Space News & Blog Articles

One of the more famous features of Space Age 2.0 is the rise of the commercial space industry, also known as “NewSpace.” While the space agencies of the world plan to send astronauts back to the Moon (this time, to stay), crewed missions to Mars, and robotic missions to every corner of the Solar System, NewSpace companies are offering cost-effective launch services, sending commercial astronauts to space, and commercializing Low Earth Orbit (LEO). There’s also the prospect of space tourism, with companies like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX offering suborbital flights, trips to LEO, and beyond!

China, one of the fastest-growing nations in space, is looking to offer commercial flights to suborbital space. According to senior rocket scientists Yang Yiqiang, who spoke to the state-run China Global Television Network (CGTN), China will send its first group of commercial passengers on a spaceflight, with ticket prices ranging between $287,200 to $430,800 (2 to 3 million yuan). While China is a relative newcomer to the commercial space scene, this announcement signals its intent to catch up to companies based in the U.S. and other space competitors.

Illustration of the first two types of commercial space travel: flights to the ISS (right) and twin-fuselage configuration designs (left). Credit: CFP

Yang Yiqiang was the general director of the Long March 11 rocket project and the founder of Beijing-based rocket company CAS Space (founded in 2018). As Yang explained, there are currently three modes of spacelight:

According to Yang, this third mode will be most suitable for commercial passengers and the one that China will focus on. Based on the illustrations featured by CGTN, this will probably involve using the Long March 3C (CZ-3C) to launch a Shenzou spacecraft (and/or a converted Tianzhou automated cargo spacecraft) with a crew of three. China’s next-generation crewed spacecraft (a reusable vehicle intended to replace the Shenzou) can accommodate up to seven passengers and is likely to be used for tourism ventures.

Way back in 1979, astronomers spotted two nearly identical quasars that seemed close to each other in the sky. These so-called “Twin Quasars” are actually separate images of the same object. Even more intriguing: the light paths that created each image traveled through different parts of the cluster. One path took a little longer than the other. That meant a flicker in one image of the quasar occurred 14 months later in the other. The reason? The cluster’s mass distribution formed a lens that distorted the light and drastically affected the two paths.

Fast-forward to 2022. A team of astronomers from the University of Valencia reported on their study of a similar effect with another distant quasar. They spent fourteen years measuring an even longer time delay between multiple images of their target quasar. The galaxy cluster SDSS J1004+4112 plays a role in the delay. The combo of galaxies and dark matter in the cluster is really entangling the quasar light as it passes through. That’s causing the light to travel different trajectories through the gravitational lens. The result is the same strange time-delayed effect.

Hubble’s image of SDSS J1004+4112 with annotations showing the lensed images of the distant quasar, plus other lensed objects.

“The four images of the quasar that we observe actually correspond to a single quasar whose light is curved on its path towards us by the gravitational field of the galaxy cluster”, said José Antonio Muñoz Lozano, professor of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and director of the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Valencia. “Since the trajectory followed by the light rays to form each image is different, we observe them at different instants of time; in this case, we have to wait 6.73 years for the signal we observed in the first image to be reproduced in the fourth one.”

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey first discovered cluster SDSS J1004+4112. Hubble Space Telescope imaged it in 2006. It was the first image of a single quasar with its light split into five images by lensing.

Photosynthesis is probably the most important chemical reaction for life on Earth. It is the process plants use to transform sunlight into energy it can use. Through it, plants can produce carbohydrates they can use (and we can eat when we harvest plants), generating oxygen as a by-product. Photosynthesis is why Earth’s atmosphere is about 20% oxygen. No photosynthesis, no life on Earth as we know it.

It’s also the reason so many plants are green. Most plants use chlorophyll as part of the photosynthesis process, which reflects green light while absorbing red and blue light through photosynthesis. If you think about it, that’s a bit odd, since the Sun gives off its most intense light in the green range of the spectrum. There is actually a photosynthesis chemical known as retinal which absorbs green and reflects red and blue. If plants used retinal instead of chlorophyll, then most plants would be purple. Some bacteria use retinal, but it turns out for sunlight that chlorophyll is more efficient, so overall it gives more bang for your buck. It’s possible that early life used retinal, which is a simpler molecule, before figuring out how to use chlorophyll.

Of course, photosynthesis evolved to take advantage of a bright yellow star that emits most of its light in the visible spectrum. But Sun-like stars make up less than 8% of main sequence stars in our galaxy. Red dwarfs, on the other hand, make up 75% of main sequence stars. Statistically, the vast majority of potentially habitable planets orbit a red dwarf. And red dwarfs are much smaller and cooler than our Sun. Most of the light they emit is in the infrared. Infrared light is nice and warm, but does it have the kick you need to power photosynthesis? In a recent study, a research team tried to find out.

To do this they created a starlight simulator. It’s an array of LEDs set up to mimic the spectrum of a red dwarf. The device can mimic the spectra of various types of stars, but since red dwarfs are so common they studied that first. They then created an atmosphere that might be typical for an early habitable world, tossed in some bacteria, and illuminated it with simulated starlight.

They started with cyanobacteria, which were among the first type of organisms on Earth to use photosynthesis to produce oxygen. They are particularly good at surviving in harsh environments. The cyanobacteria thrived and grew under the infrared glow of a red dwarf, so the team repeated the experiment with red and green algae. Both of them thrived as well. So even though red dwarfs don’t emit the type of light which drove the evolution of photosynthesis, terrestrial organisms could live under a red dwarf sun. This is great news for everyone wanting to find extraterrestrial life.