The Webb Space Telescope’s instruments have been in safe mode intermittently since December 7, but scientific operations resumed earlier this week, NASA said in a press release on Wednesday.
Webb was in safe mode—during which all the observatory’s nonessential systems are turned off, which means no scientific operations—multiple times in the last two weeks, the release stated. Though NASA says the issue is resolved and “the observatory and instruments are all in good health,” the agency also did not report the glitch until yesterday.
Webb is a $10 billion space observatory that images the cosmos at infrared and near-infrared wavelengths. It is a state-of-the-art telescope that has captured our attention in its first six months of scientific observations, revealing iconic structures like the Pillars of Creation in new light.
The NASA release says the “software fault triggered in the attitude control system,” the apparatus that guides where the observatory is pointing. That’s most directions, except that the telescope was turned away from the micrometeoroid avoidance zone in the spring, to protect the telescope’s mirrors. That maneuver came following a space rock strike that damaged one of the mirror panels.
The pauses added up to several days that the telescope could not do observations this month, NASA said. Now, science is fully back underway, and the Webb team is working to reschedule the observations affected by the glitch.
Yesterday, Webb posted the cosmic equivalent of a holiday card: an image of the spiral galaxy NGC 7469, which bears a resemblance to a wreath. The galaxy is 220 million light-years away and looks distinctly serene in Webb’s eye. Sharp diffraction spikes spread from the galactic center, where a supermassive black hole resides.
Besides seeing known objects in new ways, Webb has imaged light from the earliest corners of the universe, light which was too faint for older observatories to see.
One of Webb’s core scientific goals is to inspect ancient light sources—the earliest stars and galaxies—to understand how those objects emerged and evolved in deep time.
In other words, it’d be really nice if Webb could avoid safe mode, for the sake of science. But better safe than sorry, and now that the telescope is back to business, let’s hope it stays that way.
More: Webb Telescope Brings a Once-Fuzzy Galaxy Into Focus
NASA and the European Space Agency are developing plans for one of the most ambitious campaigns ever attempted in space: bringing the first samples of Mars material safely back to Earth for detailed study. The diverse set of scientifically curated samples now being collected by NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover could help scientists answer the question of whether ancient life ever arose on the Red Planet.
Bringing samples of Mars to Earth for future study would happen in several steps with multiple spacecraft, and in some ways, in a synchronized manner. This short animation features key moments of the Mars Sample Return campaign: from landing on Mars and securing the sample tubes to launching them off the surface and ferrying them back to Earth.
Animation is contributed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the European Space Agency, Goddard Space Flight Center, and Marshall Space Flight Center.
The Webb Space Telescope before it was packed and shipped to French Guiana for launch. Photo: NASA
After a hiatus, one of Webb Space Telescope’s cameras will be fully operational again following an engineering test that took place last week.
Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) will resume observations using its medium-resolution spectrometry (MRS) mode by November 12, NASA announced Tuesday in a blog post. The instrument had suffered a minor glitch on August 24 due to increased friction in one of MRS’ grating wheels. Since then, the Webb science team had paused observations using that mode.
Following an in-depth investigation, the team concluded that the glitch was likely caused by “increased contact forces between the wheel central bearing assembly’s sub-components under certain conditions,” NASA wrote. That particular mechanism essentially functions like a “grating wheel” for the MRS observing mode, allowing scientists to select between short, medium, and longer wavelengths when making observations.
The investigation team then developed a set of recommendations on how to use the grating wheel mechanism during science observations. On November 2, NASA ran through an engineering test with new operational parameters based on predictions of the friction in the wheel. The test was successful, and MRS got the green light to carry out science observations once again.
The MRS mode is resuming at the perfect moment, as Webb gears up for a time-limited opportunity to see Saturn’s polar regions. The planet’s poles won’t be observable by Webb for another 20 years after that. But the science team is taking it slow at first, scheduling extra science observations for MRS in order to monitor how well it does under the new operational parameters before fully resuming its regular schedule, according to the Space Telescope Science Institute.
