Space News & Blog Articles

Missions focusing on small bodies in the solar system have been coming thick and fast lately. OSIRIS-Rex, Psyche, and Rosetta are all examples of projects that planned or did rendezvous with a small body in the solar system. But one of their biggest challenges is understanding the gravity of these bodies – which was especially evident when Philae, Rosetta’s lander, had a hard time staying on the surface of its intended comet. A new idea from researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory could help solve that problem – by bouncing small probes around.

String theory, like most revolutions, had humble origins. It started all the way back in the 1960’s as an attempt to understand the workings of the strong nuclear force, which had only recently been discovered. Quantum field theory, which had been used successfully to explain electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force, wasn’t seeming to cut it, and so physicists were eager for something new.

One of the most significant constraints on the size of objects placed into orbit is the size of the fairing used to put them there. Large telescopes must be stuffed into a relatively small fairing housing and deployed to their full size, sometimes using complicated processes. But even with those processes, there is still an upper limit to how giant a telescope can be. That might be changing soon, with the advent of smart materials – particularly on a project funded by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) that would allow for a kilometer-scale radio telescope in space.

As astronomers have begun to gather data on the atmospheres of planets, we’re learning about their compositions and evolution. Thick atmospheres are the easiest to study, but these same thick atmospheres can hide the surface of a planet from view. A Venus-like world, for example, has such a thick atmosphere making it impossible to see the planet’s terrain. It seems the more likely we are to understand a planet’s atmosphere, the less likely we are to understand its surface. But that could change thanks to a new study in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astrophysical Society.

NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) has been responsible for maintaining contact with missions venturing beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since 1963. In addition to relaying communications and instructions, the DSN has sent breathtaking images and invaluable science data back to Earth. As missions become more sophisticated, the amount of data they can gather and transmit is rapidly rising. To meet these growing needs, NASA has transitioned to higher-bandwidth radio spectrum transmissions. However, there is no way to increase data rates without scaling the size of its antennas or the power of its radio transmitters.