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Tech - Universe Today - 2 hours ago

How Likely Is Life on Mars?

Mars is by far the most Earth-like planet in the solar system…but that’s not saying much.

Tech - Universe Today - 3 hours ago

Missions to Mars with the Starship Could Only Take Three Months

In a recent paper, UCSB physicist Jack Kingdom identified a trajectory for a rapid transit (90 days) to Mars using SpaceX's Starship. This proposal offers an alternative to mission architectures that rely on nuclear propulsion to reduce transit times.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 hours ago

Future Telescopes Could Detect Life Managing their Planet Atmospheres

The challenge in the search for habitable worlds is clear. We need to be able to identify habitable worlds and distinguish between biotic and abiotic processes. Ideally, scientists would do this on entire populations of exoplanets rather than on a case-by-case basis. Exoplanets' natural thermostats might provide a way of doing this.

Tech - Universe Today - 1 day ago

Traveling to Mars and Ceres Using Lunar Gateway as a Springboard

How can humanity use the developing Lunar Gateway as an appropriate starting point for advancing human space exploration beyond the Moon? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) hopes to address as a team of researchers evaluated a myriad of ways that Lunar Gateway could be used as a testbed for future technologies involving sending humans to Mars and Ceres. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, astronauts, and mission...

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

Finding a Better Way to Distinguish Life from Non-Life

The search for life on other worlds needs a way to sift through the chemistry of their atmospheres. If another species observed Earth to search for life, they'd look for "smoking gun" chemistry in the atmosphere. That includes looking for oxygen, since it is created through photosynthesis by plants and some bacteria. So, the key is to look for life-dependent chemical "signals" at exoplanets.

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

Advanced Orbital Constellations for Solar Storm Defense

Solar storms have the potential to cause catastrophic damage. One that occurred around the end of October 2003 (now called the 2003 Halloween Storm) caused an estimated $27B in damages. That number will only increase as humanity has become more reliant on space-based and electrical infrastructure. However, if we could predict when storms would hit with some accuracy and adjust our use of the technologies that could be affected, we could avoid the worst damage. But, as of now, we don't have such ...

Tech - Universe Today - 2 days ago

Advancing Deep Space Travel with Nuclear Propulsion

How can fission-powered propulsion help advance deep space exploration, specifically to the outer planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) hopes to address as a pair of researchers from India investigated the financial, logistical, and reliability of using fission power for future deep space missions. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, and future astronauts develop n...

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

The Next Moon Landing Will Be in High-Definition

The grainy videos from the Apollo Moon landings are treasured historical artifacts. For many of us, that footage will be lodged in our minds until our final synaptic spark sputters out. But like all technology since the space race days, video technology has advanced enormously, and the next Moon landings will be captured in high-definition video. The ESA is so focused on getting it right that they're practicing filming lunar landings in a special studio that mimics the conditions on the lunar su...

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

June's Full Moon is the Southernmost for a Generation

Not all Full Moons are created the same. Follow the familiar Moon long enough, and you’ll notice something strange, as it seems to wander across the sky from north to south, from one cycle to the next. Welcome to the fantastic precession of our natural satellite the Moon. Last December, we saw the ‘Long Night’s Full Moon,’ as the Full Moon nearest to the solstice rode the highest in the sky for the last two decades. Now, its time for the southern hemisphere to get a turn, as the Moon heads stee...

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

The Habitability of Earth Tells Us the Likelihood of Finding Life Elsewhere

In a universe of a billion galaxies, Earth is the world known to have life. If we're a common example of what happens in the Universe, then our location can tell us something about habitability. A new study is about to flip everything we thought we knew about habitability on its head, examining the potential for life in exotic environments, such as rogue planets, water worlds, and tidally locked planets, and calculate how habitable they would be compared to Earth. As we learn more about these ot...

Tech - Universe Today - 3 days ago

Strange Object is Releasing Regular Blasts of Both X-Rays and Radio Waves

Just when astronomers think they're starting to understand stellar activity, something strange grabs their attention. That's the case with a newly discovered stellar object called ASKAP J1832-0911. It lies about 15,000 light-years from Earth and belongs to a class of stellar objects called "long-period radio transients." That means it emits radio waves that vary in their intensity on a schedule of only 44 minutes per cycle. It does the same thing in X-ray intensities, which is the first time any...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Webb Reveals that Europa's Surface is Constantly Changing

You'd think that icy worlds are frozen in time and space because they're - well - icy. However, planetary scientists know that all worlds can and do change, no matter how long it takes. That's true for Europa, one of Jupiter's four largest moons. Recent observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) zero in on the Europan surface ices and show they're constantly changing.

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Could Satellites Endanger Radio Astronomy?

Could Satellites Endanger Radio Astronomy?

