Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 134

NASA announced the cancellation of a scheduled spacewalk for astronauts aboard the International Space Station out of fear of space debris.

The space agency announced via its Twitter account that the spacewalk was canceled as there was a potential threat of space debris being a danger for astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron. The ISS astronauts were going on a spacewalk to replace a faulty antenna system. NASA has provided updates to its blog post on its website, where it writes that it received a "debris notification" before the spacewalk was meant to take place and decided to postpone the walk until further assessment of the situation has been done.

A new release from the European Space Agency (ESA) has detailed the discovery of the closest pair of merging supermassive black holes to Earth.

The team of researchers behind the study that's been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics state that they have never found a pair of merging supermassive black holes as close as the pair that reside in the center of the galaxy NGC 7727. The galaxy resides in the constellation Aquarius and is around 89 million light-years away from Earth. Research indicates that the two supermassive black holes will become one in around 250 million years.

The lead author on the new study, Karina Voggel, an astronomer at the Strasbourg Observatory in France, says that merging black holes within NGC 7727 has broken the record for the closest pair of merging black holes to Earth by more than half the previous record holder. The record that was just broken was held by a pair of merging black holes 470 million light-years away from Earth, which is more than five times the distance than the two that were recently discovered.

A team of researchers have analyzed samples from an asteroid and found evidence that suggests Earth's earliest water came from space rocks and the Sun.

The team of researchers published a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy, and it outlines an isotopic analysis of samples from the asteroid Itokawa. This asteroid orbits the Sun every eighteen months, and researchers were interested in its isotopic composition to answer the question about how Earth's surface became 70% water.

For some time, scientists have thought that carbon-rich asteroids brought water to Earth, but the chemical fingerprint of the asteroids didn't quite match Earth's, hence why researchers are looking into different asteroids. The researchers in the recently published study found that the interaction between solar wind that's constantly produced by the Sun and dust particles from the asteroid samples caused the earliest water to begin forming on Earth.

Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB) is the largest comet ever observed, and a new study from the University of Maryland shows it may have been active a lot longer than previously thought.

Comets are conglomerations of ice and dust left over from the formation of a solar system, and as one approaches a star, it will warm and begin to vaporize. A comet is active when the ice vaporizes, creating an envelope of dust and vapor around it known as the coma. The ice within the comet could be frozen water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, or several other compounds, all requiring different conditions to vaporize.

BB is massive, at 100 kilometers across, and exists in our solar system further from the Sun than Uranus. Using the Transient Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to examine previous observations of BB, researchers determined from its distance from the Sun and its size, BB's coma is made primarily from carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide can begin to vaporize up to five times farther from the Sun than where BB was first observed, suggesting BB has been active for significantly longer.

NGC 6891 exists in the constellation Delphinus, or the Dolphin, and is a bright, asymmetrical planetary nebula.

NGC 6891 is a bright, asymmetrical planetary nebula. It is made from gas that has been ionized by the central white dwarf star, stripping electrons from hydrogen atoms in the nebula. The glowing gas of the nebula results from light emitted as electrons lose energy recombining with hydrogen nuclei.

Hubble has captured this image, showing several structural elements, including a spherical outer halo, expanding faster than the inner nebula, and at least two ellipsoidal shells. Astronomers estimate from their motion that one of the shells is 4,800 years old, while the outer halo is 28,000 years old. Also revealed in the nebula's interior are filaments and knots surrounding the white dwarf star in the center. These elements indicate periodic outbursts radiating from the dying star.

A comet that was first discovered at the beginning of the year will soon approach Earth. It will be its first visit for about 70,000 years.

Gregory J. Leonard, a senior researcher at the Department of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona, discovered the comet at the Mount Lemmon Observatory, which has been appropriately named C/2021 A1 Leonard. The comet is now expected to make a close approach to Earth in December, and researchers are hoping that it will be close enough and bright enough to be visible with the naked eye. Researchers suspect that C/2021 A1 Leonard may be visible for several days despite the speed at which it will be traveling by Earth.

So, why hasn't it flown past Earth for 70,000 years? Research suggests that the comet's orbit is severely elliptical. A good way to envision this is to picture Earth's circular orbit around the Sun and change the circle shape into an oval. C/2021 A1 Leonard is due to enter the inner solar system, where it will then gain speed and be shot off in slingshot-like fashion by the immense gravity of the Sun back into deep space, where it will remain there for some tens of thousands of years.

A statement from the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory (INL) are partnering with NASA to get a nuclear reactor onto the Moon within the next 10 years.

According to the statement, the INL is partnering with NASA to figure out a way to get a uranium-powered nuclear reactor to fit inside a 12-foot-long by 18-foot-wide rocket. Both agencies are currently seeking proposals from the private industry and the proposal has requirements, which are as follows; the reactor must be a uranium-powered nuclear fission reactor that weighs no more than 13,200 pounds, that gives at least 40 kilowatts of power for at least 10 years and has controls to make sure the temperature is regulated.

