Latest news with #SwRI
Time of India
06-07-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Rainbow' in space? NASA's PUNCH mission reveals a dazzling view
NASA's newest solar research mission is already producing some amazing outcomes. The PUNCH or Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere mission, which was launched on March 12, 2025, is a set of four small satellites working together in low Earth orbit to study the sun's outer atmosphere and solar wind. Within weeks of launch, it sent back its first set of images, including a colourful and unusual 'rainbow' view of a faint glow caused by sunlight scattering off dust in space that was rare and rarely seen before. These early images are scientific and have quickly caught the attention of space enthusiasts due to their unexpected beauty. One image, taken on April 18 by the WFI-2 instrument, shows a soft gradient of red, green, and blue light against a starry sky. The image shows how the spacecraft measures different wavelengths of light and the direction that light has been polarised by particles in space. A rainbow in space This image isn't a real rainbow, but a false-colour representation of polarised light from space dust. The colours including red, green, and blue, reflect different polarisation angles that help scientists understand how light scatters off interplanetary particles. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Birla Evara 3 and 4 BHK from ₹ 1.75 Crore* Birla Estates Learn More Undo As said by NASA in a SwRI press release, 'The image is colorised to show the polarization (or angle) of the zodiacal light, a faint glow from dust orbiting the sun.' These early images help scientists confirm that the instruments are working correctly and are ready for more detailed solar observations. Seeing the moon in a new light Another exceptional moment happened on April 27, when one of PUNCH's cameras, the Narrow Field Imager (NFI), spotted the new moon passing near the sun. To see this clearly, the NFI used a special cover called an occluder to block out the sun's bright light. In the image, the moon looks full even though it was technically a new moon. That's because of something called 'Earthshine', or sunlight bouncing off Earth and lighting up the moon's dark side. This helped scientists make sure the moon won't get in the way of PUNCH's future views of the sun's outer layers. On April 16, two of the other PUNCH satellites, WFI-1 and WFI, also captured the soft glow of zodiacal light. Through their wide-angle view, they picked up some famous sights in the night sky, like the Hyades and Pleiades star clusters, the Andromeda galaxy, and the Cassiopeia constellation. These early images are helping scientists fine-tune the instruments, but they also show just how sensitive PUNCH is as it can spot even the faintest details way out in space. SPHEREx joins the ride Launched alongside PUNCH aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, SPHEREx is another NASA mission with big goals. Unlike the James Webb Space Telescope, which zooms into distant objects, SPHEREx will scan the whole sky in 102 infrared colours. As Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a SPHEREx briefing, 'We are literally mapping the entire celestial sky in 102 infrared colors for the first time in humanity's history. ' Photo: NASA/ SwRI
Associated Press
12-06-2025
- Automotive
- Associated Press
ITS World Congress Partners with SwRI to Lead the 2025 Future Leaders Program
Winners to present transportation solutions at the world's largest ITS conference 'We are investing in the next generation of transportation technology leaders by creating opportunities for students to showcase their innovative solutions on a global stage.'— Laura Chace, President and CEO of ITS America ATLANTA, GA, UNITED STATES, June 12, 2025 / / -- Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is excited to sponsor the Future Leaders Program at ITS World Congress this year, organized in partnership by RX and ITS America (ITSA), taking place August 24-28 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Through the Future Leaders Program, the next generation of ITS leaders will gather and have the opportunity to attend educational sessions, training sessions, meet with exhibitors, sponsors, and technology providers, and network with the global community of ITS professionals who can offer career advice and mentorship. College students are invited to share visions for the future of transportation in a global essay competition ahead of ITS World Congress 2025. Three winning students - one from Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Americas - will receive a paid trip to present their research at the event. 'We are investing in the next generation of transportation technology leaders by creating opportunities for students to showcase their innovative solutions on a global stage,' said Laura Chace, President and CEO of ITS America. 