Space and astronomy news
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered most of the confirmed exoplanets that we know of. But its successor, TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), is catching up. New research announces the validation of eight more TESS candidates, and they’re all Super-Earths.
Continue reading “TESS Finds Eight More Super-Earths”
NASA and aerospace company, Aerojet Rocketdyne, have successfully completed qualification testing of the Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS), which is a 12-kilowatt, solar electric propulsion (SEP) engine being built for use for long-term space missions to the Moon and beyond, and AEPS is being touted as the most powerful electric propulsion—also called ion propulsion—thruster currently being manufactured. For context, 12 kilowatts are enough to power more than 1,330 LED light bulbs, and the success of these qualification tests come after NASA announced the beginning of qualification testing in July.
Continue reading “The Most Powerful Ion Engine Ever Built Passes the Test”
A pair of recent studies conduct in-depth analyses of Jupiter-sized exoplanets, also known as Exo-Jupiters, and were published in Nature Communications and The Astronomical Journal, respectively. The study published in Nature Communications was conducted by an international team of researchers and examines how Exo-Jupiters could be more common than previously thought, while the study published in The Astronomical Journal was conducted by one researcher and examines exoplanetary system, HD 141399, and how it is comprised entirely of Exo-Jupiters with no additional planets.
Continue reading “Exo-Jupiters’ Commonality and Exclusivity Highlighted in Two New Studies”
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has evolved considerably in the past sixty years since the first experiment was conducted. This was Project Ozma, which was conducted in 1960 by Dr. Frank Drake and his colleagues using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia. While the experiment did not reveal any radio signals from space, it established the foundation upon which all future SETI is based. Like Ozma, the vast majority of these experiments have searched for possible technosignatures in the radio spectrum.
Unfortunately, this search has always been plagued by the problem of radio interference from Earth-based radio antennas and satellites in orbit, which can potentially flood SETI surveys with false positives. In a recent study, an international team of astronomers (including researchers with Breakthrough Listen) recommended that future technosignature searches rely on multi-site simultaneous observations. This has the potential of eliminating interference from terrestrial sources and narrowing the search for extraterrestrial radio signals.
Continue reading “SETI Works Best When Telescopes Double-Check Each Other”
Earth’s early history is marked by massive collisions with other objects, including planetesimals. One of the defining events in our planet’s history, the formation of the Moon, likely resulted from one of these catastrophic collisions when a Mars-sized protoplanet crashed into Earth. That’s the Giant Impact Hypothesis, and it explains how the collision produced a torus of debris rotating around the Earth that eventually coalesced into our only natural satellite.
New research strengthens the idea that Theia left some of its remains inside Earth.
Continue reading “Earth is Hiding Another Planet Deep Inside”
NASA’s Lucy mission hits the jackpot on its very first asteroid flyby earlier this week.
Welcome to Dinkinesh. NASA’s Lucy mission flew past its first target of Wednesday, November 1st, and turned up a surprise: 152830 Dinkinesh (meaning ‘marvelous’ in the Amharic language) is not one asteroid, but two (!)
Continue reading “Lucy Completes its First Flyby… and Discovers a Bonus Asteroid”
In about one year from now, the European Space Agency will launch its Hera mission. Its destination is the asteroid Didymos, and it’ll be the second human spacecraft to visit the 390-meter chunk of rock. NASA’s DART mission crashed a kinetic impactor into Didymos’ tiny moonlet Dimorphos as a test of planetary defence.
Hera will perform a follow-up investigation of the binary asteroid to measure the size and morphology of the impact crater on Dimorphos. To help it along, it’s taking two tiny CubeSats that will land on Dimorphos.
Continue reading “ESA’s Hera Mission is Bringing Two Cubesats Along. They’ll Be Landing on Dimorphos”
Jupiter has gone pastel!
Check out this ultra-cool image of Jupiter taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. This is a color composite picture of Jupiter seen in ultraviolet, which reveals different features in Jupiter’s atmosphere. One feature that stands out is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot — it is blue in this image!
Continue reading “Jupiter Looks Bizarre in Hubble's New Ultraviolet Image”
NASA’s Kepler mission ended in 2018 after more than nine years of fruitful planet-hunting. The space telescope discovered thousands of planets, many of which bear its name. But it also generated an enormous amount of data that exoplanet scientists are still analyzing.
Now, a team of researchers has shed new light on a seven-planet system in Kepler’s ocean of data.
Continue reading “Old Data from Kepler Turns Up A System with Seven Planets”
Discovered early this year, Comet C/2023 H2 Lemmon may approach naked eye brightness this month.
A comet discovered earlier this year is performing above expectations, and is currently well-placed in the dusk sky. We’re talking about Comet C/2023 H2 Lemmon, moving up the charts now at magnitude +8 and brightening.
Continue reading “Comet H2 Lemmon Brightens in Early November Ahead of Expectations”