Space news topic and space related news

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Keftxo, time to adopt a brown dwarf

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Ngay

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Cheers! NASA's Webb Finds Ethanol, Other Icy Ingredients for Worlds
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-111

Newfound carbon-containing molecules are key ingredients for potentially habitable planets.

Stars and their planets form from swirling clouds of gas and dust enriched with chemical elements and compounds from previous generations of stars. One long-standing question in astronomy is: How ubiquitous are the elements crucial to life as we know it?

A new Webb study of two protostars, so young that they have not yet formed planets, has found a variety of molecules ranging from relatively simple ones like methane to complex compounds like acetic acid (familiar to cooks as an ingredient in vinegar). These molecules constitute key ingredients for worlds that might one day host life.

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How NASA Chases and Investigates Bright Cosmic Blips
https://science.nasa.gov/directorates/smd/astrophysics-division/how-nasa-chases-and-investigates-bright-cosmic-blips/

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Aiming exascale at black holes
https://www.ias.edu/news/aiming-exascale-black-holes

In 1783, John Michell, a rector in northern England, "proposed that the mass of a star could reach a point where its gravity prevented the escape of most anything, even light. The same prediction emerged from [founding IAS Faculty] Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. Finally, in 1968, physicist [and Member (1937) in the School of Math/Natural Sciences] John Wheeler gave such phenomena a name: black holes."

Despite initial skepticism that such astrophysical objects could exist, observations now estimate that there are 40 quintillion (or 40 thousand million billion) black holes in the universe. These black holes are important because the matter that falls into them "doesn't just disappear quietly," says James Stone, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences.

"Instead, matter turns into plasma, or ionized gas, as it rotates toward a black hole. The ionized particles in the plasma 'get caught in the gravitational field of a black hole, and as they are pulled in they release energy,' he says. That process is called accretion, and scientists think the energy released by accretion powers many processes on scales up to the entire galaxy hosting the black hole."

To explore this process, Stone uses general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). But the equations behind MHD are "so complicated that analytic solutions — finding solutions with pencil and paper — [are] probably impossible." Instead, by running complex simulations on high-performance computers like Polaris and Frontier, Stone and his colleagues are working to understand how radiation changes black hole accretion.

"The code created by Stone's team to investigate black hole accretion can be applied to other astrophysical phenomena. Stone mentions that he 'can use the same [...] code for MHD simulations to follow the motion of cosmic rays,' high-energy particles also produced by black holes."

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Mars Sample Return a top scientific priority, Lunine testifies
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2024/03/mars-sample-return-top-scientific-priority-lunine-testifies

At the western end of Mars' Jezero Crater, a river channel and pile of sediments resembling river deltas on Earth hold clues about how Mars evolved from a more Earth-like world to the barren, inhospitable surface seen today.

Since 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover has collected more than 20 samples of rocks and sediments from the crater floor, delta fan and hills above it – resources that could answer crucial questions about what happened to the red planet's climate and geology and improve understanding of our own.

But those samples could be stranded on Mars if Congress fails to provide adequate funding for the space agency to design and build the Mars Sample Return mission, Jonathan Lunine, the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences and chair of the Department of Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences, testified March 21 before a congressional subcommittee reviewing NASA's science programs.

"The benefit of succeeding in bringing back rock and soil from an ancient riverbed on a planet 140 million miles away is that it will tell the world that this nation has the imagination, will and courage to accomplish just about anything," Lunine said in written testimony. "And that message is priceless. To not complete Mars Sample Return – to leave the samples stranded on Mars – would be ... a national disgrace."

Lunine was one of four experts invited to testify at the U.S. House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics hearing titled, "Advancing Scientific Discovery: Assessing the Status of NASA's Science Mission Directorate." Watch a replay here.

Earlier this year, budget uncertainty led NASA to plan for the lower of two proposed funding levels for the mission and to lay off staff at its Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Current appropriations bills defer a decision on funding, which could range from $300 million to nearly $1 billion, while the agency reassesses the mission's architecture.

Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said that after an independent review board's "sobering analysis" of the mission's costs and challenges last fall, the agency would complete its internal reassessment this spring.

"It's our willingness to acknowledge these challenges and overcome them, to conduct science in ways that have barely been imagined, that makes us NASA," Fox testified.

Lunine called Mars Sample Return the most ambitious robotic program the United States has ever attempted, requiring challenging new technology and involving multiple NASA centers and the European Space Agency.

But having served as a member of an independent review board that examined the mission last year, Lunine said he's "supremely confident" that it can and will be done despite budget pressures requiring difficult choices.

"It can be done because American engineering prowess is up to the task," he told lawmakers. "It will be done because as a nation we surely will not simply walk away from a daring, highly visible and scientifically important challenge."

Successive National Academies of Sciences decadal surveys have identified the mission as the top priority in planetary science, Lunine said, to help answer the questions: Did life begin on Mars? How did Mars dry up? Exactly when did it dry up?

Only instruments in laboratories on Earth, instruments far more precise and powerful than those carried by the Mars rovers, can precisely analyze the collected rock and soil samples to determine their composition and age, Lunine said. In the same way, the samples Apollo astronauts returned from the moon established a definitive chronology for the earliest history of the Earth-moon system – the program's most profound scientific achievement, Lunine said. More than a half-century later, moon samples continue to be studied by increasingly capable instruments.

"The samples returned from Mars in the coming decade will be analyzed not only by scientists active today, but by scientists who are not yet born, using laboratory techniques not yet invented," Lunine said. "These precious records of early Mars will be a lasting scientific treasure and a legacy of American technological prowess."

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Study: Life's building blocks are surprisingly stable in Venus-like conditions
https://news.mit.edu/2024/study-lifes-building-blocks-surprisingly-stable-venus-conditions-0320

Results suggest the clouds of Venus could be hospitable for some forms of life.

If there is life in the solar system beyond Earth, it might be found in the clouds of Venus. In contrast to the planet's blisteringly inhospitable surface, Venus' cloud layer, which extends from 30 to 40 miles above the surface, hosts milder temperatures that could support some extreme forms of life.

If it's out there, scientists have assumed that any Venusian cloud inhabitant would look very different from life forms on Earth. That's because the clouds themselves are made from highly toxic droplets of sulfuric acid — an intensely corrosive chemical that is known to dissolve metals and destroy most biological molecules on Earth.

But a new study by MIT researchers may challenge that assumption. Appearing today in the journal Astrobiology, the study reports that, in fact, some key building blocks of life can persist in solutions of concentrated sulfuric acid.

The study's authors have found that 19 amino acids that are essential to life on Earth are stable for up to four weeks when placed in vials of sulfuric acid at concentrations similar to those in Venus' clouds. In particular, they found that the molecular "backbone" of all 19 amino acids remained intact in sulfuric acid solutions ranging in concentration from 81 to 98 percent. 

"What is absolutely surprising is that concentrated sulfuric acid is not a solvent that is universally hostile to organic chemistry," says study co-author Janusz Petkowski, a research affiliate in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS).

"We are finding that building blocks of life on Earth are stable in sulfuric acid, and this is very intriguing for the idea of the possibility of life on Venus," adds study author Sara Seager, MIT's Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Sciences in EAPS and a professor in the departments of Physics and of Aeronautics and Astronautics. "It doesn't mean that life there will be the same as here. In fact, we know it can't be. But this work advances the notion that Venus' clouds could support complex chemicals needed for life."

The study's co-authors include first author Maxwell Seager, an undergraduate in the Department of Chemistry at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Seager's son, and William Bains, a research affiliate at MIT and a scientist at Cardiff University.

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Signs of life detectable in single ice grain emitted from extraterrestrial moons
https://www.washington.edu/news/2024/03/22/signs-of-life-detectable-in-single-ice-grain-emitted-from-extraterrestrial-moons/

The ice-encrusted oceans of some of the moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter are leading candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life. A new lab-based study led by the University of Washington in Seattle and the Freie Universität Berlin shows that individual ice grains ejected from these planetary bodies may contain enough material for instruments headed there in the fall to detect signs of life, if such life exists.

