Webb telescope reveals surprising details of Pluto's moon Charon
Will Dunham
Tue, October 1, 2024
FILE PHOTO: Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is seen in a high-resolution, enhanced color view captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Observations by the James Webb Space Telescope are giving scientists a fuller understanding about the composition and evolution of Pluto's moon Charon, the largest moon orbiting any of our solar system's dwarf planets.
Webb for the first time detected carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide - both frozen as solids - on the surface of Charon, a spherical body about 750 miles (1,200 km) in diameter, researchers said on Tuesday. Those are added to the water ice, ammonia-bearing compounds and organic materials previously documented on Charon's surface.
Charon, discovered in 1978, has the distinction of being the solar system's largest moon relative in size to the planet it orbits. It is about half the diameter and an eighth the mass of Pluto, a dwarf planet that resides in a frigid region of the outer Solar System called the Kuiper Belt, beyond the most distant planet Neptune.
The distance between Charon and Pluto is about 12,200 miles (19,640 km), compared to the 238,855 miles (384,400 km) on average separating Earth from its moon.
Most of Charon's surface is gray, with reddish-brown regions around its poles composed of organic materials.
The Webb observations build on data obtained when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Charon during its visit to the Pluto system in 2015. The new study tapped into the ability of Webb, which was launched in 2021 and began collecting data the following year, to observe across a greater range of wavelengths than previously available.
The presence of hydrogen peroxide speaks to the irradiation processes Charon has experienced over time, the researchers said, while the carbon dioxide is probably an original component dating to this moon's formation about 4.5 billion years ago.
The hydrogen peroxide, the researchers said, formed as the water ice on Charon's surface was chemically altered by the perpetual onslaught of ultraviolet radiation from the sun as well as energetic particles from the solar wind and from galactic cosmic rays that traverse the universe.
The researchers said the carbon dioxide observed by Webb was probably buried underneath the surface and exposed by impacts on Charon. The carbon dioxide, they said, is likely to have been part of the primordial material from which both Charon and Pluto originally formed.
Scientists had been surprised that carbon dioxide was not previously spotted.
"The detection of carbon dioxide was a satisfying confirmation of our expectations," said Silvia Protopapa, assistant director of the department of space studies at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, co-investigator of the New Horizons mission and lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
"The detection of hydrogen peroxide on Charon was unexpected. I honestly did not anticipate finding evidence of it on the surface," Protopapa added.
The new observations of Charon help tell a broader story about the celestial bodies populating our solar system.
"Every small body in the outer solar system is a unique piece of a larger puzzle that scientists are trying to put together," Protopapa said.
The researchers used a Webb instrument called the Near-Infrared Spectrograph to make four observations in 2022 and 2023, getting full coverage of Charon's northern hemisphere.
"These new Webb observations add carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide to the known inventory of (Charon's) surface components. Both of these provide insights into ongoing processes of irradiation and impact-driven resurfacing," said study co-author Ian Wong, staff scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
(Reporting by Will Dunham, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
Grounded Astronauts Angry They Were Forced to Give Up Their Seats for Stranded Starliner Crew
Victor Tangermann
Wed, October 2, 2024
Grounded
NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were intending to get a lift to the International Space Station on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft over the weekend.
But thanks to Boeing's disastrous crewed test flight of its issues-laden Starliner spacecraft, the two women had to stay behind to make space for their stranded colleagues, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.
Wilmore and Williams, who have been stuck on board the ISS since June and had to wave their Starliner ride goodbye as it made its reentry without them last month, will take Cardman and Wilson's seats in February instead.
"I think it was hard not to watch that rocket lift off without thinking, 'That's my rocket and that's my crew,'" Cardman said during NASA's live broadcast of Saturday's Crew-9 launch, as quoted by Space.com. "It makes me feel very connected to this mission."
Hate to Watch You Leave
Two out of the four seats on board the Crew Dragon were occupied by NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, who will be returning alongside Wilmore and Williams early next year.
Hague has been on two trips to the ISS, while Gorbunov is on his first flight to space. Cardman has yet to visit the ISS, while Wilson flew to space onboard three Space Shuttle missions between 2006 and 2010.
It must've been a bittersweet moment, watching the two leave without Cardman or Wilson on board. After all, an opportunity to launch into space is exceedingly rare.
"We, of course, want to be together," Wilson said during the broadcast. "We have built friendship and camaraderie … but I'm very excited for them, looking forward to hearing their stories from space."
To balance out the weight, Cardman and Wilson's bodies were simulated using pieces of ballast inside the Crew Dragon capsule.
