Universe Today

January 18, 2025January 18, 2025 by Matt Williams

NASA is Building a Space Telescope to Observe Exoplanet Atmospheres

Artist's impression of the Pandora mission observing a transiting exoplanet. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab

The exoplanet census continues to grow. Currently, 5,819 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,346 star systems, while thousands more await confirmation. The vast majority of these planets were detected in the past twenty years, owing to missions like the Kepler Space Telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the venerable Hubble, the Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits (CoRoT) mission, and more. Thousands more are expected as the James Webb Space Telescope continues its mission and is joined by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST).

In the meantime, astronomers will soon have another advanced observatory to help search for potentially habitable exoplanets. It’s called Pandora, a small satellite that was selected in 2021 as part of NASA’s call for Pioneer mission concepts. This observatory is designed to study planets detected by other missions by studying these planets’ atmospheres of exoplanets and the activity of their host stars with long-duration multiwavelength observations. The mission is one step closer to launch with the completion of the spacecraft bus, which provides the structure, power, and other systems.

January 17, 2025January 17, 2025 by Matt Williams

New Glenn Reaches Orbit, but Doesn't Recover the Booster

Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket launching on January 16th, 2025. Credit: Blue Origin

On Thursday, January 16th, at 02:03 AM EST, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket took off on its maiden flight from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This was a momentous event for the company, as the two-stage heavy-lift rocket has been in development for many years, features a partially reusable design, and is vital to Bezos’ plan of “building a road to space.” While the company failed to retrieve the first-stage booster during the flight test, the rocket made it to orbit and successfully deployed its payload -the Blue Ring Pathfinder – to orbit (which has since begun gathering data).

According to the most recent statement by Blue Origin, the second stage reached its final orbit following two successful burns of its two BE-3U engines. The successful launch of NG-1 means that Blue Origin can now launch payloads to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), a huge milestone for the commercial space company. “I’m incredibly proud New Glenn achieved orbit on its first attempt,” said Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp in a company statement. “We knew landing our booster, So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance, on the first try was an ambitious goal. We’ll learn a lot from today and try again at our next launch this spring. Thank you to all of Team Blue for this incredible milestone.”

January 17, 2025January 17, 2025 by Evan Gough

Astronomers are Watching a Newly Forming Super Star Cluster

An artist impression of young star formation in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Massive and low-mass stars appear within nebulous gas within which they are born. Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/S.Dagnello

Six or seven billion years ago, most stars formed in super star clusters. That type of star formation has largely died out now. Astronomers know of two of these SSCs in the modern Milky Way and one in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and all three of them are millions of years old.

New JWST observations have found another SSC forming in the LMC, and it’s only 100,000 years old. What can astronomers learn from it?

January 17, 2025January 17, 2025 by Evan Gough

Sticks and Stones: The Molecular Clouds in the Heart of the Milky Way

Astronomers have created 3D maps of two giant molecular clouds in the Milky Way's Central Molecular Zone (CMZ). What happens to them in such an extreme environment? Image Credit: Alboslani et al. 2025.

The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) at the heart of the Milky Way holds a lot of gas. It contains about 60 million solar masses of molecular gas in complexes of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), structures where stars usually form. Because of the presence of Sag. A*, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole (SMBH), the CMZ is an extreme environment. The gas in the CMZ is ten times more dense, turbulent, and heated than gas elsewhere in the galaxy.

How do star-forming GMCs behave in such an extreme environment?

January 17, 2025January 17, 2025 by David Dickinson

Review: Dwarf Lab’s New Dwarf 3 Smartscope

DwarfLab’s new Dwarf 3 smartscope packs a powerful punch in a small unit.

In the past decade, amateur astronomy has witnessed nothing short of a revolution, as smartscopes have come to the fore. In half a century of skywatching, we’ve used just about every iteration of GoTo system available, starting with the now almost prehistoric ‘push-and-point’ AstroMaster units of the 90s. Strange to think, these were the hot new thing for telescopes in the 90s… though you still often had to perform a visual spiral search to actually find the target.

We recently had a chance to put Dwarf Lab’s new Dwarf 3 smartscope through its paces, and were impressed with what we’ve seen thus far. The small telescope even has personality: my wife said it actually looked like Johnny 5 from the 80s movie Short Circuit on start up (!)

January 17, 2025January 17, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

The Los Angeles Fires Got Extremely Close to NASA’s JPL Facility

The wildfires raging around Los Angeles have made plenty of headlines lately, though they are slowly starting to get under control. NASA was a part of that effort, tracking the fire’s evolution via the Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer-3 (AVIRIS-3) as they raged through southern California. As they were doing so, they likely realized that these fires posed an extreme risk to one vital part of NASA itself – the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

January 16, 2025January 11, 2025 by Paul M. Sutter

Dark Matter Can’t Be Too Heavy

Technicians scanning for dust on the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) Dark Matter Detector. Credit: LZ Experiment

Dark matter may have to go on a diet, according to new research.

January 16, 2025January 11, 2025 by Paul M. Sutter

Space Itself May Have Created Galaxies

According to new research, the earliest seeds of structures may have been laid down by gravitational waves sloshing around in the infant universe.

January 16, 2025January 11, 2025 by Paul M. Sutter

A Flexible, Adaptable Space Metamaterial

An illustration of the Gateway’s Power and Propulsion Element and Habitation and Logistics Outpost in orbit around the Moon. Credits: NASA

Researchers have discovered how to make a new kind of metamaterial reconfigure itself without tangling itself up in knots, opening up the possibility of a broad array of space applications.

January 16, 2025January 17, 2025 by Alan Boyle

SpaceX Catches Booster But Loses Ship in Starship Test Flight

Super Heavy booster settling into launch-tower arms — SpaceX's Starship Super Heavy booster comes in for a launch-tower catch at the Starbase launch site. (SpaceX via X)

SpaceX’s seventh flight test of its massive Starship launch system brought good news as well as not-so-great news.

The good news? The Super Heavy booster successfully flew itself back to the Texas launch site and was caught above the ground by the launch tower’s chopstick-style mechanical arms. That’s only the second “Mechazilla” catch to be done during the Starship test program. The bad news is that the upper stage, known as Ship 33, was lost during its ascent.

“Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn. Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause,” SpaceX said in a post-mission posting to X. “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and today’s flight will help us improve Starship’s reliability.”