Universe Today

August 26, 2024August 26, 2024 by Matt Williams

JAXA Officially Wraps Up its SLIM Lander Mission

Illustration: SLIM lander on the moon — An artist's conception shows Japan's SLIM lander on the moon. Credit: ISAS/JAXA

On January 20th, 2024, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) made history when its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) made a soft landing on the Moon, becoming the first Japanese robotic mission to do so. This small-scale lander was designed to investigate the origins of the Moon and test technologies that are fundamental to exploring the low-gravity lunar environment. Unfortunately, mission controllers lost contact with the lander after April 28th, 2024, and have spent the last few months trying to reestablish communications.

August 26, 2024August 26, 2024 by Evan Gough

After a Boost from Earth and the Moon, Juice is On its Way to Venus and Beyond

The ESA's Juice spacecraft is on a long journey to the Jovian system. It's the first spacecraft to perform an Earth-lunar flyby for a gravity assist. Image Credit: ESA

The first spacecraft to use gravity assist was NASA’s Mariner 10 in 1974. It used a gravity assist from Venus to reach Mercury. Now, the gravity assist maneuver is a crucial part of modern space travel.

The latest spacecraft to use gravity assist is the ESA’s JUICE spacecraft.

August 26, 2024August 26, 2024 by Mark Thompson

X-Ray Telescopes Could Study Exoplanets Too

Exoplanets are often discovered using the transit method (over three quarters of those discovered have been found this way.) The same transit technique can be used to study them, often revealing detail about their atmosphere. The observations are typically made in visible light or infrared but a new paper suggests X-rays may be useful too. Stellar wind interactions with the planet’s atmosphere for example would lead to X-ray emissions revealing information about the atmosphere. As we further our exploration of exoplanets we develop our understanding of our own Solar System and ultimately, the origins of life in the Universe.

August 26, 2024August 21, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

Life Needs Black Holes to Survive

Illustration of an active quasar. New research shows that SMBHs eat rapidly enough to trigger them. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Life is rare, and it requires exactly the right environmental mix to establish itself. And there’s one surprising contributor to that perfect mix: gigantic black holes.

August 25, 2024August 25, 2024 by Laurence Tognetti

The Big Fringe Telescope. A 2.2 KILOMETER Telescope on the Cheap. And it Can Make Exoplanet “Movies”.

Can a kilometer-scale telescope help conduct more efficient science, and specifically for the field of optical interferometry? This is what a recently submitted study hopes to address as a pair of researchers propose the Big Fringe Telescope (BFT), which is slated to comprise 16 telescopes 0.5-meter in diameter and will be equivalent to a telescope at 2.2 kilometers in diameter. What makes BFT unique is its potential to create real-time exoplanet “movies” like the movies featuring Venus transiting our Sun, along with significantly reduced construction costs compared to current ground-based optical interferometers.

August 25, 2024August 21, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

What Makes a Supercluster?

Illustration of the Laniakea Supercluster. Credit: Andrew Z. Colvin

By eye, it’s impossible to pick out the exact boundaries of the superclusters, which are among the largest structures in the universe. But that’s because they are not defined by their edges, but by the common motion of their components.

August 24, 2024August 24, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Neutron Star Mergers Could Be Producing Quark Matter

An artist's impression of a neutron star merger as the two stars merge, change shape, and heat up. Courtesy: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick.

When neutron stars dance together, the grand smash finale they experience might create the densest known form of matter known in the Universe. It’s called “quark matter, ” a highly weird combo of liberated quarks and gluons. It’s unclear if the stuff existed in their cores before the end of their dance. However, in the wild aftermath a neutron-star merger, the strange conditions could free quarks and gluons from protons and neutrons. That lets them move around freely in the aftermath. So, researchers want to know how freely they move and what conditions might impede their motion (or flow).

August 24, 2024August 24, 2024 by Matt Williams

Chinese Researchers Devise New Strategy for Producing Water on the Moon

The strategy for in-situ water production on the Moon through the reaction between lunar regolith and endogenous hydrogen. Credit: NIMTE)

In the coming years, China and Roscosmos plan to create the International Lunar Research PStation (ILRSP), a permanent base in the Moon’s southern polar region. Construction of the base will begin with the delivery of the first surface elements by 2030 and is expected to last until about 2040. This base will rival NASA’s Artemis Program, which will include the creation of the Lunar Gateway in orbit around the Moon and the various surface elements that make up the Artemis Base Camp. In addition to the cost of building these facilities, there are many considerable challenges that need to be addressed first.

Crews operating on the lunar surface for extended periods will require regular shipments of supplies. Unlike the International Space Station, which can be resupplied in a matter of hours, sending resupply spacecraft to the Moon will take about three days. As a result, NASA, China, and other space agencies are developing methods to harvest resources directly from the lunar environment – a process known as In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). In a recent paper, a research team with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced a new method for producing massive amounts of water through a reaction between lunar regolith and endogenous hydrogen.

August 24, 2024August 20, 2024 by Paul M. Sutter

Is Science Slowing Down?

This Fine Guidance Sensor test image was acquired in parallel with NIRCam imaging of the star HD147980 over a period of eight days at the beginning of May. This engineering image represents a total of 32 hours of exposure time at several overlapping pointings of the Guider 2 channel. The observations were not optimized for detection of faint objects, but nevertheless the image captures extremely faint objects and is, for now, the deepest image of the infrared sky. The unfiltered wavelength response of the guider, from 0.6 to 5 micrometers, helps provide this extreme sensitivity. The image is mono-chromatic and is displayed in false color with white-yellow-orange-red representing the progression from brightest to dimmest. The bright star (at 9.3 magnitude) on the right hand edge is 2MASS 16235798+2826079. There are only a handful of stars in this image – distinguished by their diffraction spikes. The rest of the objects are thousands of faint galaxies, some in the nearby universe, but many, many more in the distant universe. Credit: NASA, CSA, and FGS team.

Paradoxically, even though we produce more scientific output than ever before – each year, researchers around the world publish millions of academic papers – the pace of scientific discovery is slowing down.

August 23, 2024August 23, 2024 by Matt Williams

China Proposes Magnetic Launch System for Sending Resources Back to Earth

Distance Between the Earth and Moon — The Earth rising over the Moon's surface, as seen by the Apollo 8 mission. Credit: NASA

In his famous novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein describes a future lunar settlement where future lunar residents (“Loonies”) send payloads of wheat and water ice to Earth using an electromagnetic catapult. In this story, a group of Loonies conspire to take control of this catapult and threaten to “throw rocks at Earth” unless they recognize Luna as an independent world. Interestingly enough, scientists have explored this concept for decades as a means of transferring lunar resources to Earth someday.

Given that space agencies are planning on sending missions to the Moon to create permanent infrastructure, there is renewed interest in this concept. In a recent paper, a team of scientists from China’s Shanghai Institute of Satellite Engineering (SAST) detailed how a magnetic launcher on the lunar surface could provide a cost-effective means of sending resources back to Earth. This proposal could become part of China’s long-term vision for a lunar settlement known as the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) – a joint project they are pursuing with the Russian space agency (Roscosmos).