https://phys.org/space-news/space-exploration en-us Phys.org provides the latest news on space, space exploration, space science and earth sciences. NASA's InSight mission provides data from the surface of Mars. Its seismometer, equipped with electronics built at ETH Zurich, not only records marsquakes, but unexpectedly reacts to solar eclipses as well. When the Martian moon, Phobos moves directly in front of the sun, the instrument tips slightly to one side. This miniscule effect could aid researchers in determining the planet's interior. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-solar-eclipse-mars-affects-interior.html Space Exploration Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:10:34 EDT news518429430 The absolute model age (AMA), or geologic age of Finsen crater on the moon's far side is determined to be about 3.5 billion years (Ga) based on crater counting method, according to a study published in Icarus. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-geologic-age-finsen-crater-side.html Space Exploration Fri, 04 Sep 2020 07:08:23 EDT news518422100 Europe's Vega rocket returned to the skies on Wednesday from French Guiana in its first mission since a failed launch last year. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-vega-rocket-french-guiana.html Space Exploration Thu, 03 Sep 2020 04:05:35 EDT news518324733 To the surprise of many planetary scientists, the oxidized iron mineral hematite has been discovered at high latitudes on the Moon, according to a study published today in Science Advances led by Shuai Li, assistant researcher at the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). https://phys.org/news/2020-09-earth-oxygen-rusted-moon-billions.html Space Exploration Wed, 02 Sep 2020 14:00:09 EDT news518248440 An alert pops up in your email: The latest spacecraft observations are ready. You now have 24 hours to scour 84 hours-worth of data, selecting the most promising split-second moments you can find. The data points you choose, depending on how you rank them, will download from the spacecraft in the highest possible resolution; researchers may spend months analyzing them. Everything else will be overwritten like it was never collected at all. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-magnetic-eruptions-space-ai.html Astronomy Space Exploration Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:46:16 EDT news518251570 What looks like an engine made its way to space and back last November. While the hardware of the Perwaves experiment will not end up in your car, results from this research could lead to more efficient and carbon-free fuel in the future. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-perwaves-space-future-fuels.html Space Exploration Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:42:29 EDT news518251345 The Sun is our star and has a profound influence on our planet, life, and civilization. By studying the magnetism on the Sun, we can understand its influence on Earth and minimize damage of satellites and technological infrastructure. The GREGOR telescope allows scientists to resolve details as small as 50 km on the Sun, which is a tiny fraction of the solar diameter of 1.4 million km. This is as if one saw a needle on a soccer field perfectly sharp from a distance of one kilometer. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-solar-telescope-gregor-unveils-magnetic.html Astronomy Space Exploration Tue, 01 Sep 2020 12:10:28 EDT news518181025 Mars is often a very dynamic place due to its atmosphere and how it interacts with the surface. At present, we're in the "windy season" in Gale crater. This means that we're seeing increased aeolian (meaning "related to the wind") activity at the surface. In recent sols, we've taken Mastcam images of the same surface ripples on multiple sols. We've been able to see the ripples moving from sol to sol, due to wind moving the sand grains that make up the ripples, which tells us both the dominant wind direction and how strong the wind is. Today's plan included more observations designed to look for changes on the surface and rover deck: a MARDI image of the region below the rover, to prepare for making more images of that location over the next few sols so we can look for changes, and a Navcam deck pan, to look for changes to dust and sand grains on the rover deck. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-curiosity-summer-approaches-gale-crater.html Space Exploration Tue, 01 Sep 2020 07:22:49 EDT news518163765 A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder is pioneering a new solution to the problem of spring cleaning on the moon: Why not zap away the grime using a beam of electrons? https://phys.org/news/2020-08-dustbuster-moon.html Space Exploration Mon, 31 Aug 2020 13:04:04 EDT news518097832 NASA has selected five proposals for concept studies of missions to help improve understanding of the dynamics of the sun and the constantly changing space environment with which it interacts around Earth. The information will improve understanding about the universe as well as offer key information to help protect astronauts, satellites, and communications signals—such as GPS—in space. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nasa-space-environment-missions.html Space Exploration Mon, 31 Aug 2020 09:21:19 EDT news518084476 NASA has approved the final development stage of the Southwest Research Institute-led Lucy mission to explore the Trojan asteroids in preparation for its October 2021 launch. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-first-ever-mission-trojan-asteroids-nasa.html Space Exploration Fri, 28 Aug 2020 14:29:37 EDT news517843759 On the afternoon of February 10, 2009, the operational communications satellite Iridium 33 collided with the obsolete Cosmos 2251 communications satellite over Siberia at an altitude of roughly 800 kilometers. The collision was at a speed of 11.7 kilometers a second and produced a cloud of more than 2,000 pieces of debris larger than ten centimeters. This debris spread out over an extensive area within a few months and has been threatening to collide with other operational satellites since then. This event was a wake-up call for all satellite operators, but also for politicians. "The problem of so-called space debris—disused artificial objects in space—took on a new dimension," says Professor Thomas Schildknecht, head of the Zimmerwald Observatory and deputy director of the Astronomical Institute at the University of Bern. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-space-debris-day.html Astronomy Space Exploration Fri, 28 Aug 2020 08:54:05 EDT news517823640 Jakob van Zyl, an engineer who held crucial positions at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was involved in numerous space exploration missions over decades, has died. He was 63. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-jakob-van-zyl-key-jet.html Space Exploration Fri, 28 Aug 2020 04:19:12 EDT news517807147 In a landmark study, scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have mapped the immense envelope of gas, called a halo, surrounding the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large galactic neighbor. Scientists were surprised to find that this tenuous, nearly invisible halo of diffuse plasma extends 1.3 million light-years from the galaxy—about halfway to our Milky Way—and as far as 2 million light-years in some directions. This means that Andromeda's halo is already bumping into the halo of our own galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-hubble-giant-halo-andromeda-galaxy.html Astronomy Space Exploration Thu, 27 Aug 2020 14:52:33 EDT news517758729 A new sensor to identify lunar volatiles is being assembled in a clean room at The Open University, UK ahead of some exciting missions to the moon. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-image-moon.html Space Exploration Thu, 27 Aug 2020 10:53:27 EDT news517744404 Everyone is planning to return to the moon. At least 10 missions by half a dozen nations are scheduled before the end of 2021, and that's only the beginning. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-moon-person-lunar-looms-perspective.html Space Exploration Thu, 27 Aug 2020 09:25:06 EDT news517739101 Wormholes are a popular feature in science fiction, the means through which spacecraft can achieve faster-than-light (FTL) travel and instantaneously move from one point in spacetime to another. And while the General Theory of Relativity forbids the existence of "traversable wormholes," recent research has shown that they are actually possible within the domain of quantum physics. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-theory-standard-wormholes.html Space Exploration Thu, 27 Aug 2020 09:19:38 EDT news517738776 The detection more than a decade ago by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope of an excess of high-energy radiation in the center of the Milky Way convinced some physicists that they were seeing evidence of the annihilation of dark matter particles, but a team led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine has ruled out that interpretation. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-dark-destruction-extra-galaxy-center.html Astronomy Space Exploration Wed, 26 Aug 2020 15:15:12 EDT news517673704 In a year defined by obstacles, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student rocket team persevered. Working together across five time zones, they successfully designed a hybrid rocket engine that uses paraffin and a novel nitrous oxide-oxygen mixture called Nytrox. The team has its sights set on launching a rocket with the new engine at the 2021 Intercollegiate Rocketry and Engineering Competition. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-student-team-hybrid-rocket.html Space Exploration Wed, 26 Aug 2020 08:24:40 EDT news517649076 Imagine microscopic life-forms, such as bacteria, transported through space, and landing on another planet. The bacteria finding suitable conditions for its survival could then start multiplying again, sparking life at the other side of the universe. This theory, called "panspermia", support the possibility that microbes may migrate between planets and distribute life in the universe. Long controversial, this theory implies that bacteria would survive the long journey in outer space, resisting to space vacuum, temperature fluctuations, and space radiations. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-bacteria-survive-earth-mars-aggregates.html Space Exploration Wed, 26 Aug 2020 03:23:25 EDT news517631000 An international team led by Professor Tian Hui from Peking University has recently measured the global magnetic field of the solar corona for the first time. The team used observations from the Coronal Multi-channel Polarimeter, an instrument designed by Dr. Steve Tomczyk at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA. Their results have been recently published in Science and Science China Technological Sciences. Yang Zihao, a first-year graduate student at Peking University, is the first author of both papers. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-global-magnetic-field-solar-corona-1.html Space Exploration Tue, 25 Aug 2020 13:39:44 EDT news517581581 Fifty potential planets have been confirmed by a new machine learning algorithm developed by University of Warwick scientists. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-planets-machine.html Space Exploration Tue, 25 Aug 2020 09:08:00 EDT news517565277 Testing teams have successfully completed a critical milestone focused on demonstrating that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will respond to commands once in space. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-ground-segment-success-james-webb.html Space Exploration Mon, 24 Aug 2020 12:21:21 EDT news517490469 When it comes to places with the potential for habitability, Venus isn't usually on that list. The hot, greenhouse-effect-gone-mad neighboring planet with a crushing surface pressure and sulfuric acid clouds certainly isn't friendly to life as we know it, and the few spacecraft humanity has sent to Venus' surface have only endured a few minutes. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-life-cloudtops-venus.html Space Exploration Astrobiology Mon, 24 Aug 2020 09:10:48 EDT news517479042 Many resources essential to the technology on which we depend are dwindling or are increasingly inaccessible to certain nations for geopolitical reasons. A case in point is that several of the rare metallic elements that are needed to construct the components of modern electronic devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs, fuel cells, rechargeable batteries, photovoltaic systems, and other technology are by definition low in abundance. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-deep-space.html Space Exploration Mon, 24 Aug 2020 09:10:05 EDT news517479002 The last time we saw NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission was on July 30, 2020, as it disappeared into the black of deep space on a trajectory for Mars. But with NASA's Eyes on the Solar System, you can follow in real time as humanity's most sophisticated rover—and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter traveling with it—treks millions of miles over the next six months to Jezero Crater. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nasa-perseverance-rover-real-mars.html Space Exploration Sun, 23 Aug 2020 05:23:23 EDT news517378989 The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the closest images yet of the sky's latest visitor to make the headlines, comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, after it passed by the Sun. The new images of the comet were taken on 8 August and feature the visitor's coma, the fine shell that surrounds its nucleus, and its dusty output. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-hubble-snaps-close-up-comet-neowise.html Space Exploration Fri, 21 Aug 2020 14:09:33 EDT news517237762 Europa's outer icy shell has completely reoriented itself in one of the last geologic events recorded on its young surface. Europa's poles are not where they used to be. Cracks in the surface of Jupiter's icy moon indicate its shell of ice rotated by 70 degrees sometime in the last several million years. In addition to supporting prior evidence for the existence of a subsurface ocean, it also means that the geologic history of Europa's surface must be reexamined. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-degree-shift-jupiter-icy-moon.html Space Exploration Fri, 21 Aug 2020 13:52:35 EDT news517236741 So, you've just put the finishing touches on upgrades to your spaceship, and now it can fly at almost the speed of light. We're not quite sure how you pulled it off, but congratulations! https://phys.org/news/2020-08-video-nasa-near-light-speed.html Space Exploration Fri, 21 Aug 2020 08:46:42 EDT news517218398 Optical communications, transmitting data using infrared lasers, has the potential to help NASA return more data to Earth than ever. The benefits of this technology to exploration and Earth science missions are huge. In support of a mission to demonstrate this technology, NASA recently completed installing its newest optical ground station in Haleakala, Hawaii. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-ground-station-laser-closer-reality.html Space Exploration Fri, 21 Aug 2020 08:40:13 EDT news517218011