Category: Science & Research

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NASA’s Webb Identifies Tiniest Free-Floating Brown Dwarf

Source: NASA

Brown dwarfs are objects that straddle the dividing line between stars and planets. They form like stars, growing dense enough to collapse under their own gravity, but they never become dense and hot enough to begin fusing hydrogen and turn into a star. At the low end of the scale, some brown dwarfs are comparable with giant planets, weighing just a few times the mass of Jupiter.

Astronomers are trying to determine the smallest object that can form in a star-like manner. A team using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has identified the new record-holder: a tiny, free-floating brown dwarf with only three to four times the mass of Jupiter.
“One basic question you’ll find in every astronomy textbook is, what are the smallest stars? That’s what we’re trying to answer,” explained lead author Kevin Luhman of Pennsylvania State University.

To locate this newfound brown dwarf, Luhman and his colleague, Catarina Alves de Oliveira, chose to study the star cluster IC 348, located about 1,000 light-years away in the Perseus star-forming region. This cluster is young, only about 5 million years old. As a result, any brown dwarfs would still be relatively bright in infrared light, glowing from the heat of their formation.
The team first imaged the center of the cluster using Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) to identify brown dwarf candidates from their brightness and colors. They followed up on the most promising targets using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) microshutter array.

Webb’s infrared sensitivity was crucial, allowing the team to detect fainter objects than ground-based telescopes. In addition, Webb’s sharp vision enabled them to determine which red objects were pinpoint brown dwarfs and which were blobby background galaxies.
This winnowing process led to three intriguing targets weighing three to eight Jupiter masses, with surface temperatures ranging from 1,500 to 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit (830 to 1,500 degrees Celsius). The smallest of these weighs just three to four times Jupiter, according to computer models.
Explaining how such a small brown dwarf could form is theoretically challenging. A heavy and dense cloud of gas has plenty of gravity to collapse and form a star. However, because of its weaker gravity, it should be more difficult for a small cloud to collapse to form a brown dwarf, and that is especially true for brown dwarfs with the masses of giant planets.
“It’s pretty easy for current models to make giant planets in a disk around a star,” said Catarina Alves de Oliveira of ESA (European Space Agency), principal investigator on the observing program. “But in this cluster, it would be unlikely this object formed in a disk, instead forming like a star, and three Jupiter masses is 300 times smaller than our Sun. So we have to ask, how does the star formation process operate at such very, very small masses?”

In addition to giving clues about the star-formation process, tiny brown dwarfs also can help astronomers better understand exoplanets. The least massive brown dwarfs overlap with the largest exoplanets; therefore, they would be expected to have some similar properties. However, a free-floating brown dwarf is easier to study than a giant exoplanet since the latter is hidden within the glare of its host star.
Two of the brown dwarfs identified in this survey show the spectral signature of an unidentified hydrocarbon, or molecule containing both hydrogen and carbon atoms. The same infrared signature was detected by NASA’s Cassini mission in the atmospheres of Saturn and its moon Titan. It has also been seen in the interstellar medium, or gas between stars.
“This is the first time we’ve detected this molecule in the atmosphere of an object outside our solar system,” explained Alves de Oliveira. “Models for brown dwarf atmospheres don’t predict its existence. We’re looking at objects with younger ages and lower masses than we ever have before, and we’re seeing something new and unexpected.”

Since the objects are well within the mass range of giant planets, it raises the question of whether they are actually brown dwarfs, or if they’re really rogue planets that were ejected from planetary systems. While the team can’t rule out the latter, they argue that they are far more likely to be a brown dwarf than an ejected planet.
An ejected giant planet is unlikely for two reasons. First, such planets are uncommon in general compared to planets with smaller masses. Second, most stars are low-mass stars, and giant planets are especially rare among those stars. As a result, it’s unlikely that most of the stars in IC 348 (which are low-mass stars) are capable of producing such massive planets. In addition, since the cluster is only 5 million years old, there probably hasn’t been enough time for giant planets to form and then be ejected from their systems.
The discovery of more such objects will help clarify their status. Theories suggest that rogue planets are more likely to be found in the outskirts of a star cluster, so expanding the search area may identify them if they exist within IC 348.
Future work may also include longer surveys that can detect fainter, smaller objects. The short survey conducted by the team was expected to detect objects as small as twice the mass of Jupiter. Longer surveys could easily reach one Jupiter mass.
These observations were taken as part of Guaranteed Time Observation program 1229. The results were published in the Astronomical Journal.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Download full resolution images for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Read/Download the research results released in The Astronomical Journal.
Right click the images in this article to open a larger version in a new tab/window.

Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro– rob.gutro@nasa.govNASA’s  Goddard Space Flight Center, , Greenbelt, Md.
Hannah Braun – hbraun@stsci.edu , Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.eduSpace Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.

Lifecycle of Stars
More Webb News – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/latestnews/
More Webb Images – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/multimedia/images/
Webb Mission Page – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/

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NASA Signs Memorandum of Agreement for Space Weather

Source: NASA

On Dec. 7, 2023, Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, signed on behalf of the agency the Memorandum of Agreement for Space Weather Research-To-Operations-To-Research Collaboration. This quad-agency agreement is between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Air Force.
The memorandum outlines the responsibilities for collaboration across the federal government to enhance the country’s preparedness for space weather – the environmental changes caused in space by the constant outflow of solar wind from the Sun.
In addition to improving our ability to protect satellites and GPS signals from space weather, NASA’s heliophysics division works closely with our Artemis program to support the human exploration of deep space in a variety of ways including learning how to measure the radiation environment on and around the moon. These measurements will aid in the prediction and validation of the radiation environment that our astronauts will experience.

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NASA’s Dragonfly to Proceed with Final Mission Design Work

Source: NASA

3 min read

NASA’s Dragonfly mission has been authorized to proceed with work on final mission design and fabrication – known as Phase C – during fiscal year (FY) 2024. The agency is postponing formal confirmation of the mission (including its total cost and schedule) until mid-2024, following the release of the FY 2025 President’s Budget Request.

Earlier this year, Dragonfly – a mission to send a rotorcraft to explore Saturn’s moon Titan – passed all the success criteria of its Preliminary Design Review. The Dragonfly team conducted a re-plan of the mission based on expected funding available in FY 2024 and estimate a revised launch readiness date of July 2028. The Agency will officially assess the mission’s launch readiness date in mid-2024 at the Agency Program Management Council.

“The Dragonfly team has successfully overcome a number of technical and programmatic challenges in this daring endeavor to gather new science on Titan,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington. “I am proud of this team and their ability to keep all aspects of the mission moving toward confirmation.”

Dragonfly takes a novel approach to planetary exploration, for the first time employing a rotorcraft-lander to travel between and sample diverse sites on Titan. Dragonfly’s goal is to characterize the habitability of the moon’s environment, investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry in an environment where carbon-rich material and liquid water may have mixed for an extended period, and even search for chemical indications of whether water-based or hydrocarbon-based life once existed on Titan.

Dragonfly is being designed and built under the direction of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which manages the mission for NASA. The team includes key partners at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado; Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company; NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California; NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia; Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania; Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California; Honeybee Robotics in Pasadena, California; NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales), the French space agency, in Paris, France; DLR (German Aerospace Center) in Cologne, Germany; and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in Tokyo, Japan. Dragonfly is the fourth mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission Directorate.

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NASA Researcher Honored by Goddard Tech Office for Earth Science Work

Source: NASA

Goddard researcher Dr. Antonia Gambacorta the 2023 IRAD Innovator of the Year for her work developing hyperspectral microwave technology to dissect Earth’s atmosphere from orbit.

Earth science researcher Dr. Antonia Gambacorta earned the 2023 Goddard IRAD Technology Leadership award for pioneering new ways to measure lower layers of Earth’s atmosphere from space.
The award from the chief technologist of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recognizes Gambacorta’s work demonstrating how hyperspectral microwave sounding, the measurement of hundreds of thousands of wavelengths of microwave light, could dissect Earth’s atmospheric planetary boundary layer (PBL). She also conceptualized a microwave photonics radiometer instrument to reveal these measurements.

The part of Earth’s atmosphere people live in, and have the most experience studying, is the hardest to measure from space due to the volume and complex behavior of the air above it, Gambacorta said. Developing the ability to probe and measure the boundary layer on a global, routine basis is important to better understanding its connections to the rest of our atmosphere, the land surface, and the oceans.
“The unique challenge of the PBL requires a novel path forward that will bring together traditionally disparate observing system components in order to enable transformative scientific advances in Earth system science,” said fellow researcher Joseph Santanello. “To that end, Dr. Gambacorta’s efforts extend beyond individual technology developments, and are represented in her aspirational vision of PBL sounding as ‘the tie that binds.’ Just as notably, Dr. Gambacorta’s passion, enthusiasm, and respect for her colleagues has been evident through each of stage of the project’s development.”
In seeking solutions to measure the boundary layer, Gambacorta stepped up to lead Goddard’s hyperspectral microwave projects and became the face of the center’s Decadal Survey Incubation (DSI) efforts. Through multiple Internal Research and Development, or IRAD grants, she and her team performed fundamental research to show the effectiveness of hyperspectral microwave sounding, conceptualized a microwave photonics radiometer instrument, and more recently began developing a framework to integrate data from multiple sensors for boundary layer science observations.

