From what astronomers have learned about black holes, these gravitational behemoths are surrounded by infalling matter (gas, dust, and even light) that form swirling, bright disks. This material and energy is accelerated to near the speed of light, causing it to release heat and radiation (mostly in the ultraviolet) as it slowly accretes onto the black hole’s “face.” These UV rays interact with a cloud of electrically charged plasma (the corona) surrounding the black hole, which boosts the rays’ into the X-ray wavelength.

Since 2011, NASA’s XMM-Newton has been observing 1ES 1927+654, a galaxy located 236 million light-years away in the constellation Draco with a black hole of 1.4 million Solar masses Suns at its center. In 2018, the X-ray corona mysteriously disappeared, followed by a radio outburst and a rise in its X-ray output—what is known as Quasi-periodic oscillations (QPO). UMBC associate professor Eileen Meyer, a co-author of this latest study, also recently released a paper describing these radio outbursts.

“In 2018, the black hole began changing its properties right before our eyes, with a major optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray outburst,” she said in a NASA press release. “Many teams have been keeping a close eye on it ever since.” Meyer presented her team’s findings at the 245th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), which took place from January 12th to 16th, 2025, in National Harbor, Maryland. By 2021, the corona reappeared, and the black hole seemed to return to its normal state for about a year.

However, from February to May 2024, radio data revealed what appeared to be jets of ionized gas extending for about half a light-year from either side of the SMBH. “The launch of a black hole jet has never been observed before in real time,” Meyer noted. “We think the outflow began earlier, when the X-rays increased prior to the radio flare, and the jet was screened from our view by hot gas until it broke out early last year.” A related paper about the jet co-authored by Meyer and Masterson was also presented at the 245th AAS.

In addition, observations gathered in April 2023 showed a months-long increase in low-energy X-rays, which indicated a strong and unexpected radio flare was underway. Intense observations were mounted in response by the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and other facilities, including XMM-Newton. Thanks to the XMM-Newton observations, Masterson found that the black hole exhibited extremely rapid X-ray variations of 10% between July 2022 and March 2024. These oscillations are typically very hard to detect around SMBHs, suggesting that a massive object was rapidly orbiting the SMBH and slowly being consumed.

“One way to produce these oscillations is with an object orbiting within the black hole’s accretion disk. In this scenario, each rise and fall of the X-rays represents one orbital cycle,” Masterson said. Additional calculations also showed that the object is probably a white dwarf of about 0.1 solar masses orbiting at a velocity of about 333 million km/h (207 million mph). Ordinarily, astronomers would expect the orbital period to shorten, producing gravitational waves (GWs) that drain the object’s orbital energy and bring it closer to the black hole’s outer boundary (the event horizon).

However, the same observations conducted between 2022 and 2024 showed the fluctuation period dropped from 18 minutes to 7, and the velocity increased to half the speed of light (540 million km/h; 360 million mph). Then, something truly odd and unexpected followed: the oscillations stabilized. As Masterson explained:

“We were shocked by this at first. But we realized that as the object moved closer to the black hole, its strong gravitational pull could begin to strip matter from the companion. This mass loss could offset the energy removed by gravitational waves, halting the companion’s inward motion.”

This theory is consistent with what astronomers have observed with white dwarf binaries spiraling toward each other and destined to merge. As they got closer to each other, instead of remaining intact, one would begin to pull matter off the other, which slowed down the approach of the two objects. While this could be the case here, there is no established theory for explaining what Masterson, Meyer, and their colleagues observed. However, their model makes a key prediction that could be tested when the ESA’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) launches in the 2030s.

“We predict that if there is a white dwarf in orbit around this supermassive black hole, LISA should see it,” says Megan. The preprint of Masterson and her team’s paper recently appeared online and will be published in Nature on February 15th, 2025.

Further Reading: 

• ESA, 
• NASA, 
• arXiv, 
• AJL

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16-01-2025 om 21:30 geschreven door peter  

Astronauts haven’t gone further into space than the ISS for decades. But if Artemis lives up to its promise, they’re about to leave Earth and its protective environment behind. Artemis will land astronauts on the Moon, which could be an intermediate step to an eventual landing on Mars. What hazards does radiation pose, and how can astronauts be protected?

A new research editorial in the Journal of Medical Physics examines the issue. It is titled “System of radiological protection: Towards a consistent framework on Earth and in space.” The lead author is Werner Rühm from the Federal Office for Radiation Protection, München (Neuherberg), Germany. The same issue of the Journal of Medical Physics contains several other articles about radiation exposure. Together, they’re part of a research effort by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) to update and harmonize radiation exposure guidelines.

The term ‘radiation’ is descriptive enough that most of us recognize the potential threat. However, when it comes to variable space environments and human physiology, the word holds a lot more detail. The authors use the term ‘mixed radiation field’ to describe the radiation environment astronauts must endure.

“The mixed-radiation field outside and within a space vehicle is of particular complexity involving not only low-linear energy transfer (LET) radiation such as gamma radiation, electrons, and positrons but also high-LET radiation such as neutrons and heavy ions,” the authors write. The components of the field contain a wide span of particles with different energy levels. “The quantitative and even qualitative risks of exposure to the combined impact of a complex radiation environment, microgravity, and other stressors remain unclear,” they explain.

One problem in preparing for exposure to these mixed radiation fields is the different approaches taken by different countries and space agencies.

According to lead author Rühm, this disharmony is caused by “the complex and dynamic radiation environments and an incomplete understanding of their biological consequences. Because of this, space agencies follow somewhat different concepts to quantify radiation doses and their resulting health effects.”

This paper and its companions are part of an effort to unify our understanding of radiation and its hazards and to harmonize the various approaches to dealing with them. The goal is to develop a “consistent radiological protection framework.” To do that, the authors explain that several questions need answers:

• Which radiation-induced health effects should be considered?
• What dose quantities are the best for the radiological protection of astronauts?
• Which metrics should be used to quantify radiation-related health risks?
• How do we address sex and age differences in radiation risk?
• What kind of protection criteria should be applied?
• How do we decide on the tolerability of radiation-induced risks, given that astronauts are exposed to many other occupation-related risks?
• How do we deal with the fact that increased health risks due to radiation exposure may persist after an astronaut’s career ends?
• How do we communicate radiation risk and make a comparison with other health hazards in a meaningful way?
• How do we harmonize national radiological protection guidelines, given that different subpopulations might have different levels of risk tolerance?

This list of questions vividly illustrates the complexity of the radiation exposure problem. Answering them will help harmonize the approach to radiation on space missions.

Rühm and his colleagues want to support space agencies as they harmonize and coordinate their guidelines for astronauts’ exposure to radiation. The goal is to develop an approach consistent with the thorough guidelines followed here on Earth.

The difference between how males and females respond to radiation illustrates one of the problems in developing radiation exposure guidelines. In past decades, much medical research was based on males and the results were applied to females as well. According to Rühm, the same thing has happened with radiation.

“It is worth mentioning that on Earth, the System developed by ICRP does not include any systematic differentiation between recommendations on limits for males and females,” the authors write. This is in spite of the fact that it is “well known that there are individual differences in radiation sensitivity between males and females.” The difference is largely because reproductive tissue is more susceptible to radiation than other tissue, and women have more of it.

NASA has developed a different approach to radiation exposure because of this. “This standard is based on a REID (Risk of Exposure-Induced Death) of 3% calculated for cancer mortality in the most vulnerable group of astronauts––35-year-old females,” the authors write. Scientists understand that females are more vulnerable to radiation than males and that younger females are more sensitive than older females. It’s worth noting that astronauts are unlikely to be under the age of 35.

The difference between the sexes isn’t the only thing that needs to be addressed when it comes to astronauts’ exposure to radiation. Different sub-populations might have different risk factors; there are lifestyle-related risks, different mission architectures hold different risks, and many other factors come into play. Harmonizing an approach with all of these different factors is a daunting task.

Difficult or not—and there’s nothing easy about space travel—a harmonized and coordinated approach to understanding the radiation risk is the logical next step. Artemis itself is a collaboration between different nations and agencies, and it’s only fair to the astronauts themselves that they have the same protections and considerations when it comes to radiation exposure.

Rühm and his colleagues hope that their work will help lead to a harmonized approach to assessing the radiation hazards faced by astronauts in mixed radiation fields. We owe it to the people willing to put their lives on the line and serve as astronauts.

“Adventurous people have always tried to widen their horizon, this is part of our very nature as humans,” Rühm says. “Our work contributes to and supports one of the most exciting and challenging human endeavors ever undertaken.”

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14-01-2025 om 21:22 geschreven door peter  

It’s not unusual for space probes to complete gravitational flyby manoeuvres en route to their destination. It’s a bit more unusual when the flyby is at the destination planet. ESA’s BepiColombo spacecraft is manoeuvring around Mercury into its final orbit. With each flyby it gets closer and closer and closer until its finally captured by Mercury’s gravity in 2026. During the latest flyby, stunning images of the nearest planet to the Sun were captured from just a few hundred km. Checkout the best and most stunning images of Mercury yet. 

Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System and closest to the Sun is a rocky world. It’s surface somewhat resembles the Moon, desolate and heavily cratered. The lack of an atmosphere and the proximity to the Sun means daytime temperatures can reach a whopping 472°C but they plummet to -200°C at night. Mercury’s orbit is highly elliptical taking just 88 Earth days to complete one full orbit around the Sun. From Earth Mercury is never far from the Sun in the sky and so is very difficult to observe in the bright twilight sky. 

To date, only two spacecraft have visited Mercury; Mariner 10 and Messenger. There is now another on the way, BepiColombo. It was launched on 20 October 2018 where it began its journey to the innermost planet. Led by ESA, this joint mission with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA.) is made up of two orbiters; ESA’s Mercury Planetary Orbiter and JAXA’s Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter. On arrival, the two orbiters will manoeuvre into their dedicated polar orbits, beginning their operations in early 2027. 

