INFORMATION

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. A look at the lighting system for Lunar Lab and Regolith Testbeds. Credit: NASA/Uland Wong. The facility ...

Using data from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, scientists have discovered new clues that could help predict when and where the next solar flare might blast from the Sun. Researchers were able to identify small flashes in the upper layers of the corona – the Sun’s atmosphere – found above regions that would later flare in energetic bursts of light and particles released from the Sun. The scientists compared the flashes to small sparklers before the big fireworks. “We can get some very different information in the corona than we get from the photosphere, or ‘surface’ of the Sun,” said KD Leka, lead author on the new study from Nagoya University in Japan, in a NASA press release. “Our results may give us a new marker to distinguish which active regions are likely to flare soon and which will stay quiet over an upcoming period of time.” Since it launched in 2010, the Solar Dynamics Observatory has helped scientists understand better what causes solar flares. One of the main goals of ...

Here’s another striking image from the venerable Hubble Space Telescope. These billows of blue and red show a detailed look at a small portion of the famous Orion Nebula. But what really catches the eye are the brilliant stars with the cross-shaped diffraction spikes — a hallmark of Hubble images. In the center is the bright variable star V 372 Orionis and a smaller companion star in the upper left is named BD-05 1307. V 372 Orionis, also known as HD 36917 or Ori 47, is a so-called Orion variable — a variable star which exhibits irregular variations in its brightness. Orion variables are often associated with diffuse nebulae, just like the nebulous gas and dust of the Orion Nebula, a massive star-forming region full of young, hot stars that lies approximately 1,450 light-years from Earth. BD-05 1307, otherwise known as 2MASS J05345223-0533085 or TIC 427373786, is classified as an emission-line star. This image uses data from two of Hubble’s instruments. Data from the Advanced Came...

Now that the Perseverance rover has dropped off ten regolith and rock sample tubes for a future sample return mission to retrieve, the plans for such a mission are coming together. The mission is a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency, and ESA has agreed to build a 2.5-meter-long robotic arm to pick up tubes and then transfer them to a rocket for the first-ever Mars samples to be brought to Earth. ESA says the Sample Transfer Arm (STA) will likely be autonomous, with a large range of movements and seven degrees of freedom. Cameras and sensors will assist the arm, which will have a hand-like gripper to handle the sample tubes. Perseverance has brought to Mars 43 6-inch-long (15.2 centimeters) titanium tubes. The entire architecture for the sample return mission is not yet final, but it is surely one of the most ambitious missions ever attempted. There will likely be a Mars orbiter that will send a lander to the planet’s surface. It will touch down so...

Humanity is in a back-and-forth relationship with nature. First, we thought we were at the center of everything, with the Sun and the entire cosmos rotating around our little planet. We eventually realized that wasn’t true. Over the centuries, we’ve found that though Earth and life might be rare, our Sun is pretty normal, our Solar System is relatively non-descript, and even our galaxy is one of the billions of spiral galaxies, a type that makes up 60% of the galaxies in the Universe. But the Illustris TNG simulation shows that the Milky Way is special. Illustris TNG is an ongoing series of large-scale simulations. The goal is to understand the mechanisms behind galaxy formation and evolution. The effort is a “series of large, cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulations,” according to the Illustris TNG website. So far, the project has produced three primary runs, each one larger and higher resolution than the previous one: TNG 50, TNG 100, and TNG 300. Each run also focuses on va...

In 2033, NASA and China plan to send the first crewed missions to Mars. These missions will launch every two years when Earth and Mars are at the closest points in their orbits (Mars Opposition). It will take these missions six to nine months to reach the Red Planet using conventional technology. This means that astronauts could spend up to a year and a half in microgravity, followed by months of surface operations in Martian gravity (roughly 40% of Earth gravity). This could have drastic consequences for astronaut health, including muscle atrophy, bone density loss, and psychological effects. Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts maintain a strict exercise regimen to mitigate these effects. However, astronauts will not have the same option while in transit to Mars since their vehicles (the Orion spacecraft) have significantly less volume. To address this challenge, Professor Marni Boppart and her colleagues at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technol...

