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RCW 38 is a molecular cloud of ionized hydrogen (HII) roughly 5,500 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Vela. Located in this cloud is a massive star-forming cluster populated by young stars, short-lived massive stars, and protostars surrounded by clouds of brightly glowing gas. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) recently released a stunning 80-million-pixel image of the star cluster that features the bright streaks and swirls of RCW 38, the bright pink of its gas clouds, and its many young stars (which appear as multi-colored dots).

The image was captured by the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), located at the ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The telescope is the world’s largest survey telescope and combines a 4.1-meter (~13.5-foot) mirror, the most highly curved mirror of its size. The extremely high curvature reduces the focal length, making the telescope’s structure extremely compact. This design enables VISTA to map large areas of the southern sky quickly, deeply, and systematically.

The telescope also has a wide field of view and a huge camera weighing three metric tons (3.3 U.S. tons) with 16 state-of-the-art infrared-sensitive detectors. VISTA’s surveys in the near-infrared (NIR) spectrum have revealed completely new views of the southern sky. Star clusters are often called “stellar nurseries” since they contain all the ingredients for star formation, including dense gas clouds and opaque clumps of cosmic dust.

When clumps of this gas and dust collect to the point that they undergo gravitational collapse, new stars are born. The strong radiation produced by these newborn stars causes the gas shrouding the star cluster to glow brightly, creating the colorful display we see in this image. Despite that, many of the cluster’s stars cannot be observed in visible light because they are obscured by dust. However, these stars are still visible in infrared light, which passes through clouds of dust unimpeded.

This allowed the VISTA telescope and the VISTA InfraRed CAMera (VIRCAM) to capture the interior of the RCW 38 stellar cluster and reveal the true extent of its beauty. Visible in the cluster’s interior are young stars within dusty cocoons and colder “failed” stars known as brown dwarfs. The roughly 2000 stars in RCW 38 are very young, less than a million years old compared to our Sun (4.6 billion years old). Through its six public surveys, the telescope has mapped small patches of sky for long periods to detect extremely faint objects.

These range from distant galaxies, red dwarf stars, and brown dwarfs to small bodies in our Solar System. The newly-released infrared image was taken as part of the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey, which studied the central parts of the Milky Way in five near-infrared bands. This survey took over 200,000 images of our galaxy and captured more than 355 open and 33 globular clusters. The data was used to create the most detailed infrared map of our home galaxy ever made. In fact, this map contains 10 times more objects than a previous one released by the same team back in 2012.

A catalog is also being created from VISTA data that will contain about a billion point sources and will be used to create a three-dimensional map of the central bulge of the Milky Way. Since the image of RCW 38 was taken, the VIRCAM camera has been retired after seventeen years of service. Later this year, it will be replaced by a new instrument, the 4-meter Multi-Object Spectrograph Telescope (4MOST). This second-generation instrument will give new life to the VISTA telescope, allowing it to obtain spectra of 2400 objects at once over a large area of the sky.

Further Reading: ESO

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When astronomers detected the first known interstellar object, ‘Oumuamua, in 2017, it sparked a host of new studies trying to understand the origin and trajectory of the galactic sojourner.

‘Oumuamua’s unique properties – unlike anything orbiting our sun – had scientists pondering how such an object could have formed. Now, a pair of researchers, Xi-Ling Zheng and Ji-Lin Zhou, are using numerical simulations to test out possible solar system configurations that could result in ‘Oumuamua-like objects. Their findings show that solar systems with a single giant planet have the necessary orbital mechanics at work to create such an object – but that other explanations may still be required.

Zheng and Zhou published their findings in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in February 2025.

They began their study by working backward from the known properties of ‘Oumuamua.

When it was visible to Earth’s telescopes for just a few months in 2017, it showed an intensely variable brightness, changing from bright to dim every four hours. Astronomers interpreted this variability as an elongated, cigar-shaped object tumbling through space.

Two other things made ‘Oumuamua unique. First, it appeared to have a dry, rocky surface, akin to the asteroids known in our solar system. But it also changed its orbit in a way that could not purely be explained by the laws of gravity – something else made it change direction.

Redirections like this are sometimes seen in icy comets. As they approach the Sun, off-gassing released from the heated ice acts like a thruster, changing the comet’s trajectory.

An artist’s depiction of the interstellar comet ‘Oumuamua, as it warmed up in its approach to the sun and outgassed hydrogen (white mist), which slightly altered its orbit. (Image credit: NASA, ESA and Joseph Olmsted and Frank Summers of STScI)

Somehow, ‘Oumuamua displayed a mix of both comet-like and asteroid-like properties.

One plausible explanation, proposed in 2020, is that ‘Oumuamua-like objects are formed by tidal fragmentation. That’s when a ‘volatile-rich’ parent body (like a large comet) passes too close to its star at high speeds, shattering it into long, thin shards. The heating process in these extreme interactions causes the formation of an elongated rocky shell, but preserves an interior of subsurface ice. This unique combination, not seen in our own solar system, would explain ‘Oumuamua’s orbital maneuvers despite its rocky composition.

It also explains why we don’t tend to see them in our solar system, because “ejected planetesimals experienced tidal fragmentation at more than twice the rate of surviving planetesimals (3.1% versus 1.4%),” the authors write. In other words, if the orbital forces are strong enough for tidal fragmentation to happen, it also means they’re strong enough to kick the object out of the system entirely.

Interstellar space may therefore be full of dagger-shaped shards of rock and ice (an exaggeration, but a fun quote for dinner parties nonetheless).

The white dwarf Sirius B compared to Earth. Credit: ESA and NASA

The simplest star system that could cause this type of tidal fragmentation are those home to white dwarfs. These are the extremely dense, dead cores of old exploded stars. A white dwarf, encircled by a belt of distant comet-like objects, similar to the Sun’s Oort cloud, could spawn ‘Oumuamua clones with regular frequency.

But the process is enhanced in systems that host Jupiter-sized planets.

The exception is ‘Hot Jupiters’ that orbit close to their star. These are less likely to interact with objects subject to tidal fragmentation.

But Jupiter-sized planets distant from their host star are very effective at producing ‘Oumuamua clones, especially if they have eccentric orbits. But even here, it’s not a perfect match for the origin of ‘Oumuamua, because these interactions tend to produce shards that are not as elongated, and at a rate lower than what is expected for ‘Oumuamua-type objects.

The authors conclude that the planetary systems most likely to have spawned ‘Oumuamua are those with many planets, which are more “efficient at producing interstellar objects,” the authors say, though they propose a few other possibilities too.

So while there is now a strong, plausible explanation for the process that birthed ‘Oumuamua, the type of solar system that produced it is still very much an open question.

Xi-Ling Zheng amd Ji-Lin Zhou, “Configuration of single giant planet systems generating ‘oumuamua-like interstellar asteroids.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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NASA continues to progress with the development of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST), the next-generation observatory with a target launch date of 2027. As the direct successor to the venerable Hubble Space Telescope, Roman will build on the successes of Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, the “mother of the Hubble,” the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a panoramic field of view 200 times greater than Hubble’s infrared view, enabling the first wide-field maps of the Universe.

Combined with observations by the ESA’s Euclid mission, these maps will help astronomers resolve the mystery of Dark Matter and cosmic expansion. The development process reached another milestone as the mission team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center successfully integrated the mission’s sunshade—a visor-like aperture cover—into the outer barrel assembly. This deployable structure will shield the telescope from sunlight and keep it at a stable temperature, allowing it to take high-resolution optical and infrared images of the cosmos.

Similar in function to Webb‘s sunshield, Roman’s is designed to make its instruments more sensitive to faint light sources, allowing the telescope to resolve distant galaxies, dimmer stars, brown dwarfs, and the gas and dust that permeate the interstellar medium (ISM). The shield consists of two layers of reinforced thermal blankets that will remain folded during launch, allowing the telescope to fit inside its payload fairing. It will deploy once the telescope has reached space using a system of three booms that are triggered electronically.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named after NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy.
Credits: NASA

The integration took a few hours, during which the technicians joined the sunshield and outer barrel assembly in the largest clean room at NASA Goddard. In addition to protecting the telescope from micrometeoroid impacts, the outer barrel assembly will also prevent light contamination and keep the telescope at a stable temperature. This will be accomplished by a series of heaters that prevent the telescope’s mirrors from experiencing temperature swings that would cause them to expand and contract. Said Brian Simpson, Roman’s deployable aperture cover lead at NASA Goddard, in a NASA press release:

“We’re prepared for micrometeoroid impacts that could occur in space, so the blanket is heavily fortified. One layer is even reinforced with Kevlar, the same thing that lines bulletproof vests. By placing some space in between the layers we reduce the risk that light would leak in, because it’s unlikely that the light would pass through both layers at the exact same points where the holes were.”

With this integration complete, the mission has now passed the Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D) milestone, the transition from fabrication to the assembly phase. This will be followed by the integration and testing phases, which Roman is on track for completion by fall 2026, followed by the launch phase no later than May 2027. The sunshade and outer barrel assembly were built by Goddard engineers and have been individually tested many times. Following the integration, the engineers conducted a deployment test that verified that they function together.

Since the sunshade was designed to deploy in space, the system isn’t powerful enough to deploy in Earth’s gravity, so the test involved a gravity negation system to offset its weight. Next, the team will conduct a thermal vacuum test to ensure the components function in the temperature and pressure environment of space. After that, they will put the assembled components through a shake test to simulate the intense vibrations they will experience during launch.

The view from below the Roman Space telescopes Outer Barrell Assembly’s baffles towards the deployed Deployable Aperture Cover. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

In the coming months, technicians will attach the telescope’s solar panels (which completed testing this past summer) to the outer barrel assembly and sunshade. The team expects to have these components integrated with the rest of the observatory by the end of the year. Said Laurence Madison, a mechanical engineer at NASA Goddard:

“Roman is made up of a lot of separate components that come together after years of design and fabrication. The deployable aperture cover and outer barrel assembly were built at the same time, and up until the integration the two teams mainly used reference drawings to make sure everything would fit together as they should. So the successful integration was both a proud moment and a relief!”

