Space News & Blog Articles

If predictions are correct, a key outburst star could put on a show in early 2024.

If astronomers are correct, a familiar northern constellation could briefly take on a different appearance in 2024, as a nova once again blazes into prominence. The star in question is T Coronae Borealis, also referred to as the ‘Blaze Star’ or T CrB. Located in the corner of the constellation Corona Borealis or the Northern Crown, T CrB is generally at a quiescent +10th magnitude, barely discernible with binoculars… but once every 60 years, the star has flared briefly into naked eye visibility at around +2nd magnitude.

The enigma that is T Coronae Borealis was first noted by Irish astronomer John Birmingham on the night of May 12, 1866. Observers later scoured the region for decades to come, until hitting pay-dirt with a second flare-up from the star once again in 1946. None other than astronomer Leslie Peltier of Starlight Nights fame witnessed the 1946 outburst. A recent study by Bradley Shaefer Louisiana State University in 2023 suggests that a bright ‘guest star’ seen in 1217 and again in 1787 in the same region mentioned in medieval manuscripts may in fact have been apparitions of T CrB.

We now know that T Coronae Borealis is what’s known as a recurrent nova. This occurs when a white dwarf companion star orbiting a red giant siphons off material, which accretes and compresses around the white dwarf star. This accumulates on the white dwarf, until it reaches a limit where runaway fusion occurs, and it shines briefly as a nova. Recurrent novae are rare, and less than 10 are known of in our galaxy.

This seems to suggest a periodicity of 80 years for the Blaze Star, suggesting another appearance running up to 2026. A suspicious dimming recorded in 2023, however, is now giving astronomers pause. The star behaved the same way in 1945, about a year prior to outburst. Astronomers are now hoping that we’ll see T CrB brighten this year.

Intuitive Machines says it’s putting its Odysseus moon lander to bed for a long lunar night, with hopes of reviving it once the sun rises again near the moon’s south pole.

The Houston-based company and NASA recapped Odysseus’s six days of operation on the lunar surface, shared pictures showing its off-kilter configuration, and looked ahead to the mission’s next phase during a briefing today at Johnson Space Center in Texas.

The original plan called for the solar-powered spacecraft to be turned off when the sun fell below the lunar horizon, but Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said mission controllers would instead put the Odysseus into hibernation and try restoring contact in three weeks’ time. “We are going to leave the computers and the power system in a place where we can wake it up and do this development test objective, to actually try to ping it with an antenna and see if we can’t wake it up once it gets power again,” he told reporters.

Last week, Odysseus became the first-ever commercial spacecraft to survive a descent to the lunar surface, and the first U.S.-built spacecraft to do so since NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in 1972. NASA struck a deal to pay Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six science instruments to the lunar surface under the terms of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, or CLPS.

Sue Lederer, NASA’s project scientist for CLPS at Johnson Space Center, said every one of NASA’s payloads has met “some level of their objectives, and we’re very excited about that.”

During the Universe’s Dark Ages, dense primordial gas absorbed and scattered light, prohibiting it from travelling. Only when the first stars and galaxies began to shine in energetic UV light did the Epoch of Reionization begin. The powerful UV light shone through the Universe and punched holes in the gas, allowing light to travel freely.

New observations with the James Webb Space Telescope reveal how it happened. The telescope shows that faint dwarf galaxies brought an end to the darkness.

To reach back in time and answer fundamental questions about our Universe is the James Webb Space Telescope’s greatest gift. The powerful infrared space telescope has peered back into the earliest stages of the Universe’s life and shown astronomers the forces that shaped it. One of our biggest questions about the Universe concerns the Epoch of Reionization (EOR) that occurred several hundred million years after the Big Bang, ending the Universe’s Dark Ages.

Scientists have been uncertain about the source of light that caused the EOR. The primordial gas that blocked light from travelling prior to the EOR was hydrogen, and it comprised the Intergalactic Medium (IGM). Only higher-energy UV light can ionize hydrogen, so astronomers looked for sources of UV light. (Gamma rays and X-rays can too, but there weren’t enough sources to cause the EOR.) Candidates included Population III stars, the very first stars to form in the Universe. They were massive and luminous and could’ve provided the required UV light.

Quasars were another candidate because they emit so much light above the threshold needed to ionize hydrogen. But there weren’t enough of them to trigger the EOR. Massive galaxies were also a candidate, but astronomers think that they would’ve absorbed much of their own light.

Here’s a front row seat on what it would be like to return to Earth inside a space capsule. Varda Space Industries’ small W-1 spacecraft successfully landed at the Utah Test and Training Range on February 21, 2024.  A camera installed inside the cozy 90 cm- (3 ft)-wide capsule captured the entire stunning reentry sequence, from separation from the satellite bus in low Earth orbit (LEO) to the fiery re-entry through Earth’s atmosphere, to parachute deploy, to the bouncy landing.

At the end of this 5-minute video, you’ll see a pair legs with mud-caked shoes approach to gather the parachute and retrieve the capsule. Not only is there video, but sound as well. And the sounds of reentry and landing are what grabs you!  

There’s a also full 27-minute unedited raw footage from separation to touchdown is also available, below.

On X, Varda said reentry speeds reached Mach 25.

W-1 was part of a Rocket Lab Photon spacecraft launched in June 2023 on SpaceX’s Transporter-8 rideshare mission (NASA’s CAPSTONE mission also launched on this flight.). Varda used the spacecraft to test their in-space manufacturing technologies. Inside the capsule, the company was able to produce crystals of a drug called ritonavir, an antiviral drug grown in the microgravity LEO environment that can be used to treat HIV and hepatitis C.  The company’s goal is to develop the infrastructure to make LEO more accessible to commercial industries.  

The possibility for life beyond the Earth has captivated us for hundreds of years. It has been on the mind of science fiction writers too as our imaginations have explored the myriad possibilities of extraterrestrial life. But what would it really be like if/when we finally meet one; would it lead to war or peace? Researchers have used a complex language model to simulate the first conversations with civilisations from pacifists to militarists and the outcomes revealed interesting challenges.

The first radio transmissions were made in 1895 and since then the signals, however weak have been leaking out into space. The first intentional transmission out into space was the Arecibo message of 1974 that was sent toward the globular cluster M13 22,180 light years away. That means the signal won’t arrive there for about another 22,131 years! During this time of course, all the signals have been leaking out but the further they travel, the weaker they get. Its likely then that any signals out to a distance of about 100 light years is likely to be so weak as to not be detectable. 

It would be so easy to be dragged into other areas of debate about aliens but it feels useful to set the scene of how difficult it will be to make contact or rather, how likely it may be. Assume then, that in some way, we do find ourselves making communication with an alien civilisation. Just how that conversation goes has been modelled by a team led by Mingyu Jin from Northwestern University. 

The team used a new artificial intelligence framework known as CosmoAgent to simulate the interaction based upon the unique Large Language Model (LLM). The system uses a Multi-Agent System to enable modelling among a diverse range of civilisations. The civilisations have the ability to choose their own character traits from hiding, fighting or collaborating. This dynamic environment allows for a plethora of outcomes from alliances forming, adherence to rules to rivalries to how a civilisation might respond to an unforeseen event. 

Diversity and conditions for life were also inherent in the modelling using transition matrices to analyse how civilisations might grow and change over time. This natural progression of an intelligent life form would inevitably mean ethics, morals, beliefs and sciences would develop along a varied path. These different frameworks would hugely effect just how such a civilisation might respond to alien contact. 

Ingenuity has been the first aerial vehicle on another world. NASA announced the end of the Martian helicopter’s life at the end of its 72nd flight. During the flight there had been a problem on landing and, following the incident a few photos revealed chips in one of the rotor blades but nothing too serious. New images have been revealed that show the craft is missing one of its rotor blades entirely! 

Mars Ingenuity was developed by NASA as a small lightweight drone that made history by becoming the first powered flight on Mars. It was part of the mission that took the Perseverance rover to Mars in February 2021.  Undertaking powered flights in the thin Martian atmosphere it demonstrated that powered flight was possible as it surveyed the surrounding area for items of interest for further exploration. 

