Universe Today

March 4, 2020March 4, 2020 by Nancy Atkinson

Phew, Earth-Watching DSCOVR is Operational Again

Image of Earth from 2020, over the South Pacific Ocean from the EPIC camera on the DSCOVR satellite. Many things affect Earth's albedo, including clouds, snow cover, and vegetation. How does exoplanet vegetation affect albedo and climate? Credit: NASA/NOAA

Rejoice! If you’ve missed your daily fix of seeing views of our rotating Earth from space, NOAA announced that its Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) is now back in action. The deep space satellite, which produces incredible full-disk images of our Blue Marble, has been offline since June 27, 2019 because of a problem with the spacecraft’s attitude control system. But NOAA and NASA engineers developed and uploaded a software patch to restore DSCOVR’s operations.

March 3, 2020March 3, 2020 by Susie Murph

Carnival of Space #653

Carnival of Space. Image by Jason Major.

Welcome to the 653rd Carnival of Space! The Carnival is a community of space science and astronomy writers and bloggers, who submit their best work each week for your benefit. We have a fantastic roundup today so now, on to this week’s worth of stories!

March 3, 2020March 3, 2020 by Evan Gough

NASA is Planning to Build a Lunar Rover With a 1-Meter Drill to Search for Water Ice

An illustration of NASA's VIPER lunar rover. It'll explore the Moon's south pole and map water resources. Image Credit: NASA Ames/Daniel Rutter

Meet VIPER, NASA’s new lunar rover, equipped with a drill to probe the Moon’s surface and look for water ice. VIPER, or Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, will carry a one-meter drill and will use it to map out water resources at the Moon’s south pole. It’s scheduled to be on the lunar surface by December 2023, one year later than it’s initial date.

March 3, 2020March 3, 2020 by Matt Williams

Magnetic Fields Around Mars InSight are 10x Stronger than Scientists Expected

Artist's concept of NASA's InSight lander on Mars, layers of the planet's subsurface can be seen below and dust devils can be seen in the background. Credits: IPGP/Nicolas Sarter

When NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (Insight) lander set down on Mars in November of 2018, it began its two-year primary mission of studying Mars’ seismology and interior environment. And now, just over a year and a half later, the results of the lander’s first twelve months on the Martian surface have been released in a series of studies.

One of these studies, which was recently published in the journal Nature Geosciences, shared some rather interesting finds about magnetic fields on Mars. According to the research team behind it, the magnetic field within the crater where InSight’s landed is ten times stronger than expected. These findings could help scientists resolve key mysteries about Mars’ formation and subsequent evolution.

March 3, 2020March 3, 2020 by Evan Gough

3 Billion Years Ago, the World Might Have Been a Waterworld, With No Continents At All

Artist's depiction of a waterworld. A new study suggests that Earth is in a minority when it comes to planets, and that most habitable planets may be greater than 90% ocean. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)

Evidence from an ancient section of the Earth’s crust suggest that Earth was once a water-world, some three billion years ago. If true, it’ll mean scientists need to reconsider some thinking around exoplanets and habitability. They’ll also need to reconsider their understanding of how life began on our planet.

March 3, 2020June 1, 2021 by David Dickinson

Introducing Analog Sky’s 3D-Printed Giant Binoculars

Sky scanner — A set of Analog Sky binoculars, set up for a night's worth of observing. Credit: Analog Sky.

Update: we’re happy to announce that Analog Sky is making a special offer just for Universe Today readers for its new giant binoculars.

A unique, crowd-sourced, 3D-printed telescope is poised to revolutionize how we look at the sky.

Late last year, we announced Oregon-based innovator and amateur astronomer Robert Asumendi’s plans to release the Analog Sky telescope system, featuring a set of giant space binoculars. Now, we’re happy to announce that Robert has officially launched the project as a crowd-funded campaign on Indiegogo.

March 3, 2020March 3, 2020 by Nancy Atkinson

Even Though it Was Observing an Asteroid, OSIRIS-REx Accidentally Spotted a Black Hole

This image shows the X-ray outburst from the black hole MAXI J0637-043, detected by the REXIS instrument on NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The image was constructed using data collected by the X-ray spectrometer while REXIS was making observations of the space around asteroid Bennu on Nov. 11, 2019. The outburst is visible in the center of the image, and the image is overlaid with the limb of Bennu (lower right) to illustrate REXIS’s field of view. Credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/MIT/Harvard

While the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was orbiting asteroid Bennu, one of the instruments on board happened to catch a glimpse of a black hole ‘out of the corner of its eye,’ so to speak.

While intently focusing on the asteroid, the Regolith X-Ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS) happened to catch the X-rays from a newly flaring stellar mass black hole. While the flare occurred 30 thousand light years away, the flash in distant space was visible just off the limb of asteroid Bennu, in the edge of the instrument’s field of view.

March 2, 2020March 2, 2020 by Evan Gough

Astronomers Have Recorded the Biggest Explosion Ever Seen in the Universe

Hundreds of millions of light years away, a supermassive black hole sits in the center of a galaxy cluster named Ophiuchus. Though black holes are renowned for sucking in surrounding material, they sometimes expel material in jets. This black hole is the site of an almost unimaginably powerful explosion, created when an enormous amount of material was expelled.

March 2, 2020March 2, 2020 by Matt Williams

Another Reminder that Spaceflight is Difficult. Starship Prototype Explodes and Falls Over

The assembled Mk. 1 picture at night. Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX’s Starship has been hitting some bumps making its way from the drawing board to space. As the spacecraft element of the Elon Musk’s proposed super-heavy launch system, the Starship will one day become the workhorse of SpaceX, replacing the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launchers. Unfortunately, another Starship prototype recently experienced a structural failure during pressure testing that caused it to explode.

March 2, 2020March 2, 2020 by Evan Gough

Here’s a New Planetary Nebula for Your Collection: CVMP 1

The international Gemini Observatory composite color image of the planetary nebula CVMP 1 imaged by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachón in Chile. Credit: The international Gemini Observatory/NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory/AURA

Some stars die a beautiful death, ejecting their outer layers of gas into space, then lighting it all up with their waning energy. When that happens, we get a nebula. Astronomers working with the Gemini Observatory just shared a new image of one of these spectacular objects.