Universe Today

July 9, 2024July 9, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

NASA Imagines a Catastrophic Asteroid Impact to Study How to Prevent it

The Netflix movie Don’t Look Up received plenty of accolades for its scarily realistic portrayal of a professor from Michigan State University attempting to warn the world about a civilization-ending asteroid impact. In reality, there are plenty of organizations in the US government and beyond whose job it is to find and avoid those impacts. And the best way to train them to do those jobs is to run scenarios and try to determine what actions would need to be taken. That was the idea behind the fifth Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise, held at John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in April. NASA recently released a preliminary report on the results of the exercise, with a fully detailed one to come in August.

July 8, 2024July 8, 2024 by Matt Williams

A Moon Base Will Need a Transport System

Artist's impression of astronauts on the lunar surface, as part of the Artemis Program. How will they store power on the Moon? 3D printed batteries could help. Credit: NASA

Through the Artemis Program, NASA will return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 landed in 1972. Beyond this historic mission, scheduled for September 2026, NASA plans to establish the infrastructure that will enable annual missions to the Moon, eventually leading to a permanent human presence there. As we addressed in a previous article, this will lead to a huge demand for cargo delivery systems that meet the logistical, scientific, and technical requirements of crews engaged in exploration.

Beyond this capacity for delivering crews and cargo, there is also the need for transportation systems that will address logistical needs and assist in exploration efforts. These requirements were outlined in a 2024 Moon to Mars Architecture white paper titled “Lunar Mobility Drivers and Needs.” Picking up from the concurrently-released “Lunar Surface Cargo,” this whitepaper addresses the need for lunar infrastructure that will enable the movement of astronauts and payloads from landing sites to where they are needed the most. As usual, they identified a critical gap between the current capabilities and what is to be expected.

July 8, 2024July 8, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Mapping the Milky Way’s Dark Matter Halo

The Galactic disk warp "dances gracefully" under the torque of the dark matter halo (an artistic impression created by Kaiyuan Hou and Zhanxun Dong from the School of Design, Shanghai Jiao Tong University).

Anytime astronomers talk of mapping the Milky Way I am always reminded how tricky the study of the Universe can be. After all, we live inside the Milky Way and working out what it looks like or mapping it from the inside is not the easiest of missions. It’s one thing to map the visible matter but mapping the dark matter is even harder. Challenges aside, a team of astronomers think they have managed to map the dark matter halo surrounding our Galaxy using Cepheid Variable stars and data from Gaia.

July 8, 2024July 8, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Ammonites Were Doing Fine Until the Asteroid Hit

Ammonites basking under the Late Cretaceous sun. Artwork by Callum Pursall (@cpursall on X)

I must confess, I think asteroids and I think of movies like Deep Impact or Armageddon! Scientists think that an asteroid like the ones that appeared in the Hollywood blockbusters struck Mexico 66 million years ago and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. It now seems they may not have been the only ones that were wiped from our planet. Ammonites are marine mollusks that flourished for 350 million years but they were wiped out too. Some research suggests they were struggling in North America but thriving in other parts of the world.

July 8, 2024July 8, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

A Handy Attachment Could Make Lunar Construction a Breeze

Moving large amounts of regolith is a requirement for any long-term mission to the Moon or Mars. But so far, humanity has only sent systems capable of moving small amounts of soil at a time – primarily for sample collection. Sending a large, dedicated excavator to perform such work might be cost-prohibitive due to its weight, so why not send a bulldozer attachment to a mobility unit already planned for use on the surface? That was the thought process of an interdisciplinary team of engineers from NASA and the Colorado School of Mines. They came up with the Lunar Attachment Node for Construction and Excavation – or LANCE.

July 6, 2024July 6, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Webb Looks at One of the Best Gravitationally Lensed Quasars Ever Discovered

A small image of a galaxy distorted by gravitational lensing into a dim ring. At the top of the ring are three very bright spots with diffraction spikes coming off them, right next to each other: these are copies of a single quasar in the lensed galaxy, duplicated by the gravitational lens. In the centre of the ring, the elliptical galaxy doing the lensing appears as a small blue dot. Courtesy: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Nierenberg

It looks like a distant ring with three sparkly jewels, but the Webb telescope’s (JWST) most recent image is really the view of a distant quasar lensed by a nearby elliptical galaxy. The telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) looked at the faint apparition during a study of dark matter and its distribution in the Universe.

July 6, 2024July 7, 2024 by Matt Williams

NASA's Skyrocketing Need for Cargo Deliveries to the Moon

Artist's impression of astronauts on the lunar surface, as part of the Artemis Program. Credit: NASA

NASA has big plans for the Moon. Through the Artemis Program, NASA plans to create a program of “sustained exploration and lunar development.” This will include the creation of the Lunar Gateway, an orbital habitat that will facilitate missions to and from the surface, and the Artemis Base Camp that will allow for extended stays. Through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, NASA has contracted with commercial partners like SpaceX and Blue Origin to deliver scientific experiments and crew to the lunar surface.

However, these efforts are expected to culminate in the creation of a permanent outpost and human presence on the Moon. This will require far more in the way of crew and payload services to ensure crews can be sustained in the long run. In a recent white paper, “Lunar Surface Cargo,” NASA researchers identified a significant gap between current cargo delivery capabilities and future demand. The paper indicates that this growing cargo demand can only be met by creating a “mixed cargo lander fleet.”

July 5, 2024July 5, 2024 by Alan Boyle

The First Space War Is Here: Find Out How the Next One May Play Out

Illustration: Satellites in orbit — An artist's conception shows satellites that are part of the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program. (Space Force Illustration)

Wars in space are no longer just science fiction. In fact, Space War I has been raging for more than two years, with no quick end in sight. This isn’t the kind of conflict that involves X-wing fighters or Space Marines. Instead, it’s a battle over how satellites are being used to collect imagery, identify military targets and facilitate communications in the war between Ukraine and Russia.

“As I looked at Ukraine in the early months, it was obvious to me: This is the first space war,” says David Ignatius, a journalist who lives a double life as a foreign-affairs columnist for The Washington Post and a spy-thriller novelist.

In the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast, Ignatius delves into the potential national-security threats posed by satellite-based warfare — and how he wove those threats into the plot threads of a new novel titled “Phantom Orbit.” The tale lays out a scenario in which Space War I tips toward a potentially catastrophic Space War II.

July 5, 2024July 5, 2024 by Evan Gough

Black Holes Dominate Large Regions of Space, But They’re Mysterious

This image is from a black hole simulator. It shows a supermassive black hole, or quasar, surrounded by a swirling disk of material called an accretion disk. There are many unanswered questions about black holes and how they grow to be so massive. Simulations is one way of finding answers. Image Credit: Caltech/Phil Hopkins group

In the beginning, the Universe was all primordial gas. Somehow, some of it was swept up into supermassive black holes (SMBHs), the gargantuan singularities that reside at the heart of galaxies. The details of how that happened and how SMBHs accumulate mass are some of astrophysics’ biggest questions.

July 5, 2024July 5, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

CubeSat Propulsion Technologies are Taking Off

Two cubesats communicated and then maneuvered towards one another in a recent technology demonstration. Image Credit: NASA

CubeSats are becoming ever more popular, with around 2,400 total launched so far. However, the small size limits their options for fundamental space exploration technologies, including propulsion. They become even more critical when mission planners design missions that require them to travel to other planets or even asteroids. A team from Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi recently released a review of the different Cubesat propulsion technologies currently available – let’s look at their advantages and disadvantages.