One of the great things about CubeSat designs is that they constrain the engineers who design them. Constraints are a great way to develop novel solutions to problems that might otherwise be ignored without them. As CubeSats become increasingly popular, more and more researchers are looking at how to get them to do more with less. A paper from 2020 contributes to that by designing a 3U CubeSat mission that weighs less than 4 kilograms to perform a fly-by of a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) using entirely off-the-shelf parts.
Continue reading “A 3U CubeSat Could Collect Data During an Asteroid Flyby”Could We Use An Asteroid to Shield Astronauts On Their Way to Mars?
Radiation is a primary concern for long-duration human spaceflight, such as the planned trips to Mars, which are the stated goal of organizations such as NASA and SpaceX. Shielding is the standard way to protect astronauts from radiation during those flights. However, shielding is heavy and, therefore, expensive when it is launched off the Earth. What if, instead, astronauts could hitch a ride on a giant mass of shielding already in space that will take them directly to their destination? That is the basic thought behind a paper from Victor Reshetnyk and his student at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv.
Continue reading “Could We Use An Asteroid to Shield Astronauts On Their Way to Mars?”Could Primordial Black Holes Be Hiding in Plain Sight?
Are Primordial Black Holes real? They could’ve formed in the unusual physics that dominated the Universe shortly after the Big Bang. The idea dates back to the 1960s, but so far, the lack of evidence makes them purely hypothetical.
If they do exist, a new paper suggests they may be hiding in places so unlikely that nobody ever thought to look there.
Continue reading “Could Primordial Black Holes Be Hiding in Plain Sight?”How Much Are Asteroids Really Worth?
Popular media love talking about asteroid mining using big numbers. Many articles talk about a mission to Psyche, the largest metallic asteroid in the asteroid belt, as visiting a body worth $10000000000000000000, assumedly because their authors like hitting the “0” key on their keyboards a lot. But how realistic is that valuation? And what does it actually mean? A paper funded by Astroforge, an asteroid mining start-up based in Huntington Beach, and written by a professor at the Colorado School of Mine’s Space Resources Program takes a good hard look at what metals are available on asteroids and whether they’d genuinely be worth as much as the simple calculations say that would be.
Continue reading “How Much Are Asteroids Really Worth?”The Best Way to Find Planet Nine Might Be Hundreds of Tiny Telescopes
Ever since William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, astronomers have been eager to find new planets on the outer edge of the solar system. But after the discovery of Neptune in 1846, we’ve found no other large planets. Sure, we discovered Pluto and other dwarf planets beyond it, but nothing Earth-sized or larger. If there is some planet nine, or “Planet X” lurking out there, we have yet to find it.
Continue reading “The Best Way to Find Planet Nine Might Be Hundreds of Tiny Telescopes”Did Some of Earth’s Water Come from the Solar Wind?
The source of Earth’s water is an enduring mystery that extends to exoplanets and the notion of habitability. In broad terms, Earth’s water was either part of the planet from the beginning of its formation in the solar nebula or delivered later, maybe by asteroids and comets.
New research suggests that the Sun’s relentless solar wind could’ve played a role.
Continue reading “Did Some of Earth’s Water Come from the Solar Wind?”There Might Be Water on the Surface of the Metal Asteroid Psyche
While a NASA probe heads for an asteroid known as Psyche, telescopes have been probing it to prepare for the arrival. Data from the James Webb Space Telescope has found something quite unexpected on the surface – hydrated molecules and maybe even water! The origin of the water is cause for much speculation, maybe it came from under the surface or from chemical interactions with the solar wind!
Continue reading “There Might Be Water on the Surface of the Metal Asteroid Psyche”Swarming Satellites Could Autonomous Characterize an Asteroid
An asteroid’s size, shape, and rotational speed are clues to its internal properties and potential resources for mining operations. However, of the more than 20,000 near-Earth asteroids currently known, only a tiny fraction have been sufficiently characterized to estimate those three properties accurately. That is essentially a resource constraint – there aren’t enough dedicated telescopes on Earth to keep track of all the asteroids for long enough to characterize them, and deep space resources, such as the Deep Space Network required for communications outside Earth’s orbit, are already overutilized by other missions. Enter the Autonomous Nanosatellite Swarming (ANS) mission concept, developed by Dr. Simone D’Amico and his colleagues at Stanford’s Space Rendezvous Laboratory.
Continue reading “Swarming Satellites Could Autonomous Characterize an Asteroid”Swarms of Orbiting Sensors Could Map An Asteroid’s Surface
It seems like every month, a new story appears announcing the discovery of thousands of new asteroids. Tracking these small body objects from ground and even space-based telescopes helps follow their overall trajectory. But understanding what they’re made of is much more difficult using such “remote sensing” techniques. To do so, plenty of projects get more up close and personal with the asteroid itself, including one from Dr. Sigrid Elschot and her colleagues from Stanford, which was supported by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts back in 2018. It uses an advanced suite of plasma sensors to detect an asteroid’s surface composition by utilizing a unique phenomenon – meteoroid impacts.
Continue reading “Swarms of Orbiting Sensors Could Map An Asteroid’s Surface”Dinkinesh's Moonlet is Only 2-3 Million Years Old
Last November, NASA’s Lucy mission conducted a flyby of the asteroid Dinkinish, one of the Main Belt asteroids it will investigate as it makes its way to Jupiter. In the process, the spacecraft spotted a small moonlet orbiting the larger asteroid, now named Selam (aka. “Lucy’s baby”). The moonlet’s name, an Ethiopian name that means “peace,” pays homage to the ancient human remains dubbed “Lucy” (or Dinkinish) that were unearthed in Ethiopia in 1974. Using novel statistical calculations based on how the two bodies orbit each other, a Cornell-led research team estimates that the moonlet is only 2-3 million years old.
Continue reading “Dinkinesh's Moonlet is Only 2-3 Million Years Old”