NASA

If we want to live on the Moon we need oxygen and NASA already knows how to extract it: with a giant mirror

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Goodbye, Mars, the Moon has returned make it a priority. Really, except for an Elon Musk obsessed with terraform the red planetthe rest of the countries and even NASA had something between their minds: returning to the Moon. And come back in a big way, too, laying the foundations to create a settlement. For this we need oxygen, and NASA has just taken a great leap for humanity in the project to harvest oxygen from the lunar regolith. And all thanks to a giant mirror. In short. The Moon is a mine. Not only does it have enormous potential to obtain energy through photovoltaics, but it also has a huge amount of resources in its soil. The satellite is covered in ‘lunar dust’, also known as regolith, and part of its composition is oxygen. With current technology you can’t separate the chaff from the grain, but that’s where NASA’s carbothermal oxygen production reactor, or CaRD, project comes into play. The mirror | Photo: NASA The prototype installed on Earth is a reactor that has a huge precision mirror that concentrates a beam of sunlight on a reactor, heating its interior to temperatures of about 1,800ºC. The enormous amount of energy generated causes a carbothermic reaction which produces, among other elements, oxygen. It is the evolution of the high-power laser that NASA development in 2023, but unlike that tool that needs an enormous amount of energy, and other solutions based on electrolysismirrors are nourished by the sunlight they can concentrate. Regolith. According to According to the US agency, the technology “has the potential to produce several times its own weight in oxygen each year and in an automated manner, which will allow for a sustained human presence and the creation of a lunar economy.” And that lunar dust not only has oxygen. The regolith is composed of O2, but also metals. If the different components can be separated, we can obtain other resources and, in addition, the resulting dust as waste can be used as construction material for make bricks and roads. In fact, there are projects to ‘dope the regolith with bacteria to be able to cultivate directly in the lunar soil. The ESA approach. These advances by NASA occur while the rugged steps of the Artemis program which plans to take humans to lunar orbit this year, with future missions in which we will set foot on the satellite again. But as we said, the ESA also wants its piece of the pieand relies on electrolysis to separate metals from oxygen. Regolith and urine cement: the best cement | Photo: ESA The problem, as we said before, is the enormous amount of energy necessary to carry out the process. This molten salt electrolysis heats the regolith to 950ºC with calcium chloride to achieve the same objective that NASA has: release oxygen and separate it from iron and aluminum. And it is also collaborating with NASA to ensure that human presence in the medium term, experimenting with a mixture between human urine and regolith to create cement. Everyone wants a piece of cheese. But the one who has plans as ambitious as those of the United States with the Moon is… China. The Asian giant is completing phases of the space race dizzying speedwith launches every two by three and some very aggressive plans. Before 2030 it wants to send its first astronauts to orbit the satellite, with a manned moon landing scheduled for 2029/2030. Furthermore, together with Russia, they are building the International Lunar Research Station that they want to have in operation by 2030, complete by 2035 with thousands of scientists on board and with a nuclear reactor as a heart to get stable energy. When the enormous problem posed by the get oxygen stably on the Moona giant step will have been taken in international ambitions to place a long-term base on the satellite. That is, furthermore, SpaceX’s new plan. Elon Musk confirmed a few days ago that Mars was no longer the priority because quick results are needed, and the Moon is a much more favorable scenario. There are many eyes focused on the same objective, one we haven’t stepped on since 1972. Images | NASA, ESA In Xataka | Faced with the need to look for weapons against superbacteria, science has opted to send viruses into space

If the question is whether there was life on Mars, NASA has a new explanation: it depends

