If you’re looking for some sky treats in 2022, mark your calendar for the 12 full moons that will be shining during the new year. Two of this year’s full moons will be big and bright “supermoons,” and two moons will be turning full during alignments that will create a total lunar eclipse.
A supermoon is a full moon that appears to be slightly bigger and brighter than a typical full moon because it reaches its fullest phase when its orbit brings it closer to Earth.
The moon’s path around the Earth is not perfectly round; instead, it is elliptical — sort of an oval shape — so its distance from our planet varies from month to month when the moon turns full from the light that reflects from the sun.
Here are the dates, times and nicknames of each of the 12 full moons of 2022:
Two of the 12 full moons in 2022 will be “supermoons” because they will be slightly bigger and brighter than a typical full moon.Len Melisurgo | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Supermoon standards
Although the definition of a supermoon varies among astronomy experts and publications, most consider it to be a full moon that tracks less than 223,000 miles from the Earth at the closest point of its orbit, known as the perigee.
TimeAndDate.com, which frequently writes about big sky events, uses 223,694 miles (which is 360,000 kilometers) as its benchmark for supermoons.
Space.com uses calculations set by Fred Espanak, a retired NASA astrophysicist who defines a supermoon “as a full moon within 90% of its closest approach to Earth.” Anyone who follows that definition, including EarthSky.org, will say there will be four supermoons in 2022: May, June, July and August.
But more astronomy experts appear to be using the stricter definition, with the shorter distance between the moon and the Earth, saying there will be only two supermoons in 2022 — one on June 14 and one on July 13.
During a lunar eclipse, like this one in 2010, light reflecting from the sun will make the moon appear to glow in a rusty orange or reddish color. That’s why many people call this type of full moon a “blood moon.”SL
Lunar eclipses in 2022
The new year will also feature two total lunar eclipses, when the Earth’s shadow will temporarily cover the entire moon. During the event, light reflecting from the sun will make the moon appear to glow in a rusty orange or reddish color, prompting many sky watchers to refer to this full moon as a “blood moon.”
The first lunar eclipse in 2022 will start during the late-night hours on Sunday, May 15 and end in the early-morning hours on Monday, May 16, according to TimeAndDate.com. It will be visible from the United States, along with the rest of North America as well as South America, Africa, Europe and parts of Asia, the website says.
The second lunar eclipse in 2022 will occur during the early morning hours on Tuesday, Nov. 8, and also will be visible from the United States and the rest of North America, says TimeAndDate.com. People in Asia, Australia, most of South America and parts of northern and eastern Europe also will be able to see the November eclipse.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon drifts across the Earth’s dark shadow during a period when the sun, the earth and the moon are closely aligned. Because of that alignment, our planet’s shadow will temporarily block the light that the sun reflects off the moon’s surface, so the moon’s brightness will fade.AccuWeather
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Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com.
From commercial space race to operations on the red planet, space exploration was in the public spotlight.
Here are a few of the biggest moments:
February 18 — NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover lands on Mars
On Feb. 18, NASA’s fifth Mars rover, Perseverance, successfully landed on Mars’ Jezero crater.
“This landing is one of those pivotal moments for NASA, the United States, and space exploration globally – when we know we are on the cusp of discovery and sharpening our pencils, so to speak, to rewrite the textbooks,” then-acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk said in a statement. “The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission embodies our nation’s spirit of persevering even in the most challenging of situations, inspiring, and advancing science and exploration.”
April 19 — NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter flies
On April 19, NASA made history once again after its Ingenuity Mars helicopter completed the first-ever powered, controlled flight on another planet.
The helicopter hovered for 30 seconds at its planned altitude of 10 feet, and spent 39 seconds airborne.
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is seen here in a close-up taken by Mastcam-Z, a pair of zoomable cameras aboard the Perseverance rover. This image was taken on April 5, the 45th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
NASA SPACECRAFT MAKES HISTORY, OFFICIALLY ‘TOUCHES’ SUN FOR FIRST TIME EVER
“Ingenuity has performed its first flight — the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet!” flight control was heard saying in a NASA audio broadcast.
May 8 — Chinese rocket booster falls back to Earth
On the evening of May 8, the core stage of China’s Long March 5B booster re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, burning up over the Maldives.
After NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and others accused Beijing of acting recklessly, the Chinese government said it was unfairly being held to different standards than the U.S. and other space programs.
