Universe Today

July 22, 2023July 22, 2023 by Laurence Tognetti

NASA Astronauts Get a New Ride at Kennedy Space Center

NASA’s new custom-designed, fully electric, environmentally friendly crew transportation vehicles for the upcoming Artemis missions, which were delivered to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on July 11, 2023. These new vehicles will ferry Artemis astronauts to Launch Complex 39B for their missions beginning with Artemis II, and were delivered by the manufacturer, Canoo Technologies Inc. (Credit: NASA/Isaac Watson)

In its continued support for the Artemis missions, a three fully-electric, environmentally friendly, and specially designed vehicles were recently delivered to NASA for the purpose of ferrying future Artemis astronauts from their crew quarters to historic Launch Pad 39B before their journey to the Moon. The vehicles were built and delivered by Canoo Technologies Inc. based in Torrance, California, and comes just over a year after NASA awarded Canoo the contract to provide the new vehicles, and almost two years since NASA put out a call for proposals.

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Record-Breaking Magnetar was There in the Data All Along

An artist’s impression of the ultra-long period magnetar—a rare type of star with extremely strong magnetic fields that can produce powerful bursts of energy. Credit: ICRAR

The cosmic zoo has strange beasts that astronomers stumble across in the most fascinating ways. Not long ago a team in Australia found a highly unusual magnetar, one of the weirder denizens of the starry zoo. It’s called GPM J1839-10 and it lies some 15,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Scutum.

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 by Evan Gough

Not All Craters are Circular. Sometimes They Look Like This

This unusual looking Martian crater was created when something impacted the planet's surface at an angle. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona

Impact craters are nature’s signature from a more chaotic time in our Solar System’s history. A quick glance at the Moon’s disfigured surface makes that clear. Same with Mars, though a telescope is needed to examine it. Or better yet, an orbital spacecraft with a powerful camera.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its HiRISE camera have been examining Mars’ surface for years, cataloguing the planet’s menagerie of impact craters. One of them, recently chosen as the HiRISE Picture of the Day (HIPOD,) looks like a Thunderbird. Or a dinosaur footprint left in the mud.

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 by Scott Alan Johnston

China is Working on a New Crew Spacecraft to Carry Up to 7 Passengers

China's Next Generation Spacecraft test vehicle after returning from orbit in 2020. China Central Television (CCTV).

China’s next-generation crew capsule was given an updated timeline this week. According to Yang Liwei, deputy chief designer of China’s Human Spaceflight Program, the new capsule will make its first flight in 2027 or 2028. Meeting this timeline will be a key milestone in China’s recently announced plan to land on the Moon by 2030.

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 by Brian Koberlein

One Side of This White Dwarf is Covered in Hydrogen While the Other Side is Helium.

Illustration of the newly-discovered white dwarf. Credit: K. Miller, Caltech/IPAC

Sunlike stars and those smaller than the Sun end their lives as white dwarfs. Without a continued source of energy from hydrogen fusion, these stars eventually collapse under their own weight. They would continue collapsing were it not for the pressure of electrons. As long as the remaining mass of a star is less than about 1.4 Suns, the electron pressure and gravitational pull will balance each other, creating a white dwarf.

July 20, 2023July 20, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Carbon-Based Molecules Seen Just a Billion Years After the Big Bang

A crop of the JADES Survey field that JWST observed, using its NIRCAM instrument to search for carbon-based molecules.

The more astronomers look at the early Universe, the more discoveries they make. Some of those finds change what they thought they knew about the infancy of the cosmos. For example, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently found evidence of carbon-based molecules and dust existing only a billion years after the Big Bang. It looks a bit different from the dust observed later in the Universe.

July 20, 2023July 20, 2023 by Evan Gough

Star Factories Haven’t Changed Much Over the Entire Age of the Universe

“Sh 2-209” is a rare and large-scale star-forming region in the outer region of the Milky Way Galaxy. It's notable for its low metallicity, a characteristic it shares with the early Universe. Image Credit: NAOJ/Subaru Telescope

The ancient Universe is weird and secretive. Scientists have made laudable progress in uncovering more and more information on how the Universe began and what conditions were like all those billions of years ago. Powerful infrared telescopes, especially the ground-breaking James Webb Space Telescope, have let astronomers study the ancient light from the early Universe and remove some of the secrecy.

One of the mysteries astronomers want to untangle concerns star formation. Has it changed much since the Universe’s early days?

July 20, 2023July 20, 2023 by Brian Koberlein

Thin Flat Lenses Could Unleash a Revolution in Space Telescopes

A flat lens space telescope design as part of the Nautilus Space Observatory. Credit: Daniel Apai/University of Arizona

Thanks to the laws of physics, there are two basic rules about telescopes. The first is that the bigger your primary lens or mirror, the higher the resolution of your telescope. The second is that lenses and mirrors have to be curved to focus light into an image. So, if you want a space telescope sensitive enough to see the atmospheres of distant exoplanets, Your telescope is going to need a large curved mirror or lens. But neither of these things is technically true, as a newly proposed telescope design demonstrates.

July 20, 2023July 20, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

DART Impact Ejected 37 Giant Boulders from Asteroid Dimorphos’ Surface

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid Dimorphos was taken on 19 December 2022, nearly four months after the asteroid was impacted by NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission. Hubble’s sensitivity reveals a few dozen boulders knocked off the asteroid by the force of the collision. These are among the faintest objects Hubble has ever photographed inside the Solar System. Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Jewitt (UCLA).

When the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft intentionally slammed into asteroid moonlet Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, telescopes around the world and those in space watched as it happened, and continued to monitor the aftermath.

Of course, the Hubble Space Telescope was focused on the event. In looking at Hubble’s images and data from post-impact, astronomers discovered 37 boulders that were ejected due to the impact. These boulders range in size from 1 meter (3 feet) to 6.7 meters (22 feet).

However, these boulders were not debris created by the spacecraft’s impact. Instead, they were boulders that were already on the surface of Dimorphos, and the impact event “shook” the boulders loose. A team of astronomers, led by David Jewitt and Yoonyoung Kim say in their paper detailing the findings that these boulders are some of the faintest objects ever imaged in the Solar System, only visible because of Hubble’s keen sensitivity. The images here showing the boulders surrounding Dimorphos were taken on December 19, 2022.

July 20, 2023July 20, 2023 by Alan Boyle

Threats From Above Lead the List of Space Concerns in New Survey

Vapor trail from 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor — This vapor trail was left behind by an asteroid that zoomed over the Siberian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013. (Credit: Alex Alishevskikh via NASA)

Sending astronauts to the moon is OK — but more Americans think NASA should instead put a high priority on monitoring outer space for asteroids and other objects that could pose a threat to Earth, according to the Pew Research Center’s latest survey focusing on Americans’ perspectives on space policy.

The nonprofit research center’s report was released today, on the 54th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. It follows up on a similar survey that was done in 2018 to mark NASA’s 60th anniversary.

The earlier survey suggested that slightly more Americans saw monitoring climate change as a top priority (63% vs 62%). This year, the rankings were reversed, with 60% putting cosmic threats at the top of their list, as opposed to 50% for climate concerns. Only 12% of the respondents said sending astronauts to explore the moon was a top priority, and 11% said sending astronauts to Mars led their list. That translates into less support than those missions had five years ago.

The survey, conducted online from May 30 to June 4, is based on responses from 10,329 randomly selected U.S. adults who are part of the research center’s online panel. The results were weighted to reflect current demographics.