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Webb’s MIRI uses a camera and a spectrograph to see light in the mid-infrared part of the spectrum, wavelengths of light that are longer than what the human eye can see. MIRI has four observing modes: imaging, coronagraphic imaging, low-resolution spectroscopy, and medium-resolution spectroscopy. The MRS observing mode is useful for observing signals from the interaction of light and matter, like the emissions coming from molecules and dust in planet-forming disks.
The imaging instruments on Webb have been delivering stunning views of the cosmos. Most recently, Webb imaged the iconic Pillars of Creation, revealing the stretched-out ‘hand’ of gas and dust in exquisite detail.
More: Space Pebble That Hit Webb Telescope Caused Significant Damage, Scientists Say
A view of Webb’s secondary mirror, captured during the telescope’s cryogenic testing. Photo: Ball Aerospace
The Webb Space Telescope has been dutifully beaming back incredible images of the cosmos since its “perfect” alignment earlier this year—but nothing is entirely perfect, even a $10 billion telescope. One of Webb’s observing mechanisms has apparently run into a bit of trouble, and mission engineers are working to figure out a solution.
On August 24, a mechanism used to support Webb’s medium-resolution spectroscopy (MRS) experienced “increased friction” while being set up for a science observation, NASA said in a blog post on Tuesday. The space agency called for a meeting of an anomaly review board on September 6 to “assess the best path forward.” As the board works to analyze the issue and develop strategies to resolve it, NASA has paused observations using this particular mode.
The MRS observing mode is part of Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which uses a camera and a spectrograph to see light in the mid-infrared part of the spectrum (wavelengths that are longer than what human eyes can see). MIRI has four observing modes: imaging, coronagraphic imaging, low-resolution spectroscopy, and medium-resolution spectroscopy. MRS is useful for observing signals from the interaction of light and matter, like the emissions coming from molecules and dust in planet-forming disks.
The glitch in question affected a mechanism that functions like a “grating wheel” for the MRS observing mode, allowing scientists to select between short, medium, and longer wavelengths when making observations using that particular mode, according to NASA.
For now, that mode is on hold while NASA tries to fix the issue. “The observatory is in good health, and MIRI’s other three observing modes – imaging, low-resolution spectroscopy, and coronagraphy – are operating normally and remain available for science observations,” the space agency wrote.
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Webb has recently wowed us with images of neighboring planets Mars and Jupiter, but the telescope is also gearing up to bring us unprecedented views of the distant universe from its perch in space 1 million miles away from Earth. Webb is expected to operate for about 20 years or longer, so hopefully it can overcome a few technical glitches along its journey.
More: Whoa, NASA Just Turned the First Webb Telescope Images Into Sounds
On the left is a monochromatic image showing infrared data from Webb of the Southern Ring Nebula. On the right is a processed image showing the same view in full color.Image: Gizmodo/NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI
On July 12, the first full-color images from the Webb Space Telescope showed countless nebulae, galaxies, and a gassy exoplanet as they had never been seen before. But Webb only collects infrared and near-infrared light, which the human eye cannot see—so where are these gorgeous colors coming from?
Image developers on the Webb team are tasked with turning the telescope’s infrared image data into some of the most vivid views of the cosmos we’ve ever had. They assign various infrared wavelengths to colors on the visible spectrum, the familiar reds, blues, yellows, etc. But while the processed images from the Webb team aren’t literally what the telescope saw, they’re hardly inaccurate.
“Something I’ve been trying to change people’s minds about is to stop getting hung up on the idea of ‘is this what this would look like if I could fly out there in a spaceship and look at it?’” said Joe DePasquale, a senior data image developer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in a phone call with Gizmodo. “You don’t ask a biologist if you can somehow shrink down to the size of a cell and look at the coronavirus.”