“We are willing to work with other countries including the United States to strengthen cooperation in the use of outer space, but we also oppose double standards on this issue,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said.
At the end of the month, the nation’s first Mars rover touched down on the planet and began to roam its surface.
June 2 — NASA selects two missions to study Venus
On June 2, NASA announced it had selected two new missions to Venus.
The VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) and DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) missions map Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor and measure its atmosphere.
DAVINCI+ will also determine whether the planet ever had an ocean.
They are expected to launch in the 2028 to 2030 timeframe.
HOW THE APOLLO 8 CREW DELIVERD AN OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD MESSAGE OF HOPE DURING A PIVOTAL CHRISTMAS
July 11 — Richard Branson reaches space in Virgin Galactic rocket ship
On July 11, Billionaire Richard Branson and five crew mates launched to space, flying more than 53 miles above the Earth in a final test mission before kicking off commercial space flights in the new year.
The 71-year-old became the first person to blast off in his own spaceship, beating Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos by nine days.
November 15 — Russian weapons test threatens International Space Station (ISS)
On Nov. 15, a Russian weapons test created more than 1,500 pieces of space junk, threatening the astronauts aboard the ISS.
Nelson told The Associated Press at the time that he was “outraged” by the action and that it was “unbelievable that the Russian government would” do the test.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the test also threatened satellites.
This image made available by NASA shows an artist’s rendering of the Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. (Steve Gribben/Johns Hopkins APL/NASA via AP)
Russian officials rejected accusations that they had endangered astronauts and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said the strike was carried out “with surgical precision.”
Astronauts now face four times greater risk than normal from space junk, according to Nelson.
December 14 — NASA craft ‘touches’ sun for first time
On Dec. 14, a spacecraft touched the sun for the first time.
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NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has flown through the sun’s corona, or its upper atmosphere, and sampled particles and magnetic fields there.
Scientists said it took months to get the data back and several more months to confirm.
Parker — launched in 2018 — was 8 million miles from the center of the sun when it first crossed the boundary between the solar atmosphere and outgoing solar wind.
The spacecraft dipped in and out of the corona at least three times.
Preliminary data suggests Parker also dipped into the corona during its ninth close approach in August, but scientists said more analyses are needed.
Parker will keep drawing ever closer to the sun and diving deeper into the corona until its grand finale orbit in 2025.
SCIENTISTS have hatched mankind’s ultimate insurance plan – involving the moon and LOTS of sperm.
Dubbed the “global insurance policy”, the project is planning on sending seeds, sperm and ovaries to the Moon.
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A solar-powered ark would then cryogenically store the frozen samples from some 6.7 million species underground.
Taking inspiration from Noah’s Ark, experts fear that Earth may not be safe enough to ensure the survival of the human race – or any species.
Prof Jekan Thanga, of University of Arizona, who proposed the idea in a paper earlier this year, says the human race must safeguard to world against global catastrophes.
He said: “Earth is naturally a volatile environment.
“As humans, we had a close call about 75,000 years ago with the Toba supervolcanic eruption, which caused a 1,000-year cooling period and, according to some, aligns with an estimated drop in human diversity.
“Because human civilisation has such a large footprint, if it were to collapse, that could have a negative cascading effect on the rest of the planet.”
The scientist highlighted climate change, a global pandemic and nuclear war as possible causes of catastrophic disasters.
There is a similar project on Earth – the Svalbard Seedbank in Norway, dubbed the “doomsday vault” – which holds hundreds of thousands of seed samples.
But Thanga believes storing samples on our own planet is too risky.
The near-seven million samples would be sent to the moon in multiple payloads and then stored below the surface in vaults, CBS news reports.
The ark would be stored within a network of lava tubes – discovered in 2013 – formed after molten streams flowed beneath the lunar surface billions of years ago.
Experts believe these tubes could provide protection from solar radiation as well as meteors and other hazards on the surface.
And the moon’s harsh environment “makes it a great place to store samples that need to stay very cold and undisturbed for hundreds of years at a time,” the project team said.
Speaking on Room 104 earlier this year, Thanga said: “Hopefully when the costs of space travel comes down, we can start making moves on this, but we really need to start sending samples to the moon within the next 30 years or so.”
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Scientists are planning to store seeds and sperm on the moonCredit: Getty
Thanga believes transporting the millions of seeds – totalling 335m samples – would take around 250 rocket launches.