"For the first time we have shown that even a tiny fraction of cellular material could be identified by a mass spectrometer onboard a spacecraft," said lead author Fabian Klenner, a UW postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences. "Our results give us more confidence that using upcoming instruments, we will be able to detect lifeforms similar to those on Earth, which we increasingly believe could be present on ocean-bearing moons."

The open-access study was published March 22 in Science Advances. Other authors in the international team are from The Open University in the U.K.; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; the University of Colorado, Boulder; and the University of Leipzig.

The Cassini mission that ended in 2017 discovered parallel cracks near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Emanating from these cracks are plumes containing gas and ice grains. NASA's Europa Clipper mission, scheduled to launch in October, will carry more instruments to explore in even more detail an icy moon of Jupiter, Europa.

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We need to find life in our solar system

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Yeah

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ExLabs plans mission to rendezvous with asteroid Apophis
https://spacenews.com/exlabs-plans-mission-to-rendezvous-with-asteroid-apophis/

SAN FRANCISCO — Exploration Labs, a Southern California startup focused on space resources, is planning a 2028 mission to rendezvous with the asteroid Apophis before it reaches Earth.

During the mission, ExLabs intends to deposit three cubesats in Apophos' orbit. The flight also is designed to validate systems and software for future campaigns to capture and move near-Earth asteroids into stable orbits for resource acquisition.

"We're creating a unique partnership to enable a new style of lower-cost missions in collaboration with government and commercial partners," ExLabs CEO Matthew Schmidgall told SpaceNews.

ExLabs is developing massive modular spacecraft to host partner payloads, plus robotics to capture and transport space objects to new locations. Space Exploration and Resource Vehicle, or SERV, is ExLabs' spacecraft to host payloads with a mass as high as 30 metric tons in its fully stacked configuration. ExLabs' Arachne Platform is designed to capture and transport noncooperative objects.

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Three-Year Study of Young Stars with NASA's Hubble Enters New Chapter
https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-012

Scientists now begin mining the data for new insights only Hubble can provide

ULLYSES—the largest Hubble Space Telescope program ever executed—recently finished collecting information on almost 500 young stars over a three-year period. Now the hard work of analysis begins as teams of scientists start to dig into the vast treasure trove of data!

This comprehensive survey provides a rich spectroscopic dataset obtained in ultraviolet light, which can only be observed from space. Only Hubble with its ultraviolet capability could accomplish such a study. Described as "transformative" and "impacting overall astrophysics," ULLYSES offers new insights into stellar formation, evolution, and the impact of young stars on their surroundings. This information may eventually be used in ways not yet imagined.

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Sleeping Supermassive Black Holes Awakened Briefly by Shredded Stars
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/sleeping-supermassive-black-holes-awakened-briefly-by-shredded-stars

Radio observations of Compact Symmetric Objects (CSOs) provide new clues about their origins

A new investigation into an obscure class of galaxies known as Compact Symmetric Objects, or CSOs, has revealed that these objects are not entirely what they seem. CSOs are active galaxies that host supermassive black holes at their cores. Out of these monstrous black holes spring two jets traveling in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. But in comparison to other galaxies that boast fierce jets, these jets do not extend out to great distances—they are much more compact. For many decades, astronomers suspected that CSOs were simply young and that their jets would eventually travel out to greater distances.

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SOHO reaches 5000 comets
On March 25, 2024, a citizen scientist in the Czech Republic spotted a comet in an image from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, which has now been confirmed to be the 5,000th comet discovered using SOHO data. SOHO has achieved this milestone over 28 years in space, even though it was never designed to be a comet hunter.

https://www.cobs.si/news/archive/soho-reaches-5000-comets/

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Txantsan

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Fast radio bursts
https://www.uva.nl/en/news-events/news/shorthand-stories/fast-radio-bursts.html?cb

Radio bursts from billions of light years away reveal secrets of the universe

No one knows what causes them, but they may help us map the universe down to its furthest reaches: fast radio bursts. Bright flashes travelling across galaxies, their origins shrouded in mystery but suspected to be unprecedentedly powerful sources billions of light years away. The University of Amsterdam is a world leader in tracing these flashes back to their source galaxies. And if we can find where they come from, we might also be able to figure out how they came to be and what exactly they are.

