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What's Changing? - Space

Space

 

 

Please see below selected recent space-related change.

 

See also:

 

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight up - Fred Hoyle

 

March 2024

 

February 2024

  • Over millions of years, the moon has shrunk by 150 feet in diameter and now scientists are growing concerned. The shrinking, caused by the cooling of the moon's molten core, has led to the formation of thrust faults and “moonquakes” that could pose risks to future lunar missions, notably at its south pole.
  • While humans are expected to return to the lunar surface on the Artemis III mission as soon as 2026, a series of privately funded lunar trips before then intend to use the moon as a sort of "dumping ground" for a variety of materials, including human remains. The trouble is there are "no U.S. laws or standards outlining what is acceptable on the celestial body's surface," Reuters said. Among the items proposed for a place on the moon's surface is a two-story Christian cross made of the moon's dirt. "Nobody owns the moon," Justin Park, the entrepreneur who wants to build the lunar cross, told Reuters. 
  • A US-built spacecraft landed on the moon for the first time in 51 years. The robotic lander, named Odysseus, was built by the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines. Its mission was part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, which teams up the agency with private companies to "deliver science and technology to the lunar surface".
  • Scientists from Southwest Research Institute in Texas reported the first discovery of water molecules on the surface of an asteroid - potentially revealing how water was delivered to Earth. They made this discovery using data from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a retired airborne observatory that collected data on the moon, asteroids, and more during more than 90 overnight flights.
  • Google joined a project to identify methane leaks from space - potentially helping plug leaks of the potent greenhouse gas, which is responsible for one-seventh of human greenhouse emissions.

 

January 2024

  • The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA’s) Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) spacecraft touched down on the moon. This made Japan just the fifth nation in history to successfully “soft land” on the lunar surface.

 

December 2023

  • The oldest black hole in the universe was observed. Its mass is a million times that of the sun, which surprised astronomers.
  • Freethink recapped the biggest space stories of 2023:
    • NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope had a big year, discovering a potential “Hycean” world, a triply-lensed supernovadozens of objects that “shouldn’t exist,” and more, but its greatest achievement may have been providing evidence that the heat from early galaxies was responsible for major changes in the universe soon after the Big Bang, solving a mystery that has long plagued our understanding of the cosmos.
    • Reusable rockets dramatically cut launch costs, but it’s still not cheap to send something to space. The startup Relativity Space, based in California, is hopeful that it’ll be able to cut costs even further by making rockets mostly out of 3D-printed parts. On March 22, it launched the first 3D-printed rocket, and though the flight didn’t go exactly as planned (first flights rarely do), it was a major milestone for both the company and the rocket industry.
    • India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft touched down on the moon’s surface, making the nation just the fourth in history to successfully “soft land” on the moon (a “soft” landing is one that doesn’t destroy the spacecraft). 
    • ESA launched Euclid, a space telescope that could revolutionize our understanding of this dark universe.
    • NASA could return astronauts to the moon as soon as 2025 - and maybe even put people on Mars for the first time not long after that.

 

November 2023

  • The shape of space plays a significant role in the future of the cosmos, determining whether the Universe will expand indefinitely or contract in a "Big Crunch."  There are three commonly discussed shapes of space: flat, spherical, and hyperbolic or "saddle." Each shape has distinct geometrical properties, such as the behaviour of parallel lines and the sum of angles in triangles. Astronomers have used radio antennas to image the Universe after the Big Bang, and they have determined that space is flat, noted Big Think.
  • NASA wants to explore methods to extract breathable oxygen from Moon dust. Its Space Technology Mission Directorate is seeking input from industry partners and external researchers, and hopes to create a demonstration technology soon. NASA hopes to put humans back on the Moon for the first time since 1972 with its Artemis 3 mission, currently planned for 2025.
  • Europe's first operational spaceport, located on the island of Andøya in the northwest of Norway, opened for business. It was built by German start-up Isar Aerospace and once finished, hopes to have several launch pads and to be able to send small- and medium-sized satellites into space, at around €10-12m per flight. 
  • France, Germany, and Italy agreed to jointly put up €340 million annually for European space exploration company Arianespace to launch its Ariane 6 rocket at least four times per year and another lighter launcher at least three times. The investment was intended to make Europe’s space sector more competitive with American firms like SpaceX.
  • Meanwhile, a Dutch startup, Spaceborn United, wants to see if it’s possible to create human babies in space. The company said that in 2024 it would send a satellite-lab into low Earth orbit and there attempt to conduct in-vitro fertilisation. Spaceborn hopes the technology can pave the way for humans to be born in future space colonies.

 

October 2023

  • Quartz believes that the "Moon rush" has begun - the US, Europe and China are spending billions on plans to return humans to the Moon. According to NASA, this time people are going to stay, bringing the tools for long-term exploration. Private companies are also playing a much larger role in these missions than they did in the era of Apollo. Companies are investing their own funds alongside NASA to develop robotic Moon landerslanders for astronauts  space suits and infrastructure like communications and navigation satellites and power sources.
  • There’s also talk of mining minerals or ice. PwC estimated that the lunar economy could be a US$170 billion market by 2040.
  • Meanwhile, the Moon, it turns out, is 40 million years older than previously believed. The finding, which puts the age of the Moon at 4.46 billion years, is based on a new analysis of rocks collected from the lunar surface in the 1970s.
  • NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft returned a capsule containing pieces of the asteroid Bennu to Earth, finishing a seven year mission. The capsule’s landing in Utah also signalled the start of a brand-new journey: scientists across the globe will study the asteroid material in the hope of learning more about Earth’s past and how to protect it from threatening asteroids in the future.
  • There are two Jupiter-sized planets floating around in space without a star to orbit. This happens sometimes to single planets, but the reason for this pairing is so far unknown astronomers.
  • Travelling to space poses risks to the human body. Since NASA wants to send a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s, scientists need to find solutions for these hazards sooner rather than later. A NASA project aims to mitigate the health hazards that participants of a future mission to Mars might face.
  • Earth’s orbit is cluttered with millions of defunct satellites, rocket parts, and other bits of junk people sent into space, but didn't bring back down, and a collision with a bit of debris as small as a rubber traveling at 15,000 miles per hour could be devastating for an operational spacecraft. To keep space safe, NASA is exploring many ways to remove space debris - from “space tugs” to trash bags 

 

September 2023

  • A NASA capsule travelled 6.21 billion kilometres to deliver the largest-ever asteroid sample to American soil. The capsule landed in the Utah desert. Scientists hope the sample will help us better understand how the solar system formed and why life occurred on Earth.

 

August 2023

  • India became the newest 21st century space power. The Chandrayaan-3 mission made it to the Moon.
  • A planet-like object exists that’s hotter than the sun. The brown dwarf’s temperature is 7,727°C (13,940°F), whereas the surface of the sun comes in at 5,505°C (9,941°F).

 

July 2023

  • Some astronomers now think smaller planets result from dust pressured by larger neighbours, like fillings between slices of bread.
  • The climate on Mars had a dramatic shift 400,000 years ago. Data collected by China’s Zhurong rover shows dune changes coincide with the planet’s last ice age.
  • India launched a rocket to land a robotic rover on the moon, hoping to become only the fourth country to do after the US, China, and Russia. India wants to establish itself as a major space power by exploring the lunar South Pole - where no mission has ventured before - despite spending much less than others on its space programme, noted Quartz.