During a press briefing on 9 January 2025, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher revealed the first images from the spacecraft’s monitoring cameras (M-CAMs) and the results did not disappoint. 

In this first image, BepiColombo passed over Mercury’s terminator, the line between the day and night hemispheres, allowing M-CAM 1 to peer into the permanently shadowed craters of the north pole. The craters Prokofiev, Kandinsky, Tolkien and Gordimer can be seen with their permanently dark floors. Despite Mercury’s proximity to the Sun, the floors of the craters are some of the coldest places in the Sun. In these dark, shadowy places there is even evidence of frozen water!

The second image captures the volcanic plane known as Borealis Planitia. The large smooth plains on Mercury, rather like those on the Moon, formed billions of years ago. In the case of Mercury, it’s thought the plains formed 3.7 billion years ago when volcanic eruptions flooded the surface with molten lava. Any craters that were in the area, such as Henri and Lismer got filled with lava and as the planet cooled, wrinkles formed in the plains much like the wrinkling of an apple skin

Many of the smaller craters in this region have been wiped out by the lava but the rim of Mendelssohn crater is still visible along with Caloris Basin, a large impact crater with a diameter of 1,500 km. 

The final image was taken by M-CAM 2 and shows more evidence of volcanic activity and impact events. There is a bright region toward the upper limb and this is known as Nathair Facula. It’s the result of the largest volcanic explosion on Mercury with a central vent 40km across. Evidence has been found for at least 3 major eruptions that have deposited lava over 150km away. In stark contrast, to the left is the much younger Fonteyn Crater, just 300 million years old! 

Source : 

• Top three images from BepiColombo’s sixth Mercury flyby

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

14-01-2025 om 21:02 geschreven door peter  

Mysterious 'ghost island' is spotted by a NASA satellite - before vanishing entirely

• READ MORE: Inside Indonesian island where hobbit-like humans could roam

By SHIVALI BEST FOR MAILONLINE 

The idea of a 'ghost' island might sound like a concept from the latest episode of Scooby Doo. 

But it has become a reality in the Caspian Sea. 

NASA satellites spotted a mysterious island - before watching it vanish entirely.

The landmass emerged off the coast of Azerbaijan after a mud volcano erupted in early 2023. 

But by the end of 2024, it had nearly eroded away. 

According to NASA Earth Observatory, the island retreated from view 'like an apparition.'

'Powerful eruptions of the Kumani Bank mud volcano have produced similar transient islands several times since its first recorded eruption in 1861,' it explained. 

'Also known as Chigil-Deniz, the feature is located about 25 kilometers (15 miles) off the eastern coast of Azerbaijan.'

NASA's Landsat 8 and 9 satellites captured images of the island on November 18 2022 (left), February 14 2023 (centre), and December 25 2024 (right)

NASA's Landsat 8 and 9 satellites captured images of the island on November 18 2022, February 14 2023, and December 25 2024. 

In November, the crest of the volcano remained below the sea surface. 

But by the Feburary image, the island had appeared, and a sediment plume driftd away from it. 

According to Mark Tingay, a geologist at the University of Adelaide, additional satellite observations suggest the island between January 30 and February 4 and measured approximately 400 meters (1,300 feet) across. 

However, by the end of 2024, the island had disappeared, with a 'greatly diminished' portion of the Kumani Bank left visible above the water. 

The volcano's previous eight recorded eruptions occurred in bursts lasting less than two days, and produced islands of different sizes and longevities. 

'A May 1861 event resulted in an island just 87 meters (285 feet) across and 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) above the water,' NASA said. 

'This one eroded away by early 1862. 

In November, the crest of the volcano remained below the sea surface. But by Feburary (pictured), the island had appeared, and a sediment plume driftd away from it

An artist's impression of NASA's Landsat 8 satellite, which snapped the photos of the 'ghost' island

'The strongest eruption, in 1950, produced an island 700 meters (2,300 feet) across and 6 meters (20 feet) high.'

Mr Tingay describes mud volcanoes as 'weird and wonderful features', but admits that they're 'largely understudied and little understood'. 

Most mud volcanoes are found in areas with active tectonics - with Azerbaijan unusual for its high concentration. 

'Geologists have tallied more than 300 in eastern Azerbaijan and offshore in the Caspian Sea, with most of those occurring on land,' NASA said. 

'The region falls within a convergence zone where the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates are colliding.'

Worryingly, mud volcanoes have the potential to be hazardous thanks to their ability to expel large amounts of materials - and even flames - over a short period of time. 

'It is uncertain if the 2023 Kumani Bank eruption was fiery, but past eruptions of this and other nearby mud volcanoes have sent towers of flame hundreds of meters into the air,' NASA added. 

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

13-01-2025 om 23:02 geschreven door peter  

Neptunus is blauw en Uranus is lichtgroen. Tenminste dat dachten we altijd. Maar nieuw onderzoek wijst uit dat de twee ijsreuzen eigenlijk bijna dezelfde kleur hebben: ze zijn allebei een beetje bleekgroen.

Neptunus wordt meestal afgebeeld als diep azuurblauw, terwijl Uranus een soort heel  lichtgroene kleur heeft op plaatjes. Oxford-onderzoekers tonen nu echter aan dat beide planeten min of meer dezelfde groenblauwe kleur hebben. Dit is niet helemaal nieuw. Astronomen weten al heel lang dat de meeste afbeeldingen van de twee planeten niet hun echte kleuren tonen. Het misverstand is ontstaan door de nabewerking van de foto’s, die NASA’s Voyager 2 maakte in de jaren tachtig van de vorige eeuw. Vooral Neptunus werd te blauw afgebeeld. Ook werd er te veel contrast toegevoegd aan de foto’s om de wolken, ringen en winden duidelijker zichtbaar te maken.

“De bekende Voyager 2-beelden van Uranus zijn gepubliceerd in een kleur die dichtbij de echte kleur komt, maar die van Neptunus zijn bewerkt en versterkt en daardoor kunstmatig te blauw gemaakt”, legt professor Patrick Irwin van Oxford uit. “Hoewel deze kunstmatige kleur bij de meeste planeetwetenschappers destijds bekend was en de beelden werden gepubliceerd met een onderschrift waarin dat werd uitgelegd, is dat kleurverschil in de loop der tijd vergeten.”

Dus hebben de onderzoekers geprobeerd de werkelijke kleur te reconstrueren met behulp van data van de Hubble en de Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) van ESO’s Very Large Telesecope. Bij beide instrumenten is iedere pixel een continu spectrum van kleuren. Daarmee konden de werkelijke kleuren van Uranus en Neptunus worden bepaald. Uiteindelijk bleken ze vrijwel dezelfde kleur te hebben, al blijft Neptunus iets blauwer.

Nog een mysterie opgelost
Maar de studie lost nóg een interessante kwestie op, namelijk waarom de kleuren van Uranus een beetje veranderen tijdens zijn 84 jaar durende rondje rond de zon. Metingen tonen aan dat Uranus een tikje groener lijkt tijdens de zomer- en winterzonnewende, als een van de polen van de planeet richting de zon wijst. Tijdens de equinox – als de zon recht boven de evenaar staat – heeft hij een iets blauwere tint.

Een bekende verklaring daarvoor is dat Uranus op een heel ongebruikelijke manier om zijn as draait. Tijdens zijn baan rond de zon ligt de planeet bijna op zijn kant, wat betekent dat tijdens de zonnewendes de noord- of de zuidpool bijna rechtstreeks richting de zon en de Aarde wijst. Het maakt dat elke verandering van de reflectie van het poolgebied direct grote invloed heeft op de algehele helderheid van Uranus, bezien vanaf onze planeet.

See Uranus' seasonal changes in color! 168-year animated time-lapse

Methaanijsdeeltjes
Wat echter nog niet goed duidelijk was, is hoe of waarom deze reflectie verandert. Daarom hebben de onderzoekers een model ontwikkeld dat de spectra van de poolgebieden van Uranus vergelijkt met de regio rond de evenaar. En daaruit bleek iets bijzonders: de poolregio’s reflecteren groene en rode golflengtes meer dan blauwe, deels omdat methaan dat rood absorbeert, maar half zoveel voorkomt bij de polen als bij de evenaar.

Dit was echter niet genoeg om de kleurverandering volledig te verklaren, dus voegden de onderzoekers een steeds dikker worden ijslaag toe aan de polen, die eerder is waargenomen in de zomer, als de polen door de zon verlicht worden wanneer de planeet van de equinox naar de zonnewende beweegt. De laag bestaat vermoedelijk uit methaanijsdeeltjes.

In de simulaties bleken de ijsdeeltjes de reflectie van groene en rode golflengtes te vergroten bij de polen. Dat verklaart waarom Uranus groener is tijdens de zonnewende. “Het komt doordat er in de poolregio’s een afname is van methaan, maar ook door een toegenomen dikte van heldere methaanijsdeeltjes”, aldus Irwin.

Tijd voor een nieuwe missie
Het is bijzonder dat een mysterie dat al zo lang bestaat, nu is opgelost. “De misvatting over de kleur van Neptunus en de ongebruikelijke kleurveranderingen van Uranus hebben ons decennialang voor raadselen gesteld, maar door deze grote studie zijn beide vraagstukken opgelost”, vertelt onderzoeker Heidi Hammel, van de Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), die beide planeten al tientallen jaren onderzoekt.

De ijsreuzen Uranus en Neptunus blijven een aanlokkelijke bestemming voor toekomstige missies, die kunnen voortbouwen op de Voyager-reizen uit de jaren tachtig. Van de bizarre seizoenen tot de grote hoeveelheid ringen en manen, er valt nog genoeg te ontdekken. Maar makkelijk is dat niet. Zelfs ruimtesondes die heel lang meegaan, kunnen maar een glimp waarnemen van een jaar op Uranus.