By comparison, the International Space Station took 40 launches to build.
The ark would involve solar panels on the lunar surface for electricity which would be used to power features such as elevator shafts down into the vaults.
The seeds would be cooled to -292 degrees Fahrenheit and the stem cells to -320 degrees Fahrenheit.
The team has also proposed using robots on magnetic tracks to move around the facility.
More research needs to be done on the impact of a lack of gravity on seeds, reports say.
Álvaro Díaz-Flores Caminero, a University of Arizona student, said: “What amazes me about projects like this is that they make me feel like we are getting closer to becoming a space civilisation, and to a not-very-distant future where humankind will have bases on the moon and Mars.
“Multidisciplinary projects are hard due to their complexity, but I think the same complexity is what makes them beautiful.”
Scientists baffled after recording ‘eery sounds’ coming from Jupiter’s moon
A new study shows how cell membranes curve to create the “mouths” that allow the cells to consume things that surround them.
“Just like our eating habits basically shape anything in our body, the way cells ‘eat’ matters for the health of the cells,” said Comert Kural, associate professor of physics at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study. “And scientists did not, until now, understand the mechanics of how that happened.”
The study, published recently in the journal Developmental Cell, found that the intercellular machinery of a cell assembles into a highly curved basket-like structure that eventually grows into a closed cage. Scientists had previously believed that structure began as a flat lattice.
Membrane curvature is important, Kural said: It controls the formation of the pockets that carry substances into and out of a cell.
The pockets capture substances around the cell, forming around the extracellular substances, before turning into vesicles – small sacs one-one millionth the size of a red blood cell. Vesicles carry important things for a cell’s health – proteins, for example – into the cell. But they can also be hijacked by pathogens that can infect cells.
But the question of how those pockets formed from membranes that were previously believed to be flat had stymied researchers for nearly 40 years.
“It was a controversy in cellular studies,” Kural said. “And we were able to use super-resolution fluorescence imaging to actually watch these pockets form within live cells, and so we could answer that question of how they are created.
“Simply put, in contrast to the previous studies, we made high-resolution movies of cells instead of taking snapshots,” Kural said. “Our experiments revealed that protein scaffolds start deforming the underlying membrane as soon as they are recruited to the sites of vesicle formation.”
That contrasts with previous hypotheses that the protein scaffolds of a cell had to go through an energy-intensive reorganization in order for the membrane to curve, Kural said.
The way cells consume and expel vesicles plays a key role for living organisms. The process helps clear bad cholesterol from blood; it also transmits neural signals. The process is known to break down in several diseases, including cancer and
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Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab
With the successful extension of Webb’s second sunshield mid-boom, the observatory has passed another critical deployment milestone. Webb’s sunshield now resembles its full, kite-shaped form in space.
Engineers began to deploy the second (starboard) mid-boom at 6:31 p.m. EST and completed the process at about 10:13 p.m. EST.
The completion of the sunshield cover and mid-boom deployments over the past two days marks a critical milestone for Webb: all 107 membrane release devices associated with the sunshield deployment — every single one of which had to work in order for the sunshield to deploy — have now successfully released. Webb has 178 of these ‘non-explosive actuators’ in all; 107 were used to keep the sunshield safe and folded prior to deployment.
As the mid-booms slowly pushed out horizontally from the spacecraft, each driven by a motor, they pulled the folded membranes of the sunshield with them. This extended the sunshield to its full 47-foot width all the way across the observatory.
“The mid-booms are the sunshield’s workhorse and do the heavy lifting to unfold and pull the membranes into that now-iconic shape,” said Keith Parrish, Webb observatory manager at
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One of the James Webb Space Telescope’s most nail-biting deployment steps is safely in the books.
The $10 billion observatory unfurled its huge sunshield on Friday (Dec. 31), carefully unfolding the five-layer structure by sequentially deploying two booms.
“Shine bright like a diamond. With the successful deployment of our right sunshield mid-boom, or ‘arm,’ Webb’s sunshield has now taken on its diamond shape in space,” mission team members said via Webb’s Twitter account Friday night.
