UAF scientist designing satellite to hunt small space debris
University of Alaska Fairbanks
A University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist is participating in a U.S. government effort to design a satellite and instruments capable of detecting space debris as small as 1 centimeter, less than one-half inch.
Debris that small, which cannot currently be detected from the ground, can damage satellites and other spacecraft in low-Earth orbit.
The idea is to outfit future satellites, such as those vital for communication systems, with technology to avoid space debris collisions.
Space debris travels at high speeds, about 17,500 mph. A 1-centimeter object traveling at that speed has an impact energy equivalent to that of a small explosive such as a hand grenade.
Space debris comes in many shapes and sizes and consists of defunct satellites, spent rocket stages, fragments from collisions, and other human-made objects that no longer serve a purpose.
UAF Geophysical Institute research professor Paul Bernhardt and colleagues from the University of Calgary in Canada have devised a method to determine a small object’s distance from a satellite or spacecraft and the angle of its approach.
The method is based on their discovery that an object in orbit creates waves as it passes through naturally occurring plasma disturbances — known as striations — that occur along Earth’s magnetic field lines. Plasma is a gas-like state of matter made of free-floating negative electrons and positive ions.
Bernhardt and colleagues are developing the instruments that would use that method. He also is designing the satellite that will carry the instruments for this initial test. He calls it the Space Debris Hunter.
“The whole satellite will be dedicated to detection of space debris too small to be seen from the ground,” he said.
The direction to a piece of space debris would be determined by an on-board sensor that simultaneously measures electric and magnetic wave fields to detect signals emanating from the space object. A separate sensor would record changes in signal frequency over time. Analysis of these data would then be used to determine direction and distance to the space debris to reveal its location.
“Several measurements of this type are sufficient to predict the future path of the debris,” Bernhardt said. “That’s the new science we’re exploring.”
That knowledge will allow satellites to be steered away from the path of the debris, Bernhardt said, adding that operators of the Starlink system take more 20,000 collision avoidance actions per year.
The new detection method was detailed in a Jan. 8 paper in Physics of Plasmas. Bengt Eliasson of the University of Strathclyde in Great Britain is the lead author.
The work is part of a U.S. government effort to track space debris. It is based on work supported in part by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. It was performed in collaboration with contractor Blue Halo in the IARPA Space Debris Identification and Tracking program.
The U.S. debris-tracking program estimates that more than 100 million objects greater than 1 millimeter in size orbit Earth but that less than 1 percent of debris that can cause mission-ending damage is tracked. Because of that, the program’s website states, “there is an increased interest” in tracking small debris.
CONTACTS:
• Paul Bernhardt, University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, pabernhardt@alaska.edu
• Rod Boyce, University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, 907-474-7185, rcboyce@alaska.edu
Journal
Physics of Plasmas
Article Title
The generation of whistler, lower hybrid, and magnetosonic waves by satellites passing through ionospheric magnetic field aligned irregularities
Article Publication Date
28-Feb-2025
Young star clusters give birth to rogue planetary-mass objects
University of Zurich
Planetary-mass objects (PMOs) are cosmic nomads: they drift freely through space, unbound to any star, and weigh less than 13 times the mass of Jupiter. While they have been spotted in abundance in young star clusters such as the Trapezium Cluster in Orion (Fig. 1), their origin has puzzled scientists. Traditional theories have suggested that they might be failed stars or planets ejected from their solar systems.
An international team of astronomers, in collaboration with the University of Zurich (UZH), has used advanced simulations to demonstrate that these enigmatic objects can form directly from the violent interactions of disks around young stars. “PMOs don’t fit neatly into existing categories of stars or planets,” said Lucio Meyer from the UZH, corresponding author of the study. “Our simulations show they are probably formed by a completely different process.”
How disks collide to create PMOs
Using high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations, the team from the University of Zurich, the University of Hong Kong, the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, and the University of California Santa Cruz, recreated close encounters between two circumstellar disks – rotating rings of gas and dust that surround young stars. When these disks pass close to each other, their gravitational interactions stretch and compress the gas into elongated “tidal bridges.”
The simulations revealed that these bridges collapse into dense filaments, which further fragment into compact cores. When the mass of the filaments exceeds a critical threshold for stability, they produce PMOs with masses of about 10 Jupiters. Up to 14% of PMOs form in pairs or triples, which explais the high rate of PMO binaries in some clusters. Frequent disk encounters in dense environments such as the Trapezium Cluster could generate hundreds of PMOs.