 

May 2023

 

April 2023

 

March 2023

 

February 2023

  • Scientists revealed that the James Webb Space Telescope had discovered six ancient galaxies that "shouldn't exist". Experts said that the galaxies date back to when the universe was in its very early stage, and are roughly 13.5 billion-years-old. What's really surprised researchers is that the galaxies are so old and are far bigger than anyone expected. NASA believes that the discovery could help us learn more about the beginnings of the universe and could even change our understanding of how galaxies are formed.
  • SpaceX agreed to work with the US National Science Foundation to mitigate the impact of its satellites on our view of the night sky. Astronomers have long complained that SpaceX satellites (the company plans to launch tens of thousands) will impair their work. 
  • A possibly habitable planet was found 31 light-years away, although half of it is plunged in perpetual darkness.
  • Quartz noted that there’s light in the solar system coming from "nowhere". After accounting for all the known sources of light, a glow equivalent to 10 fireflies in a dark room remains unexplained.
  • SpaceX tested the most powerful rocket system ever built. The rocket system is twice as powerful as NASA’s Artemis, and Elon Musk claimed it could help carry humans to Mars.
  • NASA’s Curiosity rover found the ‘clearest evidence yet of an ancient lake on Mars’. At the foothills of a Martian mountain the rover discovered rocks etched with what appear to be the marks left by flowing water. If a lake did exist on Mars, it raises the probability that the planet was once home to microbial life forms.

 

January 2023

 

December 2022

 

November 2022

  • NASA said it expects humans to live on the Moon ‘within the decade’. Speaking in the wake of the launch of the Artemis I rocket, NASA scientist Howard Hu said astronauts would set up a permanent settlement on the Moon in the 2020s, and use it as a base from which to go deeper into space.
  • China sent three astronauts to its new space station. In a landmark moment for China’s space programme, Tiangong became the second space station to achieve permanently-occupied status, after the International Space Station.

 

October 2022

  • Ancient Mars may have had an environment capable of harbouring an underground world teeming with microscopic organisms, scientists reported, but if they existed, these simple life forms would have altered the atmosphere so profoundly that they triggered a Martian Ice Age and snuffed themselves out, the researchers concluded.

 

September 2022

 

August 2022

  • NASA released infrared images of Jupiter captured by the James Webb telescope (JWST). The shots offered an unprecedented view of the biggest planet’s northern and southern lights, storms, rings, auroras and hazes, giving scientists more clues to Jupiter’s "inner life". Scientists collaborated with a citizen scientist to translate the Webb data into images.
  • The Economist explained how the JWST is proving to be the most sensitive telescope ever for detecting infrared cosmic light. Radiation of this kind is interesting to astronomers for three reasons: it is better at penetrating dust clouds than visible light is, illuminating hitherto hidden regions where stars and solar systems are forming; it is emitted by ancient hot objects such as stars and galaxies whose wavelengths have been stretched into the infrared by the universe’s expansion; it also corresponds to the emissions of cool objects such as planets, including those potentially capable of hosting life.
  • Scientists detected dark matter that existed around galaxies 12 billion years ago. Researchers at Japan's Nagoya University said we’ve never detected the presence of dark matter so soon after the birth of the universe. The work could change our understanding of how galaxies evolved.
  • Despite recent advances in astrophysics and astronomy, scientists still don't understand exactly how galaxies can exist. The most common explanation for this observational conundrum is a so-far undiscovered form of matter: dark matter. Dark matter has yet to be directly observed by scientists.
  • A close look at the data of where planets exist shows something surprising: of the first 5000+ exoplanets discovered, 99.9% of them are found around metal-rich stars; metal-poor stars are overwhelmingly planet-free. This suggests that a large fraction of stars in the Universe never had planets, and that it took billions of years of cosmic evolution for rocky, potentially habitable planets to be possible at all.

 

July 2022

 

June 2022

 

May 2022

  • McKinsey argued that, today, while the public may not fully realise it, the space ecosystem touches many aspects of daily life, abounds with commercial investment and increased commercial use cases, and plays a key role in advancing global sustainability and security priorities. Yet the sector is at an inflection point; leaders believe that existing frameworks are no longer sufficient to manage the full breadth of today’s most pressing issues, including space debris and the commercialisation of low-Earth orbit. Rapid technological progress is unlocking new capabilities, encouraging more commercial funding in space, and making space more accessible for nations and the private sector, but these developments are also sparking more competition as space becomes crowded,
  • Researchers found changes in the brains of astronauts who visited the International Space Station, with parts of the brain called perivascular spaces expanding in volume. The researchers found that these fluid-filled spaces in the brain, called perivascular spaces, got bigger in astronauts who went to the space station for the first time. However, astronauts who had already been to space and had been to the station for another mission didn’t show any change. That suggests that astronauts may adapt to space.
  • China wants to find "another Earth". Chinese scientists will survey planets outside the Solar System in an attempt to find an Earth-like planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star.
  • A global team captured the first picture of a black hole at the centre of our galaxy. Their methodology included linking a network of existing radio observatories and synthesising the data as a single “virtual telescope”. This was only the second such picture of a black hole ever achieved.

 

April 2022

 

March 2022

  • An image of the distant universe left scientists “giddy”, as it showed a star 2,000 lightyears away sitting amongst thousands of ancient galaxies. The James Webb Space telescope took the image to test whether its 18 hexagonal mirrors were aligned. The clarity of the picture "is everything that we dared hope", said Webb operations project scientist Jane Rigby. Rigby said her team hopes that soon the telescope will be able to see the universe so far back in time that it will only be “a couple hundred million years after the big bang”.
  • Running out of planet? Terrestrial traffic slowing down deliveries? A company called Inversion Space believes these are just two of the concerns it can solve by essentially using space as both a warehouse and a highway, The New York Times reported. The startup, which  secured $10 million in funding by early 2022, developed flying saucer-like capsules in which items - founders say these could include anything from artificial organs to pizza deliveries - could be either transported at supersonic speeds or stored in orbit and parachuted back to Earth when they’re needed.
  • A NASA astronaut broke the record for the longest space flight. The previous record was 340 days, 8 hours, and 42 minutes.
  • The deepest image ever taken, the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, revealed about 5,500 galaxies over an area that took up just 1/32,000,000th of the sky. Scientists estimate that there are more than ten times as many galaxies out there than Hubble, even at its limits, is capable of seeing. All told, there are possibly some 2 trillion galaxies within the observable Universe.
  • The European Space Agency suspended a planned $1.9 billion joint EU-Russian mission to Mars. The decision means the mission - which was to search the red planet for signs of life - will be postponed at least four years as Brussels looks for new partners. 

 

February 2022

 

January 2022

  • After analysing powdered rock samples collected from the surface of Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover, scientists announced that several of the samples are rich in a type of carbon that on Earth is associated with biological processes. While the finding is intriguing, it doesn’t necessarily point to ancient life on Mars, as scientists have not yet found conclusive supporting evidence of ancient or current biology there, such as sedimentary rock formations produced by ancient bacteria, or a diversity of complex organic molecules formed by life.
  • China planned to carry out more than 40 space launches in 2022, a number roughly on par with the US. China also aimed to complete its first orbiting space station and send at least two crewed missions there in 2022.

 

December 2021

 

November 2021

 

October 2021

 

September 2021

 

August 2021

  • Virgin Galactic set price marker in the space-tourism industry, announcing it plans to charge customers at least $450000 for a seat on its spacecraft. The company opened ticket sales, offering everything from single seats to entire six-seat cabins. While the level of demand for space trips is unclear, analysts estimate the industry could generate nearly £2.8 billion ($4 billion) in annual sales by 2030.
  • A $1 billion space suit is reportedly holding up NASA’s 2024 moon landing. It’s not easy to build a one-person space vehicle that can withstand temperatures of 260°F to -280°F.
  • Astronomers discovered the largest known comet. Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is between 100 to 200 km across, and will make its closest approach to our sun in 2031.
  • Compared with how warm the planet should be given how far it is from the sun, Jupiter has a remarkable amount of heat. The cause of this disconnect has troubled scientists for decades, though several possible ideas for the cause have been proposed. A solution was finally found. In a study published in Nature, a team of researchers using data from the Keck II telescope and several satellites determined that the incredibly powerful Jovian aurora is heating the upper atmosphere to extremely high temperatures.

