SPACE NEWS
AI-powered lasers could zap space debris away from collision courses
Sharmila Kuthunur
Wed, October 18, 2023
A graphic showing two red lasers pointing at dangerous debris floating around in space. The planet Earth is also part of the graphic. .
Low-Earth orbit is teeming with space junk. This increasingly cluttered area of space could benefit from a network of lasers that nudge objects at risk of colliding with satellites or spacecraft into safer orbits, according to new research.
While space debris has been a concern for decades, efforts to address this junk have only recently started receiving serious investment. The latest early-stage idea is to mount artificial intelligence-powered lasers on satellites or other dedicated platforms and have them monitor space debris objects. When an object is suspected to be on a collision course with a valuable space asset like the International Space Station (ISS) or a satellite, the lasers could, in theory, nudge that object into a safer orbit.
"Our goal is to develop a network of reconfigurable space-based lasers, along with a suite of algorithms," Hang Woon Lee, the director of Space Systems Operations Research Laboratory at West Virginia University who is leading the new project, said in a statement. "Those algorithms will be the enabling technology that make such a network possible and maximize its benefits."
Related: Orbiting debris trackers could be a game changer in space junk monitoring
NASA is funding Lee's idea with $200,000 across three years. Although the plan is still in its infancy, its ultimate goal is to develop a system capable of making real-time decisions about which space objects to target and to ensure the new orbits are actually safe from further collisions. Using multiple lasers is crucial to efficiently alter the object's trajectory "in a way that would be impossible with a single laser," Lee said in the same statement.
Measuring the amount of risk from space debris is quite difficult, as not every object in orbit is capable of being tracked. Humans have flown over 15,000 satellites since the 1950s, of which only about 4,000 are operational satellites, according to 2022 estimates. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), around 34,600 space debris fragments are currently tracked by radar systems on Earth, but another 130 million pieces could be in orbit that are too small to be accurately detected or tracked.
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So unlike other space debris removal ideas, a coordinated network of lasers in space could be particularly useful in tackling a space object of any size, researchers say. In March, a NASA report found space-based lasers are advantageous compared to ground-based ones because they don't need to pass through Earth's atmosphere, which could deform the beams. Being in space, the beam can more easily pulse the target object into favored orbits, according to the report.
Such AI-powered systems are also beneficial in terms of cost and could eventually be used to track space objects ahead of launches, for example. Last week, Amazon delayed the launch of its first two prototype internet satellites by six minutes to avoid colliding with a space object. Back in July, India had delayed launching its historic Chandrayaan-3 moon mission by three seconds for the same reason.
Sharmila Kuthunur
Wed, October 18, 2023
A graphic showing two red lasers pointing at dangerous debris floating around in space. The planet Earth is also part of the graphic. .
Low-Earth orbit is teeming with space junk. This increasingly cluttered area of space could benefit from a network of lasers that nudge objects at risk of colliding with satellites or spacecraft into safer orbits, according to new research.
While space debris has been a concern for decades, efforts to address this junk have only recently started receiving serious investment. The latest early-stage idea is to mount artificial intelligence-powered lasers on satellites or other dedicated platforms and have them monitor space debris objects. When an object is suspected to be on a collision course with a valuable space asset like the International Space Station (ISS) or a satellite, the lasers could, in theory, nudge that object into a safer orbit.
"Our goal is to develop a network of reconfigurable space-based lasers, along with a suite of algorithms," Hang Woon Lee, the director of Space Systems Operations Research Laboratory at West Virginia University who is leading the new project, said in a statement. "Those algorithms will be the enabling technology that make such a network possible and maximize its benefits."
Related: Orbiting debris trackers could be a game changer in space junk monitoring
NASA is funding Lee's idea with $200,000 across three years. Although the plan is still in its infancy, its ultimate goal is to develop a system capable of making real-time decisions about which space objects to target and to ensure the new orbits are actually safe from further collisions. Using multiple lasers is crucial to efficiently alter the object's trajectory "in a way that would be impossible with a single laser," Lee said in the same statement.
Measuring the amount of risk from space debris is quite difficult, as not every object in orbit is capable of being tracked. Humans have flown over 15,000 satellites since the 1950s, of which only about 4,000 are operational satellites, according to 2022 estimates. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), around 34,600 space debris fragments are currently tracked by radar systems on Earth, but another 130 million pieces could be in orbit that are too small to be accurately detected or tracked.
Related Stories:
— Taking out the trash: Here's how private companies could be vital for space debris removal
— Clearspace-1 space debris cleanup target in orbit just got struck by space debris
So unlike other space debris removal ideas, a coordinated network of lasers in space could be particularly useful in tackling a space object of any size, researchers say. In March, a NASA report found space-based lasers are advantageous compared to ground-based ones because they don't need to pass through Earth's atmosphere, which could deform the beams. Being in space, the beam can more easily pulse the target object into favored orbits, according to the report.
Such AI-powered systems are also beneficial in terms of cost and could eventually be used to track space objects ahead of launches, for example. Last week, Amazon delayed the launch of its first two prototype internet satellites by six minutes to avoid colliding with a space object. Back in July, India had delayed launching its historic Chandrayaan-3 moon mission by three seconds for the same reason.
Snake-like magnetic fields on the sun bring scientists closer to solving a major solar mystery
Robert Lea
Thu, October 19, 2023
An image of the sun next to a close-up of snake-like structures in our star's magnetic field.
Solar scientists could be one step closer to solving a lingering mystery about the sun: why its outer atmosphere, called the corona, is so much hotter than the layers below it.
Using Earth's most powerful solar telescope, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Hawai'i, an international team of scientists observed the magnetic field of the sun in unprecedented detail. They found complex snake-like patterns of energy in the magnetic field in the sun's lower atmosphere, the chromosphere, that could be driving energy to the outer layers of our star's atmosphere.
"Thanks to this research, we may be one step closer to comprehending the sun, our life-giving star," University of Sheffield professor and research co-investigator Robertus Erdelyi said in a statement.
Related: Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter team up to tackle 65-year-old sun mystery
The so-called coronal heating problem has puzzled researchers for decades. The mystery is this: The diffuse cloud of charged atoms that makes up the corona can reach temperatures of over 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius), while the sun's surface , called the photosphere, is a relatively balmy at 10,000 degrees F or so (6,000 degrees Celsius).
This defies stellar models, because stars' heat source is the nuclear fusion at their core; thus, temperatures should increase moving toward the heart of a star. The layers of the sun seem to obey this rule until we get to the corona, meaning there must be some unknown mechanism heating the sun's outer atmosphere. And these snake-like magnetic phenomena could fit the bill.
"An accurate insight into the magnetic field geometry is fundamental for the understanding of the various energetic phenomena that drive the dynamics of the plasma in the solar atmosphere," Erdelyi said. "That includes the much sought-after magnetic behavior that may ultimately be responsible for energizing the solar plasma to temperatures of millions of [degrees]."
The key to the coronal heating mystery could dwell in quiet regions of the sun
Previous attempts to solve the coronal heating problem have focused on active regions of the sun, particularly sunspots, huge dark patches on the sun's face that are highly magnetic and pass energy among the outer layers of the star. But for the new study, the team looked away from sunspots and focused on quieter regions of the sun.
These quiet areas of the photosphere are covered by convective cells called granules that are host to weaker but more dynamic magnetic fields than found around sunspots. Previous observations have indicated that these magnetic fields are organized in small loops, but the study team found a more complicated underlying pattern for the first time, with the orientation of these magnetic fields displaying a serpentine variation.
RELATED STORIES:
— Scientists may finally know why the sun's outer atmosphere is so freakishly hot
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— Scientists may have just cracked the sun's greatest mystery
"The more complex the small-scale variations in magnetic-field direction, the more plausible it is that energy is being released through a process we call magnetic reconnection — when two magnetic fields pointing in opposite directions interact and release energy that contributes to atmospheric heating," said research co-investigator Michail Mathioudakis, of Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland.
"We have used the most powerful solar optical telescope in the world to reveal the most complex magnetic-field orientations ever seen at the smallest scales," Mathioudakis added. "This brings us closer to understanding one of the biggest conundrums in solar research."
The team's research was published earlier this month in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Robert Lea
Thu, October 19, 2023
An image of the sun next to a close-up of snake-like structures in our star's magnetic field.
Solar scientists could be one step closer to solving a lingering mystery about the sun: why its outer atmosphere, called the corona, is so much hotter than the layers below it.
Using Earth's most powerful solar telescope, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Hawai'i, an international team of scientists observed the magnetic field of the sun in unprecedented detail. They found complex snake-like patterns of energy in the magnetic field in the sun's lower atmosphere, the chromosphere, that could be driving energy to the outer layers of our star's atmosphere.
"Thanks to this research, we may be one step closer to comprehending the sun, our life-giving star," University of Sheffield professor and research co-investigator Robertus Erdelyi said in a statement.
Related: Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter team up to tackle 65-year-old sun mystery
The so-called coronal heating problem has puzzled researchers for decades. The mystery is this: The diffuse cloud of charged atoms that makes up the corona can reach temperatures of over 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius), while the sun's surface , called the photosphere, is a relatively balmy at 10,000 degrees F or so (6,000 degrees Celsius).
This defies stellar models, because stars' heat source is the nuclear fusion at their core; thus, temperatures should increase moving toward the heart of a star. The layers of the sun seem to obey this rule until we get to the corona, meaning there must be some unknown mechanism heating the sun's outer atmosphere. And these snake-like magnetic phenomena could fit the bill.
"An accurate insight into the magnetic field geometry is fundamental for the understanding of the various energetic phenomena that drive the dynamics of the plasma in the solar atmosphere," Erdelyi said. "That includes the much sought-after magnetic behavior that may ultimately be responsible for energizing the solar plasma to temperatures of millions of [degrees]."
The key to the coronal heating mystery could dwell in quiet regions of the sun
Previous attempts to solve the coronal heating problem have focused on active regions of the sun, particularly sunspots, huge dark patches on the sun's face that are highly magnetic and pass energy among the outer layers of the star. But for the new study, the team looked away from sunspots and focused on quieter regions of the sun.
These quiet areas of the photosphere are covered by convective cells called granules that are host to weaker but more dynamic magnetic fields than found around sunspots. Previous observations have indicated that these magnetic fields are organized in small loops, but the study team found a more complicated underlying pattern for the first time, with the orientation of these magnetic fields displaying a serpentine variation.
RELATED STORIES:
— Scientists may finally know why the sun's outer atmosphere is so freakishly hot
— Earth's sun: Facts about the sun's age, size and history
— Scientists may have just cracked the sun's greatest mystery
"The more complex the small-scale variations in magnetic-field direction, the more plausible it is that energy is being released through a process we call magnetic reconnection — when two magnetic fields pointing in opposite directions interact and release energy that contributes to atmospheric heating," said research co-investigator Michail Mathioudakis, of Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland.
"We have used the most powerful solar optical telescope in the world to reveal the most complex magnetic-field orientations ever seen at the smallest scales," Mathioudakis added. "This brings us closer to understanding one of the biggest conundrums in solar research."
The team's research was published earlier this month in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
NASA tests new kind of Artemis moon-rocket engine in dramatic 'hot fire' test (video)
Elizabeth Howell
Thu, October 19, 2023
An industrial construct stands amidst a green forest with smoke billowing out into a plume
Live footage from NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi showed smoke and fire successfully flowing out of the RS-25 for 550 seconds (more than nine minutes), which was the full planned duration of Wednesday's test. The test included bringing the power up to the level required during a normal SLS launch. The duration was slightly longer than a nominal SLS core-stage burn, which lasts 500 seconds.
The tests will aid the certification of SLS missions starting with Artemis 5, which will fly no earlier than 2029 but may push into the 2030s depending on the progress of earlier missions. Artemis 2 will bring four astronauts around the moon in 2024, while Artemis 3 aims to put astronauts down near the lunar south pole in late 2025 or 2026, provided SpaceX's Starship landing system is ready in time. Artemis 4 will attempt another landing in 2028.
The lead SLS engine contractor is Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris Technologies company, while Boeing is building the SLS.
The engines aren't the only thing being tested for future missions. For example, in September, engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama finished a subscale booster motor test. SLS uses twin solid-rocket boosters to provide additional thrust during liftoff. The test is examining an alternate booster design for missions after Artemis 8.
Construction of NASA’s Artemis Moon Rockets on Track Despite Welding Issue
Elizabeth Howell
Thu, October 19, 2023
An industrial construct stands amidst a green forest with smoke billowing out into a plume
A full duration test of the RS-25 certification engine was conducted at NASA's Stennis Space Center on October 17, 2023.
NASA kicked off the final certification series for its Artemis moon-rocket engines with a dramatic "hot fire" test this week.
NASA will begin using repurposed RS-25 space shuttle engines to fly astronauts to the moon with its Artemis program. Then the new hotfire series, starting Wednesday (Oct. 17), aims to continue certifying an updated RS-25 line of engines that will start flying on the Artemis 5 mission late in the 2020s. Four RS-25s power the core stage of each Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, a key piece of Artemis hardware.
The RS-25 developmental design for engine E0525 passed its first hotfire on Wednesday, kicking off an ambitious series of 12 tests planned through 2024. "The test series will collect data on the performance of several new key engine components, including a nozzle, hydraulic actuators, flex ducts and turbopumps," NASA officials wrote in an Oct. 3 update.
Each hotfire series puts a different RS-25 engine through its paces; another RS-25 was certified in June following its own set of 12 tests.
Related: Watch NASA test fire new and improved Artemis moon rocket engine (video)
NASA kicked off the final certification series for its Artemis moon-rocket engines with a dramatic "hot fire" test this week.
NASA will begin using repurposed RS-25 space shuttle engines to fly astronauts to the moon with its Artemis program. Then the new hotfire series, starting Wednesday (Oct. 17), aims to continue certifying an updated RS-25 line of engines that will start flying on the Artemis 5 mission late in the 2020s. Four RS-25s power the core stage of each Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, a key piece of Artemis hardware.
The RS-25 developmental design for engine E0525 passed its first hotfire on Wednesday, kicking off an ambitious series of 12 tests planned through 2024. "The test series will collect data on the performance of several new key engine components, including a nozzle, hydraulic actuators, flex ducts and turbopumps," NASA officials wrote in an Oct. 3 update.
Each hotfire series puts a different RS-25 engine through its paces; another RS-25 was certified in June following its own set of 12 tests.
Related: Watch NASA test fire new and improved Artemis moon rocket engine (video)
Live footage from NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi showed smoke and fire successfully flowing out of the RS-25 for 550 seconds (more than nine minutes), which was the full planned duration of Wednesday's test. The test included bringing the power up to the level required during a normal SLS launch. The duration was slightly longer than a nominal SLS core-stage burn, which lasts 500 seconds.
The tests will aid the certification of SLS missions starting with Artemis 5, which will fly no earlier than 2029 but may push into the 2030s depending on the progress of earlier missions. Artemis 2 will bring four astronauts around the moon in 2024, while Artemis 3 aims to put astronauts down near the lunar south pole in late 2025 or 2026, provided SpaceX's Starship landing system is ready in time. Artemis 4 will attempt another landing in 2028.
The lead SLS engine contractor is Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris Technologies company, while Boeing is building the SLS.
The engines aren't the only thing being tested for future missions. For example, in September, engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama finished a subscale booster motor test. SLS uses twin solid-rocket boosters to provide additional thrust during liftoff. The test is examining an alternate booster design for missions after Artemis 8.
Construction of NASA’s Artemis Moon Rockets on Track Despite Welding Issue
George Dvorsky
Thu, October 19, 2023
All four RS-25 engines mounted on the SLS core stage for NASA’s Artemis 2.
In recent updates on NASA’s Artemis program, all four core stage engines have been installed onto the booster of the second Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, but a production issue has temporarily slowed work on the third.