“Antonia’s innovation rises above her individual successes as a capable and creative innovator,” said Goddard Chief Technologist Peter Hughes. “She capitalized on multiple programs to incubate new technology while engaging expertise from across agencies and around the world to connect to other resources.”
Her cutting-edge innovations and research earned support from NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office and from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Specifically, Gambacorta built on her IRAD successes to secure an Earth Science Technology Office Instrument Incubator Program (IIP) project award to further develop her team’s microwave photonics radiometer concept and DSI funding to advance the multi-sensor fusion framework. Additionally, her momentum enabled a DSI-funded airborne instrument project attempting to transform CoSMIR, Goddard’s Conical Scanning Millimeter-wave Radiometer, into a hyperspectral sensor. That project is led by up-and-coming instrument scientist Rachael Kroodsma.
This entire portfolio that Gambacorta now manages also culminated in a successful NOAA Broad Agency Announcement proposal to demonstrate hyperspectral microwave radiometry. Through her engagement with colleagues in ESTO, NOAA, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, Hughes said Goddard’s hyperspectral microwave and PBL initiatives are regarded globally as the trusted strategy for understanding the planetary boundary layer. Goddard is widely viewed as a pioneer in the use of integrated photonics for Earth remote sensing due to Gambacorta’s leadership, he added.
“Antonia serves as a true inspiration to the technologists and scientists on her teams,” her colleague Santanello added. “Her innovation and contribution to Goddard and the larger community can also be measured in each of these ways.”
By Karl B. Hille
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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Hubble Images Galaxy with an Explosive Past

Source: NASA

2 min read

This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope features the spiral galaxy NGC 941, which lies about 55 million light-years from Earth. Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) collected the data that created this image. Beautiful NGC 941 is undoubtedly the main attraction in this view; however, the hazy-looking galaxy was not the motivation for collecting the data. That distinction belongs to an astronomical event that took place in the galaxy years before: the supernova SN 2005ad. The location of this faded supernova was observed as part of a study of multiple hydrogen-rich supernovae, also known as type II supernovae, to better understand the environments in which certain types of supernovae take place. While the study was conducted by professional astronomers, SN 2005ad itself owes its discovery to a distinguished amateur astronomer named Kōichi Itagaki, who has discovered over 170 supernovae.

This might raise the question of how an amateur astronomer could spot something like a supernova event before professional astronomers who have access to telescopes such as Hubble. The detection of supernovae is a mixture of skill, facilities, and luck. Most astronomical events happen over time spans that dwarf human lifetimes, but supernova explosions are extraordinarily fast, appearing very suddenly and then brightening and dimming over a period of days or weeks. Another aspect is time – data from a few hours of observations with telescopes like Hubble might take weeks, months, or sometimes even years to process and analyze. Amateur astronomers can spend much more time actively observing the skies, and sometimes have extremely impressive systems of telescopes, computers, and software they can use. 

Because amateurs like Itagaki spot so many supernovae, there is actually an online system set up to report them (the Transient Name Server). This system is a big help to professional astronomers, because time is truly of the essence with supernovae events. After the reported discovery of SN 2005ab, professional astronomers were able to follow up with spectroscopic studies and confirm it as a type II supernova, which eventually led to Hubble to study its location. Such a study wouldn’t be possible without a rich library of cataloged supernovae, built with the keen eyes of amateur astronomers.

Text credit: European Space Agency

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NASA’s Hubble Measures the Size of the Nearest Transiting Earth-Sized Planet

Source: NASA

3 min read

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has measured the size of the nearest Earth-sized exoplanet that passes across the face of a neighboring star. This alignment, called a transit, opens the door to follow-on studies to see what kind of atmosphere, if any, the rocky world might have.

