Space News & Blog Articles

If asked to pick what color asteroids in the asteroid belt would be, red is likely not one that would come to mind for most people.  But that is exactly the color of two new asteroids found by Hasegawa Sunao of JAXA and an international team of researchers.  The catch is the objects don’t appear to be from the asteroid belt at all, but are most likely Trans-Neptunian objects that were somehow transported into what is commonly thought of as the asteroid belt. How exactly they got there is still up for debate.

The bureaucracy of government control is slowly fading away in space exploration, at least in the US.  A series of delays, cost overruns, and imposed requirements have finally started taking its toll on the Space Launch System (SLS), the next generation NASA rocket system.  Now, the space agency has finally conceded a point to the commercial launch industry.  It has elected to use Space X’s Falcon Heavy to launch one of its upcoming flagship missions – Europa Clipper.

In 1916, Albert Einstein put the finishing touches on his Theory of General Relativity, a journey that began in 1905 with his attempts to reconcile Newton’s own theories of gravitation with the laws of electromagnetism. Once complete, Einstein’s theory provided a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of the cosmos, where massive objects alter the curvature of spacetime, affecting everything around them.

Material science is still the unsung hero of space exploration.  Rockets are flashier, and control systems more precise, but they are useless without materials that withstand the immense temperatures of forces required to get people and things off the planet.  Now a team from MT Aerospace, working on a grant from ESA, has developed a new type of material that will be immensely useful in one of the most important parts of any rocket engine – the fuel tanks.

In May of 2018, NASA’s Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) landed on the Martian surface. This mission is the first of its kind, as all previous orbiters, landers, and rovers focused on studying the surface and atmosphere of Mars. In contrast, InSight was tasked with characterizing Mars’ interior structure and measuring the core, mantle, and crust by reading its seismic activity (aka. “marsquakes”).

If you were planning an ice-fishing trip to the Martian south pole and its sub-surface lakes observed by radar in 2018, don’t pack your parka or ice auger just yet. In a research letter published earlier this month in Geophysical Research Letters by I.B. Smith et al., it seems that the Martian lakes may be nothing more smectite, that is, a kind of clay. Should the findings of the paper, titled A Solid Interpretation of Bright Radar Reflectors Under the Mars South Polar Ice (a solid title if you ask me), turn out to be correct, it would be a significant setback for those hoping to find life on the red planet. So why were these supposed lakes so critical for the search for life on Mars? How were they discovered in the first place? Why have our dreams of Martian ice-fishing turned to dust (or, more correctly, clay)?

The planned launch of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) has been pushed back to Tuesday, August 3 after a mishap involving a newly docked Russian module. Originally, Starliner’s flight was to take place today, July 30, 2021 but NASA and Boeing officials agreed to delay the flight following a “spacecraft emergency” on the space station after inadvertent thruster firings on the new Nauka module caused a loss of attitude control on the ISS.

On April 10th, 2019, the world was treated to the first image of a black hole, courtesy of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Specifically, the image was of the Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) at the center of the supergiant elliptical galaxy known as M87 (aka. Virgo A). These powerful forces of nature are found at the centers of most massive galaxies, which include the Milky Way (where the SMBH known as Sagittarius A* is located).

In our exploration of Mars, we’ve seen some strange, naturally occurring shapes. Polygons – a shape with at least three straight sides and angles, typically with five or more – have been seen in several different Martian landscapes, and scientists say these shapes are of great interest because they often indicate the presence of shallow ice, or that water formerly was present in these areas.

Dark matter remains one of the greatest mysteries in science.  Despite decades of astronomical evidence for its existence, no one has yet been able to find any sign of it closer to home.  There have been dozens of efforts to do so, and one of the most prominent just hit a milestone – the release and analysis of 8 years of data.  The IceCube Neutrino Observatory will soon be releasing results from those 8 years, but for now let’s dive in to what exactly they are looking for.

Blue Origin has been busy lately.  They launched their founder, Jeff Bezos, into space and put a bid in on NASA’s new Lunar Lander project.  While SpaceX won that contract back in April, Blue Origin has continued to fight for their right to supply the space agency with an alternative lander.  And recently, their not-quite-an-astronaut chief had added another fuel to the fire by offering to take $2 billion off the price tag of a Blue Origin lander.

On October 19th, 2017, astronomers made the first-ever detection of an interstellar object (ISO) in our Solar System. This body, named 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), was spotted shortly after it flew by Earth on its way to the outer Solar System. Years later, astronomers are still hypothesizing what this object could have been (an interstellar “dust bunny,” hydrogen iceberg, nitrogen icebergs), with Harvard Prof. Abraham Loeb going as far as to suggest that it might have been an extraterrestrial solar sail.

One of the less appreciated aspects of George Lucas’ vision for Star Wars was that he predicted the existence of planets in binary star systems years before we saw even the first exoplanet.  Now a team from the University of Cambridge and the Max Planck Institute for Extra-terrestrial Physics have found how exactly those planets can form without being torn apart by their accompanying suns.

An opportunity in 2019 lays the groundwork for balloon-borne detectors on Venus, working to unravel a key mystery.

Ganymede has been getting alot of attention lately.  It was the co-star of a video from Juno recently, and now scientists found something to make it an even more intriguing place visit – water vapor.

The robotic arms of the ISS are some of its most useful tools.  The arms, designed by Canadian and Japanese space agencies, have been instrumental in ferrying around astronauts and shepherding modules to one side of the ISS.  However, the Russian segment lacked its own robotic arm – until a new one designed by ESA was launched last week.

On Feb. 18th, 2021, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed within the Jezero Crater on Mars. Like its predecessor, Curiosity, a fellow member of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program (MEP), the goal of Perseverance is to seek out evidence of possible life on Mars (past and present). A key part of this mission will be the first sample return ever performed on Mars, where samples obtained by Perseverance will be placed in a cache for later retrieval and return to Earth.

The Earth’s magnetic field is an underappreciated wonder of the natural world.  It protects our atmosphere, provides some of the most breathtaking scenery when it creates auroras, and allows people to navigate from one side of the world to the other.  Unfortunately, it won’t be able to save us from the death of the Sun though.  At least that’s the finding of some new research by Dr. Dimitri Veras of the University of Warwick and Dr. Aline Vidotto of Trinity College Dublin.

As of July 23, 2021, China’s Mars rover Zhurong has traveled 585 meters across the surface of Mars. And along the way, it’s taking pictures of interesting sights.

Gravitational-wave astronomy is set to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos. In only a few years it has significantly enhanced our understanding of black holes, but it is still a scientific field in its youth. That means there are still serious limitations to what can be observed.

Planetary formation is a complicated, multilayered process.  Even with the influx of data on exoplanets, there are still only two known planets that are not yet fully formed.  Known as PDS 70b and PDS 70c, the two planets, which were originally found by the Very Large Telescope, are some of the best objects we have to flesh out our planetary formation models. And now, one of them has been confirmed to have a moon-forming disk around it.