Space News & Blog Articles

You had to be in the right part of North America to get a great view of the recent solar eclipse. But a particular telescope may have had the most unique view of all. Even though that telescope is in Hawaii and only experienced a partial eclipse, its images are interesting.

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is at the Haleakala Observatory in Hawaii. With its four-meter mirror, it’s the largest solar telescope in the world. It observes in visible to near-infrared light, and its sole target is the Sun. It can see features on the Sun’s surface as small as 20 km (12 miles.) It began science operations in February 2022, and its primary objective is to study the Sun’s magnetic fields.

Though seeing conditions weren’t perfect during the eclipse and the eclipse was only partial when viewed from Hawaii, the telescope still gathered enough data to create a movie of the Moon passing in front of the Sun. The bumps on the Moon’s dark edge are lunar mountains.

via GIPHY

“The team’s primary mission during Maui’s partial eclipse was to acquire data that allows the characterization of the Inouye’s optical system and instrumentation,” shares National Solar Observatory scientist Dr. Friedrich Woeger.

Astronomers have found the largest stellar mass black hole in the Milky Way so far. At 33 solar masses, it dwarfs the previous record-holder, Cygnus X-1, which has only 21 solar masses. Most stellar mass black holes have about 10 solar masses, making the new one—Gaia BH3—a true giant.

Supermassive black holes (SMBH) like Sagittarius A Star at the heart of the Milky Way capture most of our black hole attention. Those behemoths can have billions of solar masses and have enormous influence on their host galaxies.

But stellar-mass holes are different. Unlike SMBHs that grow massive through mergers with other black holes, stellar black holes result from massive stars exploding as supernovae. SMBHs are always found in the center of a massive galaxy, but stellar black holes can be hidden anywhere.

“This is the kind of discovery you make once in your research life.”

Astronomers found BH3 in data from the ESA’s Gaia spacecraft. It’s Gaia’s third stellar black hole. BH3 has a stellar companion, and the black hole’s 33 combined solar masses tugged on its aged, metal-poor companion. The star’s tell-tale wobbling betrayed BH3’s presence. At only 2,000 light-years away, BH3 is awfully close in cosmic terms.

The last total solar eclipse across the Mexico, the U.S. and Canada for a generation wows observers.

Did you see it? Last week’s total solar eclipse did not disappoint, as viewers from the Pacific coast of Mexico, across the U.S. from Texas to Maine and through the Canadian Maritime provinces were treated to an unforgettable show. The weather threw us all a curve-ball one week out, as favored sites in Texas and Mexico fought to see the event through broken clouds, while areas along the northeastern track from New Hampshire and Maine onward were actually treated to clear skies.

Many eclipse chasers scrambled to reposition themselves at the last minute as totality approached. In northern Maine, it was amusing to see tiny Houlton, Maine become the epicenter of all things eclipse-based.

We were also treated to some amazing images of the eclipse from Earth and space. NASA also had several efforts underway to chase the eclipse. Even now, we’re still processing the experience. It takes time (and patience!) for astro-photos to make their way through the workflow. Here are some of the best images we’ve seen from the path of totality:

Tony Dunn had an amazing experience, watching the eclipse from Mazatlan, Mexico. “When totality hit, it didn’t look real,” Dunn told Universe Today. “It looked staged, like a movie studio. the lighting is something that can’t be experienced outside a total solar eclipse.”

Universe Today has recently had the privilege of investigating a myriad of scientific disciplines, including impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, solar physics, comets, planetary atmospheres, planetary geophysics, cosmochemistry, meteorites, radio astronomy, and extremophiles, and how these multidisciplinary fields can help both scientists and space fans better understand how they relate to potentially finding life beyond Earth, along with other exciting facets. Here, we will examine the incredible field of organic chemistry with Dr. Andro Rios, who is an Assistant Professor in Organic Chemistry at San José State University, regarding why scientists study organic chemistry, the benefits and challenges, finding life beyond Earth, and potential paths for upcoming students. So, why is it so important to study organic chemistry?

“Organic chemistry is a fascinating and powerful discipline that is directly connected to nearly everything we interact with on a daily basis,” Dr. Rios tells Universe Today. “This can range from what gives our favorite foods the flavors we love, to the medicines we take to help alleviate our pain. Organic chemistry is also the basis of describing the known chemistry that makes up the biology on this planet (called biochemistry) and can possibly provide the clues to what extraterrestrial life might be based on as well, should we find evidence of it in the upcoming years.”

