Best overall		Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ		SEE IT	A solid build and specs, paired with smartphone-guided sky recognition technology, makes this telescope perfect for starry-eyed explorers.
Best for viewing planets		Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope		SEE IT	This telescope punches above its weight class in size and power, making it an ideal scope for checking out neighboring orbs.
Best for kids		Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit		SEE IT	The entire package is designed to inspire kids during the window where they stare curiously out of the windows.

Telescopes under $500 can provide a passport to the universe without emptying your wallet. In their basic function, telescopes are our connection to the stars. For millennia, humankind has gazed skyward with wonder into the infinite reaches of outer space. And as humans are a curious bunch, our ancestors devised patterns in the movements of celestial bodies, gave them names, and built stories around them. The ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks indulged in star worship. But you don’t have to follow those lines to geek out over the vastness of the night sky. It’s just so cool. Fortunately, whatever your motivation for getting under the stars, there is an affordable option for you on our list of the best telescopes under $500.

• Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ
• Best for viewing planets: Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope
• Best for astrophotography: William Optics Guide Star 61
• Best for kids: Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit
• Best budget: Popular Science by Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope

How we chose the best telescopes under $500

The under-$500 telescope market is crowded with worthy brands and models, so we looked at offerings in that price range from several well-known manufacturers in the space. After narrowing our focus based on personal experience, peer suggestions, critical reviews, and user impressions, we considered aperture, focal length, magnification, build quality, and value to select these five models.

The best telescopes under $500: Reviews & Recommendations

To get the best views of the stars, planets, and other phenomena of outer space, not just any old telescope will get the job done. There are levels of quality and a wide range of price points and features to sort through before you can be sure you’re making the right purchase for what you want out of your telescope, whether it’s multi-thousands, one of the best telescopes for under $1,000, or one of our top picks under $500.

Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ

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Why it made the cut: Solid build and specs, paired with the remarkable StarSense Explorer app, make this telescope a perfect introduction to celestial observation.

Specs

• Focal length: 650mm
• Aperture: 130mm, f/5
• Magnification: 65x, 26x

Pros

• App aids in finding stars
• Easy to operate
• Steady altazimuth mount

Cons

• Eyepieces are both low power

Newbies to astronomy today can have a decidedly different experience than beginners who started stargazing before smartphones were a thing. Instead of carting out maps of the night sky to find constellations, the StarSense Explorer series from Celestron, including the DX 130AZ refractor, makes ample use of your device to bring you closer to the stars. 

With your smartphone resting in the telescope’s built-in dock, the StarSense Explorer app will find your location using the device’s GPS and serve up a detailed list of celestial objects viewable in real time. Looking for the Pleiades cluster? This app will tell you how far away it is from you and then lead you there with on-screen navigation. The app also includes descriptions of those objects, tips for observing them, and other useful info. 

The StarSense Explorer ships with an altazimuth mount equipped with slow-moving fine-tuning controls for both axes so you can find your target smoothly. And for those times you want to explore the night sky without tethering a smartphone, the scope’s red dot finder will help you zero in on your targets. The two eyepieces, measuring 25mm and 10mm, are powerful enough to snag stellar views of the planets but not quite enough to see the details a high-powered eyepiece would deliver.

Best for viewing planets: Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope

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Why it made the cut: This telescope punches above its weight class in size and power, making it an ideal scope for viewing planets.

Specs

• Focal length: 1300mm
• Aperture: 102mm, f/12.7
• Magnification: 130x, 52x

Pros

• Great for viewing planets and galaxies
• Sharp focus and contrast
• Powerful

Cons

• Not ideal for deep-space viewing

Let’s be real—most consumers in the market for a moderately priced telescope are in it to gain spectacular views of the planets and galaxies, but probably not much else. And it’s easy to see why. Nothing makes celestial bodies come alive like viewing them in real time, in all their colorful glory.

If that sounds like you, allow us to direct you to the Sky-Watcher Skymax 102, a refracting telescope specializing in crisp views of objects like planets and galaxies with ample contrast to make them pop against the dark night sky. The Skymax 102 is based on a Maksutov-Cassegrains design that uses both mirrors and lenses, resulting in a heavy-hitting scope in a very compact and portable unit. A generous 102mm aperture pulls in plenty of light to illuminate the details in objects, and the 1300mm focal length results in intense magnification.

Two included wide-angle eyepieces measuring 25mm and 10mm deliver 130x and 52x magnification, respectively. The package also includes a red-dot finder, V-rail for mounting, 1.25-inch diagonal viewing piece, and a case for transport and storage. Look no further if you’re looking for pure colors across a perfectly flat field in a take-anywhere form factor.

Best for astrophotography: William Optics GuideStar 61 

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Why it made the cut: Top-notch specs and an enviable lens setup make this telescope ideal for astrophotography.

Specs

• Focal length: 360mm
• Aperture: f/5.9
• Magnification: 7x (with 2-inch eyepiece)

Pros

• Well-appointed specs
• Sturdy, durable construction
• Carrying case included

Cons

• Flattener is an extra purchase

Sometimes you want to share more than descriptions of what you see in the night sky, and that’s where this guidescope comes in, helping you to focus on the best full-frame image. You can go as deep into the details (not to mention debt) as your line of credit will allow in your quest to capture the most impressive images of space. Luckily, though, this is a worthy option at a reasonable price. 

The Williams Optics Guide Star 61 telescope is a refracting-type scope with a 360mm focal length, f/5.9 aperture, and 61mm diameter well-suited to capturing sharp images of planets, moon, and bright deep-sky objects. The GS61 shares many specs with the now-discontinued Zenith Star 61, including focal length, aperture, and diameter, as well as the FPL53 ED doublet lens for high-contrast images.

The scope’s optical tube is about 13 inches long and weighs just 3 lbs.—great for traveling with the included carrying case—with a draw-tube (push-pull) focuser for coarse focusing and a rotating lens assembly for fine focus. Attaching a DSLR camera to the Guide Star 61 is a fairly easy job, but note that the flattener for making that connection is a separate purchase.

Best for kids: Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit

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Why it made the cut: The entire package is designed to get kids exploring space right out of the box.

Specs

• Focal length: 700mm
• Aperture: 60mm, f/11.7
• Magnification: 70x, 28x

Pros

• Capable of detailed views of moon and planets
• Lightweight construction
• Lots of handy accessories

Cons

• Not enough optical power to reach deep space

Parents have a limited window of time to recognize and develop their kids’ interests, so kindle a fascination with the stars through a star projector and then fan it with a telescope. That’s what makes the Orion Observer II such a great buy. Seeing the craters on the moon or the rings of Saturn for the first time can affirm your kids’ curiosity about space and expand their concept of the universe—and they can get those goosebumps while learning through this altazimuth refractor telescope.

The Orion Observer II is built to impressive specifications, with a 700mm focal length that provides 71x magnification for viewing the vivid details of planets in our solar system. True glass lenses (not plastic) are a bonus at this price point, and combined with either included Kellner eyepieces (25mm and 10mm), the telescope delivers crisp views of some of space’s most dazzling objects. 

Kids and parents can locate celestial objects with the included red-dot finder. The kit also includes MoonMap 260, a fold-out map that directs viewers to 260 lunar features, such as craters, valleys, ancient lava flows, mountain ranges, and every U.S. and Soviet lunar mission landing site. An included copy of Exploring the Cosmos: An Introduction to the Night Sky gives a solid background before they go stargazing. And with its aluminum tube and tripod, the entire rig is very portable, even for young ones, with a total weight of 4.3 pounds. Find more options for the best telescopes for kids here. (And/or go the opposite direction with a microscope for kids—a love of science begets more science.)

Best budget: Popular Science by Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Popular Science has teamed up with Celestron on a line of products. The decision to include this model in our recommendations was made by our reviewer independently of that relationship, but we do earn a commission on its sales—all of which helps power Popular Science.

Why it made the cut: With its feature set, portability, and nice price point, this scope is ready for some serious stargazing without a serious investment.

Specs

• Focal length: 400mm
• Aperture: 70mm, f/5.7
• Magnification: 168x

Pros

• Bluetooth remote shutter release
• Ships with two eyepieces
• Pack included

Cons

• Lacks optical power for deep space

Getting out of town, whether camping in the wilderness or driving in the countryside, is one of the attractions of stargazing. Out in the great wide open, far away from streetlights, the stars explode even to the naked eye. Add a handy telescope like the Popular Science Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope—our pick for the best portable telescope under $500—and you’ll see much farther into space. The fact that it’s as affordable as it is moveable just adds to the value.

The Popular Science Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope is a well-equipped refractor telescope built for backpacking and adventuring but without skimping on cool gadgets. Whether you’re gazing at celestial or terrestrial objects, the smartphone adapter will aid you in capturing images with your personal device, with an included Bluetooth remote shutter release.

Designed with portability and weight in mind, the entire package fits into an included pack with a total of 3.3 pounds—that includes the telescope, tripod stand, 20mm and 10mm eyepieces, 3x Barlow lens, and more. Download Celestron’s Starry Night software to help you get the most from your astronomy experience. 

Here are some other options from the Celestron and Popular Science collaboration:

• Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 100AZ Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope
• Popular Science AstroMaster 80mm – Portable Refractor Telescope
• Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 5” Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope 
• Popular Science by Celestron Outland X 12x50mm Monocular with Tripod, Smartphone Adapter, and Bluetooth remote

What to consider when buying the best telescopes under $500

Optics

There are three types of optics available on consumer telescopes, and they will help you achieve three different goals. Refractor telescopes use a series of glass lenses to bring celestial bodies like the moon and near planets into focus easily. Reflector telescopes—also known as Newtonian scopes for their inventor, Sir Isaac Newton—swap lenses for mirrors and allow stargazers to see deeper into space. Versatile compound telescopes combine these two methods in a smaller, more portable form factor, with results that land right in the middle of the pack. 

Aperture

Photographers will recognize this: The aperture controls the amount of light entering the telescope, like on a manual camera. Aperture is the diameter of the lens or the primary mirror, so a telescope with a large aperture draws more light than a small aperture, resulting in views into deeper space. F-ratio is the spec to watch here. Low f-ratios, such as f/4 or f/5, are usually best for wide-field observation and photography, while high f-ratios like f/15 can make deep-space nebulae and other bodies easier to see and capture. Midpoint f-ratios can get the job done for both.

Mounts

All the lens and mirror power in the world won’t mean much if you attach your telescope to a subpar mount. In general, the more lightweight and portable the tripod mount, the more movement you’ll likely get while gazing or photographing the stars. Investing in a stable mount will improve the viewing experience. The two common mount types are alt-az (altitude-azimuth) and equatorial. Altazimuth mounts operate in the same way as a camera tripod, allowing you to adjust both axes (left-right, up-down), while equatorial mounts also tilt to make it easier to follow celestial objects.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best telescopes under $500

• Best overall: Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ
• Best for viewing planets: Sky-Watcher Skymax 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope
• Best for astrophotography: William Optics Guide Star 61
• Best for kids: Orion Observer II 60mm AZ Refractor Telescope Starter Kit
• Best budget: Popular Science by Celestron Travel Scope 70 Portable Telescope

Although this group of sub-$500 scopes is fairly diverse, the Celestron StarSense Explorer DX 130AZ stands out in our best telescopes under $500 as the best place to start your interstellar journey due to its versatility and sky recognition app, which make for a fun evening of guided tours through the star patterns, no experience necessary. 

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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Of all the pyrotechnics that blast through the cosmos, fast radio bursts (FRBs) are among the most powerful—and mysterious. While our radio telescopes have picked up hundreds of known FRBs, radio astronomers recently detected one of the most fascinating bursts yet. Not only does it come from a greater distance than any FRB observed before, it’s the most energetic, too.

A superlative FRB like this defies our already murky understanding of the bursts’ origins. FRBs are sudden surges of radio waves that typically last less than a second, if not mere milliseconds. And they are very, very high-energy: They can deliver as much energy in milliseconds as the sun emits in three days. Despite all that, we don’t know for certain how they form.

The new event, what astronomers lovingly call FRB 20220610A, first appeared as a blip in the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, an arrangement of antennae in the desert about 360 miles north of Perth. When astronomers measured the burst’s redshift, they calculated that it left its source about 8 billion years ago, as they described in a paper published today in Science. 

After pinpointing the burst’s origin in the sky and following up with visible light and infrared telescopes, the authors managed to develop a blurry image of merging galaxies.

[Related: Two bizarre stars might have beamed a unique radio signal to Earth]

“The further you go out in the universe, of course, the fainter the galaxies are, because they’re farther away. It’s quite difficult to identify the host galaxy, and that’s what they’ve done,” Sarah Burke Spolaor, an astronomer who studies FRBs at West Virginia University, who was not an author of the study.

FRBs aren’t exciting just because they’re loud. To reach us, a burst from outside the Milky Way must traverse millions or billions of light-years of the near-empty space between galaxies. In the process, they’ll encounter an extremely sparse smattering of ionized particles. This is the stuff that prevents the bulk of the cosmos from being completely empty—what astronomers call the intergalactic medium, which might make up as much as half of the universe’s “normal” matter.

“We don’t know much about it, because it’s so tenuous that it’s difficult to detect,” says Daniele Michilli, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who also wasn’t a study author.

As an FRB crosses the intergalactic medium on its long voyage, the particles cause its radio waves to scatter, which leaves fingerprints that astronomers can pick apart. In this way, scientists can use FRBs to investigate the intergalactic medium. More faraway bursts like FRB 20220610A could allow astronomers to study the medium across wide swathes of the universe.

[Related: How astronomers traced a puzzling detection to a lunchtime mistake]

“It’s very exciting, definitely one of the great applications of fast radio bursts,” says Ziggy Pleunis, an astronomer who studies FRBs at the University of Toronto, who was also not part of the authors’ group. “Fast radio bursts currently are really the only thing that we know that interacts with the intergalactic medium in a meaningful enough way that we can measure properties.”

In the future, astronomers might even be able to use FRBs to study how the universe expands. To unweave that mystery, however, astronomers will need to detect FRBs from even deeper into the cosmic past than FRB 20220610A. “For a lot of applications, it’s still not quite far away enough,” Pleunis says. “But it certainly bodes well.” 

There’s a balancing act involved: Over a sufficiently long distance, the particles in the intergalactic medium will peel an FRB apart until it disperses into background noise. To survive, an FRB must be brighter and more energetic; in turn, by taking stock of how much a burst has dispersed, astronomers can estimate its original energy. 

By computing the numbers for FRB 20220610A, they found that it was the most energetic burst Earth has seen so far. (Another recently observed burst, FRB 20201124A, comes within the same order of magnitude, but FRB 20220610A is the record-holder.) A burst with this much energy throws something of a wrench into astronomers’ understanding, such as it is, of what creates FRBs in the first place.

We, again, don’t have a definitive answer to that question. Complicating the question, some FRBs are one-off flashes, while others repeat, hinting that the two types of FRBs may have two different origins. (To wit, FRB 20220610A seems to have been a one-off. But that other high-energy FRB, FRB 20201124A, seems to repeat.)

Nevertheless, astronomers have simulated a few scenarios, largely involving neutron stars. Perhaps FRBs burst from near a neutron star’s surface, or perhaps FRBs erupt from shockwaves through the material that neutron stars throw up.

But when this paper’s authors ran the numbers with their new FRB, they found that neither of those two scenarios could easily create an burst with this much energy—suggesting that theoretical astronomers have even more work to do before they can satisfactorily explain these events.

“What always strikes me about fast radio bursts is, every time we observe a new one, it breaks the mold of previous ones,” Spolaor says.

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Jupiter and its dynamic atmosphere are ready for another closeup in a new image taken with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Using the telescope’s data, scientists have discovered a new and never-before-captured high-speed jet stream. The jet stream sits over Jupiter’s equator above the main cloud decks, barrels at speeds twice as high as a Category 5 hurricane, and spans more than 3,000 miles. The findings were described in a study published October 19 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

[Related: This hot Jupiter exoplanet unexpectedly hangs out with a super-Earth.]

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system and its atmosphere has some very visible features, including the infamous Great Red Spot, which is large enough to swallow the Earth. The planet is ever-changing and there are still mysteries in this gas giant that scientists are trying to unravel. According to NASA, the new discovery of the jet stream is helping them decipher how the layers of Jupiter’s famously turbulent atmosphere interact with each other. Now, JWST is helping scientists look further into the planet and see some of the lower and deeper layers of Jupiter’s atmosphere where gigantic storms and ammonia ice clouds reside. 

“This is something that totally surprised us,” study co-author Ricardo Hueso said in a statement.  “What we have always seen as blurred hazes in Jupiter’s atmosphere now appear as crisp features that we can track along with the planet’s fast rotation.” Hueso is an astrophysicist at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain.

The research team analyzed data from JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) that was obtained in July 2022. The Early Release Science program was designed to take images of Jupiter 10 hours apart (one Jupiter day) in four different filters. Each filter detected different types of changes in the small features located at various altitudes of Jupiter’s atmosphere.

The resulting image shows Jupiter’s atmosphere in infrared light. The jet stream is located over the equator, or center, of the planet. There are multiple bright white spots and streaks that are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms. Jupiter’s northern and southern poles are dotted by auroras that appear red and extend to the higher altitudes of the planet. 

“Even though various ground-based telescopes, spacecraft like NASA’s Juno and Cassini, and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have observed the Jovian system’s changing weather patterns, Webb has already provided new findings on Jupiter’s rings, satellites, and its atmosphere,” study co-author and University of California, Berkeley astronomer Imke de Pater said in a statement.  

The newly discovered jet stream travels at roughly 320 miles per hour and is located close to 25 miles above the clouds, in Jupiter’s lower stratosphere. The team compared the winds observed by JWST at higher altitudes with the winds observed at deeper layers by the Hubble Space Telescope. This enabled them to measure how fast the winds change with altitude and generate wind shears.

[Related: Jupiter formed dinky little rings, and there’s a convincing explanation why.]

The team hopes to use additional observations of Jupiter to determine if the jet’s speed and altitude change over time. 

“Jupiter has a complicated but repeatable pattern of winds and temperatures in its equatorial stratosphere, high above the winds in the clouds and hazes measured at these wavelengths,” Leigh Fletcher, a study co-author and planetary scientists at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “If the strength of this new jet is connected to this oscillating stratospheric pattern, we might expect the jet to vary considerably over the next 2 to 4 years–it’ll be really exciting to test this theory in the years to come.”

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The recent “ring of fire” solar eclipse looked stunning across portions of North and South America and we now have a new view of the stellar event. The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite created the image of the eclipse on Saturday October 14, depicting the mostly blue Earth against the darkness of space, with one large patch of the planet in the shadow of the moon. 

[Related: Why NASA will launch rockets to study the eclipse.]

Launched in 2015, DSCOVR is a joint NASA, NOAA, and U.S. Air Force satellite. It offers a unique perspective since it is close to 1 million miles away from Earth and sits in a gravitationally stable point between the Earth and the sun called Lagrange Point 1. DSCOVR’s primary job is to monitor the solar wind in an effort to improve space weather forecasts. 

A special device aboard the satellite called the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) imager took this view of the eclipse from space. According to NASA, the sensor gives scientists frequent views of the Earth. The moon’s shadow, or umbra, is falling across the southeastern coast of Texas, near Corpus Christi.

An annular solar eclipse occurs when the moon moves between Earth and the sun. The sun does not vanish completely in this kind of eclipse. Instead, the moon is positioned far enough from Earth to keep the bright edges of the sun visible. This is what causes the “ring of fire,” as if the moon has been outlined with bright paint.

While this year’s event could be seen to some degree across the continental United States, the 125-mile-wide path of annularity began in Oregon around 9:13 AM Pacific Daylight Time. The moon’s shadow then moved southeast across Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, before passing over Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. It continued south towards Mexico’s Yucatan, Peninsula, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Brazil

Unlike the colorful Aurora Borealis, eclipses are much easier to predict. Scientists can say when annular and solar eclipses will happen down to the second centuries in advance. The precise positions of the moon and the sun and how they shift over time is already known, so scientists can see how the moon’s shadow will fall onto Earth’s globe. Advances in computer technology have also enabled scientists to even chart eclipse paths down to a range of a few feet.

[Related: We can predict solar eclipses to the second. Here’s how.]

The next annular solar eclipse will be at least partially visible from South America on October 2,2024. One of these ‘ring of fire’ eclipses will not be visible in the United States until June 21, 2039. However, a total solar eclipse will darken the sky from Maine to Texas on April 8, 2024. There is still plenty of time to get eclipse glasses or make a pinhole camera to safely watch the next big celestial event. 

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A giant seismic event on Mars—a “marsquake”—that shook the Red Planet last year had an unexpected source, surprising astrophysicists from around the world. They suspected a meteorite strike. Instead, enormous tectonic forces within Mars’s crust, which caused vibrations that lasted for six hours, caused the quake and not a meteorite strike. The findings are described in a study published October 17 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

[Related: Two NASA missions combined forces to analyze a new kind of marsquake.]

NASA’s InSight lander recorded the magnitude 4.7 marsquake on May 4, 2022, which scientists named S1222a. Its seismic signal was similar to those of previous quakes that were caused by meteorite impacts, so the team began to search for an impact crater. 

In the new study, a team from the University of Oxford worked with the European Space Agency, Chinese National Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation, and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency to scour more than 55 million square miles on Mars. Each group examined the data coming from its own satellites to look for a crater, dust cloud, or other signature of a meteorite impact. Because the search came up empty, they now believe that S1222a was caused by the release of huge tectonic forces from within the Martian interior. 

That doesn’t mean Mars’s tectonic plates are moving the way they do during an earthquake. The best available evidence suggests the planet is remaining still. “We still think that Mars doesn’t have any active plate tectonics today, so this event was likely caused by the release of stress within Mars’ crust,” study co-author and University of Oxford planetary geophysicist Benjamin Fernando said in a statement. “These stresses are the result of billions of years of evolution; including the cooling and shrinking of different parts of the planet at different rates.”

While Fernando explains that scientists do not fully understand why some parts of Mars seem to have more stress than others, these results can help them investigate further. “One day, this information may help us to understand where it would be safe for humans to live on Mars and where you might want to avoid!” he said.

S1222a was one of the last events recorded by NASA’s InSight mission before its end. The InSight lander launched in May 2018 and survived “seven minutes of terror” to touch down on Mars, where it studied the planet’s interior and seismology for years. The last of the spacecraft’s data was returned in December 2022, after increasing dust accumulation on its solar panels caused InSight to lose power. 

[Related: InSight says goodbye with what may be its last wistful image of Mars.]

In its four years and 19 days of service, InSight recorded more than 1,300 marsquakes. At least eight of these events were from a meteorite impact; the largest two formed craters that were almost 500 feet in diameter. If the S1222a event was formed by an impact, the team estimates that the crater to be would have been at least 984 feet in diameter.

The team is applying knowledge from this study to other work, including future missions to our moon and the tectonics that are similar to California’s famed San Andreas fault located on one of Saturn’s moons named Titan. They also hope that it encourages additional major international collaborations to study the Red Planet and beyond. 

“This has been a great opportunity for me to collaborate with the InSight team, as well as with individuals from other major missions dedicated to the study of Mars,” study co-author and New York University Abu Dhabi astrophysicist Dimitra Atri said in a statement. “This really is the golden age of Mars exploration!”

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Last Friday, NASA launched the Psyche spacecraft toward an asteroid of the same name. Psyche is blazing a trail as the first mission to a metal asteroid, and it’s also about to blaze a literal blue trail. The source of its bright wake—the probe’s remarkable propulsive system—will switch on within the first 100 days of the mission.

A mechanism known as a Hall thruster will propel the Psyche through space. This thruster glows blue as it ionizes xenon, a noble gas also used in headlights and plasma televisions, to move the spacecraft forward. This is the first time this tech, which has only been available for NASA spaceflight since 2015, has been used to travel beyond the moon—but what makes it so special, and why is Psyche using it?

When planning a space mission, engineers are focused on efficiency. Carrying chemical fuel along for the massive interplanetary journey would be like trying to drive around the entire world while having to keep all the gasoline you need in the trunk, because there are no rest stops along the way—it’s just not feasible. To get to its destination, Psyche would need thousands and thousands of pounds of chemical propellant.

[Related: How tiny spacecraft could ‘sail’ to Mars surprisingly quickly]

To get around this problem, engineers turned to electric thrusters. These come in many flavors: “There are many different types of electric thrusters, almost as many as there are different makers of cars,” explained NASA’s Psyche chief engineer Dan Goebel in a blog post. But space travel uses two kinds in particular, known as ion thrusters and Hall thrusters. “They can probably be considered the Tesla versions of space propulsion,” Goebel wrote. Rather than burning fuel, electric thrusters rip off the electrons from the propellant’s atoms in a process known as ionization. Then they chuck those ions out at some 80,000 miles per hour. This generates a higher specific impulse—which Goebel says is “equivalent to miles per gallon in your car,” but for spacecraft—than chemical fuels, enabling a thruster-powered spacecraft to go farther on less propellant.

Ion thrusters use high electric voltages to make a plasma (the fourth state of matter) and spew ions into space. NASA’s Dawn mission used these to get to dwarf planet Ceres, but they’re not the fastest—according to NASA, it would take the spacecraft four days to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour. Definitely not race car material! 

[Related: Want to learn about something in space? Crash into it.]

Hall thrusters, on the other hand, use a magnetic field to swirl electrons in a circle, producing a beam of ions. They don’t get quite as good “mileage” as ion thrusters, but they pack a bigger punch. The Psyche team picked this system because it allowed them to make a smaller, and therefore more cost-efficient, spacecraft. 

For the thrusters to work, the spacecraft needs power—which it gets from the sun, via solar panels—and something to ionize. For Psyche, that’s xenon gas. “Xenon is the propellant of choice because it’s inert (it doesn’t react with the rest of the spacecraft) and is easy to ionize,” explained Goebel. It also gives the thrusters their remarkable blue shine. Psyche carries about 150 gallons of the stuff, and gets about 10 million miles per gallon. 

Now that the mission has launched, the team will spend the next 100 days checking out all the spacecraft’s systems to ensure they’re ready for the journey. At some point in this period, those glimmering blue thrusters will turn on.

If Psyche proves to be a success, Hall thrusters will be likely to make an appearance on future space missions. They offer “the right mix of cost savings, efficiency, and power, and could play an important role in supporting future science missions to Mars and beyond,” said Steven Scott, program manager for the Psyche mission at the company Maxar, which built the thrusters, in a press release. Thanks to these propulsive devices, Psyche should reach its destination in the asteroid belt in just 3.5 years—and we can’t wait to see what lies at the end of its electric blue trail.

The post NASA’s Psyche spacecraft will blaze an unusual blue trail across the solar system appeared first on Popular Science.

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We had a great time checking out the Oct. 14 solar eclipse, but the next one that’s visible here in the U.S. won’t be until April 2024. Lots of interesting things will be happening in the sky between then and now, and you’ll need a good telescope to check them out. Right now, Amazon has substantial discounts on Celestron x PopSci telescopes that were already a solid value. There are three different options currently available depending on your star-gazing needs. Then, when the next eclipse rolls around, you can buy a dedicated solar eclipse filter and get a better look than all those jealous people with their (still pretty cool) pinhole cameras.

Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 5” Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope $498 (was $599)

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This is the biggest and most powerful scope in the Celestron x PopSci lineup, and it’s just over $100 off right now. Its five-inch aperture and high-end coatings provide a clear, low-aberration image of the night sky. More importantly, it’s compatible with the Celestron app, which can help you find cool things going on in the sky above you and then help you locate them with your scope so you don’t have to go blindly hunting around the heavens. That’s especially important with a scope this powerful.

Popular Science StarSense Explorer DX 100AZ Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope $269 (was $349)

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This 100mm refractor provides a very solid field of view for astrophotography. It’s light and easy to move around, and it’s compatible again with Celestron’s app to guide you around the night sky. Plus, the integrated hood helps combat errant light from hitting the front element of the scope and causing image-ruining glare.

Popular Science AstroMaster 80mm – Portable Refractor Telescope $151 (was $239)

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This model is meant specifically for beginners, and the price makes it very appealing with this discount. The short tub provides a relatively loose view of celestial objects, so beginners won’t get frustrated trying to find specific areas. Plus, the short tube design keeps it small and light, so this is a great scope to keep as a backup for quick jaunts out into dark sky country without lots of gear.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Popular Science has teamed up with Celestron on a line of products. We do earn a commission on its sales—all of which helps power Popular Science.

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Best overall		Sega Toys Homestar Flux		SEE IT	Get a scientifically accurate recreation of the night sky at home.
Best for adults		BlissLights Sky Lite 2.0		SEE IT	Skip the kid stuff without breaking the bank.
Best budget		Infmetry Star Projector		SEE IT	This star light is designed ofor gaming rooms, home theaters,

Beyond a few bright celestial objects, the rise of light pollution has made it difficult for most people to experience a genuinely starry night sky—and that’s where star projectors come in. If artificial lights have obscured your view of the Milky Way, these compact devices provide a fun and comfortable way to observe the cosmos. All you need is a dark room with a power outlet and you’re ready to bask in the wonders of the universe. Many also function as night lights or pattern projectors that can spruce up a room without the celestial theme. While nothing can replace the awe-inspiring feeling of seeing millions of stars in person, the best star projectors can still leave you transfixed.

• Best scientifically accurate: Sega Toys Homestar Flux
• Best portable: NEWSEE Northern Lights Star Projector
• Best for adults: BlissLights Sky Lite
• Best for kids: Gdnzduts Galaxy Projector
• Best budget: Infmetry Star Projector

How we chose the best star projectors

I’ve been fortunate to visit areas less affected by light pollution, so I know what it’s like to gaze upon the grandeur of our galaxy. As an editor at TechnoBuffalo, I visited NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., to learn about the Mars rover. I also took a guided tour of the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, where I saw enormous satellites used to communicate with faraway spacecraft. Over the last 10 years, I’ve written about gadgets and space for outlets like CNN Underscored, TechnoBuffalo, and Popular Science, and this guide, in a way, allows me to write about both. If you’re searching for a projector for movie night, you’re in the wrong place (though we do have a guide for the best projectors for indoors and outdoors). But if you enjoy the stars of the sky as much as you do the stars of the screen, read on.

The best star projectors: Reviews & Recommendations

Whether you’re looking to liven up your space with colorful lights or follow in the footsteps of Carl Sagan, a star projector is a novel way to explore the cosmos. When making our picks, we found a balance between fantastical projectors, options for kids and adults, and a more scientifically accurate model that’s great for those who love astronomy.

Best overall: Sega Toys Homestar Flux

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Why it made the cut: Sega’s Homestar Flux features the most scientifically accurate images out of all the star projectors we picked.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 6.3 x 6.3 x 5.9 inches (LWH)
• Weight: 1.36 pounds
• Power: USB

Pros 

• Supports multiple discs
• Projects up to 60,000 stars at once
• Great educational tool

Cons 

• Expensive

Sega’s Homestar Flux is the closest thing to a planetarium if you’re a fan of astronomy and intend to use your star projector as an educational tool. It can project up to 60,000 stars at once and covers a circle with a 106-inch diameter. Unlike the other star projectors on this list, Sega’s model supports interchangeable discs, allowing owners to explore different parts of the universe in incredible detail. The Homestar Flux comes with two discs, the Northern Hemisphere and the Northern Hemisphere with constellation lines; it also supports additional discs that feature the Andromeda Galaxy, the southern hemisphere, and more. 

These discs contain data from different missions of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the United States Naval Observatory (USNO). While Sega’s projector is pricey, it features the most scientifically accurate experience and is a must-have for would-be astronomers.

Best portable: NEWSEE Northern Lights Star Projector

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Why it made the cut: NEWSEE’s Northern Lights Star Projector lets you take the magic of the stars with you everywhere.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 4.7 x 4.7 x 4.8 inches (LWH)
• Weight: 1.15 pounds
• Power: USB-C

Pros 

• Battery powered
• 360-degree projection
• White noise mode
• Bluetooth streaming

Cons 

• Don’t expect high-fidelity audio

NEWSEE’s Northern Lights Star Projector is the only model we’re recommending that can be taken anywhere. The battery-powered projector can run for a couple of hours before needing to be recharged—though because it has a USB-C port, you can plug it into a portable charger to extend its life. The projector sits on a stand and can be rotated so that you can find the best angle for your room. This flexibility comes in handy because you may be using the projector in multiple rooms because of its portability.

You can program NEWSEE’s projector to display one of four different star patterns, and play five different white noises. This star projector can even be used as a Bluetooth speaker for playing any music from your digital library. However, you shouldn’t get your hopes up where audio fidelity is concerned—consider this a fun bonus feature. If you want to take a star projector to a friend’s place or on vacation, this is the one to grab.

Best for adults: BlissLights Sky Lite

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Why it made the cut: The Sky Lite from BlissLights will help you set the mood with the right lighting.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 5.95 x 2.91 x 5.95 (LWH)
• Weight: 1.68
• Power: AC adapter

Pros 

• Adjustable brightness
• Tilting base
• App controlled

Cons 

• Projector design is easy to tip over

The Sky Lite from BlissLights is an excellent option for adults because it offers brightness controls, and several lighting effects, making it easy to set the proper mood. While star projectors generally become the center of attention in whatever room they’re in, the Sky Lite is excellent as complementary lighting, casting colorful auroras during dinner, movie nights, and parties. Additionally, the Sky lite 2.0 supports a rotation feature and a shutoff timer so that you can have your magical night under the stars before nodding off to bed. 

Best for kids: Gdnzduts Galaxy Projector

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Why it made the cut: This galaxy projector features brightness controls and a shutoff timer, plus it doubles as a colorful night light.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 6.45 x 6.45 x 4.92 (LWH)
• Weight: 0.61 pounds
• Power: USB

Pros 

• Built-in speaker
• Shutoff timer
• Brightness controls

Cons 

• Doesn’t show constellations

This simple galaxy projector features 21 lighting effects, a shutoff timer, brightness controls, and doubles as a night light. That way, you can find the right effect you like, adjust the brightness, and set a timer before bed. You can also toggle the lasers on and off, turning off the stars and letting the nebula-like effect lull you to sleep. The Galaxy Projector also comes with a remote, making it easy for kids to operate. Whether you want to inspire your kid’s imagination or keep them feeling safe with a night light, the Galaxy Projector is an excellent choice.

Best budget: Infmetry Star Projector

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Why it made the cut: Infmetry’s Star Projector offers an array of features at an affordable price.

Specs 

• Dimensions: 7.1 x 7.1 x 7.5 inches (LWH)
• Weight: 1.37 pounds
• Power: USB

Pros 

• Affordable
• Five brightness modes
• Shutoff timer

Cons

• No nebula or aurora features

Infantry’s Star Projector casts 360 degrees of light through a precut dome, creating a night sky-like effect. This model also supports five brightness modes, a breathing mode, and four colors (white, yellow, blue, and green). There’s also a shutoff timer, so you can fall asleep with the projector on and wake up with it off. It’s not nearly as captivating as the other options on this list, but for the price, it’s a fun way to introduce someone to the wonders of the universe.

What to consider when buying the best star projectors

Generally, cheap star projectors are novelties that emit a mix of colorful swirling LED lights and class 2 lasers, which are low-power visible lasers—the same type used in laser pointers. While most models aren’t scientifically accurate, they provide a fanciful escape and can offer a calming experience. However, if you’re serious about astronomy and willing to spend more, you can find a star projector that can turn your room into a personal planetarium.

Most models we researched offer features like brightness and color controls, image rotation, and an automatic shut-off timer. We found picking the right star projector is more about finding the experience that matches your mood. Are you looking for the cosmic color of nebulae? What about scientifically accurate constellations? Whatever you’re after, there’s a star projector for everyone.

Projection type

You’d think that a star projector only projects, well, stars. But many of them can cover the broad cosmic spectrum and mimic everything from nebulae to auroras to constellations. As we mentioned, picking the right one is about capturing your interest and imagination. A projector that can cast a nebula or aurora is an excellent choice if you want to create a calming environment before going to sleep. A star projector with more scientifically accurate images is ideal for studying and educational use.

Brightness control

A good star projector uses an LED bulb and offers multiple brightness settings. While star projectors are most effective in a dark room, the models that project nebula and aurora make for great complementary lighting, such as during a party or movie night. They also make for good night lights and can help create a calming environment that encourages rest.

Color settings

In addition to adjusting brightness, most star projectors offer different color settings, similar to smart light bulbs. Users can create a scene that fits their mood through advanced color settings and change it with the press of a button. A green aurora may be suitable for calm and tranquility, while yellow may be ideal for happiness and optimism. Most star projectors allow color adjustments through a controller or smartphone app and support millions of color options.

Still vs. rotating

Star projectors generally offer different viewing modes: still and rotating. A projector that operates in still mode will cast light onto a surface and remain static. A projector with a rotating feature will put on a more dynamic light show by slowly rotating the lights. Many of the models we looked at are capable of switching between still and rotating modes.

Extra features

Beyond simply projecting lights onto a wall, some star projectors include extra features like white noise, app support, and shutoff timers. Some models can even be synced with your music so that you can put on a cosmic light show. While these features aren’t necessary, they make specific models more appealing, especially if you intend to use a star projector in a child’s room, because it can act as a night light and white noise machine and then shut off after a few hours.

FAQs

Final thoughts on the best star projectors

• Best scientifically accurate: Sega Toys Homestar Flux
• Best portable: NEWSEE Northern Lights Star Projector
• Best for adults: BlissLights Sky Lite
• Best for kids: Gdnzduts Galaxy Projector
• Best budget: Infmetry Star Projector

Star projectors are a fun and affordable way to add bright, colorful lights to your bedroom. That said, most are nothing more than novelties and put on light shows that vaguely resemble nebulae and auroras. If you’re searching for something with more scientifically accurate imagery, you can find some excellent options if you don’t mind spending more money. Better yet, we recommend traveling to a place unaffected by light pollution and experiencing the feeling of seeing millions of stars in person.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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On Saturday, October 14, you’ll be able to watch an annular “ring of fire” eclipse as the moon passes in front of the sun at a distance where it’s unable to cover all of Earth’s nearest star. But only an exclusive crowd will be able to witness the event in its fully blazing glory—unless you know where to look.

Although it may be too late to travel to one of the best locations to watch this year’s final solar eclipse, nearly everyone in all 50 US states will have a chance to catch at least a glimpse (sorry western Alaska and western Hawaii). The 125-mile-wide path of annularity, however, will stretch from Oregon to Texas and cross just nine states before continuing on to Central and South America. You’ll only be able to see the sun form a fiery halo around the moon along that route. If you’re outside its range, you can simply load up one of several official livestreams to see what you’re missing.

How to watch the October 14, 2023 eclipse in person

The path of annularity will enter the US in Oregon at 12:13 p.m. Eastern Time (9:13 a.m. Pacific Time) and leave Texas at 1:30 p.m. ET (12:03 p.m. Central Time). The “ring of fire,” will pass over 29 national park sites and dozens of other pieces of public land. Worldwide, about 33 million people will be able to see it firsthand, while everyone else will have to settle for a less dramatic experience.

No matter where you are, make sure you’re wearing protective glasses to avoid damaging your eyes if you plan to look directly at the eclipse, or make a pinhole camera to project the event onto a sheet of paper. And of course, weather conditions may make it hard or impossible to see anything, so take note of the forecast.

If you want to know exactly what to expect where you are, astronomy website Time and Date has an interactive map that will help you set your eclipse-viewing plans. Once you’ve opened the map, click the magnifying glass icon on the left to open the search menu. Type the name of any city or town into the search bar and select it from the list that populates underneath. A pin will appear on the map and a box full of eclipse data will show up under the search bar.

That data will show you how much of the moon will cover the sun at that location, when the eclipse will begin and end there, when maximum coverage will occur, and the weather forecast for that spot on the globe. If you click the play icon next to the duration, you’ll go to another page where you can watch a simulation of what the eclipse will look like at that exact spot.

How to watch the annular “ring of fire” eclipse online

Just because you aren’t part of the 0.41 percent of people in the world who will be able to physically bear witness to the celestial spectacle doesn’t mean you’re stuck with whatever’s happening in the sky above you. All you have to do is turn your eyes away from the wonders of the natural world and look at a screen—there are four livestreams we think will offer an exquisite show.

The Exploratorium’s livestreams

The San Francisco-based Exploratorium will be broadcasting two livestreams starting at 8 a.m. PT (11 a.m. ET), one from their telescopes in Valley of the Gods, Utah, and another from their telescopes in Ely, Nevada. They will also broadcast Spanish-language coverage of the event starting at 9 a.m. PT (12 p.m. ET) on YouTube.

According to Time and Date, annularity—the “ring of fire”— will last 4 minutes and 46 seconds at the Valley of the Gods. There are morning clouds in the forecast, though, so the view might be obscured, but this has the potential to be the most scenic livestream on our list. 

• Eclipse start: 9:10 a.m. Mountain Time (11:10 a.m. ET)
• “Ring of fire” start: 10:29 a.m. MT (12:29 p.m. ET)

In Ely, meanwhile, annularity will last for 3 minutes and 38 seconds. The weather is expected to be partly cloudy, so the eclipse could be hard to see.

• Eclipse start: 8:07 a.m. PT (11:07 a.m. ET)
• “Ring of fire” start: 9:24 a.m. PT (12:24 p.m. ET)

Time and Date’s livestream

Time and Date’s eclipse chasers will be broadcasting a livestream from Roswell, New Mexico. There, according to the website’s own interactive map, the annularity will last for 4 minutes and 41 seconds. It’s expected to be sunny there, so the view should be clear.

• Eclipse start: 9:15 a.m. MT (11:15 a.m. ET)
• “Ring of fire” start: 10:38 a.m. MT (12:38 p.m. ET)

NASA’s livestreams

NASA, of course, will also be livestreaming the eclipse, with feeds from Kerrville, Texas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, starting at 11:30 a.m. ET. Annularity will last 4 minutes and 14 seconds at Kerrville, according to Time and Date.

• Eclipse start: 10:22 a.m. CT (11:22 a.m. ET)
• “Ring of fire” start: 11:50 a.m. CT (12:50 p.m. ET)

At Albuquerque, which is supposed to have sunny skies during the eclipse, annularity will last 4 minutes and 48 seconds.

• Eclipse start: 9:13 a.m. MT (11:13 a.m. ET)
• “Ring of fire” start: 10:34 a.m. MT (12:34 p.m. ET)

The space agency will also be broadcasting a live feed of three rocket launches that are part of its Atmospheric Perturbations around the Eclipse Path (APEP) mission to study how Earth’s ionosphere responds to a sudden drop in sunlight. You might want to cue that one up in a different browser window alongside the eclipse, or set up picture-in-picture on your device.

Whatever you do, just know that your scheduling calculations and technological machinations are probably way less complicated than all the math scientists do to predict the paths of future eclipses.

The post How to watch Saturday’s ‘ring of fire’ eclipse from wherever you are appeared first on Popular Science.

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The powdery material that NASA officials unveiled on Wednesday looked like asphalt or charcoal, but was easily worth more than its weight in diamonds. The fragments were from a world all their own—pieces of the asteroid Bennu, collected and returned to Earth for analysis by the OSIRIS-REx mission. The samples hold chemical clues to the formation of our solar system and the origin of life-supporting water on our planet.

The clay and minerals from the 4.5 billion-year-old rock had been preserved in space’s deep freeze since the dawn of the solar system. Last month, after a seven-year-long space mission, they parachuted to a desert in Utah, where they were whisked away by helicopter. 

And now those pristine materials sit in an airtight vessel in a clean room at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, where researchers like University of Arizona planetary scientist Dante Lauretta are getting their first chance to study the sample up close. 

“The electron microscopes were fired up and ready” by September 27, Lauretta said in a news conference. “And boy did we really nail it.” (Lauretta, the principal investigator, gave the mission its name, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer.) The preliminary investigation of a tiny fraction of the sample revealed it is rich in water, carbon, and organic compounds.

Carbon is essential for all living things on Earth, forming chemical bonds with hydrogen, oxygen, and other elements necessary to build proteins and enzymes. “We’re looking at the kinds of minerals that may have played essential roles in the origin of life on Earth,” Lauretta said. 

The Bennu sample contained about 4.7 percent carbon, as measured by the Carnegie Institution for Science, according to Daniel Glavin, the OSIRIS-REx sample analysis lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. This is “the highest abundance of carbon” the Carnegie team has measured in an extraterrestrial sample, Glavin said. “There were scientists on the team going ‘Wow, oh my God!’ And when a scientist says that ‘Wow;’ that’s a big deal.”

[Related: This speedy space rock is the fastest asteroid in our solar system]

The Bennu sample is also flush with organic compounds, too, which glowed like tiny stars within the dark sample when exposed to a black light. “We picked the right asteroid—and not only that, we brought back the right sample,” Glavin said. “This stuff is an astrobiologist’s dream.”

Asteroids like Bennu were most likely responsible for all of Earth’s wet features—the water in oceans, lakes, rivers, and rain probably arrived when space rocks landed on our young planet some 4 billion years ago. Bennu has water-bearing clay with a fibrous structure, which according to Lauretta, was the key material that ferried H₂O to Earth.

Under magnification, the clay has a sinuous shape. “We call this serpentine because they look like serpents or snakes inside the sample, and they have water locked inside their crystal structure,” he said. “That is how we think water got to the Earth.”

This is only the start. The OSIRIS-REx science team, as they catalog the sample, have months of more detailed work ahead. After six months, they will publish the catalog; scientists from around the world will be able to propose studies using the materials—though more than half the sample will be kept in reserve for research to take place years or even decades in the future. 

[Related: NASA’s mission to a weird metal asteroid will blast off … soon]

They have more than a half-pound of material to work with. OSIRIS-REx recovered an estimated 250 grams of Bennu material, more than four times the 60 grams the mission had targeted. And as the science team began dissembling the sample return capsule at Johnson Space Center, they discovered what NASA is calling bonus material: bits of Bennu adhering to the collector head and lid of the sealed canister that brought the bulk of the sample home. 

”The first thing we noticed was that there was black dust and particles all around the outer edge,” Lauretta said. “Already this is scientific treasure.”

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The 2018 winner of PopSci’s annual Best of What’s New continues to impress. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is still edging closer to the sun than any other spacecraft has ever achieved, and it’s setting new speed records in the process. According to a recent status update from the space agency, the Parker Solar Probe has broken its own record (again) for the fastest thing ever made by human hands—at an astounding clip of 394,736 mph.

The newest milestone comes thanks to a previous gravity-assist flyby from Venus, and occurred on September 27 at the midway point of the probe’s 17th “solar encounter” that lasted until October 3. As ScienceAlert also noted on October 9, the Parker Solar Probe’s speed would hypothetically allow an airplane to circumnavigate Earth about 15 times per hour, or skip between New York City and Los Angeles in barely 20 seconds. Not that any passengers could survive such a journey, but it remains impressive.

[Related: The fastest human-made object vaporizes space dust on contact.]

The latest pass-by also set its newest record for proximity, at just 4.51 million miles from the sun’s plasma “surface.” In order not to vaporize from temperatures as high as nearly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, the Parker Solar Probe is outfitted with a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite shield to protect its sensitive instruments. These tools are measuring and imaging the sun’s surface to further researchers’ understanding of solar winds’ origins and evolution, as well as helping to forecast environmental changes in space that could affect life back on Earth. Last month, for example, the probe raced through one of the most intense coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ever observed. In doing so, the craft helped prove a two-decade-old theory that CMEs interact with interplanetary dust, which will improve experts’ abilities in space weather forecasting.

Despite its punishing journey, NASA reports the Parker Solar Probe remains in good health with “all systems operating normally.” Despite its numerous records, the probe is far from finished with its mission; there are still seven more solar pass-bys scheduled through 2024. At that point (well within Mercury’s orbit), the Parker Solar Probe will finally succumb to the sun’s extreme effects and vaporize into the solar winds— “sort of a poetic ending,” as one mission researcher told PopSci in 2021.

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is showing off its imaging prowess again, this time with a stellar image of NGC 346. This is the brightest and biggest star-making region in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way called the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The SMC is about 21,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Tucana. 

[Related: JWST takes a jab at the mystery of the universe’s expansion rate.]

The image that looks like Edgar Allan Poe’s ominous raven in some angles was taken using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The blue wisps of light show emissions from molecules like silicates and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The red fragments highlight dust that is warmed by the largest and brightest stars in the center.

An arc at the center left might be a reflection of light from the star near the center of the arc, and similar curves appear to be associated with strats at the lower left and upper right. The bright patches and filaments denote areas with large numbers of protostars. While looking for the reddest stars, the research team found 1,001 pinpoint sources of light. Most of these are young stars still snuggled up in their dusty cocoons.

This SMC is more primeval than the Milky Way since it possesses fewer heavy elements. According to NASA, these elements are forged in stars through nuclear fusion and supernova explosions, compared to our own galaxy.

“Since cosmic dust is formed from heavy elements like silicon and oxygen, scientists expected the SMC to lack significant amounts of dust,” NASA wrote in a press release. “However the new MIRI image, as well as a previous image of NGC 346 from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera released in January, show ample dust within this region.”

Astronomers can combine JWST’s data in both the near-infrared and mid-infrared data to take a fuller census of the stars and protostars within this very dynamic region of space. This could help us better understand the galaxies that have existed billions of years ago, during an era known as Cosmic Noon. During Cosmic Noon, star formation was at its peak. Heavy element concentrations were lower, which we can see when we study the SMC.

[Related: The Whirlpool Galaxy’s buff, spiral arms grab JWST’s attention.]

This raven-like image is not the first JWST image that is picture perfect for spooky season. In September 2022, it released chilling new images of 30 Doradus aka the Tarantula Nebula. The nebula’s arachnid inspired nickname comes from its similar appearance to a burrowing tarantula’s silk-lined home. The Tarantula Nebula is about 161,000 light-years away from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, which is home to some of the hottest and biggest stars known to astronomers.

JWST has also imaged the “bones” of  IC 5332, a spiral galaxy over 29 million light years away from the Earth in the constellation Sculptor. The uniquely shaped galaxy has a diameter of roughly 66,000 light years, making it slightly larger than our Milky Way galaxy. The MIRI aboard the new telescope observes the furthest reaches of the universe and can see infrared light, so it’s able to peer through the galaxy’s clouds of dust and into the “skeleton” of stars and gas underneath its signature arms. MIRI basically was able to take an x-ray of a galaxy, revealing IC 5332’s bones and a world that looks different, yet somewhat the same.

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On October 10, the European Space Agency (ESA) published some interim data from its nearly a decade-long Gaia mission. The data includes half a million new and faint stars in a massive cluster, over 380 possible cosmic lenses, and the position of over 150,000 asteroids within the solar system. 

[Related: See the stars from the Milky Way mapped as a dazzling rainbow.]

Launched in December 2013, Gaia is an astronomical observatory spacecraft with a mission to generate an accurate stellar census, thus mapping our galaxy and beyond. A more detailed picture of Earth’s place in the universe could help us better understand the diverse objects that make up the known universe. 