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Martian Probe Rolls Over to See Subsurface Ice and Rock

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is equipped with a powerful tool called SHARAD (Shallow Radar), designed to peer beneath the Martian surface and uncover hidden layers of ice, rock, and geological secrets. To accommodate it, engineers mounted SHARAD on the side of the spacecraft, requiring the orbiter to roll 28° during operation to boost signal quality. But computer models hinted at something else: if the orbiter rolled more than 120°, the radar performance could dramatically improve. Scienti...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

The Search is on for Betel-Buddy

Betelgeuse is dying—but not quietly. This colossal red supergiant, already famous for its brightness fluctuations, has now revealed a strange long-term rhythm: a secondary pulse every 2,100 days. One tantalising theory suggests a hidden companion—possibly a second star orbiting Betelgeuse at roughly the distance between Saturn and the Sun, circling every six years. Astronomers recently pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at the giant in search of this elusive “Betel-Buddy" but failed to find it c...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

We Need to be Looking for Life in "Continuous" Habitable Zones

Exoplanet science is shifting from finding any detectable exoplanets we can to searching for those in their stars' habitable zones. NASA's proposed Habitable World Observatory and other similar efforts are focused on these worlds. The problem is, habitable zones aren't static.

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

The Challenge Of Coordinating Multiple Robots On The Moon

Frameworks are a critical, if underappreciated, component of any space exploration mission. They can range from the overall mission architecture, capturing scientific and technical goals, to the structure of messages sent between two internal components of the system. One of the most interesting frameworks that is getting much attention in the space exploration community is the interaction of multiple robots for a single purpose, known as a multiple-robot system, or MRS. On top of that, one of t...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Did a Large Impact on the Moon Make its Rocks Magnetic?

We've been gazing at the Moon for a long time, yet it's still mysterious. We've sent numerous orbiters and landers to our satellite, and even brought some of it back to our labs. Those rocks only presented more mysteries, in some ways. Lunar rocks are magnetic, yet the Moon doesn't have a magnetosphere. How did this happen?

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

How to Handle Resource Waste from ISRU on the Moon

In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) is commonly cited as being a critical step towards a sustainable human presence in space, especially on the Moon. Just how crucial it is, and how much its by-products will affect other uses of the Moon, is still up for debate. A new paper from Evangelia Gkaravela and Hao Chen of the Stevens Institute of Technology dives into those questions and comes up with a promising answer - ISRU is absolutely worth it, if we can control the waste products.

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Venus Shows Why Ozone Isn't a Good Biosignature

Just because we can find ozone in the atmosphere of other planets doesn't mean there's life. Ozone is a sign of life on Earth, but its detection on Venus shows that it can also be produced abiotically. This indicates that there are different pathways for its creation, not only on Venus but also on other Venus-like exoplanets.

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe – Quanta and Fields

What happens when you see something that just doesn’t make sense? Perhaps you rub your eyes and consider it an anomaly. But what if you see it in an experiment? Say, travelling electrons that make different patterns depending upon whether they were detected? Then, you might want to change your sense of reality. Now, if you can develop a theory for the observations, then maybe you can start a new field of science. It has happened. Quantum mechanics is the name given to this relatively new field a...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

China's Tianwen-2 is Off to Collect an Asteroid Sample

China's Tianwen-2 mission blasted off on Wednesday, embarking on an epic 8-year journey that will help to unlock the secrets of an asteroid and a comet before delivering the precious cargo back to Earth. The spacecraft will first hunt down Kamoʻoalewa (asteroid 2016 HO3) which it will study for a year, extracting samples from its surface. After returning the sample to Earth, Tianwen-2 will head back out into the Solar System taking another 7 years to intercept the main belt comet 311P/Pan-STARRS...

Tech - Universe Today - 4 days ago

Space Power Satellites at the Moon Could Keep a Base Warm

Lunar exploration is gaining momentum, but one of the biggest challenges remains the Moon’s long, cold night, which lasts about two weeks. To address this, a team of researchers has proposed deploying a constellation of solar power satellites in lunar orbit. These satellites would beam energy wirelessly to a base on the Moon, providing a continuous supply of 1,600 kW of power, day or night. Their proposal includes launching 300 satellites by 2035, supporting long term plans for establishing perm...

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Clouds Could Enhance the Search for Life on Exoplanets

A team of geophysicists from the University of Chicago showed how clouds on exoplanets could enhance the search for biosignatures. Their findings could have significant implications for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) and other next-generation telescopes that will study exoplanets via direct imaging.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Passing Stars Could Have a Significant Impact on the Future of our Solar System

Studies of the Solar System's dynamics generally treat it in isolation and do not consider the influence a passing star could have on the orbits of the planets over time. According to a recent study by a team of astronomers, stars passing close to the Solar System could result in the loss of planets over the next 5 billion years.

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

A CubeSat Design for Monitoring the Whole Sky In UV

Ultraviolet astronomical observations have always been hindered by one simple fact - the Earth's atmosphere blocks most UV photons, especially in the UV-C and UV-B range of 100-315nm wavelengths. So, astronomers must have a collector above the atmosphere if they want to know what is happening in those wavelengths. A consortium from Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC) hopes to provide additional insight into that realm with their PhotSat mission, a CubeSat that will observe the whole...

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Can the Computer for an Interstellar Mission Stay Sane?

