Carolyn Collins Petersen, Author at Universe Today

December 29, 2022December 29, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

An Ongoing Study of Jupiter’s Cloudtops Has Been Going on for 40 Years

A Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter in 2020. Planetary scientists studied temperature changes in its lower atmosphere and may soon be able to predict Jupiter weather. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL team.

Some of the most useful discoveries about distant objects take time to complete. For example, several generations of planetary scientists have been studying the clouds of Jupiter since the late 1970s. Their observations focused on the planet’s upper troposphere. The results show unexpected patterns in how the temperatures of Jupiter’s belts and zones change over time.

December 28, 2022December 28, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Navigation Could be Done on the Moon Just by Looking at Nearby Landmarks

Artist's impression of astronauts on the lunar surface, as part of the Artemis Program. How will they store power on the Moon? 3D printed batteries could help. Credit: NASA

When humans start living and working on the Moon in the Artemis missions, they’re going to need good navigational aids. Sure, they’ll have a GPS equivalent to help them find their way around. And, there’ll be LunaNet, the Moon’s equivalent to the Internet. But, there are places on the lunar that are pretty remote. In those cases, explorers could require more than one method for communication and navigation. That prompted NASA Goddard research engineer Alvin Yew to create an AI-driven local map service. It uses local landmarks for navigation.

December 22, 2022December 22, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Perseverance Places its First Sample on the Surface of Mars. One Day This Will be in the Hands of Scientists on Earth

Perseverance drops a load of rock on Mars for pickup later. — The Mars Perseverance Rover deposited a tube filled with a chalk-size core of igneous rock, taken from a region of Mars’ Jezero Crater, for later pickup by the joint ESA-NASA Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

In the not-too-distant future, a planetary scientist will open up a tube of rocks that came from Mars. Thanks to the Perseverance rover, there are at least 17 of these rock and regolith samples, just waiting for analysis on Earth. To get them, the rover has covered about 13 kilometers on its Mars geology field trip.

December 19, 2022December 19, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Giant Exoplanet is Spiraling Inward to its Doom

Kepler 1658b may spiral in to its aging star in the distant future. Credit: Gabriel Perez Diaz/Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

“Death by star” is a fate awaiting most planets in star systems. That includes our Sun, Venus, and Mercury a few billion years from now. And, astronomers now see that same fate awaiting Kepler-1658b. It’s a hot Jupiter exoplanet orbiting an evolved F-type yellow-white dwarf star about 2600 light-years away from Earth.

December 16, 2022March 4, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Juno has Been Touring Jupiter’s Moons on its Extended Mission. Next Stop: Volcanic Io

The Juno mission's infrared view of the Jovian moon Io. Taken on July 5, 2022. All the hotspots are volcanic features. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

For a tiny moon orbiting a giant planet, Io sure packs a giant wallop. It’s the most volcanic world in the solar system. Due to that extreme volcanism, scientists with the Juno mission are now focusing the spacecraft’s instruments and cameras on Io. They want to know more about its eruptions and how its constant stream of material into space interacts with Jupiter’s magnetosphere.

December 15, 2022December 15, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

A Soyuz Capsule on ISS is Leaking Coolant Into Space

Soyuz leak — A screen grab from a video taken at the International Space Station of a coolant leak from the Soyuz spacecraft. Courtesy NASA.

There is an ongoing incident at the International Space Station involving a coolant leak from a docked Soyuz MS-22 crew ship. Just as Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Propokyev and Dmitri Petelin were getting ready to do a spacewalk to relocate a radiator, ground teams in Moscow noticed the leak. The spacewalk was cancelled immediately.

December 15, 2022December 15, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Where are the Best Places to Land Humans on Mars?

An artist's concept of Mars explorers and their habitat on the Red Planet. Courtesy NASA.

Want to go to Mars? Great! Now, all you need to do is plan a mission. Figure out where to land, what to bring, and how you’re going to live there in the months (or years) between favorable return windows. All this will be determined by the availability of crucial resources you’ll need to survive.

December 13, 2022December 13, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

ESA’s Upcoming Mission Will Tell us if Venus is Still Volcanically Active

Venus Envision mission — EnVision orbiting Venus and studying its surface and atmosphere. The mission will launch in the early 2030s. Courtesy ESA.

When it comes to planetary exploration, particularly of Venus, a big part of the story is under the surface. It’s a story that ESA’s EnVision mission was selected to tell when it gets to the planet in the 2030s. That’s because the spacecraft will include a subsurface radar sounder (SRS) to “peek under the surface” of Venus.

December 12, 2022December 12, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Black Holes Shouldn’t be Able to Merge, but Dozens of Mergers Have Been Detected. How Do They Do It?

black holes in a globular cluster — This is an artist’s impression created to visualize the concentration of black holes at the center of globular cluster NGC 6397. Credit: ESA/Hubble, N. Bartmann

Who knows what lurks in the hearts of some globular clusters? Astronomers using a collection of gravitational wave observatories found evidence of collections of smaller black holes dancing together as binaries in the hearts of globulars. What’s more, they’ve detected an increased number of gravitational wave events when some of these stellar-mass black holes crashed together.

December 9, 2022December 9, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Comets Leave Dusty Trails That Surround the Solar System

Could the solar system be enveloped in a shell of faintly glowing dust from comets? Courtesy NASA/ESA/STSci

Comets are messy things. They scatter bits of dust as they travel through the solar system. If Earth happens to encounter one of those cometary dust trails, we get to see a meteor shower.