Atmosphere Archives

December 18, 2024December 18, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Drone Test Flights Are Being Tested for Flights on Alien Worlds

An atmospheric probe model attached upside down to a quad rotor remotely piloted aircraft ascends with the Moon visible on Oct. 22, 2024. The quad rotor aircraft released the probe above Rogers Dry Lake, a flight area adjacent NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. The probe was designed and built at the center. Credit : NASA/Steve Freeman

We’ve already seen the success of the Ingenuity probe on Mars. The first aircraft to fly on another world set off on its maiden voyage in April 2021 and has now completed 72 flights. Now a team of engineers are taking the idea one step further and investigating ways that drones can be released from satellites in orbit and explore the atmosphere without having to land. The results are positive and suggest this could be a cost effective way to explore alien atmospheres.

November 20, 2024November 22, 2024 by Evan Gough

Uranus is Getting Colder and Now We Know Why

This zoomed-in image of Uranus, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) Feb. 6, 2023, reveals stunning views of the planet’s rings. The planet's upper atmosphere has been cooling for decades, New research has an explanation. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI IMAGE PROCESSING: Joseph DePasquale (STScI).

Uranus is an oddball among the Solar System’s planets. While most planets’ axis of rotation is perpendicular to their orbital plane, Uranus has an extreme tilt angle of 98 degrees. It’s flopped over on its side, likely from an ancient collision. It also has a retrograde rotation, opposite of the other planets.

The ice giant also has an unusual relationship with the Sun that sets it apart from other planets.

November 16, 2024November 16, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Millions of Phones Could Map the Earth’s Ionosphere

Ionospheric VTEC from phones during a geomagnetic storm

We are all familiar with the atmosphere of the Earth and part of this, the ionosphere, is a layer of weakly ionized plasma. It extends from 50 to 1,500 km above the planet. It’s a diffuse layer but sufficient to interfere with satellite communications and navigation systems too. A team of researchers have come up with an intriguing idea to utilise millions of mobile phones to help map the ionosphere by relying on their GPS antennas.

November 13, 2024November 13, 2024 by Evan Gough

Lessons From Ancient Earth’s Atmosphere: From Hostile to Hospitable

Earth's ancient atmosphere was much different than now. How did it transition from hostile to hospitable? If scientists can figure that out, they'll be better able to understand exoplanets and their atmospheres. Image Credit: Tohoku University

Will we ever understand how life got started on Earth? We’ve learned much about Earth’s long, multi-billion-year history, but a detailed understanding of how the planet’s atmospheric chemistry evolved still eludes us. At one time, Earth was atmospherically hostile, and its transition from that state to a planet teeming with life followed a complex path.

November 11, 2024November 11, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Good News, the Ozone Layer Hole is Continuing to Shrink

The area of depleted ozone over the Antarctic ranked the seventh smallest since recovery began in 1992.

Climate change is a huge topic and often debated across the world. We continue to burn fossil fuels and ignore our charge toward human driven climate change but while our behaviour never seems to improve, something else does! For the last few decades we have been pumping chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere causing a hole in the ozone layer to form. Thanks largely to worldwide regulation changes and a reduction in the use of these chemicals, the hole it seems is finally starting to get smaller.

October 31, 2024October 31, 2024 by Evan Gough

Webb Reveals a Steam World Planet Orbiting a Red Dwarf

An artist’s conception of the “steam world” GJ 9827 d, shown in the foreground in blue. Astronomers have theorized about these worlds, but this is the first one they've observed. Image credit: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI), Ralf Crawford (STScI)

The JWST has found an exoplanet unlike any other. This unique world has an atmosphere almost entirely composed of water vapour. Astronomers have theorized about these types of planets, but this is the first observational confirmation.

September 6, 2024September 6, 2024 by Evan Gough

One Step Closer to Solving the Mystery of Mars’ Lost Water

NASA scientists have determined that a primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth's Arctic Ocean and that the Red Planet has lost 87 percent of that water to space. Credit: NASA/GSFC

Few scientists doubt that Mars was once warm and wet. The evidence for a warm, watery past keeps accumulating, and even healthy skepticism can’t dismiss it. All this evidence begs the next question: what happened to it?

August 5, 2024August 5, 2024 by Evan Gough

Fast-Tracking the Search for Habitable Worlds

Astronomers have detected thousands of planets, including dozens that are potentially habitable. To winnow them down, they need to understand their atmospheres and other factors. (NASA Illustration)

Modern astronomy would struggle without AI and machine learning (ML), which have become indispensable tools. They alone have the capability to manage and work with the vast amounts of data that modern telescopes generate. ML can sift through large datasets, seeking specified patterns that would take humans far longer to find.

The search for biosignatures on Earth-like exoplanets is a critical part of contemporary astronomy, and ML can play a big role in it.

July 27, 2024July 27, 2024 by Evan Gough

Webb Directly Images a Jupiter-Like Planet

The gas-giant exoplanet Epsilon Indi Ab imaged using the MIRI instrument on NASA’s Webb telescope. A star symbol marks the location of the host star, whose light has been blocked by MIRI’s coronagraph, resulting in the dark circle with a dashed white line. The planet is to the left of the star. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, E. Matthews (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy)

The JWST has directly imaged its first exoplanet, a temperate super Jupiter only about 12 light-years away from Earth. It could be the oldest and coldest planet ever detected.

July 25, 2024July 25, 2024 by Evan Gough

Our Carbon Dioxide Emissions Have a Mesmerizing Side

This screenshot is from NASA's new global CO2 visualization. Image Credit: NASA/SVS

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.