'The contributions from new talent will help shape how we build safer, greener, smarter transportation systems.' The competition requires students to address transportation challenges within their region that align with the conference theme 'Deploying Today, Empowering Tomorrow.' A panel of judges from ITS Asia-Pacific, ITS America, ERTICO, and Southwest Research Institute will select regional finalists before choosing three global winners. 'The Future Leaders Program connects students directly with industry pioneers,' said Josh Johnson, Executive Director of SwRI's Intelligent Transportation Systems Department. 'By presenting at ITS World Congress, students gain real-world experience sharing their research with transportation leaders from around the world.' The Future Leaders Program features a dedicated day of programming on Wednesday, August 27, including expert roundtable discussions, guided tours of exhibits and demonstrations, and resume reviews at the SwRI booth. Students from around the World and local Atlanta-area student groups will participate in special sessions designed to encourage careers in transportation technology. 'ITS World Congress creates life-changing opportunities for students to launch their careers in transportation technology,' said Jaime McAuley, Event Director for ITS America Events at RX Global. 'Winners receive conference admission, round-trip airfare, and access to exclusive networking events where they can connect with potential employers and mentors.' Students can register and view submission guidelines at The submission deadline is July 1, 2025. Danielle Baker 10 to 1 PR [email protected] Visit us on social media: LinkedIn Facebook X Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Space photo of the day for April 30, 2025
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A new study from the NASA New Horizons mission team at the Southwest Research Institute have resulted in a first-of-its-type map from the Milky Way galaxy in an ultraviolet wavelength, revealing details in the region around our solar system. This spectrograph map, generated from data collected by NASA's New Horizons probe, depicts the relatively uniform brightness of the ultraviolet (UV) "Lyman-alpha" background surrounding the sun and its area of influence."Understanding the Lyman-alpha background helps shed light on nearby galactic structures and processes," said Dr. Randy Gladstone with the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Colorado. "This research suggests that hot interstellar gas bubbles like the one our solar system is embedded within may actually be regions of enhanced hydrogen gas emissions at a wavelength called Lyman alpha." Lyman-alpha is a specific wavelength of UV light emitted and scattered by hydrogen atoms. It is useful when studying distant stars, galaxies and the interstellar medium, as it can help detect the composition, temperature and movement of these distant this spectrograph map, the black dots represent approximately 90,000 known UV-bright stars in our galaxy. New Horizons, which began as the first mission to flyby Pluto, collected baseline data about Lyman-alpha emissions during its initial journey to the small, icy world. After the spacecraft's primary objectives at Pluto were completed, New Horizons' ultraviolet spectrograph (named "Alice") was used to make more frequent surveys of Lyman-alpha emissions as New Horizons traveled farther from the sun. These observations included an extensive set of scans in 2023 that mapped roughly 83% of the sky. Before this map was released, scientists theorized that a wall of interstellar hydrogen atoms would accumulate as they reached the edge of our heliosphere — the region of our galaxy where the solar wind from our sun reaches and interacts with the interstellar medium. New Horizons data saw nothing to indicate that this "wall" was an important source of Lyman-alpha emissions."These are really landmark observations, in giving the first clear view of the sky surrounding the solar system at these wavelengths, both revealing new characteristics of that sky and refuting older ideas that the Alice New Horizons data just doesn't support," said Dr. Alan Stern. the mission's principal investigator at SwRI. "This Lyman-alpha map also provides a solid foundation for future investigations to learn even more." Read more about New Horizons' mission after leaving Pluto and other recent research based on Lyman-alpha emissions. You can also find the scientific paper describing the SwRI map and its findings in The Astronomical Journal.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
NASA spacecraft zooms by strange asteroid, beams back images
