Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

— Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law

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Space and Astronomy News from Universe Today
Updated: 5 hours 31 min ago

It's Official: Asteroids Ryugu and Bennu Are Siblings

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Some scientists thought that the asteroids Ryugu and Bennu were from the same family. Now that they have samples and JWST spectra from both, the verdict is in: They're both from the Polana collisional family, a diverse and widespread family of asteroids.

Categories: Astronomy

A Distant Star Explodes While Swallowing Its Black Hole Companion

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Astronomers have discovered what may be a massive star exploding while trying to swallow a black hole companion, offering an explanation for one of the strangest stellar explosions ever seen.

Categories: Astronomy

Moon Flybys Could Save Fuel On Interplanetary Missions

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

The Three Body Problem isn’t just the name of a viral Netflix series or a Hugo Award winning sci-fi book. It also represents a really problem in astrodynamics - and one that can cause headaches to mission planners in terms of its complexity, but also one that offers the promise of an easier way to enter stable orbits that might otherwise be possible. A new paper from researchers at the Beijing Institute of Technology shows one way those orbital maneuvers might be enhanced while exploring planetary systems - by using a gravity assist from its moons.

Categories: Astronomy

A 3D Printed Alumnium Mirror Could Enable Enhance CubeSat Observations

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Compact, reflective, easy to manufacture mirrors are a critical component for advancing astronomical technology in space. Mirrors are a key component in most telescopes, though they are notoriously hard to manufacture with the necessary precision, especially at large scales. A new paper from researchers in the UK uses additive manufacturing to make a thin, flexible, and lightweight mirror out of aluminum and analyzes its properties to see if it will be useful in applications such as CubeSats.

Categories: Astronomy

Tracking the Interstellar Objects 1I/'Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov, and 3I/Atlas to their Source

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

In a recent paper, researchers followed the trajectories of 1I/`Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov, and 3I/ATLAS - three installer objects that have entered the Solar System in the past decade - to constrain their possible origin. Through a series of Monte Carlo simulations, they came up with predictions of where they came from and how old they are.

Categories: Astronomy

Detecting Exoplanet Magnetic Fields From The Moon

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Exoplanets with and without a magnetic field are predicted to form, behave, and evolve very differently. In order to understand the exoplanet population, and to make progress understanding habitability, astronomers need to understand and constrain exoplanets' magnetic fields. Detecting them may best be done from the Moon.

Categories: Astronomy

Astronomers Search for Dark Matter Using Far Away Galaxies

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Physicists from the University of Copenhagen have begun using the gigantic magnetic fields of galaxy clusters to observe distant black holes in their search for an elusive particle that has stumped scientists for decades.

Categories: Astronomy

How Did Jupiter's Galilean Moons Form?

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

We already know a decent amount about how planets form, but moon formation is another process entirely, and one we’re not as familiar with. Scientists think they understand how the most important Moon in our solar system (our own) formed, but its violent birth is not the norm, and can’t explain larger moon systems like the Galilean moons around Jupiter. A new book chapter (which was also released as a pre-print paper) from Yuhito Shibaike and Yann Alibert from the University of Bern discusses the differing ideas surrounding the formation of large moon systems, especially the Galileans, and how we might someday be able to differentiate them.

Categories: Astronomy

A Cosmic Noon Puzzle: Why Did Cosmic Noon Galaxies Emit So Many Cosmic Rays?

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

The Universe's early galaxies were engulfed in halos of high-energy cosmic rays. It's likely because they had tangled and turbulent magnetic fields. These fields accelerate cosmic rays to higher energies.

Categories: Astronomy

China’s Crewed Lunar Lander Passes Key Test Milestone

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

China took a step closer to the Moon, with the first short test for their crewed lunar lander. The test was completed on Wednesday, August 6th at a facility in China’s northern Hebei Province, and lasted just under 30 seconds. The tethered test successfully demonstrated the integration and performance of key systems, simulating descent, guidance, control and engine shutdown. This marks the first test for a China’s Manned (crewed) Space Agency (CMSA’s) human-rated lander.

