Daily Archives: June 9, 2021

"This Week In Space" brings you whats new and exciting in space exploration and astronomy once a week, every week. From supernovae to SpaceX or Mars missions to black holes, if its out of this world, its covered here:

A supernova that lit the night sky for months in 1181 AD has returned as a 'zombie' star, scientists say.

In 1181 AD, medieval astronomers in China and Japan stood witness to something that has only occurred eight times in all of recorded history: a supernova from within our galaxy. The stellar explosion appeared to humans as a new light in the night sky, then slowly faded over months back into darkness, never to be seen again. Until now.

Nearly a thousand years later, an international team of astronomers believe they have found the remains of that supernova. Its called a "zombie star," becauseunlike nearly every other supernova weve observedit partially survived its explosion.

On top of that, the supernova may be the first definite example of a rare type thats only been theorized before, involving the merger of two extremely dense stars. The only way to find out for sure is to study the star in detail.

Now, centuries after it was first seen by human eyes, thats finally possible.

An airborne experiment over the Alps could help scientists explore matter in other galaxies.

Scientists have thought of many ways to discover life on other planets, but they often rest on assumptions about what aliens might be like. This past week, an interdisciplinary team of scientists put forward a promising new method that only assumes one of the most fundamental facts about life as we know it. Then they tested it in daredevil fashion.

All life on Earth is based on molecules that are chiral, meaning they can exist in either one of two mirror-image forms. When biology uses a molecule in some way, it almost always uses just one form and not its mirror image. The scientists claim is that this microscopic tendency could be visible from space. Or, at the very least, from a helicopter.

In what must have been a fun study, the group sped a helicopter 5,000 feet above the Swiss Alps while constantly taking measurements of the ground beneath them through a telescope. If the helicopter was above greenery, the hope was that they would be able to detect how sunlight reflects differently from a plants asymmetrically chiral molecules (as opposed to, say, a rock or a lake).

It did. They found that they could use their measurements to tell whether they were flying over plant life within seconds.

Future astronomers may not use helicopters to accomplish the same feat, but the proof-of-concept stands, and means that some day this technique could be scaled up to planets themselves.

The U.S. is looking to become a gatekeeper and licenser for all of Earth's extra-planetary operations.

Another step has been taken toward the corporatization of space. Last week, South Korea and New Zealand became the 10th and 11th countries to sign the Artemis Accords, a space treaty that acts a prerequisite for those who want to be involved in American efforts to again set foot on the Moon.

Mostly, the agreement is uncontroversial. It reaffirms peaceful cooperation in space exploration and the status quo. To some, though, it represents another inch slid down the slippery slope to privatized space, or even an outer space totally dominated by the U.S.

The Accords set the standard for whether and how corporations can exploit resources in space (e.g. mining), allowing it so long as the corporations are appropriately approved. But the U.S. would be the body deciding most of those approvals, since most private space corporations are licensed in America. The result is that space not only becomes a new frontier of potentially unlimited private property, but one which the U.S. controls access to in practice.

Perhaps this is why NASA and the Department of State have pursued the treaty on a country-by-country basis, as opposed to bringing it to the UN for approval. With each country that signs on, there is a bit more precedent that outer space is aligned with US interests.

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This week in space: Zombie stars and the corporatization of the galaxy - Chron

What lies beyond our solar system has long fascinated not just scientists but also writers and filmmakers, so murky are its depths.

And even the two probes that have made it beyond the heliosphereand into interstellar space Voyagers 1 and 2 did so only after decades of exploring our own planetarysystem.

Now, Canberra researchers say they have cracked the code to enable usto send a spacecrafteven further, and at a far greater speed, to another planetarysystem altogether.

The spacecraft is alsoso small and delicatethat scientistsplanto send more than one in the hope thatsome of them will make it to Alpha Centauri, without being destroyed by an errant piece of space dust along the way.

The achievement is "very exciting"because it could enable us to record information from those planetary bodieswithin our lifetime its predicted travel time is just 20 years.

Compare that to the roughly 44 years Voyager 2 spent nosing around Uranus and Neptune before continuing into the great beyond.

The study's lead author, Australian National University astrophysicist Chathura Bandutunga, said when they discovered the solution it was a kind of "eureka moment", when they worked out how many lasers, and in what formation, they would need to propel their spacecraft far enough and fast enough to reach its goal.

"We already have several crafts Voyager included [in interstellar space]but it will be many human lifetimes before they reach anywhere near another star," Dr Bandutunga said.

