Kategorie: NASA

Astronomers will use the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to improve our understanding of the size and orbit of asteroid 2024 YR4, which has a very small chance of impacting Earth in 2032.
Why is asteroid 2024 YR4 important?
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered on 27 December 2024. As of 10 February 2025, it has an approximately 98% chance of safely passing Earth on 22 December 2032. Astronomers are working to reduce our uncertainty about the asteroid’s orbit and rule out any impact risk, but it will fade from view from Earth in a few months’ time, and a small chance of impact may persist until it becomes visible again in 2028.
The chance of impact is very slim, and the asteroid is small enough that the effects of any potential impact would be on a local scale, but the situation is significant enough to warrant the attention of the global planetary defence community.
What do we hope to learn by studying the asteroid with Webb?
Astronomers around the world are using powerful telescopes to measure the asteroid’s orbit as accurately as possible. But knowing its orbit will only tell us if the asteroid could impact Earth, not how significant an impact could be.
To accurately assess the hazard posed by asteroid 2024 YR4, we need a more precise estimate of its size. Our current estimate, 40—90 m, has not changed much since the asteroid was first discovered in December 2024, despite many follow-up observations.
This is because astronomers are currently limited to studying the asteroid via the visible light it reflects from the Sun. In general, the brighter the asteroid, the larger it is, but this relationship strongly depends on how reflective the asteroid’s surface is. 2024 YR4 could be 40 m across and very reflective, or 90 m across and not very reflective.
It is very important that we improve our size estimate for 2024 YR4: the hazard represented by a 40 m asteroid is very different from that of a 90 m asteroid.
Webb is able to study the infrared light (heat) that 2024 YR4 emits, rather than the visible light it reflects. Infrared observations can offer a much better estimate of an asteroid’s size, as explained in an article recently published in the journal Nature, co-authored by members of ESA’s Planetary Defence Office.
Astronomers will use Webb’s MIRI instrument to get a much more precise estimate of the asteroid’s size. This, in turn, will be used by ESA, NASA, and other organisations to more confidently assess the hazard and determine any necessary response.
Observations made using Webb’s NIRCam instrument will complement MIRI’s thermal data and will also provide additional measurements of the asteroid’s position once it is beyond the reach of Earth-based telescopes.

When will the observations of 2024 YR4 take place?
The first round of observations will take place in early March, just as the asteroid becomes observable by Webb and is at its brightest. The second round of observations will take place in May. Astronomers will use these later observations to study how the temperature of 2024 YR4 has changed as it has moved further away from the Sun and to provide the final measurements of the asteroid’s orbit until it returns into view in 2028.
Who requested the observations?
Each year, a small amount of Webb’s observational time is reserved for ‘Director’s Discretionary Time’. This time is set aside for time-critical or new discoveries made after the annual Webb proposal deadline that cannot wait for the next proposal cycle.
An international team of astronomers from institutions including ESA’s Planetary Defence Office submitted a proposal to use some of this time to study 2024 YR4. This proposal has now been accepted. The total observation time will amount to around four hours. The resulting data will be publicly available.

About Webb
Webb is the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. Under an international collaboration agreement, ESA provided the telescope’s launch service, using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace. ESA also provided the workhorse spectrograph NIRSpec and 50% of the mid-infrared instrument MIRI, which was designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona.
Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Many thanks to the team at ESA’s Planetary Defence Office and to Andrew Rivkin of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Principal Investigator for the James Webb Space Telescope observations of 2024 YR4, for their input to this post.

Source: https://blogs.esa.int/rocketscience/2025/02/10/james-webb-space-telescope-will-study-asteroid-2024-yr4/

NASA’s SPHEREx observatory undergoes testing at BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado, in August 2024. Launching no earlier than Feb. 27, 2025, the mission will make the first all-sky spectroscopic survey in the near-infrared, helping to answer some of the biggest questions in astrophysics. 
Credit: BAE Systems/NASA/JPL-Caltech

