For decades, astronomers have advocated building radio telescopes on the far side of the Moon. This “radio-quiet” zone always faces away from Earth and would provide the perfect location to study a variety of astronomical phenomena that can’t be observed in low radio frequencies from our planet, or even by Earth-orbiting space telescopes. But the costs and logistics of such a project have pushed most of these concepts to the realm of futuristic dreams.
Edward Stone is retiring after 50 years as Project Scientist for the Voyager mission. The twin spacecraft revolutionized our understanding of our Solar System, and Stone was along for the ride every step of the way. Both spacecraft are still going, travelling deeper into interplanetary space, and still sending data home.
On May 1st, 2009, after five years on the Martian surface, the Spirit rover got stuck in a patch of soft sand (where it would remain for the rest of its mission). On February 13th, 2019, NASA officials declared that Spirit’s sister – the Opportunity rover – had concluded its mission after a planetary dust storm forced it into hibernation mode about seven months prior. And in March 2017, the Curiosity rover’s wheels showed signs of their first break, thanks to years of traveling over rough terrain. Such are the risks of sending rover missions to other planets in search of discoveries that can lead to scientific breakthroughs.
Dark matter. It’s secret. It’s dark because it doesn’t give off any light. We can’t see it, taste it, touch it, smell it, or even feel it. But, astronomers can measure this dark secret of the universe. How? By looking at galaxies and galaxy clusters. Dark matter exerts a gravitational influence on those regions, and that CAN be measured.
Roughly half a century ago, astronomers realized that the powerful radio source coming from the center of our galaxy (Sagitarrius A*) was a “monster” black hole. Since then, they have found that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) reside at the center of most massive galaxies. This leads to what is known as Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) or quasars, where the central region of a galaxy is so energetic that it outshines all of the stars in its galactic disk. In all that time, astronomers have puzzled over how these behemoths (which play a crucial role in galactic evolution) originated.
Most of us don’t think about ozone as we go about our daily lives. Yet, this pale blue gas plays a huge role in keeping our planet habitable. There’s a layer of it in Earth’s stratosphere, and it absorbs most of the ultraviolet radiation streaming from the Sun. Without the ozone layer, the UV would cause severe damage to most life on Earth. What would happen if we had an ozone hole?
Let’s talk about Phobos. We know it’s a moon of Mars and it orbits the planet once every 7.4 hours. It has a huge impact crater called Stickney. It measures about 9 km across. That’s pretty big, considering Phobos itself is 28 km across on its longest side. But, beyond that, Phobos presents something of a mystery.
Interstellar winds are powerful agents of change. For one thing, they can interrupt or shut down the process of star birth completely. That’s what a team of astronomers using the Karl Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico found when they studied the galaxy M33. They also learned that speedy cosmic rays play a huge role in pushing those winds across interstellar space.
We want to send humans to Mars eventually, and while this will be both a historic and exciting journey, it could also be tragic and terrible, and we must also address the potential pitfalls and risks of such an adventure. The intent behind this is to allow fans of space exploration to consider the full picture of such an endeavor. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
We recently examined how and why the planet Mars could answer the longstanding question: Are we alone? There is evidence to suggest that it was once a much warmer and wetter world thanks to countless spacecraft, landers, and rovers having explored—and currently exploring—its atmosphere, surface, and interior. Here, we will examine another one of Saturn’s 83 moons, an icy world that spews geysers of water ice from giant fissures near its south pole, which is strong evidence for an interior ocean, and possibly life. Here, we will examine Enceladus.
The Mars InSight lander might be nearing the end of its life on the Red Planet, but its scientific data are still shaking up the planetary science community. That’s because it detected another Marsquake on December 24, 2021. It was a major shaker and generated surface waves that rippled across the crust of the planet. The data from that quake allowed science team members to get a better idea of the Martian crust’s structure.
In a recent study accepted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) investigated the potential for life on exoplanets orbiting M-dwarf stars, also known as red dwarfs, which are both smaller and cooler than our own Sun and is currently open for debate for their potential for life on their orbiting planetary bodies. The study examines how a lack of an asteroid belt might indicate a less likelihood for life on terrestrial worlds.
The hits just keep on streaming back to Earth from James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This time, arriving to help celebrate Hallowe’en, data from the MIRI mid-infrared instrument onboard JWST shows another view of the Pillars of Creation. Thousands of stars are embedded in those pillars, but many are “invisible” to MIRI.
In the beginning, there was hydrogen and helium. Other than some traces of things such as lithium, that’s all the matter the big bang produced. Everything other than those two elements was largely produced by astrophysical rather than cosmological processes. The elements we see around us, those that comprise us, were mostly formed within the hearts of stars. They were created in the furnace of stellar cores, then cast into space when the star died. But there are a few elements that are created differently. The most common one is gold.
There’s a monster black hole in our backyard (astronomically speaking). Life could survive underground on Mars for hundreds of millions of years. Starlink was hacked and now works as GPS. Bad news for Arecibo.
Trees are like sentinels that preserve a record of shifting climates. Their growth rings hold that history and dendrochronology studies those rings. Scientists can determine the exact ages of trees and correlate their growth with climatic and environmental changes.
In June, NASA announced that it had commissioned an independent study team to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) from a scientific perspective. Last week, NASA announced the members of the independent team that will study observed events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or natural phenomena. These sixteen individuals, a collection of scientists and researchers from premier institutions across the U.S., will analyze all possible data sources that could help NASA and other agencies learn more about this phenomenon.
One of the great tragedies of the night sky is that we will never travel to much of what we see. We may eventually travel to nearby stars, and even distant reaches of our galaxy, but the limits of light speed and cosmic expansion make it impossible for us to travel beyond our local group. So we can only observe distant galaxies, and we can only observe them from our home in the universe. You might think that means we can only see one face of those galaxies, but thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope that isn’t entirely true.
Everybody’s heard of methane. It’s a major part of the atmosphere in places like Uranus and Neptune. On Earth, it’s also part of our atmosphere, where it works to warm things up. Some of it gets there from natural causes. But, a lot of it comes from industrial super-emitters and other human-caused processes. That’s not good because too much methane works, along with other greenhouse gases (like carbon dioxide, or CO2) to “over warm” our atmosphere.
Less than a year after it went to space, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has already demonstrated its worth many times over. The images it has acquired of distant galaxies, nebulae, exoplanet atmospheres, and deep fields are the most detailed and sensitive ever taken. And yet, one of the most exciting aspects of its mission is just getting started: the search for evidence of life beyond Earth. This will consist of Webb using its powerful infrared instruments to look for chemical signatures associated with life and biological processes (aka. biosignatures).
A few years from now, a small capsule will enter Earth’s atmosphere and float to the surface under a parachute. The parachute will likely be radar-reflective so that it can be easily tracked. It may land in Australia’s outback, a popular spot for sample returns. Scientists will take it to a sterilized, secure lab and carefully open it. Inside, there’ll be rock samples from Mars collected by the Perseverance Rover.
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