Science

A spacecraft takes between about seven and nine months to reach Mars. The time depends on the spacecraft and the distance between the two planets, which changes as they follow their orbits around the Sun. NASA’s Perseverance is the most recent spacecraft to make the journey, and it took about seven months. If it didn’t take so long, then Mars would be within reach of a human mission sooner rather than later. NASA is exploring the idea of using nuclear electric propulsion to shorten the travel time. Sending a crewed mission to Mars is much more complicated than sending a robotic explorer like Perseverance. Perseverance will be left there after its mission ends. But humans need to return to Earth. One of the main restrictions is launch windows. These occur every 26 months when the planets are closest to one another, making the trip shorter and more manageable. So, a crewed return mission to Mars could take about four years, depending on factors like the crew’s time on the planet. A m...

The exoplanet WASP-127b is an unusual world. It is about 30% larger than Jupiter but has just a fifth of Jupiter’s mass. It is an example of a super-puff planet because of its extremely low density. These puffy worlds are so unusual that we don’t know if they would resemble the gas giants of our solar system, or something more exotic, such as a large super-Earth. But a recent study of WASP-127b shows that super-puff worlds can have tremendous winds. The team used the CRyogenic high-resolution InfraRed Echelle Spectrograph (CRIRES+) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope to watch the world as it passed in front of its star. Since some of the starlight passes through the planet’s atmosphere with each transit, the team could capture the absorption spectra of the atmosphere. From this, they identified some molecules in the atmosphere that we would expect, such as carbon monoxide and water vapor, which are present in the atmospheres of our gas planets. But the team also found a surprise. As the ...

Gas is the stuff of star formation, and most galaxies have enough gas in their budget to form some stars. However, the picture is a little different for dwarf galaxies. They lack the mass required to hold onto their gas when more massive neighbouring galaxies are siphoning it off. New research shows that even isolated dwarf galaxies with no overbearing galactic neighbours struggle to form stars. What’s going on? The research is centred on ultra-faint dwarf (UFD) galaxies . These tiny galaxies are the faintest galaxies in the Universe and contain only a few hundred stars, up to about one thousand. UFDs also contain ample amounts of dark matter. They’re different from globular clusters because globulars contain tens of thousands up to millions of stars and have very little dark matter, maybe none at all. Because they’re so faint, astronomers struggle to locate them. The ones that have been found are close to the Milky Way. However, that makes them difficult to study because their mas...

There’s a Universe full of black holes out there, spinning merrily away—some fast, others more slowly. A recent survey of supermassive black holes reveals that their spin rates reveal something about their formation history. If you want to describe a supermassive black hole’s characteristics, there are two important numbers to use. One is its mass and the other is its spin rate. Some black hole spin rates are thought to be very close to the speed of light. According to Logan Fries, a PhD student at the University of Connecticut, those numbers are tough to get. “The problem is that mass is hard to measure, and spin is even harder,” he said. Yet, having accurate numbers is important if we want to understand black hole evolution. Fries and his colleagues in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s Reverberation Mapping Project took on a tough job. They measured the spin rates of black holes over cosmic history. “We have studied the giant black holes found at the centers of galaxies, from today ...

The exoplanet census continues to grow. Currently, 5,819 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,346 star systems, while thousands more await confirmation. The vast majority of these planets were detected in the past twenty years, owing to missions like the Kepler Space Telescope , the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the venerable Hubble , the Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits (CoRoT) mission, and more. Thousands more are expected as the James Webb Space Telescope continues its mission and is joined by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST). In the meantime, astronomers will soon have another advanced observatory to help search for potentially habitable exoplanets. It’s called Pandora , a small satellite that was selected in 2021 as part of NASA’s call for Pioneer mission concepts . This observatory is designed to study planets detected by other missions by studying these planets’ atmospheres of exoplanets and the activity of their host stars with long-du...

By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — One of NASA’s two  stuck astronauts  got a much welcomed change of scenery Thursday, stepping out on her first spacewalk since  arriving  at the International Space Station more than seven months ago. Suni Williams , the station’s commander, tackled some overdue outdoor repair work alongside NASA’s Nick Hague. They emerged as the orbiting lab sailed 260 miles (420 kilometers) above Turkmenistan. Williams got a close-up look at the SpaceX capsule that will bring her home this spring, floating just a few feet away from the parked vessel as she struggled with a chore. She eventually prevailed without damaging her ride. In this photo provided by NASA, astronaut Suni Williams tries on and evaluates her spacesuit aboard the International Space Station on Jan. 9, 2025. (NASA via AP)  Plans called for Williams to head back out next week with Butch Wilmore on another spacewalk. The two launched aboard...

By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) —  Blue Origin  launched its massive new rocket on its first test flight Thursday, sending up a prototype satellite to orbit thousands of miles above Earth. Named after the  first American to orbit Earth , the New Glenn rocket blasted off from Florida, soaring from the same pad used to launch NASA’s Mariner and Pioneer spacecraft a half-century ago. Years in the making with heavy funding by  Amazon founder Jeff Bezos , the 320-foot (98-meter) rocket carried an an experimental platform designed to host satellites or release them into their proper orbits. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux) Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complex 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Pho...