 

July 2021

  • Big think cautioned that, besides Earth, our own solar system is probably lifeless. Detecting Earth-like planets or moons elsewhere guarantees nothing. Recent research showed how oxygen can be produced by a lifeless planet. And now, new research suggests that most stars do not produce enough energy to support plant life, meaning that Earth-like planets themselves are probably rare.
  • We will soon see the development of a space-tourism industry," claimed The Wall Street Journal. Private companies are racing to become the first to carry hundreds into space a year, it's believed space tourism could generate close to $4 billion in annual revenue by 2030, according to UBS.
  • Virgin Galactic took a notable step towards commercial space tourism, rocketing founder Sir Richard Branson to the edge of space and back. The trip, which took around an hour, was a test run for the kind of commercial spaceflights that Virgin Galactic hopes to offer in the future.
  • International Space Station astronaut Christina Koch has successfully demonstrated CRISPR gene editing in space. Koch’s experiment used the technique to generate a specific type of damage to DNA in yeast cells; the ability to create that kind of damage will now allow scientists to learn more about how DNA is repaired in space. There’s a practical reason to get excited about this. One of the big challenges associated with traveling deep into space is that it exposes astronauts to ionising radiation that greatly increases the risk of DNA damage. If we want to get to Mars and beyond, we need to learn how to shield ourselves from that damage and repair it when it occurs, noted New World, Same Humans.
  • NASA is reportedly funding a renewed hunt for alien civilisations. New programmes will search for techsignatures that indicate the presence of advanced technologies.

 

June 2021

 

May 2021

 

April 2021

  • Dark matter, a type of matter that is predicted to make up around 27 percent of the known universe, has never been detected experimentally. Now a team of astrophysicists and cosmologists think they found a clue that may lead them to finally detect the elusive material, so hard to find because it does not absorb, reflect, or emit light
  • Satellites and space debris have brightened the night sky by more than 10%. Astronomers say the light pollution is making it increasingly hard for many around the world to see the stars.
  • The first machine from Earth to fly like an airplane or helicopter on another planet completed its maiden journey, when NASA’s Ingenuity briefly lifted off the surface of Mars. Ingenuity could be the first step in complex aerial transportation and navigation, surface mapping, sample collection, and atmospheric data gathering.
  • The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), produced oxygen from carbon dioxide found in Mars’ atmosphere. MOXIE could be a scalable solution for creating a source to power rockets for transportation and for providing future Mars inhabitants breathable oxygen that does not have to be transported from Earth, noted Future Today Institute.
  • NASA is currently exploring Space Synthetic Biology, hoping to biomanufacture an array of items, including vitamins and medicines, healthy fats and proteins, and cement—all produced off-planet. By enabling localized, on-demand production of these items, missions can minimize the number of supplies launched, and better take advantage of local resources, noted Future Today Institute.
  • China launched the first piece of a new space station into orbit. The Chinese Space Station will eventually be about a quarter of the size of the International Space Station and will have space to house three astronauts and a range of low-gravity experiments. 

 

March 2021

  • China and Russia agreed to build a moon base. The space agencies from the two countries agreed to construct a “complex of experimental research facilities” on the surface or in the orbit of the moon.
  • There are 8,000 metric tons of debris passing through Earth’s orbit at 8 km) per second, endangering the satellites that watch the weather, allow us to communicate, and beam internet to rural areas. Quartz offered an in-depth look at the nascent industry trying to prove it can destroy orbital junk, repair aging satellites, and offer a more sustainable future in space.

 

February 2021

  • An international team of scientists created the world's largest astronomical map in an effort to better understand dark energy. Dark energy is the force that's thought to be driving the expansion of the universe. The ultimate goal of the team is to develop a three-dimensional map of the universe, which could help scientists unravel the mysteries of dark energy, noted Big Think.
  • Cellular phone pioneer Craig McCaw became the latest billionaire to join the space race through a $2.1 billion deal to merge Holicity, his SPAC, with Astra, a rocket launching company. The deal is likely to stoke more interest in space deals by family offices who have become key backers to the sector.  According to Space Capital, the private sector invested $25.6 billion in space during 2020, pushing the total to $178 billion over 10 years. Other space billionaires are led by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sir Richard Branson and Sunil Bharti Mittal, who's backed by the UK Government. 
  • For the first time in over a decade, the European Space Agency looked to recruit new astronauts. Any European dreaming of space can apply and women as well as people with disabilities are encouraged to apply to expand the agency’s diversity. One trait applicants will need is patience: after a six-stage selection procedure the ESA will reveal its newest space explorers to the world in October 2022. European Commissioner Thierry Breton shared a new space programme and the EU’s largest ever budget for space to speed up the bloc’s ambitions in the field. 
  • Seeking astronauts with physical disabilities, the European Space Agency also started recruiting candidates to make space more accessible.In what it called a first for human spaceflight worldwide, ESA said in a statement it was looking for "individual(s) who are psychologically, cognitively, technically and professionally qualified to be an astronaut, but have a physical disability that would normally prevent them from being selected due to the requirements imposed by the use of current space hardware."
  • China, the United Arab Emirates, and the US all aimed, separately, to descend on Mars to study its atmosphere in the search for signs of past life. Indeed, when the NASA rover Perseverance landed on Mars, only days after the arrival of probes from China and the United Arab Emirates, the trio of missions represented distinct approaches to space exploration, Quartz explained. The nostalgic US “favours symbolic moonshot projects over cumulative, long-term investment,” while China, with a detailed plan to eclipse American power, and the UAE, with more of a private-sector startup feel, prioritise future economic returns. The United Arab Emirates made history by becoming the first Arab nation to send a spacecraft to Mars. It was also the fifth country to ever reach the Red Planet, when the UAE Space Agency's Hope Probe entered Martian orbit on February 9 2021.

 

January 2021

  • Many space missions are scheduled for blast-off in 2021. To tweak the orbit of an asteroid’s moon that is nearly as big as a stadium, America’s NASA plans to launch a car-sized craft to smash into it the following year. Neither the asteroid, Didymos, nor its moon, Dimorphos, threatens Earth, but the collision should yield potentially handy “planetary defence” know-how. NASA also plans an uncrewed flight around the Moon, and, with help from the space agencies of Canada and Europe, the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the biggest and priciest ever. India may put three astronauts into orbit. India and Russia aim to launch lunar landers. And China will begin launching parts of its next and biggest space station, Tiangong-3.
  • Blue Origin, founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, successfully completed the fourteenth test run of their New Shepard rocket booster and capsule, cementing plans for their first manned flight to the edge of outer space in 2021. Travelling 100 kilometres into outer space, the rocket will be fully autonomous and stay in zero gravity for close to 10 minutes.
  • The first entirely private crew will head to the International Space Station. Three wealthy men will have one former astronaut to guide them.

