Universe Today

August 23, 2023August 23, 2023 by Matt Williams

NASA is Helping to Develop a Mach 4 Passenger Jet

Concept illustration of a Boeing high-supersonic commercial passenger aircraft. Credit: Boeing

The concept of supersonic transport (SST) has been a part of the commercial flight and aerospace sector since the 1970s. But as the Concorde demonstrated, the technology’s commercial viability has always been hampered by various challenges. For starters, supersonic planes must limit their speed to about 965 km/h (600 mph) over land to prevent damage caused by their sonic booms. Given the potential for flying from New York City to London in about 3.5 hours, which otherwise takes about 8 hours on average, aerospace engineers hope to overcome this problem.

Since 2006, the NASA Commercial Supersonic Technology Project (CSTP) has been researching SST as part of its QueSST mission and the X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft to reduce sonic booms, thus removing a crucial barrier to commercial development. Recently, NASA investigated whether commercial supersonic jets could theoretically travel from one major city to another at speeds between Mach 2 and 4 – 2,470 to 4,940 km/h (1,535 to 3,045 mph) at sea level. These studies concluded that there are potential passenger markets along 50 established routes, which could revolutionize air travel.

August 23, 2023August 23, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Chandrayaan-3 Lands Successfully on the Moon’s South Pole

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 Lander Module on the surface of the Moon on August 23, 2023. Credit: ISRO

India’s space agency successfully landed their Chandrayaan-3 lander on the lunar surface, becoming the fourth country to touch down on the Moon and the first to land at one of the lunar poles.

The Indian Space Resource Organization’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3 launched last month and made a soft landing on the Moon’s south pole at approximately 8:34 a.m. ET on August 23. The mission is set to begin exploring an area of the Moon that is of extreme interest, but Chandrayaan-3 is the first to visit this area in-situ. The lunar south pole is thought to contain water ice that could be a source of oxygen, fuel, and water for future missions, or perhaps even for a future lunar base or colony.

August 23, 2023August 23, 2023 by Brian Koberlein

The Irony. ClearSpace-1 Couldn't Clean up Space Debris Because its Target Already Got hit by Space Debris, Creating Even More Space Debris.

Illustration of ClearSpace-1 capturing a piece of space debris. Credit: ClearSpace

We have a problem.

Ever since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, we have been launching debris into space. Everything from space stations and large communication satellites to small CubeSats. With each launch, we also add things such as rocket parts and paint chips to the orbital pile. Right now there are more than a million objects orbiting Earth wider than a centimeter, and at least 130 million millimeter-sized objects. Most of it isn’t going to deorbit any time soon.

August 22, 2023August 22, 2023 by Matt Williams

The Most Compelling Places to Search for Life Will Look Like “Anomalies”

Will it be possible someday for astrobiologists to search for life "as we don't know it"? Credit: NASA/Jenny Mottar

In the past two and a half years, two next-generation telescopes have been sent to space: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the ESA’s Euclid Observatory. Before the decade is over, they will be joined by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST), Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx), and the ESA’s PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) and ARIEL telescopes. These observatories will rely on advanced optics and instruments to aid in the search and characterization of exoplanets with the ultimate goal of finding habitable planets.

Along with still operational missions, these observatories will gather massive volumes of high-resolution spectroscopic data. Sorting through this data will require cutting-edge machine-learning techniques to look for indications of life and biological processes (aka. biosignatures). In a recent paper, a team of scientists from the Institute for Fundamental Theory at the University of Florida (UF-IFL) recommended that future surveys use machine learning to look for anomalies in the spectra, which could reveal unusual chemical signatures and unknown biosignatures.

August 22, 2023August 22, 2023 by Brian Koberlein

When the Sun Dies, it Could Produce a Fantastic Ring in Space, Like This New Image From JWST

The Ring Nebula seen by JWST's Near-Infrared Camera (left) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (right). Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, M. Barlow (University College London), N. Cox (ACRI-ST), R. Wesson (Cardiff University)

Planetary nebulae were first discovered in the 1700s. Legend tells us that through the small telescopes of the time, they looked rather planet-like, hence the name. Real history is a bit more fuzzy, and early objects categorized as planetary nebulae included things such as galaxies. But the term stuck when applied to circular emission nebulae centered around a dying star. As new observations show, planetary nebulae have a structure that is both simple and complex.

August 22, 2023August 22, 2023 by David Dickinson

Catch a Cycle of Lunar Occultations of Antares Starting This Week

Moon v. Antares — The Moon occults Antares Thursday night. Credit: Stellarium.

Most of North America gets to see the Moon blot out Antares Thursday night.

The long drought of lunar bright star occultations ends this week, as the Moon meets the bright star Antares. This event is one of the best bright star versus the Moon occultations for 2023, and is a harbinger for a series of new occultations of the star once every pass, as the Moon swings through Scorpius the Scorpion every lunar synodic period or 29.5 days.

August 21, 2023August 21, 2023 by Matt Williams

Russia's Luna 25 Lander Crashed Into the Moon

The Luna-25 mission lifting off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome on Aug. 11th. Credit: Roscosmos/Reuters

On August 10th, 2023, Roscosmos’ Luna-25 mission launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome atop a Soyuz-2 rocket. This mission was the first lunar mission to launch from Russia since the 1970s and would be the first Russian lander to touch down in the South-Pole Aitken basin. This mission was part of Roscosmos’ partnership with China to develop an International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) in the region by 2030. Unfortunately, Russia announced on Saturday, August 19th, that the lander spun out of control and crashed into the surface.

August 20, 2023August 20, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Is This How You Get Magnetars?

An artist's impression of the star HD 4 5166, which is on its way to becoming a magnetar. Courtesy ESO.

Imagine a living star with a magnetic field at least 100,000 times stronger than Earth’s field. That’s the strange stellar object HD 45166. Its field is an incredible 43,000 Gauss. That makes it a new type of object: a massive magnetic helium star. In a million years, it’s going to get even stranger when it collapses and becomes a type of neutron star called a “magnetar”.

August 20, 2023August 20, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Floating Seismometers Could Help Peer Into The Core of Venus

Seismology has been ubiquitous on Earth for decades, and missions such as InSight have recently provided the same data for the inside of Mars. Understanding a planet’s inner workings is key to understanding its geology and climate. However, the inner workings of Venus, arguably our closest sister planet, have remained a mystery. The sulfuric acid cloud and scorching surface temperatures probably don’t help. But Siddharth Krishnamoorthy from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Daniel Bowman of Sandia National Laboratory think they have a solution – use seismometers hanging from balloons.

August 19, 2023August 19, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

A Maglev System On The Moon Could Make Lunar Logistics A Breeze

Maglevs are one of those technologies that still look like magic, even years after they were initially rolled out. While they have long been a workhorse of the transportation systems of some major cities, they don’t often impact the day-to-day lives of people who don’t use them to commute. But, they might be invaluable in another setting – lunar exploration. There’s an ongoing debate about the best way to shuttle stuff around on the Moon’s surface, and a team from JPL and a company called SRI International think they have a solution – deploy a maglev track on the Moon.