News (Page 27)

Euclid Begins its 6-Year Survey of the Dark Universe On July 1, 2023, the Galileo Spacecraft launched with a clear mission: to map the dark and distant Universe. To achieve that goal, over the next 6 years, Galileo will make 40,000 observations of the sky beyond the Milky Way. From this data astronomers will be able to map the positions of billions of galaxies, allowing astronomers to observe the effects of dark matter. There have been several galactic sky surveys before, but Galileo’s mission will take them to the next level. Galileo is equipped with a widefield imaging system. With each 70-minute exposure of theRead More →

OSIRIS-REx’s Final Haul: 121.6 Grams from Asteroid Bennu After several months of meticulous, careful work, NASA has the final total for their haul of asteroidal material from the OSIRIS-REx mission to Bennu. The highly successful mission successfully collected 121.6 grams, or almost 4.3 ounces, of rock and dust. It won’t be long before scientists get their hands on these samples and start analyzing them. These samples have been a long time coming. The OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) was approved by NASA back in 2011 and launched in September 2016. It reached its target, the carbonaceous Apollo group asteroid 101955 Bennu,Read More →

Even if We Can’t See the First Stars, We Could Detect Their Impact on the First Galaxies For a long time, our understanding of the Universe’s first galaxies leaned heavily on theory. The light from that age only reached us after travelling for billions of years, and on the way, it was obscured and stretched into the infrared. Clues about the first galaxies are hidden in that messy light. Now that we have the James Webb Space Telescope and its powerful infrared capabilities, we’ve seen further into the past—and with more clarity—than ever before. The JWST has imaged some of the very first galaxies, leadingRead More →

Another Clue Into the True Nature of Fast Radio Bursts Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are strange events. They can last only milliseconds, but during that time can outshine a galaxy. Some FRBs are repeaters, meaning that they can occur more than once from the same location, while others seem to occur just once. We still aren’t entirely sure what causes them, or even if the two types have the same cause. But thanks to a collaboration of observations from ground-based radio telescopes and space-based X-ray observatories, we are starting to figure FRBs out. Most FRBs happen well beyond our galaxy, so while we can pinRead More →

NASA is Trying to Fix a Problem With one of Perseverance’s Instruments There’s a problem with the Perseverance rover. One of its instruments, the laser-shooting SHERLOC, which is mounted on the end of the robotic arm, has a dust cover that is supposed to protect the instrument when it’s not in use. Unfortunately, the cover has been stuck open, and that can allow dust to collect on the sensitive optics. The cover is partially open, so the rover can’t use its laser on rock targets or collect mineral spectroscopy data. NASA engineers are investigating the problem and are hoping to devise a solution. There areRead More →

Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus Lander Begins Its Moon Odyssey Now it’s Intuitive Machines’ turn to try making history with a robotic moon landing. Today’s launch of the Houston-based company’s Odysseus lander marks the first step in an eight-day journey that could lead to the first-ever soft landing of a commercial spacecraft on the moon. Odysseus would also be the first U.S.-built spacecraft to touch down safely on the lunar surface since Apollo 17’s mission in 1972. The lander — which is as big as an old-fashioned British phone booth, or the Tardis time portal from the “Doctor Who” TV series — was sent spaceward from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’sRead More →

Engineers Design Habitats for the Moon Inspired by Terminite Mounds Through the Artemis Program, NASA intends to send astronauts back to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. But this time, they intend to stay and establish a lunar base and other infrastructure by the end of the decade that will allow for a “sustained program of lunar exploration and development.” To accomplish this, NASA is enlisting the help of fellow space agencies, commercial partners, and academic institutions to create the necessary mission elements – these range from the launch systems, spacecraft, and human landing systems to the delivery of payloads. WithRead More →

Radio Telescope Confirms Free-Floating Binary Planets in the Orion Nebula Planets orbit stars. That’s axiomatic. Or at least it was until astronomers started finding rogue planets, also called free-floating planets (FFPs). Some of these planets were torn from their stars’ gravitational grip and now drift through the cosmos, untethered to any star. Others formed in isolation. Now, astronomers have discovered that some FFPs can orbit each other in binary relationships as if swapping their star for another rogue planet. In 2023, astronomers working with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) detected 42 JuMBOs in the inner Orion Nebula and the Trapezium Cluster. JuMBOs are differentRead More →

Passing Stars Changed the Orbits of Planets in the Solar System The orbit of Earth around the Sun is always changing. It doesn’t change significantly from year to year, but over time the gravitational tugs of the Moon and other planets cause Earth’s orbit to vary. This migration affects Earth’s climate. For example, the gradual shift of Earth’s orbit and the changing tilt of Earth’s axis leads to the Milankovitch climate cycles. So if you want to understand paleoclimate or the shift of Earth’s climate across geologic time, it helps to know what Earth’s orbit was in the distant past. Fortunately, Newtonian mechanics and theRead More →

Saturn’s “Death Star Moon” Mimas Probably has an Ocean Too A recent study published in Nature presents a groundbreaking discovery that Saturn’s moon, Mimas, commonly known as the “Death Star” moon due to its similarities with the iconic Star Wars space station, possesses an internal ocean underneath its rocky crust. This study was conducted by an international team of researchers and holds the potential to help planetary geologists better understand the conditions for a planetary body to possess an internal ocean, which could also possess the conditions for life as we know it. While Mimas was photographed on several occasions by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, includingRead More →

Even Stars Like the Sun Can Unleash Savage Flares in Their Youth Why would a young Sun-like star suddenly belch out a hugely bright flare? That’s what astronomers at Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory want to know after they spotted such an outburst using a sensitive submillimeter-wave telescope. According to Joshua Bennett Lovell, leader of a team that observed the star’s activity, these kinds of flare events are rare in such young stars, particularly at millimeter wavelengths. So, what’s happening there? Lovell and his team targeted the star, called HD 283572, in a search for circumstellar dust. It’s fairly young—about the same age the Sun wasRead More →

Ground-Based Lasers Could Accelerate Spacecraft to Other Stars The future of space exploration includes some rather ambitious plans to send missions farther from Earth than ever before. Beyond the current proposals for building infrastructure in cis-lunar space and sending regular crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, there are also plans to send robotic missions to the outer Solar System, to the focal length of our Sun’s gravitational lens, and even to the nearest stars to explore exoplanets. Accomplishing these goals requires next-generation propulsion that can enable high thrust and consistent acceleration. Focused arrays of lasers – or directed energy (DE) – and lightsails areRead More →