The construction was the brainchild of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory who oversaw the construction on behalf of the agency. NASA’s Ames Research Centre and Langley Research Center played a significant role in flight performance analysis and technical support. 

On board the vehicle was some cutting edge technology that was tailored for the conditions on Mars. First of course, are the rotors, the thin atmosphere on Mars mean larger than usual blades were needed to generate the lift required. It was built with lightweight materials like carbon fibre to make it as efficient as possible, new and efficient solar cells that would drive the autonomous navigation systems. It was equipped with sensors and cameras to enable data collection of the Martian terrain to send back to Perseverance rover and controllers on Earth. 

Ingenuity had been flying in a terrain with few rocks – which it uses in some part for navigation – and so had been experiencing difficulties. On 6 Jan it made an emergency landing because it couldn’t accurately identify its location. It happened again on the next flight but this time it seems to have come down at an angle and struck the ground with one of its rotors. Images suggested it had suffered some chips on one of the rotor blades however, recent images reveal the damage is more severe.

Universe Today has explored the importance of studying impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, and solar physics, and what this myriad of scientific disciplines can teach scientists and the public regarding the search for life beyond Earth. Here, we will explore some of the most awe-inspiring spectacles within our solar system known as comets, including why researchers study comets, the benefits and challenges, what comets can teach us about finding life beyond Earth, and how upcoming students can pursue studying comets. So, why is it so important to study comets?

Dr. James Bauer, who is a Research Professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Maryland, tells Universe Today, “For star gazers, comets are some of the most attention-grabbing objects in the sky. They move, they change their shape, appearance, and their brightness, as they travel through their orbits. Yet they are scientifically important for other reasons. When they venture towards the Sun (approach their orbital perihelion), they show what they are made of, by emitting gas and dust from the comet nucleus. They are the most accessible, least altered solar system bodies, and they are accessible because they come close to the Sun and Earth. They have retained a significant portion of their volatiles over time, and they have likely played a significant role in transporting volatile material through the solar system, for example from the outer solar system to the inner planets.”

While comets have been explored via spacecraft for only the last few decades, their observational history dates back several thousand years, including Halley’s Comet, which becomes visible from Earth every 75-79 years, and was most famously illustrated on the Bayeux Tapestry in the 11th century that depicted the Norman invasion of England in 1066, known as the Battle of Hastings. Like most astronomical phenomena throughout history, the cometary observations were initially perceived as either positive or negative omens, whether it be for fortune or health.

In fact, it was the legendary Greek philosopher, Aristotle, who proclaimed during the 4th century BCE that comets were atmospheric phenomena. This belief went unopposed until a series of physicists and mathematicians made their own scientific assertions about comets, including the French mathematician, Jean Pena, who deduced that comets were of celestial origin as opposed to terrestrial origin. This was later confirmed by Tycho Brahe, who used the Great Comet of 1577 to measure its parallax and deduced that comets are of astronomical nature, as well. Since the dawn of the Space Age, several spacecraft missions have visited comets up-close, including Halley’s Comet on a few occasions, offering scientists incredible opportunities to learn more about these mysterious balls of ice. But, even with advanced ground- and space-based exploration technologies, what are some of the benefits and challenges of studying comets?

“Comets change,” Dr. Bauer tells Universe Today. “Throughout their orbits, as well as their behavior in different orbital passes near the sun (perihelion passages), they often have variations in their behavior. This makes them exciting to study. Each variance provides more information as to the cause and nature of its behavior. It also makes the behavior difficult to interpret. For example, if you measure an unusually strong presence of a species, unless you have observed the comet over a broad timescale, you cannot assume it is a regular feature of the comet and not something from a short-term outburst. This makes it difficult to interpret the same exciting variances in behavior.”

NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission was hailed a success when it collided with its target asteroid Dimorphos last year. The purpose of the endeavour was to see if it could redirect an asteroid and, since the impact, astronomers have been measuring and calculating the impact on the target. It is incredible that the 580kg spacecraft travelling at 6 km/s was able to impart enormous kinetic energy to the 5 billion kg asteroid.

