Space News & Blog Articles

Scientists detected the first long-predicted gravitational wave in 2015, and since then, researchers have been hungering for better detectors. But the Earth is warm and seismically noisy, and that will always limit the effectiveness of Earth-based detectors.

Is the Moon the right place for a new gravitational wave observatory? It might be. Sending telescopes into space worked well, and mounting a GW observatory on the Moon might, too, though the proposal is obviously very complex.

Most of astronomy is about light. The better we can sense it, the more we learn about nature. That’s why telescopes like the Hubble and the JWST are in space. Earth’s atmosphere distorts telescope images and even blocks some light, like infrared. Space telescopes get around both of those problems and have revolutionized astronomy.

Gravitational waves aren’t light, but sensing them still requires extreme sensitivity. Just as Earth’s atmosphere can introduce ‘noise’ into telescope observations, so can Earth’s seismic activity cause problems for gravitational wave detectors. The Moon has a big advantage over our dynamic, ever-changing planet: it has far less seismic activity.

We’ve known since the Apollo days that the Moon has seismic activity. But unlike Earth, most of its activity is related to tidal forces and tiny meteorite strikes. Most of its seismic activity is also weaker and much deeper than Earth’s. That’s attracted the attention of researchers developing the Lunar Gravitational-wave Antenna (LGWA).

Well over 5,000 planets have been found orbiting other star systems. One of the satellites hunting for them is TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Astronomers using TESS think they are made a rather surprising discovery; their first free-floating – or rogue – planet. The planet was discovered using gravitational microlensing where the planet passed in front of a star, distorting its light and revealing its presence.

We are all familiar with the eight planets in our Solar System and perhaps becoming familiar with the concept of exoplanets. But there is another category of planet, the rogue planets. These mysterious objects travel through space without being gravitationally bound to any star. Their origin has been cause for much debate but popular theory suggests they were ejected from their host star system during formation, or perhaps later due to gravitational interaction. 

Simulations have suggested that these ‘free-floating planets’ or FFPs should be abundant in the Galaxy yet until now, not many have been detected. The popular theory of ejection from star systems may not be the full story though. It is now thought that different formation mechanisms will be responsible for different FFP masses. Those FFPs that are high mass may form in isolation from the collapse of gas whilst those at the low mass end (comparable to Earth) are likely to have been subjected to gravitational ejection from the system. A paper published in 2023 even suggests that those FFPs are likely to outnumber those bound planets across the Galaxy!

Detecting such wandering objects among the stars is rather more of a challenge than you might expect. Their limited emission (or reflection) of electromagnetic radiation makes them pretty much impossible to observe. Enter gravitational microlensing, a technique that relies upon an FFP passing in front of a star, it’s gravity then focussing light from the distant star resulting in a brief brightness change as the planet moves along its line of sight. To date, only three FFPs have been detected from Earth using this technique. 

A team of astronomers have been using TESS to search for such microlensing events. TESS was launched in April 2018 and whilst in orbit, scans large chunks of sky to monitor the brightness of tens of thousands of stars. The detection of light changes may reveal the passage of an FFP as it drifts silently in front of the star. It’s not an easy hunt though as asteroids in our Solar System, exoplanets bound to stars and even stellar flares can all give false indications but thankfully the team led by Michelle Kunimoto have algorithms that will help to identify potential targets. 

Over the last few years I have been renovating my home. Building on Earth seems to be a fairly well understood process, after all we have many different materials to chose from. But what about future lunar explorers. As we head closer toward a permanent lunar base, astronauts will have very limited cargo carrying capability so will have to use local materials. On the Moon, that means relying upon the dusty lunar regolith that covers the surface. Researchers have now developed 20 different methods for creating building materials out of the stuff. They include solidification, sintering/melting, bonding solidification and confinement formation. But of all these, which is the best?

Apollo astronauts reported the surface of the Moon to be covered in a fine, powdery material, similar in texture to talcum powder. The material, known as the lunar regolith is thought to have formed by the constant bombardment from meteoroids over millions of years. The impacts bombarded the rocks on the Moon’s surface breaking them down into fine grains. The layer varies in depth across the surface from 5 metres to 10 metres and consists mostly of silicon dioxide, iron oxide, aluminium dioxide and a few other minerals. The fine nature of the dust makes it difficult for astronauts and machinery alike to operate on the surface and its sharp contours make it somewhat hazardous.