Why PMOs are unique
PMOs form along stars, inheriting material from the outer edges of circumstellar disks. PMOs move in synchrony with the stars in their host cluster, unlike ejected planets. Many PMOs retain gas disks, suggesting the potential for moon or even planet formation around these nomads.
“This discovery partly reshapes how we view cosmic diversity,” said co-author Lucio Mayer. “PMOs may represent a third class of objects, born not from the raw material of star forming clouds or via planet-building processes, but rather from the gravitational chaos of disk collisions.”
Journal
Science Advances
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Not applicable
Article Title
Formation of free-floating planetary mass objects via circumstellar disk encounters
Article Publication Date
26-Feb-2025
Texas-France space hub aims to innovate space commerce and research
Rice University
image:
Announced at the 2025 ASCENDxTexas event Feb. 27, the Texas-France Space Hub aims to unite academic institutions and private enterprises, expanding commercial space presence in both countries.
view moreCredit: Photo courtesy of Rice University.
A new trans-Atlantic space initiative has launched, linking Texas and France in an ambitious effort to fuel startup growth, drive research and forge international partnerships. Announced at the 2025 ASCENDxTexas event Feb. 27, the Texas-France Space Hub aims to unite academic institutions and private enterprises, expanding commercial space presence in both countries.
The three-year initiative fosters global partnerships in aerospace, bringing together Rice University, Stellar Access and Houston Spaceport in Texas with France’s space agency CNES and Business France. Its six-month accelerator program based in Paris and Houston helps emerging French companies connect with industry leaders and essential resources, paving the way for their expansion into Texas and the U.S. while driving economic growth and innovation. The first group of startups is set to arrive in Houston in April.
“By leveraging the strength of Texas and France, we are fostering an environment where innovation thrives and commercial space activities can flourish,” said David Alexander, professor of physics and astronomy at Rice, director of the Rice Space Institute (RSI) and a Texas Aerospace Research and Space Economy Consortium member.
Startup accelerator
The hub’s biannual startup accelerator includes six weeks of preparation in Paris with CNES and Business France. This phase focuses on market analysis, strategic partnerships and business development, ensuring a seamless transition into the U.S. market.
“This program enables French space startups to benefit from France’s unique strengths in aerospace innovation with extensive support from the government and the French space agency CNES,” said Nicolas Maubert, CNES representative in the U.S. and space counselor to the French Embassy.
Moreover, early collaboration accelerates the commercialization of groundbreaking technologies, said Benjamin Ben Soussan, head of the Business France office in Houston. “Beyond technical and business expertise, the accelerator helps startups navigate regulatory frameworks and establish key industry connections,” he said.
For 8 to 12 weeks of the program, startups are based in Houston, immersing themselves in the U.S. commercial space sector under the RSI and Stellar Access, a Houston-based firm specializing in streamlining access to space. Participants will engage in networking opportunities, industry events and direct interactions with key stakeholders.
“The accelerator provides a structured pathway for French entrepreneurs to tap into the booming U.S. commercial space industry,” said Sergio Lucero, chief operating officer at Stellar Access. “By bridging these dynamic ecosystems, we can accelerate innovation and create new global opportunities.”
The first group of startups will arrive in Houston in early April, followed by a second wave in August. Among the inaugural companies are Absolut Sensing, which specializes in high-precision satellite data for methane emissions detection, and Geeglee, a software platform designed to enhance decision-making in architecture and systems engineering.
They will be joined by Agena Space, which develops in-orbit mobility solutions powered by green propulsion, and Watt & Well, a company focused on designing high-performance power electronics for space applications.
“We are opening doors for groundbreaking advancements and long-term partnerships by strengthening our ties in the space sector,” said Valérie Baraban, consul general of France in Houston.
For the final six weeks of the program, startups will return to France to refine their U.S. expansion strategies with human resources, legal matters, intellectual property and customs experts.
“After assessing their experience, the hope is that the individual companies will see value for their business in Texas and consider creating their own presence in the state with help from the accelerator if needed,” Alexander said.
Strengthening partnerships
The hub’s in-progress research accelerator is designed to focus on critical space technologies, including sustainable lunar exploration, orbital and surface habitat solutions and advancements in space food systems for long-duration missions, while also pushing the boundaries of innovation in in-space bio-manufacturing.
