News (Page 2)

Curiosity Drives Over a Rock, Cracking it Open and Revealing an Amazing Yellow Crystal On May 30th, the Mars Curiosity rover was just minding its own business exploring Gediz Vallis when it ran over a rock. Its wheel cracked the rock and voila! Pure elemental sulfur spilled out. The rover took a picture of the broken rock about a week later, marking the first time sulfur has been found in a pure form on Mars. After Curiosity’s encounter with the broken rock and its pure sulfur innards, the rover trundled over to another rock, called “Mammoth Lakes” for a little drilling session. Before it leftRead More →

Astro-Challenge: Catching Pluto at Opposition 2024 Why July 2024 is a prime time to see distant Pluto before it fades from view. Lots of the ‘wow factor’ in astronomy revolves around knowing just what you’re seeing. Sure, a quasar might be a faint +14th magnitude point of light seen at the eyepiece, but it’s also a powerful energy source from the ancient Universe, billions of light-years distant. The same case is true for finding Pluto. Though its 0.1” disc won’t resolve into anything more than a speck in even the most powerful backyard telescope, knowing just what you’re seeing is part of the thrill ofRead More →

Producing Oxygen From Rock Is Harder In Lower Gravities One of the challenges engineers face when developing technologies for use in space is that of different gravities. Mostly, engineers only have access to test beds that reflect either Earth’s normal gravity or, if they’re fortunate, the microgravity of the ISS. Designing and testing systems for the reduced, but not negligible, gravity on the Moon and Mars is much more difficult. But for some systems, it is essential. One such system is electrolysis, the process by which explorers will make oxygen for astronauts to breathe on a permanent Moon or Mars base, as well as criticalRead More →

The Entrance of a Lunar Lava Tube Mapped from Space Craters are a familiar sight on the lunar surface and indeed on many of the rocky planets in the Solar System. There are other circular features that are picked up on images from orbiters but these pits are thought to be the collapsed roofs of lava tubes. A team of researchers have mapped one of these tubes using radar reflection and created the first 3D map of the tube’s entrance. Places like these could make ideal places to setup research stations, protected from the harsh environment of an alien world.  Lava tubes have been hotlyRead More →

Moon Dust Could Contaminate Lunar Explorers’ Water Supply Water purification is a big business on Earth. Companies offer everything from desalination to providing just the right pH level for drinking water. But on the Moon, there won’t be a similar technical infrastructure to support the astronauts attempting to make a permanent base there. And there’s one particular material that will make water purification even harder – Moon dust.  We’ve reported plenty of times about the health problems caused by the lunar regolith, so it seems apparent that you don’t want to drink it. Even more so, the abrasive dust can cause issues with seals, suchRead More →

SpaceX Reveals the Beefed-Up Dragon That Will De-Orbit the ISS The International Space Station (ISS) has been continuously orbiting Earth for more than 25 years and has been visited by over 270 astronauts, cosmonauts, and commercial astronauts. In January 2031, a special spacecraft designed by SpaceX – aka. The U.S. Deorbit Vehicle – will lower the station’s orbit until it enters our atmosphere and lands in the South Pacific. On July 17th, NASA held a live press conference where it released details about the process, including a first glance at the modified SpaceX Dragon responsible for deorbiting the ISS. As usual, the company shared detailsRead More →

Gaia Hit by a Micrometeoroid AND Caught in a Solar Storm For over ten years, the ESA’s Gaia Observatory has monitored the proper motion, luminosity, temperature, and composition of over a billion stars throughout our Milky Way galaxy and beyond. This data will be used to construct the largest and most precise 3D map of the cosmos ever made and provide insight into the origins, structure, and evolutionary history of our galaxy. Unfortunately, this sophisticated astrometry telescope is positioned at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange Point, far beyond the protection of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. As a result, Gaia has experienced two major hazards in recentRead More →

Lunar Infrastructure Could Be Protected By Autonomously Building A Rock Wall Lunar exploration equipment at any future lunar base is in danger from debris blasted toward it by subsequent lunar landers. This danger isn’t just theoretical – Surveyor III was a lander during the Apollo era that was damaged by Apollo 12’s descent rocket and returned to Earth for closer examination. Plenty of ideas have been put forward to limit this risk, and we’ve reported on many of them, from constructing landing pads out of melted regolith to 3D printing a blast shield out of available materials. But a new paper from researchers in SwitzerlandRead More →

Why is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Shrinking? It’s Starving. The largest storm in the Solar System is shrinking and planetary scientists think they have an explanation. It could be related to a reduction in the number of smaller storms that feed it and may be starving Jupiter’s centuries-old Great Red Spot (GRS). This storm has intrigued observers from its perch in the Jovian southern hemisphere since it was first seen in the mid-1600s. Continuous observations of it began in the late 1800s, which allowed scientists to chart a constant parade of changes. In the process, they’ve learned quite a bit about the spot. It’s aRead More →

ESA is Building a Mission to Visit Asteroid Apophis, Joining it for its 2029 Earth Flyby According to the ESA’s Near-Earth Objects Coordination Center (NEOCC), 35,264 known asteroids regularly cross the orbit of Earth and the other inner planets. Of these, 1,626 have been identified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs), meaning that they may someday pass close enough to Earth to be caught by its gravity and impact its surface. While planetary defense has always been a concern, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slamming into Jupiter in 1994 sparked intense interest in this field. In 2022, NASA’s Double-Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) mission successfully tested the kineticRead More →

The Most Dangerous Part of a Space Mission is Fire Astronauts face multiple risks during space flight, such as microgravity and radiation exposure. Microgravity can decrease bone density, and radiation exposure is a carcinogen. However, those are chronic effects. The biggest risk to astronauts is fire since escape would be difficult on a long mission to Mars or elsewhere beyond Low Earth Orbit. Scientists are researching how fire behaves on spacecraft so astronauts can be protected. Scientists from the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen are investigating the risks of fire onboard spacecraft. They’ve published a new studyRead More →

Stars Can Survive Their Partner Detonating as a Supernova When a massive star dies in a supernova explosion, it’s not great news for any planets or stars that happen to be nearby. Generally, the catastrophic event crisps nearby worlds and sends companion stars careening through space. So, astronomers were pretty surprised to find 21 neutron stars—the crushed stellar cores left over after supernova explosions—orbiting in binary systems with Sun-like stars. A team led by Caltech’s Kareem El-Badry detected these cosmic oddities using observations made by the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission. Its astrometrical data revealed “wobbles” in the orbits of the Sun-like companions. The teamRead More →