In addition to surveying billions of galaxies and investigating the mystery of Dark Energy, Roman will use its wide-field imagers and advanced suite of spectrometers to directly image exoplanets and planet-forming disks, supermassive black holes (SMBHs), stellar nurseries, and small bodies in our Solar System. Said Sheri Thorn, an aerospace engineer working on Roman’s sunshade at NASA Goddard:

“It’s been incredible to see these major components go from computer models to building and now integrating them. Since it’s all coming together at Goddard, we get a front row seat to the process. We’ve seen it mature, kind of like watching a child grow up, and it’s a really gratifying experience.”

Further Reading: NASA

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Our neighbour, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), is rich in gas and dust and hosts regions of extremely robust star formation. It contains about 700 open clusters, groups of gravitationally bound stars that all formed from the same giant molecular cloud. The clusters can contain thousands of stars, all emitting vibrant energy that lights up their surroundings.

One of these clusters is NGC 2040 in the constellation of Dorado, and the Gemini South Telescope captured its portrait.

NGC 2040 is noteworthy because it contains so many O-type and B-type stars. They’re hot, massive stars that tend to live fast and die young as explosive supernovae. The cluster contains more than a dozen of these stars.

There are two things at play in this image. Supernova explosions buffet the gas and dust and help shape the nebula while the young stars light it up. The explosions also create shock waves that compress the surrounding gas, leading to the formation of the next generation of stars.

A press release describes the nebula as a “Valentine’s Day rose.” What we’re really seeing is oxygen and hydrogen atoms energized by UV light from young stars and emitting light at different wavelengths. However, since it’s Valentine’s Day, we’ll concede to their more poetic description.

Human eyes can never see something like this naturally. The light spans wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the optical to the infrared. Instead, the Gemini South telescope captures the light at wavelengths beyond our range. The telescope employs filters to manage the light, showing us the deep red and orange colours from hydrogen and the light blue of oxygen. Bright white regions are abundant in both. It’s a nice partnership between telescope technology and human vision.

NGC 2024 is part of a larger structure called LH 88, one of the LMC’s largest star formation regions. The stars in the cluster are moving together, though they’re widely separated. They’re ensconced in gas and dust, some left behind by stars that have already exploded as supernovae. The gas and dust are further shaped by the strong stellar winds from so many young stars.

Our Sun likely formed in a cluster similar to NGC 2024. However, since that happened about five billion years ago, the stars have dispersed, and so have the gas and dust. There’s no more nebula.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of NGC 2040 back in 2012 with its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA and D. A Gouliermis. Acknowledgement: Flickr user Eedresha Sturdivant

It might not seem like it in our busy lives here on Earth’s surface, but this image tells a story we’re all wrapped up in: The cyclical nature of birth, death, and rebirth. When stars die and explode as supernovae, their material is expelled into space and taken up in the next round of star formation. And who knows, some of that material may be taken up in planet formation, maybe even rocky planets in the habitable zones of some of the new stars. Perhaps life will take root on one of those planets.

A zoom-in of the main image. Are planets forming in here somewhere? Rocky ones in habitable zones? Image Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

Nothing lasts forever. Everything has a beginning and an end. One day, our Sun will become a red giant, Earth will be destroyed, and humanity may be destroyed with it. Though it’s a bleak proposition, it seems likely. But so is a kind of rebirth in a Universe that constantly recycles matter.

“Death is certain for one who has been born, and rebirth is inevitable for one who has died,” the Bhagavad Gita tells us. “Therefore, you should not lament over the inevitable.”

The post A Flaming Flower in the Large Magellanic Cloud appeared first on Universe Today.

New research on locomotion techniques that could be used in space exploration is constantly coming out. A lab from UCLA known as the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) is presenting a paper at the upcoming IEEE Aerospace Conference in March that details a unique system. The Space and Planetary Limbed Intelligent Tether Technology Exploration Robot (SPLITTER) consists of two miniaturized jumping robots tethered together.

Such a system might sound like a recipe for chaos and bring back memories of ladder ball games where no amount of control seems to make the tether go where you want it to. But, according to the paper, that system is actually quite stable, even in airless environments.

Mechanically, their system consists of two four-legged robots designed for jumping and tied together at their tops by a tether. Jumping is much more effective than “roving” on the surface of an asteroid because of all the jagged obstacles that need to be avoided. It is also more effective than flying since there is no atmosphere to push against in many space environments. Jumping robots, however, have been around for a while, but the real secret sauce is in the controls the RoMeLa team has developed.

Video describing some of the underlying tech of the SPLITTER robot.
Credit – Alvin Zhu YouTube Channel

The concept they used is called inertial morphing. In the case of SPLITTER, the robots “adjust inertia with changes in limb configurations and tether length,” according to lead author Yusuke Tanaka in an interview with TechXplore. The researchers turned to a technique called Model Predictive Control (MPC) to determine how each variable needs to be adjusted.

MPC is used in various industries and comes as advertised, with a model (i.e., a mathematical representation of the robots) and a prediction, which reflects what the software estimates will happen to the model next. With the model’s current state and expected next state, a controller can change the variables that affect the model’s state. Those changes will result in a stable flying path, allowing SPLITTER to soar through the skies, even without air. It also uses a physical phenomenon known as the Tennis Racket Theorem, which describes how an object can flip rotation around its intermediate axis while rotating around it. Most famously, this was demonstrated on the ISS with a t-handle. It looks chaotic, but the mathematics behind the motion are well-understood.

Implementing it in a tethered robotic system is another matter altogether, though. While SPLITTER is flying, it looks a lot like a bola used in ladder ball, except instead of round spheres on each end, it’s a robot body with four legs splayed out in different directions. The orientation of how those legs are spread out and the length of the tether connecting the two ends are the variables the MPC controls to stabilize its flight. SPLITTER can operate without heavy attitude control hardware, like reaction wheels or thrusters.

Famous video of the Tennis Racket Effect on the ISS.
Credit – Plasma Ben YouTube Channel

It also allows the system to perform other actions, like spelunking, where one robot is anchored firmly to the top of a cave system while the other rappels using the tether. Both robots only weigh about 10kg each on Earth, as well, which would make them even more agile on a world with smaller gravity like the Moon or an asteroid.

This isn’t the first robot system the RoMeLa lab designed for this purpose. They initially worked on a robot called the Spine-enhanced Climbing Autonomous Legged Exploration Robot) (SCALER), which had its limitations as they found the limbed climbing robot was too slow.

With SPLITTER, the research team thinks they have a better concept that can both traverse terrain faster and collect data that a robot tied to the ground would be unable to do. Unfortunately, for now, at least, SPLITTER is best described as a computer model, though some preliminary work has been done on the physics of MPC controlling a reaction wheel. Researchers at the lab intend to continue working on the concept, so maybe soon we’ll see a bola robot test jumping near Los Angeles.

Learn More:
TechXplore – Modular robot design uses tethered jumping for planetary exploration
Tanaka, Zhu, & Hong – Tethered Variable Inertial Attitude Control Mechanisms through a Modular Jumping Limbed Robot
UT – Miniaturized Jumping Robots Could Study An Asteroid’s Gravity
UT – A Jumping Robot Could Leap Over Enceladus’ Geysers

Lead Image:
Depiction of one SPLITTER robot descending into a crater while the other anchors on the rim.
Credit – Yusuke Tanaka, Alvin Zhu, & Dennis Hong

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White dwarfs are the remnants of once brilliant main sequence stars like our Sun. They’re extremely dense and no longer perform any fusion. The light they radiate is from remnant heat only.

Astronomers have doubted that white dwarfs could host habitable planets, partly because of the tumultuous path they follow to become white dwarfs, but new research suggests otherwise.

White dwarfs are so small that their habitable zones would be equally as small. Their habitable zones could range from only 0.0005 to 0.02 AU from the star. At that range, any planets would be tidally locked. One side of the planet could suffer from the runaway greenhouse effect, while the other could be frigid. Another problem concerns the existence of any white dwarf planets themselves. There are indications that they exist, but their population is undefined.

There are about 10 billion white dwarfs (WDs) in the Milky Way, and new research in The Astrophysical Journal suggests that some of them could harbour life-supporting planets. The research is titled “Increased Surface Temperatures of Habitable White Dwarf Worlds Relative to Main-sequence Exoplanets.” The lead author is Aomawa Shields, associate professor of physics and astronomy at UC Irvine.

“These results suggest that the white dwarf stellar environment, once thought of as inhospitable to life, may present new avenues for exoplanet and astrobiology researchers to pursue.”

Aomawa Shields, lead author, UC Irvine

“Discoveries of giant planet candidates orbiting white dwarf (WD) stars and the demonstrated capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope bring the possibility of detecting rocky planets in the habitable zones (HZs) of WDs into pertinent focus,” the authors write. If we do find more WD planets with the JWST or other telescopes, how likely is it that they’re habitable?

This research sought to find out by simulating two Earth-like aqua planets (ocean worlds) orbiting two different stars. They’re both tidally locked, follow circular orbits, and have Earth’s mass, atmospheric composition, and surface pressure. One is in the HZ of a main sequence star named Kepler-62, and the other is in the HZ of a hypothetical WD. Astronomers have already discovered large planets around WDs, so this simulation is based on real situations.

The researchers created synthetic spectra for both Kepler-62 and the white dwarf based on what is known about both. This image shows the spectral energy distribution of the modelled WD with an effective temperature of 5000 K (red) and a synthetic spectrum of Kepler-62 (4859 K, purple). Image Credit: Shields et al. 2025.

“While white dwarf stars may still give off some heat from residual nuclear activity in their outer layers, they no longer exhibit nuclear fusion at their cores. For this reason, not much consideration has been given to these stars’ ability to host habitable exoplanets,” lead author Shields said in a press release. “Our computer simulations suggest that if rocky planets exist in their orbits, these planets could have more habitable real estate on their surfaces than previously thought.”

