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Using NASA’s Fermi space telescope, Chinese astronomers have investigated a newly discovered millisecond pulsar known as PSR J1835−3259B. As a result, they identified gamma-ray pulsations from this source. The finding is reported in a paper published June 27 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars emitting a beam of electromagnetic radiation. The most rapidly rotating pulsars, with rotation periods below 30 milliseconds, are known as millisecond pulsars (MSPs). Astronomers assume that they are formed in binary systems when the initially more massive component turns into a neutron star that is then spun up due to accretion of matter from the secondary star.

PSR J1835−3259B is a recently discovered MSP in the globular cluster NGC 6652. It has a spin period of approximately 1.83 milliseconds and is in a nearly circular orbit of about 28.7 hours within the cluster. The distance to the pulsar is estimated to be some 32,600 light years.

It’s time to #UnfoldTheUniverse. Watch as the mission team reveals the long-awaited first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb, an international collaboration led by NASA with our partners the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, is the biggest telescope ever launched into space. It will unlock mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it.

All about Webb: https://webb.nasa.gov/

It’s effectively a new data set that will fuel the second wave of discoveries about Mars’ surface composition.

But while it was doing that work, it was also gathering lower-resolution mapping strips, about 83,000 of them. Now that CRISM is no longer active, the team is building their map from those strips.

Processing this much data into one cohesive map is a complicated task requiring powerful computing resources. It takes time to optimize the maps and account for environmental conditions and discrepancies between the different images.

Continue reading “NASA just built the best map of Mars to date using 51,000 images” »

With the first half of 2022 coming to a close, NASA teams are continuing work to resolve the Lucy spacecraft’s solar array issue following its October 2021 launch. Lucy is a first-of-a-kind mission to visit several asteroids in Jupiter’s L4 and L5 Lagrange points. Currently, Lucy is coasting before its first flyby of Earth in October 2022.

Lucy’s sister mission, Psyche, has experienced compatibility issues causing a delay to a No-Earlier-Than (NET) July 2023 launch. Psyche is another first-of-a-kind mission to orbit the main asteroid belt object, 16 Psyche. Both Lucy and Psyche operate under NASA’s Discovery program.

A team of engineers at the University of Arizona has an ambitious concept for a motorless sailplane that may soar above the Martian surface. They want to go higher.

For the first time, the immersive AR experience surpasses the physical by offering the contextuality that consumers need. They can see the end outcome of the purchase decision before even making the decision — the experience of seeing the couch in the context of their space is transformed — giving them more confidence in their decision.

AR and its effects on consumer psychology

AR is not taking a share of the digital pie as we know it today, but instead increasing the overall size of the pie. There are 100 million consumers shopping with AR online and in stores today. This powerful technology fundamentally changes consumer psychology in three distinct ways: changing the ecommerce model from a push to a pull experience, giving consumers new confidence in their purchases; driving conversion by giving consumers visual context before buying; and giving consumers a new way of experiencing in-person shopping.

NORTHRUP GRUMMAN’S CYGNUS cargo spacecraft conducted a successful reboost of the International Space Station on Saturday, June 25, 2022.

“This Cygnus mission is the first to feature this enhanced capability as a standard service for NASA.”

Cygnus had been docked to the ISS since February and now has departed, leaving on June 28.

Continue reading “NASA move could help the International Space Station stay in orbit without Russia” »