Universe Today

November 16, 2022November 16, 2022 by Alan Boyle

Artemis 1 Sends Back Snapshots of Earth as It Speeds Toward the Moon

Earth as seen from Orion capsule — Earth shines in an image captured by a camera mounted on one of the Orion service module’s solar array wings. (NASA / ESA / JP Major)

As it heads for the moon, NASA’s Orion space capsule is sending back snapshots of Earth that evoke the “blue marble” pictures taken by Apollo astronauts five decades earlier.

This time around, the photographer is basically a robot, built into the camera system for the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission. The round-the-moon odyssey got off to a spectacular start early today with the first launch of NASA’s Space Launch System, and over the next 25 days it’s due to blaze a trail for future crewed trips to the lunar surface.

Hours after liftoff, a camera mounted on one of Orion’s four solar arrays pivoted around to capture a view of the spacecraft’s European-built service module in the foreground — with our half-shadowed planet set against the black background of space.

“Orion looking back at Earth as it travels toward the moon, 57,000 miles away from the place we call home,” NASA’s Sandra Jones intoned as the imagery came down.

November 16, 2022November 16, 2022 by Evan Gough

The Future of Mars Exploration Belongs to Helicopters

NASA's Mars Helicopters: Present, Future, and Proposed: A family portrait of Mars helicopters - Ingenuity, Sample Recovery Helicopter, and a future Mars Science Helicopter concept. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Even though there’s no firm date for a Mars sample return mission, the Perseverance rover is busy collecting rock samples and caching them for retrieval. We’ve known of the future Mars sample return mission for a while now, and as time goes on, we’re learning more details.

The latest development concerns helicopters. With Ingenuity’s success, NASA has decided that the sample return mission will take two helicopters.

November 16, 2022November 16, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

Mapping the Interiors of Meteorites to Learn how Earth got its Water

A composite image of Earth as a watery world. Credit: Reto Stöckli, Robert Simmon, MODIS/NASA

Earth is a strange world. A warm, rocky planet covered with oceans of liquid water. This strangeness is central to life on Earth, but it has been a longstanding puzzle for astronomers. Just why is our planet wet while other terrestrial worlds are dry? Where did all of Earth’s water come from?

November 16, 2022November 16, 2022 by Matt Williams

Greenland’s ice Loss is Worse Than We Thought

Cumulative melt days on the Greenland Ice Sheet for the 2022 melt season (left) and difference from the 1981 to 2010 average melt days for the same period (right). Credit: NSIDC/T. Mote, University of Georgia

Climate change is the single greatest threat facing our planet today. Thanks to excess carbon emissions that have been growing steadily since the mid-20th century, average temperatures continue to rise worldwide. This leads to feedback mechanisms, such as rising sea levels, extreme weather, drought, wildfires, and glacial melting. This includes the Arctic Ice Pack, the East Antarctic glacier, and the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS), which are rapidly melting and increasing global sea levels.

Worse than that, the disappearance of the world’s ice sheets means that Earth’s surface and oceans absorb more heat, driving global temperatures even further. According to a new NASA-supported study by an international team of Earth scientists and glaciologists, the Greenland Ice Sheet is melting at an accelerating rate, much faster than existing models predict. According to these findings, far more ice will be lost from Greenland during the 21st century, which means its contribution to sea-level rise will be significantly higher.

November 16, 2022November 16, 2022 by Matt Williams

What Would Asteroid Mining do to the World's Economy?

Artist's impression of an astronaut conducting an EVA with an asteroid. Credit: NASA

About a decade ago, the prospect of “asteroid mining” saw a massive surge in interest. This was due largely to the rise of the commercial space sector and the belief that harvesting resources from space would soon become a reality. What had been the stuff of science fiction and futurist predictions was now being talked about seriously in the business sector, with many claiming that the future of resource exploitation and manufacturing lay in space. Since then, there’s been a bit of a cooling off as these hopes failed to materialize in the expected timeframe.

Nevertheless, there is little doubt that a human presence in space will entail harvesting resources from Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and beyond. In a recent paper, a team of researchers from the University of Nottingham in Ningbo, China, examined the potential impact of asteroid mining on the global economy. Based on their detailed assessment that includes market forces, environmental impact, asteroid and mineral type, and the scale of mining, they show how asteroid mining can be done in a way that is consistent with the Outer Space Treaty (i.e., for the benefit of all humanity).

November 16, 2022November 16, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Artemis I is On Its Way to the Moon

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis I flight test, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky.

It really, finally, actually happened. The long-waited Space Launch System (SLS) rocket carrying the Orion capsule launched successfully and is now on its way to the Moon. After years of delays — and then two scrubbed launch attempts and a rollback of the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building this fall — this is the first time in 50 years that a human capable spacecraft is going to the Moon. In a way, it is fitting that Artemis launched in the dark, as the last human-rated spacecraft that launched to the Moon – Apollo 17 – also had liftoff at night.

“It’s taken a lot to get here, but Orion is now on its way to the Moon,” said Jim Free, NASA deputy associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. “This successful launch means NASA and our partners are on a path to explore farther in space than ever before for the benefit of humanity.”

November 15, 2022November 15, 2022 by Scott Alan Johnston

The X-37B is Back After 908 Days in Orbit. What was it Doing up There? That's Classified

At 5:22 AM Eastern Time on November 12, the Space Force’s (and Air Force’s) X-37B spaceplane landed back on Earth after two and a half years in orbit. The secretive spaceplane has now performed 6 missions, and the latest, OTV-6, was the longest flight yet. Details about the X-37B’s purpose are scarce, though it is clear that the vehicle is designed to serve as a testbed for advanced spaceflight capabilities. Here’s what we know about the latest mission.

November 15, 2022November 15, 2022 by Evan Gough

A White Dwarf is Surrounded by Torn-up Pieces of its Inner Planets and its Kuiper Belt

This illustration shows a white dwarf star siphoning off debris from shattered objects in a planetary system. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

What will happen to our Sun?

In several billion years, it’ll cease fusion, shrivel into a white dwarf, and emanate only remnant heat. There it’ll sit, dormant and comatose.

But the Sun anchors the entire Solar System. What will happen to Earth? To the rest of the planets? To the rest of the objects in the Solar System?

November 14, 2022November 14, 2022 by Laurence Tognetti

The Sun Could Hurl Powerful Storms at Earth From its Goofy Smile

NASA recently photographed the Sun "smiling" (Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Solar Dynamics Observatory)

Our Sun is the very reason we’re alive. It provides warmth and the energy our planet needs to keep going. Now you can add photogenic to its illustrious résumé, as NASA recently photographed our giant ball of nuclear fusion doing something quite peculiar.

November 14, 2022November 14, 2022 by Evan Gough

New Observations Confirm That a Magnetar has a Solid Surface and No Atmosphere

An artist's impression of a magnetar, a highly magnetic, slowly rotating neutron star. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Can a star have a solid surface? It might sound counterintuitive. But human intuition is a response to our evolution on Earth, where up is up, down is down, and there are three states of matter. Intuition fails when it confronts the cosmos.