INFORMATION

In an effort to conserve Voyager 2's dwindling energy and extend the spacecraft's mission, NASA has shut down another of its instruments. They did it with the Plasma Spectrometer in October 2024, and it won't be the last. In March, Voyager 2's Low-Energy Charged Particle instrument will be powered down. What does this mean for the durable spacecraft? "If we don’t turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission." - Suzanne Dodd, Voyager Project Manager, JPL Things have changed a lot since the pair of Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977. Our planet is hotter, the human population has ballooned, and Battlestar Galactica came and went — twice. Voyager 1 and 2 have surprised us all with their longevity. When they were launched, their planned mission length was a mere five years. Now, almost 50 years after their launch date, they've both reached inters...

Late is better than never for the ‘Blaze Star’ T Coronae Borealis . It was on track to be the top astronomical event for 2024 … and here we are in 2025 , still waiting. You might remember around this time last year, when a notice went out that T Coronae Borealis (‘T CrB’) might brighten into naked eye visibility . Well, the bad news is, the ‘Flare Star’ is officially late to the celestial sky show… but the good news is, recent research definitely shows us that something is definitely afoot. The outburst occurs once every 80 years. First noticed by astronomer John Birmingham in 1866, T Coronae Borealis last brightened in February 1946 . That's 80 years ago, this month. Located about 2,000 light-years distant on the Hercules/Corona Borealis/Serpens Caput constellation junction border, the star spends most of its time below +10th magnitude. Typically during outburst, the star flares and tops out at +2nd magnitude, rivaling the lucida of its host constellation, Alpha Coronae Boreal...

If you've ever looked at Mars through a telescope, you probably noticed its two polar ice caps . The northern one is made largely of water ice—the most obvious sign that Mars was once a wetter, warmer world. A team of researchers from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) used that ice cap to make surprising discoveries about it and what it tells us about Mars's interior. According to Adrien Broquet and a team of DLR planetary scientists, the northern polar cap on Mars is quite young. They found this out by applying techniques used to measure what ice sheets on Earth do to its surface. The effect that widespread glaciation has is called "glacial isostatic adjustment," and it's still happening in places such as Scandinavia. Essentially, it's a constant movement of land as Earth's surface deforms in response to the weight of ice. The rate of deformation depends on the specific characteristics of the underlying mantle. Large areas of our planet have been covere...

Our Solar System is in motion and cruises at about 200 kilometres per second relative to the center of the Milky Way. During its long journey, it has passed through different parts of the galaxy. Research shows that the Solar System passed through the Orion star-forming complex about 14 million years ago. The Orion star-forming complex, also known as the Orion molecular cloud complex , is part of a larger structure called the Radcliffe Wave (RW). The RW was discovered very recently, in 2020 . It's a large, coherent structure that also moves through the galaxy. It's a wave-like structure of gas and dust that holds many star-forming regions, including the well-known Orion complex and the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds. It's almost 9000 light-years long and is within the Milky Way's Orion arm. The environment in the RW and the Orion complex is more dense, and when the Solar System passed through it, the greater density compressed the Sun's heliosphere. This allo...

NASA's asteroid-studying spacecraft Lucy captured an image of its next flyby target, the asteroid Donaldjohanson. On April 20th, the spacecraft will pass within 960 km of the small, main belt asteroid. It will keep imaging it for the next two months as part of its optical navigation program. Donaldjohanson is an unwieldy name for an asteroid, but it's fitting. Donald Johanson is an American paleoanthropologist who discovered an important australopithecine skeleton in Ethiopia's Afar Triangle in 1974. The female hominin skeleton showed that bipedal walking developed before larger brain sizes, an important discovery in human evolution. She was named Lucy . NASA named their asteroid-studying mission Lucy because it also seeks to uncover clues about our origins. Instead of ancient skeletal remains, Lucy will study asteroids, which are like fossils of planet formation. During its 12-year mission, Lucy will visit eight asteroids. Two are in the main belt, and six are Jupiter ...