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NASA’s Curiosity rover has been shedding light on Mars since August 2011, making authentic discoveries on its surface, in your clouds and of course, about its potential habitability. And if its younger brother Perseverance found a few months ago “the clearest sign of life we ​​have seen on Mars”, one of Curiosity’s latest discoveries is not so clear. What Curiosity found. Since 2012, Curiosity has been exploring Gale Crater, a place where there was a lake billions of years ago. In March 2025, while the rover’s integrated laboratory was analyzing a clay rock there, they found the presence of decan, undecan and dodecan. What’s that? Alkanes, that is, long chain hydrocarbons formed by hydrogen and carbon atoms. Why is it important. Because Curiosity’s discovery is the largest organic compounds ever found on the red planet and its size is such that its existence can hardly be explained by simple chemistry. On Earth, these types of hydrocarbons are usually fragments of fatty acids produced by living beings. However, on Mars, its origin is not so clear: it is reasonable to think of a biological origin, but with current evidence there is no confirmation. Biology or geology? The degradation of fatty acids causes the appearance of these hydrocarbons one way or another, but their presence does not imply that they necessarily come from a living organism. In fact, on Earth they can also be generated by geological processes. In short: detecting organic molecules on Mars does not mean finding life. Correlation does not imply causation. A “reasonable” hypothesis. So they analyzed the known non-biological sources of these organic molecules looking for an explanation for these quantities found. Since none of them fully explained this abundance, in this recent study published in Astrobiology that the research includes have raised a “reasonable” hypothesis: that living beings could have formed them. Among the known sources are molecules from meteorites that crash into the surface of Mars, cosmic dust, geological chemistry such as the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis plausible on early Mars or ultraviolet radiation, which in addition to destroying organic components can also form them, are some of the candidates. The method. To reach these conclusions, the team of scientists combined laboratory experiments, mathematical models and data from the rover, which allowed them to go back in time 80 million years to estimate how much organic matter existed at the beginning, before cosmic radiation destroyed it. The amount they were able to reconstruct far exceeds what unknown non-biological processes can generate. Of course, it does not affirm that there was life, nor are there fossils or biomarkers of course. In fact, their conclusion is clear: more studies are needed to conclude on the absence or presence of life on Mars. In Xataka | There are those who believe that 50 years ago we found life on Mars (and then accidentally destroyed it) In Xataka | China is getting closer to surpassing NASA in its Martian mission. And just invited other countries to join Cover | NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA just classified the 2024 incident at its highest level

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When NASA launched the Commercial Crew programdid so with a clear idea: to partner with private companies that would design and operate their own ships under fixed-price contracts. Boeing and SpaceX have been part of this scheme since its origin, with the aim of guaranteeing regular manned access to low orbit. The Starliner manned test flight in June 2024 was to complete the technical validation process of the Boeing capsule before its certification, but anomalies detected during the mission completely altered the initial plan. Now, when officially classifying This test as a “Type A Incident”, NASA places what happened at the highest level of its incident scale and recognizes that the magnitude of the episode goes beyond a simple technical setback. What happened in 2024. On June 5, 2024, the CST-100 Starliner took off heading to the International Space Station on its first crewed flight with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board. The mission was initially planned to last between eight and fourteen days as a comprehensive test of the system. However, during the approach They detected helium leaks and failures in the thrustersand NASA explained that a loss of maneuverability occurred as the crew approached the station, although control was regained before docking. The stay ended up extending up to 93 days and, after reviewing the flight data and performing tests on the ground, The space agency decided that the vehicle would return in September 2024 without the astronautswhich finally returned to Earth in March 2025 aboard SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission. A devastating report. The independent investigation team, formed in February 2025, examined the technical, organizational and cultural factors that contributed to the problems with the test flight. According to their conclusions, there was a combination of hardware failures, gaps in the qualification processes, leadership errors and cultural dysfunctions that generated risk conditions incompatible with the safety standards of the agency’s manned flight program. NASA has indicated that it accepts this document as the final report and that work to identify the technical root cause continues. What does “Type A mishap” (Type A Incident) mean? NASA uses this category as the highest level within its incident system. Let us remember that this definition includes cases such as damages exceeding 2 million dollars, the loss of control or destruction of a vehicle or the loss of human life. In the case of the Starliner flight, there were no injuries and, according to the agency, the mission regained control before docking, but there was a loss of maneuverability during the approach and associated financial damages. The designation recognizes that there was potential for a major mishap and that the conditions generated cannot be dismissed as a simple technical mismatch. SpaceX Dragon 2 NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was explicit in addressing the cultural dimension of the problem. “It is decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight,” he declared at the press conference. The head of the agency maintained that the classification as “Type A mishap” seeks to “make things clear” and ensure that what happened is recorded appropriately for future learning. He also admitted that allowing the program itself to initially investigate itself was “incompatible with NASA’s safety culture,” a practice that, he explained, it has decided to correct. Boeing’s response. In a statement released after the report’s publicationthe company stated that it remains “committed to NASA’s vision of having two commercial crew providers” and thanked the agency for the research. Boeing maintains that in the 18 months since the test flight it has made progress in corrective actions to address the technical challenges detected and has driven cultural changes within the team. Images | POT In Xataka | NASA’s megarocket no longer leaks: Artemis 2 passes its vital test and clears the path to the Moon

