INFORMATION

Although they are very different today, Venus, Earth, and Mars were very similar in their youth. All three were warm, with thick, water-rich atmospheres. But over time, Mars became a cold, dry planet with a thin atmosphere, and Venus became superheated, with a crushing, toxic sky. Only Earth became a warm ocean world teeming with life. But why? We know that Mars once had vast seas . It had the right conditions for life in the beginning, but with less gravity than Earth and a weak magnetic field, Mars lost much of its atmosphere over time, and most of its water either froze beneath the surface or became chemically locked in Martian clay . If Mars had been larger and more geologically active, perhaps it would have become another living world. Which raises the question of Venus. In terms of mass and composition, Venus seems to be nearly a twin of Earth. Its surface gravity is 90% of Earth’s. While it doesn’t have a strong magnetic field like our world, it is geologically active. We can...

How can artificial intelligence (AI) help astronauts on long-term space missions? This is what a recent study presented at the 2024 International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy, hopes to address as an international team of researchers led by the German Aerospace Center introduce enhancements for the Mars Exploration Telemetry-Driven Information System (METIS) system and how this could help future astronauts on Mars mitigate the communications issues between Earth and Mars, which can take up to 24 minutes depending in the orbits. This study holds the potential to develop more efficient technology for long-term space missions beyond Earth, specifically to the Moon and Mars. Here, Universe Today discusses this incredible research with Oliver Bensch, who is a PhD student at the German Aerospace Center regarding the motivation behind the study, the most significant results and follow-up studies, the significance of using specific tools for enhancing METIS, and the importance...

Are Primordial Black Holes real? They could’ve formed in the unusual physics that dominated the Universe shortly after the Big Bang. The idea dates back to the 1960s, but so far, the lack of evidence makes them purely hypothetical. If they do exist, a new paper suggests they may be hiding in places so unlikely that nobody ever thought to look there. Black holes form when massive stars reach the end of their lives and suffer gravitational collapse. However, Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) didn’t involve stars. Physicists hypothesize that PBHs formed in the early Universe from extremely dense pockets of sub-atomic matter that collapsed directly into black holes. They could form part or all of what we call dark matter. However, they remain hypothetical because none have been observed. New research in Physics of the Dark Universe suggests researchers are not looking in the right places. It’s titled “ Searching for small primordial black holes in planets, asteroids and here on Earth .” T...

One of NASA’s primary missions is to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers to join the STEM field. It does so by producing inspirational and educational content on various platforms. But sometimes, it takes a more direct approach by rewarding students for their contributions to solving a particular problem NASA is facing. Recently, the organization announced such a challenge – the Power to Explore Challenge, which is open to submission from K-12 students until the end of January. This challenge is part of an ongoing series of challenges that NASA has released to encourage kids to utilize a radioisotope power system (commonly known as a radioisotope thermal generator—or RTG) to enable future missions. Last year, the challenge involved coming up with a mission to a “dark, dusty, or far away place” where the benefits of RTGs, which don’t rely on solar power, would be the most obvious. A winner was then selected in three separate age categories, detailing missions to E...

Our satellites are dispassionate observers of Earth’s climate change. From their vantage point they watch as pack ice slowly loses its hold on polar oceans, ice shelfs break apart, and previously frozen parts of the planet turn green with vegetation. Now, scientists have compiled 35 years of satellite data showing that Antarctica is slowly, yet perceptibly, becoming greener. NASA and the United States Geological Survey sent the first Landsat into space in 1975. Since then, they’ve launched eight more Landsats, with Landsat 9 being the most recent launch in 2021. Landsat data is a unique treasure trove of data about Earth and the changes it goes through, including millions of images. Landsats have watched as forest fires burn, as urban regions expand, as glaciers melt, and as Earth goes through many other changes. Recent research published in Nature Geoscience used 35 years of Landsat data, from Landsat 5 through Landsat 8, to measure the spread of vegetation into Antarctica. It’s ...

In a few billion years, our Sun will die. It will first enter a red giant stage, swelling in size to perhaps the orbit of Earth. Its outer layers will be cast off into space, while its core settles to become a white dwarf. Life on Earth will boil away, and our planet itself might be consumed by the Sun. White dwarfs are the fate of all midsize stars, and given the path of their demise, it seems reasonable to assume that any planets die with their sun. But the fate of white dwarf planets may not be lifeless after all. More than a dozen planets have been discovered orbiting white dwarf stars. That’s a small fraction of the known exoplanets, but it tells us that planets can survive the red giant stage of a Sun-like star. Some planets may be consumed, and the orbits of survivors might be dramatically affected, but some planets retain a stable orbit. Any planets that were in the habitable zone of the star would die off, but a new study suggests that some white dwarf planets might give lif...