Live updates:NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope mission Related:How the James Webb Space Telescope works in pictures
Shine bright like a diamond 💎With the successful deployment of our right sunshield mid-boom, or “arm,” Webb’s sunshield has now taken on its diamond shape in space. Next up: tensioning the 5 sunshield layers! https://t.co/6G2caS1djY #UnfoldTheUniverse pic.twitter.com/q0iuHdnKlNJanuary 1, 2022
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The sunshield is one of the most crucial and complicated features of Webb, which launched on Dec. 25 to seek out faint heat signals from the early universe. Detecting such signals requires that Webb keep its instruments and optics extremely cold, and the sunshield will help it do just that by reflecting and radiating away solar energy.
The shiny silver shield measures 69.5 feet long by 46.5 feet wide (21.2 by 14.2 meters) when fully deployed — far too large to fit inside the protective payload fairing of any currently operational rocket. So it was designed to launch in a highly compact configuration and then unfold once Webb got to space.
That deployment is an elaborate, multistep process with many different potential failure points that could sink the entire mission.
“Webb’s sunshield assembly includes 140 release mechanisms, approximately 70 hinge assemblies, eight deployment motors, bearings, springs, gears, about 400 pulleys and 90 cables totaling 1,312 feet [400 m],” Webb spacecraft systems engineer Krystal Puga, who works at Northrop Grumman, the prime contractor for the mission, said in a video about Webb’s deployments that NASA posted in October.
Sunshield deployment began on Tuesday (Dec. 28) when Webb lowered the two pallets that hold the five-layer structure. Additional steps followed over the next few days. On Thursday (Dec. 30), for example, the observatory released the cover that had protected the sunshield during its time on Earth and launch to space.
That cover complicated Friday’s activities a bit: The Webb team delayed boom deployment by a few hours to make sure that the cover had fully rolled up as planned, and as needed.
“Switches that should have indicated that the cover rolled up did not trigger when they were supposed to,” Patrick Lynch, deputy chief of the communications office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, wrote in a blog post Friday.
“However, secondary and tertiary sources offered confirmation that it had,” Lynch added. “Temperature data seemed to show that the sunshield cover unrolled to block sunlight from a sensor, and gyroscope sensors indicated motion consistent with the sunshield cover release devices being activated.”
Webb team members initiated deployment of the port (lefthand) mid-boom at 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT) on Friday, Lynch wrote, and the activity wrapped up at 4:49 p.m. EST (2149 GMT). Extension of the starboard mid-boom began at 6:31 p.m. EST (2331 GMT) and was done by around 10:13 p.m. EST (0313 GMT on Jan. 1), Lynch wrote in another blog post.
Related: Why the James Webb Space Telescope’s sunshield deployment takes so long
Unfurling the sunshield is a huge milestone, so Webb team members are likely breathing big sighs of relief after Friday’s success. But the sunshield work isn’t done yet; its five thin Kapton layers must still be brought up to the proper tension, which the mission team aims to do over the weekend.
After that’s done, the focus will shift to deploying Webb’s secondary mirror and its 21.3-foot-wide (6.5 m) primary mirror. Those tasks are expected to be complete by Jan. 7 at the earliest, but deployment timelines are flexible, so don’t be shocked (or concerned) if that target isn’t met.
Locking the mirrors into their proper place will bring Webb’s complex main deployment phase to an end. The next major milestone to follow will be an engine burn, scheduled for 29 days after launch, that will insert Webb into orbit around its final destination: the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), a gravitationally stable spot 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet.
Webb team members will still have a lot of work to do after the observatory arrives at L2. They’ll have to precisely align the 18 segments of Webb’s primary mirror so the pieces work together as a single light-collecting surface, for example, and check out and calibrate the telescope’s four scientific instruments.
Regular science operations are expected to start six months after launch, in the summer of 2022. For at least five years after that, Webb will study some of the universe’s first stars and galaxies, hunt for intriguing compounds in the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets and make a variety of other potentially transformative cosmic observations.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.
Our planet’s convoluted history of evolving life has spawned countless weird and wonderful creatures, but none excite evolutionary biologists – or divide taxonomists – quite like crabs.
When researchers attempted to reconcile the evolutionary history of crabs in all their raucous glory just earlier this year, they arrived at the conclusion that the defining features of crabbiness have evolved at least five times in the past 250 million years.
What’s more, crabbiness has been lost possibly seven times or more.
This repeated evolution of a crab-like body plan has happened so often it has its own name: carcinization. (And yes, if you lose crabbiness to evolution, it’s called decarcinization.)
Frog crabs (Raninidae) are one unusual example. Features of the crab body plan were also lost en route to almost-legless Puerto Rican sand crabs (Emerita portoricensis) and various lop-sided hermit crabs – but then red king crabs regained crabby features at the last evolutionary minute.