NASA’s ambitious Artemis program, aimed at sending astronauts back to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo era, appears to be ticking along nicely. The installation of all four RS-25 core stage engines onto Core Stage-2 (for use in Artemis 2) marks a major milestone, though production on Core Stage-3 (Artemis 3) has faced a minor setback due to a welding issue. Meanwhile, looking ahead to Artemis 5 and beyond, the revamped RS-25 rocket engines have undergone their inaugural certification test.
It hasn’t been all smooth sailing, however. An unspecified welding challenge has arisen at the Michoud Assembly Facility, as reported by NASASpaceFlight. This snafu has delayed the completion of the liquid oxygen (LOX) tank intended for Core Stage-3, which is crucial for the Artemis 3 mission. But according to Jonathan Looser from NASA, a resolution appears to be at hand. Core Stage-2 is expected to be completed later this year, while Core Stage-3 is slated for late 2024 or early 2025, aligning with NASA’s timeline for the second and third Artemis missions. This is despite some supply chain issues seen across the industry, Looser told NASASpaceFlight.
The Artemis 2 mission is earmarked for late 2024 or early 2025, and its goal is to transport four astronauts on a 10-day mission around the Moon. This journey, if successful, will serve as a prelude to the Artemis 3 mission. Scheduled for 2025 or 2026, Artemis 3 will attempt to land astronauts on the lunar surface—a feat not attempted since 1972.
NASA ran a full duration, 550-second hot fire test of the RS-25 certification engine on October 17.
In yet another Artemis update, the revamped RS-25 engine is also showing promise. It was recently tested for 550 seconds at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, exceeding the required duration by 50 seconds. This test is the first of 12 planned through 2024, steered by Aerojet Rocketdyne. The aim is to gauge the efficacy of new engine components, with techniques like 3D printing enhancing the production process. These RS-25 engines are fundamental for powering the SLS rocket during its lunar missions.
These updates remind us that Artemis 1, carried out from November 16 to December 11, 2022, was just the beginning, but as the space agency moves forward, it’s having to confront some intense criticisms. NASA’s inspector general has cast doubt on the project’s sustainability, labeling the fully expendable SLS Moon rocket’s hefty price tag of $4.2 billion per launch as unaffordable. Moreover, its approach to tackle escalating costs has been met with skepticism, deemed by the inspector general as insufficient in addressing the financial challenges ahead.
For more spaceflight in your life, follow us on X (formerly Twitter) and bookmark Gizmodo’s dedicated Spaceflight page.
Thu, October 19, 2023
All four RS-25 engines mounted on the SLS core stage for NASA’s Artemis 2.
In recent updates on NASA’s Artemis program, all four core stage engines have been installed onto the booster of the second Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, but a production issue has temporarily slowed work on the third.
NASA’s ambitious Artemis program, aimed at sending astronauts back to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo era, appears to be ticking along nicely. The installation of all four RS-25 core stage engines onto Core Stage-2 (for use in Artemis 2) marks a major milestone, though production on Core Stage-3 (Artemis 3) has faced a minor setback due to a welding issue. Meanwhile, looking ahead to Artemis 5 and beyond, the revamped RS-25 rocket engines have undergone their inaugural certification test.
It hasn’t been all smooth sailing, however. An unspecified welding challenge has arisen at the Michoud Assembly Facility, as reported by NASASpaceFlight. This snafu has delayed the completion of the liquid oxygen (LOX) tank intended for Core Stage-3, which is crucial for the Artemis 3 mission. But according to Jonathan Looser from NASA, a resolution appears to be at hand. Core Stage-2 is expected to be completed later this year, while Core Stage-3 is slated for late 2024 or early 2025, aligning with NASA’s timeline for the second and third Artemis missions. This is despite some supply chain issues seen across the industry, Looser told NASASpaceFlight.
The Artemis 2 mission is earmarked for late 2024 or early 2025, and its goal is to transport four astronauts on a 10-day mission around the Moon. This journey, if successful, will serve as a prelude to the Artemis 3 mission. Scheduled for 2025 or 2026, Artemis 3 will attempt to land astronauts on the lunar surface—a feat not attempted since 1972.
NASA ran a full duration, 550-second hot fire test of the RS-25 certification engine on October 17.
In yet another Artemis update, the revamped RS-25 engine is also showing promise. It was recently tested for 550 seconds at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, exceeding the required duration by 50 seconds. This test is the first of 12 planned through 2024, steered by Aerojet Rocketdyne. The aim is to gauge the efficacy of new engine components, with techniques like 3D printing enhancing the production process. These RS-25 engines are fundamental for powering the SLS rocket during its lunar missions.
These updates remind us that Artemis 1, carried out from November 16 to December 11, 2022, was just the beginning, but as the space agency moves forward, it’s having to confront some intense criticisms. NASA’s inspector general has cast doubt on the project’s sustainability, labeling the fully expendable SLS Moon rocket’s hefty price tag of $4.2 billion per launch as unaffordable. Moreover, its approach to tackle escalating costs has been met with skepticism, deemed by the inspector general as insufficient in addressing the financial challenges ahead.
For more spaceflight in your life, follow us on X (formerly Twitter) and bookmark Gizmodo’s dedicated Spaceflight page.
Japan provides up to $80 million subsidy to moonshot startup ispace
Kantaro KomiyaUpdated Thu, October 19, 2023
FILE PHOTO: A model of the lander in HAKUTO-R lunar exploration program by "ispace" is pictured at a venue to monitor its landing on the Moon, in Tokyo
By Kantaro Komiya
TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan will provide a subsidy of up to 12 billion yen ($80 million) to moon exploration startup ispace as part of a grant programme for innovative ventures, industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said on Friday.
Tokyo-based ispace aims to launch its second moon lander next year and start a NASA-sponsored moonshot in 2026, following its failed first lunar landing attempt in April this year.
The Japanese government's grant will be used to develop a new spacecraft, tentatively called "Series 3", which aims to carry more than 100-kg loads to the moon's surface by 2027, ispace said in a corporate disclosure.
The grant would not have any material impact on the company's near-term earnings forecast since it relates to a future mission, ispace added. The company has expected to book a net loss of 4.5 billion yen in the current financial period ending in March 2024.
($1 = 149.8700 yen)
(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Robert Birsel)
India wants to land astronauts on the moon in 2040
Sharmila Kuthunur
Wed, October 18, 2023
Chandrayaan 3 launch.
Fresh off its first-ever successful robotic moon landing, India aims to put an astronaut on the lunar surface by 2040 and build an Earth-orbiting space station by 2035, the nation's government said on Tuesday (Oct. 17).
On Aug. 23, India became just the fourth nation ever to soft-land a spacecraft — its Chandrayaan-3 lander-rover duo — on the surface of the moon. In a recent meeting with the Indian government department that manages the country's space program, Prime Minister Narendra Modi "directed that India should now aim for new and ambitious goals," according to an official statement.
India's future moon exploration efforts will include a series of additional robotic Chandrayaan missions, a new launch pad and a heavy-lift launch vehicle, the statement added.
Related: India to launch test flight on Oct. 21 for future Gaganyaan astronaut mission
India's delayed Gaganyaan human spaceflight program, now aiming to fly three astronauts to low Earth orbit in 2025, will feature 20 major tests, including three uncrewed missions to test the launch vehicle over the course of the remainder of this year and all of next.
As part of this testing process, the first high-altitude abort test meant to validate the crew escape system will be carried out this Saturday (Oct. 21), officials announced in the same statement. Launching from the country's spaceport in Sriharikota, the Test Vehicle Demonstration 1 (TV-D1) mission will also assess whether drogue parachutes can effectively stabilize the spacecraft and decelerate it during reentry to Earth's atmosphere.
By the middle of the 2030s, India hopes to have a 20-ton space station in a fixed orbit 248 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, with capabilities to host astronauts for 15 to 20 days at a time, K. Sivan, former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has previously said.
Further down the pipeline of missions, ISRO is planning a Venus orbiter called Shukrayaan-1 to study the surface of that hellishly hot planet. The payloads for that mission are currently being developed, current ISRO chairman S. Somanath had said last month.
— India's Chandrayaan-3 moon lander spotted from lunar orbit (photo)
— NASA's Artemis program: Everything you need to know
— Chandrayaan-3: A complete guide to India's third mission to the moon
A second orbiter mission to Mars is also on the books, according to the latest statement. The nation's first, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), was launched in 2013 and studied the Red Planet's atmosphere for eight years before it lost contact with Earth in April 2022.
The follow-up mission, Mars Orbiter Mission 2 or MOM 2, will likely include cameras to study the planet's crust and may also include a lander, although many of the mission plans are yet to be finalized.
India isn't the only nation aiming to send people to the moon. The United States is targeting late 2025 for the launch of Artemis 3, its first crewed lunar landing mission since the Apollo program 50 years ago. Artemis 3 will place astronauts in one of the 13 potential landing regions near the lunar south pole. China is eyeing some of these same spots for its own crewed lunar touchdown, which it aims to pull off before the end of this decade.
India wants to build its own space station and send astronauts to the moon by 2040
The country is planning its first crewed mission in 2025 ahead of embarking on its more ambitious goals.
Cheyenne MacDonald
·Weekend Editor
Thu, October 19, 2023
R. SATISH BABU via Getty Images
The country is planning its first crewed mission in 2025 ahead of embarking on its more ambitious goals.
Cheyenne MacDonald
·Weekend Editor
Thu, October 19, 2023
R. SATISH BABU via Getty Images
India has announced plans to build its own space station by 2035, and carry out a human mission to the moon five years later. The country has ramped up its space program in recent years, becoming the first in the world to successfully land a spacecraft near the lunar south pole just this past August. Shortly after, in September, it launched a probe to study the sun. But, human spaceflight is new territory. Its upcoming Gaganyaan mission will be the first time India has sent astronauts to space using its own capabilities, and it’s now gearing up to start testing the vehicles that will support a human crew.
In a meeting led by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the country’s space agency laid out a plan to achieve its first crewed launch in 2025 ahead of its eventual moon mission. It has a demonstration flight of its Crew Escape System Test Vehicle currently set for Oct 21, and will later send its launch vehicle on three test missions without humans on board. All in all, India is planning around 20 tests in the leadup to sending astronauts to space.
The country says it’s building a new launch pad and a next generation launch vehicle to make its admittedly “ambitious” other goals possible. In addition to establishing the Bharatiya Antariksha Station — or the Indian Space Station — by 2035 and launching a crewed mission to the moon by 2040, India also has its sights on interplanetary missions. Modi expressed interest in the development of a Venus orbiter and a Mars lander, too.
Could Neptune's largest moon swing a spacecraft into the planet's orbit?
Paul Sutter
Thu, October 19, 2023
An artist's depiction of Neptune and its largest moon, Triton.
The only spacecraft to visit Neptune was the Voyager 2 probe, which spent just a few precious minutes in the vicinity of this mysterious world during its historic flyby tour of the outer solar system in the 1980s. It's been over 40 years since that mission launched. And while space agencies around the world have developed dozens of probes, landers and rovers in the decades since, none have visited the solar system's outermost planet, let alone orbit it.
Planetary scientists have long been interested in a return visit to Neptune, but the planet is so distant that an orbiter or lander mission is next to impossible. While the New Horizons spacecraft has visited the dwarf planet Pluto, that was a brief fly-by mission. So far, the most distant orbiter that we've sent has been to Saturn.
Neptune is so far away that it's difficult to fathom: It sits roughly 30 times farther from the sun than Earth does. To put that into context, Jupiter is only five times farther from the sun than Earth is. It takes years for an orbiter to reach Jupiter, and Neptune is five times farther away. While Voyager 2 took 12 years to fly past Neptune, it zoomed by without stopping, quite a very different mission profile. New Horizons flew past Neptune and its moon Triton in 2014 from a distance of about 2.45 billion miles (3.96 billion kilometers), but also just zoomed past the planet. Placing a spacecraft in orbit around the planet is quite a different matter, and remains infeasible with current technologies.
Related: Neptune is cooling down, and scientists don't know why
One problem with a return mission to Neptune is that a flyby focused solely on that world does not provide significant bang for the buck. Without the lucky alignment available to missions in the 1970s and '80s, we'd have to spend even more fuel to send a probe in that direction, and we wouldn't get that much more science than we did decades ago.
The next logical step after a successful flyby mission is an orbiter, but the extreme distance to Neptune poses significant challenges. We have no clear way to haul a large enough orbiter to the Neptune system, pack enough fuel to allow it to slow down and do it all in a reasonably short amount of time.
However, researchers have shared a radical new idea for how to overcome these challenges: Use the thin atmosphere of Triton, Neptune's largest moon, to capture a spacecraft.
In a paper appearing in the preprint database arXiv, the researchers pointed out that in 2022, NASA successfully completed the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID). The goal of that program was to develop an inflatable shield to protect a spacecraft as it descended through Earth's atmosphere and slow the craft so it didn't crash upon landing.
The researchers proposed to aim a future Neptune orbiter at Triton and use a LOFTID-like apparatus, known as an aeroshell, to slow the spacecraft. They found that the atmosphere of Triton, despite having less than 1/70,000 the air pressure of Earth's atmosphere, could sufficiently slow a spacecraft and allow it to enter into a captured orbit around Neptune. Additionally, they could change the angle of the aeroshell to tweak the orbiter's alignment and fine-tune the course to get it into the perfect orbit.
To get it right, the orbiter would have to get as low as 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the surface of Triton. That's not much higher than a typical intercontinental flight, but because Triton doesn't have any seriously large mountain ranges (the tallest known peaks are barely a kilometer tall), there's very little risk of a catastrophic collision with the surface.
Related Stories:
—A mission to Uranus and Neptune could act as massive gravitational-wave detector
—Next stop, Triton? Here's two wild ideas to explore Neptune's weirdest moon
—These are the space missions to watch in 2023 with new rockets, moon landings, an asteroid trip and more
Similar ideas have been proposed for using an aeroshell to insert an orbiter around Saturn using its moon Titan, but Titan has a much thicker atmosphere, making the job a lot easier. Although Triton's atmosphere is incredibly thin, the moon sits relatively far away from Neptune, meaning the spacecraft would not be traveling as quickly, and would not have to reduce its speed as much, to be captured.
The researchers estimate that, using this aeroshell technique, a mission to Neptune could take as little as 15 years, which is far shorter than any other current mission ideas would allow. With current approaches, an orbiter would need to pack so much fuel for use in slowing itself down at Neptune that it would never be able to reach a high velocity, making the trip extremely long.
And there's a bonus to the plan: It would give us an up-close view of Triton, which is one of the strangest objects in the solar system and likely a captured Kuiper Belt object. We'd get to see this odd world from a vantage point of only a few kilometers above the ground, thus delivering some great extra science.
Paul Sutter
Thu, October 19, 2023
An artist's depiction of Neptune and its largest moon, Triton.
The only spacecraft to visit Neptune was the Voyager 2 probe, which spent just a few precious minutes in the vicinity of this mysterious world during its historic flyby tour of the outer solar system in the 1980s. It's been over 40 years since that mission launched. And while space agencies around the world have developed dozens of probes, landers and rovers in the decades since, none have visited the solar system's outermost planet, let alone orbit it.
Planetary scientists have long been interested in a return visit to Neptune, but the planet is so distant that an orbiter or lander mission is next to impossible. While the New Horizons spacecraft has visited the dwarf planet Pluto, that was a brief fly-by mission. So far, the most distant orbiter that we've sent has been to Saturn.
Neptune is so far away that it's difficult to fathom: It sits roughly 30 times farther from the sun than Earth does. To put that into context, Jupiter is only five times farther from the sun than Earth is. It takes years for an orbiter to reach Jupiter, and Neptune is five times farther away. While Voyager 2 took 12 years to fly past Neptune, it zoomed by without stopping, quite a very different mission profile. New Horizons flew past Neptune and its moon Triton in 2014 from a distance of about 2.45 billion miles (3.96 billion kilometers), but also just zoomed past the planet. Placing a spacecraft in orbit around the planet is quite a different matter, and remains infeasible with current technologies.
