Posted on by Evan Gough

How Can Astronauts Avoid Vision Loss from Spaceflight?

NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson floats through the Unity module aboard the International Space Station. The microgravity on the ISS can cause vision damage and even loss in astronauts. Credit: NASA

Human bodies are sacks of fluids supported by skeletons. The entire human organism has evolved over billions of years on Earth in harmony with the planet’s specific gravity. But when astronauts spend too much time on the ISS in a microgravity environment, the organism responds, the fluids shift, and problems can occur.

One of those problems is with vision, and scientists are working to understand how it happens and what they can do about it.

Continue reading “How Can Astronauts Avoid Vision Loss from Spaceflight?”
Posted on by Andy Tomaswick

NASA Announces the 2025 Human Lander Challenge

One of NASA’s core mission objectives, though not explicitly stated in its charter, is to educate Americans about space exploration, especially students. As part of that mission, NASA hosts a number of challenges every year where teams of students compete to come up with innovative ideas to solve problems. The agency recently announced the next round of one of its standard yearly challenges—the Human Lander Challenge.

Continue reading “NASA Announces the 2025 Human Lander Challenge”
Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

NASA Decides to Play it Safe. Wilmore and Williams are Coming Home on a Crew Dragon in February

NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts (from top) Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams pose on June 13, 2024 for a portrait inside the vestibule between the forward port on the International Space Station’s Harmony module and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Credit: NASA

Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams will remain on board the International Space Station until February, returning to Earth on a SpaceX Crew Dragon. NASA announced its decision over the weekend, citing concerns about the safety of the Boeing Starliner capsule due to helium leaks and thruster issues. The troublesome Starliner is slated to undock from the ISS without a crew in early September and attempt to return on autopilot, landing in the New Mexico desert.

NASA said this allows them and Boeing to continue gathering test data on Starliner during its uncrewed flight home, while also not accepting more risk than necessary for the crew.

Continue reading “NASA Decides to Play it Safe. Wilmore and Williams are Coming Home on a Crew Dragon in February”
Posted on by Matt Williams

JAXA Officially Wraps Up its SLIM Lander Mission

Illustration: SLIM lander on the moon
An artist's conception shows Japan's SLIM lander on the moon. Credit: ISAS/JAXA

On January 20th, 2024, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) made history when its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) made a soft landing on the Moon, becoming the first Japanese robotic mission to do so. This small-scale lander was designed to investigate the origins of the Moon and test technologies that are fundamental to exploring the low-gravity lunar environment. Unfortunately, mission controllers lost contact with the lander after April 28th, 2024, and have spent the last few months trying to reestablish communications.

Continue reading “JAXA Officially Wraps Up its SLIM Lander Mission”
Posted on by Evan Gough

After a Boost from Earth and the Moon, Juice is On its Way to Venus and Beyond

The ESA's Juice spacecraft is on a long journey to the Jovian system. It's the first spacecraft to perform an Earth-lunar flyby for a gravity assist. Image Credit: ESA

The first spacecraft to use gravity assist was NASA’s Mariner 10 in 1974. It used a gravity assist from Venus to reach Mercury. Now, the gravity assist maneuver is a crucial part of modern space travel.

The latest spacecraft to use gravity assist is the ESA’s JUICE spacecraft.

Continue reading “After a Boost from Earth and the Moon, Juice is On its Way to Venus and Beyond”
Posted on by Mark Thompson

X-Ray Telescopes Could Study Exoplanets Too

Jupiter seen in X-rays

Exoplanets are often discovered using the transit method (over three quarters of those discovered have been found this way.) The same transit technique can be used to study them, often revealing detail about their atmosphere. The observations are typically made in visible light or infrared but a new paper suggests X-rays may be useful too. Stellar wind interactions with the planet’s atmosphere for example would lead to X-ray emissions revealing information about the atmosphere. As we further our exploration of exoplanets we develop our understanding of our own Solar System and ultimately, the origins of life in the Universe. 

Continue reading “X-Ray Telescopes Could Study Exoplanets Too”
Posted on by Laurence Tognetti

The Big Fringe Telescope. A 2.2 KILOMETER Telescope on the Cheap. And it Can Make Exoplanet “Movies”.

Credit: van Belle & Jorgensen (2024)

Can a kilometer-scale telescope help conduct more efficient science, and specifically for the field of optical interferometry? This is what a recently submitted study hopes to address as a pair of researchers propose the Big Fringe Telescope (BFT), which is slated to comprise 16 telescopes 0.5-meter in diameter and will be equivalent to a telescope at 2.2 kilometers in diameter. What makes BFT unique is its potential to create real-time exoplanet “movies” like the movies featuring Venus transiting our Sun, along with significantly reduced construction costs compared to current ground-based optical interferometers.

Continue reading “The Big Fringe Telescope. A 2.2 KILOMETER Telescope on the Cheap. And it Can Make Exoplanet “Movies”.”