Generation starships may be the only way humans travel to other stars. These hypothetical spacecraft would travel at sub-light speed and take generations to reach their destination. Over the hundreds or even thousands of years, generations of human beings would be born, live, and then die on these ships. Even if that awkward arrangement could be made to work, how would everything else function for so long? What about the spacecraft? What about the AI?

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Will Europa Become Habitable When the Sun Becomes a Red Giant?

People always want to know what will happen to Earth when the Sun eventually swells up as a red giant. For one thing, the expanding Sun will turn the inner planets into cinders. It will almost certainly spell the end of life on our planet. Mars might become more temperate and hospitable to life. In addition, it could well be a boon for the gas giant Jupiter and its moons. That's because the habitable zone of the Solar System will move outward from where it is now, to a spot encompassing the Jov...

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Will Europa Become a New Habitable World When the Sun Becomes a Red Giant?

People always want to know what will happen to Earth when the Sun eventually swells up as a red giant. For one thing, the expanding Sun will turn the inner planets into cinders. It will almost certainly spell the end of life on our planet. Mars might become more temperate and hospitable to life. In addition, it could well be a boon for the gas giant Jupiter and its moons. That's because the habitable zone of the Solar System will move outward from where it is now, to a spot encompassing the Jov...

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Demonstrating Lunar Surface Raman Spectroscopy with the Raman Cube Rover

Raman spectroscopy uses scattered to identify a substance’s chemical ingredients and is one of the most widely used scientific methods in space exploration. It is used for lunar exploration to identify volcanic minerals, water ice, and space weathering, and has been limited to obtaining data from lunar orbiters. But how can Raman spectroscopy be conducted on the lunar surface to help us better understand our nearest celestial neighbor? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and ...

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

Will Europa Become a Habitable World When the Sun Becomes a Red Giant?

People always want to know what will happen to Earth when the Sun eventually swells up as a red giant. For one thing, the expanding Sun will turn the inner planets into cinders. It will almost certainly spell the end of life on our planet. Mars might become more temperate and hospitable to life. In addition, it could well be a boon for the gas giant Jupiter and its moons. That's because the habitable zone of the Solar System will move outward from where it is now, to a spot encompassing the Jov...

Tech - Universe Today - 5 days ago

After Awesome Launch, SpaceX's Starship Spins Out of Control

SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket got off to a great start for its ninth flight test, but the second stage ran into a host of issues and made an uncontrolled re-entry.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

The Webb Captures Faint Galaxies from the Universe's Ancient Past

The galaxy cluster Abell S1063 dominates the center of this JWST image. It's a massive cluster of galaxies about 4.5 billion light-years away. While it dominates the picture, it's not the primary target. It serves as a gravitational lens that magnifies even more distant galaxies that appear as glowing streaks of light around its circular edges.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

A New Nuclear Rocket Technology Takes Another Step Forward

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) has stood as a promising potential alternative propulsion technology for decades. Chemical rockets have begun to reach their theoretical maximum efficiency, and their developers have switched their focus to making them cheaper rather than more efficient. NTP should answer that by offering high thrust and specific impulse. NASA's DRACO Program, the standard-bearer for NTP systems, provides a specific impulse of around 900 seconds, about double a traditional chemic...

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

New Adaptive Optics Show "Raindrops" on the Sun

Modern ground-based telescopes rely on adaptive optics (AO) to deliver clear images. By correcting for atmospheric distortion, they give us exceptional pictures of planets, stars, and other celestial objects. Now, a team at the National Solar Observatory is using AO to examine the Sun's corona in unprecedented detail.

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

One Star Once Orbited Inside the Other in this Bizarre Binary System.

Astronomers have spotted a pulsar in a binary system, taking about 3.6 hours for the stars to orbit one another. Their orbit is so close that, from our vantage point, the pulsar’s radio signals vanish for roughly one-sixth of each cycle—blocked by the companion’s interference. Researchers think that the more massive star died first, exploding as a supernova and collapsing into a neutron star, passing within the atmosphere of the other. It took about 1,000 years to blow away the envelope of mater...

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

Astronomers Identified the Lost Star of 1408…Or Have They?

Over the past 90 years, astronomers have successfully matched several Chinese historical records of "guest stars" with known supernovae. However, identifying historical novae (smaller stellar explosions) has proven to be far more challenging, with many proposed candidates later turning out to be comets or meteors instead. One particularly debated case involves a guest star recorded in 1408 CE by Chinese astronomers. A team of astronomers now think they may have finally been able to identify the ...

Tech - Universe Today - 6 days ago

Perseverance Photobombed by a Passing Dust Devil

On May 10th, while striking a selfie to mark its 1,500th day on Mars, NASA’s Perseverance Rover got an unexpected guest star—a towering dust devil swirling in the distance photobombed the shot. The rover was on Witch Hazel Hill, an area on the rim of Jezero Crater that it has been exploring for the last 5 months. The dust devil on the other hand was sneaking into the background from a distance of 5 km away. The selfie image was made up of 59 separate photos taken by the rover using its WATSON ca...

Tech - Universe Today - 7 days ago

How Likely Are Habitable Exo-Moons?

