Universe Today

September 30, 2021September 30, 2021 by Evan Gough

BepiColombo Meets Mercury for the First Time on October 1

New research suggests that Mercury is still contracting and shrinking. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/Carnegie Institution of Washington/USGS/Arizona State University

BepiColombo made a quick visit to Venus in August and is on to its next rendezvous. On October 1st it’ll perform a flyby of Mercury, the spacecraft’s eventual destination. This visit is just a little flirtation—one of six—ahead of its eventual orbital link-up with Mercury in late 2025.

The quick visit will yield some scientific results, though, and they’ll be just a taste of what’s ahead in BepiColumbo’s one-year mission to Mercury.

September 30, 2021September 30, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Starlink can be Used as a Navigation System too

Starlink keeps growing, and so do its capabilities. Lately, even people outside of SpaceX have even been developing capabilities for it. A team of researchers from the Ohio State University (OSU) and the University of California Irvine (UCI) has developed a way to use Starlinks networked satellites as a basic navigation tool.

September 30, 2021September 30, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Giant Balls of Mush Made From Ammonia and Water Form in the Atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune

One advantage to planetary science is that insights from one planet could explain phenomena on another. We understand Venus’ greenhouse gas effect from our own experience on the Earth, and Jupiter and Saturn share some characteristics. But Jupiter also provides insight into other, farther out systems, such as Uranus and Neptune. Now, a discovery from a spacecraft orbiting Jupiter might have solved a long-standing mystery about Uranus and Neptune – where has all the ammonia gone?

September 29, 2021September 29, 2021 by Evan Gough

Even the Quiet Supermassive Black Holes are Blasting out Neutrinos and Gamma Rays

Is there anywhere in the Universe where we can escape from radiation? Certainly not here on Earth. And not in space itself, which is filled with diffuse radiation in the form of gamma rays and neutrinos. Scientists have struggled to explain where all those gamma rays and neutrinos come from. A trio of researchers is proposing a source for all that radiation in a new paper: resting black holes.

September 29, 2021September 29, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

Landsat 9 Joins a Fleet of Earth Observation Satellites

Landsat 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on September 27, 2021 on an an Atlas V 401 rocket. Credit: NASA

Earth has a new eye in orbit to monitor our changing planet.

Landsat 9 launched on September 27, 2021 continuing the Landsat family of satellite’s nearly 50-year tradition of making critical observations to help with energy and water management, forest monitoring, human and environmental health, urban planning, disaster recovery and agriculture.

September 29, 2021September 29, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Mars has Seasons, and They Might Have Revealed Where it’s Hiding its Water

The search for water on Mars has consumed a lot of data collection and research time. Underground lakes have been found and then discounted again. Melted ice has been proposed and then dismissed again. All this attention focuses on one of the most important resources available to any future Martian explorers. Water is critical to human life and can also be split into two crucial components for rocket fuel. So finding an easily accessible cache of it is a prerequisite to any serious human mission to the red planet that expects to return its crew back home.

A team from the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) thinks they might have found easily accessible reservoirs of water ice at much more temperate latitudes than had been traditionally thought. Finding any significant water source near the equator would be cause for celebration, as most large known water deposits are located near the poles, which is even more inhospitable to human exploration than the rest of the planet.

September 29, 2021September 29, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Dozens of Robots Competed to Race Through Underground Caves

America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is well known for its challenges. It held a series of autonomous driving competitions back in the early 2000s that directly led to today’s self-driving cars. Now that Grand Challenge has evolved into a new one – the Subterranean (SubT) challenge, which took place last week. This new one also happens to be directly applicable to technologies that would be useful in space exploration.

September 29, 2021September 29, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Lunar Landers Could Spray Instant Landing Pads as They Arrive at the Moon

Illustration of the in-Flight Alumina Spray Technique (FAST). Credit: Masten Space Systems

Space exploration requires all kinds of interesting solutions to complex problems. There is a branch of NASA designed to support the innovators trying to solve those problems – the Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). They occasionally hand out grant funding to worthy projects trying to tackle some of these challenges. The results from one of those grants are now in, and they are intriguing. A team from Masten Space Systems, supported by Honeybee Robotics, Texas A&M, and the University of Central Florida, came up with a way a lunar lander could deposit its own landing pad on the way down.

September 29, 2021September 29, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

Aging White Dwarfs Become Even More Magnetic

An artist view of a highly magnetized neutron star -- a magnetar. It's thought that these objects have solid surfaces and suffer eruptions when their magnetic fields are disturbed. Credit: Carl Knox/ OzGrav

In a few billion years the Sun will end its life as a white dwarf. As the Sun runs out of hydrogen to fuse for energy it will collapse under its own weight. Gravity will compress the Sun until it’s roughly the size of Earth, at which point a bit of quantum physics will kick in. Electrons from the Sun’s atoms will push back against gravity, creating what is known as degeneracy pressure. Once a star reaches this state it will cool over time, and the once brilliant star will eventually fade into the dark.

September 28, 2021September 28, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

NASA’s Human Space Exploration Division is Being Split in Two

Large government organizations require lots of people to run them. NASA is no exception. America’s space agency has long been under pressure to organizationally support its ongoing Artemis program to return to the moon. Now, it has taken a step in that direction by announcing that its Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate will split into two new ones: the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate and the Space Operations Missions Directorate.