A recent study published in Nature examines how mud cracks observed on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover could provide insight into how life on the Red Planet could have formed in its ancient past. On Earth, mud cracks have traditionally been linked to cycles of wet and dry environments that assisted in developing the complex processes responsible for microbial life to take hold. This study was conducted by an international team of researchers and holds the potential to help scientists better understand the geological and chemical processes that might have existed in Mars’ ancient past, up to billions of years ago.
Continue reading “Ancient Cracked Mud Found on Mars”Crew-7 Reaches the International Space Station
SpaceX Crew-7, the next group of four astronauts, are now on board the International Space Station, and this diverse crew is definitely putting “International” in the ISS. The new crew hails from four different countries: the US, Denmark, Japan and Russia. There will be 11 people on board the station for a few days before the Crew-6 foursome head back to Earth.
NASA has at least 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations queued up for Crew-7[‘s six months space, many of which will help prepare for the upcoming Artemis missions.
Continue reading “Crew-7 Reaches the International Space Station”NASA’s New Horizons Mission Still Threatened
The New Horizons spacecraft that studied Pluto and Kuiper Belt Object Arrokoth continues its pioneering exploration of the Kuiper Belt. However, that might soon end if NASA doesn’t change course. The New Horizons science team has been told by NASA that the mission as they know it is slated to end September 30, 2024.
Continue reading “NASA’s New Horizons Mission Still Threatened”The Early Universe Should Be Awash in Active Galaxies, but JWST Isn't Finding Them
For decades the most distant objects we could see were quasars. We now know they are powerful active black holes. Active galactic nuclei so distant that they resemble star-like points of light. It tells us that supermassive black holes in the early Universe can be powerful monsters that drive the evolution of their galaxies. We had thought most early supermassive black holes went through such an active phase, but a new study suggests most supermassive black holes don’t.
Continue reading “The Early Universe Should Be Awash in Active Galaxies, but JWST Isn't Finding Them”40th Rocket Lab Electron Mission, “We Love The Nightlife”, Launches From New Zealand with Reused Engine
Private space company, Rocket Lab, launched its 40th Electron mission on their lauded Electron rocket, dubbed “We Love The Nightlife”, on August 24th at 11:45am New Zealand Standard Time (August 23rd at 7:45pm EST), which also marks the 7th launch of 2023, all successful. The purpose of the mission was to deliver the next-generation Acadia satellite for Capella Space to a circular orbit above the Earth at 640 km (400 miles), which was executed flawlessly. Acadia is part of Capella’s synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constellation and is the first of four Acadia satellites that Rocket is currently contracted to launch for Capella.
Continue reading “40th Rocket Lab Electron Mission, “We Love The Nightlife”, Launches From New Zealand with Reused Engine”Pulsars Detected the Background Gravitational Hum of the Universe. Now Can They Detect Single Mergers?
Current gravitational wave observatories have two significant limitations. The first is that they can only observe powerful gravitational bursts such as the mergers of black holes and neutron stars. The second is that they can only observe these mergers for wavelengths on the order of hundreds to thousands of kilometers. This means we can only observe stellar mass mergers. Of course, there’s a lot of interesting gravitational astronomy going on at other wavelengths and noise levels, which has motivated astronomers to get clever. One of these clever ideas is to use pulsars as a telescope.
Continue reading “Pulsars Detected the Background Gravitational Hum of the Universe. Now Can They Detect Single Mergers?”India's Rover Rolls Out Onto the Lunar Surface
On July 14th, 2023, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched the third mission in its Chandrayaan (“Moon vehicle” in Hindi) lunar exploration program. Earlier this week (Wednesday, August 23rd), the Chandrayaan-3 mission’s Vikram lander touched down on the far side of the Moon, making India the fourth nation in the world to send missions to the lunar surface and the first to land one near the Moon’s south pole region. Shortly after that, the ISRO announced that they had deployed Pragyan, the rover element of the mission, to the surface.
Continue reading “India's Rover Rolls Out Onto the Lunar Surface”A Giant Black Hole Destroyed a Star and Threw the Pieces Into Space
When a black hole consumes a star, things can get quite messy. Take, for example, the event known as ASASSN-14li, where a massive star strayed too close to a supermassive black hole and paid the ultimate price.
Continue reading “A Giant Black Hole Destroyed a Star and Threw the Pieces Into Space”Hackers are Attacking Observatories
Why would anybody want to hack an observatory? That’s the question facing IT professionals at NOIRLab after somebody tried to crack the computer systems at Gemini North in Hawai’i. The cyber break-in and ongoing investigation by NOIRLab and National Science Foundation experts affected observations and operations in Hawai’i and Chile.
Continue reading “Hackers are Attacking Observatories”IceCube-Gen2: 8 Cubic Kilometers of Ice, 5 Times the Sensitivity
The IceCube Neutrino Detector is an observatory unlike any other. Using sensors embedded inside a square kilometer chuck of Antarctic ice, it detects tiny particles called neutrinos, which rarely interact with ordinary matter and are incredibly hard to capture. IceCube has had several major successes in the last few years, including this summer’s announcement of a neutrino map of the Milky Way galaxy. But scientists are pushing up against the limits of IceCube’s capabilities, and plans are in the works for IceCube-Gen2: a detector 5 times as sensitive and 8 times as large, with a radio antenna array across four hundred square kilometers. IceCube Gen2 will increase the number of neutrino detections by an order of magnitude, and will be able to better pinpoint the sources from which the neutrinos are emitted.
Continue reading “IceCube-Gen2: 8 Cubic Kilometers of Ice, 5 Times the Sensitivity”