INFORMATION

Solar storms have the potential to cause catastrophic damage. One that occurred around the end of October 2003 (now called the 2003 Halloween Storm) caused an estimated $27B in damages. That number will only increase as humanity has become more reliant on space-based and electrical infrastructure. However, if we could predict when storms would hit with some accuracy and adjust our use of the technologies that could be affected, we could avoid the worst damage. But, as of now, we don't have such a system that could help predict the types of events that could cause that damage accurately enough. That is where a new Sun activity monitoring system, described in a recent paper by Leonidas Askianakis of the Technical University of Munich, would help. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/qTdBKAZ via IFTTT

How can fission-powered propulsion help advance deep space exploration, specifically to the outer planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) hopes to address as a pair of researchers from India investigated the financial, logistical, and reliability of using fission power for future deep space missions. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, and future astronauts develop next-generation technologies as humanity continues to expand its presence in space. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/mf2VEL4 via IFTTT

Exoplanet science is shifting from finding any detectable exoplanets we can to searching for those in their stars' habitable zones. NASA's proposed Habitable World Observatory and other similar efforts are focused on these worlds. The problem is, habitable zones aren't static. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/nrcOU8Q via IFTTT

We've been gazing at the Moon for a long time, yet it's still mysterious. We've sent numerous orbiters and landers to our satellite, and even brought some of it back to our labs. Those rocks only presented more mysteries, in some ways. Lunar rocks are magnetic, yet the Moon doesn't have a magnetosphere. How did this happen? from Universe Today https://ift.tt/4KP3iQc via IFTTT

Just because we can find ozone in the atmosphere of other planets doesn't mean there's life. Ozone is a sign of life on Earth, but its detection on Venus shows that it can also be produced abiotically. This indicates that there are different pathways for its creation, not only on Venus but also on other Venus-like exoplanets. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/pjECrGD via IFTTT

Lunar exploration is gaining momentum, but one of the biggest challenges remains the Moon’s long, cold night, which lasts about two weeks. To address this, a team of researchers has proposed deploying a constellation of solar power satellites in lunar orbit. These satellites would beam energy wirelessly to a base on the Moon, providing a continuous supply of 1,600 kW of power, day or night. Their proposal includes launching 300 satellites by 2035, supporting long term plans for establishing permanent lunar bases. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/AHp2WkF via IFTTT

A team of geophysicists from the University of Chicago showed how clouds on exoplanets could enhance the search for biosignatures. Their findings could have significant implications for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) and other next-generation telescopes that will study exoplanets via direct imaging. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/9V3tsM0 via IFTTT

Generation starships may be the only way humans travel to other stars. These hypothetical spacecraft would travel at sub-light speed and take generations to reach their destination. Over the hundreds or even thousands of years, generations of human beings would be born, live, and then die on these ships. Even if that awkward arrangement could be made to work, how would everything else function for so long? What about the spacecraft? What about the AI? from Universe Today https://ift.tt/a4RSfLD via IFTTT

SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket got off to a great start for its ninth flight test, but the second stage ran into a host of issues and made an uncontrolled re-entry. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/SvBNKrE via IFTTT

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) has stood as a promising potential alternative propulsion technology for decades. Chemical rockets have begun to reach their theoretical maximum efficiency, and their developers have switched their focus to making them cheaper rather than more efficient. NTP should answer that by offering high thrust and specific impulse. NASA's DRACO Program, the standard-bearer for NTP systems, provides a specific impulse of around 900 seconds, about double a traditional chemical rocket, but half that of most ion thrusters. To increase that number even further, researchers at the University of Alabama at Huntsville and The Ohio State University have been working on a novel configuration of NTP called the Centrifugal Nuclear Thermal Rocket (CNTR) that promises almost to double the specific impulse of traditional NTP systems while maintaining similar thrust levels. However, the system has some engineering challenges to overcome, and a new paper coming out in Acta A...

Modern ground-based telescopes rely on adaptive optics (AO) to deliver clear images. By correcting for atmospheric distortion, they give us exceptional pictures of planets, stars, and other celestial objects. Now, a team at the National Solar Observatory is using AO to examine the Sun's corona in unprecedented detail. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Og72lc5 via IFTTT

Astronomers have spotted a pulsar in a binary system, taking about 3.6 hours for the stars to orbit one another. Their orbit is so close that, from our vantage point, the pulsar’s radio signals vanish for roughly one-sixth of each cycle—blocked by the companion’s interference. Researchers think that the more massive star died first, exploding as a supernova and collapsing into a neutron star, passing within the atmosphere of the other. It took about 1,000 years to blow away the envelope of material. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/khVBwy5 via IFTTT