Bronmateriaal

• "Modelling the seasonal cycle of Uranus’s colour and magnitude, and comparison with Neptune" - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

{https://scientias.nl/ }

12-01-2025 om 23:38 geschreven door peter  

In this new gravity map of Mars, the red circles show prominent volcanoes and the black circles show impact craters with a diameter larger than a few 100 km. A gravity high signal is located in the volcanic Tharsis Region (the red area in the center right of the image), which is surrounded by a ring of negative gravity anomaly (shown in blue).

Credit: Root et al.

Mysterious Structures Discovered Hidden Under The Surface of Mars

The new map and analysis include data from multiple missions, including NASA's InSIGHT (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) mission. They also use data from tiny deviations in satellites as they orbit Mars.

The paper "The global gravity field of Mars reveals an active interior" will be published in an upcoming edition of JGR: Planets. The lead author is Bart Root of the Delft University of Technology. Some of the results go against an important concept in geology.

Geologists work with a concept called flexural isostasy. It describes how a planet's outer rigid layer responds to large-scale loading and unloading. The layer is called the lithosphere and consists of the crust and the uppermost part of the mantle.

When something heavy loads the lithosphere, it responds by sinking. On Earth, Greenland is a good example of this, where the massive ice sheet puts downward pressure on it. As its ice sheets melt due to global warming, Greenland will rise.

The researchers found an underground mass around 1750 kilometres across and at a depth of 1100 kilometres. They suspect that it's a mantle plume rising under Tharsis Montes and strong enough to counteract the downward pressure from all the mass.

"This suggests that a plume head is currently flowing upward towards the lithosphere to generate active volcanism in the geological future," the authors write in their paper.

There's debate about how volcanically active Mars is. Although there are no active volcanic features on the planet, research shows that the Tharsis region has resurfaced in the near geological past within the last few tens of millions of years.

If there is a mantle plume under Tharsis Montes, could it eventually reach the surface? That's purely speculative, and more research is needed to confirm these findings.

The researchers also found other gravitational anomalies. They found mysterious, dense structures under Mars' northern polar plains. They're buried under a thick, smooth sediment layer that was likely deposited on an ancient seabed.

The anomalies are approximately 300–400 kg/m³ denser than their surroundings. Earth's Moon has gravitational anomalies that are associated with giant impact basins. Scientists think that the impactors that created the basins were denser than the Moon, and their mass has become part of the Moon.

These maps show the gravitational anomalies at the surface of the Moon. Some of the gravity anomalies are clearly associated with large impact basins. On Mars, the anomalies have no corresponding surface features.

Image Credit: By Mark A. Wieczorek –

Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1381260

Impact basins on Mars also show gravity anomalies. However, the anomalies in Mars' northern hemisphere show no traces of them on the surface.

This image from the research shows the gravitational structures in Mars’ northern polar region on a topographical map. There’s no correlation between the deep structures and the surface.

Image Credit: Root et al.

"These dense structures could be volcanic in origin or could be compacted material due to ancient impacts. There are around 20 features of varying sizes that we have identified dotted around the area surrounding the north polar cap—one of which resembles the shape of a dog," said Dr. Root.

"There seems to be no trace of them at the surface. However, through gravity data, we have a tantalizing glimpse into the older history of the northern hemisphere of Mars."

The only way to understand these mysterious structures and Mars' gravity in general is with more data. Root and his colleagues are proponents of a mission that could gather the needed data.

It's called the Martian Quantum Gravity (MaQuls) mission. MaQuls would be based on the same technology used in the GRAIL (Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory) and GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) missions, which mapped the Moon's and Earth's gravity, respectively. MaQuls would feature two satellites trailing each other and connected by an optical link.

A grainy yet illustrative image of how the MaQuls mission would work. MaQuls would investigate the gravitational field of Mars and study static and dynamic processes on and under the surface. MaQuls would measure Mars’s gravitational field with the highest precision yet.

Image Credit: Worner et al. 2023.

"Observations with MaQuIs would enable us to better explore the subsurface of Mars. This would help us to find out more about these mysterious hidden features and study ongoing mantle convection, as well as understand dynamic surface processes like atmospheric seasonal changes and the detection of ground water reservoirs," said Dr. Lisa Wörner of DLR, who presented on the MaQuIs mission at EPSC2024 this week.

• This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

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12-01-2025 om 22:59 geschreven door peter  

NASA's troubled Mars sample-return mission has scientists seeing red

Related: 

• NASA's Mars Sample Return in jeopardy after US Senate questions budget

MSR’s complex architecture is a key driver of such high costs and troubling delays. The official plan calls for a NASA-built lander to voyage to Mars while housing a small sample-return rocket, as well as a robotic arm provided by the European Space Agency (ESA). The lander would touch down near the Perseverance rover that’s already been busily dropping tubes of carefully curated samples from its explorations around Jezero Crater, the site of an ancient river delta. Those specimens would be picked up and stuffed into the rocket by Perseverance — or perhaps instead retrieved by a couple of newly minted flying drones akin to the Ingenuity helicopter that the rover already let loose on Mars.

The sample-packed rocket would launch into orbit around Mars to rendezvous with an ESA-supplied spacecraft for subsequent transport to Earth. Encased in a protective capsule, the samples would at last reach our planet by plummeting from space to the Utah Test and Training Range, where they’d be recovered and whisked to a specialized facility for processing and further study.

Replanning and ramping back

Nationwide, more than 1,300 people have been working on MSR, but that number is dropping. After the IRB report’s release, NASA hit the pause button on the project: the space agency announced that several of its research centers were “ramping back” associated work. A hiring freeze is now in effect at the space agency’s MSR-managing Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and last week the lab laid off 100 of its contractors. The slowdown comes as NASA faces a constricted budget in fiscal year 2024 because of a debt ceiling spending cap deal in Congress. The House of Representatives’ proposed budget allots nearly $1 billion to the project in 2024 per NASA’s request, while the Senate’s budget offers only $300 million — and explicitly threatens MSR with cancellation if the program’s costs can’t be reined in.

In response, NASA has set up a Mars Sample Return Independent Review Board Response Team (MIRT), led by Sandra Connelly, the space agency’s deputy associate administrator for science. Connelly is expected to provide an update about MIRT’s process and progress in an upcoming "town hall" meeting. Meanwhile the agency has delayed its plans to confirm the official mission cost and schedule pending MIRT’s conclusions, which are expected in March 2024.

"The team will make a recommendation by the second quarter of fiscal year 2024 regarding a path forward for Mars Sample Return within a balanced overall science program," said NASA’s Dewayne Washington, a senior communications manager for MSR, in a statement to Scientific American. "The agency will delay its plans to confirm the official mission cost and schedule until after the completion of this review."

ESA, for its part, maintains that it is "steadfastly progressing towards fulfilling all of its commitments" for a launch as early as 2028, according to a statement provided to Scientific American. ESA is working closely with NASA on replanning MSR, the statement explained. "On the ESA side, the outcome of the ESA/NASA studies will be formulated as options and the way forward will then be decided together with [ESA] Member States," it said.

Related: 

• The big reveal: What's ahead in returning samples from Mars?

A question of priorities

MSR’s perceived scientific value is the rationale for NASA and ESA traversing the delicate geopolitical tightrope of the project’s replanning, says Victoria Hamilton, a planetary geologist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Hamilton also chairs the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), a committee that is advising NASA on its Red Planet plans and participated in the IRB that issued last September’s damning report.

Multiple planetary science decadal surveys produced by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have anointed MSR as the highest scientific priority for all of NASA’s robotic exploration efforts, she notes. The last such decadal survey, however, issued in 2022, gauged MSR’s nominal cost as $5.3 billion and cautioned that overruns on the project could "undermine the long-term programmatic balance of [NASA’s] planetary portfolio."

Achieving that balance is essential, Hamilton says, because Mars isn’t the only alluring destination vying for more attention and federal dollars. The very same decadal survey that reinforced MSR’s preeminence also set several other high-priority objectives, such as robotic NASA missions to Uranus, Venus and the mysterious Saturnian moons Enceladus and Titan. Left unchecked, cost and schedule overruns for MSR could easily cascade throughout the space agency’s planetary science division to disrupt these other projects — not to mention any NASA efforts to send humans to Mars.

"In addition to the scientific benefits, MSR will feed forward into human exploration plans," Hamilton says. "And I honestly don’t understand how we can talk about sending humans to Mars to do science if a pathfinding mission like MSR is deemed too ambitious or too costly."

Others, conversely, struggle to understand how MSR in its current form benefits the broader planetary science community—and how the official plan for its execution came so far before being formally called out for its excesses. One well-versed space agency official, who asked for anonymity, bluntly calls the plan a “dumpster fire.”

"Within the planetary science community, you have the Mars faction [that supports MSR]. But the outer planets community doesn’t care about MSR," the official says. "The Venus exploration advocates don’t care about this, nor does the moon community. Then there’s perhaps half of the Mars community that feels [that for MSR’s estimated cost], you can imagine a lot of Mars rovers going across the surface and see a whole fleet of Mars orbiters that also need to be replaced."

Fran Bagenal, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder’s (CU Boulder’s) Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and a veteran of multiple NASA interplanetary missions, is skeptical that MSR’s skyrocketing price tag will prove worthwhile despite its historic astrobiological potential. Most of the material in and around Jezero Crater is more than 3.7 billion years old, she notes—and scientists still vigorously debate any hints of life in rocks of similar vintage right here on our own far-better-studied Earth. 

