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Space Science Institute
Study looks at velocity impact to asteroid Dimorphos
The first peer-reviewed results from NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission were published Wednesday by Nature, including contributions from LLNL’s planetary defense team. The DART spacecraft executed a successful hypervelocity impact of 150-meter asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022. Analysis by Earth-based telescopes determined that the impact…
Water modified ancient asteroid
Samples from asteroid Ryugu returned by the Hayabusa2 mission contain evidence of extensive alteration by water and appear related to CI chondrites, which are believed to best represent the bulk of the solar system composition. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists in collaboration with an international team looked at the isotopic composition of oxygen,…
LLNL leads new DART Mission paper on inferring asteroid material properties from deflection test
Today at 4:14 p.m. (PDT), NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission will execute the first-ever asteroid-deflection test by crashing into asteroid Dimorphos. Traveling at ~6 km/s with a mass of ~600 kg, the DART spacecraft will transfer enough momentum for the imparted change in velocity to be detectable from Earth-based telescopes. However, there is…
LLNL-led paper reveals spacecraft geometry effects on impact simulations for NASA’s DART Mission
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft will crash into asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, executing the first asteroid deflection test that has been years in the planning. Dimorphos, at 150 meters across, is the “moonlet” of a binary asteroid system, orbiting the larger companion asteroid, Didymos (800 meters). The momentum of the ~600 kg spacecraft,…
Asteroid sample lands on LLNL
No need to worry, it is just a very small piece for scientific study. In December 2014, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency launched the spacecraft Hayabusa2 to the asteroid 162173 Ryugu. In December 2020, when the sample-return capsule successfully landed safely back on Earth with pristine pieces of Ryugu that it had collected, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory…
Lab’s technology on board James Webb Space Telescope
Last month, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a partnership with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, revealed unprecedented and detailed views of the universe, with the release of its first full-color images and spectroscopic data. The cosmic objects that Webb targeted for these first observations were released July 12 and are available on the…
Short Wavelengths Yield Big Dividends
Collaborative research and development focused on the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) end of the spectrum has resulted in state-of-the-art, multilayer reflective optics used for space exploration, manufacturing microchips, and more.
Where on Earth did the water come from?
Earth’s supply of water is incredibly important for its ability to sustain life, but where did that water come from? Was it present when Earth formed or was it delivered later by meteorites or comets from outer space? The source of Earth’s water has been a longstanding debate and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists think they have the answer — and they…
Pandora mission to study stars and exoplanets continues toward flight
The Pandora mission, co-led by a national laboratory and a NASA flight center, has passed a crucial step on its path to study stars and planets outside our solar system, or exoplanets. After a successful concept study report and system requirements review, NASA approved the mission to continue toward flight. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and NASA’s Goddard…
Lawrence Livermore takes part in NASA’s first planetary defense test
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is taking part in NASA’s first-ever planetary defense test, which deliberately collides a spacecraft into an asteroid called Dimorphos. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will examine technologies that will prevent an impact of Earth by a hazardous asteroid. DART is the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor…
Data Science Challenge welcomes UC Riverside
Together with LLNL’s Center for Applied Scientific Computing, the Data Science Institute welcomed a new academic partner to the 2021 Data Science Challenge internship program: the University of California (UC) Riverside campus. The intensive program has run for three years with UC Merced, and it tasks undergraduate and graduate students with addressing a real-world…
A bigger nursery for the solar system’s first formed solids
The earliest solids formed in the solar system give clues to what radioactive species were made by the young sun, and which ones were inherited. By studying isotopic variations of the elements vanadium (V) and strontium (Sr), an international team of researchers including scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) found that those variations are not…
Lawrence Livermore optics used to spot elusive aurora on Red Planet
The United Arab Emirates' (UAE) Mars mission that launched about a year ago has recently captured the most detailed images of auroras in the Martian sky. The optics used to capture these images include a silicon carbide-coated mirror and diffraction grating for the Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) that were developed by researchers at Lawrence Livermore…
Eyes High in the Skies
In 2021, a small satellite bearing an imaging payload featuring two MonoTeles hitched a rideshare on a SpaceX Starlink launch at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Planetary Research: Exploring Our Past and Future
How could life begin from a swirling chaos? How did Earth and its moon form? What can lunar rocks from the Apollo missions reveal? And what will scientists learn from exploration on distant moons? These questions are addressed in this four-part feature article on Lawrence Livermore’s space science research.
LLNL’s Tactically Responsive Launch-2 payload launched into orbit
When the U.S. Space Force’s Tactically Responsive Launch-2 (TacRL-2) mission launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base on June 13, it carried a payload designed and built in record time by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). LLNL provided a three-mirror reflective telescope and sensor for the payload, which they designed, integrated, tested and delivered within…
Virtual LLNL-UC Merced Data Science Challenge tackles asteroid detection though machine learning
Over three weeks, students from the University of California, Merced collaborated online with mentors at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to tackle a real-world challenge problem: using machine learning to identify potentially hazardous asteroids that could pose an existential threat to humanity. The Data Science Challenge was the third such annual event for…
LLNL/Tyvak space telescope goes into orbit
Thousands of images of Earth and space have been taken by a compact space imaging payload developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers and its collaborator Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. Known as GEOStare2, the payload has two space telescopes that together have taken more than 4,500 pictures for space domain awareness, astronomy and Earth…
Lab will co-lead NASA mission to study stars, planets
NASA has selected Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to serve as lead institutions for the Pandora scientific mission that will study 20 stars and their 39 exoplanets. The goal of the Pandora mission is to learn about starspots (akin to sunspots) and identify which of these exoplanets are hydrogen- or water-dominated and…
Lab has ties to Nobel Prize winner Andrea Ghez
The 2020 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to Andrea Ghez of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, for their discovery of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. They share the award with Roger Penrose of Oxford University for his mathematical proof that black holes are…
