Viewing the Dark-side of an Exoplanet

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: Artist’s image of WASP-121b from Engine House VFX.

It was not so long ago that we were questioning the very existence of exoplanets, and now we are measuring their dark-sides. MIT News has a story about a recent paper discussing the findings of astronomers observing an exoplanet approximately 850 light years from Earth. About twice the size of Jupiter and tidally-locked with its host star, the exoplanet has a very strange water cycle. The article states:

While on Earth, water cycles by first evaporating, then condensing into clouds, then raining out, on WASP-121b, the water cycle is far more intense: On the day side, the atoms that make up water are ripped apart at temperatures over 3,000 kelvins. These atoms are blown around to the night side, where colder temperatures allow hydrogen and oxygen atoms to recombine into water molecules, which then blow back to the day side, where the cycle starts again.

The article and paper go into many more details, yet I am most impressed with this level of observation already possible using a spectroscopic camera aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. With the James Webb Space Telescope soon to go online, we can only hope for more fascinating insights into distant exoplanets.

Another Russian Casualty: Mars

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: The Exomars rover from the ESA.

Yesterday, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that another space program has been impacted by the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

Regarding the ExoMars programme continuation, the sanctions and the wider context make a launch in 2022 very unlikely. ESA’s Director General will analyse all the options and prepare a formal decision on the way forward by ESA Member States.

The ESA website on the Exomars program notes that it is a two part mission searching for life on Mars: the Trace Gas Orbiter launched in 2016 and the Exomars rover and surface platform planned for launch in 2022. NASA also contributed to this latest mission:

NASA’s participation in the 2022 ExoMars Rover mission includes providing critical elements to the premier astrobiology instrument on the rover, the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA). By studying organic molecules, the chemical building blocks of life, MOMA is designed to help answer questions about whether life ever existed on Mars, along with its potential origin, evolution and distribution on the Red Planet.

The list of impacted space missions will only grow.

Ukraine and Starlink

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: Starlink terminals posted in a Ukrainian tweet.

Three cheers for SpaceX’s assistance to Ukraine during this difficult time. After Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov made a plea to SpaceX for assistance with its Internet, Mr. Must approved the shipment of Starlink terminals to Ukraine to allow the country to use the company’s satellites for its communications.

Vice Prime Minister Fedorov had tweeted:

@elonmusk, while you try to colonize Mars — Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand.

We can haggle about the number of Starlink satellites in orbit another time. Fortunately, such satellites are there when the beleaguered Ukrainians need them.

You can read more about it via The Verge.

Russia Interrupts Space Missions

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: Guiana Space Center launch pads from the ESA.

Be prepared. With the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the related U.S. and European sanctions, we can expect some delays and cancellations in upcoming space missions. The latest news story is Russia’s pull out of the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, leading to the delayed launch of two European Space Agency (ESA) Galileo navigation satellites that were to be sent into orbit on Soyuz rockets.

Director General of Russia’s Roscosmos tweeted:

In response to EU sanctions against our enterprises, Roscosmos is suspending cooperation with European partners in organizing space launches from the Kourou cosmodrome and withdrawing its technical personnel, including the consolidated launch crew, from French Guiana.

Luckily, the world is becoming less and less reliant on Russian rockets. Nonetheless, it would be better for Russia to focus on scientific missions again rather than military missions. Rockets should be aimed at the stars instead of the Ukrainian people.

Remnants of Another Galaxy Found in the Milky Way

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: Gaia spacecraft map of the Milky Way from ESA.

The European Space Agency (ESA) reported scientists found the remnants of another galaxy that collides with our galaxy 8-10 billion years ago. This would be the sixth such grouping or galaxy to be found within the Milky Way. We commonly hear about merging planets in the early stages of our solar system, but that is small stuff by comparison. Observations from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft led to this discovery. This merged galaxy is called “Pontus,” the name of one of the first children of Gaia, the Greek goddess of the Earth.

An earlier ESA release discussed the number of galaxies that arrived more recently and may pass us by or be caught by the Milky Way and pulled apart like Pontus and the others:

François Hammer, Observatoire de Paris – Université Paris Sciences et Lettres, France, and colleagues from across Europe and China, used the Gaia data to calculate the movements of 40 dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way. They did this by computing a set of quantities known as the three-dimensional velocities for each galaxy, and then using those to calculate the galaxy’s orbital energy and the angular (rotational) momentum.

They found that these galaxies are moving much faster than the giant stars and star clusters that are known to be orbiting the Milky Way. So fast, that they couldn’t be in orbit yet around the Milky Way, where interactions with our galaxy and its contents would have sapped their orbital energy and angular momentum…

So will these newcomers settle into orbit or simply pass us by? “Some of them will be captured by the Milky Way and will become satellites,” says François.

I wonder what is would be like sitting in one of those smaller galaxies awaiting your fate. Of course, it will be a very long wait.

Source/Credit: Dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way from ESA.
Source/credit: Gaia spacecraft from the ESA/- C. Carreau.
Posted in ESA