Space News & Blog Articles

It’s not always possible to observe the night sky from the surface of the Earth. The blocking effects of the atmosphere mean we sometimes need to put telescopes out into space. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory is one such telescopes and it has just completed its 25th year of observations. To celebrate, NASA have just released 25 never-before-seen images of various celestial objects in x-rays. The collection includes images showing the region around black holes, giant clouds of hot gas and extreme magnetic fields. Sadly though, NASA is planning on shutting down the mission to save budget so best to enjoy the images while you can. 

Venus’s atmosphere has drawn a lot of attention lately. In particular, the consistent discovery of phosphine in its clouds points to potential biological sources. That, in turn, has resulted in numerous suggested missions, including floating a balloon into the atmosphere or having a spacecraft scoop down and suck up atmospheric samples. But a team of engineers led by Jeffrey Balcerski, now an adjunct at Kent State University but then part of the Ohio Aerospace Institute, came up with a different idea years ago – use floating sensor platforms shaped like leaves to collect a wide variety of data throughout Venus’ atmosphere.

The JWST has directly imaged its first exoplanet, a temperate super Jupiter only about 12 light-years away from Earth. It could be the oldest and coldest planet ever detected.

SpaceX is flying again after the Federal Aviation Administration ruled that the company can resume Falcon 9 rocket launches while the investigation into a failed July 11 mission continues.

Supermassive Black Holes are Nature’s confounding behemoths. It’s difficult for Earth-bound minds to comprehend their magnitude and power. Astrophysicists have spent decades studying them, and they’ve made progress. But one problem still baffles even them: the Final Parsec Problem.

The extrasolar planet census recently passed a major milestone, with 5500 confirmed candidates in 4,243 solar systems. With so many exoplanets available for study, astronomers have learned a great deal about the types of planets that exist in our galaxy and have been rethinking several preconceived notions. These include the notion of “habitability” and whether Earth is the standard by which this should be measured – i.e., could there be “super habitable” exoplanets out there? – and the very concept of the circumsolar habitable zone (CHZ).

When the James Webb Space Telescope was launched it came with a fanfare expecting amazing things, much like the Hubble Space Telescope. One of JWST’s most anticipated target was TRAPPIST-1. This inconspicuous star is host to seven Earth-sized planets, with at least three in the habitable zone. The two inner planets are airless worlds but so far there has been no word of the third planet, the first in the habitable zone. The question is why and what makes it so tricky to observe?

Venus is known for being really quite inhospitable with high surface temperatures and Mars is known for its rusty red horizons. Even the moons of some of the outer planets have fascinating environments with Europa and Enceladus boasting underground oceans. Recent observations from the James Webb Space Telescope show that Ariel, a moon of Uranus, is also a strong candidate for a sub surface ocean. How has this conclusion been reached? Well JWST has detected carbon dioxide ice on the surface on the trailing edge of features trailing away from the orbital direction. The possible cause, an underground ocean!

When we think of Jupiter-type planets, we usually picture massive cloud-covered worlds orbiting far from their stars. That distance keeps their volatile gases from vaporizing from stellar heat, similar to what we’re familiar with in our Solar System. So, why are so many exoplanets known as “hot Jupiters” orbiting very close to their stars? That’s the question astronomers ask as they study more of these extreme worlds.

Our CO2 emissions are warming the planet and making life uncomfortable and even unbearable in some regions. In July, the planet set consecutive records for the hottest day.

Check any container of over-the-counter medicine, and you’ll see its expiration date. Prescription medicines have similar lifetimes, and we’re told to discard old medications rather than hold on to them. Most of them lose their effectiveness over time, and some can even become toxic. We’re discouraged from disposing of them in our wastewater because they can find their way into other organisms, sometimes with deleterious effects.

We take high definition streaming for granted in many parts of the world. Even now, as I type this article, I have the Martian streaming in high definition but until now astronauts on board the Space Station have had to accept low definition streaming. A team of researchers at NASA have developed and used a new system using an aircraft as a relay. A laser terminal was installed on a research aircraft and data was sent to a ground station. The signals were sent around the Earth and beamed to a relay satellite which then sent the signal on to the Space Station. What the astronauts will actually use it for is less likely to be streaming HD movies but will certainly be able to take advantage of the high bandwidth for science data and communications. 

Characterizing near-Earths asteroids (NEAs) is critical if we hope to eventually stop one from hitting us. But so far, missions to do so have been expensive, which is never good for space exploration. So a team led by Patrick Bambach of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany developed a mission concept that utilizes a relatively inexpensive 6U CubeSat (or, more accurately, two of them) to characterize the interior of NEAs that would cost only a fraction of the price of previous missions. 

There’s a burgeoning arms race between Artificial Intelligence (AI) deepfake images and the methods used to detect them. The latest advancement on the detection side comes from astronomy. The intricate methods used to dissect and understand light in astronomical images can be brought to bear on deepfakes.

The field of extrasolar planet studies has grown exponentially in the past twenty years. Thanks to missions like Kepler, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and other dedicated observatories, astronomers have confirmed 5,690 exoplanets in 4,243 star systems. With so many planets and systems available for study, scientists have been forced to reconsider many previously-held notions about planet formation and evolution and what conditions are necessary for life. In the latter case, scientists have been rethinking the concept of the Circumsolar Habitable Zone (CHZ).

The prospect of actually resolving the event horizon of black holes feels like the stuff of science fiction yet it is a reality. Already the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has resolved the horizon of the black holes at the centre of the Milky Way and M87. A team of astronomers are now looking to the next generation of the EHT which will work at multiple frequencies with more telescopes than EHT. A new paper suggests it may even be possible to capture the ring where light goes into orbit around the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way. 

Think about background radiation and most people immediately think of the cosmic background radiation and stories of pigeon excrement during its discovery. That’s for another day though. Turns out that the universe has several background radiations, such as infrared and even gravitational wave backgrounds. NASA’s New Horizons is far enough out of the Solar System now that it’s in the perfect place to measure the cosmic optical background (COB). Most of this light comes from the stars in galaxies, but astronomers have always wondered if there are other sources of light filling our night sky. New Horizons has an answer. No!

According to the ESA’s Near-Earth Objects Coordination Center (NEOCC), 35,264 known asteroids regularly cross the orbit of Earth and the other inner planets. Of these, 1,626 have been identified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs), meaning that they may someday pass close enough to Earth to be caught by its gravity and impact its surface. While planetary defense has always been a concern, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slamming into Jupiter in 1994 sparked intense interest in this field.

The largest storm in the Solar System is shrinking and planetary scientists think they have an explanation. It could be related to a reduction in the number of smaller storms that feed it and may be starving Jupiter’s centuries-old Great Red Spot (GRS).

Lunar exploration equipment at any future lunar base is in danger from debris blasted toward it by subsequent lunar landers. This danger isn’t just theoretical – Surveyor III was a lander during the Apollo era that was damaged by Apollo 12’s descent rocket and returned to Earth for closer examination. Plenty of ideas have been put forward to limit this risk, and we’ve reported on many of them, from constructing landing pads out of melted regolith to 3D printing a blast shield out of available materials. But a new paper from researchers in Switzerland suggests a much simpler idea – why not just build a blast wall by stacking a bunch of rocks together?

For over ten years, the ESA’s Gaia Observatory has monitored the proper motion, luminosity, temperature, and composition of over a billion stars throughout our Milky Way galaxy and beyond. This data will be used to construct the largest and most precise 3D map of the cosmos ever made and provide insight into the origins, structure, and evolutionary history of our galaxy. Unfortunately, this sophisticated astrometry telescope is positioned at the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange Point, far beyond the protection of Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere.