Dr. Pamela Gay inducted into 2018 Academy of Podcasters Hall of Fame
For many years, bloggers exploring the vastness of space have delivered hundreds of articles and the best have been featured on the Carnival of Space.
Mars is 1000x Drier Than the Driest Places on Earth
Matt Williams | Universe Today
For generations, many have dreamed about the day when it would be possible to set foot on Mars – aka. “Earth’s Twin” planet. And in the past few years, multiple orbiters, landers and rovers have revealed evidence of past water on Mars, not to mention the possibility that water still exists underground. These findings have fueled the desire to send crewed missions to Mars, not to mention proposals to establish a colony there.
However, this enthusiasm may seem a little misguided when you consider all the challenges the Martian environment presents. In addition to it being very cold and subject to a lot of radiation, the surface of Mars today is also extremely dry. According to a new study led by researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center, Martian soil is roughly…
Catch Comet C/2017 S3 PanSTARRS in Outburst
David Dickinson | Universe Today
Comets are one of those great question marks in observational astronomy. Though we can plot their orbits thanks to Newton and Kepler, just how bright they’ll be and whether or not they will fizzle or fade is always a big unknown, especially if they’re a dynamic newcomer from the Oort Cloud just visiting the inner solar system for the first time.
We had just such a surprise from a cosmic visitor over the past few weeks, as comet C/2017 S3 PanSTARRS erupted twice, brightening into binocular visibility. Discovered on December 23rd 2017 during the PanSTARRS survey based on Haleakala, Hawai’i, S3 PanSTARRS is on a long-period…
Was There a Time When the Moon was Habitable?
Matt Williams | Universe Today
To put it simply, the Earth’s Moon is a dry, airless place where nothing lives. Aside from concentrations of ice that exist in permanently-shaded craters in the polar regions, the only water on the moon is believed to exist beneath the surface. What little atmosphere there is consists of elements released from the interior (some of which are radioactive) and helium-4 and neon, which are contributed by solar wind.
However, astronomers have theorized that there may have been a time when the Moon might have been inhabitable. According to a new study by an astrophysicist and an Earth and planetary scientist, the Moon may have had two early “windows” for habitability in the past. These took place roughly…
Titan Looks Cool in Infrared
Matt Williams | Universe Today
The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on September 15th, 2017, when it crashed into Saturn’s atmosphere, thus preventing any possible contamination of the system’s moons. Nevertheless, the wealth of data the probe collected during the thirteen years it spent orbiting Saturn (of the gas giant, its rings, and its many moons) continues to be analyzed by scientists – with amazing results!
Case in point, the Cassini team recently released a series of colorful images that show what Titan looks like in infrared. The images were constructing using 13 years of data that was accumulated by the spacecraft’s…
Underground Liquid Water Found on Mars!
Matt Williams | Universe Today
According to evidence gathered by multiple robotic orbiters, rovers, and landers over the course of several decades, scientists understand that Mars was once a warmer, watery place. But between 4.2 and 3.7 billion years ago, this began to change. As Mars magnetic field disappeared, the atmosphere slowly began to be stripped away by solar wind, leaving the surface the cold and dry and making it impossible for water to exist in liquid form.
While much of the planet’s water is now concentrated in the polar ice caps, scientists have speculated some of Mars’ past water could still be located underground. Thanks to a new study by a team of Italian scientists, it has now been confirmed that liquid water still exists beneath Mars’…
Life on Europa Would be Protected by Just a Few Centimeters of Ice
Matt Williams | Universe Today
Ever since the Galileo probe provided compelling evidence for the existence of a global ocean beneath the surface of Europa in the 1990s, scientists have wondered when we might be able to send another mission to this icy moon and search for possible signs of life. Most of these mission concepts call for an orbiter or lander than will study Europa’s surface, searching the icy sheet for signs of biosignatures turned up from the interior.
Unfortunately, Europa’s surface is constantly bombarded by radiation, which could alter or destroy material transported to the surface. Using data from the Galileo and Voyager 1 spacecraft, a team of scientists recently produced a map that shows how radiation varies across Europa’s surface. By following this map, future missions like NASA’s Europa Clipper will be…
CosmoQuest’s Dr. Pamela Gay inducted into 2018 Academy of Podcasters Hall of Fame
Susie Murph | CosmoQuest
The 2018 Hall of Fame inductees will be inducted on July 24 at the Academy of Podcasters’ Hall of Fame Ceremony, during the Podcast Movement Conference in Philadelphia. CosmoQuest’s own principal investigator Dr. Pamela Gay will be inducted for her work over the past decade plus with the Astronomy Cast podcast, which will be celebrating it’s 500th episode this September.
SpaceX BFR Will Make Space Based Solar Cheaper but Building Hoover Dam Scale Projects in Space Requires Big Changes
Brian Wang | Next Big Future
America needs to get serious about its spacefaring future. There needs to be an aggressive political, economic, and military strategy to help transition to space-based sustainable energy to replace fossil fuels.
A fully reusable SpaceX BFR will enable space-based solar power to be a clean energy source that is lower cost than coal.
In order to take advantage of this then hundreds of very large space solar power systems will need to be built and they will collectively generate more power than the dozens of Hoover Dams.
Gingrich and other have talked about the need to strengthen congressional support for developing dramatically improved American human space access. The Aerospace States Association needs to also push for…
Electrospray Ion Drive Scalable to Thousands of Times the Thrust of Existing Ion Drives
Brian Wang | Next Big Future
Accion Systems uses electrospray ion drive propulsion. The thrust-producing ions are supplied from their ionic liquid propellant — a safe, non-toxic liquid salt. This novel source of ions allows us to avoid the use of large ionization chambers, pressurized tanks, bulky valves, and external cathodes.
Technology is built around a thruster “chip” architecture. Each chip houses hundreds of microscopic emitters that produce beams of ions generated from our novel propellant source: ionic liquid.
They use electric fields to accelerate ions. Ions leave the thruster chips through small…
“X”-ploring the Eagle Nebula and “Pillars of Creation”
Mario Guarcello | Chandra X-Ray Observatory Blog
The Eagle Nebula, also known as Messier 16, contains the young star cluster NGC 6611. It also the site of the spectacular star-forming region known as the Pillars of Creation, which is located in the southern portion of the Eagle Nebula.
Using Chandra, researchers detected over 1,700 individual sources of X-rays in the Eagle Nebula (only a fraction are…
Chandra May Have First Evidence of a Young Star Devouring a Planet
Chandra X-Ray Observatory Blog
This artist’s illustration depicts the destruction of a young planet or planets, which scientists may have witnessed for the first time using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, as described in our latest press release. If this discovery is confirmed, it would give insight into the processes affecting the survival of infant planets.
RW Aur A is a star about 450 light years from Earth, making it relatively nearby. Since the 1930s, astronomers have studied RW Aur A and been curious about why the optical light from this star changes over time. In recent years, scientists have observed that this variability has increased, with the star dimming even more and for longer periods of time.
To investigate this mystery, a team of astronomers used Chandra to get information in the X-ray band of the electromagnetic spectrum. X-rays are generally emitted by…
Five Teams Compete to Design a 3D Printed Mars Habitat for NASA
Matt Williams | Universe Today
If and when we decide to go to Mars (and stay there), the Martian settlers will face some serious challenges. For one, the planet is extremely cold compared to Earth, averaging at about -63 °C (-82°F), which is comparable to cold night in Antarctica. On top of that, there’s the incredibly thin atmosphere that is unbreathable to humans and terrestrial creatures. Add to that the radiation, and you begin to see why settling Mars will be difficult.
But as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. And to stimulate the invention process, NASA has partnered with Bradley University of Peoria to launch the 3D-Printed Habitat Centennial Challenge competition. As part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges…
With All These New Planets Found in the Habitable Zone, Maybe it’s Time to Fine Tune the Habitable Zone
Matt Williams | Universe Today
In the past few decades, thousands of extra-solar planets have been discovered within our galaxy. As of July 28th, 2018, a total of 3,374 extra-solar planets have been confirmed in 2,814 planetary systems. While the majority of these planets have been gas giants, an increasing number have been terrestrial (i.e. rocky) in nature and were found to be orbiting within their stars’ respective habitable zones (HZ).
However, as the case of the Solar System shows, HZs do not necessary mean a planet can support life. Even though Venus and Mars are at the inner and the outer edge of the Sun’s HZ (respectively), neither is capable of supporting life on its surface. And with more potentially-habitable planets being discovered all the time, a new study suggests that it might be time to refine our definition of habitable zones.
Einstein Was Right… Again! Successful Test of General Relativity Near a Supermassive Black Hole
Matt Williams | Universe Today
In 1915, Albert Einstein published his famous Theory of General Relativity, which provided a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time. This theory gave rise to the modern theory of gravitation and revolutionized our understanding of physics. Even though a century has passed since then, scientists are still conducting experiments that confirm his theory’s predictions.
Thanks to recent observations made by a team of international astronomers (known as the GRAVITY collaboration), the effects of General Relativity have been revealed using a…
And so another Carnival passes by. Tune in to the NEXT Carnival of Space hosted by Allen Versfeld | Urban Atronomer.
