Crew-5 mission launch to Juno's closest view of Jupiter moon; a quick weekly space recap

The space sector was fairly busy this week as several new discoveries were made and milestones were achieved. While SpaceX launched the fifth crewed mission for NASA, the Juno spacecraft offered the clearest views of Jupiter’s Moon Europa in over 22 years. ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) also announced a major success by mapping the sodium concentration on the lunar surface for the first time. Here is a quick recap of everything that happened this week. 

NASA’s Crew-5 mission launch

SpaceX launched four astronauts-- Josh Cassada, Nicole Mann, Anna Kikina and Koichi Wakata-- to the International Space Station (ISS) on October 5, completing its fifth manned mission for NASA. Out of the four, Cassada and Mann represented NASA whereas Kikina and Wakata represented the Russian space agency Roscosmos and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Named Crew-5, the mission was historic because it saw the first Native American woman (Mann) visit Space and the first Russian cosmonaut launch in a US-made commercial spacecraft.

Juno photographs Europa's icy crust

The Juno spacecraft beamed a new image of Europa offering a close-up view of the Moon's fractured icy surface. The picture was taken by the spacecraft's Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) camera when it was around 412 km from the surface and was racing at a speed of 24 kilometers per second. According to NASA, the images being sent by Juno are providing the closest view of Europa since the Galileo spacecraft did over 22 years ago.

ISRO maps sodium on the Moon for the first time 

ISRO, on October 7, announced that the Chandrayaan 2 orbiter has mapped the concentration of sodium on the lunar surface for the first time ever. The mapping was done using the orbiter's X-ray spectrometer CLASS instrument which provides clean signatures of the element using its high sensitivity. "The new findings from Chandrayaan-2, provide an avenue to study surface-exosphere interaction on the Moon, which would aid development of similar models for Mercury and other airless bodies in our Solar System and beyond," ISRO's official statement read.

NASA combines powers of Hubble, Chandra and Webb telescopes

NASA shared new pictures of the farthest cosmic objects by combining the powers of the Chandra X-ray telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope with the James Webb Space Telescope. The image made using Hubble's visible and ultraviolet observation and Webb's infrared view was that of a galactic pair named VV 191 whereas the images combining Chandra's and Webb's data included five different cosmic objects including the Carina nebula, the Cartwheel galaxy and the Stephans' Quintet among others. Combining Chandra and Webb's powers also yielded some new discoveries which previously went unnoticed.

Ground telescopes observe asteroid destroyed by DART

Just two days after NASA's DART spacecraft rammed into an asteroid, astronomers pointed the 4.1-meter Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope in Chile toward the crash site to analyse the aftermath. The researchers said that the debris plume from the asteroid stretched to at least 10,000 kilometers from the point of impact. It is amazing how clearly we were able to capture the structure and extent of the aftermath in the days following the impact," said Teddy Kareta from Lowell Observatory.

Image: NASA