A committee including representatives from Rice, CNES, Business France, Expertise France, Space Founders and the consulate general of France in Houston oversaw the Texas-France Space Hub selection process led by Hugues Mbezal Bogam, French space liaison to RSI.
“By building on existing initiatives in France and Texas, the program will cultivate joint research projects that bring together industry, academia, institutions and space agencies in both regions,” Mbezal Bogam said.
Space exploration in Texas and beyond
The foundation for the Texas-France Space Hub was laid March 18, 2024, when Rice, CNES and Houston Spaceport signed a letter of intent to establish collaboration frameworks, paving the way for joint research initiatives and industry partnerships.
“Our goal is to support startup growth, facilitate technology transfer and create new avenues for global engagement within our expanding aerospace ecosystem,” said Arturo Machuca, director of Ellington Airport and Houston Spaceport.
RSI is doing just that. As the hub prepares for launch, RSI, in collaboration with the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership and the Greater Houston Partnership, is leveraging its research expertise and industry connections to drive innovation, expand commercial opportunities in the space sector, attract foreign investment and strengthen the workforce across Texas, while also opening the door to creating opportunities nationwide.
A launchpad for global space commerce
The leaders of the Texas-France Space Hub say they envision a future where international partnerships create new opportunities to propel space exploration and commerce.
While the hub is initially a three-year commitment, its long-term vision includes expanding globally, forming potential partnerships with Mexico, Italy, Japan, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom and others.
“This initiative is just the beginning,” Alexander said. “Building strong international partnerships sets the stage for technological developments that will shape the future of space exploration and the space industry.”
The International Space Station is overly sterile; making it “dirtier” could improve astronaut health
Cell Press
Astronauts often experience immune dysfunction, skin rashes, and other inflammatory conditions while traveling in space. A new study publishing February 27 in the Cell Press journal Cell suggests that these issues could be due to the excessively sterile nature of spacecraft. The study showed that the International Space Station (ISS) has a much lower diversity of microbes compared to human-built environments on Earth, and the microbes that are present are mostly species carried by humans onto the ISS, suggesting that the presence of more microbes from nature could help improve human health in the space station.
“Future built environments, including space stations, could benefit from intentionally fostering diverse microbial communities that better mimic the natural microbial exposures experienced on Earth, rather than relying on highly sanitized spaces,” says co-first author Rodolfo Salido of the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego).
The researchers collaborated with astronauts who swabbed 803 different surfaces on the ISS—around 100 times more samples than were taken in previous surveys. Back on Earth, the researchers identified which bacterial species and chemicals were present in each sample. Then, they created three-dimensional maps illustrating where each was found on the ISS and how the bacteria and chemicals might be interacting.
The team found that overall, human skin was the main source of microbes throughout the ISS. Chemicals from cleaning products and disinfectants were present ubiquitously throughout the station. They also found that different “modules” or rooms within the ISS hosted different microbial communities and chemical signatures, and these differences were determined by the module’s use. For example, dining and food preparation areas contained more food-associated microbes, whereas the space toilet contained more urine- and fecal-associated microbes and metabolites.
“We noticed that the abundance of disinfectant on the surface of the International Space Station is highly correlated with the microbiome diversity at different locations on the space station,” says co-first author Nina Zhao (@NinaHaoqiZhao) of UC San Diego.
When they compared the ISS to different human-built environments on Earth, the researchers found that the ISS microbial communities were less diverse than most of the samples from Earth and were more similar to samples from industrialized, isolated environments, such as hospitals and closed habitats, and homes in urbanized areas.
Compared to most of the Earth samples, the ISS surfaces were lacking in free-living environmental microbes that are usually found in soil and water. Intentionally incorporating these microbes and the substrates they live in into the ISS could improve astronaut health without sacrificing hygiene, the researchers say. The researchers compare their suggestion to the well-studied beneficial impacts of gardening on the immune system.
“There’s a big difference between exposure to healthy soil from gardening versus stewing in our own filth, which is kind of what happens if we're in a strictly enclosed environment with no ongoing input of those healthy sources of microbes from the outside,” says Knight.
In the future, the researchers hope to refine their analyses to be able to detect potentially pathogenic microbes and signals of human health from environmental metabolites. They say that these methods could also help improve the health of people living and working in similarly sterile environments on Earth.
“If we really want life to thrive outside Earth, we can't just take a small branch of the tree of life and launch it into space and hope that it will work out,” says Salido. “We need to start thinking about what other beneficial companions we should be sending with these astronauts to help them develop ecosystems that will be sustainable and beneficial for all.”