While its name implies a scientific field of complicated science, the field of organic chemistry essentially involves the study of organic compounds, also known as carbon-based life, which comprises all known lifeforms on the Earth. This involves studying the various properties, classifications, and reactions that comprise carbon-based life, which helps scientists understand their structural formulas and behaviors. This, in turn, enables overlap with other disciplines, including the aforementioned biochemistry, but also includes materials science, polymer chemistry, and medicinal chemistry, as well. Therefore, given its broad range of scientific potential, what are some of the benefits and challenges of studying organic chemistry?

“Organic chemistry has played a vital role in transforming the human experience on this planet by improving our health and longevity,” Dr. Rios tells Universe Today. “All of us, or nearly all of us, have known either family members, friends or even ourselves who have fallen severely ill or battled some chronic disease. The development of new medicines, both directly and indirectly through the tools of organic chemistry to fight these ailments has been one of the most beneficial contributions of this field to society.”

Dr. Rios continues, “Learning organic chemistry in the classroom often presents a challenge because it seems so different from the general chemistry courses that most students have learned to that point. The reason for this is because organic chemistry introduces new terminology, and its focus is heavily tied to the 3-dimensional structure and composition of molecules that is not considered in general chemistry courses. The good news is that organic chemistry provides the perfect bridge from general chemistry to biochemistry/molecular biology which also often focuses on the structures and shapes of molecules (biomolecules).”

The Milky Way is ancient and massive, a collection of hundreds of billions of stars, some dating back to the Universe’s early days. During its long life, it’s grown to these epic proportions through mergers with other, smaller galaxies. These mergers punctuate our galaxy’s history, and its story is written in the streams of stars left behind as evidence after a merger.

And it’s still happening today.

The Milky Way is currently digesting smaller galaxies that have come too close. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds feel the effects as the Milky Way’s powerful gravity distorts them and siphons a stream of gas and stars from them to our galaxy. A similar thing is happening to the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy and globular clusters like Omega Centauri.

There’s a long list of these stellar streams in the Milky Way, though the original galaxies that spawned them are long gone, absorbed by the Milky Way. But the streams still tell the tale of ancient mergers and absorptions. They hold kinematic and chemical clues to the galaxies and clusters they spawned in.

As astronomers get better tools to find and study these streams, they’re realizing the streams could tell them more than just the history of mergers. They’re like strings of pearls, and their shapes and other properties show how gravity has shaped them. But they also reveal something else important: how dark matter has shaped them.

Hmmm spaceflight is not the easiest of enterprises. NASA have let us know that their plans for the Mars Sample Return Mission have changed. The original plan was to work with ESA to collect samples from Perseverance and return them to Earth by 2031. Alas like many things, costs were increasing and timescales were slipping and with the budget challenges, NASA has had to rework their plan. Administrator Bill Nelson has now shared a simpler, less expensive and less risk alternative.

The Mars Perseverance Rover departed Earth as part of the Mars 2020 mission on 30 July 2020. It’s no quick nip round the corner to get to the red planet so it arrived just under 7 months later on 18 February 2021. Among its many tasks was to collect rock samples, package them up into tubes and deposit them ready for collection by another future mission to return them to Earth. The samples are to be analysed in Earth based laboratories to help us understand the formation of the Solar System, to look for signs of ancient life on Mars and to enable future human exploration. So far so good but enter NASAs budgetary challenges. 

In response to these budget challenges and to an independent review of the Mars Sample Return mission, NASA have had to get creative. The mission design has been updated to include a simpler, less risky approach and at lower cost. The timescales for the sample return have also now been pushed out to return the samples by 2040 instead of the original target date 9 years earlier. 

The team at NASA are under no illusions as to the complexity of the task at hand. To land safely on Mars is just the beginning. The samples have to be collected and safely stowed away, then the rocket must take off from Mars and return safely to Earth! This has never been done before without human intervention – think Apollo with astronauts bringing several kilograms of lunar samples back for analysis. 

At the time of writing this report, NASA do not yet have a way to reduce the costs yet maintain a high level of confidence of success. NASA has asked multiple teams to work together to come up with a plan that takes an innovative approach with where possible, proven technology. They are to work with other industries on proposals to find ways that the mission can be delivered to the cost challenges, with less complexity and by bringing the delivery of the samples back to the 2030’s. 