NASA has seen that it accelerates and slows down to the rhythm of the seasons

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On the icy and remote islands of Svalbard archipelago In Norway, the Earth hides ice colossi with behavior that fascinates science. And they are not frozen static masses, but rather incredibly dynamic frozen rivers that have been under the watchful eye of NASA satellites. Something really important because he has been able to capture an amazing phenomenon on the Stonebreen Glacier: a flow pattern that simulates a seasonal “beat”, and that even has a very characteristic red color. A transformation phenomenon. The recent article published by the NASA Earth Observatoryreveals how this glacier transforms during the warmer months. The data show a brutal choreography in which the ice moved at speeds of up to 2,590 meters per year in the summer of 2020. Although the real question here is what exactly makes this glacier “beat” with such force and how we have managed to measure it with such precision. Melt water. Glaciologist Chad Greene, a key researcher in this discovery, explains that the secret of this heartbeat lies in the water. During the summer, melt water penetrates to the base of the glacier and this water dramatically increases the hydrostatic pressure, acting as a powerful lubricant between the immense mass of ice and the bedrock. In this way, by losing friction, the glacier slides towards the ocean at dizzying speeds. Scientists call this phenomenon “upwelling.” While the vast majority of the planet’s glaciers flow at a more or less constant speed, only 1% of global glaciers experience this type of cycle of rapid advance and subsequent dormancy. Coincidentally, Svalbard is one of the places in the world where this anomalous behavior is most common. ITS_LIVE. Tracking the movement of a glacier millimeter by millimeter is not a simple task at all, and to achieve this, scientists have used this technology, which is a monumental initiative. developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This system acts as a large, high-resolution global radar and to this end, it automatically processes millions of pairs of optical and radar images obtained by satellite constellations such as NASA’s Landsat and ESA’s Sentinel using a powerful algorithm called autoRIFT. A long process. It is not something that can be done in two days of analysis, but to achieve this result it has been necessary to process more than 36 million pairs of images collected since 1982. By processing this data, the tools are capable of generating maps where the colors reveal the movement: intense red to identify fast flows and pink for slower progress. A fragile giant. The science behind Stonebreen has been fascinating researchers for years, since previous studies already warned about the precarious situation of the glacier. In 2017, Strozzi’s team documented how the glacier underwent significant frontal destabilization, and after a slow retreat that lasted until 2011, it experienced a strong acceleration driven by the loss of thickness and, possibly, the intrusion of unusually warm ocean water. The problem is that part of the glacier is anchored below sea level for six kilometers from its front. This particularity makes it extremely vulnerable both to melting and to erosion by the ocean itself in front of it. Its relevance. In a context of climate emergency like the one we live in, understanding these beats is vital. As Noël’s team has already demonstrated, the low altitude of the glaciers in Svalbard is directly correlated with a very high variability in ice mass loss, which can be a disaster as sea levels rise. That is why these projects are very important, since they allow almost real-time research, not only of the wonderful seasonal “heartbeat” of nature, but it is our best predictive tool to calculate exactly how the melt will behave and, consequently, how it will affect the entire ecosystem. Images | Vince Gx In Xataka | So much ice has melted in Greenland that plankton has grown by 40%. It’s not good news