There are several well-documented health risks that come from spending extended periods in microgravity, including muscle atrophy, bone density loss, and changes to organ function and health. In addition, astronauts have reported symptoms of immune dysfunction, including skin rashes and other inflammatory conditions. According to a new study , these issues could be due to the extremely sterile environment inside spacecraft and the International Space Station (ISS). Their results suggest that more microbes could help improve human health in space. The study was led by Rodolfo A. Salido and Haoqi Nina Zhao , a bioengineer and an environmental analytical chemist at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), respectively. They were joined by researchers from multiple UCSD programs and centers, the University of Denver, the Chiba University-UC San Diego Center for Mucosal Immunology Allergy and Vaccines (cMAV), Space Research Within Reach , the Baylor College Center for Space Medic...

On December 27th, 2024, the Chilean station of the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) detected 2024 YR 4 . This Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) belongs to the Apollo group, which orbits the Sun with a period of approximately four years. For most of its orbit, 2024 YR4 orbits far from Earth, but sometimes, it crosses Earth’s orbit. The asteroid was spotted shortly after it made a close approach to Earth on Christmas Day 2024 and is now moving away. Additional observations determined it had a 1% probability of hitting Earth when it makes its next close pass in December 2032. This led the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) – overseen by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) – to issue the first-ever official impact risk notification for 2024 YR 4 . The possibility of an impact also prompted several major telescopes to gather additional data on the asteroid. This included the Subaru Telescope at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, which ca...

The Andromeda Galaxy, our nearest large neighbour, has 36 identified dwarf galaxies. The Hubble telescope took images of Andromeda and its dwarfs during more than 1,000 orbits, creating a precise 3D map. Astronomers used these observations to reconstruct the dwarf galaxies’ star formation histories. The results show that their environment plays a critical role in their star formation and their quenching. When galaxies are quenched, they no longer form stars. It happens because the supply of star-forming gas is diminished or somehow made unavailable. This typically happens because of black hole feedback or when a galaxy moves through a dense galaxy cluster, and its gas is stripped away. However, the dwarf galaxies around Andromeda (M31) seem to follow an unusual pattern of star formation and quenching. New research shows that the rambunctious environment around M31 is responsible. The research is “ The Hubble Space Telescope Survey of M31 Satellite Galaxies. IV. Survey Overview and...

Rogue planetary-mass objects, also known as free-floating planets (FFPs) drift through space alone, unbound to any other objects. They’re loosely defined as bodies with masses between stars and planets. There could be billions, even trillions of them, in the Milky Way. Their origins are unclear, but new research says they’re born in young star clusters. Some free-floating planets (FFPs) form the same way stars form by collapsing inside a cloud. The International Astronomical Union calls them sub-brown dwarfs. But that can’t account for all FFPs, or isolated planetary-mass objects (iPMOs) as they’re sometimes called. New research in Science Advances shows how FFPs form in young star clusters where circumstellar disks interact with one another. “This discovery partly reshapes how we view cosmic diversity.” Lucio Mayer, University of Zurich The research is titled “ Formation of free-floating planetary mass objects via circumstellar disk encounters. ” Zhihau Fu from the Departmen...

The effects of Climate Change on Earth’s living systems have led to a shift in biological studies, with attention now being focused on the boundaries within which life can survive. Studying life forms that can thrive in extreme environments (extremophiles) is also fundamental to predicting if humans can live and work in space for extended periods. Last, but not least, these studies help inform astrobiological studies, allowing scientists to predict where (and in what form) life could exist in the Universe. In a recent study , a team of Italian researchers used brine shrimp ( Artemia franciscana ) in the earliest stage of development (nauplii) and subjected them to Mars-like pressure conditions. Their results indicate that while the nauplii experienced physiological changes, their development remained largely unchanged. This not only demonstrates that extremophiles show great adaptability and can survive in Mars-like conditions. It also indicates that similar life forms could be found ...