Lifeboat Foundation

“Studying how known benchmarks like Uranus appear in distant imaging can help us have more robust expectations when preparing for these future missions,” said Samantha Hasler. “And that will be critical to our success.”

How can Uranus teach us about exoplanets? This is what a recent study presented at the 56th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how gas giants like Uranus can be used to better understand the characteristics of exoplanets. While exoplanets have been discovered using the direct imaging method, no exoplanet has been directly imaged itself. Therefore, this study holds the potential to use gas giant planets within our solar system as analogs for exoplanets throughout the cosmos.

For the study, the researchers analyzed data collected from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft and the Hubble Space Telescope to study the atmosphere of Uranus in various wavelengths. Both telescopes exhibit different imaging properties, as Hubble is built to obtain up-close images from far away while New Horizons is built to obtain up-close images from close-up. As a result, the images from Hubble revealed far more detail while the images from New Horizons revealed Uranus as a small dot.

Continue reading “Beyond Our Solar System: How Uranus Prepares Us for Exoplanet Discovery” »

No new launch date has yet been set for the delayed mission.

Astronomers are reveling in the James Webb Space Telescope’s discoveries about the formative epoch of cosmic history.

The Sun has started spooky season with a bang, letting loose on October 1 with a colossal flare and coronal mass ejection headed right for Earth.

The flare clocked in at X7.1 – the second most powerful flare of the current solar cycle, and one of the most powerful solar flares ever measured, sitting within the top 30 flares over the last 30 years.

We’re not in any danger, but the NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center has forecast minor to strong geomagnetic storms over the next few days, from 3 to 5 October, as we await the gust of solar particles as the coronal mass ejection blasts through the Solar System.

“The isotope values of these carbonates point toward extreme amounts of evaporation, suggesting that these carbonates likely formed in a climate that could only support transient liquid water,” said Dr. David Burtt.

Was the planet Mars ever habitable and what conditions led to it becoming the uninhabitable world we see today? This is what a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences hopes to address as a team of researchers from the United States and Canada investigated how carbonate minerals found within Gale Crater on Mars could help paint a clearer picture of past conditions on the Red Planet and whether it was habitable. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of Mars and whether it once had the necessary conditions to support life as we know it.

Studying carbonate minerals is important due to their ability to tell scientists how a climate formed and evolved over time, with these carbonate minerals containing large amounts of carbon and oxygen isotopes, specifically Carbon-13 and Oxygen-18, which the study notes is the highest amount of these isotopes identified on the Red Planet. Carbon-13 and Oxygen-18 are known as environmental isotopes, which are used to better understand the interactions between a planet’s ocean and atmosphere and how life could exist. While Earth is the only known planet to support life, studying these isotopes on Mars could help scientists better understand if life could have formed on Mars long ago.

Continue reading “The Habitable Mars? Examining Isotopes in Gale Crater” »

BepiColombo’s 2023 flyby of Mercury’s magnetosphere uncovered unexpected insights into plasma and surface composition.

High-speed free-space data transmission could improve connectivity for space missions.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have achieved record-breaking data transmission speeds using plasmonic modulators, promising advancements in space communication and potential global high-speed internet access. With speeds potentially reaching 1.4 Tbit/s, this technology could change how the world connects.

Scientists have achieved data rates as high as 424Gbit/s across a 53-km (33-mile) turbulent free-space optical link using plasmonic modulators—devices that use special light waves called surface plasmon polaritons to control and modify optical signals. This new research establishes the foundation for high-speed optical communication links that transmit data through open air or space.

An exploration of the possibilities of alien survival von neumann probes designed to serve as lifeboats for interstellar travelers.

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Continue reading “Alien Messages in The Cold and the Dark: Survival Machines” »

The team also studied the direct interaction between charged particles in the solar wind as well as plasma around Mercury and BepiColombo itself. This process is complicated by the fact that when the spacecraft is facing the sun, it is heated and cooled, and heavier charged particles called ions can’t be detected because BepiColombo becomes electrically charged and repels them.

However, when BepiColombo slips into the shadow of Mercury, cool ions in a sea of plasma become detectable. This allowed BepiColombo to see ions of the elements oxygen, sodium and potassium around Mercury. The team thinks these particles originated from the surface of the tiny planet and were launched into space by meteorite strikes or solar wind bombardment.

“It’s like we’re suddenly seeing the surface composition ‘exploded’ in 3D through the planet’s very thin atmosphere, known as its exosphere,” MPPE instrument lead Dominique Delcourt, from the Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, said in the statement. “It’s really exciting to start seeing the link between the planet’s surface and the plasma environment.”