Space News & Blog Articles

In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! You’ll just be getting started with today’s topic: protoplanetary disk!

Viking’s biochemistry experiments have been among the most hotly debated scientific results of all time.  The lander famously collected samples from the Red Planet in 1976, in an experiment called “Label Release.”  Scientists watched with bated breath as oxygen was released from the sample after it was subjected to a liquid slurry.  They were then left scratching their heads as that oxygen production continued after the sample was sterilized via 160 degree C heat.  Scientists now really agree that the oxygen production that Viking noticed was an abiotic process.  But that also leads to a potential opportunity as some scientists think we can make oxygen farms out of a system similar to that used on Viking itself.

Will we ever understand life’s origins? Will we ever be able to put our finger on the exact moment and circumstances that lead to living matter? Will we ever pinpoint the spark? Who knows.

Drones have become more and more ubiquitous in recent years.  From recently discovering the Endurance to participating in wars, drones have made history in more ways than one.  Now they have a new job title to add to their resume – meteorite hunter.

Earth formed from the Sun’s protoplanetary disk about 4.6 billion years ago. In the beginning, it was a molten spheroid with scorching temperatures. Over time, it cooled, and a solid crust formed. Eventually, the atmosphere cooled, and life became a possibility.

October 4th, 2022, will be an auspicious day as humanity celebrates the 65th anniversary of the beginning of the Space Age. It all began in 1957 with the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik-1, the first artificial satellite ever sent to orbit. Since that time, about 8,900 satellites have been launched from more than 40 countries worldwide. This has led to growing concerns about space debris and the hazard it represents to future constellations, spacecraft, and even habitats in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! You’ll be feeling very powerful after today’s topic: the quasar!

It looks like the Perseverance rover has an unwanted passenger, a rock stuck inside one of its wheels. The image of the stone was selected as the “Image of the Week” for Week 54 (Feb. 20 – 26, 2022) for the Perseverance mission. The Image of the Week is selected by public input. Perseverance captured this image on February 25th, 2022.

Germany is flexing its muscles.

Here’s your chance to participate in NASA’s return to the Moon with the Artemis program!

Observers have been tracking a chunk of space junk, waiting for it to strike the Moon. It should’ve hit the far side of the Moon, and hopefully, orbiters will have images of the impact site, though that might take a while.

We know a ton about the inside of Earth. We know it has both an inner core and an outer core and that the churning and rotation create a protective magnetosphere that shields life from the Sun’s radiative power. It has a mantle, primarily solid but also home to magma. We know it has a crust, where we live, and plate tectonics that moves the continents around like playthings.

Radar is finicky.  It is extraordinarily useful for a multitude of tasks, but testing it for some particular tasks is complicated since almost everything interferes with it.  That challenge is particularly acute when testing an antenna that is supposed to be used in space, which is why a team from the SENER engineering group in Spain decided to take a novel approach to testing the radar antenna the European Space Agency (ESA) plans to use for EnVision – they suspended it from a balloon.

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has wide-reaching implications, not only in the geopolitical sphere but also outside of the atmosphere.  On the International Space Station (ISS), Russians work alongside astronauts from other countries that are currently imposing economic and trade sanctions in an attempt to force their country to stop their invasion of their neighbor.  It was only a matter of time before that conflict escalated to the point of arguments over the ISS, but this time an unlikely hero appeared to defend the interests of Western nations – Elon Musk.

We’ve all seen the gorgeous images and videos of coronal loops. They’re curved magnetic forms that force brightly glowing plasma to travel along their path. They arch up above the Sun, sometimes for thousands of kilometres, before reconnecting with the Sun again.

Astronomers discovered the first exoplanets in 1992. They found a pair of them orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12 about 2300 light-years from the Sun. Two years later they discovered the third planet in the system.

Artificial gravity remains the stuff of science fiction.  But dealing with no gravity causes significant problems in many astronauts, ranging from bone deterioration to loss of sight.  An alternative method that might eliminate some of these problems is “simulated gravity,” which uses a spinning structure to create centrifugal force that would have the same effect on the body as gravity would.  Whether or not this would solve the problems caused by lack of gravity remains to be seen. Still, NASA seems keen on the idea – to the tune of a $600,000 NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase II grant to a team from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Washington (UW) who is looking to develop a structure that can simulate full Earth gravity and be launched in a single rocket.

Who is excited to send a spacecraft to Europa? Every person I’ve talked to who is even remotely interested in planetary exploration is incredibly enthusiastic about the upcoming Europa Clipper mission to explore Jupiter’s icy moon. With strong evidence of a subsurface liquid ocean, Europa is considered by many to be the most likely place in our Solar System – besides Earth — which might harbor life. The many mysteries about this moon make it a compelling place to explore.

Earlier this year, the discovery of a potentially hazardous asteroid took astronomers on a roller coaster ride.

One thousand light-years away is pretty close for a black hole. When researchers discovered a black hole at that distance in 2019, it caught the attention of other astronomers and other interested people. It was the first black hole-hosting stellar system to be seen with the naked eye.

The fields of extrasolar planet studies and astrobiology have come a long way in recent years. To date, astronomers have confirmed the existence of 4,935 exoplanets in 3,706 star systems, with another 8,709 candidates awaiting confirmation. With so many planets to study, next-generation instruments, and improved data analysis, the focus is transitioning from discovery to characterization. With the James Webb Space Telescope now deployed, these fields are about to advance much farther!