“Just. Wow.” So said NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers as she caught sight of a phenomenon known as a sprite from the International Space Station (ISS) 250 miles above Earth.
Ayers shared an image on her X account showing the fleeting phenomenon. You can see the sprite — essentially a large-scale electrical discharge — in the center of the picture as a bluish-white flash on the clouds, with a thin, red, tree-like burst of light shooting upward into the dark sky.
Just. Wow. As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this sprite.
Sprites are TLEs or Transient Luminous Events, that happen above the clouds and are triggered by intense electrical activity in the thunderstorms below. We have a great view above the clouds, so… pic.twitter.com/dCqIrn3vrA
“As we went over Mexico and the U.S. this morning, I caught this sprite,” the American astronaut, who arrived in orbit in March, wrote in a post on X.
As she explains, sprites are known as Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) that occur above clouds and are triggered by intense electrical activity in thunderstorms below.
Seen from the ISS, the sprite likely lasted for less than a tenth of a second, suggesting that Ayers’s image is a frame taken from a video that was monitoring the skies over Earth.
“We have a great view above the clouds, so scientists can use these types of pictures to better understand the formation, characteristics, and relationship of TLEs to thunderstorms,” Ayers wrote in her post.
Unlike aurora, which are easily observed from the ground as well as space, it’s much harder to observe a sprite from terra firma as it requires special conditions such as clear dark skies, distant large thunderstorms, and minimal light pollution.
Visual reports of sprites were first recorded in 1886, but it wasn’t until July 4, 1989 — exactly 36 years ago — that the first images were taken, by scientists at the University of Minnesota.
For anyone wondering about their effect on aircraft, sprites actually take place way above commercial flight altitudes and therefore pose no direct danger to aircraft. While their electromagnetic pulses could theoretically affect an aircraft’s electronics, no incidents have been reported.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.