Space and astronomy news
The crew of NASA’s first Mars habitat simulation, CHAPEA 1, exited their Earth-based environment after 378 days on July 6 at 5 p.m. EDT. Greeted by friends, family, mission team members and project directors, the crew of four expressed gratitude and optimism about their time in isolation and the data collected, which will contribute to the future goal of putting boots on Mars.
Continue reading “Volunteers Complete a Simulated Year on Mars”
Calculating the distance to far-away objects, such as galaxy clusters and quasars, is difficult. But it is also critical to our understanding of how the universe evolves. Luckily, humanity has a trusty workhorse that has been collecting data for such calculations for decades—Hubble. It is by far the best telescope suited to the job, as described by a recent NASA press release about a distance measurement to a supernova in a nearby galaxy.
Continue reading “Only Hubble Could Make this Measurement of a Supernova”
If history has taught us one thing, it is that science fiction often gives way to science fact. Consider the Star Trek communicator and the rise of flip phones in the late 1990s and early 2000s, or how 2001: A Space Odyssey predicted orbiting space stations and reusable space planes – like the International Space Station (ISS) and the Space Shuttle. And who can forget Jules Verne’s classic, From the Earth to the Moon, and how it anticipated that humans would one day walk on the Moon? Almost a century later, this dream would be realized with the Apollo Program.
The latest comes from Cornell University, where a team of researchers has developed a novel in-suit urine collection and filtration system inspired by the suits the Fremen wore in Frank Herbert’s Dune. Once integrated into NASA’s standard spacesuit—the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU)—this system has the potential to provide astronauts with additional water while reducing the risk of hygiene-related medical events. In short, the stillsuit technology has the potential to enable longer-duration missions on the surface of the Moon, Mars, and orbit.
Continue reading “Dune-Inspired Stillsuits Could Allow Astronauts to Recycle Their Urine Into Water”
Novel ways to move on other celestial bodies always draw the attention of the space exploration community. Here at UT, we’ve reported on everything from robots that suspend themselves from the walls of Martian caves to robots that hop using jets of locally mined gas. But we haven’t yet reported on the idea of a balloon that “walks.” But that is the idea behind the BALloon Locomotion for Extreme Terrain, or BALLET, a project from Hari Nayar, a Principal Roboticist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and his colleagues.
Continue reading “A Walking Balloon Could One Day Explore Titan – Or Earth’s Sea Floor”
What happens when a spiral and an elliptical galaxy collide? To celebrate the second anniversary of the “first light” for the Webb telescope, NASA released an amazing infrared view of two galaxies locked in a tight dance. They’re called the Penguin and the Egg and their dance will last hundreds of millions of years.
Continue reading “Webb Completes Its Second Year of Operations”
Look at most spiral or barred spiral galaxies and you will see multiple regions where stars are forming. These star forming regions are comprised of mostly hydrogen gas with a few other elements for good measure. The first galaxies in the Universe had huge supplies of this star forming gas. Left unchecked they could have burned through the gas quickly, generating enormous amounts of star formation. Life fast though and die young for such an energetic burst of star formation would soon fizzle out leaving behind dead and dying stars. In some way it seems, galaxies seem to regulate their star formation thanks to supermassive black holes at their centre.
Continue reading “Galaxies Regulate their Own Growth so they Don’t Run Out of Star Forming Gas”
Dark matter is curious stuff! As the name suggests, it’s dark making it notoriously difficult to study. Although it’s is invisible, it influences stars in a galaxy through gravity. Now, a team of astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to chart the movements of stars within the Draco dwarf galaxy to detect the subtle gravitational pull of its surrounding dark matter halo. This 3D map required studying nearly two decades of archival data from the Draco galaxy. They found that dark matter piles up more in the centre, as predicted by cosmological models.
Continue reading “Mapping the Stars in a Dwarf Galaxy to Reveal its Dark Matter”
When massive stars detonate as supernovae, they leave often behind a pulsar. These fast rotating stellar corpses have fascinated scientists since their discovery in 1967. One nearby pulsar turns 174 times a second and now, its size has been precisely measured. An instrument on board the International Space Station was used to measure x-ray pulses from the star. A supercomputer was then used to analyse its properties and found it was 1.4 times the mass of the Sun and measured only 11.4 km across!
Continue reading “A Close Pulsar Measures 11.4 km Across”
Two recent studies published in The Astrophysical Journal discuss findings regarding solar flare properties and a new classification index and the Sun’s magnetic field, specifically what’s called solar magnetic reconnection. These studies hold the potential to help researchers better understand the internal processes of the Sun, specifically pertaining to solar flare activity and space weather. Here, Universe Today discusses these two studies with both lead authors regarding the motivation behind the studies, significant results, and implications on our understanding regarding solar flares and space weather.
Continue reading “Solar Flares and Solar Magnetic Reconnection Get New Spotlight in Two Blazing Studies”
In a new movie titled “Fly Me to the Moon,” a marketing consultant played by Scarlett Johansson uses Tang breakfast drink, Crest toothpaste and Omega watches to give a publicity boost to NASA’s Apollo moon program.
The marketing consultant may be totally fictional. And don’t get me started on the fake moon landing that’s part of the screwball comedy’s plot. But the fact that the makers of Tang, Crest and Omega allied themselves with NASA’s brand in the 1960s is totally real.
More than 50 years later, those companies are still benefiting from the NASA connection, says Richard Jurek, a marketing and public relations executive in the Chicago area who’s one of the authors of “Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program.”
In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Jurek says Tang sold poorly when it was introduced in the late 1950s. “But once it was announced that it was being used in the space program and marketed that way, it became a huge bestseller for them, and in fact, still sells more overseas — and is a multibillion-dollar brand today,” he says.
Continue reading “‘Fly Me to the Moon’ Points to the Past and Future of Moonshot Marketing”