Space Stories: Spirals in the Oort Cloud, Killer Asteroid Heading Towards Moon, and Starlink Messes Up Astronomy

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Halley’s Comet. (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology)

Here are some recent space-related stories of interest.

—NDTV: “Visual Glitch Leads To Accidental Discovery Of Spiral In Mysterious Oort Cloud“

Scientists have long assumed the Oort Cloud, one of the most mysterious structures in our solar system, to be spherical. But during the pre-production of their new space show, “Encounters in the Milky Way,” they noticed a strange spiral pattern in the middle of the cloud. The show, which premiered on Monday at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium, featured a computer-generated visualisation of the Oort Cloud on the dome. The team was reviewing the animation when they noticed what appeared to be a spiral structure inside the typically spherical cloud shape.

—Daily Mail: “NASA Issues Urgent Update on ‘City Killer’ Asteroid Heading Towards the Moon in 2032“

The ‘city killer’ asteroid 2024 YR4 may not be on a collision course with Earth anymore. But NASA has raised the odds of it hitting the moon in just seven years’ time. According to the space agency, there’s now a 4.3 per cent chance that 2024 YR4 will smash into the moon on December 22, 2032…The impact event would be the first time scientists could watch a known asteroid create a lunar crater in real-time.

—New Scientist: “Starlink Satellites are Leaking Radio Signals that May Ruin Astronomy“

SpaceX’s Starlink satellites are leaking radio waves to such an extent that it could threaten our ability to study and understand the early universe, say astronomers. Interference from the thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit, where they provide a global internet service, has been a continuing concern for astronomers, who say that the radio emissions from the craft could affect sensitive telescopes that observe distant, and faint, radio sources. SpaceX has worked with astronomers to try to prevent this interference, by switching off their internet-transmitting beams when they fly over key telescopes, but it turns out that this isn’t enough.