Of the roughly 6,000 exoplanets we've discovered, a significant number are in the apparent habitable zones of their stars. Most are giant planets; either gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, or ice giants like Uranus and Neptune. Could some of those have habitable exomoons?

Tech - Universe Today - 9 days ago

The Event Horizon Telescope's Next Feat? Multi-Color Pictures of Black Holes

Astronomers with the Event Horizon Telescope have developed a new way to observe the radio sky at multiple frequencies, and it means we will soon be able to capture color images of supermassive black holes.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

Astronomers Conduct a Preliminary Search for Exoplanets Around Alpha Centauri

An international team of researchers has announced the preliminary findings of Webb's observations of the Alpha Centauri system. According to their analysis, Alpha Cen A may have a Jupiter-sized planet and a very bright zodiacal dust disk orbiting it.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

Is Venus Hiding Dangerous Asteroids?

Twenty years ago, the US Congress instructed NASA to find 90% of near-Earth asteroids threatening Earth. They've made progress finding these asteroids that orbit the Sun and come to within 1.3 astronomical units of Earth. However, they may have to expand their search since astronomers are now finding asteroids co-orbiting Venus that could pose a threat.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

How To Resolve Conflicts Over Lunar Resources

Sometimes, space enthusiasts blind themselves with techno-optimism about all the potential cool technological things we can do and the benefits they can offer humanity. We conveniently ignore that there are trade-offs: if one group gets to utilize the water available on the lunar surface, that means another group doesn't get to. Recognizing and attempting to come up with a plan to deal with those sorts of trade-offs is the intent of a new paper by Marissa Herron and Therese Jones of NASA's Offic...

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

More Questions About Life on Exoplanet K2-18b

Whenever scientists present new research showing potential biosignatures on an exoplanet, follow-up articles spread like ripples on a pond. Mainstream media usually runs with it, which shows how the issue captures people's attention. The issue of life on other worlds is a compelling one. This is what happened recently with the exoplanet K2-18b.

Tech - Universe Today - 10 days ago

Venus Has a Single Solid Crust... But It's Surprisingly Thin

Our nearest neighbor is only slightly smaller than the Earth… but that’s just about the only thing the two planets have in common. Now, a recent NASA-funded study suggests that the interior of Venus may be equally strange as well.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

HERMES-PF's 6 CubeSats Watch The Entire Sky For High-Energy Bursts

Multi-messenger astronomy has been all the rage lately. It involves capturing data on the gravitational and electromagnetic signals from catastrophic cosmic events. However, with that newfound interest comes required updates to infrastructure. Gravitational wave detectors have been upgraded and will be even more sensitive soon. But to realize the promise of multi-messenger astronomy, scientists must have a fleet of spacecraft watching the entire sky for high-energy signals indicative of the even...

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Our Solar System May Have a New Planetary Sibling: Another Dwarf Planet

Our understanding of our Solar System is still evolving. As our telescopes have improved, they've brought the Solar System's deeper reaches into view. Pluto was disqualified as a planet because of it. Now, new research says another dwarf planet may reside at the edge of the Solar System. Its presence supports the Planet X hypothesis.

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Mapping the Center of the Milky Way in 3D

The Solar System is a whopping 26,000 light-years from the heart of the Milky Way, where a mysterious and dense region—shrouded in thick gas and dust—holds one of the Galaxy’s most active zones: the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ). A team of scientists have unleashed a cutting-edge 3D model of this region, mapping out everything from massive molecular clouds to young stars in the making. Armed with powerful radio telescopes and infrared observatories, they’ve pieced together a detailed map, offerin...

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

The Location of a Galaxy's Gas Plays a Role in Star Formation

Galaxies are stellar factories generating stars at different speeds—some working at a breakneck pace while others trickling along! We have known for a long time that the availability of raw materials makes a difference to stellar formation, but according to a new paper which surveyed 1,000 galaxies the location of the matter plays a role too. Those with a high stellar formation rate seem to have a high volume of gas reserves in the heart of their densest star clusters with the highest concentrat...

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

Even Extreme UV from Massive Stars Can't Stop Planets from Forming

We know that planets form in protoplanetary disks, swirling collections of gas and dust that rotate around very young stars. But we don't know all the details, partly because it's difficult to see inside these disks and watch the process unfold. One question astronomers want an answer to concerns ultraviolet radiation. Does extreme ultraviolet radiation disrupt the planet-forming process?

Tech - Universe Today - 11 days ago

New Exoplanet Can Cause Chemical Discrepancies In Paired Stars

Co-paired stars, or stars that travel together, can provide insights into processes that other stars can't. Differences in their brightness, orbits, and chemical composition can hint at different features, and scientists are beginning to exploit them. A new paper from researchers in Australia, China, the US, and Europe analyzed data to determine if one of those features - specifically the depletion of particular elements in a star - could be a sign that it has formed a planet, or if it ate one.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Is the World Ready for a Catastrophic Solar Storm?

Some 13,000 years ago, the Sun emitted a huge belch of radiation that bombarded Earth and left its imprint in ancient tree rings. That solar storm was the most powerful one ever recorded. The next strongest was the 1839 Carrington Event. It was spurred by a huge solar flare that triggered a powerful geomagnetic storm at Earth. The resulting "space weather" disrupted telegraph communications around the world. Today, as we move through this year's "solar maximum", a period of solar activity that o...