Space weather forecasters announced that the Earth was going to be sideswiped by a blast from the Sun, and now the blast has arrived.

On November 27, forecasters predicted that a coronal mass ejection (CME) was going to hit Earth and possibly cause G1-class geomagnetic storms, and as predicted, the blast from the Sun hit Earth's magnetic field but didn't cause any geomagnetic storms. Instruments monitoring the Sun observed a plasma filament snapping, which caused a "canyon of fire" to be seen for more than six hours.

Spaceweather watches predicted that the CME could cause Arctic auroras to appear, which is a fantastic opportunity for incredible photographs. As Earth passed into the wake of the CME, a crack was opened in Earth's magnetic field, which caused the solar wind to hit the atmosphere, sparking an aurora to be created around the Arctic Circle. An aurora tour guide, Marianne Bergli, photographed the above aurora from Tromso, Norway. Bergli said, "My guests were a little skeptical at first ... then Boom! Wow, Fantastic. The colors were absolutely amazing."

The American Meteor Society (AMS) has confirmed multiple sightings of a fireball lighting up the night sky over multiple US states.

A new event has been confirmed on the American Meteor Society website details a fireball sighting reported by 34 individuals across L, AR, GA, MS, and TN on Sunday, November 28th, 2021, at around 23:50 UT. For those that don't know, a fireball is a meteor that has entered Earth's atmosphere and has begun burning up. For a meteor to be considered a fireball, it must shine brighter than the planet Venus.

The above video was captured and sent to the AMS by Justin Oden from Dora, Alabama. The video shows the fireball entering the field of view in the top right and exponentially getting brighter and brighter. The AMS event log states that Oden saw the fireball for around 3.5 seconds before it disappeared in the night sky. If you are interested in reading more about these fireball sightings, check out the AMS event log here.

A collection of images of the International Space Station (ISS) have been published by NASA, showcasing the floating laboratory in all its glory.

The images were taken back on November 8 when the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule Endeavor was leaving the ISS for a return journey back to Earth with four astronauts. Before Endeavor made its way back down to the surface of Earth, it did a complete 360-degree fly-around the ISS, which Space.com reports is a maneuver that hasn't been performed since NASA retired its space shuttle fleet back in 2011. So, why fly around the ISS?

Besides the fun that the astronauts would have had flying around the ISS, the maneuver was also practical as it assisted Endeavors navigation system and allowed for astronauts to take photos of the ISS from angles that aren't usually visible to ISS managers. The photos are truly stunning and capture an incredible feat the human civilization has achieved. The ISS is a $100 billion floating laboratory used by many nations around the world, and these images represent a successful joint effort between many countries. What an achievement!

Researchers have published a new study in The Astrophysical Journal, simulating tidal disruptions and analyzing their dependence on stellar and black hole mass.

Using supercomputer simulations, the research team modeled the outcome of eight different stars approaching a black hole with a mass of one million times our Sun. All of the stars are stretched and deformed by the gravitational forces of the black hole, undergoing spaghettification, with gravity destroying some entirely. When destroyed in a "tidal disruption event," the star is pulled apart into a long stream of gas and absorbed by the black hole.

The simulations are the first to combine realistic stellar density models with the physical effects of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Simulated stars had masses ranging from one-tenth to ten times the mass of the Sun. The team found that the star's survival depends more on its density than its mass alone.

Lin Meng won the grand prize for 2021's Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists for her research into how city environments impact tree phenology.

"Phenology is the study of periodic events in biological life cycles and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as habitat factor," according to Wikipedia. Meng set out to determine how global warming and bright artificial lighting conditions in cities changed when trees started growing leaves in spring.

Previous research has shown that higher temperatures impact vegetation growth in cities, so the following question is how global warming affects that. Meng analyzed satellite data spanning 2001 to 2014 and 85 cities in the United States to find when trees began growing leaves. Trees "greened up" an average of six days earlier and were responding more rapidly to climate change in urban areas than in rural areas.

Prichal, the new Russian docking module, has successfully arrived at the International Space Station (ISS).

Prichal joined with Russia's Nauka module aboard the ISS at 15:19 UTC, slightly ahead of schedule, with the docking hooks closing at 15:25 UTC. The module arrived with around 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of cargo and supplies for the crew aboard the ISS.

A crater may disappear long after a meteorite impact, but a new method of finding impact sites despite this has been uncovered.

Gunther Kletetschka of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute has identified the significantly reduced level of natural remanent magnetization in rock as the key to defining a meteorite impact site. Rocks naturally have 2-3% remanent magnetization, referring to the number of magnetic mineral grains they contain, typically magnetite, hematite, or both. When collecting samples from the Santa Fe Impact Structure in New Mexico (pictured above), Kletetschka found they contained less than 0.1% magnetism.

Kletetschka determined that during a meteorite impact, the plasma created and changes in the electrons within the atoms of the rocks being struck decreased their magnetism. The Santa Fe Impact Structure consists of many shatter cones, which are believed to form only when rock is subjected to high pressure and high-velocity shockwaves, for example, a meteorite impact. Before these telltale shatter cones are uncovered, this discovery allows scientists to identify an impact site that has eroded and become unrecognizable or define the extent of an already identified impact site.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe has just completed its 10th pass of the Sun, and during its fly-by, it smashed two world records.

