Space and astronomy news
Astronomers are keenly interested in red dwarfs and the planets that orbit them. Up to 85% of the stars in the Milky Way could be red dwarfs, and 40% of them might host Earth-like exoplanets in their habitable zones, according to some research.
But there are some problems with their potential habitability. One of those problems is tidal locking.
Continue reading “Are Planets Tidally Locked to Red Dwarfs Habitable? It’s Complicated”
For a tiny moon orbiting a giant planet, Io sure packs a giant wallop. It’s the most volcanic world in the solar system. Due to that extreme volcanism, scientists with the Juno mission are now focusing the spacecraft’s instruments and cameras on Io. They want to know more about its eruptions and how its constant stream of material into space interacts with Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
Continue reading “Juno has Been Touring Jupiter’s Moons on its Extended Mission. Next Stop: Volcanic Io”
Thirteen years after the original “Avatar” movie came out, the idea of human minds inhabiting alien bodies is returning for an amped-up sequel — and since 2009, real-life efforts to create robotic avatars have advanced at least as much as computer-aided filmmaking has.
Oscar-winning director James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” returns to Pandora, a far-off exomoon where the peaceful, blue-skinned Na’vi people are menaced by human invaders who are capable of getting into their skin. The film is a visual mind-blower, combining elements of underwater documentaries, video games and the movie that earned Cameron his Oscar: “Titanic.”
The idea of a human taking charge of an alien body via virtual reality is pure science fiction — but if you replace the fictional Na’vi with a robot, you get the premise for the ANA Avatar XPRIZE, which gave out its top awards at the $10 million competition’s finals in November.
In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, we focus on the parallels between the science-fiction vision embodied in the Avatar movies and the future-tech vision that roboticists are pursuing through the Avatar XPRIZE and other efforts. Someday, robotic avatars could well transform space exploration as well as life back here on Earth.
Continue reading “Avatars Return to the Movies — and Find a Real-Life Foothold”
You’d have to be in some kind of sense-of-wonder-repressed coma not to appreciate satellite images of Earth. If you are, then images from the NOAA’s newest satellite might pull you out of it.
And they’re only a taste of the fascinating images that it will provide.
Continue reading “NOAA’s New Weather Satellite is Operational, and its Pictures of Earth are Gorgeous”
The origin of Earth’s water has been an enduring mystery. There are different hypotheses and theories explaining how the water got here, and lots of evidence supporting them.
But water is ubiquitous in protoplanetary disks, and water’s origin may not be so mysterious after all.
Continue reading “Earth’s Water is 4.5 Billion Years Old”
There is an ongoing incident at the International Space Station involving a coolant leak from a docked Soyuz MS-22 crew ship. Just as Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Propokyev and Dmitri Petelin were getting ready to do a spacewalk to relocate a radiator, ground teams in Moscow noticed the leak. The spacewalk was cancelled immediately.
Continue reading “A Soyuz Capsule on ISS is Leaking Coolant Into Space”
Like a famous (and photogenic) actor followed by paparazzi, the Carina Nebula is one of the most photographed objects in space because of its stunning beauty. Over the years, the Carina Nebula has been one of the Hubble Space Telescope’s most-imaged objects.
Continue reading “Here's a new Image of the Carina Nebula From Hubble”
Want to go to Mars? Great! Now, all you need to do is plan a mission. Figure out where to land, what to bring, and how you’re going to live there in the months (or years) between favorable return windows. All this will be determined by the availability of crucial resources you’ll need to survive.
Continue reading “Where are the Best Places to Land Humans on Mars?”
In case you missed any of the 25-day flight of Artemis 1, NASA has compiled a 25-minute highlight reel that showcases the top moments of the mission, from launch to splashdown.
Continue reading “Watch a NASA Supercut of the Entire Artemis I Mission, From Launch to Landing”
To stand on a coastal shore and watch how eagles, ravens, seagulls, and crows take flight in high winds. it’s an inspiring sight, to be sure. Additionally, it illustrates an important concept in aerial mechanics, like how the proper angling of wings can allow birds to exploit differences in wind speed to hover in mid-air. Similarly, birds can use these same differences in wind speed to gain bursts of velocity to soar and dive. These same lessons can be applied to space, where spacecraft could perform special maneuvers to pick up bursts of speed from “space weather” (solar wind).
This was the subject of a recent study led by researchers from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. By circling between regions of the heliosphere with different wind speeds, they state, a spacecraft would be capable of “dynamic soaring” the same way avian species are. Such a spacecraft would not require propellant (which makes up the biggest mass fraction of conventional missions) and would need only a minimal power supply. Their proposal is one of many concepts for low-mass, low-cost missions that could become interplanetary (or interstellar) explorers.
Continue reading “Birds use Dynamic Soaring to Pick Up Velocity. We Could Use a Similar Trick to Go Interstellar”