Just like Isaac Newton, Galileo and Albert Einstein, I’m not sure exactly when I became aware of Peter Higgs. He has been one of those names that anyone who has even the slightest interest in science, especially physics, has become aware of at some point. Professor Higgs was catapulted to fame by the concept of the Higgs Boson – or God Particle as it became known. Sadly, this shy yet key player in the world of physics passed away earlier this month.

Peter Higgs was born on 29th May 1929 in Newcastle upon Tyne. He suffered with asthma as a child and, coupled with the family moving around due to his father’s work, was schooled at home for much of his earlier years. Whilst living in Bristol, Higgs’ father had to move to Bedford so Peter and is Mum stayed behind. Eventually he enrolled in Cotham Grammar School in Bristol where he excelled at science and won many prizes for his work. Surprisingly this tended to focus around chemistry rather than physics. It was at Cotham that he became fascinated by quantum mechanics.

By the time he was 17, he had moved to City of London School and here he focussed on mathematics, eventually graduating with a first-class honours degree in physics. His masters came two years later in 1952. In 1954, he was awarded a PhD with a thesis titled ‘Some Problems in the Theory of Molecular Vibrations from the Universe.’ Higgs tried to get a job at Kings College where he earned his PhD but was unsuccessful so moved to the University of Edinburgh and set about answering the question – Why do some particles have mass?

He worked upon the idea that, at the time when the Universe began, particles did not have mass. This was later gained due to interactions with something which became known as the Higgs Field. The concept was a field that permeates through space giving mass to sub-atomic particles like quarks and leptons. His work was an evolution of earlier work from Yoichiro Nambu from the University of Chicago.

Two other groups of scientists published work at similar times with a similar concept, but Higgs’ work published in 1964 was prominent and so the (theoretical) particle, that transferred mass, became known as the Higgs Boson. In the years that followed, scientists hunted for the new particle, chiefly using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN but Higgs retired by 2006 with nothing detected.

It’s been just over a week since millions of people flocked to places across North America for a glimpse of moonshadow. The total solar eclipse of April 8th, 2024 was a spectacular sight for many on the ground. From space, however, it was even more impressive as Earth-observing satellites such as GOES-16 captured the sight of the shadow sweeping over Earth.

NASA even got a snap of the eclipse from the Moon, as taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). Unlike most Earth-based photographers, however, LROC’s view was a tricky one to get. The cameras are line scanners and their images get built up line-by-line. That process requires the spacecraft to slew to keep up with the action and build up a complete view. Amazingly, it took only 20 seconds to capture all the action.

NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory got an amazing view from Earth orbit, capturing the entire eclipse as it passed over the continent. That observatory “lives” out at LaGrange Point 1, which enabled it to get a full view of Earth and the Moon’s shadow.

For most viewers, the chase to see an eclipse meant driving (or flying) to somewhere along the path of totality to get the best view. That path stretched from the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico up toward the northern Canadian provinces. That meant a wide swath of the U.S. experienced totality. Or course, the weather had to be good to see it all. In most places, that actually turned out reasonably well. Social media immediately came alive with images of the eclipse, people enjoying it, and others waiting vainly for a break in the clouds.

A composite of images taken during the total solar eclipse showing all the phases leading up to and after totality. NASA/Keegan Barber.

I’m really not sure what to call it but a ‘dusty sneeze’ is probably as good as anything. We have known for some years that stars surround themselves with a disk of gas and dust known as the protostellar disk. The star interacts with it, occasionally discharging gas and dust regularly. Studying the magnetic fields revealed that they are weaker than expected. A new proposal suggests that the discharge mechanism ‘sneezes’ some of the magnetic flux out into space. Using ALMA, the team are hoping to understand the discharges and how they influence stellar formation. 

In a fairly inconspicuous part of the Galaxy, a star slowly formed out of a cloud of gas and dust. This event took place around 4.6 billion years ago and soon, the hot young star began to clear the surrounding area of gas and dust. What remained was a disk surrounding the star known as a protostellar disk. Eventually the planets of our Solar System formed. It is not unique to our own system though as there have been disks like this found around many stars. A very well known example are the stars in the Trapezium cluster inside the Orion Nebula. 

