Space News & Blog Articles

How do you measure an object’s weight from a distance? You could guess at its distance and therefore derive its size. Maybe you could further speculate about its density, which would eventually lead to an estimated weight. But these are far from the exact empirical studies that astrophysicists would like to have when trying to understand the weight of stars. Now, for the first time ever, scientists have empirically discovered the weight of a distant single star, and they did so using gravitational lensing.

In this era of exoplanet discovery, astronomers have found over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets, with thousands more awaiting confirmation and many billions more waiting to be discovered. These exoplanets exist in a bewildering spectrum of sizes, compositions, orbital periods, and just about every other characteristic that can be measured.

Roscosmos appears to be having some issues with a spacecraft again. In December, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft that delivered three crewmembers of Expedition 68 to the International Space Station (ISS) reported a leak in its coolant loop. On February 11th, engineers at the Russian Mission Control Center outside Moscow recorded a depressurization in Progress 82, an uncrewed cargo craft docked with the Poisk laboratory module. The cause of these leaks remains unknown, but Roscosmos engineers (with support from their NASA counterparts) will continue investigating.

There has long been a limiting factor in the development of space-based telescopes – launch fairings. These capsules essentially limit the overall size of the mirrors we are able to launch into space, thereby limiting the sensitivity of many of those instruments. Despite those limitations, some of the most successful telescopes ever have been space-based, but even with all the advantages of being in space, they have so far failed to find an exoplanet in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star. Enter a new project called the Diffractive Interfero Coronagraph Exoplanet Resolver (DICER), which recently received funding from NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). 

Novel propulsion ideas for moving around space seem like they’re a dime a dozen recently. Besides the typical argument between solar sails and chemical propulsion lies a potential third way – a nuclear rocket engine. While we’ve discussed them here at UT before, NASA’s Institute of Advanced Concepts has provided a grant to a company called Positron Dynamics for the development of a novel type of nuclear fission fragment rocket engine (FFRE). It could strike the balance between the horsepower of chemical engines and the longevity of solar sails.

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) lurk in the center of large galaxies like ours. From their commanding position in the galaxy’s heart, they feed on gas, dust, stars, and anything else that strays too close, growing more massive as time passes. But in rare circumstances, an SMBH can be forced out of its position and hurtle through space as a rogue SMBH.

A meteoroid lit up the sky above the English Channel early Monday morning February as it streaked through the atmosphere, and because it had been detected just a few hours beforehand – with expert precision on where it could be seen — skywatchers were able to capture the event.

Solar systems evolve, especially early on in their lifetimes. While this evolution is primarily driven by gravity, there are some parts of our own solar system that are difficult to understand – especially how gravity forced them into their current configuration. One of the most prominent of these areas is the Trojan asteroids.

In a recent study published in Nature Astronomy, an international team of researchers led by NASA and The George Washington University examined data from an October 2020 detection of what’s known as a “large spin-down glitch event”, also known as an “anti-glitch”, from a type of neutron star known as a magnetar called SGR 1935+2154 and located approximately 30,000 light-years from Earth, with SGR standing for soft gamma repeaters. Such events occur when the magnetar experiences a sudden decrease in its rotation rate, which in this case was followed by three types of radio bursts known as extragalactic fast radio bursts (FRBs) and then pulsed radio emissions for one month straight after the initial rotation rate decrease.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover has reached another milestone. It’s finished caching its samples for a potential return to Earth. The sample depot is located in Mars’ Jezero Crater, where Perseverance is busy searching for signs of ancient life.

Astronomers have discovered a galaxy with very little or no stellar mass. Galaxies like these are called ‘dark galaxies.’ It contains clouds of gas but very few stars, possibly none. This is the only isolated dark dwarf galaxy in the local universe.

Exploring Mars is hazardous work. Robotic missions that are sent there have to contend with extreme temperatures, dust storms, intermittent sunlight, and rough terrain. In recent years, two robotic missions were lost due to dust alone, and all that roving around has done a number on the Curiosity rover’s treads. It’s understandable why mission teams are pleasantly surprised when their missions make it through a rough patch. This was the case with the Ingenuity team when they discovered that the rotorcraft, which has been exploring Mars alongside Perseverance, survived the night and is back in working order.

Oftentimes in astronomy, it takes a village of telescopes and people to make an amazing find. In the case of the quasar NRAO 530, it took a planet full of radio dishes ganged together to peer into its heart. Then, it took a major collaboration of scientists to figure out what the instruments were telling them.

For astronomers, one of the greatest challenges is capturing images of objects and phenomena that are difficult to see using optical (or visible light) telescopes. This problem has been largely addressed by interferometry, a technique where multiple telescopes gather light, which is then combined to create a more complete picture. Examples include the Event Horizon Telescope, which relies on observatories from around the world to capture the first images of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the center of the M87 galaxy, and of Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way.

NASA and its international partners have approved the crew lineup for Axiom Space’s second privately funded mission to the International Space Station — a lineup that includes the first Saudi woman cleared to go into orbit.

All the stars we can see with the naked eye are part of the Milky Way. The gravitational power of the galaxy’s combined mass binds the stars to the galaxy. But sometimes stars are evicted from the galaxy.

If life is common in our Universe, and we have every reason to suspect it is, why do we not see evidence of it everywhere? This is the essence of the Fermi Paradox, a question that has plagued astronomers and cosmologists almost since the birth of modern astronomy. It is also the reasoning behind the Hart-TIpler Conjecture, one of the many (many!) proposed resolutions, which asserts that if advanced life had emerged in our galaxy sometime in the past, we would see signs of their activity everywhere we looked. Possible indications include self-replicating probes, megastructures, and other Type III-like activity.

The Sun belted out strong solar flares two days in a row, as activity ramps up toward the next Solar Maximum, predicted for mid-2025.

Astronomers know that galaxies grow over time through mergers with other galaxies. We can see it happening in our galaxy. The Milky Way is slowly absorbing the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds and the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy.

SpaceX tests all 33 engines on Super Heavy. The worst-case scenario for space debris actually happened. A kilonova is coming. A new map of all the matter and dark matter in the Universe.

The Hubble Space Telescope recently captured the appearance of several asymmetrical ‘spokes’ rising above the rings of Saturn, marking a coming change in season for the ringed gas giant. The spokes are made of charged ice particles bulging up and away from the rest of the rings. Researchers aren’t sure exactly what causes the spokes, but they suspect it has something to do with the planet’s powerful magnetic fields.