Posted on by Evan Gough

James Webb Makes The Journey From Houston To Los Angeles; Last Stop Before It Heads To The Launch Facility In 2019

A look inside the cavernous cargo hold of the C5 aircraft that carried the James Webb to California. Image: NASA/Chris Gunn

The two halves of the James Webb Space Telescope are now in the same location and ready to take the next step on JWST’s journey. On February 2nd, Webb’s Optical Telescope and Integrated Science instrument module (OTIS) arrived at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California. The integrated spacecraft, consisting of the spacecraft bus and sunshield, were already there, waiting for OTIS so they could join together and become a complete spacecraft.

“The team will begin the final stages of integration of the world’s largest space telescope.” – Scott Willoughby, Northrop Grumman’s Program Manage for the JWST.

“It’s exciting to have both halves of the Webb observatory – OTIS and the integrated spacecraft element – here at our campus,” said Scott Willoughby, vice president and program manager for Webb at Northrop Grumman. “The team will begin the final stages of integration of the world’s largest space telescope.”

The Space Telescope for Air, Road, and Sea (STTARS) is a custom-designed container that holds the James Webb’s Optical Telescope and Integrated Science (OTIS) instrument module. In this image its being unloaded from a U.S. military C-5 Charlie aircraft at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Feb. 2, 2018. Image: NASA/Chris Gunn

OTIS arrived from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it had successfully completed its cryogenic testing. To prepare for that journey, OTIS was placed inside a custom shipping container designed to protect the delicate and expensive Webb Telescope from any damage. That specially designed container is called the Space Telescope Transporter for Air, Road and Sea (STTARS).

STTARS is a massive container, measuring 4.6 meters (15 feet) wide, 5.2 meters (17 feet) tall, and 33.5 meters feet (110) long, and weighing approximately 75,000 kilograms (almost 165,000 pounds). It’s much larger than the James Webb itself, but even then, the primary mirror wings and the secondary mirror tripod must be folded into flight configuration in order to fit.

The Space Telescope Transporter for Air, Road and Sea (STTARS) NASA’s at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Image: NASA/Chris Gunn

The next step for the JWST is to join the spacecraft itself with OTIS. Once that happens, JWST will be complete and fully integrated. Then there’ll be more tests called observatory-level testing. After that, another journey inside STTARS to Kouru, French Guiana, where the JWST will be launched in 2019.

“This is a major milestone.” – Eric Smith, director of the James Webb Space Telescope Program at NASA.

“This is a major milestone,” said Eric Smith, director of the James Webb Space Telescope Program at NASA. “The Webb observatory, which is the work of thousands of scientists and engineers across the globe, will be carefully tested to ensure it is ready to launch and enable scientists to seek the first luminous objects in the universe and search for signs of habitable planets.”

You can’t fault people, either NASA personnel or the rest of us, for getting excited about each development in the James Webb Space Telescope story. Every time the thing twitches or moves, our excitement re-spawns. It seems like everything that happens with the JWST is now a milestone in its long, uncertain journey. It’s easy to see why.

The Space Telescope That Almost Wasn’t

The James Webb ran into a lot of problems during its development. As can be expected for a ground-breaking, technology-pushing project like the Webb, it’s expensive. In 2011, when the project was well underway, it was revealed that the Webb would cost $8.8 billion, much more than the initial budget of $1.6 billion. The House of Representatives cancelled the project, then restored it, though funding was capped at $8 billion.

That was the main hurdle facing the development of the JWST, but there were others, including timeline delays. The most recent timeline change moved the launch date from 2017 to Spring 2019. As of now, the James Webb is on schedule, and on target to meet its revised budget.

The First “Super Telescope”

The JWST is the first of the “Super Telescopes” to be in operation. Once it’s in place at LaGrange Point 2 (L2), about 1.5 million km (930,000 miles) from Earth, it will begin observing, primarily in infrared. It will surpass both the Hubble Telescope and the Spitzer Telescope, and will “look back in time” to some of oldest stars and galaxies in the universe. It will also examine exoplanets and contribute to the search for life.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

There is a car, in space. Launched by a rocket with reused parts that landed back on Earth by a billionaire who wants to colonize Mars.

StarMan drives his Tesla to space. Credit: SpaceX

Update: It looks like the center booster didn’t make the landing. It couldn’t light all its engines back up and it hit the droneship hard.

In the last hour or so, SpaceX successfully completed the first liftoff of the Falcon Heavy rocket. This is a beefed up version of its successful Falcon-9 rocket, where three boosters are strapped together, firing 27 Merlin engines simultaneously with the capability of launching 54 tonnes of cargo into space.

