Ingenuity marked a number of milestones in space exploration. Arguably most importantly, it proved that powered flight was possible on another planet. However, it did have some limitations, such as being tied to the Perseverance rover and there only being one copy of the helicopter itself. AV Inc, one of the sub-contractors for Ingenuity, hopes to fix those problems with a proposed new mission called Skyfall that would involve six helicopters and no rover.
We live in an age of exoplanet discovery, and have discovered several thousand planets orbiting distant stars. These discoveries hold important lessons about planetary formation and solar system architecture. But we're also discovering a growing number of rogue planets, also called free-floating planets. These planets aren't gravitationally bound to any star. What can they teach us?
In June, technicians at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center began the crucial process of installing the Solar Array Sun Shield aboard the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This shield comprises six panels covered in solar cells that will provide the observatory with power while keeping its instruments cool throughout its mission. This marked the completion of the telescope's outer section, which was followed by thermal vacuum and electronic systems testing of its core section to ensure that the observatory can survive in the harsh environment of space.
They are known as Little Red Dots, or LRDs. We find them in deep field images of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), and they remain a bit of a mystery. But a new study finds that they are not super-Eddington objects, so while they are unusual, they don't break the known rules of astrophysics.
A billion things had to go just right for Earth to become the life-supporting world it is today. Our planet is just the right distance from the right type of star. It has a hot, convective core that generates its protective shield. And early in its history, it was the recipient of organic molecules and water that shepherded Earth towards habitability. Without impacts from both rocky and icy Solar System bodies, Earth wouldn't have received these materials, and it wouldn't be the planet it is today.
Astronauts exploring the Moon will need all the help they can get, and scientists have spent lots of time and plenty of money coming up with different systems to do so. Two of the critical needs of any long-term lunar mission are food and oxygen, both of which are expensive to ship to the Moon from Earth. So, a research team from the Technical University of Munich spent some of their time analyzing the effectiveness of using local lunar resources to build a photobioreactor (PBR), the results of which were recently published in a paper in Acta Astronautica.
What do extreme icy moons in the Solar System and unruly water behavior have to do with each other? That's what scientists at University of Sheffield in England wanted to know. So, they simulated conditions at Europa and Enceladus in the lab. Europa orbits Jupiter and Enceladus circles Saturn. Both have frozen surfaces and internal oceans of salty water. That water plays a huge role in resurfacing and reshaping these icy moons. That process is called cryovolcanism and it shows that water behaves much differently "out there" than it does here on Earth, where it freezes below 0 C and boils above 100 C.
Sometimes the easiest way to understand the physics of a phenomenon is to make a physical model of it. But how do you make a model of a system as large as, say, a protoplanetary disc? One technique, suggested in a recent paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and the University of Greifswald, would be familiar to any grade schooler who took a science class - spin water around in a circle really fast.
While NASA maintains the lead in human space exploration, other nations have already begun their own projects. Take the China National Space Agency for example, with their CLEP, or Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. If you have any doubts about the objectives of the program, just check out their logo: a stylized crescent moon with two footprints in the middle.
Between September 2003 and January 2004, the Hubble Space Telescope conducted its deepest observations of the cosmos ever. Known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the images produced showed nearly 10,000 galaxies of various ages, sizes, and shapes, including some that existed when the Universe was just 800 million years old. Recently, astronomers were able to revisit this iconic snapshot of the cosmos using two instruments aboard the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Their observations set a new record for the longest and deepest observations of an extragalactic field to date.
In the northern hemisphere, we're getting on to enjoying summer time which traditionally includes vacationing. Typically, vacations are a time to pause from work and remember life's possibilities beyond work. Now, perhaps you the vacationer want to rekindle a brief fling you had with science or maybe begin a new science tryst. Ersilia Vaudo's book "The Story of Astrophysics in Five Revolutions" could be just the impetus necessary for such a diversion.
The United States and China aren’t the only powerful, wealthy nations in the world, and they’re certainly not the only nations active in space. For example, there are the Russians, which are…kind of distracted at the moment, so for our purposes there really isn’t much to talk about there.
If you want to get to the moon, you need to spend an enormous amount of resources developing, creating, testing, and deploying a variety of spacecraft and technologies. All you need is money. Lots of money. For decades the only entities with enough green in checking accounts were large governments or multi-national consortia. But nowadays we have some absurdly wealthy, and absurdly motivated, individuals who have stars in their eyes and designs on space missions of their own.
On November 1st, 2024, Project Hyperion - an international, interdisciplinary team of architects, engineers, anthropologists, and urban planners - launched a design competition for crewed interstellar travel. The event was hosted by the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is), a UK-based non-profit organization dedicated to the robotic and human exploration of exoplanets around nearby stars, and eventually settlement. With a prize purse of $10,000, competitors were tasked with producing concepts for a Generation Ship (aka. Worldships) using current technologies and those that could be realized in the near future.
I don’t think space or lunar tourism is going to be the big draw that transforms the moon into something unrecognizable. Instead, I think it’s going to more about large-scale mining and industrialization that scars the lunar surface. So when it comes to possible industrial hellscapes that the moon might turn into, think less Las Vegas and more…Gary, Indiana. No offense, Gary, but you’re kind of an industrial hellscape.
Simulating extraterrestrial environments on Earth has always been a challenge. Our planet has a pleasant atmosphere, reasonable temperatures, and a moderate amount of gravity, unlike the rest of the solar system. Or maybe that’s just because we think that way because we adapted to how it is here as we evolved here. In either case, the physical environment here makes it difficult for us to set up test environments that can accurately test probes going to other parts of the solar system. Many times, it involves vacuum chambers, air conditioners and heaters pumping hot and cold air into them, and soil simulant - lots and lots of soil simulant. But, according to a new paper from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we’ve been neglecting one important aspect of these tests, and it might be the reason Spirit eventually got permanently stuck on Mars - sand is affected by gravity too.
Deep in the heart of our Galaxy lies one of the most chaotic and mysterious regions in space. Now, scientists have created the first detailed map of magnetic fields in this turbulent zone, providing crucial insights into how stars form and evolve in extreme environments.
Science is driven by our desire to understand things. In some cases, where it requires significant effort and investment to develop systems that can understand new things, science benefits from a game plan that the community of researchers focused on a particular niche can rally around, even if they don’t necessarily agree on the details. In astronomy and space science, those game plans typically take the form of Decadal Surveys, produced by the National Academies to define the path forward in a specialization or sub-field.
If you've ever dreamed of exploring space, you know there'll be some serious dangers. One of them is posed by cosmic rays. These high-speed particles slam through anything, including our bodies, damaging DNA and ripping molecules apart. As dangerous as they sound to unprotected spacefarers, they could actually help microscopic life survive hiding under the icy surfaces of places like Europa or Enceladus.
But wait, before you go out to build a moon casino we need to talk about a couple things. One, you really have to figure out how the roulette wheel is going to work in a low gravity environment. Second, we’re going to need you to keep the noise down.
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