Space and astronomy news
For many of us, gardening has been a therapeutic distraction during this time of pandemic quarantine. But some researchers from the Jet Propulsion Lab have been gardening at home with a specific goal in mind: growing food on the Moon.
Continue reading “Radishes Can Likely Grow in Lunar Regolith”
What’s the most interesting fact you know about Uranus? The fact that its rotational axis is completely out of line with every other planet in the solar system? Or the fact that Uranus’ magnetosphere is asymmetrical, notably tilted relative to its rotational axis, and significantly offset from the center of the planet? Or the fact that it’s moons are all named after characters from Shakespeare or Alexander Pope?
All of those facts (with the exception of the literary references) have come from a very limited dataset. Some of the best data was collected during a Voyager 2 flyby in 1986. Since then, the only new data has come from Earth-based telescopes. While they’ve been steadily increasing in resolution, they have only been able to scratch the surface of what may be lurking in the system surrounding the closest Ice Giant. Hopefully that is about to change, as a team of scientists has published a white paper advocating for a visit from a new Flagship class spacecraft.
Continue reading “The Moons of Uranus Are Fascinating Enough On Their Own That We Should Send a Flagship Mission Out There”
Earth’s lithosphere is made up of seven large tectonic plates and a number of smaller ones. The theory of plate tectonics that describes how these plates move is about 50 years old. But there’s never really been an understanding of how this system developed, and how the Earth’s shell split into separate plates and started moving.
Now a group of researchers have a possible explanation.
Continue reading “What Cracked the Earth’s Outer Shell and Started its Plate Tectonics?”
In the coming years, multiple space agencies will be sending missions (including astronauts) to the Moon’s southern polar region to conduct vital research. In addition to scouting resources in the area (in preparation for the construction of a lunar base) these missions will also investigate the possibility of conducting various scientific investigations on the far side of the Moon.
However, two prominent scientists (Dr. Karan Jani and Prof. Abraham Loeb) recently published a paper where they argue that another kind of astronomy could be conducted on the far side of the Moon – Gravitational Wave astronomy! As part of NASA’s Project Artemis, they explain how a Gravitational-wave Lunar Observatory for Cosmology (GLOC) would be ideal for exploring GW in the richest and most challenging frequencies.
Continue reading “The Moon is an Ideal Spot for a Gravitational Wave Observatory”
Natural processes here on Earth continually re-shape the planet’s surface. Craters from ancient asteroid strikes are erased in a short period of time, in geological terms. So how can researchers understand Earth’s history, and how thoroughly it may have been pummeled by asteroid strikes?
Scientists can turn their attention to our ancient companion, the Moon.
Continue reading “800 Million Years Ago, it Was Raining Asteroids on the Earth and Moon”
Welcome back to our Fermi Paradox series, where we take a look at possible resolutions to Enrico Fermi’s famous question, “Where Is Everybody?” Today, we examine the possibility that there is something in the Universe that prevents life from reaching the point where we would be able to hear from it.
In 1950, Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi sat down to lunch with some of his colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he had worked five years prior as part of the Manhattan Project. According to various accounts, the conversation turned to aliens and the recent spate of UFOs. Into this, Fermi issued a statement that would go down in the annals of history: “Where is everybody?“
This became the basis of the Fermi Paradox, which refers to the high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and the apparent lack of evidence. Seventy years later, we still haven’t answered that question, which has led to many theories as to why the “Great Silence” endures. A popular one is that there must be “Great Filter” that prevents life from reaching an advanced stage of development.
Continue reading “Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” III: What is the Great Filter?”
Landsat 8 strikes again.
Landsat 8 is the United States Geological Survey’s most recently launched satellite, and it holds the powerful Operational Land Imager (OLI.) The OLI is a powerful multi-spectral imager with a wide dynamic range.
The OLI does a great job of keeping an eye on Earth, and now its captured images of winds in Namibia picking dust up and carrying it out over the Atlantic Ocean.
Continue reading “Dust Seen Streaming Out of Namibia Into the Atlantic Ocean”
We’ve detected thousands of exoplanets, but for the most part, nobody’s ever seen them. They’re really just data, and graphs of light curves. The exoplanet images you see here at Universe Today and other space websites are the creations of very skilled illustrators, equal parts data and creative license. But that’s starting to change.
The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has captured images of two exoplanets orbiting a young, Sun-like star.
Continue reading “Wow! An Actual Picture of Multiple Planets Orbiting a Sunlike Star”
On July 20th, SpaceX launched a South Korean military communications satellite (ANASIS-II) using the same Falcon 9 that delivered a pair of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) back in May. And in another interesting development, this mission was the first time that SpaceX managed to not only retrieve the first stage booster at sea but also retrieved both halves of the payload fairing.
Continue reading “SpaceX Finally Catches Both Halves of a Falcon 9 Fairing”
We’re getting better and better at detecting exoplanets. Using the transit method of detection, the Kepler Space Telescope examined over 530,000 stars and discovered over 2,600 explanets in nine years. TESS, the successor to Kepler, is still active, and has so far identified over 1800 candidate exoplanets, with 46 confirmed.
But what if, hidden in all that data, there were even more planets? Astronomers at Warwick University said they’ve found one of these “lost” planets, and that they think they’ll find even more.
Continue reading “Astronomers are Starting to Find Planets in Much Longer Orbits. Cooler, More Habitable Planets”