INFORMATION

To get to the Moon, NASA is building a Lunar Gateway in orbit to facilitate easier access to the Moon. With construction beginning in 2028 as part of Artemis IV there will be an ongoing programme of enhancements and additions. NASA has now released a fabulous new 3D animation of the Lunar Gateway to showcase what the final Gateway will look like. It includes modules from partner nations and an Orion lunar landers dock to carry astronauts.  NASA’s Artemis program marks a historic return to lunar exploration following on from the Apollo era. It aims to land “the first woman and the next man” on the Moon by 2025 and heralds a new era of space exploration focused on sustainability and international collaboration. This ambitious project will use advanced technologies, including the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft, to establish a long-term human presence on the surface of the Moon. The program also aims to develop the Lunar Gateway, a space station orbiting th...

Universe Today has recently investigated a myriad of scientific disciplines, including impact craters , planetary surfaces , exoplanets , astrobiology , solar physics , comets , planetary atmospheres , planetary geophysics , cosmochemistry , meteorites , radio astronomy , extremophiles , organic chemistry , black holes , cryovolcanism , planetary protection , and dark matter , and what they can teach us about how we got here, where we’re going, and whether we might find life elsewhere in the universe. Here, Universe Today discusses the explosive field of supernovae—plural for supernova—with Dr. Joseph Lyman , who is an assistant professor in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group at the University of Warwick, regarding the importance of studying supernovae, the benefits and challenges, the most intriguing aspects about supernovae he’s studied throughout his career, what supernovae can teach us about finding life beyond Earth, and any advice he can offer upcoming students who wish to p...

The early Universe is a puzzling and—in many ways—still-unknown place. The first billion years of cosmic history saw the explosive creation of stars and the growth of the first galaxies. It’s also a time when the earliest known black holes appeared to grow very massive quickly. Astronomers want to know how they grew and why they feed more like “normal” recent supermassive black holes (SMBH). Today we see SMBH in galaxies that can have upwards of millions or billions of solar masses sequestered away. Astronomers naturally assumed that it took a long time for such monsters to build up. Like billions of years. So, when JWST observed the most distant quasar J1120+0641 , they expected to see an active galactic nucleus as it looked some 770 million years after the Big Bang. That is, they expected a still-growing central supermassive black hole. They were intrigued to find that it had a mass of at least a billion suns. This image of ULAS J1120+0641, a very distant quasar powered by a bla...

Nine months have passed since NASA’s OSIRIS-REx returned its samples of asteroid Bennu to Earth. The samples are some of the Solar System’s primordial, pristine materials. They’ve made their way into scientists’ hands, and their work is uncovering some surprises. Some of the material in the samples indicates that Bennu had a watery past. NASA chose Bennu for the OSIRIS-REx sampling mission for several reasons. First, it’s a near-Earth asteroid (NEA), so it’s relatively close to Earth. It’s also not very large at about 500 meters in diameter and rotates slowly enough to allow for a safe sampling procedure. But the overarching reason was probably its composition. It’s a B-type asteroid, a subtype of carbonaceous asteroids, which means it contains organic molecules . Finding organic molecules throughout the Solar System is one way of tracing its origin and formation. Returning samples to Earth is the best and most complete way to study asteroids. Asteroid fragments that fall to Earth...

In the coming years, NASA and other space agencies plan to extend the reach of human exploration. This will include creating infrastructure on the Moon that will allow for crewed missions on a regular basis. This infrastructure will allow NASA and its international partners to make the next great leap by sending crewed missions to Mars (by 2039 at the earliest). Having missions operate this far from Earth for extended periods means that opportunities for resupply will be few and far between. As a result, crews will need to rely on In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), where local resources are leveraged to provide for basic needs. In addition to air, water, and building materials, the ability to create propellant from local resources is essential. According to current mission architectures, this would consist of harvesting water ice in the polar regions and breaking it down to create liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid hydrogen (LH 2 ). However, according to a new study led by engineers fr...

As everybody who saw May’s spectacular auroral displays knows, the Sun is in its most active period in 11 years. The active region sunspot group that unleased the giant X-class flare rotated around the Sun, away from our direct view. But, that isn’t keeping the Solar Orbiter from spotting what’s happening with it and other active regions as they travel around on the Sun. This European Space Agency solar satellite continuously observed the region as it transited the solar far side. The onboard x-ray instrument (STIX) watched in real time as that sunspot group (dubbed AR3664) belched out another massive flare on May 20th. That outburst is currently the record-holder for strongest flare of the current solar cycle. If it was aimed toward Earth, we’d have seen fantastic auroral displays again. However, the flare could have posed a huge threat to our satellites, communications services, and even astronauts in orbit. Observing the Whole Sun Scientists were, until relatively recently, lim...

Protecting the astronauts of the Artemis program is one of NASA’s highest priorities. The agency intends to have a long-term presence on the Moon, which means long-term exposure to dangerous radiation levels. As part of the development of the Artemis program, NASA also set limits to the radiation exposure that astronauts can suffer. Other hazards abound on the lunar surface, including a potential micrometeoroid strike, which could cause catastrophic damage to mission equipment or personnel. NASA built a team to design and develop a “Lunar Safe Haven” to protect from these hazards. Their working paper was released in 2022 but still stands as NASA’s best approach to long-term living on the lunar surface. The two hazards mentioned above provided the primary impetus for the design, but there are some nuances to them—in particular, radiation. Astronauts will experience two main types of hazardous radiation on the lunar surface: cosmic rays and solar eruptions.  Cosmic rays are the mo...

One of the most fundamental questions astronomers ask about an object is “What’s its distance?” For very faraway objects, they use classical Cepheid variable stars as “distance rulers”. Astronomers call these pulsating stars “standard candles”. Now there’s a whole team of them precisely clocking their speeds along our line of sight. What makes a classical Cepheid a “standard candle” in the darkness of the Universe? It’s that pulsation. Not only does a Cepheid grow larger in a regular rhythm, but its brightness changes over predictable periods of time. In the early 1900s, astronomer Henrietta Leavitt studied thousands of these stars. She found something pretty interesting: there’s a strong relationship between a Cepheid’s luminosity and its pulsation period. And that’s a useful relationship. When you compare a Cepheid’s luminosity to its pulsation period, you can derive the star’s distance. This relationship appears to be true for all known Cepheids. That’s why they’re considered an...

Universe Today has had some incredible discussions with a wide array of scientists regarding impact craters , planetary surfaces , exoplanets , astrobiology , solar physics , comets , planetary atmospheres , planetary geophysics , cosmochemistry , meteorites , radio astronomy , extremophiles , organic chemistry , black holes , cryovolcanism , and planetary protection , and how these intriguing fields contribute to our understanding regarding our place in the cosmos. Here, Universe Today discusses the mysterious field of dark matter with Dr. Shawn Westerdale , who is an assistant professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy and head of the Dark Matter and Neutrino Lab at the University of California, Riverside, regarding the importance of studying dark matter, the benefits and challenges, how dark matter can teach us about finding life beyond Earth, the most exciting aspects about dark matter he’s studied throughout his career, and advice for upcoming students who wish to p...

One of the easiest ways to find exoplanets is using the transit method. It relies upon monitoring the brightness of a star which will then dim as a planet passes in front of it. It is of course possible that other objects could pass between us and a star; perhaps binary planets, tidally distorted planets, exocomets and, ready for it…. alien megastructures! A transit simulator has been created by a team of researchers and it can predict the brightness change from different transiting objects, even Dyson Swarms in construction.  51 Pegasi-b was the first exoplanet discovered in 1995 and it sparked the development of numerous ground-based and space-based instruments. The launch of the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in 2018 popularised the transit method, leading to the discovery of over 4,000 exoplanets. As instruments have become increasingly sensitive and precise, research has progressed from simply detecting exoplanets to studying thei...