500,000 new stars and cluster cores

In 2022, Gaia’s third data release (DR3) contained data on over 1.8 billion stars, which built a rather complete view of the Milky Way and beyond. Even with all that data, there were still gaps in the ESA’s mapping. Gaia still hadn’t fully explored areas of the sky that were particularly densely packed with stars, overlooking the stars that shine a little less brightly than their neighbors. 

A key example of this is in globular clusters. These are some of the oldest objects in the known universe and are especially valuable for looking back into our cosmic past. However, their bright cores can sometimes overwhelm telescopes trying to get a clear view. 

Gaia selected Omega Centauri to help fill in the gaps in the stellar map. Omega Centauri is the largest globular cluster that can be seen from Earth and is a good example of one of the galaxy’s more ‘typical’ clusters. Gaia enabled a special mode to truly map a wider patch of sky that is surrounding the cluster’s core whenever the cluster came into view.

“In Omega Centauri, we discovered over half a million new stars Gaia hadn’t seen before – from just one cluster!” study co-author and astrophysicist from the Leibniz-Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) Katja Weingrill said in a statement. “We didn’t expect to ever use it for science, which makes this result even more exciting.”

The data also allowed the team to detect new stars that are too close together to be properly measured.

“With the new data we can study the cluster’s structure, how the constituent stars are distributed, how they’re moving, and more, creating a complete large-scale map of Omega Centauri. It’s using Gaia to its full potential—we’ve deployed this amazing cosmic tool at maximum power,” study co-author and AIP astrophysicist Alexey Mints said in a statement. 

The half million new stars showed that Omega Centauri is one of the most crowded regions that Gaia has explored so far. 

Currently, Gaia is exploring eight more regions using these same techniques. The scoop from those exploration will be included in Gaia Data Release 4. It should help astronomers truly understand what is happening within these cosmic building blocks and more accurately confirm the age of our galaxy.

Spotting gravitational lenses 

Gravitational lensing happens when the image of a faraway object in space becomes warped by a disturbing mass, such as a galaxy or star, sitting between the observer and the object. The mass in the middle acts like a giant lens that can magnify the brightness of light and cast multiple images of the faraway source onto the sky. 

[Related: Gravitational Lens Splits Supernova’s Light 4 Different Ways.]

“Gaia is a real lens-seeker,” study co-author and Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux astrophysicist Christine Ducourant  said in a statement. “Thanks to Gaia, we’ve found that some of the objects we see aren’t simply stars, even though they look like them.”

Some of the objects here are not ordinary stars, but distant quasars. These quasars are extremely bright, high-energy galaxies powered by black holes. To date, Gaia has found 381 candidates for lensed quasars. This is a “goldmine” for cosmologists, says Ducourant , and the largest set of candidates ever detected at once. 

Detecting lensed quasars is challenging, since a lensed system’s constituent images can clump together on the sky in misleading ways.

“The great thing about Gaia is that it looks everywhere, so we can find lenses without needing to know where to look,” study co-author and Université Côte d’Azur astrophysicist Laurent Galluccio said in a statement. “With this data release, Gaia is the first mission to achieve an all-sky survey of gravitational lenses at high resolution.”

Asteroids and The Milky Way

One of the studies in this data release reveals more about 156,823 asteroids, pinpointing their positions over nearly double the previous timespan. In the fourth Gaia data release, the team plans to complete the set and include comets, planetary satellites, and double the number of asteroids.

[Related: Smashed asteroid surrounded by a ‘cloud’ of boulders.]

Another study maps the disc of the Milky Way by tracing the weak signals seen in starlight, faint imprints of the gas and dust that floats between the stars. The Gaia team stacked six million spectra to study these signals and the data will hopefully allow scientists to finally narrow down the source of these signals.

“This data release further demonstrates Gaia’s broad and fundamental value—even on topics it wasn’t initially designed to address,” study co-author and ESA Project Scientist Timo Prusti said in a statement. “Although its key focus is as a star surveyor, Gaia is exploring everything from the rocky bodies of the solar system to multiply imaged quasars lying billions of light-years away, far beyond the edges of the Milky Way. The mission is providing a truly unique insight into the Universe and the objects within it, and we’re really making the most of its broad, all-sky perspective on the skies around us.”

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On October 14, the Western Hemisphere will witness an annular solar eclipse. The moon will be too small and far away in our view to totally block out the sun’s disc. Instead, it will blot out its center, leaving a ring at the edges. The best locations to view that ring of fire in the sky will be along a path that cuts through Oregon, Texas, Central America, Colombia, and finally northern Brazil. You might decide to visit Albuquerque, New Mexico, where you’ll experience exactly 4 minutes and 48 seconds of an annular eclipse.

And if you’re seeking a true total eclipse, you only have to wait another six months. On April 8, 2024, at 2:10 p.m. Eastern (12:10 p.m. local time), Mazatlan, Mexico will become the first city in North America to see most of the sun vanish in shadow. The path of totality then arcs through Dallas and Indianapolis into Montréal, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland in Canada. We know all of these precise details—and more—thanks to our knowledge of where the moon and sun are situated in the sky at any given moment.

In fact, we can predict and map eclipses farther into the future, even centuries from now. Because they know the precise positions of the moon and the sun and how they shift over time, scientists can project the moon’s shadow onto Earth’s globe. And with cutting-edge computers, it’s possible to chart eclipse paths down to a range of a few feet.

A solar eclipse needs three things. It results when the moon blocks the sun’s light from our vantage point on Earth. So to predict an eclipse, you must know where and how the sun, moon, and Earth move in relation to each other. This isn’t quite as elementary as it may seem, because the solar system isn’t flat. The moon’s orbit slants about 5 degrees in relation to the sun’s path, which astronomers call the ecliptic. While our satellite passes between Earth and the sun around once a month—which we call a new moon—the two rarely seem to cross paths.

Solar eclipses can only occur when the moon is at one of the two points where the moon’s orbit crosses the ecliptic, known as a node. If the moon is new at this crossing, the result is a solar eclipse.

In centuries past, trying to predict eclipses meant predicting minute details of finicky orbits. But as astronomers learned more about how celestial objects moved, they began tabulating what they call ephemerides: predictions of where the moon, sun, and planets will be in the sky. Ephemerides are still the key to eclipse prediction.

[Related: Make a classic pinhole camera to watch the upcoming solar eclipse]

“All you need is the ephemeris data…you don’t have to actually track the orbit,” says C. Alex Young, a solar physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

With ephemeris data, astronomers can pinpoint dates and times when the moon and sun cross paths. Once you know that date, mapping an eclipse is relatively straightforward. Ephemerides let scientists project the moon’s shadow onto Earth’s sphere; with 19th-century mathematics, they can calculate the shape and latitude of two features of that shadow, the umbra and penumbra. Then, by knowing what time it is and where Earth is angled in its rotation, it’s possible to determine the longitudes. Putting these together produces an eclipse map.

In the past, astronomers printed the ephemerides in almanacs, long tomes filled with page after page of coordinate tables. Just as all of astronomy has advanced into an era of computers, so have ephemerides. Scientists today mathematically model the paths of the moon, sun, planets, other moons, asteroids, and much more.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) regularly publishes a new compendium of celestial locations every few years. The most recent edition, 2021’s DE440, accounts for details like the moon’s core and mantle sloshing around and slowing its rotation. “Generally speaking, we know where the moon is from the Earth to about a meter, maybe a couple of meters,” says Ryan Park, an engineer at JPL. “We typically know where the sun is to maybe a couple hundred meters, maybe 300 meters.”

[Related: How to look at the eclipse without damaging your eyes]

Ephemerides serve other purposes, especially when planning spaceflight missions. But it’s largely due to more sophisticated ephemeris data that we can now reliably predict the motions of the moon for the centuries ahead. In fact, you can find detailed maps of solar eclipses nearly a millennium in the future. (If you’re lucky enough to be in Seattle on April 23, 2563 or in Amsterdam on September 7, 2974, prepare for total eclipse day.)

But these maps, like most eclipse maps, show the path of totality or annularity as a smooth line crossing Earth’s surface. That isn’t an accurate representation. “This was designed for pencil and paper calculation, so it makes a lot of simplifying assumptions that are just a tiny bit wrong,” says Ernie Wright, who makes eclipse maps for NASA Goddard, “for instance that the moon is a perfectly smooth sphere.”

Both the moon and Earth are jagged at the edge. Earth’s terrain can block some views of the sun, and the moon has its own patchwork of mountains and valleys. In fact, sunbeams passing through lunar vales create the Baily’s beads and “diamond ring” often seen at an eclipse’s edge. “We now have detailed terrain information of these mountains from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter,” Young says.

Wright has helped devise a new way of mapmaking that swaps the Victorian-age mathematics out for modern computer graphics. His method turns Earth’s surface into a map of pixels, each one with different latitude, longitude, and elevation, with the sun and moon in the sky above. Then, the method calculates which pixels see which parts of the moon block which parts of the sun. 

“You then make a whole sequence of maps at, say, one-second intervals for the duration of the eclipse,” Wright says. “You end up with a frame sequence that you can put together to make a movie of the shadow.” This new technique—only possible with modern computers and ultraprecise ephemerides—may allow us to make eclipse maps that clearly show whether you can see an eclipse from, say, your house. 

“I think that’s going to provide a whole new set of maps in the future that are going to be much more accurate,” says Young. “It’s going to be pretty exciting.”

The post We can predict solar eclipses to the second. Here’s how. appeared first on Popular Science.

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NASA’s Artemis III astronauts are apparently going to look incredibly fashionable walking the lunar surface. On October 4, the commercial aerospace company Axiom Space announced a new collaboration with luxury fashion house Prada to design spacesuits for the upcoming moon mission currently scheduled for 2025.

According to Wednesday’s reveal, Prada’s engineers will assist Axiom’s systems team in finalizing its Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit while “developing solutions for materials and design features to protect against the unique challenge of space and the lunar environment.” Axiom CEO Michael Suffredini cited Prada’s expertise in manufacturing techniques, innovative design, and raw materials will ensure “not only the comfort of astronauts on the lunar surface, but also the much-needed human factors considerations absent from legacy spacesuits.”

[Related: Meet the first 4 astronauts of the ‘Artemis Generation’.]

NASA first unveiled an early prototype of the AxEMU spacesuit back in March, and drew particular attention to the fit accommodating “at least 90 percent of the US male and female population.” Given the Artemis mission has long promised to land the first woman on the lunar surface, such considerations are vital for astronauts’ safety and comfort.

In Wednesday’s announcement, Lorenzo Bertelli, Prada’s Group Marketing Director, cited the company’s decades of technological design and engineering experience. Although most well known for luxury fashion, Prada is also behind the cutting-edge Luna Rossa racing yacht fleet.

“We are honored to be a part of this historic mission with Axiom Space,” they said. “It is a true celebration of the power of human creativity and innovation to advance civilization.”

Despite Prada’s association with high fashion, the final AxEMU design will undoubtedly emphasize safety and function over runway appeal. After all, astronauts will need protection against both solar radiation and the near-vacuum of the lunar surface, as well as ample oxygen resources and space for HD cameras meant to transmit live feeds back to Earth. According to the BBC earlier this year, each suit will also incorporate both 3D-printing and laser cutters to ensure precise measurements tailored to each astronaut.

Although NASA’s first images of the AxEMU in March showcased a largely black-and-gray color palette with blue and orange accents, Axiom Space’s newest teases hint at an off-white cover layer more reminiscent of the classic Apollo moon mission suits. It might not be much now, but you can expect more detailed looks at the spacesuits in the coming months as the Artemis Program continues its journey back to the moon.

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It’s a well-known fact that staring at the sun is… not the best idea. In the same way that the sun can burn your skin, our home star can overwhelm your peepers with UV rays and literally scorch your retina.

That is a huge bummer, especially because watching a solar eclipse (when the moon covers the sun) is an incredibly cool experience. Thankfully, there are several ways to watch an eclipse without risking your vision, and one of them is building a pinhole camera out of a box, a piece of aluminum foil, and lots of tape. This is an easy and incredibly versatile project, and you can turn it into a permanent camera obscura when you’re done watching the eclipse. 

How to make a pinhole camera

1. Light-proof your box. Leaving one side open, use duct tape or electrical tape to seal the box and prevent any light rays from sneaking in. Pay special attention to the corners and wherever two pieces of cardboard meet. The pinhole will only allow a few rays of light into your box, so the projection of the sun will be dim. That means the darker your camera, the easier it will be to see the image.

As we said, this project is versatile. You can use a wide range of box sizes to make your pinhole camera, but cereal and shoe boxes work exceptionally well. We used the 15-by7 ½-by-5 ½-inch box that carried our neighbor’s latest online shopping spurt. 

Likewise, duct tape and electrical tape are the best choices to light-proof your box, but you can use any tape that will block light—dark washi tape or masking tape will also do the trick. Just keep in mind that you may have to apply multiple layers to achieve total darkness inside your box. 

[Related: A ‘ring of fire’ eclipse and Hunter’s Moon will bring lunar drama to October’s skies]

• Pro tip: Check your work by holding your box up to a light and looking inside. If you still see some shine coming through, apply another layer of tape. 

2. Determine your pinhole’s location and cover the inside of the opposite face with white paper. Measure one of the smallest sides of the box, cut a piece of white paper to the same size, and tape or glue it to the inside of the corresponding face. It doesn’t have to be perfect—as long as most of the side is covered, you’ll be good to go. Just make sure that the paper doesn’t have any wrinkles or folds, as they may distort the image of the sun. 

3. Measure the openings for the pinhole and the viewer. On the side opposite the one you covered with white paper, use your ruler and a pencil to measure two openings. The pinhole opening will be located in the upper left corner (about half an inch from the edges) and will be 2-by-2 inches (we’ll make it smaller later). 

The viewing opening will be located in the upper right corner of the box, half an inch from the top edge and an inch from the right edge of the box. This opening will be smaller—only 1 inch square.

4. Cut the openings. Using a box cutter or scissors, cut out the openings you drew. 

• Pro tip: If the openings end up being too big, don’t sweat it—you can always adjust their size with tape. 

5. Close and seal the box. Use your newly cut openings to make sure there are no other places where light might be sneaking in. Pay special attention to the corners of the box above and below your openings. Cover all the places where pieces of cardboard meet with tape. 

6. Cover the larger opening with aluminum foil. Cut a smooth 2 ½-by-2 ½-inch piece of aluminum foil. With the dull side facing you, carefully cover the big opening with the metallic sheet and tape it in place. Make sure you secure it tightly so no light can get into the box.  

• Pro tip: To smooth out any creases, softly rub the top of any fingernail over the foil in a small, circular motion. 

7.  Use the thumbtack to poke a hole in the foil. Find the rough center of the 2-by-2-inch square under the aluminum sheet and gently push the tack through before pulling it back out—you want a clean, round hole. If you don’t have a thumbtack, you can use the tip of a toothpick or an embroidery needle. Just make sure that whatever you’re using has a point (it’ll make a neater hole) and that it’s approximately 0.2 millimeters wide. 

• Note: The width of your pinhole will determine how much light gets into the box. Too much light and the image will be blurry. If that’s the case, don’t worry—just replace the foil and try making a smaller pinhole. 

8. Put your pinhole camera to the test. Stand with your back facing the sun and look into the box through the viewport. Use your hands to block out as much light as possible and move around until you find the angle where sunlight enters through the pinhole. When this happens, you should see a small projection of the shape of the sun on the white paper you pasted inside the box. 

[Related: Total eclipses aren’t that rare—and you’ve probably missed a bunch of them]

Keep in mind that the weather is crucial in determining the quality of the image you’ll see inside your pinhole camera, and whether you can see the eclipse at all. The October 14 eclipse, in particular, will be annular, so the moon will be smaller than the sun and clouds, rain, or other inclement weather will make it hard to see the event, explains Franck Marchis, a SETI Institute astronomer and the chief scientific officer of Unistellar, a company that manufactures smart telescopes.

How a pinhole camera works

Images are light. Everything we see we perceive because there’s light bouncing off of it, beaming directly through our pupils and into our eyes. All cameras, including the humble pinhole camera you just made, operate under this basic principle. The better they filter the light, the sharper the resulting image will be. 

The sun, of course, is the ultimate light source. On a sunny day, rays from the star travel to Earth and bounce off of every surface they reach. This is a lot of light coming from all directions, so if we want to see only a small portion of the sun’s rays, we have to focus those rays and filter out the rest. That’s why the pinhole in your camera is so tiny or, in more technical terms, why its aperture is so narrow—it only lets a small amount of light into the box, just enough so you can see only a dim projection of the sun when you point the pinhole directly at it. 

The dimness of the image is not ideal, but it’s the tradeoff we make for sharpness—too much light results in a blurry, out-of-focus picture. This is important during a solar eclipse, as filtering the light will allow you to see the round shape of the sun become a crescent or a ring as the moon moves in and gradually blocks the sunlight. 

When the eclipse is over, use a skewer to widen your camera’s pinhole. When you look inside, you won’t only be able to see the sun, but a slightly brighter and inverted image of your surroundings. A bigger pinhole turns your box into a camera obscura, allowing more light in and projecting an image of the objects around you.  

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About 364 miles above Earth, the crew of the Inspiration 4 private mission in 2021 drew each other’s blood and administered ultrasound scans. Yet it’s not clear whether those experiments were subject to the same ethical rules that govern human studies on the ground. And it’s unlikely to be the last time humans in orbit are asked to study each other in this way. Jared Isaacman, the billionaire backer of Inspiration 4 plans to conduct more experiments on his Polaris Dawn mission scheduled for sometime in 2024. 

It’s different when the research happens on Earth. If a US citizen chooses to participate in a clinical trial or other biomedical experiment, even those run privately, ethics rules govern the scientists, doctors, and institutions in charge of the study. A physician or a university cannot penalize a person for refusing to participate, for instance, and an ethics board must approve any trials before they start. 

Those ethical rules are part of the territory when receiving federal funding. “If the federal government gives you $1 anywhere in your organization, even having nothing to do with the research, then any human subjects research you do has to follow what’s called the ‘Common Rule,’” says Paul Wolpe, a bioethicist at Emory University and the former chief of bioethics at NASA. 

The 1991 Common Rule, or more formally the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, is codified in multiple federal agencies, including the Health and Human Services Department. Its reach even extends beyond the bounds of Earth to NASA’s research, managing how the agency must treat astronauts on the International Space Station. 

But civilians have begun flying to orbit in the spacecraft of private companies. And those that don’t take federal money are not formally subject to the Common Rule. So what if SpaceX or Axiom Space, say, makes it a condition that anyone flying on private space missions must take a pharmaceutical drug at the behest of a partner company to gauge how it is metabolized in microgravity? 

[Related: Private space missions will bring more countries to the ISS]

That was the topic of a new paper published in Science by Wolpe and his colleagues. They argue that the time to begin asking questions about the ethics of human experimentation on private spacecraft is right now, before it becomes ubiquitous.

”Commercial spaceflight is revving up right now. The temptation to do human subjects experimentation is already starting,” Wolpe says, urging for a quick consensus. “It’s not like we’re saying, ‘10, 15 years from now, we may do this. We’re saying, ‘Next week we may do this.’” 

The paper’s authors argue it’s possible to extend the ethical frameworks already used to govern human scientific research on the ground—and in space for NASA astronauts—by following four principles: social responsibility, scientific excellence, proportionality, and global stewardship. 

Social responsibility recognizes that the past public investments that make spaceflight possible mean that this research should be treated “like a community resource.” It also points out that experimentation in the early years of commercial spaceflight “will be critical for ensuring the safety of future missions,” the authors write.  

Scientific excellence means thinking about how poorly designed or conducted experiments return low quality results, and “bad science is also bad for business,” the authors write. 

Proportionality refers to the importance of ensuring human research in space, like that on Earth, maximizes benefits while reducing the potential for harm as much as possible. And, guided by global stewardship, the fruits of these studies should benefit everyone, the authors argue: “Spaceflight research should therefore engage, and be conducted by, individuals and communities representative of humankind’s diversity.”

Wolpe hopes the principles can serve as a starting point for commercial space companies to think about and implement ethical guidelines, just as private companies do for human research on Earth. This paper doesn’t propose any concrete rules just yet. But coming up with a standard set of them for human experimentation in commercial spaceflight would be in corporations’ interest, too, Wolpe notes. “If everybody agrees on the rules, and we all operate under these rules, then we know what the floor and the ceiling is,” he says. Ideally, these would protect participants—and safeguard companies from lawsuits, if someone is harmed on a mission.

[Related: Space tourism is on the rise. Can NASA keep up with it?]

But before a new ethical framework takes root in the commercial spaceflight industry, more conversations need to happen to characterize research and its participants, according to Sara Langston, a space lawyer and professor of spaceflight operations at the Daytona Beach Florida campus of the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. As to whether there is a gap in existing rules and regulations around human experiments in commercial spaceflight that needs to be filled, she adds, “we need to actually define the question more specifically in order to answer it.”

You can, for instance, make a distinction between passive and active research or experimentation, according to Langston. Active experimentation are activities such as drawing blood or consuming drugs. Passive experimentation could include passengers sharing their subjective experiences of the flight, more akin to a survey. ”I don’t know that passive research in itself needs any kind of regulatory or even ethical framework, because passive research has been done all the time for marketing purposes, such as surveys,” Langston says. 

And it will also be important to distinguish private astronauts—flight participants who bought a ticket or were invited onto the mission—and commercial ones, who are the paid employees of a space company. “This is important because the roles, rights, duties, and liabilities are going to be distinct for each of those categories,” Langston says. 

Getting a head start in discussing these issues is the point, according to Wolpe. “These things are beginning to be built into the conversations around commercial spaceflight,” he says. “They weren’t so much before.”

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It took eight years and the collaborative efforts of over 600 interdisciplinary undergraduate students, but Estonia’s second satellite is finally on track to launch later this week. Once in orbit thanks to a lift aboard one of the European Space Agency’s Vega VV23 rockets, the tiny  8.5 lb ESTCube-2 will test an elegant method to potentially help clear the skies’ increasingly worrisome space junk issue using a novel “plasma brake.”

Designed by Finnish Meteorological Institute physicist Pekka Janhunen, the electric sail (E-sail) technology harnesses the physics underlying Earth’s ionosphere—the atmosphere’s electrically charged outer layer. Once in orbit, Estonia’s ESTCube-2 will deploy a nearly 165-foot-long tether composed of hair-thin aluminum wires that, once charged via solar power, will repel the almost motionless plasma within the ionosphere.

[Related: The FCC just dished out their first space junk fine.]

“​​Historically, tethers have been prone to snap in space due to micrometeorites or other hazards,” Janhunen explained in an October 3 statement ahead of the mission launch. “So ESTCube-2’s net-like microtether design brings added redundancy with two parallel and two zig-zagging bonded wires.”

If successful, the drag should slow down the tiny cubesat enough to shorten its orbital decay time to just a two-year lifespan. Not only that, but it would do so without any physical propellant source, thus offering a lightweight, low-cost alternative to existing satellite decommissioning options.

“It is exciting to see if the plasma break is going to work as planned… and if the tether itself is as robust as it needs to be,” Carolin Frueh, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University, tells PopSci via email. “The longer a dead or decommissioned satellite is out there, the higher the risk that it runs into other objects, which leads to fragmentation and the creation of even more debris objects.”

According to Frueh, although drag sails have been explored to help with Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites’ end-of-life maneuvers in the past, “the plasma brake technology has the potential to be more robust and more easily deployable at the end of life compared to a classical large solar sail.”

After just seven decades’ worth of space travel, junk is already a huge issue for ongoing private- and government-funded missions. Literally millions of tiny trash pieces now orbit the Earth as fast as 17,500 mph, each one a potential mission-ender. Such debris could also prove fatal to unfortunate astronauts in their path. 

Although multiple international efforts are underway to help mitigate the amount of space junk, even the process of planning such operations can be difficult. Earlier this year, for example, an ESA space debris cleanup pilot project grew more complicated after its orbital trash target reportedly unexpectedly collided with other debris. On October 2, the Federal Communications Commission issued its first-ever orbital littering fine after satellite television provider Dish Network failed to properly deorbit a decommissioned, direct broadcast EchoStar-7 satellite last year.

“As satellite operations become more prevalent and the space economy accelerates, we must be certain that operators comply with their commitments,” Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan A. Egal said at the time.

Estonia’s second-ever satellite is scheduled to launch on October 7 from the ESA’s spaceport in French Guiana.

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This month, millions of Americans will have a chance to watch an annular eclipse, also known as a “ring of fire” for the scorching halo the sun forms around the moon. If you’re one of them, be careful: looking directly at a solar eclipse without eye protection can permanently damage your vision.

It doesn’t matter if our rocky satellite is blocking all or some of our nearest star—the sun is still an incredibly bright source of light. Don’t risk your eyesight for a quick glimpse or even a once-in-a-lifetime event. Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to protect your eyes while watching an eclipse..

What happens if you look at a solar eclipse

We are able to see thanks to photoreceptors. These cells, also known as rods and cones, are located at the backs of our eyes, and convert the light reflected by the world around us into electrical impulses that our brain interprets as the image we see. But when strong light, like that from the sun, hits our eyes, a series of chemical reactions occur that damage and often destroy these rods and cones. This is known as solar retinopathy, and can make our eyesight blurry. Sometimes, if the damage is too great in one area, you can lose sight completely.

[Related: Every sunset ends with a green flash. Why is it so hard to see?]

On a typical sunny day, you almost never have to worry about solar retinopathy. That’s because our eyes have natural mechanisms that ensure too much light doesn’t get in. When it’s really bright outside, our pupils get super tiny, reducing the amount of sunlight that can hit your photoreceptors. But when you stare directly at the sun, your pupils’ shrinking power isn’t enough to protect your peepers.

This is where your eyes’ second defense mechanism comes into play. When we look at something bright, we tend to blink. This is known as the corneal or blink reflex, and it  prevents us from staring at anything too damagingly bright. 

Just before a solar eclipse has reached its totality, the moon is partially blocking the sun, making it a lot easier for us to look up at the star without blinking. But that doesn’t mean you should—even that tiny sliver of sunlight is too intense for our sensitive photoreceptors.

[Related: Total eclipses aren’t that rare—and you’ve probably missed a bunch of them]

Unfortunately, if you practice unprotected sun-gazing, you probably won’t know the effects of your actions until the next morning, when the damage to your photoreceptors has kicked in.

And while solar retinopathy is extremely rare, it is by no means unheard of. If you search the term in medical journals, you’ll find case reports after almost every popular solar eclipse. Let’s try really hard to do better this time, eyeball-havers.

How to safely watch a solar eclipse

Watching the eclipse with your own two eyes is easy: just wear legitimate eclipse sunglasses. These are crucial, as they will block the sun’s rays enough for you to safely see the eclipse without burning your eyes out.

And if you don’t have eclipse glasses, you can still enjoy the view, albeit not directly. Try whipping up your own eclipse projector or a DIY pinhole camera so you can enjoy the view without having to book an emergency visit to the eye doctor.

This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2017.

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The 2023 Nobel prize in chemistry was jointly awarded to Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus, and Alexei Ekimov for the discovery and developments of quantum dots. These nanoparticles are so small that their size determines their properties. Quantum dots can be found in modern computers, televisions, and LED lights, among numerous other applications.

[Related: In photos: Journey to the center of a quantum computer.]

Bawendi is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brus is a professor emeritus at Columbia University, and Ekimov works for a company called Nanocrystals Technology in New York State.

“For a long time, nobody thought you could ever actually make such small particles,” Johan Åqvist, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said during a news conference. “But this year’s laureates succeeded.”

Size matters in the nanoscale

Quantum dots are among the smallest components of nanotechnology. Typically, an element’s properties are governed by how many electrons it has. When that matter shrinks down  to nano-dimensions quantum phenomena arise. This means the element’s properties are now governed by the size of the matter instead of the number of electrons it has. 

Quantum dots are made of only a thousand atoms. By comparison, one quantum dot is to a soccer ball as a soccer ball is to the planet Earth.

The quantum dots that Bawendi, Brus, and Ekimov produced are particles small enough for their properties to be determined by quantum phenomena. They are among the smallest, but most important particles, nanotechnology.

“Quantum dots have many fascinating and unusual properties. Importantly, they have different [colors] depending on their size,” Åqvist said in a statement. 

The movement of electrons in quantum dots is highly constrained. This then affects how they absorb and release visible light, allowing for very bright colors. The quantum dots themselves are nanoparticles that glow red, blue, or green and the color depends on the size of the particles. Larger dots shine red and smaller dots shine blue. The change in color depends on how electrons act differently in more confined or less confined spaces. 

Big discoveries, super small particles

In 1937, physicists theorized that size-dependent quantum effects could arise in nanoparticles. However, it was almost impossible to sculpt in nano dimensions, so few believed that it was possible.

During the early 1980s, Ekimov created size-dependent quantum effects in colored glass. The color of the glass came from the nanoparticles of copper chloride. With this colorful experiment, Ekimov demonstrated that the particle size affected the color of the glass via quantum effects.

[Related: Quantum computers are starting to become more useful.]

A few years later, Brus became the first scientist in the world to prove that size-dependent quantum effects in particles were floating freely in a fluid. Brus and Ekimov were actually working independently from one another when they made their initial discoveries. 

In 1993, Bawendi revolutionized the chemical production of quantum dots. His techniques resulted in almost perfect particles, which was necessary for using the quantum dots in a wide range of applications. 

Quantum dots can now be found in computer monitors and television screens and even help biochemists and surgeons map tissues and remove tumors. 

Last year’s chemistry prize was also awarded to a trio of chemists: Carolyn R. Bertozzi for her work in bioorthogonal chemistry alongside K. Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal for laying the foundation for click chemistry. 

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The Federal Communications Commission is officially doling out fines for space polluters, and the popular satellite television provider Dish Network earned the dubious honor of receiving the first ticket. On October 2, the FCC announced it slapped the telecommunications company with a $150,000 penalty after failing to properly deorbit its decommissioned, direct broadcast EchoStar-7 satellite last year. According to the FCC, the fine comes with an admission of liability, as well as an agreement to follow a “compliance plan” to help make way for the thousands of orbital projects in the works around the world.

[Related: FCC slaps voter suppression robocall scammers with a record-breaking fine.]

Space junk is already a huge concern for any industry requiring operations high above the planet, with literal millions of trash bits orbiting Earth at any given moment. In July, NASA director Bill Nelson told the BBC space junk poses a “major problem,” explaining that even something like a small paint chip striking an astronaut during a spacewalk at orbital speed (17,500 mph) “can be fatal.” Experts also worry about humans accidentally initiating a “Kessler cascade” or “Kessler syndrome.” In such situations, orbital space becomes so polluted that debris collisions are impossible to avoid, thus producing an exponentially increasing cycle of more collisions that create more debris. Were this to occur, the future of space exploration and travel could remain stymied until governments and companies begin complicated, costly cleanup efforts. 

Dish Network’s EchoStar-7 satellite launched and achieved geostationary orbit in 2002, and received FCC approval for an eventual orbital mitigation plan in 2012. According to the agreement, the telecoms company committed to eventually boost the satellite roughly 300 km above its operational arc. In February 2022, however, Dish Network revealed the satellite did not have enough remaining propellant to adhere to the original agreement’s altitude. In the end, the EchoStar-7 satellite only retired about 122 km above its geostationary arc—far lower than planned. Last year, the FCC also announced plans to finally begin tighter restrictions on satellites’ lifespans and decommissioning protocols.

[Related: Some space junk just got smacked by more space junk, complicating cleanup.]

“As satellite operations become more prevalent and the space economy accelerates, we must be certain that operators comply with their commitments,” Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan A. Egal said via Monday’s announcement. “This is a breakthrough settlement, making very clear the FCC has strong enforcement authority and capability to enforce its vitally important space debris rules.”

In August, a space debris cleanup pilot project overseen by the European Space Agency quickly turned into a logistical headache after its orbital trash target appeared to collide with another piece of debris. Luckily, the ESA and its partners at Swiss startup ClearSpace-1 stated at the time that their project appears able to progress as planned.

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The universe is expanding—but astronomers can’t agree how fast. And NASA’s superstar observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, just confirmed there’s a problem in our understanding of the stretching cosmos. JWST’s new measurements are the most precise of their kind, but they don’t clear up a baffling mismatch in the two methods scientists track this growth. 

In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that all the galaxies we can see are moving away from us. The relationship between the distance to a galaxy and how fast it’s moving is now known as Hubble’s law. This law uses the also-eponymous Hubble constant to describe the rate at which the universe is expanding. It also tells us the age of the universe: Astronomers can use the Hubble constant to “rewind” time to when the universe would be a single point in space—the big bang.

There are two main ways to measure this fundamental number. One is by tracing tiny fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background from the beginning of the universe. The other is to watch flickering stars known as Cepheids. But those two methods disagree. This baffling mismatch is known as the Hubble tension, and it’s unclear if it’s a problem with our models of the universe or our measurements.

If it’s our measurements, the error might result from the way we survey Cepheid stars. Astronomers consider these objects to be a type of “standard candle,” a thing in space whose intrinsic brightness is known. We can observe how bright one of these stars looks in the sky. If it’s faint, it’s farther away. Brighter is closer. 

Researchers use the luminosity of these stars like a yardstick to measure distance. Then, with methods such as spectroscopy, they can gauge the motion of far-off galaxies. Putting those observations together tells us how fast the universe is expanding.

[Related: NASA releases Hubble images of cotton candy-colored clouds in Orion Nebula]

“When we use Cepheids like this, we need to be very, very sure we’re measuring their brightnesses correctly, otherwise our distance measurements will be off. However, Cepheids can be in crowded parts of their galaxies and if our telescopes aren’t sensitive enough, we can’t clearly distinguish a Cepheid from the stars around it,” explains astronomer Tarini Konchady, a program officer at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 

Before JWST, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) took the best measurements of Cepheid stars. HST couldn’t distinguish individual Cepheids where they were bunched in crowded regions, but JWST can—and it just did. JWST peered into two distant galaxies, and made measurements of the Hubble constant 2.5 times better than HST could. 

“Webb’s measurements have dramatically cut the noise in the Cepheid measurements,” said project lead Adam Riess, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University in a NASA press release. “This kind of improvement is the stuff astronomers dream of!”

One of JWST’s major advantages is its ability to look at the cosmos in infrared light, which helps cut through dust between our telescopes and the Cepheids. “Sharp infrared vision is one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s superpowers,” Riess said.

[Related: How old is the universe? Our answer keeps getting more precise.]

However, the new measurements matched up with those from HST, just with smaller error bars—so we can’t confidently pin the mystery on those old numbers.

The new results from Riess and team are just the beginning, though, and they still have many more galaxies to observe with JWST. “I think the jury is still out on whether the JWST has completely eliminated crowding as a solution to the Hubble tension,” says University of Chicago astronomer Abigail Lee. “Analyzing the data for the rest of the 42 galaxies [that JWST plans to observe] will illuminate whether the Hubble tension is alive and real or if there are indeed just errors in the Cepheid measurements.”

The fate of the universe, or at least the Hubble tension, doesn’t just hinge on JWST. Many other facilities will come online in the next few years, providing more evidence for this investigation. The Vera Rubin Observatory, for example, is going to scan the whole Southern sky every few nights when it opens next year, and will likely discover many more Cepheid stars.

“We’re at a point where astronomers are going to be deluged by the most sensitive and wide-reaching data yet,” says Konchady. There might not be a clear answer yet, but astronomers are surely on the case to figure out this mystery.

This post has been updated to include additional details about astronomical methods for measuring the expansion rate.

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In space, the brightness of a galaxy is typically determined by its mass. However, some new research suggests that less massive galaxies can actually glow just as brightly as larger ones. Due to irregular and brilliant bursts of star formation, some  younger galaxies appear deceptively large. The new findings are detailed in a study published October 3 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[Related: Our universe mastered the art of making galaxies while it was still young.]

The first stellar images released by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2022 came with a bit of a quandary. To some astronomers, the young galaxies appeared to be too bright, too massive, and too mature to have formed so soon after the big bang, almost as if an infant grew into an adult after only a few years. 

“The discovery of these galaxies was a big surprise because they were substantially brighter than anticipated,” study co- author and Northwestern University astrophysicist Claude-André Faucher-Giguère said in a statement. “Typically, a galaxy is bright because it’s big. But because these galaxies formed at cosmic dawn, not enough time has passed since the big bang. How could these massive galaxies assemble so quickly? Our simulations show that galaxies have no problem forming this brightness by cosmic dawn.”

The period in cosmological history called Cosmic Dawn lasted from about 100 million years to 1 billion years after the big bang and is marked by the formation of the first stars and galaxies in the universe. 

“The JWST brought us a lot of knowledge about cosmic dawn,” study co-author and Northwestern University astrophysicist Guochao Sun said in a statement. “Prior to JWST, most of our knowledge about the early universe was speculation based on data from very few sources. With the huge increase in observing power, we can see physical details about the galaxies and use that solid observational evidence to study the physics to understand what’s happening.”

The team used advanced computer simulations to model how galaxies formed just after the big bang. Part of Northwestern’s Feedback of Relativistic Environments (FIRE) project, the simulations combine astrophysical theory and advanced algorithms to model how galaxies form. These models help researchers see how galaxies grow and change shape all while considering mass, energy, momentum, and chemical elements returned from stars. 

“The key is to reproduce a sufficient amount of light in a system within a short amount of time,” Sun said. “That can happen either because the system is really massive or because it has the ability to produce a lot of light quickly. In the latter case, a system doesn’t need to be that massive. If star formation happens in bursts, it will emit flashes of light. That is why we see several very bright galaxies.”

[Related: Your guide to the types of stars, from their dusty births to violent deaths.]

The simulations in the study created galaxies that were just as bright as the ones observed by JWST. They also found that the early galaxies formed at cosmic dawn likely had stars that formed in bursts. This is a concept called bursty star formation, where stars form in an alternating pattern. It begins with the formation of a bunch of stars at once, then millions of years with little to no stars, and then another burst of stars. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy followed a very different pattern of star formation at a steady rate.

According to Faucher-Giguère, bursty star formation is particularly common in low-mass galaxies. However, the details of why this happens are still the subject of other research. The team on this study believes that it happens when the initial bursts of stars explode as supernovae a few million years later. The gas is kicked out and then falls back inwards to form new stars and drives the cycle again. 

When the galaxies get massive enough, they have significantly stronger gravity. So when the  supernovae explode, they aren’t strong enough to eject gas from the star system and the gravity binds the galaxy together. The result is a more steady state.

“Most of the light in a galaxy comes from the most massive stars,” Faucher-Giguère said in a statement. “Because more massive stars burn at a higher speed, they are shorter lived. They rapidly use up their fuel in nuclear reactions. So, the brightness of a galaxy is more directly related to how many stars it has formed in the last few million years than the mass of the galaxy as a whole.”

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NASA’s Psyche mission to a unique, metallic asteroid of the same name launched from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A at 10:20 a.m. Eastern on October 13 via a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

It was, finally, a smooth exit from Earth for the probe. Psyche had been scheduled to blast off on October 5, the first day of a window that stretches through October 25. But NASA officials announced a delay on September 28, citing issues with the spacecraft’s maneuvering thrusters, which are used to point the vehicle where it needs to go. “The change allows the NASA team to complete verifications of the parameters used to control the Psyche spacecraft’s nitrogen cold gas thrusters,” NASA officials wrote in the announcement. 

That weeklong delay was small, though, compared to the mission’s earlier hold-ups. Psyche was first set to launch in October of 2022, but issues with the navigation software developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory forced the agency to delay the mission by a year. 

This mission should be well worth the wait. It could help uncover details about unusual asteroids and our planet. And the pioneering technology and operations it will demonstrate during its nearly six-year mission will influence the design of future spacecraft. 

Psyche to Psyche

The destination of Psyche (a spacecraft) is 16 Psyche (an asteroid)—an object about 140 miles in diameter in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It looks a bit like a cratered potato. 

Remote observations by astronomers have already determined 16 Psyche to be a highly metallic asteroid, rich in iron, and it is believed to be the exposed core of a small planet that never fully formed. Getting up close and personal with 16 Psyche could help scientists better understand Earth’s iron-rich core: It’s easier to send a spacecraft 280 million miles away to study an asteroid than to access Earth’s rocky center, 1,800 miles beneath our feet. Exploring the metallic object in space has implications for our planet’s geomagnetic field, which protects life from space radiation—that field is generated when our planet’s solid inner core spins within liquid metal surroundings. 

Thrusters and lasers

Psyche is one of NASA’s first spacecraft to use solar electric propulsion as its primary means of reaching an asteroid. Rather than relying on traditional chemical rockets, Psyche will use Hall effect thrusters, which use electrostatic fields to accelerate ions—charged particles—and expel them, generating thrust. (These are different machines from the nitrogen thrusters that caused the launch delay.) Such thrusters produce very low thrust—far less than a pound—but do so very efficiently, allowing Psyche to preserve its xenon gas propellant and build up speed over the vast distances it will cover. 

The electric thrusters will use solar power—though the sunlight it absorbs will shrink as Psyche approaches its destination. Still, it’s well prepared. While the spacecraft itself is the size of a large car, its twin solar panels are about the size of tennis courts. They’ll produce 21 kilowatts of energy near Earth and about two kilowatts when at asteroid Psyche. 

[Related on PopSci+: In its visit to Psyche, NASA hopes to glimpse the center of the Earth]

In addition to solar electric propulsion, Psyche will also test a new form of Earth-to-spacecraft transmission system called Deep Space Optical Communication. Deep Space Optical Communication encodes data in infrared lasers, rather than radio waves, and can potentially carry much more information to and from the Psyche spacecraft than can traditional methods. The laser communications are just a demonstration—Psyche will still stay in touch with Earth, and vice versa, using NASA’s radio-based Deep Space Network. 

Research on a metal world

When Psyche arrives at the asteroid 16 Psyche in 2029, it will set to work studying the iron asteroid’s magnetic properties. With the aid of an imager and two kinds of spectrometer, the probe will also use patterns of light absorption to determine what elements and compounds exist on this metal potato. 

But Psyche won’t simply scratch the surface. It will also study the asteroid’s internal structure by measuring the space rock’s gravity field. There’s no specific instrument to pull this off. Instead, scientists on the ground will use radio signals from Psyche to precisely measure the spacecraft’s orbit around the asteroid, measuring any slight perturbations that signal variations in the gravitational field, which in turn can tell scientists about the internal density of 16 Psyche. 

[Related: Smashed asteroid surrounded by a ‘cloud’ of boulders]

And while the Psyche mission has the unique potential to shed light on how planetary bodies are formed and function, it’s also a part of an expanding portfolio of NASA asteroid missions. NASA’s Lucy mission, which launched in 201, is currently on its way to fly by multiple asteroids near Jupiter between 2025 and 2033. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, meanwhile, just dropped pieces of the asteroid Bennu back on Earth on September 24. It’snow headed to visit the asteroid Apophis; the mission has been renamed to OSIRIS-APEX, or Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-APophis EXplorer.

Such missions have multiple goals: they help scientists better understand the formation of the early solar system and how planets like Earth, and they can also tell us about the makeup of asteroids that could one day pose a threat—and how to deflect them if necessary. 

Apophis, for instance, was at one time considered a very hazardous asteroid; though it won’t hit Earth, it will pass within 20,000 miles of our planet on April 13, 2029. 

The people of Earth don’t have to worry about any danger from 16 Psyche, though, as it will continue along in its orbit between Mars and Jupiter indefinitely, hundreds of millions of miles from our planet. 

That is, unless humans make changes to the metallic space rock. Mining asteroids is an old idea. But, as spacecraft improve, the estimated $10 quintillion worth of metal ore on Psyche and asteroids like it might begin to look pretty appetizing to companies that want to capitalize on resources in the heavens.

This post has been updated. It was originally published on October 2.

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Chances are you have heard about this one already. The moon will pass between Earth and the sun and cast a huge shadow on our planet in the process. With the right protective eyewear, it will be a sight to behold—the phenomenon produces a “ring of fire” as if the moon is outlined with flames.  

Astronomers have calculated precisely when the best views will be where you are, so consult this list when scheduling an outing to safely check out the sky. The duration will range from little more than one minute to almost five, depending where you are located in its path. This eclipse has a 125-mile-wide path of annularity that will begin in Oregon at 12:13 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. It will leave the US at about 1:03 p.m. EDT and head southeastward toward Central and South America. 

October 21 and 22 – Orionids Meteor Shower Predicted Peak

The annual Orionid meteor shower is expected to peak on October 22 in a moonless sky, but the wee hours of the morning of October 21 could also yield some meteors. According to EarthSky, under a dark sky with no moon, the Orionids can produce a maximum of about 10 to 20 meteors per hour. On October 22, the moon will be setting around midnight, which means its light shouldn’t interfere with the shower. The best time to try and spot the shower is just after midnight into the early morning hours 

October 23 – Venus at Greatest Elongation

In August, the planet Venus moved between the Earth and the sun and rose in the east. Venus will be farthest from the sunrise on October 23 and should remain visible in the morning sky until May 2024, where it will be a very bright “morning star.” 

During this month’s greatest elongation, Venus will appear higher in the sky from the Northern Hemisphere than from the Southern Hemisphere. This is because of the steep angle of the path of the sun, moon, and planets in the mornings during the autumn months. 

October 28- Full Hunter’s Moon and Partial Lunar Eclipse

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour.

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This article was originally published on Undark.

IN JANUARY 2023, Tara Sweeney’s plane landed on Thwaites Glacier, a 74,000-square-mile mass of frozen water in West Antarctica. She arrived with an international research team to study the glacier’s geology and ice fabric, and how its ice melt might contribute to sea level rise. But while near Earth’s southernmost point, Sweeney kept thinking about the moon.

“It felt every bit of what I think it will feel like being a space explorer,” said Sweeney, a former Air Force officer who’s now working on a doctorate in lunar geology at the University of Texas at El Paso. “You have all of these resources, and you get to be the one to go out and do the exploring and do the science. And that was really spectacular.”

That similarity is why space scientists study the physiology and psychology of people living in Antarctic and other remote outposts: For around 25 years, people have played out what existence might be like on, or en route to, another world. Polar explorers are, in a way, analogous to astronauts who land on alien planets. And while Sweeney wasn’t technically on an “analog astronaut” mission — her primary objective being the geological exploration of Earth — her days played out much the same as a space explorer’s might.

For 16 days, Sweeney and her colleagues lived in tents on the ice, spending half their time trapped inside as storms blew snow against their tents. When the weather permitted, Sweeney snowmobiled to and from seismometer sites, once getting caught in a whiteout that, she said, felt like zooming inside a ping-pong ball.

On the glacier, Sweeney was always cold, sometimes bored, often frustrated. But she was also alive, elated. And she felt a form of focus that eluded her on her home continent. “I had three objectives: to be a good crewmate, to do good science, and to stay alive,” she said. “That’s all I had to do.”

None of that was easy, of course. But it may have been easier than landing back on the earth of El Paso. “My mission ended, and it’s over,” she said. “And how do I process through all these things that I’m feeling?”

Then, in May, she attended the 2023 Analog Astronaut Conference, a gathering of people who simulate long-term space travel from the relative safety and comfort of Earth. Sweeney had learned about the event when she visited an analog facility in the country of Jordan. There, she’d met one of the conference’s founders, Jas Purewal, who invited her to the gathering.

The meeting was held, appropriately, at Biosphere 2, a glass-paneled, self-contained habitat in the Arizona desert that resembles a 1980s sci-fi vision of a space settlement — one of the first facilities built, in part, to understand whether humans could create a habitable environment on a hostile planet.

A speaker at the conference had spent eight months locked inside a simulated space habitat in Moscow, Russia, and she talked about how the post-mission period had been hard for her. The psychological toll of reintegration became a chattering theme throughout the whole meeting. Sweeney, it turned out, wasn’t alone.

Across the world, around 20 analog space facilities host people who volunteer to be study subjects, isolating themselves for weeks or months in polar stations, desert outposts, or even sealed habitats inside NASA centers. These places are intended to mimic how people might fare on Mars or the moon, or on long-term orbital stations. Such research, scientists say, can help test out medical and software tools, enhance indoor agriculture, and address the difficulties analog astronauts face, including, like Sweeney’s, those that come when their “missions” are over.

Lately, a community of researchers has started to make the field more formalized: laying out standards so that results are comparable; gathering research papers into a single database so investigators can build on previous work; and bringing scientists, participants, and facility directors together to share results and insights.

With that cohesion, a formerly quiet area of research is enhancing its reputation and looking to gain more credibility with space agencies. “I think the analogs are underestimated,” said Jenni Hesterman, a retired Air Force officer who is helping spearhead this formalization. “A lot of people think it’s just space camp.”

ANALOG ASTRONAUT FACILITIES emerged as a way to test drive space missions without the price tag of actually going to space. Scientists, for example, want to make sure tools work properly and so analog astronauts will test out equipment ranging from spacesuits to extreme-environment medical equipment.

Researchers are also interested in how astronauts fare in isolation, and so they will sometimes track characteristics like microbiome changes, stress levels, and immune responses by taking samples of spit, skin, blood, urine, and fecal matter. Analog missions “can give us insights about how a person would react or what kind of team — what kind of mix of people — can react to some challenges,” said Francesco Pagnini, a psychology professor at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Italy, who has researched human behavior and performance in collaboration with the European and Italian space agencies.

Some facilities are run by space agencies, like NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA, which is located inside NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The center also houses a 3D-printed habitat called Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog, or CHAPEA, where crews will simulate a year-long mission to Mars. The structure looks like an artificial intelligence created a cosmic living space using IKEA as its source material.

“My mission ended, and it’s over,” Sweeney said. “And how do I process through all these things that I’m feeling?”

Most analog spots, though, are run by private organizations and take research proposals from space agencies, university researchers, and sometimes laypeople with projects that the facilities select through an application process.

Such work has been going on for decades: NASA’s first official analog mission took place in 1997, in Death Valley, when four people spent a week pretending to be Martian geologists. In 2000, the nonprofit Mars Society, a space-exploration advocacy and research organization, built the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in Nunavut, Canada, and soon after constructed the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah. (Both facilities have been used by NASA researchers, too.) But the practice was in place long before those projects, even if the terminology and permanent facilities were not: In the Apollo era, astronauts used to try out their rovers and space walks, along with scientific techniques, in Arizona and Hawaii.

Many facilities, according to Ronita Cromwell, formerly the lead scientist of NASA’s Flight Analogs Project, are located in two types of places: extreme environments or controlled ones. The former include Antarctic or Arctic research stations, which tend to be used to study topics like sleep patterns and team dynamics. The latter — sealed, simulated habitats — are primarily useful for human behavior research, like learning how cognitive ability changes over the course of a mission, or testing out equipment, like software that helps astronauts make decisions without communicating to mission control. That independence becomes necessary as crews travel farther from Earth, because the communication delays increase with distance.

During her work on NASA’s mission simulations, Cromwell saw their value. “What excited me is that we were able to create sort of spaceflight situations on the ground, to study spaceflight changes in the human body,” Cromwell said, “whether they be, you know, psychological, cognitive changes, or physiological changes.”