Cardman applauded NASA for prioritizing the "safety of the crew," and added that Williams and Wilmore were "well-prepared" professionals.
In late August, NASA made the decision to bump the two women from the flight. Instead, they had to watch their colleagues get ready over many weeks, an unfortunate reality brought about by Boeing's plagued Starliner.
"Zena and Stephanie will continue to assist their crewmates ahead of launch," NASA chief astronaut Joe Acaba said in a statement at the time. "They exemplify what it means to be a professional astronaut."
More on Starliner: NASA Almost Gave All Its Crew Funding to Boeing's Disastrous Starliner, Leaving SpaceX Out in the Cold
NASA switches off instrument on Voyager 2 spacecraft to save power
ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN
Wed, October 2, 2024 at 9:18 AM MDT·1 min read
60
FILE - This photo provided by NASA shows the "Sounds of Earth" record being mounted on the Voyager 2 spacecraft in the Safe-1 Building at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Aug. 4, 1977. (AP Photo/NASA, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — To save power, NASA has switched off another scientific instrument on its long-running Voyager 2 spacecraft.
The space agency said Tuesday that Voyager 2's plasma science instrument — designed to measure the flow of charged atoms — was powered down in late September so the spacecraft can keep exploring for as long as possible, expected into the 2030s.
NASA turned off a suite of instruments on Voyager 2 and its twin Voyager 1 after they explored the gas giant planets in the 1980s. Both are currently in interstellar space, or the space between stars. The plasma instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working long ago and was finally shut down in 2007.
Four remaining instruments on Voyager 2 will continue collecting information about magnetic fields and particles. Its goal is to study the swaths of space beyond the sun's protective bubble.
Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune. It's currently more than 12 billion miles (19.31 billion kilometers) from Earth. Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles (24.14 billion kilometers) from Earth.
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NASA astronaut snaps footage of glorious comet flying through space
Tue, October 1, 2024
The International Space Station viewed from a SpaceX Dragon craft.
An icy visitor is flying through the inner solar system.
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, also called Comet C/2023 A3, has grown brighter as it's approached the sun, allowing astronauts aboard the International Space Station to capture vivid footage of this ancient ball of ice, rock, and dust. NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick recently posted a view of the comet rising beyond Earth as the station zipped through its orbit at some 17,500 mph.
"Comet rises above the horizon just before orbital sunrise amongst aurora and swirling satellites," the space agency's flight engineer posted online. The comet makes its appearance at the bottom of the view at about 12 seconds into the short clip.
SEE ALSO: NASA scientist viewed first Voyager images. What he saw gave him chills.
In this view from Sept. 29, the comet is some 75 million miles from Earth, and 38 million miles from the sun (Earth is 93 million miles from our star). As comets approach the sun, they heat up and eject dust and gas into space, leaving long wakes of millions-of-miles-long material, as you can see below. Comet C/2023 A3 just made its closest approach to the sun on Sept. 27, and is now en route to the profoundly frigid realms of the deep solar system.
Comets have a lot of material to burn, as they're typically miles long to tens of miles long. "When frozen, they are the size of a small town," NASA explained. One particular comet, discovered in 2021, is a whopping 85 miles wide.
Although Dominick captured the comet with a camera, he did note that it's visible to the naked eye from the space station, too. And down on Earth, it might be visible to skygazers. The "best show," as the comet zooms between Earth and the sun, is likely to happen in mid-October.
But if this comet eludes you, or you can't escape to dark enough skies, enjoy the view from space.
NASA’s TESS spots record-breaking stellar triplets
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
image:
This artist’s concept illustrates how tightly the three stars in the system called TIC 290061484 orbit each other. If they were placed at the center of our solar system, all the stars’ orbits would be contained a space smaller than Mercury’s orbit around the Sun. The sizes of the triplet stars and the Sun are also to scale.
view moreCredit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Professional and amateur astronomers teamed up with artificial intelligence to find an unmatched stellar trio called TIC 290061484, thanks to cosmic “strobe lights” captured by NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite).
The system contains a set of twin stars orbiting each other every 1.8 days, and a third star that circles the pair in just 25 days. The discovery smashes the record for shortest outer orbital period for this type of system, set in 1956, which had a third star orbiting an inner pair in 33 days.
“Thanks to the compact, edge-on configuration of the system, we can measure the orbits, masses, sizes, and temperatures of its stars,” said Veselin Kostov, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. “And we can study how the system formed and predict how it may evolve.”
