Space Stories: Solar Probe’s Close Flyby, Cosmic Tunnels, and More Complexities in Planet Formation

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: NASA

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Sky & Telescope: “Parker Solar Probe Swings By Sun in Closest Approach Yet“

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is about to go where no spacecraft has gone before. A final flyby of Venus last month has sped up Parker for the mission’s next solar perihelion, set to occur on December 24 at 6:40 EST / 11:40 UT. At just 6.2 million km (3.9 million miles) from the solar surface — about nine times the Sun’s radius — this perihelion will be the closest for the mission. Parker is breaking its own record to once again become the closest human-made object to ever approach the Sun…the mission is totally autonomous in taking measurements; it should start transmitting data back to Earth within a week after this pass, though it has the capability to carry out operations on its own for up to two months if needed.

—BRG: “Astronomers Say They Found a Tunnel Connecting Our Solar System to Other Stars“

Astronomers have made a startling discovery. Using data from the eRosita X-ray instrument, researchers say they’ve discovered a “cosmic tunnel” that connects our solar system to other stars. Scientists have long known that our solar system exists in a Local Hot Bubble. This bubble is believed to have formed following several supernovas over the past several million years and is estimated to be around 300 light-years across. Using data from the eRosita, researchers from the Max Planck Institute say they found evidence of a cosmic tunnel stretching from our solar system out toward the Centaurus constellation. The tunnel appears to move through the material that makes up the Local Hot Bubble

—Northwestern Now: “Young Exoplanet’s Atmosphere Unexpectedly Differs from its Birthplace“

Just as some children physically resemble their parents, many scientists have long thought that developing planets should resemble the swirling disk of gas and dust that births them. But, in a new study, a Northwestern University-led team of astrophysicists discovered the resemblance might be looser than previously thought. By studying a still-forming exoplanet and its surrounding natal disk using new instrumentation at W.M. Keck Observatory, the researchers uncovered a mismatched composition of gases in the planet’s atmosphere compared to gases within the disk. The surprising finding potentially confirms long-held skepticism that scientists’ current model of planet formation is too simplified.

Space Stories: Firefly Wins Another NASA Contract, Commercial Space Station Progress, and Another Starliner Delay

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander and a rover on the lunar surface. (Firefly Aerospace)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Firefly Aerospace: “Firefly Awarded $179 Million NASA Contract for Moon Delivery to Gruithuisen Domes“

Firefly Aerospace, Inc., the leader in end-to-end responsive space services, was awarded an approximately $179.6 million NASA contract to deliver and operate six NASA instruments in the Gruithuisen Domes on the Moon’s near side in 2028. As part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload (CLPS) initiative, the mission will utilize Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, Elytra Dark orbital vehicle, and a rover from an industry provider to investigate the unique composition of the Gruithuisen Domes – a part of the Moon that has never been explored.

—NASA: “NASA Sees Progress on Starlab Commercial Space Station Development“

A NASA-funded commercial space station, Starlab, recently completed four key developmental milestones, marking substantial progress in the station’s design and operational readiness. The four milestones are part of a NASA Space Act Agreement awarded in 2021 and focused on reviews of the habitat structural test article preliminary design, systems integration, integrated operations, and a habitat structural test plan. “These milestone achievements are great indicators to reflect Starlab’s commitment to the continued efforts and advancements of their commercial destination,” said Angela Hart, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program. “As we look forward to the future of low Earth orbit, every successful milestone is one step closer to creating a dynamic and robust commercialized low Earth orbit.”

—Associated Press: “NASA’s 2 stuck Astronauts Face More Time in Space with Return Delayed Until at Least Late March“

NASA’s two stuck astronauts just got their space mission extended again. That means they won’t be back on Earth until spring, 10 months after rocketing into orbit on Boeing’s Starliner capsule. NASA announced the latest delay in Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams’ homecoming on Tuesday. The two test pilots planned on being away just a week or so when they blasted off June 5 on Boeing’s first astronaut flight to the International Space Station. Their mission grew from eight days to eight months after NASA decided to send the company’s problem-plagued Starliner capsule back empty in September.

Space Stories: Classifying Supernovae, Non-Water Liquid on Mars, and Understanding Exoplanet Atmospheres

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Wolf-Rayet 124 (WR 124), a hot star just about to go supernova, as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Caltech: “Zwicky Transient Facility Leads to Classification of 10,000 Supernovae“

Fast forward to now, and Zwicky’s namesake, the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)—a National Science Foundation-funded sky survey that began operations in 2017 using the 48-inch telescope—has detected about a hundred thousand supernovae. These detections, in turn, have led to the spectroscopic classification and confirmation of more than 10,000 supernovae, making ZTF the largest supernova survey to date. “There are trillions of stars in the universe, and about every second, one of them explodes. Reaching 10,000 classifications is amazing, but what we truly should celebrate is the incredible progress we have made in our ability to browse the universe for transients, or objects that change in the sky, and the science our rich data will enable,” says Christoffer Fremling, a staff astronomer at Caltech. Fremling leads the Bright Transient Survey (BTS), ZTF project that discovers and classifies new supernovae.

—MIT News: “Liquid on Mars was Not Necessarily All Water“

Dry river channels and lake beds on Mars point to the long-ago presence of a liquid on the planet’s surface, and the minerals observed from orbit and from landers seem to many to prove that the liquid was ordinary water. Not so fast, the authors of a new Perspectives article in Nature Geoscience suggest. Water is only one of two possible liquids under what are thought to be the conditions present on ancient Mars. The other is liquid carbon dioxide (CO2), and it may actually have been easier for CO2 in the atmosphere to condense into a liquid under those conditions than for water ice to melt. 

—Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences: “A Rare Venus Solar Transit Helps Unravel Exoplanet Atmospheres“

In the next decade, researchers will start probing the atmosphere of planets as small as Earth and Venus orbiting nearby stars. But although these two solar system planets are similar in size and bulk density—so that some call them “twins”—their atmospheres are nothing alike. Would scientists be able to set them apart if seen from light-years away? A team led by the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA) pretended Venus was faraway in another planetary system—an exoplanet—and asked what kind of information they could extract. The results were published in an article in the journal Atmosphere and prove that techniques being used to study large hot exoplanets can be effectively applied to those with a diameter 10 times smaller.

Space Stories: Venus Without Oceans, Evidence of Black Holes on Earth, and Organic Material on Ceres

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The planet Venus. (NASA)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Astronomy.com: “Venus May Never Have Had Oceans“

The story of the inner early Solar System goes something like this: Billions of years ago, there were three rocky worlds with oceans of liquid water. Perhaps all three could have been primed for life. But as Mars lost its atmosphere and Venus’ atmosphere experienced a runaway greenhouse effect, only Earth could support life by the end. But a trio of researchers at the University of Cambridge, U.K., have a different view — that all those billions of years ago, Venus was already too hot to support oceans. There was water vapor (we still see evidence of this today), but it never had the chance to condense into oceans. Instead, Venus was a steam world, one that could reach surface temperatures as high as 1,340 degrees Fahrenheit (727 degrees Celsius). By most metrics, this means the surface of Venus was already a hellish, inhospitable world — and it never got much better.

—University at Buffalo: “Evidence of Primordial Black Holes may be Hiding in Planets, or Even Everyday Objects Here on Earth“

Imagine the formation of a black hole and you’ll probably envision a massive star running out of fuel and collapsing in on itself. Yet the chaotic conditions of the early universe may have also allowed many small black holes to form long before the first stars. These primordial black holes have been theorized for decades and could even be ever-elusive dark matter, the invisible matter that accounts for 85% of the universe’s total mass. Still, no primordial black hole has ever been observed. New research co-led by the University at Buffalo proposes thinking both big and small to confirm their existence, suggesting that their signatures could range from very large — hollow planetoids in space — to minute — microscopic tunnels in everyday materials found on Earth, like rocks, metal and glass.

—Astronomy.com: “New Evidence of Organic Material Identified on Ceres, the Inner Solar System’s Most Water-rich Object After Earth“

Six years ago, NASA’s Dawn mission communicated with Earth for the last time, ending its exploration of Ceres and Vesta, the two largest bodies in the asteroid belt. Since then, Ceres —a water-rich dwarf planet showing signs of geological activity— has been at the center of intense debates about its origin and evolution. Now, a study led by IAA-CSIC, using Dawn data and an innovative methodology, has identified eleven new regions suggesting the existence of an internal reservoir of organic materials in the dwarf planet. The results, published in The Planetary Science Journal, provide critical insights into the potential nature of this celestial body.

Martian Space Stories: Ocean Shoreline Located, Rings Turned to Moons, and Ancient Liquid Water

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The Red Planet. (NASA/JPL)

Here are some recent stories on Mars.

—Earth.com: “China’s Mars Zhurong Rover Finds an Ocean Shoreline on the Red Planet“

The Chinese Mars rover Zhurong is adding an exciting twist to the story and history of water on Mars. After landing in southern Utopia Planitia on Mars in May 2021, the now-defunct Zhurong rover went to work exploring the Martian surface, and its latest findings might just change the way we think about the Red Planet. Bo Wu and a team of researchers from Hong Kong Polytechnic University believe they’ve found compelling evidence of an ocean shoreline for a massive body of water that once covered Mars’ northern lowlands.

—New York Times: “An Asteroid’s Destruction May Have Given Mars Rings, Then Moons“

Something’s not quite right about the moons of Mars. They are too small — Phobos is 17 miles across, and Deimos is a mere nine miles in length. And they aren’t round, but lumpy, misshaped objects. Frankly, they don’t resemble moons at all…A study published Wednesday in the journal Icarus makes a case that the moons did indeed start out in asteroid form. But it’s not the genesis everyone was expecting. Using supercomputer-powered simulations, scientists describe a situation in which a large-enough asteroid was captured by Mars long ago and torn to shreds by the planet’s gravity, briefly forming a debris cloud — and possibly a ring system — around Mars that ultimately clumped together to form two moons.

—Astrobiology News: “Meteorite Contains Evidence Of Liquid Water On Mars 742 Million Years Ago“

An asteroid struck Mars 11 million years ago and sent pieces of the red planet hurtling through space. One of these chunks of Mars eventually crashed into the Earth somewhere near Purdue and is one of the few meteorites that can be traced directly to Mars. This meteorite was rediscovered in a drawer at Purdue University in 1931 and therefore named the Lafayette Meteorite. During early investigations of the Lafayette Meteorite, scientists discovered that it had interacted with liquid water while on Mars. Scientists have long wondered when that interaction with liquid water took place. An international collaboration of scientists including two from Purdue University’s College of Science have recently determined the age of the minerals in the Lafayette Meteorite that formed when there was liquid water. The team has published its findings in Geochemical Perspective Letters.