Space News & Blog Articles

A lack of effective radiation shielding is one of the biggest challenges still to be overcome if humans are to embark on long-term voyages into deep space. On Earth, the planet’s powerful magnetosphere protects us from the deadliest forms of radiation – those produced by solar flares, and galactic cosmic rays arriving from afar – that stream through the Solar System. Astronauts on the International Space Station, some 408km above the Earth, receive elevated levels of radiation, but are close enough to Earth that they still receive some shielding, and can stay on orbit for up to a year. The same can’t be said for astronauts traveling further out, to the Moon, for example, or, someday, to Mars. Future deep space voyagers will need to bring their own shielding with them – or, as a new paper suggests – grow it along the way.

In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! Today’s topic is almost too hot to handle: Type-1a Supernovae!

The latest satellite in the Landsat family of Earth observation spacecraft has collected its “first light” images of our planet. Landsat 9 launched on September 27, 2021 and it continues the nearly 50-year tradition of making critical observations to help with energy and water management, forest monitoring, human and environmental health, urban planning, disaster recovery and agriculture.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been in ‘safe mode’ since October 23, with all of the science instruments offline and unavailable for observations. However, engineers have now been able to bring one instrument, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), back online, and have restarted its science observations. NASA said engineers are still investigating the issue as the other four instruments remain offline.

In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! You’ll have a blast learning about today’s topic: Type-II Supernovae!

Two microphones aboard the Perseverance Rover have recorded “alien” sounds on Mars – the sounds of a human-made spacecraft crunching its wheels on the Red Planet’s surface, or its motors whirring, or blasts from its scientific laser instrument. Perseverance’s microphones have also captured the sounds of another spacecraft – the Ingenuity helicopter – taking flight. During the five or so hours recorded so far, you can hear the Martian wind gusting in the background.  

NASA has pushed back the timetable for landing astronauts on the moon for the first time in more than a half-century from 2024 to no earlier than 2025.

Potatoes, tomatoes …. which will grow best on Mars? Researchers are working towards figuring that out, partnering with a global foods company.

Four astronauts splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule, despite one of the parachutes not deploying immediately. Their spectacular return in darkness from the International Space Station capped off the record-setting mission for the SpaceX Crew-2, with the longest spaceflight by a U.S. crewed spacecraft. Their 199 days in orbit surpassed the 168 days set by NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission earlier this year.

For months, the commercial space sector has waited for a pivotal case to be resolved. This was none other than the legal action filed by Blue Origin in response to NASA selecting SpaceX to execute the Human Landing System (HLS) contract worth $2.9 billion. This system is a vital piece of the Artemis Program mission architecture, which will be used in the coming years to transport crew and cargo to the lunar surface.

Mars is still quite mysterious, despite all we’ve learned about the planet in recent years. We still have a lot to learn about its interior and surface evolution and how changes affected the planet’s history and habitability. Fortunately, an impact on the red planet sent clues to Earth in the form of meteorites.

The field of extrasolar planet research has advanced by leaps and bounds over the past fifteen years. To date, astronomers have relied on space-based and ground-based telescopes to confirm the existence of 4,566 exoplanets in 3,385 systems, with another 7,913 candidates awaiting confirmation. More importantly, in the past few years, the focus of exoplanet studies has slowly shifted from the process of discovery towards characterization.

It’s been a long time coming.  Finally, after years of delays and billions of dollars in budget overruns, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is ready to fly.  To celebrate the occasion, ESA released a video showing the “unboxing” of one of the most highly advanced technical achievements in human history.  It is truly as impressive as it sounds.

Many papers are usually released at once for big space exploration missions. Usually, that happens when an entire batch of data has been analyzed.  The most recent set of papers is from Juno’s explorations of Jupiter’s atmosphere.  With this data dump, scientists now have the first 3D map of the atmosphere of the solar system’s largest planet.

We don’t know what dark matter is. We do know the characteristics of dark matter, and much of how it behaves, so we know what physical properties dark matter must have, but no known matter has all the necessary characteristics of dark matter. So we’re stumped.

In just a few years, astronauts will walk on the surface of the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. In addition to the Artemis Program, NASA’s fabled return to the Moon, there are also a number of planned missions involving the European Space Agency (ESA), JAXA, China, and Russia. By the 2030s, NASA and China hope to send crewed missions to Mars, which will culminate in the creation of a permanent base on the surface.

In space, it’s almost always raining dust. Most of that dust is so small a microscope would have a hard time seeing it.  Created by asteroid impacts, millions of these fine dust particles collide with Earth’s upper atmosphere every second.  When they hit that atmosphere, they start a complex dance of plasmas and energy that can be difficult to see and understand.

Hubble is getting a bit long in the tooth. Initially launched in 1990, it has been one of the most spectacularly successful orbital satellites in history.  But it has also had its fair share of errors, starting almost immediately upon its launch.  Now the instruments on the telescope have been operating in a “safe mode” for more than a week, and it appears that they will remain so for at least another one.

There are plenty of processes that might be easier in lower gravity.  So far, the biggest hindrance to developing those processes has been the expense of launching equipment to the low gravity environments of the ISS or other space-based research stations.  Testing on the ground would be preferable both for ease of use and much lower cost, but the Earth’s gravity usually puts a stop to that.  Some scientists see another way. Using magnetic fields can artificially simulate a zero-gravity environment, and now a team from Florida State University’s (FSU’s) National High Magnetic Field Laboratory has developed a system that can hold a much larger sample than previous iterations.

Frameworks are a valuable tool in science.  They give context to sometimes abstract concepts such as “how powerful can an alien civilization be” (Kardashev scale) or “how developed is this technology?” (Technology Readiness Levels).  Now, NASA has developed a new scale to help give context to what some consider one of the agency’s most critical missions – the search for extraterrestrial life.

In the Milky Way, the formation rate of stars is about one solar mass every year. About 10 billion years ago, it was ten solar masses every year. What happened?