Universe Today

March 25, 2023March 25, 2023 by Matt Williams

The 9th Annual Achieving Mars Workshop Report has been Released! How to Make Mars Affordable…

Artist's concept image of a boot print on the moon and on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This past summer (June 14th to June 16th), representatives from the public space sector, the commercial space industry, and academic institutions convened at George Washington University in Washington D.C. for The Ninth Community Workshop for Achievability and Sustainability of Human Exploration of Mars. The invitation-only event was hosted by Explore Mars, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering international collaboration and cooperation between government and industry to achieve the human exploration of Mars by the 2030s.

The purpose of this workshop is to identify activities that will help prepare for missions to Mars by the 2030s. In particular, the workshop sought to address how a sustainable program of human Martian exploration can be achieved. The highlights of this event were recently shared with the release of the Achieve Mars (AM) IX Report, which established priorities and science objectives for future missions to Mars. The authors also made several recommendations for how cutting-edge technologies could play a role, how the health and safety of astronauts can be assured, and how Mars and Earth can be protected from possible contamination.

March 25, 2023March 25, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Success and Failure: Relativity Space Launches its Terran 1, but the Rocket Fails to Reach Orbit. However, the Launch Photos are Incredible

Liftoff of Terran 1. Credit: Relativity Space / Michael Baylor.

This past week was a mixed bag for Relativity Space and their 3D-printed methane-fueled rocket engine. While the company’s Terran 1 rocket blasted off successfully on Wednesday, March 22, the second stage failed to ignite a few minutes after launch. The rocket coasted to an altitude of about 129 km and then returned to Earth, crashing a few hundred kilometers downrange.

But Relativity Space counted this first launch attempt as a success.

March 24, 2023March 24, 2023 by Evan Gough

A Rogue Earth and Neptune Might Have Been Found in Older Data

An artist's illustration of a rogue planet, dark and mysterious. Image Credit: NASA

Scientists have found what appear to be rogue planets hidden in old survey data. Their results are starting to define the poorly-understood rogue planet population. In the near future, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will conduct a search for more free-floating planets, and the team of researchers developed some methods that will aid that search.

March 23, 2023March 23, 2023 by Matt Williams

Hypervelocity Stars Teach us About Black Holes and Supernovae

An artist's conception of a hypervelocity star that has escaped the Milky Way. Credit: NASA

Hypervelocity stars (HVS) certainly live up to their name, traveling thousands of kilometers per second or a fraction of the speed of light (relativistic speeds). These speed demons are thought to be the result of galactic or black hole mergers, globular clusters kicking out members, or binary pairs where one star is kicked out when the other goes supernova. Occasionally, these stars are fast enough to escape our galaxy and (in some cases) take their planetary systems along for the ride. This could have drastic implications for our theories of how life could be distributed throughout the cosmos (aka. panspermia theory).

There are thousands of these stars in our galaxy, and tracking them has become the task of cutting-edge astrometry missions (like the ESA’s Gaia Observatory). In previous research, astronomers suggested that these stars could be used to determine the mass of the Milky Way. In a recent study from Leiden University in the Netherlands, Ph.D. candidate Fraser Evans showed how data on HVS could be used to probe the mysteries of the most extreme objects in our Universe – supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and the violent supernovae of massive stars.

March 23, 2023March 23, 2023 by Evan Gough

The Discovery of a Hot Neptune that Shouldn’t Exist

exoplanet hot jupiter transiting its star — This artist’s impression shows an ultra-hot exoplanet as it is about to transit in front of its host star. Credit: ESO

1800 light-years away, an unlikely survivor orbits an aged star. This rare planet is called a hot Neptune, and it’s one of only a small handful of hot Neptunes astronomers have found. Hot Neptunes are so close to their stars that the overpowering stellar radiation should’ve stripped away their atmospheres, leaving only a planetary core behind.

But this planet held onto its atmosphere somehow.

March 23, 2023March 23, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Fly Around Jezero Crater on Mars in This New Video

Image of the region around Jezero Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL.

There’s a reason Jezero Crater was chosen as the landing site for the Perseverance Rover: it is considered one of the likeliest places to find any evidence if Mars was ever habitable for long periods of time. In this great new flyby video from ESA, you can get a birds-eye look at Perseverance’s home.

Created from data ESA’s Mars Express and NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the video takes you on an aerial tour of the crater. From this perspective, you can see the water features in this ancient impact crater and understand why this was considered one of the best places to explore Mars.

March 22, 2023March 22, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Did Supernovae Help Push Life to Become More Diverse?

Distant past supernovae could be linked by cosmic ray particles to climate change on Earth and changes in biodiversity. Courtesy: Henrik Svensmark, DTU Space.

Life on Earth has been around for a long time—at least 3.8 billion years. During that time, it evolved significantly. Why has biodiversity here changed so much? A new study proposes a startling idea. Some major diversity changes are linked to supernovae—the explosions of massive stars. If true, it shows that cosmic processes and astrophysical events can influence the evolution of life on our planet.

March 22, 2023March 22, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Another Look at the Aftermath of DART's Impact Into Dimorphos

This artist’s illustration shows the ejection of a cloud of debris after NASA’s DART spacecraft collided with the asteroid Dimorphos. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

When the DART spacecraft slammed into asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, telescopes worldwide (and in space) were watching as it happened. But others continued watching for numerous days afterward to observe the cloud of debris. DART’s (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) intentional impact was not only a test of planetary defense against an asteroid hitting our planet, but it also allowed astronomers the chance to study Dimorphos, a tiny moon or companion to asteroid Didymos.

New images released by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) show how the surface of the asteroid changed immediately after the impact when pristine materials from the interior of the asteroid were exposed. Other data tracked the debris’ evolution over a month, and provided details on how the debris changed over time. Additionally, astronomers searched for evidence of DART’s fuel but couldn’t find any.

March 21, 2023March 21, 2023 by Matt Williams

A New Mission Will Search for Habitable Planets at Alpha Centauri

Artist's impression of a hypothetical planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri B, a member of the triple star system that is the closest to Earth. Credit: ESO

Alpha Centauri is our closest stellar neighbor, a binary star system located just 4.376 light-years away. Despite its proximity, repeated astronomical surveys have failed to find hard evidence of extrasolar planets in this system. Part of the problem is that the system consists of two stars orbiting each other, which makes detecting exoplanets through the two most popular methods very challenging. In 2019, Breakthrough Initiatives announced they were backing a new project to find exoplanets next door – the Telescope for Orbit Locus Interferometric Monitoring of our Astronomical Neighbourhood (TOLIMAN, after the star’s ancient name in Arabic).

This low-cost mission concept was designed by a team from the University of Sydney, Australia, and aims to look for potentially-habitable exoplanets in the Alpha Centauri system using the Astrometry Method. This consists of monitoring a star’s apparent position in the sky for signs of wobble, indicating that gravitational forces (like planets) are acting on it. Recently, the University of Sydney signed a contract with EnduroSat, a leading microsatellites and space services provider, to provide the delivery system and custom-built minisatellite that will support the mission when it launches.

March 21, 2023March 21, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Machine Learning Finds 140,000 Future Star Forming Regions in the Milky Way

Our galaxy is still actively making stars. We’ve known that for a while, but sometimes it’s hard to understand the true scale in astronomical terms. A team from Japan is trying to help with that by using a novel machine-learning technique to identify soon-to-be star-forming regions spread throughout the Milky Way. They found 140,000 of them.