Space and astronomy news
Mars has captured our imagination for centuries. Ever since the invention of the telescope our imagination has often drifted toward the possibility of life on Mars. Exploration of the red planet has often revealed that Mars once had plenty of water on its surface but it’s no longer there. Now NASA’s Curiosity rover has found deposits of carbon-rich minerals that could give us a much needed clue.
Continue reading “How Did Mars Become Uninhabitable?”
As comets travel along their orbit they dump material along the way. A stream of debris known as the Taurid swarm has been keeping astronomers attention. It’s thought the debris is the remains of comet Encke which has also been fuelling the Taurid meteor shower. The swarm is believed to be composed of mostly harmless, tiny objects but there has been concern that there may be some larger, kilometre size chunks. Thankfully, new observations reveal there are of the order of 9-14 of these 1km rocks.
Continue reading “Good News. Comet Encke Only Threw a Handful of Giant Space Rocks in our Direction”
NASA has sent a whole host of spacecraft across the Solar System and even beyond. They range from crewed ships to orbit and to the Moon to robotic explorers. Among them are a range of mission classes from Flagships to Discovery Class programs. Now a new category has been announced: Probe Explorers. This new category will fill the gap between Flagship and smaller missions. Among them are two proposed missions; the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite and the Probe Far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics.
Continue reading “NASA Announces a New Class of Space Missions: Probe Explorers”
A long time ago, the Milky Way Galaxy was busy being a prodigious star-formation engine. In those times, it turned out dozens or hundreds of stars per year. These days, it’s rather more quiescent, cranking out only a few per year. Astronomers want to understand the Milky Way’s star-birth history, so they focus on some of the more recent star litters to study. One of them is Westerlund 1, a young so-called “super star cluster” that looks compact and contains a diverse array of older stars. It was part of a burst of star creation around 4 to 5 million years ago.
Continue reading “The Open Star Cluster Westerlund 1, Seen by Webb”
TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has been on the lookout for alien worlds since 2018. It has just hit the news again having identified an extreme triple star system where two stars orbit each other every 1.8 days. The third component circles them both in 25 days – this puts the entire system within the orbit of Mercury with a little wriggle room to spare! To visual observers, it looks like a single star but the power of TESS revealed a flicker as the stars line up and pass one another along our line of sight. Eventually, the two inner stars will merge, triggering a supernova event!
Continue reading “TESS Finds a Triple Star System that Could Fit within Mercury’s Orbit”
Every second in the Universe, more than 3,000 new stars form as clouds of dust and gas undergo gravitational collapse. Afterward, the remaining dust and gas settle into a swirling disk that feeds the star’s growth and eventually accretes to form planets – otherwise known as a protoplanetary disk. While this model, known as the Nebular Hypothesis, is the most widely accepted theory, the exact processes that give rise to stars and planetary systems are not yet fully understood. Shedding light on these processes is one of the many objectives of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
In a recent study, an international team of astronomers led by University of Arizona researchers and supported by scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy (MPIA) used the JWST’s advanced infrared optics to examine protoplanetary disks around new stars. These observations provided the most detailed insights into the gas flows that sculpt and shape protoplanetary disks over time. They also confirm what scientists have theorized for a long time and offer clues about what our Solar System looked like roughly 4.6 billion years ago.
Continue reading “The JWST Reveals New Things About How Planetary Systems Form”
China have a roadmap to sent astronauts to the Moon in 2030 and when they do, they are going with a very definite nod to the Chinese origins to the rocket! Their officials have unveiled the new look Chinese space suit with all the mod cons but with a design that is somewhat reminiscent of Chinese armour. There will some fabulous features like the close and long distance field of view visor, a chest control panel and a protective material to shield against the harmful lunar environment.
Continue reading “China Unveils its Lunar Spacesuit”
Mining the Moon to extract its resources is a critical step on humanity’s path into the solar system. One of the most common resources on the Moon is considered relatively valuable here on Earth – titanium. At $10,000 a ton, it is one of the more valuable metals used in various industries, such as aerospace and nanotechnology. So, could we utilize titanium from the Moon to supply Earth’s economy with more of this valuable material? That question is the focus of a paper from researchers at Uppsala University in Finland.
Continue reading “How Accessible is Titanium On The Moon?”
The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft is on its way to do follow-up observations of Dimorphos, two years after an earlier probe knocked the mini-asteroid into a different orbital path around a bigger space rock.
Scientists say the close-up observations that Hera is due to make millions of miles from Earth, starting in 2026, will help them defend our planet from future threats posed by killer asteroids.
Continue reading “Hera Probe Heads Off to See Aftermath of DART’s Asteroid Impact”
Small primordial black holes (PBHs) are one of the hot topics in astronomy and cosmology today. These hypothetical black holes are believed to have formed soon after the Big Bang, resulting from pockets of subatomic matter so dense that they underwent gravitational collapse. At present, PBHs are considered a candidate for dark matter, a possible source of primordial gravitational waves, and a resolution to various problems in physics. However, no definitive PBH candidate has been observed so far, leading to proposals for how we may find these miniature black holes.
Recent research has suggested that main-sequence neutron and dwarf stars might contain small PBHs in their interiors that are slowly consuming their gas supply. In a recent study, a team of physicists extended this idea to include a new avenue for potentially detecting PBHs. Basically, we could search inside objects like planets and asteroids or employ large plates or slabs of metal to detect PBHs for signs of their passage. By detecting the microchannels these bodies would leave, scientists could finally confirm the existence of PBHs and shed light on some of the greatest mysteries in cosmology today.
Continue reading “Primordial Holes Could be Hiding in Planets, Asteroids, and Here on Earth”