Any future engineers that visit the Moon to construct habitats will need to somehow employ the use of this material in their work. A paper published in the journal Engineering by Professor Feng from the Tsinghua University has conducted a review of possible techniques. Almost 20 techniques have been employed and these have been categorised into four main processes. 

In what I can only assume to be a process similar to concrete and its reaction with water, reaction solidification takes regolith particles and reacts them with other compounds. These will have to be transported to the Moon and, when mixed with regolith, will solidify. The process would create a solid material where regolith comprises 60% to 95% of the overall mixture. 

An alternative approach involves sintering or melting the regolith by subjecting it to high temperatures. The approach can create solid material composed of entirely regolith however, temperatures in excess of 1,000 degrees are required and this in itself will pose challenges and safety concerns on the lunar surface. 

Astrobiologists continue to work towards determining which biosignatures might be best to look for when searching for life on other worlds. The most common idea has been to search for evidence of plants that use the green pigment chlorophyll, like we have on Earth. However, a new paper suggests that bacteria with purple pigments could flourish under a broader range of environments than their green cousins. That means current and next-generation telescopes should be looking for the emissions of purple lifeforms.

“Purple bacteria can thrive under a wide range of conditions, making it one of the primary contenders for life that could dominate a variety of worlds,” said Lígia Fonseca Coelho, a postdoctoral associate at the Carl Sagan Institute (CSI) and first author of “Purple is the New Green: Biopigments and Spectra of Earth-like Purple Worlds,” published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.

According to NASA’s Exoplanet Archive, 5612 extrasolar planets have been found so far, as of this writing, and another 10,000 more are considered planetary candidates, but have not yet been confirmed. Of all those, there are just over 30 potentially Earth-like worlds, planets that lie in their stars’ habitable zones where conditions are conducive to the existence of liquid water on surface.

But Earth-like has a broad meaning, ranging from size, mass, composition, and various chemical makeups. While being within a star’s habitable zone certainly means there’s the potential for life, it doesn’t necessarily mean that life could have emerged there, or even if it did, the life on that world might look very different from Earth.

“While oxygenic photosynthesis gives rise to modern green landscapes, bacteriochlorophyll-based anoxygenic phototrophs can also colour their habitats and could dominate a much wider range of environments on Earth-like exoplanets,” Coelho and team wrote in their paper. “While oxygenic photosynthesis gives rise to modern green landscapes, bacteriochlorophyll-based anoxygenic phototrophs can also colour their habitats and could dominate a much wider range of environments on Earth-like exoplanets.”

Planetary nebula are some of nature’s most stunning visual displays. The name is confusing since they’re the remains of stars, not planets. But that doesn’t detract from their status as objects of captivating beauty and intense scientific study.

Like all planetary nebula, the Southern Ring Nebula is the remnant of a star like our Sun. As these stars age, they will eventually become red giants, expanding and shedding layers of gas out into space. Eventually, the red giant becomes a white dwarf, a stellar remnant bereft of fusion that emanates whatever residual thermal energy it has without ever generating anymore. The white dwarf lights up the shells of gas expelled earlier, and we get to enjoy the show.

When the long-awaited JWST started delivering images, the Southern Ring Nebula (NGC 3132) was one of its first targets. It was one of five objects that made up the telescope’s first science results. The JWST’s images revealed something surprising about NGC 3132: it has two stars. The white dwarf is in the center of NGC 3132 and its companion is between 40 to 60 AU away, about the same distance as Pluto is from the Sun.

Researchers wanted to understand more about the Southern Ring Nebula’s structure. The JWST works in the infrared and can image warm hydrogen in the nebula. But to get a more complete image of the nebula, a team of researchers from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) turned to the Submillimeter Array (SMA). The SMA can sense the cooler CO (carbon monoxide) in the nebula beyond the JWST’s reach. It sensed CO’s presence and measured its velocity and the velocities of other molecules.