 

December 2020

  • Saturn and Jupiter met up on the 21st December. The last time both planets orbited as closely and were visible in the sky was in 1226.
  • NASA selected 18 astronauts who will head to the moon. The group, which will blast off in 2024, includes the first woman who will set foot on the lunar surface.
  • Researchers from several institutions across the globe are developing the means to extract solar energy from power stations based in space. Solar cells in space can shift so they face the sun 24 hours a day, a massive advantage over solar cells based on Earth. Such power stations could be assembled in space incrementally, with thousands of smaller solar cells adding up to one big power station
  • Quartz reported that China successfully landed a spacecraft full of lunar surface samples in Mongolia, completing the Chang’e 5 mission that launched in November. Assuming the samples are safe and sound, it’s the first time humans have brought back anything from the moon since 1976. The roughly 2 kg of rocks, which come from a previously unexplored lunar region, promise to give scientists new information about the history of the solar system and how the moon formed. The mission also demonstrates the increasing sophistication of China’s space technology. As the globe gears up for a new season of moon exploration, China next plans to sample a different moon location in 2024, while the US is plotting its own fleet of private moon robots.
  • Big Think reported that humanity could be making its way through the Solar System much faster thanks to the discovery of a new superhighway network among space manifolds. Researchers believe the new pathways can eventually be used by spacecraft to get to the outer reaches of our Solar System with relative haste. The celestial highway could get comets and asteroids from Jupiter to Neptune in less than a decade. Compare that to hundreds of thousands or even millions of years it might ordinarily take for space objects to traverse the Solar System.
  • A new US Air Force satellite could send solar power to Earth. The Helios project will test beaming solar energy to other spacecraft, and maybe terrestrial receivers.
  • 2020 saw the inaugural Space Economy Leaders meeting, organised by the Saudi Space Commission, where representatives from the world's 20 largest economies came together to discuss the future space economy. The purpose of the virtual conference was to facilitate a discussion between influential countries who have a shared vision of elevating the space sector with a view to collaborating on existing and future projects revolving around space exploration, industry investment, and innovation.

 

November 2020

  • Throughout its nine-year tour of duty that concluded in 2018, NASA's Kepler Space Telescope produced a massive amount of observational data. Among its revelations were 2,800 confirmed exoplanets, with thousands more still being analysed. A new study of its data suggests that there may be as many as 300 million inhabitable planets in our galaxy. It finds that several of these could be relatively close by, within 30 light years from here, reported Big Think.
  • The Hubble telescope spotted an asteroid worth 70,000 times more than the entire global economy. Psyche 16 is made of iron and nickel and valued at $10,000 quadrillion, claimed New World, Same Humans.
  • SpaceX launched four astronauts into space. The successful lift-off marked the first operational flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which was scheduled to dock with the International Space Station after a nearly 28-hour trip. The mission marked a major step towards commercialising space travel.
  • The Milky Way, the galaxy that contains our Solar System, is estimated to be about 13.6 billion years old. What was there before is a loaded question that scientists are getting closer to answering. A team of astrophysicists reconstructed the cosmic ancestry of our galaxy. To dive deep into the prehistory of our galaxy, the researchers directed their AI to study global clusters that they suspected were formed in the progenitor galaxies. The orbital motion of the clusters informed their predictions. The AI was able to pinpoint the masses of the stars and the details of the mergers with great precision, reported Big Think.
  • A study of a Martian meteorite suggests that most water may not come from space at all, but that it's a natural byproduct of rocky-planet formation. If true, this could mean water is everywhere, which would greatly increase the chances of extraterrestrial life. The research is based on a meteorite from Mars called "Black Beauty" that was found in the Moroccan desert. Black Beauty is 4.45 billion years old and comes from the Martian crust, providing a rare window into the early days of Mars and the solar system, reported Big Think.

 

October 2020

  • Astronomers at Washington State University identified 24 planets that may be even more habitable than Earth. The planets are warmer, wetter, larger and older than our own, and so make promising targets in the search for complex life.
  • Big Think noted that the odds are that if Earth has the right conditions for the development of life, other places probably do, too. Scientists have identified two dozen planets that match some items on the list of desirable traits. All of these planets are too far away to reach with current tech, but may be valuable research targets. "With the next space telescopes coming up, we will get more information, so it is important to select some targets. We have to focus on certain planets that have the most promising conditions for complex life. However, we have to be careful to not get stuck looking for a second Earth because there could be planets that might be more suitable for life than ours".
  • For the first time, scientists confirmed the presence of water on the sunlit surface of the moon, a discovery with major implications for future moon missions. Publishing their findings in the journal Nature Astronomy on Monday, researchers examined the lunar surface using NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). Using SOFIA, the team took a close look at two sites near, one near the lunar equator and another near the Clavius crater, one of the largest craters on the moon. The researchers observed light signals that could only have come from molecular water.
  • Researchers used advanced computer simulations to study the effect of meteoroid impacts on the Moon's surface. The study showed that such impacts were unlikely to cause the magnetisation observed in the lunar crust. An ancient core dynamo is the most likely explanation for the Moon's magnetic field from about 4 billion years ago.
  • Astronomers had their best view yet of a star being ripped to shreds by a black hole. A flash of light close to a known black hole 215 million light years away alerted researchers at the European Southern Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Chile to what’s known as a “tidal disruption event”. The powerful gravitational pull of the black hole “spaghettified” the star, tearing it into ribbons of dust and gas. 
  • The near-collision of an old Soviet satellite and the body of a Chinese rocket renewed concerns about junk cluttering Earth's orbit. Axios reports space debris poses a near-term threat to weather, security, communications and other satellites. Long-term, it threatens future exploration. The CEO of startup Rocket Lab told CNN it’s already facing safety challenges launching clients' satellites, having to "weave their way up in between these [satellite] constellations." The U.S. military has tracked 25,000 space objects, but millions of smaller pieces are out there.
  • Mars shone brighter in October 2020 than at any time until 2035

 

September 2020

  • Astronomers discovered signs of what could be life not in the outer reaches of the solar system but on Venus, our closest planet, long overlooked by astrobiologists because of its acidic atmosphere and scorching surface temperatures of more than 400 degrees. In a pair of papers astronomers describe the chemical phosphine in Venus's upper clouds. There are no known non-biological ways of making phosphine and it generally has a short lifespan.
  • The mysterious dark vacuum of interstellar space is finally being revealed by two spacecraft that have become the first human-made objects to leave our Solar System. Far from the protective embrace of the Sun, the edge of our Solar System would seem to be a cold, empty, and dark place. Until recently, it was somewhere that humankind could only peer into from afar. Astronomers paid it only passing attention, preferring instead to focus their telescopes on the glowing masses of our neighbouring stars, galaxies and nebula. But two spacecraft, built and launched in 1970s, have for the past few years been beaming back our first glimpses from this strange region we call interstellar space. As the first man-made objects to leave our Solar System, they are venturing into uncharted territory, billions of miles from home. No other spacecraft have travelled as far.
  • Big Think reported how, in May 2019, a ripple of gravitational waves passed through Earth after traveling across the cosmos for 7 billion years. The ripple came in four waves, each lasting just a fraction of a second. Although the ancient signal was faint, its source was cataclysmic: the biggest merger of two black holes ever observed. It occurred when two mid-sized ("intermediate-mass") black holes — 66 and 85 times the mass of our Sun — drifted close together, began spinning around each other and merged into one black hole roughly 142 times the mass of our Sun. "It's the biggest bang since the Big Bang observed by humanity," Caltech physicist Alan Weinstein, who was part of the discovery team, told The Associated Press.
  • A study from Japanese researchers confirmed the possibility of panspermia, the possible spread of life throughout the universe via microbes that attach themselves to space bodies. The scientists showed that bacteria on the outside of the International Space Station can survive in space for years. The team also concluded that the Deinococcus radiodurans bacteria used in the experiment could even make the journey from Earth to Mars, hinting at the likelihood of our own extraterrestrial beginnings.
  • Imagine the energy of eight Suns released in an instant. This is the gravitational "shockwave" that spread out from the biggest merger yet observed between two black holes. The signal from this event travelled for some seven billion years to reach Earth but was still sufficiently strong to rattle laser detectors in the US and Italy in May 2019. Researchers say the colliding black holes produced a single entity with a mass 142 times that of our Sun.

