Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists were stunned on May 30 when a rock that NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover drove over cracked open to reveal something never seen before on the Red Planet: yellow sulfur crystals.

When Elon’s critics say that Mars colonization is impossible, citing radiation as the main threat. They could not be more wrong…#space #nasa #mars Please…

Call it the force’s doing, but it has been surprises galore for the GEDI mission.

In early 2023, the lidar mission that maps the Earth’s forests in 3D was to be burned up in the atmosphere to make way for another unrelated mission on the International Space Station. A last-minute decision by NASA saved its life and put it on hiatus until October 2024. Earlier this year, another surprise revealed itself: the mission that replaced GEDI was done with its work, effectively allowing GEDI to get back to work six months earlier than expected.

That’s how, in April, a robotic arm ended up moving the GEDI mission (short for Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation and pronounced “Jedi” like in the Star Wars films) from storage on the ISS to its original location, from where it now continues to gather crucial data on aboveground biomass on Earth.

The University of Western Australia’s ‘TeraNet’, a network of optical ground stations specializing in high-speed space communications, has successfully received laser signals from a German satellite in low Earth orbit. This breakthrough paves the way for a 1,000-fold increase in communication bandwidth between space and Earth.

TeraNet’s laser communication test with OSIRISv1 marks a step towards replacing outdated radio systems with high-speed lasers for space communications in Western Australia. With funding from Australian governments, the network aims to support diverse missions, enhancing data transfer capabilities across multiple sectors.

Groundbreaking Laser Communications Test.

LeoLabs will provide space tracking and monitoring, and collision-avoidance services to the U.K. Space Command’s Project Tyche.

“This new planet supports the theory that high eccentricity migration should account for some fraction of hot Jupiters,” said Dr. Sarah Millholland.

How do exoplanets evolve throughout their lifetimes, specifically those known as “hot Jupiters”, which have been found to orbit extremely close to their parent stars? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated the highly eccentric orbit of TIC 241,249,530 b, which is a Jupiter-sized exoplanet located approximately 1,100 light-years from Earth. This study holds the potential to help astronomers better understand the formation of exoplanets like hot Jupiters and how their orbits evolve over time.

Now, TIC 241,249,530 b could help astronomers piece together the evolution of hot Jupiters given the exoplanet’s highly eccentric orbit, meaning it travels very close to its parent star at certain points followed by swinging back out to well beyond the parent star, completing one orbit in 167 days. Astronomers hypothesize this could mean that hot Jupiters initially begin as cold Jupiters in highly eccentric orbits only to slowly become more circular and closer to its parent star over time.

Continue reading “Evolution of Hot Jupiters: From Cold Giants to Star-Hugging Worlds” »

Various forms of hopping robots have crept into development for use in different space exploration missions. We’ve reported on their use on asteroids and even our own moon. But a study funded by NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) in 2018 planned a mission to a type of world where hopping may not be as noticeable an advantage—Europa.

After pondering its existence for decades, scientists have confirmed the first moon cave. Here’s how the structures could contribute to long-term lunar exploration.

“Astronomers have been searching for exoplanets that are likely precursors to hot Jupiters, or that are intermediate products of the migration process, for more than two decades, so I was very surprised — and excited — to find one,” team leader Arvind Gupta, a NOIRLab postdoctoral researcher, said in a statement. “It’s exactly what I was hoping to find.”

The scientists first used the NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet and Stellar Speckle Imager (NESSI) to remove “twinkling” patterns caused by Earth’s atmosphere, as well as reduce noise coming from other sources of light that could pollute the signal from the star TIC 241,249,530 as its planet transits its face.

Next, they measured the velocity of the exoplanet around the star using the NEID spectrograph to determine the star’s shift in light.