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

The New, Farthest Galaxy has Been Found by Webb. Only 280 Million Years After the Big Bang

The JWST has done it again. The powerful space telescope has already revealed the presence of bright galaxies only several hundred million years after the Big Bang. Now, it's sensed light from a galaxy only 280 million years after the Big Bang, the most distant galaxy ever detected.

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Is Mars Storing its Water Underground?

Mars' oceans, lakes, and rivers are long gone. They've left behind evidence of their time here in river channels, deltas, paleolakes, and other features. The water's existence isn't a mystery, but its whereabouts is. Did it disappear into space, or did it retreat into underground aquifers?

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

Lunar Landing Pads Will Need to be Tough

As humanity heads back to the Moon, a silent danger lurks: exhaust plumes from multiple spacecraft will blast lunar dust into orbit, creating a potentially deadly obstacle course for future missions. The solution will be to build landing pads on the lunar surface out of the lunar regolith. Researchers simulated landing pads just like these and their tests showed they could handle the heat and force of the propellant exhaust from a landing spacecraft. The techniques they found will minimise erosi...

Tech - Universe Today - 12 days ago

New Study Suggests that Jupiter was Once Twice as Big as it is Today

Jupiter and its powerful gravity have played a major role in sculpting the Solar System. A new study provides a glimpse into Jupiter's primordial state, which could have implications for our understanding of how the Solar System evolved.

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

Building A Giant Catchers' Mitt On The Moon

Members of the space exploration community are always coming up with novel ideas to solve problems that they view as holding back humanity's expansion into the cosmos. One such problem that has become more noticeable of late, due to the failure of several powered lunar landers, is the difficulty of landing on the Moon. To open up the wealth of resources on our nearest neighbor, we will have to regularly deliver cargo to it as well as ship cargo off of it. A new idea from Lunar Cargo, a company b...

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

Terraforming Mars Could Be Within Reach

Mars has fascinated us for centuries. Since the invention of the telescope, science fiction writers have mused over its habitability. Its location in the Solar System's habitable zone suggests it could, in theory, support life—despite lacking a global magnetic field and surface water. In a new paper, researchers propose that terraforming Mars is now an achievable goal. They outline methods for warming the planet, releasing pioneer species to build an ecosystem, and improving its atmosphere.

Tech - Universe Today - 13 days ago

A CubeSat Propulsion System to Visit Near Earth Objects

In recent years, humanity has visited several near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), including Ryugu (Hayabusa2) and Didymos (DART). However, we will need more frequent missions to start gathering more helpful information about this class of over 37,000 space rocks. CubeSats have off-the-shelf components and a relatively small size, making them a potentially good candidate for such an exploration program. But how would they reach these asteroid locations given their relatively limited payload and propulsi...

Tech - Universe Today - 14 days ago

Planetary Scientists Confirm There's No Flowing Water on Mars

It was big news years ago when Mars orbiters found streaks of what appeared to be water running down Martian cliffs and crater walls. Scientists worked hard to figure out what they were. Some proposed that they were seasonal streaks of briny ice, melting as the weak Mars summer arrived. New research says no to that.

Tech - Universe Today - 14 days ago

Exoplanet's Companion Found Via Orbital Mechanics Variations

Tracking exoplanets via orbital mechanics isn't easy. Plenty of variables could affect how a planet moves around its star, and determining which ones affect any given exoplanet requires a lot of data and a lot of modeling. A recent paper from researchers led by Kaviya Parthasarathy from National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan tries to break through the noise and determine what is causing the Transit Timing Variations (TTVs) of HAT-P-12b, more commonly known as Puli.

Tech - Universe Today - 14 days ago

New Algorithm Details the Most Extreme Particle Storm Known to Science

Extreme solar storms are a relatively rare event. However, as more and more of our critical infrastructure moves into space, they will begin to have more and more of an impact on our daily lives, rather than just providing an impressive light show at night. So it's best to know what's coming, and a new paper from an international team of researchers led by Kseniia Golubenko and Ilya Usoskin of the University of Oulu in Finalnd found a massive Extreme Solar Particle Event (ESPE) that happened 123...

Tech - Universe Today - 15 days ago

Meteor Impacts on Mars Can Excavate its Secrets

Spacecraft orbiting Mars can reveal small features on the planet's surface, but there are only so many things you can see from above. When a meteor strikes the surface of Mars, it can excavate sub-surface material, allowing scientists to study what lies beneath. Researchers have simulated various impacts on Mars, changing the sub-surface material from bedrock to water-ice glaciers, and then calculated what should be visible after an impact, enabling new science.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

Astronauts Could See Auroras on Mars with their Eyes

Earth's magnetosphere channels particles from solar storms into stunning auroras. Mars lacks a planet-wide magnetic field and has patchy auroras barely detectable with instruments. Or so we thought. New images captured by NASA's Perseverance Rover with its Mastcam-Z instrument show green auroras in visible light. When humans finally walk on Mars and look to the skies, they could possibly see faint auroras there, too.

