Space News & Blog Articles

It is an exciting time for astronomers and cosmologists. Since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have been treated to the most vivid and detailed images of the Universe ever taken. Webb‘s powerful infrared imagers, spectrometers, and coronographs will allow for even more in the near future, including everything from surveys of the early Universe to direct imaging studies of exoplanets. Moreover, several next-generation telescopes will become operational in the coming years with 30-meter (~98.5 feet) primary mirrors, adaptive optics, spectrometers, and coronographs.

Even with these impressive instruments, astronomers and cosmologists look forward to an era when even more sophisticated and powerful telescopes are available. For example, Zachary Cordero 
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently proposed a telescope with a 100-meter (328-foot) primary mirror that would be autonomously constructed in space and bent into shape by electrostatic actuators. His proposal was one of several concepts selected this year by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program for Phase I development.

Corder is the Boeing Career Development Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and a member of the Aerospace Materials and Structures Lab (AMSL) and Small Satellite Center. His research integrates his expertise in processing science, mechanics, and design to develop novel materials and structures for emerging aerospace applications. His proposal is the result of a collaboration with Prof. Jeffrey Lang (from MIT’s Electronics and the Microsystems Technology Laboratories) and a team of three students with the AMSL, including Ph.D. student Harsh Girishbhai Bhundiya.

Their proposed telescope addresses a key issue with space telescopes and other large payloads that are packaged for launch and then deployed in orbit. In short, size and surface precision tradeoffs limit the diameter of deployable space telescopes to the 10s of meters. Consider the recently-launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the largest and most powerful telescope ever sent to space. To fit into its payload fairing (atop an Ariane 5 rocket), the telescope was designed so that it could be folded into a more compact form.

This included its primary mirror, secondary mirror, and sunshield, which all unfolded once the space telescope was in orbit. Meanwhile, the primary mirror (the most complex and powerful ever deployed) measures 6.5 meters (21 feet) in diameter. Its successor, the Large UV/Optical/IR Surveyor (LUVOIR), will have a similar folding assembly and a primary mirror measuring 8 to 15 meters (26.5 to 49 feet) in diameter – depending on the selected design (LUVOIR-A or -B). As Bhundiya explained to Universe Today via email:

Before going to the Moon, the Apollo astronauts trained at various sites on Earth that best approximated the lunar surface, such as the volcanic regions Iceland, Hawaii and the US Southwest.  To help prepare for upcoming robotic and human Artemis missions, a newly upgraded “mini-Moon” lunar testbed will allow astronauts and robots to test out realistic conditions on the Moon including rough terrain and unusual sunlight.

The Lunar Lab and Regolith Testbed at the Ames Research Center in California simulates conditions on the Moon in a high-fidelity environment, allowing researchers to test hardware designs intended for the lunar surface. The lab is currently being used as a test environment for the next phases of the Artemis Program, to conduct studies on optical sensing and drill testing, and tests for in-situ resource utilization identification and extraction techniques.

The facility was originally built in 2009 but has now been expanded and upgraded to include a lunar lab with multiple testbeds with a variety of simulated lunar regolith. These large indoor “sandboxes” can be configured and customized to simulate various regions on the Moon. In addition, a special lighting system can re-create realistic lighting conditions on the Moon, such as the darkness of a lunar polar crater, or the glaring rays of the Sun that the Apollo astronauts had to deal with in the lunar mares.

The testbeds aren’t huge, but big enough to provide a variety of conditions. The first original sandbox measures approximately 13 feet by 13 feet by 1.5 feet (4 meters by 4 meters by 0.5 meter) and is filled with eight tons a lunar regolith simulant called Johnson Space Center One simulant (JSC-1A), which makes this the world’s largest collection of the material. The JSC-1A simulant mimics the Moon’s mare basins and is dark grey in color.

The new larger testbed, measures 62 feet by 13 feet by 1 foot (19 meters by 4 meters by 0.3 meter) and is  filled with more than 20 tons of Lunar Highlands Simulant-1 (LHS-1), which is light grey to simulate the lunar highlands. This larger sandbox can be reconfigured if needed to be a smaller, but deeper, testbed.

Astronomers have not yet been able to map large portions of the radio emissions from our universe because of interference from the Earth itself. A team of astronomers hopes to change that, beginning with the LuSEE Night mission to the far side of the Moon. It will launch in 2025 and chart a new pathway to Lunar observatories.

The Earth is really loud in the radio, especially at frequencies below 20 megahertz. The ionosphere of the planet itself crackles at those frequencies, obscuring radio emissions from more distant sources. Plus we use low frequency radio waves for communication and radar searches, swamping cosmic sources.

The only way to mitigate all that terrestrial contamination is to get up and away from it. The best place is the far side of the Moon, so that the bulk of the Moon’s body blocks out radio emissions from the Earth. The Sun itself is also a rather loud emitter of radio signals at those frequencies, so the best time to observe is during the Lunar night, when the far side of the Moon is plunged in darkness.

But building radio observatories on the far side of the Moon is no easy task, so we have to start small. One of the first steps is LuSEE Night, the Lunar Surface Electromagnetic Explorer, a small radio antenna and instrument package that is scheduled to be delivered to the far side of the Lunar surface as early as 2025.