A paper, led by Kostov, describing the results was published in The Astrophysical Journal Oct. 2.
Flickers in starlight helped reveal the tight trio, which is located in the constellation Cygnus. The system happens to be almost flat from our perspective. This means the stars each cross right in front of, or eclipse, each other as they orbit. When that happens, the nearer star blocks some of the farther star’s light.
Using machine learning, scientists filtered through enormous sets of starlight data from TESS to identify patterns of dimming that reveal eclipses. Then, a small team of citizen scientists filtered further, relying on years of experience and informal training to find particularly interesting cases.
These amateur astronomers, who are co-authors on the new study, met as participants in an online citizen science project called Planet Hunters, which was active from 2010 to 2013. The volunteers later teamed up with professional astronomers to create a new collaboration called the Visual Survey Group, which has been active for over a decade.
“We’re mainly looking for signatures of compact multi-star systems, unusual pulsating stars in binary systems, and weird objects,” said Saul Rappaport, an emeritus professor of physics at MIT in Cambridge. Rappaport co-authored the paper and has helped lead the Visual Survey Group for more than a decade. “It’s exciting to identify a system like this because they’re rarely found, but they may be more common than current tallies suggest.” Many more likely speckle our galaxy, waiting to be discovered.
Partly because the stars in the newfound system orbit in nearly the same plane, scientists say it’s likely very stable despite their tight configuration (the trio’s orbits fit within a smaller area than Mercury’s orbit around the Sun). Each star’s gravity doesn’t perturb the others too much, like they could if their orbits were tilted in different directions.
But while their orbits will likely remain stable for millions of years, “no one lives here,” Rappaport said. “We think the stars formed together from the same growth process, which would have disrupted planets from forming very closely around any of the stars.” The exception could be a distant planet orbiting the three stars as if they were one.
As the inner stars age, they will expand and ultimately merge, triggering a supernova explosion in around 20 to 40 million years.
In the meantime, astronomers are hunting for triple stars with even shorter orbits. That’s hard to do with current technology, but a new tool is on the way.
Images from NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be much more detailed than TESS’s. The same area of the sky covered by a single TESS pixel will fit more than 36,000 Roman pixels. And while TESS took a wide, shallow look at the entire sky, Roman will pierce deep into the heart of our galaxy where stars crowd together, providing a core sample rather than skimming the whole surface.
“We don’t know much about a lot of the stars in the center of the galaxy except for the brightest ones,” said Brian Powell, a co-author and data scientist at Goddard. “Roman’s high-resolution view will help us measure light from stars that usually blur together, providing the best look yet at the nature of star systems in our galaxy.”
And since Roman will monitor light from hundreds of millions of stars as part of one of its main surveys, it will help astronomers find more triple star systems in which all the stars eclipse each other.
“We’re curious why we haven’t found star systems like these with even shorter outer orbital periods,” said Powell. “Roman should help us find them and bring us closer to figuring out what their limits might be.”
Roman could also find eclipsing stars bound together in even larger groups — half a dozen, or perhaps even more all orbiting each other like bees buzzing around a hive.
“Before scientists discovered triply eclipsing triple star systems, we didn’t expect them to be out there,” said co-author Tamás Borkovits, a senior research fellow at the Baja Observatory of The University of Szeged in Hungary. “But once we found them, we thought, well why not? Roman, too, may reveal never-before-seen categories of systems and objects that will surprise astronomers.”
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission managed by NASA Goddard and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes, and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.
NASA’s citizen science projects are collaborations between scientists and interested members of the public and do not require U.S. citizenship. Through these collaborations, volunteers (known as citizen scientists) have helped make thousands of important scientific discoveries. To get involved with a project, visit NASA’s Citizen Science page.
Journal
The Astrophysical Journal
Method of Research
Meta-analysis
Article Publication Date
2-Oct-2024
Scientists discover planet orbiting closest single star to our Sun
ESO
image:
This artist’s impression shows Barnard b, a sub-Earth-mass planet that was discovered orbiting Barnard’s star. Its signal was detected with the ESPRESSO instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), and astronomers were able to confirm it with data from other instruments. An earlier promising detection in 2018 around the same star could not be confirmed by these data. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which has at least half the mass of Venus but is too hot to support liquid water, a year lasts just over three Earth days.
view moreCredit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s star, the closest single star to our Sun. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which has at least half the mass of Venus, a year lasts just over three Earth days. The team’s observations also hint at the existence of three more exoplanet candidates, in various orbits around the star.
