Europe’s JUICE Jupiter Probe Successfully Completes Historic Lunar Flyby
On August 19, 2024, Europe’s JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) spacecraft achieved a notable milestone in space exploration by performing a gravity assist flyby of the Moon. The probe came within 465 miles (750 kilometres) of the lunar surface, capturing images of this significant encounter. This manoeuvre is the first part of an unprecedented double gravity assist mission, with the second leg set to occur when JUICE flies past Earth.
Historic Flyby Captured in Photos
The JUICE spacecraft, which was launched in April 2023, aims to study Jupiter and its major moons: Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. These moons are believed to harbour subsurface oceans, making them prime targets for exploration. The Moon flyby was crucial for JUICE’s trajectory, helping to fine-tune its path towards a future Venus encounter in 2025. This series of manoeuvres will ultimately set the probe on a course for Jupiter, with an arrival planned for July 2031.
Photo Credit: ESA
The spacecraft’s cameras, designed primarily for monitoring the deployment of its solar arrays and scientific instruments, provided raw images of the Moon. These images were shared live by the European Space Agency (ESA), showcasing JUICE’s close approach and the Moon’s rugged terrain.
Strategic Manoeuvre for Efficient Travel
JUICE’s flybys are a strategic choice to save time and fuel. The gravity assist from the Moon and Earth, followed by the Venus flyby, will optimize the spacecraft’s journey to Jupiter. According to Ignacio Tanco, JUICE spacecraft operations manager, this approach effectively “brakes” the spacecraft, reducing the amount of propellant needed compared to traditional engine burns.
During its Earth flyby, JUICE will come within about 4,250 miles (6,840 kilometres) of our planet. While there will be no live feed for this encounter due to communication constraints, amateur astronomers in regions such as Alaska might catch a glimpse of the probe through a telescope. The successful execution of these manoeuvres underscores Europe’s growing capabilities in space exploration and highlights the intricate planning behind interplanetary missions.
In a groundbreaking experiment, gold has defied the expectations that it was still solid even after being heated above the standard temperature. With the help of rapid laser bursts, the scientists could superheat gold beyond the entropy catastrophe, which is a theoretical boundary at which solids need to melt due to extreme heat. To the surprise, the gold was in the structure temporarily, and then it led to the rethinking of how matter behaves when provided with intense conditions. Such a rare phenomenon is known as superheating, where the heating happens so fast that atoms don’t get enough time to reorganise themselves into a liquid.
Gold Withstands the Entropy Catastrophe: What Is Superheating?
As per Science Alert, the atomic structure of gold resisted melting and absorbed the heat quickly, even faster than the response of its atoms. Scientists performed this study at 19,000 Kelvin, and gold remained solid for 2 picoseconds, which is enough to challenge the theory of physics.
Conventionally, the physicist believed that solids could not survive heat more than three times their melting point. This experiment, although pushed gold to 14 times the threshold, with the help of advanced techniques, which involved X-ray reflections to track the heat absorption accurately. The findings suggest that the materials can resist melting beyond the previously known boundaries; however, only for brief moments, which are difficult to even imagine.
Could Other Solids Resist Melting Like Gold? What This Means for Future Research
The results found by the scientists don’t change the law of thermodynamics. However, they suggest that such laws cannot be completely applied in ultra-fast reactions, and atoms cannot move or rearrange in this much time. Most importantly, gold had no place to go, and this let it remain solid even after heating to unexpected temperatures.
This unlocks the new possibilities fr understanding the extreme situations, from the impact of asteroids to the nuclear reactors. Scientists now wonder if other solids could also show the same tolerance, and rule out the current model of melting points, which need to be known altogether. Science must revisit the question asked by one scientist that how hot can you make something before melting?
For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who’sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.
Astronomers have found a vast, never-before-noticed reservoir of stellar material, hundreds of light-years across, lurking in a cold, dark, starless swath of our galaxy. It’s dubbed the Midpoint Cloud and was identified using the Green Bank Telescope; it appears to channel dense clouds of material into the heart of our galaxy. It harbours active regions filled with dense dust lanes and star formation possibilities. These lanes could be bringing twisted matter into the galaxy’s central bar, shaping how stars form in this extreme environment and offering a rare snapshot of the first stages of a galaxy’s evolution.
Newly Found Midpoint Cloud May Be Key to Star Formation in the Milky Way’s Core
As per the study, researchers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Green Bank Observatory confirmed the size and shape of the GMC based on mass, density, and movement. The gassy chaos in the cloud mirrors the caustic turmoil at the galactic centre, yielding measurements from a faint object that says something about an energetic event 200 light-years distant. That could be a link from the field-like tranquillity of our own Milky Way’s disk to the mayhem of its core.
Perhaps analogously to gas channels, a thick dust lane in the Midpoint cloud could supply the central stellar bar fragment with fresh gas, again supporting an interpretation that star formation is inhibited in this region by the strong gravitational potential. But regions like the Midpoint could collect such thick gas, spurring the birth of new stars.
The team classified Knot E as a compact gas clump whose material has been eroded by both star radiation and a maser, or microwave emission, within a cloud. A shell-like feature suggests earlier supernova explosions, like those the deaths of massive stars in the region might have initiated.
The Midpoint cloud Larry Morgan, of the Green Bank Observatory, discovered is a valuable clue in our knowledge of how galaxies evolve and form stars near their centers. The finding could give scientists a way to learn how matter flows inward across the cosmos, one hidden cloud at a time.
For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who’sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike