Space and astronomy news
There’s a link between Earth’s ocean salinity and its climate. Salinity can have a dramatic effect on the climate of any Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star. But what about exoplanets around M-dwarfs?
Continue reading “Ocean Salinity Affects Earth’s Climate. How About on Exoplanets?”
Well-placed observers have a rare opportunity to see an interplanetary spacecraft early next week.
If skies are clear, dedicated observers and imagers have a shot early next week at seeing a spacecraft headed to Jupiter.
The Mission is JUICE, the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer. Launched atop an Ariane-5 rocket from Kourou Space Center in French Guiana on April 14th, 2023, JUICE is due to arrive at Jupiter in 2031. But first, the spacecraft will perform several planetary flybys to pick up speed, hurdling it towards the outer solar system.
Continue reading “See JUICE Next Week During Its Earth-Moon Flyby”
The idea of terraforming Mars, making its atmosphere and environment more Earth-like for human settlement, goes back decades. During that time, many proposed methods have been considered and put aside as “too expensive” or requiring technology well in advance of what we have today. Nevertheless, the idea has persisted and is often considered a part of long-term plans for establishing a human presence on Mars. Given the many plans to establish human outposts on the Moon and then use that infrastructure to send missions to Mars, opportunities for terraforming may be closer than we think.
Unfortunately, any plans for terraforming Mars suffer from unresolved hurdles, not the least of which are the expense, distance, and the need for technologies that don’t currently exist. Triggering a greenhouse effect and warming the surface of Mars would take massive amounts of greenhouse gases, which would be very difficult and expensive to transport. However, a team of engineers and geophysicists led by the University of Chicago proposed a new method for terraforming Mars with nanoparticles. This method would take advantage of resources already present on the Martian surface and, according to their feasibility study, would be enough to start the terraforming process.
Continue reading “New Study Shows Mars Could be Terraformed Using Resources that are Already There”
Many times, it’s better to flesh out technologies fully on Earth’s surface before they’re used in space. That is doubly true if that technology is part of the critical infrastructure keeping astronauts alive on the Moon. Since that infrastructure will undoubtedly use in-situ resources – known as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) – developing test beds here on Earth for those ISRU processes is critical to derisking the technologies before they’re used on a mission. That’s the plan with a test bed designed by researchers at the German Aerospace Center in Bremen – they designed it to improve how well we gather water and oxygen from lunar regolith. Unfortunately, as their work described in a recent paper demonstrates, it will be a challenge to do so.
Continue reading “Researchers Developed a Test Bed For Separating Valuable Material on the Moon”
GPS is ubiquitous on Earth. It guides everything from precision surveying to aircraft navigation. To realize our vision of lunar exploration with a sustained human presence, we’ll need the same precision on the Moon.
That starts with an accurate clock.
Continue reading “What Time is it on the Moon? Lunar GPS Needs to Know”
Primordial black holes formed during the earliest stages of the evolution of the universe. Their immense gravity may be playing havoc in stellar systems. They can transfer energy into wide binary systems disrupting their orbits. Like celestial bullies their disruption might lead to extreme outcomes though like the ejection of a star, only to be replaced by the black hole itself! A new paper studies the interactions of systems like these and looks at ways we might be able to detect them.
Continue reading “Primordial Black Holes Could Kick Out Stars and Replace Them.”
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!
Continue reading “NASA’s Says Goodbye to its Asteroid-Hunting NEOWISE Mission”
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.
Continue reading “Mars Has Lots of Water, But It’s Out of Reach”
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.
Continue reading “A Hopper Could Explore Over 150km of Triton’s Surface In Two Years”
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!
Continue reading “Can Meteor Showers Be Dangerous to Spacecraft?”