Psychiatry researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, for instance, recently found that members of a crew at HERA performed better on cognition tasks — like clicking on squares that randomly appear on a screen and memorizing three-dimensional objects — as their mission went on. Another recent HERA study, led by scientists at Northwestern and DePaul universities, found that over time, teams got better at executing physical tasks together, but worsened when they tried to work together creatively and intellectually, like brainstorming as many uses as possible for a given object. Those brain and behavioral changes could teach scientists about tight teams deployed in other remote, tedious, stressful situations. “I think space psychology can also speak a lot about everyday life,” said Pagnini.

On the physical side, an international team that included a NASA scientist recently used the Mars Desert Research Station to test whether analog astronauts could be quickly taught how to fix broken bones using a device that could work on Mars — or an earthly site far from medical facilities. Investigations into self-contained, sustainable living reveal how low-resource existence could work on Earth, too. For example, another crew, led by Griffith University medical researchers, performed an experiment extracting water from minerals in case of emergency.

“I think the analogs are underestimated,” said Hesterman. “A lot of people think it’s just space camp.”

While scientific research that actually takes place in space usually gets the spotlight, the ground-testing of all systems, including human ones, is necessary, if not always glamorous or publicly lauded. “I felt like I was in charge of a deep, dark secret,” said Cromwell, jokingly, of her work on the NASA analog program.

In fact, even people who work in adjacent fields sometimes haven’t heard of the field. Purewal, an astrophysicist, only learned about analog space research in 2020. With Covid-19 restrictions in place, though, most facilities had halted new missions. “If I can’t go to an analog, maybe I can bring the analog to me,” Purewal thought.

Amid the drapey willow branches and manicured hedges of her parents’ backyard in Warwick, England, she constructed a geodesic dome out of broomstick handles and tent-like materials. Purewal sequestered inside for a week, leaving only to use the bathroom — and then only while wearing a simulated spacesuit. She communicated with those outside her dome on a synthesized 20-minute delay and ate freeze-dried foods, which she came to hate, and insect protein from mealworms and locusts, which she came to like more than she anticipated.

While Purewal admits her personal analog was “low-fidelity,” it offered a test drive for more rigorous research. By 2021, Purewal had, with SpaceX civilian astronaut Sian Proctor, co-founded the Analog Astronaut Conference that Sweeney attended, along with an associated online community of more than 1,000 people. She also participated in an analog mission in someone else’s backyard — one surrounded by Utah State Trust Lands — in November 2022. Their endeavor was sponsored by the Mars Society and involved research on mental health, geologic research tools, and sustainable food supplies, all of which would be necessary if they were going to Mars.

BUT THEY WEREN’T HEADED to Mars, they were headed to Utah. About five minutes from the small town of Hanksville — home to “Hollow Mountain,” a gas station convenience store dug out of a rock formation — sits the turnoff to the Mars Desert Research Station. Operated by the Mars Society, the facility is 3.4 miles down a dirt track called N Cow Dung Road. The landscape looks otherworldly: mushroom-shaped rock formations; sandy, granular ground; and eroded hills of red rock.

The station sits in a flat spot surrounded by those hills, with a cylindrical living space two stories tall but just 26 feet in diameter. The habitat links out via above-ground “tunnels” to a greenhouse and a geodesic dome that resembles Purewal’s initial backyard creation, and houses a control center and lab.

In November 2022, Purewal brought a team there for two weeks, with Hesterman as commander. In the habitat, an astrobiology student tried to grow edible mushrooms in the crew’s food waste. Another team member wanted to see if they could make yogurt from powdered milk and bacteria. Purewal, meanwhile, was experimenting with an AI companion robot called PARO. Shaped like a baby harp seal, PARO is typically used to relieve stress in medical situations. The crew members interacted with PARO and wore bio-monitoring straps that measured things like heart rate as they did so.

Every day on “Mars” had a set of missions: spacewalks, splinting a broken ankle on a virtual reality headset, a tabletop emergency exercise about evacuating for noxious fumes, a fake pass-out to test emergency response protocol. Their personal protocols were working well, but Purewal and Hesterman, locked in together, had begun to fret about the quality and consistency of the analog enterprise more broadly. They started to think about creating standards: for the research, for the facilities themselves. At their Utah-Mars station, for instance, a pipe broke under their sink. There were electrical issues. A propane monitor was malfunctioning.

After their mission ended, they spoke with others, and heard about issues such as expired fire extinguishers, or the lack of safety training for participants who would be using specialized technologies and life support systems. They consulted Emily Apollonio, a former aircraft accident investigator. In 2022, she traveled to Hawaii to live at HI-SEAS, a 1,200-square-foot analog station located 8,200 feet above sea level on the Mauna Loa volcano. Apollonio thought HI-SEAS had avoidable problems. For one, the bathroom had only a composting toilet, which the mission crew weren’t allowed to pee in, and a urinal, which the women had to use, too.

With a draft version released this June, they hope to improve conditions for participants — ensuring, for instance, that facilities adhere to building codes and provide adequate medical support. They also want to encourage analog participants to follow research best practices to ensure rigorous outputs. The standards suggest, for instance, that each mission have its research plan pre-validated by the principal investigator and habitat director, a timeline for research completion, and an Institutional Review Board approval in place for human experiments. While projects with federal or institutional grant funding go through these steps anyway, the formality isn’t uniform across the board.

While some analogs already have rigorous protocols in place to protect participants, the safety issues and inclusivity gaps she heard about from colleagues helped inspire Apollonio to start a training and consulting company called Interstellar Performance Labs to help prepare would-be analog astronauts before their missions. She also started to work with Purewal, Hesterman, and others on a document called “International Guidelines and Standards for Space Analogs.”

The standards also detail the creation of a research database, putting all the writeups (peer-reviewed and otherwise) of analog projects in one place. That way, people aren’t duplicating efforts — as the mushroom-grower, it turns out, was — unless they mean to test the replicability of results. They can also better link their studies to space agencies’ established needs to be more directly helpful and relevant to the real world.

“I didn’t know where to look, I didn’t know where to go,” Apollonio said. “I couldn’t hear my thoughts.”

As part of this centralization effort, Purewal, Apollonio, Hesterman, and colleagues are also putting together what they call the World’s Biggest Analog: a simultaneous, month-long mission involving at least 10 isolated bases across the world, which together will simulate a large, cooperative future presence in space.

So far, though, attempts to give the community cohesion and coherency have yet to fully address the aspect of analog life that gives many participants trouble: the end of their mission. “Being in an analog mission was less difficult than coming out an analog mission,” said Apollonio, of her own experience.

Shortly after emerging from HI-SEAS, she walked around the streets of Waikiki with her husband. The lights, the noise — everything was too much. “I didn’t know where to look, I didn’t know where to go,” she said. “I couldn’t hear my thoughts.” After they chose a restaurant for dinner, and the server handed her a menu, she froze. “I have to choose my own food,” she realized. It was overwhelming, and that feeling didn’t abate.

Meanwhile, few other people understood the experience, said Hesterman. “You come home and you’re all excited, like, you want to tell everybody about it,” she continued. “You tell everybody about it once, and then they’re just done. On back to paying the bills and cutting the grass and stuff. You still want to talk about it.”

Purewal missed the team and the sense of shared purpose, and started to seek it outside the simulation. “I need to find this same feeling in my day-to-day life,” she said. “We all kind of need our crew.”

RESEARCH ON THE post-mission experience is scant, said Pagnini. In March 2023, he co-authored a review paper, commissioned by the European Space Agency, which aimed to lay out the state of research on human behavior and performance in space, including gaps in the science. Studying how astronauts react and cope “post-mission,” his research found, has been particularly neglected. The same is true of returning from analog space.

Pagnini says the research isn’t just relevant to analog or actual astronauts. Life in space has similarities to life on Earth — including in its difficulties. Italy’s heavily restrictive and prolonged Covid-19 lockdown, for instance, resembled going away on a mission. “When we got out of the lockdown phase, getting in touch with other people was kind of strange,” he said. Much of living a regular life on Earth was strange.

The strangeness also extends to other experiences, like military deployments and the subsequent return to domestic life. “The expectation is kind of that families will live happily ever after” once they’re reunited, said Leanne Knobloch, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois, who performed a large reintegration study on military couples. “So that’s why reintegration has sometimes been overlooked, but more and more researchers are starting to recognize that it is a challenging period, and it’s not the storybook ending that people make it out to be.”

She noted that her research, like that on the psychology of space travel and the post-mission experience, can apply to other arenas. “Any kind of situation where partners are separated and they come together, this research can help understand that puzzle piece more broadly,” she said.

Knobloch’s work includes suggestions for easing the transition, such as preparing people for the issues they’re likely to experience. “If you’re ready and expect that you might experience some of these problems, it won’t be so stressful,” she said. “Because you’ll recognize that they’re normal.”

Apollonio’s Interstellar Performance Labs, for one, is already planning to include education on “aftercare,” educating people about what she calls the “deorbiting effect” of returning to regular life.

WHEN THE DAY finally came for Sweeney to depart Thwaites Glacier, the aircraft seemed to materialize right out of the sky, as though the remote outpost had transformed into a busy airport. As she was leaving, she looked down at the camp where half her team remained. “You could just see how small our little footprint was,” she said. A speck in the middle of endless white space.

Since she landed in North America, Sweeney has savored time with her family. But the adjustment hasn’t been easy. “Each day that ticks by of being back, I started feeling pulled in different directions,” she said. With numerous projects ongoing — mentoring, speaking, doing her doctoral research — she felt her sense of self splintering. In Antarctica, she had been a smooth, singular whole.

But at the Analog Astronaut Conference in May, hearing about others’ similar readjustment difficulties, Sweeney felt some sense of normalcy. Having a community of support could help with post-mission struggles. Further research — aided by the new database and standardization measures — could help uncover best coping strategies, along with the keys to successful crew dynamics, stress creators and mitigators, and tools and designs that make the practicalities of a mission easier. Maybe someone will look at the database, see this scientific gap, and try to fill it.

Such research might resonate with Sweeney and others having trouble readjusting to their daily lives. “We have to get back to work, we have to go see our families, we want to pick up the projects we were doing before,” she said. “But also, we need to make space for the magnitude of the experience that we just had. And to be able to decompress from that.”

UPDATE: A previous version of this piece incorrectly stated that Tara Sweeney’s plane landed on Thwaites Glacier in November 2022. She arrived to McMurdo Station in Antarctica in November 2022, but did not land on Thwaites Glacier until January 2023. The piece also described a scene in which Sweeney left her camp on Thwaites Glacier, and incorrectly stated that she was departing Antarctica at that time. She remained in Antarctica for several weeks after she left the glacier. Lastly, a previous version stated that storms dumped feet of snow on the landscape. To clarify that the snow was not fresh snowfall, the piece has been updated to reflect that snow blew against the tents.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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Solar sails that leverage the sun’s photonic rays for “wind” are no longer the stuff of science fiction—in fact, the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 practical demonstration was deemed a Grand Award Winner for PopSci’s Best of What’s New in 2019. And while countless projects continue to explore what solar sails could hold for the future of space travel, a new study demonstrates just how promising the technology could be for excursions to Earth’s nearest planetary neighbor, and beyond.

According to a paper recently submitted to the journal Acta Astronautica, detailed computer simulations show tiny, incredibly lightweight solar sails made with aerographite could travel to Mars in just 26 days—compare that to conventional rocketry time estimates of between 7-to-9 months. Meanwhile, a journey to the heliopause (the demarcation line for interstellar space where the sun’s magnetic forces cease to influence objects) could take between 4.2 and 5.3 years. For comparison, the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes took a respective 35 and 41 years to reach the same boundary.

[Related: This novel solar sail could make it easier for NASA to stare into the sun.]

The key to such speedy trips is the 1 kg solar sails’ 720g of aerographite—an ultra-lightweight material with four times less density than most solar sail designs’ Mylar components. The major caveat to these simulations is that they involved an extremely miniscule payload weight, something that will most often not be the case for major interplanetary and interstellar journeys.

“Solar sail propulsion has the potential for rapid delivery of small payloads (sub-kilogram) throughout the solar system,” René Heller, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and study co-author, explained to Universe Today earlier this month. “Compared to conventional chemical propulsion, which can bring hundreds of tons of payload to low-Earth orbit and deliver a large fraction of that to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, this sounds ridiculously small. But the key value of solar sail technology is speed.”

Another issue still that still needs addressing is deceleration methods needed upon actually reaching a destination. Although aerocapture—using a planet’s atmosphere to reduce velocity—is a possible option, researchers concede more investigation will be needed to determine the best, most efficient way to actually stop at a solar sail-equipped spacecraft’s intended endpoint. Regardless, the study only adds even more wind in the sails (so to speak) for the impressive interstellar travel method.

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The dark side of the moon, despite its name, is a perfect vantage point for observing the universe. On Earth, radio signals from the furthest depths of space are obscured by the atmosphere, alongside humanity’s own electronic chatter, but the lunar far side has none of these issues. Because of this, establishing an observation point there could allow for unimpeded views of some of cosmic history’s earliest moments—particularly a 400 million year stretch known as the universe’s Dark Ages when early plasma cooled enough to begin forming the  protons and electrons that eventually made hydrogen.

After years of development and testing, just such an observation station could come online as soon as 2026, in part thanks to researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

[Related: Watch a rocket engine ignite in ultra-slow motion.]

The team is currently working alongside NASA, the US Department of Energy, and the University of Minnesota on a pathfinder project called the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment-Night (LuSEE-Night). The radio telescope is on track to launch atop Blue Ghost, private space company Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander, as part of the company’s second moon excursion. Once in position, Blue Ghost will detach from Firefly’s Elytra space vehicle, then travel down to the furthest site ever reached on the moon’s dark side. 

“If you’re on the far side of the moon, you have a pristine, radio-quiet environment from which you can try to detect this signal from the Dark Ages,” Kaja Rotermund, a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley Lab, said in a September 26 project update. “LuSEE-Night is a mission showing whether we can make these kinds of observations from a location that we’ve never been in, and also for a frequency range that we’ve never been able to observe.”

More specifically, LuSEE-Night will be equipped with specialized antennae designed by the Berkeley Lab team to listen between 0.5 and 50 megahertz. To accomplish this, both the antennae and its Blue Ghost transport will need to be able to withstand the extreme temperatures experienced on the moon’s far side, which can span between -280 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of its shielded lunar location, however, LuSEE-Night will also need to beam its findings up to an orbiting satellite that will then transfer the information back to Earth.

“The engineering to land a scientific instrument on the far side of the moon alone is a huge accomplishment,” explained Berkeley Lab’s antenna project lead, Aritoki Suzuki, in the recent update. “If we can demonstrate that this is possible—that we can get there, deploy, and survive the night—that can open up the field for the community and future experiments.”

If successful, LuSEE-Night could provide data from the little known Dark Ages, which breaks up other observable eras such as some of the universe’s earliest moments, as well as more recent moments after stars began to form.

According to Berkeley Lab, the team recently completed a successful technical review, and is currently working on constructing the flight model meant for the moon. Once landed, LuSEE-Night will peer out into the Dark Age vastness for about 18 months beginning in 2026. 

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Albert Einstein didn’t know about the existence of antimatter when he came up with the theory of general relativity, which has governed our understanding of gravity ever since. More than a century later, scientists are still debating how gravity affects antimatter, the elusive mirror versions of the particles that abide within us and around us. In other words, does an antimatter droplet fall down or up? 

Common physics wisdom holds that it should fall down. A tenet of general relativity itself known as the weak equivalence principle implies that gravity shouldn’t care whether something is matter or antimatter. At the same time, a small contingent of experts argue that antimatter falling up might explain, for instance, the mystical dark energy that potentially dominates our universe.

“Everything about antimatter is challenging,” says Jeffrey Hangst, a physicist at Aarhus University in Denmark and a member of the ALPHA group. “It just really sucks to have to work with it.”

Adding to the challenge, gravity is extremely weak on the microscopic scale of atoms and subatomic particles. As early as the 1960s, physicists first thought about measuring gravity’s effects on positrons, or anti-electrons, which have positive rather than negative electric charge. Alas, that same electric charge makes positrons susceptible to tiny electric fields—and electromagnetism eclipses gravity’s force.

So, to properly test gravity’s influence on antimatter, researchers needed a neutral particle. The only “one of the horizon” was the antihydrogen atom, says Joel Fajans, a physicist at UC Berkeley and another member of the ALPHA group.

Antihydrogen is the first, most fundamental element of the anti-periodic table. Just as the garden-variety hydrogen atom consists of one proton and one electron, the basic antihydrogen atom consists of one negatively charged antiproton and an orbiting positron. Physicists only created antihydrogen atoms in the 1990s; they couldn’t trap and store some until 2010.

“We had to learn how to make it, and then we had to learn how to hold onto it, and then we had to learn how to interact with it, and so on,” says Hangst.

Once they overcame those hurdles, they were finally able to study antihydrogen’s properties—such as its behavior under gravity. For the new paper, the ALPHA group designed  a vertical vacuum chamber around a vertical tube devoid of any matter to prevent the antihydrogen from annihilating prematurely. Scientists wrapped part of the tube inside a superconducting magnetic “bottle,” creating a magnetic field that locked the antihydrogen in place until they needed to use it.

Building this apparatus took years on end. “We spent hundreds of hours just studying the magnetic field without using antimatter at all to convince ourselves that we knew what we were doing,” says Hangst. To produce a magnetic field strong enough to hold the antihydrogen, they had to keep the device chilled at -452 degrees Fahrenheit. 

The ALPHA group then dialed down the magnetic field to open the top and bottom of the bottle, and let the antihydrogen atoms loose until they crashed into the tube’s wall. They measured where those atomic deaths happened: above or under the position the antimatter was held in. Some 80 percent of atoms fell a few centimeters below the trap, in line with what a cloud of regular hydrogen atoms would do in the same setup. (The other 20 percent simply popped out.)

For instance, when the authors of the Nature study computed how rapidly the antihydrogen atoms accelerated downward with gravity, they found it was 75 percent of the rate physicists would expect for regular hydrogen atoms. But they expect the discrepancy to fade when they repeat these observations to find a more precise result. “This number and these uncertainties are essentially consistent with our best expectation for what gravity would have looked like in our experiment,” says William Bertsche, a physicist at the University of Manchester and another member of the ALPHA group.

But it’s also possible that gravity influences matter and antimatter in different ways. Such an anomaly would throw the weak equivalence principle—and, by extension, general relativity as a whole—into doubt.

“Any difference that you find between hydrogen and antihydrogen would be an extremely important clue to the baryogenesis problem,” says Fajans.

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About 40 light years away, a system of seven Earth-sized planets orbit a star that is much cooler and smaller than our sun— the exoplanetary system called TRAPPIST-1. When these exoplanets were discovered in 2016, astronomers speculated that they could one day support humans. Three of those worlds are located in the star’s habitable zone, also called the “Goldilocks zone,” where the conditions for life could be “just right.” Now, astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have made important progress in understanding the atmosphere of one of its potentially habitable planets.

[Related: JWST’s double take of an Earth-sized exoplanet shows it has no sky.]

JWST observations ruled out the possibilities for a clear, extended atmosphere, failing to detect elements such as hydrogen. The telescope’s new detections also cut through the interference of the star at the center of this system, avoiding what astronomers call stellar contaminations. The findings are detailed in a study published September 22 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The new study specifically sheds light on the nature TRAPPIST-1 b, the exoplanet that is closest to the system’s central star. The team from institutions in the United States and Canada used the JWST’s NIRISS instrument to observe TRAPPIST-1 b during two transits, when the planet passed in front of its star. 

The team used a technique called transmission spectroscopy to look deeper into the distant world. They saw the unique fingerprint left by the molecules and atoms that were found within the exoplanet’s atmosphere. “These are the very first spectroscopic observations of any TRAPPIST-1 planet obtained by the JWST, and we’ve been waiting for them for years,” study co-author and Université de Montréal doctoral student Olivia Lim said in a statement. 

In the past, stars at the center of solar systems may have hampered our understanding of far-off atmospheres. That’s because these suns can create “ghost signals” which fool observers into thinking they are seeing a particular molecule in the exoplanet’s atmosphere. This phenomenon, stellar contamination, is the influence of a star’s own features on the measurements of an exoplanet’s atmosphere.  A sun’s dark spots and bright faculae, or bright spots on its surface, can warp the chemical fingerprints that telescopes detect.

“In addition to the contamination from stellar spots and faculae, we saw a stellar flare, an unpredictable event during which the star looks brighter for several minutes or hours,” said Lim. “This flare affected our measurement of the amount of light blocked by the planet. Such signatures of stellar activity are difficult to model but we need to account for them to ensure that we interpret the data correctly.”

The team also used the observations to explore a range of atmospheric models for TRAPPIST-1 b. They ruled out the existence of cloud-free, hydrogen-rich atmospheres, which means that TRAPPIST-1 b likely does not have a clear and extended atmosphere around it. However, the data could not confidently rule out the possibility of a thinner atmosphere, perhaps made up of pure water, carbon dioxide, or methane. 

[Related: The James Webb Space Telescope just identified its first exoplanet.]

According to the team, this result underscores the importance of taking stellar contamination into account when planning future observations of all exoplanetary systems. This consideration is especially true for systems like TRAPPIST-1, because the system is centered around a red dwarf star which can be particularly active with frequent flare events and dark spots.

More observations will be needed to determine exactly what kind of atmosphere is surrounding this exoplanet and if it could support human life. “This is just a small subset of many more observations of this unique planetary system yet to come and to be analyzed,” study co-author and Université de Montréal astronomer René Doyon said in a statement. “These first observations highlight the power of NIRISS and the JWST in general to probe the thin atmospheres around rocky planets.”

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Trillions of particles from distant stars and galaxies are streaming through your body every second—you just can’t feel them. These ghost-like particles are called neutrinos. Although the universe spits them out constantly, these objects barely interact with matter—they can even slip through humanity’s toughest barriers, such as steel or lead walls. 

Some neutrinos come from supernovae, the extravagant deaths of the biggest stars; they’re also produced by radioactive decay in Earth’s rocks, reactions in the sun, and even our planet’s aurorae. These hard-to-see particles are all over the place and crucial to multiple areas of science, but we’re still in need of better ways of finding them. Now, a new observatory under construction in China’s Guangdong province—the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory, or JUNO—plans to hunt these elusive particles with better sensitivity than ever before. 

Like most neutrino detectors, it’s a huge vat filled with liquid for the neutrinos to interact with—the bigger the net, the more fish you’re likely to catch. “When it is completed, JUNO will be 20 times larger than the largest existing detector of the same type,” says Yufeng Li, a researcher and member of the JUNO collaboration at the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) in Beijing. Currently under construction and expected to start operation in 2024, this detector will not only be bigger, but also more sensitive to slight variations in neutrinos’ energies than any of its predecessors. Li adds, it’s going to be “a unique and important observatory in the community.”

[Related: The Milky Way’s ghostly neutrinos have finally been found]

The observatory’s most ambitious goal is to preemptively spot neutrinos from stars that are dying but haven’t exploded yet. That way, telescopes can catch these stars in their final destructive act. “Neutrinos are expected to reach Earth hours earlier than photons because of their weakly-interacting nature,” explains Irene Tamborra, a physicist at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark not affiliated with the project. 

Astronomers still don’t know the finer details of how a star explodes, but observing the supernova as it starts might help give some clues. “The early detection of neutrinos will be crucial to point the telescopes in the direction of the supernova and catch its electromagnetic emission early on,” adds Tamborra. JUNO should be able to alert astronomers hours to days before a star is slated to explode, giving them time to prep and point their telescopes. It might even be able to measure the faint background of neutrinos coming from distant supernovae, all across the galaxy, which is of great interest to cosmologists trying to put together a picture of the whole universe. 

In addition to supernovae, the observatory will be searching for neutrinos from much closer to home: nuclear reactors. The nearby Yangjiang and Taishan nuclear power plants produce neutrinos, and physicists are hoping to get a taste of those neutrinos’ flavors with JUNO. Neutrinos come in three flavors (yes, they’re really called that!), known as the electron, tau, and muon neutrinos. They can flip between their different states in so-called oscillations. Scientists can calculate the number of neutrinos of each kind they expect from the power plant, and compare to what they actually observe with JUNO to better understand these flips.

[Related: This ghostly particle may be why dark matter keeps eluding us]

“It is also very likely that there will be surprise discoveries, as that often happens when powerful new experiments are deployed,” says Ohio State University astrophysicist John Beacom.

JUNO isn’t the only big observatory after neutrinos. The current largest liquid neutrino detector is Super-Kamiokande in Japan, and researchers there are planning a huge upgrade to make it the Hyper-Kamiokande. The United States is getting in the game too, currently using a detector at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab and planning its own multi-billion-dollar next-gen observatory, called the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. These projects are a few years away, though, so IHEP president Yifang Wang told Science that he gives JUNO “3-to-1 odds to get there first” to figure out some fundamental properties of neutrinos.

No matter who wins the race, this observatory is opening up one of our windows to the universe a bit wider. “JUNO is a huge step forward for neutrino physics and astrophysics,” Beacom says, “and I’m very excited to see what it will do.”

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A little less than one-third of the universe—around 31 percent—consists of matter. A new calculation confirms that number; astrophysicists have long believed that something other than tangible stuff makes up the majority of our reality. So then, what is matter exactly?

One of the hallmarks of Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity is that mass and energy are inseparable. All mass has intrinsic energy; this is the significance of Einstein’s famous E=mc² equation. When cosmologists weigh the universe, they’re measuring both mass and energy at once. And 31 percent of that amount is matter, whether it’s visible or invisible.

That difference is key: Not all matter is alike. Very little of it, in fact, forms the objects we can see or touch. The universe is replete with examples of matter that are far stranger.

What is matter?

When we think of “matter,” we might picture the objects we see or their basic building block: the atom. 

Our conception of the atom has evolved over years. Thinkers throughout history had vague ideas that existence could be divided into basic components. But something that resembles the modern idea of the atom is generally credited to British chemist John Dalton. In 1808, he proposed that indivisible particles made up matter. Different base substances—the  elements—arose from atoms with different sizes, masses, and properties. 

Dalton’s schema had 20 elements. Combining those elements created more complex chemical compounds. When the chemist Dmitri Mendeleev constructed a primitive period table in 1869, he listed 63 elements. Today we have cataloged 118. 

But if only it were that simple. Since the early 20th century, physicists have known that tinier building blocks lurk within atoms: swirling negatively charged electrons and shrouded nuclei, made from positively charged protons and neutral neutrons. We know now, too, that each element corresponds to atoms with a certain number of protons.

[Related: How does electricity work?]

And it’s still not that simple. By the middle of the century, physicists realized that protons and neutrons are actually combinations of even tinier particles, called quarks. To be precise, protons and neutrons both contain three quarks each: a configuration type that physicists call baryons. For that reason, protons, neutrons, and the matter they form—the stuff of our daily lives—are often called “baryonic matter.”

Strange matter in the sky

In our everyday world, baryonic matter typically exists in one of four states: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. 

Again, matter is not that simple. Under extreme conditions, it can take on a menagerie of more exotic forms. At high enough pressures, materials can become supercritical fluids, simultaneously liquid and gas. At low enough temperatures, multiple atoms coalesce together, creating the Bose-Einstein condensate. These atoms behave as one, acting in all sorts of odd quantum ways

Such exotic states are not limited to the laboratory. Just look at neutron stars: Their undead cores aren’t quite massive enough to collapse into black holes when they go supernova. Instead, as their cores crumple, intense forces rip apart their atomic nuclei and crush the rubble together. The result is essentially a giant ball of neutrons—and protons that absorb electrons, becoming neutrons in the process—and it’s very, very dense. A single spoonful of a neutron star would weigh a billion tons.

There are, potentially, hundreds of millions of neutron stars in the Milky Way alone. Deep in their centers, some scientists think, pressures and temperatures are high enough to rip neutrons apart too. Those neutrons may break the quarks that form them.

Physicists study neutron stars to learn about these objects—and what happened at the beginning of the universe. The matter we see around us did not always exist; it formed in the aftermath of the big bang. Before atoms formed, protons and neutrons swam alone through the universe. Even earlier, before there were protons and neutrons, everything was a superheated quark slurry.

Scientists can recreate that state, in some fashion, in particle accelerators. But that disappears in a flash that lasts a fraction of a second. It’s no comparison to the extremely long-lasting neutron stars  “You have a lab that basically exists forever,” says Fridolin Weber, a physicist at San Diego State University.

Matter in the grand scheme of the universe

Over the past several decades, astronomers have developed several ways to understand the universe’s basic parameters. They can examine its large-scale structure and identify  subtle fluctuations in the density of the matter they can see. They can watch how objects’ gravity bends passing light.

A specific way to measure matter density—the proportion of the universe made up of visible and invisible matter—is to pick apart the cosmic microwave background of the big bang. From 2009 to 2013, the European Space Agency’s Planck observatory prodded the afterglow to give scientists the best calculation of the matter density yet, 31 percent.

[Related: Does antimatter fall down or up? We now have a definitive answer.]

The most recent research used a different technique called the mass-richness relation, essentially examining clusters of galaxies, counting how many galaxies exist in each cluster, using that to calculate each group’s mass, and reverse-engineering the matter density. The technique isn’t new, but until now it was raw and unrefined.

“When we did our work, as far as I know, this is the first time that the mass-richness relation has been used to get a result that’s in very good agreement with Planck,” says Gillian Wilson, an astrophysicist at the University of California Riverside, and one of the authors of a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal on September 13. 

Yet remember, it’s not that simple. Only a small fraction—thought to be around 15 percent of matter, or 3 percent of the universe—is visible. The rest, most scientists think, is dark matter. We can detect the ripples that dark matter leaves in gravity. But we can’t observe it directly.

Consequently, we aren’t certain what dark matter is. Some scientists believe it is baryonic matter, just in a form that we can’t easily see: Perhaps it is black holes that formed in the early universe, for instance. Others believe it consists of particles that must barely interact at all with our familiar matter. Some scientists believe it is a mix of these. And at least some scientists believe that dark matter does not exist at all.

If it does exist, we might see it with a new generation of telescopes, such as eROSITA, the Rubin Observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and Euclid, that can scan ever greater swathes of the universe and see a wider variety of galaxies at different times in cosmic history. “These new surveys might change our understanding of the whole universe [and its matter],” says Mohamed El Hashash, an astrophysicist at the University of California Riverside, and another of the authors. “This is what I personally expect.”

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Every year or two, the solar system lines up just right, with the moon casting a shadow over part of Earth’s surface and blocking out the sun—a solar eclipse. In 2017, people across the United States flocked to see the “Great American Total Eclipse”, which was the first one visible in the continental states since 1979. Now, eclipse chasers and citizen scientists across North America are getting ready for the next big events: an annular eclipse on October 14, 2023 and a total eclipse on April 8, 2024. This will be the last eclipse visible in the continental US until August 2045, more than two decades away. 

People love eclipses for the novelty—how cool it is to see the sun disappear in the day. But these phenomena are both showstoppers and opportunities: a group of radio astronomers and citizen scientists called Radio JOVE is aiming to capitalize on the upcoming eclipses for science, part of NASA’s “Helio Big Year.”

Radio JOVE “initially started as an education and outreach project to help students, teachers, and the general public get involved in science,” explains project co-founder Chuck Higgins, an astronomer at Middle Tennessee State University. The project has been running since the late 1990s, when it began at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “We now focus on science and try to inspire people to become citizen scientists.” 

As its name suggests, Radio JOVE originally focused on the Jovian planet, Jupiter. “Serendipitously, it turns out that the same radio wavelengths we use for observing Jupiter are also useful for observing the sun,” says Thomas Ashcraft, a citizen scientist from New Mexico who has been observing with Radio JOVE since 2001. After the 2017 Great American Eclipse, its members became more involved with heliophysics, the study of the sun.

[Related: Total eclipses aren’t that rare—and you’ve probably missed a bunch of them]

As energy spews from the sun and travels to Earth, it interacts with our planet’s atmosphere; in particular, the sun’s rays create a layer of ionized particles, known as the ionosphere. Any radio waves coming from the sun have to pass through these particles above us. Communication technology takes advantage of this layer, bouncing radio waves off it to travel long distances.

The ionosphere’s plasma changes a lot between day and night. When the sun shines on this layer, particles break into ions. When the sun is absent, those ions calm down. During eclipses, when most of the sun’s light is blocked, similar changes happen in the short term change. By measuring those fluctuations precisely with a fleet of amateur observers, Radio JOVE hopes to improve our understanding of the ionosphere.

To do so, Radio JOVE is equipping citizen scientists across the country with small radio receivers and training them to observe radio waves from Earth’s ionosphere. The project offers some-assembly-required starter kits for around $200, and a whole team of experts and experienced observers are around to support new volunteers. 

[Related: The best US parks for eclipse chasers to see October’s annularity]

Right now, they’re prepping participants for a full day of observing during the October annular eclipse. Project members are already gathering data to have a baseline of the sun’s influence on a normal day, which they’ll compare to the upcoming eclipse data. And this is only a small taste before the big event: next year’s total eclipse. “The 2023 annular eclipse will be used as a training, learning, and testing experience in an effort to achieve the highest quality data for the 2024 total eclipse,” Higgins wrote in a summary for an American Geophysical Union conference.

Citizen science projects such as Radio JOVE not only collect valuable data, but they also involve a new crowd in NASA’s scientific community. Anyone interested in science can join in, and if Radio JOVE doesn’t suit your interests, NASA has a long list of other opportunities. For example, if you’re a ham radio operator, you can get involved with HamSCI, which also plans to observe the upcoming eclipse.

“NASA’s Radio JOVE Citizen Science Project allows me to further explore my lifelong interest in astronomy,” said John Cox, a Radio JOVE citizen scientist from South Carolina, in a NASA press release. “A whole new portion of the electromagnetic spectrum is now open to me.”

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Is Earth primarily a planet of life, a world stewarded by the animals, plants, bacteria, and everything else that lives here? Or, is it a planet dominated by human creations? Certainly, we’ve reshaped our home in many ways—from pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to literally redrawing coastlines. But by one measure, biology wins without a contest.

 In an opinion piece published in the journal Life on August 31, astronomers and astrobiologists estimated the amount of information transmitted by a massive class of organisms and technology for communication. Their results are clear: Earth’s biosphere churns out far more information than the internet has in its 30-year history. “This indicates that, for all the rapid progress achieved by humans, nature is still far more remarkable in terms of its complexity,” says Manasvi Lingam, an astrobiologist at the Florida Institute of Technology and one of the paper’s authors.

[Related: Inside the lab that’s growing mushroom computers]

But that could change in the very near future. Lingam and his colleagues say that, if the internet keeps growing at its current voracious rate, it will eclipse the data that comes out of the biosphere in less than a century. This could help us hone our search for intelligent life on other planets by telling us what type of information we should seek.

To represent information from technology, the authors focused on the amount of data transferred through the internet, which far outweighs any other form of human communication. Each second, the internet carries about 40 terabytes of information. They then compared it to the volume of information flowing through Earth’s biosphere. We might not think of the natural world as a realm of big data, but living things have their own ways of communicating. “To my way of thought, one of the reasons—although not the only one—underpinning the complexity of the biosphere is the massive amount of information flow associated with it,” Lingam says.

Bird calls, whale song, and pheromones are all forms of communication, to be sure. But Lingam and his colleagues focused on the information that individual cells transmit—often in the form of molecules that other cells pick up and respond accordingly, such as producing particular proteins. The authors specifically focused on the 100 octillion single-celled prokaryotes that make up the majority of our planet’s biomass. 

“That is fairly representative of most life on Earth,” says Andrew Rushby, an astrobiologist at Birkbeck, University of London, who was not an author of the paper. “Just a green slime clinging to the surface of the planet. With a couple of primates running around on it, occasionally.”

Now, picture the reverse. For decades, scientists and military experts have sought out signatures of extraterrestrials in whatever form it may take. Astronomers have traditionally focused on the energy that a civilization of intelligent life might use—but earlier this year, one group crunched the numbers to determine if aliens in a nearby star system could pick up the leakage from mobile phone towers. (The answer is probably not, at least with LTE networks and technology like today’s radio telescopes.)

On the flip side, we don’t totally have the observational capabilities to home in on extraterrestrial life yet. “I don’t think there’s any way that we could detect the kind of predictions and findings that [Lingam and his coauthors] have quantified here,” Rushby says. “How can we remotely determine this kind of information capacity, or this information transfer rate? We’re probably not at the stage where we could do that.”

But Rushby thinks the study is an interesting next step in a trend. Astrobiologists—certainly those searching for extraterrestrial life—are increasingly thinking about the types and volume of information that different forms of life carries. “There does seem to be this information ‘revolution,’” he says, “where we’re thinking about life in a slightly different way.” In the end, we might learn that there’s more harmony between the communication networks nature has built and computers.

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At first glance, everything seems solid. Then, a small rip begins to spread across the middle of the structure as its siding expands. The module suddenly bursts apart, spraying debris in every direction as engineers cheer on from the safety of their control room. The sudden destruction—and the fifth such explosion—of a module intended for the International Space Station’s successor may not sound like the desired outcome, but, scientists say, it’s all part of the plan.

In Sierra Space’s September 20 progress update, the Colorado-based company released video of the explosion. The company aims to supply habitat spaces for Orbital Reef, Blue Origin’s NASA-backed space station project. During a recent Ultimate Burst Pressure (UPB) test, the engineering team essentially amped up the pressure within a one-third-scale LIFE module prototype until it popped. Said “pop” is certainly a sight to behold:

Unlike ISS construction materials, the LIFE modules are largely composed of “softgoods” such as Vectran, an incredibly strong and durable synthetic fiber spun from liquid-crystal polymers. When inflated, the LIFE module’s softgood design becomes rigid enough to withstand the low-earth orbit’s extreme environmental stresses. According to Sierra Space, the latest results offered a 33 percent margin over a full-scale LIFE module’s certification standard, nearly 20 percent better than the previous test design.

What makes the most recent UPB test especially impressive is that it was the first module prototype to include a steel “blanking plate” that acted as a cheaper stand-in for essential design features like windows.

[Related: NASA is spending big on commercial space destinations.]

“Inclusion of the blanking plate hard structure was a game-changer because this was the first time that we infused metallics into our softgoods pressure shell technology prior to conducting a UBP test,” Shawn Buckley, Sierra Space’s Senior Director Engineering and Product Evolution, said in the company’s announcement. “With this added component, once again, we successfully demonstrated that LIFE’s current architecture at one-third scale meets the minimum 4x safety factor required for softgoods inflatables structures.”

As Space.com notes, this marks the third UPB test for the module prototypes. Sierra Space has also overseen two “creep tests” in December 2022 and February 2023, during which the LIFE designs were subjected to higher-than-usual pressures for extended periods of time. With the latest success, Sierra Space says it’s now ready to move onto the next development phase—testing on full-scale LIFE module prototypes. If all goes as planned (a big “if,” given such endeavors’ complexities), future LIFE module iterations will be some of Orbital Reef’s central structures. Orbital Reef is currently intended to start construction in 2030.

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On the morning of September 24, a space capsule containing a pristine sample of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu entered Earth’s atmosphere wreathed in fire. During a 10 minute descent, the craft used its heat shield to dissipate speed through friction. It safely touched down on a military range in Utah, marking the end of NASA’s seven-year-long Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer—the OSIRIS-REx mission. The roughly 9 ounces of asteroid bits, doused in nitrogen to keep out any contaminants, are now in a clean room.

For more than half a decade, the members of this mission faced multiple technical challenges: building, testing, and launching the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in 2016; rendezvousing with asteroid Bennu in 2018 about 207 million miles from Earth; using a robotic arm to grab half a cup’s worth of Bennu in 2020; and setting a course back to Earth in 2021. 

The scope of the OSIRIS-ReX mission stretches from the distant past into the relatively closer future. Nearly two decades ago, astronomers set out to not only get up close and personal with an ancient asteroid, but actually bring some home. And its scientific observations dip billions of years into the past. Samples from this more than 4.5 billion-year-old asteroid are likely to provide clues to the origin of life itself. It will also help prepare us for a moment, centuries from now, when Bennu could threaten to strike Earth. 

The power of a pristine asteroid 

The OSIRIS-REx sample is a chance to thoroughly examine what compounds may have been present in the early solar system. By bringing pieces of the space rock to Earth, researchers can use the most powerful laboratory techniques available—not just what tools can fit on a spacecraft. 

”It’s tremendously powerful to be able to get something back in the laboratory,” says Jason Dworkin is a biochemist and astrobiologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He’s been the project scientist for OSIRIS-REx since NASA accepted the mission proposal in 2011, and has been involved in the mission’s planning since its conception in 2004. “You can change your mind about what you’re looking for. As new discoveries come in, you can adjust your instrumentation. You can have devices that are not only too large to get on the spacecraft, but for us, even larger than the launch pad.” 

[Related: The asteroid that created Earth’s largest crater may have been way bigger than we thought]

Dworkin has long been interested in the ways interstellar chemistry can shed light on how the early Earth’s organic compounds combined to form life as we know it. It’s possible that material from asteroids, made of similar stuff as Bennu, helped deliver some necessary ingredients when they struck our planet.

We know the strikes happened, Dworkin says, but we don’t know how relevant the “asteroidal input” from objects like Bennu was.

Rapidly recovering the sample

Before scientists like Dworkin can probe the bits of rock for data, they have to get the samples safely into the lab. Sample collection teams—NASA experts and academic mission scientists, US military representatives, and scientists and engineers from Lockheed Martin, which built the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft—have spent the summer practicing to recover the Bennu sample as quickly as possible. 

As the capsule neared Earth’s atmosphere, the recovery teams boarded helicopters, using infrared imaging to track the capsule as it descended. They swiftly arrived to where the capsule came to rest, within a 36-mile by 8.5-mile area of the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range near Salt Lake City. The reason for the haste is to limit the chances that anything Earthly would contaminate the 8.8 ounces of pristine Bennu material. 

To further guard against this, the team recovering the capsule also took samples of soil and material from around the landing site. That way, if scientists detect something “extraordinary,” Dworkin says, “we can make sure that it cannot be explained by contamination or by something else from the environment.”

The capsule, which slowed from 27,650 mph when it entered Earth’s atmosphere to 11 mph when it landed, was taken to a temporary clean room at the military range. There, it will be disassembled and on Monday packaged for a flight to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the space agency has built a specialized clean room environment. This will be Bennu’s home on Earth.

“The sample comes back and is studied by the science team for two years,” Dworkin says. “Within six months, we produce a catalog of what we’ve observed based on how to describe the sample without damaging the sample using non-invasive techniques.”

What an asteroid on Earth can tell us

The science team has 12 major hypotheses and 54 sub-hypotheses to test, according to Dworkin, which fall into four broad categories. 

The first category is testing the observations that OSIRIS-REx made of Bennu while in space. NASA wants to know: If the results of remote instrument measurements of, say, the asteroid’s mineralogy hold up when tested on the ground? If so, this will be a baseline for additional remote studies of other asteroids NASA won’t send a spacecraft to sample. 

The second category, Dworkin’s favorite, is examining what organic compounds might exist in the sample. It may contain amino acids, sugars, and aldehydes. These are potentially some of the same ingredients that were present on Earth when life began. Studying how they exist on Bennu can reveal the chemical changes they’ve undergone over the eons in space. 

The history of the solar system is the third category. This is the tale, told by the sample, of our solar neighborhood: all the way “from the protosolar nebula to the formation of the crater out of which we collected the sample,” Dworkin says. In this view, as Bennu traveled in the frigid space, it was as if material from the solar system’s early days was held in cold storage.

[Related: Local asteroid Bennu used to be filled with tiny rivers]

And the fourth category of study will be analyzing if and how bringing a piece of Bennu home changes the sample. ”We saw images of it before we stowed it; is that the same, or did it change on the reentry into Earth’s atmosphere?” Dworkin says. “Do we have evidence of contamination from the spacecraft, from the sample processing and handling? 

Some of the answers to questions across all four categories could come within months to a few years. But NASA is preparing for the long haul. Today’s scientists will only have immediate access to about a quarter of the sample. The rest will be held in cold storage for decades, on the assumption that later generations will have better tools and more knowledge to bring to bear. 

NASA wants to avoid repeating mistakes the agency made with some of the Apollo-era moon samples, when tests weren’t as conservative with lunar material. “ “That’s arming the future, and making sure that future generations thank us instead of curse us,” Dworkin says.

There’s one final forward-looking aspect to the OSIRIS-REx mission. In the late 22nd century, sometime between 2170 and 2200, Bennu has a slim chance of hitting Earth. It’s “a small percentage, but not nothing,” Dworkin notes. Information gathered by OSIRIS-REx and subsequent sample studies could help scientists and political leaders decide, with decades of preparation, whether they need to take action to deflect Bennu to prevent a disastrous impact. 

”That’s a wonderful feeling to be able to work on a mission for so long, and have it pay off scientifically for the future, and perhaps planetary defense for the future,” Dworkin says. ”That happens when you start thinking about what happened four and a half billion years ago. You start thinking about the future too.”

Back in space, 20 minutes after this mission came to an end, the spacecraft’s new task began: OSIRIS is now headed for the 1,000-foot-wide asteroid Apophis.

This post was updated after the capsule’s successful landing.

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On April 20, the most powerful rocket ever flown stood on a launch pad in Boca Chica, Texas, its stainless steel skin gleaming in the sun. Moments later, rocket and launch pad would become fiery debris. It was the first, disastrous orbital test launch of the SpaceX Starship.

Within seconds of launching, the rocket’s ferocious thrust shattered the concrete pad at SpaceX’s Texas Starbase facility, sending debris flying as far as Port Isabel, a city six miles away. The rocket caught fire. Less than four minutes after launch, it began to tumble across the sky, and then it exploded.

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded Starship, pending an investigation into the explosion, but the rocket may soon fly again. On September 8, the FAA closed its inquiry, citing 63 corrective actions SpaceX would need to take before its second attempt to send Starship to orbit. 

“The FAA has approval authority on all commercial launches, and so they are the ones who grant companies launch licenses,” says Wendy Whitman Cobb, a space policy expert and instructor at the US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. “Any time something blows up, they want to know why. Because they want to make sure that it’s safe not only to go up, but that it’s not going to harm anybody on the ground.”

SpaceX will have to demonstrate to the FAA that the company has successfully completed those 63 corrective actions and then apply for a modified launch license. “Once that is granted, they theoretically can go up whenever they want,” Whitman Cobb says. Neither FAA nor SpaceX have publicly said what those fixes are. But the actions presumably address the failures of the April launch.

There’s a lot riding on Starship’s success. It’s key to expanding SpaceX’s launch and Starlink satellite businesses. NASA plans to return humans to the moon in 2025 with a modified Starship as the lunar landing vehicle on the Artemis III mission. If SpaceX can fix the problems—and Whitman Cobb and other experts believe that’s likely—the company may put its rocket program and NASA’s moon program back on track. This investigation might also provide insights into launch pad construction that could one day help astronauts traveling to and from the moon. 

Failures to launch

Starship, despite not yet reaching orbit, holds the title for most powerful rocket ever launched—a superlative it took from the Soviet N1 rocket. Meant to power Soviet cosmonauts to the moon, the N1 first stage produced 10.2 million pounds of thrust. Starship has two stages in its “stack;” the first stage alone, the Super Heavy Booster, produces 16.7 million pounds of thrust. 

That record-breaking power is why it was bizarre that SpaceX chose to launch Starship from a concrete launch pad without features such as flame trenches. Those grooves are designed to divert a rocket’s plume away from the pad and the vehicle itself. SpaceX could have also used a water deluge system to flood the pad to help mitigate the rocket engines’ heat and acoustic shockwaves. 

[Related: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launches have been a slow burn—for an interesting reason]

“You would never normally launch a rocket with that much thrust without having a better designed active mitigation of the plume in the launch environment. Because you worry about the heat and the dynamic forces of the plume breaking materials and creating ejecta,” says University of Central Florida physicist Philip Metzger. ”If the ejecta had hit the launch vehicle in a way that caused the rocket to explode while it was still near the tower, it could have destroyed a lot of infrastructure that would have taken a very long time to rebuild.”

As it was, the April launch blew the launch pad apart and dug a crater “about as deep as a house,” he says. 

Lessons for the moon

Metzger has been studying the Starship launch and is currently writing a paper about the results. He wants to understand what went wrong—because the way things failed is important for the design of future rockets and landing pads on the moon or other celestial bodies. 

Most concepts for a lunar landing pad simply use flat concrete. “There’s no flame diverter, no flame trench, no water,” Metzger says. “I decided just because of the pure fun of solving the physics, and also because of what we might learn about lunar landing pads, that I was going to take this seriously.”

What he found was that chunks of concrete from the Boca Chica pad were flung away at more than 200 miles per hour. A cloud of hot water vapor and carbon dioxide, created by Starship’s methane- and liquid oxygen-burning Raptor engines, heaved sand skyward and carried it to Port Isobel. Metgzer realized the process must have been similar to the way pressure builds in a volcano before an eruption. 

“The only explanation we could come up with was that the landing pad cracked and the high pressure of the thrust drove gas through the cracks,” he says. This increased pressure beneath the pad until it erupted. Lunar landing pads must be designed to avoid this problem, he says, by adding vents for gases to escape or by constructing stronger pads that resist fracture. 

[Related: DOJ is suing SpaceX for years of workplace discrimination]

That could be difficult on the moon, where heavy construction will be hindered by a lack of resources, machinery, and an atmosphere. But on Earth, SpaceX may have a solution—a steel plate that is actively cooled with water to keep it from melting during a rocket launch. 

”That’s really a great idea,” Metzger says. “If their engineers did it correctly, it should be a complete solution to the problem.”

As for keeping the next Starship from blowing up in the sky, SpaceX says it found that leaked fuel had ignited inside the Super Heavy Booster. The resulting fires cut the booster off from the computer guiding its flight, which caused the rocket to tumble and then explode, according to an update on its website. The company has “significantly expanded Super Heavy’s pre-existing fire suppression system in order to mitigate against future engine bay fires,” the company says. 

Next moves

While neither the FAA nor SpaceX have said where the two are in the process, SpaceX Founder Elon Musk has suggested that his company has completed the corrective tasks, tweeting on September 5, before the FAA announcement, that ”Starship is ready to launch, awaiting FAA license approval.”

If the ball is truly in the FAA’s court and the regulator is simply reviewing the work SpaceX has done, “I don’t think it will take more than a few weeks,” Whitman Cobbs says. “That would be my best guess.” If that’s the case, she notes, then SpaceX and the FAA have moved with exceptional speed to get Starship ready for another launch attempt. Whitman Cobb contrasted SpaceX with its competitor Blue Origin, whose New Shepard rocket remains grounded more than a year after a failed launch on September 12, 2022. Blue Origin is “still in the FAA investigation mode, and have not been able to launch,” she says. “They’ve yet to apply for a modified launch license.”

Rapidly reworking Starship and its launch pad, though, doesn’t guarantee the next launch attempt will go flawlessly. But Whitman Cobb notes that SpaceX has been more willing than NASA or other rocket makers to test new spacecraft, watch them fail, and rapidly make changes. The eighth Starship prototype was destroyed in a fiery belly flop during a high-altitude test in December 2020, for instance, but the company pressed on. 

