Universe Today - Space and astronomy news

Time 2020-07-19 12:03:09

Web Name: Universe Today - Space and astronomy news

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According to the Giant Impact Hypothesis, the Moon formed when a Mars-sized object (named Theia) collided with Earth billion years ago, at a time when the Earth was still a ball of magma. This event not only led to the Earth-Moon system we recognize today, it is also beleived to have led to the differentiation of the Earth s core region into an molten Outer Core and a solid Inner Core. However, there has been an ongoing debate as to the timing of this impact and how long the subsequent formation of the Moon took place. According to a new study by a team of German researchers, the Moon formed from a magma ocean that took up to 200 million years to solidify. This means that the Moon finished forming about 4.425 billion years ago, or 100 million years later than previously thought.Continue reading The Moon Might Have Formed a Little Later than Originally Believed Posted on July 17, 2020Curiosity Is Going To Spend Its Summer Driving Around a Dangerous Sandy Region on Mars Do road trips actually require roads? Not if you’re NASA’s Curiosity rover, who is embarking on an extended 1 mile long road trip this summer up the side of Mount Sharp.The rover will be moving between two “units” of Gale Crater, where it has been exploring since 2014.  It’s wrapping up experiments in the “clay-bearing unit”, which resulted in the highest concentrations of clay found during the mission.  It’s now moving to the “sulfate-bearing unit”, which is expected to contain an abundance of sulfates, such as gypsum and Epsom salts.Continue reading Curiosity Is Going To Spend Its Summer Driving Around a Dangerous Sandy Region on Mars Posted on July 17, 2020July 16, 2020Supernovae shockwaves aren t spherical In February of 2017, the scientific community rejoiced as NASA announced that a nearby star (TRAPPIST-1) had a system of no less than seven rocky planets! Since that time, astronomers have conducted all kinds of follow-up observations and studies in the hopes of learning more about these exoplanets. In particular, they have been attempting to learn if any of the planets located in the stars Habitable Zone (HZ) could actually be habitable.Many of these studies have been concerned with whether or not the TRAPPIST-1 planets have sufficient water on their surfaces. But just as important is the question of whether or not any have viable atmospheres. In a recent study that provides an overview of all observations to date on TRAPPIST-1 planets, a team found that depending on the planet in question, they are likely to have good atmospheres, if any at all.Read more Posted on July 16, 2020July 16, 2020A Stellar Stream of Stars, Stolen from Another Galaxy Modern professional astronomers aren t much like astronomers of old. They don t spend every suitable evening with their eyes glued to a telescope s eyepiece. You might be more likely to find them in front of a super-computer, working with AI and deep learning methods.One group of researchers employed those methods to find a whole new collection of stars in the Milky Way; a group of stars which weren t born here.Continue reading A Stellar Stream of Stars, Stolen from Another Galaxy Posted on July 16, 2020July 16, 2020Perseverance Has Been Put Inside its Atlas V Rocket This summer between July 30th and August 15th NASA s Perseverance rover will begin its long journey for Mars. Once it arrives (by February of 2021), it will join its sister mission, the Curiosity rover, and a slew of other robotic landers and orbiters that are busy characterizing the atmosphere and surface of the Red Planet. Ultimately, the goal of Perseverance is to determine if Mars once supported life (and maybe still does!)Just last week (July 7th), the Perseverance rover and all the other elements of the Mars 2020 spacecraft were loaded aboard the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket that will send it on its way. This included the aeroshell, cruise stage, and descent stage, which will be responsible for transporting the Perseverance rover during its six-month journey to Mars and depositing it on the surface. Continue reading Perseverance Has Been Put Inside its Atlas V Rocket Posted on July 16, 2020July 16, 2020White dwarfs are a big source of carbon in the Universe Every 26 months, the orbits of both Earth and Mars conspire to make travel between the two planets shorter. Launching in one of these windows means the travel time can be reduced to only six months. Our robotic missions to the Martian surface, and missions that place satellites in Martian orbit, launch during these windows. But are there other alternatives to this mission architecture?One group of researchers says that crewed missions to Mars shouldn t go directly to their destination; they should slingshot past Venus first.Continue reading Instead of Going Straight to Mars, Astronauts Should Make a Slingshot Past Venus First Posted on July 16, 2020More Details On NASA s VERITAS Mission, Which Could Go to Venus Venus has always been a bit of the odd stepchild in the solar system. It’s similarities to Earth are uncanny: roughly the same size, mass, and distance from the sun. But the development paths the two planets ended up taking were very different, with one being the birthplace of all life as we know it, and the other becoming a cloud-covered, highly pressurized version of hell. That cloud cover, which is partially made up of sulfuric acid, has also given the planet an air of mystery. So much so that astronomers in the early 20th century speculated that there could be dinosaurs roaming about on the surface.Some of that mystery will melt away if a team from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory gets a chance to launch their newest idea for a mission to the planet, the Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topograph, and Spectroscopy (or VERITAS) mission.Continue reading More Details On NASA s VERITAS Mission, Which Could Go to Venus

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