As we reported earlier this week, the recently launched Japanese satellite, ASTRO-H, nicknamed Hitomi, suddenly went dark, losing all communications with the Japanese space agency, but now, according to an article on gizmodo.com, the satellite has sent two very short messages to its controllers, and they are trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

Hitomi was launched on February 17th of this year, and until this week had been sending back some exciting data, said Chris Reynolds, a University of Maryland astronomy professor.  “It’s fabulous data, it’s transformational data.  That’s why there is widespread shock about what’s happening. We all recognize how much fabulous science could come from [Hitomi].”

The initial mission of the satellite was to gather X-ray spectroscopy data from black holes and other cosmic X-ray sources, hoping to shed some light on the physical laws that affect them.  If the spacecraft is lost, astronomers across the globe would experience a major disappointment.

JAXA, the Japanese space agency, said in a press release they did receive a short signal from the satellite, and they are working on recovery.  Major concerns were raised earlier this week when the US Joint Space Operations Center announced they had detected debris in the general area of where the satellite should be located, fueling speculation the craft had been struck by other debris or exploded.  The agency has since said they haven’t seen evidence of a collision.

The article says video of the Hitomi, shot by astronomer Paul Maley in Arizona, shows the satellite is still there, but is spinning at a rate of one full rotation every 23.5 seconds.  That could help account for the inability of the satellite to communicate with controllers on the ground.  Under normal conditions, the satellite’s antenna would be pointing at the Earth, but if it is indeed tumbling through space, communicating with the craft becomes much more difficult.

The ground team suspects that a stuck rocket thruster or some type of escaping gas, essentially acting as a thruster, could be causing the craft to rotate so quickly, but they admit that is just speculation.  Still, the fact that some short messages made it through gives hope of rectifying the problem with the craft, and keeping hope of recovery alive.

Reynolds summed it up with “We all still have hope.  We’re not prepared to declare it lost yet.”

Astronomers, using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, have completed a precision  temperature map of 55 Cancri e, an exoplanet located approximately 40 light-years from Earth, and the data reveals one side of the world is constantly facing the star it orbits, causing extreme temperature differences across hemispheres, according to discovery.com.

The scientists found the world is so near to its parent star, it only takes 18 hours to complete one orbit, and that has the planet “tidally locked,” in that one hemisphere is always facing the star, and the other is in perpetual darkness.

This effect means the star-facing side of 55 Cancri e, located in the constellation Cancer, has temperatures reaching 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit, while the back side measures at a mere 2,000 degrees, still quite hot, but an extreme temperature shift.  The result is the hotter side is covered with molten lava, flowing like rivers and oceans, and the back side is solid.

Brice-Olivier Demory of the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory and lead author of the study, said, “We haven’t yet found any other planet that is this small and orbits so close to its parent star, and is relatively close to us, so 55 Cancri e offers lots of possibilities.  We still don’t know exactly what this planet is made of — it’s still a riddle. These results are like adding another brick to the wall, but the exact nature of this planet is still not completely understood.”

Demory adds it appears the atmosphere on the star-facing side may have evaporated completely due to the intense heat, but the researchers think there could still be some left on the dark side.  Heat from the star side is not being efficiently transferred, or possibly not at all transferred, to the night side.

Still, the researchers don’t believe all the heat noted on the light side of 55 Cancri e is due just to always facing the star.  The researchers believe there is extra heat being  generated, although at this point, they don’t know from where.  More research will need to be completed, and the scientists hope NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can be used to take a closer look at this new world.

Findings from the study were published in the journal Nature.

Japan’s X-ray astronomical satellite, Hitomi, launched on February 17th of this year, was completing a round of calibrations and initial checks when it suddenly lost contact with trackers on Earth, according to an article on nature.com.

Engineers from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are working feverishly to re-establish contact with the spacecraft, but the current status of the satellite is unknown.  Additionally, the United States Joint Space Operations Center reported spotting five objects near the area of the spacecraft at the time contact was lost, fueling fears of a break up.  The US agency tracks space debris orbiting the planet.

That doesn’t mean the satellite has been completely destroyed, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and space analyst at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  It could be some insignificant pieces of the vessel were blown off during a malfunction and the main part of the satellite could still be intact.

JAXA, which lost communication with the satellite at 4:40 PM, Japan time, on the 26th of March, says, “The cause of the communication failure is under investigation.”  The agency continued to say they had received one short signal since that time and they are investigating all possible ways to re-establish the connection with Hitomi.

