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Scientists Solve 400 Year Old Solar Mystery
For over four centuries, the dark blemishes on our Sun's surface have puzzled astronomers. Now, German scientists have cracked the code behind sunspot stability, revealing how these Earth sized magnetic monsters, each powerful enough to rival an MRI machine yet spanning areas larger than our entire planet, maintain their grip on the solar surface for weeks or months at a time. This breakthrough not only solves one of astronomy's oldest mysteries but could revolutionize our ability to predict the explosive solar storms that threaten our satellite dependent world.
Earth Was Born With Water; No Delivery Needed
The source of Earth's water is one of the most compelling questions facing scientists. Earth's habitability depends on multiple factors, but water is the basis for life, and it had to come from somewhere. Did comets and meteorites deliver it after Earth formed? Or did water become part of our planet as it formed?
A Lunar Base Could Start with a Dome over a Crater Made of Regolith
When astronauts live on the Moon permanently, they're going to need a safe habitat, ideally made out of local construction material. A new paper suggests that lunar astronauts could cover a 17-meter crater with a dome made from a lunar regolith-based geopolymer. A 3D printer would extrude a paste made of lunar regolith that would be sintered together into the shape of the dome. This would provide protection from radiation and could even maintain a pressurized habitat.
This Earth-sized Exoplanet is On a Death Spiral
An international team of astronomers have discovered an Earth-size exoplanet on a very tight orbit around its star. It completes an orbit in only 5 hours and 22 minutes. Unfortunately, the planet will either be torn to pieces or crash into its star in about 31 million years.
The Milky Way Could be Surrounded by 100 Satellite Galaxies
The Milky Way is surrounded by about 60 satellite galaxies. The famous ones are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. But according to a new simulation, the Milky Way could have 80 and even 100 satellite galaxies that we haven't detected so far. These galaxies will be hard to find. They've had most of their mass stripped by the gravity of the Milky Way's halo. But new telescopes like Vera Rubin should be able to spot them.
A Solar Gravitational Lens Telescope Is The Only Feasible Way To Get High Resolution Pictures Of A Habitable Exoplanet
Sometimes in order to support an idea, you first have to discredit alternative, competing ideas that could take resources away from the one you care about. In the scientific community, one of the most devastating ways you can do that is by making the other methods appear to be too expensive to be feasible, or, better yep, prove they wouldn’t work at all due to some fundamental limitation. That is what a recent paper by Dr. Slava Turyshev, the world’s most prominent proponent of a Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL) telescope mission, does. He examines how effective alternative telescope technologies would be at creating a 10x10 pixel map of an exoplanet about 32 light years away. Unsurprisingly, there’s only one that is able to do so without giant leaps and bounds in technology development - the SGL telescope.
Scientists Unlock Secrets of Matter Under Extreme Conditions
Scientists have recreated the universe's first moments by smashing atomic nuclei together at near-light speeds, generating temperatures 1,000 times hotter than the Sun's core and briefly forming the same "soup" of fundamental particles that existed microseconds after the Big Bang. In this groundbreaking research, heavy particles act like tiny cosmic detectives, moving through this primordial matter and revealing how the chaotic early universe transformed into the structured reality we see today. By understanding how these massive particles behave under the most extreme conditions imaginable, researchers are essentially reading the universe's origin story written in the language of fundamental physics.
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NASA to Preview Advanced US-India Radar Mission Ahead of Launch
NASA will host a news conference at 12 p.m. EDT Monday, July 21, to discuss the upcoming NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission.
The Earth-observing satellite, a first-of-its-kind collaboration between NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), carries an advanced radar system that will help protect communities by providing a dynamic, three-dimensional view of Earth in unprecedented detail and detecting the movement of land and ice surfaces down to the centimeter.
The NISAR mission will lift off from ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, on India’s southeastern coast. Launch is targeted for no earlier than late July.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will stream the briefing live on its X, Facebook, and YouTube channels. Learn how to watch NASA content through a variety of platforms, including social media.
Participants in the news conference include:
- Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
- Karen St. Germain, director, Earth Science Division, NASA Headquarters
- Wendy Edelstein, deputy project manager, NISAR, NASA JPL
- Paul Rosen, project scientist, NISAR, NASA JPL
To ask questions by phone, members of the media must RSVP no later than two hours before the start of the event to: rexana.v.vizza@jpl.nasa.gov. NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online. Questions can be asked on social media during the briefing using #AskNISAR.
With its two radar instruments — an S-band system provided by ISRO and an L-band system provided by NASA — NISAR will use a technique known as synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to scan nearly all the planet’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days. Each system’s signal is sensitive to different sizes of features on Earth’s surface, and each specializes in measuring different attributes, such as moisture content, surface roughness, and motion.