The DART mission, launched by NASA in 2021, aimed to test our ability to deflect asteroids. By crashing a spacecraft into the smaller asteroid of the Didymos binary system, DART was to demonstrate the effectiveness of kinetic impactors in altering an asteroid’s trajectory. This mission marked a crucial step in planetary defence, showcasing technology that could one day protect us from potential asteroid impacts.

Studies from the impact have shown that the kinetic impact approach for deflecting asteroids is a viable approach. Earth-based observations indicate that Dimorphos’ orbit around its parent asteroid, Didymos, decreased by approximately 33 minutes. However, researchers remain uncertain about the overall ‘impact’ to the asteroid from the spacecraft’s impact. Additionally to be able to understand the efficiency of the moment transfer from the impact (known as the beta factor) a precise measurement fo the asteroids mass must be known. This is up to the Hera mission to achieve. 

Hera is a European Space Agency mission due for launch in October 2024 and arrive in 2026. Its purpose is to survey the Didymos binary asteroid system following the DART impact. Hera will measure the mass accurately but will also attempt to measure the recoil from material ejected out into space. We already have some information from the Italian LICIACube, images from James Webb and Hubble show a plume of debris that extended 10,000 km into space. 

While we wait for Hera to arrive, research teams have been simulating the DART impact using the Bern Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics impact code (SPH). It was developed at the University of Bern and was designed to model the break up of rocky bodies from collisions. It’s a fascinating tool that converts colliding bodies into millions of individual particles whose behaviours are informed by the laws of physics. This isn’t just some whimsical game though, the software has been used already to reproduce the impact of Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft with the asteroid Ryugu.

When a satellite reaches the end of its life, it has only two destinations. It can either be maneuvered into a graveyard orbit, a kind of purgatory for satellites, or it plunges to its destruction in Earth’s atmosphere. The ESA’s ERS-2 satellite took the latter option after 30 years in orbit.

ERS-2 was an Earth Observation satellite launched in 1995. It was scheduled to last three years but lasted much longer. In March 2,000, a computer and a gyro failed, and the mission continued but suffered some data degradation. Other equipment failures followed, and the mission finally ended in 2011. ERS-2 was destroyed during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere on February 21st, 2024. But unlike other satellites, the destruction of ERS-2 was caught on camera. The Tracking and Imaging Radar (TIRA) at the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR in Germany captured images of the satellite’s demise.

TIRA has a 34-meter tracking antenna, and on February 19, 20 and 21, the facility tracked the satellite for a few minutes while it travelled overhead. A GIF of these images shows ERS-2 tumbling through the sky and its solar array coming loose.

via GIPHY

The images show the solar array coming loose the day before ERS-2 re-entered the atmosphere.

Plate tectonics is not something most people would associate with Mars. In fact, the planet’s dead core is one of the primary reasons for its famous lack of a magnetic field. And since active planetary cores are one of the primary driving factors of plate tectonics, it seems obvious why that general conception holds. However, Mars has some features that we think of as corresponding with plate tectonics – volcanoes. A new paper from researchers at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) looks at how different types of plate tectonics could have formed different types of volcanoes on the surface of Mars.

Typically, when you think of volcanoes on Mars, you think of massive shield volcanoes like Olympus Mons, similar to those seen in some locations on Earth, such as Hawai’i. These form when repeated eruptions deposit layers of lava for millions of years. Those eruptions aren’t impacted by how any underlying plates move underneath them. But they do create a different underlying landscape than elsewhere on the planet.

One of the main differences is that the volcanoes have a high silica concentration. Most of the rest of the Red Planet has relatively low silica concentration and consists primarily of basalt. However, they have distinctly more elevated levels of silica, and Dr. Joseph Michalski and his colleagues at HKU think they know why.

Back in the Archean age, 3 billion years ago, on Earth, geologists have theorized that a type of plate tectonics known as “vertical tectonics” forced the planet’s crust to collapse into the planet’s mantle. There, it was reformed, injected with a high concentration of silica, and then spewed back onto the surface due to erupting volcanoes.