 

August 2020

  • A study reported by Big Think shed light on the final supernovae of the Universe. Matt Caplan, the theoretical physicist from Illinois State University who conducted the study, said the end-times universe will be "a bit of a sad, lonely, cold place." Most scientists expect not much will be around to witness the proceedings of this "heat death" - just black holes and burned-out stars. But Caplan also sees something else happening then. As the universe functions now, massive stars die in supernova explosions that follow an over-accumulation of iron in their cores. The smaller stars will meet their demise by burning through all their nuclear fuel and turning into white dwarfs.
  • Situated 77,000,000 kilometres from Earth, roughly halfway to the Sun, the cameras on the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter have taken high-quality images from a closer vantage point than any camera ever. 
  • In a video, former NASA astronaut Leland Melvin, educator Bill Nye, science journalist Stephen Petranek, astronomer Michelle Thaller, and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku considered mankind's fascination with Mars and explain why the planet may be the most viable option for colonisation. They also shared difficult truths about what it will take for this expensive dream to become a reality. From finding a way to protect against radiation and adjusting to the difference in atmospheric pressure, to mining for ice and transporting food, to significantly lowering the cost of space travel, it certainly won't be easy, noted Big Think.
  • NASA astronauts splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. The successful return to Earth of two astronauts from the International Space Station in a SpaceX capsule, two months after blasting off from Florida, made it the first commercial spacecraft to carry people to and from orbit.
  • When astronauts return to the moon or travel to Mars, how will they shield themselves against high levels of cosmic radiation? A recent experiment aboard the International Space Station suggested a surprising solution: a radiation-eating fungus, which could be used as a self-replicating shield against gamma radiation in space. 
  • A tiny meteorite may shed light on evolution, reported Quartz. Asuka 12236 is the size of a golf ball, but its amino acid concentration could help researchers understand how life developed.

 

July 2020

  • Astrophysicists unveiled the largest-ever 3D map of the universe, reported Quartz. It’s the product of a joint effort of hundreds of researchers around the world, who analysed several million galaxies and quasars.
  • Galileo Galilei was the first person to point a telescope at the night sky. Having gazed – heretically – upon very large and distant celestial bodies, he realised he could use the same technology to magnify smaller terrestrial ones closer to home. Lenses with a shorter focal length enabled Galileo to squint at insects as well as planets. He called the new device his occhiolino, or “little eye”. We call it the microscope. Today scientists apply technology across similarly vast differences of scale. By observing how the light of distant stars passes through interstellar gas and dust, astronomers have been able to interpret what exists in the outer reaches of space. Now, researchers from Exeter University are using the same technique to detect breast cancer.
  • New pictures of the Sun taken just 77 million km from its surface were the closest ever acquired by cameras. They came from the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter (SolO) probe, which was launched earlier in 2020.
  • With thousands of planned spacecraft launches astronomers are warning that our view of the sky, and our ability to research the cosmos, is under threat. Scientists have voiced concern that mega-constellations of microsats and cubesats will not only obstruct their view, but that they could also interfere with radio astronomy equipment. Some commercial spacecraft manufacturers, including SpaceX, are developing new coatings that would minimise reflection and other sources of interference. noted Future Today Institute.
  • The FTI also warned that space is our next dumping ground. As many as 170 million fragments of metal and astro debris necklace Earth. That includes 20,000 pieces larger than a softball, and 500,000 about the size of a marble, according to NASA.
  • Last but not least, the FTI added that while printing muscle tissue, such as a heart, is difficult on Earth because the delicate tissues required tend to collapse under their own weight, space-based organ printing using bio-inks and gels would be possible in microgravity. The first bioprinter was sent to the ISS in 2019 and printed a tiny portion of a heart muscle. Similar techniques could be used in microgravity to culture meats more easily. Another candidate for space production is fibre-optic cables made from fluoride glass, which is difficult to work with terrestrially because our gravity can cause crystals to form when the glass is being heated and stretched. Researchers believe that in space, the necessary fibres could be created more easily.
  • Quartz claimed that governments see Mars as a unique target. Even if the Moon promises more economic potential and is easier to access, Mars remains novel. “Chinese space policymakers are clear that their long-term space ambition is to continuously develop capacity for a cislunar presence (in space between Earth and the Moon), they keenly realise that for global prestige and reputation purposes, a Mars landing is a coveted prize to capture,” according to an article in The Diplomat.
  • Kosmos-2543, a small satellite contained inside a larger satellite, Kosmos-2542, and 'birthed’ into orbit in late 2019, recently came under scrutiny in January 2020 when it was reportedly caught ‘buzzing’ US spy satellites in Low Earth Orbit. By releasing a small projectile from the Kosmos-2543 sub-satellite, the US claims that Russia has launched a new projectile into orbit with relatively high speed – estimated at around 500 km per hour – leading to concerns about the potential of Russia to develop this technology as a weapon to target foreign satellites,

 

June 2020

  • It might be possible to set up a Mars colony with only 110 people. Researchers concluded that was the minimum number of humans required to viably settle on a different planet.
  • SpaceX's Crew Dragon successfully docked at the International Space Station Monday, marking a historic moment in NASA's push to end the U.S. reliance on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to carry astronauts to the lab. It also marked the first privately owned and operated spacecraft since the start of the space age.
  • China has spent $10 billion on its own satellite navigation network, known as Bei-Dou-3. Beijing put the last of the system's 35 satellites in orbit in mid-2020, capping a major leap forward in China's bid to become a premier space power.
  • NASA needs toilet ideas. The US space agency is soliciting thoughts from the public on the best way to build a bathroom on the Moon.

 

May 2020

  • Astronomers said that they found a black hole that’s only 1,000 light years away, the closest yet discovered. Though each light year represents a sizeable distance of almost 5.9 trillion miles, the newly-discovered black hole is a close neighbour by cosmic standards - our Milky Way galaxy alone is about 100,000 light years across.
  • NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine confirmed on Twitter that the space agency and the company SpaceX are working with Tom Cruise to shoot an action-adventure film aboard the International Space Station. The project would be the first narrative film ever shot in space.
  • Monica Grady, a professor of Planetary and Space Science and Chancellor at Liverpool Hope University, thinks there's a great likelihood of undiscovered life somewhere in our galaxy, specifically on Jupiter's moon, Europa. "When it comes to the prospects of life beyond Earth, it's almost a racing certainty that there's life beneath the ice on Europa," she said in recent address, adding that these life forms on Europa, 390 million miles from Earth, could be higher in sophistication than the Martian bacteria, possibly having "the intelligence of an octopus."
  • Astronomers got lucky with photographing Jupiter. They snapped some of clearest photos of the fiery planet using the lucky imaging technique, which involves shooting lots of short exposure images.
  • The European Space Agency's BepiColombo spacecraft took off from Kourou, French Guyana on October 20, 2019, on its way to Mercury. To reduce its speed for the proper trajectory to Mercury, BepiColombo executed a "gravity-assist flyby," slinging itself around the Earth before leaving home. Over the course of its 34-minute flyby, its two data recorders captured five data sets that Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) enhanced and converted into sound waves. The data was captured by BepiColombo's Italian Spring Accelerometer (ISA) instrument. Says Carmelo Magnafico of the ISA team, "When the spacecraft enters the shadow and the force of the Sun disappears, we can hear a slight vibration. The solar panels, previously flexed by the Sun, then find a new balance. Upon exiting the shadow, we can hear the effect again." There is no sound in space which means there is no music, but if there was, this is what it might sound like, reported Big Think.
  • During the pandemic, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, US used out-of-work citizens to analyse pictures from the Hubble space telescope to help build an image similarity database that other astronomers could search. According to Wired, the scientists who founded this project realised that instead of just asking strangers on the internet to help out for free, they could create short-term work for their neighbourhood. Which also meant that unlike most citizen science projects, it was paid. 
  • California Institute of Technology professor Konstantin Batygin embarked on a journey of discovering what lurked beyond Neptune. What he and his collaborator discovered was a strange field of debris. This field of debris exhibited a clustering of orbits, and something was keeping these orbits confined. The only plausible source would be the gravitational pull of an extra planet—Planet Nine. While Planet Nine hasn't been found directly, the pieces of the puzzle are coming together, notes Big think, adding that Batygin is confident we'll return to a nine-planet solar system within the next decade.

