Dit is ons nieuw hondje Kira, een kruising van een waterhond en een Podenko. Ze is sinds 7 februari 2024 bij ons en druk bezig ons hart te veroveren. Het is een lief, aanhankelijk hondje, dat zich op een week snel aan ons heeft aangepast. Ze is heel vinnig en nieuwsgierig, een heel ander hondje dan Noleke.
This is our new dog Kira, a cross between a water dog and a Podenko. She has been with us since February 7, 2024 and is busy winning our hearts. She is a sweet, affectionate dog who quickly adapted to us within a week. She is very quick and curious, a very different dog than Noleke.
DEAR VISITOR,
MY BLOG EXISTS ALREADY 13 YEARS AND 1 MONTH.
ON 06/07/2024 MORE THAN 2.101.500
VISITORS FROM 135 DIFFERENT NATIONS ALREADY FOUND THEIR WAY TO MY BLOG.
THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF 400GUESTS PER DAY.
THANK YOU FOR VISITING MY BLOG AND HOPE YOU ENJOY EACH TIME.
The purpose of this blog is the creation of an open, international, independent and free forum, where every UFO-researcher can publish the results of his/her research. The languagues, used for this blog, are Dutch, English and French.You can find the articles of a collegue by selecting his category. Each author stays resposable for the continue of his articles. As blogmaster I have the right to refuse an addition or an article, when it attacks other collegues or UFO-groupes.
Druk op onderstaande knop om te reageren in mijn forum
Zoeken in blog
Deze blog is opgedragen aan mijn overleden echtgenote Lucienne.
In 2012 verloor ze haar moedige strijd tegen kanker!
In 2011 startte ik deze blog, omdat ik niet mocht stoppen met mijn UFO-onderzoek.
BEDANKT!!!
Een interessant adres?
UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN - DE ALLERLAATSTE NIEUWTJES
UFO's of UAP'S in België en de rest van de wereld In België had je vooral BUFON of het Belgisch UFO-Netwerk, dat zich met UFO's bezighoudt. BEZOEK DUS ZEKER VOOR ALLE OBJECTIEVE INFORMATIE , enkel nog beschikbaar via Facebook en deze blog.
Verder heb je ook het Belgisch-Ufo-meldpunt en Caelestia, die prachtig, doch ZEER kritisch werk leveren, ja soms zelfs héél sceptisch...
Voor Nederland kan je de mooie site www.ufowijzer.nl bezoeken van Paul Harmans. Een mooie site met veel informatie en artikels.
MUFON of het Mutual UFO Network Inc is een Amerikaanse UFO-vereniging met afdelingen in alle USA-staten en diverse landen.
MUFON's mission is the analytical and scientific investigation of the UFO- Phenomenon for the benefit of humanity...
Je kan ook hun site bekijken onder www.mufon.com.
Ze geven een maandelijks tijdschrift uit, namelijk The MUFON UFO-Journal.
Since 02/01/2020 is Pieter ex-president (=voorzitter) of BUFON, but also ex-National Director MUFON / Flanders and the Netherlands. We work together with the French MUFON Reseau MUFON/EUROP.
ER IS EEN NIEUWE GROEPERING DIE ZICH BUFON NOEMT, MAAR DIE HEBBEN NIETS MET ONZE GROEP TE MAKEN. DEZE COLLEGA'S GEBRUIKEN DE NAAM BUFON VOOR HUN SITE... Ik wens hen veel succes met de verdere uitbouw van hun groep. Zij kunnen de naam BUFON wel geregistreerd hebben, maar het rijke verleden van BUFON kunnen ze niet wegnemen...
11-06-2024
In an Extremely Unlikely First, Scientists Found Frost On the Peak of Mars’ Volcano Olympus Mons
In an Extremely Unlikely First, Scientists Found Frost On the Peak of Mars’ Volcano Olympus Mons
A team of scientists recently discovered frozen water in an unlikely place on Mars.
Rain will probably never fall on Mars’ giant volcano, Olympus Mons (our condolences to the MMC). But a glittering swath of frost covers the Martian mountaintop on chilly mornings, according to new research, suggesting that the planet has an active, if sparse, water cycle.
A team of scientists recently discovered frozen water in an unlikely place on Mars: 13.5 miles above the surface, nestled near the peak of our Solar System’s largest mountain, Olympus Mons (which is also a volcano, though its last eruption was 25 million years ago.) For a few hours each morning during the colder Martian seasons, huge patches of frost settle in the ancient calderas of Mars’s Tharsis Mountain range, which includesOlympus Mons. The recent study is the first time scientists have seen frost anywhere near the planet’s equator, and it could suggest new places to look for water and potential signs of life on Mars.
The frost is visible in blue in this image of Olympus Mons.
ESA/DLR/FU BERLIN
FROST-CAPPED MOUNTAIN PEAKS IN THE MARTIAN TROPICS
Valentinas and his colleagues spent five years poring over data from an instrument called CaSSIS (Color and Stereo Surface Imaging System) aboard the European Space Agency’s Trace Gas Orbiter. In 2018, the scientists thought they had glimpsed frost in the high calderas of Olympus Mons and some of the other dormant volcanoes of Tharsis, and more data from the Mars Express Orbiter confirmed what they had seen. The team spent the next five years studying more than 30,000 images of the region, captured at different times of day and in different seasons, to piece together a record of how the frost came and went.
It turns out that during Mars’s colder months, a super-thin layer of frost forms at the peaks of the towering mountains and in their calderas — the collapsed craters formed by cataclysmic volcanic eruptions millions of years ago. The icy layer is only about as thick as a human hair, and it lasts just a few hours before it evaporates under the heat of the Martian Sun. However, it covers such a wide swath of ground that even that thin, short-lived frost layer contains about 150,000 tons of water, enough to fill 6 Olympic swimming pools. And in the mostly-dry environs of modern Mars, that’s a lot of water.
“We thought it was improbable for frost to form around Mars’s equator, as the mix of sunshine and thin atmosphere keeps temperatures during the day relatively high, at both the surface and the mountaintops — unlike what we see on Earth, where you might expect to see frosty peaks,” says Valentinas in a recent statement.
Valentinas and his colleagues suggest that there’s something about air circulation around the tops of the mountains and through the calderas that creates a microclimate that’s cool enough and humid enough to allow frost to form on cold mornings. Building computer simulations of how the frost forms and evaporates could help scientists understand Mars’s water cycle, such as it is, in more detail.
Rijm ontdekt op de hoogste vulkanen van Mars: "Altijd gedacht dat zoiets onmogelijk was"
Rijm ontdekt op de hoogste vulkanen van Mars: "Altijd gedacht dat zoiets onmogelijk was"
Artikel door Wim De Maeseneer
In de winter wordt wel eens gewaarschuwd voor rijm- en ijsplekken op de weg. Rijm is de witte laag die je soms op je gazon ziet als het in de winter vriest. Het zijn de fijne waterdruppels uit de lucht die condenseren op het gras of op de weg en dan bevriezen. Voor het eerst is er bewijs dat er zich ook rijm op Mars kan vormen.
Op de kilometers hoge toppen van enkele vulkanen is een dun laagje rijm ontdekt, dat tijdens het koude seizoen elke dag verschijnt rond zonsopgang en enkele uren later weer verdampt in het zonlicht. Dat blijkt uit waarnemingen van 2 Europese satellieten rond Mars: de ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) en de Mars Express.
Nochtans werd altijd gedacht dat er op die plek, dicht bij de evenaar van Mars, onmogelijk water kon bevriezen. "Tot nog toe dachten we dat de temperaturen aan de evenaar te hoog zouden zijn, zowel op het oppervlak als op de bergtoppen, door het zonlicht en de dunne atmosfeer", zegt onderzoeker Adomas Valantinas die de studie heeft geleid. "Er moeten dus ongewone processen meespelen waardoor er zich toch rijm kan vormen."
Belgische bijdrage
Wat die ongewone processen dan wel zouden kunnen zijn, dat onderzochten wetenschappers van de Koninklijke Sterrenwacht van België. "Onze modellen van de luchtcirculatie op Mars hebben aangetoond dat vochtige lucht inderdaad kan condenseren tot rijm van water op de bodem van caldera's (de grote krater aan de top van een uitgedoofde vulkaan, red.), gedurende de nacht en vroege ochtend. Vergelijkbaar met wat kan worden waargenomen op aarde", klinkt het in een persbericht.
"In die caldera's zou de temperatuur toch iets kouder kunnen zijn. Net koud genoeg om toch rijm te kunnen vormen", vult Karolien Lefever van het Koninklijk Belgisch Instituut voor Ruimte-Aeronomie (BIRA) aan. Het is mede dankzij het NOMAD-instrument van het BIRA, aan boord van de ExoMars-satelliet, dat de rijm kon worden ontdekt.
Credit: Adomas Valantinas
Deze vroege ochtendopname van Olympus Mons (LST = 7:20 uur, Ls = 346,7°, lat = 18,2°N, lon = -133,2°E) is gemaakt door de Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera (MEX-HRSC). Deze foto toont voor het eerst de aanwezigheid van rijm van water op de top van de vulkaan, de hoogste vulkaan op Mars en in het hele zonnestelsel.
Mars is miljoenen jaren lang geteisterd door grote vulkaanuitbarstingen en dat is op het oppervlak nog altijd goed te zien. De vulkanen waar het over gaat, bevinden zich in het Tharsisgebied, een enorm vulkanisch plateau op de evenaar van Mars. Hier liggen de grootste vulkanen van ons zonnestelsel.
Olympus Mons torent 25 kilometer boven het oppervlak uit en is de grootste bekende vulkaan. Hij is meer dan 600 kilometer breed. Er liggen nog verschillende andere vulkanen van 10 kilometer hoog en meer. Ter vergelijking: de hoogste vulkaan ter wereld, de Ojos del Salado in Chili, is net geen 7 kilometer hoog.
"Hoewel het om een heel dun laagje gaat, ongeveer de dikte van een menselijk haar, bedekt het een enorm groot gebied. Alles samen komt het overeen met zo'n 150.000 ton water, dat elke dag tussen de atmosfeer en het oppervlak wordt uitgewisseld."
"Deze ontdekking is een nieuw, klein puzzelstukje in het beter begrijpen van de watercyclus op Mars", zegt Lefever. "Waterijswolken en waterdamp werden eerder al gedetecteerd op Mars. En we weten dat die wolken een heel belangrijke rol spelen in de watercyclus, omdat ze water van de polen naar de droge gebieden aan de evenaar brengen."
"Als we ooit mensen naar Mars willen sturen, dan zal die kennis over de watercyclus zeker van pas komen. Want het zal belangrijk zijn voor astronauten om zelf drinkwater te maken, om water te maken om zich te wassen en om planten te laten groeien, bijvoorbeeld. "
The Milky Way’s Last Merger Event Was More Recent Than Thought
The Milky Way is only as massive as it is because of collisions and mergers with other galaxies. This is a messy process, and we see the same thing happening with other galaxies throughout the Universe. Currently, we see the Milky Way nibbling at its two satellite galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Their fate is likely sealed, and they’ll be absorbed into our galaxy.
Researchers thought the last major merger occurred in the Milky Way’s distant past, between 8 and 11 billion years ago. But new research amplifies the idea that it was much more recent: less than 3 billion years ago.
This new insight into our galactic history comes from the ESA’s Gaia mission. Launched in 2013, Gaia is busily mapping 1 billion astronomical objects, mostly stars. It measures them repeatedly, establishing accurate measurements of their positions and motions.
A new paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society presents the findings. It’s titled “The Debris of the ‘Last Major Merger’ is Dynamically Young.” The lead author is Thomas Donlon, a post-doctoral researcher in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Donlon has been studying mergers in the Milky Way for several years and has published other work on the matter.
Each time another galaxy collides and merges with the Milky Way, it leaves wrinkles. ‘Wrinkles’ obviously isn’t a scientific term. It’s an umbrella term for several types of morphologies, including phase space folds, caustics, chevrons, and shells. These wrinkles move through different groups of stars within the Milky Way, affecting how the stars move through space. By measuring the positions and velocities of these stars with great precision, Gaia can detect the wrinkles, the imprint of the last major merger.
“We get wrinklier as we age, but our work reveals that the opposite is true for the Milky Way. It’s a sort of cosmic Benjamin Button, getting less wrinkly over time,” said lead author Donlon in a press release. “By looking at how these wrinkles dissipate over time, we can trace when the Milky Way experienced its last big crash—and it turns out this happened billions of years later than we thought.”
The effort to understand the Milky Way’s (MW) last major merger involves different pieces of evidence. One of the pieces of evidence, along with wrinkles, is an Fe/H-rich region where stars follow a highly eccentric orbit. A star’s Fe/H ratio is a chemical fingerprint, and when astronomers find a group of stars with the same fingerprint and the same orbits, it’s evidence of a common origin. This group of stars is sometimes called ‘the Splash.’ The stars in the Splash may have originated in a Fe/H-rich progenitor. They have odd orbits that stand out from their surroundings. Astronomers think they were heated and their orbits altered as a by-product of the merger.
There are two competing explanations for all of the merger evidence.
One says that a progenitor dwarf galaxy named Gaia Sausage/Enceladus (GSE) collided with the MW proto-disk between 8 and 11 billion years ago. The other explanation is that an event called the Virgo Radial Merger (VRM) is responsible for the stars in the inner halo. That collision occurred much more recently, less than 3 billion years ago.
This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the globular cluster NGC 2808. It might be the old core of the Gaia Sausage. Image Credit: By NASA, ESA, A. Sarajedini (University of Florida) and G. Piotto (University of Padua (Padova)) http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/2007/18/image/a/ (direct link), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2371715
“These two scenarios make different predictions about observable structure in local phase space because the morphology of debris depends on how long it has had to phase mix,” the authors explain in their paper.
The wrinkles in the MW were first identified in Gaia data in 2018 and presented in this paper. “We have observed shapes with different morphologies, such as a spiral similar to a snail’s shell. The existence of these substructures has been observed for the first time thanks to the unprecedented precision of the data brought by Gaia satellite, from the European Space Agency (ESA)”, said Teresa Antoja, the study’s first author, in 2018.
This AI-generated image illustrates the MW’s ‘wrinkles’ from the last major merger event. Image Credit: University of Barcelona.
But Gaia has released more data since 2018, and it supports the more recent merger scenario, the Virgo Radial Merger. That data shows that the wrinkles are much more prevalent than the earlier data and the studies based on it suggest.
“For the wrinkles of stars to be as clear as they appear in Gaia data, they must have joined us less than 3 billion years ago—at least 5 billion years later than was previously thought,” said co-author Heidi Jo Newberg, from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. If the wrinkles were much older and conformed to the GSE merger scenario, they’d be more difficult to discern.
“New wrinkles of stars form each time the stars swing back and forth through the center of the Milky Way. If they’d joined us 8 billion years ago, there would be so many wrinkles right next to each other that we would no longer see them as separate features,” Newberg said.
This doesn’t mean there’s no evidence for the more ancient GSE merger. Some of the stars that hint at the ancient merger may be from the more recent VRM merger, and some may still be associated with the GSE merger. It’s challenging to figure out, and simulations play a large role. The researchers in previous work and in this work ran multiple simulations to see how they matched the evidence. “Our goal is to determine the time that has passed since the progenitor of the local phase-space folds collided with the MW disc,” the authors write in their paper.
“We can see how the shapes and number of wrinkles change over time using these simulated mergers. This lets us pinpoint the exact time when the simulation best matches what we see in real Gaia data of the Milky Way today—a method we used in this new study too,” said Thomas.
“By doing this, we found that the wrinkles were likely caused by a dwarf galaxy colliding with the Milky Way around 2.7 billion years ago. We named this event the Virgo Radial Merger.” Those results and the name come from a previous study from 2019.
As Gaia delivers more data with each release, astronomers are getting a better look at the evidence of mergers. It’s becoming clear that the MW has a complex history.
The VRM likely involved more than one entity. It could have brought a whole group of dwarf galaxies and star clusters into the MW at around the same time. As astronomers research the MW’s merger history in greater detail, they hope to determine which of these objects are from the more recent VRM and which are from the ancient GSE.
“The Milky Way’s history is constantly being rewritten at the moment, in no small part thanks to new data from Gaia,” adds Thomas. “Our picture of the Milky Way’s past has changed dramatically from even a decade ago, and I think our understanding of these mergers will continue to change rapidly.”
“This finding improves what we know of the many complicated events that shaped the Milky Way, helping us better understand how galaxies are formed and shaped—our home galaxy in particular,” said Timo Prusti, Project Scientist for Gaia at ESA.
Landing on Pluto May Only Be A Hop Skip and Jump Away
There are plenty of crazy ideas for missions in the space exploration community. Some are just better funded than others. One of the early pathways to funding the crazy ideas is NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts. In 2017 and again in 2021, it funded a mission study of what most space enthusiasts would consider only a modestly ambitious goal but what those outside the community might consider outlandish—landing on Pluto.