Shaped like a megaphone, the upcoming mission will map the entire sky in infrared light to answer big questions about the universe.
Expected to launch no earlier than Thursday, Feb. 27, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, NASA’s SPHEREx space observatory will provide astronomers with a big-picture view of the cosmos like none before. Short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, SPHEREx will map the entire celestial sky in 102 infrared colors, illuminating the origins of our universe, galaxies within it, and life’s key ingredients in our own galaxy. Here are six things to know about the mission.
1. The SPHEREx space telescope will shed light on a cosmic phenomenon called inflation.
In the first billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the big bang, the universe increased in size by a trillion-trillionfold. Called inflation, this nearly instantaneous event took place almost 14 billion years ago, and its effects can be found today in the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe. By mapping the distribution of more than 450 million galaxies, SPHEREx will help scientists improve our understanding of the physics behind this extreme cosmic event.
2. The observatory will measure the collective glow from galaxies near and far.
Scientists have tried to estimate the total light output from all galaxies throughout cosmic history by observing individual galaxies and extrapolating to the trillions of galaxies in the universe. The SPHEREx space telescope will take a different approach and measure the total glow from all galaxies, including galaxies too small, too diffuse, or too distant for other telescopes to easily detect. Combining the measurement of this overall glow with other telescopes’ studies of individual galaxies will give scientists a more complete picture of all the major sources of light in the universe.
3. The mission will search the Milky Way galaxy for essential building blocks of life.
Life as we know it wouldn’t exist without basic ingredients such as water and carbon dioxide. The SPHEREx observatory is designed to find these molecules frozen in interstellar clouds of gas and dust, where stars and planets form. The mission will pinpoint the location and abundance of these icy compounds in our galaxy, giving researchers a better sense of their availability in the raw materials for newly forming planets.

Molecular clouds like this one, called Rho Ophiuchi, are collections of cold gas and dust in space where stars and planets can form. SPHEREx will survey such regions throughout the Milky Way galaxy to measure the abundance of water ice and other frozen molecules.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

4. It adds unique strengths to NASA’s fleet of space telescopes.
Space telescopes like NASA’s Hubble and Webb have zoomed in on many corners of the universe to show us planets, stars, and galaxies in high resolution. But some questions — like how much light do all the galaxies in the universe collectively emit? — can be answered only by looking at the big picture. To that end, the SPHEREx observatory will provide maps that encompass the entire sky. Objects of scientific interest identified by SPHEREx can then be studied in more detail by targeted telescopes like Hubble and Webb.
5. The SPHEREx observatory will make the most colorful all-sky map ever.
The SPHEREx observatory “sees” infrared light. Undetectable to the human eye, this range of wavelengths is ideal for studying stars and galaxies. Using a technique called spectroscopy, the telescope can split the light into its component colors (individual wavelengths), like a prism creates a rainbow from sunlight, in order to measure the distance to cosmic objects and learn about their composition. With SPHEREx’s spectroscopic map in hand, scientists will be able to detect evidence of chemical compounds, like water ice, in our galaxy. They’ll not only measure the total amount of light emitted by galaxies in our universe, but also discern how bright that total glow was at different points in cosmic history. And they’ll chart the 3D locations of hundreds of millions of galaxies to study how inflation influenced the large-scale structure of the universe today.
6. The spacecraft’s cone-shaped design helps it stay cold and see faint objects.
The mission’s infrared telescope and detectors need to operate at around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 210 degrees Celsius). This is partly to prevent them from generating their own infrared glow, which might overwhelm the faint light from cosmic sources. To keep things cold while also simplifying the spacecraft’s design and operational needs, SPHEREx relies on an entirely passive cooling system — no electricity or coolants are used during normal operations. Key to making this feat possible are three cone-shaped photon shields that protect the telescope from the heat of Earth and the Sun, as well as a mirrored structure beneath the shields to direct heat from the instrument out into space. Those photon shields give the spacecraft its distinctive outline.
More About SPHEREx
SPHEREx is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA. The mission principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive.
For more information about the SPHEREx mission visit:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/spherex/

Source: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/6-things-to-know-about-spherex-nasas-newest-space-telescope/

Colossal super-rockets being produced by billionaires Elon Musk snd Jeff Bezos are set to carry … [+]

One of the globe’s top designers of space robots says a new “Golden Age of Space Exploration” – spearheaded by the world’s twin Titans of spaceflight – will speed up astronauts joining robotic scouts in trekking around the Moon and Mars.

Gigantic new rockets now being tested by spacecraft makers Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos – the planet’s leading hyper-billionaires – are setting the stage for human explorers to sojourn across an expanding realm of off-world outposts, says Kris Zacny, Director of the Exploration Technology Group at Honeybee Robotics.

