Astronomy

In 1973 Concorde broke the record for the longest total solar eclipse in history by extending totality to 74 minutes.

Total solar eclipses have set the stage for major scientific advancements—everything from the discovery of helium to the testing of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Launched on 21 February 2024 on Apple TV+, new original series Constellation has gripped viewers with its mix of sci-fi and mind-bending mystery.

Venus and Jupiter may shine through the blue sky during the April 8th solar eclipse even if the eclipse for you is only deep partial. After dark, Orion walks down in the southwest.

The post This Week's Sky at a Glance, April 5 – 14 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

North America will have a total solar eclipse on 8 April – here is where, when and how to view it safely

North America will have a total solar eclipse on 8 April – here is where, when and how to view it safely

Image: This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image features part of Victoria, a state in southeast Australia.

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Pablo Álvarez Fernández, one of ESA's five astronaut candidates currently undergoing basic astronaut training at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany, shares his experiences in astronaut training, his favourite lessons, and his view on the future of space exploration. Also, stay tuned to hear his favourite space-related quote and movie!

This is Episode 5 of our ESA Explores podcast series introducing the ESA astronaut class of 2022, recorded in November 2023.

Music and audio editing by Denzel Lorge. Cover art by Gaël Nadaud.

Access all ESA Explores podcasts.

 

For the first time, potential signs of the rainbow-like ‘glory effect’ have been detected on a planet outside our Solar System. Glory are colourful concentric rings of light that occur only under peculiar conditions.

 

Data from ESA’s sensitive Characterising ExOplanet Satellite, Cheops, along with several other ESA and NASA missions, suggest this delicate phenomenon is beaming straight at Earth from the hellish atmosphere of ultra-hot gas giant WASP-76b, 637 light-years away.

 

Seen often on Earth, the effect has only been found once on another planet, Venus. If confirmed, this first extrasolar glory will reveal more about the nature of this puzzling exoplanet, with exciting lessons for how to better understand strange, distant worlds. 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is set launch 23 of the company's Starlink broadband satellites early this morning (April 5).

Travelling to Mars has its own challenges. The distance alone makes the journey something of a mission in itself. Arrive though, and the handwork has only just begun. Living and surviving on Mars will be perhaps humans biggest challenge yet.  It would be impossible to take everything along with you to survive so instead, it would be imperative to ‘live off the land’ and produce as much locally as possible. A new rover called AgroMars will be equipped with a number of agriculture related experiments to study the make up of the soil to assess its suitability for growing food. 

Growing food on Mars poses a number of challenges, chiefly due to the harsh environmental conditions. Not least of which is the low atmospheric pressure, temperature extremes and high radiation levels. To try and address these, new techniques have been developed in the fields of hydroponics and aeroponics. The key to these new techniques involves using nutrient rich solutions instead of soils. 

Special structures are build analogous to greenhouses on Earth with artificial lighting, temperature and humidity control. Genetic engineering too has played a part in developing plants that are more hardy and capably of surviving in harsh Martian environments. As we continue to explore the Solar System and in particular Mars, we are going to have to find ways to grow food in alien environments. 

The space station’s Veggie Facility, tended here by NASA astronaut Scott Tingle, during the VEG-03 plant growth investigation, which cultivated Extra Dwarf Pak Choi, Red Russian Kale, Wasabi mustard, and Red Lettuce and harvested on-orbit samples for testing back on Earth. Credits: NASA

Enter AgroMars. A space mission taking a rover to Mars to hunt for, and explore the possibility of establishing agriculture on Mars! The rover will be launched with similar capabilities to the likes of Perseverance or Curiosity. The rover will be launched to Mars by a Falcon 9 launch vehicle operated by Space X but this is some years off yet. The development phase has yet to start. In a paper by lead author M. Duarte dos San- tos the mission has been shaped, reality is a little way off. 