Two major questions stand out in the mission design: How would a probe arriving at Pluto slow down, and what kind of lander would be useful on Pluto itself? The answer to the first is one that is becoming increasingly common on planetary exploration missions: aerobraking.
Pluto has an atmosphere, albeit sparse, as confirmed by the New Horizons mission that whizzed past in 2015. One advantage of the minor planet’s relatively weak gravity is that its low-density atmosphere is almost eight times larger than Earth’s, providing a much bigger target for a fast incoming aerobraking craft to aim for.
Fraser discusses future missions to Pluto.
Much of the NIAC Phase I project was focused on the details of that aerobraking system, called the Enveloping Aerodynamic Decelerator (EAD). Combined with a lander, that system makes up the “Entrycraft” that the mission is designed around. Ostensibly, it could alternatively contain an orbiter, and there are plenty of other missions discussing how to insert an orbiter around Pluto. Hence, the main thrust of this paper is to focus on a lander.
After aerobraking and slowing down to a few tens of meters a second, from 14 km/s during its interplanetary cruise phase, the mission would drop its lander payload, then rest on the surface, only to rise again under its own power. The answer to the second question of what kind of lander would be useful on Pluto is – a hopper.
Hoppers have become increasingly popular as an exploration tool everywhere, from the Moon to asteroids. Some apparent advantages would include visiting a wide array of interesting scientific sites and not having to navigate tricky land-based obstacles. Ingenuity, the helicopter that accompanied Perseverance paved the way for the idea, but in other words, the atmosphere isn’t dense enough to support a helicopter. So why not use the current favorite method of almost all spacecraft – rockets?
Fraser discusses the results from New Horizons.
A hopper would fire its onboard thrusters to reach the area on Pluto’s surface and then land elsewhere. It could then do some science at its new locale before taking off and doing so again somewhere else. The NIAC Phase I Final Report describes five main scientific objectives of the mission, including understanding the surface geomorphology and running some in-situ chemical analysis. A hopper structure would enable those goals much better than a traditional rover at a relatively low weight cost since Pluto’s gravity is so weak.
Other objectives of the report include mathematical calculations of the trajectory, including the aerobraking itself and the stress and strain it would have on the materials used in the system. The authors, who primarily work for Global Aerospace Corporation and ILC Dover, two private companies, also updated the atmospheric models of Pluto with new New Horizons data, which they then fed into the aerobraking model they used. Designing the lander/hopper, integrating all the scientific and navigation components, and estimating their weights were also part of Phase I.
The original launch window for the mission was planned as 2029 back in 2018, though now, despite receiving a Phase II NIAC grant in 2021, that launch window seems wildly optimistic. Since the mission would require a gravity assist from Jupiter, the next potential launch window would be 2042, with a lander finally reaching the surface of Pluto in the 2050s. That later launch window is likely the only feasible one for the mission, so we might have to wait almost 30 years to see if it will come to fruition. Sometimes crazy ideas take patience – we’ll see if the mission team has enough of that to push it onto the surface of one of the most interesting minor planets in the solar system.
Newly published research from scientists at Cornell University is casting doubt on previous findings hinting at the presence of a large lake of liquid water underneath Mars’ polar ice caps. Instead, the researchers say their models were able to produce the same signals detected by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter back in 2018 in a simpler and likelier way that doesn’t require the presence of liquid water.
Previous studies have found overwhelming evidence for large amounts of water billions of years in Mars’ past, increasing the possibility that life may have had a chance to evolve on the red planet. However, the presence of liquid lakes on or underneath Mars would greatly increase the chances that life currently resides on the red planet. If confirmed, these latest findings, which say the readings were caused by ice reflections, would represent a dramatic setback to those hopes, potentially restricting any living Martian organisms to the planet’s watery ancient past.
“I can’t say it’s impossible that there’s liquid water down there,” said Daniel Lalich, research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science and an author on the study outlining the team’s findings, “but we’re showing that there are much simpler ways to get the same observation without having to stretch that far, using mechanisms and materials that we already know exist there.”
In fact, Lalich is so confident in his team’s findings that he says random chance could “create the same observed signal in the radar.”
EVIDENCE FOR LIQUID WATER UNDERNEATH MARS’ POLAR ICE CAPS
Ever since NASA and the European Space Agency began sending various probes, rovers, and satellites to Mars, they have found a steadily increasing body of evidence that the red planet was once home to large amounts of liquid water. Some research even showed that a massive ocean may have existed on Mars’ surface around three billion years ago, even though the temperature at the surface was well below freezing, thanks to constant water circulation and periodic coastal rainfall. An examination of rocks collected by the Perseverance Rover also found that water in Jezero Crater may have persisted for much longer than previously thought, increasing the opportunity for life to form.
Then suddenly, in 2018, researchers using the ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft reported the discovery of a large lake of liquid water underneath Mar’s polar ice caps in the Planum Australe region. The researchers were so confident in their findings that they went so far as to say that the 20km wide lake “is probably kept from freezing by dissolved salts and the pressure of the ice above.”
Now, both of those studies have been called into question, with the new models suggesting that the reflections that seemed to indicate the presence of this massive lake were likely just illusions created by layers of ice.
RANDOMLY GENERATED LAYERING SCENARIOS REPLICATE READINGS WITHOUT NEED FOR WATER
In the media release announcing the new findings, Lalich notes that he had developed earlier models that could account for the presence of reflections underneath the Martian ice caps. However, he says that those models, which relied on assumptions about layers of frozen carbon dioxide hiding beneath the ice caps, “likely were incorrect.”
Hoping to refine his approach, Lalich says he decided to use much more sophisticated modeling techniques, which helped in “closing the gaps” in his radar interference hypothesis. This included modeling thousands of randomly generated layering scenarios based specifically on the atmospheric and material conditions present only at the Martian poles. Throughout these different scenarios, Lalich and his team periodically adjusted the spacing and composition of the various ice layers, like those already known to exist beneath the surface of Mars, while monitoring how this would affect readings captured by a satellite like the Mars Express.
Just like his previous models, Lalich said that those slight adjustments started to produce “bright subsurface signals consistent with observations” found by all of the three frequencies analyzed by the Mars Express orbiter’s MARSIS radar instrument during the 2018 discovery. In effect, his data showed that when the RADAR waves bounced off of ice layers that were too close together for the MARSIS instrument to tell them apart, the instrument most likely combined them together, resulting in amplified peaks and troughs in the signal that matched those made by liquid water.
“This is the first time we have a hypothesis that explains the entire population of observations below the ice cap without having to introduce anything unique or odd,” Lalich said. “This result where we get bright reflections scattered all over the place is exactly what you would expect from thin-layer interference in the radar.”
While this research doesn’t permanently shut the door on the idea of liquid water underneath Mars’ polar ice caps, the researchers behind the finding do seem to agree that the scientific community tends to prefer the simplest explanation whenever possible, as opposed to the one that is more exciting.
“The idea that there would be liquid water even somewhat near the surface would have been really exciting,” Lalich said. “I just don’t think it’s there.”
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
The pit crater possibly opens into a larger cave that could provide a sheltered environment for both astronauts and hypothetical Martian life.
The alluring pit crater on Arsia Mons, imaged by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/UArizona)
A mysterious pit on the flank of an ancientvolcano on Mars has generated excitement recently because of what it could reveal beneath the surface of the Red Planet. Here's what that means.
First things first, the pit, which is only a few meters across, was actually imaged on Aug. 15, 2022 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was about 159 miles (256 kilometers) above the Martian surface at the time. This hole in the ground is also not alone. It's one of many seen on the flanks of a trio of large volcanoes in the Tharsis region of Mars. This particular pit is found on a lava flow on the extinct volcano Arsia Mons, and appears to be a vertical shaft. That raises a question: Is it just a narrow pit, or does it lead to a much larger and remarkable cavern? Or, could it perhaps be a really deep lava tube formed underground long ago when the volcano was still active?
There are several reasons why pits and caves on Mars are of interest. For one, they could provide shelter for astronauts in the future; because Mars has a thin atmosphere and lacks a global magnetic field, it cannot ward off radiation from space the way that Earth does. Consequently, radiation exposure on the Martian surface averages between 40 and 50 times greater than on Earth.
The other enticing aspect of these pits is they might not just provide shelter for human astronauts; they could hold astrobiological interest in the sense that they could have been sheltered abodes for Martian life in the past — perhaps even today, if microbial life indeed exists there.
The presence of these so-called holes on the flanks of volcanoes is a big clue that they are probably connected to volcanic activity on Mars. Channels of lava can flow away from a volcano underground; when the volcano grows extinct, the channel empties. That leaves behind a long, underground tube. We see such tubes not only on Mars, but also on the moon and on Earth.