The research is published in The Astrophysical Journal titled “The Molecular Exoskeleton of the Ring-like Planetary Nebula NGC 3132.” Professor Joel Kastner from the RIT School of Physics and Astronomy is the lead author.

The venerable Hubble Space Telescope is like a gift that keeps on giving. Not only is it still making astronomical discoveries after more than thirty years in operation. It is also making discoveries by accident! Thanks to an international team of citizen scientists, with the help of astronomers from the European Space Agency (ESA) and some machine learning algorithms, a new sample of over one thousand asteroids has been identified in Hubble‘s archival data. The methods used represent a new approach for finding objects in decades-old data that could be applied to other datasets as well.

The research team was led by Pablo García-Martín, a researcher with the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). It included members from the ESA, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy, the University of Craiova, the Université Côte d’Azur, and Bastion Technologies. The paper that describes their findings, “Hubble Asteroid Hunter III. Physical properties of newly found asteroids,” recently appeared in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Ask any astronomers and they will tell you that asteroids are material left over from the formation of the Solar System ca. 4.5 billion years ago. These objects come in many shapes in sizes, ranging from peddle-sized rocks to planetoids. Observing these objects is challenging since they are faint and constantly in motion as they orbit the Sun. Because of its rapid geocentric orbit, Hubble can capture wandering asteroids thanks to the distinct curved trails they leave in Hubble exposures. As Hubble orbits Earth, its point of view changes while observing asteroids following their orbits.

Hubble image of the barred spiral galaxy UGC 12158, with streaks left by photobombing asteroids. Credit: NASA, ESA, P. G. Martín (AUM)/J. DePasquale (STScI)/A. Filippenko (UC Berkeley)

Asteroids have also been known to “photobomb” images acquired by Hubble of distant cosmic objects like UGC 12158 (see image above). By knowing Hubble’s position when it took exposures of asteroids and measuring the curvature of the streaks they leave, scientists can determine the asteroids’ distances and estimate the shapes of their orbits. The ability to do this with large samples allows astronomers to test theories about Main Asteroid Belt formation and evolution. As Martin said in a recent ESA Hubble press release:

The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft is finally phoning home again. This is much to the relief of mission engineers, scientists, and Voyager fans around the world.

On November 14, 2023, the aging spacecraft began sending what amounted to a string of gibberish back to Earth. It appeared to be getting commands from Earth and seemed to be operating okay. It just wasn’t returning any useful science and engineering data. The team engineers began diagnostic testing to figure out if the spacecraft’s onboard computer was giving up the ghost. They also wanted to know if there was some other issue going on.

It wasn’t completely surprising that Voyager 1 would have issues, after all. And, this isn’t the first time Voyager 1 has sent back garbly data. It’s been traversing space since its launch in 1977. Currently, the spacecraft is rushing away from the Solar System toward interstellar space. The spacecraft systems will eventually fail due to age and lack of power. But, people have always held out hope for them to last as long as possible. That’s because Voyager 1 is probing unexplored regions of space.

The diagnostic testing led the engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to look at old engineering documents and manuals for the onboard computers. Eventually, they found that the flight data subsystem (FDS) was having an issue. In the spacecraft’s data handling pipeline, this system takes information from the instruments and packages it into a data stream for the long trip back to Earth.

It turns out that the FDS has a bit of a memory problem. The engineers found this out by poking at the computer—literally sending a “poke” command to Voyager 1. That prompted the FDS to disgorge a readout of its memory—including the software code and other code values. The readout showed that about 3 percent of the FDS memory is corrupted due to a single chip failing. That’s just enough to keep the computer from doing its normal work of packaging science and engineering data. Unfortunately, engineers can’t replace the chip. No repair is possible, so the technical team devised a workaround.

The search for extrasolar planets is currently undergoing a seismic shift. With the deployment of the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scientists discovered thousands of exoplanets, most of which were detected and confirmed using indirect methods. But in more recent years, and with the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the field has been transitioning toward one of characterization. In this process, scientists rely on emission spectra from exoplanet atmospheres to search for the chemical signatures we associate with life (biosignatures).

