Space News & Blog Articles

Back in 2008, astronomers made a big announcement: for the first time, they had taken pictures of a multi-planet solar system, much like ours, orbiting another star. At the time, the star system, named HR8799 was known to have three planets, but follow-up observations a year later revealed a fourth world.

In a recent study scheduled to be published in the journal Icarus in March 2023, a team of researchers led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) modeled a potential correlation between an ancient freezing ocean with cryovolcanic flows and surface canyons on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. Their hypothesis was that when Charon’s interior ocean froze long ago, the significant stress put on the icy outer shell from the addition of more ice to the bottom of the existing shell could have been responsible for the cryovolcanic flows on the surface.

The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) both ended 2022 and started 2023 on a very high note as its first-ever lunar orbiter, Danuri, sent back black-and-white images of the Earth with the Moon’s surface in the foreground that were photographed between December 24 and January 1, KARI announced in a January 3rd statement. Both the images and videos were taken less than 120 kilometers (75 miles) above the Moon’s surface, and will be “used to select potential sites for a Moon landing in 2032,” KARI added in the statement.

The cosmic zoo contains objects so bizarre and extreme that they generate gravitational waves. Scorpius X-1 is part of that strange collection. It’s actually a binary pair: a neutron star orbiting with a low-mass stellar companion called V818 Scorpii. The pair provides a prime target for scientists hunting for so-called “continuous” gravitational waves. Those waves should exist, although none have been detected—yet.

In a recent study published in Science, a team of researchers at Imperial College London examined 18 meteorites containing the volatile element zinc to help determine their origin, as it has been long hypothesized that Earth’s volatiles materials, including water, were derived from asteroids closer to our home planet. However, their results potentially indicate a much different origin story.

In a recent study submitted to the journal Icarus, a team of researchers at the International Research School of Planetary Science (IRSPS) located at the D’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy conducted a geological analysis of a region on Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, known as Monad Regio to ascertain the geological processes responsible for shaping its surface during its history, and possibly today. These include what are known as endogenic and exogenic processes, which constitute geologic processes occurring internally (endo-) and externally (exo-) on a celestial body. So, what new insights into planetary geologic processes can we learn from this examination of Monad Regio?

The frontiers of astronomy are being pushed regularly these days thanks to next-generation telescopes and scientific collaborations. Even so, astronomers are still waiting to peel back the veil of the cosmic “Dark Ages,” which lasted from roughly 370,000 to 1 billion years after the Big Bang, where the Universe was shrouded with light-obscuring neutral hydrogen. The first stars and galaxies formed during this same period (ca. 100 to 500 million years), slowly dispelling the “darkness.” This period is known as the Epoch of Reionization, or as many astronomers call it: Cosmic Dawn.