"For the Breakthrough Starshot probe to reach Alpha Centauri within one lifetime it will need to travel over 2000 times faster than our current interstellar probes."

Supplied: Breakthrough Initiatives

DrBandutunga said the whole project was "very ambitious", but one researchers were finally confident enough to share with their collaborators around the world.

"The challenge that we're really looking at is how do we use light to push the satellite along?" he said.

"And how do we get that light from a ray that's on the ground all the way to the satellite in orbit? How to do that on a grand scale that's really unheard of to date."

If their theory is correct, the lasers will be arranged in just the right combination and number to propel the sail to where it needs to go, and the next step is to test that theory within the laws of physics.

"The next step is to test the building blocks in a laboratory setting," he said.

Ideally, a spacecraft will reach Alpha Centauri,the closest star system and closest planetary system to Earth's, and record images and scientific measurements that will be broadcast back to Earth.

Scientistsestimate roughly 100 million individual lasers will be needed to generate the required optical power of about 100GW.

Fellow author Paul Sibley said the devil was in the detail when it came to unscrambling the lasers.

"We use a random digital signal to scramble the measurements from each laser and unscramble each one separately in digital signal processing,"he said.

This allows us to pick out only the measurements we need from a vast jumble of information. We can then break the problem into small arrays and link them together in sections."

While these measurements may seem confounding to the average eye, what is clear is that scientists have never got this close before.

"This project is really about making that travel from our star to another star possible within a human lifetime," Dr Bandutunga said.

University of Southern Queensland professor of astrophysics Jonti Horner described the development as a "brilliant"step forward in space exploration research.

"I think it's really fun," Dr Horner said.

"It puts an interesting spin on something people already do in astronomy.

"I think it's a beautiful illustration of how something that has been developed for one purpose can be repurposed for a totally different project.

"Instead of unscrambling the effect that the atmosphere has on light coming in, you're preemptively scrambling the light going out so that the atmosphere unscrambles it."

Dr Horner said the breakthrough was an exciting one because it was using existing technology to do something groundbreaking, where data from distant stars could be sent back within 25 years.

"It's a really fascinating example of where the investment of money and science leads to remarkable results,"he said.

"This idea that if we could speed the spacecraft up to a quarter of the speed of light, you could get it to the nearest star within 15 or 20 years.

"It's saying this is possible, likely with technology that's not much more further advanced than what we have now, so it's not science fiction, it's near-future technology."

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Australian National University researchers light up our pathway to another planetary system in major scientific breakthrough - ABC News

Two years ago, rocket engineer Diana Alsindy typed a seemingly straightforward query in Arabic on Google: Why do satellites not fall from the sky? she asked.

Her search returned zero answers.

But when Alsindy typed the same phrase in English, she was inundated with pages upon pages of information.

There were hundreds of articles, with videos and illustrations and graphics, says the Baghdad-born Alsindy, a propulsion engineer at Boeing in California.

[Arabs] were pioneers in maths, astronomy, calligraphy and so many of the technologies we use to this day were discovered by Arab scientists and engineers. And it seems like we kind of went downhill.

If were expecting to expand the Arab world [in science and technology], how do you expect people to learn if youre not saying it in their language?

Instead of complaining, Alsindy, 27, whose family immigrated to the US from Iraq in 2008, decided to do something about it. She launched the Instagram account @TheArabianStargazer that same year in 2018, posting science, technology and engineering as well as space exploration content in Arabic and English.

It was an immediate success, quickly winning her a steady following mostly from Arabic speakers around the world. The account now has more than 110,000 followers.

When you make it normal to talk about science in Arabic, more people feel included. If I hear someone speaking in Japanese, I wont listen to it, because I dont understand it. You need to deliver that inclusivity, she says.

From questions about wearing veils in space, to the challenges of being a Muslim astronaut and how young female students can convince their parents how they can work in a male-dominated career such as space, Alsindy says she gets hundreds of questions from her followers all over the world.

Two years ago, I received a message from a girl and she said, I am from Egypt and that I really look up to you and I want to be in this field one day.

We kept in touch and a year later she got it touch again and said she was messaging me from her dormitory in Stanford University and thanked me for being an inspiration. She said she wouldnt have applied for Stanford if it wasnt for my platform and was really thankful to be there. She went straight from Egypt to an Ivy League school and thats so amazing.

When we immigrated, I barely spoke English. So I didnt even think of which career I was going to be in

There are detractors too, she notes.

I sometimes get comments like Youre a woman, you should be in the kitchen. Im a scientist and engineer and they still think its OK to say say these things, she laughs. But the positive feedback is way more than the negative. So its cool.