Tech - Universe Today - 16 days ago

A Lunar Telescope that Could Explore the Cosmic Dark Ages

In a recent paper, an international team proposed an ultra-long wavelength radio interferometer that could examine the Cosmic Dark Ages and Cosmic Dawn. Known as the Dark Ages Explorer (DEX), this telescope could provide fresh insights into how and when the first stars and galaxies formed.

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

Astronomers Can Classify Satellites By Watching How They Block Stars

The satellite population in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) is not an open book. While data on many satellites is public, others are shrouded in secrecy, and information is incomplete for others. New research shows how observers can determine satellite shapes by watching them occult background stars.

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

The Deepening Mystery Around the JWST's Early Galaxies

When the JWST came to life and began observations, one of its first jobs was to gaze back in time at the early Universe. The Assembly of Galaxies is one of the space telescope's four main science themes, and when it observed the Universe's first galaxies, it uncovered a mystery. According to our understanding of how galaxies evolve, some were far more massive than they should be.

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

Perseverance Sees Deimos in the Sky

NASA’s Perseverance Rover didn't just look up—it captured a sprint across the Martian sky! On March 1st, its navigation camera locked onto Deimos as the moon raced overhead in the pre-dawn darkness. Sixteen rapid-fire, 3-second exposures stacked together reveal the moon's movement across the Martian sky. The pictures were taken in very low light, so it's pretty grainy and noisy, but there are two additional stars in the sky, Regulus and Algieba, in the constellation Leo.

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

A Black Hole is Firing Bullet-Like Blobs of Gas into Space

Scientists have discovered that black holes don't just devour everything—they also fire back. While nothing can escape the event horizon, black holes generate ferocious winds that blast outward at significant fractions of the speed of light. New research challenges the long-held belief that they flow smoothly and continuously. Instead, these winds are violent, fragmented bursts resembling rapid-fire streams of gas bullets. Astronomers have now witnessed this phenomenon firsthand, detecting five ...

Tech - Universe Today - 17 days ago

There are Planets Forming in the Center of the Milky Way

Astronomers have discovered a protoplanetary disks where planets are born thrive in the most violent region of our Galaxy. For years the galactic center was thought to be too chaotic and hostile for planet formation. This is wrong. New ALMA observations have seen planet nurseries flourishing in the turbulent Central Molecular Zone near our Galaxy's heart, challenging everything we thought we knew about how worlds are born. Planets find a way.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

A Proposed Mission to Study Venus' Interior

Sometimes it's fun to look back at old missions that never were. There are more of those than the missions that receive funding and are launched, but many of those were influenced by the ones that were funded that came before. A great fountain of mission ideas is the Alpbach Summer School, held annually in Austria. Every year, at least two teams publish papers defining a complete mission concept as part of their capstone experience at the school. One published in 2014 describes a mission designe...

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

The Small Magellanic Cloud is Being Pulled in Different Directions

The Small Magellanic Cloud is one of our closest galactic neighbours. It's a dwarf irregular galaxy about 200,000 light-years away, containing several hundred million stars. New research based on massive stars in the SMC shows it's being stretched along two different axes.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

Calculating ISRU Propellant Production

Computational Fluid Dynamics. Those words are enough to strike fear into the heart of many an undergraduate engineer. Modeling how liquids move through a system is mathematically challenging, but in many cases, absolutely vital to understanding how those systems work. Computational Fluid Dynamics (more commonly called CFD) is our best effort at understanding those complex systems. A new paper from researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) applies those mathematical models to an ar...

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

Water Ice Found in Another Star System

Just as ice dominates the outer Solar System, blanketing the moons of giant planets and coating objects in the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud—astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have made a chilly discovery in a distant planetary system. The alien system HD 181327, 155 light-years away harbours significant deposits of both ordinary and crystalline water ice. They detected the ice in regions that are farther away from the star, with the outer area containing as much as 20% water ice.

Tech - Universe Today - 18 days ago

Venus Might Have Tectonic Activity After All

One of the big differences between Venus and Earth is the lack of plate tectonics. While Earth's continents float on tectonic plates—constantly reshaping our world—Venus was previously thought to remain locked in a largely static crust with only occasional volcanic hotspots. But everything we thought we knew might be wrong! Researchers examining 30-year-old NASA Magellan spacecraft images have spotted what appears to be the smoking gun of tectonic activity on our hellish sister planet, potential...

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

There's No Simple Origin Story for Long Gamma Ray Bursts

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful phenomena in the Universe. First detected during the Cold War, these events beam a tremendous amount of high-energy light our way in a short period of time. They come in two types: short GRBs that last for less than two seconds and long GRBs that last for minutes. Both types have mysterious origins. Short GRBs could be caused by the collisions of neutron stars or perhaps the powerful flares of a magnetar. Observations of long GRBs suggest they are ca...

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

Methane is the Key to Understanding Titan

Saturn's moon Titan is the only other body in the Solar System with weather similar to Earth's. The large moon has a thick, nitrogen-rich atmosphere like Earth's, liquid on its surface, and a precipitation cycle. But instead of water, the surface liquid and the precipitation cycle are mainly based on methane.