Now is the time to catch Jupiter at its best. The King of the Planets rules the winter night skies. Early December gives sky watchers a good reason to brave the cold, as Jupiter shines at its best. Look for the regal planet rising in the east at sunset, while the Sun sets to the west. Why Opposition? For an outer planet, we call this point ‘ opposition ’ as the planet sits ‘opposite’ to the Sun from our Earthly perspective. This also means that Jupiter is above the horizon for the entire evening: low to the east at sunset, high to the south at local midnight, and setting to the west at sunset. Opposition for Jupiter in 2024 occurs on Saturday, December 7 th . Jupiter is closest to the Earth (611 million kilometers distant) a day prior on December 6 th . The discontinuity exists because Jupiter is currently moving away from us, while we’re headed towards the Sun. A double shadow moon transit from August 14th, 2024. Credit : Thad Szabo. Jupiter reached perihelion early last yea...

NASA has given SpaceX the contract to launch the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. A Falcon Heavy will send the rotorcraft and its lander on their way to Titan in 2028, if all goes according to plan, and the mission will arrive at Titan in 2034. Dragonfly is an astrobiology mission designed to measure the presence of different chemicals on the frigid moon. Dragonfly will be the second craft to visit Titan, along with the Huygens probe and its short visit back in 2005. Titan is remarkable because it’s the only body besides Earth with liquids on its surface. The liquids are hydrocarbons, not water, though there may be surface deposits of water ice from impacts or cryovolcanic eruptions. Researchers think that prebiotic chemicals are also present, making the moon an enticing target to understand how far prebiotic chemistry may have advanced. These images of Titan’s well-known hydrocarbon seas are from Cassini radar data. Image Credit: [JPL-CALTECH/NASA, ASI, USGS] Titan is ...

Even some fields that seem fully settled will occasionally have breakthrough ideas that have reverberated impacts on the rest of the fields of science and technology. Mechanics is one of those relatively settled fields – it is primarily understood at the macroscopic level, and relatively few new breakthroughs have occurred in it recently. Until a few years ago, when a group of Harvard engineers developed what they called a totimorphic structure, and a recent paper by researchers at ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team dives into detail about how they can be utilized to create megastructures, such as telescope mirrors and human habitats in space. First, it’s worth understanding what a totimorphic structure is. It is a series of triangular structures with a beam, a lever, and two elastic bands acting as springs. Given the proper configuration, the elastic bands can hold the lever at a set position in what mechanics researchers call “neutral” – i.e., without any external force being applied. O...

In our search for exoplanets, we’ve found that many of them fall into certain types or categories, such as Hot Jupiters, Super-Earths, and Ice Giants. While we don’t have any examples of the first two in our solar system, we do have two Ice Giants: Uranus and Neptune. They are mid-size gas planets formed in the cold outer regions of the solar system. Because of this, they are rich in water and other volatile compounds, and they are very different from large gas giants such as Jupiter. We still have a great deal to learn about these worlds, but what we’ve discovered so far has been surprising, such as the nature of their magnetic fields. When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s, it found that neither world had a strong dipolar magnetic field like Earth’s. Instead, each had a weaker and more chaotic magnetic field, similar to that of Mars. This was surprising given what we understand about planet formation. Models for the interior structures of the ice-...

You know what it’s like. You get a new telescope and need to know where to point it! The bigger the telescope, the more potential targets and the harder the decision! To date, we have found over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets (5,288 to be exact) with thousands more candidates. With missions like Gaia identifying thousands of nearby stars like our Sun where Earth-like planets could be lurking, its time to hunt them down. A new paper takes on the goiath task of trying to filter down all the millions of candidates into about 1,000 main sequence stars or binaries worth exploring. From these, they have identified 100 most promising targets and from them, the 10 best planetary systems. Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars outside our Solar System. The first confirmed discovery of an exoplanet occurred in 1992 and since then, thousands more have been identified. They come in a wide variety of sizes, compositions, and orbital properties, ranging from small, rocky Earth-like planets to massive...

Space exploration is a dangerous business, especially when squishy living organisms, such as humans, are involved. NASA has always prided itself on how seriously it takes the safety of its astronauts, so as it gears up for the next big push in crewed space exploration, the Artemis program, it is looking for solutions to potentially catastrophic situations that might arise. One such catastrophe would be if one of the Artemis astronauts was incapacitated and couldn’t return to the lander. The only person who could potentially be able to save them would be their fellow astronaut, but carrying a fully suited human back to their base of operations would be a challenge for an astronaut similarly kitted out in their own bulky suit. So, NASA decided to address it as precisely that – a challenge – and ask for input from the general public, offering up to $20,000 for the best solution to the problem. The challenge, “South Pole Safety: Designing the NASA Lunar Rescue System,” was announced on N...

The moons of Mars are garnering increased attention, not only because they could provide a view of the solar system’s past but also because they could provide invaluable staging areas for any future human settlement on Mars itself. However, missions specifically designed to visit Phobos, the bigger of the two moons, have met with varying stages of failure. So why not make an inexpensive mission to do so – one that could launch multiple copies of itself if necessary? That’s the idea behind a CubeSat-based mission to Phobos, known as Perseus, which was initially described back in 2020. Phobos is interesting for several reasons, but so far, we’ve only gotten relatively grainy pictures of this small moon, whose total diameter is the size of a medium-sized city. Most of those pictures have come from Mars orbiters, such as MRO, who occasionally turn their instruments on the other bodies in the system. Several planned missions to visit directly, such as Phobos 1 and 2 and, more recently, Ph...