Space News & Blog Articles

Now is the time to catch Comet A3-Tsuchinshan-ATLAS at dawn.

The most likely way we will discover life on a distant exoplanet is by discovering a biosignature. This can be done by looking at the atmospheric spectra of a world to discover the spectral pattern of a molecule that can only be created through biological processes. While it sounds straightforward it isn’t. The presence of simple molecules such as water and oxygen don’t prove life exists on a planet. It’s true that Earth’s atmosphere is oxygen rich thanks to life, but geological activity can also produce large quantities of oxygen. And as a new study shows, some molecules we’ve long thought to be biological in origin may not be.

When a massive star explodes as a supernova, it does more than release an extraordinary amount of energy. Supernovae explosions are responsible for creating some of the heavy elements, including iron, which is blasted out into space by the explosion. On Earth, there are two accumulations of the iron isotope Fe60 in sea-floor sediments that scientists trace back about two or three million years ago and about five to six million years ago.

On June 6th, 2024, the fourth orbital test flight of the Starship successfully lifted off at 07:50 a.m. CT (08:50 a.m. EDT; 06:50 PDT) from SpaceX’s Starbase in Texas. This test was the first time the Starship (SN29) and Super Heavy (BN11) prototypes reentered Earth’s atmosphere and landed successfully. While the SN29 conducted a powered vertical landing before splashing down in the Indian Ocean, the BN11 executed a similar powered landing before splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico. In a recent tweet, Elon Musk shared a photo of the BN11 booster being pulled out of the sea.

Researchers have developed a set of hexagon-shaped robotic components that can be snapped together into larger and larger structures. Each one of the component hexagons is made of rigid plates that serve as its exoskeleton. Driven by electricity, the plates can change their shape, shifting from long and narrow to wide and flat at high speed. The combined structures are capable of jumping four times their own body height, then can shape-shift to roll extremely fast, or use multimodal actuation to crawl through confined spaces.

Noctilucent clouds were once thought to be a fairly modern phenomenon. A team of researcher have recently calculated that Earth and the entire Solar System may well have passed through two dense interstellar clouds causing global noctilucent clouds that may have driven an ice age. The event is thought to have happened 7 million years ago and would have compressed the heliosphere, exposing Earth to the interstellar medium. 

Earth’s last half-billion years were action-packed. During that time, the climate underwent many changes. There have been changes in ocean levels and ice sheets, changes in the atmosphere’s composition, changes in ocean chemistry, and ongoing biological evolution punctuated with extinction events.

If there really are advanced alien civilizations out there, you’d think they’d be easy to find. A truly powerful alien race would stride like gods among the cosmos, creating star-sized or galaxy-sized feats of engineering. So rather than analyzing exoplanet spectra or listening for faint radio messages, why not look for the remnants of celestial builds, something too large and unusual to occur naturally?

An atlas doesn’t seem to be an essential item in cars these days but think about them and most people will think about distances. An atlas of the stars not only covers distances but must also take into account time too. The Andromeda galaxy for example is so far away that its light takes 2.5 million years to reach us. A team of researchers have now built a catalogue that contains information on millions of galaxies including their distance and looks back in time up to 10 billion years!

A gravitational lens is the ultimate funhouse mirror of the Universe. It distorts the view of objects behind them but also supplies amazing information about distant galaxies and quasars. Astronomers using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) recently released a new image of one of these weird apparitions called “The Carousel Lens”. It’s a rare alignment of seven background galaxies that all appear distorted by an intervening galaxy cluster.

Solar flares are a fascinating thing and have a profound effect on what astronomers refer to as “space weather.” These events vary with the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle, releasing immense amounts of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum (from extreme ultraviolet to X-rays) into space. The effects of flares have been observed since time immemorial, which include aurorae at high latitudes (Aurora Borealis and Australis), but have only been the subject of study and prediction for about a century and a half. Still, there is much that remains unknown about these dramatic events.

When you get close to a black hole, things can get pretty intense. The tremendous gravity can squeeze gas to ionizing temperatures, and fierce magnetic fields can accelerate plasma into jets speeding at nearly the speed of light. That’s a lot of power, and wherever there is power someone will figure out how to harness it.

Earth’s average global temperatures have been steadily increasing since the Industrial Revolution. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), Earth has been heating up at a rate of 0.06 °C (0.11 °F) per decade since 1850 – or about 1.11 °C (2 °F) in total. Since 1982, the average annual increase has been 0.20 °C (0.36 °F) per decade, more than three times as fast. What’s more, this trend is projected to increase by between 1.5 and 2 °C (2.7 to 3.6 °F) by mid-century, possibly more! This is a direct consequence of burning fossil fuels, which has increased exponentially since the mid-19th century.

Black holes often appear in science fiction movies, largely because elements of their existence are still a mystery. They have fascinating impacts on the surrounding region of space too with distortions in space and time high on the list. A team of astronomers have found a supermassive black hole with twin jets blasting out an incredible 23 million light years, the longest yet. To put this into context, if you lined up 140 Milky Way galaxies side by side, then that’s the length of the jet! 

Global internet access does seem like a worthy enterprise yet the rise of satellite megaconstellations there is a danger of the night sky becoming ruined. Astronomers the world over are keeping an eye on the impact these satellites are having on the night sky. Until recently the concerns have been relating to the reflection of visible light against the sky hindering night time observations. A recent study shows that the second-generation Starlink satellites leak 32 times the radio signal than the previous models. Are their presence putting at risk the radio sky now too?

When you look at the Moon, you don’t see any water on its surface. That doesn’t mean there isn’t any. In fact, there’s a lot of “wetness” on the Moon, but it’s in places and forms we can’t see. Understanding where all those resources are is the subject of a study based on NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) data taken from aboard the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft was sent to Jupiter to study the gas giant. But its mission was extended, giving it an opportunity to study the unique moon Io. Io is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System, with over 400 active volcanoes.

Although most potentially habitable worlds orbit red dwarf stars, we know larger and brighter stars can harbor life. One yellow dwarf star, for example is known to have a planet teaming with life, perhaps even intelligent life. But how large and bright can a star be and still have an inhabited world? That is the question addressed in a recent article in the Astrophysical Journal.

Computers truly are wonderful things and powerful but only if they are programmed by a skilful mind. Check this out… there is an algorithm that mimics the growth of slim mold but a team of researchers have adapted it to model the large scale structure of the Universe. Since the Big Bang, the universe has been expanding while gravity concentrates matter into galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Between them are vast swathes of empty space called voids. The structure, often referred to as the cosmic web.

Photosynthesis changed Earth in powerful ways. When photosynthetic organisms appeared, it led to the Great Oxygenation Event. That allowed multicellular life to evolve and resulted in the ozone layer. Life could venture onto land, protected from the Sun’s intense ultraviolet radiation.

On September 15th, 2024, the Polaris Dawn crew returned to Earth after spending five days in orbit. The mission was the first of three planned for the Polaris program, a private space project to advance human spaceflight capabilities and raise funds and awareness for charitable causes. The mission’s Dragon spacecraft safely splashed down off the coast of Florida at 3:36:54 a.m. EDT (12:36:54 p.m. PDT). Once their spacecraft was retrieved, the crew was flown to the Kennedy Space Center to see their families and undergo medical examinations before traveling to Houston to complete more of the mission’s studies.