However, there’s some controversy regarding the kinds of signatures scientists should look for. Essentially, astrobiology uses life on Earth as a template when searching for indications of extraterrestrial life, much like how exoplanet hunters use Earth as a standard for measuring “habitability.” But as many scientists have pointed out, life on Earth and its natural environment have evolved considerably over time. In a recent paper, an international team demonstrated how astrobiologists could look for life on TRAPPIST-1e based on what existed on Earth billions of years ago.

The team consisted of astronomers and astrobiologists from the Global Systems Institute, and the Departments of Physics and Astronomy, Mathematics and Statistics, and Natural Sciences at the University of Exeter. They were joined by researchers from the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria and the Natural History Museum in London. The paper that describes their findings, “Biosignatures from pre-oxygen photosynthesizing life on TRAPPIST-1e,” will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).

The TRAPPIST-1 system has been the focal point of attention ever since astronomers confirmed the presence of three exoplanets in 2016, which grew to seven by the following year. As one of many systems with a low-mass, cooler M-type (red dwarf) parent star, there are unresolved questions about whether any of its planets could be habitable. Much of this concerns the variable and unstable nature of red dwarfs, which are prone to flare activity and may not produce enough of the necessary photons to power photosynthesis.

With so many rocky planets found orbiting red dwarf suns, including the nearest exoplanet to our Solar System (Proxima b), many astronomers feel these systems would be the ideal place to look for extraterrestrial life. At the same time, they’ve also emphasized that these planets would need to have thick atmospheres, intrinsic magnetic fields, sufficient heat transfer mechanisms, or all of the above. Determining if exoplanets have these prerequisites for life is something that the JWST and other next-generation telescopes – like the ESO’s proposed Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) – are expected to enable.

Astronauts on board the International Space Station are often visited by supply ships from Earth with food among other things. Take a trip to Mars or other and the distances are much greater making it impractical to send fresh supplies. The prepackaged food used by NASA loses nutritional value over time so NASA is looking at ways astronauts can produce nutrients. They are exploring genetic engineering techniques that can create microbes with minimal resource usage. 

Many of us take food and eating for granted. The food we can enjoy is usually flavoursome and the textures varied. Astronauts travelling through space generally rely upon pre-packaged food and often this can lack the taste and textures we usually enjoy. Lots of research has gone into developing a more pleasurable dining experience for astronauts but this has usually concentrated on short duration trips. 

During longer term missions, astronauts will have to grow their own food. Not only due to the nutritional issues that form the purpose of this article but carrying prepackaged food for flights that last many years becomes a logistic challenge and a launch overhead. To address the loss of nutritional values, the Ames Research Centre’s Space Biosciences Division has launched its BioNutrients project to enable future space travellers to grow their own supplements.

The team has announced they has come up with a solution, thanks to the wonders of genetic engineering. The approach that the team has developed involves microbial based food (similar to yeast) that can produce nutrients and compounds with small amounts of resources. 

The secret is to store dried microbes and take food grade bioreactors along on the trip. Until now I never knew what a bioreactor was nor that they even existed. I live in the world of physics and astrophysics so this concept intrigued me. Turns out that a bioreactor does just what it says. It is a container of some form, often made from steel inside which, a biologically active environment can be maintained. Often chemical processes are carried out inside which involve organisms undergoing either aerobic or anaerobic processes. They are often used to grow cells or tissues and it is within these that NASA pins their hopes on cultivating food in space. 

A surprise appearance of a new comet made the April 8th total solar eclipse all the more memorable.

Any dedicated ‘umbraphile’ will tell you: no two eclipses are exactly the same. Weather, solar activity, and the just plain expeditionary nature of reaching and standing in the shadow of the Moon for those brief moments during totality assures a unique experience, every time out. The same can be said for catching a brief glimpse of what’s going on near the Sun, from prominences and the pearly white corona to the configuration of bright planets… and just maybe, a new comet.

While many planned to try and spy periodic Comet 12P Pons-Brooks during totality, astronomer Karl Battams at the U.S. Naval Observatory alerted us to another possibility. A new sungrazing comet, spotted just hours prior. The Kreutz family comet was seen by Worachate Boonplod in the field of view of the joint NASA/ESA Solar Heliospheric Observatory’s (SOHO) LASCO C3 and C2 imagers. These are equipped with Sun-covering coronagraphs that allow it to see the near solar environment. The mission was launched over a quarter of a century ago in 1995. SOHO was deployed to the sunward L1 Earth-Sun Lagrange point nearly a million miles distant. SOHO has since proven itself to be a crucial workhorse in solar heliophysics.

