China’s Lander Successfully Grew Some Cotton Plants on the Moon. Fruit Flies and Potatoes Didn’t Fare So Well

A 3D reconstruction based on image processing and data analysis shows two cotton leaves grown in the Chang’e-4 lander on the far side of the moon. Image Credit: Chongqing University.

When China’s Chang’e-4 spacecraft landed on the lunar far side on January 3rd 2019, it made history. It was the first spacecraft to visit that part of the Moon, and among its payload was a 2.6 kg (5.7 lb) mini-biosphere called the Lunar Micro Ecosystem (LME).

The sealed, cylindrical biosphere is only 18 cm (7.1 in) long and 16 cm (6.3 in) in diameter. The LME carried six lifeforms, kept in mostly Earth-like conditions except for micro-gravity and lunar radiation.

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Nine Astronauts from Four Different Space Agencies are on the International Space Station Right Now

The usual six-astronaut crew of the International Space Station welcomed three more and a cargo vehicle last week, making for a full house on the orbital outpost. Image Credit: ESA

The International Space Station’s usual complement of six astronauts grew by 50% recently, making things a little crowded up there. The nine astronauts come from four separate space agencies, and for the first time, an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is onboard the ISS.

The ISS is a multicultural place. Astronauts from around the world serve on the station to advance the scientific goals of humanity and to build cooperative ties between Earth’s different peoples. It’s kind of like Star Trek, but in space.

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India’s Crashed Lander is In This Picture, Somewhere

The Chandrayaan-2 lander, Vikram, attempted a landing September 7th (Friday the 6th in the United States), on a small patch of lunar highland smooth plains between Simpelius N and Manzinus C craters. Unfortunately the landing was not successful and location of the spacecraft has not been announced. The scene above was captured from an LROC Quickmap fly-around of the site, image width is about 150 kilometers across the center [NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University].

This image of the lunar highlands is from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. You’d need superhuman eyesight to spot it, but India’s crashed Vikram lander is in there somewhere. The lander attempted to land on the Moon on September 6th, but when it was only 2.1 km above the surface, within reach of its objective, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) lost contact with the spacecraft.

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A Red Dwarf Star Has a Jupiter-Like Planet. So Massive it Shouldn’t Exist, and Yet, There It Is

Artist's illustration of the newfound gas-giant planet GJ 3512b, which circles a red dwarf star. (Image credit: Guillem Anglada-Escude—IEEC/Science-wave, using SpaceEngine.org (CC BY 4.0))

Thanks to the Kepler mission and other efforts to find exoplanets, we’ve learned a lot about the exoplanet population. We know that we’re likely to find super-Earths and Neptune-mass exoplanets orbiting low-mass stars, while larger planets are found around more massive stars. This lines up well with the core accretion theory of planetary formation.

But not all of our observations comply with that theory. The discovery of a Jupiter-like planet orbiting a small red dwarf means our understanding of planetary formation might not be as clear as we thought. A second theory of planetary formation, called the disk instability theory, might explain this surprising discovery.

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Confirmed. Fossils That Formed 3.5 billion Years Ago, Really are Fossils. The Oldest Evidence of Life Found So Far

A stromatolite from the Pilbara Craton in Australia. Image Credit: By Didier Descouens - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15944367

The title of Earth’s Earliest Life has been returned to the fossils in the Pilbara region of Australia. The Pilbara fossils had held that title since the 1980s, until researchers studying ancient rocks in Greenland found evidence of ancient life there. But subsequent research questioned the biological nature of the Greenland evidence, which put the whole issue into question again.

Now a new study of the Pilbara fossils has identified the presence of preserved organic matter in those fossils, and handed the ‘Ancient Life’ crown back to them.

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Mice That Spend a Month in Space Were Able to Reproduce Once They Got Back to Earth

The International Space Station (ISS), seen here with Earth as a backdrop. Credit: NASA
The International Space Station (ISS), seen here with Earth as a backdrop. Credit: NASA

A team of Japanese researchers have used sperm from mice that spent time aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to fertilize female mice back on Earth. While previous research has shown that freeze-dried mouse sperm stored in space can experience radiation damage, these results show that the sperm from live mice may not suffer the same damage.

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Astronomers Have Found a Place With Three Supermassive Black Holes Orbiting Around Each Other

The three black holes at the center of three separate galaxies as imaged by Chandra and other telescopes. Image Credit: Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/George Mason Univ./R. Pfeifle et al.; Optical: SDSS & NASA/STScI

Astronomers have spotted three supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of three colliding galaxies a billion light years away from Earth. That alone is unusual, but the three black holes are also glowing in x-ray emissions. This is evidence that all three are also active galactic nuclei (AGN,) gobbling up material and flaring brightly.

This discovery may shed some light on the “final parsec problem,” a long-standing issue in astrophysics and black hole mergers.

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Shape-shifting Robots Like These Could Be Just What We Need to Explore Titan

A prototype of the transforming robot Shapeshifter is tested in the robotics yard at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

When it comes to space exploration, it’s robots that do most of the work. That trend will continue as we send missions onto the surfaces of worlds further and further into the Solar System. But for robots to be effective in the challenging environments we need to explore—like Saturn’s moon Titan—we need more capable robots.

A new robot NASA is developing could be the next step in robotic exploration.

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Astronauts Explore Caves on Earth, Learning the Skills They’ll Need for the Moon and Mars

ESA astronauts from five different space agencies are pictured here training in caves in Slovenia, as part of the ESA's CAVES program. Image Credit: ESA–A. Romeo

We’re accustomed to astronauts pulling off their missions without a hitch. They head up to the International Space Station for months at a time and do what they do, then come home. But upcoming missions to the surface of the Moon, and maybe Mars, present a whole new set of challenges.

One way astronauts are preparing for those challenges is by exploring the extreme environment inside caves.

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This Summer’s Asteroid Near-Miss Helped Greenlight NASA’s NEOCam Mission to Search the Skies for Killer Spacerocks

NEO asteroid
An artist's conception of an NEO asteroid orbiting the Sun. Credit: NASA/JPL.

Last July, a once-in-a-lifetime event happened. Not the good kind; the football-field-sized-asteroid near-miss kind. And that near miss is the catalyst for a renewed effort from NASA to detect more dangerous space-rocks that might threaten Earth.

Last summer’s near-miss asteroid was named 2019 OK, and it passed within about 77,000 km (48,000 miles) of Earth. It managed to slip past all of our detection methods and came within 0.19 lunar distances to Earth. In astronomical terms, that is remarkably close.

We only had 24 hours notice that the asteroid was coming, thanks to a small telescope in Brazil that spotted it. That near miss has sparked a renewed conversation on planetary defense and on NASA’s role in it.

It also left people wondering how this could happen.

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