During a virtual roundtable with journalists and space aficionados staged by the Mars Society, Dr. Zacny, who holds a doctorate in geotechnical engineering, with a focus on extraterrestrial drilling and mining, from the University of California Berkeley, sketched out his predictions for the new space epoch being opened by the titanic spacecraft now waiting in the wings.
“Folks who love space are the luckiest people on Earth,” Zacny mused during the meetup, hosted by the Mars Society’s Ashton Zeth.

“We have two of the wealthiest guys in the world prepared to spend their own money to go to space and change how we explore space and make space habitable,” Zacny says.
“They have a combined wealth of 500 billion dollars – half a trillion dollars – and this is their vision.”
“This is a golden age of space exploration.”

A new generation of gigantic rockets will power astronaut flights to an expanding ring of celestial … [+]
SSPL via Getty Images
“Jeff [Bezos] and Elon [Musk] are prepared … to change humanity forever.”
By designing colossal boosters that are rapidly reusable, and could power interplanetary flights ahead, these two Promethean rivals of the NewSpace sector, with their contest to dominate the celestial sphere, could collectively propel expanding waves of spacefarers into the heavens.
“Last week a Falcon 9 launched with [the Moon-bound lander] Firefly,” Zacny recounted, “then the next day New Glenn launched for the first time – it was a perfect launch – then Starship launched again.”
“We had three different rockets from private companies launching in three consecutive days, and these rockets will be taking humans to the Moon and Mars – so we are lucky.”
Blue Origin’s first flight test of its massive New Glenn rocket played out almost flawlessly, while the seventh demo of the Starship – which featured a more advanced version of the super-capsule – ended in a pyrotechnic break-up of the second stage, sparked by SpaceX’s super-speed campaign to perfect the most powerful and technologically sophisticated spacecraft ever to take flight from Planet Earth.
Both Blue Origin and SpaceX have been commissioned by NASA to deploy landers to shuttle astronauts from lunar orbit down to the polar region of the Moon in a series of Artemis missions across the second half of the 2020s, and their supercharged rockets will launch those landers.
This unfolding phase of advanced rocketry and robotics will set the stage for human bases to expand outward.
Kris Zacny has produced an array of groundbreaking studies and books on deploying robots to extraterrestrial outposts to build the foundation for later astronaut missions, for example by constructing H2O reservoirs that could in turn provide oxygen for domed oases on the Martian dunes and rocket fuel for Mars-Earth space odysseys.
His team at Honeybee Robotics Exploration Systems has already designed robotic instruments that have sped across the solar system, including on the Mars Phoenix lander, the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and the Perseverance rover, which is now exploring the ghosts of lakes and rivers that once animated the orange-red dune-covered planet.
Honeybee’s breakthrough technologies are also set to touch down on the netherworld-like moon Titan, revolving around the fantastical rings of Saturn.