A team in Japan, from the Kyushu University have been examining data from the ALMA radio telescope to learn more about stars in the earliest stages of development. To their surprise they discovered the disks around new stars seem to emit jets or plumes of dust and gas and even electromagnetic energy. The team dubbed them ‘sneezes’ and its this process that seems to slowly erode the magnetic flux of a young star system. 

One phenomenon of the disks is a powerful magnetic field which permeates through the region. It therefore carries a magnetic flux and herein lies the problem. The magnetic fields would be far stronger than those observed if the magnetic flux had been retained from day one. History shows us, they didn’t seem to retain them so the flux has been slowly eroded away in new star and planetary systems. 

One such proposal was that the field slowly decreased as the surrounding dust cloud collapsed into the core of the star. To explore the phenomenon the team studied MC 27, a system 450 light years away using ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimetre Array. In total, 66 radio telescopes pointed to the object from an altitude of 5,000 metres. They found that there were ‘spike like’ structures that seemed to extend out by a few astronomical units (average distance between Sun and Earth.)

The most recognizable feature on Pluto is its “heart,” a relatively bright valentine-shaped area known as Tombaugh Regio. How that heart got started is one of the dwarf planet’s deepest mysteries — but now researchers say they’ve come up with the most likely scenario, involving a primordial collision with a planetary body that was a little more than 400 miles wide.

The scientific term for what happened, according to a study published today in Nature Astronomy, is “splat.”

Astronomers from the University of Bern in Switzerland and the University of Arizona looked for computer simulations that produced dynamical results similar to what’s seen in data from NASA’s New Horizons probe. They found a set of simulations that made for a close match, but also ran counter to previous suggestions that Pluto harbors a deep subsurface ocean. They said their scenario doesn’t depend on the existence of a deep ocean — which could lead scientists to rewrite the history of Pluto’s geological evolution.

University of Arizona astronomer Adeene Denton, one of the study’s co-authors, said the formation of the heart “provides a critical window into the earliest periods of Pluto’s history.”

“By expanding our investigation to include more unusual formation scenarios, we’ve learned some totally new possibilities for Pluto’s evolution,” Denton said in a news release. Similar scenarios could apply to other objects in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy worlds on the edge of our solar system.

Look through the names and origins of the constellations and you will soon realise that many cultures had a hand in their conceptualisation. Among them are the Egyptians who were fantastic astronomers. The movement of the sky played a vital role in ancient Egypt including the development of the 365 day year and the 24 hour day. Like many other cultures they say the Sun, Moon and planets as gods. Surprisingly though, the bright Milky Way seems not to have played a vital role. Some new research suggests that this may not be the case and it may have been a manifestation of the sky goddess Nut! 

It’s a fairly well accepted theory that the pyramids of Egypt were constructed in some way as a representation of or tribute to the sky. The Sun god Ra was often depicted sailing the Sun across the sky in a boat but the Milky Way was never seemed to be a big part, other than perhaps some consideration that the river Nile could represent it. 

Back in the days of ancient Egypt, light pollution really wasn’t a thing. The Milky Way would have been far more prominent than for many stargazers today. A recent study by astrophysicists at the University of Portsmouth suggest that a lesser heard god by the name of Nut had something to do with it. 

Hunt through Egyptian artwork and you will often see a star-filled woman arched over another person. The woman is Nut, the goddess of the sky and the other figure represents her brother, the god of Earth, Geb. Nut has a very specific job though, she protects the Earth from being flooded from waters of the void! Presumably this would be the void of space but of course back then we didn’t have such a great understanding of the cosmos. She also swallowed the Sun as it sets, giving birth to it again in the morning. 

Thankfully the Egyptians were fabulous at recording things and so there have been plenty of Egyptian texts to refer to. Running simulations from the evidence in the documents, the team (led by Dr Or Graur Associate Professor in Astrophysics) suggest that the Milky Way represented Nut’s outstretched arms in the winter and her backbone in the summer. This suggestion aligns with the broad patterns in the Milky Way. 

In 2011, astronomers with the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) consortium detected a gas giant orbiting very close to a Sun-like (G-type) star about 700 light-years away. This planet is known as WASP-39b (aka. “Bocaprins”), one of many “hot Jupiters” discovered in recent decades that orbits its star at a distance of less than 5% the distance between the Earth and the Sun (0.05 AU). In 2022, shortly after the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) it became the first exoplanet to have carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide detected in its atmosphere.