And Liftoff for Falcon Heavy. Credit: SpaceX
And Liftoff for Falcon Heavy. Credit: SpaceX

The Falcon Heavy is now the most powerful rocket currently operating on Earth, by a factor of two.

On board the Falcon Heavy was Elon Musk’s choice for a test mass. An appropriate amount of weight that will demonstrate the Falcon Heavy’s ability to carry cargo into space: his car. Specifically, his Midnight Red Tesla Roadster. At the driver’s seat is a dummy named StarMan wearing a prototype of the SpaceX spacesuit that astronauts will wear when the Dragon capsule starts delivering crew to the International Space Station.

The launch was delayed by high winds in the upper atmosphere, but when things settled down, they did the launch.

And the launch itself seemed to go perfectly. The Falcon leaped off the launch pad, blasted off into space with its twin reused rocket boosters firing. After a couple of minutes, the boosters detached and returned to Earth, followed by the central stage.

We watched the twin boosters return to Cape Canaveral and land almost simultaneously. The fate of the central third core is still unknown, the video feed cut off as the rocket was returning to the autonomous drone ship in the Atlantic. This happens from time to time, apparently, as the blast of the rocket’s landing engines can throw the drone’s communications antennae out of alignment.

The payload fairing detached and fell away, revealing the Tesla to the Universe, and the second stage continued on, carrying the car to orbit. As David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” began its endless looping background music, we could see the car floating free above the Earth.

According to Musk, the car’s going to spend the next 5 hours or so enjoying the radiation of the Van Allen Belts before its final burn to carry it out onto a Marslike orbit.

In completing this launch, SpaceX demonstrated several things. The Falcon Heavy is a reality. If you’ve got $90 million burning a hole in your pocket, and you want to send 54 tonnes of cargo into low Earth orbit, they’ll be glad to take your order.

They tested using previously flown Falcon-9 first stages as components in the Falcon Heavy. They tested landing three boosters simultaneously.

They also got a chance to test out their new spacesuit in actual space. And I guess, they’ll know if Tesla Roadsters are ready for the harsh environment of interplanetary space.

Don't Panic StarMan, Don't Panic. Credit: SpaceX
Don’t Panic StarMan, Don’t Panic. Credit: SpaceX

I’m not sure how long this’ll last, but you can watch a live view from over the shoulder of StarMan as he sits behind the wheel, with the reassuring “Don’t Panic” sign on the Roadster’s dashboard.

Interesting side note, Musk announced that they wouldn’t be making the Falcon Heavy human rated, they’ll be saving that trick for the BFR which should start launching in the next few years, or decades, or however long things take. In other words, we’ll need to go through this whole process all over again of anticipation, and excitement.

Clearly this story is still unfolding. Will the car make its transfer burn? Did the third booster land? Does anyone want to buy 54 tonnes of cargo launched to orbit for $90 million? Will the BFR ever launch? Will Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin catch up?

Stay tuned.

Posted on by Matt Williams

Here’s a Prediction About the Orbit Musk’s Tesla is Going to Take Through the Solar System

The Falcon Heavy, once operational, will be the most powerful rocket in the world. Credit: SpaceX

After multiple delays, SpaceX recently announced that the inaugural flight of their Falcon Heavy rocket would take place this Tuesday, February 6th, 2018. This rocket, which is the heaviest launch vehicle in the SpaceX fleet (and the most powerful operational rocket in the world right now), is not only central to the company’s vision of reusable rockets, but also to Musk’s long-term vision of sending humans to Mars.

As a result, people all over the world have been tuning in to watch the coverage of the event, and eagerly waiting to see the rocket take off before its launch window closes at 04:00 pm (PST) this afternoon. In keeping with Musk’s habit of sending interesting payloads into space, the rocket will be carrying his cherry-red Tesla Roadster, with the goal of depositing it into a stable orbit around Mars.

According to previous statements made by Musk, the plan calls for the Falcon Heavy to launch the Roadster on a Hohmann Transfer trajectory, an orbital maneuver where a satellite or spacecraft is transferred from one circular orbit to another. After being placed in an elliptical orbit between Earth and Mars, the Roadster would be picked up by Mars’ gravity and remain in orbit around it for (according to Musk) up to a billion years!

To add to the peculiarity of the mission payload, Musk has also been clear that he wants the car to be playing “Space Oddity” – the famous song written and performed by the late and great David Bowie – as its launched into space. This classic song recently got a shot in the arm thanks to Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who performed a rendition of the song while still serving as the commander of Expedition 35 aboard the International Space Station.

But unlike Hadfield’s more positive rendition of the song (which you can watch above), in which the astronaut (Major Tom) does NOT die, Musk’s Roadster will be belting out this tune in its original form. One can only assume that he’s not a particularly superstitious man, or just has a very quirky sense of humor. Considering that a previous payload consisted of a wheel of cheese, I think we know the answer!