Shields and her co-researchers used a 3D climate model to simulate planets around the stars. Both planets are tidally locked to their stars. Although both stars have similar effective temperatures, the results show that the planets’ climates differ considerably. The HZ around the white dwarf is much closer, meaning its planet is closer. That proximity means the planet had a higher surface temperature and a much faster rotation period, which is critical to the results.

“The synchronously rotating WD planet’s global mean surface temperature is 25 K higher than that of the synchronously rotating planet orbiting K62 due to its much faster (10 hr) rotation and orbital period,” the authors explain in their paper.

The simulated planet orbiting K62 had a much longer orbital period, which allowed a large mass of water vapour clouds to accumulate on the dayside. These clouds cooled more of the planet’s surface, subtracting habitable surface area. “The planet orbiting Kepler-62 has so much cloud cover that it cools off too much, sacrificing precious habitable surface area in the process,” Shields said.

“On the other hand, the planet orbiting the white dwarf is rotating so fast that it never has time to build up nearly as much cloud cover on its dayside, so it retains more heat, and that works in its favor,” Shields said.

The WD planet’s faster rotation circulated the atmosphere more effectively, avoiding the runaway greenhouse effect. “This ultrafast rotation generates strong zonal winds and meridional flux of zonal momentum, stretching out and homogenizing the scale of atmospheric circulation and preventing an equivalent buildup of thick, liquid water clouds on the dayside of the planet compared to the synchronous planet orbiting K62,” the paper states. The authors also explain that this transports heat from higher latitudes toward the equator and that this pattern is seen in other simulations of short-period planets.

The simulations show that zonal winds are weaker on the K62 planet (left) than on the WD planet (right.) The WD planet’s more powerful winds create a more habitable planet. Image Credit: Shields et al. 2025

“We expect synchronous rotation of an exoplanet in the habitable zone of a normal star like Kepler-62 to create more cloud cover on the planet’s dayside, reflecting incoming radiation away from the planet’s surface,” Shields said. “That’s usually a good thing for planets orbiting close to the inner edge of their stars’ habitable zones, where they could stand to cool off a bit rather than lose their oceans to space in a runaway greenhouse. But for a planet orbiting squarely in the middle of the habitable zone, it’s not such a good idea.”

This figure shows surface temperatures on the K62 planet (left), which has a 155-day orbit, and the WD planet (right), which has a 0.44-day orbit. The planet orbiting K62 “shows a characteristic, oval-shaped temperature pattern,” the authors write. The hottest point is at the substellar point on the planet’s dayside, and a cold nightside. The WD planet has stretched-out scales of circulation across the planet. and midlatitude jets. The hottest surface temperatures are located in the midlatitude jets, which is similar to simulations of other short-period planets. Image Credit: Shields et al. 2025.

Fewer clouds on the dayside of WD planets, combined with a stronger greenhouse effect on the night side, would create warmer, more habitable conditions than on the Kepler-62 planet, despite the fact that WD energy outputs slowly decline over time. If these results hold up, they could be game-changing in our search for exoplanets in habitable zones.

“White dwarfs may, therefore, present amenable environments for life on planets formed within or migrated to their HZs, generating warmer surface environments than those of planets with main-sequence hosts to compensate for an ever-shrinking incident stellar flux,” the authors explain.

“These results suggest that the white dwarf stellar environment, once thought of as inhospitable to life, may present new avenues for exoplanet and astrobiology researchers to pursue,” Shields said.

What’s not clear is how many planets there are around WDs. The transition from a red giant to WD isn’t a peaceful process. When red giants expand, they engulf and destroy nearby planets. Our Sun will one day become a red giant, and it will engulf Mercury, Venus, and probably Earth. Maybe even Mars.

Artist’s impression of a red giant star. When red giants expand, they engulf and destroy nearby planets. Planets further away could migrate inwards and orbit the star when it’s a white dwarf. Image Credit: NASA/ Walt Feimer

These destroyed planets can form a debris disk around the white dwarf, from which a new generation of planets could emerge. Or planets further away from the red giant could survive and move closer to the star as it undergoes its changes. More research is needed to understand these possibilities.

“As it is likely that many of the planets orbiting WD progenitors will have been engulfed during the red giant phase, WD planets may be few within their systems and possibly orbiting alone in single-planet systems,” the authors write.

Our knowledge of exoplanet habitability is incomplete. Yet, it’s a critical issue in understanding the Universe and one of our biggest questions: Is there other life? We can’t answer the big one without a much better understanding of habitability and what conditions it exists in. The only way to gain that knowledge is with more powerful observations.

“As powerful observational capabilities to assess exoplanet atmospheres and astrobiology have come on line, such as those associated with the James Webb Space Telescope, we could be entering a new phase in which we’re studying an entirely new class of worlds around previously unconsidered stars.”

Press Release: UC Irvine astronomers gauge livability of exoplanets orbiting white dwarf stars

Research: Increased Surface Temperatures of Habitable White Dwarf Worlds Relative to Main-sequence Exoplanets

The post White Dwarfs Could Be More Habitable Than We Thought appeared first on Universe Today.

We all know that asteroids are out there, that some of them come dangerously close to Earth, and that they’ve struck Earth before with catastrophic consequences. The recent discovery of asteroid 2024 YR4 reminds us of the persistent threat that asteroids present. There’s an organized effort to find dangerous space rocks and determine how far away they are and where their orbits will take them.

A team of scientists has developed a method that will help us more quickly determine an asteroid’s distance, a critical part of determining its orbit.

Our asteroid concern is centred on NEOs or Near-Earth Objects. These are asteroids whose closest approach to the Sun is less than 1.3 astronomical units (AU). (A small number of NEOs are comets.) There are more than 37,000 NEOs, and while potential impacts are rare, the results can be catastrophic. Considering what happened to the dinosaurs, there’s not much room for complacency or hubris.

Large asteroids in the Main Asteroid Belt (MAB) are easier to study. Their large sizes mean they produce a bigger signal when observed, and astronomers can more easily determine their orbits. However, the MAB holds many smaller asteroids around 100-200 meters. There could be hundreds of millions of them. They’re big enough to devastate entire cities if they strike Earth, and they’re more difficult to track. The first step in determining their orbits is determining their distances, which is challenging and takes time.

Recent research submitted to The Astronomical Journal presents a new method of determining asteroid distances in much less time. It’s titled “Measuring the Distances to Asteroids from One Observatory in One Night with Upcoming All-Sky Telescopes” and is available at arxiv.org. The lead author is Maryann Fernandes from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University.

The Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) should see its first light in July 2025. One of its scientific objectives is to find more small objects in the Solar System, including asteroids, by scanning the entire visible southern sky every few nights. If it moves and reflects light, the VRO has a good chance of spotting it. However, it won’t automatically determine the distance to asteroids.

The Vera Rubin Observatory is poised to begin observations in 2025. It could detect 130 Near Earth Objects each night. Image Credit: Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/B. Quint

“When asteroids are measured with short observation time windows, the dominant uncertainty in orbit construction is due to distance uncertainty to the NEO,” the authors of the new paper write. They claim their method can shorten the time it takes to determine an asteroid’s distance to one night of observations. It’s based on a technique called topocentric parallax.

Topocentric parallax is based on the rotation of the Earth. In a 2022 paper by some of the same researchers, the authors wrote that “Topocentric parallax comes from the diversity of the observatory positions with respect to the center of the Earth in an inertial reference frame. Observations from multiple observatories or a single observatory can measure parallax because the Earth rotates.”

In the two years since that paper, the researchers have refined their method. The research expands on previous algorithms and tests the technique using both synthetic data and real-world observations.

“In this paper, we further develop and evaluate this technique to recover distances in as quickly as a single night,” the authors write in the new paper. “We first test the technique on synthetic data of 19 different asteroids ranging from ~ 0.05 AU to ~ 2.4 AU.”

The figure below shows the results of the test with synthetic data. Each asteroid was observed six times in one night, and two different equations were employed to process the data.

This figure shows the measured and true distances to 19 asteroids as part of the method’s test. In this test, each asteroid was observed six times in one night. The top shows Measured distance (AU) versus True distance (AU) for all 19 asteroids considered in this analysis. Each panel is based on a separate equation that can be employed in the method. “We see the fit from Eq. 1 for the group of asteroids yielding precise distances with relatively good agreement with true distances,” the authors write. Image Credit: Fernandes et al. 2025.

The researchers also tested their method by taking 15 observations of each asteroid over five nights (3 per night). In this test, Equation 1 performed poorly, while Equation 2 performed well.

This scenario featured 15 observations taken over 5 nights, with three observations per night. Equation 1 produces poor distance agreement, while with Equation 2, the distance recovery improves. Image Credit: Fernandes et al. 2025.

Of course, the distance to the asteroid affected the accuracy of the measurements. The closer the object was, the more precise the measurement was. The paper notes that the method was able to recover distances “with uncertainties as low as the ~ 1.3% level for more nearby objects (about 0.3 AU or less) assuming typical astrometric uncertainties.”

After these tests with synthetic data, the team acquired their own single-night observations of two asteroids using a different algorithm. The real observations produced a less precise result, but it was still a meaningful improvement. The authors explain that they were able to recover distances “to the 3% level.”

So, what do all these tests, equations, and algorithms boil down to?

When we hear of an asteroid that could potentially strike Earth in a few years, people can wonder why the situation is so uncertain. Shouldn’t we know if an asteroid is heading straight for us? Trying to determine the orbit of these small rocks from tens of millions of km away is extremely difficult. An AU is almost 150 million km (93 million miles). 2024 YR, the latest asteroid of concern, is only 40 to 90 metres (130 to 300 ft) in diameter. Those numbers illustrate the problem.

If this method can improve the accuracy of our distance measurements and do it based on a single night of observations, that’s a big improvement.

The technique can be applied to data generated by the Vera Rubin Observatory and the Argus Array. According to the authors, “distances to NEOs on the scale of ~ 0.5 AU can be constrained to below the percent level within a single night.” As the study shows, the accuracy of those measurements from a single-site observatory depends heavily on the spacing between individual observations. If multiple observatories at different sites are used on the same night, the accuracy increases.

