Universe Today

August 13, 2024August 13, 2024 by Matt Williams

NASA’s Says Goodbye to its Asteroid-Hunting NEOWISE Mission

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), launched in 2009, spent the next fourteen and half years studying the Universe in infrared wavelengths. During that time, it discovered thousands of minor planets, star clusters, and the first Brown Dwarf and Earth-Trojan asteroid. By 2013, the mission was reactivated by NASA as the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), which was tasked with searching for Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). For ten years, the NEOWISE mission faithfully cataloged comets and asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth someday.

Unfortunately, NASA announced on July 1st that it would be decommissioning this planetary defense mission, which is expected to burn up in our atmosphere later this year. On Thursday, August 8th, the mission was decommissioned after the final command was sent from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and related to the spacecraft by the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system. However, the scientific data NEOWISE collected during its ten years of operation will continue to inspire new discoveries!

August 13, 2024August 13, 2024 by Evan Gough

Mars Has Lots of Water, But It’s Out of Reach

A cutout of the Martian interior beneath NASA's Insight lander. The top 5 kilometers of the crust appear to be dry, but a new study provides evidence for a zone of fractured rock 11.5-20 km below the surface that is full of liquid water—more than the volume proposed to have filled hypothesized ancient Martian oceans. Credit: James Tuttle Keane and Aaron Rodriquez, courtesy of Scripps Institute of Oceanography

Mars was once wet, but now its surface is desiccated. Its meagre atmosphere contains only a tiny trace amount of water vapour. But new research says the planet contains ample liquid water. Unfortunately, it’s kilometres under the surface, well out of reach.

August 13, 2024August 13, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

A Hopper Could Explore Over 150km of Triton’s Surface In Two Years

Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, is one of the most biologically interesting places in the solar system. Despite being hard to reach, it appears to have active volcanoes, a thin atmosphere, and even some organic molecules called tholins on its surface. However, Voyager only visited it once, in passing, 35 years ago. Technology has advanced a lot in the intervening decades, and a new push for a lander on Triton specifically has been garnering attention. One such mission was described by Steve Oleson and Geoffrey Landis of NASA’s Glenn Research Center. Their concept mission, known as Triton Hopper, was funded by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) back in 2018 and utilized a cryogenic pump to extract propellant from Triton’s surface to power a “hopper” that could travel up to 5 km a month, and do some fascinating science along the way.

August 13, 2024August 13, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Can Meteor Showers Be Dangerous to Spacecraft?

We’ve all read the advice, during a meteor shower there is no equipment needed. All you need to do is lay back and wonder at one of the most spectacular sights the universe has to offer. That’s about it though and while you lay back on a lounger and watch it really can be a wonderfully grounding and relaxing experience. Unless you happen to be on National TV and miss a meteor behind your head and just tell the world there’s nothing to see. Not that I’m bitter about that of course!

August 12, 2024August 12, 2024 by Mark Thompson

NASA is Looking for a Commercial Partner to Save VIPER

NASA VIPER rover in clean room — NASA’s VIPER rover sits assembled inside the clean room at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Texas. (Credit: NASA)

Space exploration has led the world in that wonderful human ability to co-operate, alas history shows we don’t do it quite as much as we should! Recently NASA has put a request out to the wider community for ideas for their VIPER rover which was designed for lunar exploration. The exact purpose of VIPER was to hunt for volatile minerals in the polar regions of the Moon. The big question, will NASA get any takers?

August 12, 2024August 12, 2024 by David Dickinson

The Next Solar Cycle Has Started… But the Current One Hasn’t Finished Yet

We may be already seeing the makings of next solar cycle, peeking out through the current one.

It’s been a wild ride. Thus far, Solar Cycle Number 25 has been one of the strongest cycles in recent memory, producing several massive sunspot groups. The current large region turned Earthward (Active Region 3780) is now easily visible with eclipse glasses… no magnification needed. Cycle 25 started back in 2019.

August 12, 2024August 12, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

Are Andromeda and the Milky Way Doomed to Collide? Maybe Not

Scientists discovered the Andromeda galaxy, known as M31, hundreds of years ago, and around a century ago, we realized that it had negative radial velocity toward the Milky Way. In other words, eventually, the two galaxies would merge spectacularly. That has been common knowledge for astronomers since then, but is it really true? A new paper from researchers at the University of Helsinki looks at several confounding factors, including the gravitational influence of other galaxies in our local group, and finds only a 50% chance that the Milky Way will merge with the Andromeda galaxy in the next 10 billion years.

August 12, 2024August 12, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

Astronomers Use Artificial Intelligence To Find Elusive Stars “Gobbling Up” Planets

We recently reported on how the mountains of data produced by astronomical instruments are “perfect for AI.” We’ve also started reporting on several use cases for different AI algorithms. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Texas has developed a new use case that focuses on discovering the interior makeup of exoplanets by looking at a specific type of star.

August 12, 2024August 12, 2024 by Allen Versfeld

Rubin's Secondary Mirror is Installed

On July 24, 2024, Vera C. Rubin Observatory's 3.5-meter secondary mirror was installed onto the Simonyi Survey Telescope. Credit: NOIRLab (CC BY 4.0)

The construction of the Vera C. Rubin observatory has just crossed a major milestone with the successful installation of its 3.5 meter diameter secondary mirror. The observatory is now one step closer to first light in 2025, when it will begin the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST): a mission to repeatedly image the entire sky, at high resolution, to create a time-lapse record of the Universe.

August 11, 2024August 11, 2024 by Matt Williams

New Study Examines the Links Between Science Fiction and Astronomy

Dr. Kip Thorne made it clear that black is not the primary hue of Black Holes. His guidance offered to Nolan raised science fiction to a new level. Credit: Paramount Pictures/Warner Bros.

“Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s science fact.” This quote, attributed to Isaac Asimov, captures science’s intricate relationship with science fiction. And it is hardly a one-way relationship. Whereas science fiction is constantly evolving to reflect new scientific discoveries and theories, science itself has a long history of drawing inspiration from the works of visionary authors, filmmakers, and popular culture. And in some cases, where scientists themselves were the visionaries (like Asimov himself), you had an instance of both!

The relationship between the two was the subject of a recent study by Samuel Boissier, a researcher with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the director of research at the Laboratoire d’astrophysique de Marseille (LAM). In an age when misinformation, “deepfakes,” and deliberate attempts to obscure scientific truths are at an all-time high, examining the interconnection between science, art, and science fiction is very important. According to Boissier, doing so offers people in the scientific community a way to engage with the public in a way that is relatable and accessible.