Space Stories: The Youngest Exoplanet, a Second Generation Exoplanet, and a Cold Lava Exoplanet

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): A randomly rendered exoplanet. (Image by Adis Resic from Pixabay)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest related to exoplanets.

—Wired: “Astronomers Confirm Discovery of the Youngest Known Exoplanet Ever”

Newly formed exoplanets are often buried within disks of gas and dust, the leftover building blocks from a planet’s formation, also known as a protoplanetary disk. The difficulty of just locating such a new celestial body is part of what makes the discovery of the exoplanet Elias 2-24b—now the youngest ever confirmed—so exciting…Elias 2-24b is located approximately 450 light-years from Earth. It orbits its star at a distance of approximately 55 astronomical units (one astronomical unit being the average distance between Earth and the sun). Its mass is estimated to be at most 1.9 to 4.0 times that of Jupiter, though researchers believe its volume is likely to be much smaller than our local gas giant. Since its host star is less than 1 million years old, Elias 2-24b is estimated to be similarly young.

—CNN: “First-ever Evidence of a Second-generation Planet Detected Around Dead Star“

In a cosmic first, scientists say they have detected a planet that may have formed from the burned remains of its dead host star. The planet is likely a gas giant orbiting a white dwarf called HS 0209+0832 located about 270 light-years from Earth, according to the authors of a study published Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy. After analyzing observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments, the team found chemical evidence that suggests the planet could have condensed from material expelled by the star as it fizzled out of energy and collapsed into a white dwarf.

—Space.com: “Astronomers Discover a Cold Lava Planet That May Resemble Early Earth“

Scientists have discovered a new planet that defies all expectations. It’s a lava world, but it’s also cold. In fact, it’s the coldest lava world we’ve ever seen with an atmosphere. Researchers spotted HD 3167 b, a rocky super-Earth covered in lava, orbiting a star 154 light-years away. This planet orbits so closely to its star that a “year” on the world (one revolution around its star) takes only one Earth day. But it’s not just a lava-covered rock  — it’s the smallest lava world researchers have ever found. And yet, it has managed to hang onto its atmosphere.

Note: Here is the podcast version of this post.

Study Findings: Discovery of a Star Sensitive to the Spin of Sagittarius A*

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Milky Way galaxy. (NASA)

Nature abstract of study findings:

Residing in the centre of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) is the closest massive black hole1 (MBH). Its vicinity has allowed measuring individual stellar orbits around it. The stars act as test particles and probe the gravitational potential around the 4.3 × 106M⊙ MBH. These observations have determined the central mass to sub-per-cent precision, and the mildly relativistic motions of stars have given access to the dominant relativistic corrections, the gravitational redshift, the transverse Doppler effect and the prograde precession imposed by the Schwarzschild metric nature of the potential. These effects are of order β2 = (v/c)2 (for velocity v and speed of light c). The Kerr metric for a rotating black hole leads to corrections of order β3. Here, we report the discovery of a faint main-sequence star (mK = 19.3), S301, on an 8.7-year orbit and with small enough a pericentre distance, such that the peak velocity of the star reaches 25,000 km s−1. Within the measurement abilities of current near-infrared interferometry and future spectroscopy on an extremely large telescope, the motion of S301 is directly sensitive to the spin of Sgr A*. The high eccentricity of S301 suggests that it is the captured component of a binary that was torn apart by the Hills mechanism.

Citation:  Abd El Dayem, K., Abuter, R., Aimar, N. et al. Discovery of a star sensitive to the spin of Sagittarius A*. Nature 657, 359–363 (2026).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10894-w

Study-related stories:

Science News – “A Record-breaking Star Could Reveal How the Milky Way’s Giant Black Hole Spins”

Universe Today – “The Fastest Star in the Milky Way Will Test Relativity”

Sky & Telescope – “Star Feels Spin of Milky Way’s Black Hole”

Space Quote: Robots Plan to Visit the Moon

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): NASA’s Valkyrie humanoid robot. (NASA)

“Our team is not trying to replace human explorers with robots but instead make human exploration safer and more sustainable by developing highly capable, reliable, and trustworthy robots to work in extreme environments…If we can send more capable robots, we can reduce the risk and make people more effective in doing the things that people do best.”

-Statement by Shaun Azimi, NASA’s Dexterous Robotics Team lead. The 16-member Dexterous Robotics Team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston includes team member who had experience with earlier robot experiments, including Robonaut 2, used on the International Space Station, and Valkyrie, which is NASA’s first bipedal humanoid robot. Future robots are expected to assist with the Moon Base, lunar exploration, and eventually greater work on Mars (beyond the rovers and helicopter already on the Martian surface). This means that artificial intelligence (AI) will be heading to the moon as well while we still try to figure out what to do with AI back here on Earth. AI is already being used on the Martian surface with the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers.

Crew-13 Safely Arrives at the ISS

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The SpaceX Dragon, with its nose cone open and carrying four Crew-13 members, approaches the International Space Station for a docking yesterday evening. (NASA)

A new ISS crew was launched from Cape Canaveral at 11:10 a.m. EDT Thursday, October 1, 2026 . Crew-13, consisting of NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. The ride to the space station was scheduled to be about 8 hours. The SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the crew safely docked with the ISS at 9:19 p.m. EDT.

The new crew will replace Crew‑12 consisting of NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. These four crew members will be returning to Earth as soon as Monday, weather permitting.

Image (Credit): From left to right, Crew-13 NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. (NASA)

Pic of the Week: Colorful IC 348

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): IC 348 as captured by NASA’s JWST recently observed IC 348. (NASA, ESA, CSA, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb))

This week’s image is from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). With its sharp, amazing colors you would not think it is real, yet you are looking at a star-forming region about 1,000 light-years away called IC 348.

Here is NASA’s description of what you are seeing:

In regions like IC 348, cold clouds of molecular hydrogen gas collapse to form new stars, creating glowing, sculpted scenes like this one. The star-formation process can create widely varied objects, from massive stars that expire after only a few million years in core-collapse supernova explosions to the smallest and most common stars, which are long lived and produce powerful stellar storms.The smallest stars weigh in at around 8 percent of the Sun’s mass. Below this mass lies a strange class of objects called brown dwarfs. Brown dwarfs form in the same way stars do, through the collapse of molecular clouds. However, unlike stars, the cores of brown dwarfs never become hot enough to fuse ordinary hydrogen into helium (though many briefly fuse deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, early in their lives).