One of Honeybee’s future robots will fly across the otherworldly lakes and skies of Saturn’s moon … [+]
Getty Images
Another Honeybee invention, designed to collect samples of moondust on the lunar surface, is now on its way to the silvery orb, and its Trident drill, aimed at potentially excavating water around the lunar South Pole, is still searching for a White Knight rocket to blast it off to the Moon, Zacny told me during the Mars Society’s virtual conference.
When I asked Dr. Zacny about the fate of the Trident, part of the VIPER mission that was once slated to help prospect for ice that survived – potentially for billions of years – hidden away in the Moon’s eternally shadowed craters, he was surprisingly upbeat.
NASA commissioned leading American scientists and roboticists to design and develop a roving science lab, with spectrometers to detect ice and the Trident to drill for it, as part of pivotal plan to begin amassing ice for later astronaut missions and habitats.
Then, when researchers were just about to cross the finish line on perfecting the VIPER lab last summer, NASA’s leaders abruptly cancelled the $433-million project, stating that “cost increases” and “delays to the launch date” impelled the agency to “stand down on the mission,” even though these same negative factors plagued a host of NASA science missions as the COVID pandemic hit the world.
“Moving forward, NASA is planning to disassemble and reuse VIPER’s instruments and components for future Moon missions,” the leadership then in power stated, but the space agency held out a slight chance of a reprieve for the lab if a commercial American or international partner offered to deploy “the existing VIPER rover system at no cost to the government.”
“VIPER is finished in terms of development of the rover,” Zacny told me. “It went through all the environmental testing and it passed with glowing colors. So it’s ready.”
“What we are looking for is a ride to the Moon – the rocket.”
“Once we start flying these big missions – once Blue Origin’s Mark 1 and and Mark 2 [lunar] landers start flying – once the Starship starts flying to the Moon – these have enormous capacity – enormous.”
On a Starship or New Glenn flight, he adds, “VIPER would be just one of the payloads – not the only payload.”
“I’m 100-percent sure we’re going to be flying to the Moon.”
Although Blue Origin acquired Honeybee Robotics three years ago, the robot maker has operated fairly autonomously, and Kris Zacny delves out equal praise to Blue and to SpaceX.
He has even teamed up with two of SpaceX’s top engineers, along with a constellation of vanguard American space scholars, to sketch out how the leading-edge Starship could open an astonishing phase of human settlements across the solar system.
In a joint study titled “Accelerating Martian and Lunar Science through SpaceX Starship Missions,” Zacny and his SpaceX confrères state: “This two-stage vehicle (Super Heavy first stage and Starship as the second stage) is fully reusable and can transport payloads to Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars, along with being able to support a number of other missions including to Venus, asteroids, or elsewhere in the Solar System. “
“The first set of Starships launched to Mars will be uncrewed and are intended to demonstrate the capability to successfully launch from Earth and land on Mars with human-scale lander systems.”
These autonomously piloted ships will “provide the opportunity to deliver significant quantities of cargo to the surface in advance of human arrival.”

SpaceX founder Elon Musk says he aims to loft a flotilla of unmanned Starships to Mars next year, … [+]
Houston Chronicle via Getty Images
Teams of autonomous robots flown to Mars on this first fleet of Starships could help set up an astronaut base by positioning “equipment for increased power production, water extraction, LOX/methane production [for rocket fuel], pre-prepared landing pads, radiation shielding, dust control equipment [and] exterior shelters for humans.”
Elon Musk told his 200 million followers on X last summer that he aims to launch five unmanned Starships to Mars in late 2026, when the next Earth-Mars orbital transfer window opens, and the first Mars-bound astronauts in 2028 – for a Starship landing in the second half of 2029.
Ever since launching SpaceX, Musk has said its core mission is to create a second foundation for human civilization on Mars, with the near-term goal of fostering the Red Planet’s first cosmopolis, of one million human Martians, within two decades of lofting the initial flotillas of interplanetary Starship capsules.
“An ultimate objective of SpaceX is to develop self-sustaining cities on Mars,” Zacny and his SpaceX co-authors state, “and current SpaceX architecture plans call for multiple Starship flights to be launched to Mars at every launch opportunity (~2 years).”
While Mars is the primary target, they add, “flights to the Moon do provide the opportunity to test and demonstrate Starship systems closer to Earth prior to the longer journey to Mars.”
“More frequent flights to the Moon than to Mars are feasible due to orbital dynamics,” they add, “and thus significant capabilities can be developed and tested at the Moon prior to Mars missions.”
During the Mars Society gathering, Zacny predicted the next stage of human spaceflight missions would target the Earth’s ancient black and silver satellite: “We’re going to the Moon first for many reasons.”
Yet he adds: “I’m really hopeful we’ll go to Mars this decade.”
The venue Zacny chose to outline his predictions on the changing destiny of humans in space – the Mars Society – was created a quarter-century ago by Robert Zubrin, who is likely to be chronicled by historians of the future as the master architect of the campaign to reshape Mars in the Earth’s image.
While NASA and other space agencies have perennially cast Mars as a target destination for human landings in the distant future, Zubrin has scripted a series of books, including The Case for Mars, that outline how this generation can deploy current rockets and robots to touch down on Mars and begin terraforming the now-frozen planet.

Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin aims to remake the Red Planet in the Earth’s image, as a … [+]
AFP via Getty Images
Zubrin envisions that inside massive geodesic domes – assembled by robots and pressurized with oxygen captured on Mars – the first human colonies and glasshouse gardens will start spreading across the dunes even as geo-engineers begin warming the entire planet, restoring its ocean and atmosphere while building a proto-Eden to host a new branch of civilization.
Kris Zacny paid homage to the founder of the Mars Society during his talk, and said reading one of Zubrin’s books while a graduate student in California changed the trajectory of his life, setting him on track to design robots bound for Mars.

source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinholdenplatt/2025/01/26/space-robotics-leader-says-humans-will-soon-join-robots-on-moon-mars/

NASA’s Perseverance rover is well into its second science campaign, collecting rock-core samples from features within an area long considered by scientists to be a top prospect for finding signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. The rover has collected four samples from an ancient river delta in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater since July 7, bringing the total count of scientifically compelling rock samples to 12.
“We picked the Jezero Crater for Perseverance to explore because we thought it had the best chance of providing scientifically excellent samples – and now we know we sent the rover to the right location,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science in Washington. “These first two science campaigns have yielded an amazing diversity of samples to bring back to Earth by the Mars Sample Return campaign.”
Twenty-eight miles (45 kilometers) wide, Jezero Crater hosts a delta – an ancient fan-shaped feature that formed about 3.5 billion years ago at the convergence of a Martian river and a lake. Perseverance is currently investigating the delta’s sedimentary rocks, formed when particles of various sizes settled in the once-watery environment. During its first science campaign, the rover explored the crater’s floor, finding igneous rock, which forms deep underground from magma or during volcanic activity at the surface.  
“The delta, with its diverse sedimentary rocks, contrasts beautifully with the igneous rocks – formed from crystallization of magma – discovered on the crater floor,” said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley of Caltech in Pasadena, California. “This juxtaposition provides us with a rich understanding of the geologic history after the crater formed and a diverse sample suite. For example, we found a sandstone that carries grains and rock fragments created far from Jezero Crater – and a mudstone that includes intriguing organic compounds.”
“Wildcat Ridge” is the name given to a rock about 3 feet (1 meter) wide that likely formed billions of years ago as mud and fine sand settled in an evaporating saltwater lake. On July 20, the rover abraded some of the surface of Wildcat Ridge so it could analyze the area with the instrument called Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals, or SHERLOC.  
SHERLOC’s analysis indicates the samples feature a class of organic molecules that are spatially correlated with those of sulfate minerals. Sulfate minerals found in layers of sedimentary rock can yield significant information about the aqueous environments in which they formed.
What Is Organic Matter?
Organic molecules consist of a wide variety of compounds made primarily of carbon and usually include hydrogen and oxygen atoms. They can also contain other elements, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. While there are chemical processes that produce these molecules that don’t require life, some of these compounds are the chemical building blocks of life. The presence of these specific molecules is considered to be a potential biosignature – a substance or structure that could be evidence of past life but may also have been produced without the presence of life.
In 2013, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover found evidence of organic matter in rock-powder samples, and Perseverance has detected organics in Jezero Crater before. But unlike that previous discovery, this latest detection was made in an area where, in the distant past, sediment and salts were deposited into a lake under conditions in which life could potentially have existed. In its analysis of Wildcat Ridge, the SHERLOC instrument registered the most abundant organic detections on the mission to date.  
“In the distant past, the sand, mud, and salts that now make up the Wildcat Ridge sample were deposited under conditions where life could potentially have thrived,” said Farley. “The fact the organic matter was found in such a sedimentary rock – known for preserving fossils of ancient life here on Earth – is important. However, as capable as our instruments aboard Perseverance are, further conclusions regarding what is contained in the Wildcat Ridge sample will have to wait until it’s returned to Earth for in-depth study as part of the agency’s Mars Sample Return campaign.”
The first step in the NASA-ESA (European Space Agency) Mars Sample Return campaign began when Perseverance cored its first rock sample in September 2021. Along with its rock-core samples, the rover has collected one atmospheric sample and two witness tubes, all of which are stored in the rover’s belly.
The geologic diversity of the samples already carried in the rover is so good that the rover team is looking into depositing select tubes near the base of the delta in about two months. After depositing the cache, the rover will continue its delta explorations.
“I’ve studied Martian habitability and geology for much of my career and know first-hand the incredible scientific value of returning a carefully collected set of Mars rocks to Earth,” said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “That we are weeks from deploying Perseverance’s fascinating samples and mere years from bringing them to Earth so scientists can study them in exquisite detail is truly phenomenal. We will learn so much.”
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA, would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/

source: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasas-perseverance-rover-investigates-geologically-rich-mars-terrain/