Researchers Just Scanned 14 Worlds From the Kepler Mission for “Technosignatures”, Evidence of Advanced Civilizations When it comes to looking for life on extra-solar planets, scientists rely on what is known as the “low-hanging fruit” approach. In lieu of being able to observe these planets directly or up close, they are forced to look for “biosignatures” – substances that indicate that life could exist there. Given that Earth is the only planet (that we know of) that can support life, these include carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and water. However, while the presence of these elements are a good way of gauging “habitability”, they are not necessarilyRead More →

Carnival of Space #547 It’s that time again! This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Pamela Hoffman at the Everyday Spacer blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #547. And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to susie@wshcrew.space, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want toRead More →

The Solar System Probably has Thousands of Captured Interstellar Asteroids On October 19th, 2017, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar asteroid, named 1I/2017 U1 (aka. ‘Oumuamua). Originally thought to be a comet, this interstellar visitor quickly became the focus of follow-up studies that sought to determine its origin, structure, composition, and rule out the possibility that it was an alien spacecraft! While ‘Oumuamua is the first known example of an interstellar asteroid reaching our Solar System, scientists have long suspected that such visitors are a regular occurrence. Aiming to determine just how common,Read More →

Weekly Space Hangout – Feb 7, 2018: Weekly News Roundup Hosts: Dr. Kimberly Cartier (KimberlyCartier.org / @AstroKimCartier ) Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg & ChartYourWorld.org) While Fraser and Paul are in Iceland, Kimberly and Morgan hold down the fort, and discuss the major news of the week – like the SpaceX Falcon Heavy successful launch! Announcements: If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions! We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You canRead More →

James Webb Makes The Journey From Houston To Los Angeles; Last Stop Before It Heads To The Launch Facility In 2019 The two halves of the James Webb Space Telescope are now in the same location and ready to take the next step on JWST’s journey. On February 2nd, Webb’s Optical Telescope and Integrated Science instrument module (OTIS) arrived at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California. The integrated spacecraft, consisting of the spacecraft bus and sunshield, were already there, waiting for OTIS so they could join together and become a complete spacecraft. “The team will begin the final stages of integration of theRead More →

There is a car, in space. Launched by a rocket with reused parts that landed back on Earth by a billionaire who wants to colonize Mars. In the last hour or so, SpaceX successfully completed the first liftoff of the Falcon Heavy rocket. This is a beefed up version of its successful Falcon-9 rocket, where three boosters are strapped together, firing 27 Merlin engines simultaneously with the capability of launching 54 tonnes of cargo into space. And Liftoff for Falcon Heavy. Credit: SpaceX The Falcon Heavy is now the most powerful rocket currently operating on Earth, by a factor of two. On board the FalconRead More →

Here’s a Prediction About the Orbit Musk’s Tesla is Going to Take Through the Solar System After multiple delays, SpaceX recently announced that the inaugural flight of their Falcon Heavy rocket would take place this Tuesday, February 6th, 2018. This rocket, which is the heaviest launch vehicle in the SpaceX fleet (and the most powerful operational rocket in the world right now), is not only central to the company’s vision of reusable rockets, but also to Musk’s long-term vision of sending humans to Mars. As a result, people all over the world have been tuning in to watch the coverage of the event, and eagerlyRead More →

Good News For The Search For Life, The Trappist System Might Be Rich In Water When we finally find life somewhere out there beyond Earth, it’ll be at the end of a long search. Life probably won’t announce its presence to us, we’ll have to follow a long chain of clues to find it. Like scientists keep telling us, at the start of that chain of clues is water. The discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system last year generated a lot of excitement. 7 planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, only 40 light years from Earth. At the time, astronomers thought at least some of them wereRead More →

ESA’s ExoMars has Completed its Aerobraking Maneuvers to Bring it Into a Circular 400 km Orbit Around Mars In March of 2016, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) mission into space. A joint project between the ESA and Roscosmos, this two-part mission consisted of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Schiaparelli lander, both of which arrived in orbit around Mars in October of 2016. While Schiaparelli crashed while attempting to land, the TGO has gone on to accomplish some impressive feats. For example, in March of 2017, the orbiter commenced a series of aerobraking maneuvers, where it started toRead More →

Astronomers use a Galaxy Cluster as an Extremely Powerful “Natural Telescope” to Peer Even Farther into the Universe When it comes to studying some of the most distant and oldest galaxies in the Universe, a number of challenges present themselves. In addition to being billions of light years away, these galaxies are often too faint to see clearly. Luckily, astronomers have come to rely on a technique known as Gravitational Lensing, where the gravitational force of a large object (like a galactic cluster) is used to enhance the light of these fainter galaxies. Using this technique, an international team of astronomers recently discovered a distantRead More →

For the First Time, Planets Have Been Discovered in ANOTHER Galaxy! The first confirmed discovery of a planet beyond our Solar System (aka. an Extrasolar Planet) was a groundbreaking event. And while the initial discoveries were made using only ground-based observatories, and were therefore few and far between, the study of exoplanets has grown considerably with the deployment of space-based telescopes like the Kepler space telescope. As of February 1st, 2018, 3,728 planets have been confirmed in 2,794 systems, with 622 systems having more than one planet. But now, thanks to a new study by a team of astrophysicists from the University of Oklahoma, the firstRead More →