“Given the ability of SpaceX to succeed and prove its critics wrong in the past few years, I have no evidence to believe they wouldn’t be able to make this work,” she says. 

Metzger also notes that the person in charge of getting Starship ready to fly again is William Gerstenmaier, who, before joining SpaceX in 2020, was the former associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA. “Gerstenmaier is a legend in the space community,” Metzger says. ”It’s in really good hands. I don’t know if there’s anybody better in the world than Bill Gerstenmaier to manage that sort of a project.”

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Rocket ignitions are always impressive, but they’re not the easiest to look at with the naked eye for pretty obvious reasons—you can’t be anywhere near their incinerating temperatures, and their brightness is generally blinding. Thanks to popular YouTubers’ high-speed video capabilities, however, curious minds can take a look at a recent test firing to see the complex, beautiful, and perhaps terrifying ignition in action.

The new footage comes courtesy of The Slow Mo Guys, a team of videographers specializing in… well, you can connect the dots. The YouTubers were given a front row seat at a test ignition for one of Firefly Aerospace’s Reaver engines, but unlike previous excursions, this project required quite a bit of preplanning. First off, The Slow Mo Guys only had one chance to nab the shot, since rockets traditionally use up huge amounts of fuel and resources—a single SpaceX Falcon9 rocket, for example, uses tens of thousands of gallons of kerosene and liquid oxygen. 

That single attempt also needed to be positioned, rigged, and timed to begin filming at enough of a distance that wouldn’t injure anything, or anyone. According to Slow Mo Guy Gav Free, a special enclosure capable of withstanding the intense heat and vibrations needed to house their slow-motion camera, while also calibrating the equipment to handle the explosion’s brightness. In the end, Free and his companions settled on exposing their film well over 40 percent darker than usual to account for the luminosity.

All that prep work definitely paid off, judging from the footage. At 2,000 frames-per-second (80 times slower than real time), viewers may be surprised to see an initial, bright green flame. This is produced as a rocket fuel mixture called triethylaluminium-triethylborane (TEA-TEB) combusts upon coming into contact with oxygen and air. After the initial green burst comes the yellow and orange flames—but with such a slow framerate, you can actually see those flames responding to the shockwaves generated by the engine thrust. According to Free, a rocket engine can generate upwards of 45,000 lbs of thrust in a vacuum at temperatures as high as 5,500 F.

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On October 14, the moon will cruise between Earth and the sun during an annular solar eclipse, casting an immense shadow on our planet. It will be a sight to behold, though you’ll want to wear protective glasses or glimpse it indirectly to avoid frying your eyeballs. Unlike 2017’s total eclipse, the sun won’t vanish completely; instead, the moon will be positioned far enough from our planet to leave the star’s brilliant edges visible. The result is a “ring of fire,” as though the moon has been outlined with a blowtorch. Every continental state will have at least a partial view of this event, but spotting this celestial circle could be well worth the travel. 

The eclipse’s 125-mile-wide path of annularity begins in the US in Oregon at 12:13 p.m. Eastern (9:13 a.m. Pacific). It will loom over the country until it leaves Texas at 1:03 p.m. (12:03 Central), continuing its southeastward journey to Central and South America. The best viewing conditions will be in places with low fog and high aridity, like Nevada and Utah, the two driest states in the country. “The place with the lowest chance of cloud cover is Albuquerque, New Mexico—but most of the path of annularity looks pretty good,” says University of Texas at San Antonio astrophysics professor Angela Speck, who co-chairs the American Astronomical Society’s Solar Eclipse Task Force.  

Oregon

The first US national park that the eclipse will pass over is Crater Lake, where water has filled a collapsed volcano, Mount Mazama. All of the park is in the annularity’s path, so prepare for crowds as well as limited parking and lodging.

Other Oregon parks in the path:
Shore Acres State Park

[Related: We’ve been predicting eclipses for over 2,000 years. Here’s how.]

California

Bat-filled caves, battlefields, and basaltic flows make up Lava Beds National Monument, a desert landscape that is the product of thousands of years of volcanic activity. Only the northeast sliver of this California park is directly in the annularity’s path, but the section just outside it may be a good vantage for another fascinating feature of the eclipse: Baily’s beads, short-lived bright dots caused when sunbeams stream through the crags and valleys of the lunar surface.

Nevada

The southern edge of the US path of annularity cuts through Great Basin National Park, where park staff will be available to guide viewers, according to the National Park Service. The agency also notes that, while the park tends to be less busy in October, eclipse watchers should be prepared for the event to bring out crowds.

Utah

Parsons-Bernstein ordered 20,000 eclipse glasses that will be distributed across Utah’s state parks on a first come, first serve basis. “In the entire state, there’s no less than 83 percent view of the annularity,” she says. But several areas are “dead-on 100 percent,” including 13 parks that are directly in the eclipse’s path. One of those is Goblin Valley State Park, which boasts rocky scenery so otherworldly that the movie Galaxy Quest used it as an alien planet.

Other Utah parks in the path:
Bryce Canyon National Park
Capitol Reef National Park
Canyonlands National Park
Escalante Petrified Forest State Park
Glen Canyon National Recreation Area
Goosenecks State Park
Kodachrome Basin State Park
Hovenweep National Monument
Natural Bridges National Monument
Rainbow Bridge National Monument
Territorial Statehouse State Park Museum

Arizona 

The moon’s shadow will zip into Arizona at speeds of around 3,150 mph, slowing to 2,626 mph as it leaves. It will pass through Navajo National Monument, where, for hundreds of years, Hopi, Navajo, and other Native Americans lived in the canyons. However, visitors to the Hopi Reservation and Navajo Nation should be aware that, in some traditions, eclipses are sacred times to pray or meditate indoors. 

Other Arizona parks in the path:
Canyon De Chelly National Monument

[Related: 7 US parks where you can get stunning nightsky views]

Colorado

Celebrating its remarkable Ancestral Pueblo cliff settlements, Mesa Verde National Park became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. Go for the eclipse, but stick around after nightfall on campgrounds and scenic overlooks: The park has one of the darkest skies in the continental US, and boasts stellar views of the Milky Way.

Other Colorado parks in the path:
Yucca House National Monument

New Mexico

The Manhattan Project National Historical Park at Los Alamos was once the secret city where physicists developed the atomic bomb. Now, certain areas are open to the public (many of the buildings are within an area secured by the Energy Department that’s only occasionally available by guided tour). But hikers can take the trail loop on Kwage Mesa, which will offer views of the annularity.

Other New Mexico parks in the path:
Aztec Ruins National Monument
Bandelier National Monument
Chaco Culture National Historical Park
Pecos National Historical Park
Petroglyph National Monument
Rio Grande Nature Center State Park
Salinas Pueblo Mission National Monument
Valles Caldera National Preserve

Texas

As the eclipse falls over the Lone Star State, it will darken 17 state parks as well as San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. Just after noon, it will depart the US for the Gulf of Mexico, but not before touching one last bit of public American land: the Padre Island National Seashore, which is just a quick drive from Corpus Christi and famous for its unique, biodiverse mudflats.

Other Texas parks in the path:
Big Spring State Park
Choke Canyon State Park
Goose Island State Park
Kickapoo Cavern State Park
Lake Corpus Christi State Park
Mustang Island State Park

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An unexpected and astonishing find located more than 2.5 million light-years from Earth took top honors at the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year awards this week. Amateur astronomers Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner, and Yann Sainty captured an image of a massive plasma arc near the Andromeda Galaxy, a discovery that has resulted in scientists looking closer into the giant gas cloud.

“This astrophoto is as spectacular as [it is] valuable,” judge and astrophotographer László Francsics said in a press release. “It not only presents Andromeda in a new way, but also raises the quality of astrophotography to a higher level.”

[Related: How to get a great nightsky shot]

While “Andromeda, Unexpected” captured the prestigious overall winner title, other category winners also dazzled with photos of dancing auroras, neon sprites raining down from the night’s sky, and stunning far-off nebulas that might make you feel like a tiny earthling floating through space.

Sit back and scroll in awe at all the category winners, runners-up, and highly commended images from the 2023 Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year honorees.

Galaxy

Overall winner: Andromeda, Unexpected

Runner-Up: The Eyes Galaxies

Highly Commended: Neighbors

Aurora

Winner: Brushstroke

Runner-up: Circle of Light

Highly Commended: Fire on the Horizon

Our Moon

Winner: Mars-Set

Runner-Up: Sundown on the Terminator

Highly Commended: Last Full Moon of the Year Featuring a Colourful Corona During a Close Encounter with Mars

Our Sun

Winner: A Sun Question

Runner-Up: Dark Star

Highly Commended: The Great Solar Flare 

People & Space

Winner: Zeila

Runner-Up: A Visit to Tycho

Highly Commended: Close Encounters of The Haslingden Kind

Planets, Comets & Asteroids

Winner: Suspended in a Sunbeam

Runner-Up: Jupiter Close to Opposition

Highly Commended: Uranus with Umbriel, Ariel, Miranda, Oberon and Titania

Skyscapes

Winner: Grand Cosmic Fireworks

Runner-Up: Celestial Equator Above First World War Trench Memorial

Highly Commended: Noctilucent Night

Stars & Nebulae

Winner: New Class of Galactic Nebulae Around the Star YY Hya

Runner-Up: LDN 1448 et al.

Highly Commended: The Dark Wolf – Fenrir

The Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer

Winner: Sh2-132: Blinded by the Light

Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year

Winner: The Running Chicken Nebula

Runner-Up: Blue Spirit Drifting in the Clouds

Highly Commended: Lunar Occultation of Mars

Highly Commended: Roses Blooming in the Dark: NGC 2337

Highly Commended: Moon at Nightfall

Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation

Winner: Black Echo

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This post has been updated.

A new NASA-commissioned independent study report recommends leveraging NASA’s expertise and public trust alongside artificial intelligence to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) on Earth. As such, today NASA Director Bill Nelson announced the appointment of a NASA Director of UAP Research to develop and oversee implementation of investigation efforts.

“The director of UAP Research is a pivotal addition to NASA’s team and will provide leadership, guidance and operational coordination for the agency and the federal government to use as a pipeline to help identify the seemingly unidentifiable,” Nicola Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, said in a release.

Although NASA officials repeated multiple times that the study found no evidence of extraterrestrial origin, they conceded they still “do not know” the explanation behind at least some of the documented UAP sightings. Nelson stressed the agency’s aim to begin minimizing public stigma surrounding UAP events, and begin shifting the subject “from sensationalism to science.” In keeping with this strategy, the panel report relied solely on unclassified and open source UAP data to ensure all findings could be shared openly and freely with the public.

[Related: Is the truth out there? Decoding the Pentagon’s latest UFO report.]

“We don’t know what these UAP are, but we’re going to find out,” Nelson said at one point. “You bet your boots.”

According to today’s public announcement, the study team additionally recommends NASA utilize its “open-source resources, extensive technological expertise, data analysis techniques, federal and commercial partnerships, and Earth-observing assets to curate a better and robust dataset for understanding future UAP.”

Composed of 16 community experts across various disciplines, the UAP study team was first announced in June of last year, and began work on their study in October. In May 2023, representatives from the study team expressed frustration with the fragmentary nature of available UAP data.

“The current data collection efforts regarding UAPs are unsystematic and fragmented across various agencies, often using instruments uncalibrated for scientific data collection,” study chair David Spergel, an astrophysicist and president of the nonprofit science organization the Simons Foundation, said at the time. “Existing data and eyewitness reports alone are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence about the nature and origin of every UAP event.”

Today’s report notes that although AI and machine learning tools have become “essential tools” in identifying rare occurrences and outliers within vast datasets, “UAP analysis is more limited by the quality of data than by the availability of techniques.” After reviewing neural network usages in astronomy, particle physics, and other sciences, the panel determined that the same techniques could be adapted to UAP research—but only if datasets’ quality is both improved and codified. Encouraging the development of rigorous data collection standards and methodologies will be crucial to ensuring reliable, evidence-based UAP analysis.

[Related: You didn’t see a UFO. It was probably one of these things.]

Although no evidence suggests extraterrestrial intelligence is behind documented UAP sightings, “Do I believe there is life in the universe?” Nelson asked during NASA’s press conference. “My personal opinion is, yes.”

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What’s it like to spend a whole year in space? In just a matter of days, US astronaut Frank Rubio will be able to tell the tale. On Wednesday, he broke the record for the longest space mission taken by a US astronaut by spending 355 days in low orbit. He and his fellow Expedition 69 crew members are awaiting three new members that will arrive at the end of the week, according to NASA. 

The seven Expedition 69 members are actually a mashup of two groups, one of which, including Rubio, has been onboard for nearly a year. A Russian Soyuz capsule isn’t expected to return him and his crewmates back to Earth until September 27—meaning his full space trip will hit 371 days. This return date was rescheduled from an original March 2023 timeline so Russia could prepare the vehicle, according to CNN.

When leaving for the International Space Station, Rubio was only expected to spend six months up there. When the Russian Soyuz capsule holding him sprang a coolant leak back in December, the Russian space agency ruled that the craft wasn’t safe enough to bring Rubio and his colleagues back. In March, it made a solo trip back home, while in February a new Soyuz capsule made its way to the ISS. 

[Related: “How Russia’s war in Ukraine almost derailed Europe’s Mars rover” ]

“Rubio’s journey in space embodies the essence of exploration,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a social media statement on Monday, adding that Rubio’s dedication to space research paves the way for future endeavors by a new generation of astronauts. 

While Rubio’s feat beats out previous records set by retired NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei in 2022 and Scott Kelly in 2015-2016, Russia still holds the record for longest trip to space. Between January 1994 and March 1995, astronaut Valeri Polyakov spent 437 continuous days in orbit. Another Russian astronaut, Gennadi Padalka, set the record of most cumulative days in space—879—over the course of five different flights in 2015.

This adventure certainly wasn’t planned, but Rubio is taking it in stride. “I think this [duration] is really significant, in the sense that it teaches us that the human body can endure, it can adapt and—as we prepare to push back to the moon and then from there, onward onto hopefully Mars and further on into the solar system—I think it’s really important that we learn just how the human body learns to adapt, and how we can optimize that process so that we can improve our performance as we explore further and further out from Earth,” he said in a recent interview with ABC’s Good Morning America.

At 11 AM Tuesday, NASA broadcasted a pre-recorded “space-to-ground” chat between Rubio and Vande Hei, during which Rubio acknowledged his family. “They’ve been a key component, as much as I appreciate the team and how critical the entire human space flight team has been to this, really my family has been the cornerstone that’s inspired me to keep somewhat of a good attitude as I’ve been up here,” he adds. “Having [family] made it so much easier to be up here, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

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Space tourism is already becoming so commonplace that Virgin Galactic’s second private astronaut flight on September 8 went off without much fanfare. And although a brief press announcement only announced the names of its three-man passenger list after the trip, the recap didn’t mention Galactic 03’s historic “first” cargo—fossilized bones from two of humanity’s closest ancestors.

According to Tim Nash’s Virgin Galactic biography, the “entrepreneur, adventurer, conservationist and member of the Hubbard Council of The National Geographic Society,” carried with him the clavicle of a nearly 2-million-year-old Australopithecus sediba, as well as a roughly 250,000-year-old thumb bone from Homo naledi. Both hominid remains were previously discovered within the Cradle of Humankind UNESCO World Heritage Site outside Johannesburg, South Africa—sebedi is considered one of the potential candidates that presaged humanity’s Homo genus.

The initiative’s organizers, including researchers at the University of Witwatersrand, Johnnesburg, intended the gesture to represent “humankind’s appreciation of the contribution of all of humanity’s ancestors and our ancient relatives,” said Lee Berger, a National Geographic Explorer in Residence, Carnegie Fellow and Director of the Centre for the Exploration of the Deep Human Journey. “Without their invention of technologies such as fire and tools, and their contribution to the evolution of the contemporary human mind, such extraordinary endeavors as spaceflight would not have happened.”

[Related: Virgin Galactic’s second commercial flight sent three tourists to space’s edge.]

Berger’s son, Matthew, discovered the sebida clavicle in 2008 when he was 9 years old during an expedition alongside his father within the Cradle of Humankind heritage site. Matthew Berger traveled last week to Virgin Galactic’s Spaceport America in New Mexico to hand deliver the bones to Nash, a conservationist involved with human origins research. Caretakers stored both bone fragments within a carbon fiber container prior to their suborbital excursion.

“These fossils represent individuals who lived and died hundreds of thousands of years ago, yet were individuals who likely gazed up at the stars in wonder, much as we do,” Berger said in a September 8 statement via the University of Witwatersrand.

“The magnitude of being among the first civilians going into space, and carrying these precious fossils, has taken a while to sink in, during all of the preparations for the flight,” Nash said via the University of Witwatersrand statement, “But I am humbled and honored to represent South Africa and all of humankind, as I carry these precious representations of our collective ancestors, on this first journey of our ancient relatives into space.”

Nash, alongside Las Vegas real estate entrepreneur Ken Baxter and British engineer and racecar company founder Adrian Reynald, purchased their Virgin Galactic seats as far back as 2004 from company founder and multibillionaire Richard Branson. Tickets for the few minutes’ worth of suborbital weightlessness alongside views of the Earth’s curvature reportedly cost between $250,000 and $450,000.

“We sincerely hope it brings further awareness of the importance of our country and the African continent to understanding the journey of humankind that has led to this historic moment where commercial spaceflight is possible,” says Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site CEO Matthew Sathekge said via University of Witwatersrand’s announcement.

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Our understanding of the solar system is a work in progress. Pluto’s demotion to a dwarf planet was just one of many revisions—in recent decades astronomers have cataloged new dwarfs, like far-off Eris, and spotted more moons around our gas giant neighbors. And now some researchers think there’s evidence for a new planet hiding beyond Neptune.

Two astronomers in Japan, Patryk Sofia Lykawka and Takashi Ito, claim there is a planet a little larger than Earth lurking in the Kuiper belt, the ring of icy debris where Pluto also resides, as they published last week in The Astronomical Journal. The pair hasn’t seen this world directly, but their computer models show that such a planet could explain the wonky observed orbits of other Kuiper belt objects.

The disturbance in this belt “predicts the existence” of an undiscovered planet with 1.5 to 3 times the mass of Earth, says lead author Lykawka, an astronomer at Japan’s Kindai University. “The solar system would officially have nine planets again.”

[Related: There might be an ice giant planet hiding in our solar system]

The Kuiper belt is somewhat similar to the asteroid belt: It contains small bits of rock and ice, all leftovers from the violent process of making planets. A few objects there have strange orbits, where their paths around the sun are extremely tilted or elongated (more egg-shaped than circular like Earth’s orbit). These weird orbits suggest that something massive must be pushing them around, tugged by  its gravity—something as big as an  undiscovered planet.

“It may be that this planet will be uncovered even in the next few years, if it exists on a relatively nearby orbit,” says Yale astronomer Malena Rice, who wasn’t involved in the new work.

Lykawka and Ito’s simulations show that a planet could explain the oddities in the Kuiper belt. The world, which they referred to as the Kuiper Belt Planet (KBP), would be located about 6 to 12 times further from the sun than even distant Neptune. The KBP’s orbit would also have to be tilted from the plane of the solar system by about 30 degrees, which is pretty weird. Dwarf planet Pluto sticks out because it’s off-kilter compared to the eight major planets—and its orbit is only tilted by about 17 degrees.

This bizarre and distant Earth-like planet, though, isn’t the first hidden world to be proposed. In 2016, astronomers from Caltech claimed to have evidence for a super-Earth, referred to as Planet 9 or Planet X, even farther out in the solar system. Those researchers also proposed Planet 9 as a way to explain the quirks of the Kuiper Belt; it caused quite a stir among scientists, who debated for years whether those idiosyncrasies were real or just the result of flawed observations.

Lykawka claims that the KBP hypothesis is superior to Planet 9 because it relies on other observations that haven’t caused as much dispute. “We demonstrated that a hypothetical Earth-like planet located in the far outer solar system could explain several properties of the distant Kuiper Belt and be compatible with observations simultaneously,” he says. “The Planet 9 model has yet to demonstrate that.” 

Yet other researchers don’t think the KBP is necessary. Konstantin Batygin, an astronomer at Caltech who was part of the initial Planet 9 research, agrees that there are oddities in the Kuiper belt that have to be explained by some sort of additional object beyond Neptune. “However, all of this has been understood for quite some time within the framework of the Planet 9 model,” he says, questioning the need for this new work, whose predictions for a hidden planet overlap substantially with the existing Planet 9 hypothesis. 

[Related: What will we name the solar system’s next planet?]

Batygin’s model suggests Planet 9 is somewhat bigger and farther: about five to six times the mass of Earth at 500 astronomical units (AU) away from the sun. Meanwhile, the KBP would be between 200 and 500 AU from the sun. (These are extreme distances—1 AU is equal to the gap between Earth and the sun.) Planet 9 would have an odd tilt to its orbit, to, of 20 degrees.

But we won’t know for sure if there’s a hidden planet, whether it looks like Planet 9 or the KBP, until astronomers actually pinpoint it in the night sky. Astronomers have been looking for Planet 9 for years, and that hunt includes some regions where the newly-proposed planet could be. “Those searches are still ongoing,” Rice says. “It’s incredible just how much parameter space remains to be searched in the outer solar system where hidden planets could be lurking.”

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If all goes according to plan, a tennis ball-sized robot modeled after a children’s toy will soon briefly explore the moon’s surface as part of Japan’s first soft lunar landing. As recently highlighted by Space.com, the Japanese space agency, JAXA, is currently overseeing its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) probe mission, which launched on September 6 alongside the country’s XRISM X-ray satellite payload. Unlike more powerful launches, it will take less than 9-foot-wide SLIM between three and four months to reach lunar orbit, after which it will survey the roughly 1000-foot-wide Shioli Crater landing site from afar for about another month.

Afterwards, however, the lander will descend towards the moon, and deploy the Lunar Excursion Vehicle 2 (LEV-2) once it reaches around six-feet above the surface. The probe’s sphere-shaped casing will then divide into two halves on either side of a small camera system. From there, LEV-2 will begin hobbling atop the SLIM landing site and surrounding area for around two hours, until its battery reserve is depleted.

[Related: India’s successful moon landing makes lunar history.]

Per JAXA’s description, LEV-2 was developed by its Space Exploration Innovation Hub Center associate senior researcher Hirano Daichi. Daichi collaborated with a team from Doshisha University as well as the toy manufacturer TOMY to create the tiny space explorer. Meanwhile, Sony provided the two cameras that will survey the moon. According to Daichi, the team turned to children’s toys for their “robust and safe design… which reduced the number of components used in the vehicle as much as possible and increased its reliability.”

“This robot was developed successfully within the limited size and mass using the downsizing and weight reduction technologies and the shape changing mechanism developed for toys by TOMY,” continued Daichi.

If successful, JAXA engineers hope the soft lunar landing method can be adapted to larger craft in the future, including those piloted by human astronauts. “By creating the SLIM lander humans will make a qualitative shift towards being able to land where we want and not just where it is easy to land, as had been the case before,” reads JAXA’s project description. “By achieving this, it will become possible to land on planets even more resource scarce than the moon.”

Beyond just this project, it’s been an active time for lunar exploration. In August, India completed the first successful lunar landing at the moon’s south pole via its Chandrayaan-3 probe. Last year, NASA’s Artemis-1 rocket also kickstarted the space agency’s long standing goal towards establishing a permanent moon base.

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UFOs were, for decades, the stuff of science fiction and conspiracy theory circles. But the highest levels of the US government have started seriously considering these phenomena—redubbing them Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, or UAPs. There have been hearings on Capitol Hill, Pentagon reports, and a NASA working group, all looking into more than 100 currently unexplained UAP sightings, often made by military pilots who caught something unfathomable on their sensors. And plenty of civilians see things they don’t know how to explain, either. 

Even if UAPs have gone mainstream, the vast majority of human sightings turn out to be perfectly explicable, though occasionally rare, phenomena. And Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, hears about them all. 

“I get a lot of social media questions and emails, and occasionally cold calls from random people who have seen something weird in the sky,” McDowell says. Around 90 percent of the conversations, he says, go something like this: ‘Is this space debris, Jonathan?’ No, it’s just a meteor, because it blew up in only two seconds. Or: ‘Is this a UFO?’ No, it’s a Falcon 9 [rocket] launch. ‘Is this aliens?’ Well, that depends on where you think Elon comes from.”

But it’s rarely ignorance or credulity that leads people to mistake a rocket launch or an aircraft for a UAP. Instead, it’s just how human perception works.

“Our ability to estimate how far away something is sucks when it’s not in a context where we have the usual clues,” McDowell says. A close-by insect moving in a peculiar way might be confused for something much farther. Or a shining light might appear close—when it’s actually Venus, 35 million miles or so away. 

[Related: UFO research is stigmatized. NASA wants to change that.]

Even professionals can be fooled. Every once in a while, a satellite or spacecraft gets temporarily mistaken as a new asteroid. “If you have a spacecraft in a very high orbit around the Earth, the rate at which it’s moving across the sky is actually similar to an asteroid moving in orbit around the sun,” McDowell says. “There have been multiple cases where an object has been picked up by the asteroid surveys, given a temporary asteroid designation, and then it’s maneuvered. And we go, ‘Oh, that’s probably not an asteroid.’”

When it comes to the general public spotting what they think are UAPS, McDowell finds they usually turn out to be phenomena in three main categories: Rocket launches, spacecraft, and celestial objects. 

Rocket launches

If you’ve ever watched a rocket launch, in person or through a video, you can see a contrail as the craft shoots from the launchpad to the heavens. But once a rocket reaches space, its exhaust can lose that familiar linear shape, creating seemingly otherworldly sights under the right conditions.

The first weird thing rockets can create occurs about two minutes after launch, when they finally get above most of Earth’s atmosphere. No longer contained by thick air, the exhaust plume might spread out over hundreds of miles, according to McDowell, producing some bizarre forms that almost look oceanic. “Those are often described as jellyfish,” he says. “People are much less able to sort of recognize those as being rocket plumes and those often get reported as UFOs.”

Another type of rocket launch weirdness happens when rockets shut down and restart in space. This might be to change an orbit, or when a rocket vents its leftover propellant after delivering its payload. 

“You’ve got this big cloud of gas that then gets ejected from the rocket and forms ice crystals that reflect the sunlight,” McDowell says, ”so you get these big kind of comet-like clouds” moving through the sky. Even professional astronomers have been tricked by rocket fuel dumps, who reported them to the International Astronomical Union as new comet sightings. 

But the most striking rocket trail phenomenon are the striking, spiraling geometric patterns in the sky, such as those that appeared over Norway in 2009. At first glance, it is utterly unnatural. You might think it’s “a Stargate wormhole opening up in space and the aliens are invading,” McDowell says. But as weird as they look, the spirals are no portals. Instead, it’s the result of a spinning or tumbling rocket, which releases contrails “like a garden sprinkler.” In the case of the Norwegian spiral, it was actually a Russian military rocket maneuvering above Earth’s atmosphere. 

If you want to hunt down a bizarre rocket-exhaust plume for yourself, it’s important to realize the strange sights hinge on the relative position of the exhaust, the sun, and the observer: You’re most likely to catch one around dawn or dusk, when it’s dark for you on the ground, but the high-altitude rocket exhaust can catch the sun rays.

Spacecraft and satellites

There’s another category of artificial space objects that we commonly mistake for UAPs: Starlink satellite trains, which, in McDowell’s experience, “really freak people out.” 

SpaceX began launching its Starlink satellites in 2019, lofting between 22 and 60 of them at a time to provide broadband internet. As of September 2023, there are more than 4,700 Starlink satellites in orbit, according to McDowell’s personal satellite tracking website. It takes a couple of weeks after launch for Starlink satellites to fully separate from each other and move into their operational orbits at around 340 miles altitude. In their early days of flight, they can catch the sun and produce a bizarre geometric pattern in the sky—a long, bright straight line. 

“They march across the sky in this line, like little kids in the crocodile coming home from school,” McDowell says (using the British expression for pairs of kids in a line). “They’re close enough together that you can’t see them as separate dots. Even if you see them separately, to have them marching in lockstep across the sky as 20 different objects, that definitely looks like an alien invasion to your gut.”

To catch Starlink or other satellites as they fly overhead, McDowell recommends using the website heavens-above.com. “It tells you what time the satellite is going to go over, and if you click on the time, it gives you a nice star chart showing the path of that satellite across the sky, as seen from your location,” he says. The website doesn’t show Starlink satellites by default, because they’re so  numerous but you can click a link to see the Starlink constellation.

[Related: How scientists decide if they’ve actually found signals of alien life]

The reentry of satellites, spacecraft, or space debris can also look pretty weird, too. It might not be easy to tell what’s happening, though. “That’s where it gets tricky because if you see bright stuff overhead in the sky breaking up, that can be one of two things,” McDowell says. “It can be a natural meteor, or it can be a reentering piece of space debris.”

They key distinction, he says, is that meteors shoot across the sky fairly quickly, then vanish. A deorbiting satellite or other debris will have multiple pieces that cross the sky as it breaks up over time. 

There is a particular type of reentry that is sometimes mistaken for UAPs or natural meteors—the return of a spacecraft like the SpaceX Crew Dragon. “That looks more like a fireball, like a natural meteor, except that it lasts much longer,” McDowell says. “And if it’s breaking up, that’s really bad news.”

Celestial objects 

The last type of thing McDowell commonly hears about being mistaken for UAPs are natural objects that are very, very far away—Venus, for instance. He estimates, before dash cams and cell phones started picking up meteors, space debris and the like, the planet caused about half of all UFO reports. “Venus is the classic UFO.”

When very faint, high clouds move at night, this foreground motion can trick human perception. The result is the sense that a bright light—in this case, the planet—is traveling across the sky, when in fact it’s only the clouds. 

Comets also sometimes trigger UAP questions, McDowell says. The Comet Nishimura, which makes its closest approach to Earth on September 12, could turn some heads, if it becomes bright enough to be visible to the naked eye. 

“People aren’t used to seeing comets, so if they haven’t heard in the news there’s a bright comet around, they might think that’s a UFO,” he says. 

As quick as people are to label many different sights in the sky as UAPs, McDowell notes there’s one common object in the night sky he rarely hears about: The International Space Station.

“I think it’s just that the number of times the ISS is passing over you is comparatively rare, maybe,” he says. “People don’t seem to worry about that as much for some reason.”

If you would like to catch the ISS or China’s Tiangong space station as they zoom overhead, heavens-above.com can also help you plot their course over your location so you can look up at the right time, according to McDowell. For the planets or other celestial objects, he recommends the interactive sky charts at skyandtelescope.org. 

“You can put in your position and the time of the night that it is and you get a map of the sky tuned for your experience,” he says. “You can see where the bright planets are relative to constellations.” 

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Just in time for spooky season, astronomers have detected a dark and hungry space monster. The newly spotted black hole named Swift J0230 is gradually eating huge chunks of a star that is very much like our own sun. Every time this star passes close to Swift J0230, it loses the equivalent mass of three Earths. The findings are described in a study published September 7 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

[Related: Astronomers used dead stars to detect a new form of ripple in space-time.]

A bright X-ray flash that seemed to come from the center of a nearby galaxy called 2MASX J02301709+2836050 first alerted a team of astronomers from the University of Leicester. This galaxy is about 500 million light-years away from the Milky Way and the black hole Swift J0230 was officially spotted via a new tool developed by the scientists at NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. 

The team scheduled more observations of this black hole and found that instead of decaying away as they expected, it would shine brightly for 7 to 10 days before abruptly switching off and repeating this process about every 25 days.

“Given that we found Swift J0230 within a few months of enabling our new transient-hunting tool, we expect that there are a lot more objects like this out there, waiting to be uncovered,” study co-author and University of Leicester astrophysicist Kim Page said in a statement. 

According to the team, similar behavior has been observed in quasi-periodic eruptions and periodic nuclear transients. This is where a star has its material ripped away by a black hole as it is orbiting close by. However, black holes can differ in how often they erupt and whether the eruption is predominantly in X-rays or optical light. The regularity of Swift J0230’s emissions fell somewhere between these two types of outbursts, suggesting that it could form the ‘missing link’ between them.

“This is the first time we’ve seen a star like our sun being repeatedly shredded and consumed by a low mass black hole,” study co-author and University of Leicester astronomer Phil Evans said in a statement. “So-called ‘repeated, partial tidal disruption’ events are themselves quite a new discovery and seem to fall into two types: those that outburst every few hours, and those that outburst every year or so. This new system falls right into the gap between these, and when you run the numbers, you find the types of objects involved fall nicely into place too.”

For the study, the team used models proposed for these two classes of events as a guide. They concluded that Swift J0230’s outbursts represent that a sun-sized star is in an elliptical orbit around a low-mass black hole smack in the center of its galaxy. As this star’s orbit takes it closer to the intense gravitational pull of the black hole, the material equivalent to the mass of three Earths is sucked from the star’s atmosphere and heated up as it plummets into the black hole. The intense heat is about 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit and releases the surge of X-rays that the Swift satellite first detected. 

[Related: Black hole collisions could possibly send waves cresting through space-time.]

The team estimates that the black hole is about 10,000 to 100,000 times the mass of our sun—shockingly  small for the supermassive black holes that are usually found at the center of galaxies. By comparison, the black hole at the center of our own galaxy is believed to be about 4 million solar masses, while most are in the region of 100 million solar masses.

This is the first discovery for the new transient detector on the Swift satellite, which was developed by the University of Leicester team and running on their computers. 

“This type of object was essentially undetectable until we built this new facility, and soon after it found this completely new, never-before-seen event. Swift is nearly 20 years old and it’s suddenly finding brand new events that we never knew existed,” said Evans. “I think it shows that every single time you find a new way of looking at space, you learn something new and find there’s something out there you didn’t know about before.”

The team was supported by the UK Space Agency and the UK Science and technology Facilities Council (STFC).

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Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope have detected the magnetic field of a galaxy that is so far away from Earth, that its light has taken more than 11 billion years to get here. With the telescope, we are seeing this galaxy just as it was when our universe was only 2.5 billion years old.

[Related: Our universe mastered the art of making galaxies while it was still young.]

The findings are detailed in a study published September 6 in the journal Nature. Finally seeing this cosmic artifact could give astronomers some vital clues to how the magnetic fields of galaxies like the Milky Way came to be. Magnetic fields are present in many of the universe’s astronomical bodies from stars to planets and up to galaxies. 

“Many people might not be aware that our entire galaxy and other galaxies are laced with magnetic fields, spanning tens of thousands of light-years,” study co-author and University of Hertfordshire astrophysicist James Geach said in a statement.

It is not yet fully clear both how early in our universe’s lifetime and how quickly the magnetic fields in galaxies form. To date, astronomers have only mapped magnetic fields in galaxies close to us.

“We actually know very little about how these fields form, despite their being quite fundamental to how galaxies evolve,” study co-author and Stanford University extragalactic astronomer Enrique Lopez Rodriguez said in a statement. 

In this new study, the team used data from ALMA and the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and discovered a fully formed magnetic field in a distant galaxy. It’s similar in structure to what is observed in nearby galaxies, and while the magnetic field is about 1,000 times weaker than our planet’s magnetic field, it extends over more than 16,000 light-years.

Observing a fully developed magnetic field this early in the history of the universe is an indication that magnetic fields spanning entire galaxies can form pretty quickly, even while younger galaxies are still growing.  

According to the team, intense star formation in the universe’s early days may have played a role in accelerating the development of the magnetic fields and that the fields can influence how later generations of stars will eventually form. 

[Related: Secrets of the early universe are hidden in this chill galaxy cluster.]

These new findings show off the inner workings of galaxies, according to study co-author and ESO astronomer Rob Ivison. “The magnetic fields are linked to the material that is forming new stars,” Ivison said in a statement. 

To detect this light, the team searched for light emitted by dust grains in a distant galaxy named 9io9. When a magnetic field is present, galaxies are full of dust trains that tend to align and the light that they emit becomes polarized. When this happens, the light waves oscillate along a preferred direction instead of randomly. When ALMA detected and mapped the more polarized signal coming from galaxy 9io9, it confirmed the presence of a magnetic field in a very distant galaxy for potentially the first time. 

“No other telescope could have achieved this,” said Geach. 

The team hopes that with this new discovery and future observations of distant magnetic fields, astronomers will get closer to how fundamental components of galaxies form. 

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Nuclear fuel cells the size of poppy seeds could power NASA’s Artemis lunar base once it begins operations around 2030. Designed by researchers at Bangor University’s Nuclear Futures Institute in the UK, the miniscule power source—dubbed “Trisofuel”—is intended to run on a micro nuclear generator roughly the size of a small car created by Rolls Royce. According to a report in the BBC, engineers intend to begin fully testing their new fuel within the next few months. If successful, Trisofuel’s uses could even extend far beyond the moon’s surface.

Momentum is quickly building towards establishing a permanent human presence on the moon, likely near its south pole where scientists hope to find water-based ice to help support habitation. NASA’s ongoing Artemis project is making progress towards its proposed end-of-decade base construction, most recently with its first successful mission in November 2022. Last month, India made history as the fourth nation to land a probe on the moon via its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, as well as the first to do so at the lunar south pole.

[Related: India’s successful moon landing makes lunar history.]

Given its size and relative power, a resource like Trisofuel could be vital to lunar bases’ success. With its portability, however, the new nuclear fuel cell could easily be adapted to a range of other scenarios, both here on Earth and beyond.  Phylis Makurunje, a researcher involved Trisofuel testing, explained to the BBC that the tiny fuel pellets could be used to power rockets that one day take humans to Mars. “It is very powerful—it gives very high thrust, the push it gives to the rocket. This is very important because it enables rockets to reach the farthest planets,” Makurunje explained.

Trisofuel may be so strong, in fact, that it could nearly halve the time it takes to reach the Red Planet—from an estimated nine months down to between four-to-six months. “Nuclear power is the only way we currently have to provide the power for that length of space travel,” Bangor University professor Simon Middleburgh said in a release. “The fuel must be extremely robust and survive the forces of launch and then be dependable for many years.”

At a much more localized level, researchers believe that micro generators running Trisofuel could also be deployed to disaster zones with compromised electrical grids.

Having a reliable, powerful fuel source is one thing—having structures to house such systems is another hurdle altogether. Of course, researchers are currently hard at work optimizing construction options for proposed lunar base designs. Potential building materials could even be drawn from the moon itself, using lunar regolith to reinforce 3D-printed bricks to compose base structures.

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Update (September 5, 2023): India successfully launched its Aditya-L1 solar observatory on September 2 at 2:20 am EST. It is expected to arrive at its first destination between the Earth and the sun in January 2024.

On August 23, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) pulled off the Chandrayaan-3 mission, depositing the Vikram lander and Pragyan rover near the lunar South Pole. India is now the fourth nation to land on the moon—following Russia, the US and China— and the first to land near the lunar South Pole, where the rover has already detected sulfur and oxygen in the moon’s soil. Fresh off of this success, ISRO already has another mission underway, and its next target is something much bigger—the sun.

The ISRO’s Aditya-L1 spacecraft, armed with an array of sensors for studying solar physics, is scheduled to launch around 2 a.m. Eastern on September 2, atop a PSLV-C57 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, in southeast India.

Aditya-L1 will begin a four-month journey to a special point in space. About 932,000 miles away is the sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian, an area where the gravity of Earth and the sun cancel out. By entering into an orbit around L1, the spacecraft can maintain a constant position relative to Earth as it orbits around the sun. It shares this maneuver with the NASA-ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO, which has been in the sun-observation business since 1996. If it reaches the L1 orbit, Aditya-L1 will join SOHO, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, ESA’s Solar orbiter, and a handful of other spacecraft dedicated to studying the closest star to Earth. 

“This mission has instrumentation that captures a little bit of everything that all of these missions have already done, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to replicate science,” says Maria Weber, a solar astrophysicist at Delta State University in Mississippi, who also runs the state’s only planetarium at that campus. ”We’re getting more information and more data now at another time, a new time in the solar cycle, that previous missions haven’t been able to capture for us.” The sun undergoes 11-year patterns of waxing and waning magnetic activity, and the current solar cycle is expected to peak in 2025, corresponding with more sunspots and solar eruptions.

Aditya-L1 will carry seven scientific payloads, including four remote sensing instruments: a coronagraph, which creates an artificial eclipse for better study of the sun’s corona, an ultraviolet telescope, and high and low X-ray spectrographs, which can help study the temperature variations in parts of the sun. 

[Related: Would a massive shade between Earth and the sun help slow climate change?]

“One thing I’m excited about is the high-energy component,” says Rutgers University radio solar physicist Dale Gary. Aditya-L1 will be able to study high-energy x-rays associated with solar flare and other activity in ways that SOHO cannot. And L1 is a good position for that sort of study, he says, since there is a more stable background of radiation against which to measure solar X-rays. Past measurements made in Earth orbit had to contend with Van Allen radiation belts. 

Aditya-L1’s ultraviolet telescope will also be unique, Gary says. It measures ultraviolet light, which has shorter wavelengths than visible light; the shortest or extreme UV light, near the X-ray spectrum, has already been measured by SOHO, but Aditya will capture the longer UV wavelengths.

That could allow Aditya-L1 to study parts of the sun’s atmosphere that have been somewhat neglected, Gary says, such as the transition region between the chromosphere, an area about 250 miles about the sun’s surface, and the corona, the outermost layer of the sun that begins around 1,300 miles above the solar surface and extends, tenuously, out through the solar system. 

Although ground-based telescopes can take some measurements similar to Aditya’s, the spacecraft is also kitted out with “in situ” instruments, which measure features of the sun that can only be observed while in space. “It’s taking measurements of magnetic fields right where it’s sitting, and it’s taking measurements of the solar wind particles,” Weber says. 

Like all solar physics missions, Aditya-L1 will inevitably serve two overall purposes. The first is to better understand how the sun—and other stars— work. The second is to help predict that behavior, particularly solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Those eruptions of charged particles and magnetic fields can impact Earth’s atmosphere and pose risks to satellites and astronauts. In March 2022, a geomagnetic storm caused by solar radiation caused Earth’s atmosphere to swell, knocking 40 newly launched SpaceX Starling satellites to fall out of orbit. 

“We live with this star and so, ultimately, we want to be able to predict its behavior,” Weber says. “We’re getting better and better at that all the time, but the only way we can predict its behavior, is to learn as much as we can even more about it.”

[Related: Why is space cold if the sun is hot?]

Aside from Aditya-L1’s scientific mission, its success will mark another feather in the cap of ISRO, another step in that space agency’s hard work to make India a space power, according to Wendy Whitman Cobb a space policy expert and instructor at the US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (who was commenting on her own behalf, not for the US government). 

“India has had some pretty expansive plans for the past two decades,” she says. “A lot of countries say they’re going to do something, but I think India is that rare example of a country who’s actually doing it.”

Of course, space is hard. ISRO’s first lunar landing attempt with Chandrayaan-2, in 2019, was a failure, and there’s no guarantee Aditya-L1 will make it to L1. “It’s a technical achievement to go into the correct orbit when you get there,” Gary says. “There’s a learning curve. It would be very exciting if they accomplish their goals and get everything turned on correctly.”

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken some new images of a star that exploded during the Reagan Administration. The space telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) helped capture the images of a world renowned supernova called Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) in September 2022. The jaw-dropping new images were officially made public on August 31. 

[Related: An amateur astronomer spotted a new supernova remarkably close to Earth.]

Supernova 1987A is roughly 168,000 light-years away from Earth and located in the Large Magellanic Cloud–a satellite dwarf galaxy of the Milky Way. The supernova is the remnants of a blue supergiant star called Sanduleak–69 202. It was believed to hold a mass about 20 times that of the sun before the explosion was detected in February 1987. It is also the closest observed supernova since 1604, when Kepler’s Supernova illuminated the Milky Way. Supernova 1987A has been the target of observations at wavelengths ranging from gamma rays to radio waves for nearly 40 years. 

The latest image shows a central structure of inner ejecta similar to a keyhole. Clumpy gas and dust pack up the center that is ejected by the supernova explosion. According to NASA, the dust is so dense that even near-infrared light that Webb can detect can’t penetrate it, shaping the dark “hole” in the keyhole. 

Surrounding the inner keyhole is a bright equatorial ring which forms a band around the “waist” of the supernova which connects the two faint arms of hourglass-shaped outer rings. The equatorial ring is formed from material ejected tens of thousands of years before the supernova even exploded.. Bright hot spots in the ring appeared as the supernova’s shock wave hit it, and now exist externally to the ring, with diffuse emission surrounding it. These are where the supernova shocks hit more exterior material.

The Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-ray Observatory have also observed Supernova 1987A, but JWST’s sensitivity and spatial resolution abilities showed a new feature in this supernova remnant–small crescent-like structures. The crescents are believed to be part of the outer layers of gas that shot out from the supernova explosion. They are very bright, which may be an indication of an optical phenomenon called limb brightening. This results from being able to observe the expanding material in three dimensions. “The viewing angle makes it appear that there is more material in these two crescents than there actually may be,” NASA wrote in a press release.

Before JWST, the now-retired Spitzer telescope observed this supernova in infrared throughout its entire 16 year lifespan, providing astronomers with key data about how Supernova 1987A’s emissions evolved over time. However, Spitzer couldn’t observe the supernova with the same level of clarity and detail as JWST.  

[Related: JWST captures an unprecedented ‘prequel’ to a galaxy.]

There are still several mysteries surrounding this supernova, namely some unanswered questions about the neutron star that should have formed in the aftermath of the supernova explosion. There is some indirect evidence for the neutron star in the form of X-ray emission that was detected by NASA’s Chandra and NuSTAR X-ray observatories. Additionally, some observations taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array indicate the neutron star may be hidden within one of the dust clumps at the heart of the remnant.

JWST will continue to observe the supernova over time, using the NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) instruments that give astronomers the ability to capture new, high-fidelity infrared data over time. 

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By year’s end, NASA will begin testing a fridge-sized laser communications upgrade aboard the International Space Station. It’s a major relay system demonstration for the ISS, and one which could chart a path forward for how humans communicate not just in low-orbit, but on the lunar surface and beyond. 

Although radio has long served as both piloted and unpiloted missions’ primary communications method, as Space.com notes, laser communication arrays boast a number of benefits. From a purely logistical standpoint, the equipment is both cheaper and lighter-weight than radio devices. Meanwhile, lasers’ shorter wavelengths ensure far more information can be transferred at one time compared to radio waves.

Once launched aboard a forthcoming SpaceX commercial resupply services mission, NASA’s Integrated LCRD Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal (ILLUMA-T) will work alongside the agency’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) launched in December 2021. ILLUMA-T will use infrared light to send and receive laser communications at a higher data rate than previously available. Once installed, these transmissions’ higher rates will allow for more videos and images to transmit back to Earth, all at around 1.2 gigabits-per-second—comparable to a solid internet connection here on Earth.

[Related: NASA is testing space lasers to shoot data back to Earth.]

“Laser communications offer missions more flexibility and an expedited way to get data back from space,” said Badri Younes, former deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program. “We are integrating this technology on demonstrations near Earth, at the Moon, and in deep space.”

After installation, ILLUMA-T will first beam data to-and-from the LCRD satellite hovering 22,000 miles above Earth in geosynchronous orbit. Meanwhile, the LCRD will transmit data back to Earth at two stations in California and Hawaii—spots chosen for their comparatively low cloud cover, which often impedes laser transmissions.

“ILLUMA-T is not the first mission to test laser communications in space but brings NASA closer to operational infusion of the technology,” NASA wrote in a recent statement,  In 2022, a small CubeSat in low Earth orbit began testing laser communications as part of the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery System. Before that, the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration also transferred data to-and-from lunar orbit during 2014’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer mission. Still, NASA explains that all of these tests combined will further help advance aerospace communications between Earth, the moon, Mars, and beyond.

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Summer skygazing season in the Northern Hemisphere is quickly drawing to a close.  September 1 marks the beginning of meteorological autumn, and we are racing towards the Autumnal Equinox. While the temperatures may finally start to get a little bit cooler, the night sky is staying pretty hot with a very bright Mercury beginning in mid-September, a meteor shower, and the last supermoon of the year. Here are some events to look out for this month and if you happen to get any stellar sky photos, please tag us and include #PopSkyGazers.

[Related: Climate change is affecting fall foliage, but not in the way you think.]

September 1- Aurigid Meteor Shower Predicted to Peak

The day after August’s Blue Moon, the Aurigid meteor shower is predicted to reach its peak. This meteor shower has been active since August 28 and will wrap up on September 5. From the eastern US, the shower will likely be visible around 11:30 PM each night when its radiant point rises above the eastern horizon. It is predicted to remain active until dawn breaks at around 5:51 AM. In the Sky estimates that viewers could see about five meteors an hour and that the bright moon will likely cause some viewing interference. 

September 12 – Nishimura Comet at Closest Approach

Anyone can buy a certificant to get a star named after them, but only the lucky can have comets named for them. That’s what happened earlier in August when Hideo Nishimura of Kakegawa, Japan was photographing the night sky and captured an image of Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura). The comet orbits the sun every 520 years and is expected to be at its closest approach to our planet this month, as long as it survives a cozy orbit around the sun even tighter than the planet Mercury’s loop. According to EarthSky, Comet Nishimura should become a binocular object during the first mornings of September if it survives its orbit. Observers with an unobstructed view to the east-northeastern horizon might get good binocular views of Comet C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) about 45 minutes before sunrise. It’s expected to pass at 78 million miles from Earth and does not pose any threat. 

[Related: ‘Oumuamua isn’t an alien probe, but it might be the freakiest comet we’ve ever seen.]

September 18 – Venus at its Greatest Brightness

In addition to the planet Mercury lighting up the sky most of this month, our solar system’s brightest planet will be at its most radiant around the middle of September. Venus will be shining brightly at a magnitude of -4.5 early in the morning in the eastern sky. It will continue to remain pretty bright for the rest of the month and reach its peak altitude until October 20.

September 23 – Autumnal Equinox 

Fall officially arrives in the Northern Hemisphere at 2:50 AM EDT on Saturday, September 23. The autumnal equinox occurs at the exact same moment around the world. It is the second equinox of the year, after March’s Spring equinox. During an equinox, the sun crosses an imaginary extension of Earth’s equator line called the celestial equator. The equinox happens precisely when the sun’s center passes through this imaginary line. In the Northern Hemisphere, the autumnal equinox happens when the sun crosses the equator from north to south. When the sun crosses from south to north, it marks the spring or vernal equinox, which is what happens in the Southern Hemisphere in September. 

The days will continue to get shorter than the nights, since the sun will rise later and set earlier. This continues up until the winter solstice in December, when the days begin to slowly grow longer again. 

[Related: We finally know why Venus is absolutely radiant.]

September 29 – Full Harvest Supermoon

September’s full moon, or the Harvest Moon, will reach its peak illumination at 5:58 AM EST. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the full moon that happens nearest to the fall equinox always takes on the name Harvest Moon. The Harvest Moon also rises at roughly the same time, around sunset, for several consecutive evenings. This traditionally gives farmers several extra evenings of moonlight, helping them to finish harvesting before the frosts of fall are scheduled to arrive. This year’s Harvest Moon is also the last of four supermoons of 2023 and it will be 224,658 miles away from Earth. 