That would conveniently explain why the silica levels of volcanoes on Mars are higher than on the rest of the planet. To back up their findings, the paper describes signs of numerous other volcano types, such as stratovolcanoes and lava domes, that also contain high silica concentrations and could result from this type of theorized tectonics.

The Star Wars world Tatooine is one of the most recognizable planets in the realm of science fiction. It’s a harsh place, and its conditions shaped the hero Luke Skywalker in many ways. In the reality-based Universe, there may not be many worlds like it. That’s because, according to a new study out from Yale researchers, the Universe likes to be more orderly, and that affects planets and their environments.

The study, led by Yale assistant professor Malena Rice and two colleagues, looked at binary star systems with planets. In many of these systems, the planets orbit one of the two stars. “We show, for the first time, that there is an unexpected pile-up of systems where everything is aligned,” said Rice. “The planets orbit precisely in the same direction that the first star rotates, and the second star orbits that system on the same plane as the planets.”

To come to that conclusion, Rice’s team looked at data about binary systems in several databases. They also examined triple-star candidates. The Gaia DR3 catalog provided high-precision stellar astrometry. Such accuracy is crucial to determining the separations and distances of binaries and their associated worlds. NASA’s Exoplanet Archive provided planetary system parameters, and the TEPCat catalog of transiting planet properties supplied information about the physical properties in systems where the planetary orbits cross in the line of sight between the star and Earth.

The team used all the data to create 3D geometries mapping the planets in binary star systems. It turns out that nine of the 40 systems they studied had “perfect alignment.” That is, they have joint spin-orbit and orbit-orbit alignment. That means—due to regular, periodic gravitational interactions—the planets and stars move in orbits that have aligned with each other. In other words, everything in the system orbits in the same plane and same direction.

The extrasolar planet TrES-4b orbits a star in Hercules that lies about 1,660 light-years away. There’s a binary companion in the system, as well. This is one system studied in the Rice team’s research for binary system orbital alignments with planets. Artist’s impression, credit: Lowell Observatory.

Astronomers have found three new moons orbiting our Solar System’s ice giants. One is orbiting Uranus, and two are orbiting Neptune. It took hard work to find them, including dozens of time exposures by some of our most powerful telescopes over several years. All three are captured objects, and there are likely more moons around both planets waiting to be discovered.

This is the first new moon found around Uranus in 20 years and brings the planet’s total to 28. One of the new moons around Neptune is the smallest ever detected with a ground-based telescope, and the pair of new discoveries bring Neptune’s total to 16.

Uranus’ new moon has the provisional title S/2023 U1 and was first observed on November 4, 2023, by Scott Sheppard from Carnegie Science. Like the planet’s other outer satellites, it will eventually be given a name from a Shakespeare play. Other moon names include Oberon, Titania, and Ariel. S/2023 U1 is only 8 km in diameter, tiny compared to the ice giant’s largest moon, Titania, which is almost 800 km. The tiny moon takes 680 days to orbit Uranus.

Neptune’s pair of new moons are likewise tiny. The brightest one has the provisional name S/2002 N5, is about 23 km in diameter, and takes nearly nine years to orbit Neptune. The fainter one has the provisional name S/2021 N1, is about 14 km in diameter, and takes almost 27 years to orbit the planet. They’ll both be given names from Greek mythology.

All of the easy-to-observe moons were found long ago. These small moons required much more work. While Scott Sheppard played a leading role, he had a lot of help.

Evolution has produced a wondrously diverse variety of lifeforms here on Earth. It just so happens that talking primates with opposable thumbs rose to the top and are building a spacefaring civilization. And we’re land-dwellers. But what about other planets? If the dominant species on an ocean world builds a technological civilization of some sort, would they be able to escape their ocean home and explore space?

A new article in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society examines the idea of civilizations on other worlds and the factors that govern their ability to explore their solar systems. Its title is “Introducing the Exoplanet Escape Factor and the Fishbowl Worlds (Two conceptual tools for the search of extra-terrestrial civilizations).” The sole author is Elio Quiroga, a professor at the Universidad del Atlántico Medio in Spain.

