Universe Today

November 21, 2023November 21, 2023 by Matt Williams

SpaceX Tested Its Starship Again. Successful Launch But Both Vehicles Were Destroyed

The SN25 Starship and BN9 booster on the landing pad at Boca Chica, Texas. Credit: SpaceX

After months of waiting, SpaceX made its second attempt at an orbital flight this past Saturday (November 18th). During their previous attempt, which occurred back in April, a fully-stacked Starship (SN24) and Super Heavy (BN7) prototypes managed to make it off the landing pad and reach an altitude of about 40 km (25 miles) above sea level. Unfortunately, the SN24 failed to separate from the BN7 booster a few minutes into the flight, causing the vehicle to fall into an uncontrolled tumble and forcing the ground teams to detonate the onboard charges.

Things went better this time as the SN25 and BN9 prototypes took off at about 7:00 AM local time (8:00 AM EDT; 05:00 AM PDT) from the Starbase launch complex. The SN25 successfully separated from its booster two minutes and fifty seconds later – at an altitude of 70 km (43 mi) – and reached an altitude of about 148 kilometers (92 miles), just shy of SpaceX’s goal of 150 km (~93 mi). However, the booster stage was lost about 30 seconds after separation, exploding over the Gulf of Mexico. The SN25 also exploded about eight minutes into the flight, reportedly because its flight termination system was activated.

November 21, 2023November 21, 2023 by Evan Gough

A Galaxy Only 350 Million Years Old Had Surprising Amounts of Metal

The JWST has the power to see the most ancient galaxies in the Universe, as shown in this image of its first deep field. Now, astrophysicists have found carbon in one of these ancient galaxies. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Astrophysicists working with the JWST have found a surprising amount of metal in a galaxy only 350 million years after the Big Bang. How does that fit in with our understanding of the Universe?

November 21, 2023December 4, 2023 by David Dickinson

ESA’s Juice Mission is Approaching Earth. Why Has it Come Home Before Visiting Jupiter?

JUICE Prepares for a first of its kind double-flyby next year.

A Jupiter-bound mission adjusted its course last week…for a rendezvous with Earth. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE) fired its thrusters for 43 minutes on Friday, November 17^th. This sets the mission up for a first of its kind double-flyby next year on August 23^rd, as it passes the Moon and then the Earth to pick up momentum.

November 21, 2023November 21, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Simulating How Moon Landings Will Kick Up Dust

A look at the Apollo 12 landing site. Astronaut Alan Bean is shown, working near the Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA) on the Apollo 12 Lunar Module (LM) during the mission's first extravehicular activity, (EVA) on Nov. 19, 1969. Credit: NASA.

When spacecraft land on the Moon, their exhaust strikes the powdery regolith on the lunar surface. The Moon has low gravity and no atmosphere, so the dust is thrown up in a huge plume. The dust cloud could possibly interfere with the navigation and science instruments or cause visual obstructions. Additionally, the dust could even be propelled into orbit, risking other spacecraft nearby.

In working to better understand the impact future landers might have on the lunar surface, NASA has developed a new supercomputer simulation. They used it to predict how Apollo 12’s lunar lander exhaust would interact with regolith, then compared this to the actual results of the landing.

November 21, 2023November 21, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

It’s Time for the Mars Rovers to Hunker Down and Wait for the Earth to Return

Mars Perseverence rover sent back this image of its parking spot during Mars Solar Conjunction. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

If you’ve noticed a slowdown in Mars news lately, it’s because of the Sun. Or, rather, it’s because the Sun is temporarily blocking our “view” of the Red Planet, which is on the other side of the Sun from Earth, in what’s called “Mars Solar Conjunction.”