Related: Neptune is cooling down, and scientists don't know why
One problem with a return mission to Neptune is that a flyby focused solely on that world does not provide significant bang for the buck. Without the lucky alignment available to missions in the 1970s and '80s, we'd have to spend even more fuel to send a probe in that direction, and we wouldn't get that much more science than we did decades ago.
The next logical step after a successful flyby mission is an orbiter, but the extreme distance to Neptune poses significant challenges. We have no clear way to haul a large enough orbiter to the Neptune system, pack enough fuel to allow it to slow down and do it all in a reasonably short amount of time.
However, researchers have shared a radical new idea for how to overcome these challenges: Use the thin atmosphere of Triton, Neptune's largest moon, to capture a spacecraft.
In a paper appearing in the preprint database arXiv, the researchers pointed out that in 2022, NASA successfully completed the Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID). The goal of that program was to develop an inflatable shield to protect a spacecraft as it descended through Earth's atmosphere and slow the craft so it didn't crash upon landing.
The researchers proposed to aim a future Neptune orbiter at Triton and use a LOFTID-like apparatus, known as an aeroshell, to slow the spacecraft. They found that the atmosphere of Triton, despite having less than 1/70,000 the air pressure of Earth's atmosphere, could sufficiently slow a spacecraft and allow it to enter into a captured orbit around Neptune. Additionally, they could change the angle of the aeroshell to tweak the orbiter's alignment and fine-tune the course to get it into the perfect orbit.
To get it right, the orbiter would have to get as low as 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the surface of Triton. That's not much higher than a typical intercontinental flight, but because Triton doesn't have any seriously large mountain ranges (the tallest known peaks are barely a kilometer tall), there's very little risk of a catastrophic collision with the surface.
Related Stories:
—A mission to Uranus and Neptune could act as massive gravitational-wave detector
—Next stop, Triton? Here's two wild ideas to explore Neptune's weirdest moon
—These are the space missions to watch in 2023 with new rockets, moon landings, an asteroid trip and more
Similar ideas have been proposed for using an aeroshell to insert an orbiter around Saturn using its moon Titan, but Titan has a much thicker atmosphere, making the job a lot easier. Although Triton's atmosphere is incredibly thin, the moon sits relatively far away from Neptune, meaning the spacecraft would not be traveling as quickly, and would not have to reduce its speed as much, to be captured.
The researchers estimate that, using this aeroshell technique, a mission to Neptune could take as little as 15 years, which is far shorter than any other current mission ideas would allow. With current approaches, an orbiter would need to pack so much fuel for use in slowing itself down at Neptune that it would never be able to reach a high velocity, making the trip extremely long.
And there's a bonus to the plan: It would give us an up-close view of Triton, which is one of the strangest objects in the solar system and likely a captured Kuiper Belt object. We'd get to see this odd world from a vantage point of only a few kilometers above the ground, thus delivering some great extra science.
NASA's Juno Reveals Hellish Landscape of Jupiter's Moon Io in Latest Flyby
Passant Rabie
Thu, October 19, 2023
Jupiter’s Moon Io in the latest picture taken by the Juno spacecraft.
After years of capturing the massive world of Jupiter, the Juno spacecraft has recently turned its attention to its Jovian moons. During a close flyby of Jupiter’s spookiest moon, Juno imaged the charred surface of a volcanic world caught in a haunting gravitational tug.
This week, NASA shared new images taken by the Juno spacecraft during its flyby of Jupiter’s moon Io on October 15. The images reveal an ominous view of the most volcanically active world in the solar system, which has clearly been through a lot over the past 4.5 billion years.
This is perhaps the clearest view we’ve seen of Io as the Juno spacecraft inches its way closer to the moon. The surface of the moon is mangled by hundreds of volcanoes and lakes of molten silicate lava, which is why the moon appears burnt as though it had been through enormous torment.
The moon is wedged between Jupiter’s immense gravitational force, as well as the gravitational tug of its sister moons Europa and Ganymede. As a result, the moon is constantly being stretched and squeezed, which contributes to its volcanic activity.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which has been studying the Jovian system since 2016, observed Io during previous flybys in May and July. Juno also captured a cozy family photo of Jupiter and Io in September, revealing the gas giant and its moon side by side. The next time Juno approaches the volcanic world will be on December 30, as well as February 1, 2024, and then again on September 20, 2024, approaching the haunting world with caution to gather more data on its activity.
As the innermost of Jupiter’s large moons, Io is the main source of most of the charged particles in the planet’s magnetosphere, creating a donut-shaped cloud of ions and electrons that surround Jupiter. The cloud, known as Io Plasma Torus, is formed when atmospheric gases escaping from Io are ionized.
During upcoming flybys, scientists from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) will use the Hubble and James Webb telescopes to simultaneously observe the Jovian moon from a distance.
Gizmodo
Ashley Strickland, CNN
Thu, October 19, 2023
ESO/M. Kornmesser
Astronomers have detected a mysterious blast of radio waves that have taken 8 billion years to reach Earth. The fast radio burst is one of the most distant and energetic ever observed.
Fast radio bursts, or FRBs, are intense, millisecond-long bursts of radio waves with unknown origins. The first FRB was discovered in 2007, and since then, hundreds of these quick, cosmic flashes have been detected coming from distant points across the universe.
The burst, named FRB 20220610A, lasted less than a millisecond, but in that fraction of a moment, it released the equivalent of our sun’s energetic emissions over the course of 30 years, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.
Many FRBs release super bright radio waves lasting only a few milliseconds at most before disappearing, which makes fast radio bursts difficult to observe.
Radio telescopes have helped astronomers trace these quick cosmic flashes, including the ASKAP array of radio telescopes, located on Wajarri Yamaji Country in Western Australia. Astronomers used ASKAP to detect the FRB in June 2022 and determine where it originated.
“Using ASKAP’s array of (radio) dishes, we were able to determine precisely where the burst came from,” said study coauthor Dr. Stuart Ryder, astronomer at Macquarie University in Australia, in a statement. “Then we used (the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope) in Chile to search for the source galaxy, finding it to be older and (farther) away than any other FRB source found to date and likely within a small group of merging galaxies.”
The research team traced the burst to what appears to be a group of two or three galaxies that are in the process of merging, interacting and forming new stars. This finding aligns with current theories that suggest fast radio bursts may come from magnetars, or highly energetic objects that result from the explosions of stars.
Scientists believe that fast radio bursts may be a unique method that can be used to “weigh” the universe by measuring the matter between galaxies that remains unaccounted for.
“If we count up the amount of normal matter in the Universe — the atoms that we are all made of — we find that more than half of what should be there today is missing,” said study coauthor Ryan Shannon, a professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, in a statement. “We think that the missing matter is hiding in the space between galaxies, but it may just be so hot and diffuse that it’s impossible to see using normal techniques.”
So far, the results of current methods used to estimate the universe’s mass don’t agree with one another, which suggests the entire scope of the universe isn’t included.
“Fast radio bursts sense this ionised material,” Shannon said. “Even in space that is nearly perfectly empty they can ‘see’ all the electrons, and that allows us to measure how much stuff is between the galaxies.”
This method of using fast radio bursts to detect missing matter was demonstrated by the late Australian astronomer Jean-Pierre Macquart in 2020.
“J-P showed that the (farther) away a fast radio burst is, the more diffuse gas it reveals between the galaxies. This is now known as the Macquart relation,” Ryder said. “Some recent fast radio bursts appeared to break this relationship.
Our measurements confirm the Macquart relation holds out to beyond half the known Universe.”
Nearly 50 fast radio bursts have been traced to date back to their origin points, and about half of them have been found using ASKAP.
“While we still don’t know what causes these massive bursts of energy, the paper confirms that fast radio bursts are common events in the cosmos and that we will be able to use them to detect matter between galaxies, and better understand the structure of the Universe,” Shannon said.
Astronomers said they hope that future radio telescopes, currently under construction in South Africa and Australia, will enable the detection of thousands more fast radio bursts at greater distances.
“The fact that FRBs are so common is also amazing,” Shannon said. “It shows how promising the field can be, because you’re not just going to do this for 30 bursts, you can do this for 30,000 bursts, make a new map of the structure of the universe, and use it to answer big questions about cosmology.”
