Space and astronomy news
One of the largest reentries in recent years, ESA’s ERS-2 satellite is coming down this week.
After almost three decades in orbit, an early Earth-observation satellite is finally coming down this week. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) European Remote Sensing satellite ERS-2 is set to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere on or around Wednesday, February 21st.
Continue reading “European Satellite ERS-2 to Reenter Earth’s Atmosphere This Week”
The solar cycle has been reasonably well understood since 1843 when Samuel Schwabe spent 17 years observing the variation of sunspots. Since then, we have regularly observed the ebb and flow of the sunspots cycle every 11 years. More recently ESA’s Solar Orbiter has taken regular images of the Sun to track the progress as we head towards the peak of the current solar cycle. Two recently released images from February 2021 and October 2023 show how things are really picking up as we head toward solar maximum.
Continue reading “Look at How Much the Sun Has Changed in Just Two Years”
Quasars are fascinating objects; supermassive black holes that are actively feasting on material from their accretion disks. The result is a jet that can outshine the combined light from the entire galaxy! There are smaller blackholes too that are the result of the death of stars and these also sometimes seem to host accretion disks and jets just like their larger cousins. We call these microquasars and, whilst there are similarities between them, there are differences too.
Continue reading “What are the Differences Between Quasars and Microquasars?”
Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander has beamed back a series of snapshots that were captured as it headed out from the Earth toward the moon, and one of the pictures features Australia front and center. The shots also show the second stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched the spacecraft, floating away as Odysseus pushed onward.
Continue reading “Odysseus Moon Lander Sends Back Selfies With Earth in the Picture”
April 8’s North American solar eclipse is just around the corner, and it has astronomy fans and weather aficionados alike preparing for an incredible show. But it’s not just fun and games. Eclipses are rare opportunities for scientists to study phenomena that only come around once in a while.
Last week, a team of meteorological experts from the Netherlands released a paper describing how eclipses can disrupt the formation of certain types of clouds. Their findings have implications for futuristic geoengineering schemes that propose to artificially block sunlight to combat climate change.
Continue reading “Solar Eclipses Provide a Rare Way to Study Cloud Formation”
Whether or not you agree that Pluto isn’t a planet, in many ways, Pluto is quite different from the classical planets. It’s smaller than the Moon, has an elliptical orbit that brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune at times, and is part of a collection of icy bodies on the edge of our solar system. It was also thought to be a cold dead world until the flyby of New Horizons proved otherwise. The plucky little spacecraft showed us that Pluto was geologically active, with a thin atmosphere and mountains that rise above icy plains. Geologically, Pluto is more similar to Earth than the Moon, a fact that has led some to reconsider Pluto’s designation as a dwarf planet.
Continue reading “Even Eris and Makemake Could Have Geothermal Activity”
A recently submitted study to The Astronomical Journal continues to search for the elusive Planet Nine (also called Planet X), which is a hypothetical planet that potentially orbits in the outer reaches of the solar system and well beyond the orbit of the dwarf planet, Pluto. The goal of this study was to narrow down the possible locations of Planet Nine and holds the potential to help researchers better understand the makeup of our solar system, along with its formation and evolutionary processes. So, what was the motivation behind this study regarding narrowing down the location of a potential Planet Nine?
Continue reading “There’s One Last Place Planet 9 Could Be Hiding”
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has put out a call for international and industry partners to contribute science payloads to its Chang’e-8 lunar lander, set for launch to the Moon in 2028. The mission, which will involve a lander, a rover, and a utility robot, will be China’s first attempt at in-situ resource utilization on the Moon, using lunar regolith to produce brick-like building materials.
Continue reading “China's Chang'e-8 Mission Will Try to Make Bricks on the Moon”
During the 1970s, inventor/environmentalist James Lovelock and evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis proposed the Gaia Hypothesis. This theory posits that Earth is a single, self-regulating system where the atmosphere, hydrosphere, all life, and their inorganic surroundings work together to maintain the conditions for life on the planet. This theory was largely inspired by Lovelock’s work with NASA during the 1960s, where the skilled inventor designed instruments for modeling the climate of Mars and other planets in the Solar System.
According to this theory, planets like Earth would slowly grow warmer and their oceans more acidic without a biosphere that regulates temperature and ensures climate stability. While the theory was readily accepted among environmentalists and climatologists, many in the scientific community have remained skeptical since it was proposed. Until now, it has been impossible to test this theory because it involves forces that work on a planetary scale. But in a recent paper, a team of Spanish scientists proposed an experimental system incorporating synthetic biology that could test the theory on a small scale.
Continue reading “Can the Gaia Hypothesis Be Tested in the Lab?”
Space-based solar power (SBSP) has been in the news recently, with the successful test of a solar power demonstrator in space taking place last summer. While the concept is fundamentally sound, there are plenty of hurdles to overcome if the technology is to be widely adopted – not the least of which is cost. NASA is no stranger to costly projects, though, and they recently commissioned a study from their internal Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy that suggests how NASA could continue to support this budding idea. Most interestingly, if the technological cards are played right, SBSP could be the most carbon-efficient, lowest-cost power source for humanity by 2050.
Continue reading “New NASA Report Suggests We Could See Space-Based Power After 2050”