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Sending “Water” to Europa
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will carry a special message when it launches in October 2024 and heads toward Jupiter’s moon Europa. The moon shows strong evidence of an ocean under its icy crust, with more than twice the amount of water of all of Earth’s oceans combined. A triangular metal plate, seen here, will honor that connection to Earth. The plate is made of tantalum metal and is about 7 by 11 inches (18 by 28 centimeters). It is engraved on both sides and seals an opening in the electronics vault, which houses the spacecraft’s sensitive electronics. The art on this side of the plate features waveforms that are visual representations of the sound waves formed by the word “water” in 103 languages. The waveforms radiate out from a symbol representing the American Sign Language sign for “water.”

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Sending “Water” to Europa
DTU Space releases images taken by Andreas Mogensen
DTU Space releases images taken by Andreas Mogensen

@DTUSpace: Med et kamerasystem fra DTU Space har @Astro_Andreas taget nye fantastiske billeder til vores forskning i de voldsomme lyn-fænomener, der finder sted i Jordens atmosfære. Her et blåligt lyn i en sky og over det et lyn kaldet en rød fe #dkrummet #dkastro

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Andreas Mogensen films red sprite from ISS
Andreas Mogensen films red sprite from ISS

The Danish ESA astronaut, Andreas Mogensen, has been filming unusual lighting-like discharges above the world's most energetic thunderstorms. Here are the first picutres.

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University of Malaga chooses ASIM paper for first prize in Research Excellence
University of Malaga chooses ASIM paper for first prize in Research Excellence

To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the University of Malaga, Spain, the university has awarded its first prize ever for Excellence in Research to an ASIM paper, led by UMA professor Alberto Castro-Tirado. The paper about ASIM's detection of quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in the initial explosion of a magnetar flare, was published in Nature in December 2021. The author list includes many prominent ASIM and ASDC collaborators and partners. Though the ASIM instruments were designed to look down on the Earth to study electrical discharges from powerful thunderstorms. there is no way to stop high energy photons (x-rays and gamma rays) from space penetrating the sides of the instruments and being registered by the detectors. In this way ASIM observed in better detail than any other instrument the magnetic explosion of a neutron star in another galaxy (NGC 253).

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Robotically moving ASIM the storm hunter on the International Space Station
Robotically moving ASIM the storm hunter on the International Space Station

ESA video of the ASIM relocation using the Canada robotic arm. This video is speeded up to show the procedure in couple of minutes - in reality it took about 5 hours

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Extraordinary shakings of a distant magnetar
Extraordinary shakings of a distant magnetar

The ASIM instrument aboard the International Space Station was the only instrument out of seven which detected the giant flare and recorded the main burst phase without being blinded by the giant flash of high energy which saturated the other six detectors at the time of the maximum emission. After a very long journey through space, a burst of high-energy radiation was detected by the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) instrument aboard the International Space Station (ISS) on April 15, 2020. The origin of this energetic burst was found to be a giant flare from an extremely magnetized neutron star known as a magnetar, located more than 10 million light years away in the galaxy NGC 253.

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The Incredible ASIM: Distant galaxy edition
The Incredible ASIM: Distant galaxy edition

The Atmosphere–Space Interactions Monitor, or ASIM for short, is a first-of-its-kind complement of instruments on the International Space Station. Dubbed the ‘space storm hunter’, ASIM measures electric events in Earth’s upper atmosphere with cameras, photometers and X- and gamma-ray detectors. Recently, ASIM unexpectedly detected a unique gamma-ray burst from outer space. This fortuitous observation was published in Nature magazine, less than a year after ASIM made a cover story.

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AGU/EOS spotlight: Observations from Space and Ground Reveal Clues About Lightning
AGU/EOS spotlight: Observations from Space and Ground Reveal Clues About Lightning

The American Geophysical Union journal EOS (Earth and Space Science) News has chosen an ASIM paper by Østgaard et al. as a research spotlight for June 2021. The spotlight focusses on the ASIM work that demonstrates how TGFs are triggered by lightning leaders: "In a coordinated monitoring effort, scientists have uncovered the timing and triggering of high-energy lightning events in the sky."

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ASIM i Forskerzonen
ASIM i Forskerzonen

Artikel på videnskab.dk s forskningsside, Forskerzonen, om ASIM missionen: Gå i Andreas Mogensens fodspor på jagt efter mystiske kæmpelyn

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ESA: How space science is combating climate change
ESA: How space science is combating climate change

ESA web article on ASIM's link to climate change research

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