The diminutive planet, LTT 1445Ac, was first discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2022. But the geometry of the planet’s orbital plane relative to its star as seen from Earth was uncertain because TESS does not have the required optical resolution. This means the detection could have been a so-called grazing transit, where a planet only skims across a small portion of the parent star’s disk. This would yield an inaccurate lower limit of the planet’s diameter.

“There was a chance that this system has an unlucky geometry and if that’s the case, we wouldn’t measure the right size. But with Hubble’s capabilities we nailed its diameter,” said Emily Pass of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Hubble observations show that the planet makes a normal transit fully across the star’s disk, yielding a true size of only 1.07 times Earth’s diameter. This means the planet is a rocky world, like Earth, with approximately the same surface gravity. But at a surface temperature of roughly 500 degrees Fahrenheit, it is too hot for life as we know it.

The planet orbits the star LTT 1445A, which is part of a triple system of three red dwarf stars that is 22 light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. The star has two other reported planets that are larger than LTT 1445Ac. A tight pair of two other dwarf stars, LTT 1445B and C, lies about 3 billion miles away from LTT 1445A, also resolved by Hubble. The alignment of the three stars and the edge-on orbit of the BC pair suggests that everything in the system is co-planar, including the known planets.  

“Transiting planets are exciting since we can characterize their atmospheres with spectroscopy, not only with Hubble but also with the James Webb Space Telescope. Our measurement is important because it tells us that this is likely a very nearby terrestrial planet. We are looking forward to follow-on observations that will allow us to better understand the diversity of planets around other stars,” said Pass.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, in Washington, D.C.

Media Contacts:

Ray VillardSpace Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

Science Contact:Emily PassCenter for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, Massachusetts

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How NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Will Chronicle the Active Cosmos

Source: NASA

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will pair space-based observations with a broad field of view to unveil the dynamic cosmos in ways that have never been possible before.
“Roman will work in tandem with NASA observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, which are designed to zoom in on rare transient objects once they’ve been identified, but seldom if ever discover them,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Roman’s much larger field of view will reveal many such objects that were previously unknown. And since we’ve never had an observatory like this scanning the cosmos before, we could even find entirely new classes of objects and events.”
The mission’s High Latitude Time-Domain Survey is well-designed to discover a particular type of exploding star that astronomers can use to trace the evolution of the universe and probe possible explanations for its accelerated expansion. And since this survey will repeatedly observe the same large vista of space, scientists will also see sporadic events like stellar corpses colliding and stars being swept into black holes.
The survey will look beyond our galaxy to observe the same patch of sky approximately every five days for two years. Stitching these observations together like stop-motion animation will create movies that will reveal a wealth of transient events.
[embedded content]
NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will see thousands of exploding stars called supernovae across vast stretches of time and space. One kind, called type Ia, serves as “standard candles” because they peak at about the same intrinsic brightness. Scientists can use them to measure distances and trace cosmic expansion over time, providing a window onto the universe’s distant past. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI LabRetreating Stellar Sparks
Astronomers will hunt through all this data for a special kind of exploding star called type Ia supernovae. These phenomena originate from certain binary star systems that contain at least one white dwarf – the small, hot core remnant of a Sun-like star. In some cases, the dwarf may siphon material from its companion. This triggers a runaway nuclear reaction that ultimately detonates the thief. Astronomers have also found evidence supporting another scenario, involving two white dwarfs that spiral toward each other until they merge. If their combined mass is high enough, they, too, may produce a type Ia supernova.
Since these explosions each peak at a similar, known intrinsic brightness, astronomers can use them to determine how far away they are by simply measuring how bright they appear. Astronomers will use Roman to study the spectrum of light from these supernovae to find out how rapidly they appear to be moving away from us due to the expansion of space.
By comparing how fast type Ia supernovae at different distances are receding, scientists will trace cosmic expansion over time. This will help us understand whether and how dark energy – the unexplained pressure thought to be speeding up the universe’s expansion – has changed throughout time. Using these and other Roman measurements should also help clear up mismatched measurements of the Hubble constant, which is the universe’s current expansion rate.
“Roman will paint a more vivid picture of our universe’s past and present, giving us new clues about its possible fate,” said Rebekah Hounsell, a research scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Goddard, who is exploring ways to optimize Roman’s High Latitude Time-Domain Survey. “Its findings could reshape our understanding of the cosmos.”
[embedded content]
This time-lapse of supernova 2018gv in galaxy NGC 2525 compresses nearly one-year of observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope into a few seconds. The supernova initially outshines the brightest stars in the galaxy before fading into obscurity. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, currently under construction, could capture such events from start to finish and alert other telescopes, such as the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, for even more detailed observations. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Riess (STScI/JHU) and the SH0ES team; acknowledgment: M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble)Fleeting Cosmic Wonders
Because of the way this survey will observe the cosmos, it will also spot other rare phenomena. Through Roman, we will witness the birth of new black holes that form when neutron stars – the cores of exploded stars that weren’t quite massive enough to collapse to form black holes on their own – merge. These titanic events create ripples in the fabric of space-time and brilliant kilonova explosions.
The mission is also expected to reveal several dozen tidal disruption events, which happen when a star venturing too close to a black hole is shredded by the black hole’s extreme gravity. The stellar shrapnel generates a huge amount of light as it speeds toward the black hole. Roman will pick up these flares of energy to learn how black holes affect their surroundings.
The survey will also allow astronomers to explore variable objects, like active galaxies whose cores each host an extremely bright quasar. A quasar is a brilliant beacon of intense light powered by a supermassive black hole. The black hole voraciously feeds on infalling matter that unleashes a torrent of radiation. Roman’s steady gaze will help astronomers study how and why these outbursts fluctuate in brightness.
And by finding hundreds of faint, faraway quasars, Roman will also allow scientists to probe the period of reionization. During this cosmic epoch, scientists think intense ultraviolet light from quasars stripped electrons from atoms and turned them into ions. This transition ushered in “cosmic dawn,” as the universe went from being mostly opaque to transparent, allowing visible and ultraviolet light to travel freely.
“This Roman survey will provide a treasure trove of data for astronomers to comb through, enabling more open-ended cosmic exploration than is typically possible,” McEnery said. “We may serendipitously discover entirely new things we don’t yet know to look for.”
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
By Ashley BalzerNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media contact:
Claire AndreoliNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.301-286-1940