Additional names for September’s full moon include the Corn Moon or Mandaamini giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), the Gourd Moon or Wade Nuti in the Catawba Language of the Catawba Indian Nation, South Carolina, and the Falling Leaf Moon or Poneʔna-wueepukw Neepaʔuk in the Mahican Dialect of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Wisconsin.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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NORMALLY, creating a universe isn’t the job of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Most of the back-breaking science—singling out and tracking Higgs bosons, for example—from the world’s largest particle accelerator happens when it launches humble protons at nearly the speed of light.

But for around a month near the end of each year, LHC switches its ammunition from protons to bullets that are about 208 times heavier: lead ions.

When the LHC crashes those ions into each other, scientists can—if they have worked everything out properly—glimpse a fleeting droplet of a universe like the one that ceased to exist a few millionths of a second after the big bang.

This is the story of quark-gluon plasma. Take an atom, any atom. Peel away its whirling electron clouds to reveal its core, the atomic nucleus. Then, finely dice the nucleus into its base components, protons and neutrons.

When physicists first split an atomic nucleus in the early 20th century, this was as far as they got. Protons, neutrons, and electrons formed the entire universe’s mass—well, those, plus dashes of short-lived electrically charged particles like muons. But calculations, primitive particle accelerators, and cosmic rays striking Earth’s atmosphere began to reveal an additional menagerie of esoteric particles: kaons, pions, hyperons, and others that sound as if they’d give aliens psychic powers.

It seemed rather inelegant of the universe to present so many basic ingredients. Physicists soon figured out that some of those particles weren’t elementary at all, but combinations of even tinier particles, which they named with a word partly inspired by James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: quarks.

Quarks come in six different “flavors,” but the vast majority of the observable universe consists of just two: up quarks and down quarks. A proton consists of two up quarks and one down quark; a neutron, two down and one up. (The other four, in ascending order of heaviness and elusiveness: strange quarks, charm quarks, beauty quarks, and the top quark.)

At this point, the list of ingredients ends. You can’t ordinarily chop a proton or neutron into quarks in our world; in most cases, quarks can’t exist on their own. But by the 1970s, physicists had come up with a workaround: heating things up. At a point that scientists call the Hagedorn temperature, those subatomic particles are reduced to a high-energy soup of quarks and the even tinier particles that glue them together: gluons. Scientists dubbed that soup quark-gluon plasma (QGP).

It’s a tantalizing recipe because, again, quarks and gluons can’t normally exist on their own, and reconstructing them from the larger particles they build is challenging. “If I give you water, it’s very difficult to tell the properties of [hydrogen and oxygen atoms],” says Bedangadas Mohanty, a physicist at India’s National Institute of Science Education and Research and at CERN. “Similarly, I can give you protons, neutrons, pions…but if you really want to study properties of quarks and gluons, you need them in a box, free.”

This isn’t a recipe you can test in a home oven. In units of the everyday world, the temperature in a hadronic system is about 3 trillion degrees Fahrenheit—100 thousand times hotter than the center of the sun. The best appliance for the job is a particle accelerator. 

But not just any particle accelerator will do. You need to boost your particles with sufficient energy. And when scientists set out to create QGP, LHC was no more than a dream of a distant future. Instead, CERN had an older collider only about a quarter of LHC’s circumference: the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS).

As its name suggests, SPS was designed to crash protons into fixed targets. But by the end of the 1980s, scientists had decided to try swapping out the protons for heavy ions—lead nuclei—and see what they could manage. In experiment after experiment across the 1990s, CERN researchers thought they saw something happening to the nuclei. 

“Somewhat to our surprise, already at these relatively low energies, it looked like we were creating quark-gluon plasma,” says Marco van Leeuwen, a physicist at Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics and at CERN. In 2000, his team claimed they had “compelling evidence” of the achievement.

Across the Atlantic, CERN’s counterparts at Long Island’s Brookhaven National Laboratory had been trying their hands with equal parts optimism and uncertainty. The uncertainty faded around the turn of the millennium, when Brookhaven switched on the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a device designed specifically to create QGP.

“RHIC turned on, and we were deeply within quark-gluon plasma,” says James Dunlop, a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

So there are two major QGP factories in the world today: CERN and Brookhaven. With this pair of colliders, for the brief flickers for which the quantum matter exists in the world, physicists can watch the plasma materialize in what they call “little bangs.”

Going back and forth in time

The closer in time to the big bang that you travel, the less the universe resembles your familiar one. As of this writing, the James Webb Space Telescope has possibly observed galaxies from around 320 million years after the big bang. Go farther back, and you’ll reach a very literal Dark Ages—a time before the first stars, when there was little to illuminate the universe except the cosmic background.

In this shadowy age, astronomy steadily gives way to subatomic physics. Go even farther back, to just 380,000 years after the big bang, and electrons are just joining their nuclei to form atoms. Keep going back; the universe is ever smaller, denser, hotter. Seconds after the big bang, protons and neutrons haven’t joined together to form nuclei more complex than hydrogen. 

Go back even farther—around a millionth of a second after the big bang—and the universe is hot enough that quarks and gluons stay split apart. It’s a miniature version of this universe that physicists seek to create.

Physicists puzzle over that universe in office blocks like the exquisitely modernist one overlooking CERN’s visitors center. Look out this building’s window, and you might see the terminus of a Geneva tram line. Cornavin, the city’s main railway station, is only 20 minutes away.

CERN physicists Urs Wiedemann and Federico Antinori meet me in their office. Wiedemann is a theoretical physicist by background; Antinori is an experimentalist, presiding over heavy-ion collision runs. Studying QGP requires the talents of both.

“The existence of quark-gluon plasma we have established,” says Antinori. “What is most interesting is understanding what kind of animal it is.”

For instance, their colleagues who first created QGP expected to find a sort of gas. Instead, QGP behaves like a liquid. QGP, in fact, behaves like what’s called a perfect liquid, one with almost no viscosity. (Yes, the early universe may have been, very briefly, a sort of superheated ocean. Many creation myths might find a distant mirror inside a particle accelerator.)

Both Antinori and Wiedemann are especially interested in watching the liquid come into being, watching atomic nuclei rend themselves apart. Some scientists call the process a “phase transition,” as if creating QGP is like melting snow to create liquid water. But turning protons and neutrons into QGP is far more than melting ice; it’s creating a transition into a very different world with fundamentally different laws of physics. “The symmetries of the world we live in change,” Wiedemann says.

This transition happened in reverse in the very early universe as it cooled down past the Hagedorn temperature. The quarks and gluons clumped together, forming the protons and neutrons that, in turn, form the atoms we know and love today.

But physicists struggle to understand this process with mathematics. They come closer by examining QGP collisions in the lab.

QGP is also a laboratory for the strong nuclear force. One of the four fundamental forces of the universe—alongside gravity, electromagnetism, and the weak nuclear force that governs certain radioactive processes—the strong nuclear force is what holds particles together at the hearts of atoms. The gluons in QGP’s name are the strong nuclear force’s tools. Without them, charged particles would electromagnetically repel each other and atoms would rip themselves apart.

Yet while we know quite a lot about gravity and electromagnetism, the inner workings of the strong nuclear force remain a secret. Moreover, scientists want to learn more about the role the strong nuclear force plays.

“You can say, ‘I understand how an electron interacts with a photon,’” says Wiedemann, “but that doesn’t mean that you understand how a laser functions. That doesn’t mean that you know why this table doesn’t break down.”

Again, to understand such things, they’ve got to crash heavy ions together.

With the likes of SPS, scientists could look at droplets of QGP and confirm they existed. But if they wanted to actually peer inside and see their properties at work—to examine them—they’d need something more powerful.

“It was clear,” says Antinori, “that one had to go to higher energies than were available at the SPS.”

The universe-faking machine

Crossing from CERN’s campus into France, it’s impossible to tell that this green and pleasant vale—under the grace of the Jura Mountains—sits atop a 17-mile-long ring of superconducting magnets and steel. Scattered around that ring are different experiments and detectors. The search for QGP is headquartered in one such detector.

The road there passes through the glistening hamlet of Saint-Genis-Pouilly, where many of CERN’s staff live. On the pastoral outskirts sits a cluster of industrial cuboids and cooling towers.

Apart from a mural on the corrugated metal facade overlooking a parking lot, the complex doesn’t really advertise that this is where scientists look for QGP—that one of these warehouselike buildings is the outer cocoon of a large ion collider experiment called, well, A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE).

CERN physicist Nima Zardoshti greets me beneath that mural: ALICE’s detector, the QGP-watcher, depicted in a pastel-colored mural. Zardoshti leads me inside, past a control room that wouldn’t look out of place in a moon-landing documentary, around a corner covered in sheet metal, and out to a precipice. A concrete shield caps it, several stories below. “This concrete is what stops radiation,” he explains.

Beneath it, occluded from sight, sits the genuine article, a machine the size of a small building that weighs nearly the same as the Eiffel Tower. The detector sits more than 180 feet beneath the ground, accessible by a mine lift. No one is allowed to go down there while the LHC is running, save for CERN’s fire department, which needs to move in quickly if any radioactive or hazardous materials combust.

The heavy ions that collide inside that machine don’t originate in this building. Several miles away sits the old SPS, transformed into LHC’s first steppingstone. SPS accelerates bunches of lead nuclei up to very near the speed of light. Once they’re ready, the shorter collider unloads them into the longer one.

But unlike SPS, LHC doesn’t do fixed-target experiments. Instead, ALICE creates a magnetic squeeze that goads lead beams, racing in opposite directions, into violently crashing head-on.

Lead ions make fine ingredients. A lead-208 ion has 82 protons and 126 neutrons, and both of those are “magic numbers” that help make the nuclei as spherical as nuclei can become. Spherical nuclei create better collisions. (Across the Atlantic, Brookhaven’s RHIC uses gold ions.)

ALICE’s detector isn’t a camera; QGP isn’t like a ball of light that you can “see.” When these lead ions collide at high energies, they erupt into a flash of QGP, which dissipates into a perfect storm of smaller particles. Instead of watching for light, the detector watches the particles as they cascade away. 

A proton-proton collision might produce a few dozen particles—maybe a hundred, if physicists are lucky. A heavy-ion collision produces several thousand.

When heavy ions collide, they create a flash of QGP and spiky jets of more “normal” particles: often combinations of heavy quarks, like charm and beauty quarks. The jets pierce through the QGP before they reach the detector. Physicists can reconstruct what the QGP looked like by examining those jets and how they changed as they passed through.

First those particles crash through silicon chips not unlike the pixels in your smartphone. Then the particles pass through a time projection chamber: a cylinder filled with gas. Still streaking at high energy, they shoot through the gas atoms like meteors through the upper atmosphere. They knock electrons free of their atoms, leaving brilliant trails that the chamber can pick up.

For fans of particle physics equipment, the time projection chamber makes ALICE special. “It’s super useful, but the downside of it, and why other experiments don’t use it, is it’s very slow,” says Zardoshti. “The process takes, I think, roughly something on the order of a millionth of a second.”

ALICE creates about 3.5 terabytes of data—around the equivalent of three full-length feature films—each second. Physicists process that data to reconstruct the QGP that produced the particles. Much of that data is processed right here, but much of it is also processed by a vast global network of computers.

From particle accelerators to neutron stars

Particle physics is a field that always has one foot extended decades into the future. While ALICE kicked into operation in 2010, physicists had already begun sketching it out in the early 1990s, years before scientists had even detected QGP at all. 

One of their current big questions is whether they can make QGP by smashing ions smaller than lead or gold. They’ve already succeeded with xenon; later this year, they want to try with an even scanter substance like oxygen. “We want to see: Where is the transition where we can make this material?” says Zardoshti. “Is oxygen already too light?” They expect the life-giving element to work. But in particle physics, there’s no knowing for certain until after the fact.

In the longer term, ALICE’s stewards have big plans. After 2025, the LHC will shut off for several years for maintenance and upgrades, which will boost the collider’s energy. Alongside those upgrades will come a wholesale renovation of ALICE’s detector, scheduled for installation as early as 2033. All of this is planned out precisely many years in advance.

CERN’s stewards are daring to draft a device for an even more distant future, a Future Circular Collider that would be more than three times the LHC’s size and wouldn’t be online till the 2050s. No one is sure yet if it will pan out; if it does, it will require securing an investment of more than 20 billion euros.

Higher energies, larger colliders, and more sensitive detectors all make for stronger tools in QGP-watchers’ arsenals. The particles they’re seeking are tiny and incredibly short-lived, and they need those tools to see more of them.

But while particle physicists have spent billions of euros and decades of effort bringing fragments of the very early universe back into reality, some astrophysicists think the universe might have been showing the same zeal.

Instead of a particle accelerator, the universe can avail itself of a far more powerful appliance: a neutron star. 

When an immense star, far larger than the mass of our sun, ends its life in a spectacular supernova, the shard of a core that remains begins to cave in. The core can’t be too large, or else it will collapse into a black hole. But if the mass is just right, the core will reach pressures and temperatures that might just tear atomic nuclei apart into quarks. It’s like the ALICE experiment at scale in a more natural setting—the unruly universe, where it all began.

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a stellar new image of the Whirlpool Galaxy (aka M51 or NGC 5194), a grand-design spiral galaxy about 27 million light-years away from Earth. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), grand-design spiral galaxies like this one have prominent, well-developed spiral arms, unlike other spiral galaxies that have more ragged or disrupted spiral arms. 

[Related: Herschel Space Telescope’s First Images Give Promising Glimpse of What’s to Come.]

M51 lies in the constellation Canes Venatici (or The Hunting Dogs) and is trapped in a bit of a tumultuous relationship with the dwarf galaxy NGC 5195. The interaction between these two galactic neighbors has been one of the more well studied galaxy pairs in the sky. M51’s gravitational influence on its smaller companion is believed to be partially responsible for the grand nature of its prominent and distinct spiral arms. 

This new galactic portrait uses data from JWST’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). This new observation is one of a series of observations collectively titled Feedback in Emerging extrAgalactic Star clusTers (FEAST). The FEAST observations were designed for astronomers and the public to learn more about stellar feedback and star formation environments outside of the Milky Way galaxy. 

Stellar feedback describes the outpouring of energy from stars into the environments which form them. It is a crucial process in determining the rates at which stars form, and is important to building accurate models of star formation. 

“Stellar feedback has a dramatic effect on the medium of the galaxy and creates a complex network of bright knots as well as cavernous black bubbles,” the ESA wrote in a statement. 

In the new image, the dark red regions trace the filamentary warm dust permeating the medium of the galaxy. These rosy regions show the reprocessed light from complex molecules forming on dust grains. The orange and yellow portions show areas of ionized gas created by recently formed star clusters.

Before JWST became operative in 2022, other observatories including those made at the Atacama Large Millimetre Array in the Chilean desert and the Hubble Telescope gave astronomers a glimpse of star formation. These observations occurred at either the onset, when the dense gas and dust clouds where stars will form, or after the stars have been destroyed with their energy their natal gas and dust clouds. JWST is opening up a new observational window to the earlier stages of star formation and stellar light. 

“Scientists are seeing star clusters emerging from their natal cloud in galaxies beyond our local group for the first time. They will also be able to measure how long it takes for these stars to pollute with newly formed metals and to clean out the gas (these time scales are different from galaxy to galaxy),” wrote the ESA.

[Related: Our universe mastered the art of making galaxies while it was still young.]

More observations and study of these processes is expected to lead to a better understanding of how the whole star formation cycle and metal enrichment process are regulated within galaxies. It also could help present a more clear time scale for when planets and brown dwarfs form because once gas and dust is removed from newly formed stars, there isn’t any material left to form planets.

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Outer space is a rough place for the human body. The effects of space travel on our health pose substantial challenges to our future in the cosmos. Beyond Earth, astronauts literally lose bone and muscle while being exposed to potentially cancer-causing radiation. As they plan to go on longer trips—like to the moon and Mars, such as in NASA’s Artemis program—biologists need to prepare to keep these explorers safe on these extended voyages. 

Part of that is understanding exactly how space changes our bodies, from the macroscopic scale of our organs all the way down to our microscopic cells. To that end, Swedish biologists used an experiment here on Earth to simulate what happens to a human’s immune system in microgravity, the “weightlessness” experienced by space travelers. In a new research paper, published last week in Science Advances, the study authors report significant genetic changes to these guardian cells. 

The immune system is a crucial system in the human body, protecting us from a barrage of bacteria and viruses that dwell on our lively planet. If an astronaut’s immune system is damaged by the conditions of outer space, they may not be able to fight off infections when they return to Earth, and viruses that were lingering dormant in their system might even come back with a vengeance. 

[Related: Most of us have viruses sleeping inside us, and spaceflight wakes them up]

To study this on Earth, volunteer test subjects lived in space-like conditions for 21 days, essentially floating on what are called “dry immersion” beds. Researchers analyzed the participants’ blood and found that the genes in their T cells, a type of germ-fighting white blood cell, had altered in ways that might make them less effective at protecting against pathogens.

“T cells significantly changed their gene expression—that is to say, which genes were active and which were not—after seven and 14 days of weightlessness,” says co-author Lisa Westerberg, an immunologist from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. “T cells began to resemble more so-called naïve T cells, which have not yet encountered any intruders. This could mean that they become less effective at fighting tumor cells and infections.” 

But there’s some good news. After a return to usual gravity, some of the cells’ changes reverted back to normal, Westerberg and her colleagues observed. This suggests human bodies have the potential to re-adapt once they’re back on Earth—at least, based on this research, for 21-day trips. It’s still unclear how longer-term spaceflight, like the perilous possibly years-long journey to and from Mars, would affect astronauts, their genes, and their immune systems.

[Related: Space stations could wage war on hitchhiking bacteria with self-cleaning tech]

This isn’t the first time that scientists have noticed changes in DNA due to space travel. NASA’s famous “Twins Study”, in which astronaut Scott Kelly lived aboard the International Space Station while his twin brother Mark Kelly remained on Earth, revealed that a year in space does affect and sometimes damage genes. We also know that space can harm blood cells and bone marrow, destroying them to the point that astronauts could experience so-called “space anemia.” (Although new research shows there might be a way to combat that, using fat cells.)

The truly novel bit of this new research is how it ties cellular changes to the human body’s broader functions, allowing researchers to brainstorm fixes to the problem at a cellular level. Several clinical trials are underway for new drugs and therapies to treat similar cell-related issues on Earth, including certain cancers, allergies, and autoimmune disorders. “We therefore think this study can pave the way for new treatments that reverse these changes to the immune cells’ genetic program,” says Westerberg.

Prepping for Mars or beyond, then, has the potential to help both Earth-bound patients and spacefaring travelers, providing a better understanding of the human body no matter where it is in the universe.

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The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against SpaceX on Thursday for allegedly refusing to consider hiring asylum seekers and refugees. According to a DOJ statement, Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company “routinely discouraged” applicants because of their citizenship status from at least September 2018 to May 2022, thus violating the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

The DOJ argues SpaceX, in multiple job postings and public statements, “wrongly claimed” that federal “export control law” regulations forced the company to only hire US citizens and green card holders. The allegedly willful misinterpretation of the law was repeatedly and publicly echoed by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. In June 2020, for example, Musk posted to X (formerly Twitter) that “U.S. law requires at least a green card to be hired at SpaceX, as rockets are advanced weapons technology.”

But as the DOJ’s announcement notes, the jobs in question weren’t only advanced engineering and tech roles, but a “variety of other positions, including welders, cooks, crane operators, baristas, software engineers, marketing professionals, and more.” According to the DOJ, SpaceX falsely claimed to be legally prohibited from hiring refugees in a total of 14 job postings, public announcements, and other online recruiting communications.

According to the INA, employers cannot discriminate against hiring asylees or refugees unless a specific executive order, government contract, law, or other federal regulation prevents them. “In this instance no [such situation] required or permitted SpaceX to engage in the widespread discrimination,” argues DOJ representatives.

[Related: SpaceX’s Starship launch caused a ‘mini earthquake’ and left a giant mess.]

Musk, however, has already doubled down on his and fellow employees’ previous assertions via an August 24 post to X, claiming SpaceX was “told repeatedly” that hiring non-permanent US residents would violate international arms trafficking laws. “This is yet another case of weaponization of the DOJ for political purposes,” added Musk, who purchased the social media platform formerly known as Twitter in October 2022. Lawyers like Rebecca Bernhard, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney specializing in employment-related issues involving work visas and immigration challenges, doubt the validity of Musk’s defense.

“While it is lawful for an employer to refuse to provide employer-sponsorship to a potential employee (for example, by not sponsoring the individual for an H-1B), it is not lawful to require that the employee be a US citizen,” she explains via email. Bernhard argues that while, “There are other classes of immigrants who have work authorization in the US and do not need employer sponsorship… To require someone be a US citizen would discriminate against these individuals.”

One potential exception, however, are employers subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) or the Export Administration Regulations (EAR). Bernhard notes that, “it appears the DOJ is claiming SpaceX fraudulently relied on this exception.” 

“While I cannot comment on whether SpaceX is subject to ITAR or EAR, I can state that the DOJ takes the anti-discrimination provisions of the INA very seriously, aggressively enforces them, and interprets the ITAR and EAR exceptions very narrowly,” adds Bernhard.

The DOJ filing seeks fair consideration and back pay for those affected by the alleged discriminatory practices.

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When it comes to building a sustainable settlement on Mars, the technological and engineering challenges are steep. But they take a back seat to the Human Resources department. Forget sophisticated vehicles or sensitive instrumentation—the most temperamental, fragile things we send to the Red Planet will be humans.

After all, NASA’s Opportunity rover roamed Mars for 14 years, separated from Earth by a half-hour communications delay, scoured by dust storms and irradiated by cosmic rays, and never complained or got into a fight with a colleague. 

Humans, though, will be sequestered “in a confined space about the size of a small RV for three years,” James Driskell, a research psychologist at the Florida Maxima Corporation, says of most plausible NASA Mars mission scenarios. Driskell and his company have consulted with the space agency and the US military on the psychological issues of crews in isolated and stressful situations. In tight quarters, “people get angry at each other.”

Current Mars plans, such as NASA’s proposed Artemis mission, would send astronauts there and back on a three-year round trip. But you can imagine how stressful dynamics—danger, isolation, other people—might increase on a permanent base or research station, if crews stayed for a decade (or forever). Or, rather than using your imagination, you can rely on the computer simulation of a Mars settlement produced by George Mason University Computational Social Scientist Anamaria Berea and her colleagues. 

In a forthcoming study that hasn’t yet undergone full peer review, Berea and her colleagues detail how they used an “agent-based modeling” approach—a computer system not all that different from a large video game—to calculate the survivability of different population sizes of Mars settlers. They’ve incorporated personality types, too, for the long haul. They came to two main conclusions: that only a few tens of initial settlers are needed to create a sustainable colony, and that people with more agreeable social traits did better for themselves and the larger settlement. 

[Related: Rodent astronauts suggest trips to Mars will make us anxious, forgetful, and afraid]

The new study originated as a response to other papers suggesting that between 100 and 300 people would be the minimum necessary to begin a sustainable settlement on Mars. The nonprofit Blue Marble Science Institute, which studies questions of planetary science and habitability, contacted Berea to see whether her team could verify the other studies’ minimally viable population numbers. 

Berea says she had a better idea: Creating a simulation for a space habitat that included “human, social, and behavioral factors.” Berea and her team at the computational social sciences department had created simulated humans, who were assigned a set of skills necessary for running a Mars settlement, such as producing food or maintaining life support systems. 

Each faux settler had one of four aggregate personality types: There were the “agreeables,” highly social and low in scores of aggressions or competitiveness; “socials,” extroverts with a bit more of a competitive edge; “reactives,” who were more still competitive and fixated on fixed routines; and “neurotics,” highly competitive people with difficulty coping with changes in routine or boredom. Settlement members could die in accidents, or due to “health” conditions determined by the available food and life support resources, but could also be replenished by resupply shuttles every 18 months—the researchers chose not to model sex and reproduction. 

After running multiple computer models for more than 20 simulated years, the study authors found that settlements could begin with far fewer than 100 settlers and remain sustainable, despite accidents or dips in food supplies. The lowest number to kickstart a sustainable settlement was 22 people, but that is not a hard limit, according to Berea. “It’s somewhere between 10 and 50,” she says. “It’s in the tens; It’s not in the hundreds like the other papers were saying.”

[Related: NASA rover finds evidence of carbon-based chemistry in Martian crater]

They also found that agreeable personality types were the most likely to survive to the end of each simulation run. But Bera is careful to note that the agents—the algorithmic representations of humans—do not remain static through the simulation, just as people, whatever their personalities, change over time. “The neurotic that puts his or her foot down on the planet on day zero might not be the neurotic on day 100. They interact, and they adjust,” she says.

This can be seen in real-world Mars mission simulations, such as the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) missions, which places crews of six people in a simulated Mars habituated on the rocky lava slopes of Mauna Loa. There, it’s vital to anticipate the ways people change over time. 

“For the first few weeks, usually of people living under stressful conditions, they can still kind of have a ‘honeymoon period’ where everyone’s still very polite and patient and can kind of get along despite some challenges,” says astrobiologist Michaela Musilova, the former director of HI-SEAS from 2018 until 2022. “Usually after the first few weeks is when people really start to struggle and if they’re not prepared for it properly.” 

That struggle could take the form of depression or rudeness with other crew members or mission control. Over the 30 simulated Moon and Mars missions for which Musilova served as commander, she found the answer was to consciously forge bonds between crew members using shared meals and evening recreation, such as karaoke. 

“The more the crew bonded, the longer the ‘honeymoon period’ lasted and even when it wore off, the crew still behaved politely towards one another,” she says. 

Musilova also found that selecting as diverse a group of people as possible, in terms of skills, life experience and ethnicity, helped ensure a better functioning team. 

That’s one thing that Berea and her colleagues didn’t model—all of their simulations contained equal numbers of the four personality types they had defined, rather than trying to build teams composed of different proportions of different types of people. Purposefully screening for personality is something Driskell notes is important for building teams going into difficult and isolated conditions. 

“What type of trait profiles do we want in that team? That sociability and extraversion is really good, but you don’t want a team full of it, because then they’re going to really want to just interact and get along and talk,” Driskell says. At the same time, he adds, you have people who are very competent and follow the rules and keep things running, but who are just a complete pain to live with. “Everybody’s got an example of somebody who was extremely technically adept, but you just could not get along with them,” he says. “I guess Elon Musk is a good example.”

Neither human nor computer simulations of Mars missions can ever fully predict the experience of putting human boots on the Red Planet, but each approach also takes a different slice of the problem. Computer simulations such as Berea’s and her colleagues can give researchers some idea of the large-scale population dynamics and psychology of a Mars settlement over many years. A 12-month HI-SEAS Mars mission, meanwhile, helps tease out real-life psychological nuance you can’t get from a computer model. 

Berea hopes to do more to integrate both approaches in the future, noting that NASA has just launched a new Mars analog mission, the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) in the Mars Dune Alpha habitat. “Once they are done with that project, it would be great to get the data and compare that with our model for validation,” she says.

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In 2022, NASA’s Artemis I mission traveled 1.4 million miles into space. When the Orion spacecraft flew by the moon, future trees were on board. The uncrewed spacecraft contained seeds for five tree species, including sweetgums, Douglas-firs, sycamores, loblolly pines, and giant sequoias. After the 25.5 day mission, the Forest Service successfully germinated the seeds. Now, community organizations and schools across the United States now apply to receive a seedling grown from one of the tree seeds that flew by the moon that will grow to become official Artemis Moon Trees. 

[Related: Artemis I’s solar panels harvested a lot more energy than expected.]

NASA and the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service will distribute the Artemis Moon Tree seedlings in an effort to “create new ways for communities home on Earth to connect with humanity’s exploration of space for the benefit of all” and promote STEM in the classroom and beyond. 

Institutions that can apply for a seedling include universities, museums, science centers, organizations that serve K-12 schools, and government organizations. Applications are posted here and are due by Friday October 6. 

The Artemis I Mission launched on November 16, 2022 and was the first integrated test of NASA’s latest deep space exploration technology: the Orion spacecraft itself, the all-powerful Space Launch System rocket, and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center. Orion returned to Earth after 25.5 days in space, where it journeyed 270,000 miles away from Earth, orbited the moon, and collected crucial data along the way. A plush Snoopy zero-gravity indicator, LEGO minifigures, and three ‘moonikins,’ were also aboard the spacecraft with the Artemis seeds.

“NASA’s Artemis moon trees are bringing the science and ingenuity of space exploration back down to Earth,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. “Last year, these seeds flew on the Artemis I mission 40,000 miles beyond the Moon. With the help of the USDA, this new generation of Moon trees will plant the spirit of exploration across our communities and inspire the next generation of explorers.”

[Related: Before the Artemis II crew can go to the moon, they need to master flying high above Earth.]

The Artemis seeds are also the second generation of Moon Trees. In 1971, Apollo 14 Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa, carried hundreds of tree seeds about the mission as a part of his personal kit. Roosa was a former Forest Service smokejumper, a group of specially trained wildland firefighters who are often the first to respond to remote firefighters. When Apollo 14 returned, the Forest Service germinated the seeds and the first generation of Apollo Moon Tree seedlings were then planted around the United States.

NASA and the Forest Service hope that this next 21st Century generation of Moon Trees carry on the legacy of inspiration launched over 50 years ago. 

“The seeds that flew on the Artemis mission will soon be Moon Trees standing proudly on campuses and institutions across the country,” Forest Service chief Randy Moore said in a statement. “These future Moon Trees, like those that came before them, serve as a potent symbol that when we put our mind to a task, there is nothing we can’t accomplish. They will inspire future generations of scientists, whose research underpins all that we do here at the Forest Service.”

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Blue moons, black moons, pink moons, strawberry moons, micromoons, supermoons. For some reason, your news aggregation algorithm of choice thinks you really really really want to know all about these moons. “Catch This Weekend’s AMAZING SUPERMOON,” one headline (or, perhaps, 500 of them) will announce. “The Supermoon Isn’t Actually A Big Deal And You’re All Ruining Astronomy,” another will grouse.

The latest example is the full moon that will peak on August 30 around 9:36 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time: the so-called ”blue supermoon”. It’s the second-to-last supermoon of 2023, and should appear the brightest and biggest of all the full moons this year. It will also coincide with—and reduce the visibility of—the end of the Perseid meteor shower.

Here’s everything you need to know about this headline-grabbing moon, the next one, and all the rest.

What is a full moon?

Look, it’s okay if you don’t know. There are probably loads of folks who walk around pretending they totally know why that thing in the sky seems to get bigger and smaller at regular intervals who totally do not.

[Related: How to take a picture of the moon that doesn’t look like a tiny, white blob]

The moon orbits Earth, and it’s tidally locked—that means it always shows us the same face, instead of twirling around like our planet does. That’s why you can always see the man on the moon (or the moon rabbit, depending on your cultural preferences) even as the satellite spins around us. But while the moon is big and bright in the sky when it’s full, that’s only because it’s reflecting light from the sun. The moon is also always moving, so it’s getting hit with sunlight at different angles. It’s invisible to us during the “new moon,” because the celestial body is parked right between us and the sun; the so-called dark side of the moon is lit up like Las Vegas, but the side we can see is in shadow. A full moon happens when Earth is right between the sun and the moon, so sunlight hits the part we can see. All the other phases are just the transition from one of those extremes to the other.

What is a supermoon?

A moon’s supermoon status is often the subject of fierce debate. This is because, as EarthSky explains, a supermoon may sound more scientific than a blood Moon or Worm Moon, but it’s still not a term with a scientific definition. In fact, it was coined not by an astronomer, but by an astrologer named Richard Nolle in 1979. Basically, whether or not a particular moon is a supermoon boils down to how different stargazers (amateur and otherwise) calculate just how relatively close a full moon has to be to be considered super.

The moon isn’t always exactly the same distance from Earth, because its orbit isn’t perfectly circular. We call the closest point perigee (when it averages a distance of about 225,803 miles), and the most distant point apogee (when it averages a distance of about 251,968 miles). These shifts are not insignificant, but they’re also far from earth-shattering.

The reason you care about this middling change in distance is that it turns a moon super. When a full moon happens close to perigee, it’s going to look a smidge bigger than if it happened at apogee. Maybe. If you’re lucky. Honestly, the difference is not that profound, but if you’re in a position to photograph the supermoon next to something that showcases the slight increase in scale, it can look pretty cool. Our 2023 supermoons—the ones where perigee for the months lines up with the full moon—fall in July, August, August again, and September. So we’re currently halfway through supermoon season.

And just to really remind you that words are meaningless and the moon is always just the moon no matter what we decide to call it: It sometimes makes its closest monthly (or even annual) approach to Earth on a night we can’t see it, aka on the new moon.

What is a blue moon?

A blue moon is a nickname for when two full moons fall in the same calendar month. Astronomer David Chapman explained for EarthSky that this is merely a quirk of our calendar; once we stopped doing things based on the moon and started trying to follow the sun and the seasons, we stopped having one reliable full moon per month. The moon cycle is 29.53 days long on average, so on most months we still end up with a single new moon and a single full one. But every once in awhile, things sync up so that one month steals a full moon from another.

In March of 2018, we had our second blue moon of that year, to much acclaim. And while that’s not necessarily special in an oh-gosh-get-out-and-look-at-it kinda way, it’s certainly special: We hadn’t previously had two in one year since 1999. In 2018 (and in 1999) both January and March stacked full moons on the first and last nights of the month, leaving February in the dark. The next time this will happen is 2037.

Even getting two blue moons in a 12-month cycle is rare, but we have individual blue moons every few years. (The next one after August 2023 won’t be until May 2026.) Also, fun fact: It’s not actually blue. A moon can indeed take on a moody blue hue, but this only happens when particles of just the right size disperse through the sky—and it has nothing to do with the moon’s status as “blue.” Big clouds of ash from volcanic eruptions or fires can do the trick, but it doesn’t happen often, and the stars would certainly have to align for two such rare instances to occur at once.

Is there another kind of blue moon?

Surprise! There’s another kind of moon that some farmer’s almanacs refer to as blue. Just as there’s typically one full moon a month, there are generally three full moons a season. And just as there are sometimes two full moons in a month due to our calendar almost-but-not-quite following the lunar cycle, there are sometimes four full moons in a season. April 2019’s full moon landed right as spring began, leaving enough time for another three. Some breathlessly referred to this as a rare occurrence, but it happens every couple of years.

Weirdly, the blue moon moniker is applied not to the fourth full moon in a season (which actually only happens once-in-a-you-know-what) but to the third. Why? Who knows. What’s the fourth full moon in a season called? A full moon. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Similarly, the term “black moon” most commonly refers to the second new moon in a calendar month, but can also refer to the third new moon in a season with four of them. The phrase has also historically been applied to months without full moons, as well as months without new moons. Each of these circumstances occur about once every 19 years, and only in February.

What’s a sturgeon moon?

There won’t be anything fishy about a sturgeon moon’s appearance. Instead, as NASA notes, this refers to what some Algonquin tribes called the moon during August; at this time of year, Native Americans fished for sturgeon in the Great Lakes. There are other names for it, too, like the ”green corn moon.”

Sometimes you’ll see a headline that promises a moon with so many qualifiers it makes your head spin. A superblueblood wolf moon, perhaps? Lots of websites will tell you that “wolf moon” is the traditional name of the first full moon of the year in “Native American” cultures, which is kind of a weird thing to claim given that there are 573 registered Tribal Nations in the US alone today, not to mention historically. The idea that hungry, howling wolves were such a universal constant in January that all of North America, with its disparate cultures, geographies, and languages, spontaneously came up with the same nickname is—well, it’s silly. It’s a silly idea.

[Related: Landing on the moon only made us love it more]

The Farmer’s Almanac now lists a handful of alternatives for historical August moon names: the black cherries moon (Assiniboine), ricing moon (Anishinaabe), and harvest moon (Dakota), to name just a few.

Many cultures have traditional names for the full moon in a given month or season, so there’s quite a list to draw from if you’re trying to really plump up a story on a perfectly pedestrian full moon. But these are all based on human calendars and activities and folklore; you will not go outside and see a fish-scale moon in August or a fuchsia moon in April (or a moon full of beavers in November, for that matter), though I wish it were so.

What is a new moon?

Every 29.531 days, the relative positions of the sun, moon, and Earth conspire to leave our satellite—which doesn’t produce its own light, but shines thanks to the reflected light of our host star—in the dark. The sun’s rays are still striking the moon’s surface, but they’re hitting the (obviously inappropriately named) dark side that faces away from us. The moon appears to grow and shrink in the sky throughout the month thanks to shifts in its position relative to Earth and the sun. Fun fact: while basically everyone knows what a crescent moon is and why it’s so-called, you might not know that the bulbous shape of a moon somewhere between a straight split down its face and a full circle is called “gibbous,” from the Latin word for hunched or humped.

What is a micro moon?

It’s the opposite of the super one. Size isn’t everything. In a previous version of this article, I wrote that while we had such a moon coming up in September 2019, we probably wouldn’t see tons of news outlets crowing over the Micro full corn moon. I was only half right: There were plenty of headlines crowing, though they decided to dub it the harvest micromoon instead.

As is the case with supermoons, you shouldn’t expect to see a noticeable difference in a micromoon’s size.

What is a black moon?

You may be familiar with the concept of a blue moon (see above), which rather dramatically refers to the second full moon in a month. A black moon is the same thing, but for the second new moon in a month. This happens about once every three years. What’s it look like? Well, it looks like a new moon. That means you can’t really see it. But by all means, get out there and do some stargazing.

In case you haven’t yet really grasped the fact that all of these moons are just the result of our arbitrary and often nonsensical calendar system, consider this: In some time zones, a new month at the end of the month will actually rise on the first day of the next month.

What’s a pink moon?

While spring moons may be referred to as pink moons, they won’t actually look pink. Atmospheric conditions can conspire to change the hue of the moon as seen from the ground—NASA has a neat picture of a positively purple one, which is just gorgeous—but there’s no reason to think full moons in April look anything but the usual grayish color. The full pink moon is so-named, according to the Farmer’s Almanac, because its April rise often coincides with the blossoming of a pink North American wildflower called Phlox subulata.

What is a blood moon?

Objectively the most metal moon (sorry, black moon), these only occur during total lunar eclipses (which can happen a few times a year in any given location). When the moon slips through our shadow, our planet gives it a reddish cast. The moon can also look orange whenever it’s rising or setting, or if it hangs low in the horizon all night—the light bouncing off of it has to travel through thicker atmosphere there, which scatters more blue light away. But you’ll probably only see that deep, sinister red during an eclipse.

[Related: Volunteer astronomers bring wonders of the universe into prisons]

A lot of headlines about moons are just silly (you do not need to be particularly excited about a blue moon, it just looks like a regular ol’ moon), but you should definitely roll out of bed to look at a blood moon if one is going to be visible in your region. But anyone who crams both “blood” and “eclipse” into their moniker for a moon is just trying to win the search engine optimization game; a blood moon is just a lunar eclipse that’s going through a goth phase. Ryan F. Mandelbaum at Gizmodo makes the case that we should really just stop throwing the phrase “blood moon” around and call them lunar eclipses, which is tough but fair, because they’re lunar eclipses and not evidence of bloody battles between the sky gods.

A flower blood supermoon, meanwhile? We can get behind that.

This post has been updated. It was originally published on March 2018.

The post The upcoming ‘blue supermoon’ will be the biggest of the year appeared first on Popular Science.

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Having already done a decent job of it here on Earth, humans are well on their way to polluting the skies just beyond our atmosphere. After nearly 70 years of modern rocketry and satellite projects, there are literally millions of centimeter-and-larger discarded objects orbiting the planet—alongside an estimated 130 million tinier bits of space trash. Cleaning up all that debris is already presenting a challenge for experts and legislatorsReportedly, it’s gotten so bad that pilot projects can’t even get off the ground without being forced to recalibrate their objectives.

According to the European Space Agency working alongside Swiss startup ClearSpace, project planners will need to alter their proof-of-concept “derelict object” removal mission currently scheduled for 2026. The reason? It appears the space junk intended for capture and controlled deorbiting has been hit by another piece of space junk. ESA and ClearSpace representatives estimate the most likely cause is a “hypervelocity impact of a small, untracked object” that slammed into their 113kg, two-meter-wide rocket debris target first jettisoned during a 2013 ESA mission. Although the collision appears to have resulted in a “low-energy release of new fragments,” the team’s preliminary assessment indicates a “negligible” increase in collision risks for future missions.

[Related: “How harpoons, magnets, and ion blasts could help us clean up space junk.”]

The ClearSpace-1 mission team is currently continuing as planned as more data is collected on their slightly banged-up target, while a full analysis isn’t expected for at least “several weeks.” Until then, ClearSpace and the ESA are treating the new complication as a fine example of why such projects are already so necessary.

“This fragmentation event underlines the relevance of the ClearSpace-1 mission. The most significant threat posed by larger objects of space debris is that they fragment into clouds of smaller objects that can each cause significant damage to active satellites,” ESA reps explained. “To minimize the number of fragmentation events, we must urgently reduce the creation of new space debris and begin actively mitigating the impact of existing objects.”

As Universe Today also notes, fast-tracking these projects is incredibly important in order to avoid what is known as the “Kessler cascade” or “Kessler syndrome.” In these scenarios, the orbital space above Earth becomes so junky that debris collisions are essentially impossible to avoid, thus producing more debris, which begets more collisions, and so forth. Like our other pollution-based problems here on Earth, it’s difficult to estimate a time frame for an exact tipping point—but suffice to say, agencies like the ESA will know it when they see it. Barring additional orbital shenanigans, here’s to hoping projects like ClearSpace-1 will achieve their goals and get much-needed space cleanup underway.

Update August 25, 2023 9:17am: In a statement provided to PopSci, P.J. Blount, Cardiff University law lecturer and executive secretary for the International Institute of Space Law wrote:

“Space debris is an increasing problem that puts the benefits we receive from space at risk. Reducing the overall amount of debris will be critical to avoiding the onset Kessler syndrome. This will need to be a global effort, which will require coordination and cooperation of the major space powers. In the near term, it is unlikely that we will see new international law emerge to help address this issue. National level legislation, might help to alleviate some pressures operators face but will not be able to sufficiently address the debris problem without a global effort.”

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With its vanishing clouds and now a large dark spot, the planet Neptune appears to be going through some things. Here’s a bit about why the eighth planet in our solar system is causing all this drama. 

[Related: Neptune’s faint rings glimmer in new James Webb Space Telescope image.]

Is Neptune the new Jupiter? 

Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have observed a large dark spot and a smaller bright spot next to it in Neptune’s atmosphere. This is the first time that the planet’s dark spots have ever been observed using an Earth-based telescope The findings were published on August 24 in the journal Nature Astronomy. These new spots are only occasional features in the blue background of Neptune’s atmosphere and the new results are providing clues to their mysterious nature and origin. Spots are common in the atmospheres of giant planets, with Jupiter’s Great Red Spot being the most famous. In 1989, a dark spot was first discovered on Neptune by NASA’s Voyager 2 before the spots disappeared just a few years later. 

The international team of researchers used the VLT to rule out the possibility that the dark spots are caused by a ‘clearing’ in the planet’s clouds. The team’s new observations indicate that the dark spots are likely due to air particles darkening in the layer below the main visible haze layer, as these hazes and ices mix in Neptune’s atmosphere.

The team used the VLT’s Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) to split the reflected sunlight from Neptune and its spot into component colors, or wavelengths, so that they could  study the spot in more detail than was possible before. 

The observations also offered up a surprise result. 

“In the process we discovered a rare deep bright cloud type that had never been identified before, even from space,” study co-author and University of California, Berkeley planetary scientist Michael Wong, said in a statement. 

These unusual luminous clouds appeared as a bright spot along the larger main dark spot, showing that the new “deep bright cloud” was actually at the same level in the atmosphere as the main dark spot. The team says this is a completely new type of feature compared to the smaller ‘companion’ clouds of high-altitude methane ice that astronomers have previously observed. 

The case of the disappearing clouds

About four years ago, Neptune’s ghostly, cirrus-like clouds largely disappeared, and only a patch of clouds hovering over the ice giant’s south pole exists today. Using almost 30 years worth of observations captured by three different space telescopes, scientists have finally determined that the diminished cloud cover could be in sync with the solar cycle. The findings were recently published in the journal Icarus.

[Related: Neptune’s bumpy childhood could reveal our solar system’s missing planets.]

“These remarkable data give us the strongest evidence yet that Neptune’s cloud cover correlates with the Sun’s cycle,” study co-author and University of California, Berkeley astronomer Imke de Pater said in a statement. “Our findings support the theory that the sun’s (ultraviolet) rays, when strong enough, may be triggering a photochemical reaction that produces Neptune’s clouds.”

The level of activity in the sun’s dynamic magnetic field will increase and decrease during the solar cycle. According to NASA, every 11 years, the magnetic field flips, as it becomes more tangled like a bundle of string. During periods of more heightened activity on the sun, more intense ultraviolet radiation bombards our solar system.

The team used data from the Lick Observatory in California, the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and NASA’s 30-year-old Hubble Space Telescope and observed 2.5 cycles of cloud activity over the 29-year period of Neptune observations. The planet’s reflectivity increased in 2002 and dimmed in 2007. Then, the ice giant brightened again in 2015 before it darkened to its lowest level ever seen in 2020. That’s when most of the cloud cover faded away.

“It’s fascinating to be able to use telescopes on Earth to study the climate of a world more than 2.5 billion miles away from us,” study co-author and Keck Observatory staff astronomer Carlos Alvarez said in a statement. “Advances in technology and observations have enabled us to constrain Neptune’s atmospheric models, which are key to understanding the correlation between the ice giant’s climate and the solar cycle.”

The post What the heck is up with Neptune’s dark spots? appeared first on Popular Science.

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On the one hand, the sun provides life-giving heat and light. On the other, it spews an incessant stream of potentially harmful charged particles. These particles form the solar wind, and it is no less formidable than our star’s other products. Without Earth’s magnetic field to shield our planet’s surface, we would constantly face a bombardment of ionizing radiation.

But astronomers have never been completely certain where those particles come from or how they travel into interplanetary space. Now, they’ve found a promising clue. Using ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft, researchers have found miniature jets that seem to channel particles up through holes in the sun’s corona and away from the star. These jets might combine to blow the solar wind, a group of astronomers suggests in a paper published in the journal Science on Thursday.

The corona, a star’s outermost layer, is a sheath of undulating plasma. It is almost always hidden in visible light, although it’s thousands of times hotter than the layers below. We might only see this outer layer during a solar eclipse, when the moon blots out the rest of the sun. 

But the corona is not one even layer. Imaging the sun in ultraviolet reveals shifting dark swatches: regions where the corona’s plasma is cooler and less dense. Astronomers call these areas coronal holes.

[Related: Why is space cold if the sun is hot?]

Coronal holes also seem to resculpt the sun’s powerful, endlessly changing magnetic field. In these parts, lines that guide the sun’s magnetic field seem to blow outward. “Usually, magnetic fields loop back to the solar surface, but in these open field regions the lines of force stretch into interplanetary space,” says Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany, and one of the paper’s authors.

It’s also within coronal holes that the sun’s magnetic field lines can knot about themselves. When that happens, the magnetic field realigns and reconnects, creating fierce electrical surges. Those energetic outbursts siphon matter from deeper layers of the sun and toss them away in jets that can stretch more than a thousand miles across. Astronomers had long suspected that these jets fuel the solar wind, but didn’t know if these jets could provide enough particles to fill the solar wind we observe.

Sun-watching spacecraft like Yohkoh and SOHO have been able to see jets since the 1990s. But astronomers say that none have the sightseeing abilities of Solar Orbiter, which launched in 2020. At its closest approach, Solar Orbiter dips closer to the sun than Mercury.

“Solar Orbiter has the advantage of being located close to the sun, so it can detect smaller and fainter jets,” says Yi-Ming Wang, an astronomer at the US Naval Research Laboratory, who was not an author of the paper.

In March 2022, Chitta and his colleagues focused one of Solar Orbiter’s ultraviolet cameras upon a coronal hole situated near the sun’s south pole. When they did, they glimpsed a type of miniature jet never before seen by humans. Each of these tiny jets carried around one-trillionth the energy of a full-size version. The authors dubbed these “picoflare jets,” dipping into SI system prefixes.

These adorable-sounding surges don’t stick around. Each fleeting picoflare jet lasts about a minute. But this is still the sun—a place of immense power. A single solar picojet might create enough energy to power a small city for a year.

[Related: How a sun shade tied to an asteroid could cool Earth]

The authors scoured only one small part of the sun, but they saw picoflare jets in every corner they looked. It’s likely they cover much of the sun’s surface. Myriads of miniature jets, then, might combine into a large-scale process that transfers charged particles away from the star and out toward the planets.

“We suggest that these tiny picoflare jets could actually be a major source of mass and energy to sustain the solar wind,” Chitta says.

In years past, many astronomers thought of the solar wind as a steady flow, streaming away from the sun at a constant rate. But, if surging picoflare jets drive the solar wind, then the phenomenon might actually be ragged, uneven, and constantly in flux. Picoflare jets may not be the only source of the solar wind, but if Chitta and colleagues are correct, they’re at least a significant contributor.

Fortunately, scientists in a few years’ time will have plenty of additional tools to peer into the sun. Alongside the Solar Orbiter—and future sun-seeing spacecraft, such as the Japanese-led SOLAR-C—they’ll have more powerful solar magnetograms, instruments that allow them to directly measure the sun’s magnetic field from places like Southern California and Maui, able to track the magnetic fluctuations powering the sun’s jets from right here on Earth.

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This post has been updated. It was originally published on August 22.

On August 23, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully landed on the moon on with the Chandrayaan-3 mission. India is now only the fourth country to successfully place a probe on the moon, and the first to land at the lunar south pole. Previous moon missions touched down on the moon’s equator. Scientists now hope to deploy a rover to send images and data back to Earth.

“India’s successful moon mission is not just India’s alone,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He added that the mission is based on a “human-centric” approach and its success belongs to all of humanity.

This has been a record week for space exploration—despite the obliterating crash of Russia’s lunar spacecraft on Sunday. The first Soviet and American soft landings on the moon happened all the way back in the 1960s, at the dawn of the Space Race. But it’s not easy to deposit a lunar lander—since those early successes, China has been the sole country to join Russia and the US in this feat.

“Very few countries have landed on anything. It’s just really hard, and everything has to work just about perfectly,” says Dave Williams, a planetary scientist who archives data of the moon at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

To start, spaceflight is a huge engineering challenge, and the moon is a particularly tricky target. Unlike Earth or Mars, our satellite has no atmosphere, so there’s nothing natural to slow down a spacecraft—no air for parachutes or gliders to use. The only way to get to the surface without crashing is a controlled descent, in which rockets lower the probe all the way down. Plus, the rocket engines must shut off at a precise moment so the craft doesn’t bounce back up off the lunar surface.