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Astronomers unveil strong magnetic fields spiraling at the edge of Milky Way's central black hole
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2406/

A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration has uncovered strong and organised magnetic fields spiraling from the edge of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Seen in polarised light for the first time, this new view of the monster lurking at the heart of the Milky Way galaxy has revealed a magnetic field structure strikingly similar to that of the black hole at the centre of the M87 galaxy, suggesting that strong magnetic fields may be common to all black holes. This similarity also hints toward a hidden jet in Sgr A*. The results were published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

In 2022 scientists unveiled the first image of Sgr A* at press conferences around the world, including at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). While the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, which is roughly 27 000 light-years away from Earth, is more than a thousand times smaller and less massive than M87's, the first-ever black hole imaged, the observations revealed that the two look remarkably similar. This made scientists wonder whether the two shared common traits outside of their looks. To find out, the team decided to study Sgr A* in polarised light. Previous studies of light around the M87 black hole (M87*) revealed that the magnetic fields around it allowed the black hole to launch powerful jets of material back into the surrounding environment. Building on this work, the new images have revealed that the same may be true for Sgr A*.

"What we're seeing now is that there are strong, twisted, and organised magnetic fields near the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy," said Sara Issaoun, NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, US, and co-lead of the project. "Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarisation structure to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, we've learned that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them."

Light is an oscillating, or moving, electromagnetic wave that allows us to see objects. Sometimes, light oscillates in a preferred orientation, and we call it 'polarised'. Although polarised light surrounds us, to human eyes it is indistinguishable from 'normal' light. In the plasma around these black holes, particles whirling around magnetic field lines impart a polarisation pattern perpendicular to the field. This allows astronomers to see in increasingly vivid detail what's happening in black hole regions and map their magnetic field lines.

"By imaging polarised light from hot glowing gas near black holes, we are directly inferring the structure and strength of the magnetic fields that thread the flow of gas and matter that the black hole feeds on and ejects," said Harvard Black Hole Initiative Fellow and project co-lead Angelo Ricarte. "Polarised light teaches us a lot more about the astrophysics, the properties of the gas, and mechanisms that take place as a black hole feeds."

But imaging black holes in polarised light isn't as easy as putting on a pair of polarised sunglasses, and this is particularly true of Sgr A*, which is changing so fast that it doesn't sit still for pictures. Imaging the supermassive black hole requires sophisticated tools above and beyond those previously used for capturing M87*, a much steadier target. EHT Project Scientist Geoffrey Bower from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taipei said, "Because Sgr A* moves around while we try to take its picture, it was difficult to construct even the unpolarised image," adding that the first image was an average of multiple images owing to Sgr A*'s movement. "We were relieved that polarised imaging was even possible. Some models were far too scrambled and turbulent to construct a polarised image, but Nature was not so cruel."

Mariafelicia De Laurentis, EHT Deputy Project Scientist and professor at the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, said, "With a sample of two black holes — with very different masses and very different host galaxies — it's important to determine what they agree and disagree on. Since both are pointing us toward strong magnetic fields, it suggests that this may be a universal and perhaps fundamental feature of these kinds of systems. One of the similarities between these two black holes might be a jet, but while we've imaged a very obvious one in M87*, we've yet to find one in Sgr A*."

To observe Sgr A*, the collaboration linked eight telescopes around the world to create a virtual Earth-sized telescope, the EHT. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, and the ESO-hosted Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), both in northern Chile, were part of the network that made the observations, conducted in 2017. 