These capabilities will help scientists better understand processes involved in natural hazards and catastrophic events, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, land subsidence, and landslides.
Additionally, NISAR’s cloud penetrating ability will aid urgent responses to communities during weather disasters such as hurricanes, storm surge, and flooding. The detailed maps the mission creates also will provide information on both gradual and sudden changes occurring on Earth’s land and ice surfaces.
Managed by Caltech for NASA, JPL leads the U.S. component of the NISAR project and provided the L-band SAR. NASA JPL also provided the radar reflector antenna, the deployable boom, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder, and payload data subsystem. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Near Space Network, which will receive NISAR’s L-band data.
Multiple ISRO centers have contributed to NISAR. The Space Applications Centre is providing the mission’s S-band SAR. The U R Rao Satellite Centre provided the spacecraft bus. The rocket is from Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, launch services are through Satish Dhawan Space Centre, and satellite mission operations are by the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network. The National Remote Sensing Centre is responsible for S-band data reception, operational products generation, and dissemination.
To learn more about NISAR, visit:
-end-
Karen Fox / Elizabeth Vlock
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
Andrew Wang / Scott Hulme
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-653-9131
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / scott.d.hulme@jpl.nasa.gov
Satellite images track Grand Canyon wildfires burning across thousands of acres
NASA’s Chandra Finds Baby Exoplanet is Shrinking
A star is unleashing a barrage of X-rays that is causing a closely-orbiting, young planet to wither away an astonishing rate, according to a new study using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and described in our latest press release. A team of researchers has determined that this planet will go from the size of Jupiter down to a small, barren world.
This graphic provides a visual representation of what astronomers think is happening around the star (known as TOI 1227) and a planet that is orbiting it at a fraction the distance between Mercury and the Sun. This “baby” planet, called TOI 1227 b, is just about 8 million years old, about a thousand times younger than our Sun. The main panel is an artist’s concept that shows the Jupiter-sized planet (lower left) around TOI 1227, which is a faint red star. Powerful X-rays from the star’s surface are tearing away the atmosphere of the planet, represented by the blue tail. The star’s X-rays may eventually completely remove the atmosphere.
The team used new Chandra data — seen in the inset — to measure the amounts of X-rays from TOI 1227 that are striking the planet. Using computer models of the effects of these X-rays, they concluded they will have a transformative effect, rapidly stripping away the planet’s atmosphere. They estimate that the planet is losing a mass equivalent to a full Earth’s atmosphere about every 200 years.
The researchers used different sets of data to estimate the age of TOI 1227 b. One method exploits measurements of how TOI 1227 b’s host star moves through space in comparison to nearby populations of stars with known ages. A second method compared the brightness and surface temperature of the star with theoretical models of evolving stars. The very young age of TOI 1227 b makes it the second youngest planet ever to be observed passing in front of its host star (a so-called transit). Previously the planet had been estimated by others to be about 11 million years old.
Of all the exoplanets astronomers have found with ages less than 50 million years, TOI 1227 b stands out for having the longest year and the host planet with the lowest mass. These properties, and the high dose of X-rays it is receiving, make it an outstanding target for future observations.
A paper describing these results has been accepted publication in The Astrophysical Journal and a preprint is available here. The authors of the paper are Attila Varga (Rochester Institute of Technology), Joel Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology), Alexander Binks (University of Tubingen, Germany), Hans Moritz Guenther (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Simon J. Murphy (University of New South Wales Canberra in Australia).
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.
Read more from NASA’s Chandra X-ray ObservatoryLearn more about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and its mission here:
Visual DescriptionThis release features an artist’s illustration of a Jupiter-sized planet closely orbiting a faint red star. An inset image, showing the star in X-ray light from Chandra, is superimposed on top of the illustration at our upper left corner.
At our upper right, the red star is illustrated as a ball made of intense fire. The planet, slightly smaller than the star, is shown at our lower left. Powerful X-rays from the star are tearing away the atmosphere of the planet, causing wisps of material to flow away from the planet’s surface in the opposite direction from the star. This gives the planet a slight resemblance to a comet, complete with a tail.
X-ray data from Chandra, presented in the inset image, shows the star as a small purple orb on a black background. Astronomers used the Chandra data to measure the amount of X-rays striking the planet from the star. They estimate that the planet is losing a mass equivalent to a full Earth’s atmosphere about every 200 years, causing it to ultimately shrink from the size of Jupiter down to a small, barren world.
News Media ContactMegan Watzke
Chandra X-ray Center
Cambridge, Mass.
617-496-7998
mwatzke@cfa.harvard.edu
Corinne Beckinger
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
256-544-0034
corinne.m.beckinger@nasa.gov
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