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Category: space – Page 67

The dream of traversing the depths of space and planting the seed of human civilization on another planet has existed for generations. For long as we’ve known that most stars in the Universe are likely to have their own system of planets, there have been those who advocated that we explore them (and even settle on them). With the dawn of the Space Age, this idea was no longer just the stuff of science fiction and became a matter of scientific study. Unfortunately, the challenges of venturing beyond Earth and reaching another star system are myriad.

When it comes down to it, there are only two ways to send crewed missions to exoplanets. The first is to develop advanced propulsion systems that can achieve relativistic speeds (a fraction of the speed of light). The second involves building spacecraft that can sustain crews for generations – aka. a Generation Ship (or Worldship). On November 1st, 2024, Project Hyperion launched a design competition for crewed interstellar travel via generation ships that would rely on current and near-future technologies. The competition is open to the public and will award a total of $10,000 (USD) for innovative concepts.

Project Hyperion is an international, interdisciplinary team composed of architects, engineers, anthropologists, and urban planners. Many of them have worked with agencies and institutes like NASA, the ESA, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Their competition is sponsored by the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is), a non-profit organization incorporated in the UK dedicated to research that will enable robotic and human exploration and the settlement of exoplanets around nearby stars.

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Until now, only a small fraction of meteorites that land on Earth had been firmly linked back to their parent body out in space – but a set of new studies has just given us compelling origin stories for more than 90 percent of meteorites today.

Past analyses of meteorites striking our planet today suggest some kind of shared origin; they’re made from very similar materials and have been baked by cosmic radiation for a suspiciously short amount of time, hinting at a relatively recent break-up from shared parent bodies.

The teams behind three new published papers used a combination of super-detailed telescope observations and computer modeling simulations to compare asteroids out in space with meteorites recovered on Earth, matching up rock types and orbital paths between the two.

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Today, only about 6% of the observable Universe is reachable due to cosmic expansion.

The Universe is a vast, wondrous, and strange place. From our perspective within it, we can see out for some 46 billion light-years in all directions. Everywhere we look, we see a Universe filled with stars and galaxies, but are they all unique? Is it possible, perhaps, that if you look far enough in one direction and see a galaxy, that you’d also see that same galaxy, from a different perspective, in the opposite direction? Could the Universe actually loop back on itself? And if you traveled far enough in a straight line, would you eventually return to your starting point, just as if you traveled in any one direction for long enough on the surface of the Earth? Or would something stop you?

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Part of a groundbreaking effort to harness artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory is a key collaborator in the newly launched NSF-Simons AI Institute for the Sky (SkAI, pronounced “sky”), led by Northwestern University.

Jointly funded by a $20 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Simons Foundation, SkAI aims to revolutionize how researchers explore the universe by developing innovative AI technologies capable of handling the vast data generated by astronomical surveys.

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As detailed in a new study published in the journal Astronomy & and Astrophysics, the tunnel exists as part of an enormous structure of hot gas with a radius of hundreds of light years that surrounds our solar system known as the Local Hot Bubble. What’s more, the findings suggest that it could connect with a nearby and even larger bubble.

Using extensive data collected by the eROSITA telescope, the first x-ray observatory fully outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, the researchers generated a 3D model of the entire LHB, confirming some features that astronomers had predicted, but also uncovering entirely new ones.

“What we didn’t know was the existence of an interstellar tunnel towards Centaurus, which carves a gap in the cooler interstellar medium,” said study coauthor Michael Freyberg, an astronomer at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in a statement. “This region stands out in stark relief thanks to the much-improved sensitivity of eROSITA and a vastly different surveying strategy compared to ROSAT,” the space telescope’s predecessor.

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According to Banerjee and colleagues, that could drive enough volcanism to blanket the planet in sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide.

But other planetary scientists aren’t so sure, and that underscores how difficult it is to understand what we’re seeing when we look at an exoplanet’s atmosphere from 35 light years away, even with a powerful and sensitive telescope like JWST.

“The era of detection and characterization of atmospheres around rocky exoplanets is now here,” write Banerjee and colleagues in their recent paper. And that’s true, but it’s not always as straightforward as astronomers might hope.

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SAN FRANCISCO – Austrian space domain awareness startup iSEE Global established a U.S. subsidiary in Arlington, Virginia, led by former Kleos Space CEO Andy Bowyer.

The U.S. subsidiary of iSEE, which stands for Impact Space Expedition & Exploration Global Corp., seeks “proximity to key government and defense customers, like the U.S. Space Force, and major commercial clients,” Bowyer told SpaceNews by email. “The U.S. is the biggest and most influential SDA [space domain awareness] market.”

Having a U.S. subsidiary will help iSEE “navigate the complex regulatory requirements,” Bowyer said.

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WASHINGTON — The Defense Department should step up support of commercial space companies to take advantage of capabilities that might otherwise be lost, a new report concludes.

That recommendation is among several in a study called Space Agenda 2025 released Oct. 24 by The Aerospace Corporation and its Center for Space Policy and Strategy (CSPS). The report is intended to provide advice to the next administration on key topics in civil, commercial and national security space.

In a briefing held in advance of the report’s release, Sam Wilson, systems director at CSPS, said the Defense Department is benefitting from growing commercial capabilities in areas like commercial remote sensing, much of which was fueled by a boom in private investment in space companies several years ago. Private investment has dropped significantly since a peak in 2021, though, and investors say access to capital remains difficult for space companies today, especially those trying to raise larger, later rounds.

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