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

Using Shape Memory Alloys To Navigate Underground Spaces

Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) is becoming increasingly common in space exploration applications. It has primarily been used in deployable structures, such as antenna booms or solar sail deployment. However, it also has a use case nearer the ground of whatever planet, moon, or asteroid it finds itself near. A new paper by Shufeng Tang and their colleagues at the Inner Mongolia University of Technology uses SMA to solve a problem in an area near and dear to space explorers' hearts—small space flexible ...

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

Why Don't Titan's Seas Have Deltas?

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, looks more Earth-like on its surface than any other place in the Solar System. With its thick atmosphere and liquid methane rain, it has lakes, rivers, sand dunes and seas. But appearances can be deceiving and in other ways, Titan is in fact a very alien world. One baffling difference, recently discovered, is that Titan's rivers do not seem to form deltas when they reach the sea.

Tech - Universe Today - 19 days ago

Martian Resource Potential and Challenges for Future Human Activities

What steps can be taken to enhance in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) for future astronauts on Mars? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated the reasons, benefits, and challenges of conducting ISRU on Mars. This study has the potential to help astronauts, scientists, engineers, and mission planners develop new methods for enhancing the survivability of future Mars astronauts wh...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Microbes are Evolving that Thrive in Spacecraft Cleanrooms

Spacecraft are expensive and intricately engineered machines designed to perform complex missions in harsh space environments. They're costly and require a long time to design and build. Due to their uniqueness and high value, and the need to keep them sterilized, they're assembled in cleanrooms that limit the amount of dust and microbes. New research shows that microbes are adapting to these clean rooms and learning how to thrive in them.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

A CubeSat to Capture a Supernova's UV Spectrum

Technology Readiness Levels (or TRL levels, because repeating the last word of initialisms is common in English) is a metric commonly used by NASA to define how developed a technology for use on a mission is. These typically range from 1-9, with 1 being an idea in someone's head, and 9 having been successfully flown on a mission. One of the assessments of new projects that NASA does is a check of the TRL levels of its constituent components - those with a higher level get higher marks, since it ...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Could Dark Matter Be Evolving Over Time, and Not Dark Energy?

For a while now, there has been a problematic mystery at the heart of the standard cosmological model. Although all observations support the expanding Universe model, observations of the early period of the cosmos give a lower rate of acceleration than more local observations. We call it the Hubble tension problem, and we have no idea how to solve it. Naturally, there have been several proposed ideas: what if general relativity is wrong; what if dark matter doesn't exist; what if the rate of tim...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Tracking Down "Annihilation Photons" Could Lead To Unique Binary Systems

Tracking the sources of photons is a hobby of many astrophysicists. Some types of photons are tied so closely to particular phenomena that tracking their sources would help answer some larger questions in astrophysics itself. Photons on the "511 keV line" are one such type of photon, and they have been overrepresented near the galactic core, with no known source being prolific enough to create them. A new paper from Zachary Metzler and Zorawar Wadiasingh of the University of Maryland and NASA's ...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Glass Beads on the Moon Contain Material Dug Up from Deep Down

If we could peel back the Moon's cratered crust and examine its mantle, we might find answers to some foundational questions that date back to the Apollo moon landings. We lack the technological capability to excavate the Moon's mantle, but Nature has a way. A massive, ancient impact excavated material from deep beneath the Moon's crust and left it on the surface for us to study. It could help confirm the Moon's origins.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

TESS Has Found Exoplanets. Can it Find Rings Around Them?

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has already uncovered hundreds of exoplanets of all sizes. Now, a team of astronomers is pushing the search even further—this time, looking for signs of planetary rings. Scanning 308 TESS planet candidates, they zeroed in on large, fast-orbiting worlds circling bright, nearby stars. Out of those, six showed subtle hints that rings might be present. But despite the tantalising clues, none offered definitive evidence of ring systems—at least not ...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Everything in the Universe Could Decay from Hawking Radiation

You’ve probably heard that black holes stick around for a long time—but even they are not eternal. Over unimaginable spans of time, they slowly evaporate into space through a process called Hawking radiation. And here’s the kicker: this doesn’t just apply to black holes. Anything with mass—stars, moons, even you—can, in theory, evaporate in this way. Black holes are a special case since they don’t have a surface and can actually swallow some of their own radiation, making their demise painfully ...

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Webb Watches Auroras Dance in Jupiter's Atmosphere

James Webb Space Telescope zoomed in on Jupiter's turbulent north pole in 2023 on the lookout for aurora. The results were amazing. Scientists have finally crunched through the data, revealing how the aurora rapidly change, fizzing and popping with light over the course of a few minutes. The team didn't stop there, training Hubble's ultraviolet eye on the same light show, they've created the most comprehensive view of Jupiter's auroral displays ever captured.