Webb’s first test images helped check its mirrors’ alignment and captured an orange-tinted shot of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Those early snapshots were not representative color images; one used a monochromatic filter (its image was grayscale) and the other just translated infrared light into the red-to-yellow visible color bands, so the team could see certain features of the cloud they imaged. But now, with the telescope up and running, the images that get released are full of blazing color, like this recent portrait of the Cartwheel Galaxy.
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Astronomy is often done outside the visible spectrum, because many of the most interesting objects in space are shining brightly in ultraviolet, x-rays, and even radio waves (which category light falls into depends on the photon’s wavelength). The Webb Telescope is designed to see infrared light, whose wavelengths are longer than red visible light but shorter than microwaves.
Infrared light can penetrate thick clouds of gas and dust in space, allowing researchers to see previously hidden secrets of the universe. Especially intriguing to scientists is that light from the early universe has been stretched as the universe has expanded, meaning what was once ultraviolet or visible light may now be infrared (what’s known as “redshifted” light).
“These are instruments that we’ve designed to extend the power of our vision, to go beyond what our eyes are capable of doing to see light that our eyes are not sensitive to, and to resolve objects that we can probably see with just our eyes,” DePasquale said. “I’m trying to bring out the most detail and the most richness of color and complexity that’s inherent in the data without actually changing anything.”
Webb’s raw images are so laden with data that they need to be scaled down before they can be translated into visible light. The images also need to be cleaned of artifacts like cosmic rays and reflections from bright stars that hit the telescope’s detectors. If you look at a Webb image before processing work is done, it’ll look like a black rectangle peppered with some white dots.
A raw image of the Carina Nebula as seen by NIRCam, before the infrared light is translated into visible wavelengths.Image: Space Telescope Science Institute
“I think there’s some connotations that go along with ‘colorizing’ or ‘false color’ that imply there’s some process going on where we’re arbitrarily choosing colors to create a color image,” DePasquale said. “Representative color is the most preferred term for the kind of work that we do, because I think it encompasses the work that we do of translating light to create a true color image, but in a wavelength range that our eyes are not sensitive to.”
Longer infrared waves are assigned redder colors, and the shortest infrared wavelengths are assigned bluer colors. (Blue and violet light has the shortest wavelengths within the visible spectrum, while red has the longest.) The process is called chromatic ordering, and the spectrum is split into as many colors as the team needs to capture the full spectrum of light depicted in the image.
“We have filters on the instruments that collect certain wavelengths of light, which we then apply a color that is most closely what we think it will be on the [visible] spectrum,” said Alyssa Pagan, a science visuals developer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, in a phone call with Gizmodo.
The chromatic ordering depends too on what elements are being imaged. When working with narrow-band wavelengths in optical light—oxygen, ionized hydrogen, and sulfur, Pagan suggests—the latter two both emit in red. So the hydrogen might get shifted to green visible light, in order to give the viewer more information.
“It’s a balance between the art and the science, because you want to showcase science and the features, and sometimes those two things don’t necessarily work together,” Pagan added.
Webb’s first representative color images were released July 12, over six months after the telescope launched from an ESA spaceport in French Guiana. From there, Webb traveled about a million miles to L2, a point in space where gravitational effects allow spacecraft to stay in place without burning much fuel.
The telescope unfolded itself on the way to L2, so once it was there, mission scientists could get started on aligning the $10 billion observatory’s mirrors and commissioning its instruments. The telescope has four instruments: a near-infrared camera (NIRCam), a near-infrared spectrograph, a mid-infrared instrument (MIRI), and a fine guidance sensor and slitless spectrograph for pointing at targets precisely and characterizing exoplanet atmospheres.
The voluminous amounts of dust in some galaxies and nebulae are transparent to NIRCam, allowing it to capture bright stars at shorter wavelengths. MIRI, on the other hand, can observe discs of material that will give way to planets as well as dust warmed by starlight.
When telescope images are being assembled, image processors work with instrument scientists to decide which features of a given object should be highlighted in the image: its piping hot gas, perhaps, or a cool dusty tail.