Another pit crater on Arsia Mons, again imaged by the HiRISE instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. (Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/UArizona)
Sometimes, if the crust is thin enough, the ceiling of these tubes collapses. If a collapse happens along the tube's entire length, it forms a feature called a rille, which is a long trench commonly found on the moon and sometimes in other areas of Mars. If the tube's ceiling just collapses in small areas, however, we get pits like those imaged on Arsia Mons. Planetary scientists have also seen pit chains on the flanks of Martian volcanoes, which are linear stretches of multiple pits seemingly following the length of a lava tube.
Pit chains in a region of Mars called Tractus Catena, which is on the south-western flank of Alba Mons, an old volcano. This image was taken by the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission. (Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum))
How deep these pits descend is a mystery, however, and it remains uncertain whether the pits open into a large cavern or whether they are contained to a small, cylindrical depression. Some Martian pits have been imaged when the sun is high enough in the sky to illuminate what appears to be the sides of the pit wall, which implies they are shafts that go straight down into the flank of the volcano. This would seem to suggest these pits are unlikely to open into larger caves or tubes. If so, this would make them similar to pit craters found on the volcanic mountains of Hawaii, which also don't open up to anything larger and which are produced by the collapse of material deeper underground, which causes material above to sink.
However, pits on the moon have been shown to have boulder-strewn floors that appear as though they could lead to a larger subterranean volume.
A pit crater on the moon, imaged by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Boulders can be seen on the floor of the pit, and it gives the impression of opening into a wider chasm. (Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University)
Pits can also be formed through tectonic stresses that fracture a world's surface, and these may be less likely to lead to a larger cavern. And finally, one other — possibly less likely — explanation is that these pits open up into where underground rivers once flowed billions of years ago.
We can see a similar phenomenon on Earth, in the form of a geological feature called a karst, which forms when limestone bedrock dissolves and weakens, creating pits and sinkholes that open up into areas of groundwater. If that is the case on Mars, then, if the Red Planet ever once had life, those organisms may have sheltered in karsts. Indeed, running water down the flank of an active volcano would have been warm, providing the perfect protected environment for life to flourish and stay safe.
Still, this is all speculation for now. We'll only have some concrete answers after future missions actually explore some of these pits. Though a rover that drives to the edge of a pit would be unable to descend, an airborne mission along the same lines as NASA's Ingenuity helicopter, which operated on Mars for three years before it became grounded in January 2024 after damaging one of its rotor blades, would have the ability to hover over and descend into a pit to see what is down there.
If these pits do open up into caves, they may become a preferred landing site for future crewed missions to Mars that will require astronauts to build a sheltered basecamp away from the world's unrelenting radiation.
Starship’s fourth test flight launched at 8:50 am Eastern Time today, and both SpaceX and NASA are declaring the flight, which included splashdown of the Super Heavy first stage, plus re-entry and splashdown for Starship itself, a success.
Flights of the world’s largest rocket are starting to seem almost routine this spring, but SpaceX is under tremendous pressure to have Starship ready to fly the Artemis 3 crew to the Moon — and land there — by late 2026. Starship’s test flights are also part of the key to making sure potential future missions to the Moon and Mars don’t run out of gas on the way. As SpaceX put it in a tweet shortly before launch, “The payload for these flights is data.”
The SpaceX Starship launches on its fourth flight test from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on June 6, 2024. The Starship is vital to NASA's plans for landing astronauts on the Moon later this decade, and to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's hopes of eventually colonizing Mars. (Photo by Chandan KHANNA / AFP) (Photo by CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
AN EXTREMELY COOL ENGINEERING CHALLENGE
The largest rocket ever flown, Super Heavy uses a combination of liquid oxygen and methane to get off the ground. Despite the exhaust blasting out the back end of the rocket at several thousand degrees Fahrenheit, the propellant in Super Heavy’s tanks has to be kept at a chilly -300 degrees Fahrenheit; any warmer, and it will boil away into gas, useless for fueling those 33 Raptor engines. SpaceX is one of several contractors — including Eta Space, Lockheed Martin, and United Launch Alliance — whose flights will gather data for NASA’s study of how to manage propellants like these on long flights.
On its third test flight (also known as the first one in which Starship made it to orbit), engineers moved propellant from the header tanks to the main tanks while the ship was coasting in orbit. That's going to be an important step for the Artemis III and IV missions to get the spacecraft out of Low Earth Orbit and on their way to the Moon. Engineers are also using these test flights to study how all those bouncing blobs of rocket fuel affect Starship’s stability in orbit.
Rockets have used super-cold, or cryogenic, liquid propellants, for decades. The Apollo missions traveled to the Moon on a mix of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, both cryogenic (after using liquid kerosene and liquid oxygen to get to space). They work well, but they can be tricky, especially in space, where the temperature can swing from bitter cold to boiling hot in a matter of hours — and the way liquid floats around in microgravity means it’s difficult to transfer fuel from a storage tank to a thruster, or even measure how much is left in the tank.
And if NASA wants to realize its ambitions on the Moon, and eventually Mars, the agency and its contractors will need to store and transfer more cryogenic propellant, for longer flights, than ever before.
“Storing and transferring cryogenic propellant in orbit has never been attempted on this scale before,” said Jeremy Kenny, project manager, NASA’s Cryogenic Fluid Management Portfolio at Marshall, in a March 2024 statement.
That’s where SpaceX comes in, along with a few of its competitors. Starship is working on a particular piece of the problem, called slosh. Once Starship’s main engines cut off, there’s no acceleration forcing the propellant to sit neatly at one end of its tank, where it’s easy to measure. Instead, you get a bunch of little blobs of super-cold fluid bouncing around in the tank. If there’s not enough pressure to keep the propellant all together, then the engine may end up pulling in a bunch of gas, rather than propellant, which means it won’t fire.
One way Starship deals with this problem is by using header tanks: a pair of smaller propellant tanks that can keep the propellant under enough pressure that it doesn't have room to slosh. The header tanks provide the initial sip of propellant the engines need to restart in orbit. Once the engines restart, their thrust will push the liquid in the main tanks back into the right position to flow to the engines and keep them firing.
It should not be surprising that Venus is dry. It is famous for its hellish conditions, with dense sulphurous clouds, rains of acid, atmospheric pressures comparable to a 900 meter deep lake, and a surface temperature high enough to melt lead. But it’s lack of water is not just a lack of rain and oceans: there’s no ice or water vapour either. Like Earth, Venus is found within our Solar System’s goldilocks zone, so it would have had plenty of water when it was first formed. So where did all of Venus’s water go?
Venus is an extremely dry planet, although it wasn’t always like this. At some point in its history, a run-away greenhouse effect began, ending with its current extreme state. Most models agree that this process would have driven off most of its original water, but that there should still be some remaining. And yet, observations show us that there is practically no water at all. Planetary scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder believe that they have found an explanation: a molecule called HCO+ high in Venus’s atmosphere may be responsible. Unfortunately, they may have to wait for future missions to Venus before they can confirm it.
Until the middle of the 20th century, Venus was thought of as Earth’s twin. Both planets are approximately the same size and mass, and they’re both within the sun’s habitable zone – the region where temperatures can exist that are warm enough to melt ice, but not so hot that water boils into steam. It was long assumed that, beneath its shining white cloud cover, Venus must have a similar climate to Earth. Science fiction authors even wrote stories about visitors to Venus exploring verdant jungles and meeting exotic civilizations. But the truth is much harsher: Venus is an extreme place, with sulphuric acid rains, crushing atmospheric pressure, and a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead. But it wasn’t always like that.
The general assumption among astronomers and planetary scientists is that both Earth and Venus started life with similar amounts of water. But something happened to release enormous quantities of carbon dioxide into its atmosphere, leading to an extreme runaway greenhouse effect. The high temperatures melted off any ice, and boiled away any liquid water, filling the atmosphere with water vapour. Much of this hot vapour would eventually blow off into space, drying out the planet, but some should remain. The puzzle is that the usual models predict a great deal more remaining water vapour than what is actually there. So, what happened?
According to a study, led by Dr Eryn Cangi and Dr Mike Chafin, both of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), the answer may be a molecule named HCO+. In their earlier work studying the atmosphere of Mars, they discovered a process by which this molecule can remove water from planetary atmospheres. In their new paper, they suggest that the same process could be at work on Venus. The only catch is that this molecule has never been detected in the Venusian atmosphere.
Unfortunately, there is little evidence to confirm this theory. HCO+ has never been detected in the atmosphere of Venus. However, Cangi and Chafin point out that this is because nobody has ever looked for it, and none of the missions sent to Venus so far were equipped with instruments that could detect it. They are optimistic for future missions, however.
