Space and astronomy news
The far side of the moon has been getting more popular than a Pink Floyd album lately. A variety of missions are planned to visit the previously overlooked side opposite Earth. Recently NASA announced a few more, including two landers which will measure properties of the Moon’s interior.
Continue reading “NASA is Finally Sending a Lunar Lander to the Moon’s far Side”
In the coming years, multiple space agencies will be sending astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the closing days of the Apollo Program. For NASA, this will represent the long-awaited “return to the Moon,” while every other space agency will see it as a tremendous step for their space programs. One thing they all have in common is that this time around, the goal is to build the necessary infrastructure that will allow for a long-term human presence.
However, amid all the excitement of this approaching moment in history are concerns about the lack of an international framework that will ensure our efforts are for the sake of “for all humankind.” Whereas NASA is seeking partners for its Artemis Program through bilateral agreements, Russia and China are pursuing an agreement of their own. They call it the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), and they too are looking for partners in this endeavor.
Continue reading “China and Russia Announce their Future Plans for the Moon, Including a Human Base”
Chirality is a word normally found in biological textbooks that will occasionally pop up in the astronomy community, usually when discussing potential biosignatures. Typically the term is explained by analogy with left and right hands – how the molecules are curved in one specific way or another, similarly to how human hands are formed either as left or right. These two curvatures of the molecules are mirror images of each other, but not exactly the same. Until recently, detection of chirality has focused on in situ measurements, such as those on Mars where molecules can be sampled directly. Now, however, a team led by Drs. Lucas Patty and Jonas Kühn at the University of Bern, has managed to detect chirality remotely using some impressive new technology.
Continue reading “Astrobiologists Detect a Signature of Life Remotely. Don’t get too Excited, Though, it was With a Helicopter Here on Earth”
A new nanosat has been quietly snapping over 4500 pictures of the Earth and the sky after its launch on May 15th. Rocketed into orbit on a Falcon 9, the nanosat, known as GEOStare2, actually contains two different telescopes – one focuses on a wide field of view while the other has a much narrower field of view but much higher resolution. Together they aim to provide data on Earth, the stars, and the network of satellites in between.
Continue reading “Teeny Tiny Space Telescope has Taken Thousands of Pictures of Both Earth and Space”
Back in 2019, the world was treated to the first ever image of a black hole, which was originally captured in 2017. The feat was widely heralded as a leap forward for astrophysics, supporting Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Now a team led by the Radboud University proposes sending instruments into space to estimate black hole parameters more accurately by an order of magnitude. The newest paper, led by Dr. Volodymyr Kudriashov, translates science goals into technical requirements and focuses on the instrumentation needed for the Event Horizon Imager, as the mission is called.
Continue reading “Space Telescopes Could Provide Next-Level Images of Black Hole Event Horizons”
At the heart of most galaxies is a supermassive black hole. These beasts of gravity can play a crucial role in the formation and evolution of their galaxy. But astronomers still don’t fully understand when the influence of black holes becomes significant. Did large black holes form early in the universe, causing galaxies to form around them? Or did black holes grow after its primordial galaxy had begun to form? You might call this the chicken or egg problem. But a recent study suggests that galaxies and their supermassive black holes can have a mutual interaction that allows them to co-evolve.
Continue reading “Supermassive Black Hole Winds Were Already Blowing Less Than a Billion Years After the Big Bang”
Since the Juno spacecraft has been in orbit around Jupiter for nearly five years — since July 4, 2016 — you may have forgotten about that time back in 2013 Juno flew past Earth. The spacecraft needed a little extra boost to reach Jupiter, so it used Earth for a gravity assist. Image editor Kevin Gill reminded us of that flyby with some stunning newly processed images of Earth, taken by the JunoCam, the “citizen science” camera on board. Pale blue dot indeed!
Continue reading “Juno Captured This Image of Earth on its Way Out to Jupiter Back in 2013”
It is hard for humans to wrap their heads around the fact that there are galaxies so far away that the light coming from them can be warped in a way that they actually experience a type of time delay. But that is exactly what is happening with extreme forms of gravitational lensing, such as those that give us the beautiful images of Einstein rings. In fact, the time dilation around some of these galaxies can be so extreme that the light from a single event, such as a supernova, can actually show up on Earth at dramatically different times. That is exactly what a team led by Dr. Steven Rodney at the University of South Carolina and Dr. Gabriel Brammer of the University of Copenhagen has found. Except three copies of this supernova have already appeared – and the team thinks it will show up again one more time, 20 years from now.
Continue reading “Astronomers saw the Same Supernova Three Times Thanks to Gravitational Lensing. And in Twenty Years They Think They’ll see it one More Time”
In this week’s edition of new unexplained astronomical phenomena, a team of astronomers led by Dr. Leigh Smith from Cambridge found a star 100 times larger than our sun that nearly disappears from the sky every few decades. They also have no idea why it does so.
Continue reading “Astronomers Find a Blinking Star Near the Center of the Milky Way”
Internal geological processes on the moon are almost non-existent. However, when it gets smacked by a space rock, its surface can change dramatically. Debris from that impact can also travel over large distances, transplanting material from one impact site hundreds of kilometers away, where it can remain untouched in its inert environment for billions of years.
So when Apollo 17 astronauts took regolith samples at their landing site near Serenitatis Basin, they collected not only rocks from the basin itself, but from other impacts that had happened billions of years ago. Differentiating material that actually formed part of the Basin from material that landed their after an impact has proven difficult.
Continue reading “Apollo 17 Astronauts Brought Home Samples From the Oldest Impact Crater on the Moon”