Science

Being trapped in space sounds like the stuff of nightmares. Astronauts on board the International Space Station have on occasion, had their return delayed by weather or equipment malfunction. We find ourselves again, watching and waiting as two astronauts; Juni Williams and Butch Wilmore have been stuck for months instead of their week long mission. The delays came as the Starliner system required fixes to be implemented. NASA successfully fired up 27 of its 28 thrusters in a hot-firing test and now, ground teams are preparing finally, to bring them home. The Boeing Starliner spacecraft is officially known as the CST-100 Starliner. It was developed by Boeing as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Its purpose is to transport astronauts to the International Space Station and other low orbit craft. Starliner hit the headlines with its reusable design aimed at reducing costs and increasing launch frequency. It was first launched on 20 December 2019 as an uncrewed test flight to demon...

In October 2022, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected an extraordinarily powerful Gamma Ray Burst (GRB). It still stands as the Brightest Of All Time (BOAT), and astronomers have been curious about it ever since. New research has uncovered more details in the burst. What do they tell us about these forceful explosions? “When I first saw that signal, it gave me goosebumps.” Maria Edvige Ravasio, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands GRBs are the most powerful energetic events in the Universe, second only to the Big Bang. They’re brief yet powerful explosions that can release as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun will release in its billions of years of fusion. Astronomers don’t completely understand the mechanism behind them. They seem to come from the explosion of an extremely massive star or the merger of two extremely dense objects like neutron stars or black holes. A GRB’s initial burst is called the prompt emission....

Some galaxies experience rapid star formation hundreds or even thousands of times greater than the Milky Way. Astronomers think that mergers are behind these special galaxies, which were more abundant in the earlier Universe. But new results suggest no mergers are needed. These galaxies are called Hyper Luminous Infrared Galaxies (HyLIRGs), and they emit most of their energy in the infrared. New research examined a HyLIRG that’s 10,000 times brighter than the Milky Way in infrared . Instead of a chaotic merger, they found an organized rotating ring of gas that they say is responsible for the galaxy’s abundant star formation. Their results are in a paper in Nature Astronomy titled “ Detailed study of a rare hyperluminous rotating disk in an Einstein ring 10 billion years ago. ” The lead author is Daizhong Liu, a Research Professor at Purple Mountain Observatory near Nanjing, China. HyLIRGs are the rarest type of starburst galaxy , and they’re the most extreme type. They’re found on...

One of the hazards astronauts must contend with is muscle loss. The more time they spend in a microgravity environment, the more muscle loss they suffer. Astronauts use exercise to counter the effects of muscle atrophy, but it’s not a perfect solution. Researchers want to develop drugs to help, and understanding the muscle-loss process in space is a critical first step. In the early days of space travel, researchers weren’t certain what effects microgravity had on astronauts. As the length of space missions grew and scientific monitoring became more prevalent, researchers gained a better understanding of the problem. After the Skylab missions in 1973 and 1974, researchers acquired better data and began to reach some conclusions . It was clear that microgravity contributed to a host of health problems, and muscle atrophy was among them. Many of the problems astronauts suffer mimic the same problems stemming from aging. “Space is a really unique environment that accelerates qualitie...

What does it take to have life at another world? Astrobiologists say you need water, warmth, and something for life to eat. If it’s there, it’ll leave signs of itself in the form of organic molecules called amino acids. Now, NASA scientists think that those “signatures” of life—or potential life—could exist just under the icy surfaces of Europa and Enceladus. If future explorations find those signatures, it’ll make a major step in the search for life elsewhere in the Solar System—and beyond. That’s one reason why robotic missions will someday land on those moons—to look for the signs of life. The next mission to Europa, called Europa Clipper, will orbit that tiny moon, but won’t land. However, it will look for environments suitable for life. So, that’s a start. There’s also a proposed mission called Enceladus Orbilander. It could launch in 2038 and spend a year checking out that moon. The Search for Life Signs Scientists strongly suspect there’s a warmish salty ocean beneath the ic...

Sometimes, brainstorming does work. In 2019, America’s National Science Foundation (NSF) held the CubeSat Ideas Lab, a shindig that brought together some of the world’s best CubeSat designers. One outcome of that shindig is the Virtual Super-Resolution Optics with Reconfigurable Swarms, or VISORS, mission. Expected to launch in October, this mission will be a proof of concept for many swarming technologies in CubeSats. Hopefully, It will also capture a pretty impressive picture of the Sun’s corona. VISORS was formally defined in a paper in 2022, with input from experts at nine different academic institutions, one NASA lab, and one private lab. The concept of operations (or ConOps in the paper) is easy enough – fly two separate 6U CubeSats in formation and take an extreme ultraviolet picture of the Sun.  The obvious question is—why do you need two CubeSats to do that? A single spacecraft could do the job, but the science goal of the VISORS missions is to take an image at a very h...

