Space and astronomy news
For a small, lumpy chunk of rock that barely reflects any light, Mars’ Moon Phobos draws a lot of attention. Maybe because it’s one of only two moons to orbit the planet, and its origins are unclear. But some of the attention is probably because we have such great images of it.
Continue reading “How Mars’ Moon Phobos Captures Our Imaginations”
There are plenty of problems that spacecraft designers have to consider. Getting smacked in the sensitive parts by a rock is just one of them, but it is a very important one. A micrometeoroid hitting the wrong part of the spacecraft could jeopardize an entire mission, and the years of work it took to get to the point where the mission was actually in space in the first place. But even if the engineers who design spacecraft know about this risk, how is it best to avoid them? A new programming library from research at NASA could help.
Continue reading “NASA has a New Database to Predict Meteoroid Hazards for Spaceflight”
The Standard Model of particle physics does a good job of explaining the interactions between matter’s basic building blocks. But it’s not perfect. It struggles to explain dark matter. Dark matter makes up most of the matter in the Universe, yet we don’t know what it is.
The Standard Model says that whatever dark matter is, it can’t interact with itself. New research may have turned that on its head.
Continue reading “Evidence of Dark Matter Interacting With Itself in El Gordo Merger”
Our Moon is shrinking and has been doing so since just after its formation ~4.5 billion years ago from a collision with the young Earth. That shrinkage, along with a constant rain of micrometeorites, causes lunar seismic activity. NASA plans to send two instruments to the Moon to measure its moonquakes. Those dual seismometers share technology first used on Mars by the InSight lander to measure more than a thousand marsquakes.
Continue reading “Two Seismometers are Going to the Moon to Measure Moonquakes”
Radio telescopes have an advantage over optical telescopes, in that radio telescope can be used even in cloudy conditions here on Earth. That’s because the longer wavelengths of radio waves can pass through clouds unhindered. However, some wavelengths are still partially obscured by portions of Earth’s atmosphere, especially by the ionosphere which traps human-made Radio Frequency Interference (RFI).
Astronomers have developed a new calibration technique that allows them to take sharp images in low radio frequencies — between 16 and 30 MHz — for the first time, bypassing the influence of the ionosphere. The astronomers say this will allow them to study things like plasmas emanating from ancient black holes and perhaps even detect exoplanets that orbit small stars.
Continue reading “Astronomers Have a New Way to Bypass Earth's Atmosphere”
The Hubble Space Telescope has been shut down temporarily after one of its gyroscopes sent faulty telemetry readings back to Earth in late May. The venerable space-based observatory, which has been responsible for some of the most remarkable scientific advances of the last three decades, and stunning astrophotography that became a cultural mainstay, is in its thirty-fourth year of operation.
Continue reading “Hubble Pauses its Science Again”
China says its Chang’e-6 spacecraft has gathered up soil and rocks from the far side of the moon and has lifted off from the surface, beginning a journey to bring the samples back to Earth. The probe’s payload represents the first lunar samples ever collected from the far side.
In a status update, the China National Space Administration said the Chang’e-6 ascent module successfully reached lunar orbit, where it’s due to transfer the samples to a re-entry capsule hooked up to the probe’s orbiter. (Update: CNSA says the ascent module made its rendezvous with the orbiter and transferred the samples to the re-entry capsule on June 6.)
If all goes according to plan, the orbiter will leave the moon’s orbit, head back to Earth and drop off the re-entry capsule for retrieval in China’s Inner Mongolia region sometime around June 25.
Continue reading “Chinese Probe Collects Moon Samples and Heads for Earth”
The Artemis Program represents NASA’s effort to return to the Moon. One of the goals of the project is to set up long-term exploration of the Earth’s only natural satellite. This will need much bulkier equipment than what the Apollo astronauts carried though, and this equipment needs to be transported to the Moon’s surface. Blue Origin and SpaceX, contracted by NASA to provide human landing systems, have begun developing vehicles that can safely deliver this equipment from space to the Moon’s surface.
Continue reading “NASA Wants Heavy Cargo Landers for the Moon”
One underappreciated aspect of the current flood of exoplanet discoveries is the technical marvels that enable it. Scientists and engineers must capture and detect minute signals from stars and planets light years away. With the technologies of even a few decades ago, that would have been impossible – now it seems commonplace. However, there are still some technical hurdles to overcome before finding the “holy grail” of exoplanet hunting – an Earth analog. To help that discussion, a team of researchers led by Bertrand Mennesson at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released a paper detailing the current experimental and theoretical work around one of the most critical technical aspects of researching exoplanet atmospheres – starshades.
Continue reading “Suppressing Starlight: How to Find Other Earths”
Back in December, NASA officials, space industry experts, members of the academic community, and science communicators descended on Washington, D.C., for the Achieving Mars Workshop X (AM X). This workshop is hosted by Explore Mars Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing leading experts from disparate fields together to contribute to creating the first crewed missions to Mars. On May 17th, the results of this year’s workshop were summarized in a report titled “The Tenth Community Workshop for Achievability and Sustainability of Human Exploration of Mars.”
Continue reading “Highlights from the 10th Achieving Mars Workshop”