A Puerto Rican sand crab. (Michelle Barros Sarmento Gama/iNaturalist/CC BY-NC 4.0)
Why evolution keeps crafting and shafting the crab-like body plan remain but a mystery, though evolution must be doing something right in fashioning crabby creatures time and time again.
There are thousands of crab species, which thrive in almost every habitat on Earth, from coral reefs and abyssal plains to creeks, caves and forests.
Crabs also boast an impressive display of sizes. The smallest, the pea crab (Pinnothera faba), measures just millimeters, while the largest, the Japanese spider crab (Macrocheira kaempferi), spans nearly 4 meters (around 12 feet) from claw to claw.
With their species richness, extravagant array of body shapes and rich fossil record, crabs are an ideal group to study trends in biodiversity through time. But finding some order in the chaos of crabs is an ongoing challenge.
What’s a crab, anyway?
It gets weirder, because not every crab is a crab, so to speak. There are ‘true’ crabs, such as mud crabs and swimmer crabs. Yet we also have so-called false crabs, such as shell-shy hermit crabs with their spiraling abdomens, or the spike-covered king crabs.
The most visible difference between true and false crabs is how many walking legs they have: true crabs have four pairs of lanky legs, whereas false crabs only have three, with another pint-sized pair at the rear.
Both true and false crabs evolved their wide, flat, hard upper shell and tucked tails independently of one another, from a common ancestor that had none of those features, suggests an analysis published in March 2021, led by evolutionary biologist Joanna Wolfe of Harvard University.
But it wasn’t a straightforward path after true and false crabs split. Evolution has made and remade crabs over the past 250 million years: once or twice in true crabs and at least three times during the evolution of false crabs, Wolfe and colleagues think.
Crabs have long stumped taxonomists who have invariably misclassified species as true or false crabs due to their striking similarities.
Besides figuring out where species belong in the tree of life, understanding exactly how many times evolution has crafted the crab-like body form and why, could reveal something about what drives convergent evolution.
“There has to be some kind of evolutionary advantage to be this crablike shape,” crab expert and Wolfe’s co-author Heather Bracken-Grissom told Popular Science in 2020, when carcinization had sent the internet into a spin.
tired: convergent evolution is not uncommon especially when species have similar selecting pressures in their environments
wired: 🦀everything 🦀 is 🦀 crab 🦀
— Amy (@lolennui) October 13, 2020
As with many subjects, evolutionary biologists have plenty of ideas, but no firm answers on carcinization. Due to the narrow focus of past research on select crab species, “the unparsimonious history of crab body plan evolution must be reconciled”, the team writes.
To make a start, the trio of researchers compiled data on crab morphology, behavior and natural history, from living species and fossils, and identified the gaps in genetic data which might help to resolve puzzling evolutionary relationships.
“Almost half of the branches on the crab tree of life remain dark,” they write.
Most carcinized crabs have developed hard, calcified shells to protect themselves from predators – a clear advantage – but then some crabs have abandoned this protection, for reasons unknown.
Walking sideways, silly as it seems, means crabs are supremely agile, able to make a speedy exit in either direction without losing sight of a predator, should one appear. But sideways walking is not observed in all carcinized lineages (there are forward-walking spider crabs) and some uncarcinzed hermit crabs can walk sideways, too.
That some crabs evolved outsized claws to become shell-crushing predators in an ecological arms race also cannot fully explain the timing or successes of early crab evolution.
(Joanna M. Wolfe)
Above: Phylogenetic tree showing examples of carcinized and decarcinized clades, with colored dots noting characteristics on the branches.
Like anything in science, nothing is ever settled and evolution will continue on its merry way. Though with increasing amounts of genomic information on living and fossilized crab species, rest assured taxonomists are steadily piecing together what makes a crab, a crab.
This “will allow us to resolve the multiple origins and losses of ‘crab’ body forms through time and identify the timing of origin of key evolutionary novelties and body plans,” says Wolfe.
More than that, studying crabs provides a tantalizing prospect for evolutionary sleuths who think it might be possible to anticipate the predictable shapes evolution makes based on environmental factors and genetic cues.
“Examining crab evolution provides a macroevolutionary timescale of 250 million years ago for which, with enough phylogenetic and genomic data, we might be able to predict the morphology that would result,” says Bracken-Grissom.