The Argus Array is a planned astronomical survey instrument that will be unique in its ability to observe the entire visible sky simultaneously. It will consist of 900 small telescopes, each with its own camera. It’s currently under construction, but its location isn’t being publicized. The researchers say their method can work with Argus’ data. Image Credit: Argus Array

Though larger asteroids, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, tend to remain stable in the main asteroid belt, smaller asteroids are more easily perturbed and can become part of the NEO population. An impact from a smaller asteroid might not spell the end of civilization, but it can still be extremely destructive.

Anything humanity can do to understand the asteroid threat is wise. Many asteroids have struck Earth in the past, and it’s only a matter of time before another one comes our way. If we can see it coming in advance, we can try to do something about it.

Research: Measuring the Distances to Asteroids from One Observatory in One Night with Upcoming All-Sky
Telescopes

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It’s a familiar sight to see astronauts on board ISS on exercise equipment to minimise muscle and bone loss from weightlessness. A new study suggests that jumping workouts could help astronauts prevent cartilage damage during long missions to the Moon and Mars. They found that the knee cartilage in mice seems to grow stronger after jumping exercises, potentially counteracting the effects of low gravity on joint health. If effective in humans, this approach could be included in pre-flight routines or adapted for space missions.

In space, astronauts experience significant loss of bone and muscle mass due to microgravity. Without Earth’s gravitational pull, bones lose density, increasing fracture risk, while muscles, especially in the lower body and spine, weaken from reduced use. This deterioration can impair mobility when back on Earth and effect overall health. To combat this, astronauts follow rigorous exercise routines, including resistance and cardiovascular training, to maintain strength and bone integrity. 

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst gets a workout on the Advanced Resistive Exercise Device (ARED). Credit: NASA

The next obvious step as we reach out into the Solar System is the red planet Mars. Heading that far out into space will demand long periods of time in space since its a 9 month journey there. Permanent bases on the Moon too will test our physiology to its limits so managing the slow degradation is a big challenge to space agencies. A paper published by lead author Marco Chiaberge from the John Hopkins University has explored the knee joints of mice and how their cartilage grows thicker if they jump! They suggest astronauts should embed jumping activities into their exercise regiment. 

Mars seen before, left, and during, right, a global dust storm in 2001. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS

Cartilage cushions the joints between bones and decreases friction allowing for pain free movement. Unlike many other tissues in the body, cartilage does not regenerate as quickly so it is important to protect it. Prolonged periods of inactivity, even from bed rest but especially long duration space flight can accelerate the degradation. It’s also been shown that radiation from space can accelerate the effect too. 

To maintain a strong healthy body, astronauts spend a lot of time, up to 2 hours a day running on treadmills. This has previously shown to slow the breakdown of cartilage but the new study has shown that jumping based movements is particularly effective. T

The team of researchers found that, over a nine week program of reduced movement, mice experienced a 14% reduction in cartilage thickness in joints. Other mice performed jumping movements three times a week and their cartilage was found to be show a 26% increase compared to a control group of mice. Compared to the group that had restricted movement, the jumping mice had 110% thicker cartilage. The study also showed that jumping activities increased bone strength too with the jumping mice having a 15% higher density than the control.

An interesting piece of research but further work is needed to see whether jumping would herald in the same benefits to humans but the study is promising. If so, then jumping exercises are likely to be a part of pre-flight and inflight exercise programs for astronauts. It is likely that for this to be a reality in the micro-gravitational environment, astronauts will be attached to strong elasticated material to simulate the pull of gravity. 

Source : Jumping Workouts Could Help Astronauts on the Moon and Mars, Study in Mice Suggests.

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One of the basic principles of cosmology is the Cosmological Principle. It states that, no matter where you go in the Universe, it will always be broadly the same. Given that we have only explored our own Solar System there is currently no empirical way to measure this. A new study proposes that we can test the Cosmological Principle using weak gravitational lensing. The team suggests that measuring tiny distortions in light as it passes through the lenses, it may just be possible to find out  if there are differences in density far away. 

The Cosmological Principle is a fundamental assumption stating that the universe is homogeneous on a large scale. In other words regardless of location or direction, the universe appears uniform and it underpins many cosmological models, including the Big Bang theory. Taking the assumption that physical laws apply consistently everywhere makes calculations and predictions about the universe’s structure and evolution far simpler, but research has been testing its validity by searching for potential anomalies.

This illustration shows the “arrow of time” from the Big Bang to the present cosmological epoch. Credit: NASA

A paper has been published by a team of astrophysicists, led by James Adam from the University of Western Cape in South Africa and explains that the Standard Model of Cosmology predicts the Universe has no centre and has no preferred directions (isotropy.) The paper, which was published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, articulates a new way to test the isotropy of the Universe using the Euclid space telescope.

The Euclid telescope is a European Space Agency mission to explore dark matter and dark energy. It was launched in 2023 and maps the positions and movements of billions of galaxies. It’s using this instrument that the team hope to search for variations in the structure of the Universe that might challenge the Cosmological Principle. 

Artist impression of the Euclid mission in space. Credit: ESA

Previous studies have found such anomalies before but there are conflicting measurements of the expansion rate of the Universe, in the microwave background radiation and in various cosmological data. Further independent observations are required though, providing more data to see if the observations were the result of measurement errors. 

The team explore using weak gravitational lenses, which occur when matter sits between us and a distant galaxy, slightly bending the galaxies light. Analysis of this distortion can be separated into two components; E-mode shear (caused by the distribution of matter in an isotropic and homogenous Universe) and B-mode shear which is weak and would not appear in an isotropic Universe at large scale. 

If the team can detect large scale B-modes this in itself wouldn’t be enough to confirm the anisotropies since the measurements are tiny and prone to measurement errors. To confirm, and finally test the Cosmological Principles, E-mode shear needs to be detected as well. Such discovery and correlation of E-mode and B-mode shear would suggest the expansion of the Universe is anisotropic. 

Ahead of the Euclid observations, the team simulated the effects of an anisotropic universe expansion on a computer. They were able to use the model to describe the effect of the weak gravitational force and predict that Euclid data would be sufficient to complete the study. 

Source : Does the universe behave the same way everywhere? Gravitational lenses could help us find out

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Hypervelocity stars have been seen before but NASA scientists have just identified a potential record-breaking exoplanet system. They found a hypervelocity star that has a super-Neptune exoplanet in orbit around it. This discovery could reshape our understanding of planetary and orbital mechanics. Understanding more about these fascinating high velocity stars challenges current models of stellar evolution. However it formed, its amazing that somehow, it has managed to hang on to its planet through the process!

High-velocity stars travel through space at extraordinarily high speeds, often in excess of hundreds of kilometres per second. These rapidly moving stars are usually expelled from their galaxies due to gravitational forces, perhaps from close encounters with supermassive black holes or other stars. Some of them move so fast that they can break free from the Milky Way’s gravitational pull. It’s important to study them as they offer crucial insights into the dynamics of our Galaxy, interactions with black holes, and even the distribution of dark matter across the cosmos.

The positions and reconstructed orbits of 20 high-velocity stars, represented on top of an artistic view of our Galaxy, the Milky Way. Credit: ESA (artist’s impression and composition); Marchetti et al. 2018 (star positions and trajectories); NASA / ESA / Hubble (background galaxies)

Details of the discovery were published in a paper that was authored by lead astronomer Sean Terry in The Astronomical journal. It tells of the discovery of what the team think is a super-Neptune world that is in orbit around a star with a low mass. The system is travelling at an estimated 540 kilometres per second! If it were aligned with our own Solar System and the star was where our Sun was, then the planet would sit somewhere between the orbits of Venus and Earth. Terry, who is a researcher at the University of Maryland and said “it will be the first planet ever found orbiting a hypervelocity star.” 

Finding objects like this in space is tricky. This object was first seen in 2011 following analysis of data from the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics survey that had been conducted by the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. The study had been on the lookout for evidence for exoplanets around distant stars. 

The star-filled sky in this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope photo lies in the direction of the Galactic centre. The light from stars is monitored to see if any change in their apparent brightness is caused by a foreground object drifting in front of them. The warping of space by the interloper would momentarily brighten the appearance of a background star, an effect called gravitational lensing. One such event is shown in the four close-up frames at the bottom. The arrow points to a star that momentarily brightened, as first captured by Hubble in August 2011. This was caused by a foreground black hole drifting in front of the star, along our line of sight. The star brightened and then subsequently faded back to its normal brightness as the black hole passed by. Because a black hole doesn’t emit or reflect light, it cannot be directly observed. But its unique thumbprint on the fabric of space can be measured through these so-called microlensing events. Though an estimated 100 million isolated black holes roam our galaxy, finding the telltale signature of one is a needle-in-a-haystack search for Hubble astronomers.

The presence of a mass between Earth and a distant object creates these microlensing events. As such a mass passes between us and a star, its presence can be revealed through analysis of its light curve. In the 2011 data, the signals revealed a pair of celestial bodies and allowed the researchers to calculate that one was about 2,300 times heavier than the other. 

The 2011 study suggested the star was about 20 percent as massive as the Sun and a planet 29 times heavier than Earth. Either that, or it was a nearer planet about four times the mass of Jupiter, maybe even with a moon. To learn more about the object the team searched through data from Keck Observatory and the Gaia satellite. They found the star, located about 24,000 light years away so still within the Milky Way. By comparing the location of the star in 2011 and then ten years later in 2021, the team were able to calculate its speed. 

Having calculated the speed of the star to be around 540,000 kilometres per second, the team are keen to secure more observations in the years ahead. If it is around the 600,000 kilometres per second mark then it’s likely to escape the gravity of the Milky Way and enter intergalactic space millions of years in the future. 

Source : NASA Scientists Spot Candidate for Speediest Exoplanet System

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Finding alien life may have just got easier! If life does exist on other worlds in our Solar System then it’s likely to be tiny, primative bacteria. It’s not so easy to send microscopes to other worlds but chemistry may have just come to the rescue. Scientists have developed a test that detects microbial movement triggered by an amino acid known as  L-serine. In lab testing, three different types of microbes all moved towards this chemical and could be a strong indicator of life.