On arrival, AgroMars will use an X-ray and infrared spectrometer, high resolution cameras, pH sensors, mass spectrometers and drilling tools to collect and analyse soil samples. The samples will be assessed for mineralogical composition, soil texture, soil pH, presence of organic compounds and water retention capacity. 

To be able to assess the Martian soil the rover must possess advanced capabilities for collecting and analysing soil samples, more than before. The data will then be sent on to laboratories on Earth and it is their responsibility to interpret the information. The multitude of groups involved is a wonderful reminder how science transcends geographical borders. Working together will yield far better results and help to advance our knowledge of astrobiology and agriculture on Mars. 

‘Calypso’ Panorama of Spirit’s View from ‘Troy’. This full-circle view from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the terrain surrounding the location called “Troy,” where Spirit became embedded in soft soil during the spring of 2009. The hundreds of images combined into this view were taken beginning on the 1,906th Martian day (or sol) of Spirit’s mission on Mars (May 14, 2009) and ending on Sol 1943 (June 20, 2009). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University

This doesn’t come cheap though. The estimated cost of the mission is in the region of $2.7 billion which includes development, launch and exploration for the entire mission. 

The total cost of the mission is estimated to be around $2.7 billion, which includes $2.2 billion for the development and launch of the rover and $500 million for its exploitation during the entirety of the mission. Whether it – pardon the pun – gets off the ground is yet to be seen but if we are to explore and even establish a permanent base on Mars then we will have to gain a better understanding of the environment to feed and sustain future explorers. 

Source : AgroMars, Space Mission Concept Study To Explore Martian Soil And Atmosphere To Search For Possibility Of Agriculture on Mars.

Link :

The post Want to Start a Farm on Mars? This Rover Will Find Out if it’s Possible appeared first on Universe Today.

To remain youthful in a cosmic demolition derby around supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, some cannibalistic stars gruesomely bathe in outer layers of their stellar victims.

Combining PSA blood tests with MRI scans is making the screening less harmful, but it still should be targeted only at high-risk groups, such as men who are Black or have a family history of prostate cancer, says a new report

Combining PSA blood tests with MRI scans is making the screening less harmful, but it still should be targeted only at high-risk groups, such as men who are Black or have a family history of prostate cancer, says a new report

In a paper published on the 1st April, author Mark Popinchalk reported upon a fascinating piece of research focussing on which animal has seen the most solar eclipses! It turns out that, whilst us humans have seen our fair share we are nowhere near the top of the list.  According to Popinchalk, the horseshoe crabs have seen a staggering 138 trillion solar eclipses across the entire species. We are hot on their heels but it won’t be until about 10 million years that we catch up!

On Monday we will be treated to another total solar eclipse across many parts of the globe. As the eclipse progresses – which is the result of a perfect Earth, Moon and Sun alignment – the Moon blocks sunlight from reaching parts of the Earth. When the Moon is directly between the two, from parts of the Earth, the Sun is completely blocked and we see a total solar eclipse. When only part of the Sun is blocked, we see a partial eclipse. As the eclipse progresses on Monday, hundreds of millions of people will witness the event unfold. 

Totality and the ‘diamond ring effect,’ captured during the 2023 total solar eclipse as seen from Ah Chong Island, Australia. Credit: Eliot Herman

It goes without saying that eclipses are not human constructs, nor are they purely the domain of the human being. Eclipses have occurred for millions of years, from a time long before humans appeared on Earth. This means that animals, for billions of years, witnessed eclipses long before we were the proverbial twinkle in the eye of mother Earth. 

Across the eons where eclipses have taken place there has been countless creatures walking/flying and swimming around. Even microbial activity Popinchalk suggests should be considered but it is impossible to say too much about them. In the Cambrian period there was a wide range of animals that evolved onto the surface of the Earth. The challenge however is to decide if an animal is actually aware of an eclipse, much less actually ‘observe’ it. There are anecdotal reports of birds going to roost during the lower light levels. Quantifying this is difficult.