Artist’s concept of the James Webb Space Telescope, as it appeared after opening the mission’s five-layer sunshield. Credit: NASA
Flying outbound from Earth at a distance of more than 400,000 miles, the James Webb Space Telescope extended two booms Friday and unfurled the mission’s five-layer sunshield to the size of a tennis court, notching a major milestone for the observatory after a nail-biting New Year’s Eve for astronomers and engineers on Earth.
The critical deployments marked some riskiest moments to ready the nearly $10 billion observatory for science operations, following its successful launch Dec. 25 aboard a European Ariane 5 rocket.
NASA confirmed the successful extension of the port-side mid-boom in an update shortly after 7 p.m. EST Friday (0000 GMT Saturday). Nearly four hours later, NASA announced the starboard boom was extended.
Webb’s two sunshield mid-booms are designed to pull out the shade’s five membranes into their distinctive diamond shape.
“The mid-booms are the sunshield’s workhorse and do the heavy lifting to unfold and pull the membranes into that now-iconic shape,” said Keith Parrish, Webb observatory manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Ground teams started extending the two sunshield booms several hours later than originally scheduled, NASA said in an update Friday evening. The space agency said mission controllers at the Space Telescope Science Institute took extra steps to confirm that a sunshield cover had fully rolled up before proceeding with the first mid-boom deployment.
“Switches that should have indicated that the cover rolled up did not trigger when they were supposed to,” NASA said. “However, secondary and tertiary sources offered confirmation that it had. Temperature data seemed to show that the sunshield cover unrolled to block sunlight from a sensor, and gyroscope sensors indicated motion consistent with the sunshield cover release devices being activated.”
The covers were opened and rolled back to expose the sunshield to space Thursday, but the covers were supposed roll back more in the early phase of mid-boom deployment.
“This final preparation to begin extending the mid-boom was what the team was analyzing before beginning the deployment,” NASA tweeted.
Five telescoping segments of the port, or left-side, mid-boom began extending around 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT) Friday. The motor-driven boom reached full deployment at 4:49 p.m. EST (2149 GMT), NASA said.
The starboard, or right-side boom extension began at 6:31 p.m. EST (2331 GMT) and completed at about 10:13 p.m. EST (0313 GMT).
Both mid-booms are now locked into position o
“The completion of the sunshield cover and mid-boom deployments over the past two days marks a critical milestone for Webb,” NASA said in a written update Friday night.
Webb has 344 devices that must work exactly as intended. Of those, 107 are membrane release devices, non-explosive actuators that pinned the sunshield in place for launch. All 107 successfully released to allow the sunshield to open to its full dimension.
In total, the mission’s deployment sequence relies on 140 release mechanisms, 70 hinge assemblies, eight deployment motors, 400 pulleys, and 90 cables running a quarter-mile in length. There are also an array of bearings, springs, and gears to transform Webb from its launch to operational configuration.
The sunshade stretches 69.5 feet (21.2 meters) long and 46.5 feet (14.2 meters) wide.
Officials have repeatedly said Webb’s deployment schedule could change based on real-time conditions.
“Today is an example of why we continue to say that we don’t think our deployment schedule might change, but that we expect it to change,” Parrish said. “The team did what we had rehearsed for this kind of situation – stop, assess, and move forward methodically with a plan. We still have a long way to go with this whole deployment process.”
NASA confirms the James Webb Space Telescope has extended one of two booms to begin unfurling the mission’s five-layer sunshield. With the port-side boom deployed, work is underway tonight to extend another boom on the starboard side. https://t.co/JdH8b0A2jo pic.twitter.com/cboWUNCedT
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) January 1, 2022
Made of five fragile kapton membranes, each as thin as a human hair, the sunshield will keep Webb’s mirrors, instruments, and detectors in constant shadow, allowing their operating temperature to plummet to near minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Such cold conditions are required to allow Webb to see the faint infrared light from the first galaxies in the universe more than 13.5 billion light years away.
Before Webb’s launch, most NASA managers and astronomers waiting to use the Webb telescope, the product of nearly three decades of development, gave the same answer about the most stressful moment of the mission: Sunshield deployment.
“The sunshield is one of these things that is almost inherently indeterministic,” said Mike Menzel, Webb’s mission systems engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “NASA is used to deploying rigid beams on hinges, because they’re deterministic, you can determine how they move.”