12,800 Years Ago, Earth Was Struck by a Disintegrating Comet, Setting Off Global Firestorms According to modern theories of geological evolution, the last major ice age (known as the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation) began about 2.58 million years ago during the late Pliocene Epoch. Since then, the world has experienced several glacial and interglacial periods, and has been in an inter-glacial period (where the ice sheets have been retreating) ever since the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. According to new research, this trend experienced a bit of a hiccup during the late Paleolithic era. It was at this time – roughly 12,800 years ago,Read More →

SpaceX Performs an Experimental High Retrothrust and Survives a Water Landing SpaceX’s most recent rocket launch saw the Falcon 9 perform a high retro-thrust over water, with no drone ship in sight. SpaceX never intended to reuse this rocket, and they haven’t said exactly why. This rocket was meant to test very high retrothrust landing in water so it didn’t hurt the droneship, but amazingly it has survived. We will try to tow it back to shore. pic.twitter.com/hipmgdnq16 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2018 This launch was conducted on January 31st, and the payload was a communications satellite called GovSat-1. It’s a public-private partnership,Read More →

The First Results From The IllustrisTNG Simulation Of The Universe Has Been Completed, Showing How Our Cosmos Evolved From The Big Bang The first results of the IllustrisTNG Project have been published in three separate studies, and they’re shedding new light on how black holes shape the cosmos, and how galaxies form and grow. The IllustrisTNG Project bills itself as “The next generation of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations.” The Project is an ongoing series of massive hydrodynamic simulations of our Universe. Its goal is to understand the physical processes that drive the formation of galaxies. At the heart of IllustriousTNG is a state of the artRead More →

Outflows From Black Holes are Creating New Molecules Where There Should Only be Destruction During the 1960s, scientists discovered a massive radio source (known as Sagittarius A*) at the center of the Milky Way, which was later revealed to be a Supermassive Black Holes (SMBH). Since then, they have learned that these SMBHs reside at the center of most massive galaxies. The presence of these black holes is also what allows the centers of these galaxies to have a higher than normal luminosity – aka. Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs). In the past few years, astronomers have also observed fast molecular outflows emanating from AGNs whichRead More →

Astronomers Find One of the Oldest Stars in the Milky Way According to modern cosmological models, the Universe began in a cataclysm event known as the Big Bang. This took place roughly 13.8 billion years ago, and was followed by a period of expansion and cooling. During that time, the first hydrogen atoms formed as protons and electrons combined and the fundamental forces of physics were born. Then, about 100 million years after the Big Bang, that the first stars and galaxies began to form. The formation of the first stars was also what allowed for the creation of heavier elements, and therefore the formationRead More →

Curiosity has Lasted More than 2,000 Days on Mars, Triple its Original Mission Plan On August 5th, 2012, after spending over 8 months in space, NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars. As part of the NASA Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, and the latest in a series of rovers deployed to the Martian surface, Curiosity had some rather ambitious research goals. In addition to investigating Mars’ climate and geology, the rover was also tasked with revealing more about Mars’ past and determining if it ever supported microbial life. And recently, the Curiosity rover hit another major milestone in its exploration of the Red Planet. AsRead More →

Why Finding Alien Life Would Be Bad. The Great Filter Since the Universe is big and old, and life on Earth didn’t take relatively long to evolve, then life should be everywhere in the Universe. And yet, no matter how hard we look, we don’t see any evidence of it out there, not on Mars, not sending us radio messages, and not taking over entire galaxies and using up all their energy. This, of course, is the Fermi Paradox, and it’s an absolutely fascinating concept to think about. There are many possible resolutions to the Fermi Paradox, but most of them are unsatisfying. Sure, weRead More →

Here Are Some Amazing Pictures of the January 2018 Lunar Eclipse On Wednesday, January 31st (i.e. today!), a spectacular celestial event occurred. For those who live in the western part of North America, Alaska, and the Hawaiian islands, it was visible in the wee hours of the morning – and some people were disciplined enough to roll out of bed to see it! This was none other than the highly-anticipated “Super Blue Moon“, a rare type of full moon that on this occasion was special for a number of reasons. For one, it was the third in a series of “supermoons”, where a Full MoonRead More →

Now That NASA’s Missing IMAGE Satellite Has Been Found, Talking To It Is Going To Be Difficult It’s easy to imagine the excitement NASA personnel must have felt when an amateur astronomer contacted NASA to tell them that he might have found their missing IMAGE satellite. After all, the satellite had been missing for 10 years. IMAGE, which stands for Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration, was launched on March 25th, 2000. In Dec. 2005 the satellite failed to make routine contact, and in 2007 it failed to reboot. After that, the mission was declared over. NASA’s IMAGE satellite. Credit: NASA It’s astonishing that after 10Read More →