Universe Today

SpaceX Moves Ahead With Falcon 9 Launches After FAA Go-Ahead The Federal Aviation Administration has ruled that SpaceX can resume Falcon 9 rocket launches while the investigation into a failed July 11 mission continues, and the next liftoff could take place as early as tonight. The FAA’s go-ahead came after SpaceX reported that the failure was caused by a crack in a sense line for a pressure sensor attached to the upper stage’s liquid-oxygen system. That resulted in an oxygen leak that degraded the performance of the upper-stage engine. As a near-term fix, SpaceX is removing the sense line and the sensors for upcoming FalconRead More →

Is This How You Get Hot Jupiters? When we think of Jupiter-type planets, we usually picture massive cloud-covered worlds orbiting far from their stars. That distance keeps their volatile gases from vaporizing from stellar heat, similar to what we’re familiar with in our Solar System. So, why are so many exoplanets known as “hot Jupiters” orbiting very close to their stars? That’s the question astronomers ask as they study more of these extreme worlds. It turns out that hot Jupiters don’t actually start life snuggled up so close. Instead, they form much farther away from their stars in the protoplanetary nebula. That leads to theRead More →

Now Uranus’ Moon Ariel Might Have an Ocean too Venus is known for being really quite inhospitable with high surface temperatures and Mars is known for its rusty red horizons. Even the moons of some of the outer planets have fascinating environments with Europa and Enceladus boasting underground oceans. Recent observations from the James Webb Space Telescope show that Ariel, a moon of Uranus, is also a strong candidate for a sub surface ocean. How has this conclusion been reached? Well JWST has detected carbon dioxide ice on the surface on the trailing edge of features trailing away from the orbital direction. The possible cause,Read More →

Why is JWST Having So Much Trouble with the TRAPPIST-1 System? When the James Webb Space Telescope was launched it came with a fanfare expecting amazing things, much like the Hubble Space Telescope. One of JWST’s most anticipated target was TRAPPIST-1. This inconspicuous star is host to seven Earth-sized planets, with at least three in the habitable zone. The two inner planets are airless worlds but so far there has been no word of the third planet, the first in the habitable zone. The question is why and what makes it so tricky to observe? TRAPPIST-1 is a red dwarf star about 41 light yearsRead More →

Planetary Habitability Depends on its Star’s Magnetic Field The extrasolar planet census recently passed a major milestone, with 5500 confirmed candidates in 4,243 solar systems. With so many exoplanets available for study, astronomers have learned a great deal about the types of planets that exist in our galaxy and have been rethinking several preconceived notions. These include the notion of “habitability” and whether Earth is the standard by which this should be measured – i.e., could there be “super habitable” exoplanets out there? – and the very concept of the circumsolar habitable zone (CHZ). Traditionally, astronomers have defined habitable zones based on the type ofRead More →

A Solution to the “Final Parsec Problem?” Supermassive Black Holes are Nature’s confounding behemoths. It’s difficult for Earth-bound minds to comprehend their magnitude and power. Astrophysicists have spent decades studying them, and they’ve made progress. But one problem still baffles even them: the Final Parsec Problem. New research might have solved the problem, and dark matter plays a role in the solution. Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) can be billions of times more massive than our Sun. Evidence shows that they may reside at the center of all large galaxies. The Milky Way has one and it’s named Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). SMBHs grow so massiveRead More →

Our Carbon Dioxide Emissions Have a Mesmerizing Side Our CO2 emissions are warming the planet and making life uncomfortable and even unbearable in some regions. In July, the planet set consecutive records for the hottest day. NASA is mapping our emissions, and while what they show us isn’t uplifting, it is visually appealing in a ghoulish way. Maybe the combination of visual appeal and ghoulishness will build momentum in the fight against climate change. NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio has released a video showing how wind and air currents pushed CO2 emissions around Earth’s atmosphere from January to March 2020. The video’s high-resolution zooms in andRead More →

Astronauts Can Now Watch 4K Streaming Video on the Station We take high definition streaming for granted in many parts of the world. Even now, as I type this article, I have the Martian streaming in high definition but until now astronauts on board the Space Station have had to accept low definition streaming. A team of researchers at NASA have developed and used a new system using an aircraft as a relay. A laser terminal was installed on a research aircraft and data was sent to a ground station. The signals were sent around the Earth and beamed to a relay satellite which thenRead More →

The Shelf Life of Many Medications Is Shorter Than A Round Trip To Mars Check any container of over-the-counter medicine, and you’ll see its expiration date. Prescription medicines have similar lifetimes, and we’re told to discard old medications rather than hold on to them. Most of them lose their effectiveness over time, and some can even become toxic. We’re discouraged from disposing of them in our wastewater because they can find their way into other organisms, sometimes with deleterious effects. We can replace them relatively easily on Earth, but not on a space mission beyond Low Earth Orbit. A round trip to Mars takes aboutRead More →

Astronomers Have Tools That Can Help Detect Deepfake Images There’s a burgeoning arms race between Artificial Intelligence (AI) deepfake images and the methods used to detect them. The latest advancement on the detection side comes from astronomy. The intricate methods used to dissect and understand light in astronomical images can be brought to bear on deepfakes. The word ‘deepfakes’ is a portmanteau of ‘deep learning’ and ‘fakes.’ Deepfake images are called that because they’re made with a certain type of AI called deep learning, itself a subset of machine learning. Deep learning AI can mimic something quite well after being shown many examples of whatRead More →

A Pair of CubeSats Using Ground Penetrating Radar Could Map The Interior of Near Earth Asteroids Characterizing near-Earths asteroids (NEAs) is critical if we hope to eventually stop one from hitting us. But so far, missions to do so have been expensive, which is never good for space exploration. So a team led by Patrick Bambach of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany developed a mission concept that utilizes a relatively inexpensive 6U CubeSat (or, more accurately, two of them) to characterize the interior of NEAs that would cost only a fraction of the price of previous missions.  The mission, knownRead More →

New Horizons Measures the Background Light of the Universe Think about background radiation and most people immediately think of the cosmic background radiation and stories of pigeon excrement during its discovery. That’s for another day though. Turns out that the universe has several background radiations, such as infrared and even gravitational wave backgrounds. NASA’s New Horizons is far enough out of the Solar System now that it’s in the perfect place to measure the cosmic optical background (COB). Most of this light comes from the stars in galaxies, but astronomers have always wondered if there are other sources of light filling our night sky. NewRead More →

Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope To Unlock Mysteries of Black Holes The prospect of actually resolving the event horizon of black holes feels like the stuff of science fiction yet it is a reality. Already the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has resolved the horizon of the black holes at the centre of the Milky Way and M87. A team of astronomers are now looking to the next generation of the EHT which will work at multiple frequencies with more telescopes than EHT. A new paper suggests it may even be possible to capture the ring where light goes into orbit around the black hole atRead More →

The Ultraviolet Habitable Zone Sets a Time Limit on the Formation of Life The field of extrasolar planet studies has grown exponentially in the past twenty years. Thanks to missions like Kepler, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and other dedicated observatories, astronomers have confirmed 5,690 exoplanets in 4,243 star systems. With so many planets and systems available for study, scientists have been forced to reconsider many previously-held notions about planet formation and evolution and what conditions are necessary for life. In the latter case, scientists have been rethinking the concept of the Circumsolar Habitable Zone (CHZ). By definition, a CHZ is the region aroundRead More →

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 →