NASA had been refusing to allow its astronauts to carry iPhones for decades. For Artemis II you have made a historic decision

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Jared Isaacman, NASA administrator, has announced an important change for astronauts: the crew will be allowed to carry their personal smartphones. The objective is simple, to allow both photographs and videos recorded during space missions to be shared. what has happened. The publication has been informal and outside the official NASA press page. Via X, Isaacman has revealed that the crew of Crew-12 and Artemis II you will be able to fly with “modern smartphones”. “NASA astronauts will soon fly with the latest smartphones, starting with Crew-12 and Artemis II. We are giving our crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and videos with the world. Equally important, we are challenging legacy processes and enabling modern hardware for spaceflight on an accelerated timeline. This operational urgency will serve NASA well as we strive to achieve the highest value science and research in orbit and on the lunar surface. This is a small step in the right direction.” Without detailing models or limitations, it makes it quite clear that soon we will see more than one iPhone flying over a ship far from our planet. What was happening until now. Historically, NASA has only allowed Nikon cameras (a Japanese company with which it has had an agreement for more than a decade) to be brought on board. Initially with some of their DSLRs, and recently with the Nikon Z9, the latest generation mirrorless authorized for Artemis. Because. For decades, NASA has operated under an extremely strict security framework for any object boarding a manned spacecraft. The devices must not interfere with critical systems, their batteries have to meet very specific requirements to minimize the risk of fire, they cannot contain materials that can fragment in microgravity and they must pass certification processes associated with an exact hardware model. For the first time, the agency will allow the use of mobile phones on a manned mission certified by its own procedures, marking a significant shift in how NASA evaluates and accepts commercial technology on board. When. The departure of Artemis II, after some delayis scheduled for the month of March. After several dress rehearsals, NASA is not prepared to return to the Moon, because of old ghosts like the complexity of liquid hydrogen. It will not be the first time that a modern mobile phone travels to space, but it will be the first time that its use is authorized within a manned mission managed directly by NASA. Until now, mobile phones and tablets had flown on SpaceX missions under more flexible operating frameworks, serving as a background to evaluate their behavior during the mission. In Xataka | When the United States decided to go to the Moon, it did so no matter what the cost. And that included 60% of all its chips