We have no way of knowing if other Extraterrestrial Intelligences (ETIs) exist or not. There’s at least some possibility that other civilizations exist, and we’re certainly in no position to say for sure that they don’t. The Drake Equation is one of the tools we use to talk about the existence of ETIs. It’s a kind of structured thought experiment in the form of an equation that allows us to estimate the existence of other active, communicative ETIs. Some of the variables in the Drake Equation (DE) are the star formation rate, the number of planets around those stars, and the fraction of planets that could form life and on which life could evolve to become an ETI.

In his new research article, Quiroga comes up with two new concepts that feed into the DE: the Exoplanet Escape Factor and Fishbowl worlds.

Planets of different masses have different escape velocities. Earth’s escape velocity is 11.2 km/s (kilometres per second), which is more than 40,000 km/h. The escape velocity is for ballistic objects without propulsion, so our rockets don’t actually travel 40,000 km/h. But the escape velocity is useful for comparing different planets because it’s independent of the vehicle used and its propulsion.

In a recent announcement, the Chinese Space Agency (CSA) unveiled the names for its forthcoming lunar mission components. The CSA have been working towards sending humans to the Moon through a series of robotic missions. The 22-tonne capsule that is taking the astronauts to the Moon is called Mengzhuo (translates to ‘dream vessel’) and the lander has been named Lanyue (meaning ‘embracing the Moon’). Assuming all goes to plan, they will send two humans and a rover to the surface of the Moon by 2030.

Despite the fact that the CSA have not published a date for the mission yet, if all goes well then they will become the second country to get humans to the lunar surface. The capsules will launch to the Moon atop their new super-heavy-lift carrier rocket named Long March 10.

According to Chinese state media, the Mengzhou spacecraft will include the re-entry module designed to house the astronauts and will also function as a control centre. In addition to this, there will be the service module that is home to power and propulsion systems.  Overall, Mengzhou will be 9 metres long and weigh in at 22 tons. 

In an attempt to get the public involved in the mission, the names of the craft were picked by a group of experts from nearly 2,000 ideas put forward by the public. The names have history too. ‘Lanyue’ first appeared in a poem written by Mao Zedong (the founder of People’s Republic of China) in 1965. It symbolises the Chinese aspirations and confidences in their exploration of the Universe. The name ‘Mengzhou’ is linked to the Chinese nations dream of landing on the Moon. 

That same dream is shared by President Xi Jinping with the goal of revitalising the nation and establishing itself as a prominent technological country. The aspirations for lunar exploration are on par with many other countries that wish to enhance their space capability.  Doing so may yield scientific discoveries, national prestige and opportunities for identifying resource supplies to facilitate deeper space exploration. 

Discovering exoplanets is almost routine now. We’ve found over 5,500 exoplanets, and the next step is to study their atmospheres and look for biosignatures. The James Webb Space Telescope is leading the way in that effort. But in some exoplanet atmospheres, lightning could make the JWST’s job more difficult by obscuring some potential biosignatures while amplifying others.

Detecting biosignatures in the atmospheres of distant planets is fraught with difficulties. They don’t advertise their presence, and the signals we receive from exoplanet atmospheres are complicated. New research adds another complication to the effort. It says that lightning can mask the presence of things like ozone, an indication that complex life could exist on a planet. It can also amplify the presence of compounds like methane, which is considered to be a promising biosignature.

The new research is “The effect of lightning on the atmospheric chemistry of exoplanets and potential biosignatures,” and it’s been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. The lead author is Patrick Barth, a researcher from the Space Research Institute at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

While we’ve discovered over 5,500 exoplanets, only 69 of them are in the potentially habitable zones around their stars. They’re rocky planets that receive enough energy from their stars to potentially maintain liquid water on their surfaces. Our search for biosignatures is focused on this small number of planets.

The important next step is to determine if these planets have atmospheres and then what the composition of those atmospheres is. The JWST is our most powerful instrument for these purposes. But in order to understand what the JWST shows us in distant atmospheres, we have to know what its signals tell us. Research like this helps scientists prepare for the JWST’s observations by alerting them to potential false positives and masked biosignatures.