Musk confirmed that the launch would take place at 0:130 pm EST (10:30 am PST) in a tweet he posted yesterday, where he stated:

This was followed by an additional tweet posted at 07:59 am PST, which indicated that the launch was still on. However, Musk announced that there would be a minor delay at 09:02 am PST, which was apparently weather-related:

“About 2.5 hours to T-0 for Falcon Heavy. Watch sim for highlight reel of what we hope happens. Car actually takes 6 months to cover 200M+ miles to Mars”

“Upper atmosphere winds currently 20% above max allowable load. Holding for an hour to allow winds to diminish. “

In addition, changes were seen in the countdown clocks run by the US Air Force’s Eastern Range operations. This pushed the launch from its original time of 01:30 pm to 03:19 pm EST (12:19 am PST), and then led to the count being placed on hold.  By 10:52 am PST this morning, the launch clock resumed and Musk indicated that the takeoff would commence at 3:45 pm EST (12:45 PST).

This was followed by the SpaceX ground crew commencing procedures to fuel the rocket at about 11:22 am PST.

Naturally, there has been plenty of speculation about the possible outcome of the mission. Max Fagin, an aerospace engineer from Colorado and a space camp alumni, is one such person. In a video he uploaded to his Youtube channel yesterday (Feb. 5th, 2018), he clarified what the proposed launch entails and offered his thoughts on what will likely happen to the Roadster once its sent into space.

Addressing Musk’s stated goal of a Hohmann Transfer that would put the roadster into Mars’ orbit, he indicated that Musk must have been oversimplifying because there’s no reason to launch a spacecraft on such a trajectory right now. This is due to the fact that this maneuver only makes sense when Earth and Mars are at the closest points in their orbits to each other – aka. when Mars is at opposition.

This is not the case at present, and won’t be again until April-May of this year. At that point, Earth and Mars will be the closest they have been to each other since the year 2000, and will not be in such a perfect opposition again until 2033. As a result, says Fagin, a “true Hohmann Transfer launched from Earth to Mars right now would take the Roadster no closer than 90 million km from Mars – 0.6 times the distance from Earth to the Sun.”

Having said all that, here is what Fagin thinks is actually going to happen:

“Given how light the Roadster is, and given how powerful the Falcon Heavy is, I suspect Falcon heavy is going to impart a little extra delta-v to the Roadster, beyond what would be required for a minimum-energy Hohmann Transfer. This would allow the Roadster to get as close to Mars as SpaceX wanted sometime in October of 2018.”

According to Fagin’s analysis, the Roadster would still not be able to remain in the same orbit of Mars for a billion years, which was Musk’s stated goal. But it would achieve a more stable orbit than a basic Hohmann Transfer would accomplish. In that scenario, the orbit would be perturbed by close encounters with Earth, and the Roadster might eventually come back to Earth.

In other words, the plan may be more complicated than originally stated, but could be largely successful all the same. Come what may, there is no shortage of people who want to see this rocket successfully take off! After all, it’s not only SpaceX’s future that is riding on the outcome of this launch, but perhaps even the future of space exploration itself. Cheaper costs and restored launch capability, that’s what it’s all about!

Barring any further delays, which will push the launch back until tomorrow, the launch will be taking place in T-minus 20 minutes (as of the penning of this article)! In the meantime, be sure to check out SpaceX’s live coverage of the event, which begins today (Tuesday, Feb. 6th) at 12:45 pm (GMT-8):

Further Reading: SpaceX webcast, SpaceX, Twitter (Elon Musk), Orlando Sentinel

Posted on by Evan Gough

Good News For The Search For Life, The Trappist System Might Be Rich In Water

This artist’s impression shows several of the planets orbiting the ultra-cool red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. New observations and analysis have yielded good estimates of the densities of all seven of the Earth-sized planets and suggest that they are rich in volatile materials, probably water. Image Credit: ESO

When we finally find life somewhere out there beyond Earth, it’ll be at the end of a long search. Life probably won’t announce its presence to us, we’ll have to follow a long chain of clues to find it. Like scientists keep telling us, at the start of that chain of clues is water.

The discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system last year generated a lot of excitement. 7 planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, only 40 light years from Earth. At the time, astronomers thought at least some of them were Earth-like. But now a new study shows that some of the planets could hold more water than Earth. About 250 times more.