The comet soon received the formal designation of SOHO-5008. That’s right: SOHO has led to the discovery of over 5,000 comets in its career. Most of these discoveries were thanks to the efforts of dedicated online sleuths, scouring recent LASCO images.

At the time, the doom’d comet was a faint object, located only a few degrees from the Sun. The icy interloper was a tough target to nab during the fleeting minutes of totality, but at least two dedicated astrophotographers managed to catch it. Lin Zixuan saw it imaging from northern New Hampshire. Petr Horálek from the Institute of Physics in Opava Czechia (Czech Republic) was imaging from Mexico as he caught the object.

I really can’t believe that the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars took its maiden voyage in April 2021. On the 16th April 2024, engineers at NASA have received the final batch of data from the craft which marks the final task of the team. Ingenuity’s work is not over though as it will remain on the surface collecting data. For the engineers at NASA, they have their sights set on Dragonfly, a new helicopter destined for Titan.

When Ingenuity took off on its maiden voyage it became the first powered craft to achieve flight on an alien world. It has completed 128.8 minutes of flight covering 17 kilometres. It has extra large rotor blades to achieve lift in the thin martian atmosphere and has performed excellently providing guidance and targets for the Perseverance Rover to study close up. 

It’s surprising to think that Ingenuity was only ever designed to be a short-lived demonstration mission. Over a period of 30 days, Ingenuity was to perform five experimental test flights and operate over three years. Unfortunately a rather hard landing damaged its rotor blades rendering it unable to fly again. It’s now sat at Airfield Chi in the now named “Valinor Hills” area of Mars. The team gave the region the nickname as a homage to the final residence of the immortals in Lord of the Rings. 

With Ingenuity now unable to fly the team had sent a software update to direct it to continue to collect data even if the Rover is unavailable. This will mean that it will wake each morning, test the (non-flight) systems are operational, take a colour image of the surface and record the temperature. The team believe such long term data could help to inform martian weather studies and help future explorers. This is a long term purpose for Ingenuity and it has the capability to store data for 20 years! If system or battery failure occurs the data will still be securely stored. The only way to retrieve the data though, will be through another autonomous craft or a human visitor of the future. 

The success of Ingenuity paved the way for a new era of planetary exploration. Next up is Dragonfly, a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. Costing a total of $3.35 billion across its entire lifecycle it will become the fourth mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program. The probe will be managed by the Marshall Space Flight Centre but behind them is an international team from many different organisations including but not limited to Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland; Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania; Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales in Paris; the German Aerospace Centre in Cologne, Germany; and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in Tokyo.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft came within 1,500 km (930 miles) of the surface of Jupiter’s moon Io in two recent flybys. That’s close enough to reveal new details on the surface of this moon, the most volcanic object in the Solar System. Not only did Juno capture volcanic activity, but scientists were also able to create a visual animation from the data that shows what Io’s 200-km-long lava lake Loki Patera would look like if you could get even closer. There are islands at the center of a magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The lake’s surface is smooth as glass, like obsidian.

“Io is simply littered with volcanoes, and we caught a few of them in action,” said Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton during a news conference at the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna, Austria. “There is amazing detail showing these crazy islands embedded in the middle of a potentially magma lake rimmed with hot lava. The specular reflection our instruments recorded of the lake suggests parts of Io’s surface are as smooth as glass, reminiscent of volcanically created obsidian glass on Earth.”

Just imagine if you could stand by the shores of this lake – which would be a stunning view in itself. But then, you could look up and see the giant Jupiter looming in the skies above you.

Juno made the two close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024. Images from Juno’s JunoCam included the first close-up images of the moon’s northern latitudes. Undoubtedly, Io looks like a pizza – which has been the conclusion since our first views of this moon, when Voyager 1 flew through the Jupiter system in March 1979. The mottled and colorful surface comes from the volcanic activity, with hundreds of vents and calderas on the surface that create a variety of features. Volcanic plumes and lava flows across the surface show up in all sorts of colors, from red and yellow to orange and black. Some of the lava “rivers” stretch for hundreds of kilometers.

