Universe Today

August 6, 2023August 6, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Graphene Could Be A Game Changing Material In Space – With A Bit More Research

Graphene has long been put forward as a wonder material. Undeniably, it has astounding properties – stronger than steel, a better electrical conductor than copper, and lighter than almost anything else with similar properties. And while it’s been partially adopted into space-faring technologies, many use cases remain where a pure form of the material could dramatically benefit the space industry. To detail those opportunities, a group of scientists from the Italian Space Agency recently released a paper that looked at graphene’s role in space exploration – and where it might stand to make an even bigger impact shortly.

August 6, 2023August 6, 2023 by Scott Alan Johnston

Two Stars Orbiting Each Other So Closely They Could Fit Inside the Sun

A brown dwarf: an object that weighs in somewhere between Jupiter and the least-massive known star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Astronomers have discovered a pair of star-like objects orbiting each other extremely quickly, with an entire ‘year’ lasting just 1.9 Earth hours. Catchily named ZTF J2020+5033, the system consists of one object which is definitely a small star, and another that straddles the boundary between star and planet. The two objects appear to be very old, and understanding how they came to be orbiting so close together is teaching astronomers more about how solar systems change and evolve.

August 6, 2023August 6, 2023 by Brian Koberlein

Some Metal Meteorites Have a Tiny Magnetic Field. But How?

Illustration of the metallic asteroid Psyche. Credit: Peter Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

One of the striking things about iron meteorites is that they are often magnetic. The magnetism isn’t strong, but it holds information about their origin. This is why astronomers discourage meteorite hunters from using magnets to distinguish meteorites from the surrounding rock, since hand magnets can erase the magnetic history of a meteorite, which is an important scientific record.

August 6, 2023August 5, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

A Bronze Age Arrowhead was Made Out of a Meteorite

It’s sometimes hard to remember that meteorites have been hitting our planets for millions of years. And some of them are made of valuable materials such as titanium or iron. So, theoretically, at least, our bronze and iron age ancestors could utilize these ready-made metallic rocks without having to dig underground to access them, like they would with regular tin or iron veins. Now, a new study of an arrowhead made out of a meteorite points out just how valuable iron age society thought these meteorites were and hints at a trade network that reached farther than archeologists initially thought.

August 5, 2023August 5, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Spacecraft, Landers and Rovers Could be Recycled for Parts on the Moon

Additive manufacturing is slowly becoming more and more useful as the technology improves. One of the places it continues its development is in the realm of space exploration. It has long been mooted as an integral part of any in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) efforts and is especially important for ensuring early explorers on the Moon have the right tools and materials they need to survive. The European Space Agency is supporting that research effort, as their Technology Development Element fund supported work by an Austrian company called Incus to develop a 3D printing solution that could reprint metal parts on the Moon.

August 5, 2023August 5, 2023 by Brian Koberlein

Do Technological Civilizations Depend on Atmospheric Oxygen?

Humans gathered around an evening campfire. Credit: Jarek Tuszy?ski / CC-BY-SA-3.0 & GDFL

Nearly two million years ago a species of upright apes known as homo erectus began to utilize fire. It was a gradual process, from opportunistic users of natural fires to masters able to craft flames from flint and tender. We are their descendants. We are creatures of forge and kiln, hearth and home. Fire has become so central to us that instead of homo sapiens, we could call ourselves homo ignus, the fire-wielding ape. Fire is central to the rise of our civilization. It cooks our food, keeps us warm, and illuminates our night. This raises an interesting question. Could we have built a civilization without fire?

August 5, 2023August 5, 2023 by Scott Alan Johnston

NASA Plans to Unleash a Wolf Pack of Rovers Onto the Lunar Surface in 2024

A pair of plastic prototypes of the CADRE rovers demonstrate driving in formation during a test at JPL last year. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

What’s better than one lunar rover? Three lunar rovers! In 2024, NASA plans to send a team of suitcase-sized wheeled robots to the Moon as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Collectively called CADRE – Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration – the rovers will spend one full lunar day (14 Earth days) exploring the Moon and showing off their unique capabilities.

August 5, 2023August 5, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

JWST Sees Multiple Gravitational Lenses in a Massive Cluster: “The Fishhook” and “The Thin One”

We’ve been getting plenty of spectacular images from the James Webb Space Telescope since it began operations last year. Fraser even covered everything we learned from it in a video a few weeks ago. But the news keeps coming, and recently a science team known as the Prime Extra-Galactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science (PEARLS) team released a series of four papers describing Webb’s observations of a galaxy cluster known as El Gordo (“the fat one” in Spanish). But what’s more – they also released another absolutely stunning picture.

August 4, 2023August 4, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Follow a Simulated Journey of the Destruction of ESA’s Aeolus Mission

The Aeolus spacecraft orbited Earth and used lidar to study the winds in various parts of our atmosphere. It was brought back to Earth in a controlled re-entry on July 28th. Courtesy ESA. — The Aeolus spacecraft used lidar to study the winds in various parts of our atmosphere. It was brought back to Earth in a controlled re-entry on July 28th. Courtesy ESA.

On July 28th, the European Space Agency commanded its long-working Aeolus wind profile mission to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. It did that and disintegrated into pieces over Antarctica. Of course, satellites do this often. But, Aeolus was different. It maneuvered its way into a safe re-entry profile, a first-of-its kind activity designed to avoid populated regions on Earth.

August 4, 2023August 4, 2023 by Matt Williams

A Massive Solar Storm was Detected on Earth, Mars, and the Moon

Giant solar eruption felt on Earth, Moon and Mars. Credit: ESA

A coronal mass ejection erupted from the Sun on October 28th, 2021, spreading solar energetic particles (SEPs) across a volume of space measuring more than 250 million km (155.34 million mi) wide. This means that the event was felt on Earth, Mars, and the Moon, which was on the opposite side of the Sun at the time. It was also the first time that a solar event was measured simultaneously by robotic probes on Earth, Mars, and the Moon, which included ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Eu:CROPIS orbiter, NASA’s Curiosity rover and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and China’s Chang’e-4 lander.

The ESA’s Solar Orbiter, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), and BepiColombo missions were also caught by the outburst and provided additional measurements of this solar event. The study of Solar Particle Events (SPE) – aka. solar flares – and “space weather” phenomena are vital to missions operating in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – for example, crews living and working on the International Space Station (ISS). But it is especially vital for missions destined for locations beyond LEO and cislunar space, including Project Artemis and the many proposals for sending astronauts to the Moon and Mars in the coming years.