Critical dress rehearsal leak forces NASA to delay Artemis II

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If we learned something with Artemis I in 2022 is that liquid hydrogen is possibly the biggest enemy of NASA’s patience in its missions. And in the last few hours the US space agency has confirmed what many of us feared after a difficult weekend: the launch of Artemis IIthe mission that must take astronauts around the Moon, officially delayed until March. An accumulation of errors. These days NASA had on its agenda to do a ‘general rehearsal’ for the launch of this new mission that aims to test its equipment to take the final leap: put man on Mars in the future. And everything seemed to be ready, with the astronauts in strict quarantine since January 23. But in the end, Florida’s weather reminded us again that it reigns supreme with freezing temperatures and strong winds that forced these plans to stop. Some specific limits. A priori, these adverse conditions should not be a problem for cutting-edge operation, but the reality is that the SLS rocket has very strict operating limits: it cannot safely load fuel if the temperature drops below 4.4ºC for more than 30 minutes. Something that eliminated the launch window that It was scheduled between February 6 and 7moving hope to February 8. The coup de grace. But if the weather was already a big problem, in the last few hours the last major inconvenience has arrived while retrying to refuel under more favorable conditions. It was none other than a leak of liquid hydrogen that was detected at the umbilical interface of the rear service mast while the test was being carried out. Something that has forced everything that was being done to stop, and logically to make decisions that are very hard. Safety first. Although the agency managed to complete many of the test objectives, the hydrogen concentration exceeded safety limits, forcing the rocket to be drained. Administrator Jared Isaacman has been blunt– Crew and vehicle safety is the top priority, so no launch window will be forced. A ‘dejà vu’. For fans of the Artemis show, this sounds painfully familiar. The situation is almost a carbon copy of what was experienced with Artemis I in 2022and although at that time it was not the weather, there were recurring technical failures such as propellant leaks and problems with the pressure fans that caused multiple cancellations of the general rehearsal. Because of those technical problems, they were forced to return the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building for much more thorough checks, pushing the April launch to the end of August. Now the similarity lies in the complexity of liquid hydrogen, an ultracold and extremely difficult to contain fuel that remains the Achilles heel of these missions. What will happen now? For now, with all these problems behind us, the launch window that lasted until February 11 has been completely ruled out. This forces us to look for a new date that NASA aims for sometime in March 2026although without specifying a specific day. To do this, they must still analyze data and above all have a successful general rehearsal to validate the safety of the operation. As far as the astronauts are concerned, it no longer makes sense for them to remain quarantined at the Kennedy Space Center, so they will return to Houston until there is a new firm launch date. Images | POT In Xataka | Claude begins to seem unstoppable: NASA has already used him to plan routes for the Perseverance rover on Mars

NASA has already used it to plan routes for the Perseverance rover on Mars

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Over the last few years, artificial intelligence has crept into our routines as a practical tool: generate images, summarize, analyze, program. But in recent times it is crossing a more demanding frontier, that of systems that make decisions with physical consequences in the real world. And that also includes space. NASA JPL just announced that the Perseverance rover has completed the first drives on another world whose route was planned by AI. In terms of planetary exploration, we are not talking about a great leap in distance, but about something more delicate: proving that a technology designed to interpret information and propose actions can begin to be integrated, with supervision, into the way in which other worlds are explored. What exactly did the AI ​​do. The test materialized in two drives carried out on December 8 and 10, 2025, both inside the crater Jezero. In those two days, the team incorporated AI models with visual capacity for a very specific task: proposing waypointsthat is, the intermediate locations on which the driving plan is then built and sent to the rover. This type of planning is normally done manually by specialists who analyze images and data of the terrain. On this occasion, AI generated these waypoints so that Perseverance could safely navigate a complex area, under the leadership of the rover’s own operations center at JPL and in collaboration with Anthropic. A basic limitation. Mars is far away, and you can’t drive a rover like a remote-controlled car. JPL itself remembers that the red planet is, on average, about 225 million kilometers from Earth, a distance that generates delays in communication and makes real-time control unfeasible. For this reason, the missions operate with a different logic: the terrain is analyzed, routes are drawn in sections and instructions are sent through the Deep Space Network. The rover executes them and the result is confirmed with a delay. It is a well-proven workflow, but it is also slow, especially when the goal is to advance through complex areas without putting the vehicle at risk. The milestone figures. JPL details that, in the first demonstration on December 8, 2025, Perseverance advanced about 210 meters. In the second, on December 10, he traveled around 246 meters. In total, just over four hundred meters in two days. It is not an epic feat nor does it pretend to be. What is relevant is that these routes were based on a different scheme than usual: the planning was built from the aforementioned waypoints and the rover then executed the plan on terrain that requires precision because it does not forgive mistakes. A demonstration that AI continues to gain ground. “This demonstration shows how far our capabilities have advanced and expands how we will explore other worlds,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. And he finished with an idea that serves as an editorial guide for the entire experiment: “Autonomous technologies like this can help missions operate more efficiently, respond to challenging terrain, and increase scientific performance as distance from Earth increases.” For now, the demo is limited, but it’s hard not to read it as a warning. Autonomy is no longer discussed only in laboratories, it is also being tested on Mars. In context. We are not talking about any AI. Claude, Anthropic models, have been gaining ground as a tool for programming tasks for some time, becoming a reference option, even threatening ChatGPT. And that reputation has not stayed in the developer community: according to Mark Gurman (Bloomberg), Apple would be beginning to integrate it in a structured way into its AI strategy for Xcode; and, according to Insider, Meta has incorporated Claude into “Devmate”, an internal debugging-oriented tool. Images | NASA | Anthropic In Xataka | Anthropic has rewritten his 25,000-word “Constitution” for Claude. It is the manual for how AI should behave

