Space News & Blog Articles

If you’ve been following exoplanet research over the last couple of years, you’ve definitely heard of K2-18b. Located 124 light years away in the constellation Leo, it’s attracted a lot of attention as it sits squarely in its red dwarf host star’s habitable zone, and measurements of the James Webb Space Telescope show its atmosphere is rich in carbon dioxide and methane. It’s one of the prime candidates for a “Hycean” world - one where a thick hydrogen-rich atmosphere covers a global liquid water ocean. It is such an intriguing target for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) researchers that they turned two of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world to watch K2-18b’s system. A recent paper, available in pre-print on arXiv, shows that there is likely no artificial narrow-band radio signals that are equivalent to our technology level coming from the planet, despite millions of potential hits.

There have been plenty of attempts to resolve the “Hubble Tension” in cosmology. This feature describes how one of the most important variables in cosmology, the expansion of the universe, takes on different values depending on how you measure it. A new NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I report on the Cosmic Positioning System (CPS) details another potential solution to it - this one involving a network of five far-flung satellites spread throughout the solar system.

Our solar system is home to a wide diversity of planetary bodies, boasting eight planets, five officially recognized dwarf planets, and almost 1,000 confirmed moons. The eight planets consist of the four rocky (terrestrial) planets of the inner solar system and the four gas giant planets of the outer solar system. The largest planet in our solar system is Jupiter, measuring a radius and mass of 11 and 318 times of Earth, respectively. However, the discovery of exoplanets quickly altered our understanding of planetary sizes, as several have been discovered to have masses and radii several times that of Jupiter. So, how big can planet get, and are there limits to their sizes?

In the coming weeks or months, the Artemis II rocket will make its launch window and take off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission will then carry Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen on a ten-day trip around the Moon. The flight will not only validate the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft for crewed missions. It will also raise the curtain on humanity's long-awaited return to the Moon; this time, with the intention of staying.

When stars like our Sun reach the end of their main sequence, they enter their Red Giant Branch phase and expand to become several times their original size. During this time, the star will undergo chemical changes in its interior, altering the composition of its surface layer. For decades, researchers have wondered how the changing chemical composition in the interior drives changes in the upper layers. Central to this question is the stable layer that connects the core to the outer layer and serves as a barrier between the two.

Space science is interesting in its diversity. At times, it's an extremely complex, expensive and time-consuming effort to gather data. Look how challenging it was for Curiosity and Perseverance to reach the surface of Mars safely. Look at the JWST's long journey from clean room to Sun-Earth L2, and its eventual science results.