The Dark Energy Camera Plane Survey 2 (DECaPS2) is out. This is the second data release from DECaPS, and the survey contains over 3 billion objects in the Milky Way. As the leading image shows, there are so many stars it appears as if there’s no space between them. Throughout most of human history, the nature of the Milky Way has confounded us. Aristotle thought that it resulted from the ignition of Earth’s upper atmosphere, similar to how comets produce tails. The famous Persian scholar Al-Biruni thought the Milky Way was made up of countless fragments of nebulous stars. There are countless other ideas of what the Milky Way might have been. Our modern understanding of the Milky Way is exquisitely detailed. Large-scale surveys of the galaxy have played a huge role in our growing understanding of the Milky Way. The ESA’s Gaia mission, an ongoing survey of the Milky Way, has collected detailed data on over one billion stars, including their ages, masses, chemical compositions, colours...

A team of astrophysicists has discovered a binary pair of ultra-cool dwarfs so close together that they look like a single star. They’re remarkable because they only take 20.5 hours to orbit each other, meaning their year is less than one Earth Day. They’re also much older than similar systems. We can’t see ultra-cool dwarf stars with the naked eye, but they’re the most numerous stars in the galaxy. They have such low masses that they only emit infrared light, and we need infrared telescopes to see them. They’re interesting objects because theory shows stars this close together should exist, but this system is the first time astronomers have observed this extreme proximity. “It’s amazing to see something happen in the universe on a human time scale.” Professor Adam Burgasser, UC San Diego. A team of astronomers presented their findings at the 241st Meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. Chih-Chun “Dino” Hsu, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University, led th...

A citizen science initiative called Globe at Night has some sobering news for humanity. Our artificial light is drowning out the night sky for more and more people. And it’s happening more rapidly than thought. Globe at Night is an international citizen science project run by the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab. It raises awareness about light pollution and how it’s impacting our view of the night sky. A new research article based on observational data from Globe at Night shows that the average night sky grew 10% brighter each year in artificial light for the past eleven years. And as our artificial light becomes brighter, more stars are becoming obscured. The paper is “ Citizen scientists report global rapid reductions in the visibility of stars from 2011 to 2022, ” and it was published in the journal Science. The lead author is Christopher Kyba, a researcher at the German Research Centre for Geosciences.   “The introduction of artificial light probably represents the...

Astronomers have begun using a sophisticated suite of simulations, an advanced machine learning model of the formation of galaxy clusters, and an exotic relationship between galaxies to understand the origins of dark matter and dark energy. I’m guessing that you’ve never heard of the Sunyaev Zel’dovich effect, and that’s perfectly fine. It’s a relatively obscure cosmological trick to make maps of galaxies, groups and clusters. The effect is named after two Russian scientists who first figured out the mechanism. The effect works because our universe is soaked in the cosmic microwave background, the leftover radiation form when are universe was only 380,000 years old. That radiation is relatively cool, with a temperature of around 3 degrees above absolute zero, which puts the radiation in the microwave regime. As that ancient light filters its way through the cosmos on our way to our telescopes, occasionally it will pass through a group or cluster of galaxies. These clusters and group...

In the coming years, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will send two robotic missions to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. These are none other than NASA’s Europa Clipper and the ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), which will launch in 2024, and 2023 (respectively). Once they arrive by the 2030s, they will study Europa’s surface with a series of flybys to determine if its interior ocean could support life. These will be the first astrobiology missions to an icy moon in the outer Solar System, collectively known as “ Ocean Worlds .” One of the many challenges for these missions is how to mine through the thick icy crusts and obtain samples from the interior ocean for analysis. According to a proposal by Dr. Theresa Benyo (a physicist and the principal investigator of the lattice confinement fusion project at NASA’s Glenn Research Center), a possible solution is to use a special reactor that relies on fission and fusion reactions. This proposal was selected for Phase I...