A NASA spacecraft is traveling to the most mysterious asteroids in the solar system. On the way there, it snapped images of the curious, elongated asteroid dubbed "Donaldjohanson." On April 20, the over 50-foot-wide Lucy spacecraft approached as close as some 600 miles from Donaldjohanson, which is aptly named for the discoverer of the famed Lucy hominid fossil, paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson. The craft sped by at 30,000 mph, and used a specialized camera to capture a detailed view of the five-mile-wide asteroid. The images show a unique-looking asteroid, with a narrow neck connecting the object's two lobes. SEE ALSO: If a scary asteroid will actually strike Earth, here's how you'll know "These early images of Donaldjohanson are again showing the tremendous capabilities of the Lucy spacecraft as an engine of discovery," Tom Statler, a NASA planetary scientist and program scientist of the mission, said in a statement. "The potential to really open a new window into the history of our solar system when Lucy gets to the Trojan asteroids is immense." New imagery of the asteroid Donaldjohanson captured by NASA's Lucy spacecraft. Credit: NASA / Goddard / SwRI / Johns Hopkins APL / NOIRLab (The asteroid seen in the animation above was observed at a distance of 1,000 to 660 miles away.) The Trojan asteroids — two swarms of diverse asteroids trapped around the gas giant Jupiter (one in front and one behind) — are of profound interest to planetary scientists. These asteroids can't leave Jupiter's potent gravitational influence, so Trojan meteorites likely don't land on Earth, depriving us of samples. Crucially, researchers suspect these icy rocks are captured relics of our solar system's formation some 4 billion years ago. If so, the Trojans are the smaller building blocks of planets. They can help tell us how Earth, and the other planets, came to be. "If we want to understand ourselves, we have to understand these small bodies," Hal Levison, a planetary scientist who leads the unprecedented mission to investigate the Trojans, previously told Mashable. "This is the first reconnaissance of the Trojan swarms," Levison added. This high-speed flyby of Donaldjohanson is the spacecraft's last "dress rehearsal" before it arrives at its first Trojan in August 2027, named Eurybates. To investigate the Trojans, Lucy is equipped with a suite of powerful cameras, including the Lucy Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager, or L'LORRI, which captured the images above. While it's not unusual for an object in space to be a "contact binary" — meaning two objects that orbited so closely they eventually merged — NASA noted that "the team was surprised by the odd shape of the narrow neck connecting the two lobes, which looks like two nested ice cream cones." Donaldjohanson isn't a primary target of Lucy's mission, but its unusual shape and structure will provide further insight into the origins of such primordial space objects, how they formed, and how our world formed.
Yahoo
21-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
See it: NASA's Lucy spacecraft sends back first close-up images of asteroid Donaldjohanson
NASA's Lucy spacecraft flew about 600 miles above an asteroid named Donaldjohanson on Easter Sunday, sending back the first close-ups of this oblong, potato-like object believed to be about 150 million years old. United Launch Alliance successfully launched Lucy on Oct. 16, 2021, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. After several gravity assists, the spacecraft is now in deep space, testing out its instruments on a few never-before-seen asteroids as it makes its way to the Trojan asteroids associated with Jupiter. Could Seashells Help Replace Plastics? California Researchers Think So After its first flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh in November, a main asteroid belt object, Lucy successfully made the second flyby of its mission, visiting Donaldjohanson on Sunday. This second encounter enabled Lucy's team to run a full test of its capabilities before heading on to study the Trojan asteroids. About 24 hours later, NASA and Lucy's team at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, shared the first images of asteroid Donaldjohanson. "Asteroid Donaldjohanson has strikingly complicated geology," Lucy Principal Investigator Hal Levison, with SwRI, said. "As we study the complex structures in detail, they will reveal important information about the building blocks and collisional processes that formed the planets in our Solar System." The moving image above was pieced together with images taken about every 2 seconds using Lucy's Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager during the flyby. Glowing Aurora Lights On Uranus Help Scientists Determine A Day Is 28 Seconds Longer On Sideways Planet Asteroid Donaldjohanson is named after Donald Johanson, the American paleoanthropologist who uncovered the skeletal remains of Lucy, one of humanity's oldest known ancestors. The skeleton found in Ethiopia in 1974 was named after The Beatles' song "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" after a night of celebrating the discovery while listening to the band's songs. Lucy will continue traveling through the main asteroid belt before encountering its first Jupiter Trojan asteroid in August 2027. Associated with Jupiter because the asteroids are on the same orbital path, two groups of Trojan asteroids zoom ahead of Jupiter and trail behind the gas giant. These asteroids are made up of the same materials as the giant planets of our solar system: Jupiter, Saturn and article source: See it: NASA's Lucy spacecraft sends back first close-up images of asteroid Donaldjohanson