In 2024 we feared that the asteroid YR4 would impact the Earth. Now NASA believes the Moon is threatened

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For a few weeks at the beginning of 2025, the name 2024 YR4 became an absolute protagonist among the main institutions around the planet. It was no wonder, since this object, with an estimated size between 40 and 60 metersreached the level 3 on the Torino scalea milestone that we have not seen for a long time and that implies a probability of collision greater than 1% with the capacity to produce devastating local damage. We are saved. After this fear, science has managed to reach the conclusion that the Earth is safe now. However, the story of 2024 YR4 is not over, since the latest models suggest that, although it will avoid us, there is a non-negligible probability that it will end up crashing into the Moon. How we knew. Initially, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) held his breath in early 2025. The first observations showed a worrying scenario for the year 2032 with this possible impact, but the moment more attention began to be paid to this object it was seen that it was not going to end up on Earth. The key to being able to breathe a little calmer again lies in the ‘shoulders’ of the James Webb which began making observations in May 2025. The space telescope made it possible to refine the asteroid’s orbit with a 20% precision improvement, confirming that there is no risk of impact against our planetnor an orbital alteration of the Moon that could affect us secondarily. But by closing a door, the JWST opened a fascinating and destructive window: the probability that 2024 YR4 will impact the Moon has risen from 3.8% to 4.3%. The lunar judgment. According to studies recently published on arXiv, the key date is December 22, 2032. That day is where there is about a 1 in 23 chance that we will see a violent spectacle on the lunar surface with an impact that would release an energy of 6.5 megatons of TNT. This is something very relevant, since this great energy would generate a crater approximately one kilometer in diameter and the ejection of 100 million kilos of lunar debris with a cloud of material equivalent to the weight of about 20,000 elephants. From Earth. Logically, this impact, although it does not occur on the planet, the truth is that it will have important consequences and not exactly physical ones, but rather a visual phenomenon. The debris that will be ejected from the Moon could enter the Earth’s atmosphere some time later, generating an unprecedented meteor shower caused by a secondary impact. The use of technology. Over time, the European Space Agency has also validated this data, placing the size of the object more specifically between 53 and 67 meters and confirming the 4% probability of having an impact on the moon. Although logically we also have a 96% chance that it will completely pass from the Moon. But this asteroid has had a very positive point: it has vindicated the need to improve space detection tools. And right now these objects are hiding in the “blind spot” of the sun’s glare, although with this one we were lucky that the ATLAS system in Chile managed to detect it. A future mission. Given this limitation that we have, the ESA has seen it necessary to activate the NEOMIR missionsince if it had already been active, it would have detected the asteroid a month earlier, offering vital reaction time if the threat had been against the Earth and not against the Moon. And now what. For now, we have to wait. The asteroid has moved away in this case and will not be in an optimal position to make an observation again until 2028. It will be then that astronomers will be able to refine this 4.3% probability and tell us definitively whether we will spend Christmas 2032 looking at the Moon to see how a new crater forms live. Images | Mike Petrucci NASA Hubble Space Telescope In Xataka | Japan has lost a five-ton satellite in the most unusual way imaginable: “it fell” during launch

What are the chances that Artemis II will take off for the Moon on February 7 and everything that NASA must validate before