Hubble Telescope captures the bright core of a loosely wound spiral galaxy (photo)
Samantha Mathewson
Wed, October 18, 2023
The intermediate spiral galaxy IC 5332 has a glowing core from which loosely-wound arms spiral, glittering with pink and orange stars. .
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a striking new "face-on" view of a spiral galaxy with loosely wound arms swirling around a bright core.
The spiral galaxy IC 5332 lies approximately 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Sculptor. The Hubble Telescope’s vantage point offers a face-on view of the galaxy, showcasing its large, circular structure and winding spiral arms dotted with brightly glowing clusters of star formation in pink and orange.
"To explain what is meant by ‘face-on’, it is helpful to visualize a spiral galaxy as an (extremely) large disc," European Space Agency (ESA) officials said in a statement releasing the new image. "If the galaxy is oriented so that it appears circular and disc-shaped from our perspective here on Earth, then we can say that it is ‘face-on’."
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!
Conversely, a galaxy may appear "edge-on" from our perspective on Earth. In this case, the galaxy would look squashed and oval-shaped, rather than disc-shaped. But given an edge-on view captures the galaxy from the side — oftentimes revealing a bright central bulge — viewers lose any sight of the galaxy’s intricately wound arms from this angle.
"The key thing is that the same galaxy would look extremely different from our perspective depending on whether it was face-on or edge-on as seen from Earth," ESA officials said.
IC 5332 is classified as a SABc-type galaxy, meaning it lacks a clear central bar structure and its spiral arms are not very tightly wound. About two thirds of all spiral galaxies have a distinct, elongated bar-shaped structure at their center, while others spiral out from one single point (known as an unbarred spiral galaxy). With a weak central bar, IC 5332 falls somewhere in the middle — also known as an intermediate spiral galaxy — which is what the "SAB" stands for, according to the statement.
Although IC 5332 has well-defined arms of bright stars that curl outwards from the galaxy's dense, bright core, its spiral arms are not tightly wound, which is why it is assigned a lowercase "c" on the classification scale, where "a" would indicate very tightly wound and "d" very loosely wound, ESA officials explained.
Samantha Mathewson
Wed, October 18, 2023
The intermediate spiral galaxy IC 5332 has a glowing core from which loosely-wound arms spiral, glittering with pink and orange stars. .
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a striking new "face-on" view of a spiral galaxy with loosely wound arms swirling around a bright core.
The spiral galaxy IC 5332 lies approximately 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Sculptor. The Hubble Telescope’s vantage point offers a face-on view of the galaxy, showcasing its large, circular structure and winding spiral arms dotted with brightly glowing clusters of star formation in pink and orange.
"To explain what is meant by ‘face-on’, it is helpful to visualize a spiral galaxy as an (extremely) large disc," European Space Agency (ESA) officials said in a statement releasing the new image. "If the galaxy is oriented so that it appears circular and disc-shaped from our perspective here on Earth, then we can say that it is ‘face-on’."
Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!
Conversely, a galaxy may appear "edge-on" from our perspective on Earth. In this case, the galaxy would look squashed and oval-shaped, rather than disc-shaped. But given an edge-on view captures the galaxy from the side — oftentimes revealing a bright central bulge — viewers lose any sight of the galaxy’s intricately wound arms from this angle.
"The key thing is that the same galaxy would look extremely different from our perspective depending on whether it was face-on or edge-on as seen from Earth," ESA officials said.
IC 5332 is classified as a SABc-type galaxy, meaning it lacks a clear central bar structure and its spiral arms are not very tightly wound. About two thirds of all spiral galaxies have a distinct, elongated bar-shaped structure at their center, while others spiral out from one single point (known as an unbarred spiral galaxy). With a weak central bar, IC 5332 falls somewhere in the middle — also known as an intermediate spiral galaxy — which is what the "SAB" stands for, according to the statement.
Although IC 5332 has well-defined arms of bright stars that curl outwards from the galaxy's dense, bright core, its spiral arms are not tightly wound, which is why it is assigned a lowercase "c" on the classification scale, where "a" would indicate very tightly wound and "d" very loosely wound, ESA officials explained.
A massive 'zombie' star is rampaging away from its home cluster
Robert Lea
Wed, October 18, 2023
Illustration shows a massive runaway white dwarf escaping from the Hyades star cluster.
In what sounds like the plot of a cosmic horror story, which is perfect as Halloween is on the horizon, a long-dead "zombie" star has been caught rampaging its way out of a nearby stellar bundle dubbed the Hyades star cluster. But unlike the shambling zombies you might find in a George A. Romero movie, this massive cosmic ghoul is moving as fast as 22,000 miles per hour (10 kilometers per second) relative to the cluster from which it has escaped.
Rather than terrify astronomers, however, this runaway white dwarf has proved an exciting find for the scientific community. That's because this fascinating object could help solve a few lingering mysteries surrounding the Hyades star cluster which is located around 153 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Taurus. For instance, it can aid scientists in determining just how big objects like this one can get without a helping hand.
Around 97% of stars in the Milky Way will end their existence as white dwarfs. Yet, despite the commonality of these dead stars, the Hyades open star cluster, consisting of several hundred stars that are believed to have formed around the same time — 625 million years ago — and from the same cloud of collapsing gas and dust, only possesses a few white dwarfs at its core.
This has led astronomers to wonder what happened to the rest — though they have some ideas.
Related: Dead star at heart of cosmic graveyard predicts the sun’s fate
The stars of Hyades are only loosely bound, meaning they can be ejected. One way that ejection can happen is through interactions with other star clusters; another way has to do with massive clouds of gas moving between those clusters.
But the key here is that, because of this ejection probability, the absence of white dwarfs in the Hyades star cluster could very well be because some white dwarfs were launched out.
This is the theory that led University of British Columbia researcher David Miller and colleagues to hunt for those white dwarfs that might have been ejected from the Hyades. For their analysis, the researchers used data collected by the Gaia spacecraft, which has been tracking over 1 billion Milky Way stars since 2013. Sure enough, the team found three white dwarfs with velocities that indicated they may have been ejected from Hyades.
Two of these stars were 1.1 times more massive than the sun, which made it unlikely they originated in the Hyades. But the third , designated Gaia EDR3 560883558756079616 , was 1.3 times more massive than the sun, which pointed to it being an escapee.
"It is interesting that such a high-mass white dwarf was identified as having been born in the Hyades cluster. The Hyades is not exceptionally rich in stars nor in a particularly dense region of the galaxy; by most accounts, it is a typical moderately populated and evolved cluster," the team wrote in a paper about the discovery. "The sole factor that makes the cluster stand out is its proximity as the closest cluster to the sun. This enables the detection of older, cooler white dwarfs and the ability to trace back escaped stars with greater precision, allowing us to study the cluster in greater detail than any other."
Not only that, but typical white dwarfs have masses around 0.6 times that of the sun — meaning this runaway is one of the most massive examples of its kind witnessed by scientists.. It could therefore help astronomers better assess where the line that divides white dwarfs from other types of stellar corpses, like neutron stars, is drawn.
This dead star isn’t stitched-together Frankenstein’s monster
White dwarfs are created when stars roughly the size of the sun run out of hydrogen at their cores, fuel needed for nuclear reactions at their hearts. Without fuel, the reactions cannot continue. The end of those nuclear reactions also see the end of the outward energy that supports a star against the inward force of its own gravity.
Thus, the cores of stars at this stage of their lives collapse under their own gravity while the outer layers — where nuclear fusion is still occurring — "puff out" to expand the star until its diameter is between 10 and 100 times larger than normal. . The sun will undergo this transformation over around 5 billion years, its diameter eventually reaching that of Mars' entire orbit. At this point, our host star will also swallow the inner planets — including Earth.
The puffed-out material of a dying star continues to expand and cool over time, eventually forming a planetary nebula. The core, meanwhile, gradually smolders away to become a white dwarf stellar remnant consisting of matter that is prevented from collapsing further. That matter is saved by a rule of quantum physics called electron degeneracy, which prevents an entity from cramming its material too closely. This electron degeneracy pressure can be overcome, however, if a star exceeds around 1.4 times the mass of the sun — the so-called Chandrasekhar limit — with stars pushing past this limit pulling in material so closely that they become either neutron stars or black holes.