The search for primitive alien life focuses on finding simple organisms, like microbes or bacteria that can survive in extreme environments. Scientists target places like Mars or moons of the outer planets like Europa (Jupiter,) and Enceladus (Saturn,) where liquid water and energy sources might exist. By studying extremophiles on Earth—organisms that seem to thrive in harsh conditions—researchers can gain clues about where and how to look for extraterrestrial life. Advanced technologies, including chemical sensors and microscopic imaging, are being developed to detect signs of life on future space missions.

Europa captured by Juno

One of the great challenges is exactly what to look for. One aspect of life be it primative or advanced, is the ability to move independently. The process where a chemical causes an organism to move in response is known as chemotaxis and it this that a team of researchers in Germany are interested in. They have developed a new method for creating the chemotactic movement in some of the most basic forms of life here on Earth. The team published their results in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences. 

The team undertook experiments with three different types of microbe, two of them were bacteria and one was an archaea – a single celled microorganism. Each one has the capability of surviving in the types of extreme environments that might be found in space. One of the microbes has the catchy name Bacillus Subtilis and is known to be able to survive temperatures up to 100°C while others can survive down to -2.5°C. Each of the microbes responded, moving toward the chemical L-serine. The positive response from the microbes gives scientists a great insight into searching for organisms that are living on other worlds in our Solar System. 

Image of a tardigrade, which is a microscopic species and one of the most well-known extremophiles, having been observed to survive some of the most extreme environments, including outer space. (Credit: Katexic Publications, unaltered, CC2.0)

The scientists used a microscope slide that contained two separate chambers that were separated by a thin membrane. The sample microbes were placed on one side with L-serine placed on the other. The concept is simple, if the microbes are alive, they will move toward the chemical. On a future space mission however, it may need some slight refinements, chiefly it would need to work without human interaction. 

It’s not the first time the chemical has been used to trigger movement in primative life and is thought to exist beyond the confines of Earth. Its presence beyond our home planet suggest that it may also be useful in helping the search for alien life. If L-serine does exist on other worlds in our Solar System then it may induce movement in microbes and may therefore help us to find that life. 

Source : Efforts to find alien life could be boosted by simple test that gets microbes moving

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MSL Curiosity is primarily a rockhound. It’s at Gale Crater, examining the rocks there and on Mt. Sharp, which sits in the middle of the crater and rises 5.5 km above the crater floor. But Curiosity is also a skywatcher, and its primary camera, Mastcam, was built with Martian clouds in mind.

When the sun set on Mars’ Gale Crater on January 17th, MSL Curiosity spent 16 minutes capturing images of the sky with Mastcam, the rover’s primary camera system. The images are part of an effort to understand noctilucent clouds, which are made of CO2 ice and only form over certain regions.

In the animation below, the 16 minutes of images have been sped up by about 480 times. “The white plumes falling out of the clouds are carbon dioxide ice that would evaporate closer to the Martian surface,” NASA says in a press release. “Appearing briefly at the bottom of the images are water-ice clouds travelling in the opposite direction roughly 31 miles (50 kilometres) above the rover.”

via GIPHY

Earth has noctilucent clouds, too. They form in the upper atmosphere and are only visible during twilight when the atmosphere’s lower layers are in the shade and the upper atmosphere is sunlit. They form from water ice crystals between 76 to 85 km altitude and are the highest clouds in the atmosphere.

Mars’ noctilucent clouds are similar, but the main difference is that they contain carbon dioxide ice. They form at an altitude of around 60 to 80 km and are also classified as mesospheric clouds. On Mars, they occur in the Fall over the southern hemisphere. Only Mars’ high-altitude clouds containing carbon dioxide ice display iridescent colours.

This is the fourth year in succession that Curiosity has seen these noctilucent clouds. Its Mastcam instrument has different filters that let it see different wavelengths of light, and some of those filters are used to study the composition and particle size in clouds. It also has stereo vision, which helps scientists determine cloud height, shape, and the speed at which they’re moving. It can also observe the Sun through filters and determine how much sunlight the atmosphere is blocking. That tells scientists how much dust and ice is in the atmosphere and how it changes over time.

A November 2024 paper titled “Iridescence Reveals the Formation and Growth of Ice Aerosols in Martian Noctilucent Clouds” summarized Curiosity’s images and findings. The lead author is Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

“I’ll always remember the first time I saw those iridescent clouds and was sure at first it was some color artifact,” he said in a press release. “Now it’s become so predictable that we can plan our shots in advance; the clouds show up at exactly the same time of year.”

These clouds form only in early Martian fall and only in the southern hemisphere. Their iridescence is from uniform particle size, which indicates that the clouds had a brief evolution in a uniform environment. When clouds are both noctilucent and iridescent, they’re called nacreous clouds. It’s interesting to note that these colours would be easily seen by an astronaut on the Martian surface.

This figure from the paper shows iridescent clouds in cylindrical projections. Each image was taken on a separate day. (d) is twice the resolution of the others. (e) shows a corona in the clouds caused by low variance in CO2 ice particle size. Image Credit: Lemmon et al. 2024.

One of the mysteries behind these clouds concerns their location. They’re only seen in Mars’ southern hemisphere, and the Perseverance rover, which is in the Jezero Crater in the northern hemisphere, has never seen them. It seems pretty clear that they only form in certain locations, but the reasons why are unknown.

Lemmon says that gravity waves, which are atmospheric phenomena separate from astrophysical gravitational waves, could be responsible. They cool the atmosphere and could give rise to clouds of frozen CO2. “Carbon dioxide was not expected to be condensing into ice here, so something is cooling it to the point that it could happen. But Martian gravity waves are not fully understood, and we’re not entirely sure what is causing twilight clouds to form in one place but not another,” Lemmon said.

Scientists need more data to better understand these clouds. Curiosity wasn’t the only one to see them; the InSight lander did, too. But they could only see for a few hundred kilometres around their landing sites and their data is incomplete. “Orbiters capable of sunset and twilight times could constrain the cloud altitude,” Lemmon and his co-authors write in their paper.

There are unanswered questions about these clouds. Scientists would like to understand how quickly particles in these clouds evolve. They’d also like to know what the nature of the corona-forming layer is. A larger data sample could help answer these questions, as could more time-lapse imagery.

• Press Release: A Rainbow-colored “Feather” in the Martian Sky
• Press Release: NASA’s Curiosity Rover Captures Colorful Clouds Drifting Over Mars
• Published Research: Iridescence Reveals the Formation and Growth of Ice Aerosols in Martian Noctilucent Clouds

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Venus is very variable. Its surface constantly changes from volcanic activity, and the difference between its lower and upper atmosphere is night and day, with a dramatic change in sulfuric acid concentration. So, designing a system that works for all parts of Venus is particularly challenging. NASA thinks they might be on to a new idea of how to do so and has funded Ben Hockman, a roboticist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to work on a tethered atmospheric sensor attached to a balloon as part of the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts Phase I program.

The project, known as the Tethered Observatory for Balloon-based Imaging and Atmospheric Sampling (TOBIAS—assumedly not after the Arrested Development character), is based on a simple principle. On Venus, a very distinct cloud layer, between 47 and 52 km in altitude, separates the relatively stable upper atmosphere similar to Earth’s, with a hellish surface that no probes have yet lasted longer than a few minutes on. 

TOBIAS would float a helium-filled balloon in the upper atmosphere, where conditions are Earth-like. Then it would release a “towbody” – a stand-alone sensing platform connected to the balloon by a tether. That tether is intended to be several kilometers long, allowing the towbody to pass through the hazardous cloud layer and, hopefully, take accurate, high-resolution images of Venus’ surface.

Fraser interviews Ben Hockman, the PI for the TOBIAS project.

Several design decisions will be the focus of the Phase I NIAC grant. According to Dr. Hockman’s interview with Fraser, one of the most important aspects will be the tether design. The most significant force on the tether wouldn’t be from the towbody itself but from the wind shear. The wind conditions are different enough from where the balloon is located (50-60km altitude) to where the towbody is intended to reside (45km altitude) that the forces on the tether would be strong enough to rip it apart if it’s not designed correctly.

Also, the tether’s material is essential. Standard copper wire could potentially power the towbody, but it would be too heavy to survive the mission’s expected wind shear conditions. Optical fiber could prove a viable alternative, but there are some concerns about the amount of power that could be transmitted that way. According to Dr. Hockman, “People have put power over fiber before.”

Much of that power would go to a cooling system that would make the temperature in that part of the Venusian atmosphere manageable. Dr. Hockman suggests alternative power sources, like solar panels (which would be affected by the same cloud layer that obscures the surface) to wind turbines, which would do well because of the high energy available from the wind but might lead to stability issues with the towbody.

Fraser explains why Venus is a critical step in our space exploration program.

Ultimately, if they can get the cable, power, and communication systems on the towbody to work, it could provide atmospheric sensing, and more importantly, direct imaging of the surface of Venus, in a variety of wavelengths. Near-infrared images, which TOBIAS could supply, could help answer outstanding questions about the history of Venusian volcanism.

Dr. Hockman even speculates about the potential for a tethered impactor to land on the surface, grab a sample, and reel itself back up to the balloon. That concept was the subject of a previous year’s NIAC grant, though it’s unclear whether further progress has been made.

TOBIAS would benefit from additional information about the Venusian atmosphere from DaVinci and Veritas, which will also contain instruments to peer through to the surface, just not in the wavelengths that the towbody would enable. Data from those missions could inform the design of TOBIAS’s balloon and tether system, hopefully making it more likely to survive Venus’ extreme conditions.

Venus presents a ton of engineering challenges, as Fraser discusses here.

The project still has a long way to go before it has to survive anything, though. NIAC grants, especially Phase I, are meant to encourage very early design studies, many of which are unlikely to receive further funding. But, if Dr. Hockman proves the idea more and receives a Phase II grant sometime in the next few years, a balloon tugging along some sensors might one day reach Venusian skies.

