Space and astronomy news
Don’t miss one of the best meteor displays of 2023, as the Perseids peak this coming weekend.
Grab a lawn chair, bring a friend, a red light and lots of bug spray: the August Perseids are active this week going into the weekend. You won’t want to miss ‘em if skies are clear, as 2023 is a banner year for the Perseids, one of the sure-fire performers when it comes to meteor showers.
Continue reading “Why 2023 is a Great Year for the Perseid Meteors”
The Ingenuity helicopter continues to explore the landscape around Jezero Crater on Mars, now more than 800 days into its original 30-day demonstration mission. Recently, Ingenuity completed its 54th flight on the Red Planet. However, things haven’t gone exactly to plan the past several weeks.
On its 53rd fight on July 22, 2023, the helicopter cut the flight short after one of its warnings was triggered, implementing the “LAND_NOW” protocol. Ingenuity should have flown for 136 seconds but was only in the air for 74 seconds before performing an emergency landing.
Continue reading “NASA's Mars Helicopter Had an Unscheduled Landing, But Flew Again”
A day on Earth last about 24 hours. The word “about” in that sentence does a lot of heavy lifting because Earth’s rate of rotation changes all the time. Not by much, only fractions of milliseconds, but it means our common 24-hour day only really applies at human scales.
There are several things that can change the Earth’s rotation. The gravitational tug of the Moon and tides are gradually slowing Earth over millions of years. The melting of ice in the polar regions, the tectonic shift of the Earth’s crust during earthquakes, and even the draining of water from the aquifer. Earth is a geologically and biologically active world, so it’s only natural that Earth’s rotation rate is also dynamic. But a recent study shows that the rotation of Mars is also changing, which is a bit of a surprise.
Continue reading “Mars is Spinning Faster and Faster”
The basic idea of turning an asteroid into a rotating space habitat has existed for a while. Despite that, it’s always seemed relatively far off regarding technologies, so the concept hasn’t received much attention over the years. But, if you’re retired and have an underlying interest in researching space habitats, developing a detailed plan for turning an asteroid into one seems like a great use of time. And that is precisely what David W. Jensen, a retired Technical Fellow at Rockwell Collins, recently did. He released a 65-page paper that details an easy-to-understand, relatively inexpensive, and feasible plan to turn an asteroid into a space habitat.
Continue reading “A New Paper Shows How To Change An Asteroid Into A Space Habitat – In Just 12 Years”
It’s hard to believe, but Mars Curiosity Rover has been on Mars doing its thing for 11 years. And, so what’s it doing to celebrate? Heading up a hill, making one of its toughest climbs ever.
Continue reading “Curiosity Had to Route Around a 23-Degree Slope to Reach a Fascinating Field of Craters”
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.
Continue reading “Graphene Could Be A Game Changing Material In Space – With A Bit More Research”
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.
Continue reading “Two Stars Orbiting Each Other So Closely They Could Fit Inside the Sun”
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.
Continue reading “Some Metal Meteorites Have a Tiny Magnetic Field. But How?”
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.
Continue reading “A Bronze Age Arrowhead was Made Out of a Meteorite”
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.
Continue reading “Spacecraft, Landers and Rovers Could be Recycled for Parts on the Moon”