"So what will we learn by spending many billions on returning [such] samples from Mars?" she asks. "It’s easy to say, 'It has to be new and interesting, whatever we find.' But we must be responsible to the taxpayer and ask if it is worth the cost." Investing instead in developing better methods for robotic, in situ studies on Mars, she argues, could be a more affordable option that also yields new approaches for other destinations, such as Venus and Jupiter’s icy, oceanic moon Europa.

The A-ha! moment

According to Scott Hubbard, former director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, who served as the agency’s inaugural Mars exploration program director from 2000 to 2001, there’s an easy explanation for MSR’s programmatic miscalculations. Historically, he says, NASA has shown a strong tendency to err on the low side of mission costs to get a project approved; the aha! moment comes later. "NASA counts on this a great deal, whether consciously or unconsciously," he says — especially for ambitious initiatives such as MSR. Add to this "the 'evolutionary' process of how [MSR’s planning] was dragged out over decades," and you end up with the current state of affairs.

Bruce Jakosky, a scientist at CU Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and former lead investigator of NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter, which is presently at Mars, has spent decades researching the Red Planet’s climate, atmosphere and potential habitability. The scientific value of returning Mars samples cached by NASA’s Perseverance rover for studies back here on Earth cannot be overstated, he maintains. "There are analyses that we can carry out here that are just not possible using even the best-equipped rover on the surface," Jakosky says.

Mars Sample Return is important for another reason, Jakosky adds. "It’s a demonstration of the ability to do a round trip to Mars and will be incredibly valuable as a risk-reduction effort in preparing for human missions to Mars," he says. "Given that advance work is already going on related to planning the architecture of human Mars missions, this seems like a necessary step along the way."

Salvaging MSR, Hubbard says, may require making the project an "all-of-NASA initiative" to take advantage of the agency’s human exploration plans (and budgets). This could allow for new mission profiles that reduce complexity — if not cost. NASA’s new Space Launch System [SLS] megarocket, he notes, is meant for lofting crews and hefty payloads into Earth orbit for voyages to the moon — but its huge size could conceivably house all of MSR’s planned elements, which are currently intended for two separate rockets. With SLS, he says, "you could probably launch the whole thing in one fell swoop." (An SLS launch, however, costs more than $2 billion— about 40% of the entire baseline MSR budget, leaving aside the multibillion-dollar overruns projected by the IRB.)

Related: 

• Mars: Everything you need to know about the Red Planet

The China factor

For James Head, a planetary scientist at Brown University, it has not been a question of one mission to return samples from Mars but rather of many. "There are so many different fundamental scientific problems to address, and so many different places to go to address them, that multiple Mars sample return missions are essential," he says.

The possibility of multiple sample-return sorties isn’t a pipe dream: China is planning one of its own — a mission called Tianwen-3 that is planned to launch in 2028 and would seek to deliver Mars rocks to Earth as early as mid-2031. Last April Head co-convened a session on that country’s Mars sample endeavor in Hefei, China.

"They are clearly moving ahead on this mission," he says, noting the large number of Chinese university students and mission personnel from institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that have proposed Tianwen-3 landing sites. "The project is moving forward well, and we are working on the landing site location," says Yang "Steve" Liu, a planetary scientist at the National Space Science Center in Beijing. Sample collection by the Tianwen-3 lander, Liu says, would mirror that of China’s Chang’e-5 lunar mission, which, sans rover, drilled and scooped moon rocks that were rocketed back to Earth in December 2020.

One touchdown locale under review is the southern part of Utopia Planitia, a giant impact basin in the midlatitudes of Mars’s northern hemisphere that China’s Zhurong rover already scouted in 2021 and 2022. (NASA’s Viking 2 lander also touched down in Utopia Planitia in 1976.) "It seems clear to me that a significant part of the geological history of Mars will be included in samples returned from this area," Head says.

In the event that China’s Mars samples are the first — or only — to arrive back on Earth, finding a way for U.S. researchers to share in those data would be ideal, Head says. Federal law presently limits NASA’s collaborations with China, but the space agency’s recent approval of efforts by NASA-funded investigators to participate in studies of Chang’e-5’s lunar samples is a very positive sign, he says. "We all hope that NASA will be able to extend this in the future to the upcoming Chang’e-6 farside lunar samples and to any future Chinese Mars returned samples."

Of course the most ideal scenario of all, envisioned by Head and his fellow Mars-focused peers, would be for NASA to ensure that its homegrown MSR project comes to fruition. The choice to move forward, he says, represents a "momentous decision point" for the space agency — and the nation.

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{ https://www.space.com/space-exploration }

11-01-2025 om 21:16 geschreven door peter  

It turns out that the Standard Model is able to account for less than 5% of all the matter and energy in the cosmos. Another 25% or so is Dark Matter, an unknown kind of matter that is for all intents and purposes invisible. The rest is known as Dark Energy, a mysterious entity that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

One of the first things astronomers noticed when they first discovered dark matter and dark energy was their apparent similarity. Why in the world are the two dark components of our universe roughly the same strength? I know, 25% and 70% don’t sound very similar, but when it comes to astronomy – and especially cosmology – they’re basically the exact same number.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence that they have about the same strength, and we’re overthinking it.

Or maybe it’s something else. Clever physicists have proposed connections within the “dark sector” of the universe, where dark matter and dark energy talk to each other. This would allow them to follow each other’s evolution, ensuring that they have roughly equal contributions to the energy budget of the universe for long periods of time.

To make them talk to each other, you need a force. But this force can’t be any of the known ones, otherwise dark matter and/or dark energy must also interact with normal matter, and we would have seen more directly evidence of them already.

So it has to be a new force, a fifth force of nature, completely different from electromagnetism, gravity, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear.  While ideas like this remain only in the realm of hypothesis, some of the ideas already have names.

One name is quintessence, the fifth essence of the universe. Another is dark photons, a particle that travels the cosmos like a photon but is, as its name suggests, dark.

To test these ideas we have to turn to the cosmos for answers. If a fifth force exists, it must be very subtle. Stronger manifestations of the fifth force have already been ruled out by observations of galaxy clusters, the expansion of the universe, and even the behaviors of neutron stars. So we have our work cut out for us – it will take a truly massive amount of data to tease out some signal that differs from expectations.

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{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

11-01-2025 om 15:20 geschreven door peter  

Scheduled for launch in 2027, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is slowly being readied for operation. This week, NASA announced that they have started to joined the mission’s telescope, instrument carrier and instruments onto the spacecraft. Having completed the construction, they will now move to the testing phase where the instrument will be subjected to more tests. These will include exposure to electromagnetic radiation expected during launch along with vibration and thermal changes too. If it passes these tests, the new space telescope will be on the home straight. 

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is often referred to as the Roman Space Telescope. It’s been developed by NASA and was named after former chief astronomer Nance Grace Telescope. It has a mirror 2.4m in diameter so is similar in size to the Hubble Space Telescope but has a wider field of view. On board are instruments that enable it to explore exoplanets and the large scale structure of the universe. It will also investigate the nature of dark energy and try to understand more about the accelerated expansion of the universe through the study of gravitational lenses. 

It’s fitting that the telescope has been named after Roman who was a leading American astronomer and astrophysicist. She was instrumental in the development of the Hubble Space Telescope so has often been called the ‘Mother of Hubble.’ She was born on 16 May 1925 and became one of the first female executives of NASA, including a role as Chief of Astronomy. 

In a recent press release, NASA confirmed that a team of technicians have successfully integrated the telescope with instrument carrier, known as the Instrument Payload Assembly. Two instruments have been installed, the Coronagraph Instrument which will be used to block starlight to reveal and study exoplanets, the Optical Telescope Assembly  and the Wide Field Instrument. The Wide Field Instrument is made up of 18 detectors that will give the telescope images with a field 100 times larger than Hubble’s but with the same resolution. I really can’t wait to see the images it produces. The whole assemble is now safely connected to the spacecraft that will take the observatory into its orbit. 

Mark Clampin, acting Deputy Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate said “With this incredible milestone, Roman remains on track for launch and we’re a big step closer to unveiling the comos as never before.”

Launch is a little way off but before then, the instrumentation will under its next testing phase. There has been a significant amount of testing so far but this next test phase is designed to to ensure the individual components operate when integrated. By subjecting it to simulated launch conditions, the tests will check that the vibrations will not cause problems, that the communications equipment won’t create electromagnetic interference and to check, across a range of conditions, that the optics and instrumentation can cope with the predicted thermal variations. 

On completion of these tests, which are expected to last a few months, the aperture cover will be added to the outer barrel assembly with the solar panels soon after. Once this has been completed, the structure will be added to the spacecraft during autumn. To date though, all is going well with the testing and all is on track for launch no later than May 2027.

Source : 

• NASA Joins Telescope,
• Instruments to Roman Spacecraft

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{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

11-01-2025 om 15:06 geschreven door peter  

By SONYA GUGLIARA FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

The American astronauts who have been stranded in space for seven months have hinted at the toll their unexpected mission is taking. 

Butch Wilmore, 62, and Sunita Williams, 59, were heard telling NASA bigwigs 'eventually, we want to go home' during a video call on Wednesday.

The pair first landed at the International Space Station (ISS) on June 5 and they have been stuck there ever since.

Their visit was only supposed to be eight days long. But due to safety concerns, NASA decided to send the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they arrived on back to Earth without anyone inside.  

In August 2024, it was decided that the left-behind astronauts would return home on a SpaceX aircraft in 2025. 

On Wednesday, Wilmore and Williams joined fellow astronauts Nick Hague, 49, and Don Pettit, 69, at the ISS to share more details about their lives in space.

The astronauts participated in a video call with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. 

Williams shared how she and Wilmore have been feeling about their shocking circumstances and adapting to their extended space stay. 

'Yeah, eventually we want to go home, because we left our families a little while ago, but we have a lot to do while we’re up here,' she revealed.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague, Don Pettit and Suni Williams (from left to right) spoke about their experiences in space on Wednesday 

Butch Wilmore, 62, and Suni Williams, 59, have been stuck at the ISS since June when their spacecraft had to leave without them 

'We’ve got to get all that stuff done before we go home.'

