Space News & Blog Articles

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.

As someone that has always lived in the UK countryside I am no stranger to the glory of a dark star-filled sky. Sadly 60% of the world’s population has already lost access to the night sky thanks to light pollution. Across Europe and the US that number climbs to nearer 80%. A team of researchers want to try and track the growth of light pollution and to that end have developed an inexpensive sensor made from “off-the-shelf” parts. Their hope is that people around the world will build and install these sensors to share their data enabling them to track the spread of light pollution. If you’ve got technical skills, this could be a fun project.

The Sun is midway through its life of fusion. It’s about five billion years old, and though its life is far from over, it will undergo some pronounced changes as it ages. Over the next billion years, the Sun will continue to brighten.

Most of the exoplanets we’ve discovered orbit red dwarf stars. This isn’t because red dwarfs are somehow special, simply that they are common. About 75% of the stars in the Milky Way are red dwarfs, so you would expect red dwarf planets to be the most abundant. This also means that most habitable worlds are going to orbit these small, cool stars, and that has some significant consequences for our search for life.

Dwarf planet Ceres is the largest planetary body in the Asteroid Belt. For a long time, scientists thought it was born in the outer solar system and then migrated to its present position. Some evidence for that origin lies in extensive surface deposits of ammonium-rich materials on the Cerean surface.

Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, has had a profound impact on the way we do business. There is scarcely any industry that has not been affected by the adoption of this technology, and that includes spaceflight. Companies like SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Aerojet Rocketdyne, and Relativity Space have all turned to 3D printing to manufacture engines, components, and entire rockets. NASA has also 3D-printed an aluminum thrust chamber for a rocket engine and an aluminum rocket nozzle, while the ESA fashioned a 3D-printed steel floor prototype for a future Lunar Habitat.

Peanuts! Get your peanuts here! The Solar System has been passing out peanuts lately in the form of two different oddly shaped asteroids that recently passed by Earth, and both look like over-sized peanuts. The latest peanut-shaped asteroid pass was on September 16, 2024, when the near-Earth asteroid 2024 ON came within 1 million kilometers (62,000 miles) of Earth (2.6 times the Earth-Moon distance). Radar imaging revealed the asteroid was peanut-shaped because it is actually a contact binary – which means it is made of two smaller objects touching each other. NASA says the two rounded lobes are separated by a pronounced neck, and one lobe about 50% larger than the other.

We are all familiar with our one Moon but other planets have different numbers of moons; Mercury has none, Jupiter has 95 and Mars has two. A new paper proposes that Mars may actually have had a third larger moon. Why? The red planet has a triaxial shape which means it bulges just like Earth does but along a third axis. The paper suggests a massive moon could have distorted Mars into this shape. 

The Hubble Deep Field and its successor, the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, showed us how vast our Universe is and how it teems with galaxies of all shapes and sizes. They focused on tiny patches of the sky that appeared to be empty and revealed the presence of countless galaxies. Now, astronomers are using the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field and follow-up images to reveal the presence of a large number of supermassive black holes in the early Universe.

If you are going to look for intelligent life beyond Earth, there are few better candidates than the TRAPPIST-1 star system. It isn’t a perfect choice. Red dwarf stars like TRAPPIST-1 are notorious for emitting flares and hard X-rays in their youth, but the system is just 40 light-years away and has seven Earth-sized worlds. Three of them are in the potentially habitable zone of the star. They are clustered closely enough to experience tidal forces and thus be geologically active. If intelligent life arises easily in the cosmos, then there’s a good chance it exists in the TRAPPIST-1 system.

Astronomers have solid evidence for the existence of stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes. However, evidence for Intermediate Black Holes (IMBHs) is more elusive. Their existence remains hypothetical.