Learn More:
NASA / Ben Hockman – TOBIAS: Tethered Observatory for Balloon-based Imaging and Atmospheric Sampling
UT – A Balloon Mission That Could Explore Venus Indefinitely
UT – The Best Way to Learn About Venus Could Be With a Fleet of Balloons
UT – Is There Seismic Activity on Venus? Here’s How We Could Find Out

Lead Image:
Artist’s concept of TOBIAS
Credit – Ben Hockman / NASA

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Hydrogel protection could be crucial for safe human space exploration.

Space radiation: the threat is real. Credit: ESA

It’s a key problem that will need to be addressed, if humans are to attempt deep-space, long duration missions. Not only is radiation exposure a dangerous health risk to humans, but it also poses a hazard to equipment and operating systems. Now, a team at Ghent University in Belgium are testing a possible solution: 3D printed hydrogels, which could provide deformable layers of water-filled protection.

Water acts as a great radiation shield. Relatively dense, the hydrogen-laden H2O molecule can slow down radiation particles as they zip past. Plus, water is something that astronauts will have to bring lots of on deep space missions. We have our own built-in water shielding on Earth with the atmosphere above, with the added benefit of the Earth’s magnetic field beyond.

Exposure sources are mainly two types: space weather (from the Sun) and cosmic (from outside the solar system) from ancient and exotic sources, such as supernovae explosions. The 11-year solar cycle intensifies solar activity, while we see and uptick in cosmic radiation when our Sun is at a lull.

Radiation and its risk to spaceflight. Credit: ESA Radiation Exposure on the ISS

From the earliest days of the Space Age, astronauts have reported seeing occasional flashes in their eyes… even when closed. We now know this is due to high energy particles zipping through and interacting with the aqueous and vitreous humors (fluids) in the eye, and (somewhat disturbing to think about) the brain. Astronauts in low Earth orbit aboard the ISS have sheltered from solar storms in the past, taking advantage of the core modules which are at least surrounded by the bulk of the station.

But as far as providing personal protection, water poses a challenge. Bulky suits can limit movement and spring a leak: a bad thing to have happen in space. Super-absorbent polymers (SAPs) designed by the Chemistry and Biomaterials Group (PBM) at Ghent University could function as an alternative, and are more effective versus circulating water.

Enter Hydrogel

SAP can absorb a hundred times its weight in liquid. This makes it an ideal lightweight and portable material to work with. Think of the ‘monster toys’ that expand in size, just add water. Unlike traditional circulation systems, the water in hydrogel is not free-flowing, making it resistant to leakage during a puncture.

Timelapse of an expanding hydrogel, absorbing water. Credit: ESA

“The beauty of this project is that we are working with a well-known technology,” says Lenny Van Daele (Ghent University) in a recent press release. “Hydrogels are found in many things we use every day.”

Hydrogels are common in consumer products, including soft contact lenses, bio-materials, and medical bandage gels.

“The super-absorbent polymer that we are using can be processed using multiple techniques, which is a rare and advantageous quality amongst polymers,” says Manon Minsart (Ghent University) in the same ESA press release. “Our method of choice is 3D printing, which allows us to create a hydrogel in almost any shape we want.”

3D printed hydrogel models of a space shuttle and an astronaut. Credit: ESA/University of Ghent. Radiation Exposure En Route to Mars

The problem posed by space radiation on long duration missions cannot be overstated. It’s something that will have to be solved, if humans are to make the long round trip journey to Mars.

Curiosity’s RAD experiment carried on its journey to the Red Planet in 2012 demonstrated the magnitude of the dilemma. Astronauts on a Mars mission would receive 60 rem/0.6 Sieverts… about a career’s-worth of acceptable radiation exposure, in one mission.

The RAD detector mounted aboard Curiosity. NASA/JPL-Caltech

The problem is far from solved, but hydrogels may provide a solution in the years to come. It will be exciting to see hydrogels used as a common feature on future deep space missions, to keep astronauts and equipment safe.

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When massive stars reach the end of their life cycle, they undergo gravitational collapse and shed their outer layers in a massive explosion (a supernova). Whereas particularly massive stars will leave a black hole in their wake, others leave behind a stellar remnant known as a neutron star (or white dwarf). These objects concentrate a mass greater than the entire Solar System into a volume measuring (on average) just 20 km (~12.5 mi) in diameter. Meanwhile, the extreme conditions inside neutron stars are still a mystery to astronomers.

In 2017, the first collision between two neutron stars was detected from the gravitational waves (GWs) it produced. Since then, astronomers have theorized how GWs could be used to probe the interiors of neutron stars and learn more about the extreme physics taking place. According to new research by a team from Goethe University Frankfurt and other institutions, the GWs produced by binary neutron star (BNS) mergers mere milliseconds after they merge could be the best means of probing the interiors of these mysterious objects.

The research was conducted by a group led by Luciano Rezzolla, a professor from the Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP) at Goethe University and a Senior Fellow with the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS). The research team also includes members of the ExtreMe Matter Institute (EMMI-GSI), Darmstadt Technical University (TU Darmstadt), and the University of Stavanger in Norway. The paper detailing their findings appeared on February 3rd in Nature Communications.

Light bursts from the collision of two neutron stars. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab

Originally predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity (GR), gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime caused by the merger of massive objects (like white dwarfs and black holes). While the most intense GWs are produced from mergers, BNS emit GWs for millions of years as they spiral inward toward each other. The post-merger remnant (a massive, rapidly rotating object) also emits GWs in a strong but narrow frequency range. This last signal, the team argues, could hold crucial information about how nuclear matter behaves at extreme densities and pressures (aka. “equation of state“).

As the team explained in their paper, the amplitude of post-merger GWs behaves like a tuning fork after it is struck. This means that the GW signal goes through a phase (which they have named the “long ringdown”) where it increasingly trends toward a single frequency. Using advanced simulations of merging neutron stars, the team identified a strong connection between these unique characteristics and the properties of the densest regions in the core of neutron stars. As Dr. Rezzolla explained in a University of Goethe press release:

“Thanks to advances in statistical modeling and high-precision simulations on Germany’s most powerful supercomputers, we have discovered a new phase of the long ringdown in neutron star mergers. It has the potential to provide new and stringent constraints on the state of matter in neutron stars. This finding paves the way for a better understanding of dense neutron star matter, especially as new events are observed in the future.”

By analyzing the long ringdown phase, they argue, astronomers can significantly reduce uncertainties in the equation of state for neutron stars. “By cleverly selecting a few equations of state, we were able to effectively simulate the results of a full statistical ensemble of matter models with considerably less effort,” said co-author Dr. Tyler Gorda. “Not only does this result in less computer time and energy consumption, but it also gives us confidence that our results are robust and will be applicable to whatever equation of state actually occurs in nature.“

An artist’s concept of how LISA will work to detect gravitational waves from orbit in space. Credit: ESA

In this sense, post-merger neutron stars could be used as “tuning forks” for investigating some of the deepest cosmic mysteries. Said Dr. Christian Ecker, an ITP postdoctoral student, and the study’s lead author:

“Just like tuning forks of different material will have different pure tones, remnants described by different equations of state will ring down at different frequencies. The detection of this signal thus has the potential to reveal what neutron stars are made of. I am particularly proud of this work as it constitutes exemplary evidence of the excellence of Frankfurt- and Darmstadt-based scientists in the study of neutron stars.”

This research, added Dr. Ecker, compliments the work of the Exploring the Universe from Microscopic to Macroscopic Scales (ELEMENTS) research cluster. Located at the Giersch Science Center (GSC), this cluster combines the resources of Goethe University, TU Darmstadt, Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU-Gießen), and the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (GSI-FAIR). Their aim is to combine the study of elementary particles and large astrophysical objects with the ultimate goal of finding the origins of heavy metals (i.e. platinum, gold, etc.) in the Universe.

While existing GW observatories have not detected post-merger signals, scientists are optimistic that next-generation instruments will. This includes the Einstein Telescope (ET), a proposed underground observatory expected to become operational in the next decade, and the ESA’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), the first GW observatory ever proposed for space, currently scheduled for deployment by 2035. With the completion of these and other third-generation GW observatories, the long ringdown could serve as a powerful means for probing the laws of physics under the most extreme conditions.

Further Reading: Goethe University

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Planets are born in swirling disks of gas and dust around young stars. Astronomers are keenly interested in the planet formation process, and understanding that process is one of the JWST’s main science goals. PDS 70 is a nearby star with two nascent planets forming in its disk, two of the very few exoplanets that astronomers have directly imaged.

Researchers developed a new, innovative approach to observing PDS 70 with the JWST and uncovered more details about the system, including the possible presence of a third planet.

PDS 70 is an orange dwarf star about 370 light-years away and hosts two young, growing planets: PDS 70b and PDS 70c. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) imaged both of the planets directly, and PDS 70b has the distinction of being the very first protoplanet every imaged directly. The VLT accomplished the feat in 2018 with its groundbreaking SPHERE instrument.

The SPHERE observations, along with other observations, allowed astronomers to get a much more detailed look at the planets’ atmospheres, masses, and temperatures.

Now, the JWST has taken another look at the pair of young planets. The results are in a new paper in The Astronomical Journal. It’s titled “The James Webb Interferometer: Space-based Interferometric Detections of PDS 70 b and c at 4.8 ?m,” and the lead author is Dori Blakely. Blakely is a grad student in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada.

The JWST’s Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) has a feature called Aperture Masking Interferometry (AMI), which allows it to function as an interferometer. It uses a special mask with tiny holes over the telescope’s primary mirror. The interferogram it creates has a much higher resolution because the effective size of the telescope becomes much larger.

“In this work, we present James Webb Interferometer observations of PDS 70 with the NIRISS F480M filter, the first space-based interferometric observations of this system,” the authors write. They found evidence of material surrounding PDS 70 b and c, which strengthens the idea that the planets are still forming.