Illustration of NASA’s DAVINCI probe falling to the surface of Venus. (Credit: NASA GSFC visualization by CI Labs Michael Lentz and others)
“One of the surprising conclusions of this work is that HCO+ should actually be among the most abundant ions in the Venus atmosphere,” says Chaffin. “There haven’t been many missions to Venus,” adds Cangi. “But newly planned missions will leverage decades of collective experience and a flourishing interest in Venus to explore the extremes of planetary atmospheres, evolution and habitability.”
The planetary science community has gotten increasingly interested in Venus, and a number of future missions are planned to study it in more detail. NASA’s planned Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI) mission is one example. DAVINCI will drop a probe down to the surface, which will study the atmosphere at different altitudes as it falls. Unfortunately for Cangi and Chafin, it is not designed specifically to look for HCO+, but it may reveal other clues to either confirm or disprove their theory. But they remain optimistic that additional missions will be sent in future that will carry the necessary instruments that they can use to test their work.
For more information, visit CU Boulder’s announcement at
The South Pole-Aitken Basin on the lunar far side is one of the largest and oldest impact features in the Solar System. It’s easily seen in the elevation data. The low center is dark blue and purple. Mountains on its edge, remnants of outer rings, are red and yellow.
Image credit: NASA / GSFC / University of Arizona.
The solar wind is a constant flow of radiation and particles from the Sun. Earth’s magnetic field acts as a shield.
In contrast, the Moon has no magnetic field and a very tenuous atmosphere, called the exosphere.
When the solar wind hits the Moon, the surface reacts, kicking up secondary particles.
These particles may be positively or negatively charged or have no charge at all.
While the positively charged particles have been measured from orbit before, measuring negative particles was a challenge.
Negative ions are short-lived and cannot make it to orbit. This is why ESA scientists needed to operate their instrument close to the lunar surface.
“This was ESA’s first activity on the surface of the Moon, a world-first scientifically, and a first lunar cooperation with China,” said Neil Melville, ESA’s technical officer for the NILS experiment.
“We have collected an amount and quality of data far beyond our expectations.”
“These observations on the Moon will help us better understand the surface environment and act as a pathfinder to explore negative ion populations in other airless bodies in the Solar System, from planets to asteroids and other moons,” said Dr. Martin Wieser, NILS principal investigator.
Chang’e-6 landed successfully in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the Moon known on June 1, 2024.
NILS started to collect science data 280 min after landing. The first data collection period lasted for 23 min, until the instrument reverted to low voltage. A few more rounds of data collection followed between communications blackouts and reboots.
“We were alternating between short bursts of full-power and long cooling-off periods because the instrument was heating up,” Melville said.
“The fact that it stayed within its thermal design limits and managed to recover under extremely hot conditions is a testament to the quality of the work done by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics.”
Astronauts are Practicing Lunar Operations in New Space Suits
Astronauts were fully suited while conducting mission-like maneuvers in the full-scale build of the Starship human landing system’s airlock which will be located inside Starship under the crew cabin. Credit: SpaceX
Astronauts are Practicing Lunar Operations in New Space Suits
Through the Artemis Program, NASA will send astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. While the challenges remain the same, the equipment has evolved, including the rocket, spacecraft, human landing system (HLS), and space suits. In preparation for Artemis III(planned for September 2026), NASA recently conducted a test where astronauts donned the new space suits developed by Axiom Spaceand practiced interacting with the hardware that will take them to the Moon.
These new suits, the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU), were developed specifically for the Artemis III mission. The day-long test took place on April 30th at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, where astronaut Doug “Wheels” Wheelock and Axiom Space astronaut Peggy Whitson interacted with a full-scale model of the SpaceX Starship Human Landing System (HLS). This was the first time astronauts trained in pressurized spacesuits and conducted mock operations with the HLS hardware.
The test provided valuable feedback on theStarship HLSand the AxEMU spacesuits for NASA and its commercial partners. It also gave astronauts a chance to gauge the suits’ range of motion and to get a feel for the interior of the Starship HLSand its mechanical systems. Said Logan Kennedy, lead for surface activities in NASA’s HLS Program, in a NASA press statement:
The Artemis III spacesuit prototype, the AxEMU. Though this prototype uses a dark gray cover material, the final version will likely be all-white when worn by NASA astronauts on the Moon’s surface. Credit: Axiom Space
“Overall, I was pleased with the astronauts’ operation of the control panel and with their ability to perform the difficult tasks they will have to do before stepping onto the Moon. The test also confirmed that the amount of space available in the airlock, on the deck, and in the elevator, are sufficient for the work our astronauts plan to do.”
The test consisted of Wheelock and Whitson practicing putting on and taking off the spacesuits – which included the suit’s Portable Life Support System (PLSS) – in the Starship HLS‘ full-scale airlock. Since the Artemis III astronauts will need to put the suits on with minimal assistance, this test allowed NASA to test how easily the suits are to get in and out of. The suits were then pressurized and powered up, and Wheelock and Whitson began interacting with the mobility aids (handrails and straps) and control panel in the airlock.
They then walked from the airlock deck to the HLS elevator, which will take the Artemis III astronauts and their equipment to the lunar surface to conduct extravehicular activity (EVA). Though the tasks were routine, they validated the spacesuit design and brought NASA one step closer to achieving its goals through the Artemis Program. As Amit Kshatriya (NASA’s Moon to Mars program manager) expressed:
“With Artemis, NASA is going to the Moon in a whole new way, with international partners and industry partners like Axiom Space and SpaceX. These partners are contributing their expertise and providing integral parts of the deep space architecture that they develop with NASA’s insight and oversight. Integrated tests like this one, with key programs and partners working together, are crucial to ensure systems operate smoothly and are safe and effective for astronauts before they take the next steps on the Moon.”
Wheelock and Whitson tested the agility of the spacesuits by conducting movements and tasks similar to those necessary during lunar surface exploration on Artemis missions. Credit: SpaceX
Putting the spacesuits through rigorous testing is necessary since the Artemis III mission will include EVAs in space and on the lunar surface. The four-person crew will launch aboard an Orion spacecraft atop NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) while the Starship HLS launches separately and refuels in orbit. The Orion spacecraft will rendezvous and dock with the HLS in lunar orbit; two astronauts will transfer aboard and then take the HLS to and from the lunar surface. The AxEMU suits are designed to provide greater flexibility and accommodate a wider range of astronauts.
This is in keeping with NASA’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in its astronaut corps. Despite delays, things are undeniably coming together for Artemis III!
A Mission to Uranus Could Also be a Gravitational Wave Detector
Despite being extraordinarily difficult to detect for the first time, gravitational waves can be found using plenty of different techniques. The now-famous first detection at LIGO in 2015 was just one of the various ways scientists had been looking. A new paper from researchers from Europe and the US proposes how scientists might be able to detect some more by tracking the exact position of the upcoming Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP).
Initially suggested by NASA’s Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey, UOP will be the first mission to Uranus since Voyager visited the system in 1986. When it finally arrives in 2044, after a 2031 launch date, it will be almost 60 years since humanity last had an up-close look at the Uranian system.
But 13 years in transit sure is a long time. Part of that time will be spent getting a gravitational boost from Jupiter, but most will be spent coasting between planetary bodies. And that much time spent in between planets is what the paper’s authors want to utilize to do non-Uranian science.
Fraser has long been a proponent of returning to Uranus, as he explains here.
Gravitational waves can disrupt the fabric of space-time, causing discernible distortions, especially over long distances. If the instruments in question are sensitive enough, the massive distance between UOP and the Earth would be a viable way to detect them.
This isn’t the first time using the distance between a spacecraft and Earth has been considered for detecting gravitational waves. Pioneer 11, Cassini, and a triangulation of Galileo, Ulysses, and Mars Orbiter all had entertained suggestions of being utilized for gravitational wave detection while on their journey to their final destinations. However, the equipment they were designed with was not sensitive enough to pick up the minute fluctuations required for an actual detection.
UOP will have the added advantages of decades of improved equipment, especially communications and timing electronics, which are critical to any gravitational wave detection. It also benefits that we’ve already officially detected a gravitational wave, so we know at least what to look for.
Long distance communication is hard, as Fraser explains in this video, but it’s also key to capturing data on gravitational waves.
The underlying mechanism is simple enough – consistently track the exact established position of UOP during its 13-year cruise to Uranus and cross-reference any anomalies in its position against what could be expected from known causes. These include the gravitational pull of some of the planets, or even asteroids, and solar radiation pressure on the spacecraft itself. As the authors note, some or even all of these could impact the spacecraft’s exact position; for the calculations to work effectively to find gravitational waves, better accounting for what, if any, impact they have must be completed.