Related Stories:
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White dwarfs usually approach, and sometimes exceed, the Chandrasekhar limit by pulling material from a companion star and siphoning it to their surfaces. This triggers thermonuclear explosions at the surface of the white dwarf that make it appear almost as if it is springing back to life.
So what all this means when these dead stars are discovered close to that mass limit, they are usually the product of material from two stars, not one — almost like a stitched-together Frankenstein’s monster made of two stellar bodies.
But this Hyades escapee white dwarf seems to be the product of just one star, making it perhaps the most massive single progenitor star white dwarf ever spotted.
"This provides a critical observational benchmark for white dwarfs created from single progenitor stars, demonstrating that single stars can produce white dwarfs with masses close to the Chandrasekhar limit," the team behind this discovery wrote. "The combination of the unremarkable nature of the Hyades cluster and the benefits of its proximity suggest that open star clusters may be producing ultramassive white dwarfs, including white dwarfs which push the Chandrasekhar limit, more commonly than previously thought."
The team’s research has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal with a preprint available on the paper repository arXiv.
Passant Rabie
Tue, October 17, 2023
The Lucy spacecraft is on a 12-year journey to visit eight different asteroids, and it’s almost caught up with the first space rock on its checklist.
Since it launched in October 2021, NASA’s Lucy mission has trekked through over 33 million miles (54 million kilometers) in space. The spacecraft is now 4.7 million miles (7.6 million km) away from its first target, a small asteroid named Dinikinesh. As the asteroid orbits around the Sun, however, Lucy needs to travel another 16 million miles (25 million kilometers) to finally rendezvous with Dinikinesh on November 1, according to NASA.
Lucy went through a brief communications blackout from October 6 until mid-October as the spacecraft passed behind the Sun as viewed from Earth. During that time, the mission was still diligently capturing images of the asteroid, which will be sent to Earth once communication with Lucy is reestablished.
Dinikinesh is a tiny space rock in the main asteroid belt, only about a half-mile wide (1 kilometer). The asteroid was recently added to the mission’s itinerary as a way to test the spacecraft’s terminal tracking system, which is used for precise imaging during its high speed encounters with the asteroids.
Lucy will begin its tour of the Trojan asteroids in 2027 by visiting Eurybates and its binary partner Queta, followed by Polymele and its binary partner, Leucus, Orus, and the binary pair Patroclus and Menoetius. The Trojans are a group of asteroids that lead and follow Jupiter as it orbits around the Sun.
The mission is named after the famous Australopithecine fossil found in 1974, while Dinikinesh, or ድንቅነሽ in Amharic, is the Ethiopian name for the human-ancestor fossil that’s also known as Lucy. The asteroid was discovered in 1999 but was left unnamed until it was selected as a target for the mission in January.
Gizmodo
High school students set record with stratospheric balloon launch and recovery (photo)
John Loeffler
Tue, October 17, 2023
View of a cloudy sliver of Earth against the blackness of space.
A team from the Astrogazers Club at the Croydon High School for Girls became the first U.K. school group to successfully launch and recover two weather balloons that reached high into Earth's atmosphere, a major achievement for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) students in the country.
The Astrogazers Club, which included students aged 10 to 16, launched the two weather balloons from the campus of the University of Bath last month. It was their second try: The group's first attempt in late June encountered a technical failure, when high winds tore through ropes on the balloon.
Undeterred, the club's members worked over their summer break to prepare for the latest attempt, which saw the balloons rise to just above 32,000 feet (9,750 meters), well into the stratoshere. The balloons were equipped with sensors to record atmospheric data as well as a camera, which took a stunning photo of Earth from that lofty perch.
Related: Earth's atmosphere: Facts about our planet's protective blanket
The two balloons — named for astrophysicist and former University of Bath Dean of Science Jocelyn Bell-Burnell and the U.K.'s first astronaut, Helen Sharman — flew for more than two hours before making touchdowns as planned in South Oxfordshire.
The entire mission, dubbed "Mission Aspiration" by the club, was planned and carried out throughout by the students, with assistance where necessary from the club's advisor, Arabi Karteepan, the Croydon High School for Girls' Head of Physics, as well as University of Bath professor Cathryn Mitchell and Robert Watson, who helped with regulatory coordination with the U.K.'s Civil Aviation Authority.
"I am absolutely delighted that Astrogazers has become the first girls' school STEM club to achieve two successful weather balloon launches to reach the edge of space," Karteepan said in an emailed statement to Space.com. "They were so happy to see their hard work pay off, and it's especially pleasing that passion for physics and science is higher than ever and the club is now expanding with new members expressing interest in STEM subjects."
RELATED STORIES:
— The top 10 views of Earth from space
— World View to start flying passengers on stratospheric balloon rides in 2024
— Balloon-borne telescope lifts off to study black holes and neutron stars
As for what's next for the Astrogazer's Club, it has already finished a follow-up project called Mission Ivy Satellite, in which the girls created a DIY satellite ground station for weather satellite imagery. Future plans include Mission Innovation, a model rocket launch, and Mission Pegasus, in which the club will attempt to deploy a satellite into low Earth orbit.
"The effect of the successful launches has rippled through the school community and the Girls' Day School Trust — the response has been nothing short of amazing," Karteepan said. "It is fantastic that Astrogazers is now oversubscribed, with a growing waiting list."
John Loeffler
Tue, October 17, 2023
View of a cloudy sliver of Earth against the blackness of space.
A team from the Astrogazers Club at the Croydon High School for Girls became the first U.K. school group to successfully launch and recover two weather balloons that reached high into Earth's atmosphere, a major achievement for STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) students in the country.
The Astrogazers Club, which included students aged 10 to 16, launched the two weather balloons from the campus of the University of Bath last month. It was their second try: The group's first attempt in late June encountered a technical failure, when high winds tore through ropes on the balloon.
Undeterred, the club's members worked over their summer break to prepare for the latest attempt, which saw the balloons rise to just above 32,000 feet (9,750 meters), well into the stratoshere. The balloons were equipped with sensors to record atmospheric data as well as a camera, which took a stunning photo of Earth from that lofty perch.
Related: Earth's atmosphere: Facts about our planet's protective blanket
The two balloons — named for astrophysicist and former University of Bath Dean of Science Jocelyn Bell-Burnell and the U.K.'s first astronaut, Helen Sharman — flew for more than two hours before making touchdowns as planned in South Oxfordshire.
The entire mission, dubbed "Mission Aspiration" by the club, was planned and carried out throughout by the students, with assistance where necessary from the club's advisor, Arabi Karteepan, the Croydon High School for Girls' Head of Physics, as well as University of Bath professor Cathryn Mitchell and Robert Watson, who helped with regulatory coordination with the U.K.'s Civil Aviation Authority.
"I am absolutely delighted that Astrogazers has become the first girls' school STEM club to achieve two successful weather balloon launches to reach the edge of space," Karteepan said in an emailed statement to Space.com. "They were so happy to see their hard work pay off, and it's especially pleasing that passion for physics and science is higher than ever and the club is now expanding with new members expressing interest in STEM subjects."
RELATED STORIES:
— The top 10 views of Earth from space
— World View to start flying passengers on stratospheric balloon rides in 2024
— Balloon-borne telescope lifts off to study black holes and neutron stars
As for what's next for the Astrogazer's Club, it has already finished a follow-up project called Mission Ivy Satellite, in which the girls created a DIY satellite ground station for weather satellite imagery. Future plans include Mission Innovation, a model rocket launch, and Mission Pegasus, in which the club will attempt to deploy a satellite into low Earth orbit.
"The effect of the successful launches has rippled through the school community and the Girls' Day School Trust — the response has been nothing short of amazing," Karteepan said. "It is fantastic that Astrogazers is now oversubscribed, with a growing waiting list."
AI just spotted its 1st supernova. Could it replace human explosion hunters?
Robert Lea
Mon, October 16, 2023
Side-by-side images of a faraway supernova explosion, which looks like a fuzzy, pixelated white dot against the blackness of space.