Juno scientists were also able to re-create a spectacular feature on Io, a spired mountain that has been nicknamed “The Steeple.” This feature is between 5 and 7 kilometers (3-4.3 miles) in height. It’s hard to comprehend the type of volcanic activity that could have created such a stunning landform.

It was 1903 that the Wright brothers made the first successful self-propelled flight. Launching themselves to history, they set the foundations for transatlantic flights, supersonic flight and perhaps even the exploration of the Solar System. Now we are on the precipice of travel among the stars but among the many ideas and theories, what is the ultimate and most effective way to explore our nearest stellar neighbours? After all, there are 10,000 stars within a region of 110 light years from Earth so there are plenty to choose from. 

It’s not just the stars that entice us to explore beyond our Solar System. Ever since the first exoplanet discovery in 1992 we have been discovering more and more alien worlds around distant stars. The tally has now reached over 5,500 confirmed exoplanets and they too demand our attention as we reach out among the stars. There have been many ideas and technologies proposed over the past few years but to date, even Proxima Centauri (the nearest star system to our own) remains out of reach. 

In his thesis recently published, lead author Johannes Lebert from the Technische Universität München (TUM) attempts to develop a strategy, based on existing interstellar probe concepts and knowledge of nearby star systems. Lebert was driven by the exoplanet discoveries that continue at pace and the development and interest, both commercially and technically in interstellar probes. Not only does he explore the technologies but he also looks at the returns too. 

In the strategy developed in the thesis he looks at the two main objectives which are duration of the mission and the returns. By returns he refers to the sum of all rewards provided by the stars explored during the mission and of course be largely scientific.  He considers a multi vehicle approach using several probes which do not return to Earth and are capable of exploring different stars thereby maximising the mission returns. Finally he explores the routing of such a mission to ensure maximum mission returns. Succinctly he calls this his ‘Bi-objective multi- vehicle open routing problem with profits.’

The thesis concludes with several recommendation. First that the use of efficient routing around the stars, a more limited number of probes can be used, limiting reducing fuel costs. This should be balanced by the mission returns which increase faster should more probes be used to explore the same number of stars simultaneously. This does however increase mission costs due to increase fuel costs. Whichever strategy is used, small-scale remotely operated or autonomous craft are far more suited to the need. 

Can tidal forces cause an exoplanet’s surface to radiate heat? This is what a recent study accepted to The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as a team of international researchers used data collected from ground-based instruments to confirm the existence of a second exoplanet residing within the exoplanetary system, HD 104067, along with using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission to identify an additional exoplanet candidate, as well. What’s unique about this exoplanet candidate, which orbits innermost compared to the other two, is that the tidal forces exhibited from the outer two exoplanets are potentially causing the candidates’ surface to radiate with its surface temperature reaching as high as 2,300 degrees Celsius (4,200 degrees Fahrenheit), which the researchers refer to as a “perfect tidal storm”.

Here, Universe Today discusses this fantastic research with Dr. Stephen Kane, who is a Professor of Planetary Astrophysics at UC Riverside and lead author of the study, regarding the motivation behind the study, significant results, the significance of the “tidal storm” aspects, follow-up research, and implications for this system on studying other exoplanetary systems. So, what was the motivation behind this study?

“The star (HD 104067) was a star known to harbor a giant planet in a 55-day orbit, and I have a long history of obsessing over known systems,” Dr. Kane tells Universe Today. “When TESS detected a possible transiting Earth-size planet in a 2.2-day orbit (TOI-6713.01), I decided to examine the system further. We gathered all RV data and found that there is ANOTHER (Uranus mass) planet in a 13-day orbit. So, it started with the TESS data, then the system just kept getting more interesting the more we studied it.”

Dr. Kane’s history of exoplanetary research encompasses a myriad of solar system architectures, specifically those containing highly eccentric exoplanets, but also includes follow-up work after exoplanets are confirmed within a system. Most recently, he was the second author on a study discussing a revised system architecture in the HD 134606 system, along with discovering two new Super-Earths within that system, as well.