Recent studies into the reaction of animals during total solar eclipses from zoos in metropolitan areas. Hartstone—Rose and team tracked the responses to 17 families of animals during the 2017 eclipse and found that 13 of them behaved differently than usual, with 8 performing night time routines. Others, such as primates, exhibited anxiety based behaviours much like our early ancestors did. 

Hartstone-Rose et al observed the Galapagos turtles turning to look toward the sky during an eclipse, were they perhaps observing and contemplating the event? Studies from Lofting and Dolittle (1920) have explored animal communications but until we can unlock the mystery of animal communication we may never know. We cannot however, hide from the fact that animals may well have seen eclipses, the debate is whether they really cottoned on to what was happening. 

In the conclusion, Popinchalk shows how, for an estimated standing population of horseshoe crabs of 120 million they would have witnessed 1.5 million eclipses making a total of 130 trillion total solar eclipse experiences. As for humans, if we take a standing (average) population of 1 million and 320,000 eclipses thats a mere 32 billion experiences. We are lagging behind. The paper is a fascinating read, give it a try, but do remember it was published on the 1st April, the numbers may have changed by then! It’s worthy of a winky emoji at this point

SpaceX has moved its giant Super Heavy booster to the pad for testing ahead of the next Starship test flight, which could launch as soon as May.

White House officials have directed NASA to begin work on establishing a standard time for the Moon, according to a report from Reuters this week. Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) is intended to help ensure synchronization between the various lunar activities planned under the Artemis program.

Timekeeping is essential to space travel. It ensures orbital maneuvers occur correctly, it helps communications between spacecraft remain secure, and it prevents errors in positioning and mapping. Without it, in other words, lunar exploration would get very complicated.

We can blame Einstein and his theory of relativity for part of the problem. Time is experienced differently under different gravitational conditions, an effect known as time dilation.

“The same clock that we have on Earth would move at a different rate on the moon,” Kevin Coggins, NASA’s space communications and navigation chief, told Reuters.

On the Moon, clocks move faster than their Earthly counterparts by 58.7 microseconds per day. While most humans wouldn’t notice such a tiny difference, spacecraft certainly do.

Currently, spacecraft in low Earth orbit, like GPS satellites and the International Space Station, run on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). But even in these cases, periodic corrections need to be made for time dilation, otherwise GPS systems would lose precision and ultimately fail.

Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques shows his watch, set to UTC, aboard the International Space Station. Credit: CSA.

The Apollo program’s moon missions in the 1960s-70s relied on Houston time. Mission control was the astronauts’ timekeeper – though astronauts made sidereal measurements using the stars to ensure they were on course and on time – that was enough for short-term lunar visits with only two vehicles (a command module and a lander).

But with dozens of countries and private companies vying to engage in long-term lunar exploration under the Artemis program, a shared timekeeping system is going to be vital.

“Think of the atomic clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory (in Washington). They’re the heartbeat of the nation, synchronizing everything. You’re going to want a heartbeat on the moon,” Coggins said.

NASA will need international cooperation to bring LTC into being. UTC, the global standard for Earthly timekeeping, is managed by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, and LTC will likely need to be brought before the same body to ensure its implementation is accepted internationally.

The White House memo proposing LTC recognized the need for international agreements to bring it to fruition. It suggested facilitating LTC through existing international bodies, but also through the Artemis Accords, a recent 36-nation agreement that outlines guidelines for cooperative space exploration.

According to the memo, plans for LTC are expected to be finalized by the end of 2026.

The post The Moon Will Get its Own Time Zone appeared first on Universe Today.

The new BREAD experiment, which was designed to search the cosmos for mysterious dark matter, has returned its first results.

Our leading model of the universe assumes dark energy to be constant across the universe and throughout time. Emerging evidence suggests that may not be the case.

China is making progress on two new pads for commercial space launches from the island of Hainan.