Space News & Blog Articles

They are known as ultra-fast outflows (UFOs), powerful space winds emitted by the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) – aka. “quasars.” These winds (with a fun name!) move close to the speed of light (relativistic speeds) and regulate the behavior of SMBHs during their active phase. These gas emissions are believed to fuel the process of star formation in galaxies but are not yet well understood. Astronomers are interested in learning more about them to improve our understanding of what governs galactic evolution.

Globular clusters are odd beasts. They aren’t galaxies, but like galaxies, they are a gravitationally bound collection of stars. They can contain millions of stars densely packed together, and they are old. Really old. They likely formed when the universe was only about 400 million years old. But the details of their origins are still unclear.

NASA missions can be categorized into two types. One type includes headline-grabbing missions, such as the JWST or New Horizons, that take decades to design and plan. Typically those larger missions include many flight-tested components that had already been used on other missions in the past. They are intended to conduct science experiments. But those components get tested beforehand on what the agency calls “technology demonstration” flights. These are intended to work through the kinks in technology development that might hinder the use of a system in space. Lunar Flashlight was one of those technology demonstrator missions, but unfortunately, one of the critical novel components did run into one of those kinks, and now NASA has decided to shut down the mission.

Rovers have enabled some amazing explorations of other worlds like the Moon and Mars. However, rovers are limited by the terrain they can reach. To explore inaccessible terrain, NASA is testing a versatile snake-like robot that could crawl up steep slopes, slither across ice, and even slide into lava tubes. Called Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (or EELS), this robot could cross different terrains and create a 3D map of its surrounding to autonomously pick its course, avoiding hazards to reach its destination.

ESA’s Juice mission launched last month on April 14, beginning its long journey to explore Jupiter’s icy moons, Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto. But soon after launch, mission controllers realized a 16-meter (52.5 ft)-long antenna for a radar instrument was jammed and couldn’t deploy. The Radar for Icy Moons Exploration (RIME) antenna is mission critical, as it gathers data for the instrument that will be able to map beneath the ice at these moons.