Latest news with #spaceresearch
Digital Trends
a day ago
- Science
- Digital Trends
How to watch a SpaceX Crew Dragon splash down with 4 ISS crew members
The four crew members of Axiom Space's Ax-4 mission have departed the International Space Station (ISS) and are on their way home after an 18-day stay aboard the orbital outpost. Traveling inside a SpaceX Crew Dragon, private astronauts Peggy Whitson (U.S.), Shubhanshu Shukla (India), Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski (Poland), and Tibor Kapu (Hungary) undocked from the ISS at 7:05 a.m. ET on Monday. After a journey time of just over 22 hours, they're expected to splash down off the coast of Florida in the early hours of Tuesday, July 15. Axiom Space will livestream the homecoming of the Crew Dragon capsule, including its high-speed descent, parachute deployment, and splashdown. The crew are in for an exhilarating ride through Earth's atmosphere before the spacecraft's parachutes deploy to dramatically reduce its speed prior to splashdown. On his own trip home in 2020 in what was the Crew Dragon's first-ever crewed descent from orbit, NASA astronaut Bob Behnken later described the unique experience. 'As we descended through the atmosphere, the thrusters were firing almost continuously,' Behnken recounted. 'It doesn't sound like a machine, it sounds like an animal coming through the atmosphere with all the puffs that are happening from the thrusters and the atmosphere.' The mission — the fourth private ISS visit organized by Texas-based Axiom Space — involved the most research and science-related activities to date, with the four crew members working on around 60 scientific studies and activities supplied by more than 30 countries. It's hoped that the results from their efforts will enhance global knowledge in human research, Earth observation, as well as life, biological, and material sciences. How to watch The Crew Dragon and its four occupants are expected to splash down off the coast of California at about 5:30 a.m. ET (2:30 a.m. PT) on Tuesday, July 15. Axiom Space will live stream the final moments of the homecoming. You can watch the webcast via the video player embedded at the top of this page, or via Axiom Space's YouTube channel, which will carry the same feed. Besides footage from an array of cameras, you'll also get to hear the live audio communications between the Ax-4 crew and Mission Control.
Daily Mail
23-06-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
World's largest camera snaps its first picture: Incredible photo shot by the Vera Rubin observatory shows the Trifid and Lagoon nebulae in stunning detail
Scientists have revealed the first images from the world's largest digital camera, the Vera C Rubin Observatory. Located on top of the Cerro Pachón mountain in Chile, this revolutionary telescope is poised to supercharge our study of the universe. Equipped with a 5.4ft x 9.8ft digital camera, the telescope can capture an area about three times that of the moon with every photo. With a resolution of 3,200 megapixels - 67 times more than an iPhone 16 Pro - each image would need 400 4K high-definition television screens to display at its original size. One of its first stunning images shows the Trifid and Lagoon nebulae, vast clouds of colourful gas located some 9,000 light-years from Earth. Combining 678 different pictures taken over seven hours, the photograph reveals blue and pink swirls of interplanetary gas and the glow of young stars being formed. In another image, the massive telescope captures around 10 million galaxies - just 0.5 per cent of the 20 billion galaxies it will observe over its lifetime. However, these are only the very first test images from the cutting-edge telescope, with thousands more soon to come. Perched 8,770ft (2,670m) above the Chilean Andes on a mountain dedicated to space research, the newly completed Vera C Rubin Telescope is in the perfect place to watch the stars. The location is very high, exceptionally dark, and far enough above sea level to avoid much of the interference from Earth's atmosphere. The observatory's four goals are to map changes in the sky, study the formation of the Milky Way, map the solar system, and understand dark matter. As these test images offer a tantalising glimpse of what is to come, the observatory is soon to start a decade-long vigil watching the night sky. With its unique, fast-moving design, astronomers will snap an image of the sky once every 40 seconds for eight to 12 hours every single night. As part of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, the telescope will map the entire southern night sky once every three days for the next ten years. At its peak, the observatory will be generating tens of thousands of images every night, which will be sent to scientists around the world. The UK will also play a critical role in this project by hosting the data centres to process the enormous quantities of data. Another small section of the same image shows spiral galaxies interacting in the heart of a dense galaxy cluster The Vera C Rubin Observatory Altitude: 8,768.9 feet (2,672.7m) Primary mirror diameter: 27.5 feet (8.4m) Camera resolution: 3,200 megapixels The Vera C Rubin Observatory is a unique 'survey telescope' designed to photograph the entire night sky once every three days. The telescope features the largest digital camera ever constructed and a specialised mount allowing it to move much faster than traditional telescopes. This will enable the observatory to take a photo once every 40 seconds for eight to 12 hours per night. By repeatedly taking images of the same sections of the sky, the Vera C Rubin Observatory will enable scientists to detect the smallest changes. Dr Eduardo Bañados, from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, says the telescope will give astronomers a 'cosmic movie' of the next decade. 'This will allow us to go beyond just discovering such super-distant galaxies, but also learning about their physical properties,' says Dr Bañados. The system will alert scientists anytime it detects that something has changed, with up to 10 million data alerts being generated every night. These alerts might be tiny fluctuations in the light from a distant galaxy or the glint of sunlight on an asteroid approaching Earth. Scientists believe that the telescope will increase the catalogue of objects in the solar system tenfold. Speaking at a press conference revealing the test images, Aaron Roodman, Deputy Director for the observatory's construction, said: 'Since we take images of the night sky so quickly and so often, we'll detect millions of changing objects literally every night. That means, if there is a ninth planet hiding somewhere in the solar system, the Vera C Rubin telescope will be able to find it. Some scientists believe there might be a ninth planet orbiting 700 times further from the sun than Earth, well beyond the range of conventional telescopes. But by using a three-mirror system to focus even the faintest amounts of light, the Vera C Rubin Observatory will be able to see this planet if it is there. Light from distant galaxies is reflected from a 27.5-foot (8.4m) primary mirror, into an 11.2-foot (3.4m) secondary mirror, back into a 15.7-foot (4.8m) mirror, which bounces it into the waiting camera. The setup is so sensitive that a single speck of dust or the light from a stray LED is enough to cause distortion. However, overcoming those difficulties will give scientists an unprecedented window into the galactic past. Mr Roodman says: 'We also will combine those images to be able to see incredibly dim galaxies and stars, including galaxies that are billions of light-years away. 'Rubin Observatory is truly a discovery machine. It will enable us to explore galaxies, stars in the Milky Way, objects in the solar system, and all in a truly new way.' More photos from the Vera C Rubin Observatory will be released in a live-streamed event at 16:00 BST today. Who was Vera C Rubin? The namesake of the world's largest digital camera The Vera C Rubin Observatory is named after the American astronomer Vera Rubin, who was born in 1928. Vera Rubin is famous for being the person whose work provided the first convincing evidence for the existence of 'dark matter'. This is the hidden, unobservable extra mass which explains why the universe looks the way it does. Prior to Rubin's discoveries, dark matter had been proposed but was not something that many astronomers took seriously. Rubin studied more than 60 galaxies and found that the stars at the edges were moving just as fast as those at the centre. According to the laws of physics that didn't make sense. When Rubin and her colleague Kent Ford added up the mass of the galaxies, they found that their gravity shouldn't have been strong enough to hold them together. That meant there needed to be some extra mass holding them together, and that mass must be dark matter. Rubin was convinced that scientists would discover what dark matter was within a decade, but the mystery has proven far more elusive.
