The next ORION program, “Smart Telescopes,” will be at 7 p.m. June 19 at the City Room (Room A-111), McNally-Coffey Building, Roane State Community College, Oak Ridge campus. Don Spong will be the guest speaker. He is a plasma physicist who works at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on fusion energy research. The title of the […]
Tag: Orion
James Webb Space Telescope sees Orion Nebula in a stunning new light (images)
The Orion Nebula may be a familiar and well-studied celestial object, but new images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) show this star-forming cloud of gas and dust in an incredibly new and vibrant light. The Orion Nebula, also known as “Messier 42” (M42), is located around 1,500 light years from Earth toward the […]
NASA inspector general finds Orion heat shield issues ‘pose significant risks’ to Artemis 2 crew safety
NASA’s moon program still has some work to do before it can put human boots back on the lunar surface. The agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report on Wednesday (May 1) titled “NASA’s Readiness for the Artemis 2 Crewed Mission to Lunar Orbit,” which aims to determine how ready NASA is to […]
Astronomers close in on the mystery of the erupting Orion star system (video)
Astronomers have puzzled for 88 years about how a pair of binary stars have continued to erupt over the course of a century, but it seems the mystery has finally been solved. The double star system FU Orionis (FU Ori), located around 1,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Orion, first stunned astronomers in […]
NASA still investigating Orion heat shield issues from Artemis 1 moon mission
Earlier this year, NASA announced it had delayed until September 2025 the crewed Artemis 2 swingby of the moon, a practice run to prepare for 2026’s Artemis 3 mission, which will land astronauts near the lunar south pole. One reason cited for the 10-month delay was getting to the bottom of reentry heat shield data […]
After a successful moon voyage, NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion spacecraft helps prepare for the next (video)
A spacecraft that visited the moon is being tested now to help astronauts on the next lunar mission. The Orion spacecraft for Artemis 1, which circled the moon with mannequins and science experiments in 2022, just touched down in Ohio for eight months of testing before humans climb on board future versions of the spacecraft, […]
Radio signals from Orion nebula reveal new data about strange celestial objects: ‘JuMBOS’
Last year, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers made the startling discovery of some free-floating, planetary-mass objects in the Orion nebula that threw their ideas of planet and star formation into doubt. And now, new research has further deepened the mystery around these so-called Jupiter-mass binary objects, or JuMBOs. JuMBOs aren’t stars, but aren’t […]