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This research was supported by the NIH, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the University of California San Diego, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, and the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory.
Cell, Salido and Zhao et al., “The International Space Station Has a Unique and Extreme Microbial and Chemical Environment Driven by Use Patterns.” https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00108-4.
Cell (@CellCellPress), the flagship journal of Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that publishes findings of unusual significance in any area of experimental biology, including but not limited to cell biology, molecular biology, neuroscience, immunology, virology and microbiology, cancer, human genetics, systems biology, signaling, and disease mechanisms and therapeutics. Visit: http://www.cell.com/cell. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.
Journal
Cell
Method of Research
Experimental study
Subject of Research
Cells
Article Title
The International Space Station Has a Unique and Extreme Microbial and Chemical Environment Driven by Use Patterns
Article Publication Date
27-Feb-2025
NASA’s Hubble provides bird’s-eye view of Andromeda galaxy’s ecosystem
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
image:
This is a wide-angle view of the distribution of known satellite galaxies orbiting the large Andromeda galaxy (M31), located 2.5 million light-years away. The Hubble Space Telescope was used to study the entire population of 36 mini-galaxies circled in yellow. Andromeda is the bright spindle-shaped object at image center. All the dwarf galaxies seem to be confined to a plane, all orbiting in the same direction. The wide view is from ground-based photography. Hubble's optical stability, clarity, and efficiency made this ambitious survey possible. Hubble close up snapshots of four dwarf galaxies are on image right. The most prominent dwarf galaxy is M32 (NGC 221), a compact ellipsoidal galaxy that might be the remnant core of a larger galaxy that collided with Andromeda a few billion years ago.
view moreCredit: NASA, ESA, Alessandro Savino (UC Berkeley), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Akira Fujii DSS2
Located 2.5 million light-years away, the majestic Andromeda galaxy appears to the naked eye as a faint, spindle-shaped object roughly the angular size of the full Moon. What backyard observers don't see is a swarm of nearly three dozen small satellite galaxies circling the Andromeda galaxy, like bees around a hive.
These satellite galaxies represent a rambunctious galactic "ecosystem" that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is studying in unprecedented detail. This ambitious Hubble Treasury Program used observations from more than a whopping 1,000 Hubble orbits. Hubble's optical stability, clarity, and efficiency made this ambitious survey possible. This work included building a precise 3D mapping of all the dwarf galaxies buzzing around Andromeda and reconstructing how efficiently they formed new stars over the nearly 14 billion years of the universe's lifetime.
In the study published in The Astrophysical Journal, Hubble reveals a markedly different ecosystem from the smaller number of satellite galaxies that circle our Milky Way. This offers forensic clues as to how our Milky Way galaxy and Andromeda have evolved differently over billions of years. Our Milky Way has been relatively placid. But it looks like Andromeda has had a more dynamic history, which was probably affected by a major merger with another big galaxy a few billion years ago. This encounter, and the fact that Andromeda is as much as twice as massive as our Milky Way, could explain its plentiful and diverse dwarf galaxy population.
Surveying the Milky Way's entire satellite system in such a comprehensive way is very challenging because we are embedded inside our galaxy. Nor can it be accomplished for other large galaxies because they are too far away to study the small satellite galaxies in much detail. The nearest galaxy of comparable mass to the Milky Way beyond Andromeda is M81, at nearly 12 million light-years.
This bird's-eye view of Andromeda's satellite system allows us to decipher what drives the evolution of these small galaxies. "We see that the duration for which the satellites can continue forming new stars really depends on how massive they are and on how close they are to the Andromeda galaxy," said lead author Alessandro Savino of the University of California at Berkeley. "It is a clear indication of how small-galaxy growth is disturbed by the influence of a massive galaxy like Andromeda."
"Everything scattered in the Andromeda system is very asymmetric and perturbed. It does appear that something significant happened not too long ago," said principal investigator Daniel Weisz of the University of California at Berkeley. "There's always a tendency to use what we understand in our own galaxy to extrapolate more generally to the other galaxies in the universe. There's always been concerns about whether what we are learning in the Milky Way applies more broadly to other galaxies. Or is there more diversity among external galaxies? Do they have similar properties? Our work has shown that low-mass galaxies in other ecosystems have followed different evolutionary paths than what we know from the Milky Way satellite galaxies."
For example, half of the Andromeda satellite galaxies all seem to be confined to a plane, all orbiting in the same direction. "That's weird. It was actually a total surprise to find the satellites in that configuration and we still don't fully understand why they appear that way," said Weisz.