Located just six light-years away, Barnard’s star is the second-closest stellar system — after Alpha Centauri’s three-star group — and the closest individual star to us. Owing to its proximity, it is a primary target in the search for Earth-like exoplanets. Despite a promising detection back in 2018, no planet orbiting Barnard's star had been confirmed until now.
The discovery of this new exoplanet — announced in a paper published today in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics — is the result of observations made over the last five years with ESO’s VLT, located at Paranal Observatory in Chile. “Even if it took a long time, we were always confident that we could find something,” says Jonay González Hernández, a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias in Spain, and lead author of the paper. The team were looking for signals from possible exoplanets within the habitable or temperate zone of Barnard’s star — the range where liquid water can exist on the planet’s surface. Red dwarfs like Barnard’s star are often targeted by astronomers since low-mass rocky planets are easier to detect there than around larger Sun-like stars. [1]
Barnard b [2], as the newly discovered exoplanet is called, is twenty times closer to Barnard’s star than Mercury is to the Sun. It orbits its star in 3.15 Earth days and has a surface temperature around 125 °C. “Barnard b is one of the lowest-mass exoplanets known and one of the few known with a mass less than that of Earth. But the planet is too close to the host star, closer than the habitable zone,” explains González Hernández. “Even if the star is about 2500 degrees cooler than our Sun, it is too hot there to maintain liquid water on the surface.”
For their observations, the team used ESPRESSO, a highly precise instrument designed to measure the wobble of a star caused by the gravitational pull of one or more orbiting planets. The results obtained from these observations were confirmed by data from other instruments also specialised in exoplanet hunting: HARPS at ESO’s La Silla Observatory, HARPS-N and CARMENES. The new data do not, however, support the existence of the exoplanet reported in 2018.
In addition to the confirmed planet, the international team also found hints of three more exoplanet candidates orbiting the same star. These candidates, however, will require additional observations with ESPRESSO to be confirmed. “We now need to continue observing this star to confirm the other candidate signals,” says Alejandro Suárez Mascareño, a researcher also at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias and co-author of the study. “But the discovery of this planet, along with other previous discoveries such as Proxima b and d, shows that our cosmic backyard is full of low-mass planets.”
ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction, is set to transform the field of exoplanet research. The ELT’s ANDES instrument will allow researchers to detect more of these small, rocky planets in the temperate zone around nearby stars, beyond the reach of current telescopes, and enable them to study the composition of their atmospheres.
Notes
[1] Astronomers target cool stars, like red dwarfs, because their temperate zone is much closer to the star than that of hotter stars, like the Sun. This means that the planets orbiting within their temperate zone have shorter orbital periods, allowing astronomers to monitor them over several days or weeks, rather than years. In addition, red dwarfs are much less massive than the Sun, so they are more easily disturbed by the gravitational pull of the planets around them and thus they wobble more strongly.
[2] It’s common practice in science to name exoplanets by the name of their host star with a lowercase letter added to it, ‘b’ indicating the first known planet, ’c’ the next one, and so on. The name Barnard b was therefore also given to a previously suspected planet candidate around Barnard's star, which scientists were unable to confirm.
More information
This research was presented in the paper “A sub-Earth-mass planet orbiting Barnard’s star” to appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics. (https://www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202451311)
The team is composed of J. I. González Hernández (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Spain [IAC] and Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, Spain [IAC-ULL]), A. Suárez Mascareño (IAC and IAC-ULL), A. M. Silva (Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto, Portugal [IA-CAUP] and Departamento de Física e Astronomia Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Portugal [FCUP]), A. K. Stefanov (IAC and IAC-ULL), J. P. Faria (Observatoire de Genève, Université de Genève, Switzerland [UNIGE]; IA-CAUP and FCUP), H. M. Tabernero (Departamento de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica & Instituto de Física de Partículas y del Cosmos, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), A. Sozzetti (INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino [INAF-OATo] and Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Torino, Italy), R. Rebolo (IAC; IAC-ULL and Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain [CSIC]), F. Pepe (UNIGE), N. C. Santos (IA-CAUP; FCUP), S. Cristiani (INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, Italy [INAF-OAT] and Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe, Trieste, Italy [IFPU]), C. Lovis (UNIGE), X. Dumusque (UNIGE), P. Figueira (UNIGE and IA-CAUP), J. Lillo-Box (Centro de Astrobiología, CSIC-INTA, Madrid, Spain [CAB]), N. Nari (IAC; Light Bridges S. L., Canarias, Spain and IAC-ULL), S. Benatti (INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo, Italy [INAF-OAPa]), M. J. Hobson (UNIGE), A. Castro-González (CAB), R. Allart (Institut Trottier de Recherche sur les Exoplanètes, Université de Montréal, Canada and UNIGE), V. M. Passegger (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Hilo, USA; IAC; IAC-ULL and Hamburger Sternwarte, Hamburg, Germany), M.-R. Zapatero Osorio (CAB), V. Adibekyan (IA-CAUP and FCUP), Y. Alibert (Center for Space and Habitability, University of Bern, Switzerland and Weltraumforschung und Planetologie, Physikalisches Institut, University of Bern, Switzerland), C. Allende Prieto (IAC and IAC-ULL), F. Bouchy (UNIGE), M. Damasso (INAF-OATo), V. D’Odorico (INAF-OAT and IFPU), P. Di Marcantonio (INAF-OAT), D. Ehrenreich (UNIGE), G. Lo Curto (European Southern Observatory, Santiago, Chile [ESO Chile]), R. Génova Santos (IAC and IAC-ULL), C. J. A. P. Martins (IA-CAUP and Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto, Portugal), A. Mehner (ESO Chile), G. Micela (INAF-OAPa), P. Molaro (INAF-OAT), N. Nunes (Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade de Lisboa), E. Palle (IAC and IAC-ULL), S. G. Sousa (IA-CAUP and FCUP), and S. Udry (UNIGE).