When Webb imaged Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, the finished product was a 150-million-pixel image made up of 1,000 images taken by both MIRI and NIRCam. When just seen by MIRI, though, hot dust dominates the image. In the background of the MIRI images, distant galaxies glow in different colors; DePasquale said the team calls them “skittles.”
DePasquale and Pagan helped create the Webb images as we would eventually see them, rich in color and cosmic meaning. In the case of the sweeping shot of the Carina Nebula’s cosmic cliffs, different filters captured the ionized blue gas and red dust. In initial passes at the nebula image, the gas obscured the dust’s structure, scientists asked the image processing team to “tone down the gas” a bit, Pagan said.
Collecting light in Webb’s hexagonal mirrors is only half the battle when it comes to seeing the distant universe. Translating what’s there is another beast entirely.
This depression in Mare Tranquillitatis is a roughly 328 foot (100 meter) wide pit in the Moon’s surface that remains at a comfortable 63 degrees Fahrenheit.Image: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University
Data from a NASA probe suggests lunar pits have comfortable temperatures due to their shadowy overhangs, which keep them cool during the day and prevent heat from escaping at night.
Hard to believe now, but the seemingly inert surface of the Moon was once rife with volcanic activity. Today, we see evidence of this in the form of pits that litter the lunar surface. We’ve been privy to these pits for nearly 15 years, but recent research indicates that the temperatures within them could be far cooler—and arguably more comfortable—than the surrounding surface.
Data gathered by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter place the interior of the pits at a relatively consistent 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17.2 degrees Celsius) throughout the lunar day/night cycle. If confirmed, this would make them ripe targets for exploration and human habitation.
“Lunar pits are a fascinating feature on the lunar surface,” said Noah Petro in a NASA press release yesterday. Petro is an LRO project scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “Knowing that they create a stable thermal environment helps us paint a picture of these unique lunar features and the prospect of one day exploring them.”
These findings were published earlier this month in Geophysical Research Letters by scientists from the University of California in Los Angeles and the University of Colorado, Boulder. “About 16 of the more than 200 pits are probably collapsed lava tubes,” said project leader Tyler Horvath in the NASA press release. The researchers noticed that some of the pits have overhangs—the key feature that could offer future Moon explorers protection from incoming cosmic rays, micrometeorites, and wild fluctuations in surface temperature.
According to NASA, the surface of the Moon can reach highs of 260 degrees Fahrenheit (126.7 degrees Celsius) and lows of -280 degrees Fahrenheit (-173.3 degrees Celsius). But these overhangs, it appears, shade the pits during the day while preventing heat from escaping at night, leading to a consistently balmy temperature around 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17.2 degrees Celsius).
As NASA’s efforts to return humans to the Moon ramp up, creative approaches to long-term stays on the lunar surface are gaining in importance. While it’s not clear exactly how (of even if) NASA will work these pits into their mission plans, the opportunity to rely on their stable temperatures presents an intriguing possibility.
More:What to Know About Lunar Gateway, NASA’s Future Moon-Orbiting Space Station
NASA is drumming up excitement for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope with a super-retro 8-bit inspired video game, and it’s honestly really fun. In the game, players are Roman Space Telescope operators that have to collect different celestial objects ranging from exoplanets to dark matter.
What is the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope?
Once launched, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will become a powerful tool in NASA’s arsenal for unravelling the secrets of the universe. The goal of the astronomical project is to study dark energy and dark matter, which make up about 95% of the known universe. The telescope will also be used to search for exoplanets, much like the James Webb Telescope.
NASA says the Roman Space Telescope will operate much like Hubble, but it’ll function with technology that’s three decades more advanced than its predecessor. That should allow Roman to capture infrared images that are 200 times larger than images collected by Hubble. While NASA hasn’t set a firm launch date yet, the telescope passed a design review in September 2021, and NASA aims to begin science operations no later than May 2027.