The satellite’s mission was to study X-rays streaming from cosmic phenomena like black holes, galaxy clusters, and dark matter, using a high-resolution spectrometer to measure in great detail the wavelengths of the X-rays.

Two other attempts by the space agency to launch a similar mission met with failure, when the ASTRO-E telescope crashed on take-off in 2000, and the spectrometer was disabled by a helium leak aboard the Suzaku satellite in 2005.

But the agency still hopes they can recover the control of this latest mission, and they have prior successes on which to pin their hopes.  This past December, the agency managed to rescue the Akatsuki spacecraft by placing it into orbit around Venus, five years after a failed attempt at an engine burn threatened to scrap its mission.

In 1993, the US launched an X-ray mission  of its own, named Alexis, that went silent for three months before engineers eventually re-established contact and allowed the satellite to continue its mission.

Although the waterfall-climbing fish was discovered back in 1985, deep inside a system of caves in northern Thailand, little analysis had been done on it, since the species is protected, and can’t be removed from its habitat.

But, according to nytimes.com, Apinun Suvarnaraksha, a biologist at Maejo University in Thailand, and Daphne Soares, of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, observed the fish on a recent expedition  to the caves and recorded a video of the fish in motion.  Upon returning to the US, Dr. Soares played the video for her colleague, Brooke E. Flammang, a biomehanics expert, and she was “completely blown away.”

Instead of seeing the normal flopping around you would expect from a fish on the ground, the cave fish “seemed to be very leisurely walking up the rock face,” according to Dr. Flammang.

Since they could not get any of the fish from the caves for study, Dr. Suvarnaraksha found a preserved specimen in a museum in Thailand, which he took to a dental school and made images of the fish, using a high-resolution CT scanner.

He sent the images to Dr. Flammang and she was able to pair up the pictures to make a 3D model anatomy of the cave fish.  That model revealed the fish had a pelvis similar to a tetrapod, in that it was fused to the spine by elongated ribs, the same bone alignment that allows tetrapods to lift themselves up on their hind legs.

Subsequent videos taken by Dr. Suvarnaraksha in the caves, using a video camera to capture the movements of the fish in an aquarium, confirmed the initial theories by Flammang and her colleagues.  The cave fish were using their bodies in the same fashion as the salamander, walking in a tetrapod-like manner.

Dr. Flammang said, “Functionally, it makes perfect sense, but to see it in a fish is incredibly wild.”  She adds these fish may eventually give scientists hints about how fish originally arrived on the land.

The research team published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

Scientists, using precise observations from the Cassini spacecraft, have been able to measure the height of some of Titan’s tallest mountains and the news has the researchers amazed at what they have found, according to discovery.com.

The radar from Cassini was able to penetrate the thick atmosphere of the moon and allow the researchers to take measurements of a number of geologic features, including what is likely the highest point on the moon.

The peak measured 10,948 feet high, and is located among three mountain ranges in an area known as Mithrim Montes.  All of the highest peaks found so far are centered around the body’s equator and measure around 10,000 feet or higher.

Stephen Wall, deputy lead of the Cassini radar team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said it was not only the highest point found so far, but the team doesn’t expect to find one any higher on Titan.

Even at the recorded height, it is still well short of Earth’s tallest peak, Mount Everest, which tops out at 29,029 feet, so the record for the tallest mountain ever discovered is not in jeopardy.  That, so far, belongs to an extinct volcano on Mars, named Olympus, measuring in at an amazing 72,000 feet.

But the peak on Titan, with the size of the moon about two and a half times smaller than the planet Earth, would definitely be an imposing figure on the Titan’s horizon.

The initial intent of the study was to look for active tectonic regions on the moon’s crust, hoping to shed some light on the foundations underneath the moon’s exterior.  Scientists say the moon appears to have a sub-surface of liquid water, that behaves similarly to the mantle beneath the Earth’s crust.

“There is lot of value in examining the topography of Titan in a broad, global sense, since it tells us about forces acting on the surface from below as well as above,” said ani Radebaugh, a Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and research leader.

Now that they have found the geologic features, scientists have many more questions that need to be answered, including how they were formed and, how are powerful tides reacting to pressure the interior of the moon.  Perhaps an unknown process is at work, causing the shifting plates on the moon.

“As explorers, we’re motivated to find the highest or deepest places, partly because it’s exciting. But Titan’s extremes also tell us important things about forces affecting its evolution,” added Radebaugh.