Space Stories: Near Earth Hazards, Mars Helicopter, and Super-Earths

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): he NEO Surveyor infrared space telescope is optimized for finding, tracking and characterizing potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. (NASA/JPL)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Spacenews.com: “House committee questions proposed delay in NASA asteroid mission“

Members of the House Science Committee used a hearing about the planetary science decadal survey to criticize a proposal in NASA’s budget request to delay work on a space telescope to track near Earth objects (NEOs).

—NASA: “NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Captures Video of Record Flight“

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s black-and-white navigation camera has provided dramatic video of its record-breaking 25th flight, which took place on April 8. Covering a distance of 2,310 feet (704 meters) at a speed of 12 mph (5.5 meters per second), it was the Red Planet rotorcraft’s longest and fastest flight to date. (Ingenuity is currently preparing for its 29th flight.)

—Space.com: “James Webb Space Telescope will study two strange ‘super-Earths‘

The James Webb Space Telescope plans to explore strange, new rocky worlds in unprecedented detail...Rocky planets are more difficult to sight than gas giants in current telescope technology, due to the smaller planets’ relative brightness next to a star, and their relatively tiny size. But Webb’s powerful mirror and deep-space location should allow it to examine two planets slightly larger than Earth, known as “super-Earths.”

Image (Credit): Illustration showing what exoplanet 55 Cancri e could look like, based on current understanding of the planet. (webbtelescope.org)

The Latest on Exocomets

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Image (Credit): Artist’s drawing of exocomets around the young Beta Pictoris. (NASA/FUSE/Lynette Cook)

We have all heard about exoplanets and exomoons, but what about exocomets? It appears the bodies we can observe outside of our solar system are getting even smaller. In a Scientific American article, “Ukrainian Astronomers Discover ‘Exocomets’ around Another Star,” we learn about Ukrainian astronomers who found five such comets using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

The comets in question orbit the young star Beta Pictoris, which is about 65 light-years from Earth. This is not the first time comments were detected in this distant solar system’s debris disk. The researchers confirmed those earlier sighting as well. The planet-forming debris surrounding the star presents plenty of opportunities for comet sightings.

Such findings, using information from both the Kepler Space Telescope and TESS, continue to expand our understanding of these objects. Once we focus the James Webb Space Telescope on these little bodies, it should get even more interesting.

Extra: You can find the 2019 Astronomy article on the exocomets around Beta Pictoris here.

Podcast: More on the James Webb Space Telescope

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Alan Alda’s podcast Clear & Vivid (Amazon)

I wanted to highlight another astronomy interview from Alan Alda’s Clear+Vivid podcast, in this case involving a mother and daughter team. Astronomers Natalie and Natasha Batalha discuss “Looking for Life on Alien Worlds” using the new James Webb Space Telescope. The two guests discuss upcoming efforts to better understand the 5,000+ planets that have already been discovered. One of their favorites among the exoplanet systems is the TRAPPIST-1 system, noting the parent red star is about the size of Jupiter. This small star has seven exoplanets, with the “Goldilocks zone” being much closer in than is the case in our system.

NASA describes one of the exoplanets in the “Goldilocks zone,” TRAPPIST-1d, in this way:

TRAPPIST-1d is one of seven Earth-sized planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. About 40 light-years from Earth, TRAPPIST-1 is unusual both for its number of small rocky planets and the number in the habitable zone. Several of the artist’s illustrations…portray possible water or ice in the system– the proximity of the planets to their red dwarf star may indicate that any of them could have water on their surface. This artist’s concept shows TRAPPIST-1d with a narrow band of water near the terminator, the divide between a hot, dry day and an ice-covered night side.

You can read more about the TRAPPIST-1 system here.

Image (Credit): Artist’s image of exoplanet TRAPPIST-1d. (NASA)

Most Distant Galaxy on Record

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): This timeline illustrates the earliest galaxy candidates as well as the history of the universe.(Harikane et al., NASA, EST and P. Oesch/Yale)

Just recently I posted about the discovery of the farthest star. Well, now astronomers have spotted the farthest galaxy. The Harvard Gazette reports that a galaxy named HD1 appears to be about 13.5 billion light-years away and may contain the universe’s first stars or even the earliest black hole discovered to date. The contents of this galaxy is still being studied (and theorized).

The story quotes Fabio Pacucci, an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics who was involved in the discovery, who stated:

Answering questions about the nature of a source so far away can be challenging… It’s like guessing the nationality of a ship from the flag it flies, while being faraway ashore, with the vessel in the middle of a gale and dense fog. One can maybe see some colors and shapes of the flag, but not in their entirety. It’s ultimately a long game of analysis and exclusion of implausible scenarios.

More review of the data as well as updated data from the James Webb Space Telescope at some point in the future should help to answer questions related to this galaxy.

You can read more about this discover in the Astrophysical Journal. You may also be interested in the accompanying paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters,

A Liquid Lense? Ideas for Future Telescopes

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s drawing of a possible future giant telescope being created in space using fluids. (NASA & Studio Ella Maru)

NASA has an interesting story about the development of liquid lenses for space telescopes. It’s a fascinating idea as we watch the slow assembly of the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) 18-part mirror. This new approach, which could increase a telescope’s size 100 fold, will be tested aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Edward Balaban, principal investigator of the Fluidic Telescope Experiment, or FLUTE, at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley stated:

We thought, why not take advantage of the way liquids naturally behave in microgravity and apply it to the construction of large-scale telescopes or space-manufactured optical components that can have all kinds of uses. In microgravity, liquids take on shapes that are useful for making lenses and mirrors, so if we make them in space, they could be used to build telescopes that are dramatically bigger than was previously thought possible.

We are already expecting great things from the JWSP, but what could we learn with a telescope that is 100 times larger? I look forward to the results from the experiment aboard the ISS.