November 20, 2023November 21, 2023 by Laurence Tognetti

Saturn’s Rings will Disappear in 2025. Don’t Worry, They’ll Return Soon Enough

Image of ring-plane crossing at Saturn taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in May 1995, with a similar ring-plane crossing event scheduled to occur in March 2025. (Credit: Reta Beebe (New Mexico State University), D. Gilmore, L. Bergeron (STScI), NASA/ESA, Amanda S. Bosh (Lowell Observatory), Andrew S. Rivkin (Univ. of Arizona/LPL), the HST High Speed Photometer Instrument Team (R.C. Bless, PI), and NASA/ESA)

The rings of Saturn are some of the most well-known and captivating spectacles in the night sky, which are so large they can easily be observed with amateur telescopes or even a pair of high-powered binoculars. However, from time to time, Saturn’s rings “disappear” from view, a phenomenon known ring-plane crossing, with the rings being observed as a flat line running straight through the massive gas giant. Ring-plane crossing occurs approximately every 15 years and is slated to happen next in March 2025, with the rings slowly getting “larger” in the months afterwards before “disappearing” again in November 2025. But what causes ring-plane crossing?

November 20, 2023November 20, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Gaze Into the Heart of the Milky Way in This Latest JWST Image

James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument reveals a 50 light-years-wide portion of the Milky Way’s dense center. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region, along with some as-yet unidentified features. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Crowe (UVA).

Thanks to its infrared capabilities, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) allows astronomers to peer through the gas and dust clogging the Milky Way’s center, revealing never-before-seen features. One of the biggest mysteries is the star forming region called Sagittarius C, located about 300 light-years from the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole. An estimated 500,000 stars are forming in this region that’s being blasted by radiation from the densely packed stars. How can they form in such an intense environment?

Right now, astronomers can’t explain it.

November 20, 2023November 20, 2023 by Evan Gough

A Robotic Chemist Could Whip up the Perfect Batch of Oxygen on Mars

Astronauts on Mars will need oxygen. There's oxygen in the atmosphere, but only small amounts. But there's lots of subterranean water on Mars, and that means there's lots of oxygen, too. (Credit: NASA)

Humans on Mars will need oxygen, and Mars’ atmosphere is pretty anemic when it comes to the life-sustaining element. NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully extracted oxygen from CO2 in Mars’ atmosphere, but there are other ways to acquire it. There seem to be vast amounts of water buried under the Martian surface, and oxygen in the water is just waiting to be set free from its bonds with hydrogen.

On Earth, that’s no problem. Just run an electrical current through water, and you get oxygen. But Mars won’t give up its oxygen so easily.

November 19, 2023November 19, 2023 by Mark Thompson

A New Technique Has Dramatically Improved ALMA’s Resolution

Image showing two of the receivers of the ALMA array in the Atacama Desert. — Two of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) 12-metre antennas (Credit : Iztok Bon?ina/ESO)

To those familiar with optical telescopes, the idea of doing something to achieve higher resolution with their telescope may seem alien, if not, then practically impossible. A telescopes resolution is determined by among other things, its aperture – diameter of the thing that collects light (or electromagnetic radiation) and of course you can’t easily change that. Enter the team at ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array who have become the first to use the Band 10 receiver and extreme separation of the receivers to boosting its resolution so they can see detail equivalent of detecting a 10 meter long bus on the Moon!

November 19, 2023November 19, 2023 by Matt Williams

NASA Tests a Prototype Europa Lander

Testing Hardware for Potential Future Landing on Europa. Credit: NASA JPL-Caltech

In 2024, NASA will launch the Europa Clipper, the long-awaited orbiter mission that will fly to Jupiter (arriving in 2030) to explore its icy moon Europa. Through a series of flybys, the Clipper will survey Europa’s surface and plume activity in the hopes of spotting organic molecules and other potential indications of life (“biosignatures”). If all goes well, NASA plans to send a follow-up mission to land on the surface and examine Europa’s icy sheet and plumes more closely. This proposed mission is aptly named the Europa Lander.

While no date has been set, and the mission is still in the research phase, some significant steps have been taken to get the Europa Lander to the development phase. This past August, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California tested a prototype of this proposed landing system in a simulated environment. This system combines hardware used by previous NASA lander missions and some new elements that will enable a mission to Europa. It also could be adapted to facilitate missions to more “Ocean Worlds” and other celestial bodies in our Solar System.