But there is another potentially scientifically interesting cause of slight positional drift for the UOP: ultra-light dark matter. In theory, UOP could be used to test or even directly detect a form of dark matter known as ultra-light dark matter if it happens to exist in the solar system. Theorists have numerous models showing how it would work if it did exist. UOP could also use the same sort of exact positional calculation to contribute to that scientific research.
Best of all, UOP can do all this with literally no change to its primary functional mission – exploring the Uranian system. All that would have to be changed about the mission would be to update Earth with consistent positional data about once every 10 seconds for the duration of the 13-year trip to UOP’s final destination. Suppose there’s a chance that those more frequent check-ins with home could help detect gravitational waves or potentially dark matter. In that case, it seems well worth the consideration of the UOP mission planners – but it remains to be seen whether it will be included or not. The paper’s authors have made a persuasive argument about why it should be.
The Ukrainian military recorded the flight of a disk-shaped UFO hovering over the front line.
This is reported by the Daily Mail and publishes the video.
The UFO was spotted by soldiers of the 406th brigade using a Mavic drone. Their drone was more than 150 meters above sea level.
“What can they shoot at us with? Holy shit,” ‘What the hell is that?’, ‘UFO whatever,’ military officials are discussing behind the scenes whether to attack the object.
It is reported that the unknown object could be the size of a large ship and is more than 50 kilometers away.
Ukrainian soldiers film disc shaped UFO hovering over war zone
(Picture: Ukraine Freedom News/frontier_conflict)
The thermal imager showed that the UFO was warmer than its surroundings, but the technology produced a red error message that prevented us from understanding more about the object.
It is noted that this flying object bore a striking resemblance to a thin cylindrical object spotted over Iraq in May 2022 by the infrared “thermal” camera of the US Air Force’s Reaper drone.
Experts believe this could also be a case of the mirage phenomenon known as “Fata Morgana.”
This mirage occurs when a top layer of warm air and a bottom layer of cold air create an “atmospheric channel” that refracts or bends light, creating reflections in the air.
Ruimteschip van Boeing, met 2 astronauten, veilig aangekomen bij ruimtestation ISS (maar niet zonder problemen)
Ruimteschip van Boeing, met 2 astronauten, veilig aangekomen bij ruimtestation ISS (maar niet zonder problemen)
Artikel door Wim De Maeseneer
Met meer dan een uur vertraging is vanavond rond half 8 de Starliner aangekomen bij het ruimtestation ISS. Even was het spannend, toen op 400 kilometer hoogte bleek dat er iets mis was met 5 van de 28 stuwmotoren van het ruimteschip.
De koppeling met het ISS moest wachten en de 2 astronauten, Butch Wilmore (61) en Suni Williams (58) moesten van automatische naar handmatige piloot overschakelen. Ze moesten op een veilige afstand achter het ruimtestation blijven vliegen, dat met 28.000 kilometer per uur rond de aarde vliegt.
Even later kwam het nieuws dat het team aan de grond een oplossing had gevonden om 4 motoren weer aan de praat te krijgen. Starliner mocht aan het ISS koppelen en om 19.34 uur klonken de verlossende woorden vanuit mission control: "Butch en Suni, mooi gedaan."
Nog eens 2 uur later, na een hele reeks procedures, mochten Wilmore en Williams eindelijk het luik van hun ruimteschip openen en het ISS betreden. Daar werden ze hartelijk verwelkomd en geknuffeld door de bemanning van het ruimtestation. Dat zijn momenteel 4 Amerikaanse en 3 Russische astronauten. Suni Williams kon zelfs een vreugdedansje in gewichtloosheid niet bedwingen.
Naast de 2 astronauten heeft Starliner ook nog 340 kilogram vracht mee naar het ISS gevoerd. En daar zit 1 heel opvallend wisselstuk tussen: een nieuwe urinepomp. Die moet het defecte exemplaar vervangen, om zo weer drinkwater van urine te kunnen maken aan boord.
2 nieuwe gaslekken gevonden in Starliner
Starliner werd gisteren voor de eerste keer gelanceerd met astronauten aan boord. Het is de eerste bemande testvlucht van het ruimteschip van lucht- en ruimtevaartbedrijf Boeing. Het hele project heeft jaren vertraging opgelopen door technische problemen. Ook de lancering moest verschillende keren worden afgeblazen.
Voor de lancering werd al een heliumlek gevonden in het ruimteschip, maar NASA en Boeing oordeelden dat het veilig genoeg was om ondanks het lek toch te lanceren. Vandaag werden nog 2 nieuwe lekken ontdekt in Starliner. Maar opnieuw werden de lekken niet beschouwd als ernstig genoeg om de missie of bemanning in gevaar te brengen.
De 2 astronauten blijven nu ongeveer een week in het ISS. Daarna keren ze met Starliner terug om hangend aan parachutes weer op de aarde te landen. Pas dan zullen we weten of Starliner klaar is om vanaf 2025 vaker astronauten en vracht naar het ISS te voeren en terug te brengen.
Het ruimtevaartuig Starship is bij de vierde testvlucht voor het eerst succesvol teruggekeerd naar de aarde. Fabrikant SpaceX meldt op X, het voormalige Twitter, dat het ruimtevaartuig is neergekomen in de Indische Oceaan.
The European Space Agency has retired its Ariane 5 rocket, and all eyes are on its next generation, Ariane 6. The rocket’s pieces have been arriving at the Kourou facility in French Guiana and are now assembled. ESA has now announced they’ll attempt a test launch on July 9th and hope to complete a second flight before the end of 2024. This new heavy-life rocket has a re-ignitable upper stage, allowing it to launch multiple payloads into different orbits.
“Ariane 6 marks a new era of autonomous, versatile European space travel,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher, who announced the launch data at the Innovation and Leadership in Aerospace (ILA) Berlin Air Show on June 5, 2024. “This powerful rocket is the culmination of many years of dedication and ingenuity from thousands across Europe and, as it launches, it will re-establish Europe’s independent access to space. … I would like to thank the teams on the ground for their tireless hard work, teamwork and dedication in this last stretch of the inaugural launch campaign. Ariane 6 is Europe’s rocket for the needs of today, adaptable to our future ambitions.”
An overview of Europe’s new rocket, Ariane 6. Credit: ESA.
Ariane 6 has been in the works since the early 2010s to be a replacement the workhorse Ariane 5, which is no longer in production. Ariane 5’s first successful launch was in 1998, and since then has sent 109 spacecraft on their way, including the first ATV Jules Verne to the International Space Station and the James Webb Space Telescope to the second LaGrange point 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from Earth.
Ariane 6 is an expendable launch vehicle – not reusable like SpaceX’s rockets — that comes in two versions, with a modular design that can be customized: the rocket can use either two or four P120C strap-on boosters, depending on mission requirements. With the various designs, it can put a 4,500 kg payload into a geostationary transfer orbit or 10,300kg into low Earth orbit using the two boosters, and with four side boosters, it can launch 11,500 kg into a geostationary transfer orbit and 20,600kg into low Earth orbit. The re-ignitable upper stage allows for multiple satellites to launch on a single flight.
The Ariane 6 rocket test firing on its launch pad at the European Spaceport in French Guiana. Credit: ESA
Ariane 6 was developed at a cost of just under 4 billion euros ($3.9 billion) and was originally planned for its first launch in July 2020. However, the project has been hampered by several delays, including work-related issues during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The announcement of the scheduled date for Ariane 6’s first flight puts us on the home stretch of the launch campaign and we are fully engaged in completing the very last steps,” said Martin Sion, CEO of ArianeGroup, the prime contractor of the Arian 6. “This flight will mark the culmination of years of development and testing by the teams at ArianeGroup and its partners across Europe. It will pave the way for commercial operations and a significant ramp-up over the next two years. Ariane 6 is a powerful, versatile and scalable launcher that will ensure Europe’s autonomous access to space.”
Part of the first Ariane 6 rocket inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, Kourou, French Guiana earlier in 2024. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace/Arianegroup.
At the Spaceport in French Guiana, various payloads have been integrated on Ariane 6’s payload carrier. One major milestone must be met before launch: a full wet dress rehearsal, which is having a fully fueled vehicle going through all the steps of a countdown, but not the actual ignition of the rocket engines. Once this activity has been completed, the Ariane 6 Task Force will provide an update, confirming the date for the inaugural flight.
Success! SpaceX’s Starship Makes a Splash in Fourth Flight Test
SpaceX’s Starship earned high marks today in its fourth uncrewed flight test, making significant progress in the development of a launch system that’s tasked with putting NASA astronauts on the moon by as early as 2026.