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Investigations launching aboard SpaceX-29 will help humans go farther and stay longer in space

Source: NASA

The SpaceX-29 commercial resupply spacecraft will deliver numerous physical sciences and space biology experiments, along with other cargo, to the International Space Station. The research aboard this resupply services mission will help researchers learn how humans, and the plants needed to sustain them, can thrive in deep space.

The biological and physical sciences investigations headed to the Space Station are:

NASA has grown plants on the Space Station even without the help of gravity. But microgravity does present challenges and affects Space Station plants’ ability to receive adequate hydration and nutrition. The Plant Water Management-5 and 6 (PWM-5 and 6) investigation uses the physical properties of fluids, such as surface tension and wetting, as a mechanism to provide hydration and aeration for plants. Results could advance understanding of the physical aspects of fluid flow and inform designs of fluid delivery systems for reduced gravity environments.

Plant Habitat-06 investigates whether the spaceflight environment affects the ability of tomato plants to defend themselves against disease-causing microorganisms. The study will investigate whether a hormone called salicylic acid is involved in processes that regulate plant immune system function in microgravity. Results could support the development of strategies to minimize crop loss and low produce quality in future space agricultural settings caused by harmful microbes.

Extended missions to the Moon and Mars require a critical understanding on the impact of spaceflight to reproductive health for female astronauts. Throughout the course of three shuttle missions, alterations in ovarian function were detected in female mice that could potentially lead to fertility issues. This latest mission to the International Space Station (RR-20) will further probe whether space-flown female mice have temporary or permanent alterations to their reproductive capability and whether dysfunctional hormone signaling is linked with bone loss.

Polymicrobial Biofilm Growth and Control during Spaceflight, Bacterial Adhesion and Corrosion (BAC) is a joint space biology and physical sciences payload that explores conditions of multi-species biofilms in microgravity. Microorganisms in biofilms can become resistant to traditional cleaning chemicals, leading to contamination of water treatment systems and potential health risks to astronauts. This investigation identifies bacterial genes used during biofilm growth and examines whether these biofilms can corrode stainless steel, in addition to evaluating the effectiveness of silver-based disinfectants.