Alsindys desire to share her knowledge in Arabic was born out of her own experience growing up in the US. She was 14 when her parents moved her and two younger siblings from Baghdad to San Diego, California.

When we immigrated, I barely spoke English. So I didnt even think of which career I was going to be in, she recalls.

Her father, who studied mechanical engineering in Iraq, worked as an artist in the US. But Alsindy thought being an engineer could give her more options as a career.

In school, she says she really enjoyed maths and physics because there wasnt one way of doing something.

You can always solve an equation or a formula in so many different ways, she recalls.

When Alsindy was 19, she read an article about a female scientist and engineer, who was part of the crew at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, which was replicating life on Mars.

They were simulating life on the planet to see if humans could live on there. She was wearing the space suit and walking on red dust and rocks. And the story really caught my attention.

I never before thought about space that way and I never thought you could have a career in space.

Alsindy says she picked chemical engineering as her major in university so she could find opportunities in different careers just in case aerospace engineering didnt work out.

Still, Nasa seemed like a world away then, she recalls.

I kept looking for opportunities but whatever I did, it seemed like Nasa was so far way and there was no way I could reach it. And Nasa seemed to be the only place I could be if I wanted to be in space, she says.

But she was wrong. At the University of California, San Diego, which she joined in 2014, Alsindy was the Propulsion Team Lead at an undergrad group who had a passion for space.

Called Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, the group took part in Nasas Cube Quest Challenge a competition to build flight-qualified, small satellites capable of advanced communication and propulsion near and beyond the moon. Their entry, called Triteia, was a 3D-printed engine thruster, which could propel a satellite into the moons orbit.

Our engine was made from 90 per cent hydrogen peroxide, which means that there was only one place that could give us the facility to test it Nasa. The competition was three years long and evaluated every three months when we had to present the evolution of the design as we competed against high schools, other universities, graduate students and companies, she explains.

This meant a lot of meetings with Nasa. They did critical design reviews, preliminary design reviews and test readiness reviews, and it really exposed me to what the space industry was really about. It wasnt my physics class, it wasnt my maths teacher who taught me how to solve an equation, it was this hands-on experience I used all of these acronyms and methodologies as a professional working in space.

Alsindys team didnt win but working in that environment exposed her to space and what space really means, she says.

It doesnt mean you have to wear a suit and go to space and walk on rocky ground. It doesnt mean you have to be a genius in maths or physics or chemistry. It simply meant finding the right people, the right experiences and opportunity and applying your skill sets and know what youre good at.

Alsindy later became the Propulsion Development Engineer at Virgin Orbit, working on the LauncherOne rocket, which took off for space in January. She says she started The Arabian Stargazer soon after to share her love for space and clear misconceptions about its accessibility, especially in the Arab world.

There is a misconception that this is a difficult career to get into. Its just a little tricky because there isnt a clear path thats straight through, she says.

Ive always had this desire to be cause-driven and I have documents on my hard drive way before the Arabian Stargazer on how I can give back to the community using my strengths. And Ive had this feeling of I need to give back to the Arab world.

That aspiration has taken her on speaking tours around the Middle East, including the UAE, where she spoke at the Dubai Airshow in 2019. Her ultimate mission is much bigger, she says.

Ive talked to various organisations on how I could do internship-style fellowships for Arab students. Being in the space industry really opened my eyes to the fact that in order to really flourish in a certain career, especially engineering and space, you have to be in an environment where you can really explore things by hand. Also, to know if you like this before you commit to a full-time job. And that experience doesnt exist in the Middle East, she says.

The UAE, which has been leading the Arab world in space projects, could be a great partner in her mission to promote Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education in the region, she says.

I want to work with [the UAE] to build some kind of an academy where we teach students, newly graduates or not yet, on how gain these skill sets by hand, she says.

I want to provide that same opportunity I had to students in high school or university and equip them with the resources.

When companies abroad see that there are students who are trained by American professionals, they are going to come and invest in these students, she adds.

Ultimately, my drive is to give all these students with opportunities they might not get somewhere else.

Technicians work at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) in Dubai. MBRSC / AFP

An employee works at the control room of the Mars Mission at MBRSC. AFP

Employees work at the control room of the Mars Mission at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre. AFP

Engineers observe a KhalifaSat model at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre. AFP

An engineer walks toward a KhalifaSat model. AFP

Scientists work at a laboratory in the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre. AFP

Engineers observe a KhalifaSat model. AFP

Engineers walk the corridors of Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre. AFP

The entrance of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai. AFP

The entrance of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai. AFP

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Arabian Stargazer: Meet Diana Alsindy, the woman who's teaching young people about science and space, in Arabic - The National

PRESS RELEASE Space exploration just took an exciting turn at the Air Zoo in Portage, MI, with the recent addition of an interactive traveling summer exhibit named Be the Astronaut. This hands-on and highly immersive experience is well-suited for space fans of all ages and will be on site for guests through September 12, 2021.