Categories: Astronomy

JPL Is Ready To Test Mars Samples - If They're Ever Returned

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Taking a walk is great for inspiration. There have been numerous studies about how people think more clearly on walks, and how new ideas come to them more frequently while doing so. That’s part of the reason some of the most famous minds in history included a daily walk in their schedule. Just such an inspiration must have happened recently to Nicholas Heinz, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. On a hike in Arizona he found a rock that could be used as an analog of a unique one found by the Perseverance rover on Mars - and decided to take it back to his lab to study it.x

Categories: Astronomy

How Climate Change Will Reshape Space Weather's Impact on Satellites

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Climate change isn't just transforming weather on Earth's surface, it’s also fundamentally altering how space weather affects the thousands of satellites orbiting our planet. New research reveals that rising carbon dioxide levels will dramatically change how geomagnetic storms impact the upper atmosphere, creating both opportunities and challenges for the satellite industry in the decades ahead.

Categories: Astronomy

How Gecko Feet Could Save Space Travel

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Space is getting dangerously crowded. More than 50,000 pieces of debris larger than 10 centimetres are currently hurtling around Earth at breakneck speeds, turning Earth orbits into veritable minefields. Dead satellites, rocket fragments, and collision debris pose such a serious threat that the International Space Station regularly performs emergency manoeuvres to dodge potential impacts. Now, an international team of researchers thinks they've found an elegant solution to this growing crisis and it's inspired by a humble house gecko's amazing ability to walk on walls.

Categories: Astronomy

New Theory Points to the Universe's Greatest Fireworks Show

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

What if the universe began with a fireworks show? A new theory suggests that supermassive black holes, the mysterious giants found at the heart of galaxies, were born from the universe's very first stars in a spectacular flash of light that ionised all of space before vanishing forever. This dramatic "Pop III.1" model could finally explain how these giant stellar remnants grew so impossibly large so quickly after the Big Bang, while potentially solving several major puzzles plaguing modern astronomy, from the Hubble Tension to the nature of Cosmic Dawn itself.

Categories: Astronomy

Moonquakes Will Pose Risks To Long-term Lunar Base Structures

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Our Moon is a seismically active world and its long history of quakes could affect the safety of permanent base structures there. That's one conclusion from a study of quakes along the Lee-Lincoln fault in the Taurus-Littrow valley where the Apollo 17 astronauts landed in 1972. “The global distribution of young thrust faults like the Lee-Lincoln fault, their potential to be still active and the potential to form new thrust faults from ongoing contraction should be considered when planning the location and assessing stability of permanent outposts on the Moon,” said Smithsonian senior scientist emeritus Thomas R. Watters, lead author of the paper.

Categories: Astronomy

Researchers Simulate What a Black Hole "Shadow" Looks Like

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Supercomputer simulations are helping scientists sharpen their understanding of the environment beyond a black hole’s "shadow," material just outside its event horizon.

Categories: Astronomy

The JWST Shows Us That TRAPPIST-1d Is Not As Earth-Like As We Hoped

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

The exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 d intrigues astronomers looking for possibly habitable worlds beyond our Solar System because it is similar in size to Earth, rocky, and resides in an area around its star where liquid water on its surface is theoretically possible. But according to a new study using data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, it does not have an Earth-like atmosphere.

Categories: Astronomy

Mystery of the "Little Red Dots" May Finally Be Solved

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Deep in the darkness, tiny red specks of light have been driving astronomers to distraction. These mysterious "little red dots" discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope shouldn't exist, they’re impossibly compact yet blazingly bright, defying our understanding of how galaxies form. Now, Harvard researchers believe they've solved this billion year old puzzle with a theory involving the universe's rarest structures; dark matter halos.

Categories: Astronomy

A Simple Instrument Could Find Martian DNA - If It Exists

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

Mars still holds the promise of being one of the first places in the solar system humanity will colonize. However, if there was evolutionarily distinct, extant life on the planet, it might sway the heart of even the most ardent Mars colonization fans. So astrobiologists are in a race against time to try to determine whether or not such life exists, before the entire planet becomes an analogue of the Earth’s biosphere, if only unintentionally, and only a shadow of the ones that exists here. A new paper from the Christopher Temby and Jan Spacek of the Agnostic Life Finder (ALF) team discusses one of the most promising ways to prove definitively that life exists on the Red Planet - finding polyelectrolyte polymers - in other words, DNA.

Categories: Astronomy

The Vibrational Lives of Black Holes

Tue, 08/19/2025 - 4:29pm

When black holes are disrupted by things like infalling matter or gravitational waves, they vibrate like a bell struck with a clapper. The vibrations decay over time as the black hole returns to an equilibrium state. Astrophysicists can measure these vibrations to learn more about the black hole.

Categories: Astronomy