INFORMATION

Adrift in a great sea of stars, we must surely not be alone. It’s hard not to look at the night sky and think about the possibility of other civilizations out there. From the philosophical speculations of Giordano Bruno to the statistical estimations of Frank Drake, the more we’ve learned about the universe, the more likely alien life seems to be. And yet, in our search for this life, we have heard nothing but silence . It’s always possible that we are the only living things in the cosmos, just as it is possible other civilizations keep to themselves or use communication technology invisible to us. But radio communication is both powerful and cheap, and we use it extensively. Our radio signals have been beaming from Earth for decades. So why shouldn’t other civilizations use radio as well? There are some who feel we’re being too optimistic. Although we do emit plenty of radio signals into space, the power of radio light fades with distance as it fills an ever-expanding sphere. Comb...

The last place to look for windstorms is on the Moon. Yet, it has swirls on its surface that look like the wind put them there. Since there’s no atmosphere on the Moon, planetary scientists had to look for another cause. It turns out there’s a connection to local magnetic anomalies and an interplay with lunar topography. Swirls are albedo patterns on the Moon’s surface and they’ve kept planetary scientists debating their cause for years. They’re visible from Earth, although it wasn’t until 1966 that the NASA Lunar Orbiter II managed to get a clear image of one. One of the largest, Reiner Gamma, is visible through an amateur telescope. A new study by scientists at the Planetary Science Institute, led by planetary scientist Deborah Domingue, examined the texture of the surface where these swirls appear. They looked at a spot in Mare Ingenii using photometric analysis to determine the cause. That technique takes into account how material scatters light and how those scattering properti...

In an age of increasing “stuff” orbiting Earth one big concern is what happens if one satellite hits another. The result could be an explosion, or a chain reaction of collisions, or the closure of an orbit. That would be catastrophic. However, a small satellite called SBUDNIC just sent itself back to Earth earlier than expected. It’s goal: to demonstrate a low-cost way to take care of space debris. SBUDNIC was the brainchild of a group of students at Brown University who were in a “Design of Space Systems” class taught by engineering Professor Rick Fleeter. It was a 3U CubeSat made of off-the-shelf components (including 48 Energizer batteries), a small camera, and a plastic drag sail. It joins a host of other CubeSats used (or proposed for use ) at Earth and throughout the Solar System. The team launched it aboard a SpaceX rocket on May 25, 2022. They communicated with it through a Ham radio-based Arduino prototyping platform. These are commonly used aboard 3U Cubesats due to their ...

What’s true for optical astronomy is also true for gravitational wave astronomy: the more observatories you have, the better your view of the sky. This is why the list of active gravitational wave observatories is growing. But so far they are all in the Northern Hemisphere. As a recent article on the arXiv points out, that means we are missing out on a good number of gravitational events. To its credit, gravitational wave astronomy is still in its youth. In the early days of large optical telescopes, there was also a northern bias to their locations. Part of this was based on the technical challenges of constructing telescopes in the global south, but there was also a cultural bias that is still with us today. We would do well to be mindful of this bias and try to correct it. But this latest work shows that building a gravitational wave observatory in the southern hemisphere wouldn’t simply be an act of broadening global participation, it would gain us significantly more observatio...

The two most powerful space telescopes ever built, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Hubble Space Telescope , are about to gather data about the most volcanically body in the entire solar system, Jupiter’s first Galilean Moon, Io . This data will be used in combination with upcoming flybys of Io by NASA’s Juno spacecraft , which is currently surveying the Jupiter system and is slated to conduct these flybys later this year and early 2024. The purpose of examining this small, volcanic moon with these two powerful telescopes and one orbiting spacecraft is for scientists to gain a better understanding of how Io’s escaping atmosphere interacts with Jupiter’s surrounding magnetic and plasma environment. “The timing of this project is critical,” said Dr. Kurt Retherford , who is a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and principal investigator of this elaborate science campaign. “Over the next year, Juno will buzz past Io several times, offering rare opport...

After years of build-up and anticipation, the James Webb Space Telescope finally launched into orbit on December 25th, 2021 (what a Christmas present, huh?). Since then, the stunning images and data it has returned have proven beyond a doubt that it was the best Christmas present ever! After its first year of operations, the JWST has lived up to one of its primary objectives: to observe the first stars and galaxies that populated the Universe. The next-generation observatory has accomplished that by setting new distance records and revealing galaxies that existed less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang! These studies are essential to charting the evolution of the cosmos and resolving issues with our cosmological models, like the Hubble Tension and the mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy . Well, hang onto your hats because things have reached a new level of awesome! In a recent study , an international team of scientists isolated a well-magnified star candidate in a galax...