For this most recent study, Dr. Kane and his colleagues used data from the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) and High Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) ground-based instruments and the aforementioned TESS mission to ascertain the characteristics and parameters of both the parent star, HD 105067, and the corresponding exoplanets orbiting it. But, aside from discovering additional exoplanets within the system, as Dr. Kane mentions, what are the most significant results from this study?

Untangling what happened in our Solar System tens or hundreds of millions of years ago is challenging. Millions of objects of wildly different masses interacted for billions of years, seeking natural stability. But its history—including the migration of the giant planets—explains what we see today in our Solar System and maybe in other, distant solar systems.

New research shows that giant planet migration began shortly after the Solar System formed.

Planetary migration is a well-established idea. The Grand-Tack Hypothesis says that Jupiter formed at 3.5 AU, migrated inward to 1.5 AU, and then back out again to 5.2 AU, where it resides today. Saturn was involved, too. Migration can also explain the Hot Jupiters we see orbiting extremely close to their stars in other solar systems. They couldn’t have formed there, so they must have migrated there. Even rocky planets can migrate early in a solar system’s history.

New research in the journal Science establishes dates for giant planet migration in our Solar System. Its title is “Dating the Solar System’s giant planet orbital instability using enstatite meteorites.” The lead author is Dr. Chrysa Avdellidou from the University of Leicester’s School of Physics and Astronomy.

“The question is, when did it happen?” Dr. Avdellidou asked. “The orbits of these planets destabilised due to some dynamical processes and then took their final positions that we see today. Each timing has a different implication, and it has been a great matter of debate in the community.”

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Apollo astronauts set up a collection of lunar seismometers to detect possible Moon quakes. These instruments monitored lunar activity for eight years and gave planetary scientists an indirect glimpse into the Moon’s interior. Now, researchers are developing new methods for lunar quake detection techniques and technologies. If all goes well, the Artemis astronauts will deploy them when they return to the Moon.

Fiber optic cable is the heart of a seismology network to be deployed on the Moon by future Artemis astronauts.

The new approach, called distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), is the brainchild of CalTech geophysics professor Zhongwen Zhan. It sends laser beams through a fiber optic cable buried just below the surface. Instruments at either end measure how the laser light changes during the shake-induced tremors. Basically Zhan’s plan turns the cable into a sequence of hundreds of individual seismometers. That gives precise information about the strength and timing of the tremors. Amazingly, a 100-kilometer fiber optic cable would function as the equivalent of 10,000 seismometers. This cuts down on the number of individual seismic instruments astronauts would have to deploy. It probably also affords some cost savings as well.

A seismometer station deployed on the Moon during the Apollo 15 mission. Courtesy NASA.

Compare DAS the Apollo mission seismometer data and it becomes obvious very quickly that DAS is a vast improvement. In the Apollo days, the small collection of instruments left behind on the Moon provided information that was “noisy”. Essentially, when the seismic waves traveled through different parts of the lunar structure, they got scattered. This was particularly true when they encountered the dusty surface layer. The “noise” basically muddied up the signals.

The dwarf planet Ceres has some permanently dark craters that hold ice. Astronomers thought the ice was ancient when they were discovered, like in the moon’s permanently shadowed regions. But something was puzzling.

Why did some of these shadowed craters hold ice while others did not?

Ceres was first discovered in 1801 and was considered a planet. Later, it was thought to be the first asteroid ever discovered, since it’s in the main asteroid belt. Since then, our expanding knowledge has changed its definition: we now know it as a dwarf planet.

Even though it was discovered over 200 years ago, it’s only in the last couple of decades that we’ve gotten good looks at its surface features. NASA’s Dawn mission is responsible for most of our knowledge of Ceres’ surface, and it found what appeared to be ice in permanently shadowed regions (PSRs.)

New research shows that these PSRs are not actually permanent and that the ice they hold is not ancient. Instead, it’s only a few thousand years old.

Cosmic rays are high-energy particles accelerated to extreme velocities approaching the speed of light. It takes an extremely powerful event to send these bits of matter blazing through the Universe. Astronomers theorize that cosmic rays are ejected by supernova explosions that mark the death of supergiant stars. But recent data collected by the Fermi Gamma-ray space telescope casts doubt on this production method for cosmic rays, and has astronomers digging for an explanation.

