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Categories: Space: The Solar System

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Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
Published

NASA's Perseverance rover investigates geologically rich Mars terrain      (via sciencedaily.com) 

NASA's Perseverance rover is well into its second science campaign, collecting rock-core samples from features within an area long considered by scientists to be a top prospect for finding signs of ancient microbial life on Mars.

Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
Published

Saturn's rings and tilt could be the product of an ancient, missing moon      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Scientists propose a lost moon of Saturn, which they call Chrysalis, pulled on the planet until it ripped apart, forming rings and contributing to Saturn's tilt.

Geoscience: Geomagnetic Storms Space: Structures and Features Space: The Solar System
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Where do high-energy particles that endanger satellites, astronauts and airplanes come from?      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Astrophysicists show how and when specific particles form and offers clues to questions that have troubled scientists since the 1940s.

Space: Structures and Features Space: The Solar System
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Could more of Earth's surface host life?      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Of all known planets, Earth is as friendly to life as any planet could possibly be -- or is it? If Jupiter's orbit changes, a new study shows Earth could be more hospitable than it is today.

Space: Structures and Features Space: The Solar System
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Surprise finding suggests 'water worlds' are more common than we thought      (via sciencedaily.com) 

A new study suggests that many more planets may have large amounts of water than previously thought--as much as half water and half rock. The catch? All that water is probably embedded in the rock, rather than flowing as oceans or rivers on the surface.

Space: Structures and Features Space: The Solar System
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Planetary heist: Astronomers show massive stars can steal Jupiter-sized planets      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Jupiter-sized planets can be stolen or captured by massive stars in the densely populated stellar nurseries where most stars are born, a new study has found.

Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
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Martian rock-metal composite shows potential of 3D printing on Mars      (via sciencedaily.com) 

A small amount of simulated crushed Martian rock mixed with a titanium alloy made a stronger, high-performance material in a 3D-printing process that could one day be used on Mars to make tools or rocket parts. The parts were made by researchers with as little as 5% up to 100% Martian regolith, a black powdery substance meant to mimic the rocky, inorganic material found on the surface of the red planet. While the parts with 5% Martian regolith were strong, the 100% regolith parts proved brittle and cracked easily. Still, even high-Martian content materials would be useful in making coatings to protect equipment from rust or radiation damage.

Space: The Solar System
Published

Making nanodiamonds out of bottle plastic      (via sciencedaily.com) 

What goes on inside planets like Neptune and Uranus? To find out, an international team conducted a novel experiment. They fired a laser at a thin film of simple PET plastic and investigated what happened using intensive laser flashes. One result was that the researchers were able to confirm their earlier thesis that it really does rain diamonds inside the ice giants at the periphery of our solar system. And another was that this method could establish a new way of producing nanodiamonds, which are needed, for example, for highly-sensitive quantum sensors.

Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
Published

MOXIE experiment reliably produces oxygen on Mars      (via sciencedaily.com) 

The MOXIE experiment has now produced oxygen on Mars. It is the first demonstration of in-situ resource utilization on the Red Planet, and a key step in the goal of sending humans on a Martian mission.

Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
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MAVEN and EMM make first observations of patchy proton aurora at Mars      (via sciencedaily.com) 

NASA's MAVEN and the United Arab Emirates' EMM missions have released joint observations of dynamic proton aurora events at Mars. By combining the observations, scientists determined that what they were seeing was essentially a map of where the solar wind was raining down onto the planet, opening new avenues for understanding the Martian atmosphere.

Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
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The sands of Mars are green as well as red, rover Perseverance discovers      (via sciencedaily.com) 

The accepted view of Mars is red rocks and craters as far as the eye can see. That's much what scientists expected when they landed the rover Perseverance in the Jezero Crater, a spot chosen partly for the crater's history as a lake and as part of a rich river system, back when Mars had liquid water, air and a magnetic field. What the rover found once on the ground was startling: Rather than the expected sedimentary rocks -- washed in by rivers and accumulated on the lake bottom -- many of the rocks are volcanic in nature. Specifically, they are composed of large grains of olivine, the muddier less-gemlike version of peridot that tints so many of Hawaii's beaches dark green.

Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
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First underground radar images from Mars Perseverance Rover reveal some surprises      (via sciencedaily.com) 

NASA's Perseverance landed on Mars in February 2021 and has been gathering data on the planet's geology and climate and searching for signs of ancient life. The rover's subsurface radar experiment has returned images showing unexpected variations in rock layers beneath the Jezero crater. The variations could indicate past lava flows or possibly a river delta even older than the one currently being explored on the crater floor.

Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
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NASA schedules PUNCH mission to launch in 2025      (via sciencedaily.com) 

More than 60 engineers and scientists are gathering at Southwest Research Institute Aug. 23-24 to kick off the launch vehicle collaboration for NASA's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission. PUNCH, which will study the inception of the solar wind, has secured its ride into Earth orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, sharing a ride into space with NASA's Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Re-ionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx) mission.

Physics: Acoustics and Ultrasound Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
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Saturn V was loud but didn't melt concrete      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Abundant internet claims about the acoustic power of the Saturn V suggest that it melted concrete and lit grass on fire over a mile away, but such ideas are undeniably false. Researchers used a physics-based model to estimate the rocket's acoustic levels and obtained a value of 203 decibels, which matched the limited data from the 1960s. So, while the Saturn V was extremely loud, that kind of power is nowhere near enough to melt concrete or start grass fires.

Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
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Breaking in a new planet      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Impacts affect the porosity and structure of moons and planets more dramatically than scientists suspected, increasing their potential habitability for life. Studying how those impacts affect planetary bodies, asteroids, moons and other rocks in space helps planetary scientists understand extraplanetary geology, especially where to look for precious matter including water, ice and even, potentially, microbial life.

Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
Published

Mars model provides method for landing humans on Red Planet      (via sciencedaily.com) 

A mathematical model developed by space medicine experts could be used to predict whether an astronaut can safely travel to Mars and fulfill their mission duties upon stepping foot on the Red Planet.

Space: Exploration Space: The Solar System
Published

Harvesting resources on Mars with plasmas      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers have devised a plasma-based way to produce and separate oxygen within the Martian environment. It's a complementary approach to NASA's Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment and may deliver high rates of molecule production per kilogram of instrumentation sent to space. The team presents the method for harnessing and processing local resources to generate products on Mars.

Space: The Solar System
Published

Hubble sees red supergiant star Betelgeuse slowly recovering after blowing its top      (via sciencedaily.com) 

The star Betelgeuse appears as a brilliant, ruby-red, twinkling spot of light in the upper right shoulder of the winter constellation Orion the Hunter. But when viewed close up, astronomers know it as a seething monster with a 400-day-long heartbeat of regular pulsations. This aging star is classified as a supergiant because it has swelled up to an astonishing diameter of approximately 1 billion miles. If placed at the center of our solar system it would reach out to the orbit of Jupiter. The star's ultimate fate is to explode as a supernova.

Space: The Solar System
Published

One more clue to the Moon's origin      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers discover the first definitive proof that the Moon inherited indigenous noble gases from the Earth's mantle. The discovery represents a significant piece of the puzzle towards understanding how the Moon and, potentially, the Earth and other celestial bodies were formed.

Space: Structures and Features Space: The Solar System
Published

Planet formation: ALMA detects gas in a circumplanetary disk      (via sciencedaily.com) 

Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study planet formation have made the first-ever detection of gas in a circumplanetary disk. What's more, the detection also suggests the presence of a very young exoplanet.