Andy Tomaswick, Author at Universe Today

January 21, 2025January 21, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

A Tether Covered in Solar Panels Could Boost the ISS’s Orbit

The ISS’s orbit is slowly decaying. While it might seem a permanent fixture in the sky, the orbiting space laboratory is only about 400 km above the planet. There might not be a lot of atmosphere at that altitude. However, there is still some, and interacting with that is gradually slowing the orbital speed of the station, decreasing its orbit, and, eventually, pulling it back to Earth. That is, if we didn’t do anything to stop it. Over the 25-year lifespan of the station, hundreds of tons of hydrazine rocket fuel have been carried to it to enable rocket-propelled orbital maneuvers to keep its orbit from decaying. But what if there was a better way – one that was self-powered, inexpensive, and didn’t require constant refueling?

January 20, 2025January 20, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

Webb Sees Light Echoes in a Supernova Remnant

Supernovae are one of the most useful events in all of astronomy. Scientists can directly measure their power, their spin, and their eventual fallout, whether that’s turning into a black hole or a neutron star in some cases or just a much smaller stellar remnant. One of these events happened around 350 years ago (or around 11,000 years ago from the star’s perspective) in the constellation Cassiopeia. The James Webb Space Telescope recently caught a glimpse of the aftereffects of the explosion, and it happened to shed light (literally) on a familiar area of study – interstellar gas.

January 17, 2025January 17, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

The Los Angeles Fires Got Extremely Close to NASA’s JPL Facility

The wildfires raging around Los Angeles have made plenty of headlines lately, though they are slowly starting to get under control. NASA was a part of that effort, tracking the fire’s evolution via the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-3 (AVIRIS-3) as they raged through southern California. As they were doing so, they likely realized that these fires posed an extreme risk to one vital part of NASA itself – the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

January 16, 2025January 16, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

Colliding Stars, Stellar Siphoning, and a now a “Blue Lurker.” This Star System has Seen it All

Triple star systems are more common than might be imagined – about one in ten of every Sun-like star is part of a system with two other stars. However, the dynamics of such a system are complex, and understanding the history of how they came to be even more so. Science took a step towards doing so with a recent paper by Emily Leiner from the Illinois Institute of Technology and her team.

January 15, 2025January 15, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

Astronomers See Flares Coming from the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole

This artist’s conception of the mid-IR flare in Sgr A* captures the variability, or changing intensity, of the flare as the black hole’s magnetic field lines bunch together. This bunching results in magnetic reconnection, which produces particles and energy that spiral along the magnetic field lines until they cool and release their energy, spiking the intensity of the flare. Credit: CfA/Melissa Weiss

There’s plenty of action at the center of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole (SMBH) known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) literally holds the galaxy together. Part of that action is the creation of gigantic flares from Sgr A*, which can give off energy equivalent to 10 times the Sun’s annual energy output. However, scientists have been missing a key feature of these flares for decades – what they look like in the mid-infrared range. But now, a team led by researchers at Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy has published a paper that details what a flare looks like in those frequencies for the first time.

January 14, 2025January 14, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

It’s Official, 2024 Was the Hottest Year on Record

Climate scientists must fear sounding like a broken record when discussing new record temperatures yearly. But once again, last year was the hottest one ever recorded, according to a new study by NASA scientists.

January 13, 2025January 13, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

Astronauts Deploy the First Wooden Satellite into Orbit

Wood has been a mainstay of human machines and construction for millennia. Its physical properties offer capabilities that are unmatched by almost any synthetic replacements. However, it has only very rarely been used in space. That might change based on the results of a new test run by Japan’s Space Agency (JAXA). LignoSat, one of the world’s first wooden satellites, was deployed from the ISS in December.

January 10, 2025January 10, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

A New Industrial Megaproject Threatens the View of the World’s Best Observatories

The dark skies above ESO’s Paranal Observatory, home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), yield breathtaking views so clear and so full of stars that you could almost touch them. Standing atop a platform at VLT, ESO Photo Ambassador Petr Horálek reaches towards a standout object in the sky. You may assume this bright body, like many others in the sky, to be a star, but it is in fact a planet in our Solar System: the gas giant Jupiter. Closer to Earth, the four Unit Telescopes (UTs) that comprise the VLT can be seen in the background. Each UT features an 8.2-metre mirror and they operate synergistically to produce some of the sharpest views of the Universe. Accompanying the four UTs are four smaller, moveable Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) which have 1.8-metre mirrors. The Chilean Atacama desert once again proves its value as the ideal location for ESO’s VLT. The remoteness of the observatory means that there is very little to no light pollution, which is vital for astronomy and also yields such breathtaking views.

Astronomers have been battling threats to their clear skies on all fronts lately. One of the most notable battles, which we have reported on repeatedly, is the one against Starlink and other mega-constellations of satellites, which, while they offer high-speed internet in the most far-flung places, also disrupt observations by sensitive telescopes due to their reflectivity and fast movement speed. They also pose a global problem, whereas a more down-to-earth issue is cropping up at one very special observatory. A vast industrial plant threatens the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal telescope planned only a few kilometers from the site.

January 9, 2025January 9, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

SLS Could Launch A Titan Balloon Mission

Few places in the solar system are better suited to a balloon than Titan. The combination of low gravity and high atmospheric density makes Saturn’s largest moon ideal for a lighter than “air” vehicle, and the idea to put one there has been around for at least two decades. So why haven’t we yet? The simple answer is the size of the necessary balloon is too large for the existing launch platforms. But a team from Boeing, the prime contractor on the Space Launch System (SLS), believes their new launch platform will be capable of getting a large balloon into orbit, along with its necessary scientific payload – and start unlocking the mysteries of this intriguing moon.

January 8, 2025January 8, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

How to Deploy and Talk To LEAVES on Venus

We reported before about a NIAC-funded project known as the Lofted Environment and Atmospheric Venues Sensors (LEAVES) mission to study Venus’ atmosphere. While the technology behind the idea is still under development, it has already inspired a team of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) undergraduates to develop a supporting satellite mission to launch and communicate with the leaves. Their paper, part of their B.S. Thesis, details how to use these new sensors and the challenges ahead.