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Since the Apollo 17 mission, in December 1972, humans have not returned to the Moon. It’s been 53 years since that last manned trip to the satellite, but that could soon change with Artemis II. Of course, it will not be a return to plant a flag and walk on the surface, as Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt did. To set foot on the Moon again (if the program continues as planned) We will still have to wait for Artemis III. What Artemis II proposes is something else: a manned lunar flybya large-scale validation mission and a return to Earth after testing a long list of critical systems. Technology has changed since the 1970s, and that makes this mission something special: not only because of what it represents on a symbolic level, but because of what it implies on a technical level. Artemis II is, in practice, the final exam before the moon landing. And hence the inevitable question: when is it released? As is often the case in the space sector, it is not enough to set a date on the calendar. The window depends on a combination of operational, logistical and meteorological factors, and the room for maneuver is more limited than it seems. Artemis II plays everything in very specific windows The first concept that should be clear is that of the launch window: the time interval during which a specific mission can take off. In the case of Artemis II, NASA has already published a calendar with 16 opportunities distributed between February and April. The first starts on Friday, February 6 at 9:41 p.m. (Eastern time in the United States), which in peninsular Spain is translated as Saturday the 7th at 03:41 in the morning. Artemis II release window schedule for early 2026 And those dates are not set at random. Artemis II requires millimeter orbital choreography: a lunar flyby trajectory, a translunar injection with narrow margins, a free return taking advantage of the satellite’s gravity, and a reentry profile that prioritizes safety and fault tolerance. With such a level of demand, it would be strange to have a broad and flexible calendar. In practice, these missions always move within fairly limited launch opportunities. Artemis II technical calendar: opening of each window, local and UTC times, and duration of each launch opportunity But the orbital schedule is not the only bottleneck. The launch complex itself imposes relevant restrictions. At 39B, the same one from which the Saturn Vthe spherical tanks used to store cryogenic propellant allow a limited number of attempts. Liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen are loaded into the core stage and upper stage on the same day of launch. And if the takeoff is canceled, you cannot try it again the next day as if nothing had happened: you have to wait. at least 48 hourss to try the process again. Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and Christina Hammock Koch, next to the Orion capsule at the Kennedy Space Center (August 8, 2023) If today there is talk of a near launch it is because the mission has already been closing important milestones. The SLS rocket and the Orion capsule are already on the launch pad. They arrived last January 17 after a slow transfer, of about 12 hours, from the Vehicle Assembly Building. From there, the teams began the tasks of connection and integration with the terrestrial facilities, a job that was as inconspicuous as it was decisive so that the next steps could progress smoothly. The big dot marked in red on the calendar is the “Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR)“, the general fuel loading rehearsal. It is, basically, a complete simulation of the launch day. The team positions itself as if it were the real takeoff and executes the filling procedure with the same level of detail: some 2.7 million liters of cryogenic propellantsbetween liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, following the schedule that will be used in the final launch. Of course, the RS-25 engines will not start: the test will stop before that phase. NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at Kennedy Space Center, Florida NASA has explained in a recent statement who plans to take this test on Saturday, January 31. He also assures that the preparations are going as expected and that they have even managed to advance some tasks. But here experience weighs: the WDR of Artemis I, initially planned for April 2022ran into difficulties and was not completed successfully until June. That delay ended up directly affecting the launch schedule, and is a reminder that, at this point, every detail counts. Therefore, at this point, the scenario still allows for several twists. If any problems appear during WDR, NASA could choose to postpone it, repeat it, or even organize additional rehearsals. There is also a possibility that, after completing the test, it will decide to move the SLS and Orion back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to perform additional work before returning to the ramp. If the WDR is completed successfully, the next step will be a flight readiness review in early February. At that meeting, the management team will evaluate the availability of all systems involved: flight hardware, ground infrastructure, and launch, flight, and recovery equipment. Only after passing that review will an official date be announced. With all this on the table, the first slot on February 6 (already February 7 on the peninsula due to the time difference) appears as the first real great opportunity. QBut just because it exists doesn’t mean it will be used.. Even with everything aligned, NASA could decide to jump directly into one of the next planned gaps in the schedule. The good news is that once the WDR is run, we will have a much clearer map of what can happen. And there is still the factor that has broken perfect plans the most times: time. In a launch of this type, the weather is not a nuance, it is a filter. The rules … Read more

NASA has just shared some impressive images of the Helix Nebula like we have never seen it before.