Johannes Kepler is probably most well known for developing the laws of planetary motion. He was also a keen solar observer and in 1607 made some wonderful observations of our nearest star using a camera obscura. His drawings were wonderfully precise and enabled astronomers to pinpoint where the Sun was in its 11-year cycle. Having taken into account Kepler’s location and the location of sunspots, a team of researchers have identified the Sun was nearing the end of solar cycle-13. Johannes Kepler was a German mathematician who was born in 1571. His contribution to the world of celestial mechanics and the movement of the planets is second to none. The laws of planetary motion that he formulated from the observations of Tyco Brahe have stood the test of time. Other than his work on planetary motion, he was a renowned observer in his own right and he made one of the earliest records of solar activity before the invention of the telescope!  Johannes Kepler in 1610. Credit: Wikipedia...

Mercury , the closest planet to our Sun, is also one of the least understood in the Solar System. On the one hand, it is similar in composition to Earth and the other rocky planets, consisting of silicate minerals and metals differentiated between a silicate crust and mantle and an iron-nickel core. But unlike the other rocky planets, Mercury’s core makes up a much larger part of its mass fraction. Mercury also has a mysteriously persistent magnetic field that scientists still cannot explain. In this respect, Mercury is also one of the most interesting planets in the Solar System. But according to new research, Mercury could be much more interesting than previously thought. Based on new simulations of Mercury’s early evolution, a team of Chinese and Belgian geoscientists found evidence that Mercury may have a layer of solid diamond beneath its crust. According to their simulations, this layer is 15 km (9 mi) thick sandwiched between the core and the mantle hundreds of miles beneath th...

The JWST has directly imaged its first exoplanet, a temperate super Jupiter only about 12 light-years away from Earth. It could be the oldest and coldest planet ever detected. The planet orbits the star Epsilon Indi A (Eps Ind A,) a K-type star about the same age as our Sun. Epsilon Indi is a triple star system, and the other two members are brown dwarfs. The exoplanet is named Epsilon Indi Ab (Eps Ind Ab.) Eps Ind Ab’s detection is presented in a paper published in Nature. Its title is “ A temperate super-Jupiter imaged with JWST in the mid-infrared. ” The lead author is Elisabeth Matthews, a Postdoc in the Department of Planet and Star Formation at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany. This new detection is important for several reasons. The vast majority of the 5,000+ exoplanets we’ve discovered were detected by the transit method . Others were detected with the radial velocity method . Comparatively few have been directly imaged as Eps Ind Ab has. There were alre...

Rong-Gong Lin II | (TNS) Los Angeles Times LOS ANGELES — The risk of developing long COVID — enduring, sometimes punishing symptoms that linger well after a coronavirus infection — has decreased since the start of the pandemic, a new study found, with the drop particularly evident among those who are vaccinated. Related Articles Health | An unwelcome attendee has joined the Paris Olympic Games: COVID-19 Health | ‘Where have all the preschoolers gone?’ new UC Berkeley study asks Health | Biden tests positive for covid, has ‘mild symptoms’ Health | California’s COVID positivity rate is now just shy of record high from the past 12 months Health | Do you have COVID? Here’s how long the CDC recommends you stay home But the dip does not mean the risk of developing long COVID has vanished. And given the rise in new infections, particularly during periods like now, when data indicate  transmission is elevated,  even a lower rate of prevalence means many Americans...

Characterizing near-Earths asteroids (NEAs) is critical if we hope to eventually stop one from hitting us. But so far, missions to do so have been expensive, which is never good for space exploration. So a team led by Patrick Bambach of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany developed a mission concept that utilizes a relatively inexpensive 6U CubeSat (or, more accurately, two of them) to characterize the interior of NEAs that would cost only a fraction of the price of previous missions.  The mission, known as the Deep Interior Scanning CubeSat mission to a rubble pile near-Earth asteroid, or DISCUS, was initially floated in 2018. Its central architecture involves two separate 6U CubeSats equipped with a powerful radar. They would travel to opposite sides of an NEA and direct a radar to pass through the NEA’s interior. To understand more about the mission architecture, it’s best to look at the type of asteroid best suited to being visited by DISCUS. The au...

On May 30th, the Mars Curiosity rover was just minding its own business exploring Gediz Vallis when it ran over a rock. Its wheel cracked the rock and voila! Pure elemental sulfur spilled out. The rover took a picture of the broken rock about a week later, marking the first time sulfur has been found in a pure form on Mars. After Curiosity’s encounter with the broken rock and its pure sulfur innards, the rover trundled over to another rock, called “Mammoth Lakes” for a little drilling session. Before it left to explore other rocks, the rover managed to cut into that rock and take samples for further study to find out its chemical composition. It’s not that sulfur isn’t prevalent on Mars. It is, but in different forms. The stuff is highly abundant in the Solar System, so this find isn’t as surprising as you’d think. However, Curiosity finding pure sulfur in the middle of broken rocks is a new experience in Mars exploration. So, of course, that’s raising questions about how it got the...