 

April 2020

  • By comparing data derived from gravitational lensing and gamma ray observations by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, a study by researchers Simone Ammazzalorso at the University of Turin in Italy, Daniel Gruen at Stanford University, and their colleagues showed that certain regions of the sky emit more gamma rays. While the main cause of this phenomenon may be supermassive black holes, the researchers think that some of the emissions may be because of dark matter. It's a so-far-undetected substance that supposedly takes up as much as 27% of all matter in the Universe, with dark energy taking up another 68%.
  • A recent study proposed an answer to the mystery of what powers gamma-ray bursts – the brightest and most powerful explosions in the universe that take place when a star goes supernova. Research from an international team of astrophysicists indicates that the specific reason for this phenomenon, when two gigantic jets of light-emitting plasma shoot out materials at ultra-high speeds, might lie in the collapse of a star's magnetic field.By examining data from the collapse of a large star in a galaxy that's 4.5 billion light-years away, the team of researchers (led by scientists at the University of Bath) found evidence to support the magnetic model, a hypothesis that says that when a star explodes, its large magnetic field collapses, unleashing a tremendous amount of energy that powers gamma ray bursts.
  • Astronomers captured an image of a black hole spitting fire. It’s the first time scientists have seen a jet of plasma powered by a distant quasar.
  • Combining old maps with new data, the U.S. Geological Service's Astrogeology Science Centre(USGS) has produced a definitive blueprint of the lunar surface. Made in collaboration with NASA and the Lunar and Planetary Institute, USGS combined six 'regional' maps of the Moon made during the Apollo era (1961-1975) with input from more recent unmanned lunar missions. This included data on the polar regions from NASA's Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) and close-ups of the equatorial zone from the Japanese Space Agency's recent SELENE mission. The colours on the map refer to different types of surface features, grouped together according to their age

 

March 2020

  • When it rains on at least one distant planet, it rains iron. That’s what astronomers have observed on Wasp-76b, whose days are hot enough to vaporise metals.

 

February 2020

  • Astronomers observed the biggest explosion in the universe. The record-breaking blow up was caused by a black hole 390 million light years away from Earth.

 

January 2020

  • If all goes according to plan, NASA and ESI will return samples from Mars by the year 2031. The scientists hope that the samples contain signs, if not examples, of microbial life from the Red Planet. While the possibility is exciting, there is also the question of whether or not we are ready for what they might discover. Sheri Klug Boonstra of Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility recently sounded an alarm: it's time to start consciously preparing the public to definitively learn we're not alone.
  • When the last person left the moon in 1972, few could have predicted that humans wouldn’t return for another 50 years. But NASA says this time around things will be different. The agency is planning a crewed mission to the moon in 2024, and this time it wants to stick around. The idea of the Artemis mission is to lay the foundation for a permanent human presence on and around the moon, which will then serve as a jump-off point for the agency’s journey to Mars.
  • A new telescope in Hawaii captured the most detailed image yet of the solar surface.

 

December 2019

  • Mars has water an inch below its surface. A newly released ice map could steer future missions to get humans on the red planet.
  • Europe launched its space telescope Cheops. The European Space Agency will use the instrument to study the formation and composition of far-off planets. A Russian rocket launched from French Guiana carried it into orbit.

 

November 2019

  • While it seems we are making great strides in unlocking the mysteries of the Universe, there is a sizable hole in what we know – up to 95 percent of the cosmos appears to be missing. In an article, one astrophysicist provided a novel explanation for dark energy and dark matter: He believes the universe is actually filled with a "dark fluid" possessing "negative mass".
  • China mulled a new "Earth-moon space economic zone" that would create $10 trillion of new economic value by 2050. For context, that's nearly double China's current GDP. Beijing has been pumping money into its rocket programme and even landed a probe on the dark side of the moon in 2019. 

 

October 2019

 

September 2019

  • Astronomers caught an interstellar object on camera. The comet is just the second visitor we’ve ever seen from another star.

 

August 2019

  • A survey of 3000 American children showed that more kids there now aspire to be a YouTube star than an astronaut.
  • There are about 22,000 large objects orbiting the Earth, including working and broken satellites and bits of old rocket from past space expeditions. A long-term solution is needed to clean up space. The Gateway Earth Development Group is a collection of academics from universities around the world who propose turning this potential catastrophe into a resource. By 2050, Gateway Earth – a fully operational space station with a facility to recycle old satellites and other junk – could be up and running.

 

July 2019

  • July 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of astronaut Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. On July 16, 1969 Apollo 11 took off from Kennedy Space Center with astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins aboard. Four days later, the lunar module Eagle, staffed by Armstrong and Aldrin, separated from the command module where Collins was stationed. The Eagle began its descent to the lunar surface, and at 4:17 pm it touched down on the southwestern edge of the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong immediately radioed to Mission Control in Houston with his now-famous message: "The Eagle has landed." Six hours later, Armstrong took his first steps on the moon and famously said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." (listen to the audio).
  • The next 50 years in space will look very different (see The Economist's Science section). Falling costs, new technologies, Chinese and Indian ambitions, and a new generation of entrepreneurs promise a bold era of space development. It will almost certainly involve tourism for the rich and better communications networks for all; in the long run it might involve mineral exploitation and even mass transportation. Space will become ever more like an extension of Earth—an arena for firms and private individuals, not just governments. But for this promise to be fulfilled the world needs to create a system of laws to govern the heavens—both in peacetime and, should it come to that, in war.
  • According to Future Today Institute FTI), at least 58 companies are planning to return to the moon, according research by SpaceFund, which tracks such ventures. There's even a group called the Moon Village Association, which is plotting out the necessities to colonisation there. Meanwhile, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk's SpaceX are progressing toward a new era of space tourism. Virgin Galactic partnered with Social Capital’s Chamath Palihapitiya to potentially be the first publicly-listed human spaceflight company. 
  • Some estimates put the projected growth of the space economy to more than $1 trillion in the next two decades, and FTI points to three possible scenarios between now and 2039:
    • Optimistic: Off-planet territory is reaffirmed as a public good (at least from our Earthling perspective). Before new land/ surfaces/ airspaces are claimed and developed, we model longer-term outcomes. We learn from our mistakes on Earth. Off-planet exploration is about curiosity, not commercialisation.
    • Pragmatic: Our geopolitical fighting extends off-planet. What begins as China, Russia and the US competing to be the first explorers on the far side of the Moon sets the pace for an unwieldy race to space. Without meaningful coordination or planning, we flood our thermosphere and exosphere with satellites and sensors. We rush to establish colonies on Mars. And we leave Earth with all of our political, social and emotional baggage in tow. Wars of the future are fought on multi-dimensional battlefields.
    • Catastrophic: A new wealth divide emerges. Wealthy families send their kids to space training courses and camps in preparation for space travel. But these families have an additional advantage: should we need to live off-planet in the farther future, wealthy families will already have the experience and training to survive whatever cataclysm befalls us on Earth. The training has a spillover effect: these families are able to fully participate in the space economy, earning the best jobs, startup funding, and leadership positions. Poorer families don't have that option and are forced to stay on planet and fight for resources. 
  • Foam could be the key to life on Mars. Nicknamed “solid smoke,” silica aerogel could help warm the planet’s frozen soil enough to grow plants.
  • Virgin Galactic aims to become the first publicly listed company to send people to space, beating out Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Bezo’s Blue Origin. A specially designed acquisitions company called Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. will invest about $800 million in Virgin Galactic to gain a 49 percent share and take Virgin Galactic public. While Virgin Galactic has sold $80 million worth of seats to over 600 individuals in future private spaceflights and raised over $1 billion in 2004, taking the company public is a strategy to ensure that it generates enough revenue to cover its expenses prior to becoming profitable.
  • Scientists are reportedly looking for "moons on the run". “Ploonets” are exomoons that have escaped their planets to orbit their stars instead.
  • See also:

 

June 2019

  • 50 years since man first set foot on the moon, the business opportunity presented by space travel has morphed from science-fiction to reality. UBS Global Research predicts the space industry to rocket - becoming an $800bln plus industry by the end of 2030
  • According to Big Think, the universe has a very strange structure that cosmologists call the “cosmic web”. So-named for its resemblance to a spider’s web, the cosmic web is made of massive structures such as the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall - 10 billion light years long - and the Keenan, Barger, and Cowie void, inside of which is our own Milky Way galaxy. The cosmic web came into existence because of small quantum fluctuations that were stretched out during the Big Bang. These became discrepancies in density, and so, over time, more dense regions attracted more matter, creating the "web" of the cosmic web, and less dense regions became voids.

 

May 2019

  • A paper published in the Journal of Geology put forth a new idea: a pair of supernovae ionised our atmosphere to such an extent that lightning became exceptionally common, and burned down the trees in which our ancestors lived.
  • IFTF reported that even though the millions of pieces of human-made debris in orbit around the Earth are tiny, they are moving so fast that even a speck could cause catastrophic damage if it were to collide with a satellite or humanned spacecraft. Engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are building a device called OSCaR (Obsolete Spacecraft Capture and Removal) that will capture the junk in a net then drop out of orbit so the debris safely burns up in the atmosphere.
  • An ancient star collision gave us precious metals, claimed Quartz. The violent meetup of two neutron stars 4.6 billion years ago showered our solar system with gold, platinum, and plutonium.
  • Inside a meteorite NASA retrieved from the LaPaz icefield in Antarctica, researchers uncovered a grain of stardust that formed before even our own sun had come into existence. What's more, this grain of material sheds insight into how solar systems like our own form. Specifically, by studying the inclusion's composition, researchers were able to glean new insights into the thermodynamics of white dwarf novae.

 

April 2019

  • Of the 60,000 objects of meteoritic origin that have fallen on Earth and been catalogued, only 36 were observed with enough fidelity as they arrived to allow scientists to calculate the original meteor’s orbit before it entered the atmosphere. Now a network of cameras is making it easier to track meteors. By showing where the rocks came from, more data could cast light on the composition of the solar system and help move orbiting spacecraft out of danger, noted The Economist.
  • Scientists believe there are oceans buried under thick crusts of ice on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Finding them would raise hopes for life beyond Earth, The Economist added.
  • An interstellar meteor hit Earth a few years ago. The trajectory of the 1.5-foot-wide object’s 2014 crash landing suggests it originated outside our solar system.
  • The Universe’s first molecule was spotted just a week after the first sighting of a black hole.

 

March 2019

  • Many want to believe that ‘Oumuamua is an alien spaceship. The first interstellar object mankind has ever observed is oddly shaped and suspiciously fast, and resembles physicists’ ideas for solar-radiation-powered “lightsails.” But there are less profound theories too, it could be a space “snowflake,” skeleton, or a comet with an invisible tail, according to Quartz,
  • We are more linked to the moon than we've realised, found Big Think. It turns out that the outer part of the Earth's atmosphere stretches considerably past the lunar orbit. In fact, it goes as far as twice the distance to the Moon. This discovery is a product of observations by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) — a spacecraft launched in 1995 to study the sun, operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA.

 

February 2019

  • China planned to put a solar power station in space. The energy it generates would be beamed back to Earth via a microwave or laser. 
  • A Japanese spacecraft touched down on an asteroid… The Hayabusa2 craft landed on Ryugu, which is about 900 meters (3,000 feet) in diameter. It will collect samples that will be sent back to Earth,
  • Opportunity, one of two rovers of the Mars Exploration Rover programme to land on the planet in January 2004, has been declared missing. Its mission was due to last three months, but it survived for 15 years on the red planet, photographing, measuring, exploring. One day a human may follow in the tracks of a pioneer who travelled far and provided insight after insight into the history of Mars, noted The Economist.

 

January 2019

  • Quartz noted that while earthly politics may be chronically in crisis but there’s one place international cooperation has prevailed for decades: space. The United Arab Emirates' science minister claimed that space is a testing ground for a better way of doing politics.
  • Earth is starting to feel more like Mars, claimed Quartz. Temperatures on the Red Planet vary widely, and, due to climate change, those on our home planet now do too.
  • Saturn’s rings haven’t always been there. Scientists now believe the rings of the 4.5 billion-year-old planet formed less than 100 million years ago, noted Quartz.
  • Seeds taken up to the Moon by China's Chang'e-4 mission have sprouted, said China National Space Administration. It marks the first time any biological matter has grown on the Moon, and was seen as a significant step towards long-term space exploration. The Chang'e 4 was the first mission to land on and explore the Moon's far side, facing away from Earth. However, the cotton seed that sprouted did not survive the lunar sundown, when temperatures fall as low as -170°C (-274°F).
  • The Big Bang didn't just result in our familiar universe, according to a new theory reported in Science Alert - it also generated a second "anti-universe" that extended backwards in time, like a mirror image of our own. A story in Physics World explored the new theory, which was proposed by a trio of Canadian physicists who say that it could explain the existence of dark matter. The theory, laid out in a paper in the journal Physical Review of Letters, aims to preserve a rule of physics called CPT symmetry. In the anti-universe before the Big Bang, it suggests, time ran backwards and the cosmos were made of antimatter instead of matter.
  • Water is driving lunar exploration. The existence of water - a major resource for life support and rocket fuel - has become a major reason to go to the moon. Access to H20 could make what we are already doing in space cheaper and more efficient, and enable far more ambitious future missions, according to Quartz.
  • China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft landed on the far side of the moon. The lunar lander and rover took off on Dec. 8 and spent 26 days in space before landing this morning in the Von Kármán crater, a 186-km-wide (110 miles) region. 
  • NASA visited the farthest object ever explored. Just after midnight Eastern time on New Year's Day, the New Horizons space probe flew by celestial object 2014 MU69, a mysterious hunk of reddish rock 4 billion miles from Earth. New Horizons will spend 20 months transmitting data and imagery on the object, nicknamed “Ultimate Thule”.
  • We’re going back to the moon, and need to know why, claimed Quartz. We might see something akin to the gold rush, hundreds of thousands of miles in space - see more facts about our lunar future.