Over the past 90 years, astronomers have successfully matched several Chinese historical records of "guest stars" with known supernovae. However, identifying historical novae (smaller stellar explosions) has proven to be far more challenging, with many proposed candidates later turning out to be comets or meteors instead. One particularly debated case involves a guest star recorded in 1408 CE by Chinese astronomers. A team of astronomers now think they may have finally been able to identify the event, a rare nova that could potentially solve this centuries old astronomical mystery. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Y7OGDj6 via IFTTT

On May 10th, while striking a selfie to mark its 1,500th day on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance Rover got an unexpected guest star—a towering dust devil swirling in the distance photobombed the shot. The rover was on Witch Hazel Hill, an area on the rim of Jezero Crater that it has been exploring for the last 5 months. The dust devil on the other hand was sneaking into the background from a distance of 5 km away. The selfie image was made up of 59 separate photos taken by the rover using its WATSON camera. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/mvqXKrH via IFTTT

Of the roughly 6,000 exoplanets we've discovered, a significant number are in the apparent habitable zones of their stars. Most are giant planets; either gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, or ice giants like Uranus and Neptune. Could some of those have habitable exomoons? from Universe Today https://ift.tt/8r7k5Ms via IFTTT

Twenty years ago, the US Congress instructed NASA to find 90% of near-Earth asteroids threatening Earth. They've made progress finding these asteroids that orbit the Sun and come to within 1.3 astronomical units of Earth. However, they may have to expand their search since astronomers are now finding asteroids co-orbiting Venus that could pose a threat. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/lDfMcN5 via IFTTT

An international team of researchers has announced the preliminary findings of Webb's observations of the Alpha Centauri system. According to their analysis, Alpha Cen A may have a Jupiter-sized planet and a very bright zodiacal dust disk orbiting it. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/wQl3RfZ via IFTTT

Whenever scientists present new research showing potential biosignatures on an exoplanet, follow-up articles spread like ripples on a pond. Mainstream media usually runs with it, which shows how the issue captures people's attention. The issue of life on other worlds is a compelling one. This is what happened recently with the exoplanet K2-18b. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/JdurDVh via IFTTT

Sometimes, space enthusiasts blind themselves with techno-optimism about all the potential cool technological things we can do and the benefits they can offer humanity. We conveniently ignore that there are trade-offs: if one group gets to utilize the water available on the lunar surface, that means another group doesn't get to. Recognizing and attempting to come up with a plan to deal with those sorts of trade-offs is the intent of a new paper by Marissa Herron and Therese Jones of NASA's Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, as well as Amanda Hernandez of BryceTech, a contractor based out of Virginia. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/jIlHQ5a via IFTTT

Our nearest neighbor is only slightly smaller than the Earth… but that’s just about the only thing the two planets have in common. Now, a recent NASA-funded study suggests that the interior of Venus may be equally strange as well. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/4vVWn9Y via IFTTT

Our understanding of our Solar System is still evolving. As our telescopes have improved, they've brought the Solar System's deeper reaches into view. Pluto was disqualified as a planet because of it. Now, new research says another dwarf planet may reside at the edge of the Solar System. Its presence supports the Planet X hypothesis. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/0h5WMCi via IFTTT

Multi-messenger astronomy has been all the rage lately. It involves capturing data on the gravitational and electromagnetic signals from catastrophic cosmic events. However, with that newfound interest comes required updates to infrastructure. Gravitational wave detectors have been upgraded and will be even more sensitive soon. But to realize the promise of multi-messenger astronomy, scientists must have a fleet of spacecraft watching the entire sky for high-energy signals indicative of the events that cause gravitational waves. At least, that is the team's long-term plan behind the High Energy Rapid Modular Ensemble of Satellites Pathfinder (HERMES-PF) mission, which successfully launched in March and is currently undergoing commissioning. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/ZP2Cypl via IFTTT

We know that planets form in protoplanetary disks, swirling collections of gas and dust that rotate around very young stars. But we don't know all the details, partly because it's difficult to see inside these disks and watch the process unfold. One question astronomers want an answer to concerns ultraviolet radiation. Does extreme ultraviolet radiation disrupt the planet-forming process? from Universe Today https://ift.tt/QC5hGKV via IFTTT

Co-paired stars, or stars that travel together, can provide insights into processes that other stars can't. Differences in their brightness, orbits, and chemical composition can hint at different features, and scientists are beginning to exploit them. A new paper from researchers in Australia, China, the US, and Europe analyzed data to determine if one of those features - specifically the depletion of particular elements in a star - could be a sign that it has formed a planet, or if it ate one. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Bmk4RjG via IFTTT

