Space and astronomy news
When we look at images of star birth regions, they look both placid and active at the same time. That’s nowhere more true than in a stellar nursery associated with a so-called “Herbig-Haro” object. A recent image from Hubble Space Telescope zeroed in on two called “HH 1” and “HH 2”. It looked at the turbulence associated with a nearby newborn star system.
Continue reading “Hubble Looks at Newly Forming Stars in a Stellar Nursery”
In a few years, NASA and the ESA will conduct the long-awaited Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. This mission will consist of a lander that will pick up the samples, an ascent vehicle that will send them to orbit, an orbiter that will return them to Earth, and an entry vehicle that will send them to the surface. This will be the first time samples obtained directly from Mars will be returned to Earth for analysis. The research this will enable is expected to yield new insights into the history of Mars and how it evolved to become what we see today.
Returning these samples safely to Earth requires that protective measures be implemented at every step, including transfer, ascent, transit, and re-entry. This is especially true when it comes to the Earth Entry System (EES), the disk-shaped vehicle that will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at the end of the mission. In addition to a heat shield, engineers at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) near Las Cruces, New Mexico, are busy testing shielding that will protect the vehicle from micrometeorites and space debris during transit back to Earth and during re-entry.
Continue reading “Samples Returned From Mars Will be Protected by a Micrometeorite Shield”
The Fermi Paradox won’t go away. It’s one of our most compelling thought experiments, and generations of scientists keep wrestling with it. The paradox pits high estimates for the number of civilizations in the galaxy against the fact that we don’t see any of those civs. It says that if rapidly expanding civilizations exist in the Milky Way, one should have arrived here in our Solar System. The fact that none have implies that none exist.
Many thinkers and scientists have addressed the Fermi Paradox and tried to come up with a reason why we don’t see any evidence of an expanding technological civilization. Life may be extraordinarily rare, and the obstacles to interstellar travel may be too challenging. It could be that simple.
But a new paper has a new answer: maybe our Solar System doesn’t offer what long-lived, rapidly expanding civilizations desire: the correct type of star.
Continue reading “Maybe We Don’t See Aliens Because Nobody Wants to Come Here”
Earlier this month we asked, what could be better than a pair of galaxies observed by a pair of iconic space telescopes? Now, there is an exciting new answer. Even better than a pair of galaxies is a pair of galaxies that are colliding!
The Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope have each taken a look at a pair of intertwined galaxies that are 270 million light-year away from Earth, together called IC 1623. Scientists say this galactic collision has ignited frenzied star formation called a starburst, creating new stars at a rate more than 20 times that of our Milky Way.
Continue reading “Webb and Hubble Peer Into the Wreckage of a Galactic Collision”
A prototype of ESA’s new heavy lift rocket is now fully assembled and sitting on the launchpad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. But according to officials at a briefing last week, the space agency and the rocket’s prime contractor, ArianeGroup, have decided to delay the first flight of the Ariane 6 to the fourth quarter of 2023 after several issues were brought to the fore in an external review.
Continue reading “The New Ariane 6 Heavy Lift Rocket is Finally on the Launch Pad, But Won’t Liftoff Until Late 2023”
Gravitational assists are marvels of orbital mechanics. Usually, they are done for a combination of fuel (i.e., cost) savings and speed, as it is sometimes faster to take multiple trips around planets in the inner solar system to reach locations in the outer solar system more quickly. Lucy recently made such a maneuver on its way out to the Trojan asteroids along Jupiter’s orbit, and its close pass was both a marvel of precision and speed.
Continue reading “Lucy Zipped Past Earth to get a Gravitational Assist Towards Jupiter’s Trojans”
The Universe is over 13 billion years old, so a 12-year slice of that time might seem uneventful. But a timelapse movie from NASA shows how much can change in just over a decade. Stars pulse, asteroids follow their trajectories, and distant black holes flare as they pull gas and dust toward themselves.
Continue reading “NASA Provides a Timelapse Movie Showing How the Universe Changed Over 12 Years”
It’s been a banner time for black hole research! In recent months, astrophysicists have announced the discovery of the most powerful gamma-ray burst ever recorded (due to the formation of a black hole), a monster black hole in our cosmic backyard, the frame-dragging effects of a binary black hole, and the remains of the 2017 Kilonova event (spoiler alert: it was a black hole). And with the help of citizen scientists, a team of astronomers recently discovered a unique black hole in a galaxy roughly one billion light-years away that’s hurling a relativistic jet at another galaxy.
Continue reading “A Black Hole is Hurling a jet of Material at its Neighboring Galaxy”
If you think writing paper is expensive these days, be glad you didn’t live in the middle ages. Back then, paper was as rare as hen’s teeth, so good luck finding some to write one. But if you happened to be a monk, chances are there were plenty of old books made of parchment. Many of them have useless stuff like old star catalogs, so why not just recycle the parchment for your new copy of religious literature?
Continue reading “Scientists Find an Ancient Stellar Catalog Written by Hipparcus Hidden in a Medieval Tome”
What if you placed an Earth-sized planet in a close orbit around an M-dwarf star? It’s more than an academic question since M dwarfs are the most numerous stars we know. A group of astronomers studying the planet GJ 1252b found an answer and it’s not pretty.
Continue reading “A Nearby Star Has Completely Blasted Away the Atmosphere From its Planet”