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December 2018

 

November 2018

  • Since Newton, we have assumed that the universe is governed by unchanging laws, and Stephen Hawking once even argued that we were close to uncovering them in their entirety. But are these laws really eternal features of the universe, asked an iai debate? If so, how do they emerge and how do they act? Or are they merely human ways of codifying the world, which remains somehow unknowable and inexplicable?
  • Does the Universe around us have a fundamental structure that can be glimpsed through special numbers, asked Big Think? The physicist Richard Feynman thought so, saying there is a number that all theoretical physicists of worth should "worry about". He called it "one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man". That magic number, called the fine structure constant, is a fundamental constant, with a value which nearly equals 1/137. Or 1/137.03599913, to be precise.
  • From Dark Energy to Quantum Gravity, the cosmos remains mysterious. How should we approach the puzzles that remain? Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek argued in an iai course that, in science, beauty will lead us to truth. Meanwhile theoretical physicist John Ellis asked in another iai course: where did the universe come from and what don’t we understand about its future?
  • Is information fundamental to reality? Did the universe emerge from a bundle of bits? Oxford constructor theorist Chiara Marletto outlined in an iai course the new theory which seeks to explain life, the universe and everything in it.
  • In New Adventures in Spacetime, King’s College philosopher of physics Dr Eleanor Knox revealed how Einstein’s work has radical implications for past, present and future.
  • An odd-shaped visitor from beyond our solar system, 'Oumuamua (Hawaiian for "scout"), has been fascinating from the moment it arrived: It's a spaceship, it's a rock, it's a comet, it's not a comet. But is it a spaceship, asked Big Think? That's where its behaviour has some scientists at Harvard leaning; they suggest it may be a device of some kind powered by a lightsail, or a piece of one. What's got experts so puzzled about 'Oumuamua is, as an about-to-be-published paper says: "'Oumuamua showed deviations from a Keplerian orbit at a high statistical significance." In English: It sped up as it approached the Sun. Comets can do this, but 'Oumuamua has been disqualified as an active comet, as it has no tail. The authors of the paper propose that the increase in speed could be due to "solar radiation pressure." The bottom line, they say, is that the discrepancy "is readily solved if 'Oumuamua does not follow a random trajectory but is rather a targeted probe." 
  • Earth has more than one 'moon', claimed Big Think. Two massive clouds of dust in orbit around the Earth have been discussed for years and finally proven to exist. Hungarian astronomers have reportedly proven the existence of two "pseudo-satellites" in orbit around the earth. These dust clouds were first discovered in the sixties, but are so difficult to spot that scientists have debated their existence since then. The findings may be used to decide where to put satellites in the future and will have to be considered when interplanetary space missions are undertaken.
  • NASA successfully landed its Mars explorer. After “seven minutes of terror,” the InSight lander used heat shields, parachutes, and thrusters to safely touch down on Mars soil. After unfurling its solar panels, the probe will drill into the surface to measure tremors and heat flow to study the planet’s origins.

 

October 2018

  • In The space race is dominated by new contenders ,The Economist argued that private businesses and rising powers are replacing the cold-war duopoly.
  • The Economist also examined how the space industry has changed since the cold war. Some 4,500 satellites circle the Earth. Putting them there was once the job of the superpowers’ armies and space agencies; now developing countries and companies like SpaceX are leading the charge. In 2003 China became the third country to put a person into orbit. India plans to follow suit in 2022.
  • The discovery of many potentially habitable planets beyond the solar system and a growing understanding of the variety of life on Earth provides NASA an opportunity to advance the field of astrobiology, according to a new National Academy of Sciences report.
  • A mission to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft was aborted. The Soyuz system is presently the only way to get humans into orbit. (America’s space shuttle programme closed in 2011.) Three astronauts still on the ISS are likely to return by December, after which their descent craft will be unusable. A probe into the recent failure is likely to extend beyond then. There is a strong chance no human will reach the ISS again until 2020, reported The Economist.
  • In late 2018. a few American satellites, each no bigger than a brick, will enter the atmosphere of Mars, 33.9 million miles away - demonstrating a powerful new technology that will undoubtedly shape our futures. These miniature satellites, called CubeSats, were designed to follow NASA’s Mars robotic lander, InSight, as it attempts to land on the red planet in November, and they will relay information back to Earth. The goal is to demonstrate how low-cost CubeSat technology can be used in deep space and travel farther than any miniature satellite before.
  • But, for the Future Today Institute, NASA’s small experimental crafts reveal something truly exciting about our futures: the dawn of miniature satellites whose data will be mined and refined instantly for lots of different purposes. It’s a space revolution that’s moving ahead at warp speed. Thousands of these tiny, cost-effective high-value satellites will be launched into space during the next three years - and not just by government space agencies like NASA. 
  • A supermassive black hole at the core of our galaxy destroys stars that stray too close. The Event Horizon Telescope aims to photograph it. The New York Times explained the challenges and uncertainties involved and speculated upon what we’ll learn from the first results.
  • Given that the laws of nature supported the emergence of intelligent life on Earth, the universe, with its zillions of stars, should be full of alien civilisations, said The Economist. So why, wondered Enrico Fermi, have astronomers never seen extraterrestrials? By considering how far away any putative aliens might be, and the sensitivity of radio-telescopes, scientists at Pennsylvania State University have come up with a new answer: sky-watchers have not been looking hard enough.
  • Further reading:

 

September 2018

 

August 2018

 

July 2018

  • CB Insights published a briefing on the current state of space tech, from on-the-ground virtual reality experiences to space tourism.
  • A lake of liquid water has been detected on Mars, according to research published by the Italian Space Agency earlier this week. The lake is located beneath the planet’s southern polar ice cap. It is 12.5 miles across and looks similar to underwater lakes in Greenland and the Antarctic. Wondering if this lake will be a sightseeing location of the future?
  • Researchers have found evidence of an existing body of liquid water on Mars. What they believe to be a lake sits beneath the Red Planet's south polar ice cap, and is about 20km across.Previous research found possible signs of intermittent liquid water flowing on the martian surface, but this is the first sign of a persistent body of water on the planet in the present day.
  • By combining observations from both Hubble and the Gaia observatory, astronomers have further refined the value for Hubble's constant, the rate at which the universe is expanding from the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago. As the measurements have become more precise, however, the team's determination of this law has become more and more at odds with the measurements from another space observatory – ESA's Planck mission – which is producing a different predicted value for the Hubble constant.
  • A new radio telescope in South Africa is already producing brilliant images of the super massive black hole that is at our galaxy’s centre, 25,000 light years away.
  • Astronomers discovered 10 more moons orbiting Jupiter. The planet now has 79 moons in total, and one is on a collision coursewith the others.
  • Scientists should refocus their search for life, said Quartz, as Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, has confirmed oceans, making it more promising than Jupiter’s Europa.
  • Researchers calculated the most likely scenarios that would bring about other intelligent life in the observable universe, and the results are bleak, noted Quartz.
  • Astronomers photographed a planet’s birth for the first time. The image of a gas giant forming is. for Quartz, equally beautiful and enlightening.
  • Indeed, the object seen by a team led by astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, using a telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, is a planet in the process of formation, and the researchers have actually captured an image of it: a bright blob in the disk of hot gas and dust around a young dwarf star called PDS 70, in the constellation of Centaurus 370 light years away. We’re literally watching worlds in the making, claimed Prospect.
  • These many newly discovered worlds come in a variety of material and orbits. NASA and other space agencies are interested in discovering a variety of planets, but one such kind has also sparked their interest – planets within the habitable zone where liquid water oceans could be formed. The boundaries of what’s habitable and what’s even possible in the universe seem to change every day. Strange compositions we thought impossible are being discovered all the time and with an average estimate of 1 trillion planets in just our galaxy alone, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface, concluded Big Think.  

 

June 2018

 

Pre 2018

The cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself - Carl Sagan

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