“This is like seeing a family photo of our solar system when it was just a toddler. It’s incredible to think about how much we can learn from one system,” lead author Blakely said in a press release.

This is a colour-enhanced image of millimetre-wave radio signals from the ALMA observatory from previous research. It shows the PDS 70 star and both exoplanets. Image Credit: A. Isella, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)

Previous observations of the PDS 70 planets were made at shorter wavelengths, which were best explained by models for low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. But the JWST observed them at longer wavelengths, the longest they’d ever been observed with. These observations detected more light than previous observations, and the low-mass/brown dwarf models couldn’t account for the light.

The JWST observations hint at the presence of warm material around both planets, which is interpreted as material accreting from a circumplanetary disk. “Our photometry of both PDS 70 b and c provides tentative evidence of mid-IR circumplanetary disk emission through fitting spectral energy distribution models to these new measurements and those found in the literature,” the authors write.

This image from the study shows PDS 70 and its two planets with circumplanetary disks. The disks indicate that the planets are still growing by accumulating material, likely gas, from their disks. The larger orange feature is part of the larger disk surrounding the star and the planets. Image Credit: Blakely et al. 2025.

The results indicate that PDS 70 and its planets are vying for the same material needed to grow larger. The star is a T-Tauri star that’s only about 5.4 million years old. It won’t reach the Main Sequence for tens of millions more years and is still actively accreting material.

“These observations give us an incredible opportunity to witness planet formation as it happens,” said co-author Doug Johnstone from the Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre. “Seeing planets in the act of accreting material helps us answer long-standing questions about how planetary systems form and evolve. It’s like watching a solar system being built before our very eyes.”

The new research also presents additional evidence supporting a third planet around the stars, putatively named PDS 70d.

A 2024 paper presented hints of a third planet. However, there was much uncertainty. The authors of that paper wrote that they may have found another exoplanet, but it could also be a dust clump or an inner spiral of material. “Follow-up studies of d are therefore especially exciting,” the authors wrote.

While this new research isn’t solely a follow-up study on the potential exoplanet, it has constrained some of the object’s properties, whatever it may be.

This image from the research shows PDS 70 and the two planets. On the right side of the image is part of the larger circumstellar disk. This image shows increased emissions as a bright triangle. Current observations can’t discern whether this is a disk feature, a spiral or clumpy structure of gas, a stream of gas between PDS 70 b and c, or an additional planet, as suggested by previous research. Image Credit: Blakely et al. 2024.

If there is a third planet, it is significantly different from the other two. “… if the previously observed emission at shorter wavelengths is due to a planet, this putative planet has a different atmospheric composition than PDS 70 b or c,” the authors explain.

“Follow-up observations will be needed to determine the nature of this emission.”

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Sometimes, things across the vast Universe line up just right for us. The Einstein Ring above, like all Einstein Rings, has three parts. In the foreground is a distant massive object like a galaxy or galaxy cluster. In the background, at an even greater distance away, is a star or another galaxy.

We’re the observers, the third part, and all three must be perfectly aligned for an Einstein Ring to appear.

An Einstein Ring (ER) works by gravitational lensing. The massive foreground object has such powerful gravity that it bends space-time, which means the light from the distant object follows a curved path. The light is magnified and shaped into a circle.

Einstein Rings are intriguing visual oddities, but they’re also powerful, naturally occurring scientific tools.

“All strong lenses are special, because they’re so rare, and they’re incredibly useful scientifically.”

Conor O’Riordan, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany A close-up view of the centre of the NGC 6505 galaxy, with the bright Einstein ring around its nucleus, captured by ESA’s Euclid space telescope. Image Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, G. Anselmi, T. Li. LICENCE CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence

In this ER, the massive foreground object is the galaxy NGC 6505, which is warping spacetime around it. The galaxy is not unique—it just happens to be massive and about 600 million light-years away.

The background galaxy is also not particularly special. It’s 4.42 billion light years away, has never been seen before, and doesn’t even have a name. We’re only seeing it because of the alignment between both galaxies and us.

The ESA launched Euclid in July 2023, and its job is to measure the redshift of galaxies. In doing so, it can measure the expansion of the Universe so we can hopefully make progress in understanding dark energy and dark matter.

After launch, Euclid went through a testing phase and sent images back to us. For testing reasons, they were deliberately out of focus. Bruno Altieri, a scientist on the Euclid team, thought he saw something unusual in one of the images.

“I look at the data from Euclid as it comes in,” Bruno explained in a press release. “Even from that first observation, I could see it, but after Euclid made more observations of the area, we could see a perfect Einstein ring. For me, with a lifelong interest in gravitational lensing, that was amazing.”

Astronomers have observed NGC 6505, the foreground galaxy, many times, but they’ve never seen the ring before. After Altieri spotted the ring, Euclid’s high-resolution instruments captured follow-up images of it with the ring in focus. The instruments are VIS, the Visible light camera, and NISP, the Near-Infrared Spectrometer and Photometer.

“This demonstrates how powerful Euclid is, finding new things even in places we thought we knew well.”

Valeria Pettorino, ESA Euclid Project Scientist.

“I find it very intriguing that this ring was observed within a well-known galaxy, which was first discovered in 1884,” says Valeria Pettorino, ESA Euclid Project Scientist. “The galaxy has been known to astronomers for a very long time. And yet, this ring was never observed before. This demonstrates how powerful Euclid is, finding new things even in places we thought we knew well. This discovery is very encouraging for the future of the Euclid mission and demonstrates its fantastic capabilities.”

Research based on Euclid’s findings was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. It’s titled “Euclid: A complete Einstein ring in NGC 6505.” The lead author is Conor O’Riordan of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany.

“An Einstein ring is an example of strong gravitational lensing,” explained O’Riordan. “All strong lenses are special, because they’re so rare, and they’re incredibly useful scientifically. This one is particularly special, because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful.”

“The combination of the low redshift of the lens galaxy, the brightness of the source galaxy, and the completeness of the ring make this an exceptionally rare strong lens, unidentified until its observation by Euclid,” the authors write in their paper. The researchers used Euclid’s instruments and the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) to observe the ring. “The Euclid imaging, in particular, presents one of the highest signal-to-noise ratio optical/near-infrared observations of a strong gravitational lens to date.”

Strong lenses like this one allow astronomers to study the background galaxy, which would otherwise be impossible. These lenses also hold information about the expansion of the Universe, dark energy, and dark matter. “Strong lenses can be used as ‘cosmic telescopes’ to achieve higher spatial resolution when studying the lensed sources, and to test general relativity,” the authors explain in their research.

The authors also point out that studying the lens itself is also beneficial. “The most prevalent application of galaxy-scale strong lensing is in studying the lens itself, which is most often an early-type galaxy (ETG),” they write. All elliptical galaxies are considered early-type galaxies.

This image shows Euclid imaging data used in this work and in which Altieri’s lens was discovered. The main panel shows a composite false-colour image produced by combining the VIS and NISP data. The inset shows only the higher-resolution VIS data in the central 8? of the image, indicated by the square in the main panel. Image Credit: O’Riordan et al. 2025.

“Low redshift lenses are intrinsically rare because there is very little volume at low redshift,” the researchers explain in their paper. “That we observed one in the early days of Euclid is unremarkable, but for it to be an obvious strong lens is quite exceptional.”

Euclid’s mission is scheduled to last six years. The researchers say that while the spacecraft will find more Einstein rings during its mission, as many as 100,000, it will likely never find another one like this. “The exceptional nature of Altieri’s lens means it is unlikely that Euclid will find another lens below z?=?0.05 with a ring as bright as that observed here,” they explain.

The lens’ low redshift makes it exceptionally valuable scientifically. Only five others have similar low redshifts. “Strong lenses at low redshift have Einstein radii that are comparatively small in physical terms and allow for a detailed study of the composition and structure of the central region of the galaxy,” the authors write.

The researchers were able to determine the lens galaxy’s peculiar velocity, an important step in understanding Universal expansion, dark matter, and dark energy. They were also able to model its light profile in detail.

The paper is open access and interested readers can find more info there.

Press Release: Euclid discovers a stunning Einstein ring

Published Research: Euclid: A complete Einstein ring in NGC 6505

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Our Sun is a giant plasma windbag spewing a constant stream of charged particles called the solar wind. This stream leaves the Sun at speeds around 400 to 800 kilometers per second and extends to the outer edge of the Solar System to about 125 astronomical units. Astronomers have long wondered about what feeds this powerful outflow.

Recently the ESA Solar Orbiter spacecraft observed tiny plasma jets a few hundred kilometers wide, occurring across the Sun. Each one flashes for a brief instant above the solar surface. Just as a tiny stream expands to create a raging river here on Earth, these minuscule jets combine to provide “background” power that blossoms into the fast and slow parts of the solar wind.

Probing the Solar Wind

A research team led by Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany used the probe’s onboard ‘cameras’ to spot more tiny jets within coronal holes close to the Sun’s equator. “We could only detect these tiny jets because of the unprecedented high-resolution, high-cadence images produced by EUI,” said Chitta at the time of their discovery in 2023. They used the extreme ultraviolet channel of EUI’s high-resolution imager, which observes million-degree solar plasma at a wavelength of 17.4 nanometers. At the time, scientists suspected these flares were at the heart of solar wind generation but didn’t understand how widespread they were.

The team continued to use the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), Solar Wind Plasma Analyser (SWA) and Magnetometer (MAG) to study the jets over the past year and a half. By combining these high-resolution images with direct measurements of the stream of particles and the Sun’s magnetic field around the Solar Orbiter, the researchers spotted more tiny flares within coronal holes close to the solar equator. Based on those observations, they directly connected the solar wind measured at the spacecraft back to those same jets.

Picoflares that power the solar wind occur across the solar surface. Courtesy ESA. The Solar Wind and its Effects

For many years, the solar wind has remained something of a challenge to understand. We can certainly see its effects in the form of variable space weather. During years of solar maximum, the Sun is more active. That powers more outbursts in the form of X-class flares and coronal mass ejections that extend out for millions of kilometers. When the Sun quiets down, so does the activity, although it never completely stops.