LuSEE Night owes its technological heritage to the Parker Solar Probe, and is in fact nearly an identical copy of one of the instruments onboard that spacecraft. LuSEE Night consists of two 6m long antenna set in a cross-shaped pattern along with a bare bones set of electronics. 

Like Gravitational Waves (GWs) and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs), Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are one of the most powerful and mysterious astronomical phenomena today. These transient events consist of bursts that put out more energy in a millisecond than the Sun does in three days. While most bursts last mere milliseconds, there have been rare cases where FRBs were found repeating. While astronomers are still unsure what causes them and opinions vary, dedicated observatories and international collaborations have dramatically increased the number of events available for study.

A leading observatory is the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), a next-generation radio telescope located at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) in British Columbia, Canada. Thanks to its large field of view and broad frequency coverage, this telescope is an indispensable tool for detecting FRBs (more than 1000 sources to date!) Using a new type of algorithm, the CHIME/FRB Collaboration found evidence of 25 new repeating FRBs in CHIME data that were detected between 2019 and 2021.

The CHIME/FRB Collaboration comprises astronomers and astrophysicists from Canada, the U.S., Australia, Tawain, and India. Its partner institutions include the DRAO, the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (DI), the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), and multiple Universities and institutes.

Despite their mysterious nature, FRBs are ubiquitous and the best estimates indicate that events arrive at Earth roughly a thousand times a day over the entire sky. None of the theories or models proposed to date can fully explain all the properties of the bursts or the sources. While some are believed to be caused by neutron stars and black holes (attributable to the high energy density of their surroundings), others continue to defy classification. Because of this, other theories persist, ranging from pulsars and magnetars to GRBs and extraterrestrial communications.

CHIME was originally designed to measure the expansion history of the Universe through the detection of neutral hydrogen. Roughly 370,000 years after the Big Bang, the Universe was permeated by this gas, and the only photons were either the relic radiation from the Big Bang – the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) – or that released by neutral hydrogen atoms. For this reason, astronomers and cosmologists refer to this period as the “Dark Ages,” which ended roughly 1 billion years after the Big Bang as the first stars and galaxies began reionizing neutral hydrogen (the Reionization Era).

Astronomers have recently discovered that giant clouds of molecular hydrogen, the birthplace of stars, can live for tens of millions of years despite the facts that individual molecules are constantly getting destroyed and reassembled. This new research helps place a crucial piece of understanding in our overall picture of how stars are born.

In order to make stars you first need giant clouds of molecular hydrogen gas. These are the reservoirs that can undergo catastrophic collapse. When this happens dozens or even hundreds of stars can appear at once. Without these reservoirs of gas, you can’t make stars, and so astronomers are especially interested in how these clouds behave. The evolution of these clouds within a galactic environment can tell us about the star formation history of the galaxy.

Recent observations have shown that when new stars appear within a giant molecular cloud, they quickly blow out bubbles surrounding themselves. With the reduced density of molecules surrounding those stars, the remaining molecules suffer bombardment from ionizing radiation, breaking apart the molecular hydrogen into an ionized state. 

But other observations have shown that these giant clouds last for incredibly long times. So how can that be if newly born stars constantly tear apart their parent clouds?

A team of researchers turned to sophisticated computer simulations to answer the question. They simulated a portion of a galaxy and examined the behavior of molecular clouds as stars formed within them. They found that their simulations agreed with observations: that newborn stars can easily tear apart a molecular cloud. But they also found a balancing factor. Giant molecular clouds constantly vacuum up any surrounding hydrogen that happens to be wandering by in the galaxy. This action of accumulation replenishes the cloud’s stock of hydrogen.

Starship completes its wet-dress rehearsal, another problem for Webb, a nuclear rocket test is coming, and more cool NIAC grants.

Starship Wet Dress Rehersal

SpaceX made another important step towards the first orbital test of Starship. This week they performed a full wet-dress rehearsal, meaning that both stacked Starship and Super Heavy booster were filled up with fuel, just as if they were going to launch. The test was successful. Now Ship 24 was taken off the booster and SpaceX are getting ready to perform a test fire of all the 33 Raptor v2 engines of Super Heavy.

Webb’s NIRISS Problems

This week NASA announced that they’re taking the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared IMager and Slitless Spectrograph offline. According to the agency, the instrument experienced an internal communications error that caused its software to time out. It doesn’t seem like the device is damaged in any way; just experiencing this internal error. NIRISS is a Canadian-built infrared instrument that can act like a camera but also has additional modes that let it characterize exoplanet atmospheres and the light of distant galaxies. We don’t know when the instrument will return to operation.

More about NIRISS going offline.

Webb’s First Occultation

Asteroid Chariklo is one of the few worlds in the Solar System that have rings. They were originally discovered back in 2013 but now Webb had a chance to have a look at them. This was made possible because of an event called an occultation. The asteroid crossed the path of a bright background star. So, by observing dips in the brightness of the star, astronomers were able to observe Chariklo’s rings and study them in more detail.