Air Zoo visitors will have the opportunity to experience the wonders of space as they are guided through three training stations by virtual spaceflight experts, specializing in science, navigation, and engineering. Astronauts in training will not only plan a space mission, but they will also hop into the open-cockpit simulators to pilot the mission to completion! Missions include traveling to the moon, Mars, Jupiter, and the asteroid belt.

This exhibit provides an outstanding experience that we hope will ignite a passion for space exploration and inspire our future generations to consider career paths in science, engineering, and technology, states Air Zoo President & CEO, Troy Thrash. We take advantage of any opportunity we have to immerse kids (of ALL ages) in cool STEAM experiences.

This exciting experience was produced by Eureka Exhibits and designed by NASA engineers, providing a birds-eye view of real astronaut pretraining using state-of-the-art video game technology found in the touch screen stations and interactive simulator pods. Astronauts of all ages will also enjoy the display of interesting space related artifacts and information stations.

This out-of-this-world exhibit is included with general admission, with the entire Air Zoo experience, and as always free to members and children 4 and under. Admission information can be found at airzoo.org/plan-you-visit. The Air Zoo is a proud member of Museums for All, which is a national initiative to provide inspiring museum opportunities to families receiving food assistance. Guests with valid EBT*/WIC cards will receive a reduced admission fee, $2/person in the household, children 4 and under are always free.

About the Air Zoo

Located at 6151 Portage Rd., Portage, MI 49002, the Air Zoo is a Smithsonian-affiliated aerospace & science experience with over 100 rare air & space craft, inspiring interactive exhibits, indoor amusement park rides, full-motion flight simulators, hands-on science-based education programs, and more. The Air Zoo is a not-for-profit organization and is open 360+ days per year. For hours, tickets, safety policies and procedures as well as temporarily altered experiences due to COVID-19, visit airzoo.org

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New Hands-on Space Traveling Exhibit at The Air Zoo - Warbirds News

Among the kids reaching for the stars this summer, two youth from the NWT will joining Canadas Junior Astronaut Space Camp program.

Fort Smiths Taylor Porter and Inuviks Kieran McCarthy will join 50 eager astronauts-in-waiting at the July 26 to 30 camp, which will be held online.

My family and I were talking about what we wanted to do when we are older, said Porter. I mentioned that being an astronaut would be really cool and I guess my mom remembered about this camp. She asked me if I was interested in participating and of course, I said yes.

I really like the idea that theres so much more out there that we dont know about. Just thinking about it makes you realize how small you are and how much power you actually hold. I find it super cool to think that there might be other life forms or even civilizations on other planets that we have no idea about. We dont know what we could find out there, it could range from new resources to new friends or enemies.

McCarthy, who is also an avid fan of robotics, said he was really excited to be attending.

He said he had heard about the program two years ago and put in an entry and much to his own surprise, he was selected. He said the vast scope of space

The world gets smaller and small every day on Earth, he said. Theres so much out there. Ive heard there may even be planets made of diamonds.

This is the first-ever Canadian Junior Astronaut Camp. Originally planned for 2020, the camp was delayed to this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Attendees were selected randomly from a pool of candidates across Canada. To be eligible for the draw, candidates had to complete a task in one of three streams that reflect the workload of an astronaut either fitness and nutrition, communications and teamwork or science and technology. They also had to submit a video explaining why they wanted to attend the camp.

Now that theyve made the cut, the space campers will be put to work on several important activities reflecting space exploration. They will remotely operate a real lunar rover in a test-simulation. They will use satellite images to solve on the ground problems. They will experience physical training alongside astronauts and learn about robotics and the role they place in space.

Having recently competed in the Skills Canada National Robotics competition, McCarthy said he wanted to learn more about the logistics of space exploration.

With several years of robotics under his belt already, McCarthy is already learning the skills needed to grow into a career in space. He said he first focused on the programming, but this year built his first robot by himself.

It was a robot kit. There was an instruction manual for it, and I modified that into a whole new robot. It was a lot of fun, he said. It picked up wooden dowels. I could just put on the floor, it drove over to a platform and put them down. It could stack them on top of each other, so it would essentially build a wood log-house.