Continue reading “Good News For The Search For Life, The Trappist System Might Be Rich In Water”

Posted on by Matt Williams

ESA’s ExoMars has Completed its Aerobraking Maneuvers to Bring it Into a Circular 400 km Orbit Around Mars

Artist’s impression depicting the separation of the ExoMars 2016 entry, descent and landing demonstrator module, named Schiaparelli, from the Trace Gas Orbiter, and heading for Mars. Credit: ESA/D. Ducros

In March of 2016, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) mission into space. A joint project between the ESA and Roscosmos, this two-part mission consisted of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Schiaparelli lander, both of which arrived in orbit around Mars in October of 2016. While Schiaparelli crashed while attempting to land, the TGO has gone on to accomplish some impressive feats.

For example, in March of 2017, the orbiter commenced a series of aerobraking maneuvers, where it started to lower its orbit to enter Mars’ thin atmosphere and slow itself down. According to Armelle Hubault, the Spacecraft Operations Engineer on the TGO flight control team, the ExoMars mission has made tremendous progress and is well on its way to establishing its final orbit around the Red Planet.

TGO’s mission has been to study the surface of Mars, characterize the distribution of water and chemicals beneath the surface, study the planet’s geological evolution, identify future landing sites, and to search for possible biosignatures of past Martian life. Once it has established its final orbit around Mars – 400 km (248.5 mi) from the surface – the TGO will be ideally positioned to conduct these studies.

Visualization of the ExoMars mission’s Trace Gas Orbiter conducting aerobraking maneuvers to March of 2018. Credit: ESA

The ESA also released a graphic (shown above) demonstrating the successive orbits the TGO has made since it began aerobraking – and will continue to make until March of 2018. Whereas the red dot indicates the orbiter (and the blue line its current orbit), the grey lines show successive reductions in the TGO’s orbital period. The bold lines denote a reduction of 1 hour while the thin lines denote a reduction of 30 minutes.

Essentially, a single aerobraking maneuver consist of the orbiter passing into Mars’ upper atmosphere and relying on its solar arrays to generate tiny amounts of drag. Over time, this process slows the craft down and gradually lowers its orbit around Mars. As Armelle Hubault recently posted on the ESA’s rocket science blog:

“We started on the biggest orbit with an apocentre (the furthest distance from Mars during each orbit) of 33 200 km and an orbit of 24 hr in March 2017, but had to pause last summer due to Mars being in conjunction. We recommenced aerobraking in August 2017, and are on track to finish up in the final science orbit in mid-March 2018. As of today, 30 Jan 2018, we have slowed ExoMars TGO by 781.5 m/s. For comparison, this speed is more than twice as fast as the speed of a typical long-haul jet aircraft.”

Earlier this week, the orbiter passed through the point where it made its closest approach to the surface in its orbit (the pericenter passage, represented by the red line). During this approach, the craft dipped well into Mars’ uppermost atmosphere, which dragged the aircraft and slowed it down further. In its current elliptical orbit, it reaches a maximum distance of 2700 km (1677 mi) from Mars (it’s apocenter).

Visualization of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter aerobraking at Mars. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

Despite being a decades-old practice, aerobraking remains a significant technical challenge for mission teams. Every time a spacecraft passes through a planet’s atmosphere, its flight controllers need to make sure that its orientation is just right in order to slow down and ensure that the craft remains stable. If their calculations are off by even a little, the spacecraft could begin to spin out of control and veer off course. As Hubault explained:

“We have to adjust our pericentre height regularly, because on the one hand, the martian atmosphere varies in density (so sometimes we brake more and sometimes we brake less) and on the other hand, martian gravity is not the same everywhere (so sometimes the planet pulls us down and sometimes we drift out a bit). We try to stay at about 110 km altitude for optimum braking effect. To keep the spacecraft on track, we upload a new set of commands every day – so for us, for flight dynamics and for the ground station teams, it’s a very demanding time!”

The next step for the flight control team is to use the spacecraft’s thrusters to maneuver the spacecraft into its final orbit (represented by the green line on the diagram). At this point, the spacecraft will be in its final science and operation data relay orbit, where it will be in a roughly circular orbit about 400 km (248.5 mi) from the surface of Mars. As Hubault wrote, the process of bringing the TGO into its final orbit remains a challenging one.

“The main challenge at the moment is that, since we never know in advance how much the spacecraft is going to be slowed during each pericentre passage, we also never know exactly when it is going to reestablish contact with our ground stations after pointing back to Earth,” she said. “We are working with a 20-min ‘window’ for acquisition of signal (AOS), when the ground station first catches TGO’s signal during any given station visibility, whereas normally for interplanetary missions we have a firm AOS time programmed in advance.”