Alas, researchers have not constrained all of WASP-39b’s crucial details (particularly its size) based on the planet’s light curves, as observed by Webb. which is holding up more precise data analyses. In a new study led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), an international team has shown a way to overcome this obstacle. They argue that considering a parent star’s magnetic field, the true size of an exoplanet in orbit can be determined. These findings are likely to significantly impact the rapidly expanding field of exoplanet study and characterization.

The study was led by Dr. Nadiia M. Kostogryz and her fellow researchers from the MPS. They were joined by astronomers and astrophysicists from the Center for Astronomy (Heidelberg University), the Astrophysics Group at Keele University, the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). The paper describing their research, “Magnetic origin of the discrepancy between stellar limb-darkening models and observations,” was recently published in Nature Astronomy.

The “hot Jupiter” exoplanet WASP-69b orbits its star so closely that its atmosphere is being blown into space. Credit: Adam Makarenko/W. M. Keck Observatory

A light curve is the measurement of a star’s brightness over longer periods. Using the Transit Method (Transit Photometry), astronomers monitor stars for periodic dips in brightness, which can result from an exoplanet passing (transiting) in front of their face relative to the observer. In addition to being the most widely used method for detecting exoplanets, precise observations of light curves allow astronomers to estimate the size and orbital period of the exoplanets.

An international research team led by the University of Vienna has made a major breakthrough. In a study recently published in Nature Astronomy, they describe how they conducted the first direct measurements of stellar wind in three Sun-like star systems. Using X-ray emission data obtained by the ESA’s X-ray Multi-Mirror-Newton (XMM-Newton) of these stars’ “astrospheres,” they measured the mass loss rate of these stars via stellar winds. The study of how stars and planets co-evolve could assist in the search for life while also helping astronomers predict the future evolution of our Solar System.

The research was led by Kristina G. Kislyakova, a Senior Scientist with the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Vienna, the deputy head of the Star and Planet Formation group, and the lead coordinator of the ERASMUS+ program. She was joined by other astrophysicists from the University of Vienna, the Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LAMOS) at the Sorbonne University, the University of Leicester, and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL).

Astrospheres are the analogs of our Solar System’s heliosphere, the outermost atmospheric layer of our Sun, composed of hot plasma pushed by solar winds into the interstellar medium (ISM). These winds drive many processes that cause planetary atmospheres to be lost to space (aka. atmospheric mass loss). Assuming a planet’s atmosphere is regularly replenished and/or has a protective magnetosphere, these winds can be the deciding factor between a planet becoming habitable or a lifeless ball of rock.

Logarithmic scale of the Solar System, Heliosphere, and Interstellar Medium (ISM). Credit: NASA-JPL

While stellar winds mainly comprise protons, electrons, and alpha particles, they also contain trace amounts of heavy ions and atomic nuclei, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, and even iron. Despite their importance to stellar and planetary evolution, the winds of Sun-like stars are notoriously difficult to constrain. However, these heavier ions are known to capture electrons from neutral hydrogen that permeates the ISM, resulting in X-ray emissions. Using data from the XXM-Newton mission, Kislyakova and her team detected these emissions from other stars.

One of the big mysteries about dark matter particles is whether they interact with each other. We still don’t know the exact nature of what dark matter is. Some models argue that dark matter only interacts gravitationally, but many more posit that dark matter particles can collide with each other, clump together, and even decay into particles we can see. If that’s the case, then objects with particularly strong gravitational fields such as black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs might capture and concentrate dark matter. This could in turn affect how these objects appear. As a case in point, a recent study looks at the interplay between dark matter and neutron stars.

Neutron stars are made of the most dense matter in the cosmos. Their powerful gravitational fields could trap dark matter and unlike black holes, any radiation from dark matter won’t be trapped behind an event horizon. So neutron stars are a perfect candidate for studying dark matter models. For this study, the team looked at how much dark matter a neutron star could capture, and how the decay of interacting dark matter particles would affect its temperature.

The details depend on which specific dark matter model you use. Rather than addressing variant models, the team looked at broad properties. Specifically, they focused on how dark matter and baryons (protons and neutrons) might interact, and whether that would cause dark matter to be trapped. Sure enough, for the range of possible baryon-dark matter interactions, neutron stars can capture dark matter.