It sounds very simple, but it took me months to program that.

As for Porter, she looking forward to learning more about the experience of being an astronaut, though she noted she had not committed to the lifestyle as of yet.

I would love to learn about peoples experiences going to space and how that affected them mentally and physically, she said. I want to expand my knowledge on the reality of things in our universe and find out some of the everyday things youd have to go through to be an astronaut. I know that it is a real challenge to get there but doing this camp will definitely help give me tips on what to do.

I think that it would be an amazing job and so cool to be able to do that but Im not sure if its that realistic. Yes, my dream is to go to space and to be an astronaut or something close to it but it is a lot of hard work to put in and Im not sure if Im up to it. I will definitely consider this job field when Im older but it all depends on what I enjoy and exceed in andor out of school.

McCarthy expressed his thanks to his family and robotics instructor, whom he credited for keeping him looking to the stars.

Thank you mom and dad, thank you to all my friends at the robotics club and thank you to all my teachers as well, he said.

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Two kids from NWT going to Canadas first space camp - Northern News Services

NASA's Juno space probe will zoom by Jupiter's largest moon Ganymede this week, collecting new data about the moon for the first time in two decades. The spacecraft, which has been orbiting planet Jupiter since 2016, will soar 645 miles above Ganymede's icy surface at 43,200 miles per hour.

The flyby will give researchers a better understanding of the enormous moon's water-ice crust and magnetic field to help prepare for future missions to Jupiter, reports NPR's Joe Palca.

"Juno carries a suite of sensitive instruments capable of seeing Ganymede in ways never before possible," said Scott Bolton, Juno's principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio in a statement. "By flying so close, we will bring the exploration of Ganymede into the 21st century, both complementing future missions with our unique sensors and helping prepare for the next generation of missions to the Jovian system."

The Jovian moon is as fascinating as it is mysterious. The natural satellite is larger than the planet Mercury, and it's the only moon in our solar system with a magnetic field, reports Kim Lyons for the Verge. Ganymede's dense, iron-rich core produces the magnetic field, which creates visible ribbons of glowing auroras around its north and south poles. Surrounding the core is a spherical shell of rock and a 497-mile-thick ice shell that envelops and makes up the moon's surface. In 1996, the Hubble Space Telescope found evidence of a thin layer of oxygen-rich atmosphere trapped in its icy surface. While the atmosphere is too thin to support life as we know it, researchers suspect that there could have been life-producing conditions on Ganymede and other icy moons at some point, NPR reports.

Juno's flyby will be the closest any spacecraft has been to the frozen Jovian moon since NASA's Galileo space probe zipped by Ganymede in 2000. Before 2000, NASA's twin Voyager probes observed the moon in 1979. Aboard Juno are several instruments designed to photograph the moon and gather more data on its composition and icy shell. The tools include three different cameras, various radio instruments, an Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS), Microwave Radiometer (MWR), and the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM), reports Meghan Bartels for Space.com. Juno will begin collecting data three hours before it arrives at its closest approach of Ganymede.

Streaked across Ganymede's surface are bright light-colored regions of ridges and grooves that overlap darker-colored terrains along the icy shell. The textured scar-like areas suggest that the moon's surface underwent extreme changes over time. There's even some evidence that an ocean lies beneath Ganymede's surface, CNN reports. Scientists will use the microwave radiometer to identify what the lighter and darker patches on the moon are made of and how the moon maintains its frozen shell, per Space.com.

"Ganymede's ice shell has some light and dark regions, suggesting that some areas may be pure ice while other areas contain dirty ice," said Bolton in a statement. "[The microwave radiometer] will provide the first in-depth investigation of how the composition and structure of the ice varies with depth, leading to a better understanding of how the ice shell forms and the ongoing processes that resurface the ice over time."

The Juno mission's JunoCam, which has previously taken gorgeous images of the swirly gas giant, Jupiter, will also take photos of the planet's largest moonbut will need to be quick. The JunoCam will only have 25 minutes to snap five photos as the probe speeds by Ganymede, Space.com reports. Researchers will compare the images to those taken by the Voyager probes and Galileo spacecraft.

The Juno spacecraft will use the opportunity to make another flyby of Jupiter to help researchers plan future Jovian System missions. The missions include NASA's Europa Clipper and the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission. Both missions focus on searching for life on icy moons and making detailed observations of their surfaces, CNN reports.

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NASA's Juno Space Probe Zooms by Largest Moon in the Solar System - Smithsonian Magazine