known to astronomers as II ZW 96.
II ZW 96 lies approximately 500 million light-years from Earth and is located in the constellation Delphinus.
The two bright cores of each galaxy are clearly visible in this image but the swirling arms of each galaxy have been twisted out of shape by the collision. - Daisy Dobrijevic
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