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NASA Maps Minerals and Ecosystem Function in Southwest U.S. Regions

Source: NASA

In September 2023, NASA aircraft began supporting an effort to find and map critical mineral deposits in Western regions of the U.S. Identifying these minerals — often used in everyday products like laptops and cell phones — could help improve environmental processes for mining and geological activities, enhance national security, and boost the economy. This project will continue through Fall 2026.
In a collaboration with the USGS (United States Geological Survey), an ER-2 high-altitude aircraft based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, has been supporting GEMx, the Geological Earth Mapping Experiment. The campaign also includes NASA’s Gulfstream V aircraft and a diverse team of engineers, pilots, and scientists from NASA, USGS, and the University of Arizona.
“For this mission, we are flying at approximately 65,000 feet to acquire wide swaths of geophysical data with every overflight,” said Kevin Reath, NASA deputy program manager for GEMx. The instruments are flying higher than previous airborne instruments to collect data over a wider area, yet the images collected have finer detail than aa satellite view “It’s thanks to this high-altitude flying capability that we can cover such a large area.”
Researchers mounted instruments on the ER-2 and Gulfstream V to collect measurements over the country’s arid and semi-arid regions, including parts of California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico. These instruments include NASA’s AVIRIS (Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer), HyTes (Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer), and MASTER (MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator).
These instruments collect hyperspectral images, or images that use color to convey the geophysical complexities behind seemingly simple or monochromatic surfaces. The visual data that is produced by these optical sensors indicates the constituents and changes of Earth’s surface and atmosphere.
“This mission, data, and its respective data products can help the public along with local, state, tribal, and federal agencies make effective decisions regarding management of natural resource deposits including critical mineral resources,” said Dean Riley, a collaborator on the GEMx project from the University of Arizona.
“The U.S. depends on a reliable supply of Earth materials to support its economy and national security,” said Raymond Kokaly, research geophysicist with the USGS. “Such materials have been deemed critical minerals because disruption of their supply would have significant negative impacts. Undiscovered deposits of at least some of these critical and strategic minerals almost certainly exist in the United States, but modern geophysical data is needed to increase our knowledge of these resources.”
Modern geophysical data is exactly what the GEMx project is procuring.  This means data that maps not only the constituents of Earth’s surface and atmosphere, but also how those constituents change over time between 2023 and 2026.
“If this mission can successfully identify critical minerals in minable locations in the U.S., we could be less dependent on foreign entities for these critical minerals,” Reath said.
Learn more about GEMx
Learn more about the ER-2 aircraft
Learn more about NASA Armstrong Research Center

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Scorching, Seven-Planet System Revealed by New Kepler Exoplanet List

Source: NASA

A system of seven sweltering planets has been revealed by continued study of data from NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope: Each one is bathed in more radiant heat from their host star per area than any planet in our solar system. Also unlike any of our immediate neighbors, all seven planets in this system, named Kepler-385, are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. It is one of only a few planetary systems known to contain more than six verified planets or planet candidates. The Kepler-385 system is among the highlights of a new Kepler catalog that contains almost 4,400 planet candidates, including more than 700 multi-planet systems.
“We’ve assembled the most accurate list of Kepler planet candidates and their properties to date,” said Jack Lissauer, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and lead author on the paper presenting the new catalog. “NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered the majority of known exoplanets, and this new catalog will enable astronomers to learn more about their characteristics.”
At the center of the Kepler-385 system is a Sun-like star about 10% larger and 5% hotter than the Sun. The two inner planets, both slightly larger than Earth, are probably rocky and may have thin atmospheres. The other five planets are larger – each with a radius about twice the size of Earth’s – and expected to be enshrouded in thick atmospheres.

The ability to describe the properties of the Kepler-385 system in such detail is testament to the quality of this latest catalog of exoplanets. While the Kepler mission’s final catalogs focused on producing lists optimized to measure how common planets are around other stars, this study focuses on producing a comprehensive list that provides accurate information about each of the systems, making discoveries like Kepler-385 possible.
The new catalog uses improved measurements of stellar properties and calculates more accurately the path of each transiting planet across its host star. This combination illustrates that when a star hosts several transiting planets, they typically have more circular orbits than when a star hosts only one or two.
Kepler’s primary observations ceased in 2013 and were followed by the telescope’s extended mission, called K2, which continued until 2018. The data Kepler collected continues to reveal new discoveries about our galaxy. After the mission already showed us there are more planets than stars, this new study paints a more detailed picture of what each of those planets and their home systems look like, giving us a better view of the many worlds beyond our solar system.
The research article, “Updated Catalog of Kepler Planet Candidates: Focus on Accuracy and Orbital Periods” is forthcoming in The Journal of Planetary Science.
Learn more:
Listen to a sonification of the orbit data of the seven planets in the Kepler-385 system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BCiOTJjcQQ
For news media:
Members of the news media interested in covering this topic should reach out to the NASA Ames newsroom.