They are expected to return home in early April alongside the rest of Crew-9, which is the ninth crew rotation of the ongoing Expedition 72. 

Williams has become the commander of Expedition 72. Wilmore, Pettit and Hague are flight engineers, according to NASA. 

Wilmore and Williams did not seem worried about their conditions and debunked rumored safety concerns about a lack of clothes or resources.

When the pair first came to space in June, they were short on clothes because the Starliner needed more room for cargo, so some personal items had to be sacrificed. 

Wilmore said: 'It was well known that when we came up here we swapped out a couple of components that we needed on the space station for some of our clothes. 

'So we wore [the same] clothes for a while, but that doesn’t bother us, because, you know, clothes fit loosely up here. 

The Boeing Starliner that Wilmore and Williams arrived to the ISS was sent back without the crew due to safety concerns 

Williams has become the commander of Expedition 72. Wilmore is a flight engineer for the mission

'It’s not like on Earth where you sweat and it gets bad. I mean, they fit loosely, so you can wear things, honestly, for weeks at a time, and it doesn’t bother you at all.'

The astronauts have since been resupplied with clothes brought by Crew-9 in September.

Wilmore and Williams joined Crew-9 when Hague, the crew's commander, and mission specialist Aleksandr Gorbunov arrived. They cannot leave until Crew-10 arrives in late March.  

While reiterating that the astronauts are not in harm's way, Melroy cheekily said: 'So what you’re telling us is you’re not channeling ‘Cast Away,’ and you don’t have a volleyball with a handprint on it that you call Wilson.'

Williams replied: 'No, we’ve got a whole team up here, so we’re not worried about that. And there’s a lot to do as well with the team on the ground.

Williams said they are not 'cast away' in space, but the pair would like to get back to their families as soon as they can 

'It’s just a great team, and, no, it doesn’t feel like we’re cast away.

'We had tons of science experiments with SpaceX 31 [a cargo resupply mission]. We’ve got space walks coming up. It was really busy when we were waiting for Nick to get up here. 

'And it’s just been a joy to be working up here, particularly with our counterparts on the other end of the space station.' 

Williams and Hague are set to go on a spacewalk later this month. A week after that, Wilson and Wilmore may go out for one as well. 

According to NASA, the goal of Expedition 72 is to 'explore a variety of space phenomena to benefit humans on and off the Earth including pharmaceutical manufacturing, advanced life support systems, genetic sequencing in microgravity, and more.' 

DailyMail.com has reached out to NASA for comment.

{ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ }

10-01-2025 om 21:07 geschreven door peter  

Now, the 358-kilogram (789 lb) spacecraft sits in its final resting place in Elysium Planitia. Barring some hyper-futuristic, impossible-to-foresee archaeological rescue expedition, the lander will never move. It’s stranded there, waiting to be imaged repeatedly by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and its HiRISE camera.

However, perhaps unexpectedly, InSight still has more to offer. Researchers say that by monitoring the way dust collects on the lander and moves around it, they can learn about Mars’ ubiquitous dust. That will help researchers better understand the planet and prepare more thoroughly for future missions.

“Even though we’re no longer hearing from InSight, it’s still teaching us about Mars,” said science team member Ingrid Daubar of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “By monitoring how much dust collects on the surface — and how much gets vacuumed away by wind and dust devils — we learn more about the wind, dust cycle, and other processes that shape the planet.”

Martian dust is full of iron oxides, which give the planet its red appearance. It’s very fine and can be lifted high into the atmosphere during Mars’ global dust storms. It affects the planet’s weather and climate.

It’s a hazard for landers and rovers. InSight isn’t the only mission to succumb to it. Spirit and Opportunity also struggled with Martian dust before being defeated by it. Landers and rovers need to be protected from it. It can cover solar panels, rendering them ineffective. It can foul unprotected moving parts, contaminate science instruments, and cause problems with electronics and thermal control.

Martian dust is slightly magnetic due to its iron content, making it quite different from Earth dust. Scientists are concerned that its electrostatic properties might make it stick to surfaces and be difficult to remove. It could cling to some components in unanticipated ways.

There are unanswered questions about Mars’ dust. For instance, scientists don’t know exactly how it all formed or when. Are we seeing only ancient dust? Or is some of it newly created? Scientists aren’t certain how it becomes electrically charged during storms, whether it’s toxic and to what degree, or how exactly it’s transported around the planet during storms.

While monitoring InSight from space likely won’t answer all these questions, it can still teach scientists some things. One of the things they can observe is dust devil tracks. Back when the lander was still active, scientists matched MRO images of dust tracks near the lander with its wind data. They found that the whirling wind patterns that produce the dust devils subside in the winter and pick up again in the summer.

via GIPHY

InSight is also helping scientists understand how quickly surface craters can be obscured by dust. When the lander touched down in 2018, its retrorockets left marks on the surface akin to craters. By knowing exactly when they were created and watching from orbit as they’re obscured by dust, researchers can learn how quickly impact craters can be erased.

The people behind missions like InSight put a lot of time and energy into them. They’re not only career-defining; each mission advances our collective understanding of nature, including other planets in our Solar System. InSight ended because of dust, not because we had learned all we could from it. So even though watching it from orbit and learning what they can is somewhat satisfying, it no doubt reminds the mission personnel of what went left undiscovered.

“It feels a little bittersweet to look at InSight now. It was a successful mission that produced lots of great science. Of course, it would have been nice if it kept going forever, but we knew that wouldn’t happen,” Daubar said.

{ https://www.universetoday.com/ }

09-01-2025 om 18:38 geschreven door peter  

The Milky Way Is On A Terminal Collision Course — Is This New Hubble Image A Preview?

The constellation Hercules hosts this epic clash of two galactic juggernauts.

by Doris Elín Urrutia

 

ESA/Hubble/NASA

Outer space nonchalantly sheds a “tear” as two galaxies meet their end — but is the distant scene, pictured in a new Hubble Space Telescope image, a finale?

At first glance, the answer must be yes. Some 570 million light-years away from Earth, a face-on galaxy called LEDA 59642 is overlapped by a tilted, mostly side-on galaxy called NGC 6040 that has severely warped on one side and taken on a shape resembling the top of a droplet. The galaxies’ proximity and devolution is a story as old as time: galaxy mergers.

The two bodies — known collectively as Arp 122 — are careening into one another. Their stars, planets, gas, and dust will experience new gravitational forces, according to a statement that NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) published on Friday. “Galactic collisions and mergers are monumentally energetic and dramatic events,” write officials from the two space agencies behind Hubble.

In many ways, the galaxies will unravel: the grand, highly organized spiral structures may go away. They might turn out to be irregular galaxies, looking like round hazy blobs until maybe evolving into something new.

Although this scene in the constellation Hercules is playing out very far away, it’s a preview of what will happen here at home. The Milky Way is on a collision course with the Andromeda Galaxy (also known as M31), scheduled for 4 billion years from today.

But the Milky Way has always been a work in progress. Many galaxies, large and small, have combined to add or subtract to the Milky Way’s starry profile, according to research from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft. Astronomers know that the Andromeda galaxy is a patchwork of other galaxies, too.

The mashup will happen slowly. “The process of colliding and merging will not be a quick one either: it might take hundreds of millions of years to unfold. These collisions take so long because of the truly massive distances involved,” agency officials wrote.

What will happen to Arp 122 and to us is uncertain, but one possible outcome is that the ménages will sort themselves into elliptical galaxies. One such object appears in this image, too, at the bottom left corner. It’s NGC 6041, the elliptical galaxy that acts as the center of the galaxy cluster to which Arp 122 belongs.

While Arp 122 reveals a preview of what might become of the Milky Way, it also gifts Earthlings with a dazzling cosmic teardrop to admire.

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{ https://www.inverse.com/ }

09-01-2025 om 01:25 geschreven door peter  

• READ MORE: Northern Lights visible across the US on New Year's Eve 

By WILIAM HUNTER

Looking up at the flickering glow of the Northern Lights is one of Earth's most incredible experiences.

But now, a NASA astronaut has revealed what it is like to look down on one of the planet's great natural wonders.

Astronaut Don Pettit has shared his bird's eye view of the Northern Lights from the window of the International Space Station.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Mr Pettit said simply: 'Flying over aurora; intensely green.'

In this mesmerising video, you can see the lower structures of the space station silhouetted against the bright green glow of the aurora.

With the Northern Lights forming between 60 to 186 miles (100 to 300 km) above the ground, the ISS soars above at almost four times this altitude.

On social media, space fans have been blown away to discover that astronauts have this unique perspective.

One amazed commenter wrote: 'Wait wait... auroras are that low?!'

A NASA astronaut has shared his stunning bird's-eye view of the Northern Lights from aboard the International Space Station 

On social media, commenters were shocked to learn that astronauts have this unique perspective on one of Earth's natural wonders 

Don Pettit, 69, is NASA's oldest astronaut and a member of NASA's Expedition 72 crew which also includes the stranded astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Willmore.

Currently undertaking his third stay aboard the station, Mr Pettit is well known for his orbital photography.

Over more than 300 days in space, Mr Pettit has become regarded as one of NASA's best photographers and has captured many stunning images of the Earth and the Northern Lights.

The Northern and Southern lights are caused when charged particles from the sun collide with Earth's atmosphere.

As these particles arrive, they slam into particles of gas and charge them with enough energy to glow brightly.

These are visible from the ISS because the aurora actually forms in a relatively low part of the atmosphere.

The lowest glowing gases are typically found 80 miles (130 km) above the ground but can dip as low as 60 miles (100 km) in some cases.

