Andy Tomaswick, Author at Universe Today

December 10, 2023December 10, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Scientists Found Evidence Of A Nearby Kilonova 3.5 Million Years Ago

Most of the times astronomers reported dramatic, cataclysmic events like neutron star mergers or the creation of a black hole; they are taking place light years away, typically in in another galaxy. While we can observe their destructive power through the light they emit, they have minimal impact on Earth. However, a relatively recent discovery of certain types of isotopes at the bottom of the ocean hints at one of these events happening fairly close to home. And it probably didn’t happen all that long ago.

November 30, 2023November 30, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Not Getting Enough Data From Mars? Set Up A Solar System Pony Express

Getting data in from deep space can be difficult. Almost all of our missions that have flown into deep space use the Deep Space Network, a system of transmitters and receivers that already imposes constraints on the amount of data we can transfer from the far reaches of space. So a team led by Joshua Vander Hook, then at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and now at a start-up called Outrider.ai, came up with a way to dramatically enhance the throughput of the DSN. In so doing, they gave it a very catchy name – the Solar System Pony Express.

November 29, 2023December 7, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Contact Binary Asteroids are Common, but We’ve Never Seen One Form. So Let’s Make One

Ever want to play a game of cosmic billiards? That’s commonly how the DART mission was described when it successfully changed the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid last year. If you want an idea of how it works, just Google it and an Easter egg from the search giant will give you a general idea. But DART was more like trying to brute force a billiards break – there are many other things you can do with a set of asteroids and impactors on the galactic stage. One of the more interesting is to try to force two asteroids together to form a “contact binary” – the goal of a mission design put forward by a group of scientists from Cornell in a recent paper in Acta Astronautica.

November 29, 2023November 29, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

A Detailed Design for a Space Station at Sun-Earth L2

New ideas in space exploration come from all corners, and, by and large, the community welcomes anybody interested in the field. Having just read A City on Mars, it seems that even people who disagree with the idea that the age of space settlement is imminent will be accepted into the fold by enthusiasts. Now, a new entrant has joined – Daniel Akinwumi is a Nigerian graduate student at the University of Strathclyde who recently published his Master’s thesis detailing the design of the “intergalactic hub,” or I-HUB.

November 23, 2023November 23, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

How NASA Keeps Ingenuity Going After More than 50 Flights

More information is always better when it comes to publicly funded space exploration projects. So it’s welcome when a NASA engineer takes time out of the assuredly busy work lives to provide an update on everyone’s favorite helicopter on Mars. Ingenuity has been having a rough few months, and a new article entitled “The Long Wait,” posted by Travis Brown, Chief Engineer on the Ingenuity project, on NASA’s website, provides a good amount of detail as to why.

November 23, 2023November 23, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

The First Color Pictures From Euclid

Many a space enthusiast first became interested in the topic when they saw some astounding picture taken by one of the world’s great telescopes and began to get a sense of scale of the universe. This author personally remembers the first time he saw Hubble’s Ultra Deep Field – arguably the image that has changed his life more than any other. Given the massive size of the universe, there are always more incredible pictures to be taken, and now humanity has a new tool for that task. Euclid, the European Space Agency’s dark matter/energy hunter, has released its first set of images – and they are absolutely mesmerizing.

November 16, 2023November 16, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

The Echoes From Inflation Could Still Be Shaking the Cosmos Today

In the very early universe, physics was weird. A process known as “inflation,” where best we understand the universe went from a single infinitesimal point to everything we see today, was one such instance of that weird physics. Now, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Science have sifted through 15 years of pulsar timing data in order to put some constraints on what that physics looks like.

November 7, 2023November 7, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

How to Make Asteroid Landings Safer

Landing safely on an asteroid is no mean feat. Despite several recent successes, there have also been notable failures – most famously, the Philae lander to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Admittedly, that was an attempt to land on a comet rather than an asteroid, but those two bodies share many of the same landing hazards. One of the most prevalent of those is “inhomogenous” gravity. To tackle this problem, researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology in China recently released a paper detailing a framework for performing “soft landings” on asteroids, which might help make exploring these rocky worlds much more accessible.

November 7, 2023November 7, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

India Plans to Send Humans to the Moon by 2040

The Indian space program has been on a bit of a tear lately. Chadrayaan-3 was just the latest successful for the ISRO, India’s space agency, when it launched in July – especially juxtaposed with Luna-25, a Russian moon lander mission that launched around the same time and failed spectacularly by crashing into the Moon. Maybe in part due to the ISRO’s success, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to have taken an increased interest in the program and recently chaired a meeting to review the Gaganyaan Mission, India’s first foray into crewed space flight. But while in the meeting, he suggested the country’s exploration goals should go further – much further.

October 19, 2023November 7, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

There are 14,000 Near Earth Asteroids Left to Find

Everyone likes a cool infographic, right? Does that statement hold even if the infographic points out a gap in our knowledge that could kill millions of people? Because that’s what a cool-looking infographic NASA released on October 16th does.