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration for astronomy. Established as an intergovernmental organisation in 1962, today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), along with the host state of Chile and with Australia as a Strategic Partner. ESO’s headquarters and its visitor centre and planetarium, the ESO Supernova, are located close to Munich in Germany, while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope Interferometer, as well as survey telescopes such as VISTA. Also at Paranal ESO will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s largest and most sensitive gamma-ray observatory. Together with international partners, ESO operates ALMA on Chajnantor, a facility that observes the skies in the millimetre and submillimetre range. At Cerro Armazones, near Paranal, we are building “the world’s biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our offices in Santiago, Chile we support our operations in the country and engage with Chilean partners and society.
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Journal
Astronomy and Astrophysics
By Dr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL
October 1, 2024
This handout image taken by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows rippled patterns on the surface of rocks caused by the waves of a shallow lake billions of years ago - Copyright AFP Zein Al RIFAI
For first time, researchers witnessed formation of nanosized water bubbles in real time and at the molecular-scale. Here, the scientists observed hydrogen and oxygen atoms merge to form tiny, nano-sized bubbles of water. This demonstrated how palladium, a rare metallic element, can rapidly generate water from hydrogen and oxygen. The element catalyzes the gaseous reaction to generate water.
Since the early 1900s, researchers have known that palladium can act as a catalyst to rapidly generate water. But how, exactly, this reaction occurs has remained a mystery. Viewing the process with atomic precision was simply impossible, at least until nine months ago.
The researchers from Northwestern University witnessed this process at the nanoscale for the first time with an electron microscope. By viewing the process with extreme precision, they discovered how to optimize it to generate water at a faster rate.
The new process could be used to generate water on-demand in extreme environments, including on other planets. This is useful since the reaction does not require extreme conditions; hence, the researchers say it could be harnessed as a practical solution for rapidly generating water in arid environments.
For the experiment, the scientists developed an ultra-thin glassy membrane that holds gas molecules within honeycomb-shaped nanoreactors, so they can be viewed within high-vacuum transmission electron microscopes.
Here the researchers can examine samples in atmospheric pressure gas at a resolution of just 0.102 nanometers, compared to a 0.236-nanometer resolutionusing other state-of-the-art tools. The technique also enabled, for the first time, concurrent spectral and reciprocal information analysis.
The researchers think their observation might be the smallest bubble ever formed that has been viewed directly. A process called electron energy loss spectroscopy, to analyze the bubbles.
“By directly visualizing nanoscale water generation, we were able to identify the optimal conditions for rapid water generation under ambient conditions,” states Northwestern’s Vinayak Dravid, senior author of the study. “These findings have significant implications for practical applications, such as enabling rapid water generation in deep space environments using gases and metal catalysts, without requiring extreme reaction conditions.”
Dravid adds: “Think of Matt Damon’s character, Mark Watney, in the movie ‘The Martian.’ He burned rocket fuel to extract hydrogen and then added oxygen from his oxygenator. Our process is analogous, except we bypass the need for fire and other extreme conditions. We simply mixed palladium and gases together.”
The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study is titled “Unraveling the adsorption-limited hydrogen oxidation reaction at palladium surface via in situ electron microscopy”.
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