The Super Heavy booster blasted off from SpaceX’s Starbase complex in South Texas at 7:50 a.m. CT (12:50 p.m. UTC), rising into the sky with 32 of its 33 methane-fueled Raptor engines blazing. Super Heavy is considered the world’s most powerful launch vehicle, with 16.7 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.
Minutes after launch, the rocket’s upper stage — known as the Ship — separated from the first stage, firing up its own set of six Raptor engines. Meanwhile, Super Heavy flew itself to a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexic
The soft splashdown marked a new achievement for Starship. During the third flight test, which took place in March, only a few of Super Heavy’s engines were able to light up again for a crucial landing burn. As a result, the booster hit the water with an uncontrolled splat.
Eventually, SpaceX plans to have the Super Heavy booster fly itself back to its base after doing its job.
The upper stage reached orbital-scale altitudes in excess of 200 kilometers (125 miles), but completing a full orbit wasn’t part of today’s plan. Instead, SpaceX aimed to have Ship make its own soft splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
Streaming video, relayed via SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network, showed the rocket’s protective skin glowing with the heat of atmospheric re-entry. Burning debris broke off from one of Ship’s control fins, damaging the camera’s lens — but the fuzzy view nevertheless confirmed that the spacecraft successfully hit the mark. That represented another advance over the third test, when the Ship broke up during its descent to the ocean.
“Despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap, Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!” SpaceX founder Elon Musk exulted in a posting to his X social-media platform.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson added his congratulations on X, and noted that the successful test was a plus for the space agency’s Artemis moon program. “We are another step closer to returning humanity to the moon through Artemis — then looking onward to Mars,” he wrote.
A customized version of Ship is slated to serve as the lunar lander for Artemis 3, which would mark the first crewed mission to the moon’s surface since Apollo 17 in 1972. That mission is currently scheduled for 2026, but the timing depends in part on when the Starship system will be ready.
SpaceX’s uncrewed flight tests are following a step-by-step path to get Starship in shape for a wide variety of missions — including the deployment of hundreds of Starlink satellites, point-to-point travel between spaceports on Earth, and crewed odysseys to the moon, Mars and beyond.
Starship rockets aren’t carrying payloads for these early tests. “We said it before, we’re going to say it 9,000 times: The data is the payload,” SpaceX commentator Dan Huot said during today’s flight test.
But as the development program proceeds, the envelope for the flight tests will be widened to include multi-orbit operations, payload deployments and precision touchdowns on landing pads. Before today’s test, SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration worked out an arrangement that’s expected to streamline the regulatory process for future flights.
When Boeing Starliner launched at 10:52 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, so began the critical first chapter of the company’s Crew Flight Test.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams flew at 17,500 miles per hour northbound along the U.S. East Coast, towards Ireland, and over the Mediterranean Sea before entering orbit around Earth.
If Starliner aces the checks, docking with the International Space Station, reentry and landing in this next week, it will become the second U.S. human-rated spacecraft capable of ferrying astronauts into orbit.
Watch Wednesday’s historic launch, in pictures.
NASA/GETTY IMAGES NEWS/GETTY IMAGES
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams bid farewell to a crowd, which included their family and friends, by giving away flowers and tossing out mission patches. Astronaut Doug Wheelock (not pictured) was also in the crowd, taking video and photos for their families to remember the moment. Soon after, Wilmore and Williams boarded a van to reach the Boeing Starliner “Calypso” spacecraft for the Crew Flight Test launch.
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES NEWS/GETTY IMAGES
Boeing Starliner and its two passengers launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Not since the Mercury program’s final flight 61 years ago has an Atlas-class rocket sent humans into space, according to NASA
A view of the Starliner launch from another angle. Starliner launched on a flat trajectory up northward, wrapping around the Atlantic Ocean into Europe, to ensure astronaut safety
About 45 seconds after launch, the spacecraft reached the speed of sound (Mach 1).
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES NEWS/GETTY IMAGES
“Suni and I are honored to share this dream of spaceflight with each and every one of you,” Wilmore said from inside the Starliner, five minutes before launch.
“Let’s go Calypso! Take us to space, and back!” Williams said.
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES NEWS/GETTY IMAGES
Williams and Wilmore will dock with the forward port of the ISS Harmony module at 12:15 a.m. Eastern time, with a hatch opening around 2:00 p.m. Eastern, according to NASA.
GREGG NEWTON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES The next step is certification. Williams and Wilmore will conduct a series of manual tests, and evaluate the performance of Starliner all the way through landing in the U.S. southwest in about one week.
Once Starliner is certified, NASA will have dissimilar redundancy in space, two different options to launch and return astronauts to and from humanity’s farthest human outpost.
I have always wanted a 3D printer but never quite found a good enough reason to get one. Seeing that NASA are now 3D printing metal is even more tantalising than a plastic 3D printer. However, thinking about it, surely it is just a computer controlled soldering iron! I’m sure it’s far more advanced than that! Turns out that the first print really wasn’t much to right home about, just an s-curve deposited onto a metal plate! It does however prove and demonstrate the principle that a laser can liquify stainless steel and then deposit it precisely in a weightless environment.
“This S-curve is a test line, successfully concluding the commissioning of our Metal 3D Printer,”
Arguably 3D printers have revolutionised manufacturing and prototyping industry. The invention of them has been attributed to Chuck Hull who in 1983 but it’s more true to say he laid the foundations. Hull developed a technique known as stereolithography which involved creating 3D objects by curing thin layers of a photopolymer with UV light. The 3D printers that are commercially available came 5 years later in 1988.
NASA and ESA have been interested in 3D printing in space to make repair/improvement engineering far cheaper, sustainable and timely. Instead of waiting for parts to be shipped up to the ISS. To that end there has been a more conventional plastic 3D printer on board the ISS since 2014 because a 3D printed replacement is far simpler and more cost effective. Indeed ESA are trying to create a circular space economy to recycle materials already in orbit. It makes far more sense to repurpose existing materials in orbit – such as metal from old satellites – to make new tools or parts removing the need for rocket launches to transport them.
In November 2014, NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore installed a 3-D printer made by Made in Space in the Columbus laboratory’s Microgravity Science Glovebox on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA TV
The metal printer that is now on board the International Space Station employs stainless steel wire being fed onto the medium being printed upon. A high power laser which is a million times more powerful than a laser pointer then heats it up melting a small section. As the steel wire feeds into the melt pool it melts, adding to the metal, making it slightly raised.
Unlike a 3D printer you may have (or I may be trying to justify) which you can control from your own computer, the printer on ISS is controlled entirely from the ground. The crew do have tasks however, they have to open a nitrogen and venting valve before the printing can start. I guess it’s almost the equivalent of putting the paper in your printer at home!
The printer was developed by a team led by Airbus under the ESA Directorate of the Human and Robotic Exploration contract. It arrived on the ISS in January 2024 where the 180kg printer was installed in the ESA Columbus Module.
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The next step for the printer is to print four shapes that have been chosen for full-scale 3D printing. They will then be returned to Earth for analysis and comparison against reference prints already created in normal gravity. The teams hope to explore how microgravity impacts 3D printing. Two of the 3D printed parts will go to the Materials and Electrical Components Lab at ESTEC in Netherlands. The other two will go to the European Astronaut Centre at the Technical University of Denmark.
Een internationaal team van onderzoekers – waaronder ook wetenschappers van de universiteit van Luik – hebben een nieuwe planeet ontdekt: WASP-193b. En dat is een tamelijk bijzondere planeet; WASP-193b heeft namelijk ongeveer dezelfde dichtheid als een suikerspin.
WASP-193b bevindt zich op zo’n 1200 lichtjaar van de aarde. De planeet is 50 procent groter dan Jupiter, maar heeft een massa die zeven keer kleiner is dan die van Jupiter. Het betekent dat de planeet een zeer geringe dichtheid heeft; vergelijkbaar met de dichtheid van een suikerspin, zo stellen de onderzoekers.
Afwijking
WASP-193b gaat voor nu de boeken in als de op één na minst compacte planeet die tot op heden is ontdekt; alleen de eerder gespotte – maar wel veel kleinere – Kepler-51d heeft een nog lagere dichtheid. “De extreem lage dichtheid (van WASP-193b, red.) is wat de planeet echt doet afwijken van de meer dan 5000 andere exoplaneten die tot op heden zijn ontdekt,” vertelt onderzoeker Khalid Barkaoui.