[Related: 10 incredible lunar missions that paved the way for Artemis]

Making matters worse, although the moon doesn’t have oceans or cities, it still has plenty of hazards—namely, rocks and craters. Spacecraft have to navigate this terrain mostly on their own. The moon is far away enough from Earth command centers that a lander must be pre-programmed to do what it needs to for a safe landing.

This isn’t India’s first visit to the moon. The country’s lunar program began back in 2008, with a lunar orbiter and impactor in the Chandrayaan-1 mission. Chandrayaan-1 “played a vital role in raising awareness of space science among the general public,” says University of Florida astronomer Pranav Satheesh. “Many students, including myself, were inspired to pursue careers in space science and astronomy upon witnessing the success of ISRO’s programs.”

India made its first attempt at a soft landing with the Chandrayaan-2 mission in 2019. Unfortunately, that lander, named Vikram after the pioneering physicist Vikram Sarabhai, failed in the very last stages of its descent, crashing into the lunar surface. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter later spotted debris from Vikram’s crash as bits of metal strewn across the lunar landscape. The Chandrayaan-2 orbiter remained operational, however, and it continues to collect data in support of the current lunar landing attempt.

[Related: Why do all these countries want to go to the moon right now?]

Chandrayaan-3’s journey so far has been right on track. “Excitement about this mission is definitely palpable across Indian news media, WhatsApp chats, and even in everyday conversations for a lot of folks there,” says Pratik Gandhi, an astronomer at the University of California, Davis. 

It entered lunar orbit on August 5, separated from its propulsion system on August 17, and even snapped a few teaser pics of the moon on August 18. As the lander descends to the moon in the coming days, the most dangerous moment is likely the landing’s second-to-last step: the fine braking phase. “The lander must kill all of its velocity and enter a hover state at about a kilometer above the lunar surface, at which point it must also decide in 12 seconds if it’s above its desired landing region or not and proceed with the touchdown accordingly,” explains science journalist Jatan Mehta. Russia’s Luna-25 probe, on the other hand, failed much earlier in its journey—which may be a sign of poor manufacturing or a lack of testing.

When the Indian lander touched down, it should have only been moving at about 4 miles per hour. But only the slightest deviations separate a crash landing from a controlled one. “The moon’s gravity, even though it is only about one-sixth of Earth’s, is still more than enough to destroy a spacecraft if it isn’t slowed down,” says Williams. 

Some exciting science investigations are now in store for the spacecraft. Unlike any lander to come before, Chandrayaan-3 is targeting the moon’s south pole, where astronomers think there are deposits of water. Water is a crucial resource for future longer-term space exploration, both for astronauts to drink and for use as rocket fuel. 

Chandryaan-3’s lander, also called Vikram, is carrying a small rover named Pragyan. Pragyan is only about 50 pounds—the weight of a medium-sized Goldendoodle—and will roam the lunar surface for about two weeks. It’s equipped with two spectrometers, which can measure the composition of rocks and soil, providing scientists with crucial information about this never-before-explored region of the moon.

The lunar southlands are also a key target for future installments in NASA’s Artemis program, paving the way for semi-permanent human habitation on our nearest celestial neighbor. In June 2023, India signed on to the Artemis Accords, an agreement for cooperation between countries in space exploration. Japan, another signatory of the accords, even has a rover in the works with India, with the goal of drilling into the lunar south pole in search of more water. All of these plans will have a better chance at fruition if India successfully lands on the moon.

“That India is one of the few countries to be able to build lunar landers means Chandrayaan-3’s success will be a critical part of being able to truly sustain the current global momentum for a return to the moon,” says Mehta. As more nations try to land on the moon, lessons from success—and failures—should help improve each next attempt.

Correction: A previous version of this article described the fine breaking phase as the last step of the landing. It is the penultimate step.

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Best overall		Swatch Space Collection		SEE IT	These watches were inspired by iconic astronaut gear.
Best premium		Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch		SEE IT	Issued to every American astronaut, this watch is a classic.
Best for smartwatch owners		MobyFox Smartwatch Band		SEE IT	Turn your Apple Watch into a space-themed showpiece.

The history of space watches ranges from the Russian cosmonaut programs to modern residents of the International Space Station. They’re designed with a wide array of functionality, but the concept of space has also left its aesthetic mark on watch design.

Space watches are popular for a few different reasons. When we’re talking about the specific models of wristwatches that have gone into space, those models have a certain cachet: they were durable enough for some of the most extreme environments a human can experience. And owning one provides a cool feeling of connection to astronauts and cosmonauts. Here are some of our favorite space watches.

• Best overall: Swatch Space Collection
• Best classic: Bulova Moonwatch
• Best for smartwatch owners: MobyFox NASA Band
• Best premium: Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch

How we chose the best space watches

For a watch to be rated space-worthy, you know that the watch has passed a whole battery of tests. These watches must be waterproof, airproof, resistant to both extreme heat and extreme cold, and capable of withstanding the bumpiest of landings. In other words, these are the toughest of the tough.

There are also simply space-themed watches, which tie into the broader trend of affinity for the classic NASA logo. Space is, you know, cool right now. That NASA logo is both vintage and forward-looking. Companies do need approval from NASA to use the logo, but it’s not especially hard to get. Not surprisingly, those have been flooding in lately; according to an LA Times story, NASA gets multiple requests per day these days. We looked for a range of options from top watchmakers in a variety of styles and prices in compiling our list.

The best space watches: Reviews & Recommendations

In the early days of the Space Race, wristwatches had an outsized level of importance. Buzz Aldrin, for example, actually wore his on the outside of his spacesuit; he used its chronograph (that means “timer”) feature as soon as he stepped onto the Moon. Some astronauts even wear two watches, for backup or to conduct multiple simultaneous operations with timers and alarms. So if you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on the same watch Neil Armstrong wore, you can still show your love of the universe outside our home planet.

Best overall: Swatch Space Collection

SEE IT

Swatch, the Swiss company known for its vibrant, endlessly quirky plastic watches, has a newish collection dedicated to celebrating NASA and its famous missions. The watch designs—there are five—are inspired by different elements of the space missions: the orange jumpsuits, the Space Race, and even the Omega Speedmaster itself (Swatch and Omega are owned by the same company). Three of the watches in the collection are also made of a new material Swatch calls “bioceramic,” a combination of renewable plastics and ceramics.

Best classic: Bulova Moonwatch

SEE IT

In 1971, Apollo 15 mission commander Dave Scott actually damaged his NASA-provided Omega Speedmaster during the flight. But he had brought along his own personal backup, a Bulova, which he slapped on his wrist before becoming the seventh man on the Moon. Today, Bulova makes a replica of that watch, and it’s much more affordable than the Omega. 

Best for smartwatch owners: MobyFox NASA Band

SEE IT

As far as we can tell, no astronaut or cosmonaut has taken a smartwatch into space yet. They’re not really designed for that kind of high-intensity, long-lasting kind of reliability. This MobyFox band, which advertises that it’s officially licensed, can bring that space flavor to your ground-bound Apple Watch. It’s compatible with all sizes of Apple Watch and is made of tough silicone. It also sports that iconic orange color made famous by American astronauts.

Best premium: Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch

SEE IT

There’s no getting around it: the Omega Speedmaster is the watch more associated with space travel than any other. It was the first watch approved by NASA, and it passed every test with flying colors. It’s stainless steel, 42 mm case, equipped with a chronograph (timer) and tachymeter (those numbers around the outside of the dial, used to measure speed). It’s pricey, but look, if you want to tell time like an astronaut, this is your opportunity.

Things to consider before purchasing a space watch 

What you should look for in a space watch depends on budget, taste, and exactly why you want a space watch in the first place. If you’re into the aesthetics of the NASA logo, there are more inexpensive options available. After all, as a government agency, NASA isn’t allowed to make money from the sale of products with its logo, and dozens of companies have created NASA-themed gear. Some of these collaborations have come and gone, but you can still find them on eBay and Etsy; search for “Timex x NASA,” for example, and you’ll find a whole bunch of them. (Some even double down on Timex’s collaborations, with an image of Snoopy in space on the watch face.)

If you want something unusual, look to the watches worn by the Russian cosmonauts, from makers like Sturmanskie and Poljot. If you want the absolute classic, well, there’s only ever been one watch that’s been approved by NASA for outer space travel (though astronauts have worn many different, unapproved watches, too). That’s the Omega Speedmaster.

Final thoughts on the best space watches

• Best overall: Swatch Space Collection
• Best classic: Bulova Moonwatch
• Best for smartwatch owners: MobyFox NASA Band
• Best premium: Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch

Owning one of the best space watches allows you to celebrate the extraterrestial achievements of astronauts and the space program through the years. Whether you prefer a a classic look or just want to swap the band for your smartwatch, there’s an option that’s out of this world for you.

Why trust us

Popular Science started writing about technology more than 150 years ago. There was no such thing as “gadget writing” when we published our first issue in 1872, but if there was, our mission to demystify the world of innovation for everyday readers means we would have been all over it. Here in the present, PopSci is fully committed to helping readers navigate the increasingly intimidating array of devices on the market right now.

Our writers and editors have combined decades of experience covering and reviewing consumer electronics. We each have our own obsessive specialties—from high-end audio to video games to cameras and beyond—but when we’re reviewing devices outside of our immediate wheelhouses, we do our best to seek out trustworthy voices and opinions to help guide people to the very best recommendations. We know we don’t know everything, but we’re excited to live through the analysis paralysis that internet shopping can spur so readers don’t have to.

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On December 6, 1968, Time magazine published an issue with a metaphor illustrated on the cover: a Soviet cosmonaut and an American astronaut were in a sprint to the moon. The actual space race had kicked off a decade earlier, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in 1957. It ended less than a year after Time published its cover, when US Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. The excitement wore off quickly—the last humans to step foot on the moon, the crew of Apollo 17, did so in 1972. So far, no one has gone back. 

But that’s changing. NASA is committed to landing astronauts on the moon again in 2025 as part of the space agency’s Artemis Program. China has plans to land humans on the moon by 2030. In the meantime, robotic missions to the moon are increasing: Russia’s endeavor to return to the moon for the first time in 47 years, the robotic Luna-25 mission, crashed this week, and India hopes to make its first soft landing there on August 23 with its Chandrayaan-3 lander. 

With so many nations headed for the moon, including an increasingly aggressive if diminished Russia, is the world at the cusp of a second space race? 

The temptation to reach for the historical space race as a model is understandable, but as long as we’re mapping history onto current events, it may not be the best guide, according to Cathleen Lewis, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museums curator of international space programs. “In my opinion, this isn’t a new race,” she says. “If you want to use historical events, this is more of a gold rush.” 

Or, more precisely, an ice rush. In 2018, scientists discovered water ice preserved in the deep, permanent shadows of polar craters. The US, China, Russia, and India are targeting portions of the lunar South Pole where that frozen resource should be. Water can be used to create rocket fuel or in lunar manufacturing. But it is heavy, and therefore expensive, to launch from Earth.  

Space agencies “haven’t quite worked out” how they are going to use this ice, or for “what technology to what end,” Lewis says. “But everyone wants to get there because we now know there is water ice to be found.” 

[Related on PopSci+: A DIY-rocket club’s risky dream of launching a human to the edge of space]

But it’s not just about the ice. The technological basis for all of this activity is entirely different than in the mid-20th century, Lewis points out. Back then, the US and the Soviet Union were developing the technology to go to the moon for the very first time. 

President Kennedy backed the lunar program because his advisors convinced him the race was technologically winnable, she says. While this competition had a destination, it also referred to the way “the USSR was racing to the maximum capacity of their technological limits.”

The Soviets had difficulty developing vehicles powerful enough to launch a crewed mission to the moon. The US created the Saturn V rocket, a singularly capable technology that was the most powerful ever launched until the first flight of NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in late 2022. 

Today, multiple nations and even private companies have the technological capability to send spacecraft to the moon. Space itself is now more crowded, too, host to satellites tied into terrestrial economies: carrying communications, providing guidance signals, and observing agricultural water and other resources on the ground. 

The goal is no longer to achieve technological superiority. Instead, nations are rushing to acquire existing technologies that are becoming a prerequisite for economic independence and affluence. “This is part of being in a world in a mature space age, that these are no longer optional programs, they’re no longer pickup games, jockeying to see who’s first,” Lewis says. “These are essential, existential programs for 21st century existence.”

[Related: China’s astronauts embark on a direct trip to their brand new space station]

In this sense, the current wave of moon programs are different from those in the past because they are more internally focused on economies, rather than serving as a non-military proxy contest between two superpowers. China, Lewis notes, has scaled its exploration of space to match its economic development over the past 30 years.

However, that’s not to say it will remain that way. The historical Gold Rush, after all, led to conflict over that valuable resource. Once enough players are regularly operating on the moon with regularity, the opportunities for disputes will increase. 

“Who gets to choose what we do with the moon?” Lewis asks. “We haven’t sorted out issues about who has mining and drilling rights.” 

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbids nations from making territorial claims on celestial bodies, but permits using resources there. Whether that use includes mining materials to sell for a profit on Earth is less clear. “We haven’t had to deal with that profit in space,” Lewis says. ”I’m glad I’m not an attorney who specializes in these sorts of things because it’s a part of it that makes my head ache.”

But there may be plenty of time for space lawyers and diplomats to figure that out. Because, when it comes to the moon, even gold rushes move slowly. “We’ve seen missions fail,” Lewis says, such as India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission that crashed on the moon in 2019. “The moon is a lot easier than it was 60 years ago, but it’s still difficult to get there.”

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Hammocks normally invoke an image of sipping tropical drinks or relaxing in a backyard, not necessarily archaeological discoveries. However, while installing a hammock this summer at Michigan State University, workers found a hard, impenetrable, surface just under the ground. Campus archaeologists looked at old maps and determined that the object was not a rock, but the 140-plus year-old foundation of the first observatory on MSU’s campus.

[Related: Ceramic pipes kept this town from flooding during monsoons 4,000 years ago.]

The observatory was built in 1881, but was demolished in the 1920s and was buried under ground over the course of the last century, according to The Washington Post. Another observatory was built in 1969 and is still up and running on campus.

“It gives us a sense of what early campus looked like in the late 19th century,” MSU campus archaeologist and anthropology doctoral student Ben Akey said in a statement. “The original campus observatory was built and used at a time when Michigan Agricultural College—what would become MSU—was a radically different institution with only a handful of professors and a relatively small student body.”

Akey will continue to collaborate with the university’s Infrastructure Planning and Facilities (IPF) department to keep up with campus construction projects and research any discoveries that are found. Students will also work to preserve any artifacts that the site might hold and coordinate with IPF to ensure anything detected during construction is properly researched and preserved.

Using the MSU archives, Akey conducted most of the research that confirmed the discovery of the building’s former foundation. The book “Stars Over the Red Cedar’, written” by  professor emeritus in the MSU Department of Physics and Astronomy Horace A. Smith, also helped confirm this unique find. 

The old observatory is located just behind what is now Wills House and was built by Professor Rolla Carpenter. An 1873 graduate of Michigan State Agricultural College, Carpenter returned as a professor and taught courses in mathematics, astronomy, French, and civil engineering.

[Related: Newly discovered ‘Stonehenge of the Netherlands’ is 4,000 years old.]

“In the early days of MSU’s astronomy program, Carpenter would take students to the roof of College Hall and have them observe from there, but he didn’t find it a sufficient solution for getting students experience in astronomical observation,” Akey said. “When MSU acquired a telescope, Carpenter successfully argued for funding for a place to mount it: the first campus observatory.”

MSU’s present day observatory is located just south of campus and boasts a 24-inch telescope. The space is used for both education, research, and free public observation nights.

“It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come from a little 16-foot circular building to a large building with a high-quality telescope and an electric dome,” MSU astrophysics and anthropology major Levi Webb said in a statement. “Seeing the difference between how observing used to be versus how it is now is very interesting to me and makes me appreciative of the observatory we have now.”

Correction (August 23, 2023, 3:37pm): An early version of this story spelled “Wills House” as “Willis House.” PopSci regrets the error.

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The idea of gravity as we know it has been around for a long time. More than 300 years ago, Isaac Newton first shared his theory of gravitation, describing how massive objects are attracted to each other. Then, around a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein refined and expanded upon Newton’s ideas to create the theory of relativity—explaining gravity as the way objects, especially at the extremes across the universe, warp the fabric of space around them.

But there are still a few mysteries in the cosmos that even the well-tested ideas of relativity can’t explain. The biggest one? Dark matter, the most notorious problem in astronomy today. Many scientists think dark matter is some kind of yet-unknown particle that obeys traditional laws of gravity. Others think the issue is actually gravity itself. In that view, perhaps we need a modified theory of gravity—also known as MOND, for MOdified Newtonian Dynamics—where, at the largest and smallest scales, gravity acts differently from the usual Newton or Einstein theories.

MOND is often met with significant skepticism, because Newton and Einstein’s ideas of gravity have had so much success. But new observations recently published in The Astrophysical Journal claim to provide evidence for modified gravity by taking a detailed look at the ways binary stars move around each other. 

“The new results provide direct evidence that Newton’s theory simply breaks down” at certain scales, explains Kyu-Hyun Chae, astronomer at Sejong University in Seoul, South Korea and author of the new paper claiming evidence for MOND. Chae used data from the European Gaia satellite, which has been measuring the positions and motions of stars with unprecedented precision over the past decade. In particular, he looked at binary stars with particularly wide, far-apart orbits to measure their accelerations, for which MOND and traditional theories predict different values. 

[Related: Have we been measuring gravity wrong this whole time?]

These spaced-out stars move pretty slowly, enabling tests of gravity where there are tiny accelerations. These small accelerations are where the two theories of gravity diverge, and modified gravity predicts the stars will move 30 to 40 percent faster than they would under “normal” gravity—precisely what Chae claims to have seen in the data. At the small scales of binary stars, too, according to Chae, dark matter can’t really have an effect, so it can’t explain the observed differences from the predictions of traditional gravity.

Xavier Hernandez, an astronomer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who first proposed the idea of testing gravity with wide binary systems but wasn’t involved in the new work, has confidence in these new results, especially since they complement his past work. “Two largely independent and complementary approaches have been shown to yield the same result,” he says, emphasizing that this a clear example of the scientific process.

The best explanation for Chae’s observations is a particular flavor of modified gravity theories, called AQUAL MOND. But just because gravity might not be a perfect match to one theory, doesn’t mean we need to throw out everything we have. “There are many versions of modified gravity because it can be anything that goes beyond Einstein’s theory of general relativity,” said physicist Sergei Ketov in a news release from the University of Tokyo Kavli Institute. “Modified gravity does not rule out Einstein’s theory, but it shows its boundaries.”

[Related: Gravity could be bringing you down with IBS]

Not all in the scientific community are convinced this is actually a “smoking-gun” for MOND, though. “The quick answer is that this result is a confluence of three things: good science, bad science, and the ugly state of science news,” wrote science communicator Ethan Siegel on Friday in his column Starts with a Bang. Siegel and other scientists have expressed concerns about the reliability of the observations used in Chae’s study—with some even publishing contradictory research—and discontent with news articles creating the impression that this work is a decisive victory for modified gravity. Depending on what stars scientists include in their analysis, the results vary, and these scientists currently disagree on what assumptions are the correct ones to make.

“If anyone is truly skeptical, he/she should try to disprove my results,” counters Chae. However, he empathizes with the motivation for some of the disbelief. The analyses at odds with this research, he adds, failed to include an important self-calibration step. Current modified gravity theories are “like the Bohr model of atoms without quantum physics developed yet. But, we need to remember that quantum physics was eventually developed,” he adds. (The Bohr model is the classic elementary-school science view of an atom, with electrons orbiting a nucleus, which was later replaced by the much fuzzier and probabilistic view of quantum mechanics.)

Only time and many other tests will be able to determine which theory will come out on top, and if dark matter is a particle or just a tweak to gravity. “We have these binary stars orbiting each other in front of us, and not doing what Newton said they should be doing,” says Hernandez. “Not considering modified gravity is no longer an option.”

This post has been updated with additional comments from Chae.

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Every summer, bright lights seem to shoot out of the constellation named for Greek hero Perseus. And while falling space rocks might not sound as epic as slaying a legendary monster, the colorful shimmering light of this annual meteor shower is still quite a sight to behold. This year, the show started in mid-July and will last until the beginning of September, but just this weekend marked the peak of the season. The waning crescent moon allows the meteors to truly glow against a dark night-to-early-morning sky, when skywatchers have noted seeing up to 90 meteors shoot across the stars every hour.

If you missed this year’s peak, luckily the shower still looks great in photographs. Take a look at some of our favorites, and set a pre-dawn alarm if you want to try to catch the Perseids before they vanish in the fall.

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This article is excerpted from Roberto Battiston’s book “First Dawn: From the Big Bang to Our Future in Space.” This article originally published on MIT Press Reader.

By the time we realized that there was an extrasolar intruder, ‘Oumuamua, named after the Hawaiian word for “scout,” had already passed its closest point to the Sun and was leaving, as fast and stealthily as it had arrived. We are talking about the first sighting, in 2017, of an asteroid from another area of the galaxy, a messenger from distant worlds. What do we know about this dark, probably cigar-shaped shard, which visited our solar system with a trajectory and velocity that allowed it to leave so quickly?

Very little. We know that it was not made of ice, so it must be of the rocky type. It did not ignite like a comet as it approached the Sun. We know that it does not emit electromagnetic radiation. The most powerful radio telescopes have found no trace of it. Its orbit is gravitational, determined by the attraction of the Sun; a small, non-inertial component can be explained by the effect of the pressure of the radiation in our star’s vicinity. We know that its speed, before entering the solar system, was compatible with the characteristic speeds of celestial bodies in the region of the Milky Way, of which our solar system is part. This allows us to exclude the idea that it comes from one of the dozen stars closest to us, as its velocity would have been too high. However, we have identified four more distant stars near which it could have passed in the last million years, with a velocity low enough that it could have originated in one of these star systems.

So, we don’t know exactly where it comes from, if it has already been in our solar system, how many other systems it has visited, or its composition. According to one hypothesis, it could be a fragment of an exoplanet destroyed by tidal effects. In this case it would be an object much rarer than main belt asteroids or objects from the Oort cloud, which formed directly from the original nebula. What is certain is that, on timescales of the order of millions or tens of millions of years, fragments like ‘Oumuamua can bring different star systems into contact. One estimate even predicts that 10,000 extrasolar asteroids cross Neptune’s orbit on a daily basis.

On timescales of the order of millions or tens of millions of years, fragments like ‘Oumuamua can bring different star systems into contact.

It would be interesting to be able to explore one to see what it was made of. This type of asteroid would seem to be the kind of vector suitable for transporting life, in hibernating form, from one part of the galaxy to another. While a space mission of this kind would be difficult because of the speed at which these fragments are moving, it wouldn’t be impossible, considering that in the future our observational capacity will improve considerably, allowing us to identify these bodies sooner than we were able to identify ‘Oumuamua. Another idea has to do with the possibility that some of these extrasolar objects have become trapped in our solar system after having lost some of their energy in a close encounter with Jupiter; a few candidates have already been identified. This approach would make an exploratory mission much easier to accomplish.

However, even the planets in our own solar system are in communication and exchanging material at a fairly high rate. Not everyone knows that we have about 10 rock samples from Mars here on Earth, even though there has not yet been a mission that brought back material from that planet. The meteorite bombardment on Mars results in fragments that, given its thin atmosphere, can be projected into space. Some of them can reach the Earth, penetrate our atmosphere, and fall like normal meteorites. By comparing the isotopic composition of various meteorites with those measured on Mars during NASA’s robotic missions to the planet, we are able to identify and distinguish Martian meteorites from all the others.

Finally, we should remember that it takes the solar system about 220 million years to revolve around the center of the galaxy. Since it formed 4.5 billion years ago, it has made the full circuit about 20 times. This means that, in the timescale in which life emerged on Earth, the newborn solar system made at least three complete circuits, coming into contact with fragments from distant star systems.

In 2019 I participated in a Breakthrough Discuss conference in Berkeley on “Migration of Life in the Universe.” I was puzzled by the conference theme: We know almost nothing about life in the universe, I thought, so how we could talk about migration of life? But recalling the observation of ‘Oumuamua, I did participate and I am glad I did. I was surprised by the scientific quality of the talks and by the extreme fascination of the topic. Life probably doesn’t need massive, rocky starships to move from one planetary system to another. Considering the minuscule size of bacteria, the smallest living organisms we know, or even viruses, which can live and reproduce inside bacteria, we can also imagine other mechanisms suitable for this kind of transport.

Microscopic ice crystals and dust, for example, containing bacteria and spores capable of withstanding the conditions in space, can spread into space from areas of a planet’s upper atmosphere. When the dimensions become microscopic, the relationship between gravitational force, which is dependent on mass, and the thrust due to stellar radiation, which is dependent on surface area, tips the balance in favor of the latter. It is as if a planet were leaving a trail of perfume behind it. Planetary dust containing hibernating life can be pushed by radiation until it reaches high velocities and moves beyond a given star system, spreading to other systems or nebulae, where it can find suitable conditions to reproduce and evolve. We are used to thinking of space as vast and mostly empty, completely unsuitable for life. Perhaps we should change our minds. Space is less empty than we might think. In reality, the different parts of the galaxy communicate by exchanging material on timescales comparable to those of the appearance of life on our planet.

We know of various living species that can endure extremely hostile conditions such as those in space: a nearly perfect vacuum, extreme temperatures, and ionizing radiation.

But how possible is it for life to survive in space? Well, even here, nature surprises us. In fact, we know of various living species that can endure extremely hostile conditions such as those in space: a nearly perfect vacuum, extreme temperatures, and ionizing radiation. Different kinds of lichens, bacteria, and spores are able to survive, losing all of their water and entering into a condition of total inactivity — which can last for extremely long periods — from which they can emerge, once they find themselves in a humid atmosphere again. Tests of this kind have been done on the International Space Station and in various laboratories. Even plankton, made of more complex organisms, shows a capacity to resist these prohibitive conditions.

A truly extraordinary case is that of the tardigrades. These very common micro-animals are about a half a millimeter long and live in water. They have eight legs, a mouth and a digestive system, as well as a simple nerve and brain structure. They are also able to sexually reproduce. They exist in nature in thousands of different versions and have a metabolism with unique characteristics. In order to withstand prolonged drought conditions, their bodies can achieve complete dehydration, losing around 90 percent of their water and curling up into a tiny, barrel-shaped structure. In other words, it’s as if they freeze-dry themselves. Once this process is complete, their metabolism becomes 10,000 times slower. The most amazing thing is that they can stay in this state for decades, only to wake up again within 20 or 30 minutes once exposed to moisture. But there’s more. When in a dehydrated state, they can withstand the vacuum of space as well as pressures higher than normal atmospheric pressures, temperatures near absolute zero or temperatures up to 150°C. Their radiation tolerance threshold is hundreds of times higher than what would be deadly for humans. The secret of their ability to harden is due to a sugar, trehalose, which is also widely used in the food industry. When dried, this sugar replaces the water molecules in the cells, leaving the animal in a kind of vitrified state.

In addition, the tardigrade’s DNA is protected by a protein that reduces radiation damage. Is this information enough to make us assume that these micro-animals come from space? I would say no. Their unusual metabolism is more likely the result of evolutionary adaptation that happened on our planet. In fact, tardigrades are among the very few living beings that have emerged unscathed from all five extinction events that have occurred on Earth. That is why they are the best candidates for a long journey into space aboard a meteorite or a comet. Recently, tardigrades have achieved a bit of media notoriety resulting from the Beresheet mission, a private probe launched by Israel, that crashed on the Moon in early April of 2019. The probe was carrying a colony of these micro-animals, in their dehydrated state. Given their microscopic size, it is likely that they survived the crash and will remain inactive for a long time to come, ready to be reawakened from their hibernation. By replacing the Israeli probe with an asteroid, we have a textbook example of how life might have arrived on Earth.

Or how life could have migrated from Earth to other planets in our galaxy.

By replacing the Israeli probe with an asteroid, we have a textbook example of how life might have arrived on Earth.

So, the problem of the origin of life remains open, even if, step by step, we are making progress toward a solution. In the last decade, increasingly powerful calculation instruments have allowed us to reproduce, starting from the first principles of quantum mechanics, the formation of increasingly large and complex molecular systems, now made up of thousands of atoms. The field of computational biology is growing at a formidable rate; it is now only a matter of computing power.

At the same time we have dramatically developed our ability to decode and manipulate DNA, up to the creation of the first simplified genomic structures, derived from living organisms and able to reproduce. We are now talking about synthetic life, built around human-designed DNA, a field with huge development prospects.

Therefore, it is likely that the creation of the complex molecular structures needed for life or the confirmation of the existence of islands of genomic stability in the evolution of viral and bacterial species are objectives that, in future, will be within our reach. At that point, we will have another tool for understanding how life on Earth developed. Who knows? Perhaps we will discover that aliens are particular biological life forms that have lived with us since the beginning of time; and we were looking for them on Mars or below the icy surface of Jupiter and Saturn’s moons!

Roberto Battiston is a physicist who specializes in the field of experimental fundamental and elementary particle physics, both with particle accelerators and in space. He is the author of several books, including “First Dawn,” from which this article is excerpted.

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Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft was supposed to depart Earth last month in a crewed test flight scheduled for July 21. It never left the ground. Problems with the spacecraft’s parachute system and the discovery of flammable tape around internal electronics led NASA, in June, to indefinitely postpone the flight. 

The work to fix the problems with the Starliner won’t be complete until next year, NASA and Boeing officials announced this week. ”We’re anticipating that we’re going to be ready with the spacecraft in early March,” Boeing Starliner vice president and program manager Mark Nappi said during an August 7 press conference. 

It’s just the latest in a long series of problems and delays that have plagued the Starliner since its first test flight. And, in the meantime, SpaceX has been eating the more venerable aerospace giant’s lunch.

In 2014, NASA awarded both SpaceX and Boeing contracts to develop spacecraft for the space agency’s Commercial Crew Program. The goal at the time, according to Laura Forczyk, founder of the space industry analysis firm Astralytical, was to provide NASA with rides to space after the 2011 retirement of the Space Shuttle, without relying on Russia and its Soyuz spacecraft. Boeing was the clear favorite. 

“They chose to do similar redundant systems, Dragon and Starliner, for the purpose of at least one succeeding. That one was assumed to be Starliner,” Forczyk says. “And it was a question whether SpaceX would even succeed at all.”

SpaceX completed testing of its Crew Dragon spacecraft, and then flew its first official mission with NASA astronauts in November 2020. But computer issues kept Boeing’s spacecraft from completing its uncrewed flight test, the Orbital Flight Test (OFT), in December 2019. 

[Related: Watch SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket explode]

Then, in April 2021, issues with an engine valve—due to exposure to salty air at Cape Canaveral, Florida—led to the cancellation of the re-attempted uncrewed flight test, OFT-2. Boeing wouldn’t successfully complete that test until May 2022. 

The next step in Starliner testing, a crewed flight test, or CFT, was originally scheduled for December 2022. This was delayed multiple times—in February, March, and April—before the July launch date was postponed due to the issues with the parachute and flammable tape. 

According to Nappi, Boeing has redesigned linkages for the parachutes to make them more robust. The aerospace company plans to conduct a “drop test” of the new design in November, releasing a version of the Starliner from 11,000 feet over the Nevada desert. Boeing is also removing the flammable tape where possible, and considering ways to place protective coatings on the tape in areas where it cannot be so easily replaced. 

Despite marking March 2024 as the month when Starliner could be ready, NASA and Boeing do not have an official launch date in mind. And given how the program has run so far, that’s probably a wise decision, according to Forczyk. 

“There’s multiple things that could happen that will continue to delay this,” she says. “Just based on the hardware testing, I do believe that we’d have to see everything go perfectly from now until March in order for them to even optimistically consider March as a date for their next true test mission.” That an aerospace giant like Boeing is still dealing with fundamental engineering troubles this late in the game, while an upstart like SpaceX is about to fly its seventh crewed mission for NASA on August 25, has to be embarrassing for Boeing, she adds. 

More importantly though, it’s costing Boeing money: NASA awarded the company $4.2 billion to develop the Starliner in 2014, and it is on the hook for all costs beyond that amount. CNBC estimates the company has lost around $1.5 billion on Starliner so far. 

[Related on PopSci+: A DIY-rocket club’s risky dream of launching a human to the edge of space]

”This program has been such a money loss for Boeing that it makes me wonder how committed Boeing is going to be to the continuation of this program,” Forcysk says. She notes that Boeing has said it will fulfill its obligations to NASA, which include six crewed flights to the ISS, but the company may no longer be interested in trying to offer Starliner services to other governments or private customers. 

NASA, meanwhile, may soon have alternatives to Starliner. 

“Coming on board, perhaps, is Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser, which has been in development for like 20 years,” Forczyk says. And Blue Origin’s New Glenn spacecraft is expected to begin flying commercial payloads by August 2024. 

With those alternatives or backups to Crew Dragon flights, and NASA’s planned retirement of the ISS by the end of the decade, it could be that Starliner is a very expensive project that flies fewer than 10 missions. 

The end result is that SpaceX, once considered the underdog by NASA, looks to be the primary human space launch contractor for NASA for the foreseeable future. “These other systems that are in development will offer competition, but at what point does SpaceX become less dominant?” Forczyk says. “Right now SpaceX is so far ahead of everyone else in human-rated orbital launch that it’s going to take a lot for other companies to catch up.”

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Virgin Galactic’s second commercial spaceflight successfully launched today at 11:23 from the company’s Spaceport America site in New Mexico. The spaceflight reached an altitude of around 290,000 feet at about two and a half minutes post-takeoff.

Aboard the Galactic-02 mission’s reusable VSS Unity spaceplane were the first mother-daughter visitors to space, Keisha and Anastatia Mayers, along with former Olympian and Brit Jon Goodwin. At 18-years-old, University of Aberdeen physics and philosophy student Anastatia Mayers is now the youngest person to embark on such a journey.

Similar to rival private space ventures like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity technically only reaches a suborbital altitude, which technically is not “outer space,” per se. A fair amount of back-and-forth between experts still exists on the actual atmospheric boundary, space itself is considered to begin roughly 62 miles (327,360 feet) above the Earth’s surface—a demarcation known as the Kármán line. This height still allows for several minutes of weightlessness along with a view of Earth’s curvature beneath the inky blackness of space. Unlike Blue Origin or SpaceX vehicles, however, travelers first ascend while attached to a carrier plane, VMS Eve, before Unity detaches and ignites its rockets to reach its suborbital destination.

[Related: Virgin Galactic will fly you to space for the price of a house.]

The Galactic-02 crew also includes commander C.J. Sturckow, pilot Kelly Latimer, and Virgin Galactic’s astronaut instructor, Beth Moses. As Antiguans, the Mayers are the first female astronauts from the Caribbean. The Mayers won their seats via a drawing that raised funds for Space for Humanity, a non-profit aimed at providing sponsored trips for emerging world leaders to experience the Overview Effect.

“I cannot wait to go above the earth’s atmosphere and experience the different energy from here on Earth,” Keisha Mayers said in her Virgin Galactic astronaut biography. “To represent my island, Antigua, is truly an honor. I hope my journey will inspire others to reach for their dreams as well.”

Goodwin is also the second person diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease to ever travel to space, following astronaut Rich Clifford. Goodwin is an “early Virgin Galactic ticket holder,” according to the Virgin Galactic press statement.

Virgin Galactic’s first successful commercial flight took place on June 29, and served as a research mission for the Italian Air Force.

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While it takes the Earth 365 days to revolve around our star (aka the sun), the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b takes 23.6 Earth years to orbit its star. Now, an astrophysicist and exoplanet imager at Northwestern University has used 17 years of footage to create a time-lapse video of this almost complete orbit of the giant planet around its star.

[Related: New image reveals a Jupiter-like world that may share its orbit with a ‘twin’.]

Beta Pictoris b is an enormous planet that has 12 times the mass of the gas giant Jupiter. It’s about 63 lightyears away from the Earth in the constellation Pictor. The whopping planet is about 10 times further away from its star than the Earth is from the sun, and Beta Pictoris b is  about 1.75 times as massive and 8.7 times more luminous than our sun. 

Astrophysicist Jason Wang used real time footage collected between 2003 and 2020 and condense the 17-year-long journey into 10 seconds showing Beta Pictoris b making roughly 75 percent of one full orbit of its star. 

“We need another six years of data before we can see one whole orbit,” Wang said in a statement. “We’re almost there. Patience is key.”

This very young planet is only 20 to 26 million years old and was first imaged in 2003. At the time, its size and brightness made it easier to spot compared to the galaxy’s other exoplanets. 

“It’s extremely bright,” Wang said. “That’s why it’s one of the first exoplanets to ever be discovered and directly imaged. It’s so big that it’s at the boundary of a planet and a brown dwarf, which are more massive than planets.”

Wang first constructed his first time-lapse footage of the Beta Pictoris b with five years of its circuit. He started working with a local high school student named Malachi Noel who used AI-driven image-processing techniques to uniformly analyze archival imaging data from the Gemini Observatory’s Gemini Planet Imager and the European Southern Observatory’s NACO and SPHERE instruments.

“Due to the long time-range, there was a lot of diversity among the datasets, which required frequent adaptations to the image processing,” Noel said in a statement. “I really enjoyed working with the data. While it is too early to know for sure, astrophysics is definitely a career path I am seriously considering.” 

After the data was uniformly processed, Wang used an algorithmic technique called motion interpolation to fill in the gaps to make a continuous video. This kept the image of the exoplanet looking more smooth as it orbits through space. 

“If we just combined the images, the video would look really jittery because we didn’t have continuous viewing of the system every day for 17 years,” Wang said. “The algorithm smooths out that jitter, so we can imagine how the planet would look if we did see it every day.”

Wang used a technology called adaptive optics to assemble the video, which also helped to  correct the image blurring that Earth’s atmosphere causes and suppress the glare of the central star in the system. The star’s glare is still so intense that it outshines Beta Pictoris b when it gets too close. 

[Related: The Milky Way’s shiniest known exoplanet has glittering metallic clouds.]

Wang hopes exoplanet videos give viewers a unique look into planetary motion and demonstrates the inner workings of the universe. 

“A lot of times, in science, we use abstract ideas or mathematical equations,” Wang said. “But something like a movie—that you can see with your own eyes—gives a visceral kind of appreciation for physics that you wouldn’t gain from just looking at plots on a graph.”

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In Overmatched, we take a close look at the science and technology at the heart of the defense industry—the world of soldiers and spies.

YOU’RE STANDING at the top of a mountain, elated to have reached the summit. But when you reach into your pack for some water, your foot gets wedged between two rocks, and you fall and crack your ankle. While you’re not dead, you definitely can’t hike down. You need help. Luckily, you have an SOS device: a little piece of technology that can communicate with satellites to send a cry for help, along with your location and maybe a text or two, to authorities. Teams mobilize to come get you. 

In this hypothetical scenario, you were in the backcountry for recreation—to have fun. But satellite communication and tracking aren’t useful just for hikers, hunters, and mountaineers who have no cell signal. It’s also important for those doing their jobs in the kinds of wild, harsh environments that could otherwise leave them incommunicado: people like those on search-and-rescue teams who would help an injured hiker, as well as miners, forestry technicians, wildland firefighters, and soldiers. 

To make communication easier for all those folks, a company called Everywhere Communications has brought together services from two powerhouses of the industry—Iridium, maker of satellites, and Garmin, maker of GPS devices—to create a secure system that organizations can use to track and communicate with extremely remote employees and assets. If you did, in fact, crack your ankle on a peak, the search-and-rescue team that would mobilize might use Everywhere to help themselves help you. Today, the company has 300 customers, including the US government and the US national parks. 

Global SOS

Patrick Shay, who founded Everywhere Communications in 2016 along with a core team, has a long history in the finding-things and communications spaces. Earlier in his career, while working at Motorola and Sirius, Shay was instrumental in putting SOS buttons in cars, the first being a fancy one: a $100,000 S-Class Mercedes. After that, he joined Iridium. Iridium, initially funded by Motorola, created and launched a constellation of communications satellites and the bulky satellite phones you may have seen in ’90s movies. 

Finally, Shay joined a company called DeLorme, which created inReach, an SOS device that allows its users to track themselves, call for help, and send messages to civilization. In 2016, Garmin bought DeLorme and thus acquired inReach. But the device, and most commercial satellite communications tech today, tends to end up in the hands of outdoorsy recreators rather than people with dirty and dangerous jobs such as those in defense. Shay wanted to reach out to that latter segment. “At Everywhere, we focus on exclusively government and business,” he says. That includes the business of search and rescue.

But he didn’t want to start from scratch. Why reinvent the wheel when it’s already rolling around? So Everywhere formed a partnership with Garmin, which by then owned the inReach technology whose development Shay had been a part of. The inReach device looks like a diminutive walkie-talkie, and in its smallest form, the burnt-orange-and-black device weighs just 3.5 ounces and measures 4 inches tall by 2 inches wide. 

“We were incredibly fortunate because we do business with our old friends,” says Shay of his colleagues from DeLorme. Those friends allowed Everywhere to take off-the-shelf versions of inReach and add firmware that makes it secure and encrypted enough for professional and government use and also lets operators erase all the data remotely if a device gets lost. “The reason that happened,” says Shay, of the partnership and device modifications, “was because of personal relationships and history.”

Those security features were necessary if Everywhere was to appeal to the feds, because traditional satellite communications—including those of the Iridium constellation, on which Everywhere relies—have historically been simple to hack, allowing clever eavesdroppers to intercept communications. 

The software, too, needed amping up to appeal to this new crowd, so Everywhere has created code that operates differently from what you’d interact with as a civilian carrying a device like a Garmin inReach on a peak-bagging quest. Most important is the Everywhere Hub, a web-based portal that functions like an incident command center or a security operations center—the place with all the information that directs the people in the field. “That’s that room with all the TVs on the wall,” says Shay. “And one of those TVs is a picture of the world with a bunch of blinking dots and lights.” Those little lights are the team members. “If somebody in Yemen pushes an SOS button, it’s going to light up on that screen,” Shay continues.

These aren’t totally new capabilities, but Everywhere combined them into one package rather than requiring a hodgepodge of services and gadgets. The company’s innovation is taking existing hardware, modifying it for security, and linking it with Everywhere’s own professional software backbone. 

The software also has capabilities your average casual elk hunter wouldn’t need. For instance, a person using the Everywhere Hub can create a “geofence,” essentially a boundary in space and time. When, say, a soldier or miner enters or leaves that specific area during that specific time, the command center gets an alert. Those soldiers and miners could also send large amounts of information back to base, or to each other, like data regarding which streets are flooded or where a sensitive material like uranium is. And anyone driving a secured vehicle—be that a car full of cash or the lead vehicle in a security convoy—could be tracked along their route. Home base can also schedule check-ins for workers—meaning they don’t have to be tracked all the time.

A satellite constellation

All that connection is possible because of the Iridium satellite constellation—66 spacecraft in orbit—and cellular network. Together, they provide coverage for the whole planet, all the time, so no matter where you are, you can communicate if you have a device like the inReach. Iridium also allows a device to transmit information about its location—information the device gathers from GPS satellites. The GPS satellites do the pinpointing, but communications satellites relay those pinpoints. Like SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites, the Iridium spacecraft live in low Earth orbit, around 500 miles from Earth, so signals like those to and from an inReach can whiz back and forth quickly, without the lag time caused by more distant orbits. 

While Iridium does make its own communications and tracking devices, it also sells chips and antennas to other outfits, like Garmin, so they can implant those in their devices, or stick them to their assets, allowing their own technology to enable a connection from the satellites.

“Other networks were going after who can provide the fastest internet pipe to your home or remote cabin,” says Matt Desch, Iridium’s CEO. “We weren’t going after that. That’s not what we do.” 

Instead, Iridium aims to provide extremely mobile connections, like those that firefighters, miners, soldiers, and searchers would need as they roam in the field and use Everywhere’s services. More than 60,000 aircraft—including medevac helicopters whose position and ability to communicate are lifesaving, not just vacation-enabling—also have Iridium chips inside. Iridium’s network also guides autonomous vehicles on land, by sea, or in the air. For example, Swoop Aero’s drones use it above the ground, and SailDrone’s uncrewed boats use it on the surface of the ocean. 

Military or aid organizations can also stick sensors on, say, pallets of food and water to make sure they get delivered to their intended destination, or use the antennas to send, for example, weather and seismic information from ground sensors to an intelligence outfit halfway across the world. The ability to do such data transfer is especially important, militarily, in the Arctic: Near the top of the Earth—where missile warning and air surveillance are prime activities—satellite comms are really the only option. And when teams are completing missions, or helping deliver aid, an organization can use a software-hardware combo system like Everywhere to watch the boots on the ground from the comfort of the incident command room and to send a text if, say, someone looks stuck.

People have typically gone to areas like distant summits to be a little alone, to disappear for a while, to feel self-sufficient, and, maybe, to not be tracked. But when people need rescuing, the ability to call for help and say where to send it can trump that desire for solitude. And when you’re out there—or in a combat zone without cell service, or on a cross-conflict trek with no infrastructure, or deep in a mine or forest—for work, a bit of job security, in the more literal sense of the word, can be lifesaving.

Read more PopSci+ stories.

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For the past few days, if you headed outside after sunset and you happened to look up at the sky on a clear night, you might have been able to witness the annual production of the Perseids. If you didn’t, don’t fret, there’s still plenty of time. The Perseids are expected to reach their peak August 11 through the 13, with the best viewing on August 12, between midnight and before the sun rises. And here at Popular Science we’re answering all the questions you might have about the upcoming display. Let’s dive right in.

When is the Perseid meteor shower 2023?

The Perseid meteor shower happens every summer for about a month. In 2023, the Perseids will run from about July 14 to September 1, are expected to reach their peak August 11 through the 13. The best viewing expected between midnight and before the sun rises each night. Per usual, the best viewing times are before dawn.

Where can I see the Perseids?

According to EarthSky, the moon will be about 10 percent illuminated during this year’s peak. Perseids rise to a peak gradually and then fall pretty quickly. They also tend to strengthen in numbers as the night turns into the early hours of the morning. 

This meteor shower is also often best seen before dawn and these meteors are often colorful. With a dark sky with no moon, up to 90 meteors per hour are possibly visible. This year, the light from the waning crescent moon will not interfere with Perseids.

What’s the difference between a meteor shower and a normal shower?

A shower is something in your home that you stand in and that pours water all over you whenever you need to be clean.

A meteor shower is something that happens when innumerable tiny remnants of comets and asteroids slam into the Earth’s atmosphere. The speeding lumps of dust and ice and rock are no match for the dense bubble of air that surrounds our planet (which we call the atmosphere), and as they hurtle towards the ground that they will never reach, they burn up in a glorious blaze that streaks through the heavens.

[Related: How to photograph a meteor shower]

To recap: A shower is what you use to clean and reinvigorate your delightfully filthy human body. A meteor shower will help reawaken your wonder at this vast universe if you can stay up a little later than your normal bedtime to see the glory of the night sky.

(Note: A rain shower is different. While they can occur at any time, they are notorious for popping up right when you get ALL EXCITED about a meteor shower, just so that they can spoil your view. If rain is expected on the same night as a meteor shower, then darn. That sucks. Go take a nice warm normal shower instead.)

Where do the Perseids get their name from?

When you look up at the night sky during the Perseids, bright shooting points of light will appear to stream out of the constellation Perseus. They’re not emerging from the constellation itself, it’s just that the point in the sky where the meteors come from (known as the radiant if you want to impress your friends) happens to line up with the constellation Perseus. People have observed the Perseids for thousands of years, with written records of the event dating back to 36 CE.

What causes the Perseids?

The meteors that make up the Perseids are the dusty remnants left behind by Comet 109P Swift-Tuttle. Like a pet particularly prone to shedding, Swift-Tuttle leaves behind tiny bits of itself as it ambles along through the solar system, particularly when it’s near our star, and its solid, icy surface heats up, sublimating into a gas. You can tell where it’s been in the inner solar system because it leaves a veritable cloud of itself behind, but instead of dander and hair, it’s ice and dust. It sheds these in a beautiful glow that tails behind the comet, called the coma that appears as the comet gets close to the sun. After the nucleus or solid heart of the comet has passed by, the dust and ice remain.

Swift-Tuttle got its name when it was identified by astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle in 1862. Both Swift and Tuttle noticed the comet independently, and so they got to share the name. But the comet has been visiting our cosmic neighborhood for a long time. It’s an icy body whose orbit takes it out beyond Neptune, then swings back in, closer to the sun, where its orbit gets close to ours. The round-trip around the sun takes 133 years.

The last time it stopped by was December 1992 and it will venture close again in the summer of 2126.

Swift-Tuttle is a large comet, about 16 miles across. To put it in perspective, that’s about twice the size of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. People got a little nervous about whether or not it would ever hit Earth but after the last close pass in 1992, researchers calculated its orbit for the next several thousand years and figured out that we’re not in any danger of an impact from this particular comet. Whew.

Do other planets pass through it?

Swift-Tuttle orbits the sun at a steep incline compared to the planets. You can see its orbital diagram here. Right now, the comet is still on its way towards the outer reaches of the solar system, and is far below the ecliptic plane (the planets, including Earth, all orbit the sun on about the same geometric plane).

“Its orbit is inclined about 113 degrees to the ecliptic and it comes close to Earth’s orbit as it passes southward through the plane of the solar system,” Jim Scotti, an astronomer at the University of Arizona says. Scotti observed the comet when it passed by in 1992. “It also passes through the plane of the solar system out between Uranus and Saturn while heading northward on the way inbound.”

[Related: Pristine ‘fireball’ meteorite contains extraterrestrial organic compounds]

We’re the only planet that passes through the comet’s debris stream, but other, larger planets can have an effect on the comet’s long and dusty trail. Jupiter in particular is known to perturb the comet’s track (see below for more details!)

Other planets with atmospheres definitely experience meteor showers, including Venus, Mars, and Mercury. Jupiter gets hit with plenty of large meteors and comets, Saturn’s rings get pummeled by meteor strikes. Meteor showers are harder to observe at Uranus and Neptune, thanks to the immense distance between them and telescopes here on Earth, but there is some evidence that Neptune has been smacked with at least one comet and models suggest that Uranus has collided with other planetary bodies in the past.

If we pass through the dust trail every year, we must be using up the dust, right? How many meteor showers are left?

Plenty. Because the comet comes back every 133 years, there’s a slow but steady replenishment of the matter that makes up the Perseids.

How big are these things entering the atmosphere, and what happens when they do?

NASA researcher Bill Cooke told Scientific American in 2010 that most of the objects that streak across the sky are only a few millmeters to a few inches across. These are traveling at a speed of 37 miles per second or 133,200 miles per hour as they hit our atmosphere.

At that speed, even the thin upper reaches of our atmosphere prove to be an impenetrable barrier to the sand-grain-sized particles, which blaze gloriously as they fall towards Earth. Larger meteoroids, like the roughly 55-foot diameter Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013, go through a similar yet even more destructive process. As they hurtle towards Earth, air forces itself inside the meteoroid, increasing the pressure and causing it to explode from the inside out. Luckily, the most you’ll see from the Perseids are much tamer fireballs that will light up the night sky without doing any damage.