“Given that there are 40 different major deployments, and hundreds of pulleys and wires, the whole thing makes me nervous and will until its fully deployed,” said John Grunsfeld, an astrophysicist, former astronaut, and head of NASA’s science mission directorate from 2012 until 2016, a key period in Webb’s development.
But it’s the sunshield that got the biggest share of Menzel’s attention during the design and testing of Webb.
Menzel compared predicting the behavior of the sunshield layers to guessing what a string will do when you push it on a table top.
“So it is with the membranes of the sunshield,” he said. “So we can’t really predict their shape, but we can constrain it. “We can try to prevent it from going in places that we don’t want it to go, places where it could snag or tear, or maybe impede the deployment of other members.”
Each layer of the sunshield is slightly different in size and shape, created using thermally bonded sections of kapton with around 10,000 seams, according to Krystal Puga, Webb’s lead spacecraft systems engineer at Northrop Grumman.
There are reinforcement strips, or rip stops, to contain any tears or holes, and metallic ribbons giving the kapton some structural support.
The sunshield membranes are coated with aluminum, and two of the outermost layers are treated with silicon, giving the skin-like material a purple hue.
With the sunshield in its diamond shape, Webb controllers will send commands for the observatory to tension each of the five layers over two days — currently planned on Saturday and Sunday.
“Once we get the sunshield out, that’s great, but then we have to sort of tighten it up,” Parrish said in an interview before launch. “All five layers have different points around them where they’re connected up, and then we’ll pull on cables in each one of those corners to actually tighten up the sunshield.”
“The very last step is super important,” Puga said. “We need to tension all of the membranes using a series of pulleys and cables to create the separation between each of the five layers.”
The tensioning will separate each of the five ultra-thin kapton membranes, spacing them a few inches at the center and a few feet at the outermost edges. The tapered spacing helps allow heat from the sun to reflect between the layers, and eventually radiate back into space.
Tightening the sunshield will begin with the largest and flattest membrane closest to the sun, which will reach the hottest temperatures during the mission. One-by-one, each of the other four layers will be tensioned, ending with the smallest and coldest layer closest to Webb’s mirror.
“Tensioning the layers involves sending commands to activate several motors to reel in a total of 90 cables through numerous pulleys and cable management devices. Sunshield tensioning will take at least two days but may take longer, due to the complexity of the process and the flexibility built into the timeline,” NASA said Friday night.
Webb’s instruments and telescope need to be super-cold to make them sensitive to infrared light. And astronomers want to observe the cosmos in infrared wavelengths because it allows them to see the oldest galaxies, whose light waves have been stretched by the expansion of the universe.
Infrared astronomy also reveals star-forming regions obscured by clouds of gas and dust opaque to telescopes that see in visible wavelengths, the kind of light detectable by the human eye.
McCaughrean, an astronomer working on Webb since the 1990s, tweeted that infrared astronomy with a warm telescope “is like trying to observe in the visible in broad daylight with a telescope made of light bulbs. Possible, but you won’t see faint things very well.”
Once the sunshield is deployed and tensioned, ground teams will turn their attention to unfolding Webb’s huge mirror to its full size and shape. Those events are scheduled for next week.
Webb is cruising toward its operations post in a halo-like orbit around the L2 Lagrange point, a gravitational balance point nearly a million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.
Editor’s note: From extreme weather to volcanic eruptions to simple beauty, the images in this video highlight another year on our planet. The following text is a transcript of the video and includes links to detailed descriptions of each image.
Otherworldly Earth
Extreme Winter Weather Causes U.S. Blackouts Texas and other central states set records for cold temperatures during a persistent blast of arctic air.
Breakup at Brunt Two years after it fractured, an iceberg twice the size of Chicago split from an Antarctic ice shelf.
Fagradalsfjall Erupts in Iceland The volcanic eruption on the Reykjanes peninsula lit up clouds from below. Within three months, lava flows covered about 3 square kilometers.
Exceptional Heat Hits Pacific Northwest In June 2021, all-time temperature records fell in multiple cities in the U.S. and Canada during a “historic and dangerous” heatwave.
River Colors are Changing In the past 35 years, one third of large rivers in the United States have changed their dominant color, often due to sediments or algae. The images show color change from 1986 to 2020 along the Rio Grande River in New Mexico.
Cloudscapes Over Sumatra After crossing the Java Sea, moist air rises as it flows across Indonesia’s mountains. This builds spectacular thunderstorm clouds and anvils.
