Universe Today - Space and astronomy news

November 19, 2021November 19, 2021

There’s Enough Oxygen in the Lunar Regolith to Support Billions of People on the Moon

When it comes to the future of space exploration, a handful of practices are essential for mission planners. Foremost among them is the concept of In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), providing food, water, construction materials, and other vital elements using local resources. And when it comes to missions destined for the Moon and Mars in the coming years, the ability to harvest ice, regolith, and other elements are crucial to mission success.

In preparation for the Artemis missions, NASA planners are focused on finding the optimal way to produce oxygen gas (O₂) from all of the elemental oxygen locked up in the Moon’s surface dust (aka. lunar regolith). In fact, current estimates indicate that there is enough elemental oxygen contained in the top ten meters (33 feet) of lunar regolith to create enough O₂ for every person on Earth for the next 100,000 years – more than enough for a lunar settlement!

November 19, 2021November 19, 2021

There’s So Much Pressure at the Earth’s Core, it Makes Iron Behave in a Strange Way

It’s one of nature’s topsy-turvy tricks that the deep interior of the Earth is as hot as the Sun’s surface. The sphere of iron that resides there is also under extreme pressure: about 360 million times more pressure than we experience on the Earth’s surface. But how can scientists study what happens to the iron at the center of the Earth when it’s largely unobservable?

With a pair of lasers.

November 19, 2021November 19, 2021

An Absolutely Bonkers Plan to Give Mars an Artificial Magnetosphere

Terraforming Mars is one of the great dreams of humanity. Mars has a lot going for it. Its day is about the same length as Earth’s, it has plenty of frozen water just under its surface, and it likely could be given a reasonably breathable atmosphere in time. But one of the things it lacks is a strong magnetic field. So if we want to make Mars a second Earth, we’ll have to give it an artificial one.

November 18, 2021November 18, 2021

SpinLaunch Hurls a Test Vehicle Kilometers Into the air. Eventually, it’ll Throw Them Almost all the way to Orbit

For today’s commercial space companies providing launch services to orbit, the name of the game is simple: “do it cheaper.” To reduce the costs of launching payloads to space and encourage the commercialization of Low Earth Orbit (LEO), entrepreneurs have turned to everything from reusable rockets and 3-D printing to air-launch vehicles and high-altitude balloons. And yet, there is one concept that truly seems like something out of this world!

This concept is known as a mass accelerator, a kinetic energy space launch system that is an alternative to chemical rockets. In recent news, the commercial space company SpinLaunch conducted the first launch test of its Suborbital Accelerator for the first time. The success of this vertical test is a crucial stepping stone towards the creation of the company’s proposed Orbital Launch System (OLS), which will conduct regular payload launches soon.

November 18, 2021November 18, 2021

Eggshell Planets Have a Thin Brittle Crust and No Mountains or Tectonics

Planets without plate tectonics are unlikely to be habitable. But currently, we’ve never seen the surface of an exoplanet to determine if plate tectonics are active. Scientists piece together their likely surface structures from other evidence. Is there a way to determine what exoplanets might be eggshells, and eliminate them as potentially habitable?

The authors of a newly-published paper say there is.

November 18, 2021November 18, 2021

LightSail 2 has Been Flying for 30 Months now, Paving the way for Future Solar Sail Missions

Even after 30 months in space, The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 mission continues to successfully “sail on sunbeams” demonstrating solar sail technology in Earth orbit. The mission is providing hard data for future missions that hope to employ solar sails to explore the cosmos.

November 17, 2021November 18, 2021

Orbital Launch in January? Elon Musk Updates His Vision for SpaceX’s Starship

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has laid out a scenario for space travel that calls for his company’s Starship launch system to take on its first orbital test flight as soon as January.

Starship could go through “a dozen launches next year, maybe more,” and be ready to send valuable payloads to the moon, Mars and even the solar system’s outer planets by 2023, Musk said during a Nov. 17 online meeting of the National Academies’ Space Studies Board and Board on Physics and Astronomy.

But he advised against sending anything too valuable on the first flight to Mars. “I would recommend putting the lower-cost scientific mission stuff on the first mission,” he said, half-jokingly.

The National Academies presentation followed up on big-picture talks that Musk delivered in 2016 (when Starship was known as the Interplanetary Transport System), 2017 (when it was known as the BFR or “Big Frickin’ Rocket”) and 2018 (when Musk settled on “Starship”).

Musk’s basic concept is the same: Starship and its giant Super Heavy booster would be a one-size-fits-all system that could be used for point-to-point suborbital travel, orbital space missions and all manner of trips beyond Earth orbit, including moon landings. It’d be capable of lofting more than 100 tons to low Earth orbit (three times as much as the space shuttle), and sending 100 people at a time to Mars.

This week’s presentation provided some new details.

November 17, 2021November 17, 2021

Maybe There’s No Way to Tell if Habitable Planets Orbit Proxima Centauri… Yet!

Our closest stellar neighbor is Proxima Centauri, an M-type (red dwarf) star located over 4.24 light-years away (part of the Alpha Centauri trinary system). In 2016, the astronomical community was astounded to learn that an Earth-like planet orbited within this star’s circumsolar habitable zone (HZ). In addition to being the closest exoplanet to Earth, Proxima b was also considered the most promising place to look for extraterrestrial life for a time.

Unfortunately, the scientific community has been divided on whether or not life could even be possible on this planet. All of these studies indicate that this question cannot be answered until astronomers characterize Proxima b’s atmosphere, ideally by observing it as it passes in front (aka. transited) of its host star. But in a new NASA-supported study, a team led by astrophysicists at the University of Chicago determined that this is an unlikely possibility.

November 16, 2021November 16, 2021

A new Simulation of the Universe Contains 60 Trillion Particles, the Most Ever

Today, the greatest mysteries facing astronomers and cosmologists are the roles gravitational attraction and cosmic expansion play in the evolution of the Universe. To resolve these mysteries, astronomers and cosmologists are taking a two-pronged approach. These consist of directly observing the cosmos to observe these forces at work while attempting to find theoretical resolutions for observed behaviors – such as Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

In between these two approaches, scientists model cosmic evolution with computer simulations to see if observations align with theoretical predictions. The latest of which is AbacusSummit, a simulation suite created by the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Capable of processing nearly 60 trillion particles, this suite is the largest cosmological simulation ever produced.

November 16, 2021November 16, 2021

The Next Generation Very Large Array Would be 263 Radio Telescopes Spread Across North America

The iconic Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico has been at the forefront of astrophysical research since its dedication in 1980. The Y-shaped configuration of 27 radio astronomy dishes have made key discoveries about the cosmos, while becoming a part of pop-culture in several high-profile movies.

But the aging array is due for an upgrade, one that would take advantage of advanced technology. So says the latest Decadal Survey, published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, which presents a consensus among researchers on the most important scientific goals and missions for the upcoming decade.