The brightest companion galaxy to Andromeda is Messier 32 (M32). This is a compact ellipsoidal galaxy that might just be the remnant core of a larger galaxy that collided with Andromeda a few billion years ago. After being gravitationally stripped of gas and some stars, it continued along its orbit. Galaxy M32 contains older stars, but there is evidence it had a flurry of star formation a few billion years ago. In addition to M32, there seems to be a unique population of dwarf galaxies in Andromeda not seen in the Milky Way. They formed most of their stars very early on, but then they didn't stop. They kept forming stars out of a reservoir of gas at a very low rate for a much longer time.
"Star formation really continued to much later times, which is not at all what you would expect for these dwarf galaxies," continued Savino. "This doesn't appear in computer simulations. No one knows what to make of that so far."
"We do find that there is a lot of diversity that needs to be explained in the Andromeda satellite system," added Weisz. "The way things come together matters a lot in understanding this galaxy's history."
Hubble is providing the first set of imaging where astronomers measure the motions of the dwarf galaxies. In another five years Hubble or NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will be able to get the second set of observations, allowing astronomers to do a dynamical reconstruction for all 36 of the dwarf galaxies, which will help astronomers to rewind the motions of the entire Andromeda ecosystem billions of years into the past.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
Explore More
NASA’s Hubble Traces Hidden History of Andromeda Galaxy
Hubble’s High-Definition Panoramic View of the Andromeda Galaxy
Explore the Night Sky: Messier 31
Follow Hubble's social pages: @NASAHubble @NASAHubble @NASAHubble
Media Contact:
Claire Andreoli (claire.andreoli@nasa.gov)
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
Science Contact:
Alessandro Savino
University of California, Berkeley, California
Journal
The Astrophysical Journal
Article Title
The Hubble Space Telescope Survey of M31 Satellite Galaxies. IV. Survey Overview and Lifetime Star Formation Histories
Article Publication Date
28-Jan-2025
By AFP
February 26, 2025
Intuitive Machines' hexagonal-shaped lander, Athena, is set to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a window that opens at 7:02 pm (0002 GMT) Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, according to an official spaceflight advisory
Issam AHMED
Intuitive Machines made history last year as the first private company to put a robot on the Moon, although the triumph was marred by the lander tipping onto its side.
Now, the Houston-based firm is gearing up for a second attempt, determined to achieve a perfect touchdown.
Intuitive Machines’ hexagonal-shaped lander, Athena, is set to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a window that opens at 7:02 pm (0002 GMT) Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, according to an official spaceflight advisory.
If all goes well, it will touch down around March 6 at a spot called the Mons Mouton plateau, a site closer to the lunar south pole than any previously targeted.
Athena carries scientific instruments, including a drill to search for ice beneath the surface and a unique hopping drone named Grace after a famous computer scientist, Grace Hopper. It is designed to traverse the Moon’s rugged inclines, boulders, and craters — a valuable capability to support future crewed missions.
Also aboard is a small rover, which will test a lunar cellular network provided by Nokia Bell Labs by relaying commands, images, and video between the lander, rover, and hopper.
Until recently, soft lunar landings were achieved only by a handful of well-funded national space agencies.
Now, the US is working to make private missions routine through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, a public-private collaboration aimed at delivering key NASA hardware to the surface at a fraction of the cost of traditional missions. The effort supports the broader Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon and apply lessons learned there to prepare for reaching Mars.
“This is a really sophisticated mission enabled by the partnerships between the government and US industry,” said Joel Kearns, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration.
– Nailing the landing –
The first major hurdle, however, will be achieving a perfect landing — a feat the company fell short of with its first lander, Odysseus, which went to space in February 2024. It caught a foot on the surface and tipped over, coming to rest at a 30-degree angle — limiting its solar power and preventing it from completing NASA experiments under a $118 million contract.
This time, the price tag is $62.5 million.
“Landing on the Moon is very challenging,” said Kearns. “It’s a lot tougher than landing on Earth, where we have the advantage of air, wings, parachutes, and things like that.”
But on the Moon, which has an atmosphere so thin it’s practically a vacuum, spacecraft must rely solely on controlled bursts from thrusters to slow their descent.
Intuitive Machines CEO Trent Martin acknowledged the challenges and said the company had made key improvements — including better cabling for the laser altimeter, an instrument that provides altitude and velocity readings and helps select a safe landing site.
