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The Artemis Astronauts are Getting New Spacesuits With Some Help From Prada

The Artemis program involves impressive technological advancements in robotics, communications, spacecraft, and advanced habitats, all of which are clearly necessary for such an ambitious endeavour. But the mission also requires updated spacesuits. Those spacesuits are critical to mission success, and the Italian luxury fashion house Prada is adding their knowledge and experience to the design. More than 50 years have passed since the last human walked on the Moon. Entirely new technologies have been available since then, though spacesuits don’t look like they’ve changed that much, at least on the surface. But Axiom Space, the NASA contractor creating the new spacesuits, says they’ve redefined spacesuit development—and they’ve done it with help from Prada. “We’re blending engineering, science and art.” Russel Ralston, Axiom Space’s Executive Vice President of Extravehicular Activity. It’s tempting to dismiss Prada as just a fashion brand. But according to the two companies, Pra

Astronomers Solve the Mystery of the Famed Brown Dwarf That is Too Bright: It’s Twins!

In 1995 , Caltech researchers at the Institute’s Palomar Observatory first observed what appeared to be a brown dwarf orbiting Gliese 229 – a red dwarf star located about 19 light-years from Earth. Since then, this brown dwarf (Gliese 229 B) has mystified astronomers because it appeared too dim for its mass. With 70 times the mass of Jupiter, it should have been brighter than what telescopes had observed. However, a Caltech-led international team of astronomers recently solved the mystery by determining that the brown dwarf is a pair of closely orbiting twins! The study was led by Jerry W. Xuan, a graduate student in Caltech’s Department of Astronomy working with Dimitri Mawet , the David Morrisroe Professor of Astronomy. They were joined by an international team from institutes and universities around the world, including the National Research Council of Canada Herzberg , the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the European Space Agency (ESA), the Laboratory of Space Studies and I

Hera Says Farewell to the Earth and Moon

Testing the equipment on an interstellar mission is one of the first things operators do when the spacecraft successfully launches. In some cases, those tests show the future troubles the mission will face, such as what happened to NASA’s Lucy mission a few years ago. However, in some cases, the mission provides us with perspectives we might never have seen before, which was the case for Hera, ESA’s mission to Dimorphos. This asteroid was deflected successfully during NASA’s DART test in 2022. Hera was successfully launched on October 7th and carries a series of instruments designed to peer at the asteroids using different wavelengths. Some instruments were turned toward the Earth and Moon from about a million km away as part of the mission’s Near-Earth Commissioning Phase. The resulting pictures showcase the spacecraft’s capabilities and provide a new perspective of our “terraqueous globe,” as Carl Sagan once put it, and our much more sterile neighbor. First, we have an image from

Giant Cluster is Spitting Out Massive Stars

We live inside the Milky Way galaxy which is joined as it drifts through space by two satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds. A star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud known as R136 has been the subject of a fascinating discovery. A team of astronomers have discovered 55 high-speed stars that have been ejected from the cluster. The discovery was made using the Gaia satellite and it seems up to a third of stars from the cluster have been ejected in the last century. R136 is a massive star cluster in the Tarantula Nebula inside the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC.) The LMC is a satellite galaxy of ours at a distance of around 160,000 light years. The cluster is among the most massive known and it contains some of the most massive stars ever observed. The stars are young at just a few million years old having formed out of the gas in the nebula. This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of a star-forming region containing massive, young, blue stars in 30 Doradus, the Tarantula Nebula

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Jiggles

Jupiter is well known for its Great Red Spot, a feature that was discovered by Galileo over 400 years ago! Astronomers have been tracking the size and shape of it for over a century but the most accurate measurements have come from the Hubble Space Telescope. Every time Earth and Jupiter are at their closest, Hubble takes a series of images and it’s these images that have detected that the spot jiggles from day to day. Not only does it change size but length and width too leaving astronomers baffled. Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System and, like the other outer planets is a giant ball of gas. It’s so large all the other planets in the Solar System can be fitted inside with plenty of room to spare. Composed mostly of hydrogen and helium it can be seen as a colourful disk through amateur telescopes with belts, storms and of course the Great Red Spot. The spot was first discovered by Galileo in around 1610 when he became the first person to turn a telescope on the distant

China Releases its First Roadmap for Space Science and Exploration Through 2050.

China’s space program has advanced considerably since the turn of the century. In addition to developing heavy-launch vehicles like the Long March 5 and building a modular space station in orbit , China has also embarked on an ambitious program of lunar exploration ( Chang’e ) – which has launched six robotic missions to explore the Moon’s surface since 2007. These missions are paving the way for crewed missions to the Moon by 2030 and creating a permanent habitat around the Moon’s southern polar region – the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). They also plan to send crewed missions to Mars by 2033 , which will culminate in the creation of a permanent base there too. Earlier today , the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the China National Space Administration (CNSA), and the China Manned Space Agency (CMSE) jointly released the country’s first long-term scheme for space science and exploration. Titled “National Medium—and Long-Term Development Plan for Space Science (2