To quote NASA associate administrator Jim Reuter, sending crewed missions to Mars by 2040 is an “audacious goal.” The challenges include the distance involved, which can take up to six months to traverse using conventional propulsion methods. Then there’s the hazard posed by radiation, which includes increased exposure to solar particles, flares, and galactic cosmic rays (GCRs). And then there’s the time the crews will spend in microgravity during transits, which can take a serious toll on human health, physiology, and psychology.

But what about the challenges of living and working on Mars for several months at a time? While elevated radiation and lower gravity are a concern, so is Martian regolith. Like lunar regolith, dust on Mars will adhere to astronauts’ spacesuits and inflict wear on their equipment. However, it also contains harmful particles that must be removed to prevent contaminating habitats. In a recent study, a team of aerospace engineers tested a new electrostatic system for removing Martian regolith from spacesuits that could potentially remove harmful dust with up to 98% efficiency.

The new system was designed by Benjamin M. Griggs and Lucinda Berthoud, a Master’s engineering student and Professor of Space Systems Engineering (respectively) with the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Bristol, UK. The paper that describes the system and the verification process recently appeared in the journal Acta Astronautica. As they explain, the Electrostatic Removal System (ERS) they propose utilizes the phenomenon of dielectrophoresis (DEP) to remove Martian dust from spacesuit fabrics.

Dust flies from the tires of a moon buggy, driven by Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan. These “rooster-tails” of dust caused problems. Credit: NASA

Much like its lunar counterpart, Martian regolith is expected to be electrostatically charged due to exposure to cosmic radiation. But on Mars, there’s also the contribution made by dust devils and storms, which have been known to generate electrostatic discharges (aka. lightning). During the Apollo missions, astronauts reported how the lunar regolith would adhere to their suits and get tracked back into their Lunar Modules. Once inside, it would similarly stick to everything and get into their eyes and lungs, causing irritation and respiratory problems.

Four days after Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander made an off-kilter touchdown on the moon, the mission team is releasing snapshots that were taken during its descent.

The ultra-wide-angle images confirm that the lander is continuing to communicate with flight controllers, even though it’s lying in an awkward angle that limits how much data its antennas can transmit.

Meanwhile, images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have identified Odysseus’ landing spot, within a mile (1.5 kilometers) of its intended target near a crater called Malapert A in the moon’s south polar region. The bad news is that the solar-powered lander may have to go dark sooner than anticipated.

The lander is the first-ever commercial spacecraft to survive a descent to the moon, and the first U.S-built spacecraft to do so since NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in 1972. NASA is paying Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six science payloads to the surface, and there are another six private-sector payloads on board.

Odysseus’ descent wasn’t easy: Just hours before the landing, the Nova Control team had to reprogram the lander to work around a disabled laser range-finding system. The spacecraft instead made use of one of the NASA payloads, an experimental laser range-finding system. Fortunately, the work-around worked.

Like many of you, I love a good meteor shower. I have fond memories of the Leonid meteor storm back in 1999 when several hundred per hour were seen at peak. Sadly meteor storms are not that common unlike meteor showers of which, there are about 20 major showers per year. Wait, there’s another one and this time it comes from the debris left behind from Comet 46P/Wirtanen with an expected peak on December 12. Last year, 23 meteors were seen on that night that matched the location of the comets trail. 

Comets (and some asteroids) leave a trail of debris behind them like a trail of celestial breadcrumbs. If the orbit of a comet crosses the orbit of the Earth then the particles from the debris (that are often no larger than grains of sand) collide with our atmosphere. At the immense speeds (of the order of 60 km per second, the particles falling through the atmosphere cause the gas to glow giving rise to the classic shooting star we see in the sky. Because the orbits of Earth and comets are relatively fixed, this process repeats itself every time we go through the same part of the orbit giving us the familiar annual meteor showers. 

