Space News & Blog Articles

Green sand might sound like a strange thing to find on the Red Planet, but that is exactly what a new paper from researchers led by a team at Purdue found in images from Perseverance.

Private spaceflight is taking off, though some are going faster than others. As SpaceX preps for its sixth crewed launch on a NASA contract, their rival Boeing has announced that they will be delaying the first crewed flight of their Starliner spacecraft until February 2023.

Reusable rocket engines have become all the rage lately, even as NASA’s continually delayed Artemis I mission attempts to launch with non-reusable technology. Realistically the only way to significantly lower launch costs is to reuse the engines rather than build them from scratch every time. Which is why every fan of space exploration should rejoice that another small start-up company, RocketLab, has successfully retested a rocket that has flown in space.

Sometimes, space probes that have long since ceased sending back data can still usher in new discoveries. That was the case recently when scientists used data from Rosetta, a probe that eventually crashed into comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2016, to understand what changes occur on a comet’s surface as it continues its spin around the Sun.

Spaceflight can be dangerous – and not just because astronauts are strapped to an ongoing massive explosion for their ascent into orbit. Its long-term effects on the human body are starting to come more clearly into focus, and so far, none of the answers have been good. Now a new study from Mount Sinai Medical Hospital has found that, even on relatively short duration spaceflights, astronauts suffer potentially damaging DNS mutations.

Life on Venus, or the possibility thereof, has been a hot topic as of late. There’s also been plenty of controversies, including the (still disputed) discovery of phosphine, a potential biomarker in the atmosphere. The best way to lay that controversy to rest would be to go there and actually take samples, which at the very least, would help constrain the existence of life in Venus’ cloud layers. And a wide-ranging team from academia and industry hopes to do just that.

Student teams are an underappreciated resource in much of the scientific community. Joining a team working toward a goal while at university, whether for racing solar-powered cars or digging fish ponds in Africa, is an excellent way to sharpen technical and project skills while improving communication and teamwork. The space industry is starting to catch on to these strengths, with student teams developing exciting projects all over the world. A recent entry comes from students at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands – a six-legged robot called Lunar Zebro with a unique take on wheels.

The future of satellite communications is almost upon us. SpaceX has signed a deal with T-Mobile to provide the carrier’s customers with text services from its Starlink satellites anywhere in the US starting next year. 

Artemis 1 delayed yet again, a direct image of an exoplanet from Webb, how Starlink will connect directly to phones, Voyager 1 is fixed, and the Crisis in Cosmology continues.

Legendary astronomer Frank Drake has passed away at the age of 92. Known primarily for his Drake Equation — an estimate of the probability of intelligent extraterrestrial life — he pioneered the field of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, and was a noted astronomer and astrophysicist. His work and life have left an indelible mark on humanity and given hope and wonder to all our hearts.

We are living in an exciting time, where next-generation instruments and improved methods are leading to discoveries in astronomy, astrophysics, planetary science, and cosmology. As we look farther and in greater detail into the cosmos, some of the most enduring mysteries are finally being answered. Of particular interest are cosmic rays, the tiny particles consisting of protons, atomic nuclei, or stray electrons that have been accelerated to near the speed of light. These particles represent a major hazard for astronauts venturing beyond Earth’s protective magnetic field.

When Artemis 1 finally takes flight (possibly this Saturday), twelve bags of baker’s yeast will go along for the ride. Millions of these cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae will experience deep space as it grows and reproduces. The yeast is a stand-in for actual people. The idea is to see what threat the radiation environment in deep space poses to living cells. The data from the experiment will point to how genetic engineering might help reduce damage to astronauts.

The James Webb Space Telescope has taken its first direct image of an exoplanet, a planet outside our Solar System. The exoplanet, HIP 65425 b is a gas giant that orbits an A-type star, has a mass of about nine times that of Jupiter and is about 355 light-years from Earth. While the planet has virtually no chance of being habitable, the data from these observations show just how powerful a tool JWST will be for studying exoplanets.

A recent blog by Dr. Justin Maki, Imaging Scientist and the Deputy Principal Investigator on the Perseverance rover Mastcam-Z camera, provides a detailed account about the debris the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) system left scattered around the Martian surface while delivering the Perseverance rover to Jezero Crater. This blog highlights how much hardware goes into sending our brave, robotic explorers to the Red Planet while discussing the importance of imaging such debris.

A super-Earth planet has been found orbiting a red dwarf star, only 37 light-years from the Earth. Named Ross 508 b, the newly found world has an unusual elliptical orbit that causes it to shift in and out of the habitable zone. Therefore, part of the time conditions would be conducive for liquid water to exist on the planet’s surface, but other times it wouldn’t.

* Warning: Mild Spoilers Ahead *

Planetary nebulae are short-lived “leftovers” of sun-like stars. Most of these “star ghosts” only last—at most—about 25,000 years. Usually, their clouds of debris disperse so broadly that they fade out fairly quickly. However, there’s one that has lasted at least 70,000 years. That makes it a “grande dame” of planetary nebulae.

On February 18th, 2021, the Perseverance rover landed in the Jezero Crater on Mars. Since then, Perseverance has been exploring the region in search for evidence of past (and possibly present) life – much like its cousin, the Curiosity rover. This includes obtaining samples that will be placed in a cache and retrieved by a future ESA/NASA sample-return mission. These will be the first directly-retrieved samples of Martian rock and soil that will be analyzed in a laboratory on Earth, which are expected to reveal some tantalizing bits about the history of the Red Planet.

No, James Webb didn’t disprove the Big Bang. Carbon dioxide found in an exoplanet atmosphere. An amazing picture of Jupiter from Webb, pieces of other stars found in asteroid Ryugu, weak astronauts arriving on Mars, and a new way to measure distances in the Universe.

What’s the recipe for forming stars? Yep, lots of gas and dust. Galaxies rich in these materials get to make a lot of stars. When the supply runs out, star formation stops. That’s what’s happened in the galaxy SDSS J1448+1010, but there’s a twist. The galaxy didn’t stop making stars because it made so many it ran out of material. No, that happened because it merged with another galaxy. That action flung most of the available gas and dust out of the galaxy entirely. Essentially, the galaxy to went “dormant” and ceased star-forming operations.

Earlier this year, the teams attached to the Voyager 1 mission noticed that the venerable spacecraft was sending weird readouts about its attitude articulation and control system (called AACS, for short). The data it’s providing didn’t really reflect what was actually happening onboard. That was the bad news. The good news was that it didn’t affect science data-gathering and transmission. And, the best news came this week: team engineers have fixed the issue with the AACS and the data are flowing normally again.