Artist’s impression of the ESA’s Exomars 2020 rover, which is expected to land on the surface of Mars by the Spring of 2o21. Credit:ESA

With the spacecraft’s orbital period now shortened to less than 3 hours, the flight control team has to go through this exercise 8 times a day now. Once the TGO has reached its final orbit (by March of 2018), the orbiter will remain there until 2022, serving as a telecommunications relay satellite for future missions. One of its tasks will be to relay data from the ESA’s ExoMars 2020 mission, which will consist of a European rover and a Russian surface platform being deployed the surface of Mars in the Spring of 2021.

Along with NASA’s Mars 2020 rover, this rover/lander pair will be the latest in a long line of robotic missions looking to unlock the secrets of Mars past. In addition, these missions will conduct crucial investigations that will pave the way for eventual sample return missions to Earth, not to mention crewed to the surface!

Further Reading: ESA

Posted on by Susie Murph

Astronomy Cast Ep. 477: State of Exploration: Once and Future Moon

It’s been decades since humans set foot on the Moon. Well, it’s time to go back, in theory. Of course, we’ve heard this all before. What are the plans afoot to send humans back to the Moon this time. What hardware will we use, and what other strategies are in the works to make this happen?

We usually record Astronomy Cast every Friday at 3:00 pm EST / 12:00 pm PST / 20:00 PM UTC. You can watch us live on AstronomyCast.com, or the AstronomyCast YouTube page.

Visit the Astronomy Cast Page to subscribe to the audio podcast!

If you would like to support Astronomy Cast, please visit our page at Patreon here – https://www.patreon.com/astronomycast. We greatly appreciate your support!

If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions!

Posted on by Matt Williams

Astronomers use a Galaxy Cluster as an Extremely Powerful “Natural Telescope” to Peer Even Farther into the Universe

This illustration shows how gravitational lensing works. The gravity of a large galaxy cluster is so strong, it bends, brightens and distorts the light of distant galaxies behind it. The scale has been greatly exaggerated; in reality, the distant galaxy is much further away and much smaller. Credit: NASA, ESA, L. Calcada

When it comes to studying some of the most distant and oldest galaxies in the Universe, a number of challenges present themselves. In addition to being billions of light years away, these galaxies are often too faint to see clearly. Luckily, astronomers have come to rely on a technique known as Gravitational Lensing, where the gravitational force of a large object (like a galactic cluster) is used to enhance the light of these fainter galaxies.

Using this technique, an international team of astronomers recently discovered a distant and quiet galaxy that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Led by researchers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the team used  the Hubble Space Telescope to conduct the most extreme case of gravitational lensing to date, which allowed them to observe the faint galaxy known as eMACSJ1341-QG-1.

The study that describes their findings recently appeared in The Astrophysical Journal Letters under the title “Thirty-fold: Extreme Gravitational Lensing of a Quiescent Galaxy at z = 1.6″. Led by Harald Ebeling, an astronomer from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the team included members from the Niels Bohr Institute, the Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

The quiescent galaxy eMACSJ1341-QG-1 as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. The yellow dotted line traces the boundaries of the galaxy’s gravitationally lensed image. The inset on the upper left shows what eMACSJ1341-QG-1 would look like if we observed it directly, without the cluster lens. Credit: Harald Ebeling/UH IfA

For the sake of their study, the team relied on the massive galaxy cluster known as eMACSJ1341.9-2441 to magnify the light coming from eMACSJ1341-QG-1,  a distant and fainter galaxy. In astronomical terms, this galaxy is an example of a “quiescent galaxy”, which are basically older galaxies that have largely depleted their supplies of dust and gas and therefore do not form new stars.

The team began by taking images of the faint galaxy with the Hubble and then conducting follow-up spectroscopic observations using the ESO/X-Shooter spectrograph – which is part of the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Based on their estimates, the team determined that they were able to amplify the background galaxy by a factor of 30 for the primary image, and a factor of six for the two remaining images.

This makes eMACSJ1341-QG-1 the most strongly amplified quiescent galaxy discovered to date, and by a rather large margin! As Johan Richard – an assistant astronomer at the University of Lyon who performed the lensing calculations, and a co-author on the study – indicated in a University of Hawaii News release:

“The very high magnification of this image provides us with a rare opportunity to investigate the stellar populations of this distant object and, ultimately, to reconstruct its undistorted shape and properties.”

A spiral galaxy ablaze in the blue light of young stars from ongoing star formation (left) and an elliptical galaxy bathed in the red light of old stars (right). Credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey, CC BY-NC.

Although other extreme magnifications have been conducted before, this discovery has set a new record for the magnification of a rare quiescent background galaxy. These older galaxies are not only very difficult to detect because of their lower luminosity; the study of them can reveal some very interesting things about the formation and evolution of galaxies in our Universe.

