Okay, so let’s start with the obvious. The big bang is not dead. Recent observations by the James Webb Space Telescope have not disproven the big bang, despite certain popular articles claiming otherwise. If that’s all you needed to hear, then have a great day. That said, the latest Webb observations do reveal some strange and unexpected things about the universe, and if you’d like to know more, keep reading.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is designed to probe the farthest frontiers of the universe, but newly released images of Jupiter prove that the observatory can also bring fresh perspectives to more familiar celestial sights.
It’s difficult to study neutron stars. They are light years away and only about 20 kilometers across. They are also made of the most dense material in the universe. So dense that atomic nuclei merge together to become a complex fluid. For years our understanding of the interiors was based on complex physical models and what little data we could gather from optical telescopes. But that’s starting to change.
In the coming decade, in 2033, NASA and China intend to send astronauts to Mars for the first time in history. This presents numerous challenges, ranging from logistical and technical issues to ensuring that astronauts can deal with waste and have enough food and water for the months-long transit to and from Mars. But of course, there’s also the health and safety of the astronauts, who will be spending months traveling through space where they’ll be exposed to cosmic radiation and microgravity. There are even concerns that after months of exposure to microgravity, astronauts will have trouble adapting to Martian gravity.
The origin of Phobos and Deimos, the two Martian moons, has been a mystery to astronomers. These two bodies are a fraction of the size and mass of the Moon, measuring just 22.7 km (14 mi) and 12.6 km (7.83 mi) in diameter. Both have a rapid orbital period, taking just 7 hours, 39 minutes, and 12 seconds (Phobos) and 30 hours, 18 minutes, and 43 seconds (Deimos) to complete an orbit around Mars. Both are also irregular in shape, leading many to speculate that they were once asteroids that got kicked out of the Main Belt and were captured by Mars’ gravity.
There is still so much we don’t know about the asteroids. Various missions have already been sent to some near Earth and in the asteroid belt, but there are just so many that it is hard to keep track of them all. Lucy, NASA’s mission to the Trojan asteroids, is supposed to help with that, but even it doesn’t know what it is getting into. Apparently, there are even more things to explore than the mission designers initially thought when it launched. Rather than visiting seven asteroids as originally envisioned, the discovery of another asteroid in orbit around Polymede means the mission will be visiting nine asteroids in total.
Materials science has long taken the lead in space exploration research, and it seems to have been getting even more attention than usual lately. That is especially true for building materials. NASA has funded several new research programs to develop new building materials that can do everything from providing structure to future human habs to landing pads for future reusable rocket missions. Now that second goal is one step closer, thanks to researchers at the University of Delaware.
Space science doesn’t always go as planned. Sometimes when scientists think they’ve made a remarkable discovery that will make human expansion into the cosmos easier, they are just flat-out wrong. But the beauty of science is that it corrects itself in the presence of new data. The people responsible for planning future Mars missions will have to make just such a correction as new data has come in on the availability of water on the red planet. There’s not as much of it as initially thought. At least not around the equator where InSight landed.
There’s more than one way to produce oxygen on Mars. Or at least there is now. After the success of the MOXIE experiment that rode along with Perseverance to the red planet in 2021, another idea to produce one of the most useful gases in the universe has been experimentally proven by an international team of researchers. And they could potentially do it on Mars itself.
Two fundamental factors affect all astrophotography – timing and location. If a camera happens to be at the right place at the right time, it can capture images that have never been seen before. And with the proliferation of cameras throughout the solar system, more and more novel photos will be captured at an ever-increasing frequency. China’s Tianwen-1 probe added to that novel collection to celebrate its second anniversary by taking a shot of Mars’ moon Phobos.
One of the beauties of modern-day space telescopes is that the data they produce, which is eventually wholly released to the public, contains useful information about much more than their primary mission objective. Other astronomers can then sift through the data using their own ideas, and in many cases, their own algorithms. Recently, a team from Poland turned a flare-searching algorithm on TESS’s planet-hunting data, and found an astonishing 25,229 stars with solar flares in the data set.
Within the next decade, several space agencies and commercial space partners will send crewed missions to the Moon. Unlike the “footprints and flags” missions of the Apollo Era, these missions are aimed at creating a “sustained program of lunar exploration.” In other words, we’re going back to the Moon with the intent to stay, which means that infrastructure needs to be created. This includes spacecraft, landers, habitats, landing and launch pads, transportation, food, water, and power systems. As always, space agencies are looking for ways to leverage local resources to meet these needs.
Rocket Lab is launching the first-ever private mission to Venus. Europe is considering space-based solar power. A new method to detect exoplanets. More evidence about the Moon’s origins. Webb’s largest every image. All that and more in this week’s episode of Space Bites.
In 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope gave us our first direct image of a black hole. It was a powerful image, but not one with much detail. It looks like a blurry orange donut. To be fair, the real meat of the discovery was in the data, not the image. And as a recent study shows, there’s a great deal more in the data than what we’ve seen.
The James Webb Space Telescope continues to deliver surprise after surprise. Next up, a team of astronomers have identified likely candidates for proto-globular clusters. Clusters like these can help astronomers understand the evolution and ultimate fate of galaxies like our own.
How do you fix the solar array of a spacecraft millions of miles away from the Earth hurdling through the void at thousands of miles per hour? Very carefully, that’s how.
Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundation signed a contract with ICEYE to provide the Government of Ukraine with the SAR reconnaissance data and full capabilities of one of ICEYE’s satellite already in orbit. The deal was closed with the money from the Foundation’s crowdfunding initiative.
In a recent study published in Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, a team of researchers from the University of Texas at Arlington, Valdosta State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory estimated how many moons could theoretically orbit the Earth while maintaining present conditions such as orbital stability. This study opens the potential for better understanding planetary formation processes which could also be applied to identifying exomoons possibly orbiting Earth-like exoplanets, as well.
Scientists, futurists, and fans of science fiction alike have all dreamed that someday, humans would set foot on Mars. With the dozens of robotic orbiters, landers, rovers, and aerial vehicles we have sent there since the turn of the century (and the crewed missions that will follow in the next decade), the prospect that humans might settle on the Red Planet is once again a popular idea. Granted, the challenges of getting people there are monumental, to say nothing of the challenges (and hazards) associated with living there.
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