Universe Today

July 18, 2022July 18, 2022 by Evan Gough

Two Spacecraft Could Work Together to Capture an Asteroid and Bring it Close to Earth for Mining

Mining asteroids might be necessary for humanity to expand into the Solar System. But what effect would asteroid mining have on the world's economy? Credit: ESA.

Humanity seems destined to expand into the Solar System. What exactly that looks like, and how difficult and tumultuous the endeavour might be, is wide open to speculation. But there are some undeniable facts attached to the prospect.

We need materials to build infrastructure, and getting it all into space from Earth is not realistic. (Be quiet, space elevator people.)

July 18, 2022July 18, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Weird String-Like Object Found on Mars, Probably Dropped by the Rover

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image of the area in front of it using its onboard Front Right Hazard Avoidance Camera A. This image was acquired on July 12, 2022 (Sol 495) at the local mean solar time of 16:56:25. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Here’s the best evidence I’ve ever seen for water on Mars: NASA’s Perseverance rover came across a tangled mess of string on Mars, which looks like snarled fishing line left behind by a frustrated angler. Where there’s fishing, there’s gotta be water, right?

Actually, this tiny piece of trash is likely something left over from Perseverance’s parachute, or descent stage or even the backshell, which all worked in tandem to bring the rover safely to the surface of Mars back in February of 2021.

July 17, 2022July 17, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

A new Record for the Strongest Magnetic Field Seen in the Universe: 1.6 Billion Tesla

A massive flare ejected from a magnetar.

A team of astronomers using the Chinese Insight-HXMT x-ray telescope have made a direct measurement of the strongest magnetic field in the known universe. The magnetic field belongs to a magnetar currently in the process of cannibalizing an orbiting companion.

July 15, 2022July 15, 2022 by Anton Pozdnyakov

Booster 7’s BOOM, Nuclear Mission to Neptune, More JWST Images

Even more pictures from James Webb Space Telescope, China’s planning a mission to Neptune, SpaceX’s Booster 7 suffers from an explosion, black holes are messy eaters, going under Europa’s ice crust and more.

July 15, 2022July 15, 2022 by Evan Gough

These Ancient Microbes Give a Glimpse of What Extraterrestrial Life Might Look Like

Rhodopsins are ancient proteins evolved by some of Earth's first life forms. They turned sunlight into energy without photosynthesis. Image Credit: Sohail Wasif/University of California, Riverside.

Will we discover simple life somewhere? Maybe on Enceladus or Europa in our Solar System, or further away on an exoplanet? As we get more proficient at exploring our Solar System and studying exoplanets, the prospect of finding some simple life is moving out of the creative realm of science fiction and into concrete mission planning.

As the hopeful day of discovery draws nearer, it’s a good time to ask: what might this potential life look like?

July 15, 2022July 15, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

JWST Also Looked Inside the Solar System, at Jupiter and its Moons

Jupiter, center, and its moon Europa, left, are seen through the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument 2.12 micron filter. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and B. Holler and J. Stansberry (STScI)

After the ‘big reveal’ earlier this week of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first full color images and spectra of the universe, the science team has now released data from closer to home. One stunning shot includes Jupiter and its moons, and there are also data from several asteroids. These latest data are actually just engineering images, designed to test JWST’s ability to track solar system targets, as well as test out how the team can produce images from the data. The quality and detail in these test images have excited the mission scientists.

July 15, 2022July 15, 2022 by Matt Williams

To get Artificial Gravity on the Moon, you'd Need a Giant Rotating Lunar Base

Living and working in space for extended periods of time presents a number of challenges. These include radiation, as locations beyond Earth’s protective magnetosphere are exposed to greater levels of solar and cosmic rays. There’s also the need for self-sufficiency since Lunar or Martian bases are too far to rely on regular resupply missions like the International Space Station (ISS). Last, there’s the issue of low gravity, which is especially pressing for long-term missions and habitats beyond Earth. If humanity’s future truly lies in space, we must devise solutions to this issue in advance.

A popular idea is to create rotating habitats in space that simulate artificial gravity, like the Pinwheel Station or the O’Neill Cylinder. Another proposal by a team of Japanese researchers calls for something bolder: a rotating habitat on the Moon! On July 5th, representatives from Kyoto University and the Kajima Corporation (one of the oldest and largest construction companies in Japan) announced that they would be partnering to conduct a study on this concept and how it could make humanity’s plans for living on the Moon and Mars a reality!

July 15, 2022July 15, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

The Earliest Galaxies Rotated Slowly, Revving up Over Billions of Years

This image features the spiral galaxy NGC 691, imaged in fantastic detail by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). This galaxy is the eponymous member of the NGC 691 galaxy group, a group of gravitationally bound galaxies that lie about 120 million light-years from Earth. Objects such as NGC 691 are observed by Hubble using a range of filters. Each filter only allows certain wavelengths of light to reach Hubble’s WFC3. The images collected using different filters are then coloured by specialised visual artists who can make informed choices about which colour best corresponds to which filter. By combining the coloured images from individual filters, a full-colour image of the astronomical object can be recreated. In this way, we can get remarkably good insight into the nature and appearance of these objects. Links Video of the Eponymous NGC 691

A team of astronomers have used the ALMA telescope to find a slowly-rotating galaxy in the early universe. That galaxy is the youngest ever found with a measured rotation, and it’s much slower than present-day galaxies.

July 14, 2022July 14, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

A New Instrument is Going to the ISS to Study the Climate Impact of Dust in Earth’s Upper Atmosphere

People often seem surprised when they learn that NASA doesn’t just look out to the other planets, stars, and galaxies. It’s also an agency that studies our own home planet—from space! And why not? Earth is part of the solar system, too. So, to that end, there’s a new Earth studies mission called EMIT on its way to the International Space Station. It’s designed to track dust as it moves from one place to another on our planet through through our atmosphere.

The official name of the mission is the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT, for short). It will use a high-tech imaging spectrometer to study dust around the globe over the next year.

A dust plume stretches over the eastern Mediterranean, shrouding parts of Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. The June 2020 image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. NASA’s EMIT mission will help scientists better understand how airborne dust affects climate. Credits: NASA — A dust plume stretches over the eastern Mediterranean, shrouding parts of Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. The June 2020 image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. NASA’s EMIT mission will help scientists better understand how airborne dust affects climate. Credit: NASA

July 14, 2022July 14, 2022 by Matt Williams

Here are the Locations in the sky for the First JWST Images

On the morning of Tuesday, July 12th, the world was treated to the first images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope – the most detailed images of the cosmos taken by the most powerful telescope ever! These featured familiar features from our galaxy, including updated images of the Carina Nebula, a nebula surrounding a stellar remnant (the Southern Ring), a collection of merging galaxies (Stephans Quintet), an exoplanet (WASP 96b), and a deep field image showing thousands of galaxies and gravitational lenses (SMACS 0723).

In anticipation of these images being released, a helpful space exploration ambassador shared a map that shows where these objects are located within (or in relation to) the Milky Way. The map was uploaded to the Reddit group Space on July 10th (two days before image release day) and is the work of data scientist Tony Rice (user name u/rtphokie). Rice is an information security engineer for a telecommunications company and a Solar System Ambassador with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.