As Ebeling, an astronomer with the UH’s Institute of Astronomy and the lead author on the study, explained:

“We specialize in finding extremely massive clusters that act as natural telescopes and have already discovered many exciting cases of gravitational lensing. This discovery stands out, though, as the huge magnification provided by eMACSJ1341 allows us to study in detail a very rare type of galaxy.”

Quiescent galaxies are common in the local Universe, representing the end-point of galactic evolution. As such, this record-breaking find could provide some unique opportunities for studying these older galaxies and determining why star-formation ended in them. As Mikkel Stockmann, a team member from the University of Copenhagen and an expert in galaxy evolution, explained:

“[A]s we look at more distant galaxies, we are also looking back in time, so we are seeing objects that are younger and should not yet have used up their gas supply. Understanding why this galaxy has already stopped forming stars may give us critical clues about the processes that govern how galaxies evolve.”

An artist’s impression of the accretion disc around the supermassive black hole that powers an active galaxy. Credit: NASA/Dana Berry, SkyWorks Digital

In a similar vein, recent studies have been conducted that suggest that the presence of a Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) could be what is responsible for galaxies becoming quiescent. As the powerful jets these black holes create begin to drain the core of galaxies of their dust and gas, potential stars find themselves starved of the material they would need to undergo gravitational collapse.

In the meantime, follow-up observations of eMACSJ1341-QG1 are being conducted using telescopes at the Paranal Observatory in Chile and the Maunakea Observatories in Hawaii. What these observations reveal is sure to tell us much about what will become of our own Milky Way Galaxy someday, when the last of the dust and gas is depleted and all its stars become red giants and long-lived red dwarfs.

Further Reading: University of Hawa’ii News, The Astrophysical Journal Letters

Posted on by Matt Williams

For the First Time, Planets Have Been Discovered in ANOTHER Galaxy!

Using the microlensing metthod, a team of astrophysicists have found the first extra-galactic planets! Credit: NASA/Tim Pyle

The first confirmed discovery of a planet beyond our Solar System (aka. an Extrasolar Planet) was a groundbreaking event. And while the initial discoveries were made using only ground-based observatories, and were therefore few and far between, the study of exoplanets has grown considerably with the deployment of space-based telescopes like the Kepler space telescope.

As of February 1st, 2018, 3,728 planets have been confirmed in 2,794 systems, with 622 systems having more than one planet. But now, thanks to a new study by a team of astrophysicists from the University of Oklahoma, the first planets beyond our galaxy have been discovered! Using a technique predicting by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, this team found evidence of planets in a galaxy roughly 3.8 billion light years away.

The study which details their discovery, titled “Probing Planets in Extragalactic Galaxies Using Quasar Microlensing“, recently appeared in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The study was conducted by Xinyu Dai and Eduardo Guerras, a postdoctoral researcher and professor from the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Oklahoma, respectively.

For the sake of their study, the pair used the Gravitational Microlensing technique, which relies on the gravitational force of distant objects to bend and focus light coming from a star. As a planet passes in front of the star relative to the observer (i.e. makes a transit), the light dips measurably, which can then be used to determine the presence of a planet.

In this respect, Gravitational Microlensing is a scaled-down version of Gravitational Lensing, where an intervening object (like a galaxy cluster) is used to focus light coming from a galaxy or other large object located beyond it. It also incorporates a key element of the highly-effective Transit Method, where stars are monitored for dips in brightness to indicate the presence of an exoplanet.

In addition to this method, which is the only one capable of detecting extra-solar planets at truly great distances (on the order of billions of light years), the team also used data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to study a distant quasar known as RX J1131–1231. Specifically, the team relied on the microlensing properties of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) located at the center of RX J1131–1231.

They also relied on the OU Supercomputing Center for Education and Research to calculate the microlensing models they employed. From this, they observed line energy shifts that could only be explained by the presence of of about 2000 unbound planets between the quasar’s stars – which ranged from being as massive as the Moon to Jupiter – per main-sequence star.

Image of the gravitational lens RX J1131-1231 galaxy with the lens galaxy at the center and four lensed background quasars. It is estimated that there are trillions of planets in the center elliptical galaxy in this image. Credit: University of Oklahoma

As Xinyu Dai explained in a recent University of Oklahoma press release:

“We are very excited about this discovery. This is the first time anyone has discovered planets outside our galaxy. These small planets are the best candidate for the signature we observed in this study using the microlensing technique. We analyzed the high frequency of the signature by modeling the data to determine the mass.”

While 53 planets have been discovered within the Milky Way galaxy using the Microlensing technique, this is the first time that planets have been observed in other galaxies. Much like the first confirmed discovery of an extra-solar planet, scientists were not even certain planets existed in other galaxies prior to this study. This discovery has therefore brought the study of planets beyond our Solar System to a whole new level!