The NASA probe made an extremely close encounter with the Sun on November 21, 2021, at 4:35 am EST. The probe was just 5.3 million miles away from the surface of our star and passed by at a ridiculous speed of 363,660 mph, making it the fastest artificial object ever created. Additionally, the Parker Solar Probe also broke the record for the closest satellite to survive a near pass of the Sun.

The probe will continue to orbit and increasingly get closer to the Sun, eventually coming within 4.3 million miles from the surface at speeds above 430,000 mph. With each pass, the probe collects valuable data about our star and relays the information back to Earth for scientists to interpret. Information regarding solar wind, and the amount of dust particles in the area are two main sets of data the probe collects. If you are interested in reading more about this story, check out this link here.

A team of researchers has published a new study in the journal BioScience on November 17, and it details warnings for increasing Earth's biosecurity as the human race accelerates its push into space exploration.

The paper concentrates on how humans in the past have moved species to new environments only for those species to have a negative effect on the environment, driving out the native species. The researchers believe that humans can do the same thing with planets when we begin visiting them and that alien life on other planets could accidentally be brought back to Earth via astronauts. Humans spreading bacteria from Earth on a planet may cause devastating effects on the planet's evolution. The same way alien bacteria being brought to Earth and potentially becoming harmful to life would cause havoc.

The new study calls for more papers to be written as collaborations between astrobiologists that are hunting for signs of life in the universe as well as invasion biologists that are studying invasive species on Earth. Lead author Anthony Ricciardi, a professor of invasion biology at McGill University in Montreal, said to Live Science, "We can only speculate on what kinds of organisms might be encountered if astrobiologists were to find life. The most plausible life-forms would be microbial and probably resemble bacteria."

If you have booked your tickets to become an astronaut with Blue Origin, you will be staying in Jeff Bezos' Astronaut Village.

Space tourists flying with Blue Origin will stay in Astronaut Village, located about 15 miles away from the launch site in Van Horn, Texas desert. Passengers will sleep in Airstream trailers, and according to Don DiCostanzo, a business owner who was Star Trek actor William Shatner's wingman told Insider in an interview conducted earlier that the campsite is located down a dirt road that has "tight security". Additionally, Chris Boshuizen, who joined Shatner on his space flight, said that Astronaut Village was a "perfect little campsite."

Future astronauts are given their own Airstream trailer to sleep in, which has had its interior outfitted to look more like a hotel than a camper van. According to Boshuizen, "It's not like a five-star hotel or anything. They have historic artifacts here and there in the different rooms, so you really feel like you're in a place with some connection to past and future". Astronaut Village is also equipped with its own restaurant and bar where future astronauts can enjoy a nice seating arrangement around a fire pit.

Researchers in many fields are yet to fully understand what they are studying, but every day we move closer to uncovering the answers to some of the most difficult questions.

Outlined in this article are just seven questions that have puzzled researchers for quite some time, and while they are extremely difficult to answer, they aren't impossible. In all of the questions, scientists have a basic understanding of the topic but haven't yet been able to fully answer the entire question.

As time continues and technology advances, it can be assumed that some of these questions will be answered and replaced by others.

In a newly released data dump by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia mission, what we thought of as satellite galaxies to the Milky Way are not all they seem.

For decades scientists have believed the dwarf galaxies surrounding the Milky Way to be satellites, galaxies orbiting our own that have been doing so for billions of years. However, new data from ESA's Gaia mission has been used to calculate the movements of these galaxies, revealing they aren't orbiting the Milky Way at all.

Researchers computed the three-dimensional velocities for forty dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way, then used them to calculate the galaxy's orbital energies and angular (rotational) momentum. They found the galaxies to be moving significantly faster than other giant stars and star clusters known to orbit the Milky Way. The research team concluded that the dwarf galaxies could not yet be orbiting the Milky Way, as it would have attenuated their orbital energies and angular momentum.

The Russian cargo ship "Progress 78" has departed the International Space Station (ISS), freeing up space for the inbound Prichal module.

Also known as Progress MS-17, Progress 78 launched on June 29th, 2021, to the ISS, delivering over 3,600 pounds (1,630 kilograms) of supplies two days after it launched. Progress 78 undocked from Russia's Nauka science module at 11:22 UTC, November 25th, set on a destructive trajectory into Earth's atmosphere. A new Russian docking port module named Prichal (Russian for "pier") is set to take its place, launching toward the ISS on November 24th.

Prichal's role will be for "testing architecture for potentially permanent settlements in space" according to RussianSpaceWeb.com. Another Progress spacecraft is bringing the Prichal module to the ISS, after which it will undock from Prichal and meet the same fate as Progress 78. Progress 78 was expected to burn up upon re-entry to Earth's atmosphere above the Pacific ocean, roughly four hours following undocking.