Space Stories: Japanese Spacecraft Leaves for Mars, Extreme Exoplanet Weather, and Ghostly Green Stars

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: JAXA

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—Sky & Telescope: “Japan Launches the Martian Moons Exploration Mission“

A two-stage, H3-24L rocket lit up the predawn skies over Tanegashima Space Center on the southern tip of Japan early on Tuesday, October 20th (3:41 p.m. EDT on October 19th), carrying a mission headed for the Red Planet: the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Martian Moons eXploration (MMX)…The mission is complex, set to explore the moons of Mars with a series of flybys past Deimos before rendezvous with and landing on Phobos. If all goes well, MMX will collect and return a sample from Phobos and return it to Earth. The agency’s goal is nothing less than to understand the potato-shaped moons’ origins.

—SciTechDaily: “NASA’s James Webb Telescope Reveals a Giant Alien Planet That’s Not Quite Round“

One side of WASP-17b’s atmosphere extends farther into space than the other, giving this intensely hot giant planet an uneven outline. Astronomers have now mapped that distortion with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), finding a pattern consistent with predictions of how heat and powerful winds shape a world with permanent day and night sides. WASP-17b is a hot Jupiter, a giant planet that orbits close to its star, about 1,300 light-years from Earth. The study, co-led by Cornell University in the United States and the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, was published in Nature Astronomy. It marks the first application of a method called transmission strings, developed at Bristol by astrophysicists Dr. David Grant and Dr. Hannah Wakeford.

—ScienceDaily: “Astronomers Discover a Ghostly Green Star Unlike Any Known Before“

Astronomers at the University of Warwick have discovered that white dwarf stars can display a surprising variety of colors, including green, pink, purple, yellow, and cyan. Among their findings is the first known star that would appear genuinely green to the human eye. For most stars, color is closely tied to temperature. Cooler stars appear orange, stars like our Sun look white, and the hottest stars shine pale blue. The relationship is similar to heating a piece of iron, which changes from red to orange and eventually white as its temperature rises.

Study Findings: Two Families of Multi-planet Systems With Distinct Architectures and Stellar Hosts

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by YourAveragePhotographer from Pixabay.

Nature Astronomy abstract of study findings:

The rapidly growing census of exoplanets now includes over a thousand multi-planet systems, revealing architectures that span more than four orders of magnitude in mass and five in orbital scale. Explaining the origin of this striking diversity remains a central challenge for planet formation theory, compounded by observational biases that limit access to Solar System-like regimes. Here we introduce architecture-agnostic metrics to uniformly analyse four independently defined samples of multi-planet systems, uncovering unifying patterns across their diversity. We identify a clear bimodality in system masses, dividing known architectures into two distinct families. The lower-mass family, predominantly hosted by subsolar-to-solar stars, exhibits tightly packed configurations with mass distributions consistent with the ‘peas-in-a-pod’ pattern and modal dynamical excitation comparable with that of the Solar System. By contrast, the high-mass family forms in metal-rich environments around solar-to-supersolar stars, displays gravitationally compact architectures and is an order of magnitude dynamically hotter than both the Solar System and the lower-mass counterparts. Their high level of dynamical excitation points to violent evolutionary pathways driven by global instabilities and planet–planet scattering. Together, these results show that the architectures of planetary systems are born from the combined influence of formation processes and host star properties. Signatures of these roots are preserved across the post-formation dynamical evolution that reshaped most known multi-planet systems.

Citation: Turrini, D., Danielski, C., Polychroni, D. et al. Two families of multi-planet systems with distinct architectures and stellar hosts. Nat Astron (2026).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-026-02990-8

Study-related stories:

Phys.org – “Planetary Systems Reveal Two Distinct Families Tied to Their Host Stars”

Earthsky – “Planetary Systems Fall Into 2 Distinct Families, Astronomers Say”

Scienmag – “Exoplanet Census Reveals Two Distinct Families of Planetary Systems”

Video/Podcast: The Future of Mankind and AI

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by Brian Penny from Pixabay.

Cool Worlds Lab has some great video on YouTube worth watching. One of latest related to artificial intelligence (AI), titled “AI Has Poisoned Everything?” As with most of the videos on the site, it poses a number of questions. In this case, the questions are very troubling.

I am used to the videos asking questions such as Is there life elsewhere in the universe? and When will our time in the universe end?, but the question posed in this video is much more immediate. It asked Can we count on our eyes and understanding of the world as AI takes over? It is a scary question that has no answer yet, and the efforts so far in Washington DC to understand AI seem puny compared to the potential threat.

But don’t stop with the video. The Cool Worlds podcast has more on AI. This week’s podcast, “Hugging Face Hack, AI Meltdowns, Poisoning AI,” involves a discussion between Professor David Kipping and Hal Triedman, a PhD student at Cornell Tech. Triedman is studying the role of AI agents, which are grabbing all of the attention these days as they hack their way through our economy.

None of this is uplifting, but it is important and worth understanding. We are being pushed into this new world, so we need to be ready for what is to come. Even if half of what is being said is an exaggeration, the remaining half is more than enough to threaten everything we have built as a civilization to date.

Like nuclear weapons, we cannot unlearn what we now know. Unlike nuclear weapons, AI may be able to think and act on its own before we find a way to put any controls around it.

Space Quote: No One Knows Anything While Ukraine Burns

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Space Frontpage.

“Well, I don’t know if it was anybody, because it wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon, and from what I understand, it’s the same as it’s always been.”

–Statement by President Trump after being asked about interference with the Starlink system used by the Ukrainians to defend their country against Russian attacks. Elon Musk and the US Government operate the Starlink and Starshield systems, respectively, over Ukraine. The New Republic is now reporting that Mr. Musk approached President Trump about “slowing down” the satellite service while the White House touts a false ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine for the purpose of obtaining Russian diesel fuel to replace fuel lost as a result of the war with Iran. The planned deal between Russia and the US would violate US law while also harming Ukraine. The White House is blaming Ukraine for attacking Russian energy assets while saying nothing about how Russia continues to violate international law as well as a treaty between Ukraine, the US, and Russia. Mr. Musk should probably figure this out quickly since the Ukrainian uncertainty is already impacting SpaceX stock, the only thing he seems to care about these days.

Pic of the Week: Nebula Pa 30 – Space Fireworks

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Nebula Pa 30 as captured by the Gemini North Telescope. (International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSG/AURA)

This week’s image is from the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii. The spectacular explosion you see here is not the end of the Death Star, but rather Nebula Pa 30.

Here is what NASA’s Astronomy Photo of the Day website has to say about this image:

It is likely the remnant of an old supernova explosion: separate historical records by Chinese, Japanese and Arabic astronomers tell of a “guest star” that appeared in the sky for 185 days in the year 1181. It is believed that this bright new point of light came from the supernova that caused the fireworks in Pa 30. Astronomers don’t know exactly what happened in this unusual explosion, classified as a Type Iax supernova, but it is thought to be caused by the merger of two white dwarfs. The mysterious central star in the image is extremely hot and produces a strong wind, possibly forming the radial filaments. Look closely at them: those pearl-like knots stringing the filaments are 4 light-days in diameter. Understanding how a supernova created this amazing nebula continues an 845-year old mystery (and counting).