Barkaoui en collega’s vingen een eerste glimp op van WASP-193b dankzij de zogenoemde Wide Angle Search for Planets (kortweg WASP). Binnen dit onderzoeksproject wordt met behulp van een observatorium op het noordelijk halfrond en een observatorium op het zuidelijk halfrond de helderheid van duizenden sterren in de gaten gehouden. Daarbij werd ook gekeken naar WASP-193: de moederster van WASP-193b. En tussen 2006 en 2008 – maar ook tijdens aanvullende waarnemingen in 2011 en 2012 – zagen onderzoekers de helderheid van deze ster met regelmaat afnemen. Die afnames in helderheid bleken vervolgens te herleiden te zijn naar het bestaan van een planeet die rond WASP-193 cirkelde. Wanneer deze planeet – vanaf de aarde gezien – voor zijn moederster langs beweegt, houdt deze een deel van het licht van zijn moederster tegen, waardoor het lijkt of de helderheid van WASP-193 tijdelijk afneemt.
exoplanet, WASP-193B genoemd, is gevonden op een afstand van 1.232 lichtjaren.
Omlooptijd en omvang
Op basis van de metingen van WASP konden onderzoekers dus al concluderen dat WASP-193 een planeet bezat. Ook wezen de observaties uit dat deze ongeveer 6,25 dagen nodig had om een rondje om zijn moederster te voltooien. Daarnaast konden onderzoekers uit de hoeveelheid zonlicht die WASP-193b tegenhield op het moment dat deze voor zijn moederster langs bewoog ook afleiden hoe groot de planeet ongeveer was: ongeveer 1,5 keer groter dan Jupiter.
Massa
Opmerkelijk werd het echter pas toen de onderzoekers met behulp van andere observatoria ook de massa van de planeet poogden te achterhalen. Tot grote verrassing van de onderzoekers wezen deze aanvullende observaties namelijk uit dat WASP-193b een zeven keer kleinere massa heeft dan Jupiter. En daarmee heeft de planeet – die dus wel 1,5 keer groter is dan Jupiter – een zeer geringe dichtheid. Zo zou WASP-193b een dichtheid hebben van 0,059 gram per kubieke centimeter, zo is in het blad Nature Astronomy te lezen. Ter vergelijking: de dichtheid van Jupiter is 1,33 gram per kubieke centimeter en die van de aarde is maar liefst 5,51 gram per kubieke centimeter.
Artistieke weergave van de planeet WASP-193b in een baan om zijn ster WASP-193.
Krediet: MysteryPlanet.com.ar.
Suikerspin
“De planeet is zo licht dat het lastig is om een vast materiaal te bedenken (met een vergelijkbare dichtheid, red.),” merkt onderzoeker Julien de Wit op. Toch is het de onderzoekers gelukt; WASP-193b is qua dichtheid nog het beste te vergelijken met een suikerspin. Het bekende snoepgoed kent namelijk een dichtheid van ongeveer 0,05 gram per kubieke centimeter. “De reden dat (WASP-193b, red.) zo vergelijkbaar is met een suikerspin, is dat beiden in feite grotendeels uit lucht bestaan. De planeet is gewoon super fluffy.”
Waar een suikerspin vooral uit suiker bestaat, bestaat WASP-193b voornamelijk uit waterstof en helium, zo vermoeden de onderzoekers. Die gassen lijken een gigantisch omvangrijke atmosfeer te vormen die tienduizenden kilometers verder reikt dan de atmosfeer van Jupiter. Hoe de planeet zo is kunnen opzwellen, is onduidelijk. Wetenschappers hebben verschillende theorieën over hoe planeten ontstaan, maar geen enkele van die bestaande theorieën kunnen het bestaan van WASP-193b vooralsnog verklaren. “We kunnen niet verklaren hoe deze planeet ontstaan is,” bevestigt onderzoeker Francisco Pozuelos. “WASP-193b is een kosmisch mysterie,” voegt Barkaoui toe. De wetenschappers hopen dat toekomstige waarnemingen – met onder meer de James Webb Telescoop – kunnen helpen om dat mysterie op te lossen.
MIT ASTRONOMERS SAY THEY HAVE DISCOVERED A PLANET CURRENT THEORIES CAN’T EXPLAIN
Around a star in our Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have discovered an extremely low-density planet that is as light as cotton candy. The new planet, named WASP-193b, appears to dwarf Jupiter in size, yet it is a fraction of its density.
CRE
MIT ASTRONOMERS SAY THEY HAVE DISCOVERED A PLANET CURRENT THEORIES CAN’T EXPLAIN
A team of astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say they have discovered a distant planet that they can’t explain with current planet evolutionary theories.
The newly discovered WASP-193b is a gas giant 50 percent larger than Jupiter, the largest gas giant in our solar system. However, it is only one-tenth as dense, making it the second-most dense exoplanet ever found.
The researchers behind the seemingly impossible find, which also includes experts from Belgium and Spain, say these types of “puffy Jupiters” have left astronomers baffled for over 15 years since they cannot explain how they formed using the best modern-day planet forecasting tools
“We don’t know where to put this planet in all the formation theories we have right now because it’s an outlier of all of them,” explained study co-lead author Francisco Pozuelos, a senior researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia, in Spain. “We cannot explain how this planet was formed based on classical evolution models.”
A NASA illustration of planet WASP-193b which is more than 1,200 light-years away.
(Supplied: NASA)
‘PUFFY JUPITER’ IS AS DENSE AS COTTON CANDY
According to a formal announcement of the discovery, WASP-193b was initially spotted between 2006 and 2008 and then again between 2011 and 2012. Those detections were made by the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) project, which is a collaboration between international astronomers using a pair of robotic observatories in the southern and northern hemispheres.
Together, these robotic arrays of wide-angle cameras scour the stars, looking for the periodic ‘dips’ in light that sometimes indicate a planet is orbiting the star. In the case of WASP 193, a star located 1,232 light years from Earth, the southern WASP observatory spotted these types of dips during both recording sessions.
A detailed analysis of that data determined that a planet was likely crossing in front of its host star every 6.25 days. Further analysis of the amount of light blocked by the planet revealed that it was more or less similar in size to Jupiter. However, when astronomers tried to determine the planet’s mass by measuring how much it affected its host star’s orbit, known as the ‘radial velocity’ method, the numbers didn’t add up. In fact, their initial analysis found no shift in the star’s light spectrum at all, belying the planet’s massive size.
“Typically, big planets are pretty easy to detect because they are usually massive and lead to a big pull on their star,” said study co-author Julien de Wit, an assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Earth. “But what was tricky about this planet was, even though it’s big — huge — its mass and density are so low that it was actually very difficult to detect with just the radial velocity technique. It was an interesting twist.”
After reviewing the data and performing further analysis, the team determined that the planet was actually larger than Jupiter but had to be significantly less dense to exhibit so little gravitational pull on its host star.
“[WASP-193b] is so very light that it took four years to gather data and show that there is a mass signal, but it’s really, really tiny,” said lead study author and MIT postdoc Khalid Barkaoui.
The researchers say finding a solid material that has this type of limited density isn’t easy. In fact, in their published study, the authors say the best comparison they could make is that WASP-193b has the same density as cotton candy.
“The planet is so light that it’s difficult to think of an analogous, solid-state material,” Barkaoui says. “The reason why it’s close to cotton candy is because both are mostly made of light gases rather than solids. The planet is basically super fluffy.”
While clearly an outlier they cannot easily explain, the researchers say astronomers have seen similar readings in previous exoplanets. Still, those cases are still considered extreme outliers that don’t fit within planetary formation models.
“To find these giant objects with such a small density is really, really rare,” says lead study author and MIT postdoc Khalid Barkaoui. “There’s a class of planets called puffy Jupiters, and it’s been a mystery for 15 years now as to what they are. And this is an extreme case of that class.”
FOLLOW-UP OBSERVATIONS COULD UNRAVEL THE MYSTERY
In an effort to better understand the planet’s origin, the researchers say they are planning follow-up observations using a technique developed by de Wit. If successful, this process could reveal the planet’s temperature, composition, and even its pressure at various depths of what they suspect is a mostly hydrogen and helium atmosphere.
“Looking more closely at its atmosphere will allow us to obtain an evolutionary path of this planet,” Pozuelos said.
“The bigger a planet’s atmosphere, the more light can go through,” de Wit said in agreement. “So it’s clear that this planet is one of the best targets we have for studying atmospheric effects. It will be a Rosetta Stone to try and resolve the mystery of puffy Jupiters.”
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him directly at christopher@thedebrief.org.
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Over mijzelf
Ik ben Pieter, en gebruik soms ook wel de schuilnaam Peter2011.
Ik ben een man en woon in Linter (België) en mijn beroep is Ik ben op rust..
Ik ben geboren op 18/10/1950 en ben nu dus 73 jaar jong.
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