Topic: Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp.

NASA discovers Dual Supermassive Black Holes

October 4, 2017 |

Written by Molly Porter
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

Huntsville, AL – Astronomers have identified a bumper crop of dual supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. This discovery could help astronomers better understand how giant black holes grow and how they may produce the strongest gravitational wave signals in the Universe.

The new evidence reveals five pairs of supermassive black holes, each containing millions of times the mass of the Sun. These black hole couples formed when two galaxies collided and merged with each other, forcing their supermassive black holes close together.

Illustration of supermassive black hole pair. (NASA/CXC/A.Hobart)

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NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope provides additional data on system with 7 Earth Size Planets

March 10, 2017 |

Written by Michele Johnson
NASA Headquarters

Washington, D.C. – On February 22nd, astronomers announced that the ultra-cool dwarf star, TRAPPIST-1, hosts a total of seven Earth-size planets that are likely rocky, a discovery made by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope in combination with ground-based telescopes.

NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope also has been observing this star since December 2016. Today these additional data about TRAPPIST-1 from Kepler are available to the scientific community.

This illustration shows the seven TRAPPIST-1 planets as they might look as viewed from Earth using a fictional, incredibly powerful telescope. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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NASA’s Astrophysics Explorers Program to explore Exotic Astronomical Objects

January 4, 2017 |

Written by Felicia Chou
NASA Headquarters

Washington, D.C. – NASA has selected a science mission that will allow astronomers to explore, for the first time, the hidden details of some of the most extreme and exotic astronomical objects, such as stellar and supermassive black holes, neutron stars and pulsars.

Objects such as black holes can heat surrounding gases to more than a million degrees. The high-energy X-ray radiation from this gas can be polarized – vibrating in a particular direction.

NASA Selects Mission to Study Black Holes, Cosmic X-ray Mysteries

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NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope provides unique view of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

October 10, 2016 |

Written by Elizabeth Landau
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – On September 30th, the European Space Agency concluded its Rosetta mission and the study of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

During the final month of the mission, NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft had a unique opportunity to provide a “big picture” view of the comet as it was unobservable from Earth. Ground-based telescopes could not see comet 67P, because the comet’s orbit placed it in the sky during daylight hours.

From September 7th through September 20th, the Kepler spacecraft, operating in its K2 mission, fixed its gaze on comet 67P. From the distant vantage point of Kepler, the spacecraft could observe the comet’s core and tail. The long-range global view of Kepler complements the close-in view of the Rosetta spacecraft, providing context for the high-resolution investigation Rosetta performed as it descended closer and closer to the comet.

This animation shows a series of 15 images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko taken by NASA’s Kepler space telescope from Sept. 17 through Sept. 18. (The Open University/C. Snodgrass and SETI Institute/E. Ryan)

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NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope data used to create list of Planets that may be similar to Earth

August 7, 2016 |

Written by Michele Johnson
NASA Headquarters

Washington, D.C. – Using public data collected by NASA’s Kepler mission, astronomers have catalogued the planet candidates that may be similar to our third rock from the sun. The tabulation of candidates will help astronomers focus their research efforts in the search for life.

The analysis, led by Stephen Kane, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University in California, highlights 20 candidates in the Kepler trove that are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit their star in the conservative habitable zone — the range of distances where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet.

The artistic concept of Kepler-186f is the result of scientists and artists collaborating to imagine the appearance of these distant worlds. (NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech)

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NASA reports Kepler Spacecraft now stable after entering emergency safe mode

April 12, 2016 |

Written by Charlie Sobeck​, Kepler and K2 mission manager

NASA’s Ames Research Center

Moffett Field, CA – NASA mission operations engineers have successfully recovered the Kepler spacecraft from Emergency Mode (EM). On Sunday morning, the spacecraft reached a stable state with the communication antenna pointed toward Earth, enabling telemetry and historical event data to be downloaded to the ground. The spacecraft is operating in its lowest fuel-burn mode.

The mission has cancelled the spacecraft emergency, returning the Deep Space Network ground communications to normal scheduling.

Artist’s concept of NASA’s Kepler space telescope. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope given new mission to discover exoplanets in the center of Milky Way Galaxy

April 8, 2016 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Astronomers have made great strides in discovering planets outside of our solar system, termed “exoplanets.” In fact, over the past 20 years more than 5,000 exoplanets have been detected beyond the eight planets that call our solar system home.

The majority of these exoplanets have been found snuggled up to their host star completing an orbit (or year) in hours, days or weeks, while some have been found orbiting as far as Earth is to the sun, taking one Earth year to circle.

As an exoplanet passes in front of a more distant star, its gravity causes the trajectory of the starlight to bend, and in some cases, results in a brief brightening of the background star as seen by a telescope. The artistic animation illustrates this effect. This phenomenon of gravitational microlensing enables scientists to search for exoplanets that are too distant and dark to detect any other way. (NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle)

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NASA’s Kepler space telescope continues new discoveries after major malfunction

March 12, 2016 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – The engineers huddled around a telemetry screen, and the mood was tense. They were watching streams of data from a crippled spacecraft more than 50 million miles away — so far that even at the speed of light, it took nearly nine minutes for a signal to travel to the spacecraft and back.

It was late August 2013, and the group of about five employees at Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado, was waiting for NASA’s Kepler space telescope to reveal whether it would live or die. A severe malfunction had robbed the planet-hunting Kepler of its ability to stay pointed at a target without drifting off course.

In this artist’s conception, a tiny rocky object vaporizes as it orbits a white dwarf star. Astronomers have detected the first planetary object transiting a white dwarf using data from the K2 mission. Slowly the object will disintegrate, leaving a dusting of metals on the surface of the star. (CfA/Mark A. Garlick)

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NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captures images of regions on Mars used in movie, “The Martian”

October 6, 2015 |

Written by DC Agle / Guy Webster
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Images from a NASA Mars orbiter’s telescopic camera reveal details of real regions on Mars where a new Hollywood movie, “The Martian,” places future astronaut adventures.

The novel of the same name used actual locations on Mars for the landing sites for its “Ares 3” and “Ares 4” missions. The landing sites for “Ares 3” is on a Martian plain named Acidalia Planitia. The base for the “Ares 4” mission was set inside a crater named Schiaparelli.

This May 2015 image from the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows a location on Mars associated with the best-selling novel and Hollywood movie, “The Martian.” (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)

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NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) telescope studies Odd group of Asteroids

August 5, 2015 |

Written by DC Agle
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – High above the plane of our solar system, near the asteroid-rich abyss between Mars and Jupiter, scientists have found a unique family of space rocks.

These interplanetary oddballs are the Euphrosyne (pronounced you-FROH-seh-nee) asteroids, and by any measure they have been distant, dark and mysterious — until now.

Distributed at the outer edge of the asteroid belt, the Euphrosynes have an unusual orbital path that juts well above the ecliptic, the equator of the solar system. The asteroid after which they are named, Euphrosyne — for an ancient Greek goddess of mirth — is about 156 miles (260 kilometers) across and is one of the 10 largest asteroids in the main belt.

The asteroid Euphrosyne glides across a field of background stars in this time-lapse view from NASA’s WISE spacecraft. (NASA)

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