Space News & Blog Articles

Chemical rockets have taken us to the Moon and back, but traveling to the stars demands something more powerful. Space X’s Starship can lift extraordinary masses to orbit and send payloads throughout the Solar System using its chemical rockets but it cannot fly to nearby stars at thirty percent of light speed and land. For missions beyond our local region of space, we need something fundamentally more energetic than chemical combustion, and physics offers or in other words, antimatter.

Picture an astronaut on the Moon in 2035, reaching for a crisp lettuce leaf grown in lunar soil simulant, gazing upon Earth which is visible through the window. It sounds like science fiction, but a global collaboration of scientists is making this vision increasingly tangible, developing the agricultural technologies that will sustain human exploration of the Moon and Mars.

Touch a metal door handle on a dry day and you might get a small static shock, an annoying but harmless release of built up electrical charge. Now imagine that same phenomenon happening constantly in the swirling dust devils that race across the Martian surface. A team of scientists have just detected these electric discharges on Mars for the first time.

Have scientists finally confirmed the existence of the first exomoon? This is what a recent study accepted for publication in *Astronomy & Astrophysics* hopes to address as a large international team of researchers investigated new methods for identifying an exomoon orbiting a gas giant exoplanet. This study has the potential to help scientists develop new methods for finding exomoons, the latter of which has yet to be confirmed.

What can an ancient supernova teach scientists about Earth and celestial objects? This is what a recently submitted study to *Astronomy & Astrophysics* hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated the interaction of the remnants of supernova that occurred 10-million years ago with Earth. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand how Earth is influenced by celestial objects and what this could mean for the future of life on Earth, along with potentially habitable worlds beyond Earth.

What can equatorial jet streams on gas giant planets teach scientists about gas giant planetary formation and evolution? This is what a recent study published in *Science Advances* hopes to address as a team of scientists investigated the mechanisms of jet streams on gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). This study has the potential to help scientists better understand not only the formation and evolution of giant planets in our solar system, but exoplanets, too.

There is a growing movement worldwide to establish a human presence in orbit, on the Moon, and beyond. This presents many challenges, ranging from the technological and logistical to the biological and medical. After all, if people are going to be living and working in space for extended periods, we need to know what the effects will be on the human mind and body. While considerable research has been conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS), most notably NASA's Twins Study, much more remains to be done before outposts in space can be realized.