The team then went on to look at how dark matter thermalization could occur. In other words, as dark matter is captured it should release heat energy into the neutron star through collisions and dark matter annihilation. Over time the dark matter and neutron star should reach a thermal equilibrium. The rate at which this occurs depends on how strongly particles interact, the so-called scattering cross-section. The team found that thermal equilibrium is reached fairly quickly. For simple scalar models of dark matter, equilibrium can be reached within 10,000 years. For vector models of dark matter, equilibrium can happen in just a year. Regardless of the model, neutron stars can reach thermal equilibrium in a cosmic blink of an eye.

If this model is correct, then dark matter could play a measurable role in the evolution of neutron stars. We could, for example, identify the presence of dark matter by observing neutron stars that are warmer than expected. Or perhaps even distinguish different dark matter models by the overall spectrum of neutron stars.

After a journey lasting about two billion years, photons from an extremely energetic gamma-ray burst (GRB) struck the sensors on the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope on October 9th, 2022. The GRB lasted seven minutes but was visible for much longer. Even amateur astronomers spotted the powerful burst in visible frequencies.

It was so powerful that it affected Earth’s atmosphere, a remarkable feat for something more than two billion light-years away. It’s the brightest GRB ever observed, and since then, astrophysicists have searched for its source.

NASA says GRBs are the most powerful explosions in the Universe. They were first detected in the late 1960s by American satellites launched to keep an eye on the USSR. The Americans were concerned that the Russians might keep testing atomic weapons despite signing 1963’s Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Now, we detect about one GRB daily, and they’re always in distant galaxies. Astrophysicists struggled to explain them, coming up with different hypotheses. There was so much research into them that by the year 2,000, an average of 1.5 articles on GRBs were published in scientific journals daily.

There were many different proposed causes. Some thought that GRBs could be released when comets collided with neutron stars. Others thought they could come from massive stars collapsing to become black holes. In fact, scientists wondered if quasars, supernovae, pulsars, and even globular clusters could be the cause of GRBs or associated with them somehow.

It’s an exciting time for the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. Thanks to cutting-edge observatories, instruments, and new techniques, scientists are getting closer to experimentally verifying theories that remain largely untested. These theories address some of the most pressing questions scientists have about the Universe and the physical laws governing it – like the nature of gravity, Dark Matter, and Dark Energy. For decades, scientists have postulated that either there is additional physics at work or that our predominant cosmological model needs to be revised.

While the investigation into the existence and nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy is ongoing, there are also attempts to resolve these mysteries with the possible existence of new physics. In a recent paper, a team of NASA researchers proposed how spacecraft could search for evidence of additional physical within our Solar Systems. This search, they argue, would be assisted by the spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation and using interferometers. Such a mission could help resolve a cosmological mystery that has eluded scientists for over half a century.

The proposal is the work of Slava G. Turyshev, an adjunct professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and research scientist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was joined by Sheng-wey Chiow, an experimental physicist at NASA JPL, and Nan Yu, an adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina and a senior research scientist at NASA JPL. Their research paper recently appeared online and has been accepted for publication in Physical Review D.

A new study shows how measuring the Sun’s gravitational field could search for additional physics. Credit: NASA/ESA

Turyshev’s experience includes being a Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission science team member. In previous work, Turyshev and his colleagues have investigated how a mission to the Sun’s solar gravitational lens (SGL) could revolutionize astronomy. The concept paper was awarded a Phase III grant in 2020 by NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. In a previous study, he and SETI astronomer Claudio Maccone also considered how advanced civilizations could use SGLs to transmit power from one solar system to the next.

Most satellites share the same fate at the end of their lives. Their orbits decay, and eventually, they plunge through the atmosphere toward Earth. Most satellites are destroyed during their rapid descent, but not always

Heavy pieces of the satellite, like reaction wheels, can survive and strike the Earth. Engineers are trying to change that.

Satellite debris can strike Earth and is a potential hazard, though the chances of debris striking anything other than ocean or barren land are low. Expired satellites usually just re-enter the atmosphere and burn up. But there are a lot of satellites, and their number keeps growing.

In February 2024, the ESA’s European Remote Sensing 2 (ERS2) satellite fell to Earth. The ESA tracked the satellite and concluded that it posed no problem. “The odds of a piece of satellite falling on someone’s head is estimated at one in a billion,” ESA space debris system engineer Benjamin Bastida Virgili said.

That would be fine if ERS 2 was an isolated incident. But, according to the ESA, an object about as massive as ERS 2 reenters Earth’s atmosphere every one to two weeks. The statistics may show there’s no threat to people, but statistics are great until you’re one of them.