On Earth, we see the effects of the solar wind in increased auroral displays, and—if coronal mass ejections are severe—in disruption of communication and power generation technologies. Out in space, the solar wind also affects other solar system bodies. For example, it shapes and disrupts comet plasma tails as they near their closest approach to the Sun. But, what powers it? And, how do scientists explain its variations?

The solar wind comes in two flavors: slow and dense at the solar equatorial regions and fast and not-so-dense at the higher latitudes and the poles. The Ulysses spacecraft, which was in a near-polar orbit for nearly 18 years starting in 1990, mapped these regions of the solar wind closest to the Sun and found that the fast wind is relatively steady, while the slow solar wind is more variable in speed.

The fast solar wind comes from the direction of dark patches in the Sun’s atmosphere called coronal holes. These are places where the solar magnetic field stretches out from the Sun through the solar system. Charged particles can flow along these “open” magnetic field lines, heading away from the Sun as the solar wind. It turns out that the slow solar wind also comes from equatorial coronal holes where nanoflares are also at work.

More about the Jets

So, what causes these tiny jets? Such nanoflare outbursts are called “picoflare jets”. They’re powered by a process called “magnetic reconnection.” This happens when magnetic field lines in a region of the Sun’s atmosphere get tangled and twisted together. Eventually, they break, similar to what happens when you twist a rubber band too much. That “break” releases heat and energy into the corona. New field lines reconnect to continue the process. This is the same mechanism that powers larger solar flares.

Interestingly, we see similar magnetic reconnection in comet plasma tails. Magnetic field lines are entrained in the solar wind. They “drape” around a comet and its plasma tail. Those field lines have a specific polarity. As the comet passes through different “regimes” of the solar wind, it experiences different polarities. When that happens, the old-polarity plasma tail “breaks off” in a disconnection event and that releases energy. The new field lines build a new plasma tail in a case of magnetic reconnection.

Comets are small-scale examples of this effect, while the Sun is a perfect example of the large-scale influence of magnetic reconnection. When you have countless numbers of these nanoflares releasing energy into the corona, it’s enough to power the entire solar wind. Spacecraft such as the Solar Orbiter and the Parker Solar Probe have front-row seats to the action and will provide long-term measurements of the Sun’s tremendous power-generation action.

For More Information

Scientists Spot Tiny Sun Jets Driving Fast and Slow Solar Wind
Coronal Hole Picflare Jets are Progenitors of Both Fast and Alfvénic Slow Solar Wind
Solar Wind

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Humanity will eventually need somewhere to live on the Moon. While aesthetics might not be the primary consideration when deciding what kind of habitat to build, it sure doesn’t hurt. The more pleasing the look of the habitat, the better, but ultimately, the functionality will determine whether or not it will be built. Dr. Martin Bermudez thinks he found a sweet synergy that was both functional and aesthetically pleasing with his design for a spherical lunar habitat made out of blown glass. NASA apparently agrees there’s potential there, as he recently received a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I grant to flesh out the concept further.

Bermudez’s vision’s artistic design looks like something out of an Arthur C. Clarke novel: a glass sphere rising off the lunar surface that could potentially contain living and work areas for dozens of people. His firm, Skyeports, is founded on creating these blown glass structures in space.

The design has some challenges, as Dr. Bermudez discusses in an interview with Fraser. First is how to build this thing. It’s far too large to ship in any conventional lunar lander. However, there’s also no air on the Moon to use as the blown gas to create the spherical shape. Dr. Bermudez plans to utilize argon, which would initially be shipped up from Earth to fill the sphere. Argon has several advantages in that it’s a noble gas and not very reactive, so it’s unlikely to explode in the furnace while the glass is blown.

Video animation showing the blown glass concept.
Credit – Skyeports YouTube Channel

Surprisingly, the lack of outside air pressure actually makes it easier to form a sphere than it would be on Earth since less pressure would be necessary to expand the sphere outwards. There are some nuances in the glass as well, with it being more like a glass lattice with embedded titanium or aluminum to make it stronger. Specific kinds of glass, such as borosilicate glass, could potentially add to the strength of the glass itself.

Most of the materials required to create such a structure could already be found on the lunar surface. Lunar regolith is full of the raw building materials required to make the structure work. Some of it has already been blasted into glass-like structures called agglutinates when micrometeoroids hit the lunar surface.

Those micrometeoroid impacts pose another risk to the glass sphere. Dr. Bermudez suggests having multiple layers of glass protecting the habitat, each with a layer of argon between them, like modern-day double-glazed windows. He suggests that spinning the outer layer might also provide some advantage, as will the spherical shape itself, as the impact force will dissipate better into the structure than it would on a flat surface.

3D printing is one of the fabrication technologies the blown glass sphere will have to compete with, as Fraser discusses.

Dr. Bermudez’s dreams don’t stop at the Moon, though. He suggests such a glass-blown structure could be useful on Mars or asteroids, where the microgravity would make it even easier to create these structures. On Mars, such a habitat might be limited to the top of Olympus Mons, where the atmosphere is thinner, and there isn’t as much wind and dust that could erode away the outer layers.

Many use cases exist for a structure like this, though many technical challenges remain. NIAC is the place for novel ideas that could potentially impact space exploration, and this one certainly fits that bill. As Dr. Bermudez works through de-risking his design, we get closer than ever to a future of aesthetically pleasing habitats on the Moon and everywhere else in the solar system.

Learn More:
NASA / Martin Bermudez – Lunar Glass Structure (LUNGS): Enabling Construction of Monolithic Habitats in Low-Gravity
UT – Glass Fibers in Lunar Regolith Could Help Build Structures on the Moon
UT – Recreating the Extreme Forces of an Asteroid Impact in the Lab
UT – Conceptual Design for a Lunar Habitat

Lead Image:
Artist’s concept of a lunar sphere on the lunar surface.
Credit – NASA / Martin Bermudez

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How can a geologic map of a lunar impact crater created billions of years ago help future human and robotic missions to the lunar surface? This is what a recent study published in The Planetary Science Journal hopes to address as an international team of researchers produced arguably the most in-depth, comprehensive, and highest resolution geologic maps of Orientale basin, which is one of the largest and oldest geologic structures on the Moon. This study has the potential to help scientists, engineers, and mission planners develop sample return missions that could place absolute ages on the Moon’s geology, resulting in better understanding the formation and evolution of our Moon and the Earth.

For the study, the researchers created a 1:200,000-scale geologic map of the Moon’s Orientale basin while focusing on identifying what are known as impact melt deposits, which are molten rocks created from a high-speed impact and intense heat that cooled and is now frozen in time, thus preserving its geologic record of when it was formed billions of years ago. The 1:200,000-scale means the map is 200,000 times smaller than in real life. Additionally, one pixel on the geologic map is equal to 100 meters, or approximately the size of an American gridiron football field, which improves upon previous Orientale basin geologic maps that were created at 1:5,000,000-scale.

“We chose to map Oriental basin because it’s simultaneously old and young,” said Dr. Kirby Runyon, who is a Research Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and lead author of the study. “We think it’s about 3.8 billion years old, which is young enough to still have its impact melt freshly exposed at the surface, yet old enough to have accumulated large impact craters on top of it as well, complicating the picture. We chose to map Orientale to test melt-identification strategies for older, more degraded impact basins whose ages we’d like to know.”

The goal of the study is to not only create an improved geologic map of Orientale basin, but to provide a foundation for future missions to potentially obtain surface samples of the impact melt and return them to Earth for analysis. Such analyses would reveal absolute ages of the impact melt through radiometric dating since these samples have been frozen in time for potentially billions of years. These results could help scientists unravel the Earth’s impact history, as both the Earth and Moon were potentially formed around the same period.

Along with the targeted impact melt, the team successfully identified and mapped a myriad of geologic features within Orientale basin as part of the new geologic map, including smaller craters within Orientale, fractures, fault lines, calderas, crater ejecta, and mare (volcanic basalt deposits), while also constructing a top-to-bottom map of Orientale basin, also called a stratigraphic map, that shows the most recent layers on top with the oldest layers on the bottom.

Image of the most recent Orientale basin geologic map at 1:200,000-scale, which improves upon past geologic maps of the region that were 1:5,000,000-scale. The project focused on impact melt (depicted in red), which was created from the extreme heat of the high-speed impact and has been preserved for potentially billions of years. The stars represent potential landing sites for future sample return missions that scientists can analyze back on Earth to determine the absolute age of Oriental basin. (Credit: Runyon et al.)

Unlike Earth, whose surface processes like plate tectonics and multitude of weather processes have erased impacts from billions of years ago, the preserved lunar geologic record could provide incredible insight into not only Earth’s impact history, but both how and when life first emerged on our planet. This is due to Orientale basin’s crater size and age, as such a large impact on Earth billions of years ago could have postponed or reset how and when life first emerged on the Earth.

“Giant impacts – like the one that formed Orientale – can vaporize an ocean and kill any life that had already started,” said Dr. Runyon. “Some recent modeling has shown that we probably never totally sterilized Earth during these big impacts, but we don’t know for sure. At some point our oceans could have been vaporized from impacts, then recondensed and rained out repeatedly. If that happened a number of times, it’s only after the last time that life could have gotten a foothold.”

While Orientale basin is one of the most striking features on the lunar surface, more than approximately 75 percent of it is not visible from Earth due to its location at the lunar nearside and farside boundary on the western limb of the Moon as observed from the Earth. Therefore, studying the Orientale basin is only possible with spacecraft. Despite this, Orientale basin was first suggested to be an impact crater during the 1960s when scientists at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory used groundbreaking techniques to “image” the sides of the Moon not visible to Earth using telescopic images taken from the Earth.

While NASA is focused on returning astronauts to the lunar surface with its Artemis program with the goal of establishing a permanent human presence on the Moon, returning scientific samples from Orientale basin could provide enormous scientific benefits for helping us better understand both the age of the Moon but also how and when life emerged on Earth billions of years ago.

How will the Orientale basin geologic map help us better understand the Moon’s and Earth’s history in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

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