Another issue the IM-1 mission faced was accurately determining its position en route to the Moon. To improve this, Intuitive Machines has enhanced coordination with NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) for more precise navigation.
Athena’s arrival at the Moon is set to be preceded on March 2 by another private US lander, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, which launched on a more circuitous journey back in January, sharing a ride with Tokyo-based ispace’s Resilience lander.
Also hitching a ride on this rocket will be NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer probe, which will enter orbit after a four-month journey and begin a two-year mission to study the distribution of different forms of water on the Moon.
These missions come at a delicate time for NASA, amid speculation that it may scale back or cancel its astronaut program to the Moon in favor of Mars — a key goal of both President Donald Trump and his close advisor Elon Musk.
MSU forges strategic partnership to solve the mystery of how planets are formed
Michigan State University
image:
An artist’s conception of the exoplanet K2-33b, a 10 Myr Jupiter-sized planet, transiting in front of its active host star. This system is comparable to those which will be observed by the KRONOS collaboration.
view moreCredit: NASA/JPL-CalTech
EAST LANSING, Mich. – Astronomers have long grappled with the question, “How do planets form?” A new collaboration among Michigan State University, Arizona State University and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will seek to answer this question with the help of a powerful telescope and high-performance computers.
The team of researchers will use 154 hours on the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, to probe the atmospheres of seven planets beyond our solar system – all of which were formed less than 300 million years ago, around the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth. In conjunction with JWST, this collaboration, called the KRONOS program, will use computers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, or LLNL, to create atmospheric models that could lead to understanding how planets form, evolve and possibly even harbor conditions favorable for life.
“Understanding the compositions of planetary atmospheres at different ages is still a big unknown because these planets are hard to find and even harder to characterize,” said KRONOS program co-principal investigator Adina Feinstein, a NASA Sagan Fellow and incoming assistant professor at MSU. “With the precision and instruments aboard JWST, we’re excited to have the ability to begin to directly address questions of what natal planets look like.”
Three years into its operations, the JWST – a joint mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency – is already revolutionizing our understanding of planets beyond our solar system. Given the number of planets in our galaxy – 6,000 and counting – it’s clear that planet formation is pervasive. The details of how that happened, however, are still elusive. One way to find out is to observe planets of different ages, particularly young exoplanets less than 300 million years old, as they transit their host stars.
During this transit, some of the starlight passes through the planet’s atmosphere, and molecules such as water or carbon dioxide absorb some of the light. Scientists observe exoplanet transits at different wavelengths to probe how the light is absorbed to uncover the composition of an exoplanet atmosphere.
By using physics-driven models of atmospheres, astronomers can explore an exoplanet’s composition, linking it to planetary formation and evolution theories. The problem is these models come at a huge computational cost. To combat this, the KRONOS team won 22 million hours of computing time through the LLNL Computing Grand Challenge Program. This program provides significant quantities of institutional computing resources to LLNL scientists to perform cutting-edge research.
The models KRONOS creates will be used to understand the compositions of a wide variety of exoplanet atmospheres. This in turn can be used to understand how planets are formed.
“We are taking some of the first steps to probe young exoplanet atmospheres – a largely unknown population. Through our strategic partnership, we will push the limits of our models and data, looking for new insights into both planetary atmospheres and their host stars,” said KRONOS co-principal investigator Luis Welbanks, a 51 Pegasi b Fellow and incoming assistant professor at Arizona State University. “Our results will reveal the physical and chemical processes shaping these distant worlds, guiding the future of both theoretical and observational research”
In addition to the seven planets being studied by KRONOS, the team will generate models for all 70 exoplanets that have been observed by JWST.
“An endeavor to uniformly model such a large sample of planets – from scorching worlds more massive than Jupiter, to temperate and small Earth-mass planets – has yet to be undertaken,” said LLNL principal investigator Peter McGill. “This task can really only be accomplished using LLNL’s world-class high performance computing platforms.”
Once completed, the atmospheric models developed by the team will be made publicly available to the astronomy community. The goal is to encourage open collaborative science and make a lasting impact on the field.
By Bethany Mauger, with contributions from Kim Baptista at Arizona State University
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Michigan State University has been advancing the common good with uncommon will for more than 170 years. One of the world’s leading public research universities, MSU pushes the boundaries of discovery to make a better, safer, healthier world for all while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 400 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.
For MSU news on the web, go to MSUToday or x.com/MSUnews.
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