The JWST has done it again. The powerful space telescope has already revealed the presence of bright galaxies only several hundred million years after the Big Bang. Now, it's sensed light from a galaxy only 280 million years after the Big Bang, the most distant galaxy ever detected. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/l9woJZ5 via IFTTT

Some 13,000 years ago, the Sun emitted a huge belch of radiation that bombarded Earth and left its imprint in ancient tree rings. That solar storm was the most powerful one ever recorded. The next strongest was the 1839 Carrington Event. It was spurred by a huge solar flare that triggered a powerful geomagnetic storm at Earth. The resulting "space weather" disrupted telegraph communications around the world. Today, as we move through this year's "solar maximum", a period of solar activity that occurs every 11 years, scientists want to prepare governments for the effects of severe solar storms. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/vdVf6w9 via IFTTT

Mars' oceans, lakes, and rivers are long gone. They've left behind evidence of their time here in river channels, deltas, paleolakes, and other features. The water's existence isn't a mystery, but its whereabouts is. Did it disappear into space, or did it retreat into underground aquifers? from Universe Today https://ift.tt/ag89YDc via IFTTT

Members of the space exploration community are always coming up with novel ideas to solve problems that they view as holding back humanity's expansion into the cosmos. One such problem that has become more noticeable of late, due to the failure of several powered lunar landers, is the difficulty of landing on the Moon. To open up the wealth of resources on our nearest neighbor, we will have to regularly deliver cargo to it as well as ship cargo off of it. A new idea from Lunar Cargo, a company based in Europe, has come up with a novel, patented way to deliver cargo to the Moon - the Momentum Absorption Catcher for Express Deliveries on Non-Atmospheric Somata, or M.A.C.E.D.O.N.A.S. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/GFjKqRh via IFTTT

It was big news years ago when Mars orbiters found streaks of what appeared to be water running down Martian cliffs and crater walls. Scientists worked hard to figure out what they were. Some proposed that they were seasonal streaks of briny ice, melting as the weak Mars summer arrived. New research says no to that. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Dxdj9Sc via IFTTT

In recent years, humanity has visited several near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), including Ryugu (Hayabusa2) and Didymos (DART). However, we will need more frequent missions to start gathering more helpful information about this class of over 37,000 space rocks. CubeSats have off-the-shelf components and a relatively small size, making them a potentially good candidate for such an exploration program. But how would they reach these asteroid locations given their relatively limited payload and propulsion capacity? That is the focus of a new paper from Alessandro Quarta of the University of Pisa. He looks at potential trajectory planning for CubeSats given one of several configurations of ion drives. He shows how many NEAs can be accessed by simply entering a heliocentric orbit and awaiting the asteroid's arrival as part of its orbit. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/cGhaI1k via IFTTT

Extreme solar storms are a relatively rare event. However, as more and more of our critical infrastructure moves into space, they will begin to have more and more of an impact on our daily lives, rather than just providing an impressive light show at night. So it's best to know what's coming, and a new paper from an international team of researchers led by Kseniia Golubenko and Ilya Usoskin of the University of Oulu in Finalnd found a massive Extreme Solar Particle Event (ESPE) that happened 12350 years ago, which is now considered to be the most energetic on record. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/CWsKmFM via IFTTT

The satellite population in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) is not an open book. While data on many satellites is public, others are shrouded in secrecy, and information is incomplete for others. New research shows how observers can determine satellite shapes by watching them occult background stars. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/eVFnmxf via IFTTT

Spacecraft orbiting Mars can reveal small features on the planet's surface, but there are only so many things you can see from above. When a meteor strikes the surface of Mars, it can excavate sub-surface material, allowing scientists to study what lies beneath. Researchers have simulated various impacts on Mars, changing the sub-surface material from bedrock to water-ice glaciers, and then calculated what should be visible after an impact, enabling new science. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/mkMdCTY via IFTTT

Earth's magnetosphere channels particles from solar storms into stunning auroras. Mars lacks a planet-wide magnetic field and has patchy auroras barely detectable with instruments. Or so we thought. New images captured by NASA's Perseverance Rover with its Mastcam-Z instrument show green auroras in visible light. When humans finally walk on Mars and look to the skies, they could possibly see faint auroras there, too. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/20V6XSi via IFTTT

In a recent paper, an international team proposed an ultra-long wavelength radio interferometer that could examine the Cosmic Dark Ages and Cosmic Dawn. Known as the Dark Ages Explorer (DEX), this telescope could provide fresh insights into how and when the first stars and galaxies formed. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/0Vuyv6K via IFTTT