Are some years better than others?

Remember we mentioned Jupiter’s effect above? While Swift-Tuttle generally follows the same path around the sun, sometimes it (and its dust) gets pulled a little bit by larger planets like Jupiter, putting it on a slightly different path. The solar wind, a constant stream of particles from the sun, also plays a role in changing the position of the comet and its dust, slowly pushing on the dust trails left behind, making them distinct.

“The dust that left the comet during its 1862 perihelion [or closest point to the sun] passage will be closer to the comet than the debris that left the comet in around 1479, three orbits earlier. The dust has spread out more as well, so [it] may be not as dense as it was when ejected from the comet.” Scotti says.

Streams from the comet’s passing in 1479 and 1862 are slightly offset from the rest of the tail, enough that they’re still identifiable. When Earth passes through those, like it did in 2016, the result can be an outburst, or a dramatic uptick in the amount of meteors seen per hour. An outburst unexpectedly dazzled the morning of August 14, 2021; this year, the moon is cooperating somewhat, so stargazers should be able to see some streaks in the sky.

Are there a lot of those debris fields out there?

Yep! The Perseids are far from alone in the meteor shower department. The Geminids in December are known for being more brilliant, but tend to occur during brutally cold weather when most people would rather be indoors.

Ok, sounds cool. Remind me when can I see the Perseids?

The Perseid shower started in mid-July this year, and it will reach its peak on August 11 through 13. NASA recommends going out in the pre-dawn hours in mid-August, when activity will be highest above the horizon. Look up (but not straight up) and to the North, in the darkest area you can find, and try to spend a few hours just taking in the sky. The longer you let your eyes adjust, the more meteors you’ll actually spot.

If getting out of bed in the wee hours isn’t your cup of tea, you can try your luck anytime after dark this week, and should have decent chances around midnight or later. Check out our meteor shower viewing tips to make sure you get the best views.

This story has been updated for the 2023 meteor shower.

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Some of the most exotic solutions to climate change are the various forms of geoengineering. Such proposals aim to reduce global warming by shrinking the amount of solar radiation that reaches Earth’s surface—by, say, injecting large amounts of sulfur dioxide or dust into the air to mimic the cooling effect of large volcanic eruptions. Or building catapults to launch lunar dust into orbit around Earth and intercept the sun’s rays in the space near our planet. 

But University of Hawaii cosmologist István Szapudi has an even more far-out idea: place a 372,000-mile-wide sun shade tethered to a captured asteroid between Earth and the sun to reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching our planet by 1.7 percent. His analysis is agnostic to the shade’s shape, though he imagines it could be a circular shade made of triangular segments, able to open or close like flower petals to allow variable amounts of sunlight through. 

“It’s not going to cast a sharp shadow,” Szapudi says. ”Maybe with a telescope you could notice that there is something in front of the sun. But other than that, it would just be that people would notice that the weather is a little bit better.”

He readily admits that this concept would require millions of dollars investment in just preliminary engineering studies to see if it is really possible. “Of course, it’s unrealistic to actually do this, so hopefully, we will slowly give up fossil fuels,” Szapudi says, citing a much more mainstream goal to curb a source of climate change. “But that’s a very long-term process.”

In the meantime, he suggests, maybe the world can consider alternatives to help mitigate the change in climate that occurs from the carbon already in Earth’s atmosphere today. 

Szapudi’s proposal, as described in a paper published on July 31 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, would place this massive sun shade at the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1, or L1. This is a region of space about 932,000 miles toward the sun from Earth where the gravity of both bodies cancels out, allowing a spacecraft orbiting L1 to maintain a constant position relative to the sun and Earth with minimal maneuvering. The James Webb Space Telescope makes use of the same phenomena at L2, the L1 point’s counterpart 932,000 miles away from Earth in the direction of the outer solar system. 

[Related: How big banks can make real progress against climate change]

Szapudi is not the first to suggest placing a sun shade at L1, but previous proposals ran into problems. Namely, a large sun shade will also act like a solar sail, catching solar radiation that will push the structure out of position at L1. Previous proposals got around this by making the sun shade extremely massive, on the order of 350 million tons, perhaps of metal or asteroid stuff—an utterly unrealistic amount of mass even for a proposal that’s already this far out. 

Szapudi instead proposes connecting it to an asteroid counterweight by tethers up to 1.9 million miles long. Since the sun’s gravity is more potent the further away from L1 and closer to the star you go, the tug of solar gravity on the asteroid will counterbalance the radiation pressure on the sun shade, allowing it to stay in place. 

With such a configuration, Szapudi estimated the shade itself might weigh only 35,000 tons. “That’s something that SpaceX could put up in space” using its current rockets, he says, though it’d take a lot of time and effort. A sun shade could be made even lighter, Szapudi suggests, if made from something like graphene, an extremely light and strong material consisting of atom-thick sheets of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice pattern. 

Astronomers would have to identify a suitable near-Earth asteroid for the counterweight through something like the University of Hawaii’s Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), Szapudi says. But once they did, the sun shade could be tethered to the asteroid in its existing orbit and used as a solar sail to divert the space rock toward the L1 point. 

Engineering-wise, the whole idea is extremely speculative, Szapudi emphasizes, relying on technology that is not yet developed, such as materials strong and light enough to serve as the tethers. 

[Related on PopSci+: Cloudy with a chance of cooling the planet]

But it’s also not clear if geoengineering of this sort would actually help mitigate the effects of climate change, or do so without introducing other, unpredictable and negative consequences, according to Rutgers University climatologist Alan Robock. Robock leads the Rutgers Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project, which uses climate change models to predict the effects of geoengineering interventions.

“What if you start doing it and you say, ‘OK, we figured out that 90 percent of the world is going to be better off, but 10 percent is going to be worse off,” Robock says. “But we don’t know which 10 percent because of randomness in the climate system.”

And some effects are well understood, likely, and not good, he adds. 

“For example, you’d get drought in Africa and Asia, because the summer monsoon is driven by the temperature difference between the land and the ocean in the summer,” Robock says. “If you block out the sun, the land would cool more than the ocean. And so that temperature difference would go down. In the summer monsoon precipitation would be reduced.” 

And if something went wrong with the sun shield, and it stopped blocking the sun suddenly, Earth would warm back up much more rapidly than humans have ever experienced r. 

“That’s called the termination problem,” Robock says, and it’s something that dogs all geoengineering proposals. 

And then there’s also the very human problem of cooperating on what is essentially a species-wide project: building and tuning a sun shade. How do humans agree on how much sun to block, or as Robock puts it, how does the world agree on where to set the planetary thermostat? “Countries like Canada and Russia wouldn’t mind it being a little bit warmer,” he says. “In fact, we’ve calculated their agriculture would improve, but countries in the tropics would want it cooler because sea levels are going up, they’re already drowning.”

Ultimately Robock sees geoengineering projects as potential distractions from reducing emissions today. The best solution to climate change, Robock says—and Szapudi agrees—is to leave fossil fuels in the ground. 

 But Szapudi sees his proposal as a project to help mitigate the lasting effects of emissions that have already taken place. It could be an insurance policy to help turn off the worst effects of global warming that are already baked into the climate—but it only works if we start such a long term research project now. 

As an insurance policy, though, it’d have one expensive premium. “If technology develops the way I hope it would, maybe this is a trillion-dollar project,” Szapudi says. “You would need at least an army of engineers, probably tens of millions of dollars just to explore the concept to enough detail.”

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Reality is stranger than fiction, especially in space, where astronomers just spotted two tiny stars orbiting so close together that the whole system could fit inside our sun. In a new article submitted to the Open Journal of Astrophysics, researchers present the discovery of ZTF J2020+5033, a not-quite-a-star object called a brown dwarf that’s circling a small, low-mass star.

This is what’s known as a binary system, where two stars are bound to each other in a sort of gravitational dance—think the iconic twin suns in the sky above Tatooine, the Star Wars planet. What’s wild about this particular new—and very real—binary is just how small it is. “This system shouldn’t exist,” says Mark Popinchalk, an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History not involved in the new research. 

The brown dwarf completes one lap of its parent star in just under two hours, about the time it takes Popinchalk to commute from Brooklyn to his Manhattan office and back. “I would have been skeptical of the system,” he adds, but the authors have collected “an impressive amount of data” using multiple telescopes and techniques to support this discovery.

[Related: Your guide to the types of stars, from their dusty births to violent deaths]

“The orbit is much tighter (i.e., smaller, with a shorter orbital period) than any previously discovered brown dwarf binaries,” says lead author Kareem El-Badry, an astronomer at Caltech. “Until now it seemed like these kinds of binaries were unable to reach such short periods, but this system shows that is not the case.”

Binary systems are an important tool for astronomers to understand stars more generally. Thanks to the gravitational interactions between the two components, researchers can measure mass, radius, and temperature and other key properties more reliably and accurately for binaries than they can when observing lone stars. These measurements are needed to test our models and understanding of how stars change over time.

The center of this binary system is a low-mass star—something smaller than our sun—with a brown dwarf orbiting around it. Brown dwarfs are sometimes called “failed stars” because they’re not quite big enough to be a star but too big to be a planet. “Failed stars” may be a misnomer, though, since astronomers are still trying to figure out if brown dwarfs and stars are born the same way.

This particular newly discovered brown dwarf, which is about 80 times the mass of Jupiter, is on the cusp of being massive enough to be a star. Studying it in particular can help astronomers unravel how these intermediate objects came to be. “The way brown dwarfs form still has several big question marks around it, and each brown dwarf/low-mass star binary system is an important laboratory to answer these questions,” says Popinchalk. ZTF J2020+5033 is such a large example of a brown dwarf that someday, if any of its partner star’s material transfers onto it, that addition might push the brown dwarf into star territory—“like a cosmic gift, some mass passed on to an old friend to help them over the line and into the category of full fledged star,” says Popinchalk.

[Related: Dust clumps around a young star could one day form planets]

Plus, this new binary’s tight orbit poses a puzzle for researchers. Stars are puffier when they’re young—so much so that if these stars weren’t old, they couldn’t orbit so close and would be touching. “A majority of known brown dwarfs are young and inflated,” says El-Badry. “So it lets us test models for how brown dwarfs should cool as they age.” Their youthful puffiness also means they couldn’t have possibly been in this orbit their whole lives, and instead the orbit somehow shrunk with the stars by a factor of five over their lifetimes.

The authors propose the shrinking orbit could be caused by magnetic braking, where energetic particles from a star are funneled through its magnetic field, robbing the star of energy. Existing models assume that magnetic braking doesn’t work for small stars, but it looks like it must be operating here. If small stars decelerate more than previously thought, this could have big impacts for the evolution of other types of binary stars too—X-ray binaries that have a neutron star and a low-mass star, or cataclysmic variables with a low-mass star and a white dwarf.

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Sealed safely inside the International Space Station, astronauts dress for comfort and convenience. Their typical getups—short-sleeve collared shirts and long cargo pants—are regular Earth clothes, sourced from retailers that include Cabela’s and Lands’ End. But astronauts require exceptional attire when outside the ISS’s climate-controlled confines. NASA’s chunky spacesuits are, essentially, spacecraft condensed to human size. They protect wearers from an environment that swings from 250 degrees Fahrenheit in the sun to minus 250 degrees in the shade. 

Inside the suits, spacewalkers often work up a sweat, despite cooling tubes that wick away body heat. Extravehicular activities, or EVAs, may involve hours of strenuous labor. To stay warm and pressurized, astronauts also have to wear layers—including an inner form-fitting garment akin to long underwear—that they re-wear and even share. Complicating matters still: There are no laundry machines on the ISS. Because water is so valuable, washing a suit in orbit is not an option. Which is why NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and other organizations have asked textiles experts to investigate the problem of biocontamination in suits and develop fabrics that might solve it.

[Related: Future astronauts and space tourists could rock 3D printed ‘second skin’]

Heavy work in heavy gear leads to filth. After mock EVAs on Earth, technicians who help peel stand-in astronauts out of their suits have learned to turn their heads away on the first unzip to avoid a stinky blast, says Gernot Grömer, director of the Austrian Space Forum, a research group that conducts simulated astronautical missions. “Everybody sees those beautiful, shiny white spacesuits. But nobody knows what it smells like at the ISS.” (It’s not particularly pleasant.)

As these suits are used again and again, worries go beyond foul odors to hygiene and health hazards. The possibility for biocontamination, which includes human debris, bacteria, and other foreign substances, may get worse as spacefarers travel past low-Earth orbit for longer trips to the moon. 

“Washing spacesuit interiors on a consistent basis may well not be practical” in lunar habitats, ESA materials and processes engineer Malgorzata Holynska says in a statement. That space agency is investing in unusual ways to keep suits clean, such as antibiotic chemicals churned out by microbes.

Some of the fabrics were infused with copper, which has impressive antimicrobial properties. When bacteria touch the element, it destabilizes their cell walls and membranes, making the microbes vulnerable to damage from the metal’s ions. The NASA scientists also examined textiles treated with silver—likewise toxic to germs on contact—and silicone.

After observing the gunk that grew on the fabrics for up to 14 days, they found that only one compound kept bacteria and fungi below targets set by NASA’s Constellation program—a now-defunct plan for lunar missions in which a spacesuit would have been reused up to 90 times in six months. The winner was a solution of silver molecules used for disinfecting hospital dressings and other fabrics. But the metal ion was too good at its job. “It kills everything,” Orndoff says. Total sterility can cause even more problems than grime, given than humans need a balanced ecosystem of millions of microorganisms to keep the skin and other organs healthy.

The experiments showed that concentrations of other antimicrobial compounds were generally too low to be effective. Some microbes would initially dip in numbers, but the resistant ones would repopulate the samples. The scientists worried that, at high-enough amounts, antimicrobial particles would irritate anyone wearing the fabric or pollute the space station. “After that we never really revisited antimicrobial treatments,” Orndoff explains, for the “simple reason” that it would present complications for the ISS life-support system that provides clean air and water. 

[Related: Onboard the ISS, nothing goes to waste—including sweat and pee]

While Orndoff’s team did not pursue their idea further, NASA’s commercial contractors have. In 2022, the agency hired US companies Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to develop the next generation of suits for spacewalks. Earlier this year, Axiom unveiled a prototype suit that Artemis III astronauts might use to explore the lunar south pole. In a statement to Popular Science, the company says: “The Axiom Space AxEMU spacesuits will use textiles that have antimicrobial properties to reduce biocontamination.” The suits’ cooling system will also use biocide in its water loops “to prevent microbial buildup.” The company did not share the exact type of the agents, citing their proprietary nature.

One metabolite in particular, named violacein, survived every hostile attack with its antimicrobial properties intact. The purple-black substance can be found in the bacteria that live on the skin of red-backed salamanders. It’s so good at killing microbes that some biologists suspect it protects the amphibians from deadly chytrid fungus infections. The Austrian Space Forum plans to field-test violacein in a simulated Mars mission, in which six astronaut roleplayers will spend four weeks in Armenia’s rugged mountains in 2024. 

Grömer envisions a future where this pigment’s potent defenses leave the planet, not only on treated spacesuits but also towels and other gear. While dirty linens might just sound like a chore, they can be a breeding ground for microbes, which thrive in low gravity and may mutate faster in space. “When you go to Mars, you’re at the edge of what’s technologically possible, so little nuisances can transform into real disaster-prone situations,” Grömer says. “And so if there’s a risk we can control, hell, let’s do it.”

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An archive of international art is headed to the moon this year. The project, called the Lunar Codex, brands itself as “a message-in-a-bottle to the future, so that travelers who find these time capsules might discover some of the richness of our world today.” It will contain contemporary art, poetry, magazines, music, film, podcasts and books by 30,000 artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers from 157 countries.

The project is run by Incandence, a private company that owns the physical time capsules, the archival technology used in the capsules, and related trademarks, and was thought up by Canadian scientist and author Samuel Peralta, who is the executive chairman of Incandence. 

From 2023 to 2026, in a parallel mission with the Artemis launches, NASA will not only send scientific instruments to the moon, but also carry commercial payloads from partners. Peralta, in July 2020, purchased payload space from Astrobotic Technology, reserving it for the time capsules that would make up the Lunar Codex. Then the submissions rolled in. Artists do not have to pay to be considered, but the works that make it in have all been hand-selected. 

If all goes according to plan, the project will be a permanent installation on the moon, sitting within a MoonPod onboard the lunar lander for the Astrobotic Peregrine Mission 1 scheduled to launch later this year. The team plans to send multiple collections via multiple launches on rockets from SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance. 

Such a message requires an equally enduring medium. The one chosen by Lunar Codex is NanoFiche—a nickel-based material that etches shrunken down versions of texts and photos onto a disc-like surface. According to Lunar Codex, a single disc, which is around 3 centimeters across, can hold hundreds of small square images, each 2,000 pixels by 2,000 pixels in size. They come in sets of three in order to portray color, one channel each for red, green, and blue. 

According to Lunar Codex, each disc “can store 150,000 pages of text or photos on a single 8.5”x11” sheet. It is currently the highest density storage media in the world.” The benefit of these discs is that you can read the data easily with a microscope, or a really powerful magnifying glass, no software needed. It bypasses the difficulties many forms of digital storage have today, which is that digital data, usually kept in the form of bits, can degrade over time. 

Since nickel does not oxidize, degrade, or melt (unless under extreme high temperatures), and can withstand various types of environmental factors that they might have to withstand in outer space like radiation and electromagnetic radiation, it’s the most stable, and probably cheapest form of long-term storage option. The Arch Lunar Library, an effort by the non-profit Arch Mission Foundation to preserve human culture and knowledge, also uses NanoFiche as its preferred form of storage. 

[Related: Inside the search for the best way to save humanity’s data]

This kind of storage does have some limitations. For example, capturing film and music would be tedious and expensive. For film, each frame would have to be etched—a daunting task. As an alternative, screenplays or scripts are captured instead. And for music, it’s represented as sheet music or hex-encoded MIDI files. 

The Lunar Codex is also experimenting with another way to archive music, by etching their waveform and frequency spectrograms onto NanoFiche. “The original music may be  reconstructed via sound wave analysis algorithms,” Peralta explains on the website. 

Of course, The Lunar Codex isn’t the first project to set foot on the moon. Other than the Arch Mission Foundation’s Lunar library, and an assortment of miscellaneous human trash left behind, there’s also “The Moon Museum” which arrived with Apollo 12 in 1969. It was an etched ceramic wafer smuggled onto a lander leg.

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If you’re part of the 83 percent of Americans who live in an urban area, you probably can’t see many stars from your home. Cities are overwhelmed with lights, shining from lamps in skyscrapers, the streets, and the ones in bedroom windows. All of this light from the ground drowns out the stars in a phenomenon called light pollution.

Thankfully, a few organizations including the National Park Service (NPS) and the International Dark Sky Association (IDA) are fighting to preserve stargazing spots across the country and the world. Their goals are to ensure that people can access the majesty of the cosmos and safeguard eons-old cultures tied into the night sky. The IDA designates certain areas as “dark sky parks”—or even “dark sky sanctuaries” for the most remote, precious locations.

Of the US’s many dark sky sites, we’re highlighting seven of the most spectacular stargazing spots in the continental states. These might not be the country’s absolute darkest places, but they’re where you can see some incredible natural views and the beauty of the night sky at the same time.

Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

Crater Lake, Oregon’s only national park, is a showstopper, as seen in the top photo. The 6,000-plus foot elevation atop the volcanic caldera makes for pristine skywatching, since at this height there’s just less atmospheric stuff to get in the way between you and the stars. The website Space Tourism Guide recommends the Scenic Rim Drive, the path that circles the lake, as a popular spot. The starlight is supposedly so bright that flashlights are optional.

Rainbow Bridge National Monument, Utah

The Rainbow Bridge National Monument in Utah, which the IDA recently designated as a dark sky sanctuary, is a magnificent rock formation and one of the world’s largest natural bridges. It is a sacred site to the Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, and other Indigenous nations of the Southwest. Getting there isn’t easy: It is only accessible by boat or a lengthy 14-plus mile backpacking trip. If you are looking for a reverent experience of the night sky, this may be the place. As the National Park Service says on its website, “Please visit Rainbow Bridge in a spirit that honors and respects the cultures to whom it is sacred.”

Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico

Designated as a dark sky park in 2013, Chaco Culture NHP in New Mexico bears the marks of millenia of human astronomical activities. In this canyon, Ancestral Puebloan people built massive structures that reflected their observations of the night sky, such as the solar cycles. They also created astronomical rock art that still stands today. The park even offers night sky programs to carry on this long tradition, including public stargazing nights and a yearly astronomy festival.

[Related: The 10 most underrated national parks in the US]

Cherry Springs State Park, Pennsylvania

Cherry Springs Dark Sky Park in rural Pennsylvania is a contender for the absolute best stargazing in the United States—and unlike so many of the national parks, which are located in the southwest, this one’s an easy drive for urban New Englanders. Plus, it’s a personal favorite; my college’s astronomy group took yearly camping trips here, driving out of the glare of New York City and into this idyllic preserve. The park has a designated overnight astronomy observation field, complete with restrooms and telescope domes.

Big Bend National Park, Texas

Big Bend officially takes the title of having the darkest skies in a national park, at least in the lower 48 states. This Texas gem boasts over 150 miles of trails, drawing over half a million visitors per year. The National Park Service offers three campgrounds for stargazers, plus backcountry camping for the more adventurous wilderness enthusiasts. (Just don’t forget your permit!) It’s a great place to see the splendor of the Milky Way.

Stephen C. Foster State Park, Georgia

The terrain in Georgia’s Stephen C. Foster State Park is a bit different from the other deserts and forests on this list. It’s home to the Okefenokee Swamp, the largest wetland in the Southern US, which is bursting with biodiversity from alligators and black bears to storks and ibis. Plus, Foster State Park is the only gold-tier dark sky part in the Southeast, scoring the highest rating for a dark sky park from the IDA. It’s the best bet for folks living in Georgia, Florida, and other nearby states. You can even go for a late night paddle on the swamp and enjoy the stars from the water.

Katahdin Woods & Waters National Monument, Maine

Although it’s better known as the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, this forested region in Maine also hosts a stellar stargazing site. Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument is a reserve that sprawls over 87,000 acres. The NPS claims this monument has “some of the darkest night skies east of the Mississippi River.” Just be sure to visit in a warmer season, since Katahdin freezes into a snowmobiler’s paradise in the winter.

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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just headed into its second year in service, and recently recorded new images of the Ring Nebula named Messier 57. This nebula is about 2,600 light-years away from Earth, located in the Lyra constellation. The images were released by an international team of astronomers who are part of the JWST Ring Nebula Project.

[Related: James Webb Space Telescope reconstructed a ‘star party,’ and you’re invited.]

The Ring Nebula is a common target for space enthusiasts and is known for a donut-shaped ring of dust and gas that can even be viewed with backyard telescopes in the summer months. 

“I first saw the Ring Nebula as a kid through just a small telescope,” Western University astrophysicist and member of the JWST Ring Nebula Imaging Project Jan Cami said in a statement. “I would never have thought that one day, I would be part of the team that would use the most powerful space telescope ever built, to look at this object.”

Messier 57 is known as a planetary nebula. These objects are the colorful remnants of dying stars that have tossed a majority of their mass at the end of their stellar lives. Nebulae like the Ring Nebula come in a variety of shapes and patterns, from something that looks like a lobster, to expanding bubbles, to cotton candy-like clouds. The Ring Nebula’s vibrant colors are shown in a whole new light with JWST’s NIRcam.

“We are amazed by the details in the images, better than we have ever seen before. We always knew planetary nebulae were pretty. What we see now is spectacular,” University of Manchester astrophysicist Albert Zijlstra said in a statement. 

The patterns in the Ring Nebula are the consequence of a complicated array of different physical properties that astronomers are still figuring out. The light from its hot and central star is illuminating the layers in the pattern. Similar to fireworks, different chemical elements within the Ring Nebula emit specific light colors. The colors help scientists understand the chemical evolution of these objects in better detail. 

“These images hold more than just aesthetic appeal; they provide a wealth of scientific insights into the processes of stellar evolution. By studying the Ring Nebula with JWST, we hope to gain a deeper understanding of the life cycles of stars and the elements they release into the cosmos,” member and co-lead scientist of the JWST Ring Nebula Imaging Project Nick Cox said in a statement.

[Related: This highly detailed image of the Cat’s Eye Nebula might finally help us understand how it formed.]

Investigating Messier 57 in this detail can also help astronomers better understand the sun. When stars of similar sizes to our solar system’s central star run out of the fuel needed for nuclear fusion, they can’t support themselves against their own gravity. This ends the balancing forces that kept the star stable for millions to billions of years.

The star’s outer layers are blasted outward as the core collapses, since nuclear fusion is still occurring in these outside layers. The star will initially become a red giant, which is expected to happen to our sun in about five billion years. Eventually, the outer shells will cool and disperse in the variety of shapes nebulae are famous for. 

“We are witnessing the final chapters of a star’s life, a preview of the Sun’s distant future so to speak, and JWST’s observations have opened a new window into understanding these awe-inspiring cosmic events,” astronomer and co-lead scientist of the JWST Ring Nebula Imaging Project Mike Barlow from University College London said in a statement. “We can use the Ring Nebula as our laboratory to study how planetary nebulae form and evolve.”

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A team of small, solar-powered rovers are traveling to the moon next year. There, they will attempt to autonomously organize and carry out a mission with next-to-no input from NASA’s human controllers. If successful, similar robotic fleets could one day tackle a multitude of mission tasks, thus allowing their human team members to focus on a host of other responsibilities.

Three robots, each roughly the size of a carry-on suitcase, comprise the Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) project. The trio will descend onto the lunar surface via tethers deployed by a 13-foot-tall lander. From there, NASA managers back on Earth, such as CADRE principal investigator Jean-Pierre de la Croix, plan to transmit a basic command such as “Go explore this region.”

[Related: Meet the first 4 astronauts of the ‘Artemis Generation’.]

“[T]he rovers figure out everything else: when they’ll do the driving, what path they’ll take, how they’ll maneuver around local hazards,” de la Croix explained in an August 2 announcement via NASA. “You only tell them the high-level goal, and they have to determine how to accomplish it.”

The trio will even elect a “leader” at their mission’s outset to divvy up work responsibilities, which will reportedly include traveling in formation, exploring a roughly 4,300 square foot region of the moon, and creating 3D topographical maps of the area using stereoscopic cameras. The results of CADRE’s roughly 14-day robot excursion will better indicate the feasibility of deploying similar autonomous teams on space missions in the years to come.

As NASA notes, the mission’s robot trifecta requires a careful balance of form and function. Near the moon’s equator—where the CADRE bots will land—temperatures can rise to as high as 237 degrees Fahrenheit. Each machine will need to be hardy enough to survive the harsh lunar climate and lightweight enough to get the job done, all while housing the computing power necessary to autonomously operate. To solve for this, NASA engineers believe installing a 30-minute wake-sleep cycle will allow for the robots to sufficiently cool off, assess their respective heath, and then elect a new leader to continue organizing their mission as necessary.

“It could change how we do exploration in the future,” explains Subha Comandur, CADRE project manager for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The question for future missions will become: ‘How many rovers do we send, and what will they do together?’”

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In the Late Bronze Age, humans learned to smelt iron, and things haven’t been the same since. Between 1200 and 1000 BCE, the movement of information stemming possibly from ancient Anatolia on how to utilize the metal and turn it into tools both led to more permanent settlements and put sturdy weapons in the hands of lots of people for the first time in history. 

But even before the Iron Age, which ended around 600 BCE, iron could still be turned into tools since the material can be found naturally—mostly off of the planet, however. One example of such extraterrestrial iron, which was typically found in meteorites in conjunction with nickel or silicate minerals, in tools was recently rediscovered in the depths of Switzerland’s Bern History Museum. There, a team of archaeologists spotted an arrowhead made with what they believe to be iron from a meteor. They published their findings recently in the Journal of Archeological Sciences.

[Related: A meteorite-hunting AI will scout for space rocks buried in polar ice.]

The 1.5-inch long, 2.9 gram arrowhead was originally discovered in the 19th century in a late Bronze Age lake dwelling community called Mörigen on Lake Biel about an hour drive from Bern. Archeological finds made from meteoritic iron are quite rare, the Bern History Museum wrote in a release—there are only 55 objects in all of Europe, Asia, and Africa, including King Tut’s ‘space dagger’, and these all come from 22 sites. 

The settlement of Mörigen is located a mere five miles from the location where the Twannberg meteorite struck earth around 150,000 years ago. Strangely enough, the meteorite, which was discovered only in 1984, couldn’t have been the original source for this particular tool. After some analysis, the authors found that the arrowhead itself was made up of 8.3 percent nickel, twice as much as the Twannberg meteorite holds. The tiny tool also is made up of a high content of geranium and a low concentration of aluminum-26. This hints that the meteorite was likely a IAB type and originally had a mass of at least two tons. 

Three such meteorites have hit Europe—one in the Czech Republic, one in Spain, and one in Estonia. The authors estimate that the meteorite that could’ve sourced this rare find is the Kaalijarv meteorite, which formed a giant crater on the Estonian island of Saaremaa around 1,500 BCE. This impact site, a 864-mile-journey through modern day Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, also suggests a complex trade and transport system could have been in place during this era. Now, it’s just a matter of finding the rest of the ancient gadgets and tools that could’ve been made from space rocks long before anyone knew what they were. 

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The last full month of the summer in the Northern Hemisphere is not only getting two full moons—this year, August brings two full super moons and a Blue Moon. Also expect the annual Perseids meteor shower as the midsummer night skies heat up. Here are some events to look out for. If you happen to get any stellar sky photos, tag us and include #PopSkyGazers.

[Related: The world needs dark skies more than ever. Here’s why.]

August 1: Full Sturgeon Supermoon

The first full moon of the month is the Surgeon Moon which is set to appear on the afternoon of August 1, reaching peak illumination at 2:32 p.m. EDT. As the sun sets that night, look to the southeast to see the moon rise. 

The Surgeon Moon is the second of four scheduled supermoons this year. A supermoon typically exceeds the disk size of an average-sized moon by up to 8 percent and is about 16 percent brighter than the average moon.  

The name Sturgeon Moon refers to the time of year when the giant sturgeon of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain were most frequently caught. Additional names for August’s full moon include the Corn Moon or Skumoone Neepãʔuk in the Mahican Dialect of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Wisconsin, the Ricing Moon or Manoominike-giizis in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe), and the Hot Moon or Gëdë́’ökneh in Seneca. 

[Related: Lunar laws could protect the moon from humanity.]

August 12-13: Perseids meteor shower peaks

The annual Perseids meteor shower is predicted to peak around August 13. According to EarthSky, the moon will be about 10 percent illuminated during this year’s peak. Perseids rise to a peak gradually and then fall pretty quickly. They also tend to strengthen in numbers as the night turns into the early hours of the morning. Another bonus is that these meteors are often colorful.

This meteor shower is also often best seen before dawn. With a dark sky with no moon, up to 90 meteors per hour are possibly visible. This year, the light from the waning crescent moon will not interfere with Perseids.

August 24: Moon occults Antares

In this rare event, the moon will pass in front of the star Antares (Alpha Scorpii), creating a lunar occultation that is expected to be visible in Mexico, the contiguous United States, and Canada. For those in Eastern time, the occultation will begin with the disappearance of Antares (Alpha Scorpii) behind the moon at about 10:52 p.m.

This moon will be 25 days past the new moon and 57 percent illuminated. Antares (Alpha Scorpii) will disappear behind the darkest side of the moon and then reappear from behind the illuminated side.

August 26: Asteroid 8 Flora at opposition

Not to be upstaged by two moons and a beloved meteor shower, Asteroid 8 Flora will be visible in the constellation Aquarius and will be positioned well above the horizon for much of the night on August 26. 

[Related: Smashed asteroid surrounded by a ‘cloud’ of boulders.]

The 91-mile in diameter Asteroid 8 Flora will reach its highest point in the sky around midnight local time wherever you are on Earth. In Eastern time, it will be visible between 10:42 PM and 3:43 AM, according to In the Sky. 

Asteroid 8 Flora is the largest rock in the Flora family of asteroids and is named after the Roman goddess of flowers and gardens. 

August 30: Full Blue Supermoon

The month will end with a Blue Moon, a term usually used for a month that has two full moons like this August. According to NASA, they occur once every two to three years and are not usually blue in color. Moons with a blue hue are “the result of water droplets in the air, certain types of clouds, or particles thrown into the atmosphere by natural catastrophes, such as volcanic ash and smoke,”

The Blue Moon will reach peak illumination at 9:36 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, August 30. This full moon will also be the closest, biggest, and brightest full supermoon of the year. It will be 222,043 moon miles from Earth, which is fairly close by. A full supermoon won’t be any closer until November 2025.

The same skygazing rules that apply to pretty much all space-watching activities are key this month: Go to a dark spot away from the lights of a city or town and let the eyes adjust to the darkness for about a half an hour. 

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Terms like “cultural heritage” and “archaeology” might conjure Indiana Jones-lie scenes of old and ancient things buried under the sands of time. But even now, each one of us is producing material that could interest future humans trying to record and study our own era.

For those who believe that space exploration and astronauts’ first departures from Earth are culturally significant, then there is a wealth of objects that spacefarers—crewed and uncrewed, past and present—have left in the realms beyond our atmosphere.

“This stuff is an extension of our species’ migration, beginning in Africa and extending to the solar system,” says Justin Holcomb, an archaeologist with the Kansas Geological Survey. “I argue that a piece of a lander is the exact same thing as a piece of a stone tool in Africa.”

This idea is the heart of what Holcomb and his colleagues call “planetary geoarchaeology.” In a paper published in the journal Geoarchaeology on July 21, these “space archaeologists” detail how they want to study the interactions between the items we’ve left around the solar system and the  hostile environments they now occupy. This research, the authors believe, will only become more important as human activity on the moon is set to blossom in the decades to come.

The idea of documenting and preserving what we leave behind in space isn’t a completely new concept. In the early 2000s, New Mexico State University anthropologist Beth O’Leary (who co-authored the paper with Holcomb) cataloged objects scattered around Tranquility Base, Apollo 11’s landing site on the moon. O’Leary later helped get some of those artifacts registered in California and New Mexico as culturally significant properties.

“I would argue that Tranquility Base could easily be considered the most important archaeological site that exists,” says Justin St. P. Walsh, an archaeologist at Chapman University in California who was not involved with the new paper. The base’s lunar soil can’t be declared a cultural heritage site because that would violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prevents any country from claiming the soil of the moon or another world. But scholars can still list objects found there as heritage.

Naturally, O’Leary’s catalog includes the remnants of Apollo 11’s lunar module and its famed US flag, along with empty food bags, utensils, hygiene equipment, and wires. What is space junk to some is precious culture to space archaeologists. Even long-festering astronaut poop has its value—“that’s human DNA,” Holcomb says.

Archaeological sites on Earth are deeply impacted by the processes of the world around them, both natural and artificial. Likewise, Tranquility Base doesn’t just sit in tranquility. The moon’s surface is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays and micrometeoroids; even faraway human landings can kick up regolith showers.

[Related: Want to learn something about space? Crash into it.]

Holcomb and his colleagues want to study the various states objects are left in to learn how sites on the moon and other worlds change over time—and how to preserve them for our distant descendants. “We think in deep time scales,” says Holcomb. “We’re not thinking in just the next five years. We’re thinking in a thousand years.”

That sort of research, the authors say, is still quite new. Holcomb, for instance, wants to study what happens to NASA’s Spirit rover on Mars as a sand dune washes over it. Other planetary geoarchaeology projects might focus on what the moon’s environment has wrought upon artificial materials we’ve left on the lunar surface.

“We can find out more about what happened to [castoffs] in the length of time they’ve been there,” says Alice Gorman, an archaeologist at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who also wasn’t a co-author. 

On Earth, Gorman and colleagues plan to replicate Apollo astronauts’ boot prints in simulated lunar soil and subject them to forces like rocket exhaust. Gorman believes even engineers with no interest in archaeology may want to take interest in work like this. “These same processes will be happening to any new habitats built on the surface,” she says. “With the archaeological sites, we get a bit of a longer-term perspective.”

The moon is the immediate focus for both this paper’s authors and other space archaeologists, and it’s easy to see why. After several decades of occasional uncrewed missions and flybys, NASA’s Artemis program promises to spearhead a mass return to the satellite’s surface. The Artemis program is slated to land on the moon’s south pole, far away from existing Apollo landing sites. But a flurry of private companies have emerged with the goal of not just touching the moon as Apollo did, but extracting its resources.

Space archaeologists fear that all this future activity will place past sites at risk. “We barely know how to operate on the moon,” says Walsh.

There are some indications that the broader space community is thinking about the problem. The Artemis Accords (a US-initiated document that aims to outline the ethical guidelines for the Artemis era) and the Vancouver Recommendations on Space Mining (a 2020 white paper by primarily Canadian academics that proposes a framework for sustainable space mining) express a desire to protect space heritage sites.

Of course, these are only words on nonbinding paper, and space archaeologists do not think they go far enough. Holcomb and colleagues want experts in their field to be involved in planning—for instance, steering scientific and commercial space missions away from spots where they might interfere with existing cultural heritage. There is earthbound precedent for such a role: In many countries, archaeologists already assist infrastructure projects.

“We know we’re going to go there someday, so let’s make sure that we have the protections in place before we go and ruin things,” says Walsh.

[Related: What an extraterrestrial archaeological dig could tell us about space culture]

Moves like this can’t protect lunar heritage from every possible harm: A future satellite could very well crash-land on Tranquility Base and wreck the last remnants of Apollo 11 there. But space archaeologists say that it is valuable to take any steps we can.

“I think the paper is a really fantastic demonstration of how any mission to the moon has to be about more than just engineering, and it has to be interdisciplinary,” Gorman notes. “It’s very timely that it’s been published now, while there’s still time to incorporate its recommendations into actual lunar missions.”

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The early universe was a stressful place for galaxies. Globs of tens to hundreds of neighboring galaxies, called galaxy clusters, would share a communal pool of hot gas—but not without drama. There was always another wayward galaxy crashing into the cluster, merging with one of the former occupants, and generally perturbing the gas pool, known as the intracluster medium.

That’s what makes the newly discovered galaxy cluster SPT2215 so special. Found about 8.4 billion-light years from Earth, astronomers recently captured views of SPT2215 as it existed when the universe was just 5 billion years old. On further study, they’ve deemed it one of the few “relaxed” galaxy clusters found from that period in the cosmos. It could lead scientists to revise how their models of how fast galaxies formed at the dawn of the universe.

[Related: These 6 galaxies are so huge, they’ve been nicknamed ‘universe breakers’]

“If the galaxy cluster is in the process of forming, we call it ‘disturbed’—it’s just kind of a mess,” says Michael Calzadilla, a PhD candidate in astrophysics at MIT and lead author of an April 19 paper in The Astrophysical Journal characterizing the newly discovered SPT2215 cluster with the help of multiple telescopes and flying observatories.

“If the gas is very round, very symmetrical, and looks kind of like a ball, it tells you that there haven’t been any recent interactions,” he says. “It’s very ‘relaxed.’” In other words, there are no galaxy mergers disrupting things, which seems to be the case with SPT2215.

Finding and studying relaxed galaxy clusters from the early universe can give astronomers clues to how galaxy and star formation differed between eight billion years ago and today. The discovery of SPT2215, however, came about unlike that of any other galaxy cluster. It began with an interesting shadow of microwave frequencies and ended with a bizarre thermostat reading.

An international team of dozens of scientists went looking for signs of distant galaxy clusters in the SPTpol Extended Cluster Survey, which uses the Sunyaev–Zel’dovich effect—the cosmic microwave background interacting with the hot communal gas from galaxies—to find relevant groups of stars.

The cosmic microwave background is the first light in the universe, a.k.a. the afterglow of the big bang, Cazadilla notes. When low-energy microwave photons encounter a galaxy cluster on their way to Earth, they’re scattered to higher energies by the gas, or the plasma inside of the galaxy cluster,” he says. The gaps left behind by those amped-up photons show up as shadows against the cosmic microwave background, giving a rough idea of where the cluster is. From there, astronomers have to do follow-up observations to tell the distance, and whether the cluster is disturbed or relaxed. In the case of SPT2215, Calzadilla and his colleagues used a collection of instruments including the Hubble Space Telescope, the infrared Spitzer Telescope, the Chandra X-ray observatory, and ground-based telescopes like the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile.

”You get more of the whole picture of what’s going on if you look at different wavelengths,” Calzadilla says. “Chandra is looking at X-ray wavelengths; Spitzer is looking at infrared wavelengths; and Hubble is looking at optical wavelengths that are kind of in the middle.”

The intracluster gas of a galaxy cluster typically cools over time, first emitting X-rays, then cooling to emit ultraviolet light, and finally, emitting electromagnetic wavelengths down to the infrared region, he explains. “We can catch each part of this process at different wavelengths, using these different telescopes.”

[Related: How a microwave helped astronomers solve the peryton mystery]

Normally, the cooling gas shared in a galaxy cluster slowly falls inward, forming and feeding a central galaxy that tends to dominate the others, Calzadilla says. The gas sustains star birth in that central galaxy, but also fuels the creation of a supermassive black hole at that galaxy’s center. When feeding, supermassive black holes will generate energetic outbursts, which push back against the cooling and inflating gas.

“It acts as a thermostat and regulates the temperature, in a sense of the galaxy cluster,” Calzadilla notes, slowing down the rate at which the gas cools.    

But what’s interesting about SPT2215, he adds, is that “it looks like that thermostat is having a hard time keeping up with the amount of cooling that’s going on.” That gives it a chillier aura than expected (starting at around 179,540 degrees Fahrenheit), with the gas being projected to cool much faster than in most other galaxy clusters found at a similar time in the universe. The central galaxy also exhibits more new, young stars than a cluster where a black hole kept the gas from cooling too quickly.        

Calzadilla thinks there could be a variety reasons SPT2215 is so cool, including the possibility “that maybe the black hole has only just now been turned on. It it takes a while for this cooling gas to make it to the central galaxy and into that black hole.”

While it would take further observations, perhaps with the James Webb Space Telescope or longer follow-ups with Hubble, to know for certain, “[SPT2215] could be telling us that galaxies are forming at a younger age than we thought,” in the early universe, Calzadilla says. “That’s challenging our timeline of when things happened.”

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If you want to see a retired NASA space shuttle, you have a few options. You could travel to Virginia and see Discovery, or journey to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida to check out the angled Atlantis. And don’t forget about Enterprise in New York City, a shuttle that never flew into space but did glide through the atmosphere. 

Then there’s Endeavour. Right now, that space shuttle, which made 25 trips to space and back, is on display horizontally at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. But the museum has towering plans for the shuttle: It’s going to move it into a vertical position, and display it with solid rocket boosters and an external fuel tank, all attached together as if the ship was about to blast off into space. When that happens, it’ll be the only shuttle displayed vertically. And instead of having to cope with the forces of a launch, the orbiter assembly will need to withstand any California earthquakes.

As Endeavour is now, “it’s a great display, you can walk under it, look up at the tiles—it’s wonderful,” says Jeffrey Rudolph, the president and CEO of the museum. “But it will be amazing, and we think [a] far better display, when it’s vertical, with the whole stack. This’ll be 200 feet tall—20 stories tall—and you’ll be able to look at it [from] multiple perspectives, multiple views, at multiple levels.” 

To get it into the launch position requires an operation worthy of an actual NASA mission. It kicked off in earnest on July 20, when two components called aft skirts came in via crane and were lowered into position on a concrete pad. Each of those aft skirts are as wide as 18 feet and weigh 13,000 pounds and have both lifted off on actual shuttle flights. 

The aft skirts comprise the base of the solid rocket boosters (SRBs). Other segments, called the solid rocket motors, which are about 116 feet tall, will join them to make up each SRB, as will parts called forward assemblies. Those two SRBs will weigh in at a total of a quarter million pounds together. Before Endeavour can join those SRBs, the 76,000-pound external tank (technically known as ET-94) must be moved into place, too.

The plan holds that early next year, the 176,000-pound Endeavour itself will be lifted into launch position using two cranes, one of which will simply make sure the orbiter’s tail doesn’t hit the ground.  

For this whole assembly operation, “we’re basically following the same process that Kennedy Space Center used,” Rudolph notes, adding that no one has put together a shuttle at a non-NASA facility before. As an example, this incredible time-lapse video shows the space shuttle Atlantis being lifted and then mated with its solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank for the very last shuttle flight in July of 2011. 

Like a real NASA launch, Rudolph adds that weather will play a key role in when they actually carry out that maneuver of lifting the actual orbiter into place. Windy conditions, which could interact with the orbiter, would cause a delay. “It is a glider,” he points out. “It’s got wings.” 

[Related: Astronauts explain what it’s like to be ‘shot off the planet’]

The whole flight assembly—Endeavour, the solid rocket boosters, and the tank—will together weigh just over half a million pounds, according to the California Science Center. “We’ve got the last hardware—the last external tank—so it’s the only place in the world you’ll be able to see a full space shuttle stack in launch position,” Rudolph says.

To mitigate against the possibility of an earthquake, the whole shuttle configuration will be perched on a thick concrete pad that weighs more than 3 million pounds. “It’s a 8-foot-thick concrete pad that is surrounded on all four sides by a 3-foot moat, basically,” Rudolph explains. And under that pad are a half-dozen seismic isolators, which Rudolph compares to “big ball bearings.” The Los Angeles Times has helpful graphics.

“That whole pad can move independently of the building, and will withstand any foreseeable earthquake,” he adds. 

Rudolph says that it will be a couple years before the facility is actually open, and that the entire planned Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center that will house Endeavour and other exhibits costs $400 million. According to a previous NASA estimate, it cost around $450 million to actually launch a shuttle. A more recent estimate via the Center for Strategic and International Studies put the number at well over $1 billion for each launch, in fiscal year 2021 dollars. 

Rudolph says that they had hoped to display a space shuttle in this way starting as early as three decades ago. “I actually have a rendering from 1992 showing a space shuttle in launch position,” he says. With any luck, the shuttle will be moved into place in January of 2024. 

Watch a short video about the new facility, below.

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Satellites are usually a bespoke endeavor, requiring a range of specific needs and logistical plans to meet project requirements. To simplify some of these challenges a few years ago, a team of researchers and engineers working together between the European Space Agency (ESA), France’s CNES, the UK Space Agency, and Airbus unveiled the OneSat—a standardized telecommunications satellite capable of adjusting capacity, coverage areas, and frequency “on the fly” while in orbit.

On Tuesday, the ESA announced a new feature passed its inspection reviews and is ready to ship out with future OneSat launches. The latest addition is a “deployment and pointing system” featuring robotic arms capable of positioning a satellite’s plasma thrusters far away from its body. Such an addition will optimize the usage of OneSats’ xenon fuel reserves.

[Related: DARPA wants to push the boundaries of where satellites can fly.]

As tech news site The Next Web noted on Tuesday, the announcement means that OneSat is now “fully propelled by European technology.” In its official statement, the ESA explained that, “The deployment and pointing system promotes European autonomy and constitutes an essential feature of the industrial footprint in Europe of OneSat.”

Construction of the OneSat deployment and pointing system was truly a multinational effort within Europe—France’s Airbus designed the system, while Belgian manufacturer Euro Heat Pipes built the devices. A company in Spain provided its rotary actuator, while the booms, harnesses, and plasma thrusters were all also developed and assembled by multiple French outlets.

[Related: This giant solar power station could beam energy to lunar bases.]

OneSat deployment is meant to have extremely tangible effects across the world, including providing traditional TV broadcasting, boosting in-flight internet connections for air travelers, and helping remote communities gain previously unreliable or wholly lacking access to communications.

Because of their modular design, The Next Web also explained each OneSat can be built using largely off-the-shelf components, thereby allowing them to potentially enter the market in half the time as other satellite options, and for less cost. Multiple companies around the world have already placed orders for OneSat, including Japan’s main satellite operator, SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation. According to the ESA, this marks the first time a European satellite has been sold to a Japanese telecom company.

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A stellar new image from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is offering up some clues about how planets as enormous as the gas giant Jupiter could form. Researchers used the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and an international astronomy facility called Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to detect large dusty clumps located close to a young star. The clumps may collapse and one day create planets. The findings were published July 25 in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

[Related: Your guide to the types of stars, from their dusty births to violent deaths.]

“This discovery is truly captivating as it marks the very first detection of clumps around a young star that have the potential to give rise to giant planets,” study co-author and researcher at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile Alice Zurlo said in a statement. 

This new analysis is based on a picture obtained with the VLT’s Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument that shows more detail of the material around the star V960 Mon. This is a young star that is located over 5,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Monoceros. 

V960 Mon attracted astronomers’ attention in 2014 when it suddenly increased its brightness by more than 20 times. SPHERE took observations shortly after the onset of this burst of brightness, which revealed that the material orbiting V960 Mon is coming together in a series of spiral arms extending over distances bigger than the entire solar system.

Astronomers were motivated by this finding to go back and look at older observations of the same system that ALMA made. Observations made by the VLT probe the surface of the dusty material around the star, while ALMA can look deeper into deeper into its structure. 

“With ALMA, it became apparent that the spiral arms are undergoing fragmentation, resulting in the formation of clumps with masses akin to those of planets,” said Zurlo.

Giant planets either form when dust grains come together in a core accretion, or when large fragments of material contract and collapse around a star by gravitational instability. Astronomers have found evidence of core accretion, but support for gravitational instability has been more difficult to capture. 

[Related: Wiggly space waves show neutron stars on the edge of becoming black holes.]

“No one had ever seen a real observation of gravitational instability happening at planetary scales—until now,” study co-author and University of Santiago researcher Philipp Weber said in a statement. 

The group on this study has been searching for signs of how planets form for over a decade. Future studies will hopefully unveil more details of V960 Mon and the “captivating planetary system in the making.” According to the team, the future Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will play a key role. This new telescope is currently under construction in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and will be able to observe the V960 Mon system in even better detail. 

“The ELT will enable the exploration of the chemical complexity surrounding these clumps, helping us find out more about the composition of the material from which potential planets are forming,” said Weber.

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IN ONE OF HUMANITY’S many possible futures, the fearless explorers tasked with climbing cloud-splitting mountains in oxygen-poor atmospheres or charting the low, darkened craters of various alien landscapes would never perish from injuries during perilous scouting expeditions. Nor would they fall ill or sustain genetic damage, thanks to supercharged hypersleep chambers that would heal otherwise fatal wounds. As it is today, astronauts don’t have the luxury of being unprepared—instead they must be equipped to deal with all sorts of medical mishaps, especially as they experiment with long-term spaceflight beyond the far side of the moon. 

Current human-rated spacecraft come stocked with emergency supplies to assist the crew, mostly everyday things like Band-Aids and aspirin, but also more specialized items like hydromorphone injections and those all-too-famous space blankets. While astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) have relied on these, as well as telemedicine calls, to treat ailments and keep a clean bill of health, the fact is, being on another world could put a serious dent in the capacity of emergency medical care. NASA notes that all crew members are trained to handle the medical devices on board—but if a complex surgery is needed and the patient can’t be quickly flown back to Earth, the trainees would have to forge on with limited tools and experience. Thankfully, the worst they’ve faced so far is blood clots.

