Universe Today

June 7, 2023June 7, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Missed the Mars Livestream? Here's the Video

An animation created from images that were sent to Earth, beamed directly from the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) on board ESA’s long-lived Mars Express mission, during a special livestream of data from Mars to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the mission. Credit: ESA.

When a mission to Mars reaches 20 years of service, that’s definitely reason to celebrate. ESA’s Mars Express celebrated by airing the first-ever livestream of images, sent directly from the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) on board the spacecraft. For an hour, it sent back images from the Red Planet in as close to real-time as the speed of light would allow.

The animated gif, above, was created from all the images that came down during that hour, roughly 50 seconds apart from each other. There’s a short break in the middle of the animation because of an unexpected rainstorm at ESA’s ground station in Cebreros, Spain, where telemetry wasn’t able to be received.

June 7, 2023June 7, 2023 by Evan Gough

JWST Shows How the Early Universe Was Furiously Forming Stars

This infrared image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was taken for the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, program. It shows a portion of an area of the sky known as GOODS-South, which has been well studied by the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. More than 45,000 galaxies are visible here. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz), Ben Johnson (CfA), Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge), Marcia Rieke (University of Arizona), Daniel Eisenstein (CfA). Image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

We can gaze out into regions in our neighbourhood of the Milky Way and find orgies of star birth. The closest region is in the Orion nebula, where astronomers have identified more than 700 young stars. They range from only 100,000 years—mere infancy for a star—to over a million years.

But we’re more than 13 billion years after the Big Bang now. What was star formation like way back when, when conditions in the Universe were so different?

June 7, 2023June 7, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

SLS Could Launch a Sample Return Mission to Phobos and Deimos

The Mars Reconaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured this image of Phobos and the Stickney crater in 2008. The grooves are clearly visible in the image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

NASA’s next colossal rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), recently had its first successful flight back in November after years of development. Much of that development was done by aerospace contractors like Northrop Grumman and Boeing, so it is a good bet that engineers at those companies want the SLS to be seen as a success. One measure of its success will be how many missions it manages to help launch successfully – the more missions, the better. To help plan out some of those missions, a pair of Boeing engineers wrote a paper describing an outline of a sample return mission to Phobos and Deimos. And, of course, it would be launched by the SLS.

June 6, 2023June 6, 2023 by Matt Williams

20 Years of Mars Express Images Helped Build This Mosaic of the Red Planet

Color mosaic image of Mars, taken by the HRSC instrument aboard the ESA's Mars Express orbiter. Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Michael)

The Mars Express orbiter, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) first interplanetary mission, entered orbit around Mars on June 2^nd, 2003. Since then, the probe has mapped the Martian surface using its High-Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC), an instrument built by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) with commercial partners. In honor of the mission’s 20th anniversary, a celebration occurred last Friday (June 2^nd) at the ESA’s European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany.

During the festivities, a series of global color mosaic images were live-streamed from the Mars Express orbiter to Earth. The mosaic is the result of a high-altitude campaign conducted by the HRSC science team and state-of-the-art image processing. The result is a mosaic unparalleled in detail, spatial resolution, and diversity of color that provides valuable insight into the Martian environment. This includes revealing the surface composition, demonstrating how water once flowed there in the past, and modern meteorological phenomena.

June 6, 2023June 6, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

There Are Hundreds of Mysterious Filaments at the Center of the Milky Way

A radio image of the central portions of the Milky Way galaxy composited with a view of the MeerKAT radio observatory. Radio bubbles and associated vertical magnetized filaments can be seen. Courtesy: MeerKAT/SARAO/Oxford University/Heywood

Several million years ago, the core of our galaxy experienced a powerful event. It blew out a huge bi-lobed bubble that blasted through the interstellar medium in two directions. Whatever it was, it released huge amounts of energy from the central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short).

June 6, 2023June 6, 2023 by Evan Gough

JWST Sees Organic Molecules Ludicrously Far Away

Astronomers using the Webb telescope discovered evidence of complex organic molecules in a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years away. In this false-color Webb image, the foreground galaxy is shown in blue, while the background galaxy is red. The organic molecules are highlighted in orange. Graphic courtesy J. Spilker / S. Doyle, NASA, ESA, CSA

When astronomers used the JWST to look at a galaxy more than 12 billion light years away, they were also looking back in time. And when they found organic molecules in that distant galaxy, they found them in the early Universe.

The organic molecules are usually found where stars are forming, but in this case, they’re not.

June 6, 2023June 6, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Airbus Developed a System To Extract Oxygen and Metal From Lunar Regolith

An illustration of a Moon base that could be built using 3D printing and ISRU, In-Situ Resource Utilization. Credit: RegoLight, visualisation: Liquifer Systems Group, 2018

New technologies utilizing material found in space are constantly popping up, sometimes from smaller companies and sometimes from larger ones. Back in 2020, one of the largest companies of them all announced a technology that could have significant implications for the future lunar exploration missions planned over the next ten years. The European aerospace giant Airbus developed the Regolith to OXYgen and Metals Conversion (ROXY) system.

June 5, 2023June 5, 2023 by Evan Gough

Researchers are Working on a Tractor Beam System for Space

This graphic illustrates how a servicer spacecraft could remove debris from orbit using electrostatic forces. Image Credit: Schaub Lab

Human technology is crossing another threshold. Tractor beams have been common in science fiction for decades. Now a team of researchers is working on a real-life tractor beam that could help us with our burgeoning space debris problem.

June 5, 2023June 5, 2023 by Matt Williams

New Satellite Successfully Beams Power From Space

The inside of the space-based Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (MAPLE) which emits collected energy across empty space using an array of transmitters (right) to two receivers (right) to illuminate an LED. Credit: Caltech

Solar power is the fastest-growing form of renewable energy and currently accounts for 3.6% of global electricity production today. This makes it the third largest source of the renewable energy market, followed by hydroelectric power and wind. These three methods are expected to grow exponentially in the coming decades, reaching 40% by 2035 and 45% by 2050. Altogether, renewables are expected to account for 90% of the energy market by mid-century, with solar accounting for roughly half. However, several technical challenges and issues need to be overcome for this transition to occur.

The main limiting factor for solar power is intermittency, meaning it can only collect power when sufficient sunlight is available. To address this, scientists have spent decades researching space-based solar power (SBSP), where satellites in orbit would collect power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without interruption. To develop the technology, researchers with the Space Solar Power Project (SSPP) at Caltech recently completed the first successful wireless power transfer using the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment (MAPLE).

June 5, 2023June 5, 2023 by Evan Gough

The Latest JWST Image Pierces Through a Shrouded Star-Forming Galaxy

A delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters threads across this image of NGC 5068 from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team

Sometimes an image is so engrossing that we can ignore what it’s telling us about its subject and just enjoy the splendour. That’s certainly true of this image of NGC 5068 released by the ESA. But Universe Today readers are curious, and after enjoying the galactic portrait for a while, they want to know more.