Lake Mead Drops to a Record Low The reservoir fell to its lowest level since being filled in the 1930s.
Tidal Vortices in the Sea of Okhotsk Strong tides create laminar and turbulent flow patterns in waters off far eastern Russia.
Lava Burns a Path Through La Palma A slow-moving wall of basaltic lava bulldozed its way through communities on one
of the Canary Islands.
A Changed Landscape on La Palma Parts of the island now look more like a moonscape than a tropical paradise.
Falling for Corn More than one-third of the world’s corn is grown in the United States. In this map, yellow areas depict lands that were planted with corn in 2020. This image shows a swath of the Midwest region just as the corn harvest was nearing its end in 2021.
First Light from Landsat 9 NASA and USGS launched Landsat 9 in September 2021. The first images were ready in a few weeks.
Autumn Color in Japan Momijiari, or “red leaf hunting,” can last into early December in the country’s southern regions.
New Ocean Data Flowing In Ocean Surface data from the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich mission became available to the public in June 2021. Late in the year, the new satellite observed a moderate La Niña, visible as an area of lower-than-normal sea level (blue) along and below the equator.
Antarctica Eclipsed The only total solar eclipse of 2021 was visible from Antarctica, where the Moon blotted out the Sun for nearly two minutes.
The Braided Paraná Visit NASA Earth Observatory for more daily images of your home planet in 2022.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration formally supports extending operations of the International Space Station through the end of the decade, an announcement that is neither surprising nor addresses how to get all the station’s partners, notably Russia, to agree on the station’s future.
In a statement published on NASA’s ISS blog Dec. 31, NASA said the White House agreed to extend operations of the ISS through 2030. Federal law, last revised in 2015 with the enactment of the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, made it U.S. policy to operate the station through at least 2024.
“I’m pleased that the Biden-Harris Administration has committed to continuing station operations through 2030,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in the statement. “The United States’ continued participation on the ISS will enhance innovation and competitiveness, as well as advance the research and technology necessary to send the first woman and first person of color to the moon under NASA’s Artemis program and pave the way for sending the first humans to Mars.”
While the form and the timing of the announcement — a blog post rather than a formal press release, issued on New Year’s Eve — was a surprise, the decision to extend the life of the ISS was not. NASA had made clear its long-term plan for the station was to operate it through the end of the decade, providing enough time for commercial stations to enter service in the late 2020s and enable a smooth transition from the ISS to those commercial facilities.
There have been several efforts in the last few years to formally extend the authorization of ISS operations in federal law from 2024 to 2028 or 2030. That included an effort led by Nelson in his final days in the Senate in 2018 to pass a commercial space policy bill with that extension. That bill won approval in the Senate by unanimous consent in December 2018 but failed to get the two-third majority needed to pass the House via a legislative procedure known as suspension of the rules.
The White House’s decision is alone not sufficient to continue ISS operations through the end of the decade. NASA said it would work with the station’s partners — Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia — “to enable continuation of the groundbreaking research being conducted in this unique orbiting laboratory through the rest of this decade.”
One partner has already signaled its willingness to continue the ISS. “I welcome this announcement & will submit a proposal to Member States for @esa to continue until 2030, as well,” tweeted Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, shortly after NASA published its statement.
A bigger challenge, though, will be keeping Russia in the ISS partnership. Russian officials have expressed doubts about both the technical ability of the ISS to operate through the end of the decade given problems with the Russian segment of the station as well as a desire to develop a Russian national space station.
“The current agreement is that we’ll keep operating it until 2024. It can, of course, keep flying after 2024, but every next year will come at greater difficulty,” Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, said during a press conference at the International Astronautical Congress in Dubai Oct. 25. That difficulty, he said, was in the form of increasing technical failures and malfunctions.
Geopolitics will also be a factor in Russia’s future participation in the ISS, particularly given fears in recent weeks that Russia will attempt to invade Ukraine. The station’s operations were not affected by sanctions from Russia’s annexation of Crimea and incursion into eastern Ukraine in 2014, but after a Dec. 7 call between President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. officials said that “things we did not do in 2014 we are prepared to do now.”
Biden and Putin talked again Dec. 30. In a readout of that call, the Kremlin stated that Putin told Biden that any new sanctions against Russia would be a “grave error” and risks “a complete breakdown in Russia-U.S. relations.”
