Universe Today

March 25, 2020March 25, 2020 by Evan Gough

This Powerful Ion Engine Will Be Flying on NASA’s DART Mission to Try and Redirect an Asteroid

The NEXT-C ion thruster in a vacuum chamber at NASA's Glenn Research Center. Image Credit: NASA/Bridget Caswell

Despite humanity’s current struggle against the novel coronavirus, and despite it taking up most of our attention, other threats still exist. The very real threat of a possible asteroid strike on Earth in the future is taking a backseat for now, but it’s still there.

Though an asteroid strike seems kind of ephemeral right now, it’s a real threat, and one that—unlike a coronavirus—has the potential to end humanity. Agencies like NASA and the ESA are still working on their plans to protect us from that threat.

March 25, 2020May 19, 2020 by David Dickinson

Following Comet Y1 ATLAS: the ‘Lost Comet’ of Spring

Got clear skies? If you’re like us, you’ve been putting the recent pandemic-induced exile to productive use, and got out under the nighttime sky. And though 2020 has yet to offer up a good bright ‘Comet of the Century’ to keep us entertained, there have been a steady stream of good binocular comets for northern hemisphere viewers, including C/2017 T2 PanSTARRS and C/2019 Y4 ATLAS. This week, I’d like to turn your attention to another good binocular comet that is currently at its peak: the ‘other’ comet ATLAS, C/2019 Y1 ATLAS.

March 24, 2020March 31, 2020 by Susie Murph

Weekly Space Hangout: March 25, 2020 – Amy Shira Teitel’s Fighting for Space

Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)

Allen Versfeld (https://www.urban-astronomer.com/ / @uastronomer)

Carolyn Collins Petersen (TheSpaceWriter.com / @spacewriter)

Alex Teachey (alexteachey.com /@alexteachey

We are pleased to once again welcome our good friend Amy Shira Teitel back to the WSH to chat about her most recent labor of love, her new book Fighting for Space which tells the story of female pilots who dreamed of being the first American woman in space.

March 24, 2020March 24, 2020 by Matt Williams

Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden has Passed Away

Apollo Astronaut Alfred Worden (1932-2020). Credit: NASA

Last Wednesday (March 18th), the world was saddened to hear of the death of Apollo astronaut Alfred “Al” Worden, who passed away after suffering a stroke at an assisted living facility in Texas. A former Colonel in the US Marine Corps who obtained his Bachelor of Science from West Point Academy in 1955 and his Master of Science at the University of Michigan in 1963, Worden went on to join NASA.

March 24, 2020March 24, 2020 by Matt Williams

How Researchers Produce Sharp Images of a Black Hole

In April of 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration history made history when it released the first image of a black hole ever taken. This accomplishment was decades in the making and triggered an international media circus. The picture was the result of a technique known as interferometry, where observatories across the world combined light from their telescopes to create a composite image.

This image showed what astrophysicists have predicted for a long time, that extreme gravitational bending causes photons to fall in around the event horizon, contributing to the bright rings that surround them. Last week, on March 18th, a team of researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) announced new research that shows how black hole images could reveal an intricate substructure within them.

March 24, 2020March 24, 2020 by Brian Koberlein

The three-body problem shows us why we can’t accurately calculate the past

Our universe is driven by cause and effect. What happens now leads directly to what happens later. Because of this, many things in the universe are predictable. We can predict when a solar eclipse will occur, or how to launch a rocket that will take a spacecraft to Mars. This also works in reverse. By looking at events now, we can work backward to understand what happened before. We can, for example, look at the motion of galaxies today and know that the cosmos was once in the hot dense state we call the big bang.

March 23, 2020 by Matt Williams

NASA Chooses 4 New Astronomy Space Missions for Additional Study

Hot stars burn brightly in this image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, showing the ultraviolet side of a familiar face. At approximately 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda galaxy, or M31, is our Milky Way's largest galactic neighbor. The entire galaxy spans 260,000 light-years across -- a distance so large, it took 11 different image segments stitched together to produce this view of the galaxy next door. The bands of blue-white making up the galaxy's striking rings are neighborhoods that harbor hot, young, massive stars. Dark blue-grey lanes of cooler dust show up starkly against these bright rings, tracing the regions where star formation is currently taking place in dense cloudy cocoons. Eventually, these dusty lanes will be blown away by strong stellar winds, as the forming stars ignite nuclear fusion in their cores. Meanwhile, the central orange-white ball reveals a congregation of cooler, old stars that formed long ago. When observed in visible light, Andromeda's rings look more like spiral arms. The ultraviolet view shows that these arms more closely resemble the ring-like structure previously observed in infrared wavelengths with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers using Spitzer interpreted these rings as evidence that the galaxy was involved in a direct collision with its neighbor, M32, more than 200 million years ago. Andromeda is so bright and close to us that it is one of only ten galaxies that can be spotted from Earth with the naked eye. This view is two-color composite, where blue represents far-ultraviolet light, and orange is near-ultraviolet light.

Since 1958, the NASA Explorer Program has conducted low-cost missions that were deemed relevant to the goals of the Science Mission Directorate (SMD), particularly where the study of our Sun and the deeper cosmic mysteries are concerned. Recently, the Explorer Program selected four missions that they considered to be well-suited to these goals, two of which will be selected for launch in the coming years.

Consisting of two astrophysics Small Explorer (SMEX) and two Missions of Opportunity (MO) proposals, these missions are designed to study cosmic explosions and the debris they leave behind, as well as monitor how nearby stellar flares may affect the atmospheres of orbiting planets. After detailed evaluations, two of these missions will be selected next year and will take to space sometime in 2025.

March 23, 2020 by Matt Williams

Another Incredible Picture of Mars, This Time From a Region Just Outside Valles Marineris

HiRISE image showing the terrain in Juventae Chasma. Credit: NASA/JPL/UArizona

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) delivers once again! Using its advanced imaging instrument, the High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) camera, the orbiter captured a breathtaking image (shown below) of the plains north of Juventae Chasma. This region constitutes the southwestern part of Valles Marineris, the gigantic canyon system that runs along the Martian equator.

March 23, 2020March 23, 2020 by Evan Gough

This is Foam, Made in Space

An early image from the ESA's Foam-Coarsening on the ISS. Image Credit: ESA

Say hello to Space Foam.

The ESA has a science lab on the International Space Station called Columbus. Inside that lab is the Fluid Science Laboratory, dedicated to studying the behaviour of fluids in microgravity. Currently, that lab is being used to study a substance most of us probably don’t spend much time thinking about: foam.

March 20, 2020 by Matt Williams

Elon Musk says that SpaceX Has no Plans to Spin Off Starlink

The first launch of Starlink. Credit: SpaceX

Last week, the Satellite 2020 Conference & Exhibition wrapped up after four days of presentations and addresses from some of the leading experts in the telecommunications industry. As advertised, SpaceX founder Elon Musk was on hand to deliver a keynote speech in which he announced that (contrary to earlier statements) Starlink will not be spun off and become its own business enterprise.