It’s not easy to tell where a cosmic ray comes from. Most cosmic rays are hydrogen nuclei, others are protons, or free-flying electrons. These are charged particles, meaning that every time they come across other matter in the Universe with a magnetic field, they change course, causing them to zig-zag through space.

The direction a cosmic ray comes from when it hits Earth, then, is not likely the direction it started in.

But there are ways to indirectly track down their origin. One of the more promising methods is by observing gamma rays (which do travel in straight lines, thankfully).

When cosmic rays bump into other bits of matter, they produce gamma rays. So when a supernova goes off and sends cosmic rays out into the Universe, it should also send a gamma-ray signal letting us know it’s happening.

NASA is in the business of launching things into orbit. But what goes up must come down, and if whatever is coming down doesn’t burn up in the atmosphere, it will strike Earth somewhere.

Even Florida isn’t safe.

Careful consideration goes into releasing debris from the International Space Station. Its mass is measured and calculated so that it burns up during re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere. But in March 2024, something didn’t go as planned.

It all started in 2021 when astronauts replaced the ISS’s nickel hydride batteries with lithium-ion batteries. It was part of a power system upgrade, and the expired batteries added up to about 2,630 kg (5,800 lbs.) On March 8th, 2021, ground controllers used the ISS’s robotic arm to release a pallet full of the expired batteries into space, where orbital decay would eventually send them plummeting into Earth’s atmosphere.

It was the most massive debris release from the ISS. According to calculations, it should have burned up when it entered the atmosphere on March 8th, 2024. But it didn’t.

A new theory suggests that Titan’s majestic dune fields may have come from outer space. Researchers had always assumed that the sand making up Titan’s dunes was locally made, through erosion or condensed from atmospheric hydrocarbons. But researchers from the University of Colorado want to know: Could it have come from comets?

When the Cassini spacecraft arrived in orbit around Saturn, nobody had ever seen beneath the thick soupy atmosphere of Titan. So when it dropped the Huygens lander, and began probing Titan with cloud-penetrating radar, scientists were surprised to learn that Titan has a very earth-like appearance. It has a thick nitrogen atmosphere, rain, rivers, oceans and massive dune fields. But unlike the dunes of Earth’s sandy deserts in Namibia and southern Arabia, Titan’s dunes are enormous, and fill massive fields covering more than an eighth of the giant moon’s surface. These dunes are about 100 meters tall, 1 to 2 km wide at the base, and can stretch for hundreds of kilometers in length.

Dunes on Earth are made from sand, which is blown by the wind and heaped into drifts. Individual sand particles are nudged and blown by the wind with enough force to make them bounce and scatter in a process called saltation. If the particles don’t bounce, then they cannot pile up on top of each other, but if the wind is able to lift them off the ground completely then they simply blow away. Saltation depends on the size and mass of the sand particles and the strength of the wind, but also needs the particles to be dry so that they can move freely without sticking together.

Titan is the second largest moon in the entire Solar System, beaten only by Ganymede, orbiting Jupiter. It is Saturn’s largest moon, and very old. Unlike most of Saturn’s moons, which were captured over time, Titan would have formed together with Saturn billions of years ago. Despite having so many features in common with Earth, it is a very different place. It is so intensely cold that, instead of water, its rain and rivers are made from liquid hydrocarbons like methane. Water, on the other hand, is frozen into hard ice; rocks on Titan are made from water ice, instead of granite and basalt, and Titan’s equivalent of lava and magma are made from liquid water and ammonia.

This means that sand on Titan is not made from silica eroded from larger rocks, since those materials are not found on the surface. One popular theory is that it could instead be made from ice. When liquid methane rains and flows, it could erode the water-ice bedrock, grinding chunks together to a sand of ice grains. An alternative idea is that the sand particles are instead made from tholins. These are found all over the colder regions of the Solar System, where cold hydrocarbons in comets or the outer atmospheres of planets and moons react with ultraviolet light from the Sun to create complex compounds. Tholins formed in the dry atmosphere of Titan could clump together with static electricity to form small grains of soot that then settle to the ground, creating both dust and sand.