Orbiting at 230 to 285 miles (370 to 460 km), the ISS safely passes over the top of the aurora, allowing astronauts on board to look down on the show.

Don Pettit (pictured) is NASA's oldest serving astronaut and widely regarded as one of the space agency's best photographers 

Since the ISS orbits at an altitude of 230 to 285 miles (370 to 460 km), it can be almost four times higher than the lowest parts of the Northern Lights 

However, in some of the strongest events, even the ISS can be caught up in the aurora with the uppermost parts of the display extending several thousand miles above the Earth.

In Mr Pettit's video, the bright lights of a city appear beneath the intense green glow of excited gases 

While hints of blue and pink are caused by nitrogen, this emerald green is the characteristic sign of oxygen molecules charged by particles from the sun.

On social media, commenters flocked to share their amazement with Mr Pettit's stunning images.

One commenter wrote: 'It's like a massive emerald come alive!'

'Not sure how I thought it would look from above but this is incredible,' added another.

While one space fan wrote: 'The amount of electrical flow is astounding.'

Normally, the aurora is only visible at very high latitudes – for example at the poles, Scandinavia or the southern tip of South America. 

The ISS' height allows the crew to capture stunning images of the Northern Lights as they pass overhead. Pictured: The aurora seen from the ISS in August, 2024

Commenters on social media were amazed by the view, saying they had no idea that the Northern Lights would look like this from above 

One commenter said that the green of the aurora was 'like a massive emerald come alive'

This is because the charged particles which make the atmosphere glow are funnelled towards the poles by the Earth's magnetic fields.

However, when the sun undergoes an event called a 'coronal mass ejection' enormous clouds of charged particles are sent flying towards Earth at around two million miles per hour.

These clouds interact with the Earth's magnetic fields to produce geomagnetic storms which trigger huge auroral displays stretching into the lower latitudes.

Luckily for Mr Pettit, the start of the year has seen a few exceptionally large coronal mass ejections which have made the aurora even brighter than normal.

On January 3 and January 4, the sun was lit up by two X-class solar flares - a class reserved for the most intense kind.

Solar flares are sudden explosions of radiation created by the 'snapping' of tangled magnetic fields in the sun's atmosphere.

Since they are usually followed by coronal mass ejections, these two flares meant stunning auroral displays were soon to follow.

On the day that Mr Pettit posted his video, January 6, there had already been two days of geomagnetic storms according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Mr Pettit's video came after a week of intense Northern Lights due to a series of large solar storms. On January 4, the Northern Lights were forecast to extend as far south as the northern United States 

As clouds of charged particles arrived from the sun, they triggered massive outbursts of aurora in the Northern Hemisphere throughout the first week of the year. Pictured: Anchorage, Alaska on New Year's Day 

To make things even more exciting, a massive 'coronal hole' formed in the sun's atmosphere – a dark area of cooler plasma.

These holes allow a constant stream of charged particles called 'solar wind' to escape from the sun and bombard Earth.

This meant that even more particles arrived to collide with the Earth's atmosphere leading to even brighter aurora.

Last week, auroras were forecast in the US as far south as Washington, northern Idaho and Montana over the US.

On Monday, NASA recorded the explosion of an extremely strong solar flare rated as a class X1.8.

NASA wrote: 'Flares and solar eruptions can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to spacecraft and astronauts.'

However, no significant disruption is forecast due to this stellar explosion.

The reason that there has been so much activity lately is because the sun is now at its 'solar maximum' – the peak of the sun's 11-year activity cycle. 

The auroral activity was made even stronger by the formation of a coronal hole - a dark, cool region which allows charged particles to escape. On January 3, a large coronal hole (pictured) formed which could have made the Northern Lights even more intense 

The Northern Lights have been more active recently because the sun is now at its 'solar maximum'. At this time there are far more sunspots (cool regions associated with solar flares) which leads to an increased level of activity and more intense auroras on Earth 

The sun goes through an 11-year cycle in which the number of sunspots (cool regions associated with solar flares) gradually increases.

In October last year, NASA revealed that the sun had reached its solar maximum and could stay at that level for another year.

That means an increased number of sunspots, more solar flares, and even brighter aurora.

While these solar flares can be dangerous to electrical systems on Earth, it also means that there will be plenty more opportunities for NASA's astronauts to bring us some spectacular views of the Northern Lights.

SOLAR STORMS PRESENT A CLEAR DANGER TO ASTRONAUTS AND CAN DAMAGE SATELLITES

Solar storms, or solar activity, can be divided into four main components that can have impacts on Earth:  

• Solar flares: A large explosion in the sun's atmosphere. These flares are made of photons that travel out directly from the flare site. Solar flares impact Earth only when they occur on the side of the sun facing Earth.  
• Coronal Mass Ejections (CME's): Large clouds of plasma and magnetic field that erupt from the sun. These clouds can erupt in any direction, and then continue on in that direction, plowing through solar wind. These clouds only cause impacts to Earth when they're aimed at Earth. 
• High-speed solar wind streams: These come from coronal holes on the sun, which form anywhere on the sun and usually only when they are closer to the solar equator do the winds impact Earth. 
• Solar energetic particles: High-energy charged particles thought to be released primarily by shocks formed at the front of coronal mass ejections and solar flares. When a CME cloud plows through solar wind, solar energetic particles can be produced and because they are charged, they follow the magnetic field lines between the Sun and Earth. Only charged particles that follow magnetic field lines that intersect Earth will have an impact. 

While these may seem dangerous, astronauts are not in immediate danger of these phenomena because of the relatively low orbit of manned missions.

However, they do have to be concerned about cumulative exposure during space walks.

This photo shows the sun's coronal holes in an x-ray image. The outer solar atmosphere, the corona, is structured by strong magnetic fields, which when closed can cause the atmosphere to suddenly and violently release bubbles or tongues of gas and magnetic fields called coronal mass ejections

The damage caused by solar storms 

Solar flares can damage satellites and have an enormous financial cost.

The charged particles can also threaten airlines by disturbing Earth's magnetic field.

Very large flares can even create currents within electricity grids and knock out energy supplies.

When Coronal Mass Ejections strike Earth they cause geomagnetic storms and enhanced aurora.

They can disrupt radio waves, GPS coordinates and overload electrical systems.

A large influx of energy could flow into high voltage power grids and permanently damage transformers.

This could shut off businesses and homes around the world. 

Source: NASA - Solar Storm and Space Weather 

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09-01-2025 om 00:50 geschreven door peter  

Unexpected Mechanism Explains Formation of Pluto-Charon System

Planetary scientists at the University of Arizona say they have discovered an entirely new type of cosmic collision.

Pluto and Charon are the largest binary system in the known population of trans-Neptunian objects in the outer Solar System. Their shared external orbital axis suggests a linked evolutionary history and collisional origin. Their radii, 1,200 km and 600 km, respectively, and Charon’s wide circular orbit of about 16 Pluto radii require a formation mechanism that places a large mass fraction into orbit, with sufficient angular momentum to drive tidal orbital expansion. Denton et al. numerically modeled the collisional capture of Charon by Pluto using simulations that include material strength.

Image credit: Denton et al., doi: 10.1038/s41561-024-01612-0.

For decades, planetary researchers have theorized that Pluto’s unusually large moon Charon formed through a process similar to Earth’s Moon — a massive collision followed by the stretching and deformation of fluid-like bodies.

This model worked well for the Earth-Moon system, where the intense heat and larger masses involved meant the colliding bodies behaved more like fluids.

However, when applied to the smaller, colder Pluto-Charon system, this approach overlooked a crucial factor: the structural integrity of rock and ice.

“Pluto and Charon are different — they’re smaller, colder and made primarily of rock and ice,” said Dr. Adeene Denton, a postdoctoral researcher with the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.

“When we accounted for the actual strength of these materials, we discovered something completely unexpected.”

Using advanced impact simulations, the authors found that instead of stretching during the collision, Pluto and the proto-Charon temporarily stuck together, rotating as a single snowman-shaped object before separating into the binary system we observe today.

A binary system occurs when two celestial bodies orbit around a common center of mass.

“Most planetary collision scenarios are classified as ‘hit and run’ or ‘graze and merge’,” Dr. Denton said.

“What we’ve discovered is something entirely different — a ‘kiss and capture’ scenario where the bodies collide, stick together briefly and then separate while remaining gravitationally bound.”

“The compelling thing about this study is that the model parameters that work to capture Charon, end up putting it in the right orbit. You get two things right for the price of one,” said Professor Erik Asphaug, also from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona.

The study also suggests that both Pluto and Charon remained intact during their collision, preserving much of their original composition.

This challenges previous models that suggested extensive deformation and mixing during the impact.

Additionally, the collision process, including tidal friction as the bodies separated, deposited considerable internal heat into both bodies, which may provide a mechanism for Pluto to develop a subsurface ocean without requiring formation in the more radioactive very early Solar System — a timing constraint that has troubled planetary scientists.

“Charon is captured relatively intact in our scenario, retaining its core and most of its mantle, which implies that Charon could be as ancient as Pluto,” the researchers said.

• Their work appears today in the journal Nature Geoscience.
• C.A. Denton et al. Capture of an ancient Charon around Pluto. Nat. Geosci, published online January 6, 2025; doi: 10.1038/s41561-024-01612-0

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08-01-2025 om 22:14 geschreven door peter  

Previously, scientists believed that Pluto and Charon formed from a massive collision, similar to the Giant Impact Hypothesis. According to this theory, a Mars-sized planet named Theia collided with a primordial Earth roughly 4.5 billion years ago. This impact turned both bodies into molten debris that eventually coalesced to form the Earth and Moon, eventually settling into the Earth-Moon system. According to the team’s study, this theory does not fit when it comes to Pluto and Charon because it fails to take into account the structural strength of cold, icy worlds.

