Several Double Planetary Disks Found

Circumstellar disks in young multiple star systems, as discovered using ALMA. Where the orbits are known, they are included with white lines. Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/B. Saxton
Circumstellar disks in young multiple star systems, as discovered using ALMA. Where the orbits are known, they are included with white lines. Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/B. Saxton

If you want to know what the newly forming Solar System looked like, study planetary disks around other stars. Like them, our star was a single star forming its retinue of worlds and other stars did the same. This all happened 4.5 billion years ago, so we have to look at similar systems around nearby stars.

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Getting To Mars Quickly With Nuclear Electric Propulsion

Modular Assembled Radiators for Nuclear Electric Propulsion Vehicles, or MARVL, aims to take a critical element of nuclear electric propulsion, its heat dissipation system, and divide it into smaller components that can be assembled robotically and autonomously in space. This is an artist’s rendering of what the fully assembled system might look like. NASA/Tim Marvel

A spacecraft takes between about seven and nine months to reach Mars. The time depends on the spacecraft and the distance between the two planets, which changes as they follow their orbits around the Sun. NASA’s Perseverance is the most recent spacecraft to make the journey, and it took about seven months.

If it didn’t take so long, then Mars would be within reach of a human mission sooner rather than later. NASA is exploring the idea of using nuclear electric propulsion to shorten the travel time.

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A Fast Radio Burst Came From an Old, Dead Galaxy

Astronomers first detected the new FRB, dubbed FRB 20240209A, in February 2024 with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). Credit: CHIME, Andre Renard, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are intense flashes of radio light that last for only a fraction of a second. They are likely caused by the intense magnetic fields of a magnetar, which is a highly magnetic neutron star. Beyond that, FRBs remain a bit of a mystery. We know that most of them originate from outside our galaxy, though the few that have occurred within our galaxy have allowed us to pin the source on neutron stars. We also know that some of them repeat, meaning that FRBs can’t be caused by a cataclysmic event such as a supernova. Thanks to one repeating FRB, we now know something new about them.

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Tracing the Big Ideas that Led to Webb

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At the end of large engineering projects, the design team is typically asked to develop a document, in some cases called a Theory of Operations. This document is meant to describe the design decisions, why they were made, and how they were implemented. The document intends to inform future engineers about why a system operates the way it does so they can assess if any modifications or improvements can be made. It also allows the design engineers to reflect on their work as a whole, sometimes in a new light. Recently, some original members of the design team of the James Webb Space Telescope decided to take their shot at a brief version of such a document, releasing a paper that describes the design history of what is now considered to be one of the crowning jewels of humanity’s space telescope fleet.

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Rubin Will Find Millions of Supernovae

This illustration depicts NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory capturing light from supernovae, the explosive deaths of massive stars. These cosmic beacons are important for studying the expansion of the Universe. In particular, Type Ia supernovae serve as “standard candles” to measure cosmic distances. By observing thousands of supernovae across vast regions of the sky, Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will provide the largest sample of Type Ia supernovae yet, helping scientists refine the Universe's expansion rate and gain deeper insights into the mysterious “dark energy” driving its acceleration.

The discovery of a few thousand type 1a supernovae over the last few decades has helped measure the expansion of the Universe. The new Vera Rubin Observatory will soon to start scour the skies looking for more. Astronomers hope that the discovery and observations of millions more exploding stars will allow the universal expansion to be mapped in unprecedented detail. If all goes to plan, the survey will begin in a few months with the entire southern sky being scanned every few nights. 

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Black Hole Jets Seen Forming in Real-Time

Artist's impression of a white dwarf embedded in the disk of a giant black hole. Credit: NASA/Sonoma State University, Aurore Simonnet

A short time ago, astronomers observed a distant supermassive black hole (SMBH) located in a galaxy 270 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. For years, this galaxy (1ES 1927+654) has been the focus of attention because of the Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) at its core. It all began in 2018 when the SMBH’s X-ray corona mysteriously disappeared, followed by a major outburst in the optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray wavelengths. Astronomers began watching it closely, but what they saw next was completely unexpected!

As we covered in a previous article, much of the excitement was generated by the SMBH’s behavior, which suggested it was consuming a stellar remnant (a white dwarf). In addition, astronomers noted a huge increase in radio emissions and the formation of plasma jets extending from the black hole, which all happened over the course of a year. In a new paper, a team led by the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) describes how they watched a plasma jet forming in real time, something astronomers have never done before.

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Hubble Shows Young Stars Shaping Their Surroundings in the Orion Nebula

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the nearest star-forming region to Earth, the Orion Nebula (Messier 42, M42), located some 1,500 light-years away. Young stars in Orion are shaping their environments. ESA/Hubble, NASA, and T. Megeath

Orion the Hunter, resplendent in the northern hemisphere’s night sky in winter, is more than an easily identified constellation. It’s home to the Orion Nebula, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. It’s a mere 1,500 light-years away and can be seen with the naked eye below the three stars that form Orion’s belt.

New Hubble images show how young, newly-formed stars in the Orion Nebula are altering their environments.

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What Will It Take To Reach Zero Space Debris?

The space debris problem is only getting worse. The ESA says we lack the technology to deal with it. We may also lack the needed political cohesion. Image Credit: ESA

The space debris problem won’t solve itself. We’ve been kicking the can down the road for years as we continue launching more rockets and payloads into space. In the last couple of years, organizations—especially the European Space Association—have begun to address the problem more seriously.

Now they’re asking this question: What will it take to reach zero space debris?

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Supersonic Winds Blowing on an Extreme Exoplanet

Artist’s visualisation of WASP-127b shows supersonic jet winds that move around the planet’s equator. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

The exoplanet WASP-127b is an unusual world. It is about 30% larger than Jupiter but has just a fifth of Jupiter’s mass. It is an example of a super-puff planet because of its extremely low density. These puffy worlds are so unusual that we don’t know if they would resemble the gas giants of our solar system, or something more exotic, such as a large super-Earth. But a recent study of WASP-127b shows that super-puff worlds can have tremendous winds.

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China’s Chang’e 7 Will Include a Flag That Will ‘Flap’ on the Moon

China’s Chang’e 7 lunar lander mission will feature a flag fluttering in the vacuum of space.

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A CNSA flag flying on the Moon. Credit: CGTN News screenshot.

It’s one of the most often asked questions I get, while showing off the Moon to the public. “Can you see the flag the astronauts left there?” This then leads to a discussion on how far the Moon is, versus the difficulty of seeing a 1.5 by 0.9 meter flag at such a distance. My ‘scope is good, but not that good.

During the U.S. Apollo program, six crewed missions landed on the Moon starting with Apollo 11 in 1969, leaving a like number of flags. Now, China recently announced that one more flag will join the collection in late 2026, when Chang’e 7 heads to the Moon.

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