Astronomers find first direct evidence of gravitational wave background

Scientists have heard the "chorus" of gravitational waves emanating throughout the universe for the very first time, and it's louder than they expected.

The new discovery was made by scientists using the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav).

To reach their findings, they closely observed stars called pulsars that essentially act as cosmic metronomes, allowing scientists to measure a great deal of space phenomena.

Crucially, the new findings constitute the first direct evidence for the gravitational wave background, which only existed in theories until now.

"This is just the beginning"

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ESA’s Euclid telescope is on the move!

The near $1 billion telescope is currently being transported along public roads towards the Cape and it’s ultimate destination at SLC-40.
Source: @_mgde_

Europe's space telescope to target universe's dark mysteries

After a month-long journey through space, Euclid will join its fellow space telescope James Webb at a stable hovering spot around 1.5 million kilometers (more than 930,000 miles) from Earth called the second Lagrangian Point.

From there, Euclid will chart the largest-ever map of the universe, encompassing up to two billion galaxies across more than a third of the sky.

By capturing light that has taken 10 billion years to reach Earth, the map will also offer a new view of the 13.8-billion-year-old universe's history.

Scientists hope to use this information to address what the Euclid project manager Giuseppe Racca calls a "cosmic embarrassment": that 95 percent of the universe remains unknown to humanity.

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Computer simulation provides 4,000 scenarios for a climate turnaround

Using an extensive computer simulation of the climate, the global economy and the global energy system, researchers at Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) have been analyzing different ways of mitigating climate change, together with colleagues from the US, China, Ireland, Finland and Sweden.

CO2 emissions from human activities account for about 42 billion tons per year. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has calculated that only another 300 to 600 billion tons can be added, from 2020 onward, or else the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5° Celsius will be virtually unattainable.

"It could be a close shave, because 70% of our scenarios predict that the world will exceed the 1.5°C mark in the next five years."

[Note: We have anomalies which have exceeded the mark this year but the averages haven't.]

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Falcon 9 went vertical at SLC-40 early this morning ahead of today’s targeted launch of the ESA Euclid mission; weather is currently 90% favorable for liftoff at 15:12 UTC → http://spacex.com/launches

NASA's MOXIE instrument extracts double the expected oxygen in new test

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has far surpassed its previous record for extracting oxygen from the Red Planet's thin atmosphere.

The rover's Mars Oxygen in Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) achieved the impressive new milestone earlier this month.

In a new test, NASA was able to double the MOXIE experiment's previous oxygen production level. The new milestone could prove to be a crucial step toward eventual human exploration of the Red Planet.

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Success! Euclid is on its way to L2 where it will begin calibrating and eventually collecting data. Meanwhile it will start turning on and checking its instruments.

We will continue with coverage of the science involved here so stay tuned!

Check out:
• Launch and landing videos
• Photo of the team
• Interesting detail
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Euclid's journey to L2

In the next four weeks, Euclid will travel towards Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, an equilibrium point of the Sun-Earth system located 1.5 million km from Earth (about four times the Earth-Moon distance) in the direction opposite from the Sun. There, Euclid will be manoeuvred into orbit around this point and mission controllers will start the activities to verify all the functions of the spacecraft, check out the telescope and finally turn on the scientific instruments.

Scientists and engineers will then be engaged in an intense two-month phase of testing and calibrating Euclid’s scientific instruments and preparing for routine observations. Over six years Euclid will survey one third of the sky with unprecedented accuracy and sensitivity.

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Maximising science

To achieve its ambitious scientific goal, Euclid is equipped with a 1.2 m reflecting telescope that feeds the two innovative scientific instruments: VIS, which takes very sharp images of galaxies over a large fraction of the sky, and NISP, which can analyse galaxies’ infrared light by wavelength to accurately establish their distance.

The spacecraft and communications will be controlled from ESOC. To cope with the vast amounts of data Euclid will acquire, ESA’s Estrack network of deep space antennas has been upgraded. These data will be analysed by the Euclid Consortium – a group of more than 2000 scientists from more than 300 institutes across Europe, the US, Canada and Japan.

As the mission progresses, Euclid’s treasure trove of data will be released with yearly cadence and will be accessible to the global scientific community.

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Thruster burn complete🔥! ESA Euclid is on its way to Lagrange point 2

It'll take a month to get there. #DarkUniverse, we'll soon be turning on the lights
Source: @esaoperations

NASA Seals Volunteers Into Isolated Habitat For Year-Long Experiment

On June 25, 2023, a crew of four volunteers entered a simulated Martian habitat, from which they will not emerge for over a year. Their mission: to learn more about the logistics – and the human psychology – of living long-term on another planet, without ever leaving the ground.

The mission is called CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) and is the first of three planned simulations between now and 2026, each of which will teach scientists progressively more about what it takes for long-duration human spaceflight to succeed.

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