Using the University of Arizona’s high-performance computing cluster, the team conducted advanced impact simulations. This showed that when Pluto and a proto-Charon collided, they became temporarily stuck together and formed a single snowman-shaped object – not unlike Arrokoth, the first Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) that New Horizons surveyed on December 31st, 2018. Over time, they separated to become the binary system we observe there today. Said Denton in a U of A News story:

“Pluto and Charon are different – they’re smaller, colder and made primarily of rock and ice. When we accounted for the actual strength of these materials, we discovered something completely unexpected. Most planetary collision scenarios are classified as ‘hit and run’ or ‘graze and merge.’ What we’ve discovered is something entirely different – a ‘kiss and capture’ scenario where the bodies collide, stick together briefly, and then separate while remaining gravitationally bound.”

Their results also suggest that Pluto and Charon remained largely intact during their collision and retained much of their original composition. This challenges previous models that suggest that colliding bodies will exchange material during the impact. This is based on studies of the Apollo moonrocks, which indicated that the Earth and Moon are similar in composition, a finding that led scientists to conclude that the Earth-Moon system formed together. What’s more, their research offers a potential explanation for how Pluto may have developed an internal ocean.

The collision process, they state, combined with the tidal friction caused by the separation of Pluto and Charon, would have caused considerable internal heating for both bodies. This could have provided the necessary mechanism for creating a subsurface ocean, contrary to a previous theory where scientists have argued that Pluto formed during the very early Solar System when there were far more radioactive elements. However, scientists have expressed doubts about this theory because of the timing constraints it imposes.

Denton and her colleagues are now planning follow-up studies to explore several related questions about this system of icy bodies. This includes how tidal forces influenced Pluto and Charon’s early evolution when they were much closer together, how this formation scenario aligns with Pluto’s current geological features, and whether similar processes could explain the formation of other binary systems. Said Denton:

“We’re particularly interested in understanding how this initial configuration affects Pluto’s geological evolution. The heat from the impact and subsequent tidal forces could have played a crucial role in shaping the features we see on Pluto’s surface today.”

Further Reading: 

• University of Arizona, 
• Nature

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08-01-2025 om 21:13 geschreven door peter  

Dating the Moon

As it turns out, both numbers could be true. The Moon could have formed very early, but it experienced something that changed its geological clock. According to UC Santa Cruz professor Francis Nimmo and a team of researchers, the Moon likely did form 4.51 million years ago in that catastrophic collision with baby Earth. But, 180 million years later, it may have experienced a “remelting”. That reset the ages of lunar rocks to around 4.35 billion years. That’s why the surface samples collected by the Apollo astronauts show a younger age.

“We predict that there shouldn’t be any lunar rocks that are older than 4.35 billion years because they should have experienced the same resetting,” said Nimmo. “Because this heating event was global, you shouldn’t find rocks anywhere on the Moon that are significantly older than that.”

Nimmo and his colleagues suggest that a global remelt of lunar rocks could account for the existence of younger surface rocks. The Apollo rocks suggest something happened, and the return of rocks from China’s Chang’e 6 mission could offer more evidence for that theory. For their paper, the authors used modeling to show that the Moon may have experienced sufficient tidal heating to cause this remelting approximately 4.35 billion years ago, which could “reset” the apparent formation age of these lunar samples.

Modeling a Lunar Surface Reset

What could cause a global melting strong enough to reset the age of the Moon’s rocks? Nimmo suggest that the Moon experienced tidal heating due to the evolution of its orbit around Earth. This happened because the Moon was closer to Earth, and the orbit was pretty unstable during certain epochs. Thanks to the immense tidal pull from Earth, the Moon could have been heated, which led to the alteration of its geology and the “age reset” of its rocks.

It turns out that the Moon isn’t the only place in the solar system where this could happen. The volcanic moon Io in orbit around Jupiter experiences the same type of tidal attraction as it orbits. That helps explain Io’s extensive volcanic activity and surface “paving” by the frequent eruptions from its volcanic features. It also explains why we don’t see widespread craters on Io.

If the same thing happened to the infant Moon after its original formation, cooldown, and subsequent bombardment, we wouldn’t see any of its original craters. They’d have been covered by subsequent eruption and melting when the Moon’s orbit was stabilizing.

Why is the Lunar Surface Age Important?

The formation and evolution of the solar system and its many different bodies is still a hot area of study. Among other things, scientists want to understand the timing of events that shaped solar system objects. For that, they need a better understanding of the geology of each object. More data leads to better models of every aspect of solar system formation—from the first “push” in the protosolar nebula to such events as collisions, tidal heating, orbital dynamics, and surface evolution of different worlds. That’s where planetary science missions come in handy. They provide “in situ” data about each world (or object, in the case of asteroids, moons, comets, and rings), and they fill in gaps in the history of each place.

“As more data becomes available—particularly from ongoing and future lunar missions—the understanding of the Moon’s past will continue to evolve,” Nimmo said. “We hope that our findings will spark further discussion and exploration, ultimately leading to a clearer picture of the Moon’s place in the broader history of our solar system.”

For More Information

• A “Remelting” of Lunar Surface Adds a Wrinkle to Mystery of Moon’s True Age
• Tidally Driven Remelting Around 4.35 billion Years Ago Indicates the Moon is Old
• Moon Formation

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08-01-2025 om 21:00 geschreven door peter  

Nelson noted that China is planning to launch a Mars sample return mission in 2028.

“I don’t think we want the only sample return coming back on the Chinese spacecraft, and that’s just simply a grab-and-go kind of mission, whereas ours has been a very methodical process. … I think that the administration will certainly conclude that they want to proceed, so what we wanted to do was to give them the best possible options so that they can go from here,” he told reporters.

For years, NASA has been working on a plan that started out with the collection and caching of samples by the Perseverance rover in Mars’ Jezero Crater, which is considered prime territory for harboring potential evidence of ancient life. Those samples would have been gathered up and brought to a sample retrieval platform, where they would have been sent into Martian orbit on a rocket known as the Mars Ascent Vehicle. The samples would be transferred to a Mars orbiter built by the European Space Agency. That orbiter would then deliver the samples back to Earth for laboratory study.

It was a complex plan, and last year, NASA determined that the operation would have taken until 2040 to get the samples back, with a price tag of $11 billion. “That was just simply unacceptable,” Nelson said.

NASA asked its experts as well as commercial space ventures to come up with ideas for lowering the cost and speeding up the schedule, which resulted in the two options presented today.

The sky crane option would build upon the technology that used a rocket-powered, free-flying platform to lower NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers to the Martian surface. “You’re looking at cost in the range of $6.6 billion to $7.7 billion,” Nelson said.

The estimated price tag for the commercial heavy-lift option is in the range of $5.8 billion to $7.1 billion. “You all know that SpaceX and Blue Origin have already been ones that have expressed an interest, but it could be others as well, and a team is evaluating and researching all industry capability to include the schedule and the budget to determine the best strategy going forward,” Nelson said.

Both options would use many of the same elements proposed under the previous plan, but would trim costs by using a smaller Mars Ascent Vehicle as well as a simpler design for the sample retrieval platform, powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator rather than solar panels. The samples would be brought back from Mars and sent down to Earth by ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter. NASA said ESA is currently evaluating the options proposed by NASA.

The newly proposed schedule could lead to launches in the 2030-31 time frame, and delivery of the samples by as early as 2035. “But it could go out to 2039,” Nelson said. “Now, a good reason for why it could get extended out is if the Congress and the new administration do not respond.”

Nelson said Congress would have to commit at least $300 million during the current fiscal year to keep the Mars sample return campaign on track. “If they want to get this thing back on a direct return earlier, they’re going to have to put more money into it, even more than $300 million in fiscal year ’25, and that would be the case every year going forward,” he said.

Trump has been bullish on Mars exploration, in part due to the influence of SpaceX founder Elon Musk. So bullish, in fact, that Trump wants to have astronauts on the Red Planet by 2028, potentially forcing another overhaul of the Mars sample return campaign.

“We will reach Mars before the end of my term,” Trump said during a campaign rally last October. “Elon promised me he was going to do that. … He told me that we’re going to win, and he’s going to reach Mars by the end of our term, which is a big thing. Before China, before anybody.”

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The robotic arm on NASA’s Perseverance rover reached out to examine rocks in an area on Mars nicknamed the “Cratered Floor Fractured Rough” area in this image captured on July 10, 2021 (the 138th sol, or Martian day, of its mission).

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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08-01-2025 om 20:39 geschreven door peter  

Astronomers have long wondered why light from hydrogen atoms can be detected, given that they should be blocked from view by gas formed in the aftermath of the Big Bang.

The new findings reveal mergers between galaxies as the likely source of these mysterious hydrogen emissions.

When astronomers view extremely distant galaxies, they appear as they would have looked long ago due to the time it takes the light they produce to travel across space. Hence, observations made by the James Webb Space Telescope are not only revealing the most distant regions of the universe in unprecedented detail, but also how they looked in much earlier times.

However, these galaxies are very faint, and hence powerful telescopes are required to make the observations, a task that Webb is well equipped to accomplish.

Very active star formation occurred within the universe’s earliest galaxies, giving rise to their other name: stellar nurseries. These regions of space produced a specific variety of light emitted from hydrogen known as Lyman-α emission.

Essentially, Lyman-α emission is produced by hydrogen atoms when an electron falls from a higher energy level to the lowest one it can be in, which can be likened to the electron’s home base. This light has a very specific color spectra that can only be discerned with the help of special instruments, which can be likened to being a “fingerprint” for this kind of activity.

NIRCam image of the Lyman-α emitting galaxy EGSY8p7

(Credit: NASA/ESA/Ceers survey)

Long ago, these stellar nurseries were enveloped in large amounts of neutral hydrogen gas, and the even the spaces between galaxies once contained far more gas than what is observed today. Light emissions produced by hydrogen are easily absorbed by this gas, causing astronomers to predict that the Lyman-α emission that populated these regions of the early Universe, despite their abundance, would effectively remain invisible to astronomers today.