Move over, human astronomers! Artificial intelligence (AI) could soon be doing your supernova hunting for you.
A new, fully automated machine-learning algorithm has successfully detected, identified and classified its first supernova — the first time this has been achieved with AI. The program, called Bright Transient Survey Bot (BTSbot), could vastly accelerate the process of analyzing and classifying supernovas, its developers say.
Spotting supernovas currently depends on humans and computers working in conjunction, but BTSbot could cut us out of that equation. According to the BTSbot team, over the past six years alone, human astronomers have spent an estimated 2,200 hours visually inspecting and classifying supernova candidates. BTSbot could allow astronomers to redirect this effort and spend more time investigating the origins of these stellar explosions and modeling how they proceed.
"For the first time ever, a series of robots and AI algorithms have observed, then identified, then communicated with another telescope to finally confirm the discovery of a supernova," team leader Adam Miller, a professor of physics at Northwestern University in Illinois, said in a statement. "This represents an important step forward as further refinement of models will allow the robots to isolate specific subtypes of stellar explosions.
"Ultimately, removing humans from the loop provides more time for the research team to analyze their observations and develop new hypotheses to explain the origin of the cosmic explosions that we observe," Miller added.
Related: Right before exploding, this star puffed out a sun's worth of mass
Supernovas: a needle in a cosmic haystack
Many supernovas occur when dying stars exhauts their fuel for nuclear fusion. Unable to support themselves against the inward push of gravity, these stars' cores collapse while their outer layers blast out as supernovas.
In the case of Type Ia supernovas, explosions are triggered when a stellar remnant called a white dwarf exists in a binary system and is stripping matter from its companion star. This influx of material causes white dwarfs to reignite and explode, destroying them entirely.
These supernova explosions can be so bright that they outshine the combined light of every star in the galaxy around them. Thanks to the vastness of space, however, even this incredible burst of light doesn't mean supernovas are easy to spot. Currently, robotic telescopes scan the night sky, capturing repeated images of the same patch of space, hoping to find a changing — or transient — object that wasn't in previous images.
"Automated software presents a list of candidate explosions to humans, who spend time verifying the candidates and executing spectroscopic observations," Miller said. "We can only definitively know that a candidate is truly a supernova by collecting its spectrum — the source's dispersed light, which reveals elements present in the explosion. There are existing robotic telescopes that can collect spectra, but this is also often done by humans operating telescopes with spectrographs."
To potentially remove humanity's role in these proceedings, Miller and his team developed BTSbot and trained the AI with over 1.4 million historical images from nearly 16,000 sources. These included confirmed supernovas and other explosive astronomical phenomena like the temporary flaring of stars, stars that are periodically variable stars and the flaring of galaxies.
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— How artificial intelligence is helping us explore the solar system
Putting BTSbot to the test
In order to test their new AI tool, the researchers set about hunting for a newly spotted supernova candidate designated SN2023tyk, which is believed to be a Type Ia supernova located around 760 million light-years from Earth.
The supernova was found by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) robotic telescope on Oct. 3. As it searched ZTF data, BTSbot was able to identify SN2023tyk on Oct. 5, after which it collected the potential supernova's spectrum from the robotic telescope at Palomar Observatory, known as the SED machine (SEDM). Thus, through this automatic collaboration, SN2023tyk was classified as a Type Ia supernova. BSTbot didn't even need its human operators to get the word out, as this information was automatically shared with astronomers by the AI on Oct. 7.
"The simulated performance was excellent, but you never really know how that translates to the real world until you actually try it," Northwestern graduate student Nabeel Rehemtulla, who co-led the BTSbot technology development with Miller, said in the same statement.
"Once the observations from SEDM and the automated classification came in," Rehemtulla added, "we felt a huge wave of relief. The beauty of it is that once everything is turned on and working properly, we don't actually do anything. We go to sleep at night, and, in the morning, we see that BTSbot and these other AIs unwaveringly do their jobs."
Robert Lea
Mon, October 16, 2023
Side-by-side images of a faraway supernova explosion, which looks like a fuzzy, pixelated white dot against the blackness of space.
Move over, human astronomers! Artificial intelligence (AI) could soon be doing your supernova hunting for you.
A new, fully automated machine-learning algorithm has successfully detected, identified and classified its first supernova — the first time this has been achieved with AI. The program, called Bright Transient Survey Bot (BTSbot), could vastly accelerate the process of analyzing and classifying supernovas, its developers say.
Spotting supernovas currently depends on humans and computers working in conjunction, but BTSbot could cut us out of that equation. According to the BTSbot team, over the past six years alone, human astronomers have spent an estimated 2,200 hours visually inspecting and classifying supernova candidates. BTSbot could allow astronomers to redirect this effort and spend more time investigating the origins of these stellar explosions and modeling how they proceed.
"For the first time ever, a series of robots and AI algorithms have observed, then identified, then communicated with another telescope to finally confirm the discovery of a supernova," team leader Adam Miller, a professor of physics at Northwestern University in Illinois, said in a statement. "This represents an important step forward as further refinement of models will allow the robots to isolate specific subtypes of stellar explosions.
"Ultimately, removing humans from the loop provides more time for the research team to analyze their observations and develop new hypotheses to explain the origin of the cosmic explosions that we observe," Miller added.
Related: Right before exploding, this star puffed out a sun's worth of mass
Supernovas: a needle in a cosmic haystack
Many supernovas occur when dying stars exhauts their fuel for nuclear fusion. Unable to support themselves against the inward push of gravity, these stars' cores collapse while their outer layers blast out as supernovas.
In the case of Type Ia supernovas, explosions are triggered when a stellar remnant called a white dwarf exists in a binary system and is stripping matter from its companion star. This influx of material causes white dwarfs to reignite and explode, destroying them entirely.
These supernova explosions can be so bright that they outshine the combined light of every star in the galaxy around them. Thanks to the vastness of space, however, even this incredible burst of light doesn't mean supernovas are easy to spot. Currently, robotic telescopes scan the night sky, capturing repeated images of the same patch of space, hoping to find a changing — or transient — object that wasn't in previous images.
"Automated software presents a list of candidate explosions to humans, who spend time verifying the candidates and executing spectroscopic observations," Miller said. "We can only definitively know that a candidate is truly a supernova by collecting its spectrum — the source's dispersed light, which reveals elements present in the explosion. There are existing robotic telescopes that can collect spectra, but this is also often done by humans operating telescopes with spectrographs."
To potentially remove humanity's role in these proceedings, Miller and his team developed BTSbot and trained the AI with over 1.4 million historical images from nearly 16,000 sources. These included confirmed supernovas and other explosive astronomical phenomena like the temporary flaring of stars, stars that are periodically variable stars and the flaring of galaxies.
RELATED STORIES:
— Hundreds of supernova remnants remain hidden in our galaxy. These astronomers want to find them
— Supernova photos: Great images of star explosions
— How artificial intelligence is helping us explore the solar system
Putting BTSbot to the test
In order to test their new AI tool, the researchers set about hunting for a newly spotted supernova candidate designated SN2023tyk, which is believed to be a Type Ia supernova located around 760 million light-years from Earth.
The supernova was found by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) robotic telescope on Oct. 3. As it searched ZTF data, BTSbot was able to identify SN2023tyk on Oct. 5, after which it collected the potential supernova's spectrum from the robotic telescope at Palomar Observatory, known as the SED machine (SEDM). Thus, through this automatic collaboration, SN2023tyk was classified as a Type Ia supernova. BSTbot didn't even need its human operators to get the word out, as this information was automatically shared with astronomers by the AI on Oct. 7.
"The simulated performance was excellent, but you never really know how that translates to the real world until you actually try it," Northwestern graduate student Nabeel Rehemtulla, who co-led the BTSbot technology development with Miller, said in the same statement.
"Once the observations from SEDM and the automated classification came in," Rehemtulla added, "we felt a huge wave of relief. The beauty of it is that once everything is turned on and working properly, we don't actually do anything. We go to sleep at night, and, in the morning, we see that BTSbot and these other AIs unwaveringly do their jobs."
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