Exploration of the Moon or other dusty environments comes with challenges. The lunar surface is covered in material known as regolith and its a jaggy, glassy material. It can cause wear and tear on equipment and can pose a health risk to astronauts too. Astronauts travelling to Mars would experience dust saucing to everything, including solar panels leading to decrease in power. To combat the problems created by dust, NASA is working on an innovative electrodynamic dust shield to remove dust and protect surfaces from solar panels to space suits. 

Dust is common on Earth as much as it is on other worlds although of course the source can be very different. It plagues are homes and leads to the constant battle to remove it from our homes in the almost ritualistic activity of dusting. Even here there are a multitude of sprays, brushes and rags that claim to help. Some even employ the electrostatic force to help repel dust from surfaces. It is a mere annoyance to us, perhaps causing the odd electrical device to over heat but largely its a small part of our lives. On alien worlds, it can lead to serious equipment malfunction and serious health hazards. 

Researchers at NASAs Kennedy Space Centre in Florida are now turning to electrostatic forces for help to keep astronauts and equipment dust free. Technology is being developed that has been called the Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) –  I rather wish they dropped the word dust from the title to make it sound a little more StarTrek! The shield uses transparent electrodes and electric fields to electrically remove dust from surfaces.The idea was inspired by the electric curtain concept that was developed by NASA in 1967 but this new EDS has been in development since 2004. 

Dust exposure is a real concern for Commercial Lunar Payload Services and Artemis missions as the material can get into gaskets and seals, hatches and even potentially lunar habitats compromising their integrity. Dr Charles Buhler, lead scientist said “For these CPLS and Artemis missions, dust exposure is a concern because the lunar surface is far different than what we’re used to here.”

It’s the nature of the stuff to, not just that it gets everywhere like sand after a day at the beach. It is really abrasive like tiny pieces of glass because, unlike Earth where weathering tends to dull sharp edges, no such process occurs on the Moon. Even brushing the stuff off surfaces can lead to problems. 

The Martian moons Phobos and Deimos are oddballs. While other Solar System moons are round, Mars’ moons are misshapen and lumpy like potatoes. They’re more like asteroids or other small bodies than moons.

Because of their odd shapes and unusual compositions, scientists are still puzzling over their origins.

Two main hypotheses attempt to explain Phobos and Deimos. One says they’re captured asteroids, and the other says they are debris from an ancient impactor that collided with Mars. Earth’s moon was likely formed by an ancient collision when a planetesimal slammed into Earth, so there’s precedent for the impact hypothesis. There’s also precedent for the captured object scenario because scientists think some other Solar System moons, like Neptune’s moon Triton, are captured objects.

Phobos and Deimos have lots in common with carbonaceous C-type asteroids. They’re the most plentiful type of asteroid in the Solar System, making up about 75% of the asteroid population. The moons’ compositions and albedos support the captured asteroid theory. But their orbits are circular and close to Mars’ equator. Captured objects should have much more eccentric orbits.

The moons are less dense than silicate, the most abundant material in Mars’ crust. That fact works against the impact theory. A powerful impact would’ve blasted material from Mars into space, forming a disk of material rotating around the planet. Phobos and Deimos would’ve formed from that material. If they result from an ancient planetesimal impact, they should contain more Martian silica.

Everyone knows that solar energy is free and almost limitless here on Earth. The same is true for spacecraft operating in the inner Solar System. But in space, the Sun can do more than provide electrical energy; it also emits an unending stream of solar wind.

Solar sails can harness that wind and provide propulsion for spacecraft. NASA is about to test a new solar sail design that can make solar sails even more effective.

Solar pressure pervades the entire Solar System. It weakens with distance, but it’s present. It affects all spacecraft, including satellites. It affects longer-duration spaceflights dramatically. A spacecraft on a mission to Mars can be forced off course by thousands of kilometres during its voyage by solar pressure. The pressure also affects a spacecraft’s orientation, and they’re designed to deal with it.

Though it’s a hindrance, solar pressure can be used to our advantage.

A few solar sail spacecraft have been launched and tested, beginning with Japan’s Ikaros spacecraft in 2010. Ikaros proved that radiation pressure from the Sun in the form of photons can be used to control a spacecraft. The most recent solar sail spacecraft is the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2, launched in 2019. LightSail 2 was a successful mission that lasted over three years.