And as Eduardo Guerras indicated, the discovery was possible thanks to improvements made in both modelling and instrumentation in recent years:

“This is an example of how powerful the techniques of analysis of extragalactic microlensing can be. This galaxy is located 3.8 billion light years away, and there is not the slightest chance of observing these planets directly, not even with the best telescope one can imagine in a science fiction scenario. However, we are able to study them, unveil their presence and even have an idea of their masses. This is very cool science.”

In the future, exoplanet discoveries are likely to be made within and beyond the Milky Way Galaxy. Credit: NASA

In the coming years, more sophisticated observatories will be available, which will allow for even more in the way of discoveries. These include space-based instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope (which is scheduled to launch in Spring of 2019) and ground-based observatories like the ESO’s OverWhelmingly Large (OWL) Telescope, the Very Large Telescope (VLT), the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), and the Colossus Telescope.

At this juncture, the odds are good that some of these discoveries will be in neighboring galaxies. Perhaps then we can begin to determine just how common planets are in our Universe. At present, it is estimated that could be as many as 100 billion planets in the Milky Way Galaxy alone! But with an estimated 1 to 2 trillion galaxies in the Universe… well, you do the math!

Further Reading: University of Oklahoma, The Astrophysical Journal Letters

Posted on by Matt Williams

12,800 Years Ago, Earth Was Struck by a Disintegrating Comet, Setting Off Global Firestorms

According to a new study, a comet impact triggered massive wildfires and a temporary cooling 12,800 years ago. Credit: NASA/Don Davis

According to modern theories of geological evolution, the last major ice age (known as the Pliocene-Quaternary glaciation) began about 2.58 million years ago during the late Pliocene Epoch. Since then, the world has experienced several glacial and interglacial periods, and has been in an inter-glacial period (where the ice sheets have been retreating) ever since the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago.

According to new research, this trend experienced a bit of a hiccup during the late Paleolithic era. It was at this time – roughly 12,800 years ago, according to a new study from the University of Kansas – that a comet struck our planet and triggered massive wildfires. This impact also triggered a short glacial period that temporarily reversed the previous period of warming, which had a drastic affect on wildlife and human development.

The study in question, “Extraordinary Biomass-Burning Episode and Impact Winter Triggered by the Younger Dryas Cosmic Impact ~12,800 Years Ago”, was so large that it was divided into two parts. Part I. Ice Cores and Glaciers; and Part II. Lake, Marine, and Terrestrial Sediments, were both recently published by The Journal of Geography, part of the the University of Chicago Press’ series of scientific publications.

New research shows that some 12,800 years ago, an astonishing 10 percent of the Earth’s land surface, or about 10 million square kilometers, was consumed by fires. Credit: Pexels.com

Led by Wendy S. Wolbach, a Professor of inorganic chemistry, geochemistry and analytical chemistry at Chicago’s De Paul University, the study was conducted by a team of 24 scientists and included members from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the Climate Change Institute, the Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Tierra (INICIT), the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and multiple universities.

For the sake of their study, the team combined data from ice core, forest, pollen and other geochemical and isotopic markers obtained from more than 170 different sites across the world. Based on this data, the team concluded that roughly 12,800 years ago, a global disaster was triggered when a stream of fragments from a comet measuring about 100 km (62 mi) in diameter exploded in Earth’s atmosphere and rained down on the surface.

As KU Emeritus Professor of Physics & Astronomy Adrian Melott explained in a KU press release:

“The hypothesis is that a large comet fragmented and the chunks impacted the Earth, causing this disaster. A number of different chemical signatures — carbon dioxide, nitrate, ammonia and others — all seem to indicate that an astonishing 10 percent of the Earth’s land surface, or about 10 million square kilometers, was consumed by fires.”

Ice ages are characterized by a drop in average global temperatures, resulting in the expansion of ice sheets globally. Credit: NASA

According to their research, these massive wildfires also caused a massive feedback in Earth’s climate. As fires rushed across much of the planet’s landscape, the smoke and dust clogged the sky and blocked out sunlight. This triggered rapid cooling in the atmosphere, causing plants to die, food sources to dwindle, and ocean levels to drop. Last, but not least, the ice sheets which had been previously retreating began to advance again.

This quasi-ice age, according to the study, lasted about another thousand years. When the climate began to warm again, life began to recover, but was faced with a number of drastic changes. For example, fewer large animals survived, which affected the hunter-gather culture of humans all across North America. This was reflected in the different types of spear points that have been dated to this period.