When the JWST came to life and began observations, one of its first jobs was to gaze back in time at the early Universe. The Assembly of Galaxies is one of the space telescope's four main science themes, and when it observed the Universe's first galaxies, it uncovered a mystery. According to our understanding of how galaxies evolve, some were far more massive than they should be. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/WZniN9Q via IFTTT

We don't have to rely solely on the JWST to observe the Universe's oldest stars. Some of the oldest stars in the Universe reside in globular clusters, and the Milky Way has about 150 of them. How old exactly? New research has the answer. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/ys3j8db via IFTTT

Some parts of the Moon are more interesting than others, especially when searching for future places for humans to land and work. There are also some parts of the Moon that we know less about than others, such as the Irregular Mare Patches (IMPs) that dot the landscape. We know very little about how they were formed, and what that might mean for the history of the Moon itself. A new mission, called the LUnar Geology Orbiter (LUGO), aims to collect more data on the IMPs and search for lava tubes that might serve as future homes to humanity. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/eEiz9CZ via IFTTT

We tend to think of habitability in terms of individual planets and their potential to host life. But barring outliers like rogue planets with internal heating or icy moons with subsurface oceans created by tidal heating, it's exoplanet/star relationships that generate habitability, not individual planets. New research emphasizes that fact. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/QK40G9U via IFTTT

Over the past decade or so, astronomers have speculated about the characteristics of rogue planets in the Milky Way Galaxy. These "free-floating" worlds don't orbit stars, but instead roam the spaceways. They're hard to spot with current technology, but the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) will be a perfect instrument to find them and give insights into the history and features they may have in common with Solar System worlds. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/gADCVE5 via IFTTT

One of the unanswered questions in astronomy is just how supermassive black holes grew so big, so quickly. A team of astronomers have tried to answer this question by searching for actively feeding supermassive black holes (aka quasars) as a way to measure how much material material they are actually accumulating. They studied nebulae near the quasars that light up with the quasar is releasing radiation and found that many of the more distant quasars have only been active for a few hundred thousand years, not long enough to grow to the size we see today. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/8hKlMwx via IFTTT

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Could Study Dying Planets from Universe Today https://ift.tt/93fb4FX via IFTTT

The most massive stars in the Milky Way contain one hundred times more mass than the Sun, even more in some cases. These O-type stars are extremely hot, luminous, and blue, and often die in supernova explosions. Astrophysicists want to know how they get so big, and a simple household chemical might hold the answer. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/WRPVKga via IFTTT

Researchers have identified several features on Mars that look surprisingly similar to conditions on Earth. One notable feature is giant wave-like landforms called solifluction lobes, which are in cold, mountainous regions of Earth, like the Arctic or Rocky Mountains. These are slow-moving patterns similar to fluids running downhill, but on Mars, they're 2.6 times larger because of its lower gravity. They can grow much taller before collapsing on Mars. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/nQ2Dtch via IFTTT

To understand how chaotic the early Solar System was, we need only gaze at the Moon. Its cratered surface bears the scars from multitudes of collisions. The early Solar System was like a debris field where objects smashed into each other in cascades of collisions. The same must be true in all young solar systems, and in a new paper, researchers simulated a collision between two massive planets to see what would happen. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Cpq3xbP via IFTTT

What new technologies or methods can be developed for more efficient in-situ planetary subsurface analyses? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how a novel instrument called OptiDrill could fill existing technological voids regarding the sampling and collection of regolith (top dust layer) and subsurface samples on a myriad of planetary bodies throughout the solar system. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/LjziveB via IFTTT

When astronomers want to understand brown dwarfs, they often turn to WISE 1049AB. It's a benchmark brown dwarf in astronomy, and the closest and brightest brown dwarf we know of. The binary pair, which is also known as Luhman 16, is about 6.5 light-years away. Brown dwarfs are a crucial bridge between planets and stars, and understanding them helps astronomers understand the dynamics of both exoplanets and stars. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/urhlyVw via IFTTT

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Could Study Dying Planets from Universe Today https://ift.tt/esNVY9K via IFTTT

The JWST continues to live up to its promise by revealing things hidden from other telescopes. One of its lesser-known observations concerns Free-Floating Planets (FFP). FFPs have no gravitational tether to any star and are difficult to detect because they emit so little light. When the JWST detected 42 of a particular type of FFP in the Orion Nebula Cluster, it gave astronomers an opportunity to study them more closely. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/3fG8Ibk via IFTTT

The idea that our Solar System is representative of other solar systems hasn't survived the age of exoplanet discovery. Kepler and TESS have shown us that our system doesn't even contain the most common type of planet: sub-Neptunes. These planets pose a mystery to planetary scientists, and the JWST is helping unravel the mystery. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/pCBUlDN via IFTTT