The Roman Space Observer Game
NASA released the Roman Space Observer Game last week much to the delight of space and vintage enthusiasts alike. With the 80s being so in right now, the Roman Space Observer Game fits right in as it’s a retro-style arcade game. Think Asteroids, but instead of blasting space rocks, players collect exoplanets and black holes. NASA said on the game’s homepage: “Our goal for this game is to inform and inspire players about the amazing cosmic objects in our universe and what Roman may be able to see in a fun and engaging way.”
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The game is named after the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is set to launch later this decade.Graphic: NASA
I played the game for a bit and I had an absolute blast. I was given control of the Nancy Grace Space Telescope and had to catch as many astrophysical objects as possible in one minute using the telescope’s sights. Galaxies, supernovae, rogue planets, and even the James Webb Telescope zoom in and out of the view of the Roman Space Telescope while a kitschy soundtrack full of “bleeps” and “bloops” played in the background. There are also blobs of dark matter and black holes that zip across the screen, but those proved to be much harder to snag since they blended in with the black background, which probably explains why they’re worth so many more points.
It sounds easy, but its actually incredibly challenging and I spent way too much time living the dream of a NASA telescope operator. I’m not a video game expert by any means, but I do love science and I think that the Roman Space Observer Game is a super fun way to engage the public on the namesake telescope’s mission to study some of the more mysterious parts of our universe.
More: NASA to Test GPS-Like Navigation System at the Moon for the First Time
Long before Webb even launched from French Guiana, we’ve been waiting for this moment: the first full-color images from this cutting-edge space telescope. NASA announced yesterday that those pictures will be available on July 12, along with some spectroscopic data.
“The release of Webb’s first full-color images will offer a unique moment for us all to stop and marvel at a view humanity has never seen before,” said Eric Smith, a Webb program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a NASA release.
Webb launched on December 25 and arrived at its observation point in space—a place called L2, a million miles from Earth—one month later. Since then, NASA scientists (as well as scientists at the European and Canadian space agencies, who are partners on the telescope mission) have been hard at work preparing the machine to do science.
The telescope’s primary science goals are to study the birth of stars and the rise of planetary systems, to learn about the evolution of galaxies and local objects like exoplanets, and to investigate the earliest sources of light in the universe—the very first stars and galaxies.
“Our goals for Webb’s first images and data are both to showcase the telescope’s powerful instruments and to preview the science mission to come,” said astronomer Klaus Pontoppidan, a Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, in the same release. “They are sure to deliver a long-awaited ‘wow’ for astronomers and the public.”
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NASA has been tight-lipped about what Webb’s first color images will show, though we got a clue last month, when the agency released some remarkable shots of the Large Magellanic Cloud taken by Webb’s MIRI instrument and held a briefing on what is to come. From that press conference, we know that the images (called “early release observations”) will be of Webb science targets. But the exact subjects will remain a “surprise” until the images are released in July, Pontoppidan said last month.
The first images are only a month away, but many will follow thereafter. Only planned to last five years, the Webb mission may go for as long as 20 years, thanks to fuel saved during an ultra-precise launch.
More: NASA Releases Ridiculously Sharp Webb Space Telescope Images
NASA held a press conference Monday morning to discuss the precise alignment of the Webb Space Telescope and the spacecraft’s upcoming scientific operations. The space agency also released images from the telescope that put Webb’s progress on dazzling display.
“I’m delighted to report that the telescope alignment has been completed with performance even better than we had anticipated,” said Michael McElwain, a Webb observatory project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a NASA press conference. “This is an extraordinary milestone for humanity.”
Webb sits at an observational point called L2 nearly 1 million miles from Earth, where it will look further back in time than the Hubble Space Telescope. (Hubble will continue to operate alongside Webb once the latter is operational).
The $10 billion telescope’s primary science goals are to study how stars are born and give rise to planetary systems, to investigate the evolution of galaxies, exoplanets, and objects in our solar system, and to look at the universe’s earliest light, in the hopes that we can figure out how the first stars and galaxies emerged.