"As the largest and most powerful of the telescopes in the EHT, ALMA played a key role in making this image possible," says ESO's María Díaz Trigo, European ALMA Programme Scientist. "ALMA is now planning an 'extreme makeover', the Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade, which will make ALMA even more sensitive and keep it a fundamental player in future EHT observations of Sgr A* and other black holes."

The EHT has conducted several observations since 2017 and is scheduled to observe Sgr A* again in April 2024. Each year, the images improve as the EHT incorporates new telescopes, larger bandwidth, and new observing frequencies. Planned expansions for the next decade will enable high-fidelity movies of Sgr A*, may reveal a hidden jet, and could allow astronomers to observe similar polarisation features in other black holes. Meanwhile, extending the EHT into space would provide sharper images of black holes than ever before.

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Hubble Sees New Star Proclaiming Presence with Cosmic Lightshow
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/hubble-sees-new-star-proclaiming-presence-with-cosmic-lightshow/

Jets emerge from the cocoon of a newly forming star to blast across space, slicing through the gas and dust of a shining nebula in this new image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

FS Tau is a multi-star system made up of FS Tau A, the bright star-like object near the middle of the image, and FS Tau B (Haro 6-5B), the bright object to the far right obscured by a dark, vertical lane of dust. The young objects are surrounded by gently illuminated gas and dust of this stellar nursery. The system is only about 2.8 million years old, very young for a star system. Our Sun, by contrast, is about 4.6 billion years old.

FS Tau B is a newly forming star, or protostar, surrounded by a protoplanetary disk, a pancake-shaped collection of dust and gas leftover from the formation of the star that will eventually coalesce into planets. The thick dust lane, seen nearly edge-on, separates what are thought to be the illuminated surfaces of the flared disk.

FS Tau B is likely in the process of becoming a T Tauri star, a type of young variable star that hasn't begun nuclear fusion yet but is beginning to evolve into a hydrogen-fueled star similar to our Sun. Protostars shine with the heat energy released as the gas clouds from which they are forming collapse, and from the accretion of material from nearby gas and dust. Variable stars are a class of star whose brightness changes noticeably over time.

FS Tau A is itself a T Tauri binary system, consisting of two stars orbiting each other.

Protostars are known to eject fast-moving, column-like streams of energized material called jets, and FS Tau B provides a striking example of this phenomenon. The protostar is the source of an unusual asymmetric, double-sided jet, visible here in blue. Its asymmetrical structure may result from the difference in the rates at which mass is being expelled from the object.

FS Tau B is also classified as a Herbig-Haro object. Herbig–Haro objects form when jets of ionized gas ejected by a young star collide with nearby clouds of gas and dust at high speeds, creating bright patches of nebulosity.

FS Tau is part of the Taurus-Auriga region, a collection of dark molecular clouds that are home to numerous newly forming and young stars, roughly 450 light-years away in the constellations of Taurus and Auriga. Hubble has previously observed this region, whose star-forming activity makes it a compelling target for astronomers. Hubble took these observations as part of an investigation of edge-on dust disks around young stellar objects.

Spoiler

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Integral spots giant explosions feeding neutron star jets
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Integral/Integral_spots_giant_explosions_feeding_neutron_star_jets

ESA's gamma-ray space telescope Integral has played a decisive role in capturing jets of matter being expelled into space at one-third the speed of light. The material and energy were liberated when huge explosions occurred on the surface of a neutron star. This world-first observation proved to be 'a perfect experiment' for exploring astrophysical jets of all descriptions.

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Radar journey to centre of Hera's asteroid with Juventas CubeSat
https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Hera/Radar_journey_to_centre_of_Hera_s_asteroid_with_Juventas_CubeSat

A small, shoebox-sized spacecraft delivered to ESA's Hera mission this week promises to make a giant leap forward in planetary science. Once deployed from the Hera spacecraft at the Didymos binary asteroid system, the Juventas CubeSat will perform the first radar probe within an asteroid, peering deep into the heart of the Great-Pyramid-sized Dimorphos moonlet.