One such comet that it seems may become host to a new annual shower is Comet 46P/Wirtanen (46P). It nearly hit the headlines previously when it had been initially selected as the target for the Rosetta mission which, as you may recall, visited 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko instead.  46P is known as a short period comet taking 5.4 years to complete one orbit of the Sun. It is among the family of comets known as a Jupiter comet which has a most distant point from the Sun of between 5 and 6 astronomical units (1 AU is the average distance between the Sun and Earth). Observations have suggested it has a diameter of about 1.4km. 

Due to the high levels of ice present in comets, it’s not unusual for active areas on their surface to appear as the ices sublimate into gasses or pockets of gas escape. Observations using the TRAPPIST telescope (The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope) suggest 40% of the surface is active which is higher than the usual 5-10% for Jupiter family comets. A recent study found the presence of mm sized dust particles in the comet’s coma which should be visible upon entering Earth’s atmosphere. 

The orbit of 46P has a very low minimum orbit intersection distance (MOID) to Earth of just 0.071AU. The MOID between two objects that orbit a common point is the distance between the closest points of their orbits. The low MOID and the mm sized particles mean there is a high liklihood it could be the source of a meteor shower. Previous observations however have revealed no positive confirmation of peaks in 2017 and 2019.

Japan’s space agency didn’t expect its wrong-side-up SLIM moon lander to revive itself after powering down for a circuit-chilling lunar night on Feb. 1. But that’s exactly what happened.

“Last night, a command was sent to SLIM and a response received, confirming that the spacecraft has made it through the lunar night and maintained communication capabilities!” the SLIM mission team reported today in a posting to X / Twitter.

This wasn’t SLIM’s first resurrection: The boxy spacecraft touched down and tumbled onto its side on Jan. 19-20, settling in a position where its solar arrays couldn’t charge up its batteries. To conserve power, mission managers put the probe into hibernation and waited for the sun’s rays to hit the panels at a more favorable angle.

The team was able to revive the lander and get a few days’ worth of science data before putting it back into hibernation. Mission managers thought that might have been the end. During the 14-day lunar night, surface temperatures were expected to fall to about 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-130 degrees Celsius) — a deep-freeze that was colder than what SLIM was designed to endure.

The lunar night ended days ago. After giving SLIM’s solar panels a chance to charge up the batteries again, the team at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency decided to check in — and got the good news. The circuitry is warm again. Actually, it’s hot: SLIM’s team members said that when the lander resumed contact, some of its equipment was hotter than 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius). That’s too hot for their liking.

Does Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, possess the necessary ingredients for life to exist? This is what a recent study published in Astrobiology hopes to address as a team of international researchers led by Western University investigated if Titan, with its lakes of liquid methane and ethane, could possess the necessary organic materials, such as amino acids, that could be used to produce life on the small moon. This study holds the potential to help researchers and the public better understand the geochemical and biological processes necessary for life to emerge throughout the cosmos.

Along with its liquid lakes of methane and ethane, Titan is also strongly hypothesized to possess a subsurface liquid water ocean like Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus, and Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa. For the study, the researchers used data from impact cratering from comets to estimate the number of organic molecules that could relocate from Titan’s surface to its subsurface liquid water ocean. The team hypothesized that when comets strike Titan’s surface, their icy materials would melt from the heat of the impact and mix with the surface organics, resulting in a unique mixture. However, the heavier liquid water would then sink to the subsurface, slowly filling the subsurface ocean over time.

Artist’s cutaway illustration displaying Titan’s subsurface ocean (blue). (Credit: NASA/JPL)

After accounting for a presumed annual number of cometary impacts on Titan’s surface throughout its billions of years of existence, the researchers then calculated how much water would make its way from the surface to the subsurface ocean. In the end, the team concluded that the amount of glycine, which is the most basic amino acid that forms the proteins to create life, was measured at no greater than 7,500 kilograms/year (16,530 pounds/year). This amount approximately equals the size of a smaller African forest elephant, hence indicating number of organic materials that exist on Titan is quite miniscule.

“One elephant per year of glycine into an ocean 12 times the volume of Earth’s oceans is not sufficient to sustain life,” said Dr. Catherine Neish, who is an associate professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Western University and lead author of the study. “In the past, people often assumed that water equals life, but they neglected the fact that life needs other elements, in particular carbon.”