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If there were a nebula popularity contest, that of the Propeller It would be at the top: it is one of the brightest and closest to Earth, located about 650 light years from the Solar System, in the constellation of Aquarius. However, the fact that it was discovered more than two centuries ago and its resemblance to the “Eye of Sauron” have made it one of the most photographed in history. Over the years the Hubble space telescope has captured some of the most iconic images of the Helix Nebula, like the one you can see just below these lines, but the new images that NASA has just published of the James Webb They are simply on another level. If you like astronomy and want to renew your desktop background, here are some great candidates. One of the most iconic images of the Helix Nebula, made by Hubble. POT The reason is not so much because of the nebula itself, it is that the difference in sensitivity and sharpness is abysmal compared to the veteran Hubble and the retired Spitzer, as you can see in this video. The key is the size of their “eye” (the mirror) and the type of light they detect. Thus, while Hubble observes mainly in the visible and ultraviolet, with a 2.4-meter mirror, Spitzer was a pioneer of the infrared with a much smaller mirror, 0.85 meters, which limited its resolution. The James Webb combines the best of both approaches: with a 6.5-meter mirror and extraordinary infrared sensitivity, it achieves unprecedented resolution in that range of the spectrum and is capable of passing through interstellar dust. In image quality it plays in another league. The Webb Space Telescope photographs the Helix Nebula in spectacular detail The correct term to refer to this nebula is “planetary nebula”, which does not clarify very well what we have in front of us: they are not formed from planets, but from stars like the Sun. When their life is running out, these stars emit large amounts of gas in an envelope that expands in a grandiose but “brief” phenomenon (in cosmo, not terrestrial units). It is, in a nutshell, like glimpse the possible final destiny of the Sun and our planetary system. This new image highlights comet-like knots, strong stellar winds, and layers of gas released by a dying star as it interacts with its environment. Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) The image obtained with Webb’s NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) that you see just above shows a kind of pillars that look like comets with elongated tails, tracing the circumference of the internal region of an expanding gas envelope, explains NASA. The image shows “scorching winds of hot, fast-moving gas from the dying star colliding with slower, cooler layers of dust and gas ejected earlier in its life, sculpting the nebula’s extraordinary structure.” Webb’s near-infrared vision highlights these knots against the ethereal image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and thanks to the higher resolution, the focus is much sharper than ever. Additionally, this infrared vision makes it possible to clearly visualize the transition between the hotter and colder gas as the envelope expands. The Helix Nebula from the Visible and Infrared Telescope for Astronomy located on Earth (left) in front of Webb’s field of view (right). Image: ESO, VISTA, NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Emerson (ESO); Acknowledgment: CASU Outside the Webb’s frame, you can see the white dwarf in the center of the nebula (its nucleus), which emits very strong radiation. This energy works like a kind of flashlight that illuminates the surrounding gas in different chromatic layers depending on the temperature: the blue area is the closest and hottest, the coldest is red at the edge, where the gas mixes with dust. In the middle, the intermediate area in yellow, where atoms begin to join together to form molecules. The most striking thing on a technical level is that to date, Spitzer images only hinted at the formation of these molecules, but the resolution of the Webb allows us to see precisely those dark and protected “pockets” between the bright orange and red tones: it is where complex molecules are being manufactured. This interaction is essential insofar as it constitutes the raw material from which some day new planets could form in other star systems. In Xataka | NASA has published 96 fantastic posters of the universe that you can download for free in HD In Xataka | The first images from NASA’s new satellite offer us a completely different view of the oceans Images | POT

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