The preparation and testing of the telescope’s science instruments (a process called commissioning) will take about two months to complete. Only once the commissioning is complete can Webb begin taking the scientific images that will define its tenure in space.
But some images are already being collected, to make sure the telescope is functioning properly. Webb’s coldest instrument—the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI)—recently took a test image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way that was previously imaged by the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope’s Infrared Array Camera.
Webb’s image of the same region makes Spitzer’s look like a finger painting, showing interstellar gas clearly distributed across the star field. The stars—blots, in Spitzer’s view—are seven-pointed beacons of light in the MIRI test.
“This is a really nice science example of what Webb will do for us in the coming years,” said Christopher Evans, a Webb project scientist with the European Space Agency, in the press conference. Evans said that Spitzer was useful for surveys of objects like the Large Magellanic Cloud, but (as you may notice) its images were limited by their resolution. Webb is way less limited. “This is just going to give us an amazing view of the processes in a different galaxy for the first time, cutting through the dust,” Evans said.
Webb’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSPEC) is also a big upgrade on previous space telescope technology. Evans said that older space observatories have only been able to see spectra one target at a time; NIRSPEC will be able to observe 100 targets simultaneously. That’s a boon for the many thousands of scientists all hoping to use Webb data in their research.
Webb’s next steps will focus on taking images of its science targets, known as early release observations. These will not only be the first images of Webb science targets, but they will be the first images processed into full color. (Webb sees the cosmos in the infrared and near-infrared wavelengths, but the images will be translated into visible light.)
Klaus Pontoppidan, a Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, said in the briefing that the chief differences between the most recent images and the ones to come are that the former were taken to test the telescope’s ability to see clearly, whereas the latter will test the telescope’s ability to image science targets. Pontoppidan wouldn’t elaborate on what Webb team will capture in the early release observations—the targets are a “surprise,” he said.
From these early results, it appears that Webb will be something of an intergalactic palantir, dropping scientists into various parts of deep space that were previously inaccessible. It’s the next best thing to actually being there for the universe’s infancy.
The telescope was designed to operate for five years at minimum, but its ultra-precise launch back in December means the telescope may have enough fuel to stay in position for more than 20 years. Buckle up.
More: Webb Space Telescope Could Get a Good Look at the Next ‘Oumuamua
Images from the Webb Telescope’s instrument suite of focused stars indicate that the mirrors are fully aligned.Image: NASA/STScI
The Webb Space Telescope is one step closer to being fully operational: It is now fully aligned and calibrating its suite of four instruments to collect data on our universe. NASA announced the new milestone in a blog post yesterday.
Webb, a collaboration between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency, is humanity’s newest attempt at unlocking the secrets of the cosmos. The aim of the telescope is to collect data on potentially habitable exoplanets, as well as to observe distant stars and fledgling galaxies in infrared using its golden honeycomb array. Now, its seventh and final stage of alignment is officially complete after its launch back in December 2021, and it has some amazing photos from each of its four instruments to prove it.
“These remarkable test images from a successfully aligned telescope demonstrate what people across countries and continents can achieve when there is a bold scientific vision to explore the universe,” said Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in the NASA blog post.
Now that the mirrors are fully aligned, the telescope is successfully supplying its four instruments with incoming light from the far reaches of the universe, capturing images of stars in sharp focus. The instruments are the NIRCam, a near-infrared camera for imaging young stars and forming galaxies; the NIRSpec, a powerful spectrograph to study light from distant sources; MIRI, a camera and spectrograph that operate in the mid-infrared wavelengths; and FGI/NIRISS, which allows the telescope to aim with precision and study exoplanets.
Webb is now moving into the process of instrument commissioning, where these incredibly sensitive instruments will be tested across different configurations to ensure they are ready for full-scale operation. As a part of this process, the telescope will point at different patches of the sky to ensure that it’s thermally stable. Instrument commissioning should take around two months, and the official start of the science mission should finally begin this summer.