To plan for these inevitable crises, space agencies have latched on to the science of 3D bioprinting to help revolutionize regenerative medicine for life in the cosmic abyss and on the ground. Researchers have already made strides in bioprinting—the process of generating living cells and medical products in a manner similar to 3D printing—creating tissues, skin grafts, and eventually, whole organs for future transplants, as well as artificial bones that could become “spare parts” for injured astronauts. 

But as demand for smaller, more compact technologies grows, another class of machines has been rocketing to new heights. Capable of stretching, squeezing, bending, and even twisting to fulfill their tasks, “soft robots” are fabricated with materials inspired by living tissue such as human skin, instead of the rigid structures used in traditional remote-controlled systems. This allows robotic instruments to interact more safely with our bodies and lets surgeons perform complicated procedures with more accuracy and precision, says Sheila Russo, an assistant professor at Boston University who specializes in mechanical engineering design for miniaturized surgical robots.

“I work in a field where we build robots that can help patients survive,” Russo explains. “We as engineers listen to people that have problems, and we want to engineer a robotic solution to it.” She likes to point to Big Hero 6’s Baymax as a fictional example of an autonomous soft robot that successfully heals people, either with the various medical devices it’s equipped with or by offering helpful advice. 

Though the doodads in development won’t be able to simply hug anyone’s aches and pains away (yet), they’re lightweight and relatively cheap to produce, making them easy to transport to remote locations, says Russo. For instance, one lab at King’s College in the UK is trying to address the limitations of ultrasound by creating adaptable soft robots that can withstand high-energy sound waves. 

As these prototypes gain traction within the greater medical field, there’s still a long list of quirks and challenges to tackle. But their endless potential could help humans endure extreme circumstances both on Earth and in the stars.  

Acting much like a medical endoscope, this tiny, multifunctional robotic arm (about 0.8 inches in diameter) can be used to fix damaged body parts directly inside a patient’s body. Conventional devices rely on large desktop printers to create artificial tissues, which can then either be kept and grown until mature or implanted directly into the body. But this high-cost method often poses risks, such as structural damage to the faux organ during transport, tissue injuries, and contamination once the part is brought out of a sterile environment. 

The flexible in situ 3D bioprinter (F3DB), on the other hand, works by accessing hard-to-reach areas of the body via small incisions or through natural orifices such as the mouth or anus. “About 90 percent of the human body has a tubular structure,” says Thanh Nho Do, a senior lecturer at UNSW Sydney and one of the team leads for the project. “If you can develop the technology, [robots] can navigate along this way in any desired direction.” 

Once positioned in the target area, F3DB’s multiaxis printing head, which is mounted on a snakelike extendable arm, bends its nozzle to print in three different directions, delivers water to wash away blood and tissue, and acts as an electric scalpel to flag and sever cancerous lesions or tumors. It’s so versatile in its applications that it could potentially be used as an all-in-one surgical tool for medical professionals, says Do. 

Although this tool is still more than half a decade away from human trials, researchers plan to continue using haptic technology—sensor-filled gadgets that can convey tactile information—to manipulate the device, so the system could one day be easily controlled in extreme environments, such as on space stations or in lunar or Martian settlements. 

A recent addition to the ISS, the 3D BioFabrication Facility (BFF) and Advanced Space Experiment Processor are two separate payloads that combine to make a powerful 3D bioprinting laboratory. In collaboration with the ISS National Lab and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Center for Biotechnology, Redwire’s researchers plan to use it to re-create part of a human knee in space—specifically the meniscus, cartilage that helps absorb shock and stabilizes the joint. If successful, it could be the first step in helping to treat severe knee injuries for US military service members on Earth. 

“A torn meniscus is one of, if not the most common issue that our military have,” says Ken Savin, the aerospace manufacturing company’s chief scientist. “[It’s] a day-to-day issue that a lot of people have and translates to the general population, so it’s a great target to go after.” The printer itself, which is about the size of a dorm fridge, cultures pre-harvested adult stem cells into a solution called bio-ink. 

After being warmed, fed with liquid nutrients, and stimulated to grow, the mixture can be layered into precise, ultrafine structures aboard the ISS and then shipped back to Earth. Strong gravitational forces cause the soft tissues to spread apart like puddles of water, but in space, they can be expected to hold their form due to the microgravity inherent to the ISS, says Savin. 

“When you remove gravity, you open up a whole new field of science,” Savin says. “It allows you to do things and see things that were otherwise hidden.” Once the ISS is decommissioned (which will happen after 2030), Redwire aims to continue advancing its biomanufacturing research aboard Blue Origin’s planned space station, Orbital Reef. 

While the company is now still in the early planning stages of the meniscus project, Savin expects it to be a stepping stone to many other medical breakthroughs, including individualized heart patches that restore cardiac function. Depending on the size of the 3D-printed tissue, production would likely take less than a day. And that’s not the only way BFF would move anatomical technologies along. With future commercialization, the portable lab could help organ-donation hopefuls avoid long wait times and subpar inorganic replacements.

Inspired by plant roots, pollen tubes, and fungi, engineers at the University of Minnesota recently developed a process that allows soft robots to exhibit a level of movement called tip growth, previously seen only in nature. Organisms use this method to add new cells to the ends of their bodies, enabling them to generate large, specific structures over time, cross harsh terrain with ease, and navigate via external stimuli like light or chemical signals. 

In 2022, researchers were able to mimic this process in their own robotic prototype by using a technique called photopolymerization, which uses light to transform liquid molecules into solid materials. It’s a popular 3D-printing strategy in the medical field, specifically for creating accurate anatomical models of patients’ bodies, but in this novel application, it allows a soft robot to build its own body from a liquid monomer solution as it navigates complex environments. 

Capable of a number of exploratory tasks as it slinks along its path, this inchworm-like device can grow up to speeds of about 5 inches per minute, stretch up to about 5 feet, and avoid and even deflect obstacles to reach the deepest recesses of the human body. The tool could be especially helpful for medical fields like gynecology and urology, according to Timothy Kowalewski, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota and a member of the project. He also sees it making a difference in procedures like automated intubation and heart attack treatment, where soft catheters are pushed through blood vessels to stabilize a patient. 

Not all soft robots are meant to turn humans into cyborgs with fancy mechanical parts. One bioprinter prototype, developed by the German Aerospace Center, was designed to accelerate an astronaut’s own healing process, says Michael Becker, the project manager for the program. 

Like other innovations in space-centered healthcare, the BioPrint FirstAid Handheld Bioprinter will use cells collected from astronauts before the mission to prepare cartridges of personalized bio-ink for emergency wound treatment, like fixing up superficial lesions and even bone fractures. Likely the first-ever handheld version of a bioprinter in space, the device resembles a compact glue gun—complete with a printing head, guide wheels, and room to hold two bio-ink cartridges for easy access and use. 

While the machine was created to be completely manually operated, the actual printing process takes only a few minutes, Becker explains. “You basically put the printer on your arm or somewhere else and drive over the injured skin.” The nozzle then pushes the solution out to create a plaster-like wound covering. In 2021, ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer demonstrated the technology using simulated cells during a training session on Earth, and he did it again in 2022 during his Cosmic Kiss mission on the ISS.

Having a handheld bioprinter along on a long-duration spaceflight would allow the crew to quickly provide personalized medical care, but the creators need to clear two hurdles first: determining just how many bio-ink cartridges would be needed for a given interplanetary journey and figuring out how to store them in a stable environment. “The challenge right now [is] to create ink where these cells can survive for long-term missions,” says Becker. 

The team hopes the astronaut-friendly tool finds alternative uses, such as in research missions to harsh environments like Antarctica or for bedridden patients. 

Another robot designed to print tissues and organs inside the human body in a minimally invasive manner, the ferromagnetic soft catheter robot (FSCR) stands out from its counterparts because it relies on magnets to move about. 

“This work provides two very new ideas,” says Jianfeng Zang, a professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology whose work revolves around bridging the gap between hard machines and the soft human body. “One, in that we can do minimally invasive bioprinting, and the second one is that we use a magnetic system to do it.” 

Usually, these kinds of medical machines use motors to propel themselves through the patient’s body. But Zang’s group disperses particles of the rare-earth metal neodymium down the center of their catheter-shaped robot, which also doubles as a bioprinter capable of fabricating complex structures. The device can be swiftly steered via an external computer-controlled magnet to transport materials like drugs or injectable bio-inks through narrow, winding environments. It’s also highly durable because neodymium retains its magnetism for hundreds of years.

Researchers are working to miniaturize the device, which is currently a fraction of an inch, even further. It could one day offer physicians finer control over the instrument’s movements and allow them to complete complex procedures without radioactive X-rays. 

“We just want to use magnetic robots to treat some disease or do some precise surgery that existing technology cannot do,” says Zang. “It’s our dream.”

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Before a spacecraft lands on Mars, or futuristic cargo planes soar above our cities, they have to be designed and rigorously tested in wind tunnels. Even passenger airliners, such as Boeing’s 747 jets used by major airlines, are subject to such tests. These facilities allow engineers to “fly” aircraft and spacecraft just a few feet off the ground. NASA, which has a 100-year history of using the machines, is finally building a new one, updated for the 21st century—the agency’s first new wind tunnel in over 40 years.

The NASA Flight Dynamic Research Facility (FDRF), slated to open in 2025 at the Langley Research Center in Virginia, will be over 100 feet tall. NASA leaders think it’s going to be key for creating the spacecraft of the future. The agency plans to use the new wind tunnel to prepare for human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars, plus robotic missions to two solar system worlds with thick atmospheres: Venus and Titan, Saturn’s methane-rich moon. It will also be key for the next generation of Earth-bound aircraft, which NASA hopes to make more sustainable, in line with its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. 

“What we’re going to do with this facility is literally change the world,” said Clayton Turner, director of NASA Langley Research Center, in a press release from the facility’s groundbreaking ceremony. “The humble spirit of our researchers and this effort will allow us to reach for new heights, to reveal the unknown, for the betterment of humankind.” 

Wind tunnels push air past a stationary object, usually using huge fans, to simulate the motion of air around, over, and under flying craft. This allows engineers to tweak their designs based on what they see in the experiment, making vehicles more stable and aerodynamic. The wind tunnel is a safe place to try out new technologies, and a key step in testing the safety of any craft before a human jumps aboard. It’s also key for rockets and spacecraft, where engineers must ensure the vehicle can safely traverse a planet’s atmosphere. (Biologists have even used wind tunnels—though not NASA’s—to observe flying geese.)

Langley’s most recently built wind tunnel is the National Transonic Facility, constructed in 1980. That will remain in operation, but the FDRF will replace two existing wind tunnels, both near 80 years old: the 12-foot Low-Speed Spin Tunnel from 1939, and the 20-foot Vertical Spin Tunnel from 1940. The flying machines tested in the new facility will be beyond what the original builders could have dreamed. “We haven’t tested anything with a propeller on it in decades,” joked NASA Langley chief engineer Charles “Mike” Fremaux at a recent community lecture about the project.

[Related: How to build a massive wind farm]

The first NASA wind tunnel (which was the US government’s first wind tunnel) was built all the way back in 1921 at Langley. It was basically a glorified box with some powerful fans. Since then, the agency has built more than 40 wind tunnels, many with specialized purposes. Some are tiny, meant only for miniature models, and some are large enough to fit a whole jet. Each produces a different temperature, pressure, and speed of wind, meant to simulate the different conditions a craft might encounter in the real world. Some wind tunnels can move air at over 4,000 miles per hour, significantly quicker than a 747’s usual cruising speed of around 600 mph.

Many famous missions have started their journeys in a wind tunnel. The Curiosity rover’s parachute, for example, was first tested in the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex at NASA Ames in California, long before it ballooned open in the Red Planet’s atmosphere. In the past few years, key parts of NASA’s Artemis missions, which aim to return Americans to the moon, including the Orion crew capsule and the SLS rocket, were tested in wind tunnels.

The new wind tunnel at the FDRF will be more efficient than past facilities, cutting down on costs. Plus, it’ll be safer for the staff running the wind tunnel tests, who used to run the risk of getting sucked into the machine as they deployed models. “Just like we do now…a very skilled technician is going to launch the models by hand. That’s not a joke,” said Fremaux in his presentation. In the past, there have only been some minor injuries, and most accidents just damage the facility itself. But, now there will be more fail-safes to minimize the risks.

It really might even pave the way for flying cars, too, by testing the tech for vertical takeoff, as demonstrated by Back to the Future’s hover cars or a classic Jetsons’-style flying car. Those are far-out ideas, but they’d never be able to take off without the help of the time-tested wind tunnel.

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The three-decade old Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a swarm of space boulders around the asteroid Dimorphos. If that name sounds familiar, it is the same asteroid that NASA deliberately slammed the 1,200 pound DART spacecraft into in September 2022.

[Related: NASA’s first attempt to smack an asteroid was picture perfect.]

The mission was the first time humans set out to change the movement of an object in space. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft slammed head-on into Dimorphos at 13,000 miles per hour on September 26, 2022 in an effort to change the asteroid’s velocity. The smashing results demonstrated how this kind of kinetic impact technology could be used to deflect asteroids heading towards the Earth. Dimorphos and the larger asteroid that it orbits, named Didymos, do not pose a known threat to Earth. 

The 37 free-flung boulders that Hubble has detected range in size from three 22 feet across. They are slowly drifting away from Dimorphos at slightly over half-mile per hour. The total mass in these detected boulders is about 0.1 percent the mass of Dimorphos.

“This is a spectacular observation–much better than I expected. We see a cloud of boulders carrying mass and energy away from the impact target. The numbers, sizes, and shapes of the boulders are consistent with them having been knocked off the surface of Dimorphos by the impact,” said University of California at Los Angeles planetary scientist David Jewitt said in a statement. “This tells us for the first time what happens when you hit an asteroid and see material coming out up to the largest sizes. The boulders are some of the faintest things ever imaged inside our solar system.”

According to Jewitt, this finding opens up a new dimension for studying the aftermath of the DART experiment when the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft arrives at the binary asteroid in late 2026. Hera is scheduled to perform a detailed post-impact survey. 

The boulder cloud is also expanding and dispersing, and is expected to spread along Dimorphos and Didymos’ surface. NASA believes that the boulders are likely not shattered pieces of the asteroid caused by the impact. These pieces were already scattered across Dimorphos’ surface, based on the final close-up image that DART spacecraft took only two seconds before the collision. 

Jewitt estimates that the impact from DART shook off two percent of the boulders on the Dimorphos’ surface, and that the boulder observations made by Hubble also give an estimate for the size of the DART impact crater.

 “The boulders could have been excavated from a circle of about 160 feet across (the width of a football field) on the surface of Dimorphos,” he said. When Hera arrives in three years and five months, it will determine the actual crater size

[Related: Why scientists are studying the clouds of debris left in DART’s wake.]

It’s not fully clear how the boulders were lifted off Dimorphos’ surface, but they could have been part of an ejecta plume that Hubble and other observatories have photographed. It’s also possible that a seismic wave from the impact with DART may have rattled through the asteroid and shook it loose. 

“If we follow the boulders in future Hubble observations, then we may have enough data to pin down the boulders’ precise trajectories. And then we’ll see in which directions they were launched from the surface,” said Jewitt.

Asteroids present a real collision hazard to Earth, such as the one that caused the mass extinction event 65 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs. Protecting the Earth from asteroids is also front of mind to respondents of a poll on Americans views on space exploration from Pew Research released on July 20. Sixty percent of respondents said that monitoring asteroids should be NASA’s top priority going forward, compared with only 12 percent who said that going to the moon again should be front and center. 

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Researchers using Chile’s Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of telescopes (ALMA) may have found a rare “sibling” sharing the same orbit of a Jupiter-like planet about 370 light-years away from Earth in the Centaurus constellation. The newly discovered twin shares the same orbit as PDS 70b around a young star in the  PDS 70 system. 

[Related: How engineers saved NASA’s new asteroid probe when it malfunctioned in space.]

While two Jupiter-like planets, PDS 70b and PDS 70c, are already known to orbit this star, the team detected a cloud of debris within PDS 70b’s orbital path following this planet’s orbit. The debris could be the beginnings of a new planet, or even the remnants of one that is already formed. The findings were published on July 19 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. If confirmed, this discovery would present the strongest known evidence that two exoplanets can share one orbit. 

“Two decades ago it was predicted in theory that pairs of planets of similar mass may share the same orbit around their star, the so-called Trojan or co-orbital planets. For the first time, we have found evidence in favor of that idea,” Olga Balsalobre-Ruza study co-author and a student at Centre for Astrobiology in Madrid, Spain said in a statement.

Rocky bodies that are in the same orbit as a planet called Trojans are common throughout our solar system. Jupiter’s more than 12,000 known Trojan asteroids that are in the same orbit as our sun are the most common example. The asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit were named after heroes of the Trojan War when they were first discovered, which is why the catch-all name Trojans is used to describe these celestial objects. 

Astronomers have speculated that systems like this could exist around a star other than our sun—appropriately called exotrojans.

“Exotrojans have so far been like unicorns: they are allowed to exist by theory but no one has ever detected them,” study co-author and researcher at the Centre for Astrobiology Jorge Lillo-Box said in a statement.

In this new study, an international team of scientists analyzed archival ALMA observations of the PDS 70 system system, and spotted the cloud of debris at the location in PDS 70b’s orbit where Trojans are expected to exist. Trojans typically occupy two extended regions in a planet’s orbit where the combined gravitational pull of the star and the planet can trap material called Lagrangian zones/points. By studying these two regions of PDS 70b’s orbit, the team noticed a faint signal coming from one of them, indicating that a cloud of debris that has a mass roughly two times that of our moon might be present. 

[Related: The James Webb Space Telescope just identified its first exoplanet.]

This cloud of debris could point to an existing Trojan world in this system, or a planet in the process of forming, according to the team.

 “Who could imagine two worlds that share the duration of the year and the habitability conditions? Our work is the first evidence that this kind of world could exist,” said  Balsalobre-Ruza. “We can imagine that a planet can share its orbit with thousands of asteroids as in the case of Jupiter, but it is mind blowing to me that planets could share the same orbit.”

Patience will be key to fully confirm this detection. The team will have to wait until after 2026, when they plan to use ALMA to see if both PDS 70b and its sibling debris cloud move significantly along their orbit together around the star. 

“The future of this topic is very exciting and we look forward to the extended ALMA capabilities, planned for 2030, which will dramatically improve the array’s ability to characterize Trojans in many other stars,” study co-author and European Southern Observatory Head of the Office for Science Itziar De Gregorio-Monsalvo concluded in a statement.

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The universe is a dusty place. Cosmic particles can range from the size of a single large molecule up to a bit larger than a grain of terrestrial sand, and these can accumulate in billowing clouds light-years wide. The general scientific understanding was that dust piles up gradually, produced by stars and supernovae over hundreds of millions of years. Dust is usually a fixture of mature galaxies, or so astronomers thought. 

But in a new paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, astronomers found a specific type of cosmic dust, high in carbon, in young distant galaxies just 800 million years after the Big Bang. That accumulation happened far earlier than current theories of dust formation suggest is possible. It’s a finding that could change how astronomers understand the creation of stars and evolution of galaxies in the early universe, and ultimately, how that young universe grew into the cosmos we know today. 

For a long time, astronomers treated the cosmic stuff the way we might view a dust bunny under a sofa: as a nuisance. Scientists tried to look beyond large clouds of cosmic dust, treated more like obstacles than subjects of study in their own right. “The way most astronomers interact with it is that [dust] actually absorbs a lot of the light that we’re trying to observe,” says lead study author Joris Witstok, a post-doctoral researcher with the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at Cambridge, in the UK. 

But that’s changed in recent years, thanks to observatories such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, which uses infrared light to see through the clouds. Scientists have also come to appreciate the dust itself, realizing these tiny flecks of carbon, silicon, and other matter are responsible for large-scale processes in the universe, such as new star formation. 

”For example, in the Milky Way, we have these sites where new stars are forming, and they’re very dusty,” Witstok says. “There’s big clouds of gas and dust and the dust really helps to allow the gas to cool and contract and therefore form new stars.”

[Related: 5,000 tons of ancient ‘extraterrestrial dust’ fall on Earth each year]

It’s not that the early universe was dustless. Previous studies had found large quantities of dust in galaxies in the very early universe, according to Witstok. Astronomers are interested in this early dust because it represents when stars began to produce some of the first elements heavier than hydrogen.

“The first stars that started to convert hydrogen into helium, which was the only thing that was around all the way at the beginning, into the heavier elements like carbon, oxygen,” Witstok says. 

Large primordial stars may have expelled vast quantities of dust, made of these heavier elements, toward the end of their life cycles, or during supernovae explosions as they died. 

But previous studies hadn’t been able to detect carbonaceous dust—meaning it’s rich in carbon—at such early times. 

“The thing that is really a new discovery here is that we’re able to pinpoint the type of dust grains that we’re seeing,” Witstok says. ”What we’re actually able to tell is that there’s something producing, specifically, these carbon dust grains on a very short timescale. And that’s where the surprise lies.”

Spectrographic observations of dust nearer to Earth, within the Milky Way galaxy, made this discovery possible. Spectroscopy breaks light into a spectrum and looks for telltale signs of absorbed light at certain wavelengths associated with different elements and compounds—sort of like reading a unique rainbow. 

Carbonaceous dust produces a spectroscopic “bump” at a wavelength of 217.5 nanometers, a wavelength that places it in the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum. At least, that’s the wavelength of the light as it left its home galaxy billions of years ago. 

“Since it’s been traveling over roughly 13 billion years, while the universe is expanding, the light really gets stretched with that expansion,” Witstok says, a phenomenon known as redshift. Light that was ultraviolet gets stretched longer, so that the wavelength—about 1.5 to 2 micrometers—is now in the infrared, the part of the spectrum JWST is fine-tuned to measure. 

“That’s exactly why we couldn’t do this before,” Witstok says. “Because with JWST, we’re now for the first time able to look and make these very precise measurements in the infrared.”

[Related: Physicists figured out a recipe to make titanium stardust on Earth] 

Now that researchers have measured this carbonaceous dust at an earlier time in the universe than expected, they’re left trying to figure out what process could be producing it. There are two theories, Witstok says, though neither are perfect. 

The first is that supernovae in early galaxies make the dust, with dying stars expelling the material before their final fiery death throes. But the problem there, he says, is that violent forces unleashed by the supernovae might also destroy much of that dust.

Another source of the dust could be Wolf-Rayet stars, massive, hot, and fast-burning stars that can expel a large portion of their mass into space in less than a million years’ time. “But again, it’s the question of how much can they actually produce?” Witstok says. “Is it enough to explain what we’re seeing in the early universe?”

Witstok and his colleagues hope to answer those questions with computer simulations. Theorists can try to tweak models of supernovae and Wolf-Rayet stars to try to find the conditions that produce the carbonaceous dust seen in the JWST observations. 

And further observations of early galaxies may net answers as well, he says. “We could start to look at what might be hints of an unusual number of Wolf-Rayet stars within those galaxies, for example.”

Whatever is driving carbonaceous dust creation in the early universe may hold clues for understanding how galaxies in the more recent universe evolved, and how stars and planets form, too. ”Dust is this really key component of how galaxies evolve,” Witstok says. ”That we’re now starting to see more and more evidence of it forming very early on is telling us that perhaps this evolution is taking place more quickly than we previously thought. That then has a knock-on effect, down the line, as to how we get to the present.”

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In the series I Made a Big Mistake, PopSci explores mishaps and misunderstandings, in all their shame and glory.

Astronomers can’t help but be enchanted with fast radio bursts, or FRBs, thanks to their mysterious nature. These humongous pulses of radio waves blast toward Earth from outer space, often from beyond the Milky Way. But these bursts were almost thrown aside as noise almost 10 years ago, all because of a lunchtime blunder. FRBs are real signals from space, but a very similar radio wave, known as a peryton, originates from an Earthly mistake. 

When the first FRB was discovered in 2006, researchers knew they’d found something unexpected—but they didn’t know what it was. West Virginia University astronomers Duncan Lorimer and Maura MacLaughlin were trawling through old troves of radio telescope observations, hunting for signals from pulsars, the rapidly spinning husks of dead stars. Pulsars pulse because they have bright jets that sweep across Earth, like an interstellar lighthouse. One day, a student working on this project came in with a bizarre finding: a pulse more than a hundred times brighter than expected. 

The team’s first thought was that it could be interference from Earth-based radio transmissions, but this burst had all the usual fingerprints of something coming from space—it was definitely something new and strange the universe had produced. They published this detection in the prestigious journal Science in 2007, and this first FRB discovery became known as the “Lorimer burst.”

The Lorimer burst spurred more searches, with teams of astronomers scouring radio data to see whether they missed any FRBs in past observations. FRBs were elusive. Years went by without discovering new ones. 

Astronomers did, however, find another type of signal in 2007: the peryton. No one knew exactly what it was, but it showed up in radio telescope data for decades, looked kind of like an FRB, and was clearly coming from Earth—not space, like the Lorimer burst had claimed to be.

These perytons “basically cast doubt on the original event,” says Lorimer. Even its name evokes this doubt—the mythological peryton, created by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, is an elk-bird creature that casts a misleading human shadow. “Many people just moved on.”

But not everyone. At the time, a graduate student in Australia named Emily Petroff was writing her PhD thesis on FRBs. Her advisor, though, was so concerned about perytons that he asked her to get to the bottom of the mystery. “The line between the two [perytons and FRBs] was blurry enough to be concerning,” she says. During her PhD work, she’d present new results to her research group, only to be met with the same question, she recalls: “That’s great, but have we figured out the perytons yet?”

[Related: Astronomers spot repeating radio burst patterns from deep space]

Petroff and her collaborators collected all the hints about perytons observed at their local facility, Parkes Observatory. Perytons only showed up when the telescope was pointed in particular directions, so the scientists deduced it had to be something at the observatory. Their monitoring systems showed a spike in energy at the same time a peryton was observed around 2.5 gigahertz, a common frequency that WiFi, Bluetooth, kitchen appliances, and other electronics employ. Looking through old data revealed these spikes had happened since 1998, so the cause had to be decades-old technology. And most damning—they happened much more often around lunchtime. 

All signs pointed to microwaves, which were in the two buildings where perytons appeared to come from. But what exactly about the microwaves made this signal? The observatory staff tried everything: microwaving water, microwaving different foods, using different settings, and more. As they experimented, one engineer would stand by the microwave, communicating on a walkie-talkie to another engineer at the telescope. Eventually, they tried breaking the major rule of microwaves—opening the door while it’s still running. 

And voila, the peryton appeared. 

[Related: Two bizarre stars might have beamed a unique radio signal to Earth]

The mystery was solved with a clear-cut, satisfying answer. Response to the result, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2015, was electric. “I’ve heard from university teachers, high school teachers, that they teach this paper as how science works,” adds Petroff, who now works as support staff at the Perimeter Institute in Canada. “I don’t think I’ve ever had as satisfying of a moment in my research.”

With the peryton mystery solved, astronomers could devote more time to the puzzle of FRBs. They finally detected a second batch of FRBs in 2013, six years after the initial Lorimer burst, and their count reached almost a dozen by 2015. The momentum shows no signs of stopping, either, as the Canadian CHIME instrument discovers multiple FRBs daily. Radio astronomers have a plethora of other telescopes on the case, too: the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, precursors to the Square Kilometer Array in South Africa, the Deep Synoptic Array in California, and ASKAP in Australia. “Ten years from now, we’ll have probably well over 50,000 FRBs,” Lorimer says.

Astronomers also finally have a clue to what these things actually are. The leading theory traces FRBs to magnetars, spinning dead stars (similar to pulsars) with extremely strong magnetic fields. “When you’re spinning around on a carousel, you have some rotational energy due to the fact that you’re spinning,” explains Alice Curtin, astronomy graduate student at McGill University. But magnetars also store energy in their magnetic fields. “We think that it’s something having to do with the possible release of energy from their magnetic fields that could be powering FRBs.”

FRBs have also proven to be an extraordinary resource for exploring the universe. “FRBs are encoded with information about all the stuff between us and them,” adds Curtin. Armed with their newly-expanded catalog of FRBs, astronomers can track hard-to-see dust and gas filling the spaces between the stars. When the FRB travels through matter in space, parts of it are slowed down, smearing out the FRB across frequencies. By looking at the amount of smear, scientists can approximate the amount of stuff. Just earlier this year, a team used FRBs to explore the Milky Way, finding our galaxy actually has less matter than expected.

Perytons are a thing of the past: Radio observatories now have stricter rules for using microwaves. But other sources of radio interference are ramping up, threatening astronomers’ ability to observe the night sky. SpaceX’s infamous Starlink satellites, for example, are ruining so-called radio-quiet zones around major telescopes. The future looks shaky for some ground-based astronomy, and it won’t be as easy to solve as turning off a microwave.

But, for now, the tale of the peryton-producing microwave is a great example of a mistake with a satisfying scientific conclusion—and a fun story. “When I talk to people about FRBs, or even just radio astronomy,” Petroff says, “someone will almost always mention microwave ovens.” 

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In milliseconds, Google can serve up a fact that long eluded many of humanity’s deepest thinkers: The universe is nearly 14 billion years old. And many cosmologists continue to grow more confident in that number. In December of 2020, a collaboration of researchers working on the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile published their latest estimate: 13.77 billion years, plus or minus a few tens of millions of years. Their answer matches that of the Planck mission, a European satellite that made similar observations between 2009 and 2013.

The precise observations of ACT and Planck come after more than a millennium of humans watching the sky and pondering where it all could have come from. Somehow, primates with lifespans of less than a century got a handle on events that took place eons before their planet—and even the ancient stars and atoms that would form their planet—existed. Here’s a brief account of how humanity came around to figure out how old the universe is.

Antiquity: The beginning of creation

Every culture has a creation myth. The Babylonians, for instance, believed the heavens and the Earth to be hewn from the carcass of a slain god. But few belief systems specified when existence started existing (one exception is Hinduism, which teaches that the universe reforms every 4.3 billion years, not so far off from the actual age of the Earth).

The idea that stuck, at least in the West, came from the Greek philosophers, and it was actually something of a scientific step back. In the fourth and third centuries BCE, Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophers went all in on the notion that the planets and stars were embedded in eternally rotating celestial spheres. For the next millennium or so, few expected the entire universe to have an age at all.

The clash between the night sky and the infinite universe became known as Olber’s paradox, named after Heinrich Olber, an astronomer who popularized it in 1826. An early version of the modern solution came, of all people, from the poet Edgar Allan Poe. We experience night, he speculated in his prose poem “Eureka” in 1848, because the universe is not eternal. There was a beginning, and not enough time has elapsed since then for the stars to fully light up the sky.

1900s: The early and modern universes come into view

But the resolution to Olber’s paradox took time to sink in. In 1917, when Einstein’s own theory of gravity told him that the universe likely grew or shrank over time, he added a fudge factor into his equations—the cosmological constant—to get the universe to hold still (allowing it to endure forever).

[Related: From the archives: The Theory of Relativity gains speed]

Meanwhile, larger telescopes had brought clearer views of other galaxies to astronomers’ eyepieces, prompting a fierce debate over whether they were looking at far-off “island universes,” or nearby star clusters inside the Milky Way. Edwin Hubble’s keen eyes settled the argument in the late 1920s, measuring intergalactic distances for the first time. He found that not only were galaxies immense and distant objects, they were also flying away from each other.

The universe was expanding, and Hubble clocked its expansion rate at 500 kilometers per second per megaparsec, a constant that now bears his name. With the expansion of the universe in hand, astronomers had a powerful new tool to look back in time and gauge when the cosmos started to grow. Hubble’s work in 1929 pegged cosmic expansion in such a way that the universe should be roughly 2 billion years old.

“The expansion rate is telling you how fast you can rewind the history of the Universe, like an old VHS tape,” says Daniel Scolnic, a cosmologist at Duke University. “If the rewind pace is faster, then that means the movie is shorter.”

But measuring the distances to far-flung galaxies is messy business. A cleaner method arrived in 1965, when researchers detected a faint crackling of microwaves coming from every direction in space. Cosmologists had already predicted that such a signal should exist, since light emitted just hundreds of thousands of years after the universe’s birth would have been stretched by the expansion of space into lengthier microwaves. By measuring the characteristics of this Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), astronomers could take a sort of snapshot of the young universe, deducing its early size and contents. The CMB served as unassailable evidence that the cosmos had a beginning.

“The most important thing accomplished by the ultimate discovery of the [CMB] in 1965 was to force us all to take seriously the idea that there was an early universe,” wrote Nobel prize laureate Steven Weinberg in his 1977 book, The First Three Minutes.

1990 to present: Refining the calculation

The CMB let cosmologists get a sense of how big the universe was at an early point in time, which helped them calculate its size and expansion today. Scolnic likens the process to noting that a child’s arm appears one foot long in a baby picture, and then estimating the height and growth speed of the corresponding adolescent. This method gave researchers a new way to measure the universe’s current expansion rate. It turned out to be nearly 10 times slower than Hubble’s 500 kilometers per second per megaparsec, pushing the moment of cosmic genesis further back in time. In the 1990s, age estimates ranged from 7 to 20 billion years old.

Painstaking efforts from multiple teams strove to refine cosmology’s best estimate of the universe’s expansion rate. Observations of galaxies from the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993 pegged the current Hubble constant at 71 kilometers per second per megaparsec, narrowing the universe’s age to 9 to 14 billion years.

[Related: Stellar telescopes for your space-loving kids]

Then in 2003, the WMAP spacecraft recorded a map of the CMB with fine features. With this data, cosmologists calculated the universe’s age to be 13.5 to 13.9 billion years old. About a decade later, the Planck satellite measured the CMB in even more detail, getting a Hubble constant of 67.66 and an age of 13.8 billion years. The new independent CMB measurement from ACT got basically the same numbers, further bolstering cosmologists’ confidence that they know what they’re doing.

“Now we’ve come up with an answer where Planck and ACT agree,” said Simone Aiola, a cosmologist at the Flatiron Institute and member of the ACT collaboration, in a press release at the time. “It speaks to the fact that these difficult measurements are reliable.”

Up next: A cosmological conflict

But as measurements of the early and modern universes have gotten more precise, they’ve started to clash. While studies based on the CMB baby picture suggest a Hubble constant in the high 60s of kilometers per second per megaparsec, distance measurements of today’s galaxies (which Scolnic compares to a cosmic “selfie”) give brisker expansion rates in the low to mid 70s. Scolnic participated in one such survey in 2019, and another measurement based on the brightness of various galaxies came to a similar conclusion (that the modern universe is speedily expanding) in January 2021.

Taken at face value, the faster rates these teams are getting could mean that the universe is actually around a billion years younger than the canonical 13.8 billion years from Planck and ACT. Or, the mismatch may hint that something deeper is missing from modern astronomy’s picture of reality. Connecting the CMB to the present day involves assumptions about the poorly understood dark matter and dark energy that appear to dominate our universe, for instance, and the fact that the Hubble constant measurements aren’t lining up could indicate that calculating the true age of the universe will involve more than just rewinding the tape.

[Related: How to weigh the universe, according to astronomers]

Another controversial estimate claims the universe could be 26.7 billion years old, so twice as ancient as currently thought. This is based on the unconfirmed notion that redshift light from distant galaxies can be altered by physical constants other than the expansion of space. One way to test this is through finite measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope.

“I am not certain about how we are deriving the age of the universe,” Scolnic says. “I’m not saying that it’s wrong, but I can’t say it’s right.”

This story has been updated. It was originally published on January 13, 2021.

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Harvesting solar power here on Earth is limited to a location’s daylight hours—a restriction that doesn’t exist while in space. Knowing this, researchers have long theorized and experimented on ways to construct solar farming satellites capable of beaming virtually unlimited clean energy back to Earth via microwave transmissions. But as progress inches closer to making the science fiction concept a reality, a new project taking shape aims to amass solar power beyond Earth’s surface—in this case, from the moon.

According to a recent European Space Agency (ESA) bulletin, engineers at the Swiss company Astrostrom unveiled the first details for their Greater Earth Lunar Power Station, or GE⊕-LPS, in a study published earlier this year. Taking a cue from butterfly wing physiology, the GE⊕-LPS includes V-shaped solar panels positioned in a helix configuration over one-square-kilometer in length. Such a size could hypothetically allow the satellite station to beam as much as 23 megawatts of sustained energy to a lunar base. For reference, a single megawatt of power can supply as many as 200 houses in Texas with energy during times of peak demand.

[Related: A potentially revolutionary solar harvester just left the planet.]

Per the team’s study, both the GE⊕-LPS and even its solar panels could largely be constructed using lunar surface materials such as iron-pyrite. Iron-pyrite, also known as “Fool’s Gold,” can be found on Earth, but its components also occur in lunar regolith. Combining these could allow for synthetic manufacturing. With each light-absorbing crystal measuring around just 400th of a millimeter in size, iron-pyrite could function as a reliable reflective external layer for the solar panels.

The station itself is designed for sustained human habitation, and would be located at an Earth-moon Lagrange point roughly 61,350 km above the moon. Lagrange points are locations between two celestial bodies in which their respective gravitational and centrifugal forces balance out, thus creating an equilibrium requiring minimal orbital correction.

[Related: Are solar panels headed for space?]

Although such a project may initially seem financially and logistically prohibitive, researchers believe constructing and launching such satellites from the lunar surface could actually be easier and more cost-effective than doing so from Earth. In fact, Astrostrom engineers estimate lunar solar power launches would require five times less velocity change to place them in geostationary orbit compared to satellite launches on Earth. What’s more, the study determined that the deployment of GE⊕-LPS “could be achieved without requiring any technological breakthroughs.”

“Launching large numbers of gigawatt-scale solar power satellites into orbit from the surface of the Earth would run into the problem of a lack of launch capacity as well as potentially significant atmospheric pollution,” Sanjay Vijendran, head of the ESA’s SOLARIS space-based solar power research project, said in a statement. “But once a concept like GE⊕-LPS has proven the component manufacturing processes and assembly concept of a solar power satellite in lunar orbit, it can then be scaled up to produce further solar power satellites from lunar resources to serve Earth.”

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A group of astronomers found that a small, faint “brown dwarf” star is the coldest star yet recorded that still produces emission at radio wavelength. The findings were published last week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and describe a star that is only 797 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to campfires on Earth which can hit 1500 to 1650 degrees.

[Related: Your guide to the types of stars, from their dusty births to violent deaths.]

The “ultracool brown dwarf” named T8 Dwarf WISE J062309.94−045624.6 is not the coldest star ever found, but it is the coolest to be analyzed using radio astronomy, according to the team on this study.

“It’s very rare to find ultracool brown dwarf stars like this producing radio emission. That’s because their dynamics do not usually produce the magnetic fields that generate radio emissions detectable from Earth,” co-author and University of Sydney PhD student Kovi Rose said in a statement. “Finding this brown dwarf producing radio waves at such a low temperature is a neat discovery. Deepening our knowledge of ultracool brown dwarfs like this one will help us understand the evolution of stars, including how they generate magnetic fields.”

Astronomers are still questioning the internal dynamics of brown dwarf stars  that produce radio waves. They do have a good idea of how larger stars like the sun generate radio emissions, but it is not fully known why less than 10 percent of brown dwarf stars produce these emissions. 

It’s possible that the rapid rotation of ultracool dwarfs may play a part in generating their strong magnetic fields. Electrical current flows may be created when the magnetic field rotates at a different speed than the star’s ionized atmosphere. For this star, the team believes that radio waves could be being produced by the inflow of electrons to the star’s magnetic polar region, which when added together with the star’s rotation, is producing regularly repeating radio bursts.

This star is considered a brown dwarf because it does not give off a ton of light or energy, and is not big enough to ignite nuclear fusion the way our sun and other stars do.

“These stars are a kind of missing link between the smallest stars that burn hydrogen in nuclear reactions and the largest gas giant planets, like Jupiter,” said Rose. 

[Related: These 5 mysterious space objects straddle the line between planets and stars.]

T8 Dwarf WISE J062309.94−045624.6 was first discovered in 2011 and is about 37 light years from Earth. Brown dwarfs are considered “failed stars” because despite typically being larger than gas giants, they are still smaller than other stars. This particular star’s width is believed to be between 65 percent and 95 percent of the size of our solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter. However, this brown dwarf is somewhere between four and 44 times more dense than Jupiter.

New data from the CSIRO ASKAP telescope in Western Australia followed up with observations from the Australia Telescope Compact Array near Narrabri in New South Wales. The MeerKAT telescope in South Africa also helped make this discovery possible. 

“We’ve just started full operations with ASKAP and we’re already finding a lot of interesting and unusual astronomical objects, like this,” co-author and University of Sydney astrophysicist Tara Murphy said in a statement.  “As we open this window on the radio sky, we will improve our understanding of the stars around us, and the potential habitability of exoplanet systems they host.”

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In 2014, a meteor entered Earth’s atmosphere and burst apart in the air above the ocean near the Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea, probably scattering tiny fragments along the seabed. Meteors that burn up in the atmosphere and leave small traces are not unusual— NASA estimates nearly 50 tons of space rock falls on the Earth every day—but Harvard astrophysicist Avi Leob recently made headlines when he suggested this particular meteor, dubbed CNEOS 2014-01-08 or IM1, may actually have been a piece of an alien spacecraft. 

Many of Loeb’s colleagues in the fields of astrophysics and the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Life, or SETI, are highly skeptical of his claims. They’ve also cast doubt on the evidence that CNEOS 2014-01-08 is truly an interstellar object. But Loeb’s claim—and the responding criticism—raise important questions: Just how do you decide whether you’ve found evidence of alien life when the data are often so small, far away, or just ambiguous? And how do you share your findings?

”It’s a big problem,” Jason Wright, a professor of astronomy at Penn State. “We call these the post-detection protocols in SETI.”

Scientists working on SETI in the 1960s and 1970s, including Carl Sagan and Frank Drake in the US, and Nicolai Kardashev and Iosif Shklovsky in the Soviet Union, created a set of protocols for how they would assess potential radio signals of extraterrestrial origin.

The first step was keeping the claims to a small group. “When you thought you might have found something, you would be able to share it only with other scientists without making it public,” he says. That might sound “incredibly naive today,” he notes, but it made pre-internet sense. After analyzing the signal and ensuring they were not mistaking Earthly radio signatures for aliens, “then you would make a big announcement—you would go to the UN and you would go to the governments.”

What the Cold War Era SETI post-detection protocols didn’t anticipate, Wright says, were more ambiguous signals or evidence. But those began cropping up as early as the 1970s, with a set of experiments on board the NASA Viking missions to Mars.

The tests, which were meant to detect the presence of organic compounds and possibly alien life on the Red Planet, had unclear and conflicting results. A biology experiment on the Viking 1 spacecraft showed one positive result for the presence of organic compounds, one negative result, and a third that was undetermined. The lead scientist for the experiment, the late Gilbert Levin, who died in 2021, argued as recently as 2012 that the experiment had, in fact, found signs of life on Mars. 

Then, in 1996, a team of scientists led by NASA Johnson Space Center’s David McKay began investigating a meteorite of Martian origin, known as Alan Hills 84001. Members of the team became so convinced they’d found evidence of fossilized Martian life in the space rock that it reached President Bill Clinton, who said “it speaks of the possibility of life” in an address to the nation. 

Though the scientific community came to believe McKay and his team were mistaken, they “were reasonably responsible [in the first article they published about it], even if they clearly believed they had something,” Arizona State University astrophysicist Steven Desch says. 

Since the 1996 announcement, scientists have put even more thought into how to gauge the levels of evidence for signs of alien life in different circumstances. The European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission Rosalind Franklin, a rover scheduled to launch to the Red Planet in 2028, will use a complex “biosignature score” rubric, ranking the confidence experiments have found signs of aliens. 

Key to any such evaluation of evidence of alien life is understanding what your confounders are, Wright says. Put another way: What might you detect that you would mistake as what you are looking for? 

For astronomers looking for signs of alien telecommunications, if you’re hoping to eavesdrop on alien radio, you need to rule out radiation signals from Earth. “When they do a SETI search these days, millions and millions and millions of hits, they call them, get detected, and they’re all from terrestrial transmitters,” Wright says. “It’s extremely challenging to rule those out to get rid of them. It’s like being in a crowded room and everyone’s talking at once, and you’re trying to hear the one voice.”

For signs of technological origin, or signs of fossilized life in meteorites, confounders are processes that could produce those objects without an appeal to alien life. Most scientists ultimately concluded that what looked like fossil microbial life in Alan Hills 84001 could be produced by other chemical or geological processes. 

[Related: Alien civilizations could send us messages by 2029]

Off the coast of Papua New Guinea, Loeb and his research team used a magnetic sled to drag the sea bed along the expected trajectory of the space rock. They collected small metal spheres. (Authorities from the island nation have suggested the material may have been illegally acquired.) The astronomer announced on his blog that his team had recovered unusual magnetic material consisting of an alloy of iron, titanium and magnesium that “does not resemble known human-made alloys or familiar asteroids.” He asked whether the asteroid might have been manufactured by some alien technology.

But he will also need to rule out that these spherules didn’t originate from the many other sources that create tiny metallic bits on the ocean floor, SETI experts say. 

“You’d have to match them against what are the more mundane possibilities including spherules from [non-intersterstellar] asteroid material hitting the Earth,” Desch says, noting that the seabed is covered in tiny pieces of ordinary meteorites. Then there is volcanic ash and artificial spherules—“stuff comes out of coal fired plants and lands on the seafloor too.” 

And while comparing a possible sign of life to more mundane alternatives, it’s also important to acquire that most essential form of comparison in science—a control sample. Since it landed on Mars in 2021, for example, NASA’s Perseverance rover has been collecting tubes of rock and soil that will be returned to Earth for analysis in the early 2030s. 

To help ensure any signs of life are not actually contamination brought to Mars from Earth, the rover carries five “witness tubes” containing Earth materials that could, in theory, contaminate the rover samples. Briefly opening the witness tubes on Mars will give scientists a pattern of what terrestrial contamination of a Mars sample would look like. 

The same type of measurement is even easier to make when trolling the seabed for signs of interstellar meteorites, according to Desch. “Go 100 miles away and collect the stuff from there and see if it’s any different,” he says. “If you find the same mix of stuff everywhere, it’s not all aliens, it’s just natural.”

For his part, Loeb says his team believes the spheres they found are in fact from the meteor, and not other sources. “The composition of the spherules along the meteor path is different from that of volcanic ash,” he writes in an email to Popular Science. “Our control samples were obtained tens of kilometers away from the meteor path, and revealed an abundance of spherules lower by a factor of 10 from the meteor path.”

Loeb plans to do further laboratory analysis of the recovered materials at the Harvard College Observatory. If history is any guide, that analysis will need to be extremely thorough, as confirming ambiguous signs of alien life has so far proven to be a big and incomplete task. 

[Related: Astronomers want to wield a tiny laser to look for life on neighboring worlds]

But that’s not to say there are no conditions that would point indisputably to the existence of extraterrestrial life. If intelligent, space-faring aliens really are capable of visiting Earth, they could, of course, fulfill a 1950s sci-fi stereotype and land on the White House lawn to ask to see the president. 

“Another example is finding a technological gadget as the relic of an interstellar meteor,” Leob writes. “Such an object could have components that are unfamiliar, including a label: ‘Made on an exo-planet.’”

More convincing than that, however, might be the detection of a radio signal that could not be produced by natural means, according to Wright. “Only technology can produce narrowband radio emission,” Wright says, referring to radio transmissions encoded in a narrow range of frequencies that efficiently use bandwidth to communicate data. He envisions “plenty of scenarios where we’re sure it’s technology and space, and we’re sure it’s not ours, because it’s not local.” The SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array, several dishes in California, are designed to hunt for such a signal. 

But even a detection of an alien radio transmitter might set up a whole new level of analysis. Just because you receive the signal, it doesn’t mean it’s for you, that you can decipher it, or that the sender would respond if you tried to talk to them. “We say, ‘Well, that star’s got radio transmissions.’ Sometimes you see them, sometimes you don’t. They’re definitely technological,” Wright says. “Yes, they have radio transmitters. And that’s all we know.”

The post How scientists decide if they’ve actually found signals of alien life appeared first on Popular Science.

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Yesterday, electric vehicle maker Canoo announced in a press release that it had delivered three new Crew Transportation Vehicles (CTVs) to NASA. The cute-looking and totally electric vehicles will transport astronauts to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the Artemis lunar missions.

Designed as a big update to shuttle-era Astrovan, the CTVs were made specifically for the requirements of the Artemis missions, NASA says. Each vehicle can accommodate up to four astronauts in their brand-new Orion spacesuits, plus a spacesuit technician, on the drive to Launch Pad 39B. There’s also “room for specialized equipment,” NASA says. 

“The collaboration between Canoo and our NASA representatives focused on the crews’ safety and comfort on the way to the pad ahead of their journey to the Moon,” Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, the Artemis launch director, said in a press release. 

Although safety and comfort were obviously important, NASA also put a lot of thought into the visual design of the CTVs, which is meant to pay “homage to the legacy of the agency’s human spaceflight and space exploration efforts.” Apparently, everything “from the interior and exterior markings to the color of the vehicles to the wheel wells” was carefully chosen. 

[Related: With Artemis 1 launched, NASA is officially on its way back to the moon]

“I have no doubt everyone who sees these new vehicles will feel the same sense of pride I have for this next endeavor of crewed Artemis missions,” Blackwell-Thompson, who was involved in the design process, added. Canoo intends to reveal the interior and exterior in more detail later this year.

Canoo is one of the more interesting electric vehicle manufacturers in the US. It has developed a “skateboard” modular EV platform (other EV makers use the skateboard approach too). Basically, it consists of four wheels, a battery, a motor or two, and a drive-by-wire steering wheel on a 9.35-foot wheelbase, allowing the company to develop different vehicles from the same chassis. So far, it has a van-style Lifestyle Vehicle (which the NASA CTVs are based on), a delivery-van, and a pickup truck, which the US Army is currently testing. 

Of course, developing a brand-new platform like this is never a smooth process. Canoo’s press release boasts of an “on time” delivery, hinting at some of its past troubles. As recently as May last year, the company only had enough cash on hand to last another three months. It seems a spate of binding orders for more than 15,000 vehicles from companies like Walmart and two fleet leasing companies, Zeeba and Kingbee, were enough to keep it in the clear. It’s a big reminder that the EV space is still very new, and some of the companies making headlines right now might not be the ones that we are talking about in 10 year’s time.

Although they were delivered this week, the CTVs won’t have their big day until at least November of 2024. That’s the current planned launch date for NASA’s first crewed mission to the moon in 53 years, Artemis II. The little CTVs will drive the four astronauts the first nine miles of their trip into space, though the hulking Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft will take them for the rest of their 10-day mission. Until then, the three EVs will be used for astronaut training exercises. 

The post Check out NASA’s fun new electric vans appeared first on Popular Science.

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