When you think of a black hole, you might think its defining feature is its event horizon. That point of no return not even light can escape. While it’s true that all black holes have an event horizon, a more critical feature is the disk of hot gas and dust circling it, known as the accretion disk . And a team of astronomers have made the first direct measure of one. According to Newton, if you drop an object from rest near a planet or star, the object will fall straight down, tracing a linear path until it strikes the planet or star. Einstein says something slightly different. That straight path is only possible if the planet or star isn’t rotating. If it is rotating, then space near the planet or star is twisted. It’s an effect known as frame dragging, and it means our object will be pulled around an object as it falls. We have measured frame dragging on satellites near Earth , so we know it is a real effect. Near fast-rotating black holes the frame-dragging effect can be immense....

Europa and other ocean worlds in our solar system have recently attracted much attention. They are thought to be some of the most likely places in our solar system for life to have developed off Earth, given the presence of liquid water under their ice sheathes and our understanding of liquid water as one of the necessities for the development of life. Various missions are planned to these ocean worlds, but many suffer from numerous design constraints. Requirements to break through kilometers of ice on a world far from the Sun will do that to any mission. These design constraints sometimes make it difficult for the missions to achieve one of their most important functions – the search for life. But a team of engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory think they have a solution – send forth a swarm of swimming microbots to scour the ocean beneath a main “mothership” bot. One of the most likely forms of the mothership bot for this mission is the Subsurface Access Mechanism for Eur...

A recent study published in Nature examines how mud cracks observed on Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover could provide insight into how life on the Red Planet could have formed in its ancient past. On Earth, mud cracks have traditionally been linked to cycles of wet and dry environments that assisted in developing the complex processes responsible for microbial life to take hold. This study was conducted by an international team of researchers and holds the potential to help scientists better understand the geological and chemical processes that might have existed in Mars’ ancient past, up to billions of years ago. “This is the first tangible evidence we’ve seen that the ancient climate of Mars had such regular, Earth-like wet-dry cycles,” said Dr. William Rapin , who is a CNRS Research Scientist at IRAP (Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie), and lead author of the study. “But even more important is that wet-dry cycles are helpful – maybe even required – for th...

SpaceX Crew-7, the next group of four astronauts, are now on board the International Space Station, and this diverse crew is definitely putting “International” in the ISS. The new crew hails from four different countries: the US, Denmark, Japan and Russia. There will be 11 people on board the station for a few days before the Crew-6 foursome head back to Earth. NASA has at least 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations queued up for Crew-7[‘s six months space, many of which will help prepare for the upcoming Artemis missions. Crew-7 arrived on Sunday, August 27 aboard the SpaceX Dragon Endurance spacecraft, which launched at 3:27 a.m. EDT Saturday, Aug. 26, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  The crew includes NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov. They are currently getting acclimated to life on orbit ...

The New Horizons spacecraft that studied Pluto and Kuiper Belt Object Arrokoth continues its pioneering exploration of the Kuiper Belt. However, that might soon end if NASA doesn’t change course. The New Horizons science team has been told by NASA that the mission as they know it is slated to end September 30, 2024. In response, many in the planetary science community have communicated extreme disapproval of that action to the agency. In addition, the National Space Society launched a petition drive to save the mission and its mission scientists. It’s asking people to sign and show public support to the decision-makers at NASA. The deadline is the end of August. Interested members of the public can also write to their Congressmembers or Senators directly about the issue. Those representatives can contact NASA administrator Bill Nelson to save the mission and its science team. It’s particularly timely since NASA could require the current team to re-compete for its own mission later ...

For decades the most distant objects we could see were quasars. We now know they are powerful active black holes. Active galactic nuclei so distant that they resemble star-like points of light. It tells us that supermassive black holes in the early Universe can be powerful monsters that drive the evolution of their galaxies. We had thought most early supermassive black holes went through such an active phase, but a new study suggests most supermassive black holes don’t. Most galaxies contain a supermassive black hole. They contain millions or billions of solar masses. They can power tremendous jets of ionized gas streaming away from a galaxy at nearly the speed of light, rip stars apart to seed a galaxy with gas and dust, and even strip galaxies of dust to winnow star formation. They can also remain quiet for billions of years, hiding in a galaxy’s central bulge, as does the central black hole in the Milky Way. But the sheer mass of these black holes suggests they must have grown qui...

Private space company, Rocket Lab, launched its 40th Electron mission on their lauded Electron rocket , dubbed “We Love The Nightlife”, on August 24th at 11:45am New Zealand Standard Time (August 23rd at 7:45pm EST), which also marks the 7th launch of 2023, all successful. The purpose of the mission was to deliver the next-generation Acadia satellite for Capella Space to a circular orbit above the Earth at 640 km (400 miles), which was executed flawlessly. Acadia is part of Capella’s synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constellation and is the first of four Acadia satellites that Rocket is currently contracted to launch for Capella. “We’ve been a trusted launch partner to Capella since 2020 and we’re delighted to deliver mission success once again,” Rocket Lab CEO and Founder, Peter Beck, said in an official statement . “Electron has played a crucial role in helping constellation operators like Capella deploy their spacecraft on time and on target, and we look forward to continuing ...