Universe Today (Page 2)

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 →

Swarming Satellites Could Autonomous Characterize an Asteroid An asteroid’s size, shape, and rotational speed are clues to its internal properties and potential resources for mining operations. However, of the more than 20,000 near-Earth asteroids currently known, only a tiny fraction have been sufficiently characterized to estimate those three properties accurately. That is essentially a resource constraint – there aren’t enough dedicated telescopes on Earth to keep track of all the asteroids for long enough to characterize them, and deep space resources, such as the Deep Space Network required for communications outside Earth’s orbit, are already overutilized by other missions. Enter the Autonomous Nanosatellite Swarming (ANS)Read More →

Officially, Only the Sun Can Have Planets. Is it Time to Fix the Definition of “Planet”? What is the true definition of a planet, and could there be a more refined definition in the future? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as a team of researchers from the United States and Canada investigated the potential for a new definition of a “planet”. This study holds the potential to challenge the longstanding definition outlined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which established IAU Resolution B5 in 2006, resulting in demoting Pluto from a “planet” to a “dwarfRead More →

Neutron Star is Spraying Jets Like a Garden Sprinkler X-ray binaries are some of the oddest ducks in the cosmic zoo and they attract attention across thousands of light-years. Now, astronomers have captured new high-resolution radio images of the first one ever discovered. It’s called Circinus X-1. Their views show a weird kind of jet emanating from the neutron star member of the binary. The jet rotates like an off-axis sprinkler as it spews material out through surrounding space, sending shockwaves through the interstellar medium. The MeerKAT radio telescope in South African spotted the S-shaped jets emanating from the neutron star. Its images are theRead More →

NASA Stops Work on VIPER Moon Rover, Citing Cost and Schedule Issues NASA says it intends to discontinue development of its VIPER moon rover, due to cost increases and schedule delays — but the agency is also pointing to other opportunities for robotic exploration of the lunar south polar region. The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover was originally scheduled for launch in late 2023, targeting the western edge of Nobile Crater near the moon’s south pole. The south polar region is a prime target for exploration because it’s thought to hold deposits of water ice that could sustain future lunar settlements. NASA plans to sendRead More →

Experimental Radar Technique Reveals the Composition of Titan’s Seas The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn generated so much data that giving it a definitive value is impossible. It’s sufficient to say that the amount is vast and that multiple scientific instruments generated it. One of those instruments was a radar designed to see through Titan’s thick atmosphere and catch a scientific glimpse of the moon’s extraordinary surface. Scientists are still making new discoveries with all this data. Though Saturn has almost 150 known moons, Titan attracts almost all of the scientific attention. It’s Saturn’s largest moon and the Solar System’s second largest. But Titan’s surface isRead More →

Webb Measures the Weather on a Tidally Locked Exoplanet Exploring exoplanet atmospheres in more detail was one task that planetary scientists anticipated during the long wait while the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was in development. Now, their patience is finally paying off. News about discoveries of exoplanet atmosphere using data from JWST seems to be coming from one research group or another almost every week, and this week is no exception. A paper published in Nature by authors from a few dozen institutions describes the atmospheric differences between the “morning” and “evening” sides of a tidally locked planet for the first time. First, let’sRead More →

More Than Half of Near Earth Objects Could Be “Dark Comets” Next time you’re visiting the seaside or a large lake, or even sipping a frosty glass of water, think about where it all originated. There are many pathways that water could have taken to the infant Earth: via comets, “wet asteroids”, and outgassing from early volcanism. Aster Taylor, a University of Michigan graduate student has another idea: dark comets. They’re something of a cross between asteroids and comets and could have played a role in water delivery to our planet. Dark comets are small Solar System bodies. They have short rotational periods thanks toRead More →

Pulsars are the Ideal Probes for Dark Matter Pulsars are the remnants of the explosion of massive stars at the end of their lives. The event is known as a supernova and as they rapidly spin they sweep a high energy beam across the cosmos much like a lighthouse. The alignment of some pulsar beams mean they sweep across Earth predictably and with precise regularity. They can be, and often are used as timing gauges but a team of astronomers have found subtle timing changes in some pulsars hinting at unseen mass between pulsars and telescopes—possibly dark matter entities. The discovery in 1967 of pulsarsRead More →

New Images From Webb Reveal Jupiter’s Complex Atmosphere The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has accomplished some spectacular feats since it began operations in 2021. Thanks to its sensitivity in the near- and mid-infrared wavelengths, it can take detailed images of cooler objects and reveal things that would otherwise go unnoticed. This includes the iconic image Webb took of Jupiter in August 2022, which showed the planet’s atmospheric features (including its polar aurorae and Great Red Spot) in a new light. Using Webb, a team of European astronomers recently observed the region above the Great Red Spot and discovered previously unseen features. The team wasRead More →

Webb Maps the Weather on the Closest Brown Dwarfs to Earth James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has done it again. A team of astronomers have used it to map the weather on a pair of brown dwarf stars. Infrared light was analysed from the pair and its variation over time was measured. The team were able to generate a 3D picture of the weather and discovered gasses in the atmosphere like water vapour, methane and carbon dioxide. Swirling clouds of hot sand were also found with temperatures reaching as high as 950 C! Weather on worlds beyond our solar system, is likely to be diverseRead More →

Astronauts Struggle To Eat Bland Food in Space and Scientists Want to Know Why Astronauts sometimes struggle to consume enough nutritious food on the ISS because it tastes bland. But astronaut food is of high quality and designed to be palatable and to meet nutrition needs. What’s the problem? NASA has two facilities devoted to astronaut food: the Space Food Systems Laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston and the Space Food Research Facility, also in Texas. Both facilities support the production and development of astronaut food— including menus, packaging, and hardware—for all of NASA’s space programs. There’s even an Advanced Food Research Team lookingRead More →

Volunteers Complete a Simulated Year on Mars The crew of NASA’s first Mars habitat simulation, CHAPEA 1, exited their Earth-based environment after 378 days on July 6 at 5 p.m. EDT. Greeted by friends, family, mission team members and project directors, the crew of four expressed gratitude and optimism about their time in isolation and the data collected, which will contribute to the future goal of putting boots on Mars. The egress event at the Johnson Space Center was initiated by Deputy Director Steve Koerner, who expressed sincere gratitude to the team and their families and highlighted the crucial data gathered over the course ofRead More →

Only Hubble Could Make this Measurement of a Supernova Calculating the distance to far-away objects, such as galaxy clusters and quasars, is difficult. But it is also critical to our understanding of how the universe evolves. Luckily, humanity has a trusty workhorse that has been collecting data for such calculations for decades—Hubble. It is by far the best telescope suited to the job, as described by a recent NASA press release about a distance measurement to a supernova in a nearby galaxy. The NGC 3810 galaxy is a spectacular example of a spiral galaxy in the Virgo Supercluster, which had a Type Ia Supernova happenRead More →

Dune-Inspired Stillsuits Could Allow Astronauts to Recycle Their Urine Into Water If history has taught us one thing, it is that science fiction often gives way to science fact. Consider the Star Trek communicator and the rise of flip phones in the late 1990s and early 2000s, or how 2001: A Space Odyssey predicted orbiting space stations and reusable space planes – like the International Space Station (ISS) and the Space Shuttle. And who can forget Jules Verne’s classic, From the Earth to the Moon, and how it anticipated that humans would one day walk on the Moon? Almost a century later, this dream wouldRead More →