Yet, mysteriously, some early hydrogen emissions have been successfully observed by astronomers, a phenomenon that has until recently remained unexplained. But how could hydrogen that should have been scattered throughout the universe by now, if not absorbed altogether, still be visible today?

University of Cambridge astronomer Callum Witten, who specializes in the study of galaxies and active galactic nuclei, calls this question “one of the most puzzling issues” astronomers have faced in trying to resolve this cosmic mystery.

“Many hypotheses have previously been suggested to explain the great escape of this ‘inexplicable’ emission,” Witten, the principal investigator on a new study that explores this phenomenon, said in a recent statement.

However, thanks to the power and precision of the James Webb Space Telescope, new insights appear to have shed light on this longstanding mystery.

With help from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), Witten and his colleagues were able to observe much smaller and dimmer galaxies clustered around the brighter ones from which mysterious hydrogen emissions were previously noted. However, these lesser galaxies are not static, but instead appear to be dynamically interacting and combining.

“Where Hubble was seeing only a large galaxy, Webb sees a cluster of smaller interacting galaxies,” said Sergio Martin-Alvarez, a team member from Stanford University involved with the study, who adds that Webb’s latest revelations have “had a huge impact on our understanding of the unexpected hydrogen emission from some of the first galaxies.”

Using state-of-the-art simulations, the team then explored the physics behind what they observed, learning that the fast accumulation of stellar mass that results from galaxy mergers had likely driven the strong hydrogen emissions being observed. Based on the new observations, this appeared to have occurred through channels that had been cleared of neutral gasses that had originally been prevalent.

The team believes that the merging of these smaller, previously unobserved galaxies is very likely to be the solution to the lasting riddle of inexplicable early hydrogen emissions, and now aims to follow up their recent observations by looking at galaxies in other stages of merging, which they believe will not only help them to better understand how hydrogen emission is ejected, but also to reveal new clues to the evolution of galaxies.

The team’s research was the subject of a new paper, “Deciphering Lyman-α emission deep into the epoch of reionization, that was recently published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

• Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on X: @MicahHanks.

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08-01-2025 om 00:38 geschreven door peter  

Scientists are baffled after discovering a unique asteroid-comet hybrid that's like NOTHING seen before

• READ MORE: Scientists SOLVE the mystery of 'alien' signal received from space

By WILIAM HUNTER

In the dark depths of the solar system, astronomers have discovered a truly baffling object.

Named 2060 Chiron, this 125-mile-wide (200km) asteroid-comet hybrid is a type of body known as a Centaur, named after the mythical creature that is half-horse and half-man.

Centaurs are solar system bodies found between Jupiter and Neptune that move and behave like asteroids but produce glowing tails of gas and dust like comets.

Now, astronomers from the University of Central Florida have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to show that Chiron is 'like nothing' they've seen before.

By analysing near-infrared images, the researchers have carefully reconstructed the chemical makeup of this interplanetary chimaera.

They found that Chiron's surface contains a cocktail of chemicals from a time predating the formation of the solar system including CO2, methane, and frozen water. 

Co-author Dr Charles Schambeau says: 'These results are like nothing we've seen before.

'These detections enhance our understanding of Chiron's interior composition and how that material produces the unique behaviours as we observe Chiron.'

Scientists have uncovered the baffling secrets of the comet-asteroid hybrid Chiron, a 'Centaur' body which is now travelling through the region of the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Pictured: An artist's impression of Chiron 

When Chiron was discovered in 1977, it was the first of a new group of solar system bodies which astronomers dubbed Centaurs.

Astronomers believe that Centaurs were formed in the very earliest days of the solar system and have remained relatively unchanged since then.

Hidden in the frozen expanses of the Trans-Neptunian region, meaning outside the orbit of Neptune, their immense distance from the sun makes Centaurs frozen time capsules of information about the solar system's formation.

But even among that growing body of mysterious objects, Chiron stuck out as exceptionally unusual.

Dr Schambeau says: 'It's an oddball when compared to the majority of other Centaurs.

'It has periods where it behaves like a comet, it has rings of material around it, and potentially a debris field of small dust or rocky material orbiting around it.'

Yet what most interested astronomers is the tail of dust and gas that Chiron produces as it is warmed by the sun. 

Most objects from the depths of space are either too cold or don't have the ice needed to create a tail.

Centaurs are a type of body which are typically found between Jupiter and Neptune and behave like comets but produce tails of gas and dust like comets. Chiron (pictured) is a particularly strange Centaur because it has a ring of dust like Saturn. Pictured: Artists' impression of Chiron and its rings 

2060 Chiron: Key Facts

Comets, on the other hand, do produce tails known as a coma but only when they get much closer to the sun.

That means that the coma is disturbed by interactions with the radiation from the sun and is so thick that astronomers can't see through it to the comet beneath.

Lead researcher Dr Noemi Pinilla-Alonso says: 'What is unique about Chiron is that we can observe both the surface, where most of the ices can be found, and the coma, where we see gases that are originating from the surface or just below it.

'Discovering which gases are part of the coma and their different relationships with the ices on the surface helps us learn the physical and chemical properties, such as the thickness and the porosity of the ice layer, its composition, and how irradiation is affecting it.'

Using the JWST, the researchers looked at the near-infrared radiation coming from the coma surrounding Chiron.

Since certain chemicals absorb or re-emit energy at specific frequencies, researchers can look at the dips and spikes in the spectrum to see which are present.

This spectrum revealed that Chiron contains carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and methane which were part of the cloud of materials which existed before the solar system formed.

Other chemicals like propane and ethane were likely formed later as the chemicals oxidised, the same chemical process that turns iron into rust.

By analysing the light coming from Chiron (illustrated), the scientists were able to work out that it contained water ice, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, acetylene, carbon dioxide, methane, ethane, and propane. Some of these compounds were formed from the cloud of materials which predated the solar system 

Dr Pinilla-Alonso says: 'Based on our new JWST data, I'm not so sure we have a standard centaur.

'Every active centaur that we are observing with JWST shows some peculiarity. But they cannot be all outliers. There must be something that explains why they appear to all behave differently or something that is common between them all that we cannot yet see.'

In the future, the researchers plan to follow up with Chiron using the FWS to learn more about the layers of ice and rock that make up this strange body.

Those observations could help researchers learn what it is that all centaurs have in common and just why Chiron appears to behave so strangely.

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06-01-2025 om 18:05 geschreven door peter  

(Credit: Johns Hopkins University)

Are there fish swimming in Titan’s rivers and seas? If they exist and I had the opportunity to catch some, I would have avoided the temptation to eat them because of related health risks from methane and ethane, both flammable gases. However, the mere existence of fish or any other living organism on Titan, would constitute life-as-we-do-not-know-it based on chemistry in liquids other than water.

This illustration shows NASA’s Dragonfly rotorcraft-lander approaching a site on Saturn’s exotic moon, Titan. Taking advantage of Titan’s dense atmosphere and low gravity, Dragonfly will explore dozens of locations across the icy world, sampling and measuring the compositions of Titan’s organic surface materials to characterize the habitability of Titan’s environment and investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry. 

Credits: NASA/JHU-APL

Finding life on Titan would have major implications not only for the prevalence of life in the present-day Universe but also in the early Universe. The surface temperature of Titan is 94 degrees Kelvin, about a third of room temperature on Earth relative to absolute zero. This happened to be the temperature of the cosmic microwave background about a hundred million after the Big Bang when the first generation of stars formed.

An object like Titan forming out of matter enriched by heavy elements from the first supernovae, would have acquired this surface temperature irrespective of its distance from a star. As I wrote in a recent paper, the bath of cosmic radiation would have kept the Titan-like object warm for tens of millions of years, sufficiently long for primitive forms of life to possibly emerge on it when the Universe was just a percent of its current age.

NASA’s mission Dragonfly is planned for launch in July 2028 , with arrival to Titan in 2034. It will carry a robotic rotorcraft that will fly in Titan’s atmosphere with the goal of studying prebiotic chemistry. This quadcopter drone lander will possess a mass of about 450 kilograms, packaged inside a heat shield 3.7 meters in diameter. It will collect regolith samples on multiple locations by vertically taking off and landing. The craft can fly at a speed of about 10 meters per second, and reach altitudes of about 4 kilometers.

Dragonfly will carry meteorological sensors to measure atmospheric temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind speed, a seismometer to detect potential “Titan-quakes,” and a collection of cameras that will image each landing site, take microscopic images at the millimeter scale of grains of sand, and capture aerial photos as the rotorcraft flies between locations.

Titan’s atmospheric pressure is 1.5 larger than Earth’s and its surface gravity is 14% of Earth’s. As a result, the required flight power per payload mass is about 40 times lower than needed for flights around Earth.

About 17% of Titan’s surface is covered by dune fields, mostly at latitudes between plus or minus 30 degrees. Dragonflywill provide important information about the dune properties but only over a small region of Titan’s surface. It will not deliver a high-quality global map of Titan.

The detailed compositions of Titan’s lakes and seas are important for studying the prospects for it to host life, since prebiotically relevant organic structures can form in these liquid reservoirs and also condense from the atmosphere. If Dragonfly detects exposed water ices on Titan’s surface, that finding could be indicative of recent endogenic or exogenic activity, since much of the surface might be covered by organics that accumulate from Titan’s atmosphere.

I realize that my wish to go fishing on Titan may not be granted in the short time that I have left to live. But I am content with relying on Dragonfly to provide me some clues on what forms of life may exist within Titan’s lakes, rivers and seas.

• Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s – Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011-2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.

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06-01-2025 om 00:49 geschreven door peter