What’s more, pollen samples obtained from this period indicate that pine forests were likely burned off and were replaced by poplar forests, a species that colonizes cleared areas. The authors also suggest that this impact could have been responsible for the so-called Younger Dryas cool episode. This period occurred roughly 12,000 years ago, where gradual climatic warming was temporarily reversed.

Intrinsic to this period was an increase of biomass burning and the extinctions of larger species during the late Pleistocene period (ca. 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago). These sudden changes are believed to be what led to severe shifts in human populations, causing a decline during the 1000-year cold period, and leading to the adoption of agriculture and animal husbandry once the climate began to warm again.

Pleistocene of Northern Spain showing woolly mammoth, cave lions eating a reindeer, tarpans, and woolly rhinoceros. Credit: Wikipedia Commons/Mauricio Antón

In short, this new theory could help explain a number of changes that made humanity what it is today. As Mellot indicated:

“Computations suggest that the impact would have depleted the ozone layer, causing increases in skin cancer and other negative health effects. The impact hypothesis is still a hypothesis, but this study provides a massive amount of evidence, which we argue can only be all explained by a major cosmic impact.”

These studies not only provide insight into the timeline of Earth’s geological evolution, they also sheds light on the history of the Solar System. According to this study, the remnants of the meteor which struck Earth still persist within our Solar System today. Last, but not least, the climate shifts that these impacts created had a profound effect on the evolution of life here on Earth.

Further Reading: Kansas University

Posted on by Evan Gough

SpaceX Performs an Experimental High Retrothrust and Survives a Water Landing

This SpaceX rocket was performing a very high retro-thrust landing in water. It wasn't expected to survive, but did. Image: SpaceX

SpaceX’s most recent rocket launch saw the Falcon 9 perform a high retro-thrust over water, with no drone ship in sight. SpaceX never intended to reuse this rocket, and they haven’t said exactly why.

This launch was conducted on January 31st, and the payload was a communications satellite called GovSat-1. It’s a public-private partnership, and GovSat-1 is a heavy satellite which was placed into a particularly high orbit. It will be used by the government of Luxembourg, and by a private European company called SES. It’ll provide secure communications and surveillance for the military, and it has anti-jamming features to help it resist attack.

A high orbit and a heavy payload means that the Falcon 9 that launched it might not have had enough fuel for its customary drone landing. But other Falcon 9s have launched payloads this high and landed on droneships for reuse. So what gives?

According to SpaceX, they never planned to land and reuse this one. They didn’t exactly say why they did it this way, but it’s been speculated that this one was an older iteration of the Falcon 9 known as the Block3. This is the second time SpaceX flew a Block 3 iteration without trying to reuse it. The first time they launched one without reusing it, it carried 10 Iridium satellites into low-Earth orbit.

The Falcon 9 is flying in Block 4 configuration now, with Block 5 coming in the near future. SpaceX says that the Falcon 9 Block 5 will improve the performance and the reusability of the rocket in the future. They’ve also stated that the Block 5 will be the final configuration. Maybe they let this one land in the ocean because it’s just not needed anymore.

SpaceX’s reusable rocketry technology is their primary development. The main booster of their Falcon 9 can be reconditioned and used again and again, keeping costs down. After lift-off, and after the primary stage is released, the main-stage booster lands on a SpaceX drone ship, where it is secured and delivered to shore to be reused.

In this case, SpaceX wanted to test a high retro-thrust landing. The test consisted of three separate burns performed over water, rather than on a drone ship, to avoid damaging the ship. The rocket itself wasn’t expected to survive, but did. Or it partly survived, anyway. As Elon Musk confirmed in his tweet:

The retro-thrust rockets on SpaceX rockets like the Falcon 9 allow the rocket to land softly. They thrust in the opposite direction the rocket is landing, and cushion the Falcon 9’s landing on the droneship.

With the successful static test of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy last week, a first launch for the Heavy is in sight. Testing high retro-thrust landings could be related to the upcoming first launch, even though, as Elon Musk said, merely getting the Falcon Heavy off the pad and back would constitute a successful first flight. But that’s just a guess.

The Falcon Heavy is designed to be reusable, just like its little brother, the Falcon 9. Reusability is key to SpaceX and is the whole reason Musk started the company: to make spaceflight more affordable, and to help humanity travel beyond the Moon.

SpaceX plans to tow this Falcon 9 back to shore and see if it can be salvaged. But after being dunked in salt water, any meaningful salvage seems unlikely. Who knows. Maybe Elon Musk will use it for flame-thrower target practice.

But the fate of this single rocket isn’t really that important in the grand scheme of things. What’s important is that SpaceX is still testing designs, and still pushing the boundaries of lower-cost spaceflight.

With that in mind, here’s hoping the whiz kids at SpaceX can destroy a few more rockets. After all, it’s all in the name of science.