Universe Today

June 18, 2019June 18, 2019 by Matt Williams

Inflatable Heat Shield Could Deliver Heavy Payloads to Worlds With a Thick Atmosphere

Illustration of Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID). Credits: NASA

One of the greater challenges of sending payloads to Mars is having to contend with the planet’s atmosphere. While incredibly thin compared to Earth’s (with roughly half of 1% of Earth’s air pressure), the resulting air friction is still an issue for spacecraft looking to land there. And looking to the future, NASA hopes to be able to land heavier payloads on Mars as well as other planets – some of which may have atmospheres as dense as Earth.

A possible solution to this is the use of inflatable aeroshells (aka. heat shields), which offer numerous advantages over rigid ones. To develop this technology, NASA and United Launch Alliance (ULA) have partnered to develop an inflatable heat shield known as the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID). By 2022, they hope to send this cutting-edge prototype to low-Earth orbit (LEO), where it will be tested.

June 17, 2019June 17, 2019 by Evan Gough

Earth has a Water Cycle. Mars has a Dust Cycle

Comparison images of Mars taken by Hubble (left) and showing a global dust storm that engulfed it (right). Astronomers studying dust storms in the Aonia-Solis-Valles Marineris region over eight years have found a distinct periodicity in their occurrence. Image Credit: NASA

To say there are some myths circulating about Martian dust storms would be an understatement. Mars is known for its globe-encircling dust storms, the likes of which are seen nowhere else. Science fiction writers and Hollywood movies often make the dust storms out to be more dangerous than they really are. In “The Martian,” a powerful dust storm destroys equipment, strands Matt Damon on Mars, and forces him into a brutal struggle for survival.

June 15, 2019June 15, 2019 by Matt Williams

Satellites Equipped With a Tether Would be Able to De-Orbit Themselves at the end of Their Life

Artist's impression of the orbital debris problem. Credit: UC3M

There’s no denying it, we are facing an orbital debris problem! As of January 2019, the ESA’s Space Debris Office estimates that there are at least 34,000 pieces of large debris in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) – a combination of dead satellites, spent rocket stages, and other assorted bits of space junk. And with thousands of satellites scheduled to be launched in the next decade, that problem is only going to get worse.

This is a situation that cries out for solutions, especially when you consider the plans to commercialize LEO and start sending crewed missions to deep space in the coming years. A team of scientists from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) has come up with a simple but elegant idea: equip future satellites with a tether system so they can de-orbit themselves at the end of their lives.

June 14, 2019August 26, 2024 by Matt Williams

Robotic asteroid mining spacecraft wins a grant from NASA

Credits: Joel Sercel, TransAstra Corporation

Back in April, NASA once again put out the call for proposals for the next generation of robotic explorers and missions. As part of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, this consisted of researchers, scientists, and entrepreneurs coming together to submit early studies of new concepts that could one-day help advance NASA’s space exploration goals.

One concept that was selected for Phase III of development was a breakthrough mission and flight system called Mini Bee. This small, robotic mining craft was designed by the Trans Astronautica (TransAstra) Corporation to assist with deep-space missions. It is hoped that by leveraging this flight system architecture, the Mini-bee will enable the full-scale industrialization of space as well as human settlement.

June 14, 2019June 14, 2019 by Evan Gough

Saltwater Similar to the Earth’s Oceans has been Seen on Europa. Another Good Reason Why We Really Need to Visit This Place

Tara Regio is the yellowish area to left of center, in this NASA Galileo image of Europa’s surface. This region of geologic chaos is the area researchers identified an abundance of sodium chloride. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Jupiter’s moon Europa is an intriguing world. It’s the smoothest body in the Solar System, and the sixth-largest moon in the Solar System, though it’s the smallest of the four Galilean moons. Most intriguing of all is Europa’s subsurface ocean and the potential for habitability.

June 14, 2019June 14, 2019 by Evan Gough

This is What the Ground Looked Like After InSight Landed on Mars

The gnarly surface of Mars, with two pits excavated by InSight's thrusters. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

When InSight landed on Mars on Nov. 26th, 2018, it deployed a parachute to slow its descent through the thin Martian atmosphere. As it approached the surface, it fired its retro rocket to slow it even more, and then gently touched down on the surface. As it did so, its retro rockets excavated two small pits in the Martian soil.

June 13, 2019June 14, 2019 by Matt Williams

In Order to Reveal Planets Around Another star, a Starshade Needs to Fly 40,000 km Away from a Telescope, Aligned Within Only 1 Meter

Artist's concept of the prototype starshade, a giant structure designed to block the glare of stars so that future space telescopes can take pictures of planets. Credit: NASA/JPL

To assist with future efforts to locate and study exoplanets, engineers with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory – in conjunction with the Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP) – are working to create Starshade. Once deployed, this revolutionary spacecraft will help next-generation telescopes by blocking out the obscuring light coming from distant stars so exoplanets can be imaged directly.

While this may sound pretty straightforward, the Starshade will also need to engage in some serious formation flying in order to do its job effectively. That was the conclusion of the reached by the Starshade Technology Development team (aka. S5) Milestone 4 report – which is available through the ExEP website. As the report stated, Starshade will need to be perfectly aligned with space telescopes, even at extreme distances.

June 13, 2019June 13, 2019 by Evan Gough

An Orbit Map of the Solar System

This orbit map of the Solar System was made by Eleanor Lutz. Check out her work at Tabletop Whale (tabletopwhale.com) Image Credit: Eleanor Lutz

If you want to know what a talent for scientific visualizations looks like, check out Eleanor Lutz. She’s a PhD student in biology at the University of Washington, and at her website Tabletop Whale, you can see her amazing work on full display.

Her latest piece is a map showing all the orbits of over 18,000 asteroids in the Solar System. It includes 10,000 asteroids that are over 10km in diameter, and about 8,000 objects of unknown size.

June 13, 2019June 13, 2019 by Evan Gough

Ceres is a Strange Place, Including a Volcanic Peak 4,000 Meters High Made From Bubbling Salt Water, Mud and Rock

A visual image and a gravitational field image of Ceres. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Ceres, at almost 1,000 km (620 miles) in diameter, is the largest body in the asteroid belt. Between 2015 and 2018, NASA’s ion-powered Dawn spacecraft visited the dwarf planet, looking for clues to help us understand how our Solar System formed. Ceres is the first dwarf planet ever visited by a spacecraft.

Now that scientists have worked with the data from Dawn, we’re starting to see just how unusual Ceres is. One of the most shocking of Dawn’s findings is the volcano Ahuna Mons, a feature that seems out of place on this tiny world. Now scientists from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have figured out how this strange feature formed on this intriguing little planet.

June 12, 2019June 12, 2019 by Evan Gough

Mimas Pushes Through Saturn’s Rings Like a Snowplow

Saturn's rings and moons have been the subject of scientific debate. A 2019 study showed that the migration of Saturn's moons has widened the Cassini Division in Saturn's rings. Image Credit: Cassini, Dante, Baillié and Noyelles

Saturn’s moon Mimas is the smallest of the gas giant’s major moons. (Saturn has 62 moons, but some of them are tiny moonlets less than 1 km in diameter.) Two new studies show how Mimas acted as a kind of snow-plow, widening the Cassini division between Saturn’s rings.