Space and astronomy news
Radishes are a very divisive food – most people either love them or hate them. However, they are very easy to grow, and have now been grown in one of the most inhospitable environments of all – the International Space Station.
Continue reading “Attention Astronauts. Fresh Radishes Are Now On the Menu”
The first-ever all-sky X-ray map of our galaxy, provided by the ESA’s eROSITA spacecraft, reveals two massive bubbles. These bubbles extend for up to 50,000 lightyears above and below the Milky Way, and are believed to be remnants of a massive outburst that occurred millions of years ago.
Continue reading “A second set of even larger bubbles has been found blasting out of the Milky Way’s center”
A monster lurks at the heart of many galaxies – even our own Milky Way. This monster possesses the mass of millions or billions of Suns. Immense gravity shrouds it within a dark cocoon of space and time – a supermassive black hole. But while hidden in darkness and difficult to observe, black holes can also shine brighter than an entire galaxy. When feeding, these sleeping monsters awaken transforming into a quasar – one of the Universe’s most luminous objects. The energy a quasar radiates into space is so powerful, it can interfere with star formation for thousands of light years across their host galaxies. But one galaxy appears to be winning a struggle against its awoken blazing monster and in a recent paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, astronomers are trying to determine how this galaxy survives.
Distances in the solar system are vast, and it typically takes millions of years for small bodies to migrate from one orbit to another. But researchers recently discovered a “super highway”, where interactions among the planets are capable of sending comets and asteroids from Jupiter to Neptune in as little as a decade.
Continue reading “Gravitational interactions can drive comets and asteroids from Jupiter out to Neptune in just 10 years”
In the past twenty years, one of the biggest developments to take place in the realm of space exploration has been the growth of the commercial space industry (aka. NewSpace). As a result of growing demand and declining costs, more companies are coming to the fore to offer launch services that are making space more accessible and cost-effective.
One such company is the space delivery services company Aevum, an Alabama-based startup specializing in Autonomous Launch Vehicles (AuLVs). On Dec. 3rd, 2020, Aevum unveiled their prototype vehicle, the RAVN-X. Once operational, this autonomous suborbital spaceplane will be able to send satellites and other small payloads to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in just three hours.
Continue reading “The RAVN-X is a new Autonomous Aircraft Designed to Launch Small Satellites”
Mining is traditionally thought of as an activity that utilizes picks and shovels, or in more modern times, huge machines that can tear apart entire mountainsides in minutes. Industrial might isn’t the only way to rip apart rock though. A scalable and much more environmentally friendly way to access the materials mining seeks to extract is to use microbes. Such techniques are already widely used in terrestrial mining operations. But recently, a team led by the University of Edinburgh have launched an asteroid mining experiment using microbes on the International Space Station (ISS).
Continue reading “We’re About to Find Out How Well Biomining Works in Space”
At a fundamental level, Mars is a volcanic planet. Its surface is home to the Solar System’s largest extinct volcano, Olympus Mons, and another trio of well-known volcanoes at Tharsis Montes. And those are just the highlights: there are many other volcanoes on the surface. Though that volcanic activity ceased long ago, the planet’s surface tells the tale of a world disrupted and shaped by powerful volcanic eruptions.
Continue reading “You Can See the Spot Where Lava Broke Through the Wall of a Martian Crater and Began Filling it Up”
The solar system’s two massive gas giant planets pair up at dusk on December 21st, with a rare conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.
A once-in-a-lifetime view is about to grace the dusk sky worldwide, closing out 2020 with one of the best astronomical events of the year.
Continue reading “Catch an Awe-Inspiring Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21st”
As Einstein originally predicted with his General Theory of Relativity, gravity alters the curvature of spacetime. As a consequence, the passage of light changes as it encounters a gravitational field, which is how General Relativity was confirmed! For decades, astronomers have taken advantage of this to conduct Gravitational Lensing (GL) – where a distant source is focused and amplified by a massive object in the foreground.
In a recent study, two theoretical physicists argue that the Sun could be used in the same way to create a Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL). This powerful telescope, they argue, would provide enough light amplification to allow for Direct Imaging studies of nearby exoplanets. This could allow astronomers to determine if planets like Proxima b are potentially-habitable long before we send missions to study them.
Continue reading “If We Used the Sun as a Gravitational Lens Telescope, This is What a Planet at Proxima Centauri Would Look Like”
Virgin Galactic lit up SpaceShipTwo’s rocket motor for the first time in the skies over New Mexico today, but only for an instant before the engine shut down and the plane glided back to a safe landing at Spaceport America.
The flight test team had hoped that the SpaceShipTwo craft known as VSS Unity might make it all the way to the 50-mile space milestone with two test pilots at the controls. Unity has made it that high up twice before, in 2018 and 2019, when the test operation was based at Mojave Air and Space Port in California — but this was the first powered test flight planned since operations moved to Spaceport America.
Continue reading “SpaceShipTwo’s First Powered Test Flight Since Move to New Mexico Fizzles Out”