Tech - Universe Today - 20 days ago

Advancing Martian Geology Mapping with Machine Learning Tools

How can artificial intelligence (AI) be used to advance mapping and imaging methods on other planets? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference hopes to address as a lone researcher investigated using machine learning models to enhance mapping and imaging capabilities from orbital images obtained from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) Context Camera (CTX), which is currently orbiting Mars. This study has the potential to help scientists, enginee...

Tech - Universe Today - 21 days ago

The Fastest Spinning Asteroids are Most Likely to Have Moons

When NASA's Galileo spacecraft flew past asteroid Ida, it discovered a second, smaller asteroid in orbit: Dactyl. This was the first confirmed discovery of an asteroid with a moon, but now we know of many, including 13 asteroids larger than 100 km with satellites. Researchers have found that the mostly rapidly spinning asteroids are more likely to have moons; a large impact both spins up the asteroid and creates the debris that remains in orbit.

Tech - Universe Today - 21 days ago

Not Saying it's Aliens: SETI Survey Reveals Unexplained Pulses From Distant Stars

Veteran NASA scientist Richard H. Stanton describes the results of a multi-year survey of more than 1300 Sun-like stars for optical SETI signals. This survey revealed two fast identical pulses from a Sun-like star about 100 light-years from Earth, that match similar pulses from a different star observed four years ago.

Tech - Universe Today - 21 days ago

Our View of the Early Universe Is Obscured By Galaxy Formation

The Cosmic Microwave Background is one of the bedrock pieces of evidence for the Big Bang. It's described as the cosmic afterglow from the Universe's birth. However, new research calls into question our understanding of the CMB and what it tells us about the evolution of the Universe.

Tech - Universe Today - 21 days ago

A Relative of DNA Can Handle the Venus High Atmosphere

Could some type of life find refuge in Venus' clouds? The detection of phosphine and potentially ammonia in the planet's atmosphere is posing that question. If life could survive there, would it be like Earth life? Or would it have a different molecular basis?

Tech - Universe Today - 21 days ago

How To Aerobrake a Mission To Uranus On the Cheap

Getting a probe to the Icy Giant planets takes some time - a journey to Uranus could take as long as 13 years, even with a gravity assist from Jupiter. However, several ideas are in the works to speed up that process, especially given the increased interest in sending a probe their way. One of those ideas is to use an aerocapture system to slow a probe down once it reaches its intended target. A new paper from Andrew Gomez-Delrio and their co-authors at NASA's Langley Research Center describes h...

Tech - Universe Today - 22 days ago

It's Been a Year Since the Most Powerful Solar Storm in Decades. What Did We Learn?

One year ago, our star erupted with almost apocalyptic force—unleashing the most violent solar assault in two decades. Dubbed the Gannon storm, it wasn't just another solar flare. Multiple coronal mass ejections collided and merged into a single devastating megastorm that slammed into Earth's protective shield. As our magnetosphere buckled the night skies exploded with spectacular auroral displays. The event even reached Mars with images from Curiosity sprinkled with streaks from charged particl...

Tech - Universe Today - 22 days ago

There's Liquid Water Deep Down on Mars

Mars once flowed with water—then 3 billion years ago, it mysteriously disappeared. Where did these ancient Martian seas go? Did the Red Planet's collapsing magnetosphere allow solar winds to strip away its water into space or did the water sink into the Martian regolith, hiding from our view?NASA’s InSight mission may have cracked the case. Seismic waves from meteorite impacts revealed water layer lurking 5.4-8 kilometres below the surface.

Tech - Universe Today - 22 days ago

The Plato Mission Just Got Dozens of Cameras Installed

ESA's Plato Mission just hit a major milestone: 24 of 26 high-tech cameras have now been mounted and will soon be ready to hunt. This isn't your average telescope; it’s a planet-spotting powerhouse designed to catch distant worlds passing in front of their stars. The clever camera arrangement creates a cosmic wide-angle lens, scanning a massive 5% of the entire sky in one go. No other planet-hunter comes close to this field of view.

Tech - Universe Today - 24 days ago

Perseverance Happened to Land Right Beside a Composite Volcano

NASA's Perseverance Rover landed in Jezero Crater, an ancient impact crater that was probably filled with water for a long time. During its exploration, the rover has discovered volcanic rocks on the crater floor, but the original source hasn't been found. Now, a team of researchers thinks there's a composite volcano right on the edge of Jezero Crater. They identify a conical-shaped structure that rises about 2 km above the surrounding plains.

Tech - Universe Today - 24 days ago

Tracing the Moon's Geological History with LUGO

Some parts of the Moon are more interesting than others, especially when searching for future places for humans to land and work. There are also some parts of the Moon that we know less about than others, such as the Irregular Mare Patches (IMPs) that dot the landscape. We know very little about how they were formed, and what that might mean for the history of the Moon itself. A new mission, called the LUnar Geology Orbiter (LUGO), aims to collect more data on the IMPs and search for lava tubes ...

Tech - Universe Today - 24 days ago

The Milky Way's Globular Clusters Formed at the Dawn of the Universe

We don't have to rely solely on the JWST to observe the Universe's oldest stars. Some of the oldest stars in the Universe reside in globular clusters, and the Milky Way has about 150 of them. How old exactly? New research has the answer.